The purpose of this study was to examine the determinants of advocacy among parents of children with autism. Existing research related to parental involvement in the autism community has been largely qualitative and/or without a theoretical basis. This study utilized the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to predict and explain parents' intentions to communicate with school staff and to attend autism advocacy event based on their attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control. Respondents included 86 parents of children enrolled in the Delaware Autism Program (DAP), a highly specialized program dedicated exclusively to educating those on the autism spectrum. The survey was available between March 25, 2013 and June 1, 2013; 19 parents returned paper surveys while 67 completed an online version. A multiple regression analysis revealed that past behavior, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control predicted communication and attendance intentions. Attitude was an additional predictor of intention to attend an event. A paired t-test revealed that parents are more likely to communicate about their child than they are to attend an event to benefit the larger autism community. Pearson correlations revealed additional relationships, including a relationship between past advocacy experience and current attitudes toward advocacy. This study adds to autism research, advocacy research, and research expanding applications of the TPB.


OBJECTIVE
The prognostic nutritional index (PNI), based on serum albumin and lymphocyte concentration, is an inflammation-based nutritional score that has been shown to be a prognostic determinant in several populations. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of PNI on mortality in patients with infective endocarditis (IE).

METHODS
A total of 131 patients with IE were enrolled in this retrospective study. The patients were divided into 2 groups based on in-hospital mortality. The PNI value of the patients was evaluated, as well as baseline clinical and demographical variables.

RESULTS
Among the study group, 29 patients died in-hospital during the median follow-up of 37 days. The PNI was found to be lower in cases of mortality (35.90±6.96; 31.09±5.88; p=0.001). ROC curve analysis also demonstrated that the PNI had a good predictive value for in-hospital mortality with a cut-off value of 35.6 (Area under the curve: 0.691; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.589-0.794; p=0.002). In multivariate logistic regression analysis, advanced age (Odds ratio [OR]: 1.078; 95% CI: 1.017-1.143; p=0.012), PNI (OR: 0.911; 95% CI: 0.835-0.993; p=0.034), and leaflet perforation (OR: 5.557; 95% CI: 1.357-22.765; p=0.017) were found to be independent predictors of mortality. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that long-term survival was found to be significantly decreased in patients with a lower PNI (Log rank: p=0.008).

CONCLUSION
The PNI result was associated with an increased in-hospital mortality rate in patients with IE. The PNI value, advanced age, and cardiac valve perforation as a complication of IE were found to be independent predictors of mortality.


ABSTRACT This work is a revision of the scarab beetle genus Euphoria Burmeister (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Cetoniinae) and is based on the examination of 18,880 specimens from 67 collections. Based upon a character study of all specimens examined, the genus is divided into 14 informal species-groups: areata species-group, avita species-group, biguttata species-group, candezei species-group, discicollis species-group, fulgida species-group, geminata species-group, hera species-group, herbacea species-group, histrionica species-group, inda species-group, pulchella species-group, sepulcralis species-group, and verticalis species-group. A description, a diagnosis, adult temporal occurrence, and geographic distribution are presented for each species. Maps of distribution and illustrations of key characters are also included. Bilingual (English and Spanish) keys for the species-groups and all species are included. Euphoria now includes 59 species, ten of which are here described as new species: E. canaliculata Orozco, E. diminuta Orozco, E. hidrocalida Orozco, E. lacandona Orozco, E. levinotata Orozco, E. mayita Orozco, E. montana Orozco, E. nicaraguensis Orozco, E. paradisiaca Orozco, and E. vittata Orozco. The following combinations are placed into new synonymy: E. acerba Janson (= E. steinheili Janson), E. atra Bates (= E. humilis Blanchard), E. comminuta Casey (= E. chontalensis Bates), E. fascifera trapezium Casey (= E. fascifera LeConte), E. fuscocyanea Casey (= E. fulgida (F.)), E. hoffmannae Deloya and Nogueira (= E. monticola Bates), E. holochloris Fall (= E. monticola Bates), E. leucopyge Bates (= E. dimidiata (Gory and Percheron)), E. limatula Janson (= E. sepulcralis (F.)), E. lineoligera Blanchard (= E. biguttata (Gory and Percheron)), E. longula Casey (= E. eximia Bates), E. morosa Janson (= E. abreona Janson), E. nigriventris Bates (= E. humilis Blanchard), E. nitens Casey (= E. sepulcralis (F.)), E. precaria Janson (= E. abreona Janson), E. rufina (Gory and Percheron) (= Euphoria leucographa (Gory and Percheron)), Euphoria scabiosa Casey (= E. sonorae Bates), E. submetallica Casey (= E. yucateca Bates), E. testacea Casey (= E. leucographa (Gory and Percheron)), E. trivittata Nonfried (= E. steinheili Janson), and E. vazquezae Deloya and Woodruff (= E. candezei Janson). The following names are raised from synonymy and are considered valid species (new status): E. leucographa (Gory and Percheron), E. limbalis Fall, E. vestita (Gory and Percheron), and E. yucateca Bates. Lectotypes are designated for the following species names: Cetonia canescens Gory and Percheron, C. dimidiata Gory and Percheron, C. latreillei Gory and Percheron, C. lesueuri Gory and Percheron, C. lineoligera Blanchard, C. pulchella Gory and Percheron, C. submaculosa Gory and Percheron, Euphoria acerba Janson, E. andina Schein, E. candezei Janson, E. hera Burmeister, E. leprosa Burmeister, E. punicea Janson, E. steinheili Janson, E. verticalis Horn, Stephanucha bispinis Bates, and S. thoracica Casey. A neotype is selected for E. sonorae Bates.


This practical compendium provides clinical scientists with an essential guide to the basic techniques of molecular medicine. It serves as a laboratory manual and a source of reference. It is suitable for those wishing to perform basic semi-quantitative experiments such as Northern or Southern blots and also those wishing to undertake more specialised genetic manipulations such as gene cloning, expression and creation of DNA libraries. It will give clinical scientists a unique insight into the potential of these techniques. As stated by Sir David Weatherall: 'It should be of great value to both established research workers and young scientists coming into the field for the first time. It deserves every success.'


This book provides a comprehensive discussion of the issues related to risk, volatility, value and risk management. It includes a selection of the best papers presented at the Fourth International Finance Conference 2007, qualified by Professor James Heckman, the 2000 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, as a "high level" one. The first half of the book examines ways to manage risk and compute value-at-risk for exchange risk associated to debt portfolios and portfolios of equity. It also covers the Basel II framework implementation and securitisation. The effects of volatility and risk on the valuation of financial assets are further studied in detail.The second half of the book is dedicated to the banking industry, banking competition on the credit market, banking risk and distress, market valuation, managerial risk taking, and value in the ICT activity. With its inclusion of new concepts and recent literature, academics and risk managers will want to read this book.


No document standard is sufficient for all purposes because the requirements significantly differ among businesses, industries, and geopolitical regions. On the other hand, the ultimate aim of business document interoperability is to exchange business data among partners without any prior agreements related to the document syntax and semantics. Therefore, an important characteristic of a document standard is its ability to adapt to different contexts, its extensibility, and its customization. The UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) is an important landmark in this direction.
 In this article, we present a survey and an analysis of some of the prominent UN/CEFACT CCTS-based electronic document standards. We describe their document design principles and discuss how they handle customization and extensibility. We address their industry relevance and the recent efforts for their harmonization and convergence. We conclude by mentioning some emerging efforts for the semantic interoperability of different document standards.


The climate along the subtropical east coast of Australia is changing significantly. Rainfall has decreased about by 50 mm per decade and temperature increased by about 0.1 °C
per decade during the last fifty years. These changes are likely to impact upon episodes of hypersalinity and the persistence of inverse circulations which are often characteristic features of the coastal zone in the subtropics. These conditions are controlled by the
balance between evaporation, precipitation and freshwater discharge. In this study, we use observations and results from an ocean model to investigate the circulation pattern and water renewal of Hervey Bay, a subtropical bay off the central east coast of Australia. The investigation of this shallow coastal environment (mean depth 15 m) showed how current climate trends have impacted upon the physical characteristics of the bay. The observed hypersalinity zone and inverse circulation, which are climatological features, are caused by the high evaporation rate, solar heat fluxes and the water renewal timescales of the bay.
The region therefore acts as an effective source for an accumulation of salt. Over the last two decades the outflow of this salt has increased by about 25 % in direct consequence of recent climate trends. Further the manifestation of this salt export, in form of gravity
currents, has also increased in frequency and strength. With the help of Lagrangian particle techniques, we could track these plumes on their way along/down the continental
shelf to depths up to 220 m, to form a 'Hervey Bay' water mass. These outflow events, when integrated over the time they occur, have a volume comparable to the volume of the
bay and have broad implications for the local biology, sediment dynamics but also for pollutant transport. The study further indicates that hypersalinity conditions are more persistent and reversal of these conditions is less frequent in the last decade due to the reduced supply of freshwater.


Polymer materials are used in different fields of industries, from microelectronice to medicine. Ion beam implantation is method of surface modification when surface properties must be significantly changed and bulk properties of material must be saved.
 Ion Beam Treatment of Polymers contains results of polymer investigations and techniques development in the field of polymer modification by high energy ion beams.
 This book is intended for specialists in polymer science who have interest to use an ion beam treatment for improvement of polymer properties, for specialists in physics who search a new application of ion beam and plasma equipment and also for students who look for future fields of high technology.
 Chapter 1-3 are devoted to overview of the basic processes at high energy ion penetration into solid target. The historical aspects and main physical aspects are covered. A basic equipment principles and main producers of equipment for ion beam treatment are considered.
 Chapter 4 contains chemical transformations in polymers during and after high energy ion penetration. The modern methods and results of experimental and theoretical investigation are described.
 Chapters 5-10 are devoted to properties of polymers after ion beam treatment, regimes of treatment, available applications, in particular: increase of adhesion of polymers and a mechanism of an adhesion increase, wetting angle of polymer by water and its stability, adhesion of cells on polymer surface, drug release regulation from polymer coating and others.
 Chapter 11 contains our last results on polymerisation processes in liquid oligomer composition under high vacuum, plasma and ion beam conditions as simulation of free space environment.

 * By scientists working in polymer chemistry, physics of ion beam implantation and in development and production of ion beam equipment
 * Covering industrial and scientific applications of ion beam implanted polymers
 * Also for students with an interest in future fields of high technology


Syren, a location-based, multi-speaker augmented audio reality installation was presented as a shipboard exhibit at the 12th International Symposium on Electronic Art in August 2004. It was conceived as a continuous 3-day spatial audio experience that augments the landscape through the Baltic archipelago with location-based audio media, spatialised through a 12-channel speaker array. As the ship tracks between Helsinki, Mariehamn, Stockholm and Tallinn, listeners on the upper deck hear sounds that are perceived to originate from geographic features. Our custom GIS is derived from electronic nautical charting information that includes coastlines, buoys and beacons. A handheld GPS provides both position and direction data that was used by a software system to drive parameters of the spatial audio presentation. The sound production for the artwork was created using the custom application that enabled the artist to place sound media in relation to a real-world map. An important component to this software was the ability to audition the audio experience without ever taking the journey.


A sequence of mafic to ultramafic chlorite-actinolite-hornblende-talc rocks with komatiitic and komatiitic basalt compositions has been mapped in the southeastern Vredefort dome. A volcanic origin for the rocks is indicated by pillow structures, flow banding, variolites and spinifex textures in low-strain domains. They are intercalated with quartz-sericite-biotite schists. The rocks are metamorphosed to mid-greenschist-facies (~400°C) and are heterogeneously deformed, with a dominant subvertical, northwest-trending schistosity (S3) that developed under peak metamorphic conditions. To the northwest, the greenstones are bounded by a kilometre-wide dip-slip shear zone, which includes poorly-exposed high-grade (~700°C, 5 kbar) amphibolites and migmatitic trondhjemitic gneisses, and pegmatitic granite, and which separates the low-grade rocks from the high-grade gneissic core of the dome. The variation in metamorphic grade across the mapped area is attributed primarily to the displacement across the shear zone (southeast side down), but it may also reflect, in part, deeper levels of exhumation towards the centre of the dome. In contrast to the komatiitic greenstones, the amphibolites within the shear zone have a tholeiitic composition; however, they also show features consistent with volcanic precursors and are interleaved wirh banded ironstones and quartz-sericite-biotite schists. The mafic and ultramafic metavolcanics display close similarities to the komatiites and komatiitic basalts in the Johannesburg dome, but are relatively depleted in Fe2O3, TiO2 and CaO and enriched in Al2O3 relative to the Barberton greenstones. They are compositionally distinct from the dismembered granulite-facies greenstone remnants in the central parts of the dome.


I read with interest the study of Raluca Fodor et al., on the
significance of Plasma Neutrophil Gelatinase-Associated
Lipocalin (NGAL), as an early biomarker for acute kidney injury
in critically ill patients, published recently in issue
no.4/2015 of JCCM journal [1]. In this well-written and
interesting study, the authors successfully demonstrated that
in critically ill patients, increased levels of NGAL predict,
with a good sensitivity and specificity, the development of
acute kidney injury within forty-eight hours of admission to an
ICU. However, as no information is presented on the aetiology
of the acute kidney injury, we believe that the article raises
interesting and still un-elucidated hypotheses on the
pathophysiological substrate of the systemic release of NGAL in
patients with critical conditions.


Microspheres are the colloidal drug delivery system. Microspheres are characteristically free-flowing powders consisting of proteins/synthetic polymers that are biodegradable in nature and ideally having a particle size less than 200mm. Biodegradable microspheres can be utilized to direct drugs to certain organs through capillary blockade. Its success depends on the size of the microspheres used and on the mode of administration (intravenous/intra-arterial). The microspheres can also be used for targeting anticancer drugs to the tumor. This review represents the various dimensions and prospective for different areas where microspheres can be used to function as a great drug delivery system. The major categories and types of micro particulate system that can be utilized ranging from radioactive microspheres to floating microspheres for site targeted or sustained release, are being discussed in this review.


This is theoretical modeling and algorithmic paper about cognitive processing of human brain by using data mining techniques. This paper discusses the challenges associated with cognitive processing of human brain using brain-computer interface. Brain computer interface uses knowledge of electroencephalography systems to deliver output from human brain regarding any situation. Data base is used to store all metadata and by using classification different classes are derived where information related to different aspect (emotional, educational etc) is stored. By using decision making models this information is indexed. From this dataset cognitive skills are evaluated by analyzing from which portion of database (brain) the output is retrieved and how strong or week is the cognitive skills.


Two studies compared college students' interpersonal interaction online, face-to-face, and on the telephone. A communication diary assessed the relative amount of social interactions college students conducted online compared to face-to-face conversation and telephone calls. Results indicated that while the internet was integrated into college students' social lives, face-to-face communication remained the dominant mode of interaction. Participants reported using the internet as often as the telephone. A survey compared reported use of the internet within local and long distance social circles to the use of other media within those circles, and examined participants' most recent significant social interactions conducted across media in terms of purposes, contexts, and quality. Internet interaction was perceived as high in quality, but slightly lower than other media. Results were compared to previous conceptualizations of the roles of internet in one's social life.


Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses. Currently, web-logs are hosts to thousands of pro-ana (short for pro-anorexia) blogring participants, joining together with a common claim that eating disorders are "lifestyles not illnesses." This study explored participation motives among pro-ana blogring participants, relationships to individual psycho-social factors, and to unique web-log features. Results from the cross-sectional online survey suggest three main participation motives among blogring participants (community, obtaining social/ emotional support, and egoprotection. Results also indicate individual factors such as; social support satisfaction, drive-for-thinness, and BMI were related to blogger motives in a various diverse ways. Analyses of the findings from the present study reflect the self-disclosive nature of the blogging process. The results have several implications for eating disorder, computermediated communication, internet social support, and blog/blogring research.


Linkage studies were performed in six European families with hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis (PPII) with myotonia, an autosomal dominantly inherited disorder characterised by episodic weakness. The weakness is caused by non-inactivating sodium channels of reduced single channel conductance of the muscle fibre membrane. Recently, portions of the gene coding for the alpha subunit of the sodium channel of the adult human skeletal muscle (h-Na2) have been cloned and localised on chromosome 17q with no recombinants to the human growth hormone locus (GH1). Linkage between these two chromosome 17 markers and the disease was shown in our families (Z = 7.14, 0 = 0.00). These results, combined with the linkage data of a single large American family, suggest that the disease is caused by dominant mutations of the adult sodium channel, and that it is probably a genetically homogeneous disorder. Hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis is the first non-progressive myotonic disorder to be localised on the human genome.


The authors review court rulings in cases involving alleged violations of the equality rights in s.15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They find that the success rate of s.15 claimants has been consistently and significantly lower than the success rate of Charter claimants generally. Turning to the Supreme Court of Canada's rulings in equality rights cases, they argue that the Court's stated commitment to substantive equality is not manifest in its rulings. They close by recommending changes to the jurisprudence aimed at ensuring that the promotion of substantive equality is consistently treated as the primary goal of Canadian equality jurisprudence.


Is there an easier way to build and deliver rich internet applications (RIAs) other than the Flash IDE or Ajax? Absolutely. With Adobe Flex 2, the Flex 2 SDK, and this book, you have all you need to build RIAs. Programming Flex 2 offers you plenty of practical and useful examples that reveal how and why to use a particular feature of Flex 2, and when and when not to.As part of the Adobe Developer Library, Programming Flex 2 is the authoritative guide to this new Adobe framework. You learn to use a markup language called MXML and a vast library of off-the-shelf and highly-configurable components to build Flash-based applications that combine the immediacy of the Web with the functionality and responsiveness of desktop applications. You also discover why -- with the Flash Player runtime environment and the powerful ActionScript 3.0 programming language -- the possibilities with Flex 2 are nearly limitless.Topics include:Managing LayoutWorking with ComponentsWorking with MediaManaging StateUsing Transitions and EffectsWorking with DataCustomizing Application AppearanceClient Data Communication and Remote Data CommunicationDebugging Flex Framework ApplicationsCreating Custom ComponentsFlex may be easier to learn than the Flash IDE, but you still need a reliable guide to the framework. Programming Flex 2 not only serves as a reference, but provides valuable and practical insight into this new technology. As you learn how to build Flex applications, you'll also discover how Flex works. This book supplies all the information you need in one convenient place.Adobe Developer Library is a co-publishing partnership between O'Reilly Media and Adobe Systems, Inc. and is designed to produce the number one information resources for developers who use Adobe technologies. Created in 2006, the Adobe Developer Library is the official source for comprehensive learning solutions to help developers create expressive and interactive web applications that can reach virtually anyone on any platform. With top-notch books and innovative online resources covering the latest in rich Internet application development, the Adobe Developer Library offers expert training and in-depth resources, straight from the source.


Advancements in technology enable integration of multiple devices on a single core, resulting in increased on chip power and temperature densities. Higher temperatures, in turn, present a significant challenge for reliability. In this work we propose a comprehensive framework for analyzing reliability of multi-core systems, considering permanent faults. We show that aggressive power management can have an impact on reliability due to temperature cycling. Our cycle-accurate simulation methodology shows fine-grained variations of device failure rates over short time scales, thus enabling workload analysis and scheduling to control the reliability impact. On the other hand, the statistical reliability simulator and optimizer give a view into the long time horizon reliability analysis—over system lifetime, and help us optimize a power management policy under reliability and performance constraints. We show that our optimization strategy can achieve large power savings while still meeting the reliability and performance constraints.


Lung resident neutrophils need to be tightly regulated to avoid degranulation-and cytokine-associated damage to fragile alveolar structures that can lead to fatal outcomes. Here we show that lung neutrophils (LNs) express distinct surface proteins and genes that definitely distinguish LNs from bone marrow and blood neutrophils. Functionally, LNs show impaired migratory activity toward chemoattractants and produce high levels of IL-6 at steady state and low levels of TNF-α in response to LPS challenge. Treating bone marrow neutrophils with bronchoalveolar lavage fluid or prostaglandin E2 induces LN-associated characteristics including the expression of transglutaminase 2 (Tgm2) and reduced production of inflammatory cytokines upon LPS challenge. Neutrophils from Tgm2-/- mice release high levels of inflammatory cytokines in response to LPS. Lung damage is significantly exacerbated in Tgm2-/- mice in an LPS-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome model. Collectively, we demonstrate that prostaglandin E2 is a key factor for the generation of LNs with unique immune suppressive characteristics, acting through protein kinase A and Tgm2, and LNs play essential roles in the protection of the lungs against pathogenic inflammation.


This volume explores the moral, spiritual, and cultural terrain of aging through interdisciplinary scholarship and clinically based research. Aging has long been of interest to scholars and practitioners in a vast array of academic fields and professions. Thomas R. Cole, Ruth E. Ray, and Robert Kastenbaum have brought together leaders from a variety of academic realms to explore how aging is depicted in the modern era and the effect of these portrayals on individuals and society. The first section views aging and old age through the lenses of four disciplines: history, literature, religion, and philosophy. It probes the idea and effect of age in different places and times in history; discusses the concept as put forth in novels, memoirs, and literary studies and criticism; and raises important existential and spiritual questions about the meaning of growing old. The chapters in the second section demonstrate how interdisciplinary humanities can be applied to the study of aging through such thoughtful queries as: How do creativity and health relate in old age? What does "old" mean in an era of high-tech medicine, and what is our moral obligation to care for elderly persons? Why are friendships of special importance to older people? Section three uses semiotics, cultural analysis, and ideological critiques to identify key social issues related to aging, including the concept of "home," ageism and discrimination, and our understanding of aging in the era of globalization. The text closes with Robert Kastenbaum's poignant reflection on his own considerations of meaning and mortality as he journeyed back to health following heart surgery. This comprehensive guide works at the nexus of the humanities and health professions to provide the intellectual rationale, history, and a substantive overview of humanistic gerontology as it has emerged in the United States and Europe.


Fibers that respond to distension of hollow viscera and to mechanical stimulation of somatic structures were found primarily near the ventromedian fissure of the upper lumbar spinal cord. These fibers could be directly excited by electrical stimulation at C1. The average conduction velocity for these fibers was 68.6 meters per second.


Poll taxes are unconstitutional and yet Americans continue to link political rights to economic status. When taxpayers claim, "We pay taxes and therefore should decide how public monies are spent," they claim a privileged position in society based on their monetary contributions to the state and federal fiscal position that, by implication, nontaxpaying Americans should not have. Not only do taxpayers claim they deserve special political privileges, but the law itself continues to couple political rights to taxpaying status in ways that legal scholars have largely left unexplored. This article examines a range of political benefits tied to the payment of federal taxes and concludes that various Tax Code provisions and judicial doctrines operate as a fee for political expression. In particular, the presidential election check-off, various tax benefits, and the taxpayer standing doctrine devised (and later revised) by the Supreme Court in Flast v. Cohen all function as hidden poll taxes in violation of current constitutional principles. This article investigates two legal reforms that would remedy the perceived constitutional infringements: Congress and the Court could repeal and overturn laws that award political benefits based on taxpaying status, thereby denying all individuals the benefits, alternatively, lawmakers could retain the existing legal benefits but link them to citizenship status rather than to taxpaying status. Practical and normative considerations will lead to preferring one approach over the other in each context, accordingly, this article explores the relevant factors and reaches tentative conclusions as to which approach should be pursued.


A newly described pathogen poses a major threat to salamanders via trade In the midst of an ongoing sixth mass extinction (1), more than 40% of all amphibians are threatened (2). Chytridiomycosis, an emerging infectious disease (EID) caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has been more devastating than any infectious wildlife disease recorded, with >200 amphibian species collapsing to or near extinction (3). Recently, a new infectious chytrid fungal pathogen from Asia and specific to salamanders (4), Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), has been described (5). With no effective means to control spread of Bsal once it is established in wild host populations, Bsal invasion of North America could lead to rapid epizootic (wildlife epidemic) declines and extinctions in the world's richest and most diverse salamander fauna. We demonstrate the likelihood of Bsal introduction to North America via international trade, the likelihood of species being exposed to Bsal, and the potential impact of species exposure to Bsal. This presents a unique opportunity for wildlife management officials and the international amphibian trade community to prevent the spread of this deadly pathogen and to develop and implement rapid risk assessments and international responses to EIDs in wildlife.


Environmental quality is resultant from various conditions which caused by event of in natures and also cause of activie of human. One of a real problems related to condition and environmental quality is management of natural resources. In management of natural resources, balance between exploitings and continuity is important prerequisite. Existence of exploiting of natural resources and environment having the character of eksploitatif will affect to environmental quality. Management of natural resources required some policies, two among others is exploiting policy and observation policy. In this article explained about the policies. Conclusion from this article; exploiting of natural resources and environment having the character of eksploitatif, causes the balance and continuity annoyed; required various strategic steps and. action according to development of natural resources and environmental; observation policy of natural resources is interpreted as straightening of law in environmental management and natural resources; coordination effort between between institute which related in exploiting of natural resources is required.


Tokamak turbulence, driven by the ion-temperature gradient and occurring in the presence of flow shear, is investigated by means of local, ion-scale, electrostatic gyrokinetic simulations (with both kinetic ions and electrons) of the conditions in the outer core of the Mega-Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST). A parameter scan in the local values of the ion-temperature gradient and flow shear is performed. It is demonstrated that the experimentally observed state is near the stability threshold and that this stability threshold is nonlinear: sheared turbulence is subcritical, i.e. the system is formally stable to small perturbations, but, given a large enough initial perturbation, it transitions to a turbulent state. A scenario for such a transition is proposed and supported by numerical results: close to threshold, the nonlinear saturated state and the associated anomalous heat transport are dominated by long-lived coherent structures, which drift across the domain, have finite amplitudes, but are not volume filling; as the system is taken away from the threshold into the more unstable regime, the number of these structures increases until they overlap and a more conventional chaotic state emerges. Whereas this appears to represent a new scenario for transition to turbulence in tokamak plasmas, it is reminiscent of the behaviour of other subcritically turbulent systems, e.g. pipe flows and Keplerian magnetorotational accretion flows.


The title Little Country, Big Talk is evocative. Ireland is a little country, having a tiny population of just 4.64 million, a quarter of New Delhi's; but its contribution to the global science qualitywise is 'big'. From the yardstick of patents, its resident scientists acquired 357 patents in 2015 compared to India's 822, a country which is the third largest economy on purchasing power parity parameter of rupee, and houses the second largest population in the world. And look at the Global Innovation Index: Ireland ranked 10th among the 130 countries that were surveyed in 2017 compared to India's 60th.


The subject of this thesis is not the text contained in this book, but the four electroacoustic compositions presented: Go, Hendrix Haze, Triple Concerto and Toccata del Mago. The purpose of this writing is to put forward a context in which these four compositions may be assessed. In chapter 1, I choose to present my work taking a lateral approach. Rather than discuss my background as a composer and the reasons or 'necessity' for using the electroacoustic medium to express my musical thinking, I have instead introduced a new idea to provide a wider context: Magic Realism in music. I have developed the notion that there is a musical equivalent to Magic Realism in literature, and that my work, as well as the work of other Latin American composers, may be seen in this light. Also in this chapter, I put forward the idea that the electroacoustic medium may be the natural environment or 'habitat', as it were, for the Magic Realist composer to develop. Chapters 2 to 5 present a specific framework, that is, the aesthetic point of VIew and the technical means involved in the creation of each piece. In these chapters, the compositional process is presented, from the first, often abstract ideas that trigger the imagination of a composer, to the decision taken during the final production stage in the studio. It is hoped that this specific framework will convey the necessary Information required for a preliminary assessment of the music presented, in terms of the composer's aims and the results obtained. Yet, a piece of music can be a far more complex and richer phenomenon than the composer's aims and intentions, and it must be ultimately assessed in its own terms.


Autocratic governments hold a preference for opacity. Autocracies are less transparent than democracies and a closed informational environment preserves autocratic regimes from mass unrest. Yet, autocracies vary widely in the extent to which they disclose economic information. In this article, we offer an explanation for why some autocrats choose to disclose. We contend that, paradoxically, some autocratic leaders may benefit from increasing the capacity of the populace to mobilize. In so doing, autocratic leaders threaten rival members of the elite, reducing the risk of elite challenges and increasing their freedom of maneuver. We contend that transparency acts as one mechanism toward these ends. We formalize these intuitions and demonstrate empirically that leaders in transparent autocracies enjoy a reduced hazard of removal via coup relative to their opaque counterparts. Personalistic dictators and entrenched autocrats—who suffer the smallest risk of sanctioning by their elites—are particularly unlikely to disclose information.


The application of hydrological models to data on conservative tracers can yield information about transit times and storage volumes and may provide an independent test of the model structure.

In this study, the PULSE-model has been modified to simulate conservative tracers. Attempts have been made to describe both short-term and long-term variations in oxygen-18 concentration in three small forested basins.

The performance of the model was considerably increased, when additional storage was introduced in the model. The turnover times were estimated to approximately 7 and 12 months for two of the basins.


ABSTRACT Prior research suggests that women are less likely than men to own and operate growth-oriented firms. This study uses data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Small Business Finances to compare women-owned growth firms to women-owned non-growth firms. In addition, women-owned growth firms were compared to a sample of men-owned growth firms to determine whether the same factors contribute to growth in both. Results reveal that, for the most part, the variables associated with growth were the same for both women- and men-owned firms. Specifically, growth-oriented firms were more likely to be organized as limited liability entities and less likely to be primarily owned by one family. Human capital in the form of prior business experience and financial capital were predictors of growth for both women- and men-owned firms as anticipated. Surprisingly, however, human capital in the form of educational attainment was not significant in predicting growth for either women- or men-owned firms. INTRODUCTION Small firms are a vital part of the United States economy. The U.S. Small Business Administration defines a small firm as one that has 500 or fewer employees. Using this definition, 99% percent of all firms hi the U.S. would be categorized as small businesses. Data compiled by the SBA indicate that there were 23.6 million small firms in this country hi 2003 (Frequently Asked Questions, 2005). These firms generated over half of gross domestic product and employed half of all private sector employees. In fact, small firms have been responsible for 60-80% of net new jobs. They are also an important source of innovation hi the creation of new products, services, and technologies. Within the larger category of small businesses, women-owned small businesses are a special subset. According to the Center for Women's Business Research, there were 10.6 million privately-held women-owned small firms hi the United States in 2004 (Top Facts About WomenOwned Businesses, 2005). These firms generated an estimated $2.46 trillion in sales and employed 19.1 million people. Although women-owned firms still constitute a minority of all small firms (47%), their numbers have been growing rapidly. The number of women-owned firms increased by 17.4% from 1997 to 2004 compared to a growth rate of 9.0% for privately-held firms overall. During the same timeframe, the revenues for women-owned firms increased by 39.3% compared to an increase of 33.5% for all firms. Thus, women-owned firms are growing hi terms of both numbers and economic importance. In spite of then growing numbers, however, women-owned firms continue to lag behind men-owned firms in a number of performance measures. In particular, women-owned firms have traditionally been much smaller than men-owned firms in terms of total sales, total assets, and total number of employees. A number of possible reasons for this discrepancy have been posited It may be that women are more averse to risk than men and are thus unwilling to embark on larger ventures (Collerett & Aubry, 1990; Morris, Miyasaki, Waiters, & Coombes, 2006). Alternatively, the need to balance work and family may cause women to gravitate to smaller and more manageable firms (Caputo & Dolinsky, 1998; Lee & Denslow, 2005). Some researchers contend that women select industries and lines of business that do not particularly lend themselves to growth (Loscocco, Robinson, Hall, & Alien, 1991). Other research points to differences in financial capital and human capital that may ultimately serve as impediments to growth (Brush & Chaganti, 1998; Carter & Alien, 1997; Lucas, 2006). Finally, women may not measure success by the traditional indicators of growth and profitability; other factors may be more important to them as measures of achievement (Anna, Chandler, Jansen, & Mero, 1999). Whatever the reason, the fact remains that, in spite of their progress in the past two decades, women continue to start and operate very small firms thus denying themselves the opportunity for higher levels of sales and earnings. …


This paper tests whether hedging currency risk improves the performance of international stock portfolios. We use a generalized performance measure which allows for investor-dependencies such as different utility functions and the presence of nontraded risks. In addition we show that an auxiliary regression, similar to the Jensen regression, provides a wealth of information about the optimal portfolio holdings for investors for the non mean-variance case. This is analogous to the information provided by the Jensen regression about optimal portfolio holdings for the mean-variance case. Our empirical results show that static hedging with currency forwards does not lead to improvements in portfolio performance for a US investor that holds a stock portfolio from the G5 countries. On the other hand, hedges that are conditional on the current interest rate spread do lead to significant performance improvements. Also, when an investor has a substantial exogenous exposure to one of the currencies, currency hedging clearly improves his portfolio performance. While these results hold for investors with power utility as well as with mean-variance utility functions, the optimal hedge ratios for these investors are different.


While integration policies as such are not new, and in some countries date back to the 1980s and beyond, there have been important shifts in the debates on integration and in related re-configurations of integration policymaking in the past decade or so. One of the main recent trends is the linkage of integration policy with admission policy and the related focus on recent immigrants. A second trend is the increasing use of obligatory integration measures and integration conditions in admission policy, and third, integration policymaking is increasingly influenced by European developments, both through vertical (more or less binding regulations, directives etc.) and through horizontal processes (policy learning between states) of policy convergence.
An increasing number of EU Member States have, in fact, adopted integration related measures as part of their admission policy, while the impact of such measures on integration processes of immigrants is far less clear. In addition, Member States' policies follow different, partly contradictory logics, in integration policy shifts by conceptualising (1) integration as rights based inclusion, (2) as a prerequisite for admission residence rights, with rights interpreted as conditional, and (3) integration as commitment to values and certain cultural traits of the host society.
The objective of PROSINT is to evaluate the impact of admission related integration policies on the integration of newcomers, to analyse the different logics underlying integration policymaking and to investigate the main target groups of compulsory and voluntary integration measures.
The project investigated different aspects of these questions along five distinct workpackages,. These analysed (1) the European policy framework on migrant integration (WP1), (2) the different national policy frameworks for the integration of newcomers in the 9 countries covered by the research (WP2), the admission-integration nexus at the local level in studied in 13 localities across the 9 countries covered by the research (WP3), the perception and impacts of mandatory pre-arrival measures in four of the nine countries covered (WP4) and a methodologically oriented study of the impact of admission related integration measures (WP5).

The countries covered by the project were Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Apart from individual cases project reports generally cover the period until end of 2010.

For more information about the project visit http://research.icmpd.org/1429.html


The person who passes urine which is exceedingly sweet, cool, slightly viscid, turbid, and resembling the juices of the sugarcane … suffers from glycosuria. … There are two types of urinary disorders—one, natural due to genetic factors, and the other due to indiscreet living or dietetic indiscretions. The patient suffering from the former is thin, pale, eats less and drinks too much.… The patient with the latter is usually obese, eats a lot, is stout, of sedentary habits and sleeps too much.


We formulate an adaptive color space for segmenting all image into the two classes "object of interest" and "background" by using well-established methods from statistical pattern recognition. Both classes are modeled by a multivariate Gaussian distribution whose actual parameters are estimated via the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. The output grayscale feature image is derived as the distance of each pixel's color to the decision boundary which is shaped bewteen the two class models. Based on this feature image, which provides a maximum discriminatory power with respect to the underlying model assumptions, the actual segmentation can be performed with appropriate methods from grayscale image processing. This adaptive color space is a practical tool for homogeneously colored scenes, as they appear, e.g., in microscopic images of biotechnical fundamental research.


Fusarium head blight (FHB) caused by Fusarium graminearum is responsible for billions of dollars in agriculture losses. The goal of the present study was evaluation the expression of acidic chitinase, one of PR proteins, in wheat defense response against different FHB induced treatments in 'Falat' as a highly susceptible and 'Sumai3' as a tolerant cultivar. These treatments contained fungi extract, spore suspension, DON and salicylic acid (SA). Infected spikes are sampled in 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 36, 72 hours and 7 days after artificial inoculation and subjected to total RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis. Quantitative Real-Time PCR was performed with specific primer to detect expression differences between tolerant and susceptible cultivars. Output data was analysed using REST software, indicated differences in expression level of cultivars during the disease expansion cycle. These results support the emerging role of acidic chitinase gene in salicylic acid signaling pathway against necrotrophic fungal pathogen and demonstrate the effect of acidic chitinase gene in SAR signaling cascade against fungal extract treatment as PR protein inducer, as compare with these DON can't act as a elicitor for acidic chitinase gene according to its expression profiling in this experiment. Results may serve as a foundation for dissecting mechanisms and regulations underlying FHB and SAR elicitors resistance reactions in wheat and revealing functions of the plant acidic chitinase gene in defense.


Mosaic vasculature is one crucial visual sign often indicating the existence of abnormality in the underlying cervix tissues. Automatic detection of this vascular pattern in uterine cervix images is a challenging task, especially in a large dataset, due to the factors such as fuzzy boundary, small vessel caliber, and appearance variation. In this paper, we present a supervised-learning based approach to segment the regions encompassing mosaic vasculatures, hoping to overcome these challenges. It is part of an automatic segmentation scheme that is aimed at assisting gynecologists in the study of cervical cancer. The affectivity of the method was tested and evaluated on a set of clinical uterine cervix images that were manually marked and categorized by medical experts.


Getting familiar with a face is an important cognitive process in human perception of faces, but little study has been reported on how to objectively measure the degree of familiarity. In this article, a method is proposed to quantitatively measure the familiarity of a face with respect to a set of reference faces that have been seen previously. The proposed method models the context-free and context-dependent forms of familiarity suggested by psychological studies and accounts for the key factors, namely exposure frequency, exposure intensity and similar exposure, that affect human perception of face familiarity. Specifically, the method divides the reference set into nonexclusive groups and measures the familiarity of a given face by aggregating the similarities of the face to the individual groups. In addition, the nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is extended in this paper to learn a compact and localized subspace representation for measuring the similarities of the face with respect to the individual groups. The proposed method has been evaluated through experiments that follow the protocols commonly used in psychological studies and has been compared with subjective evaluation. Results have shown that the proposed measurement is highly consistent with the subjective judgment of face familiarity. Moreover, a face recognition method is devised using the concept of face familiarity and the results on the standard FERET evaluation protocols have further verified the efficacy of the proposed familiarity measurement.


We performed an experimental investigation on a Q-switched, mode-locked laser based on the combination of passive Q switching and active mode locking. This study was carried out using an erbium fiber ring laser incorporating an active mode locker employing a fast Si-based variable optical attenuator and a passive Q switch based on a carbon nanotube saturable absorber. It was found that stable Q-switched, mode-locked pulses can be readily generated when using a particular cavity modulation index and pump power. It was also found that our scheme can easily alter the operating regime among the Q switching, Q-switched mode locking, and mode locking by simply controlling the cavity modulation index and/or the pump power. For this particular laser configuration, the cavity modulation index and pump power operating conditions have been experimentally analyzed for three laser operating regimes.


Earthquakes are one of nature IS greatest hazards; throughout historic time they have caused significant loss oflife and severe damage to property, especially to man-made structures. On the other hand, earthquakes provide architects and engineers with a number of important design criteria foreign to the normal design process. From well established procedures reviewed by many researchers, seismic isolation may be used to provide an effective solution for a wide range of seismic design problems. The application ofthe base isolation techniques to protect structures against damage from earthquake attacks has been considered as one of the most effective approaches and has gained increasing acceptance during the last two decades. This is because base isolation limits the effects of the earthquake attack, a flexible base largely decoupling the structure from the ground motion, and the structural response accelerations are usually less than the ground acceleration. In this research, a series of dynamic analyses are carried out to investigate in detail the seismic responses for stiff and flexible 12-storey multi storey buildings to the various isolation systems and to consider the effects of foundation compliance on their responses when subjected to different earthquakes. At the same time, an investigation of the seismic response of the recently suggested segmental buildings is carried out. The segmental building concept can be considered as an extension of the conventional base isolation technique with additional flexibility distributed in the superstructure. In addition to the conventional isolation system placed at the base, the superstructure of segmental buildings is further divided into several segments which are interconnected by extra isolation systems located in the upper storeys. In general, the increase of additional viscous damping in the structure may reduce displacement and acceleration responses of the structure. This study also seeks to evaluate the effects of additional damping on the seismic response when compared with structures without additional damping for the different ground motions. In addition, analysis and design considerations for base isolated and segmental structures are suggested to enable the designer to get a better understanding at the preliminary design stage.


We present CLASSQ-L (for: class Q-learning) an application of the Q-learning reinforcement learning algorithm to play complete Wargus games. Wargus is a real-time strategy game where players control armies consisting of units of different classes (e.g., archers, knights). CLASSQ-L uses a single table for each class of unit so that each unit is controlled and updates its class' Qtable. This enables rapid learning as in Wargus there are many units of the same class. We present initial results of CLASSQ-L against a variety of opponents.


At the end of the winter season (November 1st to February 28th), National Grid identifies the three half-hour periods of highest consumption of electricity, subject to a separation of at least 10 calendar days. These three periods are called Triads. Thus, the half-hour in which national demand was highest is the first Triad; the second highest half-hour, excluding a period of 21 days centred on the first Triad, is the second Triad; and the third highest half-hour, excluding two periods of 21 days centred on the first and second Triads, is the third Triad. Historically, Triads always occur on Mondays to Thursdays between 16:30 and 18:00 hours, and not close to Christmas (which is a period of relatively low consumption). Figure 1 shows the typical pattern over a winter.

Figure 1: National electricity consumption figures from the winter of 2003/04. Diamonds indicate daily levels; squares indicate dates on which British Energy issued Triad warnings; and circles indicate those dates on which a Triad was, at the end of the winter, declared to have occurred.

British Energy supplies electricity to large industrial and commercial customers. Charges are based on the Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) Charges which are levied by National Grid and passed through to British Energy's customers. TNUoS includes a substantial surcharge based on each customer's usage during the Triad periods: the higher a customer's usage during Triads, the higher their overall electricity supply costs.

British Energy, in common with other large commercial electricity suppliers, aims to reduce National Grid charges for some of its customers by issuing a "Triad warning" on days when it seems possible that a Triad might later be found to have occurred. Industrial customers are often encouraged by their contract with British Energy to reduce their consumption on those warning days. British Energy are restricted by the contract to issuing a limited number of calls over the entire winter period, anything up to 23.

A customer who receives a Triad warning may, or may not, take action (e.g. shutting down their factory early that day). Some – but not all – customers are contractually required to inform British Energy whether or not they are reducing their consumption. Therefore British Energy cannot be sure by how much overall consumption will drop if a warning is issued. Furthermore, the national consumption is also affected by suppliers other than British Energy who may also have issued a Triad warning.

It is thought that this system may suffer from "negative feedback". That is, on a day that is likely to include a Triad period because it has high predicted consumption, many suppliers will issue warnings, resulting in many customers reducing their actual consumption, ensuring that the total national demand is actually much lower than predicted: sufficiently low, in fact, that no Triad occurs, and no warning was actually necessary. It is expensive for customers to take action when it is not actually required.

British Energy currently uses the deterministic half-hourly consumption forecast issued by National Grid and the recent and forecast temperatures at hourly intervals at 7 locations around the country to decide on a daily basis whether to issue a Triad warning. The decision-making tool, called TriFoS, does not currently take into account the possible problem of negative feedback.

The Study Group was asked to consider ways of compensating for negative feedback. Section 2 confirms that feedback is a statistically significant phenomenon. Sections 3 and 4 then use the so-called 'Full-Information Secretary Problem' to motivate the derivation of possible triad-calling strategies. Section 5 examines the possibilities for issuing triad warnings from analysing historical data.


AD 3580. The Intersolar Commonwealth has spread through the galaxy to over a thousand star systems. It is a culture of rich diversity with a place for everyone. A powerful navy protects it from any hostile species that may lurk among the stars. For Commonwealth citizens, even death has been overcome. At its centre is a massive black hole. This Void is not a natural artefact. Inside there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different to those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core - one day it will have devoured the entire galaxy. Inigo, a human, has started to dream of a wonderful existence of the Void. He has a following of millions of believers. They now clamour to make a pilgrimage into the Void to live the life they have been shown. Other starfaring species fear their migration will cause the Void to expand again. They are prepared to stop them no matter what the cost. And so the pilgrimage begins...


Coronary artery disease is extremely common among elderly people and accounts for half of all deaths in those who are more than 65 years old. Although the condition is essentially the same as that encountered in younger patients, the management of coronary artery disease in elderly subjects can be difficult because the anticipated benefits and risks of the various treatment options are often altered by the presence of co-morbid conditions. Moreover, the results of the major outcome studies that underpin most treatment guidelines may not be relevant to the needs of many elderly patients for several reasons.


There is strong competition and rapid change in technology cell phone industry. Cellular industry has to build up customer-oriented strategies in order to compete effectively in the competitive environment. The longer a brand can retain a customer, the greater revenue and cost savings from that customer. Pakistani customer have greater choices between multiple cell phone brands. This study aims to identify and analyses the factors that influence cell phone users and adoption of high technology cell phone brands. Facts and figures for this research were collected by using a convenience Sample of 160 cell phone users in Bahawalpur City, Punjab Province, Pakistan. The decision to switch the cell phone brand or to be loyal with current cellular brand is hypothesized to be a function of customer satisfaction that is ultimately has strong relation with, service quality and brand commitment, switching cost also has great impact on the both dimension of customer either to be loyal with brand or to switch. Here switching cost also play very important role to keep customer loyal with brand. The research findings reveal that service quality brand commitment impact on customer's satisfaction level. As this level increase, it makes a customer loyal and in decrease in satisfaction level leads to switching behavior of customer. Switching cost also play a key role to keep loyal a customer even if he/she want to change the cell phone brand. The findings also reveal that the young and high-income groups are more likely to switch towards high technology cell phone brand.


In October and November of 1980, the Center for Archaeological Research, The University of Texas at San Antonio, conducted an intensive resource survey and limited testing in an area on either side of the mouth of the Brazos River in Brazoria County, Texas. A history was composed of the project area in relation to that of the Republic and State of Texas. A structural history of the town of Velasco was compiled from archival and historical research. Intensive survey and assessment of the project area resulted in the conclusion that, aside from a few possible subsurface indications at or below the water level, Fort Velasco and the townsite of Velasco have been eliminated by the action of successive tropical storms. It is recommended, however, that further intensive testing be carried out if the area within Monument Square of old Velasco is to be seriously impacted by the Freeport Harbor Navigation Improvement Project.


"Metabolic syndrome" refers to the triumvirate of obesity-related, cardiovascular diseases such as hyperlipidaemia, type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis and hypertension. The worldwide prevalence of these diseases have increased to such an extent that they are now the leading cause of human morbidity and mortality. Metabolic syndrome is characterised by elevated levels of plasma lipids, hyperglycaemia, compromised insulin signalling, excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and a vasculature that is in a persistently inflamed state. Because of the increasing prevalence of these diseases, considerable research effort has gone into understanding the disease processes and developing appropriate therapies. Two metabolic syndrome targets which have been identified and for which therapeutics have been successfully developed are hyperlipidaemia and hyperglycaemia. A common target of the lipid-lowering therapies is the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme which catalyses the rate limiting step in the cholesterol synthesis pathway namely the conversion of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaric acid coenzyme-A (HMG-CoA) to mevalonate. Statins are the primary class of drugs with this HMG-CoA inhibiting ability. Polyphenolic compounds produced by plants have also been shown to have hypolipidaemic activity by inhibiting HMG-CoA as well as other enzymes involved in the processes of lipid manufacture and delivery to cells. Polyphenolic compounds have also been shown to improve the glucose status of diseased subjects by improving vascular health, improving insulin signalling and glucose uptake into muscle. Of these plant-derived polyphenolic compounds, members of the flavonoid sub-family been shown to be particularly successful in treating both hyperlipidaemia and hyperglycaemia. Carpobrotus rossii (CR) is a succulent halophyte native to Australia and commonly found growing along the coastal margins of southern Australia. The plant has a history of use by both the indigenous aboriginal population and early Tasmanian settlers. CR was reportedly consumed as a food, to treat gastrointestinal upsets, and applied topically for the treatment of bites and scratches. Preliminary investigations conducted at the University of Tasmania have shown that crude extracts from its leaves inhibit platelet aggregation, inflammatory cytokine release (interleukin-1-beta, tumour necrosis factor-alpha) and lipid oxidation in vitro (Geraghty et al., 2011). This activity is believed to be due to the flavonoid compounds that the plant produces in its leaves. Several of these flavonoids have a known HMG-CoA inhibitor 3-hydroxy-3methylglutaric acid (HMG) present as a substituent (Jager, 2009).The presence of this moiety, in conjunction with the known hypoglycaemic and hypolipidaemic activities of other flavonoids, mean that the consumption of CR flavonoids could potentially improve endothelial health, cardiovascular function and health via a combination of effects related to both their flavonoid and statin properties.
In planta, the primary function of flavonoids appears to be as antioxidants, and their production has been shown to be induced under a suite of conditions which cause the plant to experience oxidative stress. The ROS generation and signalling process in planta are complex, and the effect of environmental conditions on a plant's redox status, and hence flavonoid production, is likely to vary between species. The effects of environment on flavonoid product has not been previously investigated for CR. The flavonoid structures described in chapter 4 are extremely complex, and based on informal discussions with an organic chemist familiar with similar compounds, not easily amenable to synthesis. As such, the ability to produce sufficient material and improve the efficiency of their production e.g. increasing biomass or increasing flavonoid concentration by the modification of environmental parameters is a key component of overall CR pharmaceutical and nutraceutical investigations. This thesis has involved using techniques relevant to the disciplines of pharmacology, organic chemistry and plant physiology. The primary aims were to investigate the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical potential of the flavonoids derived from CR leaves. To do this, several basic questions were addressed, namely:
1. What effect do environmental conditions have on metabolite production,
2. What is the structure of the CR flavonoids,
3. Is the consumption of CR leaf derived extracts safe, and,
4. Do the CR leaf flavonoids possess pharmacological activity in metabolic syndrome, specifically an improvement in either glycaemic or lipid profile. A suite of novel findings which pave the way for further study of this plant are the result of this research. The body of the thesis is presented as a series of articles for publication, of which three are published at the time of thesis submission.


Net farm income for most representative farms in 2011 will be lower than in 2002. Low profit farms, which consist of 25% of the farms in the study, may not have financial resiliency to survive. The new farm bill will provide higher net farm income than a continuation of the FAIR Act. Cropland prices and cash rental rates are projected to increase slightly in all regions. Debt-to-asset ratios for most farms will increase slightly throughout the forecast period. Debt-to-asset ratios for the low-profit and small-size farms are higher than those for large and high-profit farms.


This paper aims at studying current-account imbalances by paying a particular attention to exchange-rate misalignments. We rely on a nonlinear model linking the persistence of current-account imbalances to the deviation of the exchange rate to its equilibrium value. Estimating a panel smooth transition regression model on a sample of 22 industrialized countries, we show that persistence of current-account imbalances strongly depends on currency misalignments. More specifically, while there is no persistence in cases of currency undervaluation or weak overvaluation, persistence tends to augment for overvaluations higher than 11%. In addition, whereas disequilibria are persistent even for very low overvaluations in the euro area, persistence is observed only for overvaluations higher than 14% for non-eurozone members.


The fully entangled fraction can be used to characterize whether a quantum state in a d d  system can be used to teleport an unknown d -dimensional quantum state faithfully. Regarding the similarity of remote state preparation and quantum teleportation, a natural question is: Whether fully entangled fraction can be used as a resource for remote preparation of a known state? In this paper, we address this question and show that although both fully entangled fraction and quantum discord have similar behavior with respect to the fidelity of remote state preparation, it is not the case in general. Moreover, we show that there exist states for which fully entangled fraction have better behavior with respect to the quantum discord.


While Australian academic contexts generally prioritize verbal participation, Japanese educational environments expect students to participate silently. This research project explored why Japanese students remain silent in Australian classrooms despite knowing the expectations of western universities. Contrary to prevailing conceptions of silence in classroom contexts, findings revealed that some participants' silent in-class behavior does not necessarily suggest reluctance or inability. Rather, participants assumed that verbally contributing to the class would impede the teacher's lecture and their peers' learning. Additional findings indicated that while cultural, identity traits, and previous education in Japan may have shaped their silent in-class behavior, some participants acknowledged the need to participate verbally to satisfy their teachers and peers in Australian classrooms. Peripheral factors such as the size of classrooms and lack of genuine rapport between classmates also influenced their classroom behavior. The findings expand upon existing literature which shows that Japanese students' silence in Australian classrooms is often juxtaposed with teacher and student expectations.


This paper explores complex and ambivalent religious discourses that inform Muslim women's understandings of sex and sexual praxis. Presenting the experiences of a group of contemporary South African Muslim women, the authors examine the various ways in which religious sexual imaginaries are negotiated, contested, and embodied in a particular context. Drawing on their narratives, we highlight how dominant religious concepts of sexuality intersect with marital dynamics to produce particular forms of female subjectivity. Women's notions of the self are informed by gendered understandings of the God-believer relationship, including notions of what constitutes worship or devotion (ibadah). Many of these women understand marital and sexual relationships to constitute part of their larger service to God. As such, women sometimes appear to prioritize male sexual desires. At other times, they reconfigure the dominant sexual paradigm by demanding full recognition of their sexual agency and equal personhood and stressing ethical ideals such as mutuality and reciprocity in marriage.


We describe in this paper a new method for extracting knowledge on Hierarchical Task-Network (HTN) planning problems for speeding up the search. This knowledge is gathered by propagating properties through an AND/OR tree that represents disjunctively all possible decompositions of an HTN planning problem. We show how to use this knowledge during the search process of our GraphHTN planner, to split the current refined planning problem into independent subproblems.

We also present new experimental results comparing GraphHTN with ordinary HTN decomposition (as implemented in the UMCP planner). The comparison is performed on a set of problems from the UM Translog domain - a large HTN transportation domain that is considerably more complicated than the well known "logistics" domain.

Finally, so that we could compare GraphHTN with action-based planners such as IPP and Blackbox, we translated the UM Translog domain into a STRIPS-style representation. We found that GraphHTN performed considerably better on UM Translog than IPP and Blackbox.


We propose a new method for content-based image retrieval which exploits the similarity measure and indexing structure of totally randomized tree ensembles induced from a set of subwindows randomly extracted from a sample of images. We also present the possibility of updating the model as new images come in, and the capability of comparing new images using a model previously constructed from a different set of images. The approach is quantitatively evaluated on various types of images with state-of-the-art results despite its conceptual simplicity and computational efficiency.


A flow-injection analysis system is descriptionbed for the indirect determination of sulphate by direct measurement of lead with a coated tubular lead ion-selective electrode. An excess of lead(II) ions as lead perchlorate is added to the sample solution-carrier stream mixture as a reagent stream in an environment of sodium perchlorate, as ionic strength adjustor, and methanol-formaldehyde, to decrease solubility of formed PbSO4 and retard oxidation of the membrane. The system is useful for the determination of sulphate in the range 50-10 000 mg dm-3 at a sampling rate of 60 h-1 with a coefficient of variation of better than 1,70%. Major interference is caused by cations (Ag+, Hg2+, Cu2+) and anions (Po43-) which form insoluble lead salts.


As disparities in health care continue to widen between wealthy and impoverished nations, an increasing number of medical professionals are committing themselves to the growing field of global health. Caring for the World assembles the stories, experience, and advice of prominent global health practitioners in this inspired guidebook for health care workers who are interested in - or already are - improving the lives of people throughout the world. Providing a wealth of valuable resources and information, the authors detail how individuals can find and prepare for global health work as well as how to obtain education and funding from governmental and non-governmental organizations. Skillfully addressing important issues related to working within other countries and cultures, they also provide practical advice on how to understand pandemics and the HIV/AIDS crisis in order to effect change. Accessible, thorough, and concise, Caring for the World is essential reading for anyone interested in global health work, non-governmental organizations, and the current state of global health care.


Abstract. Soil moisture is important to enable the growth of vegetation in the way that it also conditions the development of plant population. Additionally, its assessment is important in hydrology and agronomy, and is a warning parameter for desertification. Furthermore, the soil moisture content affects exchanges with the atmosphere via the energy balance at the soil surface; it is significant due to its impact on soil evaporation and transpiration. Therefore, it conditions the energy transfer between Earth and atmosphere. Many remote sensing methods were tested. For the soil moisture; the first methods relied on the optical domain (short wavelengths). Obviously, due to atmospheric effects and the presence of clouds and vegetation cover, this approach is doomed to fail in most cases. Therefore, the presence of vegetation canopy complicates the retrieval of soil moisture because the canopy contains moisture of its own. This paper presents a synergistic methodology of SAR and optical remote sensing data, and it's for simulation of statistical parameters of soil from C-band radar measurements. Vegetation coverage, which can be easily estimated from optical data, was combined in the backscattering model. The total backscattering was divided into the amount attributed to areas covered with vegetation and that attributed to areas of bare soil. Backscattering coefficients were simulated using the established backscattering model. A two-dimensional multiscale SPM model has been employed to investigate the problem of electromagnetic scattering from an underlying soil. The water cloud model (WCM) is used to account for the effect of vegetation water content on radar backscatter data, whereof to eliminate the impact of vegetation layer and isolate the contributions of vegetation scattering and absorption from the total backscattering coefficient.


The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights has as one of its components and the world call to achieve education for all has led to a number of countries' introduction of Free Education. In Lesotho the call was heeded with the introduction of the Free Primary Education Programme in phases as from the year 2000. It was with the advent of the Free Primary Education Programme that a number of adults who never had formal schooling and or who had very little schooling took advantage and enrolled in the mainstream of primary education. This study therefore investigates the teaching and learning processes of adult learners in the mainstream of primary education where the curriculum is designed for the school age learners. It consists of the in-depth investigations of three primary schools in the Southern districts of Lesotho namely Moyeni Primary and Zibandayo Primary in the district of Quthing; and Naleli Primary in the district of Mohales'hoek; This study also investigates how these schools handled the education of adult learners while still not compromising the tuition of the school age learners. It also tried to find solutions as to how best the tuition of the adult learners could be handled so as to benefit them and the country as a whole.


Advancement of understanding in paleontology and biology has always been hindered by difficulty in accessing comparative data. With current and burgeoning technology, the severity of this hindrance can be substantially reduced. Researchers and museum personnel generating three-dimensional (3-D) digital models of museum specimens can archive them using internet repositories that can then be explored and utilized by other researchers and private individuals without a museum trip. We focus on MorphoSource, the largest web archive for 3-D museum data at present. We describe the site, how to use it most effectively in its current form, and best practices for file formats and metadata inclusion to aid the growing community wishing to utilize it for distributing 3-D digital data. The potential rewards of successfully crowd sourcing the digitization of museum collections from the research community are great, as it should ensure rapid availability of the most important datasets. Challenges include long-term governance (i.e., maintaining site functionality, supporting large amounts of digital storage, and monitoring/updating file to prevent bit rot, which is the slow and random corruption of electronic data over time, and data format obsolescence, which is the problem of data becoming unreadable or ineffective because of the loss of functional software necessary for access), and utilization by the community (i.e., detecting and minimizing user error in creating data records, incentivizing data sharing by researchers and institutions alike, and protecting stakeholder rights to data, while maximizing accessibility and discoverability). MorphoSource serves as a proof-of-concept of how these kinds of challenges can be met. Accordingly, it is generally recognized as the most appropriate repository for large, raw datasets of fossil organisms and/or comparative samples. Its existence has begun to transform data transparency standards because journal reviewers, editors, and grant officers now often suggest or require that 3-D data be made available through this site.


I. INTRODUCTION Most legal challenges to school voucher programs have focused on the question of whether a voucher program that permits the use of public funds in private religious schools constitutes an unconstitutional establishment of religion.1 In the wake of the Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris2 that such programs do not violate the First Amendment, the question remains whether they will be found to violate state constitutional provisions governing the relationship between church and state. State constitutional challenges to voucher programs will not be limited to the issue of religious establishment, however. Although most state constitutions do prohibit state aid to religious institutions, many also include provisions governing other aspects of public education. Of particular interest are provisions in the constitutions of fifteen states requiring some degree of uniformity among public schools.3 In the past, plaintiffs have used these "uniformity clauses" to justify challenges to state approaches to public school financing. But voucher opponents are putting them to a different use, claiming that in offering families a diverse array of educational options, voucher programs sacrifice the required uniformity. A recent decision of the Florida Supreme Court illustrates the possibilities of this approach-and its perils. In Bush v. Holmes, decided in January 2006, the court heard a challenge to the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), a school voucher program permitting the use of vouchers in religious schools.4 The plaintiffs claimed that the OSP violated not only Florida's constitutional "no aid" clause, prohibiting state aid to religious institutions, but also its uniformity clause, requiring the state to maintain a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools."5 In advance of the ruling, many observers expected the court to focus on the establishment question, which an intermediate appellate court had certified as one of "great public importance."6 Instead, the high court struck down the OSP as a violation of Florida's uniformity clause.7 Some voucher proponents accused the Holmes court of ducking the real issue. Said an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit organization that helped litigate the case for the defendants: "[T]he opinion appears both nakedly political and specifically designed to avoid confronting the [religion] question."8 Such criticisms missed the point, however. The problem with Holmes v. Bush was not that the court passed on the religion question. It was that, having addressed itself to the question of uniformity, the court offered an unsatisfactory answer. Whether a court measures a school voucher program against a ban on religious establishment or against a requirement for uniformity, the potential sticking point is the same: voucher programs provide public funds to private institutions whose purposes and practices may differ radically from those of public schools. In either case, the court must evaluate whatever differences exist between publicly funded schools against the constitution's insistence on uniformity. But it cannot do so without first determining what "uniformity" means. The fatal flaw in Bush v. Holmes is that the court neglected this essential task. Although the meaning of uniformity is neither obvious nor settled, clues exist as to its meaning. Courts in other states have offered a variety of possible definitions, some arguing that uniformity means equal funding, others that it denotes equality of opportunity, and still others that it refers to the "character of instruction." These decisions, interpreting other uniformity clauses, do not indicate how the Florida court should have interpreted Florida's constitutional language-but they do illustrate the range of possibilities. More importantly, there is a small body of case law construing Florida's own uniformity clause. …


Participatory Budgeting (PB) is conceptually powerful because it ties the normative values of non-elite participation and deliberation to specific policymaking processes. It is a democratic policymaking process that enables citizens to allocate public monies. PB has spread globally, coming to the United States in 2009. Our analysis shows that the types of institutional designs used in the United States are quite different from the original Brazilian programs. What explains the variation in PB institutional design between Brazil and the United States? Most PB cases in the US are district-level whereas in Brazil, PB cases are mainly municipal. We account for this variation by analyzing the electoral system; configuration of civil society; political moment of adoption; and available resources. We use case study analysis to account for this variation in institutional design. We then assess how the different rule design is likely to create a different set of institutional outcomes.


"What if traditionally apathetic library users were instead motivated to get up early on a Saturday morning and plead for library staff members to open the doors?" author Jenny Levine asks in the introduction to "Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services," the 5
 th issue in volume 42 of Library Technology Reports . In this issue of LTR , numerous detailed examples of what libraries are already doing—including public, school, and academic libraries—provide Levine the springboard to illustrate how librarians can reap positive gains by proactively, creatively, and (above all) affordably integrating gaming into the services and programs already offered at your library. The case studies reveal that gaming programs often turn out to be among the most popular a library can offer. "I have yet to hear about a library of any type offering gaming that has received negative feedback from patrons," Jenny notes. All the way to the conclusion of her report, "What Librarians Can Learn from Gamers," Levine entertains as she informs. Along the way, you can:
 The issue covers video game consoles (e.g., MicroSoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's GameCube, and Sony's PlayStation), computer-based games (e.g., Myst , The Sims , Civilization IV ), and Web-based games (e.g., Bookworm and PopCap Games ) as well as some of the common gaming-equipment setups/configurations in libraries. Jenny Levine is the author of the popular blog The Shifted Librarian blog. She is currently Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide for the American Library Association's Information Technology and Technical Systems and Publishing departments. Learn more about gaming and libraries at the ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium, July 22-24, 2007, in Chicago, IL. Visit


Reservoir computing is a decade old framework from the field of machine learning to use and train recurrent neural networks and it splits the network in a reservoir that does the computation and a simple readout function. This technique has been among the state-of-the-art for a broad class of classification and recognition problems such as time series prediction, speech recognition and robot control. However, so far implementations have been mainly software based, while a hardware implementation offers the promise of being low-power and fast. Despite essential differences between classical software implementation and a network of semiconductor optical amplifiers, we will show that photonic reservoirs can achieve an even better performance on a benchmark isolated digit recognition task, if the interconnection delay is optimized and the phase can be controlled. In this paper we will discuss the essential parameters needed to create an optimal photonic reservoir designed for a certain task.


Examinations of racial discrimination hinge upon the ability of the researcher to accurately measure worker productivity. To overcome this difficulty, researchers have utilized data from professional sports. Unlike many industries, professional sports provide an abundance of performance measures for the individual worker. Unfortunately, the abundance itself may pose a problem, as researchers face a number of plausible measurements of worker performance. As we show, the choice of measurements does impact the results. Additionally, we show that race can also be measured in a variety of ways and that choice also appears to influence the reported findings. Such results indicate that prior research on the topic of racial discrimination may need to be reconsidered.


We revise and extend the foundation of computable topology in the frame- work of Type-2 theory of effectivity, TTE, where continuity and computability on finite and infinite sequences of symbols are defined canonically and transferred to abstract sets by means of notations and representations. We start from a computable topo- logical space, which is a T0-space with a notation of a base such that intersection is computable, and define a number of multi-representations of the points and of the open, the closed and the compact sets and study their properties and relations. We study computability of boolean operations. By merely requiring "provability" of suitable re- lations (element, non-empty intersection, subset) we characterize in turn computability on the points, the open sets (!), computability on the open sets, computability on the closed sets, the compact sets(!), and computability on the compact sets. We study modifications of the definition of a computable topological space that do not change the derived computability concepts. We study subspaces and products and compare a number of representations of the space of partial continuous functions. Since we are operating mainly with the base elements, which can be considered as regions for points ("pointless topology"), we study to which extent these regions can be filled with points (completions). We conclude with some simple applications including Dini's Theorem as an example.


We review the tectonic evolution of the SW Pacific east of Australia from ca 120 Ma until the present. A
key factor that developed early in this interval and played a major role in the subsequent geodynamic
history of this region was the calving off from eastern Australia of several elongate microcontinental ribbons,
including the Lord Howe Rise and Norfolk-New Caledonia Ridge. These microcontinental ribbons
were isolated from Australia and from each other during a protracted extension episode from ca 120 to
52 Ma, with oceanic crust accretion occurring from 85 to 52 Ma and producing the Tasman Sea and
the South Loyalty Basin. Generation of these microcontinental ribbons and intervening basins was
assisted by emplacement of a major mantle plume at 100 Ma beneath the southern part of the Lord
Howe Rise, which in turn contributed to rapid and efficient eastward trench rollback. A major change
in Pacific plate motion at ca 55 Ma initiated east-directed subduction along the recently extinct spreading
centre in the South Loyalty Basin, generating boninitic lithosphere along probably more than 1000
km of plate boundary in this region, and growth of the Loyalty-Entrecasteaux arc. Continued subduction
of South Loyalty Basin crust led to the arrival at about 38 Ma of the 70-60 million years old western
volcanic passive margin of the Norfolk Ridge at the trench, and west-directed emplacement of the
New Caledonia ophiolite. Lowermost allochthons of this ophiolite are Maastrichtian and Paleocene rift
tholeiites derived from the underthrusting passive margin. Higher allochthonous sheets include a poorly
exposed boninitic lava slice, which itself was overridden by the massive ultramafic sheets that cover
large parts of New Caledonia and are derived from the colliding forearc of the Loyalty-Entrecasteaux
arc. Post-collisional extensional tectonism exhumed the underthrust passive margin, parts of which have
blueschist and eclogite facies metamorphic assemblages. Following locking of this subduction zone at
38-34 Ma, subduction jumped eastward, to form a new west-dipping subduction zone above which
formed the Vitiaz arc, that contained elements which today are located in the Tongan, Fijian, Vanuatu
and Solomons arcs. Several episodes of arc splitting fragmented the Vitiaz arc and produced first the
South Fiji Basin (31-25 Ma) and later (10 Ma to present) the North Fiji Basin. Collision of the Ontong Java
Plateau, a large igneous province, with the Solomons section of the Vitiaz arc resulted in a reversal of
subduction polarity, and growth of the Vanuatu arc on clockwise-rotating, older Vitiaz arc and South Fiji
Basin crust. Continued rollback of the trench fronting the Tongan arc since 6 Ma has split this arc and
produced the Lau Basin-Havre Trough.
This southwest Pacific style of crustal growth above a rolling-back slab is applied to the 600-220 Ma
tectonic development of the Tasman Fold Belt System in southeastern Australia, and explains key
aspects of the geological evolution of eastern Australia. In particular, collision between a plume-triggered
600 Ma volcanic passive margin and a 510-515 Ma boninitic forearc of an intra-oceanic arc had
the same relative orientation and geological effects as that which produced New Caledonia. A new
subduction system formed probably at least several hundred kilometres east of the collision zone and
produced the Macquarie arc, in which the oldest lavas were erupted ca 480 Ma. Continued slab rollback
induced regional extension and the growth of narrow linear troughs in the Macquarie arc, which
persisted until terminal deformation of this fold belt in the late-Middle to Late Devonian. A similar pattern
of tectonic development generated the New England Fold Belt between the Late Devonian and Late
Triassic. Parts of the New England Fold Belt have been broken from Australia and moved oceanward to
locations in New Zealand, and on the Lord Howe Rise and Norfolk-New Caledonia Rise, during the post-
120 Ma breakup. Given that the Tasman Fold Belt System grew between 600 and 220 Ma by crustal
accretion like the southwest Pacific since 120 Ma, facing the open Pacific Ocean, we question whether
the eastern (Australia-Antarctica) part of the Neoproterozoic Rodinian supercontinent was joined to
Laurentia.


Abstract A wide variety of anatomical structures can be involved in a sports injury. To return to play as soon as possible is of utmost importance to an athlete, and in order to achieve this, a correct, all-inclusive diagnosis, a well-focused treatment plan, and a management plan that strives to offer protection are essential. This article aims to give an overview of acute and overuse (chronic) sports injuries in adults, the approach to an accurate diagnosis and the management strategies that are available. A literature review was conducted of scientific journals, text and internet material, including a Medline and PubMed search. Literature was selected for its in-depth data and well-researched information. Key search terms included "acute and overuse injuries", as well as "sports injuries diagnosis and management" to address current and relevant scientific data on the examination and management of sports injuries in adults. The literature review indicated that sports injuries (both acute and overuse) are increasing in number due to the growing interest in physical activity and sport, as well as the enhanced intensity of training programmes. Adults are vulnerable to both types of sports injuries, and the age of occurrence of overuse injuries varies in competitive and non-competitive athletes. The importance of making an accurate diagnosis cannot be overemphasised. To assist the clinician in making an accurate diagnosis, a comprehensive history, physical examination and appropriate special investigations are mandatory. Familiarity with the demands of the athlete's sport may also prove useful. The approach to the management of acute and overuse injuries differs, with the emphasis in acute injuries being on treating the effect (torn, broken, displaced) and in chronic injuries on treating the cause (intrinsic or extrinsic). There have been numerous advances in the management of sports injuries, however further research is still warranted in this area. Follow-up articles will focus more in-depth on specifics with regard to clinical examination, special investigations and management options.


Climate change and variability severely affect rural livelihoods and agricultural productivity, yet they are causes of stress vulnerable rural households have to cope with. This paper investigated farming communities' vulnerability to climate change and climate variability across 34 agricultural-based districts in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. It considered 24 biophysical and socio-economic indicators to reflect the three components of climate change vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. A framework was used that combines exposure and sensitivity to produce potential impact, which was then compared with adaptive capacity in order to yield an overall measure of vulnerability. The classic statistical technique of factor analysis was applied to generate weights for the different indicators and an overall vulnerability index was constructed for the 34 rural districts. The analysis revealed that the districts deemed to be most vulnerable to climate change and variability overlapped with the most vulnerable populations. The most exposed farming communities showed a relatively low capacity for adaptation. The study further showed that vulnerability to climate change and variability is basically linked to social and economic developments.


During the course of a series of articles relating medieval Italian songs to oral and unwritten traditions, Nino Pirrotta comments on a peculiar anonymous two-voice setting from the fourteenth century whose verses seem to have been broken and shattered by the music. Word repetition 'does not result in a more effective or more understandable rendition of the text; on the contrary, it so fragments and stutters it that any meaning is lost, except as a pretext for the melody which submerges it'. The song in question, Dolce lo mio drudo, is part of a group of unica with Calabrian associations found in the oldest layer of the Reina manuscript. Pirrotta transcribes the song in full and analyses the text and its cognates in detail. It is a ballata with irregularities. I quote in Example 1 just the refrain, together with an indication of the syllable count, in order to facilitate comparison with what follows.