 Controlling Traffic Ensembles in Open Cirrus Wenjie Jiang, Yoshio Turner, Jean Tourrilhes, Mike Schlansker HP Laboratories HPL-2011-129 Datacenter network architectures must change to accommodate the unprecedented scaling and low cost requirements of cloud computing environments. This paper describes our work on managing the performance of multi-path Ethernet fabrics spanning a large datacenter. Our approach is to develop an Ensemble Routing Controller, which achieves management scalability by reasoning about traffic at the granularity of a tractable set of flow ensembles, i.e. groups of flows. To support research on novel datacenter network architectures and management frameworks, the Palo Alto Open Cirrus site has been augmented with an experimental multi-path Ethernet network, which operates separately and in parallel with the production Open Cirrus network fabric. We implemented and deployed a prototype Ensemble Routing Controller to manage traffic in this multi-path network. We present preliminary experimental results showing that our controller effectively manages the fabric resources by dynamically assigning traffic to efficient network paths delivering close to optimal network goodput to applications. We also describe our experiences using the Open Cirrus platform and suggest features for Open Cirrus resource allocation that would further facilitate our research on datacenter networking. External Posting Date: August 21, 2011 [Fulltext] Approved for External Publication Internal Posting Date: August 21, 2011 [Fulltext] Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Controlling Traffic Ensembles in Open Cirrus Wenjie Jiang Princeton University Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Yoshio Turner Jean Tourrilhes Mike Schlansker HP Labs Email: {yoshio.turner,jean.tourrilhes,mike email@example.com Abstract—Datacenter network architectures must change to accommodate the unprecedented scaling and low cost requirements of cloud computing environments. This paper describes our work on managing the performance of multi-path Ethernet fabrics spanning a large datacenter. Our approach is to develop an Ensemble Routing Controller, which achieves management scalability by reasoning about traffic at the granularity of a tractable set of flow ensembles, i.e. groups of flows. To support research on novel datacenter network architectures and management frameworks, the Palo Alto Open Cirrus site has been augmented with an experimental multi-path Ethernet network, which operates separately and in parallel with the production Open Cirrus network fabric. We implemented and deployed a prototype Ensemble Routing Controller to manage traffic in this multi-path network. We present preliminary experimental results showing that our controller effectively manages the fabric resources by dynamically assigning traffic to efficient network paths delivering close to optimal network goodput to applications. We also describe our experiences using the Open Cirrus platform and suggest features for Open Cirrus resource allocation that would further facilitate our research on datacenter networking.Datacenter network architectures must change to accommodate the unprecedented scaling and low cost requirements of cloud computing environments. This paper describes our work on managing the performance of multi-path Ethernet fabrics spanning a large datacenter. Our approach is to develop an Ensemble Routing Controller, which achieves management scalability by reasoning about traffic at the granularity of a tractable set of flow ensembles, i.e. groups of flows. To support research on novel datacenter network architectures and management frameworks, the Palo Alto Open Cirrus site has been augmented with an experimental multi-path Ethernet network, which operates separately and in parallel with the production Open Cirrus network fabric. We implemented and deployed a prototype Ensemble Routing Controller to manage traffic in this multi-path network. We present preliminary experimental results showing that our controller effectively manages the fabric resources by dynamically assigning traffic to efficient network paths delivering close to optimal network goodput to applications. We also describe our experiences using the Open Cirrus platform and suggest features for Open Cirrus resource allocation that would further facilitate our research on datacenter networking.


By the end of the nineteenth century the global telegraph network had connected all continents and brought distant people into direct communication 'at the speed of thought' for the first time. Roland Wenzlhuemer here examines the links between the development of the telegraph and the paths of globalization, and the ways in which global spaces were transformed by this technological advance. His groundbreaking approach combines cultural studies with social science methodology, including evidence based on historical GIS mapping, to shed new light on both the structural conditions of the global telegraph network and the historical agency of its users. The book reveals what it meant for people to be telegraphically connected or unconnected, how people engaged with the technology, how the use of telegraphy affected communication itself and, ultimately, whether faster communication alone can explain the central role that telegraphy occupied in nineteenth-century globalization.


Jane Morris (1839-1914) was a famous Pre-Raphaelite model, wife of William Morris and one of the Victorian age's most enigmatic figures. Her long love affair with Dante Gabriel Rossetti has become the stuff of legend. Later she had a romantic relationship with the adventurer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Through her daughter May, she had a contentious interaction with George Bernard Shaw. The greater fame of husband and lovers caused her to be overlooked, but she has always aroused historical interest and partisan debate. Like other women in history her emergence from mute image into speaking subject has come about through feminist scholarship, but is of wide appeal. The editors of this volume have discovered more than 500 letters from Jane to many and diverse correspondents, which radically revise the popular view of a silent, discontented invalid and reveal the range of her interests and opinions. The majority of the letters are unpublished and are fully annotated. They reveal Jane's involvement in many of Morris's endeavours such as the family firm Morris & Co., the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the 1882 Icelandic Relief Committee, and the Kelmscott Press, and offer new insights into the life of the Morris family. An independent thinker, Jane was politically engaged, although voteless, and her letters are informed by the turbulent events of the 1880s. She did not follow Morris into the Socialist movement, but retained Liberal allegiances and became an ardent supporter of Irish Home Rule. Jane Morris's letters complement those of her husband William Morris (edited by Norman Kelvin) and her lover Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In addition to the texts, the book includes a selection of the portraits and paintings through which Jane became a Pre-Raphaelite icon and archetypal femme fatale. JAN MARSH is the author of Jane and May Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Painter and Poet and other books on the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and is the current president of the William Morris Society. FRANK C. SHARP is an independent Victorian studies scholar and the author of numerous articles on William Morris and his circle.


Abstract Organic photovoltaic (OPVs) devices are promising due to their low cost, light weight, and compatibility with high throughput processing on flexible substrates. This paper demonstrates a simple process utilizing thin-film instabilities to enhance light absorption in OPVs in a way that is compatible with planar processing and the customary thermal annealing steps. Placing a thin, transparent polystyrene (PS) film between the glass substrate and the transparent conductive indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode results in the formation of periodic surface buckles in the PS layer due to induced strain caused by thermal expansion mismatch between the ITO and PS films. OPVs comprising bilayer laminates of copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) and fullerene (C60) deposited onto buckled the ITO/PS substrate show enhanced light absorption due to the longer path-length and improved power conversion efficiency (20%) relative to a similar planar device. This approach is appealing because it takes advantage of naturally-occurring surface topography (i. e., buckling) without the need for any sophisticated patterning. This work is distinguished from other buckling strategies for OPVs by the use of ITO as a transparent, conductive electrode and the absence of additional processing steps.


A key issue in fostering transition to postsecondary education for students with disabilities is documentation verifying the nature of the disability and supporting the need for services and reasonable accommodations. Documentation guidelines assist postsecondary disability service providers in making decisions about eligibility and reasonable accommodations. However, documentation is often varied in scope, comprehensiveness, and quality, requiring a great deal of professional judgment during the review process. This study examined service provider decision-making when presented with documentation of learning disability with varying levels of information. Results indicated service providers' value comprehensive Objective Evidence, but importance of the data used in decision-making varied by demographic variables, such as years of experience and type of training in reviewing disability documentation. Implications for practice are addressed.


Extracted from text ... 1 Iesi (Jesus Maria in both the Italian and the Latin texts) is a municipality of Ancona. 2 Dominus, Italian maestro. 3 Tela undulata: this could also mean ""watered silk"" or even ""pleated robes"" (cf. Pliny N.H. 8.74: 194-5); but the Italian version (which is on the whole not a very literal rendering of the Latin one) has ciambellotto, which is cloth woven from camel or goat hair. [Also cf. Forcellini sv undulates.] 4 Magister (cf. i.a. Caesar Civ. 2.43.1, Horace Carm.3.6.31): ""shipmaster""? 5 ex litteris vecturae: the Italian version has ""come per lettere di caricamento - bill of ..


This paper addresses the problem of designing a real time high performance controller and trajectory generator for air vehicles. The control objective is to use information about terrain and enemy threats to fly low and avoid radar exposure on the way to a given target. The proposed algorithm builds on the well known approach of receding horizon control (RHC) combined with a terminal cost, calculated from a graph representation of the environment. Using a novel safety maneuver, and under an assumption on the maximal terrain inclination, we are able to prove safety as well as task completion. The safety maneuver is incorporated in the short term optimization, which is performed using nonlinear programming (NLP). Some key characteristics of the trajectory planner are highlighted through simulations


The effects of the forward- and backward-wave interference in a standing-wave resonator on laser output intensity are considered. In the paraxial- and plane-wave approximation and with boundary conditions appropriate for a Fabry–Perot resonator, the intensity equations are analytically solved. The variation of the output intensity with various parameters, such as the mirror reflection and absorption coefficients, small-signal gain, and atomic detuning, is considered, and the results are compared with those obtained when the interference effects are neglected. Considerable departure from the latter case is found. Our results should find application in choosing optimum parameters in the design of a laser resonator.


In this paper, an energy optimizing extremum seeking controller is developed for vapor compression systems (VCS) that automatically discovers sets of inputs that minimizes the energy consumption while the machine is in operation. This controller optimizes an input-output map (from VCS inputs to electrical energy consumed) in realtime, and without relying on a model of the dynamics of a vapor compression system. A detailed algorithm and rules for tuning the controller gains will be described. Experiments are performed on an inverter-driven room air conditioner that demonstrate convergence of inputs to their optimal values, resulting in an improvement in COP of 10-20% for some operating points.


Molecular visualization is often challenged with rendering of large sequences of molecular simulations in real time. We introduce a novel approach that enables us to show even large protein complexes over time in real-time. Our method is based on the level-of-detail concept, where we exploit three different molecular surface models, solvent excluded surface (SES), Gaussian kernels and van der Waals spheres combined in one visualization. We introduce three shading levels that correspond to their geometric counterparts and a method for creating seamless transition between these representations. The SES representation with full shading and added contours stands in focus while on the other side a sphere representation with constant shading and without contours provide the context. Moreover, we introduce a methodology to render the entire molecule directly using the A-buffer technique, which further improves the performance. The rendering performance is evaluated on series of molecules of varying atom counts.


We live in an information society. The use of Personal Computers is widespread and it continues to grow, both in the workplace and in the home (Lewis, 1999). More information is available electronically and more services are coming on-line. The Internet and email are now everyday terms. Soon our whole lives could revolve around home and portable terminals. We may be shopping, working, communicating and learning entirely electronically. Books may become far less important and face to face interactions may become increasingly inefficient and unnecessary.
This is one view of the future. It may be unrealistic and it is probably not desirable, but it is a possibility. Information technology is developing rapidly. It is becoming more accepted and more essential to our everyday lives. It is increasingly important that information can be accessed and communicated quickly, accurately and efficiently.
Clearly this has implications for Higher Education and indeed for teaching and learning as a whole. The role of technology in enabling access to information has an obvious, perhaps inevitable next step, which is the electronic delivery of learning; in effect, the electronic instructor. In fact, this is not a new idea and such educational software has already been developed. Over the years many technology-related teaching methods have been employed in an attempt to improve the quality, flexibility and cost effectiveness of teaching and learning. For example, Interactive Television, Programmed Instruction and Computer Aided Instruction have been around for over 25 years (Jameson et al., 1974), but as yet none have been successful in replacing traditional instruction on a large scale. In 1993, the lecture was seen as the main teaching method used in Higher Education (Laurillard, 1993) and six years on, this is still the case.


Get your foot in the studio door by learning the art of matchmoving Matchmoving is a technique that allows computer graphics to be inserted into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion. Also known as motion tracking, it's what allows movie monsters to run down Main Street and robots to run through crowds--and look real. Now this unique book from a top expert from Industrial Light and Magic teaches you the art of matchmoving. With step-by-step tutorials and pages of examples, this book first explains the basics and then shows you professional techniques, from 3D calibration and tracking, to stereoscopy, and more. Explains concepts and teaches professional techniques for successful matchmoving Authored by a top matchmove specialist from Industrial Light and Magic, who walks you through step-by-step tutorials and impressive examples Covers matchmoving basics, 2D tracking, 3D calibration and tracking, automatic tracking, cameras, integrating matchmoves, and stereoscopy Learn how studio visual effects professionals make all the right matchmoves with Matchmoving: The Invisible Art of Camera Tracking 2nd Edition.


Most present day estuaries formed within incised fluvial valleys, created during the last glacial, that drowned during post-glacial sea-level rise. The sedimentary archive of the associated river-mouth areas contains important information on estuarine evolution under different rates of sea-level rise. This thesis presents a study on the development of the mouth of the Rhine-Meuse system in the Rotterdam area, western Netherlands, between 12000-6000 BP. During the study tens of thousands of core descriptions and cone penetration test results, as well as seismic data, pollen and diatom analyses, tens of OSL-dates and hundreds of radiocarbon dates were used. The objectives were to explain: 1) the early-mid Holocene sedimentary succession of the Rhine-Meuse river-mouth area; 2) the development of the river-mouth area in the early-mid Holocene in response to rapid sea-level rise (SLR) and 3) the interaction of the fluvial and coastal systems during the early-mid Holocene transgression. Between 10.5-8 ka BP, the effects of sea-level rise started to influence the study area: groundwater rise resulted in the formation of extensive wetlands, fluvial flood basins became more frequently flooded, sediment-aggradation rates increased and finally the river valley changed into an estuary with adjacent tidal basins. Sea level reached rates of 1 m/100 yr before 8 ka BP with a period of 2 m/100 yr between 8.5-8.3 ka BP as a result of sea-level jumping. During the latter period sea level rose 4.06 0.5 m: 1.95 0.74 m background sea-level rise and 2.11 0.89 m sea-level jump. This jump is linked to the drainage of Lakes Agassiz and Ojibway in the Hudson Bay area and linked to the 8.2 event. After 8 ka BP the rate of SLR slowed down to 0.6 m/100 yr. North and south of the estuary, retrogradation of the coastline occurred at a faster rate than near the mouth at Hoek van Holland, leading to the formation of a promontory. In the upper estuary a bay-head delta was formed. Around 7.3 ka BP the main branch of the Rhine connected to a tidal inlet 20 km north of the promontory that was strongly eroded. The eroded sediment was partly used to fill in the abandoned estuary, but also to fill in tidal basins north of the promontory. The closure of the several tidal inlets resulted in poor drainage conditions and the wetland area increased rapidly after 6.5 ka BP and around 6 ka BP the coastline reached its most eastward position. The sedimentary succession was also described using sequence-stratigraphic concepts. The transition from lowstand to transgressive systems tract (TST) occurred when widespread basal-peat formation halted and gyttja accumulation and clastic deposition started. In large parts of the study area this occurred near-instantaneously during the sea-level jump. The highstand systems tract in the study area started after 6.5 ka BP with widespread peat formation in the closing tidal basins. The relatively late start of the TST is most likely typical for river-mouth areas along wide, low-gradient continental shelves where base-level changes are dominant for a relatively short period.


Work on an electrostatic measuring system for the determination of the SI volt and the conversion factor KV at the PTB is reported. The system consists of a so-called voltage balance and a generator for the dc measuring voltage. There is a need for the development of such a device with an uncertainty below 1 part in 106 because measurements with existing voltage balances, and results obtained by other methods show discrepancies of several parts in 106. In order to reduce the uncertainty and to simplify the apparatus a special measuring method was developed. The voltage/force transducer of the PTB voltage balance is formed from two coaxial cylindrical electrodes and the generated force is substituted for the force of gravity on a weight of 2 g. The electrode voltage is composed of a constant part of 10186 V, derived in a 1000-fold stepup from 10 standard cells, and a much smaller variable part used for balancing the scale beam by means of a control loop. Taking the root sum of squares the total relative uncertainty of the SI volt and of KV is expected to be less than 4 parts in 107.


Breast tumor is a growth that occur in the healthy breast tissue, whereby abnormal cells undergo division in an uncontrolled manner. It comes in different types and stages and the ability to metastasize and infect distant tissues. Several studies have showed that one in eight women in the US will develop breast cancer during their life time. Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment is widely approved as being essential to effectively alleviate the disease. The aim of this study is to comparatively analyze certain breast cancer treatment procedures which include surgery, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Fuzzy PROMETHEE (preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations) a multi-criteria decision-making process was used to evaluate the treatments on factors that include side effects, overall survival rate, cost of treatment and treatment time.


We highlight some recent results on the theory and algorithms for MIMO systems, obtained at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) within the SATURN project. The paper includes a a new approximate expression for the ergodic channel capacity of a MIMO system with correlated fading, algorithms for MIMO beamforming under EIRP (equivalent isotropic radiated power) constraints and a low-complexity algorithm for MIMO channel estimation in OFDM systems. Also, we show how transmit and beamformers can be determined in a decentralized fashion without explicitly estimating the channel response.


It is undisputed that Blacks are disproportionately represented among the victims of police shootings. In a comprehensive review of the literature on police use of deadly force, James Fyfe reports that every study that has examined this issue [has] found that blacks are represented disproportionately among those at the wrong end of police guns. Although Blacks represent approximately 13 percent of the population in the United States, in parts of the country they constitute 60 to 85 percent of the victims of police shootings. On average, Blacks are more than six times as likely as Whites to be shot by police, and in large cities are killed by police at least three times more often than Whites. Latinos (or Hispanics) are about twice as likely as Whites, but only half as likely as Blacks, to be shot and killed by police. There is a noticeable lack of data regarding police use of force against other non-Black minorities, such as Asian Americans, Arab Americans, South Asians and Native Americans. However, reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch suggest that, in relation to their representation in society at large, these other minorities are also disproportionately on the receiving end of police force. While widespread consensus exists that racial minorities are disproportionately represented as victims of police shootings, the reason for this disproportion is hotly disputed. Most people who have an opinion on the subject fall within one of two camps which John Goldkamp, in his study of race and police shootings, calls Belief Perspective I and Belief Perspective II. Proponents of Belief Perspective I believe racism on the part of police officers and police departments results in one trigger finger for racial minorities and another for Whites. According to this view, police officers intentionally single out racial minorities for harsher treatment. Proponents of Belief Perspective II, in contrast, contend that race does not influence the average police officer's decision to use force. According to this perspective, Blacks and other non-Whites are disproportionately represented as victims of police shootings because they disproportionately commit armed robberies, carry firearms, and engage in behavior that police officers are likely to find threatening, such as resisting arrest. The problem with Goldkamp's two belief perspectives theory is that it frames the problem in all-or-nothing terms. Either police officers are bigots who intentionally target racial minorities (Belief Perspective I) or they are completely unbiased and color-blind (Belief Perspective II). The truth more likely lies somewhere between these two extremes. In this essay, I offer a third way to explain the disparate treatment respective segments of the population experience at the hands of police officers - an explanation that accommodates both the lived experiences of persons of color and the belief that police officers use force more often against persons of color because such individuals appear to be more threatening to the officer. Borrowing from Charles Lawrence's theory of unconscious racism, I suggest that racial stereotypes operate at a subconscious level to influence the police officer's decision to use deadly force. The police officer may not consciously decide to use deadly force because of the suspect's race, but the suspect's race nonetheless influences the officer. Racial stereotypes thus may alter the officer's perception of danger, threat, and resistance to authority. A simple question, Officer, why am I being stopped? may be perceived as behavior challenging the officer's authority when asked by someone who is Black. Police officers may also see danger more readily when dealing with a person of color. Just as racial and ethnic stereotypes influence private citizens' decisions to use force in self-defense, such stereotypes can also influence police officers' decisions to use force. I review recent social science studies which provide support for my theory and provide examples of how racial stereotypes can affect perception through actual cases. Finally, I suggest a race-switching jury instruction as a means to help de-bias juror decision making.


A lthough Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to have a major and positive effect on road safety, recent accidents caused by AVs tend to generate a powerful negative impact on the public opinion regarding safety aspects of AVs. Triggered by such incidents, many experts and policy makers now believe that paradoxically, safety perceptions may well prohibit or delay the rollout of AVs in society, in the sense that AVs will need to become much safer than conventional vehicles (CVs), before being accepted by the public. In this study, we provide empirical insights to investigate and explain this safety paradox. Using stated choice experiments, we show that there is indeed a difference between the weight that individuals implicitly attach to an AV-fatality and to a CV-fatality. However, the degree of overweighting of AV-fatalities, compared to CV-fatalities, is considerably smaller than what has been suggested in public opinions and policy reports. We also find that the difference in weighting between AV-fatalities and CV-fatalities is (partly) related to a reference level effect: simply because the current number of fatalities caused by AVs is extremely low, each additional fatality carries extra weight. Our findings suggest that indeed, AVs have to become safer — but not orders of magnitude safer — than CVs, before the general public will develop a positive perception of AVs in terms of road safety. Ironically, our findings also suggest that the inevitable occurrence of more AV-related road accidents will in time lead to a diminishing degree of overweighting of safety issues surrounding AVs.


Ecological factors such as changing climate on land and interspecific competition have been debated as possible causes of postglacial Caribbean extinction. These hypotheses, however, have not been tested against a null model of climate-driven postglacial area loss. Here, we use a new Quaternary mammal database and deep-sea bathymetry to estimate species–area relationships (SARs) at present and during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) for bats of the Caribbean, and to model species loss as a function of area loss from rising sea level. Island area was a significant predictor of species richness in the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles at all time periods, except for the Lesser Antilles during the LGM. Parameters of LGM and current SARs were similar in the Bahamas and Greater Antilles, but not the Lesser Antilles, which had fewer estimated species during the LGM than expected given their size. Estimated postglacial species losses in the Bahamas and Greater Antilles were largely explained by inferred area loss from rising sea level in the Holocene. However, there were more species in the Bahamas at present, and fewer species in the smaller Greater Antilles, than expected given island size and the end-Pleistocene/early Holocene SARs. Poor fossil sampling and ecological factors may explain these departures from the null. Our analyses illustrate the importance of changes in area in explaining patterns of species richness through time and emphasize the role of the SAR as a null hypothesis in explorations of the impact of novel ecological interactions on extinction.


Consequent to a big fire tragedy which occurred at a function on 3rd of March 1989 at Jamshedpur which left many people dead and an even more number of people with severe burn, a serious need was felt regarding having of a specialised burn care unit in the region. Foundation stone for the burn care unit (BCU) of TMH was laid on 19th December 1989. This self-sufficient unit became fully functional from August 1992 with 18 beds divided into two zones – Septic and Aseptic, and was headed by Plastic Surgeon Dr R Bharat, who served the department till his retirement in the year 2008. The present BCU has fifteen beds in separate cubicles and is provided with all the modern facilities such as modern critical care beds, wall mounted gas pipe lines and suction, monitors and Ventilators. Apart from its therapeutic endeavours, the department has constantly forayed into the realm of social responsibility by undertaking community awareness programmes on prevention of burns through its several outreach programs within the premises of the Tata Steel industrial areas as well as the community at large, in keeping with the Tata steel's Corporate Social Responsibility.


BACKGROUND
Depression becomes increasingly common in adolescence. Around 10%-20% of adolescents have a chronic illness, and they are more likely to experience depression. There is emerging evidence for cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) interventions to treat depression in adolescents with chronic illnesses, yet no review has been undertaken of how these CBT interventions are delivered in practice.

METHODS
We conducted a scoping review to summarise how CBT has been delivered in adolescents with chronic illness and depression. We included studies that evaluated CBT aimed at treating depression/depressive symptoms in adolescents with chronic illness. Searches were carried out across Embase and PsycNET.

RESULTS
Twelve studies met our inclusion criteria. These included diabetes (n = 3), inflammatory bowel disease (n = 3), polycystic ovary syndrome (n = 2), chronic headache (n = 1), chronic pain (n = 1), chronic fatigue syndrome (n = 1) and Fanconi anaemia (n = 1). Adaptations made to the delivery of CBT included cognitive restructuring of illness-related thoughts, behavioural activation balancing illness-related and enjoyable activities, psychoeducation of the comorbidity and link between the chronic illness and depression, relationship building, skill building and parental or familial involvement. CBT was typically delivered by trained professionals with expertise in working with adolescents, who worked under supervision.

CONCLUSIONS
CBT for depression is commonly adapted for this population, and the nature of cognitions and behaviours targeted in CBT may typically depend on how the chronic illness presents. There is relatively little evidence to date, and a need for more research into the efficacy and effectiveness of treatments for adolescent depression in this vulnerable population specifically.


Climate change is increasingly altering the pattern of climate-related risks. Developing countries, and in particular least developed countries, will be among the most severely impacted by climate change. The challenge for planners and policymakers today is that it is impossible to predict with certainty the future conditions to which adaptation is needed.

This paper sets out simple, practical principles that aim to reduce the impact of uncertainty on decision making. It also draws out three interconnected messages for decision-makers.

Firstly, for adaptation to be effective, comprehensive and implemented at the appropriate scale, it is crucial to integrate adaptation planning within existing priorities, planning processes and policymaking.

Secondly, adaptation strengthens the case for pushing 'faster and harder' on development priorities.

Finally, by building flexibility into adaptation strategies from the outset, increasing climate resilience, even with deep uncertainty about future impacts, should be no more challenging than other areas of policy. A central principle in managing uncertainties is to focus on promoting good development and long-term adaptive capacity while avoiding inflexible decisions that could 'lock in' future climate risk in the long term.


Context. Game development is a costly process and with today's advanced hardware the customers are asking for more playable content, and at higher quality. For many years providing this content procedurally has been done for level creation, modeling, and animation. However, there are games that require content in other forms, such as executable quests that progress the game forward. Quests have been procedurally generated to some extent, but not in enough detail to be usable for game development without providing a handwritten description of the quest. Objectives. In this study we combine a procedural content generation structure for quests with a natural language generation approach to generate a descriptive summarized text for quests, and examine whether the resulting texts are viable as quest prototypes for use in game development. Methods. A number of articles on the area of natural language generation is used to determine an appropriate way of validating the generated texts produced in this study, which concludes that a user case study is appropriate to evaluate each text for a set of statements. Results. 30 texts were generated and evaluated from ten different quest structures, where the majority of the texts were found to be good enough to be used for game development purposes. Conclusions. We conclude that quests can be procedurally generated in more detail by incorporating natural language generation. However, the quest structure used for this study needs to expand into more detail at certain structure components in order to fully support an automated system in a flexible manner. Furthermore due to semantics and grammatics being key components in the flow and usability of a text, a more sophisticated system needs to be implemented using more advanced techniques of natural language generation.


As one of only two surviving outgroups to all jawed vertebrates, lampreys (Petromyzontiformes) can provide important information in our understanding of early vertebrate evolution. However, with many phylogenetic aspects of lamprey evolution still uncertain, the ability to use contemporary lampreys in this role depends on robust phylogenetic hypotheses regarding the interrelationship of the three lamprey families, as well as the relationship between lampreys and hagfishes. To achieve this, complete mitogenome data of Southern Hemisphere lampreys is required. Another contentious issue in lamprey taxonomy is the status of paired species. Whilst many studies have focused on Northern Hemisphere species pairs, this study is the first to compare Mordacia mordax and Mordacia praecox, two lamprey species endemic to Australia and the only species pair in the Southern Hemisphere.

The complete mitochondrial genome of Mordacia mordax and Mordacia praecox was determined twice independently, in a single shotgun sequencing run on an Ion Torrent PGM, and using a combination of Sanger sequencing of short range PCR products and Roche 454 GS Junior pyrosequencing of long range PCR products. Both of the mitogenomes contain the 37 typical vertebrate genes. Their gene order and contents are identical to those of previously described lamprey mitogenomes, with the exception of a novel tandem repeat array located between Cyt b and tRNA proline. The tandem repeat array, referred to as NCIII, contains pseudogenes of tRNA proline and phenylalanine, indicating that it has arisen by tandem duplication of the tRNA proline – phenylalanine region. Characterisation of NCIII revealed that the number of repeat copies was polymorphic between individuals of both species, and was a source of both intra-individual and inter-individual variation. Consistent with other studies of lamprey species pairs, the mitogenome of M. mordax and M. praecox are nearly identical.

Phylogenetic analyses were carried out using the newly determined mitogenomes, together with five additional lamprey species and two hagfishes. Most tree topologies obtained strongly support the hypothesis that Petromyzontidae plus Geotriidae are a clade whose sister group is Mordaciidae. Additionally, lamprey divergence times were estimated by a temporally-calibrated phylogenetic analysis that included 20 vertebrate mitogenomes and was done using nine well-established fossil calibration points. The recovered topology strongly supported the hypothesis that lampreys separated from hagfishes about 409 MYA, and that lamprey divergence involved the early radiation of Mordaciidae (about 132 MYA), followed by the monophyletic divergence of Geotriidae plus Petromyzontidae about 85 MYA. Taken together, the results in this study provide robust hypotheses regarding the interrelationship of lamprey families and the relationship between hagfish and lampreys, whilst providing an estimation of their divergence times.


As adenosine 5′‐triphosphate (ATP) released from astrocytes can modulate many neural signaling systems, the triggers and pathways for this ATP release are important. Here, the ability of mechanical strain to trigger ATP release through pannexin channels and the effects of sustained strain on pannexin expression were examined in rat optic nerve head astrocytes. Astrocytes released ATP when subjected to 5% of equibiaxial strain or to hypotonic swelling. Although astrocytes expressed mRNA for pannexins 1–3, connexin 43, and VNUT, pharmacological analysis suggested a predominant role for pannexins in mechanosensitive ATP release, with Rho kinase contribution. Astrocytes from panx1−/− mice had reduced baseline and stimulated levels of extracellular ATP, confirming the role for pannexins. Swelling astrocytes triggered a regulatory volume decrease that was inhibited by apyrase or probenecid. The swelling‐induced rise in calcium was inhibited by P2X7 receptor antagonists A438079 and AZ10606120, in addition to apyrase and carbenoxolone. Extended stretch of astrocytes in vitro upregulated expression of panx1 and panx2 mRNA. A similar upregulation was observed in vivo in optic nerve head tissue from the Tg‐MYOCY437H mouse model of chronic glaucoma; genes for panx1, panx2, and panx3 were increased, whereas immunohistochemistry confirmed increased expression of pannexin 1 protein. In summary, astrocytes released ATP in response to mechanical strain, with pannexin 1 the predominant efflux pathway. Sustained strain upregulated pannexins in vitro and in vivo. Together, these findings provide a mechanism by which extracellular ATP remains elevated under chronic mechanical strain, as found in the optic nerve head of patients with glaucoma. GLIA 2014;62:1486–1501


This article describes conditions in Timor in 1945–1949. Many problems facing the Portuguese and Dutch administrations revolved around Timorese activities such as unauthorized immigration, localized warfare, and livestock theft. Australia's ambitions in the region and the support granted to independence movements by other nations created new challenges. The latter was particularly true for the Dutch, who had to deal with the influence of the Indonesian Republic, whose success eventually led to their departure. Portugal feared a similar fate, but it is explained how local conditions and a deal between Portugal and the Allies during the Second World War allowed it to retain its colonial possessions virtually free of criticism. Most histories of Timor concentrate on either the east or the west part of the island. This article, based mainly on primary sources, details the post-war situation in Timor for all the major groups concerned: the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Timorese.


Inulin, also known as fructooligosaccharide is increasingly used in human food preparations. In vitro they have been shown to selectively stimulate the growth of Bifidobacterium as well as mineral absorption. Hence, the present study was designed to investigate the effects of three different concentrations of inulin in 36 healthy formula-fed infants aged between 6 and 12 months. A complete randomised design was used to investigate the bifidogenic effect of inulin in enhancing mineral absorption, namely, calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and copper. The formula-fed infants were grouped into three groups where they received 0.75 g/d, 1.00 g/d and 1.25g/d, while another group of infants acted as control. All the bifidobacteria faecal isolates were tested and characterised using biochemical test and API20, a genus level test kit. The balance method was opted for mineral balance study. Total blood cholesterol levels were determined to investigate the correlation between inulin intake and total cholesterol level in healthy infants. All the three concentrations of inulin studied were found to significantly (P 0.05) improvement of the absorption of calcium, copper and zinc were observed. The total cholesterol level was not affected by the three levels of inulin supplementation.


On December 4, 1991, President George Bush signed into law the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) to counter illicit drug production and trade in Latin America. For ten years, it has provided preferential, mostly duty-free, treatment of selected U.S. imports from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The goal of ATPA is to encourage increased exports, thereby promoting development and providing an incentive for Andean farmers and other workers to pursue economic alternatives to the drug trade. This report discusses the ATPA, its background, and issues regarding its potential reauthorization.


Purpose: High-dose aldesleukin (HD IL2) received FDA approval for the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (MRCC) in 1992, producing a 14% objective response rate (ORR) and durable remissions. Retrospective studies suggested that clinical and pathologic features could predict for benefit. The Cytokine Working Group conducted this prospective trial to validate proposed predictive markers of response to HD IL2. Experimental Design: Standard HD IL2 was administered to prospectively evaluate whether the ORR of patients with mRCC with "good" predictive pathologic features based on an "integrated selection" model [ISM (e.g., clear-cell histology subclassification and carbonic anhydrase-9 (CA-9) IHC staining] was significantly higher than the ORR of a historical, unselected population. Archived tumor was collected for pathologic analysis including tumor programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression. Results: One hundred and twenty eligible patients were enrolled between June 11 and September 7; 70% were Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY) intermediate risk, 96% had clear cell RCC, and 99% had prior nephrectomy. The independently assessed ORR was 25% (30/120, 95% CI, 17.5%–33.7%, P = 0.0014; 3 complete responses, 27 partial responses) and was higher than a historical ORR. Thirteen patients (11%) remained progression free at 3 years and the median overall survival was 42.8 months. ORR was not statistically different by ISM classification ("good-risk" 23% vs. "poor-risk" 30%; P = 0.39). ORR was positively associated with tumor PD-L1 expression (P = 0.01) by IHC. Conclusions: In this prospective, biomarker validation study, HD IL2 produced durable remissions and prolonged survival in both "good" and "poor-risk" patients. The proposed ISM was unable to improve the selection criteria. Novel markers (e.g., tumor PD L1 expression) appeared useful, but require independent validation. Clin Cancer Res; 21(3); 561–8. ©2014 AACR.


The mechanisms by which transcription factors, which are not themselves tissue restricted, establish cardiomyocyte-specific patterns of transcription in vivo are unknown. Nor do we understand how positional cues are integrated to provide regionally distinct domains of gene expression within the developing heart. We describe regulation of the Xenopus XMLC2 gene, which encodes a regulatory myosin light chain of the contractile apparatus in cardiac muscle. This gene is expressed from the onset of cardiac differentiation in the frog embryo and is expressed throughout all the myocardium, both before and after heart chamber formation. Using transgenesis in frog embryos, we have identified an 82 bp enhancer within the proximal promoter region of the gene that is necessary and sufficient for heart-specific expression of an XMLC2 transgene. This enhancer is composed of two GATA sites and a composite YY1/CArG-like site. We show that the low-affinity SRF site is essential for transgene expression and that cardiac-specific expression also requires the presence of at least one adjacent GATA site. The overlapping YY1 site within the enhancer appears to act primarily as a repressor of ectopic expression, although it may also have a positive role. Finally, we show that the frog MLC2 promoter drives pan myocardial expression of a transgene in mice, despite the more restricted patterns of expression of murine MLC2 genes. We speculate that a common regulatory mechanism may be responsible for pan-myocardial expression of XMLC2 in both the frog and mouse, modulation of which could have given rise to more restricted patterns of expression within the heart of higher vertebrates.


Under the urging of late nineteenth-century humanitarian reformers, U.S. policy toward American Indians shifted from removal and relocation efforts to state-sponsored attempts to "civilize" Indians through allotment of tribal lands, citizenship, and forced education. There is little consensus, however, whether and to what extent federal assimilation efforts played a role in the stabilization and recovery of the American Indian population in the twentieth century. In this paper, we rely on a new IPUMS sample of the 1900 census of American Indians and census-based estimation methods to investigate the impact of federal assimilation policies on childhood mortality. We use children ever born and children surviving data included in the censuses to estimate childhood mortality and [responses to] several questions unique to the Indian enumeration [including tribal affiliation, degree of "white blood", type of dwelling, ability to speak English, and whether a citizen by allotment] to construct multivariate models of child mortality. The results suggest that mortality among American Indians in the late nineteenth century was very high - approximately 62% [standardize as % or percent throughout] higher than that for the white population. The impact of assimilation policies was mixed. Increased ability to speak English was associated with lower child mortality, while allotment of land in severalty was associated with higher mortality. The combined effect was a very modest four percent [as above] decline in mortality. As of 1900, the government campaign to assimilate Indians had yet to result in a significant decline in Indian mortality while incurring substantial economic and cultural costs.


We have developed software that adapts the techniques used by game playing computer programs to the problem of negotiating good deals. In every test case, this strategy recommends making an ultimatum. On examining the protocol, we found that it is equivalent to a standard form of the bargaining game, which has an ultimatum as the Nash equilibrium. In practice, this strategy is unlikely to lead to a desirable result. We report several failed attempts to induce the strategy to recommend more reasonable counteroffers. Only when we include uncertainty in the other participant's constraints does the strategy recommend a counteroffer other than an ultimatum. We show how this uncertainty can be included in the strategy algorithm without introducing heuristics.


Abstract People continue relationships with their dead in a variety of ways. Since the 1990s, the idea of 'continuing bonds' has provided a framework for exploring and understanding post-mortem relationships. However, the dynamics of the bonds between the living and the dead have received little attention. By looking at the intersection of things, practices and spaces, this paper demonstrates that expressions of continuing bonds do not always point to continuity, and indeed can signify discontinuity. It explores the 'transforming bonds' between the recently bereaved and their deceased in the Netherlands, illustrating how post-mortem relationships change and how such changes affect the social location of the deceased and the bereaved. By attending to the ritual dynamics of separation, transition and integration, two aspects of the social and material relationships between the living and the dead are highlighted. First, attention is given to the ways wherein the bereaved relocate their deceased through material objects within and outside of their homes, enabling them to renegotiate the absence–presence of the deceased. Second, the paper illustrates that personalised incorporation practices are inevitably linked to negotiations and contestations in the social sphere, and the norms and values of the social environment.


Robinson Forest in eastern Kentucky is one of our most important natural landscapes-and one of the most threatened. Covering fourteen thousand acres of some of the most diverse forest region in temperate North America, it is a haven of biological richness within an ever-expanding desert created by mountaintop removal mining. Written by two people with deep knowledge of Robinson Forest, The Embattled Wilderness engagingly portrays this singular place as it persuasively appeals for its protection. The land comprising Robinson Forest was given to the University of Kentucky in 1923 after it had been clear-cut of old-growth timber. Over decades, the forest has regrown, and its remarkable ecosystem has supported both teaching and research. But in the recent past, as tuition has risen and state support has faltered, the university has considered selling logging and mining rights to parcels of the forest, leading to a student-led protest movement and a variety of other responses. In The Embattled Wilderness Erik Reece, an environmental writer, and James J. Krupa, a naturalist and evolutionary biologist, alternate chapters on the cultural and natural history of the place. While Reece outlines the threats to the forest and leads us to new ways of thinking about its value, Krupa assembles an engaging record of the woodrats and darters, lichens and maples, centipedes and salamanders that make up the forest's ecosystem. It is a readable yet rigorous, passionate yet reasoned summation of what can be found, or lost, in Robinson Forest and other irreplaceable places.


The development of parallel applications is becoming increasingly important to a broad range of industries. Traditionally, parallel programming was a niche area that was primarily exploited by scientists trying to model extremely complicated physical phenomenon. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that continued hardware performance improvements through clock scaling and feature-size reduction are simply not going to be achievable for much longer. The hardware vendor's approach to addressing this issue is to employ parallelism through multi-processor and multi-core technologies. While there is little doubt that this approach produces scaling improvements, there are still many significant hurdles to be overcome before parallelism can be employed as a general replacement to more traditional programming techniques. The Parallel Tools Platform (PTP) Project was created in 2005 in an attempt to provide developers with new tools aimed at addressing some of the parallel development issues. Since then, the introduction of a new generation of peta-scale and multi-core systems has highlighted the need for such a platform. In this paper, we describe some of the challenges facing parallel application developers, present the current state of PTP, and provide a simple case study that demonstrates how PTP can be used to locate a potential deadlock situation in an MPI code.


This paper discusses effects of satellite diversity for a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite communication system. The LMS (Land Mobile Satellite) channel of a LEO system is frequency-nonselective and so frequency diversity cannot be exploited. Also the use of time diversity is limited if speech transmission is desired, because of the small interleaver delay time allowed. Considering these two facts space diversity is an important possibility to improve the transmission quality of a satellite communication system. Furthermore, the use of multiple satellites for transmission reduces the probability of a shadowed link. The diversity effects are analyzed with the help of a transmission model based on the Globalstar system. This is a LEO satellite communication concept which uses CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology. Applying this technology, the signals from different satellites can be combined with a Rake receiver. This method is designated in the Globalstar system supported by a convolutional code of rate R=1/2 and constraint length cl=9. Instead of transmitting the same convolutionally encoded bits on both channels, a new approach with a rate R=1/4 turbo code (cl=3, 5) is presented. The turbo coded bits are split on both satellites in a way that both channels get the same systematic bits but different code bits. This new scheme performs better compared to the Globalstar system and in addition to that, the same amount of processing time or even less is needed. Key-Words: LEO, satellite diversity, CDMA, turbo codes


In the 1960s, the charismatic physicist Geoffrey Chew espoused a radical vision of the universe, and with it, a new way of doing physics. Theorists of the era were struggling to find order in an unruly zoo of newfound particles. They wanted to know which ones were the fundamental building blocks of nature and which were composites. But Chew, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, argued against such a distinction. "Nature is as it is because this is the only possible nature consistent with itself," he wrote at the time. He believed he could deduce nature's laws solely from the demand that they be self-consistent.


In this paper, we address the problem of spectrum sharing where competitive operators coexist in the same frequency band. First, we model this problem as a strategic non-cooperative game where operators simultaneously share the spectrum according to the Nash Equilibrium (N.E). Given a set of channel realizations, several Nash equilibria exist which renders the outcome of the game unpredictable. For this reason, the spectrum sharing problem is reformulated as a Stackelberg game where the first operator is already being deployed and the secondary operator follows next. The Stackelberg equilibrium (S.E) is reached where the best response of the secondary operator is taken into account upon maximizing the primary operator's utility function. Finally, we assess the goodness of the proposed distributed approach by comparing its performance to the centralized approach.


Development of resistance to chemotherapy in cancer patients strongly effects the outcome of the treatment. Due to chemotherapeutic agents, resistance can emerge by Darwinian evolution. Besides this, acquired drug resistance may arise via changes in gene expression. A recent discovery in cancer research uncovered a third possibility, indicating that this phenotype conversion can occur through the transfer of microvesicles from resistant to sensitive cells, a mechanism resembling the spread of an infectious agent. We present a model describing the evolution of sensitive and resistant tumour cells considering Darwinian selection, Lamarckian induction and microvesicle transfer. We identify three threshold parameters which determine the existence and stability of the three possible equilibria. Using a simple Dulac function, we give a complete description of the dynamics of the model depending on the three threshold parameters. We demonstrate the possible effects of increasing drug concentration, and characterize the possible bifurcation sequences. Our results show that the presence of microvesicle transfer cannot ruin a therapy that otherwise leads to extinction, however it may doom a partially successful therapy to failure.


OBJECTIVE To investigate the efficacy and safety of liraglutide added to capped insulin doses in subjects with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A 26-week, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel-group trial enrolling 835 subjects randomized 3:1 receiving once-daily subcutaneous liraglutide (1.8, 1.2, and 0.6 mg) or placebo added to an individually capped total daily dose of insulin. RESULTS Mean baseline glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) (8.1% [65.0 mmol/mol]) was significantly decreased with liraglutide versus placebo at week 26 (1.8 mg: –0.33% [3.6 mmol/mol]; 1.2 mg: –0.22% [2.4 mmol/mol]; 0.6 mg: –0.23% [2.5 mmol/mol]; placebo: 0.01% [0.1 mmol/mol]). Liraglutide significantly reduced mean body weight (–5.1, –4.0, and –2.5 kg for 1.8, 1.2, and 0.6 mg, respectively) versus placebo (–0.2 kg). Significant reductions in daily insulin dose and increases in quality of life were seen with liraglutide versus placebo. There were higher rates of symptomatic hypoglycemia (21.3 vs. 16.6 events/patient/year; P = 0.03) with liraglutide 1.2 mg vs. placebo and of hyperglycemia with ketosis >1.5 mmol/L with liraglutide 1.8 mg vs. placebo (0.5 vs. 0.1 events/patient/year; P = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS In a broad population of subjects with long-standing type 1 diabetes, liraglutide added to capped insulin reduced HbA1c, body weight, and insulin requirements but with higher rates of hypoglycemia for liraglutide 1.2 mg and hyperglycemia with ketosis for liraglutide 1.8 mg.


Convertible arbitrage is an often-used hedge fund strategy that utilizes convertible securities as part of a diversified alternative investment portfolio. This article's objective is to highlight the strategy and shed some light on the changes that are likely to impact it in the future. A brief strategy description will enable readers who may be unfamiliar with it to understand what is required in order to profit from such a strategy. Discussion of overall historical performance and how investors have fared is also included. The market for convertibles is global with the predominance of activity in the United States, Europe, and Japan, while other parts of Asia and other emerging countries do offer some opportunities. Many changes have occurred within these markets, specifically as they relate to the strategy, and the author discusses some of these changes and the potential impact, in addition to current investor concerns. Lastly, this article presents a strategy outlook based upon the current state of the convertibles market.


In this Article, I contend that the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, affirming the continuing use of affirmative action in higher education in certain contexts, require selective educational institutions (law schools in particular) to use an evaluative admissions process or holistic approach. Per this approach, soft variables, including race and ethnicity, must be taken into account as part of the admissions process in order to produce a diverse student body. The reason why such an approach must be used in admissions is that members of underrepresented groups continue to score about one standard deviation below that of white applicants on high-stakes, standardized tests such as the LSAT.


Isoprene is the most abundant of the hydrocarbon compounds emitted from vegetation and plays a major role in tropospheric chemistry. Models predict that future climate change scenarios may lead to an increase in global isoprene emissions as a consequence of higher temperatures and extended drought periods. Tropical rainforests are responsible for more than 80% of global isoprene emissions, so it is important to obtain experimental data on isoprene production and consumption in these ecosystems under control of environmental variables. We explored isoprene emission and consumption in the tropical rainforest model ecosystem of Biosphere 2 laboratory during a mild water stress, and the relationship with light and temperature. Gross isoprene production (GIP) was not significantly affected by mild water stress in this experiment because the isoprene emitters were mainly distributed among the large, canopy layer trees with deep roots in the lower soil profile where water content decreased much less than the top 30 cm. However, as found in previous leaf level and whole canopy studies, the ecosystem gross primary production was reduced by (32%) during drought, and as a consequence the percentage of fixed C lost as isoprene tended to increase during drought, from ca. 1% in wet conditions to ca. 2% when soil water content reached its minimum. GIP correlated very well with both light and temperature. Notably, soil isoprene uptake decreased dramatically during the drought, leading to a large increase in daytime net isoprene fluxes.


We determine precipitation regions for the United States-Mexico border region based on seasonality and variability of monthly precipitation at 309 stations for the period 1961 to 1990. Using a correlation matrix of input data to avoid the effect of elevation on precipitation, we apply principal components analysis with oblique rotation to regionalize this large, climatologically complex study area. We examine the applicability of the method, 2 techniques for defining region boundaries, the various defined regions themselves, and the effects of transforming input data and changing obliquity of component rotation. We obtain 9 consistent and largely contiguous regions from each of the analyses, including regions for the North American monsoon, the low deserts, the California Mediterranean regime, and for summer precipitation regimes adjoining the Gulf of Mexico. The derived regions and associated boundaries make physical sense in terms of the driving atmospheric processes, and they are robust to transformed input data and changes in rotation procedures. The central border regions are remarkably consistent across analyses, with small changes to peripheral regions. We also identify 4 monsoon sub-regions, and we illustrate the applicability of the regionalization via an analysis of relationships between monsoon precipitation variability and 500 mb pressure heights. Significantly different 500 mb circulation patterns are associated with wet and dry monsoon seasons in each of the subregions, and it appears that shifts in 500 mb circulation relative to the geographic position of each sub-region influence seasonal precipitation variability, directly or indirectly. There are important differences between some sub-regions, but in general wet monsoons are associated with northward meridional bulging of the subtropical anticyclone over the continental monsoon areas, while dry monsoons are associated with zonal stretching of the subtropical anticyclone over adjacent oceans with slightly higher pressure-heights. Overall, the study provides a clear regionalization of the precipitation climatology for the southwest United States and northern Mexico, and shows its utility for studies of climate variability.


Using a principal-agent setting, we introduce honesty that requires pre-commitment. The principal offers a menu of mechanisms to screen ethics. Agents may misrepresent ethics. Dishonest agents may misrepresent the match with the assigned task (good or bad), while honest agents reveal the match honestly if they have pre-committed. Ethics-screening, that allows for match-screening with dishonest agents while leaving a lower rent to honest agents, is optimal if both honesty and a good match are likely. Otherwise the optimal mechanism is the standard second-best or the first-best (where dishonest agents misrepresent the match), if dishonesty is likely or unlikely respectively.


Rice blast, caused by a fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, is one of the most devastating diseases of rice worldwide. Analyzing the valuable genetic resources is important in making progress towards blast resistance. Molecular screening of major rice blast resistance (R) genes was determined in 2,509 accessions of rice germplasm from different geographic regions of Asia and Europe using PCR based markers which showed linkage to twelve major blast R genes, Pik-p, Pi39, Pit, Pik-m, Pi-d(t)2, Pii, Pib, Pik, Pita, Pita/Pita-2, Pi5, and Piz-t. Out of 2,509 accessions, only two accessions had maximum nine blast resistance genes followed by eighteen accessions each with eight R genes. The polygenic combination of three genes was possessed by maximum number of accessions (824), while among others 48 accessions possessed seven genes, 119 accessions had six genes, 267 accessions had five genes, 487 accessions had four genes, 646 accessions had two genes, and 98 accessions had single R gene. The Pik-p gene appeared to be omnipresent and was detected in all germplasm. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that Pita, Pita/Pita-2, Pi-d(t)2, Pib and Pit were the major genes responsible for resistance in the germplasm. The present investigation revealed that a set of 68 elite germplasm accessions would have a competitive edge over the current resistance donors being utilized in the breeding programs. Overall, these results might be useful to identify and incorporate the resistance genes from germplasm into elite cultivars through marker assisted selection in rice breeding.


Mythimna unipuncta is a species with low susceptibility to the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin, and this insect occasionally causes devastating damage to maize. In the study region, M. unipuncta-developed larvae were observed moving from a non-Bt crop to a nearby Bt crop. Although the first response of many caterpillars to xenobiotics, such as the Bt toxin, is to reduce food intake and prolong development, few studies have focused on the causes and consequences of this response in terms of resistance evolution. To clarify the causes of this response, this work compared changes in the feeding behaviour, cytochrome P450 expression and juvenile hormone titre during the last larval instar of M. unipuncta after Bt ingestion. Four P450 enzymes related to the xenobiotic metabolism of the CYP9 and CYP6 families were identified. Developed larvae fed the Bt diet reduced their food intake and CYP9 expression, experienced prolonged development and presented an altered juvenile hormone balance. The CYP9s were not increased in the larvae that consumed Bt, as previously expected, although their highest expression was observed when larval feeding increased. The high recovery capacity of the larvae contributed to their development when they were fed a non-Bt diet. The efficiency of responses that act jointly as a defence mechanism against Bt might favour the development of field resistance to the toxin. Therefore, these responses should be further investigated for resistance management programmes.


A conserved, intact and tightly regulated apoptotic pathway is necessary for embryonic organogenesis, maintenance of tissue homeostasis and tumour suppression in healthy organisms. This pathway is also activated in response to hypoxia, oncogenic overexpression or DNA damage and serves to eliminate cells that have experienced lethal doses of genotoxic stress. Several studies suggest that resistance to apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death, results in the survival of mutant cells which can induce tumourigenesis. Therefore, inhibition of apoptosis is considered a requirement for tumourigenesis and thus an acquired resistance to apoptosis has become a "hallmark" for cancer. The intrinsic, or mitochondrial, pathway of apoptosis is mainly controlled by the interactions between mitochondrial and cytosolic pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins of the Bcl-2 family. Thus, resistance to apoptosis can be acquired by mutations in pro- or anti-apoptotic genes of Bcl-2 family members or in the tumour suppressor gene p53 which is the DNA damage sensor in the intrinsic apoptotic signalling circuitry. Moreover, multiple epigenetic studies have illustrated the role DNA methylation plays in the aberrant apoptosis in many human cancers, and thus in the survival of tumours. Novel therapeutics that target the intrinsic pathway of apoptosis have also been the subject of considerable investigation.


Panayotov, D. (2022). Body weight, morphometric measurements and number of teats of Boer goat does, reared in Bulgaria. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 28 (2), 331–342 The Boer goat is a goat breed new to Bulgaria, where it was introduced a few years ago. This study was conducted to evaluate the body weight (BW) and some morphological characteristics (body and head measurements and numbers of teats) in the first Boer goats, reared in Bulgaria – imported from different country (Austria and Germany) and the generation born in Bulgaria. Data were collected from 90 does kept in Agroustina farm in Plovdiv district, situated in the pre-mountainous territories of the Rhodope mountains. The does were divided into two age groups: 1.5 years and 2.5 years. Data were collected on 12 morphometrical measurements (MM) – Body weight (BW), Withers height (WH), Rump height (RH), Body length (BL), Rump length (RL), Rump width (RW), Chest width (CW), Chest depth (CD), Heart girth (HG), Cannon circumference (CC), Head length (HDL), Head width (HDL), Horns length (HoL). The BW of does was 44.70 – 47.46 kg at 1.5 years old and 57.10 – 64.58 kg at 2.5 years old; the WH was 64.21 – 65.63 cm at 1.5 years and 65.30 – 68.26 cm at 2.5 years old. Our results are close to recommended as optimal in the majority of Boer goat standards in the world. Other important MM, which was in relation with the truly meat type, was BL (79.0 to 82.0 cm at 1.5 years old and 83.4 to 87.1 cm at 2.5 years old) and HG (81.45 to 83.00 cm at 1.5 years old and 87.6 to 91.68 cm at 2.5 years old). With ANOVA was estimated the highest and most significant influences for factor "age" on all body measurements, body weight and head measurements ((p < 0.001 and p < 0.01). The majority of correlation coefficients between BW and body measurements were high and significant (P < 0.01, P < 0.001) in both age groups but all were the highest at 2.5 years does. The highest and strongly positive correlation (P < 0.001) was recorded between BW and heart girth (0.94), chest width (0.87) followed by body length (0.84) and cannon circumference (0.79) for 2.5 years old goats. The studied goats were classified on the basis of the number of teats (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) by visual appraisal. The LS-means for number of teats in does born in Bulgaria and those born in Germany, was respectively 3.37 and 3.35 and the lowest was in does born in Austria (2.75). In the whole population of Boer does reared in Bulgaria we established а slight preponderance of four teats (48.89%) than two teats (46.67%) and equal share of does with three and five teats (2.22%). If we estimate the Supernumerary teats (SNT) of Boer does reared in Bulgaria, the biggest share had these born in Bulgaria (71.43%) followed by those born in Germany (70.00%) and the least – born in Austria (36.96%). In the Boer goat population reared in Bulgaria, the SNT was 53.33%. But if we compute the share of individuals with more than 4 teats (that was accepted in all Boer goat standards), only 2.22% of Boer goats introduced in Bulgaria had more than 4 teats (not acceptable).


This thesis focuses on the economlC concepts of weak and strong sustainable development in relation to mitigating climate change. The overall research question is how to move from weak towards strong sustainable development. The case studied is Norwegian economic policy tools in relation to the petroleum industry. In the mam part of the thesis, vanous aspects of weak and strong sustainable development are analysed: methodology, ontology, ethics and historical background. This part constructs the foundation for the following three papers, which all three contribute to answer the overall research question. Paper 1 uses circulation economics to illustrate the circular process of carbon capture and storage (CCS). The research questions are regarding how circulation economics and strong sustainable development can contribute to the preconditions for CCS. The situation today remains however, generally speaking, a long way away from recognizing strong sustainable development as an alternative to weak sustainable development. A rare exception is the arena of paper 2, the Ethical Guidelines for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global. The income to the Fund originates from the Norwegian petroleum industry, and the Fund is a potentially powerful policy instrument, controlling a huge part of the world's financial assets. The research questions of this paper analyse mitigating climate change in relation to the existing ethical base of the Ethical Guidelines, overlapping consensus. Moreover, an alternative base discourse ethics is suggested, to address mitigating climate change in a more firm manner. In paper 3, a theoretical model is constructed to make communication and cooperation between weak and strong sustainable development more even, than is detected in paper l and 2. The model is called reflexive sustainable development, and is to move the situation of today towards strong sustainable development.


Armed with a set of economic theories and a desire to influence policy and improve lives, behavioral economists have developed a doctrine variously referred to as libertarian, light/soft, or asymmetric paternalism, and a series of policy proposals collectively referred to as the nudge agenda. To its advocates, the nudge agenda allows us to improve people's choices and thereby their well-being on their own terms at minimal cost and without interfering with their liberty or autonomy. To its critics, the nudge agenda represents an ineffective and dangerous intrusion into the sphere of personal decision-making by bureaucrats who may be no better at making decisions than the people whose choices they are trying to improve. This paper reviews what libertarian paternalism and the nudge agenda are, how their foundations differ (or not) from those of neoclassical economics, and what their promises and limitations might be.


ABSTRACT Oxygen isotopic analyses show that the Moeraki septarian concretions formed in marine porewaters at shallow depths. Carbon isotopic analyses indicate that porewaters were influenced by sulfate reduction and methanogenic bacterial action. Carbon becomes progressively lighter toward the concretion margins at a calculated rate of depletion of 1 to 3/Ma for 13CPDB in a two meter concretion. Trace element and isotopic data demonstrate that the initial septaria form contemporaneously with or soon after the rim of the concretion. Septarian vein-fill of yellow spar calcite and rare, very late dolomite are both interpreted as forming in mixed meteoric-marine porewaters, probably related to the regressive sea level cycles during the Tertiary after deposition of the Moeraki formation. The calculated 18OSMOW values for the mixed porewater from which the late calcites and dolomite could have precipitated are -5 and -8, respectively, assuming a maximum crystallization temperature of 40°C. The observed decrease in the Mn/Fe ratio and change in oxygen isotopic values with growth of the yellow spar stage is consistent with a change in the redox conditions and the gradual alteration of the mixed meteoric-marine water chemistry.


Objective: Influences of environment electromagnetic fields (EMF) irradiated by the high-voltage transmission lines(HVTL) on the health of human and animals including the brain, heart, and muscle electrical-informations as well as the memory function of brain in animals are investigated, measured, and inspected. Methods: Epidemiological investigations of hearth cases of 1400 people inhabiting near high-voltage transmission line in Sichuan, Beijing, Hunan, and Jiangxi, etc. and measurements of variation of physiological features of people, who live in domain of high-voltage transmission and around transformer substations relative to those far away from high-voltage transmission systems. The changes of brain, heart, and muscle electrical-informations as well as the memory function of brain are inspected by EGI SYSTEM 200 brain electrical information instrument with 250 channels and multi-channel physiological signal acquisition processing system, respectively. Results: The strengths of electromagnetic field irradiated by the high-voltage transmission lines are depressed with decreasing their height from 7000 V/m and 0.1 G to 300 V/m 0.01 G. The environment electromagnetic fields can result in the memory loss, distracted, high increase in blood fat, significantly increases of chronic diarrhea, anemia, and incidence of hoarseness symptoms, but it can also depress the incidence of leukopenia and thrombocytopenia symptoms. Its influences on the hearth of women are smaller than those of men. Otherwise, the results of measurements of brain, heart, and muscle electrical-informations indicate that EMF of HVTL can change the properties of the images of the brain, heart, and muscle electrical-information of the animals in different degrees. Conclusion: EMF irradiated by HVTL can influence the hearth of human body as well as the brain, heart, and muscle electrical-informations of animals at different degree.


Abstract Objectives: The objective of this survey was to determine the therapeutic management of patients with diabetes in the South African private healthcare environment. Design: The International Diabetes Management Practices Study is an international multicentre and observational study. In this paper, the local South African data from the cross-sectional cohort study are discussed. Setting: South African healthcare providers who were involved in the management of patients with diabetes. Subjects: Subjects included male and female adult patients who were diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus and who consulted their healthcare provider during a specified period of two weeks. Outcome measures: Information on patient demographic and socio-economic profiles, relevant medical histories, data on previous and concomitant antidiabetic treatments, glycaemic status, patient education levels and the impact of diabetes on absenteeism and hospitalisation was collected. Results: A total of 899 patients from 54 healthcare centres in South Africa participated. The mean age of patients in the study was 53.35 ± 14.47 years. The duration of diabetes was longer in type 1 diabetic patients. Of the type 2 diabetic patients, 46.4% were on oral antidiabetic monotherapy and 44.1% on two oral medications. Metformin was the most commonly prescribed oral medication. Of the 242 patients with type 2 diabetes on insulin and oral combination, 175 were on one oral medication combined with insulin therapy. The mean haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) of study participants was 8.2%. Conclusion: These data demonstrate that in accordance with current global findings, the glycaemic control of the majority of a cohort of patients with diabetes managed in the private healthcare sector in South Africa was suboptimal when assessed according to HbA1c levels.


The use of plasmid and bacteriophage vectors for cloning of DNA segments from procaryotes and eucaryotes is described. A similar approach is being developed with DNA viruses like simian virus 40 or adenovirus 2. Such hybrid viruses may permit the amplification of specific genes and the overproduction of the corresponding proteins.


The key objective of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) is to generate new data with the same statistics as the provided training data. However, multiple recent works show that state-of-the-art architectures yet struggle to achieve this goal. In particular, they report an elevated amount of high frequencies in the spectral statistics which makes it straightforward to distinguish real and generated images. Explanations for this phenomenon are controversial: While most works attribute the artifacts to the generator, other works point to the discriminator. We take a sober look at those explanations and provide insights on what makes proposed measures against high-frequency artifacts effective. To achieve this, we first independently assess the architectures of both the generator and discriminator and investigate if they exhibit a frequency bias that makes learning the distribution of high-frequency content particularly problematic. Based on these experiments, we make the following four observations: 1) Different upsampling operations bias the generator towards different spectral properties. 2) Checkerboard artifacts introduced by upsampling cannot explain the spectral discrepancies alone as the generator is able to compensate for these artifacts. 3) The discriminator does not struggle with detecting high frequencies per se but rather struggles with frequencies of low magnitude. 4) The downsampling operations in the discriminator can impair the quality of the training signal it provides. In light of these findings, we analyze proposed measures against high-frequency artifacts in state-of-the-art GAN training but find that none of the existing approaches can fully resolve spectral artifacts yet. Our results suggest that there is great potential in improving the discriminator and that this could be key to match the distribution of the training data more closely.


The three dimensional wall jets can be found in some important industrial applications such as burners, boilers, gas turbine combustion chambers, vertical landing airplanes and fuel injection systems. This engineering field requires specific facilities where experiments and investigations can be undertaken. First the scope of the project contained the design, the building and the testing of the facility, but this scope had to be reduced in order to be able to finish the project in the established time. In Figure 1 is shown a schematic three dimensional view of the elements which will compose the entire facility.The project purpose is to design a facility which permits the measurement and study of the three dimensional wall jets using water and meant to use optical devices to measure the properties of the flow. After a deep review of the literature, I started to find the way to design in the most accurate manner the test section of the facility. However, the first results obtained for the dimensions of the test section were too large and I had to find the way to give a better design to achieve smaller dimensions. There is not a single method to follow to design such a facility like this, which makes it more complicated than it could seem at the first instance. Once the size of the test section was found, I continued with stress analysis
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simulations which were helpful in order to choose the material for the test section and ensure that this part of the facility would be able to handle such a large amount of water.
Afterwards, the flow conditioner was designed. The flow conditioner is composed by a conical expansion, different wire screens, a straightener and a contraction which ensures that the flow at the exit of the flow conditioner has the desired characteristics.
Finally, the last part of the design was the selection of a water pump that could ensure that the water could flow through all the devices and satisfy the requirements set for the flow.


A neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) requires a finite size seed island to become unstable. Usually the local pressure gradient is relatively large at the beta-values needed for these seed islands to destabilize the NTMs. Therefore, the island has a large growth rate at mode onset and grows rapidly to its saturated island width. This width is proportional to as long as it is well above the marginal beta-limit below which the mode is stable. The marginal beta-limit is independent of the seed island trigger mechanism and provides detailed information on the stabilizing terms in the modified Rutherford equation, which are not unambiguously determined theoretically. It is shown that in JET the marginal normalized beta-limit for the 3/2 mode, beta(N,marg), is of the order of 0.5-1 for magnetic fields between 3.3 and 1T, with q(95) approximate to 3.3, and near the H-L transition. Therefore, all H-modes with typical q-profiles (q(95) approximate to 3.3) are metastable in JET to 3/2 NTMs. In addition, the marginal island width is of the order of 2-4 cm and the stabilizing terms are such that they influence the saturated island width when it is smaller than 4-6 cm in these H-mode discharges. It is also shown that detailed analyses of the time evolution of the island width with slow beta ramp-down suggest that the convective form of the stabilization term due to the 'chi(perpendicular to) model' is more appropriate and can explain the island decay between 4 and 6 cm to the marginal island width, while the polarization current model can explain the rapid stabilization when beta < beta(marg). The range of values of the different stabilizing terms are discussed in detail. In particular, it is shown that the mode is stabilized and has a large negative growth rate, when the effect of the stabilizing terms is such as to reduce the saturated width by a factor of 2.


A comparison between the fluorescence spectra of the Nd-doped vanadate crystals (Nd:YVO4, Nd:GdVO4, Nd:LuVO4) for the 4F3/2 → 4I11/2 transition is studied. We numerically analyze the condition of gain-to-loss balance via an uncoated intracavity etalon to achieve the dual-wavelength operation. We further experimentally demonstrate the orthogonally polarized dual-wavelength laser with a single Nd:LuVO4 crystal. The simultaneous dual-wavelength Nd:LuVO4 laser at 1085.7 nm in σ polarization and 1088.5 nm in π polarization is realized. At an incident pump power of 12 W, the average output power obtained at 1085.7 nm and 1088.5 nm is 0.4 W and 1.7 W, respectively.


This book series is devoted to the publication of high-level books that contribute to topic areas related to intelligent engineering and informatics. This includes advanced textbooks, monographs, state-of-the-art research surveys, as well as edited volumes with coherently integrated and well-balanced contributions within the main subject. The main aim is to provide a unique forum to publish books on mathematical models and computing methods for complex engineering problems that require some aspects of intelligence that include learning, adaptability, improving efficiency, and management of uncertain and imprecise information. Intelligent engineering systems try to replicate fundamental abilities of humans and nature in order to achieve sufficient progress in solving complex problems. In an ideal case multi-disciplinary applications of different modern engineering fields can result in synergistic effects. Informatics and computer modeling are the underlying tools that play a major role at any stages of developing intelligent systems. Soft computing, as a collection of techniques exploiting approximation and tolerance for imprecision and uncertainty in traditionally intractable problems, has become very effective and popular especially because of the synergy derived from its components. The integration of constituent technologies provides complementary methods that allow developing flexible computing tools and solving complex engineering problems in intelligent ways.


S ervices computing as a science and engineering discipline has enjoyed steady growth in the past 10 years. With continued innovation in cloud computing, everything is being packaged and delivered as a service, from hardware infrastructure as a service (IaaS), to platform and middleware as a service (PaaS), to software and applications as a service (SaaS). The recent explosion in new communication and collaboration models such as social media and crowdsourcing has further fueled the growth of services computing in multiple dimensions. Collective intelligence becomes an attractive channel for improving service-provisioning quality. Using collective intelligence as a service recommendation tool helped motivate the work of Michael Lyu and his colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong ("QoS-Aware Web Service Recommendation by Collaborative Filtering," IEEE Trans. Services Computing, vol. 4, no. 2, 2011, pp. 140–152). The authors described a framework that enables consumers to select and discover offerings with the best quality of service (QoS), measured by userindependent dimensions such as price, popularity, and availability as well as user-dependent dimensions such as response time and invocation failure rate. The authors started by analyzing system requirements and the feasibility of measuring user-dependent QoS properties for each Web service client. Their proposed recommendation framework uses historical QoS data collected from similar users and similar services. Without resorting to Web service invocations, the framework can predict userdependent QoS properties of desired Web services by performing statistical analysis of both historical Web service QoS data from similar users and historical QoS data captured for similar Web services by combining userand item-based collaborative filtering (CF) methods. To evaluate their approach's prediction accuracy, the authors collected 1.5 million Web service invocations from 150 service users in 24 countries on 100 operational Web services in 22 countries. The authors tested the effectiveness of their approach by dividing the 150 users into training users and active users. They first randomly removed different numbers of QoS entries for active users and then used the CF methods to predict the removed QoS entries, with original values as the ground truth. They showed both the effectiveness and efficiency of their methods by comparing them with existing CF methods. In the broader context of services computing research, this work indicates yet another subject area where harnessing the collective intelligence of multiple users can improve service selection and discovery affordably. As the number of services and their users grows, our ability to learn by capturing collective experiences increases. Socially driven data analysis technologies will continue to enhance the ways that computing and IT services are delivered, used, and managed in the years to come.


Many sophisticated biological processes can be understood using basic concepts from physics. With this approach in mind, I will present two novel biophysical mechanisms derived from optical systems in marine animals. I will begin by describing the physical mechanism used by giant clams to increase diffusive flux of photosynthetic product from symbiotic algae. Over 50 years ago, it was reported that the addition of clam homogenate to algae stimulated photosynthate release, but the molecular effectors and mechanism of this "host release factor" have remained unresolved. Here we show that zwitterionic betaines, long known to exist in millimolar concentrations in coral and clam hosts, generally accelerate photosynthate diffusion. The electric field emanating from these molecules serves to organize water and generate a chemical potential for diffusion of small, polar molecules such as glucose and glycerol. The rest of my dissertation is dedicated to characterizing the sequence, structure, and function of the reflectin protein. The reflectin protein is responsible for giving cephalopods the remarkable ability to manipulate incident light to camouflage with their environment. This unique capability is made possible by iridescent cells composed of over 90% reflectin protein. The highly evolutionarily conserved region of reflectin that is unique to cephalopods has proven intractable to most standard biophysical characterizations including crystallization. Using a combination of sequence analysis and molecular modeling, I will explore the structure of motifs and the regions of sequence that connect them in bulk water and at membrane interfaces. I will then discuss the development of an experimental system designed to probe the interactions between reflectin and lipids. Here we show that reflectin, known to self-assemble into dense, membrane bound platelets, strongly interacts with lipid bilayers and increases the propensity for the membrane to adopt the flat structures observed in cells. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Physics & Astronomy First Advisor Alison Sweeney


The FP7 project SENSIndoor "Nanotechnology-based intelligent multi-SENsor System with selective pre-concentration for Indoor air quality control" was initiated at the beginning of COST action EuNetAir and will come to its successful conclusion in December 2016. This contribution provides a short overview of the main results, but also lessons learned from the project outside of the scientific and technical achievements. These touch on the design and initiation of and collaboration within the project itself, but also on joining forces with other projects, especially for achieving better visibility for the addressed application and, thus, a greater impact of the project results. A brief outlook is also given on opportunities for further applications based on the SENSIndoor technology and beyond.


As internet and smartphones have become more accessible in Thailand, a growth of social networking service (SNS) has been continuously increased. Twitter has ranked as one of the top SNS among other services for several years. With unique feathers of Twitter, it is worthy to investigate how Twitter is used by Thai users. Since politics in Thailand has always been one of the most discussed topic due to its instability, Thai politics was focused in this study. Here, the author aimed to determine a role of Twitter in Thai political communication. Furthermore, factors that influenced the role of Twitter were listed. Four data sets of tweets were collected during the time political incidents occurred. Three analyses were conducted, i.e., format of communication, distribution of user activity and content analysis. Results from the analyses showed that Twitter acted as an information disseminating tool. Most information was informative and it was spread widely among the users. Scale of event, reoccurrence of event and censorship were found to be the factors that affected the role of Twitter. The first two factors influenced size of data set and sentiments in tweets. The last factor affected sources of information and was likely to decrease the size of data set.


For each issue of Journal of Consumer Health on the Internet, the editor selects three to five health care sites containing high quality health care information on a given subject. The topic for each issue is very much dependent on the whim of the editor and the consumer questions that have crossed her desk. Sites used within the column are chosen based on the editor's personal experience and usage of the Internet. Each select site has been subjected to rigorous evaluation criteria. Evaluation criteria include: reputation of the producer/publisher of the site; bias; content and scope of information provided (including types of information provided – general overviews or specific conditions, treatments, etc.); intended audience (professionals, adults, teens, or children); currency of site updates; and viability of links. Dead links and changing URLs are a problematic reality of Internet usage. The selected sites have exhibited stability in providing long-term access to quality information. Columns begin with a brief discussion of the topic. In addition to the selected sites, other resource sites and URLs may be included in the discussion. Following the discussion, the main page of each select site will be reproduced, including site title and URL for bookmark purposes. The second page will summarize producer information, content, search options, audience, and noteworthy items. JCHI Editor's Select Sites are printed on two facing pages so they can be used as guides beside computer terminals. Web site and topic suggestions for the JCHI Editor's Select Sites column are welcome. Send suggestions to: Nancy R. Glassman, D. Samuel Gottesman Library, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461. E-mail email@example.com.


We explore the value of multispectral CO retrievals from NASA/Terra Measurement of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT v5), along with Atmospheric CO2 Observations from Space (ACOSv2.9) CO2 retrievals from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT), for characterizing emissions from anthropogenic combustion. We use these satellite retrievals to analyze observed CO2/CO enhancement ratios (ΔCO2/ΔCO) over megacities. Since CO is coemitted with CO2 in anthropogenic combustion, the observed ΔCO2/ΔCO characterizes the general trend in combustion activity. Our analyses show patterns in ΔCO2/ΔCO that correspond well with the developed/developing status of megacities, and ΔCO2/ΔCO that agree well with available literature and emission inventories to approximately 20%. Comparisons with ΔCO2/ΔCO derived from Total Carbon Column Observing Network measurements show similar agreement, where some of the differences in observed ΔCO2/ΔCO are due to representativeness and limited GOSAT data. Our results imply potential constraints in anthropogenic combustion from GOSAT/MOPITT, particularly in augmenting our carbon monitoring systems.