Background: Recent research has indicated that children suffering from specific learning disorders not only encounter a tragic fact of continuous separation in the educational system and in their classes but also face the peril of losing their self-confidence. Hence, such disorders may have a negative impact on children's mental health. These children often experience loneliness and inferiority complex, communication problems, lack of mental health, postponement of development, psychological problems as well as educational disimprovements. Therefore, such mental-educational problems along with other disorders form a cluster of mishaps in which children may not be able to meet their most superficial needs. Method & Material: The current research has been designed based on the case study model and approximate reasoning approach as an alternative for traditional approaches. The participant of the study is a second-grade pupil who had the primary symptoms of learning disorders in mathematics in Zakariaye Razi Primary School in Mashhad. He was, then, introduced to Baharestan Center of Learning Disorders in Mashhad. The necessary data were collected according to the Wexler Test of Children WISC-R, Bender Gestalt Visual Motor Test, Frastig Perceptive-Visual Discrimination Test, Wapmann Auditory Discrimination Test, Lincoln-Oseretsky Motor Development Tests and Laterality Test. Since the data of the current research were based on the individual pupil, the researcher utilized Rood-Kafman software to analyze them. Findings: The findings of the study indicate that the subject, in the diagnosis test phase, manifested as having operations in line with the pattern of the symbols of math disorder. Despite the fact that he was in the second grade, but the pupil did not meet the objective functions in test operations. Hence, he encountered cognitive obstacles encountered in the classification operations. With respect to the comparison of pre-test - post-test, the study found that he not only needed visual-motor integration and visual fixation skills but also he required spatial-visual skills and strengthening of the calculation skill. Results: In accordance with the mathematical learning of Piaget's (1998) hierarchy system, the pupil under study will reach the sufficient cognitive scale in solving math problems.


Rogoz, K. 2012. Signaling Mechanisms in the Neuronal Networks of Pain and Itch. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 833. 78 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 978-91-554-8517-7. Glutamate is the essential neurotransmitters in pain pathways. The discovery of the vesicular glutamate transporters (VGLUT1-3) has been a fundamental step on the way to describe glutamate-dependent pain pathways. We used the Cre-lox system to construct conditional knockouts with deficient Vglut2 transmission in specific neuronal populations. We generated a Vglut2 line to selectively delete Vglut2 from the peripheral nervous system. These Vglut2 deficient mice showed decreased acute nociceptive responses and were less prone to develop an inflammatory state. They did not develop cold allodynia, or heat hyperalgesia and were less hypersensitive to mechanical stimuli in the PSNL chronic pain model. Further analyses of genes with altered expression after nerve injury, revealed candidates for future studies of chronic pain biomarkers. Interestingly, the Vglut2 mice developed an elevated itch behavior. To investigate more specific neuronal populations, we analyzed mice lacking Vglut2 in the Nav1.8 population, as inflammatory hyperalgesia, cold pain, and noxious mechanosensation have been shown to depend upon Nav1.8 positive sensory neurons. We showed that deleting Vglut2 in Nav1.8 positive neurons abolished thermal hyperalgesia in persistent inflammatory models and responses to noxious mechanical stimuli. We also demonstrated that substance P and VGLUT2-dependent glutamatergic transmission are co-required for the development of formalin-induced inflammatory pain and heat hyperalgesia in persistent inflammatory states. Deletion of Vglut2 in a subpopulation of neurons overlapping with the vanilloid receptor (TRPV1) primary afferents in the dorsal root ganglia resulted in a dramatic increase in itch behavior accompanied by a reduced responsiveness to thermal pain. Substance P signaling and VGLUT2-mediated glutamatergic transmission in TRPV1 neurons was co-required for the development of inflammatory pain states. Analyses of an itch phenotype uncovered the pathway within TRPV1 neurons, with VGLUT2 playing a regulatory role and GRPR neurons, which are to plausible converge the itch signal in the spinal cord. These studies confirmed the essential role of VGLUT2-dependent glutamatergic transmission in acute and persistent pain states and identified the roles of specific subpopulations of primary afferent neurons. Additionally, a novel pain and itch transmission pathway in TRPV1/VGLUT2 positive neurons was identified, which could be part of the gate control of pain.


The shadows from large over-water structures built on nearshore habitats in the Puget Sound can reduce prey abundance and disrupt juvenile Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) migratory behavior with potential consequences on survival rates. As part of an ongoing project to reduce the effects of ferry terminals on juvenile salmon, this study looked at the effectiveness of a fiber optic lighting system at mitigating dock shading impacts on juvenile salmon behavior. The authors conducted intensive visual observations, snorkel surveys, and video filming surveys at the Port Townsend Ferry Terminal (dock) from March through August 2008 and 2009 to test whether migrating salmon reacted to changes in light beneath the terminal and whether evident reactions by the salmon were moderated by the fiber optic lighting system. The authors found that during high tides shoals of juvenile salmon (primarily pink salmon O. gorbuscha) were reluctant to swim under the dock and also under the shaded areas. Overall, less than 15 percent of juvenile salmon shoals penetrated under the terminal, and they typically remained within a few meters from the dock. No salmon swam completely under the dock during their observations in the study period. As a consequence of this dock avoidance behavior, ferry terminals likely delay migration for some juvenile salmon (pink salmon) by several hours per dock encounter, during high tide periods, daylight hours and on sunny days. The authors' results also indicated that light transmitted or installed under some old and new terminals could mitigate dock shading impacts on juvenile salmon. However, their experience testing both fiber optic-transmitted natural and in situ artificial (halogen) light suggests that such light mitigation systems will need to (1) be more powerful, (2) be regulated to light only shaded areas, (3) operate on a natural light spectrum, and (4) distribute light over a wide area. The impacts of large over-water structures on juvenile salmon behavior likely alter juvenile salmon migration behavior in shallow nearshore waters, but with an unknown impact to growth and survival. The use of artificial light is a promising mitigation method because fish appeared to respond at a low light level. However, the authors' results were not sufficient to determine whether artificial light could completely mitigate the effects of the dock and eliminate juvenile salmon avoidance behaviors.


The longstanding debate over the relative merits of adversarial and communitarian theories of legal dispute bargaining has been in somewhat of a holding pattern for several years, but recent research in the field of cognitive neuroscience may break the logjam. Laboratory experiments and case studies in that field have shown how dispositions and capacities for social cooperation inherited from natural selection and evolution predispose humans to configure disputing as a mixture of argument over factual reality, disagreement over the interpretation of normative standards, and a search for impartial resolutions that protect the interests of everyone involved equally. This neurobiological inheritance can be difficult to appreciate, resist, and control, but it is something all dispute bargaining theory, adversarial and communitarian alike, must take into account. Theories that ignore it are limited to telling only part of the dispute bargaining story.


Biomass is a low-cost, readily available, widely distributed, environmentally friendly and renewable carbon source. How to realize the reasonable disposal of biomass is an important question because it is a by-product/bio-waste of agriculture, industry and forestry. Carbon nanomaterials (CNMs), especially carbon nanotubes (CNTs), carbon nanofibers (CNFs), and graphene, conventionally prepared from fossil fuels are the most in-demand carbon materials at present due to their outstanding characteristics and extensive applications. The purpose of this review is to overview the progress in the technology of the preparation of CNMs from biomass in the last few decades. The production of these high value-added CNMs from biomass is intensively investigated, together with the applications of biomass as catalysts and catalyst supports during the preparation of CNMs. Finally, the advances in the application of biomass-based CNMs in terms of ecological remediation, photocatalysis, electrode materials for supercapacitors and batteries, chemical catalysis and composites are briefly summarized to develop the potential market of biomass-based CNMs.


One of the central problems in matroid theory is Rota's conjecture that, for all prime powers q, the class of GF(q)-representable matroids has a finite set of excluded minors. This conjecture has been settled for q s; 4 but remains open otherwise. Further progress towards this conjecture has been hindered by the fact that, for all q > 5, there are 3-connected GF(q)-representable matroids having arbitrarily many inequivalent GF(q)-representations. This fact refutes a 1988 conjecture of Kahn that 3-connectivity would be strong enough to ensure an absolute bound on the number of such inequivalent representations. This paper introduces fork-connectivity, a new type of self-dual 4-connectivity, which we conjecture is strong enough to guarantee the existence of such a bound but weak enough to allow for an analogue of Seymour's Splitter Theorem. We prove that every fork-connected matroid can be reduced to a vertically 4-connected matroid by a sequence of operations that generalize ti. Y and Y ti. exchanges. It follows from this that the analogue of Kahn's Conjecture holds for fork-connected matroids if and only if it holds for vertically 4-connected matroids. The class of fork-connected matroids includes the class of 3-connected forked matroids. By taking direct sums and 2-sums of matroids in the latter class, we get the class M of forked matroids, which is closed under duality and minors. The class M is a natural subclass of the class of matroids of branch-width at most 3 and includes the matroids of path-width at most 3. We give a constructive characterization of the members of M and prove that M has finitely many excluded minors.


How accurately do climate models reproduce today9s climate and that of the past? In their Perspective,
 Smith
 et al.
 compare model errors with observational sampling and analysis errors. The authors find that today9s models are within the observed uncertainty, at least with respect to the 100-year record of observed global sea surface temperature. They conclude that to ensure adequate future climate records, more attention must be given to limiting the growing dependent biases of today9s climate records.


The OSI Directory uses distinguished names as the primary keys to entries in the directory. Distinguished Names are encoded in ASN.1. When a distinguished name is communicated between to users not using a directory protocol (e.g., in a mail message), there is a need to have a user-oriented string representation of distinguished name. This specification defines a string format for representing names, which is designed to give a clean representation of commonly used names, whilst being able to represent any distinguished name. Please send comments to the author or to the discussion group .


Using two standard cycle methodologies (classical and deviation cycle) and a comprehensive sample of 83 countries worldwide, including all developing regions, we show that the Latin American and Caribbean cycle exhibits two distinctive features. First, and most important, its expansion performance is shorter and, for the most part, less intense than that of the rest of the regions considered; in particular, that of East Asia and the Pacific. East Asia's and the Pacific's expansions last five years longer than those of Latin American and the Caribbean, and its output gain is 50 percent greater. Second, the Latin American and Caribbean region tends to exhibit contractions that are not significantly different from those other regions in terms of duration and amplitude. Both these features imply that the complete Latin American and Caribbean cycle has, overall, the shortest duration and smallest amplitude in relation to other regions. The specificities of the Latin American and Caribbean cycle are not confined to the short run. These are also reflected in variables such as productivity and investment, which are linked to long-run growth. East Asia's and the Pacific's cumulative gain in labor productivity during the expansionary phase is twice that of Latin American and the Caribbean. Moreover, the evidence also shows that the effects of the contraction in public investment surpass those of the expansion, leading to a declining trend over the entire cycle. In this sense, we suggest that policy analysis needs to increase its focus on the expansionary phase of the cycle. Improving our knowledge of the differences in the expansionary dynamics of countries and regions can further our understanding of the differences in their rates of growth and levels of development. We also suggest that, while the management of the cycle affects the short-run fluctuations of economic activity and therefore volatility, it is not trend neutral. Hence, the effects of aggregate demand management policies may be more persistent over time, and less transitory, than currently thought.


The resistance of circumcisers can be a substantial obstacle to the eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM). As part of a broader study on FGM conducted in Kenyas Machakos Nyeri and Embu districts in-depth interviews were conducted with 19 circumcisers. 18 were female. FGM is not a full-time activity so circumcisers were also engaged in farming and small-scale businesses; 5 were traditional birth attendants (TBAs). With the exception of the TBAs respondents had no formal clinic- or hospital-based training to prepare them for their practice. Although circumcisers identified excessive bleeding and infection as potential sequelae of FGM they attributed these complications to curses bad omens or broken taboos. The main advantage of FGM cited by respondents was the reduction of sexual desire which is believed to reduce prostitution and promote moral standards. Uncircumcised girls were viewed with contempt. Most circumcisions are performed when girls are 3-11 years of age contradicting the claim that the practice is performed to prepare young women for marriage. Although fees varied widely all respondents viewed FGM as an important income source. They felt their work conferred high status within their communities and an opportunity to promote moral standards. Although many circumcisers are unlikely to stop their practice because of the social prestige it confers and their belief they are destined to perform this function others could be persuaded to take up alternate means of generating an income if provided with start-up capital. Also important would be involvement of circumcisers in the development of alternative coming-of-age rituals.


Recent AI research has emphasised the importance of learning disentangled representations of the explanatory factors behind data. Despite the growing interest in models which can learn such representations, visual inspection remains the standard evaluation metric. While various desiderata have been implied in recent definitions, it is currently unclear what exactly makes one disentangled representation better than another. In this work we propose a framework for the quantitative evaluation of disentangled representations when the ground-truth latent structure is available. Three criteria are explicitly defined and quantified to elucidate the quality of learnt representations and thus compare models on an equal basis. To illustrate the appropriateness of the framework, we employ it to compare quantitatively the representations learned by recent state-of-the-art models.


CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title "They could write like angels and scheme like demons." So begins Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Larson's masterful account of the wild ride that was the 1800 presidential election an election so convulsive and so momentous to the future of American democracy that Thomas Jefferson would later dub it "America's second revolution." This was America's first true presidential campaign, giving birth to our two-party system and indelibly etching the lines of partisanship that have so profoundly shaped American politics ever since. The contest featured two of our most beloved Founding Fathers, once warm friends, facing off as the heads of their two still-forming parties the hot-tempered but sharp-minded John Adams, and the eloquent yet enigmatic Thomas Jefferson flanked by the brilliant tacticians Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, who later settled their own differences in a duel. The country was descending into turmoil, reeling from the terrors of the French Revolution, and on the brink of war with France. Blistering accusations flew as our young nation was torn apart along party lines: Adams and his elitist Federalists would squelch liberty and impose a British-style monarchy; Jefferson and his radically democratizing Republicans would throw the country into chaos and debase the role of religion in American life. The stakes could not have been higher. As the competition heated up, other founders joined the fray James Madison, John Jay, James Monroe, Gouverneur Morris, George Clinton, John Marshall, Horatio Gates, and even George Washington some of them emerging from retirement to respond to the political crisis gripping the nation and threatening its future. Drawing on unprecedented, meticulous research of the day-to-day unfolding drama, from diaries and letters of the principal players as well as accounts in the fast-evolving partisan press, Larson vividly re-creates the mounting tension as one state after another voted and the press had the lead passing back and forth. The outcome remained shrouded in doubt long after the voting ended, and as Inauguration Day approached, Congress met in closed session to resolve the crisis. In its first great electoral challenge, our fragile experiment in constitutional democracy hung in the balance. "A Magnificent Catastrophe" is history writing at its evocative best: the riveting story of the last great contest of the founding period."


We describe a simple method for the affinity purification of specific RNA-binding proteins. DNA sequences corresponding to the protein-binding site of the RNA are subcloned into an in vitro transcription vector between the T7 viral promoter and a poly(A) track. A polyadenylated RNA transcript is bound to poly(U)-Sepharose and subsequently incubated with a cellular extract prepurified on heparin-agarose. Specifically adsorbed proteins are recovered in high yield and purity from the affinity matrix by high salt elution. Using this method we isolated the iron regulatory factor (IRF), a cytoplasmic protein which binds to specific palindromic elements in the 5' and 3' untranslated sequences of ferritin and transferrin receptor mRNA, respectively. Activation and binding of this regulatory factor correlates with increased transferrin receptor mRNA stability and inhibition of ferritin translation. The purified factor from human placenta migrates as a monomer in gel chromatography, but is present in equimolar amounts of two proteins with molecular weights of 95 and 100 kDa when analysed by SDS/PAGE. The two proteins are highly related as judged by the identity of their isoelectric points and their specificity to form RNA-protein complexes.


Micro learning aims to assist users in making good use of smaller chunks of spare time and provides an effective online learning service. However, to provide such personalized online services on the Web, a number of information overload challenges persist. Effectively and precisely mining and extracting valuable information from massive and redundant information is a significant pre-processing procedure for personalizing online services. In this study, we propose a deep sequence labelling model for locating, extracting, and classifying key information for micro learning services. The proposed model is general and combines the advantages of different types of classical neural network. Early evidence shows that it has satisfactory performance compared to conventional information extraction methods such as conditional random field and bi-directional recurrent neural network, for micro learning services.


Grid connected voltage source inverters may be controlled in the stationary reference frame by means of the infinite impulse response (IIR) P+Resonat regulator. This regulator is able to correctly track fixed frequency sinusoidal references, but does not perform well if the frequency of the electric grid voltage is varied. In order to avoid the lack of precision to track variable frequency sinusoidal references, an adaptive IIR filter structure is proposed which offers good tracking properties even if the frequency of the grid voltage varies. This filter adapts its coefficients in real time and is inherently stable no matter the adaptation process, thus overcoming one of the most important drawbacks of the IIR filter structure. Furthermore, this structure is perfectly suited to be programmed in fixed point digital signal processors (DSPs) because of some important numeric properties, i.e., it has a high mapping precision and a low round-off accumulation, and it avoids quantization limit cycle oscillations. The proposed adaptive controller has been tested by means of the TI TMS320F2812 DSP. The obtained experimental results show up that this controller allows the correct tracking of a sinusoidal reference, even if this reference is time variant.


The northern sector of the Sicilian Channel is an area of favourable upwelling winds, which ought to support primary production. However, the values for primary production are low when compared with other Mediterranean areas and very low compared with the most biologically productive regions of the world's oceans: California, the Canary Islands, Humboldt and Benguela. The aim of this study was to identify the main factors that limit phytoplankton biomass in the Sicilian Channel and modulate its monthly changes. We compared satellite-based estimates of chlorophyll a concentration in the Strait of Sicily with those observed in the four Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems mentioned above and in other Mediterranean wind-induced coastal upwelling systems (the Alboran Sea, the Gulf of Lions and the Aegean Sea). Our results show that this low level of chlorophyll is mainly due to the low nutrient level in surface and sub-surface waters, independently of wind-induced upwelling intensity. Further, monthly changes in chlorophyll are mainly driven by the mixing of water column and wind-induced and/or circulation-related upwelling processes. Finally, primary production limitation due to the enhanced stratification processes resulting from the general warming trend of Mediterranean waters is not active over most of the coastal upwelling area off the southern Sicilian coast.


Herein, ZnMgO thin film ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors based on metal-semiconductor-metal structure were fabricated on a-plane sapphire substrates by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. The effect of H2O2 solution treatment on the properties of the ZnMgO thin film and its UV photodetectors was investigated. After immersing the ZnMgO UV photodetector in a H2O2 solution at 100 degrees C for 3 min, the dark current of the device was reduced by more than one order of magnitude under 1 V bias, whereas the responsivity was slightly decreased. More interestingly, the response speed became much quicker and insensitive to the atmosphere after the treatment of the photodetector with H2O2 solution, which can be attributed to the reduction in the oxygen vacancy defects. Our findings may provide a promising approach for improving the performance of photodetectors.


The US Geological Survey Operates two nationwide networks to monitor water quality, the National Hydrologic Bench-Mark Network and the National Stream Quality Accounting Network (NASQAN). The Bench-Mark network is composed of 51 stations in small drainage basins which are as close as possible to their natural state, with no human influence and little likelihood of future development. Stations in the NASQAN program are located to monitor flow from accounting units which collectively encompass the entire land surface of the nation. Data collected at both networks include streamflow, concentrations of major inorganic constituents, nutrients, and trace metals. The goals of the two water quality sampling programs include the determination of mean constituent concentrations and transport rates as well as the analysis of long-term trends in those variables. This report presents a station-by-station statistical summary of data from the two networks for the period 1974 through 1981. 12 refs., 3 tabs.


This Article explores the ways in which a more robust link to direct legal service programs can help LGBT impact litigation organizations answer critiques and create a scheme for prioritizing legal issues that is more pluralistic and democratic. The Article posits that the lack of a clear democratic component in LGBT impact litigators' prioritization schemes contributes to critiques of the work engaged in by those organizations. The Article specifically identifies two kinds of critiques - a "procedural" critique that questions the process by which impact litigators set priorities, and a "substantive" critique that questions the priorities themselves. The Article observes that both kinds of critiques are partially based upon the lack of an evident democratic method of priority-setting. The Article then suggests that in order to address those critiques, LGBT impact organizations can democratize their issue selection process by deliberately and systematically collecting and relying upon data on community need that is gathered by providers of LGBT-specific direct legal services. While scholarship regarding the LGBT rights movement has studied impact litigation groups in some depth, there has been little examination of the important work that direct legal service organizations plays in that movement, and even less examination of the interplay between impact litigators and direct service providers. This Article advances the discussion by demonstrating how increased commitment to developing collaborations between impact litigators and direct service projects answers pervasive movement critiques and strengthens the movement overall.


Accurately and reliably predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of lithium battery is very important for the lithium battery health management system. However, most of the existing methods rely on complex multidimensional input features, which require a large number of sensors, increase the application cost and introduce redundant measurement errors. Therefore, this paper only based on the battery capacity curve itself, proposes a method to construct a prediction model of support vector regression by fusing multiple kernel functions. The linear equation coefficients of multiple kernel function combinations are optimized by the hybrid optimization algorithm. It is found that the hybrid kernel function can effectively overcome the problem that the single kernel function is not capable of mapping the capacity fading trend of lithium battery. Hybrid optimization algorithm can avoid the problems of local optimization and global search ability deficiency. The proposed method is validated by experiments using the battery attenuation datasets from NASA, the University of Maryland and a high-rate lithium battery in the laboratory stage. It can be seen from the experimental results that the prediction accuracy of this method is high. The mean prediction error, mean RMSE and mean MAE are 2%, 0.0198 and 0.0157.


We examine the recent information visualization phenomenon known as tag clouds, which are an interesting combination of data visualization, web design element, and social marker. Using qualitative methods, we find evidence that those who use tag clouds do so primarily because they are perceived as having an inherently social or personal component, in that they suggest what a person or a group of people is doing or is interested in, and to some degree how that changes over time; they are visually dynamic and thus suggest activity; they are a compact alternative to a long list; they signal that a site has tags; and they are perceived as being fun, popular, and/or hip. The primary reasons people object to tag clouds are their visual aesthetics, their questionable usability, their popularity among certain design circles, and what is perceived as a bias towards popular ideas and the downgrading of alternative views.


Protecting essential habitats through the implementation of area closures has been recognized as a useful management tool
 for rebuilding overfished populations and minimizing habitat degradation. School shark ( Galeorhinus galeus ) have suffered significant stock declines in Australia; however, recent stock assessments suggest the population may have
 stabilized and the protection of closed nursery areas has been identified as a key management strategy to rebuilding their
 numbers. Young-of-the-year (YOY) and juvenile G. galeus were acoustically tagged and monitored to determine ontogenetic differences in residency and seasonal use of an important
 protected nursery area (Shark Refuge Area or SRA) in southeastern Tasmania. Both YOY and juvenile G. galeus showed a distinct seasonal pattern of occurrence in the SRA with most departing the area during winter and only a small proportion
 of YOY (33%) and no juveniles returning the following spring, suggesting areas outside the SRA may also be important during
 these early life-history stages. While these behaviors confirm SRAs continue to function as essential habitat during G. galeus early life history, evidence of YOY and juveniles emigrating from these areas within their first 1–2 years and the fact that
 few YOY return suggest that these areas may only afford protection for a more limited amount of time than previously thought.
 Determining the importance of neighbouring coastal waters and maintaining the use of traditional fisheries management tools
 are therefore required to ensure effective conservation of G. galeus during early life history.


The relationship between energy and capital is one of the most important relationships of modern economic growth. Machines need energy to produce all the goods we enjoy; energy without machinery is useless. However, the great majority of the economic models do not take into account the elasticities of substitution (or complementaries) between these two main variables. Actually, energy is absent in many growth models and discussions on diverging economic development paths. We approach this relevant issue from a new perspective: energy and capital relations during 100 years. We use the latest estimations of capital stock (machinery and equipment) and energy consumption for Latin America and compare them with those of Western Europe. The energy capital ratio (how much energy is used per unit of capital) could be a predictor of economic growth, thus providing some answers about the timing and causes of the different modernisation patterns of these regions and showing us some answers about the long run relationship between energy consumption and capital accumulation.


One challenge of monitoring and inspecting timber bridges is the difficulty of measuring the moisture content anywhere other than close to the surface. Damage or design mistakes leading to water penetration might not be detected in time, leading to costly repairs. By placing electrodes between the glulam beams, the moisture content through the bridge deck can be measured. Due to the logarithmic decrease of the resistance in wood as a function of electrode length, the model must be calibrated for measurement depth. Two models were created: one for electrode lengths of 50 mm and one for electrode lengths up to 1355 mm. The model for short electrodes differed by no more than 1 percentage points compared with the oven dry specimens. The model for long electrodes differed up to 2 percentage points for lengths up to 905 mm, and over that it could differ up to 4 percentage points.


The main objective of antitrust interventions is to assure competition in markets to benefit consumers. This paper challenges this common approach by examining the case of a satellite broadcasting network with monopoly power. First, satellite TV is identified as a two-sided market. It is then analyzed in the framework of the canonical model for two-sided markets developed by Rochet & Tirole (2004). The main finding is that the satellite network maximizes his profits by choosing a price formation which maximizes the overall welfare of all market participants. Even if the satellite network uses his monopoly power to introduce a fee to receive satellite TV, it would do so only until the semi-elasticity of the amount of consumers in regard to the per-interaction-price equals the one of the TV stations – exactly the point where welfare is maximized. It is therefore concluded that antitrust cases have to take a more in-depth look at two-sided markets before deciding that competition is best for consumers.


Glutathione transferase-P1-1 (hGSTP1-1), which is associated with acquired drug resistance in some tumour cells, requires two identical subunits for full activity. Naturally occurring inhibitors for GSTP1-1 quaternary structure could be interesting therapeutic agents. The aim of this study was to investigate potential binding sites for hGSTP1-1 interaction with ligands many of which occur naturally. Simulations were performed with commercial docking software and with GST monomer or dimer as template. Docking results using hGSTP1-1 dimer showed one binding site for most of the ligands tested. Lycopene, glutathione, ellagic acid, ethacrynic acid, quercetin, caffeic acid, ferulic acid, porphyrin, curcumin, cinnamic acid, and also α-tocopherol bound at the enzyme dimer subunit-subunit interface. In contrast, investigations using hGSTP1-1 monomer revealed three additional sites for ligand binding. In conclusion, the docking simulations suggest that the enzyme subunit interface may be important for hGSTP1-1 interactions with ligands. These findings may provide valuable insights for further research to identify naturally occurring therapeutic agents.


Assessing the child's inner world of representations about family life and modes of social interaction has enriched through the development of the story stem technique. In our longitudinal study we aim to investigate whether story stem responses are associated with children's symptoms/strengths at kindergarten age and whether story stem responses are predictors of changes in children's symptoms/strengths between 5 and 6. Five-year-old children from a clinically enriched sample completed eight story stems of the MacArthur
Story Stem Battery (N=187). A multi-informant approach (parent, teacher, child) was employed to assess children's symptoms/strengths at 5 and 6. Children were interviewed using a standardized puppet interview. Parents and teachers completed questionnaires. Results showed that a large number of negative parental representations at 5 predicted an increase in conduct problems one year later, whereas a large number of positive parental representations at 5 predicted an increase in prosocial behaviour one year later. In terms of emotional symptoms and hyperactivity/inattention, symptoms at 5 were the only predictor for symptoms one year later. When comparing children with clinically relevant levels of behavioural/emotional symptoms and non-clinical children we found that the association between positive narrative characteristics and positive behavioural competences was prominent in children with clinically relevant behavioural/emotional symptoms. Our findings support the clinical approach that it is important to address the representational level in diagnostic and psychotherapy with young children and suggest that narrative assessments may help to identify resources on which psychotherapeutic approaches can build.


The task of Reading Comprehension with Multiple Choice Questions, requires a human (or machine) to read a given {passage, question} pair and select one of the n given options. The current state of the art model for this task first computes a question-aware representation for the passage and then selects the option which has the maximum similarity with this representation. However, when humans perform this task they do not just focus on option selection but use a combination of elimination and selection. Specifically, a human would first try to eliminate the most irrelevant option and then read the passage again in the light of this new information (and perhaps ignore portions corresponding to the eliminated option). This process could be repeated multiple times till the reader is finally ready to select the correct option. We propose ElimiNet, a neural network-based model which tries to mimic this process. Specifically, it has gates which decide whether an option can be eliminated given the {passage, question} pair and if so it tries to make the passage representation orthogonal to this eliminated option (akin to ignoring portions of the passage corresponding to the eliminated option). The model makes multiple rounds of partial elimination to refine the passage representation and finally uses a selection module to pick the best option. We evaluate our model on the recently released large scale RACE dataset and show that it outperforms the current state of the art model on 7 out of the 13 question types in this dataset. Further, we show that taking an ensemble of our elimination-selection based method with a selection based method gives us an improvement of 3.1% over the best-reported performance on this dataset.


The study investigates alternative governance forms in the hotel industry. We analyze the choice among independently owned firms, voluntary chains, franchising, and vertically integrated chains. Based on agency theory, we argue that the need for control over service quality, financial risk, and the market environment affect the choice of governance form. Prior agency research emphasizes alternative governance structures employed by principals given local market conditions, agent incentives, and risk preferences. We augment the established principal-agent perspective with a discussion of agent motivations to join hotel alliances. Data from 650 hotels indicate that the number of service offerings, distance to headquarters, population, population density, and hotel scale influence governance.


Since the Supreme Court's invalidation of anti-gay marriage laws, scholars and advocates have been debating the LGBT movement's near-term strategies and priorities. This Article joins that conversation by developing the framework for a national campaign to repeal or invalidate anti-gay curriculum laws –– statutes that prohibit or restrict the discussion of homosexuality in public schools. Anti-gay curriculum laws expose LGBT students to stigmatization and bullying, and they are far more prevalent than scholars and advocates have recognized. In the existing literature, these provisions are called "no promo homo" laws and are said to exist in only a handful of states. Based on a comprehensive survey of federal and state law, this Article shows that anti-gay provisions exist in the curriculum laws of twenty states and in a federal law that governs the annual distribution of $75 million for abstinence-education programs. Grounded in moral disapproval and anti-gay animus, these laws plainly violate the Constitution's equal protection guarantees under the Supreme Court's landmark rulings in Romer v. Evans, Lawrence v. Texas, Windsor v. United States, and Obergefell v. Hodges. Yet federal and state officials will retain the legal authority to enforce these laws unless and until courts enjoin them from doing so. Challenging anti-gay curriculum laws is a necessary and important step toward establishing the legal equality of LGBT people and creating a safe environment for LGBT students in the nation's public schools.


Background and Objective: Due to the increasing popularity that mindfulness has achieved in the health-related sciences in recent years, and the scientific study of mindfulness and mindfulness techniques for therapy, has been rising sharply, using valid and reliable instruments for measuring these constructs is essential. Thus, the objective of this study was to survey the validity and reliability of the persian version of short from of Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory. Materials and Methods: In this descriptive psychometric study, the number of 400 students from Yasuj University were selected through a multi- stage cluster sampling method and they responded to the short form of Freiburg mindfulness inventory, Schutte emotion regulation subscale, and Tangney self-control scale. The reliability of the short form of Freiburg mindfulness inventory was calculated by Retest reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficient and Ordinal Theta. For assessment of the concurrent validity, correlation coefficients of mindfulness inventory with emotional regulation subscale and self-control scale were used. In order to assess the evidence regarding the validity, the confirmatory factor analysis was used. The gathered data were analyzed by SPSS and LIZREL software's. Results: Retest reliability of short form of Freiburg mindfulness inventory based on two tests run and internal consistency of the questionnaire based on Cronbach's alpha coefficients and Order Theta in sample group was confirmed. Concurrent validity of this inventory with the related scales was confirmed. Also, confirmatory factor analysis results indicate that the inventory has an acceptable fit to the data. Conclusion: According to the results of current research, the short form of Freiburg mindfulness inventory is a reliable instrument with valid psychometric properties to measure the rate of mindfulness of individuals in Iranian society. Key words: Mindfulness, Reliability, Validity, Confirmatory factor analysis Funding: No grant has supported the present study. Conflict of interest: None declared. Ethical approval: The Ethics Committee of Yasuj University approved the study. How to cite this article: Ghasemi Jobaneh R, Arab Zadeh M, Jalili Nikoo S, Mohammad Alipoor Z, Mohsenzadeh F. Survey the Validity and Reliability of the Persian Version of Short Form of Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory. J RafsanjanUniv Med Sci 2014 14(2): 137-50. [Farsi]


Background Psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics have extended our understanding of the abnormal communication seen in psychosis, as well as that of people with autism and Asperger's syndrome. Psycholinguistics has the potential to increase the explanatory power of cognitive and neuropsychological approaches to psychosis and new methods of assessment and therapy are now being developed, based on linguistic theory. Method MEDLINE literature search was used. Results Of 205 relevant articles identified, 65 were selected for review. Conclusions Greater familiarity with linguistic theory could improve psychiatrists' assessment skills and their understanding of the relevance of human communication to the new cognitive models of psychosis.


Air samples were collected at an urban site and a rural (BERQESH) site during February (2017) until March (2017) to determine concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Air. The extraction process was done by using Soxhlet apparatus and methylene chloride as solvent. The sample clean up step is performed by solid phase extraction. The analysis of PAHs samples are carried out by GC/MS. Low molecular weight PAHs dominated in all samples such as acenaphthylene, fluorene and anthracene, while high molecular weight PAHs was not detected. The total mean PAHs concentration in summer in Rural Area (92ng/m 3 ) is higher than that in winter (46 ng/m 3 ). In addition, PAHs total mean concentration in the day time is higher than that in the night time. The total mean PAHs concentration in summer in Urban Area (124 ng/m 3 ) is higher than that in winter (75 ng/m 3 ). Keywords: pollution; (PAHs); environment; fossil fuels; Jordan; human; season


Highly efficient room-temperature operation of an Er:YAG laser end-pumped by a high-power cladding-pumped tunable Er,Yb fiber laser operating at 1532 nm is reported. Using a simple four-mirror folded-resonator configuration, we obtained > 60W of continuous-wave output at 1645nm for 82W of incident pump power. The corresponding slope efficiency was 80.7%.


We study 4-dimensional SQCD with gauge group SU(Nc) and Nf flavors of chiral supermultiplets on the lattice. We perform extensive calculations of matrix elements and renormalization factors of composite operators in Perturbation Theory. In particular, we compute the renormalization factors of quark and squark bilinears, as well as their mixing at the quantum level with gluino and gluon bilinear operators. From these results we construct correctly renormalized composite operators, which are free of mixing effects and may be employed in non-perturbative studies of Supersymmetry. All our calculations have been performed with massive matter fields, in order to regulate the infrared singularities which are inherent in renormalizing squark bilinears. Furthermore, the quark and squark propagators are computed in momentum space with nonzero masses.
This work is a feasibility study for lattice computations relevant to a number of observables, such as spectra and distribution functions of hadrons, but in the context of supersymmetric QCD, as a forerunner to lattice investigations of SUSY extensions of the Standard Model.


Academic departments play an important role in the success of institutions of higher education and success of departments directly depends on effectiveness of their head. This study is an attempt to determine heads of academic departments' leadership styles and its relationship with leadership effectiveness at Malaysian Research Universities (RUs). Using Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5x (MLQ), the study employed 298 lecturers of three Malaysian RUs. Results indicated that lecturers perceived the heads of departments exhibited combination of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles. The result of regression analysis demonstrated that contingent reward, idealized influence (attribute), inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, laissez-faire, intellectual stimulation, and management-by-exception active are significant predictors of leadership effectiveness. These factors accounted for 82% of the variance in leadership effectiveness. In addition, the results suggest that contingent reward has important effects on leadership effectiveness. The implications of the research findings are discussed.


In recent years, intellectual property law has paid increasing attention to issues of private international law. The American Law Institute promulgated Intellectual Property: Principles Governing Jurisdiction, Choice of Law, and Judgments in Transnational Dispute in 2008. In Europe, the Max Planck Institutes' Conflict of Laws in Intellectual Property Conflicts of Law effort is expected in 2010. However, neither of these projects has dealt explicitly with choice of law on contributory liability (or any other form of secondary liability that makes one party liable for the harm caused by another). Yet, actions premised on secondary liability are rapidly becoming the favored route for efficient enforcement on a worldwide basis. Examples include cases that attempt to impose liability on manufacturers of copying technologies for infringements caused by those who use their equipment; on purveyors of peer-to-peer file sharing software for the activities of those who download material without rightholders' permissions; on internet service providers for subscribers's infringing postings; and on other intermediaries, such as auction sites. In principle, secondary liability actions can occur in all areas of intellectual property law. However, for purposes of this paper, we concentrate on trademark cases, such as the litigation involving the responsibility of the online auction house, e-Bay, for the sale of counterfeit goods on its website. The problems posed in that area are particularly complex. After offering a stylized fact pattern to illustrate the problems, we consider the different ways in which courts might deal with questions arising in cases where secondary liability claims are asserted. We suggest that the traditional approach to choice of law in trademark cases generates unacceptable uncertainties for intermediaries and that a genuine engagement with conflicts scholarship would help mediate among the diverse interests and policy concerns. In the end, however, we conclude that private international law solutions may not resolve all the complications of multinational secondary liability cases. Thus, we are moved to propose, as an alternative solution, an autonomous (substantive) principle applicable in these cases. We conclude with some thoughts about how the different approaches engage with existing models for the resolution of trans-border intellectual property disputes and with the international intellectual property regime more generally.


Introduction: Salivary biomarkers are suggested to provide a reliable, noninvasive and objective measurement of chronic psychosocial stress and helps in assessment of pivotal role of stress in causation or precipitation of multitude of health problems. Objectives: To evaluate the usefulness of salivary alpha amylase activity as an objective indicator of chronic stress and to find out any correlation between stress- related mucosal complaints and its levels. Study Design: Study was conducted among 50 subjects suffering from chronic stress related problems and 50 non-stressed individuals who were screened with a psychometric questionnaire. Brief case history and oral examination was carried out and about one ml of unstimulated saliva was collected. Salivary alpha amylase levels estimated were compared between study and control group and between subjects with and without oral mucosal changes using non parametric Mann Whitney U test. Results: There was statistically significant higher salivary alpha amylase levels in study group (p =.002) and salivary alpha amylase between the oral mucosal complaints group and without oral mucosal complaints group within the total study population were found to be statistically significant (p=0.045). Conclusions: Salivary amylase activity increases in patients with chronic psychosocial stress and may be used as a biomarker of chronic stress, but it may not be an indicator to suggest the development of stress related oral mucosal changes. Key words:Salivary biomarker, salivary alpha amylase, psychosocial stress, sympathetic nervous system, oral mucosal changes.


The purpose of this study was to clarify the curricular structure, techniques, and materials used in predoctoral prosthodontic programs of Japanese dental schools. A survey of dental schools was conducted by the education committee of the Japan Prosthodontic Society in 2007. The questionnaire was mailed to the chairperson of the prosthodontic departments of 29 dental schools in Japan. Of these, 28 schools returned the completed survey, resulting in a response rate of 96.6%. Results from this survey show that a large majority of schools are using a similar curricular structure in pre-clinical clerkship programs; for instance, the mean number of laboratory hours is approximately twice as long as that of lecture hours. Total hours spent on fixed prosthodontics was the longest, followed by removable partial denture prosthodontics, and then complete denture prosthodontics. The clinical clerkship programs varied considerably from school to school, and in some schools, the opportunities for dental students are very limited. Conclusion: Predoctoral clinical prosthodontic programs vary from school to school, yet a large percentage of schools agree on many topics.


Hitherto, sustainably profitable low-cost operations can only be observed among shortto medium-haul airlines. Even though various carriers have launched attempts to extend the low-cost carrier (LCC) business model to longhaul flights (LHF, see the subsequent chapter for a definition), most of them failed before flight operations were initiated or went bankrupt after three to five years if flight operations started. However, the frequency with which new low-cost LHF airlines are founded is still considerable (see Tab. 1). Entrepreneurs as well as established airlines seeking new growth paths are among those in the industry that follow what seems to be a trial-and-error process in launching and operating LCC LHF airlines. This is not particularly surprising, since little systematic guidance on preconditions for and design options of a LCC LHF business model have been advanced. Rather, the scholarly literature has given only scant attention to the challenge of adapting the low-cost model to LHF, and the question of whether the low-cost long-haul model is economically viable has not been unanimously answered yet.


Nowadays, physics simulation is a relevant topic in several domains, from scientific areas like medicine to entertainment purposes such as movie's effects, computer animation and games. To make easier the production of faster simulations, developers are using physics engines because they provide a variety of features like rigid and deformable body simulation, fluids dynamics and collision detection. Computer game and film industries use increasingly more physics engines in order to introduce realism in their products. In these areas, speed is more important than accuracy and efforts have been made to achieve high performance simulations. Besides faster physical simulation algorithms, GPUs' performance improvement in the past few years have lead developers to transfers heavy calculation work to these devices instead of doing it in the Central Processing Unit (CPU). Some engines already provide GPU implementations of several key features, particularly on rigid body collision detection. In this work we want to accelerate a feature present in most of the current physics engines: cloth simulation. Since collision detection is one of the major bottlenecks in this kind of simulation, we will focus specifically in improving this phase. To achieve a considerably speed-up we plan to exploit the massive parallelism of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) by designing an efficient algorithm using the Open Computing Language (OpenCL) framework. Finally, a study will be made to compare the performance of a sequential CPU approach against the parallel GPU proposed solution.


We show that political booms, measured by the rise in governments' popularity, predict financial crises above and beyond other better-known early warning indicators, such as credit booms. This predictive power, however, only holds in emerging economies. We show that governments in emerging economies are more concerned about their reputation and tend to ride the short-term popularity benefits of weak credit booms rather than implementing politically costly corrective policies that would help prevent potential crises. We provide evidence of the relevance of this reputation mechanism. JEL-Code: D820, E440, E510, E580, G010, H120, N100, N200.


An instrument is described that simultaneously records images and spectra of materials in the infrared fingerprint region using a long-wavelength infrared focal-plane array detector, a step-scan Michelson interferometer, and an infrared microscope. With the combination of step-scan Fourier transform (FT) Michelson interferometry and arsenic-doped silicon (Si: As) focal-plane array image detection, an infrared spectroscopic imaging system has been constructed that maintains both an instrumental multiplex and multichannel advantage and operates from approximately 4000 to 400 cm−1. With this method of mid-infrared spectroscopic imaging, the fidelity of the generated spectral images recorded through the microscope is solely determined by the number of pixels on the focal-plane array detector, and only a few seconds of data acquisition time are required for spectral image acquisition. This seamless combination of spectroscopy for molecular analysis and the power of visualization represents the future of infrared microscopy. Step-scan imaging principles, the operation and characteristics of long-wavelength array detectors, and instrument design details are outlined, and infrared chemical imaging results are presented. The results are discussed with respect to their implications for the chemical analysis of a variety of solid-state materials.


The application of acoustics to study the seabed have for decades provided industry and science with valuable information, and is still excels in terms of spatial coverage and detail. An acoustic response from the seabed not only contains information about the range, through the two way travel time, but also the acoustic reflectivity of the substrate from the strength of the backscatter response. As the signal strength differs between substrate types, this information can be used to detect and classify different seabed types. However, there are ambiguities in the acoustic signatures and the reliance on ground truth samples, for succeeding in this identification, is a limiting factor. In this paper we present a way to mitigate this problem using Hidden Markov Random Fields (HMRF) to perform unsupervised segmentation of the backscatter response for the purpose of determining different seabed types. The outcome of this analysis is directly used to plan and conduct an autonomous near-seabed camera survey to verify the classification results, whilst complementing the acoustical data-set. The method is tested in a full-scale experiment and performed in-situ onboard a Kongsberg Hugin 1000 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).


The Spanish missions founded by Padre Eusebio Kino in Sonora, Mexico, during the 1690s and early 1700s are historical as well as architectural marvels. Once self-supporting villages with central churches, the missions stand today as monuments to perseverance in the face of a hostile New World. These "Kino Missions" were surveyed in 1935 by the National Park Service to prepare for the restoration of the mission at Tumacacori, Arizona, then a National Historic Monument. That report, which was never published, provided insights into the missions' history and architecture that remain of lasting relevance. Perhaps more important, it documented these structures in photographs and drawings the latter including floor plans and sketches of architectural detail that today are of historic as well as aesthetic interest. This volume reproduces that 1935 report in its entirety, focusing on sixteen missions and including two maps, 52 drawings, and 76 photographs. With a new introduction and appendixes that place the original study in context, The Missions of Northern Sonora is an invaluable reference for scholars and mission visitors alike.


In this Article, Professor Silver examines Section 108 of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which limits challenges to employment practices taken pursuant to employment discrimination consent decrees. The Article traces the development of the impermissible collateral attack doctrine, that doctrine's demise in Martin v. Wilks, and Congress' response to Martin as embodied in Section 108. Professor Silver also suggests ways in which Section 108 should be administered to comply with the Due Process Clause and argues for specific additional federal legislation to protect non-litigants or potential third-party challengers as well as to foster the utility and finality of legitimate consent decrees. In addition to arguing for procedural reforms, Professor Silver urges the Supreme Court to acknowledge the relevance of race and to release benign racial distinctions from strict scrutiny analysis.


Abstract The thrust of the argument presented in this paper is that phenomenological ontology survives the criticism of "correlationism" as advanced by speculative realism, a movement that has evolved in continental philosophy over the past decade. Correlationism is the position, allegedly occupied by phenomenology, that presupposes the ontological primacy of the human subject. Phenomenology survives this criticism not because the criticism misses its mark, but because phenomenology occupies a position that is broader than that of correlationism. With its critique of correlationism, speculative realism rightly identifies a battle that no longer needs to be fought: the battle against 19th century brands of mechanical realism. Free from the impatient and defensive posturing against the mechanization of the human, phenomenology is also free to explore the world beyond its emphasis on human experience. Doing so requires a return to Husserl's discussion of hylé and the "twofold bed" of phenomenology. Phenomenology may emphasize hylé – that is, material; or it may emphasize nous – the world as it appears to or is transformed by consciousness. By returning to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, a case is made for hyletic phenomenology. Hyletic phenomenology allows for ontological reversibility and recognizes the "unhuman" elements in things. It is hyletic phenomenology that grounds phenomenological ontology after the critique of correlationism has been assessed.


MapReduce workloads have evolved to include increasing amounts of time-sensitive, interactive data analysis; we refer to such workloads as MapReduce with Interactive Analysis (MIA). Such workloads run on large clusters, whose size and cost make energy efficiency a critical concern. Prior works on MapReduce energy efficiency have not yet considered this workload class. Increasing hardware utilization helps improve efficiency, but is challenging to achieve for MIA workloads. These concerns lead us to develop BEEMR (Berkeley Energy Efficient MapReduce), an energy efficient MapReduce workload manager motivated by empirical analysis of real-life MIA traces at Facebook. The key insight is that although MIA clusters host huge data volumes, the interactive jobs operate on a small fraction of the data, and thus can be served by a small pool of dedicated machines; the less time-sensitive jobs can run on the rest of the cluster in a batch fashion. BEEMR achieves 40-50% energy savings under tight design constraints, and represents a first step towards improving energy efficiency for an increasingly important class of datacenter workloads.


This study investigates spatial patterns of sediment-associated zinc (Zn) storage in floodplain deposits and the potential reintroduction of these metal-contaminated sediments to the active channel by bank erosion. We estimate patterns of Zn mass storage by combining longitudinal trends in Zn concentrations with measurements of sediment mass storage in overbank and point-bar deposits. Overbank deposits are the largest contaminant sink, storing five times more Zn than the point-bar deposits. While Zn concentrations decrease downstream because of dilution effects, the total mass of Zn stored in floodplains is greatest in both the upstream reaches and in the wider lower valleys where low channel gradients promote rapid sedimentation. Zn storage is low in middle reaches where steep, narrow valleys with high stream power favor sediment transport over deposition. Overall, more than half of the Zn released by mining remains stored in floodplain deposits within the watershed. The remobilization of Zn from storage...


Growing concerns about food safety and environmental protection have created a need for new and safe plant disease control strategies. The aim of this study was to find an alternative to synthetic fungicides currently used in the control of the devastating fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea Pers., the causal agent of grey mould disease of strawberry ( Fragariaananassa Duch). The antifungal activity of the essential oils of Origanumvulgare L., Monardadidyma L. and of a commercial formulation of thyme oil (Gloves Off®) was investigated against B. cinerea and compared with controls. Contact phase effects of different concentrations of the essential oils and commercial formulation were found to inhibit the growth of B. cinerea in a dose dependent manner. Complete growth inhibition of the pathogen was recorded at 200 µg/ml of 'Gloves Off®'. The mycelial growth of the pathogen was significantly reduced at the highest concentration of the essential oils of O. vulgare and M. didyma tested, which was 51.2 µg/ml. Spore germination and germ tube elongation were also inhibited by the essential oils and Gloves Off®. Light microscopic observations revealed that the essential oils caused morphological degenerations, such as cytoplasmic coagulation, hyphal shrivelling and protoplast leakage of the fungal hyphae. The essential oils of O. vulgare L. and M. didyma L. are promising, antifungal agents against B. cinerea similar to the commercial formulation 'Gloves Off®'.


The Latin American region has an ecosystem where the nature of publication is conceived as the act of making public, of sharing and not as the publishing industry. International, national and institutional contexts have led to a redefinition of a project—Redalyc.org—that begun in 2003 and that has already fulfilled its original mission: give visibility to knowledge generated in Latin America and promote quality of scientific journals. Nevertheless, it is mandatory to be transformed from a Latin American platform based in Mexico into a community-based regional infrastructure that continues assessing journals quality and providing access to full-text in benefit of journals visibility and free access to knowledge. A framework that generates technology in favor of the empowerment and professionalization of journal editors, making the editorial task in open access sustainable and that allows Redalyc to sustain itself collectively. This work describes the first Redalyc's model, presents the problematic in course and the new business model Redalyc is designing and adopting to operate on.


Epidemics of influenza A vary greatly in size and age distribution of cases, and this variation i attributed to varying levels of pre-existing immunity. Recent studies have shown that antibody mediated immune responses are more cross-reactive than previously believed, and shape patterns of humoral immunity to influenza A viruses over long periods. Here we quantify antibody responses to the hemagglutinin subunit 1 (HA1) across a range of subtypes using protein microarray analysis of cross-sectional serological surveys carried out in the Netherlanc before and after the A/2009 (H1N1) pandemic. We find significant associations of responses, both within and between subtypes. Interestingly, substantial overall reactivity is observed to HA1 of avian H7N7 and H9N2 viruses. Seroprevalence of H7N7 correlates with antibody titer to A/1968 (H3N2), and is highest in persons born between 1954 and 1969. Seroprevalence of H9N2 is high across all ages, and correlates strongly with A/1957 (H2N2). This correlation is most pronounced in A/2009 (H1N1) infected persons born after 1968 who have never encountered A/1957 (H2N2)-like viruses. We conclude that heterosubtypic antibody crossreactivity, both between human subtypes and between human and nonhuman subtypes, is common in the human population.


A defining element of catastrophes is the magnitude of their harmful consequences. To help society prevent or mitigate damage from catastrophes, immense effort and technological sophistication are often employed to assess and communicate the size and scope of potential or actual losses. This effort assumes that people can understand the resulting numbers and act on them appropriately.However, recent behavioral research casts doubt on this fundamental assumption. Many people do not understand large numbers. Indeed, large numbers have been found to lack meaning and to be underweighted in decisions unless they convey affect (feeling). As a result, there is a paradox that rational models of decision making fail to represent. On the one hand, we respond strongly to aid a single individual in need. On the other hand, we often fail to prevent mass tragedies such as genocide or take appropriate measures to reduce potential losses from natural disasters. This might seem irrational but I think this occurs, in part, because as numbers get larger and larger, we become insensitive; numbers fail to trigger the emotion or feeling necessary to motivate action.I shall address this problem of insensitivity to mass tragedy by identifying certain circumstances in which it compromises the rationality of our actions and by pointing briefly to strategies that might lessen or overcome this problem.


In this paper, a microgrid resonance propagation model is investigated. To actively mitigate the resonance using DG units, an enhanced DG unit control scheme that uses the concept of virtual impedance is proposed. It can be seen that a conventional voltage-controlled dg unit with an LC filter has a short-circuit feature at the chosen harmonic frequencies, whereas a current-controlled dg unit presents an open-circuit characteristic. because of completely different behaviors at harmonic frequencies, specific harmonic mitigation methods shall be developed for currentcontrolled and voltage-controlled dg units, respectively. The application of underground cables and shunt capacitor banks may introduce power distribution system resonances. This paper additionally focuses on developing a voltage-controlled dg unitbased active harmonic damping technique for gridconnected and islanding microgrid systems. an improved virtual impedance control method with a virtual damping resistor and a nonlinear virtual capacitor is proposed. The nonlinear virtual capacitor is used to compensate the harmonic dip on the grid-side inductor of a dg unit LCL filter. Here we are using fuzzy controller compared to other controller due to its accurate performance. The virtual resistance is principally answerable for microgrid resonance damping. The effectiveness of the proposed damping method is examined using each a single dg unit and multiple parallel dg units.


For a long time simplified models have been used to simulate the behaviour of large water distribution networks. Often, simplification has been carried out by removing small diameter pipes and substituting branched parts by outlets directly applied to head nodes. Some authors have proposed a more reliable technique based on the aggregation of groups of connected components to obtain an equivalent pipe with a similar transport capacity to those of the real substituted pipes, taking care into accumulate the demands from the removed nodes into the preserved ones. This technique is more cumbersome but it conserves the conductance of the real network. Nevertheless, some difficulties could arise to obtain simplified elements from highly interconnected groups of pipes. Recently, due to the rapid increase in the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), the storage and management of all the real components of a water distribution system and its properties on large databases has become available. So the simplest way to build a hydraulic model from the cartographic data stored in database is constructing it as a detailed model where all the components are present. As a consequence, the size of the hydraulic models has increased enormously and more and more capacity is required for simulators. This procedure is practical for programmers in order to connect GIS with hydraulic models but no so interesting for engineers due to: The enormous extra-information to be analysed by the user in order to full understand the global behaviour of the system. The regular hypothesis applied to load the nodes of a hydraulic model, and in particular to associate a demand pattern for them, it fails as the number of properties supplied from these nodes decrease, due to the stocasticity of demands. As a consequence the results obtained from a detailed model on nodes of low relevance would be unreliable. The calibration of a detailed model is more complex due to the great number of parameters to be adjusted and the low reliability of measurements taken on small pipes. Additionally, finding the cause of discrepancies between measured and computed values when all the components are present is much more difficult. The enormous size of the model could result in long computing time, and will increase significantly the time consumption for reading and verify the input data and particularly to process the results. In this paper some computer aid techniques will be introduced to automate the simplification process in order to obtain a reduced model from a detailed one, using the facilities offered by the Geographical Information Systems.


We present an automatic video completion algorithm that synthesizes missing regions in videos in a temporally coherent fashion. Our algorithm can handle dynamic scenes captured using a moving camera. State-of-the-art approaches have difficulties handling such videos because viewpoint changes cause image-space motion vectors in the missing and known regions to be inconsistent. We address this problem by jointly estimating optical flow and color in the missing regions. Using pixel-wise forward/backward flow fields enables us to synthesize temporally coherent colors. We formulate the problem as a non-parametric patch-based optimization. We demonstrate our technique on numerous challenging videos.


This work presents a driving control for the trajectory tracking of four mecanum wheeled mobile robot (FMWMR). The control consists of Backstepping-Type 1 Fuzzy Logic-Particle swarm optimization i.e.,(BSC-T1FLC-PSO). The kinematic and dynamic models have been derived. Backstepping controller (BSC) is used for finding controlled torques that generated from robot motors while Type-1 fuzzy logic control (T1FLC) as well as particle swarm optimization (PSO) used for finding the appropriate values of gain parameters of BSC. Square trajectory has been selected to test the performance of the control system of FMWMR. MATLAB/ Simulink is used to simulate the results. It has been concluded from the results that obtained from this control system there is a good matching between the simulated and the desired trajectories.


Research Problem: The purpose of this research synthesis is to identify new opportunities for smell-enabled games based upon current olfactory research, and to present early game concepts that have emerged from our empirical assessments. Literature Review: We briefly summarize key projects in the history of scent technologies for film and media. Human-Computer Interaction researchers have also explored a number of uses for scent delivery in interactive digital media. Recent developments in olfactory psychology and neuroscience research suggest that a fruitful avenue for exploration is to develop learning games that expand olfactory capacity. Methodology: We have conducted two studies of computer-based perceptual and cognitive olfactory tasks. Mixture perception experiment: We designed a perceptual experiment where the task was to correctly estimate the intensity of odor components in a blend of coffee and tea. Blended odors were presented to 10 healthy adults by means of a computer-controlled olfactometer. Following each stimulation, the participant used a computer interface to estimate the intensity of components of the blend. Event-based memory experiment: We have developed a digital olfactory version of the children's game "Memory." The game interface consists of 32 white squares that are presented in a grid pattern on the screen and that, when participants click on them, triggers the release of one of eight possible smells from the olfactometer. Fifteen healthy adult participants were tested in 10 laboratory sessions distributed over three weeks. Results and Conclusions: Our empirical results suggest that smell training through learning games holds promise as a means of improving cognitive function. The results of our event-based memory experiment suggest that both olfactory and visual memory capacities might have benefitted from olfactory game training. The results of our mixture perception experiment indicate that binary odor mixtures might provide a suitable starting point for perceptual training, and we suggest that a smell-enabled game might include adaptive difficulty by progressively introducing more complex mixtures. We have used event-based memory and mixture perception as "olfactory targets" for game mechanic development, and present early design concepts for "Smelly Genes" and "Scenter." Finally, we discuss future directions and challenges for this new, interdisciplinary research topic.


IMPORTANCE
If occupational therapy is to play an important role in improving population health, it is important to understand how academic programs are preparing new occupational therapists for this role.

OBJECTIVE
To determine current and desired coverage of population health concepts in entry-level occupational therapy programs.

DESIGN
Online survey administered to occupational therapy program directors.

SETTING
Higher education institutions.

PARTICIPANTS
Survey invitations were sent to all 182 entry-level occupational therapy program directors in Spring 2018.

MEASURES
Questionnaire responses were used to calculate current and desired curriculum coverage of 23 population health domains.

RESULTS
Of 182 program directors, 60 (33.0%) responded. Respondents agreed that 21 of 23 population health domains should be included in entry-level occupational therapy programs, and 11 of the domains had moderate or better coverage in their current programs. The largest gaps between current and desired coverage were found in global health issues, population health informatics, environmental health, and organization of health systems.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Occupational therapy faculty can use these results to further develop the population health content of their programs.

WHAT THIS ARTICLE ADDS
Although the occupational therapy profession advocates for the role of occupational therapists in the improvement of population health, little information is available about how to prepare new occupational therapists for this role. This study addresses this gap by presenting occupational therapy program directors' assessments of current and desired levels of population health content within their programs.


The collation of 913 driftwood samples from across the western Arctic, with spatiotemporal distribution and available provenance data, enabled the production of a high-resolution proxy-based reconstruction of Holocene Arctic Ocean surface current and sea ice dynamics. Regionally bounded, driftwood-based sea ice reconstructions studies suggest spatiotemporally complex past Arctic sea ice extent and movement; however, a large-scale compilation of Holocene Arctic driftwood has not previously been developed. Sparse driftwood in the early Holocene (≥8.2 cal ka B.P.) deglacial period was followed by increased driftwood deposition in the warmer mid-Holocene (8.2–4.2 cal ka B.P.); characterized by an enhanced Transpolar Drift (TPD) ∼7 cal ka B.P., leading to sea ice loss through the Fram Strait. Driftwood incursion peaks show spatial E-W progression from the Eurasian Archipelagos to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, suggesting a progressive shift in the orientation of the TPD on centennial-millennial time scales and intermediate phases in the Arctic Oscillation. Late Holocene cooling (≤4.2 cal ka B.P.) is indicated by increased influx of probably North American Picea via a strengthened Beaufort Gyre (BG) which enhanced sea ice recirculation, starting in the western Arctic and progressing eastward. In recent millennia (<2 cal ka B.P.), a more variable driftwood record alternates between BG and TPD dominance on centennial time scales. To further constrain a spatiotemporal reconstruction of variations in Holocene ocean current and sea ice dynamics, a more definitive determination of driftwood provenance is recommended to build upon the current framework, such as through radiogenic isotope tracing and aDNA analysis.


The possibility that the periodic features observed in the nearshore region are the result of selforganisational processes is investigated in this work. The behaviour of two numerical models, based on different techniques, has been analysed in order to describe the formation of periodic features in the surf and swash zone respectively. The appearance of periodic patterns in the nearshore region has been traditionally linked to the presence of standing edge waves with the topographic changes passively driven by the flow patterns. A more recent approach indicates the possibility that periodic patterns appear because of feedback processes between beach morphology and flow. In the first model, the coupling between topographic irregularities and wave driven mean water motion in the surf zone is examined. This coupling occurs due to the fact that the topographic perturbations produce excess gradients in the wave radiation stress that cause a steady circulation. To investigate this mechanism, the linearised stability problem in the case o f an originally plane sloping beach and normal wave incidence is solved. It is shown that the basic topography can be unstable with respect to two different modes: a giant cusp pattern with shore attached transverse bars that extend across the whole surf zone and a crescentic pattern with alternate shoals and pools at both sides of the breaking line showing a mirroring effect. For the swash zone, the formation of beach cusps has been investigated. The several theories proposed in the past have been analysed and all the field and laboratory measurements available in the literature collected in order to test such theories. It is suggested that, with the available measurements it is not possible to distinguish between the standing edge wave model and the self-organisation approach. A numerical model based on self-organisation has been here developed and tested in order to understand the processes occurring during beach cusp formation and development, to evaluate the sensitivity towards the parameters used and to look at how the model might relate to field observations. Results obtained confirm the validity of the self-organisation approach and its capacity to predict beach cusp spacing with values in fair agreement with the available field measurements and with most of the input parameters primarily affecting the rate of the process rather than the final spacing. However, changes in the random seed and runs for large numbers of swash cycles reveal a dynamical system with significant unpredictable behaviour. A qualitative comparison between the model results and field measurements collected by Masselink et al. (1997) during beach cusp formation and development has also been performed on the basis of a non-linear fractal technique. Results indicate beach locations and time-scales where non-linearities are more important and selforganisation can play a fundamental role.


Describes a method to recover a drawing order of a handwritten script from a static 2D image. The script should be written in a single stroke and may include double-traced lines. After the script is scanned in and preprocessed, we apply our recovery method which consists of two phases. In the first phase, we globally analyze the graph constructed from the skeletal image and label the graph by determining the types of each edge. In the second phase, we trace the graph from the start vertex to the end vertex using the labeling information. This method does not enumerate the possible cases, for example, by solving the traveling salesman problem and, therefore, does not cause a combinatorial explosion even if the script is very complex. By recovering a drawing order of a handwritten script, the temporal information can be recovered from a static 2D image. Hence, this method will be used as a bridge from the offline handwriting character recognition problem to the online one.


Uncertainty reasoning has been a challenging issue in AI and database research. During the last two decades, numerous frameworks have been proposed by extending the standard logic programming and deductive database systems. These frameworks vary in different ways including the way in which uncertainties are associated with the facts and rules in programs. On the basis of this, we have classified the approaches of these frameworks into "annotation based" (AB) and "implication based" (IB). In the AB approach, uncertainties are associated with the atoms whereas in the IB approach they are associated with implications. Except for some particular cases, the exact relationship between the two approaches has not been studied previously, in that, the two are treated as somewhat orthogonal and unrelated. In this paper, we investigate this issue and introduce the notion of certainty constraint. The purposes are two fold. First, this notion supports the operations of selection and join by certainty, which are often useful in query formulation and processing in the context of uncertainty. Second and more importantly, this notion "relates" the expressive power of the two approaches. To be precise, we propose a transformation technique which establishes that the AB and IB approaches are equally expressive when the rule bodies are extended with certainty constraints. A consequence of this result is that, using the transformation technique, we can adopt and use successful developments in


In 2012 the governments in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland launched their Decade of Centenaries projects to 'focus' on 'significant centenaries' occurring between 2012 and 2022-3, with an unusual degree of co-ordination between them. The initiatives have generated major public interest in the commemoration of events like the third Home Rule crisis, the 1913 Lockout, the 1916 rising, the First World War, the War of Independence, extension of the franchise to women, and partition, and also in the meaning and relevance of historiography. This paper examines the thinking behind the Decade of Centenaries, the state of the Irish Labour History Society and Irish labour historiography, the involvement of state authorities with labour anniversaries, and the consequences for publications on labour and on the public understanding of labour historiography. While the Decade of Centenaries is patently an attempt to manage the remembrance of the controversies and violence that led to the creation of the two Irish states between 1920 and 1922, it has been beneficial for historians by encouraging popular engagement with the past. Traditionally, Irish labour historiography has been weak in its presence in the academy, but strong in its organic connections with the trade union movement. The Decade of Centenaries has allowed it to exploit its strength to secure greater state and public recognition. Among the positive outcomes have been a significant increase in the number of labour historians and publications on labour, and an extension of the ambit of labour history into new fields of enquiry.


AIMS
Studies have used myriad measures of family history of alcoholism (FH) making it difficult to compare them directly. Commonly used FH measures partition samples into the well known positive (FH+) and negative (FH-) dichotomy, although quantitative measures of density potentially provide more information. A standard FH measure would facilitate between-study comparisons. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a quantitative FH measure, called Family History Density (FHD), that has theoretical and practical advantages over currently used measures.

DESIGN
Logistic regression equations were estimated for FHD and six commonly used FH measures on alcohol dependence diagnosis, and two measures of alcoholism severity (i.e. withdrawal and tolerance).

PARTICIPANTS
Subjects recruited for studies (254 men and 97 women) completed a structured clinical assessment.

MEASUREMENTS
Alcoholism diagnosis and endorsement of tolerance or withdrawal symptoms were obtained using the alcohol module from the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule III-R (DIS III-R). Family history of alcoholism was coded using the criteria from the Family Informant Schedule and Criteria (FISC).

FINDINGS
All FH measures were associated with alcohol dependence diagnosis, development of tolerance and experiencing withdrawal symptoms in men. In women, only FHD and Parent were significantly associated with all three outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS
FHD is a good candidate to be a standard FH measure because it is quantitative, based on familial relatedness and capable of accounting for significant variation in alcoholism diagnosis and two indices of alcoholism severity in men and in women.


The present study was untaken to assess the capacity of Bacillus pumilis KHS-1 to grow on chicken flour and to prepare feather digest as fertilizer. To increase keratinolytic activity, the addition of cysteine (5.0 mM) showed the highest keratinolytic activity (245 unit) among the reducing agents tested. The production of soluble protein (feather digests) paralleled the tendency to the production of keratinolytic protease. In the growth curve of B. pumilis KHS-1 at 30C in the feather medium with 5 mM cysteine, the maximum keratinolytic activity of B. pumilis was about 161 units/ml after 84 h of incubation. The maximum enzyme activities were observed at the late logarithmic growth phase, and remained thereafter with little changes. Using 27-day plant growth assays on carrot and Chinese cabbage, feather digests and reference fertilizer were compared. In terms of the length and the weight of the above-ground vegetations, feather digests showed the same effect as that of the fertilizer. Therefore, our investigation shows that the feather digests can be used in agriculture.


Data from Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) is useful for diagnosing corruption. Development practitioners can in particular benefit from the tool at the early identification and formulation stages of a programme or a strategy, by making inferences regarding the state of corruption in a country and sector institutions. It is preferable to many other indices because it provides experiencebased data. However, if questions on attribution, effectiveness or impact of specific reforms or organisations are asked, then more intervention-specific data is needed. The GCB can only be used as supplementary data when appraising, monitoring and evaluating policies, programmes, and institutions.


Although the methods by which leukemia is classified have been improved for effective therapies, leukemia patients occasionally exhibit diverse, sometimes unpredictable, responses to treatment. Consequently, these patients also evidence individually different clinical courses when administered with anti-leukemia drugs. In order to find new, more precise molecular markers for leukemia classification, we have analyzed the gene expression profiles from 65 diagnostic bone marrow specimens of adult patients with AML, ALL, CML or CLL by using high-throughput DNA microarrays harboring approximately 8,300 unique human genes or expression sequence tags. In the present study, we identified a group of leukemia-specific genes, which manifest gene expression profiles distinctly representative of normal bone marrow samples, as determined by a significance analysis of microarray (SAM) and GeneSpring 6.1 programs. We also determined the minimal number of genes showing a difference between acute and chronic leukemia patient groups. Furthermore, the unsupervised cluster analysis revealed a gene subset which can be used to distinguish between AML, ALL, CML and CLL patient groups, based on expression signatures. The expression levels of differentially regulated genes were verified via the principle component analysis (PCA). Our results may provide a novel set of molecular criteria for the classification of leukemia patients, and may also facilitate effects to discovery new targets, allowing for more effective treatment of leukemia patients.


In 1986, the United States Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision ruling that Air Force regulations prohibiting Simcha Goldman from wearing a yarmulke while in uniform did not violate Goldman's First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The Court's majority opinion, which accepted the government's assertion that allowing Goldman to wear a yarmulke would unduly upset important military interests, drew unusually harsh responses from both dissenting justices and legal scholars. Yet, upon closer examination, perhaps what stands out most about the events surrounding the Goldman decision is the untold story of the case, which differs in significant respects from the official version of both the facts of the dispute and the ensuing litigation. The official narrative characterizes the facts as simply presenting a dispute between a Jewish soldier wanting to wear his yarmulke during work and a commanding officer demanding strict adherence to the military uniform protocol. However, the unofficial narrative demonstrates how much of the story was the result of personal factors, such as personal animosity between parties and passionate opinions from judges, that seemed to drive each stage of the legal process.


As the average age of the population continues to rise in industrialized nations, the fiscal impacts of aging demand ever-closer attention. Closing the Deficit examines one oft-discussed approach to the issue - encouraging people to work longer than they now do. Workers would spend more years paying taxes and fewer years drawing pension and health benefits. But how much difference to spending and revenues would longer working lives make? What steps could be taken to make longer working lives attractive? And what would happen to older Americans not in a position to prolong their work lives? Leading scholars examine these issues in Closing the Deficit , edited by Brookings economists Gary Burtless and Henry Aaron.


Sentence semantic matching requires an agent to determine the semantic relation between two sentences, which is widely used in various natural language tasks such as Natural Language Inference (NLI) and Paraphrase Identification (PI). Among all matching methods, attention mechanism plays an important role in capturing the semantic relations and properly aligning the elements of two sentences. Previous methods utilized attention mechanism to select important parts of sentences at one time. However, the important parts of the sentence during semantic matching are dynamically changing with the degree of sentence understanding. Selecting the important parts at one time may be insufficient for semantic understanding. To this end, we propose a Dynamic Re-read Network (DRr-Net) approach for sentence semantic matching, which is able to pay close attention to a small region of sentences at each step and re-read the important words for better sentence semantic understanding. To be specific, we first employ Attention Stack-GRU (ASG) unit to model the original sentence repeatedly and preserve all the information from bottom-most word embedding input to up-most recurrent output. Second, we utilize Dynamic Re-read (DRr) unit to pay close attention to one important word at one time with the consideration of learned information and re-read the important words for better sentence semantic understanding. Extensive experiments on three sentence matching benchmark datasets demonstrate that DRr-Net has the ability to model sentence semantic more precisely and significantly improve the performance of sentence semantic matching. In addition, it is very interesting that some of finding in our experiments are consistent with the findings of psychological research.


We extend the neural Turing machine (NTM) model into a dynamic neural Turing machine (D-NTM) by introducing trainable address vectors. This addressing scheme maintains for each memory cell two separate vectors, content and address vectors. This allows the D-NTM to learn a wide variety of location-based addressing strategies, including both linear and nonlinear ones. We implement the D-NTM with both continuous and discrete read and write mechanisms. We investigate the mechanisms and effects of learning to read and write into a memory through experiments on Facebook bAbI tasks using both a feedforward and GRU controller. We provide extensive analysis of our model and compare different variations of neural Turing machines on this task. We show that our model outperforms long short-term memory and NTM variants. We provide further experimental results on the sequential MNIST, Stanford Natural Language Inference, associative recall, and copy tasks.


Qualitative research methodologies can play an important role in health care design as they can provide contextual data about health care settings—specifically the people, processes, and patterns that make up the daily work of providing health care. Health care is provided in complex environments with intricate webs of relationships, which represent the multiple interactions with people, information, technology, culture, and the physical environment in which the care is provided. One could ask, "Is good design possible without an understanding of the context in which the work occurs?" Qualitative methods can capture the experiential aspects of design and usability; however, certain qualitative methods are better suited to capture the complexity of health care. These include observations, focus groups, and interviews, which are discussed in depth.