Equine piroplasmosis caused by Theileria equi and Babesia caballi is an economically important disease with a worldwide distribution. The objective of the present study was to investigate the seroepidemiology of T. equi and B. caballi in horses reared in various Mongolian provinces. Serum samples prepared from blood collected from horses in 19 Mongolian provinces were screened for antibodies specific to T. equi and B. caballi using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays based on recombinant forms of T. equi merozoite antigen-2 and the B. caballi 48-kDa merozoite rhoptry protein, respectively. Of 1,282 horses analyzed, 423 (33%) and 182 (14.2%) were sero-positive for T. equi and B. caballi, respectively. Additionally, 518 (40.4%) were positive for at least 1 parasite species, of which 87 (16.8%) were co-infected with both parasites. Both T. equi and B. caballi were detected in all surveyed provinces, and on a per province basis the positive rates ranged from 19.0 to 74.2% and 4.5 to 39.8%, respectively. Theileria equi- and B. caballi-positive rates were comparable between male horses (31.9 and 14.1%, respectively) and female horses (34.5 and 14.3%, respectively). However, the positive rates were higher in the >3-yr-old age group (37.7 and 15.6%, respectively) compared with the 1-3-yr-old age group (19.4 and 10.0%, respectively). These findings confirmed that T. equi and B. caballi infections are widespread among horses all over Mongolia, and that horse age is a risk factor for infection in this country. Our results will be useful for designing appropriate control measures to minimize T. equi and B. caballi infections among Mongolian horses.


The rise in popularity of social networking services (SNS) in the last few years is not unproblematic. The structure and underlying philosophy of social networking services presents two problems regarding user self-presentation of identity. First, the fixity of profiles creates conflict in user self-presentation strategies. SNS privilege a single identity presentation as both "authentic" and "real", which diminishes user agency. I present a typology of user presentation strategies on Friendster, Orkut, and MySpace that discusses how users navigate this fixity in a variety of ways, and how successful the application architecture is in encouraging a particular type of presentation. Second, I draw from social networking theory to discuss how the presentation of social networks is decontextualized both in terms of relational ties and larger social structures. The social and cultural power inherently embedded in networks is made invisible, replaced with both structural regulation and power (by the application) and political and cultural assumptions in how identity is presented. Additionally, the structure of both application and profiles encourages framing oneself as a consumer and commodifying complicated relationships as social capital.


Bilevel optimization problems involve two nested objectives, where an upper-level objective depends on a solution to a lower-level problem. When the latter is non-convex, multiple critical points may be present, leading to an ambiguous definition of the problem. In this paper, we introduce a key ingredient for resolving this ambiguity through the concept of a selection map which allows one to choose a particular solution to the lower-level problem. Using such maps, we define a class of hierarchical games between two agents that resolve the ambiguity in bilevel problems. This new class of games requires introducing new analytical tools in Morse theory to extend implicit differentiation, a technique used in bilevel optimization resulting from the implicit function theorem. In particular, we establish the validity of such a method even when the latter theorem is inapplicable due to degenerate critical points. Finally, we show that algorithms for solving bilevel problems based on unrolled optimization solve these games up to approximation errors due to finite computational power. A simple correction to these algorithms is then proposed for removing these errors.


In the spring of 2007, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) began the process of reducing the number of superintendents and facilities dedicated to ordinary maintenance tasks. The need to downsize was the direct result of the requirement in House Bill 667 passed by the Virginia General Assembly in the 2006 session to outsource all normal interstate maintenance. The purpose of this study was to develop a procedure to assist VDOT in determining the number of superintendents needed to oversee and manage maintenance in each residency and the number of facilities needed to support their maintenance operations. Current superintendent (Transportation Operations Manager II)) workloads were quantified and calculated for each VDOT residency based on a limited number of workload parameters and a workload boundary representing the maximum observed workload for any combination of the parameters. Reductions in the number of superintendent positions were then made without exceeding the maximum current workloads for residencies. Deicing chemical storage capacity and maximum travel time to residency limits were determined to be the factors related to the number of necessary facilities. The minimum number of facilities to be retained by each residency was determined using residency-specific data related to these two factors. The procedure for determining the appropriate number of area headquarters superintendents and maintenance facilities was presented to and accepted by Virginia's Commonwealth Transportation Board in the fall of 2006. Reductions in the numbers of superintendent positions and facilities began taking place in the spring of 2007. Beginning with 213 superintendents at 207 maintenance area headquarters (AHQ) in 2006, the study presented in this report recommended a reduction of 35 superintendents, whereas the final plan issued by VDOT in 2007 called for a reduction of 32 superintendents. Similarly, the study presented here recommended a reduction of 35 AHQ facilities, whereas the final plan issued by VDOT called for a reduction of 31 AHQ facilities. The decisions leading to the differences between the recommended and effected reductions in superintendents and AHQ facilities, resulted from both public comment and internal VDOT comment and are beyond the scope of this study.


Limited understanding of the production and loss of organic aerosol (OA) to the atmosphere has resulted in poorly constrained source estimates ranging from 140 to 910 TgCyr−1 [Goldstein and Galbally, 2007]. We use satellite observations to quantitatively estimate the atmospheric burden of organic aerosol and the associated production. We find that attributing the mid‐visible continental aerosol optical depth (AOD) observed by the MISR satellite entirely to OA implies a global source of 430 TgCyr−1 of sub‐micron OA. We use a model (GEOS‐Chem) to remove the contribution of inorganic aerosol, dust and soot from the observed AOD and derive a continental OA production of 150 TgCyr−1 (equivalent burden of 2.5 TgC), with 80% uncertainty. This result significantly reduces the uncertainty in the global OA budget and provides an upper limit for the "missing source" of OA.


Increasing competition, declines in consumer demand and consumers that are more strategic than ever before have led to saturation and stagnation in a number of well-developed markets. Corporations have begun to realise that constructive forms of marketing communication in such markets imply that all business efforts need to be directed at relationship-building with consumers, i.e. all communication instruments, including advertising, personal selling, sales promotion and corporate identity as well as conventional direct and database communication need to draw on personalised and targeted methods and media if marketing is to remain cost-effective. Technological developments in interactive communication, telecommunication and digital marketing make this possible. Far more than mere communication tools, interactive media have become powerful business instruments. The article examines the nature of interactive communications and media and their integration and implementation in the marketing communications mix. The long-term implementation of interactive communications in corporations requires a marketing communications specialist that operates more interdisciplinary than ever before: he needs to assume the role of a ""marketing communications engineer"" beyond the mere technical sense of the term, something that raises a number of implications for the communication services industry, academics in communication and marketing communication practitioners.


Photography in Japan 1853-1912 is a fascinating visual record of Japanese culture during its metamorphosis from a feudal society to a modern, industrial nation at a time when the art of photography was still in its infancy. The 350 rare and antique photos in this book, most of them published here for the first time, chronicle the introduction of photography in Japan and early Japanese photography. The images are more than just a history of photography in Japan; they are vital in helping to understand the dramatic changes that occurred in Japan during the mid-nineteenth century. These rare Japanese photographs-whether sensational or everyday, intimate or panoramic-document a nation about to abandon its traditional ways and enter the modern era. Taken between 1853 and 1912 by the most important Japanese and foreign photographers working in Japan, this is the first book to document the history of early photography in Japan a comprehensive and systematic way.


Contemporary calls for including 'spiritual' considerations in our understandings of sustainability are contextualized against the backdrop of modernity and the roots of design and manufacturing practices, as well as more recent design developments that focus on social innovation. An exploration of the meaning of spirituality and its relationship to worldviews, human needs and creativity, leads into a discussion of its implications for design. This results in a direction for design that not only brings to the fore ethical and environmental responsibilities but also more profound understandings of human flourishing and enduring notions of human wisdom.


The course on risk measure, in Luminy, starts at 16.00 on Monday (here). The slides can be found here, Note that additional references can be downloaded on the internet, e.g. the short course on risk measures by Freddy Delbaen (here) or the article from the Encyclopedia of quantitative finance, by Hans Follmer and Alexander Schied (there). See also here for the paper by Jean Marc Tallon, Johanna Etner and Meglena Jeleva, on decision theory under uncertainty.


In Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, the United States Supreme Court established the premier categorical regulatory takings standard with certain limited exceptions. The Lucas rule establishes that private property owners are entitled to compensation for a taking under the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause when a government regulation "denies all economically beneficial or productive use of land." Today, Lucas remains the controlling law on categorical regulatory takings. But in application, how much does Lucas still matter? My review of more than 1,600 cases in state and federal court reveals only twenty-seven cases in twenty-five years in which courts found a categorical regulatory taking under Lucas. By percentage, that works out to a Lucas claim success rate of just 1.6 percent. This does not mean Lucas is unimportant, however. Rather, the paucity of successful Lucas claims itself tells a significant story about the importance of pleading takings claims. I contend that Lucas' most enduring value is not its contribution to the positive law but rather its effect on how litigants shape their cases. A crucial aspect of the Lucas categorical regulatory takings analysis has been, and will continue to be, the problem of defining the denominator in the regulatory takings equation. My research suggests that Lucas' holding incentivizes the private contractual agreements entered into by property owners to shrink the takings denominator and tilt the scales slightly in favor of the plaintiff. The ability of a property owner to reduce the denominator remains the loadstar for a Lucas case-winning strategy. This is important for not only theorists but also for practitioners to know — those who litigate and conduct transactions in Lucas' shadow.


We previously showed that middle-aged female rats sustain a larger infarct following experimental stroke as compared to younger female rats, and paradoxically, estrogen treatment to the older group is neurotoxic. Plasma and brain insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) levels decrease with age. However, IGF-1 infusion following stroke, prevents estrogen neurotoxicity in middle-aged female rats. IGF1 is neuroprotective and well tolerated, but also has potentially undesirable side effects. We hypothesized that microRNAs (miRNAs) that target the IGF-1 signaling family for translation repression could be alternatively suppressed to promote IGF-1-like neuroprotection. Here, we report that two conserved IGF pathway regulatory microRNAs, Let7f and miR1, can be inhibited to mimic and even extend the neuroprotection afforded by IGF-1. Anti-mir1 treatment, as late as 4 hours following ischemia, significantly reduced cortical infarct volume in adult female rats, while anti-Let7 robustly reduced both cortical and striatal infarcts, and preserved sensorimotor function and interhemispheric neural integration. No neuroprotection was observed in animals treated with a brain specific miRNA unrelated to IGF-1 (anti-miR124). Remarkably, anti-Let7f was only effective in intact females but not males or ovariectomized females indicating that the gonadal steroid environment critically modifies miRNA action. Let7f is preferentially expressed in microglia in the ischemic hemisphere and confirmed in ex vivo cultures of microglia obtained from the cortex. While IGF-1 was undetectable in microglia harvested from the non-ischemic hemisphere, IGF-1 was expressed by microglia obtained from the ischemic cortex and was further elevated by anti-Let7f treatment. Collectively these data support a novel miRNA-based therapeutic strategy for neuroprotection following stroke.


Previously published as The Bar on the Seine A forgotten crime comes to light in the Parisian summer in Georges Simenon's twisted tale. Book eleven in the new Penguin Maigret series. 'A radiant late afternoon. The sunshine almost as thick as syrup in the quiet streets of the Left Bank...there are days like this, when ordinary life seems heightened, when the people walking down the street, the trams and cars all seem to exist in a fairy tale.' A story told by a condemned man leads Maigret to a bar by the Seine and into the sleazy underside of respectable Parisian life. In the oppressive heat of summer, a forgotten crime comes to light. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel is a revised translation, previously published as The Bar on the Seine. "Compelling, remorseless, brilliant." (John Gray). "One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century...Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories." (Guardian). "A supreme writer...unforgettable vividness." (Independent).


We study the sample complexity of learning one-hidden-layer convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with non-overlapping filters. We propose a novel algorithm called approximate gradient descent for training CNNs, and show that, with high probability, the proposed algorithm with random initialization grants a linear convergence to the ground-truth parameters up to statistical precision. Compared with existing work, our result applies to general non-trivial, monotonic and Lipschitz continuous activation functions including ReLU, Leaky ReLU, Sigmod and Softplus etc. Moreover, our sample complexity beats existing results in the dependency of the number of hidden nodes and filter size. In fact, our result matches the information-theoretic lower bound for learning one-hidden-layer CNNs with linear activation functions, suggesting that our sample complexity is tight. Our theoretical analysis is backed up by numerical experiments.


ABSTRACT What lessons about linearity are illuminated by the stories that engage our experience of queer fat bodies? The authors examine stories generated in the collaborative, community-based research project Through Thick and Thin. They analyze a selection of 3- to 7-minute microdocumentaries produced in the project that feature assemblages of queer sexuality, gender expression and identity, and other privileged or minoritized identifications (race, disability, class, indigeneity) in confrontation with weight-based stigma, expectations around eating and exercise, and experiences of pathologization. The athors argue that linearity requires a constant labor of improvement that seeks to restore and recover fat queer bodies to imagined state(s) of normalcy/health. By using concepts of queer and crip time, the authors illustrate how queer subjectivity—queered in terms of not only sexuality, but also body shape and size, and/or eating dis/order practice—finds itself out of sync with time: that is, how the project's storytellers are refused or engage in acts of refusing available futurities and instead construct and live subversive temporalities. In the authors' range of examples, they show and value how Through Thick and Thin storytellers, and by extension persons with queer and non-normative embodiments, live and move through and in effect, re-make time.


It has been suggested that Lys 234 residue participates in β-lactamase catalysis by acting as an electrostatic anchor for the C-3 carboxylate of penicillin. The aim of the present work is to test the role of the carboxylate group at C-3 in binding with the enzyme. A novel penicillin derivative, 3aminomethyl-6-phenylacetamidopenicillanate, was prepared in which the carboxylic acid group at C-3 was replaced by an amino group. This was achieved by the reduction of a mixed anhydride of penicillin G to obtain 6-phenylacetamidopenicillanyl alcohol. The behavior of the alcoholic function in reacting with acidic components, following Mitsunobu reaction, was investigated, and 3-di-tert-butoxycarbonylaminomethyl-6-phenylacetamidopenicillanate was prepared as a crude product. After purification using column chromatography, the crude product undergoes deprotection of the amino group to produce the desired compound 3-aminomethyl-6phenylacetamidopenicillanate. The hydrolysis of this compound by β-lactamase and the altered βlactamase was determined and studied. The alteration in β-lactamase was done by changing the lys 234 residue to glutamic acid residue using site specific mutagenesis.


Abstract. Simulation of areal snowmelt and snowcover depletion over time can be carried out by applying point-scale melt rate computations to distributions of snow water equivalent (SWE). In alpine basins, this can be done by considering these processes separately on individual slope units. However, differences in melt timing and rates arise at smaller spatial scales due to the variability in SWE and snowpack cold content, which affects the timing of melt initiation, depletion of the snowcover and spatial extent of the snowmelt runoff contributing area (SRCA). This study examined the effects of variability in SWE, internal energy and applied melt energy on melt rates and timing, and snowcover depletion in a small cold regions alpine basin over various scales ranging from point to basin. Melt rate computations were performed using a physically based energy balance snowmelt routine (Snobal) in the Cold Regions Hydrological Model (CRHM) and compared with measurements at 3 meteorological stations over a ridge within the basin. At the point scale, a negative association between daily melt rates and SWE was observed in the early melt period, with deeper snow requiring greater energy inputs to initiate melt. SWE distributions over the basin (stratified by slope) were measured using snow surveys and repeat LiDAR depth estimates, and used together with computed melt rates to simulate the areal snowcover depletion. Comparison with observations from georeferenced oblique photographs showed an improvement in simulated areal snowcover depletion curves when accounting for the variability in melt rate with depth of SWE in the early melt period. Finally, the SRCA was characterized as the product of the snowcovered area and the fraction of the SWE distribution undergoing active melt and producing an appreciable runoff quantity on each slope unit. Results for each slope were then aggregated to give the basin scale SRCA. The SRCA is controlled by the variability of melt amongst slope units and over individual SWE distributions, the variability of SWE, and the resulting snowcover depletion patterns over the basin.


With the world population reaching about 10 billion by mid-century, the requirement for carbon-free energy (estimated at 30 terawatts) to meet global needs will indeed be daunting. A sizable portion of this power is expected to come from nuclear sources fuelled by fission and/or fusion breeding. Although a great international effort is currently underway aimed at producing pure fusion power, the fact remains that such reactors will initially be characterised by a rather modest gain factor, 'Q' (the ratio of fusion power to injected power), putting in question their economic viability and potential impact on the energy crisis. It is well known, nevertheless, that fusion reactions are neutron rich and energy poor, while fission reactions are energy rich but neutron poor. As a result, it has occurred to many researchers over the past several decades that a fusion hybrid in which fusion neutrons are used to breed fissile material, thereby serving as a 'fusion fuel factory', might very well address the impending energy shortage. In this paper, we take a somewhat different approach. We propose a system in which the fusion neutrons from a fusion reactor operating at Q-value slightly larger than unity are used to drive an energy-producing blanket in which uranium-233 fissile material is bred from thorium-232 and simultaneously burned to produce energy. It will be a steady-state operating system with no criticality invoked, thus providing a measure of safety as well as potential elimination of proliferation hazards.


EPANET is one of the most widely used software packages for water network hydraulic modelling, and is especially interesting for educational and research purposes because it is in the public domain. However, EPANET simulations are demand-driven, and the program does not include a specific functionality to model water leakage, which is pressure-driven. Consequently, users are required to deal with this drawback by themselves. As a general solution for this problem, this paper presents a methodology for including leakage in EPANET models by following a two-stage process. Firstly, leakage is spatially distributed among the nodes, according to the characteristics of the network. Secondly, leakage is modelled through an emitter at each node. The process is described in detail and two numerical examples illustrate the applicability and advantages of the method. In addition, free access through a URL is provided to the leakage modelling tool that has been developed.


NoBorder activisms and Italian philosophies are highly complicit in the ongoing fortification of the EU and the West, and of the West's subsequent global hegemonic spread through Eurocentric discourses and technologies. I will show that many radical Italian writings, through a metaphorisation of the 'migrant' or 'refugee', supplement the alter-globalisation movement in effectively reproducing the Eurocentric fantasy of the Enlightenment subject as the ultimate centre for social change, just as much as those despised EU policies do. I will do so by pointing out that this migrant metaphor functions primarily as a tool to make possible the claim for some sort of hegemonic 'unification of struggles' in 'the new world order' by these radical Italian thinkers. They will be shown to do so through a doubly romanticising move, leading to both the reproduction of the migrant or refugee as a heroic figure and the acting out of an unfinishable desire for communal self-identification with the migrant, through claims that s/he embodies the transcendental fantasy of the total subsumption of boundaries.


We use car-level micro data to provide empirical evidence on the usage of conventional and electric vehicles (EVs) in private and car sharing fleets in Germany. We shed light on both monetary and non-monetary barriers to EV adoption and usage by exploiting the feature that variable costs are identical for shared vehicles but different for private car owners across engine types. While drivers respond to monetary incentives when using conventional cars, this does not hold for EVs. We find that EVs are, on average, driven shorter distances than conventional vehicles, both in terms of annual and single-day mileage, even if costs are identical. We also document that car sharing intensifies the usage of conventional cars but not that of EVs.


The Common Wealth Jelly Mould was commissioned by Panel as a cultural project involving a series of six unique souvenirs inspired by the sporting events of London 2012 and Glasgow 2014. The commission was shared with Atelier E.B, Claire Duffy, FOUND, Emlyn Firth with Angharad McLaren, and Neil McGuire with Marianne Anderson. The project encompassed an exhibition, film series, events programme and shop in partnership with Glasgow Museums and South Block.

The jelly mould was based on traditional Shelly models, but drew its inspiration of form from Rogano's Oyster Bar. The ceramic moulds was produced in Ullapool and Glasgow in collaboration with Highland Stoneware.

Common Wealth has two main collaborators. The legendary Art Deco interior of Glasgow cocktail bar and restaurant Rogano has inspired the zig-zag motif described by the mould, and head chef Andy Cumming has provided for it exclusive jelly recipes. Highland Stoneware, established in Lochinver, Sutherland in 1975 supplied the clay body, as well as finishing the moulds in their factory. Thus two institutions offering very distinct perspectives on Scottish heritage are brought together.

Roganos' history is rooted in the 1920s and 30s, the great age of the Ocean Liner. It was styled and decorated by many of the designers and trades-people involved in the manufacture of Cunard's Queen Mary Liner in John Brown and Co's Yard on Clydebank. Highland Stoneware's story is no less interesting. It presents a more kilted vision of Scotland's post-industrial struggle with its skillfully decorated pots adorned with 'timeless' visions of wildflowers, fishing boats, salmon and Highland scenes.

The appropriation of these two icons of Scottish heritage is a marker of a key cultural and economic shift that is familiar to many post-industrial nations. This shift concerns the move from an industrial manufacturing base to a service and tourism economy. That the shift to service and tourism is represented by one of Britain's few remaining tableware factories, and the pre-war manufacturing boom years is represented by a cocktail bar and restaurant, is not just a historic irony.

In the heady self-confidence of the boom years, questions of precisely what gets made become somewhat secondary to the glamour and style of making itself. Whilst making doesn't quite take care of itself, it nevertheless has it's own justification in the frenzy of seemingly never ending demand. This is the background for the international, exotic and luxury style movement of Art Deco. Restaurants, cocktail bars and ocean liners are the ultimate expression of this confident internationalism centered on travel and entertainment.

More recently, when manufacturing shifts to distant, cheaper shores and global competition has threatened to overwhelm, what gets made here becomes the subject for intense debate. A product's vernacular styling and market position as a localised 'national' brand can be crucial. Highland Stoneware's turn towards the industrial application of craft techniques and its pastoral subject matter is a symptom of this shift. The hand finished, unique application of the makers skill is a self-conscious reminder to the consumer that the product has in fact been 'hand made' (in Scotland).

Common Wealth is a thoroughly contemporary effort to bridge this gap between a confident internationalism and a neo-traditional, self-conscious national vernacular. In bringing together two partners with such distinct histories and contexts West challenges herself to produce a synthesis that allows both these stories to flourish. Perhaps more significantly, the souvenir that West has produced must also work on it's own terms, independently of it's partners, as an authentic, desirable and fully functioning piece of kitchenware.


Given a program whose functionality depends on access to certain external resources, we investigate the question of how to gracefully degrade functionality when a subset of those resources is unavailable. The concrete setting motivating this problem statement is mobile applications, which rely on contextual data (e.g., device identifiers, user location and contacts, etc.) to fulfill their functionality. In particular, we focus on the Android platform, which mediates access to resources via an installation-time permission model. On the one hand, granting an app the permission to access a resource (e.g., the device ID) entails privacy threats (e.g., releasing the device ID to advertising servers). On the other hand, denying access to a resource could render the app useless (e.g., if inability to read the device ID is treated as an error state). Our goal is to specialize an existing Android app in such a way that it is disabled from accessing certain sensitive resources (or contextual data) as specified by the user, while still being able to execute functionality that does not depend on those resources. We present ShamDroid, a program transformation algorithm, based on specialized forms of program slicing, backwards static analysis and constraint solving, that enables the use of Android apps with partial permissions. We rigorously state the guarantees provided by ShamDroid w.r.t. functionality maximization. We provide an evaluation over the top 500 Google Play apps and report on an extensive comparative evaluation of ShamDroid against three other state-of-the-art solutions (APM, XPrivacy, and Google App Ops) that mediate resource access at the system (rather than app) level. ShamDroid performs better than all of these tools by a significant margin, leading to abnormal behavior in only 1 out of 27 apps we manually investigated, compared to the other solutions, which cause crashes and abnormalities in 9 or more of the apps. This demonstrates the importance of performing app-sensitive mocking.


In the ever-expanding realm of scholarship discussing nonhuman animals, the question of the animal is experiencing shifts to integrate ethics of care. To explore an extension of ecofeminist writing—vegan poetics—my paper enters the debate among eco-writing regarding the eating of nonhuman animals. Currently, there is a small subgroup of authors openly including their politicized abstaining from using nonhuman animal as objects in their diets, as well as in their writing. Through a close reading of Literature for Nonhumans by vegan scholar Gabriel Gudding, this paper follows the motif of rejecting the erasure of factory farm animals from discussions and writings regarding anthropogenic and environmental issues. Literature for Nonhumans encourages future scholarship to both uncover and create more texts embodying elements of vegan poetics, such as confronting human exceptionalism found among the ethical considerations of dominant Western culture. Critically entering Literature for Nonhumans exposes a call for both poetics and scholarship to reassess the consequences of mass consuming nonhuman animals and viewing them as edible objects: "When you eat the muscles of animals / your anus is a tunnel to the slaughterhouse"—"We really are ethical misers when it comes / to other beings" (Gudding 27-9).


Fusarium head blight (FHB) or scab, incited by Fusarium graminearum, can cause significant economic losses in small grain production. Five field experiments were conducted from 2007 to 2009 to determine the effects on FHB and the associated mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) of integrating winter wheat cultivar resistance and fungicide application. Other variables measured were yield and the percentage of Fusarium-damaged kernels (FDK). The fungicides prothioconazole + tebuconazole (formulated as Prosaro 421 SC) were applied at the rate of 0.475 liters/ha, or not applied, to three cultivars (experiments 1 to 3) or six cultivars (experiments 4 and 5) differing in their levels of resistance to FHB and DON accumulation. The effect of cultivar on FHB index was highly significant (P < 0.0001) in all five experiments. Under the highest FHB intensity and no fungicide application, the moderately resistant cultivars Harry, Heyne, Roane, and Truman had less severe FHB than the susceptible cultivars 2137, Jagalene, Overley, and Tomahawk (indices of 30 to 46% and 78 to 99%, respectively). Percent fungicide efficacy in reducing index and DON was greater in moderately resistant than in susceptible cultivars. Yield was negatively correlated with index, with FDK, and with DON, whereas index was positively correlated with FDK and with DON, and FDK and DON were positively correlated. Correlation between index and DON, index and FDK, and FDK and DON was stronger in susceptible than in moderately resistant cultivars, whereas the negative correlation between yield and FDK and yield and DON was stronger in moderately resistant than in susceptible cultivars. Overall, the strongest correlation was between index and DON (0.74 ≤ R ≤ 0.88, P ≤ 0.05). The results from this study indicate that fungicide efficacy in reducing FHB and DON was greater in moderately resistant cultivars than in susceptible ones. This shows that integrating cultivar resistance with fungicide application can be an effective strategy for management of FHB and DON in winter wheat.


This research synthesizes the theory of applying Charles Edwards III, with 4 variables; communication, disposition, resources and organizational structure. This team principally assisted the Governor in overseeing and managing complaints relating to public services. This team has the main duty of handling public service complaints for the people in West Sumatra. Provincial government of West Sumatera has not been sufficient in implementing Presidential regulation No. 76 of 2013 on Public Service Complaint Management. In effective TP4 performance in accepting public complaints has an effect on the aims and objectives of the Presidential Regulation. TP4 West Sumatera Province more dominates the prevention performance, TP4 conducts guidance and monitoring both through working visit as well as Provincial Service Competency Assessment Team at Provincial level.


Abstract. The most recent and significant transformations of European landscapes have occurred as a consequence of a series of diffused, varied and often connected phenomena: urban growth and sprawl, agricultural intensification in the most suitable areas and agricultural abandonment in marginal areas. These phenomena can affect dramatically ecosystems' structure and functioning, since certain modifications cause landscape fragmentation while others tend to increase homogeneity. Thus, a thorough comprehension of the evolution trends of landscapes, in particular those linked to urban-rural relations, is crucial for a sustainable landscape planning. In this framework, the main objectives of the present paper are: (a) to investigate Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) transformations and dynamics that occurred over the period 1955–2006 in the municipality of Serra San Bruno (Calabria, Italy), an area particularly representative of the Mediterranean mountainous landscape; (b) to compare the settlement growth with the urban planning tools in charge in the study area; (c) to examine the relationship between urban–rural gradient, landscape metrics, demographic and physical variables; (d) to investigate the evolution of urban–rural gradient composition and configuration along significant axes of landscape changes. Data with a high level of detail (minimum mapping unit 0.2 ha) were obtained through the digitisation of historical aerial photographs and digital orthophotos identifying LULC classes according to the Corine Land Cover legend. The investigated period was divided into four significant time intervals, which were specifically analysed to detect LULC changes. Differently from previous studies, in the present research the spatio-temporal analysis of urban–rural gradient was performed through three subsequent steps: (1) kernel density analysis of settlements; (2) analysis of landscape structure by means of metrics calculated using a moving window method; (3) analysis of composition and configuration of the urban–rural gradient within three landscape profiles located along significant axes of LULC change. The use of thematic overlays and transition matrices enabled a precise identification of the LULC changes that had taken place over the examined period. As a result, a detailed description and mapping of the landscape dynamics were obtained. Furthermore, landscape profiling technique, using continuous data, allowed an innovative and valuable approach for analysing and interpreting urban–rural gradient structure over space and time.


Considering Class offers international, interdisciplinary perspectives on class analysis today. It explores the gap between the class forces shaping the world and the paucity of class-consciousness at a popular level. The book shows the importance of the cultural struggle.


Small and medium sized enterprises (SME) play an important role in the economies of numerous emerging economies. Despite the fact that the SME sector plays a significant role in the national economy it still suffers from the underdeveloped financial sector services. It results in the lower levels of indebtedness of private sector in Poland in relation to such emerging economies like Malaysia, Estonia or Chile. The commercial financial sector is inefficient in delivering funds to SME, the important role in this area is played by regional policy, especially supported from European regional funds. The distribution of development funds is realized with serious problems because SME are reluctant to financial sector services and besides typical grants, debt-type instruments meet serious problems. Polish SME are also reluctant to use support instruments aimed at developing innovations, R&D, and intellectual property (IP) protection. Imitation model of growth still dominates among Polish SME. To address this issue, in 2014 the University of Gdansk (UG) launched a project, supported by National Science Centre (NCN, governmental), on using behavioural interventions to increase the propensity of Polish SME to apply more ambitious development measures through support instruments. The research revealed, that the majority of tested behavioural interventions aimed at building friendly support environment proved to be efficient and increased the interest of SME in developmental activities.


Science and technology (S & T) play an important role in society, because every citizen needs a certain basic understanding of S & T to participate in the public debate, for example, in discussions with regard to topics such as climate change and gene manipulation. This thesis describes how video feedback coaching (VFC-T) can help stimulate S&T skills of students in the early school years, such as inquiry skills, scientific reasoning and argumentation. The VFC T focuses on teacher professionalization with regard to providing S&T lessons, and stresses the importance of interaction between teacher and pupils as a means to stimulate these S&T skills. Teachers learn to use different pedagogical strategies, namely the scientific method, asking questions that encourage students' scientific reasoning, and scaffolding. The latter provides the teacher support just above the level of a learner, so the pupil can reach a higher level. Video recordings of their own lessons are used during the coaching of teachers in applying these techniques. The effecti study shows that the intervention had a positive effect on the number of scientific reasoning stimulating questions asked by teachers during the intervention. However, this effect is no longer visible two months after the intervention. The pupils, however, show a higher level of scientific reasoning during and after the end of the intervention, compared with the pre-measurements and in comparison with a control group (and this result is still visible after 2 months). Not all teachers showed these results. This thesis describes how contextual aspects influence the effectiveness in individual cases, and explains these results from a complexity viewpoint.


PURPOSE: A container for liquor and beverage is provided to be used as a cup after the content inside thereof are all consumed, by being turned over and coupled to a container cap. CONSTITUTION: A main body(11) has an open top having an inner diameter which becomes smaller to the bottom of the main body, and a closed bottom. A first connection unit(11a) is provided at a position selected from a inner periphery or the outer periphery of the bottom of the main body. The inner diameter having a larger diameter has a cap(12) fastened thereto. At the central portion of the cap, a second connection unit(12a) is provided, which is connected to the first connection unit. A sealing material(14) is adhered to the front end of the main body, in which the cap is fastened to. The first and second connection units are coupled to each other by screw tab joining or forced insertion. The shape of the main body is a polygonal shape.


The Supreme Court's interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act is universally touted as favoring arbitration. Its arbitration cases and decisions in other areas are also viewed as supporting the Court's more general hostility to litigation. These pro-arbitration and anti-litigation policies can be mutually reinforcing. Moreover, they appear to be mutually consistent, in part because the Court describes the essential features of arbitration as being "informal," "speedy," "efficient"—in short, the categorical opposite of litigation.

This Article contends that the Court's approach is not as "pro-arbitration" as it appears. On the contrary, the Court's pro-arbitration and anti-litigation values sometimes conflict. When they do, hostility to litigation wins. For example, consider an arbitration clause that explicitly authorizes de novo judicial review. Pro-arbitration policies favoring party autonomy would enforce the clause and allow judicial review, but anti-litigation norms would require the opposite. In that factual context and others, the Supreme Court's hostility to litigation has overridden its support for arbitration. Such results are particularly problematic for international commercial arbitration.

This is the arbitration-litigation paradox: because courts play an important role in supporting arbitration, some litigation is needed to support arbitration. Efforts to limit litigation in U.S. courts and enforce distinctions between litigation and arbitration may in turn limit courts' ability to offer this support. Moreover, the Court's hostility to litigation—in arbitration cases and in other, seemingly unrelated contexts—weakens U.S. courts' ability to prioritize arbitration values such as party autonomy and procedural flexibility. This Article advocates prioritizing such values over hostility to litigation. It considers several avenues for pursuing this approach and sets the stage for further research into the competitive relationship between arbitration and litigation.


The two-dimensional nonlinear shallow water equations in the presence of Coriolis force and bottom topography are solved numerically using the fractional steps method. The fractional steps method consists of splitting the multi-dimensional matrix inversion problem into an equivalent one dimensional problem which is successively integrated in every direction along the characteristics using the Riemann invariant associated with the cubic spline interpolation. The height and the velocity field of the shallow water equations over irregular bottom are discretized on a fixed Eulerian grid and time-stepped using the fractional steps method. Effects of the Coriolis force and the bottom topography for particular initial flows on the velocity components and the free surface elevation have been studied and the results are plotted.


This is a selective bibliography of current law review literature of interest to defense counsel. Main articles are identified by naming the author or authors. The designations "Note," "Comment," "Case Note," etc. are as listed in the publication, with the authorship, if given, shown in parentheses. Symposiums generally are shown by title. U.S. and International Damages Daniel M. Weddle, A Practitioner's Guide to Litigating Punitive Damages after BMW of North America Inc. v. Gore. 47 DRAKE L. REV. 661 (1999). Drake Law Review, Managing Editor, Drake Law Review, Drake University, Des Moines, IA 50311. Reid Hastie, David A. Schkade & John W. Payne, Juror Judgments in Civil Cases: Effects of Plaintiff's Requests and Plaintiff's Identify on Punitive Damage Awards. 23 LAW & HUM. BEHAV. 445 (1999). Law and Human Behavior, Plenum Publishing Corp., 233 Spring St., New York, NY 10013. Jason L. Yearout (Note), Fear of Future Harm in Toxic Tort Litigation: The Appropriate Measure of Damages. 22 AM. J. TRIAL ADVOC. 639 (1999). American Journal of Trial Advocacy, Box 2263, Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, Birmingham, AL 35229. Evidence Wendy S. Neal (Casenote), The Future of Scientific Evidence in Toxic Tort Litigation. 67 U. CIN. C. REV. 881 (1999). University of Cincinnati Law Review, Room 300, Taft Hall, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0040. Michael J. Pavloski (Comment), Interpretation and Misapplication of Federal Rule of Evidence 403. 33 NEW ENG. L. REV. 797 (1999). New England Law Review, New England School of Law, 154 Stuart St., Boston, MA 02116. Tristin K. Green (Comment), Making Sense of the McDonnell Douglas Framework Circumstantial Evidence and Proof of Disparate Treatment under Title VII. 87 CAL. L. REV. 983 (1999). California Law Review, University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94730. Robert P. Murian, The Admissibility of Expert Eyewitness Testimony under the Federal Rules. 29 CUMB. L. REV. 379 (1998-99). Cumberland Law Review, S.U. Box 2268, Samford University, 800 Lakeshore Drive, Birmingham, AL 35229. H. Lowell Brown, The Crime-fraud Exception to the Attorney-client Privilege in the Context of Corporate Counseling. 87 Ky. L.J. 1191 (1998-99). Kentucky Law Journal, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0048. Therese Leblanc (Note), Accountant-client Privilege: The Effect of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. 67 UMKC L. REV. 583 (1999). UMKC Law Review, University of Missouri--Kansas City School of Law, 5100 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, MO 64110. Maria L. Ontiveros, Adoptive Admissions and the Meaning of Silence: Continuing the Inquiry into Evidence Law and Issues of Race, Class, Gender, and Ethnicity. 28 SW. U. L. REV. 357 (1999). Frederic I. Lederer, Some Thoughts on the Evidentiary Aspects of Technologically Presented or Produced Evidence. 28 SW. U. L. REV. 389(1999). Southwestern University Law Review, 675 South Westmoreland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90005. Jack B. Weinstein, Science and the Challenges of Expert Testimony in the Courtroom. 77 OR. L. REV. 1005 (1998). Oregon Law Review, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403. Bryan S. Gowdy (Note), Should the Federal Government Have an Attorney-client Privilege? 51 FLA. L. REV. 695 (1999). Florida Law Review, 115 Holland Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611. Adam M. Chud (Note), In Defense of the Government Attorney-client Privilege. 84 CORNELL L. REV. 1682 (1999). Cornell Law Review, Myron Taylor Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4901. Insurance Justin A. Harris (Note), Judicial Approaches to Stipulated Judgments, Assignments of Rights, and Covenants Not to Execute in Insurance Litigation. 47 DRAKE L. REV. 853 (1999). Drake Law Review, Drake University, Des Moines, IA 50311. Thomas M Jones & Jon D. Hurwitz, An Introduction to Insurance Allocation Issues in Multiple-trigger Cases. …


We have previously demonstrated that Mie scattering of partially coherent plane waves can create coherence vortices, namely screw-type dislocations in the phase of the spectral degree of coherence. However, plane waves are an idealization and in practice, optical beams are often much closer to reality. Thus, in this paper, we consider coherence vortices created by Mie scattering of partially coherent focused beams. We demonstrate that Mie scattering of partially coherent complex focused beams can give rise to coherence vortices. As the scattered fields propagate coherence vortex-antivortex pairs are annihilated thus creating hair-pin structures in the coherence-vortex nodal lines. The evolution of correlation singularities in the scattered field with the variation of the complex focus point of the incident beam is also discussed. The variation of the degree of polarization of the scattered field is also studied.


Introduction This paper explores the issues and challenges that we have faced as Canadian academic business librarians when working with business data. As this is an exploratory study, we hope only to start a discussion among data librarians about some key challenges facing the academic community related to supporting the teaching and research use of business data. Our paper begins with a brief discussion of general data trends, followed by a detailed exploration of business data trends and trends in Canadian business education. We discuss challenges and issues related to working with business data from both the collections and reference service perspectives, including the pros and cons of providing business data services and support within the library environment. We conclude by suggesting some measures that both academic business librarians and data librarians can take to address some of these challenges.


20M Sprint Capacity Test a component of the Wheelchair Sports Performance Test:  A SmartWheel ® Technology Field Validation Pilot Study The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the relationships between the 20M Sprint Capacity Test utilizing SmartWheel ® technology and other speed evaluation techniques. The goal of the 20M Sprint Capacity Test is to provide an objective protocol for coaches and players to measure speed training and performance growth. All participants (N = 17) performed two trials of the 20M Sprint Capacity test with the SmartWheel® placed on each side of a wheelchair provided by the researcher. Results of this research focus on the potential relationships existing between the variables of push length (r = .650) push frequency (r = .594) peak force (r = .540) and speed performance as measured in meters/second by the SmartWheel® The relationships between classification level of the athletes and speed in meters/second suggested a significant relationship (r = . 859). Due to the highly correlated relationship between classification level and speed athlete classification (i.e. class) was partialed out to control for this relationship. When partial correlations were analyzed push length and speed were no longer significantly correlated (r = .175 p = .532). Push frequency and speed (m/s) remained significantly correlated (r = .573 p = .026); however peak force and speed (m/s) also were no longer significantly correlated (r = .464 p = .081). Additional research is needed to further validate these results and develop speed training assessment protocols for athletes with disabilities.


We sampled 0-group juvenile Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L. within fjords and off- shore in northern Norway from 1994 to 2008 using different gears for the 3 sampling depths: shore seine (0�3 m), pelagic trawl (various depths), and bottom trawl (>80 m). Frequencies of alleles at the Pan I locus (4218 fish analysed) showed highly significant differences among samples col- lected in the different habitats. The Pan I A allele showed a mean frequency of ~80% in the shore seine samples, 12% in the bottom trawl samples, and between 5 and 57% in the pelagic samples. These differences are thought to reflect the co-occurrence of different populations of cod in the area with different settling regimes. Shallow-water settlers are thought to represent the stationary Norwegian coastal cod (NCC), the deep-water settlers represent the migratory Arcto-Norwegian cod (ANC), and the non-settled individuals represent a variable mixture of the 2 populations. For designated samples, we analyzed 16 microsatellites (non-neutral and neutral) that supported a genetic divergence between shallow-water and deep-water settlers. Correlations between length and Pan I genotypes within selected samples showed that the Pan I BB homozygotes (typical of ANC) were significantly longer than the Pan I AA homozygotes (typical of NCC). This could reflect differences in spawning time and growth conditions between ANC and NCC, just as well as one genotype being superior to the others in terms of growth performance. Finally, we argue that the Pan I difference between 0-group NCC and ANC is not caused by contemporary selection but reflects adaptation on an ecological post-glacial time scale.


C91 Oncogenesis is a stepwise progression driven by mutations to key regulatory proteins as well as epigenetic changes in gene expression patterns. Fundamental to overall disease progression are changes in signaling networks that govern the response to growth factor(s) and therefore control the decision to maintain survival or induce death. Profiles from screens involving siRNA-mediated gene knockdown have not only been integral to mapping phosphorylation cascades but also in defining key intermediates whose function is essential for cell survival. The discovery of key regulatory nodes has improved the ability to target specific mechanistic points for potential therapeutic intervention. The validation of potential targets requires cell analysis systems capable of defining variations in expression of multiple parameters at the single cell level, within an overall population (sample well), and across data sets. T this end, we have developed the microcapillary-based Guava EasyCyte™ Plus system, which, when used in conjunction with Guava Technologies' suite of functional assays, provides an ideal platform for secondary target validation and compound screening. To demonstrate, a limited drug discovery screening experiment was performed. To identify genes that impact Camptothecin (CAM)-induced apoptosis, HeLa cells were screened using a siRNA library directed against known tumor suppressors, oncogenes, and other cell signaling intermediates. Following RNAi transfection, cells were treated with CAM and assayed for changes in proliferative capacity (ViaCount), cell cycle arrest, and apoptotic induction. In addition, cultures were assayed for changes in phosphorylation at protein-specific sites using multiplex bead sets. Following acquisition, data was analyzed using an integrated experiment-based software platform designed specifically to simplify, enhance, and expedite the assessment of multidimensional data sets through visualization of user-defined parameters in the form of heat-maps. Briefly, we identified several enhancers and inhibitors of CAM-induced apoptosis. We further observed that many of the identified modulators also had effects on cell cycle progression as well as proliferation. Moreover, it was evident that certain genes are functionally linked and thus part of the same or overlapping networks. In summary, the Guava EasyCyte Plus platform permits (i) the acquisition and analysis of both cell and bead-based assays, (ii) ordering of kinase activation within a signaling cascade, and (iii) construction of stimuli-specific bio-signatures through overlapping multiple, independent, measurable parameters within a single system


Context: Education can be effective when combined with entertainment making it edutainment and this includes dramas, flashcards, board games, etc. Flashcards are handy, valuable, useful, and easy to carry at various locations. Aim: The aim of this study is to use educative flashcards designed for clinical undergraduate students to learn bioethics and its application. Settings and Design: Experimental double-blinded study was conducted to use educative flashcards on Bioethics and its application, designed for clinical undergraduate students. Materials and Methods: Participants were divided into three groups, Group 1 was traditional teaching method where class was taken for 1 h, for Group 2 only flashcards were given, and for Group 3 both classes was taken and flashcards were given. After a week, semiconstructed pretested questionnaire was given to all the participants. Statistical Analysis: Data were collected, coded and fed in SPSS (IBM version 23) for further analysis. Results: Nearly 43.3%, 13.3%, and 30% of them from Group 1, 2, and 3, respectively, thought that professionalism was same as bioethics (P< 0.05, χ2 = 6.599). Nearly 86.7%, 96.7%, and 100% of them from Group 1, 2, and 3 respectively, knew it was important to highlight the cost involved before taking consent for any procedure (P > 0.05 and χ2 = 5.506). Only, 53.3%, 53.3%, and 86.7% of them from Group 1, 2, and 3, respectively, knew that there is an ethical committee in this institution. Conclusion: Participants from Group 2 and 3 have fairly more knowledge compared to participants from Group 1 where majority of the answers were not right.


This research has investigated local fair trade in Kitchener-Waterloo, seeking to determine its extent, the supports and obstacles it experiences, and the reasons people engage in it. Local fair trade combines localism with the ethical principles of fair trade, and is defined as "any business for which profit-making is a means to achievement of social goals through local action". Twenty-eight key informant interviews were conducted with local practitioners of fair trade, and with experts knowledgeable about fair trade, business, and Kitchener-Waterloo. Five follow-up interviews with practitioners added to the data on people's motivations for working in local fair trade businesses and organizations. The research revealed that many local fair trade businesses exist in Kitchener-Waterloo, but these businesses do not see themselves as connected with one another in the practice of local fair trade. No formal or informal network exists among them. The research findings indicated numerous major supports for local fair trade including: funding, volunteers, public awareness, a focus on business management, connections between producers and consumers, support from community and individuals, and action for change on multiple levels. Interestingly, the major obstacles to local fair trade were all associated with major supports. Obstacles included financial issues (high costs, low income), need for funding, difficulties with business operations, and a lack of public support, awareness, and understanding. People were motivated to work in local fair trade by a sense that what they did was "good" or "right", by a desire to work towards increasing people's economic security and human development, and because they wanted to promote sustainability, human health, and a healthy environment. The findings suggested that business issues are an ongoing source of challenge for many local fair trade businesses and organizations. They also suggested that local fair trade involves a difficult balancing act between business goals and social goals. The research highlighted a perceived need for greater public awareness and support for the goals of local fair trade, as well as, contradictorily, a sense that local fair trade would be more successful if it could reach "mainstream" consumers through good business practice (rather than shared values). The research concluded that local fair trade, while present in Kitchener-Waterloo, needs better support and promotion for existing businesses to represent a serious alternative to conventional economics. Promotion must occur on various levels, from the education of individuals to advocacy at the international level, in order to promote fair trading rules and the rights of localities to make decisions in favour of localization and of environmental protection. Promotion should also include making information on local fair trade available to prospective and current business-people, investigating a long-term solution to the problem of funding, and developing a network for local fair trade business and organizations.


Afrobarometer's regular surveys of public attitudes toward governance, democracy and economics in 18 African countries shows that experiences of crime and concerns over safety in South Africa are indeed quite prevalent, but are by no means exceptional. People in some African countries are as, or even more, fearful than South Africans, and there are several countries in which people confront crime more frequently than do South Africans. The results also show that the South African Police Service, despite having higher levels of physical and human capital than its counterparts to the north, often lags well behind in terms of transparency and community relations.


An understanding of cellular mechanoresponses to well-defined synthetic topographic features is crucial for the fundamental research and biomedical applications of stem cells. Structured biointerfaces, in particular the ones with nanometer and/or micrometer surficial features, have drawn more attention in the past few decades. However, it is still difficult to integrate nanostructures and microstructures onto the synthesized biointerfaces to mimic the hierarchical architecture of the native extracellular matrix (ECM). Herein, a series of "raspberry"-like hierarchical surfaces with well-defined nanofeatures and tunable nano/microfeatures have been achieved via a catecholic polymer coating technique. Cellular responses to these hierarchical interfaces were systemically studied, indicating that the nanofeatures on the raspberry surfaces significantly enhanced the mechanosensing of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) to interfacial physical cues. Cell mechanotransduction was further investigated by analyzing focal adhesion assembling, cytoskeleton organization, cell nuclear mechanics, and transcriptional activity. The results suggest that nanosize surficial features could increase cellular mechanosensing to environment physical cues. The mechanotransduction and cell fate specification were greatly enhanced by the ECM mimicking nano/microhierarchical biointerfaces but the features should be in an optimized size.


Built on models of 'action understanding', motor theories of expression perception propose that facial simulation, a process similar to covert imitation, aids perception and interpretation of others' facial expressions. As predicted by these accounts, some reports suggest that blocking facial mimicry impairs expression recognition. However, these reports have been criticized and motor theories remain controversial. Crucially, it remains to be determined whether the labeling errors observed reflect a loss of perceptual sensitivity - a genuine perceptual phenomenon - or whether they are a product of response bias. The current study addressed this question using a novel psychophysical paradigm, where observers judged whether smiles drawn from a morph continuum were sincere or insincere. In Experiment 1, we confirmed that cues from both the eye and mouth regions contribute to sincerity judgments. Experiment 2 measured discrimination of smile sincerity across free-viewing and blocked-mimicry conditions. In the blocked-mimicry condition, participants pronounced vowel sounds during stimulus presentation, thereby loading the motor system and preventing mimicry. Each participant's responses were modeled by fitting psychometric functions. Sensitivity to changes in smile sincerity and bias were inferred from the slope and the point of subjective equality (PSE), respectively. Motor interference significantly decreased sensitivity relative to baseline, but did systematically affect bias. Experiment 3 examined whether the motor manipulation has similar effects on judgments of facial gender, a task equated for difficulty but which is not thought to recruit motor processes. Neither slope nor PSE estimates for gender judgments were affected, indicating that the loss of sensitivity seen in Experiment 2 is relatively specific to judgments of expression and does not reflect generic distraction. These findings accord with the view that judgments of facial expression benefit from motor contributions to perception. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


With recent crime incidents at universities highlighted through the media, campus safety is of increasing importance to universities today. This research examines spatiotemporal relationships between surveyed perceptions of safety, reported incidents of crime, and exterior lighting. A GIS was used to digitize data from student surveys into digital points. Spatial analysis tools were used to convert these points into an enhanced campus perception of safety density surface. These point data were analyzed with spatial statistics tools in the CrimeStat application to examine relationships between daytime, nighttime, sexes, and other spatiotemporal characteristics. The perception points were compared with actual campus crime locations and the spatial extent of exterior illumination. The daytime perception data yielded results primarily and unexpectedly related to foot-traffic and transportation safety while the nighttime data related to more classic safety concerns. Results from this study suggest a high level of clustering of perceptions of unsafe areas but these do not necessarily correlate with areas in which crime actually occurs. However, there were similarities between poor lighting conditions and unsafe perceptions. Results from this study may potentially be used to create a safer real and perceived environment for students as well as offer a more focused crime prevention regime.


Purpose: The purpose of the study was to investigate the experiences of Japanese nurses and their adaptation to their work environment in Australia. Using a qualitative research method and semistructured interviews, the study aimed to discover, describe, and analyze the experiences of 14 Japanese nurses participating in the study. Design: A qualitative study. Method: Fourteen Japanese registered nurses working in Australian hospitals participated in the study. Individual semistructured interviews were conducted from April to June in 2008. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes within the data. Results: Analysis of qualitative open-ended questions revealed the participants' adaptation process. It consists of three themes or phases: seeking (S), acclimatizing (A), and settling (S), subsequently named the S.A.S. model. Discussion: The conceptual model of the adaptation processes of 14 Japanese nurses working in Australia includes the seeking, acclimatizing, and settling phases. Although these phases are not mutually exclusive and the process is not necessarily uniformly linear, all participants in this study passed through this S.A.S. model in order to adapt to their new environment. Implications for Practice: The S.A.S. model of adaptation helps to describe the experiences of Japanese overseas qualified nurses working in Australian hospitals. Future research is needed to examine whether this model can be applied to nurses from other countries and in other settings outside Australia.


Date Presented 04/06/19
 People with Multiple Sclerosis (PwMS) often experience executive function (EF) deficits affecting daily living. The Weekly Calendar Planning Activity (WCPA) is a recently developed tool requiring management of a cognitively challenging functional task. This study sought to validate the WCPA as an assessment of functional cognition for PwMS. We established the WCPA's discriminant, concurrent, and construct validity. Overall, it can be a useful tool to assess EF function difficulties among PwMS.
 Primary Author and Speaker: Diane Rose Allid
 Additional Authors and Speakers: Melissa Orenstein
 Contributing Authors: Yael Goverover


Supernovae are spectacular events--the death throes of stars that can be seen across the universe--and they can leave behind puzzling remnants in the form of neutron stars or black holes. In his Perspective,
 Gilmore
 discusses results reported in the same issue by
 Bietenholz
 et al.
 on the observation of a radio-emitting remnant in supernova 1986J. This unusual compact energetic object is apparently very similar to the supernova remnant in the Crab nebula, and represents the youngest neutron star or black hole associated with a supernova yet observed.


A cation exchange polymer resin embedded with magnetic nanoparticles and modified with crown ether was developed for urinalysis to rapidly monitor levels of 90Sr exposure in humans who have been involved in a nuclear event. Invention of the resin matrix of 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid cross-linked with divinylbenzene incorporated a Sr2+ chelating agent, di-tert-butyl-cyclohexano-18-crown-6 through surface immobilization using a molecular modifier 1-octanol. The performance of these magnetic cation exchange resin particles was investigated by separating 90Sr in the presence of 90Y progeny. Masking agents and precipitants were examined to ascertain that sodium hydroxide at pH 7.5 was capable of selectively removing 89 ± 2% 90Y before subsequent 90Sr uptake. Preliminary investigations in rapid urinalysis were successful in isolating 83 ± 2% 90Sr when pH was optimized to 9, with a sample turnover time <2 h, which is promising for radiological emergencies.


The MPEG-DASH standard allows the client-centric access to different representations of video content via the HTTP protocol. The client can flexibly switch between different qualities, i.e., different bit rates and thus avoid waiting times during the video playback due to empty playback buffers. However, quality switches and the playback of lower qualities is perceived by the user which may reduce the Quality of Experience (QoE). Therefore, novel algorithms are required which manage the streaming behavior with respect to the user's requirements and which do not waste network resources. As indicated by recent studies, scalable video coding (SVC) may use the current network and content distribution infrastructure in a more efficient way than with single layer codecs. The contribution of this paper is the design and the implementation of a novel DASH/SVC streaming algorithm. By means of measurements in a test-bed, its performance and benefits are evaluated and compared to existing algorithms from an user-centric view point with objective performance metrics. Our findings show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other DASH mechanisms in terms of video quality, low switching frequency and usage of the available resources in a realistic mobile network scenario. This is a first step towards true QoE management of video streaming in the Internet with DASH and SVC.


This eighth quarterly technical report discusses the progress made on a machine vision technique for determining coal content and preparations for Year-3 system deployment. Classification maps for coal have been generated and shown to two coal-mining executives. An application for licensing high-speed hyperspectral data analysis software from the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been made. Both Western Energy and Stillwater Mining Company have offered platforms for Year-3 deployment. Barretts Minerals has expressed renewed interest in using Resonon's machine vision system for identifying dolomite in their talc ore and have agreed to provide samples to the Montana Tech team.


Background: Paroxysmal movements in the form of tonic spasms, dystonia, choreoathetosis and hemidyskinesia have been reported in patient with multiple sclerosis (MS). Intracranial hypertension with headache and papilledema resembling idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) exceptionally occurs in patient with MS. Conversely, IIH may rarely present as movement disorder in children. Aims of the study: Report an unusual patient with MS and intracranial hypertension anteceded by movement disorder. Methods: Clinical examinations and ancillary diagnostic testing. Results: A 54 year old patient presented one year earlier to her diagnosis of MS with symptoms of paroxysmal kinesigenic diskinesia (PKD). Her initial neurologic examination and brain MRI were normal. A year later her examination became abnormal and her MRI showed demyelination. Her cerebrospinal fluid contained oligoclonal bands and the opening pressure was markedly elevated, in the absence of headache and papilledema. Conclusion: PKD may antecede MS and acephalgic intracranial hypertension without papilledema in exceptional patients.


This paper evaluates the production structure of the South African agricultural sector for the period 1970–1998, using a translog function. The results show that the production structure is best represented by production technology that is Hicks-neutral and homothetic. This information is useful in evaluating the results of previous research on the structure of South African agricultural production, particularly relatively recent research on elasticities of substitution. In addition, it also provides the basis for meaningful future analysis of aspects related to the production structure of agriculture.


This monograph provides a comprehensive review of the literature on competitiveness and leakage concerns associated with differentiated climate abatement commitments among countries. The literature reviewed is not exhausted, but it is sufficient to provide a balanced view of both academics and policy circles. Section 2 discusses main channels of carbon leakage. Section 3 discusses how to identify the sectors at a risk of carbon leakage. Section 4 examines ex ante estimates of potential carbon leakage rates, and explains why they differ from ex post results of environmental tax reforms and greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes that have been implemented in the European Union. Section 5 discusses broad policy options to address competitiveness and leakage concerns, and compares which anti-leakage policy, border adjustments or output-based allocation, is more effective to limiting carbon leakages or mitigating production loss in the sectors affected. Given that border carbon adjustment measures were incorporated in the U.S. proposed congressional climate bills to level the carbon playing field and could have potential conflicts with World Trade Organization (WTO) provisions and practical difficulties associated with their implementation, Section 6 discuses in great detail the WTO consistency, the effectiveness and methodological challenges of border carbon adjustment measures. The monograph ends with some concluding remarks.


Transplantation is the most regulated field in medicine and requires a detailed knowledge of the clinical as well as the non-clinical issues of a program to succeed in a highly competitive field. Organ and Tissue Transplantation is a series of seven volumes that will go over the science, the administrative and regulatory issues making a contemporary transplant program successful. The seven volumes will address separately the following: liver, kidney, pancreas, small bowel, heart, lung, and bone marrow transplantation. This series provides comprehensive reviews of the most crucial and provocative aspects of solid organ transplantation. It will be a unique source of information and guidance for the current generation of transplant surgeons that evolved from being pure clinicians into savvy administrators knowledgeable in every regulatory aspects governing transplantation. As a single transplant necessitates the effort of a large group of health care providers of different disciplines, the books in the series address the need and questions of everyone involved including surgeons, hepatologysts, anesthesiologists, palliative care specialists, immunologists, infectious disease specialists, physiatrists, radiologists, scientists, transplant coordinators, financial specialists, epidemiologists, administrators, and attorneys. Volumes in the series contain chapters covering every single aspect of the surgical operation in the donors (live and cadaver: whole and split), as well as the recipients of transplants. The pre-operative work-up, as well as the postoperative immunosuppression management, and the treatment of recurrent diseases are addressed in detail. Single chapters are dedicated to controversial issues. The series goes beyond the analysis of the formal medical and surgical aspects of transplantation and introduces deep knowledge on key aspects of contemporary transplant programs, such as physical rehabilitation, palliative care, pregnancy, the multiple requirements of regulatory agencies ruling transplantation, quality measurements for transplant programs, finance, liability and the administration of an effective transplant program. The series analyzes and reviews medical as well as surgical issues related to transplantation in all its forms. Each book dedicates sections to every subspecialty collaborating in the success of transplantation. Differently from previously published books in this field the series dissects organizational issues that are vital to the good performance of transplant programs.


OBJECTIVE
This panel study examined the relations between alcohol-specific socialization by parents (monitoring of alcohol use by children, allowing alcohol use by children at home, communicating against alcohol use and setting rules against alcohol use), general dimensions of parenting behavior (responsiveness and demandingness) and alcohol use by children.

METHOD
A sample of 488 fifth-grade children reported their perceptions of alcohol-specific socialization by parents, parental responsiveness and parental demandingness. These variables were used to predict alcohol use when children in the panel were in seventh grade.

RESULTS
Nineteen percent of seventh-grade children reported alcohol use in the past 30 days. Logistic regression analyses indicated that, after accounting for children's age, sex, single parent status, prior use of alcohol and exposure to parental modeling of alcohol use, the odds of alcohol use were significantly greater among children who perceived no parental monitoring of alcohol use, who had been allowed by parents to have a drink with alcohol at home and who perceived relatively low levels of parental demandingness. Rules against alcohol use, parental communication against alcohol use and parental responsiveness were unrelated to the study outcome.

CONCLUSIONS
Parental monitoring of alcohol use by children, family norms regarding alcohol use by children at home and parental ability to set and enforce behavioral rules merit consideration as factors that should be modified by prevention programs. There is a need, however, for additional research that further examines the relations between exposure to such parenting behaviors during childhood and alcohol use during adolescence.


Definitions of translation studies are changing. While historically focused on the process or product of translation at a national European level, new definitions by scholars such as Mukherjee, Trivedi, Cheung, and Tymoczko are expanding the parameters of translation by exploring how the field is defined in international non-European contexts — in India, China, the Arab world, for example. Other scholars, such as Cronin, Simon, Apter, and Brodzki are looking at subnational locations, including within cities, diasporic communities within cities, and even between generations within individual families in those communities. This paper looks at how translation is defined and studied in such macro- and micro-contexts in the Americas, suggesting that translation is less something that happens between national cultures and more something, especially among immigrants and linguistic minorities, that comprises the very basis upon which those cultures are constructed.


Zinnia acerosa (D.C.) Gray, is a Southwest native flowering plant frequently observed in the Trans-Pecos desert and desert grasslands of Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico. The plant is valued for producing an abundance of distinctive 2.0 cm diameter white flowers on greenish and sparsely leaved stems. Selections of Z. acerosa from West Texas are under evaluation as a water conserving plant species for use in arid landscapes of the Southwest. During April through June, Z. acerosa plants in TAMU, Dallas field plots were observed with small, brown flower spots that enlarged to include whole petals, causing conspicuous flower blighting. Microscopic examination of lesions from infected flower blossoms demonstrated the presence of short beaked, cylindrical spores near the smaller lesions on flower petals. Isolations from symptomatic flower petals consistently yielded cultures of an Alternaria sp. with long chains of conidia. Typical conidia contained 3 to 5 transverse walls and 1 to 2 longitudinal walls and measured 43 μm length by 15 μm width. The fungus was identified as A. alternata (Fries) Keissler consistent with the description in Ellis (1). Pathogenicity tests were conducted on plants maintained on a greenhouse bench by spraying spore suspensions obtained from 16-day-old A. alternata cultures on potato-dextrose agar. Inoculations produced light brown lesions on blossoms typical of field disease symptoms of the disease. This disease is important as a flower blight, however, infections on the leaves are also apparent but limited. Outbreaks of the disease are frequently observed during periods of rainfall during the summer months. This is the first report of Alternaria alternata causing a floral blight on Z. acerosa. References: (1) M. B. Ellis. 1971. Dematiaceous Hyphomycetes. Commonwealth Mycological Institute, Kew, Surrey, England.


Thirkell's research into collotype has investigated a new area of image-making in the field of fine art print. Through adapting what has historically been a highly specialized reproductive medium, a fusion of old and new has been brought to the creation and output of digitally mediated print. Collotype is a unique medium in that it renders images in continuous tone rather than the ubiquitous and cruder halftone method. The Centre for Fine Print Research's work into this process for rendering digitally mediated artists prints generated two large AHRB research grants between September 2001- March 2004. The project led to a number of innovations, namely the adaption of digital output to produce continuous tone pre-press negatives and the development of a digital method for creating the non-standard, extended colour separation method common to traditional analogue collotype. The paper outlined a number of the project's findings; these included the production of collotype compatible digital negatives, methods for making customized colour separations using digital technology and the production of traditional high quality collotype inks.

The significance of collotype and the characteristics of its inks were discussed in an interview with Thirkell on Material World, BBC Radio 4, 13 June 2002.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20020613.shtml
Paper given at Society for Imaging Science and Technology, The PICS conference, an international technical conference on the science and systems of digital photography 13-16 May 2003, paper title, A Reassessment of Past Colour Collotype, Printing Achievements as a Model for Current Digital, Archival Printing Practice, ISBN 0-89208-245-3. A further elaboration of the research was given at the 2nd International Collotype Conference, Bristol, 31 January 2005, hosted at CFPR, which brought together researchers and industrial practitioners from twelve countries including USA, Japan, Italy and Germany.


Prostate cancer is the most common type of noncutaneous cancer diagnosed in men in the United States and the second leading cause of cancer-related death. African American (AA) men are more likely to be diagnosed with and are more than twice as likely to die from prostate cancer compared to white men. The reasons for this difference are complex. While socio-economic factors and access to care may have some influence, they cannot fully explain this disparity. There is evidence of genetic factors as well as environmental, diet, and lifestyle factors being important contributors to the higher rate of prostate cancer and prostate cancer deaths in AA men. Inflammation has emerged as a potential contributory factor in both the initiation and progression of prostate cancer. Furthermore, previous studies indicate that inflammation and the overexpression of genes involved in inflammatory pathways may be more prevalent in the prostates of AA men versus white men. We hypothesize that prostatic inflammation may contribute to the increase in prostate cancer mortality rates in AA men and that the stimulus for the overexpression of genes involved in inflammatory pathways may be infectious agents. Infections, including sexually transmitted infections (STIs), can cause inflammation and, indeed, our previous studies have detected the presence of microorganisms in prostate tissue. Past infection with an STI as well as increased numbers of sexual partners are both associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer. With the advent of "metagenomic" sequencing technologies (i.e., the determination of all microbial species present in a sample using next-generation sequencing), we are now able to fully determine the variety of microbial species present in a prostate tissue sample. As an initial strategy, we are currently utilizing 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequencing to comprehensively evaluate the presence of bacterial rRNA in post-surgical prostatectomy tissue specimens from both AA and white men. The results of these analyses will be compared to presence, type, and extent of inflammation in the corresponding surgical tissue specimen and we will be developing strategies to localize microorganism(s) of interest in prostate tissues. The results of our studies stand to provide a wealth of information regarding the prostate tumor microenvironment in AA men and will begin to allow for a mechanistic understanding of the role of inflammation and infections in this prostate cancer racial disparity. Citation Format: Corey M. Porter, Shu-Han Yu, Karen Sfanos. Metagenomic studies of bacterial agents in prostate cancer racial disparities. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Seventh AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 9-12, 2014; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2015;24(10 Suppl):Abstract nr A71.


Remote sensing and geographic information science offer many pos- sibilities in terms of availability of diverse data. Some products like land cover layers or digital elevation models can be extracted from imagery and enable the realization of 3D city models. Starting from these morphological and geographical sources, an approach is proposed to extract information about urban structure types (UST), i.e. types of urban habitat at the neighborhoodscale. We propose an effective processing chain to describe UST : from the different data sources, we extract spectral and spatial indices and use them as features in a machine learning process to classify these urban structural types using support vector machine classification (SVM). Moreover, Markov Random Fields (MRF) are used to take into account the spatial distribution of the classe and increase the spatial consistency. This study focuses on the city of Munich and uses as different data sources the land cover data, the 3D city model, spectral images from LandSat TM 8 and OpenStreetMap (OSM) vector data to character- ize UST. The main hypothesis is that we can discriminate among urban structural types by using land cover information, spectral properties and 3D structure: in other words, that an industrial area won't have the same structure nor the same properties as a residential or an agricultural area. The proposed processing chain enables to predict with a precision of 70% the 11 UST. This opens possibilities to describe the urban footprint of the city, to detect the key areas for urban planification and to better understand the city dynamics.


Hydroxyl-terminated P(S-r-MMA) random copolymers with molecular weight ranging from 1.7 to 69 kg/mol and a styrene unit fraction of 61% were grafted onto a silicon oxide surface and subsequently used to study the orientation of domains with respect to the substrate, in cylinder-forming PS-b-PMMA block copolymer thin films. When the thickness (H) of the grafted layer is greater than 5−6 nm, a perpendicular orientation is always observed because of the efficient decoupling of the BCP film from the polar SiO2 surface. Conversely, if H is less than 5 nm, the critical thickness of the grafted layer, which allows the neutralization of the substrate and promotion of the perpendicular orientation of the nanodomains in the BCP film, is found to depend on the Mn of the RCP. In particular, when Mn = 1700, a 2.0 nm thick grafted layer is sufficient to promote the perpendicular orientation of the PMMA cylinders in the PS-b-PMMA BCP film.


This study is a brand-by-brand analysis of product placement within AMC's hit television drama Mad Men. Product placement is a method of advertising that places brands and products within pre-existing forms of entertainment to enhance brand sentiment. Through a methodology constructed of peer-reviewed research, four brands within the plot lines of Mad Men were analyzed to construct viewers' brand sentiment, or the viewer's takeaways on each brand based on its placement within the series. Analyzed brands included Lucky Strike Cigarettes, Hilton Hotels, Jaguar Cars, and Coca-Cola. This research confirmed the findings of Teurlings' 2011 study, which purported that placements of brands within entertainment media are perceived more positively if they are deeply ingrained within the entertainment rather than blatantly displayed as advertisements. It also confirmed Russell et al.'s 2013 study, which found viewers tend to align their attitudes toward a brand to match those of the characters.


Until now, the vegetation of seasonal wetlands in South America has only been studied on local to regional scales. A synoptic view is lacking and the distribution of vegetation types remains unknown. Hence we attempt here to detect fl oristic patterns on the spatial dimension of the subcontinent and to identify the environmental factors behind them. All plot-related fl oristic data (phytosociological relevés) available to us were collected and stored in a TURBOVEG-database. The study area included both extratropical South America (austral-temperate and subantarctic climatic zones) and the orotropical biome of the Andean Highlands, because the amphibic habitats in the two areas have some taxa in common. Tropical lowlands were more dissimilar and thus were excluded. In total we found 573 vegetation samples in 28 bibliographic sources, published between 1960 and 2008. To achieve a consistent nomenclature was a major problem, and the taxonomic treatment of a number of habitat specifi c taxa is obviously in need of improvement. Classifi cation and ordination were performed with the total data set as well as just the diagnostic taxa. The fl oristic structure was analysed using non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) and procrustes rotation techniques to compare species combinations at the species and genus levels. The interpretation of the results is limited by the substantial fl oristic and ecological heterogeneity of the data (varying plot size, plots including an inundation gradient etc.) and by the spatially uneven distribution of the data. The classifi cation revealed a higher diversity of communities than expected: 11 clusters with precise species combinations, ecology and distribution emerged from the classifi cation: A) Plagiobothryo-Acaenion platyacanthae and B) Prat ion repentis are distributed in Southern Patagonia in seasonal lagoons, respectively on inundated turfs. Moorland pools and inundated bog hollows in hard cushion mires of the Andean belt have a number of genera in common, but separate on the species level into C) Muhlenbergia fastigiata-Distichlis humilis-communities in the semi-desert highlands of NW Argentina, D) Gentiana sedifolia-Carex bonplandii and GentianoOritrophion-communities in the Super-Páramo belt of Venezuela, E) the Lilaeopsion andinae in the altiplano extending from S Peru to NE Chile and NW Argentina, and F) Limosella-communities ranging from E Bolivia to Central Andean Peru. Lakeshores in the super-forest belt of the wet tropical Andes and in the mountainous parts of extratropical South America are colonized by the Crassuletal ia peduncularis-venezuelensis (cluster G), the amphibic zone of lakes in the temperate climate of Chile and Argentina by Littorel l ion austral isand Senecioni zosteraefol i i-Eleocharietal ia-communities (cluster H). The vegetation of vernal pools in Mediterranean Chile has been poorly studied until now, but some communities are recorded from the transition zone to temperate Chile. They are grouped in Juncion planifol i i (cluster I). Seasonal wetlands in fl ooded Pampa grassland of Argentina are characterized by the Ludwigia peploides-Luziola peruviana-communities (group J). Muddy river banks of River Paraná are colonized by the Lindernio dubiae-Mecardonietum (cluster K). Strong spatial patterns emerge on the continental scale, not only from vicinismus effects of the matrix vegetation surrounding the small-scale seasonal wetlands, but also for the habitat specifi c fl ora and vegetation. The main differentiating environmental factors on large scales are macroclimatic conditions and the trophic level of the substrate. Water depth, inundation duration and germination conditions in the amphibic ecophase result in a local zonation pattern. An azonal character of seasonal wetlands becomes obvious on the super-specifi c taxonomic rank from genera, that speciated within this environment and evolved geographical vicarious species with similar niches (e.g. Isoëtes, Limosella, Ranunculus, Hypsela, Oritrophium, Littorella, Lilaeopsis, Muhlenbeckia and Crassula).


ABSTRACT Forensic mental health services provide care to people in secure psychiatric hospitals and via specialised community teams. Such services are typically low volume and high cost, often highly restrictive and average duration of inpatient care prior to discharge is long. Measuring outcomes of care is important to safeguard patients and the public, monitor progress, inform treatment plans and assist in service evaluation and planning. We describe the development in England of a new outcome measure for forensic mental health services. Patient interviews and multi-stakeholder focus groups were held to elicit key concepts. Thematic analysis was used to develop an outcomes framework. Fifteen patients participated in the interviews and 48 stakeholders in the focus groups. Six domains were identified in thematic analysis: 'about me, my quality of life, my health, my safety and risk, my life skills and my progress'. Sixty-two stakeholders participated in the first round of the Delphi process, and 49 completed round two. Eight of the top fifteen outcomes were shared between patients/carers and professionals. Based on these results, a new outcome measure, the FORensic oUtcome Measure (FORUM), was developed including both a patient reported and clinician reported measure. Further assessment of the FORUM's use to track patients' progress over time, and facilitate shared decision-making and care planning, is required.


The build-up dynamics of quantum-optical correlations in a Jaynes–Cummings model for semiconductor quantum-dot systems is characterized using the cluster-expansion scheme. Assuming an excitation with a coherent state source under strong- and weak-coupling conditions, it is found that higher-order correlations are sequentially generated. Even though the influence of dephasing hinders their development, significant correlations build up even in the presence of strong dissipation showing that quantum-spectroscopy studies are possible even in interacting many-body systems like semiconductors.


Lawyers and other commentators often remark that American courts, and particularly American juries, are prejudiced against large corporate entities. Existing empirical research attempting to confirm this suspicion is contradictory and suffers from a number of shortcomings. In this Article, Professor Kimberly Moore reexamines the issue by reporting the results of research on an original dataset of over 4000 patent cases and more than 2 million patents. The results cast substantial doubt on the hypothesis that individuals and corporations are treated identically in jury trials of patent property rights. In jury trials of patent cases between corporations and individuals, the individual won 78% of the time, with the large corporation winning in the remaining 12% of cases. Corporations and individuals won at nearly equal rates with judges. Marshaling a range of other evidence, Professor Moore explains that these results may understate the degree of bias, placing a floor but not a ceiling on the impact of anti-corporate prejudice. Although differential case quality may explain some of the win rate disparity it is unlikely to account for magnitude of the difference. Moreover, analysis of patent cases permits the exploration of related phenomena - the heroic iconization of the American inventor. As the injured tort victim is sympathetic, the American inventor is idealized for her ingenuity, productivity, and creativity. The inventor puts a face on one of the corporate entities, humanizing or personalizing the party. Hence, even in corporate versus corporate litigation, there is an individual component to every patent case and therefore an opportunity for bias to impact decision-making.