This paper proposes an efficient neural network (NN) architecture design methodology called Chameleon that honors given resource constraints. Instead of developing new building blocks or using computationally-intensive reinforcement learning algorithms, our approach leverages existing efficient network building blocks and focuses on exploiting hardware traits and adapting computation resources to fit target latency and/or energy constraints. We formulate platform-aware NN architecture search in an optimization framework and propose a novel algorithm to search for optimal architectures aided by efficient accuracy and resource (latency and/or energy) predictors. At the core of our algorithm lies an accuracy predictor built atop Gaussian Process with Bayesian optimization for iterative sampling. With a one-time building cost for the predictors, our algorithm produces state-of-the-art model architectures on different platforms under given constraints in just minutes. Our results show that adapting computation resources to building blocks is critical to model performance. Without the addition of any special features, our models achieve significant accuracy improvements relative to state-of-the-art handcrafted and automatically designed architectures. We achieve 73.8% and 75.3% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet at 20ms latency on a mobile CPU and DSP. At reduced latency, our models achieve up to 8.2% (4.8%) and 6.7% (9.3%) absolute top-1 accuracy improvements compared to MobileNetV2 and MnasNet, respectively, on a mobile CPU (DSP), and 2.7% (4.6%) and 5.6% (2.6%) accuracy gains over ResNet-101 and ResNet-152, respectively, on an Nvidia GPU (Intel CPU).


Abstratct – Most chronic non-transferable diseases result from a complex interaction among heredity and natural variables. With better living conditions and appropriation of western ways of life in developing nations, there is an expanded frequency of these diseases, the most widely recognized of which is diabetes. India being the diabetic capital need to underline on preventive techniques to lessen the occurrence of diabetes and subsequently decrease the weight on wellbeing administrations and assets of the nation. The identification of high hazard bunch like those with impeded fasting glucose focuses on the requirement for basic interventional measures to bring down the diabetic community in the nation.


Purpose: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted face to face instruction, most of the educational institutions have been obliged to continue their education through distance education without examining the conditions necessary for effective online learning The researcher who offered more than 100 class hours of English instruction realized that the students did not participate in online courses as much as expected Therefore, this study aimed to examine the level of students' online learning readiness (OLR) and the factors predicting their participation in online English courses Method: The study employed a correlational research design to discover the relationship between variables The sample included 177 students selected from the Departments of Civil Aviation and Translation and Interpreting Data were collected using a validated and reliable OLR scale This instrument was conducted as an online form, which included an additional part to obtain information about some characteristics of the sample, which were used to examine relationships Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression Findings: The findings revealed that the students had an average level of OLR The results of logistic regression analysis indicated that students' department type, previous experience in online courses, computer ownership, computer/internet self-efficacy (CIS) and motivation for learning (ML) influenced students' participation in online courses, while internet limit, self-directed learning (SDL), learner control (LC) and online communication self-efficacy (OCS) were not significant variables influencing their participation frequency Implications for Research and Practice: Further research was suggested to examine the relationship between different predictors and the outcome variable It was suggested to take actions to maximize students' participation for more learning gains © 2021 Ani Publishing Ltd All rights reserved


For centuries, identity has been an important existential issue, because it organizes human relation with the world. Identity is not only one man's being in a biological sense, but the principle of social and cultural order. The identity is the self-awareness, the result of the social actor's involvement in a variety of network connections which are forming a human being together with the biological dimension. Thus, the identity, on the one hand, is a kind of Erikson's tradition, namely the sense of being human, on the other hand interactionist tradition, modification of identity through a process of interaction. Contemporary world, the world of confronting cultures, raises the need for analysis of identity within many cultures, which has been shaped by continuous contact with different values, norms, patterns of behaviour. Upper Silesia has been our empirical reference point for the discussion on social (regional) identity. Identity of Upper Silesia is the result of a long and complicated history and present day. This identity is created by Polish, German, Czech and Jewish a cultural elements.


Discrete mathematics, you may be disappointed to discover, is not the sort of stuff you talk about discreetly, in secretive whispers behind closed doors. It can be discussed in public by anyone; it has lots of important everyday connections. The term discrete means separate or disconnected; its opposite is continuous. Discrete mathematics deals with non-continuous quantitative phenomena — activities as mundane as counting objects and as arcane as ana-lyzing the output of a Turing machine. It also includes familiar topics like functions, but it explores their structural algebraic features and examines them with respect to computational complexity; matters connected to continuity or differentiability are left for analytic geometry and calculus. As a field of mathematics, discrete mathematics is both very old and very new. Counting and basic arithmetic, of course, go back to pre-historic times. The rise of discrete mathematics in recent decades, however, is a result of the increased power and ongoing development of computer technology. Concepts and results in discrete mathematics provide the mathematical foundation for computer science. In return, computer science supplies crucial stimuli and resources for important contemporary developments and applications in discrete mathematics. Discrete mathematics is a field every computer scientist should know about, and one that today's mathematicians should be familiar with as well. This textbook is written for students in both majors. While the primary focus here is on mathematics, we will investigate topics that are crucial for computer science as well.


This study presents the development of a 3-fluid microfluidic device for the application in immunoassays. The test uses a microfluidic valve in order to sequentially load the reagents autonomously onto the detection area after adding the sample. The development of the multi-fluid circuit allows the application of an enzyme-linked assay in a lateral flow device as to provide with an improved sensitivity compared to strip tests available on the market. For fabricating the channels of the device, a wax printer was used. The layers were attached using double-sided tape. In order to advance the reliability of the device, new fabrication method were applied in this study. After optimizing parameters such as reagent concentrations, reagent volumes and the dimensions of the device, a calibration curve using rabbit IgG was created. The limit of detection was then obtained. Furthermore a housing for the device was developed. By compressing the microfluidic valve, an improved reliability of the valves was obtained. For the goal of an autonomously running device, a reagent storage was incorporated into the housing. The reagent storage provides with the ability to operate the test without additional interference after adding the sample. Based on the results of this study, an improved lateral flow test was obtained. The developed 3-fluid device using an enzyme-linked assay is able to detect rabbit IgG down to a concentration of 4.7 ng/ml. This results in a limit of detection better than in a conventional ELISA conducted on microtiter–plates (8.6 ng/ml). Advantages such as lower reagent volumes, lower time to result and biodegradability of materials used during the development of this device were achieved.


Ablation driven by intense, femtosecond laser pulses offers a novel route to fabrication of nanometer-sized particles. I model particle formation by considering the hydrodynamics of material expansion into vacuum. Modeling reveals rapid material dilution and cooling. Vacuum expansion is found to quench the ejected material 1–3 orders of magnitude more efficiently than thermal conduction quenches the residual bulk surface. Efficient quenching implies that solid-phase particles are produced rapidly (in ≪1 ns) following laser excitation; this may allow unique material states to be frozen within the ejected particles. Finally, the mean particle size is estimated to range from ∼1 to ∼10 nm for initial lattice temperatures ranging from 0.3 to 10 eV.


Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease caused by infection of  Schistosoma japonicum, S. haematobium, S. mansoni, S. mekongi, and S. intercalatum. It is transmitted to definitive host through cercaria contaminated water. In Indonesia, schistosomiasis was caused by S. japonicum which can be found in endemic areas at Lindu, Napu, and Bada highland. Schistosomiasis can infect all people regardless their age. If untreated, it leads to a chronic condition. Children who are infected will have a growth and cognitive problem and even death. The transmission of schistosomiasis cannot be separated from people behavior. This study aimed to identify the relationship between behavior of elementary student and schistosomiasis settle in Lindu, Sigi District, Central Sulawesi for eight months from March to December 2014. This was an observational study with a cross-sectional design. The data were collected by stool sampling and interview on elementary students. Stool samples were examined by Kato-Katz method. The chi-square analysis showed that there was no relationship between bathing habits, defecation habits, and using boots to schistosomiasis.


Despite the major advances in conventional forms of treatment (i.e. surgical techniques, radiotherapy and chemotherapy) and improved survival rates, cancer is still the second leading cause of death in developing countries. One major limitation of cytotoxic drugs and radiation in the treatment of cancer patients is their inability to discriminate between malignant and normal tissues. This in turn prevents the delivery of the optimal (therapeutic) dose of such agents to malignant tissues for their eradication. With the advent of hybridoma technology in 1975, it has been possible for the first time to produce large amounts of an antibody (i.e. monoclonal antibody) against any antigens of interest. Since each antibody is highly specific for a particular antigen, this typical feature of the antibodies has resulted in their widespread use in diagnostic kits, medical research (e.g. to unravel the function of the antigen in physiological and pathological conditions), and more recently, for the management of a wide range of human diseases such as autoimmune disease and human cancers. Thanks to recent advances in genetic engineering, the immunogenicity of rodent antibodies was reduced by producing the chimeric or humanized version of such antibodies or by developing the fully human antibodies. In other instances, as intact antibodies are too large for rapid penetration into solid tumours, it has been possible to develop a smaller fragment of such antibodies (e.g. Fab, scFv, VHH) with greater potential for use in cancer imaging and therapy. Depending on the target antigens and the antibody format, monoclonal antibodies can induce their anti-tumour activities by several mechanisms including activation of the host effector cells. To date, several mAbs have been approved for management of human cancers including: anti-EGFR antibody cetuximab and anti-VEGF antibody bevacizumab for treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer, anti-HER-2 antibody trastuzumab for metastatic breast cancer, anti-CD20 antibodies rituximab and ibritumomab tituxetan for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, antiCD52 antibody alemeutumab for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, and anti-CD33 antibody gemutuzumab ozogamicin for the treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia patients. Monoclonal antibodies currently account for about 30% of all new drugs in development, with more than 500 antibodies at different stages of clinical trials worldwide. In this review, the characteristic features of some of the therapeutic antibodies and the antigens recognised by such antibodies will be discussed as well as several challenges that need to be addressed in order to facilitate their widespread use as "magic bullets" in the management of human diseases and in particular human cancers.


Object of Research which at the same time become the problem of this research is What becoming base consideration of Attorney in conducting criminal prosecution at perpetrator of rape doing an injustice that happened to child? How evaluation punish human right (HAM) to base consideration of Attorney demand in case rape of child? While method the used is descriptive of analysis, where if needed archive and relevant have succeeded to be mustered by hence the archive analysed descriptively analysis, that is facts explaining of empiric found in field to be compiled systematically later; then the data analysed and correlation with archive of scond existing and pulled by conclusion utilize to get answer of problems which have been lifted. Pursuant to result of research,. Consideration of the Attorney is Consideration of Yuridis, good of and also formal of materil and Consideration of Sosiologis. As for hitting base consideration of prosecution by yuridis formal relate at rule of Section 183 Jo. 184 KUHAP verification termite, that is with at least there are two valid evidence appliance hence base consideration of attorney by yuridis formal earn dikatakn meet the eye punish and human right. While consideration of yuridis by materil will see at doing an injustice elements which is asserted in inspection in conference. For the consideration of prosecution by sosiologis, this matter concerning at assessment or idea of feeling of Attorney to defendant in the court. Pursuant of all the result of research, JPU not attantion yet of human right.


A classified listing of books, articles, directories, pamphlets, and other material of interest to the readers of the New Outlook for the Blind, prepared by the editors. Please write to the source listed in each entry if copies or more information is desired; the materials are not available from the New Outlook or the American Foundation for the Blind.


Most organizations have innovated their distribution strategy and adopted a multichannel strategy. The success of this strategy depends to a large extent on the adoption of new channels by the consumer. This research aims to build a model that explains consumer multichannel behavior. It gives answers to the question which factors influence the use of a new ICT enabled channel. The central question in this thesis is: What factors explain consumer channel choice in an ICT enabled multichannel configuration, therewith finding an explanation for the trial, adoption and choice of a new channel? This main question leads to three sub questions that will be answered in this thesis: Which theories can be used to find the factors that explain the trial, adoption and choice of an ICT enabled channel by customers in a multichannel configuration? Is it possible to arrive at a model based on these theories that explains the use of ICT enabled channels? Can this model can be confirmed empirically?


The discussion of new tests of relativity must begin with a definition of the word new. Included, under that rubric, not only tests that have never been attempted before or never produced a useful result, but also those that may be repeated with significantly improved results. Thus, the classical tests insofar as they have been recently refined are discussed and the results are given obtained at the Center for Astrophysics (CFA). A new test of relativity is described via the detection of the de Sitter precession of the Moon's orbit. These tests, when considered in the parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) framework, have all involved determining combinations of beta and gamma. A further topic of consideration is that of old data. In attempting to improve a test of relativity, particularly when the effect to be discerned is a secular one, such as the relativistic perihelion advance of Mercury, it is important to maintain the original set of data, so that the experiment need not start all over.


We tested the effects on problem-solving, anxiety and depression of 12-week group-based self-management cancer rehabilitation, combining comprehensive physical training (PT) and cognitive-behavioural problem-solving training (CBT), compared with PT. We expected that PT + CBT would outperform PT in improvements in problem-solving (Social Problem-Solving Inventory-Revised (SPSI-R)), anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)), and that more anxious and/or depressed participants would benefit most from adding CBT to PT. Cancer survivors (aged 48.8 ± 10.9 years, all cancer types, medical treatment completed) were randomly assigned to PT + CBT (n = 76) or PT (n = 71). Measurement occasions were: before and post-rehabilitation (12 weeks), 3- and 9-month follow-up. A non-randomised usual care comparison group (UCC) (n = 62) was measured at baseline and after 12 weeks. Longitudinal intention-to-treat analyses showed no differential pattern in change between PT + CBT and PT. Post-rehabilitation, participants in PT and PT + CBT reported within-group improvements in problem-solving (negative problem orientation; p < 0.01), anxiety (p < 0.001) and depression (p < 0.001), which were maintained at 3- and 9-month follow-up (p < 0.05). Compared with UCC post-rehabilitation, PT and PT + CBT only improved in anxiety (p < 0.05). CBT did not add to the effects of PT and had no extra benefits for higher distressed participants. PT was feasible and sufficient for durably reducing cancer survivors' anxiety.


In this letter, we introduce an hidden Markov model (HMM)-based inversion system to recovery articulatory movements from speech acoustics. Trajectory HMMs are used as generative models for modelling articulatory data. Experiments on the MOCHA-TIMIT corpus indicate that the jointly trained acoustic-articulatory models are more accurate (lower RMS error) than the separately trained ones, and that trajectory HMM training results in greater accuracy compared with conventional maximum likelihood HMM training. Moreover, the system has the ability to synthesize articulatory movements directly from a textual representation.


Persistent poverty and rapid urbanization are important development challenges in most African countries. Although the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in Africa could be reduced over the last few decades, the absolute number of people living below the poverty line continues to rise. At the same time, the share of people living in urban areas has significantly increased since the 1950s, reaching 43% of the total African population in 2017. Strong population growth and urbanization tendencies are both expected to continue in Africa over the next couple of decades. Up till now, food insecurity in Africa was often looked at primarily as a rural issue. Recent trends suggest that a closer look at urban food insecurity and dietary patterns is also warranted. More than in rural areas, urban food consumption is immediately connected to cash income earnings. Other factors that determine urban diets and nutrition include access to good infrastructure, adequate housing, healthcare, and other basic services. However, many of the urban poor live in informal settlements (slums) where they have inadequate access to basic facilities. Slum households are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, unbalanced diets, and poor nutrition and health. A recent additional facet that may affect urban diets in Africa is the food system transformation with a rapid rise of supermarkets and other modern retailers. Previous research has shown that the modernization of the food retail sector can influence consumer nutrition, but whether or not this is already true also for the urban poor is not yet sufficiently understood.
In this dissertation, we analyze food sources and consumption patterns of the urban poor in Africa. In particular, we use cross-section survey data that we collected ourselves from 600 households in the poorest neighborhoods of Nairobi and Kampala, the capital cities of Kenya and Uganda. Nairobi and Kampala are among the largest cities in East Africa. In both countries, over 50% of the urban population is estimated to live in slums. Data were collected using a carefully pretested questionnaire with various sections, including a module on household income sources and food consumption modules at household and individual levels for female adults and children. Household-level food consumption data were collected through a 7-day recall; at the individual level a 24-hour dietary recall was used. We also developed and conducted a choice experiment to elicit consumers' preferences for nutritionally enhanced foods.
The dissertation contains three essays. In the first essay, we use multiple indicators derived from the household- and individual-level data to analyze food security and dietary quality among slum dwellers in Nairobi and Kampala. Very little is known about the diets of slum dwellers as they are often underrepresented in standard household surveys. Given the breadth of data collected, we also compare different indicators. Such comparison can help, for instance, to identify which household-level indicators can be used as proxies for individual diets in situations where individual-level data are unavailable. Our analysis is based on 600 households (300 in Nairobi, 300 in Kampala), 600 children aged 6-59 months (300 in Nairobi, 300 in Kampala) and 582 women aged 15-49 years (299 in Nairobi, 282 in Kampala). Results show that in both cities around 90% of the slum dwellers are food insecure in terms of at least one of the indicators used. Thirty-one percent of the households in Nairobi and 59% in Kampala are undernourished in a calorie sense. Many more have inadequate access to food quantity and quality, at least temporarily. Moreover, a significant proportion of children and women remain below minimum recommended levels of dietary diversity. We find a strong correlation between the different dietary indicators, concluding that household-level indicators can be used as proxies for the diets of women and children when individual-level data are unavailable. Regression analyses confirm that cash income plays a significant role for food security and dietary quality irrespective of the indicator used. People with more stable salaried employment are better off than people who depend on casual employment alone.
In the second essay, we pay particular attention to households' food purchase patterns against the background of the increasing role of supermarkets in urban food retailing. Existing studies show that supermarkets may improve access to diverse foods at affordable prices, but may also encourage a switch from unprocessed to highly-processed and energy-dense foods, thus contributing to overweight and obesity. However, the use of supermarkets in developing countries is positively correlated with household income. Hence, what is true for middle- and upper-income consumers is not necessarily true for low-income consumers. Using our data from urban slum dwellers in Nairobi and Kampala we find that very few of these households actually buy any of their food in supermarkets. Supermarkets account for only 3% and 0.4% of all food expenditures by the urban poor in Nairobi and Kampala, respectively. These households buy most food items in unprocessed form from various traditional retail outlets, including mom-and-pop shops, local markets, and kiosks. We discuss reasons for the low supermarket use of these population segments, and conclude that a focus on the modern retail sector alone will not suffice to ensure food and nutrition security for all.
In the third essay, we analyze poor consumers' preferences for nutritionally enhanced foods using choice-experimental data from the slum households in Nairobi and Kampala. Previous studies have shown that micronutrient fortification and other food-based approaches, such as using more nutritious ingredients in food processing, could help alleviate micronutrient malnutrition. However, little is known about poor consumers' attitudes towards nutritionally enhanced foods. Would poor consumers purchase foods with more nutritious ingredients, even when nutrition knowledge is limited? And are poor consumers able and willing to pay more for nutritionally enhanced products? We use the example of porridge flour, a widely purchased product among poor urban households in East Africa, to analyze the acceptance of different types of nutritional attributes. Our findings show that consumers generally welcome products that are micronutrient-fortified or include new types of nutritious ingredients. However, willingness to pay for nutritional attributes is small. New ingredients that are perceived to have little effect on taste and appearance are seen more positively than ingredients that may change the product more notably.
Based on these findings, we draw several conclusions. (i) A large proportion of the urban poor are food insecure and their diets are largely characterized by consumption of starchy staples with low intake of nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables. Access to adequate and nutritious food is largely constrained by lack of income and lucrative employment. Food and nutrition programs should have a particular focus on vulnerable slum dwellers. (ii) Simple, cost-effective and easy to collect household-level food security and dietary diversity indicators can be used where more detailed individual-level dietary data are not available. (iii) A focus on the modern retail sector alone will not suffice to ensure food and nutrition security for all. The efficiency of traditional food supply chains will also have to be improved to help reduce costs along the supply chains and thus market prices for the end-consumer, (iv) Enhancing the nutrition content of foods using industrial and related food-based approaches could improve access to more nutritious foods among the urban poor. However, such foods should build on local consumption behavior and should not be associated with significant price increases.


Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is an inherited ion channelopathy resulting in abnormal ventricular repolarization and abnormal prolongation of QT interval on the ECG. Syncope, fainting, cardiac arrest, and sudden death are common manifestations of LQTS. We present a case report that describes a patient with prolonged QT interval after extrasystoles and a family history of sudden cardiac deaths. Electronic Physician 2010; Vol 2, Pages 104-108


Much of the first day's route is spent in travelling in a southerly direction through desert basins to Chihuahua City (Fig. 1). Numerous ranges are visible from the roadside and some stops are scheduled for description of lithologies and structures, particularly where mapping has been accomplished. Of particular interest is the lower Cretaceous in Sierra del Presidio and Banco Lucero, Los Medanos (dune field), Sierra La Candelaria and Sierra El Kilo intrusions, and the Tertiary volcanic stratigraphy of Sierra Gallego (near El Sueco), Sierra El Nido, Sierra de La Campana, and Sierra Sacramento. The Sierra de Samalayuca, near the community of the same name, has been considered by some to be Early Jurassic or Paleozoic in age, and it consists of weakly-metamorphosed sediments in an anticlinal structure.

The underground visit to the manto and breccia-pipe deposits at the Potosi mine, West Camp, Santa Eulalia completes the day.

0.0 Buenos dias. Proceed north on Santa Fe Street.

0.1 Turn right on frontage road (Wyoming) and proceed eastward through 4 traffic lights.

0.9 Join I-10, travelJing east, passing Southern Pacific railroad yards.

2.2 Pass Southern Pacific railroad yards on right. Continue east on I-10; keep in right lane. At 9:00 is southern flank of Franklin Mountains, where Bliss Sandstone is overlain by Ordovician strata (Fig. 2), and the El Paso Group overlies a Precambrian (Red Bluff) crystalline complex. The tectonic style of the Franklin Mountains comprises a north-trending, west-dipping, tilted fault block typical of Basin and Range structure (see Lovejoy, 1980).

The Rio Grande Valley is aligned from northwest to southeast, but curves prominently between Cerro Cristo Rey and the Southern Franklin Mountains, forming El Paso del Norte. Between the Franklin Mountains and the Hueco Mountains (to the east) lies the Hueco Bolson ; a relatively flat valley which is filled with sand and silts and is the major source of El Paso's water supply.

The Franklin Mountains range is linear, extending from its southern limit near central El Paso, north and slightly west for approximately 24 km, to a point about 6 km north of the Texas New Mexico boundary. The range is roughly 5 km wide. The highest point, North Franklin, or Cabeza de Vaca Peak, is approximlately 2,390 m above sea level. Precambrian igneous rocks comprise North Franklin Peak, making it the area of greatest structural relief in the state of Texas.

The oldest rocks exposed in


Abstract Barikaite, ideally Pb10Ag3(Sb8As11)∑19S40, is a new mineral species from the Barika Au-Ag deposit, Azarbaijan Province, western Iran. It was formed in fractures developed in silica bands situated in massive banded pyrite and baryte ores. These fractures house veinlets that contain a number of Ag-As- Sb-Pb-rich sulfosalts, tetrahedrite-tennantite, realgar, pyrite and electrum. Barikaite appears as inclusions in guettardite. The mineral is opaque, greyish black with a metallic lustre; it is brittle without any discernible cleavage. In reflected light barikaite is greyish white, pleochroism is distinct, white to dark grey. Internal reflections are absent. In crossed polars, anisotropism is distinct with rotation tints in shades of grey. The reflectance data (%, in air) are: 37.0, 39.3 at 470 nm, 34.1, 36.9 at 546 nm, 33.1, 36.2 at 589 nm and 31.3, 34.1 at 650 nm. The Mohs hardness is 3-3½, microhardness VHN50 exhibits the range 192-212, with a mean value of 200 kg mm-2. The average results of five electron-microprobe analyses in a grain are (in wt.%): Pb 35.77(33), Ag 5.8(1), Tl 0.15(08), Sb 18.33(09), As 15.64(16), S 24.00(15), total 99.69(10) wt.%, corresponding to Pb9.31Ag2.90Tl0.04(Sb8.12As11.26)∑19.36S40.37 (on the basis of 32Me + 40S = 72 a.p.f.u.). The simplified formula, Pb10Ag3(Sb8As11)∑19S40, is in accordance with the results of a crystal-structure analysis, and requires Pb 37.89, Ag 5.91, Sb 17.79, As 15.05 and S 23.42 (wt.%). The variation of chemical composition is minor, the empirical formula ranging from Pb10.39Ag2.32Tl0.02Sb7.52As11.27S40.49 to Pb9.24Ag2.93Tl0.04Sb8.13As11.35S40.31. Barikaite has monoclinic symmetry, space group P21/n and unit-cell parameters a 8.5325(7) Å, b 8.0749(7) Å, c 24.828(2) Å, and β 99.077(6)°, Z = 1. Calculated density for the empirical formula is 5.34 (g cm-3). The strongest eight lines in the (calculated) powder-diffraction pattern [d in Å (I)(hkl)] are: 3.835(63)(022), 3.646(100)(016), 3.441(60)(212), 3.408(62)(2̄14), 2.972(66)(2̄16), 2.769(91)(222), 2.752(78)(4̄24) and 2.133(54)(402). Barikaite is the N = 4 member of the sartorite homologous series with a near-equal role of As and Sb, which have an ordered distribution pattern in the structure. It is a close homeotype of rathite and more distantly related to dufrénoysite (both distinct, pure arsenian N = 4 members) and it completes the spectrum of Sb-rich members of the sartorite homologous series. The new mineral and its name have been approved by the IMA-CNMNC (IMA 2012-055).


Modern New Zealand society relies on the ability to use a number of different resources in order to function effectively. The continued existence of that society therefore requires a continued supply of those resources. Sustainable management, which focuses on enabling present generations to satisfy their needs and wants without adversely affecting the ability of future generations to do the same, is a key concept in ensuring the continued supply of resources. It also reinforces the fact that human society is linked with and has an impact on the functioning of numerous ecosystems. The concept of sustainable management highlights the effects of present decisions on the resource in question and on the linkages that those decisions have with other resources and other aspects of the functioning of the environment and society. One of the key resources that is affected by the concept of sustainable management is energy. New Zealand society is totally dependent on energy to enable it to continue to function as it does at present. It is therefore important to ensure that there is a sustainable supply of energy that will continue to meet the foreseeable needs of New Zealand energy consumers, without causing significant adverse effects on the other matters that comprise a sustainable society. Some form of monitoring must be undertaken to determine whether energy is being managed sustainability. This thesis seeks to establish a regime of indicators to monitor energy use in New Zealand in terms of the major tenets of sustainability and to apply those indicators to the New Zealand energy system in order to assess the current state of energy use in New Zealand. There are two stages to achieving the aims of this thesis. The first is to establish the scope of the monitoring programme. This process involved a number of steps. First was a literature review of various formulations of the criteria of effective indicator design and the establishment of a set of criteria that collated this work. A further literature review was undertaken to establish the key tenets of energy sustainability. A survey was then undertaken of the monitoring regimes that are presently in operation or are being developed in New Zealand and around the world. Given the base information that was provided by the reviews and the survey, the next step was the development of the indicators themselves. The final stage of the thesis was an application of those indicators that could be developed within the constraints of existing data collection regimes. The results of this process clearly demonstrate that New Zealand is on an unsustainable energy path. Most of the indicators demonstrate a movement to an unsustainable state. Specific indicators that show this trend are the level of carbon dioxide emissions, energy intensity, renewable energy use, reliance on imported oil products, total primary energy supply (that is, total energy use) and household expenditure on energy. Although the levels of economic rent being earned by ECNZ are high, it is difficult to form a conclusion about this indicator as it is uncertain how these profits are used once they are paid into the consolidated fund. While real energy prices are decreasing, a number of the benefits of this decrease are being lost as consumption levels increase. As well as providing an insight into the nature of energy use in New Zealand, this thesis highlights a number of issues concerning the state of information concerning indicator development, energy sustainability and the state of energy data collection in New Zealand. There is an abundance of information available concerning indicator development, so much so, that there is little to be gained from developing the issue further. By contrast, there is iii a paucity of detailed information concerning energy sustainability. The majority of that information either focuses on one issue in great detail or takes a very generalised global picture. What is needed is information that fits between these two levels, so that multiobjective sustainable energy management policies can be developed. The most serious concern is however directed at the state of the energy statistics that are available. There are numerous omissions from the data that is available and numerous inconsistencies. Specific matters to be addressed focus on increasing the subject cover;J.ge and the geographic coverage of the data. The time periods that data applies to and the consistency of the collection also need attention.


Cloud computing is envisioned as the next generation architecture of IT enterprises, providing convenient remote access to massively scalable data storage and application services. While this outsourced storage and computing paradigm can potentially bring great economical savings for data owners and users, its benefits may not be fully realized due to wide concerns of data owners that their private data may be involuntarily exposed or handled by cloud providers. Although end-to-end encryption techniques have been proposed as promising solutions for secure cloud data storage, a primary challenge toward building a full-fledged cloud data service remains: how to effectively support flexible data utilization services such as search over the data in a privacy-preserving manner. In this article, we identify the system requirements and challenges toward achieving privacy-assured searchable outsourced cloud data services, especially, how to design usable and practically efficient search schemes for encrypted cloud storage. We present a general methodology for this using searchable encryption technique, which allows encrypted data to be searched by users without leaking information about the data itself and users' queries. In particular, we discuss three desirable functionalities of usable search operations: supporting result ranking, similarity search, and search over structured data. For each of them, we describe approaches to design efficient privacy-assured searchable encryption schemes, which are based on several recent symmetric-key encryption primitives. We analyse their advantages and limitations, and outline the future challenges that need.to be solved to make such secure searchable cloud data service a reality.


Communication between humans deeply relies on the capability of expressing and recognizing feelings. For this reason, research on human-machine interaction needs to focus on the recognition and simulation of emotional states, prerequisite of which is the collection of affective corpora. Currently available datasets still represent a bottleneck for the difficulties arising during the acquisition and labeling of affective data. In this work, we present a new audio-visual corpus for possibly the two most important modalities used by humans to communicate their emotional states, namely speech and facial expression in the form of dense dynamic 3-D face geometries. We acquire high-quality data by working in a controlled environment and resort to video clips to induce affective states. The annotation of the speech signal includes: transcription of the corpus text into the phonological representation, accurate phone segmentation, fundamental frequency extraction, and signal intensity estimation of the speech signals. We employ a real-time 3-D scanner to acquire dense dynamic facial geometries and track the faces throughout the sequences, achieving full spatial and temporal correspondences. The corpus is a valuable tool for applications like affective visual speech synthesis or view-independent facial expression recognition.


The in-cylinder combustion dynamics of spark-ignition (SI) engines involves a complex
interaction of physical and chemical processes. Despite significant progress In the
numerical simulation of these phenomena with computational fluid dynamics (CFD),
there is a need for generalised models to describe the emission, absorption and scattering
of thermal radiation within the 'participating' combustion gases. Therefore, the present
work advances the predictive capability of nurnerical methods for radiation transport in
participating media for inclusion into an established finite-volume CFD code.
The research focuses on three radiation methods: discrete transfer, YIX and a pathlengthbased
Monte Carlo algorithm. The three-dimensional formulation and coding of each
method combines the best available knowledge from heat transfer, statistical and graphics
literature. In particular, the tracing and searching of complex arbitrary geometries utilises
an efficient ray-triangle intersection algorithm in a novel way to handle cell face distortion
and edge intersections with minimum computation. A new general weighted-sum-ofgray-
gases model (WSGG) is implernented in order to first resolve the spectral (nongray)
dependence of high-temperature gas radiative properties prior to solution by one of the
three radiation methods.
The present methods are first verified against published benchmark solutions for radiating
media in the absence of other modes of heat transfer. Subsequently, the discrete transfer-
WSGG model is coupled with the engine-specific CFD code KIVA-11 for studies of the
flow field, flame propagation and infrared emission in pancake and pentroof SI engines.
Here, the Favre-averaged Navier-Stokes, energy and radiation conservation equations are
solved over a nonorthogonal, curvilinear mesh of arbitrary hexahedrons, body-fitted to the
combustion chamber geometry. Flexible algebraic and elliptic mesh generation tools are
developed for this purpose. Additional k-F- turbulence terms for variable density flows,
the EDC model for mixing-controlled combustion, the Shell model for auto-ignition and
the capability to simulate ports and valves with wave action are new features added to
KIVA-11 to ensure a good description of the turbulent, chemically reacting flow field as a
basis for the radiation studies. Comparisons with experimental measurements from optical
engine studies are presented.


Now in its third edition, the classic book on game design has been completely revised to include the latest developments in the game industry. Readers will learn all the fundamentals of concept development, gameplay design, core mechanics, user interfaces, storytelling, and balancing. Theyll be introduced to designing for mobile devices and touch screens, as well as for the Kinect and motion-capture gameplay. Theyll learn how indie developers are pushing the envelope and how new business models such as free-to-play are influencing design. In an easy-to-follow approach, Adams offers a first-hand look into the process of designing a game, from initial concept to final tuning. This in-depth resource also comes with engaging end-of-chapter exercises, design worksheets, and case studies.


The assembly of cells into functional organs requires the coordination of cell shape and polarity with organ architecture. Although defects in cell shape and polarity can lead to human disease, the in vivo regulation of these processes during organ formation is poorly understood. In this thesis, I used the Caenorhabditis elegans pharynx as an in vivo model to study organogenesis. Similar to many human organs, the pharynx is a tube formed from a monolayer of polarized epithelial cells that surround a central lumen. The pharyngeal lumen develops midway through embryogenesis when cells polarize along a central axis to form an epithelial cyst. Using live cell imaging, I found that cyst development is preceded by the grouping of pharyngeal precursors into a bilaterally symmetric intermediate. The organization of cells into this bilateral intermediate requires the POP-1/TCF cell fate pathway and the pharyngeal organ identity factor PHA-4/FoxA. Cyst formation begins when cells within the bilateral structure undergo a mesenchymal to epithelial transition and localize apical polarity determinants along their inner surfaces. These inner surfaces then constrict, creating the central lumen. I found that laminin, an integral basement membrane component, is required to define the axis of pharyngeal polarity. In luminin mutants, cells develop inverted polarity and constrict their outer surfaces, resulting in multiple pharyngeal lumens. After cyst formation, pharyngeal cells adopt highly reproducible morphologies. A previous ultrastructural study found that two cells, called pm8 and vpil, develop into toroidally shaped single-cell tubes. By combining live cell microscopy with genetic analysis, I showed that pm8 and vpil form toroids via a novel mechanism: They wrap around the midline and then self-fuse, thereby creating an intracellular lumen. The self-fusion of pm8 and vpil into toroids requires fusogens and activation of the Notch signaling pathway in pm8. Thus organogenesis of the pharynx requires sequential action of global, tissue-level signals, such as laminin, and local, cell-specific signals, such as Notch.


Waves play an important role in shoreline configuration. The wave pattern can
induce erosion and sedimentation. Wave pattern studies using radar imagery have a
potential application for coastal areas. This study investigates if the shoreline change
can be modeled by wave spectra information extracted from radar images. The study
area is Kuala Terengganu, located on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia.
Mathematical modeling was carried out to extract wave spectra from radar
(ERS-l and AIRSARfTOPSAR) data. The two-dimension Fast Fourier Transform (2-
DFFI) was applied over selected windows on radar data. The results of the transform
were wavelength and power spectra. The quasi-linear modulation model was used to
map the radar wave spectra to ground-truth wave spectra to obtain the actual wave spectra. The result showed that there was a significant difference between the quasilinear
model and the velocity bunching model. It suggests that the AIRSARffOPSAR
data are better than ERS-l data for wave spectra investigation. This is probably because
the Doppler shift effects are smaller in AIRSARffOPSAR data than in ERS-ldata.
The wave spectra information was then used to predict shoreline change based
on wave refraction and sediment transport. Both the wave spectra pattern derived from
radar data and the wave spectra change derived from ship observations, were used to
model the shoreline sedimentation and erosion pattern. Actual shoreline change was
estimated from remotely sensed data by using vectorization, overlaying techniques and
field measurements. The estimated shoreline change gave a rate of erosion along
Chendering of 3.5 m/year between 1959 and 1994. The rate of erosion was 1 m/year
along the Sultan Mahmud Airport shoreline between 1970 and 1996. The areas of
erosion are similar to observations made in the field. The predicted shoreline change,
from wave modeling, gave a rate of erosion from Batu Burok to Batu Rakit of less than
2 m/year and a rate of erosion to the south of Chendering of 4 m/year. The predicted and
estimated result showed that the shoreline south of Chendering was always dominated
by erosion throughout the year. However, overall, the beach changes along the
Terengganu shoreline studied was in a state of equilibrium. The periods of erosion were
balanced by periods of accretion.
In conclusion, radar data (ERS-I and AIRSARffOPSAR) can be used to extract
wave spectra for shoreline change modeling. Verification can be done with the
assistance of other sources of data such as ship observation, ground truth data, aerial
photography, other remotely sensed data, beach profiling, and sediment sampling. The combination of classical techniques, predictive modeling methods, and remote sensing
technology as used in this study allows for better understanding of the interaction
between ocean wave and shoreline change over a larger spatial scale and in a shorter
time frame.


Enzymes are protenic in nature, which catalyses the formation of product from specific substrate. Enzymes plays important role in many bioconversion processes. Hydrolytic enzymes are the enzymes which catalyze the hydrolysis of a chemical bond of the substrate. Lasparaginase is an antileuckemic enzyme which specifically targets cancerous cells in the human body. It converts L-asparagine into L-aspartic acid and releases ammonia. In the current study L-asparaginase producing isolates were screened from Water samples of Lonar Lake, Buldhana, Maharashtra. The maximum L-asparaginase producing isolate was found to be Gordonia terrae strain 5-Sj-4-3-2-M by 16sRNA sequencing. Along with L-asparaginase production the isolates potential to produce other hydrolytic extracellular enzymes like protease, amylase, esterase, lipase, inulinase, L-glutaminase was checked qualitatively. Gordonia terrae strain 5-Sj-4-3-2-M was found positive for all the enzymes except esterase.


It is widely accepted that today's technological world is moving in a much more speed than the past, which requires the skill of keeping up with the pace of change. This change and innovation is a must for all organizations. According to Shen (2008, p.73), this change is trickier in the educational context, where "the nature of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of those involved and the way that these are expressed in action" is of much significance. The need for innovation in education derives from the fact that they are, according to a study of the European Union reported in Popescu and Crenicean (2012, p.3982), "among the most important skills that employers seek." Therefore, the book under review in this paper is about a topic that needs constant attention.


Analysis of High-throughput sequencing (HTS) data is a difficult problem, especially in the context of non-model organisms where comparison of homologous sequences may be hindered by the lack of a close reference genome. Current mapping-based methods rely on the availability of a highly similar reference sequence, whereas de novo assemblies produce anonymous (unannotated) contigs that are not easily compared across samples. Here, we present Assembly by Reduced Complexity (ARC) a hybrid mapping and assembly approach for targeted assembly of homologous sequences. ARC is an open-source project (http://ibest.github.io/ARC/) implemented in the Python language and consists of the following stages: 1) align sequence reads to reference targets, 2) use alignment results to distribute reads into target specific bins, 3) perform assemblies for each bin (target) to produce contigs, and 4) replace previous reference targets with assembled contigs and iterate. We show that ARC is able to assemble high quality, unbiased mitochondrial genomes seeded from 11 progressively divergent references, and is able to assemble full mitochondrial genomes starting from short, poor quality ancient DNA reads. We also show ARC compares favorably to de novo assembly of a large exome capture dataset for CPU and memory requirements; assembling 7,627 individual targets across 55 samples, completing over 1.3 million assemblies in less than 78 hours, while using under 32 Gb of system memory. ARC breaks the assembly problem down into many smaller problems, solving the anonymous contig and poor scaling inherent in some de novo assembly methods and reference bias inherent in traditional read mapping.


The use of spherical harmonics for rigid and nonrigid shape representation is well known. This paper extends the method to surface harmonics defined on domains other than the sphere and to four-dimensional spherical harmonics. These harmonics enable us to represent shapes which cannot be represented as a global function in spherical coordinates, but can be in other coordinate systems. Prolate and oblate spheroidal harmonics and cylindrical harmonics are examples of surface harmonics which we find useful. Nonrigid shapes are represented as functions of space and time either by including the time-dependence as a separate factor or by using four-dimensional spherical harmonics. This paper compares the errors of fitting various surface harmonics to an assortment of synthetic and real data samples, both rigid and nonrigid. In all cases we use a linear least-squares approach to find the best fit to given range data. It is found that for some shapes there is a variation among geometries in the number of harmonics functions needed to achieve a desired accuracy. In particular, it was found that four-dimensional spherical harmonics provide an improved model of the motion of the left ventricle of the heart. >


This article describes the validation of a linear parameterization of the ozone photochemistry for use in upper tropospheric and stratospheric studies. The present work extends a previously developed scheme by improving the 2-D model used to derive the coefficients of the parameterization. The chemical reaction rates are updated from a compilation that includes recent laboratory work. Furthermore, the polar ozone destruction due to heterogeneous reactions at the surface of the polar stratospheric clouds is taken into account as a function of the stratospheric temperature and the total chlorine content. Two versions of the parameterization are tested. The first one only requires the solution of a continuity equation for the time evolution of the ozone mixing ratio, the second one uses one additional equation for a cold tracer. The parameterization has been introduced into the chemical transport model MOCAGE. The model is integrated with wind and temperature fields from the ECMWF operational analyses over the period 2000–2004. Overall, the results from the two versions show a very good agreement between the modelled ozone distribution and the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite data and the "in-situ" vertical soundings. During the course of the integration the model does not show any drift and the biases are generally small, of the order of 10%. The model also reproduces fairly well the polar ozone variability, notably the formation of "ozone holes" in the Southern Hemisphere with amplitudes and a seasonal evolution that follow the dynamics and time evolution of the polar vortex. The introduction of the cold tracer further improves the model simulation by allowing additional ozone destruction inside air masses exported from the high to the mid-latitudes, and by maintaining low ozone content inside the polar vortex of the Southern Hemisphere over longer periods in spring time. It is concluded that for the study of climate scenarios or the assimilation of ozone data, the present parameterization gives a valuable alternative to the introduction of detailed and computationally costly chemical schemes into general circulation models.


Blanchflower and Oswald (1994) have argued that, in regional data, the level of unemployment is related to the level of wages. This result is at variance with the implications of the original Phillips curve for regional data, which would predict that the change in wages ought to be related to the unemployment rate. On the other hand, there is considerable empirical support for the expectations-augmented Phillips curve using macroeconomic data. I resolve this tension by showing that a standard macroeconomic expectations-augmented Phillips curve can be derived from microfoundations that begin with the wage curve.


A Coarse Grain Reconfigurable Architecture (CGRA) tailored for accelerating bio-informatics algorithms is proposed. The key innovation is a light weight bio-informatics processor that can be reconfigured to perform different Add Compare and Select operations of the popular sequencing algorithms. A programmable and scalable architectural platform instantiates an array of such processing elements and allows arbitrary partitioning and scheduling schemes and capable of solving complete sequencing algorithms including the sequential phases and deal with arbitrarily large sequences. The key difference of the proposed CGRA based solution compared to FPGA and GPU based solutions is a much better match of the architecture and algorithm for the core computational need as well as the system level architectural need. This claim is quantified for three popular sequencing algorithms: the Needleman-Wunsch, Smith-Waterman and HMMER. For the same degree of parallelism, we provide a 5 X and 15 X speed-up improvements compared to FPGA and GPU respectively. For the same size of silicon, the advantage grows by a factor of another 10 X.


From her captivating debut in Roman Holiday in 1953, Audrey Hepburn redefined notions of Hollywood elegance and sophistication. This lavishly illustrated book celebrates Audrey's popularity as an enduring icon, providing a unique insight into her career, personality and trademark style that still fascinate and captivates today. A detailed biography is accompanied by over 160 photographs, many reproduced for the first time and taken by some of the world's top photographers. Famous quotes on and from Audrey Hepburn complement the impressive iconographic research, which includes numerous family pictures as well as information from private collections, press agencies and newspapers. From her enchanting appearances on the big screen to her charity work for UNICEF and fascinating family life, this book is a highly individual portrait of a much-loved movie and fashion legend.


Hibernation is a process that occurs in nature where organisms undergo dormancy for long periods of time in order to improve their survival during extreme environmental conditions. During this time, organisms undergo physiological changes such as reduction in core body temperature and metabolic rate, as well as cells being impeded from going into mitosis. Alvarado et al. (2015) discovered that genomic DNA methylation is dynamic across torpor-arousal bouts during winter hibernation in thirteen lined ground squirrels (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus), indicating that physiological changes during hibernation are the results of more than simply cold temperatures slowing down metabolism and that there are cellular mechanisms that are responsible for such physiological changes. A study by Robbins (2017) found that THP-1 cells incubated in hibernating bullfrog plasma (Lithobates catesbeianus) stop undergoing cellular division, with THP-1 cells being restricted to the G2 stage of the cell cycle. This suggests that there may be one or more substances in hibernating bullfrog plasma that prevent THP-1 cells from progressing in cell division. In this study, I explored the effects of cyclin B levels on cellular division and its potential impact on confining THP-1 cells in the G2 phase, while maintained in hibernating bullfrog plasma. My results indicate that the levels of cyclin B in hibernating and non-hibernating bullfrog plasma do not vary, suggesting that the expression of cyclin B may not be responsible for confining THP-1 cells to the G2 stage of the cell cycle. LEVELS OF CYCLIN B IN THP-1 CELLS INCUBATED IN HIBERNATING AND NON-HIBERNATING BULLFROG PLASMA, Lithobates catesbeianus. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science Tharuka D. Pathmaperuma University of Northern Iowa May 2020


Objective:  To compare procedures used for the development of three sets of dietetic practice guidelines for type 2 diabetes: the Queensland Best Practice Guidelines (Queensland Guidelines), New Zealand Standards of Care (New Zealand Guidelines) (unpublished, 2003) and American Nutrition Practice Guidelines (American Guidelines) against National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) standards for development of clinical practice guidelines.

Design:  The Queensland, New Zealand and American guidelines were audited against a checklist based on the NHMRC clinical practice guideline development standards, accounting for the recommended tasks and the order in which they should be completed. Additional information regarding the development processes was obtained from development coordinators of the existing dietetic practice guidelines for type 2 diabetes.

Results:  The American guidelines addressed more of the components of development recommended by the NHMRC than the Queensland and New Zealand guidelines. Most importantly the American guidelines were tested for clinical and cost effectiveness.

Conclusion or application:  The data presented show that the American Guidelines came closest to meeting the NHMRC criteria. These results suggest that the American Guidelines may best suit Australian requirements.


From primary school through university and beyond, textbooks are crucial for teaching and learning science. In most cases the content of the books is aligned with intended state curricula, and teachers in many countries use textbooks at least to guide lesson preparation. Therefore, textbooks are discussed as an implemented curriculum. Many existing studies have been conducted on the content of science textbooks. Using different methods, Biology textbooks as well as Physics textbooks could be shown to be not very coherent in sense of using striking scientific terms regularly. However from the viewpoint of learning only the frequent use of a term will elicit stable propositions around the term, which allows emerging concepts associated with the terms in the mental representation of the readers.


BackgroundWe tested if an adjunctive sleep health (SH) intervention improved smoking cessation treatment response by increasing quit rates. We also examined if baseline sleep, and improvements in sleep in the first weeks of quitting, were associated with quitting at the end of treatment.MethodsTreatment-seeking smokers (N = 29) aged 21–65 years were randomized to a SH intervention (n = 16), or general health (GH) control (n = 13) condition. Participants received six counseling sessions across 15-weeks: SH received smoking cessation + SH counseling; GH received smoking cessation + GH counseling. Counseling began 4-weeks before the target quit date (TQD), and varenicline treatment began 1-week prior to TQD. Smoking status and SH were assessed at baseline (week 1), TQD (week 4), 3 weeks after cessation (week 7), week 12, and at the end of treatment (EOT; week 15).ResultsSH versus GH participants had higher Carbon Monoxide (CO) -verified, 7-day point prevalence abstinence at EOT (69% vs. 54%, respectively; adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 2.10, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.40–10.69, P = 0.77). Higher baseline sleep efficiency (aOR = 1.42, 95% CI = 1.03–1.96, P = 0.03), predicted higher EOT cessation. Models were adjusted for age, sex, education, and baseline nicotine dependence.ConclusionsImproving SH in treatment-seeking smokers prior to cessation warrants further examination as a viable strategy to promote cessation.


The target article (Kirby, 2016) proposes that we add the promotion of mindful, psychologically flexible, pro-social values to positive parenting programs. These programs intend to create more nurturing environments through the goal of promoting and reinforcing pro-social behavior, minimizing coercion and aggression, and reducing opportunities for problem behavior. This goal, the article argues, will be supported by greater emphasis on mindfulness and compassion. We agree, although we hope our comments might add to the precision and scope of this recommendation. Nurturing environments do not necessarily come naturally. As the target article notes, parenting is much more than simply addressing bad behaviors. The article argues that mindfulness will help parents avoid being reactive, harsh, or impatient and will increase the likelihood that they notice opportunities to reinforce positive steps. Compassion, it is said, will promote acting in line with parenting values, rather than reacting with parental behavior that is punitive or dismissive. The article suggests that both of these processes will be supported by a greater emphasis on psychological flexibility. These are important ideas that are worthy of experimental test, and we agree with their central tenets. Our ability to reference the literature is restricted in this commentary by journal policy, but we also believe that the existing research literature allows a bit more to be said.


Breast cancer is the most prominent cancer in women of the Western world with over 1.7 million women newly diagnosed and >500,000 deaths annually. The majority of breast cancers are hormone receptor positive and potentially bear sensitivity towards endocrine treatment. Despite initially effective, still some 30% of women with breast cancer eventually die of their disease due to therapy resistant metastases. Therefore, gaining insight into the development of metastasis and therapy resistance is crucial, especially in initial endocrine-responsive disease. Active Wnt signaling contributes to stemness and metastasis, and is upregulated in models of acquired resistance to hormonal therapies. Whereas spontaneous mammary tumors in rodents are either not hormone-sensitive (mice) or do not metastasize (rats) they are not ideally suited for research on hormone-dependent breast cancer. Female dogs are well-known for their sensitivity to hormone-induced mammary cancer and early castration leads to a decreased incidence of spontaneous mammary carcinomas. Our findings on the role of progestin-induced growth hormone (GH) expression in the canine mammary gland showed GH to play also a role in human breast epithelium, where it results in increased proliferation of stem/progenitor cells. In this thesis we focused on three aspects regarding progestin-induced canine mammary tumorigenesis: 1) Studies focusing on expression and function of human and murine PR isoforms have revealed high degree of conservation but also species-specific features. We first addressed the function and expression of canine PR isoforms. We show that dogs (and other canids) are unique among mammals in that they have multiple mutations within AF3 domain resulting in a poor PR-B related transcriptional activity. Moreover, dogs appear to have low (or no) expression of PR-B. This data is further discussed in relation to unique progesterone-related reproductive biology of canids. 2) A subset of canine mammary tumors expresses mammary GH in the absence of PR, suggesting a loss of direct progesterone control and/or cross-regulation by additional pathways. Similarly, canonical Wnt activity in human breast cancer was shown to be responsive to deregulation of multiple signaling pathways. We explored the possibility of direct interaction between GH and canonical Wnt signaling in PR- canine mammary tumor cell lines. Using luciferase reporters and gene expression analysis we observed no direct cross-regulation, suggesting that the progesterone-dependent regulation of the two pathways is independent of each other. 3) Aberrant activation of canonical Wnt signaling has been suggested in canine mammary tumors based on limited immunohistochemical data and gene expression profiling. We quantitatively assessed the activity of canonical Wnt signaling in canine mammary tumor cell lines as well as the underlying mechanism of activation. Luciferase based TCF-reporter assay identified three groups of cell lines exhibiting high, moderate and low canonical Wnt activity. Moderate canonical Wnt activity was dependent on Wnt ligands and could be explained by overexpression of Wnt ligands and/or loss of sFRP1 antagonist. In contrast, high canonical Wnt activity was ligand-independent and not caused by known mutations in pathway components. Our data suggest a novel ligand-independent mechanism of canonical Wnt activation that may involve overexpression of a TCF-family member, LEF1.


The Supreme Court's recent reversal of the D.C. Circuit's decision in Whitman v. American Trucking Ass'ns brings to center stage the critical question for disciplining delegation of lawmaking authority to administrative agencies: Should courts use constitutional law or administrative law for requiring agencies to supply the standards that guide and limit their lawmaking discretion when Congress does not? Professor Bressman argues that Ashwander v. TVA provides a resolution. In Ashwander, Justice Brandeis directed courts to refrain from deciding constitutional questions unless absolutely necessary to decide a particular case. Following Justice Brandeis' now famous teaching, courts should refrain from using constitutional law to require agency-generated standards because administrative law provides an adequate non-constitutional law ground for this purpose. Deferring to administrative law avoids the need to revive the constitutional nondelegation doctrine or impugn the constitutionality of a statutory delegation. Moreover, administrative law offers a theoretical foundation and a practical framework for imposing an administrative standards requirement. Professor Bressman also argues that the Ashwander principle begins to explain and justify the Supreme Court's opinion in American Trucking. The Supreme Court in American Trucking rebuked the D.C. Circuit for applying constitutional doctrine to require an agency to supply limiting standards where Congress had not. It also denied the D.C. Circuit the power to decide that agencies rather than courts (indeed, the Court) could supply narrowing constructions of statutory delegations when constitutionally required. This reading brings American Trucking in line with other recent cases in which the Court has corrected other governmental actors for exceeding the limits of their assigned roles. But, Professor Bressman contends, American Trucking did not foreclose the possibility of requiring administrative standards under administrative law. The Court did not pretend that the nondelegation doctrine actually forces Congress to provide standards that meaningfully guide and limit administrative discretion. Moreover, the Court hinted to Judge Williams that the proper way to require supplemental administrative standards was under administrative law rather than constitutional law. Viewed this way, the Court accepted the learning of Ashwander, guided by the additional impulse of wanting the last word on matters of constitutional interpretation.


The study was carried out in Meta Robi district, West Shewa Zone, Oromia Regional State to identify the types and sources of feeds, constraints in feed production, transportation, utilization and supply, estimate annual feed produced, maintenance requirement, annual feed balance and determine the mineral status of natural pasture and soil samples. Secondary data sources and field observations, key informants discussions and semi-structured questionnaire interview were employed to generate data. The district was stratified into upper, mid and lower altitudes and a total of 90 respondents (upper=30, mid=30 and lower=30) were randomly selected and interviewed individually. Samples of feed and soil were collected from three altitudes during the dry and wet seasons and their mineral concentrations were determined. The results of the study indicated that the major feed resources were grazing of natural pasture (58.9%), wheat straw (42.4%), barley straw (30%) and hay (21.1%). During the dry season, 90% of the respondents feed their animal crop residues, hay (58.8%) and stubble grazing (56.1%). Natural pasture was the major feed source during the wet season. Most respondents (46.7%) had their own natural pasture lands, 86.7% produced crop residues from their crop land whereas only 25.6% were producing improved forages. The major constraints related to livestock feed were shortage of grazing land, absence of feed processors and retailers, shortage of technologies in feed production and lack of awareness of the respondents. The total maintenance DM of feed requirement of the animals per year in the district was 388,859.8 tons while the actual DM of feed production was 212,047.15 tons. The total DM of feed produced per year fulfilled the maintenance requirement of the animals only for 6.54 months of the year. Concentrations of most minerals in the soil were above the critical level of plant growth and most macro minerals in the feed were below the requirement of dairy animals while micro minerals were above the requirement of dairy animals except Mn. Alternative feed production technologies such as development of improved forages, efficient feed utilization technologies (eg. provision of chopper) and natural pasture land improvement measures should be taken. To compensate the mineral deficiency of natural pasture, improved forages with better yield and mineral contents should be provided for livestock. Provision of common salt and/or locally available natural soil as mineral source should be encouraged.


Diversity of trajectories of post-socialist transforming economies is a stylized fact of this experience of system change. The paper explores the relations between change in formal and informal rules in historical perspective, discussing new institutional views about rationality of formal institutions and detrimental inertia of informal institutions. It submits that an open and complex approach of the centrality of formal/informal rules interaction may give a better explanation to the multiplicity of national post-socialist pathways.


The structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies continues to develop because of the increasingly difficult to inspect and assess bridges with traditional manual methods for practical needs. However, It is still difficult to apply SHM to practical bridges according to the theory and technology of damage identification and location. More attention has been attracted by the safety and service performance of high-speed railway bridges under high speed trains. In this paper, a detailed static and dynamic calculation and analysis was applied to the service safety evaluation of Dashengguan Yangtze River Bridge on Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway. The reasonable sensors layout was analyzed, and the SHM data was put forward for the service performance evaluation method and its detailed indexing system. This evaluation includes direct assessment of measured parameters, the variation evaluation of the parameters, and comprehensive evaluation. Finally, the service performance evaluation of Dashengguan bridge was proposed and presented based on part of the measured acceleration data. Meantime, the suitability of evaluation indexing system was proposed and verified as the fairly well vibration characteristics of Dashengguan bridge. doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/57


This research views enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation as an organizational learning behavior. We examined the roles of business process differences, education/training, system integration, and vendor support in the ERP implementation of Taiwan's electronics companies, and found that the problems of education/training and vendor support have negative influences on the companies' performance of ERP system. As compared with the prior research that adopted the sample of all industries, the variable of business process difference is less important in the electronics industry. This result implies that the factor of industrial difference must be taken into consideration in ERP system implementation. Introduction Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is a managerial information system that integrates all sectors of a modern business (Scalle and Cotteleer, 1999). However, ERP implementation is not an easy task (Markus et al., 2000). Many prior researches attempted to explore the success factors of ERP implementation (e.g. Huang et al. 2004; Nah et al., 2003; Murray and Coffin, 2001), while few of them viewed ERP implementation from the perspective of organizational learning. This paper examines several relevant factors of organizational learning for ERP implementation to fill this difference. The effects of business process difference, education/training, system integration, and vendor support on the performance improvement of ERP system are measured and compared. The results show that education/training and vendor support are two critical factors for the ERP implementation of Taiwan's electronics industry in our sample. Learning theory says that people learn new skills by their previous knowledge structures which are called schemas in the literature. The performance of learning depends on the difference between the schema and the learning task, and the efforts to develop a new schema (Rumelhart, 1980). Since a company implementing an ERP system will experience a learning process, it is interesting to examine the relationships between ERP performance and the relevant organizational learning factors. Schema differences can be represented by business process difference and difficulty of system integration. Efforts to develop a new schema can be represented by education/learning and vendor support. Business process difference and difficulty of system integration are widely viewed as significant negative factors for ERP implementation (e.g. Huang et al. 2004; Tsai et al. 2005a; Tsai et al. 2005b) used a sample of all industries and found that business process difference, education/learning problem, and insufficient vendor support negatively influence ERP implementation performance. This paper focuses on Taiwan's electronics industry to investigate whether there are different results. Research Methodology The sample in this research came from a questionnaire survey during 2003 on ERP implementation in Taiwan's top 5000 largest corporations. We only analyzed the data of the electronics companies which adopted ERP packages, so the sample size is 85. Likert Scale was used as a measurement way, and the sample data were obtained with a certain level of reliability and validity. The ERP performance measures proposed by DeLone and McLean (1992) are used in this paper. The six measurement dimensions are "System Quality", "Information Quality", "System Use", "User Satisfaction", "Individual Impact", and "Organizational Impact". The computation of the composite performance value (PL^sub i^) is as follows. Research Findings Table 2 shows the regression results of our models. In order to realize model robustness, we added four simple regression models to the electronics industry model. Equation El is the electronics industry model, and equation E2-E5 are business process difference (BSDF) model, education/training (PEDTR) model, system integration (SYSlNT) model, and vendor support (PVEND) model, respectively. …


Companies need integrated information systems to react to requirements of their customers, collaborate with partners, identify and exploit new opportunities quickly and effectively. A need for solid technology that will provide effective Knowledge Management within and across industrial enterprises is crucial. The main attention of this paper is concentrated on formation processes of global peer-to-peer networks of Web-based resources in the context of OntoServ.Net an automated industrial environment for assets management being developed by Industrial Ontologies Group [9,10]. To increase the efficiency of service (resource) discovery and to facilitate service integration in a decentralized environment, we present scenarios of peer-to-peer network formation and OntoShell mechanism that joins specification of the formation processes with the technology for adaptation of heterogeneous services.


While government intelligence—knowledge to support policy decision making— is often characterized as an art or science, this dissertation suggests it is more akin to what Science and Technology Studies call a "technological system" or a" sociotechnical ensemble". Such a policy support tool is a mechanism socially constructed for the production of policy-relevant knowledge through integration of social and material components. It involves organizational and procedural innovations as much as it does specialized hardware for obtaining, manipulating, and distributing information. The development and function of American intelligence is illustrated here through a case study of how the United States and its European allies learned about Germany's World War II secret weapons, especially the long-range liquid fueled rocket known to their military as the A4, but better known to the public as the V-2. The colonial British heritage and the unique American experiences of participating in wars taking place in domestic and foreign territories set the cultural stage for both the strengths and weaknesses with which American intelligence approached the rapidly evolving German secret weapon capabilities of World War II. The unfolding events that American and British intelligence dealt with in building their knowledge evolved through three stages: early speculation about the existence and nature of the secret weapon threat derived from frequently misleading or misunderstood espionage reports, followed by improvements in knowledge from direct access to information sources provided by enabling technologies, and, finally, systematic reflection on the aggregate of earlier knowledge and new data. This allowed government decision makers to build plans and resources with which to counter the new threats and to prepare for post-war management of similar political and technical issues. However, it also illustrated the difficulties that large and complex systems create for stabilization of institutional innovations.


Reduced demand for wood and wood products resulting from the economic crisis in the first decade of the 2000s severely impacted the forest industry throughout the world, causing large forest-based organizations to close (CBC News, 2008; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009; Pepke, 2009). The result was a dramatic increase in unemployment and worker displacement among forest product workers between 2011 and 2013 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). Forested rural communities often depended on the large-scale forest industry for their livelihood, and as a result, decreased reliance on largescale industry became increasingly important (Lupo, 2015). This article explores portablesawmill-based entrepreneurship as an opportunity to promote social change in the local community. Results indicated that portable-sawmill-based small businesses created community development opportunities, which promoted social change in the larger community through farm business expansion, conservation efforts to improve local community development, and niche market creation in the local or larger community.


Dynamic combinatorial chemistry (DCC) is an attractive method to efficiently generate libraries of molecules from simpler building blocks by reversible reactions under thermodynamic control. Here we focus on the chemical modification of DNA oligonucleotides with acyclic diol linkers and demonstrate their potential for the deoxyribonucleic acid functionalization and generation of libraries of reversibly interconverting building blocks. The syntheses of phosphoramidite building blocks derived from D-threoninol are presented in two variants with protected amino or thiol groups. The threoninol building blocks were successfully incorporated via automated solid-phase synthesis into 13mer oligonucleotides. The amino group containing phosphoramidite was used together with complementary single-strand DNA templates that influenced the Watson–Crick base-pairing equilibrium in the mixture with a set of aldehyde modified nucleobases. A significant fraction of all possible base-pair mismatches was obtained, whereas, the highest selectivity (over 80%) was found for the guanine aldehyde templated by the complementary cytosine containing DNA. The elevated occurrence of mismatches can be explained by increased backbone plasticity derived from the linear threoninol building block as a cyclic deoxyribose analogue.


Nowadays, almost all public administration plan to establish processes with electronic signatures. For such processes, there are no standardized system models with test cases. We are developing a simplified system model with interfaces of a public administration to determine an integration test with test cases especially for mass processes. These are very time-consuming and labor intensive. After simulating these cases, we conclude that applying a functional integration test could reduce costs for establishing a trust center1. We are planning to apply that method in some public administration. The first step is to analyze the actual situation of mass processes in public administration. Our system model is simple and common i.e. it could be applied for the various tiers of public administration, the European, the federal, the state and the local tier. In our age of globalization and European integration it is particularly the supranational level, i.e. the European tier, that is becoming increasingly important. In order to replace the handwritten signature with an electronic signature a trust center has to be set up. The trust center administrates the certificates of authorized officers by using electronic signatures. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the organizational structure to determine the authorized officers of the mass processes.


Using plot level data, this study examines the differential fertilizer application rates on plots managed individually by men, women, or jointly in dual adult households in three districts in south-central Mozambique. The results suggest that—controlling for the demographics of the manager and plot characteristics—joint management of agricultural plots is associated with higher fertilizer application rates on maize plots but with lower fertilizer application on non-food cash plots. Absent equitable sharing of proceeds from jointly managed plots, efforts to increase access to inputs by women may need to be targeted at plots already managed by women themselves. In land-scarce environments where women are less likely to have parcels to cultivate autonomously, these results suggest that improving women's bargaining power under joint management of agricultural activities may be one way to improve gender equality in agriculture.


Nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma (NLPHL) is an uncommon histologic variant, and the optimal treatment for stage I-II NLPHL is undefined. We conducted a multi-center retrospective study including patients ≥16 years with stage I-II NLPHL diagnosed from 1995-2018 receiving all forms of management including radiotherapy (RT), combined modality therapy (CMT=RT+chemotherapy), chemotherapy (CT), observation after excision, rituximab and RT, and single agent rituximab (R). End points were progression-free survival (PFS), freedom from transformation, and overall survival (OS) without statistical comparison between management groups. We identified 559 patients with median age 39 years, 72.3% being male, and 54.9% having stage I disease. Median follow up was 5.5 years (IQR=3.1-10.1). 5-year PFS and OS for the entire cohort were 87.1% (95%CI=83.6-90.0%) and 98.3% (95%CI=96.4-99.2%), respectively. Primary management was RT alone (n=257, 46.0%), CMT (n=184, 32.9%), CT alone (n=47, 8.4%), observation (n=37, 6.6%), rituximab and RT (n=19, 3.4%), and rituximab alone (n=15, 2.7%). 5-year PFS rates were 91.1% (95%CI=85.3-94.7%) after RT, 90.5% (95%CI=84.8-94.1%) after CMT, 77.8% (95%CI=61.3-88.0%) after chemotherapy, 73.5% (95%CI=50.6-87.0%) after observation, 80.8% (95%CI=41.0-95.1%) after rituximab and RT, and 38.5% (95%CI=14.0-62.8%) after rituximab alone. For the RT cohort but not the CMT cohort, variant immunoarchitectural pattern and number of sites>2 were associated with worse PFS (P<0.05). Overall, 21 patients (3.8%) developed large cell transformation, with a significantly higher transformation rate for those with variant immunoarchitectural pattern (P=0.049) and number of involved sites >2 (P=0.0006). OS for patients with stage I-II NLPHLwas excellent following all managements.


Coumarin derivatives as antifungal bioactive agents have been considered for many years. However, their mechanism of action is not very clear. In the current paper, antifungal activity of natural and synthetic coumarins are studied against Cryptococcus neoformans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mechanism of pH-dependent activity of coumarin compounds was investigated using P-NMR spectra and even intracellular estimate of the pH values. The results showed that coumarin derivatives have inhibitory effects without any noticeable side effects through a selective ATPase inhibitory mechanism.


Abstract: The role of natural disasters has been largely overlooked in studies of South Pacific historical ecology. To highlight the importance of rapid-onset natural hazards, we focus on the contributions of volcanism in shaping landscape histories. Results of long-term research in the Willaumez Peninsula on New Britain in Papua New Guinea illustrate the wide range and complexity of potential relationships between volcanic activity and human responses. Despite frequent severe volcanic impacts, human groups have responded creatively to these challenges and over time may have developed particular strategies that coped with the demands of repeated refuging and recolonization.


On January 23, 2003, Dennis Rodgers, a lecturer in development studies in the London School of Economics, visited CERLAC. Rodgers is a social anthropologist by training who has a particular interest in, and expertise on, issues related to violence and crime, youth gangs, urban poverty, and international migration in Latin America (Nicaragua, Argentina, and Colombia) and South Asia (India). This following are excepts taken directly from Rodgers' lecture notes, in which he explored the pandilla, or youth gang, phenomenon in contemporary urban Nicaragua. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in a low income Managua neighbourhood in 1996-1997 and 2002, he traced the emergence and evolution of the Nicaraguan gang phenomenon, focusing on the role of gangs as social institutions and their multifarious ramifications for the constitution of social order in a wider context of urban poverty and social breakdown such as characterizes contemporary urban Nicaragua.


Intellectual disability is common and lifelong, with lifetime cost. Thus, this people have been the focus of recent major national policy developments in Europe, the USA, Australia and across high-income countries. The education of these students with disabilities now can benefit from a wider range of assistive tools. Following this unstoppable trend, this paper presents MAS, a software platform aimed to help people with severe intellectual disabilities and cerebral paralysis in their learning processes. MAS, as a technology enhanced learning platform, provides several tools that supports learning and monitoring for people with special needs, including adaptative games, data processing and monitoring tools. Installed in a special needs education institution in Madrid, Spain, MAS provides special educators with a tool that improved students education processes.


We study the Landau-Zener dynamics of a tunneling spin coupled to a torsional resonator. For strong spin-phonon coupling, when the oscillator frequency is large compared to the tunnel splitting, the system exhibits multiple Landau-Zener transitions. Entanglement of spin and mechanical angular momentum results in abrupt changes of oscillator dynamics which coincide in time with spin transitions. We show that a large number of spins on a single oscillator coupled only through the in-phase phonon field behaves as a single large spin, greatly enhancing the spin-phonon coupling. We compare purely quantum and semiclassical dynamics of the system and discuss their experimental realizations. An experiment is proposed in which the field sweep is used to read out the exact quantum state of the mechanical resonator.


Measurements of the contrast threshold for peripheral vision for size d of the circular test spot between 4′ and 420′ and for flash time t between 0.02 and 1 sec are presented. Wavelengths for adapting field λ1 and test stimulus λ2 6500 and 5250A so that four λ1 − λ2 combinations were explored. The merits of theoretical speculations on the perception of contrast considering the statistical fluctuations in the number of incident quanta and nerve impulses are discussed.It proved that the perception of red light is dominant over the stimulation of the rod system by the background and that the state of adaptation of the one eye and the perception of light via this eye is not affected or influenced by the actual stimulation or state of adaptation of the opposite eye when influences due to variations in pupil size are eliminated. Exception must be made for very high brightnesses of a green background.


We study scalar and electromagnetic perturbations of a family of nonsingular nonrotating black hole spacetimes that are solutions in a large class of conformally invariant theories of gravity. The effective potential for scalar perturbations depends on the exact form of the scaling factor. Electromagnetic perturbations do not feel the scaling factor, and the corresponding quasinormal mode spectrum is the same as in the Schwarzschild metric. We find that these black hole metrics are stable under scalar and electromagnetic perturbations. Assuming that the quasinormal mode spectrum for scalar perturbations is not too different from that for gravitational perturbations, we can expect that the calculation of the quasinormal mode spectrum and the observation with gravitational wave detectors of quasinormal modes from astrophysical black holes can constrain the scaling factor and test these solutions.


Dieffenbachia picta is a worldwide appreciated crop due to its ornamental value. In Argentina it is cultivated in warm provinces and in the outskirts of Buenos Aires city, where in spring 2007 a great amount of plants were lost in commercial greenhouses. Symptoms such as wilting and soaked lesions in the basal leaves began in four- to six-month-old plants causing plants to wilt due to basal stem and root rot processes. A Peronosporomycete was consistently isolated from diseased tissues. The pathogen was identified as Phytophthora nicotianae based on cultural characteristics, morphology of vegetative and reproductive structures, and on the analysis of the sequence of the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region. Pathogenicity tests were carried out and Koch's postulates were fulfilled. In complementary studies, the dieffenbachia varieties Alex, Compact, Camilla and Marianne were susceptible to the infection caused by P. nicotianae, whereas Tropic snow (D. amonea) was resistant. This is the first report of P. nicotianae causing stem and root rot of D. picta in Argentina and in the Americas.


Background & Objective: The regular exercise training is known as a preventive and adjuvant therapy in inflammatory diseases such as cancer. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the aerobic training on IL-10 and IL-8 levels and the count of white blood cells (WBC) in women with breast cancer. Material & Methods: The statistical society of the present study included Kerman women with breast cancer. Forty patients with breast cancer were randomly divided into two groups: exercise (n = 20) and control (n = 20). The exercise group performed the endurance training for 8 weeks with the intensity between 40 to 55 percent of the target heart rate. Twenty four hours before the first session and 48 hours after the last session of the exercise protocol, blood samples were taken from both groups and then IL-10 and IL-8 levels in serum were measured by ELISA via a Boster kit. Results: The results of the present study showed that 8 weeks of the endurance exercise training did not significantly increase the IL-10 (P=0.113) serum level, but increased the WBC count (p=0.019) and decreased the serum level of IL-8 (p=0.03) significantly. Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, regular endurance training via decreasing the inflammatory factors can be considered as an effective factor along with other therapies in improving breast cancer.


Using the setting of hedge funds, we document two important merits of external audits. We find that incentive fee rates (i.e., performance-based compensation to fund managers) are higher for audited funds than for unaudited funds. In contrast, management fee rates (i.e., fund-size-based compensation to fund managers) do not differ depending on audit status. We also find some evidence that audited funds attract more capital inflows from investors than unaudited funds do after funds report high performance. Our findings indicate that hedge fund investors appreciate the value of external audits.


Recent crises in the agricultural sector, such as the 2011 German dioxin scandal and deaths from EHEC or the last swine fever outbreak in Germany in 2006, have caused immense economic damage. As a result, German veterinary authorities at the district, state, and federal levels have been put in charge as crisis managers and leaders of active preventative organizations. To perform their tasks successfully, they require effective communication skills as well as close cooperation with stakeholders in the agribusiness sector. However, despite clear evidence that identifies these relationships as crucial, there is only very little research that directly addresses communication quality and intensity of public authorities responsible for food safety. The relevant literature so far primarily deals with the technical design and implementation of new information and communication systems. However, it often fails to address the particular needs and communication behaviour of individual users. It is the objective of this study to identify determinants of communication quality and to differentiate between types of communicators in order to shed light on the construct of communication behaviour in veterinary authorities. To do so, the determinants of the quality of communication between public authorities and their external stakeholders were identified based on a causal model. These determinants were used as cluster-building variables in a cluster analysis to determine different types of communicators in veterinary services. The data reveals that the personal aspects of communication are of greater relevance than its content. This knowledge could be helpful to identify measures that could be implemented in order to improve the quality of communication of veterinary authorities