This paper is an attempt to study the issues like use of electronic information resources, its impact on the collection of print and electronic sources its awareness among the users, and the places where the users are accessing these resources. A survey was conducted in the academic year 2010-11 at the Mahatma Phule Agricultural University, Rahuri (M.S). A total number of 108 faculty members were selected and their response was obtained with the help of questionnaire. The findings show that users were using e-resources; the awareness about eresources encourages users to use such resources to the maximum; and the users are using Department and home more for accessing the information. The impact of e-resources was visible from the decrease in number of printed documents in comparison to the increase in number of electronic resources. The use of e-resources has increased manifold. The printed material is being quickly replaced by the electronic resources.


Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) gains resistance to β-lactam antibiotics through a mutated penicillin binding protein (PBP2a) encoded on the SCC mec element. In combination with the recombinase encoded by ccr , these two genes are used as markers of the mobile genetic element (SCC mec ). Due to recent increases in community acquired MRSA infections, the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance gene transfer have gained attention. Transduction, a method of horizontal gene transfer mediated by bacteriophage, is believed to be responsible for the movement of the SCC mec element. Recent studies have shown the transduction of the SCC mec element in clinical isolates; however, this study is more concerned with transduction in the environment. The preliminary study presented here was based on two studies demonstrating the presence of the mecA gene in viral fractions from environmental sources by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This study aimed to confirm the presence of the SCC mec element in environmental bacteriophage populations through PCR analysis and sequencing. Approximately 22% of the environmental samples collected contain mecA and/or ccr . One positive sample was sequenced, confirming the presence of the mecA gene and defining it as Type 1. Samples from non-fecal sources were more likely to contain one or both genes, and compost samples have the greatest percent (65%) positive. This preliminary study left many questions unanswered, spurring a second study with goals to determine the frequency of transduction and the allotype of the SCC mec element most frequently transduced. A number of bacterial isolates were collected and characterized. This works sets the stage for isolation of phages and transduction experiments in the future. The


It was hypothesized that society profiles mass murderers in a very specific way contradicting the reality of who the offenders are statistically shown to be. It was correspondingly hypothesized that a mass murderer is labeled more commonly as mentally ill and socially isolated than a serial killer, regardless of the death toll. To assess the lay profile of killers, participants were randomly assigned to either a mass killer or serial killer crime scenario. They then read a brief description of the crime and completed extended response and multiple choice questions on characteristics of the offender. Results supported the hypothesis that the lay profile of a serial killer and mass killer differ in mental health differ greatly. Additionally, the hypothesis that the lay profile differs from who killers are statistically shown to be was both supported and denied. LAY PROFILES OF MASS AND SERIAL KILLERS 3


Phytochrome and its partner transcription factor go to their doom together in response to a change in light quality. As a growing seedling emerges into the light, it needs to shift its developmental program to grow toward the light. Signaling components that flip the switch from growth in the shade to growth in the light include phytochromes, which are sensitive to red light, and transcription factors that drive the shade-adapted pattern of development. Ni et al. now show how phosphorylation sets these signaling partners up for destruction. The signaling established by red light invokes photomorphogenesis by promoting the destruction of the photoreceptor and its signaling partner. W. Ni, S.-L. Xu, J. M. Tepperman, D. J. Stanley, D. A. Maltby, J. D. Gross, A. L. Burlingame, Z.-Y. Wang, P. H. Quail, A mutually assured destruction mechanism attenuates light signaling in Arabidopsis. Science 344, 1160–1164 (2014). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The "financialization" of commodity markets have become a concern for policy makers and market participants. What was once a market for the hedging of holding physical commodities has expanded to become a market for the diversification of financial assets. When financial assets diversification goals are decoupled from the fundamental factors that affect producers and consumers of physical goods futures markets may not be as efficient in aggregating information concerning the economics of the underlying commodity. Theoretical understanding of whether commodity futures market function well under exogenous shifts in demand for futures contracts depend on our assumptions of how market participants behave, including their level of risk aversion. This paper builds a competitive storage model with an explicit futures market that incorporates irrational shocks to demand for futures contracts. This model is flexible enough to investigate the impact of the "financialization" of commodity futures markets and the resulting impacts.


Increasing pressures on freshwater supplies, continuity of supply uncertainties, and costs linked to legislative compliance, such as for wastewater treatment, are driving water use reduction up the agenda of manufacturing businesses. A survey is presented of current analysis methods and tools generally available to industry to analyze environmental impact of, and to manage, water use. These include life cycle analysis, water footprinting, strategic planning, water auditing, and process integration. It is identified that the methods surveyed do not provide insight into the operational requirements from individual process steps for water, instead taking such requirements as a given. We argue that such understanding is required for a proactive approach to long-term water usage reduction, in which sustainability is taken into account at the design stage for both process and product. As a first step to achieving this, we propose a concept of water usage efficiency which can be used to evaluate current and proposed processes and products. Three measures of efficiency are defined, supported by a framework of a detailed categorization and representation of water flows within a production system. The calculation of the efficiency measures is illustrated using the example of a tomato sauce production line. Finally, the elements required to create a useable tool based on the efficiency measures are discussed.


Information and communication technologies are permeating all aspects of industrial and manufacturing systems, expediting the generation of large volumes of industrial data. This paper surveys the recent literature on data management as it applies to networked industrial environments and identifies several open research challenges for the future. As a first step, we extract important data properties (volume, variety, traffic, and criticality) and identify the corresponding data enabling technologies of diverse fundamental industrial use cases, based on practical applications. Second, we provide a detailed outline of recent industrial architectural designs with respect to their data management philosophy (data presence, data coordination, and data computation) and the extent of their distributiveness. Then, we conduct a holistic survey of the recent literature from which we derive a taxonomy of the latest advances in industrial data enabling technologies and data centric services, spanning all the way from the field level deep in the physical deployments, up to the cloud and applications level. Finally, motivated by the rich conclusions of this critical analysis, we identify interesting open challenges for future research. The concepts presented in this paper thematically cover the largest part of the industrial automation pyramid layers. Our approach is multidisciplinary, as the selected publications were drawn from two fields; the communications, networking and computation field, and the industrial, manufacturing, and automation field. This paper can help the readers to deeply understand how data management is currently applied in networked industrial environments, and select interesting open research opportunities to pursue.


ABSTRACT Background: TACE is currently recommended for the treatment of patients with intermediate-stage HCC (Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer [BCLC] stage B). However, it remains unclear which patients are most likely to benefit from TACE, or when TACE should be stopped and alternative treatments considered. The multikinase inhibitor sorafenib is the only systemic therapy currently approved for the treatment of advanced HCC. The aim of this observational study is to prospectively collect data from patients with HCC who either receive or do not receive sorafenib subsequent to TACE. Trial design: Patients aged ≥18 years, with histologically/cytologically documented or radiographically diagnosed HCC classified as BCLC stage B or higher, with a life expectancy of ≥8 weeks, and for whom a decision to treat with TACE has been made at the time of study enrollment (one prior TACE treatment is allowed if performed at the same center and all required data about the procedure are available), are eligible. Treatment decisions made before a patient is enrolled, and during the observation period, must be according to investigators' regular practice. Exclusion criteria include any systemic anti-cancer therapy prior to the first TACE, or participation in an interventional study of locoregional or systemic therapy. The primary objective is evaluation of overall survival in patients who received sorafenib subsequent to TACE non-eligibility (early sorafenib) compared with those who did not (non-early sorafenib). The non-early sorafenib group includes patients who did not receive sorafenib or who received it at a later point. Secondary objectives include progression-free survival, time to progression, tumor response, and safety. Planned enrollment is approximately 1600 patients from about 30 countries across Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific, and from Canada. One interim analysis is planned once 500 patients have been observed for at least 6 months. Final analysis will be performed once the last enrolled patient has been followed for 18 months, has been lost to follow-up, or has died. The study began in October 2013 and 69 patients have been enrolled as of January 2014.This abstract was accepted and previously presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting Chicago, June 2014 (TPS4155). Disclosure: J. Raoul: has received honoraria from Bayer Healthcare and has held an advisory role for Bayer Healthcare; M. Peck-Radosavljevic: has received honoraria and research funding from Bayer Healthcare and has held an advisory role for Bayer Healthcare; H.C. Lee: has received research funding from Bayer Healthcare; M. Kudo: has received honoraria from Bayer Healthcare and has held an advisory role for Bayer Healthcare; K. Nakajima: is an employee of Bayer Healthcare and owns stocks in Bayer Healthcare. A. Cheng: has no conflicts of interest


This "Handbook for Writing an Experimental Research Proposal on Golf" consists of two parts covering the research process from introduction to methodology.In detail, Part One (Writing Research Proposal) comprises Chapter 1 (Introduction); Chapter 2 (Literature Review); and Chapter 3 (Methodology) that are required in submitting a research proposal. Part Two (Evaluating Practice in Mind (PIM) Training Research Proposal) covers the basic checklists for evaluating the research proposal and full research report to help design a good research proposal. Finally, the handbook also includes the standard terms that are needed to write a research proposal. ms that are needed to write a research proposal.


The use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to investigate the ocean surface provides a wealth of useful information that is very seldom used to its full potential. Here we will discuss the application of multifractal techniques to detect oil spills and the dynamic state of the sea regarding turbulent diffusion. We present different techniques in order to relate the shape of the multifractal spectral functions and the maximum fractal dimension to the behaviour of the ocean surface. We compare eddy and sheared dominated flows with convective driven flows and discuss the different features and observation methods. We also compare the scaling of different oil spills detected by means of SAR images. Recent spills and weathered ones are selected and compared to investigate their behaviour in different spatial and temporal ranges. We calculate the partition function based on the grey intensity value of each SAR pixel deriving several types of multifractal spectra as a function of spill residence time estimated for each image. Image manipulations are seen to reduce the speckle noise and thus distinguish much better the texture of the oil spill images. The results are used to discuss how eddy diffusivity may be estimated and used in a description of the ocean surface using a simple turbulence kinematic simulation model to predict the shape of oil spills. Differences in the multifractal spectrum among SAR images may detect the slicks due to plankton and also provide information on the age of the oil spills, on the Lagrangian turbulent structure and on ocean surface diffusivity.


Calculation of design loads for offshore wind turbine (OWT) foundations is typically performed in a joint effort between wind turbine manufactures and foundation designers (FDs). Ideally, both parties would apply the same fully integrated design tool and model for that purpose. However, such solutions are rather limited as it would require exchanging confidential data and the need of sophisticated modelling capabilities for all subsystems of the OWT. In practice, this leads to an iterative and sequential load calculation process involving different design tools. In this process, the wind turbine manufacturer provides the FD with dynamic responses obtained from aeroelastic simulations at a predefined interface. These responses are subsequently expanded to the corresponding dynamic responses in all structural parts of the foundation. In this article, a novel load calculation method, for the expansion to dynamic foundation responses based on an inverse dynamics algorithm, is introduced and described in detail. Furthermore, a summary of load calculation methods currently applied for the design of bottom-mounted OWTs foundations is provided and compared with the proposed method. While emphasis is given to jacket-type foundations, the methods are considered applicable for other bottom-mounted foundation types as well. All load calculation methods are applied and evaluated for an exemplarily fatigue design scenario from the perspective of an FD in order to establish more confidence in these methods. The article concludes with an assessment and recommendation for all presented load calculation methods.


User simulation has become an important trend of research in the field of spoken dialogue systems because collecting and annotating real interactions with users is often expensive and time consuming. Yet, such data are generally required for designing and assessing efficient dialogue systems. The general problem of user simulation is thus to produce as many as necessary natural, various and consistent interactions from as few data as possible. In this paper, we propose a user simulation method based on Bayesian Networks (BN) that is able to produce consistent interactions in terms of user goal and dialogue history but also to simulate the grounding process that often appears in human-human interactions. The BN is trained on a database of 1234 human-machine dialogues in the TownInfo domain (a tourist information application). Experiments with a state-of-the-art dialogue system (REALL-DUDE/DIPPER/OAA) have been realized and promising results are presented.


This work develops an innovative approach for guiding high-level software caches' eviction policy. The decision on which data to keep in the cache is made according to a stochastic analysis over the application data access behaviour. This approach shows it is possible to achieve high cache hit ratios with a reduced cache size. The effectiveness of the policy is tested and validated through the execution of two distinct benchmarks – the TPC-W and the oo7 benchmarks. The newly developed approach is flexible enough to be applied to any high-level software cache in an object-oriented system. Keywords-software cache; stochastic approach; performance; data access.


The emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) of Asian lineage and the subsequent spillover to other part of the globe and on going spread of Eurasian-Africa H5N1 epidemic into domestic, wild birds and human have generated unprecedented attention in recent times and threat of potential pandemic via the avian-human link. Historically, from 1878 through 1955, fowl plaque was described as a high mortality disease of poultry in many countries throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America and Africa and the etiology was proved to be a filterable virus. In the 1930s through the 1950s, fowl plaque disappeared as an endemic disease in most part of the world. In 1949, the first report of a low virulent disease in chickens caused by LPAI virus was reported. In 1955, the etiological of fowl plaque was determined to be influenza A virus, which subsequently was identified as the H7 subtype. In 1959, a "fowl plaque-like" outbreak was described in chickens, which was the first report of fowl plaque caused by a non-H7 AI virus, i.e. first fowl plaque outbreak from H5 subtype of AI virus. In 1961 the first wild birds infection and deaths were reported in common terns of South Africa. In 1966 and 1971, the first H5 and H7 LPAI viruses, respectively were identified; prior to this period, only HPAI viruses had H5 and H7 subtypes. In 1970, the AGID serological test was introduced, which allowed easy and rapid identification of AI virus-infected poultry flocks. In 1972, there was the first isolation of LPAI viruses in asymptomatic wild birds: ducks in the United State and shorebirds in Australia. In 1981, the term "highly pathogenic avian influenza" was accepted as standard nomenclature for fowl plaque and related synonyms. In 1983, LPAI virus was observed mutating to HPAI virus during LPAI field outbreak, and specific genomic changes were identified in the proteolytic cleavage site of the hemagglutinin responsible for the virulence change. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, molecular criteria were added to the definition for classifying an AI virus as HPAI. In 2002, there were the first reported infections and deaths in a wide variety of wild bird species from AI virus H5N1 HPAI virus. The primary goal of this review is to highlight the global situation of HPAI and provide baseline information to show the potential pandemic nature of the virus, so that control and prevention strategies can be improved.


Networks in Tropical Medicine explores how European doctors and scientists worked together across borders to establish the new field of tropical medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book shows that this transnational collaboration in a context of European colonialism, scientific discovery, and internationalism shaped the character of the new medical specialty. Even in an era of intense competition among European states, practitioners of tropical medicine created a transnational scientific community through which they influenced each other and the health care that was introduced to the tropical world. One of the most important developments in the shaping of tropical medicine as a specialty was the major sleeping sickness epidemic that spread across sub-Saharan Africa at the turn of the century. The book describes how scientists and doctors collaborated across borders to control, contain, and find a treatment for the disease. It demonstrates that these medical specialists' shared notions of "Europeanness," rooted in common beliefs about scientific, technological, and racial superiority, led them to establish a colonial medical practice in Africa that sometimes oppressed the same people it was created to help.


Making a vital contribution to the understanding of Latin American modernism, Esther Gabara rethinks the role of photography in the Brazilian and Mexican avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s. During these decades, intellectuals in Mexico and Brazil were deeply engaged with photography. Authors who are now canonical figures in the two countries' literary traditions looked at modern life through the camera in a variety of ways. Mario de Andrade, known as the "pope" of Brazilian modernism, took and collected hundreds of photographs. Salvador Novo, a major Mexican writer, meditated on the medium's aesthetic potential as "the prodigal daughter of the fine arts." Intellectuals acted as tourists and ethnographers, and their images and texts circulated in popular mass media, sharing the page with photographs of the New Woman. In this richly illustrated study, Gabara introduces the concept of a modernist "ethos" to illuminate the intertwining of aesthetic innovation and ethical concerns in the work of leading Brazilian and Mexican literary figures, who were also photographers, art critics, and contributors to illustrated magazines during the 1920s and 1930s.

Gabara argues that Brazilian and Mexican modernists deliberately made photography err: they made this privileged medium of modern representation simultaneously wander and work against its apparent perfection. They flouted the conventions of mainstream modernism so that their aesthetics registered an ethical dimension. Their photographic modernism strayed, dragging along the baggage of modernity lived in a postcolonial site. Through their "errant modernism," avant-garde writers and photographers critiqued the colonial history of Latin America and its twentieth-century formations.


Background. Chronic kidney disease is thought to be a potential risk factor for cardiovascular death. In renal-allograft recipients, cardiovascular disease is the most significant cause of death. The purpose of this study was to investigate if renal function has a significant role in determining the risk for cardiovascular death in renal-allograft recipients. Methods. We analyzed 58,900 adult patients registered in the United States Renal Data System who received a primary renal transplant between 1988 and 1998 and who had at least 1 year of graft survival. The primary study endpoint was death from a cardiovascular event beyond 1 year of transplantation. Secondary endpoints were death caused by infections and malignancy-related deaths. Cox proportional-hazard models were used to estimate the effect of renal function on cardiovascular death, infectious death, and malignancy-related death while correcting for potential confounding variables, such as donor and recipient age, gender, race, cause of end-stage renal disease, length of dialysis before transplantation, year of transplantation, donor source and age, delayed graft function, and immunosuppressive regimen. Results. Serum creatinine values at 1 year after transplantation were strongly associated with the risk for cardiovascular death. Above a serum creatinine value of 1.5 mg/dL, there was a significant and progressive increase in the risk for cardiovascular death. The risk of cardiovascular death was significantly higher when patients who lost allograft function were included in the analysis. There was an association between worsening renal function and infectious death, but there was no association between renal function and malignancy-related death. Conclusion. Serum creatinine at 1 year is strongly associated with the incidence of cardiovascular death independent of known risk factors.


GoLoco motif proteins bind to the inhibitory Gi subclass of G-protein α subunits and slow the release of bound GDP; this interaction is considered critical to asymmetric cell division and neuro-epithelium and epithelial progenitor differentiation. To provide protein tools for interrogating the precise cellular role(s) of GoLoco motif/Gαi complexes, we have employed structure-based protein design strategies to predict gain-of-function mutations that increase GoLoco motif binding affinity. Here, we describe fluorescence polarization and isothermal titration calorimetry measurements showing three predicted Gαi1 point mutations, E116L, Q147L, and E245L; each increases affinity for multiple GoLoco motifs. A component of this affinity enhancement results from a decreased rate of dissociation between the Gα mutants and GoLoco motifs. For Gαi1Q147L, affinity enhancement was seen to be driven by favorable changes in binding enthalpy, despite reduced contributions from binding entropy. The crystal structure of Gαi1Q147L bound to the RGS14 GoLoco motif revealed disorder among three peptide residues surrounding a well defined Leu-147 side chain. Monte Carlo simulations of the peptide in this region showed a sampling of multiple backbone conformations in contrast to the wild-type complex. We conclude that mutation of Glu-147 to leucine creates a hydrophobic surface favorably buried upon GoLoco peptide binding, yet the hydrophobic Leu-147 also promotes flexibility among residues 511–513 of the RGS14 GoLoco peptide.


This paper evaluates the design management competences used in the case of the Knitted Lives, an art project and museum exhibition created to improve the lives of older women. We discuss how design management contributed to the effectiveness of the project and, generally, the way that design could be managed in cultural organisations, specifically museums and art galleries that offer services to society.

These services include: a) in the case of museums the research, collection, exhibition and preservation of art works, cultural heritage objects and other types of material and/or intellectual human achievements and b) in the case of art charities the involvement of isolated social groups in creative activities to improve well being and combat social exclusion. Both these kinds of organisations contribute to cultural and personal growth, education, entertainment, knowledge dissemination and appreciation of the individuals towards the arts, as well as, their own lives and capabilities.

Consequently, they are agents of social change. We believe that design and design management, have a key role to play in any social innovation process and, in this particular paper, we explain how.


We review two important schools within business and society research, which we label positivist and post-positivist corporate social responsibility (CSR). The former is criticized because of its instrumentalism and normative vacuity, and the latter because of its relativism, foundationalism, and utopianism. We propose a new approach, based on J?rgen Habermas's theory of democracy, and define the new role of the business firm as a political actor in a globalizing society.


High-throughput screening of drugs with human induced pluripotent stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes reveals a "cardiac safety index." Failing fast for tyrosine kinase inhibitors Discovery early in its life cycle that an anticancer drug causes heart damage (a common side effect) can halt development—saving money, time, and perhaps lives. To this end, Sharma and colleagues derived heart cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells and then examined how a battery of anticancer tyrosine kinase inhibitors altered their physiology. By measuring cell death, contraction, excitability, calcium dynamics, and signal transduction and integrating the results, they calculated a drug-specific "cardiac safety index." This index proved highly informative, with low values corresponding to those drugs known to cause heart problems in patients. The analysis even revealed that VEGFR2-inhibiting drugs caused cells to try to compensate for the toxic effects by up-regulating protective insulin/IGF pathways, prompting the authors to devise a combination treatment that may limit the toxicity of this class of drug. This screening method is expected to reveal early on whether potential anticancer drugs are cardiotoxic. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), despite their efficacy as anticancer therapeutics, are associated with cardiovascular side effects ranging from induced arrhythmias to heart failure. We used human induced pluripotent stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs), generated from 11 healthy individuals and 2 patients receiving cancer treatment, to screen U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved TKIs for cardiotoxicities by measuring alterations in cardiomyocyte viability, contractility, electrophysiology, calcium handling, and signaling. With these data, we generated a "cardiac safety index" to reflect the cardiotoxicities of existing TKIs. TKIs with low cardiac safety indices exhibit cardiotoxicity in patients. We also derived endothelial cells (hiPSC-ECs) and cardiac fibroblasts (hiPSC-CFs) to examine cell type–specific cardiotoxicities. Using high-throughput screening, we determined that vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2)/platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR)–inhibiting TKIs caused cardiotoxicity in hiPSC-CMs, hiPSC-ECs, and hiPSC-CFs. With phosphoprotein analysis, we determined that VEGFR2/PDGFR-inhibiting TKIs led to a compensatory increase in cardioprotective insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling in hiPSC-CMs. Up-regulating cardioprotective signaling with exogenous insulin or IGF1 improved hiPSC-CM viability during cotreatment with cardiotoxic VEGFR2/PDGFR-inhibiting TKIs. Thus, hiPSC-CMs can be used to screen for cardiovascular toxicities associated with anticancer TKIs, and the results correlate with clinical phenotypes. This approach provides unexpected insights, as illustrated by our finding that toxicity can be alleviated via cardioprotective insulin/IGF signaling.


Background: There is a lack of structured instruments to assess how technical skills are taught. We aimed to develop a practical assessment tool that is easy to use and will assess the teaching of technical skills. Methods: A 5-point Likert global rating scale was constructed. An experienced surgeon independently assessed each surgery using the assessment tool. Trainees also used the assessment tool after the surgery. Results: Forty-two surgeries were assessed: 26 open and 16 laparoscopic surgeries. Interrater reliability between the independent assessor and trainees was performed using a coefficient of .77 and a P value of less than .05. Conclusions: Our study shows that our assessment instrument has a potential ability to assess any taught technical task. We will continue and expand the study in surgery, and we aim to expand it further to medical specialties (eg, internal medicine, and so forth) that also teach technical tasks (eg, chest drain insertion, and so forth). © 2005 Excerpta Medica Inc. All rights reserved.


This paper investigates the consequences of population ageing and of changes in the education composition of the population for macroeconomic performance. Estimation results from a theoretically founded empirical framework show that ageing as well as the education composition of the population influence economic performance. The estimates and simulations based on population projections and different counterfactual scenarios show that population ageing will have a substantial negative consequence for macroeconomic performance in many countries in the years to come. The results also suggest that education expansions tend to offset the negative effects, but that the extent to which they compensate the ageing effects differs vastly across countries. The simulations illustrate the heterogeneity in the effects of population ageing on economic performance across countries, depending on their current age and education composition. The estimates provide a method to quantify the increase in education that is required to offset the negative consequences of population ageing. Counterfactual changes in labour force participation and productivity required to neutralise ageing are found to be substantial.


Since the introduction of Islamic bank, the intense competition in the banking industry has been increased exponentially. Islamic banks are not only competing among other Islamic banks providers but also with conventional banks which have offered Islamic windows as an alternative to their customers. As many banks started to offer Islamic banking services/products to the customers, one of the important factor distinguishes those banks in maintaining the sustainability competitive advantage in the industry is service quality. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the key dimensions of service quality of Islamic banks by using ImportantPerformance Analysis. Structured self administered questionnaire were used and a total of 276 usable questionnaires were obtained. Factor analysis was carried out to uncover the key dimensions of Indonesian Islamic banking service quality while the Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) was employed to evaluate its level. Factor analysis uncovers five key dimensions including reliability, bank-customer relationship, tangibles, shariah issues and rates and charges. The IPA has plotted reliability, rate and charges, and bank-customer relationship dimensions in possible overkill quadrant which reflects low importance but over-performed by the bank. The dimension of shariah and tangibles are placed at the critical quadrant and thus vital attention from the bank is required. This means that shariah and tangibles are perceived important by customers but very low in performance. Based on this finding, service quality of Islamic banks is still perceived unoptimal by their customers. This implies that Islamic banks should improve their service quality management, particularly on the dimensions of shariah and tangibility.


SOOTY SHEARWATER (PUFFINUS GRISEUS) RESPONSE TO WIND VARIABILITY IN THE CALIFORNIA CURRENT by Melinda S. Nakagawa Marine predators forage in a heterogeneous landscape where prey patches are unevenly distributed. Predators return to larger scale areas of consistent productivity such as the California Current, and search at finer temporal and spatial scales to locate prey patches. One of the most abundant avian marine predators in the California Current is the sooty shearwater. Sooty shearwaters leave southern hemisphere islands at the end of the breeding season in the southern autumn. They arrive in the California Current after completing a trans-hemispheric migration, in need of replenishing body condition. Sooty shearwaters are adapted for efficient flight, and their flight is highly correlated with winds. Shearwaters in this study appeared to use winds opportunistically, and responded by vacating foraging hotspots following a reversal in winds, often flying more economically in a downwind direction. Shearwaters also used headwind and tailwind flight much more frequently than expected. This was a result of constraints of a northsouth oriented coastline, and available winds. Sooty shearwaters travelled synchronously while foraging in the CC and when departing on the southern migration. The cue to depart on the southern migration was likely a combination of factors of phenology, local enhancement and body condition.


Based on the ecological-contextual model and on the concept of parental involvement, this article proposes to discuss the parental practices of separated/divorced fathers and mothers towards their children. In order to do so, 234 subjects (117 fathers/117 mothers) with children at school were interviewed via the Parental Practices Inventory. Such instrument evaluated the parental involvement in 5 areas: affective involvement, didactic involvement, social involvement, disciplinary involvement and, responsibility. The results showed greater maternal involvement with children after the divorce: direct (care, interaction) and indirect (monitoring, preoccupation). The cohabitation with the mother revealed itself as a significant variable associated to her greater involvement with activities in the private/domestic environment while fathers had greater involvement in the public/social space. Contextual characteristics (cohabitation, frequency of visits) and characteristics of the parents (occupation, education, affective and conjugal issues) showed to be strongly associated with the parental involvement after divorce.


In order to secure communications for dynamic peer groups in mobile computing environments, key agreement protocols are required. In this paper, we propose a new key agreement protocol based on identities of mobile users, composed of a basic protocol and a dynamic protocol, for dynamic peer groups. With the basic protocol, an initial secret group key can be achieved in a peer group. By the dynamic protocol, a new secret group key can be reached whenever member or mass join, group mergence, group division, member or mass quit occurs. Our protocol has security features, such as implicit group key authentication, key confirmation, forward secrecy, key independence, and etc. Because our protocol runs in parallel, it is more efficient than those running in series.


Join over 250,000 IT professionals who've earned Security+ certificationIf you're an IT professional hoping to progress in your career, then you know that the CompTIA Security+ exam is one of the most valuable certifications available. Since its introduction in 2002, over a quarter million professionals have achieved Security+ certification, itself a springboard to prestigious certifications like the CASP, CISSP, and CISA. The CompTIA Security+ Study Guide: SY0-401 covers 100% of the Security+ exam objectives, with clear and concise information on crucial security topics.You'll find everything you need to prepare for the 2014 version of the Security+ certification exam, including insight from industry experts on a wide range of IT security topics. Readers also get access to a robust set of learning tools, featuring electronic flashcards, assessment tests, robust practice test environment, with hundreds of practice questions, and electronic flashcards.CompTIA authorized and endorsedIncludes updates covering the latest changes to the exam, including better preparation for real-world applicationsCovers key topics like network security, compliance and operational security, threats and vulnerabilities, access control and identity management, and cryptography Employs practical examples and insights to provide real-world context from two leading certification expertsProvides the necessary tools to take that first important step toward advanced security certs like CASP, CISSP, and CISA, in addition to satisfying the DoD's 8570 directiveIf you're serious about jump-starting your security career, you need the kind of thorough preparation included in the CompTIA Security+ Study Guide: SY0-401.


The electricity system is changing. Due to the climate targets, the share of fluctuating renewable energy will continue to rise in the next few years, and conventional, fossil fuels will increasingly take a back seat. This creates the challenge of balancing supply and demand in the power system and increases the need for flexibility in the electricity system. In this article flexibility in energy systems is introduced, flexibility options are categorised along existing literature and a method is explained to approach the estimation of flexibility potential by means of two example regions. Therefore, 13 flexibility options in the electricity system in four categories are analysed: flexible generators, demand side management, storage, and power-to-X. By means of the two study regions Prignitz in Brandenburg and Anhalt-Bitterfeld-Wittenberg in Saxony-Anhalt, a practicable, transferable method to quantify and compare the technical potentials of the flexibility options at a high regional level is developed.


Greedy algorithms such as adaptive sampling (k-means++) and furthest point traversal are popular choices for clustering problems. One the one hand, they possess good theoretical approximation guarantees, and on the other, they are fast and easy to implement. However, one main issue with these algorithms is the sensitivity to noise/outliers in the data. In this work we show that for k-means and k-center clustering, simple modifications to the well-studied greedy algorithms result in nearly identical guarantees, while additionally being robust to outliers. For instance, in the case of k-means++, we show that a simple thresholding operation on the distances suffices to obtain an O(\log k) approximation to the objective. We obtain similar results for the simpler k-center problem. Finally, we show experimentally that our algorithms are easy to implement and scale well. We also measure their ability to identify noisy points added to a dataset.


In this chapter, the latest developments in graphene oxide-based biosensors are presented. These biosensors are complexes of graphene oxide and biomacromolecules, including enzymes such as glucose oxidase, horseradish peroxidase, laccase, and nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA. The structure, design and preparation process (immobilization process) of the above graphene oxide-biomacromolecule composites were summarized. Some typical examples of immobilization of biological macromolecules are described. The immobilization efficiency and electrochemical performance of immobilized biomolecules based on graphene oxide were discussed, which may guide designing better graphene oxide-based biosensors.


This paper provides an overview of groundwater-planning tools that were developed during a Water Research Commission project that was initiated due to the need to place the significant knowledge on groundwater of the Karoo Basin within the realms of water resource planning. In essence, the project aimed to identify favourable areas of groundwater potential for bulk municipal water supplies, to provide a method to quantify them, and to package the information so that it is assessable for planning purposes. In identifying favourable groundwater areas, the focus turned to developing a detailed transmissivity map of the Main Karoo Basin. In order to present yields in an accessible manner to water-supply planners, the same concept used in surface-water resource assessments and dam or reservoir design were adapted and applied to groundwater. Two methods were developed, namely the Aquifer Assured Yield Model and the Aquifer Firm Yield Model (the latter of which was developed into a software package together with the other products). The Aquifer Firm Yield Model provides the historical firm yield and uses historical monthly rainfall data together with recharge, evapotranspiration and baseflow to determine aquifer storage in any given month. The firm yield can be considered to define the upper limit of the groundwater resource. In order to establish possible wellfield yields, the C-J Wellfield Model (based on the Cooper-Jacob approxima tion of the Theis groundwater-flow equation) was developed whereby borehole spacing can be optimised after inputting estimated transmissivity values from the transmissivity map. To aid the planning process, groundwater-quality maps were produced together with the Wellfield Cost Model which provides an easy way to obtain first-order cost estimates of the wellfield options. This paper briefly describes these 'tools' that were produced and provides slightly more detail on how the transmissivity maps were developed


All human experiences have an effect on the brain, and in the form of memories and cognitive biases, affect the response of the individual to future events. When people experience traumatic events the brain is sometimes impacted in extreme ways, with major consequences for the individual in the form of psychiatric illness. This study is concerned with examining the way in which the prior experience of traumatic events affects the processing of simple stimuli under experimental conditions, in order to understand better the types of cognitive biases involved in psychiatric illnesses. The study used a well-established computerized test of selective attention, inhibition of return (IOR), and a newer task involving facial expressions and gaze cues. A review of the use of the IOR paradigm in different adult psychiatric disorders was conducted in order to aid interpretation of the findings. The mental health status of the participants was described by use of a number of standardized questionnaires. Participants were people in contact with Adult Mental Health services who had experienced trauma, including those with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Psychosis and other psychiatric diagnoses. Results were compared with a healthy control group. Despite small sample sizes and heterogeneity within the groups, the study indicated that significant trauma can be associated with different types of mental health problem, and that different mental health problems are associated with different types of cognitive processing difficulty. The Psychosis group showed a lack of inhibitory processing, which is likely to be associated with increased distractibility, and, for example, lack of the ability to follow a train of thought. This is different from the distractibility seen in PTSD, which can be characterized as a tendency for attention to be captured by a salient stimulus without appropriate subsequent disengagement.


The carboxylic acid dimer is a frequently observed intermolecular association used in crystal engineering and design, which can show proton disorder across its hydrogen bonds. Proton disorder in benzoic acid dimers is a dynamic, temperature-dependent process whose reported occurrence is still relatively rare. A combination of variable temperature X-ray and neutron diffraction has been applied to demonstrate the effect of local crystalline environment on both the degree and onset of proton disorder in 3,5-dinitrobenzoic acid dimers. Dimers which have significantly asymmetric local intermolecular interactions are found to have a higher onset temperature for occupation of a second hydrogen atom site to be observed, indicating a greater energy asymmetry between the two configurations. Direct visualization of the electron density of hydrogen atoms within these dimers using high resolution X-ray diffraction data to characterize this disorder is shown to provide remarkably good agreement with that derived from neutron data.


When spatio-temporal datasets are large, the computational burden can lead to failures in the implementation of traditional geostatistical tools. In this pa- per, we propose a computationally efficient Bayesian hierarchical spatio-temporal model in which the spatial dependence is approximated by a Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) while the temporal correlation is described using a vector autoregressive model. By introducing an auxiliary lattice on the spatial region of interest, the proposed method is not only able to handle irregularly spaced observa- tions in the spatial domain, but it is also able to bypass the missing data problem in a spatio-temporal process. Because the computational complexity of the proposed Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is of the order O(n) with n the total number of observations in space and time, our method can be used to handle very large spatio-temporal datasets with reasonable CPU times. The performance of the pro- posed model is illustrated using simulation studies and a dataset of precipitation data from the coterminous United States.


The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is the only Asia-Pacific-wide forum for consultations and dialogue on political and security issues. Although many articles and books have been published on the ARF, this is one of the few books that treat the forum comprehensively and from the standpoint of the region itself. It traces the ARF's origins, the efforts to move it from confidence building to "preventive diplomacy", and the forces that hold them back, analysing the strategic environment that both constrains the ARF and makes it essential. The book discusses the question of participation, describes the numerous cooperative activities that the participants undertake, and deals with the issue of institutionalization. Finally, it assesses the ARF as a forum and a process on its own terms. The book is written by the former ASEAN Secretary-General and former senior official who was involved in the ARF's early years.


Once, when Megan, Bella and Alice shared a room, the Tower Room was theirs alone, remote from the rest of Egerton Hall School. Here they formed a deep friendship, which would continue long after they left their enchanted world. But now Bella thinks her life is in danger. Is her stepmother really as wicked as she believes, or can imagination sometimes be more sinister than reality?


A major goal in robot motion planning and control is to be able to specify a task in a high-level, expressive language and have the robot(s) to automatically convert the specification into a set of low-level primitives, such as feedback controllers and communication protocols, to accomplish the task. The robots can vary from manipulator arms used in manufacturing or surgery, to autonomous vehicles used in search and rescue or in planetary exploration, and to smart wheel chairs for disabled people. They are subject to mechanical constraints (e.g., a carlike robot cannot move sideways,an airplane cannot stop in place) and have limited computation, sensing, and communication capabilities. The environments can be cluttered with possibly moving and shape-changing obstacles and can con tain dynamic (moving, appearing, or disappearing) targets. One of the major challenges in this area is the development of a computationally efficient frame work accommodating both the robot constraints and the complexity of the environment, while, at the same time, allowing for a large spectrum of task specifications.


Abundance patterns of eggs and larvae of the Pacific sardine, Sardinops sagax (Jenyns, 1842), in Bahia Magdalena, Baja California Sur, were analysed during a cooling period south of the California Current from 2005 to 2009. The thermohaline characteristics and zooplankton abundance were good descriptors of the potential spawning habitat. Individual quotient analyses showed a predominance of eggs and larvae within a SST range of 16 to 18°C, at low salinities (33.9-34.1) and at low density gradient variability (0.009-0.029), associated with deeper waters (25-40 m) near the main entrance, where the transparency was intermediate (6-8 m) and zooplankton abundance was relatively high ( > 316 ml/1000 m 3 ). Increments within different class intervals meant that neither dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), phosphates nor chlorophyll a predominated. The large interannual fluctuations in sardine spawning activity and preferential temperatures observed in historical and recent data suggest that two sardine stocks spawn in Bahia Magdalena: one stock spawned in the period 1981-1989 and one stock spawned in the period 1997-2009. The influence of cooling and warming periods as additional components of the regional environmental framework is analysed and discussed.


As an integral part of the cultural history of German Jewry, early modern Yiddish and the literary corpus it produced found their way into the debate over the "Jewish question" in German scholarly discourse of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century. Focusing on the field of Jewish Volkskunde, or folkloristics, this paper explores the place of Yiddish in the works of two ideologically opposing camps: on the one hand, the racial perception of Jewry, which posited an essential sameness among Jews and distinguished them from the peoples around them, and on the other hand, the liberal, integrationist definition of Jewry, which emphasized German-Jewish symbiosis and the historical attachment of Jews to their non-Jewish environment. As demonstrated in the paper, the engagement of turn-of-the-century Jewish folklorists with early modern Yiddish did not derive merely from a scholarly ambition to encompass all aspects of Jewish culture, or from nostalgic longings to a bygone Jewish world. It was, to a large extent, an expression of cultural and intellectual resistance by a minority group, who attempted to promote an alternative to the hegemonic scholarly discourse of the time.


In this review we outline the various methods that have been explored to synthesize architecturally defined nanoparticles from discrete polymer chains, summarize the methods of characterization that are required to prove their formation and probe their morphology, and introduce a number of potential applications that are being explored currently. Given the small size of the nanostructures produced by these methods and the relative ease with which they can be tailored to specific end use applications it is likely such efforts will intensify in the coming years. So far, simple chemistry has been utilized and high-level characterization and modeling studies have been applied to understand the process by which these particles form and how they behave, both in the bulk and in solution. Although impossible to predict where this work will lead, we hope this "user's guide" will prove useful to the community as research on single-chain nanoparticles continues to evolve.


Blood uric acid levels and purine metabolism are affected in many ways after bone marrow transplantation (BMT). Although BMT is usually performed when patients have a low residual disease burden, a proportion of them are still at risk of tumor lysis syndrome, even with limited disease or after nonmyeloablative conditioning regimens; moreover, an alteration in uric acid turnover can also be observed in patients with persistently normal uric acid blood levels. Apart from this obvious complication, multiple physiopathological events occurring after transplantation may derange uric acid homeostasis. Although there is only indirect evidence (derived from obstetric eclampsia and experimental gout arthritis), a transplant-related increase in cytokine production (particularly TNF, IL-1 and IL-6) may activate xanthine oxidase which, in turn, may be responsible for a further cytokine bout: deranged cytokine homeostasis is involved in the pathogenesis of some of the main acute post-BMT complications, such as hepatic veno-occlusive disease (VOD) and acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD). Hyperuricemia is also a well-known side effect of cyclosporine A, the reference drug for the prevention of post-BMT GVHD, which may affect uric acid turnover by reducing glomerular filtration and/or affecting tubular handling; the available evidence favors the former explanation. Hyperuricemia is found in long-term transplanted patients as part of a metabolic pattern reminiscent of the so-called 'X' or 'metabolic'syndrome related to insulin resistance: there is still no precise interpretation of this post-transplant complication nor any definite data concerning its real incidence and outcome. Hyperuricemia is frequently regarded as a marginal finding in the context of X syndrome, but it is pathogenetically linked to the other component of the syndrome and has proved to be autonomously responsible for tissue and vessel damage. Finally, BMT is a possible therapeutic strategy for some inherited forms of hyperuricemia, particularly Lesch- Nyhan disease, although there is still some perplexity concerning the possibility of preventing the development of neurological impairment.


Joint modeling of language and vision has been drawing increasing interest. A multimodal data representation allowing for bidirectional retrieval of images by sentences and vice versa is a key aspect. In this paper we present three contributions in canonical correlation analysis (CCA) based multimodal retrieval. Firstly, we show that an asymmetric weighting of the canonical weights, while achieving a cross-view mapping from the search to the query space, it improves the retrieval performance. Secondly, we devise a computationally efficient model selection - crucial to generalization and stability - in the framework of the Bjork Golub algorithm for regularized CCA via spectral filtering. Finally, we introduce a Hierarchical Kernel Sentence Embedding (HKSE) that approximates Kernel CCA for a special similarity kernel between words distributions. State of the art results are obtained on MSCOCO and Flickr benchmarks when these three techniques are used in conjunction.


This account presents information on all aspects of the biology of Milium effusum L. (Wood Millet) that are relevant to understanding its ecological characteristics and behaviour. The main topics are presented within the standard framework of the Biological Flora of the British Isles: distribution, habitat, communities, responses to biotic factors, responses to environment, structure and physiology, phenology, floral and seed characters, herbivores and disease, history, and conservation. The grass Milium effusum is a common species of mature woodland in central and southern England, but is less common in the wetter parts of northern England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. World‐wide, the species is native to many temperate, boreal, subarctic and subalpine parts of the northern hemisphere: from eastern North America across most of Europe (excluding Mediterranean climates) to the Ural Mountains and Black Sea, extending eastwards to the Himalaya, Korea and Japan. Wood Millet is a shade‐tolerant, relatively tall grass (up to 1·8 m) producing up to 700 caryopses per individual. It is characteristic of temperate deciduous woodland, but can also occur in other woodland and forest types and even in scrub, alpine meadows, along railways and roads, and on rocks. In woods, it is one of the most conspicuous plants of the herb layer in the early summer after the disappearance of spring flowering species. While the species is generally considered an ancient woodland indicator in England and western Europe, it is also known to colonize secondary, post‐agricultural forests relatively rapidly in other areas such as Denmark, southern Sweden and Poland. The species has a wide amplitude in terms of soil acidity and nutrient availability, but predominantly grows on soils of intermediate soil fertility and soil pH and with high organic matter concentration. However, M. effusum can tolerate large quantities of tree‐leaf litter on the forest floor and is able to grow on very acidic soils. Changes in land use, climate, densities of large herbivores and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen are having effects on populations of Wood Millet. Significant responses of the life‐history traits and population characteristics have been detected in response to environmental variation and to experimental treatments of temperature, nutrients, light and acidity. In many of its habitats across its range, M. effusum is currently becoming more frequent. During the last century, its mean elevation of occurrence in upland areas of Europe has also increased by several hundreds of metres. Typically, management actions are directed towards the conservation of its main habitat type (e.g. ancient woodlands of the Milio‐Fagetum association) rather than to the species specifically.


Abstract Background Obsessive–compulsive symptoms (OCS) are commonly associated with clozapine treatment but are frequently overlooked by clinicians despite their potential impact on patients' quality of life. In this study, we explored whether OCS severity impacted subjective wellbeing and general functioning, independently of depressive and psychotic symptoms. Methods We used anonymised electronic healthcare records from a large cohort of patients who were treated with clozapine and assessed annually for OCS, wellbeing, general functioning, and psychopathology using standardised scales as part of routine clinical practice. We used statistical mixed linear model techniques to evaluate the longitudinal influence of OCS severity on wellbeing and general functioning. Results A total of 184 patients were included, with 527 face-to-face assessments and 64.7% evaluated three or more times. Different linear mixed models demonstrated that OCS in patients treated with clozapine were associated with significantly worse wellbeing scores, independently of depression and psychotic symptoms, but OCS did not impair general functioning. Obsessional thinking and hoarding behaviour, but not compulsions, were significantly associated with the impact on wellbeing, which may be attributable to the ego-syntonic nature of the compulsions. Conclusions Given the frequent occurrence of OCS and their negative impact on wellbeing, we encourage clinicians to routinely assess and treat OCS in patients who are taking clozapine.


With insight and originality, Michael Fellman argues that terrorism, in various forms, has been a constant and driving force in American history. In part, this is due to the nature of American republicanism and Protestant Christianity, which he believes contain a core of moral absolutism and self-righteousness that perpetrators of terrorism use to justify their actions. Fellman also argues that there is an intrinsic relationship between terrorist acts by non-state groups and responses on the part of the state; unlike many observers, he believes that both the action and the reaction constitute terrorism. Fellman's compelling narrative focuses on five key episodes: John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry; terrorism during the American Civil War, especially race warfare and guerrilla warfare; the organized 'White Line' paramilitary destruction of Reconstruction in Mississippi; the Haymarket Affair and its aftermath; and, the Philippine-American war of 1899-1902. In an epilogue, he applies this history to illuminate the Bush-Cheney administration's use of terrorism in the so-called war on terror. In the "Name of God and Country" demonstrates the centrality of terrorism in shaping America even to this day.


PURPOSE
Patients with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) or locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) were randomly assigned to 21-day doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide administered for five cycles (standard arm) versus weekly doxorubicin and daily oral cyclophosphamide administered with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor support for 15 weeks (continuous arm). All patients had subsequent weekly paclitaxel for 12 weeks before surgery.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients (n = 372) were randomly assigned to the standard arm (n = 186) or the continuous arm (n = 186) stratified by disease type (LABC, n = 256; IBC, n = 116). The primary outcome was microscopic pathologic complete response (pCR) at surgery. Secondary outcomes included disease-free survival, overall survival, and toxicity.

RESULTS
More patients in the standard arm had grade 3 to 4 leukopenia and neutropenia, but there were more instances of stomatitis/pharyngitis and hand-foot skin reaction in the continuous arm. Assessed among 356 eligible patients, pCR was not different between the treatment groups stratified by disease type (P = .42). In subset analysis, higher pCR rates were observed in the continuous arm versus the standard arm only for stage IIIB disease (P = .0057) and in IBC (P = .06). Comparison of overall survival and disease-free survival showed no difference between treatment groups (P = .37 and P = .87, respectively).

CONCLUSION
No significant clinical benefit was seen for the investigational arm in this trial overall.


In 1997, Ng and Schultz introduced the idea of cycle orderability. For a positive integer k, a graph G is k-ordered if for every ordered sequence of k vertices, there is a cycle that encounters the vertices of the sequence in the given order. If the cycle is also a hamiltonian cycle, then G is said to be k-ordered hamiltonian. We give minimum degree conditions and sum of degree conditions for nonadjacent vertices that imply a balanced bipartite graph to be k-ordered hamiltonian. For example, let G be a balanced bipartite graph on 2n vertices, n suciently large. We show that for any positive integer k, if the minimum degree of G is at least (2n+k 1)/4, then G is k-ordered hamiltonian.


The article aims to solve the problem of unequal income distribution in Malaysia. Income inequality did not change significantly since 1990. Inclusive growth is an alternative way that can help the government overcome the unequal distribution of income. However, there are no measurements or detailed studies conducted in Malaysia. Moreover, the country's distribution policy for the 2016–2030 period focuses on inclusive economic growth. Based on the above gaps, we constructed the Malaysia Inclusive Index and estimated the income distribution using this new composite index. To construct the index, we applied the Z-score method. We obtained data for this study from the World Development Indicator, Economic Planning Unit, Department of Statistics, Malaysia and annual reports from various ministries. The main research findings show yearon-year growth from 1990 to 2016, indicating that economic growth in Malaysia is increasingly inclusive. Therefore, to achieve inclusive and equitable economic growth in distribution, the government is advised to consider not only fiscal aspects, but also holistic components comprised of education, health, housing and employment of the B40 group (lower class). Simultaneously, the M40 group (middle class) should not be left out. Income distribution factors and the Malaysia Inclusive Index (MII) determinants such as investment, inflation, education and national income should be considered when developing national distribution policies, as these factors are crucial for inclusive growth in Malaysia


A sedimentological program has been conducted using frozen core samples from the 141.5m long El'gygytgyn 5011-3 permafrost well. The drill site is located in sedi- mentary permafrost west of the lake that partly fills the El'gygytgyn Crater. The total core sequence is interpreted as strata building up a progradational alluvial fan delta. Four structurally and texturally distinct sedimentary units are identified. Unit 1 (141.5– 117.0m) is comprised of ice-cemented, matrix-supported sandy gravel and interca- lated sandy layers. Sandy layers represent sediments which rained out as particles in the deeper part of the water column under highly energetic conditions. Unit 2 (117.0–24.25 m) is dominated by ice-cemented, matrix-supported sandy gravel with individual gravel layers. Most of the unit 2 diamicton is understood to result from alluvial wash and subsequent gravitational sliding of coarse-grained material on the basin slope. Unit 3 (24.25–8.5m) has ice-cemented, matrix-supported sandy gravel that is inter- rupted by sand beds. These sandy beds are associated with flooding events and represent near-shore sandy shoals. Unit 4 (8.5–0.0 m) is ice-cemented, matrix-supported sandy gravel with varying ice content, mostly higher than below. It consists of slope material and creek fill deposits. The uppermost meter is the active layer into which modern soil organic matter has been incorporated. The nature of the progradational sediment transport taking place from the western and northern crater margins may be related to the complementary occurrence of frequent turbiditic layers in the central lake basin as is known from the lake sediment record. Slope processes such as gravitational sliding and sheet flooding that takes place especially during spring melt are thought to promote mass wasting into the basin. Tectonics are inferred to have initiated the fan accumulation in the first place and possibly the off-centre displacement of the crater lake.


Abstract During the 1990s, some important European countries, particularly Italy and Sweden, have radically transformed their public pension system by adopting defined-contribution rules while retaining a pay-as-you-go financial architecture. This paper inquires into the theoretical properties of these "Notional Defined Contribution" pension schemes in order to identify the determinants of the replacement rates awarded to individuals with different income patterns. Three typical career patterns are taken into consideration, according to whether the individual wage growth is equal to, higher than, or lower than average wage growth. The impact of, and the possible remedies to, a possible discontinuity on the replacement rates is finally discussed by means of a sensitivity analysis of the replacement rates with respect to the career length (for a given retirement age), the retirement age, and the conventional rate of return credited on all individual accounts.


1In neuroscience, the similarity matrix of neural activity patterns in response to different sensory stimuli or under different cognitive states reflects the structure of neural representational space. Existing methods derive point estimations of neural activity patterns from noisy neural imaging data, and the similarity is calculated from these point estimations. We show that this approach translates structured noise from estimated patterns into spurious bias structure in the resulting similarity matrix, which is especially severe when signal-to-noise ratio is low and experimental conditions cannot be fully randomized in a cognitive task. We propose an alternative Bayesian framework for computing representational similarity in which we treat the covariance structure of neural activity patterns as a hyper-parameter in a generative model of the neural data, and directly estimate this covariance structure from imaging data while marginalizing over the unknown activity patterns. Converting the estimated covariance structure into a correlation matrix offers an unbiased estimate of neural representational similarity. Our method can also simultaneously estimate a signal-to-noise map that informs where the learned representational structure is supported more strongly, and the learned covariance matrix can be used as a structured prior to constrain Bayesian estimation of neural activity patterns.


BACKGROUND
Metabolic syndrome has been linked with various atherosclerotic diseases, but has not been evaluated sufficiently as a risk factor for the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in the general population.

METHODS
We followed up 1,440 community-dwelling individuals without CKD aged 40 years or older for 5 years and examined the effects of metabolic syndrome, defined by the modified National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III criteria, on the development of CKD.

RESULTS
During follow-up, 88 subjects experienced CKD. The age- and sex-adjusted 5-year cumulative incidence of CKD was significantly greater in subjects with than without metabolic syndrome (10.6% versus 4.8%; P < 0.01). In multivariate analysis, even after adjustment for other confounding factors, including insulinemia, metabolic syndrome remained an independent risk factor for the occurrence of CKD (odds ratio, 2.08; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.23 to 3.52). Compared with subjects with 1 or fewer metabolic syndrome component, multivariate-adjusted odd ratios for CKD in subjects with 2, 3, and 4 or more metabolic syndrome components were 1.13 (95% CI, 0.60 to 2.12), 1.90 (95% CI, 0.98 to 3.69), and 2.79 (95% CI, 1.32 to 5.90), respectively. The rate of change in kidney function during 5 years decreased significantly in subjects with 4 or more metabolic syndrome components compared with those with 1 or fewer component in the age group of 40 to 59 years, whereas it also was significantly low in subjects with 3 metabolic syndrome components in the group aged 60 years or older.

CONCLUSION
Our findings suggest that metabolic syndrome is a significant risk factor for the development of CKD in the general population.


One of the largest challenges in heterogeneous catalysis is how to control the adsorption and desorption catalytic cycle on the surface of catalyst. Therefore, the ultimate goal of this study is to design a new heterogeneous catalytic system based on an idea that the surface charge of the solid catalyst can be controlled by applying electric field in order to improve the efficiency of adsorption and desorption in catalytic cycle processes. Electric-field-induced oxidation of benzhydrol to benzophenone over electrically conducting surface containing titanium dioxide has been carried out by using hydrogen peroxide as oxidant. Polypyrrole and titanium dioxide have been used as electrically conducting materials and catalytic active site, respectively. The results suggest the occurrence of the synergistic effect of the electric field and titanium dioxide. The electric field on the generation of surface charge to induce the adsorption of organic substrate has been confirmed by methylene blue adsorption experiments. The study is also extended to photocatalysis in which the removal of methylene blue under the irradiation of UV light and electric field is chosen as a model catalytic system. One expects that the electric field will induce the degradation of metylene blue over polypyrrole containing titanium dioxide. There is no significant effect of the irradiation of UV light was observed in this process although the removal of methylene blue increased under electric field. As a global guide for future actions, this work opens new perspectives for the use of electrically conducting surface containing titanium dioxide in electric-field-induced liquid phase oxidation catalysis.


The paper discusses the relationship between material qualities of nature and the process of capitalist valuation. While valuation can be defined in a broad sense pertaining to how resources are identified, extracted and integrated into the world market, the focus here is narrower, centering on the specific qualities of nature that are important to the creation of value itself and touching on related questions such as how to evaluate tendencies in which nature materialities are increasingly commodified. The first part of the paper briefly reviews the work of scholars approaching nature as a materiality placing certain 'limits' on valuation. Most of these scholars tend to view valuation at the level of discrete production processes and while offering many examples of how material nature constraints or enables production, the role of these qualities in value generation is not clear. By contrast, a second part of the paper discusses work that directly addresses valuation, proposing that the specific role of nature lies in the fact that nature materialities are not necessarily commodified, offering a view in which nature is not a 'limit' or an 'outside' but a materiality that is a constitutive part of valuation, historically integrated through partial commodification. A final section deals with the specificity of the valuation of living nature. Agricultural biotechnologies in Latin America are briefly discussed, raising various issues that should form part of a future research agenda to evaluate how this particular type of nature valuation will reconfigure social inequalities in the area.


The catastrophic crisis of late 2001 and early 2002 marks the tragic end to Argentina's initially successful, decade-long experiment with sound money and market-oriented economic reform. The IMF consistently supported Argentina's stabilization and reform efforts in the decade leading up to the current crisis, and often pointed to many of Argentina's policies as examples for other emerging market economies to emulate. In this policy analysis, former IMF Chief Economist Michael Mussa addresses the obvious question: What went wrong in Argentina and what important errors did the IMF make in either supporting inappropriate policies or in failing to press for alternatives that might have avoided catastrophe? He emphasizes that the persistent inability of the Argentine authorities at all levels to run a responsible fiscal policy--even when the Argentine economy was performing very well--was the primary avoidable cause of the country's catastrophic financial collapse. The IMF failed to press aggressively for a more responsible fiscal policy. Mussa also addresses the role of the Convertibility Plan, which linked the Argentine peso rigidly at parity with the US dollar and played a central role in both the initial success and ultimate collapse of Argentina's stabilization and reform efforts. While the IMF accepted this plan as a basic policy choice of the Argentine authorities so long as it remained viable, it erred in the summer of 2001 by extending further massive support for unsustainable policies, rather than insisting on a new policy strategy that might have mitigated some of the damage from a crisis that had become unavoidable.Mussa moves on to discuss what needs to be done to restore economic and financial stability in Argentina and begin the process of recovery, including the proper role of the IMF and the international community. He also examines what the IMF can do to avoid repeating the types of mistakes it made in the tragic case of Argentina.


s from the 4th International Conference on Language and Cognitive Development in Down Syndrome Portsmouth, UK (15-18 September 2005) Papers and workshops Parents perceptions and early intervention – towards inclusive practice? Alice Paige-Smith & Jonathan Rix The Open University, UK Email: firstname.lastname@example.com This paper explores the experiences of early intervention for three families in England. The case study research considers parental perspectives and children's experiences of early intervention; what do parents want and what are children's experiences? In particular the ways in which parents and children participate in early intervention programmes in order to support learning will be explained. Case study data includes interviews with four parents. The early intervention experiences of three children with Down syndrome aged 3-4 years old will be described and placed within the context of early years and inclusive education policy and practice in England (QCA, 2000, DfES, 2001, 2003, 2004a,b, TSO, 2003). Recent recognition within Government policy towards increased parental involvement in the learning of young children will be considered within the context of inclusive education and early years policy and practice. The ways in which parents are encouraged to be involved in developing the learning of their children, and their support from professional services will be considered. The parents' views and experiences enable a conceptualisation of the implementation of policy and practice, in relation to the opportunities provided and the difficulties encountered. The tensions identified raise questions about whether parents are receiving the kinds of support they need and expect, and in particular whether suitable consideration has been given to the pedagogic models being applied through early intervention programmes. Speech perception in children and adolescents with Down syndrome: an under-explored area Michèle Pettinato, Sarah Barrett-Jones & Penny Roy Department of Language and Communication Science, City


In February 1997, 69 countries accounting for 95 percent of world telecommunications traffic agreed to open their basic telecommunications service markets. In April 1997, 28 countries accounting for 80 percent of world trade in information technology (IT) goods agreed to eliminate tariffs on IT goods by January 2000. These two agreements represent significant steps toward global telecommunication liberalization. The agreements also mark the beginning of new battles that will determine the extent of competition and reform in the telecommunications industry in the 21st century. Although implementation of the two pacts will be phased in over several years, some signatory countries are already facing a backlash from local telecommunications companies and equipment suppliers. Hence the issue remains highly contentious around the world. In this volume, leading scholars from different countries offer their assessments of the two new agreements. They also predict the evolution of the telecommunications industry in the years ahead. The volume provides essential background on future developments in this dynamic and crucial sector, and suggests ways in which it can be shaped to provide maximum benefits for the world economy.


ABSTRACT This study explored the respective importance of compositional (individual) and contextual (neighbourhood) factors associated with the propensity to engage in formal volunteering among a nationally representative sample of adults in Wales, UK. To date, while certain contextual characteristics of local communities have been found to be associated with the propensity to volunteer, compositional characteristics of residents tend to be stronger predictors. Few studies to date have specifically explored associations with local volunteering opportunities. To address such gaps, this study examined the extent to which such opportunities and broader neighbourhood factors such as urban/rural status and deprivation impacted upon propensities to volunteer, adjusting for important compositional predictors of voluntarism. In summary, while volunteering was marginally associated with a measure of local voluntary opportunities, hinting that the odds of formal volunteering are greater among those living in areas with more local voluntary organizations, this association was not retained following adjustment for other factors. This suggests that much of the area-level variance is explained by spatial variations in compositional factors. Further research is needed to examine determinants of volunteering behaviour at a range of spatial scales by drawing on wider measures of volunteering opportunities, before the factors at play can be fully understood.


Recently local authorities have been placed under enormous pressure due to problems arising from poor decision-making in relation to the sharing of personal information. While in some circumstances the incompetence of agency employees is identified as the cause, in other circumstances organisational failure, implicitly driven by inter-organisational distrust, is to blame for inappropriate decisions taken with regards to sharing information. Sometimes implicit policies and regulations set by policy makers are blamed, while at other times, explicit rules of confidentiality and data-protection acts are accused. During the last decades, several Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in the United Kingdom have started to employ Inter-Organisational Information Systems (IOIS) to support information sharing and networked collaboration within their departments in order to meet a diverse range of citizen needs including housing services, social care services, education services, etc. However, reaching this level of cross-agency collaboration is not easy and requires additional time and effort by individuals and agencies involved. Therefore, this paper proposes and validates a novel conceptual framework that can be used as a tool for decision-making while sharing information electronically. The framework consists of four main levels: (a) investigation and presentation of factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) in LGAs based on external environment, organisational capacity, technology environment, EIS characteristics, and inter-departmental environment, (b) investigation and presentation of the processes that an LGA department should carry out to decide whether to share information with another department, (c) mapping of the influential factors on the participation phases, and (d) prioritisation of the factors influencing EIS in LGAs in different decision-making phases.


For one-dimensional salt intrusion models to be predictive, we need predictive equations to link model parameters to observable hydraulic and geometric variables. The one-dimensional model of Savenije (1993b) made use of predictive equations for the Van der Burgh coefficient $K$ and the dispersion at the seaward boundary D0. Here we have improved these equations by using an expanded database, including new previously un-surveyed estuaries. Furthermore, we derived a revised predictive equation for the dispersion at tidal average condition and with the boundary situated at the well identifiable inflection point where the estuary changes from wave-dominated to tide-dominated geometry. We used 89 salinity profiles in 30 estuaries (including seven recently studied estuaries in Malaysia), and empirically derived a range of equations using various combinations of dimensionless parameters. We split our data in two separated data sets: (1) with more reliable data for calibration, and (2) with less reliable data for validation. The dimensionless parameters that gave the best performance depended on the geometry, tidal strength, friction and the Richardson number. The limitation of the equations is that the friction is generally unknown. In order to overcome this problem, a coupling has been made with the analytical hydraulic model of Cai et al. (2012), which makes use of observed tidal damping and by which the friction can be determined.


29 species of lichens, 3 non-lichenized calicioid fungi and 3 lichenicolous fungi are reported for the first time from the Kostroma Region. Among them, 15 species are new for the Central Federal District, including Myrionora albidula – a rare species with widely scattered locations, previously known only from the Southern Urals Mts in European Russia. The most important discoveries are confined to old-growth coniferous Picea sp. and Abies sibirica forests in the Kologriv Forest Nature Reserve. Two species (Leptogium burnetiae and Menegazzia terebrata) are included in the Red Data Book of Russian Federation. The distribution, ecology, taxonomic characters and conservation status of rare species and of those new for the Central Federal District are provided.


Sometimes the good old tried and true American business team building exercises just dont work. Although frequently successful with teams made up of employees from different sections of an organization, what happens when teams consist of employees from different geographical areas like the United States and Asia--which has a whole set of unique differences. This case follows the experiences of an executive sent to Bangkok Thailand with two other managers from corporate headquarters to clean up and team build following the discovery of fiscal mismanagement and a popular senior executives high profile firing. This three part case series puts students in the shoes of a financial auditor sent to try and strengthen weakened relationships and performance at Fasco Motors in Thailand. The material describes his efforts to rebuild trust on the Bangkok management team and the difficulties he encounters working as an outsider in every way.


This paper tries to shed some light on the actual changes that occurred in the labour markets dynamics of the European Union 253 (EU-25) over the last decade using job tenure4 data. It then investigates the potential role of employment protection legislation (EPL)5 changes in explaining differences in the dynamics of job stability across countries but also across age groups in light of the dual-track reform strategy introduced in Europe during the same period: in most European countries, reforms were made typically at the margin (for new hires), while EPL for the incumbent workers remained unchanged. Thus, if the legislation does not apply uniformly to all workers, the effects of EPL reforms are expected to be disproportionately felt by new entrants, such as the young, women, and possibly immigrants. The paper opens with a descriptive analysis of job stability measured through job tenure in the EU-25, and its evolution over the last years. The level and structure by age of this indicator is our main empirical material. Data used comes from Labour Force Surveys (EUROSTAT) up to 2006. The analysis shows no generalized decrease in job tenure but a trend towards shorter tenure of young workers (15-24) in most European countries. In a second step, the paper examines the possible explanations behind this trend, focusing on employment protection legislation. An econometric analysis is conducted to test the existence of a link between employment protection and job stability. In particular, we look at the impact of employment protection on average tenure and on the incidence of temporary employment. Finally, some policy recommendations are provided.


Abstract Two complex matrix pairs (A, B) and (A′, B′) are contragrediently equivalent if there are nonsingular S and R such that (A′, B′) = (S−1AR, R−1BS). M.I. García-Planas and V.V. Sergeichuk (1999) constructed a miniversal deformation of a canonical pair (A, B) for contragredient equivalence; that is, a simple normal form to which all matrix pairs (A + A͠, B + B͠) close to (A, B) can be reduced by contragredient equivalence transformations that smoothly depend on the entries of A͠ and B͠. Each perturbation (A͠, B͠) of (A, B) defines the first order induced perturbation AB͠ + A͠B of the matrix AB, which is the first order summand in the product (A + A͠)(B + B͠) = AB + AB͠ + A͠B + A͠B͠. We find all canonical matrix pairs (A, B), for which the first order induced perturbations AB͠ + A͠B are nonzero for all nonzero perturbations in the normal form of García-Planas and Sergeichuk. This problem arises in the theory of matrix differential equations ẋ = Cx, whose product of two matrices: C = AB; using the substitution x = Sy, one can reduce C by similarity transformations S−1CS and (A, B) by contragredient equivalence transformations (S−1AR, R−1BS).


Ştefan Zeletin (1882- 1934) – a philosopher, an economist and a sociologist – is one of the household names of Romanian interwar liberalism. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and Classical Philology in Iasi, and in 1914 he defended his doctoral thesis (and was granted magna cum laude) at the University of Berlin. After finalizing his studies, Zeletin taught at the University of Iasi.
Concerning his work, Ştefan Zeletin did not have the same attitude towards the two aspects of his thought: philosophy and sociology. He considered himself a philosopher who failed to complete his system of thought only because of the tough circumstances. Persuaded that there is an organic connection – yet to be discovered – between the economic life of a country, on one hand, and the political, legal and cultural institutions, on the other, (Claudian 1935) Ștefan Zeletin began his sociological writings, which marked the political and cultural life of those times.
The sociological and political works, which had made him known in several settings, were viewed by Zeletin as an episode within his activity, which he would have wanted to be focused on purely philosophical works. The author explains the approach to the practical aspects of social reality by the fact that he was determined to attend various events, which he felt the need to understand. An event that marked him deeply was the War of 1916-1918, to which he took part as an infantry officer; this event drew him closer to the often-disappointing reality of the Romanian society in an ongoing process of construction. "Hence, I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice: to renounce, for now, to any philosophical activity, to get to know our society just like it is and to try to give back to it something that may be in its interest. This also helped me fulfil an ardent desire I had felt on the front where, the carbine on my shoulder, I saw our society collapse like a cardboard castle." (Zeletin 1927 p. 276) This article aims at unravelling several aspects regarding the life, the work and the sociological view of the author.


Purpose: Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) has a worse prognosis in adults than in children, but there is evidence of a better outcome in the former if treated using a pediatric-like approach. This study describes treatment for RMS in patients more than 10 years old and examines to what extent treatment contributes to explain the different age-related survival observed and to what extent treatment centers impact treatment appropriateness. Methods: A retrospective population-based study was developed considering 104 RMS cases (excluding the pleomorphic subtype) diagnosed in Italy between 2000 and 2015. Patients were grouped by age (10-19 vs. 20-60 years old) and scored according to whether or not their chemotherapy was consistent with the schemes used in pediatric protocols (score 1 = chemotherapy in line with pediatric protocols). Treatment centers were grouped according to whether or not they have a pediatric-dedicated unit affiliated to the national pediatric oncology network (Associazione Italiana Ematologia Oncologia Pediatrica [AIEOP]). Results: Older patients were more likely to have tumors at unfavorable sites (p = 0.045). A treatment score of 1 was assigned to 85% of younger patients, but only to 32% of older patients (p < 0.001). Furthermore, the proportion of score 1 was higher in younger patients treated in centers with an AIEOP Unit. A multivariate model confirmed age as a significant prognostic factor (Hazard rate ratio [HR] = 2.06; p = 0.04) and showed a significant impact of treatment on survival (HR = 2.13; p = 0.03). Conclusions: Adult RMS patients are still relatively unlikely to be treated with pediatric protocols and in centers with a pediatric oncology expertise. This may explain the survival gap between older and younger patients.


Aim: To examine the surgical outcome of 2 different techniques used in the treatment of developmental dislocation of the hip with delayed diagnosis. Materials and methods: The patients were divided into 2 groups based on the technique applied: 21 hips of 18 patients were included in Group 1 and 20 hips of 16 patients were included in Group 2. Initially, all the patients were subjected to femoral osteotomy, shortening, varization and derotation. In Group 1, additionally extra-articular grafting was performed for acetabulum and in Group 2, acetabular osteotomy and extraarticular grafting were performed. The mean age of Group 1 was 8 years, and the mean age of Group 2 was 7 years. Results: The results were evaluated radiologically and clinically. The mean follow-up time was 4 years. In the patients under 7 years of age, successful results were obtained in both groups. Of 7 patients with poor outcome, 6 were older than 7 years of age. Conclusion: The surgical treatment of childhood developmental dislocation of the hip with delayed diagnosis is difficult. However, it can be concluded that, in patients 7 years old or younger with a diagnosis of developmental hip dislocation, the 2 techniques described here are effective.


This paper proposes a Fuzzy Group Decision Making approach for ranking work stations based on physical pressure. Fuzzy group decision making approach allows experts to evaluate different ergonomic factors using linguistic terms such as very high, high, medium, low, very low, rather than precise numerical values. In this way, there is no need to measure parameters and evaluation can be easily made in a group. According to ergonomics much work contents and situations, accompanied with multiple parameters and uncertainties, fuzzy group decision making is the best way to evaluate such a chameleon of concept. A case study was down to utilize the approach and illustrate its application in ergonomic assessment and ranking the work stations based on work pressure and found that this approach provides flexibility, practicality, efficiency in making decision around ergonomics areas. The normalized defuzzification numbers which are resulted from this method are compared with result of quantitative assessment of Automotive Assembly Work Sheet auto, it's demonstrated that the proposed method result is 10% less than Automotive Assembly Work Sheet, approximately.


As the world is hard pressed with the energy and fuel crises, compounded by pollution of all kinds, any technologies that bring out the solutions to this problem is considered as a bounty. In one of such new technologies, is the development of a new engine called as compressed air engine which does not require any of the known fuels like diesel, petrol, CNG, LPG, hydrogen etc. this works using only compressed air. This replaces all types of to-date known fuels and also permanently solves the problems of pollution as its exhaust is clean and cool measured practically as low as 5oC. A proto type, a horizontal, single cylinder low speed engine was modified to run on compressed air. Since this engine runs only on high pressure compressed air, the exhaust of which is undoubtedly only air, making it a zero pollution engine. No heat is generated because there is no combustion of fuel, hence this engine needs no cooling system and it result in reduced cost, weight, volume and vibration. Early cost analysis shows that it's very cost effective and the operational cost is ten times less than that of petrol or diesel. Experimental analysis were carried out on this modified engine to find out its performance characteristics like brake power, mechanical efficiency, overall efficiency, air to Air ratio, volumetric efficiency, cost analysis etc. Though the efficiencies were low as the frictional forces were high for the proto designed engine, however the concept can be applied on a professionally designed engine to improve its performance.