Important candidate genes to human bone phenotypes are those involved in the regulation of hormonal action, such as the vitamin D receptor (VDR) and the estrogen receptor-α (ERα) genes and their cofactors. RIZ1 is a specific ERα cofactor proved to strongly enhance the function of the ERα. The main focus of this thesis has been to study genetic variants in the VDR and RIZ genes and their associations to human bone phenotypes using candidate gene and functional approaches. Specifically, polymorphisms in the VDR 3' untranslated region (UTR) and a deletion/insertion polymorphism of a proline in the RIZ gene were investigated.The candidate gene approach was applied to large-scale population-based cohorts of pre-and post-menopausal women from Sweden and of elderly men from Sweden and Hong Kong. VDR 3' UTR polymorphisms were associated with peak bone mass and body composition in young women. Further analysis of common VDR 3' UTR haplotypes confirmed the association with BMD and risk of fractures in elderly men from Sweden and Hong Kong. The VDR polymorphisms were investigated for cis-acting effects, affecting allelic expression in the normal chromosomal context of human bone cells. The VDR allelic transcripts in the bone samples were unequally expressed, suggesting presence of regulatory variants in the 3' UTR. The polymorphism in the RIZ gene was strongly associated to BMD in pre- and postmenopausal women and in elderly men. The functional analyses included reporter constructs containing the RIZ polymorphic variants transfected in a cell line and its abilities in coactivating the ERα were examined. The variants were functionally different in coactivating the ERα-receptor complex. To summarize, the results of this thesis show novel evidence for functional relevant polymorphisms in candidate genes to human bone phenotypes. These polymorphisms may contribute to the variation seen in BMD and risk of fractures in the population.


A decade ago, Castells argued that most surveillance would have no directly damaging consequences. He proposed that what should be of more concern were the unpredictable consequences of our over-exposed lives, the lack of explicit rules for on-line behaviour and how this then was interpreted by a 'multitude of little sisters' who process and store this information, forever (Castells 2001:180). A decade later, these conjectures are still valid but are now at a critical level as individuals passively volunteer personal information while government and commercial organisations aggressively amass these snippets into correlated data. As boundaries between on-line and off-line blur, and geo-locative applications grow in popularity, we echo Castells by asking, what will be, and what are, the privacy implications of existing in a technologically saturated environment? The human data trail now begins prior to conception and continues after death. We aim to develop a methodology to enable us to quantify this trail and to examine the impact that such amassment of data has on society, communities, and personal identities within the UK. The reality is that the digital footprint is a significant research challenge to identify and then quantify. There is a critical need to capture relevant activities in a holistic and interconnected manner in order to enable understanding of the societal implications. We describe a preliminary study which will be used as a starting point to develop appropriate methods for quantification and analysis of the 21st century digital footprint.


Nanoglasses are non-crystalline solids whose internal structure is characterized by fluctuations of the free volume. Due to the typical dimensions of the structural features in the nanometer-range and the disordered atomic structure of the interfacial regions, the atomic structure and the structural stability of nanoglasses is not yet completely understood.
Nanoglasses are typically produced by consolidation of glassy nanoparticles. Consequently, the basis for the understanding of the atomic structure of nanoglasses lies in the atomic structure of the primary glassy nanoparticles.
Using electron energy loss spectroscopy, the elemental distribution in the Fe90Sc10 primary glassy nanoparticles and in the corresponding nanoglasses produced by consolidation of these glassy nanoparticles have been studied. Due to surface segregation, Fe has been found to be enriched at the surface of the primary Fe90Sc10 glassy nanoparticles. This behavior was found to be consistent with theoretical results based on a monolayer model for surface segregation behavior of the binary liquid alloys. In addition, the heterogeneous structure of Fe90Sc10 nanoglasses with Fe enriched interfaces was also directly observed, and may be attributed to the segregation of the primary glassy nanoparticles on the surface.
Furthermore, the electron density of the isolated and loosely compacted primary glassy nanoparticles was investigated using small- and wide- angle X-ray scattering. The results indicate that the surface shells of glassy nanoparticles have an electron density that is lower than the electron density in the cores of the glassy nanoparticles. The lower electron density seems to result mainly from a lower atomic packing density of the surface shells rather than from compositional variations due to the surface segregation.
During the consolidation of the glassy nanoparticles, the inhomogeneous elemental distribution and the short-range order in the shells of Fe90Sc10 glassy nanoparticles can be transferred into the interfaces of the resulting bulk Fe90Sc10 nanoglasses. The free volume within the shells of the Fe90Sc10 glassy nanoparticles may delocalize into the interfaces between the Fe90Sc10 glassy nanoparticles resulting in interfacial regions of lower atomic packing density in the Fe90Sc10 nanoglasses.
The structural stability of Fe90Sc10 nanoglasses has been studied by means of low temperature annealing in situ in a transmission electron microscope, and ex situ in an ultra-high-vacuum tube-furnace. The analysis of both experiments showed similar results. The structure of the Fe90Sc10 nanoglasses was stable for up to 2 hours when annealed at 150 °C. Annealing of nanoglasses at higher temperatures resulted in the formation of a metastable nanocrystalline bcc-Fe(Sc) with Sc-enriched interfaces. The crystallization process of Fe90Sc10 nanoglasses was clarified and a plausible mechanism for the structural stability was proposed.


The new Israeli cinema dismantles the equation created by the early cinema, that of nationhood and masculinity. At its best, this cinema does not obliterate the homogeneous Zionist identity; rather, it merges this identity into a broader dialogue of identities and voices. From this standpoint, it uses an ambivalent language that includes the self and the "other" and forces the spaces in which they exist to commingle. Instead of simplistically replacing the Hebrew masculine identity with a feminine Jewish one it integrates both identities and examines them inside and out. This cinema treats space similarly. Instead of replacing the Israeli space with an alternative space, it makes different spaces overlap and commingle. This cinema expresses the crisis in Israeli identity and the attempt to overcome it by combining and blending the spaces, nationalities, and genders created within it. The article uses the film The Last Love of Laura Adler as an example for this new cinema.


This paper describes an optical interferometric detection technique, known as the interferogram phase step shift, which detects narrowband, coherent, and partially coherent light in more intense broadband incoherent background light using changes in the phase gradient with the optical path difference of the coherence interferogram to distinguish the bandwidth or coherence of the signal from that of the background. The detection sensitivity is assessed experimentally by measuring the smallest signal-to-background ratio or signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR), which causes a detectable change in the self-coherence interferogram phase. This minimum detectable SCR (MDSCR) is measured for the multimode He-Ne laser, resonant-cavity light-emitting diode (LED), narrowband-filtered white light, and LED signal sources in a more intense tungsten-halogen-lamp white-light background. The highest MDSCRs to date, to the authors' knowledge, are -46.42 dB for coherent light and -31.96 dB for partially coherent light, which exceed those of existing automatic single-domain techniques by 18.97 and 4.51 dB with system input dynamic ranges of 19.24 and 11.39 dB, respectively. The sensitivity dependence on the signal-to-system bandwidth ratio and on the relative offset of their central wavelengths is also assessed, and optimum values are identified


The study aimed to provide a mapping review of non-pharmacological interventions to reduce restrictive practices in adult mental health inpatient settings; classify intervention components using the behaviour change technique taxonomy; explore evidence of behaviour change techniques and interventions; and identify the behaviour change techniques that show most effectiveness and those that require further testing.Incidents involving violence and aggression occur frequently in adult mental health inpatient settings. They often result in restrictive practices such as restraint and seclusion. These practices carry significant risks, including physical and psychological harm to service users and staff, and costs to the NHS. A number of interventions aim to reduce the use of restrictive practices by using behaviour change techniques to modify practice. Some interventions have been evaluated, but effectiveness research is hampered by limited attention to the specific components. The behaviour change technique taxonomy provides a common language with which to specify intervention content.Systematic mapping study and analysis.English-language health and social care research databases, and grey literature, including social media. The databases searched included British Nursing Index (BNI), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CCRCT), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), EMBASE, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Database, HTA Canadian and International, Ovid MEDLINE®, NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED), PsycInfo®and PubMed. Databases were searched from 1999 to 2019.Broad literature search; identification, description and classification of interventions using the behaviour change technique taxonomy; and quality appraisal of reports. Records of interventions to reduce any form of restrictive practice used with adults in mental health services were retrieved and subject to scrutiny of content, to identify interventions; quality appraisal, using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool; and data extraction, regarding whether participants were staff or service users, number of participants, study setting, intervention type, procedures and fidelity. The resulting data set for extraction was guided by the Workgroup for Intervention Development and Evaluation Research, Cochrane and theory coding scheme recommendations. The behaviour change technique taxonomy was applied systematically to each identified intervention. Intervention data were examined for overarching patterns, range and frequency. Overall percentages of behaviour change techniques by behaviour change technique cluster were reported. Procedures used within interventions, for example staff training, were described using the behaviour change technique taxonomy.The final data set comprised 221 records reporting 150 interventions, 109 of which had been evaluated. The most common evaluation approach was a non-randomised design. There were six randomised controlled trials. Behaviour change techniques from 14 out of a possible 16 clusters were detected. Behaviour change techniques found in the interventions were most likely to be those that demonstrated statistically significant effects. The most common intervention target was seclusion and restraint reduction. The most common strategy was staff training. Over two-thirds of the behaviour change techniques mapped onto four clusters, that is 'goals and planning', 'antecedents', 'shaping knowledge' and 'feedback and monitoring'. The number of behaviour change techniques identified per intervention ranged from 1 to 33 (mean 8 techniques).Many interventions were poorly described and might have contained additional behaviour change techniques that were not detected. The finding that the evidence was weak restricted the study's scope for examining behaviour change technique effectiveness. The literature search was restricted to English-language records.Studies on interventions to reduce restrictive practices appear to be diverse and poor. Interventions tend to contain multiple procedures delivered in multiple ways.Prior to future commissioning decisions, further research to enhance the evidence base could help address the urgent need for effective strategies. Testing individual procedures, for example, audit and feedback, could ascertain which are the most effective intervention components. Separate testing of individual components could improve understanding of content and delivery.The study is registered as PROSPERO CRD42018086985.This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research programme and will be published in full inHealth Services and Delivery Research; Vol. 9, No. 5. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.


Input gradients have a pivotal role in a variety of applications, including adversarial attack algorithms for evaluating model robustness, explainable AI techniques for generating Saliency Maps, and counterfactual explanations. However, Saliency Maps generated by traditional neural networks are often noisy and provide limited insights. In this paper, we demonstrate that, on the contrary, the Saliency Maps of 1-Lipschitz neural networks, learnt with the dual loss of an optimal transportation problem, exhibit desirable XAI properties: They are highly concentrated on the essential parts of the image with low noise, significantly outperforming state-of-the-art explanation approaches across various models and metrics. We also prove that these maps align unprecedentedly well with human explanations on ImageNet. To explain the particularly beneficial properties of the Saliency Map for such models, we prove this gradient encodes both the direction of the transportation plan and the direction towards the nearest adversarial attack. Following the gradient down to the decision boundary is no longer considered an adversarial attack, but rather a counterfactual explanation that explicitly transports the input from one class to another. Thus, Learning with such a loss jointly optimizes the classification objective and the alignment of the gradient , i.e. the Saliency Map, to the transportation plan direction. These networks were previously known to be certifiably robust by design, and we demonstrate that they scale well for large problems and models, and are tailored for explainability using a fast and straightforward method.


The DARPA Grand Challenge has been the most significant challenge to the mobile robotics community in more than a decade. The challenge was to build an autonomous robot capable of traversing 132 miles of unrehearsed desert terrain in less than 10 hours. In 2004, the best robot only made 7.3 miles. In 2005, Stanford won the challenge and the $2M prize money by successfully traversing the course in less than 7 hours. This talk, delivered by the leader of the Stanford Racing Team, will provide insights in the software architecture of Stanford's winning robot. The robot massively relied on machine learning and probabilistic modeling for sensor interpretation, and robot motion planning algorithms for vehicle guidance and control. The speaker will explain some of the basic algorithms and share some of the excitement characterizing this historic event. He will also discuss the implications of this work for the future of the transportation.


Waters in the vicinity of natural geochemical anomalies such as hydrothermal ore deposits potentially mobilize heavy metals by interaction with primary hydrothermally formed minerals. On the other hand, secondary alteration minerals can retain some of these heavy metals and effectively immobilize them. In order to understand the chemical evolution of waters in such a system, the best way is to compare different waters from various sample locations in a well-defined locality. Thereby one can compare the importance of parameters such as variable flow paths, flow velocities, fluid-host rock interaction and the various sources and sinks of major and trace elements. This was done for the Cu and As deposit of Neubulach in the northern Schwarzwald, Germany. Flowing and dripping waters from three sites in the abandoned mine were sampled monthly over 14 months. The waters were analyzed with respect to their major and trace element concentrations including rare earth elements (REE) to evaluate their seasonal and spatial variation. The three sample types collected from different depths in the mine have different flow paths and are influenced to different extents by the sandstone host rocks, by overlying carbonates and by the hydrothermal barite quartz vein with Cu-Bi-As ores, mainly tennantite, exploited from the former mine. The sample site in the upper part of the mine ("HGS water") is about 30 m below surface and the amount of water dripping from the roof of the adit is strongly dependent on the precipitation. By contrast, the water collected in the lower part of the mine (about 100 m below surface) is dripping constantly throughout the year and forms abundant calcite sinters ("sinter water"). A third sample was collected monthly from the mine drainage adit (again about 100 m below surface), that collects water from the entire mine ("flowing water"). Elevated Cl and Na concentrations and increased Cl/Br ratios in the HGS waters taken in the winter months during snow melt indicate input of road salt and therefore show the direct influence of surface runoff. By contrast, the sinter water compositions do not show any variation during the year, which suggests that these waters are unaffected by short-time input from the surface; their chemical composition is determined by water-rock interaction only. Rare earth element patterns and Rb/Cs values indicate interaction with clay minerals whereas Cu and As systematics show that tennantite dissolution is incongruent. Although inverse modelling shows that reaction of surface water with the observed phases in the host rocks and in the hydrothermal vein nicely explains the water compositional variations, speciation modeling and calculations of thermodynamic stabilities of various Cu arsenates suggest that secondary alteration minerals may form metastably.


Cryobiology is the study of life and death at low temperatures and provides a fascinating setting for applied mathematics. The interdisciplinary nature of cryobiology mirrors the diversity of applications ranging from animal agriculture to laboratory cell and species preservation to critical human clinical applications for the preservation of life and for the killing of cells during cryosurgery. The work comprising this thesis develops approaches for optimization of cryobiological protocols, and defines a new model for common cryobiological procedures. The first step is to advance an understanding of the optimal control of a classical ODE system describing the mass transport that occurs during cryopreservation. This investigation leads to the description of exact solutions to this 70-year-old nonlinear system, a global stability result for the generalized system with n-solutes, controllability and existence of optimal controls in the n-solute case, and a complete synthesis of optimal controls in the 2solute case. After defining optimal controls, the question arises whether the predicted continuous optimal control of the extracellular environment affects the hypotheses of the ODE model, namely, perfect stirring inside and outside of the cell/tissue-media boundary. We constructed a new model coupling the ODE mass transport at the cell/tissue boundary of changing radius with convection-diffusion and potential flow models and a numerical integration scheme to explore the effects of advection on the cell-media interface.


Logistic regression remains one of the most widely used tools in applied statistics, machine learning and data science. However, in moderately high-dimensional problems, where the number of features $d$ is a non-negligible fraction of the sample size $n$, the logistic regression maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), and statistical procedures based the large-sample approximation of its distribution, behave poorly. Recently, Sur and Cand\`es (2019) showed that these issues can be corrected by applying a new approximation of the MLE's sampling distribution in this high-dimensional regime. Unfortunately, these corrections are difficult to implement in practice, because they require an estimate of the \emph{signal strength}, which is a function of the underlying parameters $\beta$ of the logistic regression. To address this issue, we propose SLOE, a fast and straightforward approach to estimate the signal strength in logistic regression. The key insight of SLOE is that the Sur and Cand\`es (2019) correction can be reparameterized in terms of the \emph{corrupted signal strength}, which is only a function of the estimated parameters $\widehat \beta$. We propose an estimator for this quantity, prove that it is consistent in the relevant high-dimensional regime, and show that dimensionality correction using SLOE is accurate in finite samples. Compared to the existing ProbeFrontier heuristic, SLOE is conceptually simpler and orders of magnitude faster, making it suitable for routine use. We demonstrate the importance of routine dimensionality correction in the Heart Disease dataset from the UCI repository, and a genomics application using data from the UK Biobank. We provide an open source package for this method, available at \url{https://github.com/google-research/sloe-logistic}.


Information and communication technology (ICT) has a changing power and digitalization is gradually changing society in all aspects of life. Across the western world, men are in majority in the ICT industry, thus, the computer programs that change "everything" are most often made by men. Unless questioned, this male dominance can be perceived as a "norm" and becomes invisible. Against this background, this paper will provide three examples of how a feminist gaze can contribute to raise important questions and produce an awareness of how exclusion mechanisms have produce a highly homosocial tendency in design of ICT systems in the western world. The three cases illustrate how a feminist gaze leading to feminist interventions can make a difference in various ways. The first author presents a case study of a pilot for involving programming in public education in secondary schools in Norway, where a complete lack of gender awareness makes this an offer for boys in most schools. Author two presents a case study comparing the situation in the IT business in the UK and India, finding challenges not only to the situation in the western world, but also to white western feminism. Author three discusses alternative ways of involving women in ICT work, through practices of feminist pedagogy, emphasizing hands-on work.


As more citizens choose to volunteer in local and national groups, volunteer organizations and leadership educators have recognized a need to identify who has intentions to develop their leadership as a volunteer. By identifying these intentions, leadership educators may more accurately target those individuals who would like to develop their leadership in a particular organization. For this purpose, the Volunteer Leadership Development Questionnaire (VLDQ) was developed using the theory of planned behavior to guide the collection of qualitative and quantitative data. This pilot study provides evidence the VLDQ may accurately measure an individual's intentions to develop their leadership as a volunteer.


REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY
Horse misbehaviour is an important cause of poor performance in Pony Club horses, is associated with horse-related rider injuries and has been implicated as a nonspecific presenting sign for musculoskeletal pain. Despite this, little is known about the incidence of and risk factors for misbehaviour in Pony Club horses.

OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to describe the incidence and types of misbehaviour in a cohort of Pony Club horses and to identify risk factors for misbehaviour during riding.

METHODS
A prospective longitudinal study was conducted with 84 Pony Club horses from 41 families belonging to 7 Pony Clubs in one inland region of Australia. Owners recorded misbehaviour events and kept daily records of horse housing, exercise, nutrition, healthcare and disease status. Horses were subjected to a monthly veterinary examination. Descriptive statistics were calculated to describe the incidence of misbehaviour, and multivariable logistic regression was used to assess putative risk factors.

RESULTS
Misbehaviour during riding occurred on 3% of days when horses were ridden. On 52% of days with misbehaviour, the misbehaviour was classified as dangerous. Risk of misbehaviour was independently increased on exercise days when the horse was competing, and in months when the horse was fat or obese, fed supplementary feed daily, grazed on paddocks with >50% of ground cover as green grass, exercised on 5 days per month or less, and ridden for a total of 12 h or more in the month. No significant relationship was detected between misbehaviour and back pain.

CONCLUSIONS
In populations such as the study population the risk of misbehaviour is higher in fatter horses, in horses with access to pastures with greater green grass cover, in those fed daily supplements, in horses receiving exercise less frequently, and during competition.

POTENTIAL RELEVANCE
These results highlight the importance of considering horse body condition, nutrition and exercise in any investigation of horse misbehaviour. In addition, recommendations based on these results could be used by veterinarians assisting horse owners to prevent misbehaviour. From the perspective of recreational horse owners, behaviour is a key determinant of horse performance.


The ridgelines of mountain ranges are a source of geomorphic information unadulterated by the arrival of sediment from upslope. Studies along ridgecrests, therefore, can help identify and isolate the controls on important regolith properties such as thickness and texture. A 1.5 km section of ridgeline in the Sierra Nevada (CA) with a tenfold decrease in erosion rate (inferred from ridgetop convexity) provided an opportunity to conduct a high‐resolution survey of regolith properties and investigate their controls. We found that regolith along the most quickly eroding section of the ridge was the rockiest and had the lowest clay concentrations. Furthermore, a general increase in regolith thickness with a slowing of erosion rate was accompanied by an increase in biomass, changes in vegetation community, broader ridgeline profiles, and an apparent increase in total available moisture. The greatest source of variation in regolith thickness at the 10–100 m scale, however, was the local topography along the ridgeline, with the deepest regolith in the saddles and the thinnest on the knobs. Because regolith in the saddles had higher surface soil moisture than the knobs, we conclude that the hydrological conditions primarily driven by local topography (i.e. rapid vs. slow drainage and water‐storage potential) provide the fundamental controls on regolith thickness through feedbacks incorporating physical weathering by the biota and chemical weathering. Moreover, because the ridgeline saddles are the uppermost extensions of first‐order valleys, we propose that the fluvial network affects regolith properties in the furthest reaches of the watershed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The newly discovered Shuangjianzishan Ag-Pb-Zn deposit, with 145 Mt of ore grading 128.5 g/t Ag (locally up to 32,000 g/t) and 2.2 wt % Pb + Zn, is located in the Great Hinggan Range metallogenic belt, northeastern China, and is currently the largest Ag deposit in Asia. The Ag-Pb-Zn orebodies occur as veins and are hosted primarily by a Permian slate. Recent drilling and core logging have identified a partially Mo mineralized granite porphyry intrusion adjacent to the Ag-Pb-Zn mineralized veins. This well-preserved magmatic-hydrothermal system therefore offers an excellent opportunity to evaluate the possible temporal and genetic relationship between Mo-mineralized porphyry intrusions and Ag-Pb-Zn veins. Three primary paragenetic stages of veining have been recognized: (I) early pyrite + quartz ± K-feldspar, (II) main ore sulfide + sulfosalt + quartz + calcite + sericite + chlorite ± epidote, and (III) post-ore quartz. The silver mineralization occurs mainly in the late paragenetic part of Stage II, in which canfieldite (Ag8SnS6), argentite (Ag2S) and freibergite [(Ag, Cu)12Sb4S13] are the dominant Ag-bearing ore minerals. A combination of ore mineral chemical and sulfur isotope geothermometers and physicochemical calculations suggest that the Ag-Pb-Zn mineralization took place at a temperature of 250° to 200°C, a pH of 6.7 to 5.6, and a Δlogfo2 (HM) of –2.4 to –8.7.

A conspicuous enrichment of Sn and Se in the ore, which is represented by minerals containing the metal suite Ag-Pb-Zn-(Cu-Sn-Se-Sb), likely reflects a close genetic association between the base metal mineralization and a magma. In situ analyses show that the δ34S values of the sulfides and Ag-bearing sulfosalts from the Ag-Pb-Zn mineralized veins vary from –4.67 to +2.44‰; the mean value is –2.11 ± 1.49‰ (n = 77). The calculated mean δ34SH2S value of the ore-forming fluid is –1.65 ± 0.83‰, which is indicative of a magmatic sulfur source. In situ Pb isotope analyses of the ore minerals yielded a narrow range of values (206Pb/204Pb of 18.243–18.310, 207Pb/204Pb of 15.503–15.563 and 208Pb/204Pb of 38.053–38.203, n = 59). Comparisons to corresponding isotopic data for the various rock units in the area and sulfides from nearby ore deposits indicate that there were substantial contributions of Pb and other metals (e.g., Ag and Zn) to the Shuangjianzishan deposit from a Mesozoic granitic source.

Diorite-granodiorite dikes and dacite are crosscut by the Ag-Pb-Zn veins, and therefore, predate ore formation. These rock units have zircon U-Pb ages of 250.2 ± 2.0 and 133.9 ± 1.4 Ma, respectively. A concealed, weakly Mo mineralized granite porphyry intrusion proximal to the Ag-Pb-Zn mineralized vein system yielded zircon U-Pb ages of 134.4 ± 1.0 (MSWD = 0.1) and 134.4 ± 1.0 Ma (MSWD = 0.2), for coarse- and fine-grained facies, respectively. These ages are indistinguishable within the uncertainty from the zircon ages for the dacite and a granite intrusion ~2 km north of the mineralized veins, which has a weighted mean zircon U-Pb age of 135.2 ± 1.4 Ma (MSWD = 0.78). Molybdenite from three quartz vein/veinlet samples hosted by slate immediately above the porphyry intrusion yielded Re-Os model ages from 136.3 ± 0.9 to 133.7 ± 1.2 Ma and a weighted mean Re-Os age of 134.9 ± 3.4 Ma. Finally, three pyrite samples separated from the Ag-Pb-Zn mineralized veins have a weighted mean Re-Os model age of 135.0 ± 0.6 Ma. The very similar zircon U-Pb ages for the Mo-mineralized granite porphyry and dacite, and Re-Os ages for molybdenite and pyrite in the Shuangjianzishan ore district indicate that the Mesozoic magmatic-hydrothermal activity was restricted to a relatively short time interval (~136–133 Ma). They also suggest that the weakly Mo mineralized granite porphyry was likely the source of the fluids and metals that produced the Ag-Pb-Zn mineralization.

Based on our geological observations and an extensive analytical database, a model is proposed for the genesis of the giant Shuangjianzishan Ag-Pb-Zn deposit in which the ore-forming fluid and its metals (i.e., Ag, Pb, and Zn) were exsolved during crystallization of the final phase of a composite granite porphyry intrusion. This fluid transported metals to the distal parts of the system, where they were deposited in preexisting faults or fractures created by the withdrawal of magma during the waning stages of the magmatic-hydrothermal event. The present study of the Shuangjianzishan Ag-Pb-Zn deposit and those of other magmatic-hydrothermal ore deposits in the region provide compelling evidence that the widespread Mesozoic felsic magmatism and Ag-Pb-Zn mineralization in the southern Great Hinggan Range took place in an intracontinental extensional tectonic setting, which was synchronous with, and spatially associated to, Paleo-Pacific slab rollback and lithospheric delamination and thinning.


It was the goal of this study to determine whether there were age differences specifically associated with the ability to simultaneously execute two tasks, and whether cognitive costs correlated across different situations. Eighty-one young and 86 older adults underwent nine tasks, administered both in single and in dual conditions. Results showed large age differences in raw performances in all conditions. However, a larger cognitive cost in the older adults sample, as assessed by an Age 2 Condition interaction, was observed only for four out of the nine tasks. Furthermore, age effects were greatly diminished once performance in the single tasks was controlled for. Correlations between the dual tasks, or between the cognitive cost scores, were very low once age was partialled out. Results do not support the notion of general coordination costs and speak against a generalized increase in divided attention costs with advancing age.


We study the multi-play budgeted multi-armed bandit (MP-BMAB) problem, in which pulling an arm receives both a random reward and a random cost, and a player pulls L(≥ 1) arms at each round. The player targets at maximizing her total expected reward under a budget constraint B for the pulling costs. We present a multiple ratio confidence bound policy: At each round, we first calculate a truncated upper (lower) confidence bound for the expected reward (cost) of each arm, and then pull the L arms with the maximum ratio of the sum of the upper confidence bounds of rewards to the sum of the lower confidence bounds of costs. We design a 01 integer linear fractional programming oracle that can pick such the L arms within polynomial time. We prove that the regret of our policy is sublinear in general and is log-linear for certain parameter settings. We further consider two special cases of MP-BMABs: (1) We derive a lower bound for any consistent policy for MP-BMABs with Bernoulli reward and cost distributions. (2) We show that the proposed policy can also solve conventional budgeted MAB problem (a special case of MP-BMABs with L = 1) and provides better theoretical results than existing UCB-based pulling policies.


Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) is widely used as a dietary supplement due tothe biological activity of the isoquinoline alkaloids berberine and hydrastine. Differencesin location and growing conditions often lead to variations in alkaloid content ingoldenseal. These variations in chemical composition of plants are directly affected bysoil conditions in which they are grown. Soil metal concentration is only one factoraffecting the bioavailability of metals to plants. Bioavailability is dramatically affectedby soil pH, cation exchange capacity, and total organic carbon concentrations. Metalswithin the soil can enhance or inhibit pathways that produce alkaloids. Copper, zinc,manganese, iron, magnesium, and calcium are all essential metals to plant health. However,copper, zinc manganese, and iron can be harmful in high concentrations causingoxidative stress. Low concentrations of these and other nutrients can lead to deficienciesthat cause stress to the plant. Production of secondary metabolites like alkaloids isincreased by plants in response to stressors such as oxidative stress and nutrient deficiency.In this project, the concentrations of the alkaloids in leaf and root extracts of goldensealsamples grown in different locations were quantified. In addition, variationsin metal concentrations of plants grown in each location were determined by inductivelycoupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Soil parameters wereall studied through soil tests to get a complete picture of conditions that may be related to alkaloid variations within the sample set. Alkaloid concentrations were determinedusing high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC). Plant alkaloid concentrations werecompared to soil metal concentrations to determine if any correlation exists.Results showed that there were no strong correlations between metal concentrations(R2 above .8) and alkaloid content. However, weaker correlations of 0.37 and0.38 between iron and aluminum in the root show negative relationships between ironand aluminum and berberine in goldenseal roots. Overall trends appearing within thedata suggest positive relationships between berberine production and magnesium, calcium,and manganese concentrations. Trends in the data also suggest that some of thesamples with high berberine concentrations may have experienced nutrient deficiencydue to soil conditions before harvesting.


The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a treatment program called Later 'Gator, which was designed to encourage the use of social coping skills characteristic of Asian American Youth. Later 'Gator was implemented with a small group of Asian American children in an elementary school in southeast Portland, Oregon. The program was originally designed as a modification to the empirically tested New Beginnings 11 Program (NBP; Lustig, Wolchik, & Weiss, 1999; Weiss & Wolchik, 1998) by attempting to incorporate coping skills that would make it more applicable to Asian American children (Chang, 2005). Specifically, Later 'Gator was intended to augment the children's coping skills repertoire to include avoidance, distancing, and restraint coping tehniques. This study examined the program's impact on a group of 3 elementary school boys who identified themselves as being Vietnamese-American. This study examined their reactions along the Kirkpatrick (1994) Model of Learning and monitored how they changed their coping skill usage, changed their sense of optimism and pessimism, and how they changed the quality of their social relationships. End results showed that overall, the children enjoyed the program, and one in particular' showed changes in his coping skill usage. Changes in optimism and pessimism were not consistent across the group. All children seemed to improve the quality of their social relationships with parents and with peers through the program. Although the results were mixed that showed Later 'Gator to have potential as a viable treatment program and begin to address the relative dearth of literature regarding Asian American children. Degree Type Dissertation


Gender issues, particularly with respect to women's status and rights, have for a considerable period, been in the forefront of donors' dialogue on social issues with Africa. While Africa countries have fully acknowledged the seriousness of the issues and the urgent need for action, the dialogue has been largely donor-driven and issues and priorities been donor-set. Recognizing the need for a new approach in this important area for Africa's progress, the Bank, in collaboration with the Economic Commission for Africa, initiated a Gender and Law Program, in October 1997, at a Conference held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Program shifts responsibility for identification and implementation of themes, issues, and priorities to in-country stakeholders rather than with donors. During the Conference, each country delegation voiced its priorities for change. The issues included land-related challenges, family law, violence against women, employment and labor, and decentralized governance frameworks. Land and the division of household property are prime areas where gender-based disparities marginalize and disenfranchise women of Eastern Africa. In an effort to improve women's social and economic life, two main themes emerged: the impact of customary laws and practices and the need for effective implementation. The delegates emphasized the need to initiate action for change at grassroots, institutional, and policy making levels.


Temporal difference (TD) methods constitute a class of methods for learning predictions in multi-step prediction problems, parameterized by a recency factor λ. Currently the most important application of these methods is to temporal credit assignment in reinforcement learning. Well known reinforcement learning algorithms, such as AHC or Q-learning, may be viewed as instances of TD learning. This paper examines the issues of the efficient and general implementation of TD(λ) for arbitrary λ, for use with reinforcement learning algorithms optimizing the discounted sum of rewards. The traditional approach, based on eligibility traces, is argued to suffer from both inefficiency and lack of generality. The TTD (Truncated Temporal Differences) procedure is proposed as an alternative, that indeed only approximates TD(λ), but requires very little computation per action and can be used with arbitrary function representation methods. The idea from which it is derived is fairly simple and not new, but probably unexplored so far. Encouraging experimental results are presented, suggesting that using λ > 0 with the TTD procedure allows one to obtain a significant learning speedup at essentially the same cost as usual TD(0) learning.


Novel peer-to-peer-based multiplayer online games are instantiated in an ad-hoc manner without the support of dedicated infrastructure and maintain their state in a distributed manner. Although their employed communication paradigms provide efficient access to sections of distributed state, such communication fails if the participants need to access large subsets of the application state in order to detect high-level situations. We propose a demonstration that shows how multiplayer online games can benefit from using publish/subscribe communication and complex event processing alongside their traditional communication paradigm.


Many predictive approaches have been proposed to overcome the limitations of reactive autoscaling on clouds. These approaches leverage workload predictors that are usually targeted for a particular workload pattern and can fail to handle real-world cloud workloads whose patterns may be unknown a priori, may dynamically change over time, or may be irregular. The result is that resources are frequently underand overprovisioned. To address this problem, we create a novel cloud workload prediction framework called CloudInsight, leveraging the combined power of multiple workload predictors that collectively provide a "council of experts". The weights of the predictors in this ensemble model are determined in real-time based on their accuracy for current workload using multi-class regression. Under real workload traces, CloudInsight has 13% – 27% better accuracy than state-of-the-art predictors. It also has low overhead for predicting future workload changes (< 100 ms) and creating a new ensemble workload predictor (< 1.1 sec.).


With the rise of Twitter Microblogging as a phenomenon has gained widespread popularity. As with other social software (e.g. Wikis), organisations have begun experimenting with the application of Microblogging for facilitating internal communication and group processes. However, research on the topic is still in its infancy. In this paper we explore how Yammer, a Twitter-like platform, has been adopted within Capgemini, a large, globally operating consultancy business. In contrast to existing findings on Twitter usage and other Enterprise Microblogging (EMB) cases, we find that EMB in our case is a predominantly conversational medium, where people interact with each other explicitly. Rather than using the platform to inform others about themselves (Twitter) or, about their immediate task/team context as has been described in other EMB cases, the Yammer users in this case are expressing views, discussing opinion and responding to each other. We discuss these results in light of the particular organisational context of the case and the emergent nature of communication technologies. We further demonstrate how the interactive and conversational nature of short message communications has led us to investigate the classification of Microblogging according to the context of its use. We conclude that the appropriation of Enterprise Microblogging is shaped largely by the characteristics of the organisational context in which it is used and propose a model that supports this.


In this letter, a new subpixel rendering algorithm using the hue-saturation-intensity (HSI)-based color error analysis is proposed for matrix display devices. The proposed method converts an RGB input image into a HSI image, which is a color space based on human color perception, in order to analyze the sampling errors that are caused by subpixel rendering. Then, it computes the difference between the directionally displaced pixels and selects the direction with the minimum difference. Finally, the proposed method adaptively assigns weights to current and neighboring subpixels based on the directional difference. In experiments for various types of test images, the proposed method enhanced the average luminance sharpness by up to 0.224 and the average chrominance blending by up to 7.311 dB, as compared to the benchmark methods.


Most synapses display activity-dependent changes in synaptic efficacy that influence the likelihood that a particular neuronal pathway will fire; different types of synapses, however, can show marked differences in their responses to repetitive firing, and these differences depend on mechanisms that are incompletely understood. Zhang et al. uncovered an intriguing bidirectional conversation between neurons and astrocytes that mediates a novel form of use-dependent heterosynaptic inhibition (see Preview by Pascual and Haydon). The authors used pharmacologic manipulation in combination with electrophysiological analysis of cocultures of hippocampal neurons and astrocytes to show that endogenous adenosine triphosphate (ATP), acting through presynaptic purinergic P2Y receptors, tonically suppressed glutamatergic transmission. Repetitive stimulation of glutamatergic neurons led to heterosynaptic suppression of nearby neurons, which depended on the sequential activation of P2Y and non-N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptors. Using pharmacologic analysis, separate neuronal and astrocyte cultures, and bioluminescence detection of released ATP, the authors demonstrated that this suppression depended on the release of ATP from glutamate-stimulated astrocytes. The ATP metabolite adenosine mediated a similar heterosynaptic suppression of glutamatergic synapses on CA1 pyramidal neurons in rat hippocampal slices. Pharmacologic analysis, combined with calcium imaging and measurement of ATP release, indicated that this adenosine derived at least in part from ATP released from glia. In a separate study, Moore et al. demonstrated that the dramatic paired-pulse facilitation, frequency facilitation, and an unusual form of long-term potentiation characteristic of hippocampal mossy fiber synapses depended on tonic inhibition through presynaptic adenosine A1 receptors of basal transmitter release. Pharmacologic blockade of A1 receptors or degradation of extracellular adenosine in rat or mouse hippocampal slices enhanced the basal synaptic response and suppressed these use-dependent responses, as did A1 knockout. Both studies emphasize the importance of the local environment--and of adenosine in particular--in modulating activity-dependent changes in synaptic function. J. Zhang, H. Wang, C. Ye, W. Ge, Y. Chen, Z. Jiang, C. Wu, M. Poo, S. Duan, ATP released by astrocytes mediates glutamatergic activity-dependent heterosynaptic suppression. Neuron 40, 971-982 (2003). [Online Journal] K. A. Moore, R. A. Nicoll, D. Schmitz, Adenosine gates synaptic plasticity at hippocampal mossy fiber synapses. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 100, 14397-14402 (2003). [Abstract] [Full Text] O. Pascual, P. G. Haydon, Synaptic inhibition mediated by glia. Neuron 40, 873-875 (2003). [Online Journal]


Over the past decade, Argo floats have provided an unprecedented number of profiles of the global oceans (to 2000m depth), far surpassing the number collected historically fromship-based hydrography. The original design of the Argomission specified nominal 3 x 3 degree spacing, with 10 daysampling interval, of the oceans between 60 °N and 60 °S,excluding the high latitudes and marginal seas. The exclusionof the high latitudes was due to the inability of early floats tosample under sea-ice. Technological advances in float designin recent years now give us this capability. Advancements havecome through re-design of hardware (i.e. armoured ice floats),software (ice-avoidance algorithm and open-water test) andcommunications (Iridium), allowing the transmission of storedwinter profiles. Observing circulation in seasonally ice-coveredseas is challenging. To date, most observations have beenmade during ice-free summer periods and consequently thewinter circulation beneath the sea-ice is not well understood.Despite this, Argo has already made a significant contribution tohigh latitude research with successful deployments of floats inthe polar oceans of both hemispheres. As of December 2008,over 100 floats had been deployed above 60 °N and over 200below 60 °S. Approximately 60% of these floats are still active(the failure rate of early floats was high as the ice-capabletechnology was being developed and tested). Mortality rates ofnewer ice floats are now equivalent to those deployed in lessdemanding conditions. In fact, a number of floats deployed inthe Weddell Sea have survived for 7 years (surpassing 225profiles) equal to some of the longest-lived floats deployedglobally. The high latitudes are important deep water massformation regions. The Southern Ocean connects the globalocean basins and regulates the meridional overturningcirculation. The exposed Arctic Ocean will have importantconsequences for ocean and atmospheric circulation, moistureand heat fluxes. Therefore, both polar regions play a critical rolein setting the rate and nature of global climate variabilitythrough their moderation of the earth's heat, freshwater andcarbon budgets. Recent studies have shown that certainregions at high latitudes are warming more rapidly than theglobal average. Some of the most important climate changesignals are seen near ice shelves and within the sea ice zone.In the Arctic, reductions in sea-ice extent and changes infreshwater fluxes, deep water mass properties and convectionhave been observed. Similarly strong reductions in sea-icecoverage are occurring near the Antarctic Peninsula while smallincreases appear in the Ross Sea. At the same time decreasingsalinity on the Ross Sea shelf is thought to be linked toincreased glacial melt. The Argo network has been crucial fordocumenting the recent changes in the open ocean; robust andlarge-scale freshening of the Southern Ocean has beenobserved from Argo and historical hydrographic data. Butsampling at these higher latitudes is less systematic than forthe rest of the globe. Therefore, observations of high latitudeoceans in both hemispheres should be a top priority. Inconsidering sampling strategies for the high latitudes werecommend extending the Argo network beyond 60 °S and60 °N through the deployment of ice-capable floats at thenominal density (3 x 3 degrees). In addition, regional arrays ofacoustically-tracked floats will provide a more focused effort onbasin scales. An established array of sound-sources (RAFOS)and acoustically-tracked floats in the Weddell Sea is alreadyyielding valuable information on ocean circulation and structurebeneath the sea-ice. A similar array should be established tosample the Ross Sea gyre. In the Arctic, an array of lowfrequency (< 100 Hz) sound sources would be required toprovide basin-wide geo-location for profiling floats. Now that wehave come to review the past decade of progress within Argo,we find there is considerable support and justification for theofficial extension of the Argo array into the seasonally icecoveredseas. Sustained, comprehensive observation of thepolar oceans is required to adequately monitor global climatechange signals. This can only be achieved in a broad-scale andcost-effective way by using autonomous platforms like Argoprofiling floats. It is thus imperative that a commitment is madeto enhance and maintain a profiling float array in the highlatitudes. The extension of the core Argo array beyond 60degrees in both hemispheres will ensure that it remains one ofthe most important and truly global components of the oceanobserving system.


p-Type delafossite CuFeO2 has recently been reported as a promising candidate for direct photoelectrochemical solar water reduction in alkaline conditions. However, despite its favorable optical band gap energy and light absorption, this material suffers from poor electron–hole separation that limits its optimum thickness to a few hundred nanometers. This limitation can be addressed by a host–guest strategy, where a mesoporous p-type scaffold is used to support a thin-film of the light absorber. Here we demonstrate this host–guest approach for the first time with CuFeO2 using p-type transparent CuAlO2 as a scaffold. Optimizing the scaffold layer thickness at 2 μm resulted in a 2.4-fold increase in photocurrent in the presence of O2—a sacrificial electron scavenger—reaching 2.4 mA cm−2 at +0.4 V vs. RHE. Moreover, comparing the performance to host–guest electrodes prepared with an insulating SiO2 scaffold as a control suggested that the observed improvement with CuAlO2 was due to a decreased recombination stemming from improved charge separation in addition to improved charge transport through the scaffold compared to the CuFeO2 film alone.


ABSTRACT Study Context: The question of whether relationships between valence and arousal might differ among older and younger adults has not yet been totally clarified. Previous studies focused on only age-related mean-differences, but in the current study mean differences and variance in emotional ratings for the International Affective Picture Systems (IAPS) were both examined in Japanese older and younger adults. Methods: Participants were 31 older adults (69 ± 5.17 years) and 31 younger adults (19 ± 0.77 years). Each picture was projected on the screen for about 5 s in random order and participants subsequently rated its valence from "unhappy" to "happy" and its arousal from "calm" to "exciting," using 9-point scales. Results: Pearson's correlation analysis showed that positive and negative valence tended to be negatively correlated with arousal in both age groups. The 95% Confidence Intervals for positive arousal in older adults included those of younger adults. Arousal ratings for negative pictures were higher than those for neutral pictures, and those for neutral pictures were higher than those for positive pictures in older adults. There were no significant differences between arousal ratings for neutral pictures and positive pictures in younger adults. Conclusion: Older adults tended to rate the pictures as more arousing, with higher arousal ratings for negative pictures than for positive pictures, and the variance of positive arousal in older adults was the highest variance for all conditions. The results of this study suggest that older adults may be sensitive to harmful negative experiences in order to make them less aversive.


Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly recognised as having the potential to play a key role in meeting climate change targets, delivering low carbon heat and power, decarbonising industry and, more recently, its ability to facilitate the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. However, despite this broad consensus and its technical maturity, CCS has not yet been deployed on a scale commensurate with the ambitions articulated a decade ago. Thus, in this paper we review the current state-of-the-art of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage from a multi-scale perspective, moving from the global to molecular scales. In light of the COP21 commitments to limit warming to less than 2 °C, we extend the remit of this study to include the key negative emissions technologies (NETs) of bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Cognisant of the non-technical barriers to deploying CCS, we reflect on recent experience from the UK's CCS commercialisation programme and consider the commercial and political barriers to the large-scale deployment of CCS. In all areas, we focus on identifying and clearly articulating the key research challenges that could usefully be addressed in the coming decade.


In many affluent Western societies the less educated are at higher risk of developing obesity. Within a conceptual framework of sociology of embodiment, this study analyzed the embodied experiences associated with obesity and the management of body weight among women and men with different social backgrounds. Qualitative in depth interviews were conducted with 20 Danish middle-aged men and women who were categorized as clinically obese in a national dietary survey. The study found a devastating impact of obesity in the lives of highly educated women related to motherhood, career and wifehood which interrelated with persistent efforts to lose weight and repeated involvement in a great variety of weight-loss activities. In contrast, body weight among the less educated interviewees was a concern only in specific situations of everyday life, and it was a health-related concern especially for those men who had experienced weight-related disease, which interrelated with less commitment to, and variation in, weight-loss activities. These findings may help to explain why obesity is least prevalent among highly educated women in Danish society as well as other western societies. A marked difference between men and women was that only few men followed dietary regimes which involved a focus on cooking or changing eating habits on their own initiative. In addition they did not participate in commercial weight-loss programs. We discuss how the social and gendered differences found relate to wider societal contexts and how the findings may both challenge and inform public health promotion.


We report a study of photonic crystal nanocavities as a function of lattice disorder, which is implemented by deliberate radius variations of the holes forming the photonic crystal. Using cross-polarized laser light scattering, we demonstrate that lattice disorder affects the cavity mode symmetry, as is crucially evidenced by measuring scattering resonances for different sample orientations and explained by group-theoretical analysis together with calculations of the mode profile. We also quantify how the increase of lattice disorder leads to a reduction of the cavity Q factors and to a spread of both Q factors and resonance wavelengths. The trends as a function of disorder and for different radii distributions are well reproduced by theoretical calculations when both intentional (deliberate) andintrinsic (residual) disorder are taken into account. The results shed light on the effects of disorder on cavity resonances and on the interplay between intentional and intrinsic disorder, yielding reliable estimations of residual disorder (which ultimately affects technology limits) from optical measurements. Interestingly, the disorder values derived from the variation of the Q factor are lower than those derived from the wavelength spread: this suggests the occurrence of subtle interhole correlation effects that turn out to be beneficial for cavity Q factors.


One of the essential elements for safe operation of a nuclear licensed site is the availability to the licensee in sufficient numbers of suitably qualified and experienced people to carry out and manage the operations and associated design work. In the last few years, there have been a number of reports to illustrate the recent and current problems of recruiting such people to work in the traditional locations for nuclear personnel in the North-West of England. Concern for the immediate future is exacerbated by a peculiar demographic of the people currently employed in positions demanding higher level skills. In response to the growing realization that there is an impending skills gap that needs to be filled, Sellafield Limited's Talent Management team (and latterly with support of the NDA) have been working with a number of education and training providers to put in place bespoke courses aimed at overcoming this shortage. In the absence of a steady stream of willing graduates from technical and management courses, the primary strategy has been to encourage life-long learning and up-skilling amongst its employees, targeting those who, for whatever reason upon leaving school, missed their opportunity to study and progress to train at a high level, but who possess that potential and have now developed a keenness to proceed with that study in later life. One Foundation Degree has been selected for development of a unique approach to higher education. The work of University of Central Lancashire and its West-Cumbrian education and training partners has featured as a case study in other media, but this paper reports on a fresh development within that work: co-delivery. Co-delivery relates to a partnership of educationalists and industrialists, with an emphasis on industrial numbers on the course development steering group. The means by which a significant proportion of the course is strongly workplace related are presented and the benefits and problems that this introduces are discussed. The course uses the industry as a vehicle to communicate concepts and develop problem-solving skills. Rather than the major vocational aspects being confined to just a few 'workplace' modules, the industry permeates all modules and co-delivery is part of a good many. A report is also made on the areas of provision where the major capability and expertise is located in just a few industrialists; and how that aspect is learned within a co-delivery course.© 2009 ASME


There are many examples in the literature of algorithms for synthesizing state machines from scenario-based models. The motivation for these is to automate the transition from scenario-based requirements to early behavioral design models. To date, however, these synthesis algorithms have tended to generate flat state machines which can be difficult to understand or adapt for practical systems. One of the reasons for this is that relationships between scenarios are often not taken into account during synthesis—either because the relationships are not explicitly defined or because the synthesis algorithms are not sophisticated enough to cope with them. If relationships are not considered, it is impossible for a synthesis algorithm to know, for example, where one scenario stops and another continues. Furthermore, the lack of relationships makes it difficult to introduce structure into the generated state machines. With the introduction of interaction overview diagrams (IODs) in UML2.0, relationships such as continuation and concurrency can now be specified between scenarios in a way that conforms to the UML standard. But synthesis algorithms do not currently exist that take into account all of these relationships. This article presents a novel synthesis algorithm for an extended version of interaction overview diagram. This algorithm takes into account not only continuation and concurrency, but also preemption, suspension and the notion of a negative scenario. Furthermore, the synthesis algorithm generates well-structured state machines. These state machines are executable and can therefore be used to validate the scenarios. The hierarchy generated aids readability and so the state machines are more amenable to subsequent design steps. Our IOD extensions have a formal semantics and are supported by a synthesis and execution tool, UCSIM, which is currently provided as a plug-in to IBM Rational Software Modeler.


Plate tectonics has become established during the last thirty years as a coherent explanation for the major features of the Earth today. The formation of new crust at mid-ocean ridges, the movement of relatively rigid lithospheric plates over the softer underlying asthenosphere, and the collision of plates throwing up the Earth's major mountain ranges, are familiar concepts to many people. However, recent discoveries in Earth sciences challenge us to a newer concept of the Earth's evolution. These discoveries indicate that large meteorite impacts have had enormous effects on the Earth, perhaps most dramatically illustrated 65 million years ago, when an impact at Chicxulub in the Caribbean may have been responsible for mass extinctions (including the dinosaurs) on a global scale. The evidence for these catastrophic events is surprisingly enigmastic in the geological record, and has been the subject of intense scientific debate and disagreement. Some of the major types of direct evidence for meteorite impacts include the craters formed by impact, and the effects of impact on rocks, including melting the formation of shatter cones, and a whole variety of small-scale features that are revealed under the microscope. Perhaps paradoxically, these microstructures are the most unambiguous evidence for meteorite impacts, because they formed under radically greater stresses, temperatures and strain rates than those of plate tectonic processes, and are therefore quite distinct from plate tectonic microstructures. These features of meteorite impacts on Earth are illustrated by examples from several known impact sites, including the Vredefort structure in South Africa and a possible impact structure at Highbury south of Mhangura in Zimbabwe. Large meteorite impacts on Earth have significantly augmented Earth's mineral resources since the formation of the Earth, by creating diamonds in the ultra-high pressure conditions of impact, by providing structures that trap petroleum, and possibly by creating base metal deposits. The likely environmental consequences of impacts include a searing heat wave followed by global cooling, causing episodes of mass extinction that may occur in cycles. There is some controversial evidence for the theory that the first life on Earth itself may have been transported here on meteorites from Mars. The possibility of a major meteorite impact on Earth in the near future emphasizes the dramatic nature of these recent discoveries, which are having deep impacts in the Earth sciences, possibly even constituting a scientific revolution. Journal of Applied Science in Southern Africa Vol.5, No.1 pp. 63-80


Abstract
In the world, a million adults have peripheral artery disease (PAD), a number that is likely to escalate as the
population ages. Lower-extremity PAD is a component of systemic atherosclerosis and confers a markedly
heightened risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.
Material and Methods: Recruited 48 patients Exercise therapy combined with Nordic Walking and cyclette
program in patients with PAD second IIA Stage Leriche Fontaine scale stable for at least six months, with interval
free running (IML) between 200 and 300 meters.
Result: In Group A the free shift range test (IML) 137 ± 12 meters in T0, resulting in statistically significant post
processing T1 222 ± 10 (p < 0.05). In Group B T0 138 ± 6 meters in T1 IML 212 ± 10 meters (p < 0.05). The results
obtained in this study showed that the two types of exercise, at least after a short training period, are similar in terms
of increasing the autonomy of the way and improving the quality of life (QoL).
Conclusion: The benefits of regular physical activity and comprehensive secondary prevention have the
potential to benefit patients with PAD by preserving or improving functional capacity and reducing cardiovascular
events.


We prove explicit approximation hardness results for the Graphic TSP on cubic and subcubic graphs as well as the new inapproximability bounds for the corresponding instances of the (1,2)-TSP. The proof technique uses new modular constructions of simulating gadgets for the restricted cubic and subcubic instances. The modular constructions used in the paper could be also of independent interest.


This investigation analyses the production and reproduction of class-based social inequality within the Further Education and Skills system in England, with a particular focus on the years of Labour government following the 1997 General Election. New Labour policy on further education (FE) continually emphasised the importance of reforming the sector for a dual role: contributing to UK economic competitiveness by expanding the skills base; and promoting social inclusion by integrating vulnerable people into job markets and society more broadly. The published work submitted here investigates how this 'reform agenda' unfolded in three key aspects of FE provision, and examines the ways in which inequality continued to be produced and reproduced, in spite of the proposed key role for FE in social inclusion. The aspects considered are the training and workplace development of FE teachers, the rehabilitation of creativity within discourses of knowledge economy and social cohesion, and programmes for young people at risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training). In addition to the published work, a commentary outlines the context and main arguments of each paper, explains my contribution to the three co-authored publications and discusses the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the investigation. The commentary concludes by discussing the overall contribution to knowledge of the work and its theoretical significance.


In this study, two reconfigurable bandpass filters are presented. The first filter is able to switch between WiFi and universal mobile telecommunications (UMTS) transmit band standards. Centre frequency, bandwidth and power specifications are precisely met by a switchable filter topology that includes two folded resonator extensions switched by only two PIN diodes. Design specifications require two filter states, one at 2.440 GHz with a 80 MHz bandwidth and a second state at 1.955 GHz with a 140 MHz bandwidth for the WiFi and UMTS transmit bands, respectively. The filter should handle a maximum power of 16 and 21 dBm for the WiFi and UMTS states, respectively. Measured results show very good agreement with the simulations. The filter topology meets power requirements of both standards. The second filter was designed using ohmic-contact cantilever-type MEMS able to switch between two different states with a centre frequency tunable range of 24% in C band. This design includes two additional switches to provide precise input and output couplings for each state. The filter was designed to have centre frequencies of 5 and 6.2 GHz, with a fractional bandwidth of 7 and 3%, respectively. Filter specifications were successfully met with the proposed topologies.


SETTING
Multicentre study.

OBJECTIVE
To define the clinical characteristics of patients with tuberculosis (TB) destroyed lung due to past TB.

DESIGN
We reviewed patients with TB-destroyed lung between May 2005 and June 2011.

RESULTS
A total of 595 patients from 21 hospitals were enrolled. The mean age was 65.63 ± 0.47 (mean ± standard error); 60.5% were male. The mean number of lobes involved was 2.59 ± 0.05. Pleural thickening was observed in 54.1% of the patients. Mean forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1)), FEV(1)/FVC, bronchodilator response and number of exacerbations per year were respectively 2.06 ± 0.03 l (61.26% ± 0.79), 1.16 ± 0.02 l (49.05% ± 0.84), 58.03% ± 0.70, 5.70% ± 0.34, and 0.40 ± 0.04. The number of lobes involved was significantly correlated with FVC and FEV(1), and with the number of exacerbations per year. Use of long-acting muscarinic antagonists or long-acting beta-2 agonists plus inhaled corticosteroids resulted in bronchodilatory effects. Multivariable regression analysis showed that age, initial FEV(1) (%) and number of exacerbations during follow-up were independent factors affecting change in FEV(1).

CONCLUSION
Decreased lung function with exacerbation, and progressive decline of FEV(1) were observed in patients with TB-destroyed lung.


Accreditors, such as the Joint Commission, consider evidence of patient engagement strategies for awarding Primary Care/Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) accreditation. This project explored the use of brief Motivational Interviewing (MI) training at a local county health center and evaluated the impact on the documented use of selfmanagement goals (SMGs) for patients with diabetes and hypertension. Methods included a professional development program, including an online module, presentation, and educational materials. The goal was to increase providers' MI knowledge and skills to better construct and document SMGs. The program impact was evaluated by chart review to determine the use of SMGs by providers in patients with diabetes and hypertension. The presentation evaluation included participant scoring of statements based on learning objectives. Results of the presentation objectives included > than 3.88/4 means of each item and indicated satisfaction with the presentation. Pre implementation (N=120) chart review demonstrated that only 7% of the charts contained SMG documentation. One month after the program completion, no change (6%) was noted in providers' (N= 86) SMG documentation. Informal interviews with providers indicated favorable attitudes toward increasing patient engagement with MI and formation of SMGs but challenges were identified such as too little time with patients, health literacy, and lack of resources. Conclusions indicate that innovative options should be developed to support providers in the development and documentation of SMGs.


Standardized ecotoxicological tests still constitute the fundamental tools when doing risk-assessment of aquatic contaminants. These protocols are managed towards minimal mortality in the controls, which is not representative for natural systems where mortality is often high. This methodological bias, generated from assays where mortality in the control group is systematically disregarded, makes it difficult to measure therapeutic effects of pharmaceutical contaminants leading to lower mortality. This is of concern considering that such effects on exposed organisms still may have substantial ecological consequences. In this paper, we illustrate this conceptual problem by presenting empirical data for how the therapeutic effect of Oxazepam—a common contaminant of surface waters—lower mortality rates among exposed Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis) from wild populations, at two different life stages. We found that fry hatched from roe that had been exposed to dilute concentrations (1.1 ± 0.3 μg l−1) of Oxazepam for 24 h 3–6 days prior to hatching showed lower mortality rates and increased activity 30 days after hatching. Similar effects, i.e. increased activity and lower mortality rates were also observed for 2-year old perch exposed to dilute Oxazepam concentrations (1.2 ± 0.4 μg l−1). We conclude that therapeutic effects from pharmaceutical contaminants need to be considered in risk assessment assays to avoid that important ecological effects from aquatic contaminants are systematically missed.


Background and Purpose—Poststroke infections (PSIs) worsen the outcome in acute ischemic stroke, but the effect of preceding infection (PI) is controversial. Data on young patients are scarce. We characterized PI and PSI in young adults with first-ever stroke and studied whether they are associated with 3-month and long-term outcomes, recurrent vascular events, and death. Methods—From our database of 1008 consecutive patients aged 15 to 49 years, we included in the present study those who had brain imaging done within the first 2 days from stroke onset. Outcomes were unfavorable at 3 months and during long-term follow-up, vascular events, and all-cause death. Logistic regression and Cox proportional models were used to determine associations between infections and clinical outcomes. Results—A total of 681 patients (62.3% men) fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Of these, 70 (10.3%) had PI, most commonly upper respiratory tract infection, and 103 (15.1%) had PSI, most commonly pneumonia. After adjusting for ...


Abstract. The study is inspired by questions that students and teachers ask during past experiments that the authors have carried out. The users who represent Bulgarian and Croatian schools are invited to evaluate existing maps and draw their own maps. This research focuses on cartographical mistakes and how they impact user's understanding of the map. We don't aim to show or explain all cartographic mistakes. The examples are chosen arbitrarily and do not claim to provide an exhaustive list of the problems.Online maps which hold a significant market share provide cartographic information in various thematic areas for different kind of users. Producers of all world map platforms try to cover all necessary information in a similar way and do not consider user's age, cultural, professional and knowledge diversity. Similar behaviour is observed with the production of traditional maps where various cartographic mistakes can be pointed.To respond to these observations, Bulgarian and Croatian cartographic associations created rules and conditions under which a cartographic product can receive a Certificate for high-quality map / atlas / other cartographic product.


Short and narrow roads are generally overlooked when assessing road impacts on biodiversity. However, these roads bisect natural environments and may cause significant impacts on wildlife in local scale. Thus, we monitored roadkills along a short two-lane road (CPM road) in Southeastern Brazil and propose mitigation strategies to reduce wildlife mortality. We monitored roadkilled vertebrates along 5 km of CPM road from 2010 to 2016 and we also compiled data from previous studies along the same road. We conducted a hotspot analysis to identify CPM road areas with significant roadkill aggregation. We recorded 77 roadkilled vertebrates from 14 taxonomic groups along the CPM road. Mammals were the most frequently recorded group (91% of roadkills), which represented 56% of all medium- and large-sized mammal species known to occur in the study area. We identified three roadkill hotspots along the CPM road. Two of them were located at two stream crossings, where the road cut across the associated riparian forests, and the other was at a road section with water drainage from a pond, also connected to a riparian forest. These riparian forests are part of the remaining natural habitat that provides connectivity between the forest remnants in the landscape, and therefore, for wildlife. Our results showed that even short and narrow roads can have considerable roadkill, which may have severe effects for wildlife on a local scale. The results stress the need to carefully look at these types of roads and propose measures to reduce impacts. We propose the creation of safe crossing opportunities in the hotspot zones combined with wildlife fencing to keep the animals off the road and guide them towards the safe crossing opportunities.


The sequence stratigraphic approach has evolved into an important tool for stratigraphic analysis and does have an element of prediction. Several sequence models have been proposed and are in use, but there have been emotive discussions in the literature over these, as well as systems tracts and key surfaces. Metre-scale cycles (parasequences) are the building blocks of sequences and are an essential component of carbonate successions throughout the stratigraphic record. Their thickness and facies patterns, reflecting the longer-term changes in accommodation that affected deposition, enable the various systems tracts in a sequence to be recognised. There have been many arguments over the origin of parasequences with orbital forcing, tectonic and sedimentary mechanisms all having their proponents. Devonian carbonates of the Ardennes-Eifel-Aachen area are dominated by a suite of parasequence types deposited in ramp and shelf-interior locations. They show thickness patterns and trends in facies, which on a broad scale can be correlated across the region, whereas individual cycles cannot. Some packaging of cycles is seen, which could indicate an orbital-forcing control. However, there is clear evidence for a tectonic control on regional thickness patterns in some parts of the succession, as a result of deposition across syn-sedimentary extensional faults. As with many areas of Earth Science, explanation involves a combination of several hypotheses and here one mechanism does not seem to have been responsible for the Devonian cyclicity. KeYWords: Sequence stratigraphy, parasequences, Devonian, Belgium, limestones, orbital forcing, metre-scale cycles, Fischer plots.


In a series of papers it was discussed,on the basis of phenomenological arguments, whether the high frequency quasiperiodic oscillations (kHz QPOs)observed in the neutron-star and black-hole X-ray sources originate in the same physical mechanism. Recently it was suggested that a general trend seen in neutron star kHz QPOs instead excludes such a uniform origin. Using the example of the atoll source 4U 1636-53 we illustrate that this is not neccesarily true.


Parenting Practices of Lower Socioeconomic Status Parents of High Achieving Students by Michael S. Elia MS, University of Scranton, 1999 BS, East Stroudsburg University, 1996 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University May 2015 Abstract Many lower socioeconomic status (SES) students at the middle school level in a school district were not achieving academically, and many of their parents were not involved in the school. To assist these parents, this qualitative case study examined the perspectives of lower SES parents of middle school students who were experiencing academic success. The intent of this investigation was to illuminate the parenting practices andMany lower socioeconomic status (SES) students at the middle school level in a school district were not achieving academically, and many of their parents were not involved in the school. To assist these parents, this qualitative case study examined the perspectives of lower SES parents of middle school students who were experiencing academic success. The intent of this investigation was to illuminate the parenting practices and involvement that appeared to be effective for this subpopulation. The theoretical framework was Bandura's self-efficacy theory. Research questions focused on lower SES parents' practices that supported their child's academic success. Data were collected through individual interviews with 10 lower SES parents of academically successful middle school students, as indicated by their grade point averages. Data were coded and common themes were identified as keeping clear lines of communication with school, providing encouragement, and keeping parent involvement consistent and persistent. These themes were not unique to this group of parents as anticipated, but they supported findings from the literature. Findings support general recommendations for the local school district for developing a comprehensive plan to encourage consistency and persistence of parental involvement and for training of teachers on increasing parental involvement opportunities. Implications for social change include parents supporting student learning and success and teachers becoming more effective in working with parents on strategies that can support their children academically. Parenting Practices of Lower Socioeconomic Status Parents of High Achieving Students by Michael S. Elia MS, University of Scranton, 1999 BS, East Stroudsburg University, 1996 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University May 2015


Off-vine grape dehydration under controlled conditions is a pre-fermentative process which could be used independently of the climatic conditions of the wine region and leads to changes in the chemical composition of grapes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of grape dehydration process under controlled environment conditions on the organic acids composition of musts and wines. The 'Cabernet Sauvignon' grapes were harvested (20±1 °Brix) and placed to dehydration under controlled conditions (7°C and 35% relative humidity, 12 m3 s-1 of airflow). Must samples were prepared with non-dehydrated grapes (control samples) and after the grapes reached the drying of 10, 20, 30 and 40%, the musts were submitted to the same vinification condition to obtain the wine samples. The following organic acids, tartaric, malic, lactic, citric, succinic and acetic were determined by liquid chromatography using isocratic elution and with detection at 212 nm. The results showed that tartaric, malic and citric acids were detected in all musts studied. The musts obtained from grapes dehydrated by 20, 30 and 40 also showed contents of succinic acid (2.38, 2.57 and 4.83 g L-1 respectively) and acetic acid was detected only in the must obtained from dried grape of 40% (0.61 g L-1). It was observed that musts obtained from dried grapes showed high concentrations of organic acids according to the percentages of dehydration applied to the grapes. The tartaric, malic, citric and succinic acids were detected in all wines, and the wines obtained from 30 and 40% dried grapes also showed concentrations of lactic acid (0.34-0.80 g L-1 respectively) and acetic acid (0.24-0.93 g L-1 respectively). These results demonstrate that off-vine grape dehydration process under controlled conditions modifies the organic acid composition of the must and wines.


We show that the Invariant Risk Minimization (IRM) formulation of Arjovsky et al. (2019) can fail to capture"natural"invariances, at least when used in its practical"linear"form, and even on very simple problems which directly follow the motivating examples for IRM. This can lead to worse generalization on new environments, even when compared to unconstrained ERM. The issue stems from a significant gap between the linear variant (as in their concrete method IRMv1) and the full non-linear IRM formulation. Additionally, even when capturing the"right"invariances, we show that it is possible for IRM to learn a sub-optimal predictor, due to the loss function not being invariant across environments. The issues arise even when measuring invariance on the population distributions, but are exacerbated by the fact that IRM is extremely fragile to sampling.


This issue presents results from the analysis of selected case studies on how ICT-enabled social innovations promoting social investment can contribute to the modernisation of social protection systems in the EU. The selected case studies are drawn from fourteen Member States and address diverse social services and policy domains. Findings from the research show that they have made a positive contribution to transforming existing social services models, with ICT-enabled social innovation playing a crucial role, either as an enabler or game changer. The analysis illustrates examples of how ICTs can provide solutions to those global societal challenges that are adding new complexities to the delivery of social services; in particular, ICTs can help building a 'client pathway' approach, with services centred on the needs of the beneficiaries. At a more operational level, the simplification and automation of procedures increases access to services and fosters a direct relationship between service providers and users. Innovative policies encouraging the development of ICT solutions for the management of social protection systems and the delivery of social services should thus be promoted; to this end, specific incentive schemes to guarantee development, sustainability and transferability of those initiatives that generate social value by leveraging on ICTs shall be identified and fostered across the EU. At the same time, high levels of digitalization in the services delivery system must be balanced with alternative channels, to ensure that the less technologically savvy are not excluded. For this purpose, it is crucial to involve citizens and relevant stakeholders right from the early stages of social policy programming, and the creation of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and partnerships with third sector organisations should be encouraged.


This paper describes the background, the decision-making processes, and the curricular philosophy of a new four-year degree in the Computer Science & Information Systems department at Mount Royal University. The program created could be described as a hybrid between the Information Systems 2002 Model Curriculum and the Information Technology 2008 Curriculum Guidelines (IT2008). The approach described here may be of interest to other departments with existing IS programs that would like to take advantage of the strengths of the IT approach without abandoning some of the unique strengths of the IS curricula. The paper also argues that instead of trying to erect clear disciplinary boundaries around IT, we should instead think of IT as the computing discipline whose focus is the practical integration of the other computing disciplines.


This Article examines the state of cross-border banking in the NAFTA countries and the question of whether member country banks should be permitted to branch freely throughout North America. Under present law, the United States permits foreign banks to branch into its territory subject to extensive restrictions, Canada has indicated that it plans to eliminate many restrictions on foreign branching, and Mexico continues to permit access to its banking markets only by investment in or establishment of an institution chartered in Mexico. Article 1403(3) of the NAFTA left the issue of cross-border branching open to subsequent negotiation. If the decision to organize the North American banking market were made by a hypothetical disinterested "expert" the legal regime would permit banking organizations to branch freely across borders, or, alternatively, to establish either a branch or a subsidiary in their own discretion. Of course, the decision will not be made by an impartial expert, but rather will be the result of international bargaining. One way to explain the bargaining would be to say that the member countries will do everything in their control to maximize their respective "national interests." A more realistic way to examine the process, however, is through the lens of public choice theory. Industry groups and regulators will compete for government action to maximize the value of their respective enterprises. The member countries may each find that the existing banking structure provides their banks with certain non-tariff barriers to trade that they may be reluctant to surrender. Finally, the regulators in each of the countries will be reluctant to give up regulatory authority without getting something in return.


Insufficient fruit set of tomatoes owing to poor pollination in low cost greenhouses is a problem in South Africa, as bumblebee pollinators may not be imported. Since sub-optimum boron (B) levels may also contribute to fruit set problems, this aspect was investigated. Greenhouse tomatoes were planted in acid-washed river sand. Four nutrient solutions with only B at different levels (0.02; 0.16; 0.32 and 0.64 mg l-1) were used. Leaf analyses indicated that the uptake of Ca, Mg, Na, Zn and B increased with higher B levels. At the low B level, leaves were brittle and appeared pale-green and very high flower abscission percentages were found. Fruit lacked firmness at the low B level and this problem worsened during storage. At the 0.16 mg kg-1 B-level, fruit set, fruit development, colour, total soluble solids, firmness and shelf life seemed to be close to optimum. The highest B-level had no detrimental effect on any of the yield and quality related parameters. However, using 'Solubor' as a source of B, high levels decreased soluble Mn concentrations in nutrient solutions, probably owing to the precipitation of insoluble MnO2. This was reflected in reduced leaf-Mn concentrations.


Despite extensive policy discussion, limited empirical literature is available concerning the impacts of infrastructure on human development. Furthermore, major infrastructure services, such as transport and energy, are missing in the current Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) framework; although there is a firm consensus that infrastructure is the main vehicle in achieving MDGs. Therefore this study assesses the impacts of several infrastructure variables (access to electricity, access to clean drinking water sources, and road density) on the human development index (HDI) and its three component indexes (i.e., health, education, and income), using the panel data of 1995 to 2010 covering 91 developing countries. Dynamic panel estimation of General Methods of Moments resulted in revealing that all three infrastructure variables have significant positive impacts on HDI. However, access to electricity and access to clean drinking-water sources have positive and significant effects only on education and health indexes. On the other hand, road density is highly significant to increase the income index. Thus it is argued that eradication of all forms of infrastructure poverty (defined as "lack of access to infrastructure services") is a necessary condition to eliminate human poverty sustainably. Thus it is essentially important to address the infrastructure poverty comprehensively in post-2015 new-development strategies.


Abstract In a paradigm of a three-dimensioned (valence, arousal, dominance) affective space, the aim of the present study was to extend the use of picture rating methodology to primary school children and to outline the specifics of affective reactions in anxious children. Self-report measures of emotional reactions evoked by emotion-eliciting IAPS (International Affective Pictures System, Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 2005) stimuli were administered to anxious (N = 90) and non-anxious (N = 97) children, aged 7-10 years. Results confirmed that IAPS pictures of varying valence and arousal elicit the same patterns of subjective responses as in normal adults. It was hypothesized that anxiety would be associated with ratings of more negative valence, higher arousal and lower dominance of the emotioneliciting pictorial stimuli. The results supported our hypothesis only partially. Only positive IAPS pictures could differentiate between children with and without symptoms of anxiety. The intensity of reactions did not differentiate between anxious and non-anxious children, but anxious children under evaluated to valence of positive stimuli as well as their own resources to face these positively valenced stimuli. Keywords: affective space, emotion-eliciting stimuli, IAPS, biphasic motivation, anxiety disorders Introduction Osgood's semantic differential theory of emotion (Osgood, Suci, & Tanenbaum, 1957) identifies three basic parameters of emotional states. This view posits that every emotional state can be described by two primary dimensions, hedonic valence (unpleasant-pleasant) and arousal (calm, excited), and a third less-strongly related dimension, dominance or control (in controldominated). Affective valence and arousal can be represented in a bidimensional framework. Each stimulus in this framework, called the affective space, is characterized by the average scores of the two affective dimensions (Lang, 1994). The reliability of locating stimuli in this framework indicates that the concept of affective space is viable. Several researchers have reported that the affective space is shaped as a "boomerang" if valence is dimensioned on the Y axis or U shaped if valence is plotted on the X axis. Research data supports a quadratic relationship between the pleasure and arousal dimensions, meaning that the intensity of emotional reaction varies with the growth or decrease of stimulus valence. Neutral stimuli are associated with decreased arousal (Bradley & Lang, 2005). Lang, Bradley and Cuthbert (2005) consider that the association between valence and arousal can be interpreted in terms of motivation and motivated action. Starting from Bower's (1981) network theory and based on linear regression, the authors posit that the valence and intensity of emotional reactions reflect activation levels in the primary motivational systems of the brain, the appetitive and aversive systems. The appetitive motivational system is expressed in approach motivation, attitude and behavior while the aversive motivational system expresses itself in avoidance motivation, avoidance attitude and behavior, abandon, escape or attack. Approach motivation is activated by intense pleasant affective states; avoidance motivation is evoked by intense unpleasant affective experience. The biphasic motivation paradigm posits that different affective states represent different levels of activation in the appetitive and aversive motivational systems (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1990; Lang, 1995). Through this framework of biphasic motivation, the affective space offers a complex image of the assembly of motivational forces that govern human behaviour. In spite of the fact that human reactions are not exclusively regulated by the triggering stimuli, the basic dimensions of direction (approach or avoidance) and intensity are fundamental in determining the reaction (Bradley & Lang, 2006). …