The spring 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which resulted in more than 8000 cases and 774 deaths (1), severely challenged public health and health care systems globally. It is not possible to predict whether a large SARS outbreak will recur, but several potential sources of a resurgence exist. The SARS-associated coronavirus is believed to be of zoonotic origin (2), and while its natural reservoir or reservoirs are unknown, several exotic species (for example, civet cats and raccoon dogs) sold for consumption in southern China have shown evidence of infection (3). Thus, these reservoirs could serve as sources for human exposure to the virus. In December 2003 and January 2004, almost 6 months after the end of the global SARS outbreak, 4 unlinked cases of SARS were reported in Guangdong, the province in China where SARS first emerged (4). The source of infection for these cases was not conclusively determined, but 1 patient worked in a restaurant that served civets, and environmental samples from cages that housed these animals yielded evidence of SARS coronavirus (5). In addition, the genomic sequence of virus detected from a second patient differed from that of virus isolated from humans during the spring 2003 outbreak; however, the sequence closely resembled that of SARS coronavirus isolated from civets in late 2003 (3). Collectively, these findings suggest that reintroduction of SARS coronavirus from infected animals remains a distinct possibility. Another potential source of SARS coronavirus exposure is laboratories that store specimens containing the virus or that use live virus for diagnostic or research purposes. Since fall 2003, 6 persons have become infected with SARS coronavirus in 3 laboratories in Singapore, Taiwan, and China (6-8), and 1 of these patients infected 7 additional persons through 2 chains of transmission, clearly demonstrating the potential for a laboratory-acquired infection to initiate a community outbreak. Last, it is also theoretically possible that long-term SARS coronavirus shedding or recrudescence of SARS in recovered patients could initiate another outbreak, but evidence to support such events has not been reported. In light of the potential for a recurrence of SARS, it is appropriate to refine preparedness plans on the basis of information and lessons learned from the 2003 outbreak. An essential component of SARS preparedness is a strategy for the accurate and early detection of cases, which, in turn, is critical for the institution of highly effective infection-control measures to interrupt transmission. In addition, differentiation of SARS from other illnesses with a similar clinical presentation will prevent unnecessary isolation of patients and reduce the strain on health care and public health systems. However, because of the nonspecific early clinical manifestations of SARS and the limited clinical sensitivity of SARS coronavirus detection assays early in illness, rapid and accurate recognition of patients with SARS is challenging, particularly during seasonal outbreaks of other respiratory illnesses (9). Because current detection assays do not reliably exclude SARS coronavirus infection in the first few days of illness, physicians can fail to identify and isolate patients with SARS. A missed diagnosis can have serious consequences, since the failure to adequately isolate even 1 patient with SARS can lead to extensive transmission. The development of effective tools for screening and triage of patients with SARS would allow efficient use of resources in the event of another SARS outbreak. In this issue, Leung and colleagues (10) describe the development of a clinical prediction rule to identify patients with SARS in an emergency department setting. Their goal is to provide a tool that can aid physicians and public health authorities in assessing a patient's risk for SARS and in making decisions about hospital admission, isolation, and possibly treatment. Specifically, they derived a 2-step scoring system by using key clinical, laboratory, and epidemiologic features to determine whether patients presenting to an emergency department during a SARS outbreak are at low or high risk for SARS coronavirus infection. Using an internal validation procedure, the authors report that application of the rule achieved an optimism-corrected sensitivity of 0.90, a specificity of 0.62, and an area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of 0.85. The authors adhered to many of the methodologic criteria recommended for generating clinical decision rules (11, 12). The strengths of their approach include provision of a clear definition of the outcome and the predictive variables, blind assessment of the predictive variables, description of the mathematical techniques used to derive the rule, description of details of the study site and patient sample, description of the results of the rule, and provision of suggested clinical courses of action that are based on the rule. However, as the authors acknowledge, they have not validated the rule in a group of patients different from the derivation cohort. External validation may be particularly important for this rule because it was derived by using combined data from 2 epidemiologically distinct groups of patients with SARS in Hong Kong. The group from the United Christian Hospital, which made up two thirds of the derivation cohort and primarily included patients from the unique Amoy Gardens housing complex outbreak, had a much lower proportion of patients who were health care workers (8.8% vs. 59.2%) and patients who provided a history of contact with another patient with SARS (11.4% vs. 87.5%) than did the group from the Prince of Wales Hospital. These characteristics of the United Christian Hospital cohort also seem to differ from those of patients in other major SARS-affected areas of the world in 2003. For example, in Toronto and Singapore, SARS was primarily a nosocomial illness, largely restricted to health care workers, patients, and visitors exposed in affected hospitals and, to a lesser extent, to other persons who had close contact with known or suspected patients with SARS in household settings (13, 14). The outbreak involving Amoy Gardens has been widely discussed because of its peculiar epidemiologic characteristics (15, 16). The generalizability of epidemiologic variables that emerged as important components of a clinical decision rule derived from this population remains to be determined. The ultimate utility of the prediction rule will depend on how well it aids clinical decision making, which will probably vary depending on the setting and existing patient management guidelines. The ability of the rule to estimate the probability of SARS for a patient with a particular combination of clinical and epidemiologic findings will depend on the overall prevalence of SARS coronavirus infection among patients presenting to the emergency department with suspected SARS. Therefore, as pointed out by Leung and colleagues, this rule, which was developed by using data from a cohort with a high prevalence of SARS, may not apply during interepidemic periods when sporadic cases may occur. This characteristic may also be an important consideration during a global epidemic in locations not severely affected by SARS, such as the situation in the United States during the 2003 epidemic (17). The authors propose that physicians could base their decisions about hospitalization and patient placement on the predicted likelihood of SARS coronavirus infection. This strategy may be especially helpful in jurisdictions where the goal is to hospitalize all patients with SARS for the purpose of infection control, a practice that could overwhelm the health care system in a large SARS outbreak if physicians use nonspecific SARS identification methods. To avoid the consequences of missing a diagnosis of SARS, the authors designed the rule to achieve a sensitivity of 95%, which means that the prediction rule will fail to detect 1 patient with SARS in 20. Therefore, even those considered at low risk for SARS and discharged home should still be managed appropriately (for example, confined to home isolation) to prevent inadvertent exposures by patients who eventually do develop SARS. In settings with limited hospital capacity, it might be appropriate to use a different cutoff for the rule to achieve a greater specificity of prediction; in this case, however, more patients with SARS may be unrecognized and discharged, and the importance of taking appropriate precautions to prevent transmission from such patients in nonhospital settings becomes more critical. If SARS recurs, we will need strategies that allow efficient early case detection without overburdening the limited resources of both the health care and public health systems. We applaud Leung and colleagues, who, despite the numerous problems associated with retrospective analysis of data collected during a public health crisis, systematically approached this topic and developed a decision rule that may prove helpful as an early case-detection strategy. We hope their efforts will provoke and challenge others to validate their decision rule so that the medical community can assess its clinical utility for future outbreaks of SARS.


As you receive this issue of The Leading Edge the Summer of Applied Geophysical Experience (SAGE) will be starting our 30th field season. SAGE is a unique educational program that combines teaching and research as a partnership between universities, industry, government agencies and professional societies. SAGE includes a four-week period based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and one-week workshop in the following January for undergraduates, at San Diego State University, which allows us to enhance their research experience. We teach the principles and applications of refraction and reflection seismics, magnetics, gravity, GPS, several electromagnetic (EM) methods and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) in a field-based, hands-on setting. The central research activity of SAGE is the acquisition and interpretation of geophysical field data. Students learn geophysics by doing geophysics—a discovery oriented approach.


This paper describes and analyses an intervention
to improve the approach to, and the qualitative
content of, written work for a computing module in
one new UK University. Concerns about the
standard of written documentation produced in
earlier cohorts initiated collaboration between a
subject expert, a Write Now CETL writing fellow and
a learning and teaching specialist who, using an
action research approach, attempted to address the
issue by: (1)up-skilling the students involved and
modelling the process for staff development (2)
attempting to engage students in the process of
writing for assessment within the academic
discourse of their discipline (3) creating
opportunities for dialogue concerning literary
practices in academia. This paper evaluates this
process including, the reported benefits to students
and the difficulties encountered. Results are
presented showing a significant improvement in the
quality of student documentation.
Recommendations are made for future
developments and collaborations within the
Computing curriculum


Previous work in social network analysis (SNA) has modeled the existence of links from one entity to another, but not the attributes such as language content or topics on those links. We present the Author-Recipient-Topic (ART) model for social network analysis, which learns topic distributions based on the direction-sensitive messages sent between entities. The model builds on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and the Author-Topic (AT) model, adding the key attribute that distribution over topics is conditioned distinctly on both the sender and recipient--steering the discovery of topics according to the relationships between people. We give results on both the Enron email corpus and a researcher's email archive, providing evidence not only that clearly relevant topics are discovered, but that the ART model better predicts people's roles and gives lower perplexity on previously unseen messages. We also present the Role-Author-Recipient-Topic (RART) model, an extension to ART that explicitly represents people's roles.


The anti-inflammatory effects of chloroquine are mediated by inhibition of the lysosome, which enhances glucocorticoid signaling. This Podcast features a conversation with an author of a Research Article published in the 5 July 2011 issue of Science Signaling. Yuanzheng He discusses his group's finding that the anti-inflammatory drug chloroquine synergizes with glucocorticoids in treating symptoms of inflammatory arthritis in a mouse model. Chloroquine inhibited the lysosome, which enhanced glucocorticoid signaling by increasing the stability or abundance of the glucocorticoid receptor and other members of the nuclear receptor family. These results suggest that lysosomes are a potential target for treating autoimmune and inflammatory diseases as well as disorders caused by aberrant nuclear receptor signaling.


Abstract Objective We sought to examine co-design in 3 contrasting case studies of technology-supported change in health care and explain its role in influencing project success. Materials and Methods Longitudinal case studies of a seizure detection and reporting technology for epilepsy (Southern England, 2018-2019), a telehealth service for heart failure (7 UK sites, 2016-2018), and a remote video consultation service (Scotland-wide, 2019-2020). We carried out interviews with 158 participants and collected more than 200 pages of field notes from observations. Within- and cross-case analysis was informed by sociotechnical theory. Results In the epilepsy case, co-design prioritized patient-facing features and focused closely around a specific clinic, which led to challenges with sustainability and mainstreaming. In the heart failure case, patient-focused co-design produced an accessible and usable patient portal but resulted in variation in uptake between clinical sites. Successful scale-up of video consultations was explained by a co-design process involving not only the technical interface, but also careful reshaping of work practices. Discussion A shift is needed from co-designing with technology users to co-designing with patients as service users, and with healthcare staff as professionals. Good co-design needs to involve users, including those who engage with the technology-supported service bothdirectly and indirectly. It requires sensitivity to emergence and unpredictability in complex systems. Healthcare staff need to be supported to accommodate iterative change in the service. Adequate resourcing and infrastructures for systems-focused co-design are essential. Conclusions If co-design focuses narrowly on the technology, opportunities will be missed to coevolve technologies alongside clinical practices and organizational routines.


Property tax is a significantly under-utilised tax instrument in Punjab, accounting for only 6% of the total provincial tax. With a population of over 100 million, all of Punjab collects less urban property tax than the city of Chennai in India, home to about 10 million people. Punjab's cities have significant service delivery deficits. For example, only 35% of urban households in Punjab have piped water. These deficits will worsen in the absence of local financing that can be used to make public investments. This policy brief outlines the current landscape of property taxation in Punjab, highlights the significance of this source of public finance, and frames future policy direction, particularly the trade-offs between various valuation systems.


Second-harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy is a recently developed nonlinear optical imaging modality for imaging tissue structures with submicron resolution and is a potent tool for visualizing pathological effects of diseases. In this letter, we present our investigation on the influence of van Gieson's (VG) alcoholic picrofuchsin staining on SHG in type I collagen (from tendon-rich C57BL/6). Multi-channel imaging and spectra analysis show that the strong SHG signal produced in fresh collagen type I fiber has been greatly suppressed after VG staining, which indicates that staining may induce the structural or characteristic changes of SHG-dependent crystal formed by collagen constituents, such as glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline.


Following oxidative stress often two kinds of DNA-lesions can be found: 8-OxodG and the 2,6-Diamino-4-hydroxy-5-formamidopyrimidine (FaPydG). Both derive from the DNA-Nucleobase guanine. The FaPydG-lesion can exist both in the beta-configuration and the alpha configuration. To clarify biological questions concerning the basepairing and the encoding features of both forms it was necessary to synthesise of the alpha-anomer of the carbocyclic FaPydG-DNA-lesion. The synthesis of the beta-cFaPydG-lesion was already finished in 2005 in the Carell group. In a sixteen-step synthesis the alpha-lesion could be prepared in the form of its phosphoramidite component. Oligonucleotides could be prepared on solid support using automated DNA-synthesis.
Some of the synthesised DNA-Nucleotides contained the inserted FaPydG-lesion. Others showed an oxidation to alpha-c8-OxodG. This reaction is not known for natural lesion. Just a de-hydration to guanosine under harsh conditions is described. The observations can be ex-plained by formulation of a cyclic intermediate, which is possibly oxidized by the oxidation di-lution during the DNA-synthesis. If the sequence-dependent equilibrium between alpha cFaPydG and alpha c8-Hydro,hydroxydG is at the side of the closed form, an oxidation from this interme-diate directly to 8-OxodG is imaginable.
This assumption is proven by the fact that at the same time synthesised and completely identically treated DNA-strands of different sequence didn´t show oxidation products. This could be ascertained by high resolution ESI-FTICR-mesurement. With this analytical method even smallest variations are detectable in a reliable way, whereas the often used MALDI-TOF-mesurements not always show these variations.
Thermodynamic studies showed that alpha-cFaPydG doesn´t form a preferred DNA-basepair. All possible basepairs showed a strong destabilisation in comparison to the undamaged, cor-rect basepair. In vitro elongation experiments with S. cerevisiae polymerase Pol eta, G. stearothermophilus DNA-polymerase I and DinB from G. stearothermophilus showed that the alpha-lesion is a definitive block for all mentioned polymerases. Only by applying rigorous re-action conditions an elongation of the primer with BstPol I could be detected. This elongation showed a favored incorporation of dCTP, followed by an incorporation of dATP.
In the time to come experiments to avoid the unwanted oxidation of alpha-cFaPydG will be es-sential to promote the cocristallisation of the alpha-cFaPydG-oligomere with the Fpg-protein from Lactococcus lactis and the BstPol I.

In the second part of the thesis attempts were taken to prepare tetrafunctional amino acid derivatives, which were planned to be used in a PNA-template directed ligation reaction. Liga-tion takes place between two amino acids, so that for a ligation attempt with this method there is always needed a matching pair of amino acids.
This pair requires a connection of the aminoacid to the PNA over the side chain of the amino acid. The N- and C-terminus of the amino acid had to be unprotected for the ultimate ligation reaction. These termini must not react during the solid support PNA-synthesis. After ligation the template should be separated selectively. Thus, the following requirements for the pair of amino acids result: The amino acids have to possess functional side chains, which exist naturally after cleavage of the PNA-template. For the selective cleavage of the template a con-nection orthogonal to acid and base unstable protecting groups is necessary, because these are already needed for the solid support synthesis on the residual three termini of the compound. Imaginable orthogonal cleavable links are allylic compounds, which are cleavable with Pd(0), but also silicon based compounds, which are cleavable with fluoridions, would be appropriate.
In the area of the Pd(0)-cleavable link a retrosynthetic cut at this funtionality should be adequate. Here, e.g. a Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons-reaction is imaginable. The aldehydes and phosphorylides needed for this key step could be prepared with good yields, however only one of the two amino acid derivatives was obtained. The synthesis of the other compound didn´t succeed under diverse reaction conditions. Also efforts to prepare analogue Pd(0)-cleavable link molecules through classic Wittig or metathese reactions with Grubbs catalysts of the first and second generation were unsuccessful.
The most successful efforts to make a target molecule synthetically accessible for a first liga-tion attempt involved the preparing of a fluorid-cleavable silyl link. Here all requirements stay the same, just instead of allylic compounds silyl ethers are needed. The acid stability of the silyl protecting group depends on the size of the alkyl groups (tert-butyl>isopropyl>ethyl). Firstly, substitution experiments with the compounds Di-tert-butylchlorosilane, Di-tert-butyl-dichlorosilane and Di-tert-butylsilylbis(trifluoromethanesulfonate) were undertaken to estab-lish a connection between PNA and the amino acid through a Di-tert-butyldisilylether. How-ever, the substitutions produced just monosubstituted silanoles, irrespective of the choice of reaction conditions and substitution order. The experiments with the commercially available (3-Cyanopropyl)-diisopropyl-chlorosilane were more successfull. Here the synthesis of one of the target molecules could be achieved.


Across languages, plural marking on count nouns typically gives rise to a multiplicity inference, indicating that the noun ranges over sums with a cardinality of 2 or more. Plural marking has also been observed to occur on mass nouns in Greek and a few other languages, giving rise to a parallel abundance inference, indicating that there is a lot of the relevant substance. It has been observed in the literature that both of these inferences disappear in downward-entailing environments, such as when a plural appears in the scope of negation (Tsoulas 2009; Kane et al. 2015). There are two main competing approaches in the literature that aim to account for the described pattern with respect to multiplicity inferences: the ambiguity approach (Farkas & de Swart 2010) and the implicature approach (Sauerland 2003; Spector 2007; Mayr 2015, among others). As discussed in Tieu et al. (2018), while both approaches can account for the upward- versus downward-entailing pattern of multiplicity inferences, they differ in what they predict with respect to the acquisition of these inferences and their relationship with implicatures. Tieu et al. (2014; 2018) investigated multiplicity inferences in English and reported evidence for the implicature approach. In this paper, we first show how the ambiguity approach and the implicature approach to the multiplicity inference can be extended to account for the abundance inference. We then report on an experiment that tests the predictions of the two approaches for multiplicity and abundance inferences in preschool-aged children and adult native speakers of Greek. Our results replicate the patterns reported in Tieu et al. (2014; 2018) for multiplicity inferences, and crucially reveal an analogous pattern for abundance inferences. Adults computed both kinds of inferences more in upward-entailing environments than in downward-entailing ones, and children computed fewer inferences overall than adults did. These results reflect an overall pattern of implicature calculation in line with a unified implicature analysis across the three kinds of inferences. By contrast, we discuss how they pose a challenge for the ambiguity approach.


A number of questions remain to be addressed concerning the stability of Social Network Services (SNS) as members join and leave. The question of what factors contribute to user behavioral intentions toward SNS is important. A comprehensive model is proposed based on a broadening and deepening of Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to explain SNS users' behavioral intentions. The propositions presented seek to provide answers to the following research question: What are the effects of intrinsic/extrinsic motivations and social influences on users' behavioral intentions toward SNS based on TRA, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and flow theory? Simply put, this study investigates the interrelationships between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, flow experiences, social influences, attitude and behavioral intentions within SNS contexts.


Endocannabinoids, rather than endorphins, mediate some of the feelings associated with "runner's high." Distance running or other forms of endurance exercise can produce a feeling called "runner's high," which is associated with a feeling of euphoria, a reduction in anxiety (anxiolysis) and pain (analgesia), and an increased sense of relaxation (sedation). Increased abundance of β-endorphin, an endogenous opioid, and anandamide, an endocannabinoid, are observed in the plasma of humans and mice after long distance running. However, β-endorphin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. Fuss et al. used mice to investigate the molecular mechanisms that could result in runner's high. After habituating the mice to the presence of running wheels and then blocking the wheels to establish a baseline, the wheels for one group were unblocked for 5 hours immediately before testing both groups (run group and control group) for anxiety-associated and pain-associated behaviors. Compared with the control group, the mice in the run group spent more time in the light-aversive bright area, an indication of reduced anxiety. Mice in the run group also displayed increased latency to either jump or lick their paws when placed on a hot plate, an indication of analgesia. After returning to the cage with the running wheel, the mice in the run group ran less than the control mice, which could reflect a sedation effect. The mice in the run group, but not in the control group, had increased abundance of endocannabinoids in the plasma but not in the brain or in the cerebrospinal fluid. Mice injected intraperitoneally with antagonists to cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1) and then given access to the running wheel prior to behavioral testing did not exhibit the anxiolytic phenotype, spending the same amount of time in the light as mice that did not have access to a functional wheel. Injection of the run group with antagonists of the cannabinoid receptors CB1 or CB2 blocked the running-induced analgesic effect. Mice in the run group that were injected with naloxone, which blocks endorphin activity, displayed running-induced reduction of thermal pain sensitivity. Thus, the pharmacological data suggested that endocannabinoids rather than endorphins played a role in analgesia associated with running. To confirm that the effects were mediated by receptors in the brain, the authors examined mice lacking CB1 receptors in γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurons (GABA-CB1–/–), which displayed more anxiety than wild-type mice both in the control nonrunning group and in the run group. The enhanced anxiolytic and analgesic effects of running were also absent in these CB1-deficient mice. Thus, this study suggests that endocannabinoids mediate some of the positive effects associated with endurance exercise and the runner's high. J. Fuss, J. Steinle, L. Bindila, M. K. Auer, H. Kirchherr, B. Lutz, P. Gass, A runner's high depends on cannabinoid receptors in mice. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112, 13105–13108 (2015). [PubMed]


Article history: Received 25 July 2014 Received in revised form 8 August 2014 Accepted 15 September 2014 Available online 25 October 2014


The Great Recession that followed the financial crisis of 2007 is not only the largest economic crisis after the Great Depression of the 1930s, it also signals a crisis of economics as a discipline. This is not only the consequence of the inadequacy of mainstream macroeconomics, and specifically the DSGE workhorse model, to forecast such a huge event, or at least to detect the worrying tendencies towards it. Even more relevant is the choice to explicitly avoid the modelling of large crises (that for someone is a motivation for not attacking pre-crisis DSGE models focused on the analysis of small deviations from the steady-state), so denying the intrinsic nature of capitalism, a system that necessarily proceeds through cycles and (extended) crises. The replies of the DSGE approach to critics have led to extensions regarding for instance the role of financial frictions, heterogeneous agents, and bounded rationality (though typically in the form of quasi-rational expectations). The alternative paradigm of Agent-Based Macroeconomics can take into account all these elements at once within an evolutionary modelling framework based on heterogeneity and interaction, so capable to endogenously reproduce complex dynamics, from small fluctuations to large crises, due to innovation and industrial dynamics, rising inequality and financial instability, and so on. The integration between Agent-Based Macroeconomics and the (post-Keynesian) Stock-Flow Consistent approach represents a promising way for the future development of this research field.


The International Atomic Energy Agency has sponsored a number of studies involving a specific plate of A533 grade B class 1 steel designated heat JRQ. In this cooperative study between the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the Heavy-Section Steel Irradiation Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), groups of Charpy impact, tensile, and precracked Charpy specimens of the JRQ plate were irradiated by PSI to four different fast neutron fluences [from 0.39 to 5.0 × 1023 n/m2 (>1 MeV)] in a test reactor. Additional specimens were given a post-irradiation thermal annealing treatment at 460°C for 18 h when 50 % of the target fluence was reached, followed by reirradiation to the same target fluences for the four groups of irradiated specimens. Additionally, ORNL thermally annealed some of the reirradiated specimens, as well as some of those in the irradiated only condition. Charpy impact, tensile, fracture toughness, and hardness tests have been performed to evaluate material response in the various conditions and to compare with the unirradiated material. Additionally, thermo-electric power experiments have been conducted by PSI, while atom probe tomography evaluations have been conducted by ORNL. Except at the highest fluence, the results show that the material given an intermediate annealing treatment exhibited irradiation-induced transition temperature shifts about the same as those that were only irradiated. However, the upper-shelf energies were generally higher and the yield strengths were generally lower for the reirradiated groups. The intermediate thermal annealing resulted in less reirradiation embrittlement of fracture toughness than Charpy impact toughness, while annealing after reirradiation resulted in significant increases in Charpy upper-shelf energy above that in the unirradiated condition. Irradiation-induced and IAR Charpy impact transition temperature shifts exhibit a nearly linear correlation with Seebeck coefficient in the I and IAR conditions. ORNL has also sent additional specimens from I, IA, IAR, and IARA test of JRQ for additional TEP testing. After irradiation, a high number density of ultrafine Cu-, Mn-, Ni-, Si-, and P-enriched precipitates were observed by atom probe tomography. Phosphorus segregation to dislocations was also observed. A significantly lower number density of larger Cu-, Mn-, and Ni- enriched precipitates was observed after the second annealing treatment.


The article discusses how the ratification of the 3rd of May 1791 Constitution was celebrated in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This event, understood by the contemporaries as the beginning of the new epoch, inspired organization of both official and spontaneous celebrations all over the country. While analysing the content and visual expression of these events, it is sought to disclose how these festivals of "the new epoch" were formed and what they looked like, what transformations of the society had inspired them. These celebrations were a tool and product of "the Joyful Revolution": they were used for patriotic upbringing and unification of the society in the presence of outward threats, though, at the same time, the high spirits of the "revolutionary" time inspired spontaneous festive events. The organizers of such celebrations were mostly the representatives of middle nobility and townspeople, as they had become the most active supporters of the ruler and implemented the reform programme. There were especially many initiatives by townspeople, who due to the new law felt the full-fledged citizens of the state. Similar to earlier celebrations of state significance, almost all festivities were dedicated to the ruler, who was pictured as the father of the nation and creator of the Constitution. A new image of the ruler was started to propagate: the portrait of a king-patriot working for the wellbeing of the homeland and its citizens. The ideas of the "citizens' nation" encompassing all social strata of the Republic were actively manifested. Acts of the nobility oath to the town law were very important for unification of the society in a symbolic sense; they demonstrated the fraternity of all estates. It is worth mentioning here the demonstration of military attributes and military capacities in order to strengthen the morale of population in troublous times. The article covers in more detail the decorations created for the Constitution anniversary by a nobleman Vincentas Ignacas Marevicius (Wincenty Ignacy Marewicz) in his homestead near Lukiskės, which most visually demonstrated the new structure of the society entrenched by the Constitution. These celebrations of the "3rd of May epoch" could be held for quite a short time and thus failed to create new rituals and symbols. Maybe this was the reason why texts were so important in their decor and explained anew the meanings of symbols applied in earlier celebrations.


The advent of Massive Open Online Courses has been variously described as heralding the end of the modern university or alternatively, an over-hyped re-badging of existing online content whose advantages have already been realised. Appeals to ideology however, have typically characterised coverage of both polarities rather than hard evidence; in particular, there has been much less analysis on just how learning outcomes are impacted by either "face-to-face" interaction or online/digital environment. Less dichotomously and even more rarely addressed is perhaps a more pertinent question: What blending of the two learning modes works best and in what circumstances? In this paper we argue that the emerging field of learning analytics applied to "educational big data" contains the tools for answering such a question provided a university's data linkage problem can be solved. The authors, Learning Advisors in ECU's Faculty of Engineering, Health and Science, describe the initiation of a framework incorporating data on content usage in online learning systems, together with establishing a new system for collecting data on individual consultations and workshops (a "face-to-face" mode, for which data is less-commonly collected). These data are presented and even in isolation contain interesting features on ECU's current learning landscape; it is in their combination, however, that we argue the real potential lies and we conclude by covering the necessary steps needed for such a realisation.


The preparation of functional materials from photoswitchable molecules where the molecular changes multiply to macroscopic effects presents a great challenge in material science. An attractive approach is the incorporation of the photoswitches in nanoporous, crystalline metal-organic frameworks, MOFs, often showing remote-controllable chemical and physical properties. Because of the short light-penetration depth, thin MOF films are particularly interesting, allowing the entire illumination of the material. In the present progress report, we review and discuss the status of photoswitchable MOF films. These films may serve as model systems for quantifying the isomer switching yield by infrared and UV-vis spectroscopy as well as for uptake experiments exploring the switching effects on the host-guest interaction, especially on guest adsorption and diffusion. In addition, the straightforward device integration facilitates various experiments. In this way, unique features were demonstrated, such as photoswitchable membrane separation with continuously tunable selectivity, light-switchable proton conductivity of the guests in the pores, and remote-controllable electronic conduction.


The encouragement of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) in order to continuously improve the well-being of present and future generations is the most important goal stated in the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Strategy, which was renewed in 2006. The challenge for every company on the way to SCP is not only to use appropriate methods and measures to solve their specific sustainability problems, but, first of all, to select appropriate performance indicators and implement an effective sustainability performance evaluation system. It may be useful to apply an integrated indicator as a single comparable index, reducing the number of sustainability decision-making criteria that need to be considered. However, despite various approaches to create frameworks and methodologies for the development of integrated sustainability indicators that measure, monitor and assess the progress of an enterprise towards sustainability, there is still no comprehensive framework for integrated sustainability assessment of the overall company state on the basis of manufacturing processes, products/services as well as relationship with various stakeholders. An algorithm is here presented in respect of this demand. This algorithm offers methodical suggestions to assess the customers' opinion about the presence of company's environmental and social sustainability activities and initiatives, to identify and select most appropriate sustainability indicators, to determine their significance according to analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and to solve the most important sustainability problems in 3 aforementioned levels by adapting most suitable tools. The final suggestions are based on the values of 3 sub-indices of a new integrated index for the overall assessment of the SCP state in the company, I SCP . DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.71.3.11482


We present a fully automatic system for 2D model-based image coding of human faces for potential applications such as video telephony, database image compression, and face recognition. The system operates by locating a face in the input image, normalizing its scale and geometry and representing it in terms of a compact parametric image model obtained with a Karhunen-Loeve basis. This leads to a compact representation of the face that can be used for both recognition as well as image compression. Good-quality facial images are automatically generated using approximately 100-bytes worth of encoded data. The system has been successfully tested on a database of nearly 2000 facial photographs.


We calculate various indicators of the utilisation of preferences granted to developing countries by the EU and the US in the agricultural, food and fisheries sector. We conclude that only a very small proportion of the imports eligible to these preferences is actually exported outside a preferential regime. The rate of utilisation is therefore high. However, the flow of imports from poorest countries remains very limited in spite of rather generous tariff preferences, which leads to question the overall impact of the preferential agreements. In addition, preferential regimes overlap, and in such cases some regimes are systematically preferred to others. We use econometric estimates of the (latent) cost of using a given preference in order to explain why particular regimes are used. We focus on possible explanations, such as the cumulation rules (that restrict the use of materials originating from other countries), fixed administrative costs, and differences in the preferential margin.


The authors evaluated the RNA binding of all eight possible stereoisomers of LNA. Synthesis of qa-l-xylo-LNAq has been accomplished and the remaining four stereoisomers, all enantiomers of the four synthesized diastereoisomers, are indirectly evaluated by hybridization studies. The remarkable binding affinities and specificities obtained for LNA and a-l-LNA, both in a fully and in a partly modified context, establish these mols. as unique nucleic acid mimics. A strong impetus for this research has been, and continues to be, the therapeutic promises of the antisense strategy. [on SciFinder (R)]


Background: Delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) is a potentially devastating complication after intracranial aneurysm rupture and its mechanisms remain poorly elucidated. Early identification of the patients prone to developing DCI after rupture may represent a major breakthrough in its prevention and treatment. The single gene approach of DCI has demonstrated interest in humans. We hypothesized that whole genome expression profile of blood cells may be useful for better comprehension and prediction of aneurysmal DCI. Methods: Over a 35-month period, 218 patients with aneurysm rupture were included in this study. DCI was defined as the occurrence of a new delayed neurological deficit occurring within 2 weeks after aneurysm rupture with evidence of ischemia either on perfusion-diffusion MRI, CT angiography or CT perfusion imaging, or with cerebral angiography. DCI patients were matched against controls based on 4 out of 5 criteria (age, sex, Fisher grade, aneurysm location and smoking status). Genome-wide expression analysis of blood cells obtained at admission was performed by microarrays. Transcriptomic analysis was performed using long oligonucleotide microarrays representing 25,000 genes. Quantitative PCR: 1 µg of total RNA extracted was reverse-transcribed, and the resulting cDNA was diluted 10-fold before performing quantitative PCR. Microarray data were first analyzed by 'Significance Analysis of Microarrays' software which includes the Benjamini correction for multiple testing. In a second step, microarray data fold change was compared using a two-tailed, paired t test. Analysis of receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the area under the ROC curves were used for prediction analysis. Logistic regression models were used to investigate the additive value of multiple biomarkers. Results: A total of 16 patients demonstrated DCI. Significance Analysis of Microarrays software failed to retrieve significant genes, most probably because of the heterogeneity of the patients included in the microarray experiments and the small size of the DCI population sample. Standard two-tailed paired t test and C-statistic revealed significant associations between gene expression and the occurrence of DCI: in particular, the expression of neuroregulin 1 was 1.6-fold upregulated in patients with DCI (p = 0.01) and predicted DCI with an area under the ROC curve of 0.96. Logistic regression analyses revealed a significant association between neuroregulin 1 and DCI (odds ratio 1.46, 95% confidence interval 1.02-2.09, p = 0.02). Conclusions: This pilot study suggests that blood cells may be a reservoir of prognostic biomarkers of DCI in patients with intracranial aneurysm rupture. Despite an evident lack of power, this study elicited neuroregulin 1, a vasoreactivity-, inflammation- and angiogenesis-related gene, as a possible candidate predictor of DCI. Larger cohort studies are needed but genome-wide microarray-based studies are promising research tools for the understanding of DCI after intracranial aneurysm rupture.


Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policymakers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example by complementing cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon tax, or with a feed-in tariff. Often, the motivation for doing so is to limit undesirable fluctuations in the carbon price, either from rising too high or falling too low. This paper reviews the implications for the carbon price of combining cap-and-trade with other policy instruments. We find that price intervention may not always have the desired effect. Simply adding a carbon tax to an existing cap-and-trade system reduces the carbon price in the market to such an extent that the overall price signal (tax plus carbon price) may remain unchanged. Generous feed-in tariffs or renewable energy obligations within a capped area have the same effect: they undermine the carbon price in the rest of the trading regime, likely increasing costs without reducing emissions. Policymakers wishing to support carbon prices should turn to hybrid instruments — that is, trading schemes with price-like features, such as an auction reserve price — to make sure their objectives are met.


According to Scopus, only in the year 2016, there were 15747 scientific papers about data mining and KDD. These have been and remain useful technologies. In this paper, we determine the approximation level of SIA to KDD and Data Mining. To this end, we have created an approximation framework based on definition and step process proposed by Fayyad. We use mapping review and systematic review from literature published in the last 5 years in bibliographic databases ACM, EBSCO, Google Scholar, IEEE, ProQuest, Scopus and WOS. We started with 200 papers and finally, 35 had all quality criteria. This paper also describes the SIA papers and identifies a series of future research in SIA, KDD and Data Mining. Keywords-Statistical Implicative Analysis; Knowledge Discovery Database; data mining, systematic review, mapping


This thesis adopts a new operational method to measure and investigate the relationship among cost efficiency, market competition and profitability in major Asian economies by using an unbalanced panel data sample of 278 commercial banks during the financial upheaval period of 2005-2012 before and after the global financial crisis.

Firstly, we estimate the cost efficiency by employing different stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) models, which include the equity capital to indicate loss-absorbing capacity and risk preference and cross-country differences to be additional environmental variables. It is generally agreed that cross-country differences influence the frontier technology in the international comparison of banks performance. In this case, we implement the international comparison under SFA models with and without incorporating these cross-country heterogeneities. And the empirical results suggest that cross-country differences are significant sources to measure banks cost efficiency and evaluate banks performance.

Secondly, we measure the market competition by investigating a range of approaches: the traditional Structure-Conduct-Performance approach, Lerner index, and new empirical industrial organization Panzar-Rosse approach. And we find that the SCP-Lerner approach may fail to identify the strength of competition and may not always unambiguously distinguish between the market power and the efficiency explanations of market concentration.

Finally, following the approach of Boone, we measure the intensity of competition in two ways: the profit elasticity and the relative profit difference (calculated by cost efficiency score and shadow return on equity capital). Then we implement a quadratic quantile regression to compute the integral areas and standard errors for the Boone visual test and Wald test to reflect the relative intensity of competition for different competitive regimes over time. Our findings show that competition of banking industries become more intense in 9 Asian economies in the wake of the financial crisis and that two advanced economies (Singapore and Taiwan Province of China) and two remarkable emerging economies (China and India) play the significantly leading role in this intensifying competition process.


Huge amounts of water treatment sludge are wasted annually in Egypt. One common practice of sludge handling is to discharge into waterways or by disposal after drying into landfills. Currently, there is a critical need for sustainable solutions that provide environmental protection as well as benefits for water producers. Coagulant recovery is not new but is still a good solution for sludge handling and reduction of operational costs. This work aims at completing the picture on coagulant recovery from alum sludge in El-Sheikh Zayed water treatment plant (ESZ-WTP) by acidification using hydrochloric acid. This study also investigates the effect of sequential recovery on the efficiency of the coagulant and treated water quality. Sludge characterization was done through determination of metals9 concentration and composition, water content and organic matter concentration. The influence of acid concentration, sludge mass, acid/sludge mass ratio, mixing speed, temperature, and mixing time on aluminum leaching was studied. At optimum values of these parameters, 82.4% aluminum recovery was obtained. In addition, repeated recoveries were carried out at lab scale using raw water from ESZ-WTP. Our research revealed that recovered coagulant can be used for three times9 recoveries as the trihalomethanes remain within acceptable limits.


Surging pharmaceutical prices in the United States create financial strain for patients, insurance companies, and state and federal governments. Regulatory delays and coverage denials due to product prices can also affect shareholders of pharmaceutical companies by depressing stock prices. While a number of industry leaders have acknowledged that dramatic price hikes can damage their businesses, many pharmaceutical companies have not demonstrated a willingness to scale back prices.
This Note considers the use of shareholder proposals to address drug pricing policies at the company level. While shareholders of most companies are generally unable to address pricing policies, a carve-out created by the Securities and Exchange Commission allows shareholders of publicly traded pharmaceutical companies to do so. This Note studies how shareholders can use the carve-out to push for price restraint by either causing a company to include a price restraint proposal in its proxy materials and annual meeting or causing management to negotiate with proponent shareholders in order to convince the shareholders to withdraw their proposals. By evaluating the success of prior attempts to impact drug prices through shareholder proposals, this Note concludes that institutional investors are the linchpin of shareholder success, whether that success is through a vote at the annual meeting or a compromise at the negotiation table. This Note therefore calls on institutional investors to evaluate their portfolios and consider using shareholder proposals to unlock firm value and relieve the financial pressure created by rapidly rising drug prices.


In real scenarios, robust language identification (LID) is usually hindered by factors such as background noise, channel, and speech duration mismatches. To address these issues, this study focuses on the advancements of diverse acoustic features, back-ends, and their influence on LID system fusion. There is little research about the selection of complementary features for a multiple system fusion in LID. A set of distinct features are considered, which can be grouped into three categories: classical features, innovative features, and extensional features. In addition, both front-end concatenation and back-end fusion are considered. The results suggest that no single feature type is universally vital across all LID tasks and that a fusion of a diverse set is needed to ensure sustained LID performance in challenging scenarios. Moreover, the back-end fusion also consistently enhances the system performance significantly. More specifically, the proposed hybrid fusion method improves system performance by +38.5% and +46.2% on the DARPA RATS and the NIST LRE09 data sets, respectively.


This IEEE Signal Processing Magazine forum discusses the latest advances and challenges in multimedia quality assessment. The forum members bring their expert insights into issues such as perceptual models and quality measures for future applications such as three-dimensional (3-D) videos and interactivity media. The invited forum members are Al Bovik (University of Texas), Chris Plack (University of Manchester), Ghassan AlRegib (Georgia Institute of Technology), Joyce Farrell (Stanford University), Patrick Le Callet (University de Nantes), Quan Huynh-Thu (Tech-nicolor), Sebastian Möller (Deutsche Telekom Labs, TU Berlin), and Stefan Winkler (Advanced Digital Sciences Center). The moderator of this forum is Dr. Fatih Porikli (MERL, Cambridge).


It has always been complicated mathematically, to calculate the average near surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies with a thick atmosphere. Usually, the Stefan Boltzmann (S-B) black body law is used to provide the effective temperature, then debate arises about the size or relevance of additional complicating factors, including the albedo and the greenhouse effect. Presented here is a simple and reliable method of accurately calculating the average near surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies which possess a surface atmospheric pressure of over 10 KPa. The formula used is the molar mass version of the ideal gas law. This method requires a gas constant and the measurement of only three gas parameters; the average near-surface atmospheric pressure, the average near surface atmospheric density and the average mean molar mass of the near-surface atmosphere.


In December 2019, health authorities in Wuhan, China, identified a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown aetiology linked to the city's South China Seafood Market. Subsequent investigations revealed a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, as the causative agent now at the heart of a major outbreak. The rising case numbers have been accompanied by unprecedented public health action, including the wholesale isolation of Wuhan. Alongside this has been a robust scientific response, including early publication of the pathogen genome, and rapid development of highly specific diagnostics. This article will review the new knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 acute respiratory disease, and summarise its clinical features.


We developed a simple and efficient strategy to access N-vinyl secondary amines of various naturally occurring materials using readily available solid acetylene reagents (calcium carbide, KF, and KOH). Pyrrole, pyrazole, indoles, carbazoles, and diarylamines were successfully vinylated in good yields. Cross-linked and linear polymers were synthesized from N-vinyl carbazoles through free radical and cationic polymerization. Post-modification of olanzapine (an antipsychotic drug substance) was successfully performed.


The purpose of the
study was to investigate the relationship between sleep disordered breathing
(SDB) and degree of heart failure (HF) in patients with coronary heart disease
(CHD). A total of 3017 patients (77.4% men and 22.6% women) were included in
the study. Clinical examination and echocardiography for evaluation of HF using
NYHA functional classification and sleep polysomnography were performed. The
study demonstrated that SDB is more common in CHD patients with higher NYHA
functional class. The prevalence of central sleep apneas against obstructive
apneas was observed in patients with mild and moderate HF. The number of
central apneas was strongly related to the severity of heart failure. More
frequent appearance of central sleep apneas is predominantly due to instability
of ventilatory control systems during sleep because of impaired cardiac
function in HF patients. Sleep architecture was more disturbed in CHD
patients with higher NYHA functional class. A gradual increase of stage 1 and
wakefulness after sleep onset and a decrease of sleep stages 3-4 and REM sleep
as well as a diminution of sleep efficiency with worsening of NYHA functional
class were observed. We suggest that both SDB and disturbed sleep variables independently significantly correlate with manifestation of HF.


This research was conducted to investigate the role of value orientations
in effective elementary physical educators' curricular decision making.
Educational value orientations served as the theoretical base for the research.
Three research questions were examined: (a) what were the learning goals
and expectations for student performance in each program, (b) why did
teachers value these goals, and (c) how well did students understand the
goals and expectations of the program? Data were collected through class
observations, teacher and student interviews, and the Value Orientation
Inventory. Data were analyzed using constant comparison. Results described
students' learning goals and academic and social performance expectations
within each teacher's value profile. Dynamical systems theory was used to
elaborate the influence of value orientations in the curriculum decision-making
process.


We examine the political economy underpinnings of import protection in general equilibrium. Starting from a dual theoretical representation of production, trade, and consumption, we map a general representation of the real economy to underlying political processes - aka the political support function - to derive a general representation of the determinants of import protection. This includes the relatively standard approach of examining the pattern of tariffs in a Grossman-Helpman framework, as well as recent extensions linked to upstream and downstream linkages between sectors. Because we start from a relatively generic general equilibrium model of production, we have an immediate bridge between the theory and general equilibrium-based estimates of the welfare effects and rents generated by tariffs. We therefore follow the development of our generalized theoretical framework by introducing the use of general equilibrium estimates of the direct and indirect marginal impacts of protection at the sector level for econometric estimation of the revealed pattern of policy weights. This GE approach yields direct estimates of political weights based on economic effects, including cross-industry effects. The resulting weights lend insight into relative protection of agriculture and manufacturing. Working with data on the European union, we find that the strength of downstream linkages matters for policy weights and rates of protection, as does the national posture of industry. We also find support for a general political support function in the determination of tariffs, though results are mixed for the more narrow Grossman-Helpman specification. In the EU, nationality of industry seems to play a role in the setting of Community-wide import protection.


The structure of formal constitutional amendment rules has received little scholarly attention. Constitutional designers therefore have few academic resources to guide them in designing the rules of formal amendment — perhaps the most important part of any constitution. In this Article, I fill that void by creating a new classification of formal amendment rules based on my analysis of formal amendment rules in constitutional democracies. I explain and illustrate that formal amendment rules are conceptually structured in three tiers: (1) foundations, which either entrench or are silent on the distinction between constitutional amendment and revision; (2) frameworks, consisting of one of six combinations of comprehensive, restricted or exceptional single-track or multi-track procedures; and (3) specifications, which supplement amendment foundations and frameworks with voting thresholds, quorum requirements, subject-matter restrictions, temporal requirements, electoral preconditions and defense mechanisms. I also show how constitutional designers may use this classification to manage federalism, express constitutional values, enhance or diminish the judicial role, and pursue democratic outcomes related to governance, constitutional endurance, and amendment difficulty. My larger purpose is to enliven the study of formal amendment rules by generating a research agenda into their structure and uses, and the options they present to constitutional designers.


The formation of xanthomata in tendons occurs typically as part of a familial disorder associated with an elevation of the total plasma cholesterol. In those cases where the tendinous deposits are small in size and few in number, the cholesterol level is usually only moderately raised, extensive deposits being more commonly associated with much higher levels. It is therefore of interest to have encountered a patient with a severe degree of xanthoma tendinosum whose plasma cholesterol was in the normal range.


Greek economic crisis in the last years and the subsequent austerity policy measures resulted to a decline in consumers' income. This paper investigates empirically the Greek consumers' reactions to income changes regarding their consumption of different types of fuels during the period 2007-2011. The empirical findings suggest that fuel consumption elasticity of income is different among different types of fuels. Furthermore the income elasticity is different among different Greek geographic regions. More specifically, fuels with high consumption i.e. 95 RON unleaded gasoline and diesel-bio fuels are found to be income inelastic as compared to fuels with low consumption i.e. 98-100 RON unleaded gasoline and new super gasoline LRP. Furthermore, for the high consumed fuels, consumers' behavior patterns to income changes in the island are opposite to that in the rest Greek territory.


—The recent breakthroughs in computer vision have benefited from the availability of large representative datasets (e.g. ImageNet and COCO) for training. Yet, robotic vision poses unique challenges for applying visual algorithms developed from these standard computer vision datasets due to their implicit assumption over non-varying distributions for a fixed set of tasks. Fully retraining models each time a new task becomes available is infeasible due to computational, storage and sometimes privacy issues, while na¨ıve incremental strategies have been shown to suffer from catastrophic forgetting. It is crucial for the robots to operate continuously under open- set and detrimental conditions with adaptive visual perceptual systems, where lifelong learning is a fundamental capability. However, very few datasets and benchmarks are available to evaluate and compare emerging techniques. To fill this gap, we provide a new lifelong robotic vision dataset ("OpenLORIS-Object") collected via RGB-D cameras mounted on mobile robots. The dataset embeds the challenges faced by a robot in the real-life application and provides new benchmarks for validating lifelong object recognition algorithms. More-over, we have provided a testbed of 9 state-of-the-art lifelong learning algorithms. Each of them involves 48 tasks with 4 evaluation metrics over the OpenLORIS-Object dataset. The results demonstrate that the object recognition task in the ever-changing difficulty environments is far from being solved and the bottlenecks are at the forward/backward transfer designs. Our dataset and benchmark are publicly available at this url.


A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements of the Degree of Master of Science, in Family Medicine, Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Gezira, August, 2013


-- Documents prepared for e-learning projects are usually enjoyable only through CD-ROMs or the web. However several people prefer books or classroom-based learning. This paper presents NetLibrary , a project that developed a new approach in creating e-learning topics. Material is managed automatically (through the use of a custom tool, WebLibrary ) in order to support several media such as Web, CD-ROM, books, and it includes slides that can be used by instructors in classroom. However the real advantage is the cheap, fast and simple content creation, which makes this approach suitable for fast changing topics.


The asymmetric cell division is an evolutionary acquisition strategy of multicellular organisms that enable the pluripotent cells to produce two daughter cells with distinct cellular fates. This characteristic is responsible for originating all the embryonic leaflets and tissues of the Metazoan Phyla in which stem cells divide asymmetrically to give rise to two different daughter cells, one preserving the original stem cell pluripotency (self-renewal) and the other daughter, committed to a further differentiation program, into specialized cell types with non-stem cell fate (1). The mechanisms through which the asymmetric cell divisions are conferred to dividing daughter cells are inherently acquired at the time of division of the mother cell. In multicellular organisms, this response is triggered by the polarization of the mother cell and the consequent alignment of the mitotic spindle with the axis of polarity during mitotic division (1).


Background Neuropsychiatric symptoms are a common feature of Huntington's disease (HD). Despite are identifiable years before motor-based disease onset, little is known about the prevalence and significance of neuropsychiatric symptoms in pre-manifested (preHD) individuals. Objectives To determine the prevalence and significance of a wide range of neuropsychiatric features in positive gene carriers far and near disease onset and how they compare to early symptomatic and healthy controls. Methods Neurological, medication, cognitive and behavioural data were obtained from n = 129 gene positive and n = 101 healthy controls from the Spanish cohort of the Registry study. Participants were classified as preHD far (preHD-A; n = 34) and near (PreHD-B; n = 24) to disease onset, early-HD (n = 70) and healthy controls (n = 101). Frequency and severity of neuropsychiatric symptoms were addressed through the Problems Behaviour Assessment Scale in its short form (PBA-s). Results Clinically meaningful depressive symptoms are present in in all the groups showing no significance differences. Apathy appeared in up to 32% of preHD-A linearly increasing in frequency and severity up to 62% in Early-HD. Meaningful symptoms of irritability and executive dysfunction appeared in both preHD-B and Early-HD groups. The probability for presenting clinically meaningful apathetic symptoms appeared 15 to 88 times higher in preHD-A and preHD-B respectively compared to healthy controls. More than half of the preHD-B also presented significant symptoms of irritability and executive dysfunction. Discussion A wide range of neuropsychiatric symptoms are observable along the pre-manifested and early stage of HD. The frequency, severity and probability to develop meaningful apathetic symptoms linearly increases along disease stages. High prevalence of depressive symptoms in healthy controls should respond to the influence HD as a misrecognized environmental stressor. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify the meaning of neuropsychiatric features in the earliest disease stages and the potential usefulness of apathy scores as early markers of disease progression.


OBJECTIVES: To assess the degree of inappropriate use of the London Ambulance Service and analyse the reasons for misuse. DESIGN: An immediate assessment of the appropriateness of the "999" call by the ambulanceperson and casualty senior house officer followed by a retrospective review of each case by the accident and emergency (A&E) consultant. SETTING: A busy inner London A&E department. METHODS: Three hundred consecutive emergency ambulance arrivals to the A&E department underwent assessment as to the appropriateness of the call. RESULTS: Overall 53.7% of patients were considered justified in their call, 15.7% of calls were inappropriate, and in 19.0% of cases a unanimous decision was not reached. Eleven per cent of all forms were incompletely filled. CONCLUSIONS: Almost 16% of emergency ambulance calls were considered unanimously to be inappropriate. This suggests that 75,000 emergency calls per year to the London Ambulance Service are not necessary. The commonest reason for inappropriately calling an ambulance was that the caller felt that they had a serious or life threatening condition. The need for public education and deterrents of ambulance abuse are discussed. The further introduction of a nursing led triage "hot line" to appropriately dispatch ambulances according to clinical needs of the patient, and other alternatives to this are discussed.


In large software systems usually about 5%-20% of the code is duplicated. Duplicated code can increase maintenance costs because it has to be maintained in multiple locations. There is a significant amount of research on visualizing software duplication to help reduce these costs. But in practice mostly basic visualizations are used and the more advanced visualizations proposed by researchers are not adopted by the software industry. We believe the reason for this is that visualizations from academic research rely on single stand-alone views that only support simple analysis tasks. To support more complex tasks, we propose a set of connected multi-view visualizations for inspecting software duplication. We follow the systematic approach of Bret Victor for building interactive visualizations to gain insight into a system. Results from our user study indicate that our prototype is easy to use in various clone analysis tasks, and helps users reason about the code at multiple levels of abstraction.


Cite this article: Kimondo J, Mutai P, Njogu P, Kimwele C. Evaluation of the Antioxidant Activity of Nine Plants Used Medicinally by the Ilkisonko Maasai Community of Kenya. Free Radicals and Antioxidants. 2019;9(1):29-34. ABSTRACT Objectives: Many plants used in ethnomedicinal interventions have anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-aging and anticancer activities attributed to their antioxidant properties. The antioxidant properties may be attributed to high polyphenol content of the plants. The Ilkisonko Maasai are a pastoralist community from Kenya known to ingest certain select plant decoctions for prevention or treatment of targeted illnesses. This study evaluated the antioxidant properties of organic and aqueous extracts of these select plants. Methods: The antioxidant potential was evaluated by 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl free radical (DPPH) scavenging method. Total phenolic and flavonoid content were determined using the Folin–Ciocalteu's assay and aluminium chloride colorimetric test, respectively. Results: The organic extracts had significantly higher phenolic and flavonoid content than the aqueous extracts except for Pappea capensis in which the converse was observed. Among the studied plant extracts, Acacia nilotica had the highest phenolic content in the methanol and water extracts (237.26±1.83 mg and 149.66±0.60 mg tannic acid equivalent/g of extract) and the highest antioxidant activity in both the methanol and water extracts with an IC50 of 54.61μg/mL and 102.96μg/mL, respectively. The standard, ascorbic acid, had an IC50 of 50.32μg/mL. In both the methanol and water extracts, Acacia reficiens had the highest flavonoid content (130.62±1.78 and 99.80±1.73 mg catechin equivalents/g of extract, respectively). The correlation between the total phenolic content and antioxidant activity was statistically significant (Pearson's r= -0.841). Conclusion: This study found that select plants used by the Ilkisonko Maasai as medicinal plants exhibited high phenolic content and antioxidant activity, giving credence to their ethnomedicinal use.


BACKGROUND
Convulsive status epilepticus often results in permanent neurologic impairment. We evaluated the effect of induced hypothermia on neurologic outcomes in patients with convulsive status epilepticus.

METHODS
In a multicenter trial, we randomly assigned 270 critically ill patients with convulsive status epilepticus who were receiving mechanical ventilation to hypothermia (32 to 34°C for 24 hours) in addition to standard care or to standard care alone; 268 patients were included in the analysis. The primary outcome was a good functional outcome at 90 days, defined as a Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) score of 5 (range, 1 to 5, with 1 representing death and 5 representing no or minimal neurologic deficit). The main secondary outcomes were mortality at 90 days, progression to electroencephalographically (EEG) confirmed status epilepticus, refractory status epilepticus on day 1, "super-refractory" status epilepticus (resistant to general anesthesia), and functional sequelae on day 90.

RESULTS
A GOS score of 5 occurred in 67 of 138 patients (49%) in the hypothermia group and in 56 of 130 (43%) in the control group (adjusted common odds ratio, 1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.75 to 1.99; P=0.43). The rate of progression to EEG-confirmed status epilepticus on the first day was lower in the hypothermia group than in the control group (11% vs. 22%; odds ratio, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.20 to 0.79; P=0.009), but there were no significant differences between groups in the other secondary outcomes. Adverse events were more frequent in the hypothermia group than in the control group.

CONCLUSIONS
In this trial, induced hypothermia added to standard care was not associated with significantly better 90-day outcomes than standard care alone in patients with convulsive status epilepticus. (Funded by the French Ministry of Health; HYBERNATUS ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01359332 .).


Abstract In the present contribution two tests for thermal fatigue testing, which have been developed in our group, are presented. First test has provided internal cooling system of sample, while second has external cooling. For both tests heating and cooling of samples are computer guided that enables very reliable results of testing. The first test is more appropriate for testing the base material, i.e. roll cast irons, roll steels, tool steels. The second test is more appropriate for experiments that are aimed for selection of appropriate tool surface treatment, i.e. laser cladding, nitriding, coating, etc., and to compare and to achieve improved resistance against thermal fatigue of produced surface layers.


Aquifers are important sources of water in arid areas, where no surface water exist. Estimation of groundwater recharge from rainfall is a big challenge for hydrogeologists, due to the high uncertainty involved. It is even harder to estimate recharge in arid areas, due to high variability of meteorological parameters in space and time. Unlike recharge in humid and sub-humid areas, recharge in arid areas occurs indirectly after rainfall-runoff accumulates in low lands such as land depressions and recharges the aquifer. A new method for recharge estimation in arid areas has proposed in this study based on soil-water budget model and utilizing geoprocessing tools in GIS. The method uses Digital Elevation Model (DEM), land-cover and rainfall distribution to estimate runoff accumulation in depressions. The soil-water budget model is then applied to estimate the groundwater recharge in areas of runoff accumulation. The geoprocessing tools in GIS such as flow direction and flow accumulation in Spatial Analyst were utilised. The application of the proposed methodology in GIS makes it easy to cover the entire area of study, and to run maps algebra. The method was applied to the entire area of Qatar. The proposed methodology was applied on Qatar as a case study. The spatial resolution of raster maps was 350 by 350 m and the temporal resolution is one day. Data requirements for this study include daily records of rainfall, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for topography, soil-moisture holding capacity, land-use map and potential evapotranspiration. Recharge is calculated for each cell and summed to provide the total amount. The proposed methodology was applied on the entire country of Qatar using the hydrological year 2013-2014 and daily time steps. This year was selected because enough daily rainfall data was available for this period, with a good coverage of the entire country. Results obtained in this study for the hydrological year 2013/2014 show the total groundwater recharge is approximately 14 million m3, and concentrated more in the northern part of Qatar. The method can be applied on any arid region.


Feng Shui practice is very popular in East Asia and has been rapidly adopted by the population of the West. As Feng Shui involves knowledge of object placement, it opens opportunities to market Feng Shui knowledge and products. This paper presents an analysis of a successful Feng Shui enterprise, World of Feng Shui (WOFS), that has been established by a well-known Feng Shui expert Lillian Too and her daughter Jennifer Too. The enterprise`s marketing strategies and tactics are tied to the theoretical concept of social influence, widely researched in the consumer behavior literature. The three types of social influence (informational, utilitarian, and value-expressive) are examined in relation to WOFS marketing strategies using secondary data material. The main results indicate that the strategies of WOFS enterprise address all three types of social influence. The articles generated on- and off-line can be mostly associated with the informational influence. The off-line activities such as events, courses/workshops, and TV shows are also informational in nature. The Q&A sections/postings can be considered as representative of the utilitarian influence. They give experts (e.g., Lillian Too) the opportunity to provide individuals with problem-specific recommendations. Mega-mall website provides the value-expressive influence as purchase and consumption of the Feng Shui products is most susceptible to this type of influence. In terms of implications, WOFS enterprise strategies are suitable not only for consumes but also for business executives in Asia and in the West as architects, designers, and homeowners across continents use Feng Shui practices for building placements and decoration of dwellings and workplaces. Feng Shui practice has some limitations such as conflicting opinions of experts and increased complexity when the dimension of time is taken into consideration. Still, Feng Shui as a practice is growing globally adjusting itself to regional and cultural challenges.


Blueberry growers in Maine attend annual Cooperative Extension presentations given by university faculty members. These presentations cover topics, such as, how to prevent plant disease and monitor for insect pests. In 2012, in order to make the sessions more interactive and promote learning, clicker questions and peer discussion were incorporated into the presentations. Similar to what has been shown at the undergraduate level, after peer discussion, more blueberry growers gave correct answers to multiple-choice questions than when answering independently. Furthermore, because blueberry growers are characterized by diverse levels of education, experience in the field etc., we were able to determine whether demographic factors were associated with changes in performance after peer discussion. Taken together, our results suggest that clicker questions and peer discussion work equally well with adults from a variety of demographic backgrounds without disadvantaging a subset of the population and provide an important learning opportunity to the least formally educated members. Our results also indicate that clicker questions with peer discussion were viewed as a positive addition to university-related informal science education sessions.


The H/ACA small nucleolar ribonucleoprotein (snoRNP) complexes guide the modification of uridine to pseudouridine at conserved sites in rRNA. The H/ACA snoRNPs each comprise a target-site-specific snoRNA and four core proteins, Nop10p, Nhp2p, Gar1p, and the pseudouridine synthase, Cbf5p, in yeast. The secondary structure of the H/ACA snoRNAs includes two hairpins that each contain a large internal loop (the pseudouridylation pocket), one or both of which are partially complementary to the target RNA(s). We have determined the solution structure of an RNA hairpin derived from the human U65 box H/ACA snoRNA including the pseudouridylation pocket and adjacent stems, providing the first three-dimensional structural information on these H/ACA snoRNAs. We have also determined the structure of Nop10p and investigated its interaction with RNA using NMR spectroscopy. Nop10p contains a structurally well-defined N-terminal region composed of a beta-hairpin, and the rest of the protein lacks a globular structure. Chemical shift mapping of the interaction of RNA constructs of U65 box H/ACA 3' hairpin with Nop10p shows that the beta-hairpin binds weakly but specifically to RNA. The unstructured region of Nop10p likely interacts with Cbf5p.


The American wild horse has long been considered a cultural icon and an integral part of the ecosystem. In recognition of the need for wild horse protection, Congress enacted the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971. Although the Act instructs Congress to manage the wild horse population by removing "excess" wild horses from public lands, it does not explicitly provide for the use of shortor long-term holding facilities as a means for removal. In considering the legality of the use of holding facilities in the service of wild horse removal programs that the plaintiffs deplore, two district courts have come to opposite conclusions on the standing issue of how directly the plaintiffs' injury must be linked to the particular action being challenged. This Note argues that if the wild horse dispute comes before the Supreme Court in the form of a circuit split, the Court should hear the case to resolve lingering ambiguities in standing causation. Specifically, the Court should apply proximate cause analysis to the standing causation inquiry, as this would promote many of standing's underlying functions and also benefit advocates.


The origin of the three-minute oscillations of intensity and velocity observed in the chromosphere of sunspot umbrae is still unclear. We investigated the spatio-spectral properties of the 3 minute oscillations of velocity in the photosphere of a sunspot umbra as well as those in the low chromosphere using the spectral data of the Ni i λ5436, Fe i λ5435, and Na i D2 λ5890 lines taken by the Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph of the 1.6 m New Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory. As a result, we found a local enhancement of the 3 minute oscillation power in the vicinities of a light bridge (LB) and numerous umbral dots (UDs) in the photosphere. These 3 minute oscillations occurred independently of the 5 minute oscillations. Through wavelet analysis, we determined the amplitudes and phases of the 3 minute oscillations at the formation heights of the spectral lines, and they were found to be consistent with the upwardly propagating slow magnetoacoustic waves in the photosphere with energy flux large enough to explain the chromospheric oscillations. Our results suggest that the 3 minute chromospheric oscillations in this sunspot may have been generated by magnetoconvection occurring in the LB and UDs.


This paper explores the implications of the increasing role of men in violence prevention work for the women's services sector. There are many different ways for men to work with women in violence against women prevention campaigns. The language of male-led campaigns, partners in violence prevention, bystanders, male champions, male allies, aspiring allies and solidarity activists are but a few of the roles that have been identified for men. However their roles are defined, as men have become more prominent in violence against women prevention work in recent years, the issue of men's relationship with women against violence services has become a subject of ongoing concern for many feminist anti-violence activists, practitioners and scholars. This paper aims to explore the nature of those concerns and the various ways in which activist men and the organisations they work within, or are auspiced by, have responded to them.


Take action! Write a letter using the template below or draft your own to reflect your concerns over the recent spike in suicide rates at Foxconn Electronics Inc. Let your voice be heard by those with the power – Foxconn purchasers including Dell, Apple Inc. and HewlettPackard Development Company, L.P. – to put a stop to the circumstances that have led to these horrifying and needless deaths: To Whom It May Concern Regarding the Recent Suicides at Foxconn: It has recently come to my attention that a string of suicides has taken place at Foxconn over the last year. Through its extensive reporting on Foxconn, the humanitarian non-governmental organization China Labor Watch (CLW) has uncovered the deplorable work conditions at Foxconn and shed light on its militarized management style. I am horrified by these discoveries. As a loyal customer of your company, I demand that this problem be addressed with urgency. CLW reports that Foxconn is guilty of the following labor law offenses: Low basic monthly salaries Excessive mandatory overtime hours High labor intensity I expect you to take immediate steps to ensure that Foxconn, your supplier, increases its basic monthly salaries, decreases factory work hours and labor intensity, and amends its operation philosophy and execution. Foxconn must turn away from its strict profit-driven policies to emphasize dignity, meet the basic physical and material needs of its labor community and to value its workers as human beings with inalienable rights under China's Labor Contract Law and Labor Law. The deaths that have occurred at Foxconn have alerted the world to Foxconn's failure to appropriately manage its employees. As the largest manufacturer of electronics and computer components, worldwide, Foxconn has both the ability and responsibility to clean up its sweatshop abuses, create a respectful working environment and work to protect its mainland laborers. Foxconn needs your help. Rather than abandon Foxconn in attempts to negate any bad press, I instead urge you to implement remediation plans in cooperation with Foxconn management. This is truly the only way to ensure full cooperation between Foxconn and labor laws set forth in China. Your concerned consumer, (Name) (Signature) (Date)


Improper airway management is a major concern in anesthesia care. Today the laryngeal mask airway (LMA) has a well-established role in anesthesia practice. It is widely used, but there are certain situations where anesthesia providers are hesitant to use the LMA. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the factors that influence the decision-making process of CRNAs regarding the use of an LMA versus an endotracheal tube. The design of this exploratory study was qualitative and 11 CRNAs participated in semi-structured interviews. Results showed that all participants received formal training with an LMA and were most likely to be using it when the case did not require the use of neuromuscular blocking agents (63%) and during short procedures of less than an hour (18%). The major concern associated with use of the LMA was aspiration. Sixty three percent (n=7) identified no barriers to the use of the LMA, two CRNAs (18%) identified the types of LMAs available, and one CRNA (9%) identified surgeon/anesthesiologist preference as barriers. As an APRN, the CRNA incorporates research and evidence-based practice to achieve optimal outcomes. To date, there is no specific practice guideline that solely pertains to the placement of an LMA versus an ETT. The CRNA must make clinical decisions utilizing the algorithms that do exist such as the ASA's Difficult Airway Algorithm. Choosing an LMA or ETT requires a thorough evaluation of several factors and the decision to use an LMA is often based on personal experience and judgment of the CRNA. Further research is needed.


Since its establishment in 2007, the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI) has been committed to building a strong and lasting community of researchers in ageing in Ireland, North and South.
This report provides a flavour of the work that has been undertaken since CARDI's establishment. It has been an exciting journey watching our thoughts move into action. We are delighted that ageing research in Ireland, North and South, is flourishing and the spirit of co-operation across the island of Ireland is now stronger than ever before.
The next phase will see the integration of CARDI into The IPH in Ireland in 2015 whereby a Division of Ageing Research and Development will be established within the Institute. This provides a great opportunity to build on the achievements of CARDI and help develop the ageing agenda further across the island of Ireland.


Discussions of Paleolithic Cave Art rarely, if ever, explore the possibilities of evidence of writing and yet finger flutings (lines made by fingers in soft moonmilch or clay on cave walls and ceilings) raise significant questions as to what is writing and what internal structures would need to be evident within fluted panels to constitute writing. In this paper, the author shares findings from the French caves of Rouffignac and Gargas, and nine caves in Cantabrian, Spain. This paper does not pose to claim that finger flutings are necessarily writing, but instead raises the question of what elements would need to be present for them to be considered writing, and asks what would be the implications if they did.


Computing precise (fully flow- and context-sensitive) and exhaustive (as against demand-driven) points-to information is known to be expensive. Top-down approaches require repeated analysis of a procedure for separate contexts. Bottom-up approaches need to model unknown pointees accessed indirectly through pointers that may be defined in the callers and hence do not scale while preserving precision. Hence, most approaches to precise points-to analysis begin with a scalable but imprecise method and then seek to increase its precision. We take the opposite approach in that we begin with a precise method and increase its scalability. In a nutshell, we create naive but possibly non-scalable procedure summaries and then use novel optimizations to compact them while retaining their soundness and precision. For this purpose,we proposea novel abstraction calledthe Generalized Points-to Graph (GPG) which views points-to relations as memory updates and generalizes them using the counts of indirection levels leaving the unknown pointees implicit. This allows us to construct GPGs as compact representations of bottom-up procedure summaries in terms of memory updates and control flow between them. Their compactness is ensured by strength reduction (which reduces the indirection levels), control flow minimization (which removes control flow edges while preserving soundness and precision), and call inlining (which enhances the opportunities of these optimizations). The effectiveness of GPGs lies in the fact that they discard as much control flow as possible without losing precision . This is the reason why the GPGs are very small even for main procedures that contain the effect of the entire program. This allows our implementation to scale to 158kLoC for C programs. At a more general level, GPGs provide a convenient abstraction to represent and transform memory in the presence of pointers. Future investigations can try to combine it with other abstractions for static analyses that can benefit from points-to information. ; Software verification and validation


Gauss invented an algorithm for certain arithmetical purposes, which has various applications in optical problems. For instance, it is sometimes of value to see how the focal length, magnification, and back focus of a lens system vary with the change of one of the construction elements (thickness, radius, or refractive index). It is sometimes very useful to have explicit expressions for these significant lens characteristics as functions of the construction elements. However, the usefulness of these Gaussian brackets is not limited to Gaussian optics. The image errors for finite rays in the new form recommended by the author can be expressed with their help.


Introduction: Among the factors that are involved in medical education, undoubtedly feedback is a special place. Feedback is a link between assessment and learning. Student satisfaction has an important indicator in the quality of learning and teaching. Learning is also associated with the satisfaction of students from the courses. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of feedback in clinical education. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was performed on all of the seventh term nursing students in the faculty of Nursing and Midwifery in Arak and shazand cities. In the first semester in 93-94, they were trained post-CCU ward. The participants were selected through the census procedure. The students in both groups (intervention and control) were selected randomly in subgroups of 7 and 8 participants. In each group, the students were trained for 4 weeks in the morning shift. To determine the effects of these two methods, after completion of each of the training courses, all of the students completed the questionnaires and the results were compared. Results: The results showed that the intervention and the control groups were similar in terms of demographic characteristics (gender, indigenous and student work experience) and there was no statistically significant difference. Therefore, the mean of overall student satisfaction scores in the intervention group was higher than the control group. In all of the levels, the intervention group had more satisfaction compared to the control one. Statistical test showed a significant difference between the two groups (P <0/003). Conclusion: Generally, it can be said that the immediate and planned feedbacks during the training were offered to students and it could lead the way clinical training in the correct direction. So, the student satisfaction was increased with this process.


Noncircular chainrings could increase cycling power by prolonging the powerful leg extension/flexion phases, and curtailing the low-power transition phases. We compared maximal cycling power-pedaling rate relationships, and joint-specific kinematics and powers across 3 chainring eccentricities (CON = 1.0; LOWecc = 1.13; HIGHecc = 1.24). Part I: Thirteen cyclists performed maximal inertial-load cycling under 3 chainring conditions. Maximum cycling power and optimal pedaling rate were determined. Part II: Ten cyclists performed maximal isokinetic cycling (120 rpm) under the same 3 chainring conditions. Pedal and joint-specific powers were determined using pedal forces and limb kinematics. Neither maximal cycling power nor optimal pedaling rate differed across chainring conditions (all p > .05). Peak ankle angular velocity for HIGHecc was less than CON (p < .05), while knee and hip angular velocities were unaffected. Self-selected ankle joint-center trajectory was more eccentric than HIGHecc with an opposite orientation that increased velocity during extension/flexion and reduced velocity during transitions. Joint-specific powers did not differ across chainring conditions, with a small increase in power absorbed during ankle dorsiflexion with HIGHecc. Multiple degrees of freedom in the leg, crank, and pedal system allowed cyclists to manipulate ankle angular velocity to maintain their preferred knee and hip actions, suggesting maximizing extension/flexion and minimizing transition phases may be counterproductive for maximal power.


We investigated the link between tipping, an altruistic act, and bribery, an immoral act. We found a positive relationship between these two seemingly unrelated behaviors, using archival cross-national data for 32 countries, and controlling for per capita GDP, income inequality, and other factors. Countries that had higher rates of tipping behavior tended to have higher rates of corruption. We suggest that this surprising association may be accounted for by temporal focus—people may tip and bribe others in order to receive special services in the future. Indeed, in a pair of follow-up survey studies, we find evidence that the link between tipping and bribery can be partly accounted for by prospective orientation.


Risks related to events that arrive randomly play important role in many real life decisions, and models of learning and experimentation based on two-armed Poisson bandits addressed several important aspects related to strategic and motivational learning in cases when events arrive at jump times of the standard Poisson process. At the same time, these models remain mostly abstract theoretical models with few direct economic applications. We suggest a new class of models of strategic experimentation which are almost as tractable as exponential models, but incorporate such realistic features as dependence of the expected rate of news arrival on the time elapsed since the start of an experiment and judgement about the quality of a "risky" arm based on evidence of a series of trials as opposed to a single evidence of success or failure as in exponential models with conclusive experiments. We demonstrate that, unlike in the exponential models, players may stop experimentation before the first failure happens. Moreover, ceteris paribus, experimentation in a model with breakthroughs may last longer than experimentation in the corresponding model with failures.


We explore the welfare consequences of different taxation schemes in an economy where agents are debt-constrained. If agents default on their debt, they are banned from future credit markets, but retain their private endowments which are subject to income taxation. A change in the tax system changes the severity of punishment from default and, hence, leads to a limitation of possible risk sharing via private contracts. The welfare consequences of a change in the tax system depend on the relative magnitudes of increased risk sharing forced by the new tax system and the reduced risk sharing in private insurance markets. We quantitatively address this issue by calibrating an artificial economy to US income and tax data. We show that for a plausible selection of the structural parameters of our model, the change to a more redistributive tax system leads to less risk sharing among individuals and lower ex-ante welfare.