Background. Studies which have found high rates of intimate partner violence have identified that women use as much, if not more, partner violence than men. Research studies into the aetiology of female partner violence have identified a number of related risk factors but there is no single theory which adequately explains the processes by which partner violence develops and is maintained in the learning histories of females. Treatment and risk
assessment options for this group are under developed and it is critical that research is undertaken to understand this phenomenon in order to provide effective interventions in the future.
Study aim. This study aims to use a multiple sequential functional analysis to explore whether behavioural principles, when applied to the developmental histories of females, can be used to understand the trajectory of partner violence across the lifespan.
Method. Three female participants were recruited from Probation and Forensic Psychology services in the East Midlands, UK. Clinical interviews were conducted with participants using a biographical format to collate detailed information around all aspects of female's histories, current functioning and index offending. For accuracy, interview data was triangulated with data from professional interviews and file review. The multiple sequential functional analysis
was conducted according to the principles of radical behaviourism and applied functional analysis. Data was utilised in the analysis based on the pragmatic truth criterion of functional contextualism.
Results. The results are three detailed functional analytic case studies that show the development of partner violence for each participant from formative experiences to the current index offence. The results demonstrate that functional analytic principles can be used to understand the developmental pathway of partner violence in a small group of females. Synthesis of the three case studies identifies that violence and inciting violence in a male partner has functional value for these women and that issues such as power and control are important factors in female use of partner violence. Other factors of commonality are history of childhood and adulthood abuse, gendered belief systems, inferred insecure attachment style and borderline personality traits.
Discussion. Power and control were significant factors in these women's learning histories, both in terms of the victimisation and abuse they had suffered but also in their own use of violence and coercive behaviours. The findings that partner violence and inciting partner violence holds functional value for this group of women is controversial and directly contrasts with the feminist literature. This has important implications for future research and clinical
implications. A strength of the current methodology is that it identifies subtle differences amongst learning histories, which has implications for development of individualised treatment planning and risk assessment for this under represented group.


Cyclic graphical models are unnecessary for accurate representation of joint probability distributions, but are often indispensable when a causal representation of variable relationships is desired. For variables with a cyclic causal dependence structure, DAGs are guaranteed not to recover the correct causal structure, and therefore may yield false predictions about the outcomes of perturbations (and even inference.) In this paper, we introduce an approach to generalize Bayesian Network structure learning to structures with cyclic dependence. We introduce a structure learning algorithm, prove its performance given reasonable assumptions, and use simulated data to compare its results to the results of standard Bayesian network structure learning. We then propose a modified, heuristic algorithm with more modest data requirements, and test its performance on a real-life dataset from molecular biology, containing causal, cyclic dependencies.


Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are not only financial decisions but can also be understood as social processes. Due to the myriad of changes generated by an acquisition, the integration period is characterised by multiple adjustment difficulties. A substantive body of research blames post-acquisition 'cultural clash' caused by cultural differences between the two merging organisations as a major cause of disappointing integration outcomes. Yet research into the process of cultural leadership during the integration phase of an acquisition has only been sporadically studied. In fact no study to date has tackled the question of cultural leadership post-acquisition from the perspective of M&A advisory firms. Through the analysis of four interviews with M&A advisory consultants, this novel study examines the concept of cultural leadership post-acquisition. The results explore the key mechanisms through which Trice and Beyer's (1993) two variants of cultural leadership – leadership that changes and integrates cultures – are exercised to bring about the successful integration of the acquired organisation. Our findings have significant implications for future organisations that wish to pursue acquisitions. It is hoped organisations will be better able to anticipate cultural clash and in doing so, tailor leadership programs to address there underlying roots, ultimately augmenting integration success.


Cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of death among women. Certain cardiovascular risk factors or diseases are novel and unique to or more common in women. Differences in gene expression from the sex chromosomes, which may be further modified by sex differences in hormones, often have differential impact on prevalence and presentation of cardiovascular diseases. However, quality of knowledge related to women's health was lacking due to the exclusion of women in research. Hence, it is high time to encourage research to fill gaps in medical knowledge about women.Having recognized the need tohave sustainable, highquality, applied research on cardiovascular diseases among women, WINCARS (Women In Cardiology And Related Sciences) Associationhas started to create a commonplatform for clinicians and researchers to discuss about women-related heart diseases. The Indian Journal of Cardiovascular Disease in Women (IJCDW) was started with the aim to publish peer-reviewed, high-quality, scientific, original research relate to clinical practice in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular disease. However, we strongly believe that major improvements in medicine can derive from a wellintegrated, broad-based, multidisciplinary, clinical, and laboratory research work. Hence, we also facilitate provision to publish original research in other related branches such as nephrology, rheumatology, neurology, and gastroenterology for the better understanding and for having comprehensive overview regarding women-related health. In addition to publishing original papers on all aspects of women health, the journal also features reviews, clinical perspectives, case report, and editorial articles about recent developments. Having completed five online issueswith two supplementary issues successfully, to ensure availability to wider section of readers, we are initiating first print version with this issue. Print version is available as a premium add-on to the standard e-version. It will be published four times a year on quarterly basis. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the authors for the tremendous time and effort that they put forth in the preparation of their articles. I would also like to thank everyone at Thieme Publishers for their help and putting this issue into publication. Despite the fact that every effort has been made to keep this journal free from errors, some mistakes are likely to have crept in unintentionally. We request my readers to kindly point them out to us. Wewould be more than happy to receive your feedback suggestions on this.We are sure readerswillfind this journal very useful and pragmatic for their day-to-day clinical practice and will inspire readers to undertake research in academic and clinical settings.


Handicapped Children Act, the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act of 1975 was intended to guarantee each disabled child access to a free appropriate public education. The act is arguably the high-water mark of federal control of American education, regulating nearly all aspects of special education law and policy. IDEA is due for reauthorization this year. With annual expenditures of about $50 billion, including $6 billion to $7 billion in federal contributions, special education is as troubled as it is costly. The occasion of IDEA's reauthorization has been marked by proposals intended to alleviate IDEA's myriad, universally acknowledged problems while improving educational outcomes for disabled children. For better or for worse, IDEA reform will dictate special education's prospects for the future. IDEA's central failure is the complex and adversarial process required to determine the size and nature of each disabled child's entitlement to special services. Recognizing that the educational needs of disabled children differ widely, the act mandates that each child's "individual education plan," or IEP, be created out of whole cloth by his or her local school district in a series of meetings. The process mandated by the statute has not only failed to achieve its purpose of ensuring an appropriate education to each disabled child. It has marginalized the parents it was intended to empower and has created a barrage of compliancedriven paperwork so overwhelming that special educators are driven to quit the profession. Worse, IDEA's adversarial nature has undermined relationships between parents and educators, pitting parent against school in a bitter struggle over limited resources. Because the act's procedures require savvy, aggressive navigation, its benefits flow disproportionately to wealthy families, often leaving lower-income children underserved. IDEA has also precipitated a financial crisis in schools. Regulatory compliance and litigation costs related to IDEA's failed dispute resolution framework are soaking up precious resources needed for education, while IDEA funding rules have encouraged incorrect labeling of many students as disabled. The battle between parents and schools over each child's educational plan must end with a decisive victory for parents in the form of portable benefits. Special education should be reformed to allow parents to control how their child's educational dollars are spent in the public or private school of their choice. Escaping IDEA Freeing Parents, Teachers, and Students through Deregulation and Choice


Recently, several contradictory developments have appeared concerning the death penalty. On the one hand, some indicators suggest that the death penalty is on the wane. Annual death sentences, for instance, have dropped 60% from a post-Furman high in 1996, and the public is increasingly skeptical that the death penalty is being fairly applied (one recent poll found that 60% believe that an innocent person has been executed within the past five years). Yet, writing a requiem for the death penalty may be premature. Despite an increasing recognition of the death penalty's problems, overall public support remains strong. Polls consistently find that two out of every three Americans still favor capital punishment, and no widespread legislative movement toward moratoria has materialized. This Article explores the death penalty's future in light of these two crosscurrents. Relying on recent empirical findings and other developments, the Article finds that one must think small about what is happening with the death penalty in the courtroom. That is, the steady decline in death sentences over the past decade does not appear to represent a sweeping turn against the death penalty by the public. Rather, the decline can be attributed to the convergence of a number of factors that together have gradually trimmed back the imposition of death sentences. The Article next asks how much of a further decline in death sentences is possible given that a majority of Americans currently embrace a core belief that the death penalty is the only justifiable punishment for certain crimes (what the Article terms the McVeigh Factor). The Article explores the possibility that a blockbuster event, such as DNA exoneration of someone who has been executed, might lead to moratoria and eventually abolition. It concludes, however, that the immediate future is most likely to be determined by the continued emergence of factors that affect individual cases, such as better defense attorneys, more representative juries, and greater incentives for prosecutors to accept non-capital outcomes.


In the present study, an original article about Podolian cattle and its milk was performed. In detail, the following factors on reproductive career of Podolian cattle in semi-extensive and extensive rearing were analysed: age of calving, gestation lenght, calving interval length, abortions percentage, conception and calving period. Chemical and phisycal parameters (protein, fat and lactose), somatic cell count, lisozyme content and antiradical activity, with ABTS and DPPH assays, of Podolian milk in semiextensive and extensive rearing were evaluated. Finally, suggestions on future prospects of Podolian milk use were proposed: the preparation of hand soap with 5 percentage of podolian milk and the potential role of this breed for prevention and propagation of fire. The data concerning the reproductive career, milk and envinromental role of 677 cows registered in the Herdbook were analysed. The results showed that the 58.56% of the cows manifested a calving interval of 11-14 months. The reproductive activity occurred in spring; over 70% of the cows calved in the period February-April. The chemical-physical aspects of milk are in agreement with literature. It presents an high antioxidant activity values for each group (97.03% and 97.50% for ABTS and 52.09% and 52.60% for DPPH, semiextensive and extensive system respectively). The consumer test shows that the subjects appreciated the soap containing 5% of Podolian milk for different aspect. The data about environmental role were obtained from Podolian cows reared in fifteen grazing areas were monitored for five years during the summer pasture, when the Podolian cattle graze on green grazing areas located in Basilicata region (South of Italy). Therefore, an efficient management of grazing by Podolian cattle could be an important tool to prevent the fire propagation.


This paper explores the vendor transition process after the termination or alteration of existing outsourcing contracts and the impact on in-flight projects. A single case study based on a large Australian telecommunications company, which operates a heavily outsourced IT environment is presented. Qualitative techniques were used for data collection and analysis. Data collection was undertaken using on-site semistructured open-ended interviews. The following key themes were uncovered in the interviews 1) Communication of the vendor transition, 2) The transition period, 3) Confusion during transition, 4) Extending agreements, and 5) Knowledge management. The paper concludes by presenting a number implications and underlying points of interest derived from the findings.


In this art of study, each component of culture has a part to play, and every component of art, literature, science, and thought can be seen as educational in a rigorous sense. --Robert McClintock (1971, 165) The disciplinary specularity of the lynching and castration scene ... gave way (though not entirely) to other practices of surveillance and containment, and the long struggle for African-American representational inclusion in popular and political culture alike took center stage as the primary visible economy subtending the production of race. --Robyn Wiegman (1995, 116) The sharp shift to cultural studies during the 1990s has, perhaps, been too abrupt for a field that, just twenty years earlier, was fundamentally reconceptualized. The disciplinary throughlines from, say, the 1950 Tyler Rationale through Madeleine R. Grumet's stunning synthesis in Bitter Milk (1988) to recent scholarship in cultural studies--on subjects as varied as Disney (Giroux, 1999), Barbie (Seinberg, 1997), Macdonalds restaurants (Kincheloe, 2002), post-colonial figures such as Fanon and Basquiat (Dimitriadis & McCarthy, 2002) and hip-hop culture (Guillory, 2001, 2002; Daspit & Weaver, 2000)--need to be articulated. In this paper I hope to contribute to that articulation, already initiated (see Edgerton, 1996). Much of contemporary cultural studies represents a post-political scholarship (see chapter 5, Pinar, et al., 1995, 283ff.). To a considerable extent, cultural studies have incorporated and replaced political curriculum theory as a major curriculum discourse. It is primarily post-Marxist scholarship (with important exceptions: see, for instance McLaren, 1997), although curricular concerns over the educational value of high and low, bourgeois and working-class, culture remain, if latent (see Wexler, 1988). While class considerations are in eclipse, racial (Mercer, 1994; Pinar, 2001) and gender analyses (Michasiw, 1994; Pinar, 1998; Miller, 2005) remain central. Subjects hitherto relegated to separate cultures (Snow, 1964)--such as science and humanities (Haraway, 1994; Weaver, Appelbaum, & Morris 2001)--are now incorporated into cultural studies. What is the relation between cultural studies and curriculum studies? Does the former ricochet off the surface of the latter? There is a danger of that, despite efforts to link the two (see Edgerton, 1996). Over the next several years, I will argue that, like the so-called foundations of education, cultural studies should be integrated with curriculum studies. Simultaneously theoretical and practical, the interdisciplinary field of curriculum studies provides the pivotal site for scholarly efforts to understand educational experience both in and outside the school. Disciplinary traditions--among them history, philosophy, sociology, political theory--as well as interdisciplinary formations--among them cultural studies--are, in fact, already embedded in the unique history of U.S. curriculum studies (Pinar et al., 1995; Edgerton, 1996). Specifically, the interest in popular culture, so prominent in cultural studies, is evident in that history, including in my own, having worked from contemporary painting, a popular novel, and film. (1) There are throughlines between the pre- and post-reconceptualization eras. By engaging in cultural studies we curriculum specialists are still asking: what knowledge is of most worth? (2) Studying academic knowledge and popular culture and their relations to each other and to subjectivity and society, we curriculum studies scholars can devise synoptic texts (see Pinar, 2004b) that complicate the conversation surrounding our field's central question. By so working, we might trouble the educational significance of the school curriculum for the self-reflexive individual struggling against submergence in a historical moment characterized by contradictory tendencies toward globalization, localism, ethnic nationalisms, religious fundamentalisms, post- and neocolonialism (Dimitriadis & McCarthy, 2001; Pinar, 2003a, 2004a). …


Although carboplatin is one of the standard chemotherapeutic agents for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), it has limited therapeutic efficacy due to activation of a survival signaling pathway and the induction of multidrug resistance. Curcumin, a natural compound isolated from the plant Curcuma longa, is known to sensitize tumors to different chemotherapeutic agents. The aim of this study is to evaluate whether curcumin can chemosensitize lung cancer cells to carboplatin and to analyze the signaling pathway underlying this synergism. We investigated the synergistic effect of both agents on cell proliferation, apoptosis, invasion, migration, and expression of related signaling proteins using the human NSCLC cell line, A549. A549 cell was treated with different concentrations of curcumin and carboplatin alone and in combination. Combined treatment with curcumin and carboplatin inhibited tumor cell growth, migration, and invasion compared with either drug alone. Matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 were more efficiently downregulated by co-treatment than by each treatment alone. mRNA and protein expression of caspase-3 and caspase-9 and proapoptotic genes was increased in cells treated with a combination of curcumin and carboplatin, whereas expression of the antiapoptotic Bcl-2 gene was suppressed. Co-treatment of both agents substantially suppressed NF-κB activation and increased expression of p53. Phosphorylation of Akt, a protein upstream of NF-κB, was reduced, resulting in inhibition of the degradation of inhibitor of κB(IκBα), whereas the activity of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK1/2) was enhanced. Our study demonstrated that the synergistic antitumor activity of curcumin combined with carboplatin is mediated by multiple mechanisms involving suppression of NF-κB via inhibition of the Akt/IKKα pathway and enhanced ERK1/2 activity. Based on this mechanism, curcumin has potential as a chemosensitizer for carboplatin in the treatment of patients with NSCLC.


A reconnaissance field program was conducted in the summer of 2005 in the Andrew Lake area. Selected geological traverses and uranium prospecting, using a sensitive GR130 spectrometer and two STRAT SPP2N scintillometers, were carried out over the main lithological units and more focused around selected radioactive sites previously identified by Godfrey (1958). Preliminary field and microscopic observations added by microprobe and fluid inclusion analyses have been integrated in the regional geological evolution of the region that includes: a) the development of the ca. 2.4-2.1 Ga Taltson biotite and hornblende granite gneiss complex, related to the tectonothermal recycling of the western Archean Churchill Province; b) a subsequent tectonothermal event in which well-layered migmatized bands of possibly supracrustal rocks were incorporated in the granitoid gneissic complex; and c) emplacement of the ca. 1.96 Ga Andrew Lake and ca 1.97 Ga Colin Lake granitoids, local representatives of the regional Taltson plutonism. The metamorphic transformations observed in thin sections, the polyphase ductile deformation of the well-layered and migmatized rocks (routinely interpreted as bands of supracrustal rocks) and the exclusive association with the ca. 1.93 Charles Lake and the ca. 1.92 Sonja Island anatectic granitoids suggest that they represent discontinuous domains of deformation and partial melting of the Taltson granite gneiss complex. Migmatization appears to be a first phase of uranium enrichment, as many of the pegmatitic dykes and veins show radioactivity four to eight times the background level (e.g., Spider Lake). Subsequent zones of strain and fluid-flow concentration within the supracrustal units resulted in lower grade metamorphic tectonites often associates with higher concentration of uranium, sulphide, arsenide and possibly gold (e.g., the uraniferous zone southwest of Holmes Lake). The intense carbonatic metasomatism commonly associated with the Athabasca-type uranium deposits has not been observed. The hematite cemented breccia and quartz stockwork within the examined segments of Bonny Fault are apparently uranium depleted. Future exploration for uranium and base metals in the Andrew Lake area should concentrate on detailed examination of the entire belt of fault rocks that define Bonny Fault, the belts of chlorite-zone retrogression and the pegmatite units, particularly within supracrustal rocks. EUB/AGS Earth Sciences Report 2006-02 (March 2006) • vi


The relevance of the study is determined by the need to form a single innovative space in the agricultural sector of the EAEU Member States in order to make rational use of the aggregate scientific potential of the countries of the Union. Models of interstate cooperation in the scientific and technical sphere were developed and a "panel of indicators" for the development of the market for scientific and technical products was proposed. Practical recommendations on the transfer of innovations in the agricultural sector of the economy of the EAEU member states are given.


Radio occultation observations represent a planetary-scale optics experiment in which the atmosphere acts as a lens and alters the propagation velocity and paths of microwave signals passing through it. In this paper we review the process of inverting the radio occultation observations acquired using the Global Positioning System (GPS) in order to derive atmospheric quantities of interest including temperature, geopotential and water vapor. Beginning with geometric optics, we derive the Abel integral used to transform the observations into profiles of refractivity. In the process, we characterize why the Abel transform works so well as a first approximation for deriving atmospheric profiles. We discuss the resolution of the observations and the improvements that can be achieved via the backpropagation concept where the receiver's position is effectively moved closer to the limb of the Earth in post-processing. We discuss several factors that complicate the observations in the Earth's troposphere including critical refraction and atmospheric multipath. Critical refraction refers to the situation where the bending becomes so great that the occulted signal disappears whereas atmospheric multipath refers to the situation where multiple signal paths connect the transmitter and receiver. We describe the derivation of temperature, pressure and water vapor from the observations including the optimal combining of the occultation observations with weather and climate analyses. We describe some key issues in deriving profiles from real data including the correction of clock errors and ionospheric effects, and the estimation of the resolution and atmospheric Doppler in a self-consistent manner. We conclude by summarizing the expected and achieved accuracy and resolution.


Energy consumption induces climate change but at the same time modifications in climate impact the energy sector both in terms of supply capacity and shift in energy demand. Different regions will be affected in different ways and this paper aims at analysing the issue at the European level. Usually rising sea levels, extremes of weather and an increase in the frequency of droughts and floods are indicated to play havoc with the world's energy systems but they can be hardly estimated and this study will be limited to the effects of the increase in average temperature. Tipping points are also taken out of any quantitative assessment. Structure of the EU energy budget is presented, shifts in energy demand, vulnerabilities of supply and risks for energy infrastructure are discussed in order to eventually provide figures of possible further threats to the continental energy security.


We consider polynomial differential equations and make a number of contributions to the questions of (i) complexity of deciding stability, (ii) existence of polynomial Lyapunov functions, and (iii) existence of sum of squares (sos) Lyapunov functions.
(i) We show that deciding local or global asymptotic stability of cubic vector fields is strongly NP-hard. Simple variations of our proof are shown to imply strong NP-hardness of several other decision problems: testing local attractivity of an equilibrium point, stability of an equilibrium point in the sense of Lyapunov, invariance of the unit ball, boundedness of trajectories, convergence of all trajectories in a ball to a given equilibrium point, existence of a quadratic Lyapunov function, local collision avoidance, and existence of a stabilizing control law.
(ii) We present a simple, explicit example of a globally asymptotically stable quadratic vector field on the plane which does not admit a polynomial Lyapunov function (joint work with M. Krstic). For the subclass of homogeneous vector fields, we conjecture that asymptotic stability implies existence of a polynomial Lyapunov function, but show that the minimum degree of such a Lyapunov function can be arbitrarily large even for vector fields in fixed dimension and degree. For the same class of vector fields, we further establish that there is no monotonicity in the degree of polynomial Lyapunov functions.
(iii) We show via an explicit counterexample that if the degree of the polynomial Lyapunov function is fixed, then sos programming may fail to find a valid Lyapunov function even though one exists. On the other hand, if the degree is allowed to increase, we prove that existence of a polynomial Lyapunov function for a planar or a homogeneous vector field implies existence of a polynomial Lyapunov function that is sos and that the negative of its derivative is also sos.


The history of volcanism on Mercury is almost the entire history of the formation of its crust. There are no recognized tracts of intact primary crust analogous to the Moon's highland crust, probably because the density of Mercury's iron-poor magma ocean was insufficient to enable crystalized silicate phases to float. Mercury's surface consists of multiple generations of lavas. These were emplaced, rather like terrestrial "large igneous provinces" or LIPs, in their greatest volumes prior to about 3.5 Ga. Subsequently, erupted volumes decreased, and sites of effusive eruption became largely confined to crater floors. Plains lava surfaces younger than about 3.7 Ga have become scarred by sufficiently few impact craters that they are mapped as "smooth plains." The older equivalents, which experienced the inner solar system's "late heavy bombardment," are mapped as intercrater plains. There is no consensus over whether plains with superimposed-crater characteristics that are intermediate between the smooth plains and intercrater plains end members can be consistently mapped as "intermediate plains." However, any subdivision of the volcanic plains for mapping purposes arbitrarily splits apart a continuum.
 The volcanic nature of Mercury's smooth plains was ambiguous on the basis of the imagery returned by the first mission to Mercury, Mariner 10, which made three fly-bys in 1974–1975. Better and more complete imaging by MESSENGER (in orbit 2011–2015) removed any doubt by documenting innumerable ghost craters and wrinkle ridges. No source vents for the plains are apparent, but this is normal in LIPs where effusion rate and style characteristically flood the vent beneath its own products. However, there are good examples of broad, flat-bottomed valleys containing streamlined islands suggesting passage of fast-flowing low viscosity lava.
 Although the causes of the mantle partial melting events supplying surface eruptions on Mercury are unclear, secular cooling of a small, one-plate planet such as Mercury would be expected to lead to the sort of temporal decrease in volcanic activity that is observed. Factors include loss of primordial heat and declining rate of radiogenic heat production (both of which would make mantle partial melting progressively harder), and thermal contraction of the planet (closing off ascent pathways).
 Lava compositions, so far as can be judged from the limited X-ray spectroscopic and other geochemical measurements, appear to be akin to terrestrial komatiites but with very low iron content. Variations within this general theme may reflect heterogeneities in the mantle, or different degrees of partial melting.
 The cessation of flood volcanism on Mercury is hard to date, because the sizes of the youngest flows, most of which are inside <200-km craters, are too small for reliable statistics to be derived from the density of superposed craters. However, it probably continued until approximately 1 Ga ago.
 That was not the end of volcanism. MESSENGER images have enabled the identification of over a hundred "pits," which are noncircular holes up to tens of km in size and up to about 4 km deep. Many pits are surrounded by spectrally red deposits, with faint outer edges tens of km from the pit, interpreted as ejecta from explosive eruptions within the pit. Many pits have complex floors, suggesting vent migration over time. Pits usually occur within impact craters, and it has been suggested that crustal fractures below these craters facilitated the ascent of magma despite the compressive regime imposed by the secular thermal contraction. These explosive eruptions must have been driven by the violent expansion of a gas. This could be either a magmatic volatile expanding near the top of a magma conduit, or result from heating of a near-surface volatile by rising magma. MESSENGER showed that Mercury's crust is surprisingly rich in volatiles (S, Cl, Na, K, C), of which the one likely to be of most importance in driving the explosive eruptions is S.
 We do not know when explosive volcanism began on Mercury. Cross-cutting relationships suggest that some explosion pits are considerably less than 1 Ga old, though most could easily be more than 3 Ga. They characteristically occur on top of smooth plains (or less extensive smooth fill of impact craters), and while some pits have no discernible "red spot" around them (perhaps because over time, it has faded into the background), there is no known example of part of a red spot peeping out from beneath the edge of a smooth plains unit. There seems to have been a change in eruptive style over time, with (small volume) explosions supplanting (large volume) effusive events.


This chapter investigates how persons shopping together initiate orientation towards commercial objects that populate self-service stores. Drawing on the methods developed in conversation analysis, it discusses the actions that shoppers accomplish when introducing a 'new' object into their interaction. In the supermarket setting, objects are available resources: as customers navigate through the aisles of the store, they use (commercial) objects as landmarks, as resources allowing them to organise their overall shopping activity, to initiate buying decisions, to engage in topic talk, etc. This study furthermore discusses the multimodal resources that shoppers employ when establishing a joint focus of attention and analyses the categorisation work that they accomplish when orienting towards objects that are on sale.


We explore the double-edged sword of recombination in generating breakthrough innovation: recombination of distant or diverse knowledge is needed because knowledge in a narrow domain might trigger myopia, but recombination can be counterproductive when local search is needed to identify anomalies. We take into account how creativity shapes both the cognitive novelty of the idea and the subsequent realization of economic value. We develop a text-based measure of novel ideas in patents using topic modeling to identify those patents that originate new topics in a body of knowledge. We find that, counter to theories of recombination, patents that originate new topics are more likely to be associated with local search, while economic value is the product of broader recombinations as well as novelty.


In this conversation, the author's goal is to discuss subjectivity/s as evolving and temporal representational emergences in ethnographic fieldwork. She uses her participation in a narrative ethnographic study of women's experiences in Hindu arranged marriages to show how her positions traveled and constantly shifted in the years of fieldwork. Ultimately, she shifts focus to her fieldwork and explores the ways in which her co-participants shifted her selves and, in so doing, "represented" their own marital stories. As she does so, she shows herself caught between eligibilities granted to her by her participants and how these shaped what she discerned in the narratives. Her broader goal in enacting these tough yet healthy tensions is to facilitate a dialogue on how the resculpting of the ethnographer shows us the recursive relationship among subjectivity/s, representation, and interpretation.


Downscaling methods are utilized to assess the effects of large scale atmospheric circulation on local hydrological variables such as precipitation and runoff. In this paper, a methodology of statistical downscaling using a support vector machine (SVM) approach is presented to simulate and predict the precipitation using general circulation model (GCM) data. Due to the complexity and issues related to finding a relationship between the large scale climatic parameters and local precipitation, the climate variables (predictors) affecting monthly precipitation variations over Wales are identified using a combination of the methods including the principal component analysis (PCA), fuzzy clustering, backward selection, forward selection, and Gamma test (GT). The effectiveness of those tools is illustrated through their implementations in the case study. It has been found that although the GT itself fails to identify the best input variable combination, it provides useful and narrowed-down options for further exploration. The best input variable combination is achieved by the GT and forward selection method. This approach can be a useful way for assessing the impacts of climate variables on precipitation forecasting.


Improved understanding of the mechanism behind periodontal tissue destruction, the potential protective role of nutrients and the advent of modern genomic measurement tools has led to an increased interest in the association between nutrition and periodontal disease. To date, evidence for a direct link between periodontal disease and nutrition has come mainly from large observational cross-sectional studies or very small double-blind randomized supplementation trials, with a large proportion finding no significant association between the nutrient being analyzed and markers of periodontal disease status. The advent of the 'genomic era' has introduced the concept of nutrigenomic studies, which aim to reveal the relationship between nutrition and the genome to provide a scientific basis for improved public health through dietary means. Used alongside relatively inexpensive high-throughput technology, this will allow the effect of diet on the etiology of periodontal disease to be studied in greater detail. As it is extremely likely that interactions between genotype and diet are important in determining the risk of the most common complex diseases, it is highly probable that these interactions will be important in determining periodontal disease risk. Numerous nutritional genetic studies where the outcome measures have been markers of disease risk, most notably cardiovascular disease and cancer, provide proof of principle, highlight the importance of understanding these interactions and illustrate where the effect of dietary modification on periodontal disease progression may have been overlooked previously by observational studies.


To evaluate the effect of daily beta-carotene (30 mg) versus placebo over a 2-year period on cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 2 and 3 lesions. Human papillomavirus (HPV) typing was done to determine whether lesion regression was related to HPV. Micronutrient levels were measured to determine whether levels were predictive of regression. Variables that influence the risk of HPV infection and CIN, such as cigarette smoking and sexual behavior, were evaluated. Women were randomized to beta-carotene or placebo, with cytology and colposcopy every 3 months. Cervical biopsies were performed before treatment and after 6 and 24 months to evaluate response. Persistence of or progression to CIN 3 resulted in removal from the study, whereas treatment continued for 2 years on all others. The presence and type of HPV was determined by PCR. Response was defined as an improvement in CIN by 2 grades. Mantel-Haenszel chi(2) test was used to analyze response to treatment. Fisher's exact test was used to determine the effect of HPV and CIN grade on response Wilcoxon's rank-sum tests were used to compare micronutrient levels between groups. Twenty-one of 124 enrolled women were not randomized because they either moved, became pregnant, voluntarily withdrew, or the pathological review of their initial cervical biopsies did not confirm CIN 2 or 3. Of the remaining 103 women, 33 experienced lesion regression, 45 had persistent or progressive disease, and 25 women did not complete the study and were considered nonresponders in the final analysis. The overall regression rate (32%) was similar between treatment arms and when stratified for CIN grade. Data on 99 women with HPV typing showed that 77% were HPV-positive and 23% HPV-negative at enrollment. HPV-positive lesions were subdivided into indeterminate-, low-, and high-risk categories; the response rate was highest for women with no HPV detected (61%), lower for indeterminate/low-risk (30%), and lowest for high-risk (18%; P =.001). CIN regression was negatively correlated with retinol levels. In conclusion, beta-carotene does not enhance the regression of high-grade CIN, especially in HPV-positive subjects.


The present article aims at studying the phenomenon of memes as a communicative, social and cultural product, in the attempt to identify the level of globalisation vis à vis localisation of the cultures and the societies that produce them. To this end, the article presents some memes from both the United Kingdom and Italy, which were collected in a rather large corpus, and briefly analyses them from a linguistic and visual perspective. For reasons of space, the quantitative analysis of the corpus will not be discussed at length here, even though the results of the study will be indicated briefly. However, the qualitative analysis of some of the memes will prove that a large part of the existing material – while adopting various features of globalisation – often exploits, from a linguistic point of view, regional variants of the language adopted. Thus, since language is the expression of specific cultures, the analysis demonstrates how, despite globalisation, local (and localised) features of communities and cultures keep existing in their uniqueness. Hence, since memes are, as indicated in the title of this paper, a privileged form of communication among younger members of society, the results point to a generation of youth that, despite the tendency to follow global models, is well aware of the traditional and local cultures they stem from and strive to keep them alive. On the basis of this analysis, the article finally argues that memes – like many other products of popular culture – represent a privileged arena which, if studied systematically through the tools of discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, could reveal important aspects of the societies that produce them and their evolution.


A couple on an epicurean journey across Mexico are excited by the idea of a particular ingredient, suggested by ancient rituals of human sacrifice. Precariously balanced on his throne, a king is able only to listen to the sounds around him - sure that any deviation from their normal progression would mean the uprising of the conspirators that surround him. And three different men search desperately for the beguiling scents of lost women, from a Count visiting Madame Odile's perfumery, to a London drummer stepping over spent, naked bodies.


An investigation of the dynamic properties of synthetic non-metamict zircon, ZrSiO4, was undertaken using X-ray single-crystal diffraction and polarized single-crystal Raman spectroscopy. The X-ray results at room temperature show that the Zr cation located on the triangular dodecahedral site is tightly bonded. The atomic displacement parameters from different crystals and refinements on zircon are compared and shown to be different. This is probably a result of experimental problems associated with extinction and/or slight degrees of metamictization in natural samples. A calculation of the librational motions of the rigid SiO4 tetrahedron give a mean-square libration of 3.3(3) degree(2) along the a axes and 6.9(6) degree(2) along the c axis. The Raman spectrum shows some unusual features, such as the low wave number SiO4 bending Motion, upsilon (2), at 266 cm(-1), that can be explained by the structural properties of zircon. The structure is characterized by open 'channels' running parallel to [001] and they influence the energies of the SiO4 bending modes depending upon their symmetries. The Raman modes differ strongly in intensity and this can be explained by vibrational interactions with the electronic state of Zr4+. In contrast to garnet, which shares a few structural similarities with zircon, the Zr cation residing in the large dodecahedral site shows little dynamic disorder. In addition, all the external modes in zircon are harmonic in comparison to a few modes in pyrope garnet, for example, that soften with decreasing temperature.


In this experiment, the distribution within the plant of nitrogen originating from fertilizer and from soil was followed at six periods between anthesis and grain maturity. Fertilizer rate of 180 kg N.ha -1 was applied following two splitting schedules T2 (1/3-1/3-1/3) and T5 (0-1/3-2/3) at GS25, GS30 and GS37 resp. and compared to unfertilized control T1. Aerial parts of the plant were divided into several compartments i.e. S1 (organs under the fore-last node), S2 (fore-last node and stem portion), S3 (last node and stem), L2 (fore-last leaf), L3 (flag leaf), EC (ear chaff) and EG (grain). 15 N labelled NH4N03 was used to determine the recovery of nitrogen applications, and the part of fertilizer and soil nitrogen in each plant compartment. At maturity, fertilizer N recovery varied significantly in the whole plant and ranged from 68.14 to 78.62 % and in grain from 55.91 (r 5.28) % to 69.11 (r 5.07) % for T2 and T5 respectively. Total amounts of N in the whole plant (11.3; 26.4 and 26.4 g N.m - ² for T1, T2 and T5 respectively) were distributed in S1 (1.1; 1.9 and 1.0 g N.m - ²), in S2 (0.2; 0.3 and 0.2 g N.m - ²), in S3 (0.23; 0.52 and 0.41 g N.m - ²), in L2 (0.18; 0.47 and 0.38 g N.m - ²), in L3 (0.26; 0.67 and 0.61g N.m - ²), in EC (0.57; 1.34 and 1.17 g N.m - ²), and in EG (8.8; 21.2 and 22.6 g N.m - ²). Split nitrogen application affected the recovery of fertilizer nitrogen (FNR). By suppressing the first split application (GS25) and increasing the latest (GS37), the splitting schedule T5 (0-1/3-2/3) exhibited the highest total and grain recoveries of fertilizer nitrogen.


The indications for transfusing fresh‐frozen plasma (FFP), cryoprecipitate and cryosupernatant plasma are very limited. When transfused they can have unpredictable adverse effects. The risks of transmitting infection are similar to those of other blood components unless a pathogen‐reduced plasma (PRP) is used. Of particular concern are allergic reactions and anaphylaxis, transfusion‐related acute lung injury, and haemolysis from transfused antibodies to blood group antigens, especially A and B. FFP is not indicated in disseminated intravascular coagulation without bleeding, is only recommended as a plasma exchange medium for thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (for which cryosupernatant is a possible alternative), should never be used to reverse warfarin anticoagulation in the absence of severe bleeding, and has only a very limited place in prophylaxis prior to liver biopsy. When used for surgical or traumatic bleeding, FFP and cryoprecipitate doses should be guided by coagulation studies, which may include near‐patient testing. FFP is not indicated to reverse vitamin K deficiency for neonates or patients in intensive care units. PRP may be used as an alternative to FFP. In the UK, PRP from countries with a low bovine spongiform encephalopathy incidence is recommended by the Departments of Health for children born after 1 January 1996. Arrangements for limited supplies of single donor PRP of non‐UK origin are expected to be completed in 2004. Batched pooled commercially prepared PRP from donors in the USA (Octaplas) is licensed and available in the UK. FFP must be thawed using a technique that avoids risk of bacterial contamination. Plastic packs containing any of these plasma products are brittle in the frozen state and must be handled with care.


In the last few years Twitter has become an important resource for the identification of Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs), monitoring flu trends, and other pharmacovigilance and general research applications. Most researchers spend their time crawling Twitter, buying expensive pre-mined datasets, or tediously and slowly building datasets using the limited Twitter API. However, there are a large number of datasets that are publicly available to researchers which are underutilized or unused. In this work, we demonstrate how we mined over 9.4 billion Tweets from archive.org's Twitter stream grab using a drug-term dictionary and plenty of computing power. Knowing that not everything that shines is gold, we used pre-existing drug-related datasets to build machine learning models to filter our findings for relevance. In this work we present our methodology and the 3,346,758 identified tweets for public use in future research.


Injury rates in twelve U.S. men's collegiate sports are examined in this paper. The twelve sports ranked by overall injury rate are wrestling, football, ice hockey, soccer, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, baseball, indoor track, cross country, outdoor track, and swimming. The first six sports will be called "contact" sports, and the next five will be called "non-contact." Swimming is treated separately because it has many fewer injuries. Injury rates in the contact sports are considerably higher than they are in the non-contact sports and they are on average more severe. Estimates are presented of the injury savings that would result if the contact sports were changed to have injury rates similar to the rates in the non-contact sports. The estimated savings are 49,600 fewer injuries per year and 5,990 fewer injury years per year. The estimated dollar value of these savings is between about 0.5 and 1.5 billion per year. About half of this is from football. Section 7 speculates on how the contact sports might be changed to have their injury rates be similar to those in the non-contact sports.


Outreach and engagement are regarded by many who work in homeless programs as essential services. Outreach on the streets and in shelters is often the first point of contact for people who are not served by traditional site- based services and is often the first step in engaging homeless people in services. While outreach and engagement are critical components of the response to homelessness, consensus is lacking about the nature and effectiveness of these services. The purpose of this paper is to examine what is known about outreach and engagement for people experiencing homelessness. The authors review quantitative studies that examine outcomes and augment this understanding with information from qualitative studies and non-research literature. The latter provides information about the goals of outreach, assumptions and values, staffing issues, and consumer involvement. The paper concludes with implications for practice, policy, and research.


Abstract This article traces the significant yet largely unexplored experience of transnationalism in the lived religious experiences of Mexican and Mexican American Catholics by focusing on the parish as a central unit of analysis. Within this analysis, the parish unit is rethought as an analytical unit in two important regards. First, the way in which parish life in rural Mexico has been predominately conceptualized as one whose rhythm revolves around a traditional ritual calendar centered on community celebrations of particular religious holidays and localized votive devotions needs to be replaced. Based on research from an ongoing historical case study (1890-present) of a central Mexican parish, Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Coeneo, Michoacán, and on other parishes, the rhythm of parish life has clearly shifted to celebrations of marriages and baptisms. These religious celebrations of marriages and baptisms in Mexico have become the focal point of identity and community in this transnational Mexican and Mexican American experience. These sacraments of baptism and marriage have multiple meanings that not only include universal Catholic doctrines but also notions of family, community, and a particular appreciation for the sacralized landscape of their Mexican parish. Second, notions of parish boundaries as fixed and parish affiliation as singular must be reconsidered because many Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in the United States consider themselves to be active members in at least two parishes: one in Mexico and one or more in the United States.


This study covers the investigation of evolutionary and structure-function relationship aspects of several cancer related proteins. One part of the study deals with the investigation of a critical protein of Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) the Nuclear Antigen 1 (EBNA1), and its interactions with different host proteins. One of these host proteins is a member of a large gene family, encoding ubiquitin specific proteases (USP), known as USP7. The second section of the thesis deals with the molecular evolution of the USP gene family. Another set of cellular proteins deregulated during EBV associated oncogenesis are members of the glycoside hydrolase (GH18) family. Their phylogenetic relationships and protein structures were investigated in the third section of this thesis.
EBNA1 is the only EBV protein that consistently expressed in all latent forms of the EBV infections. The protein is involved in the genome maintenance and a substantial body of evidence suggests that it has a role in EBV associated oncogenesis. In this study, full length molecular models of the EBNA1 protein were generated using the programmes, I-TASSER, MOE and Modeller. The best models were selected on the basis of plausibility in structural and thermodynamical parameters and from this models of EBNA1 homologues of primates lymphocryptoviruses (LCVs) were generated. The C-terminal DNA binding and homodimerisation domain was predicted to be structurally similar between different LCV EBNA1 homologues, indicative of functional conservation. The central glycine alanine repeat (GAr) domain was predicted to be primarily composed of α helices, while almost all of the protein interaction region was found to be unstructured, irrespective of the prediction approach used and sequence origin. Predicted USP7 and Casein kinase 2 (CK2) binding sites and GAr were observed in the EBNA1 homologues of Old World primate LCVs, but not in the marmoset homologue suggesting the co-evolution of both these sites. Dimer conformations of the EBNA1 monomer models were constructed using SymmDock, where the C-terminal tail was predicted to wrap around the proline rich loop of another monomer, possibly contributing to dimer stability. This feature could be exploited in therapeutic design, hence an inhibitor peptide was designed and a preliminary evaluation was conducted to explore its ability to inhibit EBNA1 function in cell survival. The peptide array libraries of EBNA1 were used to investigate the binding regions and critical contact points between EBNA1 and partner proteins. Human EBP2 and USP7 proteins were expressed in bacteria and probed on the EBNA1 array. The data confirm the previously known binding region for EBNA1-EBP2 and EBNA1-USP7 interactions. In addition further information was gained regarding the critical contact residues and the potential role of phosphorylation of serine residues of EBNA1 in its binding with EBP2 and USP7.
The human genome encodes nearly 100 USPs which contribute to regulate the turnover of cellular proteins. These homologues are divided into 16 paralogous groups, all sharing a characteristic peptidase C19 domain. Evolutionary relationships between these homologues were explored by datamining and the phylogenetic reconstruction of peptidase C19 domain sequences. The data reveal an ancient relationship between the genes, with expansion occurring throughout the course of evolution, but particularly at the base of the vertebrates, at the time of the two whole genome duplications. A comparison between the phylogenetic architecture and protein interaction networks suggests the parallel emergence of many molecular pathways and the associated USPs.
The GH18 gene family includes chitinases and related non catalytic proteins. Most mammals encode at least three chitinases (CHIT1, CHIA/AMCase and CTBS), as well as several homologues encoding catalytically inactive chitinase-like proteins or chilectins. Phylogenomic analysis shows that the family has undergone extensive expansion, initiating with a duplication event at the root of the vertebrate tree, resulting in the origin of the ancestors of CHIT1 and CHIA. Two further duplications of ancestral CHIA predate the divergence of bony fishes, one leading to a newly identified paralogous group (we have termed CHIO). In tetrapods, additional CHIA duplications predate and postdate the amphibian/mammalian split and relics of some exist as pseudogenes in the human genome. Homology modelling of structurally unresolved GH18 homologues in mouse and human was conducted using Modeller and I-TASSER. All resolved and predicted structures share a TIM barrel (β/α)8 and α+β domain. A central ligand binding cavity was also found in all GH18 homologues. The variation in size and shape of different paralogous proteins, indicate the difference in their ligands specificity and in turn potential functions.


The Action Plan for Australian Mammals 2012 is the first review to assess the conservation status of all Australian mammals. It complements The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2010 (Garnett et al. 2011, CSIRO Publishing), and although the number of Australian mammal taxa is marginally fewer than for birds, the proportion of endemic, extinct and threatened mammal taxa is far greater. These authoritative reviews represent an important foundation for understanding the current status, fate and future of the nature of Australia.

This book considers all species and subspecies of Australian mammals, including those of external territories and territorial seas. For all the mammal taxa (about 300 species and subspecies) considered Extinct, Threatened, Near Threatened or Data Deficient, the size and trend of their population is presented along with information on geographic range and trend, and relevant biological and ecological data. The book also presents the current conservation status of each taxon under Australian legislation, what additional information is needed for managers, and the required management actions. Recovery plans, where they exist, are evaluated.

The voluntary participation of more than 200 mammal experts has ensured that the conservation status and information are as accurate as possible, and allowed considerable unpublished data to be included. All accounts include maps based on the latest data from Australian state and territory agencies, from published scientific literature and other sources.

The Action Plan concludes that 29 Australian mammal species have become extinct and 63 species are threatened and require urgent conservation action. However, it also shows that, where guided by sound knowledge, management capability and resourcing, and longer-term commitment, there have been some notable conservation success stories, and the conservation status of some species has greatly improved over the past few decades.

The Action Plan for Australian Mammals 2012 makes a major contribution to the conservation of a wonderful legacy that is a significant part of Australia's heritage. For such a legacy to endure, our society must be more aware of and empathetic with our distinctively Australian environment, and particularly its marvellous mammal fauna; relevant information must be readily accessible; environmental policy and law must be based on sound evidence; those with responsibility for environmental management must be aware of what priority actions they should take; the urgency for action (and consequences of inaction) must be clear; and the opportunity for hope and success must be recognised. It is in this spirit that this account is offered.

Winner of a 2015 Whitley Awards Certificate of Commendation for Zoological Resource.


ABSTRACT Conflicting and complex forces are shaping the diffusion patterns of the Internet and e-commerce in South Asia. Drawing upon the literature on institutional theory, we explore the drivers and inhibitors of the Internet in South Asian countries. We examine the influence of the three pillars of institutions (Scott, 1995) on the digital world of South Asia. The paper discusses how regulatory, normative, and cognitive institution–such as laws, relationships, culture, and habit–have shaped the diffusion patterns of the Internet and e-commerce in South Asia.


Finding molecules which are able to catalyse the reaction between others is an important
contribution of molecular chemists to increase the efficiency of chemical reactions. The atom
economical reactions or approaches have provided significant challenge to the communities of
organometallic chemists and synthetic organic chemists. The term atom economy is conversion
efficiency of a reaction process in terms of all atoms involved. In an ideal chemical process the
amount of staring materials are equal to the amount of products generated and no atom is wasted.
Recent developments like high raw material cost and increased sensitivity to environmental
concerns have made atom economical approaches more popular.
Chemistry of alkaline-earth metals are less developed and they are often termed as "sleeping
beauties" compared to magnesium chemistry. Among the alkaline-earth metals (Mg, Ca, Sr and
Ba), magnesium being exceptional which was extensively studied by Grignard, who established
the organomagnesium reagent plays a significant role in the synthetic organic and inorganic
chemistry. In the recent years, the chemistry of heavier alkaline-earth metals was wellestablished and complexes of the alkaline-earth metals were employed in various catalytic
applications such as ring-opening polymerization of various cyclic esters, polymerization of
styrene and dienes, and also atom economical reaction, cross-dehydrocoupling of silanes and
amines, Hydroelementation (such as hydroamination, hydrophosphination, hydrosilylation and
hydroboration) reactions of alkenes and alkynes.
In my thesis work, I have mainly focused on the syntheses and structural characterization of
well-defined homo- and heteroleptic alkaline-earth and early transition (group IV) metal
complexes supported by novel bulky bis-iminopyrrolyl, phosphinanilido-imine chalcogenides,
boranes and 1,4-diaza1,3-butadiene (DAD) ligands in their coordination sphere as multi-dentate
chelating ligands. All newly prepared heteroleptic metal complexes were used as active precatalysts in atom economical reactions such as cross-dehydrocoupling of silanes with amine and
hydroelementation (hydroamination, hydrophosphination and hydrosilylation) reactions.


This paper uses the entry of large corporations into U.S. counties during the 1980s and 1990s to analyse the effect of plant opening on knowledge spillovers to local inventors. We use a difference-in-differences identification strategy exploiting information on the revealed ranking of possible locations for large plants in the US. Under the identifying assumption that locations not chosen (losers) are a counterfactual for the chosen location (winner), we find that patents of these large corporations are 68% more likely to be cited in the winning counties relative to the losing counties after entry. The effect materializes after the opening of the plant, rather than after the entry decision itself. The increase in citations is stronger for more recent patents whereas patent quality does not seem to play an important role. We find that the increase in citations is larger from patents belonging to the same technology class of the cited patent.


In future energy supply systems, hydrogen and electricity may be generated in decarbonized industrial clusters using a common infrastructure for natural gas supply, electricity grid and transport and geological storage of CO2. The novel contribution of this article consists of using sequential combustion in a steam methane reforming (SMR) hydrogen plant to allow for capital and operating cost reduction by using a single post-combustion carbon capture system for both the hydrogen process and the combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant, plus appropriate integration for this new equipment combination. The concept would be widely applied to any post-combustion CO2 capture process. A newly developed, rigorous, gPROMs model of two hydrogen production technologies, covering a wide range of hydrogen production capacities, thermodynamically integrated with commercially available gas turbine engines quantifies the step change in thermal efficiency and hydrogen production efficiency. It includes a generic post-combustion capture technology – a conventional 30%wt MEA process - to quantify the reduction in size of CO2 absorber columns, the most capital intensive part of solvent-based capture systems. For a conventional SMR located downstream of an H-class gas turbine engine, followed by a three-pressure level HRSG and a capture plant with two absorbers, the integrated system produces ca. 696,400 Nm3/h of H2 with a net power output of 651 MWe at a net thermal efficiency of 38.9%LHV. This corresponds to 34 MWe of additional power, increasing efficiency by 4.9% points, and makes one absorber redundant compared to the equivalent non-integrated system producing the same volume of H2. For a dedicated gas heated reformer (GHR) located downstream of an aeroderivative gas turbine engine, followed by a two-pressure level HRSG and a capture plant with one absorber, the integrated system produces ca. 80,750 Nm3/h of H2 with a net power output of 73 MWe and a net thermal efficiency of 54.7%LHV. This corresponds to 13 MWe of additional power output, increasing efficiency by 13.5% points and also makes one absorber redundant. The article also presents new insights for the design and operation of reformers integrated with gas turbines and with CO2 capture.


Adopting a sectoral perspective, this article is concerned with the pattern of economic growth in the late nineteenth-century Habsburg empire. The timing and extent of changes in machinery output and investment support the notion of a great depression in Austria after the 1873 stock market crash and match with the direction of capital flows. The post-1873 outflow of capital from Austria to Hungary, which was eventually reversed in the early 1890s, hampered industrial investment in the western part of the empire, and stimulated expansion in the eastern part. The evidence casts doubt on the revisionist view which postulates steady and uninterrupted growth of the Austrian economy between 1870 and 1913.


We consider the problem of designing revenue maximizing online posted-price mechanisms when the seller has limited supply. A seller has k identical items for sale and is facing n potential buyers ("agents") that are arriving sequentially. Each agent is interested in buying one item. Each agent's value for an item is an independent sample from some fixed (but unknown) distribution with support [0,1]. The seller offers a take-it-or-leave-it price to each arriving agent (possibly different for different agents), and aims to maximize his expected revenue.
 We focus on mechanisms that do not use any information about the distribution; such mechanisms are called "detail-free" (an alternative term is "prior-independent"). They are desirable because knowing the distribution is unrealistic in many practical scenarios. We study how the revenue of such mechanisms compares to the revenue of the optimal offline mechanism that knows the distribution ("offline benchmark").
 We present a detail-free online posted-price mechanism whose revenue is at most O((k log n)2/3) less than the offline benchmark, for every distribution that is regular. In fact, this guarantee holds without any assumptions if the benchmark is relaxed to fixed-price mechanisms. Further, we prove a matching lower bound. The performance guarantee for the same mechanism can be improved to O(k log n), with a distribution-dependent constant, if the ratio k/n is sufficiently small. We show that, in the worst case over all demand distributions, this is essentially the best rate that can be obtained with a distribution-specific constant.


Skin lesion segmentation is one of the most important steps for automated early skin cancer detection since the accuracy of the following steps significantly depends on it. In this paper we present a novel approach based on spectral clustering that provides accurate and effective segmentation for dermoscopy images. In the proposed method, an optimized clustering algorithm has been provided which effectively extracts lesion borders using spectral graph partitioning algorithm in an appropriate color space, considering special characteristics of dermoscopy images. The proposed segmentation method has been applied to 170 dermoscopic images and evaluated with two metrics, by means of the segmentation results provided by an experienced dermatologist as the ground truth. The experiment results of this approach demonstrate that, complex contours are distinguished correctly while challenging features of skin lesions such as topological changes, weak or false contours, and asymmetry in color and shape are handled as might be expected when compared to four state of the art methods.


The four-volume "Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World" offers comprehensive coverage of the ancient world, from prehistory to the fall of Rome, including Western and non-Western cultures and civilizations. An introduction outlines the key milestones in the development of human society, from the peoples of the Ice Age whose way of life was so vastly different from ours to the citizens of Greece and Rome whom we easily recognize from history books. The 69 signed entries - including 14 on "major" topics with more in-depth coverage - provide readers with an overview of the various ways in which people lived in the past.Each entry explores a specific topic across the entire world, beginning with an introduction that outlines the major developments in chronological sequence, followed by subsections on the following centers of civilization: Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Greece, Rome, and the Americas. Each entry concludes with a list of "see also" references to related entries, followed by a further reading list of books, articles, and Web sites on the topic.


The development of systems with the ability to reason about change notion and actions has been of great importance for the artificial intelligence community. The definition and implementation of systems capable of managing defeasible, incomplete, unreliable, or uncertain information has been also an area of much interest. With a few exceptions research on these two ways of reasoning was independently pursued. Nevertheless, they are complementary and closely related, since many applications that deal with defeasible information also depends on the occurrence of events and time. DeLP is an argumentative system appropriate for commonsense reasoning. The defeasible argumentation basis of DeLP allows to build applications that deal with incomplete and contradictory information in dynamic domains. Thus, the resulting approach is suitable for representing agent's knowledge and for providing an argumentation based reasoning mechanism for that agent (see for example [6, 1]). It is interesting to extend this system adding mechanisms to manage events and time as CDeLP [7]. Here we analyze how to develop a comparison criteria for arguments built up from causal information and considers commonsense rules of inertia.


Policy coordination is needed for global supply chains Climate change mitigation will create new natural resource and supply chain opportunities and dilemmas, because substantial amounts of raw materials will be required to build new low-carbon energy devices and infrastructure (1). However, despite attempts at improved governance and better corporate management, procurement of many mineral and metal resources occurs in areas generally acknowledged for mismanagement, remains environmentally capricious, and, in some cases, is a source of conflict at the sites of resource extraction (2). These extractive and smelting industries have thus left a legacy in many parts of the world of environmental degradation, adverse impacts to public health, marginalized communities and workers, and biodiversity damage. We identify key sustainability challenges with practices used in industries that will supply the metals and minerals—including cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and rare earth elements (REEs)—needed for technologies such as solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors. We then propose four holistic recommendations to make mining and metal processing more sustainable and just and to make the mining and extractive industries more efficient and resilient.


This paper presents the Social Agent that acts in the AMPLIA's collaborative editor in order to improve collaboration. The Social Agent supports group formation and it makes a search among students of an Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) or Intelligent Learning Environment (ILE) looking for suitable students to join in a workgroup. Thus, students can help others, during a common learning task. For such, these agents takes into account some affective and social aspects of the students. Collaborative learning is changing the learning environments design. Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Multi-agent Systems (MAS), and Affective Computing are techniques and resources that are been used in order to improve the individual and personalized learning.

Our research group has been developing an intelligent learning environment to promote collaborative learning, the AMPLIA system. AMPLIA is an Intelligent Probabilistic Multi-agent Environment to support the diagnostic reasoning development and the diagnostic hypotheses modeling of domains with complex and uncertain knowledge, like medical area. The AMPLIA environment provides also a collaborative Bayesian Net (BN) Editor, where the Social Agent acts, to allow students build their own networks and compare them with the expert network.


The lower productivity and higher yield gaps in major cereals are the dominant problems of agriculture in eastern-terai of Nepal. Hence, field experiment was conducted to evaluate Nutrient Expert® wheat and maize model on farmer's field at two sites each for maize and wheat in Morang and Jhapa district. The experiment was conducted in Randomized Completely Block Design replicated among twenty farmers in each district. Two treatments executed were NE (Nutrient Expert Recommendation) and FFP (Farmer Fertilizer Practices).The result revealed significant difference in terms of morphology, yield attributes and yield of wheat and maize. The highest wheat yield (4.71 ton ha -1 ) was obtained from NE followed by FFP (3.00 ton ha -1 ) in Jhapa and in Morang, was (4.01 ton ha -1 ) in NE followed by (2.05 ton ha -1) in FFP. In contrary, the higher maize yield (9.22 ton ha -1 ) was obtained from NE followed by FFP (4.94 ton ha -1 ) in Jhapa and (8.059 t ha -1 )in Morang NE followed by FFP (4.52 ton ha -1 ). The net revenue of NE wheat in Morang was found to be increased by 344.799% while in maize the increment in net revenue of NE was only by 131.158% in Jhapa than in Morang. NE based practices produced significantly higher productivity and profitability in comparison with FFP. Int. J. Appl. Sci. Biotechnol. Vol 6(1): 45-52


Studies on parent involvement in education have most often been gender-neutral, although it is primarily mothers who undertake such work (Reay, 1998; West & Noden, 1998). While African American mothers advocating for their children's educational needs is not a new occurrence, it is one that has yet to receive the attention it necessitates. Mothering work in support of children's education is rarely explored, while qualitative studies that focus specifically on African American mothers' of children with disabilities, and the decisions they make on behalf of their children, are a rarity. And, while special education research has examined varied experiences of parents, there is an obvious gap in examining specific diverse populations within the context of special education. The purpose of this research is to critically examine the overlap of race, class, and gender in parental special education advocacy, combining social and cultural capital theories with a framework Collins (1994) and Cooper (2007) describe as `motherwork' to provide an understanding, from a strengths-based perspective, of the experiences and meanings African American mothers make of their interactions within the special education setting as they attempt to elicit their voices in the decision-making for their children. The findings will add to the research on parent involvement in special education settings, examine the experiences of African American mothers of children with disabilities in an effort to counteract educators' sometimes negative perceptions of parents as adversarial, dysfunctional (Powell, Hecimovic, & Christenson, 1993, as cited in Spann, Kohler, & Soenksen, 2003; Rosin, 1996, as cited in Spann et al., 2003; Salisbury & Dunst, 1997, as cited in Spann et al., 2003) or untrustworthy sources of information (Gilliam & Coleman, 1981, as cited in Spann et al., 2003; McAfee & Vergason, 1979, as cited in Spann et al., 2003), and provide a perspective that will enable educators and policymakers to focus on the strengths of rural African American mothers while understanding some of the barriers they face.


Although efforts are being made to decrease the number of new HIV infections in Thailand, less support is give to the growing population that is already affected by the disease. This qualitative study explores the roles of Buddhist temples in the treatment of AIDS in Thailand, specifically the perspectives of both Buddhist monks and persons who are living with AIDS on HIV/AIDS and the care provided at the temples. Three major themes were derived from the interviews: (1) temple as a last choice; (2) temple as a support group; and (3) the role of Buddhism and monks at the temple. Keywords: Thailand, HIV/AIDS/Buddhist and Buddhist Temples Introduction Among the Southeast Asian countries, Thailand is considered proactive in HIV/AIDS education and prevention. However, Thailand still faces a serious HIV/AIDS problem. An estimated 670,000 Thais are living with HIV/AIDS and 55,000 people died from the disease in 2001 (UNAIDS, 2002a). Although the government's efforts regarding HIV prevention and education have reduced the number of new HIV infections, the number of AIDS cases is still increasing significantly. Between 1994 and 1997, the number of reported AIDS cases nearly doubled, from 13,923 to 26,713 (UNAIDS, 2002a). Thailand's emphasis has been more on education and prevention and less on providing care for those who are in the terminal stages of AIDS. Hospitals and clinics are used only for short visits or to receive basic medical care. Most persons who are living with HIV/AIDS are unable to afford the medical care required, for either control of an HIV infection or treatment of AIDS. The Thai government has established no hospice programs (World Bank, 2000) to response to the increase of AIDS cases. Filling a need, several Buddhist temples have begun to provide terminal care for those with AIDS. However, the number of AIDS cases is too extensive for a few temples to handle and they are filled with patients, who come from all over Thailand. The purpose of this qualitative and exploratory study is to describe Buddhist temple-based HIV/AIDS treatment in Thailand. The viewpoint of Buddhist monks who provide care for persons living with AIDS is explored, as are the perceptions of the persons who receive the care. Their approach to the treatment of persons with HIV/AIDS is unique and different from the approaches used in many other countries. Literature Review Because the AIDS epidemic has affected many working-age males, financial problems are plaguing many families. According to a research study conducted in Chiang Mai in 1994, most persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLHAs) in the research population spent about $974 on average on medical treatment (Kongsin, 1997). The treatment cost was about half of their salaries. In addition to the expensive medical care, both PLHAs and their caregivers lost income: the PLHAs could no longer work, and caregivers were forced to take time off from work to care for individuals in the terminal stages of AIDS. The majority of PLHAs in Thailand spend their last stage of life at home, cared for by family members with the support of NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs). According to Family Health International (2003), there are 465 groups for persons living with HIV/AIDS, with roughly 23,000 members in Thailand. These groups can provide only limited access to information about prevention, treatment, and care. Currently, many NGOs and CBOs in Thailand are collaborating with UNAIDS, WHO, and the Thai Ministry of Public Health to help PLHAs get access to information, treatment, and care and to help them develop networks within their communities. Despite the efforts of NGOs, PLHAs, and the government regarding education and prevention of HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS is still seen as a dirty, dangerous, fearsome, and shameful disease. According to the research conducted by Kongsin (1997), more than half of the caregivers he interviewed reported that not only PLHAs but also caregivers became targets of social discrimination. …


Mikkigak, Qaunaq and Joanne Schwartz .  Grandmother Ptarmigan . Illus. Qin Leng.  Iqualuit:  Inhabit Media, 2013.  Print. Inhabit Media Inc. has as one of its goals: the collection and publication of Inuit traditional stories.  This picture book is another of their unique products.  Many Inuit stories have recurring themes, including kind and caring treatment of children and origin stories, which tell us why things are they way they are.  This collaboration between Inuit elder, Qaunaq Mikkigak and writer, Joanne Schwartz, includes both. In this story a baby ptarmigan wants his grandmother to tell him a bedtime story.  She insists, instead, that he go to sleep.  When she finally relents and tells him a story, he is frightened by it and flies away.  The book ends with his grandmother searching for him, uttering the familiar call, "nauk, nauk".   In the story, ptarmigan play the roles of people.  They live in igloos, sleep under furs and have "armpits".  Illustrator Qin Leng shows the birds with human-like expressions and emotions. Leng's illustrations match the story in their simplicity.  Most of the pictures are drawings of the ptarmigan on white or blue-green backgrounds, with no ornamentation. There are several lessons about adult-child relationships that often appear in traditional Inuit stories.  The two that appear in this story are that young people should respect their elders, listen to them and do as they are told and that adults should be kind and caring towards children. In this story, we expect the baby ptarmigan to get into trouble for not going to sleep, but because the grandmother frightens him with the story, it is the grandmother who is left is a worried state, searching for him. Grandmother Ptarmigan would be a good addition to school and public libraries and those libraries with Canadian Indigenous folktale collections. Highly Recommended:  4 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


three-year history of painful and itching skin lesions on both feet that worsened during the winter and improved during the summer (Figure 1). She was otherwise well and did not report any constitutional symptoms. Based on the relation of cold temperature to her skin lesions, we considered a diagnosis of chilblains. Results of laboratory analyses including a complete blood count, antinuclear antibodies, cryoglobulins, cryofibrinogen, cold agglutinins, antiphospholipid antibodies and serum protein electrophoresis were normal. We prescribed topical mometasone, and after two weeks, our patient's lesions had improved considerably. We suggested that she avoid exposure to cold as much as possible, using warm socks and gloves during the winter months. At her routine follow-up visit a year later, there had been no recurrence. Chilblains, also called perniosis, are an inflammatory skin condition related to an abnormal vascular response to the cold. We are unaware of a reliable estimate of incidence. It typically presents as tender, pruritic red or bluish lesions located symmetrically on the dorsal aspect of the fingers, toes, ears and nose. Less commonly, reports describe involvement of the thighs and buttocks. The lesions present 12–24 hours after exposure to cold and usually resolve spontaneously in one to three weeks. Although more than half of published cases are idiopathic, a recent review suggests that up to 20%–40% of chilblains may be associated with more concerning conditions including systemic lupus erythematosus, cryoglobulinemia, antiphospholipid syndrome, macroglobulinemia and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia. This estimate is, however, prone to reporting bias and needs to be interpreted with caution. Because it remains a diagnosis of exclusion, a minimal workup for chilblains includes a complete blood count, antiphospholipid antibody panel, cryoglobulins, cryofibrinogen, cold agglutinins, antinuclear antibodies and serum protein electrophoresis. In treatment-resistant or chronic chilblains, further testing, including a biopsy, may be indicated to rule out other inflammatory processes. Histology usually shows intense papillary dermal edema, superficial and deep perivascular lymphocytic infiltrates and edema of vessel walls. Prevention of idiopathic chilblains is based primarily on avoidance of cold. Case reports point to successful symptomatic management of idiopathic chilblains with potent topical steroids and, in the most severe instances, prevention with the calcium channel blocker nifedipine.


Background: Coronary Heart Disease is a big concern for the health of the residents of India. Environmental contaminants, air pollutants, synthetic chemicals, and the mineral content in drinking water can affect the heart by altering the heart rate, contractility and excitability of heart muscle or by causing atherosclerosis. Objective: The aim of this study is to observe the level of arsenic exposure and clastogenic effect of arsenic in coronary heart disease cases of West Bengal. Methods: A total 511 cases were screened. Our study group included 100 nos of coronary heart disease cases and 70 no of healthy controls from West Bengal. Multivariate Logistic Regression and Student's t - test was used for statistical analysis of the parameters. The clastogenic effect of Arsenic was also examined by performing Cytogenetic Analysis. Results: Multivariate logistic regression analysis has revealed that a patient's age, Low density lipoprotein level and hypertension played a significant role in the development of CHD. Hair arsenic level in CHD cases (0.7±0.2) µg/kg was significantly high (p<0.01) than that of the controls (0.20±0.09) µg/kg. Mitotic index (4.4±0.21) was significantly low (p≤0. 05) and chromosomal aberration (0.61±0.13) was significantly higher (p≤0. 005) in CHD cases. Conclusion: This study has revealed the facts that age, low density lipoprotein level, hypertension are the three significant risk factors of CHD. It was found that, the hair arsenic content of the CHD cases in this region was having the arsenic body burden. Clastogenic effect of arsenic on coronary heart disease cases.


CBU consists of seven research groups and one service group, specialising in different aspects of computational biology. A common denominator in many of our projects are high throughput data sets, with Next Generation Sequencing as a prominent data providing technology. CBU also coordinates the Norwegian Bioinformatics platform that offers both helpdesk support and training to scientists in the field of functional genomics. A natural research focus in Bergen is marine genomics. The recently published genome of cod [1] were accomplished with CBU as an active partner in the bioinformatics work, in particular the assembly of the 454 reads. Through this and other projects special competence on analysis of highthroughput sequencing (in particular, 454) data has been built, as documented in the work to realise the FlowSim tool [2]. Metagenomics on samples from extreme environments along the mid-Atlantic ridge is another field of high interest in Bergen, due to the Centre of Geo-biology (a National Centre of Excellence) situated next to CBU. Through this collaboration, new approaches to handle amplicon sequencing datasets from 454 have been developed, and implemented in the AmpliconNoise software tool [3]. Through our role in the National bioinformatics helpdesk and our close collaboration with the Norwegian Microarray Consortium, we have extensive experience in designing experiments and analysing gene expression data from high throughput datasets. Both analysis of data in research projects and training that we provide through the Bioinformatics platform and NMC have successfully been based on the J-Express analysis software suite [4]. In addition to algorithms and tools, a suitable infrastructure for step-by-step analysis of your workflow, as well as sharing of data, results and methods across disciplines in a project group, is vital for proper utilization of your data. This is the aim of the eSysbio project, and components of the system are currently in use to implement the StoreBioinfo portal for providing high capacity storage for Life Science data sets in NorStore storage resource (national e-infrastructure). Based on the total research experience and expertise of CBU and on the analysis and e-infrastructure competence built in the national network operated over the 9 previous years, we have coordinated an application for establishing a Norwegian node of the ELIXIR pan-European infrastructure network for bioinformatics.


Durability and reliability of anode supported SOFC stacks have proven unsatisfactory in large scale trials, showing rapid failure, thermal cycling intolerance and step change in electrochemical performance most likely related to mechanical issues. Monitoring and understanding the mechanical conditions in the stack especially during temperature changes can lead to improvements of the design and of the operating regime targeting maximum durability. Within this project modelling and simulation of thermal stresses within the different parts of the cells and the stack and the validation of this models play a key role and were performed in this work. The modelling and simulation of stress and strain have been carried out using the FEA software AbaqusTM. Model variations documented the importance of exact knowledge of material properties like Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, thermal expansion coefficient, thermal conductivity and creep viscosity. The benefit of literature data for these properties is limited by the fact that all these properties are highly dependent on the composition of materials but also on details of the fabrication process like mixing, fabrication technique and sintering temperature and duration. The work presented here is an investigation into the modelling techniques which can be most efficiently applied to represent anode supported solid oxide fuel cells and demonstrates the temperature gradient and constraint on the stresses experienced in a typical design. The work described in this paper is part of a project with the title "Noveld iagnostic tools and techniques for monitoring and control of SOFC stacks – understanding mechanical and structural change" and is a collaboration with Loughborough University and Imperial College in the UK and the POSTECH institute of new and renewable energy, the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) and Hankook Oil in Korea.


The Philippines can be considered a country where successive governments have sought to create a single nation by implementing integration policies. In this article, two formal models are developed —the modernism model and the historicism (primordialism or essentialism) model — to suitably analyze the national integration policy of the Philippines. The analysis reveals that (1) the post-independence national integration policy of the Philippines cannot be regarded as being successful; (2) national integration in the Philippines will continue to be difficult; (3) no deterministic argument can be made regarding the relationship between mobilization and national cleavage; and (4) the modern nation should not be regarded as an extension of pre-modern ethnic groups but as a new identity group that is formed through the process of modernization. In addition, the mathematical implications of the two models are derived. The modernism model implies that (1) in some cases, a ruling group that is in the majority at the time of independence can maintain its position even if it cannot assimilate a majority of the underlying people after independence; (2) in some cases, a ruling group that is not in the majority at the time of independence cannot attain a majority even if it is able to assimilate a majority of the underlying people after independence; and (3) a larger ruling group is not always capable of promoting greater integration than a smaller one can. On the other hand, the historicism model implies that the size of the underlying ethnic group that will comprise the ruling group when mobilized is the key to the success or failure of national integration.


Population ageing in Europe is undeniably a success story. At the same time the new demographic mix is already challenging the old social policy framework together with a series of underlying socioeconomic factors such as inequalities and stratifications. The welfare state across Europe struggle among the current and projected total cost of ageing and the current and projected needs of an emerging ageing population. Pension, health care and long-term care systems tend to treat the needs and abilities of the older individuals as if there is no variation among them. But all individuals do not age following the same pattern. Divergent pathways over the life course present different outcomes in later life. Without innovative and targeted policy-making for the near and distant future the ageing population is in danger to be trapped between ineffective social support and inadequate family support (if any).