Contract theories may be a useful analytical tool for understanding and explaining contract, as well as for facilitating orientation in a complex and often fragmented legal regulation. The article presents main understandings of contract in various European jurisdictions: contract as free assumption of obligation, contract as a bargain based on the idea of consideration, contract as free assumption of obligation based on sufficient causa. The article inquires as to how universal those theories are, what are the recent trends in the development of European contract law, what philosophy of contract underlies the soft law instruments, such as UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts or Principles of European Contract Law (PECL), what is the stance of the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) in regard to the concept of contract. Under the law of Lithuania the definition of contract comprises elements found in several European countries, but it is argued that the new Lithuanian Civil Code has not received any model in its pure form. However it seems that the prevailing view understands contract as juridical act, as freely assumed obligation and meeting of parties' intentions with the aim to create legal effects. Following * The research for this article was funded by a grant (No. MIP-35/2010) from the Research Council of Lithuania under the project "Comparative Contract Law: Lithuania in European Context". Agnė Tikniūtė, Asta Dambrauskaitė. Understanding Contract under the Law of Lithuania and ... 1390 the position of soft law instruments in regard to the elements of the contract, Lithuanian law (at least in its statutory form) does not have any explicit additional requirements, such as consideration or causa.


Young adults represent one of the fastest growing groups of new HIV infections in the United States (Labrie, Schiffman, & Earleywine, 2002). Recent data suggest that African Americans represent approximately 74% of heterosexual diagnoses of HIV (CDC, 2004). Rates of newly reported HIV infections in North Carolina were higher in black men in all age groups compared with white men overall (CDC, 2004). The CDC's (2004) data showed that between 1998 and 2002 there was a statistically significant increase in HIV infections among black men between the ages of 18-24. This considerable increase ranged from 65 per 100,000 population in 1998 to 92 per 100,000 in 2002. Based upon results of a blind study conducted at 19 American universities, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated that 1 in 500 college students are infected with HIV. A critical question about HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among African-American college students is: What influence do alcohol and marijuana consumption have on their willingness to engage in risky sex behaviors; and thereby, increasing students' chances of contracting HIV or other STDs? Tantamount to this question is: What influence does religion have on students' decision-making about consuming alcohol and/or marijuana and engaging in risky sex behaviors? Consistent with research conducted by Cooper (2002), risky sexual behaviors are defined as those sexual behaviors that increase the likelihood of negative outcomes associated with such sexual conduct. This definition of STD's includes, but is not limited to, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea and syphilis. For the purpose of the present study, risky sex behaviors refer to high frequency of sexual behavior, high frequency of unprotected sex while sober, high frequency of unprotected sex while intoxicated, high frequency of giving and/or receiving oral sex, high number of sex partners in the past year, and frequent exploring of non-traditional sexual behaviors. The present study was designed with three major purposes in mind. First, we sought to estimate the incidence of risky sex behaviors, in relation to alcohol and/or marijuana consumption, within a predominantly African-American college student population. Second, understanding that a number of factors in addition to alcohol and/or marijuana may increase or decrease a student's willingness to engage in risky sex behaviors, we elected to examine how self-professed religiosity influenced African-American students' use of alcohol and/or marijuana and their engagement in risky sexual activity. Third, we sought to examine the interrelationship among alcohol and/or marijuana consumption, religiosity and risky sex behaviors in this same college student population. A number of studies (e.g., Abbey, 2002; Engs, 1977; Carlucci, Genova, Rubackin, & Kayson 1993; Cooper, 2002; Desiderato & Crawford, 1995; Leigh & Stall, 1993; Poulson, Eppler, Satterwhite, Wuensch, & Bass, 1998; Taylor & Fulop, 1999; Wechsler, & Wuethrich, 2002) have examined the relationship between alcohol consumption and risky sex behaviors among college students. The general findings of these studies suggest that alcohol consumption plays a key role in influencing risky sex behaviors (Cooper, 2002; Leigh & Stall, 1993; Poulson, et al., 1998). For example, Taylor and Fulop's (1999) study shows how alcohol may be used among college students to facilitate their sexual experiences. Cooper's (2002) study supports the previous findings (e.g., Taylor & Fulop, 1999) by revealing that almost fifty percent of participants stated, they may increase their amount of alcohol consumption in order to make it easier to have sex and also increase the likelihood that their partner would agree to the act. Other research (i.e., Graves, 1995; Poulson et al., 1998; Sanchez, Comerford, Chitwood, Fernandez & McCoy, 2002) indicated that those who consume alcohol may have more sexual partners than students who do not consume alcohol. …


Population density, growth and mortality rates, reproduction, feeding ecology and energy mobilization
of dab (Limanda lmanda L) on the North Wales Coast have been investigated between 1998-2001.
The total population number is estimated as 2.34 x 10 6. Average catch rates were lower in winterspring
than in autumn-summer. 42 hr' in February 2000; 141 hr'in July 2000. Catch rates were
generally higher at night than daylight: 1549 hr'at 02: 00 hr, 17 hr'at 10: 00 hr in November. The 2-
year old fish form the dominant year class. There was seasonal variation in sex ratio (Females:
Males). In the long-term data, in autumn, the females were more abundant (1.83: 1) in trawl catches
but the contribution of the males increases in spring (1.15: 1). There were seasonal variations in
length and weight relationships: the average relationship was nearly isometric (power bx3.0); in male
W=0.01 x TL 91 and in female, W=0.01 x TL 3'04. April 1s' was established as the birthday of the
fish and the greatest deposition of the opaque zone in the otolith occurred in summer. The male grows
at a faster rate than female in autumn 2000: (Loo=25.7 cm; K= 0.30 y 1) and (loo=33.4 cm; K= 0.25 y-)
respectively. The long-term average total mortality rate was significantly higher in males (Z= 1.95 y)
than females (Z= 1.16 Y"). This difference was calculated to be largely due to the relatively higher
fishing mortality rate on the males.
There were cyclical cycles in the gonad, liver weight and condition factors. The peak spawning activity
in males was in December-January whilst it occurred in February-March in females. In the 16-20 cm
male, the maximum gonadocarcass ratio, GCR, (1.8 %) and hepatocarcass ratio, HCR, (2.9 %) were
in January and August respectively. In female, the maximum GCR (17.1 %) and HCR (3.8 %)
occurred in February. The GCR was at a minimum in spring-summer. The minimum HCR occurred in
spring. The maximum condition factor (K) was in summer for male (K=0.97) and female (K=1.02) but,
after spring spawning, declined to 0.67 and 0.72 respectively. The maximum average oocyte diameter
(0.56-0.67 mm) was observed in fully ripe fish in the spawning season but, after spring spawning,
reduced to between 0.10-0.22 mm. The total estimated egg production was 2.47 x 10 ' eggs but the
average per mature female was 3.51 x 105 eggs. Relative fecundity declined from 3045 eggs g' in fish
aged I to 1917 eggs g' in fish aged 8. The fecundity-total length (F= 41.6 TL IN) and fecunditysomatic
weight (F= 4804SW 0.88) relationships are estimated to be good predictors of dab fecundity. In
autumn 2000, the length (Lw%) and age (A w%) at 50 % maturity were lower in males (L = 13.3 cm;
Ate, =1.3 yr. ) than females (L = 18.0 cm; A =2.4 yr. ). The long-term averages showed relative
stability in the females but a decrease in males, Ate, from about 2 years to about 1.5 years.
Five major taxonomic groups dominated the diet of dab: the ophiuroids, bivalves, crustaceans,
polychaetes and hydroids. The ophiuroid, Amphiura brachiata, predominated. However, the study
suggests size-selective preference for some prey groups. The composition of polychaetes in the diet
declined with increasing size of the fish; 22.9 % by weight in the 11-15 cm length group to 5.7 % in the
26-30 cm group. On the contrary, the bivalves increase in the diet with increasing size of the fish, from
11.2 % (by weight) in the 11-15 cm group to 31.4 % in the 231cm group. There is however a
significant diet overlap (C; >- 0.60) between the size groups. In general, daily food intake was higher in
late spring-summer than in autumn-winter. In May, for example, daily food intake for the 21-25 cm and
26-30 cm female dab was estimated as 1.49 g and 4.61 g respectively. In February it was 0.52 g and
1.76 g respectively.
There were distinct seasonal changes in lipid and energy composition in the liver. Lipid content was
significantly higher in the summer-autumn period than spring season. In September, it was about 62
and 69 % in male and female livers respectively. After spring spawning, the composition declined to
28 and 24 % respectively. The energy content per dry weight of liver peaked in October (8.50 kcal g'
and 8.61 kcal g') in male and female dab respectively. Also, after spring spawning, the energy levels
declined to 6.18 and 5.86 kcal g'' respectively.
The energy requirement for routine metabolism and gonad development in a 20 cm female is
estimated as 111.3 kcal but energy gained from food intake and carcass and liver reserves is
estimated as 117.9 kcal. In male, the total energy requirement was 83.4 kcal but energy gained from
food intake and carcass and liver reserves is estimated as 113.3 kcal. Feeding (in late autumn and
winter) and carcass tissues are the main suppliers of energy for activity and the spawning process.


This chapter investigates variation in the verbal language of 640 North American movies released between 1930 and 2010, taking into account situational variables such as movie genres, year of release in the United States, public and critic ratings, movie length, directors, movie studios, nature of the script (original/adapted), as well as awards/nominations received. A Multi-Dimensional analysis proposes seven dimensions of variation for the register and uses the identified situational variables to partially explain the variation found within the register across the years. The results indicated that movie genres, year of release, movie length, nature of the script, and awards/nominations received are the variables that account for the variation observed.


This book covers the evolution of satellite based Aeronautical Public Correspondence and the operational environment in which services are being offered. Followed by an examination of applicable rules, including the relevant institutions from which they emanate, attention is devoted to the effect of State Sovereignty applicable in jurisdictions such as territorial airspace, the Arctic, Antarctica, and the High Seas as well as to activities such as telecommunications, air transport, copyright protection and trade in services. Particular attention is given to the ITU Radio Regulations; ITU Sector Recommendations; ICAO Council Resolutions; International Copyright Laws; National Operational Procedures and Statutes. A presentation of the relevant Laws and Regulations currently in force is made, while the subject of Liability is analysed against the backdrop of Case Law and legal instruments in the context of both Public and Private International Law. Looking to the future, the volume discusses the influence of Convergence and the need for more appropriate Regulations. It concludes with a 'Draft Agreement on the Use of Aircraft Earth Stations for Non-Safety Purposes'.


Advances in neuroscience research are rapidly bringing new and complex issues to the forefront of medical and social ethics, and scholars from diverse fields have been coming together to debate the issues at stake. Acclaimed science writer, Sandra Ackerman witnessed one such gathering, and here she skilfully synthesizes those proceedings into a concise presentation of the challenges that neuroscience and neuroethics currently face. Top scholars and scientists in neuroscience and ethics convened at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in May, 2005. They included Michael Gazzaniga, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College; Marcus Raichle of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Harvard University provost Steven Hyman; Judy Illes, co-founder of the Stanford Brain Research Center; University of Virginia bioethicist Jonathan Moreno; Stacey Tovino of the Health Law and Policy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center; and Stanford law professor Hank Greely. Ackerman weaves the invigorating arguments and discussions among these and other prominent scholars into a seamless and dynamic narrative. She reveals the wide array of issues that have emerged from recent research, including brain imaging, free will and personal responsibility, disease diagnosis and prediction, brain enhancement, and the potential social, political, and legal ramifications of new discoveries. Translating these complex arguments into an engrossing account of neuroethics, she offers a rare view of science - and ethics - in the making.


A new method, employing Lie algebraic tools, is presented for characterizing optical systems and computing aberrations. It represents the action of each separate element of a compound optical system, including all departures from Gaussian optics, by a certain operator. These operators can then be concatenated, following well-defined rules, to obtain a resultant operator that characterizes the entire system. New insight into the origin and possible correction of aberrations is provided. With some effort, it should be possible to produce, by manual calculations, explicit formulas for the third-, fourth-, and fifth-order aberrations of a general optical system including systems without axial symmetry. With the aid of symbolic manipulation computer programs, it should be possible to compute routinely explicit formulas for aberrations of seventh, eighth, and ninth order, and probably beyond.


The studies on the operational performance of sugarcane machinery, in particular the mechanized planting system, are still incipient in Brazil, requiring greater efforts to increase the quality of agricultural operation. In this context, this study aimed to evaluate the operational performance of sugarcane mechanized planting in two operation shifts. The mechanized planting was conducted in the municipality area of Monte Alto – Sao Paulo (SP), Brazil. The statistical design was completely randomized, totaling 80 sampling points, from which 40 points for daytime operation and 40 points for nighttime operation. The variables evaluated were: displacement speed, engine rpm, engine oil pressure, engine water temperature, effective field capacity, and hourly and effective fuel consumption. The coefficient of variation is greater for the alignment of the tractor at night shift, while the coefficients of skewness and kurtosis are higher during day shift. Displacement speed, engine rpm, engine oil pressure, hourly and effective fuel consumption, and effective field capacity showed no influence over the shift operation.


Understanding the impacts of climate extremes on the carbon cycle is important for quantifying the carbon-cycle climate feedback and highly relevant to climate change assessments. Climate extremes and fires can have severe regional effects, but a spatially explicit global impact assessment is still lacking. Here, we directly quantify spatiotemporal contiguous extreme anomalies in four global data sets of gross primary production (GPP) over the last 30 years. We find that positive and negative GPP extremes occurring on 7% of the spatiotemporal domain explain 78% of the global interannual variation in GPP and a significant fraction of variation in the net carbon flux. The largest thousand negative GPP extremes during 1982–2011 (4.3% of the data) account for a decrease in photosynthetic carbon uptake of about 3.5 Pg C yr−1, with most events being attributable to water scarcity. The results imply that it is essential to understand the nature and causes of extremes to understand current and future GPP variability.


Abstract Using data provided by male university students, several structural equation models were developed and tested to assess the interrelationship of pornography use, anti-women attitudes, and propensity for sexual violence. The model best fitting the data is one in which use of Sexually Violent Pornography and Anti-Women Attitudes are exogenous latent variables predicting self-reported Likelihood of Rape and Likelihood of using Sexual Force, as well as self-reported history of having achieved sexual intercourse by use of Coercion and Force. A variation of this model which includes use of Nonviolent Pornography as an exogenous variable was also tested. Consistent with previous research, use of nonviolent pornography was not uniquely associated with potential or actual sexual aggression. The findings suggest the potential roles of both attitudes and sexually violent pornography in the occurrence of sexual aggression. Further, they support other research findings that suggest it is not merely exposure to sexually explicit materials, per se, but the combination of sex and violence in pornographic materials that encourages or facilitates sexual aggression.


Fairytales represent a long-standing cultural practice used by early childhood teachers for supporting children's social and emotional development. Yet contemporary practices see governments demanding a more academic curriculum. In drawing upon cultural-historical research, we theorise how fairytales help children to collectively develop emotion regulation, where the unity of emotions and cognition are foregrounded during the telling, retelling, and role-playing of fairytales, allowing for a dynamic interplay between interpsychological and intrapsychological functioning. We suggest that fairytales have a valuable place within early childhood programs because they introduce emotionally charged imaginative situations which we believe support children's emotion regulation in group care situations.


BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking by pregnant women is a major public health hazard with both short- and long-term effects on offspring. This study describes the presence and level of the nicotine metabolite cotinine in newborn dried blood spots (DBS) and compares it with the reported maternal smoking recorded on state birth registries. We hypothesize that cotinine in DBS may be a useful measure of newborn in utero tobacco exposure. METHODS: An observational, cross-sectional study of 1414 DBS obtained from California, Michigan, New York, and Washington newborn screening programs was carried out. Cotinine levels in DBS were quantified by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry analysis and compared with maternal smoking as reported in vital statistics data. RESULTS: Cotinine ≥0.3 ng/g was detected in 35% of newborn DBS, including DBS of 29% of newborns whose mothers reportedly did not smoke cigarettes during pregnancy, some of whom were presumably exposed to environmental tobacco smoke. Twelve percent of the newborn DBS had cotinine levels that were ≥9.0 ng/g (equivalent to 6 ng/mL plasma, a level that indicates active smoking of the mother), although 41% of the mothers of these infants reportedly did not smoke. CONCLUSIONS: These data confirm that reported smoking during pregnancy is an imperfect measure of prenatal tobacco smoke exposure. Cotinine assessment in newborns may improve surveillance of tobacco use during pregnancy.


Background and Objective: Schinus molle L. (Family: Anacardiaceae), also known by the Pepper tree (in English) and Qundo berbere (in Amargna). American/ Peruvian pepper is an evergreen tree of culinary and has medicinal importance. It's essential oil (EO) has proven bioactivities. The aim of this study was to determine chemical composition of essential oil of leaves of S. molle growing in Haramaya University (HU) Main Campus (Dire Dawa, Ethiopia).
 Material and Method: Fresh leaves from S. molle were randomly collected from the plants growing in Haramaya University (Main Campus) was used to hydrodistillation with Clevenger apparatus to obtain essential oils. Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS) was used to determine chemical composition of essential oil.
 Result: Result from GC-MS suggested forty nine volatile components in which, limonene (18.23%), elemol (12.75%) &α-phellandrene (10.40%), α-pinene (6.51%), p-cymene (6.7%) & spathulenol (5.52%) were the major compounds.
 Conclusion: Comparison with the previous studies on essential Oil of S. molle from the different part of the worldsuggested twenty compounds were exclusively present only in HU EO sample. Compounds like elemol, spathulenol, β & γ-eudesmol were found to occur in highest concentration only in HU EO. Thus, the present investigation recommended that S. molle growing in HU-Main Campus comprises of a number of volatile compounds which are not accounted in other S. molle EO's around the world.


One of the most critical areas of concern in fast urbanizing India relates to the issue of municipal solid waste management in Indian cities. As per estimates (GOI, 2010) urban India currently produces about 70 million tons of waste and this figure is expected to touch an astounding 370 million tons in 2030 given the current spate in the consumption patterns and materialistic lifestyles. Given the current state of affairs it is estimated that only between 30-60% (Rouse, 2006) of the municipal solid waste generated in Indian cities is actually collected and disposed off by the urban local bodies. Out of this collected waste only a fraction i.e., 7% is recycled through composting or WTE (waste to energy) measures and the rest 93% inclusive of the recyclable dry waste find their way into the dumping sites where they are then rummaged by the ragpickers. Thus though the informal sector operations comprising the ragpickers and other informal actors are crucial to the waste management scene in Urban India yet the services provided by this sector is poorly understood or acknowledged and it ends up being projected as illegal and illicit and being looked down upon. Given the context the research paper aims to highlight the other dimension of waste collection and management in urban India which is the informal waste collection focusing largely on the role of the waste pickers and small time informal scrap dealers. This is done by taking the case study of Amritsar city, which is an important historic centre and a metropolitan city in the state of Punjab, India. Keywords: Municipal Solid Waste, Ragpicker, Waste Management


We measure the redshift evolution of galaxy bias for a magnitude-limited galaxy sample by combining the galaxy density maps and weak lensing shear maps for a ˜116 deg2 area of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (SV) data. This method was first developed in Amara et al. and later re-examined in a companion paper with rigorous simulation tests and analytical treatment of tomographic measurements. In this work we apply this method to the DES SV data and measure the galaxy bias for a i < 22.5 galaxy sample. We find the galaxy bias and 1sigma error bars in four photometric redshift bins to be 1.12 ± 0.19 (z = 0.2-0.4), 0.97 ± 0.15 (z = 0.4-0.6), 1.38 ± 0.39 (z = 0.6-0.8), and 1.45 ± 0.56 (z = 0.8-1.0). These measurements are consistent at the 2sigma level with measurements on the same data set using galaxy clustering and cross-correlation of galaxies with cosmic microwave background lensing, with most of the redshift bins consistent within the 1sigma error bars. In addition, our method provides the only sigma8 independent constraint among the three. We forward model the main observational effects using mock galaxy catalogues by including shape noise, photo-z errors, and masking effects. We show that our bias measurement from the data is consistent with that expected from simulations. With the forthcoming full DES data set, we expect this method to provide additional constraints on the galaxy bias measurement from more traditional methods. Furthermore, in the process of our measurement, we build up a 3D mass map that allows further exploration of the dark matter distribution and its relation to galaxy evolution.


Much of what we believe about the best ways to compensate and motivate the sales force is based on theory and lab experiments. But in the past decade, researchers have been moving out of the lab and into the field, analyzing companies' sales and pay data, and conducting experiments involving actual salespeople. The findings from this new wave of research support some current compensation practices but call others into question. For example, studies clearly show that caps on commissions hurt sales. If managers must retain a cap, they should set it as high as possible to avoid reducing reps' incentives. Although overly complicated compensation systems have their downsides, research has found that a system needs to include enough elements (such as quarterly performance and overachievement bonuses) to keep high performers, low performers, and average performers engaged throughout the year. Managers should be careful in setting and adjusting quotas. For instance, studies show that ratcheting (raising a salesperson's annual quota if he or she exceeded it the previous year) dampens motivation. The research also suggests that it's important to pay attention to the timing of bonuses: A reward given at the end of a period is more motivating than one given at the beginning.


This project is based on the ongoing data collection campaign by Nokia Re- search Center-Lausanne. We use location data sampled everyday by mobile phones in the campaign to estimate position of the participants. It is with emerging mobile systems that combines different sensors in a mobile phone so, we can merge different information sources to improve our estimations. Positioning is a problem encountered frequently in many applications. GPS is widely used for positioning but its output is noisy and it does not work in every location. Considering the embedded sensors and processing capacity of mobile phone, we can improve positioning of clients by other data like visited GSM cell and Wireless LANs. In addition, for situations where GPS does not work such as indoors, we can lay on these information to locate the user. Although most mobile phones are equipped with GPS receivers, users prefer to keep them turned off because of their considerable battery consumption. On the other hand, people usually take determined paths when they want to travel among places that they frequently visit. Learning these trajectories helps to keep GPS receiver turned off and localize users by other sources of information. We describe a new positioning algorithm with two modes of operations: one for cases that we have GPS signals and the other for times that there is not any GPS signal. This work also outlines a new algorithm, based on undergoing Nokia data collection campaign, for positioning and navigating of participants among their recurrent locations.


Inhalers are hand-held portable devices that deliver medication to the lungs. Inhaled medicines have become a cornerstone in the treatment of respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but their effectiveness can be compromised if the patient uses the inhaler incorrectly. Patients may be more compliant if they have confidence in their inhalers. Successful inhalation therapy depends on choosing the correct drug and device, and also receiving comprehensive instructions on how to use the inhaler.


The War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain was fought throughout nearly all of the country, from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the vast frontier between the U.S. and Canada. No theater of war suffered more than the Chesapeake Bay region, where 11 battles-including Craney Island, Hampton, Bladensburg, and Baltimore-63 skirmishes, and 86 raids took place. Featuring a comprehensive list of more than 800 of the war's historical sites in the region, this book is an indispensable reference to the second great war for independence. One chapter each covers Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The authors draw on both American and British accounts in describing battlefields and the locations of skirmishes. The book includes historic maps and drawings, descriptive overview essays, the most complete chronology of the War in the Chesapeake ever assembled, and a thorough bibliographic essay. Supported by such primary documents as diaries, journals, and newspaper articles, the material compiled in this encyclopedia surpasses any collection thus far brought together on the subject. Local librarians, historians, tour guides, history buffs, school teachers, and genealogists will find this guide to be informative and enlightening.


The largest cause of General Aviation Accidents is shown through an analysis of the 283 UK fatal accidents between 1980 and 2006 to be loss of control, most usually at low level. Evaluating the reasons behind this, it is shown to be due to a combination of aircraft characteristics and pilot situational awareness and response. The statistical analysis also shows that there are marked differences in the incidence of these accidents between some aircraft types, and this along with systems analysis and simulator experimental work has been used as a mechanism for researching how and why these accidents occur. A proposed mechanism is described, along with an ongoing programme of research, centred on certain single engined aeroplanes, aiming to investigate this and produce recommendations both for aircraft design and pilot training. NOMENCLATURE CFIT


The food industry has shown increased interest for novel natural antimicrobials due to consumer demand for foods with fewer synthetic additives, increased safety, quality and shelf-life. Concurrently, the emergence of drug resistant bacteria substantiates the need for newer antimicrobial agents. Alternative strategies include the use of novel antimicrobials, such as fatty acid derivatives, essential oils and bacteriocins, with proven antimicrobial properties against a diverse range of bacteria. This study investigated novel carbohydrate fatty acid (CF A) derivatives for their antibacterial activity against a range of pathogenic and spoilage bacteria. A series of mono-substituted CF A derivatives using lauric and caprylic acids were synthesized. Chemical routes allowing the attachment of the fatty acid as either an ester or ether to the monosaccharide 6-hydroxyl were developed. Structure/activity relationship studies of antimicrobial efficacy allowed some insight into the mechanism of action of these compounds. In addition, selected essential oil (EO) individual components and nisin, both alone and in combination, were also assessed for possible combination strategies with CF A derivatives. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), ICso values, increase in lag phase and decrease in maximum specific growth rate were determined. Leakage of intracellular material absorbing at 260nm, Live/Dead BacLight fluorescence and ATP BacTiterGlo luminescence assays assessed membrane disrupting effects. Furthermore, a Phenotypic MicroArray assay was used to investigate bacterial cell response in the absence and presence of CF A derivatives. The laurate ether of methyl a-D-glucopyranoside (9a) and laurate ester of methyl a-D-mannopyranoside (4c) showed the highest growth-inhibitory effect. CFA derivatives were significantly more effective against Gram positive than Gram negative bacteria. The analysis of both ester and ether fatty acid derivatives of the same carbohydrate, in tandem with alpha and beta configuration of the carbohydrate moiety suggest that the carbohydrate moiety is involved in the antimicrobial activity of the fatty acid derivatives and that the nature of the bond also has a significant effect on efficacy. Membrane damage was observed and may account for at least a component of the mode of action of these compounds. The ATP assay and phenotypic responses suggested that another mechanism of action might also account for the antimicrobial activity of the beta lauric ether derivative (compound 9b). Carvacrol and thymol were found to have the highest antimicrobial activity, followed by citral. Nisin in combination with carvacrol, thymol and citral showed additive effects against Listeria spp. The antimicrobial effect of the combination was improved by lowering the pH from neutral to pH6. CF A derivatives with different structures have great potential for developing antibacterial agents relevant to the food and health care industries. Nisin in combination with individual EO components could lead to useful efficacy as an alternative natural preservative.


Тhе paper presents the results of the studies carried out to validate the concept of а new generation compound helicopter of cross arrangement (side-by-side rotor) configuration with the estimated cruise speed of 450 kmh, dubbed the Mi-450. The key features determining the Mi-450 rotorcraft family configuration are as follows: a new type rotor system which consists of two slowed during cruise mode rigid rotors accommodated overlapped on a short wing; a thrust propeller located above the fuselage on the fin; modular split torque rotor gearboxes having large-diameter shafts which house blade pitch fly-bywire actuation devices; rotor blades with embedded in the roots hinges; a transport module which is a fixed wing aircraft type fuselage equipped with а high energy absorbing landing gear and new generation on-board systems. The Mi-450 design and technology characteristics of rotor and transmission systems make it possible to eliminate the design limitations of the Ka-22 side-by-side compound helicopter which caused the helicopter crash and led to subsequent program closing; it is also possible to avoid significant weight increase inherent to single and coaxial rotor helicopters. The study shows that the Mi-450 compound helicopters require significantly less power to fly at 100 to 400 kmh as compared to conventional helicopters and tiltrotors. On the other hand the Mi-450 compound helicopters require more power for hovering and low-speed level flight than conventional helicopters and tiltrotors due to wing download and rotors interference. However, unlike tiltrotors the required power increase for these flight modes and decreasing autorotation performances are not that dramatic for the Mi-450 rotorcraft. The Mi-450 compound helicopters family transport efficiency is considerably higher than that of conventional helicopters and is close to tiltrotors by this criterion. The following are the main competitive advantages of the Mi-450 compound helicopters family as compared to tiltrotors: development, production, certification and operation cost reduction due to lighter and less complex construction. Also it provides a much safer flight because in case of engine failure it is possible to land safely on autorotation due to much lower disk loading, higher rotor inertia and lower rotor blade twist.


The aim of this work was to evaluate the use of molecular techniques for the detection of viable Giardia cysts in the environment to assess public health issues. Three target genes were selected: the heat shock protein gene, HSP70 , which is expressed in response to stress; the giardin gene, which encodes a structural protein; and, alcohol dehydrogenase E ( ADHE ), a novel gene encoding an enzyme involved in the metabolism of energy. We tested the efficiency of five protocols for the extraction of either genomic DNA or total RNA from Giardia cysts: two of these protocols were previously cited in the literature and three consisted of commercial DNA extraction kits. The brands of enzyme were determined according to the primers chosen and the amplification conditions were optimised: 2.5 mM MgCl2, 0.5 mM primers and 60°C for annealing temperature. A semi-nested PCR method and an RT semi-nested PCR procedure were developed to detect mRNA from these three genes and to estimate the viability of Giardia cysts.


This memorandum describes an engineering model which implements a
precision time-of-day function for a generic operating system. The
model is based on the principles of disciplined oscillators and phase-
lock loops (PLL) often found in the engineering literature. This memo
provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not
specify an Internet standard of any kind.


The United States securities regulatory infrastructure requires disclosure of a wide array of information both by and about covered companies. The basic purpose of the disclosures is to level the playing field — for investors, for issuers, and for the public. Although investor protection is the disclosure goal often touted, this article develops the purposes of disclosure extending beyond investors to issuers and the public. Indeed, the disclosure system is designed to level the playing field for issuers — addressing confidentiality concerns, for example. In addition, the system helps to promote confidence in the markets, which, in turn, enables growth and innovation by creating access to capital — goals important to issuers. Yet, as importantly, the system also protects the public more broadly. After all, the harms of market crashes and other disruptions are not confined to investors and issuers — despite the fact that writing in this space focuses largely on them.

Disclosure's purpose, then, is to diminish asymmetries and the space for fraud, both for those within the entity and for the public affected by the entity. To achieve these purposes, the system depends on gatekeepers, like corporate directors who are assigned a role in effectively managing the purpose and consequences of disclosure. Doing so requires them take ownership of both the ensuing internal discourse between the entity, its insiders, and its owners, as well as the external discourse with the entity's public stakeholders and the public more generally. When directors do so, the resulting discourse and candor helps to ensure the purposes of disclosure are met.

This article examines the purpose and regulation of this discourse, emphasizing the role of the board of directors and its attention to public stakeholders and the public, with a particular focus on omissions. The article proceeds as follows. Part I explores the purposes of disclosure in corporate discourse and how disclosure requirements are designed to transmit information. As we will see, the securities disclosure regime aims to address a broad range of issues — from fairness to market competitiveness. Part II develops the omissions theory in the context of the purposes of disclosure, as well as explicating their role in corporate discourse. Part III turns to the board and its responsibilities with respect to the purposes of securities disclosures and corporate discourse, with a particular emphasis on omissions and candor, and deployng some case studies to develop the theories further. Part IV analyzes the relationship between directors, disclosure (and its purpose) and omissions, and publicness, tying the information-forcing-substance theory to director gatekeeping and explicating how it can result in more thorough disclosure outcomes for investors, issuers, and the public — and thereby, fulfill disclosure's purpose.


In this second installment of G. Edward White's sweeping history of law in America from the colonial era to the present, White, covers the period between 1865-1929, which encompasses Reconstruction, rapid industrialization, a huge influx of immigrants, the rise of Jim Crow, the emergence of an American territorial empire, World War I, and the booming yet xenophobic 1920s. As in the first volume, he connects the evolution of American law to the major political, economic, cultural, social, and demographic developments of the era. To enrich his account, White draws from the latest research from across the social sciences-economic history, anthropology, and sociology-yet weave those insights into a highly accessible narrative. Along the way he provides a compelling case for why law can be seen as the key to understanding the development of American life as we know it. Law in American History, Volume II will be an essential text for both students of law and general readers.


We investigate how worries in Germany change across time and age, drawing on both closed-ended questions (which typically list a number of worry items) and open-ended questions answered in text format. We find that relevant world events influence worries. For example, worries about peace peaked in 2003, the year of the Iraq War, with a considerable number of respondents also referring to the Iraq war in their text responses. Furthermore, we found that – controlling for these historical effects – worries about various topics such as health and the general economic situation increase with age. With increasing age, respondents also became more likely to answer the open-ended question. This suggests that the age increases in worries we found are not merely a result of an age-biased choice of worry items, but instead also hold for worries self-generated by the respondents.


The solid immersion lens (SIL) is a well-developed near-field optical device for imaging and data storage. Recent experiments have demonstrated high-quality imaging beyond the diffraction limit by nanoscale lenses in an SIL-type implementation [Nature 460, 498 (2009)]; we call these nSIL. A question arises as to what resolution is obtainable with an nSIL. From full three-dimensional, finite-difference time-domain calculations, we demonstrate that the FWHM of the focal spot of an objective-lens-nSIL system can be reduced by greater than 25% compared to a regular macroscopic SIL.


We prove that Gaussian thermal input states minimize the output von Neumann entropy of the one-mode Gaussian quantum-limited attenuator for fixed input entropy. The Gaussian quantum-limited attenuator models the attenuation of an electromagnetic signal in the quantum regime. The Shannon entropy of an attenuated real-valued classical signal is a simple function of the entropy of the original signal. A striking consequence of energy quantization is that the output von Neumann entropy of the quantum-limited attenuator is no more a function of the input entropy alone. The proof starts from the majorization result of De Palma et al., IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 62, 2895 (2016), and is based on a new isoperimetric inequality. Our result implies that geometric input probability distributions minimize the output Shannon entropy of the thinning for fixed input entropy. Moreover, our result opens the way to the multimode generalization that permits to determine both the triple trade-off region of the Gaussian quantum-limited attenuator and the classical capacity region of the Gaussian degraded quantum broadcast channel.


Context: Central obesity, increased neck circumference are strong established risk factors of OSA. Familial aggregation is less explored potential risk factors. Aims: To compare sleep, metabolic parameters and risk of OSA in subjects with and without history of loud snoring in first degree blood relatives. Settings and Design: Cross-sectional tertiary hospitalbased study Methods and Material: Overweight subjects (body mass index >25 kg/m2 aged 18-65 yrs were selected using systematic random sampling from attendants of patients attending Pulmonary Medicine OPD. On the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria,380 subjects were enrolled, inquired about "Loud snoring" in their first degree blood relatives and full night study, fasting serum lipid profile, plasma glucose level estimation was carried out after taking informed/written consent. Statistical analysis used: Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 20. Student t test was applied for comparing mean values of various variables between two groups. Fisher test was applied for estimation of odd ratio (OR). Results: Neck circumference (p value .01), AHI value (p value .01) and fasting plasma glucose levels (p value .04) were found significantly higher in subjects with positive history of loud snoring in any first degree blood relative . Increased but insignificant risk (P value 0.15) of OSA (defined as AHI Conclusion: This study gives us a new direction for determining potential role of family history in near relatives in progression and occurrence of OSA in an individual. Key words: Familial aggregation, Obstructive Sleep Apnea , Obesity, snoring.


Aims and objectives: It is very important for radiologists and surgeons to update knowledge of normal and variant liver morphology before diagnosing any liver diseases.
Methods: 50 formalin fixed livers were utilized for the studying the morphological variations of livers.
Results: In the present study, 20 livers were normal and 30 livers showed morphological variations out of which 6 livers were with accessory lobes, 8 with accessory fissures, 6 with lingular process and 5 with diaphragmatic sulci.
Conclusion: This study highlights presence of morphological variations, whose knowledge is important for surgeons and radiologists.


We consider Bayesian optimization of objective functions of the form $\rho[ F(x, W) ]$, where $F$ is a black-box expensive-to-evaluate function and $\rho$ denotes either the VaR or CVaR risk measure, computed with respect to the randomness induced by the environmental random variable $W$. Such problems arise in decision making under uncertainty, such as in portfolio optimization and robust systems design. We propose a family of novel Bayesian optimization algorithms that exploit the structure of the objective function to substantially improve sampling efficiency. Instead of modeling the objective function directly as is typical in Bayesian optimization, these algorithms model $F$ as a Gaussian process, and use the implied posterior on the objective function to decide which points to evaluate. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a variety of numerical experiments.


Training a network to learn a set of periodic input/output sequences effectively makes the network learn a mapping between amplitudes and phases in Fourier space. The spectral backpropagation (SBP) training algorithm is a different way of doing this task. It measures the Fourier series components of the output error sequences and minimizes the total spectral energy as an adaptation criterion. This approach can train not only the weights but also time delays associated with the interconnects. Furthermore, the cells can have finite bandwidth via a first-order low-pass filter. Having adaptable time delays gives the SBP algorithm a powerful way to control the phase characteristics of the network.


Earlier independent crystal-structure studies of kieserite, Mg(SO 4 )·H 2 O, and the isotypic transition-metal compounds Me 2+ (SO 4 )·H 2 O (Me 2+ = Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Zn) indicated that the lattice parameters of kieserite are significantly larger than expected from both the respective ionic radii and the octahedral Mg/Me–O bond lengths. This volume mismatch was especially noticeable in comparison to the respective (high-spin) Co 2+ compound with its only slightly larger ionic radius than Mg. In order to study this possible discrepancy, we synthesized several members of the kieserite–cobaltkieserite solid solution series, Mg 1− x Co x (SO 4 )·H 2 O, and investigated the structures of ten representatives, including the end-members, using consistent single-crystal X-ray diffraction data. The present results confirm the supposed anomaly, showing a significant negative correlation of polyhedral vs . unit-cell volumes, which both change in total by ± 1.2 A 3 over the series ( V kies . = 356.0, V Co-kies . = 354.8 A 3 ; = 2.078, = 2.097 A). This effect is realized by folding and rotations within the polyhedral assemblage, apparently driven by angular O–Me–O and especially Me–O–S/Me changes. Apart from this oddity, the Mg 1− x Co x (SO 4 )·H 2 O solid solution can be described as 'well-behaved', i.e. no indications for miscibility gaps or cation ordering effects were found, and cell parameters and other structural data behave according to Vegard's law in linear relation with the refined Mg 1− x Co x content. Explanations for the paradoxical volume behaviour of kieserite compared to cobaltkieserite (and other transition-metal kieserites) are probably related to the absence, respectively presence of partly filled 3 d orbitals and/or to well-established differences in electronegativity. Literature data on bond critical point properties of forsterite and transition-metal olivines indicate that the bond critical point r c lies significantly closer to Mg as compared to the transition cations, which might be ascribed in part to the absence of d orbitals at the Mg atom. In turn, the respective mutual influence on the electron density at the oxygen atoms in case of Mg–O bonds could represent a relevant modifier for the second coordination sphere and thus contribute to the paradoxical crystal chemical behaviour observed for kieserite as compared to isotypic transition-metal compounds in general and to cobaltkieserite in particular.


Many sequences of binomial coefficients share various unimodality properties. In this paper we consider the unimodality problem of a sequence of binomial coefficients located in a ray or a transversal of the Pascal triangle. Our results give in particular an affirmative answer to a conjecture of Belbachir et al which asserts that such a sequence of binomial coefficients must be unimodal. We also propose two more general conjectures.


Background: Knowledge of the cone characteristics for the different stages of keratoconus may potentially assist practitioners in diagnosing and managing keratoconic patients. Aim: This study aims to determine if any correlation exists between the central keratometric readings and the cone characteristics for the different stages of keratoconus. Setting: A university eye clinic. Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, a saturated sample of 190 eyes from 106 cases of previously diagnosed keratoconic patient files was analyzed. The stage of keratoconus and cone characteristics, namely, cone location, cone decentration, topographical patterns, and morphology were analyzed using an Oculus 3M corneal topographer. Results: Analysis revealed a correlation between cone decentration and stage of keratoconus (P = 0.007). The association was found to exist when central K-readings were between 45D and 52D and with an apical cone decentration of 3–4 mm. No correlations were obtained for the stage of keratoconus and the cone location; topography and morphology. Conclusion: It can be concluded that cone apices are not central in all stages. Practitioners should consider the peripheral cornea when diagnosing and managing keratoconic patients. No correlation between stage, morphology or topography was respectively revealed.


A recent development in polymer concrete overlays is the Cargill SafeLane™ surface overlay (SafeLane overlay). The 3/8-in.-thick overlay is constructed with epoxy and broadcast aggregates, as are typical multiple-layer epoxy overlays that are used to provide a skid-resistant wearing surface for bridge decks that protects the decks against intrusion by chloride ions. Reportedly, the SafeLane overlay is unique in that Cargill indicates that the limestone aggregate used in the overlay can absorb and store liquid deicing chemicals that are applied to the surface of the roadway. The purpose of this research was to compare the SafeLane overlay and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) modified EP-5 epoxy concrete overlay (hereinafter called the VDOT modified EP-5 overlay) based on an evaluation of their construction, initial condition, and effectiveness in preventing frost, ice, and snow formation on the surface of the roadway. The comparison was limited to overlays placed on four bridges on I-81 in 2004 and 2005 (two SafeLane and two VDOT modified EP-5 overlays) and on four sections of continuously reinforced concrete pavement on the Virginia Smart Road in 2006. The evaluation with respect to the initial condition of the overlays on I-81 was based on a comparison of the as-constructed properties, including aggregate properties, bond strength, permeability, skid resistance, and chloride content. The evaluation with respect to the initial condition of the overlays on the Smart Road was limited to skid resistance. The evaluation of the overlays with respect to their effectiveness in preventing frost, ice, and snow formation was based on visual observations and skid measurements of overlay surfaces under typical interstate winter conditions at the I-81 sites and under artificial snow and ice conditions at the Smart Road. In addition, the effectiveness of the overlays at the Smart Road in preventing frost, ice, and snow formation was compared with that of a bare-tined concrete surface. The evaluation indicated that the SafeLane overlay can provide a skid-resistant wearing and protective surface for bridge decks. The study was not able to determine the performance of the overlay with respect to providing a surface with less accumulation of ice and snow. Further, there has not been sufficient time to evaluate chloride penetration into the decks overlaid with SafeLane overlays in Virginia.


1. Estimating food consumption is central to defining the ecological role of marine predators. This study developed an algorithm for synthesizing information about physiology, metabolism, growth, diet, life history and the activity budgets of marine predators to estimate population energy requirements and food consumption.

2. Two species of marine predators (Antarctic fur seal Arctocephalus gazella and macaroni penguin Eudyptes chrsolophus) that feed on krill in the Southern Ocean were used as examples to test the algorithm. A sensitivity analysis showed that estimates of prey consumed were most sensitive to uncertainty in some demographic variables, particularly the annual survival rate and total offspring production. Uncertainty in the measurement of metabolic rate led to a positive bias in the mean amount of food consumed. Uncertainty in most other variables had little influence on the estimated food consumed.

3. Assuming a diet mainly of krill Euphausia superba, annual food consumption by Antarctic fur seals and macaroni penguins at the island of South Georgia was 3.84 [coefficient of variation (CV) = 0.11] and 8.08 (CV = 0.23) million tonnes, respectively. This was equivalent to a total annual carbon consumption of 0.35 (CV 0.11) and 0.72 (CV = 0.23) G tonnes year(1). Carbon expired as CO2 was 0.26 (CV 0.06) and 0.65 (CV = 0.19) G tonnes year(1) for fur seals and macaroni penguins, respectively. The per capita food consumption varied depending upon sex and age but, overall, this was 1.7 (CV = 0.22) tonnes year(1) for Antarctic fur seals and 0.45 (CV = 0.22) tonnes year for macaroni penguins.

4. The algorithm showed that the seasonal demand for food peaked in both species in the second half of the breeding season and, for macaroni penguins, there was a second peak immediately after moult. Minimum food demand occurred in both species during the first half of the breeding season.

5. As both Antarctic fur seals and macaroni penguins compete for krill with a commercial fishery, these results provide an insight into the seasons and stages of the life cycle in which competition is likely to be greatest.


In this work, we have investigated the preparation of amino-functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as potential carriers for the delivery of siRNA. Several studies have shown promising results exploiting functionalised CNTs for the delivery of genetic material in vitro and in vivo. Our groups have previously observed that the type of surface functionalisation used to modify oxidised MWCNTs (oxMWCNTs) can lead to significant differences in nanotube cellular uptake and delivery capability. In those studies, amino-functionalised CNTs were obtained by cycloaddition reactions. Here, we focused on the direct conversion of the carboxylic groups present on oxMWCNTs into amines, and we attempted different synthetic strategies in order to directly tether the amines onto the CNTs, without extending the lateral chain. The functionalised material was characterised by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy, and the most water-dispersible CNTs were selected for siRNA complexation and cellular uptake studies. The aminated conjugates are demonstrated to be promising vectors to achieve intracellular transport of genetic information.


Pulling from in-depth interviews with school administrators, counselors, security and police officers, and teachers directly involved in thwarting rampage attacks at 11 Northeastern schools, this study considers the extent to which students have broken through a "code of silence," discouraging them from informing on their peers. While findings support prior research indicating the vital preventative role of students' coming forward with information about threats, close scrutiny of averted incidents reveals that scholars and educational practitioners have overestimated the extent to which the student code of silence has diminished post-Columbine. Even in these successfully averted incidents, numerous students exposed to threats still did not come forward; those who did were rarely close associates or confidants of accused students; and some who did ultimately come forward did so as a result of being personally threatened or in order to deflect blame away from themselves, rather than out of altruistic concern for others.


Hendrik Verwoerd, one of the main architects of "Bantu education "and the idea of independent Bantu homelands, is one of the most controversial politcians in South Africa. Hailed and almost venerated by his supporters, he was seen by Albert Luthuli and other African nationalists as the architect of their "calamity". In popular journalism he has been likened to Adolf Hitler and Robert Mugabe. Yet Verwoerd was no conventional racist. Recent reseach has shown that as a Stellenbosch lecturer he rejected the theory that some races were genetically and biologically superior to others. When he went abroad he was not attracted to Nazi thinking but by the ideas of American social scientists who advocated "social engineering" to avoid future conflicts. His main aim in introducing Bantu education in 1954 was to expand mass education on a primary level and to deflect black job aspirations from the cities to the homelands. His plan to impose a rigid form of apartheid was ultimately thwarted by high economic growth and much more rapid black population growth than had been anticipated.


The aim of the article is to show the phenomenon of Bytom's "Sportowiec", a specific sports magazine, which was directly involved in plebiscite agitation in 1920 and 1921 and in the struggle to connect the largest part of Upper Silesia to a reborn Polish state. The analysis of press content, document analysis was used as a research method. In addition, a descriptive and comparative method was used. The Polish Plebiscytariat was aware that there was a strong and well-organized sports movement in Upper Silesia and that it should play its role in the fight against Germany for disputed territory. Therefore, at the Commissariat, the Faculty of Physical Education was established, which published "Sportowiec". The first issue of "Sportowiec" appeared on August 4, 1920. The editorial team, apart from publishing the magazine, also worked in the field. There were lectures on the rules of playing football, judging, Polish language were taught. The "Sportowiec" was effectively crowding out German sports newspapers, both those published in Upper Silesia and reaching out from the Reich.


In summer 2010, a bleaching event decimated the abundant reef flat coral Stylophora pistillata in some areas of the central Red Sea, where a series of coral reefs 100–300 m wide by several kilometers long extends from the coastline to about 20 km offshore. Mortality of corals along the exposed and protected sides of inner (inshore) and mid and outer (offshore) reefs and in situ and satellite sea surface temperatures (SSTs) revealed that the variability in the mortality event corresponded to two spatial scales of temperature variability: 300 m across the reef flat and 20 km across a series of reefs. However, the relationship between coral mortality and habitat thermal severity was opposite at the two scales. SSTs in summer 2010 were similar or increased modestly (0.5°C) in the outer and mid reefs relative to 2009. In the inner reef, 2010 temperatures were 1.4°C above the 2009 seasonal maximum for several weeks. We detected little or no coral mortality in mid and outer reefs. In the inner reef, mortality depended on exposure. Within the inner reef, mortality was modest on the protected (shoreward) side, the most severe thermal environment, with highest overall mean and maximum temperatures. In contrast, acute mortality was observed in the exposed (seaward) side, where temperature fluctuations and upper water temperature values were relatively less extreme. Refuges to thermally induced coral bleaching may include sites where extreme, high‐frequency thermal variability may select for coral holobionts preadapted to, and physiologically condition corals to withstand, regional increases in water temperature.


This thesis discusses implications of framing bioethical concerns in international legal discourse. It starts from the observation that legal approaches to questions of bioethical relevance have become dominant frameworks for addressing many bioethical concerns at the international level. In particular, the UN General Assembly has long attempted to regulate human cloning processes through an international Convention. Similarly, UNESCO and the Council of Europe have both addressed a variety of bioethically relevant issues, such as the processing of human genetic data, the ethics of research or organ transplantation within international legal standards.

It is in the context of this strong connection between international law, international legal discourse and bioethics that this thesis seeks to analyse what exactly happens when issues of bioethical relevance are discussed within such a framework, how this affects the way bioethical issues are conceptualized, conceived of and dealt with, and, ultimately, how well-suited or successful international legal discourse is in its attempt to resolve current bioethical questions. Following the methodological approach of discourse theory, this thesis bases its analysis on the assumption that where and when international legal standards, as manifestations of an international legal discourse, serve as framework for bioethical debate that also somewhat defines how bioethically relevant issues are approached, thought of and dealt with within that framework, that it somewhat determines what methods are used to resolve such issues and that it somewhat limits the range of conceivable and viable solutions to these issue.

The thesis thereby does not aim to demonise or abrogate legal approaches to bioethics and it does not understand the implications discussed in this thesis to be necessarily good or bad. To the contrary, it will be shown that legal approaches to bioethics can and have contributed to the development of the field in several important ways. Yet, this thesis also shows that it is worthwhile to closely examine implications that follow from a specific legal approach to bioethical issues as these implications are not always easily perceived. Given the important, and often dominant or near exclusive role of international law and legal discourse in the area of bioethics as well as the former's strong influence on bioethical debates as a whole, the implications of addressing questions of bioethical relevance within an international legal discourse should at least be understood and acknowledged, a contribution that this thesis aims to make. Moreover, only if these implications are understood is it possible to ask whether engaging in that type of discourse is at all a valuable enterprise and whether or not international legal standards directly addressed to questions of bioethical relevance constitute a suitable means to effectively address questions in the area of bioethics.


Many recent applications require text segmentation for born-digital compound images. To this end, we propose a coarse-to-fine framework for segmenting texts of arbitrary scales and orientations in born-digital compound images. In the coarse stage, the local image activity measure is designed based upon the variation distribution of characters, to highlight the difference between textual and pictorial regions. This stage outputs a coarse textual layer including textual regions as well as a few pictorial regions with high activity. In the fine stage, a textual connected component (TCC) based refinement is proposed to eliminate the survived pictorial regions. In particular, a scale and orientation invariant grouping algorithm is proposed to adaptively generate TCCs with uniform statistical features. The minimum average distance and morphological operations are employed to assist the formation of candidate TCCs. Then, three string-level features (i.e., shapeness, color similarity, and mean activity level) are designed to distinguish the true TCCs from the false positive ones that are formed by connecting the high activity pictorial components. Extensive experiments show that the proposed framework can segment textual regions precisely from born-digital compound images, while preserving the integrity of texts with varied scales and orientations, and avoiding over-connection of textual regions.


In the 1990s, first projects emerged in Poland as first forms of PPPs. These involved municipal services and the construction/improvement of technical infrastructure facilities, and were mainly small investments implemented by local governments. At that time, the institution of public-private partnership did not formally exist within the legal system. In October 2005, the principles of public-private partnership in Poland finally became unambiguously defined. The new law settled the question of the nature and legality of PPP. However, the law was not used in practice, so its implementation may not be considered a success. On 6 of January 2009 President of Poland signed the new law about PPP. A new act promises a new direction in the use of public-private partnership by public and private entities. For many years, quasi-PPP initiatives have taken place, that is, projects that do not fall under public-private partnership according to the legislature, but from the point of view of their organization and objectives they are of such nature. Local governments are clearly interested in using this option, but a multitude of obstacles limits the implementation of projects in the form of broadly understood PPP. The existing state of infrastructure development and possibility of using EU aid funds should strongly encourage the use of PPP also in large-scale urban development and regeneration in cities. Authors investigated past and current obstacles existing by entering into PPP in urban development projects in Poland, non only of legal but also of socio-political nature. They aimed at presenting some solutions based on EU experience.


The relationship between Carlo Levi, his work Christ Stopped at Eboli and the village of Aliano, has changed a great deal between the first publication of the book in 1945 and the establishment of the Parco Letterario Carlo Levi in 2001. The experience and the memory of Levi's exile in Aliano profoundly affected his intellectual development and deeply influenced both his subsequent literary and political choices. When the book first appeared, it provoked an intense reaction, but fifty years later the initial response from the critics had changed to the extent that an easier and more constructive relationship between people from Aliano, the author and his masterpiece was possible. This process culminated in a cultural endowment called the Parco Letterario Carlo Levi, which aims to improve links between the region territory and its literary heritage.


How does international institutional law shape the way in which international institutions govern information and exercise cognitive authority? Drawing from the existing literature on indicators, data collection and transparency in international institutions such as the World Bank and the UN , this paper argues that existing legal norms can be reconstructed as an overarching framework that legally structures global information governance. Indicators thus do not, as is often assumed, "escape" legal regulation; law rather co-constitutes the lens through which information about the world is generated. The paper analyses the institutional architecture and the modalities of informational action as well as the sources and regulatory modus of the existing legal framework. It exemplifies rules on institutional powers, participation, review and transparency and discusses general principles that structure the field. Taken together, these rules and principles circumscribe the emerging contours of an "international institutional law of information" that normatively frames the informational relationships between international institutions, states and individuals.


Large-scale industrial systems comprise multiple heterogeneous systems that need to be adapted and configured individually to meet the customers' needs. Product line techniques such as variability modeling and product derivation are frequently used to enable such customization. However, managing the life cycle of multiple product lines in system-of-systems architectures is challenging. For instance, support is lacking for defining the architecture of multi product lines. Further, system architects, modelers and configurers are missing a common infrastructure supporting domain and application engineering. This paper contributes a tool infrastructure providing essential structures and facilities for the development and operation of multi product lines. Based on an analysis of industrial scenarios we developed support for managing the life cycle of multi product lines. This comprises architecture definition and support for sharing and deploying product line models to the involved stakeholders. In this paper we show how the infrastructure supports system architects performing life cycle management of multi product lines. We demonstrate the feasibility of the approach based on a real-world industrial system.


Abstract That asbestos is still being sold despite overwhelming evidence linking it to debilitating and fatal diseases is testament to the effectiveness of a campaign, spearheaded by Canadian interests, to promote a product already banned in many developed countries. Blessed by government and commercial support, asbestos apologists have implemented a long-term coordinated strategy targeting new consumers in Asia, the Far East and Latin America. At industry-backed "conferences" and on government-funded junkets, they spin a web of deceit, telling all who will listen that "chrysotile (white asbestos) can be used safely." The fact that Canada exports over 95% of all the chrysotile it mines suggests that while chrysotile is supposedly safe enough for foreigners, it is not safe enough for Canadians. Asbestos victims in many countries have struggled to gain public recognition of the human cost of asbestos use. In recent years, nongovernmental organizations working with these groups have created a global anti-asbestos virtual network; with the commitment and support of thousands of "virtual members," this network challenges industry's propaganda and exposes the forces that support its cynical attempt to offload this dangerous substance on developing countries.


The crystallography and morphology of barium sulphate crystals produced by a range of desmid species have been examined by electron microscopy and electron diffraction. The morphology of the BaSO4 crystals varies between desmid species and water chemistry. Tabular, rhombic crystals are commonly produced by Closterium lunula and hexagonal or elliptical crystals by Micrasterias thomasiana. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (hrtem) has confirmed the single-crystal nature of the biological precipitates. The crystals all lie with their tabular faces perpendicular to the [001] zone axis and are comparable with the typical crystal habit of geological and synthetic barium sulphates, suggesting a limited degree of biological control over precipitation. M2+ (Ba2+ or Sr2+) : SO2-4 ion ratios in vivo and in vitro have been shown to affect the morphology of the crystals produced. For Closterium lunula an M2+: SO2-4 ion ratio of less than 1:1 produces rhombic crystals and an ion ratio of more than 10:1 produces hexagonal crystals. For Micrasterias thomasiana, an ion ratio of 0.01:1 produces hexagonal crystals; an ion ratio of 1:1 produces a mixture of hexagonal and elliptical crystals, and an ion ratio of more than 10:1 produces elliptical crystals. Crystal morphologies produced by desmids have been compared with those of synthetic crystals produced at similar ion ratios. The apparently limited extent of biological control and the importance of the ionic environment on the development of crystal morphology are discussed. It is proposed that desmid crystal morphology may provide a diagnostic for the local environment of crystal formation in the cell.


In a plain-vanilla New Keynesian model with two-period staggered price-setting, discretionary monetary policy leads to multiple equilibria. Complementarity between the pricing decisions of forward-looking firms underlies the multiplicity, which is intrinsically dynamic in nature. At each point in time, the discretionary monetary authority optimally accommodates the level of predetermined prices when setting the money supply because it is concerned solely about real activity. Hence, if other firms set a high price in the current period, an individual firm will optimally choose a high price because it knows that the monetary authority next period will accommodate with a high money supply. Under commitment, the mechanism generating complementarity is absent: the monetary authority commits not to respond to future predetermined prices. We compute a traditional inflation bias equilibrium, in which price-setters are optimistic, rationally expecting small adjustments by other firms. But there is another steady-state equilibrium in which price setters are pessimistic and inflation is much higher. Further, we find that there are multiple equilibria at a point in time, not just in steady states. In a stochastic setting with equilibrium selection each period determined by an i.i.d. sunspot, there is greater inflation bias on average than if price-setters were always optimistic. The sunspot realization also has real effects: periods of higher than average inflation are accompanied by low output. Thus, increased real volatility may be an additional cost of discretion in monetary policy.


Background & Aims: To investigate the association of CFI p.Gly119Arg polymorphism with Age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Materials & Methods: In this case-control study, the association of p.Gly119Arg polymorphism in CFI gene was investigated in 65 patients suffering from AMD and150 healthy age, sex and ethnicity matched unrelated people as control group. Both of the case and control groups were originated from Northwest of Iran. Genotypes of both groups were determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). Results: Investigation of the association of p.Gly119Arg polymorphism in CFI gene with AMD showed that there are no statistically significant differences between patients and controls in genotype and allele frequencies of this polymorphism (P˃0/05). Conclusion: Our result show that p.Gly119Arg polymorphism of the CFI gene is unrelated to the susceptibility to AMD in Northwest of Iran.


We consider the problem of auto-calibrating the intrinsic parameters of a camera moving with a special motion: the rotation axis of the camera being perpendicular to its translation direction. Our method for calibrating the camera is based on Kruppa's equation which in general requires solving a set of nonlinear equations. We prove in a theorem how to recover the true scale of the Kruppa's equation from the eigenvalues of a matrix formed using the fundamental matrix between two views.


Interest in quality improvement efforts has boomed during the past decade. Total Quality Management (TQM) based upon "PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) Mindset" originated in the business world but it has gained tremendous popularity in educational institutions in recent years. The philosophy and practice of Quality education have become the center of discussions in academe across the world, especially in universities. This article focuses on the launching of the Quality Campaign in Turkey where all state schools under the Ministry of Education first adopted the campaign in 1999, but then largely resisted its implementation because it was perceived and often practiced as a top-down process. More recently, one of the most fundamental changes occurred in ELT (English Language Teaching) classes through the leadership of ELT teachers in a bottom-up approach. The aim of this paper is to provide a historical review of Quality Education in Turkey and share some insights with readers about its implementation. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/nelta.v16i1-2.6129 NELTA 2011; 16(1-2): 52-58


»Dezentralisierung von Macht und Entscheidungsfindung – ein institutioneller Treiber für Systemwechsel zur Demokratie«. Regarding processes of system change towards democracy, rule of law and market economy from a comparative point of view, the decentralization of political institutions and of managing public affairs is one important system goal. Based on German experience in two times of transformation (1945/49 and 1989/90), the article reflects on the usefulness of transferring these (meanwhile historic) experiences as a specific "lesson" to the Korean peninsula. Our conclusion is threefold: First, a reform of the political system should combine a maintaining vertical hierarchy acting top down with local autonomy with either a strong or a weak set of responsibility. Second, an elite circulation of small size which incorporates cooperative parts of old elites seems to be useful; thereby risks of obstruction can be neutralized and local rationalities can be unlocked in situations of transition crises. Third, local self-government serves not only as a "driver" of democratization but also for optimizing people`s demands of functional execution of public


Objectives It is considered that sleep restriction is one of the risk factors for the development of exertional heat stroke and illness. However, how sleep restriction affects exertional heat strain and the nature of the coping strategy involved in this phenomenon remain unclear. Methods Fourteen healthy subjects were studied on four occasions: after a night of normal sleep (NS, 7–8 h) and after a night of partial sleep restriction (PSR, 4 h), each with or without taking a daytime nap during the subsequent experimental day. The laboratory test consisted of two 40 min periods of moderate walking in a hot room in the morning and the afternoon. Results The increase in rectal temperature during walking was significantly greater in PSR than in NS in the afternoon. The rating scores for physical and psychological fatigue and sleepiness were significantly greater in PSR than in NS, both in the morning and in the afternoon. The reaction times and lapses in the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) after walking were significantly worse in PSR than in NS in the morning and after lunch. The nap intervention attenuated significantly the scores for fatigue and sleepiness in PSR. Furthermore, the decreased PVT response in PSR was significantly reversed by the nap. Conclusions These results suggest that PSR augments physiological and psychological strain and reduces vigilance in the heat. Taking a nap seemed to be effective in reducing psychological strain and inhibiting the decrease in vigilance.


This newest title in the design briefs series is a compact, hands-on guide for graphic design professionals who want to start helping communities and effectuating social change in the world. Author Andrew Shea presents ten strategies for successful community engagement, grounding each one in two real world case studies. The twenty projects featured in the book are by both design professionals and students and range from creating a map of services for the homeless community in Santa Monica, helping Chicago's Humboldt Park community by designing a website where donors can buy essential items for community members, to encouraging LA's Latina community to go for an annual PAP exam in an attempt to prevent cervical cancer through carefully designed posters, murals, and other material. Designing for Social Change is both an inspiration and a how-to book that encourages graphic designers everywhere to go out and do good with their work, providing them with the tools to complete successful projects in their communities.


Objectives: The purpose of this study was to develop a procedure for quantifying the buccal alveolar bone thickness surrounding each tooth prior to orthodontic treatment in 3D, using CBCT.
Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study was carried out on 18 Singaporean Chinese patients. A total of 18 CBCT scans met the inclusion criteria, resulting in a sample size of 85 teeth, using two kinds of CBCT scanners. All CBCT data were stored in DICOM format. Buccal Alveolar bone thickness was measured after defining the boundaries of each individual tooth and surrounding alveolar bone using Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U-test, and linear regression for statistical analysis.
Results: There was statistical significant difference in buccal bone thickness between incisor versus premolar, incisor versus molar, canine versus premolar, Canine and premolar versus molar. However, the difference between incisors and canines and between central and lateral incisors was not significant. There was also no statistical significant difference in the buccal bone thickness between maxillary and mandibular incisors, between maxillary and mandibular central incisors, and between maxillary and mandibular lateral incisors, neither between maxillary and mandibular canines.
Conclusions: The thickness of buccal bone is lowest in the incisor and canine reigns with no statistically significant difference between canines and incisors. The thickness of the alveolar bone in premolar region is significantly greater than incisor and canine regions but lesser than molar region. No statistically significant differences were found regarding buccal bone thickness between maxillary and mandibular incisors and canines.


Objective: This clinical study was conducted to assess the efficiency of diode lasers (940 nm) in preventing orthodontic induced pain. Orthodontic induced pain acts as a barrier for orthodontic therapy, Painless procedures ensure patient satisfaction toward orthodontics which subsequently, improves the quality of oral health. Materials and methods: One hundred twenty orthodontic patients were included and randomly allocated into 4 equal groups (Study, Laser-Placebo, Analgesic, and control groups). A laser beam was applied in contact mode for 1 min duration on the study group. Pain experience was evaluated using a standardized self-administered questionnaire following the Universal Pain Assessment Tool guidelines. Data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (V. 22). Results: The highest level of pain was experienced at the second day after arch-wire insertion. At the third day a radical decline in pain sensation was observed in the study group, with maximum pain relief at the fourth day, the difference being considered statistically significant at P value ≤ 0.05. Conclusion: The application of Laser therapy was found to be more effective in subsiding orthodontic induced pain than analgesics, taking into consideration the pharmaceutical side effects of analgesics.


A model has been developed for the local configuration factor for the radiant interchange between the internal surface of the cone heater and the specimen's surface in the cone calorimeter. The incident heat flux under the cone was characterised in a series of experiments as a function of spatial coordinates. Both the emissivity and the temperature of the heating element were estimated from the experimental data. Significant variations in the surface temperature, and therefore in radiosity, were observed. The expression for the configuration factor was applied to estimate uncertainties in the measured variables due to tolerances in independent parameters. Plots were provided of the configuration factor and isolines of the radiant heat flux at various heights below the base of the cone. A comparison was carried out between predicted and measured data, demonstrating good agreement. The model predicted that, at the standard location of the specimen of 25 mm below the frustum, the radiant flux is uniform but only within the central area of the sample. Toward the edges and corners, the flux decreases by 2.6 and 15.9%, respectively, in comparison to that along the centreline.


"Nonconsensual Collaborations, 2012-present: Notes on a Shared Condition" is an extended performance text. It investigates the unmarked gendered dynamics of artistic collaboration, documenting a series of "nonconsensual collaborations"—that is, performances with other artists who did not agree to their participation. Presented here as written narratives, these nonconsensual collaborations frame everyday occurrences of violation, erasure, and misrecognition, exploring how discourses of consent arise from the raced and gendered histories of property relations. They call into question the politics of representation, the status of the document, the formation of evidentiary truth, and the interpenetration of sexual and aesthetic economies. These nonconsensual collaborations go against traditional ideas of intention that structure art practice, dwelling instead on the entanglements of relation. By aesthetically reframing difficult social encounters as performance work, they attempt to recalibrate a feminist capacity to act. This work is part of Shvarts's larger investigation into how we document or capture everyday ephemeral experiences loosely understood as performance (though not necessarily experienced "live"), as well as how writing can be not only a critical resource for theorizing such capture but also a mechanism for enacting it.


Walking fruit flies are attracted by near-by objects. They estimate the distance to these objects by the parallax motion of their images on the retina. Here we provide evidence from robot simulations that distance is assessed by motion integration over large parts of the visual field and time periods of 0.5 s to 2 s. The process in flies is not selective to image motion created by the self-motion of the fly but also sensitive to object motion and to the pattern contrast of objects. Added visual motion (e.g. oscillations) makes objects more attractive than their stationary counterparts. Front-to-back motion, the natural parallax motion on the eyes of a forward-translating fly, is preferred. A group of several more distant objects can be more attractive than one close object. Objects, that are most attractive in the fronto-lateral eye-field, act as deterrent in the rear visual field. Time to course changes doubles from front to rear. A cybernetical model based on weighted motion integration in just four compartments (frontal to plusmn100deg lateral and plusmn100deg to plusmn160deg in the rear) can reproduce fly behavior. Implemented on a freely moving camera-equipped robot with panoramic vision it can reproduce various aspects of the orientation behavior of freely walking flies without the necessity to recognize objects. Tracks of walking fruit flies and traces of the robot model obtained in up-scaled environments have been rigorously compared in various arrangements of landmarks.


Ethnicity has received increased attention in studies of Africa's economic and institutional development. We present evidence on the long-term effects of Britain's "divide-and-rule" colonial strategy that deliberately fostered ethnic rivalries to weaken and control locals. Using micro data from Sub-Saharan Africa, we found that citizens of Anglophone (as compared to Francophone) countries are more likely to: (1) attach greater importance to ethnic identity (vis-a-vis national identity); (2) have weaker norms against tax evasion; and (3) face extortion by non state actors. We address endogeneity concerns using IV regression and regression-discontinuity. These results suggest that Britain's divide-and-rule strategy may have undermined state-building.


Effects of Anthropometric Factors on Foot Size in Normal Preschool Children of Iran
Parvin- Dokht Bayat*; Mohammad Mehdi Ahmadi**; Mojtaba Moradi*** & Ali Ghanbari****
* Department of Anatomy, Arak Medical School, Arak University of Medical sciences, Arak, Iran.
** Student Research Committee, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran.
*** Department of Biology, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan Branch, Hamedan, Iran.
**** Fertility and Infertility Research Center, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran.

Abstract
The growth pattern of children is affected by anthropometric dimensions. This study was aimed to investigate anthropometric factors related to growth of preschool children of a sample population in Iran. This study was performed in year 2011 on 1320 of 4–7 years old preschool children in Arak. To classify, body mass index (BMI), height and weight were recorded. The four contact points (head, back, buttocks, and heels) were maintained against the spine of the stadiometer during measurement. The head was positioned in the Frankfurt plane, and the sliding bar was lowered the crown of the head. Height was measured and recorded by the researchers. A pair of manual calibrated Seca scales was used to measure body mass in kilograms. The participants were least dressed in the uniform. We have classified BMI to four groups as group1, BMI with 10.75–15 and group 2, 3, 4 with 15.1–17 and 17.1–20, 20.1–22.5, respectively. Foot length was recorded as the distance from the posterior aspect of the heel to the most distal aspect of the longest toe. Foot length was measured with subjects standing upright using a foot board, a plastic device with calibrated lineation (in centimeters and millimeters). Analysis showed that sex neither affect on BMI nor foot measurements. The present findings contribute to the understanding of the effect of body mass on the structural development of the pediatric foot and musculoskeletal system. Excessive body mass seems to lead to increased foot length and width.

KEY WORDS: Anthropometry; Body mass index; Iran; Obesity; Sex.


Public parks (PP) and open recreational facilities are essential elements in cities particularly in the residential areas. Evidence from literature suggests that PPs have a positive influence on the social and physical health of the people who have access to them. Although, PPs have been located in the residential areas of South Africa according to urban planning guidelines and rules, they are observed to be underutilised. Many factors including location, accessibility, and social issues like crime or fear of crime, life style, and lack of time are generally attributed for such a scenario. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore how illumination levels in the public parks influence the utilisation of public parks in the residential areas of South African cities. The investigation was conducted by using Bloemfontein city as a case study following a survey research method. The study revealed that more people use the PPs during evening hours, higher illumination is one of the most important factors that contributes to the accessibility of the PPs in the residential areas and the utilisation of parks are enhanced with higher level of artificial illumination.


Philosophers and social scientists will welcome this highly original discussion of Max Weber's analysis of the objectivity of social science. Guy Oakes traces the vital connection between Weber's methodology and the work of philosopher Heinrich Rickert, reconstructing Rickert's notoriously difficult concepts in order to isolate the important, and until now poorly understood, roots of problems in Weber's own work.Guy Oakes teaches social philosophy at Monmouth College and sociology at the New School for Social Research.


Article type: Original Article Background: Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most common neuropathy in the general population. Nerve conduction studies are among the standard methods for diagnosing carpal tunnel syndrome. Electromyography is painful and unpleasant, and if nerve conduction studies can be used to diagnose axonal injury in carpal tunnel syndrome, electromyography might be replaced. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the predictability of electromyography findings by nerve conduction studies. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited 47 patients with carpal tunnel syndrome who attended electrodiagnostic unit in teaching hospitals in Isfahan in the spring and summer of 2015, among who both hands of 46 patients and only the left hand of one person were evaluated. Patients were selected by non-probability sampling and the relationship between parameters of nerve conduction studies and electromyography findings were determined based on the information obtained. The data were analyzed by Spearman's test and Mann-Whitney test in SPSS-22. Results: The mean and standard deviation of participants' age was 47.5±9.1 (range: 62-34 years old). According to data analysis, 37.6% of patients were diagnosed with neurogenic MUAP and 32.2% with neurogenic spontaneous activity. Based on the results, among 47 patients with carpal tunnel syndrome, CMAP amplitudes were most relevant to the findings of neurogenic electromyography among parameters of nerve conduction studies (31.2%) (pvalue=0.002). Conclusion: According to the results, axonal damage in carpal tunnel syndrome can be diagnosed by nerve conduction studies, especially in cases where electromyography is not possible (such as coagulation disorders, patient's dissatisfaction, etc.).


We study networks of FIFO nodes, where flows are constrained by arrival curves. A crucial question with these networks is: Can we derive a bound to the maximum delay that a packet can experience when traversing the network, and to the maximum queue size at each node? For a generic FIFO network these are still open issues: Some examples show that, contrary to common sense, no matter how low the maximum node utilization is in the network, it is possible to build an example of an unstable FIFO network. The importance of this issue lies in the necessity of hard bounds on packet delay and queue size, in order to enable QoS guarantees in these networks. For this reason we choose to tackle this problem through a deterministic approach, based on worst-case behavior. Our first result is the determination of a general method to derive sufficient conditions for the stability of a network: We show how, with a proper choice of the observed variables in the network and with the use of network calculus results, it is possible to derive the expression of an operator whose properties are associated to the stability of the network. Exploiting this method on a simple example, we first derive a generalization of the RIN result to heterogeneous settings and to leaky bucket constrained flows. Through some realistic examples, we show how this method allows networks to achieve a level of utilization which is more than three times larger than the best existing result. By applying the general method to three different variable classes, we derive some new sufficient conditions for stability, that perform largely better than all the main existing results, and we show how they can all be derived from the new sufficient conditions. Finally, we present a new formula for the computation of end-to-end delay bounds in a network of GR nodes.