PREFACE For more than twenty years, one of us (Bruce Eastwood) has been studying the texts and manuscripts of four Roman works. These are Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Macrobius's Commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, Martianus Capella's Marriage of Philology and Mercury, and Calcidius's Commentary on the Timaeus of Plato. Manuscripts of these works multiplied during the ninth century, in the culture of the Carolingian renaissance, and each of the works contained or stimulated astronomical diagrams that can reveal to moderns certain concerns of the Carolingian scholars and leaders involved. An important stimulus for the present work was the discovery that early medieval astronomy, especially in the era of Charlemagne and his successors, consisted of texts that went far beyond the boundaries of computus, which modern scholars have long believed to be the only significant context for astronomical studies of that time. It became apparent early that the texts sometimes contained varying or innovative diagrams where no other sign of divergence from the text could be seen. Such diagrams were not necessarily corruptions or errors; they were frequently found to provide indications of understandings of the texts-understandings different from those of modern scholars and generally ignored by editors of the texts. Furthermore the traditions of these diagrams lasted in many cases from the Carolingian era to the fifteenth century. Over the years Eastwood collected a large number of microfilms of the manuscripts of the four texts and of other texts using any of the planetary diagrams derived from the four Roman texts. He carried out the initial locating and identifying of all the diagrams referred to in the present work. In the summer of 1997 the two of us came together for three months at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin to work directly on the present compilation and analysis of the planetary diagrams. In the summer of 1999 we were, again at the Institute in Berlin, able to work together intensively to follow up our basic work of two years earlier. Finally, in the summer of 2001 we completed the scholarly tasks needed for our work. The long preparatory work by Eastwood was supported generously at different times by the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the American Philosophical Society and by frequent summer research grants from the University of Kentucky. The collaborative stage, from 1997 onward, was generously supported especially by the Max-Planck-Institut-fur-Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin) and by both the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst and the National Science Foundation as well as the University of Kentucky. Without these many sources of support over the years this project could never have been completed, and we are extremely grateful to each of these institutions for helping to make this work possible. Regarding our collaboration, we want to emphasize that although Eastwood contributed the microfilms and the data about the manuscripts and the diagrams, it was the conversations between us primarily during each of the three summer sessions of work together, that produced the final separations and classifications of the individual diagrams. Often it would seem at first to us that a diagram was referring to a doctrine of one author, Martianus Capella for example, when further questioning and analysis would then show us the error of our preliminary assessment and lead us to assign the diagram in question to a doctrine of a different author, Macrobius for example. Correct assignment of a diagram to its originating text was not always obvious or easy, and our give-and-take in discussing such questions has made the final result in this work far superior to what either of us could have accomplished without the other. Finally, the organization of the work in its present form, while requiring consultation between us, is almost completely the contribution of Grashoff. …


The continuing disaster in Puerto Rico, caused by the ravages of Hurricane Maria and federal inattention, cannot be understood without looking at the interrelated problems of power, bias, and epistemology.
Federal power and bias determined which dangers in Puerto Rico would be recognized by government officials, and which would be deemed too indeterminate to plan for and respond to: In the days following Maria's assault on the island on September 20, 2017, officials such as FEMA's Administrative head Brock Long, President Donald Trump, and several U.S. senators defended against accusations of an inept and paltry federal aid response by citing "logistics" and Puerto Rico's location within a body of "big water," indicating that the island's topography and physical situation proved so epistemically inaccessible to them – so uncertain -- that they could not organize an effective relief response. I call this the federal government's "uncertainty defense."
Furthermore, the government's putative uncertainty about Puerto Rico's physical features bled into its on-the-ground engagement with its residents: Interviews with residents and responders reveal that FEMA sent to Puerto Rico personnel that 1) did not speak Spanish, 2) used technology to communicate with victims even though poor Puerto Ricans did not have access to intelligent devices and the power grid had been down since September 20, 3) gave out food boxes containing items laden with sugar and salt to victims with heart disease and diabetes, 4) did not reach people in mountainous regions, and 5) could not foresee that the elderly would constitute an especially vulnerable population. This means that Puerto Ricans' culture, health, and patterns of living were regarded as indeterminacies that the federal government found impossible to calculate and so cope with after the storm.
However, insofar as President Trump and Administrator Long seek to marshal an uncertainty defense to explain their failure to provide meaningful aid to Puerto Ricans, their effort fails. An eloquent legal literature that deals with problems of epistemology and disaster exists, and has been written by Dan Farber, Cass Sunstein, and Robert Verchick. These scholars all define when hazards are discernible, and when they veer so beyond human ken as to become "uncertainties" that become impossible to strategize around in the event of a catastrophe. Their work helps us understand that the factors that Trump and Long characterized as unplannable logistics were not uncertainties at all, but rather "known knowns" that could have been calculated and planned for long in advance of the hurricane.
The real reason that Puerto Rico's topography and people proved unfathomable to federal officials had nothing to do with their enigmatic qualities, but grew out of a phenomenon called "epistemic injustice," which has been limned by the philosopher Miranda Fricker.
Deadly epistemic uncertainty did exist in Puerto Rico, however. While uncertainty and risk theorists usually gauge uncertainty from the perspective of governmental decision makers, uncertainty can be detected among the victims themselves: I call this victim uncertainty, and argue that it was caused by the government's acts of epistemic injustice. Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Maria experienced uncertainty because they could not predict that the government would prove so psychologically blind to their island's basic features, and to their status as human beings with a particular culture and set of demographics, that its agents would not be able to help them when the time came. This uncertainty bolstered what is known in psychological writings as "uncertainty paralysis:" Victims' uncertainty paralysis hampered their abilities to make the crucial decisions of whether to wait for government relief or engage in self-help during the exigencies of the storm.
Like the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the lack of care that led to so many deaths in New Orleans in 2005, the repercussions of Puerto Rico 2017 will be felt for a long time. In this article, I argue that the government must attend to the problems of power and epistemology revealed by Hurricane Maria: It should do so by listening to the stories of subordinated populations, such as those in Puerto Rico, in order to understand whom they will be helping in foreseeable future disasters, and how to do so.
In this article, I set forth interviews with residents and responders in order to highlight the failures of the U.S. response in the fall of 2017. These interviews illustrate the deadly ways in which the government perpetuated epistemic injustice in the days before and after the storm, and how the victims themselves consequently experienced dangerous epistemic uncertainty. I also set forth recommendations for the critical narrative gathering necessary for transforming government "uncertainties" about subordinated populations into recognized facts: These may take place under the auspices of the Stafford Act, which authorizes the President to send federal agencies (including FEMA) to disaster zones, as well as FEMA policy.


Game Jam employed a participatory design approach to identify opportunities for an interactive game-based learning tool and, to co-design this with young people with learning disabilities for educating them on internet and social media safety. The project involved a sequential series of Experience Labs with the young people and trainers, which spanned a period of five months. Game Jam was carried out in partnership with the Midlothian Council and the University of the West of Scotland.

The video captures the key stages of the Experience Labs, including design activities and the use of design tools and artefacts; along with key outcomes and reflection by the participants and project partners on their participation in the Experience Labs.

Photography & film credits: Louise Mather


The energy impact of air leakage has classically been treated independently of conduction gains and losses through building envelopes. However, an increasing body of evidence shows that heat exchange in envelope components resulting from interactions between air leakage and conduction and solar radiation systematically changes (generally reducing) the energy load of air infiltration. A systematic study performed by the authors shows that this heat exchange can substantially reduce the air infiltration energy requirements in frame structures or walls under laboratory conditions depending in airflow rate and leakage configurations. The interaction of airflow with solar radiation is an important consideration--perhaps as important as the interaction if airflow with conduction under outdoor conditions, and depressurizing a house during winter and pressurizing during summer using a fan may reduce energy consumption significantly. This paper reviews earlier theoretical and experimental work in this area and summarizes results of a series of experiments and theoretical work conducted by the authors.


Perhaps it is best to begin with the positive. From virtually any perspective, liberal and conservative feminists in the twentieth century have improved the quality of life for many women in a number of noteworthy ways. They have helped win the right to vote, to own property, to make contracts, to serve on juries, to use contraceptives.They have succeeded in asserting the need for enhanced economic opportunities: equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, flex-time for mothers. They have made significant advancements against both domestic battery and sexual harassment in the workplace. As a consequence of all these efforts, there are more women now than ever before in professional schools, city halls, state houses, and courts. Such well-deserved victories, however, have been achieved at the cost of a goodly number of Pyrrhic ones, not the least of which have been wholesale changes in the language and literature of the law-most of it force-fed to the silent majority of women everywhere and to a lesser extent the hapless readers of law reviews. Good people of both sexes have been stampeded into corners of stilted parlance and tortured logic by self-appointed thought police. Big Sister has imposed herself on us all; nowadays she throws no pots and burns no bras but brandishes instead a sacred and unabridgeable Lexicon of Political Correctness.In a nutshell, the attention of reasonable men and women everywhere must be earned-and can be, if the case is made with more measured moderation and less hysterical rhetoric-with more good writing, instead of writing that is impossible to understand, and with more good ideas, instead of ideas that are impossible to implement.As the next generation of enlightened sisters might well have already begun to advise the current feminist legal scholars: Lighten up. Let us understand you. Get a life.


On December 22, 2008, the contents of an enormous impoundment containing coal-ash slurry from the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant poured into the Emory River. The proximate cause of the spill was the bursting of a poorly reinforced dike holding back a pit of sludge that towered 80 feet above the river and 40 feet above an adjacent road. The volume and force of the spill were so large that 1.1 billion gallons of the inky mess flowed across the river, inundating 300 acres of land in a layer four to five feet deep, uprooting trees, destroying three homes, and damaging dozens of others. Miraculously, no one was killed. In the aftermath, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson promised to reevaluate by the end of 2009 the agency's decades-old reluctance to regulate the disposal of some 129 million tons of coal ash generated annually, a startling large figure when compared to the 250 million tons of every category of household garbage that Americans generated in 2010. Jackson met this deadline. But her efforts were thwarted when an intensive industry lobbying campaign provoked the White House to rewrite the EPA proposal, adding two significantly weaker options and derailing the momentum of Jackson's proposal. Historically, events like the Kingston disaster resulted in dramatic governmental reforms, pushing the law forward to meet new challenges and provide expanded protection for public health and the environment. Congress enacted most of the regulatory statutes of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Public Interest Era after widely publicized tragedies or abuses stirred public opinion to levels sufficient to overcome the inertia that otherwise overwhelms Congress and the regulatory agencies. But more recently, the passive response to the Kingston spill was not an outlier. The past decade has witnessed a confluence of crises across a broad array of federal regulatory programs. The response by Congress and the regulatory agencies to most of them has been tepid at best. This trend raises the question of why the twentieth century dynamic of crisis and reform has apparently disappeared in the early twenty-first century. Using the Kingston disaster as a case study, this article offers several explanations for this unfortunate trend. We argue that regulated industries dominate regulatory debates on Capitol Hill and at the federal agencies to an unprecedented extent. Rather than stressing the importance of science-based rulemaking, the White House has engaged in its own intemperate interventions, upping the ante for flexing raw political muscle at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The growing weakness of the media's investigative reporting has exacerbated both trends.These factors have sparked the deeply disturbing evolution of the administrative process into a kind of blood sport. This degeneration's most obvious and immediate threat is to our shared commons, but over the long run it is equally likely to cause irrevocable harm to individual businesses and to the efficient functioning of regulated markets.


When working on parallel programming problems it is important to have a good model of the computation and communication costs. We present a case for a model of communication based on our experiments with C-Linda. In this model the overhead (latency) of a communication plays a central role. We present some experimental results of running a simple C-Linda program on several workstations connected by Ethernet and FDDI communications networks. We provide a formula for predicting C-Linda performance given performance measures for the workstation and for the network. We show that this formula performs well in predicting the results of our experiments. We then discuss a model of message passing communication based on this formula, and some of its implications. Additionally we briefly discuss some work that we are doing that uses this model.<<ETX>>


Barbara Norris struggles to address the many problems facing her as a recently promoted nurse manager in the General Surgery Unit (GSU) at Eastern Massachusetts University Hospital (EMU). She has inherited a unit with the lowest employee satisfaction scores and highest employee turnover rate among all of the departments at EMU. Furthermore, her new unit was infamous for its culture of confrontation, blaming and favoritism. The staff that has remained is dissatisfied, unmotivated and not functioning as a team to deliver patient care. In fact, GSU's patient satisfaction scores, although average, had been declining steadily over the past few years. Barbara has been asked by EMU'S Director of Nursing to turn the unit around in the midst of an economic crisis and deep cost-cutting measures throughout the hospital. Where and how should she begin?


Ensuring that minority groups are treated fairly in the legal process is an important concern. The Castaneda v. Partida and Duren v. Missouri decisions enable courts to monitor the demographic composition of the selection of potential jurors using a variety of statistical techniques. This paper shows that Fisher's exact test is appropriate for examining statistical data on peremptory challenges when Batson issues are raised. In addition to being a well-established method, it evaluates the challenges made by each party assuming the other side is fair. Thus, it is consistent with the Supreme Court's statement in Miller-El that the defendant's pattern of challenges is not relevant in determining whether the prosecution's challenges were fair. Although one has the entire population of potential jurors and the number of peremptory challenges, which are regarded a sample from the venire, both the population and the sample are of small size. This limits the power of the test to detect a system in which the odds a minority member is challenged are two or three times those of a majority member. When data is available for similar or related trials, an appropriate method for combining the Fisher tests for each trial is noted. In every case where the Supreme Court found discrimination in peremptory challenges and the data is reported, even though the power of Fisher's exact test is low, it found a statistically significant difference in the proportions of minority members of the venire and majority members removed. It also finds a statistically significant excess of African-Americans were challenged by the prosecutor in Foster. In a case where the Court did not find bias in peremptory challenges the test did not have sufficient power to detect a substantial disparity, so the Court properly did not give the statistics much weight.


YANKOV, P., 2010. Effect of different types of main soil tillage on bean yield under the conditions of Dobrudzha region. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 16: 196-202 The investigation was carried out during 2003-2006 in the trial field of Dobrudzha Agricultural Institute on slightly leached chernozem soil type. A stationary field trial initiated in 1987 has been investigating 24 soil tillage systems based on different soil tillage tools and operations. The following field crops have been involved in 6-field crop rotation: wheat, grain maize, bean and sunflower. The following variants of main soil tillage were used in this analysis: ploughing at 24-26 cm, disking in autumn and double cultivation in spring (check variant); cutting at 2426 cm, disking in autumn and double cultivation in spring; double disking at 10-12 cm accompanied by autumn disking and double spring cultivation; direct sowing – pre-sowing treatment of field with total herbicide. With the reduction of the number and depth of the soil tillage operations in bean, the number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, 1000 seed weight per plant and 1000 seed weight decreased. Replacing deep ploughing with plowless tillage, with shallow and no tillage lead to a significant decrease of seed yield from bean variety Abritus from 4.3 to 16.5 %.


During primary HIV infection (PHI), there is a striking cascade response of inflammatory cytokines and many cells of the immune system show altered frequencies and signs of extensive activation. These changes have been shown to have a relevant role in predicting disease progression; however, the challenges of identifying PHI have resulted in a lack of critical information about the dynamics of early pathogenic events. We studied soluble inflammatory biomarkers and changes in T-cell subsets in individuals at PHI (n = 40), chronic HIV infection (CHI, n = 56), and HIV-uninfected (n = 58) recruited at the Manhiça District Hospital in Mozambique. Plasma levels of 49 biomarkers were determined by Luminex and ELISA. T-cell immunophenotyping was performed by multicolor flow cytometry. Plasma HIV viremia, CD4, and CD8 T cell counts underwent rapid stabilization after PHI. However, several immunological parameters, including Th1-Th17 CD4 T cells and activation or exhaustion of CD8 T cells continued decreasing until more than 9 months postinfection. Importantly, no sign of immunosenescence was observed over the first year of HIV infection. Levels of IP-10, MCP-1, BAFF, sCD14, tumor necrosis factor receptor-2, and TRAIL were significantly overexpressed at the first month of infection and underwent a prompt decrease in the subsequent months while, MIG and CD27 levels began to increase 1 month after infection and remained overexpressed for almost 1 year postinfection. Early levels of soluble biomarkers were significantly associated with subsequently exhausted CD4 T-cells or with CD8 T-cell activation. Despite rapid immune control of virus replication, the stabilization of the T-cell subsets occurs months after viremia and CD4 count plateau, suggesting persistent immune dysfunction and highlighting the potential benefit of early treatment initiation that could limit immunological damage.


A small amount of research has examined the association between the belief in free will and subjective well-being (SWB) among Western laypersons from individualist cultures. However, no study has examined this association among participants from collectivist cultures (e.g., Eastern Asian cultures). Therefore, in this study, we explored this association among two large, independent cohorts of Chinese adolescents (N1 = 1,660; N2 = 639; high school students). The belief in free will was measured by a self-reported questionnaire (Cohorts 1 and 2) and a two-alternative forced choice question regarding the existence of free will (Cohort 2). SWB included cognitive well-being (life satisfaction) and affective well-being (positive and negative affect) in both cohorts. Data analyses indicated that a stronger belief in free will was consistently associated with higher life satisfaction and positive affect in both cohorts. Our investigation provides evidence supporting the cultural generality of the positive effects of believing in free will on SWB.


Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is a widely used optimization algorithm in machine learning. In order to accelerate the convergence of SGD, a few advanced techniques have been developed in recent years, including variance reduction, stochastic coordinate sampling, and Nesterov's acceleration method. Furthermore, in order to improve the training speed and/or leverage larger-scale training data, asynchronous parallelization of SGD has also been studied. Then, a natural question is whether these techniques can be seamlessly integrated with each other, and whether the integration has desirable theoretical guarantee on its convergence. In this paper, we provide our formal answer to this question. In particular, we consider the asynchronous parallelization of SGD, accelerated by leveraging variance reduction, coordinate sampling, and Nesterov's method. We call the new algorithm asynchronous accelerated SGD (AASGD). Theoretically, we proved a convergence rate of AASGD, which indicates that (i) the three acceleration methods are complementary to each other and can make their own contributions to the improvement of convergence rate; (ii) asynchronous parallelization does not hurt the convergence rate, and can achieve considerable speedup under appropriate parameter setting. Empirically, we tested AASGD on a few benchmark datasets. The experimental results verified our theoretical findings and indicated that AASGD could be a highly effective and efficient algorithm for practical use.


Technical, behavioral, and institutional constraints have hampered the integration of water quality and water resources planning. Although the conceptual relationship between water resources and water quality planning has changed remarkably in the past few years, only minor advances have been made in true integration. The evolution of water quality planning and development has taken place in an institutional structure almost the reverse of planning and management of water resources. Most of the water quality advances have been made at the local or regional level while water resources activities have usually been a Federal responsibility. The most significant short-term obstacles to integration are the institutional problems including the need for a more coordinated and stabilized of intergovernmental relations and more formal recognition of meaningful community and state goals, including positive contributions of the public.


The purpose of this study is to apply the attribute hierarchy method (AHM) to a subset of SAT algebra items administered in March 2005 to promote cognitive diagnostic inferences about examinees. The AHM is a psychometric method for classifying examinees' test item responses into a set of structured attribute patterns associated with different components from a cognitive model of task performance. An attribute is a description of the procedural or declarative knowledge needed to perform a task. These attributes form a hierarchy of cognitive skills that represent a cognitive model of task performance. The study was conducted in two steps. In step 1, a cognitive model was developed by having content specialists, first, review the SAT algebra items, identify their salient attributes, and order the item-based attributes into a hierarchy. Then, the cognitive model was validated by having a sample of students think aloud as they solved each item. In step 2, psychometric analyses were conducted on the SAT algebra cognitive model by evaluating the model-data fit between the expected response patterns generated by the cognitive model and the observed response patterns produced from a random sample of 5000 examinees who wrote the items. Attribute probabilities were also computed for this random sample of examinees so diagnostic inferences about their attribute-level performances could be made. We conclude the study by describing key limitations, highlighting challenges inherent to the development and analysis of cognitive diagnostic assessments, and proposing directions for future research. This article contains embedded media (video and audio files) and may take a few minutes to download. You will need Flash Player 9.0 (available from www.adobe.com) to play the files. An alternate, smaller version of this article, that does not contain media files is available below under the Alternate Version heading.


Leaching of macronutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from soils is of particular interest in the Baltic Sea region because of its adverse effects on water quality. The objective of this study was to evaluate macronutrient leaching in a juvenile hybrid aspen ( Populus tremula L. × P. tremuloides Michx.) plantation cultivated in an agroforestry system and fertilized with biogas production residues, wastewater sludge and wood ash in hemi-boreal climate conditions. Analysis of macronutrient concentrations in the soil solution showed that annual macronutrient leaching decreased over time after the establishment of the plantation and application of fertilizers. Moreover, macronutrient leaching was affected not only by meteorological conditions, but also by the type of fertilizer used. During the five years after establishment of the plantation, nitrate-nitrogen leaching decreased up to 99.6%, phosphate-phosphorus leaching decreased up to 97.1%, but potassium ions leaching decreased up to 76.5%. Nevertheless, juvenile hybrid aspen plantations cultivated in an agroforestry system remain an important part in mitigation of leaching of macronutrients from agricultural lands in the Baltic Sea region.


This report examines the state of the U.S.-Australia military alliance, detailing the geopolitical shifts currently underway in Australia's immediate neighborhood and outlining the extent to which these developments signal the advent of a new era. The seismic nature of these changes has engendered a vigorous strategic debate within Australia over the future of its defense ties with the United States. The report provides a succinct overview of ongoing debates and examines three different schools of thought in Australia: the Alliance Minimalist School, the Alliance Maximalist School, and the Incrementalist School. Many of the traditional assumptions at the heart of Australian strategic culture are in the process of being overturned, and the U.S.-Australia alliance is increasingly perceived as a bedrock for sustained regional stability. Building on these observations, the report offers four ways in which Australia could make greater contributions to regional security and deterrence.


The Rio de la Plata is the world's largest estuary, draining the second largest basin of South America. In spite of its key significance at the local and global scale, this is the first attempt made so far to characterize the bacterial diversity of this system. We employed a suite of molecular methods to analyze the bacterial diversity at different phylogenetic levels, both in terms of richness and evenness, and we related these findings to physicochemical parameters. A clear environmental gradient was observed with 3 distinctive zones (riverine, frontal, and marine). In turn, the bacterial communities appeared highly diverse and strongly structured by the environment. A high number (324) of different operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were identified by automated ribosomal inter- genic spacer analysis (ARISA). The ARISA results suggested that the composition of bacterioplank- ton communities was strongly related to physicochemical water characteristics, and that the bacterio- plankton had little overlap with the bacterial assemblage of the sediments. Catalyzed reporter deposition-fluorescence in situ hybridization (CARD-FISH) indicated that Betaproteobacteria and Actinobacteria were more abundant in the riverine zone, whereas Gammaproteobacteria and Planc- tomycetes preferred the marine waters. The relative abundance of Bacteroidetes peaked in the frontal zone, and Alphaproteobacteria were numerically dominant throughout the estuary. The analysis of about 300 almost full-length 16S rRNA gene sequences pointed to the existence of ubiq- uitous phylotypes, but also suggested habitat preferences among certain groups. This first look into the bacterial community of the Rio de la Plata demonstrated marked diversity patterns, providing fur- ther insights into the ecology of globally distributed groups of aquatic bacteria.


Background: Chronic rhinosinusitis with eosinophilic infiltration (ECRS) has been noted a severe and intractable type of rhinosinusitis, which is often associated with asthma. Macrophages as well as eosinophilic infiltration have been reported to take part in the processes of severe asthma. Mucus hypersecretion and persistent airway inflammation results from the increased expression of mucin gene (MUC5AC). Oxidants are well known to induce the characteristic features that aggravate asthma. Superoxide dismutase (SOD), a cytoprotective enzyme against oxidants, has been extensively studied in airway diseases. From the viewpoint of "One way one disease", we examined whether SOD could be associated with infiltrating macrophages, MUC5AC and other factors that exacerbate the rhinosinusitis.
Methods: Parts of each specimen derived from the nasal polyps of ECRS and chronic rhinosinusitis without eosinophilic infiltration (non-ECRS) were divided and fixed in 10 % phosphate buffered formalin, embedded in paraffin, processed routinely and then prepared as semi-thin sections (3.5 μm). We immunohistochemically observed copper/zinc-superoxide dismutase (Cu, Zn-SOD) and macrophages by using CD68 and IL-17A as factors that promoteMUC5AC.
Results: The mean numbers of macrophages (CD68 positive cells) and IL-17A positive cells in the ECRS were significantly greater than in non-ECRS. The mean percentage of epithelial cells with Cu, Zn-SOD positive reaction in non-ECRS was significantly greater than in ECRS. There were significant negative correlations in all cases between Cu, Zn-SOD and CD 68, IL-17A or MUC5AC.
Conclusions: Our study suggests that loss of Cu, Zn-SOD in epithelia of ECRS could increase both IL-17 A and MUC5AC, resulting in the infiltration of macrophages and mucus over production.


Abstract. Total atmospheric OH reactivities (kOH) have been measured as reciprocal OH lifetimes by a newly developed instrument at a rural site in the densely populated Pearl River Delta (PRD) in Southern China in summer 2006. The deployed technique, LP-LIF, uses laser flash photolysis (LP) for artificial OH generation and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) to measure the time-dependent OH decay in samples of ambient air. The reactivities observed at PRD covered a range from 10 s−1 to 120 s−1, indicating a large load of chemical reactants. On average, kOH exhibited a pronounced diurnal profile with a mean maximum value of 50 s−1 at daybreak and a mean minimum value of 20 s−1 at noon. The comparison of reactivities calculated from measured trace gases with measured kOH reveals a missing reactivity of about a factor of 2 at day and night. The reactivity explained by measured trace gases was dominated by anthropogenic pollutants (e.g., CO, NOx, light alkenes and aromatic hydrocarbons) at night, while it was strongly influenced by local, biogenic emissions of isoprene during the day. Box model calculations initialized by measured parameters reproduce the observed OH reactivity well and suggest that the missing reactivity is contributed by unmeasured, secondary chemistry products (mainly aldehydes and ketones) that were photochemically formed by hydrocarbon oxidation. Overall, kOH was dominated by organic compounds, which had a maximum contribution of 85% in the afternoon. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of direct reactivity measurements, emphasizes the need for direct measurements of oxygenated organic compounds in atmospheric chemistry studies, and discusses uncertainties of the modelling of OVOC reactivities.


Coherent optical fiber communications for data rates of 100Gbit/s and beyond have recently been studied extensively primarily because high sensitivity of coherent receivers could extend the transmission distance. Spectrally efficient modulation techniques such as M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) can be employed for coherent optical links. The integration of multi-level modulation formats based on coherent technologies with wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) systems is key to meet the aggregate bandwidth demand. This paper reviews coherent 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) systems to scale the network capacity and maximum reach of current optical communication systems to accommodate traffic growth. Full Text: PDF ReferencesK. Kikuchi, "Fundamentals of Coherent Optical Fiber Communications", J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 157-179, 2016. CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, D.-S. Ly-Gagnon, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Coherent Demodulation of 40-Gbit/s Polarization-Multiplexed QPSK Signals with16-GHz Spacing after 200-km Transmission", Proc. OFc, Paper PDP29, (2005). DirectLink K. Kikuchi, "Coherent Optical Communication Technology", Proc. OFC, Paper Th4F.4, (2015). CrossRef J. M. Kahn and K.-P. Ho, "Spectral efficiency limits and modulation/detection techniques for DWDM systems", IEEE J. Sel. Topics Quantum Electron., vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 259–272, (2004). CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Coherent demodulation of optical multilevel phase-shift-keying signals using homodyne detection and digital signal processing", IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 18, no. 10, pp. 1131–1133, (2006). CrossRef Y. Mori, C. Zhang, K. Igarashi, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Unrepeated 200-km transmission of 40-Gbit/s 16-QAM signals using digital coherent receiver", Opt. Exp., vol. 17, no. 32, pp. 1435–1441, (2009). CrossRef H. Nakashima, Et al., "Digital Nonlinear Compensation Technologies in Coherent Optical Communication Systems", Proc. OFC, Paper W1G.5, (2017). CrossRef S. J. Savory, "Digital filters for coherent optical receivers", Opt. Exp., vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 804–817, (2008). CrossRef D. S. Millar, T. Koike-Akino, S. Ö. Arık, K. Kojima, K. Parsons, T. Yoshida, and T. Sugihara, "High-dimensional modulation for coherent optical communications systems", Opt. Express, vol. 22, no. 7, pp 8798-8812, (2014). CrossRef R. Griffin and A. Carter, "Optical differential quadrature phase-shift key (oDQPSK) for high capacity optical transmission", Proc. OFC, Paper WX6, (2002). DirectLink K. Kikuchi, "Digital coherent optical communication systems: fundamentals and future prospects", IEICE Electron. Exp., vol. 8, no. 20, pp. 1642–1662, (2011). CrossRef F. Derr, "Optical QPSK transmission system with novel digital receiver concept", Electron Lett., vol. 27, no. 23, pp. 2177–2179, (1991). CrossRef R. No'e, "Phase noise tolerant synchronous QPSK receiver concept with digital I&Q baseband processing", Proc. OECC, Paper 16C2-5, (2004). DirectLink D.-S. Ly-Gagnon, S. Tsukamoto, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Coherent detection of optical quadrature phase-shift keying signals with carrier phase estimation", J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 12–21, (2006). CrossRef M. Taylor, "Coherent detection method using DSP for demodulation of signal and subsequent equalization of propagation impairments", IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 674–676, (2004). CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Unrepeated transmission of 20-Gb/s optical quadrature phase-shift-keying signal over 200-km standard single-mode fiber based on digital processing of homodyne-detected signal for Group-velocity dispersion compensation", IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 18, no. 9, pp. 1016–1018, (2006). CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, Y. Ishikawa, and K. Kikuchi, "Optical Homodyne Receiver Comprising Phase and Polarization Diversities with Digital Signal Processing", Proc. ECOC, Paper Mo4.2.1, (2006). CrossRef K. Kikuchi and S. Tsukamoto, "Evaluation of Sensitivity of the Digital Coherent Receiver", J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 20, no. 13, pp. 1817–1822, (2008). CrossRef S. Ishimura and K. Kikuchi, "Multi-dimensional Permutation Modulation Aiming at Both High Spectral Efficiency and High Power Efficiency", Proc. OFC/NFOEC, Paper M3A.2, (2014). CrossRef F. I. El-Nahal and A. H. M. Husein, "Radio over fiber access network architecture employing RSOA with downstream OQPSK and upstream re-modulated OOK data", (Optik) Int. J. Light Electron Opt., vol. 123, no. 14, pp: 1301-1303, (2012). CrossRef T. Koike-Akino, D. S. Millar, K. Kojima, and K. Parsons, "Eight-Dimensional Modulation for Coherent Optical Communications", Proc. ECOC, Paper Tu.3.C.3, (2013). DirectLink B. Sklar, Digital communications: Fundamentals and Applications, Prentice-Hall, (2001).


In the last decades, many developing countries abandoned their existing policy regimes and adopted inflation targeting (IT) by which they aimed to control inflation through the use of policy interest rates. During the period before the crisis, most of these countries experienced large appreciations in their currencies. Given that appreciation helps central banks curb inflationary pressures, we ask whether central banks in developing countries have different policy stances with respect to depreciation and appreciation in order to hit their inflation targets. To that end, we analyze central banks' interest rate decisions by estimating a nonlinear monetary policy reaction function for a set of IT developing countries using a panel threshold model. Our findings suggest that during the period under investigation (2002-2008), central banks in developing countries implementing IT tolerated appreciation by remaining inactive in case of appreciation, but fought against depreciation pressures beyond some threshold. We are unable to detect a similar asymmetric response for IT advanced countries suggesting that asymmetric policy stance is peculiar to IT developing countries. Although there is a vast literature on asymmetric responses of various central banks to changes in inflation and output, asymmetric stance with regards to exchange rate has not been analyzed yet in a rigorous way especially within the context of IT developing countries. In this sense, our study is the first in the literature and thus is expected to fill an important gap.


Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a diagnostic method that allows for a detailed cross-sectional evaluation of the macular region. Macular examination as routinely performed by biomicroscopic funduscopy is one of the principal elements of preoperative cataract assessment. Due to media opacity occurring in patients with cataract, subtle macular pathologies may fail to be diagnosed using biomicroscopic funduscopy. OCT of the macular region might improve preoperative diagnostics in patients prior to cataract surgery. Accordingly the aim of the present study was to evaluate the additional diagnostic benefit of routine preoperative macular OCT in patients with cataract and normal biomicroscopic funduscopy. A total of 162 cataractous eyes of 123 patients who met the inclusion criteria were prospectively enrolled in the study. 78 eyes (48.15 %) showed no pathology on OCT-images. 72 eyes (44.44 %) presented changes at the vitreoretinal interface which were declared as regular age-related alterations. Macular abnormalities (e.g. epiretinal membrane or drusen) were detected by OCT in 20 eyes (12.35 %). Although this significant number of eyes showed macular abnormalities, none of the findings led to a change of therapy in any patient. All patients remained scheduled for cataract surgery without additive therapeutic intervention. Patients with pathological alterations observed on OCT-images were advised to make use of further follow-up examinations. In conclusion, OCT allows for a detailed evaluation of macular pathology in patients prior to cataract surgery presenting with normal biomicroscopic funduscopy. However, OCT-related observations did not lead to a modified therapeutic strategy and therefore should not generally be recommended to patients with normal biomicroscopic funduscopy prior to cataract surgery. Nevertheless, preoperative OCT-based detection of macular pathology impacts on further follow-up management.


The groundwater quality in the Jamankira area of Sambalpur district was evaluated to determine its hydrogeochemical variability. A total of thirty groundwater samples were analysed for their major chemical constituents. The quality of groundwater was estimated on the basis of total dissolved solids, sodium adsorption ratio, sodium percentage, residual sodium carbonate, and Piper's trilinear diagram. Cluster analysis was used in the study as a qualitative means for differentiating the groundwater into distinctive types. The cluster analysis shows: 1) Ca-HCO3-SO4-Mg bearing calcium-rich water and 2) Na K-Cl bearing sodium-rich water in the study area.


The citizens of south Sudan are rejoicing in the hope of building a new nation after the referendum next year. They are hoping to finally gain independence from the north and thus create an independent and a prosperous south Sudan. However, prosperity of a nation depends on a number of factors which are conspicuously absent in the case of south Sudan. These include existence of a socially cohesive society and a basic social and economic infrastructure. A socially cohesive society is essential to pave the way for a genuine democracy, while the presence of basic infrastructure provides the institutional base to a nation to successfully operate independently. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the absence of these essential prerequisites for prosperity in south Sudan. The paper will focus on the tribal conflicts which are making a sham of democracy and, therefore, undermining the prospects of creation of a cohesive society. In addition, the paper will focus on the low levels of health care and education, food and water supplies and basic physical infrastructure and their impact on creating developmental disparities between the center (Juba) and the rural areas and the peripheral regions. These divisions have the potential of becoming fundamental roadblocks to the creation of a flourishing nation of south Sudan.


We address in this paper the problem of coordinating resource-bounded agents under time constraints in a dynamic environment. The agent society we deal with consists of coordinated agents each of which has a goal to achieve before a deadline and new agents can asynchronously appear to achieve time-constrained goals and to coordinate their plans with the already coordinated agent society. Agents use progressive planning that adapt the detail of their local plans according to local deadlines and available resources. The plan consists of a hierarchy of partial plans where each partial plan satisfies a part of the goal. In such environments, constructing a complete plan and then coordinating it with other agents doesn't guarantee that the planning and coordination operations will finish before the given deadline. What we propose is an anytime coordination that allows an agent to return a coordinated plan at any time by using series of partial planning followed by a coordination until the complete plan is constructed and coordinated or the deadline is met. This progressive plan merging operation is assessed in a resource allocation problem.


The World Trade Organization (WTO) is today dealing with an issue that lies at the interface of two major challenges the world faces, trade liberalization and international migration. Greater freedom for the "temporary movement of individual service suppliers" is being negotiated under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Conditions in many developed economies - ranging from aging populations, to shortages of skilled labor - suggest that this may be a propitious time to put labor mobility, squarely on the negotiating agenda. Yet, there is limited awareness of how the GATS mechanism can be used to foster liberalization in this area of services trade. At the same time there is great concern, about the possible social disruption in host countries, and brain drain from poor countries. As a first step in improving our understanding of the implications of such liberalization, this volume brings together contributions from service providers, regulators, researchers and trade negotiators. They provide different perspectives on one central question: how is such liberalization best accomplished, in a way that benefits both home, and host countries? The result, combining insights from economics, law and politics, is bound to be a vital input into the WTO services negotiations, as well as the broader debate on the subject.


The physiological environment is a crucial factor in biomedical systems, which can be regulated with relative ease both in vitro and in vivo. Control of pH has emerged as a powerful strategy in cancer therapy because pH has a profound effect on the interaction of a polymeric-based drug delivery system with tumor cells. In this regard, the enhancement of pH response capability was demonstrated with a 5-flourouracil (5-FU)-loaded guar gum (GG)-grafted-lysine-β-cyclodextrin (L-β-CD) drug carrier. The size, charge, morphology, and encapsulation efficiency of the 5-FU-loaded polymeric carrier were characterized for the control and sustained release of the drug. In a specific cancer pH environment, 5-FU-loaded GG-g-L-β-CD could rapidly swallow, disassemble, and release 5-FU by accepting or losing electrons. In vitro observations indicate that GG-g-L-β-CD dramatically releases 5-FU in an acidic environment rather than in a basic environment. In vitro antitumor activity tests showed that 5-FU-loaded GG-g-L-β-CD had a higher cytotoxicity against KB cells, with an IC50 value of 1.38 μg ml-1. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by 5-FU in the KB cells showed efficient suppression of tumour cell growth. The Hoechst assay revealed the active nature of 5-FU in the cell nucleus of the KB cells. The potential mitochondrial damage by apoptosis in KB cells greatly increased cell death. Therefore, due to its active nature, the pH-sensitive 5-FU-loaded GG-g-L-β-CD carrier is a potential drug delivery system for safe and effective cancer therapy, and it can be useful for inhibiting tumour cell growth.


The pharmacokinetic (PK) profile of factor IX (FIX) following an IV infusion is characterized by a normal incremental recovery (IR) followed by a rapid distribution phase with approximately 50-80% of injected FIX in patients disappearing within the first 5 min, and a slower terminal elimination phase. This is consistent with a two-compartment model where FIX largely distributes to a space outside of the plasma compartment (extravascular space). Mechanistically, extravascular distribution of FIX could potentially prime tissues for more efficient hemostasis following an injury. In people with hemophilia, this may be particularly important at sites prone to bleeding such as joints. With the introduction of extended half-life FIX products, it has become apparent that the type of modification to extend half-life can impact the PK profile, most notably the IR, and volume of distribution (Vss). For example, while rFIXFc shows an IR similar to rFIX and pdFIX and a larger Vss after an IV dose, modifications such as glycoPEGylation can lead to a higher IR and a smaller Vss indicating less distribution to tissue. The goal of this study is to evaluate the distribution of rFIXFc, rFIX and glycoPEGylated-rFIX (GP-rFIX) to tissue in hemophilia B mice using in vivo SPECT imaging. GP-rFIX (sequence identical nonacog beta pegol, N9-GP) was generated following published methods applied to rFIX. rFIXFc was manufactured by Biogen and rFIX by Pfizer. rFIXFc, rFIX and GP-rFIX were labeled at lysine residues using an 125 I-SIB (succinimidyl iodobenzoate) or 127 I-SIB for "cold" experiments to assess impact of label (1:1 label:protein ratio) on activity and PK properties in hemophilia B mice. For SPECT imaging, hemophilia B mice were dosed with 125 I-labeled rFIXFc, rFIX and GP-rFIX at therapeutically-relevant doses (10 nmol/kg, corresponding to ~50 IU/kg). Animals were imaged longitudinally on a NanoScan SPECT/CT (Mediso), and all animals were imaged individually (30 min SPECT scan followed by CT for anatomical reference) for a total of five time points. Maximum-intensity projection (MIP) images were generated and perfect injected dose per gram (%ID/g) determined for regions of interest (ROIs) using VivoQuant. Labeling of the FIX variants with an 127 I-SIB reagent did not impact the activity or PK properties of the molecules. In vivo SPECT imaging revealed higher amounts of GP-rFIX than rFIXFc or rFIX in highly vascularized tissues such as liver and blood pool at early time points (Figure 1), consistent with higher plasma recovery and a smaller Vss as reported for N9-GP. Both rFIXFc and rFIX showed higher distribution to joint areas such as knees and shoulders that persisted throughout all the time points measured (up to 5 half-lives post dosing), with rFIXFc showing significantly higher distribution to these areas, even at time points when FIX plasma levels were below the detection level. Interestingly, GP-rFIX showed minimal distribution to joint areas. Levels of rFIXFc and rFIX in the liver were greater than blood levels when normalized by weight, while the liver and blood levels were comparable for GP-rFIX, suggesting enhanced extravascular distribution and/or liver clearance for rFIXFc and rFIX compared to GP-rFIX. The rFIXFc and rFIX biodistribution profiles in hemophilia B mice are consistent with the hypothesis that FIX can distribute to tissues outside of the plasma compartment. The significantly higher distribution of rFIXFc to joints areas compared to rFIX could potentially reflect retention at these tissues by an Fc-mediated mechanism or improved PK. These data are also consistent with the preclinical and clinical PK profile of N9-GP, and support the hypothesis that GP-rFIX remains mostly in the plasma compartment and shows reduced extravascular distribution due to modifications imposed by the PEG moiety. While the role of extravascular distribution in prevention of bleeding and overall protection of joint health remains an area of investigation, this study demonstrates biodistribution differences for FIX variants and illustrates plasma levels may not be comparable, or have the same meaning, across FIX variants. While SPECT imaging allows for the quantitative characterization of the biodistribution of FIX, the spatial resolution of the approach is limited. Ongoing studies are aimed at further characterizing the extravascular distribution of FIX with autoradiography and micro-autoradiography. Disclosures Salas: Bioverativ: Employment, Equity Ownership. Van Der Flier: Bioverativ: Employment, Equity Ownership. Hong: Bioverativ: Employment, Equity Ownership. Dumont: Bioverativ: Employment. Orcutt: inviCRO: Employment, Equity Ownership. Goel: inviCRO: Employment, Equity Ownership. Peters: Bioverativ: Employment, Other: Shareholder.


For electric and hybrid vehicles that use grid power to charge the battery, traction circuit components are not normally engaged during the charging time; hence, there is a possibility of using the traction circuit components in the charger circuit to have an onboard integrated charger. An isolated high-power integrated charger based on a special electrical machine with a double set of stator windings is described. Through the reconfiguration of the motor stator windings in the charging mode, a six-terminal machine is achieved. The so-called motor/generator acts as an isolated three-phase power source after synchronization with the utility grid in the charging mode. This rotary isolated power source constitutes a three-phase boost rectifier (battery charger) with full utilization of the inverter. The motor windings are reconfigured by a relay-based switching device for the charging and traction modes. This paper presents the mathematical model of the motor/generator and explains the system's functionality for the traction and charging modes. Furthermore, the charger grid synchronization and charge control are described. Finally, the simulation results are presented for a practically designed system with a traction power of 25 kW and a possible charge power of 12.5 kW.


Cognitive biological structures, social organizations, and computing machines operating in real time are subject to Rate Distortion Theorem constraints driven by the homology between information source uncertainty and free energy density. This exposes the unitary structure/environment system to a relentless entropic torrent compounded by large deviations causing increased average distortion between intent and impact, particularly as demands escalate. The phase transitions characteristic of information phenomena suggest that, rather than graceful decay under increasing load, these structures will undergo punctuated degradation akin to spontaneous symmetry breaking in physical systems. Rate distortion problems, that also affect internal structural dynamics, can become synergistic with limitations equivalent to the inattentional blindness of natural cognitive processes. These mechanisms, and their interactions, are unlikely to scale well, so that, depending on architecture, enlarging the structure or its duties may lead to a crossover point at which added resources must be almost entirely devoted to ensuring system stability -- a form of allometric scaling familiar from biological examples. This suggests a critical need to tune architecture to problem type and system demand. A real-time computational structure and its environment are a unitary phenomenon, and environments are usually idiosyncratic. Thus the resulting path dependence in the development of pathology could often require an individualized approach to remediation more akin to an arduous psychiatric intervention than to the traditional engineering or medical quick fix. Failure to recognize the depth of these problems seems likely to produce a relentless chain of the Chernobyl-like failures that are necessary, but often insufficient, for remediation under our system.


138 In light of the $150 billion bailout of AIG, there has been a renewed call for increased federal involvement in the insurance industry, including a proposal to extend something similar to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to insurance providers. Although that seems fair at first glance, simply applying the banking model to insurance is problematic for several reasons: (1) it contradicts the core business model of insurance; (2) it would not address the existing deficiencies in serving the lowto moderate-income market; and (3) the current fractured regulatory structure has no capacity to administer, uniformly and cogently, a national program such as a new CRA-like requirement. A greater opportunity exists in leveraging what insurance does best: mitigating risk to encourage investment and innovation and smooth unpredictable losses.


In the second edition of The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins included a short bibliometric analysis of key papers instrumental to the sociobiological revolution, the intention of which was to support his proposal that ideas spread within a population in an epidemiological manner. In his analysis, Dawkins primarily discussed the influence of an article by British evolutionary biologist William Donald Hamilton which had introduced the concept of "inclusive fitness", and he argued that citations to it were accumulating in a very different manner to two other seminal papers, demonstrating the appearance and spread of a new "meme" in circles. This paper re-examines Dawkins' original analysis and the conclusions drawn from it, and updates those conclusions based on citation data accumulated in the intervening three decades since . This updated analysis shows that patterns of citation for the three papers, and Dawkins' book itself, are actually remarkably similar and show no qualitative difference in citation growth. The data are well described by a two-phase exponential model of citation growth in which citations accumulate rapidly and then saturate at a slower level of growth dictated primarily by the general increase in production. It is speculated that this two-phase exponential growth, with some modification to account for papers that are not immediately discovered, may be a signature that will help to reveal the emergence of genuinely novel ideas within the literature.


Signaling downstream of classical seven-transmembrane domain receptors (7TMRs) had generally been thought to recruit factors that are in large part separate from those recruited by atypical 7TMRs, such as Frizzleds (Fzs), receptors for the Wnt family of glycoproteins. Classical 7TMRs are also known as G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) and are mediated by signaling factors such as heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding proteins (G proteins), GPCR kinases (GRKs), and β-arrestins. Over the past few years, it has become increasingly apparent that classical and atypical 7TMRs share these factors, which are often associated with mediating classical 7TMR signaling, as well as the scaffolding proteins that were initially thought to be involved in transmitting atypical 7TMR signals. This sharing of signaling components by agonists that bind classical 7TMRs and those binding to atypical 7TMRs establishes the possibility of extensive crosstalk between these receptor classes. We discuss the evidence for, and against, crosstalk, and examine mechanisms by which this can occur.


Objective Complete tumor resection is considered essential in the management of patients with ovarian clear-cell carcinoma. There is a debate regarding whether patients with recurrent ovarian clear-cell carcinoma benefit from secondary cytoreductive surgery. Methods Details of patients with clear-cell carcinoma were collected by the Tokai Ovarian Tumor Study Group (Nagoya University Hospital and 13 affiliated institutions) and evaluated between January 1990 and December 2015. Histology was confirmed after central pathological review. The primary endpoint of the study was disease-free survival after secondary cytoreductive surgery. Distributions of events were evaluated using the χ2 test. Survival analysis was based on the Kaplan-Meier method. Survival curves were compared using the log-rank test. A value of p<0.05 was considered significant. Results A total of 169 patients who underwent secondary cytoreductive surgery (N=25) or medical management (N=144) for recurrent clear-cell carcinoma were collected. The median age for patients undergoing secondary cytoreductive surgery was 50 years (range 35–66). Overall, 18 patients had complete resection. In patients who underwent secondary cytoreductive surgery, the median disease-free and post-recurrence survival periods were 10.9 months and 21.2 months, respectively. Moreover, among 18 patients who underwent complete resection, seven showed no evidence of disease during the observation periods. The median post-recurrence survival periods of patients with complete or incomplete resection were 30.1 months and 10.4 months, respectively (p=0.002). On stratification by the recurrence site, patients with intraperitoneal recurrence showed poorer post-recurrence survival than those with recurrence at other sites (p=0.016). However, comparison between the secondary cytoreductive surgery group versus the medical management group showed there was no difference in post-recurrence survival, even when considering complete tumor resection (p=0.114). Conclusion Patients with intraperitoneal recurrence or incomplete tumor resection had the worst survival after secondary cytoreductive surgery.


Ophthalmologic hydrogel polymers are doped with Fluorescein or Coumarin dyes prior to the femtosecond laser micromachining process. We find that the achievable micromachining writing speed can be greatly increased while maintaining large refractive index changes (up to +0.08). Compared with previous results in dye-doped polymers that do not contain water such as PMMA, we obtain much larger index changes and much faster writing speeds.


Can we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere?In this book, Russell Powell investigates whether we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere. Weaving together disparate philosophical and empirical threads, Powell offers the first detailed analysis of the interplay between contingency and convergence in macroevolution, as it relates to both complex life in general and cognitively complex life in particular. If the evolution of mind is not a historical accident, the product of convergence rather than contingency, then, Powell asks, is mind likely to be an evolutionarily important feature of any living world? Stephen Jay Gould argued for the primacy of contingency in evolution. Gould's ?radical contingency thesis? (RCT) has been challenged, but critics have largely failed to engage with its core claims and theoretical commitments. Powell fills this gap. He first examines convergent regularities at both temporal and phylogenetic depths, finding evidence that both vindicates and rebuffs Gould's argument for contingency. Powell follows this partial defense of the RCT with a substantive critique. Among the evolutionary outcomes that might defy the RCT, he argues, cognition is particularly important?not only for human-specific issues of the evolution of intelligence and consciousness but also for the large-scale ecological organization of macroscopic living worlds. Turning his attention to complex cognitive life, Powell considers what patterns of cognitive convergence tell us about the nature of mind, its evolution, and its place in the universe. If complex bodies are common in the universe, might complex minds be common as well?


Background Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the main treatment for malaria in endemic countries. Plasmodium falciparum resistance to artemisinins is described as delayed parasite clearance, which is associated with mutations on the parasite K13 propeller gene. Both the mechanisms of action and mechanisms of resistance to artemisinins are poorly understood. Transcriptomic studies can help in improving our understanding of these processes. Here we explore P. falciparum in vivo RNA expression profile after a curative dose of artesunate monotherapy. Methods During a prospective study of the efficacy of artesunate in monotherapy in children aged 1–10 years and presenting uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria in Bougoula-Hameau, Mali, venous blood was collected on PAXgen blood RNA tubes before treatment (H0) and one (H1), two (H2) and three hours (H3) after treatment. RNA was extracted from these respective blood samples and used for microarray experiments with Plasmodium/Anopheles GeneChips and the Affymetrix® platform. Results A total of 23 samples from 6 patients were included in the final analysis after quality control using Affimetrix® and Qlucore® softwares. With a 2-groups comparison of H0/H after treatment, 236 genes were identified as differentially expressed. Overall 42 genes were up-regulated including a knob-associated histidine-rich protein, rifins (pf.12.409.0, pf.13_399.0), stevors (pf.3.184.0), RESA-like proteins with DNAJ domain and thioredoxins. Heat shock protein (Pf.5.258.0), a number of AP2 domain-containing genes (Pf.6.27.0, Pf.11.99.0), an ABC transporter (Pf.12.250.0), genes involved in cell cycle regulation and many exported protein genes with unknown function and membrane proteins genes were among the 194 down-regulated genes. Conclusions Our data support a role for these genes in the in vivo response of P. falciparum to artesunate administration.


Chronic lymphoproliferative disorders sometimes can be difficult to classify. We report 4 cases characterized by large cells with distinct central nucleoli, reminiscent of prolymphocytic leukemia, but shown on further workup to represent mantle cell lymphoma. At initial examination, the patients had generalized lymphadenopathy, splenomegaly, and a leukemic blood picture. The peripheral blood showed many large cells with round to slightly irregular nuclei, single central nucleoli, and a fair amount of pale cytoplasm. The picture was not typical of prolymphocytic leukemia because of the presence of generalized lymphadenopathy and the large size of the circulating abnormal cells. Immunophenotypic study showed that the large lymphoid cells were CD5+ CD23- mature B cells with overexpression of cyclin D1, and cytogenetic study demonstrated the translocation t(11;14)(q13;q32) in 3 patients. Lymph node biopsy confirmed a diagnosis of mantle cell lymphoma, pleomorphic variant, in all 4 patients. This study documents the existence of an unusual leukemic form of mantle cell lymphoma with prominent nucleoli; the clinicopathologic features that distinguish it from other chronic lymphoproliferative disorders are discussed.


Our Western civilization is masculine and dominated by masculine values: cold objectivity, reason, power, efficiency and competition. This means the suppression of other values in the sphere of irrationality and subjectivity: sentiments, emotions, personal relationships. It is no coincidence that women have been rejected from public life and culture and relegated all too often to the home. This situation has given rise to the enormous contrast between the great powers of science and technology and the decline in the quality of life. Men are interested in things and mechanisms, women in people. Men have constructed a world of things in which people suffer, believing themselves manipulated like one more machine. Paul Tournier argues that this is a situation in which women can make a decisive contribution. For a century they have struggled to take their places in civilization. In order to do so however, they have had to adapt to fit a masculine society. They have proved capable of that, but could they not go on from there to cure our civilization of its malaise and introduce what is missing, a sense of the person? This is the question asked by this book. As in Dr Tournier's previous books, it is not raised in a theoretical way but concretely, through his own experiences, in his personal life, in his marriage and his long career as a counsellor during which he has heard so many confidences about feminine discontent.


Abstract. There is significant uncertainty regarding the spatiotemporal distribution of
seasonal snow on glaciers, despite being a fundamental component of glacier
mass balance. To address this knowledge gap, we collected repeat, spatially
extensive high-frequency ground-penetrating radar (GPR) observations on two
glaciers in Alaska during the spring of 5 consecutive years. GPR
measurements showed steep snow water equivalent (SWE) elevation gradients at
both sites; continental Gulkana Glacier's SWE gradient averaged 115 mm 100 m−1 and maritime Wolverine Glacier's gradient averaged
440 mm 100 m−1 (over > 1000 m). We extrapolated GPR point observations
across the glacier surface using terrain parameters derived from digital
elevation models as predictor variables in two statistical models (stepwise
multivariable linear regression and regression trees). Elevation and proxies
for wind redistribution had the greatest explanatory power, and exhibited
relatively time-constant coefficients over the study period. Both statistical
models yielded comparable estimates of glacier-wide average SWE (1 %
average difference at Gulkana, 4 % average difference at Wolverine),
although the spatial distributions produced by the models diverged in
unsampled regions of the glacier, particularly at Wolverine. In total, six
different methods for estimating the glacier-wide winter balance average
agreed within ±11 %. We assessed interannual variability in the
spatial pattern of snow accumulation predicted by the statistical models
using two quantitative metrics. Both glaciers exhibited a high degree of
temporal stability, with ∼85 % of the glacier area
experiencing less than 25 % normalized absolute variability over this
5-year interval. We found SWE at a sparse network (3 stakes per glacier)
of long-term glaciological stake sites to be highly correlated with the
GPR-derived glacier-wide average. We estimate that interannual variability in
the spatial pattern of winter SWE accumulation is only a small component
(4 %–10 % of glacier-wide average) of the total mass balance uncertainty
and thus, our findings support the concept that sparse stake networks
effectively measure interannual variability in winter balance on glaciers,
rather than some temporally varying spatial pattern of snow accumulation.


Aim: To present the results of the research of the analytical characteristics of pectins extracted from sunflower hearts. Materials and Methods: The object of the research is sunflower grades produced in Southern Russia. The research involved standard and modern methods of the physicochemical analysis. Results: The results showed that this raw material can be considered, first of all, as the future pectin industrial source. High pectin concentration in sunflower hearts proved the raw material technological importance for industrial processing. To assess pectin quality, the following analytical characteristics have been determined – polygalacturonic acid content, acetyl and methoxy components, extent of esterification, and complexing ability. Conclusion: High complexing ability of the sunflower pectin and high content of the polygalacturonic component provide for its possible use in the special and healthy food production. For that, sunflower heart pectins are low-esterified. It means that it is practical to use them as detoxicants.


Given a large data matrix, sparsifying, quantizing, and/or performing other entry-wise nonlinear operations can have numerous benefits, ranging from speeding up iterative algorithms for core numerical linear algebra problems to providing nonlinear filters to design state-of-the-art neural network models. Here, we exploit tools from random matrix theory to make precise statements about how the eigenspectrum of a matrix changes under such nonlinear transformations. In particular, we show that very little change occurs in the informative eigenstructure even under drastic sparsification/quantization, and consequently that very little downstream performance loss occurs with very aggressively sparsified or quantized spectral clustering. We illustrate how these results depend on the nonlinearity, we characterize a phase transition beyond which spectral clustering becomes possible, and we show when such nonlinear transformations can introduce spurious non-informative eigenvectors.


In conventional content based image retrieval (CBIR) employing relevance feedback, one implicit assumption is that both pure positive and negative examples are available. However it is not always true in the practical applications of CBIR. In this paper, we address a new problem of image retrieval using several unclean positive examples, named noisy query, in which some mislabeled images or weak relevant images present. The proposed image retrieval scheme measures the image similarity by combining multiple feature distances. Incorporating data cleaning and noise tolerant classifier, a twostep strategy is proposed to handle noisy positive examples. Experiments carried out on a subset of Corel image collection show that the proposed scheme outperforms the competing image retrieval schemes.


We propose a code scratchpad memory (SPM) management technique with demand paging for embedded systems that have no memory management unit. Based on profiling information, a postpass optimizer analyzes and optimizes application binaries in a fully automated process. It classifies the code of the application including libraries into three classes based on a mixed integer linear programming formulation: External code is executed directly from the external memory. Pinned code is loaded into the SPM when the application starts and stays in the SPM. Paged code is loaded into/unloaded from the SPM on demand. We evaluate the proposed technique by running 14 embedded applications both on a cycle-accurate ARM processor simulator and an ARM1136JF-S core. On the simulator, the reference case, a four-way set-associative cache, is compared to a direct-mapped cache and an SPM of comparable die area. On average, we observe an improvement of 12 percent in runtime performance and a 21 percent reduction in energy consumption. On the ARM11 board, the reference case run on the 16-KB four-way set-associative cache is compared to the demand paging solution on the 16-KB SPM, optionally supported by the cache. The measured results show both a runtime performance improvement and a reduction of the energy consumption by 23 percent, on average.


The purpose of this article is to examine lessons learned through the process of a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project that attempted to implement an innovative approach to community research in partnership with a clinical outcomes research project. Principal investigators were convinced that collaboration would be workable and mutually beneficial. When they reached the point where they were entering the community to begin their work, however investigators came to realize the full implications of the divergence of their respective research principles and methods. Approaches that benefited both teams initially brought them to see that neither project would be able to achieve its individual research goals if the two teams continued to operate in tandem. The design that brought these teams together ultimately proved unworkable. The reflective and iterative process of CBPR empowered investigators to recognize and learn from both their success and failures and thus gain better control over their respective projects.


Learning analytics (LA) and lesson observations are two approaches frequently used to study teaching and learning processes. In both cases, in order to extract meaningful data interpretations, there is a need for contextualization. Previous works propose to enrich LA datasets with observation data and to use the learning design as a framework to guide the data gathering and the later analysis. However, the majority of lesson observation tools collect data that is not compliant with LA datasets. Moreover, the connection between the learning design and the data gathered is not straightforward. This study reflects upon our research-based design towards an LA model for context-aware semantically annotated lesson observations that may be integrated in multimodal LA datasets. Six teachers (out of which 2 were also researchers) with previous experience in lesson observation were engaged in a focus group interview and participatory design session that helped us to evaluate the LA model through the conceptual design of Observata (a lesson observation tool that implements our model). The findings show the feasibility and usefulness of the proposal as well as the potential limitations in terms of adoption.


Introduction

People with psychosis and schizophrenia consume a poorer diet than the general population. This impacts negatively on both physical and mental health. Coupled with the effects of medication, weight gain is also probable, affecting body image, self esteem and social functioning. Mental Health Services in the UK have begun to recognise the need for nutritional care. However eliciting behavioural change in service users has been a challenge. To overcome this, this study evaluates the efficacy of a unique psychological intervention for healthy eating and weight management.

Methods

Three groups of service users were compared: those receiving the Psycho-Nutritional Intervention (PNI), standard nutritional care (treatment as usual) and a control group. Outcome measures included Nutritional Knowledge, Readiness to Change, Health Locus of Control, Decisional balance items and the Body Weight, Image and Self Esteem (B-WISE) measure. Data were collected at baseline (Time 1), one month (Time 2) and three months (Time 3).

Results

Although the PNI group did not improve outcomes to a greater extent than the other two groups, positive change over time was observed in terms of mean scores. A significant finding was that the PNI group elicited both the most positive progression in terms of readiness to change, but also the most negative regression, explaining in part, the lack of significant results, as expected.

Conclusions

Although effective for some, the use of psychological interventions that aim to empower and enhance internal control, may be anti-therapeutic if they elicit a negative effect on self-esteem because an individual still feels unable to change. The common assumption is that interventions will elicit either a neutral or positive effect. However this may not be the case. Accordingly, it is important to not only tailor the content of interventions, but also to the process of deciding who receives them.


Optical tweezers have found widespread application in many fields, from physics to biology. Here, we explain in detail how optical forces and torques can be described within the geometrical optics approximation, and we show that this approximation provides reliable results in agreement with experiments for particles whose characteristic dimensions are larger than the wavelength of the trapping light. Furthermore, we provide an object-oriented software package implemented in MATLAB for the calculation of optical forces and torques in the geometrical optics regime: Optical Tweezers in Geometrical Optics (OTGO). We provide all source codes for OTGO as well as documentation and code examples—e.g., standard optical tweezers, optical tweezers with elongated particles, the windmill effect, and Kramers transitions between two optical traps—necessary to enable users to effectively employ it in their research.


Granger causality is a widely-used criterion for analyzing interactions in large-scale networks. As most physical interactions are inherently nonlinear, we consider the problem of inferring the existence of pairwise Granger causality between nonlinearly interacting stochastic processes from their time series measurements. Our proposed approach relies on modeling the embedded nonlinearities in the measurements using a component-wise time series prediction model based on Statistical Recurrent Units (SRUs). We make a case that the network topology of Granger causal relations is directly inferrable from a structured sparse estimate of the internal parameters of the SRU networks trained to predict the processes' time series measurements. We propose a variant of SRU, called economy-SRU, which, by design has considerably fewer trainable parameters, and therefore less prone to overfitting. The economy-SRU computes a low-dimensional sketch of its high-dimensional hidden state in the form of random projections to generate the feedback for its recurrent processing. Additionally, the internal weight parameters of the economy-SRU are strategically regularized in a group-wise manner to facilitate the proposed network in extracting meaningful predictive features that are highly time-localized to mimic real-world causal events. Extensive experiments are carried out to demonstrate that the proposed economy-SRU based time series prediction model outperforms the MLP, LSTM and attention-gated CNN-based time series models considered previously for inferring Granger causality.


In this paper, we report the formation of sharp Fano resonance in planar metamaterial array with perturbed periodicity. Rigorous sheet impedance theory is given to analyze the electric-magnetic and magnetic-magnetic coupling effects. It is found that periodicity perturbation can provide a general approach for Fano resonance with ultra-strong local field enhancement.


A human being is in his essence a being of relationships, a being of dialogue, which is why everyone, consciously or subconsciously, unstoppably longs for a relationship with a fellow human being and God. We therefore claim that a relationship contains sacred dimensions which carry also an unstoppable longing for salvation. In this article we demonstrate this salvational dimension of human experience in psychoanalytic setting, namely in relational family therapy.


Predatory lenders penetrate communities and, like polluters, leave distressed properties and desperate people in their wakes. The task of cleaning up falls to cities, yet predatory lending reduces the resources available for this clean up. Declining property values resulting from predatory lending mean reduced tax revenues just as empty buildings lead to increased demand for fire and police protection. City budgets are further strained as victims of predatory lending turn to cities for relief programs and protection from abusive lenders. In the language of economics, predatory lending imposes negative externalities on cities. Lawyers across the country are pursuing claims on behalf of victims of predatory lending. Legislators are passing new laws to extend protection to borrowers and researchers are exploring the causes and cures for predatory lending. Yet, little attention has been paid to the plight of cities. In this article, I analyze whether cities have standing to recover damages for the externalities that predatory lenders impose on them and whether cities have standing as parens patriae to pursue claims against predatory lenders. The paper begins with a description of the impact predatory lending has on municipalities and then turns to the law governing municipal standing to sue predatory lenders. I also examine particular claims cities could bring against predatory lenders and the bases for city standing to bring these claims. My conclusion is that broad grants of standing to cities to pursue claims against predatory lenders are necessary to enable cities to protect residents from lender wrongdoing, to recover damages for the injuries predatory lenders impose on cities, and to force abusive lenders to internalize the externalities of their lending practices.


The gene virilizer (vir) is needed for dosage compensation and sex determination in females and for an unknown vital function in both sexes. In genetic mosaics, XX somatic cells mutant for vir differentiate male structures. One allele, vir2f, is lethal for XX, but not for XY animals. This female-specific lethality can be rescued by constitutive expression of Sxl or by mutations in msl (male-specific lethal) genes. Rescued animals develop as strongly masculinized intersexes or pseudomales. They have male-specifically spliced mRNA of tra, and when rescued by msl, also of Sxl. Our data indicate that vir is a positive regulator of female-specific splicing of Sxl and of tra pre-mRNA.


The Civil War is often portrayed as the most brutal war in America's history, a premonition of 20th-century slaughter and carnage. In challenging this view, Mark E. Neely, Jr., considers the war's destructiveness in a comparative context, revealing the sense of limits that guided the conduct of American soldiers and statesmen.Neely begins by contrasting Civil War behaviour with U.S. soldiers' experiences in the Mexican War of 1846. He examines Price's Raid in Missouri for evidence of deterioration in the restraints imposed by the customs of war; and in a brilliant analysis of Philip Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley campaign, he shows that the actions of U.S. cavalrymen were selective and controlled. The Mexican war of the 1860s between French imperial forces and republicans provided a new yardstick for brutality: Emperor Maximilian's infamous Black Decree threatened captured enemies with execution. Civil War battles, however, paled in comparison with the unrestrained warfare waged against the Plains Indians. Racial beliefs, Neely shows, were a major determinant of wartime behaviour.Destructive rhetoric was rampant in the congressional debate over the resolution to avenge the treatment of Union captives at Andersonville by deliberately starving and freezing to death Confederate prisoners of war. Nevertheless, to gauge the events of the war by the ferocity of its language of political hatred is a mistake, Neely argues. The modern overemphasis on violence in Civil War literature has led many scholars to go too far in drawing close analogies with the 20th century's "total war" and the grim guerrilla struggles of Vietnam.


Why are your smartest and most successful employees often the worst learners? Likely, they haven't had the opportunities for introspection that failure affords. So when they do fail, instead of critically examining their own behavior, they cast blame outward--on anyone or anything they can. In Teaching Smart People How to Learn, Chris Argyris sheds light on the forces that prevent highly skilled employees for learning from mistakes and offers suggestions for helping talented employees develop more productive responses. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice-many of which still speak to and influence us today. The HBR Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each volume contains a groundbreaking idea that has shaped best practices and inspired countless managers around the world-and will change how you think about the business world today.


Purpose Although burnout is associated with erosion of professionalism and serious personal consequences, whether positive mental health can enhance professionalism and how it shapes personal experience remain poorly understood. The study simultaneously explores the relationship between positive mental health and burnout with professionalism and personal experience. Method The authors surveyed 4,400 medical students at seven U.S. medical schools in 2009 to assess mental health (categorized as languishing, moderate, and flourishing) and burnout. Additional items explored professional behaviors, beliefs, suicidal ideation, and serious thoughts of dropping out. Results A total of 2,682/4,400 (61%) responded. Prevalence of suicidal ideation (55/114 [48.2%], 281/1,128 [24.9%], and 127/1,409 [9.1%]) and serious thoughts of dropping out (15/114 [13.2%], 30/1,128 [2.7%], and 14/1,409 [1.0%]) decreased as mental health improved from languishing, moderate, and flourishing, respectively (all P < .0001); this relationship between personal experience and mental health persisted independent of burnout (all P < .001). As mental health improved, the prevalence of unprofessional behaviors (i.e., cheating and dishonest behaviors) also declined, whereas students' altruistic beliefs regarding physicians' responsibility toward society improved. For example, 33/113 (29.2%), 426/1,120 (38.0%), and 718/1,391 (51.6%) of students with languishing, moderate, and flourishing mental health endorsed all five altruistic professional beliefs (P < .0001). The relationship between professional beliefs and mental health persisted among students with burnout, whereas fewer relationships were found among students without burnout. Conclusions Findings suggest that positive mental health attenuates some adverse consequences of burnout. Medical student wellness programs should aspire to prevent burnout and promote mental health.


We have analyzed the propagation properties of the field produced by circular arrays of coherent optical sources, obtaining the conditions for the generation of good-quality global beams. Such conditions can be obtained by the use of resonators based on the Talbot effect. This appears to be a practical method for the construction of simple, low-cost resonators for compact diffusion-cooled high-power lasers with annular format. Low-loss annular Talbot cavity configurations have also been studied.


Integrally stitched composite structures have attracted significant interest for enhancing the structural integrity of aircraft. One recently developed stitched composite technology is the Pultruded Rod Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure (PRSEUS) concept. While PRSEUS structures offer a high structural performanceto- weight ratio over traditional stiffened panels and sandwich panels, their thermal response is not well understood. The through-thickness stitching of PRSEUS panels provides a barrier to delamination initiation and growth. Therefore, the thermal and mechanical damage in the PRSEUS panel may be profoundly different than for traditional (unstitched) laminated structures. In this study, nonlinear transient coupled thermal-electrical finite element (FE) analyses and subsequent heat transfer analyses were performed to characterize the thermal response of a PRSEUS panel subjected to a simulated transient high electrical current waveform consistent with lightning strikes. Temperature dependent-material properties of each structural sub-component (i.e., foam core, rod, stringer, frames, and exterior skin) were employed to predict the electrical current and temperature distributions in the PRSEUS panel. Several special-purpose user subroutines were developed i) to simulate the standard lightning current waveform, ii) to predict the temperature distribution associated with high electrical currents, and iii) to update material properties based on temperature-time history. The objective of this study is to characterize the potential thermal damage in a PRSEUS panel exposed to simulated high current waveforms as well as to probe the effect of stitching on the through-the-thickness electrical and heat conduction.


Under the property and personhood theory the projection by individuals of their personhood into the physical world gives rise to property claims over tangible objects and natural resources. However, the property and personhood theory is generally used as a justification for private property, and it is not clear whether a community personhood can be extended into the physical world, giving rise to communal claims over natural resources, such as land. The property and personhood theory distinguishes between two types of proprietary claim: fungible and personal. Fungible property refers to property that is held purely instrumentally, whereas personal property is property that is bound up with the holder, and should be protected against competing fungible claims. This two-part article argues that community claims to property can be justified by the property and personhood theory, and that the law should recognize these claims, although it fails to do so. The personal claim should establish a community's entitlement to a natural resource and prevail over the fungible claim of a private landowner. However, current practice does not prioritise the community claim, because the claim is not universally understood. The dominant voice in property narrative is not that of a cohesive and mutual self-interest group, but rather the self-interested individual. Recent legislative amendments have purported to implement the policy of empowering local communities, in particular by increasing community participation in deciding on the use and allocation of resources. However, these policies have proved little more than a Trojan Horse that have perpetuated the favouring of the private property holder over a community claim.


In this paper, the dealloying of ternary Mg66Cu25.5Sn8.5, Mg67Cu18Sn15 and Mg66Cu10.2Sn23.8 alloys was investigated using 1 wt% tartaric acid (TA) and 5 wt% hydrochloric acid (HCl). The formation of nanoporous Cu–Sn alloys or composites was probed using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and nanobeam-energy dispersive spectroscopy (NB-EDS). The results showed that the structure and phase compositions of the as-dealloyed products depended on the compositions of the precursors and dealloying electrolytes. Ultrafine nanoporous Cu3Sn and Cu6Sn5 alloys could be obtained from dealloying of Mg66Cu25.5Sn8.5 and Mg67Cu18Sn15 precursors in 1 wt% TA, respectively. The dealloying of the Mg66Cu10.2Sn23.8 alloy in 1 wt% TA induced the formation of nanoporous Cu6Sn5/Sn composites. However, using 5 wt% HCl as the dealloying electrolyte led to the partial dissolution of Sn, resulting in the formation of nanoporous Cu41Sn11 and Cu6Sn5 from Mg66Cu25.5Sn8.5 and Mg66Cu10.2Sn23.8 alloys, respectively. The ligaments of the nanoporous structure after dealloying in 5 wt% HCl were also coarser due to the fast diffusion of Cu and Sn with the existence of Cl−. The dealloying mechanisms of the Mg–Cu–Sn alloys were discussed based on the experimental results. The present study provides a facile dealloying approach to fabricate nanoporous Cu–Sn intermetallic alloys via the design of precursors and the selection of dealloying electrolytes.


Impingement cooling is widely used in the cooling of turbine airfoils at critical regions where high heat transfer rates are required due to the large local convection coefficients that can be achieved. An accurate determination of local heat transfer distributions, is therefore, essential for reliable calculations of blade metal temperatures. In modern cast-in turbine airfoils, e.g. Lutum et al. [1], narrow impingement cooling channels can be formed, where the coolant is practically injected within the wall rather than the hollow of the airfoil, as shown in Figure 1. Narrow impingement channels consist of single or double rows of several cooling jets generating a relatively low amount of crossflow while the small wall thickness of a typical airfoil ( 2mm) dictates significant heat transfer in all the interior surfaces of the cavity. A turbine airfoil can include a plurality of such small impingement configurations in the spanwise direction ensuring homogenous distribution of the material temperature. Contrary to the large amount of literature sources for multi-array impingement cooling systems, e.g. a review can be found in Weigand and Spring [2], little amount of research focused on narrow impingement channels with limited information for the sidewalls and impingement plate. A few studies can be found in Gillespie et al. [3], Chambers et al. [4], Ricklick et al. [5], Lamont et al. [6] and Terzis et al. [7]. This paper describes the overall experimental procedure and the heat transfer distributions for all the interior walls of a narrow impingement channel consisting of a single row of five inline jets. Heat transfer coefficients are evaluated with the transient liquid crystal technique considering also thermocouple thermal inertia effects.