A Joint WHO/WFP/UNICEF/SCN Statement on Community-Based Management of Severe Acute Malnutrition was released on 7 June. Severe acute malnutrition remains a major killer of children under five years of age. Until recently, treatment has been restricted to facility-based approaches, greatly limiting its coverage and impact. New evidence suggests, however, that large numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated in their communities without being admitted to a health facility or a therapeutic feeding centre. The community-based approach involves timely detection of severe acute malnutrition in the community and provision of treatment for those without medical complications with ready-to-use therapeutic foods or other nutrient-dense foods at home. If properly combined with a facility-based approach for those malnourished children with medical complications and implemented on a large scale, community-based management of severe acute malnutrition could prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. The statement can be downloaded from: www.who.int/nutrition/topics/ statement_commbased_malnutrition/en/index.html. World Cancer Research Fund International (WCRF International)


Differences in perception are central to both the practice and research in education. It is thus necessary for educational practitioners to understand the reason for differences in perception in order to practice and do authentic research. It is therefore the aim of this article to touch on the complex nature of the perceptual process and influencing factors as well as provide three examples of educational phenomena in order to highlight differences in interpretation. In conclusion, a few practical guidelines will be provided in order to understand different modes of thinking and behaviour.


An important goal of inductive learning is to generate accurate and compact classifiers from data. In a typical inductive learning scenario, instances in a data set are simply represented as ordered tuples of attribute values. In our research, we explore three methodologies to improve the accuracy and compactness of the classifiers: abstraction, aggregation, and recursion.
Firstly, abstraction is aimed at the design and analysis of algorithms that generate and deal with taxonomies for the construction of compact and robust classifiers. In many applications of the data-driven knowledge discovery process, taxonomies have been shown to be useful in constructing compact, robust, and comprehensible classifiers. However, in many application domains, human-designed taxonomies are unavailable. We introduce algorithms for automated construction of taxonomies inductively from both structured (such as UCI Repository) and unstructured (such as text and biological sequences) data. We introduce AVT-Learner, an algorithm for automated construction of attribute value taxonomies (AVT) from data, and Word Taxonomy Learner (WTL), an algorithm for automated construction of word taxonomy from text and sequence data. We describe experiments on the UCI data sets and compare the performance of AVT-NBL (an AVT-guided Naive Bayes Learner) with that of the standard Naive Bayes Learner (NBL). Our results show that the AVTs generated by AVT-Learner are compeitive with human-generated AVTs (in cases where such AVTs are available). AVT-NBL using AVTs generated by AVT-Learner achieves classification accuracies that are comparable to or higher than those obtained by NBL; and the resulting classifiers are significantly more compact than those generated by NBL. Similarly, our experimental results of WTL and WTNBL on protein localization sequences and Reuters newswire text categorization data sets show that the proposed algorithms can generate Naive Bayes classifiers that are more compact and often more accurate than those produced by standard Naive Bayes learner for the Multinomial Model.
Secondly, we apply aggregation to construct features as a multiset of values for the intrusion detection task. For this task, we propose a bag of system calls representation for system call traces and describe misuse and anomaly detection results on the University of New Mexico (UNM) and MIT Lincoln Lab (MIT LL) system call sequences with the proposed representation. With the feature representation as input, we compare the performance of several machine learning techniques for misuse detection and show experimental results on anomaly detection. The results show that standard machine learning and clustering techniques using the simple bag of system calls representation based on the system call traces generated by the operating system's kernel is effective and often performs better than approaches that use foreign contiguous sequences in detecting intrusive behaviors of compromised processes.
Finally, we construct a set of classifiers by recursive application of the Naive Bayes learning algorithms. Naive Bayes (NB) classifier relies on the assumption that the instances in each class can be described by a single generative model. This assumption can be restrictive in many real world classification tasks. We describe recursive Naive Bayes learner (RNBL), which relaxes this assumption by constructing a tree of Naive Bayes classifiers for sequence classification, where each individual NB classifier in the tree is based on an event model (one model for each class at each node in the tree). In our experiments on protein sequences, Reuters newswire documents and UC-Irvine benchmark data sets, we observe that RNBL substantially outperforms NB classifier. Furthermore, our experiments on the protein sequences and the text documents show that RNBL outperforms C4.5 decision tree learner (using tests on sequence composition statistics as the splitting criterion) and yields accuracies that are comparable to those of support vector machines (SVM) using similar information.


In the current era of online interactions, both positive and negative experiences are abundant on the Web. As in real life, negative experiences can have a serious impact on youngsters. Recent studies have reported cybervictimization rates among teenagers that vary between 20% and 40%. In this paper, we focus on cyberbullying as a particular form of cybervictimization and explore its automatic detection and fine-grained classification. Data containing cyberbullying was collected from the social networking site Ask.fm. We developed and applied a new scheme for cyberbullying annotation, which describes the presence and severity of cyberbullying, a post author's role (harasser, victim or bystander) and a number of fine-grained categories related to cyberbullying, such as insults and threats. We present experimental results on the automatic detection of cyberbullying and explore the feasibility of detecting the more fine-grained cyberbullying categories in online posts. For the first task, an F-score of 55.39% is obtained. We observe that the detection of the fine-grained categories (e.g. threats) is more challenging, presumably due to data sparsity, and because they are often expressed in a subtle and implicit way.


Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world's population. World rice production nearly doubled since the 1960s to the 1980s, mainly due to the green revolution. A major issue with the traditional system of paddy production, particularly green revolution technology is input intensive and favors cash rich farmers. Increasing prices of agricultural inputs prevent poor farmers from completely adopting modern production technologies. Water demand by rice farmers were also continue increasing under such circumstances, any strategy that could produce higher rice yields with less water and less expenditure is the need of the day. Under such circumstances the system of rice intensification (SRI) method was suitable and followed by the farmers. System of rice intensification is a method for increasing the productivity of rice cultivation while at the same time reducing inputs, including seeds and fertilizers, and water requirements. The present study was conducted in Ormanjhi block of Ranchi district, to study the socio-economic profile of paddy growers, perception and constraints confronted by paddy growers under SRI method of paddy cultivation. Study revealed that the major constraints in SRI production were lack of awareness, scarcity of skilled labour, nursery management, and drudgery in cono-weeder uses. The major perception regarding SRI method of paddy cultivation were low demand of water, higher yield, remuneration from government, low seed requirement, low costs of input uses.


Increases of temperature in the range from 8 to 18°C in vivo, significantly enhanced the dry weights of lateral rhizomes, roots and shoots. At the higher temperatures dry weight production was often seen to decrease. Decreases in irradiance from 100 to 50 per cent in vivo, produced significant decreases in the dry weights of lateral rhizomes, roots and shoots. In contrast, the numbers of lateral rhizomes, tubers and shoots were largely unaffected by temperature and irradiance treatments. Day length treatments of 8 to 16 hours light in a 24 hour period in vivo produced few significant changes in either the dry weights or numbers of plant parts produced. However, day length had a strong influence over the time of flowering. For maximum rhizome production a temperature of between 13 and 18°C, a high irradiance and a short day length were required.

Increases of temperature in the range 8 to 18°C in vitro, caused significant increases in the number of lateral rhizomes and shoots produced. At the highest temperature the numbers produced often decreased. The number of roots produced was unaffected by temperature. Decreases in irradiance from 100 to 25 per cent and increases in day length from 8 to 20 hours light in a 24 hour period, produced no significant changes in the number of lateral rhizomes, roots or shoots produced in vitro. Low irradiance, however, caused etiolation of the shoots. For a good multiplication rate the requirements for the culture environment were a temperature of 15°C, an irradiance of 5 Win- 2 with a day length of 8 hours of light in a 24 hour period. The presence or absence of tubers and damage suffered by `splits' prior to planting were found to be important factors in the establishment of plants in vivo.

Subculture of rhizome explants without aerial shoot or rhizome apices and of rhizome explants divided into single internodes with or without aerial shoots, enhanced the rhizome multiplication rate. Addition of the plant growth regulators triiodobenzoic acid, thidiazuron, α-naphthaleneacetic acid, gibberellic acid and paclobutrazol to culture media, with and without BAP, caused no significant changes in the numbers of lateral rhizomes, shoots or roots produced. However, paclobutrazol produced changes in explant morphology, i.e. shoot size was reduced and the diameter of roots was increased.


The United Nations System Influenza Coordinator (UNSIC) and the World Bank agreed to produce this a fourth global progress report on responses to avian influenza and state of pandemic readiness in response to requests from participants at the New Delhi international ministerial conference on avian and pandemic influenza which took place during December 2007. The report focuses on progress with responses to avian influenza and with pandemic preparedness between June 2007 and June 2008. Where data allow, the report looks back over the last three years. It also: i) describes international financial assistance provided to date; ii) assesses national capacities to respond to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and prepare for the next influenza pandemic; iii) analyzes implications of this progress for animal and human health; and iv) recommends some key next steps. Both the full report and this synopsis are being made available to delegates at the international ministerial conference on avian and pandemic influenza in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt in October 2008.


DOI : 10.7508/rmm.2015.03.002 Abstract Background: Breast cancer is the most common female malignancy and the leading cause of cancer mortality in women worldwide. The human epidermal growth factor receptor2 (HER2) is a transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptor that is usually overexpressed in human breast cancers. Stable cell lines heterogeneously overexpressing HER2 are highly required as in vitro models for breast cancer research. The aim of this study was to establish a stable cell line overexpressing HER2. Materials and Methods: CHO Cells were transfected with linearized pCVN/HER2 plasmid and selected for the recombinant cells with G418 antibiotic. Expression of HER2 in the transfected cells was analyzed using western blotting and immunofluorescence. Results: We found that the recombinant cells stably expressed high levels of HER2 proteins that were mostly concentrated on the cell membrane. Conclusions: The cell line established here provides a useful in vitro model for breast cancer research and any HER-related studies.


We report a continuous-wave (cw) source of tunable radiation across 333-345 nm in the ultraviolet (UV) using bismuth triborate, BiB₃O₆ (BIBO) as the nonlinear gain material. The source is based on internal sum-frequency-generation (SFG) in a cw singly-resonant optical parametric oscillator (OPO) pumped at 532 nm. The compact tunable source employs a 30-mm-long MgO:sPPLT crystal as the OPO gain medium and a 5-mm-long BIBO crystal for intracavity SFG of the signal and pump, providing up to 21.6 mW of UV power at 339.7 nm, with >15 mW over 64% of the SFG tuning range. The cw OPO is also tunable across 1158-1312 nm in the idler, delivering as much as 1.7 W at 1247 nm, with >1W over 65% of the tuning range. The UV output at maximum power exhibits passive power stability better than 3.4% rms and frequency stability of 193 GHz over more than one minute.


In a population and family study we have examined the relationship between HLA types, classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), and variants of 21 hydroxylase (21 OH) deficiency detected by increased blood levels of 17 hydroxyprogesterone (17 PO) in response to ACTH after overnight suppression with dexamethasone ('short Synacthen test'). In a non-CAH population, 7.7% of subjects were found to have raised 17 PO response suggesting reduced activity of 21 OH. Such subjects with raised 17 PO levels were designated simply as type 2 responders because the relationship with genotype was unknown. Post-ACTH levels of 17 PO were significantly greater in type 2 responders than in obligate carriers of CAH. A total of 2.5% of the population studied also had raised progesterone (PO) levels in the Synacthen test. HLA-A28 and B14 (in linkage disequilibrium) were significantly increased in frequency and HLA-B12 decreased in the type 2 responders. HLA-Bw47, which is known to be associated with CAH, was found only among obligate carriers of classical CAH. Because type 2 response and classical CAH are linked to HLA but are associated with different antigens, it is likely that they are determined by two (or more) alleles.


Wesler provides an impressive and definitive compilation of more than 70 years of archaeological excavations at one of the most important archaeological sites in Kentucky.The Wickliffe Mounds site is located on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in Ballard County, Kentucky, about three miles south of the mouth of the Ohio River. Around A.D. 1100, Mississippian people--farmers and traders with a culture closely related to the historic cultures of the Southeast (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and others) created a settlement there on which they lived for approximately 250 years before moving on.In 1930 road construction cut a channel through the site, revealing archaeological deposits and bringing the area to the attention of Fain King, a local lumberman and entrepreneur. King bought the site in hopes of turning it into an attraction for the education and entertainment of the public, and not incidentally for his own profit. For more than 50 years the area was subjected to excavations ranging from looting to professional research efforts. In 1983, the site was finally turned over to Murray State University to be developed into an academic facility dedicated to research, student training, public education, and preservation of the site and its collections. Fortunately, the Wickliffe collections include all the early excavation records as well as more than 85,000 artifacts, 90% of which had been catalogued. Between 1984 and 1996 excavations were conducted specifically to affirm questionable data and/or fill in gaps in the Wickliffe archaeological record.In this volume, Wesler and his colleagues have compiled data from almost seven decades of excavations at Wickliffe Mounds, providing the first comprehensive study of this important site. The paperback version of the book is accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains contributions from a wide range of archaeological specialists and includes archaeological data, site maps, database files, plats of excavations, artifact descriptions, and photographs, compiling in one place the entire archaeological record for this very important eastern North American site."


A knowledge-based expert system model working on the basis of a geographical information system (GIS) was applied to predict fishing ground spots in the coastal waters of South and Central Sulawesi. The model is designed by the integration of multisource data to answer 'what?', 'where?', and 'why?' questions of the fishing ground location. Despite the fact that GIS is a powerful tool for dealing with the first two questions, GIS is inferior for answering the 'why?' question in geo-studies. One of the possible ways of overcoming the inferiority of GIS for answering the 'why?' question of geo-studies is by integrating an expert system in a GIS to form a knowledge-based expert system GIS model. In this study, we used a series of sea surface temperature (SST) satellite data, sea surface chlorophyll-a (SSC) and turbidity derived from MODIS Aqua in the period 2003–2005 as input data, to understand the temporal and seasonal variability of the marine environment of the study area, and identified the oceanographic phenomena, i.e. upwelling, front or eddy. A spatial configuration map of the predicted fishing ground spots was then developed and integrated using a knowledge-based expert system GIS model generated by the Erdas Macro Language (EML) of Erdas Imagine 9.0 software. To verify this result, a series of in situ fishing ground spot data of the study area were collected for similar periods, and they were then analysed using a simple statistical method. The result shows that the predicted fishing ground spots generated by the knowledge-based expert system GIS model corresponded well with in situ data with a high accuracy level of 85%. This result has demonstrated that the knowledge-based expert system GIS model can be applied to predict, localize and determine fishing ground spots in which their accuracy level will be determined by the completeness of spatial knowledge of the domain expertise and the sophistication level of the programming utilities being used.


This book offers an intriguing ac'co'unt of the co"mple"x and often contradictory relations between music and society in Freetown's past and present. Blending anthropological thought with ethnographic and historical research, it explores the conjunctures of music practices and social affiliations and the diverse patterns of social dis/connections that music helps to shape, to (re)create, and to defy in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown. The first half of the book traces back the changing social relationships and the concurrent changes in the city's music life from the first days of the colony in the late 18th century up to the turbulent and thriving music scenes in the first decade of the 21st century. Grounded in this comprehensive historiography of Freetown's socio-musical palimpsest, the second half of the book puts forth a detailed ethnography of social dynamics in the realms of music, calibrating contemporary Freetown's social polyphony with its musical counterpart.


The SARS-CoV-2 lambda variant (lineage C.37) was designated by the World Health Organization as a variant of interest and is currently increasing in prevalence in South American and other countries. The lambda spike protein contains novel mutations within the receptor binding domain (L452Q and F490S) that may contribute to its increased transmissibility and could result in susceptibility to re-infection or a reduction in protection provided by current vaccines. In this study, the infectivity and susceptibility of viruses with the lambda variant spike protein to neutralization by convalescent sera and vaccine-elicited antibodies was tested. Virus with the lambda spike had higher infectivity and was neutralized by convalescent sera and vaccine-elicited antibodies with a relatively minor 2.3-3.3-fold decrease in titer on average. The virus was neutralized by the Regeneron therapeutic monoclonal antibody cocktail with no loss of titer. The results suggest that vaccines in current use will remain protective against the lambda variant and that monoclonal antibody therapy will remain effective.


The new EU Succession Regulation has caused a series of controversies. Doubts are linked, inter alia, to the application, as a result of the Regulation, of national laws, which in many places differ from each other. One such area is statutory inheritance. Diverging national rules may result in unsatisfactory consequences of the application of the Regulation. The paper presents this area and looks for a solution that could be applied in the future. According to the author, such a solution is necessary and will allow further integration of the EU succession law.


Previous research has demonstrated that in a single IP-over-optical burst switched WDM (OBSWDM) node, higher-priority bursts can be successfully isolated from lower-priority bursts according to a certain user-defined isolation degree. This is achieved by allocating longer offset times (i.e., the time between the arrival of the control packet and the burst) to higher-priority bursts where the longer the offset time, the higher the degree of isolation. However, this creates a catch-22 situation in which quality of service (QoS) is achieved at the expense of a serious degradation in system performance. We present what we believe is a novel dual control-packet OBS system that aims to reduce the loss probability of the single control-packet OBS system owing to priority definitions. The dual control-packet scheme maintains the same QoS isolation degree as the single control-packet scheme but with a much reduced drop probability for lower-priority packets. Under 75% loading conditions, the drop probability for low-priority packets in the dual control QoS scheme ranges from 10 to 5 times lower compared with the single control-packet scheme depending on the situation and the presence of fiber delay lines (FDLs). The dual control-packet system is also shown to exhibit a smaller complexity measure compared with the single control-packet system for moderate loading conditions.


Deep seismic refraction data were gathered along the East Greenland rifted margin north of the Jan Mayen Fracture Zone in 2003 in the framework of the EUROMARGINS project. Investigations of the deep structure of the continental margin, and comparison with the conjugate margin off Norway, provide key constraints on margin's formation and structural evolution during and after Late Cretaceous - Early Tertiary rifting and continental break-up.Most of the four acquired transects were located between 72°N and 76°N on the prolongation of fjord profiles acquired during earlier investigations. In the Godthab Gulf and the Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord, forward travel-time modelling of ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) data established regional velocity models of the continental margins and the transition to oceanic crust. Both profiles show a continental basement high partially overlain by Mesozoic sediments, and total crustal thicknesses of 29 33 km. The eastward edge of the basement high correlates clearly with a positive free-air gravity anomaly. A 3 km thick sedimentary basin, with velocities of 2.0 2.4 km/s in the upper layer due to glacial compaction, extends for over 120 km across the East Greenland shelf along the Godthab Gulf profile. The onset of thin (6.5 km) crystalline oceanic crust is marked by the first clear visible magnetic spreading anomaly C22.A 3 4 km thick layer of glacially compacted sediments extends for almost 150 km along the Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord profile. The onset of thin (5.5 km) oceanic crust coincides with the clear anomaly C21 east of the continental slope.Along both profiles, a wide continent-ocean transition zone appears with lateral and vertical velocity variations. Furthermore, both profiles show a lower crustal body with p-wave velocities of 7.1 7.4 km/s which is interpretated as underplated magmatic material. It extends across distanceses of 180 km to 210 km, respectively. Wide angle reflections show a well constrained Moho as well as an intermittent top reflector (T) of the high velocity body. The southern profile shows marked relief of both the Moho and the T-reflector and the lower crustal body shows variations in its thickness of up to 15 km. The Moho boundary along the northern profile shows much less relief. The thickness of the lower crustal body varies by up to 19 km. From earlier investigations, a southward decrease in the amount of underplated material at the COT is observable; near Kong Oscar Fjord the underplating is thinner than in our profiles, and near Scoresby Sund no underplating was identified. The existence of voluminous underplating is direct evidence of rift-related magmatism that wasnt extruded like the adjacent flood basalts. Compared to the conjugate Voring Margin off Norway, differences in the crustal thickness and degree of magmatic underplating are evidence for different rift formation processes.


Each year, approximately 125,000 individuals in the United States sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) from which they are expected to have life-long disability (Selassie et al., 2008). Social communication deficits are common (Coelho, 1995) in individuals with TBI, and contribute to negative social outcomes (Galski, Tompkins, & Johnston, 1998; Struchen et al., 2008). Though social communication deficits after TBI are well characterized (Coelho, 1995), the underlying neurpsychological mechanisms of these deficits remain unclear. One neuropsychological deficit that has been linked to social communication impairments in the TBI literature is executive dysfunction (Channon & Watts, 2003; Coelho, Liles, & Duffy, 1995; Douglas, 2010), yet it is unclear whether this relationship is correlational (e.g., brain injury affects both social communication and executive functioning) or causal (e.g. executive dysfunction causes poor social communication). To address this knowledge gap, the aim of this study was to characterize the relationship of executive dysfunction to social communication by manipulating the executive function (EF) demands of a discourse task and investigating the effects of this manipulation on discourse performance. Participants were women with and without TBI. Women were chosen for this investigation because they are frequently under-represented in TBI research, in part to their lower risk for TBI (Faul, Xu, Wald, & Coronado) and also because there is evidence of sex-based differences in social communication outcomes following TBI (Dahlberg et al., 2006; Turkstra). The study focused on one aspect of discourse performance that might be affected by EF demand, discourse fluency.


Many traditional AI algorithms fail to scale as the size of state space increases exponentially with the number of features. One way to reduce computation in such scenarios is to reduce the problem size by grouping symmetric states together and then running the algorithm on the reduced problem. The focus of this work is to exploit symmetry in problems of sequential decision making and probabilistic inference. Our recent work- ASAPUCT defines new State-Action Pair (SAP) symmetries in Markov Decision Processes. We also apply these SAP symmetries in Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) framework. In probabilistic inference, we expand the notion of unconditional symmetries to contextual symmetries and apply them in Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. In future, we plan to explore interesting links in symmetry exploitation in different problems and aim to develop a generic symmetry based framework.


The purpose of this thesis is to develop new methods for automatic transcription of melody and harmonic parts of real-life music signal. Music transcription is here defined as an act of analyzing a piece of music signal and writing down the parameter representations, which indicate the pitch, onset time and duration of each pitch, loudness and instrument applied in the analyzed music signal. The proposed algorithms and methods aim at resolving two key sub-problems in automatic music transcription: music onset detection and polyphonic pitch estimation. There are three original contributions in this thesis. The first is an original frequency-dependent time-frequency analysis tool called the Resonator Time-Frequency Image (RTFI). By simply defining a parameterized function mapping frequency to the exponent decay factor of the complex resonator filter bank, the RTFI can easily and flexibly implement the time-frequency analysis with different time-frequency resolutions such as ear-like (similar to human ear frequency analyzer), constant-Q or uniform (evenly-spaced) time-frequency resolutions. The corresponding multi-resolution fast implementation of RTFI has also been developed. The second original contribution consists of two new music onset detection algorithms: Energy-based detection algorithm and Pitch-based detection algorithm. The Energy-based detection algorithm performs well on the detection of hard onsets. The Pitch-based detection algorithm is the first one, which successfully exploits the pitch change clue for the onset detection in real polyphonic music, and achieves a much better performance than the other existing detection algorithms for the detection of soft onsets. The third contribution is the development of two new polyphonic pitch estimation methods. They are based on the RTFI analysis. The first proposed estimation method mainly makes best of the harmonic relation and spectral smoothing principle, consequently achieves an excellent performance on the real polyphonic music signals. The second proposed polyphonic pitch estimation method is based on the combination of signal processing and machine learning. The basic idea behind this method is to transform the polyphonic pitch estimation as a pattern recognition problem. The proposed estimation method is mainly composed by a signal processing block followed by a learning machine. Multi-resolution fast RTFI analysis is used as a signal processing component, and support vector machine (SVM) is selected as learning machine. The experimental result of the first approach show clear improvement versus the other state of the art methods.


The traditional newspaper is declining and journalism has embraced digital media in its struggle to survive. New models of delivering news to the public are being explored in order to increase the levels of readership and user engagement.This paper introduces a new framework for researching the application of gamification techniques in journalism. Gamification, defined here as the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-gaming environments, adds a layer of game elements for the main purpose of improving user engagement. The proposed framework will allow for a simple analysis of news websites in the search of gamified elements. The concept of gamification is deconstructed into elements that can be introduced on top of an online news service. These elements are placed in three different categories: dynamics, which relate to the narrative and purpose of the gamified layer, providing the system with a sense of direction; mechanics, which relate to the processes aimed to create engagement and the strategies aimed to provide the system with momentum; and components, which relate to the visible game elements embedded in the system aimed to create flows of interaction with the readers. These elements are then evaluated in terms of level of playfulness and the underlying intention of implementation, whether it is to motivate readership, participation, or to broaden the level of knowledge of the reader.Gamification has shown to be an effective method to attract the attention and engagement of users in various domains, and it has been slowly implemented in digital journalism as an attempt to increase the number of readers, by stimulating the intrinsic motivation, and creating and/or maintaining the habit of consuming news in the audience. It has the potential to affect the way journalists write the news, to shift the topics that are introduced in the production pipeline, as well as to shape new patterns of consumption.  However, current research on the intersecting points between gamification and news is practically non-existent. This papers aims to contribute to this new area of research within journalism studies and to suggest some tools to analyze and understand the new iteration of digital journalism.Theoretically, this paper focuses on the motivational aspects of games and discusses the approaches on which they can be incorporated in the distribution channels of digital news. Finally, it analyzes some of the current examples of gamified digital newspapers and discusses why certain mechanics, such as unlocking content, progression, status, and the social graph are particularly suited to journalism, and to tap into the emotional drive of the emerging mobile audience.


Wherever commercial activities are undertaken, the question of liability for harmful effects of those activities to others is one of the first things to come to a lawyer's mind. With space activities of course, as long as endowed with commercial character, it is no different. Nevertheless, the special character of space activities as a category and space as an area, reflected in the corpus juris spatialis which has developed over the past decades as a lex specialis to the lex generalis of general public international law, provides this question of liability with a number of special features when regarded in this context. Where time and again confusion arises as to what "liability" means in theory and, as a consequence, entails in practice, before focussing on the issue of liability for commercial space activities it seems adamant to provide some clarity on these issues to allow sensible dialogues and discussions. The present paper therefore purports to survey a number of general aspects which arise in respect of liability as a notion common to more or less all municipal legal systems and to international law as a whole, and then to analyze briefly how these aspects specifically relate to the issue of commercial space activities. Hence, an inventory is made of the most important aspects of the notion of liability in theory, which should be helpful in clarifying the specific juridical consequences of liability for commercial space activities and at least focusses discussions. Among these aspects, some of the most important relate to the intricate relationship between public international and private, civil liability, and the relevance of the notion of the "appropriate state" for the field of liability. A short comparison with the doctrine of state responsibility, as it has developed in the stateto-state relationship defined by international law and transplanted into space law, is unavoidable on some of the subissues concerned. Copyright ©1994 by F.G. von del' Dunk. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics with permission. *Co-Director, International Institute of Air and Space Law, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Member IISL, Member AlAA. 161 Theoretically speaking, eight different aspects of "liability" are submitted to be of paramount importance for any analysis of liability as it operates vis-a-vis commercial activities. When surveying these eight paramount aspects of any liability regime, at the same time by relating them to the specifics both of space activities and of the space law-liability regime, as illustrated by 'legal facts' of both international and national brand, the problems which remain with respect to liability for commercial space activities are taken stock of, and the fundamental character of the relationships between public international and private liability, respectively international liability and state responsibility are highlighted. It is submitted, that any analysis of the issue of commercial activities and the related liabilityquestions should at least take account of the inventory of problems thus provided.


There have been extensive developments in "gay rights" in the past 10 years. This has
prompted the contention that some gay white men are increasingly able to access
privilege at the expense of continued marginalisation for various gendered, raced and
sexual others. Homonormativity describes a process through which gay white male
subjects are increasingly understood as normalised and accepted within existing
relations of inequalities and that this temporality is accompanied by depoliticisation
and tendency towards privatisation and domesticity. I use evidence from 15 in-depth interviews with men drawn from my socio-sexual network in Brighton and Hove, and autoethnographic writings in the form of reflective diary entries and short vignettes to develop a complex and fluid understanding of gay white men's spatial practices and experiences of privilege.


In linear structures routing we have the following problem : find the extremal of given functional, i.e 2D or 3D curve , which must consist of a special type elements. The parameters of elements are limited and their number is unknown. At first we must determine number of elements and after this we can find their optimal parameters. In the case of 2D extremal we shall consider a broken line and parabolic spline. The broken line is used as a longitudinal profile of railways and the parabolic spline is used as a longitudinal profile of roads. Initial problem was solved as multi-stage process using the methods of dynamic and nonlinear programming. On each stage we consider the different mathematical models of unknown extremal line: 1. A broken line with short elements similar to longitudinal profile of ground. This model allow us to find the initial approximation of unknown line using nonlinear programming. 2. The result of first stage give us opportunity to find number of elements using dynamic programming. 3. We use a special algorithm of nonlinear programming for solving initial problem with fixed number of elements and the result of second stage as initial approximation.


This study examines the relationship between a firm's venturing activities and its undertaking of strategic renewal. The study was motivated by some important gaps in the corporate entrepreneurship literature on venturing and renewal. The extant literature has not focused on the different types and dimensions of firms' renewal activities. In particular, discontinuous renewal involving shifts in firms' core businesses is not well understood. Moreover, the conditions that drive firms to undertake strategic renewal have not been examined. For example, it is not known how venturing increases or reduces the benefits of undertaking renewal. This study focuses on a discontinuous form of renewal involving major changes in firms' core businesses, and examines firms' external venturing activities which complement their internal development. We examine corporate venture capital (CVC) investments, which are direct minority equity investments made by established companies in privately held ventures. Discontinuous renewal is conceptualized as resulting from a set of related, and often sequential, managerial decisions. The first managerial decision is to initiate growth in a business that is relatively newer or smaller for the organization. The second decision is to move away, or even withdraw completely, from the current core business which enabled prior growth and prosperity for the firm and served as its primary revenue earner. Employing a real options perspective, we argue that CVC investments create growth options in new and existing businesses, but do not result in firms' withdrawal from existing businesses. Therefore, we expect CVC activity to be negatively associated with the likelihood of a firm undertaking discontinuous renewal. We also propose that the benefits of withdrawing from existing businesses are even lower, and the costs even higher, for firms in dynamic industries and for firms that possess strong internal capabilities. The predictions of the study are tested using longitudinal data on 477 firms from the 1990 Fortune 500 list for the period 1990-2000. We find support for all our predicted hypotheses. These results help address important limitations in the corporate entrepreneurship literature. The study also contributes to the real options and organizational capabilities literatures.


A 10 year old boy was presented with weakness of upper and lower limbs and generalized body aches for the last three months. Later he developed mild uncoordinated movements, ataxia, slurred speech and dysarthria. MRI of the brain was advised that showed bilateral T2W hyperintensity in caudate, lentiform nuclei and pons. Ophthalmological examination showed Kayser Fleisher rings. 24 h urinary copper levels established the diagnosis of Wilson's disease. Key words: MRI changes, Brain, Diagnosis, Wilson's disease.


The question of aggregating pairwise comparisons to obtain a global ranking over a collection of objects has been of interest for a very long time: be it ranking of online gamers (e.g., MSR's TrueSkill system) and chess players, aggregating social opinions, or deciding which product to sell based on transactions. In most settings, in addition to obtaining a ranking, finding 'scores' for each object (e.g., player's rating) is of interest for understanding the intensity of the preferences.In this paper, we propose Rank Centrality , an iterative rank aggregation algorithm for discovering scores for objects (or items) from pairwise comparisons. The algorithm has a natural random walk interpretation over the graph of objects with an edge present between a pair of objects if they are compared; the score, which we call Rank Centrality, of an object turns out to be its stationary probability under this random walk.To study the efficacy of the algorithm, we consider the popular Bradley-Terry-Luce (BTL) model (equivalent to the Multinomial Logit (MNL) for pairwise comparisons) in which each object has an associated score that determines the probabilistic outcomes of pairwise comparisons between objects. In terms of the pairwise marginal probabilities, which is the main subject of this paper, the MNL model and the BTL model are identical. We bound the finite sample error rates between the scores assumed by the BTL model and those estimated by our algorithm. In particular, the number of samples required to learn the score well with high probability depends on the structure of the comparison graph. When the Laplacian of the comparison graph has a strictly positive spectral gap, e.g., each item is compared to a subset of randomly chosen items, this leads to dependence on the number of samples that is nearly order optimal.Experimental evaluations on synthetic data sets generated according to the BTL model show that our algorithm performs as well as the maximum likelihood estimator for that model and outperforms other popular ranking algorithms.


We classify all bifurcations from traveling waves to non-trivial time-periodic solutions of the Benjamin-Ono equation that are predicted by linearization. We use a spectrally accurate numerical continuation method to study several paths of non-trivial solutions beyond the realm of linear theory. These paths are found to either re-connect with a different traveling wave or to blow up. In the latter case, as the bifurcation parameter approaches a critical value, the amplitude of the initial condition grows without bound and the period approaches zero. We then prove a theorem that gives the mapping from one bifurcation to its counterpart on the other side of the path and exhibits exact formulas for the time-periodic solutions on this path. The Fourier coefficients of these solutions are power sums of a finite number of particle positions whose elementary symmetric functions execute simple orbits (circles or epicycles) in the unit disk of the complex plane. We also find examples of interior bifurcations from these paths of already non-trivial solutions, but we do not attempt to analyze their analytic structure.


A new project on human body thermodynamics was developed and used in traditional engineering thermodynamics courses. The aim was to increase student motivation and learning by making the students more active and in charge of their learning, and to widen the application of thermodynamics outside the engineering field. The students and teachers experiences were investigated using a combination of questionnaires and interviews. It was found that the students were relatively satisfied with the project, although there was a relatively large spreading in the group. The teachers noticed a clear difference regarding the questions asked and the discussions that took place when comparing the project with traditional lessons/lectures. Altogether, the project was found to have benefits from both motivation and learning perspectives.


The paradigm of treating security properties on the blocklevel in sanitizable signature schemes was introduced by Brzuska et al. at EuroPKI '12. In this paper we extend their work in two respects: First, we provide a new construction which retains transparency, a stronger privacy property. In particular, we formalize the property of block-level accountability for sanitizable signatures with transparency. The original work by Brzuska et al. did not allow for transparency. We derive a provably secure construction, achieving the new notion. Second, a modification of our construction sacrifices transparency, but efficiently achieve Brzuska et al.'s stronger accountability notion also on the level of blocks. Our modified construction only requires a constant amount of signature generations to achieve block-level non-interactive public accountability property, which is a significant improvement over Brzuska et al.'s construction from EuroPKI '12. We have implemented our constructions and the scheme introduced by Brzuska et al. at PKC '09 to provide a detailed performance analysis.


Diabetes is characterized by insulin insufficiency due to a relative paucity of functional β-cell mass. Thus, strategies for increasing β-cell mass in situ are sought-after for therapeutic purposes. Pregnancy is a physiological state capable of inducing robust β-cell mass expansion, however, the mechanisms driving this expansion are not fully understood. Thus, the aim of this study was to characterize pregnancy-induced changes in the islet proteome at the peak of β-cell proliferation in mice. Islets from pregnant and nonpregnant littermates were compared via 2 proteomic strategies. In vivo pulsed stable isotope labeling of amino acids in cell culture was used to monitor de novo protein synthesis during the first 14.5 days of pregnancy. In parallel, protein abundance was determined using ex vivo dimethyl labelling at gestational day 14.5. Comparison of the 2 datasets revealed 170 islet proteins to be up regulated as a response to pregnancy. These included several proteins, not previously associated with pregnancy-induced islet expansion, such as CLIC1, STMN1, MCM6, PPIB, NEDD4, and HLTF. Confirming the validity of our approach, we also identified proteins encoded by genes known to be associated with pregnancy-induced islet expansion, such as CHGB, IGFBP5, MATN2, EHHADH, IVD, and BMP1. Bioinformatic analyses demonstrated enrichment and activation of the biological functions: "protein synthesis" and "proliferation," and predicted the transcription factors HNF4α, MYC, MYCN, E2F1, NFE2L2, and HNF1α as upstream regulators of the observed expressional changes. As the first characterization of the islet-proteome during pregnancy, this study provides novel insight into the mechanisms involved in promoting pregnancy-induced β-cell mass expansion and function.


Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a chronic cholestatic liver disease of unknown aetiology that is progressive in most symptomatic patients, advancing toward cirrhosis and liver failure. Liver transplantation is the only therapeutic option for patients with end stage liver disease resulting from this disorder. The results of transplantation for PSC are excellent with one-year survival rates of 90-97% and five-year survival rates of 80-85%, but are closely related to pre-transplant Child-Pugh stage. Recurrence of PSC after liver transplantation is common, occurring in up to 20% of patients, but it appears to have little effect on patient survival, as survival of patients with recurrent PSC is similar to that of those without evidence of recurrence. Cholangiocarcinoma is a catastrophic complication of PSC and as yet no reliable screening method exists. The results of liver transplantation for patients with clinically apparent cholangiocarcinoma are extremely poor, however in patients in whom a microscopic tumour is detected in the explanted liver, survival is similar to those transplanted with PSC without cholangiocarcinoma. Activity of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) appears to be more severe after transplantation, especially in units where steroid immunosuppression is withdrawn early. Colon cancer appears within the first few years after transplantation in approximately 7% of patients with IBD who are transplanted for PSC. Annual colonoscopy in this population seems prudent.


The history of the relationships between these two countries does not go further than half a century ago, although it has the most variable and discrete ones. Regardless of the ways that these two countries are behaving now, reading and searching over their political and economical relationship in the past, could give us a very clear perspective of each side's point of view.
In the present study, secondary data, which were gathered from a wide range of books, journal papers and newspaper articles, were used to investigate the Iran-USA relationship in order to understand the roots of the earthquake in the USA, and Iran's relationship from the political view, as well as the reasons why Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors had taken over the power and brought Iranian people into an anti-Shah manner. This research concentrated on the various aspects of the previous imperial of Iran, such as Mohammadreza Pahlavi (who was also known as Shah), his aspiration as a young king, his ruling in the area and his popularity in Iran.The Iranian domestic affairs, opposite groups, intelligent services and other conditions, which had bought the Islamic regime into the power, were also considered in this study. In the conclusion, the researcher found that Shah's dependency on the USA misconceptions, unrealistic ambitions about the Iranian society and also the hegomonistic desire of supremacy power, made him a dictator and ironically brought his regime to a misfortunate end. His misunderstanding and intolerance towards any objection, gave the oppositions the time to gather around Ayatollah Khomeini and finally replace the last monarchy of Iran by the Islamic regime. This research also dedicated that the downfall of the Shah's regime, apart from the roles of the USA was the result of his own actions as well as all the oppositions and activists' who did not believe in Shah as the rightful governor of the country.


This article reports findings from a recent research project, commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which explored the current landscape of professional doctorate (PD) provision in English Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) (Mellors-Bourne et al., 2016). Given the absence of a clear definition by the Quality Assurance Agency in England, of the characteristics which distinguish PDs from practice-based doctorates and the Doctor of Philosophy, this paper makes a timely contribution through considering the inherent characteristics of PD programmes. The paper presents an overview of the state of play of PD programmes currently available in HEIs in England, highlighting how the proliferation of PD titles and programmes, and inconsistencies between the various programmes, has resulted in confusion around what PDs are, the contribution they make, and the value they add to professional practice. Consideration is given to the tensions created through the expansion in the number and types of PDs available and the implications of these tensions with regard to the future sustainability of PD programmes in general and, in particular, in relation to the Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD).


This study is located at the interface of online learning within a context of English language studies and academic literacy and is underpinned, from a critical theoretical perspective, by an understanding of the implications of the digital divide for South Africa. The thesis includes an exploration of online learning, as mediated by information and communication technology (ICT), in an undergraduate English language and academic literacy classroom at a university in Johannesburg, South Africa. The study draws on research and theorising by Warschauer (2002a, 2002b, 2003), who argues for the need for technology in developing countries as a means of social inclusion. The aim is to explore the extent to which communities of practice (COPs) are enabled in an online environment, among English non-mother tongue speakers, who have minimal previous access to ICT. To achieve the aim the study examines the extent to which the learners participate, negotiate meaning, construct identities, and perceive themselves as autonomous in online spaces. This is a case study that explores asynchronous lCT practices such as the use of the Internet (Net), e-mail, and discussion threads in an online Web course management system. From a sociocultural perspective, and recognising that learning does not occur in isolation, the work of Lave and Wenger (1991, 1996,2002) is used to frame the study, concerned as it is with learning, technology and empowerment. Lave and Wenger (1991, 2002) locate learning as a form of interaction and co-participation, and argue that learning occurs within specific contexts or communities of practice. Thus they focus on how individuals become members of 'communities of practice'. The study suggests that practice and participation are underpinned, and to some extent determined, by the identities constructed by participants In the on line communities. Participants' ICTpractices are examined from the perspective of literacy, in this case electronic literacy, as a social practice and New Literacy Studies, where the work of Gee (1996, 1997, 2000), Street (1984, 1993a, 1993b, 2003), Barton, Hamilton and lvanic (2000), and Lankshear and Knobel (1997, 2004) are drawn on to examine the use of technology. Constructions of identity are examined from Hall's (1992) post-structuralist view that old identities, which stabilised the social world as we knew it, are in decline, giving rise to new identities and fragmenting the modem individual as a unified subject. From observations, participant-interviews, questionnaires, written data, and the analysis of messages posted to discussion threads over the duration of a year, the study demonstrates that the online environment facilitates the construction of communities of practice, by enabling participants to develop and sustain local and global relationships, construct identities, and engage autonomously in the medium. My findings suggest that online environments be considered, not merely as alternative modes of delivery in the language classroom, but for social inclusion, provided that facilitators and learners are adequately prepared for the use of digital technology. The study further suggests a model for the adoption of ICT in relation to learning within the South African context.


Complex design challenges exist in designing for a dynamic and ageing world. Designing for older adults is a timely and important issue. Understanding user requirements is vital and the appropriate exchange of this knowledge is crucial in the pursuit of supportive, sustainable buildings and the longevity of built-environment design. Capturing reflections from Built Environment Professionals (BEPs) in the UK, this paper investigates the practitioners' viewpoint on knowledge exchange by specifically focusing on the scenario of designing for the requirements of older people. Thematic analysis of BEP conversations (n=10) and the results from a questionnaire (N=35) are presented. Findings uncover recommendations towards the enhancement of knowledge exchange. They highlight the fundamentals of good communication, the desire for structured knowledge, the value of contextual guidance, the importance of a visual format for BEPs, and the need for forms of guidance to support client motivations. The design process can be enabled by equipping practitioners with information about user requirements. Interestingly, it was also found that BEPs find value in direct user-engagement although further support tools for these engagements with building users was desired. Appropriate exchange of knowledge is essential for effective 'real-world' design impact. These findings, built from the scenario of designing for older adults, also apply to the broader context of all guidance used by Built Environment Professionals.


[Extract] The question of what lawyers wear is in the news again since the Family Court of Australia has announced that judges have new robes, it will dispense with wigs, and there is a new dress code for lawyers appearing before it. The Family Court changes caused me to think again about the reason behind court dress – and others too, as evidenced by an animated discussion on Twitter following the Court's announcement.


This paper describes the rationale behind the development of a digital performance system which enables a musical ensemble or solo instrumentalist to interact with a generative and reactive visual score, projected in a cinematic environment. A partial feedback loop is setup between the performer and a projection of visual media, which allow the performer to perceive a response to their playing in certain aspects of the projection. The premise underpinning this piece runs far deeper than merely allowing acoustic instruments to interact with technology; it builds on the pioneering work of Benjamin Libet (1916 – 2007) and challenges the notion of volition and agency in the way performers react and respond to visual stimulus. The performances enabled by this system will not only provide an audience with a stimulating cinematic event but will also provoke the performers to engage in new and unexpected modes of musical behaviour. A prototype of this system is evaluated as a means of developing psychological and philosophical themes around the notion of freewill in interactive audio visual performance.


This section discusses the methodology and results obtained from the use of a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to examine the macroeconomic impacts of mineral policy on the Nigerian economy. CGE Models have several advantages such as the following:
i. They incorporate all economic interactions in an economy,
ii. They provide a laboratory for quantitative assessments of total effects (direct and indirect) of policy changes,
iii. They capture the interdependencies among economic sectors, economic agents and economic markets, and
iv. They capture feedbacks among production block, income block, expenditure block and trade blocks.In addition, the underlying database is provided by the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) which ensures data coherency and consistency and they help to isolate the economic effects of specific policy shocks. The CGE model utilized for this report is a variant of the PEP 1-1 Single Country Model developed by Decaluwe et al. (2010).


This article seeks to examine the use patterns of Facebook by Midlands State University (MSU) students as a communication tool from 2012 to 2013. It focuses on MSU students in Zimbabwe focusing on how social media networks such as Facebook can be used by university students to communicate academic, social and political issues in their day to day lives. Again, this will reflect on the efficiency and cultural impact that Facebook has in the academic world, particularly in Zimbabwe. The article will respond to issues such as: assessing the behaviour, attitude of the students themselves, and impediments they encounter when using social network sites such as Facebook. It will also analyse the uses of Facebook among college students as way of gratifying their needs, which include: establishing
relationships socially and communicating with friends and family members. The article will be informed
by such theories as information theory, electronic colonialism theory and the uses and gratifications
theory. Only few students with access to it and with solid technological background to utilise it for
social, academic and political issues maximise its availability. Facebook combines sound, still and
moving images that can be used for social identity, apart from academic research and communication
purposes. The article will be subjected to both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Therefore, unstructured and structured questionnaires, together with informal interviews will be used
as data collecting techniques.


Recent strategy in the electronics sector is to ascertain the ways to make cheap, flexible and environmentally friendly electronic devices. The 3D inkjet printing technology is based on the Additive Manufacturing concept and it is with no doubt capable of revolutionising the whole system of manufacturing electronic devices including: material selection; design and fabrication steps and device configuration and architecture. Thus, 3D inkjet printing technology (IJP) is not only one of the most promising technologies to reduce the harmful radiation/ heat generation but also achieve reductions in manufacturing cost. Here, we explore the potential of 3D – inkjet printing technology to provide an innovative approach for electronic devices in especially information storage elements by seeking to manufacture and characterise state-of-art fully inkjet printed two terminal electronic memory devices. In this work, ink-jettable materials (Ag and PEDOT:PSS) were printed by a piezoelectric Epson Stylus P50 inkjet printing machine on a flexible substrate. All components of the memory cells of a simple metal/active layer/metal structure were deposited via inkjet printing. The quality of the printed layers was first assessed by Nikon LABOPHOT-2 optical microscope, fitted with Nikon Camera DS-Fi1. Furthermore, an in-depth electrical characterisation of the fabricated memory cells was carried out using HP4140B picoammeter.


A Bayesian inversion approach was used to retrieve temporally and spatially resolved N2O fluxes for western and central Europe using in-situ atmospheric ob- servations from the tall tower site at Ochsenkopf, Germany (50 01 0 N, 11 48 0 E). For atmospheric transport, the STILT (Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport) model was employed, which was driven with ECMWF analysis and short term forecast fields. The influence of temporal aggre- gation error, as well as the choice of spatial and temporal cor- relation scale length, on the retrieval was investigated using a synthetic dataset consisting of mixing ratios generated for the Ochsenkopf site. We found that if the aggregation error is ignored, then a significant bias error in the retrieved fluxes ensues. However, by estimating this error and projecting it into the observation space, it was possible to avoid bias errors in the retrieved fluxes. Using the real observations from the Ochsenkopf site, N2O fluxes were retrieved every 7 days for 2007 at 2 by 2 degrees spatial resolution. Emissions of N2O were strongest during the summer and autumn months, with peak emissions in August and September, while the regions of Benelux and northern United Kingdom had strongest an- nual mean emissions.


Existing manifold learning algorithms use Euclidean distance to measure the proximity of data points. However, in high-dimensional space, Minkowski metrics are no longer stable because the ratio of distance of nearest and farthest neighbors to a given query is almost unit. It will degrade the performance of manifold learning algorithms when applied to dimensionality reduction of high-dimensional data. We introduce a new distance function named shrinkage-divergence-proximity (SDP) to manifold learning, which is meaningful in any high-dimensional space. An improved locally linear embedding (LLE) algorithm named SDP-LLE is proposed in light of the theoretical result. Experiments are conducted on a hyperspectral data set and an image segmentation data set. Experimental results show that the proposed method can efficiently reduce the dimensionality while getting higher classification accuracy.


Geometric information relating to most engineering products is available in the form of orthographic drawings or 2D data files. For many recent computer based applications, such as Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), these data are required in the form of a sophisticated model based on Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) concepts. A recent novel technique in this area transfers 2D engineering drawings directly into a 3D solid model called `the first approximation'. In many cases, however, this does not represent the real object. In this thesis, a new method is proposed and developed to enhance this model. This method uses the notion of expanding an object in terms of other solid objects, which are either primitive or first approximation models. To achieve this goal, in addition to the prepared subroutine to calculate the first approximation model of input data, two other wireframe models are found for extraction of sub-objects. One is the wireframe representation on input, and the other is the wireframe of the first approximation model. A new fast method is developed for the latter special case wireframe, which is named the `first approximation wireframe model'. This method avoids the use of a solid modeller. Detailed descriptions of algorithms and implementation procedures are given. In these techniques utilisation of dashed line information is also considered in improving the model. Different practical examples are given to illustrate the functioning of the program. Finally, a recursive method is employed to automatically modify the output model towards the real object. Some suggestions for further work are made to increase the domain of objects covered, and provide a commercially usable package. It is concluded that the current method promises the production of accurate models for a large class of objects.


Purpose

This paperaims to review how the field of lean and green has been evolving. Authors draw parallels between the fields of sustainability and quality management. The paper's title is borrowed and modified from Crosby's seminal book: Quality is Free.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper starts with a review on how early lean researchers in the late 1980s draw upon benchmark studies, looking at Toyota versus other auto manufacturers to demonstrate that quality is free. Similarly, the authors carry out a benchmark to show how the same argument is valid about Toyota's environmental performance and how Toyota's concept of Monozukuri can be exploited as proof for the environment is free movement. The paper concludes with an attempt to address the gap between theory and practice in the field of lean and green.

Findings

The starting point for creating a lean and green business system is the understanding that there is no trade-off between lean and green, that lean and green should be brought together in a symbiosis, as Toyota have done with Monozukuri approach. This requires a coherent strategy that is well developed, and well deployed across all levels of business. The bottom line remains that environment is free, but it is not a gift.

Research limitations/implications

The findings presented in the paper are based on arguments resulted from the review of the relevant literature. It is important to obtain feedback from a large sample of businesses regarding lean and green symbiosis to arrive at sound and valid conclusions.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the fields of operations management and sustainability by proposing a change in businesses' mind-set about sustainability. Rather than seeing environmental protection as a cost, it should be regarded as an opportunity for enhancing economic performance. In doing so, we can seek inspiration from the fields of quality management and the total quality movement.


This study explored the potential of natural light to enhance wooden interior environments. Under Nordic light, natural materials such as wood finishes present an opportunity to create warm, bright, and pleasant atmospheres, enhancing psychological well-being and comfort. The objectives of this project were twofold: first, to study the diversity of northern sky conditions in terms of cloud cover and thickness, and, second, to evaluate the impacts of the diversity of natural light on five wooden scale models. The methodology involved weather data collection that took place during the spring equinox in Quebec City. In order to create a cloudiness scale, sky condition data and photometric measurements were collected. A photographic survey occurred in five scale models made with interior wooden finishes of varying color combinations, documenting the impact of sky diversity on brightness, hue, and contrast. Simultaneous scale model studies under a real sky allowed direct comparison under the same lighting conditions. There was a remarkable diversity of visual ambiences for a southeast-oriented space depending on the position of the sun and sky conditions. Gray-dyed wooden finishes created dull and unchanging atmospheres, while yellow oaked surfaces allowed various dynamic ambiences.


Separate absorption grading charge multiplication avalanche photodiodes (SAGCM APDs) are widely accepted in photon starved optical communication systems due to the presence of large photocurrent gain. In this work, we present a detailed analysis of dark currents of planar-type SAGCM InGaAs-InP APDs with different thicknesses of multiplication layer. The effect of the diffusion process, the generation-recombination process, the tunneling process and the multiplication process on the total leakage current is discussed. A new empirical formula has been established to predict the optimal multiplication layer thickness of SAGCM APDs with dark current limited by generation-recombination at multiplication gain of 8.


A wealth of information exists on self-regulatory processes that have the potential to generate a population shift in health and well-being, but there are many barriers to progress. This thesis addresses three. The first is a lack of transparency and coherence in terminology surrounding 'stress' and 'well-being'. This was addressed using a taxonomy based on self-regulatory theory to provide a platform for clearer differentiation and enhancement of psychological coping mechanisms. The second is the difficulty illuminating a public deluged with contradictory information. This was addressed by demonstrating a means of generating publicly available, validated instruments of change, through more open, transparent and collaborative research. The third barrier is that information provision alone is not enough to induce sustainable behaviour change. This was addressed by systematically exploring ways of optimising intervention adherence, impact and adaptive habit formation. The research programme consisted of three experimental studies. Study 1 piloted a means of adding depth and ingenuity to efforts to achieve personal daily goals, using an adaptation of Pennebaker's experimental writing paradigm, underpinned by social cognitive theory. Framework analysis of interviews with participants led to the development of a web-based version of the intervention, incorporating elements from dual-processing theory. Study 2 investigated effects of this intervention on self-report measures of psychological well-being in a group of 33 university administrators, assessed at baseline and four follow-up time points over twelve months. Sustained improvements were significant for goal progress, self-efficacy, perceived stress, negative affect, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Study 3 tested the intervention using a randomised controlled trial involving 101 local government administrators. The results for self-report measures further supported and extended the findings of Study 2, whilst additional cortisol assessment proved inconclusive. Overall, the findings demonstrate a viable means of extending self-regulatory knowledge central to the pursuit of psychological and physiological well-being.


The late medieval carol is an important indigenous musical form that is abundant in a number of sources from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century both with and without extant musical notation. Often thought of as a song that only addresses Christmas themes, medieval carols, in fact, cover a variety of subject matter: love, humour, moralistic tales, the veneration of saints, and politics, to name but a few. This short study seeks to discuss the political carols; addressing their position in manuscripts of the time, examining the clues they might give to the establishments they were performed in, and exploring their representation of English political identity during this turbulent period of history.


The crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the iron curtain, and the Reagan and Thatcher "revolutions" all owe a tremendous debt to F. A. Hayek. Economist, social and political theorist, and intellectual historian, Hayek passionately championed individual liberty and condemned the dangers of state control. Now Hayek at last tells the story of his long and controversial career, during which his fortunes rose, fell, and finally rose again. Through a complete collection of previously unpublished autobiographical sketches and a wide selection of interviews, Hayek on Hayek provides the first detailed chronology of Hayek's early life and education, his intellectual progress, and the academic and public reception of his ideas. His discussions range from economic methodology and the question of religious faith to the atmosphere of post-World War I Vienna and the British character. Born in 1899 into a Viennese family of academics and civil servants, Hayek was educated at the University of Vienna, fought in the Great War, and later moved to London, where, as he watched liberty vanish under fascism and communism across Europe, he wrote The Road to Serfdom. Although this book attracted great public attention, Hayek was ignored by other economists for thirty years after World War II, when European social democracies boomed and Keynesianism became the dominant intellectual force. However, the award of the Nobel Prize in economics for 1974 signaled a reversal in Hayek's fortunes, and before his death in 1992 he saw his life's work vindicated in the collapse of the planned economies of Eastern Europe. Hayek on Hayek is as close to an autobiography of Hayek as we will ever have. In his own eloquent words, Hayek reveals the remarkable life of a revolutionary thinker in revolutionary times. "One of the great thinkers of our age who explored the promise and contours of liberty....[Hayek] revolutionized the world's intellectual and political life"—President George Bush, on awarding F. A. Hayek the Medal of Freedom F. A. Hayek, recipient of the Medal of Freedom 1991 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, was a pioneer in monetary theory and the principal proponent of the libertarian philosophy. Hayek is the author of numerous books in economics, as well as books in political philosophy and psychology.


Moral rights are often portrayed as an unwelcome import into U.S. law. During the nineteenth century, European lawmakers, influenced by personality theories of authorship, began granting authors rights of attribution and integrity. However, while these rights proliferated in Europe and international copyright treaties, they were not adopted in the United States. According to a common historical narrative, U.S. courts and lawmakers resisted moral rights because they were deemed incompatible with the copyright tradition of treating expressive works as alienable property. What little moral rights U.S. law provides today is thus seen as a necessary evil, grudgingly accepted, simply to comply with international obligations. This Article presents a history of moral rights protection that challenges, to a degree, that common historical narrative. The Article tracks how American courts adjudicated attribution and integrity disputes during the twentieth century. Doing so not only reveals that the American judiciary was more sympathetic to these claims than commonly appreciated, but, even more surprisingly, came close to developing a tort of moral rights invasion. While copyright historians know that courts have long provided proxy protection for moral rights under preexisting common law causes of action (e.g., defamation, unfair competition,privacy, etc.), what is not widely known is how frequently courts were willing to protect attribution and integrity interests directly under the banner of moral rights. This Article tells the story of how courts in the mid-twentieth century, applying state law, increasingly articulated a "sui generis tort" of moral rights invasion. It then proceeds to question why the moral rights tort stagnated and was forgotten about in the late twentieth century.


AbstractThe RCV is a four wheel drive and steer electrical vehicle developed and built by the Transport Lab at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. It is fully steer-by-wire and each wheel can be individually controlled, both with regard to steering angle, as well as camber and driving torque.The RCV is planned to be used as a common platform for different fields of research, as a rolling laboratory to implement and evaluate research with.In this report the specification and functionalities of the RCV are reviewed and its data collection capabilities are validated and evaluated through classic vehicle dynamic analyses such as circle tests, step steer and roll out tests. Also, some more experimental functionalities such as simple torque vectoring, toe sweep and steering by joystick, as proof of concept of the RCV as a research and prototyping platform.Finally, some suggestions for further developments for the RCV platform are presented.


Software reuse is a subfield of software engineering that is used to adopt the existing software for similar purposes. Reuse Metrics determine the extent to which an existing software component is reused in new software with an objective to minimize the errors and cost of the new project. In this paper, medical database related to cardiology is considered. The Pearson Type I Distribution is used to calculate the probability density function (pdf) and thereby utilizing it for clustering the data. Further, coupling methodology is used to bring out the similarity of the new patient data by comparing it with the existing data. By this, the concerned treatment to be followed for the new patient is deduced by comparing with that of the previous patients case history. The metrics proposed by Chidamber and Kemerer are utilized for this purpose. This model will be useful for the medical field through software, particularly in remote areas.


Analysis of 24-hour urine composition is widely used in diagnosis of acute and
chronic kidney diseases. In Sri Lanka, no guidelines are available on
preservation of urine. This study aimed to identify an effective preservation
technique/s among currently practiced techniques in laboratories to maintain
chemical stability of high demand bio chemical analytes in a 24-hour urine
collection. An experimental study was undertaken using urine samples from volunteers
(n=42, National Hospital of Sri Lanka and University of Sri Jayawardenepura,
Nugegoda, Sri Lanka). Each sample was divided in to 10 ml aliquots; Out of the
lot, one was preserved without any preservative and another refrigerated at 4ºC
for 24 hours. Other aliquots were preserved for 24-hours by addition of
following preservatives in a 24-hour collection: boric acid g/ urine (5, 7.5, 10),
sodium azide g/ urine (0.3, 0.6, 0.9), HCl ml/ urine (1N;10ml, 6N;10ml, 25ml
and 30ml). The aliquots with preservatives were kept at room temperature for 24
hours. Protein, Creatinine, Ca2+, Mg2+ and PO43- concentrations were measured in
each aliquot. Least mean squared error for each analyte in different preservatives
was calculated. For protein and creatinine, least mean squared error was given by, 10g/L boric acid. That of Ca2+, Mg2+ and PO43 were observed when the sample was
refrigerated or after addition of 10g/L boric acid as the preservative. Sodium azide and HCl that are utilized in current practice as preservatives for 24-hour urine collections do not show better performance in selected analytes. Boric acid (10g/L) is more effective in persevering protein and creatinine. Due to practical issues in acquiring refrigeration facilities, Ca2+, Mg and PO4 3- also can be preserved effectively by using the same preservative. Consequently, Boric acid (10g/L) could be recommended as an effective preservative to preserve selected analytes in 24-hour urine collection


Decentralization and quality of social service delivery in sub-Saharan Africa The purpose of this paper is to analyze, from a purely microeconomic perspective, the impact of decentralization on the quality of the delivery of social services in sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis uses data from the Afrobarometer Round 4 survey, which collected information on the views of citizens on governance, democracy, economic reform, civil society, and the quality of life in 20 African countries. Results of the econometric analysis show that a high degree of decentralization and/or a high quality of democracy promote good governance and in turn the provision of highquality public services. The process of decentralization in Africa is thus generally beneficial to the population from the perspective of the quality of social and public service delivery. However, while overall decentralization has a positive and significant impact on the quality of public service delivery, the results are mixed when the analysis is conducted by country. Afrobarometer Working Papers Copyright © Afrobarometer 2016 1


In this paper we develop new dependence and conditional dependence measures and provide their estimators. An attractive property of these measures and estimators is that they are invariant to any monotone increasing transformations of the random variables, which is important in many applications including feature selection. Under certain conditions we show the consistency of these estimators, derive upper bounds on their convergence rates, and show that the estimators do not suffer from the curse of dimensionality. However, when the conditions are less restrictive, we derive a lower bound which proves that in the worst case the convergence can be arbitrarily slow similarly to some other estimators. Numerical illustrations demonstrate the applicability of our method.


Title of Document: 'SIGNATURE DRAWINGS:' SOCIAL NETWORKS AND COLLECTING PRACTICES IN ANTEBELLUM ALBUMS Joy Peterson Heyrman, Ph.D., 2008 Directed By: Professor Sally M. Promey, Department of Art History and Archaeology Characterized in their own time as "miniature and easily-attainable works of art," drawings by American artists of the antebellum period were prized by fellow artists as mementi of friendship and by collectors as marks of the artist's hand. This dissertation presents a broad examination of the social meanings and contemporary contexts of these quietly communicative works of art. Using archival and documentary evidence, it investigates rich spheres of activity in the "social lives" of drawings. Special qualities of the medium and particularities of drawings exchange informed their reception. In the public sphere of business and social transaction between artists and patrons, drawings functioned as "social currency," building a community connected through gift-giving and competitive collecting. Albums of drawings reflected social networks and communicated the owner's privileged access to artists who practiced that particularly intimate form of expression. Drawings were also displayed in the antebellum parlor, a private setting encoded with aspiration to personal refinement and social position. In that sphere, drawings served a didactic, regulatory function, presenting sentimental and moral themes that provided a visual buffer to the turbulent public history of the time. My study reveals that many of the drawings collected in antebellum albums were originals for images subsequently reproduced as giftbook illustrations or prints. This dissertation demonstrates that antebellum viewers perceived drawing and writing as aligned, complimentary modes of expression; similar motivations thus informed the collecting of drawings and autographs. As the pantheon of eminent Americans shifted to include artists, their drawings were prized as signature works reflecting "temperament and quality of mind." American art history has directed little attention to antebellum-period drawings. When it has done so, it has situated them primarily as studio tools or as preparatory works for paintings. I argue that album drawings occupied a different register of value altogether, connected to literature, illustration, parlor entertainment, and the collecting of celebrity autographs during a period of explosive growth in the production of visual imagery and in media coverage of American artists. I propose a social and cultural history of the period centered on drawing collecting as a reflection of individual aspirations and social values. 'SIGNATURE DRAWINGS:' SOCIAL NETWORKS AND COLLECTING PRACTICES IN ANTEBELLUM ALBUMS


Background Despite the internet's broad reach and potential to influence consumer behaviour, there has been little examination of the volume, characteristics, and target audience of online tobacco and e-cigarette advertisements. Methods A full-service advertising firm was used to collect all online banner/video advertisements occurring in the USA and Canada between 1 April 2012 and 1 April 2013. The advertisement and associated meta-data on brand, date range observed, first market, and spend were downloaded and summarised. Characteristics and themes of advertisements, as well as topic area and target demographics of websites on which advertisements appeared, were also examined. Results Over a 1-year period, almost $2 million were spent by the e-cigarette and tobacco industries on the placement of their online product advertisements in the USA and Canada. Most was spent promoting two brands: NJOY e-cigarettes and Swedish Snus. There was almost no advertising of cigarettes. About 30% of all advertisements mentioned a price promotion, discount coupon or price break. e-Cigarette advertisements were most likely to feature messages of harm reduction (38%) or use for cessation (21%). Certain brands advertised on websites that contained up to 35% of youth (<18 years) as their audience. Conclusions Online banner/video advertising is a tactic used mainly to advertise e-cigarettes and cigars rather than cigarettes, some with unproven claims about benefits to health. Given the reach and accessibility of online advertising to vulnerable populations such as youth and the potential for health claims to be misinterpreted, online advertisements need to be closely monitored.


The Guadalupian Delaware Mountain Group is a 1,000-1,600-m (3,281-5,250-ft) thick section of siltstone and sandstone deposited in a deep-water density-stratified basin surrounded by carbonate banks or reefs and broad shallow evaporite-clastic shelves. The most prevalent style of basinal deposition was suspension settling of silt. Laminated siltstone beds are laterally extensive and cover basin-floor topographic irregularities and flat-floored channels as much as 30 m (99 ft) deep and 1 km or more wide. Channels can be observed in outcrop at the basin margin and can be inferred from closely spaced wells in the basin. The channels are straight to slightly sinuous, trend at high angles to the basin margin, and extend at least 70 km (43 mi) into the basin. Sandstone beds, con ined to channels, form numerous stratigraphic traps. Hydrocarbon sealing beds are provided by laminated organic siltstone, which laterally can form the erosional margin where channels are cut into siltstone beds. Thick beds of very fine-grained sandstones fill the channels. These sandstones contain abundant large and small-scale traction-current-produced stratification. These sandy channel deposits generally lack texturally graded sedimentation units and show no regular vertical sequence of stratification types or bed thickness. Outcrop and subsurface evidence indicates Delaware Mountain Group sediments were deposited by saline density currents. Dense saline water originated on evaporitic shelves and spilled across the carbonate rim, down steep marginal slopes, and into the basin. Basinal waters were density stratified. Denser flows moved along the basin floor cutting channels or depositing sand in existing channels; less-dense flows moved along density interfaces in the water column and carried silt-size material far into the basin where it settled to the floor as thin alternating layers of detrital silt and organic debris. Little proximal to distal change occurred in the size or nature of the channels. Exploration predictions based on submarine fan models formed by turbidity currents would anticipate very d fferent proximal-distal changes in sandstone geometry and facies.


The rapid growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has brought embedded systems into focus as major targets for both security analysts and malicious adversaries. Due to the non-standard hardware and diverse software, embedded devices present unique challenges to security analysts for the accurate analysis of firmware binaries. The diversity in hardware components and tight coupling between firmware and hardware makes it hard to perform dynamic analysis, which must have the ability to execute firmware code in virtualized environments. However, emulating the large expanse of hardware peripherals makes analysts have to frequently modify the emulator for executing various firmware code in different virtualized environments, greatly limiting the ability of security analysis. In this work, we explore the problem of firmware re-hosting related to the real-time operating system (RTOS). Specifically, developers create a Board Support Package (BSP) and develop device drivers to make that RTOS run on their platform. By providing high-level replacements for BSP routines and device drivers, we can make the minimal modification of the firmware that is to be migrated from its original hardware environment into a virtualized one. We show that an approach capable of offering the ability to execute firmware at scale through patching firmware in an automated manner without modifying the existing emulators. Our approach, called static binary-level porting, first identifies the BSP and device drivers in target firmware, then patches the firmware with pre-built BSP routines and drivers that can be adapted to the existing emulators. Finally, we demonstrate the practicality of the proposed method on multiple hardware platforms and firmware samples for security analysis. The result shows that the approach is flexible enough to emulate firmware for vulnerability assessment and exploits development.


The polar stratospheric ozone loss during the Arctic winters 2004/2005–2009/2010 is investigated by using high resolution simulations from the chemical transport model Mimosa-Chim and observations from Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), by applying the passive tracer technique. The winter 2004/2005 shows the coldest temperatures, highest area of polar stratospheric clouds and strongest chlorine activation in 2004/2005–2009/2010. The ozone loss diagnosed from both simulations and measurements inside the polar vortex at 475 K ranges from 0.7 ppmv in the warm winter 2005/2006 to 1.5–1.7 ppmv in the cold winter 2004/2005. Halogenated (chlorine and bromine) catalytic cycles contribute to 75–90% of the ozone loss at this level. At 675 K the lowest loss of 0.3–0.5 ppmv is computed in 2008/2009, and the highest loss of 1.3 ppmv is estimated in 2006/2007 by the model and in 2004/2005 by MLS. Most of the ozone loss (60–75%) at this level results from nitrogen catalytic cycles rather than halogen cycles. At both 475 and 675 K levels the simulated ozone and ozone loss evolution inside the vortex is in reasonably good agreement with the MLS observations. The ozone partial column loss in 350–850 K deduced from the model calculations at the MLS sampling locations inside the polar vortex ranges between 43 DU in 2005/2006 and 109 DU in 2004/2005, while those derived from the MLS observations range between 26 DU and 115 DU for the same winters. The partial column ozone depletion derived in that vertical range is larger than that estimated in 350–550 K by 19 ±7 DU on average, mainly due to NOx chemistry. The column ozone loss estimates from both Mimosa-Chim and MLS in 350–850 K are generally in good agreement with those derived from ground-based ultravioletvisible spectrometer total ozone observations for the respective winters, except in 2010. Correspondence to: J. Kuttippurath (firstname.lastname@example.com)


Umberto Eco's wise and witty guide to researching and writing a thesis, published in English for the first time. By the time Umberto Eco published his best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, he was one of Italy's most celebrated intellectuals, a distinguished academic and the author of influential works on semiotics. Some years before that, in 1977, Eco published a little book for his students, How to Write a Thesis, in which he offered useful advice on all the steps involved in researching and writing a thesis?from choosing a topic to organizing a work schedule to writing the final draft. Now in its twenty-third edition in Italy and translated into seventeen languages, How to Write a Thesis has become a classic. Remarkably, this is its first, long overdue publication in English. Eco's approach is anything but dry and academic. He not only offers practical advice but also considers larger questions about the value of the thesis-writing exercise. How to Write a Thesis is unlike any other writing manual. It reads like a novel. It is opinionated. It is frequently irreverent, sometimes polemical, and often hilarious. Eco advises students how to avoid ?thesis neurosis? and he answers the important question ?Must You Read Books?? He reminds students ?You are not Proust? and ?Write everything that comes into your head, but only in the first draft.? Of course, there was no Internet in 1977, but Eco's index card research system offers important lessons about critical thinking and information curating for students of today who may be burdened by Big Data.How to Write a Thesis belongs on the bookshelves of students, teachers, writers, and Eco fans everywhere. Already a classic, it would fit nicely between two other classics: Strunk and White and The Name of the Rose.ContentsThe Definition and Purpose of a Thesis ? Choosing the Topic ? Conducting Research ? The Work Plan and the Index Cards ? Writing the Thesis ? The Final Draft


The role of FDI inflows and outflows to host countries and from the source countries emerged in the 1980s as the major vehicle technology transfer that accelerated the globalization or international integration of 25 leading OECD economies over a period of 25 years (1983-2007). Although neoclassical and endogenous growth theories provide unequivocal support for FDI flows because they generate positive externalities or spillover effects through channels of GDP growth, capital formation and R&D, the empirical evidence in support of these claims are mixed. The panel data econometrics performed using a new multiplicatively complete index of total factor productivity provide fresh insights on the cross-border FDI generated through technology transfer and other channels. The empirical findings for the OECD countries are markedly different from the spillover effects on developing countries that are plagued by technology absorptive capacity effects due to the operation of threshold effects of underdeveloped human capital resources. The empirics on cross-border FDI flows and the spillover effects that they generate in OECD countries will provide much needed information to design and implement policies to harness the net benefits from cross-border FDI flows and shed light on the design of policies to reconcile the conflicting policies of austerity and growth that are required to prevent the sovereign debt racked euro-zone countries from imploding the single currency union based on the euro.


Background: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common cause of cancer-related death which can present with various clinical situations. Hypopituitarism when encountered with NSCLC may be due to diverse etiologies including pituitary metastasis, hypophysitis, pituitary infarction or a consequence of therapeutical interventions such as surgery or radiotherapy. Result: We present an unusual case of hypopituitarism in a NSCLC patient associated with a benign disorder, a sinus mucocele and thereby review the pathogenesis of hypopituitarism accompanying malignant diseases. Conclusion: Our case represents an example of association of a benign disorder with malignancy causing severe deterioration of life quality. Although rare, pituitary metastasis is the initial possible diagnosis in the setting of non-small cell lung cancer.