This thesis introduces an overlooked perspective on Chinese foreign policy, that of interest groups. I use environmental foreign relations as a vantage point to examine how domestic interest groups exert influence on China's environmental foreign relations. The proposed theoretical framework, constructivist utilitarianism, provides a bridge between the constructivist school and rationalistic institutionalism in the IR debate to explain the discursive turn of the Chinese government in global environmental governance. The discursive turn refers to the changing attitudes towards environmental governance based on learning, shared experiences, and offering an alternative norm to replace liberal environmentalism.
The interest groups under scrutiny are line ministries, state-owned enterprises, environmental non-governmental organisations, local governors, and intellectuals. They each represent a distinct interest, and demonstrate different pathways for influencing foreign relations. The focus on domestic players supplements the traditional focus on international systemic factors to explain the behaviour of China on the global stage and in bilateral relations. The empirical chapters are organised according to three dimensions: international environmental treaty implementation, sharing the Chinese experience, and offering an alternative environmental norm. Each chapter focuses on one factor, in the following order: environmental diplomacy, the Chinese experience, and ecological civilisation. These three dimensions reflect the trend of the discursive turn, which is closely linked to China's desire to establish a good national image.
My findings show that interest groups in China utilise the strategic concepts of environmental diplomacy and the Chinese experience to maximise their interests. The emergence of the discourse of ecological civilisation creates space for different groups to jump onto the bandwagon by interpreting the concept in favour of their interests. In this process, identity politics becomes a mechanism by which to aggregate and rank domestic preferences in such a way that economic interests outweigh environmental ones at the state level. This thesis calls for more future research to examine other foreign relations issues through the lens of interest groups, to better comprehend the complex dynamics of China's role in the world.


Background: Potassium permanganate (PP) is a highly corrosive and deadly agent with a reported lethal dose of 10 g in adults. In this report, successful treatment of a patient poisoned with three times the lethal dose of PP is presented, and effective and early approach to such emergency toxicologic condition is discussed. Case Presentation: A 24-year-old woman presented to emergency room of our hospital following PP ingestion (30 g) one hour earlier. She had swollen and stained (dark brown / black) oral cavity, tongue, face, neck and palms. As the patient had stridor, labored respiration, and obstructive swollen upper airways in the emergency room; surgical bedside tracheotomy was performed and later she was transferred to intensive care unit for further treatments. Later, a 20-hour regimen of intravenous N-acetyl cysteine injection was started for her. The patient was also treated with proton pump inhibitor, broad spectrum antibiotics, steroid, analgesic and IV fluids. She was decannulated on the 7th day and discharged home on the 13th day post-admission. Discussion: No specific antidote is available for this poisoning and so the mainstay of treatment is supportive. Airway management is of utmost importance since PP exposure can cause upper airway edema leading to respiratory compromise. Intensivists should be prepared for difficult intubation, emergency cricothyrodotomy or surgical tracheostomy to secure airway. Steroids might be useful for reversing airway Conclusion: This case report mainly emphasizes the significance of early management of difficult airway during resuscitation of patients with ingestion of highly caustic agents, namely PP in this report, and timely supportive care for the improved ultimate outcome.


Abstract.
 During the 20th century, gull populations in North America experienced considerable changes in abundance and geographic ranges. The objective of this study was to describe population trends of Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus) and Great Black-backed Gulls (L. marinus) in the New York Bight, USA, over a 40-year period (1974–2013). A variety of data sources using different survey methods provided estimates of the number of breeding pairs for both species. In the Long Island portion of the New York Bight, overall Herring and Great Black-backed gull nesting populations appear to have fluctuated considerably in size during this time period, and the largest numbers of breeding individuals of these two species occurred in the 1980s. In coastal New Jersey, the Herring Gull nesting population has remained relatively constant, whereas the Great Black-backed Gull nesting population has increased. Individual nesting colonies are dynamic and can vary in size considerably during even short time periods. Several factors, including sea-level changes and the availability of anthropogenic food sources (i.e., at landfills and fisheries by-catch), likely have strongly influenced individual colonies and the overall Herring and Great Blackbacked gull breeding populations in the New York Bight.


Collaterals 2016 (third International Symposium on Collaterals to the Brain) was a multidisciplinary scientific conference focused on collateral circulation in acute ischemic stroke. Decisive challenges include generalizability of optimal triage and selection paradigms based on collateral status for definitive treatment of acute ischemic stroke, rapid dissemination of expert methods, and the urgent need to leverage networking opportunities for stroke science related to the hemodynamics of collaterals. The collaterome, or individual capacity to offset ischemia in the brain, and determination of a favorable collateral profile have become pivotal factors in consideration of the precision medicine of stroke decision-making. The conference convened over 50 invited faculty from around the world to connect on-site participants at a state-of-the-art facility with remote audiences in more than 22 countries and regions. The 2½-day program was structured into 40-min sessions devoted to key issues in translating the collaterome in acute stroke therapy across the globe. This unique forum of expertise emphasized the timely impact of collaterals on a monumental scale, encouraging maximal participation, rapid diffusion and added value of a diverse networking resource. The meeting format established a model geographical framework and innovative videoconferencing platform for future scientific conferences.


An unknown impurity was observed in Sumatriptan base during Related Substance analysis for Sumatriptan succinate. This unknown impurity was isolated from crude sample of Sumatriptan base by using semi-preparative HPLC technique but it was not stable and gets fully degraded into two main impurities. The objective of this study is to find out unknown impurity from sumatriptan base (Active pharmaceutical ingredients) and confirmed its degradation into Sumatriptan impurity F and Sumatriptan base impurities by using advance spectroscopic Techniques.


Nonmodel rodents are widely used as subjects for both basic and applied biological research, but the genetic diversity of the study individuals is rarely quantified. University-housed colonies tend to be small and subject to founder effects and genetic drift; so they may be highly inbred or show substantial genetic divergence from other colonies, even those derived from the same source. Disregard for the levels of genetic diversity in an animal colony may result in a failure to replicate results if a different colony is used to repeat an experiment, as different colonies may have fixed alternative variants. Here we use high throughput sequencing to demonstrate genetic divergence in three isolated colonies of Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) even though they were all established recently from the same source. We also show that genetic diversity in allegedly "outbred" colonies of nonmodel rodents (gerbils, hamsters, house mice, deer mice, and rats) varies considerably from nearly no segregating diversity to very high levels of polymorphism. We conclude that genetic divergence in isolated colonies may play an important role in the "replication crisis." In a more positive light, divergent rodent colonies represent an opportunity to leverage genetically distinct individuals in genetic crossing experiments. In sum, awareness of the genetic diversity of an animal colony is paramount as it allows researchers to properly replicate experiments and also to capitalize on other genetically distinct individuals to explore the genetic basis of a trait.


The role that the constituents of the ascorbate-glutathione cycle play in the mechanism of contrasting ozone sensitivities was examined in mature and old tobacco leaves after acute ozone-fumigation (150 p.p.b., 5 h). Levels of the enzyme activities associated with the detoxifying system were lower in ozone-sensitive Bel W3 control plants than in unfumigated ozone-tolerant Bel B plants. In particular, the endogenous activities of ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and glutathione reductase (GR), and the metabolites ascorbic acid (AA) and reduced glutathione (GSH) were more abundant in Bel B than Bel W3 control plants. These results suggest that the higher tolerance of Bel B to O 3 is associated with a greater initial content of the antioxidant enzymes or metabolites. Only in the mature leaves of the ozone-tolerant Bel B cv. did fumigation trigger activation of APX and, weakly, of dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR). The activity of these enzymes was significantly lower after ozone treatment in both mature and old leaves of Bel W3 than in control plants. Fumigation had little effect on the ascorbate content. Its main effects on the glutathione pool were that it boosted the oxidized form and lowered the reduced form, particularly in mature Bel W3 leaves. Extractable GR activity remained unchanged in both Bel B and Bel W3 immediately after fumigation, but increased slightly 24 h later, particularly in mature leaves of Bel W3. Exposure to O 3 caused a sharp decline in chloroplastic GR mRNA levels in both cultivars. However, as Western blot analysis failed to detect any major changes in GR protein content at this time, the protein must be highly stable. There is therefore a good correlation between tolerance to O 3 and high endogenous levels of antioxidant metabolites such as AA and GSH in tobacco. In addition, the degree of inducibility of the system discriminates the two cultivars investigated.


Because of their nondeterministic nature of behaviour, the supervisory control of manufacturing systems must be carried out in closed loop. This trait greatly increases the size and complexity of the Discrete-Event System (DES)-based supervisorycontrollers of manufacturing systems. Attempting to cope with this complexity, a Hybrid Supervisory Controller (HSC), that distributes operations between a DES-based supervisory controller, an alternate mechanism, and a diagnostic system, was developed. The implemented diagnostic system had to be able to detect multiple faults, be robust, as well as integrate well with the other elements of the HSC. A model-based method derived from the General Diagnostic Engine [de Kleer and Williams, 1989] utilizing a set of models was developed and found to be suitable. Models are chosen and expectations of their predictions are adjusted according to the state of the equipment, the operations they are performing, and the location of parts.


Anthropogenic marine debris, mainly of plastic origin, is accumulating in estuarine and coastal environments around the world, causing damage to multiple species of fauna and flora, as well as habitats. Plastics have the potential to accumulate in food webs, and cause economic losses to tourism and sea-going industries, like commercial fishing. The production and use of plastic products is growing, from 230 million tonnes produced globally in 2005 to 320 million tonnes in 2015, a 40% increase in production over 10 years. If we are to manage the increasing input and threat, we must understand where plastic pollution is accumulating in the environment and what the impacts to organisms in these areas are.

The goal of this thesis was to explore the dispersal and risks of plastic pollution in the coastal environment, at a scale that is useful to local management authorities. I used four research aims to achieve this goal. The aim of the first data chapter (Chapter 2) was to prioritise research that would improve modelling outputs in the future. In the second data chapter (Chapter 3), the aim was to locate the areas of highest exposure to plastic pollution for three vulnerable habitats. In the third data chapter (Chapter 4), I aimed to explore the dominant sources and processes of plastic accumulation. Lastly, in the final data chapter (Chapter 5), I aimed to understand the sublethal consequence of plastic exposure on a tropic reef fish.

The first data chapter of my thesis presents an advection-diffusion model that includes beaching, settling, resuspension/re-floating, degradation and topographic effects on the wind in nearshore waters to quantify the relative importance of these physical processes in governing plastic debris accumulation. I found that the source location has by far the largest effect on the accumulation location of the debris. The diffusivity, used to parameterise the sub-grid scale movements, and the relationship between debris resuspension/re-floating from beaches and the presence of a wind shadow created by high islands also has a dramatic impact on the modelled accumulation areas. The rate of degradation of macroplastics into microplastics also had a large influence in the prediction of debris dispersal and accumulation. These findings may help prioritise research on the physical processes that affect plastic accumulation, leading to more accurate modelling, and subsequently an improved empirical basis for management in the future.

In the second data chapter, I used the model described in Chapter 2 to predict the potential exposure of vulnerable habitats and species to plastic pollution using a spatial risk assessment approach. The effect of plastics on the marine environment is well documented, however the physical location of these interactions are largely unknown. I assessed the potential exposure of mangroves, coral reefs and marine turtles to plastics during the two main wind conditions of the region; the trade winds and monsoon wind seasons. By creating relative exposure categories based on the density of particles in modelling outputs of nil, low, medium and high exposure. I found that in the trade wind season (April to September, dominated by strong south-easterly winds) marine turtles, mangroves and reef habitats had lower exposure than during the monsoon wind season (October to March, dominated by lighter and more variable winds). A small proportion of coral reef habitat was in the high exposure categories, whereas the turtle home-range had a large area in high exposure categories (16% and 26% exposed to high microplastics during monsoon season, respectively). Unlike the other two case studies, the mangrove habitat had consistent hotspots of high exposure across both wind seasons. The outputs of this chapter can inform local scale management action, for example turtle management and recovery plans. The method presented here can also be transferred to other species and habitats and scaled up for larger jurisdictions.

In the third data chapter, I built on Chapter 2 (a sensitivity analysis of physical/modelled processes) by using field data for macro- and microplastics to interrogate the model. The aim was to find the likely sources of plastics to the Whitsunday region and understand the limitations for the model in a complex coastline and at a management-relevant scale. I found that, for microplastics, offshore sources are likely to be more important than onshore, and for macroplastics, local (onshore) sources are more important than they are for microplastics. Of the physical characteristics I examined, I found none that make a site more or less predictable in the modelling. Field data on sources at local scales is necessary, although, this is recognised as a difficult task.

In the last data chapter, I assessed the consequence of plastic exposure by quantifying the effect of microplastic exposure on juveniles of a widespread and abundant planktivorous fish (Acanthochromis polyacanthus). Under five different plastic concentrations, with plastics the same size as the natural food particles (mean 2 mm diameter), consumption of microplastic was low and there was no significant effect of plastic exposure on fish growth, body condition or behaviour. However, the number of plastics found in the gut of the fish vastly increased when plastic particle size was reduced to approximately one quarter the size of the normal food particles, with a maximum of 2102 small (< 300 μm diameter) particles present in the gut of individual fish after a 1-week plastic exposure period. Under conditions where food was replaced by plastic, there was a negative effect on the growth and body condition of the fish. These results suggest plastics could become more of a problem as they breakup into smaller size classes, and that environmental changes that lead to a decrease in plankton concentrations likely have a greater influence on fish populations than microplastic presence alone.

The risks of plastic pollution to environmental features remain largely unquantified. However, my thesis demonstrates significant gains in understanding of mechanisms that can be used to determine where plastics are likely to accumulate, and identifies priorities for future research to improve the statistical power of the models. For example, by understanding the resuspension of plastic in areas without wind driven waves. This thesis also highlights the need to understand different types of plastics separately, microplastics have different consequences to macroplastics, different areas of accumulation and different sources, therefore the risks and appropriate management actions are very different.


There have been many new algorithms proposed over the last five years for solving time series classification (TSC) problems. A recent experimental comparison of the leading TSC algorithms has demonstrated that one approach is significantly more accurate than all others over 85 datasets. That approach, the Flat Collective of Transformation-based Ensembles (Flat-COTE), achieves superior accuracy through combining predictions of 35 individual classifiers built on four representations of the data into a flat hierarchy. Outside of TSC, deep learning approaches such as convolutional neural networks (CNN) have seen a recent surge in popularity and are now state of the art in many fields. An obvious question is whether CNNs could be equally transformative in the field of TSC. To test this, we implement a common CNN structure and compare performance to Flat-COTE and a recently proposed time series-specific CNN implementation. We find that Flat-COTE is significantly more accurate than both deep learning approaches on 85 datasets. These results are impressive, but Flat-COTE is not without deficiencies. We improve the collective by adding new components and proposing a modular hierarchical structure with a probabilistic voting scheme that allows us to encapsulate the classifiers built on each transformation. We add two new modules representing dictionary and interval-based classifiers, and significantly improve upon the existing frequency domain classifiers with a novel spectral ensemble. The resulting classifier, the Hierarchical Vote Collective of Transformation-based Ensembles (HIVE-COTE) is significantly more accurate than Flat-COTE and represents a new state of the art for TSC. HIVE-COTE captures more sources of possible discriminatory features in time series and has a more modular, intuitive structure.


Nitric oxide (NO) is one of the important biologic mediators in regulation of gastrointestinal (GI) functions, but the influence of NO on the release of secretin and cholecystokinin (CCK) and exocrine pancreatic secretion has not been adequately investigated in the rat. The aim of this study was to determine the role of NO on endogenous and exogenous secretin-or CCK-stimulated pancreatic exocrine secretion both in anesthetized and conscious rats. Experiments were carried out in four different groups of rats with duodenal pancreatobiliary cannulas and jugular vein catheters. Group 1: During duodenal infusion of 0.05N HCl or 15% casein (pH 7.0), N-nitro-l-arginine (NNA), an inhibitor of NO-synthase in graded doses (2.5, 5, 10 mg/kg/h), was infused intravenously. Group 2: One hour after starting intravenous secretin at 5 pmol/kg/h or intravenous CCK-8 at 0.06 &mgr;g/kg/h, NNA in graded doses was administered intravenously. Group 3: In conscious rats, NNA (5 mg/kg/h) was given intravenously for 1 hour after a meal. Group 4: l-Arginine at 100 mg/kg/h was infused intravenously during the period of NNA (5 mg/kg/h) infusion in groups 1, 2, and 3. Pancreatic juice was collected at 30-minute intervals to measure volume, as well as output of bicarbonate and protein. At the end of the experiment, plasma secretin, vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP) and CCK levels were determined by radioimmunoassay (RIA). NNA dose dependently inhibited the pancreatic secretion of fluid and bicarbonate stimulated by duodenal acidification, exogenous secretin, and a meal. NNA dose dependently inhibited the pancreatic secretion of protein stimulated by duodenal infusion of casein, exogenous CCK, and a meal. l-Arginine significantly reversed the NNA-induced inhibition of pancreatic secretion in all experiments. NNA did not alter significantly the plasma levels of secretin, VIP, and CCK. Our results indicated that endogenous NO plays a significant role in the regulation of pancreatic exocrine secretion stimulated by secretin and CCK. However, NO does not influence the release of secretin, VIP, or CCK in the rat.


Sketching is one of the most accessible techniques for communicating our ideas quickly and for collaborating in real time. Here we present a web-based environment for collaborative sketching of everyday visual concepts. We explore the integration of an artificial agent, instantiated as a recurrent neural network, who is both cooperative and responsive to actions performed by its human collaborator. To evaluate the quality of the sketches produced in this environment, we conducted an experimental user study and found that sketches produced collaboratively carried as much semantically relevant information as those produced by humans on their own. Further control analyses suggest that the semantic information in these sketches were indeed the product of collaboration, rather than attributable to the contributions of the human or the artificial agent alone. Taken together, our findings attest to the potential of systems enabling real-time collaboration between humans and machines to create novel and meaningful content.


This study investigates the potential of "Powdrogen" plants for blue hydrogen and decarbonized electric power production, conceived to operate flexibly depending on the electricity price and to increase the capacity factor of the hydrogen production and CO2 separation units. The Hydrogen production is based on fired tubular reforming or auto-thermal reforming technologies with pre-combustion CO2 capture by a MDEA process. The power island is based on a combined cycle with H2-fired gas turbine and a triple pressure reheat heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). The analysis considers three main plant operating modes: hydrogen mode (reformer at full load with hydrogen export and combined cycle off) and power mode (reformer at full load with all hydrogen burned in the combined cycle), plus an intermediate polygeneration mode, producing both hydrogen and electricity. The possibility of integrating the HRSG and the reformer heat recovery process to feed a single steam turbine has been explored to allow keeping the steam turbine hot also in hydrogen operating mode. The economic analysis investigates the competitivity of the plant for different operating hours in hydrogen and power modes. Results suggest that these plants are likely to be a viable way to produce flexibly low-carbon hydrogen and electricity following the market demand.


The first photographs of the OH airglow we took during a lunar eclipse revealed large (20–30-km) east–west waves from horizon to horizon which drifted northward at 10–15 m/sec. These waves were not typical of the ripples we have found to be well-correlated with lower lunar transit.


Abstract
This study updates the discussion on demand-pull attention as a source of radical product innovation. Demand-pull attention shows an ex ante alignment with market characteristics and needs as opposed to pushing resources toward markets. The authors suggest a holistic framework and specify three dimensions of demand-pull attention: anticipated or revealed market demand, market environment, and external economic environment. Based on a large German longitudinal panel consisting of 941 firm-year observations from 2003 to 2013, the authors conceptualized the measurement of demand-pull dimensions' attention and radical product innovation using computer-aided text analysis of annual reports. The authors analyzed the relationship between the attention that a firm pays to different demand-pull dimensions and the firm's strategic intention to radically innovate; thus, the authors actually focused on the cognitive sources of radical product innovations. This chapter suggests that radical product innovation activities are positively driven by attention toward the market environment and market demand orientation. However, the hypothesis, which assumed a negative relationship between attention toward the external economic environment and radical innovation, could not be significantly confirmed. This demands a closer look into the underlying decision processes of firms when deciding on radical product innovations. With the theoretical grounding on the attention-based view of the firm, the authors contribute to a better understanding of the role that organizational cognition plays in innovation processes.


A gold-mining town in northeastern California that flourished during the 1870s and 1880s, Bodie has become known as one of the most extensive ghost towns of the American West. It is now a state park managed according to the preservation principle of "arrested decay" and, as such, is an unusual instance in the United States of a cultural heritage site presented through ruins. Investigations of comparable tourist venues have emphasized the role of preconditioned conceptions in shaping visitors' reactions. Bodie offers an opportunity to consider in addition the direct effects of visual experience—the combined impression made by the geography of the site, the juxtaposition of the structures and setting, and the fragmentary furnishing of buildings—whether resulting from accidents of time or organizational decisions made at the park. Offering a minimum of written interpretation, the park is a display of fragments that creates a distinctive impression of authenticity while offering a message very different from both historical setting and the information offered to visitors. Bodie exemplifies the power of visual appearance to create meaning, whether intended or not.


Rare categories abound and their characterization has heretofore received little attention. Fraudulent banking transactions, network intrusions, and rare diseases are examples of rare classes whose detection and characterization are of high value. However, accurate characterization is challenging due to high-skewness and non-separability from majority classes, e.g., fraudulent transactions masquerade as legitimate ones. This paper proposes the RACH algorithm by exploring the compactness property of the rare categories. It is based on an optimization framework which encloses the rare examples by a minimum-radius hyper ball. The framework is then converted into a convex optimization problem, which is in turn effectively solved in its dual form by the projected sub gradient method. RACH can be naturally kernelized. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of RACH.


Hormone secretion by thyrocytes occurs by fluid phase uptake and lysosomal degradation of the prohormone thyroglobulin (Tg). However, some Tg internalized by megalin bypasses lysosomes and is transcytosed across cells and released into the bloodstream. Because the hormone content of Tg is variable, we investigated whether this affects transcytosis. We found that rat Tg with a low hormone content [low-hormonogenic rat Tg (low-horm-rTg)] is transcytosed by megalin across thyroid FRTL-5 cells to a greater extent than rat Tg with a high hormone content [hormonogenic rat Tg (horm-rTg)]. In immunoprecipitation experiments, the Tg sequence Arg-2489-Lys-2503 (required for binding to megalin and heparan sulfate proteoglycans) was found to be more exposed in low-horm-rTg, which accounted for its preferential transcytosis. Thus, removal of surface heparan sulfate proteoglycans from FRTL-5 cells or blocking of 2489–2503 reduced transcytosis of low-horm-rTg to a greater extent than that of horm-rTg. Preferential transcytosis of low-horm-rTg affected hormone release. Thus, the increase in hormone release from horm-rTg in FRTL-5 cells determined by megalin blocking (due to reduced transcytosis and enhanced Tg degradation) was rescued by low-horm-rTg, suggesting that megalin is required for effective hormone release. This finding was confirmed in a small number of megalin-deficient mice, which had serological features resembling mild hypothyroidism. Reduced hormone formation within Tg in vivo, due to treatment of rats with aminotriazole or of patients with Graves' disease with methimazole, resulted in increased Tg transcytosis via megalin, in confirmation of results with FRTL-5 cells. Our study points to a major role of megalin in thyroid homeostasis with possible implications in thyroid diseases.


Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has been an ongoing pandemic since December 2019. Unfortunately, kidney transplant recipients are a high-risk group during the disease course, and scientific data are still limited in this patient group. Beyond the dosage of immunosuppressive drugs, pharmacological immunosuppression may also alter the infection response in the COVID-19 course. The effects of immunosuppressive agents on the development and process of infection should not be decided only by determining how potent they are and how much they suppress the immune system; it is also thought that the direct effect of the virus, increased oxidative stress, and cytokine storm play a role in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 disease. There are data about immunosuppressive drugs like calcineurin inhibitors (CNI) or mammalian target of rapamycin inhibitors (mTORi) therapy related to their beneficial effects during any infection course. Limited data suggest that the use of CNI or mTORi may have beneficial effects on the process. In this hypothetical review, the probable impacts of CNI and mTORi on the pathogenesis of the COVID-19 were investigated.


The paper presents the ancient Kartvelian scripts of Crete dated from the nineteenth to fifteenth century BC. On Linear A (LA) tablets mathematical data were written in the Common Kartvelian language. The vast bulk of LA signs are graphically and phonetically identical to those of Mycenaean Linear B and the Cypriot syllabic scripts. The problem of the language of LA inscriptions has long remained unsolved, because it was supposed that the language and its culture no longer existed. The meanings of the LA inscriptions remained unidentified, and the LA tablets were declared to be written in an unknown dead language. The LA word for addition ku-ro is especially interesting and important. "The meaning of one Linear A word is certain: ku-ro is the word which introduces totals, and must mean something like 'total' or 'so much'. If we could find such a word in a known language, the problem of Linear A might be solved "(J. Chadwick). The word ku-ro denoting arithmetic operation of addition, also the word kiro/*ki-lo (subtraction, lessening) are attested in all Kartvelian dialects: Georgian, Megrelian, Laz and Svan, which is shown in detail in the text of the paper. Phonemic sequences of root+suffixal morphemes *kur-o(j) and *kir-o(j)/*kil-o(j) are the canonical forms of Common Kartvelian. It is shown that the sequence root+suffix is regulated by the principle of monovocalism in Kartvelian dialects. The study of Kartvelian material justifies the reliability of interpreting the LA script sign-sequences ku-ro and ki-ro/*ki-lo as the Common Kartvelian stems.


As the Internet evolves, we find more applications that involve data originating from multiple sources, and spanning machines located all over the world. Such wide distribution of sensitive data increases the risk of information leakage, and may sometimes inhibit useful applications. For instance, even though banks could share data to detect systemic threats in the US financial network, they hesitate to do so because it can leak business secrets to their competitors. Encryption is an effective way to preserve data confidentiality, but eliminates all processing capabilities. Some approaches enable processing on encrypted data, but they usually have security weaknesses, such as data leakage through side-channels, or require expensive cryptographic computations. In this thesis, we present techniques that address the above limitations. First, we present an efficient symmetric homomorphic encryption scheme, which can aggregate encrypted data at an unprecedented scale. Second, we present a way to efficiently perform secure computations on distributed graphs. To accomplish this, we express large computations as a series of small, parallelizable vertex programs, whose state is safely transferred between vertices using a new cryptographic protocol. Finally, we propose using differential privacy to strengthen the security of trusted processors: noise is added to the side-channels, so that no adversary can extract useful information about individual users. Our experimental results suggest that the presented techniques achieve order-of-magnitude performance improvements over previous approaches, in scenarios such as the business intelligence application of a large corporation and the detection of systemic threats in the US financial network. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Computer and Information Science First Advisor Andreas Haeberlen


We measured H2O2 release by human alveolar macrophages (AM) from normals and sarcoid patients in suspension immediately after bronchoalveolar lavage in the presence and absence of the triggering agent, phorbol myristate acetate (PMA). AM from 11 sarcoid patients produced a mean (+/- SE) of 21.7 +/- 2.3 and 5.9 +/- 3.4 nmol H2O2/10(6) macrophages in the presence and absence of PMA, respectively. By contrast, AM from normals (n = 6) produced 9.8 +/- 1.7 and 1.6 +/- 0.7 nmol H2O2/10(6) macrophages with and without PMA, respectively. Macrophage activation, as monitored by H2O2 production, did not correlate with the angiotensin-converting enzyme levels, the result of gallium-67 scans, or the percent of lymphocytes in the bronchoalveolar lavage. To determine whether AM from normals could be stimulated to increase their H2O2 production to the level seen in patients with sarcoid, we measured H2O2 released by adherent AM after incubation in each of four potential activating agents: recombinant interferons alpha A, beta, gamma (rIFN alpha A, rIFN beta, and rIFN gamma, respectively), and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3. H2O2 release in the range seen in sarcoid patients could be induced in PMA-triggered AM from normals by rIFN gamma in a time- (t1/2 approximately 1 d) and dose-dependent fashion (threefold increase, EC50 5 antiviral U/ml) and by rIFN alpha A and rIFN beta at higher concentrations, but not by 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3.


Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) envisions environments where devices interact among themselves to work seamlessly together on behalf of humans. In recent years, the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) concept, which opts for connecting everyday objects to the Internet, and the Mobile Computing paradigm have contributed to strengthening UbiComp. For this reason, UbiComp environments are not necessarily populated by powerful computers. On the contrary, resource constrained devices (e.g., embedded and mobile devices) are the main actors in these environments. Thus, it is important for the environment to deal with their heterogeneity, unreliability, and replaceability. In order to cope with heterogeneity, the Semantic Web has proposed several standards and models to clearly define the terms so that they can be reused across applications boundaries. Regarding unreliability and replaceability, space-based computing (or Tuple Spaces) promotes the uncoupled coordination of the devices. Solutions based on semantic tuple spaces combine these three beneficial aspects resulting from bridging the Semantic Web and Tuple Spaces domains for UbiComp. Most of these semantic tuple spaces consider embedded and mobile devices as mere clients in a space managed by more powerful devices. Such delegation helps to reduce the workload of devices with computing and energy limitations. However, this delegation moves the data away from where it is physically generated. This creates a conflict between providing updated data and generating unnecessary network traffic for unused information. In addition, this delegation makes constrained devices intrinsically dependent on other devices when it might not always be necessary. This dissertation explores how these constrained devices can act as fully fledged semantic knowledge providers to create a more decentralized space.


We evaluate forecasts for the euro area in data-rich and 'data-lean' environments by comparing three different approaches: a simple PMI model based on Purchasing Managers' Indices (PMIs), a dynamic factor model with euro area data, and a dynamic factor model with data from the euro plus data from national economies (pseudo-real time data). We estimate backcasts, nowcasts and forecasts for GDP, components of GDP, and GDP of all individual euro area members, and examine forecasts for the 'Great Moderation' (2000-2007) and the 'Great Recession' (2008-2009) separately. All models consistently beat naive AR benchmarks. More data does not necessarily improve forecasting accuracy: For the factor model, adding monthly indicators from national economies can lead to more uneven forecasting accuracy, notably when forecasting components of euro area GDP during the Great Recession. This suggests that the merits of national data may reside in better estimation of heterogeneity across GDP components, rather than in improving headline GDP forecasts for individual euro area countries. Comparing factor models to the much simpler PMI model, we find that the dynamic factor model dominates the latter during the Great Moderation. However, during the Great Recession, the PMI model has the advantage that survey-based measures respond faster to changes in the outlook, whereas factor models are more sluggish in adjusting. Consequently, the dynamic factor model has relatively more difficulties beating the PMI model, with relatively large errors in forecasting some countries or components of euro area GDP.


One of the points of convergence among the many strands of the A2K movement is resistance to the one-size-fits-all ratcheting up of intellectual property provisions around the world. The resistance is grounded in analysis showing that intellectual property rules often create social costs that far outweigh their intended benefits. Much of the A2K movement's advocacy for limitations of intellectual property rights is located within the field of intellectual property law – promoting the inclusion and use of balancing mechanisms within the laws granting intellectual property rights. But intellectual property rights are also shaped and limited by their interaction with other fields of law, competition law being a prime example. After describing the theoretical and doctrinal underpinnings of a shift of A2K legal advocacy toward the use of competition law, this paper surveys some of the strategic advantages of using competition norms to reframe political debates and shift struggles into new, potentially more hospitable, forums.


Ovarian stimulation plays a pivotal role in assisted reproductive therapies, to increase the number of embryos available for treatment; however, there is no clear consensus from meta-analyses in the literature which, if any, of the preparations in use are superior in terms of clinical outcomes. The aim of this thesis was to examine the effect of common human gonadotrophin preparations with different half lives and LH activity (hMG, rFSH and Pergoveris) on embryo quality and resulting offspring, compared to non- stimulated negative controls and positive PMSG treated controls, using the mouse model. The studies in this thesis indicated that an LH ceiling threshold is evident during folliculogenesis, where the use of long acting LH preparations resulted in higher numbers of fragmented oocytes, absent of cumulus cells (P<0.001), reduced expression of the pro and anti-angiogenic factors, MYHII and PEDF in cumulus cells (P<0.05), increased embryonic developmental arrest (P<0.001) and perturbed IGF2 (P<0.05) and VEGFA gene expression in resulting blastocysts (P<0.01), compared to negative controls. Use of preparations containing LH bioactivity resulted in offspring with altered total body weight trajectories and internal organ weight abnormalities (P<0.05), which were, in some instances, compounded by in vitro culture. In addition, we elucidated a relationship between FSH half life differences between urinary and recombinant preparations and embryo quality. The urinary human gonadotrophin preparation, hMG, could yield developmentally competent embryos at lower concentrations, than the recombinant Pergoveris treatment. In addition to FSH, these preparations contain LH and both low doses of preparations composed of short half life rFSH and rLH and high doses of preparations containing long acting LH bioactivity, resulted in the highest rates of developmental arrest. These groups were observed to have complete absence of H19 expression. The results of this thesis provide clear evidence that ovarian stimulation does negatively impact the embryo and subsequent offspring and provides support for an LH ceiling threshold, above which detrimental effects occur, both on in vitro embryo development and in vivo foetal development, which later effects postnatal growth.


Repeated contexts allow us to find relevant information more easily. The ability to use such information has been called contextual learning and has been investigated using the contextual cuing paradigm. In this task, participants search for and identify the orientation of a target letter T amongst rotated Ls. Over blocks, RTs become faster for repeated spatial configurations (old displays) compared with novel configurations (new displays). Learning such repeated contexts has been proposed to depend on either global processing of the repeated contexts, or alternatively processing of the local region surrounding the target. The present study takes a novel approach by measuring differences in participant's attentional bias (i.e. local or global) in relation to the amount of contextual learning. Twenty participants completed a shape detection task followed by a contextual cueing task. In the shape detection task participants were presented with large shapes consisting of smaller shapes and they had to decide whether the target shape was present or absent. The presentation of the target shape could either be presented at the local level (i.e. the smaller shape) or the global level (i.e. the larger shape). In the contextual cuing task participants completed 16 blocks with 24 trials in each (12 old and 12 new displays). Participants were then split into two groups, depending on whether their local RT - global RT was below (local-bias group) or above (global-bias group) the median. Participants in the local-bias group showed significantly stronger contextual cueing effects than participants in the global-bias group (152 vs. 39 ms, respectively). Furthermore, there was a strong negative correlation between global bias and contextual cueing (r = -0.61, p<.005). In conclusion, this study suggests that contextual learning depends more on local information than on global information. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of observer variables in relation to contextual learning.


Abstract Eight well-preserved cephalopod jaw fossils were discovered from the Upper Cretaceous (Santonian and Campanian) deposits of Vancouver Island, Canada, and Hokkaido, Japan. They occur individually in calcareous concretions and retain their three-dimensional architecture. Seven of them consist of a widely open outer lamella and a posteriorly projected inner lamella with a pointed rostrum. Both lamellae are made of fluorapatite, which may represent diagenetically altered chitin, and lack a calcareous element. Based on these diagnostic features, the seven jaw fossils are identified as lower jaws of the Coleoidea. Comparison with the lower jaws of modern coleoids allows us to distinguish the following new genera and species among them; Nanaimoteuthis jeletzkyi of the Order Vampyromorphida, and Paleocirroteuthis haggarti and P. pacifica of the Order Cirroctopodida. The lower jaws of these new taxa are clearly distinguished by having a much less projected inner lamella from those of modern and extinct species of the Superorder Decabrachia and the Order Octopodida. The maximum lengths of their outer lamellae (35.0–67.1 mm) are much larger than those of most modern vampyromorph and cirroctopodid species, indicating the large body size and weight of their owners. One of the other three lower jaws examined, characterized by a posteriorly extended outer lamella, may be assigned to the Octopodida. This study clearly demonstrates that large octobrachiate coleoids existed in the Late Cretaceous North Pacific.


Delays in approving genetically modified crops and foods in the European Union have led to a high profile trade conflict with the United States. This book analyses the EU-US conflict and uses it as a case study to explore the governance of new technologies.

The transatlantic conflict over GM crops and food has been widely attributed to regulatory differences that divide the EU and the US. Going beyond common stereotypes of these differences and their origins, this book analyses the conflict through contending coalitions of policy actors operating across the Atlantic. Governing the Transatlantic Conflict over Agricultural Biotechnology focuses on interactions between the EU and the US, rather than on EU-US comparisons. Drawing on original research and interviews with key policy actors, the book shows how EU-US efforts to harmonise regulations for agricultural biotechnology created the context in which activists could generate a backlash against the technology. In this new context regulations were shaped along different lines. Joseph Murphy and Les Levidow provide new insights by elaborating critical perspectives on global governance, issue-framing, standard-setting and regulatory science.

This accessible book will appeal to undergraduate and post-graduate students, academics and policy-makers working on a wide range of issues covered by political science, policy studies, international relations, economics, geography, business management, environmental and development studies, science and technology studies.


There are increasing concerns about the frequency and duration of drug product shortages that have led to adverse patient outcomes. The current U.S. shortage of flu vaccine exemplifies the potential negative consequences of patient care either delayed or not provided. Healthcare professionals have devised methods of dealing with drugs in short supply, but some methods have led to product confusion and/or calculation errors resulting in the inadvertent administration of the wrong drug or wrong dose.


IZA DP No. 15283 MAY 2022 Minimum Wages and the Rise in Solo Self-Employment* Solo self-employment is on the rise despite less favorable working conditions compared to traditional jobs. We show that the introduction of minimum wages in German industries led to an increase in the share of solo self-employment by up to 8.5 percentage points. We explain our findings within a substitution-scale model that predicts a decline in demand and earnings perspectives for high-skilled dependent workers, whenever the negative scale effect (overall decline in industry employment) dominates the positive substitution effect (shift towards high-skilled workers). Such situations can occur during an economic downturn in combination with a strong and rising minimum wage bite. JEL Classification: J21, J31, J38, J08


An analytical comparison is made between two basic models of the flow of workpiece material around the edge ofan orthogonal cutting tool during steady-state metal removal. Each has been the basis for assumptions in previous studies which attempt to model the machining process, but no direct comparison had been made to determine which, if either, is an appropriate model. One model assumes that a separation point exists on the rounded cutting edge while the other includes a stable build-up adhered to the edge and assumes a separation point at the outer extreme of the build-up. Theories of elastic-plastic deformation are employed to develop force predictions based on each model, and experiments are performed on 6061-T6 aluminum alloy to evaluate modeling success. The experiments utilize unusually large cutting edge radii to isolate the edge component of the total cutting forces. Results suggest that a material separation point on the tool itself does not exist and that the model that includes a stable build-up works better to describe the experimental observations.


Representative members of four arbovirus taxons were studied by immune electron microscopy (IEM) in an attempt to determine whether the technique can be applied to the specific identification of arboviruses. Alphavirus, flavivirus, bunyavirus, and rhabdovirus antigens were prepared by propagation in tissue culture. The viruses were used to titrate homologous antibody and test heterologous antibody in the IEM test. Specific clumping together with visualization of antibody attachment was observed for all homologous systems studied. For the alphaviruses, titers of antibody, as determined by IEM, were comparable with the titers obtained by hemagglutination inhibition. Alphavirus cross-reactions were observed at low antibody dilutions by IEM. However, further dilution of antibody resulted in specific clumping only of homologous virus, allowing specific identification of alphavirus unknowns. For all viruses studied, positive IEM reactions were obtained with homologous grouping ascitic fluids but not with heterologous grouping fluids.


The Ca2+-activated K+ channel in endocrine cells is responsible for membrane hyperpolarization and rhythmic firing of action potentials. The probability of opening of this channel is sensitive to intracellular-free Ca2+ concentration. In this study we have identified one such large conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channel in alpha T3-1 pituitary gonadotroph cell. This channel is ohmic with a unit conductance of 170 pS in symmetrical KCl (135 mM) and its current reverses near zero millivolts. When more than one channel is present in the patch membrane they open and close independent of each other, exhibiting no cooperativity between them as expected of a binomial distribution. The regulatory mechanism of this channel in modulating hormone secretion from alpha T3-1 gonadotroph cells is indicated.


This is an empirical study which follows general to specific approach for finding relevant macroeconomic variables affecting Pakistan's economic growth. Annualized data between 1976 and 2014, and the auto regressive distributed lag is employed for conducting the analysis. The main findings of this study are consumer price index, gross fixed capital formation, gross national expenditures, remittance and credit extended to private sector which has importance from growth perspective. Gross fixed capital formation and remittance are positively associated with economic growth of a country. Consumer price index, gross national expenditures and domestic credit extended to private sector hamper the long-run growth process. Based on empirical findings, it is recommended to relevant authorities to augment the gross fixed capital formation, attract foreign remittance, control inflation, reduce government expenditures and alleviate government intervention in financial market for achieving the long-run economic growth.


New and emerging technologies have transformed the classroom (Mishra and Koehler, 2006) and continue to do so, and it has been reported that teachers and teacher educators now work in ever evolving environments (Elliott, 2009). Research indicates that varied forms of CMC can be implemented to foster collaborative and social learning (Arnold and Ducate, 2006), and the formation of communities of practice (CoPs) (Arnold et al., 2005). Therefore, this paper investigates the implementation of online and face-to-face (F2F) communication in an English Language Teaching (ELT) teacher education programme, with the aim of illuminating the potential such modes have for sharing and collaborating, for providing a space for situated learning and open communication. Results are analysed using a corpus-based methodology, drawing on three aspects of community membership, namely a joint enterprise, mutual engagement and a shared repertoire (Wenger, 1998). This paper closes with a discussion of the implications of such data for Language Teacher Education (LTE) in a technologically-oriented world.


Introduction: Marsilea crenata Presl. grows in East Java Province, Indonesia, and showed several pharmacological activities due to its phytoestrogen content. Research indicated its phytoremediation property, and therefore has an impact on heavy metal accumulation in the plants. Lead, cadmium, and mercury are amongst heavy metals that are toxic to the human body. This study aimed to determine and compare Pb, Cd, and Hg mineral contents of soils and leaves of the plants grew in Batu, Pasuruan, Surabaya, and Kediri cities in the province. Method: 10 g of dried powdered leaves and soils were put in separate crucible porcelains, and add 2ml of nitric acid. All were burnt in low heat until white smoke were not formed, and then stood to cool. Ashes obtained were examined using AA 6200 Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS). Result: Showed that leaves samples from the areas showed no Pb and Hg mineral contents that exceeded the permissible limit. Batu City leaf sample had Cd heavy metal content of 2.79 ± 0.01 ppm, which exceeded the permissible limit. Conclusion: Analysis of heavy metal contents of soils from all of the areas showed no exceed limit of Pb and Hg mineral concentrations. Cd soil contents of Surabaya and Kediri cities, were 0.73 ± 0.00 and 2.61 ± 0.08 ppm respectively.


Production of biodiesel is currently shifting from the first to the second generation in which the raw materials are mostly from non-edible type oils and fats. Biodiesel production is commonly conducted under batch operation using mechanical agitation to accelerate mass transfers. The main drawback of oil esterification is the high content of free fatty acids (FFA) which may reduce the yield of biodiesel and prolong the production time (2-5 hours). Ultrasonification has been used in many applications such as component extraction due to its ability to produce cavitation under certain frequency. This research is aimed to facilitate ultrasound system for improving biodiesel production process particularly rubber seed oil. An ultrasound unit was used under constant temperature (40oC) and frequency of 40 Hz. The result showed that ultrasound can reduces the processing time and increases the biodiesel yield significantly. A model to describe correlation of yield and its independent variables is yield (Y) = 43,4894 - 0,6926 X1 + 1,1807 X2 - 7,1042 X3 + 2,6451 X1X2 - 1,6557 X1X3 + 5,7586 X2X3 - 10,5145 X1X2X3, where X1 is mesh sizes, X2 ratio oil: methanol and X3 type of catalyst.


Democratic reform in Taiwan, which has been praised as a "quiet revolution," has transformed Taiwan from an authoritarian regime into a democracy in which human rights and the rule of law are honored. Taiwan has been listed by the New York-based Freedom House as one of the 89 free countries in the world, and one of the 17 free countries in the Asia-Pacific region. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Taiwan plays an important role in the global economy. Taiwan's population is larger than that of over 140 UN member states. It is the world's 17th largest economy and 15th largest trading nation, and its information technology industry is world famous. It is the world's largest producer of notebooks, motherboards, and liquid crystal display monitors. In the World Economic Forum's Growth Competitiveness Report for 2004, Taiwan was listed fourth among all countries, and first in Asia for the third consecutive year. Regrettably, however, Taiwan's political and economic achievements are not truly reflected on the international stage. Taiwan is not a member of any UN-related organization. Of the more than 7,200 inter-governmental organizations in the world, Taiwan is a member of a mere 26, and an observer in only 15. This is not commensurate with the reality of Taiwan's vitality. Because of China's obstruction, Taiwan is denied almost all participation in the inter-governmental activities of the international community. This "political apartheid" harms the human rights, interests, and dignity of Taiwan's people. This is surely a travesty of democratic freedom, human rights, and other mainstream values in the international community, and is something that a civilized society should not tolerate. A Seat for Taiwan People have often stated that Taiwan has been able to create economic and political stability despite limited access to international organizations. As such, it is not necessary to help Taiwan participate in international organizations. However, for the reasons set out below. I believe that Taiwan should have a stronger voice in international institutions. The emergence of new issues demands that Taiwan receive a seat in the United Nations. With the development of globalization, it has become increasingly difficult for any given country to address many transnational issues on its own. For instance, mismanagement of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, or the monetary crises experienced in Brazil, Mexico, and Russia, could have led to a transnational domino-style effect. Fortunately, this was avoided due to the timely involvement and assistance of international financial institutions (IFIs), particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, Taiwan had to sail through the turbulence of the Asian financial crisis without any assistance from IFIs because Taiwan is not a member of them. In view of the further liberalization of the flow of international capital, the international community should seriously consider the possibility of Taiwan's joining IFIs, such as the IMF, in order to better equip IFIs to face potential future financial crises. Additionally, the formation of new frameworks requires that Taiwan has a role in the United Nations. The rise of the concept of the global village has caused a number of issues to become the focus of international concern. International environmental cooperation is one example. The Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force on February 16, 2005, was a significant landmark in multilateral efforts to prevent global warming and pursue sustainable development. The mechanisms in the Protocol pertaining to the control of greenhouse gas emissions will substantially affect Taiwan's industrial development and foreign trade. But due to the absence of UN membership, Taiwan was not permitted to participate in any negotiations concerning the Kyoto Protocol, or to take part in the stipulation of international norms. If the international community expects Taiwan to make contributions to global efforts, then it should facilitate Taiwan's international participation in new frameworks which address critical issues. …


A very fast (>100 kHz) acousto-optic scanning system, which relies on two counterpropagating acoustic waves with the same frequency modulation, is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. This scheme completely suppresses linear frequency chirp and thus permits very fast nonlinear scans and nonconstant linear scans. By changing the phase between the modulating signals, this scheme also provides very fast longitudinal scans of the focal point.


Cloud computing, the new trend for service infrastructures requires user multi-tenancy as well as minimal capital expenditure. In a cloud that services large amounts of data that are massively collected and queried, such as scientific data, users typically pay for query services. The cloud supports caching of data in order to provide quality query services. User payments cover query execution costs and maintenance of cloud infrastructure, and incur cloud profit. The challenge resides in providing efficient and resource-economic query services while maintaining a profitable cloud. In this work we propose an economic model for self-tuned cloud caching targeting the service of scientific data. The proposed economy is adapted to policies that encourage high-quality individual and overall query services but also brace the profit of the cloud. We propose a cost model that takes into account all possible query and infrastructure expenditure. The experimental study proves that the proposed solution is viable for a variety of workloads and data.


A new neural network architecture is proposed and applied in classification of data from multiple sources. The new arclhitecture is called a consensual neural network and its relation to hierarchical and ensemble neural networks is discussed. The consenr;ual neural nebwork architecture is based on statistical consensus theory and invol.ves using non-linearly transformed input data. The input data are transformed several times and the different transformed data are applied as if they were independent inputs. The independent inputs are c!lassified using stage neural networks and the 0utput.s from the stage: networks are then weighted and combined to make a decision. Experimental results based on remote sensing data and geographic data are given. The performance of the consensual neur,al network archi.tecture is compared to that of a two-layer conjugate-gradient backpropagation neural network. The results with the proposed neural network architecture compare favourably to the backpropagation method in terms of classification accuracy.


Data provenance is a valuable tool for protecting and troubleshooting distributed systems. Careful design of the provenance components reduces the impact on the design, implementation, and operation of the distributed system. In this paper, we present Curator, a provenance management toolkit that can be easily integrated with microservice-based systems and other modern distributed systems. This paper describes the design of Curator and discusses how we have used Curator to add provenance to distributed systems. We find that our approach results in no changes to the design of these distributed systems and minimal additional code and dependencies to manage. In addition, Curator uses the same scalable infrastructure as the distributed system and can therefore scale with the distributed system.


Over the last decades, email has been the major carrier for transporting spam and malicious contents over the network. Email is also the primary source of numerous criminal activities on the Internet. Computer Forensics is a systematic process to retain and analyze saved emails for the purpose of legal proceedings and other civil matters. Email analysis is challenging due to not only various fields that can be forged by hackers or malicious users, but also the flexibility of composing, editing, deleting of emails using offline (e.g., MS Outlook) or online (e.g., Web mail) email applications. Towards this direction, a number of open source forensics tools have been widely used by the practitioners. However, these tools have been developed in an isolated manner rather than a collaborative approach. Given that email forensic tool users need to understand to what extent a tool would be useful for his/her circumstances and conducting forensic analysis accordingly. In this paper, we examine a set of common features to compare and contrast five popular open source email forensic tools. The study finds that all email forensic tools are not similar, offer diverse types of facility. By combining analysis tools, it may be possible to gain detailed information in the area of email forensic.


BACKGROUND Detailed neuropathological information on the structural brain lesions underlying seizures is valuable for understanding drug‐resistant focal epilepsy. METHODS We report the diagnoses made on the basis of resected brain specimens from 9523 patients who underwent epilepsy surgery for drug‐resistant seizures in 36 centers from 12 European countries over 25 years. Histopathological diagnoses were determined through examination of the specimens in local hospitals (41%) or at the German Neuropathology Reference Center for Epilepsy Surgery (59%). RESULTS The onset of seizures occurred before 18 years of age in 75.9% of patients overall, and 72.5% of the patients underwent surgery as adults. The mean duration of epilepsy before surgical resection was 20.1 years among adults and 5.3 years among children. The temporal lobe was involved in 71.9% of operations. There were 36 histopathological diagnoses in seven major disease categories. The most common categories were hippocampal sclerosis, found in 36.4% of the patients (88.7% of cases were in adults), tumors (mainly ganglioglioma) in 23.6%, and malformations of cortical development in 19.8% (focal cortical dysplasia was the most common type, 52.7% of cases of which were in children). No histopathological diagnosis could be established for 7.7% of the patients. CONCLUSIONS In patients with drug‐resistant focal epilepsy requiring surgery, hippocampal sclerosis was the most common histopathological diagnosis among adults, and focal cortical dysplasia was the most common diagnosis among children. Tumors were the second most common lesion in both groups. (Funded by the European Union and others.)


ABSTRACT Ambiguity is a natural part of communication in a mathematics classroom. In this paper, a particular subset of ambiguity is characterized as clarifiable. Clarifiable ambiguity in classroom mathematics discourse is common, frequently goes unaddressed, and unnecessarily hinders in-the-moment communication because it likely could be made more clear in a relatively straightforward way if it were attended to. We argue for deliberate attention to clarifiable ambiguity as a critical aspect of attending to meaning and as a necessary precursor to productive use of student mathematical thinking. We illustrate clarifiable ambiguity that occurs in mathematics classrooms and consider ramifications of not addressing it. We conclude the paper with a discussion about addressing clarifiable ambiguity through seeking focused clarification.


Accurate estimations of flood peaks, volumes and hydrographs are needed to design safe and cost-effective hydraulic structures. In this study, we propose a statistical approach for the estimation of the design variables peak and volume by constructing a synthetic design hydrograph. Our approach is based on fitting probability density functions to observed flood hydrographs and takes the dependence between the two variables peak and volume into account. The method consists of the following six steps: sampling of flood events, baseflow separation, normalization of the hydrographs, fitting of the hydrography with statistical density functions, modeling of peak and volume considering their dependence, and construction of the synthetic design hydrograph. The method was developed and tested based on data from nine meso-scale catchments in Switzerland, and has been shown to provide reliable synthetic design hydrographs for all of these catchments. While the method has so far been applied to gauged catchments, it is foreseen to make it applicable to engaged catchments using regionalization approaches.


The ongoing motor output of the brain depends on its remarkable ability to rapidly transform and fuse a variety of sensory streams in real-time. The brain processes these data using networks of neurons that communicate by asynchronous spikes, a technology that is dramatically different from conventional electronic systems. We report here a step towards constructing electronic systems with analogous performance to the brain. Our VLSI spiking neural network combines in real-time three distinct sources of input data; each is place-encoded on an individual neuronal population that expresses soft Winner-Take-All dynamics. These arrays are combined according to a user-specified function that is embedded in the reciprocal connections between the soft Winner-Take-All populations and an intermediate shared population. The overall network is able to perform function approximation (missing data can be inferred from the available streams) and cue integration (when all input streams are present they enhance one another synergistically). The network performs these tasks with about 80% and 90% reliability, respectively. Our results suggest that with further technical improvement, it may be possible to implement more complex probabilistic models such as Bayesian networks in neuromorphic electronic systems.


Drought and suboptimal rainfall constrain production of canola by restricting cropping regions and annual production in Australia. Canola cultivars with improved drought performance may increase the cropping area and production. This research was therefore launched to discover and implement possible ways of improving drought performance and the yield of canola in dry environments. Transpiration efficiency (TE = ratio of biomass production per unit of water transpired) is a key trait for improving drought resistance where crop production depends mainly on seasonal rainfall and stored soil-moisture. However, due to the difficulties associated with measuring TE at the field level, present research investigated the suitability of other physiological/morphological traits including carbon isotope discrimination (Δ= difference of carbon isotope ratio between air and plant biomass), leaf chlorophyll content (SPAD) and specific leaf weight (SLW) to justify their use as
 surrogates of TE in canola. Significant genotypic variation was revealed for all these traits in 111 canola materials including hybrids and inbreds with different cytoplasms in four separate field experiments conducted in 2005, 2006 and 2007. The Δ of Triazine tolerant canola (ranged 21.8-23.2‰) was significantly higher than napus (ranged 18.7-22.4‰), INRA-Ogura (ranged 19.7-22.6‰) and Polima (ranged 20.7-21.7‰). All traits, except HGT, exhibited low genotype and environment ( ) interactions and high repeatability (0.66 to 0.82). Significant genetic (rg) and phenotypic (rp) correlations were observed between Δ and SPAD (rg= -0.43 to -0.62; rp= -0.35 to -0.47 at P<0.01), Δ and SLW (rg= - 0.55 to -0.78; rp= - 0.46 to -0.49 at P<0.01), and Δ and FT (rg = - 0.23 to -0.41; rp = -0.21 to -0.32 at P<0.05). Based on field performance in 2005 and 2006, two inbred lines PacLDP and PacHDP contrasting for Δ, SPAD, FT and HGT were selected and crossed successfully to produce a double
 haploid (DH) population of 123 individuals to study the genetics of carbon isotope discrimination and other associated/agronomic traits. This DH population was tested in fields for three years over 2007 to 2009 which revealed non-significant and high heritability (0.67 to 0.79) for several traits including Δ, SPAD, HGT, FT, and OIL. These studies also revealed negative and significant correlations between Δ and SPAD (rg= - 0.64 to -0.68; rp= - 0.37 to -0.40 at P<0.01), Δ and FT (rg= - 0.21 to -0.37; rp= - 0.25 to -0.39 at P<0.05). To study the relationship between TE and Δ in canola, two experiments were conducted with plants grown in pots. For this purpose, 24 and 35 canola lines were selected in 2006 (Ex06) and 2008 (Ex08), respectively, to represent a wide range of Δ values. Both experiments demonstrated strong and negative correlations between TE and Δ ranging from - 0.62 to -0.82 (rg) at P<0.01. These findings validated the used of Δ as a surrogate of TE in canola. In
 addition, both experiments revealed a negative correlation between Δ and SPAD (rg = - 0.29 to -0.43 at P<0.05), and Δ and SLW (rg = - 0.35 to -0.43 at P<0.05) which were consistent with the field observations. Overall performance for TE, SLW and TDW was higher in hybrids than inbreds and TT in both pot experiments suggesting that hybrids would perform better in dry environments than inbreds and TT. To study the association of Δ with sequences homologous to ERECTA, a candidate gene from Arabidopsis, six polymorphic markers (ERBo1, ERBr1, ERBn1, ERu1, ERu2 and ERu3) were developed using polymorphisms between PacHDP and PacLDP within the ERECTA homologous sequences. A genetic linkage map for canola was constructed using 396 markers including 242 SNP, 97 IP, 52 ISSR, and 3-ERECTA derived. For Δ, nine QTLs were detected explaining 52-58% of the total variation. Two Δ-QTLs stable across years were linked with ERECTA markers ERBr1/ERu2 and ERBo1/ERBn1 that explained 9-14% and 10-11%
 of the trait variation, respectively. However, the strongest Δ-QTL was linked to IP marker IP04364 which explained 11-19% of the variation. Some preliminary trials for yield were conducted using subpopulations of 28 and 12 DH lines in various canola-growing regions of Australia in 2008 and 2009. These trials revealed inconsistent relationships between Δ and yield which suggested that maturity and its interaction with rainfall events might have confounded the relationship between these traits. The overall findings of the present research confirmed the use of Δ as a surrogate of TE in canola. SPAD and SLW could also be used in preliminary screening for TE as easy and less expensive surrogates. Several QTLs for Δ linked with IP, ERECTA and SNP markers identified will help in marker-assisted selection for reduced Δ (and improved TE) in canola.


Phosphorus (P) recovery from wastewater has considerable potential to supplement limited fossil P reserves. Reliable cost data are essential for investor and policymaker decisions. In this study, investment and operational costs for nine P recovery processes were calculated from the investor's perspective, taking into account all relevant side effects on the sludge treatment or the wastewater treatment plant. The assessment was based on pilot and full-scale data which were thoroughly consolidated and standardized with technical and cost data from the German wastewater-sludge treatment train to enable direct comparison. The cost influence of precipitation processes on the current wastewater-sludge treatment train ranges from -0.14 (generating profit) to 0.23 EUR per population equivalent (PE) and year, while the cost influence of sludge leaching processes is around 2.50 EUR/(PE y). The cost influence of processes using dry sludge and mono-incineration ash varies between 0.33 and 3.13 EUR/(PE y), depending on existing disposal pathways, mono-incineration, co-incineration or agricultural use of sludge. The specific costs per kg P recovered (-4 to 10 EUR/kg P) are in general higher than conventional fertilizer production (1.6 EUR/kg P). However, annual costs per PE represent less than 3% of the total costs for wastewater disposal.


River systems are amongst the most dynamic and productive ecosystems in the world and provide habitats for numerous fluvial species. River flow and river shape determine the conditions that affect plant growth and survival. In turn, riparian plants can actively influence river flow and sedimentation and erosion processes, a process called 'ecosystem-engineering'. These continuous interactions create dynamic landscape patterns with a heterogeneous habitat mosaic. In many rivers, natural dynamics have been altered by the construction of dams, fixation of river banks and by indirect pressures such as climate change and alien invasive species. We need more understanding of how natural interactions among plants, water flow and sediment produce river landscapes, and predictive models that simulate these processes to design management plans and to predict effects of ecological restoration. Therefore, this study aimed at better understanding of emergent patterns in vegetation and fluvial morphology arising from the interaction between hydro-morphological processes and eco-engineering species and how they affect habitat suitability of other species. To study how river landscapes develop as a product of plant-river interactions, a model was developed that simulates colonisation, growth and death for eco-engineering plant species with life-stage specific characteristics. River discharge and river morphology dictate where vegetation colonizes, and survival is determined by flooding, desiccation, uprooting, burial and scour. The vegetation interacts through hydraulic resistance with the hydro-morphodynamic processes modelled in Delft3D-FLOW. This combined model is the first that is able to simulate long-term interactions between detailed hydro-morphodynamics and detailed vegetation processes. The model produces natural patterns in fluvial morphodynamics and vegetation with realistic vegetation age distribution across the floodplain. Moreover, it simulates sustained long-term meandering dynamics due to conversions from channel to floodplain and vice versa, as opposed to models with static vegetation or without vegetation. Simulation results demonstrate that river landscapes are sensitive to vegetation properties such as settlement conditions, density, growth and survival conditions. When the river system is under pressure, the native riparian vegetation cover, river morphodynamics and the resulting habitat mosaic change. After introduction of invasive alien plant species in the model, native riparian vegetation becomes outcompeted when the invaders are abundant, but facilitated when the invaders are less abundant. Seasonal plant characteristics strongly affect water levels and sediment transport, depending on season. Dams and climate change affect vegetation and river dynamics by altering the natural flow regime. Scenarios with climatic drying and dams show a reduction in riparian vegetation cover and a shift of vegetation ranges across the floodplain. Higher vegetation covers arise when extreme events in high and low flows increase. Fluvial species are most substantially affected when the flow timing mismatched with critical life-history events. Combinations of multiple flow alteration pressures and natural flow regime restoration have complex nonlinear effects due to multiple adaptation timescales. The new understanding and the model reported in this thesis will allow us to study biogeomorphological interactions, and identify and test river management strategies and river restoration plans to help increase or maintain the ecological value of rivers and their floodplains.


Nursing is one of the world's most diverse occupations. It offers a variety of workplace settings, client populations, and healthcare specialties. Challenging and rewarding careers exist in direct patient care, administration, education, and advanced practice nursing, to name a few. Workforce demand is usually high, and with some retooling or additional education, nurses can develop expertise in other areas of the profession.
One might think that the focus on helping people, the autonomy, the opportunity for career advancement, and the opportunity to work in a variety of geographic areas would be attractive to men across the nation, but that
doesn't seem to be the case. Traditionally, nursing has been and continues to be a female-dominated profession. Some feel that nursing should remain a "female" profession, but the fact is, to meet rising healthcare demands, we'll need to recruit and retain more men.


Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is a well-established technique for determining the flow direction and velocity magnitude of complex flows. This paper presents a methodology for executing this nonintrusive measurement technique to study a scaled-up turbine vane geometry within an annular cascade at engine-relevant conditions. Custom optical tools such as laser delivery probes and imaging inserts were manufactured to mitigate the difficult optical access of the test section and perform planar PIV. With the use of a burst-mode Nd: YAG laser and Photron FASTCAM camera, the frame straddling technique is implemented to enable short time intervals for the collection of image pairs and velocity fields at 10 kHz. Furthermore, custom image processing tools were developed to optimize the contrast and intensity balance of each image pair to maximize particle number and uniformity while removing scattering and background noise. The preprocessing strategies significantly improve the vector yield under challenging alignment, seeding, and illumination conditions. With the optical and software tools developed, planar PIV was conducted in the passage of a high-pressure stator row, at midspan, in an annular cascade. Different Mach and Reynolds number operating conditions were achieved by modifying the temperature and mass flow. With careful spatial calibration, the resultant velocity vector fields are compared with Reynolds-averaged-Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations of the vane passage with the same geometry and flow conditions. Uncertainty analysis of the experimental results is also presented and discussed, along with prospects for further improvements.


ABSTRACT Soybean bradyrhizobia form root nodules on soybean plants and symbiotically fix N2. Strain J5 is phylogenetically far from well-known representatives within the Bradyrhizobium japonicum linage. The complete genome showed the largest single chromosomal (10.1 Mb) and symbiosis island (998 kb) among complete genomes of soybean bradyrhizobia.


Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultural Studies By Shane Gunster University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2004; Pages: 380; Price: $35.95 ISBN 13: 9780802036933 CONTENTS/OUTLINE OF THE BOOK Introduction: Culture as Commodity 1. Mass culture and commodity form; revisiting the culture industry thesis 2. Capitalism, Mimesis Experience: Legacies of the Commodity Fetish 3. Dreams of Redemption? Adorno, Bejamin, and the dialectics of culture 4. From Mass to popular culture: from Frankfurt to Birmingham 5. Articulation and the commodity form: Rethinking contemporary cultural studies Concluding Thoughts James Hamilton of the University of Georgia finds Shane Gunster's Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultura/ Studies (CCCS) as a publication in line with Hall's 'return of the repressed in media studies' but with a difference and that is the repressed earlier was the 'concept of ideology' while here it is what the Frankfurt School has projected within the project of cultural studies. To start with, Gunster laments that the earlier proponents of the critical theory has not been properly appreciated. He notes that the series of authors in this line like Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin have not been understood in the right context; rather they have been ridiculed and misquoted by the earlier powerful critics for their vested interests. Hamilton thinks that even some other authors like Lowenthal, Marcuse and some others of the like have also not been well presented in their right sense of critical theory. Gunster argues that the critical theory has been misunderstood as if it were a set of hard and fast rules whereas it is adaptable to the changing circumstances in so far as the conditions for emancipations are concerned though the earlier authors did not anticipate the characteristics of commercialization of social relationships in the coming ages. It is further argued that the critical theory needs to be revisited for working in the area of cultural and media studies as now the interactions between the forces of domination and resistance, culture and economy, meaning and practice, and individual and society have so far been interpreted superficially as the organizing principles for work. Hamilton note that some authors like Jay (1984) and Kellner (1989) also attempted to recover Critical Theory but Gunster may be distinguished as the one trying to overcome the shortcomings of the critical theory in the past as well as in the present times. The author intends to generalize the construction of Critical Theory benefiting from the past authors and then reformulate it to cope with the particular requirements of today. Here the author wants to capitalize on the emergence of cultural studies and its theoretical developments. The author by referring to the earlier works, attempts to discover the aspects of Critical Theory not highlighted so far by each author rather than connecting and linking them with each other. The author then critically evaluates the attempt made by the CCCS to ignore Critical Theory by substituting 'mass culture' with 'popular culture'. Hamilton notes that whatever the author has dealt with in reviving the Critical Theory in this book has also been undertaken by other authors, but CCCS appears to be more exhaustive. That is why the last two chapters dealing with reshaping the Theory, relating it with other works of today, and linking it with media, society and commercialization of today's social relationships, have been worth noting. Instead of explaining the Theory as a rigid concept, the author emphasizes the study of relative interaction between the cultural positions of today with the intent of Critical Theory. The commercialization of social relationships as embedded in the 'postmodern materialism' may be studied for its content in the light of Critical Theory to inquire into it as the apparatus, that is overwhelming on a regional scale of today's social formations. …


Background: Pre-eclampsia accounts for the majority of referrals in a tertiary care centre as it stands one of the major causes of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. The objective of this study was to study the maternal and fetal outcome in patients with severe pre-eclampsia and eclampsia in a tertiary centre over a period of one year. Methods: Total 150 women with severe eclampsia and eclampsia after 20 weeks of gestation were included. Women with medical complications like anemia, preexisting hypertension, epilepsy, diabetes, vascular or renal disease, multiple gestation, polyhydramnios were excluded. Patients were managed as per existing protocol after proper history, examination and investigations. Anti-hypertensive of choice was alphamethyl-dopa, labetalol and oral nefidipene. Magnesium sulphate was used as anti convulsant. Results: Out of 150 cases of severe pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, majority (69%) were between 20-30 years of age and 47% were primigravida. We had 75 patients with convulsions on admission and 75 with severe pre-eclampsia of whom 11 had convulsions. Headache was most common complaint. Common mode of delivery was caesarean section in 72 (48%) women, majority in view of failed induction or non-progress. Maternal complications were noted in 59% attributed to renal dysfunction, postpartum hemorrhage, DIC, placental abruption, HELLP, pulmonary edema, pulmonary embolism and renal failure. 4 maternal deaths were recorded. Conclusions: Maternal and perinatal complications are more in patients with eclampsia. The incidence of eclampsia can be reduced by better antenatal care, early recognition and prompt treatment of severe pre-eclampsia.


The authors bring together thirty-one writing teachers from diverse levels of instruction, institutional settings, and regions to create a stimulating volume on the current practice in portfolio writing assessment. Contributors reflect on the explosion in portfolio practice over the last decade, why it happened, what comes next; discuss portfolios in hypertext, the web, and other electronic spaces; and consider emerging trends and issues that are involving portfolios in teacher assessment, faculty development, and graduate student experience. Contributors include Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff, Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, Brian Huot, Sandra Murphy, and William Condon.


In political science, urban politics is a well-established subfield. And more recently, suburban political behavior has received a fair amount of attention (Gainsborough 2001; 2005; McKee and Shaw 2003; Oliver 2001). But with a few exceptions (see Francia and Baumgartner 2005–2006; Gimpel and Karnes 2006), the political behavior of rural residents has been conspicuously absent thus far in a growing literature on the political role of place. This is quite surprising given the clamoring in the popular press about "red states" versus "blue states" in the most recent presidential contests. All of the post-presidential election maps that highlight red Republican counties and blue Democratic counties display a sea of red covering the vast swaths of rural, middle America. The ocean of Republican red is enough to make one ask: What's the Matter with Kansas? (Frank 2004)—one of those thinly populated plains states with hardly a glimmer of blue on a county-level map of the 2004 presidential election.


Barnard's Loop is a famous arc of Hα emission located in the Orion star-forming region. Here, we provide evidence of a possible formation mechanism for Barnard's Loop and compare our results with recent work suggesting a major feedback event occurred in the region around 6 Myr ago. We present a 3D model of the large-scale Orion region, indicating coherent, radial, 3D expansion of the OBP-Near/Briceño-1 (OBP-B1) cluster in the middle of a large dust cavity. The large-scale gas in the region also appears to be expanding from a central point, originally proposed to be Orion X. OBP-B1 appears to serve as another possible center, and we evaluate whether Orion X or OBP-B1 is more likely to have caused the expansion. We find that neither cluster served as the single expansion center, but rather a combination of feedback from both likely propelled the expansion. Recent 3D dust maps are used to characterize the 3D topology of the entire region, which shows Barnard's Loop's correspondence with a large dust cavity around the OPB-B1 cluster. The molecular clouds Orion A, Orion B, and Orion λ reside on the shell of this cavity. Simple estimates of gravitational effects from both stars and gas indicate that the expansion of this asymmetric cavity likely induced anisotropy in the kinematics of OBP-B1. We conclude that feedback from OBP-B1 has affected the structure of the Orion A, Orion B, and Orion λ molecular clouds and may have played a major role in the formation of Barnard's Loop.


Standard and non-standard variations relating to object clitics in the French spoken in French Guiana (in contact with Guianese Creole) may be explained by three combined factors: linguistic and typological tendencies and contactinduced transfer. This paper determines the exact role each of these may play. It shows that the pronominal system is a particularly non-stable domain specific to Romance languages and that clitic variation is due to an inherent tendency within French to the reduction of paradigms. When this tendency encounters the reduced pronominal paradigm of French Guianese Creole, it creates a snowball effect that reinforces the inherent tendency. The present-day language contact situation produces a higher frequency of variation; it increases the productivity of variation and spread of innovative forms.


Procuring authorities frequently use screening in order to mitigate risky bids. This study estimates the effect of bid screening and litigation on entry and bidding using a unique data set on highway construction procurement auctions in Poland. The market exhibits a screening method that ex post selects eligible offers. We demonstrate with an empirical model that this method disproportionately affects small firms and creates a barrier to entry. Our results suggest that screening increases bids by two channels. First, it directly inflates bids as well as decreasing entry. Second, in a competitive market, lower entry also inflates bids and prices.


This research aims at modeling the microwave backscatter of corn fields by coupling an incoherent, interaction-based scattering model with a semi-empirical bulk vegetation dielectric model. The scattering model is fitted to co-polarized phase difference measurements over several corn fields imaged with fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images with incidence angles ranging from 20° to 60°. The dataset comprised two field campaigns, one over Canada with the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR, 1.258 GHz) and the other one over Argentina with Advanced Land Observing Satellite 2 (ALOS-2) Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR-2) (ALOS-2/PALSAR-2, 1.236 GHz), totaling 60 data measurements over 28 grown corn fields at peak biomass with stalk gravimetric moisture larger than 0.8 g/g. Co-polarized phase differences were computed using a maximum likelihood estimation technique from each field's measured speckled sample histograms. After minimizing the difference between the model and data measurements for varying incidence angles by a nonlinear least-squares fitting, well agreement was found with a root mean squared error of 24.3° for co-polarized phase difference measurements in the range of −170.3° to −19.13°. Model parameterization by stalk gravimetric moisture instead of its complex dielectric constant is also addressed. Further validation was undertaken for the UAVSAR dataset on earlier corn stages, where overall sensitivity to stalk height, stalk gravimetric moisture, and stalk area density agreed with ground data, with the sensitivity to stalk diameter being the weakest. This study provides a new perspective on the use of co-polarized phase differences in retrieving corn stalk features through inverse modeling techniques from space.


ABSTRACT To benefit patients, treatment must improve either duration or quality of survival. For patients with minimal symptoms, one should only start palliative systemic treatment if there is strong evidence that (i) treatment improves the duration of survival, and (ii) that this effect will be lost if treatment is delayed until symptoms occur. You cannot make a well patient feel better but you can make them feel worse because of side-effects of treatment. If a patient is symptomatic, then treatment should be initiated provided that probability of benefit is greater than probability of increasing symptoms from effects of treatment. These principles will be illustrated by case scenarios of metastatic prostate and breast cancer. Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is not necessary for an asymptomatic man with slowly-rising PSA (doubling time >3 months) and low-volume metastatic prostate cancer. ADT has subtle but sometimes serious side effects. Often the main symptom is anxiety due to knowledge of PSA; this requires counselling rather than drug treatment. For symptomatic men or those with rapidly-rising PSA, ADT is effective palliation, and benefits of ADT have increased with availability of abiraterone and enzalutamide. For men with castrate-resistant prostate cancer similar principles apply to initiating chemotherapy with docetaxel. Chemotherapy generally has more side-effects than ADT, but can improve quality of life and prolong survival; however benefits are less and toxicity greater for men with comorbidity. Similar principles apply to treatment of metastatic breast cancer. In women with slowly-progressive non-visceral ER+ disease and minimal symptoms, hormonal therapy is usually appropriate. Chemotherapy should only be commenced to combat symptoms that cannot be treated by simpler means, including local radiotherapy. Women with triple negative or HER2+ve breast cancer have more rapid progression and are more likely to have visceral metastases: chemotherapy (+/-HER2 targeted therapy) can prevent or relieve symptoms but needs to be planned in relation to age and comorbidity. Performance status and patient-assessed quality of life are predictive of benefit from chemotherapy. Disclosure: The author has declared no conflicts of interest.