Three years after the Brexit referendum, the more than 3 million EU citizens residing in the UK still have no clarity what their legal status will be after Brexit. It is uncertain whether the Withdrawal Agreement will ever be adopted, while national measures adopted by the UK Government do not provide proper protection. The 'EU Settlement Scheme' has been adopted through secondary legis-lation, which can be easily changed over time, thus providing limited security. Moreover, the Scheme introduces an application system which will turn legally residing EU citizens into illegal immigrants if they do not apply successfully by the deadline, leading to scenario's similar to those seen with the Windrush scandal.

It is high time that the UK legislator takes appropriate action. This paper presents a full legislative proposal to turn the EU Settlement Scheme into a declaratory registration scheme that will ensure that EU citizens receive a document proving their status, while avoiding turning them into illegal immigrants. It equally provides a proposal to define the rights of these citizens into primary legisla-tion so they cannot be easily undermined.


The topic of this dissertation was prompted by a need to address the obvious lack of African representation on the twentieth-century global art (classical) music platform. Although art music has become universal, featuring composers and performers from every continent, African representation remains a void yet to be filled. Twentieth-century Nigerian art music is defined as a modern category of Nigerian music that preserves, disseminates, and expresses Nigerian musical traits and characteristics through Western music notation and its attendant peculiarities. Specifically, this dissertation examines the social, political, and cultural factors involved in its evolution and practice. A distinction is made between twentieth-century Nigerian art music which evolved in the twentieth century and emphasizes Western music notation, and the previously existing art music tradition in Nigeria before the advent of missionaries in the nineteenth century. While art music in its broader concept thrived in the pre-colonization era, twentieth-century Nigerian art music is a post-independence art form. The evolution of this new art form in Nigeria was profoundly influenced by the four communities that inhabited nineteenth-century Lagos. Of particular interest and emphasis are the contributions of African immigrants (repatriated ex-slaves) for their roles in fostering culturally biased nationalistic sentiments. Paradoxically, it was cultural nationalism spearheaded by these immigrants in the nineteenth century that generated the sentiments that ultimately precipitated the concept of modern Nigerian art music. An examination of the historical, cultural, and stylistic transition of Nigerian art music from its birthplace in the Christian church to the concert hall is pertinent to this study. Thus, the compositions of the pioneers of Nigerian art music are analyzed and contrasted against those of the first generation Nigerian composers for indications of stylistic and evolutionary trends. Although Nigerian art music derives from both Western and indigenous sources, it remains a valid category of Nigerian music worthy of a place on global art music


The relational data model is now more than 40 years old. It's good for very diferent scenarios and can handle certain types of data very well. But it isn't perfect. An increasing number of non-relational systems are being worked on, collectively called the 'NoSQL movement'. NoSQL is an umbrella term for a loosely defined class of non-relational datastores and best described as 'Not only SQL'. Examples are Google's BigTable and Amazon's Dynamo. These systems may provide advantages over relational databases, but generally lack the relational robustness for those advantages. In an atempt to modestly contribute to the current research in the field of geographical information systems, this research reports on a comparison of one such NoSQL datastore called Neo4j with the traditional relational database PostgreSQL when storing and querying spatial vector data. The goal of this study was to determine whether a traditional relational database system like PostGIS, or a NoSQL system, such as Neo4j-Spatial, would be more efective as the underlying technology for operating OpenStreetMap data. Neo4j is an embeddable graph database. Embeddable because it can be added to a Java-based application and used just like any other library, and graph database because the data model it uses to express its data is a graph, storing nodes and relationships that connect them, supporting user defined properties on both constructs. Multiple aspects are of interest when comparing spatial database systems. The evaluation methodology designed to compare the two, involves both objective measurements and subjective measurements based on documentation and experience. The objective tests include processing speed based on a predefined set of queries, disk space requirements, and scalability. Subjective tests include maturity/level of support, stability and ease of use. Meanwhile, the assessment framework applied for the objective tests could be used as a test suite for evaluating the performance and reliability of new spatial datastores. A test environment have been created using the same OpenStreetMap data in both the graph database and the relational database. While the systems have fundamental diferences, identical operations have been developed that provides equal results from diferently sized study areas. Regarding the objective measurements, the results of this research show that the graph database is most beneficial when queries can be expressed as traversals over local regions of a graph. Queries that are well-suited to this approach are, for example, shortest path analyses or connectivity queries. Bounding box queries were faster on the relational database. Regarding the subjective measurements, Neo4j provides a lot of functionality. Transaction support is a welcome addition and there are numerous ways to execute queries, for instance using Java, CQL or a geopipeline. The database model is schema-less and allows additions or adjustments to the schema without any major impact on the data model. As a Java component, it is relatively easy to implement Neo4j-Spatial as an embedded component in any Java program. PostgreGIS is by far the more mature database with a lot of functionality, documentation and support. Overall, this research shows that, in some cases, Neo4j should be considered as an alternative for specific tasks. A buyer's guide has been created in the form of a fow diagram to decide whether Neo4j- Spatial or PostGIS is suitable for a project. The two technologies, relational databases and non- relational database, will remain in usage side by side, each with the perfect fit for its own capabilities.


Abstract 2992

Background: Patients with myeloma receiving initial therapy with lenalidomide-based regimens can have difficulty collecting adequate stem cells for an autologous transplant. Stem cell collection in these patients can be significantly enhanced by addition of the CXCR-4 antagonist plerixafor to the mobilization regimen. Plerixafor is typically given subcutaneously (SQ), with collection approximately 11 hours after injection to obtain maximum yield. Intravenous administration can potentially allow more rapid and predictable mobilization compared to the SQ route. We designed this trial to prospectively assess the efficacy of intravenous plerixafor administration in patients undergoing lenalidomide therapy.

Patients and methods: Patients who were receiving initial therapy with a lenalidomide-based regimen and were undergoing stem cell collection within 12 months of their myeloma diagnosis were enrolled. Patients received GCSF at 10 μg/kg/day for 4 days followed by addition of plerixafor at 0.24 mg/kg/dose starting on day 5. Plerixafor was administered intravenously early morning (6–7 am) followed by apheresis beginning 4–5 hours later. Plerixafor was administered for a maximum of 4 days; but patients could continue apheresis beyond the 4th day at treating physician discretion. The aims of the study were to determine the proportion of patients reaching a stem cell yield of at least 3 million CD34 cells/kg by second day of apheresis, the safety and tolerability of intravenously administered plerixafor, and the overall rate of failure to mobilize (defined as less than 2.5 million CD34 cells/kg in 4 collections).

Results: Thirty-seven patients were accrued between December 2009 – April 2011, and 36 were eligible for analysis. The median age was 61 years (range; 28–73); 61% were male. The median time from start of initial therapy to enrollment was 4.6 months (range; 2.6 to 11.1) and the median cycles of lenalidomide were 4 (range; 3–11). Thirty-four (94%) of the patients achieved at least 3 million CD34 cells/kg within 2 days of apheresis. The median CD34 cells/kg after 1 day of collection was 3.9 million (range; 0.7 to 9.2) and after two days of collection was 7.02 million (range: 1.1–16.5). Two patients failed the mobilization (<2.5 million CD34 cells/kg). There were no grade 3 or 4 non-hematological adverse events and one patient experienced grade 4 thrombocytopenia. The most common grade 1 or 2 adverse events seen were gastrointestinal, namely nausea, diarrhea and abdominal pain or bloating. Grade 1 dizziness was reported in 8 patients. Overall, the infusion was well tolerated.

Conclusion: Intravenously administered plerixafor is an effective strategy for mobilization in this patient group with low rate of failure to mobilize. It is well tolerated with toxicity comparable to the SQ administration. It also offers flexibility in patient scheduling with a convenient schedule for early morning infusion followed by apheresis later in the day.

Disclosures: Kumar: Merck: Consultancy, Honoraria; Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Research Funding; Genzyme: Research Funding; Novartis: Research Funding. Off Label Use: Use of the investigational agent MLN9708 for the treatment of previously untreated multiple myeloma. Lacy: Celgene: Research Funding.


While nuclear compartmentalization is an essential feature of three-dimensional genome organization, no genomic method exists for measuring chromosome distances to defined nuclear structures. In this study, we describe TSA-Seq, a new mapping method capable of providing a "cytological ruler" for estimating mean chromosomal distances from nuclear speckles genome-wide and for predicting several Mbp chromosome trajectories between nuclear compartments without sophisticated computational modeling. Ensemble-averaged results in K562 cells reveal a clear nuclear lamina to speckle axis correlated with a striking spatial gradient in genome activity. This gradient represents a convolution of multiple spatially separated nuclear domains including two types of transcription "hot zones." Transcription hot zones protruding furthest into the nuclear interior and positioning deterministically very close to nuclear speckles have higher numbers of total genes, the most highly expressed genes, housekeeping genes, genes with low transcriptional pausing, and super-enhancers. Our results demonstrate the capability of TSA-Seq for genome-wide mapping of nuclear structure and suggest a new model for spatial organization of transcription and gene expression.


Finland currently has tremendous enthusiasm to increase decentralised pellet production alongside of large-scale factories. The aim of research is to promote the development of eco-/cost-efficient Nordic wood-based pellet production by means of multidisciplinary research. Using Finnish conifer stem wood (bark-free Scotch pine sawdust and shavings) as a model raw material, the total functionality of a pilot-scale pellet facility combined with an extensive chemical toolbox was tested in this study to promote future development of eco- and cost-efficient wood-based pellet production in both quantitative and qualitative senses. Lignosulphonate, residual potato flour, and potato peel residue were used as adhesive binding agents. A pilot-scale pellet facility was equipped with a data logger for temperature and power measurements. The chemical toolbox included also novel specific staining and optical microscope methods and respirometric BOD Oxitop measurements. The results showed that adhesive binding agents increased the quality of pellets and changed inorganic characteristics, but did not have a significant effect on their calorimetric heat values. Lignosulphonate even increased the rate of production. Valuable information about both the pelletizing process and pellets is necessary in the future when developing good-quality pellets, a prime biofuel, from low-value and/or moist biomass that has undergone a cost-efficient drying process.


Momentum transport in collisional magnetized plasmas due to gradients in the heat flux, a "heat flux viscosity," is demonstrated. Even though no net particle flux is associated with a heat flux, in a plasma there can still be momentum transport owing to the velocity dependence of the Coulomb collision frequency, analogous to the thermal force. This heat-flux viscosity may play an important role in numerous plasma environments, in particular, in strongly driven high-energy-density plasma, where strong heat flux can dominate over ordinary plasma flows. The heat flux viscosity can influence the dynamics of the magnetic field in plasmas through the generalized Ohm's law and may therefore play an important role as a dissipation mechanism allowing magnetic field line reconnection. The heat flux viscosity is calculated directly using the finite-difference method of Epperlein and Haines [Phys. Fluids 29, 1029 (1986)], which is shown to be more accurate than Braginskii's method [S. I. Braginskii, Rev. Plasma Phys. 1, 205 (1965)], and confirmed with one-dimensional collisional particle-in-cell simulations. The resulting transport coefficients are tabulated for ease of application.


The study aimed at perceptually and acoustically differentiating the voices of identical twins from each other. AX same-different perception test was done to find whether the voices of identical twins could be perceived as same or different voices. Ten monozygotic twin pairs, 5 males and 5 females between the ages of 10 to 15 year old served as speakers. The speakers phonation of \a\ was permuted which resulted in pairs of two different stimuli. The paired stimuli were part of one of the following speaker groups: same speaker (different repetitions) or monozygotic twins. For the AX perception test 5 native listeners (students of Speech Language Pathology) were asked to judge for each stimuli pair whether it belonged to the same speaker or different speakers. On average, the listener's correct identification of same speakers was 91.6% and the correct identification of monozygotic twin pair's voice as two different speakers was 80.27%. This shows that there was difficulty in perceptually distinguishing the voices of monozygotic twins as that of two different speakers but the listeners' sensitivity to twin differences was greater than chance . Acoustic analysis showed that shimmer values are more sensitive in discriminating twin voices among each other. This investigation can contribute to automatic speaker recognition as well as the field of forensic phonetics, especially forensic speaker identification.


Used research is case study where in gathering and analyse data done by conducting perception directly to research object for the purpose of obtaining complete boldness and data that is at some hotel have star ( Arumdalu, Asida, Grand Palm, Palemsari, Selecta, victory, Wijaya Inn). As for this research title is " Influence Of Internal Environment To Strategy Operate For At Hotel have Star In Town of Batu-Malang". Target of this research to know internal environmental influence to strategy operate for hotel have star in Stone town and to know internal environmental factor which most having an in with strategy operate for hotel have star to exist in tone town. Usefulness of research which wish to be reached specially to hotel party can be made by consideration and input in determining policy of company, good to a period of now or a period of to come. Pursuant to result of solution and research by using analysis of regresi doubled linear which have been conducted by hence can be pulled that internal environmental factor which cover human resource, cultural of oraganisasi, location, observation system and facility have an effect on by signifikan to strategy operate for hotel have star in Town of Batu-Malang. Pursuant to result of coefficient of regresi the each internal environmental variable which cover human resource variable, cultural organization, location, observation system and facility hence can know that human resource variable have dominant influence to strategy operate for hotel have star in Town of Batu-Malang. Suggestion able to be raised from this research that is expected company party always pay attention of condition and evaluate of performance which have been reached all employees in working company, the step conducted in order to giving certainty that employees have ability which relied on in working company. Company party expected to give training forms both for conducted in company and also outside company in order to peningkatkan of membership and ability on the chance of can run specified strategy company. In order to creating loyalitas work employees expected company side besides paying attention the condition of activity which there are company, expected also pay attention the condition of economics ofis each employees so that the each employees feel the existence of guarantee economical of x'self and also its family. Expected company also pay attention the condition of activity facility which there are company, so that employees can work betterly through support given by company in this case guarantee of given activity facility security or quality. Keyword : Lingkungan Internal dan Strategi Operasi Link Terkait : http://skripsi.umm.ac.id/files/disk1/263/jiptummpp-gdl-s1-2008-naningyuan-13124-pendahul-n.pdf


The reduction of fluid pressure during reservoir production promotes changes in the effective and total stress distribution within the reservoir and the surrounding strata. This stress evolution is responsible for many problems encountered during production (e.g. fault reactivation, casing deformation). This work presents the results of an extensive series of 3D numerical hydro-mechanical coupled analyses that study the influence of reservoir geometry and material properties on the reservoir stress path. The stress path is defined in terms of parameters that quantify the amount of stress arching and stress anisotropy that occur during reservoir production. The coupled simulations are performed by explicitly coupling independent commercial geomechanical and flow simulators. It is shown that stress arching is important in reservoirs with low aspect ratios that are less stiff than the bounding material. In such cases, the stresses will not significantly evolve in the reservoir, and stress evolution occurs in the overand sideburden. Stiff reservoirs, relative to the bounding rock, exhibit negligible stress arching regardless of the geometry. Stress anisotropy reduces with reduction of the Young's modulus of the bounding material, especially for low aspect ratio reservoirs, but as the reservoir extends in either or both of the horizontal directions, the reservoir deforms uniaxially and the horizontal stress evolution is governed by the Poisson's ratio of the reservoir. Furthermore, the effect of the stress path parameters is introduced in the calculation of pore volume multiplier tables to improve non-coupled simulations, which otherwise overestimate the average reservoir pore pressure drawdown when stress arching is taking place.


Objective To study prepregnancy serum lipid levels and the association with the number of children. Design Prospective, population-based cohort. Setting Linked data from the Cohort of Norway and the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. Participants 2645 women giving birth to their first child during 1994–2003 (488 one-child mothers and 2157 women with ≥2 births) and 1677 nulliparous women. Main outcome measures ORs for no and one lifetime pregnancy (relative to ≥2 pregnancies) obtained by multinomial logistic regression, adjusted for age at examination, education, body mass index (BMI), smoking, time since last meal and oral contraceptive use. Results Assessed in quintiles, higher prepregnant triglyceride (TG) and TG to high-density lipoprotein (TG:HDL-c) ratio levels were associated with increased risk of one lifetime pregnancy compared with having ≥2 children. Compared with the highest quintile, women in the lowest quintile of HDL cholesterol levels had an increased risk of one lifetime pregnancy (OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.2 to 2.4), as were women with the highest low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, TG and TG:HDL-c ratio quintiles (compared with the lowest) (OR 1.2, 95% CI 0.8 to 1.7; OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.5 to 3.2; and OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.5 to 3.2, respectively). Similar effects were found in women with BMI≥25 and the highest LDL and total cholesterol levels in risk of lifetime nulliparity. Conclusion Women with unfavourable prepregnant lipid profile had higher risk of having no or only one child. These findings substantiate an association between prepregnant serum lipid levels and number of children. Previously observed associations between low parity and increased cardiovascular mortality may in part be due to pre-existing cardiovascular disease lipid risk factors.


This paper proposes a self-optimized coverage coordination scheme for two-tier femtocell networks, in which a femtocell base station adjusts the transmit power based on the statistics of the signal and the interference power that is measured at a femtocell downlink. Furthermore, an analytic expression is derived for the coverage leakage probability that a femtocell coverage area leaks into an outdoor macrocell. The coverage analysis is verified by simulation, which shows that the proposed scheme provides sufficient indoor femtocell coverage and that the femtocell coverage does not leak into an outdoor macrocell.


Abstract. In this work we study the Zeeman effect on stratospheric O2 using ground-based microwave radiometer measurements. The interaction of the Earth magnetic field with the oxygen dipole leads to a splitting of O2 energy states, which polarizes the emission spectra. A special campaign was carried out in order to measure this effect in the oxygen emission line centered at 53.07 GHz. Both a fixed and a rotating mirror were incorporated into the TEMPERA (TEMPERature RAdiometer) in order to be able to measure under different observational angles. This new configuration allowed us to change the angle between the observational path and the Earth magnetic field direction. Moreover, a high-resolution spectrometer (1 kHz) was used in order to measure for the first time the polarization state of the radiation due to the Zeeman effect in the main isotopologue of oxygen from ground-based microwave measurements. The measured spectra showed a clear polarized signature when the observational angles were changed, evidencing the Zeeman effect in the oxygen molecule. In addition, simulations carried out with the Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator (ARTS) allowed us to verify the microwave measurements showing a very good agreement between model and measurements. The results suggest some interesting new aspects for research of the upper atmosphere.


Insects can be grouped into mainly two categories, holometabolous and hemimetabolous, according to the extent of their morphological change during metamorphosis. The three thoracic legs, for example, are known to develop through two overtly different pathways: holometabolous insects make legs through their imaginal discs, while hemimetabolous legs develop from their leg buds. Thus, how the molecular mechanisms of leg development differ from each other is an intriguing question. In the holometabolous long-germ insect, these mechanisms have been extensively studied using Drosophila melanogaster. However, little is known about the mechanism in the hemimetabolous insect. Thus, we studied leg development of the hemimetabolous short-germ insect, Gryllus bimaculatus (cricket), focusing on expression patterns of the three key signaling molecules, hedgehog (hh), wingless (wg) and decapentaplegic (dpp), which are essential during leg development in Drosophila. In Gryllus embryos, expression of hh is restricted in the posterior half of each leg bud, while dpp and wg are expressed in the dorsal and ventral sides of its anteroposterior (A/P) boundary, respectively. Their expression patterns are essentially comparable with those of the three genes in Drosophila leg imaginal discs, suggesting the existence of the common mechanism for leg pattern formation. However, we found that expression pattern of dpp was significantly divergent among Gryllus, Schistocerca (grasshopper) and Drosophila embryos, while expression patterns of hh and wg are conserved. Furthermore, the divergence was found between the pro/mesothoracic and metathoracic Gryllus leg buds. These observations imply that the divergence in the dpp expression pattern may correlate with diversity of leg morphology.


Autonomous cyber-physical agents play an increasingly large role in our lives. To ensure that they behave in ways aligned with the values of society, we must develop techniques that allow these agents to not only maximize their reward in an environment, but also to learn and follow the implicit constraints of society.
We detail a novel approach that uses inverse reinforcement learning to learn a set of unspecified constraints from demonstrations and reinforcement learning to learn to maximize environmental rewards. A contextual bandit-based orchestrator then picks between the two policies: constraint-based and environment reward-based. The contextual bandit orchestrator allows the agent to mix policies in novel ways, taking the best actions from either a reward-maximizing or constrained policy. In addition, the orchestrator is transparent on which policy is being employed at each time step. We test our algorithms using Pac-Man and show that the agent is able to learn to act optimally, act within the demonstrated constraints, and mix these two functions in complex ways.


The feasibility of a simple and low-cost 3D time-of-flight imaging system isexperimentally investigated. Using a conventional CCD camera, a fast optoelectronic shutter and a modulated light, the distance of an object in a scene is measured. The measurements are computed using a homodyne approach. The key component of the system is the opto-electronic shutter, for which amodulator developed by Acreo AB is used, and special attention was brought to characterize its properties. The principle has been successfully demonstrated. For a modulation frequency of 15 MHz and a modulator contrast of 3:1, the depth accuracy of the system is evaluated to 3.3 cm at worst and the repetability of the measurements to 3.6 cm on a range of 2 m. Indications to improve the system's resolution are detailed for future work.


Vaterite is one of three non-hydrate calcium carbonate crystalline polymorphs and is formed as an initial phase under pseudo-biological conditions. However, biological hard tissues that use vaterite are rare; the reason for vaterite rarely appearing in vivo is still unclear. There is consensus that, in phosphatecontaining solutions, vaterite barely forms and amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), the precursor of crystalline calcium carbonate and considered as aggregation of growth unit of vaterite, is stabilized. In this study, to clarify the biomineralization process, we investigated how phosphate acts as an inhibitor of vaterite growth. We measured vaterite growth rates in situ and estimated the essential crystal growth parameter, edge free energy, in the Ca-CO3-PO4 system in relation to the physico-chemical properties of ACC. The effects of PO4 on the ACC structure and dynamics were also observed. Co-existed PO4 reduced the growth rate of vaterite even when it was added in mM-scale concentrations. The surface free energy of vaterite increased with increasing PO4 concentration and was 10× higher in a 10 mM PO4-containing solution than in a PO4-free solution. Spectroscopic analyses showed that the chemical bonds in ACC particles were drastically changed by the addition of mM-scale PO4, and the particles could no longer transform into vaterite. We conclude that PO4 inhibits vaterite growth and changed the ACC structure. And the original growth units of vaterite were also modified to the other structures. Thus, vaterite crystals could not grow by association of these growth units, which resulted in an increase in the apparent surface free energy of vaterite.


Abstract A new, very small to small (2.4 to 4.6µm) reticulofenestrid coccolith, Reticulofenestra calicis n. sp., is described by scanning electron and light microscopy from the Lower Pliocene (Zone CN11 of Okada and Bukry 1980) of the South Caribbean Sea. The coccolith shows typical reticulofenestrid distal and proximal shields but the distal shield is surmounted by a cup-shaped structure formed from extensions of the inner and outer tube elements. A new genus is not introduced, although this structure is peculiar for reticulofenestrids. We base generic attribution on the distal shield morphology. The species occasionally has few slits between the distal shield elements. Attribution to the genera Reticulofenestra instead of Pseudoemiliania is discussed in detail. R. calicis n. sp. is structurally similar to the modern Emiliania huxleyi var. corona and to Reticulofenestra maceria. R. calicis n. sp., readily recognized under the light microscope in side view, has a short stratigraphic range. If the species proves not to be under strong ecological control, it will constitute a new biostratigraphic marker for subdivision of the R. pseudoumbilicus Zone.


PURPOSE
The long-term success of machined-surface implants is well documented, whereas the reliability of the moderately rough oxidized implant surface has not been definitively assessed in the long term. The aim of this retrospective study was to assess the long-term clinical and radiologic outcomes of moderately rough oxidized implants supporting fixed prostheses.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Seventy-three consecutive patients needing an implant-supported restoration received 1 to 11 implants each (n=167). All implants (82 cylindric and 85 tapered-body implants) had a self-tapping design and a moderately rough oxidized surface and were immediately loaded (n=48) or loaded after a delay (n=113). Patients were followed for up to 10 years. Outcomes were implant and prosthetic survival rates, peri-implant bone level changes, bleeding on probing, and plaque and gingival indices.

RESULTS
One patient (one implant) dropped out. Seventy-two patients (166 implants) were followed for at least 8 years (mean, 8.82 years; range, 8.0 to 10.4 years. No implants or prostheses were lost, resulting in a cumulative implant and prosthetic survival rate of 100% after up to 10 years in function. At the final follow-up, the accumulated mean marginal bone loss values were -1.72±1.53 mm (n=27) and -1.27±1.67 mm (n=44) for cylindric and tapered implants, respectively, with no statistically significant difference. Bleeding on probing was 12.1%. The cumulative plaque score was 19.7%; 83.8% of patients showed normal gingiva, 10.1% displayed mild inflammation, and 6.1% showed moderate inflammation.

CONCLUSION
This retrospective study of 73 patients treated with either cylindric or tapered-body moderately rough oxidized implants and followed for up to 10 years demonstrated good treatment outcomes with regard to implant survival, marginal bone changes, and soft tissue conditions.


We study the problem of mining the informative structure of a news Web site that consists of thousands of hyperlinked documents. We define the informative structure of a news Web site as a set of index pages (or referred to as TOC, i.e., table of contents, pages) and a set of article pages linked by these TOC pages. Based on the Hyperlink Induced Topics Search (HITS) algorithm, we propose an entropy-based analysis (LAMIS) mechanism for analyzing the entropy of anchor texts and links to eliminate the redundancy of the hyperlinked structure so that the complex structure of a Web site can be distilled. However, to increase the value and the accessibility of pages, most of the content sites tend to publish their pages with intrasite redundant information, such as navigation panels, advertisements, copy announcements, etc. To further eliminate such redundancy, we propose another mechanism, called InfoDiscoverer, which applies the distilled structure to identify sets of article pages. InfoDiscoverer also employs the entropy information to analyze the information measures of article sets and to extract informative content blocks from these sets. Our result is useful for search engines, information agents, and crawlers to index, extract, and navigate significant information from a Web site. Experiments on several real news Web sites show that the precision and the recall of our approaches are much superior to those obtained by conventional methods in mining the informative structures of news Web sites. On the average, the augmented LAMIS leads to prominent performance improvement and increases the precision by a factor ranging from 122 to 257 percent when the desired recall falls between 0.5 and 1. In comparison with manual heuristics, the precision and the recall of InfoDiscoverer are greater than 0.956.


Focusing on up-to-date artificial intelligence models to solve building energy problems, Artificial Intelligence for Building Energy Analysis reviews recently developed models for solving these issues, including detailed and simplified engineering methods, statistical methods, and artificial intelligence methods. The text also simulates energy consumption profiles for single and multiple buildings. Based on these datasets, Support Vector Machine (SVM) models are trained and tested to do the prediction. Suitable for novice, intermediate, and advanced readers, this is a vital resource for building designers, engineers, and students.


The unusual mixed public-private structure of the urban bus market in the metropolitan area of Barcelona provides an interesting context in which to analyze the management challenges and opportunities of the partial privatization of public services. Initiatives used by the public regulator to promote competition for contracts, such as short term concessions to private contractors and the removal of entry barriers, have considerable potential for improving efficiency and quality. The growth in the share of routes managed by private firms in recent years shows that privatization is a credible threat that may well stimulate improved performance among public managers. The type of reform implemented in Barcelona is of interest to all metropolitan areas large enough to operate under constant returns to scale regimes, and suitable for potential concessions of routes in segregated areas inside the metropolitan area, so as not to miss out on the benefits of economies of density.


Formation of superstructures in protein aggregation processes has been indicated as a general pathway for several proteins, possibly playing a role in human pathologies. There is a severe lack of knowledge on the origin of such species in terms of both mechanisms of formation and structural features. We use equine lysozyme as a model protein, and by combining spectroscopic techniques and microscopy with X-ray fiber diffraction and ab initio modeling of Small Angle X-ray Scattering data, we isolate the partially unfolded state from which one of these superstructures (i.e., particulate) originates. We reveal the low-resolution structure of the unfolded state and its mechanism of formation, highlighting the physicochemical features and the possible pathway of formation of the particulate structure. Our findings provide a novel detailed knowledge of such a general and alternative aggregation pathway for proteins, this being crucial for a basic and broader understanding of the aggregation phenomena.


To investigate some of the controversies concerning transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) recent experience with cerebrovascular disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital is reviewed. For example, TIAs are commonly thought to last up to 24 hours, but TIAs rarely lasted one hour in Massachusetts General cases (135 cases). Recurrent TIAs preceded strokes in 90% of 100 cases, whereas single TIAs usually posed no threat (32 cases). Of 80 patients who had more than one TIA, 88.5% had the second attack within one week. A clinicopathologic study of endarterectomy specimens in 57 cases supported hemodynamic failure rather than embolism as the cause of TIAs. Embolism from a carotid mural thrombus caused longer spells (1 case). Cardiogenic emboli (200 cases) entering a carotid system did not cause ischemic episodes that mimicked carotid TIAs (50 cases), that is, their behavior did not resemble that attributed to fibrin platelet emboli from carotid mural thrombi. The problem of TIAs in the absence of vascular disease is discussed.


The academic field known in the English-speaking world as 'industrial relations' (IR) has little institutional presence in the universities of continental Europe and those other parts of the world where anglosaxon modes of analysis are not dominant. Rather than focussing on wider questions of social relations, it has historically concentrated on worker and employer organization and collective behaviour, workplace conflict over work-related matters, and (in particular) the regulation of the formal employment relationship, whether via the law or collective bargaining. Thus, for example, during the 1980s, IR research in the UK was dominated by analyses of the effect of the Thatcher administration's labour law reforms on collective bargaining and industrial action and on the responses of unions to 'attacks' on their established institutional position and prerogatives. One of the most important theoretical developments in this Anglophone research tradition was the publication in 1966 of a paper written for a UK government commission of inquiry into workplace relations. The author, Alan Fox, used this paper to introduce what he called the 'frames of reference' approach to IR. His book Beyond Contract, in which he added a third frame of reference to the two he had previously identified, followed in 1974. Since then, IR as an academic discipline has seen few if any truly significant theoretical developments. This paper argues that the essence of Fox's theory – the idea that subjective conceptual structures condition attitudes and behaviour in economic and organizational contexts – remains valid, but that there is a need both to broaden and to deepen Fox's work. First of all there is a need to add to the categorisation of 'ways of seeing' economic and organizational phenomena. Second, there is a need to better understand how social learning processes lead to the adoption or rejection of different frames of reference. These learning processes include both analyses of the functional efficacy of conceptual models and the evaluation of the outcomes of social action against normative standards. The principal aim of this paper is to address the first of these needs, although it will also make some proposals with respect to the second. The theoretical resources required for these tasks are drawn from the work of Jurgen Habermas.


The observed and projected changes in the climate of southern Africa in the period 1900–2100 were analysed. Ten observed, reanalysed and model-simulated climate data sets were explored for changes in surface air temperature, rainfall, air pressure, winds, ocean currents and sea surface height. The analysis of spatial and temporal climate trends from historical observations provided a context to assess two coupled model simulations (IPSL, MIROC) based on the A1B emission scenario. Temperatures in the satellite era exhibited upward trends greater than +0.4 °C/year in the MIROC and IPSL A1B model simulations; between +0.02 °C/year and +0.03 °C/year in NCDC, HADCRU, CFS-R and NCEPe data sets; +0.01 °C/year in NCEPr and GHCN observations; and +0.002 °C/year in the ECMWF data set. Although rainfall trends in the satellite era were minimal in many data sets because of drought in the early 1980s, there was a significant downtrend in the IPSL simulation of -0.013 mm/day per year. When averaging the longer data sets together over the 20th century, the southern African rainfall trend was -0.003 mm/day per year. Other key features of the analyses include a poleward drift of the sub-tropical anticyclones and a +1.5 mm/year rise in seasurface height along the coast.


Objectives Community pharmacists and their staff have the potential to contribute to antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). However, their barriers and opportunities are not well understood. The aim was to investigate the experiences and perceptions of community pharmacists and their teams around AMS to inform intervention development. Design Interviews and focus groups were used to explore the views of pharmacists, pharmacy staff, general practitioners (GPs), members of pharmacy organisations and commissioners. The questioning schedule was developed using the Theoretical Domains Framework which helped inform recommendations to facilitate AMS in community pharmacy. Results 8 GPs, 28 pharmacists, 13 pharmacy staff, 6 representatives from pharmacy organisations in England and Wales, and 2 local stakeholders participated. Knowledge and skills both facilitated or hindered provision of self-care and compliance advice by different grades of pharmacy staff. Some staff were not aware of the impact of giving self-care and compliance advice to help control antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The pharmacy environment created barriers to AMS; this included lack of time of well-qualified staff leading to misinformation from underskilled staff to patients about the need for antibiotics or the need to visit the GP, this was exacerbated by lack of space. AMS activities were limited by absent diagnoses on antibiotic prescriptions. Several pharmacy staff felt that undertaking patient examinations, questioning the rationale for antibiotic prescriptions and performing audits would allow them to provide more tailored AMS advice. Conclusions Interventions are required to overcome a lack of qualified staff, time and space to give patients AMS advice. Staff need to understand how self-care and antibiotic compliance advice can help control AMR. A multifaceted educational intervention including information for staff with feedback about the advice given may help. Indication for a prescription would enable pharmacists to provide more targeted antibiotic advice. Commissioners should consider the pharmacists' role in examining patients, and giving advice about antibiotic prescriptions.


In the period between 1200 and 1500 in western Europe, a number of religious women gained widespread veneration and even canonization as saints for their extraordinary devotion to the Christian eucharist, supernatural multiplications of food and drink, and miracles of bodily manipulation, including stigmata and inedia (living without eating). The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation. Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or masochistic, she shows the power and creativity of women's writing and women's lives.


Insect-induced defenses occur in nearly all plants and are regulated by conserved signaling pathways. As the first described plant peptide signal, systemin regulates antiherbivore defenses in the Solanaceae, but in other plant families, peptides with analogous activity have remained elusive. In the current study, we demonstrate that a member of the maize (Zea mays) plant elicitor peptide (Pep) family, ZmPep3, regulates responses against herbivores. Consistent with being a signal, expression of the ZmPROPEP3 precursor gene is rapidly induced by Spodoptera exigua oral secretions. At concentrations starting at 5 pmol per leaf, ZmPep3 stimulates production of jasmonic acid, ethylene, and increased expression of genes encoding proteins associated with herbivory defense. These include proteinase inhibitors and biosynthetic enzymes for production of volatile terpenes and benzoxazinoids. In accordance with gene expression data, plants treated with ZmPep3 emit volatiles similar to those from plants subjected to herbivory. ZmPep3-treated plants also exhibit induced accumulation of the benzoxazinoid phytoalexin 2-hydroxy-4,7-dimethoxy-1,4-benzoxazin-3-one glucoside. Direct and indirect defenses induced by ZmPep3 contribute to resistance against S. exigua through significant reduction of larval growth and attraction of Cotesia marginiventris parasitoids. ZmPep3 activity is specific to Poaceous species; however, peptides derived from PROPEP orthologs identified in Solanaceous and Fabaceous plants also induce herbivory-associated volatiles in their respective species. These studies demonstrate that Peps are conserved signals across diverse plant families regulating antiherbivore defenses and are likely to be the missing functional homologs of systemin outside of the Solanaceae.


This article examines the behavioural patterns of successive Canadian governments in responding to three takeover attempts of iconic high-value Canadian corporates by large state companies from China. The first is China Minmetals Corporation's attempt to acquire Noranda in 2004–2005 during the Liberal government of Paul Martin, the second is China National Offshore Oil Corporation's acquisition of Nexen in 2012 during the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, and the third is China Communications Construction Corporation International's bid for Aecon Group in 2017–2018. This analysis highlights some important similarities in the behavioural response of the Canadian governments across the three cases: ambivalence and wariness. Policy lessons are addressed in the conclusion.


A breeding scheme using genomic selection and an indicator trait for environmental impact (EI) was studied to find the most effective recording strategy in terms of annual monetary genetic gain and breakeven price for the recording of indicator traits. The breakeven price shows the investment space for developing a recording system for an indicator trait. The breeding goal consisted of three traits – milk production, functional trait and environmental impact – with economic values of €83, €82 and €-83, respectively. The first scenario included only breeding goal traits and no indicator traits (NoIT). The other scenarios included all three breeding goal traits and one indicator trait (IT) for EI. The indicator traits were recorded on a large scale (stayability after first lactation and stature), medium scale (live weight and greenhouse gases (GHG) measured in the breath of the cow during milking) or small scale (residual feed intake and total enteric methane measured in a respiration chamber). In the scenario with stayability, the genetic gain in EI was over 11% higher than it was in NoIT. The breakeven price of recording stayability was €8 per record. Stayability is easy to record in the national milk recording system, and its use as an indicator trait for EI would not generate any additional recording costs. Therefore, stayability would be a good indicator trait to use to mitigate EI. The highest genetic gain in EI (23% higher compared to NoIT) was achieved when the GHG measured in the breath of the cow was used as indicator trait. The breakeven price for this indicator trait was €29 per record in the reference population. Ideally the recording of a specific indicator trait for EI would take place when: (i) the genetic correlation between the IT and EI is high; and (ii) the number of phenotypic records for the indicator trait is high enough to achieve a moderately high reliability of direct genomic values.


In order to better understand the relationship between vegetation vigour and moisture availability, a correlation analysis based on different vegetation types was conducted between time series of monthly Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) during the growing season from April to October within the Laohahe catchment. It was found that NDVI had good correlation with PDSI, especially for shrub and grass. The correlation between NDVI and PDSI varies significantly from one month to another. The highest value of correlation coefficients appears in June when the vegetation is growing; lower correlations are noted at the end of growing season for all vegetation types. The influence of meteorological drought on vegetation vigour is stronger in the first half of the growing season, before the vegetation reaches the peak greenness. In order to take the seasonal effect into consideration, a regression model with seasonal dummy variables was used to simulate the relationship between NDVI and PDSI. The results showed that the NDVI–PDSI relationship is significant ( α = 0.05) within the growing season, and that NDVI is an effective indicator to monitor and detect droughts if seasonal timing is taken into account.


We test the Japanese ground‐motion‐based earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm, propagation of local undamped motion (PLUM), in southern California with application to the U.S. ShakeAlert system. In late 2018, ShakeAlert began limited public alerting in Los Angeles to areas of expected modified Mercalli intensity (IMMI) 4.0+ for magnitude 5.0+ earthquakes. Most EEW systems, including ShakeAlert, use source‐based methods: they estimate the location, magnitude, and origin time of an earthquake from P waves and use a ground‐motion prediction equation to identify regions of expected strong shaking. The PLUM algorithm uses observed ground motions directly to define alert areas and was developed to address deficiencies in the Japan Meteorological Agency source‐based EEW system during the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku earthquake sequence. We assess PLUM using (a) a dataset of 193 magnitude 3.5+ earthquakes that occurred in southern California between 2012 and 2017 and (b) the ShakeAlert testing and certification suite of 49 earthquakes and other seismic signals. The latter suite includes events that challenge the current ShakeAlert algorithms. We provide a first‐order performance assessment using event‐based metrics similar to those used by ShakeAlert. We find that PLUM can be configured to successfully issue alerts using IMMI trigger thresholds that are lower than those implemented in Japan. Using two stations, a trigger threshold of IMMI 4.0 for the first station and a threshold of IMMI 2.5 for the second station PLUM successfully detect 12 of 13 magnitude 5.0+ earthquakes and issue no false alerts. PLUM alert latencies were similar to and in some cases faster than source‐based algorithms, reducing area that receives no warning near the source that generally have the highest ground motions. PLUM is a simple, independent seismic method that may complement existing source‐based algorithms in EEW systems, including the ShakeAlert system, even when alerting to light (IMMI 4.0) or higher ground‐motion levels.


In this paper superheating system of a 325MW steam power plant is modeled based on the recurrent neurofuzzy networks and subtractive clustering. The experimental data are obtained from a complete set of field experiments under various operating conditions. Nine neuro-fuzzy models are constructed and trained for seven subsystems of the superheating unit. Then, these nine fuzzy models are put together merging series and parallel units according to the real power plant subsystems, to obtain the global model of the superheating process. Comparing the time response of the nonlinear neuro-fuzzy model of a subsystem with the time response of its linear model based on the Least Square Error (LSE) method, indicates that the nonlinear neurofuzzy model is more accurate and reliable than the linear model in the sense that its response is closer to the response of the actual superheating system.


A protein that promotes NF-κB signaling during the immune response is also required for phagocytosis independently of NF-κB. Bcl10 (B cell lymphoma/leukemia-10) promotes immune responses downstream of antigen receptors and phagocytic receptors by stimulating nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling and by stimulating phagocytosis of antigenic particles. After activation of antigen receptors, a complex consisting of Carma1, Bcl10, and Malt1 (the CBM complex) recruits and activates the inhibitor of κB kinase complex, thus leading to release and nuclear translocation of the NF-κB dimers that mediate a transcriptional response to antigen. The mechanism by which Bcl10 promotes internalization of antigenic particles downstream of phagocytic receptors has been unclear. Marion et al. report that Bcl10 interacted with the clathrin adaptor proteins AP1 and EpsinR and promoted the delivery of a vesicular phosphatase that plays a critical role in phagocytosis. Phagocytosis begins with the formation of cup-shaped invaginations on the plasma membrane, followed by the formation of pseudopods that extend around the particle to enlarge and close the phagosome, thus internalizing the particle. In human and mouse monocytes in which Bcl10 was reduced or absent, phagocytosis of immunoglobulin G (IgG)–coated red blood cells, which is mediated by the Fc receptor (FcR), was initiated, as indicated by the formation of phagocytic cups, but most of these phagocytic cups stalled—failed to elongate and internalize—and eventually disappeared. Although CBM complexes and other NF-κB signaling components accumulated at sites of phagocytosis, Bcl10-mediated activation of NF-κB signaling was not required for Bcl10-mediated closure of phagocytic cups. In Bcl10-deficient cells, F-actin and phosphatidylinoitol-4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2], which is required for phagocytic pseudopod formation, accumulated in stalled phagocytic cups, and treatment with low concentrations of the actin depolymerizing drug Latrunculin-A rescued stalled phagocytosis. Fluorescence and electron microscopy revealed that intracellular vesicles were targeted to a zone of depolymerized actin at the base of phagocytic cups in control cells but did not accumulate near the F-actin–enriched phagocytic cups of Bcl10-deficient cells. EpsinR and AP1 localize to endosomes and the trans-Golgi network, where they participate in protein trafficking and vesicular budding. Both EpsinR and AP1 coimmunoprecipitated with Bcl10 and accumulated at nascent phagosomes in control, but not Bcl10-deficient, cells. The phosphatidylinositol polyphosphate 5-phosphatase OCRL1 is required for phagocytosis, and its absence leads to accumulation of PI(4,5)P2 and F-actin in the cleavage furrow of dividing cells. ORCL1 colocalized with AP1 at vesicles recruited to phagocytic cups in control cells, but not in Bcl10-deficient cells, and depletion of ORCL1 reduced FcR-mediated phagocytosis and could be rescued by treatment with Latrunculin-A. The authors thus propose that OCRL1 is recruited to Bcl10-containing phagosomes through its interaction with AP1, where it promotes the actin dynamics that drive phagosome extension and closure. S. Marion, J. Mazzolini, F. Herit, P. Bourdoncle, N. Kambou-Pene, S. Hailfinger, M. Sachse, J. Ruland, A. Benmerah, A. Echard, M. Thome, F. Niedergang, The NF-κB signaling protein Bcl10 regulates actin dynamics by controlling AP1 and OCRL-bearing vesicles. Dev. Cell 23, 954–967 (2012). [PubMed]


Group sequential stopping rules are often used as guidelines in the monitoring of clinical trials in order to address the ethical and efficiency issues inherent in human testing of a new treatment or preventive agent for disease. Such stopping rules have been proposed based on a variety of different criteria, both scientific (e.g., estimates of treatment effect) and statistical (e.g., frequentist type I error, Bayesian posterior probabilities, stochastic curtailment). It is easily shown, however, that a stopping rule based on one of those criteria induces a stopping rule on all other criteria. Thus the basis used to initially define a stopping rule is relatively unimportant so long as the operating characteristics of the stopping rule are fully investigated. In this paper we describe how the operating characteristics of a particular stopping rule might be evaluated in order to ensure that the selected clinical trial design satisfies the constraints imposed by the many different disciplines represented by the clinical trial collaborators. In particular, we present concise methods of presenting Bayesian operating characteristics over a range of prior distributions and discuss the difficulty interpreting measures based on stochastic curtailment.


In the last two decades, various studies developed static and dynamic game theory models to demonstrate that the efficiency of marketing channels can be raised through the choice of particular channel structures or the implementation of coordinating mechanisms, e.g. particular pricing schemes, cooperative advertising, channel leadership. The use of the game theory approach to deal with this topic is justified by the fact that marketing channels are composed of a set of independent institutions that interact with each other, and that channel efficiency is affected by the cooperative or non-cooperative behavior of these institutions. This paper reviews the major contributions in the literature that examined the issue of channel coordination according to the game theory approach. It highlights its main results and identifies research questions for further investigation.


General Semantics can be considered a neuro-semantic, neuro-linguistic discipline. Therefore, I have found that learning the definitions and descriptions of the formulations presented in Science and Sanity, staff lectures, workshops, and other sources provides a necessary but not sufficient condition for developing a general semantics orientation. Using the following material will help you to incorporate general semantics into your everyday habitual reacting, getting it into your nervous system, and thus learning it neuro-semantically. By using general semantics, we can learn to understand ourselves and others better. We can also learn to react-evaluate differently, if we so desire. In developing a general semantics orientation we thus can improve our functioning. In the material on the following pages, I summarize some of my formulating on how to approach these goals. The format of presentation is: 1. A GENERAL SEMANTICS FORMULATION Some aspects of using this formulation: * Some questions to ask yourself, and answer, that will help you to use this formulation in your day-to-day life. These questions can serve as experiments in using general semantics: What results from asking them? What else? Etc. The 15 formulations which follow are: 1. Evaluational (semantic) reactions 2. Time-binding (personal) 3. Organism-as-a-whole-in-environments 4. Map-territory relations 5. Non-identity 6. Non-absolutism 7. Self-reflexiveness 8. Consciousness of abstracting 9. Multiordinality 10. Question formulating 11. Dating 12. Indexing 13. Quotes 14. Hyphen 15. Etc. 1. EVALUATIONAL (SEMANTIC) REACTIONS * Note total organismic reacting; my and your sensing-thinking-feeling-acting-etc.: * What was going on in and around me as I reacted? * What was I sensing? * What was I 'thinking'? * What was I feeling'? * What was I doing? * How was I moving? * Develop an orientation of delaying reactions: * How can I delay my reaction? * When I wait to react, what happens? * Increase response options: * How did I choose to react that way? * Can I make other choices? * What? * How? 2. TIME-BINDING (personal) * Note developmental life processes; changes over time: * How did I get this way? * What led to my reacting in the ways that I do? * What kinds of response habits have I learned and developed? * How can I learn to "date" myself? (See "Dating" below) * What habits do I like? * What habits might I like to change? * How will I do this? * What are the first steps to changing? * When will I take them? * Accept present, including myself: * How can I best build on my personal experiences? * How do I help and hurt myself and others by demanding that events, including myself, should happen differently right at this moment? * When I don't accept events as they happen at the moment, does that cause them to change? * How does this hinder my growth? * What problems are created? * Should a flower not happen as it does? * Then how come I shouldn't happen as I do? * How will accepting myself help me to move on? 3. ORGANISM-AS-A-WHOLE-IN-ENVIRONMENTS * Broaden awareness of what is going on, 'inside' and 'out': * What do I sense 'inside' and 'out'? * What do I smell, hear, see, touch, taste, etc.? * What else can I become aware of? * Cope with uncertainty: * How will having greater awareness help me to deal with whatever happens? * How can this help me to experience more security, even when I can't feel 'certain' about anything? * How can I learn to "index" better? (See "Indexing" below) 4. …


Studies have revealed in plant chloroplasts, mitochondria, cell walls, and cytoplasm the existence of transglutaminase (TGase) activities, similar to those known in animals and prokaryotes having mainly structural roles, but no protein has been associated to this type of activity in plants. A recent computational analysis has shown in Arabidopsis the presence of a gene, AtPng1p, which encodes a putative N-glycanase. AtPng1p contains the Cys-His-Asp triad present in the TGase catalytic domain. AtPng1p is a single gene expressed ubiquitously in the plant but at low levels in all light-assayed conditions. The recombinant AtPng1p protein could be immuno-detected using animal TGase antibodies. Furthermore, western-blot analysis using antibodies raised against the recombinant AtPng1p protein have lead to its detection in microsomal fraction. The purified protein links polyamines—spermine (Spm) . spermidine (Spd) . putrescine (Put)—and biotin-cadaverine to dimethylcasein in a calcium-dependent manner. Analyses of the g-glutamyl-derivatives revealed that the formation of covalent linkages between proteins and polyamines occurs via the transamidation of g-glutamyl residues of the substrate, confirming that the AtPng1p gene product acts as a TGase. The Caand GTP-dependent cross-linking activity of the AtPng1p protein can be visualized by the polymerization of bovine serum albumine, obtained, like the commercial TGase, at basic pH and in the presence of dithiotreitol. To our knowledge, this is the first reported plant protein, characterized at molecular level, showing TGase activity, as all its parameters analyzed so far agree with those typically exhibited by the animal TGases.


This research is concerned with the case of Ukraine where there has been a fundamental change in the economic environment engendered by the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy and the resulting conditions of economic crisis. The way that Ukrainian marketers and consumers are reacting to this environmental change is the principal concern of the research together with the basic linkages between critical environmental elements and strategic marketing decisions. This research analyses the way in which marketing evolves in a turbulent, transitional environment. The study is based on eight case analyses within the retail sector of the Ukrainian market. The process of transition to a free market economy leads a researcher to question the validity of existing theories that have been based on empirical data that has been collected in the stable marketing environment of the West. For this reason an in-depth, theory building methodology is preferred. A number of broad research objectives were set. Firstly, to establish whether the sales - production - marketing stages model of marketing evolution, derived from empirical data collected in stable Western environments, is relevant in the context of the turbulent, transitional environment of Ukraine. Secondly, to establish if, in this turbulent, transitional environment, idiosyncratic approaches to marketing are emerging and thirdly to assess the development of attitudes to marketing, organisation for marketing and the development of marketing strategy in Ukraine. The main conclusions of this thesis are firstly, that the stages model of marketing orientation is not relevant in the context of Ukraine, secondly that there are idiosyncratic approaches to marketing emerging in the turbulent, transitional environment of Ukraine and finally that the above developments have a profound impact on the development of attitudes to marketing, organisation for marketing and the development of marketing strategy in Ukraine.


Abstract : To determine a fit between systems and technology, it is necessary to evaluate technologies within the contexts that they will be used. This report describes a process called context-based evaluation that determines the fitness of a technology within a specific context. It includes hands-on experimentation with the technology for a greater understanding of its implications, as well as early competence development of the people conducting the experiments. An integral part of the process is the development of model problems; these are prototypes, situated in a specific context, with the goal of satisfying evaluation criteria. The focus of this report is on evaluation of software technologies, such as Web services, database systems, or architectural frameworks and development tools. The report also includes a case study of the use of this process for the evaluation of Web service technology.


This letter addresses vision-based localization and servoing for quadrotors to enable autonomous perching by hanging from cylindrical structures using only a monocular camera. We focus on the problems of relative pose estimation, control, and trajectory planning for maneuvering a robot relative to cylinders with unknown orientations. We first develop a geometric model that describes the pose of the robot relative to a cylinder. Then, we derive the dynamics of the system, expressed in terms of the image features. Based on the dynamics, we present a controller, which guarantees asymptotic convergence to the desired image space coordinates. Finally, we develop an effective method to plan dynamically feasible trajectories in the image space, and we provide experimental results to demonstrate the proposed method under different operating conditions such as hovering, trajectory tracking, and perching.


Family firms span from small where the founder is the only person in the company to large corporations that are listed at the stock exchange. Moreover, they differ culturally depending on the home country of the respective firm. However, what all family firms have in common is that they constitute a large part of the total amount of firms in the world providing employment opportunities and thus contributing to the welfare of countries. This fact makes family firms a highly interesting field of research. On the one hand family firms have many competitive advantages over other firms such as majority control of shares allowing fast decisions as well as customer and long-term orientation. On the other hand family firms face difficulties that non-family firms do not. One of the most common problems of family firms is its long-term survival which can be hindered by a lack of family members that can and want to take over, control issues due to family members who sold their shares, insufficient innovation, growth or profitability. That problem leads to the two main questions which will be analyzed in this thesis: a.) "Why do many small Swedish family firms often not survive in the long run?" b.) "What can be done to increase the survival rate of small family firms in a long term perspective?" Past and current research focused a lot on large family firms even though companies with less than 50 employees constitute approximately 96 percent of all firms in Sweden. Therefore, the thesis concentrates on small family firms in Sweden. Data needed for the analysis in order to answer the questions stated above have been gathered by a survey followed up by an interview to test and compliment the results of the survey. The results of the survey indicate that the main reason why small family firms in Sweden often do not survive in the long run is because they do not want to. Reasons why they were not interested in long-term survival several state that there are no relatives that can take-over. Based on the results of the survey an attempt to answer the question what can be done to increase the survival rate was as follows: For the family firms not interested in succession the benefits of long-term survival such as better products and services, wealth for owners, jobs and tax income for society were presented. For the ones interested in succession but facing difficulties recommendations such as the introduction of governance mechanisms were suggested. To test and compliment the results from the survey a telephone interview was performed with a few of the survey respondents get more in-depth information and opinions of the small family firms. The results of the interview validate the results of the survey.


Streams control the timing and delivery of fluvial nutrient export from watersheds, and hydraulic processes such as transient storage may affect nutrient uptake and transformation. Although we expect that hydraulic processes that retain water will increase nutrient uptake, the relationship between transient storage and nutrient uptake is not clear. To examine this relationship, we injected a conservative tracer and nutrients (ammonium and phosphate) into 13 streams for a total of 37 injections at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF), New Hampshire. Transient storage was estimated by fitting conservative solute data to a one‐dimensional advection, dispersion, transient storage model. To correct for variation in depth and velocity among streams, we considered nutrient uptake as a masstransfer coefficient (Vf), which estimates benthic demand for nutrients relative to supply. Transient storage decreased with increasing specific discharge (discharge per unit stream width). Transient storage explained only 14% of variation in ammonium Vf during the entire year and 35% of variation during summer months. Phosphate uptake was not related to transient storage, presumably because P uptake is predominantly by chemical sorption at HBEF. At HBEF, surface water pools can store water but were not modeled as such by use of the transient storage model. These pools were probably not important areas of nutrient uptake; further variation in the relationship between nutrient uptake and transient storage may be explained by biological demand.


Background With increasing survival rates among patients with myocardial infarction (MI), more demands are placed on secondary prevention. While physical activity (PA) efforts to obtain a sufficient PA level are part of secondary preventive recommendations, it is still underutilized. Importantly, the effect of changes in PA after MI is largely unknown. Therefore, we sought to investigate the effect on survival from changes in PA level, post‐MI. Methods and Results Data from Swedish national registries were combined, totaling 22 227 patients with MI. PA level was self‐reported at 6 to 10 weeks post‐MI and 10 to 12 months post‐MI. Patients were classified as constantly inactive, increased activity, reduced activity, and constantly active. Proportional hazard ratios were calculated. During 100 502 person‐years of follow‐up (mean follow‐up time 4.2 years), a total of 1087 deaths were recorded. Controlling for important confounders (including left ventricular function, type of MI, medication, smoking, participation in cardiac rehabilitation program, quality of life, and estimated kidney function), we found lower mortality rates among constantly active (hazard ratio: 0.29, 95% confidence interval: 0.21–0.41), those with increased activity (0.41, 95% confidence interval: 0.31–0.55), and those with reduced activity (hazard ratio: 0.56, 95% confidence interval: 0.45–0.69) during the first year post‐MI, compared with those being constantly inactive. Stratified analyses indicated strong effect of PA level among both sexes, across age, MI type, kidney function, medication, and smoking status. Conclusions The present article shows that increasing the PA level, compared with staying inactive the first year post‐MI, was related to reduced mortality.


Originally the preserve of Afro-Brazilian slaves, the marginalized and the underclasses in Brazilian society, capoeira is now a mainstream sport, taught in Brazilian schools and practised by a range of social classes around the world. Some advocates now seek Olympic recognition for Capoeira.

This apparent change in the meaning and purpose of Capeoira has led to conflicts between traditionalists, who view capoeira as their heritage descended from the maroons, a weapon to be used against the injustice and repression; and reformers, who wish to see Capoeira develop as an international sport.

Capoeira: The History of Afro-Brazilian Martial Art explores Capoeira as a field of confrontation where the different struggles that divide Brazilian society are played out. It contains both the first comprehensive English language review of archive and contemporary literature relating to Capoeira, as well as the first scholarly account of Capoeira's history and development.


We introduce a framework to predict the landing behaviour of a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) from the appearance of the landing surface. We approach this problem by learning a mapping from visual texture observed from an onboard camera to the landing behaviour on a set of sample materials. In this case we exemplify our framework by predicting the yaw angle of the MAV after landing. Our framework demonstrates the applicability of established texture classification methods usually tested on stationary camera setups for the more challenging case of textures observed from a MAV. Results for supervised training demonstrate good estimation of the landing behaviour and motivate future work to implement autonomous decision making strategies and other behaviour predictions based on imagery.


This article examines the differences and features displayed by business angels (BAs), depending on the extent of their involvement with, and support for, the start-ups they finance measured by expertise, experience and contacts. With a sample of 293 Spanish BAs, using data obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey, our results indicate that investors who develop more rigorous screening processes in the pre-investment process and hold regular meetings with founder teams are more likely to become High Value-Added Business Angels (HVBAs). Accordingly, the ability of BAs to transfer so-called 'smart capital' is conditioned by the levels of screening and assessment applied at the pre-investment stage in terms of both the quality of projects and founder teams and the extent to which the expectations and profiles of the two parties match.


How is the struggle against climate change financed? Climate Finance: Theory and Practice gives an overview of the key debates that have emerged in the field of climate finance, including those concerned with efficiency, equity, justice, and contribution to the public good between developed and developing countries. With the collaboration of internationally renowned experts in the field of climate finance, the authors of this book highlight the importance of climate finance, showing the theoretical aspects that influence it, and some practices that are currently being implemented or have been proposed to finance mitigation and adaptation policies in the developed and developing world.


We present an on-going project that explores how consumers process electronic word-of-mouth (EWOM) recommendations from electronic word-of-mouth systems (EWOMS). Conceptualizing EWOMS as an informant-mediated persuasive environment that comprises of many communication elements and drawing on the accessibility-diagnosticity model and the elaboration likelihood model, we identify the critical roles of EWOM information diagnosticity and EWOM informant credibility and their antecedents in influencing consumers' acceptance/rejection of the EWOMS recommendation. It also examines the effects of unique EWOMS mechanisms such as helpfulness indicators and informant status indicators. Taking consumer heterogeneity into consideration, the paper discusses the moderating effects of consumers' processing motivation on the influence of information and informant characteristics and the EWOMS mechanisms. An experiment is formulated to validate our propositions.


In this article, we argue that digital media pose such challenges for analysing media content adequately that the established approach does not work as intended, reflecting underlying assumptions inherited from analogue media formats. We review two relatively new forms of the content analysis method—big data and liquid content analysis—and juxtapose these with established content analysis. In addition, we detail how these two methods tackle content analysis pillars such as mode of analysis, sampling, sampling size, variable design, unit of analysis, measuring point(s), access/capture/storing, conclusions/generalizability and the key agent doing the actual work. We summarize the article by arguing that established content analysis is insufficient for digital media but that common standards, protocols and procedures are yet to be developed for these new approaches to digital journalism research.


A series of functionalized lipid membranes were shown to respond selectively to Fe3+, Cr3+, Cu2+, and Fe2+ with a distinctive change in bilayer fluorescence. The optical response is due to a change in the aggregational state of functionalized, pyrene-labeled lipids as they recognize and bind to the metal ion. Two new lipids are introduced with 2,2′-bipyridine (PSBiPy) and N-methylamide (PSMA) headgroups. These functionalized lipids, along with two other lipids having hydroxyl (PSOH) and iminodiacetic acid (PSIDA) headgroups, were incorporated into bilayers of distearylphosphatidylcholine (DSPC) producing materials that exhibited an excellent range of sensitivity for the metal ions at low pH. At neutral pH the metal ion sensitivities were lost for PSOH and PSMA while the sensitivity and selectivity for Cu2+ increased for PSBiPy. In addition to optical sensing, the bilayers also can undergo restructuring of the membrane architecture. Dynamic light scattering and transmission electron microscope images show that for the majority of the bilayers, metal ion addition caused only aggregation of the vesicles. However, for the PSBiPy/DSPC membranes extraordinary square-shaped assemblies of planar bilayers formed in the presence of 100 µM Cu2+.


Literature is a vehicle of ideas and views. The progressive ideas of a fictional genius spread through his/her works of literature. These works later on become classic and deserve immortality. They are universally received. These fictional works attain eternity through the ages. Great literature should tell us about social realities as class exploitation, injustice and above all the insult and abuse the subaltern. The experiences of women are shaped by absence and invisibility: what does not get noticed, discussed or included. In the orthodox and conservative society like ours, women have always been undervalued due to patriarchal assumptions. They have been tutored that their greatness lies in their sufferings and therefore, happiness of others is always prioritized to their own. In fact, their perceptions of their aspirations and expectations are within the framework of Indian social and moral commitment. The paper seeks to study the work of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, as a text of the silent voice of subaltern. It throws light on some important things of life. It has universal appeal because it voices the hidden and suppressed emotions of subaltern. It is a panorama of Indian social life. It shows the endless struggle of women and untouchables for carving their identity in this cruel, conservative and elite dominating society. They are vulnerable and deserted too so have to suffer at the hands of law makers. Being a social activist she raises the existential questions of subaltern and quest for their identity with a silent voice in a modern, democratic and complex world. The paper presents the constant struggle of women for their identity through the main characters as Ammu and Velutha who have feeble voice lost in the cacophony of life.


PURPOSE
To evaluate whether treatment with single-agent docetaxel would result in longer survival than would best supportive care in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer who had previously been treated with platinum-based chemotherapy. Secondary end points included assessment of response (docetaxel arm only), toxicity, and quality of life.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients with performance statuses of 0 to 2 and stage IIIB/IV non-small-cell lung cancer with either measurable or evaluable lesions were eligible for entry onto the study if they had undergone one or more platinum-based chemotherapy regimens and if they had adequate hematology and biochemistry parameters. They were excluded if they had symptomatic brain metastases or if they had previously been treated with paclitaxel. Patients were stratified by performance status and best response to cisplatin chemotherapy and were then randomized to treatment with docetaxel 100 mg/m(2) (49 patients) or 75 mg/m(2) (55 patients) or best supportive care. Patients in both arms were assessed every 3 weeks.

RESULTS
One hundred four patients (103 of whom were eligible for entry onto the study) were well balanced for prognostic factors. Of 84 patients with measurable lesions, six (7. 1%) achieved partial responses (three patients at each dose level). Time to progression was longer for docetaxel patients than for best supportive care patients (10.6 v 6.7 weeks, respectively; P <.001), as was median survival (7.0 v 4.6 months; log-rank test, P =.047). The difference was more significant for docetaxel 75 mg/m(2) patients, compared with corresponding best supportive care patients (7.5 v 4.6 months; log-rank test, P =.010; 1-year survival, 37% v 11%; chi(2) test, P =.003). Febrile neutropenia occurred in 11 patients treated with docetaxel 100 mg/m(2), three of whom died, and in one patient treated with docetaxel 75 mg/m(2). Grade 3 or 4 nonhematologic toxicity, with the exception of diarrhea, occurred at a similar rate in both the docetaxel and best supportive care groups.

CONCLUSION
Treatment with docetaxel is associated with significant prolongation of survival, and at a dose of 75 mg/m(2), the benefits of docetaxel therapy outweigh the risks.


We propose the Low Energy Self-Organizing Protocol (LESOP) for target tracking in dense wireless sensor networks. A cross-layer design perspective is adopted in LESOP for high protocol efficiency, where direct interactions between the Application layer and the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer are exploited. Unlike the classical Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) paradigm of communication networks, the Transport and Network layers are excluded in LESOP to simplify the protocol stack. A lightweight yet efficient target localization algorithm is proposed and implemented, and a Quality of Service (QoS) knob is found to control the tradeoff between the tracking error and the network energy consumption. Furthermore, LESOP serves as the first example in demonstrating the migration from the OSI paradigm to the Embedded Wireless Interconnect (EWI) architecture platform, a two-layer efficient architecture proposed here for wireless sensor networks


We study ethnic discrimination in the sharing economy using the example of online carpooling marketplaces. Based on a unique dataset of 16,624 real rides from Germany, we estimate the effects of drivers' perceived name origins on the demand for rides. The results show sizable ethnic discrimination – a discriminatory price premium of about 32% of the average market price. Further analyses suggest that additional information about actors in this market decreases the magnitude of ethnic discrimination. Our findings broaden the perspective of ethnic discrimination by shedding light on subtle, everyday forms of discrimination in social markets; inform ongoing discussions about ways to address discrimination in an era in which markets gradually move online; and respond to increasingly recognized limitations of experimental approaches to study discrimination.


This paper looks back on the evolution of institutional frameworks for economic integration in East Asia, which accelerated after the Asian financial crisis, analyzes its dynamics and future prospects, and identifies Japan's roles in the process that are consistent with the institutional transformation of its economy and society as well as the fundamental interests the United States have in Asian integration and constructive roles it can play in the process. In Section I, it analyzes the forces influencing the development and performance of various regional frameworks. In Section II, the paper assesses the prospects for Asian economic integration in light of these forces as well as perceived obstacles. Section III examines the link between Japan's policy efforts to overcome economic and political challenges, and the development of various institutional frameworks for East Asian economic integration. In Section IV, this paper presents positive implications for the U. S. policy for Asia.


We show how to estimate a model's test error from unlabeled data, on distributions very different from the training distribution, while assuming only that certain conditional independencies are preserved between train and test. We do not need to assume that the optimal predictor is the same between train and test, or that the true distribution lies in any parametric family. We can also efficiently differentiate the error estimate to perform unsupervised discriminative learning. Our technical tool is the method of moments, which allows us to exploit conditional independencies in the absence of a fully-specified model. Our framework encompasses a large family of losses including the log and exponential loss, and extends to structured output settings such as hidden Markov models.


On July 4, 2012, the European Center for Nuclear Research, (CERN), Geneva, formally announced that two of their experimental teams have discovered a new particle with a mass in the right range to qualify as a long sought Higgs Boson, which had eluded detection for nearly five decades since it was first postulated. The discovery is the culmination of several world wide attempts and is considered by the scientific community as a landmark scientific achievement of the country. The announcement also evoked considerable interest in our country. Not only the discovered particle derives half of its name from the well known Indian physicist of the twentieth century, Prof. Satyendra Nath Bose, but the discovery team also includes several names of Indian scientists and institutions. The scientific significance of this discovery has been discussed in great detail both in print and in seminars on several occasions. But there are also important management lessons to be learnt from such research projects - projects with long lead times, high costs, cutting edge technologies, high risks of negative results and involvement of a large number of institutions and investigators across the world. In this talk, I would like to bring to your attention some of these lessons that one could learn form the Higgs Boson discovery story.


Label distribution learning (LDL) is a general learning framework, which assigns to an instance a distribution over a set of labels rather than a single label or multiple labels. Current LDL methods have either restricted assumptions on the expression form of the label distribution or limitations in representation learning, e.g., to learn deep features in an end-to-end manner. This paper presents label distribution learning forests (LDLFs) - a novel label distribution learning algorithm based on differentiable decision trees, which have several advantages: 1) Decision trees have the potential to model any general form of label distributions by a mixture of leaf node predictions. 2) The learning of differentiable decision trees can be combined with representation learning. We define a distribution-based loss function for a forest, enabling all the trees to be learned jointly, and show that an update function for leaf node predictions, which guarantees a strict decrease of the loss function, can be derived by variational bounding. The effectiveness of the proposed LDLFs is verified on several LDL tasks and a computer vision application, showing significant improvements to the state-of-the-art LDL methods.


Fundic gland polyps are now commonly recognized during endoscopy. These polyps are benign, often multiple and usually detected in the gastric body and fundus. In the past, these polyps were sometimes associated with familial adenomatous polyposis. In recent years, it has become evident that increasing numbers of these polyps are being detected during endoscopic studies, particularly in patients treated with proton pump inhibitors for prolonged periods. In some, dysplastic changes in these polyps have also been reported. Recent studies have suggested that there may be no increase in risk of colon cancer with long-term proton pump inhibitor therapy. While temporarily reassuring, ongoing vigilance, particularly in those genetically predisposed to colon cancer, is still warranted.


One of the main objectives of the IAA since the last decade has been the necessity of communicating its scientific activity to the public, together all the relevant information of general astrophysical interest that may reach to the public.
 A continuous collaboration with daily written press, in magazines of general scientific spreading and specific to astronomical information, together with
 the publication of especial editions and supplements, and the edition of our own magazine "Information y Actualidad Astronomica", conform a conspicuous presence in the written media. In this contribution we review the main activities that the IAA has carried out in the recent years within the field of scientific communication in the written press media, and present several of the new challenges that we have ahead.


Ants are ubiquitous in most communities and many form opportunistic mutualisms with honeydew-producing hemipterans (e.g. treehoppers). Hemipterans excrete honeydew, a carbohydrate rich substance, that ants harvest and, in return, ants protect their honeydewproducing partners from parasitoids, predators, and competitors. Given the efficacy of tending ants in removing hemipteran antagonists, and the strong roles that ants play within their communities as predators, competitors, and seed dispersers, surprisingly little is known of the effects of ant-hemipteran mutualisms (AHM) on the invertebrate communities in which they are embedded or on the plants that host AHM. Using observational and manipulative field experiments, I examined the long-term effect of AHM on their host plant's, honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), reproductive potential and quality. In addition, I measured how the presence of AHM affects the abundance, richness, diversity, and composition of the invertebrate communities living on honey mesquite. Plants hosting AHM may indirectly benefit (through the removal of herbivore arthropods) or suffer (through the loss pollinators) due to the defensive behavior of tending ants. To determine the effects of AHM on their host plant, I established a four-year press experiment in which I removed AHM from 50 randomly trees, while leaving 50 as controls. In addition, I marked and followed 30 trees from which AHM were naturally absent. To assess if mesquite quality differed between trees hosting AHM and trees in which AHM were naturally absent, in 2012 I assayed foliar condensed tannin concentrations, a secondary defense compound, and, in 2015, I measured foliar nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, and iron as they are essential for growth and reproduction. I compared the reproductive potential between AHM present and removed trees by counting flowers and fruits across all 4 years of the study. Mesquite that hosted AHM contained significantly less condensed tannins and significantly higher concentrations of N%, Mg, and Fe. Furthermore, over the duration of the study mesquite hosting AHM contained significantly more flowers than those from which AHM were removed or naturally absent. My results indicate that AHM select trees of high quality and their continued presence is associated with high levels of reproductive potential. Most studies that have evaluated community-level effects of AHM compare total abundance and species richness in communities (or host plants) with and without AHMs. However, both measures are dependent on sampling effort, complicating comparisons across different studies. To examine the effects of AMH on the arthropod community in mesquite, I first compared family richness and alpha diversity using standardized rarefaction and extrapolation curves. I then measured beta diversity and turnover in community composition from one year to the next. The removal of AHM increased invertebrate diversity and significantly altered community composition. Although treatments did not statistically differ in turnover rates, replacements occurred among treatments at the family level which may be biologically meaningful. Furthermore, herbivore and predator populations increased, and pollinator populations decreased following the removal of AHM. These results suggest that the presence of AHM can alter the composition of arthropod communities and food-web dynamics. However, these effects were significant in some years and not others, suggesting the importance of temporal variation in drivers of communities. Overall, my work demonstrates that AHM can be drivers of community composition and illustrate the importance of examining their effects across multiple seasons.


To initiate a study on molecular characterization of non-syndromic recessive deafness in the Pakistani population, thirty-five consanguineous families of different ethnic groups were enrolled. Twenty-eight families with three or more affected individuals were analyzed for linkage to all known non-syndromic recessive deafness causing loci and seven of the unlinked families from this group were also screened for dominant and Usher syndromes loci. These screening studies led to the mapping of different deafness genes.

Fourteen families showed linkage to the known non-syndromic recessive deafness loci. Carriers of deafness genes were identified and information was provided to the families on request. DFNB3 was found to segregate in a maximum number of families (8.5%). Linkage analysis led to the recognition of Pendred syndrome in one family previously thought to have non-syndromic deafness. DNA sequencing analyses revealed novel mutations in the PDS gene for this and some other PDS linked families. These included 3 missense and one splice site mutation. A novel mutation in TECTA, 6037delG was identified in one of the families showing linkage to DFNB21. This is the second mutation in TECTA causing non-syndromic recessive deafness.

One family was linked to a non-syndromic recessive deafness locus at chromosomal interval 3q24-25. This appears to be a narrowed refinement of one of the DFNB15 loci and/or it may be an allelic variant to USH3. A novel non-syndromic deafness causing gene, DFNB29 was mapped to chromosome 21q22. DFNB8/10 were excluded as a case of deafness for this family. The candidate deafness gene interval was reduced to ~1.5 cM by screening this family for recombination events. Twelve families remained unlinked to the mapped chromosomal intervals for deafness genes, indicating that they may have some novel deafness causing genes.