As she looked at a picture in a science magazine, Janet, one of my sixth grade students exclaimed, "That's all? That little puddle is the source of the huge Mississippi River? How does the river get so big?" Answering these questions provided the opportunity to examine in depth the social studies standards theme * PEOPLE, PLACES AND ENVIRONMENTS. (1) Since my goal in teaching geography is to open a larger world for my sixth graders, Janet's questions prompted me to find a way to help my students discover the variety of ways rivers might affect the environment, culture, and history of the people along their courses. In this article, I describe two versions of a successful project that I use with my students when they study geography. (2) The model river project combines geographic knowledge and research skills. Each year, I select the type of project we will do in light of the amount of class time available. I believe that a longer, one-month project (described below), which requires students to examine and report on life along the entire length of a river, is superior. It provides students with an opportunity to test their ideas about the relationship between people and the river in several settings. (The relationship often changes as the landscape changes.) A shorter, two-week project does provide opportunities to teach and practice geographic research and presentation skills, but it may not provide as much depth of understanding of social geography. The longer project also provides greater opportunity for students to solve problems creatively as they work on their model of a river valley. The Project Begins When studying the regions of Asia, I used the model river project as a culminating activity and an authentic assessment of student learning. Five rivers--the Ganges, Indus, Mekong, Huang He (Yellow) and Chang (Yangtze)--originate in the Himalaya Mountains. This region possesses a wide range of cultures and relationships among people along each river system and illustrates the many benefits that rivers provide to human society over time. Each student creates a three-dimensional (contour) model of a river system and a fact book about that river. If they choose, students can work with a partner, but each is required to make a plan (and have it approved by the teacher) that spells out what the division of labor will be for creating the model and the report. To begin, I give each student a detailed, written description of the rivers project, which includes requirements, directions, suggestions, and a summary of how the project will be assessed (Handout, p. M13). I instruct students on how to use a card filing system to collect data for the fact book. (Although some students may have access to a computer, I have found that using cards is the best way for them to learn research skills.) I show students an example of a well-researched book, with data organized in charts and lists. I do not require students to write everything in complete sentences in this activity. The models of river valleys, made on a base of foam board or plywood, are described in the handout, as is the rubric for assessment. Resources for Research A preliminary check of resources in the library and on the Internet indicated that there was adequate information close at hand for students to complete the project (See References). For the students, however conducting research was sometimes complicated by their inability to gain access to the information they needed in a timely manner. Thus, I made sure that a variety of useful resources were present in the classroom. Photographs and diagrams are important in helping students identify the various parts of the river systems, and several travel websites proved a useful source of pictures. Companies that plan adventure tours provided online photographs of remote and isolated regions. General references such as encyclopedias, atlases, travel books and magazines, and National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines provided sufficient information for my first two classes to successfully complete the project. …


Previously dated zircon crystals from the Amalia-Kraaipan granite-greenstone belts and Makoppa Dome were analysed for their Lu-Hf isotopic characteristics to refine the geological evolution of these areas. Samples from the Makoppa Dome, belonging to the Pietersburg Block, largely fall within the epsilon Hf-age range for granitoids from the eastern part of the block. However, the oldest 3.01 to 3.03 Ga trondhjemitic gneisses show that reworking of juvenile mafic crust started earlier in the western than the eastern part of the block, suggesting a diachronous tectonic evolution. The three granitoids from the Amalia-Kraaipan area fall within the field for Pietersburg and Kimberley block granitoids. Contribution from older crustal material is seen in a 3.08 Ga schist, likely derived from a volcanic protolith, from the Madibe Belt, in the far east of the Kimberley Block, with a mantle extraction age of 3.25 to 3.45 Ga. The data suggest that the Kimberley Block, like the Pietersburg Block, also contains (minor) ancient crustal components, derived from a depleted mantle source prior to 3.1 Ga. The new data suggest that the Kimberley and Pietersburg blocks underwent a very similar Paleo- to Mesoarchean crustal evolution, with a major crust formation event at 3.1 to 3.0 Ga followed by successive crust reworking until 2.77 Ga. Lavas of the Ventersdorp Supergroup, for which zircon grains from a ca. 2.75 lapilli tuff give εHfi of +2, are the first evidence of a juvenile source, after 300 Myr of crustal reworking.


Enterprising higher education management with a focus on instructional innovation may help teaching universities as they confront the dynamism of the transnational higher education market. The present study is documentation of an enterprising process for instructional innovation at the American University of Kuwait. Information from the employment market was used to identify an apparent opportunity to offer a human resource management (HR) undergraduate major. Stakeholder engagement and benchmarking for shaping the programme are illustrated as well as efforts to establish a reputation for quality. Freire's theory of conscientisation was applied to structure learning in the coursework of the new programme. Critical factors enabling the enterprising initiative included use of business concepts in university management, programme validation from reputable external agents and stakeholder input.


Tracking-by the system output-of a reference signal (assumed bounded with essentially bounded derivative) is considered in the context of a class of nonlinear, single-input, single-output systems modelled by functional differential equations and subject to input saturation. Prespecified is a parameterized performance funnel within which the tracking error is required to evolve; transient and asymptotic behaviour of the tracking error is influenced through choice of parameter values which define the funnel. The control structure is a saturating error feedback with time-varying nonmonotone gain designed to evolve in such a way as to preclude contact with the funnel boundary. A feasibility condition-formulated in bounds of the plant data, the saturation bound, the funnel data, the reference signal, and the initial data-is presented under which the tracking objective is achieved, whilst maintaining boundedness of the state and gain function.


A stray bone tuning peg from late medieval levels within Edinburgh Castle, the first such find to be published from Scotland, probably belonged to a small, wooden, metal-strung harp. Although it is simply made, its dimensions indicate that the lost instrument had been built to standard units of measurement (inches and fractions of an inch), was probably the product of a craft workshop and was therefore a valuable item of equipment. With the exception of an early antiquarian find from a bog in Co Antrim, of which only a drawing now remains, no such instrument has yet been found in these islands, but numerous images survive, especially in Insular manuscript miniatures. Some feature pegs and strings in the process of being tuned. Under the microscope, the object reveals surface textures that are closely consistent with such use, specifically with its insertion into a wooden socket and with repeated twisting there by means of a socketed metal key. Close to the string hole are oblique stains suggestive of a winding of metal wire. X-ray fluorescence analysis in the vicinity of these stains suggests long-term exposure to contamination from strings of copper alloy or from some nearby copper-alloy fitment. However, an unexpectedly strong iron signal from within the soil residues still packing the string hole leaves open the possibility of iron or steel wire.


Physically based constitutive equations need to incorporate the most relevant microstructural features of materials to adequately describe their mechanical behaviour. To accurately model the creep behaviour of precipitation hardened alloys, the value and the evolution of strengthening particle size are important parameters to be taken into account. In the present work, creep tests have been run on virgin and overaged (up to 3500h at 800 ◦ C) Nimonic 263, a polycrystalline nickel base superalloy used for combustion chambers of gas turbines. The experimental results suggest that the reinforcing particle evolution is not the main reason for the creep acceleration that seems to be better described by a strain correlated damage, such as the accumulation of mobile dislocations or the grain boundary cavitation. The coarsened microstructure, obtained by overageing the alloy at high temperature before creep testing, mainly influences the initial stage of the creep, resulting in a higher minimum creep rate and a corresponding reduction of the creep resistance.


In the context of ubiquitous data capture and the politics of control, there is growing individual and managerial interest in 'pulse', both in the literal sense of arterial pulse (now monitored through wearable technology) and in a metaphorical sense of real-time tracking (for instance taking the 'pulse of an organisation'). This article uses the category of 'pulse' to explore post-Fordism as a set of techniques for governing rhythms, both of the body and of technologies. It draws on Lefebvre's work to introduce notions of eurhythmia, arrhythmia and 'internal measure' as ways of exploring somatic and organisational life. It then introduces two case studies where the idea and physical nature of 'pulse' are at work. These provide an insight into the real-time nature of post-Fordist life, where a chronic sensing of
quantities becomes the basis of co-operation, rather than a judgement via measures.


Somatic GNAQ mutations at codon 209 have been identified in approximately 50% of uveal melanomas and have been reported to be oncogenic through activating PLCβ/PKC/Erk1/2 pathways. We hypothesized that protein kinase C (PKC) may provide new opportunities for therapeutic targeting of uveal melanoma carrying GNAQ mutations. To test this hypothesis, uveal melanoma cells harboring wild-type or mutant GNAQ were treated with the PKC inhibitor AEB071 (sotrastaurin) or infected with lentivirus-expressing short hairpin RNAs (shRNA) targeting PKC isoforms. Notably, AEB071 at low micromolar concentrations significantly inhibited the growth of uveal melanoma cells harboring GNAQ mutations through induction of G1 arrest and apoptosis. However, AEB071 had little effect on uveal melanoma cells carrying wild-type GNAQ. AEB071-mediated cell inhibition in the GNAQ-mutated uveal melanoma was accompanied by inhibition of extracellular signal–regulated kinase (Erk)1/2 phosphorylation, NF-κB, decreased expression of cyclin D1, survivin, Bcl-xL, and XIAP, and increased expression of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27Kip1. AEB071 suppressed the expression of PKC α, β, δ, ϵ, and θ in GNAQ-mutated uveal melanoma cells. Our findings from shRNA-mediated knockdown studies revealed that these PKC isoforms are functionally important for uveal melanoma cells harboring GNAQ mutations. Furthermore, inhibitors of Erk1/2 and NF-κB pathways reduced viability of uveal melanoma cells. Together, our findings show that AEB071 exerts antitumor action on uveal melanoma cells carrying GNAQ mutations via targeting PKC/Erk1/2 and PKC/NF-κB pathways. Targeted PKC inhibition with drugs such as AEB071 offers novel therapeutic potential for uveal melanoma harboring GNAQ mutations. Mol Cancer Ther; 11(9); 1905–14. ©2012 AACR.


Pakistan had a plural society per excellence. Its people were divided geographically between two separate regions, spoke different languages, had different cultures and economic structures. Like other plural societies elsewhere, Pakistan also faced the problem of national integration. Cleavages along the lines of traditional attachments are fundamental to any plural society, as they were in Pakistan. But their political manifestation could have been kept within managable limits if the Central Government, overwhelmingly composed of the West Pakistanis, was seriously committed to the task* All that Pakistan needed to maintain her integrated existence was deliberate, calculated and conscious efforts on the part of the Central Government to give the Bengalis, the majority linguistic and geographic group in the country, a partnership in the state of Pakistan, an effective power in the decision-making process of the country, a reasonable share from the economic resources of the country, and to show respect to their hopes and aspirations. In addition, Pakistan needed a national platform to bring her divergent linguistic and geographic groups together for some common, national purposes. Political parties were the only institutions which could have served this purpose, Pakistan miserably failed to sustain national political parties and failed to satisfy Bengalis demands. This failure eventually resulted in the falling apart of the political system of Pakistan


Human carcinogen 1,3-butadiene (BD) undergoes metabolic activation to 3,4-epoxy-1-butene (EB), hydroxymethylvinyl ketone (HMVK), 3,4-epoxy-1,2-butanediol (EBD) and 1,2,3,4-diepoxybutane (DEB). Among these, DEB is by far the most genotoxic metabolite and is considered the ultimate carcinogenic species of BD. We have shown previously that BD-exposed laboratory mice form 8- to 10-fold more DEB-DNA adducts than rats exposed at the same conditions, which may be responsible for the enhanced sensitivity of mice to BD-mediated cancer. In the present study, we have identified 1,4-bis-(N-acetyl-L-cystein-S-yl)butane-2,3-diol (bis-BDMA) as a novel DEB-specific urinary biomarker. Isotope dilution high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry was employed to quantify bis-BDMA and three other BD-mercapturic acids, 2-(N-acetyl-L-cystein-S-yl)-1-hydroxybut-3-ene/1-(N-acetyl-L-cystein-S-yl)-2-hydroxy-but-3-ene (MHBMA, from EB), 4-(N-acetyl-L-cystein-S-yl)-1,2-dihydroxybutane (DHBMA, from HMVK) and 4-(N-acetyl-L-cystein-S-yl)-1,2,3-trihydroxybutane (THBMA, from EBD), in urine of confirmed smokers, occupationally exposed workers and BD-exposed laboratory rats. Bis-BDMA was formed in a dose-dependent manner in urine of rats exposed to 0-200 p.p.m. BD by inhalation, although it was a minor metabolite (1%) as compared with DHBMA (47%) and THBMA (37%). In humans, DHBMA was the most abundant BD-mercapturic acid excreted (93%), followed by THBMA (5%) and MHBMA (2%), whereas no bis-BDMA was detected. These results reveal significant differences in metabolism of BD between rats and humans.


Introduction Promoting healthy eating and active play in early life is critical, however few interventions have been delivered or sustained at scale. The evaluation of interventions at scale is a crucial, yet under-researched aspect of modifying population-level health behaviours. INFANT is an evidence-based early childhood healthy lifestyle intervention that aims to improve parents' knowledge and skills around promoting optimal energy balance-related behaviours that, in turn, influence children's diet, activity and adiposity. It consists of: 1) Four group sessions delivered via first time parent groups across the first 12 months of life; 2) access to the My Baby Now app from birth to 18 months of age. This research aims to assess real-world implementation, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of INFANT when delivered at scale across Victoria, Australia. Methods and Analysis A hybrid type II implementation-effectiveness trial applying a mixed methods design will be conducted. INFANT will be implemented in collaboration with practice and policy partners including maternal and child health services, population health and Aboriginal health, targeting all local government areas (n=79) in Victoria, Australia. Evaluation is based on criteria from the 'Outcomes for Implementation Research' and 'RE-AIM' frameworks. Implementation outcomes will be assessed using descriptive quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with those involved in implementation, and include intervention reach, organisational acceptability, adoption, appropriateness, cost, feasibility, penetration and sustainability. Process measures include organizational readiness, fidelity, and adaptation. Effectiveness outcomes will be assessed using a sample of INFANT participants and a non-randomized comparison group receiving usual care (1,500 infants in each group), recruited within the same communities. Eligible participants will be first time primary caregivers of an infant aged 0-3 months, owning a personal mobile phone and able to communicate in English. Effectiveness outcomes include infant lifestyle behaviours and BMIz at 12 and 18 months of age. Impact This is the first known study to evaluate the scale up of an evidence based early childhood obesity prevention intervention under real world conditions. This study has the potential to provide generalisable implementation, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness evidence to inform the future scale up of public health interventions both in Australia and internationally. Clinical Trial Registration Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry https://www.anzctr.org.au/, identifier ACTRN12620000670976.


The physiology of human visual perception helps explain different uses for color and luminance in visual arts. When visual fields are isoluminant, they look the same to our luminance processing pathway, while potentially looking quite different to the color processing path. This creates a perceptual tension exploited by skilled artists. In this paper, we show how reproducing a target color using a set of isoluminant yet distinct colors can both improve existing NPR image filters and help create new ones. A straight-forward, geometric technique for isoluminant color picking is presented, and then applied in an improved pointillist filter, a new Chuck Close inspired filter, and a novel type of image mosaic filter.


To date the Supreme Court has endorsed two approaches that municipalities may adopt when attempting to handle the problem of zoning adult businesses in communities that are opposed to the expression of that manner of free speech. In Young v. American Mini Theatres, 427 U.S. 50 (1976), the Court upheld portions of a Detroit "Anti–Skid Row Ordinance" that required that certain adult establishments not be permitted within 1,000 feet of another regulated establishment. This approach— which this Article calls "cracking" for shorthand—was deemed a permissible zoning regulation despite the incidental burdens it placed on speech, in part because the Court was willing to find that the government's interest in regulating the negative "secondary effects" that accompanied such establishments was a "legitimate government objective." A decade later, the Court also upheld a similar zoning ordinance in Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41 (1986), also on the grounds that such regulation of "secondary effects" was a permissible justification for burdening speech. However, the solution proposed in the ordinance at issue in Renton was markedly different than that offered in American Mini Theatres: it promoted concentrating the establishments in one zoned area rather than dispersing them—"packing" the establishments for short. This Article is the first to evaluate the relative effectiveness and desirability of the "cracking" versus "packing" approach from a law and economics perspective. To do so, this Article evaluates which approaches were in practice adopted by communities on the ground in the years since the Supreme Court advanced the secondary effects doctrine and explores the benefits and drawbacks of each approach from an efficiency standpoint. This Article suggests that cities are being disingenuous in explaining their motivations for overwhelmingly adopting the "cracking" approach.


In Jews in Medieval Christendom: Slay Them Not, a diverse group of international scholars from various disciplines considers Jewish/Christian relations in medieval Europe, based on St. Augustine's interpretation of Psalm 51:11: "Slay them not, lest my people forget".


Abstract The aim of the experimental study presented herein is the assessment and quantification of the behavior of individual dowels in multi-dowel connections loaded by a bending moment. For this purpose, double-shear, steel-to-timber connections with nine steel dowels arranged in different patterns and with different dowel diameters were tested in four-point bending. In order to achieve a ductile behavior with up to 7° relative rotation, the connections were partly reinforced with self-tapping screws. The reinforcement did not influence the global load–deformation behavior, neither for dowel diameters of 12 mm nor for 20 mm, as long as cracking was not decisive. The deformation of the individual dowels was studied by means of a non-contact deformation measurement system. Thus, the crushing deformation, that is, the deformation at the steel plate, and the bending deformation of the dowels could be quantified. In the case of 12 mm dowels, the bending deformation was larger than the crushing deformation, while it was smaller in the case of 20 mm dowels. Moreover, dowels loaded parallel to the grain showed larger bending deformations than dowels loaded perpendicular to the grain. This indicates that the loading of the individual dowels in the connection differs depending on their location.


In 2005, at Beidha, a northern suburb of the Nabataean capital of Petra, the remains of an elaborately decorated freestanding building were uncovered. Although little of the structure remains, architectural elements found at the site make it possible to propose a tentative reconstruction of the building, the main part of which was a colonnaded hall or oecus approached through a courtyard. The oecus may have been a triclinium of the Nabataean ruler Malichos I (59/58-30 B.C.E.). The elements uncovered display a wealth of imported Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Eastern architectural and artistic ideas adapted to local use. The building is located in an area that was a wine-production center in the Nabataean era, and the decorative program of the oecus is Dionysian. This article argues that the complex, which was abandoned shortly after it went into use, was built to extol tryphé (living in luxury) and to link the Nabataean royal house to Dionysos and Alexander.


Paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) Vent.) was one of the most widely distributed crop species in prehistoric Oceania, occurring from continental East Asia to the Polynesian islands. Its broad distribution is largely due to human-mediated dispersal during colonization of the islands of Near and Remote Oceania. We explore the potential for analyses of genetic variation in paper mulberry and the value of such data for the development of a new commensal model species for reconstructing patterns of human mobility in Oceania. We introduce and discuss paper mulberry as another commensal species and outline key features for its contribution to the understanding of human migration and post-colonization interaction. Here, we describe some of the extant B. papyrifera populations in Remote Oceania and Taiwan that were sampled for initial studies. We argue that the unique characteristics of this species and its importance in ancient Pacific island societies may provide the opportunity to collect valuable genetic data with which we can address several key questions in Pacific prehistory.


This paper examines whether statistical natural language processing techniques have been useful in analyzing documents on monetary policy. A simple latent semantic analysis shows a relatively good performance in classifying the Bank of Japan (BOJ)'s documents on its governors' policy and the impact without human reading. Our results also show that Governor Haruhiko Kuroda's communication strategy changed slightly in 2016 when the BOJ introduced the negative interest rate policy. This change in 2016 is comparable to the one from the transition from Masaaki Shirakawa to Kuroda. In spite of the intention, the BOJ had a misjudgment in the communication strategy.


Therapeutic targeting of the estrogen receptor (ER) is a clinically validated approach for estrogen receptor positive breast cancer (ER+ BC), but sustained response is limited by acquired resistance. Targeting the transcriptional coactivators required for estrogen receptor activity represents an alternative approach that is not subject to the same limitations as targeting estrogen receptor itself. In this report we demonstrate that the acetyltransferase activity of coactivator paralogs CREBBP/EP300 represents a promising therapeutic target in ER+ BC. Using the potent and selective inhibitor CPI-1612, we show that CREBBP/EP300 acetyltransferase inhibition potently suppresses in vitro and in vivo growth of breast cancer cell line models and acts in a manner orthogonal to directly targeting ER. CREBBP/EP300 acetyltransferase inhibition suppresses ER-dependent transcription by targeting lineage-specific enhancers defined by the pioneer transcription factor FOXA1. These results validate CREBBP/EP300 acetyltransferase activity as a viable target for clinical development in ER+ breast cancer.


This paper reviews the connections between Graphplan's planning-graph and the dynamic constraint satisfaction problem and motivates the need for adapting CSP search techniques to the Graphplan algorithm. It then describes how explanation based learning, dependency directed backtracking, dynamic variable ordering, forward checking, sticky values and random-restart search strategies can be adapted to Graphplan. Empirical results are provided to demonstrate that these augmentations improve Graphplan's performance significantly (up to 1000x speedups) on several benchmark problems. Special attention is paid to the explanation-based learning and dependency directed backtracking techniques as they are empirically found to be most useful in improving the performance of Graphplan.


Experimentation is a very important part of education in engineering including mechatronics engineering, which is a relatively new field, combining three engineering disciplines: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and software engineering. The equipments needed for experiments in mechatronics are usually expensive. A solution to make these expensive equipments achievable is to share them with other universities or research centers from different locations in the world.The goal of our team is to build a networked telerobot system so that the Internet users, especially researchers and students, can be able to control an autonomous robot able to explore a dynamic environment remotely from their home and share the robot system with the department. The particularity of the environment, in this case, is that the experiment uses grid lines painted on the floor, for robot navigation purpose.The system which is still under development will be able to increase the number of robots. The communication software technologies are based on PHP. A specific protocol over IP was designed for communication between the server and clients.The aim of this project is oriented toward providing a telerobot system with a high degree of local intelligence in order to overcome restricted bandwidth and transmission delay of the network.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


Cooperation between rational users in wireless networks is studied using coalitional game theory. Using the rate achieved by a user as its utility, it is shown that the stable coalition structure, i.e., set of coalitions from which users have no incentives to defect, depends on the manner in which the rate gains are apportioned among the cooperating users. Specifically, the stability of the grand coalition (GC), i.e., the coalition of all users, is studied. Transmitter and receiver cooperation in an interference channel (IC) are studied as illustrative cooperative models to determine the stable coalitions for both flexible (transferable) and fixed (non-transferable) apportioning schemes. It is shown that the stable sum-rate optimal coalition when only receivers cooperate by jointly decoding (transferable) is the GC. The stability of the GC depends on the detector when receivers cooperate using linear multiuser detectors (non-transferable). Transmitter cooperation is studied assuming that all receivers cooperate perfectly and that users outside a coalition act as jammers. The stability of the GC is studied for both the case of perfectly cooperating transmitters (transferrable) and under a partial decode-and-forward strategy (non-transferable). In both cases, the stability is shown to depend on the channel gains and the transmitter jamming strengths.


Background Maternal mortality is preventable by proper information management and is the main target of the Maternal Mortality Surveillance System (MMSS). Aim This study aimed to determine the status of information management in the Iranian Maternal Mortality Surveillance System (IMMSS). Methods The population of this descriptive and analytical study, which was conducted in 2016, included 96 administrative staff of health and treatment deputies of universities of medical sciences and the Ministry of Health in Iran. Data were gathered by a five-part questionnaire with confirmed validity and reliability. A total of 76 questionnaires were completed, and data were analyzed using SPSS software, version 19, by descriptive and inferential statistics. The relationship between variables "organizational unit" and the four studied axes was studied using Kendall's correlation coefficient test. Results The status of information management in IMMSS was desirable. Data gathering and storage axis and data processing and compilation axis achieved the highest (2.7±0.46) and the lowest (2.4±0.49) mean scores, respectively. The data-gathering method, control of a sample of women deaths in reproductive age in the universities of medical sciences, use of international classification of disease, and use of this system information by management teams to set resources allocation achieved the lowest mean scores in studied axes. Treatment deputy staff had a more positive attitude toward the status of information management of IMMSS than the health deputy staff (p=0.004). Conclusion Although the status of information management in IMMSS was desirable, it could be improved by modification of the data-gathering method; creating communication links between different data resources; a periodic sample control of women deaths in reproductive age in the universities of medical sciences; and implementing ICD-MM and integration of its rules on a unified system of death.


Nonlinear interactions in the dendritic tree play a key role in neural computation. Nevertheless, modeling frameworks aimed at the construction of large-scale, functional spiking neural networks, such as the Neural Engineering Framework, tend to assume a linear superposition of postsynaptic currents. In this letter, we present a series of extensions to the Neural Engineering Framework that facilitate the construction of networks incorporating Dale's principle and nonlinear conductance-based synapses. We apply these extensions to a two-compartment LIF neuron that can be seen as a simple model of passive dendritic computation. We show that it is possible to incorporate neuron models with input-dependent nonlinearities into the Neural Engineering Framework without compromising high-level function and that nonlinear postsynaptic currents can be systematically exploited to compute a wide variety of multivariate, band-limited functions, including the Euclidean norm, controlled shunting, and nonnegative multiplication. By avoiding an additional source of spike noise, the function approximation accuracy of a single layer of two-compartment LIF neurons is on a par with or even surpasses that of two-layer spiking neural networks up to a certain target function bandwidth.


The issue of human rights has always been a matter shared by politicians, lawyers, philosophers and sociologists. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights scholars and human rights activists have discussed whether the Declaration has become a symbol of human rights universality. Two decades later Muslim states have started discussions if human rights are indeed universal. They argued that human rights is a product of western imperialism and therefore the Arab states are not bound by the human rights catalogue proposed by the West. In 2008, the Arab Charter on Human Rights drafted within the framework of the League of Arab States came into force. This fact was welcomed by the international community, non-governmental organizations, and High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Arab Charter on Human Rights was seen as a possibility for the Arab States to confirm the commitment to the universality of human rights. However, the adopted text was disappointing and once again raised the doubt that Arab States are not truly committed to universal human rights. This article analyses the quest for the universality of human rights.


Objective: To investigate the protective role of sense of coherence (SOC) and perceived social support in the effect of emergency/elective caesarian section on post-natal psychological symptoms and impairment in mother–infant bonding. Design: Thirty-seven women delivering via an emergency C-section, 21 via elective C-section and 38 through a vaginal delivery were assessed six weeks post-partum (Time 1) as to their post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive symptoms, impairment in bonding and SOC and social support. Symptoms and bonding difficulties were assessed again six weeks later (Time 2). Main and interactive effects of mode of delivery and the protective factors were examined. Main Outcome Measures: Post-natal depressive and PTSD symptoms and mother–infant bonding. Results: An emergency C-section mode of delivery predicted an increase in PTSD symptoms in Time 2, but only among women with low levels of Time-1 social support. Time-1 SOC predicted a decrease in post-natal PTSD and depression. Conclusions: Social support might buffer against the potentially traumatic effect of an emergency C-section. SOC appears to constitute a powerful dimension of post-natal resilience.


The emergence of advanced information technologies strengthens the capability to the entrepreneur to manage and manipulate data. However, the quality of information, the capability of providing the right information to the right person, and the utilization of information are still in doubt. Therefore, increasing numbers of firms have realized and started to develop as well as improve their existing information systems to fit the ever‐changing business needs of the organization to support decision‐making for the volatile business environment. Indeed, previous research studies have found that logistics management is the great frontier of cost reduction. Therefore, in this paper, an infrastructure of a decision support system is proposed to capture and maintain the business and resources allocation information with the adoption of the neural network for its artificial intelligent characteristic that mimic the operation of human brain to generate solutions systematically. The proposed system is adopted by a shipping company to assist allocation of containers.


This article describes and analyzes two approaches in South Korean civil society to the issue of human rights in North Korea: a civil and political rights-based approach and an economic, social, and cultural rights-based approach that emphasizes the right to food. By analyzing the relationship between the policy stances of South Korean administrations in respect of North Korean human rights (NKHR) and NGO (nongovernmental organization) advocacy, this essay argues that South Korean humanitarian and human rights NGOs contributed to the adoption of different human rights norms in South Korean society. Since 2000, South Korean humanitarian NGOs separated civil and political rights (CPR) concerns from economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) concerns and selectively adopted the latter by limiting these human rights to the "right to food." Under the hard-line policy of the Lee Myung-Bak administration (2008-2012), South Korean human rights NGOs resumed active advocacy targeting the international community by exposing poor CPR situation in North Korea through transnational human rights networks given the CPR approach and this led to the dominance of the CPR approach in South Korean civil society. Thus, humanitarian and human rights NGOs in South Korea narrowed the focus of human rights norms to CPR and this emphasis influenced and shaped the way later political administrations in South Korea viewed human rights issues related to North Korea.


Recent work on a computationally-designed retroaldolase RA-61 suggested that most of the rate-acceleration brought about by this enzyme was due to non-specific interactions with the aromatic substrate. To provide a benchmark for the role of non-specific interactions in this system, we measured the second-order rate constant for the amine-catalysed retro-aldol reaction of methodol in the presence of non-specific hydrophobic pockets such as micelles. We found that a simple micellar system, that consists of a positively-charged surfactant and a long-chain amine, can accelerate the retro-aldol reaction of methodol by 9500-fold. This effect rivals the 10(5)-fold rate acceleration of RA-61. Similar results were obtained with BSA used as the catalyst, implying that the retro-aldol reaction of methodol can be greatly accelerated by non-specific hydrophobic pockets that contain an amino group.


This study of Schmorl 's nodes in British populations past and present attempts to reach a better understanding of the origins and aetiology of Schmorl' s nodes and their impact upon the vertebral column in relation to age, sex, pre-existing skeletal lower limb asymmetry, and work patterns. Georg Schmorl has been accepted as the leading authority on the nodes he named. Eighty years later modem diagnostic radiographic imaging and macroscopic studies are used to reach informed answers to the questions of prevalence, relationship to other degenerative joint diseases of the spine, and the possibility of Schmorl's node recognition by clinicians when presented with specific pain location. The clinical samples studied were from Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. The archaeological samples studied were from Captain's Cabin, Dunbar, The Hirsel, Coldstream and Whithom Priory, Galloway, all in Scotland, and St. Andrew, Fishergate, York, and Tanners Row, Pontefract in England, and dated to between the 6th and 16th centuries AD. The archaeological samples were from military and monastic settlements in urban and rural contexts. Congenital disorders and acute trauma affecting the spine, and alterations to the normal primary and secondary vertebral curves were studied in an attempt to prove or disprove a relationship to Schmorl's nodes. Macroscopic study of the vertebral columns from the archaeological samples, and radiographs of the clinical samples, were analysed, along with clinical case histories and known background information of the demography, settlement type and, the geographic and topographic locations for each sample. No weak area was found in the vertebral end plate. Positive proof for symptomatic Schmorl's nodes was found in the clinical samples. The greatest numbers of Schmorl' s nodes were not formed in the first two decades of life, but in the third and fourth decades. Scheuermann's disease may be indirectly attributable to subadult Schmorl's nodes. However, Schmorl's nodes may or may not precede scoliosis. Males and females Of similar ages from the same settlements did not produce. Similar frequencies, nor were similar patterns observed between samples. Further studies using larger and better-preserved samples, with good contextual evidence may help to provide clearer positive or, negative evidence for work related Schmorl's nodes.


In April 2012, Tarek Mehanna was convicted and sentenced to seventeen and a half years in federal prison for providing "material support" to al-Qaeda. (1) During his trial, the prosecution alleged that Mehanna traveled to Yemen in an unsuccessful attempt to receive terrorist training, (2) and that he translated al-Qaeda propaganda materials into English for a jihadist website. (3) In the national media storm following the trial, Mehanna's supporters argued that he was persecuted for exercising his First Amendment rights. (4) The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that if the verdict is not overturned, "ordinary people--including writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers--could be prosecuted for researching or translating controversial and unpopular ideas." (5) Yet Mehanna's conviction does not present the grave danger to First Amendment rights that his supporters claim. This issue had already been settled by a previous Supreme Court case. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, (6) the Supreme Court drew a hard line between independent advocacy, which is protected under the First Amendment, and speech that provides material support "in coordination with" a terrorist organization, which is not protected. (7) As the evidence at trial made clear, Mehanna's behavior fell into the latter category. The First Amendment protects those who express unpopular views, but it does not grant Mehanna the right to serve as an agent in al-Qaeda's criminal enterprise. Tarek Mehanna, an American-born Muslim, grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts. (8) Following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mehanna became increasingly opposed to the American presence in the Middle East and began to advocate for the violent expulsion of American forces from Iraq. (9) At first, Mehanna limited his activities to posting on jihadist websites. (10) In early 2004, however, Mehanna traveled to Yemen with Ahmad Abousamra and another American Muslim whom he had met online. (11) They spent two weeks together in Yemen, crossing the desert in an effort to find mujahideen fighters that had settled there after leaving Afghanistan. (12) The government alleged that they were searching for terrorist training camps that would provide them with the training they needed to fight against the American forces in Iraq. (13) Ultimately, however, their trip ended in disappointment. They found no terrorist training camps. (14) When they finally did manage to meet one of the mujahideen fighters from Afghanistan, he told them all of the camps had been closed down after the September 11th attacks. (15) After their trip to Yemen, Abousamra continued on to Iraq to join the fight against American forces there. (16) Mehanna returned home to Massachusetts, but he was detained upon arrival for questioning by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. (17) Mehanna told them that he and Abousamra had gone to Yemen to visit Islamic schools, and that Abousamra had decided to stay behind in Yemen. (18) The government alleged at trial that Mehanna knew Abousamra had gone to Iraq to fight against American forces. (19) Following his trip to Yemen, Mehanna continued to post on jihadist websites. (20) He also began translating videos and written materials from Arabic into English for a website called "Tibyan Publications." (21) At trial, two expert witnesses disagreed about the relationship between al-Qaeda and Tibyan Publications. One of the experts, Evan Kohlmann, testified that al-Qaeda's media wing directly coordinated with Tibyan. (22) Kohlmann testified that al-Qaeda would provide propaganda materials to Tibyan before al-Qaeda released the materials on other sites, so that Tibyan would be able to translate the materials into different languages before they were released to the public. (23) Dr. Marc Sageman, the other expert, testified that al-Qaeda "piggybacked" on sites like Tibyan by posting propaganda materials in Arabic on multiple jihadist websites, but he disagreed that al-Qaeda used Tibyan as a recruiting tool. …


Mortality amenable to health care intervention are premature deaths which, theoretically, should not occur in the presence of timely and effective health care. As Scotland has a universal health care system, where health care is freely provided at the point of access to all residents, there should be no socioeconomic inequalities in rates of amenable mortality (AM). However, gradients in rates of AM have been found in many countries, using various measures of socioeconomic position. The routine monitoring of rates of AM, and subgroups of amenable conditions, will contribute towards an indicator of health care performance.

Records of all deaths occurring between 1980 and 2013, records of hospitalisations for amenable conditions, and mid-year population estimates were used to calculate rates of age standardised mortality and incident hospitalisations respectively. Absolute and relative inequalities in both rates for the total population were estimated using an area based measure of material deprivation, the Carstairs index. Individual level measurements of socioeconomic position, such as educational attainment, were used to measure inequalities in rates of deaths for a sample of the population, allowing for some comparison with European countries. Rates of AM in Scotland and England were compared in two natural experiments in the final two chapters, aiming to explore the direct and indirect effects of policy changes on health care systems abilities to effectively prevent amenable deaths.

Rates of AM in Scotland have been found to be decreasing for both men and women. Mortality rates within two of the three subgroups of amenable conditions have also declined, with the third having too few deaths to comment on trends. The rates of incident hospitalisations of amenable conditions between 1996 and 2013 have remained relatively stable, suggesting that rates of AM may be reflecting improvements in the detection, treatment, and management of amenable conditions. Absolute and relative inequalities in mortality rates were largest when estimated using educational attainment, whilst occupational measures produced the smallest inequalities. The rate of decline in rates of AM slowed in Scotland, relative to England, following devolution, however the attempts to adequately control for differing levels of deprivation were unsuccessful. The final chapter saw step increase in rates of AM in England, compared to Scotland, following the publication of a White Paper for the Health and Social Care Act - however, this failed to reach statistical significance.

This thesis concludes that the continued study of amenable mortality in Scotland is worthwhile, given that mortality rates continued to decline against stable rates of incident hospitalisations, and relative inequalities in mortality rates were found to be increasing, despite decreasing absolute inequalities. The monitoring of inequalities in rates of AM provides the potential for weaknesses in the provision and delivery of care to be identified and corrected.


Defra stated that UK organisations could make £7m a day in energy efficiency savings, equating to £25 billion worth of cost reductions for UK plc. Energy is currently a cheap commodity and even with smart energy procurement most organisations could be wasting up to 40% of their spend. We will show you firsthand examples of how organisations have transformed their energy and cost base through integrated carbon reduction strategies with little or no upfront investment. With the recent Energy Market Review (EMR) and the government putting a carbon floor price in place, energy
costs are likely to dramatically increase over the next few years. Finance officers are now responsible for the vital
role of reducing energy (carbon) costs whilst managing cost volatility and meeting government targets and reporting requirements. Your challenge is in building an integrated sustainability strategy that enables you to make informed investment decisions based on the right quantitative and qualitative data and supported with appropriate return on investment modelling. As leaders, you constantly want more evidence that sustainability investments will create tangible returns but all too often investment opportunities get missed when a soft business cases are presented without the correct energy data and financial modelling to establish the true investment potential.
The Royal Mail is one of the biggest property owners, employers and logistics & distribution companies in the
world. In 2006 they embarked on an energy transformation journey that saved them £35m a year, reducing their energy spend by 45%. Dr Martin Blake, then head of Sustainability for the Royal Mail Group, who led this work, will share his experiences and insights.
Investment Grade MAC Curves
Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC) curve have been around for some time to assess government policy and national energy investment strategies. Using MAC curves in an organisational or corporate setting is a comparatively new technique and requires access to energy and investment data combined with technical informational and risk & costs modelling. When skilfully developed, a MAC curve can be a fantastic and extremely informative investment tool that allows allow you to accurately evaluate between projects and
balance ROI with carbon reduction, regulatory and financial targets.
What will you learn?
The seminar has brought together the experts who will break down the critical aspects of aligning your
sustainability strategy to a solid financial plan. This will help you reduce risks, costs and emissions at better
understood financial rates of return. You will benefit from:
• Examples of businesses cases which have supported investment decisions in creating attractive ROIs
• Understand the data requirements - qualitative, quantitative and financial - needed for accurate
business modelling
• Insights into how Marginal Abatement Cost curves really works and how it they are used to provide the
basis for investment decisions
• The necessity for embedding longer term adaption strategies into your business plans
• How to align financial and sustainability objectives to create clear actions that you can replicate


Multi-agent reinforcement learning has made significant progress in recent years, but it remains a hard problem. Hence, one often resorts to developing learning algorithms for specific classes of multi-agent systems. In this paper we study reinforcement learning in a specific class of multi-agent systems systems called mean-field games. In particular, we consider learning in stationary mean-field games. We identify two different solution concepts---stationary mean-field equilibrium and stationary mean-field social-welfare optimal policy---for such games based on whether the agents are non-cooperative or cooperative, respectively. We then generalize these solution concepts to their local variants using bounded rationality based arguments. For these two local solution concepts, we present two reinforcement learning algorithms. We show that the algorithms converge to the right solution under mild technical conditions and demonstrate this using two numerical examples.


Abstract: Corporations are a part of the community and accorded a range of rights similar - although certainly not identical - to those enjoyed by individual members, and so it is natural that they are understood as being bound by the same laws and social norms as any other individual. Yet corporate criminal liability has been criticized because no one individual can be held morally accountable for its misconduct, and therefore the argument has been made that an organization should not be subject to criminal sanctions. Perhaps the most cogent criticism of corporate criminal liability is that the only real punishment available against a corporation is a fine, which can be much more easily calibrated to redress any harm through a civil proceeding that does not require all the protections usually afforded in a criminal prosecution. In this article, presented at the David G. Trager Public Policy Symposium at Brooklyn Law School on "Sharing the Blame: the Law and Morality of Punishing Collective Entities", I argue that criminal sanctions are appropriate for a corporation when the goal of the criminal prosecution is rehabilitation of the organization to change its corporate culture so that it can more effectively prevent future violations.


RATIONALE
The interstitial lung disease (ILD) multidisciplinary meetings (MDM) composing of pulmonologists, radiologists and pathologists, is integral to the rendering of an accurate ILD diagnosis. However, there is significant heterogeneity in the conduct of ILD MDMs and questions regarding its best practice remain unanswered.

OBJECTIVE
To achieve consensus among ILD experts on essential components of an ILD MDM.

METHODS
Using a Delphi methodology, semi structured interviews with ILD experts were used to identify key themes and features of ILD MDMs. These items informed two subsequent rounds of online questionnaires that were used to achieve consensus among a broader, international panel of ILD experts. Experts were asked to rate their level of agreement on a five-point Likert scale. An a priori threshold for consensus was set at a median score 4 or 5 with an interquartile range of 0.

RESULTS
We interviewed 15 ILD experts and 102 ILD experts participated in the online questionnaires. Five items and two exploratory statements achieved consensus on being essential for an ILD MDM following two questionnaire rounds. There was consensus that the presence of at least one radiologist, a quiet setting with a visual projection system, a high-quality chest high resolution computed tomography and a standardized template summarising collated patient data are essential components of an ILD MDM. Experts also agreed that it would be useful for ILD MDMs to undergo an annual benchmarking process and a validation process by fulfilling a minimum number of cases annually. Twenty-seven additional features were considered to be either highly desirable or desirable features based on the degree of consensus. Although our findings on desirable features are similar to the current literature, several of these remain controversial and warrant further research. The study also showed an agreement among participants on several future concepts to improve the ILD MDM such as performing regular self-assessments and conducting research into shared practices to develop an international expert guideline statement on ILD MDMs.

CONCLUSION
This Delphi study showed consensus among international ILD experts on essential and desirable features of an ILD MDM. Our data represents a first step toward potential collaborative research into future standardisation of ILD MDMs.


AcrA is the periplasmic adaptor protein component of the major efflux system AcrB-TolC of \(Salmonella\) Typhimurium. AcrA of S. \(Typhimurium\) SL1344 was inactivated and the mutant phenotype characterised. RT-PCR and western blotting were used to confirm expression of \(acrB/AcrB\) was retained in the acrA mutant. The AcrA mutant was hyper-susceptible to a range of antimicrobials and was more susceptible to some agents than strains lacking AcrB and TolC. This is partially explained by the increase in accumulation of Hoechst H33342, a fluorescent substrate of AcrAB-TolC, indicating that the inactivation of \(acrA\) resulted in reduced efflux activity. Lack of AcrA also attenuated the ability of S. Typhimurium to infect INT-407 and RAW 264.7 cells \(in vitro\) as previously published for AcrB and TolC mutants. The virulence defect of the mutants could not be rescued by addition of supernatant from an infection of INT-407 cells with SL1344 or addition of media conditioned by uninfected INT 407 cells. However, addition of media conditioned by overnight growth of SL1344 was able to ameliorate the virulence defect of the mutants. This suggests that AcrAB-TolC of SL1344 exports a factor/s required for virulence which the mutants are unable to export and that exogenous addition of this factor can restore the virulent phenotype. Inactivation of \(acrA\) conferred a phenotype distinct to that of inactivation of \(acrB\) or \(tolC\) indicating a role for AcrA distinct to that of other protein partners in both efflux of substrates and virulence


Hydro-distilled volatile oils from the leaves of Ocimum gratissimum L. (Lamiaceae) from Meru district in Eastern Kenya were analysed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and also evaluated for antimicrobial activity. The oil was dominated by monoterpens which accounted for 92.48%. This monoterpene fraction was characterized by a high percentage of eugenol (68.8%). The other major monoterpenes were methyl eugenol (13.21%), cis-ocimene (7.47%), trans-ocimene (0.94%), -pinene (1.10%) and camphor (0.95%). The sesquiterpenes present in fairly good amounts were germacrene D (4.25%) and trans-caryophyllene (1.69%). The minor  sesquiterpenes were -farnesene (0.85%) and - bisabolene (0.74%). The antimicrobial activities of the essential oils were evaluated against both Gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus spp.) and Gram negative (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosae, Salmonella typhi, Klebisiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis) bacteria and a pathogenic fungus Candida albicans. The oil had pronounced antibacterial and antifungal activities on all the microbes.


Microwave assisted organic synthesis has grown into a powerful tool in the hands of chemists. In the present paper we report the study of products of oxidation of N,N-dimethylaniline by ditertiary butyl chromate in few non aqueous solvents like acetonitrile, tetrahydrofuran and dioxane. The substrate solution and ditertiary butyl chromate was taken in appropriate ratio, mixed, stirred and irradiated in domestic microwave for the specified periods. The solid products of different colour and compositions so obtained were studied by elemental analysis, FTIR curves and thermogravimetric mass loss pattern.


Background: Pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) plays an important role in the natural history, prognosis, and outcome after valve intervention in patients with mitral stenosis (MS). The existing formula to estimate PVR by means of echocardiography is not readily applicable in the MS patient subset because it does not specifically calculate the risk of PVR in MS. The aim of this study was to find a new echocardiography formula to estimate PVR in MS. Methods: This diagnostic study was conducted in 2 stages. In the first stage, 58 consecutive subjects with MS were studied to find some model formulas for estimating PVR by multiple regression. Eight echo parameters were analyzed to seek their correlation with the invasive PVR value as a gold standard. The formula that had the best correlation and was easiest to use would be selected. In the second stage, those model formulas were validated by applying them to a further 34 consecutive MS subjects. Results: Four formulas which gave a discriminator coefficient of r 2 0.62–0.68 were derived.  The best model formula was proposed for further application.  The new selected formula PVR=-7.465+3.566 TRv max –(0.23 TVs')+6.799 (RV-MPI) showed good correlation (r=0.71, p<0.001) to the invasive PVR value, with good reliability. TRv max is maximal velocity of tricuspid regurgitation, TVs' is systolic velocity of tricuspid annulus, and RV-MPI is right ventricle index myocardial performance. ROC curve showed that the cut off point 7.2 has good sensitivity and specificity (90% and 88%, respectively) to predict PVR 7 WU. Conclusion: This study has shown that a novel echocardiography formula can estimate PVR with good correlation and reliability in subjects with mitral stenosis.


With the sustainable and fast development of Chinese economy, the volume of railway freight was increasing, and which promoted the train load and speed continue improving, in order to meet the needs of high speed and over loading trains' running, heavy and seamless steel rail has increasingly widely used Heat-treatment was emphasized for its important role to qualify the products of heavy rail. And air-cooling quenching was one of the widely used heating process methods. Air-jet is a very vital instrument in quenching by air-cooling. At present, the international community has been widely used air-cooled quenching, most quenching production lines of domestic converted into wind cold quenching line. It is necessary to simulate the inner and outer flow-field of airjet. In this paper, by means of computational fluid dynamics soft system Fluent to establish the geometric model of heavy rail, analysis the distribution of the internal and external flow field about air-jet centre cross section and the three sections were in parallel with it. Then through setting surface heat transfer coefficient of air-cooling, numerical simulation of temperature field in the cooling process of heavy rail. Finally, the phase changing temperature of steel U71Mn was got based on its CCT curves. With the cooling curves of several key points, the cooling rate at phase transition point was calculated. By comparing with every microstructure's critical cooling rate, the final cooling microstructure was predicted. Relative tests showed that the prediction was reasonable. It is significantly valuable for parameters' selection in heavy rail's technical operation.


In this thesis, the capability of the electrohydrodynamic atomization (EHDA)
process for preparing drug delivery carriers consisting of biodegradable polymeric
particles with different sizes and shapes was explored. The first part of the thesis
describes a detailed investigation of how the size, morphology and shape of the
particles generated can be controlled through the operating parameters; specifically
the flow rate, applied voltage and the properties of the solutions. Diameter and shape
of the particles were greatly influenced by viscosity and applied voltage. The mean
size of the particles changed from 340 nm to 4.4 μm as the viscosity increased from
2.5 mPa s to 11 mPa s. Also, using more concentrated polymer solution (30 wt%)
and higher applied voltage (above 14 kV) were found to be ideal for promoting chain
entanglement and shape transition from spherical to oblong to a more needle-like
shape. Estradiol-loaded micro and nanoparticles were produced with mean sizes
ranging from 100 nm to 4.5 μm with an encapsulation efficiency ranging between
65% to 75%. The in vitro drug release profiles of the particles started with an initial
short burst phase and followed by a longer period characterised by a lower release
rate. Two strategies were developed to tailor these profiles. First, ultrasound was
explored as a non-invasive method to stimulate "on demand" drug release from
carrier particles. Systematic investigations were carried out to determine the effect of
various ultrasound exposure parameters on the release rate in particular output
power, duty cycle and exposure time. These three exposure parameters were seen to
have a significant enhancing effect upon the drug release rate (up to 14%). The
second strategy explored was coating the surface of the particles with chitosan and
gelatin. This enabled control and reduction of the prominence 'burst release' phase
without affecting other parts of the release profile. Coating the particle surface with
1 wt% chitosan solution considerably reduces the initial release by 62%, 60% and
42% for PLGA 2 wt%, 5 wt% and 10 wt%, respectivly in the first 72 hours This
work demonstrates a powerful method of generating micro and nano drug-loaded
polymeric particles, with modified release behaviour and with control over the initial
release.


The contributions in this article are two-fold. First, we introduce a new hand-written digit data set that we collected. It contains high-resolution images of hand-written digits together with various writer characteristics which are not available in the well-known MNIST database. The data set is publicly available and is designed to create new research opportunities. Second, we perform a first analysis of this new data set. We begin with simple supervised tasks. We assess the predictability of the writer characteristics gathered, the effect of using some of those characteristics as predictors in classification task and the effect of higher resolution images on classification accuracy. We also explore semi-supervised applications; we can leverage the high quantity of hand-written digits data sets already existing online to improve the accuracy of various classifications task with noticeable success. Finally, we also demonstrate the generative perspective offered by this new data set; we are able to generate images that mimics the writing style of specific writers. The data set provides new research opportunities and our analysis establishes benchmarks and showcases some of the new opportunities made possible with this new data set.


Dik Jarman has nearly thirty years of experience in the profession of architecture as well in stop motion animation winning multiple international awards in both endeavours. In this Chapter he describes the lessons that each profession had to offer its counterpart as well as their limitations. He discusses his own internal conflict that drove the separate pursuit of each profession and likens it to the narrator of 1999 film Fight Club where he is torn by his discontent of his white colour job and looked to "destroy something beautiful" ending up splitting himself into two. Dik uses examples of his work on productions with William S. Burroughs, Francis Ford Coppola, Oscar winner Adam Elliot and architectural practice Studio505.


The term 'green jobs' can refer to employment in a narrowly defined set of industries providing environmental services. But it is more useful for the policy-maker to focus on the broader issue of the employment consequences of policies to correct environmental externalities such as anthropogenic climate change. Most of the literature focuses on direct employment created, with more cursory treatment of indirect and induced job creation, especially that arising from macroeconomic effects of policies. The potential adverse impacts of green growth policies on labor productivity and the costs of employment tend to be overlooked. More attention also needs to be paid in this literature to how labor markets work in different types of economy. There may be wedges between the shadow wage and the actual wage, particularly in developing countries with segmented labor markets and after adverse aggregate demand shocks, warranting a bigger and longer-lasting boost to green projects with high labor content. In these circumstances, the transition to green growth and job creation can go hand in hand. But there are challenges, especially for countries that have built their industrial development strategies around cheap carbon-based energy. Induced structural change, green or otherwise, should be accompanied by active labor market policies.


Using experimental samples of type-KI quartz glass processed in a barostatic chamber as an example, it is demonstrated that bubbles can be removed from it virtually completely. An investigation of the quality indices (birefringence, fine-grain inhomogeneity, and refractive index) recorded that they showed substantial variations after each operation, from the time that the glass was fabricated from quartz until the final product was obtained after the barostatic chamber, hot pressing, and rough annealing. However, the indices returned to their initial values at the completion of the processing cycle.


AD-32 (N-trifluoroacetyladriamycin-14-valerate), an analogue of doxorubicin, was examined for intraperitoneal (ip) administration in a phase 2 trial involving 25 patients with advanced gynecologic malignancies. At an AD-32 dose of 600 mg/m2, the limiting toxicity was grade 4 neutropenia (64% of patients), while severe abdominal pain was relatively uncommon (12%). Intraperitoneal AD-32 administration was associated with a 200-fold pharmacokinetic advantage for cavity exposure, compared to the systemic compartment. At the 600 mg/m2 dose level, 4 of 9 patients (44%) with ascites experienced control of malignant fluid reaccumulation. Based on the results of this phase 1 trial, further exploration of a possible role for the ip administration of AD-32 in individuals with gynecological malignancies appears indicated, particularly in patients with either small volume residual disease after initial systemic chemotherapy or in those with intractable ascites.


Corporate Strategy Siemens Nixdorf Moves to Knowledge Culture German computer maker Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG (SNI) has embarked on one of Europe's most sweeping overhauls of a corporate culture. The goal: To transform a bureaucratic, 9-to-5 company into an entrepreneurial, knowledge-based organization that can match the performance of rivals IBM Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The catalyst of change is chief executive Gerhard Schulmeyer, who was recruited from the U.S. operations of Swedish-Swiss engineering concern ABB Asea Brown Boveri. When Schulmeyer took over in 1994, SNI was deeply in the red and rapidly losing market share. Gross profit margins-a standard measure of efficiency-were running 30 percent below the industry average. Today, although the overhaul is still in progress, the company is turning a profit and showing a feisty spirit. Schulmeyer has turned SNI into a laboratory for testing innovative management tools. Among his many experiments: flattening rigid management hierarchies, installing younger top managers and launching several programs aimed at installing more entrepreneurship among the company's 35,000 workforce. Schulmeyer, who likes electronic mail because "it doesn't have any hierarchy" and lets employees gripe to him or make suggestions directly, says SNI's culture must change because the industry has changed. Today's hierarchy-driven, routine-based industrial age, he claims, is transforming into a complex information society. Labor, capital and real estate are no longer the key factors that determine success for a technology-driven companyknowledge is. Thus, creating a knowledge-based structure with questioning workers is crucial to staying ahead of competition in the fast-paced computer industry. And that requires internal networking and a new breed of employee-from the manager to the systems developer right down to the office clerk. Schulmeyer has demanded that all staff have e-mail and that the various in-house reporting systems be unified. He believes that a company can only make extreme changes if these "are supported by changes in communication." 250 Entrepreneurial Centers To help cultivate the new breed of employee, Schulmeyer has implemented a decentralized structure with 250 entrepreneurial profit centers and introduced a company-wide cultural change program. The aim is to create a new class of entrepreneurs within the business units and establish a networked "learning" organization equipped to succeed in a knowledge-based industry. In Schulmeyer's opinion, a company within a company is more responsive and flexible, and employees who know their roles in the core process and how to make concrete contributions to the value-added chain are more motivated. In short, the new structure is designed to bring the entire organization together as a team and create a spirit of consensus among equal partners. But staff in SNI's product development center are particularly affected by the new structure. "Here there is a huge focus on achieving the total quality organization, developing faster response times and establishing core competencies," says cultural change director Timothy Bookas. SNI, which doesn't have its own research department but relies instead on R&D support from Siemens AG, is indirectly benefitting from an initiative launched a few years ago by its parent company, notes Bookas. …


In-depth consideration and evaluation of security and resilience is necessary for developing the scientific foundations and technology of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). In this demonstration, we present SURE [1], a CPS experimentation and evaluation testbed for security and resilience focusing on transportation networks. The testbed includes (1) a heterogeneous modeling and simulation integration platform, (2) a Web-based tool for modeling CPS in adversarial environments, and (3) a framework for evaluating resilience using attacker-defender games. Users such as CPS designers and operators can interact with the testbed to evaluate monitoring and control schemes that include sensor placement and traffic signal configuration.


Machine learning systems typically assume that the distributions of training and test sets match closely. However, a critical requirement of such systems in the real world is their ability to generalize to unseen domains. Here, we propose an inter-domain gradient matching objective that targets domain generalization by maximizing the inner product between gradients from different domains. Since direct optimization of the gradient inner product can be computationally prohibitive -- requires computation of second-order derivatives -- we derive a simpler first-order algorithm named Fish that approximates its optimization. We demonstrate the efficacy of Fish on 6 datasets from the Wilds benchmark, which captures distribution shift across a diverse range of modalities. Our method produces competitive results on these datasets and surpasses all baselines on 4 of them. We perform experiments on both the Wilds benchmark, which captures distribution shift in the real world, as well as datasets in DomainBed benchmark that focuses more on synthetic-to-real transfer. Our method produces competitive results on both benchmarks, demonstrating its effectiveness across a wide range of domain generalization tasks.


Models for audio source separation usually operate on the magnitude spectrum, which ignores phase information and makes separation performance dependant on hyper-parameters for the spectral front-end. Therefore, we investigate end-to-end source separation in the time-domain, which allows modelling phase information and avoids fixed spectral transformations. Due to high sampling rates for audio, employing a long temporal input context on the sample level is difficult, but required for high quality separation results because of long-range temporal correlations. In this context, we propose the Wave-U-Net, an adaptation of the U-Net to the one-dimensional time domain, which repeatedly resamples feature maps to compute and combine features at different time scales. We introduce further architectural improvements, including an output layer that enforces source additivity, an upsampling technique and a context-aware prediction framework to reduce output artifacts. Experiments for singing voice separation indicate that our architecture yields a performance comparable to a state-of-the-art spectrogram-based U-Net architecture, given the same data. Finally, we reveal a problem with outliers in the currently used SDR evaluation metrics and suggest reporting rank-based statistics to alleviate this problem.


This study aims at examining the ways people communicate about energy transition, by analyzing the discourse of different stakeholders in a case of a local initiative for renewable energy. When moving from traditional to renewable energy, social acceptance of new technologies is of central importance, as public opposition can have extremely negative consequences for transition projects (Wuestenhagen, Wolsink & Buerer 2007). In order to get insights into the frames used by citizens when talking about energy transition, we chose a successful case of a local energy initiative from the northern of the Netherlands committed to supporting citizens in generating their own energy. Drawing on a corpus of online data, we conducted a discourse analysis from a discursive socioconstructivist perspective (Edwards 1994; Potter 1996) in order to examine examples of active social engagement in which local initiatives and citizens contribute to sustainability by generating their own energy (Bosman et. al 2013; Schwenke 2012). The main aim was to identify the frames that play a role in the discourse about successful local energy initiatives and allow us to better grasp the dynamics behind this type of upstream social engagement movements. Our results stress out the need for local initiatives to develop a discursive strategy that specifically distances itself from centralist approaches by stressing out the local aspect of energy transition, in opposition to national government approaches, as well as the social aspect of jointly improving the environment. The frames found are thus aimed at establishing contrasts in relation to institutions and approaches in which the public has gained distrust, on the one hand, and at constructing new collective identities with a shared vision, on the other. These results shed a light to the ways in which energy transition can be framed in order to increase local acceptance for renewable energy projects.


Is Australia a 'racist' country? Why do issues of race and culture seem to ignite public debate so readily? Tim Soutphommasane, Australia's Race Discrimination Commissioner, reflects on the national experience of racism and the progress that has been made since the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975. As the first federal human rights and discrimination legislation, the Act was a landmark demonstration of Australia's commitment to eliminating racism. Published to coincide with the Act's fortieth anniversary, this book gives a timely and incisive account of the history of racism, the limits of free speech, the dimensions of bigotry and the role of legislation in our society's response to discrimination. With contributions by Maxine Beneba Clarke, Bindi Cole Chocka, Benjamin Law, Alice Pung and Christos Tsiolkas. Reviewed here in PSnewsonline


Previous attempts to apply Halstead's software metrics to APL have led to inconsistent and counter-intuitive results. This work is a further investigation into the application of software metrics to APL to try to resolve some of the inconsistency. The effect of variations in the counting rules on values calculated for the software metrics was studied. These rules were used to analyze a set of programs from a previous study. In addition, a large number of APL programs from a university environment were analyzed. Evidence is presented that verifies that APL has a higher language level than any other common programming language previously studied. Counting monadic and dyadic uses of the same APL symbol as an instance of a different operator was found to have a significant effect on the language level calculated for APL. However, decomposing derived APL functions into separate operators did not seem to have a significant effect on language level.


Half the world's population now resides in cities, which are expanding at an unprecedented rate. Close to one billion people live in crowded, unhealthy, informal settlements--commonly referred to as slums--many of which lack security of land tenure, adequate housing, sanitation, clean water and electricity. Experts estimate that by 2030, more than two billion people will be living in these slums. In 2007, "Design for the Other 90%" explored design that helps provide better access to food, water, shelter, health, education and energy to those who most need them. "Design with the Other 90%: Cities" is the second installment in Cooper-Hewitt's ongoing and acclaimed exhibition and book series. It looks at some of the myriad challenges created by accelerated urban growth and presents design solutions that address the consequences. Exploring the multidisciplinary, overlapping relationships between urban planning and design, education, social entrepreneurship, climate change, sanitation and water, migration, public health and affordable housing in these communities, "Design with the Other 90%: Cities" looks at the efforts of international and locally based organizations, designers and communities collaborating with settlement residents to give them a chance at a more prosperous life.


Despite the phenomenal success of deep neural networks in a broad range of learning tasks, there is a lack of theory to understand the way they work. In particular, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are known to perform much better than Fully-Connected Networks (FCNs) on spatially structured data: the architectural structure of CNNs benefits from prior knowledge on the features of the data, for instance their translation invariance. The aim of this work is to understand this fact through the lens of dynamics in the loss landscape.
We introduce a method that maps a CNN to its equivalent FCN (denoted as eFCN). Such an embedding enables the comparison of CNN and FCN training dynamics directly in the FCN space. We use this method to test a new training protocol, which consists in training a CNN, embedding it to FCN space at a certain ``relax time'', then resuming the training in FCN space. We observe that for all relax times, the deviation from the CNN subspace is small, and the final performance reached by the eFCN is higher than that reachable by a standard FCN of same architecture. More surprisingly, for some intermediate relax times, the eFCN outperforms the CNN it stemmed, by combining the prior information of the CNN and the expressivity of the FCN in a complementary way. The practical interest of our protocol is limited by the very large size of the highly sparse eFCN. However, it offers interesting insights into the persistence of architectural bias under stochastic gradient dynamics. It shows the existence of some rare basins in the FCN loss landscape associated with very good generalization. These can only be accessed thanks to the CNN prior, which helps navigate the landscape during the early stages of optimization.


Although very little can be done to alter the course of dementia, much can be done to maximize the quality of life of people with the condition. Research as well as practical experience suggest that behavior management, especially through programs that provide meaningful and constructive activity, is currently the most effective treatment. In Keeping Busy, James Dowling describes a variety of activities designed to bring meaning and enjoyment to the lives of persons with dementia. The activities are organized by general categories such as music, exercise, horticulture, pets, humor, and social events. The largest section deals with communication and includes word games that help people strengthen their remaining verbal skills. The description of each activity includes step-by-step instructions, as well as tips on how to adapt it for small or large groups, for individuals at home or in an organization, or people who are bedridden.


Large Carnivores and the Conservation of Biodiversity brings together more than thirty leading scientists and conservation practitioners to consider a key question in environmental conservation: Is the conservation of large carnivores in ecosystems that evolved with their presence equivalent to the conservation of biological diversity within those systems? Building their discussions from empirical, long-term data sets, contributors including James A. Estes, David S. Maehr, Tim McClanahan, Andres J. Novaro, John Terborgh, and Rosie Woodroffe explore a variety of issues surrounding the link between predation and biodiversity: What is the evidence for or against the link? Is it stronger in marine systems? What are the implications for conservation strategies? Large Carnivores and the Conservation of Biodiversity is the first detailed, broad-scale examination of the empirical evidence regarding the role of large carnivores in biodiversity conservation in both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. It contributes to a much more precise and global understanding of when, where, and whether protecting and restoring top predators will directly contribute to the conservation of biodiversity. Everyone concerned with ecology, biodiversity, or large carnivores will find this volume a unique and thoughtprovoking analysis and synthesis.


Papers reporting the results of dynamic simulation models of aquatic ecosystems tend to show predicted concentrations of the state variables. The phytoplankton compartment is typically represented as predicted biomass, expressed as the concentration of chlorophyll a, particulate carbon, or particulate nitrogen. While computed values of phytoplankton biomass generally agree with observations, many of these same models significantly underestimate primary production. Existing simulation models often base the calculation of primary production on the Eppley curve, which sets the maximum daily phytoplankton growth rate as a function of temperature. Despite the apparent wide applicability of the Eppley curve, an increasing number of culture and field studies have measured growth rates in excess of those predicted by the curve, which may explain why existing models often underestimate primary production. An alternate empirical formulation which predicts daily phytoplankton production from biomass, photic depth, and incident irradiance has been shown to apply in a variety of nutrient-rich estuarine systems. Despite the large number of systems in which these empirical models have been developed, they predict remarkably similar rates of daily and annual production. Furthermore, these empirical models predict rates of production in excess of those predicted by the Eppley curve. The empirical formulation therefore presents an alternative to the Eppley curve in dynamic ecosystem models, and may result in more accurate predictions of primary production by these models.


This dissertation examines the sacred compositions for six or more voices by Nicolas Gombert (1495-1560). Two multivoice (six or more voices) compositional techniques emerged in sixteenth-century Europe. The first of these, the Italian double-choir (coro spezzato) technique, has received far more attention from scholars. This practice divided the vocal ensemble into two groups that sang either separately or together, and whose members remained consistent throughout the musical composition. The second technique, practiced by composers in northern Europe, also split settings into two or more vocal groups, but the members of the groupings constantly changed. This dissertation examines the second practice of multivoice writing in the sacred music of Gombert.My study is concerned with multiple issues essential in understanding Gombert's works and their relationship to other techniques of vocal writing in the sixteenth century. Among these issues, I focus on compositional procedure and context, both historical and musical. I examine Gombert's multivoice techniques across three sacred genres, motets, masses and his single complete octo tonorum cycle of Magnificats. I highlight the mechanical procedures of the pervading imitative style and how it may have been adapted to larger settings.I have found evidence of a distinct change in his compositional process in settings for more than six voices. Gombert's motets demonstrate this change in procedure. Whereas his motets for six voices show procedures utilized in settings for four and five voices, the motets also demonstrate handling of vocal groupings that appears with greater frequency in his settings for more than six voices. To further contextualize Gombert's music, I discuss how Gombert negotiates and adapts other styles and integrates them within his own. All of his multivoice masses, for example, integrate musical techniques and styles from the previous generation. The Magnificat cycle presents a unique opportunity to examine Gombert's multivoice processes as a case study.Nicolas Gombert has been a murky figure and his works have been somewhat dismissed as compositional curiosities due to the density of his pervading imitation style. This dissertation sheds light on Gombert's compositional processes and adds to our understanding of multivoice writing in the mid-sixteenth century.


Concreteness and imagery effects have been found to be among the most powerful in explaining performance on a variety of language tasks. Concreteness and imagery effects involve the capacity of concrete language to evoke sensory images in the mind (e.g., juicy watermelon), whereas abstract language has relatively less capacity to do so (e.g., agriculturalproduce). The effects of concreteness and imagery on reading and text recall have been well-established (e.g., Goetz, Sadoski, Fatemi, & Bush, 1994; Paivio, 1971, 1986; Paivio, Walsh, & Bons, 1994; Sadoski, Goetz, & Avila, 1995; Sadoski, Goetz, & Fritz, 1993a, 1993b). Concrete words, phrases, sentences, and texts have been found to be more imageable, comprehensible, memorable, and interesting than abstract language units even when other relevant contextual variables are carefully controlled. These results can be consistently interpreted by dual coding theory (Paivio, 1971, 1986, 1991), which maintains that cognition involves the operation of two separate but interconnected systems, one for verbal representations and processes and one for nonverbal (imagery) representations and processes.


In most areas of application of GNSS positioning the use of standalone calculation or loosely coupling is sufficient. With high-end GNSS receivers and high-precision IMUs these algorithms provide a good performance as long as the availability of satellites is adequate. Using GPS gives this condition in many cases. In the automotive area several challenges arise: Urban canyons cause shadowing effects and multipath errors. Besides the receiver and sensors must be affordable and in the line with the budget of vehicle production. So this work investigates the performance improvement of a tightly coupled algorithm using multi-GNSS instead of using only one system. Further it evaluates the approach of a modular update routine. This modularization enables the independent update of different parts of system state vector. To use multi-GNSS separate clock error estimation for each system is made. In the process of evaluation the different position results are compared with broadcast intersystem bias (ISB) where possible.


This paper gives a review on the theoretical foundation for fiscal decentralisation and a status quo analysis of the intergovernmental relations in Mongolia. It consists of two parts. Part I briefly reviews the theories of fiscal decentralisation and its impact on the nations' welfare considering the major challenges for a transition economy. Part II of the paper describes the general structure and scope of the government and examines the current fiscal autonomy in Mongolia focusing on the four main areas of intergovernmental relations. This paper concludes that local governments in Mongolia are still far away from having the political, administrative and fiscal autonomy. New approaches for the assignments of expenditures and revenues in Mongolia are urgently needed.


American agriculture employs some 2.5 million workers during a typical year, most for fewer than six months. Three fourths of these farm workers are immigrants, half are unauthorized, and most will leave seasonal farm work within a decade. What do these statistics mean for farmers, for labourers, for rural America? This book addresses the question by reviewing what is happening on farms and in the towns and cities where immigrant farm workers settle with their families. Philip Martin finds that the business-labour model that has evolved in rural America is neither desirable nor sustainable. He proposes regularizing U.S. farm workers and rationalizing the farm labour market, an approach that will help American farmers stay globally competitive while also improving conditions for farm workers.


Abstract
In its commercial gearing, the eighteenth-century publishing industry updated and extended popular print. New productions included an increase in the number of newspapers, books such as the novel and the engraved print which, as a repeatable commodity, became a feature of a society in which art was considered a commercial activity as well as a cultural one. The prospect of art becoming as much a commercial entity as an endorsement of cultural status provided enterprising artists such as William Hogarth with the opportunity to satisfy the requirements of an expanding, diverse and literate audience on terms with which they would be familiar. This related not only to the creation of a narrative form of art within the framing strictures of the book and text, but also the establishment of a direct link between the artist and the 'public at large' by the strategic use of newspaper advertisements and the competitive promotion of works through the subscription process. These key entrepreneurial activities are considered alongside the securing of intellectual property rights for artists by Hogarth through his successful promotion of the Engravers Copyright Act 1735 which made artists independently responsible for the production and distribution of their own work.
Chapter One outlines the conceptual framework for the analysis and interpretation of contemporary society in the early eighteenth-century. This takes into account changes in cultural gradations and the effect these had on commercial trading patterns and aesthetic interpretations of art. Chapter Two provides an overview of the background and upbringing of William Hogarth and the trajectory of his career as he became influenced by commercial opportunity and the prospect of a more open and diverse market for art. Chapter Three identifies technical developments in print and publishing during the period and demonstrates how these and the subscription process provided William Hogarth with commercial opportunities not previously available to artists. The creation by Hogarth of the visually attractive subscription ticket as an artistic item in its own right is considered along with a social analysis of sixty-four signed subscription tickets as a guide to audience composition. Chapter Four analyses the use of advertising in London newspapers by William Hogarth and the specific strategies he adopted on a print by print basis. It also provides fresh evidence of which newspapers were most advertised in and the prints which featured most frequently. Chapter Five reveals the extent to which auction sales in London, as unregulated sales events, responded to, and assisted in the commercialisation of art as an exchangeable commodity once it had left the artists hands. This demonstrates the extent to which the quest for cultural capital of an increasingly large consumer base exerted a formative influence on the commercial and marketing techniques of eighteenth -century art.


In this paper, experimental results of diffusion transport of salt through compacted, saturated bentonite clay was presented. Two different diffusion techniques namely, throughdiffusion and half-cell method were used to obtain diffusion and retention characteristics of the bentonite specimen which has a potential application as a liner material in engineered landfills and backfill material in high-level nuclear waste repository. The experiments were carried out on duplicate specimens subjected to the same initial compacted density and concentration gradient to understand the underlying mechanism of both the experimental techniques. A graphical user interface (GUI) based on Dot-Net application, CONTRADIS, was utilized to estimate the model parameters by inverse analysis on the experimental data. The GUI utilizes the analytical solutions for analyzing the data obtained from throughdiffusion and half-cell technique. The design model parameters obtained from the two techniques were analyzed and compared with the batch sorption experiments.


Giant magnetization of polyalanine monolayers on gold observed in resent years along with unusual large spin selectivity, the potential of the film and its temperature dependence are all explained in the context of vacuum polarization at the gold-monolayer interface. The enhancement is directly related to the fine structure constant, and involves a change in basic physical parameters including changes in the permeability of the vacuum and in the local zero point energy of the gold monolayer interface. Formation of an ordered state by the self-assembly process and the interaction of the monolayer with the gold plasmons form a new state of matter that can interact strongly with the zero point energy.


There is limited evidence on how much and on which days accelerometry monitoring should be performed to obtain a representative measurement of physical activity (PA) in young children. We measured 76 children (40 M and 36 F, mean age 5.6 years [SD ± 0.4]) on 7 days using Actigraph accelerometers. Mean daily PA was expressed in counts per min (cpm). Reliability increased as the number of days and hours of monitoring increased, but only to 10 hr per day. At 7 days of monitoring for 10 hr per day, reliability was 80% (95% CI [70%, 86%]). The number of days was more important to reliability than the number of hours. The inclusion or exclusion of weekend days made relatively little difference. A monitoring period of 7 days for 10 hr per day produced the highest reliability. Surprisingly short monitoring periods may provide adequate reliability in young children.