I. INTRODUCTION In Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History, I made the general argument that the development of tort law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been more influenced by ideas than previous scholars had suggested.' In making that argument I employed the terms "ideas" and "influence" at multiple levels of generality. The argument would perhaps have been better understood if I had more clearly particularized the specificity and generality of my claims about ideas as causal agents.2 At the most specific level, I employed the term "ideas" to refer to particular doctrinal and policy proposals for tort law advanced by particular scholars and judges. Examples would be the "vice principal" doctrine,3 or the doctrine of "last clear chance,"4 or proposals for a system of workmen's compensation governing certain types of industrial accidents.5 On a more general level, I used the term "ideas" to describe the starting presuppositions about the purposes and goals of the American tort system that drove those proposals, such as the idea that the primary purpose of tort law should be to compensate injured persons, or the competing idea that its primary purpose should be to deter or to punish risky conduct.6 At a still higher level of abstraction, I used the term "ideas" to refer to broad conceptions of law, as embodied in competing iurisprudential "schools" that surfaced in the American legal profession in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Examples of those "schools" include what I called "conceptualism," which treated law as the embodiment of universal principles of civil conduct represented in the concepts that were embedded in legal doctrines; "realism," which equated law with the current doctrines and policies that courts believed had the greatest functional efficacy; and "neoconceptualism," which revived an image of law, including tort law, as ordered by comprehensive principles, the source of which was no longer immanent universal truths but general insights about human behavior drawn from other scholarly disciplines. Finally, I used the term "ideas" to refer to changing perceptions of the sources of human knowledge in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a span of time in which human-oriented models for explaining and controlling change in the natural and social worlds, centering on forms of scientific inquiry, replaced externally-- oriented models, centered on religious, natural, or historical forces.? My different uses of the term "ideas" were not accompanied by an explicit theory of the causal relationships among the sets of ideas I described. Instead I drew the general conclusion that all of those sets of ideas "influenced" the course of tort law in nineteenthand twentieth-century America. I continue to agree with that conclusion, but in this Essay, which surveys developments in tort law in the last two decades of the twentieth century, I want to particularize what I mean by ideas and their influence. The sets of ideas I described in Tort Law in America can be thought of as causally connected, and their relative specificity and generality can be taken as signaling their place in a hierarchy of causal influence. The more general and abstract the ideas, the greater causal force they have. This causal hierarchy may seem problematic because the most easily discernable examples of ideas altering the course of tort law involve ideas in their most specific manifestations, doctrines and policies embodied in judicial or legislative decisions. But although this evidence of influence can readily be traced, it cannot be explained without resort to inquiries that involve higher levels of abstraction. In asking why a particular doctrinal or policy change seemed attractive to scholars, courts, and legislatures, we turn to larger ideas: starting presuppositions about the purposes of tort law driving those changes, conceptions of law animating those starting presuppositions, and, ultimately, assumptions about how humans make sense of their experience and of law as a mechanism for human-directed governance of that experience. …


Downstream Merger with Oligopolistic Input Suppliers by Kjell Erik Lommerud, Odd Rune Straume, Lars Sørgard We examine how a downstream merger affects input prices and, in turn, the profitability of such a merger under Cournot competition with differentiated products. Input suppliers can be interpreted as ordinary upstream firms, or trade unions organising workers. If the input suppliers are plant-specific, we find that a merger is more profitable than in a corresponding model with exogenous input prices. In contrast to the received literature, we find that it can be more profitable to take part in a merger than being an outsider. For firm-specific input suppliers, on the other hand, results are reversed. We apply our model to endogenous merger formation in an international oligopoly, and show that the equilibrium market structure is likely to be characterised by cross-border merger.


Today, it is common for trains to incorporate autonomous positioning systems based on geo-location technologies similar to those used on road transportation. These positioning systems represent a cost effective solution for railway companies operating in not evolved regions. Furthermore, these positioning systems can enhance the reliability of positioning systems based on the occupation of the tracks (which are most used in the most developed regions). Autonomous positioning systems calculate the position of the train, but the position has to be sent from the train to the control center. GPRS/3G mobile technologies and WiFi radio technologies are the most common technologies for transmitting the position to the control centers. These technologies do not guarantee 100% coverage in certain areas such as tunnels or mountainous regions. This paper presents the results of the tests on an autonomous positioning system to add a new communications technology in order to increase its coverage. This technology is TETRA, which is a radio technology that has been traditionally used for voice transmission, but it can be a good complement to GPRS/3G when there is no coverage.


Vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic in the United States. Uninsured women are at high risk due to a lower intake of vitamin D and limited sun exposure. We examined the association between vitamin D deficiency and hypertension in 96 uninsured women at a County Free Medical Clinic in urban Michigan. Questionnaires were used to obtain information about demographics, medical history including hypertension, and dietary habits. Measurements including blood pressure and serum 25(OH)D level were also collected. Prevalence of hypertension was higher in subjects with 25(OH)D less than 50nmol/l compared with others (85% vs. 27.3%, p = 0.014). For every 1 nmol/L decrease in serum 25(OH)D, there was an increase in the systolic and diastolic blood pressure by 0.20 (p =0.006) and 0.13 (p =0.003) mm of Hg respectively. These results demonstrate a high prevalence of hypertension in the vitamin D deficient, uninsured female population


The effects of preference revelation on allocational and Pareto efficiency are studied in a multi-attribute reverse English auction. Multi-attribute reverse auctions have been proposed as market institutions for electronic request for quotation buying processes. Preference revelation is a crucial question in multi-attribute reverse auctions in terms of the efficiency of auction outcomes. Results from a computer-based laboratory experiment are reported and auction outcomes are analyzed regarding the buyer's and suppliers' surplus, efficiency, and Pareto efficiency. The results show that suppliers make more profits when preferences are revealed, but not at the expense of the buyer, and that full revelation of the buyer's preferences significantly increases allocational and Pareto efficiency.


Kids see plants, flowers, and trees around them everyday. In this lively and educational reader, they'll learn how those plants grow. Kids will take this magical journey from seed pollination to plant growth, learning about what plants need to thrive and grow with the same careful text, brilliant photographs, and the fun approach "National Geographic Readers "are known for.


Beowulf is a study of survival: the survival of the individual, of the race, of the species, and of the human spirit as a transcendent form of the will to continuance and renewal. Because consciousness is integral to human survival, Beowulf must also be a study of human consciousness in conflict with conscious and unconscious forces that threaten its being, as well as in faithful obedience to those forces that promote its potential for becoming. -- The dynamic of Beowulf contains the interaction of consciousness with a projection, upon the 'real1 world, of forms perhaps inherent in the structure of the human psyche. The power of the conscious mind to repress the contents of the unconscious, forcing them 'underground' or 'underwater,' and the perceived necessity of its doing so, creates the tension that gives rise to the inter-psychic dialectic. The religious tensions of the poem derive from conflicting ideologies, including the subliminal influence of 'pagan' or 'high pagan' (i.e., gnostic) thought. The ideal product of this tension is its resolution through the recreation or transformation of both the individual entity and collective consciousness into a form that transcends apparent limitations, so that the objectives of survival can continue to be met. The real product is the poem itself, as a work of art. -- The patterns of behaviour, both actual and symbolic, by which the necessary adaptations, or transformations, of basic nature are effected, are the materials of this poem. Everything in Beowulf is, from this perspective, symbolic, from the archetypal forms which manifest themselves as patterns or projections of being and action, to the landscape, which impresses itself upon the reader as both an introjection of objective reality and as a projection of subjective perception, to the structures of human consciousness, to the characters encountered by the heroic protagonist. -- The eponymous hero is both an archetypal form of consciousness (where he is seen as the agent of the ego) and unconsciousness (where he is understood to be an agent of the 'self'). His primary function is to act for 'good' in opposition to the forces for 'evil' represented by the two monsters and the dragon, who stand for the dangerous and destructive elements of the three primary instincts that form the unifying thematic principle for the discussion: aggression, sexuality, and transformation (or the so-called religious instinct). These instinctual occupations, the modes of action in which the hero, Beowulf, like every human being, engages, have psychic as well as physical manifestations and goals. The psychic goal is individuation, or the process of becoming a fully 'realized' individual. The evolutionary stages of the hero represent the development of the individual's consciousness, which must include awareness of his or her own strengths and weaknesses, so that the transformative requirements of individuation may be met. -- The whole of Beowulf can be seen as the enactment of the process of individuation. Beowulf, the hero, is, in this analysis, the "individuant," who confronts in the monsters and dragon the archetypal projections of his own unconscious, which may, through the structural and formal elements of the poem, be discovered as a driving force, or will, directing the three instincts described by C.G. Jung: the aggressive, the sexual and the religious. The antagonists, in their respective forms as Grendel, the Merewife and the Wyrm, represent the repressed elements of these three primary instincts; Beowulf's battles represent the battles between consciousness and the destructive elements of both the personal and the collective unconscious. The Wyrm, in its aspect of Draca, also stands for the final transformative principle and process that underlies all developmental change. -- Apart from its representation of the individual psyche, and in keeping with both the mythopoeic intention of epic poetry and the collective nature of oral poetry, Beowulf also reflects this civilization's evolving humanity, its society, its systems and its psyche, and is, in this sense, a reflection of the collective consciousness and unconsciousness of a human species defined in relation to environmental conditions of seasonal change that includes, in a psychically significant way, the elemental conditions of ice and snow. -- Because the poem is considered to be 'about' the process of psycho-genetic development in the human individual and species, the pattern of discussion is determined by the elements basic to that process: birth, growth, death and transformation. The special temporal and transcendental function of the hero will be discussed throughout with reference to these thematic factors.


Recently a new wave of interest has risen on complex perovskite structure due to their wide use in fabrication of multilayer ceramic capacitors, electrostrictive actuators, and electromechanical transducers. The polycrystalline ceramics of Ba(Fe0.5Nb0.5)O3 (BFN) and its solid solutions 0.89Ba(Fe0.5Nb0.5)O3-0.11BaTiO3 (BFN-BT11) and 0.89Ba(Fe0.5Nb0.5)O30.11SrTiO3 (BFN-ST11) were fabricated by a solid-state reaction Method. Processing parameters such as calcination temperature, sintering temperature and sintering durations were optimized to get best dielectric properties. It was found that the above ceramics sintered at 1250°C for 6 hours exhibited maximum density and uniform microstructure. X-ray diffraction studies of the compound showed the formation of single-phase monoclinic crystal structure at room temperature. Surface morphology of the compounds was studied by Scanning electron microscope (SEM). The effects of BaTiO3 and SrTiO3 substitution on the structure and on the electrical and ferroelectric properties of Ba(Fe0.5Nb0.5)O3 samples have been studied by performing x-ray diffraction and dielectric measurements. The electrical properties of the samples were investigated in a frequency range of 100 Hz - 1 MHz and temperature range of 30-350 °C using complex impedance spectroscopic technique. The frequency-dependent electrical data are also analyzed in the framework of conductivity and impedance formalisms. Copyright © 2012 VBRI Press.


Innate antiviral immunity establishes first line of defense against invading pathogens through sensing their molecular structures such as viral RNA. This antiviral potential of innate immunity is mainly attributed to a myriad of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). Amongst well-characterized ISGs, we have previously shown that antiviral potential of chicken IFN-induced proteins with tetratricopeptides repeats 5 (chIFIT5) is determined by its interaction potential with 5′ppp containing viral RNA. Here, we generated transgenic chickens using avian sarcoma-leukosis virus (RCAS)-based gene transfer system that constitutively and stably express chIFIT5. The transgenic chickens infected with clinical dose (EID50 104 for HPAIV and 105 EID50 for vNDV) of high pathogenicity avian influenza virus (HPAIV; H5N1) or velogenic strain of Newcastle disease virus (vNDV; Genotype VII) showed marked resistance against infections. While transgenic chickens failed to sustain a lethal dose of these viruses (EID50 105 for HPAIV and 106 EID50 for vNDV), a delayed and lower level of clinical disease and mortality, reduced virus shedding and tissue damage was observed compared to non-transgenic control chickens. These observations suggest that stable expression of chIFIT5 alone is potentially insufficient in providing sterile protection against these highly virulent viruses; however, it is sufficient to ameliorate the clinical outcome of these RNA viruses. These findings propose the potential of innate immune genes in conferring genetic resistance in chickens against highly pathogenic and zoonotic viral pathogens causing sever disease in both animals and humans.


Many social policies require substantial sacrifices by existing persons in order to benefit the yet-unborn members of future generations. There is a substantial consensus that we do have ethical obligations to consider the interests of those future persons in our decisions. However, the questions of whether we do in fact have such ethical obligations, and if so then how to properly balance those obligations with our obligations to existing persons, are greatly complicated by the often-overlooked "problem of person-altering consequences." This brief essay is intended to communicate to a broad readership the nature and scope of this problem and its dramatic implications for addressing these ethical and policy assessment questions.


California cities have the least affordable housing and the most congested traffic in the nation. California's housing crisis results directly from several little-known state institutions, including local agency formation commissions (LAFCos), which regulate annexations and the formation of new cities and service districts; the California Environmental Quality Act, which imposes high costs on new developments; and a 1971 state planning law that effectively entitles any resident in the state to a say in how property owners in the state use their land. Cities such as San Jose have manipulated these institutions and laws with the goal of maximizing their tax revenues. Meanwhile, California's transportation planning has allowed transit agencies, such as San Jose's Valley Transportation Authority and Los Angeles' Metropolitan Transportation Authority, to hijack tax revenues that were originally dedicated to highways so they can build rail empires that will do little or nothing to relieve congestion. New highway construction in the 1990s cut San Jose congestion in half, but congestion is again worsening as funds once spent on highways are now diverted to expensive and little-used rail transit projects. California should change its planning laws to forbid cities and counties from conspiring to drive up housing prices in order to maximize tax revenues. California and its urban areas should also fund transportation out of user fees instead of taxes, thus making transportation more responsive to the needs of users instead of politically powerful special interest groups. Other states should avoid passing laws that create similar conditions. These recommendations and eight others in this report will greatly improve the livability of San Jose and other California urban areas.


The last half of the twentieth century has seen the development of several
significant Christian theologies of liberation. These have emerged out of
historical contexts of race, class and gender oppression and have been initiated
by Christian communities and individuals who seek to respond to their social,
economic and political contexts through the medium of their Christian faith. This
study seeks firstly to explore the central criteria for the creation of such
theologies and then to use these criteria as a means of exploring the ways in
which the Black Led Church has been able to engage with the concept and
material realities of liberation within its own British context.
The exploration begins with an analysis of five key developmental themes which
have had a significant impact on the Church's relationship to both its theology
and its manifestation of liberation. These themes are then further developed
through six essential criteria for liberation which are applied to its contemporary
interaction in British society. The study argues that the syncretistic foundation of
the Church stands as both a source and a limitation to full theological liberation.
Nonetheless, a holistic and contextual liberational spirituality does exist and
provides an essential energy for both passive and radical change.
The methodological emphasis is contextual. Therefore the study draws heavily
from transcripts of interviews and services and also utilises, as much as
possible, works produced by Church and network organisations in addition to the
observation carried out at five key denominations in Birmingham. The study's
emphasis on a contextual understanding of theological liberation is important in
that it firmly aligns the Church with meaningful liberation in Britain - not only for
its members, but also for wider Black communities. In so doing it highlights the
often unacknowledged role of the Church in the cultural and political mobilisation
of Black people in British society.


Background: Breast cancer incidence in Taiwan is continuous rising to the leading cancer incidence rate in women according to cancer registry. We hypothesize hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or mammography screening affect the breast cancer incidence. Objectives: 1) To determine whether a similar decline of HRT use and breast incidence occurred in Taiwan. 2) To compare frequency and dose of use HRT with breast cancer incidence. 3) To compare change of mammography rates in different age groups and period of time with breast cancer incidence and mortality. Methods: Breast cancer incidence in most industry countries declines as HRT use drops. This study analyzed national health insurance data from 2000-2008. Women aged above 40 years who was diagnosis postmenopausal or osteopenic were extracted from database for analysis. This research looked at information from prescriptions for HRT, mammography rates and breast cancer incidence and mortality rates. Approximately 82,478 postmenopausal or osteopenic women were included in this analysis. Odd ratios were derived from nested case control estimation to compare with HRT use, total dose and total duration of HRT. Mammography rates in different age groups and different period of year were compared by using national health insurance data. Results: We found that a reduced frequency of use of HRT was reflected in the decrease in dispensed HRT prescriptions after 2002 announced be the Women Health Initiative (WHI) in Taiwan. The largest drop in use of HRT occurred between 2002 and 2003 and continuous drop is noted during our study period. Compared with never users, estrogen and progestin users were with higher risk of breast cancer (OR: 1.58, 95% CI 1.16-2.14, p<0.003) and higher among current users of estrogen only (OR: 1.48, 95% CI 1.13-1.93, p<0.004). The HRT use, total dose of HRT and duration of HRT all showed dose-response effects (OR: 2.42 for HRT use more than 30 times; OR: 3.59 for total use of HRT for more than 3 years; OR: 3.18 for duration of use HRT). They are all statistical significant (p<0.001). Compared with mammography rates with different period of time, the study found that nearly 40% rise in breast cancer rates coincided with the 50% increase in mammography rates between 2000 and 2008. The breast cancer incidence increased following by mammography rates inclined, particular in aged 40 to 59 years group during 2001 to 2005 and 2006 to 2010. Breast cancer incidence rates began to increase dramatically in 2006 to 2010 among women aged 40-49 years. Compared with total mortality to incidence ratio [1-(M/I)] (proxy site-specific cancer survival), the survival ratio increased from 74.7% (2000) to 81.3% (2008). Conclusion: The breast cancer risk was elevated with the use of combined HRT. In Taiwan, breast cancer incidence rates continuous increase among aged 40-59 years, which is likely explained by the promotion of mammography for government breast cancer screening programs from 2003. Mortality to incidence ratio in Taiwan did show some improvement, but still limit. Some argue that the plasticizers - DEHA, DBP, BBP, DEHP, DOP - as estrogen-like substances is the cause which was discovered widely used for food packaging and illegally add into food drink in Taiwan food industry may disturb the endocrine system. Further long-term surveillance studies of time trend and spatial patterns between breast cancer incidence rate and screening rates can help reconcile the potential population-level association of these two factors. Citation Format: Eng-Mei Tsai, Po-Huang Chiang, Yen-Chen Chang. Does hormone replacement therapy or mammography screening affect breast cancer incidence rates in Taiwan? A nationwide cohort study. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research; 2012 Oct 16-19; Anaheim, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Prev Res 2012;5(11 Suppl):Abstract nr B71.


Knuth and Moore presented a theoretical lower bound on the number of leaves that any fixed-depth minimax tree-search algorithm traversing a uniform tree must explore, the so-called minimal tree. Since real-life minimax trees are not uniform, the exact size of this tree is not known for most applications. Further, most games have transpositions, implying that there exists a minimal graph which is smaller than the minimal tree. For three games (chess, Othello and checkers) we compute the size of the minimal tree and the minimal graph. Empirical evidence shows that in all three games, enhanced Alpha-Beta search is capable of building a tree that is close in size to that of the minimal graph. Hence, it appears game-playing programs build nearly optimal search trees. However, the conventional definition of the minimal graph is wrong. There are ways in which the size of the minimal graph can be reduced: by maximizing the number of transpositions in the search, and generating cutoffs using branches that lead to smaller search trees. The conventional definition of the minimal graph is just a left-most approximation. Calculating the size of the real minimal graph is too computationally intensive. However, upper bound approximations show it to be significantly smaller than the left-most minimal graph. Hence, it appears that game-playing programs are not searching as efficiently as is widely believed. Understanding the left-most and real minimal search graphs leads to some new ideas for enhancing Alpha-Beta search. One of them, enhanced transposition cutoffs, is shown to significantly reduce search tree size.


An illustrious group of economists contribute to this volume honoring Dick Netzer, the public finance economist well-known for his research on state and local taxation, the provision of urban public services, and non-profit organizations. Following in his tradition, the contributors apply microeconomics to real world problems facing urban areas and use statistical analysis to gain insight into practical solutions.


Our aim is to determine the most appropriate laboratory tests, besides anti-factor Xa (anti-FXa) chromogenic assays, to estimate the degree of anticoagulation with apixaban and compare it with that of rivaroxaban in real-world patients. Twenty patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation treated with apixaban 5 mg twice daily and 20 patients on rivaroxaban 20 mg once daily were studied. Conventional coagulation tests, thrombin generation assay (TGA), and thromboelastometry (nonactivated TEM [NATEM] assay) were performed in the 40 patients and 20 controls. The anti-FXa chromogenic assays were used to measure apixaban and rivaroxaban plasma levels. The NATEM measurements showed no significant difference between the 2 groups of patients. Concerning TGA, endogenous thrombin potential (ETP) was significantly decreased in patients on rivaroxaban as compared to those treated with apixaban (P < .003). A statistically significant, strong inverse correlation between apixaban plasma concentrations and ETP (P < .001) was observed. Apixaban significantly reduces ETP compared to controls, but to a lesser extent than rivaroxaban. Thrombin generation assay might provide additional information on apixaban exposure, which is required in order to individualize treatment especially for patients with a high bleeding risk. Our findings have to be further investigated in studies with larger sample sizes, in the entire range of apixaban exposure, with other direct oral anticoagulants, and in relation to clinical outcomes.


Chronic Kidney disease (CKD) encompasses a spectrum of different pathophysiologic processes associated with abnormal kidney function and progressive decline in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). That result in renal failure, which is one of those deadly diseases. A patient of renal failure has no alternative other than dialysis and kidney transplantation to be alive. Mootraghata is characterized by the shoshan and hani of mutra which indicate a state of suppression of urine besides Mootravibandhatva or retention of urine. Ayurveda has definite answer to these patients as an intervention and management. So we decided to study one Mootraghata / CRF.


"The second edition (1901) of Baedeker's Spain was scornfully dismissive of what it described as the city of Malaga's "..vigorous effort.. to boom itself as a winter resort..". This negative judgement was amplified in the subsequent edition on the grounds of the "..dirt on the streets, the inefficiency of the drainage system and the deficiency of comfortable quarters". Yet, only a few years later, the Nobel Prize winning poet, Vicente Aleixandre, could write of Malaga - Ciudad del Paraso ! These contrasting representations of place clearly reflect "external" and "internal" perspectives on the city of Malaga at this time but they also relate to the plurality of the tourist gaze. On the one hand there is an expression of concerns reflecting an expectation of assurances about the collective material experience of place. On the other hand there is a celebration of place relating much more to sensations and emotional intensity. Whilst in general terms there may be something of a north European/south European dichotomy manifest here, it will be argued that the early history of Malaga as a resort renders such a categorisation too crude a generalisation. This paper will attempt to reconstruct the trajectory of development of the city of Malaga as a resort destination from the late nineteenth century through to the Civil War. An explanation of the city's changing functional and spatial structure will be presented, using contemporary written accounts - both in literature and the popular media, official reports, statistical sources, the growth and nature of the infrastructure, and the built environment itself. It will be argued that, whilst Malaga may at this stage have failed to become a major tourist destination for Northern Europeans, it actually played a significant specific role for many visitors from that region but, more particularly, for Spaniards and especially Andalucians the city was anything but a "failed" resort. Moreover, the built environment of this phase of the city's development constitutes a major resource that has been fundamental in recent, successful promotional strategies. "


The kinases Rad53 and Dun1 are important components of a checkpoint kinase cascade activated in response to DNA damage in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both enzymes contain forkhead-associated (FHA) domains, which bind specifically to phosphothreonine (pThr) residues. Rad53 has four Thr residues clustered in its N-terminal SCD1 domain. Upon phosphorylation by upstream kinases, Rad53 interacts with Dun1 through the Dun1-FHA domain to activate Dun1; however, Rad53 also mediates Dun1-independent responses to DNA damage. Although mutant Rad53 proteins that contain only one of the four SCD1 Thr residues are readily activated by upstream kinases, they cannot activate Dun1, which led Lee et al. to investigate the pThr requirements for Dun1 activation. Surface plasmon resonance assays showed that the recombinant Dun1-FHA domain bound with greater affinity to Rad53-SCD1-derived phosphopeptides containing both pThr5 and pThr8 than to phosphopeptides that did not have both of these residues. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies and other structural analyses showed that the Dun1-FHA domain differed from that of Rad53 in having not one, but two high-affinity pThr-binding sites. The authors then generated four new rad53 alleles to express Rad53 proteins with various combinations of Thr or Ala residues. Treatment of yeast strains expressing each mutant rad53 allele with a DNA-damage-inducing agent, followed by in vitro analysis of the kinase activity of immunoprecipitated Dun1, showed that the presence of both Thr5 and Thr8 in the Rad53-SCD1 was required for optimal Dun1 activity. Mass spectrometry studies showed the presence of monophosphorylated and pThr5-pThr8 diphosphorylated Rad53 proteins in response to DNA damage in vivo. Together these data suggest that whereas monophosphorylation activates Rad53, diphosphorylation of Rad53 is required to activate the Dun1-dependent arm of the DNA-damage response. H. Lee, C. Yuan, A. Hammet, A. Mahajan, E. S.-W. Chen, M.-R. Wu, M.-I. Su, J. Heierhorst, M.-D. Tsai, Diphosphothreonine-specific interaction between an SQ/TQ cluster and an FHA domain in the Rad53-Dun1 kinase cascade. Mol. Cell 30, 767-778 (2008). [PubMed]


Background The age of peak swim performance has been investigated for freestyle swimmers for distances ranging from 50 m to 1500 m among swimmers aged 19 to 99 years. However, studies have yet to investigate the 10 to 19 year-old age group. The aims of the present study were (1) to investigate the age range of peak freestyle swim speed, and (2) to find differences in age range and peak freestyle swim speed between male and female freestyle swimmers from 50 m to 1500 m at a national level. Methods The changes in age range and peak freestyle swim speed among Swiss elite freestyle swimmers aged 0–9 years and 70–79 years who were ranked on the Swiss high score list between 2006 and 2010 were analyzed using linear regression analyses and analysis of variance. Results Men were fastest at ages 22–23 years for 100 m and 200 m; at ages 24–25 years for 400 m and 800 m; and at 26–27 years for 50 m and 1500 m. Women achieved peak freestyle swim speed at ages 20–21 years for all distances with the exception of 800 m. In the 800 m, women were fastest at ages 26–27 years. The difference in peak freestyle swim speed decreased with increasing swim distance from 50 m to 800 m (ie, 13.1% ± 1.3% in 50 m; 13.2% ± 0.9% in 100 m; 10.8% ± 0.9% in 200 m; 7.9% ± 1.3% in 400 m; and 4.2% ± 2.0% in 800 m). For 1500 m, however, the gender difference increased to 6.4% ± 2.3%. Conclusion These findings suggest that peak freestyle swim speed is achieved at lower age ranges in women when compared to men at 50 m to 1500 m, but not at 800 m. The gender difference in peak freestyle swim speed decreased with increasing swim distance from 50 m to 800 m, but not for 1500 m. These data should be confirmed with swimmers at an international level.


We are developing computational tools to perform virtual surgeries under physiological conditions with patient-specific anatomies. Virtual surgery can revolutionize the biomedical device (BMD) design and implantation by: enabling the optimization of BMD on the specific patient's anatomy and flow conditions, which has already been shown to significantly affect the hemodynamics; and facilitating surgical planning to select the best location/orientation for BMD implantation. As shown by past research the difference in the implantation, for example, of a bileaflet mechanical heart valve (BMHV) can affect the performance and hemodynamics of the valve. We have developed a powerful CFD tool that can simulate the blood flow through biomedical devices with moving boundaries and the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) under physiologic conditions. This tool has been tested in different applications with complex anatomic configurations, such as aneurysm hemodynamics, Fontan surgeries, and BMHV flows. The FSI simulations of a BMHV flow was validated against in vitro experiments and could capture all the flow features with great accuracy. We have recently carried out FSI simulations of a BMHV implanted in a anatomically realistic aorta in which the left ventricle (LV) was replaced by a pulsatile inflow waveform. In this work, we propose to extend our method to simulate the flow through a BMHV driven by the actual LV motion. The anatomy of the heart is obtained from MRI scan of unhealthy volunteer (St. Jude Hospital) and the left ventricle and the aorta geometry are extracted. The first step is to simulate the flow through a stationary LV with an implanted BMHV to test the capabilities of FSI-CFD tool in real anatomical setting. The second step is to impose theoretical kinematics for LV motion and test the interaction of the BMHV with the flow. The last step is to extract the real patient-specific LV wall motions from MRI data and specify it into the simulation. The shear stress and other parameters will be calculated in the flow field and the cardiovascular walls to identify the locations with high chance of blood cell damage. This work is supported by NIH Grant RO1-HL-07262 and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute.


Set on a Bengali noble's estate in 1908, this is both a love story and a novel of political awakening. The central character, Bimala, is torn between the duties owed to her husband, Nikhil, and the demands made on her by the radical leader, Sandip. Her attempts to resolve the irreconciliable pressures of the home and world reflect the conflict in India itself, and the tragic outcome foreshadows the unrest that accompanied Partition in 1947.


In extensive farmer-led trials practicing conservation farming (CF) in three regions of Zambia (Mongu: sandy soils; Kaoma: sandy or loamy sand soils; Mkushi: sandy loam or loamy soils), we studied the effects of biochar made of maize cobs (0, 2, and 6 t ha(-1) corresponding to 0, 0.8, and 2.5% per basin) at different fertilizer rates of NPK and urea on crop yield of maize (Zea mays) and groundnuts (Arachis hypogaea). Conservation farming in this case combines minimum tillage (how basins), crop rotation and residue retention. For the first time, the effect of biochar on in situ soil nutrient supply rates [determined by buried Plant Root Simulator (PRS (TM)) exchange resins] was studied, as well as the effects of biochar on elemental composition of maize. Effects of 0-10% (w:w) biochar addition on soil physical and soil chemical properties were determined in the laboratory. At all sites there was a consistent positive response in crop yield upon the addition of biochar. However, due to a great variability between farms there were no significant differences in absolute yields between the treatments. In the sandy soils at Mongu, relative yields (i.e., percentage yield with biochar relative to the same fertilizer rate without biochar) of maize grains and maize stover were significantly increased at recommended fertilizer rates (232 +/- 60%) and at half the recommended rate (128 +/- 6%), respectively. In addition, biochar significantly increased concentrations of K and P in maize stover. In situ soil nutrient supply rates as measured by PRS (TM)-probes were highly spatially variable with no consistent effects of the different treatments in the three regions. By contrast, the fraction of plant available water (Vol.-%) significantly increased upon the addition of biochar in all three soils. The increase caused by 10% biochar addition was of factor 2.5 in Mongu (from 4.5% to 11.2%) and 1.2 in both Kaoma (from 14.7% to 18.2%) and Mkushi (from 18.2% to 22.7%). Cation exchange capacity, pH, and exchangeable K significantly increased upon the addition of 10% (w: w) biochar in all three regions with a subsequent increase in base saturation and decrease of available Al3+. Our findings suggest that the addition of biochar in combination with CF might have a positive impact on crop growth and that this positive effect is mainly caused by increases in plant-available water and decreased available Al.


This paper is focused on the performance analysis, comparison and optimization of distributed object middleware for Java 2: RMI (Remote Method Invocation), CORBA IDL (Interface Definition Language) and RMI-IIOP (Remote Method Invocation on Internet Inter-ORB Protocol). The paper presents the following contributions to the research on distributed object performance. First, a detailed performance analysis is provided with the comparison. These results help to understand how the models perform. Second, an overhead analysis has been done, which explains why there are differences in performance. Third, optimizations and improved performance for RMI-IIOP and CORBA IDL are presented. These show considerably better performance in all areas compared to the original versions.


We present water content transects across a healed fault in pyroclastic obsidian from Lami pumice cone, Lipari, Italy, using synchrotron Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Results indicate that rhyolite melt degassed through the fault surface. Transects define a trough of low water content coincident with the fault trace, surrounded on either side by high-water-content plateaus. Plateaus indicate that obsidian on either side of the fault equilibrated at different pressure-temperature (P-T) conditions before being juxtaposed. The curves into the troughs indicate disequilibrium and water loss through diffusion. If we assume constant T, melt equilibrated at pressures differing by 0.74 MPa before juxtaposition, and the fault acted as a low-P permeable path for H2O that diffused from the glass within time scales of 10 and 30 min. Assuming constant P instead, melt on either side could have equilibrated at temperatures differing by as much as 100 °C, before being brought together. Water content on the fault trace is particularly sensitive to post-healing diffusion. Its preserved value indicates either higher temperature or lower pressure than the surroundings, indicative of shear heating and dynamic decompression. Our results reveal that water contents of obsidian on either side of the faults equilibrated under different P-T conditions and were out of equilibrium with each other when they were juxtaposed due to faulting immediately before the system was quenched. Degassing due to faulting could be linked to cyclical seismic activity and general degassing during silicic volcanic activity, and could be an efficient mechanism of producing low-water-content obsidian.


Achieving sub-pixel accuracy with face alignment algorithms is a difficult task given the diversity of appearance in real world facial profiles. To capture variations in perspective, occlusion, and illumination with adequate precision, current face alignment approaches rely on detecting facial landmarks and iteratively adjusting deformable models that encode prior knowledge of facial structure. However, these methods involve optimization in latent sub-spaces, where user-specific face shape information is easily lost after dimensionality reduction. Attempting to retain this information to capture this wide range of variation requires a large training distribution, which is difficult to obtain without high computational complexity. Subsequently, many face alignment methods lack the pixel-level accuracy necessary to satisfy the aesthetic requirements of tasks such as face deidentification, face swapping, and face modeling. In many such applications, the primary source of aesthetic inadequacy is a misaligned jaw line or facial contour. In this work, we explore the idea of an image-based refinement method to fix the landmark points of a misaligned facial contour. We propose an efficient two stage process - an intuitively constructed edge detection based algorithm to actively adjust facial contour landmark points, and a data driven validation system to filter out erroneous adjustments. Experimental results show that state-of-the-art face alignment combined with our proposed post-processing method yields improved overall performance over multiple face image datasets.


Two sets of field trials were performed from offshore installations in the German Entenschnabel sector of the Dogger Bank, North Sea. Trial 1 was undertaken from the jackup drilling rig Noble Kolskaya and its support vessel Northern Seeker, at locations B4-5 and B11-4 over three discrete periods (October/November 2004 and December 2004/January 2005). The purpose of these trials was to perform measurements of acoustic noise levels generated by the rig during routine activities and to undertake preliminary passive acoustic monitoring (using T-PODs) of porpoises (Cetacea: Phocoena phocoena) around the rig. Trial 2 was a six-month study (August 2005-January 2006) using T-PODS around the A6-A gas-production platform when it was isolated, when the Noble Kolskaya was docked alongside, and after the rig's departure.
Sound levels generated by the Kolskaya were similar to previous measurements from metal-legged bottom-founded platforms, both in level (120 dB re 1μPa) and in the frequency range of dominant tonals (2-1400 Hz). Sound levels were highly variable over short periods, shifting 15-20 dB between quietest (holding) and loudest (drilling) operations. The rig was significantly quieter than its associated support vessels; rig high frequency sound levels dropped rapidly > 8 kHz.
With the exception of rig-docking/rig-departure manoeuvres, porpoise activity appeared to be independent of platform/rig activity. The greatest porpoise activity was observed during the winter months; porpoise activity and feeding rates were significantly reduced in periods of heavy weather.
Here we present data to suggest that harbour porpoises may be using installations in the Dogger Bank on a seasonal basis and that installations may enhance porpoise habitat by acting as artificial reefs and feeding stations, especially during the winter months. However, these are preliminary snapshot findings. To answer completely the question posed in the title of this paper, we would need to undertake baseline and controlled and replicated longer-term studies if the story of harbour porpoise usage of offshore installations is to be fully told.


The 1992 decision of the High Court of Australia to uphold the claim of the Meriam people was welcomed as beginning a new era where the unique status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would gain recognition. Intense debate and activity ensued with federal parliament adopting a legislative framework to recognise native title and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation considering its broader constitutional implications. Fourteen years on though much of the promise of Mabo lies unfulfilled. This thesis draws upon the work of Canadian philosopher James Tully. He writes of contemporary constitutionalism in Western society and its inability to give more than superficial recognition to cultural difference. He locates the problem as lying with the dominant language of modern constitutionalism. This language provides for two main forms of recognition: the equality of selfgoverning nation states and the equality of individual citizens. Tully locates a way forward through the presence of another constitutional language. Common constitutionalism has enabled an accommodation of cultural differences guided by its three conventions of mutual recognition, continuity, and consent. Moreover, it is beneficial to analysing other studies about the ability of common law to recognise the claims of Indigenous people. Tully's contribution is applied to an examination of the Mabo events in a way that takes account of Australia's constitutional traditions. The aim is to clarify the languages employed by the representatives of Australia's institutions of governance and whether this places obstacles in the way of recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The inquiry considers the events prior to the High Court's decision, the Keating government's response, and the Howard Government's native title changes. Other chapters examine the constitutional language used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the significance of the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation. The central argument of this study is that once it is accepted that the claims of Indigenous people in Australia are constitutional, it becomes possible to appreciate that these were largely voiced through the language of human rights and common constitutionalism. In contrast, when the claims were considered by the High Court and federal parliament significant aspects were articulated through the modern constitutional language. Another thread running through the events was a desire to confront and overcome the influence of the language of White Australia. The thesis concludes by considering the significance of the findings for a settlement between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians.


In this paper, we present an efficient distributed-arithmetic (DA) formulation for the implementation of block least mean square (BLMS) algorithm. The proposed DA-based design uses a novel look-up table (LUT)-sharing technique for the computation of filter outputs and weight-increment terms of BLMS algorithm. Besides, it offers significant saving of adders which constitute a major component of DA-based structures. Also, we have suggested a novel LUT-based weight updating scheme for BLMS algorithm, where only one set of LUTs out of M sets need to be modified in every iteration, where N=ML, N, and L are, respectively, the filter length and input block-size. Based on the proposed DA formulation, we have derived a parallel architecture for the implementation of BLMS adaptive digital filter (ADF). Compared with the best of the existing DA-based LMS structures, proposed one involves nearly L/6 times adders and L times LUT words, and offers nearly L times throughput of the other. It requires nearly 25% more flip-flops and does not involve variable shifters like those of existing structures. It involves less LUT access per output (LAPO) than the existing structure for block-size higher than 4. For block-size 8 and filter length 64, the proposed structure involves 2.47 times more adders, 15% more flip-flops, 43% less LAPO than the best of existing structures, and offers 5.22 times higher throughput. The number of adders of the proposed structure does not increase proportionately with block size; and the number of flip-flops is independent of block-size. This is a major advantage of the proposed structure for reducing its area delay product (ADP); particularly, when a large order ADF is implemented for higher block-sizes. ASIC synthesis result shows that, the proposed structure for filter length 64, has almost 14% and 30% less ADP and 25% and 37% less EPO than the best of the existing structures for block size 4 and 8, respectively.


This study investigates how to obtain a portfolio which would provide above average returns while remaining robust to most risk exposures. Emphasis is placed on risk management, given our perspective (shared by many other practitioners), that retaining above average portfolio performance in current market environment depends strongly on having an effective risk management process. We rely on a comprehensive survey of the literature to describe stylized facts of market returns and main categories of asset allocation methodologies, including Modern Portfolio Theory, Black-Litterman model, factor-based and risk-based strategies. Furthermore, we present both criticisms and defenses of strategies, together with potential issues identified by practitioners and corresponding solutions (if they do exist).We outline recent enhancements to various types of portfolio strategies, and analyze how to incorporate (in the asset allocation framework) constraints, regularization, personal views, stylized features of empirical market data, and forward information given by financial options market data.More prominence is given to strategies (risk parity, risk factors, factor investing, smart beta, dynamic, etc.) that were shown to deliver better portfolio performance in terms of returns, diversification, risk, etc. We also discuss a wide ranging collection of performance measures proposed in the literature for quantifying portfolio return, risk and diversification, identify which such measures are most popular with practitioners, and which corresponding strategies have best results (as shown in the literature).Since a major topic of this study is managing risks, we provide details on the types of risk that portfolios may be exposed to, on approaches and strategies to handle such exposures, with highlighting of tail risk management. Portfolio insurance is also discussed.We also describe practical aspects needed for a successful portfolio management, including robust estimation of covariances, correlations and model parameters, numerical optimization methods, key questions and issues identified by practitioners, Monte Carlo simulation, comprehensive testing framework, stress testing, available software implementations (usually in R), etc.To summarize, the study analyzes all ingredients that are required, in our opinion, to deliver portfolios with above average performances and resilient to most risks, and concentrates on the strategies which have emerged as frontrunners in the last few years, both in the literature and in the market.


Recent studies such as Thelen and Smith (1994), Kelso, (1995), Van Gelder, (1995), Beer, (1995), and others have presented a forceful case for a dynamical systems approach to understanding cognition and adaptive behavior. These studies call into question some foundational assumptions concerning the nature of cognitive scientific explanation and (in particular) the role of notions such as internal representation and computation. These are exciting and important challenges. But they must be handled with care. It is all too easy, in this debate, to lose sight of the explanatorily important issues and to talk at cross-purposes, courtesy of the (surprisingly) various ways in which different theorists often conceive the key terms. The primary goal of the present paper is thus a modest one: to begin to clarify just what is at issue and to highlight some of the most central and pressing concerns. In so doing, we may hope to develop a constructive framework for future debate. In addition, I try to open up a space of intermediate options—ways in which dynamical and representational/computational understandings may sometimes afford complementary (rather than competing) perspectives on adaptive success.


In this paper, we discuss the tension between the ethical perspectives of Justice and Care for technology design research. We first introduce the ideal project of universal accessibility bared upon standards and rules that leave broadly open the complexity of their application in practices. By contrast, we present the ethics of Care as a critic as well as a complementary perspective needed for the realization and negotiation of shared values. We ground the debate in the case of the accessibility of digital spaces for the visually impaired and blind persons. Through our research work on the design of perceptual supplementation systems, we propose to account for two possible places of dialog between Care and Design, on one hand the product of design, and on the other hand the design approach itself.


Routine screening of lung transplant recipients and hospital patients for respiratory virus infections allowed to identify human rhinovirus (HRV) in the upper and lower respiratory tracts, including immunocompromised hosts chronically infected with the same strain over weeks or months. Phylogenetic analysis of 144 HRV-positive samples showed no apparent correlation between a given viral genotype or species and their ability to invade the lower respiratory tract or lead to protracted infection. By contrast, protracted infections were found almost exclusively in immunocompromised patients, thus suggesting that host factors rather than the virus genotype modulate disease outcome, in particular the immune response. Complete genome sequencing of five chronic cases to study rhinovirus genome adaptation showed that the calculated mutation frequency was in the range observed during acute human infections. Analysis of mutation hot spot regions between specimens collected at different times or in different body sites revealed that non-synonymous changes were mostly concentrated in the viral capsid genes VP1, VP2 and VP3, independent of the HRV type. In an immunosuppressed lung transplant recipient infected with the same HRV strain for more than two years, both classical and ultra-deep sequencing of samples collected at different time points in the upper and lower respiratory tracts showed that these virus populations were phylogenetically indistinguishable over the course of infection, except for the last month. Specific signatures were found in the last two lower respiratory tract populations, including changes in the 5′UTR polypyrimidine tract and the VP2 immunogenic site 2. These results highlight for the first time the ability of a given rhinovirus to evolve in the course of a natural infection in immunocompromised patients and complement data obtained from previous experimental inoculation studies in immunocompetent volunteers.


Abstract. The paper considers conditions and intensity of aeolian and dune slope transformation processes occurring in the wind-blown sand strips of the dunes of the Curonian Spit. An assessment of the intensity of aeolian processes was made based on the analysis of climatic factors and in situ observations. Transformations in aeolian relief forms were investigated based on the comparison of geodetic measurements and measurements of aerial photographs. Changes in micro-terraces of dune slopes were investigated through comparison of the results of repeated levelling and measurements of aerial photographs. The periods of weak, medium, and strong winds were distinguished, and sand moisture fluctuations affecting the beginning of aeolian processes were investigated. The wind-blown sand movements were found to start when sand moisture decreased by 2 % in the surface sand layer and by up to 5 % at a depth of 10 cm. In 2004–2016, the wind-blown sand movements affected the size of reference deflation relief forms: scarp length by 8 %, scarp width by 35 %, pothole length by 80 %, pothole width by 80 %, roll length by 17 %, roll width by 18 %, hollow length by 17 %, and hollow width by 39 %. The elementary relief forms in the leeward eastern slopes of the dunes experienced the strongest transformations. During a period of 5 months, the height of micro-terraces of the eastern slope of the Parnidis Dune changed from 0.05 to 0.64 cm. The change was related to fluctuations in precipitation intensity: in July–August 2016 the amount of precipitation increased 1.6-fold compared with the multiannual average, thus causing the change in the position of terrace ledges by 21 %.


Lower limb length discrepancy (LLD), defined by unequal length of paired lower limbs, contributes to lower back pain, osteoarthritis of the hip, and stress fractures [1-3]. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were approximately 700 children born with LLD each year in US [4]. Patients may receive distraction osteogenesis treatment, in which an osteotomy is performed on the shorter limb, and mechanical force is applied to gradually distract the two halves of the bone during the healing process. This stretches the bone callus during healing to achieve desired limb length upon callus consolidation [5]. The current correction devices are external fixators that leave unsightly scars and are prone to infection [6]. While recently developed intramedullary devices address many of the persistent issues with external lengthening devices, size limitations and potential damage to the bone growth plates make them impractical for use in children [7, 8]. The proposed research addresses an unmet need by developing a novel implantable extramedullary device for LLD correction that is targeted for pediatric use. The device will be implantable, submuscular, and fixed to the outside surface of the bone (extramedullary), thus allowing for use in children without concern for injury to the growth plates. The device's function will be similar to an external fixator; however, it will not require exposed hardware, which increases risk of infection, or muscle penetration from the pins, which causes pain. Additionally, the device incorporates real-time control of the distraction rate, reducing the risk of complications arising from fixed rate distraction such as premature consolidation and non-union of the callus. [9-11]. The investigators of this study have previously designed and constructed a distraction mechanism prototype and test frame [10]. The current study aims to validate the real-time controller of the prototype.


The broad-ranging benefits of cash transfers are now widely recognized. However, the evidence base highlights that they often fall short in achieving longer-term and second-order impacts related to nutrition, learning outcomes and morbidity. In recognition of these limitations, several 'cash plus' initiatives have been introduced, whereby cash transfers are combined with one or more types of complementary support. This paper aims to identify key factors for successful implementation of these increasingly popular 'cash plus' programmes, based on (i) a review of the emerging evidence base of 'cash plus' interventions and (ii) an examination of three case studies, namely, Chile Solidario in Chile, IN-SCT in Ethiopia and LEAP in Ghana. The analysis was guided by a conceptual framework proposing a menu of 'cash plus' components. The assessment of three case studies indicated that effective implementation of 'cash plus' components has indeed contributed to greater impacts of the respective programmes. Such initiatives have thereby addressed some of the non-financial and structural barriers that poor people face and have reinforced the positive effects of cash transfer programmes. In design of such programmes, further attention should be paid to the constraints faced by the most vulnerable and how such constraints can be overcome. We conclude with recommendations regarding the provision of complementary support and cross-sectoral linkages based on lessons learned from the case studies. More research is still needed on the impact of the many variations of 'cash plus' programming, including evidence on the comparative roles of individual 'plus' components, as well as the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour pathways which influence these impacts.


This article explores how environmental regulation may be improved through the use of community-based social marketing techniques. While regulation is an important tool of sustainability policy, it works upon a limited range of behavioural 'triggers'. It focuses upon fear of penalty or desires for compliance, but individual behaviour is also affected by beliefs and values, and by perceived opportunities for greater satisfaction. It is argued that more effective environmental laws may be achieved using strategies that integrate regulation with community-based social marketing. Case studies where community-based social marketing techniques have been successfully used are examined, and methods for employing community-based social marketing tools to support environmental regulation are proposed.


Theoretical problems involved in the reconciliation of the assumption of constant returns to scale with determinacy of firm size are discussed with particular reference to Australian farms. Various techniques for examining changes in the size distribution of firms are examined and their use demonstrated. The work is stochastic rather than deterministic. B.A.E. sheep industry survey data is used and flock size is used as the measure of farm size. The results do not suggest that inequality in the distribution of farm sizes is increasing. Growth differs between flock sizes within the same region and for the same flock size between regions. Profitability seems to be relatively larger in the medium flock sizes.


This study characterises various aspects of barramundi (Lates calcarifer)
humoral immunity, including ontogeny, temperature modulation and kinetics
following challenge with Streptococcus iniae. It was discovered that
Staphylococcal protein A (SpA) was able to efficiently isolate antibody from
serum, and that all barramundi Ig found in serum is tetrameric with a weight
of approximately 800 kDa. This tetramer is composed of 8 heavy chains (72
kDa) and 8 light chains (28 kDa). Denaturing, non-reducing electrophoresis
demonstrated differential disulfide polymerization (redox forms) of the
tetrameric Ig which was consistent with those observed with other species.
Polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies were produced against the protein A
purified barramundi Ig, and various ELISA formats were developed. These
serological tools were used to investigate aspects of barramundi humoral
immunity.
Examination of ontogeny of humoral immunity, revealed that barramundi
possess minimal maternal antibody (<10 μg/ml wet weight) post-hatch, which
is depleted rapidly (within 3 days). By day 8 systemic Ig is able to be
detected, which continues to increase over the following months. However, it
is not until seven week post-hatch that barramundi fingerlings are able to
mount a prolonged immune response following vaccination with S. iniae.
Environmental temperature was also found to significantly impact the ability
of barramundi to respond to vaccination with S. iniae. Barramundi
maintained at low temperatures (<230C) displayed a diminished, delayed and
highly variable humoral immune response following vaccination, with many of
the experimental animals failing to respond to primary vaccination. These
responses could be mediated by either administering a booster vaccine or by
elevating the environmental temperature.
This study also demonstrated that there was a relationship with specific
serum antibody and protection against S. iniae, with fish possessing high levels of specific Ig being protected from lethal challenge, while those with
low titres being more susceptible to disease. Specific antibody in barramundi
could be generated through natural exposure to the bacterium from the
environment or through vaccination. Thus bath vaccination of fish (50,000)
held at two facilities resulted in elevated systemic antibody levels and lower
observed mortality, when compared to the unvaccinated control fish.
Infections due to S. iniae were determined to be associated with elevated
water temperatures. Laboratory trials and field data indicated that water
temperatures between 24 and 280C resulted in the highest barramundi
mortality. A weak association was also determined with low pH and
mortality, with fish exposed to low pH's (<6.0) being more susceptible to
infection. No association was observed with mortality and salinity.
Four monoclonal antibodies (Mab's) were also generated against a 21 kDa
protein from cell wall of S. iniae. The Mab's displayed a high level of
specificity for S. iniae, including those from Australia, Israel and America, and
minimal cross-reactivity with other bacterial species tested. The Mab's were
used in an immunohistochemical study that confirmed the neurotropic nature
of S. iniae infections, as well as demonstrating the presence of the bacterium
in the intestine of infected fish.


Empirical researchers interested in how governance shapes various aspects of economic development frequently use the Worldwide Governance indicators (WGI). These variables come in the form of an estimate along with a standard error reflecting the uncertainty of this estimate. Existing empirical work simply uses the estimates as an explanatory variable and discards the information provided by the standard errors. In this paper, we argue that the appropriate practice should be to take into account the uncertainty around the WGI estimates through the use of multiple imputation. We investigate the importance of our proposed approach by revisiting in three applications the results of recently published studies. These applications cover the impact of governance on (i) capital flows; (ii) international trade; (iii) income levels around the world. We generally find that the estimated effects of governance are highly sensitive to the use of multiple imputation. We also show that model misspecification is a concern for the results of our reference studies. We conclude that the effects of governance are hard to establish once we take into account uncertainty around both the WGI estimates and the correct model specification.


Fertilization with K and P impacts alfalfa (Medi- cago sativa L.) yield, but how these nutrients influence taproot reserves and gene expression is unknown. Our objectives were to determine how P and K impact (i) alfalfa yield and yield components, (ii) accumulation and use of taproot carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) pools, and (iii) transcript levels for β-amylase, sucrose synthase, and the high molecular weight vegetative storage protein in alfalfa taproots. Yield and yield components were determined at 30-d intervals beginning in late May. Roots were sampled after the late June harvest (Day 0) and 1, 3, 6, 10, 14, 21, and 30 d thereafter. Addition of P and K increased forage yield by enhancing mass per shoot. High P resulted in rapid starch use, while taproots of plants fertilized with K had low sugar concentrations. Transcripts decline by Day 6 and by Day 10 were below detection limits. Transcripts for β-amylase and sucrose synthase accumulated rapidly after Day 10 in taproots of plants fertilized with both P and K. Balanced P and K nutrition resulted in the accumulation and effective utilization of C and N reserves and in improved alfalfa adaptation to defoliation.


Estrogen stimulation promotes epithelial cell proliferation in estrogen receptor (ERα)-positive breast cancer. Many ERα target genes have been enumerated, but the identities of the key effectors mediating the estrogen signal remain obscure. During mouse mammary gland development, the estrogen growth factor receptor (EGFR) ligand amphiregulin acts as an important stage-specific effector of estrogen signaling. In this study, we investigated the role of amphiregulin in breast cancer cell proliferation using human tissue samples and tumor xenografts in mice. Amphiregulin was enriched in ERα-positive human breast tumor cells and required for estrogen-dependent growth of MCF7 tumor xenografts. Furthermore, amphiregulin levels were suppressed in patients treated with endocrine therapy. Suppression of EGF receptor signaling appeared necessary for the therapeutic response in this setting. Our findings implicate amphiregulin as a critical mediator of the estrogen response in ERα-positive breast cancer, emphasizing the importance of EGF receptor signaling in breast tumor pathogenesis and therapeutic response.


Background Metabolic syndrome) MetS( is a complex risk factor which increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. There are many studies with various populations and results about the prevalence of MetS in Iran; in order to authenticate these studies and have an overall estimation of its prevalence in Iran, performing a meta-analysis seems to be necessary. Objective This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of MetS and its components in Iran via meta-analysis method. Methods All associated published papers in national and international journals of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Magiran, Iranmedex, Science Direct, Medlib, and SID databases were searched from January, 2000 to October, 2016. All types of studies, including local and national surveys that reported the prevalence of MetS among healthy populations in Iran were reviewed. The effects of age, sample size and publication date as possible sources of heterogeneity among the study findings was examined by meta-regression. P-values less than 0.05 were considered as significant in heterogeneity tests. All analysis was done by R Ver. 3.2.1 and STATA (version 10). Results Seventy eligible studies were selected for meta-analysis. The overall estimation of MetS prevalence was 25% (95% CI: 22–29%) based on the Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) criteria, 30% (95% CI: 25–36%) according to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), and 39% (95% CI: 26–52%) based on the Joint Interim Societies (JIS) criteria. The prevalence of MetS was lower in men than in women (26.9% versus 35.7%). The prevalence of various MetS components including High TG (triglyceride), Low HDL-C, High BP and High FBS (fasting blood sugar) was 43%, 54%, 38% and 22% among the adult population. Conclusion Findings from the present meta-analyses study displayed a high prevalence of metabolic syndrome in Iran, especially in women, which increases with age in both sexes. It alerts health care providers and policy makers to find solutions in order to take action to reduce MetS risk in society.


Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen invited protagonists from the fields of architecture, art, philosophy, and literature to reflect on the single question of what, today, can be understood as a critical modality of spatial practice. Most of the sixty-four contributions presented in this volume were composed concurrently with the evictions of many of the Occupy movements, sustained turmoil in countries of the Arab Spring, and continued spasms in the global financial system, which, interestingly, all pointed at the question and problematic of whether architecture and our physical environment can still be understood as a res publica. A response by the editors takes the form of a conversation.This book is first in a series on critical spatial practice developed alongside the Stadelschule program of the same name. Each edition includes work by invited artists—the first includes newly commissioned work by the photographer Armin Linke, who documented the Occupy camp around the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.Contributions by:


The research was conducted represents case study at BRI unit Cemara Blitar with title "The Evaluation on Internal Controlling System of Village Common Credit at BRI unit Cemara Branch Office BRI Blitar". The objective of the research is to find out controlling process of Kupedes at PT. Bank Rakyat Indonesia unit Cemara Blitar and assessing the effectively of internal controlling system of Kupedes, and also to give consideration material for BRI unit Cemara Blitar to optimize controlling system of Kupedes has applied. At the research, discussion was focused at internal controlling system to distribution procedure of Kupedes. The result of that research shows, internal controlling system that has done by the firm was well and appropriate with principles of internal controlling system on BRI. It can be seen by job description and clear authority and appropriate with job description. Double duty case was not found in the job practice of BRI unit Cemara Blitar. Perhaps it was needed to add employee to support the employee performance and add satisfaction on service to customer, because it was no need to queue too long. On serving application of Kupedes, all of employee BRI unit Cemara Blitar hold on directive and distribution way of Kupedes has applied by Centre BRI. So that, documents to support distribution of Kupedes must be complete, ordinal and correct. The employee performance would be another problem in this research. Sometimes, internal controlling system of Kupedes was not running well because of it employee factor that dishonest. The deceitfulness occurred because of employee sometimes follow to use credit was given to customer. It had promised orally when employee checked to the applicant place of Kupedes. From the conclusion, researcher gives some suggestion related with that problem. It should be there was letter of pronouncement that contain Kupedes was accepted by customer must be used for business of customer, without devide with customer. So that, internal controlling system well and Kupedes would be released appropriate with correct purpose and aid customer on the growth of his business.


Interest rate policy works to sustain price stability by stabilizing production costs against shocks to current productivity and future income prospects. The Fed should publicly target core PCE inflation in a 1 to 2 percent range to improve short-run communications and lock in credibility for low inflation. To secure credibility against deflation, the Fed should arrange more fiscal support for monetary policy at the zero bound on nominal interest rates than is ordinarily granted by Congress and the Treasury. By featuring price-cost, employment, and output gap indicators more prominently in its communications, the Fed can clarify the potential for inflation or deflation and its intentions for dealing with these threats.


We investigate the relationship between world oil markets and China's macroeconomic performance over the past two decades. Our analysis starts by proposing a simple method for disentangling real economic activity stemming from China and the rest of the world. We then consider a sufficiently large set of dynamic VAR models to distinguish between abrupt and gradual changes in the macroeconomic relationships and volatility clustering in the shocks. A model exercise shows that a Markov-switching model is preferred to previously used models in the literature. When investigating the role of oil market shocks on China's output, we find that oil supply shocks tend to elicit a positive response, while the response of oil demand shocks is negative. Next, when analyzing world oil price dynamics, we find that demand shocks have had significant positive impacts over the past two decades. The average proportion of oil price variation explained by demand from China and rest of world demand are around 30 percent over the sample period. Importantly, while China specific effects are relatively constant, rest of world aggregate demand shocks are found to have larger impact during times of global macroeconomic downturn. This highlights the importance of our model comparison exercise. Finally, we find that the recent 2014/15 oil price drop was due to a combination of increased oil supply and decreased demand from China.


Inositol is a 6-carbon sugar alcohol that has been shown in limited studies to reduce retinopathy of prematurity and chronic lung disease in premature newborns. Developmentally it has a high concentration in the fetus that decreases with gestational age. It is transported from the fetus to the mother across the placenta. Although studies are underway to determine inositol kinetics in premature newborns treated therapeutically, the effects of gestational age, age after birth, and feeding on inositol concentrations after birth have not been studied adequately in premature newborns. Such studies would minimize blood removal and trauma in preterm newborns by using plasma samples scavenged from the clinical laboratory to measure inositol after birth, if they remain stable. This report describes a new high pressure liquid chromatographic assay for inositol and its use to study the stability of inositol in conditions of storage that might be encountered within the clinical laboratory. The assay is linear from 0 to 1000 Mm with a lower limit of quantitation of 50 μM. Inositol in human plasma remains stable in refrigeration and at room temperature for up to 14 days and is not affected by storage in red blood cells that are intact or lysed. Anticoagulants encountered in clinical blood samples do not interfere with the chromatograms. Thus, it is feasible to measure the changes in inositol concentrations in plasma from preterm newborns that is scavenged from the clinical laboratory after storage for as long as 14 days.


We present FlashStore, a high throughput persistent key-value store, that uses flash memory as a non-volatile cache between RAM and hard disk. FlashStore is designed to store the working set of key-value pairs on flash and use one flash read per key lookup. As the working set changes over time, space is made for the current working set by destaging recently unused key-value pairs to hard disk and recycling pages in the flash store. FlashStore organizes key-value pairs in a log-structure on flash to exploit faster sequential write performance. It uses an in-memory hash table to index them, with hash collisions resolved by a variant of cuckoo hashing. The in-memory hash table stores compact key signatures instead of full keys so as to strike tradeoffs between RAM usage and false flash read operations. FlashStore can be used as a high throughput persistent key-value storage layer for a broad range of server class applications. We compare FlashStore with BerkeleyDB, an embedded key-value store application, running on hard disk and flash separately, so as to bring out the performance gain of FlashStore in not only using flash as a cache above hard disk but also in its use of flash aware algorithms. We use real-world data traces from two data center applications, namely, Xbox LIVE Primetime online multi-player game and inline storage deduplication, to drive and evaluate the design of FlashStore on traditional and low power server platforms. FlashStore outperforms BerkeleyDB by up to 60x on throughput (ops/sec), up to 50x on energy efficiency (ops/Joule), and up to 85x on cost efficiency (ops/sec/dollar) on the evaluated datasets.


This paper describes an analytical model to calculate the setdown in waves with and without current. This model is based on a second order quadratic transfer function and a Lagrangian transformation for the effect of current. The method is validated against basin experiments with a large number of wave probes through the basin. The wave signals are separated in incoming and reflected bound and free waves based on the phase differences between the wave probes. The optimum probe spacing and transient phenomena in the restricted sized basin are discussed. The resulting separated bound wave shows good comparison to the setdown calculated with the analytical model.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


A severe limitation of the original autoregressive process of order one or AR(1) process is the Gaussian nature of the assumed residual error distribution while the observed sample residual errors tend to be much more skewed and have a much higher kurtosis than is allowed by a normal distribution. Four non-Gaussian noise specifications are considered, namely the normal inverse Gaussian, the skew Student t, the normal Laplace and the reshaped Hermite-Gauss distributions. Besides predictive distributional properties of some of these AR(1) processes, an in-depth analysis of the fitting capabilities of these models is undertaken. For the Swiss consumer price index, it is shown that the AR(1) with normal Laplace (NL) noise has the best goodness-of-fit in a dual sense for four types of estimators. On the one hand the moment estimators of the NL residual error distribution yield the smallest Anderson-Darling, Cramer-von Mises and chi-square statistics, and on the other hand the minimum of these three statistics is also reached by the NL distribution.


This volume is about interprofessional communication and through an ethnographic, interactive sociolinguistic, and cultural approach introduces a discourse perspective to the analysis of interprofessional communication. It looks at the various participants - voices - present and absent, invited and uninvited - and their contributions to team discourse about children who are evaluated for mental retardation/developmental disabilities. The authors are particularly concerned about the parents' perspective and how their concerns about their children are perceived by professionals; and how professionals of various disciplines perceive each other and children. The authors view assessments as interactively constructed by the team and identify whose contributions enter into the discourse. Ultimately, they are concerned with whose voice counts and the impact of the interactive process on families and children.


This study is a case-study examination of faculty-developed course websites and their usage within a single mid-western community college environment. Its purpose is to develop an understanding of the perceived value of selected course websites from both student and faculty perspectives based on website design and use. The study analyzes course websites from instructional and technological theoretical perspectives, drawing from literature in the fields of education and technology studies. To understand course websites within the context of their usage, three selected course websites were paired with the instructor and a subset of students to form a case study unit. The case study methodology offered an opportunity for in-depth qualitative data collection through theory-driven examination of website features, observation of website use, and in-depth interviews with students and faculty. Study findings indicate that perceived value is strengthened by the amount and quality of course-specific content while lessened by irrelevant content and/or lack of significant content. Because constructivist strategies embody interactive learning styles, web-enabling interactive content on course websites has the potential to create constructivist learning opportunities. Several factors influence course websites design and perceived value perspectives. Included among these are student involvement in the design process, professional development opportunities that support faculty development of course websites, faculty members technical abilities, and institutional support.


The judiciary sometimes competes for power with another constitutional actor, including the legislature, the executive, the states and the jury. This article addresses the issue of how the judiciary should interpret its own power in relationship to the competing power of other constitutional actors. The article describes how the judiciary has sometimes limited its own power in relationship to the competing power of the legislature, the executive and the states under the doctrines of separation of powers and federalism. A similar doctrine has not been developed, however, under which the judiciary has limited its own power in relationship to the competing power of another constitutional actor - the jury. Upon an examination of the special characteristics of the relationship between the judiciary and the jury under the Sixth and Seventh Amendments and a comparison of these characteristics to principles underlying the separation of powers and federalism, it is argued that the judiciary should act "modestly" in the interpretation of the jury's power as its relates to the judiciary's own power. Under this proposed new model of judicial behavior - that of judicial modesty - the judiciary should narrowly construe its own power in the review of its power versus that of the jury's power. Upon an examination of the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court under the Sixth Amendment, it is found that the judiciary has acted somewhat modestly in the interpretation of its own power versus that of the criminal jury. On the other hand, an examination of the Court's Seventh Amendment jurisprudence shows that the Court has not been sufficiently deferential in the examination of its power versus the jury's power. The article argues that the exercise of modesty in the interpretation of the power of the civil jury may require a re-examination of the constitutionality of certain procedural devices employed by judges that affect the jury trial right. Finally, the article states that in the future this model for judicial behavior - that of judicial modesty - may be found to apply to the judiciary's interpretation of its own power versus the competing power of other constitutional actors.


The Centennial unconformity-related uranium deposit represents the first significant uranium mineralization along the Snowbird tectonic zone in the south-central part of the Athabasca Basin. The deposit is associated with a steeply WNW-dipping contact between the Virgin Schist Group and mylonitic granite of uncertain age. Virgin Schist Group rocks in the deposit area include phyllites, impure quartzite, and quartzite. Medium- to coarse-grained microcline "augen" porphyroclasts characterize the granite. The quartzite, being resistant to weathering, forms a paleotopographic high flanked by a paleotalus which formed prior to Athabasca Group sedimentation. Diabase, petrographically and geochemically similar to the 1.27 Ga Mackenzie dikes, intrudes the mineralized trend along brittle structures in the basement rocks and Athabasca Group. A detailed paragenetic study of the deposit area reveals a protracted history that is related to the episodic reactivation of brittle structures and associated fluid movement along this significant structural corridor. Retrograde metamorphism converted biotite to chamosite at temperatures between 335° to 350°C. Weathering caused the breakdown of microcline and the dissolution of quartz prior to erosion and deposition of the Athabasca Group, which started at about 1750 Ma. Compaction and diagenesis resulted in quartz overgrowths and development of a diagenetic clay assemblage of illite and sudoite at temperatures between 150° and 200°C, which was broadly synchronous with primary mineralization. Clinochlore, euhedral quartz, carbonate, and pyrite was developed after the intrusion of the diabase under reducing conditions, primarily at temperatures between 270° to 320°C. Uranium remobilization and alteration of uraninite to coffinite appears to have taken place after the emplacement of the diabase dikes. Kaolinite and uranophane form last in the paragenetic sequence and probably form at relatively low temperatures.


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Platforms enable and drive the creation of new products and services; they also shape and transform industries in fundamental ways. Consequently, platforms have become a core feature of many emerging business models. The success of a platform is inextricably linked to its network, or ecosystem, of enablers and complementors. Drawing on models and theories of complex systems, innovation, and network analysis, this study analyzes the evolving structure of interfirm relations in the mobile device platform ecosystem. This domain is of particular interest due to the emergence of promising new platforms and competition for platform leadership between open and closed business models. The visual approach presented in this study provides insights to the complexity of interfirm relations in the mobile device platform ecosystem, determines a platform's competitive position, and identifies structural configurations that characterize various types of business strategies. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.


We examine the claim that a class of sprouting-and-retraction models is mathematically equivalent to a fixed-anatomy model. We accept, subject to important caveats, a narrow mathematical equivalence of the energy functions in both classes of model. We argue that this narrow equivalence of energy functions does not, however, entail equivalence of the models. Indeed, the claim of complete model equivalence hides significant dynamical differences between the approaches, which we discuss. We also disagree that our work demonstrates that subtractive constraint enforcement is natural in fixed-anatomy models.


Casing strings and liners are important subsurface structural components in petroleum and in geothermal wells. After the casing string has been run in hole, it is cemented to the formation by pumping a sequence of spacer fluids and cement slurry into the annulus outside the string. Spacer fluids are usually pumped ahead of the cement slurry to displace the drilling fluid from the annulus that is to be cemented and thereby avoid contamination of the cement slurry. Fluid displacements are governed by inertia, buoyancy, and viscosity effects, in addition to being strongly influenced by the annular geometry. Poor centralization of the casing or irregularities such as washouts can influence the displacement flows both locally and over long axial distances. We present three-dimensional numerical simulations of the displacement flow involving two viscoplastic fluids in the vicinity of a symmetric local hole enlargement. We focus on laminar flow regimes in the regular part of the annulus and investigate how the volumetric flowrate and the mass density difference between the fluids affect the displacement efficiency in the regular and the irregular parts of the annulus. This study considers viscoplastic displacement flows in a near-vertical, irregular annulus and is an extension of a previous publication that focused on a near-horizontal annulus. We contextualize our simulations by comparison to industry guidelines for effective and steady laminar displacements in the regular, near-vertical annulus. Here, eccentricity favors flow in the wider sector of the annulus, while a positive density difference between the fluids generates secondary, azimuthal flow toward the narrow side of the annulus. In the enlarged and irregular section, both the axial bulk velocity and casing eccentricity decrease sharply and buoyancy becomes more pronounced compared to in the regular annulus. We quantify and discuss the effects of local hole enlargements on displacement efficiencies. Simulations of cementing flows can aid in optimizing fluid properties and pump rates, including when the wellbore has suspected or confirmed zones of irregular geometries.


This paper provides field experimental evidence on the prevalence and determinants of discrimination and in-group favoritism in trust decisions. We observe choices of about 1,000 inhabitants of the city of Zurich who take part in a sequential trust game, in which first movers can condition their investments on the residential districts of second movers. Our main results can be summarized as follows: First movers discriminate significantly in their investment choices, i.e., strangers receive different investments depending on the district they live in. The systematics of the discrimination pattern is underlined by data from an additional newspaper study, where participants correctly guessed the outcome of the study. In terms of district characteristics two factors seem to be key for a district's reputation: while expected trustworthiness of a district increases in the socio-economic status it decreases in the degree of ethnic heterogeneity. Observed discrimination is not just based on mistaken stereotypes but can at least partly be classified as statistical discrimination. This can be inferred from the fact that, on a district level, both expected return on investment and actual investments are positively correlated with actual back transfers. First movers correctly anticipate different levels of trustworthiness and discriminate accordingly. Furthermore, we provide evidence of in-group favoritism, i.e., people trust strangers from their own district significantly more than strangers from other districts. Finally, we discuss individual determinants of discrimination and in-group favoritism.


The authors work closely with academia and governmental organizations in the UK and abroad to develop new, innovative schemes for social impact investing. Such schemes include considerations for public–private collaborations, legislative actions, and especially in this case, for the leveraged use of public and philanthropic funds in Crowdfunding (CF). The relatively new phenomenon of CF can not only provide necessary funds for the social enterprises, it may also lead to a higher legitimacy of these through early societal interaction and participation. This legitimacy can be understood as a strong positive signal for further investors. Governmental tax-reliefs and guarantees from venture-philanthropic funds provide additional incentives for investment and endorse future scaling by leveraging additional debt-finance from specialized social banks. This case study identifies idiosyncratic hurdles to why an efficient social finance market has yet to be created and examines a schema as a case of how individual players' strengths and weaknesses can be balanced out by a concerted action. The paper discusses the necessary actions, benefits and implications for the involved actors from the public, private and third sector.


Violent movements in different parts of the world have employed large numbers of women fighters. I address the question of how and why so many women from diverse backgrounds join an ethnic insurgency. Informed by an intersectional approach, I suggest that when gender and ethnic inequalities overlap, an ethnic insurgency promising gender emancipation would have strong appeal among women. At the same time, the intersection of class and gender shapes distinctive patterns of mobilization among women of an ethnic minority. In particular, uneducated women with lower class backgrounds join the movement because it provides them with the most viable way out of patriarchal relations. I employ a multi-method research design to study a paradigmatic case of women in arms, the Kurdish insurgency. I use an original large dataset containing information about more than 9,000 militants, from extensive fieldwork entailing dozens of in-depth interviews, and an archival study of sources in primary languages. My findings reveal the effects of unequal relationships based on ethnicity, gender, and class on violent political mobilization and the ambivalent relationship between women's political agency and empowerment.