Gradient estimation in models with discrete latent variables is a challenging problem, because the simplest unbiased estimators tend to have high variance. To counteract this, modern estimators either introduce bias, rely on multiple function evaluations, or use learned, input-dependent baselines. Thus, there is a need for estimators that require minimal tuning, are computationally cheap, and have low mean squared error. In this paper, we show that the variance of the straight-through variant of the popular Gumbel-Softmax estimator can be reduced through Rao-Blackwellization without increasing the number of function evaluations. This provably reduces the mean squared error. We empirically demonstrate that this leads to variance reduction, faster convergence, and generally improved performance in two unsupervised latent variable models.


ABSTRACT This article presents Meret Oppenheim (1913–85) as an artist and a writer who, with a special interest in the sense of touch, explored the relationship between the intellect and the senses. Associated with the surrealist movement, she created a language of the senses in close affinity with nature, art, intuition, and feeling. Her ambition to transcend the opposites of nature and culture, ancient and modern, animal and human, male and female, is expressed in her poetry as well as in her famous fur-lined cup, her hirsute objects, fantastic animals, stone women, bone gloves, and dysfunctional shoes, and her statements on sexual symbolism, cannibalism, and mortality are cleverly based on fingertip knowledge.


Since the Common Fisheries Policy reform in 2002, there have been various proposals for designing effective input-management tools in the context of demersal multispecies and multimetier fisheries to augment quota management. The relationship between fishing mortality and effort exerted by the English beam trawl fleet is investigated for two stocks of North Sea demersal fish, plaice, Pleuronectes platessa L., and sole, Solea solea (L.). Catchability was adjusted by accounting for targeting by this gear, seasonal and area effects, and individual vessel variation, using results from a generalised linear mixed-effects model (GLMM) that included random effects (in this case, vessel). Descriptors were standardised in relation to distinct submetiers and their impact on both species. Fishing efficiency was calculated as the ratio between relative nominal landings per unit effort derived from the GLMM and survey indices from a standard survey vessel. Fishing efficiency for sole increased (+0.6% annually) and for plaice decreased (−6.2%), likely because of changes in targeting, fuel costs and regulations.


Service evaluation is a professional requirement for music therapy practitioners and organisations. Yet service evaluation findings are rarely published within the professional literature, and there is limited documentation of the processes and methods of such evaluations, including the rationale, dilemmas, and challenges encountered. This is perhaps due to the perceived status, methodological weaknesses, and context-specificity of service evaluation work. Drawing on our engagement with service evaluation in diverse settings, we have become aware of its potential beyond its typical current uses in the field as well as of the need for open discussion and debate about the service evaluation tools that are available. This is where the aim of this paper lies: to introduce a service evaluation tool, the Impact Areas Questionnaire (IAQ), alongside the studies that led to its construction. Developed originally through a review of 27 individually designed service evaluation projects, this questionnaire contains a number of different impact areas. Adopting an ecological perspective, these areas refer to music therapy's perceived impact not only on service users, but also on families/carers/friends, staff, and the organisational context in its entirety. Following its original development within Nordoff Robbins England and Wales, this questionnaire was tested in the context of Nordoff Robbins Scotland with the aim of exploring its applicability and transferability to other music therapy settings. In addition to presenting the findings of this testing, we discuss the potential use of the IAQ, which is included as an appendix to this article, in other settings and its relevance for knowledge and policy making in the field.


Following assessment of the last two seminars organised by the LIBER Architecture Group in 2000 (in Warsaw) and 2002 (in Leipzig), it appeared that a certain number of participants from those seminars wished to have a re-run of the various organisational phases involved in operations for building, extending or restructuring libraries: the motivation being to ensure the clear definition of the associated processes, and identify the various players and their respective roles, together with the actions required at various times to ensure the harmonious implementation of the construction programme. I should therefore like to describe this process in as objective a fashion as possible, given that other speakers will later be telling you of their experiences as "library builders" - in particular Karl Krarup and Elmar Mittler. Karl's presentation, entitled "How to Survive in the World of Architects and Building Departments", and Elmar's, rather "combatively" (!) presentation, entitled "The Battle for Good Library Buildings". This will certainly leave you with an understanding of just how much of a cool head is required, not to mention clear ideas, a sharp sense of diplomacy and a generous dose of organisational and management skills, all underpinned by a long-term vision as to the likely development of libraries in today's world and tomorrow's, in order to arrive at the goal: the realisation of a fine and efficient library. The need is also there, of finding ways to communicate the vision over the long term, to all players involved, to ensure that the necessary funds remain available. Therefore I should like first to sketch - in as dispassionate terms as I can manage - how the scenario evolves, or should evolve, if we all lived - like we deserve - in a well organised world, with each party working without the slightest ulterior motive towards the design and production of our libraries. I propose to examine the situation from certain aspects, in particular: · the team formed by the library and its partners: putting the right person in the right role · financing the operation · the programme · the choice of architect · the obligatory programme phases, and the time required for each, and finally · the "additional sites" accompanying the main project.


Elephants (Family Elephantidae) are animals that rely on complex social behavior and organization for survival. The current literature on elephant social organization come from studies in African savannas, an open environment where animals are relatively easy to observe and study. Much less is known, however, about the social behavior of forest elephants, particularly of wild elephants (Elephas maximus) in Southeast Asia. Wild elephants in Malaysian rainforests regularly visit mineral licks to supplement their diet with nutrients and to acquire clay to buffer secondary plant compounds This provides a great opportunity to set up camera traps and regularly observe animals that otherwise would be impossible to study in their natural environment. Thus, the objective of this study is 1) to assess the feasibility of using camera traps to study the social structure of elephants in the wild; 2) to describe their social structure; and 3) to quantify wild Asian elephant patterns of mineral lick usage. Individuals were identified using features on the ears, body and tail, or any other prominent profile; and associations between elephants were recorded. Camera traps were set up at a Sira in the Belum Temenggor Forest Complex from October 2012 till October 2013. Video data were retrieved monthly. In total, we recorded 951 hours of videos representing 165 elephant visits. We were able to identify 55 adult individuals while 21 offspring in the age classes of newborn, infants, and juveniles were unidentified over the course of the study. The identified individuals included 26 female adults, 8 female subadults, 15 male adults and 6 male subadults. Seven female family units and four mother-calf units were identified with a median group size of 6 and 2 individuals, respectively. The results show that forest Asian elephants live in smaller groups than their African savanna counterparts. Among the identified elephants, resident family groups were regularly detected, suggesting that mineral licks are important for the feeding ecology of elephants though the reason is still unclear. This study thus provides a baseline of Asian elephant social structure and mineral lick use in Peninsular Malaysia using camera trapping as a recording technique.


We start by considering some of the key reasons behind the academic and industry interest in robo-advisors. We discuss how robo-advice could potentially address some fundamental problems in investors' decision making as well as in traditional financial advice. We then move on to some of the ongoing issues regarding the future of robo-advice. Firstly, the role Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays, and should play, in robo-advice. Secondly, how far should the personalisation of robo-advice recommendations go. Third, how trust in automated financial advice can be generated and maintained. Fourth, whether robots are perceived as complements or substitutes to human decision-making. Our conclusion outlines some thoughts on what the next generation of robo-advisors might look like. We highlight the importance of recent insights in Explainable AI and how new forms of AI applied to financial services would benefit from importing insights from economics and psychology to design effective human/robot interaction.


Regional trade and monetary integration mark the core elements of any regional integration processes worldwide. However, the challenges are quite different: While the Member states of the European Union (EU) are economically and monetarily united, they are dealing with the imbalances and potential spill-overs effects resulting from the Euro zone crises. The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), on the other hand, struggles with low levels of intra-regional trade, external dependencies and the goal of establishing a region-wide common currency. Inspired by the experience of each other, the WAI-ZEI anthology combines the reflections of well-known researchers from both regions on three of the most important questions in this regard: How can regional integration schemes contribute to enhance regional trade and integration into the global economy? What are the effects of monetary integration and how can synergies be created? To what extent can experiences of other regions be helpful in this process?


A full understanding of the mechanism of action of an antibiotic involves not only the identification of the drug-sensitive biochemical targets, but also the pathway by which the inhibition of the target reaction(s) leads to the eventual physiological consequences, i.e. inhibition of the reproductive capacity of the whole cell. The complexity of such a pathway may be illustrated by the case of the penicillin response of pneumococcal mutants defective in the activity of murein hydrolases, i.e. enzymes that do not seem to react directly with the penicillin molecule. These hydrolase-defective mutants seem to contain all the 'normal' penicillin-binding proteins; penicillin treatment causes typical morphological and biochemical effects (interference with cell wall metabolism) and the minimal inhibitory concentration as well as dose response to penicillin are identical in the hydrolase-defective mutant cells and in the wild-type bacteria. In spite of all these similarities, the eventual physiological response of mutants is strikingly different from that of the wild-type cells: in contrast to the wild-type cells, mutants do not lyse during penicillin treatment and their rate of loss of viability is greatly suppressed. These observations suggest that inhibition of the primary biochemical targets of penicillin (penicillin-binding proteins) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the induction of the pharmacologically most useful irreversible effects of β-lactams. During the past 4-5 years, our laboratory has been engaged in an intensive effort to unravel the mechanism of penicillin-induced death and lysis in several species of bacteria and I shall summarize briefly some of our conclusions here, using mainly observations obtained in two experimental system s: the Gram-positive pneumococci and the Gram-negative Escherichia coli. Our approach to the mode of action of β-lactams involves an attempt to identify cellular factors that are directly responsible for the events of cell death and lysis. In my mind, such studies complement the other approaches (biochemical, enzymological and genetic analysis of penicillin sensitive enzymes and binding proteins), summarized in the talks of Professor Strominger, Professor Ghuysen and Dr Spratt at this meeting.


Heterointerfaces between metal oxides show substantial promise as components for future materials in energy application. Heterointerfaces exhibit unique properties that do not exist in the corresponding bulk parent compounds. In their bulk phase, SrTiO3 and LaAlO3 are non-magnetic wide bandgap insulators, but when they are assembled to make superlattices (LaAlO3/SrTiO3) they exhibit very interesting properties like high Tc superconductivity, magnetism, ferroelectricity and colossal magnetoresistance. This behavior can be explained and enhanced through theoretical investigation such as electronic structure calculations. Electronic structure calculations on bulk metal oxides using screened hybrid functionals gained a lot of popularity in the last few years due to their high accuracy and computational efficiency. In this work, we use the most effective screened hybrid functional derived from our previous studies to compute the structural and electronic properties of bulk SrTiO3, LaAlO3 and LATiO3 and the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 superlattices. We will show how our calculations have performed exceptionally well, allowing us to assess how phase transition defects and doping affect the electronic properties of these materials.


Following the decision of the British referendum on 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom (UK) plans to exit the European Union (EU). Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was invoked at the end of March 2017 and the UK will officially leave the single market and customs union in March 2019. Brexit negotiations have proven difficult due to diverging positions of the two partners on many issues, such as freedom of movement, financial contributions and the potential re-emergence of a tough border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Despite the successfully negotiated Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration, there is still con¬siderable political uncertainty about the final EU-UK deal. Regardless of the final outcome of the negotiations, Brexit implies fundamental changes in the British trade regime concerning third countries. This starts with a negotiation of national terms of access for World Trade Organization (WTO) membership and extends to renegotiation of the numerous EU free trade agreements. Moreover, the UK will no longer be part of the European Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) or the Everything But Arms (EBA) treaty, which allow vulnerable developing countries to pay fewer or no duties on their exports to the EU. The Economic Partnership Agree-ments (EPAs) between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries will not apply to the UK either. While the negative effects of Brexit on the UK and EU are in the limelight, the implications for third countries receive less attention. This paper puts the spotlight on these often-overlooked issues by presenting new findings on Brexit implications for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and discussing policy recommendations. Developing countries with close ties to the UK will suffer from Brexit as import duties are once again imposed. In particular, 49 of the world's poorest countries presently benefit from preferential treatment that covers 99% of all products under the EBA agreement. Although these countries account for only 1.15% of the UK's imports, the share of their exports to the UK exceeds 35% in apparel, 21% in textiles and 9% in sugar (calculations based on the UN Comtrade data for 2013-2015). Our findings show that losing these preferences together with the UK's withdrawal from the EU may cause EBA countries' GDPs to fall by -0.01% to -1.08%. Our simulations also indicate that the highest losses will occur in Cambodia and Malawi, where dependence on the UK market is strong. Moreover, Brexit may cause the number of those living in extreme poverty (PPP $1.90 a day) to rise by nearly 1.7 million in all EBA countries. These are conservative estimates of Brexit's negative impacts; they do not take into account the addi¬tional implications of uncertainty, depreciation of the pound sterling, reduced aid spending, remittances and investments. The UK must act to mitigate the adverse effects on economically vulnerable countries. Such action may include replicating existing EU treaties that grant preferential access to goods from LDCs, creating a more development-friendly UK trade policy with preferential access to services imports and cumulative rules of origin, as well as offering better-targeted aid for trade initiatives. The EU could also support LDCs by implementing liberal cumulative rules of origin and applying its preferential treatment partly to goods with a low value-added content from considered countries. In addition, developing countries should diversify their export destinations and industries as well as engage in economic transformation that makes them less dependent on UK trade, aid and foreign direct investment (FDI).


Several approaches involving carbon and VOx coatings of LiCoPO4 to enable aqueous electrode processing are reported in this manuscript along with detailed physico-chemical and electrochemical investigations. It is shown that the choice of the carbon source has a severe impact not only on the purity, particle size and morphology of LiCoPO4, but also on its electrochemical performance. Although carbon coating improves the conductivity of LiCoPO4 and protects the particles' surface from direct contact with the electrolyte, it also leads to capacity fading upon cycling at high potentials. Reducing the carbon amount leads to an initially reduced capacity, but it significantly improves the stability upon cycling. Finally, the application of an additional VOx coating was also investigated.


Abstract. At the beginning of 2009 new space-borne observations of dry-air column-averaged mole fractions of atmospheric methane (XCH4) became available from the Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observations–Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) instrument on board the Greenhouse Gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT). Until April 2012 concurrent {methane (CH4) retrievals} were provided by the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY (SCIAMACHY) instrument on board the ENVironmental SATellite (ENVISAT). The GOSAT and SCIAMACHY XCH4 retrievals can be compared during the period of overlap. We estimate monthly average CH4 emissions between January 2010 and December 2011, using the TM5-4DVAR inverse modelling system. In addition to satellite data, high-accuracy measurements from the Cooperative Air Sampling Network of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA ESRL) are used, providing strong constraints on the remote surface atmosphere. We discuss five inversion scenarios that make use of different GOSAT and SCIAMACHY XCH4 retrieval products, including two sets of GOSAT proxy retrievals processed independently by the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON)/Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and the University of Leicester (UL), and the RemoTeC "Full-Physics" (FP) XCH4 retrievals available from SRON/KIT. The GOSAT-based inversions show significant reductions in the root mean square (rms) difference between retrieved and modelled XCH4, and require much smaller bias corrections compared to the inversion using SCIAMACHY retrievals, reflecting the higher precision and relative accuracy of the GOSAT XCH4. Despite the large differences between the GOSAT and SCIAMACHY retrievals, 2-year average emission maps show overall good agreement among all satellite-based inversions, with consistent flux adjustment patterns, particularly across equatorial Africa and North America. Over North America, the satellite inversions result in a significant redistribution of CH4 emissions from North-East to South-Central United States. This result is consistent with recent independent studies suggesting a systematic underestimation of CH4 emissions from North American fossil fuel sources in bottom-up inventories, likely related to natural gas production facilities. Furthermore, all four satellite inversions yield lower CH4 fluxes across the Congo basin compared to the NOAA-only scenario, but higher emissions across tropical East Africa. The GOSAT and SCIAMACHY inversions show similar performance when validated against independent shipboard and aircraft observations, and XCH4 retrievals available from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON).


OBJECTIVES
This study aims to compare the systemic inflammatory responses (SIRs) developing after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) performed under general or spinal anesthesia.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
This prospective study included 40 patients (8 males, 32 females; mean age 67.15±9.27 years; range 51 to 89 years) who underwent TKA in our clinic between February 2014 and July 2014. Patients were grouped to receive general (group 1, n=20) or spinal anesthesia (group 2, n=20). Levels of pro-inflammatory markers [Interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-8, IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and C-reactive protein (CRP)] were studied from the venous blood samples obtained immediately before induction to anesthesia (T1), immediately after closure of the operative wound (T2), and at 24 hours postoperatively (T3).

RESULTS
In both groups, levels of CRP and IL-6 were significantly increased at T3 compared to those achieved at T1. Changes in the levels of TNF-α in both groups were similar. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of the changes within the levels of the studied markers at the respective time intervals.

CONCLUSION
According to our study results, SIRs developing after TKA performed under general or spinal anesthesia are similar.


One of the major unutilized by-products of cocoa is cocoa mucilage (pulp). Cocoa pulp can be fortified with nutrients such as vitamins from other sources or the juice can be blended with other fruit juices from fruits such as pineapple that are good sources of vitamins. The objective of this study is to produce Cocoa pulp beverage supplemented with pineapple juice. Cocoa Pulp (CP) was used to replace Pineapple juice (PJ) at 0, 50, 60 70, 80, 90 and 100% levels. The nutritional and sensory properties of the CP+PJ beverages were evaluated. The CP beverage contained increasing levels of calcium, iron, fat and phosphorus with increased levels of CP in the blend but lower amounts of protein, carbohydrates and vitamin C than the PJ. In the CP+PJ blends there were not any significantly effect on the pH, ash and crude fiber contents. However, Titratable Acidity increased from 5.43 to 5.92%. Of all the blends, the 50% PJ mixture received the best evaluation from panelists-higher sensory ratings-next to the 100% PJ that was the best performer in the tests. Incorporation of cocoa pulp in the new beverages added value to the cocoa by-product and offers new options of easy, convenient and highly nutritive beverages for children and adult at the local level.


This paper presents the situation of the agricultural labour employment and evaluates the agricultural labour productivity in Hungary. Since Hungary's EU accession, the share of agricultural employment in the total employed population has been stabilized at around 5% in the country. Due to low wages, low profit and low prestige, agricultural jobs are not attractive. The gross and net labour productivity gap between Hungary and the EU have been significant since the EU accession. The agricultural labour productivity of the Hungarian regions also shows a different picture. The labour productivity influences the cost, profitability and competitiveness of products. The advantage of the cheap labour force in Hungary's agriculture significantly decreased due to low labour productivity. There are several opportunities to increase the agricultural labour productivity such as the increase of labour force qualification, moving toward producing higher value added agri-food products, rejuvenation of population in agriculture and the improvement of the conditions of financing agriculture.


This dissertation is concerned with the understanding of physico-chemical properties of energetic materials (EMs). Recently, a substantial amount of work has been directed towards calculations of equations of state and structural changes upon compression of existing EMs, as well as elucidating the underlying chemistry of initiation in detonating EMs. This work contributes to this e ort by 1) predicting equations of state and thermo-physical properties of EMs, 2) predicting new phases of novel EMs, and 3) examining the initial stages of chemistry that result in detonation in EMs. The motivation for the rst thrust, is to provide thermodynamic properties as input parameters for mesoscale modeling. Such properties are urgently sought for a wide range of temperatures and pressures, and are often di cult or even impossible to obtain from experiment. However, thermo-physical properties are obtained by calculating structural properties and vibration spectra using density function theory and employing the quasi-harmonic approximation. The second thrust is directed towards the prediction and investigation of novel polymorphs of known azide compounds to identify precursor materials for synthesis of polymeric nitrogen EMs. Structural searches are used to identify new polymorphs, while theoretical Raman spectra for these polymorphs are calculated to aid experimentalists in identifying the appearance of these azide compounds under high pressure. The nal thrust is concerned with elucidating the initial chemical events that lead to detonation through hypervelocity collision simulations using rst-principles molecular dynamics. The chemical mechanisms of initiation are determined from the atomic trajectory data, while heats of reaction are calculated to quantify energy trends of chemical transformations. vi


Recently, there has been an increased demand for power harvesting as a source of providing
renewable energy. One of the most promising technologies due to their high power densities are
piezoelectric devices, harvesting vibrational energy. There has been extensive research done in the
area of energy harvesting using smart materials. However, the majority of this work is dedicated to
the application of one type of smart material, such as piezoelectric or shape memory alloy. The aim of
this paper is to develop a completely novel concept of a hybrid device combining piezoelectric and
shape-memory alloy effects. The resulting device has a strong potential for miniaturisation and
practical biomedical applications in environments characterised by thermal fluctuations. Both finite
element and analytical models were developed to describe the dynamic behaviour of this innovative
device. Both models predicted parametric behaviour for an input frequency of 988 Hz. Performance
of the device was comparable to existing energy harvesting devices. The limitations and benefits of
each modelling approach are also discussed.


For short-reach applications, 40-Gb/s directly modulated semiconductor lasers enable high-capacity transmission with a simple and low-cost configuration. We investigated the chirp characteristics of 40-Gb/s directly modulated 1.55-/spl mu/m distributed-feedback laser diodes (DFB-LDs) and measured the linewidth enhancement factor and dynamic chirp. We then evaluated the fiber-dispersion dependence of the bit error rates (BERs) and dispersion tolerance for 40-Gb/s transmissions.


The paper makes an assessment of the progress made in developing local debt markets in emerging Asia. Market development has been limited by hurdles confronting borrowers and lenders, current and potential liquidity providers, and insufficient support from government policies and regulations. Besides fostering a credit culture to deepen local debt markets, the issue of critical size can be addressed through an integrated regional market for local currency bonds that provides greater scale, efficiency, and access. With rapid economic growth in Asia, a key challenge is to generate financial assets that can provide the underlying collateral for expanding fixed-income markets, and hence domestic and regional investment opportunities.


CRTC2 participates in transcriptional responses required for ER stress responses and gluconeogenesis. CRTC2 [CREB (cAMP response element–binding protein)–regulated transcription coactivator 2; also known as TORC2] binds to the transcription factor CREB to modulate hepatic gluconeogenesis. Wang et al. found that treatment of primary hepatocytes with thapsigargin or tunicamycin to induce ER stress promoted activation of CRTC2, as assessed by dephosphorylation and nuclear translocation. However, these treatments inhibited a luciferase reporter (CRE-luc) that detects CREB-CRTC2 activity. A proteomic screen identified ATF6α (activating transcription factor 6α), a transcription factor that translocates from the ER to the nucleus during ER stress, as a binding partner for CRTC2. In thapsigargin- or tunicamycin-treated hepatocytes, CRTC2 and ATF6α were detected on the promoter of Xbp1 (X-box binding protein 1), a gene that encodes a transcription factor induced by ER stress. Furthermore, tunicamycin injection into mice increased hepatic activity of a luciferase reporter for XBP1 (XBP1-luc) and transcription of ER stress–induced genes, including Xbp1; these effects were enhanced by CRTC2 overexpression and reduced by RNA interference directed against CRTC2. Because the binding sites for ATF6α and CREB on CRTC2 overlapped, the authors investigated whether ATF6α competes with CREB for CRTC2. Overexpression in hepatocytes of an ATF6α mutant that was constitutively localized to the nucleus (ATF6-N) reduced association of CRTC2 with CREB, recruitment of CRTC2 to the glucose-6-phosphatase promoter (a CREB target gene), and gluconeogenesis (as measured by glucose production). During extended periods of ER stress, which occur in obesity, ATF6α is degraded, an event that would be expected to impair ER stress responses while enhancing gluconeogenesis. Accordingly, obese mice, whether because of genetic engineering (db/db) or high-fat diets, showed reduced XBP1-luc reporter activity in combination with increased CRE-luc activity and blood glucose concentrations compared with lean mice; these differences were decreased by ATF6-N overexpression in either mouse model of obesity. Thus, CRTC2 appears to act as a switch between ER stress responses and gluconeogenesis, and the balance between these two states is disrupted in obesity. Y. Wang, L. Vera, W. H. Fischer, M. Montminy, The CREB coactivator CRTC2 links hepatic ER stress and fasting gluconeogenesis. Nature 460, 534–537 (2009).[PubMed]


The definition, diagnosis and classification of Diabetes Mellitus and its complications are very important. First of all, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other societies, as well as scientists have done lots of studies regarding this subject. One of the most important research interests of this subject is the computer supported decision systems for diagnosing diabetes. In such systems, Artificial Intelligence techniques are often used for several disease diagnostics to streamline the diagnostic process in daily routine and avoid misdiagnosis. In this study, a diabetes diagnosis system, which is formed via both Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Cognitive Development Optimization Algorithm (CoDOA) has been proposed. Along the training of SVM, CoDOA was used for determining the sigma parameter of the Gauss (RBF) kernel function, and eventually, a classification process was made over the diabetes data set, which is related to Pima Indians. The proposed approach offers an alternative solution to the field of Artificial Intelligence-based diabetes diagnosis, and contributes to the related literature on diagnosis processes.


The third edition of Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy was written to enhance the reader's understanding of the cutting-edge technology of Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy. It is designed to both update old readers and inform new readers about the complexities and details of clinical management. This completely updated edition provides a step-by-step, practical approach to the use of IMRT in the evaluation and treatment of cancer patients. Because of IMRT's ability to employ individually controlled beamlets, it is an extremely promising technique, especially when paired with CT, PET, and/or MRI. With these improved procedures, doctors and clinicians will be able to take high resolution images of tumors while minimizing dosages to surrounding tissue. In order to focus on the most up to date IMRT techniques, the introductory chapters have been condensed to provide a brief overview of IMRT physics, mechanics and quality assurance, and also CT and MR imaging. To help assist in clinical decision-making it provides the reader with more than 700 full-color illustrations, IMRT tables and clear, straightforward descriptions that address a range of tumor types and sites including head and neck, urinary, and gynecologic cancers. FEATURES * Anatomy and anatomical imagingsupports your understanding of IMRT and its advantages * Over 700 high-quality, full-color illustrationsto assist in clinical decision-making and over 90 new patient treatment graphics, updated in full-color * New chapters on anatomy and normal tissue complications, CNS, pancreas, rectum, and anal cavity * A new chapter on molecular imaging, focusing on new PET tracers for image-guided therapy * Updated with new clinical data; review of current IMRT literature summarized in tables * Includes clinical indications, image interpretation, target delineation, and plan optimization to help refine techniques, pinpoint treatment areas, and improve outcomes * New Chapters on pancreatic, rectal, and anal canal cancers included, with a focus on IMRT's treatment of these diseases * Chapters on breast and gynecological cancer are completely rewritten to include pertinent information on technique and application


Abstract A new burnup calculation method, called the projected predictor-corrector (PPC) method, is proposed. In comparison with the conventional predictor-corrector (PC) method, a larger time-step size can be used in burnup calculation without losing calculational accuracy. The PPC method is especially useful for Gd-bearing fuel assemblies, for which a fine time step size is necessary in burnup calculations. The PPC method utilizes a correlation between the number density and the reaction rate in each burnable nuclide and improves the accuracy of the microscopic reaction rate in the corrector step by estimating the "projected" reaction rate. The additional computation time for the PPC method is negligible. Verification calculations are performed for 17 × 17 pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies with 16 Gd-bearing fuel rods. The content of Gd in Gd-bearing fuel rods is set to be 2 to 10 wt%. The calculation results indicate that the PPC method shows comparable accuracy to conventional PC methods whose step time size is about half; i.e., the number of burnup steps in the PPC method can be reduced to about half of that in the conventional PC method.


We study the mergeability of data summaries. Informally speaking, mergeability requires that, given two summaries on two data sets, there is a way to merge the two summaries into a single summary on the union of the two data sets, while preserving the error and size guarantees. This property means that the summaries can be merged in a way like other algebraic operators such as sum and max, which is especially useful for computing summaries on massive distributed data. Several data summaries are trivially mergeable by construction, most notably all the sketches that are linear functions of the data sets. But some other fundamental ones like those for heavy hitters and quantiles, are not (known to be) mergeable. In this paper, we demonstrate that these summaries are indeed mergeable or can be made mergeable after appropriate modifications. Specifically, we show that for ε-approximate heavy hitters, there is a deterministic mergeable summary of size O(1/ε) for ε-approximate quantiles, there is a deterministic summary of size O(1 over ε log(εn))that has a restricted form of mergeability, and a randomized one of size O(1 over ε log 3/21 over ε) with full mergeability. We also extend our results to geometric summaries such as ε-approximations and εkernels.
 We also achieve two results of independent interest: (1) we provide the best known randomized streaming bound for ε-approximate quantiles that depends only on ε, of size O(1 over ε log 3/21 over ε, and (2) we demonstrate that the MG and the SpaceSaving summaries for heavy hitters are isomorphic.


In the last ten years, the tourist flow to the Syracuse coast in Sicily has increased, implementing a process of false economic development. This phenomenon produced the collapse of the weak infrastructures network. The south-eastern Sicilian coastal band, in particular, has been spoiled by high human pressure and uncontrolled building activity, due to seasonal tourist flows. The research starts from the analysis of a pilot-case, the coastal village of Marzamemi, in the Pachino area, in order to point out guidelines for sustainable interventions aimed to enhance the natural and architectural resources. Marzamemi is a village developed around an Arab tuna factory built in the XI Century. Massive urbanization phenomena separated the Bog's area ("Pantano Marzamemi" Site of Community Importance) from the sea, modifying the salina's ecosystem. The present study aims at environmental requalification through the recovery of the original bog and the integration of the natural and human components of the site, in order to restore a balance in the local ecosystem. The conservation of the landscape as well as of the historical and environmental heritage allows the transformation of the site and its integration with the main tourist routes in Sicily to be carried out. The research is intended to pursue new operating tools to manage and monitor architectural, natural and environmental resources, as well as to help start processes for conservation, exploitation and sustainable development of the whole coastal village.


Collision Analysis at 60-GHz mmWave Mesh Networks: The Case With Blockage and Shadowing Kangjia Lyu This thesis can be viewed as two parts. The first part focuses on performance analysis of millimeter wave (mmWave) communications. We investigate how the interference behaves in the outdoor mesh network operating at 60-GHz when blockage and shadowing are present using the probability of collision as a metric, under both the protocol model and the physical model. In contrast with results reported in mmWave mesh networks at 60-GHz that advocates that interference has only a marginal effect, our results show that for a short-range link of 100 m, the collision probability gets considerably larger (beyond 0.1) at the signal-to-interference-plusnoise ratio (SINR) of interest (for example, the reference value is chosen as 15 dB for uncoded quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK)). Compensation or compromise should be made in order to maintain a low probability of collision, either by reducing transmitter node density which is to the detriment of the network connectivity, or by switching to a compact linear antenna array with more flat-top elements, which places more stringent requirements in device integration techniques. The second part of this thesis focuses on finding the optimal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) deployment in the sense that it can maximize over specific network connectivity. We have introduced a connectivity measure based on the commonly used network connectivity metric, which is refered to as global soft connectivity. This measure can be easily extended to account for different propagation models, such as Rayleigh fading and Nakagami fading. It can also be modified to incorporate the 5 link state probability and beam alignment errors in highly directional networks. As can be shown, under the line-of-sight (LOS) and Rayleigh fading assumptions, the optimization regarding the global soft connectivity can be expressed as a weighted sum of the square of link distances between the nodes within the network, namely the ground-to-ground links, the UAV-to-UAV links and the ground-to-UAV links. This can be shown to be a quadratically constrained quadratic program (QCQP) problem with non-convex constraints. We have also extended our global connectivity to other types of connectivity criteria: network k-section connectivity and k-connectivity. In all the three cases, we have proposed a heuristic and straightforward way of finding the suboptimal UAV locations. The simulation results have shown that all these methods can improve our network connectivity considerably, which can achieve a gain of up to 30% for a five UAV scenario.


Purpose: We apply positron emission tomography (PET) to elucidate changes in nanocarrier extravasation during the transition from premalignant to malignant cancer, providing insight into the use of imaging to characterize early cancerous lesions and the utility of nanoparticles in early disease. Experimental Design: Albumin and liposomes were labeled with 64Cu (half-life 12.7 hours), and longitudinal PET and CT imaging studies were conducted in a mouse model of ductal carcinoma in situ. A pharmacokinetic model was applied to estimate the tumor vascular volume and permeability. Results: From early time points characterized by disseminated hyperproliferation, the enhanced vascular permeability facilitated lesion detection. During disease progression, the vascular volume fraction increased 1.6-fold and the apparent vascular permeability to albumin and liposomes increased ∼2.5-fold to 6.6 × 10−8 and 1.3 × 10−8 cm/s, respectively, with the accumulation of albumin increasing earlier in the disease process. In the malignant tumor, both tracers reached similar mean intratumoral concentrations of ∼6% ID/cc but the distribution of liposomes was more heterogeneous, ranging from 1% to 18% ID/cc compared with 1% to 9% ID/cc for albumin. The tumor-to-muscle ratio was 17.9 ± 8.1 and 7.1 ± 0.5 for liposomes and albumin, respectively, indicating a more specific delivery of liposomes than with albumin. Conclusions: PET imaging of radiolabeled particles, validated by confocal imaging and histology, detected the transition from premalignant to malignant lesions and effectively quantified the associated changes in vascular permeability. Clin Cancer Res; 17(3); 550–9. ©2010 AACR.


How do we ensure that self-driving cars, nuclear power plants and Internet-of-things devices are safe and reliable? That is the topic of risk management. Fault tree analysis is a very popular technique here, deployed by many institutions like NASA, ESA, Honeywell, Ford, Airbus, the FDA, Toyota, Shell etc. In this presentation, I will elaborate how the deployment of stochastic model checking can improve the capabilities of fault tree analysis, making them more powerful, flexible and efficient, allowing one to analyze a richer variety of questions faster, and thereby increasing their practical relevance and deployment in practical risk assessments. I will report on our experience with the application and validation of these techniques in industrial practice. In particular, I will show how compositionally, model-driven engineering, graph rewriting all helped to crunch industrial cases. Finally, I will present some new directions on the deployment of big data analytics within fault tree analysis.


Impact material, especially magnetizable tiny grains (spherules, globules and platelets) of Barringer Meteor Crater (Arizona) was studied by combined nuclear analytical techniques. The samples were analyzed first by micro-proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and deuteron-induced gamma-ray emission (DIGE) methods. In this way it was possible to determine the distribution of elements down to carbon. Using micro-synchrotron radiation X-ray fluorescence technique (SRXRF) we could determine medium and high atomic number trace elements such as the platinum-group metals. Our methodological developments made it possible for the first time to carry out quantitative analysis for more than 40 elements, providing new perspectives for the interpretation of the impact materials. Various compositions of the findings around the Barringer Crater were compared to analytical data of similar objects found in Carpathian Basin to elucidate their origin. This paper summarizes the more important results obtained by using ion beam microanalytical techniques.


We present an improved version of the Simple Linear Iterative Clustering (SLIC) superpixel segmentation. Unlike SLIC, our algorithm is non-iterative, enforces connectivity from the start, requires lesser memory, and is faster. Relying on the superpixel boundaries obtained using our algorithm, we also present a polygonal partitioning algorithm. We demonstrate that our superpixels as well as the polygonal partitioning are superior to the respective state-of-the-art algorithms on quantitative benchmarks.


The muscle-tendon work performed during locomotion can, in principle, be measured from the mechanical energy of the centre of mass of the whole body and the kinetic energy due to the movements of the body segments relative to the centre of mass of the body. Problems arise when calculating the muscle-tendon work from increases in mechanical energy, largely in correctly attributing these increases either to energy transfer or to muscle-tendon work. In this study, the kinetic and gravitational potential energy of the centre of mass of the whole human body was measured (using a force platform) simultaneously with calculation of the kinetic and potential energy of the body segments due to their movements relative to the body centre of mass (using cinematography) at different speeds of walking and running. Upper and lower boundaries to the total work were determined by including or excluding possible energy transfers between the segments of each limb, between the limbs and between the centre of mass of the body and the limbs. It appears that the muscle-tendon work of locomotion is most accurately measured when energy transfers are only included between segments of the same limb, but not among the limbs or between the limbs and the centre of mass of the whole body.


Background: Reproduction conduction aphasia is a disorder of phonological production characterised by phonological errors occurring particularly with longer words in all tasks requiring spoken output. There have been few previous studies of therapy for subjects with this disorder. Aims: The study investigates the effects of a treatment procedure involving the detection and correction of the errors in speech production with a single subject, MB. We also seek to establish the nature of MB's underlying deficit, and show how it changes as a result of treatment. Methods & Procedures: Treatment effects were investigated in a single case study using multiple baselines over tasks, materials, and time. An in-depth cognitive neuropsychological case study was used to investigate the nature of MB's speech production deficit. Outcomes & Results: MB had impaired naming, repetition, and oral reading particularly with longer words, but good word comprehension. Her errors were primarily phonological, with many repeated attempts ("conduite d'approche"). Production of non-words was less accurate than real words. The treatment improved production in all modalities and across a variety of tasks (including non-word reading). Further analysis of assessment results suggested that MB's impairment was at the level of phonological encoding and that therapy had improved phoneme production across all word positions. Conclusions: Treatment was successful and generalised across items and to connected speech. MB's deficit could be characterised as a difficulty in the process of phoneme retrieval, and this improved as a result of the treatment.


The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami wiped out over 1200 shellfish and ascidian culture long-lines and ~120 salmon farm cages that comprised the entire aquaculture installations in Onagawa Bay, Japan, and severely altered the associated ecosystem. A year later, we launched a coordinated monitoring programme to measure the extent of the damage caused by the disaster and monitor the change in the state of the marine ecosystem. As part of this effort, we conducted multi-seasonal sampling to characterise spatio-temporal variation in benthic macrofaunal community and a range of environmental parameters across Onagawa Bay between March 2012 and January 2018. The 492 total macrofaunal species recorded included Polychaeta (38.8 %), Bivalvia (13.2 %), Amphipoda (10.8 %), Decapoda (9.6 %), Gastropoda (9.3 %) and Echinodermata (4.3 %). At the outermost reference site, macrofaunal abundance, biomass, and species diversity were all consistently high throughout the study period. Inside Onagawa Bay, macrofauna metrics increased steadily from the lowest values at the beginning of the study to the highest over time. During the same period, the spatial extent of aquaculture facilities for long-lines and fish cages recovered steadily to within 60.8 % and 74.8 % of the original state, respectively. The significant variables identified by multivariate analysis to explain spatio-temporal variability in benthic macrofaunal communities were: (1) proximity to the nearest aquaculture facilities; (2) wind fetch length (exposure); (3) sediment grain size; (4) the total area of aquaculture facilities. This study suggests that coastal aquaculture operations may strongly influence the occurrence and distribution of benthic macrofaunal communities and thereby influence the recovery of seafloor biota at ecosystem scales following a catastrophic natural disaster.


Recent shifts in education and labour market policy have resulted in universities being placed under increasing pressure to produce employable graduates. However, contention exists regarding exactly what constitutes employability and which graduate attributes are required to foster employability in tertiary students. This paper argues that in the context of a rapidly changing information‐ and knowledge‐intensive economy, employability involves far more than possession of the generic skills listed by graduate employers as attractive. Rather, for optimal economic and social outcomes, graduates must be able to proactively navigate the world of work and self‐manage the career building process. A model of desirable graduate attributes that acknowledges the importance of self‐management and career building skills to lifelong career management and enhanced employability is presented. Some important considerations for the implementation of effective university career management programs are then outlined.


The recent demonstration that a single mammalian receptor protein binds both mannose 6-phosphate (Man-6-P) and insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II) with high affinity has suggested a multifunctional physiological role for this receptor, possibly including signal transduction. In order to better understand the functions of this receptor, we have investigated the properties of Man-6-P receptors from non-mammalian species. Receptors were affinity-purified from Triton X-100 extracts of total membranes from Xenopus and chicken liver as well as rat placenta using pentamannosyl 6-phosphate-Sepharose. The Man-6-P receptor was adsorbed to the pentamannosyl 6-phosphate-Sepharose and specifically eluted by Man-6-P in all three species, as evaluated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by silver staining. When the purified receptors from these three species were cross-linked to 125I-IGF-II with disuccinimidyl suberate, only receptors isolated from rat membranes were affinity-labeled. To further evaluate the properties of these Man-6-P receptors, binding of 125I-rat-IGF-II and 125I-chicken Tyr-Gly-Thr-Ala-IGF-II to purified receptors from Xenopus, chicken, and rat was evaluated by polyethylene glycol precipitation. Only the rat Man-6-P receptor exhibited detectable binding of 125I-IGF-II. These data suggest that the emergence of a high affinity IGF-II binding site on the Man-6-P receptor occurred in evolution after the divergence of mammals from other vertebrates. Thus, the biological actions of IGF-II in chickens and frogs appear to be initiated by the type I IGF receptor.


The ability of reconfiguring a system during runtime is essential for dynamic real-time applications in which resource usage is traded online for quality of service. The HaRTES switch, which is a modified Ethernet switch, holds this ability for the network resource, and at the same time it provides hard real-time support for both periodic and sporadic traffic. Although the HaRTES switch technologically caters this ability, a protocol to actually perform the dynamic reconfiguration is missing in multi-hop HaRTES networks. In this paper we introduce such a protocol that is compatible with the traffic scheduling method used in the architecture. We prove the correctness of the protocol using a model checking technique. Moreover, we conduct a set of simulation experiments to show the performance of the protocol and we also show that the reconfiguration process is terminated within a bounded time.


The results are reported from a multicentered, randomized clinical trial of a physician-delivered smoking cessation intervention package. All physicians attended a four-hour training session during which the rationales for the different aspects of the intervention were discussed, including a detailed description of the proper use of nicotine-bearing chewing gum. Patients were randomized to receive an offer of a prescription of 2 mg of nicotine chewing gum in addition to the basic intervention (n = 111) or the basic intervention alone (n = 112). The basic intervention included advice, setting a date for quitting, self-help materials, and the offer of supportive follow-up visits. Receptionists were instructed to recruit the first two smokers attending the practice each day. One-year smoking cessation was validated by cotinine saliva analysis. The validated three-month sustained abstinence rates at one year were 8.1 percent and 9.8 percent in the gum and no-gum groups, respectively. The 95 percent confidence interval about this difference was -9.3 percent to 6.4 percent. There is no evidence from this study that the offer of 2 mg of nicotine-bearing gum enhances smoking cessation rates when added to a comprehensive intervention offered to all smokers in primary care. Until larger trials are completed, however, the possibility that this dose of nicotine gum may produce small beneficial effects cannot be excluded.


Data parallel memory systems must maintain a large number of outstanding memory references to fully use increasing DRAM bandwidth in the presence of increasing latency. At the same time, the throughput of modern DRAMs is very sensitive to access pattern's due to the time required to precharge and activate banks and to switch between read and write access. To achieve memory reference parallelism a system may simultaneously issue references from multiple reference threads. Alternatively multiple references from a single thread can be issued in parallel. In this paper, we examine this tradeoff and show that allowing only a single thread to access DRAM at any given time significantly improves performance by increasing the locality of the reference stream and hence reducing precharge/activate operations and read/write turnaround. Simulations of scientific and multimedia applications show that generating multiple references from a single thread gives, on average, 17% better performance than generating references from two parallel threads


Recurring bagworm outbreak is a major problem in the oil palm plantation. The continuous use of chemical insecticides to control bagworm outbreaks, the lack of beneficial plants in the plantation to attract natural enemies, and infestation in neighbouring plantations were reported as the contributing factors for bagworm outbreaks. Hence, the aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of pheromone trapping application for controlling bagworm, Metisa plana in Mukim Chaah smallholdings in Yong Peng, Johor, Malaysia. The installation of pheromone traps at Mukim Chaah smallholdings was carried out at four different locations for two consecutive generations of M. plana. Results showed that the first and second generations of pheromone trapping at Kg Sg Berlian and Kg Sawah Padi, without the aerial spraying of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have successfully reduced 89% and 77% of bagworm population, respectively. Meanwhile, another trapping session conducted at Kg Temehel and Kg Seri Sepakat, together with the aerial spraying of Bt, resulted in the first and second generations of pheromone trapping to successfully reduced 94% and 85% of bagworm population, respectively. Together with the aerial spraying of Bt, the two consecutive generations of pheromone trapping application at two different areas in Mukim Chaah smallholdings successfully reduced bagworm population to manageable levels.


Bushell's Case, 24 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C.P. 1670), established that jurors may not be fined or imprisoned for returning a verdict that conflicts with the judge's assessment of the evidence. Chief Justice John Vaughan's opinion did not defend jury nullification - in fact, the opinion asserted that jurors must follow the judge's directions concerning the law - but the opinion has long been recognized as a crucial resource for those who advocate nullification. Modern defenses of jury nullification that draw on Bushell's Case often point to Vaughan's argument that jurors must be permitted to form their own views because reasonable people may disagree about a witness's credibility or the reliability of the evidence. In the 1680s, however, when Bushell's Case was first being publicly debated, commentators focused primarily on Vaughan's argument that because jurors were chosen from the locality where the crime occurred, they should be presumed to have personal knowledge of the facts of the case. By the late seventeenth century, however, this premise was untenable. This article considers why the "personal knowledge" argument might have been so appealing, despite its implausibility, and examines the process by which that justification for jury nullification gave way to the "independent assessment" argument. In the course of the movement from the first justification to the second one, Bushell's Case began to viewed as supporting the jury's right to find both fact and law - a right that Vaughan had never defended.


Background and aims: Previous research on supported housing for people with serious mental illness focuses primarily on tenant/client experiences. The aim of this article is to present families' perspectives on the role of supported housing in recovery, utilizing the CHIME framework of personal recovery. Method: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 14 families of individuals with serious mental illness living in supported housing. Participants were across five supported housing sites in four Canadian provinces. Results: Families credited supported housing with helping tenants redefine a positive sense of identity, re-establish social relationships and regain control over their lives. Families were less confident about supported housing facilitating future employment or 'full' recovery, focusing on stability rather than continual improvement. Conclusion: This is one of the first studies to report family perspectives on the role of supported housing in their loved one's recovery processes – both strengths and weaknesses.


This paper seeks to understand the peculiarity of the Trudeau government's decision to withdraw Canadian fighter jets from Iraq and Syria. Most studies have focused on electoral turnover to account for early withdrawal from coalition operations. Yet no study offers a plausible explanation for why a centrist challenger, such as Trudeau, favoured early withdrawal despite public support and alliance pressure for continued involvement, and committed when in power to a bolder and riskier mission while withdrawing valued military assets from coalition operations. Building on foreign policy role theory, we argue that role conflict best explains the particularity of the Trudeau government's withdrawal decision. In the wake of the 2015 federal election, the Liberal Party of Canada witnessed an intra-party conflict over which role to perform between that of a faithful ally and a good international citizen. The party leader finally proposed a compromise mission making Canada more involved on the frontlines.


The emerging 5 GHz unlicensed bands in Europe and the US may be used to support short range, high rate links for portable computers. This would overcome the range and directionality limitations of today's infrared connections. This paper investigates the performance of a binary FM link in this application, operating in a dispersive indoor channel. The consequence of increasing the modulation index is explored as a cost free means of multipath mitigation. An increase from 0.5 (MSK) to 1 was found to yield a worthwhile improvement in tolerable delay spread. Increasing the index beyond 1 gave no further improvement but significantly affected the spectral occupancy of the signal. This defines a precise design point for high rate, short range radios.


Abstract. Peat fires in Southeast Asia have become a major annual source of trace gases and particles to the regional–global atmosphere. The assessment of their influence on atmospheric chemistry, climate, air quality, and health has been uncertain partly due to a lack of field measurements of the smoke characteristics. During the strong 2015 El Nino event we deployed a mobile smoke sampling team in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo and made the first, or rare, field measurements of trace gases, aerosol optical properties, and aerosol mass emissions for authentic peat fires burning at various depths in different peat types. This paper reports the trace gas and aerosol measurements obtained by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, whole air sampling, photoacoustic extinctiometers (405 and 870 nm), and a small subset of the data from analyses of particulate filters. The trace gas measurements provide emission factors (EFs; grams of a compound per kilogram biomass burned) for up to  ∼  90 gases, including CO2, CO, CH4, non-methane hydrocarbons up to C10, 15 oxygenated organic compounds, NH3, HCN, NOx, OCS, HCl, etc. The modified combustion efficiency (MCE) of the smoke sources ranged from 0.693 to 0.835 with an average of 0.772 ± 0.053 (n  =  35), indicating essentially pure smoldering combustion, and the emissions were not initially strongly lofted. The major trace gas emissions by mass (EF as g kg−1) were carbon dioxide (1564 ± 77), carbon monoxide (291 ± 49), methane (9.51 ± 4.74), hydrogen cyanide (5.75 ± 1.60), acetic acid (3.89 ± 1.65), ammonia (2.86 ± 1.00), methanol (2.14 ± 1.22), ethane (1.52 ± 0.66), dihydrogen (1.22 ± 1.01), propylene (1.07 ± 0.53), propane (0.989 ± 0.644), ethylene (0.961 ± 0.528), benzene (0.954 ± 0.394), formaldehyde (0.867 ± 0.479), hydroxyacetone (0.860 ± 0.433), furan (0.772 ± 0.035), acetaldehyde (0.697 ± 0.460), and acetone (0.691 ± 0.356). These field data support significant revision of the EFs for CO2 (−8 %), CH4 (−55 %), NH3 (−86 %), CO (+39 %), and other gases compared with widely used recommendations for tropical peat fires based on a lab study of a single sample published in 2003. BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes) are important air toxics and aerosol precursors and were emitted in total at 1.5 ± 0.6 g kg−1. Formaldehyde is probably the air toxic gas most likely to cause local exposures that exceed recommended levels. The field results from Kalimantan were in reasonable agreement with recent lab measurements of smoldering Kalimantan peat for "overlap species," lending importance to the lab finding that burning peat produces large emissions of acetamide, acrolein, methylglyoxal, etc., which were not measurable in the field with the deployed equipment and implying value in continued similar efforts. The aerosol optical data measured include EFs for the scattering and absorption coefficients (EF Bscat and EF Babs, m2 kg−1 fuel burned) and the single scattering albedo (SSA) at 870 and 405 nm, as well as the absorption Angstrom exponents (AAE). By coupling the absorption and co-located trace gas and filter data we estimated black carbon (BC) EFs (g kg−1) and the mass absorption coefficient (MAC, m2 g−1) for the bulk organic carbon (OC) due to brown carbon (BrC). Consistent with the minimal flaming, the emissions of BC were negligible (0.0055 ± 0.0016 g kg−1). Aerosol absorption at 405 nm was  ∼  52 times larger than at 870 nm and BrC contributed  ∼  96 % of the absorption at 405 nm. Average AAE was 4.97 ± 0.65 (range, 4.29–6.23). The average SSA at 405 nm (0.974 ± 0.016) was marginally lower than the average SSA at 870 nm (0.998 ± 0.001). These data facilitate modeling climate-relevant aerosol optical properties across much of the UV/visible spectrum and the high AAE and lower SSA at 405 nm demonstrate the dominance of absorption by the organic aerosol. Comparing the Babs at 405 nm to the simultaneously measured OC mass on filters suggests a low MAC ( ∼  0.1) for the bulk OC, as expected for the low BC/OC ratio in the aerosol. The importance of pyrolysis (at lower MCE), as opposed to glowing (at higher MCE), in producing BrC is seen in the increase of AAE with lower MCE (r2 =  0.65).


This Article uncovers and analyzes an important part of our recent regulatory history, one that provides a key to understanding some of the deeper, hidden causes of the recent financial crisis. It offers an in-depth analysis of an extensive body of regulatory decisions - interpretive letters issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the primary regulator of federally chartered banks - that constitute the primary source of the U.S. commercial banks' legal authority to trade and deal in a wide range of derivative instruments. In these letters, issued between the mid-1980s and the end of 2008, the OCC interpreted an ambiguously phrased central clause in the National Bank Act of 1863, which sets forth activities permissible for national banks, as authorizing derivatives transactions as part of the "business of banking." While legal scholars have thoroughly examined the evolution of the statutory concept of the "business of banking" in the context of banks' attempts to conduct securities, insurance, or real estate activities, to date, the far-reaching regulatory implications of the OCC's interpretive efforts in the derivatives area have gone largely unnoticed. This Article develops a typology of methods the OCC used to interpret the statutory language as permitting banks to engage in an increasingly complex set of derivatives transactions. It argues that, in the course of issuing these interpretations, the OCC gradually formulated an excessively broad definition of the key statutory concept of the "business of banking" as encompassing all types of financial intermediation and dealing in all forms of financial risk. Through the seemingly routine and often non-transparent administrative actions, the agency effectively enabled large U.S. commercial banks to transform themselves from the traditionally conservative deposit-taking and lending institutions into a new breed of financial "super-intermediaries," or wholesale dealers in pure financial risk. By indirectly removing most of the restrictions on activities of commercial banks, the OCC's interpretive efforts had an ironic effect of prolonging the life of an obsolete statute and potentially impeding legislative reforms necessary to bring the regulatory framework in line with the changing business and risk profile of modern financial institutions. Understanding this process and its outcomes provides a more nuanced context for the ongoing debate on the future of financial sector regulation.


The present study was aimed to determine ascorbic acid, total phenolics and antioxidant activity of five local tomato varieties available in fresh markets, namely "Rashinee", "Puang", "Sida", "Tou" and "Cherry", under optimum conditions of 2,6-dichlorophenolindophenol, Folin-Ciocalteu reagent and 2,2-diphenyl-picrylhydrazyl radical methods, respectively. Fresh tomato fruits were homogenized and kept as a freeze-dry powder prior to be extracted with methanol, ethanol and deionized water using ultrasonicator as a green extraction method. It was found that the methanol extracts of these samples gave rather higher antioxidant activities (171.6-197.1 mg BHT/100 g dry weight) and total phenolics (302.3-349.7 mg GAE/100 g dry weight) than those of both ethanol and aqueous extracts. It is evident that the total phenolics contents relate well with its corresponding antioxidant activity for all tomato varieties. However, the ascorbic acid contents (37.6-62.9 mg/100 g dry weight) of the aqueous extract could be cooperated as the synergistically reducing factor.


This paper reports the development and implementation of a collaborative professional experience learning community for a group of nine pre-service secondary mathematics teachers. The preservice teachers and their methods lecturer made 12 school visits over one academic year to a local secondary school. The pre-service teachers observed and co-taught problem-solving lessons in two Year 8 classes. They discussed the lessons with the teacher and the university lecturer, and later posted reflective comments to an online forum. Data from questionnaires, interviews, and reflections indicate that participation in the learning community helped pre-service teachers make stronger links between theory and practice, learn from each other, and become more reflective about problem-solving teaching approaches.


This study describes the seasonal migration patterns of Western High Arctic Brant (WHA, or Grey-belly Brent Geese), Branta bernicla , an admixed population that breeds in the Canadian High Arctic and winters along the Pacific coast of North America. Adult WHA Brant were captured in family groups on Melville Island (75°23'N, 110°50'W) in 2002 and 2005 and marked with satellite platform transmitting terminal (PTT) transmitters or very high frequency (VHF) transmitters. During autumn migration, all PTT-tagged Brant followed a coastal route around Alaska and staged for variable lengths of time at the following sites on the north and west coasts of Alaska: Kasegaluk Lagoon (69°56'N, 162°40'W), Ikpek Lagoon (65°55'N, 167°03'W), and Izembek Lagoon (55°19'N, 162°50'W). Izembek Lagoon was the most important staging area in terms of length of stay (two months on average) and the majority (67–93%) of PTT and VHF detections occurred in Moffet Bay (55°24'N, 162°34'W). After departing Izembek Lagoon, the PTT-tagged geese followed a c. 2,900 km trans-oceanic route to overwinter in the southern part of the Salish Sea (i.e. from north Puget Sound, Washington to south Strait of Georgia, British Columbia; centred at c. 48°45'N, 122°40'W). Most (c. 45%) PTT detections in the southern Salish Sea occurred in Samish Bay (48°36'N, 122°30'W) followed by Padilla Bay (48°30'N, 122°31'W; c. 26%). Brant migrated north from the Salish Sea along the coast to southeast Alaska and then followed either an interior route across the Yukon or a coastal route around Alaska. The "interior" birds staged for c. four days at Liverpool Bay (69°20'N, 133°55'W) in the Northwest Territories before flying on to Melville Island. They also departed the Salish Sea two weeks later than the coastal migrants and arrived at Melville Island two weeks earlier. This study and previous research suggest that WHA Brant use similar migration routes each year and are faithful to their breeding, staging, and wintering grounds. Because WHA Brant constitute one of the smallest breeding stocks in the world (8,000–11,000 individuals), concentrate in only a few areas, and are likely highly site-faithful, they are susceptible to a range of threats such as excessive harvesting, habitat loss and/or degradation, and petroleum spills.


Research in social psychology points to a discontinuity between the individual self and the collective self such that operating at the collective level of identity leads one to be more biased, defensive, and hostile than when operating at the individual level of identity. One area of research where this distinction is particularly apparent is that of identity threat and affirmation theory. Although affirming the self has been shown to reduce individual-level biases in the face of threat, affirming the group in response to a collective-level threat has been shown to accentuate biased tendencies. This may be a result of the inherent inflexibility of the collective self. Unlike self-affirmation, group-affirmation may induce a focus on a specific social identity and activate the psychological attributes (e.g., attitudes, stereotypes, and norms) pertinent to that identity which then guide subsequent thoughts, judgments, motivations, and behaviors. This raises the question, if the collective self is construed in this manner, are there certain contexts in which affirming the group can in fact lead to a reduction in bias and defensiveness in the face of threat? Two potential contexts are addressed in this research: (a) if the threat is to one's individual-level identity (Study 1) and (b) if having unbiased attitudes are a component of the affirmed group's psychological identity (Study 2). Affirming the group did not affect participants' attributional tendencies following a self-threatening task performance. Groupaffirmation did, however, increase positive attitudes towards certain out-groups for lowidentifying group members. Also, unlike affirming the self, affirming the group did not protect participants' self-esteem from either an individual-level threat or a collective-level threat, providing further support for the notion that selfand group-affirmation are distinct processes. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. USING AFFIRMATION THEORY TO FURTHER UNDERSTAND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL SELF AND THE COLLECTIVE SELF


This thesis presents a generic and principled solution for optimising the visual complexity of any arbitrary computer-generated virtual environment (VE). This is performed with the ultimate goal of reducing the inherent latencies of current virtual reality (VR) technology. Effectively, we wish to remove extraneous detail from an environment which the user cannot perceive, and thus modulate the graphical complexity of a VE with little or no perceptual artifacts. The work proceeds by investigating contemporary models and theories of visual perception and then applying these to the field of real-time computer graphics. Subsequently, a technique is devised to assess the perceptual content of a computer-generated image in terms of spatial frequency (c/deg), and a model of contrast sensitivity is formulated to describe a user's ability to perceive detail under various conditions in terms of this metric. This allows us to base the level of detail (LOD) of each object in a VE on a measure of the degree of spatial detail which the user can perceive at any instant (taking into consideration the size of an object, its angular velocity, and the degree to which it exists in the peripheral field). Additionally, a generic polygon simplification framework is presented to complement the use of perceptually modulated LOD. The efficient implementation of this perceptual model is discussed and a prototype system is evaluated through a suite of experiments. These include a number of low-level psychophysical studies (to evaluate the accuracy of the model), a task performance study (to evaluate the effects of the model on the user), and an analysis of system performance gain (to evaluate the effects of the model on the system). The results show that for the test application chosen, the frame rate of the simulation was manifestly improved (by four to five-fold) with no perceivable drop in image fidelity. As a result, users were able to perform the given wayfinding task more proficiently and rapidly. Finally, conclusions are drawn on the application and utility of perceptuallybased optimisations; both in reference to this work, and in the wider context.


Methods based on the electron spin resonance (ESR) phenomenon are used to study paramagnetic systems at temperatures that ranges from 1000 to below 1 K. Commercially available spectrometers achieve spin sensitivities in the order of 10^(10) spins/?Hz at room temperature on sample with volumes in the order of few µl. This results can be improved by cooling the system at cryogenic temperatures, where the larger magnetization of paramagnetic samples cause the detected signal to increase. Furthermore operation at high field (frequency) turns as well in an improved spin sensitivity. For what it concern the spin sensitivity operation at cryogenic temperature and high frequency are thus beneficial. In 2008 the group of Dr. G. Boero proposed a novel detection method based on the integration of all the element responsible for the sensitivity on a single silicon chip. The methodology allowed to study sample with nanoliter scale volume with spin sensitivity that were at least 2 orders of magnitude better than the best commercial spectrometer. The proposed method has performance that are comparable with the one obtained on similar scales with micro-resonator based spectroscopy tool. During this thesis I have investigated the possibility of extending the use of the detection method from frequency that goes from 20 to 200 GHz and temperatures that range from 77 to 4 K. In this frame several domains were touched. First of all the design of CMOS silicon oscillators operating at frequency which are closed to the most modern technology frequency limit. The lack of model valid for the target frequencies and the needs of limiting the power consumption for matching the limited cooling power of cryogenic systems, made the subject a challenging and interesting research topic itself. The study produces a remarkable result of a system operating at about 170 GHz with a power consumption of about 3 mW at room temperature and about 1.5 mW at 4 K. With the realized devices the first measurements of integrated silicon CMOS LC oscillators at temperature below 77 K were performed. From this measurements we could confirm the presence of expected effect, such as minimum power consumption reduction and oscillator frequency increase. In addition to that, by measuring the frequency-bias characteristic, it's been noticed a succession of smooth region and sharp transitions. This jumps are tentatively attributed to the random telegraph signal (RTS) effect that is supposed to be the main responsible for the flicker noise in sub-micrometer MOS devices. Since the impact of RTS on the performance of highly scaled transistor performance is expected to grow with the technology scale down, measurement methods based on LC oscillator, that shows better sensitivity if compared with nowadays employed methods, might allow to better understand the mechanism governing the effect and to develop technological strategy for lowering the impact on the future CMOS technology node. The realized devices have finally demonstrated ESR performances that are comparable with the most recent publication done with miniaturized resonators on mass-limited samples. In fact sensitivity of about 10^(7) spins/?Hz at 50 GHz and 300 K and of about 10^(6) spins/?Hz at 28 GHz and 4 K, at least 3 orders of magnitude better then commercially available state of the art devices, have been proven.


In this paper, we investigate two new candidate transmission schemes, non-orthogonal frequency reuse (NOFR) and beam- hopping (BH). They operate in different domains (frequency and time/space, respectively), and we want to know which domain shows overall best performance. We propose a novel formulation of the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) which allows us to prove the frequency/time duality of these schemes. Further, we propose two novel capacity optimization approaches assuming per-beam SINR constraints in order to use the satellite resources (e.g., power and bandwidth) more efficiently. Moreover, we develop a general methodology to include technological constraints due to realistic implementations, and obtain the main factors that prevent the two technologies dual of each other in practice, and formulate the technological gap between them. The Shannon capacity (upper bound) and current state-of-the-art coding and modulations are analyzed in order to quantify the gap and to evaluate the performance of the two candidate schemes. Simulation results show significant improvements in terms of power gain, spectral efficiency and traffic matching ratio when comparing with conventional systems, which are designed based on uniform bandwidth and power allocation. The results also show that BH system turns out to show a less complex design and performs better than NOFR system specially for non-real time services.


STUDY OBJECTIVE--The aim was to investigate the pattern of age specific non-response bias in a two phase survey of disablement in the community. It seeks to examine patterns of response in different age groups to a household based postal questionnaire, and the implication of such trends for the estimation of prevalence of reported dependence. It also looks at the effect that the readiness to respond during the first phase postal questionnaire had on participation in the interview based second phase of the study. DESIGN AND SETTING--A two stage survey of disablement in the population was undertaken. A first phase postal questionnaire was sent to 25,168 households in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England, to ascertain the prevalence of physical disability. The second phase comprised in depth interviews with a sample of individuals identified in the first phase as being disabled. RESPONDENTS--A total of 21,889 postal questionnaires were returned (87%) representing households containing 42,826 people aged 16 years and over. A disproportionately stratified random sample of 950 respondents reporting disability was taken for the second phase. Of these 891 were still available, and 838 (94%) were interviewed. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS--A study of the timing of response to a postal questionnaire showed that patterns differed for different age groups. The estimated prevalence of those aged 65 years and over who were dependent was steady over time whereas for those in the 16-64 age range the estimated prevalence fell as the survey progressed, indicating a tendency for those who were dependent to respond sooner. Examination of the relationship of responses at phase 1 and phase 2 showed that response to invitation to interview was much less in those who had responded later, and presumably more reluctantly, in the first phase. CONCLUSIONS--These findings raise questions about how different patterns of response might be indicative of bias which could differentially affect final age specific prevalence estimates. They also have methodological implications for the follow up of reluctant responders both to increase the response rate and to secure cooperation in the second phase of a two phase survey.


Abstract We propose a microscopic model of the dominant carbonate for phosphate substitution in fluorapatite. A well-crystallized sedimentary fluorapatite sample containing ~2.3 ± 0.8 wt% of carbonate was investigated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and 13C and 19F magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS NMR). About 75% of the carbonate groups replace the phosphate group ("B-site"), whereas a lesser contribution from carbonate groups located in the structural channels ("A-site") is observed. Beside the dominant 19F NMR signal of channel ions at ~ -102 ppm, an additional signal corresponding to ~8% of fluoride ions is observed at -88 ppm. 19F double quantum-single quantum (DQ-SQ) MAS NMR and 13C{19F} frequency-selective Rotational Echo DOuble Resonance (REDOR) experiments prove that this additional signal corresponds to isolated fluoride ions in the apatite structure, located in close proximity of substituted carbonate groups. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations allow us to propose a composite carbonate-fluoride tetrahedron defect model accounting for these experimental observations. The planar carbonate ion lies in the sloping face of the tetrahedron opposite a fluoride ion occupying the remaining vertex, together replacing the tetrahedral phosphate ion. This "francolite-type" defect leads to a diagnostic narrow IR absorption band at 864 cm-1 that could be used as a guide to, e.g., detect the incipient transformation of fossil bone and teeth samples.


The ProbabilisticRoadMap planner (PRM) has been applied with success to multiple planning problems involving robots with 3 to 16 degrees of freedom (dof) operating in known static environments. This paper describes the planner and reports on experimental and theoretical results related to its performance. PRM computation consists of a preprocessing and a query phase. Preprocessing, which is done only once for a given environment, generates a roadmap of randomly, but properly selected, collision-free configurations (nodes). Planning then connects any given initial and final configurations of the robot to two nodes of the roadmap and computes a path through the roadmap between these two nodes. The planner is able to find paths involving robots with 10 dof in a fraction of a second after relatively short times for preprocessing (a few dozen seconds). Theoretical analysis of the PRM algorithm provides bounds on the number of roadmap nodes needed for solving planning problems in spaces with certain geometric properties. A number of theoretical results are presented in this paper under a unified framework.


Stereoscopic ('3D') devices and content relying on stereopsis are now widely available. However, traditional image editing techniques cannot be directly used to edit stereoscopic media, as extra constraints are needed to ensure consistent changes are made to both left and right images. This paper addresses the problem of manipulating perspective in stereoscopic pairs. We note that a straightforward approach based on depth recovery is unsatisfactory. Instead, our method relies on feature correspondences between stereoscopic image pairs. Given a new, user-specified perspective, we determine correspondence constraints under this perspective, and optimize a 2D warp for each image which preserves straight lines, and guarantees proper stereopsis relative to the new camera. Experiments demonstrate that our method generates new views with suitable stereoscopic output which correspond well to expected projections, for a wide range of specified perspective. Various advanced camera effects, such as dolly zoom and wide angle effects, can also be readily generated for stereoscopic image pairs using our method.


OBJECTIVE
To compare the biomechanical properties and gapping characteristics following loop modification of a 3-loop-pulley (3LP) pattern in an ex vivo canine common calcaneal tendon (CCT) avulsion repair model.

SAMPLE
56 skeletally mature hindlimbs from 28 canine cadavers.

PROCEDURES
The CCTs were randomized to 1 of 4 experimental groups (n = 14/group) then sharply transected at the teno-osseous junction. Groups consisted of a 3LP, 4-loop-pulley (4LP), 5-loop-pulley (5LP), or 6-loop-pulley (6LP) pattern with loops placed 60° apart using size-0 polypropylene. Yield, peak, and failure loads, construct stiffness, loads to produce a 3-mm teno-osseous gap, and failure mode were evaluated and compared between groups.

RESULTS
Yield (P = 0.001), peak (P < 0.001), and failure loads (P < 0.001), construct stiffness (P < 0.001), and loads to 3-mm gap formation (P = 0.005) were all significantly greater for 6LP compared to all other groups. Mode of failure did not differ among groups (P = 0.733) with 75% (42/56) of repairs failing by mechanism of core sutures pulling through the tendinous tissue. Pattern modification by increasing the number of loops increased the repair site strength by 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 times for 4LP, 5LP, and 6LP compared to 3LP, respectively.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Increasing the number of suture loops compared to a traditional 3LP repair is a relatively simple technique modification that significantly increases teno-osseous repair site strength and loads required to cause 3-mm gap formation. The results of this study justify further focused investigation of increasing the number of suture loops in vivo for teno-osseous CCT repair in dogs.


Two isostructural transition metal fluorosulfates based on Co and Ni metal ions with the molecular composition of [H3O][M(SO4)F] (where M = Co(II) for 1 and Ni(II) for 2) were synthesized under solvothermal conditions and structurally characterized by single crystal X-ray analysis. The materials were further characterized by complementary techniques like TGA, FTIR and PXRD. The 3D-crystal lattice consists of a kagome-type entity where sulfate groups replaced one of the metal nodes when compared with true kagome structures. Magnetic studies of the complexes were also performed which showed that the interactions at the metal center are antiferromagnetic in nature. The proton conductivity increases with the increase in humidity and was found to be 7.9 × 10-6 S cm-1 for 2 at RH = 98%.


In this survey paper we have consolidated all the current data mining standards. We have categorized them in to process standards, XML standards, standard APIs, web standards and grid standards and discussed them in considerable detail. We have also designed an application using these standards. We later also analyze the standards their influence on data mining application development and later point out areas in the data mining application development that need to be standardized. We also talk about the trend in the focus areas addressed by these standards. Data Mining Standards ......................................................................................... 1


This paper presents an approach to design a contactless energy-transfer system to supply desktop computer peripherals. Energy is transferred using coreless transformers from an array of primary coils (placed on a table) to one or several secondary coils (placed under the peripheral). Knowing the geometrical structure of the coils of a coreless transformer, accurate calculations allow predicting the power that can be transferred to a load. By applying these calculations to one basic energy-transfer cell, it is then possible to design a whole table that is able to supply many consumers at any location. The main problem with such systems is that the energy transfer is not constant along the surface and may not be even enough to supply an electronic device. This paper proposes several solutions to solve this problem.


Internationalisation of regional development policies – Needs and demands in the Nordic countries. It is commonly argued that European integration has and will continue to present challenges for Nordic regional policy-makers located both inside and outside the Member States of the European Union. More and more Nordic regional actors have concluded that the European Union represents a political and not just a financial resource worthy of greater attention, and many continue to refine how they can get the 'best out of the European Union'. This Report is a detailed 'bottom-up micro-study' of three Nordic regions, and is distinctive in arguing that – by using innovative Regional Action and Fusion approaches – a clearer understanding of the functional activities of regional actors can be gained. The Report, bringing together an international team of researchers, investigates the types and forms of functional activity undertaken by regional actors when handling European Union questions. It also examines the attitudes and future ambitions of regional actors and aims to help them to understand more clearly what they do now, and reflect upon how they might improve in the future. The Fusing Regions? research reveals notable variations in activity among our three regions, combined with evidence in all three cases of a strong desire among regional actors to continue to further harness the benefits of European integration partly as a means to 'bypass' the nation state and to develop closer relations between their respective region and the European Union.


In the two centuries since Mozart's La clemenza di Tito was first performed, and the almost three centuries since Metastasio created the libretto, many rumours, myths and prejudiced opinions have gathered around the work, creating a narrative that Mozart, Mazzola and their contemporaries would scarcely recognise. The essays in this book contribute ideas, facts and images that will draw the twenty-first-century reader closer to the events of Central Europe in the late eighteenth century, and these new facts and ideas will help peel off some of the transmitted accretions that may hinder a modern listener from enjoying and understanding the opera in all its fullness. In this sense the essays present the reappraisal promised in the title. The book is a product of the Performing Premodernity research project, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and based at the department of theatre studies of Stockholm University. Envisioned and edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider and Ruth Tatlow, the five essays by internationally renowned Mozart scholars are preceded by a chronology and a selection of original documents presented in new and revised parallel translations. Praise for Mozart's La clemenza di Tito: A Reappraisal "[The monograph] supplies a wealth of information and thoughts about this opera, which has seldom been treated in such detail. It is a very welcome complement to John A. Rice's 1991 monograph and to Emanuele Senici's 1997 dissertation on the reception of La clemenza di Tito ." "The idea of starting the volume with a documented critical chronology of sources relating to the genesis and reception of the opera is brilliant." — Lorenzo Bianconi, Universita di Bologna


Background and purpose — Due to the relative lack of reports on the medium- to long-term clinical and radiographic results of modular femoral cementless revision, we conducted this study to evaluate the medium- to long-term results of uncemented femoral stem revisions using the modular MRP-TITAN stem with distal diaphyseal fixation in a consecutive patient series. Patients and methods — We retrospectively analyzed 163 femoral stem revisions performed between 1993 and 2001 with a mean follow-up of 10 (5–16) years. Clinical assessment included the Harris hip score (HHS) with reference to comorbidities and femoral defect sizes classified by Charnley and Paprosky. Intraoperative and postoperative complications were analyzed and the failure rate of the MRP stem for any reason was examined. Results — Mean HHS improved up to the last follow-up (37 (SD 24) vs. 79 (SD 19); p < 0.001). 99 cases (61%) had extensive bone defects (Paprosky IIB–III). Radiographic evaluation showed stable stem anchorage in 151 cases (93%) at the last follow-up. 10 implants (6%) failed for various reasons. Neither a breakage of a stem nor loosening of the morse taper junction was recorded. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed a 10-year survival probability of 97% (95% CI: 95–100). Interpretation — This is one of the largest medium- to long-term analyses of cementless modular revision stems with distal diaphyseal anchorage. The modular MRP-TITAN was reliable, with a Kaplan-Meier survival probability of 97% at 10 years.


Many interesting theoretical problems arise from computer networks. In this thesis we will consider three of them: algorithms and data structures for problems involving distances in networks (in particular compact routing schemes, distance labels, and distance oracles), algorithms for wireless capacity and scheduling problems, and algorithms for optimizing iBGP overlays in autonomous systems on the Internet. While at first glance these problems may seem extremely different, they are similar in that they all attempt to look at a previously studied networking problem in new, more realistic frameworks. In other words, they are all as much about new models for old problems as they are about new algorithms. In this thesis we will define these models, design algorithms for them, and prove hardness and impossibility results for these three types of problems.


The persisting drought in Iran, where the livestock are mostly fed by natural pastorlands, has caused a higher rate of sheep slaughter, thus an increase in the supply of meat and a reduction of the price in the Summer 2008. On the other hand, the higher slaughter diminished the available level of the cattle which in turn reduced the production capacity of the following year. This is inherent and unique to this production sector that the production capacity depends on the inventory. This study, based on a modified supply chain dynamic model, indicates that the short term effect of drought is a lower meat price; however, in the coming season a sudden increase in the price should be expected. It can be concluded that using right policies, such as importing provender, could save the hardly recoverable production capacity of the country.