Traceability requires capturing the relations between software artifacts like requirements, architecture and implementation explicitly. Manual discovery and recovery of tracing information by studying documents, architecture documentation and implementation is time-intensive, costly, and may miss important information not found in the analyzed artifacts. Approaches for explicitly capturing traces exist, but either require manual capturing or lack comprehensive tracing to both architecture and implementation. In this paper we present an approach for (semi)automatically capturing traceability relationships from requirements and design decisions to architecture and implementation. Traces are captured in a non-intrusive way during architecture design and implementation. The captured traces are integrated with a semi-formally defined architecture description model and serve as the basis for different kinds of architecture-related activities.


Background Cellular signaling involves a sequence of events from ligand binding to membrane receptors through transcription factors activation and the induction of mRNA expression. The transcriptional-regulatory system plays a pivotal role in the control of gene expression. A novel computational approach to the study of gene regulation circuits is presented here. Methodology Based on the concept of finite state machine, which provides a discrete view of gene regulation, a novel sequential logic model (SLM) is developed to decipher control mechanisms of dynamic transcriptional regulation of gene expressions. The SLM technique is also used to systematically analyze the dynamic function of transcriptional inputs, the dependency and cooperativity, such as synergy effect, among the binding sites with respect to when, how much and how fast the gene of interest is expressed. Principal Findings SLM is verified by a set of well studied expression data on endo16 of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (sea urchin) during the embryonic midgut development. A dynamic regulatory mechanism for endo16 expression controlled by three binding sites, UI, R and Otx is identified and demonstrated to be consistent with experimental findings. Furthermore, we show that during transition from specification to differentiation in wild type endo16 expression profile, SLM reveals three binary activities are not sufficient to explain the transcriptional regulation of endo16 expression and additional activities of binding sites are required. Further analyses suggest detailed mechanism of R switch activity where indirect dependency occurs in between UI activity and R switch during specification to differentiation stage. Conclusions/Significance The sequential logic formalism allows for a simplification of regulation network dynamics going from a continuous to a discrete representation of gene activation in time. In effect our SLM is non-parametric and model-independent, yet providing rich biological insight. The demonstration of the efficacy of this approach in endo16 is a promising step for further application of the proposed method.


In the book of Judges we come across the literary depiction of a corporate body (tribe or a group of tribes) consisting of individuals seeking to survive in the midst of threatening danger. The reader would, therefore, expect to find the literary depiction of Israel's survival being produced by ideal bodies (whole male warriors) in the book, as this reflects Israel's dominant body ideology related to good order. However, contrary to the expected literary depiction, it is the unwhole, different-functioning body, which is depicted as producing survival for the corporate body. This is further emphasised by the fact that the whole, functioning bodies are depicted as jeopardising the survival of the corporate body. The hypothesis of this article is that the paradoxical depiction of bodies in Judges serves as counterculture rhetoric in the form of a hidden polemic to advocate an alternative body ideology of difference. This hidden polemic criticises both the dominant body ideology of the whole body and the idea of good order, which go hand in hand. The alternative ideology proposes that difference is not threatening, but is in fact beneficial to society. Judges 4-5 is used as an example to highlight this counterculture rhetoric in the form of a hidden polemic in the book of Judges. It is of vital importance for the church and biblical scholars to take notice of such hidden polemic in the Bible, especially with reference to body ideology and the treatment of so-called unwhole bodies in society.


Incomplete mixing models have recently been shown to better represent solute transport at junctions of pressurized water systems, compared to a complete mixing assumption. The present work incorporated an incomplete solute mixing model into a methodology for sensor network design. Water quality simulations conducted using both mixing models were carried out to generate pollution matrices that provided the input data for the set covering optimization formulation. Multiple contamination and detection scenarios were simulated by considering both a minimum hazard level of the contaminant and a maximum volume of contaminated water consumed. Examination and comparison of outcomes demonstrated that the water quality solver used may impact sensor network designs in three ways by altering: (i) the minimum number of monitoring stations required for full detection coverage, (ii) the optimal layout of stations over the water network and (iii) the detection domain of some stations.


Objective: To evaluate the therapeutic effect of local steroid injection and prolotherapy on the iliac crest pain syndrome (ICPS) in patients with nonspecific low back pain. Method: 44 patients with ICPS were chosen randomly. The treatment groups were divided into two. The first group received a mixture of triamcinolone and lidocaine. The second received with a mixture of dextrose and lidocaine. The patients in each group were injected once a week over 4 weeks. The effectiveness of treatment was evaluated by a visual analogue scale (VAS), a pressure threshold and patient's life activities with modified Oswestry questionnaire before injection, 30 minutes, 1 week, 4 weeks and 3 months later after injection respectively. Results: VAS, pressure threshold and patient's life activities of two groups were all improved at 30 minutes, 1 week, 1 month and 3 months after injection compared with those of pre-injection, and there was no significant difference between groups. Conclusion: The low back pain on ICPS can be significantly improved by local steroid injection and prolotherapy equally. Therefore, patients with risk of steroid injection could be treated by prolotherapy. (J Korean Acad Rehab Med 2007; 31: 20-24)


A rotor configuration on a graph contains in every vertex an infinite ordered sequence of rotors, each is pointing to a neighbor of the vertex. After sampling a configuration according to some probability measure, a rotor walk is a deterministic process: at each step it chooses the next unused rotor in its current location, and uses it to jump to the neighboring vertex to which it points.
Rotor walks capture many aspects of the expected behavior of simple random walks. However, this similarity breaks down for the property of having an infinite excursion. In this paper we study that question for natural random configuration models on regular trees. Our results suggest that in this context the rotor model behaves like the simple random walk unless it is not "close to" the standard rotor-router model.


"Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you man understand the crises of our age," Ignatius said solemnly. "Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now, that I think about of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books." "You're fantastic." "I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman."


Researchers have long been interested in the characteristics associated with "good" teaching. However, most relevant studies have been conducted in Western contexts. As cultural background has a strong influence on the way good teaching is perceived, it was considered important to explore this issue in the Arab Gulf. The current study sought to compare Omani school students' and teachers' perceptions of the characteristics of good English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in the Omani context. To achieve this, 171 Omani students and 233 English teachers responded to a seven-category, 68-item questionnaire utilizing a 4-point Likert-type response key. Descriptive statistics and t tests were used to determine perceptions of good teacher characteristics and differences between students' and teachers' responses. Results indicate that Omani students and teachers generally agree about the importance of all characteristic categories, with those related to English language proficiency and treating students equally being of special importance. Participants also agreed that knowledge of Western culture/s and the use of technology were relatively unimportant. Implications of these findings for EFL teaching in Oman are discussed.


Objective To determine whether use of metal-on-metal bearing surfaces is associated with an increased risk of a diagnosis of cancer in the early years after total hip replacement and specifically with an increase in malignant melanoma and haematological, prostate, and renal tract cancers. Design Linkage study with multivariable competing risks flexible parametric survival model to examine the incidence of new diagnoses of cancer in patients with metal-on-metal hip replacement compared with those with alternative bearings and to compare the observed incidence of diagnoses in patients undergoing hip replacement with that predicted by national incidence rates in the general population. Setting National Joint Registry of England and Wales (NJR) linked to NHS hospital episode statistics data. Participants 40 576 patients with hip replacement with metal-on-metal bearing surfaces and 248 995 with alternative bearings. Main outcome measures Incidence of all cancers and incidence of malignant melanoma and prostate, renal tract, and haematological cancers. Results The incidence of new diagnoses of cancer was low after hip replacement (1.25% at one year, 95% confidence interval 1.21% to 1.30%) and lower than that predicted from the age and sex matched normal population (1.65%, 1.60% to 1.70%). Compared with alternative bearings, there was no evidence that metal-on-metal bearing surfaces were associated with an increased risk of any cancer diagnosis in the seven years after surgery (mean follow-up of three years, 23% (n=67 361) of patients observed for five years or more). Similarly, there was no increase in the risk of malignant melanoma or haematological, prostate, and renal tract cancers. The adjusted five year incidence of all cancers for men aged 60 was 4.8% (4.4% to 5.3%) with resurfacing, 6.2% (5.7% to 6.7%) with stemmed metal-on-metal, and 6.7% (6.5% to 7.0%) for other bearing surfaces. Equivalent rates for women aged 60 were lower: 3.1% (2.8% to 3.4%) with resurfacing, 4.0% (3.7% to 4.3%) with stemmed metal-on-metal, and 4.4% (4.2% to 4.5%) with other bearings. Conclusions These data are reassuring, but the findings are observational with short follow-up. The use of hospital episode statistics data might underestimate cancer diagnoses, and there is the possibility of confounding by indication. Furthermore, as some cancers have a long latency period it is important that we study the longer term outcomes and continue to investigate the effects of exposure to orthopaedic metals.


A key feature of the 2007-2008 financial crisis is that for some classes of securities trade has ceased. And where trade does occur, it appears that market prices are well below what one might believe to be the intrinsic value for that class of security. This seems to be especially true for those securities where the payoff streams are particularly complex (for example, CDOs). One explanation for this is that information about these securities' intrinsic values is asymmetric, with the current holders having better information than potential buyers. We show how the resulting adverse selection problem can help explain why more complex securities trade at significant discounts to their intrinsic values or do not trade at all. To examine whether asymmetric information alone would suffice to shut down portions of the asset-backed securities (ABS) market, we append a simple "workhorse" model for pricing securities under asymmetric information into a Monte Carlo simulation that generates hypothetical securities backed by residential mortgages. We conduct a type of "stress test" on the ABS by making the distribution of payoffs to the underlying loans worse, and find that the intrinsic values of the securities further down the securitization chain become dispersed in such a way that the market for them may shut down under asymmetric information. We then consider the role for government intervention, and compare the effectiveness of different policies that aim to unclog these markets.


The more recent waves of regionalism in Latin America have been associated, respectively, with structuralist, neo-liberal and post-liberal economic and political experiments in the region. Structuralist realism was inaugurated in the 1950s and somehow survived until the 1970s, open regionalism followed in the 1980s and 1990s, and was replaced, to a certain extent, during the next decade by post-liberal regionalism. However, the limits, if not demise, of post-liberal experiments in the most important economies of Latin America, pose the question of the future of regionalism? In this changing situation, this paper explores several questions that arise about the future of regionalism in Latin America.


Experience has shown that Bluetooth, Wireless LAN (WLAN), Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) and other Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency band wireless technologies developed for office use, have encountered problems when used in critical industrial applications. The development of more reliable wireless solutions requires extensive knowledge of industrial environments with regards to both electromagnetic interference and wave propagation. This study presents the results of the analysis of two important classes of industrial environments having opposite characteristics, one being highly absorbent and the other being highly reflective, with respect to radio wave propagation. The analysis comprises both multipath and path loss characterisation. The results show that wireless solutions with different fundamental properties must be chosen for each of these environments to ensure high reliability. The conclusions of this work can be used as an important reference for further research in this area, as well as the design of new standards and guidelines for selecting wireless solutions in similar industrial environment classes.


Visual Transformers (VTs) are emerging as an architectural paradigm alternative to Convolutional networks (CNNs). Differently from CNNs, VTs can capture global relations between image elements and they potentially have a larger representation capacity. However, the lack of the typical convolutional inductive bias makes these models more data-hungry than common CNNs. In fact, some local properties of the visual domain which are embedded in the CNN architectural design, in VTs should be learned from samples. In this paper, we empirically analyse different VTs, comparing their robustness in a small training-set regime, and we show that, despite having a comparable accuracy when trained on ImageNet, their performance on smaller datasets can be largely different. Moreover, we propose a self-supervised task which can extract additional information from images with only a negligible computational overhead. This task encourages the VTs to learn spatial relations within an image and makes the VT training much more robust when training data are scarce. Our task is used jointly with the standard (supervised) training and it does not depend on specific architectural choices, thus it can be easily plugged in the existing VTs. Using an extensive evaluation with different VTs and datasets, we show that our method can improve (sometimes dramatically) the final accuracy of the VTs. Our code is available at: https://github.com/yhlleo/VTs-Drloc.


Maritime boundaries is very important for a states or country to decide where their right on the ocean but the lack of negotiation to deciding where the maritime boundary between two states or country be the big issues nowadays especially for areas of territorial waters with particular interest to countries claiming rights to the waters such as those on the Southern China Sea demands. In the context of this study it is more about the royalty claims than the underlying states under the Federal Government of Malaysia. Petroleum oil and gas royalty claims for Kelantan and Terengganu waters require strong legal evidence, especially when it involves maritime boundaries. According to Article 3 and 4 in UNCLOS, the countries may claim their 12 nautical miles of territorial sea from base line (low water line) but this act was not effective to the State in Federal Government of Malaysia because the Government of Malaysia is purpose the new act that call as Territorial Sea Act (TSA) 2012 that in section 3(3) mention the State Government only can claim from baseline (low water line) to three nautical miles only. This is very important to Kelantan and Terengganu to get the actual fact about their own boundary between their coast lines adjacent. Thus, the aim of this study is to establish the maritime boundary between the Kelantan and Terengganu in Malaysia. In determining the maritime boundary, the position of the base points for each state should be determined in advance. The position of the base points was determined in this study using two methods. The first method used the outermost seaward base points. This method is used by International Court of Justice (ICJ) in resolving the maritime boundary conflict between coastal countries in dispute. The second method is the scaled distance or equidistance of the base point are set to 100 meters, 200 meters and 300 meters in ensuring the best maritime boundary between the States. Next is the three nautical miles area between State of Terengganu and Federal Government of Malaysia. The purposed of the area in Redang Island already done JUPEM on 1998 but this research will enhance the area and make a comparison which one that more beneficially to the state of Terengganu. Method that has been used for this issue is buffer ring method in ArcGIS software, from that the differences between area of JUPEM and this research will figure out. At the end of the hat, this research will answer the maritime boundary issue between Kelantan and Terengganu and also will figure out the three nautical area between State of Terengganu and Federal Government of Malaysia at Redang Island.


While atypical antipsychotics appear to be effective in reducing depressive symptoms in the acute phase of schizophrenia, little is known about their efficacy in patients with ongoing symptoms. The present study assessed whether quetiapine (Seroquel®) is more effective than haloperidol in treating depressive symptoms in patients with persistent positive symptoms, and investigated whether this effect is independent, or secondary to, reductions in other symptoms such as positive, negative or extrapyramidal symptoms. Patients with schizophrenia and a history of partial refractoriness to conventional antipsychotics who had not responded to 4 weeks of fluphenazine treatment (20 mg/day) were randomized to receive either quetiapine (600 mg/day) or haloperidol (20 mg/day) for a further 8 weeks. Change in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale depression factor score from baseline to endpoint was calculated and path analyses were performed on data from 269 patients. Quetiapine produced a greater reduction in depressive scores than haloperidol (-1.60 versus -0.54; p = 0.006). The path analyses indicated that this was a direct effect on depressive symptoms. These findings extend the evidence for an antidepressant effect for the novel antipsychotics in schizophrenia, and suggest that this is not limited to acutely psychotic patients.


Background Imported malaria has been a great challenge for public health in the State of Qatar due to the large number of immigrant workers come from the Indian subcontinent and Sub-Saharan Africa. Antimalarial drug resistance has emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing malaria control today. Chloroquine (CQ) resistance in Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) is associated with genetic polymorphisms in Pf CQR-transporter (Pfcrt) and Pf multi-drug resistance (Pfmdr-1). Monitoring parasite haplotypes that predict susceptibility to major anti-malarials can guide treatment policies. CQ is used in State of Qatar mainly for treatment of uncomplicated Pf infection and incidence of CQ resistant Pf in Qatar is yet unknown. Thus, present study is conducted to determine the polymorphic regions of CQ drug resistance genes (Pfmdr1-codon86 and Pfcrt-codon76) in imported malaria cases in the State of Qatar. Method During September 2013 to September 2015, a total of 325 (79 Pf and 246 P. vivax) microscopically positive uncomplicated malaria samples were collected from Emergency Room, Al-Khor General Hospital and Hamad General Hospital, HMC, Qatar and confirmed by molecular assay. Nested-PCR and Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) were used to detect alleles of pfcrt gene (K76T) and pfmdr1 gene (N86Y). Result Out of 79 uncomplicated malaria cases, the majority of patients were from East and West Africa followed by Indian Sub-continent and Central Africa. Molecular genotyping at codon 86 of the pfmdr1 gene showed that 60.7% harboured wild/susceptible allele (N86), 26.6% mutant/resistant (Y86) and 11.4% had mixed alleles (N86Y). However, the prevalence of Pfcrt mutant allele (T76), wild type (K76) and mixed alleles (T76K) was 72.1%, 22.8% and 5% respectively. Conclusion Molecular surveillance strategy based on imported malaria cases can be used to detect and track drug-resistant malaria. The data presented here might be helpful for enrichment of molecular surveillance of antimalarial resistance and will be useful for developing and updating antimalarial guidance for non-immune imported cases in State of Qatar.


Background: Food insecurity has important social and health consequences for affected individuals and households. We sought to measure one aspect of food insecurity—household hunger—and evaluated its possible association with household morbidity and mortality.
Methods: We analyzed data from the final two rounds of a repeat cross-sectional, population-based survey conducted in Lusaka Zambia (May and August 2011). Using the Household Hunger Scale, we categorized participating households into three groups using established convention in the public health literature: little to no hunger, moderate hunger, and severe hunger. We used multilevel logistic regression to investigate associations between household hunger and the following morbidities, adjusting for individual, household, and cluster characteristics: malaria, persistent cough, tuberculosis, diarrhea, hospitalization, and death.
Results: Overall, 90.0%, (95%CI: 88.1–91.7%) participating households were considered to have little to no household hunger; 9.8% (95%CI: 8.2–11.6%) reported moderate household hunger; and 0.2% (95%CI: 0.1–0.4%) reported severe household hunger. Marital status, functional status, education, employment, household member requiring nursing care, and household wealth index were associated with all levels of hunger. Adjusted for individual and household characteristics and sampling cluster, hunger was associated with malaria (OR:1.29, 95%CI:1.03–1.63 [mild] and OR:3.68, 95% CI:1.76 –13.74 [severe]), persistent cough   (OR:1.64,   95%CI:1.13–2.38 [mild]),
tuberculosis (OR:2.24, 95%CI:1.45–3.46 [mild], OR:6.06;   95%CI:1.56–23.57   [severe]), and
hospitalization (OR:1.95; 95%CI:1.38–2.76 [mild]; OR:5.52; 95%CI:1.78-17.16 [severe]).Household hunger was not associated with death (p>0.05).
Conclusions: Household hunger was associated with a number of adverse health outcomes. Although further studies are needed, our findings suggest that programs to alleviate household hunger—an important aspect of food insecurity—could lead to measurable public health impacts.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
DHS Demographic and Health Survey
HFIAS Household Food Insecurity Access Scale HHS Household Hunger Scale
HOH Head of household


There is no doubt that Jean-Francois Lyotard consistently gives an important philosophical role to aesthetic works. Towards the end of his career, the primacy of aesthetical thinking persists in the way in which he compares the political experience to an instance of the sublime. Because of his focus on aesthetics, particularly the sublime, the relation between his aesthetic thought and his political thought is often misunderstood. Lyotard's turn to reflective judgment and aesthetical thought has been interpreted as a turn away from ethics and political responsibility through an aesthetization of politics. For example, Claude Piche accuses Lyotard of turning politics into an object of aesthetic creation guided by the artistic genius who creates the political realm. Piche argues that Lyotard reduces politics to aesthetics, which leaves "fragmentation" and "particularism" as the only topics left for philosophy ("The Philosopher Artist," 158). In this essay, I will examine the complexities surrounding the intersection between aesthetics and politics in Lyotard's later work to see in what ways aesthetical thought assists politics and in what ways art and politics are different from one another. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I will argue that ultimately, Lyotard does not advocate an aesthetic form of politics, even though his reasons for why this is the case need further development and are curiously left unexamined in detail. The Differend Throughout his career, so many of Lyotard's works focus on aesthetical issues, that it would be impossible to recount the various descriptions and roles given to aesthetic experience. For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on the sublime and its relation to politics in the instance of the Differend because it is this relation that is most relevant to politics. For Lyotard, politics concerns the Differend which arises in the face of a dispute between phrase genres. Examples of phrase genres are the speculative genre, the ethical genre, the cognitive genre, the logical genre, the nominative genre, and the ostensive genre, but there are many more in addition to these.1 Phrase genres function teleologically and focus on attaining certain ends, like to know, or to be just, but the genres cannot be adequately translated into one another because the goal of each genre is different. Lyotard does not believe there is a hierarchy between language genres and therefore no particular genre can assert its authority over all the others. This makes the question of linking onto a phrase difficult, because there is not a universal genre that can settle cases of dispute. Lyotard defines the Differend as the "case of conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments" (D, xi, 9). With the Differend, a wrong takes place which cannot be compensated or repaired because there is no acceptable idiom in which this could occur. A wrong [tort], for Lyotard, is "a damage [Dommage] accompanied by the loss of the means to prove the damage" (D, 5, 18). A wrong is different from litigation, because in litigation, the existence of damage can be established according to the rules of a particular language genre. In the case of a Differend, at least two genres that seek different aims are battling for the power to settle the dispute. An offense [l'offense] occurs because one genre prevails through the usurpation of the authority of another genre (D, 84, 128). As Bill Readings describes it, what the Differend requires is not a re-trial, but "an as yet unthinkable tribunal" which would acknowledge an entirely new idiom (Introducing Lyotard, 124). Ultimately, what is contested in a Differend is the authority of the idiom that seeks to regulate and establish reality. The Differend cannot be eliminated for good, because Differends will always arise. However, one can bear witness to Differends, and even strain to hear their call. …


The analysis of palaeoclimate time series is usually affected by severe methodological problems, resulting primarily from non-equidistant sampling and uncertain age models. As an alternative to existing methods of time series analysis, in this paper we argue that the statistical properties of recurrence networks – a recently developed approach – are promising candidates for characterising the system's nonlinear dynamics and quantifying structural changes in its reconstructed phase space as time evolves. In a first order approximation, the results of recurrence network analysis are invariant to changes in the age model and are not directly affected by non-equidistant sampling of the data. Specifically, we investigate the behaviour of recurrence network measures for both paradigmatic model systems with non-stationary parameters and four marine records of long-term palaeoclimate variations. We show that the obtained results are qualitatively robust under changes of the relevant parameters of our method, including detrending, size of the running window used for analysis, and embedding delay. We demonstrate that recurrence network analysis is able to detect relevant regime shifts in synthetic data as well as in problematic geoscientific time series. This suggests its application as a general exploratory tool of time series analysis complementing existing methods.


In the Egyptian Oracle, we project a simulation of an ancient temple onto a large projection screen. (See http://publicvr.org/egypt/oracle/shortvid.html.) We create the illusion of a contiguous space by matching the scale of virtual and physical objects. In the live performance, actors in front of the screen interact with human-operated avatar actors in the virtual space. As with any dramatic production, music, sound, and dialogue are a large part of the experience. Our goal is to create a unified aural space that extends from the physical through the virtual to encompass the entire performance. We use commodity electronics to produce an elegant affordable solution, which produces an impressive dramatic effect. We also confront fundamental issues typical of performances of this type, pointing the way to more advanced auditory solutions for interactive mixed reality spaces. This project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the code is free to the public as open source.


This article discusses the results of research investigating the effect of metacognitive strategy training on the reading comprehension and metacognitive knowledge of Polish intermediate learners of English as a foreign language. Results of a pretest and posttest questionnaire and a reading comprehension test administered to both an experimental and a control group of students suggest that students who were taught to apply self-regulatory strategies while performing a task related to reading could enhance their metacognitive knowledge of themselves as readers, their perceptions of the reading process and reading strategies, and their motivation as well as self-evaluation of reading skills. With respect to the students' reading comprehension, a comparison of the effect of the training on students at two levels of language competence indicates that the training was more effective for the less proficient students. The study points to the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training for students at an intermediate level of language proficiency. It also stresses the significance of learners' beliefs concerning reading and underscores the role of metacognition in developing reading skills.


Because liturgy also is ritual and rite through which patterns of linguistic, homiletic, musical, and embodied practices are repeated over time and by which Christian persons are formed, we must pay close attention to the subtle ways in which the "liturgy of supersessionism" persists in our churches. To this end, this article explores questions about the Christian use of the Tetragrammaton in prayer and song; the distinction, or lack thereof, between Sabbath and Sunday; the relationship between the dating of Easter and Passover; and the ways in which Christian prayer and song portray the relationship between Israel and the Church.


As a response to the increase in selective attention and to the changing marketing landscape, a marketing trend has emerged whereby marketers have acknowledged the importance of moving from selling to helping the consumer. This trend is called content marketing, and although it is growing in importance, there is a lack of research within the field as existing literature merely aims to explain what it is, and thus, does not create an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon in relation to the consumer. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the consumption of content is intertwined with the consumers' consumption practices. The study is of a qualitative nature, whereby a single case study of the Swedish grocery retailer ICA was performed, and primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Further, the study explored the phenomenon through the application of the Uses and Gratifications theory and the Practice Theory, in order to analyse how various content forms are used and whether these assist in the consumers' consumption practices. The findings revealed that the consumers' obtain three gratifications through ICA's content marketing efforts, and that the choice of content is affected by mediating factors. Further, three main components derived from the Practice Theory are identified as important parts of the consumers' consumption practices within this study. It was also identified that these components are intertwined with the gratifications sought and obtained. Thus, the study arrived at the conclusion that this intertwining is what determines how ICA's content marketing efforts assist in the consumer's consumption practices.


The objective of this doctoral study is to develop and demonstrate a theoretical framework to guide both the analysis and composition of twenty-first-century film music. The compositional portfolio submitted as part of this thesis includes scores for nine short films and for a feature-length docudrama. The thesis is based on analysis of twenty feature film scores by Alexandre Desplat (b. 1961), with particular attention to two: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Studying one composer's output enables the observation of a compositional voice articulated across multiple film genres. Desplat's work has proven a relevant and worthy subject, because the films he has scored exemplify a wide variety of styles and approaches, including skilful integration of past styles and current trends.  The theoretical framework I use to discuss both Desplat's film music and my own, draws together selected concepts from semiotics, metaphor theory, narratology, and harmonic analysis, especially transformational theory. I use the framework to explore how musical objects – such as modes, chords, and their transformations through time – might act as symbols, icons, or metaphors for one or more elements of the narrative – such as a setting, character, characters' emotions, events, or the attitude of the cinematic narrator. It is argued that this combination of ideas provides a suitable framework – useful in both composition and analysis – for understanding how music might expressively contribute to filmic narratives.  It is argued that Neo-Riemannian triadic transformations – in Desplat's work and mine, at least – are often most usefully considered in relation to the scales and modes that they articulate, transform, and/or subvert. This is a point of difference from other recent transformational analysis of film music. Although my analyses focus primarily on pitchbased features, I also consider how these elements accrue meaning in their interactions with other musical features, such as tempo and orchestration.


In randomized controlled trials, it is common for attrition rates to differ by lottery status, jeopardizing the identification of causal effects. Inverse probability weighting methods (Hirano et al, 2003; Busso et al., 2014) and estimation of informative bounds for the treatment effects (e.g. Lee, 2009; Angrist et al., 2006) have been used frequently to deal with differential attrition bias. This paper studies the performance of various methods by comparing the results using two datasets: a district-sourced dataset subject to considerable differential attrition, and an expanded state-sourced dataset with much less attrition, differential and overall. We compared the performance of different methods to correct for differential attrition in the district dataset, as well as we conducted simulation analyses to assess the sensitivity of bounding methods to their underlying assumptions. In our application, methods to correct differential attrition induced bias, whereas the unadjusted district level results were closer and more substantively similar to the estimated effects in the benchmark state dataset. Our simulation exercises showed that even small deviations from the underlying assumptions in bounding methods proposed by Angrist et al. (2006) increased bias in the estimates. In practice, researchers often do not have enough information to verify the extent to which these underlying assumptions are met, so we recommend using these methods with caution.


How far is the European Union a vehicle for inclusion and empowerment of a new range of policy actors in education? This article explores the role of actors in policy formation through a case study. It examines European Union attempts since 2000 to develop indicators of 'active citizenship' and 'education and training for active citizenship'. It is based on two main sources: policy documents on the development of indicators and benchmarks; and a case study of an exercise (2005–07) to develop such indicators, initiated by the European Commission's Directorate General for Education and Culture. It shows that policy actors have attempted to take advantage of the Open Method of Coordination, often seen as a neo-liberal control mechanism, to ensure that citizenship remains on the policy agenda.


Activated human mononuclear cells (MCs) were coincubated for 8 h with HIT cells, a clonal cell line of pancreatic islet β-cells. Measurements of HIT cell viability and insulin secretion were determined to 1) ascertain whether activated MCs can alter β-cells viability in the absence of exogenously provided cytokines, 2) examine this response over a range of MC–HIT cell ratios, and 3) identify mechanisms responsible for altered insulin release consequent to MC-induced HIT cell damage. HIT cell viability was markedly decreased by activated MCs during an 8-h coincubation. HIT cell lysis could be attributed to activated natural killer cells, and lysis did not occur in the presence of activated T-lymphocyte clones. Activated MCs caused a marked early increase in insulin release from HIT cells (increase at 2 h: 7.75 ± 0.16 nM for activated MCs, 2.66 ± 0.09 nM for control; P < 0.001). Insulin levels by the 8th h of the coincubation were significantly lower than the 2-h peak (4.33 ± 0.13 vs. 7.75 ± 0.16 nM, P < 0.001). These changes in insulin were dependent on the ratio of activated MCs to HIT cells with the effects clearly evident at an activated MC–HIT cell ratio of ≥ 10:1. Pretreatment of activated MCs and HIT cells with prostaglandin-synthesis inhibitors did not prevent the cytotoxic effects of activated MCs on HIT cells. Somatostatin did not inhibit the early exaggerated insulin release, suggesting that these increased insulin levels represented leakage of insulin from damaged HIT cells rather than functional insulin secretion. The decrements in insulin levels during the later stages of the experiments were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography to be caused by degradation of previously released insulin. These studies establish that activated MCs cause HIT cell lysis in the absence of exogenously provided cytokines and that HIT cells can be used as targets to examine the functional consequences of exposing pancreatic islet β-cells to activated MCs.


Objective Autoimmune disorders result from the interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Many autoimmune disorders are associated with specific seasons of birth, implicating a role for environmental determinants in their etiopathology. We investigated if there is an association between the season of birth and the development of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Methods Birth data from 10,913 children with JIA enrolled at 62 Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance Registry sites was compared with 109,066,226 US births from the same period using a chi-square goodness-of-fit test. Season of birth of the JIA cohort was compared to the US population estimate using a 2-sided 1-sample test for a binomial proportion and corrected for multiple comparisons. Secondary analysis was performed for JIA categories, age of onset, and month of birth. Results A greater proportion of children with JIA were born in winter (January–March) compared to the US general population (25.72% vs 24.08%; corrected P < 0.0001). This observation was also true after stratifying for age of onset (≤ or > 6 yrs). When analyzed by the month of birth, a greater proportion of children with JIA were born in January compared to the US population (9.44% vs 8.13%; corrected P < 0.0001). Conclusion Relative to the general population, children with JIA are more often born in the winter, and specifically in the month of January. These observations support the hypothesis that seasonal variations in exposures during the gestational and/or early postnatal periods may contribute to development of JIA.


Abstract Aluminum oxide aerogel can be used as a backlighter target to provide a radiation source for diagnostics during ICF experiments. To demonstrate the feasibility of this type of target, it was necessary to cast thin pieces of aerogel for plasma emission studies of aluminum oxide. We were able to demonstrate density control over a range of 50-400 mg/cc, and, furthermore, cast the aerogel as a thin (0.6-0.7 mm), smooth monolith that did not require additional machining. The fabrication of these targets begins with a solution of aluminum chloride, ethanol, and water and is then catalyzed with propylene oxide to gel within molds to form the shape. Supercritical drying with carbon dioxide provides the dry aerogel. Various target densities were made by adjusting the relative amounts of starting materials and post treatment condition. The finished materials were characterized for density, pore size, and water content. Initial freestanding targets of 98 mg/cc have been fabricated and shot, and other similar targets of densities from 50-400 mg/cc have been fabricated for future experiments.


Quantitative measurement of myocardium perfusion is possible with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) using a semiconductor detector. However, accumulation of 99mTc-tetrofosmin in the liver may make it difficult to assess that accurately in the inferior myocardium. Our idea is to reduce the high accumulation in the liver by using dynamic SPECT imaging and a technique called time subtraction. We evaluated the performance of a new SPECT system with a cadmium-zinc-telluride solid-state semiconductor detector (Discovery NM 530c; GE Healthcare). Our system acquired list-mode raw data over 10 minutes for a typical patient. From the data, ten SPECT images were reconstructed, one for every minute of acquired data. Reconstruction with the semiconductor detector was based on an implementation of a 3-D iterative Bayesian reconstruction algorithm. We studied 20 patients with coronary artery disease (mean age 75.4 ± 12.1 years; range 42-86; 16 males and 4 females). In each subject, 259 MBq of 99mTc-tetrofosmin was injected intravenously. We performed both a phantom and a clinical study using dynamic SPECT. An approximation to a liver-only image is obtained by reconstructing an image from the early projections during which time the liver accumulation dominates (0.5~2.5 minutes SPECT image-5~10 minutes SPECT image). The extracted liver-only image is then subtracted from a later SPECT image that shows both the liver and the myocardial uptake (5~10 minutes SPECT image-liver-only image). The time subtraction of liver was possible in both a phantom and the clinical study. The visualization of the inferior myocardium was improved. In past reports, higher accumulation in the myocardium due to the overlap of the liver is un-diagnosable. Using our time subtraction method, the image quality of the 99mTc-tetorofosmin myocardial SPECT image is considerably improved. Keywords—99mTc-tetrofosmin, dynamic SPECT, time subtraction, semiconductor detector.


Metals such as lead, zinc, copper, aluminum and manganese have been implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders. However, until fairly recently the role of iron in brain function was rather obscure, because little attention was paid to its metabolism in the brain. It is now apparent that maintenance of brain iron homoeostasis is important for the normal functioning of his organ. Most of the studies have been directed towards the cognitive and attentional deficit resulting from nutritional iron deficiency. Evidence so far suggests subsensitivity of striatal dopamine neurotransmission. By contrast the selective increase in free iron in the substantia nigra pars compacta of parkinsonian brains is thought to initiate oxidative stress, from iron-induced liberation of cytotoxic oxygen free radicals. Such radicals are known to promote membrane fluidity, alteration in cellular calcium homoeostasis, lipid peroxidation and finally cell death in systemic organs. Evidence supporting similar processes being responsible for nigrostriatal dopamine neuron degeneration in Parkinson's disease is now becoming available. Such possibilities afford the development of neuroprotective drugs as a means to retard the progression of this disorder. These include other selective monoamine oxidase B inhibitors, iron chelators with the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, selective calcium channel antagonists and mitochondrial electron transport system protectors.


Considering the widespread of Covid-19 and its impact on the population health in Russian regions, it is necessary to examine the impact of the pandemic (as excess mortality) on the regional socio-economic development in 2020. Based on a quantitative and qualitative model, the study explains the process of coronavirus diffusion at the regional level, using information from foreign publications, Russian regional statistics and a database of legal documents «Consultant +». The concept of spatial diffusion, developed in the 1950s-1980s, was chosen as the research methodology. The study methods include a cartographic analysis of the monthly dynamics of coronavirus spread in Russian regions and regression analysis of regional differences in excess mortality regarding the most significant explanatory variables. The developed regression model explains the spread of Covid-19 across Russian regions in 2020, while the proposed qualitative model «network-place-scaling» describes the spatial diffusion of the virus. The conducted analysis confirmed the relationship between the spread of the virus and economic specialisation of regions. Simultaneously, such widely discussed factors as physical density, urbanisation level and per capita income did not show significant correlation with excess mortality. The study revealed the following results. There is a significant discrepancy between the actual situation in Russian regions and expected developments according to the simplified centre-periphery model. The important regression variables, explaining the interregional differences in excess mortality in 2020, include the share of employed in contact-intensive wholesale and retail trade and manufacturing (large production teams); proportion of the population over 65; the number of retail facilities per 1000 people. The qualitative model «network-place-scaling» was deemed suitable for explaining the mechanisms of the spread of coronavirus in Russian regions. Future studies should focus on examining the mechanisms and socio-economic consequences of the pandemic at the municipal level of large cities and urban agglomerations in Russia.


Objective: This study explores the potential contribution of a microbicide's sexually transmitted infection (STI) efficacy in reducing a female sex worker's (FSW) risk of STI and HIV infection. The study then investigates whether the threshold for the reduction in condom use following microbicide introduction that can be tolerated without increasing HIV risk is affected by STI efficacy. Methods: A dynamic model describing the transmission of a bacterial STI between FSW and their clients was coupled with a static HIV model. The model uses data from Cotonou, Benin (1998–9), for illustration, to estimate the change in risk following the introduction of 50% HIV efficacious microbicides of different STI efficacies, used in 50% of sex acts when a condom is not used. The condom migration thresholds were estimated. The degree to which the findings are influenced by STI prevalence was explored. Results: For highly transmissible STI, there is a non-monotonic relationship between STI prevalence and microbicide impact on HIV with the relative reduction in HIV risk first increasing, due to the proportion of HIV risk attributable to the STI increasing, but then decreasing at high prevalences as the STI becomes harder to control. A less transmissible STI can still be impacted upon with a moderate/high STI efficacy microbicide even at high STI prevalences. This relationship is also reflected in the condom migration thresholds. Conclusions: A microbicide's STI efficacy may have a substantial impact on STI and HIV incidence among high-risk groups. The variation in the condom migration thresholds for different STI efficacies and STI prevalences may be difficult to measure accurately.


Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic work, we analyze three population-making technologies (denuncias, biobanks, and bodies) that have emerged as dominant tools both on the part of governments and human rights advocates to capture the missing migrants. We conclude that missing migrants are a Population of Cognition that is both made legible and unknowable through specific technologies and delineations of crisis.


Abstract In recent years several electrical wound management systems, so called electroceuticals, have been introduced claiming an induced electrical response in the wounded tissue. Some have external current and voltage sources while others have internal constructions aiming at creating necessary therapeutic currents. We investigate two representative electroceuticals by mapping out their electrical field landscapes using a previously developed skin model within a numerical simulation scheme. We find very strong fields from the electroceuticals of the order of 1 kV/m amenable for electrotaxic influence on pertinent cell types for wound healing. Current densities can locally be as high as 1 A/cm2.


A large-scale apparatus was designed and built at the University of Wollongong to evaluate the pull-out strength of rail subballast reinforced with geocells. A series of tests were carried out to investigate the pull-out resistance, mobilised tensile strength (ttensile) and passive strength (tpassive) of a subballastgeocell assembly under a given range of overburden pressure (1 kPa < q < 45 kPa). The interface was held in a vertical alignment to better simulate the interaction between subballast and geocell in accordance with routine track practices. The test results show that the geocell reinforcement provides a considerable degree of passive resistance, where the opening area (OA) and lateral pressure (sn) over the geocell strip are found to be influential factors. A three-dimensional finite element simulation was also conducted. The numerical results show that the tensile strength mobilised in the geocell will increase as the geocell stiffness increases, but causes a reduction in tpassive. A parametric study was also developed to investigate the impact of geocell stiffness and friction coefficient on the passive resistance and mobilised tensile strength. These results indicate that the passive resistance and mobilised tensile strength increase with the increase in overburden pressure (q) and friction coefficient (d).


The aim of this experimental study was to evaluate the use of eggshell membrane in the protection of brain tissue from the harmful mechanical effect of metallic microsurgical instruments during neurosurgical interventions. Methods: Thirty uncovered fresh cadaveric cow brains were equally divided into two groups: group with eggshell membrane group (Group I) and without eggshell membrane group (Group II). In Group I, eggshell membrane was sprawled over the left lateral side of the interhemispheric sulcus of the anterior brain surface. The mechanical traumatic effects of the metallic surgical instruments were divided into three groups: minor, moderate and severe. Results: In Group I (n=15), the number of minor injured brains was found to be 12 (80%). In Group II (n=15), the number of minor injured brains was found to be 5 (33.33%). On the contrary, the number of moderately injured brains parenchyma in Group I cow brains was estimated to be 2 (13.33%). However, the number of moderately injured brains in Group II was found to be 9 (60%). The number of severe injury was found to be 1 (6.67%) in Group II. The number of same injury was also found to be 1 (6.67%) in Group I. Conclusion: This study showed that protecting the naked brain tissue from the mechanical injury effect of metallic microsurgical instruments with covering of eggshell membrane is feasible. It is believed that this material might contribute to the practical microneurosurgery in protecting the brain tissue.


Xeroderma Pigmentosum is an autosomal recessive disease caused by alterations in the DNA repairing gene. The clinical manifestation involves extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation and progressive effects in sun exposed areas (skin, mucosa and ocular surface) such as inflammation, sunburn, pigment changes and neoplasia. This disease may be associated with ocular findings such as dry eye syndrome, photophobia, blepharospasm and a number of corneal diseases such as ulceration, perforation and tumors. In this paper, we report the case of a patient with Xeroderma Pigmentosum, accompanied by ocular manifestations and treatment.


The timing properties of the 4.45 s pulsar in the Be X-ray binary system GRO J1750-27 are examined using hard X-ray data from INTEGRAL and Swift during a type II outburst observed during 2008. The orbital parameters of the system are measured and agree well with those found during the last known outburst of the system in 1995. Correcting the effects of the Doppler shifting of the period, due to the orbital motion of the pulsar, leads to the detection of an intrinsic spin-up that is well described by a simple model including P and P terms of -7.5 × 10 -10 s s -1 and 1 × 10 -16 s s -2 , respectively. The model is then used to compare the time-resolved variation of the X-ray flux and intrinsic spin-up against the accretion torque model of Ghosh & Lamb; this finds that GRO J1750-27 is likely located 12-22 kpc distant and that the surface magnetic field of the neutron star is ∼2 x 10 12 G. The shape of the pulse and the pulsed fraction shows different behaviour above and below 20 keV, indicating that the observed pulsations are the convolution of many complex components.


COMMENT I. INTRODUCTION The United States nuclear power industry produced 753.9 billion kWh of electricity in 2000.(1) This made up almost 20% of all energy consumed in the United States that year.2 The U.S. nuclear power industry also produced about 2,000 metric tons of extremely hot, highly radioactive Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF), which added to the approximately 40,000 metric tons already produced through 1999.(3) The question of what to do with this waste has plagued state and federal authorities since the nuclear industry began in the 1950's, and will continue for tens of thousands of years until a solution is found.4 The federal government addressed this issue when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982.(5) Lawmakers concluded that it was the responsibility of the federal government to take and dispose of the SNF at the expense of the various utilities.6 For several years the Utilities poured billions of dollars into this program and maintained smaller onsite storage facilities believing their waste would be transported away in the not-to-distant future, but almost four years after the date disposal was supposed to begin, no SNF has been moved from the Utilities' on-site storage.7 As the SNF disposal program became increasingly behind schedule, the Utilities' problems began to compound. As SNF began to fill up small storage facilities, the Utilities began to realize that at a certain date in the near future their plants would produce more waste than could legally be stored in their facilities, thus forcing the power generation to be halted.8 IMAGE FORMULA4 They also began to wonder if their multi-billion dollar investment into the disposal program would ever pay off. These fears caused the Utilities to file suit against the Department of Energy (DOE). The solution to the question of what to do with SNF is more complicated now than before 1982.(9) The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) is more than a decade behind schedule and the probable results of the Utilities' lawsuits will create more problems than they solve. A. Spent Nuclear Fuel SNF is the byproduct of a controlled nuclear reaction that takes place in a nuclear power plant. Nuclear plants operate by splitting atoms, which causes a great deal of heat.10 Water is pumped through the reactor core to be heated, and then released as steam into a turbine, thus creating electricity. "The fresh fuel rod, which emits relatively little radioactivity, contains uranium that has been slightly enriched in the isotope U-235."11 Eventually, after several years of producing heat, the rods begin to decay and must be removed. By this point, they become very hot and highly radioactive.12 The process of decay comes about: [a]fter nuclear fission has taken place in the reactor, many of the uranium atoms in the fuel rods have been split into a variety of highly radioactive fission products; others have absorbed neutrons to become radioactive plutonium, some of which has also split into fission products. Radioactive gases are also contained in the spent fuel rods.13 This process creates a product that is extremely hot and "remains dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years."14 After these rods are withdrawn from the reactor, they are stored in on-site pools of water to contain radiation and to keep them from overheating.15 The amount of waste stored in these on-site pools has been growing for a number of years.16 The typical large commercial nuclear reactor produces about twenty to thirty metric tons of SNF a year.17 U.S. reactors produce about 2,000 metric tons annually.18 Approximately 40,000 metric tons of SNF is currently stored on-site at seventy plants around the nation.19 "As a result, the total amount of [SNF] is expected to reach 60,000 IMAGE FORMULA10 metric tons by 2010... and almost 80,000 metric tons by 2020. …


Education serves as capital for a society. The educational journey of India during the last six decades after independence has been quite exciting. India is expected to become the global powerhouse of human resource by 2025. In the emerging era of knowledge-driven society, declining workforce and aging population in developed countries, India with its large young population has the opportunity to position itself as a quality source of skilled manpower for the world. The immense scientific, technological and socio-economic development has led to a paradigm shift in the basic objectives of imparting education. While factors such as increasing competition, economic slowdown, poverty, illiteracy, population imbalances and political instability are adding pressures on the policy makers as well as common citizens, the importance of education and especially 'relevant education' is gaining significance as a viable solution to combat these issues in our society. The system is also failed to fulfill market needs, resulting in a curriculum that is of low relevance to employment needs. Commercialization and privatization of education has proceeded, corporatization has been banned, stifling investments in formal university education. Major education reforms are long overdue. Only then can India become a pioneer educational hub, as it once was.


This paper discusses the basis of the difficulty of computer shooting games from the viewpoint of artificial intelligence research and proposes a method for firing enemy characters' bullets so that the enemy looks more intelligent and amusingness of shooting games is improved. In the firing method, the probability of the destruction of the player's fighter is evaluated considering the existence of multiple enemies and previously fired bullets. The performance of the method was examined by experiment using a shooting game developed by the author. The experimental results show that the proposed method is efficient in reducing the variation of actions that make the player's fighter survives without increasing the number of bullets on the game screen.


This paper considers a civil suit between an artist and her former gallery dealer. In the case of Nadimi v. Belmore, the plaintiff and the defendant exemplify two opposing ideologies, which in turn reflect two possibilities for understanding art. This paper considers the case, and Belmore's artworks as representative of both systems. Through a strategic defense of her art and her practice, Belmore upholds a complex understanding of the value of art. The current legal system, however, only ascribes art value as commodity product. This paper demonstrates how Belmore's actions and artworks related to the case supersede simple categorization. Her works cannot be corralled into any one classification; they are not only fine art, nor simply First Nations art. The article exposes how her works deploy multiple socio-cultural systems simultaneously: from an Anishnabe worldview, to European-Canadian art history, from the public museum, to the commercial gallery, to the Toronto bound freeway. I contend that this strategic employment of multiple systems is recognized in newly established international law, and articulated in the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples as traditional knowledge. The Belmore case illustrates the immediate need for governmental systems to acknowledge and employ such international law to redress systemic misconceptions of Indigenous arts practices.


A wide variety of qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning systems have now been developed that formalise various commonsense aspects of space and time. Despite this, relatively few applications have made use of the reasoning tasks provided by these systems. We address this in a novel way by adopting the perspective of application designers. We present an outline of QSTR application theory, and use this to develop methodologies that support designers in creating suitable qualitative models, implementing metrics for analysing QSTR applications, and conducting application-level QSTR logic validation.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To identify the impact of shiftwork on individuals and their lives and to discuss the implications this has for nurses and nursing.

BACKGROUND
The context of shiftwork in the early 21st century is changing rapidly, and those involved in or required to work shiftwork are now spread over many different sectors of the community. In the Australian community, 16% of workers regularly work shiftwork. Most nurses undertake shiftwork at some time in their career, and health services could not operate without a shiftworking nursing workforce.

DESIGN
Narrative literature review.

METHODS
A narrative review of journal articles was conducted. Databases searched were CINAHL, EBSCO Host, JSTOR, Medline/PubMed and Google Scholar. Search terms used were 'shiftwork' and 'shift work'. Limitations included 'English language', 'published between 1980-2013' and 'human'.

RESULTS
Reviewed for this paper were 118 studies that met the inclusion criteria. Results were categorised using thematic analysis. Themes that emerged were physical and psychosocial health, and sleep. Findings will be explored under these themes.

CONCLUSIONS
Shiftwork research has mainly focussed on the physiological and psychosocial health and sleep effects. Absent from the literature are studies focussing on the personal experience of the shiftworker and how workers mediate the effects of shiftwork and how shiftwork fits into the rest of their lives. Therefore, it is difficult to draw conclusions about how people 'manage' their shiftwork, and further research needs to be undertaken in this area.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Working shifts for nurses is a reality that comes with the profession. While there is a significant body of research on shiftwork, little of this has been specifically applied to nursing, and the implications for individual nurses needing to care for their own health have not been drawn.


Crop rotation schemes are believed to work by preventing specialist soil-borne pests from depressing the future yields of similar crops. In ecology, such negative plant-soil feedbacks may be viewed as a type of Janzen-Connell effect, which promotes species coexistence and diversity by preventing the same species from repeatedly occupying a particular site. In a controlled greenhouse experiment with 24 plant species and using soils from established field monocultures, we reveal community-wide soil-based Janzen-Connell effects between the three major functional groups of plants in temperate European grasslands. The effects are much stronger and more prevalent if plants are grown in interspecific competition. Using several soil treatments (gamma irradiation, activated carbon, fungicide, fertilizer) we show that the mechanism of the negative feedback is the buildup of soil pathogens which reduce the competitive ability of nearly all species when grown on soils they have formerly occupied. We further show that the magnitude of the change in competitive outcome is sufficient to stabilize observed fitness differences between functional groups in reasonably large communities. The generality and strength of this negative feedback suggests that Janzen-Connell effects have been underestimated as drivers of plant diversity in temperate ecosystems.


We undertook an investigation of the seismic behavior of large earthquake and estimated the crustal deformation state in the northern Philippine area in terms of the radial component of seismic moment tensors (Mrr) distribution. Based upon these two analyses, the seismic potential of the Manila Trench has been assessed. Regarding the seismic characteristics of large earthquakes, results show that both the overriding and the subducting plates are under compressive stress before the main large events but are characterized by an extensional regime after mainshocks. In the northern Manila Trench area, the broad zone of extensional seismic activity along the trench and its neighboring areas shows a stress environment distinct from that of the interseismic environment of large earthquakes, suggesting that the plates are in a relaxed state instead of accumulating tectonic stress. Thus, the coupling between the two plates could be weak. Along the central Manila Trench, even though only few extensional earthquakes occurred near the trench, numerous negative Mrr events in the overriding plate indicate that the crust is affected by a dilatational regime and also suggests a relatively low coupling environment. In the southern Manila Trench, with the exception of a few extensional events that occurred locally in the Central Valley Basin, most earthquakes show compressive mechanisms. We suggest that a relatively high plate coupling exists along this portion of the trench and results in stress accumulation not only along the plate interface but also in its vicinity, within the subducting and overriding plates.


Background. Obesity has been associated with a number of negative health consequences (e.g., hypertension/heart disease, type-2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and respiratory illnesses). Despite health communication campaigns to reduce overweight/obesity by encouraging lifestyle changes (e.g., eating healthier foods and exercising), the rates of overweight and obesity levels have continued to rise. Studies indicate that the rate of overweight and obesity in the U.S. is highest among Blacks. Messages targeted toward "Blacks" (African-Americans) in the United States treat this segment of the population as a homogenous group and fail to account for within-group cultural differences. Cultural values and beliefs related to food, physical activity, and ideal body size may contribute to overweight and obesity. Objective. This study was designed to gain a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences between African-American and Afro-Caribbean immigrant women living in the Metro Atlanta, Georgia, in terms of the role that culture and social environments play in forming obesity-related—food, physical activity, and body image—attitudes, values, and behaviors. Method. A social cognitive theory (SCT) framework informed the design of semi-structured interview guides. Study participants were comprised of 13 African-American women and 12 Afro-Caribbean women who recently immigrated to the United States from English-speaking countries. All participants were living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time of the study. They were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling and interviewed between October 5 and December 26, 2014. Data from audio-recorded in-depth interviews were transcribed and analyzed using textual analysis software package NVivo9. Results. African-American and Afro-Caribbean participants were similar in terms of some food-, physical activityand body-image related attitudes and behaviors. Health-related concerns and matrilineal influence affected the food-related behaviors of both groups of participants. Physical activity and body image-related attitudes and behaviors of women in both groups were affected by the norms of their childhood and current social environments. Although a healthy physical activity lifestyle was important to women in both groups, not all women were consistently physically active. The study also revealed some differences between African-American and Afro-Caribbean participants. In general, the African-American women described the food-related norms of their childhood environments in negative terms and were more likely to have changed their foodrelated behaviors for health reasons. The Afro-Caribbean women described their childhood foodrelated norms in positive terms, and thus, strove to maintain healthy behaviors from their childhood. The norms of the current social environments of African-Americans, but the childhood social environments of Afro-Caribbean participants, influenced them more toward healthier food-, physical activityand body image-related attitudes and behaviors. In terms of body ideals, Afro-Caribbean women typically identified a smaller "ideal body size" than African-American women. African-Americans from the South, or those with parents from the South tended to choose larger figures than women from the North. Conclusion. Consistent with other SCT studies, this study found attitudes and behaviors that were consistent with those modeled within the participants' social environments. There are more cultural differences than similarities between African-American and Afro-Caribbean women. The similarities and differences revealed in this study have implications for the design of culturally relevant obesity-related messages. INDEX WORDS: African-American women, Afro-Caribbean immigrants, Culture, Cultural competence, Culturally-relevant message design, Obesity, Social cognitive theory EXPLORING THE OBESITY-RELATED LIFESTYLE ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN AND AFRO-CARIBBEAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN METRO ATLANTA, GEORGIA


The reflective and interrogative processes required for developing effective qualitative research questions can give shape and direction to a study in ways that are often underestimated. Good research questions do not necessarily produce good research, but poorly conceived or constructed questions will likely create problems that affect all subsequent stages of a study. In qualitative studies, the ongoing process of questioning is an integral part of understanding the unfolding lives and perspectives of others. This article addresses both the development of initial research questions and how the processes of generating and refining questions are critical to the shaping of a qualitative study.


Migraine can be conceptualised as a disorder of sensory processing, manifest by such
symptoms as headache (pain), phonophobia and photophobia. Current models of
migraine pathophysiology incorporate a significant role for the brainstem. Vestibular
migraine (VM) is a subtype of the disorder in which significant brainstem dysfunction
has been documented. The condition is known to have a significant effect on mental
health. This study was designed to investigate disturbances in audiovestibular
brainstem function in vestibular migraine in a four part study:
1. Otoacoustic emission suppression by contralateral noise, a test of auditory efferent
pathway function, was measured in a group of 33 VM patients and compared with 31
healthy controls. Regression analysis showed a higher rate of abnormality amongst
the VM group (p=0.03).
2. Vestibular evoked myogenic potentials were recorded in a group of 30 VM patients
and compared with 35 healthy controls. Recordings showed a higher rate of abnormal
responses in the VM group than amongst controls (p=0.008).
3. The potential for vestibular stimuli to act as migraine triggers was investigated by
observing the effect of vestibular testing or a control condition on 148 individuals.
Vestibular stimulation was associated with a significant increase in the probability of
developing a migraine attack over the following 24 hour period (p=0.01).
4. Psychological symptoms of depression and anxiety were assessed using
questionnaires 39 patients with VM and compared with a control group of 44
patients with dizziness of other causes. Although the VM group had a significantly
higher load of symptoms of depression and anxiety, regression modelling showed
that this effect was largely accounted for by an excess of dizziness symptoms.
In conclusion, this study documents a number of audiovestibular sensory processing
abnormalities using a variety of techniques. Vestibular migraine has a significant
effect on psychological wellbeing, largely via the associated balance symptoms.


Despite the founders of social enterprises being faced with a proliferation of structural forms to pursue their interests, social enterprise is often portrayed as a homogenous organisational category. This domain is increasingly rendered a governable terrain (Nickel & Eikenberry, 2016) through the development of Kitemarks, funder/investor requirements and government policy initiatives which shape and control what it means to be a 'good' social enterprise. Such mechanisms have been shown to strengthen institutional coherence and drive structural isomorphism (i.e. Similarity) (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Boxenbaum, & Jonsson, 2017). As yet, however, scant attention has been given to the ways in which Kitemarks, standards and funding criteria serve to prioritise and marginalise particular forms of social enterprise by bestowing or denying access to material (e.g. financial) and symbolic (e.g. legitimacy) resources. Further, the implications of such disciplining affects and how individual entrepreneurs respond to them has likewise received little attention from scholars.
This thesis seeks to explicate this issue, positioning Kitemarks, standards and funding criteria as political artefacts that serve to discipline the structure choices of social entrepreneurs through prescribing desirable characteristics, behaviours and structures for social enterprises. This prescription becomes problematic in situations when adherence to such prescriptions is at odds with social entrepreneur's own constructions of legitimate organising principles, which are perceived by them to be as socially and materially efficacious but prevent access to physical and symbolic resources.
The qualitative data set for this thesis comprises fifteen in-depth interviews with social entrepreneurs and their advisors regarding structure choice. The analysis presented offers new insights into the dynamics of structure choice by social entrepreneurs, including the potential nodes of conflict between exogenous prescriptions and social entrepreneur's own orientation to certain aspects of organisation and what social entrepreneurs actually do in the face of such conflict. I find that conflict is particularly prevalent in respect of ownership and decision-making. In order to resolve the tensions that they experience, social
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entrepreneurs often 'decouple' their governance and/or organising practices from those prescribed in external standards or begin to create new structures and ways of organising on the margins of the social enterprise domain through a process of institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009).
This thesis places such structures within an extended structural typology, extending the work of Bull (2015, 2018), and culminates in the development of a practice model for social enterprise structure selection.


Media-induced tourism as well as voluntourism are topics increasingly investigated in the tourism literature. However, a discussion of the intersection of these two forms of tourism (i.e., media-induced voluntourism) is currently missing from the literature. Using the example of two Chinese TV dramas, this article seeks to shed light on motivations and activities of media-induced voluntourists to the Chinese province of Yunnan. Based on a thematic analysis of online postings of the fans of these Chinese TV dramas, the article finds empirical evidence for media-induced voluntourism. The findings reveal that fans travel to Yunnan not only to engage in altruistic behavior, but also to inspect the volunteer work of other fans, as well as to receive recognition from the community. General tourism activities also play a role in their travels. The results indicate that fan voluntourism was strongly motivated by their empathy for the TV dramas' characters and their desire to live the values promoted in these dramas.


Precise peripheral ocular measurements have become important in vision research. These measurements are influenced by the shape and position of the peripherally observed entrance pupil. A long-held assumption is that its apparent shape is elliptical and is optically centered in its position. Our three-dimensional model shows that as viewing angle increases, the entrance pupil moves forward, tilts and curves towards the observer's direction. Moreover, the tangential pupil size narrows and exhibits asymmetric distortions. Consequently, its shape is non-elliptical and its geometric mid-point departs from the optical center. These findings may have implications on the accuracy of peripheral ocular measurements.


The increasing adoption of semantic web technology in application scenarios with frequently changing data has imposed new requirements on the underlying tools. Reasoning algorithms need to be optimized for the processing of dynamic knowledge bases and semantic frameworks have to provide novel mechanisms for detecting changes of knowledge. Today, the latter is mostly realized by implementing simple polling mechanisms. However, this implies client-side post-processing of the received results, causes high response times and limits the overall throughput of the system. In this paper, we present a heuristics framework for realizing a subscription mechanism for dynamic knowledge bases. By analyzing similarities between published information and resulting notifications, heuristics can be employed to "guess" subsequent notifications. As testing the correctness of guessed notifications can be implemented efficiently, notifications can be delivered to the subscribers in an earlier processing phase and the system throughput can be increased. We experimentally evaluate our approach based on a concrete application scenario.


The current research aims to investigate the relationship between lifelong learning and social emotional learning. Study group consists of 590 university students (390 females, 200 males) studying in different undergraduate programs in University of Sakarya, Faculty of Education in the Fall Term of 2015.In this research, relationships between the variables of lifelong learning and social emotional learning were investigated. Pearson Product Moment Correlation, Partial Correlation methods were utilized so as to investigate these relationships. As consequence of the research, lifelong learning and social emotional learning scores were correlating significantly. According to these results, it can be discussed that social emotional learning which can be explained as the behavioral reflection of social and emotional skills in a systematical and consistent way, has a positive relationship with lifelong learning which can be defined as all kinds of learning including formal or informal through one's life. Results are discussed within the context of the associated literature.


This paper describes ongoing research exploring how a place-based collaborative approach to design has the potential to enhance learning experiences for young people and businesses, as well as raise awareness of future employment opportunities in the local area. It highlights current challenges in skills and education, focusing on how a new approach to tackling these issues could be nurtured through design. The paper explores two projects in towns in the North West of England that have barriers to future work opportunities, in which collaborative design processes are having a positive influence on young people, businesses and the wider community. In the first project, a design company, youth workers and design researchers are designing a digital intervention for young people and businesses to connect through learning and work experiences. In the second project, a creative practice, secondary school pupils and design researchers are co-designing a place-appropriate programme of activities to be included in a major festival in the North West. This paper concludes with findings on how a co-design approach can engage and inspire local young people and businesses around future work opportunities, shape learning experiences, as well as foster resilient, sustainable communities, an area to be explored further in design research.


We present space- and ground-based observations of the signatures of magnetic reconnection during an interval of duskward-oriented interplanetary magnetic field on 25 March 2004. In situ field and plasma measurements are drawn from the Double Star and Cluster satellites during traversals of the pre-noon sector dayside magnetopause at low and high latitudes, respectively. These reveal the typical signatures of flux transfer events (FTEs), namely bipolar perturbations in the magnetic field component normal to the local magnetopause, enhancements in the local magnetic field strength and mixing of magnetospheric and magnetosheath plasmas. Further evidence of magnetic reconnection is inferred from the ground-based signatures of pulsed ionospheric flow observed over an extended interval. In order to ascertain the location of the reconnection site responsible for the FTEs, a simple model of open flux tube motion over the surface of the magnetopause is employed. A comparison of the modelled and observed motion of open flux tubes (i.e. FTEs) and plasma flow in the magnetopause boundary layer indicates that the FTEs observed at both low and high latitudes were consistence with the existence of a tilted X-line passing through the sub-solar region, as suggested by the component reconnection paradigm. While a high latitude X-line (as predicted by the anti-parallel description of reconnection) may have been present, we find it unlikely that it could have been responsible for the FTEs observed in the pre-noon sector under the observed IMF conditions. Finally, we note that throughout the interval, the magnetosphere was bathed in ULF oscillations within the solar wind electric field. While no one-to-one correspondence with the pulsed reconnection rate suggested by the ground-based observation of pulsed ionospheric flow has been demonstrated, we note that similar periodicity oscillations were observed throughout the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere system. These findings are consistent with previously proposed mechanisms of solar wind modulation of the dayside reconnection rate.


A description is given of the Oxford System of Medicine, (OSM) project, the goal of which is a decision support system (DSS) that general practitioners can use during routine clinical work to support such decision-making tasks as diagnosing illnesses, planning investigations and patient treatment schedules, prescribing drugs, screening for disease, assessing the risk of a particular disease, and determining whether to refer a patient to a specialist. The OSM consists of the following modules: a user model, models of the decision-making tasks, an inference layer, and domain models for top-down development of the medical knowledge base. An abstract medical knowledge model that deals primarily with the static part of the knowledge base, defining the types of objects this contains and their interrelations, was developed, along with specialist domain theories that help to maintain the integrity of the knowledge. The model provides a specification of what is required in the knowledge base.<<ETX>>


Integration of renewable electricity from wind farms into the electricity grid presents challenges because wind is a highly variable resource whereby the amount of power generated depends on local wind speed, air density and wind turbine characteristics. Energy storage is one possible approach to mitigate power fluctuations and quality issues. Among presently available technologies to store energy, Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) shows many attractive features. This work focuses on techno-economic modelling and analysis for the integration of wind turbines with CAES into the power grid. To have a deep understanding of the performance, characteristics and benefits of system integration, technical and economic models for CAES processes are developed in the processes simulation software ECLIPSE. To conduct this study, two scenarios that are each dependent on generation scales and locations were proposed; (1) centralised CAES (based on the diabatic method) (2) distributed CAES (based on the adiabatic approach). The nominal power generation of centralised and distributed CAES systems were given as 280 MWe and 5 MWe, respectively. The impact of CAES systems on the electricity market is also discussed. Techno-economic analysis of the modelled centralised CAES system showed round-trip efficiency of around 53.6% (and around 56.7% for the modelled distributed CAES system). Specific investment was found to be around €585/kWe (€2452/kWe) and break-even electricity selling price to be around €111/MWh (€275/MWh). Their CO2 emissions were found to be compatible with the average CO2 emissions of UK CCGT power generation.


The Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Treasury of Metaphysics with Self-Commentary) is a pivotal treatise on early Buddhist thought composed around the fourth or fifth century by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu. This work elucidates the Buddha's teachings as synthesized and interpreted by the early Buddhist Sarvāstivāda school ("the theory that all [factors] exist"), while recording the major doctrinal polemics that developed around them, primarily those points of contention with the Sautrāntika system of thought ("followers of the scriptures"). Employing the methodology and terminology of the Buddhist Abhidharma system, the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya offers a detailed analysis of fundamental doctrines, such as early Buddhist theories of mind, cosmology, the workings of karman, meditative states and practices, and the metaphysics of the self. One of its unique features is the way it presents the opinions of a variety of Buddhist and Brahminical schools that were active in classical India in Vasubandhu's time. The work contains nine chapters (the last of which is considered to have been appended to the first eight), which proceed from a description of the unawakened world via the path and practices that are conducive to awakening and ultimately to the final spiritual attainments which constitute the state of awakening. In its analysis of the unawakened situation, it thus covers the elements which make up the material and mental world of sentient beings, the wholesome and unwholesome mental states that arise in their minds, the structure of the cosmos, the metaphysics of action (karman) and the way it comes into being, and the nature of dispositional attitudes and dormant mental afflictions. In its treatment of the path and practices that lead to awakening, the treatise outlines the Sarvāstivāda understanding of the methods of removing defilements through the realization of the four noble truths and the stages of spiritual cultivation. With respect to the awakened state, the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya gives a detailed description of the different types of knowledge and meditational states attained by practitioners who reach the highest stages of the path.


Imidazolium ionomer derivatives of an isobutylene-rich elastomer demonstrated superior absorption characteristics for target molecules of biological interest compared to their non-ionic parent material, while retaining biocompatibility with a range of suspended cell cultures. Halide displacement from brominated poly(isobutylene-co-paramethyl styrene) was used to introduce 0.23 mmol per g-polymer of imidazolium bromide functionality to the polymer, resulting in up to 10-fold improvements in n-octanol and n-butanol partition coefficients (PCs) and up to 4-fold improvements in selectivity (α). In contrast to analogous imidazolium ionic liquids (ILs) that were cytotoxic toward Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Clostridium acetobutylicum and Pseudomonas putida, the ionomers had no effect on suspended cell growth. In addition, these ionomers demonstrated surface antimicrobial activity towards select microorganisms under static conditions with direct surface/microbe contact. Thus, these materials do not affect suspended cell growth while simultaneously reducing cell proliferation at the ionomer interface.


Deep convolutional artificial neural networks (ANNs) are the leading class of candidate models of the mechanisms of visual processing in the primate ventral stream. While initially inspired by brain anatomy, over the past years, these ANNs have evolved from a simple eight-layer architecture in AlexNet to extremely deep and branching architectures, demonstrating increasingly better object categorization performance, yet bringing into question how brain-like they still are. In particular, typical deep models from the machine learning community are often hard to map onto the brain's anatomy due to their vast number of layers and missing biologically-important connections, such as recurrence. Here we demonstrate that better anatomical alignment to the brain and high performance on machine learning as well as neuroscience measures do not have to be in contradiction. We developed CORnet-S, a shallow ANN with four anatomically mapped areas and recurrent connectivity, guided by Brain-Score, a new large-scale composite of neural and behavioral benchmarks for quantifying the functional fidelity of models of the primate ventral visual stream. Despite being significantly shallower than most models, CORnet-S is the top model on Brain-Score and outperforms similarly compact models on ImageNet. Moreover, our extensive analyses of CORnet-S circuitry variants reveal that recurrence is the main predictive factor of both Brain-Score and ImageNet top-1 performance. Finally, we report that the temporal evolution of the CORnet-S "IT" neural population resembles the actual monkey IT population dynamics. Taken together, these results establish CORnet-S, a compact, recurrent ANN, as the current best model of the primate ventral visual stream.


The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was administered and scored for 154 Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), U.S. Department of Labor, employees who serve as accident investigators for serious accidents and fatalities as part of their job duties. The subjects responded anonymously during a workshop on stress. The subjects consisted of randomly selected individuals, representative of locations across the country and representative of all mining commodities: coal, metal, nonmetal, stone, and sand and gravel. The Maslach Burnout Inventory assesses three aspects of experienced burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishments. The average results of the scores for each of the three subscales fell in the moderate range for the study group of MSHA accident investigators. The scores within the moderate range show that the subject population was at the lower end of the range for emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, tending toward a lower burnout risk, while the group evidenced a lower sense of personal accomplishment in their jobs, indicating a higher risk for burnout. It is concluded that overall this group is at moderate risk for burnout, and the authors recommend follow-up with this population.


This study aims to examine the influence of capital structure towards firm value. The sample of this research consists of 101 manufacture companies listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange during the period 2012 - 2015. The results of this study indicate that the higher the capital stucture with Debt to Equity Ratio (DER) and Long term Debt to Asset Ratio (LDAR) are indicators of a higher firm value, while lower Long term Debt to Equity Ratio is an indicator of a lower firm value. The study has found a positive correlation between Debt to Equity Ratio (DER) and Long term Debt to Asset Ratio (LDAR) to firm value, and a negative correlation of Long term Debt to Equity Ratio (LDER) to firm value. However, the capital structure with Debt to Asset Ratio (DAR) did not seem to have an influence on the firm value.


Stochastic satisfiability (SSAT), Quantified Boolean Satisfiability (QBF) and decisiontheoretic planning in finite horizon partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are all PSPACE-Complete problems. Since they are all complete for the same complexity class, I show how to convert them into one another in polynomial time and space. I discuss various properties of each encoding and how they get translated into equivalent constructs in the other encodings. An important lesson of these reductions is that the states in SSAT and flat POMDPs do not match. Therefore, comparing the scalability of satisfiability and flat POMDP solvers based on the size of the state spaces they can tackle is misleading. A new SSAT solver called SSAT-Prime is proposed and implemented. It includes improvements to watch literals, component caching and detecting symmetries with upper and lower bounds under certain conditions. SSAT-Prime is compared against a state of the art solver for probabilistic inference and a native POMDP solver on challenging benchmarks.


Gut bacteria stimulate signaling pathways that promote tolerance to infection and limit physiological damage. Infection and intestinal damage can trigger severe muscle wasting and loss of fat in mice. How this happens is poorly understood. Palaferri Schieber et al. discovered a protective Escherichia coli strain in their mouse colony. Mice intestinally colonized with the E. coli and infected with the food-poisoning bug Salmonella or with the lung pathogen Burkholderia did not waste away. Without the E. coli, similarly infected mice became fatally ill. The protective E. coli stimulated an innate immune mechanism that ensured that muscle-signaling pathways were not damaged by infection. Thus, the friendly E. coli allowed its host to tolerate and survive the pathogens. A. M. Palaferri Schieber, Y. M. Lee, M. W. Chang, M. Leblanc, B. Collins, M. Downes, R. M. Evans, J. S. Ayres, Disease tolerance mediated by microbiome E. coli involves inflammasome and IGF-1 signaling. Science 350, 558–563 (2015). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Conditioning stimuli of differing luminances, which appear equally bright because of the effects of previous light adaptation, may produce essentially equivalent on-responses, as evaluated by the temporal changes in the threshold of a superimposed test flash. The magnitude of these responses is directly related not to the actual luminance of the conditioning stimulus in each case, but to its brightness. Over a fairly wide range of conditions of light adaptation and brightness, constant brightness is accompanied by constant changes in log visual sensitivity, as assessed both by an increment threshold and the conditioning-stimulus-test-flash-threshold techniques.Only at intermediate sensitivity levels is there any evidence for a simple "filter factor" model for the light-adaptation mechanism. The visual response at the extremes of the sensitivity range appears to approach physiological limits which render a simple model of the effects of light adaptation untenable.