Strychnos nux vomica (Family: Loganiaceae) is a widely distributed poisonous medicinal plant. Different parts of this plant mainly seeds have been used in traditional Chinese and Indian systems of medicine. Although nux vomica is extremely poisonous, still it considered to be useful for treating many diseases such as paralytic and neuralgic affections, dyspepsia, itching, urinary disorders, joint pain, dysentery, emotional disorders, epilepsy, rheumatism and insomnia. Phytochemical studies of different parts revealed the presence various constituents mainly alkaloids together with flavonoids, iridoids and phenolic glycosides. Various types of preparations and constituents of nux vomica exerted hepatoprotective, antioxidant, antinociceptive, anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anticancer, antipyretic, gastroprotective, antidiabetic, antialcoholic, anti-snake venom and neuropharmacological properties. Moreover, clinical studies on nux vomica preparations showed positive outcome against sinusitis, insomnia and rhinitis. However, most of the pharmacological and clinical studies are too preliminary to conclude the effectiveness of nux vomica. In the future, more efforts should be required on in vitro and In vivo studies and also on clinical trials to confirm clinical efficacy and to determine the active constituent(s) and mode of actions involved in each activity of nux vomica. Moreover, nux vomica is extremely toxic and this is attributed to the presence of alkaloids, mainly strychnine and brucine. Therefore, more attention should also be paid to minimize its toxic potential through advanced detoxification processes without altering the therapeutic potential. Through this review, the authors are intended to integrate traditional ethno medicinal knowledge and modern scientific findings about nux vomica in order to understand its phytochemical, therapeutic potential as well as toxicity and future perspective.


The present work examines how Lucia Etxebarria, in her 2007 novel Cosmofobia, presents a more optimistic view on the multiculturalism of Madrid's Lavapies community than the one held by its (fictional) residents. The novel in its printed form becomes a representation of the apartment complex and its denizens as Etxebarria describes an intercultural space that recasts the characters' cosmofobia into a vibrant, evolving community. The works of Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja, and David Harvey provide the theoretical framework that structures my analysis, especially Soja's concept of Thirdspace (1996). I propose that as Cosmofobia creates a macro-view of the social space of Lavapies, the novel realizes Soja's Thirdspace as an interactive and intercultural space. This analysis also draws on recent works in the fields of urban, race and cosmopolitan/multicultural studies that contribute to a better understanding of the treatment of the cosmopolitan city within contemporary novels. With her text Cosmofobia, Etxebarria re-presents Lavapies, seeking to come to terms with a new definition of community – a new identity of what it could mean to be "Spanish" in an increasingly heterogeneous society.


The rock-dwelling macropod species of the tropics of the Northern Territory, Australia, are behaviourally elusive and difficult to observe in their rugged habitats. Hence, little is understood about their ecology. We evaluated the potential of using scats (faecal pellets) as a survey tool for this faunal assemblage by: (1) developing a key to the scats of the species; (2) examining the rates of loss and decomposition of short-eared rock-wallaby (Petrogale brachyotis) scats in these tropical environments; and (3) comparing the distribution of scats of P. brachyotis with the species' use of space and habitats as determined with radio-telemetry. Classification tree modelling discriminated the scats of the seven macropod species, primarily on the basis of width. The reliability of identification was greatly improved with larger sample sizes and inclusion of a habitat parameter. Rates of scat loss and decay were variable and the greatest losses occurred in the wet season, particularly on sandy soils. Scat censuses underestimated the total area used by P. brachyotis but the distribution of scats showed the same broad pattern of habitat use found by radio-telemetry. We conclude that scats can accurately indicate the presence and habitat preferences of rock-dwelling macropod species.


How confident do you feel in your personal tutoring role? In the face of ever-increasing and demanding learner issues, do you feel equipped to provide the essential support to meet their needs?

This timely book provides you with essential help in an area which has often been given little attention in comparison with curriculum delivery by contextualising the support side of a teacher's role within further education; looking beyond conventional notions of personal tutoring and coaching; appreciating the real world applications of issues; recognising the benefits personal tutoring and coaching bring to learners and educational institutions and reflecting on a variety of different approaches to support learners' achievement as well as positively affecting institutional key performance indicators.

It provides proven practical advice and guidance for planning and delivering group tutorials, undertaking one to ones, identifying and managing vulnerable learners and those at risk of not achieving, as well as helping learners to progress onto their chosen career paths. It explores methods to engage the most disaffected and hard to reach learners, as well as stretching and challenging the more able.

It includes clear aims, detailed case studies, learning checklists and a unique self-assessment system for the reader and the educational institution.

The text is an excellent foundation for the majority of modules on teacher training qualifications and is relevant to any pre-service or in-service trainee teacher or existing practitioner with a personal tutoring role, a specialised personal tutor, manager or anyone in a learner-facing role within further education.


Wieland K60 is an age hardenable copper alloy combining good electrical and thermal conductivity with high strength. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, hardness, and tensile properties. It also includes information on corrosion and wear resistance as well as heat treating and machining. Filing Code: Cu-878. Producer or source: Wieland Metals Inc..


This study develops a methodology to quantify the combined effects of two major nontariff barriers (NTBs), sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and customs and administrative procedures. We employ a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) utility function with factor-augmenting technical progress to incorporate changes in the quality of goods. We then estimate the effects of these two NTBs in the Japanese cut flower market. Results show that estimates of SPS are biased without considering product quality changes caused by the customs and administrative procedures for highly perishable agricultural products. If these Japanese NTBs were removed, findings suggest there would be a significant increase in cut flower imports by Japan.


Taking the 'Prince and the Pauper' story as the basis for a money-fuelled '80s comedy, Trading Places (dir. John Landis, 1983) skirts around issues of class, race, and gender. Its cultural satire, though, is primarily catered for through its casual dialogue references to operas (Porgy and Bess, La Boheme) and an Elmer Bernstein score that parodies classical favourites alongside continued references to the parallel world of Mozart: opening with a curtailed version of the Marriage of Figaro overture, the film can be read in part through the lens provided by its more illustrious operatic precedent.Interpretations of the film, however, are faced with an important question: is it a promoter of conservative Reaganite capitalism, or a satire that draws attention to the social inequalities of Reagan's first-term America? In considering the music, I suggest that that there may be a subtler satirical process happening that sidesteps issues of social injustice to make a point about the overdrawn opposites inherent in Reagan's social policy. Like the eighteenth-century genre of opera buffa to which the film makes reference, though, these satirical aspirations are ultimately secondary to the film's primary function: to entertain.


We use novel survey data to estimate how personal experiences affect household expectations about aggregate economic outcomes in housing and labor markets. We exploit variation in locally experienced house prices to show that individuals systematically extrapolate from recent locally experienced home prices when asked for their expectations about US house price changes over the next year. In addition, higher volatility of locally experienced house prices causes respondents to report a wider distribution over expected future national house price movements. We find similar results for labor market expectations, where we exploit within-individual variation in labor market status to estimate the effect of own experience on national labor market expectations. Personally experiencing unemployment leads respondents to be significantly more pessimistic about future nationwide unemployment. The extent of extrapolation is unrelated to proxies for how informative personal experiences are, and is more pronounced for less sophisticated individuals.


Zika virus (ZIKV) infections were more common in the zoonotic cycle until the end of the 20th century with few human cases in Africa and Southeastern Asia. Recently, the Asian lineage of ZIKV is spreading along human-to-human chains of transmission in the Pacific Islands and in South America. To better understand its recent urban expansion, we compared genetic differences among the lineages. Herein we show that the recent Asian lineage spread is associated with significant NS1 codon usage adaptation to human housekeeping genes, which could facilitate viral replication and increase viral titers. These findings were supported by a significant correlation with growth in Malthusian fitness. Furthermore, we predicted several epitopes in the NS1 protein that are shared between ZIKV and Dengue. Our results imply in a significant dependence of the recent human ZIKV spread on NS1 translational selection.


In the late spring of 1985, shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the former USSR, the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party (CMC) directed a radical change in the armed forces′ training and preparation for war. The Chinese People′s Liberation Army (PLA-as all the military services and branches are collectively designated) was instructed that it was no longer necessary to prepare for an "early, major and nuclear war" with the Soviet Union. Henceforth, the PLA′s doctrine, strategy and operational concepts would be focused on preparing for the most probable form of future conflict: local, limited war (jubu zhanzheng) around China′s periphery.1 The decade following the CMC′s directive has seen the Chinese armed forces begin the transition towards a more modern, flexible military force as they′changed their organizational structure, command and control, and training to focus on possibly unexpected, potentially intensive military conflict along China′s borders and maritime territories. These changes paralleled the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which eliminated any significant military threat to China′s northern borders for at least another decade. Nevertheless, and even as Beijing′s security analysts were publicly acknowledging that China′s military security was more assured than it had been for the past 50 years, the defence expenditures of the People′s Republic entered a period of rapid growth that continues to this day.


Lake Tahoe was surveyed using a state-of-the-art, high-resolution, multibeam mapping system to provide an accurate base map for the myriad of ongoing environmental studies in and around the lake. The newly defined basin morphology shows steep basin margins on the northern, eastern, and western sides and a gentle margin on the southern side. Two large, flat plateaus several kilometers wide extend from the shore to about 40 m water depth in the northern and northwestern sections of the basin. A series of ridges in the west and north are presumed traces of faults, some of which border the lake basin and some of which traverse across the northern section of the lake and converge in McKinney Bay. McKinney Bay is a large reentrant in the western margin that was created by a failure of the western margin that occurred about 300 ka. The failure generated a major debris avalanche that carried large blocks, some more than 1000 m long and 80 m high, across the basin. Apparently, the debris avalanche was deflected by the eastern margin of the basin and flowed to the north and south. Small debris flows and slides have continued to occur in this area. Small debris aprons occur along the northern, western, and eastern margins, some apparently the remnants of collapsed terminal moraines formed in the basin from the 160 ka Tahoe Glaciation, which reached the edge of the basin. Eroded plateaus and ridges occur on a glacial outwash plain that covers the gentle southern margin. The plateaus and ridges are inferred to be remnants of another large terminal moraine of the Tahoe Glaciation.


The development of multi-constellation, multi-frequency GNSS is ongoing, with the aim to enable a robust and reliable navigation and approach service to airspace users. While this will greatly reduce vulnerability to space weather, unintentional interference and constellation weakness, some residual vulnerabilities will remain. In the current, predominantly GPS L1 GNSS environment, aviation has accepted that alternate positioning, navigation and timing capabilities based on terrestrial systems remain necessary. These reversionary area navigation capabilities are based primarily on DME/DME, while still providing some residual VOR/DME services. However, this reversionary capability has not been demonstrated to support the stringent RNP requirements that GNSS can support. Also, DME is criticized as being spectrum inefficient, and aviation-internal and aviation-external pressures to share the DME band with other services are increasing significantly. A key question for the future evolution of Communication, Navigation and Surveillance systems is what type of a reversionary capability will be needed in the future (terrestrial or space based), and what performance levels it needs to provide. To answer this question, supported by specific technology options, a project under the SESAR Horizon 2020 Framework (PJ14-03-04) is working on this topic under the title "Alternative Positioning, Navigation and Timing, A-PNT". A-PNT is a complex, multi-disciplinary topic, with technical and operational aspects going across the CNS domains, and spectrum concerns being an underlying driver. The research activities in PJ14-03-04 are covering a selected set of potential technical solutions: take full advantage of the actual DME performance, DME enhancements (ensuring compatibility with legacy systems), LDACS NAV function and eLORAN. This paper will focus the discussion on the performance levels achievable by each of these technologies and their major advantages and drawbacks. The concept of a modular approach will be introduced as well (which allows the computation of a position solution with integrity based on inputs from various types of sensors). The paper includes contributions from the following SESAR partners: EUROCONTROL, DLR, Thales Avionics, Thales Air Systems and Honeywell Aerospace.


Subband/Wavelet filter analysis-synthesis filters are a major component in many compression algorithms. Such compression algorithms have been applied to images, voice, and video. These algorithms have achieved high performance. Typically, the configuration for such compression algorithms involves a bank of analysis filters whose coefficients have been designed in advance to enable high quality reconstruction. The analysis system is then followed by subband quantization and decoding on the synthesis side. Decoding is performed using a corresponding set of synthesis filters and the subbands are merged together. For many years, there has been interest in improving the analysis-synthesis filters in order to achieve better coding quality. Adaptive filter banks have been explored by a number of authors where by the analysis filters and synthesis filters coefficients are changed dynamically in response to the input. A degree of performance improvement has been reported but this approach does require that the analysis system dynamically maintain synchronization with the synthesis system in order to perform reconstruction. In this paper, we explore a variant of the adaptive filter bank idea. We will refer to this approach as fixed analysis adaptive synthesis filter banks. Unlike the adaptive filter banks proposed previously, there is no analysis synthesis synchronization issue involved. This implies less coder complexity and more coder flexibility. Such an approach can be compatible with existing subband wavelet encoders. The design methodology and a performance analysis are presented.


"And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. (25) And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, (26) And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, (27) When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. (28) For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. (29) And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. (30) And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? (31) And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? (32) And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. (33) But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. (34) And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague."


From the Publisher:
Whether you are a novice or an expert, as long as you know how to turn on a modem, you can now tune in to the vast range of sources and resources in the global Internet web. As easy to use as your telephone book, THE INTERNET DIRECTORY provides: user-friendly instructions on how to get on-line and get the information you want; a guide to the thousands of interconnected computer systems that comprise Internet; tips on how to send and receive messages, and much more.


Administration of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) to patients with Stevens–Johnson syndrome (SJS) has been controversial. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of IVIG, systemic corticosteroids, or both in treating Mycoplasma pneumoniae–associated SJS (mpSJS). Retrospective series of 10 pediatric mpSJS cases were stratified into four treatment groups: IVIG alone, IVIG and systemic corticosteroids together, systemic corticosteroids alone, and supportive care. The efficacy of therapy was evaluated on the basis of several proxies of disease severity, including hospital length of stay (LOSt) and number of febrile days (Febt) after initiation of therapy. Patients treated with IVIG alone had a longer LOSt and more Febt, despite different baseline characteristics, than patients treated with supportive therapy. Of patients who received IVIG, 50% were treated with corticosteroids concurrently and had similar characteristics of disease severity but showed a non–statistically significant trend toward shorter LOSt and fewer Febt than those who received IVIG alone. A patient treated with corticosteroids alone had the shortest LOSt in this series. Therefore treatment with IVIG alone was associated with a more severe disease course than supportive therapy, although causality cannot be inferred given possible confounding by indication. When systemic corticosteroids were used alone or in conjunction with IVIG, hospital LOSt and Febt trended lower than with the use of IVIG alone, although disease severity at baseline was similar between those treated with IVIG and corticosteroids concurrently and those treated with IVIG alone. It was thus concluded that treatment with systemic corticosteroids as monotherapy or in combination with IVIG may be preferable to IVIG alone. Further large‐scale studies are warranted to evaluate this hypothesis.


In coherent imaging, one obtains a complex-valued image of the optical field reflected by an object under coherent illumination. One can propagate this field numerically to the pupil of the imaging system and manipulate the phase to correct for aberrations. Methods for doing this will be discussed.


Dazzling modern lyrical poems from Catullus - by turns smutty, abusive, romantic and deeply moving. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Catullus (c.84-54 BCE). Catullus' The Poems is available in Penguin Classics.


Acidic in situ recovery (ISR) of uranium is utilized because of its potential to be much cleaner than traditional physical mining techniques. Instead of spreading uranium-laden waste rock across soil, ISR circulates acid below the surface of the Earth within a closed loop recovery system. Once mining operations cease in Kazakhstan, the acid remains in the aquifer and is left for natural remediation, with the hope that, over time, the native Fe and SO¬4 reducing bacteria will raise the pH and precipitate the mobile metals. The risks of ISR coupled with natural attenuation are groundwater contamination and a long timeframe of pH recovery. Some estimates state that recovery can take up to tens of thousands of years. In order to evaluate the ability of natural attenuation to increase pH and the rate of such 'natural processes', first the effect of the acid on both geochemistry and the native microbial communities must be understood. The initial sampling mission from this collaboration, revealed that the acid not only liberates metals and salts, as predicted, but also has an affect on the indigenous microbes. These results will be presented along with future plans to compare natural attenuation vs. biostimulation in situ.


The association of asthma with occupational exposures was studied in 14,151 adults, aged 25-59 years, from the general population of the 1975 French Pollution Atmospherique et Affections Respiratoires Chroniques (PAARC) Survey. Associations of asthma with specific jobs, such as personal care workers, waiters, and stock clerks, were observed, with age-, sex-, and smoking-adjusted odds ratios between 1.5 and 1.7. Exposures to 18 asthmagenic agents (low and high molecular weight and mixed environment) were estimated by an asthma-specific job exposure matrix. Risks associated with asthma increased when subjects with imprecise estimates of exposure were excluded. Risks increased further with increasing specificity of the definition of asthma when considering jobs or specific agents, such as industrial cleaning agents, latex, flour, highly reactive chemicals, and textiles. For example, for industrial cleaning agents, odds ratios increased from 1.55 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.08, 2.23) for "ever asthma," to 2.17 (95% CI: 1.41, 3.34) for asthma onset after age 14 years, to 2.35 (95% CI: 1.38, 4.00) for asthma onset after beginning current job, and to 2.51 (95% CI: 1.33, 4.75) for asthma with airflow limitation. Results underlined the importance of the specificity of exposure and asthma definitions and indicated a deleterious role of occupational exposure on asthma, especially for cleaning agents.


Understanding the variation in selection pressure on key life-history traits is crucial in our rapidly changing world. Density is rarely considered as a selective agent. To study its importance, we partition phenotypic selection in fluctuating environments into components representing the population growth rate at low densities and the strength of density dependence, using a new stochastic modelling framework. We analysed the number of eggs laid per season in a small song-bird, the great tit, and found balancing selection favouring large clutch sizes at small population densities and smaller clutches in years with large populations. A significant interaction between clutch size and population size in the regression for the Malthusian fitness reveals that those females producing large clutch sizes at small population sizes also are those that show the strongest reduction in fitness when population size is increased. This provides empirical support for ongoing rand K-selection in this population, favouring phenotypes with large growth rates r at small population sizes and phenotypes with high competitive skills when populations are close to the carrying capacity K. This selection causes long-term fluctuations around a stable mean clutch size caused by variation in population size, implying that rand K-selection is an important mechanism influencing phenotypic evolution in fluctuating environments. This provides a general link between ecological dynamics and evolutionary processes, operating through a joint influence of density dependence and environmental stochasticity on fluctuations in population size.


In the early nineteenth century, Beirut was no more than a small sea village with its small population and dilapidated facilities. Beirut had golden opportunities to seize political and economic advantages on the eastern Mediterranean region in the course of the nineteenth century, although there were other competing cities which already had vested rights in the region. The starting point of this research begins with the question of why Beirut became the most prominent sea-port on the eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century and how it kept its leading position in this region. For the explanation of this emergence of Beirut as a political and economic center of the eastern Mediterranean area during this period, not only external factors which favored Beirut but also internal factors such as local struggles to guarantee Beiruti's political and economic advantages will be employed.


Impulsive buying is another form of consumption behaviour that seems to be occurring more frequently today. This behaviour has both positive and negative effects, therefore, caution should be taken when making consumption decisions. This study attempts to investigate impulsive buying behaviour among marketing students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It discusses factors that contribute to such behaviour, some of which were identified in a study conducted by Youn & Faber (2000). These factors include lack of control (impulsivity), stress and absorption. The study highlights cultural influences on impulse buying behaviour. It mentions the several differences between male and female consumers. According to Zhou & Wong (2003), retailers need to understand how they can attract and retain a significant share of consumer impulse purchases for market survival. Understanding consumer behaviour helps in the development of effective marketing communications (Bothma et. al 2002). A literature review conducted to gain insight and understanding on impulse buying behaviour. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from fifty University of KwaZuluNatal marketing students. Findings on the study highlight vast unplanned consumption behaviours.


Heavy metals such as lead and copper when present in large concentrations in the environment can have detrimental effects on living organisms. This study identified the presence of lead and copper in liver flukes, Fasciola hepatica and Fasciola gigantica and in liver tissues of water buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis) as potential heavy metal bioaccumulators using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Both the uninfected and infected liver tissues and the liver flukes were found positive for lead and copper. Lead concentration levels of 5.162 μg/g in uninfected liver tissue sample, 5.422 μg/g in infected liver tissue, 9.692 μg/g in F. hepatica, and 7.754 μg/g in F. gigantica were detected, while copper concentration levels of 6.742 μg/g in uninfected liver tissue, 2.278 μg/g in infected liver tissue, 24.75 μg/g in F. hepatica, and 32.98 μg/g in F. gigantica were observed. Liver flukes showed a greater concentration of both copper and lead than the liver tissues suggesting that these parasites can serve as bioaccumulators of heavy metals and bioindicators of environmental pollution.


In this experiment the eect on post-harvest preservation of papaya ( Carica papaya L.) fruit coated with either Aloe gel (AG; 100%) or papaya leaf extract with Aloe gel (PLEAG; 1:1) was studied. To evaluate the role of coating on ripening behavior and quality of papaya the uncoated and coated fruits were stored and ripened at room temperature (25 C-29 C) and 82-84% relative humidity. Physicochemical properties were analyzed at 4 day intervals during the storage period. The incidence of disease attack was also visually observed. The overall results showed the superiority of AG and PLEAG coating in lengthening the shelf-life of papaya fruit compared to controls which showed signicant decay from 6 th day onward and complete decay within 12 days of storage. The AG and PLEAG coated fruits maintained their shelf life for 12 days and decayed at 16 th day. The coated fruits also maintained their color, avor and rmness up to 12 days of storage. An increase in ascorbic acid content (120.2 mg/100 g) was also found in coated fruits in contrast to the control (59 mg/100 g). Only 27% disease incidence was observed in AG and 13% in PLEAG coated fruits as compared to control (100%) during the storage period. The results of this study show that both AG and PLEAG coatings have excellent potential to be used on fresh produce to maintain quality and extend shelf-life.


Transcription of genes encoding enzymes required for lipogenesis is induced in hepatocytes in response to elevated glucose metabolism. We have previously mapped the carbohydrate-response elements (ChoREs) of the rat liver-type pyruvate kinase (L-PK) and S(14) genes and found them to share significant sequence similarity. However, progress in unraveling this signaling pathway has been hampered due to the difficulty in identifying the key factor(s) that bind to these ChoREs. To gain further insight into the nature of the carbohydrate-responsive transcription factor, the glucose regulatory sequences from the mouse S(14) gene were examined in primary hepatocytes. Three elements were found to be essential for supporting the glucose response: a thyroid hormone-response element between -1522 and -1494, an accessory factor site between -1421 and -1392, and the ChoRE between -1450 and -1425. Of these, only the accessory factor site was conserved between the rat and mouse S(14) genes. Investigation of the ChoRE sequence indicated that two half E box motifs are critical for the response to glucose. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays revealed a complex formed between the mouse S(14) ChoRE and liver nuclear proteins. This complex was also formed by ChoREs from the rat S(14) and L-PK genes but not by mutants of these sites that are inactive in supporting the glucose response. These results suggest the presence of a novel transcription factor complex that mediates the glucose-regulated transcription of S(14) and L-PK genes.


This study investigates the relationship between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), derived from a high-resolution satellite imagery of SPOT-5 HRV, and vegetation biomass and cover of a protected range reserve in the Jordanian Steppe. Eighty locations inside a range reserve were sampled to determine the cover and biomass of herbaceous and shrubby species. The percent cover of herbs was visually estimated while the line-transect method was used to measure the canopy cover of shrubs. The above-ground biomass of herbs was determined by clipping, whereas the biomass production of shrubs was estimated using the reference unit technique. All sampling points were recorded by a Global Positioning System (GPS), and the corresponding NDVI values of these locations were extracted form the HRV imagery then correlated with estimates of above-ground biomass and vegetation cover. Significant correlations were found between NDVI on one hand and both vegetation cover and total above-ground biomass on the other with R2 values of 0.79 and 0.77, respectively. For prediction purposes and potential application of productivity estimates, thirty locations were sampled to validate the output relationships between above-ground biomass and vegetation cover and the remotely sensed NDVI. Significant correlations occurred between predicted and estimated parameters with R2 values of 0.71 and 0.57 for above-ground biomass and cover, respectively. Results also showed good productivity levels after protecting the rangeland for four consecutive years, indicating a good potential of rangeland recovery under proper management.


Consider the reaction of Trayvon Martin's family to the jury verdict. They were devastated that George Zimmerman, the defendant, was found not guilty of manslaughter or murder. Whatever the merits of this outcome, what does the Martin family's emotional reaction mean? What does it say about criminal punishment – especially the reasons why we punish? Why did the Martin family want to see George Zimmerman go to jail? And why were – and are – they so upset that he didn't? This Article will argue for three points. First, what fuels this kind of outrage is vengeance: the desire to see defendants like George Zimmerman be forced to "pay" for the harms that they needlessly and culpably inflict on others. While this point may seem obvious, it isn't. Most people repudiate revenge and therefore the notion that it plays any role in the criminal justice system. Second, this attitude toward revenge is misguided and needs to change. We need to recognize that vengeance not only does but should play a significant role in motivating criminal punishment. Our vengeful reactions to harmful crimes are not ugly or shameful; on the contrary, they manifest a deep valuation of victims and a bitter denunciation of individuals who actively renounce this valuation through their criminal behavior. Third, these two points have significant implications for the two main theories of criminal punishment: "retributivism," which says that criminals should be punished in order to give them their "just deserts," and "consequentialism," which says that criminals should be punished in order to bring about such good consequences as deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. Traditionally, these two theories have been at war with one another. But I will show how recognizing revenge as a motivation and justification for punishment can help to end this war and bring these two theories together.


Since achieving statehood in 1991, Armenia has faced major economic and political obstacles which have significantly affected the nation's research libraries. This research paper will quantitatively and qualitatively examine the challenges facing Armenian research libraries just over twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Specifically, the authors analyze their interviews with five library administrators at five major institutions, respectively. These include Yerevan State University Library, the National Library of Armenia, the Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, the Republican Scientific-Medical Library of Armenia, and the Papazian Library of the American University of Armenia. The instrument for the interviews consists of 73 questions based on the 2004 Association of College and Research Libraries Standards for Libraries in Higher Education and evaluates the following factors: • The library's mission, goals and objectives • Public or user services • Instruction activities at the library • Resources (print, media, or electronic) and collection development • Access to the library's resources • Outcome assessment, or evaluation of the library • Staffing issues • Facility maintenance and plans for library development • Communication and cooperation both within the library and with the user community • Administration • Budget In addition, we will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of these libraries and investigate the growing open access movement in Armenia. Based on our findings, the authors wish to facilitate dialogue and consider possible approaches to help these libraries meet Armenia's pressing information needs.


Purpose : Second language writing as an inherent part of ELT is no exception. One specific part of second language writing in which visual images can be used is narrative essay writing. Visual images, in this case, comic series and pictures, can be a very useful aid in stimulating students' ideas, creativity, as well as interest and ability in narrative essay writing. Students' writing activities in using  pictures and comic strips are discussed in this study, including students' responses towards this particular topic, as well as the procedures of how these visual images are used. This study is therefore aimed at disclosing how pictures and comic strips, as forms of visual images, can be used to enhance students' narrative writing ability as well as creativity. In writing narrative essays with the help of visual images, students were helped in terms of generating ideas, developing logical and critical thinking, and improving reasoning skills. Research Methods: The design of this study was qualitative in nature. The participants were comprised of 19 Professional Narrative Writing students. The data for this research was taken from documents, that is, students' essays and journals which were written after the writing activities were done, interviews with two students, and students' scores. There were also pre-tests and post-tests given at the beginning and the end of the semester, but the scores were descriptively presented. Interviews with two students were also conducted to validate the findings. These students, whose essays were used as analyzed documents, were enrolled in the Professional Narrative Writing class of the English Language Education Program, the Faculty of Language and Arts (FLA), Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW), Salatiga, Indonesia. The class was conducted in Semester I of the 2017-2018 academic year. The students were fourth-semester students. The Professional Narrative Writing course taught students how to be professional in writing narratives. Findings: The findings showed that pictures, as well as comic strips, were very useful in helping students to write narratives. They helped students generate ideas, delve into more creativity, as well as develop their imagination and motivation in writing, though some students experienced difficulties in some aspects like ideas, grammar, diction, and plot. Implications for Research and Practice: The results of the study hopefully can inspire other narrative writing lecturers all over the globe to maximize the use of visual images, including pictures and comic strips. These visual aids can enhance students' writing abilities as well as their creativity. Students taking writing courses can hopefully be motivated to write better narratives.


ABSTRACT Endophytic filamentous brown algae are known to invade stipes and fronds of kelps with potentially negative effects for the hosts. They have simple filamentous thalli and are difficult to identify based on morphology. We investigated the molecular diversity of 56 endophytes isolated from seven different kelp species from Europe, Chile, Korea and New Zealand by sequencing two unlinked molecular markers (5'COI and ITS1). A majority of 49 of the isolated endophytes (88%) belonged to the genera Laminarionema and Laminariocolax. The endophyte Laminarionema elsbetiae was isolated from Saccharina latissima and S. japonica tissues in Europe and Korea, respectively, and showed highly similar sequences in both regions. Three different species of the genus Laminariocolax were identified, the most common of which was L. aecidioides, an endophyte with a worldwide distribution and a broad host range. The other two species, L. tomentosoides and a species described here as Laminariocolax atlanticus sp. nov., were associated with different kelp species in the northern hemisphere and the North Atlantic, respectively. Our results suggest that specific host-endophyte patterns could exist locally, as found in kelps in Brittany where all endophytes isolated from S. latissima were L. elsbetiae, all endophytes isolated from Laminaria digitata were Laminariocolax tomentosoides, and those isolated from Laminaria hyperborea were Laminariocolax atlanticus and L. aecidioides. However, this pattern was not consistent with the results from other places, such as Western Scotland and Helgoland where the same kelp species are present.


Natural compound-eyes consist of a large number of ommatidia that are arranged on curved surfaces and thus are able to detect signals from a wide field of view. We present an integrated artificial compound-eye sensor system with enhanced field of view of 180° × 60° due to the introduction of curvature. The system bases on an array of adaptive logarithmic wide-dynamic-range photoreceptors for optical flow detection and compound-eye optics for increasing sensitivity and expanding the field of view. Its assembling is mainly done in planar geometry on a flexible printed circuit board. The separation into smaller ommatidia blocks by dicing enables flexibility and finally allows for mounting on curved surfaces. The signal processing electronics of the presented system is placed together with further sensors into the concavity of the photoreceptor array, and facilitates optical flow computation for navigation purposes.


The objective of this article is to examine the market integration among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) emerging markets with respect to the global financial crisis of 2008 using cointegration analysis and factor analysis. The study finds that the BRICS emerging markets are cointegrated with each other during the pre- and post-2008 financial crisis period, and the markets have been moving toward greater integration after the 2008 financial crisis. The Granger causality and Johnsen cointegration tests show that the stock markets of China, India, and Russia have strong short-term and long-run relationships. Factor analysis reveals that the BRICS markets have become closer after the financial crisis. Brazil, Russia, India, and China appear to have close causal linkages. The market integration among BRICS markets is tested using correlation, Granger causality test, Johansen's cointegration test, and factor analysis. The correlation coefficient among the stock markets of Russia, India, and China increases as markets increase in trade and geographical closeness. This article has practical implications for investors, governments, and multinational companies. TOPICS: Emerging markets, financial crises and financial market history, statistical methods


Test suite minimization techniques attempt to reduce the cost of saving and reusing tests during software maintenance, by eliminating redundant tests from test suites. A potential drawback of these techniques is that in minimizing a test suite, they might reduce the ability of that test suite to reveal faults in the software. A study showed that minimization can reduce test suite size without significantly reducing the fault detection capabilities of test suites. To further investigate this issue, we performed an experiment in which we compared the costs and benefits of minimizing test suites of various sizes for several programs. In contrast to the previous study, our results reveal that the fault detection capabilities of test suites can be severely compromised by minimization.


Historical research into economic topics is booming: The history of capitalism is on the march, Atlantic and Pacific histories have invigorated research on trade and merchants, and environmental history is increasingly economic. But this new popularity has generally not been accompanied by increased collaboration or even interaction with colleagues working in departments. The sources of this standoff are many, but prominent among them is the role of numbers. What should we count? And what should we do with the multitude of numbers and tables that punctuate early American documents? We have much to gain from more extensive use of quantitative sources. However, historians should return to quantification with caution: Not as novice cliometricians, but as the beneficiaries of cultural and social history. New research has already begun to stake out a kind of quantitative middle ground, combining close and distant reading and approaching numerical sources both as sources of data and as narrative structures with politics.


The current definition of 3D digital lines, which uses the 2D digital lines of closest integer points (Bresenham's lines) of two projections, has several drawbacks: the discrete topology of this 3D digital line notion is not clear; its third projection is, generally, not the closest set of points of the third euclidean projection; if we consider a family of parallel euclidean lines, we do not know how many combinatorially distinct digital structures will be built by this process; and mainly the set of voxels defined in this way is not the set of closest points of the given euclidean line. And these questions are the simplest ones; many others could be asked: dependence on the choice of the projection, intersections with digital planes, intersections between 3D digital lines,... This paper gives a new definition of 3D digital lines relying on subgroups of Z3, whose main advantage over the former one is its ability to convert any practical question into rigorous algebraic terms. It follows previously developed ideas but with a much simpler treatment and new results. In particular, we obtain a complete description of the topology of these lines and a condition for the third projection being a 2D digital line as well as a classification of digital lines of the same direction into classes of equivalent combinatorial structure.


Despite the level of resources potentially available for the development of the agricultural sector in Nigeria, it has performed below global average over the past three decades.In reaction to this, several policies have also been employed by successful governments in an attempt to revamp the sector but the achievement of any of these policies has been minimal because of dwindling investments, low capital and political commitment. The objective of this study was therefore to examine the impact of agricultural extension services on food production in Nigeria. The study relied mainly on a randomized primary data from farmers in Oshin, Oke-Oyi in Ilorin East Local Government of Kwara State through a structured questionnaire. The data collected were analysed using the descriptive and inferential statistics (Multinomial Logit Model (MLM)). The results show that most of the farmers under the Oshin Irrigation scheme indicated that the scheme has greatly improved their farm outputs and reduced their cost of production. It has also promoted private farmers' partnership with the government agricultural extension service. This had made them have constant access to government extension services more than their non-member farmers. The study, therefore, recommended the shaping of a general policy package to induce the youth back to agriculture, an arrangement such as the one at Oshin irrigation scheme. Also, it was recommended that availability and accessibility of credit facilities to farmers should be enhanced so as to enable them acquire more modern farm implements and other inputs towards increased productivity.


Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are multipotent cells that can differentiate into various cell types such as cartilage, bone, and fat cells. Recent studies have shown that induction of MSCs in vitro by growth factors including epidermal growth factor (EGF) and fibroblast growth factor (FGF2) causes them to differentiate into neural like cells. These cultures also express ChAT, a cholinergic marker; and TH, a dopaminergic marker for neural cells. To establish a protocol with maximum differentiation potential, we examined MSCs under three experimental culture conditions using neural induction media containing FGF2, EGF, BMP‐9, retinoic acid, and heparin. Adipose‐derived MSCs were extracted and expanded in vitro for 3 passages after reaching >80% confluency, for a total duration of 9 days. Cells were then characterized by flow cytometry for CD markers as CD44 positive and CD45 negative. MSCs were then treated with neural induction media and were characterized by morphological changes and Q‐PCR. Differentiated MSCs expressed markers for immature and mature neurons; β Tubulin III (TUBB3) and MAP2, respectively, showing the neural potential of these cells to differentiate into functional neurons. Improved protocols for MSCs induction will facilitate and ensure the reproducibility and standard production of MSCs for therapeutic applications in neurodegenerative diseases.


In the era of centralisation of the great powers in Europe, dynasties rul- ing smaller states on the margins between France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire developed strategies for survival. One of these was to establish a presence at the courts of these larger states, by sending members of the ruling dynasty itself. This article looks in particular at the court of France, where such princely emissaries established lineages known to historians as the «foreign princes», the princes etrangers. The French monarchy desired the presence of these princes as well, for various political and ceremonial reasons. The successes and failures of the foreign princes sent to the French court can be measured at the individual level and the wider dynastic level, and are examined by scrutinising activities of secular princes (male and female) as well as prelates. The results are varied, and depended on a variety of ever-shifting factors, notably the establishment of kinship ties with the royal dynasty, a solid independent financial base, and individual character. By the end of the period, some smaller states had survived; others had not.


In modern control systems and information processing, the recognition of objects in the image is complicated by the fact that the impact of negative factors introduces uncertainty into this process, leading to blurring of images. In this regard, it is necessary to develop models and algorithms that would reduce the degree of uncertainty in image processing. These models are necessary, for example, when monitoring environmentally hazardous objects, for search and detection of unauthorized burial of household waste, in the field of information security, in the analysis of x-rays and thermograms, in the actions of unmanned aerial vehicles of law enforcement agencies in autonomous mode. This article presents a description of information technology for recognition in the automated mode of objects in images. The basis of this technology is the algorithm of contour analysis of images. The main distinguishing feature of the algorithm is the use of convolution of the image in four directions, as well as the tracing procedure. The aim of the study was to develop algorithms for high-speed automated visualization of external objects. We present the results of the study of the algorithm of contour analysis in the processing of various images in the visible and infrared wavelengths. Recommendations are formulated for the choice of parameters of the contour analysis algorithm, such as the mean square deviation in image blur, minimum and maximum thresholds for filtering. The results of the study can be used in production management systems, life support of the city, technical vision, environmental conditions, monitoring of business processes, as well as in the creation of simulators for training operators of complex systems, etc. In addition, we show the expediency of applying the algorithm we developed in decision support systems.


Upon taking office, the new US president will immediately face major decisions on domestic and international climate policy. The United States and the rest of the international community have set December 2009 as the deadline for concluding a new global climate agreement. The controversial 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and new international arrangements are urgently needed. This new round of climate negotiations provides a real chance to ensure strong, equitable action by all major economies, including the United States, China, and India, which in the past have resisted obligations to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions. Simultaneously, the US Congress is likely to take up major legislation to dramatically reduce US emissions--an objective each of the leading presidential candidate supports. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The key to success in managing climate change, of course, will be aligning the international and domestic efforts. New domestic laws must help spur international cooperation. New international agreements must mesh with domestic strategies and political realities. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading scientific authority on the topic, tells us we probably have one last clear chance to deal with the climate problem in time to avoid unacceptable environmental, economic, humanitarian, and security risks. Given this urgency, integrating US domestic and international climate policy is vitally important to the United States and the world. The truth is this: the United States has neither a sound climate foreign policy nor the right mechanism for creating one. Absent a fundamental change in the way the United States makes and carries forward its climate diplomacy, the next president and Congress may fail to do what is necessary to stabilize the Earth's climate system in time to avoid disastrous consequences for the United States and the world. Now is the time to consider innovative alternative approaches. For inspiration, we should look to more successful areas of international cooperation, specifically international trade. Heading in the Wrong Direction Before delving into the trade model answer to climate policy, it is important to understand why one must conclude the United States is heading in the wrong direction.. There are two main problems with our current approach. First, the United States lacks a compelling bipartisan vision for how it should engage the world on climate change. In fact, die United States does not even have publicly stated negotiating objectives for the climate talks that are already underway. Without further guidance, US climate diplomats seem unlikely to thread the needle--crafting a politically acceptable, economically feasible and environmentally effective climate agreement. Furthermore, in the absence of a bipartisan climate change foreign policy, Congress may fail to design new domestic climate legislation with the international community firmly in mind. A go-it-alone approach would forego important opportunities that domestic climate laws provide to entice and cajole other nations to do more to mitigate their emissions as well. Second, securing the two-thirds support of the Senate that the US Constitution requires to ratify a new climate treaty would be a truly daunting task. The supermajority for treaties is among the highest bars imposed by the Constitution, equal to the standard for removing a president from office. The Framers expected treaties to be relatively rare--a few agreements with England, France, and Spain. Today, the United States enters into several hundred new international agreements each year, but very few of these are treaties because as a general rule the Senate will not act on a treaty if a single member of the Committee on Foreign Relations asks for more time. These informal committee "holds," as they are called, can last for years and even decades. …


Permanency is a pillar of child welfare law; children generally do better with legally permanent caretakers than in temporary foster care. Historically, when foster children cannot reunify with their parents, states have sought to terminate parental rights and find adoptive families. But recent legal reforms have created a continuum of permanency options, many of which permit ongoing legal relationships with biological parents and do not require termination of biological parents' rights. Research has demonstrated that such options are as lasting as adoption, and can help more children leave foster care to legally permanent caretakers. This continuum promises to empower families — especially children and their new permanent caregivers — to determine the best legal status for their particular situation. It also challenges a reliance on terminations of parental rights as the default tool to achieve permanency. This is the new permanency. A milestone in the development of this new permanency was the 2008 Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act ("Fostering Connections"), which provided federal funds for kinship guardianship subsidies. Yet six years after Fostering Connections, the number of guardianships nationally has not increased, just as many children grow up in foster care, and in many states families have no greater ability to choose the best option for them.This Article is the first to explore the reasons for Fostering Connections' failure to spark major changes. The fault lies in Fostering Connections' failure to challenge the deep cultural and legal subordination of guardianship to adoption or the discretion child welfare agencies have to make core decisions in a case without significant court oversight. This Article also explores a jurisdiction in which the new permanency is close to reality. The District of Columbia has seen the number of guardianships surpass the number of adoptions, with more children reaching permanency, and fewer unnecessary terminations. The District thus represents an extreme version of what the new permanency could do nationally — although it also illustrates the problems with overly wide agency discretion regarding kinship placements.This Article proposes a set of reforms that would help fully implement the new permanency nationwide. These reforms would rid the law of a hierarchy among permanency options, establish a stronger and more consistent preference for kinship placements, and empower families, not the state, to select the permanency option that best fits their situation, through more rigorous procedures and better provision of quality counsel than current law provides.


This study aims to investigate the effects of perceived brand globalness (PBG) on consumer affective and behavioral responses to brand failures and for how consumer perceives global and local brands and their responses in the event of failure present or absent related to brand performance and brand familiarity, brand presence and prestige, brand equity, product country match, country ethnocentrism.This research is conducted in regards to women consumers in two cities in North India related to global and local brands with impact of perceived brand globalness to brand failures present or absent scenario based on consumer responses. The research explored into four main factors as dependent variables on which PBG effects are examined and observed in failure present as well as failure absent scenario. This research consists of mainly two studies and two preliminary tests. Study 1 is executed basically to investigate and to test consumer responses towards brand failures of fictitious brands. Study 2 is designed to examine consumer responses to brand failures of established brands.The study found that PBG effects are more positive on Global brands as compared to the local brands and concluded that consumer is less negative and less impulsive to the global brands when they met failure scenario. The study could not find any significance and examined that customer ethnocentrism does not interrupt with buying behavior. This research was able to test whether global brands are still perceived superior to local brands in the context of Indian consumer and also test whether the effects of PBG on consumer responses to brand failures will be mediated by consumer attribution as blaming or fault accountable in the event of encountering.Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 5, Issue-1: 18-30


White Milk. In Denmark, 'lactose intolerance' refers to a medical diagnosis and a condition where the person is unable to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and dairy products. However, 75% of the world's population is considered lactose intolerant which raises the question: under which circumstances is lactose intolerance considered a disease in Denmark? In order to answer this question, this article examines different subjectifying processes in relation to health, race,ethnicity, and the consumption of food, and the relation of all of these factors to milk. The analysis focuses on a publication by the Danish adoption organization Adoption og Samfund (Adoption and Society), a special issue on food. Influenced by the work of Butler (1990, 2004), Omi & Winant (1986) and Myong (2009), I find that milk comes to determine whiteness and Danishness in the publication. Consequently, lactose tolerance functions as a figure for the normalizedbody belonging to the white adopter, who is framed by firstness and situated in the Global North. At the same time, lactose intolerance functions as a figure for the deviant, weak, medicalized body belonging to the adoptee of colour who is framed by otherness and situated in the Global South. Hence, drinking milk (or not) positions the subject either as part of a privileged majority or an underprivileged minority.


This research deals with the challenging task of video classification, with a particular focus on action recognition, which is essential for a comprehensive understanding of videos. In the typical scenario, there is a list of semantic categories to be modeled, and example clips are given together with their associated category label, indicating which action of interests happens in that clip. No information is given about where or when the action happens, even less about why the annotator considered the clip to belong to a sometimes ambiguous category. Within the framework of the bag-of-words representation of videos, we explore how to leverage such weak labels from three points of view: (i) the use of coherent supervision from the earliest stages of the pipeline; (ii) the combination of heterogeneous features in nature and scale; and (iii) mid-level representations of videos based on regions, so as to increase the ability to discriminate relevant locations in the video. For the quantization of local features, we propose and evaluate a novel form of supervision to train random forests which explicitly aims at the discriminative power of the resulting bags of words. We show that our forests are better than traditional ones at incorporating contextual elements during quantization, and draw attention to the risk of naive combination of features. We also show that mid-level representations carry complementary information that can improve classification. Moreover, we propose a novel application of video classification to tracking. We show that weak clip labels can be used to successfully classify videos into categories of dynamic models. In this way, we improve tracking by performing classification-based dynamic model selection.


Children who are frequently or persistently absent from school tend to perform poorly in school and are likely to drop out before graduation from high school. Excessive school absence was significant implications in terms of maladaptive behavior, wasted opportunities, and future unemployment and welfare costs. Epidemiologic information about this problem suggests that physical and mental health problems of students or their families are the sole or contributing cause of this behavior in more than 50% of cases. Excessive school absence may signal such health problems as poor coping with or management of chronic illness, masked depression, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, inappropriate responses to minor illnesses, or severe family dysfunction. School absence patterns appear to be a readily available, easy-to-use marker of childhood dysfunction which lends itself to screening large numbers of children for unmet health needs. Attention to this area of child behavior as part of routine health care will frequently uncover previously unrecognized health problems in children and their families.


The Crime of Genocide Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, results in great losses to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions represented by these human groups, and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. Many instances of such crimes of genocide have occurred, when racial, religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part. The punishment of the crime of genocide is a matter of international concern. The General Assembly , therefore , Affirms that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices – whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds – are punishable; Invites the Member States to enact the necessary legislation for the prevention and punishment of this crime; Recommends that international co-operation be organized between States with a view to facilitating the speedy prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, and, to this end, Requests the Economic and Social Council to undertake the necessary studies, with a view to drawing up a draft convention on the crime of genocide to be submitted to the next regular session of the General Assembly.


GaAs FET's are widely used in system such LNA, PA, mixers, frequency multipliers, oscillators and attenuators. Recent works have shown the usefulness of these transistors in the optoelectronics field, as photodetectors or optoelectric mixers. In this paper an experimental study explores the idea of unifying the detection and mixing of two optical modulated signals at different wavelengths, using a single GaAs FET. The FET is biased at fixed VGS and VDS and loaded to 50 , while two optical modulated signals of different wavelength and frequencies are illuminating the gate of the FET. The results show that the FET can detect both signals and by means of the inherent nonlinearity in the channel of the FET, the sum and difference of both frequencies appear (up and down conversion). Moreover, this type of architecture demonstrates low distortion in contrast to its counterpart (electric and optoelectric mixers) and also, to obtain the same power level for the up and down conversion frequencies, the power level required for the RF and LO signals are much lower than the case of electric and optoelectric mixers. To our knowledge this is the first time that a single FET is used for detecting and mixing two optical modulated signals at the same time.


Objective Airway mucins are the major constituents of mucus and one of the first lines of host defense against inhaled pathogens. However, aberrant expression of mucins is associated with mucus hypersecretion resulting in chronic nasal drainage, a common complaint from patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). Our goal in this systematic review was to determine (1) expression profiles, (2) regulatory mechanisms, and (3) the pathologic roles of mucins associated with CRS. Methods MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched for studies focused on the role of mucins in CRS. Quality was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. The full text articles selected were then categorized into 3 study groups: (1) clinical, (2) animal, and (3) in vitro cultures. Data regarding study design, population/setting, methods, and bias were extracted and synthesized. Results Our initial search generated 392 titles/abstracts. After the primary review, 111 articles underwent secondary review. The final review included 53 articles, including 34 articles (64%) in the clinical study group, 3 articles (6%) in the animal study group, and 16 articles (30%) in the in vitro study group. In total, aberrant expression of 8 mucins—6 secreted-mucins (MUC2, -5AC, -5B, -6, -7, and -8) and 2 membrane-bound mucins (MUC1 and -4)—were identified in CRS tissues compared to healthy controls. Mucin expression was associated with bacterial sinusitis, inflammatory markers, and the response to steroid therapy in patients with CRS with nasal polyposis. Conclusion There is a strong correlation between alterations in mucin expression profiles and CRS. This systematic review highlights the most recent literature on the role of mucins in CRS. The analysis of these studies is limited by the heterogeneity in study designs, relatively few numbers of clinical samples, and lack of mechanistic studies in animal models and in vitro cultures.


My paper explores links between the human and animal candidates for resurrection and deextinction and focuses on the aspect of nationalist agenda in application to both species. I explore the intersection between the scientific and symbolic agendas in the resurrection and de-extinction discourse. I interpret the ideological underpinnings of the current developments in the woolly mammoth de-extinction in the Russian Federation in parallel to the theme of resurrection of historically-important personalities in contemporary Russian fiction of magical historicist bent. My particular focus is on the role of NeoEurasianist thinking in the choice of the candidates for resurrection and de-extinction, both animal and human. My conclusions are that both animal de-extinction and human resurrection futurity share a proleptic vision of ecological and geopolitical scenarios and that both create taxonomies and hierarchies privileging one kind of species over the other. Due to the constructed exclusivity of selected candidates among species and human groupings this futurity is both informed by and makes a contribution to the quasi-racialist discourse. De-extinction plays into political ideas about race, identity, nationality in a way that might not be suspected. While on the surface the mammoth de-extinction drive appears to be part of the process to restore the ecosystem for the holistic benefit of fauna, flora and humans, the NeoEurasianist context gives the project a distinct symbolic meaning. The new mammoth hybrid becomes correlated to the construct of complementary-hybridised Eurasian ethnicities of Siberia.


Abstract In this paper we present nomenclatural adjustments and validations of syntaxa of the forest vegetation of Europe. We introduce a new, valid name of the class of nemoral coniferous or mixed forests (Asaro europaei-Abietetea sibiricae) replacing the deciduous Carpino-Fagetea in the easternmost Europe and Siberia. We describe two new orders for birch and birch-poplar woodlands, formerly included in the Betulo pendulae-Populetalia tremulae. We validate the names of two alliances for the deciduous forests of the Southern Urals and the name of an alliance for hemiboreal forest swamps. The suballiance Ostryo-Tilienion, coined to accommodate the xerothermophilous ravine forests of SE Europe, is here elevated to the rank of alliance. Finally, we validate the name Quercion alnifoliae (evergreen oak forests of Cyprus).


Premotor predictions facilitate vocal interactions. Here, we study such mechanisms in the forebrain nucleus HVC (proper name), a cortex-like sensorimotor area of songbirds, otherwise known for being essential for singing in zebra finches. To study the role of the HVC in calling interactions between male and female mates, we used wireless telemetric systems for simultaneous measurement of neuronal activity of male zebra finches and vocalizations of males and females that freely interact with each other. In a non-social context, male HVC neurons displayed stereotypic premotor activity in relation to active calling and showed auditory-evoked activity to hearing of played-back female calls. In a social context, HVC neurons displayed auditory-evoked activity to hearing of female calls only if that neuron showed activity preceding the upcoming female calls. We hypothesize that this activity preceding the auditory-evoked activity in the male HVC represents a neural correlate of behavioral anticipation, predictive activity that helps to coordinate vocal communication between social partners. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Most social-living vertebrates produce large numbers of calls per day, and the calls have prominent roles in social interactions. Here, we show neuronal mechanisms that are active during call-based vocal communication of zebra finches, a highly social songbird species. HVC, a forebrain nucleus known for its importance in control of learned vocalizations of songbirds, displays predictive activity that may enable the male to adjust his own calling pattern to produce very fast sequences of male female call exchanges.


A large share of the recent growth in the United States economy has been in high-technology industries or service industries that use high-tech services. Information and communications technologies have developed very rapidly, generating productivity growth throughout the economy. 1 The firms developing many of these technologies—such as Oracle, Intel, and Microsoft—have achieved a dominant position in the marketplace and thus attracted the attention of competition authorities. But successful innovation, with or without patent protection, is often accompanied by a position of market power. Transitory or even not so transitory monopoly profits are the reward for successful innovation and may be required to promote a dynamic economy, as Joseph Schumpeter explained decades ago. As a result, successful innovators often find themselves in conflict with competition policy authorities. In this paper, we analyze the impacts of recent United States Section 2 Sherman Act cases brought against three major information and communications technology sector firms in the last half of the 20 th century: IBM, AT&T, and Microsoft. These cases provide a particularly interesting set of case studies because they all involve major players in the high-tech sector, but each case had a different legal outcome. One—IBM—was dropped after 13 years; another – AT&T—was settled after 8 years of litigation; and the third—Microsoft—resulted in a court decision that was a clear victory for the government. But what was the effect of each case's resolution on the relevant markets? Has the remedy that was imposed in the two latter cases actually worked to produce a more competitive industry structure? Could the remedy proposed by the government in IBM have improved the performance of the computer industry? We will argue that, unlike earlier landmark antitrust cases against steel, oil, tobacco, or aluminum, a successful outcome in these Section 2 cases brought against high-technology firms would not simply be an expansion of output and lower prices of a relatively homogeneous commodity, but rather the development of new products to replace or to compete with the dominant firm's product or service. Is it conceivable that antitrust authorities can design remedies that obtain such results? 1 For a recent summary of the research on the recent surge in productivity growth in the United States, see Jorgenson, Ho, and Stiroh (2005).


During experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a model for multiple sclerosis associated with blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption, oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) overexpress proteoglycan nerve/glial antigen 2 (NG2), proliferate, and make contacts with the microvessel wall. To explore whether OPCs may actually be recruited within the neurovascular unit (NVU), de facto intervening in its cellular and molecular composition, we quantified by immunoconfocal morphometry the presence of OPCs in contact with brain microvessels, during postnatal cerebral cortex vascularization at postnatal day 6, in wild-type (WT) and NG2 knock-out (NG2KO) mice, and in the cortex of adult naïve and EAE-affected WT and NG2KO mice. As observed in WT mice during postnatal development, a higher number of juxtavascular and perivascular OPCs was revealed in adult WT mice during EAE compared to adult naïve WT mice. In EAE-affected mice, OPCs were mostly associated with microvessels that showed altered claudin-5 and occludin tight junction (TJ) staining patterns and barrier leakage. In contrast, EAE-affected NG2KO mice, which did not show any significant increase in vessel-associated OPCs, seemed to retain better preserved TJs and BBB integrity. As expected, absence of NG2, in both OPCs and pericytes, led to a reduced content of vessel basal lamina molecules, laminin, collagen VI, and collagen IV. In addition, analysis of the major ligand/receptor systems known to promote OPC proliferation and migration indicated that vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A), platelet-derived growth factor-AA (PDGF-AA), and the transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) were the molecules most likely involved in proliferation and recruitment of vascular OPCs during EAE. These results were confirmed by real time-PCR that showed Fgf2, Pdgfa and Tgfb expression on isolated cerebral cortex microvessels and by dual RNAscope-immunohistochemistry/in situ hybridization (IHC/ISH), which detected Vegfa and Vegfr2 transcripts on cerebral cortex sections. Overall, this study suggests that vascular OPCs, in virtue of their developmental arrangement and response to neuroinflammation and growth factors, could be integrated among the classical NVU cell components. Moreover, the synchronized activation of vascular OPCs and pericytes during both BBB development and dysfunction, points to NG2 as a key regulator of vascular interactions.


Traffic watermarking is an important element in many network security and privacy applications, such as tracing botnet C&C communications and deanonymizing peer-to-peer VoIP calls. The state-of-the-art traffic watermarking schemes are usually based on packet timing information and they are notoriously difficult to detect. In this paper, we show for the first time that even the most sophisticated timing-based watermarking schemes (e.g., RAINBOW and SWIRL) are not invisible by proposing a new detection system called BACKLIT. BACKLIT is designed according to the observation that any practical timing-based traffic watermark will cause noticeable alterations in the intrinsic timing features typical of TCP flows. We propose five metrics that are sufficient for detecting four state-of-the-art traffic watermarks for bulk transfer and interactive traffic. BACKLIT can be easily deployed in stepping stones and anonymity networks (e.g., Tor), because it does not rely on strong assumptions and can be realized in an active or passive mode. We have conducted extensive experiments to evaluate BACKLIT's detection performance using the PlanetLab platform. The results show that BACKLIT can detect watermarked network flows with high accuracy and few false positives.


The term "fake news" ascended rapidly to prominence in 2016 and has become a fixture in academic and public discussions, as well as in political mud-slinging. In the flurry of discussion, the term has been applied so broadly as to threaten to render it meaningless. In an effort to rescue our ability to discuss—and combat—the underlying phenomenon that triggered the present use of the term, some philosophers have tried to characterize it more precisely. A common theme in this nascent philosophical discussion is that contemporary fake news is not a new kind of phenomenon, but just the latest iteration of a broader kind of phenomenon that has played out in different ways across the history of human information-dissemination technologies. While we agree with this, we argue that newer sorts of fake news reveal substantial flaws in earlier understandings of this notion. In particular, we argue that no deceptive intentions are necessary for fake news to arise; rather, fake news arises when stories which were not produced via standard journalistic practice are treated as though they had been. Importantly, this revisionary understanding of fake news allows us to accommodate and understand the way that fake news is plausibly generated and spread in a contemporary setting, as much by non-human actors as by ordinary human beings.


Corruption in Brazil is endemic and has increased since the end of the military transition regime in 1985, a year marked by an indirect presidential election, which was followed by the 1988 Constitutional Reform. The present thesis answers the research question of "how corruption affects well-being in Brazil" by investigating the existing cause-effect relationships and complex dynamics and logic between corruption and related variables in Brazil, with each of the twenty-seven causal diagrams being analyzed individually. Among the key findings are that (i) a center role is played by the level of quality of institutions, (ii) high corruption is a symptom of a fundamental problem with the independence, quality and effectiveness of the judiciary, and that (iii) corruption is dominated by fast destructive reinforcing loops that can deteriorate quite rapidly if left unwatched, and improvement to lower corruption levels is characterized by feedback loops with long delays. The present thesis also recommends anti-corruption policies that can result in lower levels of corruption and in improved well-being. Among the several policies recommended are: stop impunity of the corrupt, close the loophole on the penal procedure code that allows corrupt criminals to escape serving jail time, introduce severe jail sentences to the corrupt, strengthen control of corruption, strengthen the procedure for nomination of Supreme Court Judges and to ensure the independence of the judiciary, introduce the study of corruption at all levels of the school curricula, introduce a political reform to stop reelection and to strengthen the electoral system to promote the election of non-corrupt representatives, introduce policies to strengthen the control of the black market for currencies and illicit financial flows, including money laundering, trade misinvoicing, anonymous companies, tax havens, bank secrecy and others – ultimately, allow Brazil to win the war against corruption.


Distributed shared memory (DSM) systems provide a shared memory programming paradigm on top of a physically distributed network of computers. The DSM system removes the necessity for programmers to move data explicitly between processors. The principle challenge in the development of an efficient DSM system lies in reducing the amount of communication necessary to maintain coherence to an absolute minimum. This thesis presents Brazos, a DSM system for use in an environment of symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) personal computers that are networked together by industry-standard 100 Mbps FastEthernet. Brazos is distinguished by its use of application-level multithreading, selective multicast, adaptive runtime mechanisms, and a unique performance history mechanism. Through the detailed analysis of twelve scientific programs, we show that Brazos outperforms the current state-of-the-art software DSM system by an average of 83%, and outperforms a version of the same DSM system that has been altered to take advantage of SMP personal computers by an average of 32%. Our results indicate that networks of commodity personal computers using available PC networks and operating systems can perform comparably on a wide variety of scientific applications to more traditional networks of high-end engineering workstations.


An action research study was conducted at a public elementary school in Hawaii, where second grade students' perceptions of blogging for the first-time were gathered. Prior to the implementation period, students were introduced to basic computer skills that are necessary for blogging. Field notes and observations, daily reflection, a small group interview, and a post survey were used to collect data. Results revealed that students were very receptive and positive toward blogs. In fact, although blogging was not required outside of class time, some were blogging at home and even on vacation in another state and country. The students were not afraid to share their work, which portrayed a sense of authorship and ownership of their work, rather than apprehensiveness. However, some students encountered challenges with some basic computer skills, such as keyboarding and computer navigation. Despite some setbacks, this action research project yielded valuable feedback that could help the researcher and other educators to integrate blogging throughout many content areas.


This paper proposes a numerical approach for the determination of convective heat transfer coefficients in the end region of a totally enclosed permanent magnet synchronous machine used as an integrated starter generator in a hybrid vehicle. A simplified numerical model based on CFD methods is developed to understand the mechanism of convective heat transfer over a large operation range. The effect of the rotation speed on the variation of the convective heat transfer coefficients inside the end region is thoroughly investigated. Heat flux paths are also identified for the entire operating range. CFD calculation results are used to provide tabulated values of the coefficients used by Schubert's correlation for the different surfaces delimiting the end region. Subsequently, general correlations are provided using the dimensionless averaged Nusselt number as a function of the Reynolds number. All these numerical results are used to compute the corresponding thermal resistances used in the definition of a detailed thermal network model. Then, the obtained numerical data are compared to experimental temperature measurements.


We present here a complete Citizen Science scenario being deployed for secondary school teachers and students who will be able to take active part of the biotechnology research process. It intends to be a successful use case to demonstrate the mutual benefits of the integration of this kind of collective intelligence on the education field. As a consequence of the quick advance in computational resources, scientists have found a significant bottleneck in the management and analysis of the huge data they face. Besides computing can cope with some aspects of this issue, human brains continue being extremely good at pattern recognition. Therefore, Citizen Science has emerged as a solution for these researchers as well as a way to involve general public in the creation of science. Applied to advanced education and selecting the proper field of study, this approach means a fruitful bidirectional interaction channel. Students help researchers in the analysis of their data sets, while being trained on the specific field. The proposed experiment deals with the analysis of pictures taken from real cells under treatment in cancer's drug discovery research. Students receive in their computers real images taken from a microscope used at the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI) labs. They can also visit the laboratory facilities virtually. Some training is provided in order to understand cell biology phenomena to be analyzed in the pictures. After that, they are able to distinguish live from dead cells, cell proliferation, or the mechanism by which they die. They move from the book to the lab getting in touch with a real case of what they are studying. Our framework compiles the feedback from the participants, merging them and presenting the data to the researcher in a useful way to understand what happened in each of the wells of the cell culture plates over time. Students gain knowledge about biotechnology and pharmacology research processes. Each solution for each image is archived and compared so that performance can be evaluated. At the same time, top level research facilities are made accessible to any student connected to Internet. We also address to collective behavior and emerging intelligence for image analysis, ensuring amateur inputs to be remarkable for scientists and the crowd sourced contributions relevant to improve the research work. In the pilot phase of the project, sixteen secondary schools participate with almost a thousand students analyzing cell images. This initial phase is deployed jointly between the BIFI-Unizar and the Department of Education from the Aragon Regional Government with the support of the Ibercivis Foundation and Ciencia Viva. It is scheduled to be deployed at European and Brazilian level as a part of the objectives of the FP7 project called SOCIETIC during 2013 and 2014. The virtual excursion, where students can visit the laboratory and get direct training from scientific research is carried out under a distinct FP7 project called Global Excursion.


We propose Episodic Backward Update (EBU) - a novel deep reinforcement learning algorithm with a direct value propagation. In contrast to the conventional use of the experience replay with uniform random sampling, our agent samples a whole episode and successively propagates the value of a state to its previous states. Our computationally efficient recursive algorithm allows sparse and delayed rewards to propagate directly through all transitions of the sampled episode. We theoretically prove the convergence of the EBU method and experimentally demonstrate its performance in both deterministic and stochastic environments. Especially in 49 games of Atari 2600 domain, EBU achieves the same mean and median human normalized performance of DQN by using only 5% and 10% of samples, respectively.


Aquatic therapy is one of the most common treatments for alleviating musculoskeletal pathologies. Its effectiveness has been evaluated with functional tests and questionnaires. Functional tests are used in aquatic therapy; however, in most cases, they are carried out in a non-aquatic environment and, as such, their results may differ from those of tests performed in an aquatic environment. A systematic review was performed to assess the accuracy of functional tests and patient-reported outcomes to assess aquatic therapy interventions. The authors conducted a literature search in July 2019. In total, 70,863 records were identified after duplicates removed. Of these, 14 records were included about functional tests assessment in aquatic environment and 725 records for questionnaires. The majority of the tests had also been assessed in a dry environment, allowing differences and similarities between the tests in the two environments to be observed. Different variables have been assessed in tests included in the present systematic review (cardiorespiratory, neuromuscular, kinematic, physiological, kinetic responses and rating of perceived exertion) which are included in the manuscript. Visual Analogue Scale, Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index and the 12-item Short Form Health Survey were the assessments most commonly used by the different authors.


During the last century's archaeological investigations of the advanced Bronze Age culture maintained by the so-called Minoans on the island of Crete, a number of tombs dated to the Late Minoan period and containing weapons have been discovered in the surroundings of the site of Knossos. The tombs are not confined to a certain area or cemetery, but are rather dispersed around the Palace and town. Although they are characterised by their weapons, other artefacts - such as bronze vessels and certain pottery types - also distinguish these tombs. The tombs are of three types: chamber tombs with long dromoi, shaft graves and pit-caves. Various labels have been designated for them: tombs with weapons, warrior tombs, warrior graves and weapon-tombs. The warrior graves are often discussed in relation to the question of when the Mycenaeans arrived in Crete. Most scholars agree that a Mycenaean presence or power in Crete existed in the Late Bronze Age, but when their arrival would have taken place has not yet enjoyed consensus. Previous scholarship raises a number of questions that are dealt with in this work in relation to the funerary landscape at Knossos, including: to what degree do the burial customs in fact change in LM II, and what about the mainland influences? If the archaeological material points in that direction, how are we to understand such a transformation of the mortuary practices? Would this indicate an ethnic change? If, on the other hand, the material points towards a gradual process beginning already in LM I or earlier, with elements of mainland traits, what would that indicate? The tombs, shaft graves and pit-caves of Knossos are re-examined in an attempt to put answers to these intriguing questions.


Myotis peninsularis Miller, 1898 is an endemic bat from the Cape Region in Baja California Sur, México. Its taxonomic status is unclear, either as a valid species or as a subspecies of M. velifer (J. A. Allen, 1890). In order to assess its taxonomic status, the objective of this study was to examine phylogenetic relationships of M. peninsularis, using molecular and geometric morphometric data. Two mitochondrial genes were analyzed: cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) and cytochrome b (Cytb). The phylogenetic analysis (maximum likelihood and Bayesian Inference) showed that M. peninsularis and M. velifer were sister groups, collectively forming a monophyletic assemblage. We observed less than 2% of genetic distance in the Cytb, considered an interval at the subspecies level. The geometric morphometric analysis showed differences in skull shape. We obtained three morphotypes: M. peninsularis (Baja California group), M. velifer incautus (northern population) and M. v. velifer (southern population). The most important differences were located in the braincase (ventral, dorsal and lateral view). The lateral view was the most discriminating. The Cape Region specimens had the sagittal crest more procumbent in the front than the rear of the braincase. The slope line at the rostral lateral view was more abrupt in M. velifer populations. Morphologically, the three lineages tended to possess the same normal variation as the entire Mexican population of M. velifer but with a specific morphotype associated to its distribution. In a combined molecular and landmark configuration of the phylogenetic analysis, the ancestral shape corresponded to an intermediate shape between M. peninsularis and M. velifer, presenting a similar variation to the one of intra-specific level in M. velifer. We considered M. peninsularis a junior-synonym of M. velifer.


The purpose of this article is to provide an instructional review about how to write effective discussion sections for original medical research articles. First, the basic function and aims of the discussion section are outlined. The discussion is critically linked to the introduction and results sections: it should respond and attempt to conclude the issues and motivations raised in the introduction, and it should interpret the objective data described in the results to do this. Given these roles, the writing in the discussion needs to be precise and unambiguous, but does also allow for a more subjective and personable tone when less objective, or more expansive topics are being discussed. Next, the principle functions of a discussion are reviewed; these include the statement of major findings, comparison with other literature, implications, limitations, and conclusion. Using examples, each of these functions are analyzed with reference to the common English language features, such as verb tense, common words and phrases, hedging language, etc., that are associated with each function. Important information to include in each function, along with techniques to improve coherence and readability, are also outlined. These include explicitly identifying the source of any information being referred to and clearly ordering and labelling the different points within the discussion.


Book synopsis: Law and Aesthetics draws on the work of poets as well as philosophers. Taking as its starting point Shelleys assertion that poets are unacknowledged legislators,the book suggests that there is a way of thinking that, as yet, has not been taken up by those who make use of literary aesthetics to understand law. The book tracks this aesthetic thinking through the failures of critical legal studies and stages an encounter with psychoanalysis, before suggesting that an aesthetics of law can be exhumed from Nietzsches work. The aesthetic is a call to the creative: fashion new law. A review of contemporary legal theory that makes use of aesthetic perspectives suggests that dissident and radical Nietzschean energies continue to animate legal thought. In the final chapter, an aesthetics of law is shown to make for an interruption of legal categories, and the generation of new legal relationships. The book concludes with a further meditation on Shelleys poetry, and a call to continue in the spirit of aesthetic reinvention.