This Article is the first to use the copyright publication doctrine to clarify whether art, photographs, films, and historical documents that fill our museums and libraries are in the public domain. Knowing whether a photo, painting, film, or original letter was published is critically important to anyone who wants to use it today. Before 1989, publishing a work with no copyright notice dedicated the work to the public domain. Unpublished works without a notice are likely protected by copyright, and their unauthorized use can result in severe federal penalties. Unfortunately, the meaning of "publication" in copyright law is notoriously ambiguous. The federal statutory definition suggests that works "made available" to the public are published, while leading treatises generally assume that works given to public museums and libraries are unpublished. Confronted with this uncertainty, risk averse institutions too often assume that archived works are protected by copyright. Misunderstanding the law can keep cultural treasures locked in dark archives, vaults and basements, preventing their use as a foundation for new expression and distorting our sense of history.This Article critically examines mistaken assumptions about copyright publication. It finds that neither the statutory definition nor leading treatises adequately identify when a work is published. A better standard for determining when a work is published and in the public domain is needed to free works from being locked up by copyright uncertainty. The best solution would clarify the boundaries of a stable public domain. In a recent decision, the Supreme Court took a wrong turn in dismissing the importance of the public domain. Knowing what content may be freely used is critical to preserving First Amendment values and freeing cultural treasures from copyright's bondage. The copyright ambiguity of archived works should be resolved in a way that honors the expressive and historical value of the public domain. After considering several alternatives, this Article shows how precedential patterns point to the best solution to the publication ambiguity. Drawing on empirical analysis of federal cases interpreting copyright publication, I identify the variables that are most important in determining whether archived works are published. The suggested solution focuses on copyright owner intent and the availability of authorized copies. Other factors described as significant in leading treatises — such as the type of work or archive — actually mask these two fundamental inquiries. The proposed standard provides a much needed solution to clarify which pieces of our cultural heritage are in the public domain and freely available as raw materials for educational sharing, expressive work, historical research, and public discourse.


Canada has been the world's leader in e‑Government maturity for the last five years. The global average for government website usage by citizens is about 30%. In Canada, this statistic is over 51%. The vast majority of Canadians visit government websites to obtain information, rather than interacting or transacting with the government. It seems that the rate of adoption of e‑Government has globally fallen below expectations although some countries are doing better than others. Clearly, a better understanding of why and how citizens use government websites, and their general dispositions towards e‑Government is an important research issue. This paper initiates discussion of this issue by proposing a conceptual model of e‑Government adoption that places users as the focal point for e‑Government adoption strategy.


Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy [REBT], Cognitive Behaviour Therapy [CBT] and Meseron Therapy are three uniquely and very effective cognitive therapies used in clinical psychology practice. It is essential to clearly spell out the difference in the therapies as some psychologists in the past have experienced difficulty differentiating them. Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy [REBT] was developed by Albert Ellis [1962] based on the rationale that irrational thinking is the root cause of psychological disturbances. Cognitive behaviour therapy [CBT] by Aaron Beck [1976], posits that how individuals view situations may result in psychological disturbances while Meseron Therapy by Alfred Awaritefe [1995] postulates that psychological disturbances arise as a result of faulty speaking as seen in the distortion of our appraisal mechanism, acquiescing to negativity and incongruence of striving and goals. This paper attempts to further explain each therapy in detail.


Many myths exist regarding mental illness and those with mental health issues. Under the auspices of a Community-University Research Alliance on Housing and Mental Health, a partnership between academics, community health and social service agencies and representatives of consumer-survivor groups, fourteen consumer-survivor and eight family member focus groups were held throughout Southwestern Ontario. Individual interviews were also conducted with 150 male and 150 female community-based mental health system consumer-survivors living in a variety of housing environments in London, Ontario. The findings dispute beliefs around four myths: that people with mental health problems are a homogenous population, which was highlighted by significant differences between men and women in frequency and length of psychiatric hospitalizations, primary diagnosis, problem severity, psychoactive drug use and sexual abuse, are unemployed because they are uneducated, are violent and dangerous and thus spend extended periods of time incarcerated and are unsupported by their families which then leads to housing problems. Challenging these and other equally erroneous myths is essential in responding to the oppression faced by mental-health consumer-survivors and in developing a national strategy for mental health.


Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet East Coast Australia is your passport to all the most relevant and up-to-date advice on what to see, what to skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Enjoy lunch with one of Sydney's best views at Manly Pavilion, gaze at marine life through a glass-bottomed semisubmersible, or experience the Daintree Rainforest; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of East Coast Australia and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet East Coast Australia Travel Guide: *Colour maps and images throughout *Highlights and itineraries show you the simplest way to tailor your trip to your own personal needs and interests *Insider tips save you time and money and help you get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots *Essential info at your fingertips - including hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, and prices *Honest reviews for all budgets - including eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, and hidden gems that most guidebooks miss *Cultural insights give you a richer and more rewarding travel experience - including history, politics, sports, landscapes, wildlife, cuisine, and wine *Over 94 local maps *Useful features - including Month-by-Month (annual festival calendar), Your Reef Trip, and East Coast Australia Outdoors *Coverage of Melbourne, Sydney, Cairns, Byron Bay, the Great Barrier Reef, Brisbane, Fraser Island, Whitsunday Island, Port Douglas, Blue Mountains, and more The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet East Coast Australia, our most comprehensive guide to East Coast Australia, is perfect for those planning to both explore the top sights and take the road less travelled. * Looking for a guide focused on Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef? Check out Lonely Planet's Queensland & the Great Barrier Reef guide for a comprehensive look at all that each of these regions has to offer. * Looking for more extensive coverage? Check out Lonely Planet's Australia guide for a comprehensive look at all the country has to offer, or Lonely Planet's Discover Australia, a photo-rich guide to the country's most popular attractions. Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Regis St Louis, Jayne D'Arcy, Sarah Gilbert, Paul Harding, Catherine Le Nevez, Virginia Maxwell, Olivia Pozzan, and Penny Watson. About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in. TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)


This article identifies and carefully analyzes the use in tort law of what is termed unilateral and bilateral legal analysis. Unilateral, or one-party, analysis involves the design of legal doctrine that is focused on the characteristics or status of a single legal person. It is traditionally associated with criminal law, where the doctrinal attention is tightly focused on the criminal defendant. Inquiry may be made regarding the nature and degree of harm suffered by the victim, or whether the victim agreed to the harm producing act, but these considerations are generally relevant only to the degree that they shed light on the culpability of the criminal defendant. Tort law employs this classic one-party analysis when it determines whether the intent element is satisfied for any of the intentional torts, and when it examines whether or not the defendant in a negligence action has breached the duty of care.As useful as it is in some critical areas of tort law, unilateral analysis fails to generate doctrine that handles properly other important tort law issues. One such area is the privilege of consent. Another is the privilege of self-defense. Both of these tort law problems require for their satisfactory resolution the deployment of classic bilateral, or two-party, analysis of the sort that is traditionally associated with contract law.After fully exploring the necessary blending of unilateral and bilateral analysis, the article goes on to identify a second kind of bilateral analysis that is present in tort law. This type of two-party analysis must deal with situations in which the normally harmonious goals of compensation and deterrence come into conflict. The nature of this problem and its resolution is illustrated across a number of recurring factual situations in torts, including the problem of subjective consent in the absence of objective consent and the problem of reasonable self-defense in response to an innocently generated threat.In the final section of the article, the conflict between compensation and deterrence is shown to shape a bilateral analysis that does not always withhold liability but that instead sometimes results in liability being imposed on a defendant who has not acted in an undesirable, antisocial manner. This element of strict liability is shown to exist within the very heart of what is thought to be traditional, fault-based intentional tort law.


Abstract A notion for distance between hesitant fuzzy data is given. Using this new distance notion, we propose the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution for hesitant fuzzy sets and a new approach in modelling uncertainties. An illustrative example is constructed to show the feasibility and practicality of the new method.


The following study seeks to discover how potential clients define and view the concepts of religion and spirituality. Research questions include: How do respondents define the concepts of religion and spirituality? What interventions do respondents consider religious and/or spiritual? Finally, what interventions would respondents want incorporated into their mental and physical health care? The study is comprised of forty-five respondents who participated in a Survey Monkey survey. Results indicated that while respondent definitions of religion and spirituality differ, themes emerged. Themes that emerged when describing religion included: an organized set of rules, worshiping a God/Higher Power, and a community of followers. Themes that emerged when describing spirituality included: belief in God/Higher Power, an individual, personal experience, and rules/morals dictating how one should live life. Most respondents reported that meditation, yoga, guided imagery, and spending time in nature are spiritual activities. Prayer and music were found to be both religious and spiritual. Majority of respondents indicated they would want mediation, yoga, guided imagery, music, and spending time in nature incorporated into their mental and physical health care. Prayer was the only intervention the majority of respondents reported they did not want incorporated into their care.


Nonlinear mixing of the subharmonic wave with the waves recording principal grating is studied taking as an example spatial subharmonics in CdTe. An importance of optical amplification is shown experimentally for the efficiency of subharmonic generation, but not for the threshold of its excitation. Configuration is proposed for grating recording in which the subharmonic wave is enhanced due to optical interaction with the pump waves. It is shown that subharmonic intensity can be increased more than one order of magnitude by appropriate choice of the polarizations or intensity ratio of the pump beams.


We analyse the structure and chemical enrichment of a Milky Way-like galaxy with a stellar mass of 2 × 1010 M⊙, formed in a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. It is disc dominated with a flat rotation curve, and has a disc scalelength similar to the Milky Way's, but a velocity dispersion that is ˜50 per cent higher. Examining stars in narrow [Fe/H] and [α/Fe] abundance ranges, we find remarkable qualitative agreement between this simulation and observations. (a) The old stars lie in a thickened distribution with a short scalelength, while the young stars form a thinner disc, with scalelengths decreasing, as [Fe/H] increases. (b) Consequently, there is a distinct outward metallicity gradient. (c) Mono-abundance populations exist with a continuous distribution of scaleheights (from thin to thick). However, the simulated galaxy has a distinct and substantive very thick disc (hz ˜ 1.5 kpc), not seen in the Milky Way. The broad agreement between simulations and observations allows us to test the validity of observational proxies used in the literature: we find in the simulation that mono-abundance populations are good proxies for single age populations (<1 Gyr) for most abundances.


RÉSUMÉ This paper focused on the estimates of the VAT gap in WAEMU Member States using the "top-down approach" and conducted econometric analysis to assist in the understanding of the nature and causes of the VAT gap, and to identify country-specific characteristics that appear related to different levels of the VAT gap. The VAT gap is the difference between the theoretical VAT liability and VAT actually collected. It is often expressed in relative terms as a ratio of a theoretical VAT liability. Panel Corrected Standard Errors, robust OLS regression and instrumental variable methods have been used to identify the factors which explain the different levels of VAT gap. Two variables were found to have the strongest relationship with the level of the VAT gap. The VAT gap share increases with the final consumption (% of GDP) of households and non-profit organizations. Second, if the VAT burden, characterized by the ratio theoretical VAT liability to GDP is included as a candidate explanatory variable, then we find a significantly positive connection with the VAT gap. But, we have identified the risk that this estimated correlation could be biased by the measurement errors in the estimation of the theoretical liability. After taking into account this risk through instrumental variable regression, we conclude on a negative and significant relationship with the VAT gap. However, it is up to policymakers to account for not only the VAT rates but also the structure of the tax base with a view to a more efficient VAT system.


Vectorization seeks to accelerate computation through data-level parallelism. Vectorization has been applied to graph processing, where the graph is traversed either in a push style or a pull style. As it is not well understood which style will perform better, there is a need for both vectorized push and pull style traversals. This paper is the first to present a general solution to vectorizing push style traversal. It more-over presents an enhanced vectorized pull style traversal. Our solution consists of three components: CleanCut, a graph partitioning approach that rules out inter-thread race conditions; VectorFast, a compact graph representation that supports fast-forwarding through the edge stream; and Graptor, a domain-specific language and compiler for auto-vectorizing and optimizing graph processing codes. Experimental evaluation demonstrates average speedups of 2.72X over Ligra, 2.46X over GraphGrind, and 2.33X over GraphIt. Graptor outperforms Grazelle, which performs vectorized pull style graph processing, 4.05X.


Background: Traditional, complimentary and alternative medicines (TCAMS) are increasingly being promoted by various Sub-Saharan African governments as a promising health resource in the control and amelioration of HIV/AIDS. The accessibility and cultural acceptability of both herbal medicines and faith healing and the scarcity of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in many communities have made them a favorite treatment option for people living with HIV (PLHIV). Objectives : This paper reviews the literature on the utilization and potential contribution of plant medicines and faith healing for treatment of HIV and opportunistic infections in Ethiopia. Methods : The published and unpublished literature on TCAM, faith healing and HIV/AIDS was reviewed from online sources and several bibliographies. Results and Discussion : Several studies indicate that both plant medicines and faith healing are widely used in Ethiopia for the treatment of HIV-related illness due to the long history, prevailing illness perceptions and religious beliefs. Primary phytochemical tests have identified several plant species with anti-HIV, anti-mycobacterial and antiprotozoal properties but their development as safe and effective medicines will require extensive toxicological and pharmacological drug interaction studies. Increasing evidence of positive outcomes of faith healing involving holy water and prayer reported by PLHIV, particularly spiritual and mental benefits, has potential application for chronic patient care but needs further study. Conclusion and Recommendations: Prevailing and evolving indigenous practices indicate the need for the implementation of appropriate policies and guidelines for the development of safe and effective herbal medicines and the integration of traditional medicine into the health services. Several areas requiring further study are identified.


Ellen J. Kim, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Dermatology and Associate Residency Program Director in the Department of Dermatology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. She is an attending physician in the Cutaneous Lymphoma Clinic, Extracorporeal Photopheresis Program, and the Clinical Trials Unit where she participates in multicenter clinical trials for refractory CTCL. She is a member of the American Academy of Dermatology, the International Society of Cutaneous Lymphomas, and the US Consortium of Cutaneous Lymphomas.


We read with great interest the article entitled «Total Concentrations of Plasma Homocysteine in Puerto Rican Patients With Ischemic Heart Disease» by Rodriguo et al.1 published in the December issue of the REVISTA. Given the enormous pervasiveness of the subject, we would like to make some comments. Firstly, in the Introduction, the authors comment that in Spain studies of ischemic heart disease have been focused more on the theory of the increase in cholesterol, and that there are no studies of homocysteine values in this population. There is a Spanish study2 on this topic that reported that 26% of patients with heart disease proved to have hyperhomocysteinemia. Secondly, the authors did not determine vitamin B6, B12, and folic acid values in cases in which deficits thereof could be a nutritional cause of hyperhomocysteinemia. It has been suggested that


Although the model of English pronunciation in Dutch schools is, and always has been, British English (commonly known as Received Pronunciation, RP), not only teachers, but also informed laymen notice that the pronunciation of learners seems to be more and more influenced by American English. An investigation into the nature and spread of this influence therefore seems in order. This paper discusses some of the preliminary results of a research project which aims to give an inventory and description of the influence of American English (General American, GA) on the pronunciation of 10 phonological variables, among which are /ae/ in words like classroom and wineglass, and flapped /t/ in words like pretty and meeting.A second aim of the project is to find out to which the degree the American and British varieties are attractive to our population. Therefore a number of listening tests were administered:- a preference test, in which subjects had to indicate which pronunciation of a lexical item they thought (a) best (i.e. confirm to the school norm) and (b) they would prefer to use themselves.- an identification test, in which subjects had to indicate whether an item was pronounced in RP or in GA.- a matched guise test consisting of 12 versions of the same story, read by 8 speakers, 4 of them in both varieties.A preliminary inventory shows that in roughly 25% of all the pronunciations of single lexical items (word list style) we can speak of an 'American-like' pronunciaton. The variables that are pronounced most frequently GA-like are flapped /t/ in little, /ae/ in classroom, /a/ in hockey and postvocalic /r/ in morning. It also appears that RP is still the preferred variety on both the preference tests, although this preference decreases slightly when asked which pronunciation they would prefer to use themselves. Roughly 65% of the items was correctly identified as being RP or GA. Finally, the matched guise test showed a significantly high rating of GA female voices on all factors except for the factor 'school-norm'. RP males and females scored relatively high on this factor as well as on 'social status', but dropped considerably on the 'activity' factor and remained below the GA voices on 'personal affect'.


AbstractMolecular dynamics simulations of water flow through nanotubes have demonstrated higher flow rates than the flow rates predicted using classical models and a significant change in flow patterns due to the thin film that forms on the solid wall of the tubes. We have developed a two-region analytical model that described the flow characteristics and permeability of fluid flow through nanoporous media and considered the solid-liquid interfacial effects. Our model considers the influence of various interfacial effects, including long-range van der Waals forces, double-layer repulsive forces, and short-range structure repulsive forces, and it establishes relationships between the permeability and the average pore diameter, porosity, surface diffusion, and contact angle by numerical calculations. Our results indicate that the permeability calculated using the present model (with interfacial effects) is more than 30 times the results that were calculated using the Kozeny-Carman equation (without interfac...


From its illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in spring 2014 to its alleged complicity in the Salisbury Novichok poisonings in spring 2018, Russia has been widely criticised for conducting international relations in a manner that undermines international peace and security. In this article, Stephen Lewis examines the legal aspects of Russia's naval confrontation with Ukraine in November 2018. He argues that, given the present situation of armed conflict between the two countries, specific legal obligations apply to the parties. These differ from those which would apply during peacetime.


Background: The loss of residual renal function (RRF) and subsequent urine volume among haemodialysis (HD) patients may influence affect. Although RRF has been associated with improved patient outcome, its relationship with depression symptomatology is unknown. Methods: 106 HD patients completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The BDI is a depression symptom screening tool, with a score of ≥16 indicating possible clinical depression. Clinical parameters, including RRF (urea clearance, KRU [ml/min]) and interdialytic urine volume, were averaged over the 3-month pre-assessment including the month of the BDI assessment. Results: BDI scores correlated negatively with KRU and interdialytic urine volume. Patients with a KRU <1 had significantly higher BDI scores compared to those with a KRU ≥1. In logistic regression, KRU significantly predicted a BDI score ≥16, after controlling for a range of clinical parameters including urea, dialysis vintage and treatment time. A history of depressive illness was the only other predictive factor. Conclusion: We have demonstrated an association between RRF and depression symptoms in HD patients. The perception of loss associated with low RRF and urine volume may increase depressive vulnerability. Longitudinal assessment is required in order to validate this finding and to determine causality.


This research study presents the strength variations of concrete when replacing fine aggregate by quarry dust and cement by fly ash from 0%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% in step by step. For this study M25 grade of concrete are used. The experimental study of compressive strength of fly ash concrete cubes at age of 7, 14 and 28 days are taken at room temperature. Also, the split tensile strength of fly ash concrete cylinders was found at the age of 14 and 28 days. The flexural strength of the concrete beams is cured by water at 28 days. Following that the admixture of casein protein was added in fly ash and quarry dust concrete specimens while casting process. In this study the advanced method of chloride penetration method (RCPT) was conducted for the fly ash and quarry dust concrete. Finally, this study shows the structural properties like compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural strength of fly ash and quarry dust concrete at various percentage of replacements and also describes the advanced testing of chloride permeability of concrete at 0% to 50% replacement of fly ash and quarry dust.


Background: Elderly patients with cardiovascular disease are relatively undertreated and undertested. Objectives: To investigate whether, and how, individual doctors are influenced by a patient's age in their investigation and treatment of angina. Design: Process-based judgment analysis using electronic patients, semistructured interviews. Setting: Primary Care, Care of the Elderly and Cardiology in England. Participants: Eighty five doctors: 29 cardiologists, 28 care of the elderly specialists and 28 general practitioners (GPs). Main outcome measures: Testing and treatment decisions on hypothetical patients. Results: Forty six per cent of GPs and care of the elderly doctors, and 48% of cardiologists treated patients aged 65+ differently to those under 65, independent of comorbidity. This effect was evident on several decisions: elderly patients were less likely to be prescribed a statin given a cholesterol test, referred to a cardiologist, given an exercise tolerance test, angiography and revascularisation; more likely to have their current prescriptions changed and to be given a follow-up appointment. There was no effect of specialty, gender or years of training on influence of patient age. Those doctors who were influenced by age were on average five years older than those who were not. Interviews revealed that some doctors saw old age as a contraindication to treat. Conclusions: Age, independent of comorbidity, presentation and patients' wishes, directly influenced decision-making about angina investigation and treatment by half of the doctors in the primary and secondary care samples. Doctors explicitly reasoned about the direct influence of age and age-associated influences.


Pregnant women with high blood lead posed high risk to their fetus as placental transfer can occurs to the fetus. The objective of this study was to identify the relationship between blood lead and the neuropsychological score of women who were in their 3rd trimester of pregnancy. These respondents were undergoing a routine antenatal checkup at a teaching hospital located in Klang Valley areas.  Blood lead concentrations were analyzed using graphite furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS). The neuropsychological scores were measured with WHO Neurobehavioral Core Test battery (NCTB). The test consists of 7 items, which made up of the Digit Symbol, Trail Making, Digit Span, Benton Visual Retention Test, Pursuit Aiming, Santa Ana Manual Dexterity, Reaction Time and Movement Time tests. The mean blood lead was 7.78±4.77 µg/dL. The mean score for the total NCTB test was 50.00±5.24. Statistical analysis showed blood lead concentrations were inversely correlated with the total NCTB score (r= –0.462, p≤0.01). The correlation was about 21.3%. The General Linear Model (GLM) showed that age (β= –0.15, p=0.017), weight (β=2.67, p=0.05) and height (β=–1.97, p=0.05) also influence the total neuropsychological scores. In conclusion, blood lead reduces the total neuropsychological scores. The scores for each of the 7 items were inversely and significantly correlated with blood lead concentrations except for the Trail Making and Santa Ana Manual Dexterity tests.


We present a case of a 65 years old man from Islamabad who presented with six months history of psychiatric and behavioural symptoms, significant weight loss. Later on he developed difficulty swallowing and altered sensorium. This was followed by an episode of shortness of breath leading to respiratory arrest, followed by ICU stay on ventilator support, then developed focal deficit in form of left sided weakness, dysautonomia, bradycardia leading to cardiac arrest and another cardiopulmonary resuscitation, myoclonic jerks, orofacial dyskinesias, status epilepticus, coma ultimately resulting in death of the patient. Patient was found to be NMDA receptor antibody positive. CT chest and abdomen did not reveal any hidden malignancy. Patient was given intravenous pulse steroids for 5 days followed by five sessions of plasmapheresis but did not respond. He stayed on ventilator support for 40 days and did not improve. This is the second case of antibody proven NMDA encephalitis from Pakistan, the first being from Islamabad as well and published in this journal.


Rebuilding Western Civilization: Beyond the Twenty-first Century Collapse Seymour Itzkoff Paideia Publishers, 2005 Seymour Itzkoff, professor emeritus of Smith College, is a remarkably erudite and prolific scholar who has immersed himself in the brief history of evolving Homo sapiens and the even more brief history of human civilization. He is deeply concerned by the evidence for a gloomy, and possibly very brief future for humanity. Certainly he sees civilization under threat. What does Itzkoff understand by civilization? Many writers, he notes, have in recent years tended to equate all cultures and to treat all complex cultures as equally entitled to be regarded as "civilizations." But he does not share this view. In his own words, "a way of life that is ... suffused by religious superstition, ruled by clerical pretenders to the word of Deity, incompetent in the arts and sciences," is not a civilization. That seems a harsh judgment, and his statement is perhaps not perfectly valid, but there is sense in what he says. Early Christianity suffocated the inquiring and rational civilization of European antiquity, and was at least partially responsible for the so-called "dark ages" that held Europe in intellectual subjugation for centuries. It was not the Germanic tribes who destroyed the Roman empire that were responsible for the suppression of the ancient civilization of Greece and Rome. As Gibbon showed in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it was a Middle Eastern revelation religion that suppressed all inquiry and sent "heretics" to the stake. Itzkoff himself does not appear to be thinking so much about this historic example of religious superstition as he is about presentday anti-scientific thinking. In particular he appears to have in mind fundamentalist Moslem thought, and fundamentalist Christian thought that seeks to restrict birth control in impoverished third world countries that suffer from an excessive explosion of population induced by Western medical improvements and Western food aid. Itzkoff's dream of a benign, enlightened, global civilization, free from all religious and other prejudices, does not have to be accepted for the intelligent reader to give serious consideration to his warning that the future of mankind is seriously threatened by ignorance and outdated religious dictates. Itzkoff fears a reversal of all that mankind has achieved, and raises the specter of possible future human "devolution." Why do not current Western intellectuals see the threat that he sees? Probably, he suggests, because they are too fearful, and pin their hopes on the mirage of human equality, and on what he regards as a mistaken belief that all extant human populations have the same innate ability to accept and maintain an advanced and highly technical civilization. Itzkoff's prime concern is with what he sees as a threatened decline in human intelligence, a quality he regards as essential to the creation and maintenance of civilization. Not only is high intelligence a requisite for science and technology, but also, he claims, for the visual arts and music. What is more, he says, "there is a harmonization in the intelligence that creates a free constitutional system of political life, and a people who can respond with an heroic and progressive work ethic, having imagination and educational openness to boot." Itzkoff sees the Cro-Magnons as the first truly modern humans. As a part of the population that was directly ancestral to the modern peoples of both Western and Eastern Eurasia, their descendants spread to all parts of the Old World, hybridizing in many areas with indigenous populations of earlier Homo, to produce the varied range of peoples who today inhabit the world. …


Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of secondary school students toward mathematics study, to compare the attitudes of students in the USA with eight other countries, and to compare differences in attitudes by gender for students in the USA. The study also analyzed the relationships between these attitudes and other mathematics learning factors and reported their impact on mathematics achievement. Introduction Research centering on students' attitudes toward mathematics study has received increasing attention. Studies have shown that factors such as motivation and attitude have impacted student achievement (Cote & Levine, 2000; Singh, Granville & Dika, 2002). Moreover, instructional strategies may also support student needs in order to increase student achievement. For example, Bottge (2001) found that when math problems were interesting and engaging, students with learning disabilities were able to solve problems that emphasized higher level thinking skills. Tymms (2001) investigated 21,000 students' attitudes toward math and suggested that the most important factors were the teacher and students' academic level; while age, gender, and language were weakly associated with attitudes. Webster and Fisher's (2000) study revealed that rural and urban students' attitudes toward math and career aspirations positively affected their performance. Altermatt and colleagues (2002) found that students' attitude changes could be predicted and influenced by types of classmates. Webb, Lubinski, & Benbow (2002) found educational experiences, abilities, and interests predicted undergraduate degree concentrations in math and science. Koller, Baumert, and Schnabel (2001) studied gender differences in mathematics achievement, which favored males in achievement, interest, and placement in advanced math courses. Few studies systematically analyzed attitudes, various mathematics learning factors, and achievement of secondary school students using an international database. Utilizing trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), provides insight into cross-national similarities and differences, and augments the existing literature. Methods Sample. A total of 9,072 eighth grade students in the USA were compared with students from eight other countries. These countries included Australia (4,032), Canada (8,770), Chile (5,907), England (2,960), Israel (4,195), Japan (4,745), Russia (4,332), and South Africa (8,146). Australia's sample included both eighth and ninth grade students, and England's sample included only ninth grade students. The sampling design from the TIMSS 1999 study ensured that a representative sample of eighth or ninth grade students was drawn. Data Sources. The data were derived from the TIMSS 1999 study that included student achievement in mathematics and information obtained through a student questionnaire. A total of 57 items were selected from the student questionnaire. Of these items, 11 reflected students' attitudes toward mathematics study. Questions were centered on three categories: importance (2 items), interest (3 items), and difficulty (6 items). Students rated their level of agreement with each item on a four-point scale: 1=Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Agree, and 4=Strongly Agree. Of the remaining 46 items, questions were centered on additional categories including family factors (4 items), friends/classmates' attitudes and behaviors (4 items), self-expectations (3 items), self-concept of performance in math (4 items), motivation (4 items), teaching approaches (26 items), and gender (1 item). Data Analysis. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the characteristics of eighth grade students, which centered on three categories: importance, interest, and difficulty. Where questionnaire items that were categorized as indicating interest or difficulty were reversed, the items were recoded to reflect the opposite score. …


Peer-to-Peer (P2P) live media streaming is an emerging technology that reduces the barrier to stream live events over the Internet. However, providing a high quality media stream using P2P overlay networks is challenging and gives raise to a number of issues: (i) how to guarantee quality of the service (QoS) in the presence of dynamism, (ii) how to incentivize nodes to participate in media distribution, (iii) how to avoid bottlenecks in the overlay, and (iv) how to deal with nodes that reside behind Network Address Translators gateways (NATs).
In this thesis, we answer the above research questions in form of new algorithms and systems. First of all, we address problems (i) and (ii) by presenting our P2P live media streaming solutions: Sepidar, which is a multiple-tree overlay, and GLive, which is a mesh overlay. In both models, nodes with higher upload bandwidth are positioned closer to the media source. This structure reduces the playback latency and increases the playback continuity at nodes, and also incentivizes the nodes to provide more upload bandwidth.
We use a reputation model to improve participating nodes in media distribution in Sepidar and GLive. In both systems, nodes audit the behaviour of their directly connected nodes by getting feedback from other nodes. Nodes who upload more of the stream get a relatively higher reputation, and proportionally higher quality streams. To construct our streaming overlay, we present a distributed market model inspired by Bertsekas auction algorithm, although our model does not rely on a central server with global knowledge. In our model, each node has only partial information about the system. Nodes acquire knowledge of the system by sampling nodes using the Gradient overlay, where it facilitates the discovery of nodes with similar upload bandwidth.
We address the bottlenecks problem, problem (iii), by presenting CLive that satisfies real-time constraints on delay between the generation of the stream and its actual delivery to users. We resolve this problem by borrowing some resources (helpers) from the cloud, upon need. In our approach, helpers are added on demand to the overlay, to increase the amount of total available bandwidth, thus increasing the probability of receiving the video on time. As the use of cloud resources costs money, we model the problem as the minimization of the economical cost, provided that a set of constraints on QoS is satisfied.
Finally, we solve the NAT problem, problem (iv), by presenting two NAT-aware peer sampling services (PSS): Gozar and Croupier. Traditional gossip-based PSS breaks down, where a high percentage of nodes are behind NATs. We overcome this problem in Gozar using one-hop relaying to communicate with the nodes behind NATs. Croupier similarly implements a gossip-based PSS, but without the use of relaying.


> Objective: To determine the effects of ketanserin given from early in the midtrimester of pregnancy on fetal heart rate parameters later in pregnancy. Methods: Patients with diastolic blood pressure persistently higher than 80 mm Hg between 12 and 20 weeks' gestational age were randomized to receive either ketanserin or placebo. Both groups also got 75 mg of aspirin per day. The fetal heart rate was monitored once every fortnight from 28 weeks' gestation and weekly from 36 weeks onward. Recordings were made with the Sonicaid System 8000 and continued until the Dawes and Redman criteria were met. Results: The Dawes and Redman criteria were met within 10 min in 54% of recordings in both study groups, whereas they were not met in 4.5 and 3.3% of recordings in the ketanserin group and placebo group, respectively (P = 0.58). The mean time to meet these criteria duration per recording was 16.9 min in the ketanserin group and 16.2 min in the placebo group (P = 0.83). There were no significant differences between the two study groups in fetal heart rate variability, accelerations, or decelerations before 38 weeks' gestation. Thereafter the mean minute range and short-term and baseline variability were significantly higher in the ketanserin group, and significantly more accelerations of the fetal heart were recorded in the ketanserin group. Conclusions. Ketanserin does not influence the fetal heart rate adversely and may even be associated with improved recordings late in pregnancy.


Database evolution is the process of updating the schema of a database or data warehouse (schema evolution) and evolving the data to the updated schema (data evolution). Database evolution is often necessitated in relational databases due to the changes of data or workload, the suboptimal initial schema design, or the availability of new knowledge of the database. It involves two steps: updating the database schema, and evolving the data to the new schema. Despite the capability of commercial RDBMSs to well optimize query processing, evolving the data during a database evolution through SQL queries is shown to be prohibitively costly. We designed and developed CODS, a platform for efficient data level data evolution in column oriented databases, which evolves the data to the new schema without materializing query results or unnecessary compression/decompression as occurred in traditional query level approaches. CODS ameliorates the efficiency of data evolution by orders of magnitude compared with commercial or open source RDBMSs.


We investigate the effects of the COVID-19-induced shock in financial markets on aggregate venue selection/market share and market quality. We find that the shock is linked with an economically significant loss of market share by dark pools to lit exchanges. In line with theory, the loss appears linked to an increase in lit market volatility and a search for immediacy by traders active in stocks with dark trading access. The market quality implications of the reduction in dark trading are mixed: while it tempers COVID-19-linked liquidity decline in the lit market, it exacerbates the loss of informational efficiency. JEL classification: G12, G14, G15, G18


A study of a number of works bus and coach services operating with little or no financial support from employers is reported. All operated over routes more than 8 km in length. Fares were less than those charged on many conventional stage carriage services and, in terms of pence per km, decreased as route length increased. When route lengths were greater than 12 km, fares were lower than the perceived costs of motoring, taken to be petrol costs of 2P per km (1978 prices). Generally vehicle loads were 40 or more. Overall the group of services exhibited features which an earlier economic study had predicted would be necessary for break-even operation. The work indicated that female workers were generally prepared to tolerate higher fare levels, which meant that services for women could operate over shorter distances on a break-even basis. It also suggested that break-even services for women could be operated to smaller work units. In a speculative section the advantages, disadvantages and potential of works bus operation are discussed.(a) (TRRL) centered variables on the probability of skidding were demonstrated.


BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is a common condition in clinical practice and may be seen in certain occupations due to awkward sitting postures. Studies have revealed LBP as a common problem affecting the quality of life (QOL) and causing disability in certain occupational settings. OBJECTIVE: The current study was aimed to study the prevalence of LBP, disability, and QOL in jewelry workers. Disability and QOL would be compared across genders. METHODOLOGY: One hundred and ninety-five jewelry workers were the participants of the study and were assessed on certain sociodemographic parameters, and the Nordic Musculoskeletal Pain Questionnaire, Modified Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire, and the WHO QOL Questionnaire brief version were administered to those with LBP. The data were statistically analyzed and presented. RESULTS: One hundred and ninety-five individuals participated in the study. Eighty-two (42.05%) reported the symptom of low back ache. Thirty-one males (n = 68) (45.58%) and 51 females (n = 127) (40.15%) reported the symptom. On the MOLBPQ questionnaire, the disability levels between genders showed no significant difference statistically. A mild negative correlation for the psychological domain of QOL and disability (rho = 0.49, P = 0.001) was obtained. CONCLUSIONS: LBP is a commonly occurring problem in jewelry workers and must be addressed. Larger studies are needed to validate and corroborate the findings of the current study.


The recent literature has brought together the characteristics model of utility and classic revealed preference arguments to learn about consumers' willingness to pay. We incorporate market pricing equilibrium conditions into this setting. This allows us to use observed purchase prices and quantities on a large basket of products to learn about individual household's willingness to pay for characteristics, while maintaining a high degree of flexibility and also avoiding the biases that arise from inappropriate aggregation. We illustrate the approach using scanner data on food purchases to estimate bounds on willingness to pay for the organic characteristic. We combine these estimates with information on households' stated preferences and beliefs to show that on average quality is the most important factor affecting bounds on household willingness to pay for organic, with health concerns coming second, and environmental concerns lagging far behind.


Abstract This paper considers the provision of an inter-disciplinary workshop day held for Social Work, Police and Nursing students at a UK university. The focus of the day was to give the students an insight into the reality of being a mother in prison, and the impact that having a mother in prison has upon children. A key feature of the day was the involvement of a group of imprisoned mothers from an open prison, who shared their experiences and engaged with students in small groups. The workshop allowed the stereotypes that the prisoners and student professionals held in relation to one another to be challenged. The planning, aims, process and outcomes of the day are considered along with feedback from those taking part. Students reported increased awareness of the stigma faced by this often overlooked vulnerable group of service users, an increased recognition of the needs of children with mothers in prison and an appreciation of the power of interdisciplinary working to deliver a good service. The imprisoned mothers welcomed the chance to educate the students about the issues faced by themselves and their children, and they found the experience of participating to be positive and empowering.


Training models with discrete latent variables is challenging due to the high variance of unbiased gradient estimators. While low-variance reparameterization gradients of a continuous relaxation can provide an effective solution, a continuous relaxation is not always available or tractable. Dong et al. (2020) and Yin et al. (2020) introduced a performant estimator that does not rely on continuous relaxations; however, it is limited to binary random variables. We introduce a novel derivation of their estimator based on importance sampling and statistical couplings, which we extend to the categorical setting. Motivated by the construction of a stick-breaking coupling, we introduce gradient estimators based on reparameterizing categorical variables as sequences of binary variables and Rao-Blackwellization. In systematic experiments, we show that our proposed categorical gradient estimators provide state-of-the-art performance, whereas even with additional Rao-Blackwellization, previous estimators (Yin et al., 2019) underperform a simpler REINFORCE with a leave-one-out-baseline estimator (Kool et al., 2019).


To coordinate a team of robots for exploration is a challenging problem, particularly in large areas as for example the devastated area after a disaster. This problem can generally be decomposed into task assignment and multi-robot path planning. In this paper, we address both problems jointly. This is possible because we reduce significantly the size of the search space by utilizing RFID tags as coordination points. The exploration approach consists of two parts: a stand-alone distributed local search and a global monitoring process which can be used to restart the local search in more convenient locations. Our results show that the local exploration works for large robot teams, particularly if there are limited computational resources. Experiments with the global approach showed that the number of conflicts can be reduced, and that the global coordination mechanism increases significantly the explored area.


BACKGROUND
Patients with rectal cancer in whom the mesorectal fascia is threatened by tumour are more likely than all patients with stage II/III disease to benefit from preoperative radiotherapy (RT). The objective of this study was to assess whether the status of the mesorectal fascia versus a stage II/III designation can best inform the use of preoperative RT in patients undergoing major rectal cancer resection.

METHODS
We reviewed the charts of consecutive patients with primary rectal cancer treated by a single surgeon at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, between March 2006 and December 2012. The status of the mesorectal fascia was assessed by digital rectal examination, pelvic computed tomography and, when needed, pelvic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Patients whose mesorectal fascia was threatened or involved by tumour received preoperative RT. The study outcomes were rates of positive circumferential radial margin (CRM) and local tumour recurrence.

RESULTS
A total of 153 patients were included, of whom 76 (49.7%) received preoperative RT because of concerns of a compromised mesorectal fascia. The median length of follow-up was 4.5 years. The number of CRM-positive cases in the RT and no-RT groups was 16 (22%) and 1 (1%), respectively (p < 0.01), and the number of cases of local tumour recurrence was 5 (7%) and 2 (3%), respectively (p = 0.2). Rates were similar when only patients with stage II/III tumours were included. Overall, 26 patients (17.0%) received MRI.

CONCLUSION
The status of the mesorectal fascia, not tumour stage, may best identify patients for preoperative RT.


The concept of closely coupled metallodielectric electromagnetic band-gap (CCMEBG) structures is introduced and investigated using two-dimensional (2-D) double-layer dipole and tripole arrays. An efficient numerical method based on a set of coupled integral equations is used to simulate the double-layer array response. The arrays are placed in close proximity to each other and shifted appropriately in order to produce maximum element coupling. Measurements are presented for oblique plane wave and surface wave incidences. A substantial decrease of the stopband center frequency is observed with the CCMEBG design for both element geometries. Furthermore, wider bandwidth and improved angular stability as compared to single-layer MEBG is obtained. The tripole arrays arranged on a hexagonal lattice exhibit common stopband for any polarization of the incident field due to the symmetry of the element in conjunction with the lattice. The lowering of the resonance for up to 4 to 1 in simulation results emerges as the layers are separated by less than /spl lambda//1200 (0.1 mm at 2.5 GHz).


Considering the key position principals hold and the impact that this has on all aspects of school life, it was reasonable to argue that better understanding of the problems and stresses they face would shed more light on the complex nature and dynamics of stress. Walter Gmelch maintained that sources of stress for the school principal were divided into four broad categories: role-based, taskbased, boundary-spanning, and conflict-mediating. Public and political pressure to improve student performance coupled with the arduous task of removing tenured incompetent teachers poses pressing problems for school principals. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the relationship between teacher termination and its effect on the levels of stress of principals. If there was increased stress associated with teacher termination, was the stress more significant than other stressors associated with the principalship? This qualitative study was conducted in one of the largest school districts in the state and in the nation. The Administrative Stress Index questionnaire was administered to selected principals and follow-up interviews were conducted, tape recorded, and transcribed. Principals in this study clearly indicated that a central difficulty for them, as administrators, was the excessive amount of time needed to assist and support teachers who were less than effective. The interviews also indicated that the experienced principals were more critical of the events that occurred out of their locus of control and therefore increased the level of boundaryspanning stress. The less experienced principals continued to struggle with the issue of career termination and its' impact on the person and on task-based stress. It was recommended that school districts recognize the stress associated with termination by providing comprehensive training programs for principals in stress maintenance. Colleges and universities who prepare educators should introduce a distance-learning program in stress management for school administrators. Further study was recommended on this topic as it related to middleschool and high-school principals.


Nowadays thin films play an important role in everyday life and in industries. Thin film technology has been developed primarily for the growing demand for development of smaller and smaller devices that require advanced materials and new processing techniques suitable for micro and nano technology. One of the methods of producing thin films is by means of plasma technology. This is a technique by which plasma, also known as 'the fourth state of matter', is used to generate ions, electrons and radicals which deposit at a surface where they will form a thin film. The source of these depositing species could be either gaseous, liquid or solid in origin. Most of the time a plasma is generated by means of an electrical discharge. Plasma technologies are used for various applications. One of these is Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD). PECVD systems have widespread applications in the electronic sector, because of their exibility in depositing different films such as silicon oxide thin films (SiOx). These films, currently deposited by organosilicon compounds, such as hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO), have dielectric and good barrier properties. The aim of the work at CRPP consists in optimizing PECVD processes for the deposition of these films on polymers. In this study, the species in gaseous phase and the powder produced in oxygen-diluted HMDSO plasmas were experimentally characterized in a radiofrequency (RF) capacitively-coupled reactor at 13.56 MHz. The gaseous phase of these plasmas and the particle formation were studied by in-situ infrared absorption spectroscopy and optical emission spectroscopy. The study of the powder formation is important because the particle deposition imposes an upper limit on the deposition rate. Particle formation was firstly studied as a function of HMDSO/O2 ratio. Analysis of the time evolution of the infrared absorption spectra gives the development of the size, the number density, the structure and the particle composition. At high oxygen dilution the formation of large particles is observed. The analysis of HMDSO/O2 plasma at low O2 content suggests that at the beginning of the process very small particles are formed by polymerization; the same particles do not grow much and keep sizes around 50 nm. The admixture of inert or non-reactant gases, such as Ar or N2, into the plasma promotes polymerization of the monomer; a high value of one of these inert or non-reactant gases leads to small powder particle size, since only polymerization takes place in this case. Particle size around 50 nm is also found in this case. At the same time we see a decrease of the carbon content and a weak reduction of the stoichiometry in SiOx indicated by the shift of the SiOSi asymmetric stretching vibration. This reduction also influences the deposited layers, less oxidized and, thus, quite far from a stoichiometric character. Hexamethyldisilazane (HMDSN) and tetramethylsilane (TMS) are other reagents that have been identified as alternatives to HMDSO. The in-situ infrared absorption spectra show that HMDSO/O2 and HMDSN/O2 plasmas are quite similar, but in the second case a lower SiOSi stretching peak intensity, due to NH and SiN peaks, is seen. TMS/O2 and HMDSN/O2 plasma spectra show a low SiOSi bending and stretching peak intensity, due also to the oxygen atom absence in their chemical structure. Two separate chapters are respectively devoted to the silicon nitride thin films (SiNx) and plasma crystal formation. SiNx layers are deposited by three different organosilicon compounds, such as HMDSN, TMS and bis(dimethylamino)dimethylsilane (BDMADMS). No powder formation is visualized in this contest. The ex-situ infrared absorption spectra show the difficulty to produce stable SiNx films; they present a low SiN peak intensity and are quite hygroscopic. Furthermore, in HMDSO/O2 plasmas at high oxygen dilution and high pressure, later in time into the discharge, accretion leads to larger and larger particles which can finish up in particles forming a plasma crystal. The study of RF harmonics shows the presence of instabilities, clear indications of the passage from small particulate to plasma crystal structure.


As a fundamental review and critique of activist economic policies, this book is a unique contribution to classical political economy. "Monetary Policy and Macroeconomic Stabilization" is about macroeconomic stabilization policy, with emphasis on the value of a distinct national monetary policy to growth. Ole Bjorn Roste's argument is for public officials to restrain themselves in the pursuit of policy. As the author notes: when you know less, you should do less.The history of modern macroeconomics started in 1936 with the publication of Keynes' "General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money". The problems of the Great depression of the 1930s paved the way for a change of focus, from the long run to economic fluctuations in the short run, and from nominal to real variables, such as unemployment and aggregate output.Keynes offered clear policy implications in tune with the times. Because economic adjustment was slow, waiting for the economy to recover by itself was irresponsible. Particularly fiscal policy was essential to return to high employment. Monetary policy could affect aggregate demand through Interest rates, but was less important. Roste discusses the role of monetary policy, starting out with the implications of the theory of optimum currency areas (OCAs). This is followed by estimates of the output loss associated with disinflation policy (the sacrifice ratio) for six OECD economies. Further, Roste models the dynamic adjustment to negative, local labor-market shocks, with particular relevance to Scandinavia, in a final section.The idea that governments should pursue stabilizing fiscal or monetary policies with regard to real variables is often taken for granted by the public, if not by economists. Among the reasons for skepticism, is the presence of differing views on how economies really work, that the state of a given economy becomes known only after a time lag, and that economic agents react to policy and expectations of policy. For these reasons, the effects of policy are generally uncertain. This book explains why the role of history is critical to the study of macroeconomics.


Protein-based thermoplastics offer an attractive alternative to petroleum-based plastics if their properties allow for large volume production using processes such as injection molding. A fractional factorial design was used to analyze the influence of injection-molding parameters (melt temperature, tool temperature, injection rate, holding pressure, and cooling time) on the injection-molding process (maximum injection pressure, injection pressure curve) and mechanical properties (tensile strength, elongation at break, secant modulus) of blood meal–based thermoplastics. Optimal mechanical properties were obtained at higher tool and melt temperatures while the injection rate was unimportant. The most important injection parameter was the holding pressure, which has to be lowered when using a higher melt temperature, which was preferred for better elongation at break. A lower holding pressure also produced moldings with a higher modulus, which could be good for demolding. Blood meal–based thermoplastics behaved mostly like standard thermoplastics, without any significant deviations. Within a workable processing window, its mechanical properties were largely unaffected by processing conditions, but as with any thermoplastic, care must be taken to select the best injection-molding parameter settings to achieve optimal part quality and high processability. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Adv Polym Technol 2013, 32, 21361; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/adv.21361


The article aims at revealing a specific ultimate relation of the Baltic New Sacrality with chorale. Its subject-matter is chorale transformations through the ruination of architectonics of sanctum's chorale, turning it into a horizontal and spreading space or "tower ruins" – inspiring a rise of vertical accordics to the transcendental "other space". Examples can be three works of the Lithuanian composers for the organs: Mykolas Natalevičius's "LA" dedicated to Loreta Asanavičiūtė (2014) and "Psalmus 150" (2017), also Algirdas Martinaitis's "The Messenger from Heaven", the prayer to St. Francis of Assisi (2014). In these works, there emerge the principles of transformation of architectonics of chorale's "sanctum" – Natalevičius's overflow to the horizontal and Martinaitis's integration of different sphere outlines into the vertical of rising transcendental harmony. Baltic minimalism demonstrates the way of the New Sacrality as an ideological alternative, a response or even replication to still relevant postmodernism, the "carnival of simulacra" ( J. Ranciere), relating it with the discourse of modern Western cultural philosophy of the image. The works by Arvo Pärt (Trivium, 1976), Aivars Kalejs ("Via dolorosa", 1990), Imants Zemzaris ("Field. Mandala", 1984), Teisutis Makačinas ("Prayer for Lithuania", 1980), Onutė Narbutaitė ("The Road to the Silence", 1981), Peteris Vasks ("Musica serva", 1988) are actualised by refusing "carnival simulacra" (after J. Ranciere) or representativity, going into silence of sacrality, seeking reduced choral architectonic and pulsation of Enlightening. In this way, the Baltic musical creation is especially relevant nowadays, it is renewing the global concept of sacrality.


Tea is planted in the high potential and prime lands in the humid and per-humid agro-ecological zones. The population pressure in the tea growing districts is relatively higher than that of the neighbouring districts without the enterprise. The average area under tea in the smallholder sub-sector is approximately 0.27 ha. The high population density in tea growing zones coupled with escalating unemployment in the country translates into continued sub-division of tea farms to smaller sizes. This scenario is an overt potential threat to the future of the smallholder tea production in Kenya. The problem of continued sub-division of tea farms has degenerated into what has conveniently been termed as \"uneconomic tea farm units\". The objective of this study was to determine the minimum significant tea hectarage a tea farmer should have below which it would be termed as \"uneconomic tea farm unit.\" A profit function model was fitted on 259 smallholder farms. The dependent variable was gross margin per farm per year. The independent variables were: number of tea bushes per farm per year, cost of fertilizer (Kshs.) per hectare per year, labour wage rate (Kshs.) per man-day per year in each farm and an hectarage dummy variable where D=1 for farms above a defined nominal farm size otherwise D=0. The regression analysis was done for every farm size hectarage in the whole sample. For each hectarage variable, the corresponding significance level of the hectarage dummy coefficient was recorded and their relationship summarised in a graph. The results indicated that farms with tea hectarage within 0.10 ≤ X ≤ 0.15 ha are more profitable. It was concluded that tea farm sizes falling within this range were economically efficient at all observed prices of the variable inputs, given the distribution of the fixed factors of production. It meant that tea farms sub-divided to sizes falling within this range are more profitable. The most optimal tea farm size was found at 0.13 ha. However, any tea farm with an area below 0.10 ha could conveniently be termed as \"uneconomic tea farm unit\". It implied that tea farms sub-divided to sizes below this hectarage would not be economically viable. The policy implication is that the minimum hectarage that an \"economic tea farm unit\" can have when farm subdivision is done to the limit should be 0.10 ha (approximately 0.25 acres). It is believed that subdividing tea farms below 0.10 ha would lead to uneconomical farm units which would ultimately result to a decline in national tea production. Policy makers within the tea industry can therefore conveniently draw the bottom line of tea farm subdivision at 0.10 ha. It would save the smallholder sub-sector from fragmenting tea farms to uneconomical sizes. Journal of Agriculture, Science and Technology Vol.4(1) 2002: 1-14


Many developing countries are suffering from air pollution, especially the Particulate Matter with diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5). While quite a few air quality monitoring stations have been built by governments in a city's public areas, the indoor PM2.5 has not yet been monitored and dealt with effectively. Though many office buildings have an HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system, PM2.5 is not considered as a factor when the system circulates fresh air from outdoors. This paper introduces a real system that we have deployed in the offices of four Microsoft campuses in China. This system instantly monitors indoor air quality on different floors of a building (including office areas, gyms, garages, and restaurants), enabling Microsoft employees to enquire the air quality of a place by using a mobile phone or checking a website. The information can guide a user's decision making, e.g., finding the right time to work out in the gym or turn on individual air filters in her own office. Through analyzing the indoor and outdoor air quality data collected over a long period, our system can even offer actionable and energy-efficient suggestion to HVAC systems, e.g., automatically turning on the system only a few hours earlier than usual if it is a heavily polluted day, or identifying the filters in HVAC system that should be renewed.


Sediment dissolved organic carbon (DOC) fluxes were determined in the oxygen minimum zone along the north‐western Mexican margin using five different methods: in situ benthic chambers, on‐deck incubations, slicing, dialysis sampling (peepers), and sipping. For each of the five methods, replicates (n = 6–12) were made. Directly determined fluxes (whole‐core incubations and benthic chambers) and calculated fluxes (sliced and dialysis‐sampled cores) agree well (0.41 ± 0.09, 0.36 ± 0.04, 0.25 ± 0.05, and 0.25 ± 0.05 mmol C m−2 d−1, respectively). On the Mexican margin, the DOC flux was 8% of the sedimentary carbon input, suggesting that it is a significant component to the local carbon budget. Extrapolations of this flux to the total global margin suggest that shelf and slope sediments contribute 96 Tg C yr−1. The residence time of oceanic DOC based on this flux is consistent with measurements of the deep‐water DO 14 C age. Profiles were also constructed from sip‐isolated pore waters and yield consistently lower DOC profile gradients and DOC fluxes (0.06 ± 0.02 mmol C m−2 d−1). We propose that the consistently observed discrepancy between sip‐isolated profiles and other isolation techniques is a result of sampling different reservoirs of pore water present in the heterogeneous sediment matrix.


Critics have often noted Darwin's enthusiastic curiosity (Beer, Levine, Amigoni, Schmitt, Browne) in the Journal of Researches (1839)—particularly its "intensely libidinous" nature (Beer)—but his "strange antics" and numerous instances of "amusement" have been treated as little more than biographical gloss, or charming digressions on the way to a much larger story. But re-reading these understatedly comic episodes through the interpretive prism of incongruity produces a new set of emphases, and intellectual and affective affinities. For, like Michel Foucault's laughter at the beginning of The Order of Things (1966), Darwin's "scientific wit" has distinctly taxonomic implications.  Incongruity figures the splicing of two previously un-apprehended interpretive frames, a kink in the logic of expectation. While Darwin later naturalizes (rather than spectacularizes) incongruity into his scientific method, in its first iteration in the Journal, it performs vital cultural and aesthetic work: upturning sublimity and delivering detail and present-ness rather than vastness and transcendental awe.  Building on Arthur Koestler's theory of "bisociation", I argue that incongruity—a gentlemanly and Enlightenment theory of comedy that is fundamentally horizontal rather than vertical in its purview—operates by making Darwin's own previous expectations, rather than any object, animal or person, the butt of the joke. The "clash" of comic frames at the point of observation limns incongruity's usefulness as a form of visually self-stimulating agon. These "shifts of attention" (Koestler), I propose, have significant implications in his early evolutionary theorizing: gesturing towards Darwin's own "nonsense" aesthetic: one that is highly suggestive of non-essentialist approaches to species thinking.


The Supreme Court's decision in Salman v. United States left unanswered an important issue concerning the reach of Rule 10b-5's prohibitions with respect to trades based on a tip of material inside information: in cases based on the misappropriation theory, is it necessary to show that the tipper enjoyed a personal benefit of which the trader was aware? The personal benefit test was originally developed in the context of tipping cases based on the classical theory of insider trading. The Supreme Court in Salman explicitly said that it was not reaching the matter of whether the test should be extended as well to tipping cases based on the misappropriation theory. And there is nothing in the language of Chiarella, Dirks, and O'Hagan—the earlier seminal Supreme Court cases relating to the reach of Rule 10b-5's prohibitions on insider trading—that calls for doing so. The lower courts, however, have split on the issue, and in recent years a number of them, through a set of statements unaccompanied by reasoned analysis, seem to be sleepwalking into inserting the personal benefit requirement into misappropriation-theory-based tipping cases. We show that this recent drift is seriously misguided as a matter of both doctrine and policy. Allowing this errant doctrine to become firmly lodged in the law would needlessly leave many socially undesirable trades unpunished and hence undeterred.


Abstract:  The acceleration of processes such as forest fragmentation and forest fires in landscapes under intense human pressures makes it imperative to quantify and understand the effects of these processes on the conservation of biodiversity in these landscapes. We combined information from remote‐sensing imagery and ground maps of all fires in the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary (MWLS) in the Western Ghats of India over 14 years (1989–2002). These spatial data on fire occurrence were integrated with maps of vegetation types found in the MWLS to examine fire conditions in each. We calculated the average fire‐return interval for each of the vegetation types individually and for the MWLS as a whole. Using vegetation data from the larger Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and the entire Western Ghats region, we conservatively estimated fire‐frequency information for these larger regions. Because the MWLS does not contain tropical evergreen or montane forests, we were unable to estimate fire conditions in these forest types, which represent 31% of all Western Ghats vegetation cover. For the MWLS, all vegetation types had average fire‐return intervals of <7 years, and the sanctuary as a whole had a fire‐return interval of 3.3 years. Compared with a 13‐year MWLS fire data set from 1909–1921, this represents a threefold increase in fire frequency over the last 80 years. We estimated average fire‐return intervals of roughly 5 years for both the larger Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and the entire Western Ghats region. Given other recent reports, the estimated fire frequencies for the Western Ghats forests outside protected reserves are conservative. We conclude that the current fire regime of the Western Ghats poses a severe and persistent conservation threat to forests both within and outside protected reserves.


The adsorption of a series of six cationic polyelectrolytes onto a gold surface was monitored via a quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D). The series of polyelectrolytes were chemically similar but differing in the ratio of two randomly ordered constituent monomers, one of which was charged, the other neutral. Thus the series of polyelectrolytes differed systematically in their charge densities, ranging from a high charge density (100% of monomers charged) to a low charge density (1% charged). It was determined that high charge density polyelectrolytes adsorbed in a relatively flat and rigid layer, while the low charge density polyelectrolyte, as expected, adsorbed in a much more extended structure that coupled strongly to the bulk solvent. By comparison to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results, we have also calculated the relative solvent mass hydrodynamically coupled to the adsorbed polymer, which ranges from almost 80% solvent for the 1% charged case down to close to zero for the 100% charged case. Since the QCM-D results are measured relative to uncoated gold in aqueous solution, the latter results should be interpreted as showing that the amount of water hydrodynamically coupled to gold and that coupled to gold coated with the 100% charged polyelectrolyte is very similar. It is believed that this systematic study on the effect of polyelectrolyte structure on the measured dissipation change in the QCM-D may serve as a first guide when inferring structural and viscoelastic information based solely on the QCM-D technique for other similar systems. In addition, a preliminary study on the ability of one polymer to replace another preadsorbed polymer layer was conducted that showed that a steric layer was able to prevent the adsorption of a thermodynamically more favorable polymer. In the reverse case, greater exchange was possible.


As the chemical structures of radiation damaged molecules may differ greatly from their undamaged counterparts, investigation and description of radiation damaged structures is commonly biased by the researcher. Radical formation from ionizing radiation in crystalline α-l-rhamnose monohydrate has been investigated using a new method where the selection of radical structures is unbiased by the researcher. The method is based on using ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) studies to investigate how ionization damage can form, change and move. Diversity in the radical production is gained by using different points on the potential energy surface of the intact crystal as starting points for the ionizations and letting the initial velocities of the nuclei after ionization be generated randomly. 160 ab initio MD runs produced 12 unique radical structures for investigation. Out of these, 7 of the potential products have never previously been discussed, and 3 products are found to match with radicals previously observed by electron magnetic resonance experiments.


Objectives This study was conducted to show the intraocular pressure (IOP) distribution and the factors affecting IOP in subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) in India. Methods We measured the anthropometric and biochemical parameters for confirmed type 2 DM patients. A comprehensive ocular examination was performed for 1377 subjects aged > 40 years and residing in Chennai. Results A significant difference in IOP (mean ± standard deviation) was found between men and women (14.6±2.9 and 15.0±2.8 mmHg, p = 0.005). A significantly elevated IOP was observed among smokers, subjects with systemic hypertension and women with clinically significant macular edema (CSME). After a univariate analysis, factors associated significantly with higher IOP were elevated systolic blood pressure, elevated resting pulse rate and thicker central corneal thickness (CCT). In women, elevated glycosylated hemoglobin was associated with a higher IOP. After adjusting for all variables, the elevated resting pulse rate and CCT were found to be associated with a higher IOP. Conclusions Systemic hypertension, smoking, pulse rate and CCT were associated with elevated intraocular pressure in type 2 DM. Women with type 2 DM, especially those with CSME, were more prone to have an elevated IOP.


The objective was to investigate the relationship between changes in body condition on reproductive traits of donor mares in an embryo collection program. Fifty-six non-pregnant mares, 3 to 18 years old, were studied from August 2008 through April 2009. Body condition score (BC; 1-9 scale, thin to obese) was estimated monthly. Body weight and tail and rib s.c. fat depths (SF) were measured monthly. SF was determined by ultrasound. Dominant follicle diameter (DF) was measured daily during the follicular phase. Mares were artificially inseminated and embryo transfers were conducted 6 d after ovulation. Analyses were performed with SAS® (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA). Age classes were as follows: age 1, 3 to 6.9 (n = 17); age 2, 7 to 12.9 (n = 25), and age 3, ≥13 years (n = 14). Months in experiment were T1 to T6. BC classes were as follows: B1, 7.5. Embryo recovery rate was compared by chi square. Effects of month and age on BC, weight, and SF were analyzed by a mixed model. Age, BC, and month fixed effects on DF diameter were analyzed by ANOVA with mare within class as the error term. Means were compared by contrasts. BC was higher (P = 0.02) in older mares (6.78 ± 0.2 and 6.93 ± 0.2 in age 1 and age 2 v. 7.25 ± 0.2 in age 3) and increased (P = 0.009) with time (from 6.79 ± 0.20 to 7.42 ± 0.26 for T1 to T6, respectively). Weight (kg) was not associated with age but increased (P = 0.03) throughout the experiment. Tail fat increased with age (P = 0.04) and decreased with increasing months on experiment (P = 0.02). DF diameter increased daily through the follicular phase (P < 0.0001) and was smaller (P < 0.05) in mares with lower body condition (33.80 ± 0.31 in BC1 v. 34.17 ± 0.31 mm in BC4). DF diameter decreased (P < 0.01) with month on study. Embryo recovery rate was not affected by age or BC but was lower (P = 0.003) in mares that ovulated follicles smaller than 40 mm compared to mares ovulating follicles greater than 40 mm. BC above 6.5 was associated with higher embryo recovery rate, which was, in turn, correlated positively with DF diameter. Thus, our results support the use of BC scoring to predict performance in equine embryo transfer programs. Body condition scoring was not a good indicator of SF under the current experimental conditions because SF decreased during the breeding season. BC scoring may indicate lean tissue gain, which may be a better indicator of reproductive efficiency in mares. FAPEMIG, CAPES, Haras El Far.


Using harmonized data for the years 1995–2001 from the European Community Household Panel, the authors analyze gender pay gaps by sector across the wage distribution in eleven countries. In estimations that control for the effects of individual characteristics at different points of the distribution, they calculate the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women. The magnitude of the gender pay gap, thus measured, varied substantially across countries and across the public and private sector wage distributions. The gap typically widened toward the top of the wage distribution (the "glass ceiling" effect), and in a few cases it also widened at the bottom (the "sticky floor" effect). The authors suggest that differences in childcare provision and wage setting institutions across EU countries may partly account for the variation in patterns by country and sector.


We evaluated the performances of a newly designed real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay using TaqMan® probes to detect Salmonella Typhi. TaqMan® real-time PCR assays were performed by designed primers and probe based on the staG gene for detecting S. Typhi. The specificity of the assay was evaluated on 15 Salmonella serovars. The analytical specificity was evaluated on 20 non-Salmonella microorganisms. The analytical sensitivity was assessed using decreasing DNA quantities of S. Typhi ATCC 19430. Finally the detection capability of the TaqMan® real-time PCR assay on isolates recovered from patients with Salmonella infections was compared to the conventional PCR assay. Only S. Typhi strain had positive results when subjected to the assay using Typhi-specific real-time PCR. No amplification products were observed in real-time PCR with any of the non-Salmonella microorganisms tested. The TaqMan® real-time PCR was more sensitive than the conventional PCR. In conclusion, we found that the easy-to-use real-time PCR assays were faster than conventional PCR systems. The staG-based TaqMan® real-time PCR assay showed to be specific and sensitive method for the safe and rapid detection of the S. Typhi.


Professor Lambert examines path dependence as a potential "new economics" having possible general implications for the normative basis of the corporation as nexus of contracts. He introduces the discussion by reviewing the parallel scholarship of contracts and corporate law as they utilize efficiency to reshape theory. He then addresses the concept of path-dependent lock-in to suboptimal remediable results built on the phenomenon of increasing returns. The sharp deviation from neoclassical economics evinced by path dependence prompts an analysis of scholarly criticism suggesting the highly unlikely occurrence of remediable suboptimality. Using the critical literature as a point of departure, he assesses the validity of path dependence to the contracting process, first generally, and then in connection with the literature that has focused specifically on the bond indenture. He suggests that the case has not been made for the general application of path dependence to the contracting process, but unique attributes of certain contracts, such as the corporate bond indenture, may exist in a unique environment conducive to path-dependent suboptimality. Evaluating the normative implications of path dependence that follow from potential contractual inefficiency, he turns to penalty default rules of interpretation as an antidote to inefficiency. He speculates whether Courts should adopt a passive remedial stance -- in essence a penalty default rule -- to encourage ex ante adoption of optimal terms, thus conserving ex post public judicial resources. To test the vitality of penalty defaults he considers three prominent bondholder disputes. The analysis of the cases leads to the tentative conclusion that the effect of judicial decisions on the adoption of indenture provisions is indeterminate and at most secondary to the pricing mechanism of the bond market, which accords relatively little importance to bond covenants other than interest rate, maturity and call provisions. He concludes that, even in an environment susceptible to adoption of inefficient indenture terms, courts will likely have a small role to play in encouraging efficiency in the development of indenture terms.


At present, first and second kidney transplantation have established surgical techniques with few variations between surgeons. They also are considered the best renal replacement therapy for patients with end stage renal disease. Both offer better quality of life and longer survival compared to dialysis. However the third and fourth transplants are significantly more complex. Patients are often highly sensitized, comorbid with limited surgical options due to the previous operations, immunosuppression and long periods on dialysis. There is an incorrect belief that third and fourth retransplantation will not offer any advantage to this cohort of patients and considered to be poor utilization of the limited supply of organs. Recent work demonstrated that third and fourth transplantation offers a survival advantage however it slightly inferior to first and second transplantation, but still there is no established technique. In spite of the surgical challenge, the main cause of graft loss in this cohort of patient is immune mediated rather than the surgical complications. In this review article, we describe various techniques used in transplanting these surgically, immunologically and medically challenging patients demonstrating the effect of surgical complications on the outcome.


This thesis presents an investigation, of synchronisation and causality, motivated by problems in computational neuroscience. The thesis addresses both theoretical and practical signal processing issues regarding the estimation of interdependence from a set of multivariate data generated by a complex underlying dynamical system. This topic is driven by a series of problems in neuroscience, which represents the principal background motive behind the material in this work. The underlying system is the human brain and the generative process of the data is based on modern electromagnetic neuroimaging methods . In this thesis, the underlying functional of the brain mechanisms are derived from the recent mathematical formalism of dynamical systems in complex networks. This is justified principally on the grounds of the complex hierarchical and multiscale nature of the brain and it offers new methods of analysis to model its emergent phenomena. A fundamental approach to study the neural activity is to investigate the connectivity pattern developed by the brain's complex network. Three types of connectivity are important to study: 1) anatomical connectivity refering to the physical links forming the topology of the brain network; 2) effective connectivity concerning with the way the neural elements communicate with each other using the brain's anatomical structure, through phenomena of synchronisation and information transfer; 3) functional connectivity, presenting an epistemic concept which alludes to the interdependence between data measured from the brain network. The main contribution of this thesis is to present, apply and discuss novel algorithms of functional connectivities, which are designed to extract different specific aspects of interaction between the underlying generators of the data. Firstly, a univariate statistic is developed to allow for indirect assessment of synchronisation in the local network from a single time series. This approach is useful in inferring the coupling as in a local cortical area as observed by a single measurement electrode. Secondly, different existing methods of phase synchronisation are considered from the perspective of experimental data analysis and inference of coupling from observed data. These methods are designed to address the estimation of medium to long range connectivity and their differences are particularly relevant in the context of volume conduction, that is known to produce spurious detections of connectivity. Finally, an asymmetric temporal metric is introduced in order to detect the direction of the coupling between different regions of the brain. The method developed in this thesis is based on a machine learning extensions of the well known concept of Granger causality. The thesis discussion is developed alongside examples of synthetic and experimental real data. The synthetic data are simulations of complex dynamical systems with the intention to mimic the behaviour of simple cortical neural assemblies. They are helpful to test the techniques developed in this thesis. The real datasets are provided to illustrate the problem of brain connectivity in the case of important neurological disorders such as Epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. The methods of functional connectivity in this thesis are applied to intracranial EEG recordings in order to extract features, which characterize underlying spatiotemporal dynamics before during and after an epileptic seizure and predict seizure location and onset prior to conventional electrographic signs. The methodology is also applied to a MEG dataset containing healthy, Parkinson's and dementia subjects with the scope of distinguishing patterns of pathological from physiological connectivity.


In the beginning of the 20th century several scholars (B. Stade, F. Schwally, J. Morgenstern) argued that Gen 1:1–2:4a consists of two different layers: one containing a "Tatbericht" (account of the divine act) and the other consisting of a "Wortbericht" (account of the creative divine word). This view became dominant in scholarship. However, the detailed study of O.H. Steck (1975) arguing for the literary unity of the story marked an important turning-point, the impact of which continues to be felt strongly today. This article critically examines the arguments of Steck, especially his interpretation of the " ויהי כן -formula" ("and it was so"). This is followed by observations of important differences of specific motifs and particularities of language between the "divine-word"-statements and "divine-act"-statements. For example, in the "word-account" God collaborates with other entities such as the firmament, sea, earth, but the "act-account" attributes creative activity to God alone. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the "word-account" represents the older "skeleton" of Gen 1, while the "act-layer" consists of later additions that refine the earlier account with their own theological accents. Since the vocabulary and the theological view of the later "act-statements" can be associated with the priestly document (Pg), the early "divine word account" should be taken as another sign (in addition to, for instance, Gen 5)that P is based on – at least to some extent – identifiable sources.


Antidepressants have been shown to affect glial cell functions and intracellular signaling through mechanisms that are still not completely understood. In the present study, we provide evidence that in glial cells the lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) receptor LPA1 mediates antidepressant-induced growth factor receptor transactivation, ERK1/2 signaling, and protection from oxidative stress. Thus, in C6 glioma cells and rat cortical astrocytes, ERK1/2 activation induced by either amitriptyline or mianserin was antagonized by Ki16425 and VPC 12249 (S), which block LPA1 and LPA3 receptors, and by AM966, which selectively blocks LPA1. Cell depletion of LPA1 with siRNA treatment markedly reduced antidepressant- and LPA-induced ERK1/2 phosphorylation. LPA1 blockade prevented antidepressant-induced phosphorylation of the transcription factors CREB and Elk-1. Antidepressants and LPA signaling to ERK1/2 was abrogated by cell treatment with pertussis toxin and by the inhibition of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptor (FGF-R) and platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGF-R) tyrosine kinases. Both Ki16425 and AM966 suppressed antidepressant-induced phosphorylation of FGF-R. Moreover, blockade of LPA1 or inhibition of FGF-R and PDGF-R activities prevented antidepressant-stimulated Akt and GSK-3β phosphorylations. Mianserin protected C6 glioma cells and astrocytes from apoptotic cell death induced by H2O2, as indicated by increased cell viability, decreased expression of cleaved caspase 3, reduced cleavage of poly-ADP ribose polymerase and inhibition of DNA fragmentation. The protective effects of mianserin were antagonized by AM966. These data indicate that LPA1 constitutes a novel molecular target of the regulatory actions of tricyclic and tetracyclic antidepressants in glial cells.


India offers exciting business opportunities in almost every sector in the country. One of the most liberal policies for foreign investment and technology transfer is followed by India. Foreign investment gives the Indian industry a chance for technological up gradation, access to global managerial skills and practices, optimum utilization of human capital and natural resources, and to compete efficiently in the international market. FDI is vital for India's integration with the universal production chains that are engaged by various multinationals across the world. The Government of India recognizes the significant role played by foreign direct investment in accelerating the economic growth of the country and thus started a swing of economic and financial reforms in 1991. India is now initiating the second generation reforms intended for a faster integration of the Indian economy with the world economy. As a consequence of the introduction of various policies, India has been quickly changing from a restrictive regime to a liberal one. Now FDI is also encouraged in most of the economic activities under the automatic route. Firms employ FDI in order to best utilize or manage more efficiently the existing competitive advantages. The dimensions of the FDI flows into India could be explained in terms of its growth and size, sources and sectoral compositions. The growth of FDI inflows in India was not significant until 1991 due to the regulatory policy framework. However, under the new policy regime, it is expected to assume a much larger role in catalyzing Indian economic development. Studies about Western firms reveal that market size and expected growth are the most essential determinants of FDI into the area. Present study is an endeavor in addressing some unexplored areas of FDI in Indian scenario and its economic significance.