Introduction
Obesity is the most common nutritional disorder in the world and is widely acknowledged as having become a global epidemic.(1) The prevalence of childhood obesity in the United Kingdom (UK) dramatically increased over a short number of years in the 1990s.(2-4) There are well-recognised health consequences of childhood obesity, both during childhood as well as those tracking into adulthood affecting health, psychological and economical welfare.(5;6) However, there is a surprising lack of well conducted published research into effective childhood obesity treatment strategies and few with relevance to the UK National Health Service (NHS).(5;7)

This thesis describes (a) the Scottish Childhood Obesity Treatment Trial (SCOTT), a randomised controlled trial (RCT) that compared standard NHS dietetic management of childhood obesity with a novel intensive dietetic approach in Scottish primary school aged (5 – 11 years old) children and (b) reports a complementary qualitative study that explored the parents' perceptions of the dietetic treatments their child received during the SCOTT project. The SCOTT project was conceived to be an easily reproducible treatment programme within the UK NHS system for primary school aged children.

Methodology
The SCOTT quantitative study was a single-blind RCT involving 134 obese children of primary school age (5 -11 years), 75 females and 59 males. Inclusion criteria were children with 'simple' obesity (body mass index (BMI)  98th centile on the UK 1990 charts) and families that perceived the child's weight as a problem and were motivated to change. The intervention arm involved an evidence-based novel dietetic treatment over 6-months giving 5 hours of treatment and used client-centred behavioural change techniques to increase motivation for changing diet (using a modified traffic light diet), increasing physical activity and reducing sedentary behaviour. The control arm received 1.5 hours of 'typical' dietetic weight management delivered in a traditional (educational) manner. Outcomes recorded at baseline, six and 12 months were BMI standard deviation (SD) score, objectively measured physical activity and sedentary behaviour (using accelerometers) and possible adverse effects of treatment (height growth and quality of life). The primary outcome was change in BMI SD score at six months.

The complementary qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore the thoughts and feeling of parents of the children who had completed the dietetic intervention. All interviews took place after the SCOTT 12 month outcome measurements had been completed. Purposive sampling was used and out of the 79 eligible SCOTT parents 17 were interviewed. The interviews were taped and then transcribed by experienced secretaries. Analysis was carried out using the Framework methodology (8) and aided by Nvivo software.

Key Results
The novel treatment programme had no significant effect relative to the standard dietetic care on BMI SD score from baseline to six months
(-0.10 vs -0.06; 95% CI -0.05 to 0.11) and 12 months (-0.07 vs -0.19; 95% CI -0.17 to 0.07). BMI SD score decreased significantly within both groups from baseline to six and 12 months. There were significant differences between the groups in favour of the novel treatment group for changes in total percentage of time spent in physical activity (95%CI 0.8 to 6.3) and light intensity physical activity (95%CI -4.8 to -0.5).

In the qualitative study we found themes and concepts both on our original evaluation and emergent data on the parents' thoughts and feelings on entering, continuing and leaving treatment. Those parents who had taken part in the behavioural change techniques applauded the process finding it child-friendly and talked of 'forming a partnership' with the child and dietitian. Developing a rapport with the dietitian was significant for the parents in their perception of a positive experience. Parents appeared to be characterised as being unaware of their child's weight problem, in denial, or actively seeking treatment. Parents were consistently motivated to enter treatment due to perceived benefits to their child's self esteem or quality of life, and weight outcomes were considered less important. During treatment parents expressed a lack of support for lifestyle changes outside the clinic, and noted that members of the extended family often undermined changes. Parents generally felt that treatment should have continued beyond six months, and that it had provided benefits to their child's well-being, self-esteem, and quality of life, and this is what motivated many of them to remain engaged with treatment.

Conclusions
The modest magnitude of the benefits observed in the SCOTT study perhap suggest that interventions should be longer term and more intense. The results of the qualitative study suggested that longer term interventions would be acceptable to parents.
The qualitative study was an informative addition to the SCOTT quantitative study as it allowed exploration of the subtle differences as perceived by the parents who took part in both arms of the study. It may help inform future treatments for childhood obesity by providing insights into the aspects of treatment and approaches applauded by parents. Future treatments may need to consider providing greater support to lifestyle changes within the extended family, and may need to focus more on psychosocial outcomes. This study highlighted skills and qualities required by dietitians and other health professionals to engage with families of obese children.


The Emperor's Old Groove: Decolonizing Disney's Magic Kingdom. Edited by Brenda Ayres. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. 203 pp. The last decade has seen a proliferation of critical collections focused on the Disney empire, signaling, perhaps, that Western culture's defensive loveaffair with the Disney product is finally on the wane. Brenda Ayres's collection is firmly in the tradition set by Bell, Haas, and Sells's From Mouse to Mermaid (1995) or Eric Smoodins Disney Discourse (1994): a reasonably eclectic collection of essays on various aspects of Disney's film and corporate culture. Inevitably, the tendency for any critical collection to swing wildly between poles of discourse, theory, and quality is exaggerated by the breadth of Disney's cultural artifact and by the often widely differing critical backgrounds from which critics of Disney hail. Ayres's collection finds some kind of focus by stating its intention to be "a series of close readings of individual animated films. ... a close, careful look at the very heart of Disney" (3). It thus offers more concentrated textual concerns than do Bell et al, who include live action films from Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures, or Smoodin's collection, which includes considerable analysis of the theme parks. The focus on animation is productive, underlining the extent to which it is the animated icons which define Disney to its consumers, and the animated films which define the ideological and cultural construction of the familiar images. At the same time, the limitation leads to a certain smoothing of theme, suggested by the collection's section topics-Family, Women, Culture, Literature, History. While certain essays stand out, the overall effect of both the sectioning and the bulk of the essays is a faint but persistent sense of deja vu; despite the disparity of critical approaches, they at times echo not only each other, but the general themes and insights of earlier collections. Disney scholarship, it would seem, is moving towards some kind of canonical consensus; The Emperor's Old Groove is exactly that. The sense of an accepted canon of Disney insight is strengthened in the collection by the degree to which individual essays take for granted the scholarly historicity of their approach. "Disneyfication" has apparently become an accepted critical term, used straight-faced and without explanation. Few essays offer any contextualization of Disney as cultural monolith, launching in many cases into an analysis of cultural imperialism or problematical ideology in a particular film, without pausing to define in any depth the terms in which the monolith constructs itself. The effect is curiously unbalanced: the essays on the whole do not acknowledge, other than in passing, the essential tension between Disney's popularity as innocent, family entertainment and the ideological minefield which underpins that smug surface. Ayres's Acknowledgments and Epilogue bookend the essays with a slightly shamefaced admission of pleasure in the Disney product, but none of the essays address this issue in any depth. …


Astrocytes, a type of glial cell found within the central nervous system, are morphologically complex, and their processes are not well defined structurally or functionally. It is unknown how these processes accommodate regional demands. Small morphological and functional regions, that are highly specialized for homeostasis or synaptic signaling, may be located along the lengths of astrocyte processes. Previous research has begun to identify the distribution of proteins within astrocytes. In this study the processes, and the distribution of clusters of proteins or "puncta", on seven previously imaged astrocytes, were analyzed using 3-D rendered surfaces generated in ImarisTM, a confocal analysis imaging software. The patterns for three proteins: mGluR5, a metabotropic glutamate receptor (n=30), GLT-1, a glutamate transporter (n=30), and Kir 4.1, an inward rectifying potassium channel (n=10) were examined along the lengths of individual processes. mGluR5 is a protein involved in synaptic signaling, and both GLT-1 and Kir 4.1 are considered more homeostatic. This study suggests that clustered regions of GLT-1 and Kir 4.1 are present within astrocytic processes, but that mGluR5 is more homogenously distributed, indicating that there may be subdomains for specialized functions within astrocytes.
* Indicates faculty mentor.


We previously proposed the use of acoustic microbubble delivery in blood vessels as a therapeutic application of microbubbles to improve the ef ciency of high-intensity focused ultrasound and the ef cacy of acoustic targeted drug therapy. Among the technical requirements for this technique is detailed visualization of the blood vessel network for navigation around a target such as a tumor. For this purpose, three-dimensional (3D) Doppler volumes, which can be acquired by matrix array imaging probes, are quite convenient because they allow the blood vessel structure to be extracted without segmentation. However, the acquirable volume is limited and incomplete because the Doppler signal depends on ow direction. To compensate for these issues, an ultrasound volume fusion technique is required. In this study, we propose a blood vessel volume fusion method by automatic registration among shared bifurcations. In addition, we propose a novel 3D ultrasound calibration method, which is needed to determine the initial transformation. Several optical markers are used as ducial markers in this calibration. To examine the feasibility of the proposed methods, calibration accuracy and volume fusion accuracy assessments were conducted using an arti cial blood vessel and in human subjects. Regarding calibration accuracy, the target registration error of the proposed method was 2.2 mm. Regarding volume fusion accuracy in the arti cial blood vessel, the mean distance between the shared bifurcations was reduced from 2.4 mm (initial transformation by tracking data) to 0.5 mm (registration of shared bifurcations). Regarding the volume fusion of blood vessels in human subjects, the distance was also reduced from 10.4 mm to 0.3 mm. The results demonstrate that the proposed methods are accurate for constructing large and complete blood vessel networks for navigation of microbubble delivery. Moreover, the methods may also be useful for extracting intraoperative blood vessel network to support minimally invasive surgery or therapy.


Commuter rail is increasingly popular as a means to introduce rail transportation to metropolitan transportation systems. The long-term benefits of commuter rail include the addition of capacity to the transportation system, providing a quality commute alternative, and shifting land use toward transit-oriented development patterns. The success of a commuter rail system depends upon cultivating a ridership base upon which to expand and improve the system. Cultivating this ridership is dependent upon offering a quality transportation option to commuters. Characteristics of commuter rail systems in the United States present challenges to offering quality service that must be overcome. Commuter rail has been implemented only on existing rail right-of-way (ROW) and infrastructure (depending upon condition) in the United States. Existing rail ROW does not often coincide with current commercial and residential demand centers and necessitates the use of a circulator system to expand the service boundary of commuter rail to reach these demand centers. The commuter rail circulator network design problem (CRCNDP) addresses a particular aspect of the commuter rail trip, seeking to improve the performance of the entire system through accurately modeling the portion of the trip from rail station to the final destination. This final leg includes both the trip on the circulator vehicle and the walking trip from the circulator stop to the final destination. This report seeks to provide an innovative mathematical programming formulation and solution methodology for the CRCNDP and apply this method to a case study.


This is a study of the long-term historical geography of Asia Minor, from the fourth century bc to the thirteenth century ad. Using an astonishing breadth of sources, ranging from Byzantine monastic archives to Latin poetic texts, ancient land records to hagiographic biographies, Peter Thonemann reveals the complex and fascinating interplay between the natural environment and human activities in the Maeander valley. Both a large-scale regional history and a profound meditation on the role played by geography in human history, this book is an essential contribution to the history of the Eastern Mediterranean in Graeco-Roman antiquity and the Byzantine Middle Ages.


The aerosol single‐scattering albedo (SSA) over the global ocean is evaluated based on polarimetric measurements by the PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Sciences coupled with Observations from a Lidar) satellite. For the first time, global ocean SSA and Absorption Aerosol Optical Depth (AAOD) from this instrument are shown and evaluated against other observations (the Aerosol Robotic Network, AERONET, and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument, OMI). The observational data sets compare reasonably well, with the majority of the colocated points within 0.05 of the AERONET measurements. PARASOL shows that SSA is characterized by high spatial and seasonal variability, also over the open ocean far from the inland emission regions. The near global coverage in the visible spectral range provided by the PARASOL retrievals represents a unique opportunity to evaluate aerosol optical properties simulated by global aerosol models, as performed in the Aerosol Comparisons between Observations and Models (AeroCom) framework. The SSA (AAOD) estimated by the AeroCom models is generally higher (smaller) than the SSA (AAOD) retrieved from PARASOL. On the other hand, the mean simulated aerosol optical depth is consistent or slightly underestimated compared with observations. An overestimate of the aerosol scattering, compared to absorption, by the models would suggest that these simulate an overly strong aerosol radiative cooling at top of atmosphere, over most of the ocean surfaces. This implies that aerosols have a potentially stronger direct and semidirect impact within the atmosphere than currently simulated.


Wetting is the ability of liquids to maintain contact with solids or other liquids. It is a commonly observed phenomenon in numerous natural and technological processes. Efficient wetting of liquids is crucial to painting, coating, printing, and drug delivery applications. Surface active agents (surfactants) are amphiphilic compounds which can lower the surface tension of liquid solvents. Adding surfactants to liquids is one common method to enhance wetting. Since the 1960s organomodified trisiloxane surfactants have been recognized as effective wetting agents for aqueous pesticide formulations because they fasten foliar uptake and wet larger leaf surface areas. Trisiloxane surfactants that possess the ability to promote rapid and extensive spreading of water on hydrophobic solids are known as superspreaders, and their wetting phenomenon is referred to as superspreading.

Numerous studies have been performed to reveal the peculiar properties of superspreaders and the underlying mechanisms of superspreading. The wetting area of superspreader solutions was found to increase linearly with time within the first several seconds. The highest wetting velocity was observed at a critical surfactant concentration. In the course of the years, the superspreading ability of trisiloxane surfactants was attributed to their molecular structure and to the way they aggregate in solutions. It was proposed that the driving force for superspreading is surface tension gradient over the spreading drop, which can be maintained for longer time by superspreaders than by non-superspreaders. Most of previous experiments were performed with video camera at low speeds (e.g., 500 frames per second or less). However, the investigation of early wetting with time scale of milliseconds is crucial to understand rapid adhesion phenomena. It also allows us to know when surfactants start to become effective in the wetting systems, which helps to understand the wetting mechanisms behind. The goal of this experimental thesis is to shed light on the early wetting stage of aqueous surfactant solutions on hydrophobic solids and water subphases. Different surfactants and solids are used for comparative investigations. The superspreading stage of surfactant solutions is systematically studied by changing the factors that are assumed to influence the surface tension gradient, such as surfactant concentration and relative humidity.

The experiments within this thesis are performed using high-speed video imaging with temporal resolution up to 0.02 milliseconds. The results show that the wetting processes of hydrophobic solids by surfactant-laden drops can be described by one, two, or three stages, depending on physicochemical properties of the surfactants and the solids used. Surfactants do not play a role in the early wetting stage, which is mainly dominated by inertia. After a characteristic time, inertial wetting goes over in viscous wetting. This stage has also a characteristic duration and is influenced by surfactants. Afterwards a superspreading stage is observed for superspreading drops only. The driving force in this stage is the surface tension gradient, which is influenced by the dynamic surface tension of the spreading drop. The superspreading dynamics depends strongly on the surfactant concentration, on the relative humidity, as well as on the substrate wettabilities. It is found that superspreader solutions only superspread on substrates whose wettability falls within a narrow range. Conversely, on water subphases superspreader and non-superspreader solutions behave similarly.

The work in this Ph. D. project completes one gap - early wetting dynamics of surfactant solutions – in prior work. The findings reveal different wetting stages with different characteristic duration. The action times of surfactants during the wetting process have been assessed. Moreover, this study provides more evidence for the surface tension gradient as a driving force in the superspreading stage. Therefore, the findings represent a significant step forward for surfactant-enhanced wetting and superspreading. They can also offer guidance on practical applications, e.g., crop spraying. By using superspreaders under proper conditions, the wetting performance can be maximized and a cost reduction can be achieved.


The ninth edition of "Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: A Conceptual Approach" continues the innovative time-tested approach of the previous editions: an emphasis on learning via specific, realistic examples and the extensive use of visual aids, hands-on activities, problem-solving strategies and active classroom participation. Features of the text focus on ensuring that prospective teachers will gain not only a deeper understanding of the mathematical concepts, but also a better sense of the connections between their college math courses and their future teaching experiences, along with helpful ideas for presenting math to their students in a way that will generate interest and enthusiasm. The text draws heavily on NCTM Standards and contains many pedagogical elements designed to foster reasoning, problem-solving and communication skills. The ninth edition represents a significant step forward in terms of online course management as roughly half of all problems in the text will be assignable through our new online homework platform, Connect Mathematics. In addition, Connect Mathematics will be fully integrated with Blackboard, providing the deepest integration of an online homework and course management system in the market today. Additionally, this text can be packaged with an activity set that corresponds to each section of the companion text, " Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: An Activity Approach, " also by the Bennett, Burton, and Nelson team. " Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: An Activity Approach " can be used independently or along with its companion, " Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: A Conceptual Approach. "


POSIX is a standard for operating systems, with a substantial part devoted to specifying file-system operations. File-system operations exhibit complex concurrent behaviour, comprising multiple actions affecting different parts of the state: typically, multiple atomic reads followed by an atomic update. However, the standard's description of concurrent behaviour is unsatisfactory: it is fragmented; contains ambiguities; and is generally under-specified. We provide a formal concurrent specification of POSIX file systems and demonstrate scalable reasoning for clients. Our specification is based on a concurrent specification language, which uses a modern concurrent separation logic for reasoning about abstract atomic operations, and an associated refinement calculus. Our reasoning about clients highlights an important difference between reasoning about modules built over a heap, where the interference on the shared state is restricted to the operations of the module, and modules built over a file system, where the interference cannot be restricted as the file system is a public namespace. We introduce specifications conditional on context invariants used to restrict the interference, and apply our reasoning to lock files and named pipes. Program reasoning based on separation logic has been successful at verifying that programs do not crash due to illegal use of resources, such invalid memory accesses. The underlying assumption of separation logics, however, is that machines do not fail. In practice, machines can fail unpredictably for various reasons, such as power loss, corrupting resources or resulting in permanent data loss. Critical software, such as file systems and databases, employ recovery methods to mitigate these effects. We introduce an extension of the Views framework to reason about programs in the presence of such events and their associated recovery methods. We use concurrent separation logic as an instance of the framework to illustrate our reasoning, and explore programs using write-ahead logging, such a stylised ARIES recovery algorithm.


In July 2007, after many years of strong and continuous economic growth, a worldwide crisis started and is still affecting all developed world and developing countries. The housing sector collapsed in the United States and extended the crisis to global financial markets in what is known as the "subprime mortgage crisis", the most important crisis since the Great Depression, according to experts. Nowadays, signs of economic recovery seem to be appearing in some countries, while in others (like Spain), economists can not still predict the end of this crisis.
With this economic context, the global level of demand (within all economic sectors) has maintained or even has decreased during the last two years. In this situation, the only way for companies to survive is by improving their productivity. At a macroeconomic level, improving efficiency will make it more competitive in international markets, decreasing the negative impact of the crisis on the unemployment and the economic growth.
In Spain, the economic crisis is having a worse impact than in other European Union (EU) countries, and the low levels of productivity are thought to be one of the most important reasons. The first step to improve overall productivity is to find out where the productivity level is lower inside Spain, and then it can be more easily improved.
In this thesis, regional levels of economic efficiency will be evaluated, in order to find the weak regions in Spain, which have a bad influence on the overall productivity. To do so, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) will be used. DEA is an analytical tool which, given a set of Decision Making Units (DMU) with their set of inputs and outputs, evaluates their efficiency, by comparing their performances.


Intrinsic decomposition from a single image is a highly challenging task, due to its inherent ambiguity and the scarcity of training data. In contrast to traditional fully supervised learning approaches, in this paper we propose learning intrinsic image decomposition by explaining the input image. Our model, the Rendered Intrinsics Network (RIN), joins together an image decomposition pipeline, which predicts reflectance, shape, and lighting conditions given a single image, with a recombination function, a learned shading model used to recompose the original input based off of intrinsic image predictions. Our network can then use unsupervised reconstruction error as an additional signal to improve its intermediate representations. This allows large-scale unlabeled data to be useful during training, and also enables transferring learned knowledge to images of unseen object categories, lighting conditions, and shapes. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method performs well on both intrinsic image decomposition and knowledge transfer.


Background: Depression and suicidality amongst Inuit youth is one of the most significant health concerns in Nunavut (Canada), however access to mental health services remains limited (Kirmayer et al., 2000). It is thus crucial to explore innovative intervention modalities for this community. Evidence suggests that Computerized Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (cCBT) may be effective for depressed adolescents and young adults (Andrews et al., 2010; Richardson, Stallard, and Velleman, 2010). SPARX is a form of cCBT that has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in indigenous youth of New Zealand (Merry et al., 2012; Shepherd et al., 2015). This presentation presents qualitative data derived from a recently completed pilot evaluation of SPARX in 25 remote Inuit communities in Nunavut.

Method: Participants: A sub-sample of youth participants from the study (12 of a total of 49), who completed the SPARX program, and 8 community workers from Nunavut who had supervised the youth during their SPARX trial. Procedure: Participants completed phone-based focus group interviews about their experiences of SPARX; whether they would recommend the program to others and why they might do so; how they would describe the program to others; any changes they would like to see made to SPARX; and how the game could be rendered more culture-specific. Analysis: Thematic analysis was used to analyze focus group data (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Results: Feedback from youth who completed SPARX, and youth workers who supervised them, was overwhelmingly positive. Five themes were identified based on youth feedback: SPARX promotes emotional regulation; SPARX skills can be applied to daily life; SPARX should be recommended to peers; SPARX should be modified to be Inuit-specific; SPARX could be improved. Four further themes were identified based on youth worker feedback: Positive changes in youth who had completed SPARX; Need for access to SPARX for all youth; SPARX should be modified to be Inuit-specific; Systemic challenges encountered when administering SPARX should be addressed.

Conclusion: SPARX is a novel computer-based program designed to foster resilience and protect against depression. SPARX is showing promise among some of Canada's most vulnerable youth. There is currently a push for the provision of culturally-sensitive, accessible mental health services. Once culturally adapted, SPARX may be a useful tool for implementation in remote, often marginalized communities.


French Guiana, the French territory most affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (1.3% of pregnant women), is also endemic for human T lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV1). The objective of this study was to determine if the HTLV1/HIV coinfected patients had particular characteristics. All HIV-infected patients having a computerized medical file containing an HTLV1 serology were included: there were 1,333 HIV monoinfections and 76 HTLV1/VIH coinfections. The prevalence of HTLV1/HIV coinfections was 5.39%. Women (odds ratio [OR] = 1.91[1.13-3.24]), subjects > 40 years of age, and patients of Surinamese origin (OR = 2.65 [1.25-5.61]) were overrepresented among the coinfected. CD4 count at the time of diagnosis and viral loads were higher among coinfected patients. The clinical stage was not significantly different between the two groups. The number of CD4 cells was not higher among the coinfected, unlike most reports from the literature. Prevalence of HTLV1 among HIV-infected patients is high in French Guiana, and physicians seem to omit the prescription of serology for this potentially serious coinfection.


Clinical chemistry uses automated measurement techniques and medical knowledge in the interest of patients and healthy subjects. Automation has reduced repeatability and day-to-day variation considerably. Bias has been reduced to a lesser extent by reference measurement systems. It is vital to minimize clinically important bias, in particular bias within conglomerates of laboratories that measure samples from the same patients. Small and variable bias components will over time show random error properties and conventional random-error based methods for calculating measurement uncertainty can then be applied. The present overview of bias presents the general principles of error and uncertainty concepts, terminology and analysis, and suggests methods to minimize bias and measurement uncertainty in the interest of healthcare.


Bounding the partition function is a key inference task in many graphical models. In this paper, we develop an anytime anyspace search algorithm taking advantage of AND/OR tree structure and optimized variational heuristics to tighten deterministic bounds on the partition function. We study how our priority-driven best-first search scheme can improve on state-of-the-art variational bounds in an anytime way within limited memory resources, as well as the effect of the AND/OR framework to exploit conditional independence structure within the search process within the context of summation. We compare our resulting bounds to a number of existing methods, and show that our approach offers a number of advantages on real-world problem instances taken from recent UAI competitions.


Analysis and Evaluation of Contemporary Nursing Knowledge: Nursing Models and Theories by Jacqueline Fawcett, PhD, RN, FAAN; Philadelphia: FA. Davis, 2000; 688 pages, $49.95 I have several responses to the argument that nursing models and theories are historical relics that have no place in our future because they have little, if any, relevance for contemporary nursing practice and research. My first response is sadness, that nurses continue to devalue the burgeoning knowledge of our own discipline at a time when our world needs it most. Another reaction is anger, that in applying the theories from other disciplines to our research and practice activities, we are expanding the knowledge base of those disciplines rather than our own. Finally, I am incredulous that the deepening and broadening base of nursing knowledge is not widely known and is not studied as the primary substance of nursing within our educational programs. But now, I have another response: it is to point with pride to Jacqueline Fawcett's comprehensive volume, Analysis and Evaluation of Contemporary Nursing Knowledge, as evidence that these conceptual models and theories are alive and well. Fawcett's latest book is a testimony to the maturity of our discipline that illuminates the growing body of scholarly work related to nursing models and theories. The author reminds us that we must continue this expansion: "This author is convinced that the discipline of nursing can survive and advance only if nurses celebrate their own heritage and acknowledge their own knowledge base by adopting explicit nursing discipline-specific C-T-E (conceptual-theoretical-empirical) systems to guide their activities." Fawcett has been a guardian of nursing's theoretical heritage. She has been a consistent and persistent voice to a professional discipline wandering in the wilderness, calling us to gather around the strength of our disciplinary knowledge as articulated within our conceptual models and theories. This text is a tribute to those who have developed conceptual models and theories, tested and developed them through research, and generated and evaluated nursing theory-guided practice models. Rather than create a fourth edition of Analysis and Evaluation of Conceptual Models of Nursing, first published in 1984, and a second edition of Analysis and Evaluation of Nursing Theories, first published in 1993, Fawcett has combined both volumes into this new book. I applaud this decision. This new text is a valuable resource for undergraduate students learning the breadth of nursing models and theories, master's students building depth in nursing theory-guided advanced practice, and doctoral students expanding nursing knowledge through theory-based research. In addition, it is a reference for nursing scholars working within any of the models and theories and a guide for nursing administrators and practitioners seeking to apply the models and theories to nursing practice as entrepreneurs or within health care systems. This book has four parts. In Part 1, an introduction to the structure and nature of contemporary nursing knowledge, the reader is introduced to theoretical language. Fawcett describes the relationship between her identified nursing metaparadigm, philosophy, conceptual models, grand theories, middle-range theories, and empirical indicators as the C-T-E system, referring to the necessary linkages among the philosophical, theoretical, and operational indicators related to both research and practice. She then focuses on the application of nursing models and theories to nursing practice. In Part 2, Fawcett describes her framework for analyzing and evaluating conceptual models, then applies this framework to seven conceptual models: Johnson's Behavioral System Model, Kings' General Systems Framework, Levine's Conservation Model, Neuman's Systems Model, Orem's Self-Care Framework, Rogers' Science of Unitary Human Beings, and Roy's Adaptation Model. …


Since their early history, American private foundations have warranted and have received both consistent praise and repeated criticism. The plaguing criticisms have focused on abuses facilitated by a relatively compliant, permissive and under-regulated environment. Many individuals have attacked private foundations and their donors, leading to waves of new federal tax laws and state legislation attempting to curtail undesirable behaviors of donors, private foundations and their decision-makers. Nonetheless, so far, the existing laws have failed to eliminate the opportunities for abuse.The core of the article is a case study. The case study fictionalizes names, times, mission of the private foundation and values of its assets, but it is based on a real private foundation. It is the story of a particular donor, the private foundation that the donor established, and the positive programs undertaken by the foundation. But, it also is the story of what may be numerous abuses perpetrated on the foundation after the donor's death by executors of the donor's estate who were also members of the foundation's board of directors. Thus, the case study serves as a "real life" vehicle to illustrate failures of the existing regulatory regimes applicable to private foundations, their donors and fiduciaries.It is the intimate fiduciary structure, the lack of serious attention to formal protocol, and the under-regulated nonprofit sector environment that enabled the possible abuses to occur in this case study. It is submitted that creators of foundations have a duty to ensure that their philanthropic and charitable purposes are not thwarted through the lack of attention to formal structures, management responsibilities and policies. Current laws, as well as monitoring and enforcement activities, are inadequate to deter abusive behaviors. Numerous possible remedies are suggested, among which are increasing budgets and staffs of state attorneys general offices and the Internal Revenue Service to permit improved monitoring and enforcement, and modifying existing legislation and regulations and the addition of new legislation. Appropriate regulatory structures are a necessary means of supporting and maintaining the public's trust of private foundations and of assuring the healthy future of the nonprofit sector.


Several computational techniques have been employed to perform an extensive theoretical study of different aspects of ZnS nucleation and growth. First, we use Density Functional Theory and ineratomic potential based calculations to calculate the surface energies for the most common surfaces in the two crystalline phases of ZnS wurzite and sphalerite. This study allows us to calculate the crystal morphologies for both phases, which agree with those observed experimentally. The predicted morphologies correspond to those that crystallites of micrometer sizes would adopt, but in order to understand the nucleation processes we need models for nanoclusters. We therefore use a global minimization technique (simulate annealing), with which we obtain the most stable configuration in vacuum for (ZnS)n clusters, n=10-47, 50, 60, 70 and 80. These clusters are classified into two groups. Clusters with n=10-47, denoted bubble clusters, are hollow structures in which all the atoms are three coordinated. Such structures contrast with the expectation of bulk-like structures in which most of the atoms are four coordinated. Larger (ZnS)n clusters (n=50, 60, 70 and 80) adopt what we have denoted double bubble structures, in which one big bubble encloses a smaller one. The two bubbles are bonded through covalent bonds, therefore creating a network of four coordinated atoms. Density Functional Theory as well as interatomic potential based calculations are employed to calculate the properties of these particles. The thesis concludes with a molecular dynamics study of the nucleation of ZnS in water solution, which reveals that bubble clusters are also formed in the presence of water, and gives insight into the detailed mechanisms of their formation.


The serine/threonine phosphatase calcineurin is an important signaling molecule involved in kidney development and function. One potential target of calcineurin action is the water channel aquaporin 2 (AQP2). In this study, we examined the effect of loss of calcineurin Aalpha (CnAalpha) on AQP2 function in vivo. CnAalpha null mice were found to have defective post-natal urine-concentrating ability and an impaired urine-concentrating response to vasopressin. Expression of AQP2 is normal but, paradoxically, vasopressin-mediated phosphorylation of the channel is decreased compared with wild-type littermates and there is no accumulation of AQP2 in the apical membrane. Calcineurin protein and activity was found in innermedullary collecting duct vesicles, and loss of calcineurin expression and activity was associated with a loss of AQP2 in the vesicle fraction. As such, the lack of vasopressin-mediated phosphorylation of AQP2 might be the result of a defect in normal trafficking of AQP2 to apical-targeted vesicles. Likewise, treatment of wild-type mice with cyclosporin A to inhibit calcineurin produces a similarly impaired urine-concentrating response to vasopressin and alterations in AQP2 phosphorylation and trafficking. These experiments demonstrate that, CnAalpha is required for normal intracellular trafficking of AQP2 and loss of calcineurin protein or activity disrupts AQP2 function.


Objective: To evaluate the hepatoprotective activity of ethanolic and aqueous extract of stems of Leptadenia reticulata (Retz.) Wight. and Arn. in carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-induced hepatotoxicity in rats. Materials and Methods: The toxicant CCl4 was used to induce hepatotoxicity at a dose of 1.25 ml/kg as 1 : 1 mixture with olive oil. Ethanolic and aqueous extracts of L. reticulata stems were administered in the doses of 250 and 500 mg/kg/day orally for 7 days. Silymarin (50 mg/kg) was used as standard drug. The hepatoprotective effect of these extracts was evaluated by the assessment of biochemical parameters such as serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase, serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase, alkaline phosphatase, total bilirubin, serum protein, and histopathological studies of the liver. Results: Treatment of animals with ethanolic and aqueous extracts significantly reduced the liver damage and the symptoms of liver injury by restoration of architecture of liver as indicated by lower levels of serum bilirubin and protein as compared with the normal and silymarin-treated groups. Histology of the liver sections confirmed that the extracts prevented hepatic damage induced by CCl4 showing the presence of normal hepatic cords, absence of necrosis, and fatty infiltration. Conclusion: The ethanolic and aqueous extracts of stems of L. reticulata showed significant hepatoprotective activity. The ethanolic extract is more potent in hepatoprotection in CCl4-indiced liver injury model as compared with aqueous extract.


Higher spatial resolution imaging data is always desirable to the international community of planetary scientists interested in improving understanding of surface formation processes. We have previously developed a novel Super-resolution restoration (SRR) technique (Tao & Muller, 2016) using Gotcha sub-pixel matching, orthorectification, and segmented 4th order PDE-TV, called GPT SRR, which is able to restore 5 cm-12.5 cm near rover scale images (equivalent to Navcam projected FoV at a range of ≥ 5 m) from multiple 25 cm resolution NASA MRO HiRISE images. The SRR technique has been successfully applied to the rover traverses for the MER and MSL missions within the EU FP-7 PRoViDE project. These SRR results have revealed new surface information including the imaging of individual rocks (diameter ≥ 25 cm) by comparison of the original HiRISE image and rover Navcam orthorectified image mosaics. In this work, we seek evidence from processing a very large number of stereo reconstruction results from all Navcam stereo images within PRoViDE, registration and comparison with the corresponding SRR image, in order to derive a quantitative assessment on key features including rocks (diameter < 150 cm) and rover track wheel spacing. We summarise statistics from SRR-Navcam measurements and demonstrate that our unique SRR datasets will greatly support the geological and morphological analysis and monitoring of Martian surface and can also be applied to landing site selection, in order to avoid unsuitable terrain, for any future lander/rover as well as help to define future rover paths.


This volume is intended to address three questions: (1) How are we to understand the intersection between synchronic gradience and grammaticalization? (2) What insights does grammaticalization offer for assessing the validity of Aarts's (2007a) claims regarding synchronic gradience, specifically that there is a significant distinction between subsective and intersective gradience? (3) What does the intersection between grammaticalization and synchronic gradience tell us about the hypothesis of structural gradualness, and about whether work on grammaticalization needs reanalysis and analogy/extension, or some other mechanism? In this paper we present an overview of what we consider to be central issues in answering these questions and in developing a theory of micro-changes.


Developers use tools to develop software systems and always alleged better tools are being produced and purchased. Still there have been only limited studies on how people really use tools; these studies have used limited data, and the interactions between tools have not been properly elaborated. The advent of the AISEMA (Automated In-Process Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis) systems [3] has enabled a more detailed collection of tools data. Our "new idea" is to take advantage of such data to build a simple model based on an oriented graph that enables a good understanding on how tools are used individually and collectively. We have empirically validated the model analyzing an industrial team of 19 developers for a period of 10 months.


Six large-scale reinforced concrete T-shaped slender walls were tested under reversed cyclic loading to study the effects of rein - forcing bar mechanical properties on wall deformation capacity. Effects on lateral stiffness and hysteretic energy dissipation were also quantified. Primary variables included reinforcement yield stress and the ratio of tensile-to-yield strength ( f t / f y ). An additional aim of the tests was to determine the minimum uniform elongation (strain at peak stress) and fracture elongation required of high-strength reinforcing bars for use in earthquake-resistant structures. The walls were not subjected to axial loads other than the weight of the loading apparatus and self-weight. The T-shaped walls, with a specified concrete compressive strength of 8 ksi (55 MPa), had a 100 in. (2540 mm) long stem joining a single 100 in. (2540 mm) long flange, both 10 in. (254 mm) thick. All walls had a nominal shear span of 300 in. (7620 mm). The control specimen T1 was constructed with conventional Grade 60 (420) reinforcement (where Grade corresponds to the specified yield stress of reinforcement). Walls T2, T3, T4, and T6 were constructed with Grade 100 (690) reinforcement and T5 with Grade 120 (830) reinforcement. Test results showed that regard - less of the reinforcement grade, walls designed for similar flex - ural strength using longitudinal reinforcement with f t / f y between 1.18 and 1.39, uniform elongation not less than 6%, and fracture elongation not less than 10% had similar strengths and drift ratio capacities. The effective initial stiffness and hysteretic energy dissipation index for walls with high-strength reinforcement (T2 through T6) were approximately 70%, on average, of those for the wall with conventional reinforcement (T1).


The Effects of Atomic Oxygen on the Outgassing Properties of Spacecraft Materials Eli Z. Gurnee The space environment contains many harsh characteristics that are harmful to spacecraft and threaten the success of space missions. Atomic oxygen (AO) and outgassing are among the chief concerns that spacecraft engineers must design for in order to ensure the safety of a spacecraft. AO is monatomic oxygen (O1) that is created when Ultraviolet (UV) radiation photochemically disassociates diatomic oxygen (O2) in space. AO is the dominant atmospheric constituent between 175 and 600 km, and is a great concern in low earth orbits. Orbital AO has an average impact energy of 4.5 ± 1 eV with orbiting spacecraft and is also very reactive; this makes AO very corrosive to spacecraft materials. Outgassing is the process by which trapped and adsorbed gases are expelled from materials. The high temperatures and low pressure of the spacecraft environment exacerbate the process of outgassing. Outgassing is problematic for spacecraft because outgassed material can condense on sensitive surfaces such as optical and thermal surfaces, or the material can create clouds that impede sensors ability to observe their target. While it has been shown that many aspects of the spacecraft environment act synergistically together to further degrade spacecraft performance, there is very little information and data available on the interactions between AO and outgassing. Cal Poly's Space Environments Lab is equipped with an AO simulation vacuum chamber (MAX) and an outgas testing chamber (Micro-VCM) which is capable of testing materials for total mass loss (TML) and collected volatile condensable mass (CVCM) outgassing values. MAX and Micro-VCM were used in tandem to test different spacecraft materials in order to determine if AO exposure had any effect on the respective materials TML and CVCM values. Prior to conducting testing, Micro-VCM was refurbished and validated since it was recently donated to Cal Poly and was not in working order upon arrival. Three Sheldahl materials were tested: aluminum coated 1.0 mil Kapton tape, 2.0 mil Kapton film coated with ITO on one side and aluminum on the other, and 2.0 Kapton film coated with aluminum. The materials were exposed to an average AO fluence of 1.33 ± 0.130 × 1021 atoms/cm2 for AO testing. The TML and CVCM results from four of the six tests did not show any significant changes between AO samples and control samples, partially due to large error bars that stem from using a semi-microbalance instead of a full microbalance. However, the AO exposed ITO-Kapton-Al did show an increase in TML from -0.03 ± 0.09% to 0.19 ± 0.08% for one procedure, while the aluminum Kapton tape CVCM decreased from 0.81 ± 0.12% to 0.63 ± 0.12% for another procedure. These results show that two materials exhibited a change in their outgassing properties after AO exposure. More testing on the subject is warranted and should be conducted in order to collect more data points and begin defining trend lines that can further describe the effects of AO on outgassing.


Making business intelligence work: Start-to-finish guidance for managersThis book offers a true enterprise view of business intelligence. IBM expert Mike Biere shows managers how to create a coherent BI plan that reflects the needs of users throughout the organization-and then implement that plan successfully. Biere explains how to objectively assess the business case for BI, and identifies proven solutions for the obstacles that lead many BI projects to fail. Coverage includes: Setting appropriate expectations and goals for your BI project Understanding how the key components of a complete BI solution fit together Designing effective BI solutions-including content management, handling unstructured data, and end-user segmentation Providing effective support for BI end users Introducing Corporate Performance Management (CPM): an executive's view of BI Previewing tomorrow's "next wave" in BI solutions Comprehensive checklists for planning your BI project


I. Introduction The English judge Lord Denning famously said, "As a moth is drawn to the light, so is a litigant drawn to the United States."1 There are a number of reasons for this attraction to the American courts: attorneys fees are not a deterrent for plaintiffs filing suit because of contingency-fee structuring; plaintiffs are not required to pay the opposing party's attorneys fees if they lose; and plaintiffs have the right to a trial by jury, juries being notorious for awarding very high damages.2 Another distinguishing factor that Lord Denning did not mention, however, is the discovery process in the United States. American courts allow for a much broader discovery process in which parties seeking information only must show that their request is "reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,"3 as opposed to systems such as England's that require a higher degree of relevance and systems such as France's where the judge (not the parties) plays the central role in requesting discovery.4 These differences have been particularly controversial when parties seek information that is located abroad, as foreign governments feel that broad American discovery orders are an intrusion on their sovereignty.5 As stated in the reporters' notes of the Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, "No aspect of the extension of the American legal system beyond the territorial frontier of the United States has given rise to so much friction as the requests for documents in investigation and litigation in the United States."6 In response to this friction, some foreign countries have established blocking statutes that attach criminal liability to the disclosure of certain information located in those countries.7 This Note will focus on discovery orders from United States federal courts that not only require the disclosure of information located abroad, but also require a litigant to violate foreign law by producing that information. This is a two-step process, because the "American court must decide first whether to make an order compelling discovery and second whether noncompliance with an order should be enforced through sanctions under Rule 37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."8 A federal court's decision of whether or not to compel discovery and issue sanctions for noncompliance affects the various competing interests of the party seeking discovery, the withholding party, the United States, and the foreign country whose laws prohibit disclosure. If the American court issues an order compelling discovery and issues sanctions if the order is not met, then the withholding party faces the unfortunate catch-22 of choosing between facing criminal liability in the country where the information is held or suffering sanctions that would destroy its chances of winning high-stakes litigation.9 Moreover, such an order can be highly offensive to another country because it impedes its sovereignty and disregards its laws and legal system.10 Also, blocking statutes, such as bank-secrecy laws, can be vital to foreign economies since the confidentiality benefit attracts businesses and investors." Nonetheless, there are also significant consequences if an American court chooses not to compel discovery or issue sanctions. In these cases, the party seeking discovery abroad may be put at an unfair disadvantage if it does not have the same excuse to avoid discovery as the opposing party.12 This disparity can be costly because billions of dollars are often on the line and discovery is crucial in many cases.13 Also, by establishing different standards for litigants who have information abroad and litigants who have all of their information in the United States, courts could potentially create an unlevel playing field. Companies with all of their information in the United States would face higher risks in litigation and the higher insurance premiums that attach to those risks. …


An electron microscopic study has been made of the normal ventrolateral and centre-median nuclei of the thalamus of the monkey and, in experimental material, of the mode of termination in the nuclei of afferent fibres from the motor cortex, the globus pallidus and the deep cerebellar nuclei. There are striking similarities but also a few subtle differences in the ultrastructure of the centre-median and ventrolateral nuclei. Three classes of cell are present: a large multipolar cell with much cytoplasm filled with many organelles is probably the relay cell; a small fusiform cell with a thin rim of cytoplasm and light vacuolated mitochondria, which may contain discoid vesicles, gives rise to P profiles and axon initial segments; the third type is intermediate between the other two in size and other features. There are four types of vesicle-containing synaptic profiles. The most frequent are SR axon terminals, which are small, with spherical synaptic vesicles and are pre-synaptic at asymmetrical contacts with small and medium dendrites and their spines and P profiles; SR terminals are found mainly in the interglomerular neuropil. LR terminals, the largest synaptic profiles, are found in all glomeruli; they contain many round synaptic vesicles and form numerous asymmetrical synapses, being presynaptic to the main dendrite and all its spines and many of the P profiles in a glomerulus. P profiles are irregular pale processes, which occur in considerable numbers outside and within glomeruli (70% of intra-glomerular profiles) and contain pleomorphic synaptic vesicles which are discoid. They arise from tiny unmyelinated profiles and they may have synaptic interaction in several glomeruli. Larger processes, similar in character to proximal dendrites, but with discoid vesicles and synaptic features like those of smaller P profiles are also found, and may be in continuity with a cell soma. P profiles are post-synaptic to LR, SR and F axons, both pre- and postsynaptic to other P profiles and pre-synaptic to conventional dendrites; there are reciprocal synapses between pairs of P profiles. F axons, the least common profiles, are usually extra-glomerular and synapse with proximal dendrites and cell somata; they contain cylindrical synaptic vesicles and are pre-synaptic to P profiles and dendrites at symmetrical synapses. Cell somata in the centre-median nucleus possess spines, and in both nuclei dendrites have spines, both in glomeruli and the neuropil. Multivesicular bodies are frequently present in the parent dendrite subjacent to the spine. Spines in the neuropil are post-synaptic to SR and P profiles and, in the centre-median nucleus, also to F axons. Some spines appear to be post-synaptic only to F axons. At least half the extraglomerular spines are associated with two synapses, a dyadic arrangement with one synapse on the spine and one on the parent dendrite close to the base of the spine, while many dyads have only a single presynaptic profile. Some spines have a more complex synaptology including serial synapses and triads. In glomeruli, spines are always post-synaptic to the LR bouton and always dyadic as the LR terminal also contacts the dendritic shaft close to the base of the spine. Spines account for half the contacts between an LR terminal and the main dendrite in a glomerulus. Glomeruli are found in both nuclei and serial sections have shown the multiplicity of profiles and the complexity of synaptic organization within them. Each glomerulus contains one LR bouton, one main dendrite, and a large number of P profiles, with an occasional SR or F axon terminal at the periphery of the aggregation. The dendrites are of medium calibre, often with several spines, around which the other profiles are situated. An analysis is presented of the profiles and synaptic arrangements in thirty glomeruli from the centre-median and ventrolateral nuclei, with a reconstruction of one large glomerulus. The LR bouton makes numerous synaptic contacts with the main dendrite, half the contacts being upon spines, and a considerable number with P profiles. The latter also have many synapses, being approximately equally pre-synaptic to P profiles and the main dendrites. Various specific types of synaptic array are present within the glomeruli: serial synapses; sequential arrays, where the third profile of a serial synapse is again pre-synaptic; reciprocal synapses; triads which are similar to serial synapses but with an additional contact, profile 1 also being pre-synaptic to profile 3. The complexity of the glomerular synaptology is accentuated by the overlapping of several different types of synaptic array in a given glomerulus. Afferent fibres from the motor cortex and globus pallidus terminate in both nuclei as SR boutons, and in the ventrolateral nucleus the mode of termination of both groups of fibres is very similar. In the centre-median nucleus the terminals of fibres from the cortex have a higher proportion of multisynaptic contacts, are more frequently pre-synaptic to P profiles, and the dendrites upon which they end are less often in receipt of other synapses. The termination of fibres from the globus pallidus in the centre-median nucleus differs from terminals of fibres from the cortex and globus pallidus in the ventrolateral nucleus in being pre-synaptic to fewer P profiles. When the somatic sensory cortex was destroyed as well as the motor area degenerating axon terminals were present in the ventroposterior nucleus; their mode of termination was similar to those in the ventrolateral nucleus, but they were far greater in number. Axons from the cerebellar deep nuclei end in the ventrolateral nucleus as LR boutons within glomeruli. There was no evidence of degeneration in the centre-median nucleus after damage of the cerebellum.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate how implementation of a best-practice alert, a reminder of clinical guidelines within the electronic medical record, in combination with the recommended change in immunization timing from postpartum to antepartum, affected tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid and acellular pertussis (Tdap) rates, and to examine the association of vaccination with local pertussis attack rates. METHODS: A Tdap best-practice alert was introduced into the electronic prenatal charting system in June 2013. The best-practice alert was designed to appear starting at 32 weeks of gestation and to reappear at every subsequent encounter until vaccine acceptance was recorded or delivery occurred. The overall acceptance rate was then compared with postpartum vaccination rates at our institution from the previous year. Records of pertussis cases in children younger than 2 years of age diagnosed since 2012 in Dallas County were also reviewed to correlate local trends with vaccination efforts. RESULTS: Of the 10,201 women offered Tdap during prenatal care, 9,879 (96.8%) ultimately accepted. This is compared with a 48% (5,064 of 10,600) Tdap postpartum immunization rate in the year prior, before introduction of the best-practice alert. The incidence of pertussis among neonates born to mothers who received prenatal care at Parkland Hospital showed a nonsignificant decline from 13 cases per 10,000 deliveries (19 of 14,834, 95% confidence interval [CI] 7–19) between January 2012 and May 2013 to seven per 10,000 deliveries during the study period (eight of 11,788, 95% CI 2–11, P=.174). CONCLUSION: The use of a best-practice alert, in concert with the recommended change in timing of maternal vaccination from postpartum to antepartum, was associated with an increase in the Tdap immunization rate to 97%. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


From Bitcoin to Apple Pay, big changes seem to be afoot in the world of money. Yet the use of coins and paper bills has persisted for 3,000 years. In How Would You Like to Pay? , leading anthropologist Bill Maurer narrates money's history, considers its role in everyday life, and discusses the implications of how new technologies are changing how we pay. These changes are especially important in the developing world, where people who lack access to banks are using cell phones in creative ways to send and save money. To truly understand money, Maurer explains, is to understand and appreciate the complex infrastructures and social relationships it relies on. Engaging and straightforward, How Would You Like to Pay? rethinks something so familiar and fundamental in new and exciting ways. Ultimately, considering how we would like to pay gives insights into determining how we would like to live.


Traditional explanations for specialized host use
patterns by herbivores include evolving to use high quality plant
hosts, avoid natural enemies and make efficient use of the most
common food resource in the environment. While several studies have
combined two of these hypotheses, we are still in need of
understanding how an increasing number of factors interact to
determine herbivores' diets. Symmetrischema lavernella is a
phytophagous gelechiid moth whose hosts appear to be limited to the
genus Physalis (Solanaceae). Flower buds and fruits serve as larval
substrates producing budworms and frugivores, respectively, and
both strategies are used in each of the 3+ generations of the moth.
However, each larva can adopt only one strategy, leading to the
prediction that the most profitable strategy should persist over
time. Alternatively, frugivores and budworms would coexist if
selective pressures render both strategies similar in costs and
benefits or show enough variation to impede fixation on the most
profitable strategy. This study was aimed at explaining the
occurrence of these two feeding strategies in S. lavernella by
assessing the effects of larval substrates on growth performance
and survival, and resource availability through field observations
and experiments. Frugivore pupal weights were found to be 33%
greater than in budworms, with females being heavier for both
feeding strategies. Moreover, frugivores showed greater survival
than budworms in natural patches of their host plant. Parasitoid
wasps and a larger frugivore acting as a predator on S. lavernella
were rare, suggesting natural enemies are not important agents of
mortality–at least in late summer, when this study was conducted.
On the other hand, lab experiments showed that the feeding strategy
chosen corresponds to the size of the floral bud entered:
caterpillars that enter small floral buds (<4.2mm) adopt the
budworm strategy, eating plant reproductive tissue and preventing
the flower from opening; caterpillars that enter larger floral buds
or open flowers adopt the frugivore strategy, burrowing into the
ovary and eating ovules as the fruit develops around it. Together
these findings indicate greater body size and survival in
frugivores favor frugivory but its benefits are limited by the
availability of floral buds large enough to support frugivores.
Given that each fruit supports only one frugivore, S. lavernella
faces high intraspecific competition and thus, a high opportunity
cost in avoiding small buds, favoring maintenance of the budworm
and frugivore strategies.


Visual QA is a pivotal challenge for higher-level reasoning, requiring understanding language, vision, and relationships between many objects in a scene. Although datasets like CLEVR are designed to be unsolvable without such complex relational reasoning, some surprisingly simple feed-forward, "holistic" models have recently shown strong performance on this dataset. These models lack any kind of explicit iterative, symbolic reasoning procedure, which are hypothesized to be necessary for counting objects, narrowing down the set of relevant objects based on several attributes, etc. The reason for this strong performance is poorly understood. Hence, our work analyzes such models, and finds that minor architectural elements are crucial to performance. In particular, we find that \textit{early fusion} of language and vision provides large performance improvements. This contrasts with the late fusion approaches popular at the dawn of Visual QA. We propose a simple module we call Multimodal Core, which we hypothesize performs the fundamental operations for multimodal tasks. We believe that understanding why these elements are so important to complex question answering will aid the design of better-performing algorithms for Visual QA while minimizing hand-engineering effort.


'The Problem with…' series covers controversial topics related to efforts to improve healthcare quality, including widely recommended but deceptively difficult strategies for improvement and pervasive problems that seem to resist solution.

Many healthcare organisations now track a number of performance measures like infection and complication rates, waiting times, staff adherence to guidelines, etc. Our own organisation, The Capital Region of Denmark, provides healthcare for 1.7 million people and runs 6 hospitals and 11 mental health centres. Measures of clinical quality have been widely used in our region locally at hospitals and departments for many years. Recently, our region started to systematically define and track strategical key performance measures also at the top management level. Approximately 25 measures on a wide range of subjects from hospital infections to public transportation are being tracked by the top management and the Regional Council.

The measurement strategy for hospitals involves a bottom–up approach allowing each hospital and department to, if needed, define its own performance measures that feed into one or more of the overall measures. For example, bacteraemia is one of the overall measures, and some acute-care departments, who rarely see hospital-acquired bacteraemia, have started to work on reducing the use of bladder catheters in order to reduce the risk of bacteraemia from catheter-related urinary tract infections diagnosed after their patients have been transferred to other departments. To support their work, they have developed a handful of measures that track the use of catheters and staff compliance with standard procedures related to catheter use.

We welcome this development very much. The choice of relatively few overall measures combined with the bottom–up approach is a helpful strategy that focuses and aligns improvement work and stimulates the use of data at all levels of the organisation while leaving room for meaningful local adaptations of performance …


The need for searching an alternative technology to separate solvent efficiently from the post-extraction process in the algae fuel production process has been long researched for, and little to no convincing findings were found to rectify the current energy crisis. This report aims to evaluate the viability of implementing nanofiltration technology that could replace the use of a distillation column in the post-extraction process. Aspen Plus was used to assess the thermodynamic feasibility of utilising chemical process unit operations. This includes the following: investigation of the effect of thermodynamic property methods to generate a more realistic separation process based on the nonideality of the feed mixture, optimization of the simulation via sensitivity analysis, and an overall energy balance to determine its sustainability based on the calorific value of the hydrocarbon extracted from an algae culture. Nanofiltration experiments were carried out to establish the applicability of the membrane purchased from Sterlitech and possibly fill a current void in research for utilising the Duracid membrane in a heptane solution. The experiments covered: the effect of different contact times with heptane, the effect of pressure and feed concentration variance. A stirred cell was used to facilitate the experiment, and several parameters were done to determine the characteristics of the membrane, which included permeating de-ionised water, heptane, and squalene-heptane. Results showed that prolonged contact times with heptane worsen the permeating performance of the membrane over time, and a maximum of 6% rejection value was attained when using Duracid membrane. Higher operating pressure and lower feed concentration also enhanced the permeate flux. Possible explanation for such occurrence includes the nanofiltration driving force, membrane polarity difference to the solvent, and membrane swelling. Although GCMS showed a little rejection value for retaining squalene in heptane solution, the finding is significant that could prove solvent separation via nanofiltration is possible and future work is needed to improve the outcome. Alternative separation technology and solvent resistant nanofiltration membrane had been proposed, and that could serve as another starting point for an efficient separation process.


It is important to map dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations in order to accurately predict the outbreak of red tides. This study aims to determine the feasibility of retrieving DIN in Haizhou Bay, East China from multi-temporal MODIS satellite data and to assess the impact of DIN concentration level on its inversion accuracy. DIN was modeled from the reflectance of MODIS bands and their combinations both linearly and nonlinearly. It was found that individual MODIS bands are loosely correlated with DIN concentrations. Of the various combinations of multiple bands, bands 3 and 4 bear a highly positive correlation with DIN concentrations. In particular, (R3 + R4)/(R3 − R4) is a more accurate predictor of DIN than R3 × R4/(R3 − R4). All the regression models involving this exploratory variable have an R2 value over 0.7 and a relative accuracy of around 70%. However, regression residuals are dependent of each other for DIN <70 μg/L. The removal of these observations from the regression analysis led to the establishment of the best model in the form of DIN<70 = 7.403 (R3 + R4)/(R3 − R4) + 37.14 (R2 = 0.87, n = 19). It improved the model accuracy to RMSE = 17.48 μg/L (15.8%) against the validation dataset. MODIS data allow accurate retrieval of DIN concentrations >70 μg/L in murky coastal waters. During the study period of 2004–2006, Haizhou Bay experienced a deteriorating trend in DIN in that low concentration areas decreased while areas of a high DIN concentration level expanded.


Currently, developed countries have been implementing sustainable development policies specifically in Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP). Therefore, companies consider the products and services life cycle, where Green Procurement (GP) represents a key tool for sustainability in the Supply Chain (SC). Moreover, the future on green policies in countries like Colombia has a long way to go on issues such as energy production, consumption and processes within the supply chain. In the GP area, there are three relevant issues in sustainable development policies in Colombia: 1) issues linked to barriers in the implementation such as tariffs, taxes, incentives and promotion; 2) motivation and drivers for the implementation for both public and private sector and 3) performance impacts related to the models used in order to implement in companies. The latter one is the main interest of this paper. Regarding this work, it identifies the mathematical models most widely used in SC processes, especially the issues associated with purchase processes, selection and hiring of suppliers in large and medium-sized enterprises; public or private. Moreover, the paper analyzes the models regarding their advantages and disadvantages on which some of these can be used in GP processes due its high impact. Finally, a possible mathematical model used in GP processes based on petri nets (PN) for to their characteristics and application in complex systems.


In this paper, we develop and estimate a structural, dynamic model of schooling decisions using data extracted from the Canadian Youth in Transition Survey (YITS). The model incorporates forward-looking behavior and expectations about future benefits from investing in education. The results suggest that the effect of an increase in parental income on educational attainment is modest. For example, a 25 percent increase in parental income is predicted to increase post-secondary education (PSE) attendance by one percent only. However, our results indicate that financial resources, other than parental income, play a role in PSE enrollment. In particular, our model predicts that an increase in PSE tuition fees by $2,500 per grade level (for grade 13 and above) will reduce attendance in these grades by almost 9 percentage points for males and by 6.5 percentage points for females. We also simulate the impacts of changes in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reading scores. Specifically, an increase of test scores with one standard deviation (which is comparable to the difference in average score for high school drop-outs and those with some PSE) increases PSE attendance by 10.2 percentage points for males and by 6.6 percentage points for females. At the same time, high school dropout rates are predicted to fall by 3.2 percentage points for males and by 2.8 percentage points for females. We also take advantage of the dynamics of the model and explore how a 25 percent increase in future wages for PSE students will affect current schooling decisions. This leads to an increase in PSE attendance by 2.2 percentage points for males and by 3.1 percentage points for females.


Tundra fires have important ecological impacts on vegetation, wildlife, permafrost, and carbon cycling, but the pattern and controls of historic tundra fire regimes are poorly understood. We use sediment records from four lakes to develop a 2000-yr fire and vegetation history in a highly flammable tundra region and compare this history with previously published fire records to examine spatial and temporal variability of tundra burning across Arctic Alaska. The four sites span a modern climatic gradient in the Noatak National Preserve, from warmer, drier down-valley locations to cooler, generally moister up-valley locations. Modern vegetation varies from herb- to shrub-dominated tundra from down- to up-valley sites, and pollen data suggest that this spatial pattern in vegetation persisted over the past two millennia. Peaks in macroscopic charcoal accumulation provide estimates of fire-event return intervals (FRIs), which did not vary significantly at millennial time scales but did vary across space. Down-valley sites burned relatively frequently over the past two millennia, with median FRIs of 150 years (95% CI 101–150) and FRI distributions statistically similar to those from ancient shrub tundra and modern boreal forest. At up-valley sites FRIs were significantly longer than those at down-valley sites, with a median FRI of 218 years (95% CI 128–285). These differences likely reflect the cooler growing-season temperatures and lower evaporative demand at up-valley sites, but local-scale variability in vegetation may have also shaped tundra fire regimes. Comparisons with other long-term fire records in Alaska reveal that the tundra biome can sustain a wide range of burning, with individual FRIs from as low as 30 years to more than 5000 years. These records together indicate that frequent tundra burning has occurred under a range of climatic and vegetation scenarios. The variety of tundra fire histories within Alaska suggests that the ecological impacts of tundra burning likewise vary widely, with important implications for wildlife-habitat maintenance and for the responses of tundra biophysical and biogeochemical processes to climatic change.


All of us, as Canadians, are touched throughout our lives by some aspect of social welfare, either as recipients, donors, or taxpayers. But despite the importance of the social network in our country, there has been no single source of information about this critical component of our society. Even professionals in the field of social work or social services have not had a comprehensive volume addressing the myriad features of this critical societal structure. The Encyclopedia of Canadian Social Work fills this need. Over five hundred topics important to Canadian social work are covered, written by a highly diverse group of social workers covering all aspects of the field and all areas of the country. Practitioners, policy makers, academics, social advocates, researchers, students, and administrators present a rich overview of the complexity and diversity of social work and social welfare as it exists in Canada. The principal finding from this project underscores the long-held perception that there is a Canadian model of social work that is unique and stands as a useful model to other countries. The Encyclopedia of Canadian Social Work will be an important source of information, both to Canadians and to interested groups around the world. The Encyclopedia of Canadian Social Work is available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.


Abstracts of the Joint Meeting of the European Pancreatic Club (EPC) and the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) Lodz, June 25–28, 2008 www.pancreasweb.com/abstracts/abstracts.asps of the Joint Meeting of the European Pancreatic Club (EPC) and the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) Lodz, June 25–28, 2008 www.pancreasweb.com/abstracts/abstracts.asp


Flotation in water, salt or ethanol solution is a method for separating macadamia nuts with different oil contents. Effects on quality and shelf life of macadamia nuts of immersing them in water (sp. gr. 1.00 g/cm3), brine (sp. gr. 1.02 g/cm3) or ethanol solution (sp. gr. 0197 g/cm3) were investigated. Whole macadamia nuts were dipped in each solution for 0, 30 or 60 s, redried to 1.0-1.5% moisture content (wet basis) and stored under a partial vacuum for 0, 4 or 12 months. After storage, whole macadamia nuts were evaluated for physical and sensory properties (hardness, colour, flavour, rancidity, sweetness and overall quality), and macadamia nut oil was extracted by cold pressing and analysed for peroxide value and free fatty acid content. Immersion in water had no effect on quality or shelf life of macadamia nuts. Immersion in brine or ethanol significantly (P 0.05) effect on shelf life or nut oil stability after 12 months of storage. It is concluded that water flotation is a feasible method to separate and grade macadamia nuts, although further microbiological investigations are suggested.


Reconciliation has been on the political agenda in Australia since the early 1990s and is now planted firmly in the public conscience. Australia celebrates reconciliation every year; political leaders talk often about reconciliation; schools teach reconciliation. Yet, if you take as performance indicators the gap in life expectancy, or the increasingly disproportionate numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison, one has to question whether Australia is walking further away from the work that is needed to heal and achieve true reconciliation. In this paper we will draw on our experiences of working within church and education contexts and critically engage with the challenges and limitations of reconciliation as we have encountered them. We suggest that it is necessary to talk about reconciliation in terms of a human rights agenda and make explicit the connections between reconciliation and policy and practices. As Lowitja O'Donoghue has said, "we must accept the truth of our history – it is the truth that will set us free". But how do we dare to speak the truth when the dominant political discourse focuses on the perceived success of reconciliation?


Architecture and fire, construction and combustion, meet in this poetic treatise on energy in building. In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernandez-Galiano reconstructs the movement from cold to warm architecture, from building fire to building a building with and for fire, through what he calls a "metaphorical plundering" of disciplines as diverse as anthropology and economics, and in particular of ecology and thermodynamics. Beginning with the mythical fire in the origins of architecture and moving to its symbolic representation in the twentieth century, Galiano develops a theoretical dialogue between combustion and construction that ranges from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier, from the mechanical and organic to time and entropy. Galiano points out that energy, so important to the origin of architectural theory in Vitruvius's time, has been absent from architectural theory since the introduction of the "dictatorship of the eye" over that of the skin. With Fire and Memory, he reintroduces energy to the discussion of architecture and reminds us that the sense of touch is as necessary to an understanding of the environment as the sense of sight.


The activity of a lipid kinase influences the production of invadopodia by cancer cells. This Podcast features an interview with Alissa Weaver, author of a Research Article published in the 11 September 2012 issue of Science Signaling. Metastasis is the process by which cancer cells from a primary tumor spread to a new site where they establish secondary tumors and involves cells switching between adherent and invasive states. Cells adhere to substrates through structures called focal adhesions and invade tissues using structures called invadopodia, which allow the cells to break down the extracellular matrix and penetrate tissues. Weaver's group has combined network analysis of invadopodia and focal adhesions with data from head and neck cancers to identify key signaling molecules that influence the formation of invadopodia in invasive cancer cells.


Three-dimensional mesoscale numerical simulations were performed over Niger in order to investigate dry cyclogenesis in the West African intertropical discontinuity (ITD) during the summer, when it is located over the Sahel. The implications of dry cyclogenesis on dust emission and transport over West Africa are also addressed using the model results, together with spaceborne observations from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-Red Imager (SEVIRI) and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). The study focuses on the case of 7-8 July 2006, during the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) Special Observing Period 2a1. Model results show the formation of three dry cyclones in the ITD during a 24-h period. Simulations are used to investigate the formation and the development of one of these cyclones over Niger in the lee of the Hoggar-Air Mountains. They show the development of the vortex to be associated with (1) strong horizontal shear and low-level convergence existing along the monsoon shearline and (2) enhanced northeasterly winds associated with orographic blocking of air masses from the Mediterranean Sea. The dry cyclone was apparent between 0700 and 1300 UTC in the simulation, and it was approximately 400 km wide and 1500 m deep. Potential vorticity in the center of vortex reached nearly 6 PVU at the end of the cyclogenesis period (1000 UTC). The role of the orography on cyclogenesis along the ITD was evaluated through model simulations without orography. The comparison of the characteristics of the vortex in the simulations with and without orography suggests that the orography plays a secondary but still important role in the formation of the cyclone. Orography and related flow splitting tend to create low-level jets in the lee of the Hoggar and Air mountains which, in turn, create conditions favorable for the onset of a better defined and more intense vortex in the ITD region. Moreover, orography blocking appears to favor the occurrence of a longer-lived cyclone. Furthermore, model results suggested that strong surface winds (11 m s-1) enhanced by the intensification of the vortex led to the emission of dust mass fluxes as large as 3 µg m-2 s-1. The mobilized dust was mixed upward to a height of 4-5 km to be made available for long-range transport. This study suggests that the occurrence of dry vortices in the ITD region may contribute significantly to the total dust activity over West Africa during summer. The distribution of dust over the Sahara-Sahel may be affected over areas and at time scales much larger than those associated with the cyclone itself.


Network protocols use multiple paths to route packets between network nodes, such that network capacity is optimally utilized in a scalable manner. Equal cost multipath (ECMP) and weighted cost multipath (WCMP) are routing techniques to balance load across multiple paths between traffic source and destination. Load balancing is typically achieved using a hash function to select the next hop for flows of balanced size. Hash functions are provided by switch hardware, and there is often only a limited number of uncorrelated hash functions. Reuse of correlated hash functions can lead to imbalanced traffic distribution within the network. The present disclosure describes techniques to balance traffic distribution within a network by use of VLAN (virtual local area network) tags as a hash input and by shuffling VLAN tags of packets at switches along a path.


UNDERSTANDING WOMEN'S EXPERIENCES WITH WOMEN-ONLY LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A MIXED METHODS APPROACH Danielle Geary, BSW, MSSW, APSW Marquette University, 2016 Previous research indicated that women's advancement into the leadership and administrative ranks in higher education has stalled over the past twenty years. Studies highlighted the socio-cultural and structural barriers that create challenges for women's advancement in the academy. This study focused on the use of women-only leadership development programs (WLDPs) as a potential resource for women in the pursuit of advancing their careers. Few research studies to date assess the outcome for women who have attended WLDPs. This study was an in-depth case study of the Women in Higher Education Leadership Summit (WHELS) held at the University of San Diego, School of Leadership and Education Studies. Using a sequential transformative mixed methods design, 95 WHELS alumnae were contacted to answer the research question "How do women from various social locations understand the influence of WHELS on their career plan/trajectory?" Using a quantitative survey (37% response rate), followed by qualitative interviews, five main hypotheses were tested to determine if WHELS alumnae reported improved leadership identity, improved leadership ability, improved understanding of effective leadership styles, whether they had advanced in their career, and if alumnae attributed WHELS to their advancement. Based upon the findings all five hypotheses were supported by the quantitative data. Qualitative data also supported the quantitative findings, but it provided clarification into how women experienced WHELS. The qualitative findings revealed that women reported benefitting from attending WHELS, it confirmed the leadership ability and style the women already possessed. WHELS built women's self-awareness and self-confidence, allowing women to adopt a leadership identity. Women benefitted from this leadership identity as it built their self-efficacy and agency. This study confirmed that women do face socio-cultural and structural barriers in institutions of higher education, which create barriers to their advancement into leadership roles. However, through the completion of WHELS, the participants of this study built self-confidence in their leadership abilities, adopting a leadership identity. Through this process the women in this study returned to their institutions with selfefficacy and agency. The study concludes with a discussion of the findings, limitations, recommended future research, and implications for action.


In this issue of Oncology, Levy and colleagues provide a comprehensive review of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma [BAC], with a focus on the management of this rare disease, which represents 4% of all lung cancers.[1] The definition of BAC was revised by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2004, with changes made to the diagnostic criteria and classification.[2] BAC was defined as an adenocarcinoma of the lung that grows in a lepidic fashion along the alveolar septa without invasion of stroma, blood vessels, or pleura. BAC has been sub-classified into three types: nonmucinous, mucinous, and mixed.


Principles of Microeconomics 2e covers the scope and sequence of most introductory microeconomics courses. The text includes many current examples, which are handled in a politically equitable way. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of economics concepts. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to increase clarity, update data and current event impacts, and incorporate the feedback from many reviewers and adopters. The text and images in this book are grayscale. The first (previous) edition of Principles of Microeconomics via OpenStax is available via ISBN 9781680920093.


Despite its rapid growth, the telecom sector continues to reflect rising risk because of growing system complexity, unstable prices, tight credit, and reliance on large debt burdens for multiyear buildout of massive networks. Given the growing industry risk levels and a renewed investor interest in credit quality, Standard & Poor's expects that sponsors will increase their use of traditional single-asset project finance structures for their long-term telecom investments. These structures help to limit recourse to the sponsors' balance sheets, enable joint ventures, attract large amounts of debt, and provide lower levels of credit risk. Because of regulatory and technology uncertainty and the growth in competition, coupled with rising complexity and debt burdens, most telecom projects will be challenged to obtain initial ratings in the investment-grade category without financial guarantees from investment grade-rated parents, solid structural features, and robust projected cash flows.


Citizen science projects are valued for their impact on participants' knowledge, attitude and behavior towards science. In this paper, we explore how participation in biodiversity citizen science projects is correlated to different dimensions of trust in science. We conduct a quantitative study through an online survey of 1,199 individuals, 586 of them being part of a biodiversity citizen science program in France. Our results suggest that participation-related trust is more exhaustive — it covers more dimensions of the scientific endeavor — than education-related trust. This exploratory study calls for more empirical research on the links between citizen science and the different dimensions of public trust in science.


Energy cooperation is the dominant aspect of expanding relations between China and the Persian Gulf countries. Propelling this is China's increasing reliance on Gulf oil imports. In pursuing its objectives in the Gulf, China has encountered as many challenges as opportunities-in the form of regional crises and conflicts, as well as US pressure. In seeking to balance its geopolitical and economic interests in the Gulf, China has proceeded cautiously and pragmatically. Yet, the possibility that China's arms transfers to Gulf countries and its positions on Gulf issues may have a negative impact on regional security cannot be ruled out. Since the Cold War ended, the debate in the West, especially in the United States, about the nature and implications of China's foreign policy has sharpened. The disintegration of the Soviet Union, coupled with the robust growth of the Chinese economy, have prompted a reexamination of China's role within as well as outside the Asia-Pacific region. Some have argued that China's military modernization program, the hegemony and values of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the tendency of great powers to act boldly make China a potential security threat. Others have maintained that China's internal problems, non-imperialistic tradition, and comparatively limited ability to project military power will ensure the China will behave more cooperatively in world affairs.1 The debate over the "China threat" has focused on the Asia-Pacific region, where China's cultural and economic links are most extensive, where its military assets are concentrated, and where its claims to sovereignty over territory (Tibet, Taiwan and Macau, and the South China Sea islands) are lodged. Yet, China's foreign policy and the concerns that it has raised also encompass the Persian Gulf. Indeed, throughout the 1990s, Beijing's policy toward the Gulf has been closely scrutinized, particularly by US officials and primarily because of Chinese arms transfers to Iran, and China's cooperation with that country in the field of nuclear energy. China's commercial military activities certainly deserve the attention they have received, but the preoccupation with those activities has tended to obscure the context and distort the content of Chinese policy toward the Persian Gulf. The Gulf is no longer of peripheral strategic significance to China, nor is China any longer a marginal player in the Gulf or, for that matter, in the Middle East. In recent years, Sino-Gulf relations have entered a new and important stage of development. A decade ago, arms sales were the core of China's interaction with the region. Today, however, complex energy linkages between China and the Gulf countries are developing. Before long, these linkages will constitute a major, if not the dominant, feature of Sino-Gulf relations. This study addresses two important questions: How have these growing energy ties shaped, and been shaped by, the political and strategic aspects of China's interests in the region? And, will intensifying Sino-Gulf energy interdependence exert a moderating influence on Chinese foreign policy behavior both in the Gulf and Asia-Pacific regions? GEOPOLITICS AND MODERNIZATION Since the early 1980s, China's leaders have sought to develop a foreign policy that reconciled the requirements of modernization with geopolitical considerations. With respect to China's policy toward the Persian Gulf, balancing these interests has become more complicated in the 1990s because of shifts in the global strategic balance of power, and the widening scope of China's economic involvement with the Gulf region. Chinese officials have long regarded the Persian Gulf as an area of global strategic importance. Their views on the significance of the Gulf have been derived from periodic assessments of the major trends in world affairs and their probable impact on China. In the post-Cold War period, China's leaders have identified three dominant features of international relations: an intensification of economic competition, the ascendancy of ethnic and religious sources of political identity and expression, and a tension between the forces of multipolarity and unipolarity. …