AbstractAir quality forecasts produced by the National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC), human air quality forecasters, and persistence are evaluated for predictive skill and economic value when used to inform decisions regarding pollutant emission and exposure. Surface ozone forecasts and observations were collected from 40 monitors representing eight forecast regions throughout Washington, D.C.; Virginia; and Maryland over the 2005–09 ozone seasons (April–October). The skill of the forecasts are quantified using discrete statistics, such as correlation, mean bias, and root-mean-square error, and categorical statistics, such as exceedance hit rate, false alarm rate, and critical success index. The value of the forecasts are quantified using a decision model based on costs to protect the public against a poor air quality event and the losses incurred if no protective measures are taken. The results indicate that the most skillful forecast method is not necessarily the most valuable forecast method....


The purpose of this article is to educate dentists in the care and treatment of cancer patients and their families. One of the authors (JP) is a six-year cancer survivor of squamous cell carcinoma; many of these clinical suggestions are based on his experiences. In joint effort with Loyola University, Cardinal Bernadin Cancer Center, a retrospective study makes up the remainder of the recommended approaches and products and their effective uses.


Improvements in data-capture and face modeling techniques have enabled us to create high-fidelity realistic face models. However, driving these realistic face models requires special input data, e.g., 3D meshes and unwrapped textures. Also, these face models expect clean input data taken under controlled lab environments, which is very different from data collected in the wild. All these constraints make it challenging to use the high-fidelity models in tracking for commodity cameras. In this paper, we propose a self-supervised domain adaptation approach to enable the animation of high-fidelity face models from a commodity camera. Our approach first circumvents the requirement for special input data by training a new network that can directly drive a face model just from a single 2D image. Then, we overcome the domain mismatch between lab and uncontrolled environments by performing self-supervised domain adaptation based on ``consecutive frame texture consistency'' based on the assumption that the appearance of the face is consistent over consecutive frames, avoiding the necessity of modeling the new environment such as lighting or background. Experiments show that we are able to drive a high-fidelity face model to perform complex facial motion from a cellphone camera without requiring any labeled data from the new domain.


The aim of this paper is to study the phenomenon of Social Business Enterprises (SBEs) and gain an understanding of their nature, operations, objectives and implications by using Grameen Danone Foods Limited (GDFL) as an illustration. Within this context, some questions that this paper seeks to explore are: is the concept of Social Businesses just another 'fashionable business marketing fad' that will fade and wither with time, or does it offer a real workable solution to cure the ills of global poverty? The paper seeks to investigate, with Grameen Danone's case, if, how and to what extent such social businesses help towards social and economic uplift of the poor by simultaneously being both suppliers and consumers of their services. The case of GDFL is evaluated critically and compared analytically with similar social businesses in the dairy business sector, in order to gauge its impact on local communities, especially on the target market – malnourished children. Finally, project sustainability is discussed along with consequences of a possible commercial scale-up in operations.


In post-1945 Japan, the government, guided by the occupation authority, reeducated the people with a democratic ideology. Belligerent nationalism was replaced by a national mission of enrichment of arts and culture. Takiguchi Shūzō (1903–79), a poet-critic and supporter of vanguard art since the prewar period, continued to cultivate the spirit of defiance against the establishment in the postwar art world. However, as a respected man of culture, he was also involved in a project of building the first national museum of modern art for the purpose of public enlightenment. This article explores how Takiguchi fostered independent art movements despite his conflicting engagement with the establishment.  In Takiguchi's mind, artistic collectivism had to be rooted in the public domain so that art and society would inform each other. His utopian vision paralleled many objectives of the historical avant-gardes of the West, and it was transmitted to the postwar generation of artists, most notably, to the artists' collective Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop; active 1951–57). This group exemplified the postwar Japanese reception of the Bauhausian philosophy of unified art, and Takiguchi played an important role in fostering Jikken Kōbō's interest in the Bauhaus. By placing the transmission of utopianism from Takiguchi to Jikken Kōbō in a larger politicocultural context, this article analyzes the effect of the legacy of the US-led occupation on the idea of artistic collectivism in 1950s Japan.  The United States was already under the influence of the Bauhaus in the 1930s as evidenced in the establishments of Black Mountain College and the Chicago Bauhaus. The concept of progressive art education promoted by these schools eventually reached Japan through the postwar occupation, whose initial directive was fueled by New Deal liberalism. This article examines a work that revisited Bauhausian philosophy, Jikken Kōbō's 1955 The Future Eve (Mirai no ivu), an experimental ballet theater based on a science fiction novel written in 1886 by the French novelist Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. The Future Eve revealed Jikken Kōbō's affinity with the Bauhaus in its collective engagement with production of theater, its strong interest in merging art and technology, and ultimately, its belief in art's relevance to social and public issues of the time.


Optimizing deep learning models is generally performed in two steps: (i) high-level graph optimizations such as kernel fusion and (ii) low level kernel optimizations such as those found in vendor libraries. This approach often leaves significant performance on the table, especially for the case of recursive deep learning models. In this paper, we present Cortex, a compiler-based approach to generate highly-efficient code for recursive models for low latency inference. Our compiler approach and low reliance on vendor libraries enables us to perform end-to-end optimizations, leading to up to 14X lower inference latencies over past work, across different backends.


Poor risk management within firms was the result of deregulation and the Big Bang of 1986. Without a regulator
and in order to achieve financial growth, firms inadequately managed their risk. The 2007 financial crisis was a
wake up call to the UK highlighting that companies could not carry on in this manner. The financial crisis
resulted in the FSA assuming the role of an active regulator, thus many requirements were implemented
including the Capital Adequacy Ratio. Consequently, gross mortgage lending decreased by 63% during
2007-2010. Therefore, this study investigates the perceptions of the current level of regulation on the UK
mortgage market. The research found there is a strong perception that the level of regulation is hindering lending and competition within the market.
More specifically this study uses a qualitative approach of in-depth interviews with five financial and regulatory
professionals. The results suggest that two professionals perceived regulation as positive for the UK mortgage
market. Regulation is perceived positively because of its ability to give consumers greater market confidence, the implementation of loss mitigation strategies that prevent house repossession and the loss of irresponsible lenders. Three professionals perceived regulation as highly negative because it has reduced the lending rate, created barriers to entry thus reducing competition, has moved careless lending to other areas of the market such as payday loans, has created a substantial cost burden, has used a one-size-fits-all approach and has not removed
fraudulent activity completely.
Overall these results suggest that UK economy may struggle to get out of this recessionary period as long as
there are uniform capital requirements imposed on UK lenders. It is recommended that the regulator may take an approach that lessens the requirements enforced on non-bank lenders. However, the capital requirements should be imposed on banks that have wider implications for the UK economy and caused the current financial crisis in order to prevent future financial crises. Another recommendation is the segmentation of building societies from banks as seen in the 1970s. The separation would create market confidence and would result in greater local knowledge; this would stimulate growth within the UK mortgage market.


Appalachia, like many regions around the world, exists without absolute and universallyaccepted borders. Depending on whether one is speaking in historical, political, economic, agricultural, geographic, or cultural terms, Appalachia may be described as so large to include all or parts of thirteen states and as small as consisting of only three or four states in the mountain South. This research note briefly reviews the literature concerning the differences in perception regarding Appalachian identity and geographic place as described by cultural insiders and outsiders, presents and interprets new data gathered in southern Ohio, and comments on the relevance of perceptions of cultural outsiders to contemporary tourism marketing efforts.


Exposure to the frog heart to single, millisecond length pulses of ultrasound has been shown to cause effects by two qualitatively different physical mechanisms. One of these effects has also been observed in mice. When the pulse is delivered during systole, it can cause a reduction in the developed aortic pressure. Evidence suggests that this arises from an action of radiation force on the heart tissues. The effect can be produced with an acoustic reflector over the heart. This maximizes the radiation force delivered to the heart, but eliminates direct interaction of the ultrasound with the heart tissue, thus experimentally eliminated heating and cavitation as mechanisms of action. When the pulse is delivered during diastole, it can produce a premature ventricular contraction. No premature ventricular contractions were observed with the acoustic reflector over the heart. The mechanism is nonthermal. Available evidence does not preclude cavitation as the primary physical mechanism responsible for prematur...


Patkau, Karen. Ecosystem Series: "Who Needs an Iceberg?", "Who Needs a Jungle?", "Who Needs a Swamp? " .  3 vols. Toronto:  Tundra Books, 2012. Part of elementary public school science curriculum, at least in Alberta, for many years has included a study of ecosystems.  Many publishers of children's non-fiction have published series of ecosystem-specific books in support of these curricula.  Toronto author/illustrator, Karen Patkau is a new voice in this field.  Patkau has won many awards and citations for her illustrations and these books are further examples of her fine work. All three of these books follow a similar pattern.  Illustrations make up most of the work.  The language is appropriate to the upper elementary target audience.  In each book, there are a few textbook-like illustrations of biological cycles, such as the oxygen cycle.  At the end of each volume there is a world map that shows where in the world the kind of ecosystem being described can be found.  An inset larger map shows the location of the specific ecosystem being illustrated in the book.  The map is followed by a visual dictionary of twenty-four of the organisms described in the book with a paragraph describing each organism.  Each book concludes with a glossary. "Who Needs an Iceberg? "  is miss-titled, because icebergs have much less impact on the Arctic ecosystems than does the presence of the swiftly-shrinking polar ice cap.  However, through the book, Patkau does address most of the varied terrestrial and aquatic Arctic ecosystems.  Her illustrations range from very detailed, for example the ptarmigan on the tundra, to the almost two-dimensional representation of the beluga.  This is a non-fiction work, so Patkau's representation of the underwater part of the iceberg as the face of an animal is a bit of an oddity. While "Who Needs an Iceberg?"  barely mentions the iceberg through the text, "Who Needs a Jungle?" is completely about jungle environments.  Patkau expertly portrays the dark jungle interiors and the bright and vibrant crowns.  Her jungle is lush, with many shades of green and bright flowers   and is filled with insects, birds, snakes and mammal.  In the latter part of the book Patkau addresses how the jungle impacts global weather, air quality and regional water regimes. "Who Needs a Swamp?"  focuses on a swamp in southern Georgia, in the southeastern United States.  Given that part of the marketing for ecosystem series is the tie-in to the school curriculum, it seem as bit strange that Patkau would not have chosen a swamp in a Canadian environment, with which children might have some personal experience.    While swamps wherever they are serve similar functions in trapping excess rainfall, slowing run-off and filtering water, Canadian children will not find armadillos, crocodiles, sassafras and cypress trees in their local swamps.  Similar in presentation to "Who Needs a Jungle?" this book showcases Patkau's portrayal of the lush world of a sub-tropical swamp. Because there have been several ecosystem series published for the Canadian environment in the past ten years, and not much changes in these ecosystems, for school libraries on small budgets, these books, particularly the one on swamps, would probably fall into the "nice to have"  category.   However, for any public or school library needing to buy new or having a budget large enough to accommodate duplication of subject content and peripheral content, these books are highly recommended. Highly recommended:  4 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


The research work concerns the analysis of the foundations of Quantum Field Theory carried out from an educational perspective. The whole research has been driven by two questions:
• How the concept of object changes when moving from classical to contemporary physics?
• How are the concepts of field and interaction shaped and conceptualized within contemporary physics? What makes quantum field and interaction similar to and what makes them different from the classical ones?

The whole work has been developed through several studies:
1. A study aimed to analyze the formal and conceptual structures characterizing the description of the continuous systems that remain invariant in the transition from classical to contemporary physics.
2. A study aimed to analyze the changes in the meanings of the concepts of field and interaction in the transition to quantum field theory.
3. A detailed study of the Klein-Gordon equation aimed at analyzing, in a case considered emblematic, some interpretative (conceptual and didactical) problems in the concept of field that the university textbooks do not address explicitly.
4. A study concerning the application of the "Discipline-Culture" Model elaborated by I. Galili to the analysis of the Klein-Gordon equation, in order to reconstruct the meanings of the equation from a cultural perspective.
5. A critical analysis, in the light of the results of the studies mentioned above, of the existing proposals for teaching basic concepts of Quantum Field Theory and particle physics at the secondary school level or in introductory physics university courses.


A new branch of corporate sustainability, Bottom-of-the-Pyramid (BOP), seeks out new market opportunities with low-income consumers in the developing world that simultaneously contribute to the sustainable development of these regions. While many companies consider the addition of BOP strategies to their sustainability portfolio, many also hesitate because of the uncertainties that surround this new sustainability practice. This article investigates strategies adopted by the corporate sustainability function in Novozymes, a multinational company with a solid track record in corporate sustainability, to implement a BOP project within key areas of the company's operational core. There are four internal organizational barriers that interlock one another and that have so far prevented the implementation of this project in key areas of operations. The article examines the challenges for sustainability managers who seek to overcome interlocking cognitive, processual, and structural barriers to the implementation of this new branch of sustainability practices.


This thesis is directed toward teachers who work primarily with music degree students on the collegiate level. Pedagogy is simply too often "hit or miss" in a student's degree curriculum, and yet the reality is that most musicians will have to teach at some point in their careers, whether they realize it as students or not. This thesis provides a model for how to holistically integrate pedagogy into all aspects of the performance curriculum, so that string performance students are provided with the necessary tools to be both excellent performers and teachers, regardless of whether they ever take a pedagogy class. This is accomplished through: the examination of survey results regarding how schools are incorporating the National Association for Schools of Music requirements and recommendations for the integration of pedagogy into course curricula; an overview of survey results reporting how string performers and educators feel about the quality of the education they received in regards to preparedness for artist string teaching; and a discussion of how to create a holistic curriculum for performance and pedagogy that encompasses the three main areas of most string performance curriculums (the private studio, chamber music, and orchestra). The overarching goal of this thesis is to build on the rich tradition of string playing and teaching that already exists, by introducing a curriculum that will holistically educate the student as both performer and pedagogue. At the heart of this approach is the need for fostering a "see one, do one, teach one" mentality in students.


On March 22, 2010, the Director of the Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center, Mr. Felix Angel, received a grant as part of the Mayor?s Award for Visionary Leadership in the Arts. Organized by the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Mayor?s Art Awards are the highest honors the City confers upon individuals and organizations which distinguish themselves for contributing significantly to the cultural activity of the city. The purpose of the grants is to help foster the arts in Washington, DC. The Grant was used to implement My Generation Essay Competition among Washington D.C. writers, in partnership with the Cultural Center of the Inter American Development Bank.


MACPF pore-forming proteins 'punch holes' in cell membranes, as part of their role in immune defence or microbial invasion. However, due to a small number of pore structures, our understanding of how these proteins form pores is incomplete. In this PhD, the structural characterisation of pleurotolysin, a MACPF from the oyster mushroom, was conducted. Structures were determined for pleurotolysin as a single subunit and as an assembled, multi-subunit pore complex. Furthermore, structures were obtained of non-inserted complexes, 'trapped' by molecular pins that tethered the regions responsible for pore formation in place. Together, these structures form snap-shots of how MACPF proteins form pores.


In June 2003, the Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative (CSPRI) released a policy review concerning major developments in penal policy in South Africa since the advent of constitutionalism in 1994, This paper was widely disseminated. and drew quite healed reaction from some quarters at the time. By and large the policies discussed pertained to previous corrections administrations and the fact that a new commissioner had been appointed in August 2001. This article gives an overview of the issues to which attention had been drawn in the earlier policy review and provides an update to some key changes that have occurred subsequently


A first flavor-tagged measurement of the time-dependent CP-violating asymmetry in B0s→ϕϕ decays is presented. In this decay channel, the CP-violating weak phase arises due to CP violation in the interference between B0s-B¯¯¯0s mixing and the b→ss¯s gluonic penguin decay amplitude. Using a sample of pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0  fb−1 and collected at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV with the LHCb detector, 880 B0s→ϕϕ signal decays are obtained. The CP-violating phase is measured to be in the interval [−2.46,−0.76]  rad at a 68% confidence level. The p value of the standard model prediction is 16%.


The world of mathematical formulas and jargon in Microsoft Excel is complex and can be intimidating for even advanced computer users. Perhaps like you, a majority of users find it difficult to get the most they can out of this very valuable program. Formulas and Functions with Microsoft Excel 2003 strives to break down the complexities by focusing on the four primary technologies to master: ranges, formulas, data analysis tools and lists. Chapters such as "Getting the Most Out of Ranges," "Building Your Own Functions Using VBA," and "Solving Complex Problems with Solver" will teach you practical skills and solutions that you can put to work immediately. Frustration will become a thing of the past as you begin to master the complex world of Excel!


[On several occasions in recent years, the Catholic bishops of the United States have sought to present the Catholic position in matters pertaining to crime and punishment. While in many ways laudable, these statements pay insufficient attention to important historical and conceptual foundations of criminal justice in the Catholic tradition and reflect an inadequate understanding of current trends in present-day correctional policy.]


Climate change (CC) poses important risks to development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Climate adaptation can limit the negative impacts and is important in achieving sustainable development and equity, including poverty reduction and economic growth. Integrating climate change mitigation into development work is also an opportunity to foster and support the design and implementation of sustainable projects, programs and policies. Low-carbon alternatives contribute to more sustainable development. LAC countries are increasingly incorporating CC in their national policy agendas and aim to reduce GHG emissions and build climate resilience and the IDB has supported these efforts in the Region. In 2013-2014, the Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE) carried out an evaluation of IDB's support for CC mitigation and adaptation (RE-459-1). This is OVE's first evaluation of IDB's interventions and institutional set-up related to climate change. The evaluation seeks to document and to draw lessons from the recent IDB experience related to climate change (2004-2014). It focuses on IDB-financed operations in important climate-related sectors (agriculture and natural resources, energy, disaster risk management, and transport)that directly support climate resilience-building (adaptation) or GHG emissions reduction (mitigation) or that have these outcomes as co-benefits.


With billions of users, Online Social Networks(OSNs) are amongst the largest scale communication applications on the Internet. OSNs enable users to easily access news from local and worldwide, as well as share information publicly and interact with friends. On the negative side, OSNs are also abused by spammers to distribute ads or malicious information, such as scams, fraud, and even manipulate public political opinions. Having achieved significant commercial success with large amount of user information, OSNs do treat the security and privacy of their users seriously and provide several mechanisms to reinforce their account security and information privacy. However, the efficacy of those measures is either not thoroughly validated or in need to be improved. In sight of cyber criminals and potential privacy threats on OSNs, we focus on the evaluations and improvements of OSN user privacy configurations, account security protection mechanisms, and trending topic security in this dissertation. We first examine the effectiveness of OSN privacy settings on protecting user privacy. Given each privacy configuration, we propose a corresponding scheme to reveal the target user's basic profile and connection information starting from some leaked connections on the user's homepage. Based on the dataset we collected on Facebook, we calculate the privacy exposure in each privacy setting type and measure the accuracy of our privacy inference schemes with different amount of public information. The evaluation results show that (1) a user's private basic profile can be inferred with high accuracy and (2) connections can be revealed in a significant portion based on even a small number of directly leaked connections. Secondly, we propose a behavioral-profile-based method to detect OSN user account compromisation in a timely manner. Specifically, we propose eight behavioral features to portray a user's social behavior. A user's statistical distributions of those feature values comprise its behavioral profile. Based on the sample data we collected from Facebook, we observe that each user's activities are highly likely to conform to its behavioral profile while two different user's profile tend to diverge from each other, which can be employed for compromisation detection. The evaluation result shows that the more complete and accurate a user's behavioral profile can be built the more accurately compromisation can be detected. Finally, we investigate the manipulation of OSN trending topics. Based on the dataset we collected from Twitter, we manifest the manipulation of trending and a suspect spamming infrastructure. We then measure how accurately the five factors (popularity, coverage, transmission, potential coverage, and reputation) can predict trending using an SVM classifier. We further study the interaction patterns between authenticated accounts and malicious accounts in trending. At last we demonstrate the threats of compromised accounts and sybil accounts to trending through simulation and discuss countermeasures against trending manipulation.


We explore the export performance of Africa's underperforming female entrepreneurs, using the Ghanaian ISSER-IGC panel, a comprehensive dataset of manufacturing firms for 2011–2015. Uniquely, the data provides information about the severity of key business constraints, across both male and female entrepreneurs. We find that females are less likely to export (and optimize their exporting) than their male peers. Although reduced access to finance seriously constrains the exports of female entrepreneurs, this limitation does not explain their relative inability to leverage value from exports. Consistent with related work, we find that certain social and cultural constraints, in particular constraints linked to bribes and security concerns, are more deeply felt by female entrepreneurs. This may hint at the exclusion of Africa's females (voluntarily or involuntarily) from male-dominated networks or business practices.


This study was inspired by the idea that there is more diversity in the ways languages come into contact to create efficient and fair communication. The alternative mode explored in this study is called lingua receptiva (or, LaRa): here interlocutors speak their own language and have enough linguistic and interactional competencies to understand the language of the other. Success of this mode is often related to mutual intelligibility between languages (e.g., typologically close Scandinavian constellations). However, in this study the leitmotif lies in discovering the covert potential of LaRa not within but across language families. The data come from the dialogues between native speakers of Estonian and Russian, the two biggest linguistic groups in Estonia. The participants were pre-selected with the help of a socio-linguistic questionnaire, which focused on participants' self-reported L2 proficiency, exposure to multilingual situations as well as attitudes towards the languages and social groups concerned. A C-Test was administered to obtain more objective information regarding interlocutors' proficiency in Estonian and Russian as their L2. The empirical study was based on the psycholinguistic experiments that investigate alignment in dialogues. Dyads composed of one Estonian and one Russian-speaking participant were engaged in a Skype phone call. Their task was to find each other on an abstract map and agree on a route from one point to another. In psycholinguistics, `alignment' is a state that is established once the interlocutors have reached a shared understanding of relevant aspects of reality. Based on pertinent literature, it was hypothesised that in lingua receptiva other aspects affecting successful communication include general awareness of this mode, flexibility and activation of plurilingual repertoires, exposure and attitudes to multilingual situations as well as ability to find mutual strategies of accommodation. It was argued that in LaRa alignment is actively monitored and a set of meta-communicative devices (MCDs) was proposed. The results indicated that even dyads with limited L2 proficiencies are able to complete the task successfully or can be more efficient than linguistically advanced dyads. Interlocutors reach and maintain mutual understanding by `minding' their languages with the meta-communicative devices. These MCDs vary significantly depending on the individual L2 proficiency, the composition of proficiencies within a dyad; exposure and attitudes to L2 were also found to play a role. When L2 proficiency does not guarantee mutual understanding, compensatory strategies may include code-switching. Despite the instruction to use mother tongue, the subjects in this experimental task occasionaly used their L2: all these instances were analysed in the framework of contact linguistics. Their distribution, too, depended on L2 proficiency, attitudes and exposure. It was concluded that code-switching can also function as an alignment strategy. To sum up, LaRa can be recommended as an alternative mode of multilingual communication. Equipped with plurilingual resources and meta-communicative skills, LaRa interlocutors monitor their languages by adapting to what they believe would be understood by the hearer in each specific situation. Finally, it is beyond doubt that enough common ground can be built even with quite limited linguistic resources.


In this chapter, in vivo and in vitro experimental models for the study of the exocrine pancreas in various animal species are reviewed. For the intact animal models, some anatomical details of the pancreatic duct system, which are important for the surgical preparation necessary for collection of pancreatic juice, are explained. Several techniques for collecting pancreatic juice are described, with their relevance to specific animal species. The advantages and disadvantages of various materials used for cannulas and catheters for collecting pancreatic juice are presented. For the vascular perfused models, some anatomical details of the vascular supply system are described, and the techniques used for preparation and perfusion, including the apparatus and composition of perfusates. As models for the study of cellular mechanisms, the characteristics of pancreatic segments, dispersed acinar cells and dispersed acini preparations are presented, as well as the techniques used. Systematic research into the functions of the exocrine pancreas, i.e. the pancreatic acini (synthesis and release of pancreatic enzymes and secretion of chloride-rich fluid) and ducts (secretion of bicarbonate-rich fluid), only began in the last hundred years using whole animal preparations. These preparations were necessary to study the secretory response of pancreatic juice to changes in various conditions: diets, stages of life, environments, diseases etc. and the role of pancreatic juice in the nutrition. The factors found to regulate pancreatic secretions in intact animals were investigated to see whether they acted directly on the pancreas or not. To simplify the interpretation by excluding interference from other organs, isolated perfused preparations or pancreatic segment preparations were developed. However, isolated pancreas and pancreatic segments still contain the endocrine portion, which regulates exocrine functions, as later became known. To study direct effects on acinar cells, preparations of dispersed single acinar cells and acini were developed. The development of these experimental models led to significant progress in animal and human pancreatology. The purpose of this chapter is to review and characterise experimental models for studying the functions of the exocrine pancreas.


This paper analyzes and compares socioeconomic inequalities in the use of healthcare services by the elderly in four South-American cities: Buenos Aires (Argentina), Santiago (Chile), Montevideo (Uruguay) and San Pablo (Brazil). We use data from SABE, a survey on Health, Well-being and Aging administered in several Latin American cities in 2000. After having accounted for socioeconomic inequalities in healthcare needs, we find socioeconomic inequities favoring the rich in the use of preventive services (mammograms, pap tests, breast examinations, and prostate exams) in all of the studied cities. We also find inequities in the likelihood of having a medical visit in Santiago and Montevideo, and in some measures of quality of access in Santiago, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires. Santiago depicts the highest inequities in medical visits and Uruguay the worse indicators in mammograms and pap scans tests. For all cities, inequities in preventive services at least double inequities in other services. We do not find evidence of a trade-off between levels of access and equity in access to healthcare services. The decomposition of healthcare inequalities suggests that inequities within each health system (public or private) are more important than between systems.


The depth of soil frost is decreasing in cold regions around the world as a result of climate warming. To evaluate the potential impacts of the reduction in frost depth on the hydrologic cycle, it is necessary to understand snowmelt infiltration processes in frozen soils. A field study was conducted at an agricultural site characterized by volcanic ash soil in Tokachi, Hokkaido, Japan, where frost depths have decreased significantly in the last 20 yr. Soil temperature, water content, matric potential, snow cover, and meteorological parameters were monitored to quantify snowmelt infiltration flux for four winters that had different snow and soil conditions. When snowmelt began, the soil frost was 0.1 to 0.2 m thick in two winters and was absent in two other winters, providing a unique opportunity to compare snowmelt infiltration under frozen and unfrozen conditions. Most of the snowmelt water infiltrated into the soil under both frozen and unfrozen conditions, indicating that the frozen soil layer did not impede infiltration. The lack of flow impedance in the frozen soil was partly due to relatively high air temperature and an absence of freeze‐back events during the snowmelt period. Furthermore, the temperature of the frozen soil layer was close to 0°C when the melt started, meaning that very little meltwater refroze in the soil before the temperature reached 0°C. The thick (>1 m) snow cover insulated the soil surface, allowing the frozen soil layer to warm up with the upward conduction of heat from the unfrozen layer below. These results indicate the importance of the interaction between snow cover and soil, which can be significantly affected by climate change.


There can be no basis for ecological responsibility when we commodify the world and monetize our values. The true praxis of ecological responsibility, ethic of sacrifice – that is, "making things sacred". Our ecological responsibility is to treat life as sacred, to regard it as the expression of divine Beauty, and to respond to it out of the compassionate depths of our own primordial nature, which, like its substance, is intrinsically Good. It is by the restoration of our inner beauty that we can recover the outer equilibrium that is the goal of ecological responsibility. It is by discovering what is sacred within our souls that we can discover "the dearest freshness deep down things", and only then can we fulfil the burden of our Trust and restore our harmony with nature. KEYWORDS: Stewardship, unitive vision of beauty, seeing God everywhere, Gaian ecosystem, anthropocentrism, ethic of sacrifice.


What explains our current obsession with selfies? In I Love My Selfie noted cultural critic Ilan Stavans explores the selfie's historical and cultural roots by discussing everything from Greek mythology and Shakespeare to Andy Warhol, James Franco, and Pope Francis. He sees selfies as tools people use to disguise or present themselves as spontaneous and casual. This collaboration includes a portfolio of fifty autoportraits by the artist ADAL; he and Stavans use them as a way to question the notion of the self and to engage with artists, celebrities, technology, identity, and politics. Provocative and engaging, I Love My Selfie will change the way readers think about this unavoidable phenomenon of twenty-first-century life.


Essential features of the previously named and described Miocene Crooked Ridge River in northeastern Arizona (USA) are reexamined using new geologic and geochronologic data. Previously it was proposed that Cenozoic alluvium at Crooked Ridge and southern White Mesa was pre–early Miocene, the product of a large, vigorous late Paleogene river draining the 35–23 Ma San Juan Mountains volcanic field of southwestern Colorado. The paleoriver probably breeched the Kaibab uplift and was considered important in the early evolution of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon. In this paper, we reexamine the character and age of these Cenozoic deposits. The alluvial record originally used to propose the hypothetical paleoriver is best exposed on White Mesa, providing the informal name White Mesa alluvium. The alluvium is 20–50 m thick and is in the bedrock-bound White Mesa paleovalley system, which comprises 5 tributary paleochannels. Gravel composition, detrital zircon data, and paleochannel orientation indicate that sediment originated mainly from local Cretaceous bedrock north, northeast, and south of White Mesa. Sedimentologic and fossil evidence imply alluviation in a low-energy suspended sediment fluvial system with abundant fine-grained overbank deposits, indicating a local channel system rather than a vigorous braided river with distant headwaters. The alluvium contains exotic gravel clasts of Proterozoic basement and rare Oligocene volcanic clasts as well as Oligocene–Miocene detrital sanidine related to multiple caldera eruptions of the San Juan Mountains and elsewhere. These exotic clasts and sanidine likely came from ancient rivers draining the San Juan Mountains. However, in this paper we show that the White Mesa alluvium is early Pleistocene (ca. 2 Ma) rather than pre–early Miocene. Combined 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dating of an interbedded tuff and detrital sanidine ages show that the basal White Mesa alluvium was deposited at 1.993 ± 0.002 Ma, consistent with a detrital sanidine maximum depositional age of 2.02 ± 0.02 Ma. Geomorphic relations show that the White Mesa alluvium is older than inset gravels that are interbedded with 1.2–0.8 Ma Bishop–Glass Mountain tuff. The new ca. 2 Ma age for the White Mesa alluvium refutes the hypothesis of a large regional Miocene(?) Crooked Ridge paleoriver that predated carving of the Grand Canyon. Instead, White Mesa paleodrainage was the northernmost extension of the ancestral Little Colorado River drainage basin. This finding is important for understanding Colorado River evolution because it provides a datum for quantifying rapid post–2 Ma regional denudation of the Grand Canyon region.


"Arirang" is known worldwide as the quintessential Korean folk song. Its iconic status in contemporary Korea derives from its perceived role in strengthening Korean resolve to resist the cultural violence of the Japanese colonial occupation (1905–45). A musical "skeleton" capable of countless improvised variations and interpretations, some "Arirangs" explicitly assailed the Japanese and thus were censored by colonial authorities. However, in the 1930s and 1940s, precisely the time when assimilationist pressures in colonial Korea were intensifying, Japanese songsmiths, singers, and recording companies released "Arirang" renditions in prodigious quantities, sometimes in collaboration with Korean performers. "Arirang" became the most familiar song in the Japanese empire: Its persistent theme of loss spoke to Koreans of their lost sovereignty and to Japanese of the ravaging effects of modernity on traditional lifeways. For both peoples, it served as a mirror for self-contemplation and an "ethnographic lens" for gazing upon the other.


This study was performed to elucidate mechanisms responsible for the contraction of isolated canine cerebral arteries induced by uridine 5′-triphosphate (UTP) and to ascertain whether UTP given intracisternally causes cerebral arterial constriction. The latter was proven arteriographically to be the case. In vitro, UTP (10(−4)M) and UDP were similar in potency, produced sustained contractions, and were more effective than other pyrimidine nucleotides or uridine. Unlike serotonin (5-HT), UTP was not antagonized by cinanserin and failed to cause constriction of mesenteric arteries. Adenosine similarly antagonized 5-HT and UTP. The Ca2+ antagonist nimodipine abolished contractions caused by high K+ but only incompletely antagonized 5-HT or UTP. On the other hand, procedures that hyperpolarize the cell membrane (low K+ followed by K+) abolished tonic contractions induced by UTP. Hyperpolarization prior to UTP (with or without nimodipine) did not, however, prevent the occurrence of a phasic contraction. Papaverine or lanthanum antagonized this phasic response. It was concluded that UTP selectively affects cerebral arteries, may initiate contraction by releasing membrane bound Ca2+, depolarizes the cell membrane to open receptor operated and potential sensitive calcium channels, but does not inhibit the electrogenic Na-pump nor specifically antagonize the vasodilator adenosine.


The betaherpesviruses human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) are investigated here as pathogens in Zambia, an HIV -1 endemic region where there was little previous data. In particular we assess the effects of these viruses on 'maternally HIV-l exposed' infants: HIV-l negative infants of HI V-I positive mothers. HCMV and HHV-6 are serious causes of morbidity and mortality in HIV / AIDS and are linked with AIDS progression, so in this thesis they are investigated in both HIV -1 infected and uninfected Zambian children, along with maternally HIV exposed infants, an under studied and growing group in Southern Africa. The aim ofthis thesis is to employ qualitative and quantitative PCR assays to determine betaherpesvirus prevalence, loads and genotypes in three independent Zambian paediatric cohorts: Two retrospective cohorts (141 infants hospitalized with fever and 36 childhood HIV-1 positive respiratory mortalities), and also one prospective cohort (812 infants taking part in a population-based study designed to test the efficacy of a micronutrient fortified feed supplement to improve growth and health) in which relationships between betaherpesvirus infection, duration of breast feeding, infant growth and morbidity were investigated. Prevalence and loads were highest within the symptomatic cohorts, although lower levels of both viruses were also detected in sera from healthy infants taking part in the prospective study. High load HCMV infections were shown here to be significantly more prevalent in maternally HIV -1 exposed infants. Genotyping analysis focused of two hypervariable glycoproteins (gO and gN), which in HCMV have been shown to form seven linked genotypes. Here we identified a new genotype (gN4d) and demonstrated linkage with g05, demonstrating now eight gO/gN linkages. Analyses of this data and that generated in other countries show these linkages are globally maintained. Conversely for HHV -6, whilst HHV-6B is the predominant strain for childhood infections in the V.S, Europe and Japan, in Zambia HHV-6A was identified in 84% ofinfant infections, suggesting emergence elsewhere. The prevalence of active betaherpesvirus infections through detection of viral sera-DNA was 34-40% for HCMV and 8-13% for HHV-6, showing that primary infection with HCMV occurs much earlier in this region than in European and North American countries. Active HCMV infections were associated with inhibitory effects on growth and a trend for increased morbidity in HIV -1 exposed infants as measured by an increased rate of hospital referrals. HCMV seroprevalence was associated with anaemia and stunting, and breast feeding increased HCMV transmission, particularly in HIV -1 exposed infants. A micronutrient supplement with iron reduced anaemia. In summary, genotypes of HCMV and HHV-6 were identified and characterised in infant infections in this region, and analyses shows association with morbidity and growth delays for HCMV infected children, particularly with maternal HIV -1, a newly identified potential hazard for this population.


Introduction/objectives In 2012, hypocomplementemia was included in the classification criteria of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The suggested measurement of C3 or C4 often reflect disease activity poorly. Our objective was to establish an assay measuring C3dg, which is generated following complement activation, and to evaluate the assay in a cross-sectional SLE cohort. Method We included SLE patients (n = 169) and controls (n = 170) and developed a modified C3dg assay where C3dg fragments were separated from the large plasma proteins by polyethylene glycol (PEG), and the supernatant containing the C3dg fragment was used for analysis in an antibody-based sandwich-type assay. Gel permeation chromatography and western blotting were used to establish the optimal conditions for PEG precipitation. Results 16% PEG was optimal for separating C3dg from C3 and the larger protein fragments. The assay showed a high degree of stability when using EDTA plasma, and measurements correlated well with commercially available complement activation assays. SLE patients had higher concentrations in plasma of C3dg than controls (p < 0.05). ROC analysis showed that the C3dg activation fragment of C3 with an AUC of 0.96 (CI 0.94–0.98) was superior to C3 (AUC 0.52) in differentiating between patients and controls. Conclusion Our results present a modified assay for the measurement of C3dg. We demonstrate that C3dg was superior to conventional C3 measurements in discriminating SLE patients from controls. We suggest that C3dg should be considered as a complement activation measurement in the SLE classification criteria.


Investigating the existence of mixed emotions within a sport consumer behavior context is the purpose of this study. Two experimental studies with a 4 (game outcome) × 2 (response format) mixed model analysis of covariance were implemented. The authors tested concurrence of two opposite emotions in Study 1 by asking subjects to complete an online continuous measure of happiness/sadness. Subjects reported more mixed emotions while watching a conflicting game outcome, such as a disappointing win and relieving loss, than during a straight game outcome. In Study 2, real-time-based measures of sport consumer emotions appear to have greater validity than recall-based measures of sport consumer emotions. Subjects with real-time-based measures were less likely to report a straight loss as positive and a straight win as negative than those with the retrospective measure. This study provides evidence of mixed emotions; specifically, happiness and sadness can co-occur during sports consumption.


This text covers the history of the USA's role in the International Labor Organization (ILO). It covers the challenge by the President of the American Political Science Association in 2000, who urged scholars to discover how "well-structured institutions could enable the world to have a new birth of freedom". Lorenz's study describes one model of a well-structured institution. His history of the US interaction with the ILO shows how some popular organizations, including organized labour, the women's movement, academics, the legal community, and religious institutions have been able to utilize the ILO structure to counter what the APSA president called "self-serving elites and...their worst impulses". These organizations succeeded repeatedly in introducing popular visions of social justice into global economic planning and the world economy. The text reveals why the USA, despite showing exceptional restraint in domestic social policy making, played a leading role in the pursuit of just international labour standards.


In 1997, M. Kontsevich proved that every Poisson manifold admits a formal quantization, canonical up to equivalence. In doing so he solved a longstanding problem in mathematical physics. Through his proof and his interpretation of a later proof given by Tamarkin, he also opened up new research avenues in Lie theory, quantum group theory, deformation theory and the study of operads... and uncovered fascinating links of these topics with number theory, knot theory and the theory of motives. Without doubt, his work on deformation quantization will continue to influence these fields for many years to come. In the three parts of this volume, we will 1) present the main results of Kontsevich's 1997 preprint and sketch his interpretation of Tamarkin's approach, 2) show the relevance of Kontsevich's theorem for Lie theory and 3) explain the idea from topological string theory which inspired Kontsevich's proof. An appendix is devoted to the geometry of configuration spaces.


Data stewardship encompasses all activities that preserve and improve the information content, accessibility, and usability of data and metadata. Recent regulations, mandates, policies, and guidelines set forth by the U.S. government, federal other, and funding agencies, scientific societies and scholarly publishers, have levied stewardship requirements on digital scientific data. This elevated level of requirements has increased the need for a formal approach to stewardship activities that supports compliance verification and reporting. Meeting or verifying compliance with stewardship requirements requires assessing the current state, identifying gaps, and, if necessary, defining a roadmap for improvement. This, however, touches on standards and best practices in multiple knowledge domains. Therefore, data stewardship practitioners, especially these at data repositories or data service centers or associated with data stewardship programs, can benefit from knowledge of existing maturity assessment models. This article provides an overview of the current state of assessing stewardship maturity for federally funded digital scientific data. A brief description of existing maturity assessment models and related application(s) is provided. This helps stewardship practitioners to readily obtain basic information about these models. It allows them to evaluate each model's suitability for their unique verification and improvement needs.


Previous pre-neural work on structured prediction has produced very effective supervised clustering algorithms using linear classifiers, e.g., structured SVM or perceptron. However, these cannot exploit the representation learning ability of neural networks, which would make supervised clustering even more powerful, i.e., general clustering patterns can be learned automatically. In this paper, we design neural networks based on latent structured prediction loss and Transformer models to approach supervised clustering. We tested our methods on the task of automatically recreating categories of intents from publicly available question intent corpora. The results show that our approach delivers 95.65% of F1, outperforming the state of the art by 17.24%.


With the advances in information technology, voluminous data in such domains as the internet, market, biology, medical imaging, etc. are generated constantly. Extracting useful information from these massive data sets in an efficient way is a vital problem. This research studies five information extraction problems: association rules mining, parallel computation of the singular value decomposition (SVD), gene selection for classification, unknown category classification, and k-means clustering. In association rules mining, we present a novel Transaction Mapping (TM) algorithm for frequent itemset mining, where transaction ids of each itemset are mapped and compressed to continuous transaction intervals and the counting of itemsets is performed by intersecting these interval lists in a depth-first order along the lexicographic tree. In the area of SVD, we introduce a novel scheme for the parallel computation of SVDs. This algorithm is a specific "relaxation" of the Jacobi iteration and is nicely parallelizable. For example, it enables the computation of all the rotations of a sweep in parallel such that the number of sweeps is reasonable. In the gene selection for classification problem, we develop a new greedy algorithm incorporated with correlation between genes based on the learned weights of support vector machine, which obtains a higher classification accuracy using a smaller number of selected genes than the well-known algorithms in the literature. In the unknown category classification problem, we propose a novel method that is capable of identifying the presence of a new class (for example when the new object is sufficiently away from any of the known classes). In this algorithm SVM is used for the first-stage classification following which the squared Mahalanobis distance is used to identify the unknown class (if any). This algorithm is able to detect the presence of the unknown class and classify the objects that belong to this unknown class accurately. The proposed method is flexible in that the unknown class can be controlled by the confidence level that can be set by the users. In k-means clustering, we propose three constant approximation algorithms. The first algorithm runs in time O((k/e)k nd), where k is the number of clusters, n is the size of input points, and d is dimension of attributes. The second algorithm runs in time O( k3n2 log n). This is the first algorithm for k-means clustering that runs in time polynomial in n, k and d simultaneously. The run time of the third algorithm is (O( k5 log3 kd)) and is independent of n. Though an algorithm whose run time is independent of n is known for the k-median problem, ours is the first such algorithm for the k-means problem.


The analysis and visualization of nucleic acids (RNA and DNA) is playing an increasingly important role due to their fundamental importance for all forms of life and the growing number of known 3D structures of such molecules. The great complexity of these structures, in particular, those of RNA, demands interactive visualization to get deeper insights into the relationship between the 2D secondary structure motifs and their 3D tertiary structures. Over the last decades, a lot of research in molecular visualization has focused on the visual exploration of protein structures while nucleic acids have only been marginally addressed. In contrast to proteins, which are composed of amino acids, the ingredients of nucleic acids are nucleotides. They form structuring patterns that differ from those of proteins and, hence, also require different visualization and exploration techniques. In order to support interactive exploration of nucleic acids, the computation of secondary structure motifs as well as their visualization in 2D and 3D must be fast. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on the performance of both the computation and visualization of nucleic acid structure. We present a ray casting-based visualization of RNA and DNA secondary and tertiary structures, which enables for the first time real-time visualization of even large molecular dynamics trajectories. Furthermore, we provide a detailed description of all important aspects to visualize nucleic acid secondary and tertiary structures. With this, we close an important gap in molecular visualization.


In traditional semantics, the human body tends to be ignored in the process of constructing meaning. Horst Ruthrof argues, by contrast, that the body is an integral part of this hermeneutic activity. Strictly language-based theories, and theories which conflate formal and natural languages, run into problems when they describe how we communicate in cultural settings. Semantics and the Body proposes that language is no more than a symbolic grid which does not signify at all unless it is brought to life by non-linguistic signs.

Ruthrof reviews and analyses various 'orthodox' theories of meaning, from the views of Gottlob Frege at the beginning of the twentieth century to those of theorists in the postmodern period, then offers an alternative approach of his own. His theory features 'corporeal semantics,' and holds that meaning has ultimately to do with the body and that the meaning of linguistic expressions is indeterminate without the aid of visual, tactile, olfactory, and other bodily signs. This approach also remedies what Ruthrof sees also as a loss of interpretive will in the postmodern era.

Pedagogy in many fields could be enriched by a systemic integration of non-verbal semiosis into the linguistically dominated syllabus. Those involved in discourse analysis, literature, art criticism, film theory, pedagogy, and philosophy will find the implications of Ruthrof's study considerable.


Despite a general acknowledgement that knowledge about identities is essential for understanding international relations, surprisingly little has been written about what actually activates one of a state's many identities and not another. More generally, the article suggests that situational relevance and commitment are of importance. More specifically, it is suggested that a policy area's legitimisation is a factor that may affect the commitment to a collective identity. The argument is illustrated by the case of 'Norden', as the inhabitants of Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden call their territory. The end of the Cold War and Sweden and Finland joining Denmark in the European Union (EU) put Nordic identity under severe stress in the beginning of the 1990s. As shown, this collective identity was intensely active in the case of the Nordic Passport Union, but less so in the case of environmental negotiations.


The purpose of this study was to asses the Diploma in Computer Engineering (DCE) courses offered at affiliated schools of the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) with a focus on the goals of the curriculum and employment opportunities. Document analysis, questionnaires, focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather the data. This study analyzed and described current issues and future policy strategies associated with employment opportunities of graduates. The study indicates that there is potentiality for job opportunities in foreign and domestic markets, especially for DCE graduates. The study also reveals that a remarkable number of graduates are self employed. Based on the findings of the study, the government of Nepal can play a vital role through the CTEVT to improve the employability of DCE graduates by the monitoring and supervision of institutions, fulfillment of standards requirements of programs, curriculum amendment, and marketing DCE programs. Kul Bahadur Basnet is a Ph. D. student in the Department of Technology Education at Korea National University of Education. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. Jinsoo Kim is a Professor in the Department of Technology Education at Korea National University of Education. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. 66 JOURNAL OF STEM TEACHER EDUCATION


Summary Background: Copy and paste functionality can support efficiency during clinical documentation, but may promote inaccurate documentation with risks for patient safety. The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety was formed to gather data, conduct analysis, educate, and disseminate safe practices for safer care using health information technology (IT). Objective: To characterize copy and paste events in clinical care, identify safety risks, describe existing evidence, and develop implementable practice recommendations for safe reuse of information via copy and paste. Methods: The Partnership 1) reviewed 12 reported safety events, 2) solicited expert input, and 3) performed a systematic literature review (2010 to January 2015) to identify publications addressing frequency, perceptions/attitudes, patient safety risks, existing guidance, and potential interventions and mitigation practices. Results: The literature review identified 51 publications that were included. Overall, 66% to 90% of clinicians routinely use copy and paste. One study of diagnostic errors found that copy and paste led to 2.6% of errors in which a missed diagnosis required patients to seek additional unplanned care. Copy and paste can promote note bloat, internal inconsistencies, error propagation, and documentation in the wrong patient chart. Existing guidance identified specific responsibilities for authors, organizations, and electronic health record (EHR) developers. Analysis of 12 reported copy and paste safety events was congruent with problems identified from the literature review. Conclusion: Despite regular copy and paste use, evidence regarding direct risk to patient safety remains sparse, with significant study limitations. Drawing on existing evidence, the Partnership developed four safe practice recommendations: 1) Provide a mechanism to make copy and paste material easily identifiable; 2) Ensure the provenance of copy and paste material is readily available; 3) Ensure adequate staff training and education; 4) Ensure copy and paste practices are regularly monitored, measured, and assessed.


Long distance dispersal, the migration and establishment of propagules across large biogeographical barriers, has played a critical role in shaping the historical and current biogeography of the Southern Hemisphere flora. Vicariance, the physical separation and subsequent isolation and speciation of populations, alone cannot account for the geographic distribution of the plant lineages. The extant vascular flora of Tasmania and New Zealand provides insight into the process of long distance dispersal and its consequences. This thesis investigates the relative abundance, directional dispersal, and long distance dispersal-mediated traits of these species by considering the overall flora of these island masses, and in particular, the 293 species that occur in both landmasses (referred to herein as disjunct species). These disjunct species are likely to be all recent migrants, and therefore they can be used to infer the characteristics and processes involved in dispersal.
Analysis of within-species disjunctions showed a significant directional bias for immigration from Tasmania to New Zealand, rather than vice versa. Disjunct species that are common in both areas, defined here as ones that have widespread distributions of populations, were over-represented compared to species that were rare. This observation supports a direct association between relative abundance and frequency of dispersal. Furthermore, disjunct species were more common in their source area than in the sink area, highlighting the effect of source size on the degree of dispersal. However, the observed ecological range of disjunct species in the source area was not greater or less than the observed ecological range of these species in the sink area, although disjunct species were likely to have wider ranges than nondisjunct species. No evidence was found to indicate that ecological release was an influence on establishment due to the under-representation of disjunct species common in the sink area.
Herbaceous species were more likely to be disjunct than woody species in New Zealand and Tasmania. High proportions of disjunct species inhabited freshwater aquatic, salt marsh and estuaries, coastal areas, and bogs and wet peats while low proportions were in forests (including open), grasslands, and heaths. Disjunct species were more likely to have specialist features for wind dispersal and external transport on vertebrates, but less likely to have fleshy fruits. Despite these features, small disseminules were over-represented. Dioecy was significantly under-represented in disjunct species. Groups with high frequencies of disjunct species include ferns and the angiosperm families Caryophyllaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Cyperaceae, and Juncaceae. The under-representation of disjunct species that are more common in the sink area than the source implies that there is no evidence that ecological release was an influence on establishment.
The within-species disjunctions of Tasmania and New Zealand reinforce the shifting acceptance of long distance dispersal in the Southern Hemisphere and the relevance of relative abundance in evaluating the frequency of dispersal and ecological patterns. The results argue for a comparative evaluation of other island disjunctions.


Mobile phones are widely recognized as a potentially transformative technology platform for developing nations. However, for designers and programmers in the developed world to create viable applications for mobile phones involves first identifying and communicating user requirements for diverse users. We define diverse users as those from a substantively different cultural context than that in which the technology design occurs, including developing regions. This paper presents a case study outlining our process of using data from prior research to (1) identify a tenable mobile phone product concept for mobile phone users in Kyrgyzstan; (2) detect and communicate user requirements for that product concept to a design team; and (3) develop a working prototype of the concept for usability testing. Our resulting concept meets important user needs and goals for mobile phone users in Kyrgyzstan. We believe the process by which we developed and discuss these user requirements and the subsequent prototype can serve as an example to others concerned with creating user-centered products and services for diverse users including those in developing countries.


In wireless mobile ad hoc networks where nodes are selfish and non-cooperative, a natural and crucial question is how well or how bad the MAC layer protocol IEEE 802.11 DCF performs. In this paper, we study this question by modeling the selfish MAC protocol as a non- cooperative repeated game where players follow the TIT- FOR-TAT (TFT) strategy which is regarded as the best strategy in such environments. We show for single-hop ad hoc networks the game admits a number of Nash Equilibria (NE). We then perform NE refinement to eliminate the inefficient NE and show that there exists one efficient NE maximizing both local and global payoff. We also propose an algorithm to approach the efficient NE. We then extend our efforts to multi-hop case by showing that the game converges to a NE which may not be globally optimal but quasi- optimal in the sense that the global payoff is only slightly less than the optimal case. As conclusion, we answer the posed question by showing that selfishness does not always lead to network collapse. On the contrary, it can help the network operate at a NE globally which is optimal or quasi-optimal under the condition that players are long-sighted and follow the TFT strategy.


Recent experiments in neurophysiology have begun to examine the active nature of our perceptual experience. One area of research focuses on the impact of eye movements on visual perception. With each eye movement, a new image is presented to the brain, yet our perception is that the world remains stable. This phenomenon, termed spatial constancy, depends on a convergence of information about our eye movements with sensory information from the visual system. Neurons in the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIP) contribute to the construction of an internal representation of space that is updated or "remapped" with each eye movement. Although the basic phenomenon of remapping has been described, many questions remain unanswered. Here we describe two experiments designed to gain a greater understanding of spatial updating in the primate brain. First, we hypothesized that spatial updating would be equally robust throughout the visual field. We tested this by monitoring the activity of neurons in LIP while varying the direction over which a stimulus trace must be updated. We found that individual neurons remap stimulus traces in multiple directions, though the strength of the remapped response is variable. Across the population of LIP neurons, remapping is effectively independent of saccade direction. These findings indicate that the activity of LIP neurons can contribute to the maintenance of spatial constancy throughout the visual field. Second, to begin to understand the circuitry underlying remapping, we studied a special case: when a stimulus must be updated from one visual hemifield to the other. We hypothesized that the forebrain commissures provide the primary route for this across-hemifield remapping. We tested this by comparing the signal related to within- and across-hemifield remapping. We predicted that in split-brain monkeys, across-hemifield remapping would be abolished while within-hemifield remapping would remain robust. Surprisingly, we found that in split-brain monkeys, LIP neurons can remap stimulus traces across hemifields, though this signal is weaker than that associated with within-hemifield remapping. This finding implies that while the forebrain commissures are likely to be the primary route for the interhemispheric transfer of visual information, they are not the only route available. This indicates that a distributed network of brain regions supports spatial updating.


To assess the water pollution within Ijora Creek situated in Lagos, Nigeria, the physico-chemical parameters and total concentrations of four (4) heavy metals: lead (Pb), Copper (Cu), Management (Mn) and Nickel (Ni) were determined in the surface water of the Creek using standard methods. Water samples were collected for a period of three (3) consecutive months bi-weekly from two sampling locations within the Creek at high tide. The ranges of the parameters measured were as follows: temperature (30.5 – 34 0 C), turbidity (3.0 – 99.0NTU), Nitrate (26 – 63.5mg/L), Phosphate (7.0 – 24.6mg/L) Sulphate (12.0 – 49.0mg/L), Dissolved Oxygen (1.2 – 4.2mg/L) Chemical Oxygen Demand (4.5 – 840mg/L), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (4.0 – 460mg/L). Concentrations of Heavy metals in water samples were: Lead (Pb) (0.3 – 7.2mg/L), Copper (Cu) (1.07 – 12.72mg/L,) and Manganese (Mn) (0.14 – 4.10mg/L). The high level of heavy metals reflected the impact of domestic and industrial wastes on the creek. The level of organic pollution were suspected to have arisen due to daily human activities around the creek as observed and this will not only threaten the aquatic life of the Creek but will also affect the aesthetic beauty of Ijora Creek and environs.


The depletion of non-renewable energy resources, the environmental concern over the burning of fossil fuels, and the recent price rises and instability in the international oil markets have all combined to stimulate interest in the use of fermentation processes for the production of alternative bio-fuels. As a fuel, ethanol is mainly of interest as a petrol additive, or substrate, because ethanol-blended fuel produces a cleaner, more complete combustion that reduces greenhouse gas and toxic emissions. As a consequence of the surge in demand for biofuels, ethanol producing microorganisms, such as the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis, are of considerable interest due to their potential for industrial-scale bioethanol production.

Although bioethanol has traditionally been produced in batch fermentation with the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, there are advantages in using Z. mobilis as an alternative for bioethanol production. In comparison to yeast, Z. mobilis grows and ferments rapidly, without the requirement for the controlled supply of oxygen during fermentation, and has a significantly higher ethanol product rate and yield. Most importantly, it has a high tolerance for ethanol.

Bacteria communicate with one another using chemical signalling molecules. In general, chemical communication involves producing, releasing, detecting, and responding to small hormone-like molecules termed autoinducers (AI). This process allows bacteria to monitor the environment for other bacteria and to alter behaviour on a population-wide scale in response to changes in the number and/or species present in a community.
Currently, there are three well-defined classes of molecules that serve as the paradigms for chemical signaling in bacteria: oligopeptides, AI-1 (AHLs) and AI-2. Oligopeptide signalling is the predominant signal used by Gram-positive bacteria, and AHLs (acyl-homoserine lactones) are for species-specific communication in Gram-negative bacteria. Finally, the LuxS/AI-2 pathway is generally considered as involved in interspecies communication because the luxS gene, which is responsible for AI-2 production, is found in various bacteria.

Many physiological functions in bacteria such as toxin, virulence factor and bacteriocin production, biofilm formation, bioluminescence, type III secretion, have been shown to be under the control of AI-2 quorum sensing. In Z. mobilis, in vitro synthesized and in vivo produced AI-2 treatment enhanced ethanol production by this bacterium up to a maximum of 50% in comparison with untreated control cells. This appears attributable to the overproduction of the glycolytic enzymes, enolase and pyruvate carboxylase, which are only rarely found in bacteria and the key enzymes for ethanol production.

From the perspective of interspecies communication, enhanced ethanol production in Z. mobilis, under the control of the AI-2 signalling molecules, could represent a good example of a bacterium that does not produce AI-2, but responds to it.

Another interesting finding is that two extracellular proteins from Z. mobilis, ZMO0994 and ZMO0134 which were originally induced by AI-2, were secreted when they were cloned, transformed and expressed in E. coli strain BL21 DE3; since it is generally accepted that nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, particularly derivatives of K12, do not secrete proteins under routine growth conditions. Presumably, these proteins possess signal sequences for secretion that could be used to provide a strategy for their use as carriers of recombinant proteins produced in E. coli K12. The merit of this system is that there would be few contaminant cytoplasmic proteins, and could possibly solve problems in protein purification, such as protease activity, protein misfolding and inclusion body formation.

Finally, the discovery that the metabolic pathway leading to ethanol production is regulated by AI-2 is of considerable biotechnological importance because it will provide a basis for further engineering of strains for more efficient ethanol production. Indeed, engineering Z. mobilis by introducing the genes that encode Pfs and LuxS to produce AI-2, would be a means to stimulate increased ethanol production.


Expanding the Capabilities of the Pulsed Plasma Thruster for In-Space and Atmospheric Operation Ian Kronheim Johnson Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Robert Winglee Department of Earth and Space Sciences Of all in-space propulsion systems to date, the Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT) is unique in its simplicity and wide range of operational parameters. This study examined multiple uses of the thruster for in-space and atmospheric propulsion, as well as the creation of a CubeSat satellite and atmospheric airship as test beds for the thruster. The PPT was tested as a solid-propellant feed source for the High Power Helicon Thruster, a compact plasma source capable of generating order of magnitude higher plasma densities than comparable power level systems. Replacing the gaseous feed system reduced the thruster size and complexity, as well as allowing for extremely discrete discharges, minimizing the influence of wall effects. Teflon (C2F4) has been the traditional propellant for PPTs due to a high exhaust velocity and ability to ablate without surface modification over long durations. A number of alternative propellants, including minerals and metallics commonly found on asteroids, were tested for use with the PPT. Compounds with significant fractions of sulfur showed the highest performance increase, with specific thrusts double that of Teflon. A PPT with sulfur propellant designed for CubeSat operation, as well as the subsystems necessary for autonomous operation, was built and tested in the laboratory. The PPT was modified for use at atmospheric pressures where the impulse was well defined as a function of the discharge chamber volume, capacitor energy, and background pressure. To demonstrate that the air-breathing PPT was a viable concept the device was launched on two atmospheric balloon flights.


Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), an established angiogenesis factor, is expressed in allografts undergoing rejection, but its function in the rejection process has not been defined. Here, we initially determined that VEGF is functional in the trafficking of human T cells into skin allografts in vivo in the humanized SCID mouse. In vitro, we found that VEGF enhanced endothelial cell expression of the chemokines monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 and IL-8, and in combination with IFN-gamma synergistically induced endothelial cell production of the potent T cell chemoattractant IFN-inducible protein-10 (IP-10). Treatment of BALB/c (H-2d) recipients of fully MHC-mismatched C57BL/6 (H-2b) donor hearts with anti-VEGF markedly inhibited T cell infiltration of allografts and acute rejection. Anti-VEGF failed to inhibit T cell activation responses in vivo, but inhibited intragraft expression of several endothelial cell adhesion molecules and chemokines, including IP-10. In addition, whereas VEGF expression was increased, neovascularization was not associated with acute rejection, and treatment of allograft recipients with the angiogenesis inhibitor endostatin failed to inhibit leukocyte infiltration of the grafts. Thus, VEGF appears to be functional in acute allograft rejection via its effects on leukocyte trafficking. Together, these observations provide mechanistic insight into the proinflammatory function of VEGF in immunity.


The adoption of inflation targeting (IT) by central banks leads to an increase of 10 to 20 percent in measures of financial development, with a lag. We also find evidence that the financial sector benefits of IT adoption were higher for early-adopting central banks. Our results suggest that roughly 12 to 14 years after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand adopted inflation targeting in 1989, the benefits for financial development for new adopters of inflation targeting may have been negligible.


Neurons transplanted from healthy donor mice can repair brain circuitry and partially normalize metabolism in obese mice. Neuronal replacement therapy—the idea that donor neurons can repair a brain injured by trauma or neurodegenerative disease—continues to attract considerable interest. Such therapy is fraught with challenges, however, because its success requires that donor neurons differentiate and form synaptic connections with appropriate neurons in the host. Czupryn et al. transplanted immature neurons from the hypothalamus of wild-type donor mice into the hypothalamus of mutant mice that were morbidly obese because of a genetic deficiency of the receptor for leptin, a metabolic hormone that signals in the hypothalamus. The donor neurons differentiated into four distinct neuronal types that formed functional synapses, resulting in restoration of hypothalamic leptin signaling and partial reversal of obesity and metabolic defects in the recipient mice. A. Czupryn, Y.-D. Zhou, X. Chen, D. McNay, M. P. Anderson, J. S. Flier, J. D. Macklis, Transplanted hypothalamic neurons restore leptin signaling and ameliorate obesity in db/db mice. Science 334, 1133–1137 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Vulnerabilities in Android code -- including but not limited to insecure data storage, unprotected inter-component communication, broken TLS implementations, and violations of least privilege -- have enabled real-world privacy leaks and motivated research cataloguing their prevalence and impact. Researchers have speculated that appification promotes security problems, as it increasingly allows inexperienced laymen to develop complex and sensitive apps. Anecdotally, Internet resources such as Stack Overflow are blamed for promoting insecure solutions that are naively copy-pasted by inexperienced developers. In this paper, we for the first time systematically analyzed how the use of information resources impacts code security. We first surveyed 295 app developers who have published in the Google Play market concerning how they use resources to solve security-related problems. Based on the survey results, we conducted a lab study with 54 Android developers (students and professionals), in which participants wrote security-and privacy-relevant code under time constraints. The participants were assigned to one of four conditions: free choice of resources, Stack Overflow only, official Android documentation only, or books only. Those participants who were allowed to use only Stack Overflow produced significantly less secure code than those using, the official Android documentation or books, while participants using the official Android documentation produced significantly less functional code than those using Stack Overflow. To assess the quality of Stack Overflow as a resource, we surveyed the 139 threads our participants accessed during the study, finding that only 25% of them were helpful in solving the assigned tasks and only 17% of them contained secure code snippets. In order to obtain ground truth concerning the prevalence of the secure and insecure code our participants wrote in the lab study, we statically analyzed a random sample of 200,000 apps from Google Play, finding that 93.6% of the apps used at least one of the API calls our participants used during our study. We also found that many of the security errors made by our participants also appear in the wild, possibly also originating in the use of Stack Overflow to solve programming problems. Taken together, our results confirm that API documentation is secure but hard to use, while informal documentation such as Stack Overflow is more accessible but often leads to insecurity. Given time constraints and economic pressures, we can expect that Android developers will continue to choose those resources that are easiest to use, therefore, our results firmly establish the need for secure-but-usable documentation.


Background: Salt sensitivity (SS) is associated with increased cardiovascular risk in type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2-DM) patients due to an increase in renal oxidation. ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids have shown antioxidant effects, but a typical Western diet has limited content of them. In particular, ω-3 PUFAs are able to activate Nrf-2 (nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor) to prevent DM-related complications by mitigating oxidative stress. Therefore, we hypothesized that eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, ω-3) modulates SS in T2-DM rats, by decreasing renal oxidative stress via Nrf-2 activation, and enhancing the anti-inflammatory response via IL-6 modulation. Methods: 3-months-old male rats (n=40) were fed with a normal Na-diet (NNaD) and randomly selected into 4 groups: i. healthy Wistar rats, non-diabetic rats (Wi), ii. diabetic control (eSS), iii. arachidonic acid-treated eSS (ω-6) (AA), iv. EPA-treated eSS (ω-3) (EPA). After one year, rats were placed in metabolic cages for 7 days and fed with a NNaD and followed by a 7 days period with high Na-diet (HNaD). Systolic blood pressure (SBP), body weight (BW), serum interleukin-6 (IL-6) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels were determined at the end of each 7-day period. Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), triglycerides (TAG), creatinine and cholesterol (Chol) were determined. ROS levels and Nrf-2 expression in kidney lysates were also assayed. Histological changes were evaluated. T-test or ANOVA were used for statistical analysis. Results: Following HNaD, SBP increased in both control eSS and AA groups, but not in EPA and Wi groups. However, HbA1c remained unchanged by the treatments, suggesting that the beneficial effect observed was independent of HbA1c level. IL-6 levels were higher in eSS and AA, but it remained unaltered in EPA and Wi rats following HNaD diet. Interestingly, EPA protected against serum ROS in rats fed the HNaD, whereas AA did not. In kidney lysates, ROS decreased significantly in EPA compared to eSS, and consistently, Nrf-2 expression was higher compared to AA and eSS. Diabetic rats presented focal segmental sclerosis, adherence to Bowman capsule and mild to moderate interstitial fibrosis. EPA and AA treatment prevented the kidney damage. Conclusion: An adequate ω3:ω6 prevents SS in diabetic rats, by a mechanism independent of glucose metabolism but associated to the prevention of renal oxidative stress generation. These data suggest that EPA antioxidant properties may prevent the development of hypertension or kidney damage.


Understanding the mode-locked response of excitable systems to periodic forcing has important applications in neuroscience. For example it is known that spatially extended place cells in the hippocampus are driven by the theta rhythm to generate a code conveying information about spatial location. Thus it is important to explore the role of neuronal dendrites in generating the response to periodic current injection. In this paper we pursue this using a compartmental model, with linear dynamics for each compartment, coupled to an active soma model that generates action potentials. By working with the piece-wise linear McKean model for the soma we show how the response of the whole neuron model (soma and dendrites) can be written in closed form. We exploit this to construct a stroboscopic map describing the response of the spatially extended model to periodic forcing. A linear stability analysis of this map, together with a careful treatment of the non-differentiability of the soma model, allows us to construct the Arnol'd tongue structure for 1:q states (one action potential for q cycles of forcing). Importantly we show how the presence of quasi-active membrane in the dendrites can influence the shape of tongues. Direct numerical simulations confirm our theory and further indicate that resonant dendritic membrane can enlarge the windows in parameter space for chaotic behavior. These simulations also show that the spatially extended neuron model responds differently to global as opposed to point forcing. In the former case spatio-temporal patterns of activity within an Arnol'd tongue are standing waves, whilst in the latter they are traveling waves.


The present study was based on observations on 17 cases of Trypanosoma evansi infection in buffaloes diagnosed by blood smear examination. The degree of parasitaemia revealed heavy (64.70%), moderate (23.52%) and mild (11.76%) infections in buffaloes.Haematological analysis revealed subnormal erythrocytic count and haemoglobin in 70.58% buffaloes. Leukocytosis was evident in 70.58% buffaloes with neutrophilia relatively associated with lymphocytopenia.Blood glucose level of 15 hypoglycaemic buffaloes ranged between 27 to 49.05 gm/dl with an average of 39.35 gm/dl. The comparative analysis of the degree of hypoglycaemia with parasitaemia revealed positive correlation between two parameters. Biochemical analysis of sera and blood samples showed increase level of BUN and serum creatinine in 17.64% buffaloes.


Some new understandings on the triode-like behavior and the "punchthrough mode" operation of a short-channel MOSFET are obtained based on a two-dimensional computer simulation. The drain current of a MOSFET is essentially space-charge-limited, showing a shift from a pentode-like behavior to a triode-like behavior with decreasing (source-drain distance/gate oxide thickness) ratios which serve to manifest the relative modulations by the gate and the drain upon the channel conductivity. In a short-channel MOSFET, the triode-like behavior is more accentuated by a "punchthrough effect" due to a lowering of the potential barrier at the source by the drain field. The current thus resulted includes a gate-uncontrollable component flowing deep in the bulk, which is termed "punchthrough current" to distinguish it from the gate-controllable component characterizing the triode-like behavior. Optimized conditions for a device for reducing the "punchthrough current," are also described in detail.


Despite the many benefits of energy, most of which are reflected in energy market prices, the production, distribution, and use of energy causes negative effects. Many of these negative effects are not reflected in energy market prices. When market failures like this occur, there may be a case for government interventions in the form of regulations, taxes, fees, tradable permits, or other instruments that will motivate recognition of these external or hidden costs. The Hidden Costs of Energy defines and evaluates key external costs and benefits that are associated with the production, distribution, and use of energy, but are not reflected in market prices. The damage estimates presented are substantial and reflect damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation, motor vehicle transportation, and heat generation. The book also considers other effects not quantified in dollar amounts, such as damages from climate change, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security. While not a comprehensive guide to policy, this analysis indicates that major initiatives to further reduce other emissions, improve energy efficiency, or shift to a cleaner electricity generating mix could substantially reduce the damages of external effects. A first step in minimizing the adversemore » consequences of new energy technologies is to better understand these external effects and damages. The Hidden Costs of Energy will therefore be a vital informational tool for government policy makers, scientists, and economists in even the earliest stages of research and development on energy technologies.« less


Natal dispersal is a fundamental component of the ecology and evolutionary history of birds, yet is often prohibitively difficult to study. We characterized natal dispersal for the first time in a bird using molecular genetic parentage analyses in a tropical rainforest understory species, the chestnut-backed antbird (Thamnophilidae: Myrmeciza exsul). Median natal dispersal distance was ∼800 m (mean = 931 ± 84 (SE) m, n = 48), with ∼90% of all distances < 1500 m. We found no evidence of sex-biased dispersal. An index of self-recruitment (i.e. individuals establishing a territory within the population of origin) was higher in sites largely or entirely surrounded by non-forest, suggesting birds are reluctant to disperse out of preferred forest habitat. Via simulations, we confirmed that the genetic data had sufficient resolution to correctly identify parent-offspring dyads, but lacked resolution to identify other relationships (full-sib and half-sib) with confidence. Chestnut-backed antbirds have measurable self-recruitment rates caused by short natal dispersal distances, and self-recruitment may be amplified by reluctance to disperse out of sites bordered by non-forest. Some tropical forest understory birds have naturally short dispersal distances, and our results have implications for understanding how species will be affected by fragmented landscapes and for the design of reserves.


For enhancing the awareness and competitiveness of distributed energy resources (DER) in energy markets, an optimal and implementation and operation of these resources. To address this issue, in this paper, objective, DERs that can collaborate with other DER installed as closer or far topologies, forming coalitions for gaining competitiveness between each other in the energy market, have been selected for study. The profit allocation due to coalition between DERs is being identified as an important issue for ensuring renewable sources installation in smart grids. A methodology with, bi-level, structures is proposed to maximize the profit in a competitive market and allocate profit resulting from a coalition formation between multiple energy districts encompassing DERs. In the primary level analysis, a mechanism based on noncooperative game theory is presented with the aim of creating a competitive market, as well as, to study the supply energy strategies based on pricing mechanisms of multiple energy suppliers. In the second level, various distribution methods, namely, Shapley, Nucleolus, and Merge and Split, are compared with each other for profit allocation analysis. Our study highlights that the disconnection of DERs resulting from pricing decisions allows them to collaborate together with aggregated facilities to achieve higher profits due to excess production and avoid penalties due to shortages in production, which in essence, demonstrates a significant operational increase in their profits, a concept that favors the likelihood for all energy suppliers and producers to form a coalition for economic optimizations.