The Well Child/Tamariki Ora Health Book (the Plunket book) is a small booklet given to New Zealand mothers on the birth of a child. It has been used by nurses as a tool to record growth and development from birth to five years since the 1920s. Although use of the book decreases over time, it is frequently kept within the family and handed on from mother to child. Utilising an oral history approach, this study has traced the development of the Plunket book over time and explored the experiences of a group of 34 women and one man who have reflected on their ownership of, or involvement with, Plunket books. The study found that the Plunket book remains an effective clinical tool for mothers and nurses. Mothers have used the book as a tool to link past with present, to maintain kinship ties across generations, to deal with change intergenerationally, and in a manner that contributes to their self-identity as woman and mother. Although mothers were able to use the book to affirm their own knowledge and that of their mothers, a medically dominated discourse persists in the book. The book has also played a role in facilitating the interaction between mother and nurse, providing an opportunity to explore the relationship in detail. The study found that the most successful relationships at any time were those that bordered the division between a professional relationship and a personal one: it was not the information that nurses offered but the interaction and resulting care they provided that was important to the mothers in the study. The study recommends that nurses and other health professionals continue to use the Plunket book as a clinical tool mindful of the fact that the book remains in use beyond the health professional's immediate involvement with the mother and child, playing an important role in the context of the New Zealand family across generations. Future versions of the book should contain written reference to the strengths and abilities the mother holds as she cares for her child, reaffirming her role and identity as mother not only when her children are younger but as they grow and  become parents themselves. Read Mor


This article traces approaches to social space back to the 1950s and the subsequent pursuit of the 'rise of privacy'. It then delivers a historiography of late-medieval gender and space since the 1990s under three main themes: sacred spaces (churches, nunneries and monasteries); vernacular architecture, and high status residences including gardens and deer parks. It is noted that from the mid-1990s the impulse to make women 'visible' was largely replaced by an emphasis on differences—and similarities—among and between women, men, and other social categories and contexts, such as urban and rural, and that recent studies have moved on to explore the transgression of gendered boundaries. Methodologies such as access analysis are discussed and suggestions are made for future research, including the opportunities afforded by GIS


In this paper, we develop a general interactive method to solve multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems with imprecise preferences. Assuming that preferences can be represented by a parameterized scalarizing function, we iteratively ask preferences queries to the decision maker in order to reduce the uncertainty over the preference parameters until being able to determine her preferred solution. To produce informative preference queries at each step, we generate promising solutions using the extreme points of the polyhedron representing the admissible preference parameters and then we ask the decision maker to compare two of these solutions (we propose different selection strategies). These extreme points are also used to provide a stopping criterion guaranteeing that the returned solution is optimal (or near-optimal) according to the decision maker's preferences. For the multi-objective spanning tree problem with a linear aggregation function, we provide numerical results to demonstrate the practical efficiency of our approach and we compare our results to a recent approach based on minimax regret, where preferences are asked during the construction of a solution. We show that better results are achieved by our method both in terms of running time and number of questions.


Abstract Background: In view of high mortality and morbidity rates associated with vascular access-associated bloodstream infection (VAABSI) in hemodialysis patients, clinical practice guidelines recommend empiric antibiotic therapy for suspected vascular access-related infections. We aim to describe the microbiology of confirmed VAABSI and evaluate the choice of empiric antibiotics, and whether they are prescribed in concordance with the in-house antibiotic guidelines. Methods: This was a single-center, retrospective, observational study conducted in a tertiary hospital. All adult hemodialysis patients aged 21 years and above who had confirmed VAABSI with positive blood culture results dated from January 2011 to June 2012 were recruited. Relevant information was retrieved electronically from the hospital patient online database, SCM 5.5 Sunrise Enterprise Gateway. Results: A total of 144 episodes of VAABSI were recorded from 118 patients. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) accounted for 64.2% (68/106) of the gram-positive infections. Gram-negative organisms grew in 26.4% (38/144) of blood cultures and Pseudomonas aeruginosa was the most common organism isolated. The recommended in-house guideline was used as empiric therapy in 24 episodes of VAABSI (16.7%). Five patients died due to VAABSI and none were prescribed antibiotics in concordance with in-house guidelines. Conclusions: Empiric antibiotics against MSSA and MRSA, as well as gram-negative organisms, especially P. aeruginosa, should be used in patients with suspected vascular access-related infections in our institution. Monitoring of microbiological profile is necessary to guide timely administration of appropriate empiric antibiotics. Further studies are necessary to evaluate the relationship between adherence to in-house guidelines and patients' outcomes.


Reduction in coffee consumption has required from coffee organizations the development of marketing techniques so as to creating value to their product as well as reaching consumer's satisfaction. This work aimed at identifying questions on coffee consumers' desires, perceptions, preferences and habits in Lavras, MG. The conclusive/descriptive research model was used, by means of which primary data were gathered through personal/individual surveys using structured questionnaires. It was verified that consumers are not loyal to coffee brands and that the determining factors in theirs choices are taste, price and yelding. Packaging must feature information on production site, manufacture and expiration dates, type, product classification, as well as information on the warrant stamp, yelding and brand.


The critical literary world has spent a wealth of thought and words on the question of Hawthorne himself: Where does he stand in his works? In history? In literary tradition? In this major new study, G. R. Thompson recasts the "Hawthorne question" to show how authorial presence in the writer's works is as much a matter of art as the writing itself. The Hawthorne who emerges from this masterful analysis is not, as has been supposed, identical to the provincial narrator of his early tales; instead he is revealed to be the skillful manipulator of that narrative voice, an author at an ironic distance from the tales he tells. By focusing on the provincial tales as they were originally conceived--as a narrative cycle--Thompson is able to recover intertextual references that reveal Hawthorne's preoccupation with framing strategies and variations on authorial presence. The author shows how Hawthorne deliberately constructs sentimental narratives, only to deconstruct them. Thompson's analysis provides a new aesthetic context for understanding the whole shape of Hawthorne's career as well as the narrative, ethical, and historical issues within individual works. Revisionary in its view of one of America's greatest authors, The Art of Authorial Presence also offers invaluable insight into the problems of narratology and historiography, ethics and psychology, romanticism and idealism, and the cultural myths of America.


In September 2008, the Lord Mayor of Perth announced her vision for Perth to be more 'gayfriendly'. Her vision aroused some dissonance from the ultra conservatives. The aim of this thesis is to determine the attractiveness of Perth as a lesbian destination. The significance of this study is to understand local lesbian residents' perceptions of Perth as a 'lesbian-friendly' destination, and to evaluate the motivation and satisfaction of lesbian-tourists to Perth. The methodology used included participation observation at the 2009 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade; a semi-structured focus group interview of 4 self-identified lesbian Perth residents, and a purposive sample, using snowball effect, of 112 self-identified lesbians for an on-line survey. The data was analysed using content and statistical analysis. The findings were interpreted using a social constructivist approach, within a male feminist framework.

The findings indicated that slightly over a quarter of lesbian Perth residents felt that Perth is 'lesbian-friendly' (27%). Whilst 'culture and sights' was the top motivator for a lesbian vacation (94%), 'visiting friends and family' was the top motivator for lesbian tourists visiting Perth (71%). Slightly over a tenth of lesbian tourists were satisfied with lesbian attractions in Perth (13%). Overall, only a small number of respondents found Perth to be their first-choice 'lesbian-friendly' destination (6%), with an overwhelming majority wanting to see more lesbian attractions (85%), and 5% agreeing that there are sufficient lesbian venues. These results strongly suggest that Perth is not 'lesbian-friendly', and lacks attractions and venues as an attractive lesbian tourist destination. Recommendations for further research arising from these findings include undertaking a comparison between Perth and other Australian cities in terms of lesbian tourism.


Nicolas Gruyer and Nathalie Lenoir discuss the current allocation of slots on congested European airport. In their eyes the system of grandfather rights constitutes an obstacle to the effective liberalisation of air transportation undertaken in Europe. In this article they propose to use a market mechanism, based on temporary utilisation licences. In order to allocate those licences, the proposed system is based on a combinatorial auction mechanism where a percentage of licences would be reallocated each season. A secondary market would also be set up in order to reallocate slots during a season. Since combinatorial auctions involve a complex optimisation procedure, we describe how it can be made to work in the case of auctions.


As concepts of nationhood and national identity become increasingly slippery, so the theatre historian attempting to recover neglected histories submerged within the dominant discourse of the nation state needs to be wary of imposing an ideologically pre-determined reading on the surviving evidence of performance practice and audience response. It is also important to acknowledge that theatre practice which represents the majority experience of national audiences does not necessarily conform to the subjective value judgements of the critic-historians who have tended to produce a limited, highly selective historical record. In attempting to re/write the history of twentieth-century British theatre Claire Cochrane has researched the hitherto neglected area of amateur theatre which was a widespread phenomenon across the component nations. Focusing in this article on the cultural importance of amateur theatre in Welsh communities before the Second World War, she explores the religious, socio-political, and topographical roots of its rapid expansion, and the complex national identities played out in the collaboration between actors and audience. Claire Cochrane lectures in drama and performance studies at University College Worcester. Her most recent book is Birmingham Rep: a City's Theatre, 1962–2002 (Sir Barry Jackson Trust, 2003). She is currently working on a history of twentieth-century British theatre practice for Cambridge University Press.


The BGO endcap calorimeter was successfully operated in the CMD-2 detector at the VEPP-2M collider. It consists of 680 BGO crystals each with a size of 25×25×150 mm3, arranged in two identical endcaps, with a total crystal weight of 450 kg. The light readout used vacuum phototriodes. The endcap calorimeter has now been upgraded to work in the CMD-3 detector at new collider VEPP-2000. The major part of the endcap calorimeter, the BGO crystals, remains the same. The main upgrade is the use of silicon PIN photodiodes and new electronics. Main reason to change photosensitive device is the strong non-uniform magnetic field in the endcap calorimeter volume so the vacuum photosensitive devices cannot operate in such magnetic fields. Also the available space for the endcap calorimeter space had to be reduced. The Hamamatsu PIN photodiode S3590-08 was chosen as the optimal solution, as they are insensitive to magnetic fields and are both compact and stable. An order of magnitude larger capacitance of silicon photodiodes requires design and produce new custom electronics. The upgrade is expected to bring an overall improvement of parameters. The endcap calorimeter has been installed in the detector and participates in data taking which started at 2010. The preliminary data analysis shows an improvement of the energy resolution compare to the CMD-2 detector.


Abstract. The impact of changes in incoming solar irradiance on stratospheric ozone abundances should be included in climate simulations to aid in capturing the atmospheric response to solar cycle variability. This study presents the first systematic comparison of the representation of the 11-year solar cycle ozone response (SOR) in chemistry–climate models (CCMs) and in pre-calculated ozone databases specified in climate models that do not include chemistry, with a special focus on comparing the recommended protocols for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 and Phase 6 (CMIP5 and CMIP6). We analyse the SOR in eight CCMs from the Chemistry–Climate Model Initiative (CCMI-1) and compare these with results from three ozone databases for climate models: the Bodeker Scientific ozone database, the SPARC/Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate (AC&C) ozone database for CMIP5 and the SPARC/CCMI ozone database for CMIP6. The peak amplitude of the annual mean SOR in the tropical upper stratosphere (1–5 hPa) decreases by more than a factor of 2, from around 5 to 2 %, between the CMIP5 and CMIP6 ozone databases. This substantial decrease can be traced to the CMIP5 ozone database being constructed from a regression model fit to satellite and ozonesonde measurements, while the CMIP6 database is constructed from CCM simulations. The SOR in the CMIP6 ozone database therefore implicitly resembles the SOR in the CCMI-1 models. The structure in latitude of the SOR in the CMIP6 ozone database and CCMI-1 models is considerably smoother than in the CMIP5 database, which shows unrealistic sharp gradients in the SOR across the middle latitudes owing to the paucity of long-term ozone measurements in polar regions. The SORs in the CMIP6 ozone database and the CCMI-1 models show a seasonal dependence with enhanced meridional gradients at mid- to high latitudes in the winter hemisphere. The CMIP5 ozone database does not account for seasonal variations in the SOR, which is unrealistic. Sensitivity experiments with a global atmospheric model without chemistry (ECHAM6.3) are performed to assess the atmospheric impacts of changes in the representation of the SOR and solar spectral irradiance (SSI) forcing between CMIP5 and CMIP6. The larger amplitude of the SOR in the CMIP5 ozone database compared to CMIP6 causes a likely overestimation of the modelled tropical stratospheric temperature response between 11-year solar cycle minimum and maximum by up to 0.55 K, or around 80 % of the total amplitude. This effect is substantially larger than the change in temperature response due to differences in SSI forcing between CMIP5 and CMIP6. The results emphasize the importance of adequately representing the SOR in global models to capture the impact of the 11-year solar cycle on the atmosphere. Since a number of limitations in the representation of the SOR in the CMIP5 ozone database have been identified, we recommend that CMIP6 models without chemistry use the CMIP6 ozone database and the CMIP6 SSI dataset to better capture the climate impacts of solar variability. The SOR coefficients from the CMIP6 ozone database are published with this paper.


ABSTRACT This study examines the patterns of news engagement among news consumers with different political affiliation and cultural background. We use computational methods and data from Twitter in a cross-country comparison of engagement with six online news sources in Australia and South Korea. For our analysis, we used a subset of Twitter users who retweeted at least one political story during the period of collection, and for whom we were able to predict political affiliation using correspondence analysis and data on Twitter follower ties to politicians. We find that right-wing Australian retweeters are more intense in their news engagement, compared with their left-wing counterparts, whereas in South Korea it was the opposite. Australian right-wing political retweeters have more diverse information sources, while there was no difference in information diversity between the right and left in South Korea. We discuss how the political situation in South Korea at the time of data collection may have affected our analysis. We emphasise the methodological contributions of our research and its connection to on-going research into the behavioural foundations of 'filter bubbles'.


Water is an increasingly scarce and valuable resource. It is generally accepted that there is a finite supply of water. As economies grow there is an increasing demand for water. The application of water to agricultural lands for irrigation is one of the essential uses of this natural resource in many areas. There is a competition among agriculture, industry, and human consumption for the limited supplies of water. Efficiency studies are necessary, especially in areas where there is a shortage of factors of production such as water. Panel data for viticulture products, citrus products and olive oil for the time period 2002–2012, in the area of Iraklio, Crete were used for the estimation of production models. The results indicate that the production process for the three crops cannot be represented by a single production function having a single set of coefficients. Different methods yield different efficiency measures. The stochastic frontier yields higher efficiency measures. Farmers are less efficient in the use of irrigation water than in the use of water and fertilizer together. The value of water is found to be equal to 0.73 Euros/m 3 .


Since the 1970s, a number of writers have endorsed the belief that Dr John Richardson very probably committed discreditable, and possibly even criminal, acts during the first Franklin expedition (1819–1822). These acts, they allege, were concealed from the public by Franklin and Richardson, who inserted a fabricated account into Franklin's 1823 narrative. This paper examines the evidence and arguments put forward by the originator of this theory, the historian Richard Glover. It concludes that Glover was motivated primarily by a desire to vindicate the good name of another explorer, Samuel Hearne. Richardson had suggested that Hearne's narrative was not an entirely reliable account of his travels, and in Glover's view, these remarks had seriously damaged Hearne's reputation. Glover therefore sought to characterise Richardson as a deceitful man of exceptionally poor judgement, upon whose claims no reliance could be placed. Later writers, engaged in a re-evaluation of Britain's imperial activities in the Canadian north, have accepted and expanded on Glover's theories. However, an examination of the primary sources cited by Glover and others demonstrates that there is no solid basis for the revisionist version of the 1819–1822 expedition.


Abstract Geological strain analysis of sedimentary rocks is commonly carried out using clast-based techniques. In the absence of valid strain markers, it can be difficult to identify the presence of an early tectonic fabric development and resulting layer parallel shortening (LPS). In order to identify early LPS, we carried out anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) analyses on Mississippian limestones from the Sawtooth Range of Montana. The Sawtooth Range is an arcuate zone of north-trending, closely spaced, west-dipping, imbricate thrust sheets that place Mississippian Madison Group carbonates above Cretaceous shales and sandstones. This structural regime is part of the cordilleran mountain belt of North America, which resulted from accretion of allochthonous terrains to the western edge of the North American continent. Although the region has a general east–west increase in thrust displacement and related brittle deformation, a similar trend in penetrative deformation or the distribution of tectonic fabrics is not observed in the field or in the AMS results. The range of magnetic fabrics identified in each thrust sheet ranges from bedding controlled depositional fabrics to tectonic fabrics at a high angle to bedding.


Organizations learn from other organizations. However, the observations available to them are typically a biased sample. The organizations that can be observed at any point in time are the survivors of a selective process that has eliminated a large fraction of the underlying population. In addition, there is a strong tendency to focus on successful organizations in books and the business press. As a result, the available sample of organizations usually undersamples failure. This paper shows that such undersampling of failure can contribute to a variety of false beliefs about effective management. Simply by observing existing organizations, laymen may get a misleading picture of the determinants of corporate performance. In particular, risky practices, even if they are unrelated to performance in the full population of organizations, may seem to be positively related to performance in a sample of survivors. I argue that this bias frequently implies that the organizational theories of managers and other observers of organizations will be systematically biased. Observations of existing organizations will show that unreliable, uninformed practices and practices that involve concentrated resource allocation are superior to reliable, informed practices or practices that involve diversified resource allocation. I show that this implies that observations of existing organizations will produce compelling but potentially misleading evidence for the significance several common managerial practices.


Abstract The international literature is paying significant and increasing attention to the analysis of the regions' innovation potential, and its active contribution to economic growth and competitiveness. Beside the classical, technical innovation, also the social innovation is getting even more emphasis. It can solve as alternative basically in the case of the peripheral territories. The convergence of peripheries is a stressed priority in the European Union. The territorial disparities are resulting in significant social and political problems also in the case of the Visegrad countries' regions. The authors in their research represent a possible method for the measurement of regional (NUTS-2) level social innovation potential on the example of the Visegrad countries, and they also analyse the causes and consequences of disparities. The applied complex social innovation index can be calculated as a result of three pillars (economic, social, culture and attitude), and several components. As a result of the created patterns can be concluded that compared to the economic indicators, the disadvantage of the peripheries is not so significant in the case of the social innovation index, because of the complex character of the index. In the second part of the research, the authors analyse and evaluate also the methods, which can be adequate for increasing the social innovation potential.


In learned helplessness experiments, subjects first expe- rience a lack of control in one situation, and then show learning deficits when performing or learning another task in another situation. Generalization, thus, is at the core of the learned helplessness phenomenon. Substantial experimental and theoretical effort has been invested into establishing that a state- and task-independent belief about controllability is necessary. However, to what extent generalization is also sufficient to explain the transfer has not been examined. Here, we show qualitatively and quantitatively that Bayesian learning of action-outcome contingencies at three levels of abstraction is sufficient to account for the key features of learned helplessness, including escape deficits and impairment of appetitive learning after inescapable shocks.


Urinary tract infections, which are often recurrent, can be painful and cause much suffering. The low-dose antibiotics used today to prevent them contribute, however to the development of resistance to the antibiotics, to the need of more extended care and to an increase in health care costs. The present paper is a review of literature on the effects of cranberry in preventing urinary tract infections. The literature reviewed provides support for cranberry's preventive effects, also in the case of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The effects were found to be dose-dependent and to be strongest four to six hours after consumption. The physiological effects can be explained on the basis of efficacy mechanisms which have an inhibitory effect on the ability of uropathogenic bacteria to attach to the uroepithelial cells, preventing infection from occurring. Cranberry use can be recommended primarily for women with recurrent urinary tract infections. Research on effects of cranberry use in other subpopulations appears called for.


Grid-EYE is a thermal mapping technology by Panasonic Semiconductors, using which embedded devices like Arduino Boards can generate fast the thermal maps of places, without requiring expensive thermal cameras or complicated image processing algorithms. IOT Based GRID-EYE sensor is part of a device which shall detect both the position and the intensity of the heat radiated by the surface of either a single or multiple targets or to utilize a Hot Target Mode (HTM) to track the target with the highest temperature when multiple elements of interest are involved at the same time and also specialized software and GPS Video MMS can be viewed instantly through SMART Phone. In highly critical border areas military personnel cannot monitor all the time. In such areas grid eye sensor system proves highly advantageous and efficient. An autonomous sentry gun system with IOT is implemented using the grid-eye technology which tracks and points the intruder. Grid-Eye Sensor system is interfaced with IOT to control the operating mode of the sensor and to provide a thermal image of the target on the monitoring panel at the control section. This project can accurately sense multiple intruders at a distance up to 5m 16.404ft. The temperature accuracy of the sensed object is maximum when the difference between the surroundings and the object is ±2.5°C or ±4.5°F with a maximum viewing angle of 60 degrees


Several studies have shown that current cryopreservation procedures are severely detrimental to the viability of immature bovine oocytes and permit fertilization and
development at a very reduced rate. In this study, a number of experiments were conducted to determine the in vitro viability of frozen-thawed and vitrified-thawed immature bovine oocytes. In vitro viability of frozen-thawed immature bovine oocytes was determined based on cumulus mass expansion, nuclear maturation, cleavage and blastocyst rates. Viability was assessed following experiments conducted using a variety of cooling starting temperatures, seeding temperatures, permeable cryoprotectants and saccharides. Effect of using follicular fluid in the preparation of freezing solution on the viability of
immature bovine oocytes was also examined. During freezing, chilling injury and cryoprotective agents impaired the viability of immature oocytes. Among the initial cooling temperatures tested. 30°C yielded the best maturation (34.4%) and cleavage (4.5%) rates and while maturation, cleavage and blastocyst rates from unfrozen oocytes were 86.7%, 69.5% and 17.4%, respectively. As for the permeable cryoprotectants, ethylene glycol was the least toxic compared to propanediol and dimethyl sulphoxide. In the experiment of viability study of oocytes after exposure to freezing solution, significantly better cleavage and blastocyst rates were observed when follicular fluid from > 15-mm follicles was added in freezing solution. However, maturation and cleavage rates fol lowing freezing with follicular fluid were statistically significant. Follicular fluid may have the beneficial effect by protecting oocytes from the toxicity of freezing solution but it may not have enough protective property against freezing per se. The maturation rate of immature oocytes was severely affected when exposed to vitrification solution (39.6%) and vitrifying-thawing procedure (33.9%). However, maturation rate of vitrification solution-exposed oocytes did not differ significantly from that of vitrified-thawed oocytes. These results indicate that the adverse effect on maturation rate is mainly due to vitrification solution rather than vitrification procedure. Any ultrastuctural alterations resulted from freezing and vitrification procedures were investigated using the transmission electron microscopy in order to facilitate a better
understanding of the cause of the low viability. Enlarged perivitelline space and fewer microvilli were common ultrastructural alterations that resulted from cryopreservation. Despite impairment on the viability of oocytes, most organelles of cryopreserved oocytes were able to retain their morphology.


Wireless access technologies such as UMTS with HSPA extensions, WiMAX, and Flash-OFDM and the convergence towards next generation heterogeneous networks enable the realization of always best connected scenarios. As the resulting heterogeneous networks become easier to access and more reliable to depend on, novel telemedicine services such as vehicular emergency applications emerge. Due to their life-critical characteristics, these applications require connectivity throughout the heterogeneous network. In this study, we propose MIPGATE, our mobile connectivity gateway for vehicular applications in next generation heterogeneous networks. MIPGATE contains modules for the access technologies currently available and a decision mechanism to switch intelligently to the connection offering the most suitable conditions. Link layer triggers and additional context information are used to optimize the handover decision process. MIPGATE is deployed within StrokeNet, a mobile telemedicine project for the remote diagnosis of stroke patients using real-time audio and videoconferencing. The MIPGATE system is validated through measurements on throughput, delay, packet loss, and handover latencies using public wireless network infrastructures with the UMTS technology and a Beyond-3G testbed featuring a Flash-OFDM test network. For the payload packets, mean handover times of 118 ms in case of handovers to UMTS/HSDPA and 23 ms in case of handovers to Flash-OFDM have been achieved in a real-world network setup. The overall packet loss rate is 0.21% and equally distributed over the duration of the measurements. The results show that MIPGATE supports network connectivity under mobility as required by novel vehicular telemedicine applications and demanding real-time services.


The design and implementation of a new framework for adaptive mesh refinement calculations are described. It is intended primarily for applications in astrophysical fluid dynamics, but its flexible and modular design enables its use for a wide variety of physics. The framework works with both uniform and nonuniform grids in Cartesian and curvilinear coordinate systems. It adopts a dynamic execution model based on a simple design called a "task list" that improves parallel performance by overlapping communication and computation, simplifies the inclusion of a diverse range of physics, and even enables multiphysics models involving different physics in different regions of the calculation. We describe physics modules implemented in this framework for both nonrelativistic and relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). These modules adopt mature and robust algorithms originally developed for the Athena MHD code and incorporate new extensions: support for curvilinear coordinates, higher-order time integrators, more realistic physics such as a general equation of state, and diffusion terms that can be integrated with super-time-stepping algorithms. The modules show excellent performance and scaling, with well over 80% parallel efficiency on over half a million threads. The source code has been made publicly available.


Introduction: Exfoliative dermatitis is an extreme state of skin irritation resulting in extensive erythema and or scaling of the body. More than 90% of skin surface involvement is considered as a salient pre-requisite to make a clinical diagnosis of exfoliative dermatitis. Histopathology aids in the diagnosis of many cases of exfoliative dermatitis.
Purpose: Exfoliative dermatitis can be caused by a wide range of pre-existing dermatosis or can develop de novo. Our study aimed at studying the clinical and pathological correlation in exfoliative dermatitis.
Materials and Methods: 50 patients with clinical diagnosis of exfoliative dermatitis who presented to our skin department were taken up, evaluated with lab tests and skin biopsies. Skin biopsies were classified as conclusive, compatible, and undefined according to the biopsy reporting.
Results: Psoriasis was the most common cause of exfoliative dermatitis, followed by atopic in the pre-existing dermatosis group leading to exfoliative dermatitis. Drug-induced erythroderma was seen in 24%. 26% of exfoliative cases were idiopathic. A skin biopsy was able to yield a diagnosis in 60% (36% biopsy were conclusive, 24% were compatible with a diagnosis). The rest 40% biopsy reports were undefined or non-specific findings.
Conclusion: Thus, in our series of patients presenting with exfoliative dermatitis, the etiologic diagnosis was defined in 60.0% of patients with the skin biopsy. The biopsy could not establish a definitive diagnosis in the remaining 40.0% patients. We would like to emphasize the importance of biopsy in a case of exfoliative dermatitis. Furthermore, in the population with undefined biopsy report, we would suggest follow-up biopsies 3 months later or so.


This book is the end result of a four-year project funded by the European Research Council on the environmental impact of the crusades in the eastern Baltic and the societies created by the process of military conquest, colonisation and religious conversion. Adopting a multi-scalar, multi-proxy methodology, synthesising a range of archaeological, environmental and historical sources, this study demonstrates how indigenous societies had already begun to significantly transform the environment in the pre-crusade period. Following the establishment of a militarised Christian theocratic regime in the regions that became known as Livonia and Prussia, environmental exploitation was re-organised alongside territorial reconfiguration. Fortified convents were at the centre of this reorganisation, and formed a network that connected the conquered territories within a hierarchy centred on the headquarters of the Teutonic Order at Marienburg, today Malbork in Poland. The Teutonic Order, which dominated the theocratic regime, promoted itself as the defender of Latin Christendom in north-eastern Europe. Environmental exploitation therefore served to secure and maintain the political and military authority of the Order, and is at the heart of understanding the success and longevity of the Baltic 'crusader states'. However, despite the theocracy's monolithic image and centralised administration, its impact on the conquered territories was variable. This can be synchronised with the regionally uneven and protracted process of colonisation which followed the military conquests, as well as reflecting varied relations with the indigenous population. This study provides an important contribution to our understanding of the development of Europe in the formative period of the Middle Ages, the crusading movement and how environmental change can be used as a critical proxy of colonisation.


Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease, influencing mainly elderly. The key motor factor affecting the level of participation in activities of daily living is the gait function, which is known to be progressively impaired in PD. However, gait characteristics also worsen due to normal aging. The main aim of this study was to investigate whether gait parameters decline in individuals with PD in an interval of one year compared to healthy elderly. Selected gait characteristics were recorded using 3-D optoelectronic movement analysis system ELITE in 13 patients with mild-to-moderate PD and 13 ageand gender-matched controls. Hoehn and Yahr Scale and Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale were used for clinical assessment. It was found that PD patients walk with significantly shorter steps and stride and reduced gait speed. In one year, the stride length initiated with right foot and stride walk ratio further decrease in PD patients. On re-evaluation the percentages of stance, swing and double support phase differed significantly between groups. In second measurement, control subjects walked with reduced step width. It was concluded that gait speed and stride length decline in patients with PD in a period of one year, whereas no indication of deterioration of gait function is evident in healthy controls.


Abstract. The primary goal of this study was to generate a near-real time (NRT) aerosol optical depth (AOD) product capable of providing a comprehensive understanding of the aerosol spatial distribution over the Pacific Ocean, in order to better monitor and track the trans-Pacific transport of aerosols. Therefore, we developed a NRT product that takes advantage of observations from both low-earth orbiting and geostationary satellites. In particular, we utilize AOD products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) satellites. Then, we combine these AOD products with our own retrieval algorithms developed for the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-15) and Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT-2) to generate a NRT daily AOD composite product. We present examples of the daily AOD composite product for a case study of trans-Pacific transport of Asian pollution and dust aerosols in mid-March 2014. Overall, the new product successfully tracks this aerosol plume during its trans-Pacific transport to the west coast of North America as the frequent geostationary observations lead to a greater coverage of cloud-free AOD retrievals equatorward of about 35° N, while the polar-orbiting satellites provide a greater coverage of AOD poleward of 35° N. However, we note several areas across the domain of interest from Asia to North America where the GOES-15 and MTSAT-2 retrieval algorithms can introduce significant uncertainties into the new product.


Detecting and registering nonrigid surfaces are two important research problems for computer vision. Much work has been done with the assumption that there exists only one instance in the image. In this work, we propose an algorithm that detects and registers multiple nonrigid instances of given objects in a cluttered image. Specifically, after we use low level feature points to obtain the initial matches between templates and the input image, a novel high-order affinity graph is constructed to model the consistency of local topology. A hierarchical clustering approach is then used to locate the nonrigid surfaces. To remove the outliers in the cluster, we propose a deterministic annealing approach based on the Thin Plate Spline (TPS) model. The proposed method achieves high accuracy even when the number of outliers is nineteen times larger than the inliers. As the matches may appear sparsely in each instance, we propose a TPS based match growing approach to propagate the matches. Finally, an approach that fuses feature and appearance information is proposed to register each nonrigid surface. Extensive experiments and evaluations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves promising results in detecting and registering multiple non-rigid surfaces in a cluttered scene.


Conflicts are situations in which two or more people come into disagreement: they are an integral part of social life caused by the inability to find a solution to a dispute. Conflicts are constantly present within families and in all social organizations; in the health sector, they are part of the daily routine. The most common causes of conflict are the lack of resources and the divergence in objectives. All conflicts can quickly escalate, so it is essential to recognize them in order to defuse them as soon as possible. Doctors, as managers, must recognize the early signs of latent conflict in order to better manage them and possibly use them in order to stimulate change in the organization.


ADAM SMITH ON LIBERTY AND REPUTATION: IS REPUTATION PROPERTY? ARE DEFAMATION LAWS COERCIVE? Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2013 Dissertation Director: Dr. Daniel B. Klein Esteem, admiration, fame, and reputation are powerful motivators of human behavior in Adam Smith's moral philosophy. According to Smith, we are willing to go to great ends to earn the esteem of others and achieve a lasting reputation. Indeed, he asserts men are even willing to attempt acts which will result in certain death if they believe they might achieve a sufficiently great and lasting reputation in the process. Despite the central nature of reputation and its importance to understanding human motivation, Smith is never explicit about how reputation should be treated under the law. We know Smith thinks we will go to great lengths to achieve a good reputation, but we do not know with certainty how the government should treat the reputation of individuals. The focal questions of this dissertation then, are first, whether Smith believed reputation was like property, which men can be said to have a right to defend with violence; and second, if he believed it should be protected by law. In the first essay, I consider Smith's jurisprudence, and the role of natural liberty. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith alludes to an intent to write a full book on jurisprudence ("TMS"), which presumably would have dealt fully with the issue of reputation. I discuss the nature of commutative justice and distributive justice, which becomes central to my exploration of Smith. I then discuss the role of natural liberty and natural jurisprudence, and conclude that Smith was optimistic about establishing a society that embraced a system of natural liberty based on classical liberal ideals. Such a system would likely have included a libertarian perspective on reputation. In the second essay I begin to explore the question of reputation using Smith's published works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ("WN"). I use a simple 2x2 framework to consider the interactions between the two core questions of the dissertation, i.e., is reputation property-like and therefore the subject of commutative justice, and are laws protecting reputation desirable? I also introduce a model of rhetorical bargainer vs. challenger to explain why Smith might have opted to avoid an explicit libertarian position on reputation. In the final essay, I continue my inquiry expanding beyond Smith's published works to a review of the Lectures on Jurisprudence ("LJ"), two collections of student notes taken down during Smith's lectures at Glasgow University. In this concluding paper, I explore some statements which seem on the surface to explicitly support the position that reputation is a perfect right, but also review many interesting statements Smith makes about related issues, such as dueling, that point to the opposite conclusion.


This paper firstly provides a brief overview of the research on Statistical Software Testing (SST) associated with the Sizewell B (SXB) Primary Protection System (PPS) Test Guardline. In this context the work has been known as Generic Dynamic Testing (GDT) based on the development of the normal dynamic testing used as an essential element of system validation. The GDT research programme established the feasibility of statistical system testing of plant protection systems containing software. Statistically sound testing has enabled quantitative measurement of software reliability for an industrial system, namely, the SXB PPS. The work was based on enhanced methods of input environment simulation and an established reliability estimation model. In the broader sense the study raised a number of significant questions that need to be addressed to resolve residual uncertainties and develop improved estimation models before the concept can obtain general acceptance and widespread application. Current work supported by the Nuclear Safety Research Programme is addressing these issues and the second part of the paper outlines the ongoing research and describes some of the ideas being developed. These include the development of enhanced reliability estimation models which include knowledge of the software structure with links to coverage testing concepts, the development of cost effective oracles and a consideration of the requirements for continuous control systems. The aim is to develop guidelines which will influence design options and make systems amenable to SST. It is foreseen that the main area of future application will be to widely used components such as smart sensors, ASICs and PLCs.


Pollen grains are known as important bio-allergens for sensitive individuals because of their presence in the air we breathe. Therefore, it is important to know the pollen load, major pollen types and sesonal variations of them for each populated region. The aim of this study was to determine the pollen types, densities and the pollen seasons of main pollen producers in Karacabey area. Pollen quantities and diversity studies were carried out by the gravimetric method in Karacabey (Bursa) atmosphere for two years, between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2016. During sampling, the slides were changed weekly and examined by light microscopy. Annually 14226 pollen grains (15281 in 2015 and 13171 in 2016) belonging to 59 plant taxa (32 woody and 27 herbaceous taxa) were identified and pollen grains of woody taxa represented 72.63% (77.00% in 2015 and 68.27% in 2016) and herbaceous taxa represented 26.69% (22.30% in 2015 and 31.09% in 2016) of the annual pollen index (API) which was concordant and evaluated as a reflection of the dominant flora and maquis vegetation of the area. Types of pollen identified belonged to Cupressaceae/Taxaceae, Pinus, Poaceae, Quercus, Platanus, Ambrosia, Olea, Plantago, Amaranthaceae, Salix, and Fraxinus which were classified as dominant pollen types for the region and the the total amount for them was 88.21% of the annual pollen index. In this regard, April-May and August-September can be thought of as a risky period for sensitive individuals living in or visiting the region. One of the most exciting findings of this study was the high dominance of highly allergenic Ambrosia pollen in the atmosphere.


Dutch nominalisations of the type het eten van vlees ('the eating of meat') have ergative alignment. The alignment is functionally motivated, in that it is a natural consequence of the flow of discourse. The functional account that is put forward here draws on the notion of Preferred Argument Structure (Du Bois 1987) and on the distinction between foregrounded and backgrounded discourse (Hopper & Thompson 1980). Support for this account comes from other domains of ergativity in Dutch, such as causativised predicates and participial constructions and from the observation that the alignment in Dutch nominalisations is in fact split-ergative. The present study adduces corpus evidence to corroborate the claims. In the last section, the analysis is cast in a Functional Discourse Grammar model (Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2008), including its hitherto underdescribed Contextual Component.


Partial differential equations (PDEs) are essential foundations to model dynamic processes in natural sciences. Discovering the underlying PDEs of complex data collected from real world is key to understanding the dynamic processes of natural laws or behaviors. However, both the collected data and their partial derivatives are often corrupted by noise, especially from sparse outlying entries, due to measurement/process noise in the real-world applications. Our work is motivated by the observation that the underlying data modeled by PDEs are in fact often low rank. We thus develop a robust low-rank discovery framework to recover both the low-rank data and the sparse outlying entries by integrating double low-rank and sparse recoveries with a (group) sparse regression method, which is implemented as a minimization problem using mixed nuclear norms with ℓ1 and ℓ0 norms. We propose a low-rank sequential (grouped) threshold ridge regression algorithm to solve the minimization problem. Results from several experiments on seven canonical models (i.e., four PDEs and three parametric PDEs) verify that our framework outperforms the state-of-art sparse and group sparse regression methods. Code is available at https://github.com/junli2019/Robust-Discovery-of-PDEs


Measuring the relationship between any pair of variables is a rich and active area of research that is central to scientific practice. In contrast, characterizing the common information among any group of variables is typically a theoretical exercise with few practical methods for high-dimensional data. A promising solution would be a multivariate generalization of the famous Wyner common information, but this approach relies on solving an apparently intractable optimization problem. We leverage the recently introduced information sieve decomposition to formulate an incremental version of the common information problem that admits a simple fixed point solution, fast convergence, and complexity that is linear in the number of variables. This scalable approach allows us to demonstrate the usefulness of common information in high-dimensional learning problems. The sieve outperforms standard methods on dimensionality reduction tasks, solves a blind source separation problem that cannot be solved with ICA, and accurately recovers structure in brain imaging data.


Financial market interactions can lead to large and persistent booms and recessions. Instability is an inherent threat to economies with speculative financial markets. A central bank's interest rate setting can amplify the expectation feedback in the financial market and this can lead to unstable dynamics and excess volatility. The paper suggests that policy institutions may be well-advised to handle tools like asset price targeting with care since such instruments might add a structural link between asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates. Neither stock prices nor indices are a good indicator to base decisions on.


The impairment of surface water quality in the United States has been well documented, as has the potential for agriculture to contribute nutrients that accelerate this impairment. In response, widespread implementation of conservation strategies to reduce nutrient losses and mitigate impairment has occurred. This study reports and compares the outcomes of voluntary and litigated conservation and nutrient management strategies in watersheds of Lake Erie and northwest Arkansas, respectively. In the Maumee (MRW) and Sandusky River Watersheds (SRW) that drain into Lake Erie, voluntary strategies to reduce total phosphorus (P) loading from cropland were implemented in the mid-1980s. The strategies focused on reducing particulate P loading through erosion control programs, utilizing no-till and reduced-till management. As various subsidies became available, as well as improved planters and better herbicides, farmers rapidly adopted conservation tillage. Between 1975 and 1995, this led to a decline in fertilizer and manure application and increased conservation tillage acreage, which contributed to a reduction in total and dissolved P export. In the last 10 years, however, increased no-till acres with surface soil P stratification, fall and winter broadcasting of P fertilizer, and more extreme rainfall-runoff events have contributed to an increase in dissolved P export. In the Eucha-Spavinaw Watershed (ESW), northwest Arkansas, litigation required a minimum of 33% of the poultry litter produced be exported out of ESW and the remaining land applications to be based on the risk of P runoff. Use of the Eucha-Spavinaw P Index (ESPI) has decreased the land application of poultry litter from an average 5.6 t ha−1 (2.5 tn ac−1) before litigation to 2.5 t ha−1 (1.12 tn ac−1) in 2009. This, combined with the fact that 70% to 80% of the produced litter was being transported out of ESW, has greatly reduced the risk of P loss in agricultural runoff. At 2009 fertilizer prices, the loss of P and nitrogen (N) from cropped acres in MRW and SRW was US$13 ha−1 (US$5 ac−1), and the value of P and N exported in litter from ESW was US$40 ha−1 (US$16 ac−1). While voluntary implementation of BMPs in Lake Erie watersheds decreased total P export, continued monitoring is needed to adaptively manage these BMPs to ensure their long-term effectiveness. Litigated BMP adoption in northwest Arkansas did reduce land application of litter but at a cost to beef grazing operations, which are symbiotic to poultry operations and had been using litter as a low-cost source of N and P.


Drawing on a 2011 national survey and 50 semi-structured interviews, we explore the differing ways in which those in living apart together (LAT) relationships discuss and experience notions of commitment1. We found that sexual exclusivity in LAT is expected by the large majority, regardless of their reasons for living apart. The majority of the interviewees also expressed a high degree of commitment to their partner in terms of love, care and intimacy, alongside an appreciation of the increased freedom and autonomy that living apart has to offer. Respondents were divided into four groups according to their perceived commitment: 1. Autonomous commitment, 2. Contingent commitment, 3. Ambivalent commitment, and 4. Limited commitment. Despite differing degrees of commitment, however, the overall finding was that the importance of relating and making relational decisions was central, even in the lives of those living in such unconventional relationship styles.


The research in this paper is devoted to analysis of budget items for the city of Belgrade, to revenues and earnings, expenses and issuance for 2013, 2014 and 2015 in order to determine changes in the structure and in time, and, based on these, the appropriate conclusions were drawn, which can serve as recommendations for creating budgets in the future. One of the key problems in public procurement at the City of Belgrade level were significant differences in prices for the same items procured by different contracting authorities. In many cases the same bidder offered the very same items at prices which differed up to 50% to different contracting authorities at the city level. That was a signal for the city administration to centralize the procurement of certain items in 2015 achieving significant reduction in prices of bundled procurement compared to the ones undertaken by different contracting authorities previously. In this context, the subject of the second part of this paper will be devoted to the importance of centralization of public procurements in the segment where it is possible to achieve efficiency in the management of budget funds.


This Master's thesis proposes a solution for utilizing the GSM SIM to authenticate users to distributed services accessed through the mobile terminal. By combining the GSM SIM authentication mechanisms with the EAP-SIM framework we achieve mutual authentication between the parties. By combining the fact that the GSM SIM is a tamper resistant Smart Card, and that users have to present a valid PIN to activate the system, we have also achieved strong two-factor authentication that fulfils the highest security level defined by NIST. The proposed system is secure, easy to use and inexpensive, because most of the components needed already exist in the GSM network today. Existing strong user authentication systems for mobile handsets require several devices to be able to offer secure services. The proposed system only requires one device, namely the mobile handset which the user is carrying anyway. The only user interaction required is typing the PIN. The authors' major contribution to the proposed system is the Supplicant, residing on the mobile handset and communicating with the SIM through the SATSA-APDU interface. By running the Supplicant as a local proxy on the mobile handset, it is able to communicate with all kinds of client applications supporting HTTP, e.g. mobile browsers, J2ME MIDlets and native applications. A prototype implementing several of the components in the proposed system has been developed. Unfortunately, due to several reasons, the prototype cannot be deployed on a real mobile handset today's date. We are missing the necessarily certificate required to get access to the SIM and neither of today's mobile handsets support all the functionality needed. However, the prototype has been implemented successfully on a PC running the Wireless Toolkit from Sun, which simulates the SIM environment. Based on results from this thesis, the author has written the paper "A Unified Authentication Solution for Mobile Services". The paper was accepted and published on the ERCIM workshop on eMobility in Coimbra, Portugal, on May 2007.


Two different baculovirus genes are known to be able to block apoptosis triggered upon infection of Spodoptera frugiperda cells with p35 mutants of the insect baculovirus Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus (AcMNPV):p35 (P35-encoding gene) of AcMNPV (R. J. Clem, M. Fechheimer, and L. K. Miller, Science 254:1388-1390, 1991) and iap (inhibitor of apoptosis gene) of Cydia pomonella granulosis virus (CpGV) (N. E. Crook, R. J. Clem, and L. K. Miller, J. Virol. 67:2168-2174, 1993). Using a genetic complementation assay to identify additional genes which inhibit apoptosis during infection with a p35 mutant, we have isolated a gene from Orgyia pseudotsugata NPV (OpMNPV) that was able to functionally substitute for AcMNPV p35. The nucleotide sequence of this gene, Op-iap, predicted a 30-kDa polypeptide product with approximately 58% amino acid sequence identity to the product of CpGV iap, Cp-IAP. Like Cp-IAP, the predicted product of Op-iap has a carboxy-terminal C3HC4 zinc finger-like motif. In addition, a pair of additional cysteine/histidine motifs were found in the N-terminal regions of both polypeptide sequences. Recombinant p35 mutant viruses carrying either Op-iap or Cp-iap appeared to have a normal phenotype in S. frugiperda cells. Thus, Cp-IAP and Op-IAP appear to be functionally analogous to P35 but are likely to block apoptosis by a different mechanism which may involve direct interaction with DNA.


We deal with the problem of variable selection when variables must be selected group-wise, with possibly overlapping groups defined a priori. In particular we propose a new optimization procedure for solving the regularized algorithm presented in [12], where the group lasso penalty is generalized to overlapping groups of variables. While in [12] the proposed implementation requires explicit replication of the variables belonging to more than one group, our iterative procedure is based on a combination of proximal methods in the primal space and projected Newton method in a reduced dual space, corresponding to the active groups. This procedure provides a scalable alternative with no need for data duplication, and allows to deal with high dimensional problems without pre-processing for dimensionality reduction. The computational advantages of our scheme with respect to state-of-the-art algorithms using data duplication are shown empirically with numerical simulations.


Inflation touches many areas of law, and the law's response to inflation constitutes a policymaking opportunity in its own right. Legislators have long realized that the use of specific dollar figures or economic formulas can render statutes obsolete. Yet Congress's response to the most basic type of economic change hardly reflects careful policymaking. Federal statutes specifying one price index strongly favor the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the implicit price deflator (IPD) derived from the Bureau of Economic Affairs' computation of the gross domestic product. The IPD, however, boasts two methodological advantages that enable it to outperform the CPI in many circumstances. The IPD not only covers a deeper range of goods and services in the economy; it also eschews the fixed-weighted market-basket approach of the CPI. Both features offset the CPI's tendency to over report the rate of price change in the U.S. economy. Adopting the superior inflation index does present a daunting legal task. Because courts cannot countermand specific legislative references to one index or the other, and because neither index suits for all legislative needs, substitution of the IPD for the CPI (or vice versa) must almost invariably be achieved through piecemeal amendment. This article begins by providing a very brief comparison of inflation with discount rates and purchasing power parity. It then discusses how legal responses to inflation can affect a wide range of interests, some of which transcend the strictly economic realm. The article focuses on manifestations of the phenomenon in three discrete areas of public law: taxation, constitutional law, and rate regulation. Congress's preferred method of accommodating macroeconomic volatility suffers from serious drawbacks. After conducting a detailed comparison of the CPI with the IPD, this article suggests potential solutions for flawed legal measures of inflation.


Syntax is a central subfield within linguistics and is important for the study of natural languages, since they all have syntax. Theories of syntax can vary drastically, though. They tend to be based on one of two competing principles, on dependency or phrase structure . Surprisingly, the tests for constituents that are widely employed in syntax and linguistics research to demonstrate the manner in which words are grouped together forming higher units of syntactic structure (phrases and clauses) actually support dependency over phrase structure. The tests identify much less sentence structure than phrase structure syntax assumes. The reason this situation is surprising is that phrase structure has been dominant in research on syntax over the past 60 years. This article examines the issue in depth. Dozens of texts were surveyed to determine how tests for constituents are employed and understood. Most of the tests identify phrasal constituents only; they deliver little support for the existence of subphrasal strings as constituents. This situation is consistent with dependency structure, since for dependency, subphrasal strings are not constituents to begin with.


In many developing countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has spread much faster and wider than the number of detected cases implies. By combining data from 59,770 RT-PCR tests on mostly asymptomatic individuals with administrative data on all detected cases, we capture the spread and dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in BogotAi from June 2020 to early March 2021. Our data provide unusually broad and detailed information on mostly asymptomatic adults in BogotAi, allowing to describe various features of the pandemic that appear to be specific to a developing country context. We find that, by the end of March 2021, slightly more than half of the population in BogotAi has been infected, despite only a small fraction of this population being detected. In July 2020, after four months of generalized quarantine that mitigated the pandemic without curving it, the initial buildup of immunity contributed to the end of the first wave. We also show that the share of the population infected by February 2021 varies widely by occupation, socio-economic stratum, and location. This, in turn, has affected the dynamics of the spread: while the first wave of infections was driven by the lowest economic strata and highly-exposed occupations, the second peak affected the population more evenly. A better understanding of the spread and dynamics of the pandemic across different groups provides valuable guidance for efficient targeting of health policy measures and restrictions.


Since ancient times sports has drawn the attention of scientists from a large number of disciplines, including social sciences, physiology, medicine and rehabilitation. Although it is now unquestionable that regular performance of physical exercise is associated with a lower risk of developing many human diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, rheumatic diseases, sarcopenia and frailty, some issues remain to be addressed. These typically include the amount of exercise needed to improve health and fitness without overcoming the putative health befits, along with the insufficient recognition of biological pathways that can be modulated by active lifestyle. The still incomplete knowledge of these aspects is contributing to the growth of several scientific initiatives, specifically aimed to study changes and individual adaptations underlying regular sport practice. The bases, context and early achievements of one of such initiatives, called "Run for Science", will be summarized in this article. In particular, the various editions of this event have allowed to make new discoveries and tangible advancements in human biology and personalized laboratory medicine, including the observation that cardiac troponins transitorily increase in blood after endurance exercise, that running performance is influenced by two previously unappreciated laboratory parameters (i.e., serum alpha-amylase and mean platelet volume) and that the DNA may undergo a transitory oxidative damage during exercise. More recently, the information gathered from the Run for Science helped discovering important aspects linking physical exercise with the lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and asthmatic reactions. Additional analyses are underway, and specific focus will be placed on sports epigenetics, with the aim to define how recreational sport interplays with gene expression and modifies the individual response to exercise.


Distributed applications are complex by nature, so it is essential that there be effective software development tools to aid in the construction of these programs. Commonplace "middleware" tools, however, often impose a tradeoff between programmer productivity and application performance. For instance, many CORBA IDL compilers generate code that is too slow for high-performance systems. More importantly, these compilers provide inadequate support for sophisticated patterns of communication. We believe that these problems can be overcome, thus making IDL compilers and similar middleware tools useful for a broader range of systems. To this end we have implemented Flick, a flexible and optimizingIDL compiler, and are using it to produce specialized high-performance code for complex distributed applications. Flick can produce specially "decomposed" stubs that encapsulate different aspects of communication in separate functions, thus providing application programmers with fine-grain control over all messages. The design of our decomposed stubs was inspired by the requirements of a particular distributed application called Khazana, and in this paper we describe our experience to date in refitting Khazana with Flick-generated stubs. We believe that the special IDL compilation techniques developed for Khazana will be useful in other applications with similar communication requirements.


Background: Four-dimensional (4D) flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an emerging technique used for intra-cardiac blood flow assessment. The role of 4D flow cardiovascular MRI in the assessment of trans-valvular flow in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) has not previously been assessed. The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility, image quality, and internal validity of 4D flow cardiovascular MRI in the quantification of trans-valvular flow in patients with AF. Methods: Patients with AF and healthy controls in sinus rhythm underwent cardiovascular MRI, including 4D flow studies. Quality assurance checks were done on the raw data and streamlines. Consistency was investigated by trans-valvular flow assessment between the mitral valve (MV) and the aortic valve (AV). Results: Eight patients with AF (88% male, mean age 62±13 years, mean heart rate (HR) 83±16 beats per minute (bpm)) were included and compared with ten healthy controls (70% male, mean age 41±20 years, mean HR 68.5±9 bpm). All scans were of either good quality with minimal blurring artefacts, or excellent quality with no artefacts. No significant bias was observed between the AV and MV stroke volumes in either healthy controls (–4.8, 95% CI –15.64 to 6.04; P=0.34) or in patients with AF (1.64, 95% CI –4.7 to 7.94; P=0.56). A significant correlation was demonstrated between MV and AV stroke volumes in both healthy controls (r=0.87, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.97; P=0.001) and in AF patients (r=0.82, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.97; P=0.01). Conclusions: In patients with AF, 4D flow cardiovascular MRI is feasible with good image quality, allowing for quantification of trans-valvular flow.


Phones are used to confirm some of our most sensitive transactions. From coordination between energy providers in the power grid to corroboration of high-value transfers with a financial institution, we rely on telephony to serve as a trustworthy communications path. However, such trust is not well placed given the widespread understanding of telephony's inability to provide end-to-end authentication between callers. In this paper, we address this problem through the AuthentiCall system. AuthentiCall not only cryptographically authenticates both parties on the call, but also provides strong guarantees of the integrity of conversations made over traditional phone networks. We achieve these ends through the use of formally verified protocols that bind low-bitrate data channels to heterogeneous audio channels. Unlike previous efforts, we demonstrate that AuthentiCall can be used to provide strong authentication before calls are answered, allowing users to ignore calls claiming a particular Caller ID that are unable or unwilling to provide proof of that assertion. Moreover, we detect 99% of tampered call audio with negligible false positives and only a worst-case 1.4 second call establishment overhead. In so doing, we argue that strong and efficient end-to-end authentication for phone networks is approaching a practical reality.


To produce anion conductive and durable polymer electrolytes for alkaline fuel cell applications, a series of cross-linked quaternary ammonium functionalized poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide)s with mass-based ion exchange capacities (IEC) ranging from 1.80 to 2.55 mmol g−1 were synthesized via thiol–ene click chemistry. 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were used to confirm the chemical structure of the samples. From small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), it was found that the cross-linked membranes developed microphase separation between the hydrophilic PPO backbone and the hydrophobic alkyl side chains. The ion conductivity, dimensional stability, and alkaline durability of the cross-linked membranes were evaluated. The hydroxide ion conductivity of the cross-linked samples reached 60 mS cm−1 in liquid water at room temperature. The chemical stabilities of the membranes were evaluated under severe, accelerated aging conditions and degradation was quantified by measuring the ionic conductivity changes during aging. The cross-linked membranes retained their relatively high ion conductivity and good mechanical properties in both 1 M and 4 M NaOH at 80 °C after 500 h. Attenuated total reflection (ATR) spectra were used to study the degradation pathways of the membranes, and it was determined that β-hydrogen (Hofmann) elimination was likely to be the major pathway for degradation in these membranes.


Recursive identification of time varying systems with ARX structures is considered, with the interest focused on the quality of the estimated transfer functions. Three recursive identification algorithms are considered, the least mean squares (LMS) algorithm, the recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm and the Kalman filter respectively. The model quality is studied in terms of algorithm design variables, input and disturbance signal properties and variations of the true system. Using asymptotic methods approximate expressions for the model quality are derived.


The influence of gender in qualitative research studies of masculinities is considered in this article. The findings are based on two separate studies of masculinities involving men who participated in semi-structured individual interviews while enrolled at a private research university. Using West and Zimmerman's theory of gender performance, the authors argue that participants expressed themselves as men and offered responses to interview questions in ways that were aligned with traditional assumptions about gender roles and expectations. Data from the two studies are juxtaposed to illuminate the influence researchers' gender may have had on data collection and rapport building with male participants. Implications for future qualitative inquiries into gender and masculinities are offered.


Introduction: Rhytidoplasty has shown excellent results in the treatment of facial laxity over the years, but in a few cases in which the patient has increased facial laxity associated with high preauricular scalp implantation, we observed elevation of implantation above the root of the helix after flap traction, resulting in an unesthetic facial appearance and marring the surgical procedure. The objective of this study was to demonstrate a surgical technique designed to prevent hairline recession and maintain correct alignment for the facelift. Methods: Of 25 patients who underwent rhytidoplasty, 12 received a segmented scalp peninsula. Descriptive analysis in this group included age, level of scalp implantation, surgical time, elevation of the hairline, necrosis, postoperative hematoma, unesthetic scars, and neuropraxia. Results: We analyzed the results of a segmented scalp peninsula in 12 patients, ranging in age between 41 and 74 years, with a mean of 60 years. The return to usual activities ranged from 10 to 21 days. No unesthetic changes resulted from placement of the hairline on the sideburn in these 12 patients; there was one (4%) case of hematoma, but no case of necrosis or neuropraxia. Conclusion: The segmented scalp peninsula is an easily performed technique, with a low risk of complications and with satisfactory esthetic results. ■ ABSTRACT


This chapter examines the development economics evidence base for insights into policy reforms that would benefit struggling areas in the United States. My focus is on improving education, physical and mental health, infrastructure, and institutions. First, consistent with findings on education policy effectiveness, I propose raising the legal minimum dropout age (prospectively to 19), providing better information about the benefits of completing high school, supporting targeted paraprofessional tutoring, and providing family financial incentives for attending school and graduating from high school. Second, to improve health outcomes in struggling areas, the focus is using and building on existing effective health and nutrition programs and services, identifying ways to include more families who are eligible for but not participating in these programs. Moreover, the recent development and behavioral economics evidence base has extended our understanding of the psychological, cognitive, and economic behavioral lives of the poor; the literature highlights the ways that poverty can impede cognitive functioning, with implications for policies to uplift lagging U.S. areas. Third, a review of evidence on the benefits of improving lagging rural and urban area transportation infrastructure points to the likely benefits of improved connectivity for lagging U.S. areas: reversing the legacy of past discriminatory policies, encouraging sector-based clusters, and extending access to high-speed internet. Finally, the chapter highlights the relevance of some cross-cutting themes in development economics, including the high returns to reliable household microdata and the importance of improving institutions to enable more inclusive, substantial, and lasting progress.


English for Specific Purposes (ESP) was designed to fulfil the needs of learners learning languages in specific disciplines. ESP concerns on words or terms that are created specifically or have their own definition in specific fields. As engineering students read abundance of technical texts such as manuals and reports that contain numerous technical terms that have specific meaning in the engineering field, the vocabulary knowledge of technical terms is essential for them in order to understand and comprehend the texts. However, engineering students were found to have difficulties whenever they encountered texts filled with abundance of technical terms. Hence, this study aims to investigate the vocabulary size of technical vocabulary among engineering students at Universiti Malaysia Pahang. This research employs two instruments which are technical vocabulary test and semi-structured interview. The test was used in collecting quantitative data while the semi-structured interview was used in collecting qualitative data. The test was administered to 150 students majoring in five different engineering courses who were currently on their third and fourth year of study whereas the interview involved 12 students from five respective engineering courses. The findings show that engineering undergraduates did not have adequate knowledge of technical terms and there was a significant difference in technical vocabulary size among engineering undergraduates based on English language proficiency level. However, there was no significant difference found in technical vocabulary size among engineering undergraduates when they are compared based on their year of study.


Water scarcity and land degradation increases led to a sharp rise in input resource's costs. These developments make it increasingly difficult for agricultural farms to produce according to the demand for food and other commodities, especially owing a rapid population growth. The present study aims to focus on scarce resource use in the agricultural production of the Zarafshan valley by means of the efficiency analysis. A DEA model is estimated to investigate the farm level efficiency levels with respect to the use of the limited resources available to the farmers. By the application of linear programming methods a "best practice frontier is estimated", classifying farms on the frontier as efficient and others as inefficient with respect to different scales. Technical and allocative efficiencies are calculated relative to the frontier. Results shows input resources are not used efficiently and a great majority of farms could effectively reduce considerable amounts of input use by still producing the same output.


The existence of a tour object is affected by the amount of the incoming visitor. Sea World Indonesia as one of the wisata aquatik objects in Indonesia also has to be able to see visitors as a detennining factor and as a main priority. It means without the visitors, the existence of the tour object means nothing. Therefore the best service and the adequate medium in enjoying Sea World Indonesia deserve an attention from the company it self. This research is aimed to identify any kinds of attribute that satisfied the visitors, how big is the satisfaction level of the visitors and the priorities that must be conducted by the company. The research method used in this research is a case study with the visitors of Sea World of Indonesia as the set of the case and, the visitor´s satisfaction level Sea World Indonesia as the object researched. The validity test and reliabilities test is done to see the validity and the reliability of the questioner as a main instrument of a data intake. Data analyze method used is Descriptive Analysis, Cochran Q Test Analysis, Importance and Pelformance Analysis. Result of the research showed that there are fourteen attributes that is capable to give satisfaction to the visitors which is; the diversity of the sea aquarium attritiute, the diversity of the freshwater aquarium, the main aquarium, the dugong aquarium, the touch pool, the nameplate of each species, the incoming ticket price, the sanitation of the location, the freshness of the location, the security of the location, the security officer, the toilet, the parking area and the access to the location, The incoming ticket price attribute, the divefsity of the freshwater aquarium and the parking area gives a low satisfaction. The attribute of sea aquarium diversity, the main aquarium, the species nameplate, the freshness of the location, the toilet and the access to the location showed medium satisfaction level The dugong aquarium attribute, the touch pool, the sanitation of the location, the security of the location and the security officer have given high satisfaction for the visitors of Sea World Indonesia.


Performance monitoring is commonly portrayed as providing a uniquely objective, rational foundation for decisions, based on a single-stranded feedback loop between setting objectives and measuring results. In this thesis, I investigate whether this portrayal is accurate. I analyse whether the linear model underlying performance monitoring provides an adequate basis for understanding decisions about access to rural water supply in Ethiopia. My examination focuses primarily on the politics of knowledge production from three angles.

First, I examine whether the assumptions underlying the definition of 'access' to rural water used in performance monitoring in Ethiopia, adequately represent the divergent notions of access among the relevant actors. My findings show that formal framings of access, codified in national and international guidelines and benchmarks, focus on technical aspects of the water supply infrastructure. I bring to light that the goal of performance monitoring in relation to achieving 'access' is driven by the methods used to measure it, mainly the parameters of infrastructure, volume, distance and quality, suggesting a circularity between framings of the inputs to and objectives of appraisal. In this self-referential process, a particular image of the world determines the meaning of performance, which is used as a yardstick. The power of this dynamic is apparent in Ethiopian stakeholders' characterisations of access, which, even when critical, revolve narrowly around these dominant parameters. This one-dimensional and technical framing of access, constantly reproduced in self-referential monitoring circles, contrasts starkly with the multi-dimensional and dynamic nature of the water access
experiences of local residents in Ethiopia.

Second, I test whether, in reality, monitoring processes conform to the linearity assumed by the feed-back function of performance monitoring. The process tracing method used to illuminate the political and power dynamics of monitoring processes, shows that sector government actors at different administrative levels, with different rationales, provide
different stories of 'access'. Viewed from this perspective, performance monitoring can be seen not, as conventionally asserted, as a uniquely rational appraisal of performance, but rather as being about 'performing monitoring' – the playing out on a management stage of certain politically-necessary performances. At the same time, I find that numerous less formalised monitoring practices proceed in parallel with the formal PM process, which, together, form a body of largely 'tacit' knowledge that informs sector stakeholders' daily work. It is this wider body of knowledge, rather than only formalised PM results, that informs decisions.

Third, I investigate the mechanisms that led to the formulation of specific decisions associated with rural water access and the role in these of performance monitoring. I find that particular decisions, such as repairs to rural water schemes, have multiple causes, among which performance monitoring is a contributory and necessary, but not sufficient factor. My investigation of criteria affecting budget allocations highlights that sector offices' limited control over them contributes to making strategic planning a rubber stamping exercise whose processes can be characterised as 'muddling through' as opposed to adhering to the linear model suggested by Results-based Management.

My findings highlight the need to break the self-referential cycle of narrowly framed performance monitoring exercises. They suggest greater attention to the 'tacit' monitoring
practices in local settings, and a focus on the process of monitoring and the power relations within it, to complement the dominant focus on monitoring targets and indicators.


Cultural and Artistic elements have a record of accomplishment of conserving biological diversities in Ghana. Unfortunately, the biodiversity policies in Ghana have only their sketchy representations resulting in the conservationists' failure to utilize them in biodiversity conservation management. A qualitative study with Document Analysis and Phenomenology as research methods were used to investigate into the incorporation of cultural and artistic elements in some of the biodiversity policies and strategies in Ghana. Purposive and stratified random sampling procedures were used in selecting the 98 informants for the study. Interpretive Policy Analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis were used for analysing the accrued data from the study. The study revealed that there is dearth in the cultural and artistic elements in the investigated biodiversity policies and strategies due to the scepticism that conservationists have of the conservation ethos latent in them. The study concludes that the National Biodiversity Committee of Ghana must collaborate with researchers in traditional ecological knowledge to solicit for their expert views on how to effectively incorporate cultural and artistic elements into biodiversity conservation management in Ghana. This would aid in promoting a synergistic approach toward the combat of biodiversity depletion.


The access to COVID-19 vaccines on the global scale has been drastically impacted by structural socio-economic inequalities, resulting in the fact that most COVID-19 vaccines have been used in high and upper middle income countries. Here, we develop a data-driven age-stratified epidemic model to evaluate the effects of COVID-19 vaccine inequalities in eight low and middle income countries sampled from all regions of the world. The model accounts for vaccination data, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and the introduction of more transmissible strains. The modeling approach allows us the exploration of counterfactual scenarios where we either apply vaccination rates observed in high income countries or anticipate the rollout starting dates to match those of high income countries. We estimate that more than 50%, with peaks of 80%, of deaths would have been averted with respect to the actual vaccine allocation and distribution occurred in the analyzed countries. Overall, our results quantify the negative impacts of vaccines inequalities and call for the multiplication of global efforts to provide better access and support to COVID-19 vaccines in low and middle income countries. α α


SUMMARY DNA restriction endonuclease analysis was used for intra-specific typing of Mycobacterium bovis isolates from 83 brush-tailed possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) obtained between 1982 and 1984 from the three major regions in New Zealand with endemic bovine tuberculosis. All the isolates were found to be genetically very similar. Differentiation of the isolates into 33 restriction types was achieved by using high-resolution electrophoresis and the combined results from separate digestions with the restriction enzymes Bst EII, Pvu II and Bcl I. The typing system was entirely reproducible. Isolates of the same type were usually found in adjacent localities and were always limited to one of the three major regions. In some cases, isolates of the same type were found in both 1982 and 1984. The phenotypic significance of the small genetic differences identified between different isolates is unknown. The typing system will be useful for monitoring the transmission of M. bovis to other species and the future spread of different M. bovis types through possum populations.


Situated within the context of concerns about sustainability and the over production and consumption of foods from animals the paper extends the emerging social science research field that addresses the 'de-animalisation' of the food system to explore societal debate around the substitution of foods from animals. Non-dairy milks (NDMs), made from legumes, nuts, seeds and grains provide a novel empirical case. NDMs are a substitute for dairy milk, a totemic food within national diets across the global North but one that to date has received limited attention within investigation of food system de-animalisation. A frame analysis is employed to explore how different food system actors make sense of the relationship between NDMs, dairy milk and food system sustainability. Identification of frames is undertaken through a qualitative methodology in which thematic analysis is conducted of exploratory primary data (seven semi-structured interviews) and secondary textual data from a wide range of sources. Two 'pro NDM' and one 'pro dairy' frames are identified, each associated with distinct groups of food system actors and emphasising different dimensions of sustainability. The paper concludes by reflecting on what the analysis reveals about substitution as a strategy within food system de-animalisation and the politics and governance of this process, and also offers suggestions for social science research into these issues.


Background: The unplanned departure of endotracheal tube is one of the main complications for endotracheal intubation. In addition to endotracheal extubation, its movement can also lead to damage to the oral cavity. Stabilizing endotracheal tube is the most important factor that can prevent unplanned departure of endotracheal tube as well as its movement. The current study was done with the aim of determining and comparing the effect of stabilizing endotracheal tube by a holder with routine method on quality of airway care in patients hospitalized in ICU.


We develop a model of optimal consumption, labor and portfolio choice with endogenous retirement for an individual's life-cycle decisions. Explicit solutions for finite horizon are derived both for an individual with power utility and for an individual with log utility. There are two distinct phases in the life-cycle, the first being accumulation phase and the second being retirement phase. The individual simultaneously chooses consumption, labor, portfolio and whether to retire so as to maximize the expected utility. We show that the dynamic budget constraint can be reduced to a static budget constraint. For this static optimization problem involving both stochastic optimal control and optimal stopping, we use the convex duality approach to transform it to a pure optimal stopping problem. The value function can be characterized using early exercise premium representation which depends on the optimal retirement boundary. We show that immediate retirement is optimal when a state variable hits the boundary. We derive the backward recursive equation of the boundary parameterized by a multiplier which itself satisfies a nonlinear equation from the static budget constraint. The optimal wealth and the optimal portfolio are derived and they depend on the retirement boundary and the derivative of this v boundary with respect to the multiplier. A numerical algorithm is developed for computation of the solutions. We analyze the properties and the structures of the optimal policies and also prove that retirement is optimal when the financial wealth crosses its boundary of which we derive an explicit form. We study next a model of optimal dividend-contribution, portfolio and liquidation from the viewpoint of a defined benefit pension fund. The sponsor faces a stream of intermediate liability and a terminal liability. The optimization problem stops at the optimal liquidation date rather than continues for the second phase. Preference of the sponsor is defined over net cash flow (dividends or contributions) depending on whether outlay from the fund is higher than or lower than the liability. We analyze the behavior of the optimal policies and identify in the optimal portfolio the hedges against fluctuations in the intermediate liability and in the terminal liability.


Several techniques have been developed for the encapsulation, and subsequent hotisostatic
pressing (HIPing), of silicon nitride (Si3N4) based ceramics. Green-state and
densified billets of silicon nitride were vacuum encapsulated in either glass tube or
powder. Glass powder encapsulation allows complex shaped ceramic pieces to be
HIPed. A selection of silicon nitride compositions were HIPed to near-theoretical
density (>97% T. D. ) after encapsulation in either Pyrex glass tube or powder. The
silicon nitride compositions studied included single yttria (Y203) additive materials that
cannot be densified by conventional pressureless sintering, hence the requirement for
pressurised sintering. Similar ceramic compositions were also densified using the
commercial ASEA HIP process for comparison.
The bulk ceramic microstructure was generally similar to pressureless sintered type
materials, with a complete a- to s- Si3N4 transformation, although a finer microstructure
and lower matrix phase volume were apparent.
The ceramic/encapsulant interaction during HIP was generally assessed using a boron
nitride (BN) interlayer. When a thick layer (> 50 μm thickness) was retained after HIP
negligible interaction was apparent. A thin silicon oxynitride (Si2N2O) surface layer was
observed to form with thinner interlayers. Penetration of the molten encapsulant glass
through the porous BN layer occurs during HIP, leading to an increase in the Si4+ and
02- concentration at the ceramic surface and the subsequent re-precipitation of Si2N2O in
preference to s- Si3N4. Direct penetration of the encapsulant glass into the porous
ceramic occurs in the absence of a BN barrier layer and a similar encapsulant dependent
compositional modification was observed.
Sub-surface ceramic contamination by boron was apparent in isolated samples HIPed in a
Pyrex-type glass at ASEA. Interaction between the encapsulant and ceramic did not
significantly affect the post-HIP surface oxidation rate, when compared with the bulk
material.


A BSTRACT . With the mechanization of agricultural operations, agricultural machinery management has become an exten-sive research field. Sizing tractors and implements to provide the most efficient power transfer has become an ongoing process with advances in technology. Utilization of the rotational power transferred through gear trains from the tractor engine to the power take-off (PTO) shaft is one of the most efficient methods of power transfer to an implement. This research used commercially available torque sensors that were installed on a tractor PTO shaft for measuring the torque delivered to an implement. The torque sensor was calibrated using the Nebraska Tractor Test Lab's (NTTL) dynamometer by following the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Code 2 test procedure for varying PTO loads. The calibration of the sensor was verified using the full load at varying speeds test as described in the OECD Code 2. Tractor PTO shaft torque values measured by the torque sensor were compared to the NTTL's dynamometer torque measurement. Differences in torque values measured between the sensor and the dynamometer ranged from 3 to 23 N·m. Student's t-test showed no significant difference between the measurements during the full load varying speed tests which demonstrated that the sensor can be mounted on the tractor's PTO shaft for torque data collection in field operations.