The upper south was a region that was in the literal and figurative middle during the secession crisis of 1860-1861. In the late antebellum period, the upper south had diverse populations, burgeoning economic growth and still-vibrant two-party politics, even after the collapse of the Whig party. As the north and the cotton states descended into more radicalized political positions, the upper south maintained a strong sectional identity that positioned the region as the only sane and rational part of the deteriorating nation. Upper south sectional identity was rooted in general distaste for extremism of any sort, a political culture that could allow negotiation on the question of slavery in the territories, a willingness to give the Lincoln administration a chance, and the belief that the upper south states would provide the political and social leadership to forestall secession and war. Though seemingly dissimilar at first glance, Maryland and North Carolina were two states which approached the matter of union of disunion with similar caution, and were the home of strong examples of upper south sectional identity. Through a study of both the unionist and secessionist leadership in each state, this dissertation reveals the development of the upper south sectional identity and the significant attempts at compromise that were being present in Maryland and North Carolina during the secession winter. These two states provide two excellent case studies of upper south sectional identity, as each state had populations and political leadership that was not tied to perpetual and unrestricted slavery, as well as leadership drawn from the slaveholding and non-slaveholding population. These two states also shared competing political parties that each drove state and national elections, and large populations of non-slaveholding whites. Compromise failed in 1861, although Maryland and North Carolina political leaders worked extraordinarily hard to achieve it. With the coming of the war, Maryland's unlikely Union affiliation and North Carolina's reluctant participation in the Confederacy would end upper south sectional identity, which was split apart by secession. Even in its failure, upper south sectional identity as represented by Maryland and North Carolina provides an instructive perspective on the coming of the Civil War and the dissolution of the Union. This dissertation examines the unique political culture of upper south sectionalism during the secession crisis winter of 1860-1861. Reflecting a sectional identity that traditionally arbitrated compromise between sectional interests, leaders from Maryland and North Carolina offered the best hope for political compromise. These two states are clear examples that illustrate the force of this identity as the home of political, social, and cultural leaders who worked to shape the important role the upper south played as arbiter between the more radical factions of the Union. This work traces the collapse of upper south sectionalism, particularly in these two states that did not act together and ended up taking different sides over secession. This dissertation examines two states—one that remained with the Union and one that joined the Confederacy—together in an analysis of sectionalism, unionism and secessionism.


The Bigods were one of the most powerful and important families in thirteenth-century England. They are chiefly remembered for their dramatic interventions in high politics. Roger III Bigod [c. 1209-70] famously led the march on Westminster Hall in 1258 against Henry III, while Roger IV Bigod [1245-1306] confronted Edward I in 1297 in similar fashion. This book is the first full-scale study of these two earls, and explores in depth the reasons that led each of them to take the extreme step of confronting his king. It is only in part, however, a political study. In seeking to understand the motives that lay behind their public actions, the book scrutinizes the earls' private affairs. It establishes for the first time the precise extent of their landed estate, the size of their incomes, and the membership and quality of their affinities. It also examines their relationships with friends and relatives, their building works, and even their personalities. Extensive use is made throughout of unpublished manuscript sources: in particular, the hundreds of ministers' accounts that have survived from the administration of Roger IV Bigod, and the charters given by both earls, which are calendared and translated in an appendix.


ABSTRACT Under conditions of high antigenic load during infection with invasive lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) strains, virus can persist by selective clonal exhaustion of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells. In this work we studied the down-regulation of the virus-specific CD8+-T-cell response during a persistent infection of adult mice, with particular emphasis on the contribution of the interferon response in promoting host defense. Studies were conducted by infecting mice deficient in receptors for type I (alpha/beta interferon [IFN-α/β]), type II (IFN-γ), and both type I and II IFNs with LCMV isolates that vary in their capacity to induce T-cell exhaustion. The main conclusions of this study are as follows. (i) IFNs play a critical role in LCMV infection by reducing viral loads in the initial stages of infection and thus modifying both the extent of CD8+-T-cell exhaustion and the course of infection. The importance of IFNs in this context varies with the biological properties of the LCMV strain. (ii) An inverse correlation exists between antigen persistence and responsiveness of virus-specific CD8+ T cells. This results in distinct programs of activation or tolerance (functional unresponsiveness and/or physical elimination of antigen-specific cells) during acute and chronic virus infections, respectively. (iii) A successful immune response associated with definitive viral clearance requires an appropriate balance between cellular and humoral components of the immune system. We discuss the role of IFNs in influencing virus-specific T cells that determine the outcome of persistent infections.


In this paper we apply a machine learning approach to the problem of estimating the number of defects called Regression via Classification (RvC). RvC initially automatically discretizes the number of defects into a number of fault classes, then learns a model that predicts the fault class of a software system. Finally, RvC transforms the class output of the model back into a numeric prediction. This approach includes uncertainty in the models because apart from a certain number of faults, it also outputs an associated interval of values, within which this estimate lies, with a certain confidence. To evaluate this approach we perform a comparative experimental study of the effectiveness of several machine learning algorithms in a software dataset. The data was collected by Pekka Forselious and involves applications maintained by a bank of Finland.


Problem Both medical educators and students have an increasing interest in longitudinal patient experiences (LPE) that allow students to work with patients at multiple points in time, often across multiple clinical settings. Despite this interest in LPE, following patients over time and across health systems remains a challenge. Approach In August 2012–May 2013, with faculty support, two third-year medical students implemented a pilot program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the third-year block clerkship curriculum. One of the authors modified an existing novel, electronic visit notification tool (VNT) that integrates with the electronic medical record (EMR) to help students follow patients longitudinally. Students added patients to their cohort after obtaining the patient's verbal consent. Each week, the VNT sent students e-mails notifying them of all scheduled appointments for their cohort patients at all Partners HealthCare–affiliated sites. Outcomes Each pilot student added approximately 20 patients to her cohort and followed 3–5 patients consistently. The pilot students felt the VNT made it significantly easier to follow patients over time, their appreciation of chronic illness care developed, and they gained a greater understanding of the integrated nature of patient care. Next Steps On the basis of student interest, the tool was made available to all MGH third-year students in March–May 2013 and offered to all MGH third-year students at the beginning of the next clinical year. Notification tools such as the VNT may enhance a hospital's existing EMR and facilitate longitudinal educational goals across all clinical clerkship models.


Abstract Objective Recommended as a 'universal precaution' for improving provider–patient communication, teach-back has a limited evidence base. Discharge from the emergency department (ED) to home is an important high-risk transition of care with potential for miscommunication of critical information. We examined whether teach-back improves: comprehension and perceived comprehension of discharge instructions and satisfaction among patients with limited health literacy (LHL) in the ED. Methods We performed a randomized, controlled study among adult patients with LHL, randomized to teach-back or standard discharge instructions. Patients completed an audio-recorded structured interview evaluating comprehension and perceived comprehension of (1) diagnosis, (2) ED course, (3) post-ED care, and (4) reasons to return and satisfaction using four Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems questions. Concordance with the medical record was rated using a five-level scale. We analyzed differences between groups using multivariable ordinal logistic regression. Results Patients randomized to receive teach-back had higher comprehension of post-ED care areas: post-ED medication (P < 0.02), self-care (P < 0.03), and follow-up instructions (P < 0.0001), but no change in patient satisfaction or perceived comprehension. Conclusion Teach-back appears to improve comprehension of post-ED care instructions but not satisfaction or perceived comprehension. Our data from a randomized, controlled study support the effectiveness of teach-back in a busy clinical setting. Further research is needed to test the utility and feasibility of teach-back for routine use including its impacts on distal outcomes.


The article argues that Practical Theology has moved from the uncertainty of simply being applied theology to a point where its methodology, described as the pastoral cycle in this instance, has gained such confidence that it is viewed as the natural way of doing theology. This shift in confidence occurred because the inherent theological and epistemological fault lines in foundationalism are no longer obscure. The article defines foundationalism and then focuses on describing the local and global dimensions of the pastoral cycle as well as the importance of doing it in an interdisciplinary manner.


In this paper, we are interested in finding whether a statistical relationship exists between underwater acoustics and optics, despite the different physics that govern these technologies. Besides the theoretical interest of such a relationship, predicting the quality of the optical links through acoustics is relevant for multimodal communications.
Our study is based on a large dataset acquired during the NATO ALOMEX 2015 expedition. The dataset consists of several acoustic and optical link characteristics measured at multiple locations, reflecting a diversity of sea environments. Our results, based on a systematic machine learning analysis, show a strong correlation between the properties of acoustic links and the reliability of optical communications. Potentially, this can be leveraged to predict the state of underwater optical links.


We propose and study a row-and-column affine measurement scheme for low-rank matrix recovery. Each measurement is a linear combination of elements in one row or one column of a matrix $X$. This setting arises naturally in applications from different domains. However, current algorithms developed for standard matrix recovery problems do not perform well in our case, hence the need for developing new algorithms and theory for our problem. We propose a simple algorithm for the problem based on Singular Value Decomposition ($SVD$) and least-squares ($LS$), which we term \alg. We prove that (a simplified version of) our algorithm can recover $X$ exactly with the minimum possible number of measurements in the noiseless case. In the general noisy case, we prove performance guarantees on the reconstruction accuracy under the Frobenius norm. In simulations, our row-and-column design and \alg algorithm show improved speed, and comparable and in some cases better accuracy compared to standard measurements designs and algorithms. Our theoretical and experimental results suggest that the proposed row-and-column affine measurements scheme, together with our recovery algorithm, may provide a powerful framework for affine matrix reconstruction.


Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started to decline towards the end of apartheid, they increased (against all expectations) in the immediate post-transition period. Affirmative action legislation was enacted with a lag, first targeting employment equity and skills development in 1998 and then more extensive .black economic empowerment. in 2003. However, the rise in the racial wage gap only started to reverse in 2005. Existing studies therefore report limited effects of affirmative action policies, with highly skilled occupations still dominated by white men, and racial wage gaps remaining higher than in 1997. This paper develops an updated decomposition methodology that tracks changes in the discrimination component of the wage gap over time. It accounts for biases attributable to changing generational composition of labour market entrants and retirees: this variation is typically incorrectly measured as time evolution, and by implication attributes demographic movements to the effect of policy changes. New evidence shows that 2003 was a turning point, when black. white discrimination started to decline continuously thereafter. The continuing trend suggests that this is a permanent legislative effect rather than a business cycle dividend. However, generational changes (separate from policy effects) have not yet reached a turning point. Results also indicate that the legislation has alleviated previous barriers.by which black wages did not benefit from economic growth before affirmative action legislation was implemented. Notably, the time decline in discrimination can be attributed to the large and growing returns to tertiary education, especially for black men after successive waves of reforms were enacted.


Abstract
As part of an investigation of connecting health professionals and the lay public to both the disease and genomic information, we assessed the availability and nature of the data from the Human Genome Project relating to human genetic diseases. We focused on a set of single gene diseases selected from main topics in MEDLINEplus. We used publicly available websites to investigate specific questions about the genes and gene products associated with the diseases. We also investigated questions of knowledge and data representation for the information resources and navigational issues. We assessed the major challenges encountered when navigating from phenotype to genotype.


Family–school partnerships (FSP) are considered important for student's academic and social development. However, preparing preservice teachers for these partnerships is seen as a challenge. Most studies on preservice teachers' preparation for FSP have been conducted in North American contexts, and little knowledge exists from a European perspective. Therefore, a study was conducted to examine all teacher training programmes in Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands. Programme managers were asked to complete the Epstein and Sanders' survey on this topic. Findings show that in general, preparation for FSP is considered important and that this topic is integrated into different courses. Most respondents indicated that communication with parents received the most attention. However, a majority of programme managers feel that preservice teacher's preparation in this area is not sufficient. In some programmes, FSP is not included in the curriculum. A third of the managers argued that preparing teachers for FSP belongs in in-service training. This is remarkable given the fact that collaboration with parents is legally required for preservice teachers' graduation. Furthermore, this study shows that even a decade after Epstein and Sanders' study, preparing teachers for FSP is still a challenge.


Anthropogenic global ocean warming is predicted to cause bleaching of many near-sea-surface (NSS) coral reefs, placing increased importance on deeper reef habitats to maintain coral reef biodiversity and ecosystem function. However, the location and spatial extent of many deep reef habitats is poorly known. The question arises: how common are deep reef habitats in comparison with NSS reefs? We used a dataset from the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to show that only about 39% of available seabed on submerged banks is capped by NSS coral reefs (16 110 km²); the other 61% of bank area (25 600 km²) is submerged at a mean depth of around 27 m and represents potential deep reef habitat that is spatially distributed along the GBR continental shelf in the same latitudinal distribution as NSS reefs. Out of 25 600 km² of submerged bank area, predictive habitat modelling indicates that more than half (around 14 000 km²) is suitable habitat for coral communities.


For the rock engineering projects, it is necessary to correctly estimate the mechanical properties of the rock, namely, the stress-strain relations and strength properties, the time-dependent deformation properties and so on. In our previous studies, the drained creep tests under uni-axial compressive load were carried out on some soft rocks in Japan, such as Ohya-Ishi and Kimachi-sandstone. In these experiments, the axial and lateral strains and the acoustic emission activity were observed in the loading time intervals of several minutes ∼ one month. Also, the thin sections for microscope examination conducted on the specimens, which had loaded during the prescribed time or until some region of the creep process. In this study, the creep process and mechanism were discussed by using these experimental data, and the relationship between the failure process of creep loading and conventional uni-axial loading of rock were discussed by the specially planned testing programs of the experiment.by these results, it can be said that the residual compressive strength of the creep loaded rock specimen is almost the same as that of the intact rock, when the axial strain rate is in the decreasing condition, but the residual strength decreases the value when the axial strain rate passes the minimum value and in the increasing condition. Consequently, the failure process of the creep and conventional uni-axial loading are closely connected with each others;the changing point of the residual strength of the creep loaded rock which coincides to the minimum point of the axial strain rate, corresponds to the strength failure point of the rock under the conventional uni-axial compressive loading.


Background: Depression is common but undertreated. Web-based self-help provides a widely accessible treatment alternative for mild to moderate depression. However, the lack of therapist guidance may limit its efficacy. Objective: To assesses the efficacy of therapist-guided webbased Cognitive Behavioural Treatment (Web-CBT) of mild to moderate depression. Design A randomised waiting-list controlled trial, with an 18-month follow-up. Participants: The study included a community sample of 54 participants with chronic, moderate depression (immediate treatment: n = 36, waiting-list control: n = 18). Measures Primary outcome measures were the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-IA) and the Depression scale of the Symptom Check List Revised (SCL 90-R DEP). Secondary outcome measures were the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-42) and the Well-being Questionnaire (W-BQ12). Results: In the RCT, 5 participants (9%) dropped out. Intention-to-treat ANCOVAs revealed that participants in the treatment condition improved significantly more than the participants in the waiting-list control condition (.011 < p < .015). With regard to the primary measures, between-group effects were d = 0.7 (BDI-IA) and d = 1.1 (SCL-90-R DEP). Post-test SCL90-R DEP scores indicated recovery of 49% of the participants in the treatment group, compared to 6% in the control group (Odds Ratio = 14.5; p < .004). On average, the effects were stable up to 18 months (n = 39), although medication was a strong predictor of relapse. Conclusion: The results demonstrate the efficacy of Web-CBT of mild to moderate depression, and the importance of therapist guidance in psychological interventions.


More than 130 operations have been described for the treatment of hallux valgus, However, no evidence that any of these methods of treatment are superior to the others has been described, excepting studies in the long term. The aim of this study was to analyse a series of patients who had undergone Proximal osteotomy of first metatarsal and Mc Bride procedure and had been followed up for 5 years. In This prospective study During a 6 years period, (2005-2010), 25 feet in 24 cases with hallux valgus underwent Proximal first metatarsal osteotomy and MCbride procedure, With a mean follow-up of 3/5±1/5 years. The cases were evaluated by American Orthopaedics Foot & Ankle Society HalluxMetatarsophalangeal-interphalangeal scale (AOFAS/HMI). Pre and post hallux valgus angle (HVA), intermetatarsal angle (1-2IMA), and the correlation between the angles and patient satisfaction were statistically evaluated. The mean angular corrections for hallux valgus (HVA), and intermetatarsal angle (IMA) were 28 and 10/6 degrees respectively. 13 Patients reported good to excellent results, while in 11 cases dissatisfaction were reported. Proximal first metatarsal osteotomy and Mc Bride procedure for hallux valgus is an acceptable procedure in Patients with hallux valgus deformity correction.Pain and first MTP joint contractures are two main side effects.


With the advent of miniaturised sensors for various engineering and medical applications there is an increased demand of low-power, low-voltage analog building blocks like opamps and OTAs. Degradation of certain amplifier characteristics with supply voltage is a major concern for low-voltage design and often poses contradictory requirement. CMRR (common mode rejection ratio), one such feature, is essential for sensing small bio-electric signals riding over large common-mode voltage. Here we focus on the challenging task of building a low-voltage OTA with high CMRR along with wide CMR (common mode range) and high output impedance. Robust tail current sources for a complementary differential pair OTA with folded cascode output is implemented for the purpose. The circuits are designed and simulated in 0.35µm standard CMOS technology with supply voltage of 1.8V. We could demonstrate a maximum of upto 40dB increase in CMRR for a range of common-mode voltages.


The planting of deep-rooted pasture species, herbaceous shrubs, and trees has been widely recommended to reduce deep drainage and recharge to the groundwater in the high rainfall zone (HRZ). However, in more recent years, the value of perennial pastures to reduce recharge has been questioned in areas with >600 mm annual rainfall. Currently, pastures dominated by annual species with relatively low productivity occur across much of the HRZ where deep drainage is most likely contributing to recharge. This review outlines our current understanding of water use by various herbaceous species, and indicates ways in which their water use may be increased in the HRZ of southern Australia.

To reduce deep drainage in the HRZ, the soil water deficit must be increased prior to the opening autumn rains. This will allow a greater storage of water before any potential deep drainage occurs. There are two ways that this can be achieved with the use of herbaceous species. Firstly, change to or encourage species that use more water annually. Although plants with deeper root systems including lucerne have the ability to dry the soil to depth, a combination of winter- and summer-active species, rotational grazing, and pasture spelling would extend the active growing season and soil water use of annual and perennial species. A second option is to increase the productivity of the pasture, as there is a direct link between growth and water use. For example, improving pasture productivity by 50%, say from 8 to 12 t dry matter/ha, could use (transpire) approximately 160 mm more water annually by a C3 species, irrespective of evaporation from the soil surface or evaporative demand factors. This is supported by strong correlations between plant dry mass and water use among a wide range of C3 and C4 plants of diverse growth form and habitat. This relationship appears to have been overlooked in recent studies of various components of the soil water balance model, possibly due to limited and unreliable estimates of evapotranspiration (ET). An improved relationship between 'estimated' ET and measured dry matter production should improve the capability of the soil water balance model to predict deep drainage, which is primarily dependent on the ET. Ways to increase pasture productivity and soil water use include regular applications of fertiliser and lime, and better management of waterlogged and acidic soils in the HRZ. Summer-active native species may also be useful on soils where the persistence of other deep-rooted perennials is poor; however, little is known about their productivity and persistence when heavily grazed.

We believe that the relationship between water use and pasture production needs to be reassessed to improve the predictability of the soil water balance approach and recommend further research in both the field and under controlled conditions to determine the potential for increased water use in the HRZ of southern Australia by combinations of plant species and greater pasture productivity.


Galectins have diverse functions and are involved in many biological processes because of their complex intra- and extracellular activities. Selective and potent inhibitors for galectins will be valuable tools to investigate the biological functions of these proteins. Therefore, we describe here the synthesis of galectin inhibitors with a potential "chelate effect". These compounds are designed to bind to two different binding sites on galectins simultaneously. In this paper a series of asymmetric "hybrid" compounds are prepared, which combine two galectin ligands (1) a substituted thiodigalactoside derivative and (2) an antagonist calixarene-based therapeutic agent. NMR spectroscopy was used to evaluate the interactions of these compounds with Galectin-1 and -3. In addition, cellular experiments were conducted to compare the cytotoxic effects of the hybrids with those of a calixarene derivative. While only the thiodigalactoside part of the hybrids showed strong binding, the calixarene part was responsible for observed cytoxoxicity effects, suggesting that the calixarene moiety may also be addressing a non-galectin target.


Pathogens inflict a wide variety of disease manifestations on their hosts, yet the impacts of disease on the behaviour of infected hosts are rarely studied empirically and are seldom accounted for in mathematical models of transmission dynamics. We explored the potential impacts of one of the most common disease manifestations, fever, on a key determinant of pathogen transmission, host mobility, in residents of the Amazonian city of Iquitos, Peru. We did so by comparing two groups of febrile individuals (dengue-positive and dengue-negative) with an afebrile control group. A retrospective, semi-structured interview allowed us to quantify multiple aspects of mobility during the two-week period preceding each interview. We fitted nested models of each aspect of mobility to data from interviews and compared models using likelihood ratio tests to determine whether there were statistically distinguishable differences in mobility attributable to fever or its aetiology. Compared with afebrile individuals, febrile study participants spent more time at home, visited fewer locations, and, in some cases, visited locations closer to home and spent less time at certain types of locations. These multifaceted impacts are consistent with the possibility that disease-mediated changes in host mobility generate dynamic and complex changes in host contact network structure.


This paper contains an independent empirical analysis of the effect of a Notice, issued by the Swiss Competition Commission in 2002 concerning vertical agreements between manufacturers and distributors of motor vehicles, on the degree to which the subsequent prices of cars in Switzerland exceeded those charged on the same models in neighbouring countries. Evidence presented here implies a non-transitory reduction in the degree of price discrimination against Swiss customers of medium- and large-sized cars in the years after the Notice came into effect. The total gain to Swiss buyers of cars is very conservatively estimated to be six times the total cumulative budget of the Swiss Competition Commission during the years 2003-2006; the best estimate of those gains exceed a quarter of a billion Swiss Francs during the same period. By 2006 the cumulative price reduction of the Swiss Competition Commission's action resulted in average savings per medium- and large-sized car that are estimated to be 929 and 2113 Swiss Francs, respectively. Moreover, the recurring annual gain to Swiss consumers of this measure by the Swiss Competition Commission is conservatively estimated to exceed ten times the latter's current annual budget, providing some indication of the "value for money" that effective competition law can have, even in economies with ostensibly open borders.


Proof-of-burn has been used as a mechanism to destroy cryptocurrency in a verifiable manner. Despite its well known use, the mechanism has not been previously formally studied as a primitive. In this paper, we put forth the first cryptographic definition of what a proofof-burn protocol is. It consists of two functions: First, a function which generates a cryptocurrency address. When a user sends money to this address, the money is irrevocably destroyed. Second, a verification function which checks that an address is really unspendable. We propose the following properties for burn protocols. Unspendability, which mandates that an address which verifies correctly as a burn address cannot be used for spending; binding, which allows associating metadata with a particular burn; and uncensorability, which mandates that a burn address is indistinguishable from a regular cryptocurrency address. Our definition captures all previously known proof-of-burn protocols. Next, we design a novel construction for burning which is simple and flexible, making it compatible with all existing popular cryptocurrencies. We prove our scheme is secure in the Random Oracle model. We explore the application of destroying value in a legacy cryptocurrency to bootstrap a new one. The user burns coins in the source blockchain and subsequently creates a proof-of-burn, a short string proving that the burn took place, which she then submits to the destination blockchain to be rewarded with a corresponding amount. The user can use a standard wallet to conduct the burn without requiring specialized software, making our scheme user friendly. We propose burn verification mechanisms with different security guarantees, noting that the target blockchain miners do not necessarily need to monitor the source blockchain. Finally, we implement the verification of Bitcoin burns as an Ethereum smart contract and experimentally measure that the gas costs needed for verification are as low as standard Bitcoin transaction fees, illustrating that our scheme is practical.


This discussion paper aims to further awareness of opportunities to address loss and damage caused by climate change-related slow onset events (SOEs) through social protection. The analysis is based on a review of interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical literature. The findings suggest that designing comprehensive, climate-responsive social protection strategies can strongly support proactive measures to avoid, minimise and address the complex, long-term impacts of SOEs on human health, livelihoods, poverty and inequality. This entails improving the effectiveness and extending the coverage of existing social protection systems; mainstreaming climate concerns, including risks associated with SOEs, into national social protection frameworks; integrating social protection with broader climate and development policies and strategies; and developing innovative and transformational approaches to social protection. To this end, several issues for research and policy are discussed. Overall, the paper attempts to set the groundwork for an advanced research and policy agenda on social protection and climate change as well as emphasise the need for wider consideration of social protection in global climate change debates. In addition, the study aims to inform the future work of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts in the working areas of SOEs and comprehensive risk management approaches.


Previous research has examined the incidence and correlates of contraceptive use and of several dimensions of female autonomy but only rarely the intersection of the two: female contraceptive use autonomy (CUA). Using a nationally representative household survey for two cohorts of married women, I examine female CUA incidence and correlates in Bangladesh focusing on the role of education. Female CUA is found to differ substantially across cohorts, with women from the younger cohort being far more likely to have complete autonomy over contraceptive use than women from the older cohort. Detailed decompositions reveal that the improvement in education across cohorts is the main correlate of the improved generational CUA gap. Health knowledge, especially knowledge that the use of condoms can help avoid contracting HIV/AIDS, is found to be part of the transmission mechanism between female education and female CUA but also to additionally exert its own, additional influence on CUA. I also discuss the implications of the analysis conducted here for the specification of spousal education variables and geographic fixed effects for future related research.


Epigenetic mechanisms affecting chromatin structure contribute to regulate gene expression and assure the inheritance of information, which are essential for the proper expression of key regulatory genes in healthy cells, tissues and organs. In the medical field, an increasing body of evidence indicates that altered gene expression or de-regulated gene function lead to disease. Cancer cells also suffer a profound change in the genomic methylation patterns and chromatin status. Aberrant DNA methylation patterns, changes in chromatin structure and in gene expression are common in all kind of tumor types. However, studies on leukemias have provided paradigmatic examples for the functional implications of the epigenetic alterations in cancer development and progression as well as their relevance for therapeutical targeting.


This report outlines the design and implementation of a digital guitar effects unit and amplifier. The main portion of this project consisted of the digital equalizer and effects. Several commercial equalizers were researched in order to decide the typical frequency bands and average amount of bands total. Eventually 8 bands were selected. A range of approximately 20Hz-3kHz was chosen based on test data of guitar signals. Popular effects that were incorporated in this project include Distortion, Echo, Reverb, Chorus and Flanger. The digital processor chosen was a Texas Instruments c6713 floating point processor. Designs for the various filters were done in MatLab and implementation on the processor was done through TI's Code Composer Studio.


Backgrounds:Treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) not eligible to high dose therapy represents an unmet medical need. Panobinostat showed encouraging therapeutic activity in studies conducted in lymphoma cell lines and in vivo in patients with advanced hematologic malignancies.Purpose:FIL-PanAL10 (NCT01523834) is a phase II, prospective multicenter trial of the Fondazione Italiana Linfomi (FIL) to evaluate safety and efficacy of single agent Panobinostat as salvage therapy for R/R DLBCL patients and to evaluate a possible relationships between response and any biological features. Patients and Methods:Patients with R/R DLBCL were included. The treatment plan included 6 induction courses with Panobinostat monotherapy followed by other 6 courses of consolidation. The primary objective was to evaluate Panobinostat activity in terms of overall response (OR); secondary objectives were: CR rate, time to response (TTR), progression-free survival (PFS), safety and feasibility of Panobinostat. We included evaluation of the impact of pharmacogenetics, immunohistochemical patterns and patient's specific gene expression and mutations as potential predictors of response to Panobinostat as explorative objectives. To this aim a pre-enrollment new tissue biopsy was mandatory.
ResultsThirty-five patients, 21 males (60%), were enrolled between June 2011 and March 2014. At the end of induction phase, 7 responses (20%) were observed, including 4 CR (11%), while 28 patients (80%) discontinued treatment due to progressive disease (PD) in 21 (60%) or adverse events in 7 (20%). Median TTR in 9 responders was 2.6 months (range 1.8-12). With a median follow up of 6 months (range 1-34), the estimated 12 months PFS and OS were 27% and 30.5%, respectively. Grade 3-4 thrombocytopenia and neutropenia were the most common toxicities (in 29 (83%) and 12 (34%) patients, respectively. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that Panobinostat might be remarkably active in some patients with R/R DLBCL, showing durable CR


We report on the successful demonstration of a single-mode polymer-optical fiber with an 8-µm-diameter nonlinear-optical core composed of a dye-chromophore-doped polymer. Both solid-solution cores and copolymer cores were successfully fabricated. Using an imaging system, we show that the far-field transverse light pattern is that of a single-mode guide. We find that the loss at 1064 nm for the single-mode fiber is approximately 0.2 dB/cm and that it preserves polarization to better than 99.8%/cm.


High resolution Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) requires long acquisition time to obtain the fully sampled k-space data for image reconstruction. Compressed Sensing (CS) theory has recently been utilized to accelerate the image reconstruction speed by sparsely sampling the k-space. In this work, the CS framework was combined with the Tight Wavelet Frame (TWF) transform to further enhance edges/boundaries of MR images and reduce their noise levels. Because the TWF coefficients at finer scale correspond to important image boundary features, the proposed algorithm is able to effectively enhance the signal to noise ratio of MR images without blurring their edges or create artifacts. The resulting constrained minimization problem is then solved iteratively and requires extensive computational resources. To accelerate the reconstruction for real-time medical image processing purpose, the algorithm is implemented on the General Purpose Graphic Processing Units (GPGPU). The effects of various factors, including the register counts and block size, on the GPU occupancy have been investigated to tune the hardware for the optimum performance. The proposed algorithm demonstrates great potential to accelerate the MR imaging acquisition by 8-fold without noticeable artifacts. Comparisons with other two l1 minimization methods with traditional wavelet transforms further confirm the competitiveness of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, a speedup of 45 times was achieved by the GPGPU implementation compared with the CPU version, and therefore making this algorithm suitable for applications in a clinical MRI setting.


Abstract. A size-segregated aerosol dynamics model UHMA (University of Helsinki Multicomponent Aerosol model) was developed for studies of multicomponent tropospheric aerosol particles. The model includes major aerosol microphysical processes in the atmosphere with a focus on new particle formation and growth; thus it incorporates particle coagulation and multicomponent condensation, applying a revised treatment of condensation flux onto free molecular regime particles and the activation of nanosized clusters by organic vapours (Nano-Kohler theory), as well as recent parameterizations for binary H2SO4-H2O and ternary H2SO4-NH3-H2O homogeneous nucleation and dry deposition. The representation of particle size distribution can be chosen from three sectional methods: the hybrid method, the moving center method, and the retracking method in which moving sections are retracked to a fixed grid after a certain time interval. All these methods can treat particle emissions and atmospheric transport consistently, and are therefore suitable for use in large scale atmospheric models. In a test simulation against an accurate high resolution solution, all the methods showed reasonable treatment of new particle formation with 20 size sections although the hybrid and the retracking methods suffered from artificial widening of the distribution. The moving center approach, on the other hand, showed extra dents in the particle size distribution and failed to predict the onset of detectable particle formation. In a separate test simulation of an observed nucleation event, the model captured the key qualitative behaviour of the system well. Furthermore, its prediction of the organic volume fraction in newly formed particles, suggesting values as high as 0.5 for 3–4 nm particles and approximately 0.8 for 10 nm particles, agrees with recent indirect composition measurements.


Despite a widespread recognition in the mainstream entrepreneurship literature that many legitimate entrepreneurs do not pursue purely profit-driven commercial goals, the small but burgeoning literature on entrepreneurship in the informal economy has assumed entrepreneurs operating wholly or partially on an off-the-books basis are commercial rather than social entrepreneurs. To evaluate critically this assumption, evidence is reported from a survey involving face-to-face interviews with 70 informal entrepreneurs located in deprived and affluent urban and rural English localities. The finding is that informal entrepreneurs range from those pursuing purely commercial ends through to purely social entrepreneurs pursuing solely social logics, with the majority situated somewhere in-between combining both commercial and social objectives. The outcome is a call to recognize that not all informal entrepreneurs are purely commercial entrepreneurs and that the commercial versus social entrepreneurship dichotomy will need to be transcended if the multifarious goals underpinning informal entrepreneurship are to be better understood.


Reproduction of anatomical structures by rapid prototyping has proven to be a valid adjunct for craniofacial surgery, providing alternative methods to produce prostheses and development of surgical guides. The aim of this study was to introduce a methodology to fabricate asymmetric human mandibles by rapid prototyping to be used in future studies for evaluating mandibular symmetries. Stereolithic models of human mandibles were produced with varying amounts of asymmetry in the condylar neck, ramus and body of the mandible by means of rapid prototyping. A method for production of the synthetic mandibles was defined. Model preparation, landmark description and development of the experimental model were described. A series of synthetic mandibles ranging in asymmetry were accurately produced from a scanned human mandible. A method for creating the asymmetries, fabricating, coating and landmarking the synthetic mandibles was formulated. A description for designing a reproducible experimental model for image acquisition was also outlined. Production of synthetic mandibles by stereolithic modeling is a viable method for creating skeletal experimental models with known amounts of asymmetry.


It is expected that anthropogenic increases in atmospheric levels ofC~ and other greenhouse gases will have a substantial impact on climate in the next 100 years. Knowledge of the response of high latitude vegetation to past climate variation is useful for understanding the possible response of such vegetation to potential future anthropogenic climate changes. The objectives of this thesis were to investigateclimate change, treeline dynamics and vegetation-climate relationships at the subarctic alpine treeline in northwestern Canada on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. In order to address these objectives, three hypotheses were tested: 1) Postglacial treeline change in the Mackenzie Mountains, N.W.T. was driven by changes in the seasonal and latitudinal distribution of solar radiation; 2) Establishment and mortality patterns of trees at treeline are episodic, controlled by climate variations; and 3) The position of the treeline in the Mackenzie Mountains is in equilibrium with current climatic conditions. The first hypothesis was tested using the palynological analyses of cores from three lakes in the tundra, forest-tundra and open forest of the central Mackenzie Mountains. Although there was no evidence for higher treelin.e in this region at any time during the Hol~ne, the data suggest that~ populations in the forest,tundra were greater than present between about 8000 and 5000 yr BP, and have since declined steadily. These results are consistent with predicted changes in summer insolation based on the Milankovitch theory. iii CLIMATE AND TREELINE DYNAMICS IN NORTHWESTERN CANADA The second two hypotheses were addressed using tree-ring analyses of white spruce at a number of sites in the alpine treeline zone of northwestern Canada. Dendroecological analyses of climate-growth relationships indicated that the response of trees to climate at these sites varied with tree age, which violates a basic assumption of standard dendroclimatic research. Age dependent modelling was therefore used to produce a 350 year record of summer temperatures in northwestern Canada from five sites in the N.W.T. and Yukon. Comparison of this record with white spruce recruitment/survival and mortality patterns indicated that the patterns are episodic, and controlled primarily by climatic variations. A warming trend during the last 150 years has resulted in increases in forest-tundra density, although there is evidence for only minor increases in treeline. The establishment of white spruce seedlings at sites within the upper forest-tundra, including several treeline sites, indicates that the treeline is in equilibrium with current climatic conditions. These results indicate that 1) climate-growth relationships are complex, and the simplifying assumptions made in order to reconstruct climatic records from radial growth records may in some cases be invalid; 2) in this region the response of white spruce populations to climate change on a variety of timescales has been manifested primarily as an increase in forest-tundra density, with little change in treeline altitude; and 3) seedlings are currently being produced within forest-tundra white spruce populations, and thus a rapid response to further climatic amelioration:: may be possible.


FIFA banned the practice of third-party ownership, the division and sale of a portion of a football player's economic rights to an outside investor, in 2015. The ban was nondiscriminatory, applying to all types of third-party ownership utilized throughout football. Since then, the practice has all but disappeared internationally, with FIFA quashing occurrences of the practice through large fines and other forms of punishment. FIFA's move to ban the practice came shortly after pressure from leagues that banned it years before—principally the English Premier League, one of the most influential leagues in Europe. However, such a ban was largely propped upon a report completed by the International Centre for Sports Studies that provided questionable conclusions. The disclaimers provided alongside the conclusions of the report would lead any reasonable person to conduct further research on the subject before instituting such an aggressive ban. FIFA's ban runs counter to European Union law, butting against decisions from the Court of Justice of the European Union, European Union articles and agreements, and even certain countries' independent legal codes. This Note hopes to pull the wool away from football supporters' eyes and perhaps mobilize a group of legally conscious scholars to bring action against FIFA to force compliance with EU law. Beyond that, this Note proposes a new regulatory regime to replace FIFA's complete ban. Such regime would permit one type of third-party ownership (financing TPOs, used primarily by clubs with struggling balance sheets) that would fully comply with EU law and likely receive deference from EU entities due to FIFA's stance as an expert within its market sphere. 180 VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW [VOL. 52:179


A 65-year-old woman with recently diagnosed ovarian cancer presented with near syncope, tachypnea, and hypoxia. Transthoracic echocardiography revealed a dilated and hypokinetic right ventricle and a large, mobile mass in the right atrium prolapsing across the tricuspid valve. She was diagnosed with pulmonary embolism in transit and emergent embolectomy was recommended.


Arguably design and technology, its politics and philosophy have been chronicled in a number of journals: DATA Journals, IDATER Journals, International Journal of Technology Education and other similar documents. Research has also highlighted how good practice in design and technology and creativity could be fostered amongst learners in schools. This paper explores how teachers of design and technology in Botswana Junior Secondary Schools construct the meaning of design and technology through their classroom actions. It establishes trends in teachers' approaches, which have been constructed using trajectories. The paper primarily highlights how quantitative data was collected in qualitative situations and how it was analysed, looking not only at what teachers do in classrooms (qualitative) but for how long and how often (quantitative). A case study approach using participant observation and ethnography strategies is used. This has been complemented by the use of qualitative interviewing. The findings of this paper emerge from a PhD research study that was undertaken in Botswana in Year 2000.


Deregulated signal transduction pathways and energy metabolism are hallmarks of cancer and both play a fundamental role in the process of tumorigenesis. While it is increasingly recognised that signalling and metabolism are highly interconnected, the underpinning mechanisms of their co-regulation are still largely unknown. Here we designed and acquired proteomics, phosphoproteomics, and metabolomics experiments in fumarate hydratase (FH) deficient cells and developed a computational modelling approach to identify putative regulatory phosphorylation-sites of metabolic enzymes. We identified previously reported functionally relevant phosphosites and potentially novel regulatory residues in enzymes of the central carbon metabolism. In particular, we show that pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDHA1) enzymatic activity is inhibited by increased phosphorylation in FH-deficient cells. Our work provides a novel approach to investigate how post-translational modifications of enzymes regulate metabolism and could have important implications for understanding the metabolic transformation of FH-deficient cancers.


We investigate the effect of an annular pupil-plane aperture in confocal imaging while using an NA increasing lens. We show that focal spot shape is highly sensitive to both polarization and angular spectrum of the incoming light. We demonstrate a lateral spatial resolution of 145 nm (lambda(0)/9) in the direction perpendicular to the polarization direction.


This article reviews the empirical literature combining economic and environmental performance data at the micro-level, i.e. firm or facility level. The literature has generally found a positive and statistically significant correlation between economic performance, as measured by profitability indicators or stock market returns, and environmental performance, as measured by emissions of pollutants or adoption of international environmental standards. The main reason for this finding seems to be that firms that reduce their material and energy costs experience both better economic performance and lower emissions. Only a small and recent literature analyses the joint causal impact of environmental regulations on environmental and economic performance. Interestingly, this literature shows that environmental regulations tend to improve environmental performance while not weakening economic performance. However, the evidence so far is limited to a handful of environmental regulations that are not extremely stringent, so the result cannot be easily generalized. More research is needed to assess the joint effects of environmental regulations on environmental and economic performance, to explore the heterogeneity of these effects across sectors, countries and types of policies, and to understand which policy designs allow improving environmental quality while not coming at a cost in terms of economic performance of regulated businesses.


A compact balanced-to-balanced diplexer composed of two balanced bandpass filters is proposed in this letter. The balanced filters are implemented using compact edge-coupled square split-ring resonators. The design methodology is based on the standard coupled-resonators filter synthesis procedure. First, each filter is independently designed. Then, they are connected to a common differential input port in order to achieve the desired diplexing operation, with the pertinent adjustments to take into account the loading effect of the second filter. Magnetic coupling inherently prevents common-mode transmission. An illustrative prototype example is provided with simulations and measurements to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed topology.


This paper explores digital culture with the tools of cultural semiotics in general, and then employing the semiosphere model in particular. Web 2.0 platforms are taken as the major cultural dispositive of our time, as the most representative way in which the internet shapes digital culture. Most of the global population is currently immersed in digital culture. In the first part of the paper the striking similarities between Web 2.0 platforms and the semiosphere are explored and equivalences between the elements of the classic (Lotman's) semiotic model and these platforms, or platfospheres, are identified. The second part explores the fundamental difference between the "genetic code" at the centre of the semiosphere (as conceived by Lotman), and the computer code and commercial algorithms at the core of the platfospheres that are responsible for their cultural operation. Then the parallels are examined that arise between the past cultural reality, in which the intellectual elite and academics were the driving force of culture, and the contemporary proactive (or even aggressive) core of the platfospheres, in which secret and patent-protected algorithms shape a cultural reality exclusively motivated by the logic of commercial success.


Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) and Mid Sweden University offer a flexible circuit analysis course for Initial Professional Development and Continuing Engineering Education. The course material is used on campus. A combination of synchronous and asynchronous distance learning activities is used. Asynchronous video presentations, on-line classes and on-line laboratory sessions are provided. This paper presents the course, its aims and components and discusses relevant implementation details.


We showed previously that mouse mastocytoma P815 expresses several distinct antigens that are recognized by cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL) of syngeneic DBA/2 mice. Antigens P815A and P815B are usually lost jointly and are targets for immune rejection responses in vivo. We used a cosmid library and a CTL stimulation assay to obtain transfectants expressing tumor rejection antigen P815A. From these transfectants we retrieved gene P1A which transferred the expression of both P815A and B. This gene is unrelated to three previously isolated genes coding for tum-antigens. It encodes a putative protein of 224 amino acids which contains two highly acidic domains showing homology with similar regions of nuclear proteins. The P1A gene expressed by tumor P815 is completely identical to the gene present in normal DBA/2 cells. Expression of the gene was tested by Northern blots. Cells from liver, spleen, and a number of mast cell lines were negative, but mast cell line L138.8A produced a high level of P1A message and was lysed by CTL directed against antigens P815A and B. We conclude that major tumor rejection antigens of P815 are encoded by a gene showing little or no expression in most normal cells of adult mice.


The government regulations for energy use in buildings will be tightened in the future. At the same time the interest in environmental classifications and certifications of buildings is increasing. This has meant a new situation for solar energy. The designs of solar heating systems are often based on experience and/or rules of thumb, rather than calculations and simulations. This thesis examines whether simulation tools, in this case Polysun, are useful in this work. This is done by designing a solar heating system for an energy efficient preschool. In the process, important parameters are identified and their impact has been investigated. The model is finally validated against a real system.The results show that a system designed with Polysun save SEK 400 000 while a system designed by the rules of thumb only saves SEK 300 000, over 33 years. As expected, the collector area and the collector efficiency have a major impact on solar heat exchange. It also turns out that the climate data and the loads, especially hot water loads, have a significant impact on the outcome. When the same system is simulated with two different climate files, the solar contribution differs 9 %. This, despite the fact that both are used frequently to represent a normal year in Stockholm.A comparison of flat-plate collectors and vacuum tubes show that the flat-plate collectors are advantageous in a system with smaller collector area, because of the lower price. In a system with bigger collector area, vacuum tubes may be preferable due to higher yield during spring and autumn.A validation of the model is done against measured data from a real system (measured by SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, 2001). A comparison of the solar output from the simulations and the measurements show a low correlation. Differences are assumed to be due to the fact that climate data for normal years Stockholm 1986 is used. This means that no conclusions about the model can be drawn from this.Within the same project, simulations where carried out, also by SP. The models used were validated against the measured values and showed good correlation. The simulations which where then made, by SP, were performed with climate data for Stockholm in 1986. These results correlate well with the simulated values from Polysun. This implies that the model in Polysun can describe reality well.


Cranial vault sutures are the major intramembranous bone growth sites during rapid expansion of the neurocranium. To function as bone growth sites, sutures need to remain patent, while allowing rapid bone formation at the edges of the bone fronts. Premature osseous obliteration of sutures (craniosynostosis) by fusion of bone fronts across the suture site prevents further bone formation at this site, often leading to severe facial dysmorphology. Although several growth factor receptor and transcription factor mutations have been implicated in craniosynostosis, the underlying mechanisms leading to sutural obliteration remain unclear. Previous studies have shown that dura secreted soluble factors responsible for maintaining suture patency and that suture fusion observed in the absence of dura was preceded by elevated levels of DNA synthesis and collagen production in the suture region. The use of neutralizing antibodies in a fetal calvarial culture model further demonstrated that removal of transforming growth factor (TGF) -b3 activity induced premature sutural obliteration, whereas removal of TGF-b2 activity prevented sutural obliteration. Data presented here demonstrate that suture obliteration induced by removal of TGF-b3 activity was preceded by elevated levels of DNA synthesis, similar to that seen upon removal of the dura. Addition of exogenous TGF-b3 to calvaria cultured without dura both prevented suture obliteration and reduced DNA synthesis to levels comparable to those seen with intact dura. Addition of exogenous TGF-b2 to calvarial cultures induced sutural fusion accompanied by elevated levels of cell proliferation. However, sutures rescued from obliteration by removal of TGF-b2 activity did not have decreased levels of cell proliferation, but rather appeared to be due to inhibited differentiation. In all calvaria in which sutures remained patent in culture, numbers of apoptotic cells were high within the suture, whereas in sutures destined to fuse, numbers of apoptotic cells were low. Results indicate that one of the critical regulators of suture patency is cell number. Alterations in cell number can trigger premature differentiation of cells, resulting in sutural obliteration. Furthermore, a complex interplay between closely related molecules is required to maintain cranial vault sutures in an unossified state, while allowing new bone to be formed at the edges of the bone fronts. © 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.


Asia's only great ape, the orangutan, builds nests for the night in the upper rainforest canopy. Due to the location in the upper canopy, aerial surveys of orangutans rely primarily on counting nests. This method has come under increasing criticism, because nest decay rates can vary greatly over space and time and is depended on e.g. local climatic conditions, tree species and presence of termites and other animals. Whereas empty nests may not provide a good measure of presence, live orangutans in their nests does. Assuming the orangutan is the only animal species of the size that can be found in the upperrainforest canopy at night, we used thermal camera fitted to a drone to successfully detect and identify orangutan in Kumai Estate, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Our results provide an encouraging new census platform for conservationists and park managers.


Humans have a remarkable ability to rapidly generalize to new tasks that is difficult to reproduce in artificial learning systems. Compositionality has been proposed as a key mechanism supporting generalization in humans, but evidence of its neural implementation and impact on behavior is still scarce. Here we study the computational properties associated with compositional generalization in both humans and artificial neural networks (ANNs) on a highly compositional task. First, we identified behavioral signatures of compositional generalization in humans, along with their neural correlates using whole-cortex functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Next, we designed pretraining paradigms aided by a procedure we term {\em primitives pretraining} to endow compositional task elements into ANNs. We found that ANNs with this prior knowledge had greater correspondence with human behavior and neural compositional signatures. Importantly, primitives pretraining induced abstract internal representations, excellent zero-shot generalization, and sample-efficient learning. Moreover, it gave rise to a hierarchy of abstract representations that matched human fMRI data, where sensory rule abstractions emerged in early sensory areas, and motor rule abstractions emerged in later motor areas. Our findings give empirical support to the role of compositional generalization in human behavior, implicate abstract representations as its neural implementation, and illustrate that these representations can be embedded into ANNs by designing simple and efficient pretraining procedures.


Deep-subwavelength nanohole arrays embedded in nanoripples are observed in silicon carbide surface after irradiation of an 800-nm femtosecond laser in water and alcohol environment. The period of the nanoripples is about 500 nm. The diameter of the holes ranges from 10-30 nm. The effects of the liquid medium to the formation of the nanohole arrays are discussed. Under irradiation in alcohol, more nanohole arrays could be formed, and the nanoholes are more uniform in size. Moreover, we investigate the influence of the laser scanning speed on the nanohole arrays fabricated under irradiation in alcohol.


We discuss the influence of dispersion on solute movement for zero-order, first-order, and Michaelis-Menten kinetics. In general, dispersion enters both the transport equation and the boundary condition at the soil surface. The method of characteristics yields an accurate analytical solution for arbitrary kinetics by ignoring dispersion effects in the transport equation. When those effects are taken into account, exact analytical solutions exist only for zero- and first-order kinetics. An analytical approximation is obtained here for arbitrary kinetics, and its accuracy is analyzed by considering specific examples. It is suggested that, in general, the accuracy of the solution for arbitrary kinetics can be assessed by comparison with the exact solutions for zero-and first-order kinetics, i.e., for high and low solute concentrations.


Abstract Objective: Health care professionals report a lack of skills in the psychosocial and spiritual aspects of caring for dying people and high levels of moral distress, grief, and burnout. To address these concerns, the "Being with Dying: Professional Training Program in Contemplative End-of-Life Care" (BWD) was created. The premise of BWD, which is based on the development of mindfulness and receptive attention through contemplative practice, is that cultivating stability of mind and emotions enables clinicians to respond to others and themselves with compassion. This article describes the impact of BWD on the participants. Methods: Ninety-five BWD participants completed an anonymous online survey; 40 completed a confidential open-ended telephone interview. Results: Four main themes—the power of presence, cultivating balanced compassion, recognizing grief, and the importance of self-care—emerged in the interviews and were supported in the survey data. The interviewees considered BWD's contemplative and reflective practices meaningful, useful, and valuable and reported that BWD provided skills, attitudes, behaviors, and tools to change how they worked with the dying and bereaved. Significance of results: The quality of presence has the potential to transform the care of dying people and the caregivers themselves. Cultivating this quality within themselves and others allows clinicians to explore alternatives to exclusively intellectual, procedural, and task-oriented approaches when caring for dying people. BWD provides a rare opportunity to engage in practices and methods that cultivate the stability of mind and emotions that may facilitate compassionate care of dying patients, families, and caregivers.


Applying generative adversarial networks (GANs) to text-related tasks is challenging due to the discrete nature of language. One line of research resolves this issue by employing reinforcement learning (RL) and optimizing the next-word sampling policy directly in a discrete action space. Such methods compute the rewards from complete sentences and avoid error accumulation due to exposure bias. Other approaches employ approximation techniques that map the text to continuous representation in order to circumvent the non-differentiable discrete process. Particularly, autoencoder-based methods effectively produce robust representations that can model complex discrete structures. In this article, we propose a novel text GAN architecture that promotes the collaborative training of the continuous-space and discrete-space methods. Our method employs an autoencoder to learn an implicit data manifold, providing a learning objective for adversarial training in a continuous space. Furthermore, the complete textual output is directly evaluated and updated via RL in a discrete space. The collaborative interplay between the two adversarial trainings effectively regularize the text representations in different spaces. The experimental results on three standard benchmark datasets show that our model substantially outperforms state-of-the-art text GANs with respect to quality, diversity, and global consistency.


This thesis investigates the nature of spatial integration in the East Midlands in the long eighteenth century, assessing the relative importance of different scales of interaction between people and institutions - from the most localised, intra-urban scale, to the county, regional and national scales. In contrast to the historiographical picture of the emergence of distinct, internally integrated regions in eighteenth-century England, the East Midlands was an ill-defined, incoherent space, within and across which multiple layers of spatial interaction co-existed. Whilst intra-regional interaction appears to have been dominant in regions such as the North West and West Midlands, in the East Midlands, both more localised and more extensive (extra-regional) connections were more common.
The thesis adopts an explicitly spatial frame of reference, drawing on Lefebvre's 'triad', and thus being based on the premise that spaces were shaped by the conceptions of outsiders, the attitudes and perceptions of their inhabitants, and, most importantly, the practices of individuals within those spaces. Several types of spatial practice are considered, covering economic, social, political and cultural activity, and relating to a spectrum of social groups. The space-economy of the hosiery industry is reconstructed through an analysis of different factors of production, and the nature of the transport network with which these production processes were associated. The influence of the county - as both an administrative and socio-cultural reality and an imagined community - is also discussed. Patterns of migration and the socio-spatial features of will-making illustrate the spatial scales at which social and economic life most commonly operated in the East Midlands.
Thus, the thesis demonstrates the complexity of regional development in this period, concluding that, in the East Midlands, the most localised scales of spatial interaction were of greater importance than the regional in structuring the lives of its inhabitants.
This apparent lack of region-wide integration can be explained, firstly, by the unusual dominance of three county towns at the head of weak county urban networks, and secondly, by the persistence of a proto-industrial structure in the East Midlands' staple hosiery industry.


Performance-based assessments require teacher candidates to demonstrate proficiency on specific teaching tasks and apply knowledge in authentic settings. This article describes the development and use of performance-based assessments (PBAs) for advancing the learning and evaluation of teacher candidates in an early childhood special education teacher preparation program. Teacher candidates completed PBAs under supervision during culminating practica experiences at three age levels (infant/toddler, preschool, and primary practicum). Methods for determining proficiency on national (Council for Exceptional Children) and state (Colorado teacher licensure) standards are described, along with the challenges and opportunities presented by the use of PBAs. Performance-based assessment data over a 5-year period indicate teacher candidate performance meeting and exceeding national standards and state licensure requirements.


Northern New Jersey was inside one of the worst initial coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic epicenters in the United States. At the peak of the pandemic surge in mid-April 2020, New Jersey saw 8045 hospitalized patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 symptoms, of which 2002 were in intensive care unit beds (86.3% of statewide capacity), including 1705 requiring mechanical ventilation. Because of the severity of pulmonary dysfunction/hypoxia, the unprecedented numbers of critically ill patients, the national opioid shortage, and transmission prevention measures for standard palliative care treatment protocols in place for refractory and/or end-of-life dyspnea were found to be ineffective in providing adequate symptom relief. The aim of the following Notes From the Field is to provide concise, pragmatic, and experiential reflection by 3 palliative care advanced practice nurses from 3 different hospital systems within the pandemic epicenter. The novel methods and opioid strategies implemented by their respective palliative care teams to ensure continued effective and appropriate treatment for end-of-life dyspnea are described. These accounts include Lessons Learned in order to assist others who may need to quickly implement changes in the future due to pandemic resurgence or second-wave events.


The surface radiance spectrum within the terrestrial infrared window (i.e., wavelengths between 8-12 /spl mu/m or wavenumbers between 833-1250 cm/sup -1/) is sensitive to the optical and microphysical properties of cirrus clouds. Numerous microwindows where atmospheric absorption is minimum exist in the spectral regions of 820-960 cm/sup -1/ and 1100-1240 cm/sup -1/. The minimum radiances at the microwindows in these two spectral regions can be fitted by using two linear lines. The slope of the fitting line for the spectral region of 820-960 cm/sup -1/ is sensitive to the effective size of ice crystals within cirrus clouds, whereas the intercept of the fitting line for the spectral region of 1100-1240 cm/sup -1/ is sensitive to the optical thickness of the clouds. Based on this spectral feature, a new retrieval method has been developed for simultaneously retrieving cirrus optical thickness and the effective particle size of ice crystals. Furthermore, the ice water path of cirrus clouds can be estimated from the retrieved values of cloud optical thickness and effective particle size.


In recent decades there has been a rekindling of academic interest in place, and with the way in which processes associated with modernity, globalisation and individualisation may have diminished place based communities, and weakened the attachment between individuals and the neighbourhoods in which they live. There are also debates about the importance of neighbourhood context, particularly whether neighbourhood level material deprivation and increased ethnic diversity act to reduce individual belonging to neighbourhoods and interactions between neighbours.This thesis aims to contribute towards an understanding of the ways in which individual belonging to neighbourhoods, and interaction with neighbours, may have changed over time, in relation to individual and neighbourhood context. Data from the British Household Panel Survey, for England, for the period 1998 to 2008, measuring the outcomes of individual level belonging to neighbourhoods and the likelihood of talking to neighbours, are combined with neighbourhood level Census data. Longitudinal models are used to test for age and cohort effects, and then extended to consider neighbourhood level context. Specific attention is given to the relationship between the outcomes under study and neighbourhood material deprivation, neighbourhood ethnic diversity, household income and individual mobility between neighbourhoods.Some evidence was found for cohort effects, with younger cohorts, particularly those in higher income households, being less likely to talk to neighbours. There were no apparent cohort effects for the outcome of belonging to the neighbourhood, which is found to be associated with age (generally increasing as individuals get older), and neighbourhood context. In materially deprived neighbourhoods levels of belonging are lower, but only for individuals in households with low incomes. Similarly any effect of individual mobility was found to be conditional on household income and neighbourhood level material deprivation. In general, high or increasing neighbourhood level ethnic diversity was not associated with reduced individual belonging to neighbourhoods or likelihood of talking to neighbours once other contextual variables were considered. Also, increased ethnic diversity had a small positive effect on the outcomes under study for individuals living in neighbourhoods with high levels of material deprivation.


Under increasing pressure to demonstrate environmental responsibility, organizations realize that they cannot claim to be environmentally sustainable if their supply chains are not. This research seeks to understand how an interorganizational green IS influences environmental sustainability (ES) initiatives within organizations in a supply chain. We examine a green IS taking the form of an interorganizational ES platform. Our analysis gives insight into how role conflicts arising from the various roles played by the platform users compromise the nature of actions associated with platform beliefs. In particular, cooptition conflict arising from participants' roles as supplier to the platform owner and competitor to other platform participants explains the symbolic organizational content contribution, whereas the professional conflict resulting from participants' roles as employee of an organization and knowledge peer to participants from other organizations explains the substantive personal content contribution. The lack of organizational substantive content creates content paucity, which platform users respond to by developing off-platform relationships with content contributors. The personal ES knowledge acquired through platform content consumption and the relationships with content contributors help individuals advocate for ES initiatives within their organizations. Our research is among the first to consider green IS at an interorganizational level and the corresponding multilevel perspective of the green IS users as they are at once organizational and individual actors.


Accurate forecasting of contingency workload demand for USTRANSCOM (USTC) is a herculean effort. Transportation Working Capital Fund (TWCF) managers rely on various subject matters outside and within the combatant command to estimate future workload. Since rates are set annually, when TWCF activities use incorrect or incomplete projections of workload, this leads to erroneous price structures and misaligned customer billing rates. The USTC leadership lacks the ability to accurately forecast workload demand, which is a key driver for service provider rate-setting. As a result, some customers perceive spiked rates and seek service from other competitors, which generates lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction and the inability to maximize workload to meet the readiness goals of the command. Time series forecasting is a technique planners use to model future demand. This paper examines a variety of time-series techniques applied to historical cargo and flying hour workload demand primarily from Air Mobility Command's (AMC) contingency and special airlift assignment missions (SAAM). The goal is to develop a non-prescriptive guide to improve the rate setting process and enable USTC leadership to better manage combat capability. The research introduces a median-based forecast along with an anecdotal guide for anticipating future annual workload to more accurately inform the


The use of stem cells in injury repair has been extensively investigated. Here, we examined the therapeutic effects of autologous bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) transplantation in four dogs with natural traumatic spinal cord injuries. MSC were cultured in vitro, and proliferation rate and cell viability were evaluated. Cell suspensions were prepared and surgically administered into the spinal cord. The animals were clinically evaluated and examined by nuclear magnetic resonance. Ten days after the surgical procedure and MSC transplantation, we observed a progressive recovery of the panniculus reflex and diminished superficial and deep pain response, although there were still low proprioceptive reflexes in addition to a hyperreflex in the ataxic hind limb movement responses. Each dog demonstrated an improvement in these gains over time. Conscious reflex recovery occurred simultaneously with moderate improvement in intestine and urinary bladder functions in two of the four dogs. By the 18th month of clinical monitoring, we observed a remarkable clinical amelioration accompanied by improved movement, in three of the four dogs. However, no clinical gain was associated with alterations in magnetic resonance imaging. Our results indicate that MSC are potential candidates for the stem cell therapy following spinal cord injury.


Integrate an end-to-end logistic chain using IBM Blockchain and IoT platforms
Key Features
Explore practical implementation of ledger technology in the IoT architecture

Study security best practices for your smart devices

Understand Blockchain implementation for end-to-end IoT solutions
Book Description
Blockchain has been the hot topic of late thanks to cryptocurrencies. To make matters more interesting, the financial market is looking for ways to reduce operational costs and generate new business models, and this is where blockchain solutions come into the picture. In addition to this, with Internet of Things (IoT) trending and Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other devices flooding the market, you can now create cheap devices even at home.

Hands-On IoT Solutions with Blockchain starts with an overview of IoT concepts in the current business scenario. It then helps you develop your own device on the IBM Watson IoT platform and create your fi rst IoT solution using Watson and Intel Edison.Once you are familiar with IoT, you will learn about Blockchain technology and its use cases. You will also work with the Hyperledger framework and develop your own Blockchain network. As you progress through the chapters, you'll work with problem statements and learn how to design your solution architecture so that you can create your own integrated Blockchain and IoT solution.

The next set of chapters will explain how to implement end-to-end Blockchain solutions with IoT using the IBM Cloud platform. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the convergence of IoT and Blockchain technology and exploited the best practices and drivers to develop a bulletproof integrated solution.
What you will learn
Understand the key roles of IoT in the current market

Study the different aspects of IBM Watson IoT platform

Create devices, gateways, and applications connected to the platform

Explore the fundamentals of Blockchain

Define good use cases for Blockchain

Discover the Hyperledger Fabric and Composer frameworks

Develop an IBM Watson IoT application using a Intel Edison

Integrate IoT with the Blockchain platform
Who this book is for
Hands-On IoT Solutions with Blockchain is for you if you are an Internet of Things (IoT) analyst, architect, engineer, or any stakeholder responsible for security mechanisms on an IoT infrastructure. This book is also for IT professionals who want to start developing solutions using Blockchain and IoT on the IBM Cloud platform. Basic understanding of IoT will assist you in understanding key concepts covered in the book.


Written by members of the development team at Apple, Programming with Quartz is the first book to describe the sophisticated graphics system of Mac OS X. By using the methods described in this book, developers will be able to fully exploit the state-of-the-art graphics capabilities of Mac OS X in their applications, whether for Cocoa or Carbon development. This book also serves as an introduction to 2D graphics concepts, including how images are drawn and how color is rendered. It includes guidance for working with PDF documents, drawing bitmap graphics, using Quartz built-in color management, and drawing text. Programming with Quartz is a rich resource for new and experienced Mac OS X developers, Cocoa and Carbon programmers, UNIX developers who are migrating to Mac OS X, and anyone interested in powerful 2D graphics systems. * This is the definitive guide to the revolutionary graphics system of Mac OS X that uses the Portable Document Format (PDF) as the basis of its imaging model.* It contains the latest on programming with Quartz for Mac OS X version 10.4.* Carefully crafted and extensive code examples show how to accomplish most of the drawing tasks possible with Quartz.


The authors first note that, unlike traditional investment vehicles, hedge funds seem to produce return distributions with significantly non-normal skewness and kurtosis. Hedge fund managers that apply the mean-variance optimization approach to form optimal portfolios may find that approach no longer appropriate. Moreover, utilizing a portfolio optimizer to perform portfolio allocations will cause what is known as the "butterfly effect"—that is, small changes in inputs, especially mean returns, can cause large changes in the optimal asset weightings. This phenomenon, coupled with the illiquidity of hedge funds, may prompt hedge fund managers to consider alternative approaches to portfolio allocation. In this study, the authors introduce a practical heuristic approach using the semi-variance (that better accounts for non-normality in hedge fund returns) as a measure for downside risk. This heuristic approach is able to provide better forecasts, stable portfolio allocations, and more diversification than the optimization approach. The authors find the "butterfly effect" in their sample of Asian hedge funds when using portfolio optimizers resulting in dramatic changes in optimal weights over time. They also find that their risk-return approach recommends portfolio with higher returns when compared with optimizers. In risk-reward comparisons against the optimizers, the heuristic approach yields the highest return to standard deviation and return to semi-deviation ratio (trade-offs).


Reclamation was considered the primary factor that caused coastal wetland loss in China. Along with land conversion, there were different types of land cover on the reclaimed coast. In early March 2012, we selected 5 habitats with different land cover from a reclaimed coastal area at Yancheng City that was diked about 30 years before, and the biodiversity and composition variations in soil macrofauna communities were studied. We found that higher biodiversity values appeared in the uncultivated land, the poplar forest, and the metasequoia forest, while lower values occurred in the wheat farm and bulrush land. By multivariate statistical analysis, significant differences in comparisons of soil macrofauna communities were detected, except for in the comparison between the poplar forest and the metasequoia forest. Our findings indicated that the biodiversity of macrofauna was significantly affected by habitat characters and the vegetation cover was strongly related to soil macrofauna distribution patterns and community composition in the reclaimed coastal area.


This paper investigates the influence of country-specific factors on the degree of reliance on public knowledge among innovators. Using backward citations as our dependent variable we find that national characteristics indicative of the quality of the innovation system generally have a positive effect on knowledge flows. A national bias towards applied research and development (R&D) has a negative impact, but this is moderated by individual public-private cooperation. Overall, our empirical exercise confirms the strong mutual influence of the characteristics of applicants and the attendant institutional context, thus contributing to the debate on the centrality of university/government-industry interaction in the current policy debate. Our sample consists of some 600,000 patents from the EU27 member states in years 1990-2007. The policy implications of our empirical exercise suggest the importance of strengthening the quality of innovation infrastructures and of setting targets for the composition of R&D funding to achieve a balance between patent knowledge production and knowledge flows. Last but not least, this analysis provides broad support for policies aimed at enhancing public-private cooperation to compensate for the effects of strong bias in the direction of national research.


Iron deficiency is believed to affect 20-50% of the world's population, making it the most common nutritional deficiency in the world. Iron deficiency, anaemia or both are associated with a wide variety of adverse health outcomes, including delayed child development, lower IQ, poor school achievement, decreased active play in children, lethargy and fatigue, decreased physical work capacity, decreased work productivity in repetitive tasks, preterm birth, low birth weight, perinatal mortality, infant and young child mortality, and maternal mortality. Many reports of investigation in Pakistan also consider IDA as the most prevalent among female and children. The present study was a community based cross-sectional survey conducted in the Gilgit and Ghizer districts of the Northern Areas of Pakistan. A two-staged stratified sampling technique was used for selection of 606 subjects including 416 females and 190 children. Blood was drawn from antecubital vein by means of vacuette to determine Hb, PCV, RBC count, and serum ferritin levels. Peripheral smears were also made at the spot. Physical examination was done for all respondents. Age was noted and weight, height and MUAC were measured to assess the nutritional status of the subjects. Additional information regarding food composition was elicited through the questionnaire. The results of the study showed that 22% women were underweight and 17% were short stature. It was found that caloric consumption on average in the adult non-pregnant non-lactating females, pregnant females and lactating females were 49.61 %, 46.92% and 32.31 % of their daily recommended allowance. Similarly, the iron intake in these groups was 15%, 14%, and 17%, respectively. Of the total children 29.84% children of 2-12 years were underweight. There were 5.62% severely malnourished children. By calculating their caloric intake it was found that on average the children of age group 2-5 years consumed 40.69% of their recommended allowance, while children of age group 6-12 years consumed 30.3% of their recommended allowance for daily caloric intake. Children (both male and female) of age group 2-5 years were having 2.6 mg of iron per day. Female children of age group 6-12 years were consuming 2.8 mg of iron per day. Likewise, male children of age group 6-12 years were consuming 2.9 mg of iron per day. Consumption of tea was higher at high altitudes. Using four different criteria for estimation of prevalence, it has been found that by applying the WHO method 22.20% of pregnant and 15.71% of non-pregnant female were anaemic. According to the CDC method 24% of pregnant and 17% of non-pregnant women were anaemic. Using the ±2SD method 27% of pregnant and 10.34% of non-pregnant females were considered anaemic. On the basis of serum ferritin levels 42.85% of pregnant and 38.24% of non-pregnant women were anaemic. In case of children, 21 % of children were anaemic according to WHO and CDC methods. On the basis of ±2SD 18.38% of children were anaemic. By using serum ferritin level as an index of anaemia 27.01 % of children were considered anaemic. Prevalence of IDA was also analyzed separately in female land male children. There were 11 (11.22 %) females with normal RBC morphology out of 98 female children. In the case of male children there were 16 (17.39%) children with normal RBC morphology out of 92 male children. Owing to variations in altitude and other physiological and environmental features it is hard to record the exact figures for prevalence of anaemia in the region. This calls for more specific and in-depth studies in the Northern Areas on the model followed by Cohen and Haas in their study of pregnant women residing at high altitude in Bolivia. Such studies will not only be helpful in revising the cut-off values for more accurate estimation of anaemia in the Northern Areas but will also provide a baseline for implementation of anaemia prevention programme in the region


Since its introduction in mid 2004 the Google Scholar search engine has been the subject of considerable interest within the library community and has been the subject of both excitement and criticism. While applauding its ambitious scope various writers have pointed out its shortcomings through unfavourable comparisons with the traditional scholarly databases. This article summarises the debate and then critically examines Google Scholar through a number of practical examples concluding that in terms of its coverage and functionality it outperforms traditional databases in locating a major portion of the available information.


In 2003, Estudio Urbano in partnership with master planner Leon Krier, proposed a new traditional town as an extension of Guatemala City: Ciudad Cayalá. Its goal is to create a humane, hospitable urban environment that fosters a strong sense of community, while generating local employment opportunities and a vibrant commercial and civic life. Paseo Cayalá is the first built quarter that is intended to serve as a model for future growth. It revives Guatemala's unique architectural identity and offers a way of life radically different from the typically disconnected, car-oriented developments. The principle of mixed-use and programmatically-tuned architectural variety has laid the foundation for a robust emerging public realm. Paseo Cayalá celebrates local identity and has become a place of hope and happiness.


Soft tissue- and bone-phase scintigrams were acquired from 4 normal horses before and over a 14-day period after metacarpophalangeal, antebrachiocarpal, tarsocrural and tarsometatarsal joint blocks. Images were evaluated subjectively and quantitatively for increased activity in these regions. The antebrachiocarpal block resulted in obvious focal accumulation of activity on soft tissue-phase scintigrams. This increased activity was greatest 2 to 4 days postanesthesia and persisted up to 14 days postanesthesia. On quantitative analysis of soft tissue-phase images, similar trends were noted after the metacarpophalangeal and tarsocrural blocks, but these increases were relatively mild and were not evident on subjective evaluation of the images. Abnormal soft tissue-phase activity was not associated with the tarsometatarsal block. On bone-phase scintigrams, increased activity was not present following any of these joint blocks.


A one-dimensional water quality model (WESTEX model) for simulation of thermal stratification is used to test the performance of such models related to hydrometeorological input data. A sensitivity analysis shows that the results are strongly dependent on the quality of input data, mainly air temperature, dew point temperature and short-wave solar radiation. Since the first two are quite often available, it is then proposed an alternative of using synthetic series of atmospheric transmittance, in order to improve the application of thermal stratification models in areas with scarce data of short-wave solar radiation. The tests were applied in the Jacarei Reservoir, part of the Sao Paulo Water Supply System.


In the 1990s, Japanese companies experienced a deflationary recession called the "lost ten years". To survive the recession, they looked for solutions in the kaikaku (innovative reforms) of business management, organizations and technology, whilst struggling to regain their global competitiveness. Successful companies all had one thing in common - they applied a new project management paradigm which this book refers to as Kaikaku Project Management (KPM).This book provides a comprehensive look at the features of KPM, including its emphasis on creativity and teamwork, its broader "open value system" as opposed to a "closed technical system", its close links with corporate strategy and human resource development, and the support infrastructure needed for advancing KPM. Chapters cover both the theory and practice of KPM, citing cases of information and communications technology (ICT) and pharmaceutical companies, among others. KPM holds special relevance today as global competition is increasingly reducing the lifecycle of organizations. Managers will find in KPM not only a way to survive the shake-up, but also a framework of value creation for the next generation.