Two South Australian reservoir waters, Hope Valley and Myponga, were selected in this study based on the differences in the character of their organic matter. Four treatment options: (a) alum coagulation without pH adjustment; (b) alum coagulation at pH 6; (c) magnetic ion-exchange (MIEX®) resin; and (d) combined alum/MIEX® treatment, were used to compare the removal of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and treated water quality, particularly the formation of disinfection by-products and bacterial regrowth potential. Improved DOC removal was achieved with the inclusion of MIEX® treatment in the process. Removal of DOC under optimised treatment conditions indicated combined alum and MIEX® treatment was very similar to MIEX® alone but much better than conventional and enhanced coagulation with alum. Combined treatment (alum and MIEX®) removed 2.3 and 1.4 times the DOC of enhanced coagulation with alum from Hope Valley and Myponga respectively.

The DOC remaining after each treatment strategy was different in character. The molecular weight distribution results indicated that MIEX® treatment removed a broad range of compounds, whilst alum treatment targeted the removal of high molecular weight compounds. In addition, the DOC remaining after MIEX® treatment consisted of compounds with lower specific UV absorbance (SUVA). Including MIEX® in the treatment stream provided better DOC and bromide removal thus reducing chlorine decay and trihalomethane (THM) formation. The ability of the water to support bacterial growth as measured by bacterial regrowth potential (BRP) was the lowest after MIEX® treatment (option c) compared with the three other treatments (options a, b & d). In summary, laboratory tests show that including MIEX® in the treatment process can improve treated water quality.


Autologous bone is the preferred bone graft material because it carries proteins as bone-enhancing substrates, minerals, and vital bone cells. Calcium sulfate (CS) is a well-tolerated, biodegradable, osteoconductive bone graft substitute and is a reasonable alternative to autogenous bone graft. Blood vessels are an important component of bone formation and maintenance. The process of vascular induction is called angiogenesis, and it plays a key role in all regenerative processes. Bone tissue differentiation is related to the local presence of blood vessels. One method to evaluate the presence of blood vessels in a tissue is to count the microvessels to evaluate microvessel density (MVD). The aim of the present study was to conduct a comparative evaluation of microvessel density in sites treated with CS and autologous bone in rabbits, with or without e-PTFE nonresorbable membranes (Gore-Tex, Flagstaff, Ariz). Nine New Zealand rabbits, each weighing about 2.5 kg, were used in this experiment. Three 6-mm wide defects were created in each tibial metaphysis. The defects were filled in a random way. The defects of group 1 (3 rabbits) were filled with CS granules (Surgiplaster, Classimplant, Rome, Italy) and covered with e-PTFE membranes. The defects in group 2 (3 rabbits) were filled with CS granules (Surgiplaster). The defects in group 3 (3 rabbits) were filled with autologous bone. A total of 54 defects were filled (18 with CS and e-PTFE membranes, 18 with CS alone, and 18 with autologous bone). No postoperative deaths or complications occurred. All nine animals were sacrificed at 4 weeks. MVD results were as follows: in the first group, 9.88 +/- 4.613; in the second group, 7.92 +/- 1.998; and in the third group, 5.56 +/- 1.895. P = .000 was highly significant. Statistically significant differences were found between groups 1 and 3, 1 and 2, and 2 and 3. The presence of more blood vessels in the sites treated with CS could help to explain the good results reported in the literature with the use of CS.


In order to find effective mitigating measures against the large number of moose-vehicle collisions (MVCs) in the Nordic countries, it is important to learn more about the underlying mechanisms causing their spatio-temporal variation. While many studies have looked at the effects of varying moose density, traffic volume and weather conditions on the seasonal and yearly variation in MVCs, previous research has rarely studied the same questions based on MVC data collected at the temporal scales of date and hour. However, because the circadian activity of moose is closely related to the variation in daylight, the road-crossing probability of moose may differ between light periods (dusk, dawn, night and daytime) – which timing and extent vary with month and latitude. Conversely, the circadian variation in traffic intensity seems to follow a fixed daily pattern in all of Norway. This indicates that the overlap between high crossing probability and high traffic intensity will show a predictable pattern across months and latitudes. To test this hypothesis, I examined to what extent the probability of MVC in a municipality was related to varying traffic intensity within light period during the year, while simultaneously controlling for spatial variation in moose density (harvest per km2) and traffic volume (number of cars). My results demonstrated that the probability of MVC for a given traffic intensity was lowest during the day, which concurs with previous findings that moose are more active at dawn, dusk and night. However, while the probability of MVC increased with increasing traffic intensity at dawn and night, as expected, the relationship was negative at daytime and dusk. The latter two periods coincide with hours of the day with the on average highest traffic intensity, which may suggest that moose may increasingly perceive roads as barriers when the traffic intensity exceeds a certain level. The circadian relationship also explained parts of the latitudinal and monthly variation in MVCs, particularly in November-January. My findings suggest that high probability of MVC is partly associated with the time of the year when high traffic intensity extends into the dark and twilight periods of the day. These results can be used to provide management authorities and the public better information about when and where an MVC is more likely to occur.


Abstract. The response of noctilucent clouds to the solar particle event in January 2005 is investigated by means of icy particle and ion chemistry simulations. It is shown that the decreasing occurrence rate of noctilucent clouds derived from measurements of the SCIAMACHY/Envisat instrument can be reproduced by one-dimensional model simulations if temperature data from the MLS/Aura instrument are used. The model calculations indicate that the sublimation of noctilucent clouds leads to significant changes of the water distribution in the mesopause region. These model results are compared with H 2 O measurements from the MLS and the MIPAS/Envisat satellite instruments. The pronounced modelled water enhancement below the icy particle layer and its decrease during the SPE are not observed by the satellite instruments. At altitudes >85 km the satellite measurements show an increase of H 2 O during the SPE in qualitative agreement with the model predictions. The discrepancies between model H 2 O and observations at lower altitudes might be attributed to the one-dimensional model approach which in particular neglects inhomogeneities and horizontal transport processes. Additionally, it is revealed that the water depletion due to reactions of proton hydrates during the considered solar particle event has only a minor impact on the icy particles.


Over the past thirty years, identity-rather than labour or political party affiliations-has become the rallying point of most social mobilizations. Most discussions of identity politics evaluate its revolutionary potential and condemn its emphasis on image representation as easily co-opted. What is missing from this debate is a nuanced analysis of the ways in which appeals to identity are grounded within a particular historical moment. I argue that this emphasis on identity emerges out of the late capitalist shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist paradigm of production. In North America's "post-industrial" information-based society, image production is as much a part of the economy as factory production, and redefining and essentializing an identity is a way to reclaim control of the relations of production. As the manufacturing base is being outsourced to the developing world and as governments increasingly cut social spending and deregulate industries, identity becomes one of the most effective tools for claiming state resources, capturing public attention, finding jobs, and accessing corporate sponsorships. Why identity? Because it works.


Vertical distribution of zooplankton species is controlled by physical parameters and thus affects predator-prey relationships and hence trophic interactions. Fish and gelatinous plankton often feed in distinct layers or show feeding migrations. Both temporal and spatial match are required for successful predation. Here we present data on the seasonal and vertical distribution of dominant zooplankton species in the Bornholm Basin (Central Baltic Sea) from 15 cruises between March 2002 and May 2003. Multinet hauls were taken in 10m intervals from bottom to surface and correlated with CTD data. The dominant crustaceans were grouped to four main patterns which correlated with physico-chemical parameters. While in most copepods the whole population showed a distinct seasonal vertical distribution pattern, in other species vertical distribution was ontogenetically different. The cladoceran Bosmina, dominating during the warm periods, preferred mainly the upper, warm stratified water column. Species adapted to cooler water, like Evadne nordmanni, seem to use the thermocline as a retreat area during summer. Our data implicate that in the Baltic Sea the thermocline and halocline are key features for vertical distribution; in addition the thermocline itself could represent a habitat for several species or their offspring.


In the new century, the CIA's continued existence is not guaranteed. That is alarming because our country depends on its intelligence services for survival. CIA officers, while protecting us against real dangers, should help clear the smoke for all to see that the Justice Department's investigation, whether or not it leads to criminal charges, is not part of a vast conspiracy against them. Understanding that the eagle in the CIA's seal stands for both security and liberty, they should trust Leon Panetta to improve the Agency with more assertive roles from a new General Counsel, a new Inspector General, and better internal review boards. These internal checks are especially important for an agency that operates so much in the shadows. These checks have to be realistic, however, or else the case officers will no longer take their tough questions to the safe havens. Balance is vital.


We present a novel marginalized particle Gaussian process (MPGP) regression, which provides a fast, accurate online Bayesian filtering framework to model the latent function. Using a state space model established by the data construction procedure, our MPGP recursively filters out the estimation of hidden function values by a Gaussian mixture. Meanwhile, it provides a new online method for training hyperparameters with a number of weighted particles. We demonstrate the estimated performance of our MPGP on both simulated and real large data sets. The results show that our MPGP is a robust estimation algorithm with high computational efficiency, which outperforms other state-of-art sparse GP methods.


Using plastics or dyes like molecular semiconductors to make optoelectronic devices at low cost is a project in industry that is of great interest to the "Information Community" of this beginning of the 21st century. Some applications of this technology have already been realized including flexible flat-panel displays made with organic light-emitting diodes, organic transistors for active matrices, organic solar cells and sensors. In all these applications it is essential to deduce and understand the laws that determine the charge transport and the light emission in these materials. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the theoretical models that describe these transport processes. In order to predict the behaviour of charge carriers in a given device, one can choose two methods. One can either numerically solve the master equations that describe the general behaviour of charges and currents in each part of the device, or one can simulate the detailed behaviour of each charge in the device by fixing the conditions of its movement using a procedure known as "Monte Carlo". In this thesis I addressed the two approaches. I have been interested successively in the prediction of the electric properties of multilayer light-emitting devices, considered as a whole. Then I was able to understand in detail the processes accruing at the organic-organic interfaces by using the Monte Carlo method. My last project involved the study of the channel of an organic transistor. In each one of these cases I took account of the characteristic features of small molecule organic materials in order to develop models for charge transport for the study and optimization of two important types of organic devices : organic light-emitting diodes and field-effect transistors. Amorphous organic semiconductors are mainly used for the fabrication of organic diodes. They are characterized by an energetically disordered density of states that is assumed to be Gaussian. The transport of charges in these materials occurs via hopping from one molecule to another in this density of states. The correlations between the energies of the molecular sites have important effects on transport ; the dependence of mobility on the applied electric field in particular. If the energetic disorder is due to the random orientations of the permanent dipoles of the molecules, then the correlations between the orientations of these dipoles can profoundly change the spatial configuration of the energetic disorder and consequently the charge transport. Due to the fact that organic diodes often comprise of multiple organic layers, understanding device behaviour at the organic-organic interfaces is of critical importance. Electrons and holes accumulate close to these interfaces and they are therefore more likely to recombine and emit light. The Coulomb interactions between the charge carriers and the energy disorder are at the origin of complex processes taking place at these accumulation regions. I studied these processes through a 3D multi-particle Monte Carlo simulation. The short-range Coulomb repulsion forbids the double-occupancy of the sites and shifts the energy level for injection of carriers across the interface upward, thus increasing the electric current of the diode. The long-range Coulomb interactions increase the electric field and the current at the interface although this increase is less important than suggested by 1D models. Effects related to the hopping process such as the effect of the exact form of the hopping law and backward or return hop at the interface are clearly discussed. The Monte Carlo simulations are cross-compared with an analytical model for hopping transport across the interface. This comparison made it possible to understand other aspects of the physical processes at organic-organic interface and supports the Monte Carlo simulations. The study of the electron-hole recombination showed a decrease of the cross-section with an increase of the applied electric field, but this decrease is less than what can be expected by the classical Langevin theory. In spite of their efficiency, Monte Carlo simulations are not attractive when modelling complex multi-layer diodes. The 1D models are better suited in this case. A 1D model called MOLED, which was developed at Laboratoire d'Optoelectronique des Materiaux Moleculaires (LOMM) for the simulation of the organic diodes, is used and described in detail in this thesis. We used MOLED to explore the effect of the energy correlations on the electric field dependence of the mobility. In fact we simulated the time-of-flight experiment, a common method used to determine of the carrier mobility. The crystalline organic semiconductors achieve mobility performances close or even better than amorphous silicon. Their use for the fabrication of field-effect transistors is thus a good choice. The models for charge transport in crystalline organic materials differ much from their counterparts for amorphous organic materials. Indeed band models are more appropriate to describe charge transport in crystalline organic materials. However it is very important to take into account the effects of electronic polarization in these models. I developed a method of calculation of these effects of polarization in the bulk of the organic semiconductor and I extended it to the case of the interface with a dielectric insulator, a situation encountered in the channel of the organic transistor. These calculations showed that when the polarity of the dielectric increases the inter-molecular transfer integral decreases. This is confirmed by experimental measurements showing increasingly low values of mobility when the permittivity of the insulator increases.


Oxidative stress happens in body when the production of oxidants exceeds the anti‐ oxidant capacity of body system and plays a role in pathogenesis of several chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, stock, and renal failure. Tea, ses‐ ame seed, and burdock root ( Arctium lappa L.) may improve oxidative stress and suppress the side effects of diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. Total extract of black tea and its fractions can increase antioxidants such as Super oxide Dismotase (SOD), Glutathione Peroxides (GPX) and total antioxidants and can de‐ crease oxidants like malondialdehyde (MDA). So, these herbal compounds can im‐ prove oxidative stress in diabetes rats. The injection of total extract and 20% fraction of black tea had positive effect on blood lipid profile in diabetic rats. Sesame seeds improved the antioxidants capacity in arthritis; therefore, decreased pain. Burdock root, in arthritis patients improved the antioxidants capacity and decreased the in‐ tensity of the pain. It can be concluded that the positive effects of these herbal com‐ ponents are due to the presence of antioxidants. The aim of this chapter is to review the antioxidant capacity of tea, sesame seed, and burdock root as well as to discuss their biological effects in human being.


We have proposed the concept of the cultural quality-oriented education for university in China, aiming at "improving the students' aesthetic taste, cultural taste, humanistic quality and scientific quality through strengthening education on the subjects of literature, history, philosophy, arts and other humanities and social science and natural science in university". However, some colleges and universities tend to be utilitarian with knowledge-based and technique-based status in practice. They use the training mode of one-sided pursuit of employment, and neglect the development of the humanistic spirit. The curriculum is unable to adapt to the actual needs of students of different specialties, and the implementing effect of the cultural quality-oriented courses is below expectation. Only by surpassing this predicament can the cultural quality-oriented education in university be promoted on the inheritance and innovation fruitfully. Under the new situation, the specific path of the cultural quality-oriented education in university should be mainly paved in the curriculum setting, teaching management, learning selection and student evaluation.


OBJECTIVES
This study evaluated the effects of bright light and melatonin on adaptation to night work on an oil rig in the North Sea.

METHODS
Seventeen persons working a schedule of 2 weeks on a 12-hour shift, with the first week on night shift and the second week on day shift (ie, the swing shift schedule) participated. In a randomized controlled crossover design, the shift workers received a placebo, melatonin (3 mg, 1 hour before bedtime), or bright light (30-minute exposure, individually scheduled) during the first 4 days on the night shift and during the first 4 days on the day shift. Subjective and objective measures of sleepiness (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale and a simple serial reaction-time test) and sleep (diary and actigraphy) were recorded.

RESULTS
Subjective measures indicated that melatonin modestly reduced sleepiness at work during the day shift and increased sleep by 15-20 minutes per day. Bright light gave values in between those of melatonin and the placebo, but with few significant results. According to the objective measures, bright light improved sleep to a minor degree during the night shift. Hardly any side-effects were reported.

CONCLUSIONS
Melatonin and bright light modestly improved sleep and sleepiness in this field study. In well-controlled simulated nightwork studies, both melatonin and bright light are more effective in alleviating sleepiness and sleep problems. The less effect in this field study may be due to competing or conflicting factors present in real life or to an inoptimal timing and duration of the treatments.


Throughout much of American history, discrimination against women has been rooted in the legal system. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott called the first women s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, one of their major concerns was a legal system that profoundly discriminated against women. It deprived all women of the right to vote and also prohibited women from engaging in many occupations and professions, including the practice of law. The legal system was particularly hard on the married women, depriving them of all rights in effect rendering them "civilly dead." The system is hardly perfect now, but women have fought and won major legal battles that provide significantly more protection under the law. Using a question-and-answer format, this ACLU handbook explains in detail how women can use the laws currently on the books in their continuing struggle to gain real equality in the family, marketplace, workplace, and academia. Topics covered include employment, education, parenting, family law, and reproductive freedom. This handbook also examines criminal proceedings, insurance, the military, credit, and the rights of homeless women."


Trace and minor elements in clinopyroxenes, amphiboles and basanitic melts produced in experiments at 0.5 to 2.0 GPa and 1000 to 1050°C were analysed by LAM-ICP-MS. The analyses reproduce the results of previous electron microprobe analyses by Adam & Green (1994) but also provide data for many new elements. The expanded data set was used to evaluate the trace element partitioning models of Blundy & Wood (1994) and Wood & Blundy (1997). Although the lattice-strain model of Blundy & Wood (1994) could be successfully fitted to our data, the thermodynamic model of Wood & Blundy (1997) does not predict the negative correlations that we found between DREE and pressure. This is not explained by variations in the amounts of H2O in our experiments. Instead, we attribute the variations in DREE to volume-reducing substitutions in octahedral and tetrahedral sites that increase the activities of +3 and +4 ions, and decrease those of +1 ions, in sites of 8-fold coordination as pressure increases. We were able to quantitatively model some of these effects using a combination of simple electrostatics, Pauling bond strengths and bond-valence calculations. Notwithstanding this, it is apparent that pressure, temperature and the properties of the melt phase also influence partition coefficients independently of mineral composition and crystal-chemical effects.


Background: The effect of isotretinoin (ISO) on adipokines and insulin resistance has been investigated in a few studies, and the results are conflicting. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of ISO treatment on insulin resistance and adipokines. Methods: Thirty-three patients with acne vulgaris and a control group of 30 healthy volunteers were included in our study. Screening for the biochemical parameters was performed just before the initiation and after 3 months of ISO treatment. Results: In the acne group, basal leptin levels were significantly lower (p = 0.003) and basal adiponectin levels significantly higher (p = 0.008) compared with the control group. After ISO treatment, leptin levels (p = 0.0005) decreased and adiponectin levels (p = 0.003) increased significantly. However, measurements of fasting blood glucose, insulin, C peptide, retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4), homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance and BMI did not differ after ISO treatment. Conclusion: ISO may affect leptin and adiponectin levels. It does not, however, affect insulin resistance and RBP4 levels.


The delicate balance between private and public communication, and the tension between art as self-expression and art as moral resolution were key concerns in Britten's music. Seymour examines ways in which Britten's operas explored and articulated the inherent ambiguity and latent sexuality of music, particularly song, and suggests that Britten's operas may illustrate his search for a public 'voice' which would embody, communicate, and, perhaps, resolve his private beliefs and anxieties. Analyses of Britten's operas from "Paul Bunyan" to "Death in Venice", the three Church Parables, and several of the 'children's operas' offer evidence that, for Britten, opera was the natural medium through which to explore, express and, paradoxically, repress his private concerns. Claire Seymour is an Opera Studies Tutor at Rose Bruford College, Kent.


Despite recent increases in public, media and research concern with the issue of child rape, not much is known about the disclosure of this phenomenon. This study focused on exploring disclosure from the perspective of child rape victims (i.e., elucidating the subjective meaning of disclosure for children, as well as exploring the circumstances, and factors that facilitate or hinder disclosure). The sampling frame included 16 cases of child rape (12 girls and 4 boys) in the age range 5-17 years old, with 12 years being the average age of the children. The process of thematic analysis revealed three broad thematic areas, as well as a number of dominant and sub-themes. The first broad thematic area, Pre-Disclosure, provides insight into the intrapersonal process children undergo in the aftermath of rape; the children's thoughts and anxieties in coming to understand that they have been raped; and the decision-making process they underwent prior to disclosing their rape experience(s). The second thematic area, Disclosure, provides insight into the children's lived experiences of disclosing their rape and of the disclosure process. At this point in the disclosure process, disclosure is not only experienced at the intrapersonal level, but is experienced in relation to others (interpersonal level). Lastly, Post-Disclosure, provides insight into the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup/institutional influences in the aftermath of disclosure that play a role in the child's feelings about having disclosed, their evaluation if disclosing was worthwhile, and their decision to engage in subsequent disclosures (i.e., to keep telling). The present study indicated that disclosure can best be conceptualised using the 'Tipping the Balance' model (London Family Court Clinic, 1995). This theoretical model employs a scale as a metaphor for the competing influences on a child who is sexually victimised, and proposes that a fragile balancing act precedes the decision to disclose (London Family Court Clinic, 1995). Such a decision is affected by competing pressures (intrapersonal, interpersonal and intergroup/institutional), and by what the present study has identified as facilitators and inhibitors. In each child's case, the balance must tip so that the facilitators and perceived benefits outweigh the influence of the many factors which can inhibit disclosure (London Family Court Clinic, 1995). In addition, the decision to use the ecosystemic theory as a conceptual framework for the present


This study discusses a security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) based optimal power tracing approach, which adopts the proportional power tracing method to trace power flows of the network for simultaneously satisfying physical contract paths and financial contract quantities of bilateral transactions. Thus, optimal solutions of the proposed model, including unit commitment and generation dispatch of generators and angle statuses of phase shifters, would simultaneously meet physical and financial requirements of bilateral transactions, and in turn reduce the impacts of loop flows induced by bilateral transactions to third parties of the networked system. The proposed model is a mixed integer non-linear programming problem because of the non-linear proportional power tracing constraints, and the revised outer approximation algorithm is discussed to effectively solve the problem. The effectiveness of the proposed model is further evaluated via an integrated power-money flow analysis, based on the locational marginal price based energy payments and the min–max fairness policy based transmission usage charges. Numerical case studies show that the proposed model, as compared with traditional financial bilateral transaction models, presents potential advantages to avoid loop flows and reduce the impacts to third parties in terms of energy and transmission usage payments.


My doctoral research focuses on the experience of labour in a deprived area of Sheffield, UK, where I lived and worked in two steel factories for eighteen months. In my thesis, I study the factory as a physical, economic and political space located between society and the state, and explore how state neo-liberal policies and globalisation affect working class productive and reproductive strategies, and narratives of labour; and reshape the spaces of the factory, the family and the neighbourhood. In the first part of the thesis I reconstruct the history of steel labour on the shopfloor and in the neighbourhood. In Chapter 1, I show that industrial capitalism fragmented the workforce into 'artisans' - skilled casual labourers - and 'proletarians' - unskilled wage workers. In Chapter 2, I show how this fragmentation was reproduced in the neighbourhood by public social and economic policies and by the 'medical discourse' centred on the health of working classes. The two shopfloor ethnographies in Chapter 3 and 4, show that the historical fragmentation between 'artisans' and 'proletarians' is reproduced in the capitalist labour processes today. The neighbourhood ethnographies in Chapter 5 and 6 challenge the hypothesis of 'late capitalism' scholars of the social fragmentation of the artisan-labourers and of the social stability of the families of the aristocracy of labour, and show the relative economic and social stability of the former and the fragility of the productive and reproductive institutions of the latter. I the conclusion I claim that 'late capitalism' does not entail the dissolution of the working class and the consolidation of an aristocracy of labour under the impulse of technological innovation and capital intensification. Rather, it increases both the fragmentation, and the close interaction, between the spaces of wage labour, nuclear families and civil society and the spaces of casual labour, extended families and local politics.


A publicly-held corporation maintains a system of governance through separation of ownership and control of the firm. Under this framework, corporations attract capital and repatriate profits to their shareholders under the authority vested in the board of directors. However, significant evidence exists that Chief Executive Officers ("CEOs") are commonly driven by self-interest, boards often indulge CEOs, and shareholders find it difficult to monitor management. Many recent reforms have sought to improve corporate governance through regulatory interventions that empower shareholders. This Article identifies the limitations of this approach and advances a new model that looks within the "black box" of the firm. Integrating legal analysis with insights from organizational management and finance scholarship, this Article argues that corporations can overcome weak governance practices through forces that are driven by self-interested behavior of internal corporate actors. Three distinct, yet interrelated, internal forces generate what this Article calls organic corporate governance: (1) compliance systems that establish and enforce internal rules of conduct, (2) firm-specific human capital that binds actors to the firm, and (3) mutual monitoring by superiors and subordinates that constrains the self-interested behavior that erodes firm value. This Article applies this model to the responsibilities of the Chief Legal Officer ("CLO"), also known as the firm's general counsel, who is an indispensable generator of organic corporate governance.


Ali Shariati and the Future of Social Theory: Religion, Revolution and the Role of the Intellectual is a collection of essays engaged in a future-oriented remembrance of the life and praxis of one of Iran's most influential revolutionary intellectuals: Ali Shariati.


In line with the selected methodology, the Innovation Management Task at IIASA is concentrating on sectors in an attempt to analyze the situation at this level of the economy before making any aggregations or conclusions relevant to management. In order to properly cover industry, it was suggested that branches that are at differing stages or that display different kinds of development be chosen for the study. Telecommunications was recommended as a branch with high growth.

This was the first in a series of task force meetings initiated to promote an exchange of views among researchers and to coordinate the activities of individual collaborating institutions.

A wide selection of issues for discussion are reviewed in the first paper (Vasko), which was circulated to participants in advance. It deals with macroeconomic aspects as well as with sectoral policy issues relevant to innovation.

Prof. Braun's paper deals with basic questions of information related to macroeconomic variables. It particularly points out the volatility of value concepts as related to information and some of its consequences.

The papers that follow deal with the organizational and economic environment of telecommunications. This environment, which was stable for decades, has been disturbed recently by new technology, which has brought with it new economies of scale, new demands, new organizational structures, new time horizons, etc. The paper by Dr. Mueller explores how this has changed the potential for competition in telecommunications.

When asking for resources at a national level, proponents of telecommunications often have to show that the sector can provide social returns comparable to or even higher than those offered by other branches competing for the same resources. Here it is not easy to make a convincing case ex ante, which becomes a difficulty especially when we have new services in mind. Similar difficulties are experienced by individual services within the telecommunications branch or even by individual users, as is shown in the paper by Dr. Puzman. No generally accepted methodology is in sight-case studies and their conclusions seem to be the only substitute.

A similar problem is described and suggested for further research by John Page. He concentrates on the interaction of telecommunications and computer-based information technology. Many managerial and policy issues are generated by this interaction and by organizational and operational dissimilarities of these two branches.

The last four papers deal with the relation of telecommunications development to other branches and activities. Dr. Seetzen points out how different technological innovations can be "complementary" to each other in delivering a system capable of new services and/or in offering a new value to the user.

Some potential applications (in information transfer) of these innovations are explored in the second paper by Mr. Page. He shows also how present tariff policies can hamper the acceptance of new services (for example electronic document delivery).

The relations of telecommunications to the printing industry and its potential future development are explored in the paper by Prof. Karttunen. He shows how the progress of information technology in general and telecommunications in particular can influence the graphic arts industry and its progress, giving particular attention to the scene in Finland.

An interesting attempt is made in the paper by Dr. Granstrand. He compares the innovation environment in two production branches in Sweden in which two innovated products have emerged recently -- the automobile and telecommunication equipment branches. This comparison serves as a vehicle for identifying similarities and differences in the process of innovation mangement with emphasis on capital formation.

The last paper in the proceedings describes the result of research in videotex systems carried out at IIASA by Drs. Maurer and Sebestyen. The paper presents a technical and economic analysis of the present state of the art and the potential future development of videotex systems with special attention to a comparison of one-way and two-way videotex systems. The authors also try to identify the role of technical innovation of individual components in the system's development with due attention to human and societal factors.

The paper presented by Mr. Nemeth on the use of viewdata systems for inventory control is not included in the proceedings but will be published as a collaborative paper by the institute at a later date.


This study evaluates the effectiveness of contracting out mandatory publicly provided counselling and training for long-term unemployed in Flanders (Belgium) to private for-profit and non-profit organisations (FPOs and NPOs). A multivariate transition model exploits timing-of-events and novel exclusion restrictions to account for selection on unobservables. Overall, the intervention was highly effective in reducing unemployment duration, but also spurred employment instability and withdrawals from the labour force. FPOs slightly, but significantly enhanced exits to employment without reinforcing recidivism relative to the public provider but not significantly relative to NPOs. FPOs also charged lower prices and hence were the best performing providers.


In the wake of the devastating destruction in Gaza in 2014, the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM) was established as a temporary measure to facilitate the entry of construction materials and a range of items classified and treated as 'dual use' by Israel. Two and a half years on, vital water sector recovery and development remains hampered and fully controlled by the Government of Israel, demonstrating the extent to which Israeli government policies continue to undermine humanitarian response, cause de-development and exacerbate the separation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the world. This paper analyses the effectiveness of the GRM in improving access to water, health and sanitation services, assesses the roles and responsibilities of a range of actors and identifies urgent steps in relation to the GRM that should be taken to contribute to the development of a just, effective and sustainable water sector in Gaza.


As ionic liquid analogues or quasi-ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have been applied in many fields in the past few years. Herein, a novel PEGylated DES composed of PEG 200 and thiourea was formed for the first time and used for solvothermal synthesis of nickel cobalt sulfides. The structure and composition of the as-synthesized sulfides can be tuned by adjustment of the ratio of the reactants. The PEGylated DES plays multiple roles as a solvent, a shape-control agent, and a sulfur source in the synthesis of sulfides. Compared with traditional sulfuration routes, this proposed route is cost-effective and energy-efficient by combining solvothermal synthesis and the sulfuration process. The prepared sulfides were used as catalysts for electrochemical water oxidation and they exhibited excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance, especially for NiCo2S4 with hierarchical pores. The overpotential (η) demand was 337 mV for the current density reaching 10 mA cm−2 and the Tafel slope was 64 mV dec−1 in an alkaline medium (1 M KOH) for NiCo2S4. In addition, NiCo2S4 demonstrated long-term stability with little deactivation after either thirty hours of continuous operation or two thousand cycles and a high faradaic efficiency of 95.8%. Synergistic effects including a relatively high Brunauer–Emmett–Teller area, abundant active sites, easy diffusion of electrolytes and oxygen gas, and strong structural integrity contribute to the high activity and long-term stability of the catalyst for OER. This study provides a new method for the synthesis of hierarchically structured metal sulfides for energy conversion and storage applications.


This study explores the influence of multi-platform structural newsroom features and individual innovative values on journalistic cross-channel and cross-sectional working procedures. According to results of an online survey of print and online business journalists associated with multi-platform news outlets in the German-speaking area of Switzerland: (1) multi-platform reporting is strongly connected to innovative values of journalists, and (2) enhances output- and process-related cross-channel – (3) but not cross-sectional – working procedures. A multi-platform strategy is effective in overcoming procedural inertia, which is essential to maximising innovative capacities of a news organisation.


This paper applies a social-ecological theory of power to posit that individual HIV-related vulnerability stems from how power is leveraged across situations over time. The current study identified six power domains and explored how the interchangeability of power shapes HIV-related vulnerability among men who have sex with men of colour. Data were collected as part of a mixed-methods study on the social networks and experiences of racial/ethnic and sexual minority status. A total of 35 Asian/Pacific Islander, Black and Latino men who have sex with men were recruited and individual in-depth interviews were conducted. Results showed that men who have sex with men of colour actively traded upon various domains to alter their relative power within a given situation. Results suggest that power interchangeability, or the degree to which power from one domain can be leveraged to gain power in another, may shape HIV-related vulnerability. Findings offer a dynamic understanding of the nature of HIV risk as derived from everyday power exchanges and provide theoretical foundation for future work on individual resilience against HIV-related risks over time.


The SIPRI Arms Transfers Database now contains information on all international transfers of major conventional weapons from 1950 to the end of 2011. It is the only publicly available resource providing consistent data on international arms transfers for this length of time. This Fact Sheet describes the trends in international arms transfers that are revealed by the new data. It lists the main suppliers and recipients for the period 2007–11 and describes the changes in regional trends.


ABSTRACT Mucosal surfaces are not targeted by most human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) vaccines, despite being major routes for HIV-1 transmission. Here we report a novel vaccination regimen consisting of a mucosal prime with a modified replicating vaccinia virus Tiantan strain (MVTTSIVgpe) and an intramuscular boost with a nonreplicating adenovirus strain (Ad5SIVgpe). This regimen elicited robust cellular immune responses with enhanced magnitudes, sustainability, and polyfunctionality, as well as higher titers of neutralizing antibodies against the simian immunodeficiency virus SIVmac1A11 in rhesus monkeys. The reductions in peak and set-point viral loads were significant in most animals, with one other animal being protected fully from high-dose intrarectal inoculation of SIVmac239. Furthermore, the animals vaccinated with this regimen were healthy, while ∼75% of control animals developed simian AIDS. The protective effects correlated with the vaccine-elicited SIV-specific CD8+ T cell responses against Gag and Pol. Our study provides a novel strategy for developing an HIV-1 vaccine by using the combination of a replicating vector and mucosal priming.


We illustrate the use of Querium, a novel search system designed to support people's collaborative and multisession search tasks, in the context of the HCIR 2011 Search Challenge. This report demonstrates how a Querium's interface and search engine can be used to search for documents in an open-ended, exploratory task. We illustrate the use of relevance feedback, faceted search, query fusion, and the search history, as well as commenting and overview functions. Author Keywords


Business processes underpin a large number of enterprise operations including processing loan applications, managing invoices, and insurance claims. The business process management (BPM) industry is expected to grow at approximately 16 Billion dollar by 2023. There is a large opportunity for infusing AI to reduce cost or provide better customer experience with a $15.7 trillion "potential contribution to the global economy by 2030". To this end, the BPM literature is rich in machine learning solutions including unsupervised learning to gain insights on clusters of process traces, classification models to predict the outcomes, duration, or paths of partial process traces, extracting business process from documents, and models to recommend how to optimize a business process or navigate decision points. More recently, deep learning models including those from the NLP domain have been applied to process predictions.Unfortunately, very little of these innovations have been applied and adopted by enterprise companies. We assert that a large reason for the lack of adoption of AI models in BPM is that business users are risk-averse and do not implicitly trust AI models. There has, unfortunately, been little attention paid to explaining model predictions to business users with process context. We challenge the BPM community to build on the AI interpretability literature, and the AI Trust community to understand what it means to take advantage of business process artifacts in order to provide business level explanations.


This chapter contains a critical discussion of constructions of centre and periphery in a Nordic context. Specifically, it takes its starting point in media representations of northernmost Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and discusses how discursive constructions of these geographic localities contribute to a co-production of a presumably egalitarian and forward-looking Nordic centre (i.e. the national capital regions). Relying on Said´s notion of Othering (1978), the chapter presents a post-colonial reading of productions of 'internal others' in a Nordic context – internal others who are delegated to the geographic as well as the social margins of the presumably modern, gender equal and future oriented Nordic welfare state. Despite widely diverging geographic and demographic realities in the three regions debated in this chapter, they arguably share a territorial stigma (Wacquant 1996; 2007), which may take various expressions either through exoticising or romantising these localities, or presenting them as the last strongholds of xenophobes and bigots within an otherwise open-minded and progressive Nordic welfare state.


This work has focussed on the preparation of functionalized heterocyclic organometallics. In
the first part, functionalized zinc derivatives were used due to their high functional group
tolerance. Thus various thymine derivatives have been prepared both in solution and on the
solid phase.
Alternatively, a new route to functionalized heterocyclic Grignard reagents was developed
using a low-temperature halogen-magnesium exchange. Ester, amide and nitrile functions are
tolerated and the resulting organomagnesium derivatives could be reacted with various
electrophiles.
Finally, we have attempted to perform low-temperature cross-coupling reactions using these
functionalized Grignard reagents.
5.1- Synthesis of thymine derivatives
Zincated thymine derivative 2 was prepared by zinc insertion from the corresponding bromide
4, readily available in four steps from uracil. Negishi cross-coupling reactions were then
performed using zinc reagent 2 and various aryl iodides.
N
N
O
O
Bn
Bn
4
Br HN
N
H
O
O
N
N
O
O
Bn
Bn
2
ZnBr
Ar - I
Pd(dba)2 (2.5 mol %)
N
N
O
O
tfp (5 mol %)
THF, 25 °C, 12 h
Bn
Bn
Ar
3a-j: 62-95 %
THF, 0 °C
Zn*
Scheme 67. Preparation of thymine derivatives 3a-j using a Negishi cross-coupling reaction.
Resin-attached aryl iodides were also suitable substrates and solid phase synthesis of thymine
derivatives could be performed with high HPLC-purities (89-93 %).
X
O I
N
N
O
O
Bn
Bn
X = O, NH
R
8 (10 equiv)
N
N
O
O
Pd(dba)2 (5 mol %)
tfp (10 mol %)
THF, 25 °C, 48 h
Bn
Bn
R = CO2H, CONH2
ZnBr
2) TFA
1)
89-93 % HPLC purity
Scheme 68. Solid phase synthesis of thymine derivatives.
5.2- Synthesis of functionalized heterocyclic derivatives using a low
temperature halogen-magnesium exchange
• Synthesis of pyridine derivatives
Functionalized pyridinyl Grignard reagents were prepared using a low temperature iodinemagnesium
exchange and trapped with electrophiles. Functional groups such as ester, amide
or nitrile functions are tolerated in this process.
N
I
FG 1) i-PrMgBr
-40 °C
2) E+ N
E
FG
50-92 %
FG = Br, CONR2, CN, CO2R etc.
Scheme 69. Preparation of functionalised pyridines using a low temperature iodine-magnesium
exchange.
The bromine-magnesium exchange is less general than the iodine magnesium-exchange and
electron withdrawing groups are often necessary to accelerate the exchange reaction.
However, 2-bromo and 3-bromopyridine were suitable substrates due to the π deficient
character of these heterocycles.
N
Br
1) i-PrMgBr
THF, rt, 6 h
2) E+ N
E
72-75 %
Scheme 70. Preparation of pyridine derivatives using a bromine-magnesium exchange.
• Synthesis of thiazole and thiophene derivatives
A low temperature bromine-magnesium exchange was then used in the synthesis of
functionalized thiazole and thiophene derivatives.
N S
Br
OEt
O Br
1) i-PrMgBr
THF, -78 °C
N S
Br
OEt
O E 2) E+
S Br Br
CO2Et
1) i-PrMgBr
-40 °C, 0.5 h
2)
S Br
CO2Et
1) i-PrMgBr
-40 °C, 0.5 h
2) E+ S E E
CO2Et
S Br
Br
EtO2C
1) i-PrMgBr
-40 °C, 0.5 h
2) E+ S E
Br
EtO2C
58-81 %
68-88 %
74 % 62-71 % Br
CuCN cat.
Scheme 71. Preparation of thiazole and thiophene derivatives using a bromine-magnesium exchange.
• Synthesis of dihydrobenzofurans and tetrahydrobenzazepines
An access to dihydrobenzofurans, benzolactams and tetrahydrobenzazepines was developed
using arylmagnesium reagents bearing an o-chloromethyl group.
Cl
MgBr
CO2Et
Br
83 %
CuCN 2 LiCl cat. .
Cl
CO2Et
RNH2
reflux, 24 h
K2CO3, THF N
CO2Et
R
Cl
I
1) i-PrMgBr (1.0 equiv)
THF -10 °C, 1.5 h
2) RCHO, -10 °C, 1 h
then reflux, 12 h
O
R
55-94 %
54-75 %
X = H, CO2Me
NPh
X
1) i-PrMgBr (1.0 equiv)
THF -10 °C, 1.5 h
2) PhN=C=O
O
X = H, 96 %
X = CO2Me, 75 %
Scheme 72. Preparation of dihydrobenzofurans and tetrahydrobenzazepines using a low temperature
iodine-magnesium exchange.
• Low-temperature halogen-magnesium exchange on the solid phase
The low-temperature halogen-magnesium exchange could also be performed on the solid
phase using an excess of i-PrMgBr and was applied to the synthesis of various thiophene
derivatives.
2) E+
1) i-PrMgBr (10 equiv)
THF, -40 °C
3) TFA
S
E
O
HO
S
O
O Br
83-99 % HPLC-purity
Scheme 73. Solid phase synthesis of thiophene derivatives using a low temperature brominemagnesium
exchange.


The proliferation of smart sensing and computing devices, capable of collecting a vast amount of data, has made the gathering of the necessary vehicular traffic data relatively easy. However, the analysis of these big data sets requires computational resources, which are currently provided by the Cloud Data Centers. Nevertheless, the Cloud Data Centers can have unacceptably high latency for vehicular analysis applications with strict time requirements. The recent introduction of the Edge computing paradigm, as an extension of the Cloud services, has partially moved the processing of big data closer to the data sources, thus addressing this issue. Unfortunately, this unlocked multiple challenges related to resources management. Therefore, we present a model for scheduling of vehicular traffic analysis applications with partial task offloading across the Cloud –/– Edge continuum. The approach represents the traffic applications as a set of interconnected tasks composed into a workflow that can be partially offloaded to the Edge. We evaluated the approach through a simulated Cloud - Edge environment that considers two representative vehicular traffic applications with a focus on video stream analysis. Our results show that the presented approach reduces the application response time up to eight times while improving energy efficiency by a factor of four.


The environmental conditions in which the equipment is to be operated, such as temperature, humidity, dust, operators' skill, etc, often have considerable influence directly on the product reliability and indirectly on the product supportability characteristics. This paper, after discussing the factors influencing product reliability, describes a method to estimate spare part requirements based on estimation of the actual reliability of a product under the influence of the product-operating environment using a proportional hazard model. In this research only non-repairable components/parts in repairable systems are studied. Results express a considerable difference between considering and ignoring the operating environmental factor on system performance. So, this factor should be seriously considered while dimensioning product support and service delivery performance strategies, since it will have an impact on operation, maintenance and service quality.


The electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) crisis is a key and pressing environmental problem, with considerable attention focused on the transboundary movement of discarded electronics from the global North to informal e-waste processing hubs in the global South. Initial, and still dominant, discussion of these flows and the destination hubs was a somewhat caricatured portrayal of the toxic transfer to "digital dumps" in the South of the refuse resulting from overconsumption in the North, giving rise to e-waste trade bans as accepted solutions to the problem. More recently, scholars have considered the tensions between the economic gains and environmental efficiencies of processing e-waste in the South and the health and environmental risks it poses, especially to the local communities. To date, however, little work has explored the development desires of e-waste dependent communities nor strategies to transform informal e-waste hubs into sustainable and clean industrial sectors formally integrated with e-waste management systems from exporting countries.
This dissertation addresses this knowledge gap by conducting a Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology on one instance of North-to-South e-waste trade between Israel and the West Bank from June 2014 – December 2015. Based in the West Line informal e-waste hub in South-West Hebron, West Bank, this dissertation describes a PAR method that worked with the West Line community to articulate an improved e-waste industry and implement tangible initiatives to achieve it. The participatory process revealed that this long-term informal e-waste hub has grown economically dependent on imported e-waste, and in contrast to mainstream solutions that seek to ban North-to-South e-waste trade, the local community articulated a development trajectory to regulate and transition this industry in an equitable and environmentally-friendly manner.
This dissertation is divided into five components: an introduction, three manuscripts, and a conclusion. The introduction begins with a broad overview of the e-waste literature with a focus on geographer's contribution to this field, followed by the specific objectives and research questions that guided this dissertation. I then provide the geopolitical context of the Israel-West Bank e-waste economy along with a description of the PAR method that guided this research.
The first manuscript describes the PAR approach carried out in the West Line community to upgrade the social and environmental conditions of the West Line e-waste hub. This approach contributed to the critique of "rapid participatory development" and the search for ways to recover its initial goals, detailing a unique adaptation of the Delphi-method that allowed the facilitation of a broadly endorsed development trajectory within a heterogeneous and conflicted community.
The second manuscript details a multi-method study that triangulates information from over 300 qualitative interviews, field observations, and structured interviews from a systematic stratified randomized sample drawn from all operating e-waste businesses in the West Line. This study uncovered an e-waste processing industry that imported 16,958 – 25,168 tons of e-waste in 2015, creating 381 enterprises, 1,098 jobs, and USD $28.5 million gross value added to the national economy. This study not only reveals the magnitude of a largely hidden industry, but also details an adaptable method to analyze the quantities of e-waste flows and economic gains of analogous informal e-waste processing hubs.
The third manuscript employs a dis/articulations perspective to analyze the inclusionary and exclusionary impacts of Israel's new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy and subsequent creation of a regulated e-waste commodity chain. Through a detailed historical analysis of the West Line e-waste industry, I reveal the geopolitical and economic forces that delinked this region from an economy dependent on Israeli employment and subsequently linked it to the Israeli e-waste commodity chain. This manuscript challenges conceptions of "extended" and "responsibility" in EPR laws to integrate pre-existing e-waste economies into regulated e-waste commodity chains.
The conclusion reflects on the PAR process to achieve the West Line communities articulated goal of regulating a local e-waste industry and the levels of friction encountered by various Israeli and Palestinian stakeholders that control or influence this industry. I extend findings from this study to challenge international e-waste policy to incorporate the voices of e-waste dependent communities in the South as a moral compass to determine how to best manage transboundary e-waste trade.


A plethora of research in recent years has been devoted to estimating consumer demand for genetically modified food, an important piece of information needed to create appropriate public policy. To examine this body of work, a meta-analysis was conducted of 25 studies that, in aggregate, report 57 valuations for GM food. Findings indicate as much as 89% of the variation in existing value estimates for genetically modified food can be explained by an econometric model that controls for (a) the characteristics of the sample of consumers studied, (b) the method for eliciting consumers' valuation, and (c) characteristics of the food being valued. Each of these factors has a statistically significant effect on estimated premiums for non-GM food. Results of this study effectively summarize the extant literature on consumer demand for genetically modified food and permit the creation of some stylized facts that are not conditional on the results of one particular study. This paper also illustrates the effect of methodological choices on valuation estimates and reports a model which allows researchers and policy makers to quickly generate valuation measures for use in marketing or cost benefit analysis.


The current study deals with several important aspects of HCV research, including evolution of the envelope proteins and dynamic of the humoral immune response during the long term virus persistence. The essential feature of the project was the use of a special group of patients - women infected with the same HCV strain (AD78) by a contaminated anti-D globulin in a single-source outbreak.

This unique cohort of patients infected with the same virus strain allowed the minimization of factors, including route of transmission, size of inoculum, duration of infection, age and sex of infected individuals, playing a significant role in evolution of the virus during the chronic infection. Nevertheless, even under these dramatic reduction of factors affecting intrapatient viral evolution, the established parameters, such as a rate of selective pressure, as well as a pattern of mutations in the E1/E2 region, differed markedly between AD-patients. Analysis of the rate and character of nucleotide and amino acid substitutions in the E1/E2 region revealed no evidence for a strong positive selection, while a high frequency of reverse mutations to a consensus HCV 1b sequence was observed, indicating a critical role of functional/structural constrains in evolution of envelope proteins. The obtained data allowed to formulate an unequivocal conclusion that HCV envelope proteins evolution is a patient-specific phenomenon, and that purifying (negative) selection is the major force acting on HCV populations in chronic infection.

Analysis of the character and localization of a.a. substitutions in envelope sequences of AD78 isolates obtained from AD-patients at different time points of chronic infection have shown that a significant part of mutations occurred in the HVRI, suggesting a possibilty of emergence of HCV variants escaping neutralization mediated by anti-HVRI antibodies. A significant number of mutations was also localized in known human mAbs targeted sites and, especially often, in CD-81-binding sites or, in other words, in the functionally relevant domains of the protein. These data indicated that in most AD-patients the whole ectodomain of E2 protein and not only the HVRI remains under evident selective pressure during the long term chronic infection.

The other aim of the current study was the analysis of the dynamic of the HCV-specific humoral immune response in long term chronic patients. Application of the HCVpp system allowed detecting relatively high titres of cross-reacting and cross-neutralizing antibodies in sera of AD-patients; however, no evidence of immune escape during HCV persistence was registered. These experiments provided no evidence that humoral immune response lags behind the changes in envelope sequences of the virus circulating in the host at a given time point. In other words, our data indicated that the postulated mechanism of escape from antibody-mediated neutralization is not operative in all chronic patients. The results of the current study suggested, however, that the absence of escape from neutralization of virions transmitted via cell-free route does not mean that another mechanism of immune escape, namely, the escape from anti-HVRI antibodies, which very efficiently neutralize a virus transmitted by a cell-to-cell route, is not operative and does not contribute to HCV persistence.

Finally, a new interesting structural feature of envelope sequences of some HCV strains belonging to different subtypes and genotypes - presence of additional 1 to 4 a.a. residues at the N-terminus of the E2 protein - was studied using a set of hymeric E1/E2 plasmids, in which the additional a.a. residues were swapped with a number of natural or artificial a.a. stretches. These experiments have demonstrated that the presence of additional a.a. track may result in a significant increase of pseudoparticles infectivity suggesting that the viruses bearing E2 proteins with modified N-terminus might also posess unique biological properties in vivo.


Too Close to Home is a collection of essays by international authorities ranging from psychologists and doctors to economists and communication experts. Several authors analyze the economic and health costs imposed by domestic violence, documenting that domestic violence is both a serious public health issue and a severe impediment to economic development. Others examine promising approaches that have been used to combat domestic violence, including community treatment and prevention networks, telephone hotlines, judicial and police reform, anti-violence curricula in primary and secondary schools, street theater, and creative use of the mass media. The book had its genesis in the IDB Conference, "Domestic Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Costs, Programs and Policies," held in October, 1997.


Marine alkaloid rigidins are cytotoxic compounds known to kill cancer cells at nanomolar concentrations by targeting the microtubule network. Here, a rigidin analogue containing a thioether group was "caged" by coordination of its thioether group to a photosensitive ruthenium complex. In the dark, the coordinated ruthenium fragment prevented the rigidin analogue from inhibiting tubulin polymerization and reduced its toxicity in 2D cancer cell lines monolayers, 3D lung cancer tumor spheroids (A549), and in a lung cancer tumor xenograft (A549) in nude mice. Photochemical activation of the prodrug upon green light irradiation led to the photosubstitution of the thioether ligand by water, thereby releasing the free rigidin analogue capable of inhibiting the polymerization of tubulin. In cancer cells, such photorelease was accompanied by a drastic reduction of cell growth, not only when the cells were grown in normoxia (21% O2) but also, remarkably, in hypoxic conditions (1% O2). In vivo, low toxicity was observed at a dose of 1 mg.kg-1 when the compound was injected intraperitoneally, and light activation of the compound in the tumor led to 30% tumor volume reduction, which represents the first demonstration of the safety and efficacy of a ruthenium-based PACT compounds in a tumor xenograft.


In 1989 the revolutions in several Eastern European countries brought an end to The Soviet European empire and ultimately the Cold War. This paper examines the effect the end of the Soviet threat had on America's foreign assistance programs in general, and specifically on US attempts to aid the New Independent States (NIS) and the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). Over the course of the years, America's foreign assistance programs have been motivated by a combination of national security considerations, economic self- interest, and humanitarian concerns. However, the US desire to stem Soviet expansion, first in Europe, then in South East Asia, and then in other Third World countries, came to dominate assistance policy. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the common thread of foreign aid goals, the threat of Soviet expansion, also disappeared. Lack of a strong, clear goal for foreign aid, coupled with a new isolationist sentiment and deficit reduction pressures have resulted in a foreign aid crisis. America's foreign aid program suffers from a lack of focus and foreign assistance resources continue to decline. An examination of the record and rationale behind US assistance to the NIS and the CEECs supports this perspective.


Most users of demographic data in government and industry require population forecasts-soundly based information on future population trends at the local, national, or global level. In the eyes of the public this is a principal justification for the discipline of demography And increasingly, sophisticated users expect not a single "best guess" of a population trajectory - perhaps straddled by "high" and "low" variants - but a range of demographic futures with associated indications of uncertainty, or even formal confidence intervals. Or they may want full-fledged scenarios of the development of the demographic system in different economic or environmental circumstances. Many population agencies, on the other hand, continue to generate population "projections" by methods that have been virtually unchanged for decades, with no assessment of probability and often claiming no ambition to predict. It is time to reexamine the procedures of population forecasting and to respond to these emerging demands by users. The nine chapters in this volume take on this task. The key issues they address include: What population characteristics beyond the standard variables of age and sex should routinely enter population forecasts? When should forecasts take account of economic or environmental feedbacks? How is forecasting accuracy to be assessed and what is the past record? What is the state of the art of stochastic time series modeling of population change? How can users cope with probability distributions? What scope is there for application of methods to incorporate expert opinion into population forecasting? Recent years have seen substantial advances in forecasting methods. These are beginning to be applied in population. For end users of forecasts who are familiar mainly with UN or similar population projection series and for the many professional demographers whose knowledge of projections has not progressed much since graduate, school, this volume opens a window on significant new developments in this field.


Within management studies, the 'human factor' has shifted from the status of a hindrance to that of a central resource in an age of flexible productivity. While for early Fordism, the point was to rationalize and minimize the human factor, in the phase of liquid capitalism, it becomes the object of all investments, capsizing as it were Nietzsche's observation on the Human all too human. From now on, the watchword will be: Human, ever more human. The paper elicits the theological background of the project of 'humanization' of work, showing how the biopolitical analysis of market behaviour didn't emerge against, but was rather perfectly in line with the idea of a divine oikonomia, from Linne's animal economy through Adam Smith's invisible hand all the way through contemporary models of cybernetic managing. Immanence is not anti-theological per se, but might represent, in a certain respect, the most efficacious form of managerial thinking.


Inspired by the philosophy of ancient Chinese Taoism, Xu's Bayesian ying-yang (BYY) learning technique performs clustering by harmonizing the training data (yang) with the solution (ying). In our previous work, the BYY learning technique was applied to a fuzzy cerebellar model articulation controller (FCMAC) to find the optimal fuzzy sets; however, this is not suitable for time series data analysis. To address this problem, we propose an incremental BYY learning technique in this paper, with the idea of sliding window and rule structure dynamic algorithms. Three contributions are made as a result of this research. First, an online expectation-maximization algorithm incorporated with the sliding window is proposed for the fuzzification phase. Second, the memory requirement is greatly reduced since the entire data set no longer needs to be obtained during the prediction process. Third, the rule structure dynamic algorithm with dynamically initializing, recruiting, and pruning rules relieves the ¿curse of dimensionality¿ problem that is inherent in the FCMAC. Because of these features, the experimental results of the benchmark data sets of currency exchange rates and Mackey-Glass show that the proposed model is more suitable for real-time streaming data analysis.


On Wednesday, 26 November 2008, I closed the second of two lectures on politics in the 1840s and 1850s for my second-year, pre-Con- federation Canadian history students by reiter- ating the definition of responsible government. I suggested that, at its core, was the principle that the parliamentary executive was respon- sible to the elected assembly as a whole, and that the governor general (or lieutenant governor) was expected to follow the executive's wishes. This expectation included not calling elections every time a government fell in the assembly, but rather selecting another government that had the support of the already elected members of the assembly.


The fundamental goals of this study are to 1) quantify the link between aerosols, low-level clouds, and meteorology, and 2) evaluate model representation of aerosol-cloud interactions. Recent in-situ and remote sensing studies indicate that meteorological effects which influence cloud liquid water path dominate the aerosol signal in stratocumulus clouds. To address this issue, Chapter II undertakes a synoptic-scale investigation of aerosol-cloud interactions. Using parcel back-trajectories, we develop a method to isolate meteorological from aerosol impacts on clouds, and evaluate results over the Northeast Atlantic stratocumulus regime. Using MODIS observations and ECMWF analyses, we show that controlling for variations in lower tropospheric stability reduces the dependence of cloud fraction on AOD by at least 24%. We conclude that meteorological forcing must be accounted for in assessing aerosol impacts on cloud forcing, and that doing so requires a Lagrangian analysis of parcel histories. Chapter III extends the analysis in Chapter II by performing an in-depth analysis of the meteorological sensitivities of Northeast Atlantic stratocumulus clouds. Additional satellite observations are obtained from CERES, SSM/I and QuikScat. Compositing is used to quantify the sensitivity of cloud fraction to variations in meteorological state along 72 hour Lagrangian back trajectories. Clouds are found to respond to variations in stability, free tropospheric humidity, and sea surface temperature (SST) advection over long time scales while being influenced by changes in surface divergence over much shorter time scales. Cloud sensitivity to both divergence and stability is shown to be robust and not significantly affected through covariance with other forcings. An additional finding is that the sign of the relationship between cloud fraction and several quantities, including divergence, temperature advection, and surface fluxes, is reversed for long time lags. Along with the differences in stability, SST, and boundary layer humidity that are maintained throughout the trajectories, it is suggested that these point to decoupling of the cloud and sub-cloud layers as a possible cause for cloud dissipation. In contrast, the large cloud fraction composite appears to be more shallow and well-mixed at earlier times in the trajectory, thus maintaining a strong coupling with the surface. In Chapter IV the observational sensitivities observed in Chapters II and III are compared with model representations of aerosol-cloud interactions. Since model parameterizations of aerosol-cloud interactions can be switched on or off, climate simulations can be used to separately quantify the impacts of aerosols and meteorology on cloud cover. Both the ECMWF and GFDL models are analyzed using the trajectory method developed in previous chapters. Both are consistent with Chapter \\ref}chapter2} in showing that a significant fraction of the correlation between AOD and CF results from meteorological covariations. However, the two differ significantly in the magnitude of the correction and in their representation of low-level clouds. The ECMWF model, which shows a 43% correction to the AOD-CF sensitivity, also shows a weak correlation (R²=14.4%) when MODIS cloud cover is compared with ECMWF cloud cover predictions. Alternatively, if the dynamical sensitivities of MODIS clouds are compared to those of the ECMWF clouds, the two compare reasonably well. In contrast, the GFDL model shows a 100\\% correction, indicating that within the confidence limits of our analysis, low-level cloud cover is not affected by changes in aerosol. However, the GFDL model's treatment of clouds does not compare well with the observational cloud sensitivities identified in Chapter III. Since the model results are only relevant to the observational analysis if the simulations accurately represent cloud cover, from these results it is not possible to quantitatively conclude on a corrected sensitivity of cloud cover to changes in aerosol optical depth. However, the results do qualitatively confirm the results of Chapter II. In addition, the Lagrangian technique developed in previous chapters proves useful in providing detailed diagnostic information on model performance, in particular as a means of testing cloud parameterizations


Approximately 100 hectares (250 acres) were investigated as part of the passive soil gas (PSG) investigation that included multiple areas of concern. The objective of the investigation program was to rapidly identify potential source areas and guide future sampling events based on the frequency and magnitude of compounds identified in the survey. PSG sampling was the preferred technology because it does not involve intrusive activities and allowed a comprehensive data set for evaluation before more invasive techniques were implemented. Vadose zone sources were detected using a well-executed and properly conducted non-intrusive PSG survey. A two-year field investigation allowed the development of a refined conceptual site model. The results show that historical disposal operations at this DOE facility resulted in the continuing presence of residual chlorinated contamination in the vadose zone that may present a potential threat for impacting groundwater. Confirmatory site investigation techniques revealed carbon tetrachloride soil gas concentrations at a depth of approximately 35 m (115 ft), near an area that is currently undergoing site remediation. The analysis of discrete soil samples taken in regions where significant soil gas concentration exists resulted in non-detections, indicating that dense non-aqueous phase liquid sources are not present at these locations.


Introduction
In the Chilean health system, difficulties complicate womens access to health care and aggravate the complexity of health-illness processes in their interaction as users or caregivers.

Objective
In the national and international literature, we aimed to identify gaps in womens access to health care derived from gender disparities and the exercise of gender roles in a prioritized set of health problems. These problems exacerbate gender gaps and should be considered in health reform.

Methods
We made a literature review through algorithms, snowball sampling, and reference lists from November 2020 to March 2021. The population included were women of all ages, including women users of the health system and women caregivers of specific pathologies. The search was conducted in parallel by four investigators divided into two groups. It was cross-validated to ensure inter-investigator reliability by standardizing evidence eligibility criteria. The analysis showed women users' and caregivers' dimensions for a set of pathologies prioritized by the extent of the disease burden. The pathologies analyzed included stroke, obesity, depression, musculoskeletal pain, and breast cancer.

Results
Among women users of the health system, problems of access, rates of use, experience, and outcome for the whole group of prioritized pathologies were observed. In the women caregiver dimension, we found that women are the primary health care providers. There is a knowledge gap concerning obesity and musculoskeletal conditions. However, both were reported as health consequences of womens caregiving roles.


Reducing police misconduct requires substantial institutional reform in our nation's police departments. Yet traditional legal means for deterring misconduct, such as civil suits under § 1983 and the exclusionary rule, have proved inadequate to force departmental change. 42 U.S.C. § 14141 was passed in 1994 to allow the Justice Department to sue police departments to force institutional reform. Scholars initially hailed § 14141 as a powerful tool for reducing unconstitutional police abuse. The Justice Department, however, has sued few police departments. This Article contends that § 14141's greatest potential has been overlooked. Limited resources will always mean that § 14141 can be used to force reform on only a limited number of police departments. But § 14141 could also be used to induce reform in many more. This goal requires a § 14141 litigation strategy designed to motivate proactive reform in more departments than the Justice Department can sue. The key components of this strategy are a "worst-first" litigation policy that prioritizes suits against police departments with the worst indicia of misconduct, and a policy that grants a "safe harbor" from suit for police departments that voluntarily adopt best practice reforms. This Article also explains why this proactive § 14141 enforcement strategy would be more efficient at reducing police misconduct than current enforcement policies, proposals to reform § 14141 by adding private plaintiffs, and alternative mechanisms by which the federal government could regulate police department reform.


A proof of principle gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method is presented, in combination with clean up assays, aiming to improve the analysis of methyl mycocerosate tuberculosis biomarkers from sputum. Methyl mycocerosates are generated from the transesterification of phthiocerol dimycocerosates (PDIMs), extracted in petroleum ether from sputum of tuberculosis suspect patients. When a high matrix background is present in the sputum extracts, the identification of the chromatographic peaks corresponding to the methyl derivatives of PDIMs analytes may be hindered by the closely eluting methyl ether of cholesterol, usually an abundant matrix constituent frequently present in sputum samples. The purification procedures involving solid phase extraction (SPE) based methods with both commercial Isolute-Florisil cartridges, and purpose designed molecularly imprinted polymeric materials (MIPs), resulted in cleaner chromatograms, while the mycocerosates are still present. The clean-up performed on solutions of PDIMs and cholesterol standards in petroleum ether show that, depending on the solvent mix and on the type of SPE used, the recovery of PDIMs is between 64 – 70 %, whilst most of the cholesterol is removed from the system. When applied to petroleum ether extracts from representative sputum samples, the clean-up procedures resulted in recoveries of 36 68 % for PDIMs, allowing some superior detection of the target analytes.


One or more transcriptional regulators of the LysR class control transcription of rhizobial nodulation genes. In Rhizobium sp. NGR234, two copies of nodD (nodD1 and nodD2) are present on the symbiotic plasmid pNGR234a. The complete sequence of pNGR234a revealed two additional nodD homologues, syrM1 and syrM2. Competitive RNA hybridization analyses involving a mutant of syrM1 (NGRΔsyrM1) showed that a number of symbiotic genes (e.g., nolXBTUVW) are expressed in an syrM1-dependent manner. Assays in which regions upstream of nolB and nolW were fused to promotorless lacZ confirmed that SyrM1 is required for their late induction. Mutation of syrM1 also drastically reduced production of sulfated Nod factors as shown by reverse phase-thin layer chromatography (RP-TLC). SyrM1 controls sulfation of Nod factors via one of the two chromosomal nodPQ loci. It thus seems likely that syrM1 of NGR234 encodes a transcriptional activator that regulates the expression of genes involved in both the early and late stages of i...


Background: Structural changes such as erosions, syndesmophytes and ankylosis are characteristic of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). These can be quantified by the modified Stokes Anklylosing Spondylitis Spinal Score (mSASSS). It is unknown which radiographic feature is most relevant for the assessment of change and the prediction of future damage in AS. Objectives: To analyse radiographic progression in AS by using different assessments to define the most important changes. Methods: Spinal radiographs of 116 patients with AS were scored by the mSASSS at baseline (BL) and after 2 years. Radiographic progression was assessed by differentiating (1) any change; (2) progression to syndesmophytes/ankylosis (definite change); and (3) changes exceeding the smallest detectable change (SDC) as predefined. A growth angle of 45° was used to differentiate syndesmophytes from spondylophytes. Results: Some radiographic progression after 2 years was detected in 42% of patients, novel syndesmophytes in 31% of patients, and, using the SDC (calculated at 2 mSASSS units) as cut-off, progression was seen in 28% of patients. Thus, in 74% of the patients changes were because of syndesmophytes and/or ankylosis. Using the predefined cut-off, only 12% of all syndesmophytes were spondylophytes. Patients with such changes were of older age. Definite radiographic progression was found in 44% of the patients with syndesmophytes/ankylosis at BL (n = 57) versus 19% (p = 0.03) of the patients without such changes (n = 59). Conclusions: Syndesmophytes and ankylosis are the most relevant structural changes in AS, and also in the mSASSS. Development of just one syndesmophyte within 2 years indicates progression of structural changes in AS; this is relevant for clinical practice. Syndesmophytes are the best predictors of radiographic progression.


Abstract Among the six types of Generation IV reactors, the supercritical water reactor (SCWR) is the only one that adopts light water as the reactor coolant. Different from the boiling, two-phase coolant in the core of a traditional boiling water reactor (BWR), the coolant in an SCWR would remain in one phase throughout the entire primary coolant circuit (PCC) due to its much higher operating temperature (>374°C) and pressure (>22.1 MPa). For a conventional BWR, the coolant is relatively oxidizing due to the presence of hydrogen peroxide and oxygen, directly or indirectly produced via water radiolysis. This outcome eventually leads to degradation of structural materials, primarily stress corrosion cracking. In an SCWR, the solubility of oxygen in the reactor coolant is extremely high. In the absence of the gas stripping effect in a single-phase coolant, worse degradation phenomena are expected to appear in the structural and core components. To ensure proper designs of the structural components and suitable selection of the materials to meet the requirements of operation safety, it would be of great assistance to the design engineers of an SCWR to be aware of the intrinsic state of water chemistry in the entire PCC. Since SCWRs are still at the stage of conceptual design and no practical data are available, a computer model was developed for determining the water chemistry variation and the corrosion behavior of metallic materials in the PCC of a conceptual SCWR. Radiolysis parameters used for calculating the concentrations of major redox species (i.e., [O2], [H2], and [H2O2]) in the reactor coolant were collected from literature reports. However, the lack of sufficient data necessitated that some were derived by extrapolation. Calculations indicated that the concentrations of the two major oxidizing species (H2O2 and O2) could become extremely high at locations inside or near the core, considerably higher than those in typical BWRs. It was therefore speculated that the structural materials in an SCWR may be exposed to an environment not only at a much higher temperature but also one that is more oxidizing than that in a conventional BWR.


We monitored the dynamics of extracellular organic matter in 3 mesocosms: one dominated by a heterotrophic (microbial) community with negligible autotrophic activity (net heterotrophic system), a second where a small Phaeocystis bloom developed (production and loss almost balanced), and a third harboring a large diatom bloom (net autotrophic system). In all mesocosms, meso- and macroscopic heterotrophic organisms were excluded to primarily study extracellular organic matter production and turnover by specific algae and microbial loop organisms, respectively. Concentration and composition of dissolved organic matter (DOM), i.e. dissolved organic carbon (DOC), monosaccharides and total carbohydrates (MCHO and TCHO), free and combined neutral carbohydrates (DFCHO and DCCHO), as well as free and combined amino acids (DFAA and DCAA) were measured. In addition, net and gross community production rates were determined to calculate C-budgets. Whereas concentrations and composition of MCHO differed very little among the 3 mesocosms, dynamics of TCHO, DFCHO, and DCCHO differed significantly. Concentrations of DFAA were higher in both algal mesocosms compared to the heterotrophic system, and composition of DFAA was significantly different in the Phaeocystis and Diatom tanks. The composition and concentration of DCAA, however, were similar in all 3 mesocosms. Total dissolved carbohydrates and amino acids comprised a substantial fraction of the DOC pool. Dynamics of these DOC fractions, however, could only partly explain those of DOC, implying either that other dissolved compounds were important for overall C-cycling, or that microbial degradation of DOM affects the detection of carbohydrates and protein components.


UNITED ARAB EMIRATES The Political Culture of Leadership in the United Arab Emirates, by Andrea B. Rugh. New York: Palgrave, 2007. xiii + 236 pages. Map. Notes to p. 249. Bibl. to p. 253. Index to p. 269. $69.95. Reviewed by Christopher Davidson Andrea Rugh has produced an in-depth study of the ruling families - their personal resources and their internal dynastic mechanisms - of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world's few remaining monarchies, and in many ways one of the most autocratic and opaque. The book provides important insights about the UAE, a stable polity that appears to have blended successfully tribal and other traditional politics with more modern governmental structures. Although a rather slim volume, the book's constituent chapters are packed with detail, and, importantly, they consider each of the seven emirates that make up the federation. Certainly, it is refreshing to see that considerable weight is given to events and personalities in the smaller northern emirates, which are often overlooked in broader studies of the region. Although these emirates do not possess oil reserves and are heavily dependent on federal aid from the wealthier emirate of Abu Dhabi, they nevertheless all provide a large number of federal pubic sector employees and their respective rulers all hold a position in the UAE's Supreme Council of Rulers. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is its emphasis on the significance of marriages within and between these dynasties, and their described role in the forging of alliances. While no attributed interview sources are given, it is clear that the author has managed to gather much information on exactly who is related to whom, and in what circumstances. Thankfully the density of these sections has been made somewhat easier for the reader given the inclusion of an ingenious referencing system that allows one to see how the various members of these families fit into the bigger picture. Surprisingly, given that the UAE is often regarded as more of a confederation than a federation, and given that the book is ostensibly a study of political culture, there appears to be little emphasis placed on some of the key differences that exist between the various emirates. Importantly, emirates such as Abu Dhabi, the national population of which has only become settled relatively recently and therefore still retains much of its Bedouin culture, is a much more private community than that of Dubai and the other former seafaring sheikhdoms. In many ways, this culture of privacy continues to be apparent in contemporary politics, with Abu Dhabi remaining the least transparent of the emirate-level polities. …


In this paper I propose a new method for computing equilibrium in economies featuring heterogeneous agents, incomplete markets and aggregate uncertainty. The new method approximates the endogenous joint distribution of wealth and income by replacing stochastic simulation procedures with iteration on distribution functions. By construction, the approximate distribution satisfies an intratemporal consistency condition that imposes stationarity on both the distribution and the law of motion for aggregate state variables. I show that the Method of Mixture Distributions is capable of obtaining a solution faster than existing computational algorithms while attaining a high level of accuracy. Lastly, I provide an extension of the algorithm for computing equilibrium in an economy with non-trivial market clearing, showing that the algorithm is suitable for computing models in which prices cannot be forecasted by a finite set of moments from the distribution.


Modern web applications make frequent use of third-party scripts, often in ways that allow scripts loaded from external servers to make unrestricted changes to the embedding page and access critical resources including private user information. This paper introduces tools to assist site administrators in understanding, monitoring, and restricting the behavior of third-party scripts embedded in their site. We developed Script Inspector, a modified browser that can intercept, record, and check third-party script accesses to critical resources against security policies, along with a Visualizer tool that allows users to conveniently view recorded script behaviors and candidate policies and a Policy Generator tool that aids script providers and site administrators in writing policies. Site administrators can manually refine these policies with minimal effort to produce policies that effectively and robustly limit the behavior of embedded scripts. Policy Generator is able to generate effective policies for all scripts embedded on 72 out of the 100 test sites with minor human assistance. In this paper, we present the designs of our tools, report on what we've learned about script behaviors using them, evaluate the value of our approach for website administrator.


Weaver ants (Oecophylla spp.) are managed in plantations to control insect pests and are sometimes harvested as a protein‐rich food source. In both cases, the amount of insect prey caught by the ants is imperative for returns, as more prey leads to more effective biocontrol and to a higher production of ants. Malaise‐like traps placed in trees may catch flying insects without catching ants, as ants may use pheromone trails to navigate in and out of the traps. Thus, ants may increase their prey intake if they are able to extract insects caught in traps. In a mango plantation in Tanzania, we estimated the amount of insects caught by simple traps (cost per trap = 3.9 USD), and whether Oecophylla longinoda was able to collect insects from them. On average, a trap caught 110 insects per month without catching any weaver ants. The number of insects found in traps with ant access was 25% lower than in control traps (ants excluded), showing that ants were able to gather prey from the traps. Ant activity in traps increased over time, showing that prey extraction efficiency may increase as ants customize to the traps. The prey removed from traps by ants constituted 5% of the number of prey items collected by O. longinoda under natural conditions (without traps), potentially increasing to 14% if ants learn to extract all insects. Thus, prey intake may be increased with 5–14% per 3.9 USD invested in traps. These numbers increased to 38 and 78%, respectively, when light was used to attract insects during night time. Combining ant predation with insect trapping is a new approach potentially building increased returns to ant biocontrol and to ant entomophagy.


The Paleozoic-Mesozoic transition saw the disappearance of asteroid stem groups and the ascent of the crown group, but late Paleozoic and Triassic asteroids are rare and transition events are poorly documented. Three new Middle and Late Triassic specimens augment existing data; included are a specimen of Trichasteropsis weissmanni from Germany, a specimen of Trichasteropsis ? sp. indet. from Italy, and a possible member of the extant Poraniidae from Slovenia. Presence of a small ossicle at the interbrachial midline and adjacent to the marginal series of the new T. weissmanni specimen is consistent with similar expressions not only of other trichasteropsids but also occurrence of two interbrachial ossicles in Paleozoic, stem-group asterozoans; presence is in turn consistent with a hypothesis of derivation of the axillary/odontophore coupling from two ossicles rather than direct derivation of the crown-group odontophore from a single stem-group axillary. Morphology of Trichasteropsis ? sp. indet., including, for example, the evenly-tapering arms are reminiscent of those of diverse crown-group asteroids whereas the enlarged distal arms of T. weissmanni are unique, the morphology of T ? sp. indet. thereby potentially indicative of a plesiomorphic, stemward positioning within the Trichasteropsiidae. The range of the Poraniidae is tentatively extended to the Carnian. Similarities shared by the Poraniidae and the Trichasteropsiidae suggest stemward positioning within crown-group diversification; however, known Triassic fossils do not appear closely related to extant taxa identified in recent molecular studies as basal within the crown-group. A temperate climate is suggested as preferred by the Triassic asteroids rather than a tropical, warmer one.