This paper focuses on thermal post-buckling analysis of functionally graded beams with temperature dependent physical properties by using the total Lagrangian Timoshenko beam element approximation. Material properties of the beam change in the thickness direction according to a power-law function. The beam is clamped at both ends. In the case of beams with immovable ends, temperature rise causes compressible forces and therefore buckling and post-buckling phenomena occurs. It is known that post-buckling problems are geometrically nonlinear problems. Also, the material properties (Young\'s modulus, coefficient of thermal expansion, yield stress) are temperature dependent: That is the coefficients of the governing equations are not constant in this study. This situation suggests the physical nonlinearity of the problem. Hence, the considered problem is both geometrically and physically nonlinear. The considered highly non-linear problem is solved considering full geometric non-linearity by using incremental displacement-based finite element method in conjunction with Newton-Raphson iteration method. In this study, the differences between temperature dependent and independent physical properties are investigated for functionally graded beams in detail in post-buckling case. With the effects of material gradient property and thermal load, the relationships between deflections, critical buckling temperature and maximum stresses of the beams are illustrated in detail in post-buckling case.


The interest rate in the second series of ECB targeted longer-term refinancing operations is conditional on a participant-specific lending benchmark. The restrictiveness of this benchmark varies between banks. We employ fixed effects estimations on a unique micro-dataset and investigate the relationship between the benchmark restrictiveness and net bank lending. We find that a more restrictive benchmark is associated with more total net lending and net lending to non-financial corporates by relatively large banks. Banks that are relatively large and face the most restrictive benchmark increase their lending to the real economy with 9 to 17 percent. We find no significant effects on net lending by relatively small banks. Furthermore, the restrictiveness of the benchmark does not affect net lending to households. Our findings suggest that the design of targeted lending benchmarks influences bank credit flows and that a more binding benchmark would have been even more effective in stimulating bank lending.


Information technologies impact our daily life in many significant ways. Nevertheless, there is a lack of availability of some technologies to the wide public caused by their location and price. This insufficiency seems to be even bigger for disabled people. LIRKIS laboratory of Technical university of Košice proposes solutions in education of these people and develops technologies of virtual reality which are capable to fulfill their needs. This paper is aimed at user interfaces (as VR technology) and the smart environment from human-centered perspective. The development process could become time consuming because in many cases the electrical network, sensory network and other physical elements need to be rebuilt to begin another test. Virtual reality technologies could solve this kind of issues low cost and fast. In this work a CAVE system was used in the comparison of standard approaches.


Determination of soil temperature regimes is important to establish the diagnostic horizons that are used for classification of soils. Temperature regimes are determined according to Soil Taxonomy, and soils are allocated into six regimes. From the agricultural aspect, Croatia is divided into three regions: Pannonian, Mountainous and Adriatic and into nine sub-regions. The present analysis shows the average annual cycle of soil temperatures in the period 1981 - 2010 at depths of 10 and 50 cm. According to the average annual soil temperatures, the soils in Middle and South sub-region of the Adriatic region belong to the category of soils with the Thermic temperature regime, and the soils in other seven sub-regions are classified as soils with the Mesic temperature regime. Furthermore, differences between air temperature and soil temperature have been established. Theory that states that the average annual soil temperature can be roughly determined by adding 1°C to the average annual air temperature, was tested on depths of 10 cm and 50 cm and has not proven to be entirely correct.


A notable aspect of the problem-solving process--the primary task of the literary detective--is the continuous interplay between existing knowledge and knowledge directly related to the case in hand. This article focuses on describing and comparing the investigative approaches of arguably the three most famous literary detectives of the first half of the twentieth century, created respectively by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Georges Simenon, namely, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Maigret, with reference to three bodies of knowledge: a body of knowledge existing prior to the investigation, knowledge of the investigative methodology to be used, and case-specific knowledge, gained in the course of the investigation. Knowledge that the investigator has prior to the investigation includes specialized factual knowledge and/or knowledge gained through previous experience. By drawing on a reservoir of specialized technical knowledge, the investigator is able to identify and interpret concrete data of which the meaning and significance escape his rivals. At the same time, or alternatively, the investigator has a mental catalogue, derived from previous investigations, containing information on crimes, criminal types, patterns of behavior and so on. Confronted with a set of events for which he has to find a rational explanation, the detective could use this body of knowledge as basis for a kind of encyclopedia, in which phenomena are grouped, annotated, and contextualized, and for a "dictionary" which enables him to interpret certain gestures and other observable phenomena; (1) or, through analogical thinking, to anticipate or interpret certain actions or events; to typify a suspect or clarify the profile of the victim; or to open up a line of investigation based on a technical understanding of particular data. In this respect, the investigator resembles a scientist who, upon observing a set of unexplained phenomena, first of all tries to explain it in terms of knowledge already at his disposal. The scientist works from the observed phenomena to its possible causes. If he succeeds in finding a readily available explanation that adequately accounts for these phenomena, further investigation becomes superfluous. Only if such an explanation cannot be found, or if a readily available explanation is found inadequate, do the phenomena become a problem worthy of further investigation. The search for a solution to the problem is continued by advancing conjectures that the investigator attempts to refute in view of the available data, until a solution is found that can stand up to critical scrutiny. In the process of looking for a satisfactory explanation, the investigator makes use both of a first body of knowledge concerning phenomena similar to those constituting the problem (2) and a second body of knowledge related to the methodology accepted in the discipline concerned. (3) The detective usually cannot simply apply existing explanations to the case in hand in order to arrive at a solution, inasmuch as each case presents a new problem, involving different persons and events. Yet, knowledge gained from previous cases could facilitate the identification of clues and assist the detective in finding the correct lines of investigation, especially where problems are generically related. The nature of the problem remains basically constant, in that it always involves identifying the perpetrator of a crime, so that the investigative method of a particular detective does not change significantly from case to case. The scientific process is largely conventionalized; it starts with the unambiguous formulation of a problem that can be solved with the "available methods of scientific inquiry," moves through the formulation and testing of one or more possible solutions, and culminates in the presentation of a solution that can be confirmed at least provisionally. (4) Similarly, the methodology to be used by the detective usually follows a basic pattern: once the basic facts of the problem are known, the detective systematically interviews and interrogates those involved, searches for and follows leads, regularly reviews the case up to that point, and puts forward hypotheses for the solution. …


A fast, ultrafine-tunable delay line at 1550 nm is demonstrated by use of acousto-optic pulse shaping. Delays of up to 30 ps can be achieved without any optical readjustment. The delay is linear to the rf center frequency applied to the acousto-optic modulator and is fully electronic. It takes only 3micros to switch between different time slots, irrespective of the time separation in the tuning range of 30 ps; for a smaller tuning range the tuning speed can be faster. The tuning resolution and range depend on the choice of system parameters. The pulse energy can be regulated by rf power.


The present article deals with the MHD flow of a Casson nanofluid between two disks. The lower disk was fixed as well as permeable. The upper disk was not permeable, but it could move perpendicularly up and down toward the lower disk. Titanium dioxide was selected as nanoparticles and water as a base fluid. The governing higher-order nonlinear partial differential equations were transformed into a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations by using similarity transformation. The differential transform method (DTM) was applied to solve the nonlinear ODEs. The nature of the velocity profiles for the different values of the suction injection parameter, the squeeze number, the Casson fluid parameter, and the volume fraction parameter of the nanofluid are pictorially discussed in this paper. The coefficient of skin friction was tabulated for the novelty of the research. The comparison of the results was determined by the DTM and the numerical methods. The profile values were also compared with the literature work and found to agree. This comparative study proves the accuracy and efficiency of the method. It is concluded from this research that the flow properties behave oppositely for all parameters during suction and injection.


textabstractHealth-related quality of life (HRQOL) is an essential issue for maternal and child health. This thesis aims to extend the understanding of maternal HRQOL during pregnancy and after childbirth, as well as HRQOL of children. The studies presented in this thesis were embedded in the Generation R Study and the Dutch Health Interview Survey in the Netherlands. Seven studies have been included in this thesis. The main findings are: (1) Compared with women who never reported nausea, vomiting and fatigue in early pregnancy, women with daily presence of at least one of these symptoms had significantly worse physical and mental HRQOL; (2) Physical and mental trajectories of health-related quality of life during pregnancy differ, with the most common being healthy trajectories. Predictors indicative of suboptimal HRQOL trajectories included pregnancy-related physical symptoms and pregnancy-specific anxiety. (3) Multiple determinants are associated with worse maternal HRQOL at two months after delivery. Particularly, maternal psychopathology is a profound determinant of worse mental HRQOL after delivery. (4) We did not confirm the hypotheses that worse maternal physical and mental HRQOL in early, mid- and late pregnancy are associated with more preterm birth, shorter pregnancy duration, and lower birth weight in the total study population. (5) There are multiple determinants of worse HRQOL in childhood. Having a non-western immigrant background, parents who did not work, more health conditions/disorders and using more healthcare were associated with
poorer physical HRQOL. Boys, single-parent family, obesity and having more health conditions/disorders were associated with poorer psychosocial HRQOL. (6) Children with a prevalent chronic condition
(asthma, eczema, dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, or migraine/severe headache) have a low physical /psychosocial HRQOL compared with children without any chronic conditions. The pattern of
impaired HRQOL is specific across these conditions. (7) Our results support the feasibility, concurrent validity, and discriminant validity of the Health Status Classification System-Preschool (HSCS-PS) in the general population, which is a preference-based measure of HRQOL among preschool-aged children.


PIC32 Microcontrollers and the Digilent chipKIT: Introductory to Advanced Projects will teach you about the architecture of 32-bit processors and the hardware details of the chipKIT development boards, with a focus on the chipKIT MX3 microcontroller development board. Once the basics are covered, the book then moves on to describe the MPLAB and MPIDE packages using the C language for program development. The final part of the book is based on project development, with techniques learned in earlier chapters, using projects as examples. Each projectwill have a practical approach, with in-depth descriptions and program flow-charts with block diagrams, circuit diagrams, a full program listing and a follow up on testing and further development. With this book you will learn: State-of-the-art PIC32 32-bit microcontroller architectureHow to program 32-bit PIC microcontrollers using MPIDE, MPLAB, and C languageCore features of the chipKIT series development boardsHow to develop simple projects using the chipKIT MX3 development board and Pmod interface cardshow to develop advanced projects using the chipKIT MX3 development boardsDemonstrates how to use the PIC32 series of microcontrollers in real, practical applications, and make the connection between hardware and software programmingUsage of the PIC32MX320F128H microcontroller, which has many features of the PIC32 device and is included on the chipKIT MX3 development boardUses the highly popular chipKIT development boards, and the PIC32 for real world applications, making this book one of a kind


Techniques for marine monitoring have been greatly evolved over the past decades, making the acquisition of environmental data safer, more reliable and more efficient. On the other hand, the marine renewable energy sector has introduced dissimilar ways of exploring the oceans. Marine energy is mostly harvested in murky and high energetic places where conventional data acquisition techniques are impractical. This new frontier on marine operations brings the need for finding new techniques for environmental data acquisition, processing and analysis. Modern sonar systems, operating at high frequencies, can acquire detailed images of the underwater environment. Variables such as occurrence, size, class and behavior of a variety of aquatic species of fish, birds, and mammals that coexist within marine energy sites can be monitored using imaging sonar systems. Although sonar images can provide high levels of detail, in most of the cases they are still difficult to decipher. In order to facilitate the classification of targets using sonar images, this study introduces a framework of extracting visual features of marine animals that would serve as unique signatures. The acoustic visibility measure (AVM) is here introduced as technique of identification and classification of targets by comparing the observed size with a standard value. This information can be used to instruct algorithms and protocols in order to automate the identification and classification of underwater targets using imaging sonar systems. Using image processing algorithms embedded in Proviwer4 and FIJI software, this study found that acoustic images can be effectively used to classify cod, harbour and grey seals, and orcas through their size, shape and swimming behavior. The sonar images showed that cod occurred as bright, 0.9 m long, ellipsoidal targets shoaling in groups. Harbour seals occurred as bright torpedo-like fast moving targets, whereas grey seals occurred as bulky-ellipsoidal targets with serpentine movements. Orca or larger marine mammals occurred with relatively low visibility on the acoustic images compared to their body size, which measured between 4 m and 7 m. This framework provide a new window of performing qualitative and quantitative observations of underwater targets, and with further improvements, this method can be useful for environmental studies within marine renewable energy farms and for other purposes.


Choosing a college major can be a complex decision and one that has the potential to determine an individual's professional future. The purpose of this study was to develop a theoretical framework for mapping the decision-making process. Grounded in findings from a previously published study of interviews with students majoring in fashion and the existing literature on the process of major selection, an interpretation of factors influencing students' decision-making was developed. Findings provided the foundation for a theoretical framework that permits an in-depth understanding of the decision process that currently does not exist within the literature. Further empirical use and development of the framework would provide assessment of its applicability across a variety of college majors and within countries other than the USA.


Administrative data on foster carers in New South Wales (NSW) are sadly lacking. Based on research commissioned by the NSW Department of Community Services, this paper uses the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census of Population and Housing and other data to provide up-to-date information on the characteristics of foster carers and the demographic trends that are influencing their numbers. Census data indicate that foster carer families are most likely to contain women aged 35–54 years, not in the labour force. Couples account for two-thirds of all foster carers, with the majority of those couples also caring for birth children. While single parents account for less than one-fifth of all foster carers, they are more likely to foster than couples, either with or without birth children. Higher rates of fostering were found in relatively disadvantaged areas. Projected increases in female labour force participation are expected to contribute to a decline (or to slower growth) in the number of foster carers over the next decade. However, projected increases in sole parent families and couples without children are expected to have the opposite effect. The relative magnitude of these effects was not ascertained.


Numerical simulation has become an important aspect of modern industrial production processes. Very early in the process chain - even before first prototypes are built - simulation is used for digital mock-up in order to discover potential problems and to improve certain components and their assembling. In our work, we focus on the simulation of highly flexible components like cables and hoses, which is a challenging task in vehicle industry. Nowadays, complex harnesses with kilometers of cables can be found in every vehicle and the amount even increases for electric drivelines and hybrid cars. Especially for cables of safety-relevant equipment, high loads and contacts with high friction should be avoided, already during the assembling but also later in regular usage. We present the essential steps of a dynamic cable simulation and a subsequent comparative load data analysis. The latter allows to efficiently compare many different cable configurations in order to identify the best one in the sense of damage.


The study is focused on the composition of various types of Moldanubian dyke granites in the Bohemian Forest (Czech Republic). The studied area of about 200 km2 is mainly in the northern environs of the Lipno dam lake on the Vltava River. This territory consists of metamorphic units such as Blanský les and Křisťanov granulite massifs associated with metasedimentary migmatite complexes of Monotonous and Varied units, intruded by Knižeci Stolec durbachite pluton and post-tectonic Variscan granitoids. The range of granite samples includes leucocratic rocks with muscovite, or with muscovite and biotite, and types with biotite as the single mica. Tourmalineand garnet-bearing granites are less common. The set of 25 samples characterizes the composition of 20 dykes and small intrusions. A simple provisional division of granite samples into low-Ca (0.35–0.65 wt. % CaO) and medium-Ca (0.67–1.16 wt. % CaO) groups is used. Tourmaline granites (± Ms, Grt) contain schorl with 20–40 mol. % dravite. Garnets contain almandine and spessartine as the major components (c. 30 mol. % Sps) but the sample from the Hrad hill exhibits an outer zone with up to 32 mol. % Grs. Apatite occurs in several generations, especially in low-Ca granites, which have a significant phosphorus substitution in feldspars: 1) primary fluorapatite, 2) minute anhedral apatite (containing P unmixed from albite) characterized by up to c. 10 mol. % of chlorapatite component in predominating fluorapatite, 3) very rare (hydrothermal) hydroxylapatite filling brittle fractures in tourmaline. Accessory cordierite, originally present in some leucogranites, is altered to pinite (muscovite + chlorite ± biotite aggregate). Several samples from the Smrcina area contained cordierite with low Be, which has been unmixed as a newly formed tiny beryl in pinite. The dataset exhibits geochemical heterogeneity. Low-Ca and medium-Ca granites are distinct in the Ba–Rb–Sr ternary, as well as in the of Zr/Hf vs. Y/Ho and SiO2 vs. A/CNK plots. The low-Ca dyke granites show numerous chemical differences from the granites of the plutonic bodies (such as the Eisgarn or Destna types of the Moldanubian Batholith). The medium-Ca granite dykes split into the Smrcina type and remaining types of muscovite–biotite granites. Several types of chondrite-normalized REE patterns can be distinguished in terms of the total REE contents, the degree of LREE over HREE enrichment and magnitude of the Eu anomaly; most of the patterns show clearly a tetrad effect.


This paper provides a short review of recent results on synchronization in small-world dynamical networks of coupled oscillators. We also propose a new model of small-world networks of cells with a time-varying coupling and study its synchronization properties. It is shown that such a time-varying structure of the network can ensure more reliable synchronization than the conventional small-worlds. The term "small world" refers to a network of locally connected nodes having a few additional long-range shortcuts chosen at random. The addition of the shortcuts sharply reduces the average distance between the nodes and therefore provides the so-called small-world effect. Discovered first in social networks, the small-world effect appeared to be a characteristic of many real-world structure both human-generated or of biological origin. For social networks, this property implies that almost any pair of people in the world can be connected to one another by a short chain of intermediate acquaintances, of typical length about six. However, the structure of social networks is not homogeneous, there are always key persons that provide distant out-local-world connections between people. This paper is written in honor of the 60th birthday of our friend and colleague, Wadim S. Anischenko, who is one of such key persons in European Nonlinear Dynamics community.


Feature-based SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) techniques rely on low-level contrast information extracted from images to detect and track keypoints. This process is known to be sensitive to changes in illumination of the environment that can lead to tracking failures. This paper proposes a multi-layered image representation (MLI) that computes and stores different contrast-enhanced versions of an original image. Keypoint detection is performed on each layer, yielding better robustness to light changes. An optimization technique is also proposed to compute the best contrast enhancements to apply in each layer. Results demonstrate the benefits of MLI when using the main keypoint detectors from ORB, SIFT or SURF, and shows significant improvement in SLAM robustness.


The situation of early childhood intervention in Austria is described from its beginning in the 1970s up to the present situation and future challenges. Children with disability or at risk of being disabled qualify for early childhood intervention as well as partly and to some extent also children in the context of socially disadvantaged families. Based on nine provincial laws, the structure of early childhood intervention in Austria is heterogeneous. A consensus regarding key terms, the age of the child (0 - 3 or 6), and home-based services exists. Future challenges focus on early identification of vulnerable target groups by increased communication with community based networks (social worker, mental health specialists) as the number of children with unspecific developmental delays or vulnerability will increase. The training programmes for early intervention professionals, as proposed for example in the project PRECIOUS (www.precious.at), must include the need for professionals to work with vulnerable families in general to a greater extent.


Insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) is a zinc metalloprotease that degrades the amyloid β-peptide, the key component of Alzheimer disease (AD)-associated senile plaques. We have previously reported evidence for genetic linkage and association of AD on chromosome 10q23–24 in the region harboring the IDE gene. Here we have presented the first functional assessment of IDE in AD families showing the strongest evidence of the genetic linkage. We have examined the catalytic activity and expression of IDE in lymphoblast samples from 12 affected and unaffected members of three chromosome 10-linked AD pedigrees in the National Institute of Mental Health AD Genetics Initiative family sample. We have shown that the catalytic activity of cytosolic IDE to degrade insulin is reduced in affected versus unaffected subjects of these families. Further, we have shown the decrease in activity is not due to reduced IDE expression, suggesting the possible defects in IDE function in these AD families. In attempts to find potential mutations in the IDE gene in these families, we have found no coding region substitutions or alterations in splicing of the canonical exons and exon 15b of IDE. We have also found that total IDE mRNA levels are not significantly different in sporadic AD versus age-matched control brains. Collectively, our data suggest that the genetic linkage of AD in this set of chromosome 10-linked AD families may be the result of systemic defects in IDE activity in the absence of altered IDE expression, further supporting a role for IDE in AD pathogenesis.


Aiming at a better understanding of the various collective mechanisms involved in accepting the loss of a sovereign figure associated with the order of the universe, this paper investigates the expressions of collective grief upon the death of the monarch in the sixteenth-century Ottoman context. Contemporary narrative sources reveal a strong sense of simultaneous grief and joy, fostered by the loss of one sovereign and the arrival of another one. Ottoman chronicles convey a sense of heavy grief and mourning through uncontrolled behaviour consisting of laments, wailing and violent acts of grief such as tearing one's clothes, beating one's chest, throwing soil. Similar modes of mourning are observed in various times, places, and cultures. Whether one is talking about the public reaction in Nicomedia to the death of Constantine or the laments upon the death of the legendary hero Beyrek in the Oghuz epics or the death of an Ottoman sultan, exaggerated reactions to a leader's and/or hero's death also point at a disruption in the order of things felt by those left behind feeling diminished, lost and devoid of direction. Yet this sense of grief, caused by loss and the implication of partial destruction of the social equilibrium, had to be removed to give way to the sense of a new beginning, or restoring of order. As such, the new monarch is hailed as the rising sun that shall lighten the way and bring things back to order. Acted through collective rites such as the funeral and accession rituals, this transition finds expression in the simultaneous employment of antithetical concepts such as fire/water, grief/joy, and night/day in narrative accounts. Often identified with the death and rebirth of nature, the transitory phase in between each reign is marked with a sense of loss and regaining of not only a sovereign figure, but also of the order of the world and thus the well-being of the society as a collective identity and the subject as an individual.


A "New York Times "Bestseller There are more older people in America today than ever before. They are our parents and grandparents, our aunts and uncles and in-laws. They are living longer, but in a culture that has come to worship youth--a culture in which families have dispersed, communities have broken down, and older people are isolated. Meanwhile, adults in two-career families are struggling to divide their time among their kids, their jobs, and their aging parents--searching for the right words to talk about loneliness, forgetfulness, or selling the house."Another Country "is a field guide to this rough terrain for a generation of baby boomers who are finding themselves unprepared to care for those who have always cared for them. Psychologist and bestselling writer Mary Pipher maps out strategies that help bridge the gaps that separate us from our elders. And with her inimitable combination of respect and realism, she offers us new ways of supporting each other--new ways of sharing our time, our energy, and our love."


This article describes how user centered, and particularly co-design methods can help maximize user experience for personalized services delivered over a mobile device. The specific focus was designing for Chinese spectators at large sports events (such as football matches, swimming galas or athletics meetings). User experience was assumed to comprise user, product, social, cultural and usage context components. Co-design methods were incorporated into a semistructured HCI design process that comprised content, conceptual, interaction and presentation design, followed by field and lab-based user evaluation. There were two co-design methods in particular which were found to be key to working effectively with Chinese users. Emotion Cards were used to help overcome some of the inhibitions of participants and to encourage them to provide more open and unequivocal design input. The User Advisory Board was a group of participants who mediated the relationship between the designer and other participants at various design stages. They helped to ensure genuine collaboration because the wider participants felt (1) less like the object of study and (2) more able to communicate their needs during the design process.


Irrigation canals are known to entrain anadromous and potamodromous salmonids of all life stages during their annual migrations. Fish screens may reduce or eliminate entrainment, but few studies exist on their benefits and these have evaluated effects on anadromous populations only. Prior to my study, none existed on the benefits of fish screens for non-anadromous salmonids. Large numbers of post-spawn adult and downstream migrant juvenile westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi) are potentially entrained into the seven irrigation canals on Skalkaho Creek, a tributary of the Bitterroot River. I quantified entrainment rates into the canals using telemetry and trapping before (2003) and after (2004) installation of three fish screens. I also examined the efficacy of the screens in returning downstream migrants to the stream. No telemetered adults were entrained in 2003, but most were residents and therefore did not migrate past the canals. In 2004, 79% of the telemetered adult migratory fish were entrained at either screened or unscreened canals, but all adults entrained in screened canals were successfully bypassed back to Skalkaho Creek. Only eight of 117 telemetered age-1 juveniles were entrained, whereas the others were residents and did not migrate. Only one of three age-1 juveniles entrained in 2004 was bypassed. The low number of migratory adult fish and age-1 juveniles I was able to telemeter suggests that the non-migratory, resident life history is now being selected for in this system, but screens should reverse this process. Downstream movement of age-0 westslope cutthroat trout in Skalkaho Creek increased their risk of entrainment. The Highline Canal entrained about 71% of age-0 westslope cutthroat trout moving downstream in 2003. If not for the screen to bypass them in 2004, 38% would have been entrained in the Highline Canal. A total of 6,049 age-0 westslope cutthroat trout were bypassed by all three screens. Most age-0 westslope cutthroat trout entrained at screened canals were successfully bypassed, whereas those entrained at unscreened canals were lost to the population. Fish screens were an effective management tool to reduce or eliminate entrainment at Skalkaho Creek and may be useful elsewhere to eliminate entrainment of inland salmonids.


Eighteen patients with advanced COPD, 8 with chronic respiratory failure (RF) and 10 without (nonRF, NRF) were investigated using spirometry, arterial blood gas analysis and biopsies taken from the quadriceps femorls muscle. The biopsies were analysed for ATP, creatine phosphate (CrP), creatine (Cr), lactate and glycogen content. Muscle fibre composition was also studied. Low concentrations of ATP, glycogen and CrP were found in the RF patients. Significant correlations were found between muscle metabolites and arterial blood gas values with the strongest correlation between muscle glycogen and arterial PO2 (r = 0.70; p less than 0.001). A very low percentage of "oxidative" type I muscle fibres was found in both groups. Possible mechanisms causing depletion of muscle metabolites are discussed.


This paper focuses on the connectivity issues of a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) optical wireless network operating in the ultraviolet UV-C spectral region. NLOS UV-C transmitters have a limited effective coverage and, hence, a dense node distribution is required in order to efficiently cover a large geographical area. Under this assumption, the concept of connectivity is more than important since it provides a strong indication of the network reliability and robustness. In the present study, we consider transmission with on-off keying and pulse position modulation schemes assuming both Gaussian and Poisson noise and adopt an effective experimental path loss model. Then, we evaluate the k-connectivity properties in terms of several network parameters. More precisely, we present and analyze the trade-off between node density and the degree of k-connectivity against other parameters (i.e., transmitted power, supported data rate, and error probability). The derived results are depicted using appropriate figures and tables and constitute the theoretical basis for the design and implementation of a reliable UV-C network in practice.


Biogas upgrading is an expanding field dealing with the increase in methane content of the biogas to produce biomethane. Biomethane has a high calorific content and can be used as a vehicle fuel or directly injected into the gas grid. Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) could become an alternative for biogas upgrading, by which the yield of the process in terms of carbon utilisation could be increased. The simulated effluent from a water scrubbing-like unit was used to feed a BES. The BES was operated with the biocathode poised at −800 mV vs. SHE to drive the reduction of the CO2 fraction of the biogas into methane. The BES was operated in batch mode to characterise methane production and under continuous flow to demonstrate its long-term viability. The maximum methane production rate obtained during batch tests was 5.12 ± 0.16 mmol m−2 per day with a coulombic efficiency (CE) of 75.3 ± 5.2%. The production rate increased to 15.35 mmol m−2 per day (CE of 68.9 ± 0.8%) during the continuous operation. Microbial community analyses and cyclic voltammograms showed that the main mechanism for methane production in the biocathode was hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis by Methanobacterium sp., and that electromethanogenesis occurred to a minor extent. The presence of other microorganisms in the biocathode, such as Methylocystis sp. revealed the presence of side reactions, such as oxygen diffusion from the anode compartment, which decreased the efficiency of the BES. The results of the present work offer the first experimental report on the application of BES in the field of biogas upgrading processes.


This nutshell not only addresses the fundamentals of U.S. international taxation, but it also offers insight into tax planning considerations. Both the U.S. activities of foreign taxpayers, as well as the foreign activities of U.S. taxpayers are explored. In the truly global economy in which we live, it is crucial for those involved in business and investment activities to understand the tax consequences that impact cross-border flows. Building on both academic and private sector careers, the author has used his experience to distill the complexities of real-world tax considerations into a clearly written, straight-forward presentation of the key international tax concepts.


IN THE world of fantasy fiction, perhaps no other writings have found such fame as J. R. R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and its companion books The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. They have also been the subject of much controversy as the "true" meaning of them has been endlessly disputed. They have been evaluated numerous times as a stand against the status quo, as shown by counrercultural declarations of "Frodo Lives" in the subways of New York in the 1970s. The question raised following the original publication of the books was what exactly was Tolkien trying to express through The Lord of the Rings? In response to these inquiries, Tolkien published the following statement in the Foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings: As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches; but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. [...] The real war [World War II] does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. [...] Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of the readers. (Fellowship 10-11) This declaration appears to have quelled these inquisitive voices, for since 1965 relatively little criticism has commented extensively on the hidden implications of The Lord of the Rings. Still, whether intentional or not, the elements that caused this initial question of intent continue to exist within the text of this revered novel. Middle-earth in many ways still parallels the world that existed in the late 1940s when the book was being completed. The vying powers within his created world still support the political ideologies that Tolkien advocated in life. The underlying motivations of the principal characters still echo traditional Christianity. Tolkien claims that in writing The Lord of the Rings, he was attempting to create an apolitical mythology for the English language, isolated from the time and place in which it was written. He is quoted as saying, The Lord of the Rings "is not 'about' anything but itself. Certainly it has no allegorical intentions general, particular or topical; moral, religious or political" (qtd. in Glover 39). Upon closer analysis though, it is impossible to deny the presence of allegorical elements. "Despite Tolkien's well-known distaste for allegory," David Critchett avers, "a point he makes clear in the Foreword to The Lord of the Rings, such a work as the trilogy cannot help but be susceptible to some kind of legitimate allegorical interpretation" (46). Despite his anti-allegorical intentions, The Lord of the Rings is a British epic documenting, analyzing, and criticizing the Western, Christian experience of the early 1900s as seen through the eyes of J. R. R. Tolkien. THE SHIRE AS RURAL ENGLAND, 1900 To begin to see The Lord of the Rings as an allegory of the world at large, it is perhaps best to begin with the land which is most familiar and the hobbits' home, The Shire. Tolkien admitted that much of the model for The Shire is derived from his impressions of rural England (Curry 37). These similarities run deeper than basic superficialities; the landscape, the people, and the customs presented parallel traditional, rural, British stereotypes. In the Prologue, Tolkien describes The Shire as "a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside" (Fellowship 19). The pastoral images of gently rolling hills and stone-fenced fields of England immediately come to mind as the hobbits travel throughout The Shire. …


This paper aims to explore the technical and institutional feasibility of small hydropower storage and pump-storage schemes in Switzerland. Within the European and Swiss context of the facilitation of renewable energy technologies, whereby solar and wind power are intermittent options, additional energy storage capacities are required to adjust the electricity production with the demand. Hydropower pump-storage schemes remain the most efficient and profitable option to "store" electricity. In Switzerland today, most of the big scale hydropower potential is exploited however The potential of small hydropower (<10 MW) for storage and pump-storage applications, especially with a decentralised energy supply and grid balancing perspective ("smart grid"), has not yet been evaluated. Small hydropower storage and pump-storage schemes can be built using streams and lakes, or built within existing infrastructures, such as irrigation and snow-making facilities or inoperative galleries (e.g. those used for the construction of dams or for the military). These facilities offer unexplored opportunities using existing reservoirs. This research focuses on small hydropower with storage and, where feasible, pump capacity as well. The unit of analysis is Switzerland, but the methodology could be applied to other countries. The research aims firstly to evaluate the small storage and pump-storage hydropower potential in a qualitative and explorative manner. Secondly, it aims to formulate institutional recommendations in order to facilitate such a development (e.g. remuneration instruments). The recommendations will also concern the institutional frameworks for SHP in general (e.g. reducing transactions costs, quality guarantee). The theoretical background used for the research is the framework of coherence between institutions and technologies, as well as the literature of co-evolution between institutions and technologies in the case of network industries.


Many words and expressions are viewed as 'taboo', such as those used to describe sex, our bodies and their functions, and those used to insult other people. This 2006 book provides a fascinating insight into taboo language and its role in everyday life. It looks at the ways we use language to be polite or impolite, politically correct or offensive, depending on whether we are 'sweet-talking', 'straight-talking' or being deliberately rude. Using a range of colourful examples, it shows how we use language playfully and figuratively in order to swear, to insult, and also to be politically correct, and what our motivations are for doing so. It goes on to examine the differences between institutionalized censorship and the ways individuals censor their own language. Lively and revealing, Forbidden Words will fascinate anyone who is interested in how and why we use and avoid taboos in daily conversation.


Diabetes greatly affects how people's bodies manage the food they eat. It is essential that people with diabetes follow a carefully structured meal plan and learn specific skills in order to better control their blood glucose levels. The tactics for helping people manage their diabetes through how they eat is called medical nutrition therapy (MNT). Here the American Diabetes Association presents all of the key information and strategies for effectively teaching patients how to manage their diets. Drawing on the knowledge and expertise of dozens of experts in the field, this book covers all of the key topics for implementing successful medical nutrition therapy. Topics include: Thorough discussion of nutrients Description of MNT for type 1 and type 2 diabetes Discussion of providing MNT to special populations, including youth and older individuals Explanation of the different complications of diabetes, such as kidney disease, celiac disease, and cystic fibrosis, and how they impact MNT Latest details on new technology used in MNT Guidelines and strategies for teaching patients about nutrition therapy and how to use it in their daily lives Using MNT to help prevent diabetes


Abstract We erect Mekongbathynella, new genus, to accommodate two new parabathynellid species, M. sesanensis and M. kryi, collected from subterranean water in Cambodia. The new genus is characterized by: the sexual dimorphism of the second antennular segment in the form of a 2-lobed projection in the male, the mandible with seta-like proximal teeth and a molar process having six dentate spines, including the most distal one being distally wide and bifurcated, the absence of a medial seta on the second maxillary segment, the male thoracopod VIII with massive protopod and basipod, rudimentary epipod, the exopod having dentate distal lobes and setae and endopod pointing backward, the absence of a pleopod and the uropod having two spines. The characters distinguishing the two new species are provided in a table. Mekongbathynella is closely related to Eobathynella yeojuensis Schminke, 2011, because of the similarities in the 6-segmented antennule and antenna, in the feature of the mouthparts and thoracopods I–VII, in the general shape of the male thoracopod VIII, and in the absence of pleopod I. In the context of the affinity, the details of the male thoracopods of the two new species and E. yeojuensis are compared. The status of Eobathynella is briefly discussed.


Fossil Fuels have a significant impact on small island countries in the Pacific. Sustainable developments are key for the development of these countries. One such strategy involves using renewable energy resources that are locally available. This paper focuses on a feasibility study for a sustainable campus at the National University of Samoa using a grid connected PV system.

Information from eight years of historical energy consumption, seven weeks of energy load profile data and the potential rooftops of buildings for the two campuses (upper and lower) were analysed using RETScreen and HOMER software.

The pre-feasibility study by RETScreen revealed that it is possible to offset all the university electricity consumptions from solar panels from all the university rooftops buildings to achieve sustainable campus. Also, the HOMER feasibility analysis for 25 years shows that it is economically viable for the university to have its electricity supplied by a grid connected PV system. This is based on the feed-in-tariff of $0.25 AUD, electricity retail price of $0.50 AUD, a real interest rate of 8%, the average market price of the PV panel, battery and inverter.

However, it is not technically possible for the university to have such a system, due to the utility requirements unless energy storage is used. HOMER simulation revealed that system with batteries become more expensive and uneconomical for the university.

It is recommended that a strong support from the government is required for the National University of Samoa in order to achieve a sustainable campus through the use of a grid connected PV system. Also, more research is needed in the area of electrical energy storage in order to increase the solar PV penetration onto the diesel utility grid in the country.


The Practical, Example-Rich Guide to Building Better Systems, Software, and Hardware with DFSS Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) offers engineers powerful opportunities to develop more successful systems, software, hardware, and processes. In Applying Design for Six Sigma to Software and Hardware Systems , two leading experts offer a realistic, step-by-step process for succeeding with DFSS. Their clear, start-to-finish roadmap is designed for successfully developing complex high-technology products and systems that require both software and hardware development. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience leading Six Sigma at Motorola, the authors cover the entire project lifecycle, from business case through scheduling, customer-driven requirements gathering through execution. They provide real-world examples for applying their techniques to software alone, hardware alone, and systems composed of both. Product developers will find proven job aids and specific guidance about what teams and team members need to do at every stage. Using this books integrated, systems approach, marketers, software professionals, and hardware developers can converge all their efforts on what really matters: addressing the customers true needs. Learn how to Ensure that your entire team shares a solid understanding of customer needs Define measurable critical parameters that reflect customer requirements Thoroughly assess business case risk and opportunity in the context of product roadmaps and portfolios Prioritize development decisions and scheduling in the face of resource constraints Flow critical parameters down to quantifiable, verifiable requirements for every sub-process, subsystem, and component Use predictive engineering and advanced optimization to build products that robustly handle variations in manufacturing and usage Verify system capabilities and reliability based on pilots or early production samples Master new statistical techniques for ensuring that supply chains deliver on time, with minimal inventory Choose the right DFSS tools, using the authors step-by-step flowchart If youre an engineer involved in developing any new technology solution, this book will help you reflect the real Voice of the Customer, achieve better results faster, and eliminate fingerpointing. About the Web Site The accompanying Web site, sigmaexperts.com/dfss, provides an interactive DFSS flowchart, templates, exercises, examples, and tools.


A numerical model is presented to predict the time-resolved evolution of the spatial intensity distribution of the laser pulses in the super-Gaussian mirror resonator, taking into account diffraction and stored energy depletion. The beam-quality factor M2 is calculated during the pulse evolution. Simulation results show that gain saturation affects the beam quality of the Q-switched solid-state lasers, the corresponding values of the M2 parameter increase during the pulse evolution. The spatial distribution of laser pulse first starts on the resonator axis with a Gaussian-shaped spot, then expands very quickly and forms a donut-shaped profile towards the end of the pulse.


Generating texts of different sentiment labels is getting more and more attention in the area of natural language generation. Recently, Generative Adversarial Net (GAN) has shown promising results in text generation. However, the texts generated by GAN usually suffer from the problems of poor quality, lack of diversity and mode collapse. In this paper, we propose a novel framework - SentiGAN, which has multiple generators and one multi-class discriminator, to address the above problems. In our framework, multiple generators are trained simultaneously, aiming at generating texts of different sentiment labels without supervision. We propose a penalty based objective in the generators to force each of them to generate diversified examples of a specific sentiment label. Moreover, the use of multiple generators and one multi-class discriminator can make each generator focus on generating its own examples of a specific sentiment label accurately. Experimental results on four datasets demonstrate that our model consistently outperforms several state-of-the-art text generation methods in the sentiment accuracy and quality of generated texts.


CO2 laser is employed to join a piece of powder metallurgical material (PMM) to a stainless steel in butt joint welding mode. The powder Ni35, as a filler powder, is used. The weld metal comes from three parts of stainless steel, powder Ni35, and Cu in W-Cu PMM. It is indicated that some parts of the W-Cu base metal are heated by laser and the metal Cu at the width of 0.06-0.12 mm from the edge is melted into the melting pool in the laser welding process. The formation of firm weld joint is just because that the melting liquid metal could fill the position occupied by metal Cu and surround the metal W granules fully. The analysis results indicate that the mechanism of the laser welding for stainless steel and W-Cu alloy is a special mode of fusion-brazing welding.


Background: Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) and Low Secure Units (LSUs) provide care for the most disturbed inpatients in adult mental health services. Little is known about levels of provision or how these units operate within local services. In 2002 the Department of Health (DoH) published National Minimum Standards of Care for Psychiatric Intensive Care and Low Secure Environments, but there remains a paucity of service level data to inform the specialism. Aim: To offer the first large-scale systematic survey describing service structure and functioning of PICU and LSU. Method: A questionnaire was sent to ward managers of every PICU and LSU in London. Information was gathered on provision, physical structure, staffing and aspects of unit functioning. Results: 17 National Health Service (NHS) PICUs containing 193 beds, and 16 NHS LSUs containing 199 beds were identified in London. An additional one third of PICU provision was privately (non NHS) funded and managed. Bed occupancy was high (90%, PICUs; 95%, LSUs in the 8 weeks prior to census day) and waiting lists for LSU beds long (64 patients on waiting lists for LSU beds on the census day, mean waiting time for LSU bed, 93 days). The use of agency nursing staff was high (33% of staff per shift on PICUs, 28% of staff per shift on LSUs). Conclusions: All but two units failed to meet the National Minimum Standards for PICU and LSU Environments. Improvements need to be made in provision and staffing levels for permanent nursing staff, psychology and other therapies. Idiosyncrasies exist in admission criteria, particularly with regard to informal patients in LSUs and Personality Disordered patients across the board. Declaration of Interest: The project was part-funded by Department of Health.


Rationale The role of the endothelium in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease is an emerging field of study, necessitating the development of appropriate model systems and methodologies to investigate the multifaceted nature of endothelial dysfunction including disturbed barrier function and impaired vascular reactivity. Objective We aimed to develop and test an optimized high-speed imaging platform to obtain quantitative real-time measures of blood flow, vessel diameter and endothelial barrier function in order to assess vascular function in live vertebrate models. Methods and Results We used a combination of cutting-edge optical imaging techniques, including high-speed, camera-based imaging (up to 1000 frames/second), and 3D confocal methods to collect real time metrics of vascular performance and assess the dynamic response to the thromboxane A2 (TXA2) analogue, U-46619 (1 µM), in transgenic zebrafish larvae. Data obtained in 3 and 5 day post-fertilization larvae show that these methods are capable of imaging blood flow in a large (1 mm) segment of the vessel of interest over many cardiac cycles, with sufficient speed and sensitivity such that the trajectories of individual erythrocytes can be resolved in real time. Further, we are able to map changes in the three dimensional sizes of vessels and assess barrier function by visualizing the continuity of the endothelial layer combined with measurements of extravasation of fluorescent microspheres. Conclusions We propose that this system-based microscopic approach can be used to combine measures of physiologic function with molecular behavior in zebrafish models of human vascular disease.


Examining receptor and intracellular kinase dynamics at the single-cell and posttranslational levels reveals new strategies to overcome drug resistance. Advances in genomics have revealed driver mutations for many cancers, but exclusively targeting these drivers has limited efficacy, in part because of the emergence of nongenetic, adaptive resistance in tumors. By examining treatment-induced changes in target kinases and their signaling networks on the posttranslational level, two studies found new ways to overcome drug resistance in several types of cancer. Two common mechanisms of adaptive drug resistance are pathway rewiring and intratumoral heterogeneity. Wei et al. (see also Lam and Yaffe) combined genomic and single-cell phosphoproteomic analyses to examine the in vivo response of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) to inhibitors of the kinase mTOR. In patient-derived glioblastoma xenografts grown in mice, neither copy number variations nor mutations revealed by whole-exome sequencing correlated with the emergence of drug resistance. However, single-cell immunohistochemical and proteomic chip analysis combined with computational analysis of excised xenografts revealed both markedly increased heterogeneity in drug-resistant tumors and activation of the kinases ERK [a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)] and SRC (a nonreceptor tyrosine kinase). Combining the mTOR inhibitor with an ERK inhibitor, a SRC inhibitor, or with both was effective at preventing tumor growth in mice bearing mTOR inhibitor–resistant GBM, whereas neither any monotherapy nor the combination of ERK and SRC inhibitors was effective. The rewiring events were detectable at the single-cell level in a small sample of cells within a few days of treatment; thus, clinicians could know very quickly on a small biopsy the cellular effectiveness of a treatment strategy. Miller et al. found a new way in which resistance develops to inhibitors of the MAPK pathway. The proteolytic shedding of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) reduces RTK signaling. In the supernatant of various cancer cell line cultures and in the plasma of mice bearing melanoma or breast cancer xenografts, treatment with a MAPK inhibitor reduced the abundance of the extracellular portions of several RTKs, including ErbB4, MET, and AXL. Consistent with decreased shedding, the MAPK inhibitor increased the abundance of the RTKs on the cell surface. In breast cancer patients that had not received MAPK inhibitor treatment, the amount of RTK extracellular portions, particularly that of AXL, circulating in their serum was increased compared with healthy controls. In melanoma patients, some that had a high amount of circulating RTKs before treatment with MAPK inhibitors had decreased amounts after treatment and this correlated positively with rapid disease progression. However, measuring the abundance of RTKs at the mRNA or protein levels in the tumors did not correlate with progression. Thus, noninvasive blood-based tests could reveal to clinicians whether a treatment is affecting RTK shedding and therefore predict the emergence of resistance before it manifests. The two studies show how understanding the changes that treatments make to signaling pathways could improve clinical strategies for monitoring and treating cancer patients. M. A. Miller, M. J. Oudin, R. J. Sullivan, S. J. Wang, A. S. Meyer, H. Im, D. T. Frederick, J. Tadros, L. G. Griffith, H. Lee, R. Weissleder, K. T. Flaherty, F. B. Gertler, D. A. Lauffenburger, Reduced proteolytic shedding of receptor tyrosine kinases is a post-translational mechanism of kinase inhibitor resistance. Cancer Discov. 6, 382–399 (2016). [PubMed] W. Wei, Y. S. Shin, M. Xue, T. Matsutani, K. Masui, H. Yang, S. Ikegami, Y. Gu, K. Herrmann, D. Johnson, X. Ding, K. Hwang, J. Kim, J. Zhou, Y. Su, X. Li, B. Bonetti, R. Chopra, C. D. James, W. K. Cavenee, T. F. Cloughesy, P. S. Mischel, J. R. Heath, B. Gini, Single-cell phosphoproteomics resolves adaptive signaling dynamics and informs targeted combination therapy in glioblastoma. Cancer Cell 29, 563–573 (2016). [PubMed] F. C. Lam, M. B. Yaffe, Kicking genomic profiling to the curb: How re-wiring the phosphoproteome can explain treatment resistance in glioma. Cancer Cell 29, 435–436 (2016). [PubMed]


ABSTRACT Orientation measurements of 13,000 fossils in Paleozoic shales and fine siltstones at nine sites in the southern Appalachians demonstrate tire feasibility of using fossils as paleocurrent indicators in fine lutites. Preferred orientation was detected by vector mean and Rayleigh test procedures described by Curray (1956) and Pincus (1956), supplemented by chi-square calculations. Prior stratigraphic knowledge was used in this trial study to infer paleoslope directions so that a particular extinct fossil could be oriented relative to paleocurrents. Measurement of hundreds of individuals per sample yielded highly significant orientations which could be related to inferred paleoslope directions. Fossil groups studied include graptolites, brachiopods, criccoconarids, ostracods, gastropods, and the spore-like Tasmanites. A single section of Ordovician Athens Shale was studied in detail at Calera, Alabama, to evaluate vertical consistency of paleocurrent information from graptolites (transport direction averaged due west). On a regional pattern, this agreed with a westerly transport direction for Athens muds at Centerville and Kingsport, Tennessee. Regional consistency of a single stratigraphic horizon was demonstrated for the basal portion of the Chattanooga Shale at Clinch Mountain eastern Tennessee. Biota measured include Ambocoelia, Leiorhynchus, Styliolina, Tentaculites, and Tasmanites. These gave remarkably uniform results at four localities with an average current movement toward N75°W.


Aims. The quiescent periodic photometric modulations of two low-inclination cataclysmic variables observed in Kepler K2 Campaigns 0 and 1, KZ Gem and TWVir, are investigated.
Methods. A phase-correcting method was successfully used to detect the orbital modulations of KZ Gem and TWVir and improve their orbital periods. The light curve morphologies of both CVs were further analyzed by defining flux ratios and creating colormaps.
Results. KZ Gem shows ellipsoidal modulations with an orbital period of 0.22242(1) day, twice the period listed in the updated RK catalogue (Edition 7.24). With this newly determined period, KZ Gem is no longer a CV in the period gap, but a long-period CV. A part of the quiescent light curve of TWVir that had the highest stability was used to deduce its improved orbital period of 0.182682(3) day. The flat patterns shown in the colormaps of the flux ratios for KZ Gem demonstrate the stability of their orbital modulations, while TWVir show variable orbital modulations during the K2 datasets. In TWVir, the single versus double-peaked nature of the quiescent orbital variations before and after superoutburst may be related to the effect of the superoutburst on the accretion disk.


Bioactive peptides derived from milk proteins are of particular interest to the food industry due to the potential functional and physiological roles that they demonstrate, particularly in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD). By 2020 it is estimated that heart disease and stroke will become the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Acute and chronic cardiovascular events may result from alterations in the activity of the renin-angiotensin aldosterone system and activation of the coagulation cascade and of platelets. Medications that inhibit angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) are widely prescribed in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease. ACE inhibitory peptides are of particular interest due to the presence of encrypted inhibitory peptide sequences. In particular, Ile-Pro-Pro and Val-Pro-Pro are fore runners in ACE inhibition, and have been incorporated into commercial products. Additionally, studies to identify additional novel peptides with similar bio-activity and the ability to withstand digestion during transit through the gastrointestinal tract are ongoing. The potential sources of such peptides in cheese and other dairy products are discussed. Challenges to the bio-availability of such peptides in the gastro intestinal tract are also reviewed. Activation of platelets and the coagulation cascade play a central role in the progression of cardiovascular disease. Platelets from such patients show spontaneous aggregation and an increased sensitivity to agonists which results in vascular damage and endothelial dysfunction associated with CVD. Peptide sequences exhibiting anti-thrombotic activity have been identified from fermented milk products. Studies on such peptides are reviewed and their effects on platelet function are discussed. Finally the ability of food derived peptides to decrease the formation of blood clots (thrombi) is reviewed. In conclusion, due to the widespread nature of cardiovascular disease, the identification of food derived compounds that exhibit a beneficial effect in such widespread areas of CVD regulation will have strong clinical potential. Due to the perception that food derived products have an acceptable risk profile they have the potential for widespread acceptance by the public. In this review, selected biological effects relating to CVD are discussed with a view to providing essential information to researchers.


A Review of:
Baich, T. (2015). Open access: Help or hindrance to resource sharing? Interlending & Document Supply, 43(2), 68-75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ILDS-01-2015-0003

Abstract

Objective – To examine interlibrary loan (ILL) request rates for open access (OA) materials and determine how OA may affect resource sharing. This research updates the author's previous study.

Design – Quantitative analysis.

Setting – A large, urban, public research university library system in the United States of America.

Subjects – 1,557 open access ILL material requests among 23,531 total ILL requests submitted during the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years (July 2011-June 2013).

Methods – The library has tracked and recorded OA requests that appear among ILL material requests since 2009. Using OCLC's ILLiad software to manage ILL requests, they have implemented two custom routines. One routine is for open access searching on standard items, and uses software plugins to search across various open resources. All materials published prior to 1923 are treated as being in the public domain, so requests for these materials are automatically routed to this queue. The second custom routine is used for searching for OA electronic theses and dissertations, and is employed when the requested resource is not found in the library's subscription resources. Other article requests are routed to the RapidILL service for open access availability.

Main Results – The research presented reveals that ILL requests for OA materials exhibited a steady increase year over year, while overall ILL requests decreased slightly. This finding is true both for the fiscal years reported in this study and also the years since the author's original study in 2011 (Baich, 2012). Of the 1,557 OA requests examined, 72% (n=1,135) were for journal articles, 8% (n=125) were for books or book chapters, 9% (n=140) were for theses or dissertations, 3% (n=54) were for conference papers, and 7% (n=105) were for reports.

Library staff typically fill these article requests using gold OA or green OA sources. The researcher notes the difficulty in refining by source, though confirmed that 15% of articles requested (n=170) were filled using a gold OA source, and that another 30 article requests (~2.6%) were filled with materials available in the public domain. This leads to the conclusion that the majority of article requests are filled using green OA sources. As the library also includes OA collections within its electronic resources, staff filled 13% of ILL article requests (n=152) using journals and repositories from these sources. Another 16% of article requests were filled using a combination of various online open repositories, including subject repositories (n=83), institutional repositories (n=84), or national or consortial repositories (n=16).

The author includes a similar breakdown of fulfillment rates and sources for the other main categories explored – books and book chapters, theses and dissertations, conference papers, and reports – representing a combined 27% of all OA ILL requests. Regarding this content, it is noteworthy that overall open access requests for these material categories has dropped across each category when compared to the author's previous study, with the exception of report requests, which more than doubled compared to that previous study.

The study includes a brief overview of the user status for users making the various open access requests, with undergraduate students (n=283) and graduate students (n=807) combined making 70% of all requests. Subject areas are also briefly examined, with ILL requests coming from 63 different schools or departments across the library system. The top 15 are reported, with Psychology being the top requester (n=198), followed closely by Engineering & Technology (n=182). The author notes that 7 of the top 15 are STEM or health science disciplines.

Conclusion – The rate of ILL requests for OA materials shows that library users continue to struggle with information retrieval. The researcher concludes that in many cases, making an ILL request is easier for the user than completing a thorough search. Since staff resources are being redirected to fill user requests for materials that are readily available through open access, this use of staff time may have impacts on resource sharing and the library's ability to fill ILL requests. The author identifies benefits of using OA resources, including an increased ability of staff to fulfill ILL requests, especially when providing grey literature, theses and dissertations, and conference papers and reports. Another identified benefit was the decreased turnaround time for securing materials, with immediate availability via OA saving 1.15 days to deliver materials to the user. Finally, the library estimates cost savings of over $27,000 (USD), based on estimated traditional per unit ILL costs.


The Changhua fault is a long fault (80 km), extending along the western border of three gravel terraces in west-central Taiwan. It represents the western-most thrust fault in the deformation front of Taiwan's western foothill area. Photogeologic studies indicate that it could be an active fault, as it has apparent lineation and fault scarps. In this study, we used the shallow reflection seismic method to map the near-surface structures around the fault and to examine its activity level. It is surprising to find that most of the seismic sections are composed of flat or slant layers and do not show significant traces of fault offsets. Combined with CPC data, we may categorize the fault as a 'blind-thrust' buried at the depth of 3 km. Moreover, this long fault can be divided into northern and southern parts most likely separated by a hidden fault: the Tai-an fault. According to the layer bending attitude, the southern part of the Changhua fault (the Pakua terrace area) could be more active, and may still possess a certain degree of reactivity. By contrast, the northern part is relatively flat and quiet with low potential of activity. Besides detecting the Changhua fault, we also inspected its accompanying back-thrust faults: the Tiehchanshan fault and Hengshan fault, finding that they may not exist.


This article describes a continuous-time Markov approach to the riskneutral pricing of a credit default swap with counterparty risk. The key parameters in the approach are the transition rates, which naturally incorporate the ideas of contagion. Correlation (which is time-dependent) is a derived quantity, which results from contagion. An expansion in powers of a small parameter (a risk-neutral default probability) allows analytic formulae to be obtained for all relevant quantities. Thus, the problem of the calibration of the model to the market prices of the bonds of the reference entity and the counterparty, as well as to the credit default swap spreads of the reference entity (which are independent of the bond spreads in the case of counterparty risk), is solved. This is done with the help of analytic results for the spread of a credit default swap with counterparty risk, as well as for other derivative prices. A comparison with results produced by the market-standard Gaussian copula approach indicates that the market-standard approach could be significantly improved by allowing the copula correlation coefficient to be time-dependent.


A series of novel cationic Re(iii) complexes [(DAAm)Re(CO)(NCCH3)2][X] [DAAm = N,N-bis(2-arylaminoethyl)methylamine; aryl = C6F5 (a), Mes (b)] [X = OTf (2), BArF4 [BArF4 = tetrakis[3,5-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]borate] (3), BF4 (4), PF6 (5)], and their analogue [(DAmA)Re(CO)(Cl)2] [DAmA = N,N-bis(2-arylamineethyl)methylamino; aryl = C6F5] (6) were synthesized. The catalytic efficiency for the hydrosilylation reaction of aldehydes using 4a (0.03 mol%) has been demonstrated to be significantly more active than rhenium catalysts previously reported in the literature. The data suggest that electron-withdrawing substituents at the diamido amine ligand increase the catalytic efficiency of the complexes. Excellent yields were achieved at ambient temperature under neat conditions using dimethylphenylsilane. The reaction affords TONs of up to 9200 and a TOF of up to 126 h-1. Kinetic and mechanistic studies were performed, and the data suggest that the reaction is via a non-hydride ionic hydrosilylation mechanism.


Despite international commitments to integrate indigenous peoples and their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in actions combating climate change, their inclusion remains limited. Integrating TEK with scientific knowledge has become particularly important in sectors such as agriculture, which both contributes to and is affected by climate change. While there is a general recognition that integrating TEK will contribute to climate change adaptation, agricultural interventions have made little progress in achieving this due to the assumption of a clear divide between TEK and scientific knowledge. This paper considers that knowledge integration is already occurring, but in contexts of economic, sociocultural, and political inequalities. We elaborate on the case of traditional weather forecasting methods used by Mayan indigenous farmers in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula to propose a social justice perspective for knowledge integration in climate change interventions. Using information from three studies conducted between 2016 and 2019, we first explain the importance of weather and traditional weather forecast methods for indigenous Mayan farmers. Later we describe in detail both these methods and their links with Mayan cosmology. Findings show how weather phenomena such as drought and hurricanes are main concerns for milpa farming. They illustrate the diversity of traditional short, medium, and long-term weather forecast methods based on observations from nature and the sky. Farmers also perform rituals that are related to their Mayan gods and goddess. As TEK not only defines agricultural calendars but also reproduces Mayan culture, we discuss what is needed for its integration into actions combating climate change. We use a rights-based approach that considers the economic, cultural, and political scales of justice to equally allocate resources and benefits for traditional knowledge systems, recognize indigenous values and worldviews avoiding cultural harms, and accomplish indigenous self-determination through equal representation. As a result, we hope to incentivize development actors engaged in agricultural interventions on climate change to critically reflect and examine power dynamics and relations when working with indigenous communities.


A canyonesque gulf has long existed between open academia and many external subject communities. Since 2011, we have been developing and piloting the public open scholar role (Coughlan and Perryman 2012) - involving open academics discovering, sharing and discussing open educational resources (OER) with online communities outside formal education in order to help bridge this gulf. In 2013 we took the public open scholar into Facebook (Perryman and Coughlan, 2013) to reach an international audience of autism-focussed Facebook groups in India, Africa and Malaysia, with a combined membership of over 5000 people. Performing the public open scholar role within Facebook led to our learning from group members about new resources produced by subject communities outside formal education, for example by voluntary sector organisations, government and professional bodies. These resources are surprisingly numerous and compare favourably with those from universities. Seeking to source more such resources we conducted a systematic large-scale search of free online courses, recording not only the number of learning materials available, but also how easy it was to find them. We found that provision from formal education, especially universities, dominates the returned results when searching for free online courses. Consequently, resources from beyond formal education, while they exist, are difficult to find. Indeed, most aggregators and repositories proudly state that the free online courses they list are from 'Top Universities', appearing oblivious to provision from external subject communities. We extended our research to cover e-textbooks and found a similar situation, with content from formal education again dominating provision. On the basis of these findings we suggest that the prominence of university-provided content within search aggregators not only marginalises externally produced resources, relegating them to even more obscurity than has been the case thus far, but also marginalises the open educational practices that were involved in the production of these resources. We propose that the OER movement's questions about ways of involving end-users as co-producers may be answered by looking to external subject communities and, accordingly, we should be supporting and learning from these communities. In addition, there is a need for further research into the open educational practices of external subject communities, who are clearly more than just passive consumers of resources and are involved in both producing and adapting OER. Our research has also led to our further developing the public open scholar role to include online content curation as a part of the process, on the basis of evidence indicating that online curation has the potential to help increase the discoverability of resources and raise awareness of open educational practices from beyond academia. In particular, we suggest that 'social curation' (Seitzinger, 2014) - which foregrounds sharing curated collections as a component of the curation process - has a key role in this regard. We also suggest that further research in this area could be beneficial, for example in exploring the potential for librarians to become involved in curating OER from outside academia.


Food and beverage industry is one of the prioritized manufacturing sectors that can support Indonesia's economic recovery and structural transformation post Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, the sector contributed 6% of Indonesia's national Gross Domestic Product and 20% of total exports to a value of $45.4 billion. The sector is dominated by micro- and small- medium enterprises and employs an aggregate of 4.6 million people, providing livelihood for many. However, the industry has experienced stagnating growth in the past two decades, particularly due to weak global value chain linkages. This study provides two key takeaways from Indonesia's food industry. Firstly, although the government often cites Indonesia's downstream products to showcase Indonesia's competitiveness in the food industry, the industry is dominated by palm oil related products. Indonesia is actually a net importer of food products if palm oil related goods are excluded from the trade statistics. Heavy reliance on the palm oil industry skews Indonesia's global value chain dynamics toward forward linkages (exports of raw materials) with limited backward linkages (imports of raw materials to be processed further in the country). Palm oil products are less complex compared to types of final products of the food and beverage industry, and rely mostly on Indonesia's climatic advantage. Given the different characteristics, it is important to distinguish the palm oil industries from the other processed food and beverage manufacturing industries, if Indonesia wishes to design its policy around increasing production complexity and improving domestic value added to its food and beverage industry. The second point is the importance of importing value added to move toward a more complex value chain downstream. Due to natural limitations, the food and beverage industry needs imported inputs as they tend to combine various ingredients that may not be produced in one location. Moreover, various studies suggest imported inputs have also been associated with higher firm productivity and quality of products. This study finds that a 1% increase of intermediate input imports correlates with the growth of final good exports by 0.96%. Considering how important Indonesia's domestic market is for downstream products, this result suggests how critical importing input is to the industry. Indonesia should open itself to importing products that are more efficiently produced elsewhere. However, access to imported inputs, especially food and agricultural products, are limited by Indonesia's complex and protectionist trade regulations. Non-tariff measures have proliferated in the sector covering almost 100% of animal, vegetable, and animal products. As a whole, non-tariff measures compound compliance costs and cause delays that inhibits firms' access to a reliable stream of imported inputs, and hence disrupting production. Among the non-tariff measures, quantitative restrictions and import licensing system stood out as causing the greatest distortion to the market and significant restrictions to trade. The quantitative restrictions and import licensing system are regulated in Ministry of Trade Regulations No. 25/2022 that outlines specific requirements to obtain Persetujuan Impor (import license) for each regulated traded product. For some products, such as dairy products, the PI application process requires firms to obtain recommendations from the provincial government and technical ministry. In addition, the Indonesian government also rolled out Neraca Komoditas in 2022 through Presidential Regulations No. 32/2022 that introduced a new trade licensing system based on an integrated supply-demand-stock database. The Neraca Komoditas promises a simplified import licensing system that eliminates the need for technical recommendations, but it presents potentially new problems for firms particularly around the reliability of the database and its focus on quantity of goods available as a factor in approval decision. To facilitate firms' access to imported input, the Ministry of Trade should lead a review and harmonize existing regulations that still present trade barriers to firms. The Ministry of Trade should also consider removing quantitative restrictions and allowing firms with API-P who have met the technical requirements to import without quantity limits. Last but not least, Neraca Komoditas should serve solely to inform broader strategic policy decisions rather than to decide import allowance for firms.


The present study examined category learning in relation to inhibitory control and working memory in children and adults. Results revealed that categorization performance improved with age. Young children struggled with rule learning, many older children were successful at rule learning, and most adults had no difficulty with the task. Model-based analyses suggested that performance differences were due to young children's inability to inhibit the salient, but irrelevant rule. Interestingly, when the analyses focused only on older children and adults who used the task appropriate strategy, the age-related rule-based deficit disappeared. Also, results revealed that successful performance on the categorization task was associated with better inhibitory control for older children, whereas successful performance on the categorization task was associated with greater working memory in young children. These findings suggest that the ability to learn categories varies with age and it may be partially dependent on inhibitory control and working memory.


Background: Epidemiologic studies demonstrated that community acquired pneumonia is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular events. Type 2 MI has been shown to predict a grave outcome, but the long term outcome of patients admitted with CAP who had also type 2 MI has not been studied.
Methods: during the years 2010-2016 all patients that were admitted with CAP were included in this retrospective study, and parameters like type 2 MI, age, gender, type 2 diabetes mellitus and renal failure were collected. The 5 years post discharge mortality rate was analyzed in relation with the clinical parameters.
Results: A total of 1751 consecutive patients were studied, 1222 died during the 5 years follow-up. Type 2 MI during hospitalization with CAP was associated with a higher mortality rate during the follow-up period (38.6% vs. 26.8%). Mortality rate was also dependent on older age and on renal failure.
Regression logistic analysis demonstrated an odds ratio of 19.90 to die after discharge for patients admitted with CAP who developed type 2 MI on admission or during hospitalization, and an odds ratio of 2.054 to die in CAP patients who suffered from renal failure.
Conclusions: Type 2 MI predicted a higher mortality rate during the 5 years follow up post discharge with odds ratio of 19.90. We recommend to modify the risk stratification of patients admitted with CAP and to consider type 2 MI as a risk factor for a long term outcome of patients admitted with CAP, especially older patients and those who suffer from renal failure.


Background: Job crafting refers to the self-initiated changes that employees make to the task or the relational boundaries of their work (Wrzeseniewski & Dutton, 2001). The job demands-resources model has been used to link crafting to employee well-being (Nielsen & Abildgaard, 2012). Both work characteristics and worker personality may stimulate specific types of job crafting behaviour but these mechanisms have not been sufficiently tested. In this study we explored the links between self-reported personality (using a measure of the Big Five) and different forms of job crafting behaviour across a variety of work roles.Method: Participants were from an occupationally-diverse sample of 5,326 UK government workers. Using an online questionnaire they reported whether they had used each of six types of job crafting behaviours during the previous year. These were (each n = participants reporting each form of job crafting): increasing their personal capacity to do the job (n=289); increasing the amount of positive challenge in their work (n=284) obtaining more resources to help them do the job (n=163); increasing the amount of personal control they had at work (n=140); changing the social climate or collaborations with colleagues (n=146); and reducing hindering demands (n=41). Using ANCOVAs we compared the self-reported personality traits of those reporting each type of job crafting to those in a comparison group reporting no crafting.Results: There was strong evidence that those reporting five of the six forms of crafting differed from the comparison group on their personality traits. The links between traits and job crafting differed according to the specific crafting behaviour being reported. Crafting to enhance personal capacity was associated with openness to experience. In contrast, crafting to increase job-related resources was associated with emotional stability. Those reporting crafting to reduce hindering demands and to increase personal control reported significantly lower levels of conscientiousness than the comparison group. Extraversion and openness to experience were associated with crafting to increase the level of challenge at work. None of the Big Five personality factors were associated with crafting the social environment. Overall, there was a low prevalence of crafting behaviour.Conclusions: These findings indicate that trait-specific mechanisms may stimulate specific forms of job crafting. Managers and employees may be able to use information about employee personality to more effectively identify opportunities to enhance person-job fit by adjusting work activities.


ABSTRACTObjectiveAcute respiratory infections (ARI) including bronchiolitis, pneumonia and influenza are a major cause of hospital admissions in children worldwide. Linkage of administrative health datasets provides a platform to investigate temporal and seasonal trends in large populations over many years. We examined the similarities and differences in ARI admissions using linked datasets in Western Australia and England. ApproachThrough the availability of common data items in each jurisdiction, identical coding and data cleaning principles were applied to both datasets. Hospital admissions for ARI in children aged <5 years between 2000 and 2012 were identified using International Classification of Diseases diagnosis codes. Admission rates per 1000 child-years by age, gender and admission year were calculated in each jurisdiction. A total population birth cohort was available in Western Australia and the denominator was person time at risk whereas for England, all hospitalisations were used with the mid-year population as the denominator. ResultsThe overall incidence of ARI was 18.3/1000 child-years in Western Australia and 14.4/1000 in England. In both countries, the highest incidence of ARI was observed in infants (47.9/1000 child-years in Western Australia and 42.1/1000 child-years in England). Bronchiolitis was the most common primary diagnosis in infants in both countries, accounting for 79.7% of ARI admissions in Western Australia and 78.3% in England. The most common primary diagnosis in 1-4 year olds was unspecified lower respiratory tract infections in England (48.8% of ARI admissions in this age group) and pneumonia in Western Australia (43.9% of ARI admissions in 1-4-year-olds). The annual incidence rate for ARI hospitalisations declined in Western Australia from 2000 to 2006 and since remained steady. ARI admission rates increased in England throughout the study period. Admission rates across all age groups were 1.1-1.5 times higher in boys than girls in both countries. ConclusionThe availability of similar datasets in two economically similar countries in different hemispheres has afforded the opportunity to characterise and compare the epidemiology of paediatric respiratory infections over a 13 year period. Future analyses will allow us to assess differences in coding practices, seasonality and risk factors such as socio-economic deprivation and prematurity. Furthermore the availability of linked laboratory data for respiratory pathogens in each jurisdiction will allow for comparisons of pathogen-specific epidemiology and the impact of universal vaccination programs.


The San are among the most marginalized people in Namibia. The San have often relied on indigenous knowledge for survival, particularly since access to resources has proved to be difficult. This study explores the use of indigenous knowledge by a particular San community living on Farm Six, located in the Mangetti West area north of Tsumeb. In particular, the study focuses on the use of indigenous knowledge with regard to traditional medicine. Apart from considerations of the commercial and legal issues concerning the exploitation of the devil's claw and hoodia plant, little has been published about the medicinal properties of San remedies. The findings indicate that the community relies on indigenous knowledge as their main means of treating most illnesses. While the community believes traditional remedies are effective in treating several conditions, they have also turned to herbal treatments because of a lack of access to modern health care: the nearest clinic is over 50 km away, transport is scarce, and a Ministry of Health and Social Services outreach team has not visited the camp for over 2 years. However, it was impossible to establish the medical efficacy of most of these remedies as their properties and effects have not been studied in detail.


In this paper, we explore how emerging technologies and experiences challenge previous theories and practices to grow and adopt and, thus, address new and unique challenges, such as designing across macro-level ecosystems, new devices, and interaction models that enable user control of data in an increasingly complex digital world. We discuss these topics with respect to real and future examples, the unique challenges they present, and how academia and industry must collaborate to adapt current frameworks and develop new methods to address these challenges. This partnership will ensure both parties better understand the problem space for designing emerging experiences in today's digital economy. Further, this partnership enables scholars and practitioners to more effectively explore the solution space for designing novel products and developing advanced theories that help craft meaningful user experiences. Finally, we argue that the partnership between academia and industry can develop future talent and upskill current practitioners, which is paramount in successfully meeting the challenges inherent in the design of emerging technologies.


This paper carries out a comprehensive examination of technical trading rules in cryptocurrency markets, using data from two Bitcoin markets and three other popular cryptocurrencies. We employ almost 15,000 technical trading rules from the main five classes of technical trading rules and find significant predictability and profitability for each class of technical trading rule in each cryptocurrency. We find that the breakeven transaction costs are substantially higher than those typically found in cryptocurrency markets. To safeguard against data-snooping, we implement a number of multiple hypothesis procedures which confirms our findings that technical trading rules do offer significant predictive power and profitability to investors. We also show that the technical trading rules offer substantially higher risk-adjusted returns than the simple buy-and-hold strategy, showing protection against lengthy and severe drawdowns associated with cryptocurrency markets. However there is no predictability for Bitcoin in the out-of-sample period, although predictability remains in other cryptocurrency markets.


Abstract:The late nineteenth-century Bugandan king Kabaka Mwanga is perhaps one of the most controversial Ugandan historical personalities because of the perceptions that have shaped and continue to shape how his sexuality is understood. The Kabaka's sexuality, which has been placed at the center of contemporary sexuality debates in the country, is colored by complexly paradoxical spatial and chronological registers. These registers that stretch from the colonial to postcolonial moments in public discourses in the country variously mobilize Mwanga's sexuality for propaganda purposes. While the colonial archive mobilizes Mwanga to argue that colonialism and Christianity rescued Ugandans from homosexuality, two versions of the postcolonial library simultaneously lionize and demonize this historical figure for differing ideological purposes. While the earlier postcolonial library briefly constructed Mwanga as a patriot who resisted colonialism, the most recent postcolonial record characterized by an alliance between the Ugandan state and Pentecostal Christianity demonizes Mwanga to justify their project of criminalizing same-sexualities. Writing in the throes of these topically polarizing Ugandan sexuality debates of the last decade, Ugandan novelist Nakisanze Segawa strategically inserts Mwanga's nonnormative sexuality in the first section of her debut historical/political thriller novel to provide a counter characterization of a historical figure whose sexuality has been used as a metaphor in Ugandan public discourses on sexuality. Nabutanyi argues that Segawa's representation of Mwanga, which counteracts his politicized portrayal, shows how same-sex loving men are ordinary and flawed.


We experimentally demonstrated an electrically excited surface plasmon source, which was fulfilled in a silver coated light emitting diode (LED) with well-designed gratings. With a DC current supply, surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waves were generated directly from the illuminations of the LED via the grating coupler. By adjusting the grating to a tilted one, a unidirectional SPP beam was successfully attained with a high extinction ratio (ER~10) and an improved launching efficiency. Detailed analyses show that this electrically generated unidirectional SPP has a considerable long propagation distance (~14 μm), allowing for further manipulations in plasmonic integrations and sensors.