The marine organic carbon cycle was calculated for three different regions in the Atlantic Ocean. Supported by a Geographic Information System (GIS) a new method of spatial modelling was established to enhance detailed resolution, but still keeping the possibility for a basin wide calculation. For a realistic estimation of the world wide marine carbon cycle it is important to account regional aspects because of the high variability of oceanic regions. Therefore, summing up more realistic regional budgets may cause a considerable revision of existing global estimations.In this study, the investigated regions are characteristic for three different marine regimes, which are: the northern North Atlantic with its subpolar climate and deep water formation, the northern West Atlantic with the Gulf Stream and the oligotrophic Sargasso Sea, and the equatorial East Atlantic with its equatorial and coastal upwelling.The flux of organic carbon from the photic zone to the deep sea and its degradation at the seafloor was modelled and extrapolated by detailed empirical analyses of representative data sets for each region. For a spatial extrapolation three representative master parameters were defined: Primary Production (PP in g C m-2 a-1) at the sea surface, organic carbon flux (FCorg in g C m-2 a-1) at the seafloor and the corresponding water depth (z in meters). Organic carbon fluxes at the seafloor were determined by oxygen demand measurements in surface sediments. For each of the regions, available data were collected and a final representative methodically homogenous data set of oxygen fluxes was installed in order to estimate the amount of organic carbon flux at the sediment-water interface. In contrast to these locally limited one-dimensional data, PP at the sea surface derived from satellite imagery and water depth were chosen as two-dimensional highly resolved spatial data sets.Due to the continuous degradation of organic matter in the water column empirical relationships were established for each region by a non-linear regression method. The flux of organic carbon at the seafloor that passes the sediment-water interface was expressed by the product of PP as the initial gross amount of organic carbon at the sea surface and the corresponding water depth:FCorg = PPb * z-c. The quality of this approach was proven by correlation coefficients between 0.89 and 0.96 as well as convincing results obtained by tests of the final regressions with independent data sets. With the help of these regional relationships the spatial distribution of organic carbon flux that reaches the sediment-water interface could be extrapolated for each region. Subsequently, the two gridded spatial data sets of PP by Antoine et al. (1996) and water depth by ETOPO5 (1988), both reflecting the natural distribution, enabled a cell-by-cell-calculation with an adequate resolution of 9.3 * 9.3 km. Equal area projections and overlay-techniques enabled exact planimetric analyses and mass balance calculations of each data set.In order to investigate the benthic-pelagic coupling of the marine organic carbon cycle in each region the gridded flux data sets were divided by GIS-techniques into different zones: biogeographical provinces, morphological structures such as basins or slopes, and depth-dependent zones. Specifically, the northern North Atlantic reveals benthic remineralisation fluxes half as high as the two other regions and also smaller Export Ratios with a spatial variation of 1.7 to 2.0 % at 1000m water depth. The biogeographic provinces of the Gulf Stream and the Sargasso Sea in the northern West Atlantic are divided by different Export Ratios of 3 and 6 % at 1000 m water depth. Compared with global calculations, fluxes twice as high at the continental upper northeast American slope could be distinguished from extremely low fluxes in the deep sea. In contrast to the other regions, the equatorial East Atlantic shows significantly higher benthic fluxes with a constant high level throughout down to the abyssal plain due to the equatorial upwelling and high PP. Thus, local variability and specific dynamics are captured and adequately calculated both depth dependent and on a small regional scale. This partitioning shows a significant reflection of the biogeographical provinces of the sea surface from the benthic point of view. In contrast to global approaches, all three regions show different depth-related benthic remineralisation and specific regional distribution patterns.


Segmental Anchoring Hypothesis (SAH) and Invariant Rise Hypothesis (IRH) are two models that account for the effects of segmental information on tonal alignment. While SAH suggests that tonal targets are anchored to specific segments, IRH suggests that segmental factors condition tonal alignment. In this paper, I explore Peruvian Amazonian Spanish and examine the effects of segmental duration and syllable structure on tonal alignment. Results show that F0 peaks consistently occur in the stressed syllable, regardless of segmental duration and syllable structure. Furthermore, F0 peaks tend to align with the stressed vowel, even in closed syllables, possibly suggesting that this vowel is the segmental anchor. These findings thus provide supporting evidence in favor of SAH, contrary to previous claims for Spanish.


This book is the result of project elaborated in cooperation between the IMPEL working group on criminal prosecution and METRO, with the goal of providing an insight into the systems and methods of criminal prosecution in environmental cases in practice. This book therefore provides an overview of criminal prosecution practice in environmental cases in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. It is based on the results of a comprehensive questionnaire that was answered by various experts in country reports. In addition, the book contains a detailed summary and comparison of the country reports. This provides not only a summary of the criminal prosecution of environmental law in the various countries, but also addresses differences and similarities in practice with respect to environmental criminal law. A critical analysis of the answers is also provided. Both in the comparative overview and in the analysis, crucial issues with respect to the enforcement of environmental law are discussed, such as the criminal liability of corporations for environmental offences, the role of enforcing bodies and individuals in connection with environmental offences, the possibility of administrative or criminal penalties, the existence of instruments which prohibit individuals from carrying out similar activities, and the criminal liability for environmental offences by public servants and public authorities. Special attention is also given to transfrontier pollution incidents. In their concluding remarks, the editors of the book address the trend towards corporate criminal liability, discuss the difference between administrative and criminal enforcement of environmental law and also pay attention to current moves to achieve a European environmental criminal law.


Excess rotor vibration decreases production quality and causes unscheduled maintenance breaks in the manufacturing industry utilizing rotating machinery in production. Measuring and monitoring the rotor vibration levels in production conditions provides added value through decreased maintenance costs and quality variations. E.g., paper and metal manufacturing are fields where the rotor running accuracy affects directly to the quality of the final product.
In few production machines, critical components are equipped with a modern wired condition monitoring system to acquire vibration signals from the bearing housings during operation. However, upgrading a running production machine with this kind of system is expensive and requires a maintenance brake.
In the present study, a low-cost MEMS accelerometer sensor and wireless data transmitter were attached to a bearing housing of a large rotor. Measurement series was conducted to determine the subcritical vibration spectrum and the results were verified against a laboratory vibration measurement instrument. The vibration was measured during a rotor acceleration mimicking a production ramp-up.


If the federal government has constitutional power to address a social ill, and hence has power under the Supremacy Clause to preempt state, local, and common law regimes, is there a principled rationale for distinguishing federal standard setting that sets a federal floor or ceiling? At first blush, the two appear to be mere flip sides of the same federal power, only distinguished by their different regulatory preferences for a world of minimized risk (with floors) or higher levels of risk (with ceilings). This Article argues, however, that these two central regulatory choices are fundamentally different. Floors embrace additional and more stringent state and common law action, while ceilings actually are better labeled a "unitary federal choice" due to how they preclude any more lax or more stringent action as well as the different actors, incentives, and modalities of information elicitation and proof of common law settings. Advocates of less hindered markets respond that this is precisely the idea-regulatory certainty is enhanced with ceiling preemption, allowing producers of goods to plan with confident knowledge of the regulatory terrain, unbuffeted by an array of uncoordinated actors. This debate was, until recently, largely hypothetical. Recently, however, in settings as diverse as product approvals, to regulation of risks posed by chemical plants, to possible legislation regarding greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, legislators and regulators have suggested or asserted such a broad, preemptive impact. The federal action, whatever it is, would be the final regulatory choice. But under what theory of regulation and legislation can one be confident that locating all decisionmaking power in one institution at one time will lead to appropriate standard setting? In fact, advocates of risk regulation, "experimentalist regulation" scholars, and, at the other end of spectrum, skeptics about the likelihood of public-regarding regulation, all call for attention to pervasive risks of regulatory failure. Agency and legislative inertia, information uncertainties and asymmetries, outdated information and actions, regulatory capture, and a host of other common regulatory risks create a substantial chance of poor or outdated regulatory choice. Considering these pervasive risks of regulatory failure, the principled distinctions between floor and ceiling preemption become apparent. Vesting all decisionmaking power in one institution can freeze regulatory developments. Unitary federal choice ceiling preemption is an institutional arrangement that threatens to produce poorly tailored regulation and public choice distortions of the political process, whether it be before the legislature or a federal agency. Floor preemption, in contrast, constitutes a partial displacement of state choice in setting a minimum level of protection, but leaves room for other actors and additional regulatory action. Floors anticipate and benefit from the institutional diversity they permit. This Article closes by showing how the institutional diversity engendered by retaining multiple layers of law and regulatory actors creates conditions conducive to reassessment and adjustment of often rigid or outdated regulation.


We identify three aspects of style pertaining to documents. The first of these we call literary style and it includes the word and sentence constructions and choice of illustrations traditionally associated with authorship. The second we call informative style and it includes formatting and iconic choices that convey additional information such as the document's genre or corporate identity. The third aspect of style covers the degrees of freedom remaining for the author and is used to convey the author's intent. Literary style is the realm of academic scholarship and discourse and is beyond the scope of the present article. But corporate and intent style can be quantified by measuring many different attributes. For example, density of text, colorfulness of images, regularity of positioning of images, diversity of font and typeface, all contribute to the document's overall style. Indeed, we have identified more than 150 different value functions, each of which can be measured, and each of which can contribute to a document's overall stylistic appearance. Measurement of these value functions effectively places a document as a point in a style space. But the 150 value functions are not independent. A heuristic approach is described for investigating the possibility of finding basis vectors for intent space.


ABSTRACT Muslim immigrants are vulnerable to COVID-19. They are not only at risk being infected due to extended households and frontline jobs, but they are also vulnerable to moral panics, stigmatization and corona-racism. When Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen in March 2020 closed down society, she appealed to the samfundssind (civic consciousness) of all citizens in Denmark, as a means to fight the invisible enemy of the global pandemic. The idea of samfundssind outlined a moral community between those citizens who did their best to follow the instructions of the authorities and those who deliberately ignored them. This article discusses the establishment of "Taskforce COVID-19", an ad hoc network of Danish-Pakistanis that in 2020–21 collaborated with municipalities and different health authorities in order to fight the virus. However, despite their aspiration to be accepted and included in the collective of citizens exhibiting samfundssind their efforts were questioned and regarded with suspicion.


A flexor tendon injury is acquired fast and is common for athletes, construction workers, and military personnel among others, treated in the emergency department. However, the healing of injured flexor tendons is stretched over a long period of up to 12 weeks, therefore, remaining a significant clinical problem. Postoperative complications, arising after traditional tendon repair strategies, include adhesion and tendon scar tissue formation, insufficient mechanical strength for early active mobilization, and infections. Various researchers have tried to develop innovative strategies for developing a polymer-based construct that minimalizes these postoperative complications, yet none are routinely used in clinical practice. Understanding the role such constructs play in tendon repair should enable a more targeted approach. This review mainly describes the polymer-based constructs that show promising results in solving these complications, in the hope that one day these will be used as a routine practice in flexor tendon repair, increasing the well-being of the patients. In addition, the review also focuses on the incorporation of active compounds in these constructs, to provide an enhanced healing environment for the flexor tendon.


The influence of multidimensional resistivity structures on inversion results of Transient ElectroMagnetic (TEM) data using one-dimensional (1-D) models is examined. The investigation is focused on the Long-Offset TEM (LOTEM) method. Synthetic data for the electric and magnetic field components typically measured at LOTEM receiver sites are calculated for a wide variety of models. These transients are inverted with a 1-D smooth model inversion algorithm. The inversions results do not exactly reproduce the original model. An attempt to reduce the model distortions caused by the multidimensional structures with different regularisation schemes fails. Statistically, the new regularisation schemes reduce the roughness of the models slightly, which will suppress artificial structures. In general, however, the geological interpretation will not be changed. The inversion of synthetic data sets shows that the different LOTEM-components provide different information with respect to the multidimensional structure. The 1-D models resulting from automated inversions thus may be inconsistent for the different components. In most cases meaningful information about the underlying model can be derived from the pseudo-sections of composed 1-D models. However, the inversion results do not only reflect the subsurface close to the receiver (Rx) but also the subsurface close to the transmitter (Tx) and between Rx and Tx. In the best cases, the inversion results thus reflect the gross resistivity structure of the subsurface. Comparing the TEM results to the selective information from a borehole therefore might show some discrepancies. The LOTEM results will also be different to results for the SHort-Offset TEM (SHOTEM) modification, as the volume of the subsurface contributing to the induction process differs significantly from the one for the LOTEM setup. The inconsistencies of the models for the different components causes a problem. The various models derived from different TEM-components at one single position have to be merged into one consistent geophysical model. A common approach would be to invert all data sets jointly in one inversion. However, this approach turned out to be dangerous as the so-called joint-inversions of different LOTEM-components tends to produce artifacts instead of suppressing them. A new joint-inversion approach is presented. Here, variations between the models for the different data sets are allowed to account for inconsistencies in the transients. The regularisation of the inversion favours results, where the variations between the models for the different data sets are small. The resulting pseudo-sections in general show far less spurious structures than for the pseudo-sections derived from the standard joint-inversions. In addition, the different models allow to analyse the inconsistencies and to estimate the reliability of a certain feature. Further it is shown that the data distortion by certain inhomogeneities close to the Tx can be accounted for by introducing additional parameters to the inversion process. This way pseudo-sections can be derived from the data sets which reproduce the gross resistivity structure very well for almost all data sets. The new regularisation scheme, the new joint-inversion algorithm and the additional distortion parameters are used to interpret data sets from a field campaign in northern Israel. The objective of the project is to derive the distribution of saline water in the subsurface. This knowledge would help to determine the source of saline water currently flowing into the Sea of Galilee and degrading its water quality. The new interpretation scheme proves to be very helpful to derive meaningful resistivity models from the measured data sets. The analyses of the data shows that some stations have to be excluded from the interpretation. Nevertheless, a cross-section between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee is derived from the TEM data sets. It supports the hypothesis that saltwater from the Mediterranean plays an active role in the salination of the Sea of Galilee.


Introduction: Urinary incontinence during sleeping is a common condition in children older than four years. This is called nocturnal enuresis. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the sociodemographic characteristics of children with nocturnal enuresis and its relationships with etiology, diagnosis, treatment, and obesity. Materials and Methods: 692 patients diagnosed with primary nocturnal enuresis were screened retrospectively and included in the study. Their families were interviewed and asked to fill out the questionnaire form. This questionnaire form contained questions about gender, family history of nocturnal enuresis, frequency of nocturnal enuresis, presence of encopresis or constipation, monthly income, number of siblings, age at initiation of toilet training, sleep assessment, history of previous treatment, and perspective of families on their children's medication use, height, and weight. The relationship of these variables with nocturnal enuresis was evaluated. Findings: Of the 692 patients included in the study, 262 (37.8%) were female and 430 (62.2%) were male. The mean age was 9.2 (5-16) years. 112 (16.1%) patients had a family history of nocturnal enuresis. 241 (34.9%) patients wet the bed every day, 341 (49.3%) patients wet the bed two or three days per week, 62 (8.9%) patients wet the bed one day per week or less, and 48 (6.9%) wet the bed one day per month or less. While 96 (13.8%) patients had accompanying chronic constipation, 13 (1.8%) patients had accompanying encopresis. The families of 386 (55.8%) patients had a monthly income of less than 1000 TL, the families of 214 (30.9%) patients had a monthly income between 1000-2000 TL, and the families of 92 (13.3%) patients had a monthly income of 2000 TL or over. When the number of siblings in the family was examined, 52 (7.6%) patients had no siblings, 394 (56.9%) patients had 4 or more siblings. When age at initiation of toilet training was examined, 534 (73.9%) patients received toilet training between the ages of 2 and 5 years. According to sleep assessment, 360 (52.1%) patients slept deeply. 338 (48.8%) patients received previous treatment. While the families of 358 (51.7%) patients took a positive approach to medication initiation, the families of 334 (48.3%) patients were hesitant to medication initiation due to medication side effects. According to body mass index (BMI) category, 262 (37.9%) patients were lean, 364 (52.7%) patients were normal weight, 42 (6%) patients were overweight, and 24 (3.4%) patients were obese. Conclusion: Nocturnal enuresis is an important health problem that adversely affects children. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to raise family awareness about nocturnal enuresis, to assess the socioeconomic status of the family, to determine whether there is a genetic predisposition in the family, and to reveal the presence of additional diseases in the child. The family should be adequately informed about the treatment. It should be explained to the family that nocturnal enuresis should be followed up. We think that there is a need for further studies on this subject.


A psychological phenomenon may be a significant cause of academic underachievement by minorities in law school. This phenomenon, called stereotype threat, occurs as a result of the fear of confirming a negative group stereotype (such as African-Americans are not as intelligent as Whites). When subject to this threat — as a consequence of being confronted with environmental or explicit triggers — people do worse in academic settings than they otherwise are capable of doing. In this article, I explore the implications of the research on stereotype threat for law schools and make several recommendations to deal with the threat.There are natural implications for law school admissions, of course. If a portion of our applicant pool is affected by stereotype threat, then we cannot trust the accuracy of the metrics we typically use in law school admissions, i.e., prior academic performance and LSAT scores of law school applicants. Indeed, those credentials actually may under-evaluate the academic potential of these applicants, who are often minority students. This should cause law schools to reevaluate their admissions policies.After students are admitted, law school provides fertile ground within which stereotype threat can flourish. This, of course, means that the performance of minorities in law school — in class, on exams, and in other areas — is likely to be diminished, such that many minorities will not perform up to their academic capacity. And, obviously, we would expect this same dynamic to play out on the bar exam.Law schools can address stereotype threat at each of these levels, and they should do so. This article lays out a framework for understanding and dealing with the threat.


Southeastwards of Mangalia, 6 - 7 meters under the sea level, on a surface of about two hectares, there were discovered vestiges of the ancient fortress of Callatis. The settlement known since the 4 th century B.C. had almost a millenary existence, but it is not known when it ceased to exist and what causes triggered it. Different suppositions were made and, among them, the telluric causes are plausible. The Southern Dobroudja Platform is penetrated by mobile faults and the compartment of Mangalia is affected by a negative neotectonic movement that gets accentuated towards southeast, where the epicentres of earthquakes with repeated manifestation have been observed. The negative movement rate is 3 - 4 mm/year and, cumulated during the 15 centuries that passed since the disappearance of the city of Callatis, it could explain the depth at which the vestiges of the settlement are presently located.


Phosphorylation is usually assumed to regulate signal transduction by triggering a conformational switch. Volkman et al. show that in the signaling protein NtrC, activation by phosphorylation involves stabilization of a preexisting conformation. Nuclear magnetic resonance measurements of backbone dynamics show that both active and inactive conformations are populated in unphosphorylated NtrC, with the inactive form favored. Phosphorylation shifts the equilibrium far toward the active conformation, so that conformational exchange virtually disappears. Thus, allosteric regulation of single domains may be important in signal transduction. Buck and Rosen provide a Perspective on the data. B. F. Volkman, D. Lipson, D. E. Wemmer, D. Kern, Two-state allosteric behavior in a single-domain signaling protein. Science 291, 2429-2433 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text] M. Buck, M. K. Rosen, Flipping a switch. Science 291, 2329-2330 (2001). [Full Text]


NONLINEAR CONTROL AND ESTIMATION WITH GENERAL PERFORMANCE CRITERIA Xin Wang Marquette University, 2011 This dissertation is concerned with nonlinear systems control and estimation with general performance criteria. The purpose of this work is to propose general design methods to provide systematic and effective design frameworks for nonlinear system control and estimation problems. First, novel State Dependent Linear Matrix Inequality control approach is proposed, which is optimally robust for model uncertainties and resilient against control feedback gain perturbations in achieving general performance criteria to secure quadratic optimality with inherent asymptotic stability property together with quadratic dissipative type of disturbance reduction. By solving a state dependent linear matrix inequality at each time step, the sufficient condition for the control solution can be found which satisfies the general performance criteria. The results of this dissertation unify existing results on nonlinear quadratic regulator, H and positive real control. Secondly, an 2 H H  State Dependent Riccati Equation controller is proposed in this dissertation. By solving the generalized State Dependent Riccati Equation, the optimal control solution not only achieves the optimal quadratic regulation performance, but also has the capability of external disturbance reduction. Numerically efficient algorithms are developed to facilitate effective computation. Thirdly, a robust multicriteria optimal fuzzy control of nonlinear systems is proposed. To improve the optimality and robustness, optimal fuzzy control is proposed for nonlinear systems with general performance criteria. The Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model is used as an effective tool to control nonlinear systems through fuzzy rule models. General performance criteria have been used to design the controller and the relative weighting matrices of these criteria can be achieved by choosing different coefficient matrices. The optimal control can be achieved by solving the LMI at each time step. Lastly, since any type of controller and observer is subject to actuator failures and sensors failures respectively, novel robust and resilient controllers and estimators are also proposed for nonlinear stochastic systems to address these failure problems. The effectiveness of the proposed control and estimation techniques are demonstrated by simulations of nonlinear systems: the inverted pendulum on a cart and the Lorenz chaotic system, respectively. Dissertation Supervisor: Prof. Edwin E. Yaz, PhD EECE


In this article, I look at "imperial formations" rather than at empire per se to register the ongoing quality of processes of decimation, displacement, and reclamation. Imperial formations are relations of force, harboring political forms that endure beyond the formal exclusions that legislate against equal opportunity, commensurate dignities, and equal rights. Working with the concept of imperial formation, rather than empire per se, the emphasis shifts from fixed forms of sovereignty and its denials to gradated forms of sovereignty and what has long marked the technologies of imperial rule—sliding and contested scales of differential rights. Imperial formations are defined by racialized relations of allocations and appropriations. Unlike empires, they are processes of becoming, not fixed things. Not least they are states of deferral that mete out promissory notes that are not exceptions to their operation but constitutive of them: imperial guardianship, trusteeships, delayed autonomy, temporary intervention, conditional tutelage, military takeover in the name of humanitarian works, violent intervention in the name of human rights, and security measures in the name of peace.


Software engineering has been facing a crisis for several years now - there is more demand for new software than there is ability to supply. Software reuse is a potential way to tackle the problems caused by the software crisis with its promises of increased productivity and cheaper development costs. Several software reuse successes have been reported, but these have been predominantly in large, well structured companies. However, there are numerous smaller companies that could also benefit from reuse if it were made available to them. This thesis addresses these issues by implementing a reuse programme in a small company. An incremental approach to reuse introduction is adopted, following the Seven Steps to Success, and 'lightweight' processes are recommended to support the reuse programme. A prototype tool set, ReThree- C++, was developed to automate support for the reuse programme. The results of the case study are presented. The reuse programme was successful, with benefits to the company including both increased speed of production and financial gains from selling reusable components. The challenges faced are also identified. Details of the tool set giving automated support for reuse are also presented. The tool set is an approach to reuse repository control which also integrates information abstraction from C++ source code to generate class hierarchy charts and software documentation automatically. It helps developers store, retrieve, understand and use reusable components. The usefulness of the tool set is shown with an experiment and as part of the case study. The purpose of the thesis is to show that small companies can implement reuse, and that the method presented supports the introduction of a reuse programme. It concludes that although challenges were faced, great benefits can be gained by using the method with automated support for reuse in a small company.


Objectives: The current study contributes to the literature through a systematic social observation of the defensive actions of drug sellers within open-air retail markets. The study expands upon previous literature by incorporating a novel data collection and coding method. Methods: Video footage of narcotics transactions was extracted from the closed-circuit television (CCTV) system of the Newark, NJ Police Department. Researchers transcribed and coded the footage to measure the frequency of defensive actions incorporated by drug sellers. Fisher's exact tests measured whether the frequency of each defensive action significantly differed across geographic setting or time of day. Results: The frequency of many defensive actions was significantly related to geographic setting and time of day. The strongest relationship was observed between the use of stash spots and setting. Overall, the findings suggest that drug sellers adopt tenets of Opportunity Theory to protect themselves from law enforcement, specifically by acting as guardians and place managers on their own behalf. Conclusions: This study extends prior techniques and provides an additional case study on the use of CCTV footage in the study of street-level crime. This methodology can be used in concert with more traditional ethnographic techniques in the study of the drug trade and in crime-and-place research in general.


The purpose of the current study was to examine the associations among certain temperament traits and early indications of academic performance in preschool and kindergarten children. Three temperament domains—Negative Affect, Surgency/Extraversion, and Effortful Control—were examined in relation to two areas of children's school readiness skills—language and concepts. The parents of 72 preschool and kindergarten students in a rural Appalachian Mountain community rated their children's temperaments using the Child Behavior Questionnaire, Very Short Form (CBQ-VSF; Putnam & Rothbart, 2006). The participants were also assessed with the Language and Concepts subtests on the Developmental Indicators of the Assessment of Learning (DIAL-4; Mardell & Goldenberg, 2011). Canonical correlation analysis was used to examine the relationships between the variables. Despite prior research suggesting that child temperament may be linked to academic performance in older children, no significant relationships were found in the current study. Additional research may be needed to consider the complexity of these relationships within preschoolers and kindergarteners separately.


Indomethacin is a powerful analgesic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), but is limited in use by its primary side effect to cause gastrointestinal bleeding and serious injury. One factor important for exacerbating NSAID injury is the presence of bile acids, which may interact with indomethacin to form toxic mixed micelles in the gut. The development of a safer gastrointestinal formulation of indomethacin that is chemically complexed with phosphatidylcholine (PC-indomethacin) may offer an improved therapeutic agent, particularly in the presence of bile acid, but its potential protective mechanism is incompletely understood. Intestinal epithelial cells (IEC-6) were tested for injury with indomethacin (alone and plus various bile acids) compared with PC-indomethacin (alone and plus bile acids). To explore a role for bile acid uptake into cells as a requirement for NSAID injury, studies were performed using Madin-Darby canine kidney cells transfected with the apical sodium-dependent bile acid transporter (ASBT). Indomethacin, but not PC-indomethacin, was directly and dose-dependently injurious to IEC-6 cells. Similarly, the combination of any bile acid plus indomethacin, but not PC-indomethacin, induced cell injury. The expression of ASBT had a modest effect on the acute cytotoxicity of indomethacin in the presence of some conjugated bile acids. Complexing PC with indomethacin protected against the acute intestinal epithelial injury caused by indomethacin regardless of the presence of bile acids. The presence of luminal bile acid, but not its carrier-mediated uptake into the enterocyte, is required for acute indomethacin-induced cell injury. It is likely that initial cell damage induced by indomethacin occurs at or near the cell membrane, an effect exacerbated by bile acids and attenuated by PC.


New technological advancements in Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) design has brought the 'level of automation' as a pivotal factor in the success of projects. One of the key debates in 'effective automation' is its congruence throughout the AEC projects. This is currently hampered due to the failures in computational support at the early conceptual design stages. Yet, these failures are significant, and have direct impact upon the success of the AEC design process. Extant literature has identified a significant knowledge gap concerning the key impact links and support mechanisms needed to overtly exploit computational design methods, especially Building Information Modelling (BIM),
throughout the conceptual design stage. This study posited that integration of generative design algorithms to the existing BIM platforms could bridge this gap by generating design solutions and transforming them into next stages of detailed design. This paper reports on the conducted survey to investigate perceptions of 153 professionals and students and articulate their approach to different angles of such a technology. Most of the respondents highlighted several deficiencies in the existing tools, whilst they asserted that such a purposeful BIM interface can offer comprehensive support for automation of the entire of AEC design and implementation phases, and particularly enhance the decision making process at the early design phases. Building upon two main constructs of the conducted survey, namely information modelling and form generation, this study further developed conceptual framework for 'virtual generative design workspace' using BIM as the
central conduit. The details of this framework are presented in this paper. The developed framework will be used to develop a 'proof of concept' prototype, to actively engage generative design methods into a single dynamic BIM environment. This study contributes by forming a stepping stone for digital integrating of all stages of AEC projects and implementing BIM Level 3 (Cloud), as targeted by many countries.


Radix Ranunculi Ternati the dried root tuber of Ranunculus ternatus Thunb. is neutral, sweet, pungent and warm, and enters the liver and lung meridians. It has the effects of removing toxicity, resolving phlegm and dissipating nodulation. We undertook this work to study the effect of extracted polysaccharides from Radix Ranunculi Ternati on Type I skin hypersensitivity. Water extraction and ethanol precipitation was used in extraction. Phenol-sulfuric acid method was used in determination of polysaccharides and type I hypersensitivity was established in rats. The rats were randomized into the blank control group, chlorphenamine group, cortisone group and Radix Ranunculi Ternati polysaccharide low-, medium- and high-dose groups (0.50, 1.00 and 1.50 g/kg). Polysaccharide content in Radix Ranunculi Ternati extract was determined to be 6.7%; the three doses could significantly inhibit the diameter of antiserum-induced blue reaction spots on dorsal skin of rats (P<0.01), of which the high- and medium-doses had efficacies equivalent to chlorpheniramine. Three Radix Ranunculi Ternati polysaccharide dose groups could inhibit histamine- and serotonin-induced increase in capillary permeability in rats, and inhibit histamine- induced paw edema in rats (P<0.01), of which the efficacies of high- and medium-dose groups were not significantly different from the chlorpheniramine group. Hence, polysaccharides from Radix Ranunculi Ternati may suppress type I skin hypersensitivity by the pathway of anti-allergic inflammatory mediators.


The COVID‐2019 pandemic is the most severe acute public health threat of the twenty‐first century. To properly address this crisis with both robust testing and novel treatments, we require a deep understanding of the life cycle of the causative agent, the SARS‐CoV‐2 coronavirus. Here, we examine the architecture and self‐assembly properties of the SARS‐CoV‐2 nucleocapsid protein, which packages viral RNA into new virions. We determined a 1.4 Å resolution crystal structure of this protein's N2b domain, revealing a compact, intertwined dimer similar to that of related coronaviruses including SARS‐CoV. While the N2b domain forms a dimer in solution, addition of the C‐terminal spacer B/N3 domain mediates formation of a homotetramer. Using hydrogen‐deuterium exchange mass spectrometry, we find evidence that at least part of this putatively disordered domain is structured, potentially forming an α‐helix that self‐associates and cooperates with the N2b domain to mediate tetramer formation. Finally, we map the locations of amino acid substitutions in the N protein from over 38,000 SARS‐CoV‐2 genome sequences. We find that these substitutions are strongly clustered in the protein's N2a linker domain, and that substitutions within the N1b and N2b domains cluster away from their functional RNA binding and dimerization interfaces. Overall, this work reveals the architecture and self‐assembly properties of a key protein in the SARS‐CoV‐2 life cycle, with implications for both drug design and antibody‐based testing.


This paper examines the impact of tolls on social welfare in the context of a transportation network in which only a portion of the agents are subject to tolls. More specifically, this paper addresses the question: which subset of agents provides the most system benefit if they are compliant with an approximate marginal cost tolling scheme? Since previous work suggests this problem is NP-hard, we examine a heuristic approach. Our experimental results on three real-world traffic scenarios suggest that evaluating the marginal impact of a given agent serves as a particularly strong heuristic for selecting an agent to be compliant. Results from using this heuristic for selecting 7.6% of the agents to be compliant achieved an increase of up to 10.9% in social welfare over not tolling at all. The presented heuristic approach and conclusions can help practitioners target specific agents to participate in an opt-in tolling scheme.


What is ethics? Is it a system of transcendent moral imperatives, or can it be produced by ordinary people in everyday life? Do the daily rules of interaction constitute a code of ethics? In The Culture of Ethics, renowned anthropologists Franco La Cecla and Piero Zanini address these questions in a series of thought-provoking reflections that draw their inspiration from diverse sources, ranging from fieldwork in Papua New Guinea to cinematic depictions of the Ten Commandments. An engaging and accessible contribution to the emerging interest in "ordinary ethics," The Culture of Ethics explores what anthropology has to offer on the question of how we ought to live.


The levels of zinc in plasma, erythrocytes, polymorphonuclear (PMN) and mononuclear (MN) white cells were measured after delivery in women giving birth to appropriate-for-gestational-age (AGA) babies (group I mothers), or small-for-gestational-age (SGA) babies (group II mothers) and in non-pregnant controls. Mean maternal plasma zinc and albumin levels 24-48 h after delivery were lower than in controls, but PMN and MN zinc levels were unchanged. PMN zinc levels were lower than those of MN cells. PMN and MN zinc levels were significantly lower in group II mothers than in group I, irrespective of smoking habits. There were no racial differences in peripheral white cell zinc levels. PMN, and to a lesser degree MN, zinc levels were lower in smoking than in non-smoking mothers. Erythrocyte zinc did not correlate with other zinc measurements nor with the size of the babies. Fetal erythrocyte zinc levels were one-third of maternal levels. A combination of smoking and/or low PMN zinc levels selects 85% of mothers having small-for-gestational-age babies.


Rubber plant is one of the plantation crop which has the potential to be developed at Sungai Jalau Village because it is one of the high producers village of rubber plant in the North Kampar. Some differences were found in the income of the Rubber farmer because of different purchasing offered by the employer. The purpose of this study to analysis the structure and level of house income of rubber farmers at Sungai Jalau Village. The method used in this study is a survey method by using purposive sampling. Total populations of 110 rubber farmers were taken which are subscribed by 3 major employers and then 28 farmers were sampled according to the criteria of the study. The results of the study shows that the agricultural sector is the largest contributor to the total household income of rubber farmers is 73,82% and the rest 26,18% was contributed by the revenues of non-agricultural sector. The total average household income received from primary income is Rp.2.098.057/month (63,21%) and additional income is Rp.424.120/month (12,78%), and the total average household income received from other family members is Rp.797.077/month (24,01%), while the average per capita income is Rp.7.966.210/year. Keywords: Structure, household income, household, rubber farmers, per capita income


Innovations and technological developments have been recognized for their central importance for economic success and growth at least since the 1930s. Intellectual property (IP) and intellectual property rights (IPRs), such as patents, trade secret rights, and copyrights, have during more recent decades caught increasing attention, and, mainly due to various developments at macro level, IP has become an important source of competitive advantage at micro level in many industries. This has led to an increased importance of strategic IP management, and the related research field has been growing since the late 1990s. This thesis aims to contribute to this growing field, and the first purpose of this thesis is to explore and explain strategic and innovation related IP management practices, and the managerial and economic consequences of such practices. Apart from the growing importance of IP management in general, an increased focus on open and collaborative approaches for creating innovations has led to a need for new and adapted IP management skills. The second purpose of this thesis is therefore to develop managerial and economic frameworks, models, and tools to be used in the intersection between IP management and open innovation practices. These purposes are addressed in a cover paper and six appended research papers of theoretical/conceptual as well as of empirical nature, being based on interviews, questionnaires, patent statistics, and document studies.

In connection to the first purpose the results show that, while many small firms have problems with properly benefitting from the patent system, large firms have increasingly developed their IP strategies, especially their patent strategies. The purpose is then not only to appropriate monopolistic returns from innovations but also to govern various forms of open innovation. Large firms were found to in a first step increase their patenting (in terms of quantity), and in a second step focus more on selective, quality-oriented, and internationalized patenting. Additional results show that the internationalization leads to a convergence in managerial choices of output markets for patenting worldwide, in parallel with market and technology diversification. Further, a case from mobile telecommunications illustrates the role of IP management in the governance of open innovation systems. Finally, two cases from the automotive industry illustrate the IP-related problems that arise in connection to divestments and other types of disintegrations ('IP disassembly problems'), and how IP management can mitigate them.

This leads to the second purpose, related to the development of models, tools, and frameworks for IP management in relation to open innovation. First, the thesis provides a conceptual framework of innovation openness, especially pinpointing the role of IPRs. This framework emphasizes three key dimensions of innovation openness: resource distribution, technology governance, and technology accessibility. Second, a framework for managing the IP disassembly problem is presented, enabling increased exit opportunities and decreased transaction costs. Third, a method for determining fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory royalties in licensing collaborations is developed, applicable to multilateral licensing deals.

It stands clear that contemporary IP management is not (and has never been) only about maximizing excludability. Strategic IP management must therefore be developed and integrated with technology and corporate management in order to foster success at the micro level of firms, and thereby also at macro level. Developments in IP management skills (e.g., sourcing, control, commercialization, licensing, valuation, pricing) and IP contracts will then most likely lead to increased efficiency of interorganizational technological relationships and quasi-integrated organizational forms, and thereby also to increased innovativeness and economic development.


ABSTRACT Vieira da Silva, G.; Muler, M.; Prado, M.F.V.; Short, A.D.; Klein, A.H.F., and Toldo, E.E., Jr., 2016. Shoreline change analysis and insight into the sediment transport path along Santa Catarina Island north shore, Brazil. This paper presents a shoreline change analysis applied to identify the sediment transport path involving nine adjoining beaches, including dunes and spits, located along the microtidal eastern and northern shores of Santa Catarina Island (Brazil) and extending 50 km from Barra-Moçambique to Daniela. A data set was comprised of aerial images from 1957, 1978, 1998, 2002, 2007, and 2010, and the 2012 shoreline position measured with real-time kinematic GPS, topobathymetric data set, and a 60-year water-level time series. The images were rectified and the shoreline position for each year was extracted. The average errors (ranging from 1 to 9.8 m) of the rectification process as well as the horizontal tide-related errors (varying from 8.3 ± 2.6 m to 14.9 ± 0.6 m) were calculated within a confidence level of 95%. Two complementary approaches were used: (1) general trends analysis using linear regression rate method and (2) shoreline behaviour statistically analysed by Euclidean distance and year-to-year analysis. The results indicate an anticlockwise longshore transport between a series of beaches with variable orientation and separated by headlands, including a dune overpassing from Santinho delivering ∼10,000 m3 y−1 to Ingleses, and headland bypassing leading to the development of three spits along the protected part of the study area that have possibly been nourished by subaqueous sand transport from the updrift beaches. During its development the Ponta das Canas spit grew ∼7000 m3 y−1, controlling the sediment availability downdrift. As the spit grows it traps sediment and the downdrift area retreats; on the other hand, when the spit merges to the coast the sand spreads and the downdrift beaches prograde.


This paper analyzes selection and incentive effects of opting out from public to private insurance on employer Disability Insurance (DI) inflow rates. We use administrative information on DI benefit costs and opting-out decisions of a balanced panel of about 140,000 employers that are observed between 2007 and 2011. We argue that the opting-out decision of employers was driven by current DI enrolment and anticipation effects that resulted from short-term expectations on DI costs. In particular, employers opted out when this was most rewarding for them in reducing DI premium rates. When controlling for these effects, our main finding is that there are no incentive effects due to opting out. Thus, publicly and privately insured employers show similar DI inflow rates.


Although the number of studies discerning the impact of climate change on ecological systems continues to increase, there has been relatively little sharing of the lessons learnt when accumulating this evidence. At a recent workshop entitled 'Using climate data in ecological research' held at the UK Met Office, ecologists and climate scientists came together to discuss the robust analysis of climate data in ecology. The discussions identified three common pitfalls encountered by ecologists: 1) selection of inappropriate spatial resolutions for analysis; 2) improper use of publically available data or code; and 3) insufficient representation of the uncertainties behind the adopted approach. Here, we discuss how these pitfalls can be avoided, before suggesting ways that both ecology and climate science can move forward. Our main recommendation is that ecologists and climate scientists collaborate more closely, on grant proposals and scientific publications, and informally through online media and workshops. More sharing of data and code (e.g. via online repositories), lessons and guidance would help to reconcile differing approaches to the robust handling of data. We call on ecologists to think critically about which aspects of the climate are relevant to their study system, and to acknowledge and actively explore uncertainty in all types of climate data. And we call on climate scientists to make simple estimates of uncertainty available to the wider research community. Through steps such as these, we will improve our ability to robustly attribute observed ecological changes to climate or other factors, while providing the sort of influential, comprehensive analyses that efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change so urgently require.


A powerful method for the synthesis of 2-oxazolines from silyl-protected β-hydroxyamides is reported. Using diethylaminosulfur trifluoride (DAST) or its tetrafluoroborate salt (XtalFluor-E), silyl-protected β-amidoalcohols can be in situ deprotected and dehydrated to give 2-oxazolines in good yields. The utility of this approach was demonstrated by preparing the first reported oligomer of [2,4']-coupled 2-oxazoline units. By tuning the stability of the silyl protecting groups (ex. IPDMS < TES < TBS, etc.), the deprotection rate can be optimized so that all reaction intermediates remain soluble, allowing cyclodehydration to occur at all potential sites of ring closure. N-Terminal Ser residues containing an Fmoc carbamate are converted into 2-(9'-fluorenylmethyloxy)-2-oxazoline in high yield, thereby providing a new pathway for the synthesis of peptides capped with an N-terminal 2-alkoxy-2-oxazoline or 2-oxazolidinone unit.


We examine the robust counterpart of the classical Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). We consider two types of uncertainty sets for the customer demands: the classical budget polytope introduced by Bertsimas and Sim (2003), and a partitioned budget polytope proposed by Gounaris et al. (2013). We show that using the set-partitioning formulation it is possible to reformulate our problem as a deterministic heterogeneous vehicle routing problem. Thus, many state-of-the-art techniques for exactly solving deterministic VRPs can be applied for the robust counterpart, and a modern branch-and-cut-and-price algorithm can be adapted to our setting by keeping the number of pricing subproblems strictly polynomial. More importantly, we introduce new techniques to significantly improve the efficiency of the algorithm. We present analytical conditions under which a pricing subproblem is infeasible. This result is general and can be applied to other combinatorial optimization problems with knapsack uncertainty. We also introduce robust capacity cuts which are provably stronger than the ones known in the literature. Finally, a fast iterated local search algorithm is proposed to obtain heuristic solutions for the problem. Using our branch-and-cut-and-price algorithm incorporating existing and new techniques, we are able to solve to optimality all but one open instances from the literature.


Taken during March-April 1970 these photographs focus mainly on the remarkable Buddhist stupa at Bouddhanath. It is seen as it was located then, in the middle of fields surrounded by a single ring of houses, a huge contrast with its situation today. It was and still is a focal centre for Tibetan Buddhists who have revered Bouddhanath for over a thousand years. Also seen are images of the broad breadth of things which occur in temple precincts, including monks seeking alms , laypeople making offerings and performing circumambulation and other day to day activities. At Chovar the affixing to the temple of household utensils is said to guarantee household harmony. Also seen are a selection of the erotic art on the roof struts of certain temples said to protect the temple from lightning strikes (the goddess of lightning being virginal would not approach such a temple with erotic displays) but they also possessing a more occult tantric meaning. In the town of Bhaktapur there is an image of the massive and extremely sacred Bhairav temple with the cart wheels and beams used in the Macchendranath festival lying next to it.


This paper outlines a methodology for assessing the cost of internal and external obstacles affecting the performance of the value chains serving local producers in developing countries as a means of identifying high impact interventions that would contribute to the country's successful integration into regional and global markets. The objective is to create a single measure of the effect of such barriers in order to illustrate the value of examining internal reforms (i.e., those steps essential to regional integration "behind the border") as well as export barriers in developing a regional integration strategy that makes sense in the context of the accelerating integration of global markets. The methodology employed uses tools applied by global firms in assessing their own operations and in making critical sourcing decisions. This paper was presented at Latin America/Caribbean and Asia/Pacific Economics and Business Association (LAEBA)'s 5th Annual Meeting held in Singapore on July 15th, 2009.


The main objective of this analysis is to demonstrate that some of the limitations that have characterized recent studies of the relationship between marital status and health outcomes may result in biased estimates of marital status differences in mortality among the elderly. A secondary goal is to evaluate the strength of evidence in support of the excess risks of mortality associated with widowhood, once we are able to eliminate or mitigate many of the limitations experienced by other studies. Our results, based on the 1984-1990 Longitudinal Study of Aging, demonstrate that the estimated marital status effects in logit and hazard models of survival are very sensitive to whether and how marital status information is updated after the baseline interview. Refined measures of marital status that capture prospectively transitions from the married to the widowhood state result in substantially increased estimates of the relative risk of dying in the early durations of widowhood (bereavement).


PURPOSE
Here, we explore a novel medical physics application of the Cerenkov effect for the dosimetric profiling of megavoltage beams used in radiation therapy. The technology to achieve these images has recently progressed from capturing single 2D projections with an intensified charge-coupled device, to full 3D optical tomography using parallel beam back projection and a telecentric lens. In the current study, the method is extended to 3D imaging with a standard CMOS commercial camera and lens, using cone beam tomography algorithms for the reconstruction.

METHODS
Projection images of the induced Cerenkov light from a 20×20 cm2 6 MV beam operating at a dose rate of 600 MU/min incident on a water tank with a 1.0 g/L concentration of Quinine Sulfate were captured from 0-360° with a 3° angular resolution and 5.0 second exposure time, resulting in a total scan time of 10 minutes. The resulting projection images were used in a Feldkamp-Davis-Kress (FDK) cone beam tomography algorithm to reconstruct the imparted 3D dose distribution. An accuracy analysis was performed by comparing the reconstructed lateral profile at a depth of 10 cm and a percent depth dose curve to a reference dose distribution from the treatment planning system (TPS).

RESULTS
A 3D dose distribution was successfully reconstructed from the captured projections yielding results which were within +/- 8% of the TPS dose distribution.

CONCLUSION
Optical cone beam 3D tomography of radiation beams using Cerenkov-excited fluorescence has been demonstrated for the first time. The proposed technique has several advantages over alternative methods (e.g., ionization chambers, scintillation, and gel dosimetry) including speed, flexibility, and necessitates only water, which serves as a cheap, abundant, and easily standardized tissue equivalent medium. Upon future refinement and improved accuracy the proposed modality may prove to be an important dosimetric tool with both clinical and research applications.


Outcrops on the western slope of the La Invernada Range, San Juan Precordillera (W Argentina), were surveyed for lithofacial analysis and graptolite-conodont high resolution biostratigraphy. The study profile for the upper Sierra de La Invernada Formation is approximately 500 m thick and is located in the northern part of the La Invernada Range. Successive shallowing-deepening sedimentary cycles crop out throughout the upper part of the formation. The dominantly lower turbiditic sandy deposits alternate with shaly pelagic sedimentation, and occasional coarser intervals that record gravitational flows. Hummocky structures occur in the uppermost part of the formation, indicating sedimentation under storm weather conditions. Rich graptolite faunas representing six upper Middle to lower Upper Ordovician biozones have been recorded from this section: Pterograptus elegans (tentative assignment), Hustedograptus teretiusculus, Nemagraptus gracilis, Climacograptus bicornis, Diplacanthograptus caudatus, and Climacograptus tubuliferus biozones. This graptolite biostratigraphy is complemented by the conodont records from successive productive levels, which yielded conodonts that represent the Pygodus serra, P. anserinus, Amorphognathus tvaerensis, and A. superbus biozones. The recorded conodont-graptolite assemblages allow for a correlation with the upper Darriwilian, Sandbian and lower Katian global stages, and provide preliminary biofacies records for the upper Sierra de La Invernada Formation.


The RoboCup Simulation League is recognized as a test bed for research on multi-agent learning. As an example of multi-agent learning in a soccer game, we dealt with a learning problem between a kicker and a receiver when a direct free kick is awarded just outside the opponentpsilas penalty area. In such a situation, to which point should the kicker kick the ball? We propose a function that expresses heuristics to evaluate an advantageous target point for safely sending/receiving a pass and scoring. The heuristics includes an interaction term between a kicker and a receiver to intensify their coordination. To calculate the interaction term, we let kicker/receiver agents have a receiver/kicker action decision model to predict his teammatepsilas action. The evaluation function makes it possible to handle a large space of states consisting of the positions of a kicker, a receiver, and their opponents. The target point of the free kick is selected by the kicker using Boltzmann selection with an evaluation function. Parameters in the function can be learned by a kind of reinforcement learning called the policy gradient method. The point to which a receiver should run to receive the ball is simultaneously learned in the same manner. The effectiveness of our solution was shown by experiments.


: COVID-19 has created a trade crisis in Southern Africa, with a dramatic slowdown in cross-border trade. The crisis, which exposed weaknesses and deficiencies in the trade facilitation regimes, presents an opportunity for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to address and contribute to greater levels of trade within Africa. This working paper looks at the impact of the border closures in response to the pandemic, and its impact on trade and the movement of goods in and out of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The border closures in relation to trade facilitation in Southern Africa and the position of the SADC cluster of ministers of trade and transport are also considered. The paper argues that the AfCFTA should take the lead in addressing the long-term problems of weak trade facilitation systems and bring in measures that would advance greater intra-regional cooperation, including institutional responses and hard infrastructure. The paper concludes with policy recommendations.


Mash1, a mammalian homologue of the Drosophila proneural genes of the achaete-scute complex, is transiently expressed throughout the developing peripheral autonomic nervous system and in subsets of cells in the neural tube. In the mouse, targeted mutation of Mash1 has revealed a role in the development of parts of the autonomic nervous system and of olfactory neurons, but no discernible phenotype in the brain has been reported. Here, we show that the adrenergic and noradrenergic centres of the brain are missing in Mash1 mutant embryos, whereas most other brainstem nuclei are preserved. Indeed, the present data together with the previous results show that, except in cranial sensory ganglia, Mash1 function is essential for the development of all central and peripheral neurons that express noradrenergic traits transiently or permanently. In particular, we show that, in the absence of MASH1, these neurons fail to initiate expression of the noradrenaline biosynthetic enzyme dopamine beta-hydroxylase. We had previously shown that all these neurons normally express the homeodomain transcription factor Phox2a, a positive regulator of the dopamine beta-hydroxylase gene and that a subset of them depend on it for their survival. We now report that expression of Phox2a is abolished or massively altered in the Mash1-/- mutants, both in the noradrenergic centres of the brain and in peripheral autonomic ganglia. These results suggest that MASH1 controls noradrenergic differentiation at least in part by controlling expression of Phox2a and point to fundamental homologies in the genetic circuits that determine the noradrenergic phenotype in the central and peripheral nervous system.


Despite his untimely death in 1667 at the age of thirty-seven, Gabriel Metsu left an astounding collection of history paintings, portraits, still lifes, and exquisite genre scenes. These charming depictions of kitchen maids, elegant young ladies, hunters, drinkers, and amorous couples have gained Metsu a place among the most celebrated painters of 17th-century Holland. His work ranges from group portraits of the families of wealthy merchants, to wistful portraits of single women and bustling genre scenes of markets and taverns. Meeting the demands of the early Dutch art market, Metsu mastered a number of different artistic styles. However, Metsu's biography has remained largely enigmatic. This absorbing book provides insight into his life and details the network of personal and professional connections that influenced him. Following the successful exhibition of the artist's work last year, this book promotes greater understanding of the full range of Metsu's career, and the catalogue raisonne provides a detailed and informative record of his entire known oeuvre.


This study explores group collaborations in traditional hands-on labs and computer automated simulated and remote labs. The primary purpose is to discover group collaboration patterns based on four dimensions: group proximity, communication media, group coordination structure and time on task. A factorial experiment is designed to collect the data from more than 200 students. Cluster analysis is used to analyze the data. The results suggest that students have different patterns of collaboration, both between lab groups and between lab formats. There are three distinct patterns in remote labs, four patterns in simulated labs and two patterns in hands-on labs. These differences seem to be related to learning effectiveness. The key characteristics of these clusters need to be further investigated and evaluated. These findings, along with others yet to be analyzed, promise to be fruitful for understanding, analyzing, and managing virtual collaboration, remote education, and design of information systems.


The Association of French Chefs v Butterworths Law Publishers
Foss-Harbottle J : The Association of French Chefs has sued a well-known law book publisher for propagating the calumny that gingered snails are to be avoided. One of the best known cases of wrongfully caused damages in English law is Donoghue v Stevenson which was a judgement of the House of Lords in England in 1932. Mrs Donoghue sued a Paisley (a town in Renfrewshire county, Scotland) ginger beer manufacturer, Mr Stevenson, after allegedly drinking some ginger beer from an opaque bottle in which a decomposed snail was subsequently found. She claimed that three days later she still suffered from gastroenteritis and shock.


Currently in India there is an obligatory child care center and a few studios that to determine the yield of agricultural tractors. The performance problems are hitting them manufacturers, and because the official disclosure of reports is not required, consumers only have the information of the manufacturer. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the traction conditions of the agricultural tractors in relation to four power ranges and the type of traction. For this, it was analysed in a universe of 191 tractors, the following parameters: maximum estimated strength of the traction bar traction (BT) and strength/weight ratio. Some of these parameters were evaluated in different conditions of solo and ballast. The results show that the tractor models in the power range of 147 kW and 4 × 2 of TDA traction showing the highest values of maximum traction strength Preview. The maximum traction strength is superior for tractors in the 147 kW band and 4 × 2 TDA traction.


Recent studies have indicated that angiogenesis may be regulated, in part, by p53 tumor suppressor gene function. We hypothesized that wild-type p53 replacement would down-regulate vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression and inhibit angiogenesis. KM12L4 and SW620, human colon cancer cell lines with p53 mutations, were transduced with a replication-defective adenoviral vector containing the wild-type p53 gene (Ad5/CMV/p53). Reverse transcription-PCR confirmed the presence of p53 in Ad5/CMV/p53-transduced cells. Transduction of colon cancer cells with wild-type p53 decreased VEGF RNA expression compared with that of controls. The decrease in VEGF expression in SW620 cells was dose dependent, with a 49% decrease observed at a multiplicity of infection of 50, and a 71% decrease observed at a multiplicity of infection of 100. Similar effects were seen in KM12L4 cells. VEGF supernatant protein levels were significantly reduced compared with those in nontransduced controls 48 h after the introduction of wild-type p53. Ad5/CMV/p53 inhibited tumor cell-induced angiogenesis in vivo. Restoration of wild-type p53 expression may decrease tumor growth by inhibiting the angiogenic response. These findings may explain, in part, the bystander effect seen with p53 tumor suppressor gene therapy.


In recent years living in the big cities of Australia and NZ has become unaffordable to many. However, thanks to stronger transport infrastructure living in rural towns is now an attractive and viable option. Living in the Landscape explores 30 homes overlooking remote island clifftops, tucked into escarpments or seemingly dropped into the rainforest.


This paper reflects on attempts, past and present, to map the mighty maze of periodical literature. The Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition Project (ncse), seeks to achieve two key objectives. First the ncse project responds to the pressing need to preserve fragile printed items in ways which maintain their integrity as historical material objects. Electronic editions offer to new opportunities to re-present such material in a way that is, for the first time, comprehensive and freely available. ncse will create an electronic edition of six nineteenth--century periodicals. Second, ncse, aims to formulate and implement new ways of realising our current scholarly conceptualisation of these materials in electronic form. At a time when new digital editions promise to revolutionise the way resource users across the humanities work with their materials this paper explores timely questions about the role of the scholar in this process.


Fictitious domain methods are attractive for shape optimization applications, since they do not require deformed or regenerated meshes. A recently developed such method is the CutFEM approach, which allows crisp boundary representations and for which uniformly well‐conditioned system matrices can be guaranteed. Here, we investigate the use of the CutFEM approach for acoustic shape optimization, using as test problem the design of an acoustic horn for favorable impedance‐matching properties. The CutFEM approach is used to solve the Helmholtz equation, and the geometry of the horn is implicitly described by a level‐set function. To promote smooth algorithmic updates of the geometry, we propose to use the nodal values of the Laplacian of the level‐set function as design variables. This strategy also improves the algorithm's convergence rate, counteracts mesh dependence, and, in combination with Tikhonov regularization, controls small details in the optimized designs. An advantage with the proposed method is that the exact derivatives of the discrete objective function can be expressed as boundary integrals, as opposed to when using a traditional method that uses mesh deformations. The resulting horns possess excellent impedance‐matching properties and exhibit surprising subwavelength structures, not previously seen, which are possible to capture due to the fixed mesh approach.


Ras is a membrane-bound small guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) that mediates signals from receptor tyrosine kinases to members of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family. Mutations in Ras that render it constitutively active are oncogenic, leading to the uncontrolled proliferation of cells and the growth of tumors. Many tumors are associated with such mutants of Ras (such as RasG12V) or with mutations in either upstream activators of Ras or its downstream effectors. However, Ras has not proved to be a very successful pharmacological target, so Ancrile et al. turned their attention to secreted factors associated with Ras-induced tumors. One such factor is the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6). IL-6 has both pro- and anti-inflammatory properties, and its abundance is increased in the sera of patients with pancreatic cancer, which is associated with oncogenic Ras mutations. The authors used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) to measure IL-6 secretion from a transformed human kidney cell line that expressed 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT)-inducible RasG12V. The abundance of IL-6 protein in 4-OHT-treated cultures was much higher than in noninduced cultures, and these results were confirmed at the level of IL-6 gene transcription by semiquantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays. When RasG12V-expressing cells were placed under the skin of the flanks of mice, tumors developed. However, tumors that developed from cells treated with IL-6-specific short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) were much smaller than those that developed from control shRNA-treated cells. Topical application of the carcinogen 7,12-dimethylbenzanthracene (DMBA) followed by 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) produces papillomas with a high incidence of oncogenic Ras mutations. The authors performed DMBA and TPA treatments of both wild-type and IL-6–/– mice and found that IL-6–/– mice had fewer and smaller tumors than did treated wild-type mice and also developed these tumors later than did their wild-type counterparts. Flow cytometry revealed that RasG12V-induced tumor cells did not express IL-6 receptors, indicating that these cells did not need IL-6 for proliferation. However, immunohistochemical analysis revealed that tumors that developed from IL-6-specific shRNA-treated RasG12V-expressing cells contained far fewer endothelial cells than did tumors that developed from control shRNA-treated RasG12V-expressing cells, suggesting a role for RasG12V-induced IL-6 in stimulating angiogenesis, leading to tumor growth. Finally, using the same in vivo tumor model, the authors showed that treatment of mice with a neutralizing antibody against IL-6 led to smaller tumors (and a slower growth rate) than were observed in control antibody-treated mice. These data suggest that targeting IL-6 in Ras-related cancers might be of therapeutic benefit. B. Ancrile, K.-H. Lim, C. M. Counter, Oncogenic Ras-induced secretion of IL6 is required for tumorigenesis. Genes Dev. 21, 1714-1719 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


A group of Herero cattle farmers initiated a community grazing trial within a floodplain of the ephemeral Omatako River in central Namibia. A degradation model was constructed from measurements of various characteristics, for determining changes in wetland condition. Species data for Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CANOCO) came from the nearest perennial grass, if present within 5m of the sample point, otherwise from the nearest annual grass. The first ordination axis indicates a degradation gradient, with perennial grass species towards one extreme and annual grasses towards the other. The second axis appears to reflect a moisture gradient, although it was not measured.


SUMMARY Introduction: During the last years, the number of ex-obese patients who search for surgical procedures to correct body shape is increasing. Methods: In this study, were evaluated, 10 patients (8 women and 2 men), with mean age of 41.3 + 8.27 years and mean weight loss of 65.7 + 21.3 kg). Results: The body lift was performed in all cases, 5 patients with vertical abdominoplasty, 3 with classic abdominoplasty and 2 with anterior compensation. A dermoadipose flap was used to increase the gluteal volume. The surgical time varied between 5 and 6 hours. All patients received aspirative drainage (mean time 13.3 + 1.69 days. All women who underwent vertical or classic abdominoplasty, received haemotransfusion. No cases of seroma, haematoma, infection skin necrosis or thromboembolic problems were observed. One patient presented clinical depression after the surgery. Conclusion: Body lift is a complex procedure, with low complication rate, that allows a combined approach to abdominal, pubic, lateral thigh, flank and gluteal regions, with a high degree of patient satisfaction. Descriptors: Surgery, plastic/methods. Obesity/surgery. Obesity, morbid/surgery.


Approximately 5% of the UK population live with serious mental health problems. Data show that informal caregivers of people with mental illness provide care for the highest number of hours compared to other illness and the economic cost of this care is highest in the UK when compared internationally. People living with serious mental health problems make transitions between different intensities of service as their needs fluctuate, including referral, admission, transfer or discharge. Although caregiving is associated with both stress and positive reward, service transitions are particularly associated with increased stress. This review aimed to investigate what is known about the experiences of informal caregivers during mental health service transitions. An integrative qualitative synthesis was conducted following searches in six bibliographic databases and of the grey literature. Studies published in English between 2001 and 2017 were included if the study focus was on serious mental health problems, the experiences of caregivers and service transitions. Eleven studies were included, appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool and synthesised, resulting in four themes: (a) Caregiver information, (b) Caregiver involvement in decisions about care and treatment, (c) Accessing services, (d) Being a caregiver. Caregivers' experiences were similar during transitions to their usual caregiving role but they faced more challenges and their experiences were amplified. Concerns about confidentiality created barriers to information sharing. Continuity of professionals across transitions was helpful. Caregivers struggled to deal with their own conflicting emotions and with the behaviours of the person yet rarely received help. The review findings point to a need for continuity of professionals across service transitions, co-designed and delivered training for professionals and caregivers about information sharing, greater understanding of barriers to implementation of family interventions and interventions that address emotional needs of caregivers.


Print has always been an art form for everyone – relatively cheap to produce and easy to distribute, and intended to be accessible to all. It links to painting, and creative autographic expression, as well as to a tradition of satire and protest, both social and political. Above all, prints are a means of communication and cultural exchange and, in the context of Africa and the African diaspora, these qualities have had a particular resonance.

The book covers the period from 1960, presenting and interpreting a variety of visual images from the V&A collections in terms of their political and social context, while also addressing their identity as art and design. It includes prints by Uzo Egonu, Carrie Mae Weems and Chris Ofili among others, as well as overtly political work, such as posters attacking the Apartheid policies of South Africa and material produced by American Black Power organizations.


The flow developed on a tidal site can be characterized by combinations of turbulence, shear flows, and waves. Horizontal-axis tidal turbines are therefore subjected to dynamic loadings that may compromise the working life of the rotor and drive train components. To this end, a series of experiments were carried out using a 0.9 m horizontal-axis tidal turbine in a tow tank facility. The experiments included two types of regular waveforms, one of them simulating an extreme wave case, the other simulating a more moderate wave case. The second regular wave was designed to match the peak period and significant wave height of an irregular wave which was also tested. Measurements of torque, thrust, and blade-bending moments were taken during the testing campaign. Speed and torque control strategies were implemented for a range of operational points to investigate the influence that a control mode had in the performance of a tidal stream turbine. The results showed similar average power and thrust values were not affected by the control strategy, nor the influence of either the regular or irregular wave cases. However, it was observed that using torque control resulted in an increase of thrust and blade root bending moment fluctuations per wave period. The increase in fluctuations was in the order of 40% when compared to the speed control cases.


Environmental enrichment, i.e., increased intellectual, social, and physical activity makes brain more resilient to subsequent neurological disease. The mechanisms for this effect remain incompletely defined, but evidence shows tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) is involved. TNF-α, at acutely high levels, possesses the intrinsic capacity to enhance injury associated with neurological disease. Conversely, the effect of TNF-α at low-levels is nutritive over time, consistent with physiological conditioning hormesis. Evidence shows that neural activity triggers low-level pro-inflammatory signaling involving TNF-α. This low-level TNF-α signaling alters gene expression, resulting in an enhanced resilience to disease. Brain-immune signaling may become maladaptive when increased activity is chronic without sufficient periods of reduced activity necessary for nutritive adaptation. Such tonically increased activity may explain, for example, the transformation of episodic to chronic migraine with related increased susceptibility to spreading depression, the most likely underlying cause of this malady. Thus, TNF-α, whose function is to alter gene expression, and its principal cellular source, microglia, seem powerfully positioned to orchestrate hormetic immune signaling that establishes the phenotype of neurological health and disease from brain activity.


In the great tradition of the chile cookoff, the Albuquerque Tribune proudly presents two hundred prize-winning recipes from throughout New Mexico, home of the fabulous long green chile. New Mexican cuisine gives the highest priority to taste -- over the mouth-blistering heat favored by much southwestern chile cookery. This book is a treasury of what are arguably the best green chile recipes in the world, drawn from a long tradition notable for variety, subtlety, and the incomparable New Mexican chile flavor preferred by true aficionados. New Mexico tradition and imagination combine to serve up native dishes such as New Mexican Posole, Sweet Chile Rellenos, and Classic Green Chile Stew, together with modern international adaptations like Green Chile Quiche, Green Chile Pizza, Green Chile Stroganoff, and Chile Gumbo. This book offers inviting choices for every cooking preference, from quick-and-easy miracle concoctions, to exotically flavored dishes, to made-from-scratch traditionals. Appetizers, breads, soups, vegetables, main dishes (including vegetarian offerings), salads, accompaniments, and desserts are all represented. A glossary, a list of speciality food sources, and instructions for preparing fresh green chiles to freeze or use in any recipe complete the reader's initiation into thetantalizing mysteries of New Mexican cuisine.


Hypertrophic osteodystrophy was diagnosed in 16 male and 2 female puppies aged between 2.5 and 8 months. All animals had stiff and stilted gait, painful swellings in the metaphyseal areas of the antebrachium and tibia, pyrexia, weakness and diarrhoea as common symptoms. Radiological examination of the affected areas showed extraperiosteal bone proliferations. With chronicity, the new bone formation spanned the entire diaphysis from the distal to the proximal metaphysis. Two dogs were treated with parenteral administration of analgesics, corticosteroids, vitamin C, and antibiotics in addition to dietary management. These 2 puppies, which had shown a clinical improvement during the long therapy period, died immediately after the cessation of drug administration. Fifteen animals recovered completely. These 15 puppies underwent dietary management only. The other dog was euthanised without any treatment at the owner's request. In the histopathologic examination of 2 dogs, in which a necropsy was performed, epiphyseal plates were structurally normal. However, primary and secondary spongiosa immediately below were observed to have been destroyed, extending up to the metaphyseal zone, and resorption had occurred in some areas. In the periostal zone, extraperiostal ossification, foci of bone destruction due to the osteoclastic activity, development of fibrous tissue, and infiltration by numerous neutrophils were observed.


This research was the development of interpreting system for antimicrobial susceptibility testing by the disc diffusion technique with automatically measures and interprets inhibition zone diameter. The interpreting system was designed to work concomitantly with the popular MLAB system. This interpreting system imported patient data and antibiotic sensitive criteria from MLAB system or was added by user as Stand-alone system. It received images from image capture instrument, showed the image on monitor, read the inhibition zone and simultaneously interpreted the susceptibility results. The susceptibility results were exported back to MLAB system for future processing as routine in clinical microbiology laboratory.

The efficiency of this interpreting system was evaluated by measuring 82 specimens from many types of bacteria. The inhibition zone of 1526 antimicrobial discs was measured and interpreted by this system and compared with manual measurement. An overall correlation coefficient of the zones diameter comparison was 0.97 (r = 0.97). Most of the diameter zone measured by interpreting system (94.2%) were different from manual measurement less than 3 mm. The results demonstrated 0.5% of false-susceptible, 0.2% of false-resistant, 99.84% of minimum accuracy and 8.98% of maximum coefficient variable (The minimum coefficient variable is 1.41%).


Innovation is paramount to success. Over time firms must maintain their ability to innovate in order to maintain their competitive edge. In this paper we explore the role human resource management has in nurturing and enhancing the innovative capability of the firm. To explore HRM activities, functions and processes that enhance or impede innovativeness we conducted a literature review. Following this review, 10 propositions have been made that link HRM to both incremental and radical innovativeness respectively. Our results include suggestions for empirical studies to validate our propositions as well as some managerial implications.


Using a novel dataset that links socioeconomic background to future credit, postsecondary education, and federal student loan and grant records, we document that, even though it is not and cannot be used by credit agencies in assigning risk, background is a strong predictor of adult credit health. A relationship remains upon inclusion of achievement, attainment, and debt management metrics. These findings reveal a new dimension along which childhood circumstances persist into adulthood and imply that the many important contexts in which credit scores are relied upon to evaluate individuals (e.g., lending, insurance, employment) may be helping to preserve inherited inequities.


The diffuse cosmic X-ray background (CXB) is the sum of the emission of discrete sources, mostly massive black-holes accreting matter in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The CXB spectrum differs from the integration of the spectra of individual sources, calling for a large population, undetected so far, of strongly obscured Compton thick AGN. Such objects are predicted by unified models, which attribute most of the AGN diversity to their inclination on the line of sight, and play an important role for the understanding of the growth of black holes in the early Universe. The fraction of obscured AGN at low redshift can be derived from the observed CXB spectrum assuming AGN spectral templates and luminosity functions. We show that high signal-to-noise average hard X-ray spectra, derived from more than a billion seconds of effective exposure time with the Swift/BAT instrument, imply that mildly obscured Compton thin AGN feature a strong reflection and contribute massively to the CXB. A population of Compton thick AGN larger than that effectively detected is not required, as no more than 6\% of the CXB flux can be attributed to them. The stronger reflection observed in mildly obscured AGN suggests that the covering fraction of the gas and dust surrounding their central engines is a key factor in shaping their appearance. These mildly obscured AGN are easier to study at high redshift than Compton thick sources.


AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ivy Bourgeault PhD (firstname.lastname@example.com) is an Assistant Professor in Health Studies and Sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She also holds a New Investigator Award with the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and is heading a five-year study of the impact of gender and geography on the rationalization of the health care division of labour in Canada and the United States. Ivy has published extensively in national and international journals not only on midwifery in Canada and the United States, but also on alternative medicine, patient consumerism, and the relations between health professions and the state. Recent coauthored books include, "Medicine, Nursing and the State" (1999) and "Heal Thyself" (2000) both with Garamond Press. Ivy has also been active within the midwifery and alternative childbirth movement for 10 years, including a position on the Board of Directors of the Toronto Birth Centre committee.


Globally, as well as in South Africa, postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) due to uterine atony is the number one direct cause of maternal mortality associated with the postpartum period. Active management of the third stage of labour has been thought to prevent PPH in women. This study assesses uterine fundal massage in the postpartum period as part of active management of the third stage of labour (AMTSL) and its outcome on the number of PPH cases at a level 2 maternity hospital. A quasi-experimental approach was used to determine the effect of continuous uterine fundal massage, every 15 minutes for the first 2 hours after birth, on the number of PPH cases at a level 2 maternity hospital in the Western Cape. It was found that the number of PPH cases reduced from 33/426 cases in the comparison group to 23/431 cases in the experimental group, although this was not statistically significant (Chi-square test, p=0.14). There was also a reduction in the mean postpartum blood loss (not statistically significant). Potential risk factors were considered in a logistic regression model but did not change the final conclusion that the effect of the intervention did not result in a statistically significant decrease in occurrence of PPH (p=0.1039).There was insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis of the study. It was concluded that more studies may be necessary to add to the outcome of AMTSL intervention in the maternity setting. A number of other recommendations were made for later implementation within the clinical setting for this study.


Experiments were carried out between 1983 and 1987 at the University
Farm in Southern Tasmania to compare the winter oats cultivar, Esk
(prostrate, dual-purpose), with a range of barley cultivars: Shannon
(spring, erect habit of growth, two-row grain type), Malebo (erect,
six-row forage type), Triumph (spring, semi-prostrate, two-row grain
type), and WU3072 (winter, prostrate, two-row grain type).
In a preliminary experiment on Esk oats, nitrogen fertilizer
promoted recovery after grazing by increasing tillering, leaf area
and radiation interception, and by delaying leaf senescence.
The rapid winter growth of erect barley cultivars provided
substantial amounts of dry matter (1.5 - 2.3 t/ha) for winter
grazing. However, the shoot apices on the mainstems of these
cultivars developed rapidly below the soil surface and emerged above
ground level as much as 6-8 weeks before those of the prostrate
cultivars, thus curtailing the "safe" period for grazing. Malebo
exceeded Triumph in yield of digestible dry matter prior to winter
grazing. The lowest level of crude protein at grazing was found in
Esk oats.
Although tiller numbers were increased following defoliation,
leaf production was more important for recovery. Faster regrowth
after defoliation, better radiation interception, greater efficiency
of crop regrowth and higher final forage and grain yields were
achieved by Malebo and WU3072 compared to Shannon and Triumph. The
erect Malebo replaced leaf area rapidly after defoliation, through
the production of longer, wider and thicker leaves. The prostrate
WU3072 retained considerable leaf area after defoliation. In glasshouse experiments, the rate of movement and
development of the mainstem apex was less sensitive to high
temperature in Malebo than in Shannon and Triumph. Esk oats was
shown to respond strongly to vernalization and photoperiod,
resulting in both stability in flowering time and late flowering
after the time when frosts were likely to occur. The barleys,
to vernalization
however, varied in their responses 4 from moderate in WU3072 to weak
or nil in the spring cultivars, and hence ear emergence, even after
early defoliation, occurred several weeks earlier than in Esk oats.
In the field experiments, differences between cultivars in
total dry matter at the dough stage of development were not large.
Esk generally gave the highest yield of dry matter when
undefoliated, but following early defoliation, Malebo produced over
2 t/ha more than Esk.
The lowest grain yield and harvest index was in Esk. Early
defoliation did not significantly reduce grain production in any
cultivar, whereas a single defoliation in late winter or two
defoliations (early and late) drastically reduced grain yield
because of the removal of growing points on the mainstems and
primary tillers. WU3072 was more tolerant of late defoliation than
other barley cultivars because of its residual leaf area and delayed
reproductive development. Its advantage in grain yield came from
2 more ears per m and more grains per ear.


Five OXA-48 producing Klebsiella oxytoca strains isolated in April-July 2010 were analyzed. Antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed using disc diffusion method and VITEK 2 system. Carbapenemase activity was investigated using the Modified Hodge test. Beta-lactamase genes were detected by PCR and blaOXA-48 was sequenced. Genetic relatedness between K. oxytoca isolates was investigated by pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Carbapenemase activity was detected in 5 isolates by Modified Hodge test. Although all strains were resistant to ertapenem and imipenem, only one strain was also resistant to meropenem. BlaOXA-48 in 4 isolates harbored 2 or 3 other ESBL types, namely, blaTEM, blaSHV, blaCTX-M, or blaVEB. PFGE revealed 3 different pulso-types among the K. oxytoca isolates. The presence of OXA-48 carbapenemase in other species of clinical isolates should also be considered.


Indonesian Manuscripts from the Islands of Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok is an original, pioneering, and richly illustrated work that discusses hitherto unaddressed features of manuscript traditions of these islands. The extensive description of palm-leaf manuscripts in particular opens up avenues for further study.


On the Web and in corporate environments there exists a lot of data in various formats. XQuery and XSLT serve as query and transformation languages for XML. But as RDF also becomes a mainstream format for Web of data, transformations languages between these formats are required. XSPARQL is a hybrid language that provides an integration framework for XML, RDF, but also JSON and relational data by partially combining several languages such as XQuery, SPARQL and SQL. In this paper, we present the latest open source release of the XSPARQL engine, which is based on standard software components (Jena and Saxon) and outline possible applications of XSPARQL 1.1 to address Web data integration use cases.