From the 2-butanone fraction derived out of the aqueous alcoholic extract of the fresh aerial parts of Alternanthera pungens, three C-glycoflavones, vitexin (1), isovitexin (2) and orientin (3) and an yellow solid composed of their 2"-O-I²-D glucopyranosides (4-6) were isolated and characterised. Fully assigned sets of proton and carbon resonances, based on detailed 1D and 2D NMR measurements, including 1H COSY, HMQC and HMBC experiments, enabled the deduction of definitive evidence for the C- and the O-glycosidic linkages of the three biosides. Antioxidant potential of these six compounds was evaluated using two different assays, namely, the Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity and the coupled oxidation of B-carotene and linoleic acid (autoxidation) assays. Compounds 3 and 6 were fairly active while the others were mildly active in both the assays.


We develop a convergence-rate analysis of momentum with cyclical step-sizes. We show that under some assumption on the spectral gap of Hessians in machine learning, cyclical step-sizes are provably faster than constant step-sizes. More precisely, we develop a convergence rate analysis for quadratic objectives that provides optimal parameters and shows that cyclical learning rates can improve upon traditional lower complexity bounds. We further propose a systematic approach to design optimal first order methods for quadratic minimization with a given spectral structure. Finally, we provide a local convergence rate analysis beyond quadratic minimization for the proposed methods and illustrate our findings through benchmarks on least squares and logistic regression problems.


Title of dissertation: IMPROVING EFFICIENCY AND SCALABILITY IN VISUAL SURVEILLANCE APPLICATIONS Radu Mihai Dondera Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Professor Larry S. Davis Department of Computer Science We present four contributions to visual surveillance: (a) an action recognition method based on the characteristics of human motion in image space; (b) a study of the strengths of five regression techniques for monocular pose estimation that highlights the advantages of kernel PLS; (c) a learning-based method for detecting objects carried by humans requiring minimal annotation; (d) an interactive video segmentation system that reduces supervision by using occlusion and long term spatio-temporal structure information. We propose a representation for human actions that is based solely on motion information and that leverages the characteristics of human movement in the image space. The representation is best suited to visual surveillance settings in which the actions of interest are highly constrained, but also works on more general problems if the actions are ballistic in nature. Our computationally efficient representation achieves good recognition performance on both a commonly used action recognition dataset and on a dataset we collected to simulate a checkout counter. We study discriminative methods for 3D human pose estimation from single images, which build a map from image features to pose. The main difficulty with these methods is the insufficiency of training data due to the high dimensionality of the pose space. However, real datasets can be augmented with data from character animation software, so the scalability of existing approaches becomes important. We argue that Kernel Partial Least Squares approximates Gaussian Process regression robustly, enabling the use of larger datasets, and we show in experiments that kPLS outperforms two state-of-the-art methods based on GP. The high variability in the appearance of carried objects suggests using their relation to the human silhouette to detect them. We adopt a generate-and-test approach that produces candidate regions from protrusion, color contrast and occlusion boundary cues and then filters them with a kernel SVM classifier on context features. Our method exceeds state of the art accuracy and has good generalization capability. We also propose a Multiple Instance Learning framework for the classifier that reduces annotation effort by two orders of magnitude while maintaining comparable accuracy. Finally, we present an interactive video segmentation system that trades off a small amount of segmentation quality for significantly less supervision than necessary in systems in the literature. While applications like video editing could not directly use the output of our system, reasoning about the trajectories of objects in a scene or learning coarse appearance models is still possible. The unsupervised segmentation component at the base of our system effectively employs occlusion boundary cues and achieves competitive results on an unsupervised segmentation dataset. On videos used to evaluate interactive methods, our system requires less interaction time than others, does not rely on appearance information and can extract multiple objects at the same time. IMPROVING EFFICIENCY AND SCALABILITY IN VISUAL SURVEILLANCE APPLICATIONS


Twitter is a micro-blogging service on the Web, where people can enter short messages, which then become visible to other users of the service. While the topics of these messages varies, there are a lot of messages where the users express their opinions about companies or products. Since the twitter service is very popular, the messages form a rich source of information for companies. They can learn with the help of data mining and sentiment analysis techniques, how their customers like their products or what is the general perception of the company. There is however a great obstacle for analyzing the data directly: as the company names are often ambiguous, one needs first to identify, which messages are related to the company. In this paper we address this question. We present various techniques to classify tweet messages, whether they are related to a given company or not, for example, whether a message containing the keyword "apple" is about the company Apple Inc.. We present simple techniques, which make use of company profiles, which we created semi-automatically from external Web sources. Our advanced techniques take ambiguity estimations into account and also automatically extend the company profiles from the twitter stream itself. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods through an extensive set of experiments.


Low permeate flux due to clogging is the major challenge of hollow fiber microfiltration systems in wastewater treatment because of the high content of suspended solids. In this research, a new crossflow microfiltration module to overcome this problem was studied. The module consisted of a housing, a cylindrical membrane and a bundle of hollow fibers. The nominal pore size of the cylindrical membrane was 5 μm and that of the hollow fibers was 0.1 μm. The cylindrical membrane worked as a screen for pretreatment to remove those particles larger than its pore size and therefore to reduce the solid loading to the hollow fibers. Extensive experiments were conducted under various transmembrane pressures, influent concentrations, and crossflow velocities with polydispersed suspensions prepared with ISO Test Particles of size ranging from less than 0.5 μm to 10 μm. The quantity and quality of the filtrate were monitored over time. The results have shown that the cylindrical membrane worked effectively in reducing solid fouling, and therefore increasing permeate production for the hollow fiber microfiltration system.


Knockdown of stat3 expression by RNAi inhibits in vitro growth of human ovarian cancer Background. The aim of the study was to investigate the suppressive effects of pSilencer2.1-U6-siRNA-stat3 recombinant plasmids on the growth of ovarian cancer in vitro. Material and methods. Three pairs of DNA template (stat3-1, stat3-2, stat3-3) specific for different target sites on stat3 mRNA were synthesized to reconstruct pSilencer2.1-U6-siRNA-stat3s, which were transfected into SKOV3 cells. The expressions of STAT3, BcL-2, cyclin D1 and C-myc in these cells were detected by Western blot and Northern blot. The cell cycle and the growth were determined by flow cytometry (FCM) and MTT assay, respectively. Cell apoptosis was determined by TUNEL staining. Results. Of the three siRNAs, only siRNA targeting stat3-3 markedly suppressed the protein expression of stat3 in SKOV3 cells; MTT assay and FCM showed that transfection of stat3-3 siRNA could significantly suppress the growth of SKOV3 cells and arrest the cell cycle in vitro. TUNEL staining also showed massive apoptosis in SKOV3 cells transfected with stat3-3 siRNA. Conclusions. pSilencer2.1-U6-siRNA-stat3-3 can significantly inhibit the STAT3 expression in human ovarian cancer cells resulting in the inhibition of the cancer growth and the increase of apoptosis of cancer cells.


This thesis focuses on critical issues in the curation and exhibition of networked art, and proposes a curatorial methodology (net.cromancy) for experimental, participatory models in virtual exhibitions. Since 2005, a noticeable increase in hybrid (or alchemic) models of virtual and physical display have added to the increasing institutionalization and commodification of net art. These models contribute to connotations of net art exhibitions as embodied experiences, in which the physical gallery serves as the primary site of interaction and value production. Therefore, alchemic exhibition models neglect the possibility for critical social engagement to be accomplished in uniquely virtual terms. Using an interdisciplinary conceptual framework that incorporates aspects of site-specificity, media theory, political agonism and software curation, the author outlines and analyzes methods for creating an 'open', innovative and democratic virtual exhibition model through the integration of users, and the liberating potential of virtual critique.


A wide variety of materials and chemicals are used in the development, production, cleaning, packaging, sterilization and shipment of medical devices. Some of these materials are used in large quantities and are often a source of waste. Some materials, such as poly vinyl chloride (PVC) plastics, have toxicity concerns. Additionally, many chemicals including chlorinated solvents and ethylene oxide are carcinogenic or highly toxic and can be detrimental to the environment and public health. While the medical device industry is highly regulated in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration, new green initiatives in the European Union are modifying the regulatory oversight of chemicals, materials, and their manufacture. In addition, hospitals are working to reduce waste and pollution as part of their operations and are increasingly asking vendors to assist them. Minimizing waste and pollution associated with medical devices can improve a company's environmental performance and save money. The primary focus in medical device manufacturing is patient safety and compatibility. Environmental considerations, which can include potential cost savings, are often overlooked in the design and process development phases. Numerous pollution prevention and energy efficiency options exist for medical device manufacturers. These options can be integrated into the development, design and process protocols, and engineering change orders when designing a new product or improving an existing part. By having a process design evaluation plan that includes environmental considerations, companies can effectively manage the creation of waste streams, toxicity of material inputs, and process efficiencies as a mechanism at both the front-end and the duration of the product line. These options often cut costs and can help reduce current and prospective regulatory burdens. The Minnesota Technical Assistance Program (MnTAP) at the University of Minnesota has been assisting businesses with pollution prevention and cost savings for 25 years. MnTAP's engineers and scientists have worked with the medical device industry to reduce the quantity of packaging and waste associated with cardiac catheters, reduce the use of toxic cleaning solvents, minimize the use of PVC, and research safer disinfection and sterilization methods. This poster includes case studies of the above mentioned projects, an overview of less toxic sterilization methods, and tools for medical device manufacturing that meet FDA requirements, but reduce waste and toxicity during production and use.


The Primitives of Binding model (Reuland 2001) presents a linguistic framework to explain the complex pattern of anaphora (reflexives and pronominals) across a large number of languages, i.e. it has theoretical validity. The model consist of a syntactic, semantic and discourse module and, furthermore, incorporates an economy hierarchy: syntactic anaphoric dependencies require less processing resources than semantic anaphoric dependencies, which in turn are cheaper than discourse anaphoric dependencies. I will discuss the results of three eye-tracking experiments which suggest that this economy hierarchy is reflected in real time anaphora comprehension. Hence, the model has psychological reality as well. The implications of this conclusion will be illustrated by comparing a real time version of the model to Friederici's (2002) neurocognitive approach to language comprehension.


Abstract. An interdisciplinary team from the National Technical University of Athens is performing the restoration of the Holy Aedicule, which covers the Tomb of Christ within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The first important task was to geometrically document the monument for the production of the necessary base material on which the structural and material prospection studies would be based. One task of this action was to assess the structural behavior of this edifice in order to support subsequent works. It was imperative that the internal composition of the construction be documented as reliably as possible. To this end several data acquisition techniques were employed, among them ground penetrating radar. Interpretation of these measurements revealed the position of the rock, remnants of the initial cave of the burial of Christ. This paper reports on the methodology employed to construct the 3D model of the rock and introduce it into the 3D model of the whole building, thus enhancing the information about the structure. The conversion of the radargrams to horizontal sections of the rock is explained and the construction of the 3D model and its insertion into the 3D model of the Holy Aedicule is described.


The state space of most adversary games is a directed graph. However, due to the success of simple recursive algorithms based on Alpha-Beta, theoreticians and practitioners have concentrated on the traversal of trees, giving the field the name "game-tree search." This paper shows that the focus on trees has obscured some important properties of the underlying graphs. One of the hallmarks of the field of game-tree search has been the notion of the minimal tree, the smallest tree that has to be searched by any algorithm to find the minimax value. In fact, for most games it is a directed graph. As demonstrated in chess and checkers, we show that the minimal graph is significantly smaller than previously thought. proving that there is more room for improvement of current algorithms. We exploit the graph properties of the search space to reduce the size of trees built in practice by at least 25%. For over a decade, fixed-depth Alpha-Beta searching has been considered a closed subject, with research moving on to more application-dependent techniques. This work opens up new avenues of research for further application-independent improvements.


This paper is based on partially exploratory and partially descriptive research design to find out AIDS awareness and agreement of parents and teachers on educating adolescents about contraception techniques. For this study 60 parents and 60 teachers were interviewed from 10 different Govt. Senior Secondary schools in district Sangrur, Punjab, India. The random sampling technique was used. The knowledge of AIDS among parents was found partial. Mothers showed lesser knowledge of AIDS in comparison to fathers. Teachers showed comprehensive knowledge of AIDS. Majority of respondents disagree on educating adolescents about contraception techniques. But all responded reported to be in agreement to provide full knowledge about AIDS to adolescents. The education of contraception for adolescent found to be associated with the knowledge of prevention from unwanted pregnancy. Parents and teachers showed propensity to provide such education to adolescents which advocates sexual abstinence until marriage. The plausible reason to such perception could be that in most of Indian societies there is taboo on sex or sex related discussion. Keywords : Adolescents and AIDS; contraception knowledge to adolescents; teachers and AIDS; parents and AIDS DOI: 10.3126/dsaj.v4i0.4520 Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol.4 2010 pp.193-210


Today's growing global population places greater pressure upon the world's existing food, fiber, and natural resources more than any other time in history. With this factor in mind it is imperative that individuals with the requisite knowledge, skills, and dispositions are placed in positions of leadership to foster the global agricultural industry through both prosperous and turbulent times. According to the National FFA Organization agriculture is America's largest industry with over 21 million individuals employed in various sectors of the industry. With an industry so extensive and vitally important to mankind's very survival it would undoubtedly require many individuals and a diverse array of organizations working in collaboration to ensure the continued flow of food and fiber and the conservative utilization of increasingly scarce natural resources. The African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" most certainly holds true for the global agricultural industry because it in fact takes a plethora of individuals to promote a sense of agricultural literacy among mankind as a whole. When I was approached about organizing this theme edition regarding developing professional relationships within the greater agricultural education community, I reflected back upon my career in agricultural education and the importance of the relationships that I have developed over the years. I additionally thought about the relationships that my father and his fellow secondary agricultural educators developed throughout their careers and the impact that each had upon their respective programs. Effective educators, regardless of their discipline, learn early on in their careers that providing students with a dynamic educational experience involves more than traditional classroom methodologies, but is truly a community endeavor involving an assortment of stakeholders (i.e. parents, administrators, entrepreneurs, community colleges, etc.) which bring a multitude of resources and experiences to the educational environment. As a teacher educator I have witnessed firsthand the positive impact that developing a network of professional relationships can have upon one's students outlook - i.e. providing them with a cadre of contacts, resources, and experiences I realistically could not provide solely as an instructor. The old saying that "two heads are better than one" is truly a profound statement, particularly when it comes to developing quality educational programming in agriculture. The World Food Program (2009) estimates that about one billion people are undernourished globally, a factor which can be attributed to several key factors including a poor agricultural infrastructure and the unwise use of environmental resources. …


BACKGROUND
Current demographic, prognostic, and outcomes data on the diagnosis and treatment of chondrosarcoma have been based on case series reported by individual treatment centers. The SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results) database is a validated national epidemiological surveillance system and cancer registry that has been used extensively to evaluate treatment outcomes in cases of malignancy. The purpose of the present study was to use this database to identify demographic and prognostic characteristics of chondrosarcoma and to describe the natural history following the treatment of this rare disease in the United States over the last thirty years.

METHODS
Two thousand eight hundred and ninety patients with chondrosarcoma were identified in the SEER database, and information regarding the demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients, the histological features and grade of the tumors, the location and size of the tumors, the surgical stage at the time of diagnosis, the use of surgery and radiation treatment, and survival were extracted.

RESULTS
Comparison of the overall and disease-specific survival rates revealed that patients who survived for ten years were more likely to die of events that were unrelated to chondrosarcoma. The disease-specific survival rate leveled off at ten years of follow-up. Univariate analysis revealed that female sex, a low histological grade, and local surgical stage were associated with a significant disease-specific survival benefit. An age of fifty years or less and an appendicular location of the tumor were associated with a significant overall survival benefit. On multivariate analysis, only grade and stage had significant association with disease-specific survival. On the basis of a comparison of survival rates according to the decade of diagnosis, it appears that there has been no significant improvement in survival over the last thirty years.

CONCLUSIONS
Only grade and stage are independent prognostic factors for survival in cases of chondrosarcoma. Current treatment algorithms have not improved the survival rates of patients with chondrosarcoma over the past thirty years. Routine patient surveillance following treatment should be extended to ten years of follow-up.


Millions of drinking water supplies in Bangladesh are contaminated with potentially lethal levels of arsenic. This discovery in the late 1990s sparked widespread international concerns and generated a substantial amount of funds. Yet, after more than a decade, the provision of safe water supplies and accessible arsenicosis treatment schemes remains inadequate. A lack of understanding of the origin and health impacts of arsenic is one of the many obstacles at the community level. There is evidence that arsenic poisoning affects particularly the poor due to their malnutrition and low health status. Moreover, technologies and medicines for treatment are often unaffordable or unavailable to them. Interventions in the water and health sectors must not only address these inequalities, they must also be integrated. It has long been established that treatment is of no use unless people first have access to safe water. The reverse is also true; shifting to safe water is often not sufficient to detoxify the blood and organs affected by years of gradual poisoning. A safe water supply must go hand in hand with long-term medical support for existing patients. This raises serious doubts about the sustainability of many of today's efforts. Our paper describes the challenges by drawing from our experiences working with some of the poorer arsenic affected villages in rural Bangladesh.


The myriad links between cultural and biological diversity are increasingly viewed as key elements in achieving sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, combining natural and social sciences, culture, education and communication, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is in a unique position to mainstream the links between biological and cultural diversity in research, political dialogue and action from local to international levels. As a subset but key component of the interlinkages between biological and cultural diversity, the use of local and traditional knowledge for biodiversity and heritage conservation will be further studied and documented as well as the status and trends in linguistic diversity and the numbers of speakers of indigenous languages. Attention will be paid to distilling principles of biological-cultural diversity interactions that may assist with the design and implementation of relevant policies. Ultimately, the analytical and scientific work conducted by UNESCO in this area will assist the implementation and enhanced cooperation between normative instruments related to biological and cultural diversity, which will include but will not be limited to the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.


A method has been developed for using particle hygroscopicity measurements made with a humidified tandem differential mobility analyzer (HTDMA) to determine water activity as a function of solute weight percent. In Part I, the method was tested for particles composed of sodium chloride and ammonium sulfate. Here, we report results for several atmospherically-relevant organic species: glutaric acid, malonic acid, oxalic acid and levoglucosan. Predicted water activities for aqueous dicarboxylic acid solutions are quite similar in some cases to published estimates and the simplified predictions of Kohler theory, while in other cases substantial differences are found, which we attribute primarily to the semivolatile nature of these compounds that makes them difficult to study with the HTDMA. In contrast, estimates of water activity for levoglucosan solutions compare very well with recently-reported measurements and with published data for aqueous glucose and fructose solutions. For all studied species, the critical dry diameters active at supersaturations between 0.2 and 1% that are computed with the HTDMA-derived water activities are generally within the experimental error (~20%) estimated in previously-published direct measurements using cloud condensation nuclei counters. For individual compounds, the variations in reported solution water activity lead to uncertainties in critical dry diameters of 5-25%, not significantly larger than the uncertainty in the direct measurements. To explore the impact of these uncertainties on modeled aerosol-cloud interactions, we incorporate the variations in estimates of solution water activities into the description of hygroscopic growth of aerosol particles in an adiabatic parcel model and examine the impact on the predicted drop number concentrations. For the limited set of initial conditions examined here, we find that the uncertainties in critical dry diameters for individual species lead to 0-21% changes in drop number concentration, with the largest effects at high aerosol number concentrations and slow updraft velocities. Ammonium sulfate, malonic acid and glutaric acid have similar activation behavior, while glutaric acid and levoglucosan are somewhat less hygroscopic and lead to lower drop number concentrations; sodium chloride is the most easily activated compound. We explain these behaviors in terms of a parameter that represents compound hygroscopicity, and conclude that this parameter must vary by more than a factor of 2 to induce more than a 15% change in activated drop number concentrations. In agreement with earlier studies, our results suggest that the number concentration of activated drops is more sensitive to changes in the input aerosol size and number concentrations and the applied updraft velocity than to modest changes in the aerosol composition and hygroscopic properties.


CD8+ T cells may play a beneficial role in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients by two mechanisms. HIV-specific cytotoxic activity and secretion of a soluble mediator(s) that inhibits HIV replication in vitro. Here we characterized both activities mediated by an HIV p24gag-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) CD8+ clone derived from an HIV-infected patient. When the CTL clone was mixed with HIV-infected autologous CD4+ T cells, viral replication was suppressed. This viral inhibition was observed in heterologous CD4+ T cells and when CD8+ and CD4+ populations were separated by a semipermeable membrane, demonstrating the involvement of a diffusible factor(s). The lysis of autologous HIV-infected T cells was also detected. However, HIV suppression was more efficient when CD4+ and CD8+ T cells shared major histocompatibility complex alleles and were in direct contact. Thus, one and the same CD8+ T cell population can mediate both lysis of HIV-infected targets and nonlytic suppression of HIV replication. These results underline the multiple roles of CD8+ T lymphocytes in the suppression of HIV-infected cells.


This essay is part of a written symposium in honor of Father Robert Drinan, S.J., book "Can God and Caesar Coexist?" The symposium also includes essays by professors Elizabeth Defeis and Mark Janis, as well as a responsive essay by Father Drinan, one of his last published pieces. This essay focuses on Father Drinan's proposal to establish a transnational tribunal for the protection of religious freedom. Part I of this essay considers Father Drinan's proposal as part of the modernist tradition of international legal jurisprudence. Aspects of Father Drinan's argument are especially similar to conceptions of international law elucidated by Hersch Lauterpacht, perhaps the greatest twentieth-century exponent of legal modernism. Both Lauterpacht and Drinan draw from a worldview defined by the European Enlightenment and the start of what is commonly called the Age of Reason. After situating the proposals of "Can God and Caesar Coexist?" within international law's tradition, Part II turns to a pair of relatively recent methods of criticizing the traditional view of international law: rational choice theory and so-called critical or new stream perspectives on international law. Although these perspectives have at times been linked with politically conservative (rational choice theory) and liberal (new stream) viewpoints, Part II argues that they are better understood as atavistic conceptions of law that have earlier manifestations in the theories of the Enlightenment philosophies and of their Romantic critics. As such, legal modernism, new stream theory, and rational choice perspectives are methodological siblings, borne of the Age of Reason and now squabbling over the intellectual inheritance of their parents. They may be better off sharing the wealth and helping each other. With this discussion as a base, Part III returns to Father Drinan's proposal and considers how it may profit from the perspectives of rational choice and the new stream, as well as insights from transnational legal process and legitimacy theory. I use these theories to highlight an underlying tension in Father Drinan's proposal - the attempt to use rationalist/universalist tools to defend particular conceptions of the good. Referring to recent debates on the effectiveness of transnational tribunals, I ask whether legalization and the use of a tribunal would actually be counter-productive in this instance. Conversely, while Father Drinan's proposal has its difficulties, new stream and rational choice theorists can learn from his mainstream/modernist methodology in considering how to address the sectarian struggles of today. Father Drinan's proposal may not be perfect, but it does present a clear path towards attempting to resolve actual problems. Bridging theory with practice remains one of the enduring parts of Father Drinan's scholarship and the ongoing process of trying to find a solution may be all the solution that exists.


Background and Objective: Sufficient amount of chlorine is needed to be maintained in the pool as not only the adult go for swimming but also children with more sensitive skin. This study was conducted to determine the presence of coliform group of bacteria which involved faecal coliform and Escherichia coli as microbial indicators for water quality contamination in the Sports Complex swimming pool water that is treated with chlorine disinfectant. Materials and Methods: Identification of faecal coliform and Escherichia coli were done through Membrane Filtration Method from APHA standard. The amount of free chlorine content in the swimming pool were also analyzed using HACH Spectrophotometer in order to relate the reactions of the supplied free chlorine towards the number of the microbial colonies inside the swimming pool. Results: The result shows that the outdoor swimming pool has a higher concentration for both faecal coliform and Escherichia coli compare to the indoor swimming pool and the highest concentration of faecal coliform can reached 266±64.65 CFU 100 mLG1 and Escherichia coli up to 113±57.40 CFU 100 mLG1 . This showed that coliform bacteria still presence in the swimming pool at the sports complex although it has been treated with chlorine disinfectant. In a meantime, for the free chlorine content it showed that the average concentration in outdoor pool were recorded lower at 0.492±0.531 mg LG1 which was way below the minimum limit 1.0 mg LG1 of the permissible NSPF standard, whereas indoor pool were recorded at 1.069±0.585 mg LG1 . Conclusion: The microbial presence and chlorine content in indoor swimming pool can be said more hygienic and cleaner to swim compare to the outdoor.


The investment of foreign exchange reserves or other asset portfolios requires an assessment of the credit quality of counterparties. Traditionally, foreign exchange reserve managers and other investors have relied on credit rating agencies (CRAs) as the main source for credit assessments. The Financial Stability Board issued a set of principles in support of financial stability to reduce reliance on CRA ratings in standards, laws and regulations. To support efforts to end mechanistic reliance on CRA ratings and instead establish stronger internal credit assessment practices, this paper provides a detailed technical description of a methodology developed to assign an internal credit rating to multilateral development banks (MDBs), using only publicly available data. The methodology relies on fundamental credit analysis that produces a forward-looking assessment of the investment entity's capacity and willingness to pay its financial obligations, resulting in an opinion on the relative credit standing or likelihood of default. This methodology proposes four key innovations: (i) a simple way of estimating the capital adequacy ratio, (ii) new metrics to evaluate the liquidity and funding profile of an MDB, (iii) a straightforward approach to evaluating the exceptional support from shareholders, and (iv) a new criterion related to corporate governance, which provides a high level of objectivity in assessing some of the qualitative indicators. The methodology is a key component of the joint Bank of Canada and Department of Finance Canada initiative to develop internal credit assessment capabilities and is currently used to assess eligibility and inform investment decisions in the management of Canada's foreign exchange reserves.


The year 2011 saw unprecedented waves of people occupying key locations around the world in a statement of public discontent. In Egypt, the protests which took place between 25 January and 11 February 2011 culminating in the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have now come to be known as the Egyptian Revolution. Media reporting of the revolution often portrayed it as a 'spectacle' playing out on the stage of Tahrir Square which was dubbed 'the symbolic heart of the Egyptian revolution'. Tahrir Square quickly became a space serving various functions and layered with an array of meanings. This paper explores the relationship between the discourse of protest messages and the space of Tahrir Square during the January 25 revolution, demonstrating how the two were mutually reinforcing. The messages are drawn from a corpus of approximately 2000 protest messages captured in Tahrir Square between 25 January and 11 February 2011. The analysis is presented in the form of six conceptualising frames for the space of Tahrir Square which take into account both its geographical and social context. The conceptualisation draws from the field of geosemiotics, which posits that all discourses are 'situated' both in space and time (Scollon & Scollon 2003), and on the Lefebvrian principles of the production of space which provide a useful framework for interpreting urban space (Lefebvre 1991). Keywords: Linguistic landscapes; geosemiotics; discourse and space; Tahrir Square; January 25 revolution


Abstract. In this study we present the retrieval of the column-averaged dry air mole fraction of carbon dioxide (XCO2) from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite observations using the RemoTeC algorithm, previously successfully applied to retrieval of greenhouse gas concentration from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT). The XCO2 product has been validated with collocated ground-based measurements from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) for almost 2 years of OCO-2 data from September 2014 to July 2016. We found that fitting an additive radiometric offset in all three spectral bands of OCO-2 significantly improved the retrieval. Based on a small correlation of the XCO2 error over land with goodness of fit, we applied an a posteriori bias correction to our OCO-2 retrievals. In overpass averaged results, XCO2 retrievals have an SD of  ∼ 1.30 ppm and a station-to-station variability of  ∼ 0.40 ppm among collocated TCCON sites. The seasonal relative accuracy (SRA) has a value of 0.52 ppm. The validation shows relatively larger difference with TCCON over high-latitude areas and some specific regions like Japan.


Between 1986 and 1994, 13 patients with mobile painful arthritic elbows were treated by distraction interposition arthroplasty using fascia lata. The mean period of follow-up was 63 months. An elbow distractor/fixator was applied for three to four weeks to separate the articular surfaces and to protect the fascial graft. Nine of the 13 patients (69%) had satisfactory relief from pain; eight (62%) had an excellent or good result by the objective criteria of the Mayo Elbow Performance score. Four have required revision to total elbow arthroplasty at a mean of 30 months with good results to date. Instability of the elbow, both before and after surgery, was found to be associated with unsatisfactory results. The rate of success when the procedure was performed for inflammatory arthritis was similar to that for post-traumatic arthritis, about 67%. Eight complications occurred in six patients, all in the group with post-traumatic arthritis. Two of these required further surgical procedures such as transposition of the ulnar nerve or repair of hernia of the fascia lata. Although less reliable than prosthetic replacement, distraction interposition arthroplasty is a useful option in the treatment of young, high-demand patients with arthritis of the elbow. It is rarely indicated in the presence of generalised inflammatory arthritis, but may be of value in those patients in whom the disease is limited primarily to the elbow.


Viscoelastic materials are widely used in many applications in practice. However, determination of the elastic and damping properties of these materials is quite di cult in the sense that the identi ed results may contain high degree of uncertainty. The characterization of viscoelastic materials using the Oberst beam method, based on non-contact excitation and response measurements, is revisited in this paper. The e ects of signal processing parameters such as frequency resolution in Frequency Response Function (FRF) measurements, as well as the e ects of various single-degree-of-freedom modal analysis methods, including circlet, half-power and linet are investigated rst. Then, the modal loss factors, Young's modulus and shear modulus of some sample viscoelastic materials are identi ed using both the free-layered and sandwiched samples. The results obtained from di erent tests are compared, discussed and some recommendations are made so as to identify the damping and elastic properties of typical viscoelastic materials with better accuracy. Analyses of a large number of FRF measurements show that the selection of the appropriate signal processing parameters and the use of appropriate modal analysis method can be very signi cant during the identi cation of viscoelastic materials. By following the approach presented in this paper, the damping and elastic properties of viscoelastic materials can be identi ed with better accuracy using either free-layered or sandwiched samples. The material properties obtained by this approach can be used for developing valid structural models and/or for damping optimization purposes.


Starting with the question, « by virtue of what does an adolescent crisis of the body exist? », this article proposes to play with the notions of space, of watching, and of the creation of a name. Internet, as mirror and space for circulating profiles and images, translates the journey of the trial to inscribe the destiny of new figures of the Name of the Father. This journey involves the risk of initiating a counter culture movement, and of the adolescent becoming the Father of the Name through the effects of his or her creation.


Background and aim of the Work: Groin pain after hip arthroplasty (HA) ranges from 0.4% to 18.3%. Defining the cause of groin pain after HA can be difficult. Iliopsoas impingement (IPI) has been reported to be the underlying cause of groin pain in up to 4.4% of cases. The purpose of this study is to present arthroscopic surgical outcomes in the treatment of IPI after HA. Methods: Between September 2013 and March 2018, 13 patients, 11 total hip arthroplasty (THA), 1 hip endoprosthesis and 1 total hip resurfacing affected by groin pain due to unceasing iliopsoas tendinopathy for impingement after HA were treated arthroscopically. The patients underwent to physical examination, blood analysis, hip X-rays, bone scintigraphy and CT assessment. We performed the arthroscopic OUT-IN access to hip joint in all patients. VAS scale, Harris Hip Score (HHS) and Medical Research Council (MRC) scale were performed before surgery and during follow up at 1-3-6-12 months. Results: After 10 months of mean follow-up, average HHS and MRC scale improved significantly from preoperatively to postoperatively. No complications arose in our case series. Conclusions: Hip arthroscopy after hip arthroplasty is supported in the literature for a variety of indications. Hip arthroscopy is a viable and reproducible technique in treatment of IPI, being less invasive than the classic open technique. This simple arthroscopic release provides satisfactory results and preserves HA function. Moreover an arthroscopic OUT-IN access proves good clinical outcomes, few complications and iatrogenic lesions. (www.actabiomedica.it)


There are those who go to the doctor and want to only know if they are dying or not. And then there are others who go to the doctor to know all the details of what is going inside their body. The latter group of individuals are the ones who really want to improve their body. Similarly, there are those organizations who only care to know if they are under cyberattack or if they have been breached. They do not necessarily care to know the details of what is going on inside their network. These organizations compare the need to get 24x7x365 monitoring to the physical alarm system for the house. The physical alarm system notifies you and the law enforcement if there has been a physical breach. The same way, they expect their 24x7x365 monitoring service to let them know about the data breach or a cyberattack. These organizations generally do not get the maximum value from what a 24x7x365 monitoring can provide. On the other hand, the organizations who really care to understand all the activities within their network are the ones who really want to improve their IT security and reduce the possibility of cyber compromise.


OBJECTIVE
This paper reports a rare case of an occupational hypersensitivity reaction to an antineoplastic agent.

METHODS
This is a clinical case report of a 45-year-old nurse who developed throat irritation and chronic nasal congestion followed by sinusitis shortly after beginning work at an oncological out-patient clinic. The symptoms disappeared upon leaving the clinic two years later, but they returned when she resumed work at the oncology unit at Hillerød Hospital, Denmark, handling chemotherapy on a daily basis. We performed in vitro histamine release tests against nine suspected antineoplastic agents.

RESULTS
The patient's histamine release test against the antineoplastic agent etoposide was positive; the other test results were negative. The histamine release test against etoposide using passive sensitization was also negative. Upon leaving the oncology department, the symptoms of the nurse disappeared once again. She was given a diagnosis of rhinosinusitis.

CONCLUSION
This case of a hypersensitivity reaction to etoposide was judged to be of occupational origin. It was not clear whether it was immunoglobulin E (IgE) or non-IgE mediated.


In continental collisional orogenic belts, the hinterland-foreland transition plays a crucial role in the deformation styles and in the exhumation modes of the middle crustal rocks. The Barbagia Thrust (BT), a regional scale shear zone in the Variscan belt of central Sardinia, represents this transition. The BT, separating nappes withdifferent deformation styles, is still poorly characterized.We present new data of the BT and of the nearby tectonic units, using a multidisciplinary approach. We characterized in detail both meso- and micro-structural features, as well as, the metamorphic conditions with the aid of illite and chlorite "crystallinity" of rocks from the footwall, hanging wall and high-strain zone of the BT. Moreover, combining different palaeopiezometer-wet quartzite flowlaw pairs we characterized the rheological parameters (i.e., flow stress and strain rate) present during the BT activity. Three main deformation phases were recognized. After a D1 contractional deformation, a D2 related to the BT movement was associated to the development of a nearly 100 m thick high-strain zone withthe development of a mylonitic foliation, Sm, at middle crustal conditions, near the brittle-ductile" transition. Metamorphic constrains obtained from the footwall, the hanging wall and the high-strain zone supported an epizonal metamorphism with no unambiguous trend related to the strain intensity.Integrating our new metamorphic, deformation and rheological data, with previous ones in the geological literature helps to better unravel the long-lasting history of the nappe emplacement at hinterland-foreland transition in the Sardinian Variscan Belt.


A new molecular engineering strategy is proposed that favors the packing of charge-transfer conjugated molecules to enhance their crystalline quadratic nonlinear efficiency. A highly polar substituent is grafted to an achiral molecule at a position remote from the donor–acceptor π-electron conjugated system. Dipolar interaction forces will act mainly toward the antiparallel coupling of local dipoles, while the remaining nonlinear portion of the molecule is freed, under other influences, to set up a noncentrosymmetric and possibly optimal structure. Among other 4-nitroanilinelike compounds, N-(4-nitrophenyl)-N-methylaminoacetonitrile (NPAN) exemplifies this new approach and is shown to have a powder second-harmonic generation efficiency of the same order as that of N-(4-nitrophenyl)-L-prolinol (NPP), i.e., more than 2 orders of magnitude above that of urea. The nonlinearity of both molecules (vector part of the β tensor projected along the dipole moment) has been measured by use of electric-field induced second-harmonic (EFISH) generation in solution at 1.06 μm. The nonlinearity of the NPAN molecule is roughly half that of NPP, but the transparency range of NPAN is significantly increased toward the UV compared with that of NPP. Two theoretical models, based, respectively, on a finite-field perturbation of the Hartree–Fock equations and on a sum-over-states expansion of tensor β both at a semiempirical level of approximation, are used to compute the coefficients of the first-order hyperpolarizability of NPP and NPAN. A two-level quantum model is used to account for frequency dispersion, and theoretical crystalline coefficients are obtained from an oriented-gas description of the crystal. Theoretical molecular polarizabilities are in satisfactory agreement with the EFISH experimental results. The experimental crystalline nonlinearity of NPP is also well accounted for by calculations, while the optimized nonlinear coefficient dZYY of crystalline NPAN is predicted to be of the order of 140 × 10−9 esu, coming close to that of NPP.


Anxiety and depression are among the most prevalent psychological disorders affecting a large number of people across different cultures. At present, these conditions have not been examined among the general population of Bulgaria. This thesis is a large-scale project involving Bulgarian adolescents aged 13-17 and Bulgarian adults aged 35-58. The main aims are: 1/ to investigate the prevalence and correlates of anxiety and depression in Bulgarian adolescents and adults because this population has been underresearched on these topics 2/ to assess mental health literacy about depression in these two groups. Research indicates that mental health literacy rates vary in adolescents and adults across countries and cultures and are influences by a number of factors such as: healthcare system, social attitudes and expectations, education and social support. 3/ to study the personal experience of anxiety through qualitative methods. The purpose of this analysis is to get the individual point of view. A significant overlap in symptoms exist between depression and anxiety but anxiety has many different forms and aspects (panic attacks, social phobia, generalised anxiety disorder, etc.) that are worthy of qualitative investigation. The two age groups were chosen because: A) their life experiences were very different from a cultural point of view: the adolescents grew in a global, modern and democratic Bulgaria and the adults used to live under the isolation and restrictions of the Communist rule. 3 B) adolescence and adulthood are two distinctive life stages characterised by: social/ emotional changes, changes in health attitudes/behaviour and transition between concrete/ abstract thinking. Three studies were carried out in Bulgaria: Study 1 and Study 2 were quantitative, cross-sectional and Study 3 was qualitative. For Study 1 and Study 2 adolescents (n=700) were randomly recruited from public schools and adults (n=250) were recruited from employment companies. Study 3 applied interpretative phenomenological analysis to unstructured interviews conducted with adolescents (n=10) and adults (n=10) recruited from a subsample of Study 1. Results from Study 1 suggested that adolescents and adults had marked differences in specific sub-types of anxiety with adults scoring higher on social phobia, physical injury anxiety and panic agoraphobia. Anxiety and depression correlated strongly in adults. Significant gender differences were observed with females having higher prevalence rates of anxiety and depression in both age groups. Adults also scored higher on interdependency, indicating a collectivist mind set associated with Communism. Results from Study 2 indicated that both age groups had low levels of mental health literacy. However, adults appeared to be more affected by stigma associated with psychological illnesses. Qualitative results from Study 3 highlighted personal experiences and identified additional risk factors associated with onset and persistence of anxiety. Some of these factors were prevalent across both age groups and others were age specific. Further research work needs to focus on identifying helpful strategies in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of these conditions in adolescents and adults. 4 Improving health education across different age groups and reducing stigma towards psychological illness are of particular importance.


Prokofiev's compositional output during the years 1939-1944 was exceptional in both quantity and quality. The War Years spawned many of Prokofiev's greatest works, including the trilogy of the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Piano Sonatas, known as the "War Sonatas." Focusing on the Seventh and Eighth Sonatas allows for a comparison of these, the most closely related of the three. Written almost simultaneously, the Seventh and Eighth Sonatas share an intricate unity although their contrasting elements are many. Prokofiev's versatility and genius in the use of motivic and cyclic elements links the movements of each sonata, and, ultimately, the two sonatas. Because of the motivic nature, which can be quite subtle, a Schoenbergian "Grundgestalt" method of analysis is used. Not solely a unifying device, the motives and their manipulation also create the drama of these highly charged works. Consequently, performance can be enlightened and enhanced through a detailed motivic study of both sonatas. Chapter One explores the historical context of the War Sonatas and an overview of Prokofiev's piano works, focusing on the nine Piano Sonatas. In Chapter Two, the structural relationships, motivic material, and stylistic differences of Sonata No. Seven and Sonata No. Eight are summarized. The introductory theme of the Seventh Sonata, its "Grundgestalt," contains all of the other themes in essence. Chapter Three examines how the drama of the sonatas influences their structure and the use of their motives. The Seventh Sonata is subjected to formal, tonal, and motivic analysis. Chapter Four continues the process with a full analysis of all three movements of Sonata No. Eight. In conclusion, these ideas are brought together in an overview of performance practice in the Seventh and Eighth Sonatas.


Economic theory underlines that vertical mergers are very likely to lead to efficiencies and benefit consumers. On the other hand, more recent research found that vertical integration can also be used as an anti-competitive tool by firms, and harm consumers, notably through foreclosure. These opposing effects make the assessment of vertical mergers a subtle exercise. This article argues that because of the complexity of the issue, it is important to rely on empirical studies to understand in practice the consequences of vertical integration. It reviews three recent articles on vertical mergers to better illustrate what can be learned ex post from such studies and the methods employed. It then looks at the TomTom/Tele Atlas merger where the European Commission ex ante conducted an evaluation of the incentives to foreclose by the new proposed entity. Econometric tools provide interesting insights on the mechanisms at play in vertical mergers, both ex ante and ex post, and therefore usefully complete economic theory.


The present study applies uses & gratification theory to assess motivations of people in J&K towards Internet access, their attitudes and opinions on the longest ever Internet blackout for more than 120 days in Jammu & Kashmir. Routine life of almost everyone was affected in some ways or the other. In the 21st Century when access to Internet is recognized globally as a basic human right, this basic right was denied to the people of J&K not just once but several times. Since 2012, almost 180 shutdowns were reported in J&K. Since life at present revolves around the Internet undoubtedly and when that plug is pulled-off several times, it ruptures the social balance from the view of social determinism. Technology that drives the development of society, its social structure and cultural values is the new norm in the 21st Century. The study thus aims to find specific uses of Internet by people in J&K, study their perception and opinions towards "missing"theInternet. The paper thus uses "What Missing the Newspaper Means" as a model to study what missing the Internet means to the people of J&K. Uses and gratifications approach is applied to explain the shifting focus of media from the purposes of communicator to the purposes of the receiver with the help of a survey. The study found that there is significant difference between gender and use of internet for process needs (purposeful navigation) as well as there is a significant difference between gender and loss experienced in the Internet's absence.


The particle filter(PF) has during the last decade been proposed for a wide range of localization and tracking applications. There is a general need in such embedded system to have a platform for efficient and scalable implementation of the PF. One such platform is the graphics processing unit (GPU), originally aimed to be used for fast rendering of graphics. To achieve this, GPUs are equipped with a parallel architecture which can be exploited for general-purpose computing on GPU (GPGPU) as a complement to the central processing unit (CPU). In this paper, GPGPU techniques are used to make a parallel recursive Bayesian estimation implementation using particle filters. The modifications made to obtain a parallel particle filter, especially for the resampling step, are discussed and the performance of the resulting GPU implementation is compared to the one achieved with a traditional CPU implementation. The comparison is made using a minimal sensor network with bearings-only sensors. The resulting GPU filter, which is the first complete GPU implementation of a PF published to this date, is faster than the CPU filter when many particles are used, maintaining the same accuracy. The parallelization utilizes ideas that can be applicable for other applications.


In The Antitrust Paradox, Robert Bork viewed most mergers as either competitively neutral or efficiency enhancing. In his view, only mergers creating a dominant firm or monopoly were likely to harm consumers. Bork was especially skeptical of oligopoly concerns resulting from mergers. In this paper, we provide a critique of Bork's views on merger policy from The Antitrust Paradox. Many of Bork's recommendations have been implemented over time and have improved merger analysis. Bork's proposed horizontal merger policy, however, was too permissive. In particular, the empirical record shows that mergers in oligopolistic markets can raise consumer prices.


Conscientious objectors to the killing of others—whether through war, abortion, infanticide or euthanasia usually pay quite a high price for taking such a stand, if only in having to bear the opprobrium of opposing voices; some, however, lose their jobs altogether or at least the likelihood of promotion even if they remain in post.1 Leading medical journals,2 ,3 including this one,4 have at least up to now appeared increasingly intolerant in recent years of conscientious objection in medicine.

The recently published consensus statement of an ethics summit on the topic begins, 'Healthcare practitioners' primary obligations are towards their patients, not towards their own personal conscience.'5 This arguably creates a false antithesis from the start. Conscientious objection to killing is primarily about obligations to patients in the minds of most such objectors. The consensus statement goes …


Lexical pitch accents in bimoraic particles of Tokyo Japanese are believed to be deleted when the particles are combined with accented words. Analysis of the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese revealed, however, there are many cases where particles retain their accent, thereby forming an accentual phrase of their own. Factors that favor accent preservation include semantic properties of particles, inter-accent distance, boundary pitch movements, and, formality of speech. Particles having emphatic and/or limitative meanings, like /sa'e/, /ko'so/ and /no'mi/, are the most probable to retain their accents.


The advent of electronic computing permits the empirical analysis of economic models of far greater subtlety and rigour than before, when many interesting ideas were not followed up because the calculations involved made this impracticable. The estimation and testing of these more intricate models is usually based on the method of Maximum Likelihood, which is a well-established branch of mathematical statistics. Its use in econometrics has led to the development of a number of special techniques; the specific conditions of econometric research moreover demand certain changes in the interpretation of the basic argument. This book is a self-contained introduction to this field. It consists of three parts. The first deals with general features of Maximum Likelihood methods; the second with linear and nonlinear regression; and the third with discrete choice and related micro-economic models. Readers should already be familiar with elementary statistical theory, with applied econometric research papers, or with the literature on the mathematical basis of Maximum Likelihood theory. They can also try their hand at some advanced econometric research of their own.


Some 17 303 South African prisoners-of-war of all races were incarcerated during the war. The largest contingents of South African prisoners were taken in Libya; at Sidi Rezegb (3000) in November 1941 and at Tobruk (10 722) in June 1942. These men were kept in temporary camps (called cages) in North Africa, before they were transported to camps in Italy. When Italy capitulated in September 1943, they were moved to camps in Germany. Thrown together in the camps the various nationalities introduced one another to lesser known traditional sports, volleyball being an example. This was a new sport for the South Africans and they competed keenly. The prisoners belonging to the British Dominions demonstrated cricket, rugby, soccer and Australian Rules football, while North American prisoners introduced American football, baseball, softball, and as mentioned, volleyball. Several other sports were also demonstrated and in some cases even played by prisoners from countries where the relevant sport was not traditional. Many South Africans participated in sport and games for the first time. In some camps sport was played six days a week and it was not limited only to compounds playing each other, but also took place at international level, for the days were long and boredom was one of the greatest enemies of all prisoners. The POWs also needed sporting activities to recreate some of the structures of their everyday home lives and to cover any escape activities that may have been taking place. Sport, therefore, played a major role in maintaining the sanity and health of the prisoners.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussions about the radical change that is required if any notion of sustainability is to hold in the future. It is hypothesised that developments in environmental sustainability accounting are likely to take place in China because it has both a tradition of harmony in its predominant philosophical schools and it has a political system based on strong government that is able to shape approaches to sustainability. Design/methodology/approach –The paper contains a synthesis of the literature on environmental accounting and on episteme change. Using a Foucauldian epistemic framework and method, a case of a Chinese state owned enterprise is examined for evidence of developments in environmental accounting and of the attitudes of the accountants implementing changes to the accounting systems to incorporate such developments. Findings – Developments in environmental accounting are found to mirror the developments in environmental management more generally. The influences on these developments are found to be rooted in a life-centred morality based on Chinese philosophy, invention using new technologies, removal of some of the barriers caused by specialisation and an awareness of issues linked to anthropocosmic (rather than anthropocentric) notions of world order. Practical implications – A case such as this opens the door for Chinese organisations to move towards environmental sustainability and its associated accounting in ways that are not mimetic of practices in other parts of the world (i.e. the West). This means that China could lead the world in new approaches to accounting for sustainability that do more than reduce organisations' short term reputational risk. Originality/value – This paper builds on the theoretical work on episteme change and the possibility of a new primal episteme by applying it to a Chinese organisation so as to test the theory as developed originally by Foucault.


Introduction The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge and perceptions of parents towards homeopathy. Parents with children below 5 years, who attended a registered Crèche or Educare within the central Durban area (Appendix H – 'Register' and Appendix I 'Map') were approached. Objective The objective of the study was to determine the knowledge, attitudes and parent's experience with paediatric health care provision towards homeopathy. The awareness of parents with regard to the benefits of homeopathic treatment for children as a possible alternative was also determined. Methodology A survey method in the form of a questionnaire was employed to investigate the perceptions of parents towards homeopathy in the treatment of their children. The target population for this survey was parents, whose children were below 5 years of age and attended a registered Crèche or Educare in the central Durban, Berea, Musgrave and Morningside areas (Appendix I – 'Map'). The data accumulated was evaluated and analyzed statistically using the SPSS version 17.1. Results A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed and a total of 140 (46.6%) questionnaires were returned. With regards to legitimacy of homeopathy most parents (72.1%) perceived homeopathy to be a legitimate form of medicine. 70.92% of all respondents were aware that homeopathy has a scientific basis. It was encouraging to note that 10.64% of the sample consults with a homeopath when their child is ill or indisposed. The majority of respondents (77.14%) indicated that homeopathic treatment should be available in hospitals and clinics. Only 3.57% felt that it should not be incorporated in hospitals and clinics. This indicates that most respondents perceive that integrated medicine is needed in a hospital setting. The majority of respondents (90.71%) felt that there should be more awareness of homeopathy. Despite the lack of knowledge, a large number of respondents indicated that homeopathy should be available for most medical conditions. Conclusion This study reveals that most respondents had a positive view of homeopathy in general and were enthusiastic to learn more about homeopathy. Although people are aware that homeopathy exists, a lack of knowledge and understanding of its methods and principles prevents them from seeking homeopathic treatment. A need to provide basic homeopathic education to the public exists. Education initiatives should aim to differentiate homeopathy from other alternative therapies, to dispel the confusion and to eliminate misconceptions about homeopathy. This study indicates that by educating the public on paediatric homeopathy, more individuals would be likely to seek homeopathic treatment for their children.


It is vital for mobile robots to achieve safe autonomous steering in various changing environments. In this paper, a novel end-to-end network architecture is proposed for mobile robots to learn steering autonomously through deep reinforcement learning. Specifically, two sets of feature representations are first extracted from the depth inputs through two different input streams. The acquired features are then merged together to derive both linear and angular actions simultaneously. Moreover, a new action selection strategy is also introduced to achieve motion filtering by taking the consistency in angular velocity into account. Besides, in addition to the extrinsic rewards, the intrinsic bonuses are also adopted during training to improve the exploration capability. Furthermore, it is worth noting the proposed model is readily transferable from the simple virtual training environment to much more complicated real-world scenarios so that no further fine-tuning is required for real deployment. Compared to the existing methods, the proposed method demonstrates significant superiority in terms of average reward, convergence speed, success rate, and generalization capability. In addition, it exhibits outstanding performance in various cluttered real-world environments containing both static and dynamic obstacles. A video of our experiments can be found at https://youtu.be/19jrQGG1oCU.


The study aimed to assess the content of metals in water, suspended solids and bottom sediments sampled from the Wilanowskie Lake. The analyses of zinc, lead, cadmium, and copper showed that the metal concentration in water, suspended solids, and sediments differed at individual measurement points. It can be attributed to the influx of pollutants from the areas adjacent to the lake. During the sampling period, the concentration of dissolved forms of Cu varied from 33.1 to 186.5 μg/ dm3; in the suspended form it ranged from 0.21 to 0.81 mg/dm3, and in bottom sediments, it was in the range 17–245 mg/kg dw. For cadmium, the concentration of dissolved forms ranged from 1.15 to 19.53 μg/dm3, in suspended form – from 0.02 to 0.1 mg/dm3, and in the sediments from 6.2 to 21.6 mg/kg dw. The concentration of dissolved forms of lead was from 3.19 to 106.7 μg/dm3, in the suspension from about 0.67 to 1.07 mg/dm3 and in sediments – from 200 to 450 mg/kg dw. For zinc, the results were respectively: from 65 to 632 μg/dm3 for the metal forms dissolved in water, from 1.1 to 2.2 mg/dm3 for suspended forms and from 70 to 2,900 mg/kg dw in sediments.


Target-based sentiment analysis involves opinion target extraction and target sentiment classification. However, most of the existing works usually studied one of these two sub-tasks alone, which hinders their practical use. This paper aims to solve the complete task of target-based sentiment analysis in an end-to-end fashion, and presents a novel unified model which applies a unified tagging scheme. Our framework involves two stacked recurrent neural networks: The upper one predicts the unified tags to produce the final output results of the primary target-based sentiment analysis; The lower one performs an auxiliary target boundary prediction aiming at guiding the upper network to improve the performance of the primary task. To explore the inter-task dependency, we propose to explicitly model the constrained transitions from target boundaries to target sentiment polarities. We also propose to maintain the sentiment consistency within an opinion target via a gate mechanism which models the relation between the features for the current word and the previous word. We conduct extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets and our framework achieves consistently superior results.


The potential for exploitation of the gibberellin (GA) plant growth hormones in agriculture was a major factor driving research on the physiological function of these substances following their introduction to the West from Japan in the 1950s. As a consequence of its vital role in promoting organ growth as well as in stimulating seed germination and reproductive development, this class of hormone has assumed considerable importance as a plant growth regulator (PGR) and a wide range of applications of GAs are known. However, in terms of treated area and sales, the commercial utilisation of GAs is dwarfed by that of the growth retardants, which, as inhibitors of GA biosynthesis, function by reducing the bioactive GA content of treated plants, thereby reducing shoot elongation. Several inhibitors of GA biosynthesis are of practical relevance with important uses. The annual global PGR market accounts for approximately €700 million, of which some 50% can be assumed to be represented by growth retardants. Area- and value-wise, stem shortening in small grains and in rice production to reduce the risk of lodging is the main application of PGRs worldwide. It is estimated that some 30% of global PGR sales (equalling approximately €210 million) are represented by stem stabilisers. In addition to inhibitors of GA biosynthesis, ethylene-releasing ethephon is also used for this purpose, particularly in barley. The usage of such products is general practice in countries with intense production of wheat, barley, rye, triticale, and oats such as France, Germany and Great Britain. For instance, 92% of the winter wheat, 81% of the winter barley, 67% of the oats, and 100% of the rye acreage were treated with anti-lodging products in Great Britain in 2008. Despite this, it has been estimated that losses due to lodging cost the British wheat industry about €50 million per year and these costs are likely to be even higher to date. The application of a PGR allows for an active regulation of developmental processes. For example, control of stem elongation in cereals may be "fine-tuned" according to need, both in terms of affecting the right growth stage (by timing of treatment) and the intensity of growth reduction (by dosage). Also, but within limits, distinct parts of a plant may be targeted. It can be counter-productive in cereal production if, in addition to shoot growth, root growth is also reduced. This can be avoided by spray-applying non-systemic compounds such as prohexadione-Ca. Thus, in terms of flexibility, immediate growth control and potential specificity, PGRs can offer advantages over conventional breeding and genetic engineering approaches. On the other hand, there is wide-spread concern about the use of chemicals in crop production. In order to comply with the principles of integrated crop production better, it would be preferable if problems solved with presently existing PGRs could be overcome by introducing improved genotypes and/or by making available new and more specific PGRs with an even further reduced risk to the grower, environment and consumer. The introduction of semi-dwarfing genes into wheat and rice in the 1960s played an important role in the Green Revolution that resulted in dramatic increases in crop yield. Shorter, more stable stems were necessary to avoid lodging of the crop under high levels of nitrogenous fertiliser, but semidwarfism also improved yields by increasing grain numbers, probably by allowing more assimilate to partition into the developing spike. The dwarfing genes in both rice and wheat act on the GA-signalling system: semi-dwarf rice contains mutations in a GA-biosynthesis gene that result in reduced GA content while the reduced height (Rht) mutation in wheat compromises the ability of GA to stimulate growth. In view of the importance of the GA signalling pathway in regulating physiological processes of relevance to agriculture, it is a prime target in crop improvement programmes. To date, most interest has been focussed on the GA-biosynthetic and inactivation pathways that determine GA concentration since they have been more clearly understood than the mechanisms for GA perception and signal transduction. A number of studies describing the genetic modification of GA metabolism, either to enhance or restrict plant growth, have been published. For example, increasing GA content by ectopic expression of GA 20-oxidase genes, which encode a rate-limiting enzyme in GA biosynthesis, has been shown to result in higher biomass in tobacco and in longer fibres in aspen, resulting in improved paper-making quality. Conversely, ectopic expression of GA 2-oxidase genes, which encode GA-inactivating enzymes, provides a particularly efficient method for introducing dwarfism. These approaches are clearly effective and even though breeding by genetic engineering is not publicly acceptable in a number of countries, they highlight potential gene targets for breeding to improve plant architecture or yield. Recently, the range of targets has been potentially broadened by impressive advances in our understanding of GA signal transduction.


Abstract Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) views military action and media operations as two equally important, reinforcing components of its campaign. With provinces disseminating 95% of ISIS's media output, provincial media play a central role in achieving appearance shifts in the contested balance of power. Yet, scholars have not fully examined the interactions between the media and military components of ISIS's campaign at the provincial level. To understand how enhanced coalition military operations impact the quantity and content of provincial media output, this study examines all 1643 photographs that Ninawa province disseminated before and during intense battles in the east Mosul operation. Unlike the common views in earlier studies, our study reveals that Ninawa's use of still imagery, in particular, tripled following the launch of the Mosul operation, and the depiction of the state-building campaign remained intact. ISIS also used about-to-die images as its image weaponry of choice during intensified military pressure. Here, we use the case of Ninawa province to explore how ISIS can create nuanced photographic campaigns to help offset losses on the contested media battlefield and facilitate future repackaging of content. Finally, we highlight the importance of operationalization for a better understanding of the military–media nexus in future studies.


Litigation often pivots on the testimony of fact witnesses. Unfortunately, serving as a witness may take people away from their jobs or interrupt their lives. It is therefore understandable that fact witnesses may want to be paid for devoting time to litigation. It was once the rule that fact witness compensation was limited to statutory witness fees. That limitation rested on several factors, including the concern that greater payments could entice fact witnesses to perjure themselves, might simply influence witnesses to shape their testimony in ways favorable to the parties paying them, could price justice out of the reach of some people, and created an appearance of impropriety. On the other hand, fact witnesses may be required to devote considerable time to preparing their testimony and later testifying when called, the vast majority of witnesses faithfully honor their oaths to testify truthfully, and witnesses' biases can be exposed on cross-examination. In any event, over time, restrictions on witness compensation have loosened. But while restrictions on compensating fact witnesses are looser than they once were, they are not lax. Lawyers and litigants may not pay fact witnesses for their testimony even if it is truthful. The general rule, in short, is that lawyers and litigants may pay witnesses for time spent testifying, preparing to testify, or assisting with the litigation, and may reimburse witnesses' associated expenses, provided that the amounts paid are reasonable. The general rule has major exceptions, however, as where payments are contingent upon the outcome of the litigation. Furthermore, the reasonableness of payments to fact witnesses is frequently disputed, and, even if payments to fact witnesses are reasonable, additional inducements and failures to disclose compensation-related details may be disastrous. As a result of such missteps, a court may order a new trial, sanction the lawyer or party or both, or disqualify the lawyer. In addition, the lawyer may face professional discipline, and the lawyer, party, and witness all may tempt criminal prosecution. This article examines lawyers' and litigants' compensation of fact witnesses, with a primary focus on lawyers' conduct. After analyzing the issues surrounding fact witness compensation, the article offers practical guidance to lawyers weighing whether and how to compensate fact witnesses.


For a bar and joint framework (G,p) with point group C3 which describes 3-fold rotational symmetry in the plane, it was recently shown in (Schulze, Discret. Comp. Geom. 44:946-972) that the standard Laman conditions, together with the condition derived in (Connelly et al., Int. J. Solids Struct. 46:762-773) that no vertices are fixed by the automorphism corresponding to the 3-fold rotation (geometrically, no vertices are placed on the center of rotation), are both necessary and sufficient for (G,p) to be isostatic, provided that its joints are positioned as generically as possible subject to the given symmetry constraints. In this paper we prove the analogous Laman-type conjectures for the groups C2 and Cs which are generated by a half-turn and a reflection in the plane, respectively. In addition, analogously to the results in (Schulze, Discret. Comp. Geom. 44:946-972), we also characterize symmetry generic isostatic graphs for the groups C2 and Cs in terms of inductive Henneberg-type constructions, as well as Crapo-type 3Tree2 partitions - the full sweep of methods used for the simpler problem without symmetry.


Early in its history, Mars underwent fluvial erosion that has been interpreted as evidence for a warmer, wetter climate. However, no atmosphere composed of only CO2 and H2O appears capable of producing mean planetary temperatures even close to 0�C. Rather than by precipitation, aquifer recharge and ground water seepage may have been enabled by hydrothermal convection driven by geothermal heat and heat associated with impacts. Some climatic warming was probably necessary to allow water to flow for long distances across the surface. Modest warming could be provided by even a low-pressure CO2 atmosphere if it was supplemented with small amounts of CH4, NH3, or SO2. Episodic excursions to high obliquities may also have raised temperatures over some portions of the planet's surface.


A large portion of the jail population consists of criminal defendants whose guilt has yet to be established. A growing number of states have attempted to reduce jail populations in light of budget concerns, and many federal and state statutes already direct judges to detain defendants only if alternative conditions will not protect society or prevent pretrial flight. Despite these legislative directives, judges continue to jail too many defendants pretrial. Indeed, although statutes often direct judges not to impose financial conditions leading to detention, many pretrial detainees are in jail because they could not afford the bond set by a judge. As argued here, the explanation for this lies partly in the skewed incentives of trial judges. This Article applies an agency cost model to bail, observing that the interests of judges diverge from those of their legislative principals, which causes them to err on the side of detention and stiff bond requirements. Judges receive little to no recognition for releasing defendants who pose little threat of flight or violence and are subject to few penalties for detaining them. Yet they, unlike legislators, face the possibility of public scorn (and for elected judges, lost votes) for releasing defendants who flee or commit crimes. Compounding the problem, judges do not internalize the enormous costs to society of detaining millions of defendants pretrial. To fix bail, we must address the principalagent problem at the heart of the system. Due to separation of powers concerns, legislatures typically cannot use traditional means of monitoring and controlling agents, such as punishment through compensation reductions or termination of employment. This Article therefore proposes a novel approach—the use of mandatory bail guidelines to rein in judicial discretion, and its concomitant agency costs, in the bail process. Although relying on judges to assess risk was once a necessary evil, the development of statistically validated, actuarial risk assessment tools has made this solution feasible. Relying on actuarial models instead of hurried, poorly-incentivized judges would reduce agency costs and improve accuracy, bringing meaningful change to a deeply troubled system.


Aflatoxin, which is produced by Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus fungi is one of the compounds in the mycotoxin group. The main types of aflatoxins are AFB1, AFB2, AFG1 and AFG2 which have carcinogenic properties and are dangerous to human health. Various techniques have been used for their measurements such as the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), enzyme linked immunosorbant assay (ELISA) and radioimmunoassay (RIA) but all these methods have disadvantages such as long analysis time, consume a lot of reagents and expensive. To overcome these problems, the voltammetric technique was proposed in this study using controlled growth mercury drop (CGME) as the working electrode and Britton Robinson buffer (BRB) as the supporting electrolyte. The voltammetric methods were used for investigating the electrochemical properties and the quantitative analysis of aflatoxins at the mercury electrode. The experimental conditions were optimised to obtain the best characterised peak in terms of peak height with analytical validation of the methods for each aflatoxin. The proposed methods were applied for the analysis of aflatoxins in groundnut samples and the results were compared with those obtained by the HPLC technique. All aflatoxins were found to adsorb and undergo irreversible reduction reaction at the working mercury electrode. The optimum experimental parameters for the differential pulse cathodic stripping voltammetry (DPCSV) method were the BRB at pH 9.0 as the supporting electrolyte, initial potential (Ei): -0.1 V, final potential (Ef): -1.4 V, accumulation potential (Eacc): - 0.6 V, accumulation time (tacc): 80 s, scan rate: 50 mV/s and pulse amplitude: 80 mV. The optimum parameters for the square wave stripping voltammetry (SWSV) method were Ei = -0.1 V, Ef = -1.4 V, Eacc: -0.8 V, tacc: 100 s, scan rate: 3750 mV/s, frequency: 125 Hz and voltage step: 30 V. At the concentration of 0.10 µM, using DPCSV method with the optimum parameters, AFB1, AFB2, AFG1 and AFG2 produced a single peak at -1.21 V, -1.23 V, -1.17 V and -1.15 V (versus Ag/AgCl) respectively. Using the SWSV method, a single peak appeared at -1.30 V for AFB1 and AFB2 while -1.22 V for AFG1 and AFG2. The calibration curves for all aflatoxins were linear with the limit of detection (LOD) of approximately 2 0 ppb and 0.50 ppb obtained by the DPCSV and SWSV methods respectively. The results of aflatoxins content in individual groundnut samples do not vary significantly when compared with those obtained by the HPLC technique. Finally, it can be concluded that both proposed methods which are accurate, precise, robust, rugged, fast and low cost were successfully developed and are potential alternative methods for routine analysis of aflatoxins in groundnut samples.


Sadi Carnot's ingenious reasoning of reversible cycles (1824) laid foundations for The Second Law before The First Law of energy conservation was even known (Joule 1843) and long before Thermodynamic concepts were established in 1850s. A century later, Bridgman (1941) 'complained' that "there are almost as many formulations of The Second Law as there have been discussions of it." Even today, The Second Law remains so obscure, due to the lack of its comprehension, that it continues to attract new efforts at clarification, including this one. The Laws of Thermodynamics have much wider, including philosophical significance and implication, than their simple expressions based on the experimental observations – they are The Fundamental Laws of Nature: The Zeroth (equilibrium existentialism), The First (conservational transformationalism), The Second (directional transformationalism), and The Third (unattainability of emptiness). They are defining and unifying our comprehension of all existence and transformations in the universe. The forces, due to non-equilibrium of mass-energy in space (non-uniform 'concentrations'), causing the mass-energy displacement, thus defining the process direction, are manifested by tendency of mass-energy transfer in time towards common equilibrium -cause-andeffect forced tendency of equi-partition of mass-energy. It should not be confused with local creation of non-equilibrium and/or 'organized structures' on expense of 'over-all' non-equilibrium, by spontaneous and irreversible conversion (dissipation) of other energy forms into the thermal energy, always and everywhere accompanied with entropy generation (randomized equi-partition of energy per absolute temperature level). The fundamental laws of nature are considered to be axiomatic and many believe they could not be explained, proven or questioned. However, everything may and should be questioned, reasoned, explained and possibly proven. The miracles are until they are comprehended and understood.


1 Abstract Given the importance of correctly perceiving and remembering faces for successful social interaction, face processing is one of the most widely studied cognitive domain in behavioral, neurophysiological and neuroimaging research, particularly, based on a group-mean approach. However, above mean differences, interand intra-individual variability in face processing provide valuable information for investigating the underlying mechanisms and binding the behavioral and neural substrates for better understanding of face processing. In my dissertation I investigated the biological mechanisms underlying face cognition from an interand intra-individual variability perspective at the genetic, neural, and behavioral levels. The neural activities related to face processing are measured by event-related potentials (ERPs) and their trial-by-trial latency variability are estimated using a novel and well-established method, Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE). Study 1 demonstrates the reliability of RIDE in extracting single-trial parameters of the P3b component, which is used in the investigation of the neural basis of intra-subject variability (ISV) in face processing speed in Study 2. In the Study 2, individual differences in ISV of face processing speed, measured at both behavioral and neural levels during a face processing task, are studied in their genetic variation. The results suggest that individual differences in ISV are related not only to the COMT Val158Met polymorphism, but also to the type of cognitive processing (e.g., memory domain). Moreover, we showed that ISV in reaction time can be partially explained by ISV in the speed of central cognitive processes. Furthermore, the individual differences approach in Study 3, provided valuable and novel information beyond the common group-mean approach applied in the N1/N170-related research. Based on this approach, not only we could replicate previous findings that the N170 predicts individual differences in face cognition abilities, but also we could decompose individual differences in the N170 into a domain-general and a face-specific part with different predictive powers. Moreover, we showed that top-down modulations on the N170 have separable and qualitatively different relationships to face cognition abilities. In summary, the integrated results from different studies in my dissertation demonstrate the psychological importance of the information provided by interand intra-individual variability in face processing in the investigation of its underlying biological mechanisms.


Wireless electrochemiluminescence is generated using interdigitated, 3D printed, titanium arrays as feeder electrodes to shape the electric field. Gold microparticles (45 μm diameter), functionalised with 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid, act as micro-emitters to generate electrochemiluminescence from [Ru(bpy)3]2+, (bpy is 2,2'-bipyridine) where the co-reactant is tripropylamine. The oxide coated titanium allows intense electric fields, whose distribution depends on the geometry of the array, to be created in the absence of deliberately added electrolyte. COMSOL modelling and long exposure ECL imaging have been used to map the electric field distribution. Significantly, we demonstrate that by controlling the surface charge of the gold microparticles through the solution pH, the light intensity can be increased by a factor of more than 10.


For about three decades now the world's economic systems have mainly embraced a neoliberal paradigm. The precept of this paradigm is, more egocentric than the capitalist philosophy of homo economicus, that it is not enough to have the market determine all human or institutional relations, but that there should be nothing which is not the market. Neoliberalism would see surrendered to the market to be commodified all the services communally provided for its citizens by the state, such as healthcare and education. Neoliberalism and its many approaches mount formidable pressure on states to fall to its sway. The environment created by neoliberalism is a challenge to states, like Sweden, that still believe in the central provision of essential social services so that the enjoyment of such services would not depend on the economic status of the individual citizen, because in the long run the state would benefit from having it so. This research studied, given this environment, whether the provision of higher education in the welfare state of Sweden could be commodified.

An extensive review of relevant literature was done to define the problem and establish a theoretical frame. From there a questionnaire was designed and administered to Swedish universities. The responses were used to formulate questions for semi-structured interviews with parliamentarians and university vice-chancellors.

The research found, among other things, a transformation from an inward-looking system to one of increasing globalisation; from detailed state planning and control to a broad degree of freedoms to act. There is a lack of desire for universities to be fully independent of the state; a desire for broadened entrepreneurialism, especially in the areas of conversion of research results into products and co-operation with the private sector. There are statutes that hinder some entrepreneurial activities or limit the universities' ability to make money from them; a vehement stand against the commodification of higher education for natives, but qualified openness for some categories of foreign students paying for their education in the country. There is diminished solidarity-thinking and the use of global educational contacts as a means to support the country's export sector.

There is no indication that the possibility exists in the foreseeable future for higher education in Sweden to move from the sphere of public good to private good since an overwhelming majority of those most closely associated with legislation, policy formulation and execution are against the commodification of higher education.


It is commonly accepted that one can be morally responsible for negligent behavior and its consequences. It is also commonly accepted that one cannot be morally responsible for occurrences over which one had no control. It is not clear how these beliefs are to be reconciled; for negligent behavior involves inadvertence, and yet the control which appears requisite for moral responsibility itself seems to require that one advert to one's behavior and its consequences. In this paper I shall provide an account of negligence according to which negligence involves both advertence and inadvertence to one and the same event, and I shall thereby seek to show how it is that one can be morally responsible for negligent behavior and its consequences. The paper will have two main sections: in the first I shall present my account of negligence, and in the second I shall discuss moral responsibility for negligence. There will be two appendices: in the first I shall discuss the issue of legal responsibility for negligence, and in the second I shall discuss the concepts of rashness and recklessness.


The project aimed to first explore the concepts of rape culture and victim blaming through their history, as well as their current representation in society. Also, the literature review featured sections on the scope of the problem, interventions attempted, and other information pertinent to understand rape culture. The research for this project was conducted at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in various locations, and involved a single researcher surveying students. The results of the research were broken into different sections depending on which part of the survey was being discussed. The most important section was the participants' responses to eight scenarios that depicted a person who was raped, and then participants had to rate whether or not the victim had no influence, mild influence, moderate influence, or strong influence on their rape. Although when participants were assigned a victim blaming score the results were positive and indicated low levels of victim blaming, when each individual scenario was analyzed participants tended to blame certain victims more than others based off of stereotypes and common misconceptions associated with rape.