Everyone's favorite Caldecott Honor-winning porcine diva is back and with fanfare! There are going to be fireworks tonight, and Olivia can hardly wait to hear the band. But when she finds out that there isn't going to be a band, she can't understand why not. How can there be fireworks without a band?! And so Olivia sets to putting a band together herself..."all" by herself. Using pots, pans, her brother's toys, and even her father's suspenders, Olivia forms a band spectacular enough to startle any audience. Lavishly brought to life in Ian Falconer's signature style, and introducing an eye-catching shade of blue, here is Olivia doing what Olivia does best -- making noise.


Whoever thought of the term feed-play-sleep? I remember reading about it 15 years ago when I first became a mother, and I constantly hear it being bandied about by mums I speak to now — they've either read about it in baby sleep books, or told it's a 'must' by maternal and child health nurses and sleep schools to get their baby to learn to self-settle. And look, sure, some babies may respond well to it, and some mums may find comfort in the structure it gives them, but the whole premise is somewhat confounding to me.


Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) lacking estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors account for 10% to 20% of breast cancer and are indicative of poor prognosis. The development of effective treatment strategies therefore represents a pressing unmet clinical need. We previously identified a molecularly targeted approach to target aberrant epigenetics of TNBC using a peptide corresponding to the SIN3 interaction domain (SID) of MAD. SID peptide selectively blocked binding of SID-containing proteins to the paired a-helix (PAH2) domain of SIN3, resulting in epigenetic and transcriptional modulation of genes associated with epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT). To find small molecule inhibitor (SMI)mimetics of SID peptide, we performed an in silico screen for PAH2 domain–binding compounds. This led to the identification of the avermectin macrocyclic lactone derivatives selamectin and ivermectin (Mectizan) as candidate compounds. Both selamectin and ivermectin phenocopied the effects of SID peptide to block SIN3–PAH2 interactionwithMAD, induce expression of CDH1 and ESR1, and restore tamoxifen sensitivity in MDA-MB-231 human and MMTV-Myc mouse TNBC cells in vitro. Treatment with selamectin or ivermectin led to transcriptional modulation of genes associated with EMT and maintenance of a cancer stem cell phenotype in TNBC cells. This resulted in impairment of clonogenic self-renewal in vitro and inhibition of tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. Underlining the potential of avermectins in TNBC, pathway analysis revealed that selamectin also modulated the expression of therapeutically targetable genes. Consistent with this, an unbiased drug screen in TNBC cells identified selamectin-induced sensitization to a number of drugs, including those targetingmodulated genes. Mol Cancer Ther; 14(8); 1824–36. 2015 AACR.


We outline challenges in measuring sepsis burden in pediatric populations and propose a national approach to pediatric sepsis surveillance by using EHR data. Pediatric sepsis is a major public health concern, and robust surveillance tools are needed to characterize its incidence, outcomes, and trends. The increasing use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States creates an opportunity to conduct reliable, pragmatic, and generalizable population-level surveillance using routinely collected clinical data rather than administrative claims or resource-intensive chart review. In 2015, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recruited sepsis investigators and representatives of key professional societies to develop an approach to adult sepsis surveillance using clinical data recorded in EHRs. This led to the creation of the adult sepsis event definition, which was used to estimate the national burden of sepsis in adults and has been adapted into a tool kit to facilitate widespread implementation by hospitals. In July 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention convened a new multidisciplinary pediatric working group to tailor an EHR-based national sepsis surveillance approach to infants and children. Here, we describe the challenges specific to pediatric sepsis surveillance, including evolving clinical definitions of sepsis, accommodation of age-dependent physiologic differences, identifying appropriate EHR markers of infection and organ dysfunction among infants and children, and the need to account for children with medical complexity and the growing regionalization of pediatric care. We propose a preliminary pediatric sepsis event surveillance definition and outline next steps for refining and validating these criteria so that they may be used to estimate the national burden of pediatric sepsis and support site-specific surveillance to complement ongoing initiatives to improve sepsis prevention, recognition, and treatment.


Gene therapies for recessive genetic diseases may provoke unwanted immune responses against the introduced gene product because patients, especially those with null mutation of a certain protein, have no tolerance for the protein of interest. This study used desmoglein 3 knockout (Dsg3-/-) mice as a disease model for a genetic defect in DSG3, to investigate whether nonviral gene therapy induces an immune response against Dsg3 and whether the reaction against Dsg3 can be prevented. When mouse Dsg3 cDNA was injected in the skin of Dsg3-/- mice, 50% of treated Dsg3-/- mice developed anti-Dsg3 IgG, which can bind native Dsg3 in vivo. To prevent this response, we used an anti-CD40L monoclonal antibody, MR1, which blocks the costimulatory interaction between CD40 and CD40L. To evaluate the effect of MR1, we grafted Dsg3+/+skin on Dsg3-/- mice, to mimic stable gene transfer of Dsg3. After skin grafting, all the recipient Dsg3-/- mice were treated with either MR1 (n=8) or control hamster IgG (n=8). All of the control IgG-treated mice developed circulating anti-Dsg3 IgG about 2 wk after grafting, and IgG deposition was observed on the surfaces of keratinocytes in the grafted Dsg3+/+skin. Such anti-Dsg3 IgG production was significantly prevented, however, when the recipient mice were treated with MR1. These findings suggested that gene therapies for recessive diseases may provoke an immune response against the transgene product, and that the CD40-CD40L interaction might be a reasonable target for effective prevention of such undesirable immune responses, leading, in turn, to a successful gene therapy.


INTRODUCTION Ataxia is derived from the Greek word taxis meaning 'order'. Hence, ataxia can be translated as lack of order. A patient with ataxia may have either cerebellar ataxia or so-called sensory ataxia. In most patients, a relatively common cause such as excessive alcohol consumption, drug or toxin exposure, stroke or multiple sclerosis is easily identified. But when these causes have been excluded, it can be difficult to know what to do next. In particular, there is often confusion surrounding the myriad of available tests, both genetic and non-genetic. In addition, there is a risk that patients with undiagnosed ataxia will be 'forgotten' after the initial set of tests prove unhelpful, although many of them have a slowly progressive disorder. But, even though the diagnostic yield of further investigation is not high, it is wise regularly to revisit the diagnosis (or lack of one!) and to consider whether there are


I. OVERVIEW In recent years, the development of genetic engineering techniques has resulted in unprecedented interest in industrial applications using living organisms. Human tissue and by-products, uses for new drugs, foods, chemicals, and agricultural products are immediate examples. Within the biotechnology industry, a battle is being waged to secure the massive profits these products will potentially generate. This interest is not limited to private commerce. Increases in government funding of genetic research have attracted intense political attention.(1) In terms of international trade, the genetics field is still, for the most part, underdeveloped. Although there has been significant world market capitalization, genetic engineering today remains mainly at the research phase of product development and government planning. Continuing government inaction will have deleterious effects. Countries must move now to structure regulatory regimes based on existing trade paradigms. Invariably, trade will follow the commercialization of genetic products in terms of industrial application. The stage is being set as industry begins to consolidate research operations for cost and strategic purposes,(2) and as patent acquisitions of genetic material become country-specific.(3) These developments necessarily lead to the application of domestic legal regimes (such as antitrust, intellectual property (IP), and patent law) to genetic research. They will also require a revamping of existing national laws to create a genetic regulatory regime that will buttress a particular country's comparative and strategic advantage in terms of trade and industrial development. How, then, can countries take into account relevant ethical considerations when structuring these regimes? As evidenced by the eugenics movement, there are potential problems. The implications of human genetic research have been the subject of much concern throughout the twentieth century. Although genetic research today may affect possible medical solutions to almost every conceivable human ailment, it has a darker side. History records how genetic engineering studies have been used to justify governmental action and judicial pronouncements ranging from mandatory sterilization policies of the mentally incompetent to genocide in the name of perfecting the human condition.(4) This unsavory history--and fears of more awesome manipulation of human biology--underlie the present debate over the implications of human genetic research and technological development. While this legacy is arguably important, from a trade perspective it cannot be allowed to dictate a government's policy calculations. Industrial strategy, both on the national and international level, will not be arrested by moral difficulties. The full extent of commercial productivity and profit that genetic engineering may generate in terms of both human research and other derivative applications is yet to be quantified. Government regimes designed to limit or eliminate certain biotechnology research are shortsighted when viewed through the wider lens of trade considerations. In the end, anti-genetic regulatory regimes will achieve little in the way of maintaining the moral high ground if industry simply moves elsewhere.(5) Biotechnology firms are increasingly multinational because of the enormous expense associated with genetic research. Trade disputes are likely to arise out of the unique concentration and strategic outlook of various corporate interests engaged in national and international commerce. Forced corporate movement may spark international trade disputes and may compromise a country's international position vis-a-vis its trading partners. In light of the above argument concerning the primacy of trade considerations, several issues arise. Countries can and should look to past multilateral trade negotiations in order to establish a regulatory model for genetic research. …


Studies on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) have elicited debate over the interpretation of the positive relationship between species richness and plant productivity. Manipulating richness cannot be achieved without affecting composition; it is thus essential to consider the latter in statistical models. We firstly review existing approaches that use species richness as an explanatory variable and propose modifications to improve their performance. We use an original data set to illustrate the analyses. The classical method where composition is coded as a factor with a level for each different species mixture can be improved by defining the levels using clustering. Methods based on ordinations reduce the dimensionality of plant composition and use the new coordinates as fixed effects; they provide a much better fit to our observations. Secondly, we develop a new method where composition is included as a similarity matrix affecting the residual variance–covariance. Similarity in composition between plots is treated in the same way as shared evolutionary history between species in phylogenetic regression. We find that it outperforms the other models. We discuss the different approaches and suggest that our method is particularly suited for observational studies or for manipulative studies where plant diversity is not kept constant by weeding. By treating species composition in an intuitive and sensible way, it offers a valuable and powerful complement to existing models.


Nucleic acids have been recognized as an important class of biomolecules for over half a century and are an integral component of many modern pharmaceuticals. Elucidating the associations between DNA nucleobases (thymine, cytosine, adenine and guanine) and other components in both solution and the solid state has wide-ranging applications. Far fewer thymine cocrystals have been reported compared to cocrystals of the other DNA bases. Using schemes inspired by Watson–Crick base pairing motifs, herein we investigate the cocrystallization of thymine and heterocycles with complementary hydrogen bond donors and acceptors. Our coformer screen yielded three new 1 : 1 cocrystals with thymine, only two of which exhibited the expected binding motif. The difficulties encountered in this nucleobase study serve to highlight some of the special challenges associated with cocrystallization of tautomeric components.


Though business processes have been a topic of constant attention to the organization in this decade, the term "Business Process" is understood and interpreted by people differently. This difference in understanding and interpretation is presenting difficulties for organizations to learn from business processes of other organizations or functions. Based on existing literature, this study attempts to identify and demonstrate the common design attributes and performance various business processes share. The common design attributes are identified as process context, process sub parts, process interaction and process management. The common performance measures are classified into higher level measures as process efficiency, process effectiveness and process flexibility. These attributes and outcomes can be used to compare various business processes and thus enable learning from one business process to another.


Data-driven grammar induction aims at producing wide-coverage grammars of human languages. Initial efforts in this field produced relatively shallow linguistic representations such as phrase-structure trees, which only encode constituent structure. Recent work on inducing deep grammars from treebanks addresses this shortcoming by also
recovering non-local dependencies and grammatical relations. My aim is to investigate the issues arising when adapting an existing Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) induction method to a new language and treebank, and find solutions which will generalize robustly across multiple languages.
The research hypothesis is that by exploiting machine-learning algorithms to learn morphological features, lemmatization classes and grammatical functions from treebanks we can reduce the amount of manual specification and improve robustness, accuracy and domain- and language -independence for LFG parsing systems. Function labels can often be relatively straightforwardly mapped to LFG grammatical functions. Learning them reliably permits grammar induction to depend less on language-specific LFG annotation rules. I therefore propose ways to improve acquisition of function labels from treebanks and translate those improvements into better-quality f-structure parsing.
In a lexicalized grammatical formalism such as LFG a large amount of syntactically relevant information comes from lexical entries. It is, therefore, important to be able
to perform morphological analysis in an accurate and robust way for morphologically rich languages. I propose a fully data-driven supervised method to simultaneously
lemmatize and morphologically analyze text and obtain competitive or improved results on a range of typologically diverse languages.


ABSTRACT The apparent absence of the medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis Linnaeus, 1758, in Ireland has been noted for over 150 years. Furthermore, not a single native Irish specimen has been preserved to prove its existence. The status of the Irish medicinal leech has been subject to several retrospective interpretations which need to be put into perspective in view of new thinking and research. The predominant view that this leech was never indigenous to Ireland is based predominantly on the assumption that Ireland was once totally glaciated, and this leech did not naturally colonise the island in the post-glacial period. Recent genetic evidence that the common frog survived in an Irish glacial refugium invites re-examination of some of this argument. Another widely held view is that within historic times, leeches imported into Ireland for medicine established itself in the wild but disappeared in the 19th century. In fact, Hirudo medicinalis was notoriously difficult to transplant (hence its threatened status). In spite of the millions of leeches imported into the British Isles and North America in the 19th century not a single example of an escaped population has been demonstrated. A third interpretation that the medicinal leech was indeed indigenous to Ireland is, in the author's view, most compatible with a re-assessment of the historical and more recent evidence detailed in this paper. The author leaves open as a real biological possibility that the medicinal leech may be rediscovered in Ireland, but points out the historical precedent in mainland Britain that premature proclamation of extinction may delay potential rediscovery by decades.


Since 2001, federal laws such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 2004 have made raising student achievement standards the center of our national conversation. Consequently, educators have increasingly turned their attention to exploring the potential of formative assessments as one approach to increasing student outcomes (Black & William, 1998) in order to meet federal and state accountability requirements. Meanwhile, the upcoming reauthorization of ESEA and the work of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) consortium and SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), funded through Race to the Top (RTT), are heightening and expanding the need for formative assessment practices in American classrooms (Davidson & Frohbieter, 2011; Dorn, 2010). SBAC is designing a comprehensive system that strategically balances formative, interim, and summative assessments (K–12 Center at ETS, 2011).


In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in replacing traditional periodic surfaces, e.g., frequency selective surfaces, with quasi-periodic surfaces (non-identical elements) in multi-reflector systems for satellite applications. Quasi-periodic surfaces can be used to improve existing antenna solutions or to provide innovative concepts not possible with periodic surfaces. In many scenarios, the periodic/quasi-periodic surface is used in a multi-reflector configuration, e.g., as a subreflector, where the design specifications are on the radiation pattern from the main reflector. For these applications, the design of the surface is usually carried out using an in-direct optimization approach which may provide sub-optimal designs. In this paper, we demonstrate the direct optimization of quasi-periodic surfaces for the final pattern performance. This means that all array elements in the quasi-periodic surface are optimized simultaneously to directly fulfill the goal specifications on the final pattern from the main aperture.


Biased perceptions of others are known to negatively influence the outcomes of social and professional interactions in many regards. Theses biases can be informed by a multitude of non-verbal cues such as voice pitch and voice volume. This project explores how haptic effects, generated from speech, could attenuate listeners' perceived voice-related biases formed from a speaker's voice pitch. Promising preliminary results collected during a decision-making task suggest that the speech to haptic mapping and vibration delivery mechanism employed does attenuate voice-related biases. Accordingly, it is anticipated that such a system could be introduced in the workplace to equalize people's contribution opportunities and to create a more inclusive environment by reversing voice-related biases.


At the establishment of state taxes is the need to procure resources to cover expenditure to be made to give the role accomplishment. Thus, taxes are a form of removal of part of income and or legal persons or property to the state to cover public spending. This sampling is mandatory, as a non-refundable and without consideration of the state. Starting from this definition of taxes, taxation may be regarded as a link between the state and individuals or legal entities. The main objective of this paper is to assess the perception of economic entities, the main links of value-added creative economy, about taxation in Romania


Significance As humans, we think not only about what is, but also what could be. These representations of alternative possibilities support many important cognitive functions, such as predicting others' future actions, assigning responsibility for past events, and making moral judgments. We perform many of these tasks quickly and effortlessly, which suggests access to an implicit, default assumption about what is possible. What are the default features of the possibilities that we consider? Remarkably, we find a default bias toward representing immoral or irrational actions as being impossible. Although this bias is diminished upon deliberative reflection, it is the default judgments that appear to support higher-level cognition. The capacity for representing and reasoning over sets of possibilities, or modal cognition, supports diverse kinds of high-level judgments: causal reasoning, moral judgment, language comprehension, and more. Prior research on modal cognition asks how humans explicitly and deliberatively reason about what is possible but has not investigated whether or how people have a default, implicit representation of which events are possible. We present three studies that characterize the role of implicit representations of possibility in cognition. Collectively, these studies differentiate explicit reasoning about possibilities from default implicit representations, demonstrate that human adults often default to treating immoral and irrational events as impossible, and provide a case study of high-level cognitive judgments relying on default implicit representations of possibility rather than explicit deliberation.


Author(s): Gagnon, P; Barbose, GL; Stoll, B; Ehlen, A; Zuboy, J; Mai, T; Mills, AD | Abstract: Misforecasting the adoption of customer-owned distributed photovoltaics (DPV) can have operational and financial implications for utilities; forecasting capabilities can be improved, but generally at a cost. This paper informs this decision-space by using a suite of models to explore the capacity expansion and operation of the Western Interconnection over a 15-year period across a wide range of DPV growth rates and misforecast severities. The system costs under a misforecast are compared against the costs under a perfect forecast, to quantify the costs of misforecasting. Using a simplified probabilistic method applied to these modeling results, an analyst can make a first-order estimate of the financial benefit of improving a utility's forecasting capabilities, and thus be better informed about whether to make such an investment. For example, under our base assumptions, a utility with 10 TWh per year of retail electric sales who initially estimates that DPV growth could range from 2% to 7.5% of total generation over the next 15 years could expect total present-value savings of approximately $4 million if they could reduce the severity of misforecasting to within ±25%. Utility resource planners can compare those savings against the costs needed to achieve that level of precision, to guide their decision on whether to make an investment in tools or resources.


"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein The good news is that this book offers an entertaining but enlightening compilation of Zizekisms. Unlike any other book by Slavoj Zizek, this compact arrangement of jokes culled from his writings provides an index to certain philosophical, political, and sexual themes that preoccupy him. Zizek's Jokes contains the set-ups and punch lines -- as well as the offenses and insults -- that Zizek is famous for, all in less than 200 pages. So what's the bad news? There is no bad news. There's just the inimitable Slavoj Zizek, disguised as an impossibly erudite, politically incorrect uncle, beginning a sentence, "There is an old Jewish joke, loved by Derrida..." For Zizek, jokes are amusing stories that offer a shortcut to philosophical insight. He illustrates the logic of the Hegelian triad, for example, with three variations of the "Not tonight, dear, I have a headache" classic: first the wife claims a migraine; then the husband does; then the wife exclaims, "Darling, I have a terrible migraine, so let's have some sex to refresh me!" A punch line about a beer bottle provides a Lacanian lesson about one signifier. And a "truly obscene" version of the famous "aristocrats" joke has the family offering a short course in Hegelian thought rather than a display of unspeakables. Zizek's Jokes contains every joke cited, paraphrased, or narrated in Zizek's work in English (including some in unpublished manuscripts), including different versions of the same joke that make different points in different contexts. The larger point being that comedy is central to Zizek's seriousness.


Doctor Who has been on global television screens for nearly fifty years, and many of its most memorable protagonists have been its monsters, The Daleks, Cybermen, Slitheen, the Sonterans, Ood, Wiirrn, and others. Entertainingly and provocatively written, and introduced by Who scriptwriter Paul Cornell, The Doctor s Monsters takes a new look at these and many other creatures, and asks what inspired them and what lies behind them. If the Daleks are based on ideas of genetic purity, and the Cybermen on fears of transplant surgery, what about the Autons, the Zarbi, or the Weeping Angels? Science fiction critic Graham Sleight examines stories from the whole of Doctor Who s history to give this unique perspective on the series. Why are we so scared of monsters? Why do they look and act the way they do? How do they reflect the time and place that the series is broadcast in? Along the way, the book provides a history – from an unusual angle – of how this most enduring of TV science fiction series has created and recreated itself. The book also contains a comprehensive glossary of the creatures seen in Doctor Who. It is a must for any fan of the series.


Traditionally, most people buy a product based on performance and cost, but recently appearances, comfort and aesthetic are preferred. Customers are now
becoming more complex and require not only good product performance but also appearance. To enhance product appearance, product platform has been
proposed as new approach to the design for aesthetics. In this work, a platform is identified based on component sharing among the product variants. Then
the aesthetic rules are applied to the platform. A Product Family Aesthetic
Index (PFAI) was developed to measure the product performance. The evaluation
is based on component commonality and aesthetic aspect. The result indicates
that the Product Family Aesthetic Index had increased through redesigning
several components in the product. A case study of the fan family was
conducted to verify the methodology.


Commercial production area and yield of sweet persimmon (Diospyros kaki L.) in Spain has doubled in the last 10 years to more than 5,000 ha and 50,000 tons, respectively, mainly because of the high quality and consumer demand for the Valencian autochthonous cultivar 'Rojo Brillante' in European markets. In a recent survey of decay on 'Rojo Brillante' persimmons stored in commercial packinghouses, fruit were found with disease symptoms of firm brown to dark brown round spots scattered on the fruit cheeks. Isolation of the potential causal agent (isolate IVIA QCV-2) was performed by disinfecting the surface of symptomatic fruit with alcohol, aseptically cutting pieces of infected peel tissue, and then plating them onto potato dextrose agar (PDA). The fungus grew fast, covering the entire plate surface (9 mm diameter) after 7 to 10 days of incubation at 25°C with cottony grayish mycelium that darkened with time. Masses of salmon-colored conidia were apparent in the center of some colonies. Conidia were one-celled, hyaline, aseptate, ovoid to oblong with rounded or obtuse ends, and 11.5 to 15.5 × 3.0 to 6.5 μm (n = 50). The identification of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides (Penz.) Penz. & Sacc. [synonym: Vermicularia gloeosporioides Penz.; teleomorph: Glomerella cingulata (Stoneman) Spauld. & H. Schrenk] was performed at the Instituto Valenciano de Microbiología (IVAMI, Bétera, Valencia, Spain) by macro and micro morphological observations and confirmed with the amplification and subsequent sequencing of the ribosomal DNA regions 5.8S-ITS2-28S, using the primers ITS3 and ITS4 (4). A representative nucleotide sequence was deposited in GenBank (Accession No. KC113600) and a BLAST search showed 99% identity with the strain C1254.3 of C. gloeosporioides (JX010153) (3). To fulfill Koch's postulates, selected healthy 'Rojo Brillante' persimmons were surface sterilized by dipping them for 2 min in a 0.5% sodium hypochlorite aqueous solution and thoroughly rinsing with fresh water. Mycelial plugs (5-mm diameter) from the edge of 7-day old colonies of isolate IVIA QCV-2 grown on PDA at 25°C were aseptically transferred to skin wounds (one plug per fruit). Wounded but not inoculated fruit were used as controls. Persimmons were placed in three humid chambers that each contained four fruit and incubated at 20°C for up to 21 days. The experiment was repeated twice. While inoculated persimmons developed anthracnose disease in all cases and C. gloeosporioides was consistently reisolated from these fruit, no decay was observed on control fruit. To our knowledge, this is the first report of C. gloeosporioides causing postharvest persimmon fruit rot in Spain. Persimmon anthracnose caused by this pathogen is well known in Asian countries such as China and Korea (1). This disease was also reported in Brazil (2). References: (1) J. H. Lee et al. Plant Pathol. J. 20:247, 2004. (2) M. A. S. Mendes et al. Fungos em Plants no Brasil. Embrapa-SPI/Embrapa-Cenargen, Brasilia, Brazil, 1998. (3) B. S. Weir et al. Stud. Mycol. 73:115, 2012. (4) T. J. White et al. Page 315 in: PCR Protocols: A Guide to Methods and Applications. Academic Press Inc., San Diego, CA, 1990.


Pseudolignincola siamensis and Thalespora appendiculata gen. et sp. nov. were isolated from plant substrata in Thai mangroves. Sequence analysis of the partial SSU rRNA gene places them in the Halosphaeriales, Ascomycota. Thalespora appendiculata is phylogenetically close to Okeanomyces, while P. siamensis does not show a strong affinity with any genus in the order (sequence analysis of the partial LSU rRNA gene). Pseudolignincola siamensis is characterised by having clavate asci with a truncate, thickened apex, a pore and plasmalemma retraction and cylindrical ascospores without appendages. A Humicola anamorph (H. siamensis sp. nov.) is associated with this species. Pseudolignincola siamensis is morphologically similar to Lignincola nypae but they differ in the dimensions of the ascomata, asci and ascospores, and ascospore septation. Also, no anamorph has been reported for L. nypae. Thalespora appendiculata has deliquescing asci and elongate-cylindrical ascospores which taper at one end, bearing a unipolar, tetra-radiate appendage, which develops when the ascospores are mounted in seawater. This species closely resembles Bathyascus tropicalis with its 1-septate ascospores, but the latter differs in ascospore shape and lack of ascospore appendages.


How damaging are uncertainty shocks during extreme events such as the great recession and the Covid-19 outbreak? Can monetary policy limit output losses in such situations? We use a nonlinear VAR framework to document the large response of real activity to a financial uncertainty shock during the great recession. We replicate this evidence with an estimated DSGE framework featuring a concept of uncertainty comparable to that in our VAR. We employ the DSGE model to quantify the impact on real activity of an uncertainty shock under different Taylor rules estimated with normal times vs. great recession data (the latter associated with a stronger response to output). We find that the uncertainty shock-induced output loss experienced during the 2007-09 recession could have been twice as large if policymakers had not responded aggressively to the abrupt drop in output in 2008Q3. Finally, we use our estimated DSGE framework to simulate different paths of uncertainty associated to different hypothesis on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic. We find that: i) Covid-19-induced uncertainty could lead to an output loss twice as large as that of the great recession, ii) aggressive monetary policy moves could reduce such loss by about 50%.


Personal cloud storage services such as Dropbox and OneDrive are popular among Internet users. They help in sharing content and backing up data by relying on the cloud to store files. The rise of mobile terminals and the presence of new providers question whether the usage of cloud storage is evolving. This knowledge is essential to understand the workload these services need to handle, their performance, and implications. In this paper we present a comprehensive characterization of personal cloud storage services. Relying on traces collected for one month in an operational network, we show that users of each service present distinct behaviors. Dropbox is now threatened by competitors, with OneDrive and Google Drive reaching large market shares. However, the popularity of the latter services seems to be driven by their integration into Windows and Android. Indeed, around 50% of their users do not produce any workload. Considering performance, providers show distinct trade-offs, with bottlenecks that hardly allow users to fully exploit their access line bandwidth. Finally, usage of cloud services is now ordinary among mobile users, thanks to the automatic backup of pictures and media files.


Use of hypertext is pervasive in education today—it is used for all online course delivery as well as many stand-alone delivery methods such as educational computer software and compact discs (CDs). This article will review Kintsch's ConstructionIntegration and Anderson's Adaptive Control of ThoughtRational (ACT-R) cognitive architectures and examine how each explains the empirical evidence of comprehension problems related to the use of hypertext systems. This article also discusses design tools based on those two architectures (Cognitive Walkthrough for the Web [CWW] and Scent-Based Navigation and Information Foraging in the ACT [SNIF-ACT] respectively) that can help educational content developers screen their hypertext products for possible comprehension problems prior to its release.


Beneath the battle cries of the jihad and an Islamic politics that draws attention to a religion of rigid rules and obsessive devotion, lies the mystical Islam, known as Sufism. What attracts so many Westerners to the faith, says former convert Ibn al-Rawandi, is its "heart made of poetry and art, vision and devotion, that can only be known fully from within." Enchanted by the metaphysics of Sufism, Rawandi studied and worshiped in Cyprus, convinced he had found the answers to life's questions. When doubts emerged for which the traditionalist authors had no answers and the Salman Rushdie affair divided Islam, Rawandi sought to critically evaluate Sufism by reviewing its origins and the best arguments for its views.In "Islamic Mysticism", Rawandi contends that unreliable sources seriously undermine the classical account of Islam and Sufism. His detailed study of the philosophy of religion - especially the work of traditionalists such as RenT Guenon and Frithjof Schuon - helps to develop a critical analysis of Islam from the inside out. Particular attention is given to great Islamic mystic Ibn Arabi, who is taken as representative of Sufism in its highest development. Rawandi offers a critical, secular perspective on Sufism and concludes that mystical experience is not a trustworthy validation of religion.


This report uses national data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to show that unionization raises the wages of the typical service sector worker by 10.1 percent compared to their non-union peers. The study goes on to show that unionization also increases the likelihood that a service sector worker will have health insurance and a pension. The report also notes that workers with service jobs benefit as much from unionization as workers with manufacturing jobs.


Reservoir characterization based on seismic data demands a robust and reliable method that transforms seismically derived parameters such as elastic moduli, P-velocity, S-velocity or acoustic impedance into parameters delineating lithology and reservoir quality. However, as the number of such desirable reservoir parameters exceeds the number of seismic observables, a straightforward transformation does not exist. Hence, one is restricted to consider an approach by a set of rock physics constraints, which is often associated with a non-linear and undetermined problem with non-unique solutions. Johansen et al. (2011) developed such an approach referred to as inverse rock physics modeling (IRPM) that is based on the estimation strategy of Johansen et al. (2004). There exists numerous rock physics models to cover the large span of different natural born rocks. As all these models simplify inherent complex rocks to predict the seismic response, their quantitative accuracy is debatable. Moreover, several reservoir parameters for these models have many elements of uncertainty attached, and it can be challenging to assign them proper values, e.g. the porosity of sediments in a reservoir at the stage of deposition. Despite these problems, the rock physics models have proved to yield constraint data that lie within a manageable proximity to real seismic data. The IRPM approach takes advantage of this fact and may serve as a tool for interpretation of lithology and evaluation of reservoir quality. However, users of the IRPM approach must aim their attention to recognize relevant uncertainties, pitfalls and limitations to reduce misinterpretation risks. This study considers a set of rock physics constraints where particular reservoir parameters have been perturbed to mimic uncertainty. From considering synthetic data, it was found that uncertainties in the reservoir parameters considered had a significant influence on the corresponding inverse solutions. In reservoir monitoring the supervision of temporal fluid pressure and saturation alterations during production is key information to achieve optimized oil recovery. The IRPM approach is flexible to incorporate reservoir parameters that are of interest in reservoir monitoring. This study applies IRPM on real data from Glitne, North Sea, to predict pore pressure, saturation and porosity after a period of production. However, due to absence of repeated observational data from Glitne, a synthetic hybrid model was used to simulate production effects on the initial Glitne data. The results obtained showed little variation in the porosity solutions, a wide range of possible saturation solutions and pore pressure solutions that were cumbersome to constrain due to its insensitivity in the Glitne rock physics model. The solutions emphasize limited applications of IRPM to constrain particular reservoir properties that are highly insensitive in certain rock physics models.


Research demonstrates the health consequences of caregiving as well as the health benefits of leisure pursuits. The purpose of this preliminary study was to explore the barriers to leisure travel for family caregivers. Participants comprised 105 family caregivers in North Carolina who completed an 86-item questionnaire. Factor analysis generated 5 primary factors (Environment, Personal, Service Provision, Financial, and Shared Leisure) that represented primary constraints to leisure travel for this population. Additional analysis indicated that these caregivers greatly missed their leisure, which they gave up as a result of caregiving. Implications for practice and research exist that could address the negotiation of these barriers.


The doctrine of cybertrespass represents one of the most recent attempts by courts to apply concepts and principles from the real world to the virtual world of the Internet. A creation of state common law, the doctrine essentially involved extending the tort of trespass to chattels to the electronic world. Consequently, unauthorized electronic interferences are deemed trespassory intrusions and rendered actionable. The present paper aims to undertake a conceptual study of the evolution of the doctrine, examining the doctrinal modifications courts were required to make to mould the doctrine to meet the specificities of cyberspace. It then uses cybertrespass to examine the implications of transposing property metaphors to the world of the Internet, characterized by the absence of resource rivalry and the reality of positive value enhancement through increased usage (i.e., a network effect, whereby participation in use by many is a condition for value in use by any). It is argued that the transposition of proprietary concepts to the Internet is done for purely instrumental reasons - reasons that derive neither from the nature of the resource nor its usage. The paper then evaluates whether such an instrumental use of proprietary concepts on the Internet has any effect on the meaning ordinarily attributed to the concept of property and the identification of property as an independent institution of moral significance. It concludes by showing that the relative neglect that doctrines such as cybertrespass have for identifying the boundaries of the res over which the property right is to operate, is capable of undermining the minimum core of any understanding of property as an independent institution.


We introduce a new concept in column generation for handling complex large scale optimization problems, called two-stage column generation, where columns for the compact and extensive formulation are simultaneously generated. The new framework is specifically conceived for tackling complex problems that cannot be efficiently solved by standard column generation and exploits the Relationship between compact and extensive formulation. In particular, the concept of extensive reduced cost is introduced in order to estimate the contribution of compact formulation variables to the master problem. A formal description of the proposed framework is provided and major theoretical issues are discussed. An example based on the Resource Constrained Shortest Path Problem illustrates how two-stage column generation works when the pricing subproblem satisfies or not the integrality property. The two-stage scheme is applied to the Discrete Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem and extensive computational experiments are provided to validate our framework. In particular, computational results show that two-stage column generation reduces the number of generated columns and the computational time for complex instances. The transferability of the designed framework across applications and future research directions are further discussed.


The effect of a dielectric substrate on whispering-gallery-mode (WGM)-based devices is experimentally investigated and theoretically quantified for spherical dielectric microresonators with ∼5 μm diameter. The interaction with a dielectric substrate yields a homogeneous broadening with a threshold-like behavior versus the azimuthal quantum number, which is accompanied by an energy renormalization of about 20% of the broadening. The WGM orbital planes of narrowest spectral linewidth (close to the Mie value) in the presence of a substrate are identified, and the consequences for the scattering spectrum analysis of microsphere devices relying on high-Q factors are discussed.


This paper presents the first attempt at using neural networks for sentiment analysis in Czech. The neural networks have shown very good results on sentiment analysis in English, thus we adapt them to the Czech environment. We first perform experiments on two English corpora to allow comparability with the existing state-ofthe-art methods for sentiment analysis in English. Then we explore the effectiveness of using neural networks on four Czech corpora. We show that the networks achieve promising results however there is still much room for improvement especially on the Czech corpora.


Livestock guarding dogs have been placed on South African farms by the not-for-profit organisation, Cheetah Outreach Trust, since 2005, and have been proven to be an efficient form of non-lethal predator control against jackal, caracal, leopards, cheetahs and other predators found in South Africa. However, the impact that herd species (sheep, goat, cattle or mixed) or the sex of the dog may have on the observed reduction in livestock losses following placement of a livestock guarding dogs has not been investigated. To address this, the reduction in livestock losses following placement of an Anatolian livestock guarding dogs was measured in two South African provinces over a nine year period and data simultaneously collected on herd type and dog sex. Dogs comprised of 78 males and 49 females. Farms consisted of 68 sheep, 37 goats, 23 cattle, and two exotic game farms. Effectiveness was measured as the difference between farmer-reported livestock losses before and after the placement of a dog and was calculated as percentage change in stock loss after introduction of a livestock guarding dog according herd species and dog sex. This study determined the impact of herd type or dog sex on the difference between livestock loss before versus after livestock guarding dog s placement. This study indicates that the use of this breed of livestock guarding dog is an effective means of reducing perceived livestock losses due to predation, regardless of dog sex, and may be used with equal effectiveness with a range of herd species.


Stressful life events have been positively associated with alcohol use and misuse in young adults; however, individual differences in the association suggest the presence of moderators. Findings from observational studies suggest that the effects of stressful environments on drinking behavior may differ as a function of diverse single monoamine genes regulating serotonin and dopamine neurotransmission. However, research has not utilized an experimental design to examine whether the monoamine genes collectively are associated with the degree to which exposure to stressors affects alcohol endophenotypes. The current study examined whether the effects of an experimentally manipulated psychosocial stressor on drinking urge and attentional bias for alcohol cues differ as a function of the cumulative genetic index of 5-HTTLPR, MAO-A, DRD4, DAT1, and DRD2 genotypes (candidate genes and environment interaction; cGxE). The current study also examined whether salivary alpha-amylase level or anxiety state mediate the cGxE effects. One hundred five Caucasian young adults (mean age = 19.83; 61% male) went through both control and experimental stress conditions in order. Results showed that, as the cumulative genetic score of the five monoamine genes increased, attentional bias for alcohol-related stimuli elevated in the stress condition but not in the control condition. No mediating roles of salivary alpha-amylase and anxiety state in the cGxE effect were found, however. High cumulative genetic score of the five monoamine genes was associated with elevated drinking urge both in the control and stress conditions. Although replication is necessary, the findings suggest that the five monoamine genes collectively were positively associated with the cognitive process of an individual's drive for alcohol (i.e., attentional bias) in stressful situations. The underlying psychological and neurobiological mechanisms need to be further characterized.


Effective science communication is essential to share knowledge and recruit the next generation of researchers. Science communication to the general public can, however, be hampered by limited resources and a lack of incentives in the academic environment. Various social media platforms have recently emerged, providing free and simple science communication tools to reach the public and young people especially, an audience often missed by more conventional outreach initiatives. While individual researchers and large institutions are present on social media, smaller research groups are underrepresented. As a small group of oceanographers, sea ice scientists, and atmospheric scientists at the Norwegian Polar Institute, we share our experience establishing, developing, and maintaining a successful Arctic science communication initiative (@oceanseaicenpi) on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The initiative is run entirely by a team of researchers with limited time and financial resources. It has built a broad audience of more than 7,000 followers, half of which is associated with the team's Instagram account. To our knowledge, @oceanseaicenpi is one of the most successful Earth sciences Instagram accounts managed by researchers. The initiative has boosted the alternative metric scores of our publications and helped participating researchers become better writers and communicators. We hope to inspire and help other research groups by providing some guidelines on how to develop and conduct effective science communication via social media.


In this paper, the development and evolution of bridge in Chongqing and around the world are summarized particularly. Besides, the categories of bridges, the development of bridge design theories as well as the breakthroughs of bridge construction with the passage of time are also introduced systemically. With the introduction of the historical stone-arch bridges, the recent reinforced concrete slab bridges, modern pre-stressed concrete bridge, various arch bridges, suspension bridges and cable-stayed bridges, the prosperity and progress made by human beings in the process of transformation of nature are gradually revealed in this paper, the development and evolution of bridge is also revealed with the introduction of new techniques. The construction of bridge promotes the economic development and strengthens the connection of different areas, brings a booming market. The role of mechanics in bridge design is analysed and the development of Chongqing bridges can also be experienced in this paper. Bridge is not only a construction but also the creator of the soul of a city, showing the fighting spirit and braveness of a generation.


Background and Objective: Aberrant phenotype is a phenomenon of abnormal expression or loss of expression of cell specific lineage marker not associated with specific cell type. Aberrant phenotype expression due to genetic defects may be associated with unfavorable outcome. It can be used to determine minimal residual disease status. The purpose of the study was to find out the occurrence of aberrant phenotypes in leukemia/lymphoma patients. Methods: One milliliter peripheral blood or bone marrow samples were analyzed on FACS Calibur flowcytometer. The cells were lysed and stained following standard protocol. Data was acquired and analyzed by CellQuest-Pro software. The Antigenic expression was rated as positive when the percentage of positive blast cells was ≥ 20%. In that manner, aberrant phenotype was considered positive when 20% of blast cells show expression of markers. Results: Of a total 145 cases analyzed, 26 were acute myeloid leukemia, 71 of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, 48 were of Chronic Lymphoid leukemia on the basis of morphological features and confirmed by flow cytometry. Overall, 19% (28) cases showed aberrant expression of antigens. In 32% (9/28) AML patients, CD5, CD7, CD64dim, CD10, CD117, CD25 and TdT were expressed while in 25% (7/28) ALL patients CD33, CD13, HLA-DR and CD3 were detected. Among chronic leukemia, all aberrant expressions were seen in cases of B-CLL (10/28) only; with CD11c, CD3 and CD10 as the aberrantly expressed markers. Conclusion: Variability in aberrant phenotype expression was observed in different types of acute and chronic leukemia patients with no prognostic implications on treatment response.


Abstract The comparison of superposed praealveolinid assemblages from the well exposed outcrops in the Iberian Range and the Pyrenees with Prealveolina species from the type localities in Reichel's collection have allowed us to evaluate the stratigraphical range of each species. The species Praealveolina iberica, P. pennensis and P. debilis successively replace each other from Early to Mid Cenomanian; they have been correlated with Mantelliceras mantelli and Acanthoceras rotomagense ammonite zones, and with Rotalipora brotzeni and the lower part of the R. cushmanni planktonic foraminiferal zones. Praealveolina brevis and P. tenuis appear successively during the Upper Cenomanian, but the range of P. tenuis may overlap with the one of P. brevis in the Early Upper Cenomanian; they have been correlated with Calycoceras naviculare and Metoicoceras geslinianum and with R. cushmannni zone. P simplex occurs together with P. brevis and P. tenuis in the Upper Cenomanian. The stratigraphic relationship of P. cretacea and P. lata with the species treated in this paper have not been established yet because they were not found in the studied sediments.


Hydrogenolysis of glycerol to propylene glycol was performed at lower temperatures and pressures using concentrated glycerol. Reactions were carried out at 180, 200, 220, and 240oC and at a system pressure of 1, 2, and 4 bars in the presence of a copper-chromite catalyst. The effect of temperature, pressure, residence time, water content, and H2: Glycerol mole ratios were evaluated. All results indicate that lower temperatures and higher pressures promote the selectivity on conversion of glycerol to propylene glycol. The amount of byproducts decreased with decreasing the residence time. Product quality correlates with lower water content. Catalyst productivity increased with decreasing H2: Glycerol mole ratio. An optimal H2: Glycerol mole ratio is near 15:1. Lower temperatures (220oC) are the preferred operated conditions to increase the catalyst productivity. The results are also fully consistent with a two-step reaction in which the second step of conversion of acetol to propylene glycol is equilibrium limited.


Children with Language disorders boom higher than average rates of peer relationship problems, suggesting that they are also AC risk far loneliness, A review or research on loneliness as an emotional consequence of peer relationship difficulties in childhood is preceded by a discussion of the Funicular relevance of this literature for children with language difficulties. Evidence from research on loneliness indicates the peer acceptance participation in friendship, friendship quality, and victimization by peers each contribute to children's feelings of loneliness at school. Suggestions are made concerning intervention efforts to reduce loneliness for children with language problems.


Thomas Pringle, a Scottish journalist and poet, is best known to Anglo-American scholarship for his role as editor of the first black female slave narrative to be published in Britain, The History of Mary Prince (1834). Pringle had lived in the Cape Colony from 1820 to 1826, however, and produced an important body of work that is not well known outside South Africa. The central argument of this essay is that the poem "The Bechuana Boy" (first published in 1830) has not yet been recognized as a significant precursor text of the History , even though it helps us locate the narrative as informed by a structure of thought already present in Pringle9s work. I examine in particular the way in which the poem engages the notion of sympathy, especially as this derives from Adam Smith9s conceptualization in The Theory of Moral Sentiments . Such metropolitan notions meet their limits in the colonized subject, who may only access the circuits of sympathy by divesting himself of indigenous selfhood. In comparing "The Bechuana Boy" and The History of Mary Prince , I draw attention to shared structural and thematic features and elaborate on the affinities between these works despite their generic and other differences. The essay concludes by offering a further brief comparison between the History and Olaudah Equiano9s Interesting Narrative (1789). Working with Gayatri Spivak9s notion of the "native informant," I argue that the works under examination display similarities in their understanding of the protocols governing the admission of the native informant to mainstream public discourse.


In modern criminal trials, expert evidence often plays an important role. The question as to the guilt of the defendant is often contingent upon the results of DNA analysis, polygraphs, hair comparisons, and other forensic science techniques. At the same time, through a wide variety of problems inherent to the collection and production of such evidence, the use of expert evidence in criminal litigation is often highly problematical. The vast range of problems that have been identified over the years, and the manifest presence of these problems in some of the more notorious miscarriages of justice have made expert evidence one of the most debated topics in legal literature today. Many believe that in this particular field, criminal justice systems are in dire need of legal reform. This study attempts to contribute to this debate through an analysis and comparison of two legal systems that each employ a different method for expert involvement. The study seeks to identify the similarities and differences in how different legal systems deal with expert evidence. Additionally it seeks to establish what the experiences of one country can bring to another for the purpose of enhancing the cornerstone of criminal litigation: the concept of procedural fairness.


The purpose of this chapter is to review 'traditional' approaches to reading interventions alongside experimental work which has devised tasks for the assessment of speech rhythm in different age groups. The chapter reflects on how to take the best of these tasks and intervention formats and combine them into a potential model for speech rhythm-based reading intervention. The chapter reviews the phonological deficit hypothesis before detailing reading interventions linked to this hypothesis and found to be effective in raising attainment in reading. It then reviews the methodologies and findings of studies looking at speech rhythm and its contribution to reading processes. This chapter proposes that tasks used to assess speech rhythm sensitivity could usefully be adapted and used in the context of early intervention.


The cutting and flow properties of ice depend strongly on its physical properties, as e.g. crystallite size, shape and fabrics. As the crystallites properties depend on the geochemical impurity and dust load, as well as the ice flow, and thus vary with depth,the cutting behaviour when drilling an ice core will change with depth. We are at the beginning of systematic tests and we will present first qualitative observations and links between cutting size, core production, and ice properties.The EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) borehole in DML (Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica) was under-balanced by about three bars its bottom over two years. We found that the borehole closure strongly correlates with the crystallite size record as observed in the ice core. We will discuss this as an illustrative example and suggest to leave bore holes slightly under-balanced for a while to determine the flow properties of ice sheet directly from borehole closure.


Ocular dominance describes the contribution of each eye to binocular vision. This balance is disrupted in some clinical conditions such as amblyopia. It has been shown psychophysically that short-term monocular deprivation shifts the equilibrium towards the occluded eye (1). In this study, we wanted to investigate the cortical mechanism underlying this phenomenon using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Subjects were presented with monocular and dichoptic stimuli using a frequency tagging paradigm to identify the input coming from each eye. Three 10-minute blocks of MEG recordings were followed by 2.5 hours of monocular deprivation. Immediately after removal of the patch, another three consecutive blocks were recorded followed by a final recording 45 min post deprivation. Immediately following the removal of the patch, we observed an increase in power of the response from the occluded eye as early as in V1, and reflected in the response of subsequent brain areas as well. At the same time, the power of the response from the undeprived eye was reduced. The pre-deprivation ocular power distribution was achieved again at the 45 min post-deprivation recording. The power redistribution was observed both monocularly and dichoptically, but was more pronounced on dichoptic recording. We also observed an increase in variability of the response from the occluded eye post-deprivation. In conclusion, short-term monocular deprivation perturbes the binocular equilibrium as measured psychophysically. We were able to observe a physiological correlate of this perturbation in area V1 of the visual cortex with MEG. The change in V1 neuronal population activity observed here might be a direct consequence of the underlying plasticity occurring in the brain. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


This thesis is concerned with the development and implementation of computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) based prediction methodologies for turbulent reacting flows with
principal application to turbulent diffusion flame combustors. Numerical simulation of
combustion problems involve strong coupling between chemistry, transport and fluid
dynamics. The works accomplished in this study can be separated mainly into three
distinct areas: i) assessment of the performance of turbulent combustion models and to
implement suitable submodels for combustion and flame behaviour into CFD code; ii)
Conducting CFD modelling of turbulent diffusion flames, radiation heat loss from
combustion and flame zones; and iii) modelling of pollutants like NOx (oxides of
nitrogen), identification of the effect of radiation heat loss on NOx formation.
The combustion models studied are the flame-sheet, equilibrium, eddy break-up and
laminar flamelet models. An in-house CFD code is developed and combustion models
are implemented. The basic numerical issues involving the discretisation schemes are
addressed by employing three discretisation schemes namely, hybrid, power law and TVD (total variation diminishing) schemes.
The combustion of different fuels ranging from simple H2/N2 and CO/H2/N2 to complex
CH4/H2 are investigated for different inlet velocities and boundary conditions. The
performances of the combustion models are analysed for these fuels. The configurations
used for the validation and assessment of the combustion models are co-flowing jet
flames and bluff body burner stabilized flames. The high quality experimental databases
available from Sandia national laboratories, the University of Sydney and other reported
measurements are used for the purpose of evaluating the combustion models. The
predicted results demonstrate the effects of turbulent mixing and the effects of chemical
reactions on the combustion models.
The calculations show that all the combustion models like flame-sheet and equilibrium
models are found to be inadequate even for the near equilibrium flames. Although the
equilibrium chemistry model is capable of predicting the mixture fraction, temperature
and concentrations of major and minor species, the predictive accuracy is found to be
inadequate specially, when compared to the experimental data. In situations, where
finite rate chemistry effects are important the laminar flamelet model is a good choice. The key contributions of this thesis are as follows:
1) Modification of in-house CFD code for turbulent reacting flow and development of
CFD based iterative scheme for the turbulent diffusion flames to account for
radiation heat loss from combustion and flame zones.
2) Thorough assessment of turbulent combustion modelling techniques for different
cases of diffusion flames, demonstration of the importance of differential diffusion
in the flamelet modelling of combustion and comprehensive validation 3) Demonstration of the importance of radiation heat loss in the modelling of turbulent
combustion, implementation of radiation modelling in the three cases of diffusion
flames and comprehensive validation of CFD based combustion radiation results.
4) Development of modelling strategy for the pollutants like oxides of nitrogen (NOx),
implementation of NOx modelling in the different flames cases and identified the
effect of radiation heat loss on NOx formation.
The works addressed in this thesis are presented with the applications to turbulent
diffusion flame combustors. However, these works can easily be extended to the
industrial applications and applied to a large variety of other challenging domains.


It is suggested that if Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is to fulfil its potential as an approach to cultural and historical science in general, then an interdisciplinary concept of activity is needed. Such a concept of activity would provide a common foundation for all the human sciences, underpinning concepts of, for example, state and social movement equally as, for example, learning and personality. For this is needed a clear conception of the 'unit of analysis' of activity, i.e., of what constitutes 'an activity', and a clear distinction between the unit of analysis and the substance, i.e., ultimate reality underlying all the human sciences: artifact-mediated joint activity. It is claimed that the concept of 'project collaboration' – the interaction between two or more persons in pursuit of a common objective – forms such a unit of activity, the single 'molecule' in terms of which both sociological and psychological phenomena can be theorised. It is suggested that such a clarification of the notion of activity allows us to see how individual actions and societal activities mutually constitute one another and are each construed in the light of the other.


Abstract : Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are diverse members of the neurotransmitter‐gated ion channel superfamily and play critical roles in chemical signaling throughout the nervous system. The present study establishes for the first time the acute functional effects of sertraline (Zoloft), paroxetine (Paxil), nefazodone (Serzone), and venlafaxine (Effexor) on two human and one chick nAChR subtype. This study also confirms previous findings of nAChR functional block by fluoxetine (Prozac). Function of human muscle‐type nAChR (α1βγδ) in TE671/RD cells, human autonomic nAChR (α3β4α5 ±β2) in SH‐SY5Y neuroblastoma cells, or chick V274T mutant α7‐nAChR heterologously expressed in native nAChR‐null SH‐EP1 epithelial cells was measured using 86Rb+ efflux assays. Functional blockade of human muscle‐type and autonomic nAChRs is produced by each of the drugs in the low to intermediate micromolar range, and functional blockade of chick V274T‐α7‐nAChR is produced in the intermediate to high micromolar range. Functional blockade is insurmountable by increasing agonist concentrations at each nAChR subtype tested for each of these drugs, suggesting noncompetitive inhibition of nAChR function. These studies open the possibilities that nAChR subtypes in the brain could be targets for therapeutic antidepressants and could play roles in clinical depression.


This research project is designed through the use of a metaphorical 'traveller', to record the readings of environment and the 'traces' ofa traveller's observations. It starts from the author's own cultural context, and then crosses through the journey into a new cultural vision. By searching for clarification in fragmented thoughts and in exploring the concept of 'the traces of a traveller', the textile based narrative will be constructed through the shifting traces in the artist's memories and her visual reading of the environment whilst travelling. Other travellers such as the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, Richard Long and Hamish Fulton will be discussed. The research will explore the thinking processes and the creative source materials of metaphorical textiles through various representational media. Textile vocabulary is regarded as a metaphor and simile to my art practice, as well as in developing a creative method and research methodology. A non-linear way of thinking will be proposed through exploring the creative process-collecting the traces and forming the ideas and references will be made to Chuang Tzu and Edward de Bono. The main body of collecting the content of the traces of memory is to explore historical and environmental traces. It will include those types of stories relating to my textile connotations and imagination that I have accumulated. The content will connect with materials I have collected that contain images of home and are based on individual memories about textiles. Textile artists such as Michael Brennand-Wood, Marian Bijlenga, Polly Binns and Sue Lawty etc. will also be discussed.

This research aims for the art practice and the development of transforming interpreted ideas into the form of art. The shifting boundaries will be generated from the discontinuity of personal memories and the shifting traces of a traveller's movement which crosses from one field to the other; the development of the idea ofthe transformation from material (textiles) into immaterial (video images) will thus be shaped. The relevant film artists such as Ming-liang Tsai, Andrey Tarkovsky, Chris Marker and Norman McLaren will be discussed. An aspect of contextualising the fragmented ideas into telling a continuously developing story, which conveys an essence of non-linear ways of narration, will be experimented with.


The Insurance Mediation Directive was adopted in 2002. Its aim was twofold: to protect consumers through the establishment of professional requirements for insurance intermediaries, and enhance cross-border activity through a single passport. Probably the main requirement for insurance intermediaries is to disclose information. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyse the way that the supervisory authority of insurance market administers the activities of the insurance intermediary within the scope of information disclosure to the clients. According to Resolution No. N-69 of the Lithuanian Insurance Supervisory Commission dated 22 February 2011, information shall be disclosed in due time – the insurance intermediary shall familiarise the client with the provisions of the insurance product and provide the client with information in writing or such other form, as requested and accepted by the client (except orally) prior to conclusion of the insurance contract with the client as well as to ensure that the client has sufficient time to familiarise with the aforementioned information. Moreover, prior to the conclusion of any specific contract, the insurance intermediary shall at least specify, in particular on the basis of information provided by the customer, the demands and the needs of that customer as well as the underlying reasons for any advice given to the customer on a given insurance product. However, the question arises whether a resolution is the most effective way to implement the provisions on how the supervisory authority should publicly administer the activities of insurance intermediaries. Moreover, one might argue whether Lithuania should implement stricter rules of information disclosure for the insured.


&CHOKKALINGAM, U., SMITH, J., DE JONG, W. & SABOGAL, C. 2001. A conceptual framework for the assessment of tropical secondary forest dynamics and sustainable development potential in Asia. In this paper, we present an intensification model based on the intensity of exploitation and use of forests and forest lands as a relevant framework for analysing the appearance, dynamics, and evolution of different types of secondary forests. The systematic driving forces responsible for the disturbances and subsequent secondary forest re-growth tend to change and evolve along this continuum. This dynamic, process-oriented, long-term framework draws on existing theories and models of the underlying factors of forest change relevant for tropical Asia, and emphasises factors related to secondary forests. We identify and characterise four general stages along this intensification continuum—the extensive use stage, the intensive exploitation stage, the forest depleted stage, and the forest recovery stage. In the extensive use stage, secondary forests tend to be limited and largely arise from long-rotation swidden agriculture. In the intensive exploitation stage, secondary forests tend to increase in absolute and proportional area, and arise mainly out of industrial and local logging activities and fires. In the forest depleted stage, natural forest cover is low and there is increasing interest in forest conservation, reforestation and sustainable management for timber, environmental and local needs. In the forest recovery stage, there is increased forest cover as a result of reforestation measures or regeneration with land use abandonment. This framework can help guide management and policy options for secondary forests based on threats and relative resource endowments, infrastructure, and the policy and institutional environment present in each stage. It could also be used to identify effective intervention points and to anticipate and prevent problem situations beforehand.


Since the 1980s, sick house syndrome has become one of the major challenges in environmental health. In Japan in 1980, first governmental measures were taken to limit formaldehyde release from building materials. In 2003, the Building Standards Law and the Community Health Law were revised, and these laws clarified the responsibility of building companies, local governments and health officers in preventing sick house syndrome. Telephone survey results demonstrated the decrease in the prevalence of sick house syndrome between 2002 and 2006 in Tokyo and Sapporo. Knowledge about sick house syndrome enabling patients to better deal with the syndrome and stricter regulations seem to have contributed to the decrease in the prevalence of the syndrome. Questionnaire surveys carried out through regional health centers demonstrated that the number of possible sick house syndrome patients visiting regional health centers varied, possibly reflecting different local prevalences and needs. Most of the regional health centers had staff members who were able to measure in-house environments, but their ability to discuss on health-related issues was limited, and cooperation between the centers and healthcare organizations was not sufficient. Information about healthcare organizations that can treat patients with sick house syndrome and simple self-diagnostic tools were among the most often cited useful support needs. Establishment of a hub regional health center to construct a comprehensive consultation and referral system that can meet local needs in dealing with sick house syndrome is recommended.


Summary Background: Hysterosalpingogram is a common radiological examination in the investigation of infertility and sub-fertility in women. The main aim of the examination is to assess the size of the uterine capacity and patency of fallopian tubes, which is demonstrated as free intra-peritoneal spillage of contrast. Common results of an examination include irregularity of the uterine outline, non-opacifi cation or dilatation of the fallopian tubes, loculated intra-peritoneal spillage of contrast. Case Report: The case of a 29 years old nulliparous woman with a diagnosis of primary infertility and booked for hysterosalpingogram as part of the routine work-up is presented. Based on the menstrual history and a negative urinary pregnancy test on the morning of the procedure, the examination was carried out. However, the result showed evidence of intra-uterine cyesis which was confi rmed on pelvic ultrasonography. The examination is routinely carried out when the patient is not pregnant, and all available investigations are carried out to prevent irradiation of the unborn fetus. Inadvertent irradiation of an intra-uterine fetus is a rare occurrence and the complications will include abortion as seen in this case report. Conclusions: Caution must be taken when performing a hysterosalpingogram to prevent the inadvertent exposure of a pregnant uterus. The reliance on the menstrual history and a negative pregnancy test and denial of the sexual intercourse prior to the examination did not help in this case report. The resultant complication is the spontaneous abortion of a precious baby that the couple has been seeking for and for which the procedure was performed.


The ASSI experiment aboard the San Marco D/L aeronomy satellite will monitor the airglow, solar, and interplanetary radiations from the EUV through the visible spectral regions. Four spectrometers with solar pointing control cover this broad region using channels with eighteen overlapping wavelength ranges with spectral resolutions from 0.8 to 3.0 nm are adequate for aeronomy. Large dynamic ranges up to 1:1011 permit the measurement of faint airglow or interplanetary radiation and intense solar emissions with one and the same instrument. Instrumental details such as the special optical design and calibration procedures are presented in detail.


Lasso is a widely used regression technique to find sparse representations. When the dimension of the feature space and the number of samples are extremely large, solving the Lasso problem remains challenging. To improve the efficiency of solving large-scale Lasso problems, El Ghaoui and his colleagues have proposed the SAFE rules which are able to quickly identify the inactive predictors, i.e., predictors that have 0 components in the solution vector. Then, the inactive predictors or features can be removed from the optimization problem to reduce its scale. By transforming the standard Lasso to its dual form, it can be shown that the inactive predictors include the set of inactive constraints on the optimal dual solution. In this paper, we propose an efficient and effective screening rule via Dual Polytope Projections (DPP), which is mainly based on the uniqueness and nonexpansiveness of the optimal dual solution due to the fact that the feasible set in the dual space is a convex and closed polytope. Moreover, we show that our screening rule can be extended to identify inactive groups in group Lasso. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no "exact" screening rule for group Lasso. We have evaluated our screening rule using many real data sets. Results show that our rule is more effective in identifying inactive predictors than existing state-of-the-art screening rules for Lasso.


This study investigates the role of social-problem solving and social support as mediators and moderators of the relationship between stressful life events and adjustment, experienced by young students in Saudi Arabia. The study sample involved 630 college students and 390 high school students. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used. Semi-structured interviews (Chapter 4) conducted with twelve university students showed that the chief problems that the students experienced were mainly interpersonal and personal. Students reported that they used a rational problem solving style and avoidance; rather than other styles. Translation and modification of original western cultural measures, testing psychometric properties and finding new factors of the translated scales was undertaken (Chapter 5 and 6). Reliability and validity for all the scales were acceptable. The Life Satisfaction of Young Saudi Women scale was specifically developed for the current study, and proved a reliable and valid means of assessing the populations. The empirical investigation contained two related studies (Chapter 7 and 8), using self-completion questionnaires administered to both populations. They showed that dysfunctional social-problem solving dimensions partially mediated the stress-distress relationship in both samples. Social support was found to partially mediate stress-life satisfaction only in university students. However it was found to partially mediate stress-distress relationships in the school sample. In terms of moderating effects, path analysis results showed that the path representing dysfunctional socialproblem solving dimensions significantly interacted with stress to predict a high level of distress. Results also indicated that social support moderated the relation between stress and distress in both samples. In Chapter Nine, several avenues for implication and future research are suggested in the areas of theory, measurement and applied research


Background: The prevalence
and incidences of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and associated
risk factors, may be influenced by the environment in which
one lives. This
study aimed to identify the most significant modifiable CV risk factors
associated with fatal and non-fatal CV events over five years
within a selected group of black South Africans, in the North West Province.

Methods: Risk factors associated with fatal and non-fatal CV events were assessed of 746 males and 1 263 females from rural and urban areas,
aged 35-70 years.

Results: A positive correlation between
suffering from a non-fatal CV event and age (rpb=0.14, p<0.01)
were reported, as well as all blood pressure parameters with systolic blood
pressure (SBP) revealing the strongest correlation (rpb=0.14,
p<0.01). Binary logistic regression analysis found age (β= 0.044),
education (β=0.645), weighted physical activity index (β=-0.893) and
Framingham risk score (FRS) (β=0.038) to be important predictors
of non-fatal CV events, whereas age (β=0.074) and glycated haemoglobin
(β=-1.163) were important predictors of fatal CV events. ROC curve analyses
reported all blood pressure measurements and FRS to be likely associated with
both fatal and non-fatal CV outcomes.

Conclusions: Elevated blood pressure is
the most significant predictor for both fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular
events in a selected group of black South Africans.


THE ASSESSMENT OF THE TABLETING PROPER77ES OF CHITOSAN THROUGH WET GRANOLA NON AND DIRECT COMPRESSION Chiiosan is a natural polysaccharide that is obtained by the partial deacetylation of chitin, the second most abundant natural polymer. Chiiosan is currently extensively utilised in various pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical preparations. It has found wide applicability in conventional pharmaceutical devices as a potential formulation excipient. As a pharmaceutical excipient, its main contribution seems to be as an absorption enhancer of large molecule drugs from the gastro-intestinal tract (through "tight junctions") and as a fat absorber in dietary products. Although it is present in various tablet preparations, l i l e if any is known about the tabletabiliiy of this versatile polymer. Characterisation of chiiosan raw material revealed poor flowabili, a large partide size distribution and poor compressibility. These properties provided the challenges circumvented in this study. The direct compression of chiiosan indicated that the flowabilii and compressibility of the polymer were insufficient to produce acceptable tablets comprising of pure chiiosan raw material. Therefore, chitosan was combined with ~ v i c e p PH200 and ~ r o s o l p SMCCm 90 respectively. The properties of tablets comprising of chitosan and these directly compressible fillers were compared in terms of filler concentration and mixing time. It was found that ~ v i c e p PH200 proved to be most effective at a concentration of 30% (whnr). Furthermore, a mixing time of 10 minutes produced optimal results for all the chiiosan I filler combinations. The inclusion of single dry binders was investigated to assess the suitability of dry binders as enhancers of the binding properties of chiiosan raw material. Kollidon" VA-64 (co-polyvidone) and Methocep KlOOM (hydroxypropylmethylcellulose) were combined respectively with chiiosan raw material in concentrations of 4, 5, 7, 10, 15 or 20% wb. It was evident that chiiosan exhibited a significantly higher sensitivity for Kdlidon' VA-64 than for Methocep K100M. A log-linear relatiin between the Kollidon" VA-64 concentration and crushing strength was identified. This could be considered a significant attribute of the chiiosan I Kdliion' VA-64 combination, since this correlation could be utilised to predict the crushing strength of tablets comprising of chitosan and Kollion' VA-64 at any given concentration of the binder. In comparison with the combinations containing the directly compressible fillers the formulation comprising of 20% w/w Kollidong VA-64 produced superior crushing strength and friability. Conversely, the chiiosan I ~ethocef ' KlOOM mixtures revealed erratic and relatively unacceptable results in terms of crushing strength and friability. However, the presence of Methocep KlOOM in the formulations seemed advantageous to tablet disintegration. Therefore, the combination of both binders in different concentration ratios were investigated to determine whether a combination of the dry binders would result in potentiation of the binding effect during compression and furthermore if the presence of Methocap KlOOM would enhance the disintegration of the tablets. Concentration ratios of 1:l; 3:l and 1:3 (~o l l idon~ VA-64 : ~ e t h ~ ~ e P K100M) were utilised during these experiments. The formulations comprising of single dry binders produced superior results compared to the formulations containing the dry binder combinations. Furthermore, it was evident that the binder combinations did not result in the potentiation of the binding effect nor did it prove advantageous in terms of tablet disintegration. Since the characterisation of chiiosan raw material proved that this polymer exhibited poor flowability, the subsequent wet granulation of chiiosan was investigated utilising low and high speed granulation. ~ollidon" VA-64 (mpolyvidone) and ~ e t h ~ ~ e p KlOOM (hydroxypropylmethylcellulose) were the two binders utilised in concentrations of 3% and 5% w/w respectively during granulation. Wet granulation of the polymer did improve the flowabillity, however, the inherent characteristics of chiiosan still affected the tabletability of the material. Therefore, the indusion of extragranular binder was necessitated to improve the binding of chiiosan granules during compression. Kollidon" VA-64 and Methocep KlOOM were utilised as external binders in concentrations of 3,5,7 and 10% w/w. Generally, the granulation processes overall improved the tabletability of the polymer since it was possible to compress larger quantities of chitosan with the aid of selected binders. ~ o l l i d o n ~ VA64 posed to be better suited as a granulation binder for chitosan, compared to Methocep K100M. Dissolution studies provided a method to determine the effect(s) of chiiosan as well as the induded binders on drug release. Furosemide was induded in seleded formulations as a tracer drug. The gel-forming ability of chiiosan in acidic pH evidently decreased the release rate of the incorporated drug. Dissolution profiles of all the formulations containing chiiosan granules and extragranular binder indicated sustained release of furosemide (24 hour period). Since ~ethocep KlOOM also possesses the ability to form a gel layer on contact with water or biological fluid, the produdion of matrix tablets was a possibility. However, it was clear that a total concentration of 15% wlw ~eth-P KIOOM was insufficient to achieve matrix-like dissolution profiles. The combination of chiosan and ~ethoce$ KIOOM proved to be advantageous in the formulation of sustained release dosage forms. Short-term stability testing of chiosan raw material proved that the exposure of chitosan to elevated temperatures had a detrimental effect on the tabletability of the polymer. Furthermore, it was evident that lower moisture content (sorbed water) detrimentally affected the compressibility of chiiosan raw material. Long-term stability testing indicated that ambient conditions could have pronounced effects on the physical properties of the raw material, chiosan tablets as well as the granules. Furthermore, the tablets comprising of ~ethocep KIOOM revealed the most significant deterioration in terms of crushing strength and friability. In contradidion, the tablets containing Avicep PH200 revealed the most acceptable results, confirming that direct compression produced the optimal system in terms of product stability. However, the combination of chitosan with binders allows the exclusion of Avicep PH200. However, the formulations containing binders (granulate) revealed poor stability. It could be concluded that the storage of chiosan raw material, tablets or granules should be ensured at temperatures lower that 25 "C and relative humidity not exceeding 60%. The optimisation of chiiosan raw material for utilisation in tablet formulations as well as its applicability as pharmaceutical excipient was pertinently illustrated.


[1] An extensive set of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) observations were made as part of the NASA Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment–North America (INTEX-NA) study, flown from 1 July to 14 August 2004 mostly over the eastern United States and Canada. These data show that summertime OCS mixing ratios at low altitude were dominated by surface drawdown and were highly correlated with CO2. Although local plumes were observed on some low-altitude flight legs, anthropogenic OCS sources were small compared to this sink. These INTEX-NA observations were in marked contrast to the early springtime 2001 Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific experiment, which sampled Asian outflow dominated by anthropogenic OCS emissions. To test the gridded OCS fluxes used in past models, the INTEX-NA observations were combined with the sulfur transport Eulerian model (STEM) regional atmospheric chemistry model for a top-down assessment of bottom-up OCS surface fluxes for North America. Initial STEM results suggest that the modeled fluxes underestimate the OCS plant sink by more than 200%.


The focus on psychology has increased within software engineering due to the project management innovation "agile development processes". The agile methods do not explicitly consider group development aspects, they simply assume what is described in group psychology as mature groups. This study was conducted with 45 employees and their twelve managers (N=57) from two SAP customers in the US that were working with agile methods, and the data were collected via an online survey. The selected Agility measurement was correlated to a Group Development measurement and showed significant convergent validity, i.e., A more mature team is also a more agile team. This means that the agile methods probably would benefit from taking group development into account when its practices are being introduced.


Proactive latency-aware adaptation is an approach for self-adaptive systems that improves over reactive adaptation by considering both the current and anticipated adaptation needs of the system, and taking into account the latency of adaptation tactics so that they can be started with the necessary lead time. Making an adaptation decision with these characteristics requires solving an optimization problem to select the adaptation path that maximizes an objective function over a finite look-ahead horizon. Since this is a problem of selecting adaptation actions in the context of the probabilistic behavior of the environment, Markov decision processes (MDP) are a suitable approach. However, given all the possible interactions between the different and possibly concurrent adaptation tactics, the system, and the environment, constructing the MDP is a complex task. Probabilistic model checking can be used to deal with this problem since it takes as input a formal specification of the stochastic system, which is internally translated into an MDP, and solved. One drawback of this solution is that the MDP has to be constructed every time an adaptation decision has to be made to incorporate the latest predictions of the environment behavior. In this paper we present an approach that eliminates that run-time overhead by constructing most of the MDP offline, also using formal specification. At run time, the adaptation decision is made by solving the MDP through stochastic dynamic programming, weaving in the stochastic environment model as the solution is computed. Our experimental results show that this approach reduces the adaptation decision time by an order of magnitude compared to the probabilistic model checking approach, while producing the same results.


Some technical and economic problems currently limit the use of substrates. The main problems include the lack of reciprocal adaptation of the cultivation technics and the substrate, the possible presence of pathogens, and the cost involved. To these we must add the ecological problems of the extraction areas, since there are no short-term renewable resources, especially in peat, the classic substrate. This has motivated the search for substitutes, especially amongst indigenous materials and those easily obtainable locally, such straws cereals, rice husk and cork residuous. The use of these substrates should be evaluated agronomically for: physical, chemical and cultural properties. The characterisation and use of almond shell (Prunus dulcis) as a horticultural substrate substitute for growing ornamental plants were studied. The study involved 4 almond shell and peat mixtures (20:80,40:60, 60:40 and 80:20 in almond shell and peat volume respectively), as well as those of a control mixture consisting of peat and expanded clay (33.3: 66.6 in volume of expanded clay and peat respectively). The evaluated plant was Ficus benjamina. The plants crop in mixture 20:80 present hight height, dry and fresh weight aerial and root zone and nitrogen foliar level.


Abstract. Physalia physalis, also called the Bluebottle in Australia, is a colonial animal resembling a jellyfish that is well known to beachgoers for the painful stings delivered by their tentacles. Despite being a common occurrence, the origin of the Bluebottle before reaching the coastline is not well understood, and neither is the way it drifts at the surface of the ocean. Previous studies used numerical models in combination with simple assumptions to calculate the drift of this species, excluding complex drifting dynamics. In this study, we provide a new parametrization for Lagrangian modelling of the Bluebottle by considering the similarities between the Bluebottle and a sailboat. This allows us to compute the hydrodynamic and aerodynamic forces acting on the Bluebottle and use an equilibrium condition to create a generalised model for calculating the drifting speed and course of the Bluebottle under any wind and ocean current conditions. The generalised model shows that the velocity of the Bluebottle is a linear combination of the ocean current velocity and the wind velocity scaled by a coefficient ('shape parameter') and multiplied by a rotation matrix. Adding assumptions to this generalised model allows us to retrieve models used in previous literature. We discuss the sensitivity of the model to different parameters (shape, angle of attack and sail camber) and explore different cases of wind and current conditions to provide new insights into the drifting dynamics of the Bluebottle.