Abstract Alluvial fans are the main geomorphological and depositional features at active margins of nonmarine foreland basins. The characteristics of these fans have already been extensively studied in relation to mountain-emergent thrust fronts. However, how an entire mountain front (from emergent to blind thrusts) controls the depositional environment, organization, and evolution of a foreland fan system is not yet well explored. These controls are discussed here through a case study of the Berga Formation, deposited in the late Eocene–early Oligocene in the eastern Ebro foreland basin, south of the Pyrenean chain. Near the village of Sant Llorenc de Morunys, an extensive facies analysis of the Berga deposits suggests the occurrence of a wide range of depositional processes such as subaerial stream flows and sheet flows, subaerial to subaqueous gravity flows, and subaqueous suspension fallout. This indicates two distinct sedimentary environments. The first is a large, coarse-grained, gently sloping, braided-stream-flow-dominated alluvial fan that periodically prograded into intermittent shallow lakes. It developed with sediments provided by a regional drainage basin extending from the outer Pyrenean thrust sheets to the axial Pyrenean zone. In the study area, the flow directions on this large fan had a significant component subparallel to the orientation of the mountain-front structures. In the fan, the deposits were organized in large lithosomes (tens of meters thick and tens of kilometers long), interpreted as single fan lobes. These lithosomes are arranged into packages (tens to hundreds of meters thick) of proximal to distal sediments. These packages are interpreted as short-term and long-term progradation–retrogradation cycles of the fan, driven by low-frequency climatic changes and/or tectonic events. The second sedimentary environment is a small, coarser-grained, stream-flow- and gravity-flow-dominated alluvial fan. It developed later, with sediments coming from a local drainage basin extending only on the outermost thrust sheets of the chain. The flow directions on this fan were roughly perpendicular to the orientation of the local mountain-front structures. Therefore, during the deposition of the Berga Formation, the southeastern Pyrenean foreland presented at least one large, long-lived alluvial fan within the basin and probably several small, short-lived alluvial fans at its edge. The large fan was a permanent element of the foreland geomorphological and depositional system. The geometry and evolution of the southeastern Pyrenean thrust belt controlled its location, size, drainage pattern, depositional environment, and long-term stratigraphic sequences at a regional scale. Additionally, the growth of foreland folds modified the local bed geometries, transport pathways, environmental features, and long-term stratigraphic trends of its deposits. In contrast, the small fans were temporary, jumping from the footwalls of one active emergent thrust front to another, as a result of local reorganizations into river networks and sediment sources. The adjoining emergent thrust front controlled the locations, sizes, drainage patterns, depositional environments, and long-term stratigraphic sequences of these small fans at a local scale. Finally, it is possible to speculate whether or not feedback interactions existed between the foreland deposition and the deformation of the mountain front. We suggest that the overall organization and evolution of the Berga fans, as well as their interactions with the deformation, can be extrapolated to many other active margins of foreland basins.


Astronauts often report experiences of awe and wonder while traveling in space. This paper addresses the question of whether awe and wonder can be scientifically investigated in a simulated space travel scenario using a neurophenomenological method. To answer this question, we created a mixed-reality simulation similar to the environment of the International Space Station. Portals opened to display simulations of Earth or Deep Space. However, the challenge still remained of how to best capture the resulting experience of participants. We could use psycholog- ical methods, neuroscientific methods or philosophical methods. Each of these approaches offer many benefits, but each is also limited. Neurophenomenology capitalises on and integrates all three methods. We employed questionnaires from psychology, electroencephalography, electrocardiography, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy from neuroscience, and a phenomenological interview technique from philosophy. This neurophenomenological method enabled extensive insight in experiencers and non-experiencers of awe and wonder (AW) in a simulated space scenario that otherwise would not have been possible. Traditional empirical analyses were completed, followed by individual differences analyses using interview transcriptions paired with physiological responses. Experiencers of AW showed differences in theta and beta activity throughout the brain compared to non-experiencers. Questionnaires indicated that non-experiencers of AW gave more positive responses of religious and spiritual practices than experiencers of AW. Interviews showed that awe and wonder were more likely to occur when watching the simulated Earth view instead of the Deep Space view. Our study is a success- ful example of neurophenomenology, a powerful and promising interdisciplinary approach for future studies of complex states of experience.


Abstract Why do so many IS/IT-related projects fail to deliver the level of tangible and sustainable performance improvements organizations target and expect? Why are the new mindsets and ways of operating enabled by IS/IT innovations so difficult to be integrated and adopted in organizations? Why do factors such as resistance to change, insufficient executive sponsoring, unrealistic expectations, or ineffective leadership still nullify the efforts put into the implementation of conceptually and technically sophisticated information and communication (including enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, collaboration, knowledge management and similar IS/IT-based) systems? These questions, which are relevant to both IS/IT research and practice, are at the core of a simulation-based experience aimed at deepening and extending our understanding of issues related to managing organisational change and transformation in the context of IS/IT implementation projects, providing at the same time a new approach to model, validate and diffuse efficiently (through a game-like experience) knowledge in this relevant domain.


The Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) paradigm generically predicts that the external gravitational field in which a system is embedded can produce effects on its internal dynamics. In this communication, we first show that this external field effect (EFE) can significantly improve some galactic rotation curves fits by decreasing the predicted velocities of the external part of the rotation curves. In modified gravity versions of MOND, this EFE also appears in the Solar system and leads to a very good way to constrain the transition function of the theory. A combined analysis of the galactic rotation curves and Solar system constraints (provided by the Cassini spacecraft) rules out several classes of popular MOND transition functions, but leaves others viable. Moreover, we show that Laser Interferometer Space Antenna Pathfinder will not be able to improve the current constraints on these still viable transition functions.


Background and Purpose The prevalence of a patent foramen ovale has been shown to be increased in patients with ischemic stroke. Transesophageal echocardiography, transthoracic echocardiography, and transcranial Doppler examination with contrast injection can all be used to search for a patent foramen ovale. We compared the accuracy of these techniques for identifying a patent foramen ovale in 49 patients with acute ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack. Methods Transcranial Doppler examination of the right middle cerebral artery was performed during simultaneous transthoracic echocardiography with aerated saline injection, and again during transesophageal echocardiography; the latter was adopted as the "gold standard" for assessing the sensitivity of the other two tests. Results Contrast transesophageal echocardiography detected a patent foramen ovale in 19 of 49 patients (39%), during normal respiration in 15 of them and during Valsalva maneuver in 4. Transcranial Doppler correctly identified 13 patients with a patent foramen ovale and all 30 patients without it. Therefore, the sensitivity of transcranial Doppler was 68% (13/19), and its specificity 100% (30/30). The 6 patients misclassified by transcranial Doppler (false negatives) had a very small right-to-left shunt detected by transesophageal echocardiography. Contrast transthoracic echocardiography was found to be the least sensitive test, detecting a patent foramen ovale in only 9 of 19 patients (47%). The specificity of transthoracic echocardiography was 100% (30/30 patients). The low sensitivity of transthoracic echocardiography was principally due to the suboptimal image quality obtained in false-negative patients. Both transcranial Doppler and transthoracic echocardiography were more sensitive in patients with cryptogenic stroke than in patients with stroke of determined origin. This may indicate the presence of larger, more easily detectable shunts in patients with cryptogenic stroke. Conclusions Transesophageal echocardiography is more sensitive than transcranial Doppler examination in detecting a patent foramen ovale, but only in cases of minimal right-to-left shunts, the clinical relevance of which remains to be established. The sensitivity of transthoracic echocardiography is heavily hampered by the frequency of inadequate heart visualization.


Description: The University of Botswana, as an institution of higher learning, recognizes the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a serious threat to the well-being and continued development of the nation. The University must not only fight the spread of this deadly disease within its own community, but must also contribute to the national effort through education, research, awareness-promotion, behaviour-change and other innovative initiatives in line with the National Policy on HIV/AIDS. The University believes that its ability to accomplish its Vision and Mission depends on the health and well-being of staff and students. Without effective management, the impact of HIV/AIDS will affect staff and student productivity through illness and deaths, which will impact negatively on the overall quality ofthe work of the institution. The main goal of the University, therefore, is to promote activities that will result in an HIV free environment and develop staff and students who are compassionate, just, caring and educated to deal with this and future epidemics. The University shall be guided by the following policy objectives with respect to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support, research and mitigation of impact: a. To provide education, information and training in HIV/AIDS prevention and to reduce the rate of new infections by promoting behaviour change. b. To provide care and support to staff and students affected and/infected with HIV so as to alleviate fear, stigma, and discrimination surrounding HIV and AIDS. c. To safeguard the rights of employees and students who are affected and/or living with HIV and AIDS. d. To promote and support research and community outreach on HIV/AIDS prevention, care and support. e. To promote the health, social and spiritual welfare of the University community. This policy applies to all employees and students of the University of Botswana.


The benefits of maintenance therapy with inhaled corticosteroids have been convincingly established in patients with moderate and severe asthma disease, but only recently have studies assessed the potential benefits for children with mild disease. In this issue of Archives of Disease in Childhood , Turpeinen and colleagues report the findings of such a study.1 Their results confirmed that continuous treatment with inhaled corticosteroids is associated with significantly better asthma control than with treatment with disodium cromoglycate or intermittent treatment with inhaled corticosteroids. However, better asthma control was achieved at the expense of some reduction in annual growth. These findings corroborate the results of earlier, differently designed, much larger and longer studies on around 3000 children with mild asthma.2–4 So, there is good evidence that optimal or near optimal asthma control can be achieved in most children with mild asthma with inhaled corticosteroids. Furthermore, inhaled corticosteroids are clinically more effective and improve outcomes to a greater extent than any other asthma drug available for maintenance treatment in patients with mild, persistent asthma.2 5–7

However, the adverse effect on annual growth rates reported in the study of Turpeinen and colleagues and some other studies raises the question of whether it is justified to always aim for optimal near optimal asthma control even if the price could be an adverse effect on growth velocity. Should we accept a few more asthma exacerbations and a somewhat poorer daily asthma control and ensure a normal growth rate for these children? Unfortunately this cannot be answered in any way that fulfills the criteria for evidence-based decision making. However, the literature does provide data that may help answer these questions.

When interpreting the findings from controlled clinical studies and implementing them in daily clinical practice it is worth remembering the …


Firms active in knowledge-intensive fields are increasingly organizing their R&D activities on an international scale. This paper investigates whether firms active in biotechnology can improve their technological performance by developing R&D activities in multiple technology clusters. Regions in the US, Japan and Europe, that host a concentration of biotechnology activity are identified as clusters. Fixed-effect panel data analyses with 59 biopharmaceutical firms (period 1995-2002) provides evidence for a positive, albeit diminishing (inverted-U shape) relationship between the number of technology clusters in which a firm is present and its overall technological performance. This effect is distinct from a mere multi-location effect.


Aspect extraction aims to extract fine-grained opinion targets from opinion texts. Recent work has shown that the syntactical approach, which employs rules about grammar dependency relations between opinion words and aspects, performs quite well. This approach is highly desirable in practice because it is unsupervised and domain independent. However, the rules need to be carefully selected and tuned manually so as not to produce too many errors. Although it is easy to evaluate the accuracy of each rule automatically, it is not easy to select a set of rules that produces the best overall result due to the overlapping coverage of the rules. In this paper, we propose a novel method to select an effective set of rules. To our knowledge, this is the first work that selects rules automatically. Our experiment results show that the proposed method can select a subset of a given rule set to achieve significantly better results than the full rule set and the existing state-of-the-art CRF-based supervised method.


Fifty-one patients who had been admitted to Saint Paul Hospital and Hanoi Medical University Hospital for Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) reconstruction were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire at preoperative and three-month postoperative time. The questionnaire designed to evaluate the improvement of Patient-reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) include Physical Function (PF), Pain Interference (PI), Depression (D) and Anxiety (A) scores before surgery with those taken 3 months after primary ACL reconstruction. The improvement score of PF domain increase to 10,17 ± 8,7; PI, D, A domain decrease to 9,63 ± 7,21; 10,02 ± 6,63 and 12,51 ± 7,58 respectively. At 3-month postoperative, all of the patients had better scores and had a statistically significant difference (p<0,05). All patients with ACL reconstruction had substantial improvement in pain reduction and regain physical function at 3-month after surgery.


Can advertising be a force for good? Can it bring about positive social or environmental change? Should it tell the truth about a brand? With todays consumers being more informed, empowered and ethically minded than ever, advertising needs to do all those things and more. Organized around 10 Commitment chapters, "Goodvertising" showcases outstanding creative work from over 120 campaigns from around the world that communicate that the client is actively being and doing good. Each campaign is from a leading agency working in the full spectrum of media channels for an international array of clients including Unilever, Coca-Cola, Ben & Jerrys, Nike, Tropicana, Volkswagen, Fiat, Levis, Toyota, Honda, Sainsburys, Microsoft and IKEA, and charities including Greenpeace, Amnesty International, PETA and WWF. For any advertising or branding professional, this timely and much-needed book will provide inspiration and insights into how being good doesn't lead to dull advertising.


Artificial intelligence (AI) research has explored a variety of problems and approaches since its inception, but for the last 20 years or so has been focused on the problems surrounding the construction of intelligent agents — systems that perceive and act in some environment. In this context, "intelligence" is related to statistical and economic notions of rationality — colloquially, the ability to make good decisions, plans, or inferences. The adoption of probabilistic and decision-theoretic representations and statistical learning methods has led to a large degree of integration and cross-fertilization among AI, machine learning, statistics, control theory, neuroscience, and other fields. The establishment of shared theoretical frameworks, combined with the availability of data and processing power, has yielded remarkable successes in various component tasks such as speech recognition, image classification, autonomous vehicles, machine translation, legged locomotion, and question-answering systems. As capabilities in these areas and others cross the threshold from laboratory research to economically valuable technologies, a virtuous cycle takes hold whereby even small improvements in performance are worth large sums of money, prompting greater investments in research. There is now a broad consensus that AI research is progressing steadily, and that its impact on society is likely to increase. The potential benefits are huge, since everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable. Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls. The progress in AI research makes it timely to focus research not only on making AI more capable, but also on maximizing the societal benefit of AI. Such considerations motivated the AAAI 2008–09 Presidential Panel on Long-Term AI Futures and other projects on AI impacts, and constitute a significant expansion of the field of AI itself, which up to now has focused largely on techniques that are neutral with respect to purpose. We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial: our AI systems must do what we want them to do. The attached research priorities document [see page X] gives many examples of such research directions that can help maximize the societal benefit of AI. This research is by necessity interdisciplinary, because it involves both society and AI. It ranges from economics, law and philosophy to computer security, formal methods and, of course, various branches of AI itself. In summary, we believe that research on how to make AI systems robust and beneficial is both important and timely, and that there are concrete research directions that can be pursued today.


Abstract. All professions face challenges as how best to ensure the achievement and continuance of the highest standards as they seek to determine and promulgate best practices. In the essentially linked professions of hydrographic surveying and nautical cartography these challenges become immediately international in their impacts and require close cooperation between the professional bodies representing surveyors, hydrographers and cartographers. The Standards of Competence for Nautical Cartographers are known in short form as S-8 and they describe the minimum required competencies for nautical cartographers. They indicate the minimum degree of knowledge and experience considered necessary for nautical cartographers and provide a set of programme outlines against which the FIG/IHO/ICA International Board on Standards of Competence for Hydrographic Surveyors and Nautical Cartographers may evaluate programmes submitted for recognition. The Standards recognize two levels of competence: Cate- gory A and Category B. In nautical charting communities, Category A programmes offer levels of comprehensive and broad-based knowledge in all aspects of the theory and practice of nautical cartography. Category B programmes provide a level of practical comprehension, along with the essential theoretical background, necessary for individuals to carry out the various nautical cartography tasks. The Standards have recently undergone complete review and should be ratified during 2017/18. This paper aims to bring the existence and aims of the Standards to the wider notice of ICA members and to describe the philosophy and aims of the review in meeting the professional competency needs of the nautical cartographic community.


Acne is the chronic inflammatory disease of the pilosebaceous unit, characterized by the formation of comedones, erythematous papules and pustules shortly after starting topical or oral corticosteroid. We report a case of acneiform eruptions on a Eosinophilic gastroenteritis (EGE) patient who was treated with prednisolone 30 mg 1-0-0, 2 weeks, three months ago. She developed pustular rashes over the face and back on and off during past 3 months. Presently she got admitted in the gastroenterology department for reoccurence of the symptoms associated with EGE and treated with prednisolone 30 mg 1-0-0. Dermatology opinion was sought for the aggravated pustular rashes over the face and back confirmed to be prednisolone induced acneiform eruptions. Following which, prednisolone was withdrawn within 48 h of admission and treated symptomatically with Clindamycin 1% gel.


Convolutional neural networks can successfully perform many computer vision tasks on images. For visualization, how do CNNs perform when applied to graphical perception tasks? We investigate this question by reproducing Cleveland and McGill's seminal 1984 experiments, which measured human perception efficiency of different visual encodings and defined elementary perceptual tasks for visualization. We measure the graphical perceptual capabilities of four network architectures on five different visualization tasks and compare to existing and new human performance baselines. While under limited circumstances CNNs are able to meet or outperform human task performance, we find that CNNs are not currently a good model for human graphical perception. We present the results of these experiments to foster the understanding of how CNNs succeed and fail when applied to data visualizations.


The colors present in the effluent from dyeing and textile plants are one of the most dangerous sources of environmental pollution due to their toxicity and carcinogenesis. Dye removal is, therefore, necessary to prevent their discharge into the environment. A number of methods are available for dye removal from industrial effluents, among which Fenton/Ultrasonic oxidation process is an effective one due to its high efficiency in color removal. The objective of this pilot-scale experimental study was to investigate the operational parameters involved in the removal of Reactive Red 2 dye (RR2) using the Fenton/Ultrasonic process and its efficiency. Theeffects of pH, H2O2, and Fe2+ were evaluated using an ultrasonic reactor at 40 KHz with a power of 100W. Once the parameters had been optimized, the effects of temperature, mixing speed, and different dye concentrations on the Fenton/Ultrasonic process efficiency were measured. The optimal parameters of pH, hydrogen peroxide, and ferrous ion concentration in the were determined to be 3, 2, and 0.2 mmole, respectively, in 45 minutes so that a removal efficiency of 98.91% was obtained for an optimum hydrogen peroxide to ferrous ion ratio of 10. The results indicated that the Fenton process has a good performance in the removal of Reactive Red 2.


Through Life Capability Management (TLCM) is the dominant theme of proposed
changes to UK defence acquisition, but progress has been hindered by a lack of
agreed interpretations for key concepts. This paper provides some clarity for
Capability, Network Enabled Capability (NEC), TLCM, and Affordability and notes,
in particular, the fractal nature of capability.
Through stakeholder analysis and concept maps, we identify some of the major
challenges associated with TLCM. These include affordability (which is the
motivation for TLCM but may also be its stumbling block); the increased priority of
agility, adaptability, and flexibility in capability planning; and the need for
appropriate TLCM metrics. The lack of an explicit learning mechanism within the
capability planning process is also a major deficiency, because TLCM relies on
effective knowledge management.
The changing role of industry is considered and the need for an holistic view of
capability is emphasised.


Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is associated with an increased risk of
myocardial infarction (MI), and additionally, cardiovascular disease is responsible for up to 1/3
of deaths in people with COPD. This may be attributable to the fact people with COPD are
managed differently and have higher mortality after MI compared to people without COPD.
One reason for the differences in management may be that prognostic risk scores after MI do
not perform well in those with COPD. Another reason may be that acute exacerbations of
COPD (AECOPD) are thought to be associated with a transiently increased risk of MI.
The aims of this thesis are to: 1)systematically review the evidence for an increased risk of MI
associated with COPD and AECOPD, and increased risk of death following MI for those with
COPD; 2) investigate the potential contribution of differences in management after MI on
differences in mortality; 3) investigate the performance of prognostic risk scores after MI for
those with COPD; 4) validate the recording of AECOPD in UK electronic healthcare records
(EHR); 5) investigate the recording of hospitalisations for AECOPD in UK primary and
secondary care EHR; and 6) to conduct a self-controlled case series to investigate the risk of MI
associated with AECOPD.
This work showed an increased risk of MI associated with COPD independent of smoking, and
evidence for an increased risk of death following hospital discharge for people with compared
to those without COPD.
This work demonstrated that differences in recognition and management of MI for those with
COPD may explain some of the higher risk of death for COPD patients following MI.
Additionally, the GRACE score (commonly used for risk stratification following MI) does not
perform as well for COPD patients and may explain some of the differences in management.
A validated algorithm was developed for identifying AECOPD both in primary care and
resulting in hospital admission in electronic health records.
Finally, using a self-controlled case series analysis, data showed that AECOPD is associated
with increased risk of MI for approximately four weeks following AECOPD onset, and that the
risk is modified by important patient characteristics.


Changes in estrogen receptor (ER) expression over the course of therapy may affect response to endocrine therapy. However, measuring temporal changes in ER expression requires serial biopsies, which are impractical and poorly tolerated by most patients. Functional ER imaging using (18)F-fluoroestradiol (FES)-PET provides a noninvasive measure of regional ER expression and is ideally suited to serial studies. Additionally, lack of measurable FES uptake in metastatic sites of disease predict tumor progression in patients with ER-positive primary tumors treated with endocrine therapy. This report presents a case of restored sensitivity to endocrine therapy in a patient with bone-dominant breast cancer who underwent serial observational FES-PET imaging over the course of several treatments at our center, demonstrating the temporal heterogeneity of regional ER expression. Although loss and restoration of endocrine sensitivity in patients who have undergone prior hormonal and cytotoxic treatments has been reported, this is, to our knowledge, the first time the accompanying changes in ER expression have been documented by molecular imaging.


This study examined secondary science teachers' conceptions of the nature of science after full immersion authentic scientific research experiences that included explicit nature of science instruction as compared to teachers' in full immersion research experiences that did not have explicit nature of science instruction. For 8 weeks in the summer, 19 teachers in Trial A (non-explicit) and 21 teachers in Trial B (explicit) were paired with research scientists and lived on campus in order to participate fully in scientific research.  In Trial B, teachers met weekly for a 2-hour group session with activities to explicitly address the nature of science. Data included pre/post internship Views of the Nature of Science (VNOS-C) questionnaires, interviews, and videotapes of group sessions.  In contrast to the minimal advances made by teachers in understanding the nature of science in the non-explicit group (Trial A), the Trial B teachers made substantial gains in understanding the nature of science.  However, the Trial B teachers' perceptions of the nature of science were still ambiguous in specific aspects of the nature of science. The explicit nature of science instruction in Trail B was (1) effective in initiating positive shifts in teachers' understanding of nature of science, but (2) limited in reflection opportunities for teachers to challenge their nature of science understanding in the context of authentic science research experiences.


This thesis examines the impact of several types of business regulations on bank performance, as measured by cost efficiency, in the EU economies over the 2000-2010 periods. First we investigate the impact of credit, labour and business regulation on the performance of the banking systems of the EU-10. The regulation indices are sourced from the Fraser Index of Economic Freedom (Gwartney et. al, 2012). In further analysis, we decompose the credit regulation variable in its components (private ownership of banks, foreign bank competition, private sector credit, limitations from interest rate controls and regulations) in order to find which type of credit regulation is more important for performance.

Second, we examine the impact of several type of business regulations derived from the "Doing Business" project of the World Bank on bank performance as measured by cost efficiency in the EU-10 economies. More specifically we use regulation indices related to: i) starting a business, ii) getting credit, iii) paying taxes, iv) enforcing contracts, v) resolving insolvency, vi) protecting investors, and vii) employing workers. We put special emphasis on regulations related to "getting credit", "paying taxes" and "starting a business" as the first type is directly relevant to the banking sector while the next two on the top of the EU agenda. In further analysis we investigate if the impact of business regulation on bank performance is influenced by institutional quality as measured by rule of law and corruption variables.

Third, we assess the impact of different types of labour regulation on bank performance, as measured by cost efficiency, in the five countries of the eurozone periphery (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain) over the 2000-2010 periods. We source the labour regulation variables from the Fraser Index of Economic Freedom (Gwartney et. al, 2012) and from the Employment Protection Index produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In further analysis we investigate if the impact of labour regulation on bank performance is influenced by the country-level law enforcement capacity.

Finally, some conclusions are provided along with limitations of this research and an agenda for future work.


Children's Theology, theologising with children, or Child Theology has become an established concept in the discipline of religious education in Germany. The discipline departs from the point of view that children have a right to their religion, which makes the process of religious education the focal point. It is, however, important to understand the theology generated by children and also to create interaction with their religious views. This requires dialogue in which relevant questions are to be considered and discussed. The challenges for religious educators are subsequently treated.


Background: Exacerbated postprandial lipid responses are associated with an increased cardiovascular risk. Meals with different types of fat may affect postprandial responses differently. The aim of this study was to evaluate the postprandial lipemia in young healthy subjects after six oral fat tolerance test (OFTT) with varying amounts of saturated fat.
Methods: With six different types of butter added in random order to potatoes we measured postprandial lipemia, lipoprotein, glucose, and insulin increments for eight hours in 14 young, lean, healthy students, seven of each gender. The area under the curve (AUC) was determined for the postprandial values.
Results: The meals with six types of butters had similar postprandial response even if the saturated fat content varied with 50%. Gender significantly affected the TG responses, as time to peak was 90 minutes in women and 180 minutes in men. Postprandial AUC was higher with respect to TG (p<0.001), LDL-Cholesterol (p<0.002), total cholesterol (p<0.027), and glucose (p<0.009) in men compared to women. HDL-Cholesterol was lowest in men (AUC, p<0.001). No association with gender was found with free fatty acids and insulin AUCs.
Conclusion: The six OFTT gave similar metabolic responses and postprandial lipemia was gender-specific. Replacement of saturated fat by mono- or polyunsaturated fat did not alter postprandial lipemiaduring a single OFTT.


In this paper, we test two models of the Eurozone, with a special emphasis on the role of money and monetary policy during crises. The role of separability between money and consumption is investigated further and we analyse the Euro area economy during three different crises: 1992, 2001 and 2007. We find that money has a rather significant role to play in explaining output variations during crises whereas, at the same time, the role of monetary policy on output decreases significantly. Moreover, we find that a model with non-separability between consumption and money has better forecasting performance than a baseline separable model over crisis periods.


Background:Clinical studies support biologically independent roles of cell-free HIV particles and HIV-infected cells in disease progression. The associations between the level of infected cells and immune markers have been poorly studied, particularly in perinatally infected children. Objective:We tested the hypothesis that independent roles of cell-free virus and infected cells in HIV pathogenesis should be revealed by different associations between each of them and specific immune markers. Methods:Levels of HIV RNA and DNA, HIV-specific CD8 T lymphocytes, activated and naive/memory T lymphocytes were determined in 44 untreated HIV-1-infected children. Pearson partial correlation coefficients were used to assess associations between the variables. Results:Here we provide new information, by showing a direct correlation between the percentages of CD4+HLA-DR+ lymphocytes and HIV DNA levels. Furthermore, higher HIV-specific CD8 T-lymphocyte frequencies were associated with lower HIV DNA levels. In contrast, CD8+38+ lymphocytes and memory CD4 lymphocytes were correlated only to the HIV RNA level. All correlations were independent of age and CD4 depletion. Conclusions:Several immune markers were correlated to either the HIV RNA or the HIV DNA level, but never to both of them, supporting the concept that cell-free virus and infected cells play different roles in HIV-1 immunopathogenesis.


The performance of sparse matrix vector multiplication (SpMV) is important to computational scientists. Compressed sparse row (CSR) is the most frequently used format to store sparse matrices. However, CSR-based SpMV on graphics processing units (GPUs) has poor performance due to irregular memory access patterns, load imbalance, and reduced parallelism. This has led researchers to propose new storage formats. Unfortunately, dynamically transforming CSR into these formats has significant runtime and storage overheads. We propose a novel algorithm, CSR-Adaptive, which keeps the CSR format intact and maps well to GPUs. Our implementation addresses the aforementioned challenges by (i) efficiently accessing DRAM by streaming data into the local scratchpad memory and (ii) dynamically assigning different numbers of rows to each parallel GPU compute unit. CSR-Adaptive achieves an average speedup of 14.7× over existing CSR-based algorithms and 2.3× over clSpMV cocktail, which uses an assortment of matrix formats.


Sizing of clothing is key to how it is consumed, discussed and experienced within any society, as well as having a direct bearing on the wearer's body image. However, whilst it is common practice to define women's bodies by abstract size categories such as 10-12-14, there is little accessible discussion of how these systems are devised that allow a clear understanding of the dynamics they create for the consumer. This paper will integrate quantitative research into current sizing practices of UK women's wear retailers with qualitative feedback of women's experiences of sizing. Using content analysis methods sizing data has been collected from individual retailer websites and structured into a graphical format. This enables the simple comparison of retailers individual sizing systems and provides a clearer understanding of the dynamics they provide for the consumer. Experiences of sizing systems by UK consumers were collected through structured and semi structured questionnaires alongside the collection of their body measurements. This has enabled individual experiences to be recorded and contextualised in relation current sizing practices. The dynamics of sizing and its complexities are discussed with reference to consumer experiences and sizing systems, raising issues around fit, proportion and the concept of size spread (The level of fit tolerance expected from each individual garment within a sizing range). This is contrasted to the idea of ideal fit. There were few indications of variation in expected proportions of key dimensions within sizing systems between retailers. This was perceived to have an impact on body image and be the cause of reported dissatisfaction. The research suggests a more holistic approach to understanding not only the creation of sizing systems, but also how they are interpreted and navigated by the consumers is needed


The use of real-time multimedia or mission-critical applications over IP networks puts strong pressure on service providers to operate disruption-free networks. However, after any topological change, link-state Interior Gateway Protocols (IGPs), such as IS-IS or OSPF, enter a convergence phase during which transient forwarding loops may occur. Such loops increase the network latency and cause packet losses. In this paper, we propose and evaluate an efficient algorithm aimed at avoiding such traffic disruptions without modifying these IGPs. In case of an intentional modification of the weight of a link (e.g., to shut it down for maintenance operations or to perform traffic engineering), our algorithm iteratively changes this weight, splitting the modification into a sequence of loop-free transitions. The number of weight increments that need to be applied on the link to reach its target state is minimized in order to remain usable in existing networks. Analysis performed on inferred and real Internet service provider (ISP) topologies shows that few weight increments are required to handle most link shutdown events (less than two intermediate metrics for more than 85% of the links). The evaluation of our implementation also reveals that these minimal sequences can be computed in a reasonable time.


The Electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is well regulated by frequency assignment authorities, national regulatory agencies and the International Communication Union (ITU). Nowadays more and more devices such as mobile phones and Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors make use of wireless communication. Additionally we need a more efficient use and a better understanding of the EM space to allocate and manage efficiently all communications. Governments and telecommunication operators perform spectrum measurements using expensive and bulky equipments scheduling very specific and limited spectrum campaigns. However, this approach does not scale as it can not allow to widely scan and analyze the spectrum 24/7 in real time due to the high cost of the large deployment. A pervasive deployment of spectrum sensors is required to solve this problem, allowing to monitor and analyze the EM radio waves in real time, across all possible frequencies, and physical locations.

This thesis presents ElectroSense, a crowdsourcing and collaborative system that enables large scale deployments using Internet-of-Things (IoT) spectrum sensors to collect EM spectrum data which is analyzed in a big data infrastructure. The ElectroSense platform seeks a more efficient, safe and reliable real-time monitoring of the EM space by improving the accessibility and the democratization of spectrum data for the scientific community, stakeholders and the general public. In this work, we first present the ElectroSense architecture, and the design challenges that must be faced to attract a large community of users and all potential stakeholders. It is envisioned that a large number of sensors deployed in ElectroSense will be at affordable cost, supported by more powerful spectrum sensors when possible. Although low-cost Radio Frequency (RF) sensors have an acceptable performance for measuring the EM spectrum, they present several drawbacks (e.g. frequency range, Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), maximum sampling rate, etc.) that can negatively affect the quality of collected spectrum data as well as the applications of interest for the community.

In order to counteract the above-mentioned limitations, we propose to exploit the fact that a dense network of spectrum sensors will be in range of the same transmitter(s). We envision to exploit this idea to enable smart collaborative algorithms among IoT RF sensors. In this thesis we identify the main research challenges to enable smart collaborative algorithms among low-cost RF sensors. We explore different crowdsourcing and collaborative scenarios where low-cost spectrum sensors work together in a distributed manner. First, we propose a fast and precise frequency offset estimation method for low-cost spectrum receivers that makes use of Long Term Evolution (LTE) signals broadcasted by the base stations. Second, we propose a novel, fast and precise Time-of-Arrival (ToA) estimation method for aircraft signals using low-cost IoT spectrum sensors that can achieve sub-nanosecond precision. Third, we propose a collaborative time division approach among sensors for sensing the spectrum in order to reduce the network uplink bandwidth for each spectrum sensor. By last, we present a methodology to enable the signal reconstruction in the backend. By multiplexing in frequency a certain number of non-coherent low-cost spectrum sensors, we are able to cover a signal bandwidth that would not otherwise be possible using a single receiver.

At the time of writing we are the first looking at the problem of collaborative signal reconstruction and decoding using In-phase & Quadrature (I/Q) data received from low-cost RF sensors. Our results reported in this thesis and obtained from the experiments made in real scenarios, suggest that it is feasible to enable collaborative spectrum monitoring strategies and signal decoding using commodity hardware as RF sensing sensors.


Chronic inflammation can lead to tumour initiation and progression. Vitamin B complex has the ability to regulate the immune response and, therefore, inflammation but many of the mechanistic and molecular processes involved in this regulation are still not fully understood. This study sought to determine some of these processes by studying the effects of vitamin B2 (riboflavin) B6 (pyridoxine) and B9 (folic acid) on un-differentiated pro-monocytic lymphoma cells in regard to their ability to alter the proliferation, migration, apoptosis, cytokines and expression levels of programmed death ligand 1. We show that vitamin B2, B6 and B9, on pro-monocytic lymphoma cells exerted an anti-tumorigenic effect. This data could form the basis for future studies in using vitamin B supplementation to reduce cancer cell growth in vivo.


Abstract Nests, eggs, and chicks of nesting wading birds were unharmed by two fires in the Everglades. However, at least 50 adult White Ibises (Eudocimus albus) foraging away from the breeding colonies were killed during one fire. These results are counter-intuitive given that well-flighted adult birds seem more capable of escaping a fire than immobile nests or eggs. Nests probably were unharmed because of their location in wet willow (Salix carolina) and buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) islands. The adult birds foraging in a small cattail (Typha angustifolia) stand may have been trapped by flames in surrounding tall sawgrass (Cladium jamaicense) or debilitated by smoke inhalation. These observations provide insight into the direct effects of fire on wading bird breeding colonies and individual survival.


The aim of this paper is to review the best known methodologies for web applications development as well as the existing supporting tools and techniques from an accessibility-centric perspective. To this end, a number of development methodologies with their respective characteristics are described: model-based methodologies, user-centred processes, usability engineering methodologies and accessibility engineering methodologies. Some of these methodologies are provided with specific supporting tools which facilitate the accomplishment of specified tasks. However, there are methodologies which are not supported by specific tools. Therefore, web developers must deal with diverse tools in order to perform the corresponding activities. In this context, the development of accessible web applications is even more difficult. This paper concludes that there is not currently a holistic development framework to be used throughout the whole development process. Our contribution relies on a set of tools that support the different phases of the process. Since these tools are developed upon a common methodological basis, a high rate of interoperability is obtained. This cohesion allows their integration in a comprehensive framework so that the development of accessible web applications is facilitated.


Microneurographic measurements of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (SNA) have suggested that, during static exercise, central command is much less important than skeletal muscle afferents in causing sympathetic neural activation. The possibility remains, however, that the sympathetic discharge produced by central command is targeted mainly to tissues other than skeletal muscle. To examine this possibility, we recorded SNA with microelectrodes placed selectively in skin, as well as in muscle, nerve fascicles of the peroneal nerve during static handgrip maneuvers designed to separate the effects of central command from those of muscle afferents. To study the relative effects of cutaneous sympathetic activation on sudomotor versus vasomotor function, we simultaneously estimated changes in skin blood flow (laser Doppler velocimetry) and in sudomotor (electrodermal) activation in the region of skin innervated by the impaled nerve fascicle. Two minutes of static handgrip at 10%, 20%, and 30% of maximal voluntary contraction caused large and intensity-dependent increases in skin SNA. These increases in SNA immediately preceded the onset of muscle tension, accelerated progressively during sustained handgrip, and resolved promptly with the cessation of motor effort. The handgrip-induced increases in skin SNA were not maintained when handgrip was followed by arrest of the forearm circulation, a maneuver that maintains the stimulation of chemically sensitive muscle afferents while eliminating the influences of central command and mechanically sensitive muscle afferents. During normothermia, static handgrip at 30% maximal voluntary contraction caused sustained increases in skin SNA (+400 +/- 83%, mean +/- SEM, p less than 0.05) and in electrodermal activity (+276 +/- 56%, p less than 0.05) but only transient increases in estimated skin vascular resistance (+11 +/- 2%, p less than 0.05). When skin temperature was increased or decreased to a new stable baseline level, subsequent increases in skin SNA during handgrip were accompanied by sustained but directionally opposite changes in estimated skin vascular resistance, with exercise-induced vasodilation during hyperthermia but exercise-induced vasoconstriction during hypothermia. From these observations, we conclude the following: 1) static exercise markedly increases sympathetic outflow to skin as well as to skeletal muscle; 2) the increases in skin SNA, unlike muscle SNA, appear to be caused mainly by central command rather than by muscle afferent reflexes; and 3) this cutaneous sympathetic activation appears to be targeted both to sweat glands and to vascular smooth muscle, with the relative targeting being temperature dependent.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


"Disruption" and "decolonisation" are terms often associated with Indigenous researchers' intent to validate traditional cultural knowledge and practice in academia. The challenges and complexities in Indigenous researchers' positionalities within their doctoral research projects are not always openly discussed (Webber, 2009). In this article, I share my personal reflections and observations of the challenges in my doctoral research with Tongan käinga (extended families) in Aotearoa New Zealand and Tonga. I highlight "Tatala 'a e Koloa 'o e To'utangata Tonga i Aotearoa mo Tonga", a research framework drawn from an Indigenous paradigm that governs the knowledge and actions of three to'utangata Tonga (generations of Tongan males) as well as my own activities as the researcher within the community. Interrogating and highlighting the challenges linked to my attempts to validate and legitimate Tongan cultural knowledge in the university setting is delineated by my positionality within the Tongan community in Aotearoa and Tonga, with other Indigenous researchers, and the ways in which I negotiate the boundaries between the traditional cultural world and academia.


This document provides a general overview of human toxicity, provides a listing of laboratory animal and wildlife toxicities and a cross-reference of chemical, common and trade names of many carbamate pesticides registered for use in Florida. This document is PI-51, one of a series of the Pesticide Information Office, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Original publication date July 2005.


Economic and social pressures are transforming farm businesses and the structure of the agricultural industry, consequently it is presumed that farm management skills are under intense pressure. This creates a need for effective interaction between knowledge management and the actions taken by farm decision makers. However a definition of "successful farm business performance" is not easy to find and this, combined with literature that deals with managerial tasks in isolation, does not provide a clear picture for the farm manager pursuing self development. Farm businesses vary considerably in their attributes and resource base and the plethora of measurable factors mean that the manager needs to be able to identify what to measure and why on his own farm. In the UK it appears that most of the measures used in farming do not take into account the customer or human factors alluded to in other industries. Development of the skills and abilities of the decision makers to utilise techniques, interpret measures and relate them to their own business needs is increasingly important. The preliminary investigations described in this paper indicate that farmers and farm managers are aware of business management techniques but do not appear to integrate them fully into their own businesses.


In this brief note, a concept of the 'scientific worldview' is examined. In
 particular, contrary to some of the most often misconceptions regarding the
 concept, it will be argued (1) that there cannot be a 'scientific worldview'
 in the traditional sense of a Weltanschauung if science is taken in its
 strictest sense, (2) that the remaining ontological and epistemic skeleton
 cannot be a single unified picture of the world (Weltbild), and (3) that the
 supposed 'truth' of these remaining pictures cannot be unambiguously
 grounded either in the methodology of science, although the methodology
 itself can be explanatory and predictively adequate and successful, or in
 the technological success that is associated with science.


In conducting preliminary research for my undergraduate honors thesis, I discovered a two-volume publication in Mullins Library at the University of Arkansas, The Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (/8/8) by Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq. (c. 1761-1810). It held a variety of information on the music and poetry of ancient Ireland. What interested me most was the collection of melodies at the end of the first volume. Looking at overviews of Irish music collection, I saw little mention of Walker and his Irish Bards. Upon further investigation, /found that the first edition of his book ( 1786) contained only fifteen melodies. It was then that I based my thesis around Walker, his book, and the world in which he lived. This article features a segment of that thesis,focusing on Walker's preface (which he calls an Advertisement) to the original fifteen melodies. This Advertisement is a primary document that marks Walker as a pioneer Irish ethnomusicologist. My study also investigates possible explanations for why Walker was overlooked or underestimated for his ground breaking work in the studyof/rish music.


Understanding the intent of medical questions asked by patients, or Consumer Health Questions, is an essential skill for medical Conversational AI systems. We propose a novel data-augmented and simple joint learning approach combining question summarization and Recognizing Question Entailment (RQE) in the medical domain. Our data augmentation approach enables to use just one dataset for joint learning. We show improvements on both tasks across four biomedical datasets in accuracy (+8%), ROUGE-1 (+2.5%) and human evaluation scores. Human evaluation shows joint learning generates faithful and informative summaries. Finally, we release our code, the two question summarization datasets extracted from a large-scale medical dialogue dataset, as well as our augmented datasets.


Investigating the Universe
Quine, New Foundations, and the Philosophy of Set Theory

Sean P. Morris, Ph.D.
Department of Philosophy
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Illinois (2012)

Dissertation Chairperson: W. D. Hart

Since the late1960's, there has been widespread agreement among both philosophers and mathematicians that the only conception of a set is that of the iterative conception as embodied by Zermelo-Fraenkel (ZF) set theory and its related systems. In contrast, W.V. Quine's set theory with a universal set, New Foundations (NF), has been widely neglected if not outright dismissed as a going option for a theory of sets. I argue that there are no grounds for such dismissals and that many of the reasons offered in favor of ZF can also be offered for NF, and that these reasons are largely pragmatic in justification. From this I draw two main conclusions. The first, a historical point about Quine, is that much of his naturalistic and broadly pragmatic outlook, as exemplified in his major philosophical work Word and Object, emerged from his early engagement with Russell's foundational work in mathematics. As such, we can see Quine's philosophical work as intimately intertwined with his early technical endeavors. The second, a more general philosophical claim, is that mathematics in its foundations develops in ways much more akin to the natural sciences and as such is not the paradigm of a priori knowledge philosophers have often thought it to be.


Streamflow records from 30 gaging stations in Illinois were analyzed to assess the influence of wetlands on streamflow. The objective of this research was to determine if streamflow parameters of streams draining watersheds with varying percentage of wetland areas were related to percentage of wetlands in the watersheds. The parameters analyzed included peakflow to average precipitation ratio, peakflow to peak precipitation ratio, peakflow to total precipitation ratio, and floodflow volume to total precipitation ratio. The results show that the ratios, in general, decrease with increasing percentage of wetlands in the watershed. The relation is most pronounced for peakflow to average precipitation ratio and least conclusive for floodflow volume to total precipitation ratio. On a regional basis, the ratios decrease appreciably with increasing percentage of wetlands for central and northern Illinois, and increase slightly for southern Illinois. Seasonal analysis of the data indicates that for the peakflow ratios, the most definitive relationship is for fall while for floodflow volume ratio, the most noticeable relationship is for summer. Analysis of low-flow parameters indicates that low flows generally increase with increasing percentage of wetlands.


Recent pension reforms in industrialized countries are, in part, motivated by the increased life expectancy. As individuals are expected to take more responsibility in their retirement planning and savings decisions, it is important to understand whether they are aware of improvements in life expectancy. The second chapter of this thesis investigates the extent to which individuals' beliefs about their own life expectancy coincide with the realizations. In household surveys, individual life expectancy is usually measured with questions about the probability of survival to a target age. To compare individuals' survival probabilities with their actual mortality risk, I use data from the DNB Household Survey (DHS) supplemented with (administrative) data on actual mortality from the causes of death registry. The main finding of the second chapter is that the Dutch underestimate their life expectancy, on average. This finding is important from a policy perspective since the underestimation of life expectancy may lead to insufficient retirement savings and early retirement. In the third chapter I investigate if the underestimation of life expectancy by the Dutch can perhaps be partly explained by their insufficient knowledge on population life expectancy. I find that the Dutch's underestimation of population life expectancy significantly explains the underestimation of their remaining lifetime. This finding suggests that if individuals were better informed about population life expectancies, the accuracy of their survival beliefs could improve considerably. As a result, a policy of providing respondents information about population life expectancies may help them making more optimal economic decisions such as saving and retirement decisions. The fourth chapter investigates whether individuals use their subjective probabilities of survival when they make economic decisions. In particular, I focus on the role of subjective survival probabilities in explaining the consumption decisions of the elderly. The theory predicts that the mortality risk increases with age; therefore, individuals increase current consumption at the expense of future consumption. In line with the predictions of the theory I find that there is some evidence in favor of wealth decumulation by elderly Americans after retirement and consumption growth decreases with higher subjective mortality rates for elderly singles. On the other hand, the finding that subjective survival probabilities do not explain couples' consumption decisions deserves further analysis. The last chapter of this thesis studies the drop in consumption at retirement, i.e. the so-called retirement-consumption puzzle. In contrast with earlier studies in the literature, I investigate consumption behavior of retirees also after they re-enter the labor force. This chapter concludes that moving back to labor force after retirement is very common among older Americans and most of the unretirement transitions are anticipated before retirement. Moreover, in line with the predictions of the theory consumption does not respond to unretirement if it is fully anticipated. One of the reasons for this finding could be that post-retirement jobs pay much less than pre-retirement jobs and therefore individuals' income does not increase significantly when they unretire. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals have saved enough to smooth their consumption around retirement, on average.


Publication Date January 2005 Abstract The importance of primary source materials to scholarship is undeniable. Primary source materials can verify or contradict information accepted as true in history books and other secondary sources. They can tell the whole, or at least more complete, story of events. Unlike secondary sources, primary source materials offer first-hand accounts from the past, bringing history closer and making it feel more real. It can even be argued that primary source materials are less susceptible than published texts to the loss or misinterpretation of information over time in subsequent edition revisions. In particular among primary source materials, manuscripts such as diaries and letters offer glimpses into history where historic figures are untainted and unskewed by the biographers and scholars who interpret them. Unpublished manuscripts have not usually been censored or edited to reflect modern thoughts, beliefs, or politically correct views the way secondary sources often are. Recommended Citation Morris, Sammie L., "What Archives Reveal: The Hidden Poems of Amelia Earhart," Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists 23 no. 1 (2005) . Available at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance/vol23/iss1/3  Download


Allergic airway inflammation contributes to the airway remodelling that has been linked to increased obstruction and morbidity in asthma. However, the mechanisms by which allergens contribute to airway remodelling in humans are not fully established. CCL18, chitotriosidase (CHIT1) and YKL‐40 are readily detectable in the lungs and contribute to remodelling in other fibrotic diseases, but their involvement in allergic asthma is unclear.


Caveolin 1 (Cav-1) is a plasma membrane-associated protein with the capacity to modulate signaling activities in a context-dependent fashion. Interactions between Cav-1 and low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 6 (LRP6) were reported to be important for the regulation of Wnt-β-catenin (β-cat) signaling. Cav-1 also interacts with insulin and IGF-I receptors (IGF-IR/IR) and can stimulate IR kinase activities. We found positive correlation between Cav-1 and LRP6 expression in both human primary prostate cancer and metastasis tissues and in PC-3 cells. Cav-1 stimulation of Wnt-β-cat signaling and c-Myc levels was positively associated with LRP6 expression in LNCaP, PC-3, and DU145 prostate cancer cells. Importantly, LRP6 and, to a lesser extent, Cav-1 were found to stimulate aerobic glycolysis. These activities were positively associated with the expression of HK2 and Glut3 and shown to be dependent on Akt signaling by both gene knockdown and chemical inhibition methods. We further showed that Cav-1 and LRP6 exert their effects on Akt and glycolytic activities by stimulating IGF-IR/IR signaling. Overall, our results show that Cav-1 interacts with LRP6 to generate an integrated signaling module that leads to the activation of IGF-IR/IR and results in stimulation of Akt-mTORC1 signaling and aerobic glycolysis in prostate cancer.


Ethics is a field in which the gap between words and actions looms large. Game theory and the empirical methods it inspires look at behavior instead of the lip service people sometimes pay to norms. We believe that this special issue comprises several illustrations of the fruitful application of this approach to ethics.


Wireless communication enables a broad spectrum of applications, ranging from commodity to tactical systems. Neighbor discovery (ND), that is, determining which devices are within direct radio communication, is a building block of network protocols and applications, and its vulnerability can severely compromise their functionalities. A number of proposals to secure ND have been published, but none have analyzed the problem formally. In this paper, we contribute such an analysis: We build a formal model capturing salient characteristics of wireless systems, most notably obstacles and interference, and we provide a specification of a basic variant of the ND problem. Then, we derive an impossibility result for a general class of protocols we term "time-based protocols," to which many of the schemes in the literature belong. We also identify the conditions under which the impossibility result is lifted. Moreover, we explore a second class of protocols we term "time- and location-based protocols," and prove they can secure ND.


Abstract. Data-model integration plays a critical role in assessing and improving our capacity to predict ecosystem dynamics. Similarly, the ability to attach quantitative statements of uncertainty around model forecasts is crucial for model assessment and interpretation and for setting field research priorities. Bayesian methods provide a rigorous data assimilation framework for these applications, especially for problems with multiple data constraints. However, the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques underlying most Bayesian calibration can be prohibitive for computationally demanding models and large datasets. We employ an alternative method, Bayesian model emulation of sufficient statistics, that can approximate the full joint posterior density, is more amenable to parallelization, and provides an estimate of parameter sensitivity. Analysis involved informative priors constructed from a meta-analysis of the primary literature and specification of both model and data uncertainties, and it introduced novel approaches to autocorrelation corrections on multiple data streams and emulating the sufficient statistics surface. We report the integration of this method within an ecological workflow management software, Predictive Ecosystem Analyzer (PEcAn), and its application and validation with two process-based terrestrial ecosystem models: SIPNET and ED2. In a test against a synthetic dataset, the emulator was able to retrieve the true parameter values. A comparison of the emulator approach to standard brute-force MCMC involving multiple data constraints showed that the emulator method was able to constrain the faster and simpler SIPNET model's parameters with comparable performance to the brute-force approach but reduced computation time by more than 2 orders of magnitude. The emulator was then applied to calibration of the ED2 model, whose complexity precludes standard (brute-force) Bayesian data assimilation techniques. Both models are constrained after assimilation of the observational data with the emulator method, reducing the uncertainty around their predictions. Performance metrics showed increased agreement between model predictions and data. Our study furthers efforts toward reducing model uncertainties, showing that the emulator method makes it possible to efficiently calibrate complex models.


Intermediate Chinese is the ideal reference and practice book for students with some knowledge of the language. Each of the 25 units deals with a particular grammatical point and provides associated exercises. Features include: * clear, accessible format * many useful language examples * jargon-free grammar explanations * sample drills and exercises with full answer key. All Chinese entries are presented in both pinyin romanisation and Chinese characters, and are accompanied, in most cases, by English translations to facilitate self-tuition in both the spoken and the written language. This new edition also includes a glossary of vocabulary and aglossary of grammatical terms. Intermediate Chinese reviews the principal elements presented in its sister volume, Basic Chinese, and introduces more complicated structures. The two books form a compendium of the essentials of Chinese grammar.


The self-similarity of Indonesian Borobudur Temple is observed through the dimensionality of stupa that is hypothetically closely related to whole architectural body. Fractal dimension is calculated by using the cube counting method and found that the dimension is 2.325, which is laid between the two-dimensional plane and three dimensional space. The applied fractal geometry and self-similarity of the building is emerged as the building process implement the metric rules, since there is no universal metric standard known in ancient traditional Javanese culture thus the architecture is not based on final master plan. The paper also proposes how the hypothetical algorithmic architecture might be applied computationally in order to see some experimental generations of similar building. The paper ends with some conjectures for further challenge and insights related to fractal geometry in Javanese traditional cultural heritages.


Abstract This paper studies the problems of estimation and inference in the linear trend model yt = α + βt + ut, where ut follows an autoregressive process with largest root ρ and β is the parameter of interest. We contrast asymptotic results for the cases | ρ | < 1 and ρ = 1 and argue that the most useful asymptotic approximations obtain from modeling ρ as local to unity. Asymptotic distributions are derived for the OLS, first-difference, infeasible GLS, and three feasible GLS estimators. These distributions depend on the local-to-unity parameter and a parameter that governs the variance of the initial error term κ. The feasible Cochrane–Orcutt estimator has poor properties, and the feasible Prais–Winsten estimator is the preferred estimator unless the researcher has sharp a priori knowledge about ρ and κ. The paper develops methods for constructing confidence intervals for β that account for uncertainty in ρ and κ. We use these results to estimate growth rates for real per-capita GDP in 128 countries.


Far from the catchy television spots and sleek magazine spreads are the comparatively modest ads that pop up on websites and in Internet searches. But don't be fooled—online advertising is exploding. Growing at a compound annual rate near 20%, it is now the second-largest advertising channel in the United States.
 Part history, part guidebook, part prediction for the future, Targeted tells the story of the companies, individuals, and innovations driving this revolution. It takes readers behind the scenes—examining the growth of digital advertising, its enormous potential, and the technologies that are changing the game forever. Leading the way is real-time bidding, which offers advertisers unprecedented precision in targeting ads and measuring their effectiveness.
 From keyword micro-markets and ad serving systems to aggregated virtual audiences and new business models, Targeted is sweeping in scope and stripped of technical complexity. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in finding and connecting with customers in the vast and shifting Internet universe.


Semiconductor laser is an important optical source used in various applications. A model of laser is required to simulate its performance before fabrication. In the past few decades, many laser models are developed using different types of modeling techniques. Analyses of these lasers are normally carried out by numerically solving the rate equations. Circuit simulation is one of the tools for the design and analysis of the relatively complex circuits such as semiconductor laser, which can include the parasitic and driver Circuitry. In this thesis four different types of laser structures, namely double heterostructure (DH), quantum well (QW), vertical cavity (VC) and hybrid bistable laser are developed. These circuit models are analyzed using PSPICE circuit Simulator. large and small signal circuit models for double heterostructure laser diodes are developed from the rate equations. The models include both single and multi mode operations of the DH laser. The effects of coupling coefficient, parasitics circuit, driver circuit and gain compression are studied in detail. The l-I curve, transient response and frequency response analysis are studied and it shows good agreement with the experimental results. A circuit model of quantum well laser based on the 3 level rate equations is also developed. The temperature effect on the laser behaviour is studied by incorporating equivalent thermal circuit model into the laser model. The effects of temperature, leakage current and heat dissipation are also considered in the equivalent thermal model. The effect of bias current on the transient behaviour of QW laser at various temperatures is studied. It is found that the laser performance is a function of separate confinement heterostructure (SCH) region length. It is observed that the modulation response of QW laser with shorter separate confinement heterostructure length is more sensitive to the temperature variation. The effect of temperature on multimode and frequency response of the QW laser is also simulated. An increase in temperature reduces the operating frequency and resonance peak shift to higher frequency. The vertical cavity surface emitting (VCSEL) laser model is developed. The rate equations included the carrier density flow in the SCH region of VCSEL and the logarithm gain is used as the gain constant. Optical output increases with input current up to 11mA and decreases afterward at 300K. This turn over is varies with temperature. It is found that the VCSEL is sensitive to the temperature due to the Distributed Bragg Reflectors (DBR) structures. DBR structure also causes loss such as leakage current increases exponentially with input current. The turn on delay behaves oppositely due to the dynamic increase in leakage current at higher temperature. A hybrid bistable semiconductor laser (HBSL) device is proposed to overcome the temperature sensitivity problem of VCSEL. The quantum well laser is used as the gain element of the bistable laser and VCSEL is used as the absorber element. The equivalent circuit model is developed based on the rate equations derived. The hybrid semiconductor laser consisting of edge emitting QWL and VCSEL exhibits bistability. The hysterisis width and threshold current can be controlled by source resistance as well as by the device dimensions. Symmetrical self-pulsation is also observed in HBSL by fine-tuning the load resistance value to 100 ohm, the VCSEL region is biased at 55 mA within the bistable region and a positive pulse of 10mA height and 25ns width is applied to the QWL


Graphite is used as a moderator in advanced gas cooled nuclear reactors (AGRs) across the country. The graphite is damaged over time due to a bombardment of neutrons and this has a wide range of e�fects on the physical properties of the graphite. This thesis focuses of the dimensional change of the nuclear graphite.
The first part of this thesis is based on two dimensional dislocation dynamics (2D-DD) and describes a program which has been written to model the movement of line defects in an anisotropic elastic continuum. Classical elasticity theory is applied to a single crystal containing dislocations to calculate the dimensional change of the crystal and the energy stored in the continuum by the dislocations. Several modes are described, beginning with the standard model of dimensional change which concerns point defect aggregation into prismatic loop dislocations. Extending these theories the program has been developed further to model the dimensional change as a result of gliding basal dislocations. This program was created as a proof of concept model to help show that significant energy can be stored in the lattice by dislocations as well as by the well established point defect energies.
The second part of this thesis uses ab initio calculations to measure geometries and energies of line defects in bilayer graphene and graphite which can be used to quantify the models used in the two dimensional dislocation dynamics. Density functional theory (DFT) with a local density approximation (LDA) has been utilised as implemented by the AIMPRO package. These calculations use state of the art filtration methods to allow optimisations on many atom structures which were previously unattainable. The first DFT calculation of a basal dislocation dipole in bilayer graphene has been carried out, a structure which has previously only been optimised using classical molecular dynamics. The results of these ab initio calculations can be used to quantify the 2D-DD results.


Biorefineries are an essential technology in converting biomass into biofuels or other useful materials. Advances in Biorefineries provides a comprehensive overview of biorefining processing techniques and technologies, and the biofuels and other materials produced. Part one focuses on methods of optimizing the biorefining process and assessing its environmental and economic impact. It also looks at current and developing technologies for producing value-added materials. Part two goes on to explore these materials with a focus on biofuels and other value-added products. It considers the properties, limitations, and practical applications of these products and how they can be used to meet the increasing demand for renewable and sustainable fuels as an alternative to fossil fuels. Advances in Biorefineries is a vital reference for biorefinery/process engineers, industrial biochemists/chemists, biomass/waste scientists and researchers and academics in the field.A comprehensive and systematic reference on the advanced biomass recovery and conversion processes used in biorefineriesReviews developments in biorefining processesDiscusses the wide range of value-added products from biorefineries, from biofuel to biolubricants and bioadhesives


Clostridium difficile is a major and growing problem as a hospital-associated infection that can cause severe, recurrent diarrhea. The mechanism by which the bacterium colonizes the gut during infection is poorly understood but undoubtedly involves protein components within the surface layer (S-layer), which play a role in adhesion. In C. difficile, the S-layer is composed of two principal components, the high and low molecular weight S-layer proteins, which are formed from the post-translational cleavage of a single precursor, SlpA. In the present study, we demonstrate that a recently characterized cysteine protease, Cwp84 plays a role in maturation of SlpA. Using a gene knock-out approach, we show that inactivation of the Cwp84 gene in C. difficile 630ΔErm results in a bacterial phenotype in which only immature, single chain SlpA comprises the S-layer. The Cwp84 knock-out mutants (CDΔCwp84) displayed significantly different colony morphology compared with the wild-type strain and grew more slowly in liquid medium. SlpA extracted from CDΔCwp84 was readily cleaved into its mature subunits by trypsin treatment. Addition of trypsin to the growth medium also cleaved SlpA on CDΔCwp84 and increased the growth rate of the bacterium in a dose-dependent manner. Using the hamster model for C. difficile infection, CDΔCwp84 was found to be competent at causing disease with a similar pathology to the wild-type strain. The data show that whereas Cwp84 plays a role in the cleavage of SlpA, it is not an essential virulence factor and that bacteria expressing immature SlpA are able to cause disease.


The Palestinian people have lived under numerous imperial rulers; first, the Ottoman Empire, then later the British. Today they live under the military occupation of the state of Israel as second class citizen millions more living abroad as refugees. Young Palestinian men have become the leaders and the physical manifestation of the struggle against Israel, a political Goliath that has used tactics to repress the Palestinians such as, detentions, beatings, and land confiscation, which many outside of the Israeli state deem as illegal. Scholar Rashid Khalidi states that "the quintessential Palestinian experience, which illustrates some of the most basic issues raised by Palestinian identity, takes place at the border[...] in short, at any one of those many modern barriers where identities are checked and verified"(Khalidi, 1997:1). It is through this process that the battered and bruised body of young Palestinian men represents the political identity of Palestinians to people all over the world. Yet the meaning of this body has transformed generation to generation. This paper analyzes not only this generational shift but also the history of this symbol. In this effort it also addresses related ideas, such as colonialism, nationalism and identity in the context of modern Palestine. Additional elements include issues such as state sanctioned violence and the impact this violence has on the mental development of identity in those Palestinian men who grow up under Israeli military occupation. Above all else, this paper explores Palestinian male identities, and their responses to the question "Who am I?", and why and how their answers are not as simple as saying "I am a Palestinian man."


The introduction of LTE over unlicensed bands (LTE-U) will enable LTE base stations to boost their capacity and offload their traffic by exploiting the underused unlicensed bands. However, to reap the benefits of LTE-U, it is necessary to address various new challenges associated with LTE-U and WiFi coexistence. In particular, new resource management techniques must be developed to optimize the usage of the network resources while handling the interdependence between WiFi and LTE users and ensuring that WiFi users are not jeopardized. To this end, in this article, a new game theoretic tool, dubbed the multi-game framework, is proposed as a promising approach for modeling resource allocation problems in LTE-U. In such a framework, multiple coexisting and coupled games across heterogeneous channels can be formulated to capture the specific characteristics of LTE-U. Such games can be of different properties and types, but their outcomes are largely interdependent. After introducing the basics of the multi-game framework, two classes of algorithms are outlined to achieve the new solution concepts of multi-games. Simulation results are then conducted to show how such a multi-game can effectively capture the specific properties of LTE-U and make of it a "friendly" neighbor to WiFi.


The realisation of the therapeutic potential of cellular therapies will depend on our ability to deliver these cells to selected positions in the body where they can find a suitable micro-environment to flourish. Additionally our scientific understanding would befit from studies which can assess the behaviour of cells at specific locations inside the body.
Magnetic cell delivery is a potential technology which might allow realising these premises. The major advantage of magnetic delivery compared to other delivery strategies is the ability to spatially localise entities in the body via externally applied magnetic fields. However, the fast decline of these fields with increasing distances is posing a major challenge for its in vivo application.
The aim of this thesis was to investigate potential magnetic delivery approaches which can circumvent some of the typical limitations of this technique. Two different approaches were explored to this end. The first approach was evaluating the feasibility of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system to steer labelled cells in arteries. Such an approach could take advantage of the imaging capabilities of magnetic resonance systems and combine these with steering to interactively guide cells or other entities of interest to a target area.
The second approach was addressing the feasibility of theoretical optimisations and the scalability of experimental results. For that, human MRI data was used to derive geometrical models of the blood vessels to which cells were to be delivered in this scenario. Finite element modelling was then used to explore potential magnet arrangements with the aim to maximise the force acting on cells over all target vessels. The best performing arrangement was then used for computational fluid dynamics simulations to test the possibility of cell capture from the flowing blood stream. Finally the possibility to scale-down such an arrangement to the dimensions of an animal model without changing the forces acting on cells was investigated.
Cells have to be labelled with magnetic materials in order to allow their magnetic actuation. This magnetic materials cause a distinctive contrast on MRI images. The potential of this imaging modality for cell tracking has been illustrated with an in vivo example for cell tracking in a rat heart and an in vitro example for a tissue engineering application.
Experiments with a preclinical MRI system illustrated the feasibility of cell steering with MRI indicating that such an approach could be useful for magnetic cell delivery. Computational models for the evaluation of magnet arrangements allowed the in-silico assessment of their potential and could be used to improve the experimental design of pre-clinical studies.


Can absolute rights conflict? Is it permissible to torture a person to save others from torture? And what can judges learn from trolleys? In this article, presented as a reply to an article by Steven Greer, I investigate the above questions in the context of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Drawing on Gafgen v Germany, I construct a hypothetical case of conflicting absolute rights, which cannot be resolved by the existing strands of legal reasoning in the case law of the Court. Instead, I argue, recourse must be had to moral reasoning. In discussing one of moral philosophy's deepest conundrums—the Trolley Problem—I rely on the distinction between negative and positive obligations and between direct and indirect agency to unravel the dilemma. Translating the moral argument into legal reasoning, I conclude that in cases of conflicts between absolute rights, negative obligations principally trump positive obligations.


Malicious software - so called malware - poses a major threat to the security of computer systems. The amount and diversity of its variants render classic security defenses ineffective, such that millions of hosts in the Internet are infected with malware in the form of computer viruses, Internet worms and Trojan horses. While obfuscation and polymorphism employed by malware largely impede detection at file level, the dynamic analysis of malware binaries during run-time provides an instrument for characterizing and defending against the threat of malicious software.

In this article, we propose a framework for the automatic analysis of malware behavior using machine learning. The framework allows for automatically identifying novel classes of malware with similar behavior (clustering) and assigning unknown malware to these discovered classes (classification). Based on both, clustering and classification, we propose an incremental approach for behavior-based analysis, capable of processing the behavior of thousands of malware binaries on a daily basis. The incremental analysis significantly reduces the run-time overhead of current analysis methods, while providing accurate discovery and discrimination of novel malware variants.


If the dark matter of the Universe is made of sterile neutrinos with mass in the keV region, it can be searched for with the help of x-ray satellites. We discuss the prospects of laboratory experiments that can be competitive and complementary to space missions. We argue that the detailed study of β decays of tritium and other nuclei with the help of cold target recoil ion momentum spectroscopy can potentially enter into an interesting parameter range and even supersede the current astronomical bounds on the properties of the dark matter sterile neutrinos. © 2007 The American Physical Society.


Digital technologies used to identify, profile, and supervise are often hailed as the serendipitous results of inevitable progress, while the long-term consequences of their application remain beyond the attention of lawyers and politicians. This article tries to close this gap by exploring and discussing probable effects of the application of such technologies for the present model of statehood and legal order. It examines the hypothesis that the ubiquitous digitalisation of governance and the increasing attention to individuals' reputation in the provision of public services are related to the attempt of contemporary corporate elites to perpetuate their power and resolve the problem of building a new, post-capitalist social order. The article argues that the expansion of social control through digital technologies can lead to a gradual loss of constitutional subjectivity and political power by people.


ABSTRACT In this article, a collaborative effort between archaeologists and marine ecologists, we discuss the role kelp forest ecosystems may have played in facilitating the movement of maritime peoples from Asia to the Americas near the end of the Pleistocene. Growing in cool nearshore waters along rocky coastlines, kelp forests offer some of the most productive habitats on earth, with high primary productivity, magnified secondary productivity, and three-dimensional habitat supporting a diverse array of marine organisms. Today, extensive kelp forests are found around the North Pacific from Japan to Baja California. After a break in the tropics—where nearshore mangrove forests and coral reefs are highly productive—kelp forests are also found along the Andean Coast of South America. These Pacific Rim kelp forests support or shelter a wealth of shellfish, fish, marine mammals, seabirds, and seaweeds, resources heavily used historically by coastal peoples. By about 16,000 years ago, the North Pacific Coast offered a linear migration route, essentially unobstructed and entirely at sea level, from northeast Asia into the Americas. Recent reconstructions suggest that rising sea levels early in the postglacial created a highly convoluted and island-rich coast along Beringia's southern shore, conditions highly favorable to maritime hunter-gatherers. Along with the terrestrial resources available in adjacent landscapes, kelp forests and other nearshore habitats sheltered similar suites of food resources that required minimal adaptive adjustments for migrating coastal peoples. With reduced wave energy, holdfasts for boats, and productive fishing, these linear kelp forest ecosystems may have provided a kind of "kelp highway" for early maritime peoples colonizing the New World.


This paper is a thorough investigation of the chemical transformations during pyrolytic conversion of phenolic resins to carbons, and reports that all carbons obtained from main-stream phenolic resins including phloroglucinol–formaldehyde (FPOL), phloroglucinol–terephthalaldehyde (TPOL), resorcinol–formaldehyde (RF), and phenol–formaldehyde (PF) contain fused pyrylium rings and charge-compensating phenoxides. Those four phenolic resins were prepared via a fast HCl-catalyzed process as low-density nanostructured solids classified as aerogels, which, owing to their open porosity, allowed air circulation through their bulk. In that regard, the first step of this study was the air-oxidation of those phenolic resin aerogels at 240 °C. In FPOL and TPOL aerogels, that air-oxidation step kicked off a cascade of reactions leading to ring-fusion aromatization and formation of pyrylium O+-heteroaromatic rings in every repeat unit of the polymeric backbone. Despite the complexity of the process, those structural forms were well-defined, and were retained through pyrolytic carbonization (800 °C). Under the same conditions (240 °C/air), RF and PF aerogels did not undergo aromatization; instead, they just went through an autooxidation-like process that converted the –CH2– bridges between phenolic moieties into carbonyls (CO). Importantly, however, upon further stepwise pyrolysis under Ar, by 600 °C all four systems (TPOL, FPOL, RF and PF), irrespective of whether they had been previously oxidized or not, converged to a common chemical composition. Thereby, carbon produced by pyrolysis of phenolic resins at 800 °C always contains fused pyrylium rings. All chemical analysis relied on FTIR, solid-state 13C NMR, XPS and CHN analysis. The only and significant difference made by the low-temperature (240 °C) air-oxidation step was identified with the surface areas of carbons from aromatizable systems (TPOL and FPOL), which were higher than those from direct pyrolysis of as-prepared aerogels. Upon further reactive etching with CO2, those surface areas went as high as 2778 ± 209 m2 g−1. Those findings are directly relevant to high surface area carbons for gas sorption (e.g., capture and sequestration of CO2) and ion exchange materials.


Abstract. Direct measurements of OH and HO2 over a tropical rainforest were made for the first time during the GABRIEL campaign in October 2005, deploying the custom-built HORUS instrument (HydrOxyl Radical measurement Unit based on fluorescence Spectroscopy), adapted to fly in a Learjet wingpod. Biogenic hydrocarbon emissions were expected to strongly reduce the OH and HO2 mixing ratios as the air is transported from the ocean over the forest. However, surprisingly high mixing ratios of both OH and HO2 were encountered in the boundary layer over the rainforest. The HORUS instrumentation and calibration methods are described in detail and the measurement results obtained are discussed. The extensive dataset collected during GABRIEL, including measurements of many other trace gases and photolysis frequencies, has been used to quantify the main sources and sinks of OH. Comparison of these measurement-derived formation and loss rates of OH indicates strong previously overlooked recycling of OH in the boundary layer over the tropical rainforest, occurring in chorus with isoprene emission.


Background. Economic modeling and analysis can facilitate evidence-based policy and practice. Such analyses may exceed the technical capacity and mission of public health agencies, yet may be critical to sustain health protections such as tuberculosis (TB) control. The net effect of TB prevention is incompletely understood, hampering objective value judgments of national TB elimination policies. This may promote inefficiencies and threaten individual and public health protections. We describe how a HRSA-funded Texas Public Health Training Center (TPHTC) coordinated specialized analytical skills with the needs of a state public health department to create a user-friendly tool to inform planning and resource allocation; and to identify risks, benefits, opportunities, and value in the context of Texas' Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) TB control programs. Methods. Key informants within TDSHS and faculty from the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) and its associated TPHTC collaborated to develop a combined health, cost, and outcome model to answer questions of interest to TDSHS. The model incorporates standard techniques, TB specific logic and data, and Texas specific population, epidemiologic, and programmatic data into a Microsoft Excel platform. Outcome measures include 2013 USD costs from a public agency perspective and health losses denominated in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) (but not assigned a dollar value). Outcomes represent the 10-year accrued net present value (NPV) of variable costs associated with each incident TB case. The model used only publicly available, nonconfidential data. Results. Under current public TB prevention and control practices we estimate public spending for acute medical care and health losses for Texas' 1325 TB cases in 2011 will exceed a NPV $100 000 000 and 4800 QALYs by 2022; societal costs would likely be much higher. Public TB control is relatively cost effective and preserves 3.7 QALYs/case averted at $54 000/QALY. Implications. Partnerships between academic institutions and public health departments offer the potential to produce the economic analyses needed for judicious use of public resources. We used accessible methods, data, and technology to create a model to analyze the relative value of public TB control in Texas as well as to identify potential efficiencies within activities. Our analysis suggests public efforts against latent TB infection effectively and efficiently mitigate some of the substantial health and cost impact of TB to Texas. Most of TB's burden remains, however, and more careful targeting of prevention by risk promises rich rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]