This analysis estimates the profitability of restoring wetlands for the sale of carbon offsets. Results indicate that about 7% to 12% of the recently restored grassed wetlands of the prairie pothole and high plains regions and 20% to 35% of the forested wetlands of the Mississippi alluvial valley and Gulf-Atlantic coastal flats regions could have carbon offset values that exceed the cost of restoring the wetland and the opportunity cost of moving the land out of agricultural production. Given the uncertainties, the analysis applies conservative estimates of wetlands' costs, offset prices, and wetlands' effects on greenhouse gases.


Inorganic arsenic is known to be a human carcinogen. Previous studies have reported that DNA methylation changes are involved in arsenic‐induced carcinogenesis, therefore, DNA methylation changes that are specific to arsenic‐induced tumors would be useful to distinguish tumors induced by arsenic from tumors caused by other factors and to dissect arsenic carcinogenesis. Previous studies have shown that gestational arsenic exposure of C3H mice, which tend to spontaneously develop liver tumors, increases the incidence of tumors in male offspring. In this study we used the same experimental protocol as in those previous studies and searched for DNA regions where methylation status was specifically altered in the liver tumors of arsenic‐exposed offspring by using methylated DNA immunoprecipitation–CpG island microarrays. The methylation levels of the DNA regions selected were measured by quantitative methylation‐specific PCR and bisulfite sequencing. The results of this study clarified a number of regions where DNA methylation status was altered in the liver tumors in the C3H mice compared to normal liver tissues. Among such regions, we showed that a gene body region of the oncogene Fosb underwent alteration in DNA methylation by gestational arsenic exposure. We also showed that Fosb expression significantly increased corresponding to the DNA methylation level of the gene body in the arsenic‐exposed group. These findings suggest that the DNA methylation status can be used to identify tumors increased by gestational arsenic exposure.


FORWARD AND REVERSE ENGINEERING OF CELLULAR DECISION-MAKING Najaf A. Shah Casim A. Sarkar Cells reside in highly dynamic environments to which they must adapt. Throughout its lifetime, an individual cell receives numerous chemical and mechanical signals, communicated through dense molecular networks, and eliciting a diverse array of responses. A large number of these signals necessitate discrete, all-or-none responses. For instance, a cell receiving proliferation signals must respond by committing to the cell-cycle and dividing, or by not initiating the process at all; that is, the cell must not adopt an intermediate route. Analogously, a stem-cell receiving signals for different lineages must commit exclusively to one of these lineages. How individual cells integrate multiple, possibly conflicting, noisy inputs, and make discrete decisions is poorly understood. Detailed insight into cellular decision-making can enable cell-based therapies, shed light on diseases arising out of dysregulation of control, and suggest practical design strategies for implementing this behavior in synthetic systems for research and industrial use. In this thesis, we have employed both mathematical modeling and experiments to further elucidate the mechanistic underpinnings of decision-making in cells. First, we describe a computational study that assesses the entire space of minimal networks to identify topologies that can not only make decisions but can do so robustly in the dynamic and noisy cellular environment. Second, via model-driven, quantitative experiments in a megakaryocyte erythroid progenitor line, we demonstrate that a simple network with mutual antagonism and autoregulation captures the dynamics of the master transcription factors at the level of individual cells. Expansion of this model to account for extrinsic cues reconciles the competing stochastic and instructive theories of hematopoietic lineage commitment, vii and implicates cytokine receptors in broader regulatory roles. Third, to assess the impact of specific genetic perturbations on the distribution of the population, and on commitment trajectories of individual cells, we implemented the core mutual antagonism and autoregulation topology synthetically in yeast cells. Our approach of using orthogonal variants of a single core protein represents a general, modular design strategy for building synthetic circuits, and model-driven experiments elucidate how gene dosage, repression strength, and promoter architecture can modulate decision-making behavior.


This study examines the newspaper coverage of Richard Jewell during the weeks after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. Jewell, a security guard working in the Olympic Park on July 27, 1996, was initially hailed as a hero due to his discovery of a bomb minutes before the explosion. After Jewell's name was leaked to the press as an FBI person of interest in the case, many reporters began to frame Jewell in a negative light and, in some instances, even implied his guilt. Through a discourse analysis of news stories published between the date of the bombing and the date Jewell was officially removed as a suspect (three months), four distinct framing clusters are identified in this study: The Reluctant Hero, He is Guilty, United We Stand, and Media Self-Coverage. Discursive tactics used to support these themes are identified as word choice, source choice and use of unnecessary information. The roles of myths, symbols, storytelling, and society in frame-making provide the foundation for an in-depth discussion about the broader meanings and implications of the news frames found in the coverage of the bombing. This study finds that frames are prevalent in media coverage and play an essential role in society, but they are sometimes misused by the press in such a way that harms individuals. A subsequent legal discussion underscores the courts' dogged protection of First Amendment rights in these situations and the dilemmas that develop when a private individual is ruled to be a public figure in the defamation lawsuit. An additional examination of news media ethics offers possible reasons journalists resort to the types of discursive tactics found in the Jewell coverage; specifically, this study finds explanations that pertain to the journalist, the newsroom, industry guidelines, and the collective mindset of the


Cameron Park, Texas, is a colonia (an isolated, unincorporated rural settlement without municipal improvements) on the Texas-Mexico border in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, in Cameron County near Brownsville, Texas. Cameron Park has a population of 5,961 residents, 99.3% of whom are Hispanic. The annual median income is 16,934 US dollars, about one-half of the state median. Fifty-eight percent of families generally and 68% of those with children younger than 5 years have incomes below poverty level. Cameron Park resides geographically in a region where agriculture has been, and continues to be, a dominant industry, a fact consistent with the intensive use of pesticides and increased potential for air, water, and ground contamination. The practice of good environmental health is extremely difficult under these conditions. In 1999 the Texas A&M University Center for Housing and Urban Development's Colonias Program and the Center for Environmental and Rural Health teamed up to create an environmental health education and outreach program called the Cameron Park Project (CPP). The CPP focused on how to reduce potential environmental exposures associated with human illness by providing residents with scientifically sound information on positive health practices and how to deal with environmental hazards. In this article we discuss the research methodology used in the CPP, a methodology specifically chosen to address four challenges presented by colonias to conducting valid and reliable research.


Positive-strand RNA viruses are the largest genetic class of viruses and include many serious human pathogens. All positive-strand RNA viruses replicate their genomes in association with intracellular membrane rearrangements such as single- or double-membrane vesicles. However, the exact sites of RNA synthesis and crucial topological relationships between relevant membranes, vesicle interiors, surrounding lumens, and cytoplasm generally are poorly defined. We applied electron microscope tomography and complementary approaches to flock house virus (FHV)–infected Drosophila cells to provide the first 3-D analysis of such replication complexes. The sole FHV RNA replication factor, protein A, and FHV-specific 5-bromouridine 5'-triphosphate incorporation localized between inner and outer mitochondrial membranes inside ∼50-nm vesicles (spherules), which thus are FHV-induced compartments for viral RNA synthesis. All such FHV spherules were outer mitochondrial membrane invaginations with interiors connected to the cytoplasm by a necked channel of ∼10-nm diameter, which is sufficient for ribonucleotide import and product RNA export. Tomographic, biochemical, and other results imply that FHV spherules contain, on average, three RNA replication intermediates and an interior shell of ∼100 membrane-spanning, self-interacting protein As. The results identify spherules as the site of protein A and nascent RNA accumulation and define spherule topology, dimensions, and stoichiometry to reveal the nature and many details of the organization and function of the FHV RNA replication complex. The resulting insights appear relevant to many other positive-strand RNA viruses and support recently proposed structural and likely evolutionary parallels with retrovirus and double-stranded RNA virus virions.


Managing long-term peace and environmental education programs toward positive encounters and peace building in a region of intractable conflict requires constant evaluation and monitoring of students and school staff. This paper analyzes a program running for the second year in ten Israeli high schools. It is the only Israeli environmental and peace educational network for both adolescent Israeli Jews and Arabs. The program acknowledges that there is not one fixed formula for excellence in education; thus, it aims to match its curriculum to each school, attend to current events, and generate harmony between people and between people and nature. Constant evaluation and monitoring of students and school staff is done through multiple research tools; some include a pre-post research construction while others rely on ongoing data collection, observation, and reflection. The tools implemented in this program and the lessons learned are described and analyzed in this paper. The first part of the paper discusses aspects of environmental and peace education, including pedagogic implications and the difficulties of evaluation. The second part describes the case study, including the program's origins, its position in Israel's reality, and its implementation. Finally, the paper focuses on describing and illustrating the evaluation and monitoring methods used by the program.


Biaryl bonds are a common motif found in biologically active compounds and the majority of marketed pharmaceuticals. The contemporary methods used to synthesize these biaryl bonds, albeit high yielding, are not economical because they require several prefunctionalization steps that create a high volume of waste and byproducts. Cross-dehydrogenative coupling (CDC) is the future of green coupling techniques, since it requires no prefunctionalization of substrates and can obtain high yields with a relatively low catalyst loading. Herein, we report on advances being made in the field of CDC, and our own efforts to achieve cross coupling utilizing benzimidazole moieties. The first manuscript, "Aryl-Aryl Bond Formation via CDC Reactions" is a comprehensive review of the latest and most notable achievements being made in the area of biaryl CDC reactions. The manuscript focuses on cross-dehydrogenative coupling as a green method that can be used to create aryl-aryl bonds on a vast array of substrates. Several different classes of CDC reaction conditions were examined including Pd, Rh, Ru, Cu, and Fe-based catalytic systems. The second manuscript, "Intramolecular Arylation of Benzimidazoles via Pd(II)/Cu(I) catalyzed Cross-Dehydrogenative Coupling" describes research done on the intramolecular biaryl CDC reaction between simple arenes and benzimidazoles. This novel reaction is carried out on N-benzylbenzimidazoles that upon cyclization forms a fused polycyclic system. The reaction conditions were optimized and tested on a large library of substrates, and the mechanism was probed using kinetic isotope studies and varied reaction conditions to suggest a unique Pd(II)/Cu(I) catalytic cycle.


Sociophonetic research on /s/ has revealed that sex, gender identity, sexuality, and regional identity can significantly structure the variation found in the production and perception of its acoustic signal. Relative /s/ frontness has been associated with femininity (e.g., Stuart-Smith 2007) and gay-sounding speech (e.g., Munson et al. 2006), while relative /s/ retraction has been associated with masculinity (e.g., Zimman 2013) and a Southern or country identity (e.g., Campbell-Kibler 2011). However, much of the work to date has been experimental in nature or conducted in urban centers. This paper analyzes the acoustic realization of /s/ in one inland non-urban community in Northern California, where speakers carry strong antiurban (and antiliberal) sentiment. Our acoustic analysis examines sociolinguistic interviews with 42 speakers, diverse in terms of gender, sexuality, and attitudes toward rurality (townoriented versus countryoriented). In this community, the data show a stronger polarization between men and women than found in urban settings (e.g., Hazenberg 2012, Zimman 2012), likely due to social conservatism prevalent in the community. These prominent gender norms seriously constrain the production of /s/ by gay men, who pattern much more like straight men in this community than to urban gay speakers. At the same time, variants of /s/ prevalent among straight country-oriented speakers serve as resources for sexual minorities (i.e., lesbians) to construct nonheteronormative identities without transgressing gender norms. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/


Football League Financial Fair Play kicks off in time for the 2012-13 Championship season. There are no sanctions for breaching the regulations in the 12/13 and 13/14 seasons. Come the 14/15 season, a club that is in breach of the regulations will face sanctions. It can be fined (if the club is in the Premier League at the time of the decision) or be subject to a transfer ban (if the club remains in the Championship at the time of the decision). A calculation table of fines has been published to enable clubs to understand the potential size of the penalty. Clubs who comply with the regulations will receive a share of any fines imposed on non-compliant clubs.


Las hijas de Juan shatters the silence surrounding experiences of incest within a working-class Mexican American family. Both a feminist memoir and a hopeful meditation on healing, it is Josie Mendez-Negrete's story of how she and her siblings and mother survived years of violence and sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

Mendez-Negrete was born in Mexico, in the state of Zacatecas. She recalls a joyous childhood growing up in the midst of Tabasco, a vibrant town filled with extended family. Her father, though, had dreams of acquiring wealth in el norte . He worked sun-up to sun-down in the fields of south Texas. Returning home to Mexico, his pockets full of dollars, he spent evenings drinking and womanizing.

When Mendez-Negrete was eleven, her father moved the family to the United States, where they eventually settled in California's Santa Clara Valley. There her father began molesting his daughters, viciously beating them and their mother. Within the impoverished immigrant family, the abuse continued for years, until a family friend brought it to the attention of child welfare authorities. Mendez-Negrete's father was tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

Las hijas de Juan is told chronologically, from the time Mendez-Negrete was a child until she was a young adult trying, along with the rest of her family, to come to terms with her father's brutal legacy. It is a harrowing story of abuse and shame compounded by cultural and linguistic isolation and a system of patriarchy that devalues the experiences of women and girls. At the same time, Las hijas de Juan is an inspiring tale, filled with strong women and hard-won solace found in traditional Mexican cooking, songs, and storytelling.


Background: The increasing number of survivors following stroke events are enlightening new needs to guarantee appropriate care and quality of life support at home. A potential application of telemedicine is to provide home care and rehabilitation. Within the framework of an EU FP7 project called Integrated Home Care (IHC Grant Agreement no: 222954) we performed an overview of reviews on the telefacilities for the homecare in stroke patients. Materials and methods: A broad literature research was conducted in PUBMED, Web of Science® and The Cochrane Library databases. We included and graded all the reviews according to the following criteria: published in English in peer-reviewed journals, targeting stroke as adult patients (age>18yr.) and considering a homecare setting in the intervention. Results: 6 reviews were included (i.e. 1 systematic review with meta-analysis and 5 non-systematic reviews). No conclusions can be stated on the effectiveness of telerehabilitation compared to other home treatments, due to the insufficient data available, nevertheless strong indications emerged for the inclusion of "all cause mortality" and "hospital admission" as primary outcomes. Besides "QoL", "cost", "adherence" and "patient acceptability" should be included as secondary outcomes, for a complete evaluation of the tele-intervention. No adverse effects were reported in all the reviews, stating that tele-interventions appear to be safe as usual care at home. Conclusion: Those indications should be considered as relevant in planning a telerehabilitation trial, in order to observe the expected effectiveness from a multidimensional point of view in the clinical, financial and social perspectives.


Homologous series α-4-[-4'-n-Alkoxy Cinnamoyloxy] benzoyl β-phenyl ethylenes consists of eleven members of the series. Pentyloxy to hexadecyloxy homologues are enantiotropically nematogenic without exhibition of any smectogenic character. Odd-even effect is observed for nematic-isotropic transition curve with alternation of transition temperatures of the homologues as determined using an optical polarizing microscope with heating stage. Methoxy to butyloxy homologues are nonliquid crystals. Analytical data supports the structures of the molecules. Textures of the nematic mesophase is threaded or schlieren type Nematic-isotropic thermal stability of a series is 155.4 oC. Mesomorphic properties of a present series are compared with other structurally similar homologous series.


Fire Them Up! will give you the astonishing communication skills that will help you enjoy more successful and fulfilling relationships with colleagues, clients, employees, or anyone else in your personal or professional life. It is full of stories and tactics from some of the world's most influential people. More than two dozen of today's most inspiring business leaders share their secrets including men and women who run The Ritz-Carlton, Google, Travelocity, Cranium, Cold Stone Creamery, Gymboree, 24-Hour Fitness and many other big-name brands. The book reveals seven simple secrets distilled from the wisdom of leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries from different backgrounds, generations and industries. Together, they possess all the tools you need to transform yourself into an extraordinary, electrifying, and enthusiastic leader who communicates with power, passion, confidence and charisma!


The disc stack centrifuge (DSC) in the virgin olive oil (VOO) industry is widely used for oil purification at a final stage of extraction process. The obtained oil should be commercialized directly as turbid or sent to settling and/or filtration. Despite technology is strongly consolidated, few literature is available on the effect of DSC on efficiency and quality of VOO, specially compared with alternative methods. Alternative technologies to DSC like settling or direct filtration are suitable only for very small production scale. Application of advanced technology already available for DSC like hermetic design is applicable also to VOO but more research is necessary to establish effect on quality and cost/benefit ratio. Improvement of installation module and a more appropriate use of DSC on VOO industry are recommended to reduce water consumption and consequent loss of VOO quality.


Many domains of transnational policy are now governed through dynamic, multilevel governance processes, encompassing transnational, national, and subnational scales. In such settings, both membership of policy communities and distributions of authority within them become more fluid and openly contested—increasing the importance of the politics of legitimation as a basis for distributing influence over policy processes and outcomes. Drawing on insights from theories of organizational and institutional legitimation, this article theorizes three distinctive strategies of policy influence exercised by transnational actors in multilevel governance settings, through which strategic efforts to legitimize transnational actors and forums are deployed as means of transnational policy influence. The three strategies involve: transnational field building, localized network building, and role adaptation. The effects of these influencing strategies on policy processes and outcomes are illustrated with reference to the case of Indonesian land governance, in which highly dynamic, contested, and multiscalar governance processes lend our theorized strategies particular salience.


With the rise of China as the most important emerging power especially in the 21st century, contemporary China has undergone great changes particularly in its economy, whilst Western representations of China still seem to be operating within the essentialist and reductionist discourse (Mawdsley, 2008; Spence, 1990 & 1998; Mackerras, 1999, 2011 & 2015; Cao, 2012). Nowadays, with the development of mass media and its influence on people, a growing number of depictions of the image of China in the eyes of the West are derived from the Western mass media. They report on and represent China and China-related themes. However, little research is done on how images of China are depicted and represented in the Western mass media, and especially TV documentaries since 2010s have scarcely been researched.

This thesis aims to explore and analyse the Western representations of contemporary China in the context of the rapidly-changing global power dynamics of the 21st century, by visualising China through the lens of documentary. Specifically, it involves investigating and analysing what and how images of China are depicted and represented in the three critically-selected British TV documentary series on China. They are: The Chinese Are Coming (26 Feb 2011, BBC 2), China: Triumph and Turmoil (12 March 2012, Channel 4) and Civilization: Is the West History? (10 April 2012, Channel 4). Through the in-depth analysis by employing a combination of several methodological approaches including Semiotic Analysis, Multi-modal Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, the study has found that Western images of China in the three analysed documentaries as the discursive practice, are constructed at a three dimensional depiction.

The first dimension indicates that images of China from the analysed documentary series seem to be still under the influence of the Western historical representations of China which are under orientalist despotism and modernity discourse. However, the modernity discourse is not explicitly as it used to be, but being more implicitly and camouflaged by other new elements such as a Christianity theme or Western civilization when perceiving or explaining the rise of China. As such, the archive of modernity discourse seems not to be weakened but is more internalised and crystallised through this way. Its existing discourse, though being contested and constructed by different discursive practice such as the new neo-colonialist images of China in Africa, innovative Chinese industry, etc., remains scarcely changed at its core. China is basically depicted as on the way of emulating the West, but so far only partially.

The second finding from that research data suggests that the rise of China seems to be perceived mainly as a threat in the analysed documentaries, which tends to have its cognitive elements behind. The depiction is often mixed with the depiction of the West as either being in decline, or on the verge of declining, which echoes the existing discourse of representation of China with the 'Western decline' revival theme during recent years. Hence, the image of China Threat seems to be used as the 'victim' of groupthink concurrence, which tends to be the defensive response when the group members in the West feel stressed or threatened. As such, the representation of China as a threat is more the cognitive need of group members as defense and release of stress and fear. However, unlike the historical images of 'Yellow Peril' or 'Fu Manchu', the representation of China threat is more complex and multi-faceted and the perception at the discursive practice within this thesis seems to swing between the 'Thucydides Trap' and the 'Kindleberger Trap'. The former depicts the threat of China as being very worrying and likely to be a repeat of the situation in Germany, which led to World War, whilst the latter one seems to suggest that the rise of China will not be sustainable due to its internal autocracy, corruption and ruthless Communist Party.

Thirdly and lastly, since this study aims to analyse the documentaries as its pragmatic and discursive practice, the media framing and its features of visual and verbal language, together with the colour and background music, are found to be another dimension that helps contribute the images of China in documentaries. The findings of the research suggest that there is a need for streamlining the development of mass media documents with the existing discourse or theories on images of China. Further attention should also be given towards providing more study on documentaries at discursive practice.


Calcium-Response Factor (CaRF) was first identified as a transcription factor based on its affinity for a neuronal-selective calcium-response element (CaRE1) in the gene encoding Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). However, because CaRF shares no homology with other transcription factors, its properties and gene targets have remained unknown. Here we show that the DNA binding domain of CaRF has been highly conserved across evolution and that CaRF binds DNA directly in a sequence-specific manner in the absence of other eukaryotic cofactors. Using a binding site selection screen we identify a high-affinity consensus CaRF response element (cCaRE) that shares significant homology with the CaRE1 element of Bdnf. In a genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis (ChIP-Seq), we identified 176 sites of CaRF-specific binding (peaks) in neuronal genomic DNA. 128 of these peaks are within 10kB of an annotated gene, and 60 are within 1kB of an annotated transcriptional start site. At least 138 of the CaRF peaks contain a common 10-bp motif with strong statistical similarity to the cCaRE, and we provide evidence predicting that CaRF can bind independently to at least 64.5% of these motifs in vitro. Analysis of this set of putative CaRF targets suggests the enrichment of genes that regulate intracellular signaling cascades. Finally we demonstrate that expression of a subset of these target genes is altered in the cortex of Carf knockout (KO) mice. Together these data strongly support the characterization of CaRF as a unique transcription factor and provide the first insight into the program of CaRF-regulated transcription in neurons.


Wheat is an important staple food crop in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the current wheat consumption of 900 000 tons in Kenya outweighs the wheat production of 350 000 tons given the high population growth and inflation. The stem rust currently poses the greatest threat to wheat production due to the emergence of the virulent race of the Puccinia graminis f. sp tritici , Ug99 (TTKS) and its variants Ug99 + Sr24 (TTKSK) and Ug99 + Sr36 (TTKST) leading to about 70 to 100% yield losses. This study aimed at evaluating twenty-five wheat genotypes for both field and seedling resistance to stem rust. The genotypes were grown in an alpha lattice design and in two replicates both in the greenhouse and in the field at Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Njoro. The seedling stage infection types were scored based on Stakman et al. (1962) scale. At the adult plant stages, the stem rust disease severity was based on modified Cobb's scale. The genotypes showed diverse seedling and adult plant resistance responses. The most resistant entries, KSL-2, KSL-3 and KSL-20 also exhibited the pseudo black chaff (PBC) trait implying they contain the Sr2 gene in their background; the basis of breeding for durable resistance to stem rust in wheat. These lines with high stem rust resistance could be backcrossed to the adapted and high yielding but susceptible Kenyan wheat varieties to avert further wheat yield declines.


This study was conducted to determine the trend of logs production and export in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia. The trend of logs production in this study referred only to hill and peat swamp forest logs production with their species detailed production. The trend of logs export was divided into selected species and destinations. The study covers the analysis of logs production and export for a period of ten years from 1997 to 2006. Data on logs production and export were collected from statistics published by the Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corporation (Statistic of Sarawak Timber and Timber Product), Sarawak Timber Association (Sarawak Timber Association Review), Hardwood Timber Sdn. Bhd (Warta) and Malaysia Timber Industry Board (MTIB). The trend of logs production and export were analyzed using regression model and times series. In addition, the relation between hill and peat swamp forest logs production with their species and trend of logs export by selected species and destinations were conducted using simple regression model and descriptive statistical analysis. The results depicted that volume of logs production and export by four major logs producer (Sibu division, Bintulu division, Miri division and Kuching division) for hill and peat swamp forest showed a declining trend. Result showed that Sibu division is the major logs producer for hill forest while Bintulu division is the major producer of logs produced for the peat swamp forest. The main species produced by both hill and peat swamp forest is Meranti (Shorea spp.). Eight selected species for the exported logs were Meranti, Kapur, Keruing, Selangan Batu. Sepetir, Nyatoh, Mersawa and Bindang. Among the eight selected species, Meranti is the main logs volume exported by Sarawak. The eight major logs export destinations by Sarawak were Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, India, Thailand and Singapore. The entire eight destinations showed decreasing trend except India. As a conclusion, the trend of logs production and export in the state of Sarawak for 1997 to 2006 showed a declining trend.


Useful as the oligodendrocyte precursor cells are to the central nervous system, given their ability to generate a steady supply of the cells that insulate neurons, it seems they can do even better. Kondo and Raff (see the news story by Vogel) now show that these limited-potential precursor cells can, with treatment by a series of external growth factors, be made to "back up" through the developmental cascade. The result is a source of stem cells with greater potential than the original that can form a variety of differentiated neuronal cell types. Kondo, T., and Raff, M. (2000) Oligodendrocyte precursor cells reprogrammed to become multipotential CNS stem cells. Science 289: 1754-1757. [Abstract] [Full Text] Vogel, G. (2000) Brain cells turning over a new leaf. Science 289: 1666. [Full Text]


Abstract Sweden is well known for its family policy and this study explores whether fathers' parental leave is related to later division of childcare and housework. Two materials were used; a panel survey (2003, 2009) and an interview- study (2008). Respondents in the survey had their first child between the waves and the interview-study focused on parents of 2–3 year olds. The survey is analyzed by logistic regression and the interviews by grounded theory. The results indicate that when fathers took long leave parents shared both household tasks and childcare more equally after the leave. Higher expectations of sharing childcare is related to a higher share of divided childcare once becoming parents, although it seems that some tasks are more often shared than others. When the father took long leave both parents mention that the child relates to the father as much as the mother in everyday life.


Since Ma (1898), and Wang (1938) in particular, the search for Chinese-specific grammatical patterns has become an important goal of Chinese grammar research, and many valuable attempts and contributions have been made in this direction. However, in the absence of a typological perspective, most previously identified "unique" characteristics are hardly unique. In contrast to previous research, this paper takes the angle of language universality and diversity and explores several idiosyncratic and cross-linguistically unusual syntactic patterns of Mandarin Chinese, seeking to identify some truly Chinese-specific structures.


PTEN is one of the most commonly mutated tumor suppressor genes. It is an antagonist for many cellular growth, proliferation and survival processes. When mutated or deleted, it causes cancers of the prostate, breast, colon, and brain. Researchers led by scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have now identified fundamentally novel regulatory mechanisms of PTENfunction. The findings from two related studies were published in the January 12, 2007issue of Cell. The first is research by Dr. Xuejen Jiang's laboratory at Sloan-Kettering Institute which identified a novel component that regulates PTEN. This protein, NEDD4-1, controls protein stability in cells. Researchers found that NEDD4-1 is a key component in eliminating PTEN from cells by adding a molecular tag, ubiquitin, to PTEN causing degradation in the cellular machinery called proteasome. In a mouse model for prostate cancer, the researchers found that areas with aggressive tumor contained low PTEN levels and high NEDD4-1. They concluded that NEDD4-1 could promote cancer development by down-regulating PTEN. The second study by Dr. Pier Paolo Pandolfi of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and colleagues found that the ubiquitination of PTEN by NEDD4-1 also regulates another important aspect of PTEN, its cellular localization.PTEN has been found mostly in the cytoplasm but has been known to also be in cell nuclei. While the cytoplasmic function of PTEN is now quite well understood, its nuclear functions have been elusive. Looking at a family with an inherited PTEN mutation that caused them to have the cancer-susceptibility condition, Cowden Syndrome, researchers found that the patients' coloncancer strikingly lacked nuclear PTEN.The Pandolfi and Jiang labs showed that the PTEN mutation in these patients prevented the addition of ubiquitin by NEDD4-1, providing a molecular mechanism for the detrimental effect of the mutant PTEN protein. They showed that the single ubiquitin tagging is necessary to import PTEN into the cell nucleus where it is protected from degradation and cancer is initiated.According to the researchers, the uncovered key role of PTEN degradation provides a new therapeutic strategy. Since ubiquitination has both positive (single tag) and negative (repetitive tagging) effects, a class of drugs, the proteasome inhibitors, that selectively blocks the degrading effects of ubiquitination, should now be studied as possible treatments for cancers with PTEN mutations.The research was supported by grants from The National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society.


Abstract Accelerated learning is an integrative method of learning, combining both sides of the brain to strengthen a student's relationship with self, teacher, subject matter and other students, and so assists students to achieve deep, rather than surface, learning. While the approach has been used to teach school pupils and trainees in the corporate world, its use in marketing education in universities is limited, and there are no reports of studies focusing on its use in postgraduate coursework degrees. The accelerated learning approach sits comfortably with the active approach to student learning, and builds on Kolb's (1981, 1984) four-stage experiential learning cycle. Educators in the marketing discipline have already embraced these two concepts and, thus, this paper assists educators and students who are concerned to accelerate learning even further. This article examines how accelerated learning could be used in teaching marketing at universities at the MBA level. Some techniques are synthesised from the literature that are particularly appropriate for the students and constraints of an MBA program in a university. We conclude that accelerated learning techniques can be used and are effective in a MBA program. Essentially, accelerated learning incorporates many, already known ideas but it is a useful comprehensive framework. Key words: Team work, Accelerated learning, postgraduate marketing. Introduction Mirroring worldwide uncertainties related to economic problems, ageing populations, widespread unemployment and security concerns, the future of academic study is similarly uncertain. For example, applications to the economics PhD programs of many leading American universities have risen sharply in recent times: MIT applications were up by 15% for 2002-3, and New York University applications are 70% higher now than for 2000-1 (The Economist 2003, p. 33). The Harvard Business School has witnessed increasing enrolments in its MBA program since 1965, with 907 students now enrolled for 2008 (www.hbs.edu/about/mba.html). On the other side of the Atlantic, in Britain, plenty of students are keen to study business, but economics is seen as something of a dead end, unless studied and practised in America. Doctoral programs in Britain attract French and Spanish students but few Britons. Interest in undergraduate economics programs has also dropped, although, in line with the Blair government initiative, attendance at university has soared. School students preparing to study economics at university fell from 40,000 in 1992 to 17,000 ten years later (The Economist 2003, p. 33). More recently however, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the total number of students in higher education in Britain rose by almost 2% in 2006, compared to 2005 (Ford 2006). In Australia, enrolments have increased over the past twenty years. Indeed, at any one time more than one in three Australians is a student, with increasing numbers of them being mature age and working full- or part-time (Harker, Slade and Harker 2001). One of the problems faced by academics in the 21st century is to design and conduct teaching to facilitate deep learning (Light and Cox 2001) in the context of busy, critical students, ready to brand-switch between classes and universities. Accelerated learning is one way of achieving this deep learning. It is an integrative method of learning that combines both hemispheres of the brain to strengthen a student's relationship with self, teacher, subject matter and other students (Farmer 1996a). In this way, accelerated learning assists students to achieve deep, rather than surface, learning (Biggs 1999). The approach has been used extensively to teach school pupils and in corporate training with short, intense behavioural courses such as sales training. However, research about its use in marketing education in universities is limited (Farmer 1996b), and there are no reports of studies focusing on postgraduate coursework courses such as the Master of Business Administration (MBA). …


Exploits that successfully attack computers are typically based on some form of shellcode, i.e., illegitimate code that is injected by the attacker to take control of the system. Detecting and gathering such code is the first step to its detailed analysis. The amount and sophistication of modern malware calls for automated mechanisms that perform such detection and extraction.
 In this paper, we present a novel generic and fully automatic approach to detect the execution of illegitimate code and extract such code upon detection. The basic idea is to flag certain memory pages as non-executable and utilize a modified page fault handler to react on the attempt to execute code from them. Our modified page fault handler detects if legitimate code is about to be executed or if the code originates from an untrusted location. In such a case, the corresponding memory content is extracted and execution is continued to retrieve more illegitimate code for analysis.
 We present an implementation of the approach for the Windows platform called CWXDetector, which involved reverse-engineering the proprietary memory management system of this operating system. Evaluation results using a large corpus of malicious PDF documents show that our system produces no false positives and has a very low false negative rate. To further demonstrate the universality of our approach, we also used it to detect shellcode execution in Flash Player, RealVNC client, and VideoLan Client.


An animal embryo begins its life as a ball of epithelial cells. In the course of development, invariably, this cellular ball will undergo a process of gastrulation to form a multilayered structure with the different germ layers designated to form organs with different shapes and functions. In the fruit fly Drosophia melanogaster, gastrulation begins with the constriction of mesodermal cells that make up a rectangular domain in the ventral part of the embryo. A remarkable aspect of this morphogenetic event is its anisotropy - the mesoderm constricts much more along one axis than along the other. In this paper we propose an explanation of this observed anisotropy. Specifically, we show that tissue contraction must be anisotropic, provided that the tissue is elastic and that the contractile domain is elongated (e.g. rectangular as opposed to square). This conclusion is generic in the sense that it does not depend on the specific values of model parameters. Since our recent study demonstrated that embryonic tissue is elastic on a developmentally relevant time-scale, it appears likely that the anisotropy of mesoderm contraction is an elastic effect. Our model makes a number of specific predictions that appear in close agreement with the available data.


In this paper, we show how automation on the side of the quantitative strand of research may help to alleviate this issue. For that purpose, we focus on explanatory sequential designs, where a quantitative strand of research is followed by a qualitative strand of research (Creswell, 2009). This is a common research design found in MMMR where quantitative results are further explained using qualitative methods (Schoonenboom, Johnson, & Froehlich, 2018). For instance, a survey may be followed by in-depth interviews with individuals from the survey population to help with contextualizing and interpreting the results. We report how R Markdown, a tool for report automation based on R (Froehlich, 2018b; Xie, 2013), may be used to increase research efficiency when applying such designs. We strongly believe that the quantitative strands of explanatory sequential designs lend themselves to such automation in order to free up resources for the (often labor intensive) qualitative strand. Next to increasing research efficiency, this measure is also helpful in aiding practitioners that do want to apply scientific methods, but do not possess the necessary in-depth knowledge about (quantitative) research methods.


INTRODUCTION
Diagnosis of Latent Tuberculosis Infection (LTBI) is difficult due to no clinical manifestations. Cases of LTBI are mostly sputum negative. The World Health Organization recommends the Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) as the current diagnostic standard for LTBI. Our previously developed serologic strip test for LTBI detection had suboptimal sensitivity. Additional Mycobacteriumtuberculosis (MTB) latency-associated antigens may improve the detection rate of LTBI.

AIM
The present study aimed to optimize sensitivity of existing strip test.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A combination of recombinant latency proteins Rv2029c, Rv2031c, Rv2032, Rv2627c, Rv3133c, and Rv3716c was used to prepare the strips and evaluate the performance with the sera of patients in four well-classified categories: LTBI, active pulmonary TB, healthy TB contacts and other non-TB diseases.

RESULTS
A total of 91 serum samples from various clinical categories were screened with the strips. Among clinically diagnosed LTBI patients, strip test yielded a sensitivity of 75.0%. Among clinically diagnosed non-LTBI subjects, strip test yielded 88.1% specificity. The diagnostic positive and negative predictive values for strip test in reference to various clinical contexts were 77.4% and 86.7%, respectively.

CONCLUSION
Addition of the six potential latency proteins could improve the diagnostic performance of existing strip test for LTBI. The use of suitable immunodominant antigens could maximize sensitivity in the diagnosis and differentiate MTB infection status.


For those who find themselves at the intersection of lifetime love and overwhelming obligation, the right path is often painful and difficult to find. When illness invades the couple relationship, partners ask themselves and each other some really hard questions: "What do I want to do for this person whom I have loved for many years?" "How much of my life do I give up to take care of my beloved?" "How do I sit by my beloved's side and watch her suffer?" While writing In Sickness as in Health, authors Barbara Kivowitz and Roanne Weisman learned through interviews with many couples, as well as with medical, spiritual, legal, rehabilitation and psychological experts, that couples find their own ways to deal with illnesses and catastrophic injuries.


Collocated measurements of tropospheric ozone (O3) and carbon monoxide (CO) from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) aboard the EOS Aura satellite provide information on O3‐CO correlations to test our understanding of global anthropogenic influence on O3. We examine the global distribution of TES O3‐CO correlations in the middle troposphere (618 hPa) for July 2005 and compare to correlations generated with the GEOS‐Chem chemical transport model and with ICARTT aircraft observations over the eastern United States (July 2004). The TES data show significant O3‐CO correlations downwind of polluted continents, with dO3/dCO enhancement ratios in the range 0.4–1.0 mol mol−1 and consistent with ICARTT data. The GEOS‐Chem model reproduces the O3‐CO enhancement ratios observed in continental outflow, but model correlations are stronger and more extensive. We show that the discrepancy can be explained by spectral measurement errors in the TES data. These errors will decrease in future data releases, which should enable TES to provide better information on O3‐CO correlations.


About 10,000 years ago, when the million-year-long Pleistocene epoch gave way to the ongoing Holocene epoch, much of the world's ecosystems changed. In what is now northern Siberia, vast numbers of large animals, among them mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and yaks, both thrived on and nurtured the steppes that, compared to other northern regions of the world, remained relatively unscathed from the repeated advances and retreats of ice sheets. Even so, the steppes there gave way to silt, dust, and ice-based tundra landscapes dominated in some places by forests and in others by mosses. The large animals disappeared. [Sergey Zimov][1], director of the Northeast Science Station in Cherskii in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), argues that climate change may not have been the primary reason behind the demise of this Pleistocene ecosystem. Instead, he says changing hunting practices wiped out the large animals whose absence led to the ecosystem shifts. He and his colleagues now are reintroducing bison, Yakutian horses, and other animals, eventually even tigers, in an attempt to reconstitute the Pleistocene ecosystem. The experiment will test the hypothesis that humans, rather than climate change, caused the ecosystem shift at the beginning of the Holocene. The stabilization of the northern tundra soils that this reconstitution could bring also could prevent the release of vast amount of carbon now sequestered in the Siberian soils but in danger of being released in the warmer times projected for the future.

All essays appearing in this series can be found online at [www.sciencemag.org/sciext/globalvoices/][2]

* * * [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/308/5723/796
 [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/globalvoices/


Research evaluation is increasingly being influenced by quantitative data. The legal field has not escaped the impact of such metrics. Law schools and legal journals are being ranked by multiple global rankings. The key rankings for law schools are the Times Higher Education and Shanghai University Subject Rankings for law and SSRN Ranking for U.S. and International law schools. Law Journals are measured by four different rankings: Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Journal Citation Reports (JCR), CiteScore from Elsevier, Scimago and Washington and Lee. Despite the opposition from the scientific community these metrics continue to flourish. The article argues journal rankings (as other metrics) are the consequence of theory-laden choices that can influence their structure and their pretense of objectivity is therefore merely illusory. We focus on the influential ranking of law journals in JCR and critically assess its structure and methodology. In particular, we consider the question of the existence of tacit citation cartels in the U.S. law reviews market and the attentiveness of the JCR for the potential influence of such tacit cartel. To examine this question we studied a sample of 90 journals included in the category of Law in the JCR: 45 U.S. student-edited (SE) and 45 peer-reviewed (PR) journals. We found that PR and SE journals are more inclined to cite members of their own class, forming two separated communities. Close analysis revealed that this phenomenon is more pronounced in SE journals, especially generalist ones. This tendency reflects, we argue, a tacit cartelistic behavior, which is a product of deeply entrenched institutional structures. Because U.S. SE journals produce much more citations than PR journals, the fact that their citations are directed almost exclusively to SE journals elevates their ranking in the Journal Citation Reports in a way that distorts the structure of the ranking. This distortion can hamper the production of legal knowledge. We discuss several policy measures that can counter the adverse effects of this situation.


This paper examines pre-decisional dissonance as a motivating factor in consumer decisional-making. A review of the marketing literature found the majority of research studies were limited to post-decisional influences. Several studies including measures of pre-decisional activity linked the construct to postdecision situations. The author provides evidence regarding the popularity and resurgence of research on cognitive dissonance theory and asserts that researchers in the field of consumer behavior may gain a better understanding of consumer decision-making when studying pre-decisional consonance and dissonance as separate entities and independent of post-decisions.


Although there is a substantial body of research on the factors affecting farmers' adoption of conservation practices, there is little existing research comparing different types of rural landowners and their land management decisions. This study examines the differences in awareness, attitudes, constraints, and behaviors of agricultural, small agricultural, and rural residential landowners. We conducted a mail survey of a stratified random sample of rural landowners owning two acres or more in the Little Calumet-Galien Watershed in northwestern Indiana. Generally, small agricultural and rural residential landowners have more positive attitudes, but are less familiar with water quality issues and conservation organizations. We found that being a small agricultural or rural residential landowner is associated with greater willingness to try conservation practices. For all landowners, perceived cost was the greatest barrier to conservation practice adoption. Based on these results, we suggest that to be successful, conservation programs targeted at small agricultural and rural residential landowners should address nonpoint source pollution and conservation practice awareness, as well as the cost of practice implementation. By using an evidence based approach to targeting outreach, conservation programs will become more efficient and effective.


The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project, sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and led by MDRC, is the first major opportunity to use a behavioral economics lens to examine programs that serve poor and vulnerable families in the United States. This report presents findings from four tests of behavioral interventions intended to increase the percentage of parents who made child support payments and the dollar amount of collections per parent in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.Parents who owe child support and do not have their payments automatically deducted from their paychecks through income withholding typically need to actively initiate a new payment each month. The BIAS team examined the payment process in Cuyahoga County and diagnosed a number of behavioral factors potentially impeding collections. The team collaborated with the Cuyahoga Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) to design a number of behavioral interventions intended to increase collections and evaluate them using randomized controlled trials.These tests replicated and extended previous BIAS research on child support payments in Franklin County, Ohio, which tested a variety of payment reminders and found that they increased the percentage of parents making a payment, though none of them produced statistically significant increases in collections per parent. Examining similar issues in Cuyahoga County allowed the BIAS team to more rigorously address research questions from the earlier evaluation and explore related but new research questions. Findings from the Cuyahoga tests include:• Mailing a behaviorally informed payment reminder notice to parents without income withholding or cell phone numbers on file with OCSS increased their likelihood of payment by 2.4 percentage points, from 38.2 percent to 40.7 percent, compared with sending no reminder.• Sending text message reminders to parents without income withholding but with cell phone numbers on file increased their likelihood of payment by 2.5 percentage points, from 47.3 percent to 49.8 percent, compared with sending no reminder at all. Text messages were as effective as the behaviorally informed mailing for this group, but cost significantly less.• The state already sends a payment reminder notice to some parents not making income withholding payments. Mailing the behaviorally informed notice to these parents did not increase their likelihood of payment, compared with continuing to send the existing state notice.• Mailing a behaviorally informed welcome letter and payment reminder notices to parents with new orders did not increase their likelihood of payment in the first few months of their order, compared with sending the county's existing welcome letter.• None of the interventions produced statistically significant increases in collections per parent.These findings demonstrate that low-cost, low-effort behavioral interventions can improve child support outcomes. However, more intensive interventions may be necessary to increase overall child support collection amounts, perhaps because some parents have a limited ability to pay.


We performed a user study that measured the effectiveness of our new 3D selection technique, Scope, which dynamically adapts to the environment by altering its activation area and visual appearance with relation to cursor velocity. Users tested our new technique against existing techniques Raycast, Bendcast, and Hook across a variety of different 3D scenarios which featured three different levels of object density and three different levels of object velocity. Our two dependent variables were completion time and total attempts per scenario. Users also completed a post-questionnaire which yielded qualitative insights on their experience. Our study shows that Bendcast, Scope, and Hook all performed similarly across all scenarios, yet were all significantly faster and less error-prone than Raycast. Despite this similar performance, users strongly favored Scope over the other three techniques, and over the second most preferred technique nearly two to one.


We establish existence, uniqueness and optimal regularity results for very weak solutions to certain nonlinear elliptic boundary value problems. We introduce structural asymptotic assumptions of Uhlenbeck type on the nonlinearity, which are sufficient and in many cases also necessary for building such a theory. We provide a unified approach that leads qualitatively to the same theory as that one available for linear elliptic problems with continuous coeffcients, e.g. the Poisson equation. The result is based on several novel tools that are of independent interest: local and global estimates for (non)linear elliptic systems in weighted Lebesgue spaces with Muckenhoupt weights, a generalization of the celebrated div{curl lemma for identification of a weak limit in border line spaces and the introduction of a Lipschitz approximation that is stable in weighted Sobolev spaces.


This paper presents the results of an impact evaluation for the CRIAR program, implemented in rural areas in Bolivia. The objective of this program is to increase the agricultural income and food security of smallholder farmers through productivity gains that result from technological adoption. We use data obtained from a sample of 1,287 households-817 beneficiaries and 470 controlsinterviewed specifically for this evaluation, and rely on a methodology of Propensity Score Matching. Overall, the main impacts of the program are observed in shortand medium-term variables, including crop diversification, input use and expenditures, and variables related to sales and home consumption. For the medium-term variables, the program had a positive impact on sales at the farm gate, market sales, agricultural income from sales, and a decrease in the proportion of production allocated for home consumption. The program also had a significant and positive impact on the food security of beneficiary households. For the long-term indicators, the analysis did not identify significant impacts on productivity variables. The lack of productivity impacts is probably due to the short period after program implementation, which corresponds to only one agricultural cycle. This length of time may have not been sufficient for farmers to gain experience and knowledge with regards to their effective use of the newly acquired technologies or to adjust the production process through input changes.


In the ongoing effort to build micro- and nanoscale machines, one of the key approaches is the bio-hybrid approach, which focuses on the use of biological constructs and engineered cells. As a natural extension of this concept to nanoscale communication, molecular communication is an umbrella term encompassing various communication systems that are built based on biological intra- and intercellular communication methods, most of which use molecules and molecular concentration as the information carrier. Compared to other proposed molecular communication systems such as diffusion-based communication and microtubular networks, calcium signaling is expected to provide a faster and more controllable system that is suitable for information dissemination and group behavior in nanoscale sensor networks. In this article, we give a general overview of calcium signaling, a novel communication paradigm that uses intercellular calcium waves in biology as a baseline, explain its capabilities, limitations, and some possible deployment scenarios. We also describe various open issues of this novel communication system and elaborate on some research directions for calcium signaling.


Contemporary global energy relations have fundamentally changed, inter alia, as a result of dwindling oil and gas reserves, an increase in demand for energy from emerging economies, the need for global climate change action, the impact of renewable and alternative sources of energy, and, linked to all this, the increased politicisation and securitisation of energy.1 The institutional architecture governing energy relations worldwide has been unable to accommodate these developments. It suffers from fundamental issues of representativeness, a low level of institutionalisation and a lack of compliance enforcement capacity. Today's institutions thus risk becoming unrepresentative and ultimately ineffective unless reform takes place. Subsequently an analysis is made of the most influential international energy fora and institutions with a particular view to identifying their ability to effectively govern global energy relations, the role of emerging and developing countries within the current architecture, and the potential for these fora and institutions to contribute to an inclusive and effective form of global energy governance.


Working memory (WM) is defined as a storage system limited in its capacity and involved in maintaining and manipulating information over short periods of time (Baddeley, 2003). In WM tasks, individuals are required to simultaneously store certain items in memory while updating the contents of their WM. It has been proposed that WM interacts with language abilities and deficits in WM influence language performance (Baddeley, 2003; Carpenter, & Just, 1989; Murray, 2012). Importantly, individuals with aphasia often show WM and short-term memory (STM) deficits, which may negatively affect language symptoms and recovery, and accordingly WM treatment may represent an efficient approach to addressing these individuals' cognitive and linguistic impairments (Kalinyak-Fliszar, Kohen, & Martin, 2011; Murray, 2012; Martin et al., 2012).

WM treatment for individuals with aphasia, however, has not yet been intensively studied (Murray, 2012). Previous results indicate that WM in individuals with aphasia can be improved with training (e.g., Kalinyak-Fliszar et al., 2011; Mayer & Murray, 2002; Vallat et al., 2005). Nonetheless, variable amounts of generalization to language abilities and types of untrained cognitive and linguistic functions responding to the WM treatment have been reported. Accordingly, to examine further the potential of WM training to remediate the cognitive-linguistic symptoms of individuals with aphasia, we administered a treatment with tasks designed not only to target WM skills but also semantic processing, the linguistic ability most compromised in our aphasic participant. The research questions were:

a) Would our participant with chronic aphasia demonstrate improved WM through treatment?

b) Would our participant demonstrate improved language performance given WM tasks that involved verbal stimuli?


Information about past tsunami hazards, such as their recurrence interval and magnitude, is needed for future disaster prediction and mitigation. We examined radiocarbon ages of the surfaces of massive coral boulders cast ashore by past tsunamis in the southern Ryukyu Islands, Japan, where few historical and geological records of past tsunamis are available. We selected only non-eroded Porites coral boulders along the shoreline, because their characteristics make it possible to determine the probable timing of their deposition by tsunamis, and we applied a dating method that uses the cumulative probability distributions of large numbers of radiocarbon measurements of those boulders to determine the timing of past tsunamis. The results demonstrate that the southern Ryukyu Islands have repeatedly experienced tsunami events since at least 2400 yr ago, with a recurrence interval of ∼150–400 yr. The largest Porites tsunami boulder that we studied (long axis, 9 m), which is probably the largest single-colony tsunami boulder in the world, was displaced by the A.D. 1771 Meiwa tsunami. Although the 1771 Meiwa tsunami was likely the largest event in at least the past 700 yr, calculations of current velocity show that all identified tsunamis occurring before 1771 were probably large enough to cause considerable damage to human-built structures and loss of life. This study demonstrates that by reliably dating large numbers of selected coastal boulders it is possible to ascertain the timing, recurrence interval, and magnitude of past tsunamis in a location where few adequate survey sites of sandy tsunami deposits exist.


Even a layman will find this talk by Joseph Stigliz worth noting. The talk took place late last year, meant for fellow researchers, economists, academicians and thinkers held in Scotland on this holistic topic "Creating a Learning Society". In finding a nexus between the thoughts of a Nobel Laur e ate and Islam, such a propagation has well been documented more than fourteen hundred years ago when the Quran states in Surah Al Mujadilah 58:11 that " Allah will exalt those of you who believe, and those who are given knowledge, in high degrees; and Allah is Aware of what you do " . Also, the Hadith states as narrated by Anas bin Mâlik: The Messenger of Allah said "Seeking knowledge is a duty upon every Muslim" (Sunan Ibn e Majah, Book of Sunnah, Hadith no 224, Classified as Sahih By Allama Albani). Indeed, this is a principle to adhere to for all mankind to be in the wealth of knowledge, in order to transform a society.


Logistics has become one of the foremost spheres that affect economic growth. In its reports, the World Bank analyzes the effectiveness of the LPI logistics index of the world, and states that the logistics sector plays an important role in the competitiveness of many countries. The authors, using the example of the CIS countries, analyze the influence of LPI over 10 years, and carry out factor analysis, which considers both the logistics sector (transport, telecommunications) and economic indicators (GDP, trade, industry, etc.). Groups of factors such as industry (general and agricultural), investment and trade: auto transport, freight turnover, communications; railway and air transport, service and mobile network and exports were identified based on the results of the study. These factors are closely interrelated. This interrelation plays an important role in the development of economic growth of countries. It was revealed that the efficiency of logistics affects over not only economic growth, but also the further development of a country in the global world.


Shepperd et al. find that the reported performance of a defect prediction model shares a strong relationship with the group of researchers who construct the models. In this paper, we perform an alternative investigation of Shepperd et al.'s data. We observe that (a) research group shares a strong association with other explanatory variables (i.e., the dataset and metric families that are used to build a model); (b) the strong association among these explanatory variables makes it difficult to discern the impact of the research group on model performance; and (c) after mitigating the impact of this strong association, we find that the research group has a smaller impact than the metric family. These observations lead us to conclude that the relationship between the research group and the performance of a defect prediction model are more likely due to the tendency of researchers to reuse experimental components (e.g., datasets and metrics). We recommend that researchers experiment with a broader selection of datasets and metrics to combat any potential bias in their results.


Introduction: This research investigated the factors affecting implementation of activity based costing (ABC) in operational budgeting of government agencies in Isfahan province. Methods: Being an applied, cross-sectional and descriptive research, this study made use of a questionnaire for gathering data. Governmental agencies that used provincial budget in Isfahan province in 1388 comprised the sample of this study. Results: The results of the study indicate that with the exception of the ability to evaluate performance, the 50 governmental agencies of Isfahan lack other necessary requirements for the implementation of activity-based costing in operational budgeting, such as personnel's capabilities, technical ability, authority (Legal authority, procedural authority, organizational authority), and acceptance (political acceptance, managerial acceptance, incentive compatibility). Conclusion: The conclusion drawn from the current study is that governmental agencies of Isfahan province do not possess the necessary factors for implementation of Activity Based Costing in operational budgeting. Given the fact that new methods of operational budgeting, such as ABC are a must, reforms in budgeting and change of program budgeting into operational budgeting will be difficult if not impossible to perform.


The dynamic nature of the information age necessitates a rapid reaction of the environment and change. It is inevitable that sports clubs, which are very sensitive to the environment and are most affected by it, become the most important candidates of organizational learning in the information management process in today's competitive environment.     Today, successful organizations are steadily creating information, spreading this knowledge across the organization and transforming that knowledge into new technologies, products, services, activities or processes. In terms of Sportive Businesses, competition is becoming more and more widespread, consumer awareness is increasing, people are looking for qualified people in all their lives, not just the goods or services they buy, but they are careful to use different choice. There is a need for sports entrepreneurship to grow in today's intense competitive environment and to expand their knowledge areas, to continual improvement and development, to do organizational learning and knowledge management, and to do learning organization stage so that they can keep themselves up to date and increase their competitiveness. Article visualizations:


Schistosomiasis is caused by different species of parasitic worms, called schistosomes. It is a Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) of profound medical and veterinary importance. As many as 10 different species of schistosomes have been reported to naturally infect cattle; six have received particular attention mainly because of their recognized veterinary significance. The geographical distribution of schistosoma species infecting cattle are mainly determined by the distribution of their respective intermediate host snails, level of infection and the frequency of water contacts. Epidemiological studies conducted on bovine schistosomiasis are suggestive of the endemicity of the disease in Ethiopia particularly in the area with large permanent water bodies and marsh pasture areas of the country. Most infections in endemic areas occur at a subclinical level. However, it has been established that high level of prevalence of subclinical infections cause significant losses due to long-term effects on animal growth and productivity and increased susceptibility to other diseases. Snail hosts favor intensive transmission of Schistosomiasis and the infection rate of the disease are mainly affected by host related factors, anthropogenic/ human factors like poorly designed irrigation projects, management and seasonal factors. Diagnosis is based primarily on the clinico-pathological picture, parasitological techniques and post mortem findings. The most effective way to control cattle schistosomiasis in endemic areas is to prevent contact between the animals and the parasite. Awareness creation about the disease, destruction of the snail intermediate host population at their breeding sites, either by chemical or biological methods may be considered as a recommendation to prevent the occurrence of bovine schistosomiasis. Keywords : Bovine, Epidemiology, Risk factors


The epidemic of cardiovascular disease is nonexistent in cultures which thrive predominantly on whole foods, plantbased nutrition. Is it logical to assume that patients with this disease would be willing to transition to plant-based nutrition and might this transition halt or reverse the disease? The authors have experience beyond 25 years demonstrating the success of plant-based nutrition in arresting and reversing cardiovascular disease. Nevertheless, the medical community is still skeptical of patients' adherence and efficacy of this method. We, therefore, report three case histories of carotid, coronary, and peripheral vascular disease. Each case demonstrates disease progression and the failure of the standard cardiovascular approaches in contrast to the prompt, powerful and enduring resolution of disease with whole foods, plant-based nutrition. These outcomes constitute an additional mandate that patients with cardiovascular disease be offered a plant-based option which is safe, inexpensive, empowering, and has the potential to end cardiovascular disease epidemic.


The article concentrates on the concept of administrative discretion and other issues concerning its proper exercise and control in the Republic of Lithuania. In particular, theoretical and practical aspects relating to the issue of the adequacy of evaluation of administrative discretion in Lithuanian administrative courts are analyzed. A conclusion is made that the main problems relating to the exercise and the judicial control of administrative discretion in Lithuania are mostly conditioned by the lack of consistent and adequate legal base establishing, on the one hand, the main principles, standards upon which it must be exercised in a proper and lawful manner so as to be in conformity with the intentions of the legislature that conferred it, and, on the other hand, the role of administrative courts in the process of examination of whether discretionary powers had been implemented properly. Presently, the Law on Administrative Proceedings of the Republic of Lithuania does not provide for an unambiguous possibility for an administrative court to scrutinize the exercise of administrative discretion beyond the examining of compliance of the act of an administrative body with the authority conferred to it, the main relevant procedural requirements, legally recognized general administrative principles, and, depending on the concrete case, possibly its compliance with other special standards or principles, prescribed by relevant laws applicable in that specific situation. Therefore when a Lithuanian administrative court comes across an issue of the use of administrative discretion it tends to recognize the spheres in which administrative authorities are granted discretionary powers, but judicial evaluation of administrative acts belonging to such areas is restricted. Naturally, there is also no possibility provided for in the Law on Administrative Proceedings to declare an administrative act as unlawful on the sole basis that it had been concluded that the said administrative act had been passed in the result of an improper exercise of discretionary administrative powers. It is concluded in the article that laws regulating administrative judicial proceedings in the Republic of Lithuania must be amended so as to include a possibility for the court to examine the use of discretionary powers in scrutiny, as well as to establish the right of the court to annul such an act on the sole basis that an improper use of administrative discretion had been determined.


— With extensive application, the performance of unimodal biometrics systems has to face a diversity of problems such as signal and background noise, distortion, and environment differences. Therefore, multimodal biometric systems are proposed to solve the above stated problems. This paper introduces a bimodal biometric recognition system based on the extracted features of the human palm print and iris. Palm print biometric is fairly a new evolving technology that is used to identify people by their palm features. The iris is a strong competitor together with face and fingerprints for presence in multimodal recognition systems. In this research, we introduced an algorithm to the combination of the palm and iris-extracted features using a texture-based descriptor, the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). Since the feature sets are non-homogeneous as features of different biometric modalities are used, these features will be concatenated to form a single feature vector. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used as a feature selection technique to reduce the dimensionality of the feature. The proposed algorithm will be applied to the Institute of Technology of Delhi (IITD) database and its performance will be compared with various iris recognition algorithms found in the literature.


In many parts of the country, hydraulic fracturing has brought energy development onto people's doorsteps. Efforts by local governments to employ traditional land use mechanisms to study and mitigate some of the impacts of these latest intrusions have erupted into battles over the scope of statewide agencies' control.Forgotten in this fray are many renewable energy resources. As a general rule, they are not subject to statewide oversight, and consequently renewable energy providers must navigate the myriad of siting and permitting requirements of local jurisdictions. For several years, scholars have urged more statewide renewable energy siting procedures to level the playing field. California is the national leader in renewable energy deployment, yet its statewide energy commission does not have jurisdiction over the siting of photovoltaic solar or wind energy plants. This article explores when statewide siting is beneficial and when it may be contraindicated, making a case for consolidation of all large-scale siting under the purview of California's "superagency," the California Energy Commission.


Traditional performance analysis techniques are performed after a parallel program has completed. In this paper, we describe an online method for continuously monitoring the performance of a parallel program, specifically the fraction of the time spent in various activities as the program executes. Our implementation of both a visualization client and the parallel performance framework that gathers utilization data are described. The data gathering uses a scalable and asynchronous reduction with an appropriate lossless compressed data format. The overheads in the initial system are low, even when run on thousands of processors. The data gathering occurs in an out-of-band communication mechanism, interleaving itself transparently with the execution of the parallel application by leveraging a message-driven runtime system.


The aim of this study, based on 32 French speeches simultaneously interpreted into Dutch at plenary sessions of the European Parliament in late 2008, was to ascertain whether short ear-voice span (EVS) affects the quality of the interpretation as is commonly stated in the literature. The speeches and interpretations were taken from the 'EPIC Ghent' corpus, which is in preparation at Ghent University. Three phenomena were identified as potential effects of a short EVS: syntactic transcodage (maintaining the right-branching French 'noun+de+noun' structure, not using a more natural left-branching structure, in the Dutch interpretation), use of cognates similar in sound to source language forms ('glissement phonetique'), and certain self-repairs (Barik 1973; Gile 1995). Time tags were applied to both the source and target texts, so that EVS could be measured to the nearest second from the onset of a source language item to the onset of the target language equivalent. The hypothesis was that EVS would be shorter in contexts where these three phenomena occur than elsewhere in the subcorpus. This was borne out in only one case, i.e. use of cognates: short (2 secs.) and very short (1 sec.) EVS was significantly more frequent in contexts where cognates occurred than elsewhere. There was no statistically significant frequency difference in the context of transcodage or of the relevant self-repairs.


. Despite the purported role of avian pox ( Avipoxvirus spp.) in the decline of endemic Hawaiian birds, few studies have been conducted on the dynamics of this disease, its impact on free-living avian populations, or its interactions with avian malaria ( Plasmodium relictum ). We conducted four longitudinal studies of 3 – 7 yr in length and used generalized linear models to evaluate cross-sectional prevalence of active pox infection and individuals with healed deformities that had recovered from pox. Our goal was to understand how species, season, elevation, malaria infection, and other biological characteristics influenced pox infection in ʻ Apapane, Hawai ʻ i ʻ Amakihi, ʻ I ʻ iwi, and Japanese White-eye across low-, mid-, and high-elevation forests on the island of Hawai ʻ i. We also used multi-state capture-recapture (longitudinal) models to estimate pox infection rates, recovery rates, and potential pox-related mortality. Pox infection rates were typically highest in low-elevation forests, followed by mid-elevation forests, and lowest in high-elevation forests. We also found seasonal changes in pox prevalence throughout the annual cycle; typically increasing from spring through summer, peaking in fall, and declining in winter. These seasonal changes occurred in low- and mid-elevation forests, but not in high elevations where pox infection was low. Seasonal and elevation patterns of pox infection are like those for avian malaria, strongly implicating mosquito vectors, rather than other bit- ing arthropods or contact transmission, as the primary source of transmitting both diseases. Most native Hawaiian birds recovered from pox infection within 6 months; frequently without permanent lesions. Contrary to our expectations, we found no direct evidence that pox is a substantial mortality factor in any of the three native bird species we studied. Birds with chronic malaria infection were more likely to have both active pox infection and healed pox lesions suggesting a synergistic interaction that may influence the evolution of pox virulence. Because pox infection can be assessed visually, and birds have a high recovery rate, this disease may be a sensitive indicator of the seasonal and annual risk of transmission of malaria in Hawai ʻ i.


Since numerous miRNAs have been shown to be present in circulation, these so-called circulating miRNAs have emerged as potential biomarkers for disease. However, results of qPCR studies on circulating miRNA biomarkers vary greatly and many experiments cannot be reproduced. Missing data in qPCR experiments often occur due to off-target amplification, nonanalyzable qPCR curves and discordance between replicates. The low concentration of most miRNAs leads to most, but not all missing data. Therefore, failure to distinguish between missing data due to a low concentration and missing data due to randomly occurring technical errors partly explains the variation within and between otherwise similar studies. Based on qPCR kinetics, an analysis pipeline was developed to distinguish missing data due to technical errors from missing data due to a low concentration of the miRNA-equivalent cDNA in the PCR reaction. Furthermore, this pipeline incorporates a method to statistically decide whether concentrations from replicates are sufficiently concordant, which improves stability of results and avoids unnecessary data loss. By going through the pipeline's steps, the result of each measurement is categorized as "valid, invalid, or undetectable." Together with a set of imputation rules, the pipeline leads to more robust and reproducible data as was confirmed experimentally. Using two validation approaches, in two cohorts totaling 2214 heart failure patients, we showed that this pipeline increases both the accuracy and precision of qPCR measurements. In conclusion, this statistical data handling pipeline improves the performance of qPCR studies on low-expressed targets such as circulating miRNAs.


The two main principles underlying the use of isentropic maps of potential vorticity to represent dynamical processes in the atmosphere are reviewed, including the extension of those principles to take the lower boundary condition into account. the first is the familiar Lagrangian conservation principle, for potential vorticity (PV) and potential temperature, which holds approximately when advective processes dominate frictional and diabatic ones. the second is the principle of 'invertibility' of the PV distribution, which holds whether or not diabatic and frictional processes are important. the invertibility principle states that if the total mass under each isentropic surface is specified, then a knowledge of the global distribution of PV on each isentropic surface and of potential temperature at the lower boundary (which within certain limitations can be considered to be part of the PV distribution) is sufficient to deduce, diagnostically, all the other dynamical fields, such as winds, temperatures, geopotential heights, static stabilities, and vertical velocities, under a suitable balance condition. the statement that vertical velocities can be deduced is related to the well-known omega equation principle, and depends on having sufficient information about diabatic and frictional processes. Quasi-geostrophic, semigeostrophic, and 'nonlinear normal mode initialization' realizations of the balance condition are discussed. an important constraint on the mass-weighted integral of PV over a material volume and on its possible diabatic and frictional change is noted.

Some basic examples are given, both from operational weather analyses and from idealized theoretical models, to illustrate the insights that can be gained from this approach and to indicate its relation to classical synoptic and air-mass concepts. Included are discussions of (a) the structure, origin and persistence of cutoff cyclones and blocking anticyclones, (b) the physical mechanisms of Rossby wave propagation, baroclinic instability, and barotropic instability, and (c) the spatially and temporally nonuniform way in which such waves and instabilities may become strongly nonlinear, as in an occluding cyclone or in the formation of an upper air shear line. Connections with principles derived from synoptic experience are indicated, such as the 'PVA rule' concerning positive vorticity advection on upper air charts, and the role of disturbances of upper air origin, in combination with low-level warm advection, in triggering latent heat release to produce explosive cyclonic development. In all cases it is found that time sequences of isentropic potential vorticity and surface potential temperature charts—which succinctly summarize the combined effects of vorticity advection, thermal advection, and vertical motion without requiring explicit knowledge of the vertical motion field—lead to a very clear and complete picture of the dynamics. This picture is remarkably simple in many cases of real meteorological interest. It involves, in principle, no sacrifices in quantitative accuracy beyond what is inherent in the concept of balance, as used for instance in the initialization of numerical weather forecasts.


This paper analyses the potential of different possible folded form topologies for generating timber folded surface structures. The main advantage of such structures lies primarily in the realm of ecology and sustainability. By offering an integral way of construction, which fulfils both a supporting as well as a covering function, very lightweight structures are achieved. Also, a greater degree of prefabrication is possible which leads to a reduced overall cost. As these structures consist of a large number of discrete, thin plane elements, proper edgewise connection details are needed in order to ensure an efficient load bearing system. For structures made of wood products this presents a great challenge using the state-of-the art joining techniques. For this reason, the use of timber folded plate structures in civil engineering applications has been very limited. However, recently new technical solutions have been proposed for efficient edgewise joining of thin timber panels. In this paper focus is put on integrated mechanical attachment technique which utilizes digital prefabrication to integrate connectors through panel geometry. Considering the material and the chosen connection detail fabrication as well as assembly related constraints, feasible folded forms for folded surface structures are explored. Their influence on structural performance is studied and different forms are compared by means of Finite Element Analysis. Furthermore, based on the obtained results, form improvements are proposed and observations made on a case study of a built prototype structure are presented.


The purpose of the present study was to investigate the variation of influencing factors of elearning continuance intention for different degrees of participation and to examine moderating effects of degrees of participation on influencing factors of e-learning continuance intention. Participants included 670 learners from an adult professional development website. Data was collected based on questionnaires and analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The Revised Information System Success Model proposed by DeLone and McLean and Innovation Adoption Theory of Rogers were adopted in the present study. A research model including two constructs (curriculum and system as well as innovation adaptation) and eight influencing factors were proposed in the present study based on features of e-learning. The results revealed that the factors in the construct of curriculum and system could be varied for different degrees of learner participation. Among those factors, system quality and online interaction were the factors for the differences between low and high groups of participation. Furthermore, the factors in the construct of innovation adaptation could be varied for different degrees of participation. Among Alteration of Influencing Factors of e-Learning Continued Intention for Different Degrees of Online Participation Chang, Liang, Shu and Chiu This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 34 those factors, compatibility was the factor for the differences between low and high groups of participation. Degree of online participation demonstrated moderating effects on the influences of online interaction, relative advantage and compatibility in e-learning continuance intention.


Since independence, states in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have been dominant players in shaping the regional order. The purpose of this paper is to explore and define challenges to the state and their role in shaping identities in the MENA region, and to evaluate their regional roots. The paper emphasizes two key aspects of nationalism in the region. The first concerns the existence of multiple identities and layers of identity that co-exist in the MENA region and which do not necessarily clash with each other. The second is that nationalism and national identities are not a recent phenomenon in the region. This paper shows that there are similarities as well as differences among the three major sub-regions of MENA in terms of the impact of identities at three levels of analysis.


Perennial agriculture refers to agricultural systems in which perennial crops are a central strategy for producing farm products and ecosystem services. Perennial agriculture offers a range of ecosystem services, including improved soil health and biodiversity, high carbon sequestration rates, agroecosystems better adapted to climate change, improved water quality, and economically viable products. Shifting U.S. agriculture to be perennial-focused will require a range of support structures, including federal policy changes. Federal policymakers should support perennial agriculture by establishing safety nets like those available for annual crops, centering perennial practices in cost-sharing conservation programs, facilitating market opportunities, and investing in perennial agriculture research and development.


Purpose: To determine blue color vision defect in type II diabetics and to compare it with the duration of diabetes.
Methodology: Cross-sectional study was conducted at Abdullah Memorial Hospital on 120 eyes of type-II diabetics in duration of 5 months from August 2018 to January 2019. Sample was collected through non-probability convenient sampling technique. Subjects with minimum 6/12 vision with or without correction were included and age group 35 to 65 years of both genders. Eye of diabetic type 2 without any sign of retinopathy were included. Any individual with congenital color vision defect, retinal, optic nerve or choroidal lesion was excluded. Ishihara plates were used initially to screen out congenital defects. Later, D-15 test was performed for evaluation of color vision for acquired changes due to diabetes. Data was entered using latest version 20 of SPSS and chi-square was used to assess association between color anomaly and type-II diabetes.
Results: In a sample of 120 eyes, 60% of population is Trichromate, 30% of population is tritanomalous, 1.7% population is deuteranomalous and 8.3% population is both deuteranomalous and tritanamolous. Comparison of blue color sensitivity in diabetic patients before onset of retinopathy was evaluated using Chi square with p value .000 at the level of 5% of confidence interval that shows highly significant results. Results conclude that there is strong association between blue color vision defects in diabetics. This defect was observed more with increase in duration of diabetes.
Conclusion: Study concluded that diabetic type 2 patients have impaired color vision specifically triatanomaly. Color vision must be evaluated and assessed in every diabetic patient and should be made an early assessment and screening tool. Timely assessment of color vision may detect tritanomaly earlier in type 3 diabetics.


This paper examines how ASEAN-centered free trade agreements (FTAs) or so-called ASEAN+1 FTAs are correlated among themselves and thus have the potential to be merged into one single commitment toward the establishment of a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The "Coverage Index" defined in this paper highlights similarities and differences among the ASEAN+1 FTAs (i.e., ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services 8th package [AFAS-8], ASEAN-China Free Trade Area 2nd package [ACFTA-2], ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement [AANZFTA], and ASEAN-Korea Free Trade Agreement [AKFTA]). It has been found that the degree of liberalization in terms of the Coverage Index is highest under AFAS-8, which could serve as the focal point for the convergence of the ASEAN+1 FTAs which are positively correlated with AFAS-8. Also, the ASEAN priority integration sectors are making progress (with the exception of transport-related sectors). While the Coverage Index shows rather low levels of commitment by the member countries, a feasible policy suggestion is to further prioritize the priority integration sectors, including transport-related sectors, for a seamless ASEAN Economic Community as well as for a well-connected RCEP.


In Carnegie Mellon University's CyberScout project, we are developing mobile robotic technologies that will extend the sphere of awareness and mobility of small military units while exploring issues of command and control, task decomposition, multi-agent collaboration, efficient perception algorithms, and sensor fusion. This paper describes our work on robotic all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), one of several platforms within CyberScout. We have retrofitted two Polaris ATVs as mobile robotic surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. We describe the computing, sensing, and actuation infrastructure of these platforms, their current capabilities, and future research and applications.