Abstract. Central Asia is a large-scale source of dust transport,
but it also held a prominent changing hydrological system during the
Quaternary. A 223 m long sediment core (GN200) was recovered from the Ejina
Basin (synonymously Gaxun Nur Basin) in NW China to reconstruct the main
modes of water availability in the area during the Quaternary. The core was drilled from the Heihe alluvial fan, one of the world's largest
alluvial fans, which covers a part of the Gobi Desert.
Grain-size distributions supported by endmember modelling analyses,
geochemical–mineralogical compositions (based on XRF and XRD measurements),
and bioindicator data (ostracods, gastropods, pollen and non-pollen
palynomorphs, and n-alkanes with leaf-wax δD) are used to infer the main
transport processes and related environmental changes during the
Pleistocene. Magnetostratigraphy supported by radionuclide dating provides
the age model. Grain-size endmembers indicate that lake, playa (sheetflood),
fluvial, and aeolian dynamics are the major factors influencing
sedimentation in the Ejina Basin. Core GN200 reached the pre-Quaternary
quartz- and plagioclase-rich "Red Clay" formation and reworked material
derived from it in the core bottom. This part is overlain by silt-dominated
sediments between 217 and 110 m core depth, which represent a period of
lacustrine and playa-lacustrine sedimentation that presumably formed within
an endorheic basin. The upper core half between 110 and 0 m is composed of
mainly silty to sandy sediments derived from the Heihe that have
accumulated in a giant sediment fan until modern time. Apart from the
transition from a siltier to a sandier environment with frequent switches
between sediment types upcore, the clay mineral fraction is indicative of
different environments. Mixed-layer clay minerals (chlorite/smectite) are
increased in the basal Red Clay and reworked sediments, smectite is
indicative of lacustrine-playa deposits, and increased chlorite content is
characteristic of the Heihe river deposits. The sediment succession in core
GN200 based on the detrital proxy interpretation demonstrates that
lake-playa sedimentation in the Ejina Basin has been disrupted likely due to
tectonic events in the southern part of the catchment around 1 Ma. At
this time Heihe broke through from the Hexi Corridor through the Heli
Shan ridge into the northern Ejina Basin. This initiated the alluvial fan
progradation into the Ejina Basin. Presently the sediment bulge repels the
diminishing lacustrine environment further north. In this sense, the uplift
of the hinterland served as a tipping element that triggered landscape
transformation in the northern Tibetan foreland (i.e. the Hexi Corridor)
and further on in the adjacent northern intracontinental Ejina Basin. The
onset of alluvial fan formation coincides with increased sedimentation rates
on the Chinese Loess Plateau, suggesting that the Heihe alluvial fan
may have served as a prominent upwind sediment source for it.


Steady three-dimensional convection flows induced by the knot instability of two-dimensional convection rolls are studied numerically for various Prandtl numbers. The Galerkin method is used to obtain the three-dimensional solutions of the basic equations in the case of rigid, infinitely conducting boundaries. These solutions exhibit the typical knot-like structure superimposed onto the basic rolls. The Nusselt number and kinetic energy of motion do not differ much for two- and three-dimensional solutions and the toroidal part of the kinetic energy associated with vertical vorticity always remains a small fraction of the total in the case of the knot solution. The analysis of the steady solutions is complemented by a stability analysis with respect to disturbances that fit the same horizontal periodicity interval as the knot solution. All instabilities correspond to Hopf bifurcations. Some example of finite-amplitude oscillatory knot convection are presented.


The paper examines and contextualises the results of practice-led research into the Great War experience of Irish landowner and soldier, Col. Robert David Perceval-Maxwell (13 Royal Irish Rifles). It makes use of several parallel narratives: the Estate Manager's daily record, the official war history, War Diaries and Perceval-Maxwell's personal correspondence to his wife, mother and children.The research investigates both the differences and the similarities between agricultural estate management and the overseeing of a foreign military campaign. It visually interrogates how twentieth century conflict transformed neutral landscape from a function of cultivation and animal husbandry to that of defence, aggression, military support and infrastructure. I have used photographic methods to (re)present the existing post war terrain and to examine how artistic intervention and production can re-interpret established historical parameters and viewpoints. The gradual, stealthy and surreptitious reconstruction of the theatre of the conflict continues as the land quietly recovers and heals itself from the physical wounds inflicted almost one hundred years ago. The practical and emotional post-war reaction to the conflict was the construction and rapid establishment of numerous war cemeteries to contain and honour the human sacrifice. Here, I make a visual comparison between Perceval-Maxwell's 'home' land, which he passionately cared for, and his militarily adopted land which he dutifully managed as a professional soldier. The photographic study compares the former theatre of war with that of his estate in Ireland and examines real and perceived traces of visual evidence to re-evaluate modern memory of the conflict.


Ignition delay determinations of several fuels with nitric oxidants were made at simulated altitude conditions utilizing a small-scale rocket engine of approximately 50 pounds thrust. Included in the fuels were aniline, hydrazine hydrate, furfuryl alcohol, furfuryl mercaptan, turpentine, and mixtures of triethylamine with mixed xylidines and diallyaniline. Red fuming, white fuming, and anhydrous nitric acids were used with and without additives. A diallylaniline - triethylamine mixture and a red fuming nitric acid analyzing 3.5 percent water and 16 percent NO2 by weight was found to have a wide temperature-pressure ignition range, yielding average delays from 13 milliseconds at 110 degrees F to 55 milliseconds at -95 degrees F regardless of the initial ambient pressure that ranged from sea-level pressure altitude of 94,000 feet.


This study investigated the short and long term impacts of domestic hot and cold water use and associated energy use when replacing conventional faucets in 100 apartments with energy efficient faucets labeled with energy class A-B according to the Swedish energy labeling system. The study included a behavioural study to increase the understanding of the users' perception of the faucets and to investigate the underlying reasons for acceptance of the installed products. The results showed a reduction in domestic hot water use and energy use for domestic hot water of 28 %. No reduction of cold water use could be identified although changes in occupancy of the apartments might have contributed to this result. The savings in hot water use did not diminish over the measurement period. The acceptance of the energy efficient faucets did not increase over time, which was likely due to the lack of feedback on the assumption that the faucets provided the indicated savings. It was also indicated that the perception of the faucets differed between contexts in the home. The acceptance was also found to be linked to factors that could not be isolated from the faucet and its function.


Long standard in the safety-conscious aviation industry, checklists are now being promoted aggressively in the medical literature and popular press.1–3 Almost all U.S. hospitals mandate simple preoperative "time-outs" to minimize the risk of egregious mistakes, such as operating on the wrong site or the wrong patient. Recently, however, many hospitals have started implementing more comprehensive checklist procedures for the operating room, aimed at increasing compliance with practices known to reduce complications and enhancing teamwork. Last year, a large international study supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that such checklists cut surgical morbidity and mortality almost in half. . . .


All business enterprises are mostly acknowledged as an important contributor of poverty eradication and increasing economic growth all over the world. Despite the role of SMEs in building economic development in Kenya, they are facing several challenges among them being choosing the best source of finance for their successful performance. Purposely this study was to determine the effect of sources of finance on financial performance of small and medium sized enterprises in Kenya. The specific objectives were; to determine the effect of loans on financial performance of SMEs in Kenya, to identify the effect of trade credit on financial performance of SMEs in Kenya, to find out the effect of equity financing on financial performance of SMEs in Kenya, to establish the effect of informal finances on financial performance of SMEs in Kenya, to determine the moderating effect of firm size on the effect of sources of finance on financial performance of SMEs in Kenya. The target population of the study was 291,449 licensed SMEs in the selected counties by operational wholesale and retail trade. Simple random techniques were used to collect the sample for the study. 384 respondents made up the sample and were selected from the six selected counties which comprised of Nairobi County, Mombasa County, Machakos County, Makueni County, Kajiado County and Kitui County. Secondary and primary data were useful to provide information in this study which was either quantitative or qualitative. Through a structured questionnaire data was collected and these questionnaires were dropped and later picked as the method gave respondents enough time to think about their responses carefully without interference. Determining of the reliability of the questionnaire was done by using Cronbach Alpha. The study made use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0 to aid in coding, entry and analysis of quantitative data. By using regression and correlation analysis data was analyzed and this helped to test the connection between the independent and dependent variables. Data was analyzed by use of descriptive and inferential statistics and then presented through figures, tables, percentages, arithmetic means, standard deviations and tabulation to show differences in frequencies. The findings revealed that there is a statistical significant relationship between the independent variables which comprised of Loans, Trade credit, Equity financing and Informal financing and the dependent variable Financial performance of the SMEs in Kenya. The study established that the trade credit had the strongest relationship with the financial Performance of SMEs in Kenya, then equity financing, loans and finally informal financing respectively. The study clearly concluded that there is no one source of finance that fully contribute to the financial performance of the SMEs in Kenya. The recommendation by this study was that, the SMEs in Kenya should use the four sources of finance together but should embrace more use of trade credit. Keyterms; Equity financing, Financial performance, SMEs


Objective: Purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to indicate the business and technological foundations of smart tourism, as well as prospects for its further development; (2) to indicate factors and barriers to the development of smart tourism management system in Poland. The paper then discusses a series of challenges currently neglected in the practical smart tourism agendas and the academic literature.
Research Design & Methods: A combination of 3 methods was used: mind mapping, STEEP analysis and semi-structured interview with 48 experts, representing tourism industry new-tech sector. All the interviewees were interviewed in Jan/Feb 2020.
Findings: The article presents the general concept of the smart tourism and smart tourism destination (STD) development and identifies opportunities and threads to the development of smart tourism in Poland.
Contribution & Value Added: The article is an important value from the point of view of tourism industry practitioners (destination managers). The study contributes with valuable insights on how the chances of implementing smart tourism assumptions are perceived in Poland. The final diagram gives the idea of big data availability and usability in tourism and its impact on management efficiency.


This study critically examines the meaning of approaches to learning in a Higher Education setting. In particular it highlights 'how' students leam by examining the way in which they approach their studies.The initial investigations into Approaches to Learning were conducted [in Sweden] by Marton and Saljo [during the sixties and seventies]. In their qualitative, phenomenographic work they attempted to discover the student experience of learning, focussing upon their approach to learning. Two key classifications of student's approach to learning were the outcomes of this research. These were deep level processing approach and a surface level approach. It was claimed that the approach used would affect the level of understanding obtained.This idiographic work was developed further by Entwistle and Ramsden (1983), however they directed the research in a nomothetic direction. The main outcome of their work was the Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI) which according to these authors could quantitatively measure a student's predisposition to selected Approaches to Learning.The research approach adopted for this study does not however follow the nomothetic trend set by Entwistle and Ramsden, instead it attempts to develop the original work by Marton and Saljo by using an idiographic approach. The methodological approach used in this study is existential phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) as this allows an examination of the learner as an individual. Further this approach facilitates a full description of the lived experiences so that a full insight into the lifeworld of the student may be presented. By adopting this alternate approach it is possible to develop the work of Marton and Saljo and enable a critique of the nomothetic approach used by Entwistle and Ramsden.The method used to enter the learner's lifeworld is qualitative interviews with six students studying in the Business School at the University of Derby. Each student was interviewed three times during the course of an academic year. The analytical procedure was guided by the rigours of a phenomenological methodology and a detailed profile of the individual lifeworld was formed. The Noesis-Noema distinction was also used as an analytical tool to summarise the meaning of learning for each of the participants.The findings from this phenomenological study demonstrated that approaches to learning is a complex and unique experience for each learner. The lifeworld descriptions of each student demonstrates this complexity, in particular it illuminates the inter-relationships which contribute to the individual complex nature of approaches to learning. Despite the individualistic nature of approaches to learning there were some issues that were common to the learners sampled. The themes were sociality and the student's approach to learning, learning as a support to wider needs, the meaning of learning and the student approach and what they do when trying to leam. All of these themes played a part in the meaning of approaches to learning for the students sampled.The phenomenological approach enabled an understanding of the complexity and individuality of approaches to learning by extricating the meanings of approaches to learning within the context of their lifeworld. The noema-noesis distinction proved invaluable as a heuristic device, identifying how the students 'approached' the 'object' of their learning. These findings highlighted the inadequacies of the ASI which is unable to elucidate the meanings and context of approaches to learning.This study demonstrates that if we want to understand the meanings and depth of approaches to learning then we must go beyond quantifiable variables, the nomothetic approach and instead focus on the individual's situation in life, the idiographic approach.


Arctic permafrost landscapes are considered to be very sensitive to climatic change as is predicted by many climate simulations covering the next century. Currently, regions of wet tundra in periglacial landscapes are considered to be important sinks of carbon (e.g. peat accumulation, permafrost aggradation) and strong methane sources. Under changing climatic conditions, i.e. climate warming, various environmental parameters in permafrost landscapes will be altered (permafrost temperature, active layer depth, soil moisture, precipitation, etc.), resulting possibly in an enhanced release of greenhouse gasses from this large carbon storage.Remote sensing and spatial data analysis are the most prospective tools to detect and quantify such changes on large scales. The successful interpretation of multispectral- and hyperspectral remote sensing data of spatially complex Arctic permafrost landscapes requires considerable field work for ground truth. This includes the acquisition of data on vegetation, soils, geomorphology, and also spectral surface properties. We collected extensive ground truth data in the Lena Delta, NE Siberia, during the joint Russian-German expedition Lena Delta 2005. The Lena Delta is the largest Arctic Delta and dominated by fluvial-deltaic and periglacial processes. Continuous permafrost with depths between 200-600 m occurs in this region. Generally, the landscapes of the Lena Delta are dominated by typical tundra vegetation. The delta is subdivided into three geomorphological terraces, which distinctly differ in their cryolithological, hydrological and geomorphological properties.Recent floodplains and Holocene sandy deposits form the first terrace, which is assumed to represent the modern active delta. The second terrace, mainly consisting of the large Arga-Muora-Sise Complex in the NW of the delta, is characterized by sandy deposits. Its probably fluvial genesis and Late Pleistocene origin is still under investigation and discussion. The third terrace consists of remnants of a Late Pleistocene accumulation plain of ice- and organic-rich deposits (Ice Complex) underlayed by sandy sequences.The difference of surface properties of these delta main units results in individual spectral characteristics of each terrace and a good spectral separability of these units. Thus, beyond general geomorphological mapping and description of surface properties, we used a portable field spectrometer (ASD FieldSpec Pro FR®) to collect spectral data of a variety of typical periglacial surfaces in the central and western delta.There were two main goals for our research:(1) A general characterization and classification of periglacial surfaces and geomorphological units in the Lena Delta by their spectral properties.(2) Validation and refinement of an existing large-scale Landsat-7-based land cover classification of the Lena Delta by comparison of key regions with classifications based on ground truth data and newly acquired hyperspectral data by the ChrisProba satellite (European Space Agency).During the field work we carried out point and profile measurements with the spectrometer. For each location, soil properties, active layer depths, geomorphological situation, and vegetation properties were recorded. The combination of these various data sets resulted in an excellent ground truthing for the analysis of our Landsat-7 and ChrisProba remote sensing data. Additionally, with this work we acquired a comprehensive dataset on spectral properties of periglacial tundra surfaces in the Lena Delta for the first time. To our knowledge, this dataset is currently unique for the large region of Northeast Siberia. Thus, it provides not only an important basis for remote sensing studies in the Lena Delta, but is also valuable for the comparison of spectral properties of tundra landscapes on a pan-Arctic scale.


In an environment of increasing digitalization and hyperconnectivity among Indian youths, this article examines the communication practices of professorial authority and the cultural tensions negotiated by college instructors as they intervene to manage digital connectivity and distractions in the Indian academe. Findings from interviews with 66 Indian professors illustrate how they communicate their authority using distinctive practices such as discursive norms, dialogic interactions, and verbal and nonverbal punishments. Furthermore, findings highlight how these instructors navigate cultural tensions as they face the dialectics of their status as privileged or disadvantaged and cultural similarities and differences in their management of their students' attention and learning in college classrooms. The results of this study contribute to deepening insights on instructional and intercultural communication as well as broadening understanding of cross-cultural similarities and differences in teacher-student interactions in mediated learning environments.


Purpose In the ASPIRE study of carfilzomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (KRd) versus lenalidomide plus dexamethasone (Rd) in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, progression-free survival was significantly improved in the carfilzomib group (hazard ratio, 0.69; two-sided P < .001). This prespecified analysis reports final overall survival (OS) data and updated safety results. Patients and Methods Adults with relapsed multiple myeloma (one to three prior lines of therapy) were eligible and randomly assigned at a one-to-one ratio to receive KRd or Rd in 28-day cycles until withdrawal of consent, disease progression, or occurrence of unacceptable toxicity. After 18 cycles, all patients received Rd only. Progression-free survival was the primary end point; OS was a key secondary end point. OS was compared between treatment arms using a stratified log-rank test. Results Median OS was 48.3 months (95% CI, 42.4 to 52.8 months) for KRd versus 40.4 months (95% CI, 33.6 to 44.4 months) for Rd (hazard ratio, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.67 to 0.95; one-sided P = .0045). In patients receiving one prior line of therapy, median OS was 11.4 months longer for KRd versus Rd; it was 6.5 months longer for KRd versus Rd among patients receiving ≥ two prior lines of therapy. Rates of treatment discontinuation because of adverse events (AEs) were 19.9% (KRd) and 21.5% (Rd). Grade ≥ 3 AE rates were 87.0% (KRd) and 83.3% (Rd). Selected grade ≥ 3 AEs of interest (grouped terms; KRd v Rd) included acute renal failure (3.8% v 3.3%), cardiac failure (4.3% v 2.1%), ischemic heart disease (3.8% v 2.3%), hypertension (6.4% v 2.3%), hematopoietic thrombocytopenia (20.2% v 14.9%), and peripheral neuropathy (2.8% v 3.1%). Conclusion KRd demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful reduction in the risk of death versus Rd, improving survival by 7.9 months. The KRd efficacy advantage is most pronounced at first relapse.


Robotics and artificial intelligence have seen drastic advancements in technology and algorithms over the last decade. Computer vision algorithms play a crucial role in enabling robots and machines to understand their environment. A fundamental cue in understanding environments is analyzing the motions within the scene, otherwise known as scene flow. Scene flow estimates the 3D velocity of each imaged point captured by a camera. The 3D information of the scene can be acquired by RGB-D cameras, which produce both colour and depth images and have been proven to be useful for solving many computer vision tasks. Scene flow has numerous applications such as motion segmentation, 3D mapping, robotic navigation and obstacle avoidance, gesture recognition, etc. Most state-of-the-art RGB-D scene flow methods are set in a variational framework and formulated as an energy minimization problem. While these methods are able to provide high accuracy, they are computationally expensive and not robust under larger motions in the scene. The main contributions of this research is a method for efficiently estimating approximate RGB-D scene flow. A new approach to scene flow estimation has been introduced based on matching 3D points from one frame to the next in a hierarchical fashion. One main observation that is used is that most scene motions in everyday life consist of rigid motions. As such, large parts of the scene will follow the same motion. The new method takes advantage of this fact by attempting to group the 3D data in each frame according to like-motions using concepts from spectral clustering. A simple coarse-to-fine voxelization scheme is used to provide fast estimates of motion and accommodate for larger motions. This is a much more tractable approach than existing methods and does not depend on convergence of some defined objective function in an optimization framework. By assuming the scene is composed of rigidly moving parts, non-rigid motions are not accurately estimated and hence the method is an approximate scene flow estimation. Still, quickly determining approximate motions in a scene is tremendously useful for any computer vision tasks that benefit from motion cues. Evaluation is performed on a custom RGB-D dataset because existing RGB-D scene flow datasets presented to date are mostly based on qualitative evaluation. The dataset consists of real scenes that demonstrates realistic scene flow. Experimental results show that the presented method can provide reliable scene flow estimates at significantly faster runtime speed and can handle larger motions better than current methods.


In this thesis I deconstruct key concepts, terminologies, and rhetorical conventions employed in white South African writing on modern black art. I trace the genealogy of the dominant discursive practices of the apartheid era to the cultural discourses of the colonial era, which in turn had their origins in the Enlightenment. This genealogical tracing aims to demonstrate that South African art writing of the 20th century partook of a tradition of Western writing that was primarily intent upon producing the Western subject as a rational Enlightenment agent via the debased objectification of the colonial Other. In the process of the deconstruction, I identify the most significant discursive shifts that occurred from the 1930's, when the first publications emerged, to the 1990's, when South Africa's new political dispensation opened up a different cultural landscape.


This study investigated the impact of catalase (Cat) overexpression in renal proximal tubule cells (RPTCs) on nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor 2 (Nrf2) stimulation of angiotensinogen (Agt) gene expression and the development of hypertension and renal injury in diabetic Akita transgenic mice. Additionally, adult male mice were treated with the Nrf2 activator oltipraz with or without the inhibitor trigonelline. Rat RPTCs, stably transfected with plasmid containing either rat Agt or Nrf2 gene promoter, were also studied. Cat overexpression normalized systolic BP, attenuated renal injury, and inhibited RPTC Nrf2, Agt, and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) gene expression in Akita Cat transgenic mice compared with Akita mice. In vitro, high glucose level, hydrogen peroxide, and oltipraz stimulated Nrf2 and Agt gene expression; these changes were blocked by trigonelline, small interfering RNAs of Nrf2, antioxidants, or pharmacological inhibitors of nuclear factor-κB and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase. The deletion of Nrf2-responsive elements in the rat Agt gene promoter abolished the stimulatory effect of oltipraz. Oltipraz administration also augmented Agt, HO-1, and Nrf2 gene expression in mouse RPTCs and was reversed by trigonelline. These data identify a novel mechanism, Nrf2-mediated stimulation of intrarenal Agt gene expression and activation of the renin-angiotensin system, by which hyperglycemia induces hypertension and renal injury in diabetic mice.


Abstract. A large portion of terrestrially derived carbon outgasses as carbon dioxide
(CO 2) from streams and rivers to the atmosphere. Particularly, the
amount of CO 2 outgassing from small headwater streams
is highly uncertain. Conservative estimates suggest that they contribute
36 % (i.e. 0.93 petagrams (Pg) C yr −1) of total CO 2 outgassing
from all fluvial ecosystems on the globe. In this study, stream p CO 2 ,
dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), and δ13 C DIC data
were used to determine CO 2 outgassing from an acidic headwater stream in
the Uhliřska catchment (Czech Republic). This stream drains a
catchment with silicate bedrock. The applied stable isotope model is based on
the principle that the 13 C  ∕ 12 C ratio of its sources and the
intensity of CO 2 outgassing control the isotope ratio of DIC in stream
water. It avoids the use of the gas transfer velocity parameter ( k ), which
is highly variable and mostly difficult to constrain. Model results indicate
that CO 2 outgassing contributed more than 80 % to the annual stream
inorganic carbon loss in the Uhliřska catchment. This translated
to a CO 2 outgassing rate from the stream of 34.9 kg
C m −2  yr −1 when normalised to the stream surface area. Large
temporal variations with maximum values shortly before spring snowmelt and in
summer emphasise the need for investigations at higher temporal resolution.
We improved the model uncertainty by incorporating groundwater data to better
constrain the isotope compositions of initial DIC. Due to the large global
abundance of acidic, humic-rich headwaters, we underline the importance of
this integral approach for global applications.


Introduction, aims and objectives
When this project began in 1996 the UK supply of organic vegetables, from 2400 hectares, was insufficient to meet the growing market and the majority of organic vegetables were imported. It was a policy objective to enable UK farmers to meet the demands of this growing market. A farmer converting to organic agriculture is faced with a range of specific agronomic and economic challenges different from those of conventional agriculture and of established organic systems and a lack of knowledge about these challenges was recognised as a major barrier for individual farmers considering conversion. The overall aim of this project was therefore to provide information on the agronomic and economic performance of farming systems which included field vegetables as part of their rotations during the conversion period and in the years immediately afterwards. The project was commissioned in 1996 as Project OF0126T, later continued as OF0191; this report describes the findings from both projects. The projects were led by HDRA with HRI (now Warwick HRI), EFRC (Elm Farm Research Centre), and the Institute of Rural Sciences (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) as subcontractors.

The main objectives were:
1. To convert 12 ha (Hunts Mill) of the farm at HRI Wellesbourne to an organic system, with a rotation including field vegetables and arable crops.
2. To assess agronomic and economic performance of the crops grown, soils, weeds, pest and diseases, during conversion and for the first target rotation at Hunts Mill.
3. To assess the overall agronomic and financial performance during the first full cycle of the rotations at Hunts Mill, comparing scenarios where the initial fertility building phase was 29 months, 17 or 7 months.
4. To assess the agronomic and economic performance during conversion at 10 commercial reference farms, representing contrasting scenarios of organic vegetable production.
5. To interpret and evaluate the data and to produce information appropriate to aid farmers who are undergoing, or who are considering undergoing conversion to organic systems, and to aid future policy making on related farming issues.

The reference farms were selected to represent three different scenarios of conversion (from conventional arable, from conventional intensive vegetable and from conventional mixed farms with livestock). The farms represented a range of sizes and were located in all the principle vegetable growing areas of England. The assessment period covered the two-year conversion period itself plus at least the first three years of certified organic production. The basic experimental approach was to use all the farms as case studies for monitoring and documenting the performance of the systems undergoing conversion. Comparisons were made between Hunts Mill and the reference farms and also between the reference farms representing the same vegetable production scenario and between the three different scenarios.

See main document for a summary of findings.
More specific key agronomic and economic findings can also be found in the main report.

Conclusions
The project has demonstrated that the process of conversion from conventional agriculture to organic vegetables production is often quite complex involving a significant number of innovations and restructuring of the farm systems, including changes in production, the introduction of new enterprises and marketing methods. These have resulted in a number of physical, financial and management changes both during the transition process and on the final organic farm businesses. The project has demonstrated that large-scale organic vegetable production is technically feasible, with soil fertility, weeds and pest and disease problems overcome without too much difficulty. The biggest challenges have been marketing, managing labour and making it financially viable at the farm level. Organic Farming Scheme payments have only made small contributions to the 'cost of conversion'. Conversions, especially on the larger farms, would seem to be preferable over a 5 to 10 year period, allowing time to make the necessary learning and adjustments.

Further research
Monitoring at Hunts Mill has been extended until 2006 as part of a new project: Organic field vegetable production – baseline monitoring of systems with different fertility building strategies (OF 0332). Monitoring of some of the reference farms has continued as part of the project The Sustainable Vegetable Systems Network (OF 0340). This project monitors agronomy and economics and aims to assist in the development of established organic vegetable systems. Economic conditions change and the impact of the new CAP reforms beginning in 2005 would merit further research. The models developed within this project could form the basis for this work.


Current excavations in the Fag el-Gamous necropolis have raised several questions about the ethnic composition of the mummies buried there. Of particular significance is the potential Jewish presence in the cemetery, as this could help explain the early changes in burial practices witnessed at Fag el-Gamous and often posited to be related to the Christianization of the area. However, evidence of a Jewish presence in the Fayum is difficult to pinpoint conclusively due to the integration of Jewish customs with surrounding cultures. Despite this, a sizeable Jewish population within the Fayum can be demonstrated by extrapolating from known societal integration patterns of the period and also by correlating onomastic evidence and recorded ethnicities in day to day proceedings with the mummies buried at Fag el-Gamous. This conclusion will need to be substantiated once other analyses of the Fag el-Gamous mummies become available. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v04i2_innes


New insight into wall ultrastructure has been gained from examination of 130 species of porcelaneous foraminifera. New terms are introduced to describe the porcelaneous wall, including: "porcelain" for the main body of the wall that is comprised of a matrix of randomly oriented needle-shaped crystals; "intrados" for the inner mineralised surface; and "extrados" for the outer mineralised surface. The main test wall may also contain aligned needle-shaped crystals, which form an "infraskeletal framework" where parallel to the test wall, and "infraskeletal windows" where perpendicular to the wall surface. The intrados is constructed of needle-shaped crystals oriented randomly on a plane parallel to the inner surface of the chamber. Its structure is relatively consistent across all studied species and does not change during ontogeny. The porcelain is the fundamental part of the wall that determines appearance (e.g., carinate, costate, striate and pitted ornament). It is primarily constructed of a matrix of randomly oriented needle-shaped crystals, which in some species have embedded sediment particles, and in Pseudohauerina is perforated by a canaliculate network. Within the porcelain in soritid and peneroplid taxa, an infraskeletal framework occurs in chamber and chamberlet walls that forms the basis of the chamber around which the randomly-oriented crystals of the porcelain are placed. In Alveolinella and Borelis the porcelain of lateral chamber walls contains crystals aligned perpendicular to the chambers that form infraskeletal windows, which likely assist in light transmission into the test. The extrados in the studied taxa is constructed of needle-, rod- or plate-shaped crystals that may be aligned or non-aligned. At the genus level there is typically consistency in the structure of the extrados, however in Quinqueloculina and Triloculina variation between species is observed. Examination of wall ultrastructure is a useful character to help understand attempts to split these genera, and more broadly to better understand the phylogenetic links between taxa.


In this paper, the crashworthiness of passenger vehicles in South Australia is characterised. For this purpose, crashworthiness is defined as the rate of serious and fatal crashes per crash of any severity. The relationship between this rate and the ages of passenger vehicles is used to characterise and compare the crashworthiness of the South Australian registered passenger vehicle fleet and the fleets of other Australian jurisdictions. The mean age of passenger vehicles registered in South Australia is around 11.2 years compared with 9.9 years for the entire Australian registered passenger vehicle fleet and 9.3 years for registered passenger vehicles of New South Wales. Based on these mean vehicle ages, tow-away crashes in South Australia have a 3% over-representation of seriously injured or killed drivers compared with the national average (assuming a crashworthiness decline of 2.53% per year of vehicle age). Analysis of only those vehicles that crash, confirm these estimates and suggest an over-representation of 3.5%. Young drivers appear to be doubly disadvantaged in that they have a higher rate of serious and fatal crashes for a given vehicle age, and they tend to crash vehicles that are much older than the vehicles crashed by drivers over 25 years of age. Despite this, the benefits of fleet renewal on average age-related crashworthiness are relatively modest and it may be more fruitful to encourage the safest new car fleet now so that road safety benefits can be realised in 10-15 years time. In the mean time, removal of impediments to younger drivers who would otherwise drive newer and safer cars could be considered. Keywords: Vehicle Crashworthiness, Registered Fleet, Vehicle Age, South Australia, Modelling


Our contribution in this paper is threefold. First, we survey the empirical literature on consumption smoothing mechanisms of regional economic shocks. Second, building on the work of Asdrubali et al. (1996), we present evidence on the role played by various smoothing mechanisms for specific economic shocks affecting Canadian provinces. Third, we assess whether smoothing mechanisms play a role at the North American level in facilitating the adjustment to shocks affecting Canada and the United States specifically. Our main conclusion is that there appears to be substantially more smoothing of specific provincial shocks across Canadian provinces than there is smoothing of specific shocks affecting the two countries. From this perspective, and in the absence of major structural changes, a Canada–U.S. monetary union would pose several challenges. We also conclude that the "quantity anomaly," i.e., the empirical finding that consumption tends to be less correlated than output across countries and across U.S. states, is not present in Canadian provincial data.


In order to reach their large audiences, today's Internet publishers primarily use content distribution networks (CDNs) to deliver content. Yet the architectures of the prevalent commercial systems are tightly bound to centralized control, static deployments, and trusted infrastructure, inherently limiting their scope and scale to ensure cost recovery.
To move beyond such shortcomings, this thesis contributes a number of techniques that realize cooperative content distribution. By federating large numbers of unreliable or untrusted hosts, we can satisfy the demand for content by leveraging all available resources. We propose novel algorithms and architectures for three central mechanisms of CDNs: content discovery (where are nearby copies of the client's desired resource?), server selection (which node should a client use?), and secure content transmission (how should a client download content efficiently and securely from its multiple potential sources?).
These mechanisms have been implemented, deployed, and tested in production systems that have provided open content distribution services for more than three years. Every day, these systems answer tens of millions of client requests, serving terabytes of data to more than a million people.
This thesis presents five systems related to content distribution. First, Coral provides a distributed key-value index that enables content lookups to occur efficiently and returns references to nearby cached objects whenever possible, while still preventing any load imbalances from forming. Second, CoralCDN demonstrates how to construct a self-organizing CDN for web content out of unreliable nodes, providing robust behavior in the face of failures. Third, OASIS provides a general-purpose, flexible anycast infrastructure, with which clients can locate nearby or unloaded instances of participating distributed systems. Fourth, as a more clean-slate design that can leverage untrusted participants, Shark offers a distributed file system that supports secure block-based file discovery and distribution. Finally, our authentication code protocol enables the integrity verification of large files on-the-fly when using erasure codes for efficient data dissemination.
Taken together, this thesis provides a novel set of tools for building highly-scalable, efficient, and secure content distribution systems. By enabling the automated replication of data based on its popularity, we can make desired content available and accessible to everybody. And in effect, democratize content distribution.


Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss, and alopecia areata is characterized by patchy hair loss, which includes the scalp and other areas of the head, including eyelashes, beard and entire body hair, which may also be affected. A patient with alopecia areata notes the sudden appearance of a circular patch of hair loss, which may lead to baldness of the entire scalp and is called (Alopecia areata totalis) or loss of full body hair called (Alopecia areata universals).(Finner,2011) The etiopathogenesis of the disease is still unclear, but the role of autoimmunity is strongly suggested. AA is commonly associated with Thyroid disorders; the most frequent among them is autoimmune thyroid disorders. (Kyriakis et al.,2009), (Seyrafi et al., 2005) The aim of our study To determine whether Alopecia Areata (AA) is associated with some hormone such as : Thyroid hormones ( T3, T4 and TSH ). The study included 72 cases with age ranging from (10-50 years) ; (Group A) 42 patients with AA (27 male and 15 female) and (Group B) 30 healthy volunteers ( 7 male and 23 female ) were selected as a control group. All samples were obtained from Dermatology outpatient clinic, Al-Ramadi Hospital, AlAnbar Governorate, Iraq. during the period from December 2019 to march 2020. Every case and control were subjected to history taking, dermatological examination and complete general Venous blood samples were taken from controls and patients after taking their agreement for measurement of some hormones such ; Thyroid Hormones (TSH, T3, T4). We found statistically significant differences between patients and controls regarding Thyroid Hormones levels of TSH, T3 and T4.


Abstract The concern of Partition narratives has generally been with displacement, loss of identity, alienation, gender and violence, as well as the rehabilitation of refugees. What is elided in them is the tragedy of those villagers who lost their land and livelihood in order to make space for the thousands of refugees who were resettled in "refugee" colonies. This article explores a key aspect of the impact of the Partition of India; namely, the rapid transformation of rural spaces in the periphery of the capital city of Delhi, which saw a massive influx and resettlement of refugees. It does this by looking at the novels of a lesser-known Hindi novelist, Jagdish Chandra, to foreground the alienation and uprooting of members of rural communities from their traditional moorings.


The process of clustering a given set of objects involves identifying hidden relations and underlying indicative patterns within data, and utilizing this information as a source of comparison for the objects, organizing them into meaningful groups. This thesis attempts to identify such of relations and patterns in order to cluster a set of Norwegian motion related verbs. The clustering process employed by this thesis utilizes data provided by a set of native Norwegian speakers, representing the ways in which each subject clustered the verbs, based on subjective measure of similarity. This information is employed by both a conventional clustering method, as well as an adaptation of a feature-drive method. As a source of similarity between the verbs, the criteria by which the human subjects discriminated the verbs, as well as the importance put on these criteria, are attempted identified and utilized as a part of the clustering process. Similarities between the verbs are also attempted visualized using multidimensional scaling. The clustering approached is evaluated by assessing how well the produced clusters represent the similarity between the verbs, based on the data provided by the human subjects.


Genetic marker systems have improved dramatically in the past 10 yr. Each new system needs to be evaluated for its distribution of markers on genetic linkage maps to validate its use for genetic analysis. The resulting maps are also useful for establishing the genetic positions of genes affecting important phenotypes. We have constructed a high density map in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] using a 300 RIL (recombinant inbred line) population from BSR-101 x PI437.654 by first constructing an RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphism) scaffold map based on the entire population. The RFLP anchored map was then further populated with AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism) markers based on only a 42 RIL subset. We report here an 840 marker map consisting of 165 RFLP, 25 RAPD (random amplified polymorphic DNA), and 650 AFLP markers spread over 28 linkage groups representing 3441 cM distance. Although clustering of AFLP markers occurred, markers were mapped to every linkage group and were well distributed relative to other marker systems. The AFLP marker system appears to be a useful approach for generating high density genetic maps in soybean.


Kingsport, Tennessee, was the first thoroughly diversified, professionally planned, and privately financed city in twentieth-century America. The advent of this so-called model city, a glittering new industrial jewel in the green mountains, offered area residents an alternative to rural life and staid small-town existence as the new century dawned. Neither an Appalachian hamlet nor a company town, Kingsport developed as a self-proclaimed "All-American City."Produced by the marriage of New South philosophy and Progressivism, born of a passing historical moment when capitalists turned their attention to Southern Appalachia, and nurtured by the Protestant work ethic, Kingsport today reflects its heritage. From flaunting its patriotism with grandiose Fourth of July parades to being defensive about its pollution, the city exhibits values almost stereotypically those of middle-class America. But loss of vision and a decline in the quality of leadership plague contemporary Kingsport, and, like other American industrial strongholds, it is buffeted by the winds of the high-tech revolution and the changing world economy.This first full-length biography of Kingsport challenges interpretations of regional history that promote the colonial and poverty models. Margaret Ripley Wolfe brings to it the advantage of an insider's perspective. In considering the special roles of capital, labor, industry, and government over seven decades, she neither patronizes Appalachian workers nor treats developers and industrialists as villains. Her book will interest scholars of urbanization, city planning, landscape architecture, and industrialization, as well as local history enthusiasts.


Introduction Recent interest has focussed on potential regulatory roles for vitamin D in the development and course of asthma. Aim We assessed the prevalence and characteristics of patients with vitamin D deficiency, during a calendar year, among our Regional Difficult Asthma Clinic population. Methods Retrospective study was undertaken to assess vitamin D deficiency prevalence plus characterisation of "deficient" compared to "normal" vitamin D level patients. Characterisation included demographic factors, associated comorbidities, asthma severity (BTS steps), and spirometry during that 12 month period. Comorbidities recorded included BodyMass Index (BMI), smoking status, atopic status, rhinitis, food allergy, salicylate sensitivity, sulphite sensitivity, Gastro-oesophageal Reflux disease (GORD), dysfunctional breathing, and psychological comorbidity. Results Serum vitamin D3 assessment was available for 85.4% (158/185) patients during the previous 12 months. First measured vitamin D3 levels were used for primary analysis showing a mean clinic vitamin D3 level of 45.1nmol/L. Normal vitamin D3 levels (>72nmol/L) occurred in 18.9%, 14.6% had insufficient levels (52–72nmol/L) and 65.5% had deficient levels (<52nmol/L). Severe deficiency (<20nmol/L) occurred in 14.6%. Vitamin D deficiency showed highest prevalence during Winter, Autumn and Spring(83–79%) and lowest level in Summer (53.3%). Two thirds of patients received a course of vitamin D replacement therapy during the year. Vitamin D deficient showed no difference compared to normal vitamin D3 status patients in atopic status, spirometry, inhaled medication usage, maintenance oral steroid use, Omalizumab use and asthma hospitalisations. No significant difference was observed between the two groups in respect to comorbidities like GORD, rhinitis, COPD, bronchiectasis, food allergy and dysfunctional breathing. However, vitamin D deficient subjects had significantly higher BMI (31.6 v 26.4 kg/m2; p=0.007), obesity (BMI>30) (55.3% v 13%; p<0.001) and psychological comorbidity (26.7% v 3.6%; p =0.009). Conclusion Vitamin D deficiency is highly prevalent in the Difficult Asthma group. The clinical relevance of this finding remains unclear. While vitamin D deficient patients did not show greater asthma treatment needs or healthcare use that might have reflected influence of receiving high dose vitamin D replacement. Patients with vitamin D deficiency showed significantly greater obesity and psychological comorbidity. The association of vitamin D and Difficult Asthma merits further attention.


Instrumentation was developed to monitor the volatile products oflipid peroxidation in near-realtime. This was accomplished using a miniature incubator with a cryofocusing inlet and gas chromatography with a timeof-flight mass spectrometer. The headspace above myoglobininduced lipid peroxidation of arachadonic acid in phosphatidyl choline was sampled in order to quantitate hexanal, a known marker of lipid peroxidation. With an analysis time of less than four minutes, the rapid preconcentration of volatile products allowed for low detection limits in a short length of time. Reactions were sampled repetitively, allowing near-real-time monitoring of the reaction. When phospholipid samples contained no basal levels of hexanal, the production of hexanal was linear for approximately 40 minutes, and reached concentrations of approximately 1.5 ppm. For phospholipids samples which did contain basal levels of hexanal, the production was linear for approximately 25 minutes, and reached concentrations of around 5 ppm. The presence or absence of hexanal in the lipid sample prior to the addition of myoglobin was therefore essential in determining the linearity, initial rate, and extent of hexanal production during the reaction. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis Department Chemistry


Publisher's text about this book:

'Within contemporary visual art and photography there has for a number of years been a growing interest in history. And that has been while history is being presented as 'the' history with decreasing certainty, since social upheavals have, over the course of recent decades, led to a different view of 'the' history.

The mass media have assumed the role of historiographers on a massive scale. The flip-side of this development is that visual culture is gradually losing the ability to convey history in all its variety. The mediatization and globalization of our culture is therefore leading to the dulling of our collective historical awareness.

In reaction to this, contemporary artists are asking increasingly critical questions about the way in which the representation of the past is constructed. The attention paid to history among visual artists, photographers, filmmakers and other image producers may indeed be nothing new, but Questioning History focuses on recent developments that are essentially different in their handling of images.

By proceeding from an inventory of artists' mentalities, methodologies and interests, this collection of essays will serve as an impulse for further analysis and interpretation of the theme and its modern-day relevance. This gives this publication the potential to develop into a statement, description and benchmark that attracts international attention.'


This thesis is a qualitative case study that explores the experiences of unaccompanied Afghan asylum seeking minors in Greece – a largely neglected area empirically, in migration-related social science research – despite the fact that migration has been an issue of mounting concern recently. The study sets out to bridge this gap hence, to provide insights of the paths of young people as individuals in their own right, and of the dynamics and processes of their forced migrations. The research contributes to contemporary debates about migration and childhood. The thesis takes a broader approach that highlights the connections across borders and covers the multiple facets of unaccompanied minors' experiences and feelings; pre-exile, during journeys, and on arrival in Greece. The future plans and motivations of the young respondents are also discussed. Information in relation to young respondent's experiences, emotions and thoughts was collected in a series of in-depth interviews, focus groups and participatory activities. Data was also gathered by professionals and public figures with the aim to identify how these young people are treated and perceived inside and outside of the reception centres in Greece. The data indicates that these young respondents are deeply and negatively affected by experiences of loss, separation, discrimination, abuse, and long-lasting hardships to be found throughout their histories of movement. Their accounts are renegotiated tales where notions of belonging and identity are shaped along the way, and the boundaries drawn around childhood and adulthood are often fragile and fluid. The events of young people's movements are reported as having been poignant, rendering them in a continuous, transitional state of existence. This stage 'in between', it is argued to be intricately entangled with the prolonged political insecurity which in some instances, extents to the condition of statelessness. The analysis of young respondents' experiences revealed an overt gap between entitlements which are theoretically attributed to unaccompanied minors, regarding their social, political and legal rights – irrespective of their legal status – and pragmatic barriers to be found on the ground; on the streets, at borders, in detention, in police stations, and in reception centres, these young people are imperilled to the process of dehumanization. This process is understood to be a product of social and political violence implicated in local and transnational contexts. A combination of structural factors and practices has been found to be compounded by inhuman actions such as; the commodification process, the classification process, poverty, stigmatization, institutional racism and the ambiguity of political status. The findings further indicated that young respondents had mixed and distinct feelings of their experiences and responded to the process of dehumanization in very different ways; some developed robust resilient mechanisms along the way and formed important social networks for their survival and others felt powerless, and incapable mentally to lead their lives. The data indicated that the type of care and support varied significantly among the reception centres. There was a spectrum of attitudes towards the presence of the young respondents, showing sympathy and welcoming responses but also prejudice, stereotypes and xenophobia. These appeared at professional, government and public levels. Implications are discussed in relation to the punitive policies and practices that demoralise the rights and needs of the young people, hence potential strategies are suggested for reforming aspects of the child welfare/asylum system. The thesis concludes that these young respondents have a uniquely strong claim to social and political rights that will give them back their lost 'ordinariness'. vi | Lost in Transition? Lived experiences of unaccompanied Afghan minors in Greece


"General and Oral Pathology for the Dental Hygienist, 2nd Edition", is a comprehensive study of the general concepts of pathophysiology as they relate to systemic and oral conditions. The only dental hygiene book on the market to address both oral and general pathology, "General and Oral Pathology for the Dental Hygienist" is the ideal solution for programs that cover oral and general pathology in one course, and provides an easily accessible review of general pathology for programs that cover oral pathology separately. The Oral Pathology section is uniquely organized by distinct recognizable characteristics of lesions (for example, "white" lesions or "radiolucent" lesions), a uniquely practical and highly effective way of presenting this information since dental hygienists have to evaluate pathology based on what they see. This allows the student to easily identify what he or she might be looking at and to differentiate between lesions with similar appearances.


Believing that drugs and psychoanalysis were not always the best course of treatment for a variety of mental illnesses, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer began an extensive program of research into the causes and treatment of mental illness and in 1973 opened the Brain Bio Centre in Princeton, New Jersey. Here, with a team of scientists, he found that many psychological problems can be traced to biochemical imbalances in the body. With these patients, he achieved unprecedented success in treating a wide range of mental problems by adjusting diet and providing specific nutritional supplements for those conditions where deficiencies exist. This book documents his approach. Each year, thousands of people are diagnosed as schizophrenic; many more suffer from depression, anxiety, and phobias. Dr. Pfeiffer's methods of treatment presented in NUTRITION AND MENTAL ILLNESS are a valuable adjunct to traditional therapies and can bring hope of real wellness to many of those who suffer.a


Negative physiological impacts induced by exposure to acidified seawater might sensitize marine organisms to future environmental stressors, such as disease outbreak. The goal of this study was to evaluate if ocean acidification (OA) could reduce the resistance capability of the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) to Vibrio splendidus challenge from an energy metabolism perspective. In this study, the Pacific oyster was exposed to OA (pH 7.6) for 28 days and then challenged by V. splendidus for another 72 h. Antioxidative responses, lipid peroxidation, metabolic (energy sensors, aerobic metabolism, and anaerobic metabolism) gene expression, glycolytic enzyme activity, and the content of energy reserves (glycogen and protein) were investigated to evaluate the environmental risk of pathogen infection under the condition of OA. Our results demonstrated that following the exposure to seawater acidification, oysters exhibited an energy modulation with slight inhibition of aerobic energy metabolism, stimulation of anaerobic metabolism, and increased glycolytic enzyme activity. However, the energy modulation ability and antioxidative regulation of oysters exposed to seawater acidification may be overwhelmed by a subsequent pathogen challenge, resulting in increased oxidative damage, decreased aerobic metabolism, stimulated anaerobic metabolism, and decreased energy reserves. Overall, although anaerobic metabolism was initiated to partially compensate for inhibited aerobic energy metabolism, increased oxidative damage combined with depleted energy reserves suggested that oysters were in an unsustainable bioenergetic state and were thereby incapable of supporting long-term population viability under conditions of seawater acidification and a pathogen challenge from V. splendidus.


We introduce salad, an open source toolbox that provides a unified implementation of state-of-the-art methods for transfer learning, semi-supervised learning and domain adaptation. In the first release, we provide a framework for reproducing, extending and combining research results of the past years, including model architectures, loss functions and training algorithms. The toolbox along with first benchmark results and further resources is accessible at domainadaptation.org.


Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is a positive-sense RNA virus of the family Picornaviridae that comprises of seven serotypes and is distinguished by a high contagiosity with the ability of rapid spread. Strategies for abatement and control are based on an early detection, quick initiation of retaliatory actions and mass vaccinations. Therefore, aim of the study was the development of a fast and easy method for genome sequencing as well as an investigation into the causes, why some cell lines that are mainly used for vaccine production, are resistant towards FMDV infection. Finally, adaptive sequence changes in different cell culture systems and associated effects on particle stability and immunogenicity were examined.
In case of an outbreak it is of major importance to detect and rapidly characterize the circulating virus isolate to choose an appropriate vaccine to minimize the viral spread. In addition, comprehensive genome analysis of the outbreak strain provides information about the origin of the virus and allows molecular epidemiology. A universal primer set, covering most parts of the open reading frame of the viral genome, was developed to perform quick sequence analyses, independently of the viral serotype (Paper I). Especially in endemic regions, vaccination of susceptible animal species is the main action to combat foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in an acute outbreak situation as well as a preventive measure. Reasons, why some baby hamster kidney (BHK) cell lines are resistant towards an infection with FMDV, were examined in a second study that narrowed down the cause for this phenomenon to an impaired attachment of the virus to the cell surface. Furthermore, an alternative approach could be developed to successfully adapt the virus to the resistant vaccine-production cell line by using a FMDV-sensitive "wet-nurse" cell line (Paper II). Adaptive changes in the capsid-coding region of the viral genome caused through cultivation and passaging of the virus in different BHK cell systems were the topics of the third study. It was shown that capsid alterations are rather serotype-specific and dependent on the cell line used than influenced by the cell media. Viral titers and neutralization profiles of the adapted isolates were not affected compared to the original viruses (Paper III).
Overall, this work expanded our knowledge on the control and eradication of FMD and will support the global effort to combat the disease.


A survey of published and unpublished information was used to compile a list of insect parasitoids recorded emerging from Nezara viridula (L.) in the field worldwide. Fifty-seven species among two families of Diptera and five families of Hymenoptera are recorded; 41 are egg parasitoids. No hyperparasitoids are known. Most species are not closely associated with N. viridula , although some are well adapted and the status of others is unclear. Six species of Nearctic and Neotropical Tachinidae are well adapted to adult N. viridula and could become established in new areas; they also attack large nymphs. There are no effective parasitoids specific to nymphs. The scelionid Trissolcus basalis (Wollaston), probably of Old World origin, is the most widespread egg parasitoid and now occurs with N. viridula in the New World, coastal Africa, southern Europe, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, and some Pacific islands. Unique complexes of egg parasitoids occur in parts of Africa and eastern Asia. Based on the distribution of the genus Nezara and its species' color polymorphs and egg parasitoid complexes, N. viridula is considered to be of Ethiopian origin. African and Asian egg parasitoids in the genera Trissolcus, Telenomus , and Gryon , plus six New World Tachinidae, should be considered for establishment against N. viridula elsewhere.


Expansion may be a viable alternative to mid-sized farms facing increased uncertainty from the elimination of traditional farm program payments. Financial and production results from 1995-1997 are analyzed for two mid-sized farmers on the Texas Southern High Plains, and each producer's expansion ability is discussed. Results from 1995 and 1996 indicated that Farmer 1 was in a strong financial and efficiency position and could expand, while expansion was not recommended for Farmer 2 due to higher costs and lower revenues. Although both producers expanded efficiently in 1997, Farmer 1 remained in a much more desirable long-run economic condition than Farmer 2.


Introduction: Different techniques of radiation therapy have been studied to reduce the cardiac dose in left breast cancer. Aim: In this prospective dosimetric study, the doses to heart as well as other organs at risk (OAR) were compared between free-breathing (FB) and deep inspiratory breath hold (DIBH) techniques in intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and opposed-tangent three-dimensional radiotherapy (3DCRT) plans. Materials and Methods: Fifteen patients with left-sided breast cancer underwent computed tomography simulation and images were obtained in both FB and DIBH. Radiotherapy plans were generated with 3DCRT and IMRT techniques in FB and DIBH images in each patient. Target coverage, conformity index, homogeneity index , and mean dose to heart (Heart Dmean), left lung, left anterior descending artery (LAD) and right breast were compared between the four plans using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Results: Target coverage was adequate with both 3DCRT and IMRT plans, but IMRT plans showed better conformity and homogeneity. A statistically significant dose reduction of all OARs was found with DIBH. 3DCRTDIBHdecreased the Heart Dmeanby 53.5% (7.1 vs. 3.3 Gy) and mean dose to LAD by 28% compared to 3DCRTFB. IMRT further lowered mean LAD dose by 18%. Heart Dmeanwas lower with 3DCRTDIBHover IMRTDIBH (3.3 vs. 10.2 Gy). Mean dose to the contralateral breast was also lower with 3DCRT over IMRT (0.32 vs. 3.35 Gy). Mean dose and the V20of ipsilateral lung were lower with 3DCRTDIBHover IMRTDIBH (13.78 vs. 18.9 Gy) and (25.16 vs. 32.95%), respectively. Conclusions: 3DCRTDIBHprovided excellent dosimetric results in patients with left-sided breast cancer without the need for IMRT.


Notwithstanding the significant investigatory and prosecutorial benefits of forensic science, the marriage of law and science has most often been represented as discordant: a marriage of "opposites" (Wonder 1989) that's "troubled" (Haack 2009). Yet most critics rely upon clich´ed representations or "caricatures" (Roberts 2012) to demonstrate how science and law represent two cultures. When official concerns over the potentially deleterious coupling within the criminal justice system have reached a fevered pitch, the fallout has often been a chorus of disapproval addressed to forensic science, but also denigration of legal professionals for being unable or unwilling to forge a symbiotic relationship with forensic scientists. The National Research Council's 2009 National Academy of Sciences Report on forensic science heralds the latest call for greater collaboration between the law and science, particularly in higher education institutions (HEIs). To investigate the potential for interdisciplinary cooperation, a workshop was held in the UK, attended by academics and practitioners from scientific, policing, and legal backgrounds. The workshop marked the commencement of a project to facilitate building vital connections in the academy, enabling law and science academics to "lower their drawbridges." This article outlines some of the discussion to elucidate areas of consensus, and where further dialogue is required before progress is possible, but aims to strike a note of optimism that the "cultural divide" should not be taken to be so wide as to be beyond the legal and forensic science academy to bridge.


This study fulfils the need for research into
autobiographies of writers who have a number ot common
traits which will provide specific conclusions about
the art of autobiography. Unveiling the Female ' I' ;
Autobiographies by Australian Women Born in the 1920s
looks at works by fourteen writers who share the same
nationality, gender and decade of birth.
The Introduction documents the elusiveness of
women's autobiographies and briefly surveys the
critical situation to date, noting the lack of
consensus in just what an autobiography is. Criteria
have been established for extracting women's
autobiographies from the large range of female
autobiographical writings and the validity of the
linguistic devices used to examine these works is
justified.
Working from the proposition by Chodorow that
women are defined through process and by "other".
Chapter 1 looks at character and style in four autobiographies
of childhood to establish how this
forms the identity ot Australian women born in the
1920s.
Chapter 2 discusses two autobiographies of
childhood which focus on other aspects of personal
development: Spence's Another October Child presents a
portrait of the development of a writer and Lindsay's Portrait of Pa is argued to be an autobiograpby of Jane
rather than a biography or Norman Lindsay.
The life stories of adults treated in Chapter 3
demonstrate the fallacy of the "quest" metaphor for female
writers and offer other life metaphors as more
appropriate for conveying their truths of identity.
The position of women in Australian society has
received close attention in recent years, and the
autobiographies by migrant and Aboriginal women which
are the topic of Chapter 4 illustrate their alienation
through their lack of cultural experience. Place
becomes cultural as well as physical for these women.
Dorothy Hewett's recently published Wild Card both
confirms and confounds the pattern of Australian
women's autobiography depicting the same period in a
highly and elaborately patterned way. Chapter 5
examines its statement about the role of truth in
autobiography.
Chapter 6 continues this direction and breaks new
ground by looking at the implications of "naming" and
photographs in both the structural and metaphoric
strands of the re-creation of identity.
The Conclusion considers how Australian women born
in the 1920s see their world and their values in
comparison with the male view of history. The study
draws together the threads of identity, world and truth
as represented in these self- life-writings.


As the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere rises, an increasing amount of the gas is absorbed by the ocean, making it more acidic. Both the academic challenge as well as the practical urgency to find solutions to ocean acidification within the broader field of environmental law and governance have spurred some initial analysis on this topic. This paper contributes to the growing literature and discussion concerned with the performance and transformational need of ocean governance and policies, and the need to fully incorporate ocean acidification into other pertinent environmental, social and economic deliberations toward a sustainable, low-carbon society.


The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) Lithium Blanket module (LBM) program is a first-of-kind neutronics experiment involving a toroidal fusion neutron source. Qualification experiments have been conducted to develop primary measurement techniques and verify dosimetry materials that will be used to characterize the neutron environment inside and on the surfaces of the LBM. The deuterium-tritium simulation experiments utilizing a 14-MeV neutron generator and a fusion blanket mockup facility at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory are described. Results and discussions are presented that identify the quality and limitations of the measured integral reaction data, including the minimum fluence requirement for the TFTR experiment and the use of such data in neutron spectrum adjustment and in predicting integral performance parameters, e.g., tritium production.


There is need for applications that keep the users aware of various things happening around them. One of such things is the presence of co-workers in office environments. Playing people's walking sounds in the background as cues of their presence came up as one way to provide such information. The walking sounds have very favorable properties; as a part of the normal sound ecology in an office environment they are non-obtrusive. In addition, they have a natural association to the person they present. To study how well people can identify recorded walking sounds of their co-workers we organized a listening experiment. Without any learning the identification rates were 13%, however after short teaching session rates increased to 66%. The results show that walking sounds do contain enough information to convey the identity of the person but careful design of the sounds is necessary. In this paper we also present how walking sounds can be used as a part of a ubiquitous computing system.


In this groundbreaking book, Jonathan Waskan challenges cognitive science's dominant model of mental representation and proposes a novel, well-devised alternative. The traditional view in the cognitive sciences uses a linguistic (propositional) model of mental representation. This logic-based model of cognition informs and constrains both the classical tradition of artificial intelligence and modeling in the connectionist tradition. It falls short, however, when confronted by the frame problem--the lack of a principled way to determine which features of a representation must be updated when new information becomes available. Proposed alternatives, including the imagistic model, have not so far resolved this problem. Waskan proposes instead the Intrinsic Cognitive Models (ICM) hypothesis, which argues that representational states can be conceptualized as the cognitive equivalent of scale models. Waskan argues further that the proposal that humans harbor and manipulate these cognitive counterparts to scale models offers the only viable explanation for what most clearly differentiates humans from other creatures: their capacity to engage in truth-preserving manipulation of representations.


The sympathetic nervous system, the most important extrinsic regulatory mechanism of the heart, is inhibited postsynaptically and presynaptically by opioid peptides produced in the heart via their respective receptors. The cardiac actions of β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) stimulation are attenuated by activation of the opioid receptor (OR) with OR agonist at ineffective concentrations, implying cross-talk between the OR and β-AR. This cross-talk results from inhibition of the Gs protein and adenylyl cyclase of the β-AR pathway by the pertussis toxin-sensitive G protein of the opioid pathway. Alterations in cross-talk between these two receptors occur in pathological situations to meet bodily needs. In myocardial ischemia, when the sympathetic activity is increased, the inhibition of β-AR stimulation by ĸ-opioid stimulation is also enhanced, thus reducing the workload, oxygen consumption and cardiac injury. Whereas cardiac responsiveness to sympathetic discharges is also reduced after chronic hypoxia, the cross-talk between ĸ-OR and β-AR is reduced to prevent undue suppression of the sympathetic influence on the heart. On the other hand, impairment of the cross-talk may result in abnormality. A lack or a significant reduction in the inhibition of β-AR stimulation by ĸ-OR stimulation may lead to an excessive increase in cardiac activities, which contribute to the maintenance of high arterial blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats. Other than opioid peptides, female sex hormone and adenosine also inhibit the sympathetic actions on the heart. In addition, sympathetic action is also inhibited presynaptically by ĸ-opioid peptides via their receptor.


Current state-of-the-art planners solve problems, easy and hard alike, by search, expanding hundreds or thousands of nodes. Yet, given the ability of people to solve easy problems and to explain their solutions, it seems that an essential inferential component may be missing. The reasons expressed by people for selecting  actions appear to be related to causal chains: sequences of causal links ai → pi + 1, i = 0, ..., n – 1, such that a0 is applicable in the current state, pi is a precondition of action ai, and pn is a goal. Some of these causal chains or paths appear to be good, some bad, others appear to be impossible. In this work, we focus on such paths and develop three techniques for performing inference over them  from which a  path-based planner is obtained. We define the conditions under which a path is consistent, provide an heuristic estimate of the cost of achieving the goal along a consistent path, and introduce a planning algorithm that uses paths as decomposition backbones. The resulting planner, called C3, is not complete and does not perform as well as recent planners that carry extensive but extremely efficient searches such as LAMA, but is competitive with FF and in particular, with FF running in EHC mode which yields very focused but incomplete searches, and thus provides, a more apt comparison. Moreover, many domains are solved backtrack-free, with no search at all, suggesting that planning with paths may be a meaningful idea both cognitively and computationally.


The proxy δ13C as derived from benthic foraminifera shells is widely used by palaeoceanographers to reconstruct the geometry of past water masses. The biogeochemical processes involved in forming the benthic foraminiferal δ13C signal, however, have not been fully understood yet and a sound mechanistic description is still lacking.
We are using a reaction-diffusion model for calcification developed by Wolf-Gladrow et al. (1999) and Zeebe et al. (1999) in order to quantify the effects that different physical, chemical and biological parameters have on the δ13C value of an idealised benthic foraminiferal shell.
The results indicate that temperature, δ13CDIC, respiration rate, foraminiferal size, and pH have a significant impact on foraminiferal δ13C, which exceeds the typically accepted measurement error range of 0.2 ‰. In contrast, salinity, pressure, and calcification rate have only a limited influence. In a case study we show how these effects can influence the interpretation of benthic foraminiferal δ13C.
Our study underlines the importance of understanding the biological and chemical processes in forming the δ13C signal in foraminiferal shells, and calls for further laboratory and in-situ measurements in order to test the model results.


The Agora of Techno-Organisational Change refers to the global emergence and expansion of a marketplace for the resources necessary to carry out technological changes in business organisations. These resources include technologies such as information systems and software packages, specialised technical and business expertise, change methodologies, project management, etc. The Agora of Techno-Organisational Change is populated by various diverse and heterogeneous actors (suppliers, users, intermediaries, consultants, analysts, the state, professional associations, and so on) with conflicting (or not) interests and diverse viewpoints. In summary, there is an expanding and evolving marketplace for IT and other specialised resources and expertise used to carry out technological change efforts in organisational settings. We have termed this marketplace as Agora of Techno-Organisational Change which is the analytical and practice space where technical and organisational change is happening.


Control the impact of cohesive sediments on open channels by managing the effects of silt, clay and other sediments in harbors, estuaries and reservoirs. "Cohesive Sediments in Open Channels" provides you with a practical framework for understanding how cohesive sediments are transported, deposited and eroded. One of the first books to approach the subject from an engineering's perspective, this book supplies insight into applying hydraulic design as well as understanding the behavior of cohesive sediments in a flow field.This title covers such topics as: properties and of the nature and the origin of the interparticle physicochemical forces; the forces between clay particles and the process of flocculation; processes and dynamics of flocculation and the hydrodynamic behavior of cohesive sediments; transport processes of sediments by flowing water and related equations are first presented and explained; deposition and resuspension of beds deposited from suspension from flowing waters; and, engineering applications of the hydraulics of cohesive sediments.


Abstract: Despite the improvement of democratic institutions in Peru during the last fifteen years, Peruvians are strongly dissatisfied with democracy in their country. We argue this dissatisfaction results from weak vertical accountability. In our article, we show how Peru has regained meaningful horizontal accountability since the authoritarian years of the 1990s, but has struggled to develop complementary channels of vertical accountability beyond elections. The absence of strong parties and civil society combined with the Peruvian economy's rapid growth in recent years has allowed presidents to abandon their reform promises and, consequently, generate public disappointment in the democratic system.


The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is a phosphorylation-regulated chloride channel that is a member of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter family [1]. It is involved in the movement of chloride ions across epithelial membranes in the airways, sweat glands, intestine and pancreas [2]. Mutations in CFTR that result in a loss of channel function result in the disease cystic fibrosis, affecting nearly 1 in 2500 people in northern Europe and the United States [3]. As a member of the ABC transporter family, CFTR shares the structural features of these proteins. Unique to CFTR is the presence of a cytoplasmic R-domain, that contains multiple phosphorylation sites. Phosphorylation of the R domain is required for CFTR channel gating, and cAMP/PKA simulation can also elicit insertion of CFTR into the plasma membrane from intracellular compartments [4]. We evaluated the structural basis of regulated CFTR trafficking by determining agonist-evoked increases in plasma membrane capacitance (Cm) of Xenopus oocytes expressing CFTR deletion mutants. Expression of CFTR as a split construct that omitted the R-domain (ƒ´aa 635-834) produced a channel with elevated basal current (Im) and no ƒ´Im or trafficking response (ƒ´Cm) upon cAMP/PKA stimulation, indicating that the structure(s) required for regulated CFTR trafficking are contained within the R domain. Additional deletions showed that removal of amino acids 817-838 produced a channel with regulated gating that lacked the agonist-induced increase in CFTR trafficking. This 22aa region exhibits helical structure, bears a net negative charge of -9, is highly conserved among species, and has been termed NEG2 [5, 6]. Injection of NEG2 peptide into oocytes expressing split ƒ´NEG2 CFTR prior to stimulation restored the agonist-evoked ƒ´Cm, consistent with the concept that this sequence mediates regulated CFTR trafficking. Further modifications of NEG2 suggest that the trafficking phenotype depends primarily on its helical structure. These observations suggest that the NEG2 region at the C-terminus of the R domain allows CFTR to enter a regulated intracellular compartment from which it traffics to the plasma membrane in response to cAMP/PKA-stimulation.


Response rates to the academic surveys used in quantitative research are decreasing and have been for several decades among both individuals and organizations. Given this trend, providing doctoral students an opportunity to complete their dissertations in a timely and cost effective manner may necessitate identifying more innovative and relevant ways to collect data while maintaining appropriate research standards and rigor. The case of a research study is presented which describes the data collection process used to survey a hard-to-reach population. It details the use of social media, in this case LinkedIn, to facilitate the distribution of the web-based survey. A roadmap to illustrate how this data collection process unfolded is presented, as well as several "lessons learned" during this journey. An explanation of the considerations that impacted the sampling design is provided. The goal of this case study is to provide researchers, including doctoral students, with realistic expectations and an awareness of the benefits and risks associated with the use of this method of data collection.


The purposes of the study were to investigate children's knowledge about hearing conservation, the types of protective behaviors they would adopt in noise, the agreement between children's knowledge and intended behaviors in hearing protection, and reasons why they would not take any protective action in noise. A questionnaire was administered to 479 fourth and fifth graders in their school classrooms. Results indicated that children scored low (62.0%) on this hearing conservation questionnaire. They scored the highest in strategies of hearing protection (69.9%), followed by their knowledge in general hearing health (62.6%) and noise hazards (49.6%). Only 55% of children knew that hearing protective devices could protect them against noise. Approximately 28% of children did not intend to adopt any protective behavior in noise and the major reason for this was lack of knowledge. Children's knowledge and their noise protective behavior were correlated ( P < .05). However, possessing knowledge did not guarantee that children would adopt such behaviors when they were exposed to loud sounds. It is important to increase children's knowledge about hearing protection and hazardous noise as well as to encourage actual protective actions.


Patterns and processes of migration and housing market restructuring in the English countryside have attracted considerable attention over recent years. In contrast to many earlier studies which have failed to examine the way in which these processes are interrelated, this research focuses upon the former local authority sector of the rural housing market in order to explore the key connections between housing market restructuring, migration and rural social change.
A realist approach is developed to explore the relationship between households moving through this increasingly important sector of the housing market and wider social and economic structures. This study focuses on the District of South Northamptonshire, an accessible rural district located between principal metropolitan centres where the housing market has been transformed by rapid population growth and high rates of council house sales over recent decades.
Analysis is undertaken of the way in which local responses to national housing policy over earlier decades produced a stock of over 4,500 local authority dwellings in the District. Sale of these dwellings under the Right To Buy clauses within the Housing Act (1980) and subsequent resale by tenant-purchasers is a key aspect of the post-1980 restructuring of the housing market and is presenting a unique housing opportunity to increasing numbers of homebuyers in a market characterised by extremely high houseprices and a highly constrained supply of owner-occupied housing. Analysis is based on detailed information relating to 800 households derived from interviews with purchasers of resold dwellings and local authority housing records.
The impact of these changes is examined at a variety of spatial scales from the national context, to the impact on individual settlements. Throughout the research findings are related to contemporary debates about rural housing policy and 'social' housing provision; social theory and the study of housing, migration and social change in the countryside; and the implications for future related studies


Urban flooding introduces significant risk to society. Non-stationarity leads to increased uncertainty and this is challenging to include in actual decision-making. The primary objective of this study was to develop a risk assessment and decision support framework for pluvial urban flood risk under non-stationary conditions using an influence diagram (ID) which is a Bayesian network (BN) extended with decision and utility nodes. Non-stationarity is considered to be the influence of climate change where extreme precipitation patterns change over time. The overall risk is quantified in monetary terms expressed as expected annual damage. The network is dynamic in as much as it assesses risk at different points in time. The framework provides means for decision-makers to assess how different decisions on flood adaptation affect the risk now and in the future. The result from the ID was extended with a cost-benefit analysis defining the net benefits for the investment plans. We tested our framework in a case study where the risk for flooding was assessed on a railway track in Risskov, Aarhus. Drainage system improvements are planned for the area. Our study illustrates with the use of an ID how risk for flooding increases over time, and the benefits of implementing flood adaptation measures.


Caudal autotomy is a defensive mechanism utilised by squamate reptiles to survive
predatory attacks. Although tail loss is an effective escape mechanism in lizards,
autotomy may result in severe 'costs' being inflicted upon the animal. However,
since the tail is capable of regeneration, these 'costs' may only be transient. An
animal's ability to balance the costs and benefits of autotomy determines the adaptive
advantage of tail loss. The locomotory, thermoregulatory, energetic, reproductive and
behavioural 'costs' of caudal autotomy were investigated in the metallic skink,
Niveoscincus metallicus.
Niveoscincus metallicus is a small ground-dwelling skink that inhabits a wide range of
microhabitats. It is a viviparous species that possesses a sinusoidal locomotory mode,
and both caudal and abdominal fat reserves. High levels of tail loss are evident in
most populations. Caudal autotomy was found to have two main impacts on N.
metallicus: 1) restriction of mobility; and 2) depletion of energetic reserves.
However, the species was found to possess several behavioural and anatomical
modifications to limit the 'costs' incurred.
Tail autotomy was found to severely restrict locomotory performance m N.
metallicus. Terrestrial locomotion, sprinting and stamina, was found to be
preferentially inhibited by caudal autotomy. Climbing ability was not affected by tail
loss. In females, locomotory inhibition caused by caudal autotomy was relatively
short-lived. However, in males there was no evidence of restoration of locomotory
performance during this study. This was the first investigation of the temporal impact
of caudal autotomy on performance in lizards.
Behavioural modification was evident following caudal autotomy. Tailless N.
metallicus were found to compensate for diminished locomotory abilities by selecting
more cryptically located basking sites and remaining closer to refuge. This
modification of basking preference was assumed to be the result of the animal
adopting an alternative defensive strategy.Thermoregulatory behaviour was not modified following tail loss. However, females
were found to lower their thermal preferences during gestation, presumably to
enhance embryonic development. It was concluded that reproductive success
represented higher priority than tail regeneration.
Niveoscincus metallicus was demonstrated to store the majority ( -50-75%) of its
energetic reserves in its tail. Most ( -90%) of these reserves were located within the
proximal third of the tail. Depletion of abdominal fat stores was found to be related to
periods of reproductive investment. There was some evidence that abdominal fat
reserves were preferentially allocated to reproductive effort.
Caudal autotomy during vitellogenesis was associated with a reduction in the clutch
size of tailless females. This reduced reproductive investment was related to the
diversion of energy towards tail regeneration rather than the direct depletion of caudal
fat stores. These tailless females were found to modify their reproductive strategy by
producing a smaller number of larger and 'better' quality offspring. However, tail
autotomy during gestation did not influence the weight or size of offspring. Maternal
tail size and the presumed environment during gestation was not related to the
phenotype of a female's offspring.
The frequency and position of tail loss were found to vary between altitudes and
populations. Predation pressure or basking behaviour failed to explain these
differences. Predation efficiency, frequency of repeated tail breaks and the age
structure of the population all appeared to be related to the frequency and position of
tail loss. Niveoscincus metallicus was found to be capable of 'economy of autotomy',
preferentially losing the more distal portions of its tail that do not contain significant
fat stores.
It is concluded that caudal autotomy inflicts several costs on N. metallicus. However,
the existence of behavioural and anatomical modifications limits the impacts of these
'costs'. This study suggests that the costs and benefits of caudal autotomy have coevolved
in N. metallicus, allowing it retain a successful defensive mechanism while
limiting the associated 'costs'.
iii


Introduction: Lipid metabolism disorder plays an important role in diabetes and insulin resistance in skeletal muscles. On the other hand, intramuscular lipolysis can be affected by physical activities. Lipid storage droplet protein 5 (LSDP5) (is one of the important proteins involving in regulation of muscle lipolysis. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the three different training intensities on expression of LSDP5 protein, serum glucose and insulin levels in diabetic rats. Materials and Methods: Thirty two male Wistar rats were randomly divided into four groups of 8 including three intervention groups;  with low- moderate- and  high-intensity endurance training and a control group. In all four groups, diabetes mellitus was induced by intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin, 55 mg/kg and endurance training was applied three times a week for eight weeks and the control group received nothing. The expression of the LSDP5 protein was analyzed by Western blot technique. To determine the significance of differences between the groups, the results were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Tukey post-hoc test. Results: There was a significant difference was observed between four groups in LSDP5 variables (p = 0.03). There was a significant difference between diabetic controls group and high intensity group (p = 0.019), but there was no significant difference in LSDP5 in the low intensity and moderate intensity training group (respectively p = 0.64 and p = 0.45). Conclusion: According to the results, high intensity endurance exercise increased protein expression LSDP5 in diabetic samples.


In After Our Likeness, the inaugural volume in the Sacra Doctrina series, Miroslav Volf explores the relationship between persons and community in Christian theology. The focus is the community of grace, the Christian church. The point of departure is the thought of the first Baptist, John Smyth, and the notion of church as "gathered community" that he shared with Radical Reformers. Volf seeks to counter the tendencies toward individualism in Protestant ecclesiology and to suggest a viable understanding of the church in which both person and community are given their proper due. In the process, Volf engages in a sustained and critical ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiologies of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and the metropolitan John Zizioulas. The result is a study that spells out a vision of the church as an image of the triune God.