Human neuroimaging studies suggest that localization and identification of relevant auditory objects are accomplished via parallel parietal-to-lateral-prefrontal "where" and anterior-temporal-to-inferior-frontal "what" pathways, respectively. Using combined hemodynamic (functional MRI) and electromagnetic (magnetoencephalography) measurements, we investigated whether such dual pathways exist already in the human nonprimary auditory cortex, as suggested by animal models, and whether selective attention facilitates sound localization and identification by modulating these pathways in a feature-specific fashion. We found a double dissociation in response adaptation to sound pairs with phonetic vs. spatial sound changes, demonstrating that the human nonprimary auditory cortex indeed processes speech-sound identity and location in parallel anterior "what" (in anterolateral Heschl's gyrus, anterior superior temporal gyrus, and posterior planum polare) and posterior "where" (in planum temporale and posterior superior temporal gyrus) pathways as early as ≈70–150 ms from stimulus onset. Our data further show that the "where" pathway is activated ≈30 ms earlier than the "what" pathway, possibly enabling the brain to use top-down spatial information in auditory object perception. Notably, selectively attending to phonetic content modulated response adaptation in the "what" pathway, whereas attending to sound location produced analogous effects in the "where" pathway. This finding suggests that selective-attention effects are feature-specific in the human nonprimary auditory cortex and that they arise from enhanced tuning of receptive fields of task-relevant neuronal populations.


The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of chromium picolinate (CrPic) on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and protein and lipid quality of five anatomical parts in growing pigs. The 30-day study was conducted on eight castrated Topigs growing male pigs, with an initial bodyweight of 17.16 ± 0.62 kg. The pigs were assigned to two groups (C, E), housed in individual metabolic cages, and fed on conventional diets with 17.80% crude protein (CP) and 3078 kcal/kg metabolizable energy (ME). The diet of E was supplemented with 200 ppm CrPic. Samples of ingesta and faeces were collected in three balance periods of five days each. At the end of the experiment, blood samples were collected, all pigs were slaughtered, and meat (tenderloin, loin, ham, shoulder, and belly) samples were collected. No significant differences of productive or plasma parameters were noticed. The results of the balance study showed that CrPic did not influence the digestibility of nitrogen, but the digestibility of fat was significantly decreased for group E. The nutritional quality of the collected samples was evaluated for proximate analysis. The tenderloin and ham samples had increased protein concentrations compared with C group. For belly and ham, the fat concentrations decreased significantly. As a result of this observation, amino acids and fatty acid profiles were analysed and a significant improvement were determined for E regarding essential amino acids. The conclusion of the study was that CrPic had positive effects on protein and fat metabolism and the meat had functional food attributes. Keywords: Amino acids, biochemical profile, chromium picolinate, digestibility, fatty acids, pork


The noted blues scholar Paul Oliver here examines the many different skeins of the blues form, relating them to other black traditions - musical and religious - and tracing the origin of the blues through the dense, many-colored warp and weft of influences and inspiration. He describes "the dozens," Christmas rituals, and the coded (as well as blatant) sexual imagery that has always been a vital element of every popular song tradition. With extensive source notes, photographs, a discography, and two indexes of song titles and singers, this book serves as a sound, serious, and entertaining guide to the blues heritage that has vitalized so much of the world's musical culture.


The electricity and potable water production sector in Kuwait depends solely on oil and gas fired generation technologies. Complete reliance on oil and gas has negative impact on the country's economy and environment, and hence, calls for exploration for alternative energy sources. This paper presents results of analysis of including renewable energy technologies within the generation inventory. The analysis examines the effects of generating 20% of electric energy from renewables by 2030. MARKAL/TIMES based model of Kuwait's electricity and water sector was developed. The model solutions for several technology generation mix cases are presented. With the 20% renewable generation case, the analysis results show that the fossil fuel saving and CO2 reduction are both around 17% when compared to the conventional oil/gas fired generation technologies case. Keywords-Economic impact; environmental impact; renewbale energy; MARKAL-TIMES


Abstract. This study used a longitudinal data set of 5,672 adults followed for 50 years to determine the factors that influence adult trait Openness-to-Experience. In a large, nationally representative sample in the UK (the National Child Development Study), data were collected at birth, in childhood (age 11), adolescence (age 16), and adulthood (ages 33, 42, and 50) to examine the effects of family social background, childhood intelligence, school motivation during adolescence, education, and occupation on the personality trait Openness assessed at age 50 years. Structural equation modeling showed that parental social status, childhood intelligence, school motivation, education, and occupation all had modest, but direct, effects on trait Openness, among which childhood intelligence was the strongest predictor. Gender was not significantly associated with trait Openness. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed.


Resonator fiber optic gyro (RFOG) based on the Sagnac effect has the potential to achieve the inertial navigation system requirement with a short sensing coil. Semiconductor laser is one of the key elements for integration and miniaturization of the RFOG. In this paper, an RFOG employing a semiconductor laser is demonstrated. The model of the laser frequency noise induced error in the RFOG is described. To attenuate the laser frequency noise induced error, active frequency stabilization is applied. An online laser frequency noise observation is built, as a powerful optimum criterion for the loop parameters. Moreover, the laser frequency noise observation method is developed as a new measurement tool. With a fast digital proportional integrator based on a single field programmable gate array applied in the active stabilization loop, the laser frequency noise is reduced to 0.021 Hz (1σ). It is equivalent to a rotation rate of 0.07°/h, and close to the shot noise limit for the RFOG. As a result, a bias stability of open-loop gyro output is 9.5°/h (1σ) for the integration time 10 s in an hour observed in the RFOG. To the best of our knowledge, this result is the best long-term stability using the miniature semiconductor laser.


Purpose: This study aims to explore Indonesian women's experiences of first-time IUD insertion.Method: This study using phenomenological approach. Three Javanese women who lived in Malang Indonesia were interviewed using an unstructured process and the women's native language was utilized. Soon after the interview, transcripts were translated from Indonesian into English, and phenomenological analysis of data was used.Result: The results revealed one major and three minor themes and identify embarrassment as the major contribution to women's feelings of powerlessness. These feelings emerged because women experienced a lack of privacy during the insertion procedure. Women are vulnerable especially when there is no support received while facing a stressful medical procedure.Conclusion: Women need assistance from the health staff in order to deal with this traumatic experience. This improvement will includes the enhancement of clinic staff communication skills, the enrichment of health practice in providing better service and the upgrading of health policy that focuses on nurses/ doctors' attitudes to give women-centered care.


Stretching from the ancient Chinese capital of Xian across the expanses of Central Asia to Rome, the Silk Road was, for 1,500 years, a vibrant network of arteries that carried the lifeblood of nations across the world. Along a multitude of routes everything was exchanged: exotic goods, art, knowledge, religion, philosophy, disease and war. From the East came silk, precious stones, tea, jade, paper, porcelain, spices and cotton; from the West, horses, weapons, wool and linen, aromatics, entertainers and exotic animals. From its earliest beginnings in the days of Alexander the Great and the Han dynasty, the Silk Road expanded and evolved, reaching its peak during the Tang dynasty and the Byzantine Empire and gradually withering away with the decline of the Mongol Empire.
 In this beautifully illustrated book, which covers the Central Asian section of the Silk Road - from Lake Issyk-kul through Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, the Kyzyl Kum Desert, Khiva and Merv to Herat, Kabul and Iran - Jonathan Tucker uses travellers' anecdotes and a wealth of literary and historical sources to celebrate the cultural heritage of the countries that lie along the Silk Road and illuminate the lives of those who once travelled through the very heart of the world.


The use of wide-bandgap semiconductors in modern power electronics creates new challenges in EMC. These result, among other things, from high frequencies and steep switching slopes. In addition, parasitic elements of semiconductors, passive components and the printed circuit board can cause resonances, which become noticeable in oscillations. In this work, a possibility is presented to simulate resonances in a power electronic circuit. The circuit used is a series-LC resonant converter with SiC-MOSFETs. An impedance model of the resonant load is generated with consideration of parasitic elements. The accurate simulation is validated by comparison with time domain measurements. EMC measurements of conducted and radiated emissions are done. It is shown that the resonances lead to emissions which can be predicted using the time domain simulation.


The optimization design of the layer structure for a novel type of a 1.3 μm monolithically integrated InP-based optical waveguide isolator is presented. The concept of this component is based on introducing a nonreciprocal loss-gain behavior in a standard semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) structure by contacting the SOA with a transversely magnetized ferromagnetic metal contact, sufficiently close to the guiding and amplifying core of the SOA. The thus induced nonreciprocal complex transverse Kerr shift on the effective index of the guided TM modes, combined with a proper current injection, allows for forward transparency and backward optical extinction. We introduce two different optimization criteria for finding the optimal SOA layer structure, using two different figure-of-merit functions (FoM) for the device performance. The device performance is also compared for three different compositions of the CoxFe1−x(x=0,50,90) ferromagnetic transition metal alloy system. It is found that equiatomic (or quasi-equiatomic) CoFe alloys are the most suitable for this application. Depending on the used FoM, two technologically practical designs are proposed for a truly monolithically integrated optical waveguide isolator. It is also shown that these designs are robust with respect to variations in layer thicknesses and wavelength. Finally, we have derived an analytical expression that gives a better insight in the limit performance of a ferromagnetic metal-clad SOA-isolator in terms of metal parameters.


The abundance of Synechococcus in the East China Sea (ECS) was tracked during two sets of cruises in 1997 - 1998 and 2004. These data were combined with information from the literature to examine the hypothesis wherein variations in Synechococcus abundance were linked to the magnitude of seasonal temperature ranges. An index of the amplitude of Synechococcus seasonal abundance relative to their minimum abundance (ΔN/Nmin) was well correlated with the range of sea surface temperature (ΔT). These results suggest that the regional range of temperature is a relatively good predictor for the relative seasonal change in Synechococcus abundance within many environments.


The aim of this study was to synthesis the conjugated chitosan by covalent attachment of thiol moieties to the cationic polymer, mediated by a carbodiimide to improve permeation properties of chitosan. Thioglycolic acid was covalently attached to chitosan by the formation of amide bonds between the primary amino groups of the polymer and the carboxylic acid groups of thioglycolic acid. Hence, these polymers are called as thiomers or thiolated polymers. Conjugation of chitosan was confirmed by Fourier transform-infrared and differential scanning calorimetric analysis. Matrix type transdermal patches of carvedilol were prepared using the different proportions of chitosan and chitosan-thioglycolic acid conjugates (2:0, 1.7:0.3, 1.4:0.6, 1:1, 0.6:1.4 and 0.3:1.7) by solvent casting technique. Prepared matrix type patches were evaluated for their physicochemical characterization followed by in vitro evaluation. Selected formulations were subjected for their ex vivo studies on Wistar albino rat skin and human cadaver skin using the modified Franz diffusion cell. As the proportion of conjugated chitosan increased, the transdermal patches showed increased drug permeation. The mechanism of drug release was found to be nonFickian profiles. The present study concludes that the transdermal patches of carvedilol using conjugated chitosan with different proportions of chitosan were successfully developed to provide improved drug permeation. The transdermal patches can be a good approach to improve drug bioavailability by bypassing the extensive hepatic first-pass metabolism of the drug.


Nanosized optical antennas have the potential to confine and enhance optical electromagnetic fields, making nano-antennas essential tools for applications in integrated nano-optical devices and high-resolution microscopy. The size, shape and material of the nano-antenna, together with the optical frequency, determine the antenna response and its resonances. Here, we discuss a λ/4 long optical nano-antenna, analogous to the radio frequency monopole antenna. The antenna is fabricated at the end of a near-field aperture-type fibre probe by focused-ion-beam milling in two sequential steps. Illumination through the fibre creates a localized evanescent excitation source, with the advantage of a lower background compared to 'apertureless' techniques, which require far-field excitation. Previously, we have studied the field localization, antenna excitation conditions and antenna resonances, both in experiment, by near-field single-molecule detection experiments, and in theory, by finite integration technique simulations. In this study we investigate the importance of both polarization conditions and antenna position in creating an efficient local driving field for the monopole antenna. It is shown that the antenna is driven by the field component along the antenna axis. Next we show the advantage of the antenna over the aperture: upon reduction of the diameter the antenna gains local field intensity, while the aperture field decreases rapidly. Finally, the highly localized field near the antenna apex is probed by single molecules and detected molecular emission features below 30 nm FWHM are presented.


We demonstrate that the structural and optical properties of a sol-gel deposited zinc oxide thin film can be tuned by varying the composition of the sol, consisting of ethylene glycol and glycerol. A systematic study of the effect of the composition of sol on the mean grain size, thickness, and defect density of the zinc oxide film is presented. About 20% glycerol content in the sol is observed to improve the quality of the film, as evaluated by X-ray diffraction and photoluminescence studies. Thus, optimizing the composition of the sol for about 60 nm thick ZnO film using 20% glycerol resulted in the zinc oxide film that is about 80% transparent in visible spectrum, exhibiting electrical resistivity of about 18 Omega cm and field-effect mobility of 0.78 cm(2)/(V s). (C) 2010 The Electrochemical Society. DOI: 10.1149/1.3515894] All rights reserved.


This paper provides details of soil and water conservation (SWC) investments in Ethiopia over the past 20 years. It presents SWC practices and estimates the level of SWC investments in different regions. The paper focuses on four principal agricultural regions: Amhara, Oromia, SNNPR and Tigray. Primary and secondary data were collected for the analysis, and consultations were conducted at regional levels. Primary data on diverse SWC practices, their numbers and areal extent were obtained from the archives of regional Bureaus of Agriculture (BoAs). The results of this study show that several projects involving significant financial investment have been implemented to reverse land degradation and improve land productivity in Ethiopia since the 1970s. The list of projects is not comprehensive due to a lack of documentation at all levels, but it does provide some insights into the scale of SWC investments and implementation. The projects analyzed in the four regions fall into the following categories: farmland management, hillside management and gully rehabilitation practices, including check dams and cut-off drains. The analysis shows that these practices involved both paid and unpaid labor, together representing an estimated investment of more than ETB 25 billion (or approximately USD 1.2 billion) per year over the past 10 years. It is clear that large investments have been made in SWC activities in Ethiopia. However, the outcomes in terms of impact on yield and livelihood benefits are yet to be fully understood. A comprehensive assessment is needed to measure the impact of SWC activities on farmers' livelihoods and the environment. A key recommendation arising from the analysis is that more data and information are needed on the successes and failures of SWC practices, which will assist stakeholders to better guide and target future projects and investments. An additional recommendation is to consider the biophysical and financial impact of soil erosion, both on and off farm.


Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between dietary intake of vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin D, fiber, and bone mineral density in a sample of pre-menarcheal female gymnasts and non-gymnasts in the Syracuse-area. The goal was to observe whether higher intakes of these vitamins were associated with higher bone mineral density as measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and to potentially examine the impact of activity level on these relationships. Methods: A cross-sectional design was used to examine a subset of data from a larger on-going longitudinal study on bone growth and physical activity in young females. The original study was designed to compare activity, and bone density data between gymnast and non-gymnasts. The data used in this analysis were collected from January 2009 to September 2012 from 52 premenarcheal female gymnasts and non-gymnasts between the ages of 9-11. Participants were asked to complete Harvard's Youth/Adolescent Questionnaire biannually to quantify nutrient intake. Annual bone density measurements were taken of the lumbar spine and total body using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Participants also were asked to self-report physical activity semi-annually during an interview session in which they described the type of activity and hours per week of participation. Tanner breast and pubic stages were self-assessed by subjects at each interview session. Standing height, sitting height, and weight measures were collected at the interview sessions as well. Participants: The participants were 52 pre-menarcheal female gymnasts and non-gymnasts between the ages of 9-11. The selection criteria for this analysis was limited to participants who self-reported as Tanner Stage I (Tanner breast I and Tanner pubic I) at the time of the annual DXA scan. This criterion minimizes the potentially confounding effects of estrogen on bone density and mineral concentration. Non-Caucasian subjects were not included in this analysis as the original cohort of subjects were predominantly Caucasian and the sample size for the current study was too small to account for racial variation. A factor analysis was performed to decrease the dimensionality of the full data set. A principle component analysis was used to observe groupings of dietary variables and to better understand over all dietary patterns. Pearson correlations, and simple linear regressions were used to identify associations between specific micronutrients and minerals and bone mineral density. Multiple regression analyses and ANOVA (general linear model, GLM) were used to further examine the relationships relationship between bone mineral density and the intake of vitamin A, vitamin D, biologically active vitamin K, and the ratio of vitamin A:D intake while adjusting for physical activity, weight, and age of participants. Statistical significance for all tests was set at the α=0.05 level. Results: Inverse relationships were found between bone mineral density and dietary intake of vitamin A (p=0.018), beta-carotene (p=0.008), fiber (p=0.029), and carotene (p=0.007). Bone mineral density increased with a combination of increased vitamin K1 intake and increased body mass (p=0.0006) and vitamin A and increased body mass (p=0.0001). A complex relationship appears to exist between bone mineral density and the combination of vitamin A and vitamin D intakes. The lowest bone mineral densities were observed in the highest quartile of vitamin A intake; this quartile was well above the tolerable upper limit for the age range of the focal population age range. The lowest bone densities were also associated with the highest levels of vitamin D, which was an unexpected result. However, this quartile of vitamin D intake was also above daily recommend intake levels for the focal population. Although not statistically significant, bone mineral density was lowest when vitamin A was either very high (4th quartile of vitamin A intake, mean ± stdev = 17,317.34 ±4358.86 IU) or very low (1st quartile of vitamin A intake, mean ± stdev = 5243.01 ±1230.68 IU) with respect to vitamin D intake. Intermediate levels of the ratio of the vitamin A intake with reference to vitamin D intake produced the highest bone densities. Conclusions: Higher intakes of fiber, vitamin A, carotene, and beta-carotene appear to be associated with lower measures of bone mineral density in this study population. Increased difference in the intake of vitamin A with respect to vitamin D appears to be associated with lower measures of bone mineral density, even with intake levels of vitamin D above the EAR and RDA suggested for this age group. This relationship may result from excess preformed vitamin A ingestion leading to increased retinoic acid in the body. Excess retinoic acid has the potential to impair vitamin D's ability to carry out its own genomic functions. These relationships warrant further exploration in order to improve the understanding of the genomic impact of vitamin A's impact on bone metabolism in the preadolescent life stages, as well as to aid in the prevention of negative effects on bone mineral density during this time period. EXPLORING DIETARY INTAKES OF MICRONUTRIENTS INVOLVED IN BONE REMODELING IN RELATION TO BONE MINERAL DENSITY AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY LEVELS: AN EXAMINATION OF PRE-MENARCHEAL FEMALE GYMNASTS AND NON-


Many debris discs reveal a two-component structure, with an outer Kuiper-belt analogue and a warm inner component whose origin is still a matter of debate. One possibility is that warm emission stems from an "asteroid belt" closer in to the star. We consider a scenario in which a set of giant planets is formed in an initially extended planetesimal disc. These planets carve a broad gap around their orbits, splitting up the disc into the outer and the inner belts. After the gas dispersal, both belts undergo collisional evolution in a steady-state regime. This scenario is explored with detailed collisional simulations involving realistic physics to describe a long-term collisional depletion of the two-component disc. We find that the inner disc may be able to retain larger amounts of material at older ages than thought before on the basis of simplified analytic models. We show that the proposed scenario is consistent with a suite of thermal emission and scattered light observational data for a bright two-temperature debris disc around a nearby solar-type star q$^1$ Eridani. This implies a Solar System-like architecture of the system, with an outer massive "Kuiper belt", an inner "asteroid belt", and a few Neptune- to Jupiter-mass planets in between.


ABSTRACT Bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) play pleotrophic roles in nervous system development, and their signaling is highly regulated at virtually every step in the pathway. We have cloned a novel gene, Sizn1 (Smad-interacting zinc finger protein), which functions as a transcriptional coactivator of BMP signaling. It positively modulates BMP signaling by interacting with Smad family members and associating with CBP in the transcription complex. Sizn1 is expressed in the ventral embryonic forebrain, where, as we will show, it contributes to BMP-dependent, cholinergic-neuron-specific gene expression. These data indicate that Sizn1 is a positive modulator of BMP signaling and provide further insight into how BMP signaling can be modulated in neuronal progenitor subsets to influence cell-type-specific gene expression and development.


troff is a text-formatting program for driving the Graphic Systems phototypesetter on the UNIX† and GCOS operating systems. This device is capable of producing high quality text; this paper is an example of troff output. The phototypesetter itself normally runs with four fonts, containing roman, italic and bold letters (as on this page), a full greek alphabet, and a substantial number of special characters and mathematical symbols. Characters can be printed in a range of sizes, and placed anywhere on the page. troff allows the user full control over fonts, sizes, and character positions, as well as the usual features of a formatter — right-margin justification, automatic hyphenation, page titling and numbering, and so on. It also provides macros, arithmetic variables and operations, and conditional testing, for complicated formatting tasks. This document is an introduction to the most basic use of troff. It presents just enough information to enable the user to do simple formatting tasks like making viewgraphs, and to make incremental changes to existing packages of troff commands. In most respects, the UNIX formatter nroff is identical to troff, so this document also serves as a tutorial on nroff.


Despite their importance, data capturing total credit to the private non-financial sector are scarce. This article introduces a new BIS database that provides this information for 40 economies with, on average, more than 45 years of quarterly data, reaching back to the 1940s and 1950s in some cases. It explains the key concepts underlying the compilation of the new series, including a description of the high-level statistical criteria applied, the characteristics of the underlying series used and the statistical techniques employed. For illustration purposes, some facets of the historical evolution of total credit are explored, revealing interesting similarities and differences across countries.


Introduction: With the exponential growth of electronic resources on the Web, the application of metadata has enhanced the precision of retrieval and facilitated the search of electronic resources. Hence, the aim of this study was to determine the application of metadata in e-book databases. Methods: This study is an applied work, which was carried out through survey methods in 2013. The population consisted of 9 e-books databases, including Gale Virtual Reference Library, EBL n E-book Library, Credo Reference, MyiLibrary, Palgrave Connect, NetLibrary, Ebrary, Dawsonera, Taylor & Francis eBookstore which were selected by an intentional method. Data was collected from Academic Database Assessment Tool Website (http://adat.crl.edu), which compares databases from different perspectives, through direct observation. The obtained data was analyzed using lExcelr software. Results: Results showed that metadata used in e-books databases, were as follows, MARC metadata (100 per cent), Onix (55.55 per cent), Dublin Core (11.11 per cent) and UK Lom was not used in any of the databases.nn Conclusion: Results suggested that information specialists and database designers should consider applying appropriate metadata in developing e-book databases.


We investigate the influence of krill (principally Euphausia superba) patchiness on the foraging distributions of seabirds to understand how variation in krill influences patch dynamics between krill and birds. At sea-surveys were conducted near Elephant Island, Antarctica, for 3 yr (2004–2006) during the annual U.S. Antarctic Marine Living Resources (AMLR) program. Standardized strip-transect surveys were used to map seabirds, and a combination of acoustic and net surveys was used to map krill. We measured patch size of krill and seabirds and elucidated how krill patch dynamics influence foraging seabirds. The spatial association between krill and predators was influenced by the size and arrangement of krill patches. We found a negative relationship between abundance and patchiness of krill and predators, indicating that when krill is less abundant, its predators are less abundant and concentrated. We conclude that annual patch dynamics of krill strongly influences the local abundance and distribution of seabirds. Such information should be used to interpret potential interactions between seabirds and krill fisheries operating near Elephant Island.


We describe relatively simple procedures permitting the control of a continuously tunable pulsed optical parametric oscillator with effective optical bandwidths ranging from more than 10 cm−1 to as low as ~0.01 cm−1. These techniques are surveyed, and their effectiveness is demonstrated in terms of a variety of atomic and molecular spectroscopic applications. Spatiospectral phenomena in the optical parametric oscillator output beam are found, with significant implications for spectroscopy at moderate resolution. For higher resolution, injection seeding of a passive ring-cavity optical parametric oscillator by a single-mode diode laser is shown to permit continuous tunability with effective spectroscopic bandwidths approaching the Fourier-transform limit.


Terrestrial cliff-face ecosystems are unique habitats that harbor diverse vegetational communities and an array of animal species. However, fundamental processes such as nutrient cycling in cliff-face ecosystems remain poorly understood. Cliff-face vegetative communities receive some nitrogen through atmospheric deposition, but few other nutrient-linkages have been explored. Seabirds are a well-established vector of nitrogen subsides between marine ecosystems and coastal cliffs, and I document a similar nutrient transfer between highly productive forest ecosystems and nutrient-poor terrestrial cliffs. Like seabirds, terrestrial cliff-nesting birds excrete nitrogen-rich guano at cliff nest sites, subsequently increasing nitrogen (N) availability below nesting sites. This study investigates a fundamental ecosystem process on cliffs, nitrogen cycling, while also exploring a potential link between terrestrial forest and cliff-face ecosystems in western North Carolina.To measure the community effects of a potential nitrogen subsidy, I compared cliff-face N levels, vascular plant, bryophyte and lichen diversity between the paired vertical transects. My data indicate higher ammonium levels below nests on the cliff-face (p<0.05), and differences between vegetation community composition below nests and on adjacent areas on control transects (p<0.05). Thus, nitrogen levels below raptor cliff nests are elevated enough to cause vegetation community composition shifts in terrestrial cliff-face ecosystems.


Bangsri is a sub-region of Jepara region, which located at North West of the region. Bangsri is
central of public services for surrounding area. Public services facilities both economic and
social growth rapidly and change characteristic of the area into rural-urban fringe. Besides of
spatial growth, population in this area grows 2, 31% annually. In this moment, Jepara PDAM
has served 8% people of total Bangsri sub-region population. Clean water necessity in the area
is high. Nowadays, only one village from 12 villages has covered by pipelines system of PDAM.
Water resources identification study in this area could find alternative from deep well resources.
Two deep well resources are PAT (groundwater drilling), each well have flow 15 liter/second.
PAT well is potential resources for clean water. So that, need detail study to plan water
distribution system to serve people necessity of clean water and also maximizing of PAT
resources with pipelines network. Based on the survey in the area, peoples interest for clean
water distribution system as high 65%. In this Detail Engineering Design makes some decisions
for effectiveness water resources and priority of cover area with high necessity in 2018. Detail
engineering design of expanding clean water network in Bangsri will be held in two separated
network system. Design I (Krasak System) have Length pipe 13, 6 km and design II (Kedung
Leper System) Length pipe is 9, 5 km. Distribution storage tank using grounded reservoir model
for both system. Total investment for establish clean water network system in Bangsri Sub region
is IDR Rp. 2.139.461.906,00
Keyword: Detail Engineering Design, Clean Water Distribution System, Ground water drilling


For models of concurrent and distributed systems, it is important and also challenging to establish correctness in terms of safety and/or liveness properties. Theories of distributed systems consider equivalences fundamental, since they (1) preserve desirable correctness characteristics and (2) often allow for component substitution making compositional reasoning feasible. Modeling distributed systems often requires abstraction utilizing nondeterminism which induces unintended behaviors in terms of infinite executions with one nondeterministic choice being recurrently resolved, each time neglecting a single alternative. These situations are considered unrealistic or highly improbable. Fairness assumptions are commonly used to filter system behaviors, thereby distinguishing between realistic and unrealistic executions. This allows for key arguments in correctness proofs of distributed systems, which would not be possible otherwise. Our contribution is an equivalence spectrum in which fairness assumptions are preserved. The identified equivalences allow for (compositional) reasoning about correctness incorporating fairness assumptions.


The objective of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of artificial destratification by air‐bubble plumes in reducing evaporation from reservoirs. The model DYRESM was used to model the evaporation rates and thermodynamic behaviour of a temperate reservoir in Australia under a number of combinations of destratification designs and operating conditions, comprising various numbers of ports and air‐flow rates per port. The operating conditions involved continuous operation and various intermittent operating strategies. Three reservoir depths were considered, characterizing "shallow," "medium" and "deep" reservoirs, respectively. The present study results indicated that, assuming thermal stratification develops in a reservoir (the case for the "medium" and "deep" reservoirs), artificial destratification is able to reduce surface temperatures and evaporation rates. As a result of the larger volume of cold water at the lake bottom, deeper reservoirs can derive greater benefit from the use of these systems. Being raised to the water surface by the air injected through the destratification system, the cold water from the bottom will help reduce surface temperatures. Conversely, because of their typical homothermous regime, shallow lakes are unlikely to benefit from these systems, since these reservoirs lack an abundant cold water source at the bottom. Even so, however, the reductions in evaporation from deep reservoirs are only modest, with the maximum reduction being only 2.9% for a deep lake (16.5 m) using an energy‐intensive destratification system. Based on the present study, it was concluded that using destratification systems for reducing reservoir evaporation was not warranted because of the modest water savings achieved.


In this paper, we study an asynchronous randomized gossip algorithm under unreliable communication. At each instance, two nodes are selected to meet with a given probability. When nodes meet, two unreliable communication links are established with communication in each direction succeeding with a time-varying probability. It is shown that two particularly interesting cases arise when these communication processes are either perfectly dependent or independent. Necessary and sufficient conditions on the success probability sequence are proposed to ensure almost sure consensus or $\epsilon$-consensus. Weak connectivity is required when the communication is perfectly dependent, while double connectivity is required when the communication is independent. Moreover, it is proven that with odd number of nodes, average preserving turns from almost forever (with probability one for all initial conditions) for perfectly dependent communication, to almost never (with probability zero for almost all initial conditions) for the independent case. This average preserving property does not hold true for general number of nodes. These results indicate the fundamental role the node interactions have in randomized gossip algorithms.


Abstract The magnitude, composition, temporal and spatial patterns of mammal road mortality were assessed along some sections of two different road types (I/51 and R1) connecting the towns of Banská Bystrica, Zvolen and Banská Štiavnica (Central Slovakia). Road kills were surveyed using a car, three or four times per week from March 2008 to December 2012. We conducted 440 surveys, traveling a total of 39,700 km, and recorded 5,416 road mortality events (120 kills per km on average). Mammals were represented by 693 individuals (12.8% of the total number of carcasses) identified into 20 species and categories, respectively. The most frequently identified species were fox, hedgehog and domestic cat, a substantial part fell into the category of small mammals, as they could not be mostly identified to a genus. We found significant temporal and spatial differences in the magnitude of road-kills and identified several road segments as mortality hotspots both for all observations and for each season. Using logistic models we found significant relationships between the number and composition of the mammal casualties and higher proportion of arable land, built-up areas and roads in the landscape bordering the roads. Road topography was found to be among the important variables in explaining road-kills as carnivores were most susceptible to be killed on the raised segments and insectivores and herbivore mammals on the raised or buried segments of the roads. Construction of the fence along the R1 expressway in 2010 was related to significant decrease in road-kills, however, significantly higher mortality level was recorded at the segments with the underpass where streams with line riparian vegetation are crossed by the road. This effect was not identified at segments with expressway feeders. This finding suggests that the line vegetation continues to serve as migration corridor and leads animals to the R1 road where they find defects in fencing and try to cross through them and enter the road.


The ATLAS detector is an all-purpose detector to study high-energy proton–proton collisions. ATLAS is located at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Before first data taking, many beam tests have been carried out in order to fully understand each detector component. The studies in this thesis will concentrate on the 2004 beam test of the entire combined end-cap calorimeter system. The first section of this thesis outlines particle selection in the incoming test beam, eliminating contamination in order to have an accurate calibration environment. The remainder of the thesis focuses on detector calibration and performance studies, including signal-to-energy calibration constant determination, and various detector energy summation methods studying their effect on response. Overall detector energy sharing characteristics including the response of dead detector regions is also presented.


The Department of Justice estimates that American police officers shoot 10,000 pet dogs in the line of duty each year. It is impossible to ascertain a reliable number, however, because most law enforcement agencies do not maintain accurate records of animal killings. The tally may be substantially higher, and some suggest it could reach six figures. Deferring to officers' judgment when they reasonably fear for human safety is sound policy, because they regularly must make split-second, life-or-death decisions in highly stressful situations; but many pet shootings occur when officers mistake the behavior of a friendly, curious dog for aggression. Further, some animals have been deliberately shot and killed under questionable circumstances, including through doors, or while tied, running away, or hiding. Studies show that some officers shoot pets unnecessarily, recklessly, or in retaliation, and that subsequent civilian complaints are investigated inadequately. Moreover, not every animal that police officers shoot is a large dog that may be more likely to pose a genuine risk to human safety—or even a dog at all. Police claiming a threat to human safety have shot puppies, Chihuahuas, Miniature Dachshunds, and domestic cats, among others. In some tragic cases, bullets missed their nonhuman targets and injured or even killed human bystanders instead. Pet shootings can seriously damage public relations for law enforcement agencies, especially during an era when the news seems to be saturated with stories concerning police using excessive force against unarmed civilians. The American Civil Liberties Union even classifies pet shootings as one symptom of the increased militarization of American police forces. Additionally, lawsuits brought by bereaved owners can cost agencies and taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. This Article explores these and other related issues, and presents simple solutions to help reduce the number of companion animal shootings by police in the United States.


BACKGROUND
Vascular aberration has been accepted as a potential etiology of clubfoot, and abnormal vasculature has been observed in as high as 85% of children with severe clubfoot. The perfusion index (PI) corresponds to the ratio of pulsatile to nonpulsatile blood flow at a monitoring site and can be used to quantify perfusion of the extremities. The purpose of this study was to use PI to compare the perfusion of clubfeet to controls in order to further assess the role of abnormal vasculature in clubfoot.

METHODS
A Masimo Radical 7 Pulse Oximeter (Masimo Corporation, Irvine, California) was used to measure the PI and oxygen saturation (SpO2) of the feet of children 5 years of age and younger with and without clubfoot. The sensor was placed on the great toe. Patients with clubfoot undergoing non-operative treatment and control patients undergoing treatment in a clinic for orthopedic concerns not involving the foot and with no known vascular issues were assessed. The PI and SpO2 for the following three groups were compared: 1. affected feet of patients with bilateral or unilateral clubfoot, 2. unaffected feet of patients with unilateral clubfoot, and 3. control feet.

RESULTS
One hundred and twenty-eight patients were enrolled, 64 with clubfoot (31 bilateral and 33 unilateral) and 64 controls. No significant differences in PI or SpO2 were found between: 64 clubfeet and 64 feet of controls (PI of 2.9 vs. 2.9, p = 0.984; SpO2 of 97.1 vs. 98.1, p = 0.192); unaffected feet of 30 patients with unilateral clubfoot and 64 controls (PI of 3.0 vs.2.9, p = 0.907; SpO2 of 96.9 vs. 98.1, p = 0.224); and affected and unaffected feet of 30 patients with unilateral clubfoot (PI of 3.3 vs.3.0, p = 0.500; SpO2 of 97.4 vs. 96.9, p = 0.527).

CONCLUSIONS
No difference was observed in the PI or SpO2 when comparing affected clubfoot limbs with unaffected limbs, suggesting that vascular anomalies cannot fully explain the development of clubfoot.


A strategy, based on using V beta family-specific oligonucleotides, was developed for specific amplification and direct sequencing of human TCR V beta genes. With this strategy, it was possible to undertake a structural analysis of TCRs from human T cell clones in specific responses. 12 HLA-B27-specific cytotoxic clones were examined. The results reveal a nonrandom use of V beta gene diversity in this alloreactive response in that: (a) the clones express a restricted number of V beta segments, including a subset of V beta families that are significantly more related to one another than to most other V beta families; (b) five of seven clones having a particular reaction pattern with HLA-B27 subtypes possess Alanine at the D-J junction; and (c) identical J beta segments are found associated in several instances with identical or highly homologous V beta gene segments. In addition, two new V beta 13 members are reported.


Abstract At temperatures less than ~1500 K, previously published CP data demonstrate that the heat capacities of orthoenstatite, proto-enstatite, diopside, and pseudowollastonite include primarily Debye type vibrational and anharmonic contributions, whereas the alkali chain, sheet, and ring silicates, Na2SiO3, Li2SiO3, K2SiO3, and Na2Si2O5 include a third contribution. The third contribution to CP arises from defect formation due to the mobility Na, K, Li, and O2−. The contribution becomes apparent at temperatures above 700–800 K for Na and K silicates, and above 900–1000 K for Li metasilicate. With strong thermal agitation, alkali-non-bridging oxygen (NBO) bonds are ruptured with the cations exiting their structural sites to occupy interstitial sites, thereby producing intrinsic Frenkel defects, which contribute to the CP of the alkali silicates. The magnitudes of the CP defect contributions correlate inversely with cation-oxygen bond strengths, as measured by bond dissociation energies. K-O and Na-O bond strengths are weak (239 and 257 kJ/mol) and defect contributions are large for these alkali chain, ring, and sheet silicates. The greater bond strength of Li-O (341 kJ/mol) correlates with a weaker defect contribution to the CP of Li2SiO3. Mg-O and Ca-O bonds are stronger still (394 and 464 kJ/mol) and no CP defect contributions are observed for the pyroxenes and pseudowollastonite up to ~1500 K. Above ~800 K a polymerization reaction occurs in Na2SiO3, which produces some Q3 species and free oxygen (O2− or oxide ion). The polymerization reaction annihilates an oxygen structural site so that the O2− produced must reside on non-structural sites thus producing intrinsic anionic defects. The same reactions likely occur in Na2Si2O5 and K2SiO3. Raman spectra of Na2SiO3 indicate >10% of Na+ and ~1.7% of O2−on interstitial sites at 1348 K. Ca- and Mg-bearing mantle minerals subjected to temperature greater than ~1500 K experience the destabilizing effects of disordering (Frenkel defect formation). The minerals may respond either by changing their composition or by changing phase. An abundance of Ca and Na defects in pyroxenes, for example, likely promotes production of new components (e.g., CaAl2SiO6, NaAlSi2O6) in pyroxenes. By their production, Ca and Na defect concentrations are reduced thereby stabilizing the phases. Mg-O bond dissociation and production of intrinsic Mg2+ and O2− point defects within olivine likely destabilize it and promote the phase transition to wadsleyite at the base of the upper mantle.


Unplanned intensive care units (ICU) readmissions and in-hospital mortality of patients are two important metrics for evaluating the quality of hospital care. Identifying patients with higher risk of readmission to ICU or of mortality can not only protect those patients from potential dangers, but also reduce the high costs of healthcare. In this work, we propose a new method to incorporate information from the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of patients and utilize hyperbolic embeddings of a medical ontology (i.e., ICD-9) in the prediction model. The results prove the effectiveness of our method and show that hyperbolic embeddings of ontological concepts give promising performance.


Transnational trade union action has expanded significantly over the last few decades and has taken a variety of shapes and trajectories. This book is concerned with understanding the spatial extension of trade union action, and in particular the development of new forms of collective mobilization, network-building, and forms of regulation that bridge local and transnational issues.

Through the work of leading international specialists, this collection of essays examines the process and dynamic of transnational trade union action and provides analytical and conceptual tools to understand these developments. The research presented here emphasizes that the direction of transnational solidarity remains contested, subject to experimentation and negotiation, and includes studies of often overlooked developments in transition and developing countries with original analyses from the European Union and NAFTA areas. Providing a fresh examination of transnational solidarity, this volume offers neither a romantic or overly optimistic narrative of a borderless unionism, nor does it fall into a fatalistic or pessimistic account of international union solidarity. Through original research conducted at different levels, this book disentangles the processes and dynamics of institution building and challenges the conventional national based forms of unionism that prevailed in the latter half of the twentieth century.


Lifestyle magazines portray women in different manners and have an influence on how media consumers create self-images. The importance of knowing how different visual representation of the female acts out in magazines with large target audiences is therefore of weight for the magazines' readers to understand. This thesis analyze how the two lifestyle magazines ELLE and LOVE portrays women in images and how they in turn create ideal images of women.The thesis has been conducted through a qualitative analysis of 5 images from each magazine that represents the magazines artistic styles. The theories used in this study are semiotic image analysis and visual text analysis viewed from a gender- and discourse perspective.The conclusion of this thesis is that ELLE portrays women as strong, happy and feminine, with at tendency towards androgyny, while LOVE describes women as inferior and sexual objects constructed for the male gaze. The magazines, which belong to a classic- respectively a post-modern genre within lifestyle magazines, thereby switch places with each other and becomes each other's counterparts.


This paper describes the current situation with piracy and armed robbery at sea in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly off the Horn of Africa and in Southeast Asia. This situation may be aggravated due to the downturn in international shipping following the global financial crisis. This has led to surplus shipping capacity, crews paid off, lower profits, and ship owners seeking to cut costs. Many ships are laid up in anchorages prone to sea robbery, and there is a risk that ships might be less well maintained and operated. This paper also explains how some ships are more vulnerable to attack than others. Sub-standard ships are more likely to be successfully attacked than quality vessels. Issues are identified that might be addressed by the shipping industry and ship owners, as well as by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). In addition to being a victim of piracy, the shipping industry could be adding to the problem by laying up ships in vulnerable areas, reducing wages and sizes of crew and employing sub-standard ships. This situation could be symptomatic of wider problems in international shipping that throw doubt on the effectiveness of current regimes for ship safety, security and marine environmental protection.


Hyperspectral reflectance data are utilised in many applications, where measured data are processed and converted into physical, chemical and/or biological properties of the target objects and/or processes being studied. It has been proven that crop reflectance data can be used to detect, characterise and quantify disease severity and plant density.In this thesis, various methods were proposed and used for detection, characterisation and quantification of disease severity and plant density utilising data acquired by hand-held spectrometers. Following this direction, hyperspectral images provide both spatial and spectral information opening for more efficient analysis.Hence, in this thesis, various surface water quality parameters of inland waters have been monitored using hyperspectral images acquired by airborne systems. After processing the images to obtain ground reflectance data, the analysis was performed using similar methods to those of the previous case. Hence, these methods may also find application in future satellite based hyperspectral imaging systems.However, the large size of these images raises the need for efficient data reduction. Self organising and learning neural networks, that can follow and preserve the topology of the data, have been shown to be efficient for data reduction. More advanced variants of these neural networks, referred to as the weighted neural networks (WNN), were proposed in this thesis, such as the weighted incremental neural network (WINN), which can be used for efficient reduction, mapping and clustering of large high-dimensional data sets, such as hyperspectral images.Finally, the analysis can be reversed to generate spectra from simpler measurements using multiple colour-filter mosaics, as suggested in the thesis. The acquired instantaneous single image, including the mosaic effects, is demosaicked to generate a multi-band image that can finally be transformed into a hyperspectral image.


The Kimberley region of Western Australia is a National Heritage listed region that is internationally recognised for its environmental and cultural significance. However, petroleum spills have been reported at a number of sites across the region, representing an environmental concern. The region is also characterised as having low soil nutrients, high temperatures and monsoonal rain – all of which may limit the potential for natural biodegradation of petroleum. Therefore, this work evaluated the effect of legacy petroleum hydrocarbons on the indigenous soil microbial community (Archaea, Bacteria and Fungi) across three sites in the Kimberley region. At each site, soil cores were removed from contaminated and control areas and analysed for total petroleum hydrocarbons, soil nutrients, pH and microbial community profiling (using16S rRNA and ITS sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq Platform). The presence of petroleum hydrocarbons decreased microbial diversity across all kingdoms, altered the structure of microbial communities and increased the abundance of putative hydrocarbon degraders (e.g. Mycobacterium , Acremonium, Penicillium, Bjerkandera and Candida ) . Microbial community shifts from contaminated soils were also associated with an increase in soil nutrients (notably PO 43- and S). Our study highlights the long-term effect of legacy hydrocarbon spills on soil microbial communities and their diversity in remote, infertile monsoonal soils, but also highlights the potential for natural attenuation to occur in these environments.


We investigated the production, consumption, and exchange of O2 in melting sea ice to assess the biological‐ and physical‐induced O2 turnover. The underside of the ice was covered with 5–20 cm3 large, buoyant algal aggregates. Their gross primary production amounted to 0.49 mmol C m−2 d−1, which was 4.5 times higher than the primary production of sea ice—encrusted microalgae (0.11 mmol C m−2 d−1). The phototrophic biomass of the aggregates (2.94 mg chlorophyll a m−2) was six times higher than that encountered in the sea ice itself. Taxono‐specific investigations strongly suggest that the aggregates were formed from agglutinated algae released from the melting ice. At the prevailing light conditions, the sea ice—encrusted communities were almost at metabolic balance, while the aggregates were net heterotrophic. Together, the two communities were responsible for an overall O2 consumption of 0.32 mmol m−2 d−1. The sea ice—associated communities thereby represent a southward‐drifting carbon source that is being exhausted by sea ice—affiliated food webs. The sea ice volume decreased rapidly, releasing meltwater at a rate 25 L m−2 d−1, but no surface melt ponds were formed. Aquatic eddy correlation (EC) measurements on the underside of the ice revealed a light‐dependent O2 exchange rate. However, the integrated signal resolved a net O2 uptake of 7.70 mmol m−2 d−1. The net O2 exchange was therefore dominated by the production of O2‐depleted meltwater rather than biological activity. The EC technique represents a new non‐invasive tool for O2 studies in sea ice communities.


The main aim of the study, conducted in 2007-2008, was to define the influence of nitrogen levels 0, 50, 100, 150, 200 mg N dm –3 applied to grass lawns on the content of metallic microelements: iron, manganese, zinc and copper and on their quantitative ratios in turf grass. The study was carried out on a 2-year-old lawn, composed of a mixture of lawn grasses species and varieties: perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) var. Grasslands Nui (45%), tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb) Finelawn (25%), red fescue (Festuca rubra Hack.) Olivia (10%), red fescue (Festuca rubra Hack.) Boreal (15%) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) Balin (5%). With the exception of copper, the nitrogen fertilization raised the content of iron, manganese and zinc in aerial plant parts. The application of nitrogen (as ammonium nitrate) increased the uptake of nutrients by aerial plant parts: Fe to 143.0%, Mn – 227.2%, Zn – 233.3% Cu – 180.7%, and modified the ratios between amounts of the microelements. In general, it has been demonstrated that nitrogen nutrition of plants grown on ornamental lawns, within ranges of N – 150 to N – 200, increased the ratios of Fe : Mn : Zn : Cu. The best ornamental quality of lawns was obtained where the aerial plant parts contained (in mg kg–1 d.m.): Fe 231.6-292.8, Mn 35.6-50.5, Zn 26.5-47.5 and Cu 16.9-17.6. These ranges could be recommended as preliminary guidelines for ornamental lawns. In practice, considering the positive and stimulating influence of nitrogen nutrition on crops, the chemical composition of plants and the uptake of microelements by a mixture of grasses on ornamental lawns, it is crucial to monitor actual fertilization by taking into account losses of nutrients. These losses are caused by intensive uptake of nutrients by the aerial plant parts and due to the leaching of nutrients from the rhizosphere. It is necessary to replenish lost elements using mineral fertilizers.


It has been argued that a key component of tackling climate change is to reduce our reliance on the car. In response, it is put forward by this thesis that influencing young
people before they develop a 'car habit' would appear crucial and that a more in-depth understanding of the attitudes of young people towards transport and climate change is key to the framing of policy and transport initiatives. This thesis reveals key findings from an exploratory study involving a series of small group discussions with young people before and just after the point of licence acquisition. It investigates the
participants' attitudes towards transport modes, their willingness to tackle climate change and the extent to which their willingness to tackle this issue does, or has the potential to, influence their current and, more importantly, future intended travel behaviour. A number of findings were made by the research, most prominently the
complexity of and interrelation between the factors influencing the attitudes of young people towards transport and its impact on climate change and the need for policy and
initiatives aimed at influencing young people away from an intention to drive (towards an intention to use more environmentally friendly modes), to take an holistic approach in their development. At the same time, it was found that the participants are currently subject to a range of sources of information, and at times mixed messages, about this issue.

Further to this, it was found that image, identity and materialism are central to the values expressed by the participants in relation to transport modes, and in turn their emotional responses towards the same. These factors are reflected in the participants'positive attitude towards the car in favour of more environmentally friendly modes and the dominance of this mode in their current and, more importantly, intended travel behaviour. Gaining the ability to drive was found to act as a key life-stage with respect
to the participants' self-identity and role-identity as a driver in particular. However, it also became clear that, although they lack a sound understanding of climate change
and they expressed a lack of 'front of mind' concern about this issue (in that they understood it is a serious environmental problem but are not 'concerned' about it), a
number of participants (of all ages, each gender and including those able to drive) were accepting of the idea of enforced behaviour change.


The rapid expansion of commercially available fermented food products raises important safety issues particularly when infant food is concerned. In many cases, the activity of the microorganisms used for fermentation as well as what will be the immunological outcome of fermented food intake is not known. In this manuscript we used complex in vitro, ex-vivo and in vivo systems to study the immunomodulatory properties of probiotic-fermented products (culture supernatant and fermented milk without live bacteria to be used in infant formula). We found in vitro and ex-vivo that fermented products of Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74 act via the inhibition of proinflammatory cytokine release leaving anti-inflammatory cytokines either unaffected or even increased in response to Salmonella typhimurium. These activities are not dependent on the inactivated bacteria but to metabolic products released during the fermentation process. We also show that our in vitro systems are predictive of an in vivo efficacy by the fermented products. Indeed CBA L74 fermented products (both culture medium and fermented milk) could protect against colitis and against an enteric pathogen infection (Salmonella typhimurium). Hence we found that fermented products can act via the inhibition of immune cell inflammation and can protect the host from pathobionts and enteric pathogens. These results open new perspectives in infant nutrition and suggest that L. paracasei CBA L74 fermented formula can provide immune benefits to formula-fed infants, without carrying live bacteria that may be potentially dangerous to an immature infant immune system.


High throughput sequencing (HTS) has resulted in extreme growth rates of sequencing data. At our lab, we generate terabytes of data every day. It is usually seen as required for data output to be "cleaned" and processed in various ways prior to use for common tasks such as variant calling, expression quantification and assembly. Two common tasks associated with HTS are adapter trimming and paired-end joining. I have developed two tools at Expression Analysis, Inc. to address these common tasks. The names of these programs are fastq-mcf and fastq-join. I compared the performance of these tools to similar open-source utilities, both in terms of resource efficiency, and effectiveness.


Does incivility in political discourse have adverse effects on public regard for politics? If so, why? In this study we present a theory suggesting that when viewers are exposed to televised political disagreement, it often violates well-established face-to-face social norms for the polite expression of opposing views. As a result, incivility in public discourse adversely affects trust in government. Drawing on three laboratory experiments, we find that televised presentations of political differences of opinion do not, in and of themselves, harm attitudes toward politics and politicians. However, political trust is adversely affected by levels of incivility in these exchanges. Our findings suggest that the format of much political television effectively promotes viewer interest, but at the expense of political trust.


The goal of this project has been achieved through three tasks. The main goal of Task I has been to identify appropriate sensors that have potential for bridge bearings applications. This has been achieved through the following subtasks and has been presented in this chapter: (a) An extensive literature review of behavior of elastomeric bearings and state-of-the-art on the smart bearings; (b) Objective criteria for selection of sensors; (c) Information, specifications and reliability of commercially advanced sensors. The focus of Task II has been to develop possible instrumentation schemes for implementing smart bearings as presented in Chapter 2. In Task III, costs associated with feasibility of smart bearings have been investigated. This work has been reported in Chapter 3.


The healthy state of an organism is constantly threatened by external cues. Due to the daily inhalation of hundreds of particles and pathogens, the immune system needs to constantly accomplish the task of pathogen clearance in order to maintain this healthy state. However, infection dynamics are highly influenced by the peculiar anatomy of the human lung. Lung alveoli that are packed in alveolar sacs are interconnected by so called Pores of Kohn. Mainly due to the lack of in vivo methods, the role of Pores of Kohn in the mammalian lung is still under debate and partly contradicting hypotheses remain to be investigated. Although it was shown by electron microscopy that Pores of Kohn may serve as passageways for immune cells, their impact on the infection dynamics in the lung is still unknown under in vivo conditions. In the present study, we apply a hybrid agent-based infection model to quantitatively compare three different scenarios and discuss the importance of Pores of Kohn during infections of Aspergillus fumigatus. A. fumigatus is an airborne opportunistic fungus with rising incidences causing severe infections in immunocompromised patients that are associated with high mortality rates. Our hybrid agent-based model incorporates immune cell dynamics of alveolar macrophages – the resident phagocytes in the lung – as well as molecular dynamics of diffusing chemokines that attract alveolar macrophages to the site of infection. Consequently, this model allows a quantitative comparison of three different scenarios and to study the importance of Pores of Kohn. This enables us to demonstrate how passaging of alveolar macrophages and chemokine diffusion affect A. fumigatus infection dynamics. We show that Pores of Kohn alter important infection clearance mechanisms, such as the spatial distribution of macrophages and the effect of chemokine signaling. However, despite these differences, a lack of passageways for alveolar macrophages does impede infection clearance only to a minor extend. Furthermore, we quantify the importance of recruited macrophages in comparison to resident macrophages.


Traditionally, nodes in a sensor network simply collect data and then pass it on to a centralized node that archives, distributes, and possibly analyzes the data. However, analysis at the individual nodes could enable faster detection of anomalies or other interesting events, as well as faster responses such as sending out alerts or increasing the data collection rate. There is an additional opportunity for increased performance if individual nodes can communicate directly with their neighbors. Previously, a method was developed by which machine learning classification algorithms could collaborate to achieve high performance autonomously (without requiring human intervention). This method worked for supervised learning algorithms, in which labeled data is used to train models. The learners collaborated by exchanging labels describing the data. The new advance enables clustering algorithms, which do not use labeled data, to also collaborate. This is achieved by defining a new language for collaboration that uses pair-wise constraints to encode useful information for other learners. These constraints specify that two items must, or cannot, be placed into the same cluster. Previous work has shown that clustering with these constraints (in isolation) already improves performance. In the problem formulation, each learner resides at a different node in the sensor network and makes observations (collects data) independently of the other learners. Each learner clusters its data and then selects a pair of items about which it is uncertain and uses them to query its neighbors. The resulting feedback (a must and cannot constraint from each neighbor) is combined by the learner into a consensus constraint, and it then reclusters its data while incorporating the new constraint. A strategy was also proposed for cleaning the resulting constraint sets, which may contain conflicting constraints; this improves performance significantly. This approach has been applied to collaborative clustering of seismic and infrasonic data collected by the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory in Antarctica. Previous approaches to distributed clustering cannot readily be applied in a sensor network setting, because they assume that each node has the same view of the data set. A view is the set of features used to represent each object. When a single data set is partitioned across several computational nodes, distributed clustering works; all objects have the same view. But when the data is collected from different locations, using different sensors, a more flexible approach is needed. This approach instead operates in situations where the data collected at each node has a different view (e.g., seismic vs. infrasonic sensors), but they observe the same events. This enables them to exchange information about the likely cluster membership relations between objects, even if they do not use the same features to represent the objects.


In schools today, mathematics teachers are faced with the challenge to educate all students. Additionally, teachers are also being asked to implement the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that were adopted by New York State in 2010. With the recent adoption of the CCSS and the rising number of students with disabilities, collaboration between mathematics and special education teachers is essential to meet the diverse academic needs of all students. Many schools are now implementing co-teaching so that teachers can share their expertise and work collaboratively towards the success of all students in the general education classroom. This research used a single case study method to investigate how a pair of co-teachers managed planning, teaching, and assessing lessons around the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in a secondary mathematics classroom to meet the academic needs of all students. Results from this study may help inform secondary mathematics and special education teachers as well as school administrators about the best practices for co-teaching with the CCSS. SECONDARY MATHEMATICS CO-TEACHING 1 Table of


The last two decades of medical education have been marked by a persistent push towards curricular reform. Anatomy as a discipline, the unshakable foundation of medical teaching for hundreds of years, has been at the centre of this development. Although it is widely agreed that for doctors to be competent, they need an adequate knowledge of anatomy underpinning medicine, there is much less agreement over the quantity required, and who should decide and define it. Many clinicians feel medical students are being under-trained in this basic medical science before reaching the clinical stages. Professional accreditation boards advocate the reduction of factual information in undergraduate medical courses. Anatomists complain of a progressive erosion of the time allocated to the subject. Caught in the midst of this controversy is the student of anatomy who is left bewildered and confused about what is required from him to become a safe and competent health professional. The way forward might, first, be for medical schools to facilitate discussions between students, anatomy professors, and clinicians to bring these divergent perspectives into alignment. Second, the anatomists need to re-invent themselves in two principal frameworks: first, to present the subject in the context within which it will be utilised by the student, and second to employ the overwhelming learning tool of today, i.e. technology, in their teaching and assessment of the subject.


A comprehensive knowledge of the fishery,
biology and resource potential of marine catfishes
of the family Tachysuridae in Indian
waters is lacking. This bulletin is an attempt
to provide a baseline picture of the present
status of this important resource for future
planning and management of the stock. Though
catfish production from the seas around India
varied from 4 to 6% of the total annual marine
fish landings, which is about 10% of the
country's demersal catch, this group received
inadequate attention of fishery experts. This
was mainly due to the fact that catfish was not
considered to be a quality table fish until
recently. Of late, efforts made for better utilization
of the resource and the heavy destruction
of catfish eggs by purse seines along the
Karnataka and Goa coasts (MFIS, 24, 1980)
enhanced our awareness of the urgent need to
regulate the exploitation of this promising
resource.


Calmodulin (CaM), a Ca2+-sensing protein, is constitutively bound to IQ domains of the C termini of human Kv7 (hKv7, KCNQ) channels to mediate Ca2+-dependent reduction of Kv7 currents. However, the mechanism remains unclear. We report that CaM binds to two isoforms of the hKv7.4 channel in a Ca2+-independent manner but that only the long isoform (hKv7.4a) is regulated by Ca2+/CaM. Ca2+/CaM mediate reduction of the hKv7.4a channel by decreasing the channel open probability and altering activation kinetics. We took advantage of a known missense mutation (G321S) that has been linked to progressive hearing loss to further examine the inhibitory effects of Ca2+/CaM on the Kv7.4 channel. Using multidisciplinary techniques, we demonstrate that the G321S mutation may destabilize CaM binding, leading to a decrease in the inhibitory effects of Ca2+ on the channels. Our study utilizes an expression system to dissect the biophysical properties of the WT and mutant Kv7.4 channels. This report provides mechanistic insights into the critical roles of Ca2+/CaM regulation of the Kv7.4 channel under physiological and pathological conditions.


Formal component models have been subject to research for decades, but current component frameworks hardly reflect their capabilities with respect to composition, dependency management and interaction modeling. Thus the frameworks don't exploit the benefits of formal component models like understandability and ease of maintenance, which are enabled when software is composed of hierarchical and reusable components that are loosely coupled, self-describing and self-contained. In this contribution, we try to examine the discrepancies between the state of research and the capabilities of an existing module framework, the widely-used OSGi bundle management framework for the Java platform. Based on this we propose modifications and enhancements to the OSGi framework that allow to exploit the benefits of formal component models in OSGi-based applications.


In the field of speech-language pathology, there is an increasing need for valid and appropriate assessment measures for Spanish-speaking students that can reliably be given by examiners with a wide range of Spanish knowledge and scoring experience. In order to determine the level of detail needed to reliably score a standardized measure of Spanish narrative ability, 15 participants, ranging in Spanish proficiency and experience levels, scored six samples of the experimental version of the Test of Narrative Language-Spanish (TNL-Spanish). Consistency and accuracy of scores were compared with Spanish proficiency levels, comfort levels, and presentation method (written transcript and audio-recorded samples). Results indicated no significant effect for any factor, indicating that examiners of varying levels of Spanish proficiency and experience level can reliably and efficiently score an assessment in Spanish when provided with clear and specific scoring procedures and information regarding the kinds of errors present in language disorders in Spanish.


"Food safety issues have attracted international attention because they play an increasingly important role in determining whether developing countries have access to export markets.At the same time, food suppliers in developing countries face the challenge of improving food safety for their growing urban middle classes, and the large burden of disease that poor food safety generates in developing countries is more widely appreciated. Because developing countries produce and consume more perishable foods than before, such as meat, milk, fish, and eggs, food safety has become especially important to domestic consumers and in trade among developing countries.... Food safety is no longer simply a public health issue. It is also a market development issue. The focus on food safety in international trade and in trade agreements has also made it a trade issue for many countries—developed and developing alike." from Text


BACKGROUND
Academic faculty who devote most of their time to clinical work often struggle to engage in meaningful scholarly work. They may be disadvantaged by limited research training and limited time. Simply providing senior mentors and biostatistical support has limited effectiveness.

OBJECTIVE
We aimed to increase productivity in scholarly work of hospitalists and internal medicine physicians by integrating an Academic Research Coach into a robust faculty development program.

DESIGN
This was a pre-post quality improvement evaluation.

SETTING
This was conducted at the University of Washington in faculty across three academic-affiliated hospitals and 10 academic-affiliated clinics.

PARTICIPANTS
Participants were hospitalists and internists on faculty in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Washington.

INTERVENTION
The coach was a 0.50 full time equivalent health services researcher with strong research methods, project implementation, and interpersonal skills. The coach consulted on research, quality improvement, and other scholarship.

MEASUREMENTS
We assessed the number of faculty supported, types of services provided, and numbers of grants, papers, and abstracts submitted and accepted.

RESULTS
The coach consulted with 49 general internal medicine faculty including 30 hospitalists who conducted 63 projects. The coach supported 13 publications, 11 abstracts, four grant submissions, and seven manuscript reviews. Forty-eight faculty in other departments benefited as co-authors.

CONCLUSION
Employing a dedicated health services researcher as part of a faculty development program is an effective way to engage clinically oriented faculty in meaningful scholarship. Key aspects of the program included an accessible and knowledgeable coach and an ongoing marketing strategy.


The coherence and effectiveness of engagement with the world's 'fragile and conflict- affected states'--beyond ethical imperatives and geo-strategic considerations--turns on answers to two vexing questions. First, on what defensible basis is any given country, at any given historical moment, deemed to be (or not to be) 'fragile'? Second, if a defining characteristic of state fragility is low levels of capability to implement core responsibilities, how can international agencies best support domestic public organizations to acquire capability? The first issue may appear to be a methodological one (wherein more and better data would provide a firmer empirical foundation on which to base key decisions) but any determination, especially of marginal cases, must also be grounded in a correspondingly comprehensive theory of change. Similarly, the optimal response to the second issue may appear to be importing technical and rigorously verified ('best practice') solutions, but in fact it is more likely to require a qualitatively different strategy, one able to experiment with alternative design specifications and adapt in real time to changing contextual realities (thereby iterating towards customized 'best fit' solutions). To this end, an alternative approach to the theory, measurement and practice of engaging with fragile states is outlined, in the spirit of rising concerns across the development community that prevailing strategies have demonstrably reached the limits of their effectiveness.


Nowadays almost every major company has a monitoring system and produces log data to analyse their systems. To perform analysation on the log data and to extract experience for future decisions it is important to transform and synchronize different time series. For synchronizing multiple time series serveral methods are provided so that they are leading to a synchronized uniform time series. This is achieved by using discretisation and approximation methodics. Furthermore the discretisation through Ticks is demonstrated, as well as the repsectivly illustrated results.


Collision detection is an issue in physical simulations; without it simulations are inaccurate. Unfortunately, effective collision detection can require a significant amount of computational power. To reduce the number of computations and make the problem more tractable, computer scientists have used data structures to partition the system. This removes the need to have every single particle check for possible collisions with every other particle in the system; however, generic data structures typically do not work as well as specialized data structures, so this has led to the creation of multiple spatial data structures. Some spatial data structures and algorithms were customized and created to optimize memory usage while others have been made to increase speed. This project seeks to compare spatial data structures in systems with uniformly and non-uniformly distributed particles, while varying the number of particles and the filling factor. The results of this project should provide useful information to those doing general collisional simulations, such as physicists and engineers.


ABSTRACT In the third day of his life Oedipus suffered a violent murderous assault in which his ankles were pierced so that he could be left to die. In fact, he was not only saved, but brought up as their son by the childless King and Queen of Corinth. My hypothesis is that a severe trauma left a significant physical and psychological scar, which was hidden beneath an illusion of a normal childhood. His background, including the cause of the infirmity of his ankles, remained obscure until it was revealed in the course of Sophocles drama. Facing the truth involved an exposure of the way an illusion had served to protect Oedipus not only from the truth of the murder and incest, but also of the fact that he had been severely traumatised. A phantasy of an ideal family commonly may serve as a defence against trauma and, as a result, facing the truth involves relinquishing the idealisation, and this may be experienced as a further trauma. In this paper, I will pay particular attention to the importance of guilt for the victim of early trauma. Severe trauma may block the acceptance of guilt and, hence, prevent the evolution of a benevolent cycle involving forgiveness and reparation.


INTRODUCTION In their challenging and extensively researched study, Professors Craig Allen Nard and John F. Duffy argue that Congress's decision in 1982 to give to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit exclusive jurisdiction over patent litigation is no longer a good idea, if it ever was.1 Instead, they posit, jurisdiction should be shared among several of the federal courts of appeals, somewhat in the manner it was before 1982. They extract from recent criticisms of the court's work the conclusion that a return to diversity injudicial appellate review, despite the problems that existed and that led to the 1982 restructuring, would produce decisions more in line with their sense of how patent law policy should be evolving. The thesis presented by Professors Nard and Duffy raises a number of questions. A central one, one to which we will devote some attention, is whether the perceived shortcomings in the world of patent law are within the ability of courts to cause or cure, and, to the extent they are, whether having more rather than fewer judges at work on them would likely help or hurt. When the Act creating the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was signed twenty-five years ago, it was understood that this newest of the circuit courts was something of an experiment.2 The new court had two characteristics that differentiated it from its sister circuits. One was that its jurisdiction was to be based entirely on subject matter, not geography. The other was that in the subject matter areas that were assigned to it, the court would have exclusive jurisdiction, that is, no other circuit court would hear appeals in those subject matter areas.3 Though having a circuit court with only those characteristics is unique to the Federal Circuit, the Federal Circuit is not the only circuit with subject matter jurisdiction exclusive to that circuit. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, like the eleven numbered regional circuits, derives its basic jurisdiction from the general statutes designed for geographic-based circuits. In addition, however, the D.C. Circuit hears appeals in specified subject matter areas assigned to it by Congress.4 The effect of assigning specified subject matter areas to a single court of appeals is to provide nationwide uniformity in those areas, thus making the designated court the final arbiter of the applicable law, subject only to Supreme Court review. Since much Supreme Court review results from the need to settle differences between the several circuit courts of appeals, the consequence of courts having exclusive jurisdiction is that the decisions of the Federal Circuit and the D.C. Circuit in their respective subject matter areas will be the primary methods for resolving disputes under the applicable laws, and this has proven to be the case.5 To put in perspective the debate about uniformity (one court) versus diversity (multiple courts) in the decisional process, it is important to recognize the different approaches to the judicial function called for by the different ways in which legal rules are framed. Historically, the framing of legal rules was a function of the judicial process. Each new set of facts required the courts to determine whether a plaintiffs pleading stated a cognizable cause of action. Each set of facts for which relief could be granted either fit a prior precedent or called for a new or revised rule. Thus evolved the common law, and the courts were known as common-law courts.6 Today, legislative enactments and their by-products, in the form of agency rules and regulations, have all but supplanted the common law. In particular, the federal courts do not function as common-law courts, and there is no federal general common law.7 The rights vindicated in the federal courts derive from legal rules established by others-the Constitution, treaties, and, importantly, legislation enacted by Congress and agency rules and regulations adopted pursuant to congressional enactments. …


Chinese-American relations are often viewed through the prism of power rivalry and civilization clash. But China and America s shared history is much more than a catalog of conflicts. Using culture rather than politics or economics as a reference point, Xu Guoqi highlights significant yet neglected cultural exchanges in which China and America have contributed to each other s national development, building the foundation of what Zhou Enlai called a relationship of equality and mutual benefit. Xu begins with the story of Anson Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln s ambassador to China, and the 120 Chinese students he played a crucial role in bringing to America, inaugurating a program of Chinese international study that continues today. Such educational crosscurrents moved both ways, as is evident in Xu s profile of the remarkable Ge Kunhua, the Chinese poet who helped spearhead Chinese language teaching in Boston in the 1870s. Xu examines the contributions of two American scholars to Chinese political and educational reform in the twentieth century: the law professor Frank Goodnow, who took part in making the Yuan Shikai government s constitution; and the philosopher John Dewey, who helped promote Chinese modernization as a visiting scholar at Peking University and elsewhere. Xu also shows that it was Americans who first introduced to China the modern Olympic movement, and that China has used sports ever since to showcase its rise as a global power. These surprising shared traditions between two nations, Xu argues, provide the best roadmap for the future of Sino-American relations."


During friction it is well known that the real contact area is much lower to the theoretical one and that it evolves constantly during braking. It influences drastically the system's performance. Conversely the system behavior modifies the loading conditions and consequently the contact surface area. This interaction between scales is well-known for the problematic of vibrations induced by friction but also for the thermomechanical behavior. Indeed, it is necessary to develop models combining a fine description of the contact interface and a model of the whole brake system. This is the aim of the present work.A multiscale strategy is propose to integrate the microscopic behavior of the interface in a macroscopic numerical model. Semi-analytical resolution is done on patches at the contact scale while FEM solution with contact parameters embedded the solution at the microscale is used. Asperities and plateaus are considered at the contact interface. FFT techniques are used to accelerate the resolution at the micro-scale. As an example the multiscale model is applied into a complex value analysis used to identify modal coupling in NVH simulations. With this model the interaction between non uniform surface and system dynamic behavior is clearly shown. The contact surface variations clearly affect the modal coupling and therefore noise propensity.


This paper evaluates the global welfare impact of China's trade integration and technological change in a quantitative Ricardian-Heckscher-Ohlin model implemented on 75 countries. We simulate two alternative productivity growth scenarios: a "balanced" one in which China's productivity grows at the same rate in each sector, and an "unbalanced" one in which China's comparative disadvantage sectors catch up disproportionately faster to the world productivity frontier. Contrary to a well-known conjecture (Samuelson, 2004), the large majority of countries in the sample, including the developed ones, experience an order of magnitude larger welfare gains when China's productivity growth is biased towards its comparative disadvantage sectors. We demonstrate both analytically and quantitatively that this finding is driven by the inherently multilateral nature of world trade. As a separate but related exercise we quantify the worldwide welfare gains from China's trade integration.


Abstract Fast ice is generally less developed in the Antarctic than in the Arctic because of the steeper shores and lesser dissection of the Antarctic coast. Polynyas in the Antarctic are shown by space imagery to occur mainly off the west shore of ice shelves or land cusps extending far into the sea. Satellite photography also shows that ice conditions around Antarctica are associated with atmospheric circulation patterns, with light ice prevailing during a zonal pattern and heavy ice during a meridional pattern. In some regions of the Antarctic, fluctuations in the amount of ice are found to be cyclic, with the same period as in Arctic seas.


Hollway (2007) has highlighted the way a new mother draws intersubjectively on the 'vestigial experience' of her own infantile and child state in relationship with her mother. Developing this I argue that before she has a child a woman anticipates her potential maternal subjectivity through what she 'knows' psychically and socially; both through this 'vestigial experience', through her observation and experience of her mother and other mothers, and the conflicting and contradictory social discourses of mothering in which she is immersed as she grows up. Together these create in her a fantasy maternal subjectivity that has both conscious and unconscious dimensions. This article draws on a psychosocial study of the narratives and drawings of 26 New Zealand women in their 30s and 40s who are 'circumstantially childless' (Cannold 2000); that is women who have always seen themselves as having children but find themselves at the end of their natural fertility not becoming biological mothers for social rather than (at least initially) biological reasons. They are engaged in a process of coming to terms with this situation and are in the unusual, but not uncommon, position of being neither 'voluntarily childless' (since they would like to have a child), nor 'involuntarily childless' (since they were/are, at least initially, biologically capable of doing so). It uses a psychosocial reading of the notions of 'ghosts' and 'haunting' to characterize the nature of the relationship between these women and their fantasy child(ren) and potential maternal subjectivities.


Mechanical forces play a decisive role during development of tissues and organs, during remodeling following injury as well as in normal function. A stress field influences cell function primarily through deformation of the extracellular matrix to which cells are attached. Deformed cells express different biosynthetic activity relative to undeformed cells. The unit cell process paradigm combined with topics in connective tissue mechanics form the basis for discussions of several topics from cell biology, physiology, and medicine.


Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image processing involves a two dimensional (2-D) Fourier Transform (FT) and the spectrum shape introduces high intensity sidelobes. These sidelobes may severely distort the image. Apodization technique can decrease the sidelobes level while preserving the image resolution. However, in Ultra wideband (UWB) SAR imaging, we have to reduce both orthogonal and non-orthogonal sidelobes. In this paper, a new linear window function has been presented based on analysis of different linear and non-linear apodization techniques. This new linear method controls both orthogonal and non-orthogonal sidelobes better than other conventional window functions. This method has been applied and verified with a real SAR image.


This candidate thesis aims, through model experiments, to gain knowledge about the possibilities and limitations of an adjustable, flexible and reusable form called Flexform. The idea is that one single form allows you to create geometrically different shapings shortly after each other. Since the material and context of the Flexform at the beginning of the project was unknown, a search was conducted to find an application where the opportunities were favourable. Using the Flexform for forming hanging facade elements made in fibre reinforced shotcrete (sprayed concrete), appeared during the search to be the most attractive application.
 A test model based on one functional principle for a Flexform was manufactured. It was used for the experiments to gain knowledge about the properties for the Flexform and to show a proof-of-concept for the adjustable concept. The developed principle for the Flexform was based on a principle called "Reconfigurable pin-type tooling". Here a large number of individually height adjustable pins create a form surface all together with their tips. This surface can, depending on the adjustment, be single curved, double curved or plane in different ways. The test model was designed so it could be expanded. During the experiments it had an adjustable surface of 173 x 260 mm, which was adjusted with 24 pins with a diameter of 43,3 x43,3 mm.
 The studies performed showed that it was possible to achieve vertical, flat and curved surfaces. It was seen that the form was able to shape both plaster and concrete.
 A smooth form surface with unevennesses of less than 0.5 mm could be achieved with the pin tips covered by a piece of 60 mm thick PU foam.
 As a result of the experiments a number of recommendations were made, in order to increase the flexibility of the form, to make the surfaces even smoother and to make the Flexform automatically adjustable. Further projects about Flexforms can be based in on these recommendations.