BZ‐TESTING‐TOOLS (BZ‐TT) is a tool set for automated test case generation from B and Z specifications. BZ‐TT uses boundary and cause–effect testing on the basis of the formal model. It has been used and validated on several industrial applications in the domain of critical software, particularly smart card and transport systems. This paper presents the test coverage criteria supported by BZ‐TT. On the one hand, these correspond to various classical structural coverage criteria, but specialized to the case of B abstract machines. The paper gives algorithms for these in Prolog. On the other hand, BZ‐TT introduces new coverage criteria for complex data structures, based on boundary analysis: this paper defines weak and strong state‐boundary coverage, input‐boundary coverage and output‐boundary coverage. Finally, the paper describes how BZ‐TT presents a unified view of these criteria to the validation engineer, and allows him or her to control the test case explosion on a coarse basis (choosing from a range of coverage criteria) as well as a fine basis (selecting options for each state or input variable). Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


There are two major design problems for upper seam longwall gateroads operating in a multi-seam environment. The first is to determine the location, magnitude and duration of stress transferred from lower seam mines; and the second is to predict the effect of stress transferred from lower seam mines on opening stability. To solve these problems for both longwall and room-and-pillar mines, case study data were collected and analyzed to develop empirical models predicting upper seam damage created by mining activities in the lower seam. Analysis showed vertical movement in the upper seam and roof CMRR (Coal Mine Roof Rating) to be the controlling factors in damage prediction and, therefore, gateroad planning and design. The relationship between the predicted damage rating and the gateroad stability was established and quantified. To simplify the application of design procedures developed for longwall gateroad systems, the criteria were incorporated in a Windows-based, multi-interface software , UGLY (Upperseam Gateroad Longwall Stability). The programming language was Visual Basic, and the program's design capabilities were validated and demonstrated using case study data.


While Cyberspace is, by now, well-recognized as a social and commercial environment of great promise, there is considerable debate about the form of governance that will best meet the needs of this new medium. Much of the present discussion casts this debate in stark terms?"top-down" hierarchical rules versus spontaneous "bottom-up" coordination?with self-ordering based on contracts and private agreements rather than public laws appearing both preferable and more likely to evolve. Following up on arguments presented by Professors Fisher and Elkin-Koren in this symposium, Radin and Wagner point out that the dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up obscures that a self-ordering regime brought about by networks of contracts cannot stably exist without an established background of laws against which to enforce these agreements. They argue?using examples of the dispute over the allocation of domain names and the advent of trusted systems?that Cyberspace advocates should be debating the ingredients of good mixtures of private and public ordering rather than positing the choice between state control and anarcho-cyberlibertarianism. In considering these hybrid governance systems, Radin and Wagner note that the enforcement of rules in Cyberspace will depend largely upon the ultimate remedy of banishment. This remedy, they argue, will test the restraint of territorial sovereigns to whom any banishment might be appealed; unless there is considerable agreement about baseline rules among territorial sovereigns, any self-enforcement in Cyberspace may well be unstable. They therefore conclude that a necessary ingredient for self-ordering in Cyberspace is the development of global minimal background standards of due process and public policy limits on private agreements?and that such harmony has a better chance of emerging if advocates do not forget that contractual self-ordering cannot exist without it.


Background: In comparison to lower lumbar disc herniation, L1-L2 disc herniation has unique characteristics, which cause controversy in selection of surgical approach. The goal of this study was to evaluate the clinical outcomes for treatment of L1-L2 disc herniation by microsurgical transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) technique. Therefore, 37 symptomatic patients of L1-L2 disc herniation who were treated by TLIF, from 2008 to 2016, in three academic hospitals were reviewed retrospectively. Follow-up of these patients should significant clinical improvement following TLIF surgery (p-value <0.001) and acceptable bony union with respect to the results, we concluded that TLIF can be an effective, reproducible and safe technique for surgical treatment of L1-L2 disc herniation.


A cytogenetic method for producing hybrid seed using a nuclear gene for male sterility and an alien chromosome to obtain a pollination control system has been proposed in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Our objective was to transfer the alien chromosome 4E to the monogenic recessive male-sterile mutant Lanzhou (LZ), and then to establish an efficient cytogenetic system of maintaining the male sterility of the LZ mutant. After crossing the 4E disomic addition line 81529 (2n = 44) as male to LZ [2n = 42(msms) = 42], we obtained the 4E monosomic addition line [2n = 43(msms)] in the F 3 generation that had light-blue seed color. The line was homozygous for the male-sterile gene (msms) of the host wheat and also had good self-fertility. The self-fertilized seeds segregated into 64.3% white (nonblue) with genotype 2n = 42(msms), 32.1% light blue with genotype 2n = 43(msms) and 3.6% deep blue with genotype 2n = 44(msms) grains. All plants grown from the white grains were completely male sterile. All plants grown from the light-blue grains had good self-fertility whose progeny seeds segregated into white, light-blue, and deep-blue grains again in succeeding generations. All plants grown from the deep-blue grains were self-fertile and retained their deep-blue color in the succeeding generations. When white grain male-sterile lines were crossed using any cultivar as the male parent, the hybrid plants had male fertility restored. And, this is the basis for the 4E-ms system of producing hybrid wheat.


The general equilibrium theory of J.M. Keynes was developed in the 1930's to help explain the great depression and prevent future economic downturns. Out of this came the IS-LM (investment saving/liquid money) model introduced by J.R. Hicks in 1936. There is controversy about the success of Hicks's approach not the least of which is the lack of dynamical aspects in the theory. The thesis considers three interest groups identified as bankers capitalists and workers. A coupled system of differential equations describes the flow of money capital and credit over time. A mathematical analysis of the high dimensional system reveals the existence of equilibrium points. Their stability properties are determined. By modifying the equations cycles appear corresponding to periods of boom and bust. Thus shocks to the system which are theorized by neoclassical economists to be due to external events are shown to be possible using dynamical endogenous equations.


This paper analyses the role of asset prices in comparison to other factors, in particular exchange rates, as a driver of the US trade balance. It employs a Bayesian structural VAR model that requires imposing only a minimum of economically meaningful sign restrictions. We find that equity market shocks and housing price shocks have been major determinants of the US current account in the past, accounting for up to 32% of the movements of the US trade balance at a horizon of 20 quarters. By contrast, shocks to the real exchange rate have been much less relevant, explaining less than 7% and exerting a more temporary effect on the US trade balance. Our findings suggest that sizeable exchange rate movements may not necessarily be a key element of an adjustment of today's large current account imbalances, and that in particular relative global asset price changes could be a more potent source of adjustment.


Whether the art form is theater, dance, music, festival, or the visual arts and galleries, the arts manager is the liaison between the artists and their audience. Bringing together the insights of educators and practitioners, this groundbreaker links the fields of management and organizational management with the ongoing evolution in arts management education. It especially focuses on the new directions in arts management as education and practice merge. It uses cases studies as both a pedagogical tool and an integrating device. Separate sections cover Performing and Visual Arts Management, Arts Management Education and Careers, and Arts Management: Government, Nonprofits, and Evaluation. The book also includes a chapter on grants and raising money in the arts.


The lower efficiency of the current common ways of delivering drugs to humans like oral administration and injection make it necessary to find more efficient delivery systems. In this regard, a class of nanostructured materials called mesoporous silicates such as MCM-41, SBA-15 has attracted the attention of many scientists as drug delivery vehicles for their outstanding features like high surface area, high porosity, well-ordered, tunable nanometer pores and "non-cytotoxic" properties. In this dissertation, comparative investigations of the adsorption capacity and drug release properties of these materials whose surfaces were functionalized with judiciously chosen organic groups via either post-grafting or co-condensation synthesis were conducted. Furthermore, two model drugs of different hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity were used in the study. The hydrophobicity of the ordered mesoporous silica can also be altered by modification of the surface with organic groups and thus, the hydrophobic interaction with the drug molecules can be improved. Here a comparative study between the two material synthesis method, the use of different functional groups and the two model drug molecules, Rhodamine 6G and ibuprofen, were performed. The results indicated that functional groups really make an obvious difference on the adsorption capacity and release profile depending on the type of functional group and drug molecules. Furthermore, differences in adsorption capacity and drug release properties between the materials synthesized via co-condensation and those synthesized via post-grafting were also observed. The results of the study may give further insight into rational synthetic approaches to functionalized mesoporous materials with improved adsorption capacity and release properties for a variety of hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs. In addition, pH responsive release study was conducted. Ibuprofen and R6G were used as model drug molecules. For the ibuprofen loading, amine functionalized MCM (NH2-MCM) was chosen as carrier while amine and thiol bi-functionalized MCM (NH2-MCM-SH) was chosen as carrier for the adsorption R6G. Poly (acrylic acid) PAA was encapsulated onto the silica matrix as pH stimuli because it is a well-know bioadhesive hydrogel and often used in drug formulation. Among mesoporous materials, SBA-15 has large surface area, large pore size, and thick walls. It possesses a hexagonal array of mesopores 6.0-20 nm in diameter, which is much larger than the 3.0-nm pores characteristic of the MCM-41 and MCM-48. Their wall thickness is an important parameter for providing a high degree of hydrothermal stability and improved mechanical stability compared to mesoporous MCM-41 and related silicas, and thus a sufficiently long lifetime in biological environments. Therefore, SBA-15 mesoporous materials could be modified with various surface functional groups and still preserve the large pore channels and surface areas for drug adsorption and desorption after modification. So, drug adsorption and release study over SBA-15 and comparative study between SBA-15 and MCM-41 was also investigated. Results show that SBA-15 has larger release amount than MCM-41. In this dissertation, the oxidation of epinephrine in the presence of SBA-15 and MCM-41 particles was also carried out. Dense silica particle was test as a control. It was reported that caffeine (1,3,7-trimethylxanthine) can work as a scavenger of the hydroxyl radical at millimolar concentrations. Here we investigated the epinephrine oxidation in the presence of caffeine. Antioxidant effects of caffeine and its metabolites were also evaluated by the epinephrine oxidation rate. Same experiment was also performed with its isomer, isocaffeine. It was found that influence of mesoporous silica (MCM-41 and SBA-15) nanoparticles and dense silica nanoparticles on epinephrine oxidation is pH-dependent. Aslo, in the presence of either caffeine or isocaffeine, the oxidation rate of epinephrine by MSN will be slowed down and with the increase of caffeine or isocaffeine concentration, the oxidation rate decrease accordingly. SILLICA NANOPOROUS MATERIALS ADSORPTION AND RELEASE


Social bookmarking systems have recently gained interest among researches in the areas of data mining and web intelligence, as they provide a vast amount of user-generated annotations and reflect the interests of millions of people. In this paper, we discuss our initial findings obtained from analyzing a vast corpus of almost 150 million bookmarks found at del.icio.us. Apart from investigating bookmarking and tagging patterns in this data, we discuss evidence that social bookmarking systems are vulnerable to spamming and hence need to be preprocessed before any insightful analysis can be carried out. We present a method, which limits the influence of spam in social bookmarking analysis and provide conclusions and directions for future research.


Almost all of the current top-performing object detection networks employ region proposals to guide the search for object instances. State-of-the-art region proposal methods usually need several thousand proposals to get high recall, thus hurting the detection efficiency. Although the latest Region Proposal Network method gets promising detection accuracy with several hundred proposals, it still struggles in small-size object detection and precise localization (e.g., large IoU thresholds), mainly due to the coarseness of its feature maps. In this paper, we present a deep hierarchical network, namely HyperNet, for handling region proposal generation and object detection jointly. Our HyperNet is primarily based on an elaborately designed Hyper Feature which aggregates hierarchical feature maps first and then compresses them into a uniform space. The Hyper Features well incorporate deep but highly semantic, intermediate but really complementary, and shallow but naturally high-resolution features of the image, thus enabling us to construct HyperNet by sharing them both in generating proposals and detecting objects via an end-to-end joint training strategy. For the deep VGG16 model, our method achieves completely leading recall and state-of-the-art object detection accuracy on PASCAL VOC 2007 and 2012 using only 100 proposals per image. It runs with a speed of 5 fps (including all steps) on a GPU, thus having the potential for real-time processing.


At the turn of the century the term "gamification" was introduced as a concept to understand the process of using game mechanics in "non-game" contexts. The impact of gamification was soon evident to business practices where it had impact both on marketing and, more broadly, on the organizations themselves. As the number of individuals playing video games grows, there seem to be an acceptance of game mechanics elsewhere. Its effectiveness is highly dependent on both technical possibilities and cultural acceptance, two factors present today. The aim of The Business of Gamification is to critically analyze the practical and theoretical consequences of gamification. Practically, how has gamification been applied in businesses to this point, and what are the future scenarios? Theoretically, what are the contributions of gamification to existing academic knowledge? How does this change our understanding of how business are performing and its consequences, for organizations, consumers, and society in general? This edited volume contains new, and stringent, perspectives on how gamification is contextualized in business settings, both in theory as well as in practice. This book will provide a wealth of research for individuals seriously interested in the industry at the academic level. As a result, this book will serve as a reference in curricula associated with video game development for years to come.


Films use architecture as visual shorthand to tell viewers everything they need to know about the characters in a short amount of time. Illustrated by a diverse range of films from different eras and cultures, this book investigates the reciprocity between film and architecture. Using a phenomenological approach, it describes how we, the viewers, can learn how to read architecture and design in film in order to see the many inherent messages. Architecture's representational capacity contributes to the plausibility or 'reality' possible in film. The book provides an ontological understanding that clarifies and stabilizes the reciprocity of the actual world and a filmic world of illusion and human imagination, thereby shedding light on both film and architecture.


Heavy metals, upon accumulation in human body, are known to possess quite toxic effects. They are ubiquitously found in earth crust and tend to accumulate in crops grown in heavily contaminated soil and hence enter the food chain. This study was based on the analysis of heavy metals in eighteen selected varieties of rice (Oryza sativa L.) that circulates in local market of Karachi, Pakistan. Few heavy metals namely, Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Cobalt (Co), Copper (Cu), Lead (Pb), Manganese (Mn), Nickel (Ni), and Zinc (Zn) were analyzed using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS). Rice samples were digested using nitric acid (conc.). Average concentrations of Cd, Co, Cr, Pb, Ni were 7.3, 10.6, 107, 117, 139 μg kg-1 of rice respectively, whereas, the respective concentrations of Cu, Mn, and Zn were found to be 4.7, 9.7, and 14.6 mg kg-1 of rice. The results from this study when compared with previous studies revealed that the Pakistani rice is found to have relatively less concentration of these heavy metals.


BACKGROUND Most cases of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) respond to a standard course of antibiotics, however recurrent CDI is becoming common and alternative therapeutic strategies are needed. In this scenario, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been suggested. AIM To describe the efficacy and safety of FMT for the treatment of recurrent CDI. PATIENTS AND METHODS Review of medical records of all patients with recurrent CDI treated with FMT between April 2013 and April 2017. Demographic and clinical data were abstracted including details of treatment prior to FMT, rate of FMT treatment success and clinical course during follow-up period. Telephone surveys were conducted to determine patient satisfaction. RESULTS Eight patients aged 19 to 82 years (six women) underwent FMT. They experienced a median of four previous episodes of CDI (range 3-8). The mean duration of CDI was 18 days (range 3-36) before FMT. All procedures were performed by colonoscopy. Effectiveness with one session of FMT was 100%. During the follow-up period (median 24 months, range 7-55), two patients developed CDI, one of them after using antibiotics. Adverse events were reported in three patients. Two had bloating and one patient with Crohn's disease and a history of bacteremia had an episode of Escherichia coli bacteremia. All patients would use FMT again if necessary. CONCLUSIONS FMT through colonoscopy appears to be a safe, effective and long-lasting therapy in cases of recurrent CDI.


This book explores the internet and mobile ecosystems which are powered by cloud computing an essential, if not indispensable, part of our everyday lives. Billions of users world-wide use this technology for information sharing, communication and social networking and a high proportion of activity is driven by massive media content such as images, videos and other emerging 3D visual media. However, managing, searching and visualizing this gigantic amount of data to facilitate communication is difficult which has led to an influx of innovation and research in these areas. The research is from academics from all around the world, focusing on the intersection of mobile, cloud, visual and multimedia computing and is split into five clear parts. Topics covered in the book include mobile augmented reality, computational photography, mobile visual recognition and search, and human-computer interaction (HCI). The findings discussed is meant to spur on further creative development in both academia and industry within this area. Mobile Cloud Visual Media Computing would of great interest to researchers and academics wishing to see how the state-of-the-art in media computing research is applied to innovative applications, whilst engineers and software designers from industry will gain an insight into the key set of technologies which support mobile and cloud media computing.


Since the first report of folliculo-stellate cells as corticotrophs by Farquhar [1], their histological characteristics have been investigated by many researchers. However, the physiological significance of folliculo-stellate cells has not been clearly elucidated so far. The present study is designed to investigate the function of folliculo-stellate cells, particularly focusing on their responses to LH-RH. Changes in the intracellular concentration of calcium ions ([Ca2+]i) were measured from folliculo-stellate cells in the "transitional zone" of the anterior pituitary gland. The anterior pituitary glands were removed from 7 weeks old male Wistar rats weighing 250 - 300 g. One group was used for immunohistochemical study to detect the distribution of S- 100 protein and LH-RH protein, and the other group was employed for electron microscopic examination. The remaining tissues were used for Ca measurements. Under Nomarski optics, areas of cells which corresponded to either granular cells or agranular, folliculo-stellate cells were marked. Changes in [Ca2+]i from selected areas were then measured using fura-2 loaded preparations. Bath-applied LH-RH (100 μg/ml) caused transient increases in [Ca2+]i which were followed by sustained increase in [Ca2+]i either with or without Ca oscillations. These results demonstrated that not only granular but also agranular folliculo-stellate cells, may be capable of responding to LH-RH by increasing [Ca2+]i, and thus intracellular Ca may play an important role in regulating the function of folliculo-stellate cells upon LH-RH stimulation. We hypothesize that the LH-RH message from the brain entered the anterior lobe via the "transitional zone" and then spread throughout the gland mediated via by a network system of folliculo-stellate cells as well as the portal vascular system.


Abstract The risk and benefit of GP-IIb/IIIa Inhibition (GPI) in combination with recent antiplatelet regimens in acute coronary syndromes (ACS) remain unassessed. The advent of fast-acting highly active oral P2Y12 inhibitors questions the additional value and risk of their association with GPI. We studied the effect of GPI in combination with prasugrel and ticagrelor, compared to clopidogrel on major bleeding in pivotal randomized controlled trials in the setting of ACS, using a meta-analytic approach. A similar analysis, further including the comparison of a double versus standard dose clopidogrel regimen, was performed for the risk of the primary efficacy endpoint. The combination of GPI and recent P2Y12 inhibitors was associated with a similar risk of bleeding as compared with GPI and the standard clopidogrel regimen (RR 0.92 [0.74; 1.13]). The benefit of recent regimens, including double dose clopidogrel, in reducing the primary ischemic endpoint (RR 0.86 [0.78; 0.94]) persisted in those treated with GPI. Although GPI use was associated with a consistent increase in the risk of bleeding in both recent (RR 1.27 [1.05–1.55]) and standard regimens (RR 2.01 [1.64–2.47]), the relative magnitude of such an increase was lower in association with prasugrel or ticagrelor as compared with clopidogrel. The risk of bleeding using a combination of GPI and oral antiplatelet regimens is mainly related to the use of GPI and not the oral antiplatelet regimen. Considering the absence of increased risk of bleeding and the persistence of the benefit of recent P2Y12 regimens in combination with GPI as compared with the standard clopidogrel regimen, the use of such a combination within the guidelines is supported by our findings.


In recent years there has been a likely increase in the incidence of decommissioning of offshore oil and gas installations and considerable dissension has arisen over the legal aspects of decomissioning. There is controversy as to the applicable rules of international law. There is also dissension as to adequacy of both international and state laws and practices in providing for the various interests identified by international law itself as vital to any consideration of the manner in which disused installations ought to be disposed of. The thesis therefore examines the international legal regime of the continental shelf, on which most offshore oil and gas installations are located. There is also a review of relevant principles of the law of the sea as well as other maritime zones known to international law.
A comparative study is undertaken of law and practice on abandonment in six jurisdictions, selected as fairly representative of oil-producing regions of the world. Those jusrisdictions are Australia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States. From the analysis, it hoped to ascertain representative state practice on abandonment.
In view of the issue within the abandonment controversy as to whether or not Article 60(3) UNCLOS and the IMO Guidelines 1989 had become customary international law rules there is analysys of the concept of customary international law. Following that analysis, a model or paradigm is developed for use in assessing the emergence of new norms of customary international law. The objective is that the emergence of the new model will in the future enable the objective, expeditious and forthright assessment of contended rules of customary international law.
The work goes further to consider whether the IMO Guidelines achieved a strategic balancing of the contending interests set out in Article 60 (3) and tries to postulate the reasons why those rules and Guidelines failed following the Brent Spar incident. Aspects of the legal-economic theory of regulatory capture are considered as apposite.
The work concludes by identifying new and emerging trends in relation to abandonment practices and concludes with a postulation and as well as proposals as to how abandonment is expected to develop into the future.


Particles have been used for more than a decade to visualize and study the dynamics of quantum vortices in superfluid helium. In this work we study how the dynamics of a collection of particles set inside a vortex reflects the motion of the vortex. We use a self-consistent model based on the Gross-Pitaevskii equation coupled with classical particle dynamics. We find that each particle oscillates with a natural frequency proportional to the number of vortices attached to it. We then study the dynamics of an array of particles trapped in a quantum vortex and use particle trajectories to measure the frequency spectrum of the vortex excitations. Surprisingly, due to the discreetness of the array, the vortex excitations measured by the particles exhibits bands, gaps and Brillouin zones, analogous to the ones of electrons moving in crystals. We then establish a mathematical analogy where vortex excitations play the role of electrons and particles that of the potential barriers constituting the crystal. We find that the height of the effective potential barriers is proportional to the particle mass and the frequency of the incoming waves. We conclude that large-scale vortex excitations could be in principle directly measured by particles and novel physics could emerge from particle-vortex interaction.


The Committee on the Global Financial System, made up of senior officials from central banks around the world and chaired by New York Fed President William Dudley, recently released a report on ?Structural Changes in Banking after the Crisis.? The report includes findings from a wide-ranging study documenting the significant structural adjustments in banking systems around the world in response to regulatory, technological, and market changes after the crisis, while also assessing their implications for financial stability, credit provision, and capital markets activity. It includes a new banking database spanning over twenty-one countries from 2000 to 2016 that could serve as a valuable reference for further analysis. Overall, the study concludes that the changed regulatory and market environment since the crisis has led banks to alter their business models and balance sheets in ways that make them more resilient but also less profitable, while continuing their role as intermediaries providing financial services to the real economy.


Linear and nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of collisionless magnetic reconnection in the presence of a strong guide field are presented. A periodic slab system is considered with a sinusoidally varying reconnecting magnetic field component. The linear growth rates of the tearing mode in both the large and small regimes are compared to kinetic and fluid theory calculations. In the nonlinear regime, focusing on the limit of large , the nonlinear reconnection rates in the gyrokinetic simulations are found to be comparable to those obtained from a two-fluid model. In contrast to the fluid system, however, for TiTe and very small initial perturbation amplitudes, the reconnection in the gyrokinetic system saturates in the early nonlinear phase. This saturation can be overcome if the simulation is seeded initially with sufficient random noise. © 2007 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2774003


Among scholars who adhere to an originally independent or once separate Priestly narrative (Pg) there is an emerging debate as to whether Numbers 13-14* and 20:2-12* (1) are to be included in Pg. Traditionally these texts have been incorporated as part of pg. (2) Recently, however, this has been questioned, with several scholars advocating that Pg concludes in the Sinai material, either in Exodus (3) or in Leviticus. (4) Moreover, this latter position, which excludes Num 13-14*; 20:2-12* from Pg is interrelated with the view that the establishment of the sanctuary and/or its cult within the Sinai material is the climax of Pg, where Pg's overall purpose is to be found, and therefore forms its conclusion. (5) This is an understandable development since there is a tendency among those scholars who incorporate Num 13-14*; 20:2-12* into Pg but see the primary concern of Pg to reside in the setting up of the cultic community at Sinai to have little success in accounting adequately for Num 13-14*; 20:2-12* within the theological horizon of Pg as a whole. (6)

In this article, therefore, I will address the issue of whether Num 13-14* and 20:2-12* are to be seen as part of Pg. I will seek to show that these texts form an integral part of Pg. This will be argued primarily on the grounds of the correspondences and interplay of motifs and themes between these texts and Pg texts preceding them; and, since conceptions regarding which texts belong to Pg are intimately connected with the attempt to make sense of Pg as a whole, I will argue that these texts interact with preceding Pg texts in such a way that they can be seen to play an integral role within Pg's theological horizon.


Without informants, policing would grind to a halt. The majority of drug and organized crime prosecutions hinge on the assistance of confidential informants, and white collar prosecutions and anti-terrorism investigations increasingly depend on them. Yet society by and large hates informants. The epithets used to describe them – "snitch," "rat," and "weasel," among others – suggest the reason: the informant, by assisting the police, is guilty of betrayal. And betrayal is, in the words of George Fletcher, "one of the basic sins of our civilization." But identifying disloyalty as the reason for society's disdain raises more questions than it answers. Are all informants disloyal, or are only some? Are there governing principles to distinguish those informants who are disloyal from those who are not? To whom are these informants disloyal? What import does an informant's disloyalty have beyond the social stigma on the informant? These questions matter because informants are crucial cogs in the law enforcement machine, but they have largely escaped the attention of legal scholars. This Article seeks to remedy this oversight. First, it explores how disloyalty functions in today's society by looking to the observations of philosophers and legal scholars who have considered the nature of loyalty and disloyalty as moral constructs. The Article then examines three scenarios that suggest insights into when and why informants are considered disloyal. The first is the case of an accomplice-informant who assists police in apprehending and prosecuting her partners in crime. The second scenario is that of a community with particularized norms against cooperating with the police, with a particular focus on the "Stop Snitching" movement that has become increasingly influential in high-crime communities. The third scenario looks at informants in the rest of society, where particularized norms against assisting the police do not govern. The analysis of these scenarios reveals that issues of disloyalty arising from the use of informants intersect with and inform sociological research on the marginalization of communities and the impact of police legitimacy on civilian cooperation and compliance with the law, as well as scholarly concerns about overcriminalization. The Article then makes three policy proposals that aim to enhance civilian cooperation with law enforcement without undermining police effectiveness. First, it is proposed that police and prosecutors amend their informant screening guidelines to explicitly and publicly require consideration of loyalty issues arising from the use of a given informant. Public acknowledgement in this manner that law enforcement officials share important community values would encourage voluntary cooperation with police and compliance with the law. Second, law enforcement policymakers should curtail informant recruitment in marginalized communities that are home to anti-cooperation norms in favor of alternative policing strategies, as current policies that encourage the widespread use of informants undermine police-community relations in these communities. Finally, lawmakers should limit the use of initiatives, derogatorily called "snitch lines," that encourage civilian to report minor crimes and non-criminal suspicious behavior and consider decriminalizing some minor regulatory-type offenses. Mainstream society's dissatisfaction with these programs, expressed in the harsh language of disloyalty, suggests discomfort with the "snitch lines" themselves, as well as the criminalization of the relatively minor offenses that they target.


The objectives of this study were 1) to quantify the differences in body densities and percent body fat using various methods for evaluating body composition (e.g., underwater weighing (UWW), air displacement plethysmography (ADP), skinfold caliper (SKF) measurement, ultrasound (US), bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA)), and 2) to examine the relationship between trends of the differences in body density and percent body fat obtained by these methods and characteristics of morphology and body composition. To this end, the body compositions of 73 healthy male adults were measured using UWW, ADP, SKF, US, and BIA. Twenty-seven of these 73 subjects underwent further measurement using DXA. Differences in body densities determined with ADP, SKF, and US were compared with those measured using UWW as a reference, and the differences in percent body fat estimated with UWW, ADP, SKF, US and BIA were compared with those measured by DXA as a reference. The results of this study indicate that 1) ADP is useful as a method for evaluating body density, as the results differed insignificantly from the reference method and showed no systematic errors due to differences in morphological characteristics and body composition, and 2) UWW measurements exhibited the smallest difference in percent body fat from the reference method, however, more than in any other method, there were systematic errors due to differences in morphological characteristics and body composition, specifically, trunk composition. Jpn J Phys Fitness Sports Med, 66(5): 369-382 (2017)


Hydrokinetic turbine power production depends on the interaction between the rotor and water. Therefore, an optimum geometry of the rotor must be designed and constructed to capture the maximum water energy and convert it into a usable energy. The steps involved in the design and numerical simulation of a small horizontal axis hydrokinetic turbine rotor are presented based on the same incompressible flow techniques used for designing wind turbines. Three blades of a 1 Hp (746 W) prototype hydrokinetic turbine were designed for a water velocity of 1:5 m/s with a tip speed ratio of 6:325, an angle of attack of 5 and 0 as the pitch angle; in order to obtain the maximum power coefficient of the turbine. This coefficient was 0:4382, near the Betz limit. S822 airfoil was used to generate the coordinates of the blade. CFD simulation was carried out using Ansys CFX to estimate the performance of the blade design. Furthermore, FEM was successfully used for stress calculations on turbine blades under the influence of centrifugal and hydrodynamic loading. The designed hydrokinetic turbine can be used for pico hydro generation in rural communities non-connected to electricity services through the national interconnected electric system, due to its simple structure, and low cost of initial investment. Additionally, it can be locally manufactured, the environmental impact is negligible, since large dams are not involved, and the schemes can be managed and maintained by the consumer.


The cases brought by the Jehovah's Witnesses in the early 1940s prompted the Supreme Court to confront the situations that occurred when children's interests came into conflict with parental rights over religious issues. With Minersville v. Gobitis in 1940, the Court held that the expulsion of Witness children from public schools did not constitute a violation of the religious rights of parents even though the objection was religiously based. The Court overturned this decision three years later with West Virginia v. Barnette, ruling that such expulsions did, in fact, violate the religious rights of the parents involved. It was in 1944 with the case of Prince v. Massachusetts that the rights of children became a point of consideration, and the Court decided firmly in favor of children's rights, ruling that the interests of children trumped parental religious beliefs. This precedent, coupled with the Children's Rights Revolution of the 1960s, is still the guiding principle in religious free exercise cases involving children's rights.


Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (MUAS) Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Degree Programme provides full-time Bachelor-level undergraduate studies. ICT Degree Programme has seven different major options; this paper focuses on Health Technology. In Health Technology, a significant curriculum change in 2014 enabled transition from fragmented curriculum including dozens of courses to a new integrated curriculum built around three 30 ECTS themes. This paper focuses especially on the second theme called Customer Oriented Software Applications. From students' point of view, the goal of this theme is to get familiar with existing health related ICT solutions and systems, understand business around health technology, recognize social and healthcare operating principles and services, and identify customers and users and their special needs and perspectives. This also acts as a background for health related web application development. Built web application is tested, developed and evaluated with real users utilizing versatile user centred development methods. This paper presents experiences obtained from the first implementation of Customer Oriented Software Applications theme. Student feedback was gathered with two questionnaires, one in the middle of the theme and other at the end of the theme. Questionnaires had qualitative and quantitative parts. Similar questionnaire was implemented in the first theme; this paper evaluates how the theme-based integrated curriculum has progressed in Health Technology major by comparing results between theme 1 and 2. In general, students were satisfied for the implementation, timing and synchronization of the courses, and the amount of work. However there is still room for development. Student feedback and teachers' observations have been and will be used to develop the content and operating principles of the themes and whole curriculum. Keywords—Engineering education, integrated and theme-based curriculum, learning experience, student centred learning.


Online advertising platforms are thriving due to the customizable audiences they offer advertisers. However, recent studies show that advertisements can be discriminatory with respect to the gender or race of the audience that sees the ad, and may inadvertently cross ethical and/or legal boundaries. To prevent this, we propose a constrained ad auction framework that maximizes the platform's revenue conditioned on ensuring that the audience seeing an advertiser's ad is distributed appropriately across sensitive types such as gender or race. Building upon Myerson's classic work, we first present an optimal auction mechanism for a large class of fairness constraints. Finding the parameters of this optimal auction, however, turns out to be a non-convex problem. We show that this non-convex problem can be reformulated as a more structured non-convex problem with no saddle points or local-maxima; this allows us to develop a gradient-descent-based algorithm to solve it. Our empirical results on the A1 Yahoo! dataset demonstrate that our algorithm can obtain uniform coverage across different user types for each advertiser at a minor loss to the revenue of the platform, and a small change to the size of the audience each advertiser reaches.


Background: Acellular dermal matrices (ADMs) are frequently used in reconstructive surgery and as scaffolds to treat chronic wounds. The 3-dimensional architecture and extracellular matrix provide structural and signaling cues for repair and remodeling. However, most ADMs are not uniformly porous, which can lead to heterogeneous host engraftment. In this study, we hypothesized that a novel human reticular ADM (HR-ADM; AlloPatch Pliable, Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, Edison, N.J.) when aseptically processed would have a more open uniform structure with retention of biological components known to facilitate wound healing. Methods: The reticular and papillary layers were compared through histology and scanning electron microscopy. Biomechanical properties were assessed through tensile testing. The impact of aseptic processing was evaluated by comparing unprocessed with processed reticular grafts. In vitro cell culture on fibroblasts and endothelial cells were performed to showcase functional cell activities on HR-ADMs. Results: Aseptically processed HR-ADMs have an open, interconnected uniform scaffold with preserved collagens, elastin, glycosaminoglycans, and hyaluronic acid. HR-ADMs had significantly lower ultimate tensile strength and Young's modulus versus the papillary layer, with a higher percentage elongation at break, providing graft flexibility. These preserved biological components facilitated fibroblast and endothelial cell attachment, cell infiltration, and new matrix synthesis (collagen IV, fibronectin, von Willebrand factor), which support granulation and angiogenic activities. Conclusions: The novel HR-ADMs provide an open, interconnected scaffold with native dermal mechanical and biological properties. Furthermore, aseptic processing retains key extracellular matrix elements in an organized framework and supports functional activities of fibroblasts and endothelial cells.


Topological or deconfined phases are characterized by emergent, weakly fluctuating, gauge fields. In condensed matter settings, they inevitably come coupled to excitations that carry the corresponding gauge charges which invalidate the standard diagnostic of deconfinement—the Wilson loop. Inspired by a mapping between symmetric sponges and the deconfined phase of the Z2 gauge theory, we construct a diagnostic for deconfinement that has the interpretation of a line tension. One operator version of this diagnostic turns out to be the Fredenhagen–Marcu order parameter known to lattice gauge theorists and we show that a different version is best suited to condensed matter systems. We discuss generalizations of the diagnostic, use it to establish the existence of finite temperature topological phases in d⩾3 dimensions and show that multiplets of the diagnostic are useful in settings with multiple phases, such as U(1) gauge theories with charge q matter. (Additionally, we present an exact reduction of the partition function of the toric code in general dimensions to a well-studied problem.)


The GFR (Gas cooled Fast Reactor) combines the advantages of a fast neutron spectrum with those of high temperatures. Given the high core outlet temperatures exceeding 800 C, it is clear that conventional metallic core structures and fuel cladding will be unable to meet the demanding requirements. Thus, only refractory metals or ceramic components can be considered for these purposes, as temperature excursions above 1600 C have to be foreseen. The design and development of an innovative refractory fuel in an advanced ceramic cladding remains a fundamental goal of the GFR system. Today, the focus is on SiC composite as structural and cladding material, with carbide (MC) fuel taking first priority over both oxide and nitride fuels as backups. Compatibility tests have shown that SiC and mixed metal carbide fuels (MC) react, necessitating the introduction of a protective liner made of W or other refractory material. 2 fuel element design option are considered: the plate type fuel and the pin type fuel. The basic design of plate type fuel is based on two ceramic plates, which enclose a honeycomb structure containing cylindrical pellets made of the mixed carbide fuel. Pin type fuel will be similar to current fast reactor designs


Root exudates represent a large and labile carbon input in tropical peatlands, but their contribution to carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) production remains poorly understood. Changes in species composition and productivity of peatland plant communities in response to global change could alter both inputs of exudates and associated greenhouse gas emissions. We used manipulative laboratory incubations to assess the extent to which root exudate quantity and chemical composition drives greenhouse gas emissions from tropical peatlands. Peat was sampled from beneath canopy palms (Raphia taedigera) and broadleaved evergreen trees (Campnosperma panamensis) in an ombrotrophic wetland in Panama. Root exudate analogues comprising a mixture of sugars and organic acids were added in solution to peats derived from both species, with CO2 and CH4 measured over time. CO2 and CH4 production increased under most treatments, but the magnitude and duration of the response depended on the composition of the added labile carbon mixture rather than the quantity of carbon added or the botanical origin of the peat. Treatments containing organic acids increased soil pH and altered other soil properties including redox potential but did not affect the activities of extracellular hydrolytic enzymes. CO2 but not CH4 production was found to be linearly related to microbial activity and redox potential. Our findings demonstrate the importance of root exudate composition in regulating greenhouse gas fluxes and propose that in situ plant species changes, particularly those associated with land use change, may account for small scale spatial variation in CO2 and CH4 fluxes due to species specific root exudate compositions.


Model-driven development depends on good initial models. Creating these models by hand is a challenging task, because of complex specification documents and change requests. We propose a new internal representation based on thematic roles, especially designed for (but not limited to) requirements documents. The representation can be generated automatically out of annotated real-world specification text and can be used to generate UML models based on graph rewriting rules.


The evolution of the quality of an artificial material in subsequent periods should not present setbacks. Technological development and monitoring the execution should ensure a favourable outcome in quality. However, socioeconomic and political forces can distort the course of this evolution, making it impossible for a linear reading; serving as an example of this is the history of reinforced concrete in Spain. The material was introduced to Spain about 120 years ago from European patents. After the war, and after several glorious decades, came the decline of these patents with the consequent liberalization of the technology and the publication in 1939 of Instruction for Concrete. This liberalization came into effect in a context of scarcity and high cost of construction materials, so that the concrete used in the reconstruction of the cities turned out to be a very poor material. Various decrees and orders published at this time established a number of limitations in the use of iron and cement, both depleting the quality of the material used, and as a result, developing a black market, further adding to the decline in quality. Later in the 60s, overcoming these constraints, the quality of materials began to improve. In 1973, a new regulation on the use of concrete introduced a section on quality control. Thereafter, the increasing control ensured the proven quality of the material and its continuous improvement to the present day. A series of tests conducted in buildings made of reinforced concrete in the Basque Country during the twentieth century, shows that the strength and quality of concrete from 100 years ago can be much better than of concrete from 60 years ago, attesting to the inability to perform a linear reading of its evolution.


This study integrates scientific findings about the Global Warming Potential (GWP) - for example, the roles of pollution, population growth, agricultural development and sustainable resources - with advances in economic theory and methods, so as to explain how and why climate and economy are complementary at the local, national and global levels. The primary purpose of this work is to provide analytical bases for the creation of pragmatic, ecology-environment-economy policies, rather than to overwhelm the reader with technical processing that does not offer any comprehensive examination of the effects of the economy upon the environment, and vice versa. Modelling and data processing are treated as secondary requirements and follow, rather than precede, the framework developed in this book.


This research examines the reasons for which criminal trials in Australia fail to proceed on the day of listing. The rationale of such an inquiry is that matters that fail to proceed as scheduled contribute to backlog and delay, both of which consume significant criminal justice resources. Moreover, delay in the criminal trial system may result in adverse effects, not the least of which is the anguish endured by the victims of crime and their families, and the community demanding protection from criminal offenders. This research used quantitative data from courts across a number of Australian states and territories to demonstrate that more than half of all listed criminal trials fail to commence on the listed day. After an analysis of data about trials and extensive interviews with court administrators, it is found that those trials that do not proceed can be placed into two categories: those trials that are finalised on or near the trial date either by way of late guilty plea or late withdrawal by the prosecution, and those trials that are adjourned and re-listed. While some delays will be inevitable, the report builds on recommendations made by a working group of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General to suggest ways of reducing the backlog of criminal trials across Australia.


Morna works as a cleaner in Edinburgh. She spends her time drinking, attempting affairs and trying to work out the mind of the twenty-year-old son with whom she shares her flat. Her elder brother, Athol, lives near Glasgow airport with his wife. The owner of a floor-tiling company, with two grown-up children, he's proud of his hard-won achievements since moving west. Between them, they have differing memories of their upbringing and their parents and definite opinions about each other. But these are left unsaid because Morna and Athol haven't spoken a word to each other in fourteen years...When Morna's son Joshua travels to see his uncle, he sets off a remarkable and life-changing series of events. "A Slow Air" by David Harrower premiered at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, in April 2011, and transferred to the Traverse Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.


This article takes an unconventional approach to the issue of 'race'. It illustrates the complexity and inter-disciplinarity of the racial phenomenon by blending child-like and adult-like perspectives and, as such, it is written half as a fable and half as an academic article. It puts forward a number of arguments. First, the piece suggests that five key dimensions of racism exist—namely, the historical, the philosophical, the scientific, the legal and the economic—and that they are regularly used to justify and rationalise something (racial prejudice) that is often irrational. Second, the article highlights the 'banality' of racism—an attitude that stems from mankind's diffidence towards diversity, exploits such fear and encourages forms of passivity that, as Hannah Arendt noted, are the best way of 'banalising' evil and making it appear tolerable. The fanciful classifications of 'races'—such as those articulated in South Africa's apartheid, where poor Chinese were regarded as 'yellows' while wealthy Japanese were classified as 'honorary whites'—are cases in point. Third, the piece argues that racial discrimination is often unrecognised, internalised and unquestioned by society: since racial attitudes are learnt in childhood and become part of our cultural baggage, they are extremely difficult to identify and eradicate. Finally, the article suggests that racism is not only 'banal' but also highly convenient: racists do not need to know the individual, they just need to know the characteristics of the group to which that individual is thought to belong. The piece concludes in favour of a neglected right for children: the right to be left free from racism.


A perfect hash function (PHF) is an injective function that maps keys from a set S to unique values, which are in turn used to index a hash table. Since no collisions occur, each key can be retrieved from the table with a single probe. A minimal perfect hash function (MPHF) is a PHF with the smallest possible range, that is, the hash table size is exactly the number of keys in S. MPHFs are widely used for memory efficient storage and fast retrieval of items from static sets. Differently from other hashing schemes, MPHFs completely avoid the problem of wasted space and wasted time to deal with collisions. In the past, the amount of space to store an MPHF description was O(log n) bits per key and therefore similar to the overhead of space of other hashing schemes. Recent results on MPHFs by [Botelho et al. 2007] changed this scenario: in their work the space overhead of an MPHF is approximately 2.6 bits per key. The objective of this paper is to show that MPHFs are a good option to index internal memory when static key sets are involved and both successful and unsuccessful searches are allowed. We have shown that MPHFs provide the best tradeoff between space usage and lookup time when compared with linear hashing, quadratic hashing, double hashing, dense hashing, cuckoo hashing and sparse hashing. For example, MPHFs outperforms linear hashing, quadratic hashing and double hashing when these methods have a hash table occupancy of 75% or higher (if the MPHF fits in the CPU cache the same happens for hash table occupancies greater than or equal to 55%). Furthermore, MPHFs also have a better performance in all measured aspects when compared to sparse hashing, which has been designed specifically for efficient memory usage.


In peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems, peers spend a significant amount of time looking for relevant files. However, the files available for download represent on one hand a rich collection and on the other hand a struggle for the peers to find files that they like. In this paper, we propose 'asymmetric peers' similarity based recommendation with file popularity' scheme that helps peers find and discover new and interesting files. To overcome the problems of traditional collaborative filtering recommender systems, an implicit rating approach is used. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in providing accurate recommendations.


A 2-year-old female New Zealand rabbit was admitted to Ankara University Veterinary Faculty, Department of Internal Medicine. Upon physical examination crustaceous auricular lesions, and erythematous and exudative pruritic skin lesions, both on the ventral abdomen and on extremities were detected. Microscopic examination of skin scrapings taken from pinnae and hair plucked from the ventral abdominal region revealed the presence of Psoroptes cuniculi. The ventral abdominal localization of P. cuniculi was evaluated as an ectopic infestation. Despite the injection of ivermectin 400 µg/kg and daily supportive therapy the rabbit died on the fifth day of hospitalization.


Learning essential information literacy skills through the use of mobile phones is an innovative mlearning pilot project that was collaboratively undertaken in a Canadian university college over the course of two academic terms by faculty and the library staff. The research pilot project involved ninety one undergraduate students in five different classes majoring in psychology, social work, education or social development studies in an attempt to determine the effectiveness of using mobile technology to enhance students' information literacy skills and learning experiences. Pre and post-test measures, and survey questionnaires generated quantitative and qualitative data that was analyzed to determine the degree of changes in frequency of mobile device information literacy access and fluency in digital literacy skills. The article highlights the Mobile Information Literacy innovation and includes the development and design of the mobile lessons, interactive exercises, and its applications. The study's main results and conclusions are also discussed. Additionally, the successes and challenges of the pilot to support anytime, anywhere student mobile information literacy eLearning training that engages mobile learners and enhances their learning experience are identified and critically reflected upon to improve the innovation for stage two of the project.


This paper presents a study of tone classification for continuous Thai speech recognition. A modified autocorrelation algorithm was implemented with pitch detection, and the tone classifier utilized 3-layer feed-forward neural network with back-propagation. The best performance configuration of tone features was obtained with semi-tone scaling and mean-normalization producing a classification accuracy of 72.21%. Also, after considering the effects of final consonants, the average performance of the tone classifier improved to 77.13%. Experimental results showed that the pitch value of a tone with no final consonants has more variation than one with final consonants. Also the classification for tones with voiced final consonant gave better performance than tones with unvoiced final consonants.


ABSTRACT The genetic determinants of resistance to mefloquine in malaria parasites are unclear. Some studies have implied that amplification of, or mutations in, the multidrug resistance gene pfmdr1 in Plasmodium falciparum may be involved. Using the rodent malaria model Plasmodium chabaudi, we investigated the role of the orthologue of this gene, pcmdr1, in a stable mefloquine-resistant mutant, AS(15MF/3), selected from a sensitive clone. pcmdr1 exists as a single copy gene on chromosome 12 of the sensitive clone. In AS(15MF/3), the gene was found to have undergone duplication, with one copy translocating to chromosome 4. mRNA levels of pcmdr1 were higher in the mutant than in the parent sensitive clone. A partial genetic map of the translocation showed that other genes in addition to pcmdr1 had been cotranslocated. The sequences of both copies of pcmdr1 of AS(15MF/3) were identical to that of the parent sensitive clone. A cross was made between AS(15MF/3) and an unrelated mefloquine-sensitive clone, AJ. Phenotypic and molecular analysis of progeny clones showed that duplication and overexpression of the pcmdr1 gene was an important determinant of resistance. However, not all mefloquine-resistant progeny contained the duplicated gene, showing that at least one other gene was involved in resistance.


Upon announcing his country's security pact with Japan in March 2007, Australian Prime Minster John Howard proclaimed, "Japan and Australia have a common destiny in this part of the world." This new agreement between two major democracies, which calls for increased military ties, has the potential to increase regional stability through cooperation on issues such as North Korea, terrorism and drug trafficking. However, future steps toward greater security ties must not destabilize the region, and care must be taken to avoid accelerating a strategic contest for regional ascendancy. Australia and Japan have much in common. Both are populous democracies with market economies, and both are major allies of the United States. While it is true that Japanese atrocities against Australian prisoners during the Second World War are still well within living memory, the significant economic bond between the countries makes the alliance not at all surprising. Today, Japan is the largest purchaser of Australian exports, thanks in part to a bilateral trade pact signed 50 years ago when the wounds of the Pacific war were far fresher than they are now. While the pact does not stipulate mutual defense, its other conditions will put the armed forces on much closer terms. The agreement calls for some joint training of their armed forces, increased sharing of intelligence, and annual meetings of defense and foreign ministers to further the security dialogue. Australia's pact with Japan does not parallel its alliance with the United States, with which it has a mutual defense treaty, but it is a major step in strengthening ties. It makes Australia Japan's only official military ally apart from the United States. Japanese soldiers may now train on Australian soil, and conversely, Australia will become more involved in East Asian affairs as it cooperates with Japan on North Korea. The signing of this pact is consistent with both Australia's increased military assertiveness abroad and its growing security ties with Japan. It has thousands of peacekeeping troops in East Timor and hundreds in the Solomon Islands. As a US ally, it has participated in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Australian soldiers have provided security for Japanese non-combat personnel. Australia and Japan have also cooperated in East Timor, Cambodia, and on relief efforts following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. There are worries in Australia that the pact will increase the country's foreign entanglements. …


We consider the problem of matrix column subset selection, which selects a subset of columns from an input matrix such that the input can be well approximated by the span of the selected columns. Column subset selection has been applied to numerous real-world data applications such as population genetics summarization, electronic circuits testing and recommendation systems. In many applications the complete data matrix is unavailable and one needs to select representative columns by inspecting only a small portion of the input matrix. In this paper we propose the first provably correct column subset selection algorithms for partially observed data matrices. Our proposed algorithms exhibit different merits and drawbacks in terms of statistical accuracy, computational efficiency, sample complexity and sampling schemes, which provides a nice exploration of the tradeoff between these desired properties for column subset selection. The proposed methods employ the idea of feedback driven sampling and are inspired by several sampling schemes previously introduced for low-rank matrix approximation tasks [DMM08, FKV04, DV06, KS14]. Our analysis shows that two of the proposed algorithms enjoy a relative error bound, which is preferred for column subset selection and matrix approximation purposes. We also demonstrate through both theoretical and empirical analysis the power of feedback driven sampling compared to uniform random sampling on input matrices with highly correlated columns.


This document represents a brief account of ongoing project for Diabetic Retinopathy Detection (DRD) through integration of state-of the art Deep Learning methods. We make use of deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), which have proven revolutionary in multiple fields of computer vision including medical imaging, and we bring their power to the diagnosis of eye fundus images. For training our models we used publicly available Kaggle data set. For testing we used portion of Kaggle data withheld from training and Messidor-2 reference standard. Neither withheld Kaggle images, nor Messidor-2 were used for training. For Messidor-2 we achieved sensitivity 99%, specificity 71%, and AUC 0.97. These results close to recent state-of-the-art models trained on much larger data sets and surpass average results of diabetic retinopathy screening when performed by trained optometrists. With continuous development of our Deep Learning models we expect to further increase the accuracy of the method and expand it to cataract and glaucoma diagnostics.


The purpose of this paper is to summarize the 2018 American Kinesiology Association preworkshop on best practices in internships. This preworkshop contained 2 keynote speakers, 5 ignite sessions, and 6 round-table discussions looking at the status of internships in departments of kinesiology, nationally. It is clear that kinesiology does not have a common practice for implementing internships. Given the many variables in respect to offering an internship, such as curricular mandates, faculty workload policy, community partner availability, program outcomes, student learning objectives, and assessment tools, this is not surprising. Perhaps we should rethink the notion that there is a set of best practices that guide internship development and consider the possibility that internships will look different at various institutions for valid reasons.


A History of Fashion and Costume is an eight-volume set that examines the development of costume and fashion over time - from the earliest cave dwellers to the present - along with the social history that gave rise to it. Introducing readers to the rich world of fashion and dress, this set vividly depicts the changing styles, processes, and trends - from the first people to wear clothes in the last Ice Age to the courtly fashion of medieval Europe to the globalization of Western style - that led us to the clothing of today. Describing both the practical uses of clothing and the highly impractical clothes that have been used throughout history to convey social status, these volumes provide a compelling look at the effects of fashion and costume on society. Each accessible volume describes the fashions of the time, styles and designs, and the changing use of materials. Beautiful illustrations and engaging text examine clothing as well as the jewelry, hairstyles, hats, and footwear that accompanied the fashions and made them unique. Special features in each volume include a foreword written by a fashion industry expert as well as a helpful glossary, timeline, and index.


The purpose of the essay is to offer a close reading of Hegel's account of the Fall along theologically orthodox lines. To this extent I am more in agreement with traditional readers of Hegel like Peter Hodgson, and more recently theologians like Graham Ward and Nicholas Adams who wish to bring Hegel closer to a 'generous orthodoxy' (Ward, p. 290) in order to open up the possibility of appropriating elements of the Hegelian project for the purposes of Christian theology and philosophy. In so far as I will argue for an orthodox reading of the Fall in the Encyclopaedia Logic, I will nevertheless try to show how this more or less theologically traditional reading of a religious account in Hegel engenders a sophisticated and in many ways novel meta-philosophical argument for the foundations of philosophy grounded in the features of human thought which participates in divine thought.


A directed animal is a percolation cluster in the directed site percolation model. The aim of this paper is to exhibit a strong relation between the problem of computing the generating function G of directed animals on the square lattice, counted according to the area and the perimeter, and the problem of solving a system of quadratic equations involving unknown matrices. We present some solid evidence that some infinite explicit matrices, the fixed points of a rewriting like system are the natural solutions to this system of equations: some strong evidence is given that the problem of finding G reduces to the problem of finding an eigenvector to an explicit infinite matrix.  Similar properties are shown for other combinatorial questions concerning directed animals, and for different lattices.


1. Similar constraints in distant, but climatically comparable, regions may be expected to yield biotic assemblages with similar attributes. Environmental factors that constrain communities at smaller scales, however, may be different between climatically similar regions. Thus, patterns observed at large scales may differ from those detected at small scales, and international comparisons should be focussed at multiple scales. 2. Mediterranean-climate regions (MCRs) are characterized by remarkable seasonal variability in precipitation and temperature. Accordingly, rivers in these regions have seasonal and predictable floods and droughts, and temporary reaches are frequent. Present in six geographical regions of the world, MCRs have similar environmental constraints and are ideal for testing intercontinental similarities between macroinvertebrate communities. 3. We examined aquatic macroinvertebrate taxon richness and composition in MCRs at three scales: regional, reach and macrohabitat. At the regional scale, the Mediterranean Basin had the highest taxon richness at family level, and southwestern Australia the lowest. Taxonomic composition showed c. 85% similarity between the northern hemisphere MCRs of California and the Mediterranean Basin, which were followed in similarity by South Africa. The two Australian MCRs (South west and South) showed a similarity to each other of about 70% whereas the Chilean fauna was the most distinct. 4. At the reach scale, taxon richness was not significantly different between permanent and temporary reaches in any MCR, whereas taxonomic composition was significantly different among northern hemisphere MCRs. At the macrohabitat scale, taxon richness was not significantly different between lotic and lentic macrohabitats within any of the MCRs, but differences in macroinvertebrate communities were found between macrohabitats when considering regions. 5. Our results show that the strength of similarity between distant but climatically similar regions is scale-dependent, being highest at the macrohabitat scale. Although the similarities in richness and composition at the macrohabitat scale are presumed to be universal, the seasonal predictability of drought in MCRs is expected to result in characteristic macroinvertebrate responses at the reach scale. We suggest, however, that regional evolutionary history and environmental characteristics may override this general pattern of a similar response of MCRs at different scales. The Mediterranean Basin and California, having similar historical and environmental condition, thus appeared as the most similar MCRs at all scales.


Cable–stayed bridges are usually constructed in coastal area in which the surrounding atmospheric is considered as severe environmental condition. This atmosphere helps in building up quickly the corrosion of steel cables with time.
Visual inspection of cable-stayed bridges built up worldwide shows that the bridge cables suffer from serious corrosion although the cables are protected using different techniques. There is a considerable reduction in cable diameter due to corrosion, which depends on the severity of the environmental condition.
There is no sufficient information regarding the effect of reduction in cable diameter on the structural response of cable-stayed bridge. Furthermore, snapping of cables due to accidental and /or corrosion is another important issue which affecting the structural response and safety of cable stayed bridges and need to be addressed for safe design.In this research, the effect of reducing cables diameter, cables layout and snapping of individual cables on the structural behavior and safety of cable-stayed bridge are presented. Three cable layouts are analyzed in this study i.e. harp, semi harp and fan layouts. In each layout, five different reductions in cables diameters are considered i.e 12.50%, 25.00%, 37.50%, and 50.00%. To address snapping of cable, harp bridge layout is considered and the structural behavior of the bridge due to snapping individual cables in the bridge are presented and discussed.
The analysis starts with initial shape analysis to stress the cables to minimize the deformation under self-weight of the structure. The analysis was carried out using stiffness method considering the geometrical nonlinearities.
The results of initial shape analysis show that in all bridge layouts reflect comparable behavior. The cable forces were found to be the lowest in fan layout cable bridge compared to harp and semi harp layouts. Reducing cables diameter will lead to a redistribution of forces and moment in different components of the bridge and alter the structural behavior in a nonlinear fashion. Reducing cables diameter by 25% will compromise the bridge safety as the stresses in cables, deformation, and bending moment will be increased significantly.
The bridge cable layouts have little effect on the structure response of the cable-stayed bridge with reduced cables diameter. The fan layout shows better structural response compared to harp and semi harp layout, especially in term of cable forces and deformation profile. Notwithstanding this fact, 25% of cables reduction diameter will significantly affect the moment in girder of fan bridge layout compared to other layouts of cables
Snapping the individual cable in the bridge has a significant effect on the cable force and bending moment distribution in the girder, tower and will cause bridge failure.


The social discount rate crucially determines optimal mitigation policies. This paper examines two shortcomings of the recent debate and the models on climate change assessment. First, removing an implicit assumption of (intertemporal) risk neutrality reduces the growth effect in social discounting and significantly amplifies the importance of risk and correlation. Second, debate and models largely overlook the difference in attitude with respect to risk and with respect to non-risk uncertainty. The paper derives the resulting changes of the risk-free and the stochastic social discount rate and points out the importance of even thin tailed uncertainty for climate change evaluation.


NASA has embarked on an ambitious program to integrate additive manufacturing techniques and to develop processes for the microgravity environment. The most recent example of this program is the successful launch and deployment of the first 3D printer on the International Space Station. In this one-year effort, students were required to meet a series of milestones to design, manufacture, and test their ideas in close cooperation with members of the NASA Exploration Augmentation Module (EAM) concept team.The participants in this project were tasked with thinking of new solutions using AM that would simultaneously be recyclable with minimal loss in mechanical properties but also have the capacity for high mechanical properties. Working in interdisciplinary teams, the participant teams investigated the use of recycled materials, characterization, testing, modeling, and tool development. The underlying philosophy adopted in these papers is the ability to use a strut-and-tie approach that integrates reusable carbon-fiber tension ties for tension zones.The results of this project encompass a series of nterconnected studies exploring the issues surrounding 3D printing in a space environment.


In June 2007 the Chemical Ecology of Marine Protists group performed a scientific cruise on the North Sea. One of the aims of this expedition was to detect azaspiracids (AZAs), a group of marine toxins with unknown origin, and to isolate the AZA-producing organism. Azaspiracids are a group of lipophilic algal toxins associated with the diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) syndrome. The first azaspiracid poisoning (AZP) event was known after eight people in the Netherlands had become ill in November 1995 after consumption of mussels from the Irish west coast. Symptoms of the affected persons were nausea, vomiting, severe diarrhea and stomach cramps. These symptoms were typical for DSP. However, the only DSP toxins present in the mussels were okadaic acid and dinophysistoxin-2 at very low concentrations, which could not explain the observed intoxications [1]. Three years later, in 1998 Satakes group isolated and structurally elucidated azaspirazid-1 (AZA-1) as the causative compound in shellfish [2]. Consequently other human intoxications from the consumption of mussels in Ireland, France and Italy were unambiguously attributed to AZP. During the following years other structural variants of AZA-1 were detected and isolated from shellfish [3-5] and to date 11 AZAs are known, of which only AZA-1, AZA-2 and AZA-3 have been found in plankton samples [6]. Additionally it turned out that AZP was not restricted to Ireland alone, but AZA-contaminated mussels were also found on the English east cost as well as on the Norwegian west coast [7], but no AZAs were found further north in the White Sea, Northern Russia [8]. During the North Sea cruise (AZA-1) was measured in size fractionated plankton net tows (20 µm mesh size) by a highly sensitive triple quadrupole-linear ion trap LC-MS/MS. Highest amounts of AZA-1 were present in the southern Skagerrak in the 20-3 µm size fraction. From that fraction, a large number of crude cultures were established by use of serial dilution and, after 8 weeks of growth, screened for the presence of AZAs. From one crude culture containing AZA, a small dinoflagellate was subsequently isolated by micro capillary and brought into pure culture. The isolated strain produces AZA-1, AZA-2 and a so far unknown isomer of AZA-2.References:[1] McMahon, T., Harmful Algae News, 1996, 14, 2.[2] Satake, M., Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1998, 120, 9967-9968.[3] Ofuji, K., Natural Toxins, 1999, 7, 99-102.[4] Ofuji, K., Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry, 2001, 65, 740-742.[5] James, K.J., Toxicon, 2003, 41, 277-283.[6] Furey, A., Environmental Science and Technology, 2003, 37, 3078-3084.[7] James, K.J., Toxicon, 2002, 40, 909-915.[8] Vershinin, A., Harmful Algae, 2006, 5, 558-564.


Abstract The United States has experienced major changes in race politics. With the recent election of the first African American President and the first African American head of the Republican National Committee, many doors have been opened for African Americans that were previously closed. Along with these changes, there has been a shift towards a more conservative African American population in the United States. African American males are quickly separating themselves from the Democratic Party, and many African American females seem to be following this trend as well. While the female African American Republican population within the United States is still relatively small, this group is growing. This conservative shift among African Americans was previously ignored, but has now sparked the interest of many. This paper will attempt to shed some light on the characteristics and motives of the 21st century female African American Republican, as well as profile several prominent figures who maintain this particular political affiliation.


Joy Gordon has made a major contribution to both the ethical analysis and the policy evaluation of economic sanctions. But her claims against sanctions should be understood as critique rather than condemnation and rejection of sanctions on ethical grounds. Through a series of arguments and examples, this response points out that Gordon may be too narrow in defining sanctions' success, and that, where sanctions have gone awry, it is because they were unimaginatively formulated and poorly implemented, not because sanctions are categorically unethical. Multilateral sanctions in the late 1990s are simply more finely tuned than a few years ago. As a technique of coercive diplomacy, sanctions are meant to change dramatically the costs and benefits that leaders of a nation calculate operate in their favor as they pursue policies that the majority of the international community have declared abhorrent. We can, with the help of Gordon's critical claims, accomplish this goal in a more ethical manner, and by so doing, increase the likely success of sanctions in the future.


HowHow did we humans (and other vertebrates) get our sparkling smiles? The hard white coating on our teeth, the enamel, is made up of hydroxyapatite—the same mineral that forms our bones. In our teeth, hydroxyapatite is organized into parallel arrays of columnar apatite crystals called prisms. The growth and organization of enamel prisms is controlled by special proteins secreted by cells known as ameloblasts. One of these proteins, amelogenin, forms tiny aggregates known as nanospheres once it has been secreted. Amelogenin nanospheres are thought to help apatite crystals form and grow.

New evidence reveals how polyproline-repeat elements of enamel proteins evolve from amphibians to mammals to refine biological apatite structure and function. The striking microarchitecture of biological minerals is evident in tooth enamel, above.

Studies of amelogenin's amino acid sequence have revealed that short regions at either end of the protein are found throughout vertebrate evolution. In fact, one of the main differences between the frog amelogenin gene and that found in higher vertebrates (for example, mammals) is found in the protein's polyproline domain (so-called because the amino acid proline appears with high frequency in this region). This area is an "evolutionary hotspot" that is significantly longer in mammals than in lower vertebrates. In this issue of PLoS Biology, Tianquan Jin, Tom Diekwisch, and colleagues shed new light on the evolutionary significance of differences in the polyproline domain and on its role in the regulation of apatite crystal formation.

Amelogenin's polyproline domain contains several repeats of an amino acid triplet: a proline followed by two other amino acids (an arrangement known as a PXX repeat). When Jin and colleagues compared the frequency of PXX repeats in different vertebrates, they found that that the number of PXX repeats is higher in mammals than in lower vertebrates. For example, the longest continuous PXX stretch in frog amelogenin has only 6 PXX repeats, compared to 21 repeats in bovine amelogenin. This finding led the authors to ask whether amelogenin from different species assembles into different sized aggregates. Indeed, when they compared frog, mouse, goat, and bovine nanospheres, they found that the diameter of amelogenin nanospheres from the different species was inversely correlated with the length of the species' PXX repeats.

The authors' studies on native amelogenin proteins suggest that PXX repeat length directly influences the dimensions of assembled amelogenin nanospheres. To test this idea, the group created custom polypeptides with different PXX repeat lengths (12, 24, or 33 repeats), allowed the peptides to coassemble into nanospheres, and measured the resulting structures. Again, they found that longer PXX repeats yielded nanospheres of smaller dimensions. This finding led Jin and colleagues to explore whether PXX repeat length influences apatite crystal growth; they added the custom polypeptides to a hydroxyapatite crystallization solution and measured the lengths of the resulting crystals. The results of this experiment showed that longer PXX repeats promote the growth of thinner but longer apatite crystals.

The authors next wondered whether a similar effect could be observed in vivo. To address this question, Jin and colleagues created transgenic mice expressing the frog amelogenin gene in place of the mouse amelogenin gene. Compared to wild-type mice, the mutant mice exhibited a 50% thinner enamel layer. What's more, the mutants' enamel was poorly organized and lacked the highly organized prism structure normally found in mouse tooth enamel. In fact, the enamel of the mutant mice more strongly resembled frog tooth enamel, which lacks prisms, than it did mouse tooth enamel.

Finally, the authors investigated how increasing PXX repeat length allows for smaller nanospheres by using NMR spectroscopy to estimate the 3-D shape of their custom polypeptides. These studies showed that the shortest polypeptide is very disordered. However, the longest polypeptide tended to adopt a conformation known as a "polyproline II helix", which is known to pack into a very compact shape. The ability of longer PXX repeats to pack more tightly, combined with the hydrophobic nature of the polyproline region and the reduced thermodynamic mobility of a longer molecule, could explain the smaller nanospheres formed by longer PXX repeat proteins, the authors say.

Taken together, Jin and colleagues' data indicate that PXX repeat length plays a strong role in shaping both amelogenin nanosphere dimensions and in organizing the resulting enamel growth. The authors theorize that because smaller amelogenin nanospheres are more tightly packed in the extracellular matrix, they would promote more efficient bundling and organization of the apatite crystals they nucleate than would larger amelogenin nanospheres. These findings could have interesting implications for our understanding of how genes controlling mineral growth were incorporated into the vertebrate evolutionary path.

Jin T, Ito Y, Luan X, Dangaria S, Walker C, et al. (2009) Elongated Polyproline Motifs Facilitate Enamel Evolution through Matrix Subunit Compaction. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000262


This item is part of: Boarin, P., Haarhoff, E., Manfredini,
M., Mohammadzadeh, M., Premier, A., (2021). Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim
Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub
PhD Symposium, Future Cities Research Hub, School of Architecture and Planning
of the University of Auckland. ISBN: 978-0-473-53616-9ABSTRACTClimate change is causing massive environmental disasters, which increasingly damage human civilization. To cope with climate risk, the world is progressively converting its energy dependence from the fossil fuel base to renewable energy such as photovoltaic solar farms. Successful photovoltaic (PV) projects have demonstrated various benefits and positive effects in all environmental, economic, and social aspects. However, conventional photovoltaic projects tend to have a serious land-use conflict issue with agricultural farmlands in that solar farms require huge land areas to install PV panels. Responsively, the concept of Agrivoltaic (APV), a mixed system that deploys photovoltaic panels over farmlands, emerged and have been implemented. Although numerous studies demonstrate the multiple benefits of APV, there is a lack of studies analyzing the influential attributes that may lead to the success or failure of the APV project. Thus, this paper aims to review and analyze the influential attributes of APV that may be relevant to its success or failure, based on the triple bottom lines-economic-environmental-social aspects. This paper also aim to review the opportunities and challenges that may arise when implementing APV into the urban environment.


Artemisinins, derived from the wormwood herb Artemisia annua, are the most potent antimalarial drugs currently available. Despite extensive research, the exact mode of action of artemisinins has not been established. Here we use yeast, Saccharamyces cerevisiae, to probe the core working mechanism of this class of antimalarial agents. We demonstrate that artemisinin's inhibitory effect is mediated by disrupting the normal function of mitochondria through depolarizing their membrane potential. Moreover, in a genetic study, we identify the electron transport chain as an important player in artemisinin's action: Deletion of NDE1 or NDI1, which encode mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenases, confers resistance to artemisinin, whereas overexpression of NDE1 or NDI1 dramatically increases sensitivity to artemisinin. Mutations or environmental conditions that affect electron transport also alter host's sensitivity to artemisinin. Sensitivity is partially restored when the Plasmodium falciparum NDI1 ortholog is expressed in yeast ndi1 strain. Finally, we showed that artemisinin's inhibitory effect is mediated by reactive oxygen species. Our results demonstrate that artemisinin's effect is primarily mediated through disruption of membrane potential by its interaction with the electron transport chain, resulting in dysfunctional mitochondria. We propose a dual role of mitochondria played during the action of artemisinin: the electron transport chain stimulates artemisinin's effect, most likely by activating it, and the mitochondria are subsequently damaged by the locally generated free radicals.


Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a thermochemical technology of biomass conversion that has some advantages: lower operating temperature than other technologies, ability to process biomass with high moisture content and generation of a final product with a higher calorific value than the original biomass and with hydrophobic characteristics. This study evaluated the influence of temperature, time, biomass blend, nature and dose of additive in the HTC process. The response variables were mass yield (MY) and higher heating value (HHV), generating a total of 128 experiments that were grouped in 8 complete factorial designs (2). Pressed olive (OLV), oat husks (AV), Pinus radiata sawdust (AS), and raps seeds (RPS) were used as raw biomass. MY and HHV had an R above 0.90 using the response equations of Experimental Design. Results indicate that temperature was the main effect in both responses, since it produced a decrease of MY between 5 and 10 %, and an increase of HHV between 1.5 and 2.2 MJ / kg. Use of additives did not significantly improve the energy yield. On the other hand, addition of a 'more reactive' biomass with increasing temperature achieved an important improvement in the HHV value. It is a positive fact because the studied biomass presents strong seasonal and geographical availability.


Urbanization, homelessness and opioid crisis in larger cities in United States are challenges that directly impact libraries and how they provide services. San Francisco Public Library located in one of the celebrated cities in United States finds itself amid a widespread opioid crisis. It is now more important than ever to keep the library doors open to all citizens and provide services that match the community needs. The libraries are only relevant if the community finds value in them and can use the many services they provide.
San Francisco Public Library has experienced increased number of attacks on library staff. This poster will cover best practices established by the organization to maintain the status of a premier urban library, the specific knowledge and skills that are required of library staff to provide services on continuous basis. Jana De Brauwere, the Chair of the Committee, will share several key documents and procedures developed as a direct response to security issues the library staff has identified over a period of several years and will describe the journey the library took to change the organizational culture and how it reframed the way we serve public as well as our library employees.
The Security and Communications Committee is a group of individuals from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds and representing various classifications in the organization: librarians, library managers, library technicians, Library Security, HR employees and Union representatives and many more.
A few examples of what we achieved:
1. Revision of the Patron Code of Conduct
2. Establishment of Security and Communications Task Force
3. Cooperation with San Francisco Police Department
4. Hiring of a Security Unit Manager (full time position)
5. Development of Annotated Patron Code of Conduct
6. Revision of Suspension and Appeal form and Suspension Checklist
7. Implementation of Narcan Policy
8. Development of Level 1 Incident protocol and checklist for supervisors
9. Creation of Incident Report Writing Guidelines
10. Development of Incident Report Writing training


The supply of trace metals to the surface ocean via dust
deposition is important for primary productivity and the global
biogeochemical cycle of many elements. Here we utilise the
systematic variation of the chemical properties of yttrium and
the rare earth elements (YREE) to investigate trace metal
release from dust in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. We present
YREE data for the dissolved (<0.45 μm) and suspended
particulate matter (SPM) collected from the mixed layer
during Polarstern cruise ANT-XXIII/1 in Oct-Nov 2005.

Saharan dust can be traced with the Al content of the SPM
revealing a broad maximum extending from 15° to 3°N. The
PAAS normalised YREE patterns of the dust dominated SPM
are relatively flat with a broad peak centred around Eu and
Gd. This dust dominated SPM is also characterised by lower
Y/Ho and Er/Nd ratios than the particulate material from
outside the high Al zone.

The dissolved YREE distributions show normal seawater
patterns with the relative enrichment of heavy REE over light
REE. The samples with dust dominated SPM are enriched in
the light and middle REE by a factor of approximately 2
compared to the other samples and a Sargasso Sea surface
water. The dissolved Y/Ho and Er/Nd ratios obtained from the
dust dominated SPM zone are also low compared to the
samples outside the zone but display a fractionation between
the SPM and the dissolved phase. This comparison indicates a
consistent incongruent dissolution of the dust associated
YREE which are probably mainly hosted by oxide coatings on
the particles.


ABSTRACT Background: Bone morphogenetic protein–2 (BMP-2) is an available bone graft option in spinal fusion surgery. The purpose of this study is to investigate the trends of BMP-2 utilization in adult spinal deformity (ASD) surgery. Methods: The Nationwide Inpatient Sample database from 2002 to 2011 was reviewed. Inclusion criteria were patients over 18 years of age who underwent spinal fusion for ASD. Trends of BMP-2 use were examined over time, as well as stratified based on patient and surgical characteristics. All analyses were done after application of discharge weights to produce national estimates. Results: There were 54 054 patients who met inclusion criteria and were included in this study. The overall rate of BMP-2 use was 39.7% (95% confidence interval 35.0%- 44.3%). Overall, there was steady increase in its use over time, with the highest peak in 2009 (55.3% of all cases used BMP-2), and then a decrease up to 37.9% in 2011 (P < .001). The rate of BMP-2 use was significantly higher for patients older than 54 years of age (compared to patients <54, P < .001). It was also higher in females (P = .009), Caucasian patients (P = .006), and Medicare patients (P = .006). Its use was 28.6% in the Northeast, 38.1% in the South, 45.2% in the Midwest, and 48.2% in the West (P = .035). Circumferential procedures had the highest rate of BMP-2 use (44.3%, P = .045). Average total hospital charges were $152,403 ± 117,454 for patients who did not receive BMP-2 and $205,426 ± 137,561 for patients who did (P < .001). Conclusion After analysis of a large nationwide database, it was found that the rate of BMP-2 use in ASD surgery is approximately 40%. There was a significant increase in use from 2002 to 2009, and a decrease thereafter. The highest rates of use were found in older patients, female patients, white patients, Medicare patients, circumferential approaches, and patients undergoing surgery in the Midwest and West regions.