We investigate whether low loan-to-deposit (LTD) ratios and high levels of reserve balances at the central bank (or holdings of government securities) are a reflection of policy-driven factors compared to commonly cited reasons of reluctance to lend or sometimes weak investment demand in uncertain environments. We examine changes to central bank (CB) balance sheet structures as well as commercial banks' flow of funds over the period 2007–2012. First, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) CBs play an active role in view of their size that is very large with respect to their economies compared to CBs in advanced economies. Second, under exchange rate targeting, most MENA CB balance sheets are asset-driven, holding foreign exchange (FX) reserves to support the exchange rate policy and resulting in lower loan-to-deposit (LTD) ratios in the case of unsterilized increases in FX. Third, CB policy decisions seem to be accompanied by an increase in commercial bank reserve money balances, with ensuing reduction in the LTD. Finally, if governments meet their financing needs from the banking system—whether from commercial banks or by monetary financing—commercial bank balance sheets will tend to expand, resulting in lower LTD ratios. Our analysis suggests that government and CB actions may also drive the demand for and supply of credit, which are traditionally attributed to the behavior of banks and non-financial corporates and households only. The findings offer a different interpretation of changes in CB and banks' balance sheets, with direct implications for LTD, calling to exercise caution in recommending policy action which aim at propping up LTD to 'appropriate' levels in an effort to reinvigorate credit following a downturn.


Chronic total occlusion (CTO) remains a challenging lesion subset when considering percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Until recently, CTO lesions were associated with relatively low procedural success rates ranging between 60–70% despite evidence of considerable case selection1 ,2 However, the emergence of new techniques and technologies is revolutionising the field, such that procedural success rates in excess of 90% have been described by specialist operators.3 While it has long been appreciated that CTO revascularisation can improve symptoms,4 there is an increasing body of evidence to suggest prognostic benefit may follow.5

In this issue of Heart , Michael et al describe outcomes following CTO PCI among patients with previous coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG).6 They demonstrate that prior CABG remains a challenge in CTO PCI, with lower procedural success rates than CTO lesions in previously ungrafted patients. However, the most powerful aspect of their data is that the reporting US centres are consistently achieving high rates of procedural success (85%) despite treating increasingly complex patients. In their cohort 37% of patients had undergone prior CABG, a substantially greater proportion than any other reported registry. This suggests greater patient selection among previous registries, where CTO patients with more complex disease may have been excluded from revascularisation, a situation likely to reflect real world clinical practice. Patients who have symptoms, significant ischaemia, and/or myocardial viability may often be excluded from revascularisation on the basis of feasibility of percutaneous revascularisation —that is, anatomy rather than clinical need.

Although chronic occlusions may be present in up to 35% of patients undergoing coronary angiography,7 CTO PCI accounts for only around 5% of all elective PCI procedures.8 Many patients with single vessel de novo CTO are not offered revascularisation at all. Among patients with multivessel disease undergoing PCI, the …


The Ras/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway regulates a variety of cellular processes by activating specific transcriptional and translational programs. Ras/MAPK signaling promotes mRNA translation and protein synthesis, but the exact molecular mechanisms underlying this regulation remain poorly understood. Increasing evidence suggests that the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) plays an essential role in this process. Here, we show that Raptor, an essential scaffolding protein of the mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1), becomes phosphorylated on proline-directed sites following activation of the Ras/MAPK pathway. We found that ERK1 and ERK2 interact with Raptor in cells and mediate its phosphorylation in vivo and in vitro. Using mass spectrometry and phosphospecific antibodies, we found three proline-directed residues within Raptor, Ser8, Ser696, and Ser863, which are directly phosphorylated by ERK1/2. Expression of phosphorylation-deficient alleles of Raptor revealed that phosphorylation of these sites by ERK1/2 normally promotes mTORC1 activity and signaling to downstream substrates, such as 4E-BP1. Our data provide a novel regulatory mechanism by which mitogenic and oncogenic activation of the Ras/MAPK pathway promotes mTOR signaling.


Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have revolutionized the world of image classification over the last few years, pushing the computer vision close beyond human accuracy. The required computational effort of CNNs today requires power-hungry parallel processors and GP-GPUs. Recent efforts in designing CNN Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and accelerators for System-On-Chip (SoC) integration have achieved very promising results. Unfortunately, even these highly optimized engines are still above the power envelope imposed by mobile and deeply embedded applications and face hard limitations caused by CNN weight I/O and storage. On the algorithmic side, highly competitive classification accuracy canbe achieved by properly training CNNs with binary weights. This novel algorithm approach brings major optimization opportunities in the arithmetic core by removing the need for the expensive multiplications as well as in the weight storage and I/O costs. In this work, we present a HW accelerator optimized for BinaryConnect CNNs that achieves 1510 GOp/s on a corearea of only 1.33 MGE and with a power dissipation of 153 mW in UMC 65 nm technology at 1.2 V. Our accelerator outperforms state-of-the-art performance in terms of ASIC energy efficiency as well as area efficiency with 61.2 TOp/s/W and 1135 GOp/s/MGE, respectively.


ABSTRACT:Foreign aid is an important aspect in understanding human development in aid-dependent societies. Original assessments of aid are generally based on the viewpoints of aid agencies, while the opinions of aid recipients often remain ignored. This perpetuates inconsistencies in understanding foreign aid, leaving a knowledge gap. In-depth analysis of aid efforts and recipients' perceptions can shed light on the advantages/limitations of such aid, and enable appropriate development-oriented strategies. This article brings new empirics to bear on the foreign aid debate. It builds on 'The Listening Project' (LP), which has explored the ideas and insights of those on the receiving end of foreign aid. Inspired by "listening to people" approach, this article demonstrates the central importance of explicating empirical data and including such findings in the debate on foreign aid and development. Presenting empirical evidence on aid reception in the village of Jerge-Tal, Kyrgyzstan, the author examines whether and how feedback from aid recipients is in line with the patterns and recommendations of the LP. Both these studies add to the growing literature on foreign aid for development by virtue of "listening to aid recipients" in donor–recipient relations. The conducted benchmark analysis reveals that the characteristics of aid provisions in Jerge-Tal village comply with the patterns and common assessments discovered by 'The Listening Project'. Key findings relate to greater opportunities for public participation, ownership and coordination of the aid programs and development projects. Aid recipients of LP stress the issues of appropriate knowledge on aid-recipient societies; of aid as "business model" with irrational allocation of budget and recruitment of recipients that creates "project societies" instead of the intended civil societies. The study of aid recipients in Jerge-Tal village brings an example of aid-recipient empowerment and participation in development achieved through cooperation with international and local aid agencies together with the Kyrgyz state. Potential policy implications refer to the fostering of collaborative activities between aid agencies, aid recipients and state institutions as a condition for effective aid management and coordination.


Although microalbuminuria is known to foretell the later development of overt proteinuria in patients with insulindependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), different investigators have reported different levels of albuminuria as being predictive. However, whether different levels of albuminuria reflect differences in glomerular structure is not well known. In this study, we divided a cohort of 66 nonproteinuric long-standing (duration 20 ± 7 years) IDDM patients, who had both renal functional and structural studies performed, into four groups according to their urinary albumin excretion rate (AER). The several different levels of microalbuminuria previously reported to be predictive served to demarcate these groups: group I, AER ≤22 mg/24 h (upper limit for normal in our laboratory) (33 patients); group II, AER 23–45 mg/24 h (11 patients); group HI, AER 46–100 mg/24 h (13 patients); and group IV, AER 101–220 mg/24 h (9 patients). Creatinine clearance was similar in groups I, II, and III but was lower in group IV. Systemic hypertension was present in five patients in group I, one in group II, seven in group III, and five in group IV. Mean values for glomerular basement membrane (GBM) width and volume fraction of the mesangium [Vv(mes/glom)] were greater in all groups than in a group of 52 age-matched normal kidney donors (P < 0.0001). Also, filtration surface density [Sv(PGBM)], inversely related to Vv(mes/glom) (r = 0.61, P < 0.0001), was reduced in all diabetic groups compared with the normal group (P < 0.0001). Structural measures were identical in group I and II. GBM width, Vv(mes/ glom), and Sv(PGBM) were more abnormal in groups III and IV than either group I or II (P < 0.05). Hypertension was unrelated to the values for any of these structural measures. However, AER and blood pressure had an interactive effect on Vv(mes/glom) (P = 0.002); in patients with AER <45 mg/24 h and hypertension, Vv(mes/ glom) was higher than in normotensive patients in the same AER category (P < 0.03). Thus, morphometric measures characteristic of diabetic glomerulopathy are present in normoalbuminuric IDDM patients, albeit in some of these patients renal structure is in the normal range. Lesions, on average, are more advanced when albuminuria exceeds 45 mg/24 h. In patients with AER >45 but <220 mg/24 h, a further division based on AER (< and >100) does not discriminate groups with different glomerular lesions. Therefore, albuminuria >45 mg/24 h indicates more advanced diabetic glomerulopathy and is frequently associated with other functional abnormalities such as reduced glomerular filtration rate and increasing blood pressure. These results are consistent with the majority of studies that have found the higher ranges of microalbuminuria to predict progression to overt nephropathy with greater specificity.


Abstract This work focuses on the extraction and integration of automatically aligned bilingual terminology into a Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) system in a Computer Aided Translation scenario. We evaluate the proposed framework that, taking as input a small set of parallel documents, gathers domain-specific bilingual terms and injects them into an SMT system to enhance translation quality. Therefore, we investigate several strategies to extract and align terminology across languages and to integrate it in an SMT system. We compare two terminology injection methods that can be easily used at run-time without altering the normal activity of an SMT system: XML markup and cache-based model. We test the cache-based model on two different domains (information technology and medical) in English, Italian and German, showing significant improvements ranging from 2.23 to 6.78 BLEU points over a baseline SMT system and from 0.05 to 3.03 compared to the widely-used XML markup approach.


We use DT-MRI and statistical fibre tracking in order to quantify the left-right asymmetry of connectivity between the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus (Wernicke) and the homolateral pars opercularis of the frontal inferior gyrus (Broca) in 12 healthy subjects. Our results show that there is a left-right brain asymmetry in terms of connectivity. A right handed population has denser association pathways left which seems to be fairly constant over that population (small variance). The left handed population seems to be more heterogeneous in terms of lateralisation though if lateralized it will be frequently on the right.


This introduction provides a context for the transcript of the panel discussion on The Faction's production of The Talented Mr. Ripley that took place at London's New Diorama Theatre in February 2015.1 The event was organized jointly by The Faction and Caroline Bainbridge and Candida Yates, Directors of the Media and Inner World research network. The network was first set up and funded by the AHRC in 2009 with the aim to create a dialogue between academics, media practitioners and creative and psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to explore the role of emotion and unconscious processes in the spheres of both practice and representation within media and culture. Caroline Bainbridge and I have worked with The Faction on a number of occasions, and, in the case of The Talented Mr. Ripley, we also worked with the cast in rehearsals as consultants. This involved focusing on the psychoanalytic themes of the text whilst also using a process consultancy method to explore the relational and affective themes that emerged within rehearsals themselves.


Ecosystem services have been extensively studied in recent decades. Most of the thousands of scholarly papers published on the subject have focused on describing the production, spatial extent, and valuation of such services. Human reliance on ecosystem services is a function of ecosystems' capacity to supply and societal demand for these benefits. However, considerably more attention has been devoted to the supply side than to the demand for them. Sustainable land management depends on reconciling supply of and demand for ecosystem services among different stakeholders. The emphasis is now shifting from the supply of ecosystem services to attaining a balance between supply and demand. Here, we illustrate the demand for rangeland ecosystem services, describe current changes in societal demand, and present a specific provisioning service to exemplify the dynamic nature of reconciling ecosystem-service supply and demand.


The exponential growth of the web, now the depository of the largest database of information known to humankind, is now posing the potential for new forms of learning (harvested knowledge) through research and independent inquiry. This paper reports on a case study in which a group of students were actively taught web searching and research skills. The results show not only the potential of the web for independent learning, but also some of the current problems associated with using the medium in this way. The paper points to the future of e-learning and the use of computer mediated communication in conjunction with knowledge management tools and systems. The study found that whilst there were many advantages to the Internet as a tool for independent research in this field there were also many barriers that prevented the students from using it effectively. These barriers included a lack of access to IT, a lack of knowledge about the Internet and the subject domain, a lack of experience in information seeking strategies and a lack of confidence in using computers and dealing with professionals in the outside world. The attitudes of the learners and the professionals with whom they were trying to communicate were also a factor in whether or not they were successful in their task.


It has been well documented that the education premium measured by the wage difference between university and high school graduates has remained constant over the past two decades in Canada. Despite this stable pattern at the aggregate level, skill-biased technology could have important implications for the inter-industry wage structure. In a multi-sector economy where technological innovations are skewed towards certain industries, imperfect labour mobility implies a positive relationship between the education premium and the technological change in industry. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finance and the Labour Force Survey, the authors obtain empirical results that would appear to confirm this link: university graduates in research and development- intensive industries are better paid . Yet, this positive correlation is largely due to the fact that high-tech industries attract more professionals who are more educated than the average university graduate.


We sought to elucidate the relationship between vitamin D deficiency rickets and anemia. This hospital-based study enrolled infants with rickets who were seen in a 300-bed children's hospital as outpatients or inpatients. Hematological parameters were studied and all cases were categorized as active or healed, based on radiological evidence. For the purpose of this study, iron-deficiency anemia was defined as hemoglobin (Hb) below 11 g/L and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) below 70. In 95 infants, Hb levels ranged from 5 to 14 g/L and 48% of active rickets cases were considered anemic. Hb levels in active rickets indicated anemia and were significantly lower than in healed subjects (10.48 g/L vs. 11.52 g/L, p = 0.037). MCV was low in the active rickets group. Many recent cases of rickets and anemia were reported as myelofibrosis and responded well to vitamin D and calcium. We conclude that 3 types of anemia are associated with vitamin D deficiency rickets. The most common is iron deficiency anemia due to common nutritional and other factors; the second most common is hemolytic anemia, known as Northern syndrome, that has been reported in Native Americans in Canada. The third is a very rare anemia due to myelofibrosis involving platelets and neutrophils.


Abstract The paper presents research program of bond between glass fiber reinforced polymer bars and concrete in reference to the steel bars. Bond between the reinforcement and concrete is a crucial parameter governing a behaviour of reinforced concrete members and transferring of the internal forces from concrete to the reinforcement. The use of FRP bars as an equivalent reinforcement to steel in concrete structures has increased in recent years. The FRP bars are very different from steel, mainly due to much lower elasticity modulus and their anisotropic structure. Good performance of FRP reinforced concrete requires sufficient interfacial bond between bars and concrete. However, there are no specific standards referring to the surface preparation of these bars, that leads to variable bond behaviour of the composite reinforcement to the concrete. The objective of the study was to investigate the influence of variable parameters on the bond behaviour to concrete. The experimental program consisted of eighteen beam bond specimens varying in: bar diameter (12mm, 16mm, 18mm) and type of reinforcement (GFRP sand – coated and steel bars). Although the GFRP bars indicated good bond behaviour to concrete, the average bond strength was slightly lower than that of steel reinforcement of 16mm and 18 mm, while it was higher for the GFRP bars of 12mm diameter.


This publication seeks to assist organizations in understanding the risks of RFID technology and security measures to mitigate those risks. It provides practical, real-world advice on how to initiate, design, implement and operate RFID systems in a manner that mitigates security and privacy risks. The document also provides background information on RFID applications, standards, and system components to assist in the understanding of RFID security risks and controls. This document presents information that is independent of particular hardware platforms, operating systems, and applications. The emphasis is on RFID systems that are based on industry and international standards, although the existence of proprietary approaches is noted when they offer relevant security features not found in current standards.


Vocabulary is a list of words for a particular language or a list or a set of words that individual speakers of a language might use. Vocabulary is the biggest component of any language course. Students must master vocabulary
in order to make their English fluent. However, students will find difficulties in learning English if they do not know strategies in learning vocabulary. The research purposes were: 1) to know the students' strategies in learning vocabulary, and 2) to know the dominant strategies used by junior high school students at SMP Muhammadiyah 1 Malang.
In this study the writer used descriptive qualitative design. The population of this study was students at Second year of SMP Muhammadiyah 1 Malang ; class A, B, and C; consisting of 94 students. In collecting the data, the writer used open questionnaire as instrument.
The result of the data analysis showed that many students employed more than one strategies in learning vocabulary. Those strategies were using dictionary, listening to the music, watching movie or English TV program, practicing with other, memorizing, taking a notes, reading English books, translating word, asking someone, attending course. The most dominant strategy was using dictionary. There were about 68 students. On the other hand, the least strategies was attending course, there were about 6 students.
So, the writer suggests the students learn other strategies to get more vocabularies.


The most widely used measure of milk hygiene is Somatic Cell Count (SCC), where low SCC values indicate more wholesome milk. Dirt, often associated with grazing, carry bacteria and these bacteria can cause mastitis. Milk from cows with mastitis generally has higher SCC levels and cows with mastitis are most readily treated with antibiotics. Milk with high SCC is penalized by distributers as it is difficult to process and is not considered as wholesome in fluid markets. Grazing cows is common for many organic farmers. However, regulators prohibit antibiotic use under organic production. Intensive management protocols, maintaining equipment, and closely managing the herd's environment offer substitutes for antibiotics use. Organic milk carries with it a substantial premium but may be at higher risk of discounts or penalties if the milk is more likely to have higher SCC levels. There are two forces at play concerning the quality of organic milk relative to conventional milk. For one, required and proscribed production practices create significant problems when managing milk quality. Secondly, a large premium exists to produce organic milk of high quality. This research seeks to better understand these and other determinants of SCC for conventional milk and for organic milk.


We aim to detect complex events in long Internet videos that may last for hours. A major challenge in this setting is that only a few shots in a long video are relevant to the event of interest while others are irrelevant or even misleading. Instead of indifferently pooling the shots, we first define a novel notion of semantic saliency that assesses the relevance of each shot with the event of interest. We then prioritize the shots according to their saliency scores since shots that are semantically more salient are expected to contribute more to the final event detector. Next, we propose a new isotonic regularizer that is able to exploit the semantic ordering information. The resulting nearly-isotonic SVM classifier exhibits higher discriminative power. Computationally, we develop an efficient implementation using the proximal gradient algorithm, and we prove new, closed-form proximal steps. We conduct extensive experiments on three real-world video datasets and confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


ABSTRACT Along the south shore of Bainbridge Island and north shore of the Kitsap Peninsula, Wash., the Blakeley Formation of Weaver (1912), consists of approximately 2,400 m of volcaniclastic sandstone, conglomerate, mudstone, and shale that is interpreted to be part of an ancient submarine fan complex. Three lithofacies units of Oligocene age are recognized within the sequence. The oldest unit consists of poorly-sorted ungraded disorganized conglomerate, subordinate graded organized conglomerate, and interbedded mudstone and turbidite sandstone beds assigned to the Refugian and Zemorrian Stages. A second conglomeratic unit consisting of Zemorrian strata is interpreted to be a channel facies eroded into and emplaced within the underlying Refugian sequence. The two conglomerate-bearing lithofacies grade upward into a fine-grained sandstone and siltstone succession approximately 1,100 m thick that is interpreted to be an outer-fan (distal) turbidite sequence. Sedimentary structures (flute casts, crossbedding, and imbricated clasts) indicate westward transport of sediment, probably from a Cascade Range source terrane. Deep water turbidite sedimentation suggests that the Blakeley Formation was deposited in a deep marginal basin similar to modern basins in the southern California borderland.


Crop promotion is critical for market creation and rural growth in Africa. How to achieve this for crops, other than major staples (e.g., maize) and traditional export crops (e.g., tea), remains a problem since most African countries tend to focus policy attention to major staples and traditional export crops. Using a three-tier-approach, developed based on successful soybean promotion strategies in Nigeria and Zimbabwe, this study assesses the effect of market development at household-level, communitylevel, and linking farmers' groups to industrial processors on sustainable soybean promotion in Kenya. Results show an increase in farmers' confidence to produce, process, and consume more soybeans than before. Trained farmers' groups are also developing new soybean products for cash income, a process that has proved to be very profitable. Net returns have been increased from four to 14 times for some products. Selected farmers' groups are supplying large-scale processors with soybean grains, substituting some imports.


When exploring control of a biological system such as the inflammatory response, we often think first of mechanisms that promote activation of the system. But just as important are the signals that that modulate and terminate these processes. Unchecked recruitment and infiltration of leukocytes into tissues and the unrestrained production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines can lead to tissue damage and even cancer. This issue of Science's STKE highlights studies that enhance our understanding of how pro-inflammatory signals are switched on, and--equally important--how they are switched off.


The daily rates of synthesis of protein by the whole body and by the individual tissues were determined in two Hereford × Friesian heifers (236 kg and 263 kg live weight), and a dry Friesian cow (628 kg live weight). The rate of whole-body protein synthesis (g protein/d) was estimated from the total flux through the blood of [3H]leucine and [3H]tyrosine following infusion at a constant rate for 8 h. The fractional rates of protein synthesis (ks) in the tissues (g synthesized/d per g tissue protein) were obtained after slaughter of the animals at the end of the infusion period. The fractional rate of protein synthesis was calculated assuming that the specific radioactivity of free tyrosine in either the blood (to give ks, b) or the tissue homogenate (to give ks, h) defined closely the specific radioactivity of the amino acid precursor for protein synthesis. Total protein synthesis (As, b or As, h; g/d) in an individual tissue was calculated as the product of ks, b) (or ks, h) × protein content. Based on the total leucine flux, i.e. without correction for oxidation, 1.6 kg protein were synthesized daily in the heifers; for the cow this value was 2.0 kg/d. The sum of the daily total synthesis in the major tissues (muscle+bone+brain, gastrointestinal tract (GIT), liver, hide) gave values of 1.4–1.9 kg/d based on As, b, and 2.2–3.0 kg/d based on As, h. The percentage contributions of the individual tissues to the total protein synthesis were similar in all three animals, for example based on As, h muscle was 12–16; carcass (muscle+bone+brain) 32–33; GIT 38–46; liver 7–8; skin 14–21%. The contribution of muscle to total synthesis estimated from the leucine flux was 19–22%; this value is in agreement with those calculated on the same basis for other species. The energy cost of protein synthesis was estimated to account for a maximum of 30% of heat production.


As the paradigm of innovation becomes more user oriented and collaborative, to benefit from this changing paradigm, firms need to adjust their intellectual property rights management strategy and devise tools to manage openness. Crucially, firms need to resolve is how to interface the "closed innovation" paradigm required to acquire intellectual property rights in law and to introduce openness in the process of innovation and decentralised innovation process. While the topic of open innovation has produced numerous works especially in the area of business administration and organizational studies, literature on interfacing open innovation with intellectual property law is rare or rather focused on specific subject matters of IP. For example, legal research on open innovation focus on computer, open source software or user generated contents types. This leaves out vast areas of technology uncovered and under researched. Based on literature review and qualitative case studies on a group of Finnish firms, this paper aims to identify tools that are required to manage openness, in response to legal context, and examine to what degree the protection of intellectual property, in particular patent, can be adapted or interfaced with open innovation paradigm. The paper finds that (1) open innovation is dynamic, (2) all commercial open innovation is always managed or controlled, and that (3) actors and modalities of exchanges are heterogeneous and dynamic. Multiple claim holders – as contributors, investors, co-inventors, collaborator call for a governance structure over how their claims can be prioritised. This paper argues that intellectual property law do regulate the question of co-inventor, co-creator, and co-owner but do not regulate how these rights may be coordinated or managed, in what hierarchy. Thus, we argue that to prevent disputes, proactive private ordering is necessary. Furthermore, while open innovation benefits from open exchange in communication, in the absence of clear and certain rules on how such exchange lead to loss of right, "open" communication may not occur. In other words, unless openness is managed implicitly or explicitly, communications that are crucial in open innovation will not occur. Thus we find that openness in innovation is always managed either formally (through formal governance means i.e. contract, explicit firm policy) or informally (through community norms, trust and implicit corporate culture).The paper argues that governance means are best provided by the firms either as a contracts, or general policy over information exchanges, in other words a broader form of contract (Private ordering). As a secondary option, a certain proposals to the patent law revision can also be made through introduction of limitation and exception to the right. This paper has two practical implications. First, in the absence of proper legal safeguard for own collaborative input, the paper advocates contract based governance approach. Reflecting this, open and collaborative innovation requires firms to more actively and strategically involve in the governance of intellectual property. Secondly, as a proposal for patent law reform, the paper may enlighten law and policy makers to explores for a creation of particular defence against the claims of infringement in patent law.


OBJECTIVE
The incidence of proximal junctional kyphosis (PJK) after long-segment fixation in patients with adult spinal deformity (ASD) has been reported to range from 17% to 61.7%. Recent studies have reported using "hybrid" techniques in which semirigid fixation is introduced between the fused and flexible segments at the proximal level to allow a more gradual transition. The authors used these hybrid techniques in a clinical setting and analyzed PJK to evaluate the usefulness of the flexible rod (FR) technique.

METHODS
The authors retrospectively selected 77 patients with lumbar degenerative kyphosis (LDK) who underwent sagittal correction and long-segment fixation and had follow-up for > 1 year. An FR was used in 30 of the 77 patients. PJK development and spinal sagittal changes were analyzed in the FR and non-FR groups, and the predictive factors of PJK between a PJK group and a non-PJK group were compared.

RESULTS
The patient population comprised 77 patients (75 females and 2 males) with a mean (± SD) follow-up of 32.0 ± 12.7 months (36.7 ± 9.8 months in the non-FR group and 16.8 ± 4.7 months in the FR group) and mean (± SD) age of 71.7 ± 5.1 years. Sagittal balance was well maintained at final follow-up (10.5 and 1.5 mm) in the non-FR and FR groups, respectively. Thoracic kyphosis (TK) and lumbar lordosis (LL) were improved in both groups, without significant differences between the two (p > 0.05). PJK occurred in 28 cases (36.4%) in total, 3 (10%) in the FR and 25 (53.2%) in the non-FR group (p < 0.001). Postoperatively, PJK was observed at an average of 8.9 months in the non-FR group and 1 month in the FR group. No significant differences in the incidence of PJK regarding patient factors or radiological parameters were found between the PJK group and non-PJK group (p > 0.05). However, FR (vs non-FR) and interbody fusion except L5-S1 using oblique lumbar interbody fusion (vs non-oblique lumbar interbody fusion), demonstrated a significantly lower PJK prevalence (p < 0.001 and p = 0.044) among the surgical factors.

CONCLUSIONS
PJK was reduced after surgical treatment with the FR in the patients with LDK. Solid long-segment fixation and the use of the FR may become another surgical option for spine surgeons who plan and make decisions regarding spine reconstruction surgery for patients with ASD.


Abstract Following a request from the European Commission, the Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA) was asked to revise the tolerable upper intake level (UL) for vitamin D for infants (≤ 1 year) set in 2012. From its literature review, the Panel concluded that the available evidence on daily vitamin D intake and the risk of adverse health outcomes (hypercalciuria, hypercalcaemia, nephrocalcinosis and abnormal growth patterns) cannot be used alone for deriving the UL for infants. The Panel conducted a meta‐regression analysis of collected data, to derive a dose–response relationship between daily supplemental intake of vitamin D and mean achieved serum 25(OH)D concentrations. Considering that a serum 25(OH)D concentration of 200 nmol/L or below is unlikely to pose a risk of adverse health outcomes in infants, the Panel estimated the percentage of infants reaching a concentration above this value at different intakes of vitamin D. Based on the overall evidence, the Panel kept the UL of 25 μg/day for infants aged up to 6 months and set a UL of 35 μg/day for infants 6–12 months. The Panel was also asked to advise on the safety of the consumption of infant formulae with an increased maximum vitamin D content of 3 μg/100 kcal (Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/127 repealing Directive 2006/141/EC in 2020). For infants aged up to 4 months, the intake assessment showed that the use of infant formulae containing vitamin D at 3 μg/100 kcal may lead some infants to receive an intake above the UL of 25 μg/day from formulae alone without considering vitamin D supplemental intake. For infants aged 4–12 months, the 95th percentile of vitamin D intake (high consumers) estimated from formulae and foods fortified or not with vitamin D does not exceed the ULs, without considering vitamin D supplemental intake.


As climate change continues to threaten global biodiversity, knowledge of the fundamental processes influencing species' distributions is vital to determining their vulnerability. This thesis investigated the distributions of a diverse insect group, flightless ground beetles (Carabidae), in the tropical rainforests of Australia. Influences from abiotic (such as climatic) and biotic (such as lowland ant richness) factors were analysed in relation to this group and projections of future distributions, abundance and richness patterns determined under multiple climate change scenarios. This thesis is the most detailed ecological investigation into any flightless insect taxa as well as ants to date within the Australian World Heritage Wet tropics Area (hereinafter the "Wet Tropics").

Flightless ground beetle distributions were determined throughout the Wet Tropics using both spatial distribution modelling and standardised sampling across elevational gradients. The sampling of flightless ground beetles and ants occurred primarily using 210 pitfall traps across elevational transects from 5 separate mountain ranges throughout the Wet Tropics, between 2008 and 2010. Location data from this sampling was combined with data from the Queensland Museum to create spatial distribution models. Additionally, future vulnerability of flightless ground beetles was assessed in a climate change context, under multiple emissions scenarios using distribution modelling techniques. Changes in community patterns were investigated and linked to environmental factors across spatial and temporal frameworks. Finally, relationships between flightless ground beetle and ant (a suggested competitor) richness and abundance changes were investigated.

Flightless ground beetles predominantly inhabit upland areas characterised by stable, cool and wet environmental conditions. These beetles generally displayed highly restricted distributions, and therefore were most species-rich, in mountain-top habitats. Of the climatic variables modelled to best explain this taxa's species richness, maximum temperature of the warmest period contributed the most. These distribution and richness patterns supported the time-stability hypothesis (whereby, more climatically stable habitats contain greater diversity) as this group's primary habitat, upland rainforest, is considered to be the most stable habitat within the region.

In future, flightless ground beetles throughout the Wet Tropics are projected to substantially reduce their current range sizes, population sizes and species richness under all emission scenarios. These projections were determined using multiple emissions scenarios, derived from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. Future ranges are projected to contract as distributions shift upwards and subsequently species richness is expected to decline. However, the greatest impact of climate change on flightless ground beetles was indicated to be extreme reductions in abundance, with 88% of species modelled predicted to decline in population size by over 80%, for the most severe emission scenario by the year 2080. Of this taxa, species currently restricted to more marginal mountain ranges (those characterised as drier and with lower summits) are projected to be the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Seasonal investigations also indicate that, as flightless ground beetles are inactive during dry seasons, projected increases in dry season length will negatively affect this taxa. These results suggest that flightless ground beetles are among the most vulnerable taxa to climate change impacts so far investigated in the Wet Tropics. Such findings have dramatic implications for all other flightless insect taxa and, therefore, the future biodiversity of this region.

Flightless ground beetle communities are highly distinct between subregions throughout the Wet Tropics. Such high levels of dissimilarity of flightless ground beetle assemblages between subregional blocks were attributed to factors including: low dispersal between subregions, a high level of in situ evolution, extinction filtering events and current climatic conditions. Regarding current climatic factors, differences between subregional assemblages were linked to changes of: temperature seasonality, maximum temperature, precipitation seasonality, wet season rainfall and minimum temperatures. Furthermore, species richness and abundance of flightless ground beetles significantly increased with elevation throughout the Wet Tropics and therefore species generally inhabit cooler, wetter locations.

Richness and abundance changes of the flightless ground beetle community were not only strongly linked spatial variance in climatic factors, but also seasonal changes. Beetle activity increased between November and February (during the wet season) and correlated positively with changes in both temperature and precipitation. Across the Wet Tropics landscape, the precipitation seasonality of a site negatively correlated with both richness and abundance of flightless ground beetles. This pattern adds further support to influences from the time-stability hypothesis. Seasonal changes in environmental factors were strongly linked to changes in activity, richness and abundance of flightless ground beetles.

The literature suggests that flightless ground beetles display restricted mountain-top ranges due to either intolerance of lowland climatic factors or overwhelming competition from lowland ant species. Such suggestions were assessed by analysing co-located ant and flightless ground beetle data across multiple elevational transects.

Like flightless ground beetles, the ant community is strongly linked to climatic conditions. However, unlike flightless ground beetles, ants display highly similar assemblages within similar climates throughout the Wet Tropics, regardless of geographical distance, elevation, or potential barriers to dispersal. Consequently, the lowland ant community, which is highly species-rich, is expected to be able to easily migrate up mountains, as climatic conditions become favourable due to climate change. Such migrations would result in much greater species richness in future highland ant assemblages.

Negative correlations were revealed between flightless ground beetles and ant richness and abundance across the elevational gradients. However, despite such correlations, variances in both beetle abundance and richness were best-explained by climatic factors when considered in a combined statistical model. Subsequently, flightless ground beetles are considered to respond primarily to changes in climate, rather than ant richness or abundance, across the elevational gradients. Therefore, any future reductions in flightless ground beetles are expected to predominantly occur due to changes in climatic conditions rather than possible climate-induced changes in ant richness.

Flightless ground beetles are highly vulnerable to projected climate change impacts. This high sensitivity implies that similar flightless mountain-top taxa, the vast majority of which remain unstudied, may be similarly threatened by climate change. Future research must address this lack of understanding if climate change impacts on mountain-top ecosystems are to be comprehensively understood.


As part of our investigation into the pyrazolo[1,5-a]pyridines as novel PI3K inhibitors, we report a range of analogues where the central linker portion of the molecule was varied while retaining the pyrazolo[1,5-a]pyridine and arylsulfonyl or arylcarbonyl groups. Isostere generating software BROOD was used to assist with producing ideas. The isoform selectivity of the compounds varied from pan-PI3K for compound 41 to p110α-selective for compound 58 or p110δ-selective for compound 57. The latter two compounds varied only in their sulphur oxidation state.


The literature on "infantile colic" or "paroxysmal fussing" is reviewed.
 The frequent occurrence of a regular evening fussy period in two groups of infants is reported as indicative that this is a normal physiological event of the first few weeks of life.
 The longitudinal records of 98 infants who were study subjects of the Yale Rooming-In Project were analyzed with respect to incidence, duration, and severity of "paroxysmal fussing." Forty-eight of the infants were classified as "fussy" and 50 as "contented."
 The "fussy" babies typically began to have their paroxysms in the second week of life and ceased to have them at about eight weeks. Almost all of them were more fussy in the evening hours than in the morning. The rationale of various methods of treatment is discussed.
 The "fussy" group was similar to the "contented" group as regards details of feeding, birth weight, weight gain, sex, educational level of the mother, and family history of allergy.
 Of the 48 "fussy" infants, family tension was judged to be an important contributing cause in 22 cases, allergy in six cases; both allergy and family tension together in nine cases; in 11 cases there was no apparent cause.
 "Paroxysmal fussing" or "infantile colic" is possibly one of the earliest somatic responses to the presence of tension in the environment. The particular degree to which any infant reacts is probably determined by constitutional factors.


ABSTRACT. The increase in dementia incidence among the elderly is directly related to aging, which is associated with changes in bodily functions and other health-related risk factors. Alzheimer's dementia is the most prevalent form of dementia, and individuals in the late stages are predominantly dependent on other family members. Therefore, it is important for families, as the closest support group, to recognize common symptoms early. Objective: To provide a family-friendly guide to the ten common symptoms of Alzheimer's dementia. Methods: This is a descriptive survey-based research that included 354 families comprising elderly people (≥60 years) residing in Jakarta. The instrument aimed at identifying ten common Alzheimer's dementia symptoms in Indonesia. Descriptive statistical analysis based on frequency tables was used. Results: The participant's major characteristics were age ≥66 years (52.3%), female sex (70.3%) and primary school education (87.3%). The predominant symptoms experienced by 42.4% of the elderly included forgetting recent events and asking questions and narrating a particular detail repeatedly. The remaining 35.6% demonstrated signs of forgetting where an item was placed and frequently suspecting others of theft and concealment of personal items. Conclusion: The symptoms of frequently forgetting new events and the location of personal belongings are of particular concern for families, as they have a propensity to progress and interfere with daily activities. Therefore, the families of affected individuals are expected to identify this symptom early on and present the affected individual for screening or examination at a health care facility.


As one of the three communication experiments to be performed on the ECP payload of the LEO satellite ROCSAT-l, the direct broadcasting of digital TV signals using Ka-band experiment has been well planned and prepared. In this experiment, suitable compression and protection methods for the digitized video and audio signals in the LEO and Ka-band environments will be studied. The bitrate will be between 6.6 and 3.3 Mbps, depending on the affordable link budget. The carrier frequency of the up- link is 28.25 GHz, while that of the downlink is 18.45GHz. Because of the strong dependence of system performance on the channel characteristics, a realistic Ka-band channel model suitable for the subtropic Taiwan area will also be developed.


Social networks readily transmit information, albeit with less than perfect fidelity. We present a large-scale measurement of this imperfect information copying mechanism by examining the dissemination and evolution of thousands of memes, collectively replicated hundreds of millions of times in the online social network Facebook. The information undergoes an evolutionary process that exhibits several regularities. A meme's mutation rate characterizes the population distribution of its variants, in accordance with the Yule process. Variants further apart in the diffusion cascade have greater edit distance, as would be expected in an iterative, imperfect replication process. Some text sequences can confer a replicative advantage; these sequences are abundant and transfer "laterally" between different memes. Subpopulations of the social network can preferentially transmit a specific variant of a meme if the variant matches their beliefs or culture. Understanding the mechanism driving change in diffusing information has important implications for how we interpret and harness the information that reaches us through our social networks.


In this paper, we propose a new method to compile s-t simple paths on a graph using a new compilation method called merging frontier based search. Recently, Nishino et al. proposed a topdown construction algorithm, which compiles s-t simple paths into a Zero-suppressed SDD (ZSDD), and they showed that this method is more efficient than simpath by Knuth. However, since the method of Nishino et al. uses ZSDD as a tractable representation, it requires complicated steps for compilation. In this paper, we propose z-st-d-DNNF, which is a super set of ZSDD. By using this method instead of ZSDD, we show that more efficient s-t simple paths compilation can be realized.


We show analytically that the $[0,1]$, $[1,1]$, and $[2,1]$ Pad\'e approximants of the mean cluster number $S(p)$ for site and bond percolation on general $d$-dimensional lattices are upper bounds on this quantity in any Euclidean dimension $d$, where $p$ is the occupation probability. These results lead to certain lower bounds on the percolation threshold ${p}_{c}$ that become progressively tighter as $d$ increases and asymptotically exact as $d$ becomes large. These lower-bound estimates depend on the structure of the $d$-dimensional lattice and whether site or bond percolation is being considered. We obtain explicit bounds on ${p}_{c}$ for both site and bond percolation on five different lattices: $d$-dimensional generalizations of the simple-cubic, body-centered-cubic, and face-centered-cubic Bravais lattices as well as the $d$-dimensional generalizations of the diamond and kagom\'e (or pyrochlore) non-Bravais lattices. These analytical estimates are used to assess available simulation results across dimensions (up through $d=13$ in some cases). It is noteworthy that the tightest lower bound provides reasonable estimates of ${p}_{c}$ in relatively low dimensions and becomes increasingly accurate as $d$ grows. We also derive high-dimensional asymptotic expansions for ${p}_{c}$ for the 10 percolation problems and compare them to the Bethe-lattice approximation. Finally, we remark on the radius of convergence of the series expansion of $S$ in powers of $p$ as the dimension grows.


Democracy is the most popular system of government in the contemporary world as it is based on the will of the people. Abraham Lincoln defined, 'democracy as government of the people, by the people and for the people.' There are four main foundations of democracy viz, liberty, equality, fraternity and justice wherein the most important foundation is 'equality'. Among South Asian nations democracy for the first time was introduced in India. Democracy as a system of government was applied here after independence. The Indian constitution guarantees the equality of rights of men and women. It is evident that Indian constitution from the very beginning made provisions for the human rights of men and women together. (1) Indian democracy has from the very beginning provided to its citizens, male and female, the universal franchise which is sine qua non for the establishment of a real democracy. Human Rights are those minimum rights which are compulsorily obtainable by every individual as he/she is a member of human family. The concept of human rights is related to the concept of human dignity. In this way all such rights which are essential for the maintenance of human dignity can be put in the category of human rights. (2) Human Rights can be divided on the basis of their nature into two categories as (i) civil and political rights and (ii) economic and social rights. Human Rights mean to provide all the rights and dignities to human being as human viz. right to life with dignity, right to liberty, right to equality, right to social security etc. Liberalism believes in the unity of mankind, therefore, the rights of men and women are the same but because of certain situational factors it is imperative to discuss the women's human rights separately. There are several reasons behind this: first, women are representing almost half of the worlds population; secondly, women are discriminated throughout the world in different spheres and at different stages; thirdly, women are supposed to carry out some special functions, therefore they needed human rights separately. The women's human rights can be categorized as under : * Right to equality, * Right to education, * Right to life with dignity, * Right to liberty, * Political rights, * Right to property, * Right to equal opportunity for employment, * Right to free choice of profession, * Right to livelihood, * Right to work in equitable condition, * Right to get equal wages for equal work, * Right to protection from gender discrimination, * Right to social protection in the eventuality of retirement, old age and sickness, * Right to protection from inhuman treatment, * Right to protection of health, * Right to privacy in terms of personal life, family, residence, correspondence etc. and * Right to protection from society, state and family system. II It is imperative to provide equal opportunities to all sections of society in order to strengthen democracy and democratic institutions. Indian constitution has provided all the rights to the women equal to men. Women in India constitute about half of the total population. (3) The women's human rights have been elaborated in various provisions of the Part three of the Indian Constitution that is Fundamental Rights and Part four that is Directive Principles of State Policy. Main Provisions of the article can be described as under: 1. Article 14 states--'The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.' Thus article 14 guarantees to every person, male and female, the right to equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. 2. The constitution makers unsatisfied with the general declaration of right to equality and conceding the prevalent bias in the country, provided in article 15 that 'State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them'. …


Conjugate gradient method has played a significant role in solving large scale unconstrained optimization. Numerous survey and modifications have been done recently to improve this method. In this paper, we proposed a new hybrid method of Wei-Yao-Liu (WYL) method and the Abdelrhaman et al (AMRI) method, which possesses the sufficient descent condition under exact line search. The result of the numerical experiments show that the new proposed hybrid method perform better when compared with the WYL and AMRI methods. A set of test problems with different initial points are used, most of them are from Andrei (2008).


The new edition of Lewin's Essential GENES is the most accessible, student-friendly text of its kind! Completely revised and rewritten, the Second Edition continues to provide students with the latest findings in the field of molecular biology and molecular genetics. An exceptional new pedagogy enhances student learning and helps readers understand and retain key material like never before. New Concept and Reasoning Checks at the end of each chapter section, End of Chapter Questions and Further Readings for each chapter, and several categories of special topics boxes within each chapter expand and reinforce important concepts. The reorganization of topics in this edition allows students to focus more sharply on the key material at hand and improves the natural flow of course material. New end-of-chapter questions reviews major points in the chapter and allow students to test themselves on important course material.


This paper analyzes the three-party contracting problem among the payer, the patient and the physician when the patient and the physician may collude to exploit mutually beneficial opportunities. Under the hypothesis that side transfer is ruled out, we analyze the mechanism design problem when the physician and the patient submit the claim to the payer through a reporting game. To induce truth telling by the two agents, the weak collusion-proof insurance payment mechanism is such that it is sufficient that one of them tells the truth. Moreover, we identify trade-offs of a different nature faced by the payer according to whether incentives are placed on the patient or the physician. We also derive the optimal insurance scheme for the patient and the optimal payment for the physician. Moreover, we show that if the payer is able to ask the two parties to report the diagnosis sequentially, the advantage of the veto power of the second agent allows the payer to achieve the first-best outcome.


CLEVELAND: NOW! was a joint public and private funding program for the revitalization of Cleveland which was announced by Mayor Carl B. Stokes 1 May 1968. Local businessmen, shocked by the April assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., agreed to cooperate with the city in a fundraising program to combat the ills of Cleveland's inner city in order to preserve racial peace. The plan was to raise $1.5 billion over 10 years with $177 million projected during the first 2 years to fund youth activities and employment, community centers, health-clinic facilities, housing units, and economic renewal projects. Geo. Steinbrenner III and the Group `66 organization of business leaders were committed to spearhead a public solicitation of $1.25 million from businesses, institutions, and individuals, and it was expected that local money from a .5% city income tax increase plus state and federal funds also would be channeled into Cleveland: Now! enterprises. Funding goals were quickly met for the first few months; however, when the public was made aware that NOW funds had indirectly gone to purchase arms used in the GLENVILLE SHOOT-OUT of 23 July 1968, donations declined. NOW! actively operated until 1970, when Stokes announced that its last major commitment would be the funding of 4 new community centers. The organization was not formally dissolved until Oct. 1980, when the remaining $220,000 was given to the CLEVELAND FOUNDATION to use for youth employment and low-income housing. Cleveland: Now! Records, WRHS. Stokes, Carl B. Promises of Power (1973).


This thesis studies various manifestations of monads in the mathematics of computation and presents three applications of calculi based on monads. The view that monads provide abstract mathematical interpretations of computational phenomena led E. Moggi to use the internal language of a category with a strong monad, which he called the computational lambda calculus, for describing denotational semantics of programming languages. Moggi argued that models of complicated forms of computation could be described modularly by using semantic constructors for manipulating monads. For the first application, we describe a theory of exceptions in the computational lambda calculus and give a computationally adequate interpretation of a fragment of ML, including the exception handling mechanism, in models of this theory. To our knowledge no other model of ML exceptions is available in the literature to date. We also show that normalization fails when exceptions are added to the simply typed lambda calculus. Building on top of the computational lambda calculus, A.M. Pitts proposed a predicate calculus to reason about the evaluation properties of programs: the Evaluation Logic. Following the tenets of synthetic domain theory, we interpret this logic in an ambient category with set-like structure and a fully reflective subcategory of domains with a monad for interpreting computation. We establish abstract conditions under which the monad extends to the ambient category to ensure good interaction with the logical structure. We also show that a monad and first order logical structure yield suitable evaluation relations, which can be used to give a standard interpretation of Evaluation Logic when higher order structure is not available. For the second application, we focus on side effects and investigate the use of Evaluation Logic in partial correctness reasoning. We show that, under fairly common circumstances, monads for side effects admit an extension to the ambient category which is more natural than that described for arbitrary monads and we validate special axioms for members of this class. The resulting theory of computation with side effects is then put to work on a textbook example of partial correctness specification. For our third application, we consider Moggi's modular approach to denotational semantics. We develop the theory of this approach by determining which equations are preserved by a fairly general class of semantic constructors and which ones are reflected (conservativity). Moreover, we establish a correspondence between categories of computational models and categories of theories of the metalanguage, along the lines of Gabriel-Ulmer duality, in a type-theoretic framework. Using the Extended Calculus of Constructions, we develop a semantics for parallel composition by combining elementary notions of computation defined independently and we use LEGO to prove properties of such semantics formally.


Abstract Introduction: Although the association between periodontal disease (PD) and adverse pregnancy outcomes has gained recognition amongst antenatal healthcare workers, not much has changed in practice to address it. This prospective study tested the hypothesis that BANA (N-benzoyl-DL-arginine-2-naphthylamide), a diagnostic test for PD, may inform obstetricians and other antenatal healthcare practitioners, of the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes in mothers attending antenatal clinics. Methods: At first visit, the presence of suspected periodontopathogens was assessed by BANA testing of dental plaque from 443 mothers attending antenatal clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and an association later sought with pregnancy outcomes. The accuracy of BANA to predict adverse pregnancy outcomes was evaluated by the calculation of likelihood ratios. The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki. Results: Significant differences were found between pregnancy outcomes of BANA-negative and BANA-positive mothers (p < 0.0001). BANA showed sensitivity and negative predictive values of 87% and 91%; 75% and 78%; 87% and 94% in detecting low birth weight, preterm delivery, and preterm low birth weight delivery respectively. Conclusion: This study confirms that BANA may indicate the need for periodontal therapy to reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes and could form part of the routine antenatal examination.


Background Excessive or compulsive use of social media has been likened to an addiction, similar to other behavioural addictions such as pathological gambling or Internet addiction. This investigation sought to determine the degree to which personality traits associated with such disordered social media use overlap with those known to predict problematic substance use, with use of the most commonly abused legal substance alcohol as an example of the latter. Method Well‐known indices of disordered social media use, risky or problematic alcohol use, and the personality traits alexithymia, reward sensitivity, narcissism, and impulsivity were administered online to 143 men and women aged 18–35-years who were regular users of social media. The traits examined had previously been linked to substance misuse for a variety of substances, including alcohol, as presumed predisposing factors. Results After controlling for age, gender, and social desirability in hierarchical regressions, disordered social media use was predicted by narcissism, reward sensitivity, and impulsivity, whereas risky alcohol use was predicted by narcissism, alexithymia, and impulsivity. The ability of narcissism to predict disordered social media use was mediated by reward sensitivity, which was not the case for risky drinking. Conclusions Present results point to similarities and differences in addiction‐linked traits when comparing disordered social media use to risky or problematic substance use.


InfiniBand (IB) has established itself as a promising network infrastructure for high-end cluster computing systems as evidenced by its usage in the Top500 supercomputers today. While the IB standard describes multiple communication models (including reliable-connection (RC), and unreliable data gram (UD)), most of its promising features such as remote direct memory access (RDMA), hardware atomics and network fault tolerance are only available for the RC model which requires connections between communicating process pairs. In the past, several researchers have proposed on-demand connection management techniques that establish connections when there is a need to communicate with another process. While such techniques work well for algorithms and applications that only communicate with a small set of processes in their life-time, there exists a broad set of applications that do not follow this trend. For example, applications that perform dynamic load balancing and adaptive work stealing have a small set of communicating neighbors at any given time, but over time the total number of neighbors can be very high, in some cases, equal to the entire system size. In this paper, we present a dynamic time-variant connection management approach that establishes connections on-demand like previous approaches, but further intelligently tears down some of the unused connections as well. While connection tear-down itself is relevant for any programming model, different models have different complexities. In this paper, we study the Global Arrays (GA) PGAS model for two reasons: (1) the simple one-sided communication primitives provided by GA and other PGAS models ensure that connection requests are always initiated by the origin process without explicit synchronization with the target process -- this makes connection tear-down simpler to handle, and (2) GA supports applications in several domains such as computational chemistry (NWChem) and computational biology (ScalaBLAST) that demonstrate this behavior making it an obvious first target for the proposed enhancements. We evaluate our proposed approach using NWChem computational chemistry application using up to 6144 processes, and show that our approach can significantly reduce the memory requirements of the communication library while maintaining its performance.


What kind of Europe do social democratic parties prefer? What is the origin of their preferences? Are they shaped by interests, institutions or ideas? If so, how? Why do social democratic political parties respond differently to the crucial question of the future of the European Union? While many social democratic parties initially opposed European integration either in principle or because of the form it took, gradually they came to lend their full, though often critical, support to it. Despite this evolution, important differences between them have remained.

This book examines the preferences of social democratic parties in Germany, France, the UK, Sweden and Greece towards European integration, in comparative perspective. Using a variety of sources, including interviews with key party officials, the contributors explore what kind of Europe these parties want, and seek to explain the formation and evolution of these preferences over time. They examine the interplay of national peculiarities and cross-national factors and their impact on preferences on European integration. In addition to highlighting the role of party leaders, they reveal that, far from being united on European integration, these parties disagree with each other in part because they have retreated – to varying degrees – from key social democratic principles.

Making an important contribution to the scholarship on preference formation and the research that links the European Union with the nation state, it will be of interest to students and scholars of the EU, comparative politics and political parties.


On February 22, 2013, in United States v. Izurieta, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found 18 U.S.C. § 545—a federal statute criminalizing the importation of goods "contrary to law"—ambiguous as to whether it criminalizes violations of a regulation and, as a result, applied the rule of lenity. In reaching this conclusion, the court rejected approaches espoused by two split circuits, instead examining whether the regulation appears civil or criminal in nature. To avoid this type of uncertainty, this Comment argues that courts should instead apply the rule of lenity consistently based on § 545's ambiguous text and history, rather than examine the nature of each regulation.


OBJECTIVES
We conducted a longitudinal study to examine human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake among male adolescents and to identify vaccination predictors.

METHODS
In fall 2010 and 2011, a national sample of parents with sons aged 11 to 17 years (n = 327) and their sons (n = 228) completed online surveys. We used logistic regression to identify predictors of HPV vaccination that occurred between baseline and follow-up.

RESULTS
Only 2% of sons had received any doses of HPV vaccine at baseline, with an increase to 8% by follow-up. About 55% of parents who had ever received a doctor's recommendation to get their sons HPV vaccine did vaccinate between baseline and follow-up, compared with only 1% of parents without a recommendation. Fathers (odds ratio = 0.29; 95% confidence interval = 0.09, 0.80) and non-Hispanic White parents (odds ratio = 0.29; 95% confidence interval = 0.11, 0.76) were less likely to have vaccinated sons. Willingness to get sons HPV vaccine decreased from baseline to follow-up among parents (P < .001) and sons (P = .003).

CONCLUSIONS
Vaccination against HPV remained low in our study and willingness to vaccinate may be decreasing. Physician recommendation and education about HPV vaccine for males may be key strategies for improving vaccination.


Objective: This study aimed to analyze the immediate effects of concurrent training on leptin and cortisol levels in overweighed young adults. Methods: This study used a quasi-experimental methodology. We included 20 volunteers of both sexes, randomly divided into a training competitor group (TCG n = 10) and a control group (C n = 10). Blood collection was performed in individuals at rest after fasting for 12 hours. The leptin and cortisol levels were analyzed by radioimmunoassay and chemiluminescence immunoassay before and immediately after training. Two-way ANOVA was used for statistical analysis with a significance level of p <0.05. Results: In the analysis of leptin levels, there was significant difference between groups (TCG x C) in the pre intervention (p = 0.02) and post intervention (p = 0.01). In the intra groups, no significant changes were found, and in the analysis of cortisol levels between groups (TGC x C), a significant difference in the pre intervention (p = 0.01) and post intervention (p = 0.01) was observed; however, in the intra groups there were no significant changes. Conclusion: A single concurrent training session is not sufficient to promote acute changes in the leptin and cortisol levels of the volunteer overweighed young adults in this study.


The Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes are a well-known class of powerful error correction cyclic codes. BCH codes can correct multiple errors with minimal redundancy. Primitive BCH codes only exist for some word lengths, which do not frequently match those employed in digital systems. This paper focuses on double error correction (DEC) codes for word lengths that are in powers of two (8, 16, 32, and 64), which are commonly used in memories. We also focus on hardware implementations of the encoder and decoder circuits for very fast operations. This work proposes new low redundancy and reduced overhead (LRRO) DEC codes, with the same redundancy as the equivalent BCH DEC codes, but whose encoder, and decoder circuits present a lower overhead (in terms of propagation delay, silicon area usage and power consumption). We used a methodology to search parity check matrices, based on error patterns, in order to design the new codes. We implemented and synthesized them, and compared their results with those obtained for the BCH codes. Our implementation of the decoder circuits achieved reductions between 2.8% and 8.7% in the propagation delay, between 1.3% and 3.0% in the silicon area, and between 15.7% and 26.9% in the power consumption. Therefore, we propose LRRO codes as an alternative for protecting information against multiple errors.


Education in contemporary Cameroon consists of two distinct unreformed systems inherited from colonial regimes which are unsuitable for modern Cameroon. Western Education was introduced in 1844 by the British Baptist Missionary Society and encouraged by colonial regimes (Germans 1884-1916, British and French 1916-1961). Since independence (1961), the failure to restructure education to reflect common national values has been identified by analysts with its colonial origins. Yet the different systems (Missions and colonial) had varying impacts and the inter-relationships between each system and Cameroonians differed. This study therefore examines whether the impact of the respective colonial and Missionary education systems alone can explain the present stalemate in Cameroon education or other factors are accountable. It assesses the role and motives of colonial regimes, Missions and Cameroonians in education and examines the impact of the different motives and inter-relationships on post-colonial attitudes to education.
The central argument is that the current reform impasse cannot be explained by a single factor. The respective colonial and Mission education systems and the reactions of Cameroonians were examined chronologically, using mostly primary sources. It was found that the Germans and the British were liberal to Missions as against a stronger French control. The Germans' desire for a protestant Mission together with the British tolerance to foreign Missionary societies, sustained the Basel Mission. Cameroonian interests and attitudes also influenced the pattern of education. Finally, the constraints of global economic and political forces have reinforced the deadlock on institutional reforms. Thus the impact of the respective educational legacies and the perceptions and reactions of Cameroonians at different stages of educational growth are found to have combined with the socio-economic and political developments since independence to explain the stalemate.
To attain educational change, this study recommends the importance of creating awareness among teachers and parents and the wider public on the need for reform. It also suggests that further research be conducted on pre-colonial attitudes to education and on Cameroon cultures to identify indigenous educational ideas with relevance to modem education as well as those traditional values that can enrich the educational system, and eventually generate common national and international interests.


The July 2019 Mw 6.4 and 7.1 Ridgecrest earthquakes triggered numerous aftershocks, including clusters of off-fault aftershocks in an extensional stepover of the Garlock fault, near the town of Olancha, and near Panamint Valley. The locations of the off-fault aftershocks are consistent with the stress-similarity model of triggering, which hypothesizes that aftershocks preferentially occur in areas where the mainshock static stress change tensor is similar in orientation to the background stress tensor. The background stress field is determined from the inversion of earthquake focal mechanisms, with the spatial resolution adapted to the local density of earthquakes. The mainshock static stress change is computed using finite-source models for the Mw 6.4 foreshock and Mw 7.1 mainshock. I quantify the similarity between these two stress fields using the tensor dot product of the normalized deviatoric stress tensors. The off-fault aftershocks in the Garlock stepover and the Olancha area fall within lobes of positive stress similarity, whereas the aftershocks near Panamint Valley are partially within a lobe. The cluster in the Garlock fault stepover and the smaller of two clusters near Olancha occur in regions of locally anomalous background stress that results in higher stress similarity. I compute the spatial density of M≥2.0 aftershocks and find that the aftershock density increases as a function of stress similarity, with a factor of ∼15 difference between high stress-similarity and low stress-similarity areas. This result is robust with respect to the choice of mainshock model and the uncertainty of the background stress field. The aftershock density varies substantially inside the high stress-similarity lobes, however, indicating that other variable background conditions, such as material properties, temperature, and fluid pressure, may also be playing a role. Specifically, temperature and fluid pressure conditions might help explain the low rate of aftershocks in the Coso geothermal field.


The extreme conservatism which pervades English judicial decisions of the last two years has many implications which are unattractive from a policy standpoint. The Commonwealth judicial experience is of some comparative interest, in so far as it suggests the usefulness of a variety of mediating techniques which make possible a more satisfying compromise between conflicting policy objectives. The developing law in several jurisdictions offers insights into the viability of conceptual controls which can be made use of to extenuate the harshness of an absolute principle of non-liability and yet to forestall the risk of unbounded liability. This article addresses alternative approaches to the problem with a view to assessing their soundness in relation to modern social and commercial requirements.


The contemporary mediascape offers a plethora of news media and social media, which people can turn to in everyday life and during a crisis. Generations develop routinized media usage patterns in the formative phases of their lives, which they often maintain in their daily habits in everyday life (generation-centric (GC) approach). The characteristics of media vary, providing different logics and affordances, and occupying different niches in time and space (medium-centric (MC) approach). Crisis events in the vicinity, such as gas emissions, terrorist attacks, pandemics and earthquakes, presumably ignite an augmented interest for information and news on the events that may cause a destabilization of established media usage routines. This article aims to conceptualize, describe and explain how four generations envision their media use during such crises. The article posits the GC/MC-model, a 2 × 2 matrix encompassing a generation-centric vis-á-vis a medium-centric approach, from which two hypotheses are derived. Statistical analysis of nationally representative survey data provides evidence that all generations, and both daily and less frequent users of different media, envision themselves turning to these during a crisis. Their envisioned broadening of media use, predominantly involving commanding attention to immediate news media reporting, results in a cross-generational homogenization of media use.


This report documents how the spread of biofuels is affecting land access for poorer groups in Mozambique, and what actions are being taken, successfully and unsuccessfully, to secure land access for poorer groups. To the extent possible given the recent nature of the biofuels boom in Mozambique, the report also assesses the early impacts of a few biofuels projects. The report is based on a review of existing documentation, on multi-stakeholder interviews and on case studies of three biofuels projects. The aim is to feed into debates on biofuels both nationally and internationally.


In the late summer of 2007, shares of Northern Rock went into free-fall, causing a run on the bank - the first in over 150 years. Northern Rock proved to be only the first. Twelve months later, as the world was engulfed in the worst banking crisis for more than a century, one of its largest banks, RBS, came within hours of collapse. Back from the Brink tells the gripping story of Alistair Darling's one thousand days in Number 11 Downing Street. As Chancellor, he had to avert the collapse of RBS hours before the cash machines would have ceased to function; at the eleventh hour, he stopped Barclays from acquiring Lehman Brothers in order to protect UK taxpayers; he used anti-terror legislation to stop Icelandic banks from withdrawing funds from Britain. From crisis talks in Washington, to dramatic meetings with the titans of international banking, to dealing with the massive political and economic fallout in the UK, Darling places the reader in the rooms where the destinies of millions weighed heavily on the shoulders of a few. His book is also a candid account of life in the Downing Street pressure cooker and his relationship with Gordon Brown during the last years of New Labour. Back from the Brink is a vivid and immediate depiction of the British government's handling of an unprecedented global financial catastrophe. Alistair Darling's knowledge and understanding provide a unique perspective on the events that rocked international capitalism. It is also a vital historical document.


We propose a new statistical model for image restoration in which neighborhoods of wavelet subbands are modeled by a discrete mixture of linear projected Gaussian scale mixtures (MPGSM). In each projection, a lower dimensional approximation of the local neighborhood is obtained, thereby modeling the strongest correlations in that neighborhood. The model is a generalization of the recently developed Mixture of GSM (MGSM) model, that offers a significant improvement both in PSNR and visually compared to the current state-of-the-art wavelet techniques. However, the computation cost is very high which hampers its use for practical purposes. We present a fast EM algorithm that takes advantage of the projection bases to speed up the algorithm. The results show that, when projecting on a fixed data-independent basis, even computational advantages with a limited loss of PSNR can be obtained with respect to the BLS-GSM denoising method, while data-dependent bases of Principle Components offer a higher denoising performance, both visually and in PSNR compared to the current wavelet-based state-of-the-art denoising methods.


Projective homography sits at the heart of many problems in image registration. In addition to many methods for estimating the homography parameters (R.I. Hartley and A. Zisserman, 2000), analytical expressions to assess the accuracy of the transformation parameters have been proposed (A. Criminisi et al., 1999). We show that these expressions provide less accurate bounds than those based on the earlier results of Weng et al. (1989). The discrepancy becomes more critical in applications involving the integration of frame-to-frame homographies and their uncertainties, as in the reconstruction of terrain mosaics and the camera trajectory from flyover imagery. We demonstrate these issues through selected examples.


Objectives - The objective of this project was to gain insight into the extent to which user information seeking behaviours should inform the design and development of digital libraries in an academic setting. Researchers conducted this study at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada to explore the information seeking behaviours of business students.

Methods - The students participating in the study were enrolled in the School of Business Administration at Dalhousie University. The study was based on qualitative and quantitative data collected through a survey, in-depth semi-structured interviews, an observational study, and document analysis. Qualitative case study data was coded using QSR N6 qualitative data analysis software ( . The data was categorized using Atkinson's Model of Business Information Users' Expectations and Renda and Straccia's personalized collaborative digital library (DL) model. Atkinson's model defines the expectations of business students in terms of cost, time, effort required, pleasure, and the avoidance of pain. Renda and Straccia's model of a personalized and collaborative digital library centres around three concepts: actors, objects, and functionality. The survey data was analysed using Zoomerang software .

Results - The study results revealed that students tend to select resources based on cost (free or for fee), accessibility, ease of use, speed of delivery (of results), and convenience. The results showed that similar to Atkinson's findings, business students' information seeking behaviour is influenced by the concepts of cost-benefit and break-even analyses that underlie business education. Concerning speed of delivery and convenience, the organization of the resources was paramount. Students preferred user-defined resource lists, alert services, and expert-created business resource collections. When asked about the usefulness of potential digital library functionalities, students valued a personalized user interface and communal virtual spaces in order to share information and communicate in real-time with their peers.

Conclusion - This study reveals that when digital libraries are developed, user behaviours and needs should be taken into consideration. Results demonstrate that the activity as well as the "user's orientation and motivation" (here the business student training) can directly influence the design and use of a digital tool. In other words, this study confirms a new typology of a business digital information user, one that requires the building of dedicated accredited library research systems. Providing information and information tools tailored to this specific audience is more likely to increase the appeal and use of an academic business digital library.


Consider the following problem: given sets of unlabeled observations, each set with known label proportions, predict the labels of another set of observations, also with known label proportions. This problem appears in areas like e-commerce, spam filtering and improper content detection. We present consistent estimators which can reconstruct the correct labels with high probability in a uniform convergence sense. Experiments show that our method works well in practice.


Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and visualizations were explored to investigate the changes in structure of liquid aluminosilicates. The models were constructed for four compositions with varying Al2O3/SiO2 ratio. The local structure and network topology was analyzed through the pair of radial distribution functions, bond angle, bond length and coordination number distributions. The results showed that the structure of aluminosilicates mainly consists of the basic structural units TOy (T is Al or Si; y = 3, 4, 5). Two adjacent units TOy are linked to each other through common oxygen atoms and form continuous random network of basic structural units TOy. The bond statistics (corner-, edge- and face- sharing) between two adjacent TOy units are investigated in detail. The self-diffusion coefficients for three atomic types are affected by the degree of polymerization (DOP) of network characterized by the proportions of nonbridging oxygen (NBO) and Qn species in the system. It was found that Q4 and Q3 tetrahedral species (tetrahedron with four and three bridging oxygens, respectively) decreases, while Q0 (with four nonbridging oxygen) increase with increasing Al2O3/SiO2 molar ratio, suggesting that a less polymerized network was formed. The structural and dynamical heterogeneities, micro-phase separation and liquid–liquid phase transition are also discussed in this work.


Most of the major carriers worldwide have joined one of three international airline alliances. The U.S. Department of Transportation has granted immunity from the U.S. antitrust laws to many carriers within these alliances. This article assesses the competitive effects and efficiencies associated with such grants. A grant of antitrust immunity to carriers in an alliance reduces competition in routes where these carriers offer competing flights, and the data show that fares paid by passengers for travel in non-stop trans-Atlantic flights are higher in routes with fewer independent competitors. The data also show that the alliances can produce pricing efficiencies for trans-Atlantic passengers who travel with connecting itineraries, but antitrust immunity within an alliance is not necessary to achieve such efficiencies.


A theoretical study, based on the linearized equations of motion for small disturbance, is made of the air forces on wings of general plan forms moving forward at a constant supersonic speed. The boundary problem is set up for both the harmonically oscillating and the steady conditions. Two types of boundary conditions are distinguished, which are designated "purely supersonic" and "mixed supersonic." the method is illustrated by applications to a number of examples for both the steady and the oscillating conditions. The purely supersonic case involves independence of action of the upper and lower surfaces of the airfoil and present analysis is mainly concerned with this case. A discussion is first given of the fundamental or elementary solution corresponding to a moving source. The solutions for the velocity potential are then synthesized by means of integration of the fundamental solution for the moving source. The method is illustrated by applications to a number of examples for both the steady and the oscillating cases and for various plan forms, including swept wings and rectangular and triangular plan forms. The special results of a number of authors are shown to be included in the analysis.


Samples from borehole Vranovice VK 1 (Moravia, Czech Republic) have yielded a bryozoan fauna comparable with two bryozoan faunas of equivalent age (early Badenian, Lower Lagenid Zone) from Austria (Niederleis, Locatelliwald). As previously shown by studies on foraminifera, the bryozoans indicate changes of the environment (mainly shallowing upwards) during the early Badenian. In most of the samples studied a new cheilostome bryozoan (Metrarabdotos nehybai sp. nov.) from the family Metrarabdotosidae has been found. A detailed taxonomic description is given. Skeletal thickening of the frontal shield ('secondary calcification') strongly changes the external appearance of the ontogenetically older zooids, but internal features remain stable and permit precise identification.


1 Evangelical Mackenzie University Hospital, Curitiba, PR, Brazil. Conflicts of interest: none Fibroproliferative disorders are expressed in hypertrophic scars and keloids, the latter being more aggressive and derived from an abnormal healing process. They are multifactorial and relate to physical, chemical, biological, and endogenous agents. They have a genetic predisposition, with a higher incidence in Asian and black people. The therapeutic modalities comprise most of the times: compression of the keloid, cryosurgery, application of silicone plates, surgical excision isolated or followed by radiotherapy, laser application, and intralesional injection of corticosteroids. The study aims to report a considerable keloidtype fibroproliferative disorder with a high therapeutic response and discuss its etiologies and various therapeutic modalities. ■ ABSTRACT


T-type calcium channel (CaV3.x) blockers are receiving increasing attention as potential therapeutics for the treatment of pathophysiological disorders and diseases, including absence epilepsy, Parkinson's disease (PD), hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and pain. However, few clinically approved CaV3.x blockers are available, and selective pharmacological tools are needed to further unravel the roles of individual CaV3.x subtypes. In this work, through an efficient synthetic route to the marine fungal product pseudellone C, we obtained bisindole alkaloid analogs of pseudellone C with a modified tryptophan moiety and identified two CaV3.2 (2, IC50 = 18.24 µM; 3, IC50 = 6.59 µM) and CaV3.3 (2, IC50 = 7.71 µM; 3, IC50 = 3.81 µM) selective blockers using a FLIPR cell-based assay measuring CaV3.x window currents. Further characterization by whole-cell patch-clamp revealed a preferential block of CaV3.1 activated current (2, IC50 = 5.60 µM; 3, IC50 = 9.91 µM), suggesting their state-dependent block is subtype specific.


The research is concerned with the measurement of residents' evaluations of the environmental quality of residential areas. The research reflects the increased attention being given to residents' values in planning decisions affecting the residential environment. The work was undertaken in co-operation with a local authority which was in the process of revising its housing strategy, and in particular the priorities for improvement action. The study critically examines the existing evidence on environmental values and their relationship to the environment and points to a number of methodological and conceptual deficiencies. The research strategy developed on the basis of the research review was constrained by the need to keep any survey methods simple so that they could easily be repeated, when necessary, by the sponsoring authority. A basic perception model was assumed, and a social survey carried out to measure residents' responses to different environmental conditions. The data was only assumed to have ordinal properties, necessitating the extensive use of non-parametric statistics. Residents' expressions of satisfaction with the component elements of the environment (ranging from convenience to upkeep and privacy) were successfully related to 'objective' measures of the environment. However the survey evidence did not justify the use of the 'objective' variables as environmental standards. A method of using the social survey data directly as an aid to decision-making is discussed. Alternative models of the derivation of overall satisfaction with the environment are tested, and the values implied by the additive model compared with residents' preferences as measured directly in the survey. Residents' overall satisfactions with the residential environment were most closely related to their satisfactions with the "Appearance" and the "Reputation" of their areas. By contrast the most important directly measured preference was "Friendliness of area". The differences point to the need to define concepts used in social research clearly in operational terms, and to take care in the use of values 'measured' by different methods.


The Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is one of the newcomers on the European stock market and at the same time is one of the fast developing stock exchanges in Europe. The development of WSE could be an example of successful development of a national stock exchange into a regional in a relatively short period of time. This article provides analysis of the main trends of development of the WSE through its history to show how globalization influenced regional stock exchanges and to determine key factors that affected its successful development. The WSE is one of the most popular stock exchanges in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Two main lists: Main List and NewConnect are characterized by types of investors, trading turnover and number of companies listed. The article provides quantitative and qualitative analysis of the official reports and analytical papers of key audit and consulting experts that cover both lists of the exchange. The article provides comparison of WSE key performance parameters with major European stock exchanges through 2001 - 2014 and shows those main characteristics of the stock exchange that were mostly influenced by the globalization. Further, the paper shows main consequences of globalization affecting regional stock exchanges. Collected information and results are presented both in tables and in graphical formats.


In this article I test two competing visions about how democracy produces responsive government. Electoral theories of democracy posit that elected governments are responsive to public demands because citizens are able to sanction bad politicians and select good ones. Participatory theories attribute responsiveness to a citizenry's ability to articulate demands and pressure government through a wider range of political action. I test hypotheses derived from these two approaches, using an original dataset that combines electoral, socioeconomic, and public-financial indicators for Mexico's 2,400 municipalities, from 1989 to 2000. The data show that electoral competition has no effect on municipal government performance. But the results are consistent with the hypothesis that nonelectoral participation causes improved performance. Thus, I suggest that the quality of municipal government in Mexico depends on an engaged citizenry and cooperation between political leaders and their constituents, rather than the threat of electoral punishment. I recommend that scholars broaden the study of government responsiveness to account for participatory strategies of political influence and critically assess the claims of those who would promote elections as a cure-all for poor democratic performance.