Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) mobilized peripheral blood progenitor cells (PBPC) have successfully been used as stem cells for both autologous and allogeneic transplants. However, little is known concerning the absolute number and phenotype of primitive progenitors, such as long-term culture-initiating cells (LTC-IC) in mobilized PBPC. The aim of our study was to evaluate the capacity of G-CSF to mobilize LTC-IC in the PB of normal individuals and to evaluate the phenotypic and functional characteristics of G-CSF mobilized LTC-IC. G-CSF was administered to 29 healthy volunteers at 7.5 micrograms or 10 micrograms/kg/d subcutaneously (SC) for 5 consecutive days and PBPC were harvested on day 6. Mobilization with G-CSF increased the absolute number of week 5 LTC-IC in PB 60-fold, while the number of CD34+ cells and committed colony forming cells (CFC) was increased sevenfold to 12-fold. The frequency of CFC and week 5 LTC-IC in CD34+ cells selected by fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) from mobilized PBPC was 2 +/- 0.3-fold and 9 +/- 2.2-fold higher respectively than in CD34+ cells selected from unmobilized PBMNC. CFC were enriched in the CD34+ CD38+ and CD34+ HLA-DR+ populations. The absolute number of LTC-IC present in CD34+ CD38- and CD34+ HLA-DR- cells selected by FACS from either mobilized PBPC, unmobilized PBMNC or steady state bone marrow (BM) was similar (0.5% to 2%). In contrast to unmobilized PBMNC or steady state BM CD34+ CD38+ and CD34+ HLA-DR+ cells, which contain less than 0.1% LTC-IC, CD34+ CD38+ and CD34+ HLA-DR+ cells sorted from mobilized PBPC contained 0.5% to 5% of cells capable of sustaining hematopoiesis in long-term cultures for 5 weeks. However, 90% to 95% of LTC-IC present in mobilized CD34+ CD38+ and CD34+ HLA-DR+ cells were not able to sustain hematopoiesis for 8 weeks, while 30% of CD34+ CD38- and CD34+ HLA-DR- LTC-IC present in mobilized PBPC could sustain hematopoiesis for at least 8 weeks. This suggests that the majority of CD34+ CD38+ and CD34+ HLA-DR+ week 5 LTC-IC represent progenitors at an intermediate state of differentiation. We conclude that G-CSF effectively mobilizes LTC-IC in the blood of normal individuals. Although a fraction of these cells has functional characteristics similar to those of steady state PBMNC or BM LTC-IC, more than 85% of mobilized PBPC LTC-IC are CD34+ CD38+ and CD34+ HLA-DR+, capable of sustaining hematopoiesis for 5 weeks, but not for 8 weeks. The functional and phenotypic characterization of primitive and more mature populations of LTC-IC in mobilized PBPC should prove extremely useful in future studies examining the role of these progenitors in engraftment following transplantation.


In this work, we present a detailed study of the rotational properties of magnetized and self-gravitating dense molecular cloud (MC) cores formed in a set of two very high resolution three-dimensional (3D) MC simulations with decaying turbulence. The simulations have been performed using the adaptative mesh refinement code RAMSES with an effective resolution of 40963 grid cells. One simulation represents a mildly magnetically supercritical cloud and the other a strongly magnetically supercritical cloud. We identify dense cores at a number of selected epochs in the simulations at two density thresholds which roughly mimic the excitation densities of the NH3 (J − K) = (1,1) transition and the N2H+ (1–0) emission line. A noticeable global difference between the two simulations is the core formation efficiency (CFE) of the high-density cores. In the strongly supercritical simulations, the CFE is 33% per unit free-fall time of the cloud (tff,cl), whereas in the mildly supercritical simulations this value goes down to ∼6 per unit tff,cl. A comparison of the intrinsic specific angular momentum (j3D) distributions of the cores with the specific angular momentum derived using synthetic two-dimensional (2D) velocity maps of the cores (j2D) shows that the synthetic observations tend to overestimate the true value of the specific angular momentum by a factor of ∼8–10. We find that the distribution of the ratio j3D/j2D of the cores peaks at around ∼0.1. The origin of this discrepancy lies in the fact that contrary to the intrinsic determination of j which sums up the individual gas parcels' contributions to the angular momentum, the determination of the specific angular momentum using the standard observational procedure which is based on a measurement on the global velocity gradient under the hypothesis of uniform rotation smoothes out the complex fluctuations present in the 3D velocity field. Our results may well provide a natural explanation for the discrepancy by a factor of ∼10 observed between the intrinsic 3D distributions of the specific angular momentum and the corresponding distributions derived in real observations. We suggest that previous and future measurements of the specific angular momentum of dense cores which are based on the measurement of the observed global velocity gradients may need to be reduced by a factor of ∼10 in order to derive a more accurate estimate of the true specific angular momentum in the cores. We also show that the exponent of the size-specific angular momentum relation is smaller (∼1.4) in the synthetic observations than their values derived in the 3D space (∼1.8).


This paper examines the variation between null and overt subject pronouns found in Romance null subject languages (NSL). While it is well known that several factors regulate the distribution between these two forms, it is also well known that not all null subject languages behave the same. The contexts in which null and overt subject pronouns are required or forbidden vary across dialects, as well as their rates. This paper examines such quantitative and qualitative differences and proposes two mechanisms to explain them. In the first place, a change in progress in some varieties is responsible for the qualitative and quantitative differences found. I apply Yang's (2000) model of language change and show that NSLs can become non-NSLs only if there is enough migration, which is what happened in the varieties undergoing the change. In the second place, following Cameron (1992) and Cameron and Flores-Ferran (2004), I claim that priming effects also play an important role in explaining the quantitative differences across several dialects.


The distributions of the product of independent random variables arise in many applied problems. These have been extensively studied by many researchers. In this paper, the exact distributions of the product XY have been derived when X and Y are Maxwell and Rice random variables respectively, and are distributed independently of each other. The associated cdfs, pdfs, and kth moments have been given.


Abstract. This article provides a proof of concept for using a biogeochemical/ecosystem/optical model with a radiative transfer component as a laboratory to explore aspects of ocean colour. We focus here on the satellite ocean colour chlorophyll a (Chl a) product provided by the often-used blue/green reflectance ratio algorithm. The model produces output that can be compared directly to the real-world ocean colour remotely sensed reflectance. This model output can then be used to produce an ocean colour satellite-like Chl a product using an algorithm linking the blue versus green reflectance similar to that used for the real world. Given that the model includes complete knowledge of the (model) water constituents, optics and reflectance, we can explore uncertainties and their causes in this proxy for Chl a (called derived Chl a in this paper). We compare the derived Chl a to the actual model Chl a field. In the model we find that the mean absolute bias due to the algorithm is 22 % between derived and actual Chl a. The real-world algorithm is found using concurrent in situ measurement of Chl a and radiometry. We ask whether increased in situ measurements to train the algorithm would improve the algorithm, and find a mixed result. There is a global overall improvement, but at the expense of some regions, especially in lower latitudes where the biases increase. Not surprisingly, we find that region-specific algorithms provide a significant improvement, at least in the annual mean. However, in the model, we find that no matter how the algorithm coefficients are found there can be a temporal mismatch between the derived Chl a and the actual Chl a. These mismatches stem from temporal decoupling between Chl a and other optically important water constituents (such as coloured dissolved organic matter and detrital matter). The degree of decoupling differs regionally and over time. For example, in many highly seasonal regions, the timing of initiation and peak of the spring bloom in the derived Chl a lags the actual Chl a by days and sometimes weeks. These results indicate that care should also be taken when studying phenology through satellite-derived products of Chl a. This study also reemphasizes that ocean-colour-derived Chl a is not the same as the real in situ Chl a. In fact the model derived Chl a compares better to real-world satellite-derived Chl a than the model actual Chl a. Modellers should keep this is mind when evaluating model output with ocean colour Chl a and in particular when assimilating this product. Our goal is to illustrate the use of a numerical laboratory that (a) helps users of ocean colour, particularly modellers, gain further understanding of the products they use and (b) helps the ocean colour community to explore other ocean colour products, their biases and uncertainties, as well as to aid in future algorithm development.


This thesis examines the growth and awareness of health and safety at work between 1780 and 1900. In this period the hazards at work were increased by the intensification of production brought about by the Industrial Revolution, and new risks to health arose from the wider range of toxic substances in use by manufacturing industry. There is discussion in the thesis of the extent to which the problems were identified in an age of short life expectancy and limited medical knowledge. The sources studied have been largely medical, governmental, trade and press reports. The emphasis is on the first effects seen and recommendations made, and where possible, the extent of the problem and the effectiveness of any preventative measures adopted and examined. There is discussion of the growing involvement of the Government in industrial health and safety. The subject is viewed in the light of modern thinking on industrial health but uses a classification appropriate to historical resources. Psychological and minor afflictions, neglected in the 19th century, are not considered. The available literature is reviewed in each section. Three detailed case studies conclude the thesis, two on the notoriously dangerous occupations of metal grinding and pottery, and one on occupational eye injuries. Each study is based on a different type of source material. The thesis overall shows that there was extensive concern for health and safety at work, but no systematic approach and only ad hoc implementation of preventative measures; and that the rate at which conditions improved varied between different industries and different categories of workers . However, some modern principles of health and safety at work can be seen emerging, and the period laid the necessary medical, technical and legal foundations for developments in the present century.


One way that can be done to determine the quality of lecturer performance is to conduct an assessment of the number of scientific publications have been conducted by the lecturers. The data of Mathematic and Natural Science Lecturer Lecturer, Unnes, totaled 160 lecturers will be assessed based on national and international journal publications. By using these data sources, will be applied data mining using Fuzzy C-Means algorithms and clustering method. Clustering method is one of the main methods of data analysis to help identify a grouping of data objects (cluster) of the dataset. The data of lecturer journal publications will be processed by a variable that is used as the assessment benchmark are index Scopus, journal accreditation, and the index DOAJ. So it will be found knowledge, information, and performance assessment of lecturers into four clusters which consisting of various lecturers. From the results of clustering using C-Means Clustering then obtained the FMIPA lecturer performance assessment on national and international journal publication.


A simple and facile method for the simultaneous preparation of water soluble, fluorescent graphene quantum dots (GQDs) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) is proposed and demonstrated in the present work. This particular method involves constant current electrolysis of a graphite rod either in an aqueous solution or in absolute ethanol medium consisting of sodium methoxide as an electrolyte. The process of electrolysis is carried out at a fixed current density for varied durations. Further chemical reduction of the resultant electrochemically exfoliated graphitic solution produces a clear supernatant solution and a black precipitate. Depending upon the solvent medium, duration of electrolysis and nature of the reducing agents, the size and in turn the emission colour of GQDs could be altered. In this work specifically GQDs that emit blue, green and yellow colours have been prepared. Structural, morphological and chemical characteristics of these GQDs are analyzed by using microscopic [scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM)], spectroscopic (UV-Vis spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman) and electrochemical techniques. Microscopic images obtained using HRTEM analysis clearly reveal the formation of lattice fringe patterns for these multi-coloured GQDs along with uniform particle size distribution. Further these fluorescent GQDs are utilized for bio-imaging applications and cytotoxicity studies using Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli bacteria. Similarly, the resultant black precipitate is identified as a few layered reduced graphene oxide and the structural and morphological characterization is carried out using SEM, FTIR, XRD and Raman spectroscopic studies. Further electrochemical investigation indicates the possible application of such layered RGO as a supercapacitor electrode material possessing a fast response time in the order of seconds for delivering the stored power.


Summary: Spinal intradural extramedullary capillary hemangiomas are extremely rare. We present the MR imaging and histologic findings in three patients with this abnormality. The three patients were men who had symptoms of either myelopathy (n (cid:53) 2) or radiculopathy (n (cid:53) 1). The tumors were well demarcated, 1.5–2.0 cm in diameter, and were located at the posterior or posterolateral portion of the thecal sac (one at the L1 level and the other two at the midthoracic level). On MR images, the tumor showed isoin-tensity relative to the spinal cord on T1-weighted images, hyperintensity on T2-weighted images, and strong homogeneous enhancement on contrast-enhanced T1-weighted images in all three patients. In two patients, the dural tail sign was observed. Capillary hemangioma should be included in the differential diagnosis of a spinal intradural extramedullary tumor.


Objective: To compare and discuss the clinical effect and biomechanics between locking compression plate and interlocking intramedullary nail for treatment of humerus shaft fracture.
Methods: 112 cases of patients with humerus shaft fracture were selected and divided into the locking compression plate group (LCP group) with 58 patients and the interlocking intramedullary nail group (IIN group) with 54 patients. The different operation time, bleeding volume, the length of stay after operation, healing time, difference of complication and shoulder joint dysfunction were made a comparison between the LCP group and IIN group.
Results: The operation time of patients in IIN group was (77.17 ± 15.46) min, which was shorter than that of LCP group (97.20 ± 30.06) min, p<0.05; the bleeding volume of patients in IIN group was (110.59 ± 50.34) ml, which was significantly less than that in LCP group, p<0.01. Besides, in IIN group there were 4 patients (7.41%) with the acromion injury, which was not seen in LCP group (p<0.05). However, in IIN group there were 6 patients (11.11%) with the radial nerve palsy, which was not seen in IIN group (p<0.05). Compared with patients in IIN group, the recovery of shoulder joint function was due to the plate (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The operation time, intraoperative blood loss, and the rate of radial nerve palsy of patients in IIN group are superior to these in LCP group, which is more aligned with modern orthopaedic advocated by the "Biological Osteosynthesis" principle.


In this study, the modulus of elasticity of low, normal and high strength steel fiber reinforced concrete has been predicted by developing a fuzzy logic model. The fuzzy models were formed as simple rules using only linguistic variables. A fuzzy logic algorithm was devised for estimating the elastic modulus of SFRC from compressive strength. Fibers used in all of the mixes were made of steel, and they were in different volume fractions and aspect ratios. Fiber volume fractions of the concrete mixtures have changed between 0.25%-6%. The results of the proposed approach in this study were compared with the results of equations in standards and codes for elastic modulus of SFRC. Error estimation was also carried out for each approach. In the study, the lowest error deviation was obtained in proposed fuzzy logic approach. The fuzzy logic approach was rather useful to quickly and easily predict the elastic modulus of SFRC.


This article describes the operational practices of the city morgue in Santiago, Chile and their effects on the family members who come to claim the bodies of their loved ones. It explores the impact of the body's passage through the morgue on the observance of rituals surrounding death and mourning. An underlying conflict can be identified between the state's partial appropriation of and interference with the body and intrinsic needs associated with the performance of funeral rites in accordance with cultural and religious precepts.


Cultural capital is assumed to benefit all members of society. It is accumulated through the
consumption of cultural services and is diminished through depreciation. Using the stock of
cultural goods (e.g. cultural heritage, works of arts, literature and music), cultural services are
provided by the cultural services industry; the stock of cultural goods is enlarged by the flow
of new cultural goods created by individuals who are both consumers and creators of culture
and whose utility is positively affected by the cultural goods they created. In the no-policy
market economy, individuals tend to ignore the positive external effects of their cultural
services consumption and creation of cultural goods on other individuals via augmenting
cultural capital and cultural-goods stock. Consequently, less cultural capital and culturalgoods
stock will be accumulated. The efficient allocation can be restored by introducing an
appropriate subsidy that stimulates the consumers' demand for cultural services, and the
creation of new cultural goods, promotes the accumulation of cultural capital and cultural
goods.


In this paper, routing metrics for low power and lossy networks are designed and evaluated. The cross-layer interactions between routing and medium access control (MAC) are explored, by considering the specifications of IETF RPL over the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC. In particular, the experimental study of a reliability metric that extends the expected transmission count (ETX) to include the effects of the level of contention and the parameters at MAC layer is presented. Moreover, a novel metric that guarantees load balancing and increased network lifetime by fulfilling reliability constraints is introduced. The aforementioned metrics are compared to a routing approach based on backpressure mechanism.


A phantom based on a polyurethane system that replicates the optical properties of tissue for use in near-infrared imaging is described. The absorption properties of tissue are simulated by a dye that absorbs in the near infrared, and the scattering properties are simulated by TiO2 particles. The scattering and absorption coefficients of the plastic were measured with a new technique based on time-resolved transmission through two slabs of materials that have different thicknesses. An image of a representative phantom was obtained from time-gated transmission.


A carbonaceous chondrite was recovered immediately after the fall near the village of Diepenveen in the Netherlands on October 27, 1873, but came to light only in 2012. Analysis of sodium and poly‐aromatic hydrocarbon content suggests little contamination from handling. Diepenveen is a regolith breccia with an overall petrology consistent with a CM classification. Unlike most other CM chondrites, the bulk oxygen isotopes are extremely 16O rich, apparently dominated by the signature of anhydrous minerals, distributed on a steep slope pointing to the domain of intrinsic CM water. A small subset plots closer to the normal CM regime, on a parallel line 2 ‰ lower in δ17O. Different lithologies in Diepenveen experienced varying levels of aqueous alteration processing, being less aqueously altered at places rather than more heated. The presence of an agglutinate grain and the properties of methanol‐soluble organic compounds point to active impact processing of some of the clasts. Diepenveen belongs to a CM clan with ~5 Ma CRE age, longer than most other CM chondrites, and has a relatively young K‐Ar resetting age of ~1.5 Ga. As a CM chondrite, Diepenveen may be representative of samples soon to be returned from the surface of asteroid (162173) Ryugu by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft.


The projected amount of investment to meet system expansion to achieve 40,000MW and, implicitly, universal rural electricity access, the first objective of SE4ALL, is estimated at about US$262 billion. This amount is enormous given industry experience, yet it is achievable. Much would depend on the political will to achieve results. It also requires having in place the right institutional framework, policy consistency, appropriate incentive structure and security of investment, as well as input. All these would guarantee the required flow of investment. The successful privatization of the telecommunication industry, which brought in multi-billion dollars of investment in less than a decade, provides support for this position. Ending the monopoly of NITEL and opening up of the telecommunications sector to a vibrant private sector-led dominance with one of the fastest system growth rates in the world has been due to the combination of right institutional framework, policy consistency and appropriate incentive structure.


Both international and federal law criminalize mental torture as well as physical torture, and both agree that "severe mental pain or suffering" defines mental torture. However, U.S. law provides a confused and convoluted definition of severe mental pain or suffering - one that falsifies the very concept and makes mental torture nearly impossible to prosecute or repress. Our principal aim is to expose the fallacies that underlie the U.S. definition of mental torture: first, a materialist bias that the physical is more real than the mental; second, a substitution trick that defines mental pain or suffering through a narrow set of causes and effects, ignoring the experience itself; third, a forensic fallacy, in which the due process requirements of specificity in criminal law become wrongly identified with defining characteristics of the crime of torture (an understanding that loops back to corrupt the law); and fourth, a mens rea requirement that excludes all mental torture not committed with the sadistic intention of causing long-lasting harm. Our article begins with an analysis of the concept of mental pain and suffering, as well as a factual discussion of U.S. practice. We also examine the legislative history of the definition in U.S. law. We demonstrate that it derives from political concerns that other countries might accuse U.S. law enforcement personnel of torture. We conclude by examining the specific evil of mental torture: the merciless attempt to break down and occupy the personality of the victim.


This thesis proposes clock-glitch fault injection technique to inject glitches into the clock signal running in a microcontroller unit and studying its effects on different assembly level instructions. It focusses mainly on the effect of clock glitches over the execution, sub-execution and preexecution cycles of the test instructions and also finds the delay between the actual position of glitch insertion and the trigger being set for the glitch insertion. The instructions used in this work are provided by Atmel which classifies them according to their type of operation. These instructions are here further grouped depending on the number of clock cycles they require for their execution. Each group of instructions are tested for their behavior towards clock glitches being injected at different places in and surrounding their execution cycle. This thesis utilizes the ChipWhisperer-Lite board (CW1173) for performing the whole experiment by controlling the target device, providing clock as well as clock glitches with appropriate properties at appropriate position to the target device. The Atmel AVR XMEGA 128D4U is used as the target device (CW303) that uses an external clock of frequency 7.37MHz generated by the main board. The Capture software, provided by the ChipWhisperer, is used for establishing the hardware connection between the main board and the target board. The clock glitches are designed and triggered through the Capture software.


Semecarpus anacardium is otherwise known as marking nut which has unsung medical properties. It has been claimed as half physician in Ayurveda. The folklore claims states that Semecarpus anacardium possess medicinal properties like anti carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, hypoglycemic, antimicrobial and contraceptive properties. In contrary to its biological potentials it has an adverse reaction like contact dermatitis. In this present study, a case of a couple which had got admitted in the hospital with the signs and symptoms of irritant contact dermatitis, after treating the fissure feet with the marking nut. Initially the case has been extensively treated with azithromycin and levocetirizine and the patient's condition became worsen with the given medication. Due to the severity of the disease, the patients were been taken care under a tertiary care hospital in a dermatological sequences and they were been treated with antihistamines, antibiotics, for a period of 5 days. The patients were responded to the treatment and been recovered from the severe dermatitis and they have been discharged after the completion of treatment.


The digital transition is causing seismic shifts. What changes are in store for higher education and research? To answer this question, INRA and Agreenium performed a foresight study focused on their key research themes: agriculture, the environment, food, and animal health. Four scenarios emerged that describe contrasting but sometimes congruous situations. This work has highlighted future directions that the institutions could take...which may lead them beyond their primary fields of study.


Microglia are resident immune cells in the brain and spinal cord. These cells provide immune surveillance and are mobilized in response to disparate diseases and injuries. Although microglial activation is often considered neurotoxic, microglia are essential defenders against many neurodegenerative diseases. It also seems increasingly likely that microglial dysfunction can underlie certain neurological diseases without an obvious immune component.


Background: Although acetaminophen (APAP) is considered safe at therapeutic doses, intake of high
amounts of this drug can cause liver failure. In the present experiment, we examined the hepatoprotective
effects of resveratrol (RES) in HepG2 cells and rat liver.

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the influence of RES on liver function in rat model of necrosis
and HepG2 cells.

Materials and Methods: In this study, rats were randomly assigned into 4 groups (7 rats in each group)
as follows; group 1: control rats (received normal saline), group 2: hepatotoxic control (control rats that
received 640 mg/kg/d APAP), group 3: positive control (received 150 mg/kg N-acetylcysteine), group
4: RES (received 30 mg/kg RES). The animals were treated for 7 days. Afterwards, the levels of liver
enzymes, protein carbonyl content, glutathione (GSH) level, and Tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) level
were determined.

Results: In the in vitro experiment, APAP-induced HepG2 cells were treated with RES at different
concentrations and various factors such as cell viability, liver enzymes, GSH and TNF-α levels were
measured.

Conclusions: Our results indicated that RES could normalize all these factors in vitro and in vivo (P<0.05).
In fact, RES had potential hepatoprotective effect against APAP -induced hepatotoxicity in HepG2 cells
and animal models mainly via dual change of oxidative stress and cytokine levels.


.This research explores the linkages between HR practices and business sales performance in a retail bank branch network. Whilst previous research in the last two decades has generally supported the notion that when appropriately designed HR practices can help enhance organizational outcomes, there is still ongoing debate regarding how such practices can actually influence business results. In particular, academics have highlighted the importance of the quality of HR implementation, because this can affect employee day-to-day experiences of and reactions to the HR practices which can impact on variance in the business results. In effect, it is crucial for research to take up the employee lens of the implemented practices and their reactions to these, if the HR-performance relationship is to be clearly understood. This thesis contributes to this research agenda by adopting the social exchange lens to shed light on the nature of the aforementioned relationship. A multidisciplinary and multilevel HR-performance model was employed for conducting empirical tests. Specifically, the empirical model was constructed from the literature in three different fields: strategic human resources management, social exchange theory and psychological contract, with the aim of eliciting the nature of employer-employee exchange relationships in the HR process. Subsequently, the model was tested using the data obtained from 1,286 employees in 149 bank branches and analysed so as to assess the multilevel process through which HR practices can influence business sales performance. The empirical results indicate that an organization can improve branch sales performance by paying careful attention to several processes pertaining to the implementation of HR practices. That is, through the psychological contract process, employees, based on their perceptions of the quality of the received practices (i.e. HR level and breach), reciprocate the organization with their discretionary performance, i.e. commitment attitudes and organizational citizenship behaviours and these outcomes have an impact on business results. Moreover, the findings also point to a boundary condition, whereby the HR-performance relationship can be enhanced by stressing the role of the key constituencies responsible for delivering these practices, namely: senior management and the line manager. That is, respectively, through the affective and relational processes, these agents can have an impact on employee perceptions of HR level and whether there has been a breach of the psychological contract, which in turn influence employee reactions in the causal chain. In summary, having applied the social exchange perspective to elicit the employee interaction with the different quality of HR implementation across bank branches, this study has contributed to the literature by identifying the key processes including psychological contract, relational and affective processes through which HR practices can impact on business sales performance, thereby illustrating how an organization's human resources can serve as the source of sustained business competitive advantage.


Children with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) often present with metastatic disease and have a high risk for recurrence, but rarely die of the disease. This article reviews DTC in children and discusses current approaches to their initial care and follow-up. These recommendations take into account the greater risk for recurrence and lower disease-specific mortality in these patients. Total thyroidectomy and central compartment lymph node dissection are appropriate for most children, but should be performed by a high-volume thyroid surgeon. Radioactive iodine (RAI) should generally be prescribed for those at very high risk for recurrence or known to have microscopic residual disease, and those with iodine-avid distant metastases. RAI should be considered in other patients only after carefully weighing the relative risks and benefits and the aggressiveness of the clinical presentation, because RAI may be associated with an increased risk for second malignancies and an increase in overall morbidity and mortality. All patients should be treated with thyroid hormone suppression, and follow-up should be lifelong. However, the degree of thyroid hormone suppression and frequency of disease surveillance usually decrease over time as patients are determined to be disease-free.


According to a classic position in analytic philosophy of mind, we must interpret agents as largely rational in order to be able to attribute intentional mental states to them. However, adopting this position requires clarifying in what way and by which criteria agents can still be irrational. In this paper I will offer one such criterion. More specifically, I argue that the kind of rationality methodologically required by intentional interpretation is to be specified in terms of psychological efficacy. Thereby, this notion can be distinguished from a more commonly used notion of rationality and hence cannot be shown to be undermined by the potential prevalence of a corresponding kind of irrationality.


The Crinum mine is located near Emerald in the Bowen Basin of Queensland and began development in 1994 using 2 Joy 12CM30 continuous miners in the 3.4 m high Lilyvale seam. Longwall production began in 1997 and finished the 15th and final longwall in December 2007. Over the 10 years of longwall production 40 million tonnes have been extracted and the mine has experienced over 40 longwall face, 3 main gateend, and 2 tail gateend roof falls as well as 5 roadway roof falls away from the longwall. Weak roof (less than 10 MPa in the bolted horizon) has been the principal roof control issue at the mine. However, weak, highly cleated coal, water inflow from overlying aquifers, some minor structure and a diatreme in the main headings have also contributed to the challenges at the mine. This paper describes the geotechnical experience over the 10 years, the mine's approach to addressing the issues and the relative success of these approaches.


Alcohol use with drugs is quite common and is a difficult problem for the doctor and the patient. The interactions between ethanol and drug preparations may be pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic. Alcohol interactions with drugs in absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination may result in changes in both the pharmacokinetics of drugs and ethanol, which will largely reflect on their pharmacological effects. The systematization and analysis of these interactions will help prevent unwanted consequences.


ABSTRACT Research on teacher knowledge has been criticised for taking too narrow a view on expertise. Therefore, teacher competence frameworks have been developed that are closely related to professional demands. Their practice-oriented conceptualisations have led to innovative measures with situative demands. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on whether these frameworks are actually suited to map teacher growth. This study investigated whether two components of teacher competence, Action-related (AC) and Reflective Competence (RC), can be differentially fostered through specific interventions in early childhood mathematics education. We designed two professional development programmes with a focus on AC and RC and implemented them in a randomised controlled experiment with 170 teachers. Overall, we found that AC, RC, and professional knowledge were sensitive to interventions with different change profiles. Although our hypotheses were only partially supported, the results can be seen as evidence regarding the distinctness of competence and knowledge components.


Collinear facilitation and contour integration are often attributed to facilitative interactions among low-level, V1 mechanisms with neighboring receptive fields. There are conflicting reports as to whether facilitation is polarity (phase) specific (e.g., . Williams & Hess, 1998 vs Yu & Levi, 1997 ). The latter conflict may be resolved by the existence of more than one type of mechanism. Evidence from experiments measuring orientation bandwidths with full annular surrounds suggests that at least two mechanisms exist, one narrowly tuned and the other broadly tune. In many previous works, we have described complex orientation-signaling mechanisms that sum over a large range of superimposed spatial frequencies but only over a very tight range of orientations (cigars). These mechanisms essentially signal the average orientation present. They have also been shown to be phase-independent. We have previously suggested (Persike, M, Olzak, L. A. and Meinhardt, G. , 2009) that at least one type of contour detector sums over wide ranges of frequencies; thus, contour integration may also be accomplished by cigars. Here, I tested this hypothesis directly by creating complex Gabor packets containing two gratings of very different frequency. Distractor frequencies were iso-oriented around random axes. Target components were both tilted either together (left or right) or in opposition (high-left, low-right and vice versa), relative to the line of the contour at each given location. Observers performed a two-alternative temporal forced-choice between a display containing only distractors and the one containing the contour. If contour integration occurs before the component summing stage, or is not mediated by cigars, performance will be equal in the two conditions. If the output of cigars feeds into the contour integrating mechanism, performance will be better in the opposition condition. Preliminary results suggest that performance with contours containing the components in opposition was superior. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Through a blend of personal narrative, cultural and literary analysis, and discussions about teaching, Minor Re/Visions: Asian American Literacy Narratives as a Rhetoric of Citizenship shows how people of color use reading and writing to develop and articulate notions of citizenship. Morris Young begins with a narration of his own literacy experiences to illustrate the complicated relationship among literacy, race, and citizenship and to reveal the tensions that exist between competing beliefs and uses of literacy among those who are part of dominant American culture and those who are positioned as minorities. Influenced by the literacy narratives of other writers of color, Young theorizes an Asian American rhetoric by examining the rhetorical construction of American citizenship in works such as Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Mernory, Victor Villanueva's Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart, and Maxine Hong Kingston's "Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe" from Woman Warrior. These narratives, Young shows, tell stories of transformation through education, the acquisition of literacy, and cultural assimilation and resistance. Through a consideration of the literacy narratives of Hawai i, Young also provides a context for reading literacy narratives as responses to racism, linguistic discrimination, and attempts at "othering" in a particular region. As we are faced with dominant discourses that construct race and citizenship in problematic ways and as official institutions become even more powerful and prevalent in silencing minor voices, Minor Re/Visions reveals the critical need for revising minority and dominant discourses. Young's observations and conclusions have important implications for the ways rhetoricians and compositionists read, teach, and assign literacy narratives.


The current study sought to examine the utility of yoga for reducing experiential avoidance (EA), as well as symptoms of psychological distress (SPD) and substance use. EA refers to the attempt to avoid or control adverse bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings, and memories despite negative consequences. Yoga is a holistic system of mind-body practices which includes physical postures, stretching, and breathing exercises aimed at maintaining and improving both mental and physical health. Undergraduates (n = 43) from a yoga class and basic exercise classes were recruited to participate and served as the intervention and active control group, respectively. Self-reported measures of EA, SPD (i.e., anxiety, depression), and substance use were collected at preand post-intervention time points. It was hypothesized that EA levels would be reduced from Time 1 to Time 2 in students participating in the yoga intervention compared to the control group, and that reductions in EA would mediate the relation between condition assignment and reductions in SPD and reported substance use. Overall, our hypotheses were not supported. Furthermore, our findings indicated Group differences in EA scores at Time 1. INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF A YOGA INTERVENTION ON EXPERIENTIAL AVOIDANCE, SYMPTOMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS, AND SUBSTANCE USE


The house price boom in major industrialized countries since the early 1990s has been unprecedented. Co-movement is a key feature of it and it has been attributed by scholars to synchronization of monetary policy, financial liberalization, integration of international financial markets, as well as global business cycle linkages. In this paper we focus on seven European countries, all members of the EMU, and ask the question if, the apparent co movement of the housing prices in the seven major euro zone economies implies convergence of their housing markets. Using monthly data from DSI Statistical Bases for 1990(1)-2009(4), we concentrate on the impact of the adoption of the common currency on real house prices movements. We conduct the analysis using country-specific macroeconomic variables and then extend it by adding foreign-specific macro variables to each country's model. The empirical analysis includes cointegration analysis and VAR specifications. Our findings suggest that the movement of the housing prices of the euro zone countries apart from the well known fundamentals of GDP, interest rates and stock returns is also based on a number of idiosyncratic and structural factors like demographics, the tax system and government intervention which determine the duration and the strength of the housing cycles in each country. Furthermore, it seems that the degree of convergence underlying housing prices co movement is limited given the diversities in living standards, regulation of property markets, government intervention and attitudes to residential housing.


The second half of the twentieth century was marked by significant social changes caused by extremely fast technology advancement, particularly informationcommunication technology. Besides changes in the way of doing business they have also brought changes in human society in general. Together with mass media and educational systems, information-communication technology (ICT) has influenced the growth of the overall information awareness, knowledge and human selfconsciousness. A modern human being is now acting as an individual with clearly expressed needs and attitudes to products and consumption. On the other hand, the human i. e. customer permanently encourages modern producers, i.e. suppliers, to change the relationship. This relationship change is known and is theoretically articulated through relationship marketing concept i. e. as customer relationship management. The outlined concepts strive to maintain communication with consumer as individual in order to achieve optimal satisfaction of individual customers' needs. Modern industry 4.0 is already able to produce individualised products for known customers with the use of robotic and programmable machines and CRM applications ensure by the means of communication, that is presale, sale and post-sale activities, the optimal individualized fulfilment of customer needs. The future certainly brings transition from mass production for unknown customer to production for known customer. This will also influence the change of product distribution in the way of moving from mass distribution to individualized distribution. This kind of change demands the adequate adjustment of CRM applications which must provide producer (supplier) and customer with key information about distribution as post sale activity. In that way it is necessary to observe the data coverage and develop an optimal database model in the function of achieving optimal satisfaction of individual customers' needs in the product distribution phase. From that standpoint it is meaningful to talk not only about product distribution, but also about information distribution, and to observe distribution as information phenomenon.


Learning representations for counterfactual inference from observational data is of high practical relevance for many domains, such as healthcare, public policy and economics. Counterfactual inference enables one to answer "What if...?" questions, such as "What would be the outcome if we gave this patient treatment $t_1$?". However, current methods for training neural networks for counterfactual inference on observational data are either overly complex, limited to settings with only two available treatments, or both. Here, we present Perfect Match (PM), a method for training neural networks for counterfactual inference that is easy to implement, compatible with any architecture, does not add computational complexity or hyperparameters, and extends to any number of treatments. PM is based on the idea of augmenting samples within a minibatch with their propensity-matched nearest neighbours. Our experiments demonstrate that PM outperforms a number of more complex state-of-the-art methods in inferring counterfactual outcomes across several benchmarks, particularly in settings with many treatments.


A novel coumarin-substituted manganese phthalocyanine (5) was successfully synthesized and used as sensing element for benzene and acetone vapor detection. The effects of water vapor on the benzene and acetone vapor-sensing properties and adsorption isotherms on thin film of 5 were also studied. Our preliminary results indicated that the presence of humidity modifies the baseline frequency but not the sensitivity of the sensor toward benzene and acetone vapors. Two isotherm models, Langmuir and Jovanovic isotherms, were selected to describe the adsorption process. Linear regression analysis, which is the most basic and commonly used predictive analysis method, was used to estimate the suitability of the selected isotherm models. The Jovanovic model was found to be adequate for describing benzene and acetone adsorption onto compound 5.


Inlet-interrupted sandy coasts are dynamic and complex coastal systems with continuously evolving geomorphological behaviors under the influences of both climate change and human activities. These coastal systems are of great importance to society (e.g., providing habitats, navigation, and recreational activities) and are affected by both oceanic and terrestrial processes. Therefore, the evolution of these inlet-interrupted coasts is better assessed by considering the entirety of the Catchment-Estuary-Coastal (CEC) systems, under plausible future scenarios for climate change and increasing pressures due to population growth and human activities. Such a holistic assessment of the long-term evolution of CEC systems can be achieved via reduced-complexity modeling techniques, which are also ably quantifying the uncertainties associated with the projections due to their lower simulation times. Here, we develop a novel probabilistic modeling framework to quantify the input-driven uncertainties associated with the evolution of CEC systems over the 21st century. In this new approach, probabilistic assessment of the evolution of inlet-interrupted coasts is achieved by (1) probabilistically computing the exchange sediment volume between the inlet-estuary system and its adjacent coast, and (2) distributing the computed sediment volumes along the inlet-interrupted coast. The model is applied at three case study sites: Alsea estuary (United States), Dyfi estuary (United Kingdom), and Kalutara inlet (Sri Lanka). Model results indicate that there are significant uncertainties in projected volume exchange at all the CEC systems (min-max range of 2.0 million cubic meters in 2100 for RCP 8.5), and the uncertainties in these projected volumes illustrate the need for probabilistic modeling approaches to evaluate the long-term evolution of CEC systems. A comparison of 50th percentile probabilistic projections with deterministic estimates shows that the deterministic approach overestimates the sediment volume exchange in 2100 by 15–30% at Alsea and Kalutara estuary systems. Projections of coastline change obtained for the case study sites show that accounting for all key processes governing coastline change along inlet-interrupted coasts in computing coastline change results in projections that are between 20 and 134% greater than the projections that would be obtained if only the Bruun effect were taken into account, underlining the inaccuracies associated with using the Bruun rule at inlet-interrupted coasts.


The present study examines the factor structure of the Perceived Ability to Cope with Trauma (PACT) scale (Bonanno, Pat-Horenczyk, & Noll, 2011) in an Italian sample. The authors investigated whether the structure which emerged in the original scale is confirmed in a culturally different sample. Using data from a non-random sample of 450 Italian youths recruited through a snowball sampling approach, an explorative and a confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. The original two-factor structure (Forward Focus and Trauma Focus) was confirmed in the study. However, only 14 of the original 20 items were included in the resulting factor structure. The study highlights the challenges of cross-cultural measurement, in particular about the adaptation of a measure for a different culture. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. Further studies are necessary to collect additional information about the instrument and to better adapt it for the Italian population.


By now you should have received the first
three issues of Personal Relationships (Volume
14, Issues 1, 2, and 3) produced by my editorial
team (Associate Editors: Susan Boon,
Psychology, University of Calgary, Canada;
Mario Mikulincer, Psychology, Bar-Ilan
University, Israel; Denise Solomon,
Communication Studies, Pennsylvania State
University, United States; Rodney Cate,
Emeritus, Family Studies, University of
Arizona, United States; Catrin Finkenauer, Social Psychology, VU University, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands; and Susan Branje, Adolescent
Development, Utrecht University, The
Netherlands and Editorial Assistant: Brandi
McCullough). Note that in my editor's prefaces
to the first two of these issues, I discuss how we
are working to achieve my editorial team's goal
for PR to become more international and
interdisciplinary and the importance of placing
personal relationships in structural and cultural
context. I would urge potential authors to read
these prefaces, because they provide insight into
the types of issues that might be raised as a
manuscript is reviewed. Associate Editor Mario
Mikulincer authored the Editor's Preface to the
third of these issues and discussed the
importance of building personal relationships
theory, raising issues relevant for the future of
our field. At the time of this writing, our fourth
issue is all-but-finalized. The tentative table of
contents is included in this issue.


Abstract We present a model of a subcritical neutron multiplying system coupled to an external time-dependent neutron source, within one-group diffusion theory. Within this scheme we show that the problem is fully solvable without any other approximation. Then, we are able to show that all the known results about such systems can be consistently derived. In such a way we are able to discuss various specific aspects that distinguish a subcritical system from a critical one without relying on any other approximations or assumptions. Moreover, we prove that a subcritical system has very different working regimes as the level of subcriticality varies.


Trends in hydrologic sequences may be assessed in various ways. The coefficient of regression of flow on time may be used, particularly if the sequences are very long. Under the assumption of stationarity the variance of the regression coefficient is expressed as a function of sequence length and the autocorrelation coefficients of relevant order. Thus the variance inflation factor for assessing the statistical significance of estimated regression coefficients may be readily determined for any given stationary process. The variance inflation factor is determined for four stationary processes: independent, Markov, autoregressive‐moving average of order (1, 1), and fractional Gaussian noise. The effectiveness of prewhitening observed sequences with a Markov process is nearly the same whether the first order autocorrelation coefficient is known per se or through estimation.


Society dictates that people fall into one of two sexual identities: male or female. For some people, though, sex is not so clear-cut. They may have an intersex condition or feel that there is a mismatch between their biological sex and the gender they perceive themselves to be. Catherine McNamara and Alison Rooke describe here a project in which a group of transsexual and transgendered young people were able to explore – and challenge – the biological determinants and medical understanding of sex and gender, and also to express their perceptions through performance. As well as helping the young people to make more sense of their sexed and gendered identities, the project enabled them to communicate a picture of transgendered lived experience that goes beyond limited scientific and medical descriptions.


The ability to perform accurate limb movements may require learning mechanisms that continually tune the motor system. In the current study, we isolate a form of pure limb motor plasticity. Participants reached to targets that were turned off just after the onset of an initial eye movement, reappearing at a new location at the end of the reaching movement. In contrast to classical prism or virtual reality paradigms, our task eliminated sensory adaptation by always maintaining a congruency between the seen and felt limb position. We also minimized awareness and potential adaptation processes on the basis of volitional strategies by progressively increasing the size of the target perturbations. In this manner, our adaptation procedure mimicked conditions used to study saccadic adaptation. The results indicated that adaptation under these conditions led to a robust after-effect that generalized to a large range of movements within the workspace. This fully natural, nonim-posed generalization of adaptation is not expressed in a spatial coordinate system, but more likely in a joint-centered coordinate space.


The ubiquitin binding zinc finger (UBZ) domain in the C-terminal portion of Polη has been found to interact with ubiquitin. However, the affinity between the Polη UBZ and ubiquitin was shown to be low with a previously reported K(d) of 73-81 μM. This low-affinity binding between Polη UBZ and ubiquitin has been difficult to reconcile with its presumed role in translesion synthesis as suggested by genetic and cell biology studies. In this work, we constructed a minimal S. cerevisiae Polη UBZ domain and probed the Polη UBZ-ubiquitin interaction using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique. Our quantitative binding data between the wild-type or mutant Polη UBZ and ubiquitin revealed an interesting divergence between the Polη UBZ from S. cerevisiae and humans. Moreover, we found that the C-terminal portion of yeast Polη (amino acid 515-632) binds ubiquitin with a much higher affinity than the minimal UBZ domain. Further, distinct ubiquitin-binding kinetics were observed for the C-terminal portion of Polη and the isolated UBZ domain. This observation raised the interesting possibility that the Polη C-terminal portion binds ubiquitin in a novel mode that affords higher affinity. Our findings have broader implication in understanding the generally weak interaction between the known ubiquitin-binding domains and ubiquitin.


This experiment was designed to investigate the extent of peroxidative changes and histological alterations in the myocardium of rats exposed to high fluoride for two generations, in addition to ameliorative role of selenium and vitamin E on the above indices. Adult albino Wistar rats were given fluoride through drinking water (200 ppm F) and maintained subsequently for two generations, while they were exposed to fluoride throughout the experiment. Fluoride treatment significantly increased the lipid peroxidation and decreased the activity of antioxidant enzymes, viz., catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione level in auricle and ventricle regions of the heart. Decreased feed and water consumption, organ somatic index and marginal drop in body growth rate were observed. Decreased antioxidant enzymes and increased malondialdehyde levels might be related to oxidative damage that occurs variably in the myocardium of rats. Biochemical changes were supported by the histological observations, which also revealed that chronic exposure to fluoride causes damage to the myocardium. Results of this study can be taken as an index of cardio-toxicity in rats exposed to water fluoridation. Further, oral supplementation of selenium and vitamin E not only inhibited oxidative stress but also enhanced the activities of antioxidant enzymes. Administration of antioxidants during fluoride exposure significantly overcame cardiac fluoride toxicity and therefore may be a therapeutic strategy for fluorotic victims.


A generalization of the coupled-dipole method introduced by Purcell Pennypacker [Astrophys. J.186, 705 (1973)], a low-frequency method used to describe electromagnetic scattering by dielectric objects of arbitrary shape, is proposed. At each site of the cubic lattice, instead of a dipole moment there are an electric dipole, a magnetic dipole, and an electric quadrupole, leading to an improved description of the scattered fields.


Growing numbers of "electromagnetic hypersensitive" (EHS) people worldwide self-report severely disabling, multiorgan, non-specific symptoms when exposed to low-dose electromagnetic radiations, often associated with symptoms of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) and/or other environmental "sensitivity-related illnesses" (SRI). This cluster of chronic inflammatory disorders still lacks validated pathogenetic mechanism, diagnostic biomarkers, and management guidelines. We hypothesized that SRI, not being merely psychogenic, may share organic determinants of impaired detoxification of common physic-chemical stressors. Based on our previous MCS studies, we tested a panel of 12 metabolic blood redox-related parameters and of selected drug-metabolizing-enzyme gene polymorphisms, on 153 EHS, 147 MCS, and 132 control Italians, confirming MCS altered (P < 0.05–0.0001) glutathione-(GSH), GSH-peroxidase/S-transferase, and catalase erythrocyte activities. We first described comparable—though milder—metabolic pro-oxidant/proinflammatory alterations in EHS with distinctively increased plasma coenzyme-Q10 oxidation ratio. Severe depletion of erythrocyte membrane polyunsaturated fatty acids with increased ω6/ω3 ratio was confirmed in MCS, but not in EHS. We also identified significantly (P = 0.003) altered distribution-versus-control of the CYP2C19∗1/∗2 SNP variants in EHS, and a 9.7-fold increased risk (OR: 95% C.I. = 1.3–74.5) of developing EHS for the haplotype (null)GSTT1 + (null)GSTM1 variants. Altogether, results on MCS and EHS strengthen our proposal to adopt this blood metabolic/genetic biomarkers' panel as suitable diagnostic tool for SRI.


This study examined factors associated with positive psychosocial functioning in 94 cognitively intact nursing home residents reporting poor physical health. It was hypothesized that greater use of meaning-based coping strategies would be associated with higher levels of positive psychosocial functioning. Participants completed an interview containing measures of coping, affect, psychological well-being, depression, and activities of daily living. Findings suggest that meaning-based coping variables (positive reappraisal, perceived uplifts) accounted for significant variance in positive psychosocial variables but not distress variables. In contrast, physical health variables accounted for significant variance in distress but not positive psychosocial variables. Results support the view that the absence of distress does not necessarily imply optimal mental health. Thus, a comprehensive assessment of mental health in older adults requires inclusion of indices of both positive and negative psychological and social functioning.


Background and rationale. The latent phase of labour is recognised as a period of uncertainty for women and midwives. There is evidence from the literature of considerable variation in labour definitions and practice. Stimulated by discussion at an international maternity research conference, the authors set out to explore opinions regarding the need for labour-stage definitions.
Aim. To identify health professionals' views on the need for a definition of the onset and the end of the latent phase of labour.
Methods. This was an opportunistic, semi-structured, online survey of attendees at a maternity care research conference, which included midwives, other clinicians, academics, advocates and user representatives. Attendees (approximately 100) were invited to participate through a single email invitation sent by the conference committee and containing a link to the survey. Consent was sought on the landing page. Ethical approval was obtained from Bournemouth University's research ethics committee. Quantitative questions were analysed using simple descriptive statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 24. Open questions were analysed using content analysis and where participants gave a more detailed answer, these were analysed using a thematic approach.
Findings. Participants in the survey (n=21) came from 12 countries. Most of the participants thought that there was a need to define the onset of the latent phase (n=15, 71%). Common characteristics were cited, but the main theme in the open comments referred to the importance of women's perceptions of labour onset. Most participants (n = 18, 86%) thought that there was a need to define the end of the latent phase. This was felt necessary because current practice within facilities is usually dictated by a definition. The characteristics suggested were also not unexpected and there was some consensus; but the degree of cervical dilatation that signified the end of the latent phase varied among participants. There was significant debate about whether a prolonged latent phase was important; for example, was it associated with adverse consequences. Most participants thought it was important (n=15, 71%), but comments indicated that the reasons for this were complex. Themes included the value that women attached to knowing the duration of labour and the need to support women in the latent phase.
Implications for practice. The findings from this small, opportunistic survey reflect the current debate within the maternal health community regarding the latent phase of labour. There is a need for more clarity around latent phase labour (in terms of both the definition and the support offered) if midwives are to provide care that is both woman centred and evidence-based. The findings will inform the development of a larger survey to explore attitudes towards labour definitions.


Reviewing the computational part of scientific papers puts a lot of effort on referees: even if authors provide their data and code the referee often needs to install additional software on his machine and figure out which parts of the code belong to which part of the manuscript. As a result, computational results or often not reviewed at all. We propose a new web service which outsources validation of computational results in executable papers to an independent third party. Our system adapts the well-tested toolbox currently checking R extension packages in software repositories like CRAN to check manuscripts in paper repositories. In addition, paper packages can easily be downloaded from the server and installed to replicate results locally by anyone wishing to do so.


As in most Data Mining procedures, how to tune the parameters of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a critical, though not sufficiently explored, issue. The default approach is a grid search in the parameter space, which becomes prohibitively time-consuming even when just a few parameters are to be tuned. For this reason, for models involving a higher number of parameters, different metaheuristics have been recently proposed as an alternative. In this paper we customize a continuous Variable Neighborhood Search to tune the parameters of the SVM. Our framework is general enough to allow one to address, with the very same method, several popular SVM parameter models encountered in the literature. The structure of the optimization problem at hand is successfully exploited. This is done by expressing the problem of parameter tuning as a collection of nested problems which can be solved sequentially. As algorithmic requirements we only need a routine which, for given parameters, finds the SVM classifier. Hence, as soon as an SVM library or any routine for solving linearly constrained convex quadratic optimization problems is available, our approach is applicable. The experimental results show the usefulness of our tuning method for different SVM parameter models analyzed in the literature: we can address tuning problems with dimensions for which grid search is infeasible, and, at the same time, our rather general approach yields comparable results, in terms of classification accuracy, against ad-hoc benchmark tuning methods designed for specific SVM parameter models.


What is the virtue of protecting a false reputation? The thesis of this paper is that there is none. There is none, at least, that justifies the suppression of free speech. Yet, there is a growing trend to see the protection of reputation from truth as a key function of the so-called "right of privacy." Unfortunately, people often do things that they are not proud of or do not want others to know about. Often, however, these are precisely the things that others want or need to know. For our own protection, each of us is better off being aware of the negative or less-than-flattering qualities of others with whom we deal. The things that people say about each other are protected by the Constitution as much as any other form of expression. The Supreme Court has recognized repeatedly that the judgment embodied in the First Amendment is that the benefits of a free flow of information outweigh the costs and that those who speak truthfully cannot be made to do so at their peril. Therefore, disclosures of truthful information cannot, in the name of "privacy," be constitutionally subjected to after-the-fact governmental determinations that they were not justified, unnecessary or even a crime. Perhaps there are things that it is better for us not to see or hear. But the assumption of the First Amendment is that government should not be deciding these limitations on the free flow of information or what speech is important enough to be "worth it." If, in the name of protecting privacy or reputations, government agencies can decide after the fact what is and is not legitimate negative information, self-censorship will abound and valuable information will suffer. For a much more complete (and perhaps less contentious) treatment of privacy rights and the First Amendment, see my "Privacy and the Right of Free Expression," available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract= 1996581. Note: This paper is based on presentations at the annual conference of the Law and Society Association, held in Honolulu, HI on June 5-8 2012 and, at a conference, "Perspectives on Privacy," held at Johannes-Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, on June 23-24, 2011.


More commonly known as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame", Victor Hugo's Romantic novel of dark passions and unrequited love, "Notre-Dame de Paris", is translated with an introduction by John Sturrock in "Penguin Classics". In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her, that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century. John Sturrock's clear, contemporary translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing it as a passionate novel of ideas, written in defence of Gothic architecture and of a burgeoning democracy, and demonstrating that an ugly exterior can conceal moral beauty. This revised edition also includes further reading and a chronology of Hugo's life. Victor Hugo (1802-85) was a forceful and prolific writer. He wrote volumes of criticism, Romantic costume dramas, lyrical and satirical verse and political journalism but is best remembered for his novels, especially "Notre-Dame de Paris" (1831) and "Les Miserables" (1862) which was adapted into one of the most successful musicals of all time. Though exiled to the Channel Islands by Napoleon III, Hugo returned to Paris in 1870 and remained a great public figure until his death: his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe, and he was later buried in the Pantheon. If you enjoyed "Notre-Dame de Paris", you might like Gaston Leroux's "The Phantom of the Opera". "A great writer - inventive, witty, sly, innovatory". (A. S. Byatt, author of Possession).


The authors examine the effect of manager ethnicity on the ethnic composition of employment using nine years of personnel records from a regional grocery store chain in the United States. The workforce studied is composed almost entirely of a white majority and a large Hispanic minority; the authors focus on the role of Hispanic ethnicity. Estimating models with store fixed effects, the authors examine the effects of manager ethnicity on hiring, transfer, and separation patterns. Effects of manager ethnicity are compared across several types of jobs, with significant effects occurring on hiring patterns but not on transfers, and effects occurring on separation patterns in only one atypical case. The authors also find that the effects on hiring occur only in jobs or departments with very few employees.


Commercial nonylphenol ethoxysulphonate (NPEOS), octylphenol ethoxysulphonate (OPEOS) surfactant formulations and mixtures of alkyl aryl sulphonate and NPEOS surfactant formulations, are used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The surfactants have been analysed by liquid chromatography (LC), liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry. Mixedmode C1 8/SAX and C8/SAX columns were used for both liquid chromatography and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analyses of NPEOS and OPEOS. NPEOS and alkyl aryl sulphonate surfactant mixtures were separated using a mixed-mode C4/SAX column.. Matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) spectra were obtained using either alpha-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid or 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid as matrix with the addition of lithium chloride to simplify the mass spectra obtained. Data obtained from each method indicate that the NPEOS formulation has an ethoxymer chain length ranging from 2-13 units with average of 6.26. This is in broad agreement with earlier studies, although the range was reported as 2-15. However, the data obtained suggest that the OPEOS formulation has an ethoxymer chain length ranging from 1-8 ethoxymer units with an average chain length of 3.67. This is in contrast to earlier studies carried out by LC only, which suggested that the chain length ranged from 2 to 6 ethoxymer units with an average of 3.6. A method for the extraction of NPEOS and OPEOS from sea-water and reagent water, and alkyl aryl sulphonate from sea-water only, using graphitised carbon black (GCB) solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges has also been developed.In the last section of this thesis the chemical oxidation of NPEOS used Fenton's reagent and biological oxidation of NPEOS using a microorganism (Paracoccus halodenitrificans) is reported. The intermediate products formed in the chemical oxidation have been identified and characterized by LC, LC-ES-MS and MALDI/MS techniques. The major products formed are dicarboxylic acids and single carboxylic acids. The aerobic biodegradation of NPEOS was carried out over five days. Theoxygen uptake was measured each day. The biodegradation intermediate products were analysed by LC and data indicate that the same products were formed as those from the chemical oxidation of NPEOS.


The Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 aimed to improve listed companies' financial reporting standards and protect shareholders' interests. However, most of the provisions are perceived to be costly to U. S. issuers and benefits of the Act have continued to be the subject of much debate. This thesis utilises a unique corporate governance dataset that covers both the pre- and post-SOX periods and attempts to first, investigate what changes have there been in corporate governance practices since SOX was implemented, and second, to analyse the consequences of any changes in corporate governance practices post-SOX, and whether these changes are beneficial to shareholders. To achieve these two
objectives, the thesis investigates the impact of SOX in four empirical chapters.

The main findings of this thesis suggest that companies opted to follow a box-ticking procedure in selecting their corporate governance structures post-SOX. SOX did not achieve its objectives of improving financial reporting quality,but it had, albeit unintentionally, enhanced corporate value for some firms. Overall audit conu-nittee effectiveness decreased during the SOX period, but it
increased in the post-SOX period, which indicates, in terms of corporate governance, SOX was beneficial to shareholders because it improved the overall audit committee effectiveness. Finally, earnings informativeness improved after SOX was enacted. However, this improvement may not be attributable to the changes in audit committee effectiveness.

The thesis concludes that SOX improved U. S. companies' financial reporting quality, financial account usefulness and audit committee effectiveness. However, the improvements of financial reporting quality and financial account usefulness seemed not to be attributable to the changes in corporate governance practices, but it was more likely to be attributable to other internal control
requirements, i. e. Section 404 "Assessment of internal control", Section 302 "Internal control certifications" and Section 201 "Services outside the scope of practice of auditor".


Synopsis This paper describes the evaluation of a limit equilibrium model to simulate the behaviour of crush pillars in platinum mines. An analytical model was derived to calculate the residual average pillar stress (APS) values of the crush pillars. The values predicted by this model were compared to the numerical values obtained from TEXAN simulations. In general, the limit equilibrium model appears to be very attractive for simulating pillar failure as the gradual crushing of the outside of the pillar and the transfer of stress to the intact core can be replicated. The value of the TEXAN crush pillar model was further demonstrated by simulating an idealized layout with crush pillars between two adjacent panels. The simulations illustrated that oversized pillars will not crush close to the face and this may lead to seismic failure in the back area. An important finding of the study is that closure measurements may prove to be a very valuable diagnostic measure in crush pillars layouts. Distinct differences in magnitudes of closure were simulated for a scenario where the pillars crush as expected, compared to the scenario where an oversized pillar is left. Experimental closure data collected in a crush pillar stope provided further evidence regarding the value of closure measurements in these layouts.


By operational criteria, burnout appears to be a multifaceted behavioral syndrome consisting of maladaptive individual responses subsequent to prolonged stressful situations. Given the intense physical and cognitive demands of providing high quality healthcare to a wide spectrum of patients, healthcare professionals are particularly susceptible to developing burnout syndrome, a notable phenomenon that has gleaned significant societal attention in recent years. Clearly, widespread manifestation of burnout by health care professionals represents a serious potential threat to the overall quality of patient care and to the realization of positive outcomes to multiple treatment strategies. It will most certainly engender a serious negative impact on the economic viability of the entire healthcare system. Presently, our brief review focuses on current research efforts to 1) provide precise behavioral and psychiatric diagnostic criteria for burnout syndrome in healthcare professionals, 2) identify potential etiological factors and ongoing stressors, and 3) outline an integrative approach for treatment and prevention.


Today's customers are highly aware of and sensitive to social topics. Thus, they expect organizations across all industries not only to avoid social inequalities but to react with distinct actions against social inequalities, i.e. to strive for social innovation. Moreover, digital technologies can help to leverage social innovation more easily. There are already first examples of incumbents fostering digital social innovation. Merck, for example, introduced a sticking plaster with sensors to support diabetes patients in analysing their intestinal fluids without injection. Although the potentials of digital technologies in addressing social issues seem to be obvious, research on digital social innovation is still in its infancy, and clear guidance on how to exploit the potential of digital social innovation is missing. As such, a common understanding in terms of theoretical and managerial implications is scarce. We propose a taxonomy in order to structure the research field and provide incumbents with a tool on how to address their social responsibility through digital social innovation. Thus, our study contributes to descriptive knowledge and delivers insights relevant to the practice of digital social innovation.


Introduction: Thymbra spicata (T. spicata) is a conventional medicinal herb which is commonly used in the folklore medicine system of Iran. Aim of the study was to assess the antibacterial activity of the essential oil and hudroalcholic extract of the plant T. spicata on some important bacteria. Materials & methods: The essential oil and extract of T. spicata were obtained by hydrodistillation and hydroalcoholic methods, respectively. Different concentrations of essential oil and hydroalcholic extract of the medicinal herb, T. spicata, were evaluated for their antibacterial activities against ten pathogenic bacteria (4 Gram-positive and 6 Gram-negative) by agar disc diffusion and macro Broth dilution method Results: All the bacteria showed a profound susceptibility to the essential oil and hydroalcholic extracts of the T. spicata. The essential oil was shown to be more effective against the examined bacteria. The zone of inhibition of the essential oil shown to be maximum against E. faecalis (28 mm) and M. morganii (30 mm). The hydroalcholic extract of T. spicata, showed the highest antibacterial activity against S. aureus (Gram-positive) and E. coli (Gram-negative) with the zone of inhibitions, 19 mm and 15 mm, respectively. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values for the essential oil and hydroalcholic extracts ranged from 7-60μg/ mL and 5-19 mg/ml, respectively against the tested bacteria. Conclusion: This study revealed the potential using of T. spicata as a source of antibacterial agents that could be effectively used for medicinal and pharmaceutical purposes.


Students with significant cognitive disabilities often struggle to express themselves with written language. This project examined the effects of combining simultaneous prompting and computer assisted instruction, including picture icons, to teach students with significant cognitive disabilities to create narrative stories. Participants included seven students with significant disabilities currently being taught in a self-contained special education classroom located in a public elementary school. Participants had educational classifications of autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, or multiple disabilities. A multiple probe across behaviors design was used and instructors measured the number of sentences written by participants in each computer session. Sentences were defined as a group of words that contain at least a subject and a verb and were linked in a logical way. First, a simultaneous prompting intervention was used to teach participants to copy simple three-sentence stories using the PixwriterTM assisted writing program on a preferred topic. When the participants could do this, they were given a two-sentence story to copy and then asked to generate a final sentence that would be cohesive with the story. This process was to be repeated across three preferred topics. Participants in this study had varying results with this intervention. Six of the participants with significant cognitive skills got to practice their own narrative story writing skills. Only one participant completed the full intervention. One participant did not get past copying the prepared stories. All of the participants enjoyed listening to the computer as it read the stories that they copied or helped to create.


Federal Indian law forms part of the bedrock of American jurisprudence. Indeed, critical parts of the pre-civil war constitutional canon were defined in federal Indian law cases that simultaneously provided legal justification for American westward expansion onto unceded Indian lands. As a result, federal Indian law makes up an inextricable part of American rule of law. Despite its importance, federal Indian law follows a long and circuitous road that requires "wander[ing] the maze of Indian statutes and case law tracing back [over] 100 years." That road has long oscillated between two poles, with the Supreme Court sometimes applying foundational principles that view tribes as sovereigns "retaining all their original natural rights," and at other times treating tribes as mere "wards subject to a [self-imposed] guardian."

Supreme Court respect for tribal sovereignty and self-determination reached its zenith in the so-called "modern era" of federal Indian law, spanning from 1959 through the late 1970s. During this era, the Court tended to adhere to federal Indian jurisprudence and solidified a relatively coherent doctrine based upon the foundational principles developed in the 1830s. The late Dean David Getches described the modern era as a time that "encouraged a reinvigoration of tribal governments throughout the country. During this period, tribes gained political influence and economic security as [the federal government] generally promoted a policy of tribal self-determination."

The Court turned away from its foundational Indian law principles with the onset of the 1980s and the departure intensified as Chief Justice William Rehnquist was appointed chief justice in 1986. Since then, the touchstone of the Supreme Court's federal Indian jurisprudence has been to employ a "subjectivist" approach whereby it "gauges tribal sovereignty as a function of changing conditions"—demographic, social, political, and economic—and the expectations of non-Indians that may be potentially by the exercise of tribal power. As a result, the Supreme Court became a strikingly hostile place for American Indian tribes as the Court became increasingly willing to divest tribes of governmental powers, not by upholding the enactments of Congress, but through its own interpretation of what tribal inherent governmental rights ought to be.

The appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor and, more recently, Justice Neil Gorsuch seems to have brought change to the Court's direction in Indian law cases. Since then, cases have been consistently decided in favor of tribal litigants by reaffirming treaty rights through the application of foundational principles that focus on the plain language of treaties and the application of the Indian canons of construction. However, to be sure, even the Rehnquist Court did "recite[] and sometimes act[] upon foundation principles," but those cases were limited to situations where "non-Indian interests [were] not seriously threatened." All of Indian Country waited for, or perhaps dreaded, a true litmus test.

That test came to the Supreme Court in the form of two Indian law cases—Sharp v. Murphy and McGirt v. Oklahoma—both of which were framed by non-Indian parties to affect the interests of an estimated 1.8 million people in eastern half Oklahoma. Ready or not, Indian Country found its test case, which squarely placed the Court's competing jurisprudential philosophies— its foundation principles versus its "subjectivist" approach—on a collision course.

In a powerful and uncharacteristically passionate decision, Justice Gorsuch wrote for a 5-4 majority, upholding treaty-based rights to re-recognize the historic reservation boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the fourth largest Indigenous nation in the United States. The decision was the fourth consecutive treaty-rights victory and seemed to solidify a shift toward a consistent approach rooted in foundational principles.

The victory was short-lived. Just weeks after the Court's decision in McGirt, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, once again shifting the make-up of the United States Supreme Court. As a result, Federal Indian law once again finds itself at a crossroads. The Murphy and McGirt decisions are landmark decisions that bring change to the legal landscape of much of Oklahoma. It remains to be seen whether the perceived new Supreme Court era in Indian law is here to stay.


Scaffolds used in the field of tissue engineering should facilitate the adherence, spreading, and ingrowth of cells as well as prevent microbial adherence. For the first time, this study simultaneously deals with microbial and tissue cell adhesion to rapid prototyping-produced 3D-scaffolds. The cell growth of human osteosarcoma cells (CAL-72) over a time period of 3-11 days were examined on three scaffolds (PLGA, PLLA, PLLA-TCP) and compared to the adhesion of salivary microorganisms and representative germs of the oral flora (Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella nigrescens, Candida albicans, Enterococcus faecalis, Streptococcus mutans, and Streptococcus sanguinis). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), cell proliferation measurements, and determination of the colony forming units (CFU) were performed. The cell proliferation rates on PLLA and PLLA-TCP after 3, 7, and 11 days of cultivation were higher than on PLGA. On day 3 the proliferation rates on PLLA and PLLA-TCP, and on day 5 on PLLA-TCP, proved to be significantly higher compared to that of the control (culture plate). The strain which showed the most CFUs on all of the investigated scaffolds was P. gingivalis, followed by E. faecalis. No significant CFU differences were determined examining P. gingivalis among the biomaterials. In contrast, E. faecalis was significantly more adherent to PLGA and PLLA compared to PLLA-TCP. The lowest CFU values were seen with C. albicans and P. nigrescens. Salivary born aerobic and anaerobic microorganisms adhered significantly more to PLGA compared to PLLA-TCP. These results supported by SEM point out the high potential of PLLA-TCP in the field of tissue engineering.


Author(s): Wanner, Lucas Francisco | Advisor(s): Srivastava, Mani B | Abstract: With scaling of semiconductor fabrication technologies and the push towards deep sub-micron technologies, individual transistors are now composed by a small number of atoms. This makes it difficult to achieve precise control of manufacturing quality, with the added consequence that even slight differences in manufacturing can result in significant fluctuation in critical device and circuit parameters (such as power, performance, and error characteristics) of parts across the die, die-to-die and over time due to changing operating conditions and age-related wear-out. Instance and temperature-dependent variation, particularly in power consumption, has a direct impact on application quality and system lifetime for battery powered, energy constrained systems. In this work we discuss software approaches to handle variability in power consumption of embedded systems. We characterize power variation in contemporary embedded processors, introduce tools for the evaluation of variability-aware software, and focus on two variability-aware software approaches: task activation control through variability-aware duty cycle scheduling and algorithmic choice. We measured and characterized active and leakage power for a contemporary ARM Cortex M3 processor, and found that across a temperature range of 20-60°C there is 10% variation in active power, and 14x variation in leakage power. As embedded processors in more advanced technologies become commonplace, the variations will increase significantly. While contemporary hardware already suffers from variability, the evaluation of a variability-aware software stack faces two main challenges: first, commercially available platforms typically do not provide means to sense or discover variability. Second, even if this sensing capability was available, evaluating a software stack across a statistically significant number of hardware samples and ambient conditions would prove exceedingly costly and time consuming. We introduce VarEMU, an extensible framework for the evaluation of variability-aware software that provides users with the means to emulate variations in power consumption and fault characteristics and to sense and adapt to these variations in software. We introduce variability aware duty cycling methods and a duty cycle abstractions for embedded operating systems (TinyOS and FreeRTOS) that allow applications to to explicitly specify lifetime and minimum duty cycle or quality requirements for individual tasks, and dynamically adjust duty cycle rates and task activation schedules so that overall quality of service is maximized in the presence of power variability. We show that variability-aware duty cycling yields a 3-22x improvement in total active time over schedules based on worst-case estimations of power, with an average improvement of 6.4x across a wide variety of deployment scenarios based on collected temperature traces. Conversely, datasheet power specifications fail to meet required lifetimes by 7-15%, with an average 37 days short of a required lifetime of one year. Finally, we show that a target localization application using variability-aware duty cycle yields a 50% improvement in quality of results over one based on worst-case estimations of power consumption.In addition to task activation control though duty cycling, a choice of software to be executed provides further opportunities for optimization. We introduce ViRUS (Virtual function Replacement Under Stress), an application runtime support system that adjusts service quality according to variability-aware policies. In ViRUS, different code paths implement the same function with varying quality-of-service for different energy costs. Mutations from one version to another are triggered by monitoring vectors of variability and energy stress. We demonstrate ViRUS with a framework for transparent function replacement in shared libraries and a polymorphic version of the standard C math library in Linux. Application case studies show how ViRUS can tradeoff upwards of 4% degradation in application quality for a band of upwards of 50% savings in energy consumption.


Deep learning has achieved overwhelming success, spanning from discriminative models to generative models. In particular, deep generative models have facilitated a new level of performance in a myriad of areas, ranging from media manipulation to sanitized dataset generation. Despite the great success, the potential risks of privacy breach caused by generative models have not been analyzed systematically. In this paper, we focus on membership inference attack against deep generative models that reveals information about the training data used for victim models. Specifically, we present the first taxonomy of membership inference attacks, encompassing not only existing attacks but also our novel ones. In addition, we propose the first generic attack model that can be instantiated in a large range of settings and is applicable to various kinds of deep generative models. Moreover, we provide a theoretically grounded attack calibration technique, which consistently boosts the attack performance in all cases, across different attack settings, data modalities, and training configurations. We complement the systematic analysis of attack performance by a comprehensive experimental study, that investigates the effectiveness of various attacks w.r.t. model type and training configurations, over three diverse application scenarios (i.e., images, medical data, and location data).


The research field is exhibition information design.The research consisted of adapting two historical venues in Rome and one in Prague for a exhibition of British Lifestyle Design. The exhibition participants included key figures in British design such as Ron Arad who was represented by his classic sofas. The exhibition was curated by Karin-Beate Phillips, Director of British European Design Group. The researcher project title was 'Programme Director Media'.The researcher's role within the project was to develop the seminar programme and to design/ project manage the installation of projections on the exteriors and interiors of each of the venues. These were required to be evolving during the exhibition in order to accommodate aspects which were present throughout together with those which were time sensitive such as performances and screenings. He also present a paper UK in EU.The projections described the exhibits, illustrated them and gave information about their provenance, and in the case of the seminar series, the key points in the presentations. The projects had to be in Italian in two venues and Czech in the third. They were therefore key to the viewer's interpretation of the exhibition and related seminars.More than this however they were designed to add value in their own right, as part of the overall visual experience of Homo@Habitat. The event was linked to a range of cultural institutions such as the European Festival of Student Theatre involving the UK, Italy, France and Sweden.The research was commissioned by the Government's accredited British European Design Group. Some of the seminar papers were given at further venues under the title 'Creative Britain'. These included the Jacob Javits Centre New York May 2002, Qingdao Industrial Design Association November 2004 and the Designers' Centre Shanghai, March 2006.


Chenopodium quinoa (quinoa) is an emerging crop that produces nutritious grains with the potential to contribute to global food security. Quinoa can also grow on marginal lands, such as soils affected by high salinity. To identify candidate salt tolerance genes in the recently sequenced quinoa genome, we used a multifaceted approach integrating RNAseq analyses with comparative genomics and topology prediction. We identified 219 candidate genes by selecting those that were differentially expressed in response to salinity, were specific to or overrepresented in quinoa relative to other Amaranthaceae species, and had more than one predicted transmembrane domain. To determine whether these genes might underlie variation in salinity tolerance in quinoa and its close relatives, we compared the response to salinity stress in a panel of 21 Chenopodium accessions (14 C. quinoa, 5 C. berlandieri, and 2 C. hircinum). We found large variation in salinity tolerance, with one C. hircinum displaying the highest salinity tolerance. Using genome re-sequencing data from these accessions, we investigated single nucleotide polymorphisms and copy number variation (CNV) in the 219 candidate genes in accessions of contrasting salinity tolerance, and identified 15 genes that could contribute to the differences in salinity tolerance of these Chenopodium accessions.