This paper evaluates the progress of a Latin American population through stages in family planning adoption. The focus is on changes in knowledge of contraception attitudes and practices which occurred over 5 years (1964-69) of widespread public discussion concerning family planning and of program activity in Bogota Colombia. Data from 2 surveys 1 in 1964 and the other in 1969 permit the 1st temporal analysis of family planning adoption for a major metropolitan city in Latin America. Additional data on rural and small urban areas of Colombia from the 2nd survey permit a limited assessment of diffusion of family planning from the city to the nation as a whole. The 1st survey in Bogota revealed moderate to high levels of knowledge of contraceptive methods and generally favorable attitudes to birth limitation. However at this time many women had never spoken to their husbands about the number of children they wanted nor tried a contraceptive method at any time. The 2nd survey showed substantial changes in this picture. The proportion of currently mated women who had spoken to their husbands about family size preference changed from 43 to 62% for an increase of 71%. Fertility fell appreciably over this period especially among younger women. Family planning program services had a significant direct contribution to the adoption process since 36% of mated women had been to a clinic by 1969. The most modern methods of birth control -- the anovulatory pill and the intrauterine device -- which were scarcely known in 1964 were widely known in 1969 and contributed most to the observed increase in current contraceptive practice. However among the previously known methods the simplest method of all withdrawal (coitus interruptus) showed the greatest increase in current practice and remained the most commonly used method. These findings suggest that favorable attitudes and knowledge tend to become rather widespread before levels of husband-wife discussion of family size preferences and levels of contraceptive trial increase appreciably. The results also indicate that contraceptive knowledge and favorable family planning attitudes are spreading rapidly outward from the cities into the rural areas but that contraceptive practice is still predominantly restricted to urban populations. (authors)


In safety science and practice, there have been various safety models, each of them reflecting a particular approach to safety management and accident causality. The large variety of models suggested in literature and applied in practice serve the communication of diverse perspectives towards safety and the need to consider contextual factors, but it does not allow the establishment of a common language within and across organisations and industry sectors. Considering the potential benefits of talking a lingua franca when it comes to safety and inspired by the Standard Model used in particle physics and recent suggestions from relevant studies, we thought of exploring the possibility to introduce a Standard Safety Model (STASAM). As a first step, we focused on four representative safety and accident models widely used, discussed and debated: the Swiss Cheese Model, AcciMap, Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) and Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP). We reviewed literature which compares the particular models, and we listed the strengths and weaknesses of each as a means to set the grounds for the STASAM. The combinations of these models with a focus to host their advantages and avoiding their disadvantages led to a three-level STASAM. The concept STASAM was used in two random incident investigation reports to assess its applicability and visualisation against the original models. The results of the application along with the STASAM concept were reviewed by three safety professionals and three safety researchers. The comments received were in the positive direction and indicated the potential of establishing an inclusive and commonly accepted safety/accident model. The next research phase will be the additional review of the STASAM and its pilot application to a variety of safety events and systems as a means to test its reliability and strengthen its validity.


In the past two decades, the results of a number of epidemiological studies have uncovered an association between excessive light exposure at night and the prevalence of cancer. Whereas the evidence supporting this link is strongest between nighttime light and female breast and male prostate cancer, the frequency of other tumor types may also be elevated. Individuals who have the highest reported increase in cancer are chronic night shift workers and flight attendants who routinely fly across numerous time zones.
There are at least two obvious physiological consequences of nighttime light exposure, i.e., a reduction in circulating melatonin levels and disruption of the circadian system (chronodisruption). Both these perturbations in experimental animals aggravate tumor growth. Melatonin has a long investigative history in terms of its ability to stymie the growth of many tumor types. Likewise, in the last decade chronodisruption has been unequivocally linked to a variety of abnormal metabolic conditions including excessive tumor growth.
This brief review summarizes the processes by which light after darkness onset impedes melatonin production and disturbs circadian rhythms. The survey also reviews the evidence associating the ostensible danger of excessive nighttime light pollution to cancer risk. If an elevated tumor frequency is definitively proven to be a consequence of light at night and/or chronodisruption, it seems likely that cancer will not be the exclusive pathophysiological change associated with the rampant light pollution characteristic of modern societies.


We describe here a case study in compiling a high-resolution forest inventory for central Georgia using the K-nearest neighbor approach with multi-source data and Mean Balancing correction for the estimation bias. In general, multi-source data collected through various incompatible designs cannot be mixed due to intractable variances and unknown bias. Because of this incompatibility abundant information about the environment (i.e. atmospheric conditions, soil composition, spatio-temporal data from nearly 40 years of satellite imaging, and a wealth of site specific studies with sampling for various growth attributes) frequently cannot be used to produce new unbiased estimates for the variables and areas of interest. This study was carried out in central Georgia, and the k-NN approach was used to fuse together various incompatible data from public and private sources. We used the Mean Balancing approach to remove the bias resulting from this data fusion. The result of the study is a derivation of an unbiased high-resolution forest inventory, which can be used for small area's fiber supply assessment analysis.


We consider the problem of estimating the transition probability kernel to be used by a model-based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. We argue that estimating a generative model that minimizes a probabilistic loss, such as the log-loss, might be an overkill because such a probabilistic loss does not take into account the underlying structure of the decision problem and the RL algorithm that intends to solve it. We introduce a loss function that takes the structure of the value function into account. We provide a finite-sample upper bound for the loss function showing the dependence of the error on model approximation error and the number of samples.


Research and discussions about injury rates and their prevention in elite football is one of the hottest topics in the medical and sport science literature. Over the past years, there has been an explosion of the number of publications, including surveys,1 observational, retrospective or prospective2 studies, training interventions and various types of expert opinions and commentaries.3 This array of information are likely useful to improve our understanding of what the best practices may be and, in turn, increase our ability to better prepare, manage and treat players. However, a recent survey has shown that 83% of UEFA clubs do not follow evidenced-based prevention programmes.1 It was also shown that hamstring injuries kept increasing over the last 13 years.2 Taken together, those two papers may suggest that the majority of elite club practitioners likely disregard research findings1 and may therefore be the one to be blamed for those increased injury rates.2

Making supporting staff and coaches responsible for those injuries is easy, especially when considering their perceived typical personality traits (ie, so-called type 2,4 high egos and little open-mindedness and willingness to learn—'why could they be bothered applying the new study findings?'). While this may be true sometimes, the reality is that …


In their introduction to Modern Fiction Studies' 2006 special issue on graphic narratives, Hillary Chute and Marianne DeKoven direct attention to the unique powers of the genre's layered language of text and image, calling these narratives works that are 'in their very structure and grammar, cross-discursive' (768). In graphic narrative, they state, the rhetorical capacities of word and image, often perceived as binary, enter into dialogue. Alison Bechdel uses this cross-discursiveness in a candid, effective and affective representation of the formative experiences captured in Fun Home. To date, however, what has been left out of the conversation on Bechdel's work is how the affective nature of her complex relationship with her father – the anger, guilt and shame Bechdel confronts, which both create and inhibit her self-realization – so well mirrors the historical context in which this relationship occurs. I submit that by framing the narrative of her father's and her own discovery of sexual identity as before and after the seminal historical event of the Stonewall Riots – as the chronology of their biographies dictates – and by choosing the graphic narrative as her medium, Bechdel melds the discursiveness of the late twentieth century homosexual experience with that of the graphic narrative.


Over the past decade, several research efforts have studied the quality of software systems by looking at post-release bugs. However, these studies do not account for bugs that remain dormant (i.e., introduced in a version of the software system, but are not found until much later) for years and across many versions. Such dormant bugs skew our under- standing of the software quality. In this paper we study dormant bugs against non-dormant bugs using data from 20 different open-source Apache foundation software systems. We find that 33% of the bugs introduced in a version are not reported till much later (i.e., they are reported in future versions as dormant bugs). Moreover, we find that 18.9% of the reported bugs in a version are not even introduced in that version (i.e., they are dormant bugs from prior versions). In short, the use of reported bugs to judge the quality of a specific version might be misleading. Exploring the fix process for dormant bugs, we find that they are fixed faster (median fix time of 5 days) than non- dormant bugs (median fix time of 8 days), and are fixed by more experienced developers (median commit counts of developers who fix dormant bug is 169% higher). Our results highlight that dormant bugs are different from non-dormant bugs in many perspectives and that future research in software quality should carefully study and consider dormant bugs.


Although small-group learning is an essential part of classroom instruction in nearly all of todayÕs elementary schools little is known about how teachers actually group students in their classrooms. In the study reported here, multiple observations of 30 fifth-grade teachers in a large urban school district revealed that group compositions for hands-on science instruction varied greatly, both between teachers and within classrooms. Generally, teachers tended to form heterogeneous groups given the composition of their classrooms whereas students tended to form homogeneous groups with respect to gender and ethnicity and to a lesser extent achievement level. However, classroom composition (i.e., percentage minority or low achievers) severely constrained teachersÕ grouping options and in many situations teachers formed groups that contradicted recommended practices. TeachersÕ stated grouping practices on the basis of student achievement level did not correspond to classroom observations. Further factors not explicitly mentioned by teachers, such as ethnicity, predominated many group compositions. Implications of these findings for practice and further research are discussed.


Biodamageability is one of the weak sides of the cotton-plant fiber. Economic loss from the cotton damage caused by microorganisms is significant. Toxic chemical compounds are used to preserve the cotton fiber. This has a negative impact on environment and cotton consumers. The degree of the cotton biodamage depends on selection variety, types of cultivation, storage conditions and other factors. One of the directions in cotton planting is selection of the boll-stained cotton. It was established that naturally colored cotton of different varieties has high biostability. It allows to product hypoallergenic, eco-friendly textile and reduces impact on the environment. The purpose of the work is stability evaluation for microbiological damage of different cotton varieties including those naturally colored during long-term storage in different temperature and humidity conditions. The research lasted for 10 years. The species composition of the cotton microflora was determined, the impact of fiber on microorganisms and dynamics of samples biodamage was studied in the work. The results obtained show preservation of microflora viability on cotton fiber when storing it under normal conditions for a long-term period. With an th, the fiber destruction processes are amplified. It was established that cotton damage degree depends on the regimes and terms of its storage as well as the color of the fiber. Nature-colored cotton is more resistant for microorganisms, some varieties inhibit the growth of mold fungi.


Objectives: To evaluate whether a combination of supervised exercise training and ginkgo biloba treatment is a better treatment than exercise training alone for patients with peripheral arterial disease. Design: A 24-week double-blind, placebo-controlled ginkgo biloba trial with the first 12-week period as a non-exercise control stage and the second 12-week period as an exercise training stage. Setting: Exercise physiology laboratory. Subjects: Twenty-two subjects with peripheral arterial disease. Interventions: The subjects were randomly allocated into a ginkgo or a placebo group. During the first stage, the ginkgo group ingested standardized ginkgo biloba tablets with a daily dosage of 240 mg, while the placebo group received placebo tablets. During the second stage, all subjects engaged in a supervised treadmill-walking programme while continuing to take the same dosage of ginkgo biloba or placebo tablets. Main measures: Walking capacity on treadmill, oxygen consumption during exercise, peripheral haemodynamics and blood viscosity were measured at baseline, and after the first and the second stages of treatment. Results: The ginkgo group did not show significant changes in most of the measured variables after each stage of treatment, except that the maximal walking time was significantly increased after the combined treatment (from 236 ± 112 seconds to 557 ± 130 seconds, P < 0.001). However, similar response was also found in the placebo group after exercise training (from 384 ± 125 seconds to 820 ± 146 seconds, P < 0.001). Conclusion: Supervised exercise training combined with ginkgo biloba treatment did not produce greater beneficial effects than exercise training alone in patients with peripheral arterial disease.


Consumption Liquid milk can be delivered to the consumer after various heat treatments: none (raw milk), pasteurized or sterilized, and either packaged or not (although sterilized milk is, of course, always packaged). The properties of liquid milk that require the most attention are safety to the consumer, shelf life, and flavor. Safety is, of course, essential and consumption of raw milk cannot be considered safe. Consequently, the delivery of raw milk is prohibited or severely curtailed in many countries. Likewise, delivering milk that is not packaged may involve health hazards. The relative importance of other quality marks depends on usage. Milk can be consumed as a beverage, in which case flavor is of paramount importance. Most consumers tend to dislike a cooked flavor and, therefore, low-intensity pasteurization is generally preferred. Others use milk primarily in coffee or tea, in cooking, in baking, etc., where the absence of a cooked flavor is mostly not essential (if not too intense) and shelf life may be the most important quality mark. Consequently, sterilized milk is often favored. One may even use milk preserves like evaporated milk, dried milk, or — for some uses — sweetened condensed milk.


A large amount of blended cement, special cement, and shaft kiln manufactured cement is produced in China. These cements form the basis for China's cement standards. These standards have many special features and constitute a unique cement standard system. The standard cements are divided into three groups: common cement, special performance cement, and special purpose cement. As common cements, which include ordinary portland cement, portland blast-furnace cement, portland pozzolana cement, and portland composite slag cement, etc., the required and allowable blended materials incorporated in their specifications are somewhat like those in the European cement standard EN V 197, but some kinds of metallurgical slags are allowed into composite portland cement to make good use of industrial wastes, and a series of strength grades (including type R, which have higher early strength criteria) are stipulated for satisfying the various technical level of cement production and the different construction requirements. As to the special performance cement group, there are several series of cements such as portland cement, aluminatc cement, sulfo-aluminate cement, and ferro-aluminate cement, etc. The specifications for these cements are characteristic of their performance requirements: moderate-heat portland cement stipulates the criteria for heat of hydration; rapid-hardening aluminate cement defines criteria for strength within three days; expansive sulfo-aluminate cement requires criteria for rate of expansion; and self-stressing ferro-aluminate cements need criteria for self-stressing values, etc. In addition, oil well cement and masonry cement, etc., belong in the special purpose cement group. A graphical standards system is presented which includes fundamental standards, product standards, and test method standards. Owing to the different strength of the test methods, the cement strength value cannot be compared between different countries. The author suggests an international cooperative test program be organized for establishing the interrelation of mortar strength between different testing methods and the ISO method to facilitate international trade and to exchange information.


Abstract. The exploration of aerosol retrieval synergies from
diverse combinations of ground-based passive Sun-photometric measurements
with collocated active lidar ground-based and radiosonde observations using
versatile Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere
and Surface Properties (GRASP) algorithm is presented. Several potentially fruitful aspects of observation synergy were considered. First, a set of passive and active ground-based observations collected
during both day- and nighttime was inverted simultaneously under the
assumption of temporal continuity of aerosol properties. Such an approach
explores the complementarity of the information in different observations
and results in a robust and consistent processing of all observations. For
example, the interpretation of the nighttime active observations usually
suffers from the lack of information about aerosol particles sizes, shapes
and complex refractive index. In the realized synergy retrievals, the
information propagating from the nearby Sun-photometric observations
provides sufficient constraints for reliable interpretation of both day- and nighttime lidar observations. Second, the synergetic processing of such complementary observations with
enhanced information content allows for optimizing the aerosol model used in the retrieval. Specifically, the external mixture of several aerosol
components with predetermined sizes, shapes and composition has been
identified as an efficient approach for achieving reliable retrieval of
aerosol properties in several situations. This approach allows for achieving consistent and accurate aerosol retrievals from processing stand-alone advanced lidar observations with reduced information content about aerosol columnar properties. Third, the potential of synergy processing of the ground-based
Sun-photometric and lidar observations, with the in situ backscatter sonde
measurements was explored using the data from KAUST.15 and KAUST.16 field
campaigns held at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in the August of 2015 and 2016. The inclusion of radiosonde data has been demonstrated to provide significant additional constraints to validate and improve the accuracy and scope of aerosol profiling. The results of all retrieval setups used for processing both synergy and
stand-alone observation data sets are discussed and intercompared.


The goal of this thesis is on improving the understanding of mechanical and tribological mechanisms in microelectronic wire bonding. In particular, it focusses on the development and application of quantitative models of ultrasonic (US) friction and interfacial wear in wire bonding. Another objective of the thesis is to develop a low-stress Cu ball bonding process that minimizes damage to the microchip. These are accomplished through experimental measurements of in situ US tangential force by piezoresistive microsensors integrated next to the bonding zone using standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The processes investigated are thermosonic (TS) Au ball bonding on Al pads (Au-Al process), TS Cu ball bonding on Al pads (Cu-Al process), and US Al wedge-wedge bonding on Al pads (Al-Al process). TS ball bonding processes are optimized with one Au and two Cu wire types, obtaining average shear strength (SS) of more than 120 MPa. Ball bonds made with Cu wire show at least 15% higher SS than those made with Au wire. However, 30% higher US force induced to the bonding pad is measured for the Cu process using the microsensor, which increases the risk of underpad damage. The US force can be reduced by: (i) using a Cu wire type that produces softer deformed ball results in a measured US force reduction of 5%; and (ii) reducing the US level to 0.9 times the conventionally optimized level, the US force can be reduced by 9%. It is shown that using a softer Cu deformed ball and a reduced US level reduces the extra stress observed with Cu wire compared to Au wire by 42%. To study the combined effect of bond force (BF) and US in Cu ball bonding, the US parameter is optimized for eight levels of BF. For ball bonds made with conventionally optimized BF and US settings, the SS is ≈ 140 MPa. The amount of Al pad splash extruding out of bonded ball interface (for conventionally optimized BF and US settings) is between 10– 12 μm. It can be reduced to 3–7 μm if accepting a SS reduction to 50–70 MPa. For excessive US settings, elliptical shaped Cu bonded balls are observed, with the major axis perpendicular to the US direction. By using a lower value of BF combined with a reduced US level, the US force can be reduced by 30% while achieving an average SS of at least 120 MPa. These process settings also aid in reducing the amount of splash by 4.3 μm. The US force measurement is like a signature of the bond as it allows for detailed insight into the tribological mechanisms during the bonding process. The relative amount of the third harmonic of US force in the Cu-Al process is found to be five times smaller than in iii the Au-Al process. In contrast, in the Al-Al process, a large second harmonic content is observed, describing a non-symmetric deviation of the force signal waveform from the sinusoidal shape. This deviation might be due to the reduced geometrical symmetry of the wedge tool. The analysis of harmonics of the US force indicates that although slightly different from each other, stick-slip friction is an important mechanism in all these wire bonding variants. A friction power theory is used to derive the US friction power during Au-Al, Cu-Al, and Al-Al processes. Auxiliary measurements include the current delivered to the US transducer, the vibration amplitude of the bonding tool tip in free-air, and the US tangential force acting on the bonding pad. For bonds made with typical process parameters, several characteristic values used in the friction power model such as the ultrasonic compliance of the bonding system and the profile of the relative interfacial sliding amplitude are determined. The maximum interfacial friction power during Al-Al process is at least 11.5 mW (3.9 W/ mm2), which is only about 4.8% of the total electrical power delivered to the US transducer. The total sliding friction energy delivered to the Al-Al wedge bond is 60.4 mJ (20.4 J/ mm2). For the Au-Al and Cu-Al processes, the US friction power is derived with an improved, more accurate method to derive the US compliance. The method uses a multi-step bonding process. In the first two steps, the US current is set to levels that are low enough to prevent sliding. Sliding and bonding take place during the third step, when the current is ramped up to the optimum value. The US compliance values are derived from the first two steps. The average maximum interfacial friction power is 10.3 mW (10.8 W/mm2) and 16.9 mW (18.7 W/mm2) for the Au-Al and Cu-Al processes, respectively. The total sliding friction energy delivered to the bond is 48.5 mJ (50.3 J/mm2) and 49.4 mJ (54.8 J/mm2) for the AuAl and Cu-Al processes, respectively. Finally, the sliding wear theory is used to derive the amount of interfacial wear during AuAl and Cu-Al processes. The method uses the US force and the derived interfacial sliding amplitude as the main inputs. The estimated total average depth of interfacial wear in AuAl and Cu-Al processes is 416 nm and 895 nm, respectively. However, the error of estimation of wear in both the Au-Al and the Cu-Al processes is ≈ 50%, making this method less accurate than the friction power and energy results. Given the error in the determination of compliance in the Al-Al process, the error in the estimation of wear in the Al-Al process might have been even larger; hence the wear results pertaining to the Al-Al process are not discussed in this study.


Analysis of  moringa o leifera Lam (Moringaceae) product marketing and its' effect on environment in South East, Nigeria was studied . Specifically, the objectives of the study are to describe the socio-economic characteristic of moringa product marketers, identify the various forms in which moringa are used, determine the marketing margin and marketing efficiency of marketing moringa oleiferia,   analyze the determinant factors to moringa oleifera marketing, identify  the effects of moringa marketing on the environment, identify the technologies used to cushion the effects of moringa marketing on the environment, determine the effect of the marketers' socio-economic characteristics on their technology adoption decision and identify the constraint to marketing of moringa oleifera products in the study area. A multistage random sampling procedure was used to select120 moringa products marketers in the study area. Primary and secondary data were used to elicit information from the respondents. The objectives of the study were addressed using percentage responses, marketing margin and marketing efficiency models, multiple regression analysis and factor analysis. The results show that the majority of the marketers were males, youthful, large household size, married, educated and members of cooperatives. The most important form of moringa products consumed in the study area was leaf, followed seed and leaf powder. Furthermore, the marketing margin and marketing efficiency results showed to be positive and high respectively. Among the functional forms estimated, the linear form was chosen as the lead equation based on econometric and statistical reasons. The coefficients of age, education and membership of cooperatives had a direct relationship with marketing efficiency. The effects of moringa marketing on the environment were noise, odour, flies, littering of the environment with moringa residues, rodents and mosquito  The technologies used to guide against environmental degradation by moringa marketing were use of nose and  mouth protective gadgets, good ventilation, proper disposal of wastes, proper maintenance of processing plant and use of hearing protective device (HPD)  The determinant factors to the adoption of technology by marketers against environmental dilapidation were household size, educational level, access to credit, membership of organization. Important constraints militating against moringa marketing in the study area were low returns, competition, no financial support, inadequate funding, inadequate raw materials, high cost of transportation and poor communication. These variables fell between factor loading of 0.30 and above at 10 % overlapping variance as contained in factor analysis result. Policies options aimed at enhancing marketers access to free and affordable education, encourage marketers to form cooperatives in order to reduce the transaction cost of marketing and reduce the effects of marketing on te environment,  processor of moringa leaves into powdered form should wear protective devices and for marketers' access to educational programmes on pollutions and likely consequences. Keywords; Analysis, , Moringa o leifera Lam, Marketing, effect, Environment South East, Nigeria


Mathematical modeling of human running is a challenging problem from analytical and computational points of view. Purpose of the present research is to develop and study formulations and computational procedures for simulation of natural human running. The human skeletal structure is modeled as a mechanical system that includes link lengths, mass moments of inertia, joint torques, and external forces. The model has 55 degrees of freedom, 49 for revolute joints and 6 for global translation and rotation. Denavit-Hartenberg method is used for kinematics analysis and recursive Lagrangian formulation is used for the equations of motion. The dynamic stability is achieved by satisfying the zero moment point (ZMP) condition during the ground contact phase. Bspline interpolation is used for discretization of the joint angle profiles. The joint torque square, impulse at the foot strike, and yawing moment are included in the performance measure. A minimal set of constraints is imposed in the formulation of the problem to simulate natural running motion. Normal running with arm fixed, slow jog along curves, and running with upper body motion are formulated. Simulation results are obtained for various cases and discussed. The cases are running with different foot locations, running with backpack, and running with different running speeds. Also, extreme cases are performed. Each case gives reasonable cause and effect results. Furthermore, sparsity of the formulation is studied. The results obtained with the formulation are validated with the experimental data. The proposed formulation is robust and can predict natural motion of human running.


The Visean stage of the Mississippian was a time of rapid tetrapod diversification which marks the earliest appearance of temnospondyls, microsaurs and the limbless aïstopods. Tetrapod finds from this stage are very rare and only a dozen sites are known worldwide. Here we announce the discovery of a new Visean site in Fife, Scotland, of Asbian age, and from it describe a new species of the baphetoid Spathicephalus. These specimens represent the oldest known baphetoid by three million years, yet belong to the most specialized members of the clade. Unlike typical baphetoids with large marginal teeth and palatal fangs characteristic of early tetrapods, spathicephalids had very broad flattened heads with a dentition consisting of a large number of small, uniform teeth. Spathicephalids were probably one of the earliest tetrapod groups to use suction feeding on small, aquatic prey. Palynological and sedimentological analysis indicates that the new fossil bed was deposited in a large, stratified, freshwater lake that became increasingly saline.


3-D interactive music video using the Palm Top Theatre for the iphone.  To investigate new ways of engaging audences with music - a 3D music video using both the Palm Top Theatre and accelerometer for iphone. The purpose was to get additional press interest by using a new method of deliverly. The focus of the project was about aiming for a niche audience of influential journalists and bloggers to hype the artists work.
Video directed and edited by Philip Connolly. Music by Beatie Wolfe. Programming by Theo Watson


We use a newly-compiled dataset to investigate whether and why European Union countries implement the economic policy recommendations they receive from the EU. We find that implementation rates are modest and have worsened at a time when the economic environment has improved and market pressure on sovereigns has subsided. Implementation has deteriorated in particular among countries designated as having 'excessive' macroeconomic imbalances. We then empirically test three factors that could influence implementation rates - (i) the macroeconomic environment; (ii) pressure from financial markets; and (iii) the strength of EU-level macroeconomic surveillance. The econometric estimates indicate that larger fiscal and current account deficits and a higher probability of sovereign default increase the likelihood of implementation. However, stronger surveillance under the Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure (MIP) does not seem to drive implementation rates. The quality of governance, the fragmentation of government coalitions and fewer recommendations received are connected to increased implementation, whereas for countries under the MIP, implementation slowed during election years. Finally, recommendations on financial services have a much greater chance of being implemented, whereas those on broadening the tax base, the long-term sustainability of public finance and pension systems, and competition in services are much less likely to be implemented. Overall, economic fundamentals and political economy factors provide only a small part of the answer to the question of why countries reform - ultimately, reform decisions are down to factors outside of the models.


This article tracks the genesis of one of the EU's most established meta-narratives, that of Europeanization-through-case-law. Instead of studying this theory of European integration as an explanatory frame, I consider it here as the phenomenon to be explained and accounted for. Thereby, the paper does not try to assess how heuristic and explicative it may be, but rather analyzes what is at stake in its genesis as a dominant theory of Europeanization. I trace its emergence in the conflicting theorizations of the relationship between Law and the European Communities that come along with the European Court of Justice's 'landmark' decisions (Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL). This approach helps seizing the genesis of a specific and - at the time - rather unlikely political model for Europe in which a judge (the ECJ) is regarded as the very locus of European integration's dynamics as well as the best mediator and moderator of both Member States' "conservatism" and individuals' "potential excesses". It also allows to grasp the emergence of Euro-implicated lawyers as a group endowed with a set of critical functions (integration) and missions (protecting the EC treaties) the theory assigned them.


Higher-level parallel programming languages can be difficult to implement efficiently on parallel machines. This paper shows how a flexible, compiler-controlled memory system can help achieve good performance for language constructs that previously appeared too costly to be practical.
Our compiler-controlled memory system is called Loosely Coherent Memory (LCM). It is an example of a larger class of Reconcilable Shared Memory (RSM) systems, which generalize the replication and merge policies of cache-coherent shared-memory. RSM protocols differ in the action taken by a processor in response to a request for a location and the way in which a processor reconciles multiple outstanding copies of a location. LCM memory becomes temporarily inconsistent to implement the semantics of C** parallel functions efficiently. RSM provides a compiler with control over memory-system policies, which it can use to implement a language's semantics, improve performance, or detect errors. We illustrate the first two points with LCM and our compiler for the data-parallel language C**.


This article revisits the arguments made by John Avery Jones in 1996 for "less detailed legislation interpreted in accordance with principles." His plea has been influential but perhaps not completely understood. Recent developments in the UK, particularly in the area of so-called "principles-based drafting" may not have assisted in promoting this cause. It is frequently argued that real improvements in tax law require a coherent underlying policy, not just drafting changes. Obviously, drafting techniques will not cure a poorly structured tax and so ideally the starting point would be improved policy. But we cannot afford to wait for a total policy overhaul. A different approach to the way we legislate could both improve the way we think about policy and result in better implementation, application and legitimacy in decision making. Principles-based drafting is not a solution to all ills. Nevertheless, it could offer one route, in appropriate cases, to improvement as well as, in other cases, highlighting the need for more fundamental reform. We should not give up this experiment simply because it has not yet delivered total success. No new drafting technique can deliver a perfect tax system, but it is worth persevering with principles-based legislation.


For the first time ever in the United States, earthquake supplemental damping devices have been installed in a building in San Francisco. The devices used are Added Damping and Stiffness (ADAS) elements which consist of steel plates that deform plastically during severe earthquakes to dissipate energy. The ADAS elements were used with steel chevron braces as part of the seismic retrofit scheme for a two-story, non-ductile concrete frame structure built in 1987. The building suffered both structural and non-structural damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and appeared to be a life safety hazard for a major earthquake. The ADAS retrofit scheme was selected over other more conventional schemes, in part because the design seismic force could be limited to the capacity of the existing foundation system. The paper summarizes the seismic analyses performed (linear and nonlinear), unique design details, the permit approval process, and final construction.


The sense of smell has widely been viewed as inferior to the other senses. This is reflected in the lack of treatment of olfaction in ethnographies and linguistic descriptions. We present novel data from the olfactory lexicon of Seri, a language isolate of Mexico, which sheds new light onto the possibilities for olfactory terminologies. We also present the Seri smellscape, highlighting the cultural significance of odors in Seri culture that, along with the olfactory language, is now under threat as globalization takes hold and traditional ways of life are transformed.


Recently, a claim was made, on the basis of the German Google Books 1-gram corpus (Michel et al. , Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books. Science 2010; 331 : 176–82), that there was a linear relationship between six non-technical non-Nazi words and three 'explicitly Nazi words' in times of World War II (Caruana-Galizia. 2015. Politics and the German language: Testing Orwell's hypothesis using the Google N-Gram corpus. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities [Online]. (accessed 15 April 2015)). Here, I try to show that apparent relationships like this are the result of misspecified models that do not take into account the temporal aspect of time-series data. The main point of this article is to demonstrate why such analyses run the risk of incorrect statistical inference, where potential effects are both meaningless and can potentially lead to wrong conclusions.


This is a summary of the publication Putting nature on the map, which aims to use Guidelines for Applying Protected Area Management Categories (Dudley, 2008) to identify all the places in the UK that meet the IUCN definition of a protected area, and to assign to them one of the six IUCN protected area management categories and four protected area governance types. This report also identifies ten detailed recommendations for applying the Putting Nature on the Map (PNOTM) approach. Then, based on the results from PNOTM, the report reflects on the wider significance of this work, particularly addressing the need for a new emphasis on the role of protected areas in the UK. This leads to one final recommendation addressed to IUCN NCUK for a Programme of Work on UK Protected Areas, to follow on from its support for PNOTM, and build on its results. The other hope is for this report to offer a much richer picture of protected nature in the UK and to inspire and guide similar projects to implement the 2008 Guidelines in other countries.


ABSTRACT Virulent and attenuated Brucella abortus strains attach to and penetrate nonprofessional phagocytic HeLa cells. Compared to pathogenic Brucella, the attenuated strain 19 hardly replicates within cells. The majority of the strain 19 bacteria colocalized with the lysosome marker cathepsin D, suggesting thatBrucella-containing phagosomes had fused with lysosomes, in which they may have degraded. The virulent bacteria prevented lysosome-phagosome fusion and were found distributed in the perinuclear region within compartments resembling autophagosomes.


The doubly circular relations of the major and minor keys based on all twelve pitchclasses can be depicted in toroidal models. We demonstrate a convergence of derivations from the different bases of conventional harmonic theory and recent experiments in music psychology. We present a formalization of the music-theoretical derivation from Gottfried Weber's 1817 chart of tone-centers by using a topographic ordering map. We find the results to be consistent with Krumhansl and Kessler's 1982 visualization of perceptual ratings.


AIMS
To determine relationships between drug use "hardness" (defined in increasing order of hardness as no drug use, marijuana use, non-injected heroin or cocaine use, crack smoking and injection drug use) and prevalences of several sexually transmissible infections among young adults in a high-risk neighbourhood. Drug users, particularly injection drug users and crack smokers, may be a core group for some sexually transmitted infections.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional survey and assays of young adults from (a) a household probability sample and (b) a targeted sample of youth who have used injected drugs, crack, other cocaine or heroin.

SETTING
Bushwick, an impoverished New York City minority neighbourhood with major drug markets.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 363 18-24-year-olds from a household probability sample; 165 Bushwick 18-24-year-olds who have used injected drugs, crack, other cocaine or heroin.

MEASUREMENTS
Drug use by self-report; serum- and urine-based assays for HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia and herpes simplex (type 2).

FINDINGS
Household-sample prevalences: HIV, hepatitis C and syphilis, 1%; gonorrhoea 3%; chlamydia 5%; past or present hepatitis B infection 8%; herpes simplex (type 2) 18%. In combined household and targeted samples, hepatitis C and HIV were concentrated among drug injectors. Herpes simplex (type 2), syphilis and hepatitis B increased among women with "hardest drug ever used".

CONCLUSIONS
Using "harder" drugs is associated with some but not all of these infections. Prevention efforts should help youth avoid unsafe sex and higher-risk drugs.


Stardust is newly-formed in the ejected shells of gas that surround stars towards the end of their lives. Observations of the thermal emission from this dust, which is at relatively low temperatures ( T = 50–200 K), in the circumstellar shells around these stars indicate that the dust consists of both amorphous and crystalline materials. The observed solid phases include: almost pure crystalline Mg-rich silicates (forsterite and clinoenstatite), amorphous silicates, diopside, spinel, oxides (corundum and Fe 0.9 Mg 0.1 O), and also carbon-rich solids such as: (hydrogenated) amorphous carbons, aromatic hydrocarbons and silicon carbide. Crystalline grains with isotopic signatures that indicate that they formed around evolved stars, and that therefore pre-date the formation of the solar system ( e.g. , the pre-solar silicate, nanodiamond, silicon carbide, graphite, corundum, spinel, hibonite, titanium carbide and silicon nitride grains), have now been extracted from primitive meteorites. Pre-solar forsterite and amorphous silicate grains have also been extracted from interplanetary dust particles. The dust formed around evolved stars is ejected into the surrounding interstellar medium by the relatively benign effects of stellar winds, where it is subject to stochastic and violent processing in fast supernova-generated shock waves. In this medium between the stars all the silicate dust appears to be completely amorphous and it is generally thought that dust processing, via ion irradiation/implantation in shocks and/or by cosmic rays, leads to the amorphisation of the crystalline silicate grains that were formed around the evolved stars. The formation of the dust, in circumstellar environments and subsequently ejected into the interstellar medium, is thus balanced by destructive processes that erode and eventually destroy it. This paper introduces the subject of interstellar, circumstellar and pre-solar dust composition (Astromineralogy), discusses where the dust comes from, how it evolves and what its eventual fate might be.


Accepting Diller's challenge to justify "global atheism," despite its supposed crushing burden of knowledge, this paper argues that the global atheist bears no extraordinary burden. In fact, all atheism is global atheism, as an atheist lacks any and all god-beliefs; while a local theist, who accepts one of the myriad god-beliefs over all others, has a special burden to account for that choice. Surveying the diversity of god-concepts across religions and how atheists dismiss and discard them, this paper provides an inductive and philosophical foundation of global atheism—as well as illustrating that local theisms are more prone to blending and overlapping than allowed in Diller's scheme.


Background/purpose: Recently, postoperative delirium (POD) has become a major problem in the perioperative management of general anesthesia in elderly patients. In this study, the general anesthesia and perioperative management of elderly patients aged 75 years or older undergoing non-major oral and maxillofacial surgery, and the incidence of POD, were retrospectively investigated, and the risk factors associated with them were determined.
Materials and methods: The study was performed by retrospectively investigating patients' medical records. The items investigated included: patient characteristics, dental diagnosis, concomitant general diseases, including dementia, preoperative laboratory data, anesthesia method (induction and maintenance of anesthesia), changes in blood pressure during anesthesia, duration of anesthesia, duration of surgery, perioperative complications, dose of anesthetics at induction, use of hemodynamic agents, and changes in pre- and postsurgical cognitive function. The Mann-Whitney U test and logistic regression analysis were used for statistical analysis. A significance level of p<0.05 was set for each test.
Results and conclusions: The participants were 42 patients (15 males and 27 females) with a median age of 81 years. Six patients were preoperatively diagnosed with dementia. The risk factors for POD identified were preoperative diagnosis of dementia, higher age and longer duration of anesthesia. No other factors were significantly related to the risk of POD. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that a preoperative diagnosis of dementia correlated with postoperative delirium. Six patients developed POD within several hours or 1 day after the end of anesthesia; five of the six patients were diagnosed with dementia preoperatively.


In the petrochemical plant, the flammable materials are processed so that there exists risk of fire and/or explosion accidents. They come from the leakage of raw materials or petrochemical products from tubes or tanks. If the leakage occurs inside a reacting furnace with high temperature and pressure, it should lead to serious casualty. To prevent accidents or minimize the damage from these accidents, one should understand the behaviour of flame from a ruptured pipe inside the furnace. In the present study, a large eddy simulation was conducted to investigate flame propagation characteristics from ruptured reactor tube in a naphtha cracking furnace to understand flame propagation pattern and heat and mass transfer inside the furnace to generate secondary accident. Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) was used for the simulation and the number of grid points were around 700,000. The cracking furnace has burners at the bottom part to heat the reactor tubes and combustion gas flows out at the exit located on top of the furnace. Ruptured part was made on the reactor tube with the dimension of 10% of tube diameter and placed near the burner. Leakage flame starts from the ruptured part and evolved to be merged with the fire from burners and generate separated flamelets. Temperature inside the furnace rises higher than the safe temperature of the pipe material, which raises the possibility of successive rupture of neighbour tubes. Unburned hydrocarbons flow out of the vent, which could lead to secondary accidents.


Abstract. Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis) is a widespread shrub across the western United States, and there is great interest among scientists and land managers in its ecology and conservation, particularly with regard to maintaining structural heterogeneity of sagebrush stands for wildlife habitat and livestock forage. Yet little is known about its short-term regeneration dynamics and the implications of those dynamics for changes in stand structure. We examined changes among sagebrush size classes across 3 years, as well as emergence of sagebrush from seed bank and seed rain samples at 2 sagebrush shrubland sites in northern Utah: a lower-density site (1.4 plants/m2, SE 0.11) with no recent history of manipulation and a higher-density site (1.9 plants/m2, SE 0.21) that had recently been treated with herbicide to reduce sagebrush cover. On both sites, numbers of sagebrush plants in the largest size class decreased over the 3-year time period, while dead and medium-sized sagebrush plants increased. At the higher-density herbicide-treated site, this size class shift appeared to be driven by growth of small plants into the medium size class, likely associated with reductions in numbers of (and competition from) large plants. At the lowerdensity site, it appears that densities of large plants declined because the plants shrank in size, possibly due to herbivory. Sagebrush seed rain did not differ between fall and spring assessments. Forbs had the greatest representation in the seed bank, followed by grasses and then sagebrush, though the number of sagebrush seeds may be sufficient for seedling recruitment. These results illustrate that shifts among sagebrush size classes, especially transitions of small shrubs into the medium size class, may be a primary and immediate pathway of stand recovery, in addition to recruitment from seed. These findings underscore the importance of sagebrush stand structure to plant community health and may aid in anticipating responses to disturbances such as drought or herbivory.


Recently, the application of water hydraulics has received considerable attention because of its inherent merits such as environmental friendliness, hygiene, washability, high safety against fire hazard, lower running cost, and availability of tap water. However, water hydraulic systems have lower energy efficiencies than oil hydraulic systems, and this prevents its wider application. The water hydraulic variable displacement pump is yet to be made available in the market as it requires advanced technology and high manufacturing cost. Currently, water hydraulic servo/proportional valve systems or independent metering systems incorporating fixed displacement pumps lose large amounts of energy because of surplus pressure and flow rate. This study is aimed at designing a novel water hydraulic transmission technique to improve the efficiency of motor systems. The proposed system uses two two-way, two-position flow control valves for controlling the pressure at the input port of the hydraulic motor by releasing small amounts of surplus flow rate to a reservoir through these valves. The surplus pressure in such systems can be minimized and made equal to the hose pressure drop. The simulation results showed that the proposed transmission system can improve the energy efficiency of the independent metering system and conventional system to approximately twice and thrice the current value, respectively. In this study, the energy losses in the three systems were also analyzed in detail.


Ferromagnetic hcp cobalt nanoparticles (NPs) are prepared by the polyol process using long-chain carboxylates as shape-directing agents, applying different stirring rates during the synthesis. Particles prepared with a stirring rate lower than ca. 150 rpm are very well-defined anisotropic crystals with smooth lateral facets and low stacking fault densities. The growth proceeds along the c axis of the hcp structure which corresponds to the long axis of the anisotropic particles. Increasing the stirring speed leads to a lowering of the mean aspect ratio, an increase in structural disorder as well as to a strong modification of the particle habit. The resulting Co NPs then display a marked surface roughness. We propose here a mechanism to explain the different morphologies observed. A high stacking fault density triggers the local disorganisation of the adsorbed capping agent layer which in turn favours the diffusion of Co monomers through the organic layer, resulting in the formation of excrescences perpendicular to the long axis of the particles. The magnetic properties are strongly related to the morphological and micro-structural properties of the particles. The stirring rate appears, so far, as the driving force to control the magnetic properties of the NPs from hard magnetic behaviour at low stirring rates to an almost soft magnetic one under high stirring conditions.


This paper provides a modeling methodology for high-capacitance multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) based on the transmission-line theory. To model the high-capacitance MLCC comprised of hundreds of thin layers, a distributed equivalent circuit is modified to a transmission-line circuit. Simpler models for MLCCs are demonstrated using a continued fractions approximation from the transmission-line input impedance equation. A second-order model predicts MLCC characteristics up to the first self-resonant frequency, and a fourth-order model corresponds more accurately to the MLCC behavior up to 100 MHz. In addition, model parameters are extracted using the measured impedance and physical dimension data without optimization.


It is important to have homogenous temperature distribution inside solar receivers and reactors. This paper presents a methodologic adaptation of a burner nozzle for use with a solar receiver to test and compare the performance of mixing effect of the nozzle with that of used in combustion system.Design steps are described per understanding of the influence of burner nozzle and then creation of a new type of injection port for a solar reactor via adaptive modification. Influence of the nozzle design on the temperature distribution inside a solar reactor is studied per experimental testing of the solar receiver with the new nozzle using a 7 kW high flux solar simulator. Finally, a CFD simulation of the flow pattern inside the solar receiver is given. The results show that it is possible to create different flow patterns inside a solar reactor and enhance the mixing of reactants. The results also show that nozzle provides more homogenous temperature distribution inside the solar reactor. This research demonstrates that implementation of a technique used in a mature field like combustion into solar thermal technology may inspire adaptation of other applications from combustion field to solar thermal field which would accelerate developments in emerging solar thermochemical process technology. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) PRES17 conference


This paper revisits the important contribution of Hsieh (2003) to the analysis of the intertemporal allocation of household consumption. Using total expenditures to normalize income from the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend instead of family income and an extended sample of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE), I show that log household spending on nondurables is excessively sensitive to the arrival of this predetermined cash flow, with a statistically significant elasticity between 11% and 16%. The previously estimated non-response can largely be attributed to attenuation bias introduced by substantial measurement error in self-reported before-tax family income, in particular over-reporting of very small values.


The objective of this research is to improve the atomic oxygen resistance of Kapton(TM), a polyimide (PI) made from pyromellitic acid dianhydride (PMDA) and 4,4'-oxydianiline (ODA), while retaining or enhancing the desirable properties of the pure polymer. Toward this end, zirconium-containing complexes and polymers were used to make composites and blends. Tetra(acetylacetonato)zirconium(IV), Zr(acac)4, which is commercially available, was identified as the best zirconium-containing complex for enhancing the atomic oxygen resistance of polyimide composites of the 10 complexes screened. Films prepared from the commercially available polyamic acid (PAA) of PMDA-ODA (DuPont) have good uniformity, flexibility, and tensile strength. A 24-layer 10% (mol) Zr(acac)4/PI composite film showed significant improvement (ca. 20 fold) of atomic oxygen resistance over the pure polyimide. However, 10% (mol) Zr(acac)4 represents an upper concentration limit, above which films undergo cracking upon thermal imidization. In order to increase the Zr complex concentration in PMDA-ODA PI films, while retaining good film properties, [Zr(adsp)2-PMDA]n coordination polymer [bis(4-amino-N,N'-disalicylidene- 1,2-phenylenediamino)zirconium(IV)-pyromellitic dianhydride] and [Zr(adsp)2-PMDA-ODA-PMDA]n terpolymer were synthesized and blended with commercial PAA, respectively. Several techniques were used to characterize the films made from the polymer containing Zr(acac)4. Plasma studies of films having 2% (mol) incremental concentrations of Zr in the Kapton up to 10% (mol) show that the overall rate of erosion is reduced about 75 percent.


A highly efficient aldol triple condensation method was developed for scalable synthesis of conjugated porous polymer networks. This bottom-up strategy features inexpensive starting materials and reagents as well as simple reaction procedures, which are ideal for mass production of functional organic porous materials. The resultant porous material demonstrated quick and selective adsorption of organic small molecules in aqueous solution. In addition, the pristine composition of the reaction mixture enabled solution processing of these cross-linked porous materials through a "soaking–heating–washing" procedure to form composite membranes that are essential for practical applications.


Girl's dress of blue calico cotton with white print. Stand up collar. Inset waist with long, gathered skirt. Long sleeves gathered at wrist with drawstrings. Center front opening with 8 button closure. Bodice lined with what may be sugar sack fabric; skirt unlined.

Skirt is 33" long with 22" waist.


Background: The practice of endotracheal suctioning of ventilator treated patients is necessary to remove secretions to prevent obstruction of the endotracheal-tracheal tube and lower airways. This very common procedure creates a large variety of heart-lung interferences. The closed system enables ventilation during suctioning, avoiding disconnection from the ventilator. Thus, the lesser side-effects of the closed suction system have been thoroughly evaluated rather than its effectiveness of secretion removal. Qualitative and semi-quantitative studies have indicated that the effectiveness of the closed system is inferior to the open one. Optimising the side-effects and effectiveness of the suction procedure is essential to preserve oxygenation in critically ill patients. This also requires adequate monitoring techniques. Suctioning through a fiberoptic bronchoscope (FOB) via a tight seal connector is another form of closed suctioning. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the effectiveness and side-effects of open and closed suctioning manoeuvres, using novel lung-monitoring techniques. Methods: Studies were performed in mechanical lung models, an experimental model of acute lung injury (ALI) in pigs and in ALI patients. Effectiveness of secretion removal was evaluated by weighing the suction system before and after suctioning of gel in a transparent trachea. In ALI model and patients, airway pressure and lung mechanics were measured via a tracheal catheter. A modified N2 wash-out/wash-in method was used for functional residual capacity (FRC) measurements. Electric impedance tomography (EIT) was used to monitor global and regional lung volume changes during different suction manoeuvres. Results: In a mechanical lung, closed suction during volume control ventilation caused high intrinsic PEEP levels at insertion of the catheter. Pressure control ventilation (PCV) produced less intrinsic PEEP. The continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) mode offered the least intrinsic PEEP during insertion of the catheter and least subatmospheric pressure during suctioning. Open suctioning and closed suctioning during CPAP of 0 cmH2O was about five times more effective in regaining gel from an artificial trachea than closed suctioning during PCV or CPAP of 10 cmH2O. In lavaged lungs side-effects were considerable less during closed suction with positive pressure ventilation than during open suction. Closed system suctioning during CPAP of 0 cmH2O caused sideeffects similar to open suctioning. At disconnection FRC decreased with about 50 % of baseline value and further 20 % during open suctioning. Regional compliance deteriorated most in the dorsal parts of the lavaged lung. Postsuction restitution of lung volume and compliance was somewhat slower during pressure controlled than during volume controlled ventilation, both in experimental lung injury and in some ALI patients. Bronchoscopic suction through a tight seal connector in a mechanical lung and in ventilator treated ALI patients caused marked lung volume reduction, especially if the endotracheal tube was too small in relation to the thickness of the bronchoscope. Conclusions: New monitoring strategies such as continuous, bedside FRC measurements with EIT technique and the nitrogen washout/washin method could contribute to a better understanding of the suctioning induced lung collapse and give us knowledge on how to minimize its negative effects, hence develop better clinical routines for handling them. The largest loss of lung volume takes place already at disconnection of the ventilator prior to suctioning. The dorsal regions of lavaged lungs are most affected by disconnection and suctioning. Closed system suctioning prevents lung collapse but is less efficient in removing secretions. Volume control ventilation in the postsuctioning period is a way of recruiting collapsed lung tissue. Bronchoscopic suctioning can cause severe lung collapse, although considered a closed system.


TiO2 thin films were prepared on soda lime glass, fused quartz and stainless steel substrates by liquid phase deposition (LPD) method from a (NH4)2TiF6 aqueous solution upon the addition of boric acid (H3BO3), and then calcined at 500oC for 2 h. The prepared films were characterized with X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). It was found that the substrates obviously influenced the element composition and microstructure of TiO2 thin films. Except Ti, O and a small amount of F and N elements, which came from the precursor solution, some Si (or Fe) element in the thin films deposited on soda lime glass and quartz substrates (or on stainless steel substrate) was confirmed. The Si (or Fe) element in the thin films could be attributed to two sources. One was from the SiF6 2- ions (or FeF6 2- ions) formed by a reaction between the treatment solution and soda lime glass or quartz (or stainless steel) substrates. The other was attributed to the diffusion of Si (or Fe) from the surface of substrates into the TiO2 thin films after calcination at 500oC. The Si (or Fe) element in the TiO2 thin films could behave as a dopant and resulted in the formation of composite SiO2/TiO2 (or Fe2O3/TiO2) thin films on the substrates.


In this paper the authors examine the relationship between local corruption and multinational investment. They construct a model of regulatory capture that highlights the interaction between a corrupt regulator, a local dominant …rm and a multinational …rm. The model suggests that entry by a multinational could have a variety of effects or corruption, both positive and negative. These include: decreasing corruption and regulatory distortion by reducing available rents and diluting incentives for paying bribes; increasing corruption and regulatory distortion by creating "competition" for regulatory bias; and increasing corruption while reducing distortion through dissipative competition for the regulator.


The unemployment gender gap, defined as the difference between female and male unemployment rates, was positive until 1980. This gap virtually disappeared after 1980, except during recessions when men's unemployment rate always exceeds women's. We study the evolution of these gender differences in unemployment from a long-run perspective and over the business cycle. Using a calibrated three-state search model of the labor market, we show that the rise in female labor force attachment and the decline in male attachment can mostly account for the closing of the gender unemployment gap. Evidence from nineteen OECD countries also supports the notion that convergence in attachment is associated with a decline in the gender unemployment gap. At the cyclical frequency, we find that gender differences in industry composition are important in recessions, especially the most recent, but they do not explain gender differences in employment growth during recoveries.


To be green and sustainable is a priority for every human being, especially nowadays in a world of limited natural resources. To be green, sustainable and beautiful is impeccable. ITS as one of the prestigious academic institution in Indonesia, mainly for the eastern part of the country plays an important role for taking part of the global sustainable act. Several programs have been conducted by ITS to maintain the environment green and beautiful, however many areas around the campus can still
be found undeveloped and some are even being neglected. These conditions were caused by the vast area of the campus which obviously needed an extra maintenance.
Based on these problems, the Garden Design Studio at the Interior Design Department of ITS made a study on trying to minimize these abandoned areas. This paper tries to describe method applied and analysis made on several model of garden design while exploring art at the same time as a way to create style, theme or even symbol for each Department at ITS. In the end, this study expect that by realizing the garden design with various style on each department will eventually build awareness to the ITS community for keeping the environment green, creative and stylish.


By looking at concrete examples from elementary geometry, we analyse the manner in which the simplicity of proofs could be defined. We first find that, when presented with two proofs coming from mutually incompatible sets of assumptions, the decision regarding which one is simplest can be made, if at all, only on the basis of reasoning outside of the formal aspects of the axiom systems involved. We then show that, if the axiom system is fixed, a measure of proof simplicity can be defined based on the number of uses of axioms deemed to be deep or valuable, and prove a number of new results regarding the need to use at least three times some axioms in the proof of others. One such major example is Pappus implies Desargues, which is shown to require three uses of Pappus. A similar situation is encountered with Veblen's proof that the outer form of the Pasch axiom implies the inner form thereof. The outer form needs to be used at least three times in any such proof. We also mention the likely conflicting requirements of directness of a proof and the length of a proof. This article is part of the theme issue 'The notion of 'simple proof' - Hilbert's 24th problem'.


Covering: up to 2017 The participation of non-heme dinuclear iron cluster-containing monooxygenases in natural product biosynthetic pathways has been recognized only recently. At present, two families have been discovered. The archetypal member of the first family, CmlA, catalyzes β-hydroxylation of l-p-aminophenylalanine (l-PAPA) covalently linked to the nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) CmlP, thereby effecting the first step in the biosynthesis of chloramphenicol by Streptomyces venezuelae. CmlA houses the diiron cluster in a metallo-β-lactamase protein fold instead of the 4-helix bundle fold of nearly every other diiron monooxygenase. CmlA couples O2 activation and substrate hydroxylation via a structural change caused by formation of the l-PAPA-loaded CmlP:CmlA complex. The other new diiron family is typified by two enzymes, AurF and CmlI, which catalyze conversion of aryl-amine substrates to aryl-nitro products with incorporation of oxygen from O2. AurF from Streptomyces thioluteus catalyzes the formation of p-nitrobenzoate from p-aminobenzoate as a precursor to the biostatic compound aureothin, whereas CmlI from S. venezuelae catalyzes the ultimate aryl-amine to aryl-nitro step in chloramphenicol biosynthesis. Both enzymes stabilize a novel type of peroxo-intermediate as the reactive species. The rare 6-electron N-oxygenation reactions of CmlI and AurF involve two progressively oxidized pathway intermediates. The enzymes optimize efficiency by utilizing one of the reaction pathway intermediates as an in situ reductant for the diiron cluster, while simultaneously generating the next pathway intermediate. For CmlI, this reduction allows mid-pathway regeneration of the peroxo intermediate required to complete the biosynthesis. CmlI ensures specificity by carrying out the multistep aryl-amine oxygenation without dissociating intermediate products.


Advertising exerts a significant impact on consumers' lives (Pollay 1986). On the positive side, advertising has discouraged participation in harmful behaviors (such as drunk driving and drug use), encouraged participation in socially beneficial behaviors (such as conservation and physical fitness), and provided detailed information which consumers need to accurately conduct product evaluations. On the negative side, advertising has misled and deceived consumers resulting in misinformed and inappropriate (and, in the case of health and environmental products, potentially dangerous) product selections. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has primary responsibility for review, regulation, and, when appropriate, elimination of deceptive advertising. However, in response to significant reductions in staffing, the FTC has allocated its resources to areas and claims felt to have the greatest detrimental impact on the consumer.(1) Individual states have attempted to fill the regulatory void left by the FTC but a lack of resources also hinders these efforts. As a consequence, less significant but still deceptive advertising may go unregulated. These latter types of deceptive practices may include * advertising puffery (when believed by consumers), typically defined as the use of exaggeration, superlatives, or hyperbole (Cunningham and Cunningham 1977; Kamins and Marks 1987). * general, rather than detailed, descriptions of product features that lead consumers to draw incorrect inferences about product benefits and performance (Alwitt and Mitchell 1985; Harris et al. 1989). * qualifiers and vague quantifiers. An advertiser might state, "Why do many doctors recommend our aspirin? It may be because of our special formulation." This technique is used in the hope that the consumer will interpret the copy to mean "Most doctors recommend our aspirin because of our special formulation." * small (and, in the case of television, fleeting) qualifiers and disclaimers which generally fail to provide the consumer with important product-related information (Foxman, Muehling, and Moore 1988). Because current regulatory control is insufficient to reduce or eliminate deceptive advertising practices, the task is to identify other methods for reducing the incidence of deceptive advertising practices. Discussions of alternate approaches for reducing the incidence of deceptive advertising are typically framed in terms of economic or political theory: for example, relative appeal of regulatory versus free market solutions (Bloom 1989). As might be expected given the divergence of opinion reflected in these perspectives, no consensus for the "best" approach exists. This research examines the problem from a different perspective. One means for altering an individual's behavior is to first identify the factors which exert the greatest influence on decisionmaking and then develop programs, communications, or activities that specifically target, or at minimum recognize the existence of, these factors (Ajzen 1985; Albert, Aschenbrenner, and Schmalhofer 1988; Fishbein and Ajzen 1975). In other words, once the dominant influences on decisionmaking are identified it is then possible to develop programs that (1) establish or reinforce those influences which lead to decisions in the consumer interest and (2) reduce or eliminate those influences which lead to decisions counter to the consumer interest. Research suggests a number of competing external and internal factors may influence how advertising professionals evaluate alternate decisions related to advertising content and policy (Akaah and Riordan 1989; Strong and Meyer 1992). External influence factors include legal considerations such as laws and regulations, business/performance results (e.g., anticipated business or economic outcomes of the decision), general industry considerations (e.g., standards and professional codes of conduct), corporate considerations (e. …


The importance of riparian forests in maintaining water quality through the retention of sediments and nutrients is well understood; however, little is known about how sediment deposition from upland erosion affects the integrity of these systems. The objectives of this study were to compare decomposition rates, net N mineralization rates, microbial biomass, and other soil properties along a gradient of sedimentation rates in headwater systems. These factors were measured in 17 plots situated within riparian forests of ephemeral streams at Ft. Benning, GA. The soils were analyzed for texture, pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), and bulk density. A decline in soil quality was found with increasing sedimentation rates. Soils in plots with the highest sedimentation rates (highly disturbed or HD) exhibited decreased CEC, temperature, and moisture, and increased bulk density, sand content, and pH. The HD plots also had lower nutrient turnover from decomposition, net N mineralization rates, and microbial C and N. Declines in biogeochemical processes corresponded to sedimentation rates associated with HD plots (1.0 cm yr -1 ). Shifts in biological indicators corresponding to annual variations in climate suggest that the stress of sedimentation may be further exacerbated by drought conditions. The results of this study imply that even low levels of erosional deposition in headwater riparian forests may significantly impact biogeochemical processes in these systems.


Problem definition: Unoccupied waiting feels longer than it actually is. Service providers operationalize this psychological principle by offering entertainment options in waiting areas. A service cluster with a common space provides firms with an opportunity to cooperate in the investment for providing entertainment options while competing on other service dimensions. Academic/practical relevance: Our paper contributes to the literature by being the first to examine co-opetition in a service setting, in addition to developing a novel model of waiting-area entertainment. It also sheds new light on the emerging practice of service clusters and small-footprint retailing. Methodology: Using a queueing theoretic approach, we develop a parsimonious model of co-opetition in a service cluster with a common space. Results: By comparing the case of co-opetition with two benchmarks (monopoly and duopoly competition), we demonstrate that a service provider that would otherwise be a local monopolist can achieve higher profitability by joining a service cluster and engaging in co-opetition. Achieving such benefits, however, requires a cost-allocation scheme that properly addresses an efficiency-fairness tradeoff—the pursuit of fairness may backfire and lead to even lower profitability than under pure competition. Managerial implications: We show that as much as co-opetition facilitates resource sharing in a service cluster, it heightens price competition. Furthermore, as the intensity of price competition increases, surprisingly, service providers may opt to charge higher service fees, albeit while providing a higher entertainment level.


For the blind separation of convolutive mixtures, a huge processing power is required. In this paper we propose a massive parallel implementation of the Independent Component Analysis in the time-frequency domain using the processing power of the current graphics adapters within the CUDA framework. The often used approach for solving the separation task is the transformation to the time-frequency domain where the convolution becomes a multiplication. This allows for the use of an instantaneous ICA algorithm independently in each frequency bin, which greatly reduces complexity. Besides algorithmic simplification, this approach also provides a very founded approach for parallelization. In this work, we propose an implementation using the CUDA framework, which provides an easy interface for the implementation of massive parallel algorithms. The new implementation allows for a speedup in the order of two magnitudes, as it will be shown on real-world examples.


GNU m4 is an implementation of the traditional UNIX macro processor. It is mostly SVR4 compatible, although it has some extensions (for example, handling more than 9 positional parameters to macros). m4 also has builtin functions for including files, running shell commands, doing arithmetic, etc. Autoconf needs GNU m4 for generating configure scripts, but not for running them.


This study investigates the effects of classroom interactions between a) students and students and b) students and teachers on the learning of English passivization by L1 Chinese adult learners of English as a foreign language during the language input and output treatments. In phase 1, both groups were asked to read and underline the input material. After the materials were collected, the participants were required to produce the first reconstruction. After having been exposed to the same input material again, the participants produced the reconstruction the second time. In phase 2, participants wrote a short passage on a given topic and were presented a sample of the writing provided by the participating teacher. The results of this study suggest that classroom interaction and the language output may trigger learners to notice the target form and have a positive effect on improving the learning of a foreign language.


IN 1599 THOMAS MOFFETT wrote an elaborate poem, "The silk wormes and Their Flies,"(1) describing the silkworms he had seen when he was in Tuscany in 1579 and issuing a nationalist call to his countrymen to raise silkworms and to wear silk clothing, a call that countered contemporary sumptuary laws: "rise hearts of English race. / Why should your clothes be courser than the rest?/ ... Begge countrymen no more in sackcloth base, / Being by me of such a trade possest / That shall enrich yourselves and children more / Than ere it did Naples or Spaine before."(2) Contemporaries commented on the richness of English clothing. Looking back to 1574 the historian William Camden wrote "In these dayes had very great excess of Apparel spread it selfe, all over England... whilst they jetted up and downe in theyr Silkes, glittering with gold and silver eyther imbroydered or laced."(3) In the 1590s John Stow documented both the production and retailing of silk. "There were more silk shops in Cheapside during the latter years of Elizabeth than there had formerly been in all England.... In the yeere 1599 was devised, and perfected the Art of knitting or weaving silk stockings, wastecoates, and divers other things, by engines or steele loomes by William Lee."(4) As the income of the landed increased in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, clamor for luxury goods increased.(5) Imports of silk doubled in the 1590s.(6) In 1559 silk fabrics had made up 3.3 percent of the imports to London. By 1622 this had grown to 5.1 percent. The increase in raw materials was more dramatic. In 1559 1.1 percent of the imports were silk; by 1622 this had risen to 7.5%. In the seventeenth century the new silk industry was almost entirely dependent on importation of raw materials. In 1622 London imported silk worth 118,000 [pounds sterling]. By 1640 this had reached 175,000 [pounds sterling], in the 1660s 263,000 [pound sterling] and by the end of the century 344,000 [pounds sterling], amounting throughout the century to 23-29 percent of the total value of imports.(7) Silk, either raw or "thrown into thread for the weavers at Spitalfields and elsewhere to work on," was the most valuable of all the raw material imports throughout the middle and later seventeenth century.(8) It was brought in by the Levant Company from the eastern Mediterranean, later augmented by imports from Italy. Its production, however, was uncertain because it depended on weather in those areas of the Mediterranean where silk worms dined on mulberry leaves. In response to such uncertainty and because of the increasing cost of imports, the Stuarts, like the Medici and the Valois, tried to create domestic silk industries. As a result, interest in sericulture burgeoned in the first decade of the seventeenth century.(9)The campaign to create the raw materials for the silk industry took place both in print and in orders to local magistrates to ensure that the entire population planted mulberry trees. King James argued for import substitution and technology transfer. He eschewed his loss of custom revenues in the name of public utility and jobs. In his preface, "Instructions for the increasing of mulberie Trees and the breeding of silk-wormes, for the making of Silke," James stressed how successful the King of France had been in establishing the silk industry. Adopting Henri IV's approach, James ordered "those of ability" to distribute 10,000 mulberry plants at 3 farthings a plant or 6s. a hundred: all thinges of this nature tending to plantations, increase of Science, and works of industrie, are thinges so naturally pleasing to our owne disposition, as wee shall take it for an argument of extraordinarie affection towards our own person ... our Brother the French King hath since his comming to that Crowne, both begun and brought to perfection the making of Silkes in his countrie, whereby he hath wonne to himself honour, and to his subjects a mervailous increase of wealth. …


Three series of tellurite glass were synthesized by melt quenching technique. The binary tellurite was (TeO2)x (B2O3)1-x with x = 60, 63, 65, 70,73, 75, 78, 80 mol%, the ternary tellurite [(TeO2)x (B2O3)1-x]1-y [Ag2O]y consists of three series that is x = 60, 65 and 70 mol% with y = 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 mol% and quaternary tellurite glass {[(TeO2)x (B2O3)1-x]1-y [Ag2O]y}1-z {AgI}z with z = 5, 8, 10, 13, 15 mol%. The experimental investigation was divided into two categories. The minor experimental work, which provides supportive evidence to elastic and electrical properties, consists of work on x-ray diffraction, thermal expansion coefficient and optical absorption spectra. The main experiments consist of work on ultrasonic and electrical measurements. The electrical measurements consist of dielectric and ac conductivity properties were measured at low frequencies from 10-2 to 106 Hz while ultrasonic properties were determined with MATEC 8000 at 5MHz resonating frequency and at room temperature. The amorphous structures of the glass samples were evident by the XRD spectrum. Thermal expansion measurement showed that thermal expansion coefficient was composition dependence. The optical absorption spectra of these glasses were measured, the Urbach rule has been applied to evaluate the fundamental absorption edges for all the glasses from the obtained spectrum. The optical band gaps were calculated from the absorption edge and it was found that the optical band gap energy, Eopt depended on the glass composition. The optical band gaps energy showed a decreasing pattern with composition for binary and ternary tellurite glass however it behaves otherwise for quaternary tellurite glasses. Elastic moduli were found dependent on compositions; for binary tellurite system the elastic moduli increased with the increase of TeO2 and for ternary and the quaternary system elastic moduli decreased with Ag2O and AgI respectively. The increase of elastic moduli for binary system was due to the mix former effect and the decreased elastic moduli for ternary was due to Ag2O breaking the bonds of the borotellurite glass system while AgI iodide caused network expansion of the glass structure and weakened the glass structure of this quaternary tellurite system. The Debye temperature and mirohardness had the same trend as the elastic moduli but the Poisson's ratio always the inverse of the elastic moduli. The results of dielectric response measurements and the results of the equivalent circuit analysis show that electrode polarization at low frequency, orientation polarization at intermediate frequency and polarization of defect glass structure at high frequency are the most probable process responsible for the observed dielectric behaviour of the studied glass samples. The dependence of the alternating current conductivity with frequency at various fixed temperature revealed three distinguishable regions; high frequency dispersion, low frequency dispersion and electrode polarization. The electrical conductivity of tellurite based glass was found to obey the exponential double power law.


The linguistic history of medieval Sicily is both intriguing and complex. From the classical Roman and Byzantine periods until the Arab invasions of 827, the
majority of the island's population spoke either dialects of Greek or Latin or both. On the arrival of the Normans around 1060, Arabic was the dominant language but by 1250 prestigious Romance vernaculars could be heard almost
everywhere. Of particular importance is the formative period of Norman rule (1061-1194), when the key transitions from an Arab-Muslim to a Latin-Christian island were made. During that time Romance dialects were spoken by many among the ruling elite but most of the indigenous population
continued to communicate in Arabic except in the north-eastern corner of the island where Greek was still used.

The conventional wisdom is that, under Norman rule, Sicily became a social and linguistic 'melting pot'. My thesis challenges this idea by showing how the extant linguistic data does not always present an accurate picture of the wider language situation and by arguing that Norman Sicilian society was often highly fragmented and characterised by a good deal of local variation. To
illustrate this, the thesis traces the distribution and shifting margins of the Arabic-speaking communities and the effects that social change and religious conversion had on these groups. These findings are integrated with
sociolinguistic considerations that surround language, identity and bilingualism. From a purely linguistic perspective, the thesis has a significant technical component and examines the bilingual deeds (Arabic/Greek or
Arabic/Latin) that were issued by the royal administration. Particular attention is given to the type, status and consistency of this unique data and the extent to which it accurately reflects elements of vernacular speech.

As such, the research makes a number of significant contributions to our understanding of the sources for medieval Arabic and the fate of Arabicspeakers in this region. It also adds to our knowledge of how a minority group of northern Europeans came to impose their control over a population of Arabic-speaking Muslims, Arabicised Christians, Greek-speakers, Berbers and Jews on the eve of the expansion that the Crusades would bring to the southern Mediterranean.


Abstract
Objective - This research studied the recent literature of two professions, library and information studies (LIS) and research administration (RA), to map the priorities and concerns of each with regard to research support. Specifically, the research sought to answer these research questions: (1) What are the similarities and differences emerging from the LIS and RA literatures on research support? (2) How do librarians and research administrators understand and engage with each other's activities through their professional literatures? (3) Do Whitchurch's (2008a, 2008b, 2015) concepts of bounded-cross-boundary-unbounded professionals and theory of the "third space" provide a useful framework for understanding research support?
Methods - The research method was a content analysis of journal articles on research-related topics published in select journals in the LIS (n = 195) and RA (n = 95) fields from 2012-2017. The titles and abstracts of articles to be included were reviewed to guide the creation of thematic coding categories. The coded articles were then analyzed to characterize and compare the topics and concerns addressed by the literature of each profession.
Results - Only two (2.2%) RA articles referred to librarians and libraries in their exploration of research support topics, while six (3.1%) LIS articles referred to the research office or research administrators in a meaningful way. Of these six, two focused on undergraduate research programs, two on research data management, and two on scholarly communications. Thematic coding revealed five broad topics that appeared repeatedly in both bodies of literature: research funding, research impact, research methodologies, research infrastructure, and use of research. However, within these broad categories, the focus varied widely between the professions. There were also several topics that received considerable attention in the literature of one field without a major presence in that of the other, including research collaboration in the RA literature, and institutional repositories, research data management, citation analysis or bibliometrics, scholarly communication, and open access in the LIS literature.
Conclusion - This content analysis of the LIS and RA literature provided insight into the priorities and concerns of each profession with respect to research support. It found that, even in instances where the professions engaged on the same broad topics, they largely focused on different aspects of issues. The literature of each profession demonstrated little awareness of the activities and concerns of the other. In Whitchurch's (2008a) taxonomy, librarians and research administrators are largely working as "bounded" professionals, with occasional forays into "cross-boundary" activities (p. 377). There is not yet evidence of "unbounded" professionalism or a move to a "third space" of research support activity involving these professions (Whitchurch, 2015, p. 85). Librarians and research administrators will benefit from a better understanding of the current research support landscape and new modes of working, like the third space, that could prove transformative.


As religious violence flares around the world, we are confronted with an acute dilemma: Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Benjamin Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today."Divided by Faith" begins in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, when the unity of western Christendom was shattered, and takes us on a panoramic tour of Europe's religious landscape - and its deep fault lines - over the next three centuries. Kaplan's grand canvas reveals the patterns of conflict and toleration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims across the continent, from the British Isles to Poland. It lays bare the complex realities of day-to-day interactions and calls into question the received wisdom that toleration underwent an evolutionary rise as Europe grew more "enlightened." We are given vivid examples of the improvised arrangements that made peaceful coexistence possible, and shown how common folk contributed to toleration as significantly as did intellectuals and rulers. Bloodshed was prevented not by the high ideals of tolerance and individual rights upheld today, but by the pragmatism, charity, and social ties that continued to bind people divided by faith."Divided by Faith" is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.


We have previously reported that primary hippocampal neurons exposed to synaptotoxic amyloid beta oligomers (AβOs), which are likely causative agents of Alzheimer's disease (AD), exhibit abnormal Ca2+ signals, mitochondrial dysfunction and defective structural plasticity. Additionally, AβOs-exposed neurons exhibit a decrease in the protein content of type-2 ryanodine receptor (RyR2) Ca2+ channels, which exert critical roles in hippocampal synaptic plasticity and spatial memory processes. The antioxidant N-acetylcysteine (NAC) prevents these deleterious effects of AβOs in vitro. The main contribution of the present work is to show that AβOs injections directly into the hippocampus, by engaging oxidation-mediated reversible pathways significantly decreased RyR2 protein content but increased single RyR2 channel activation by Ca2+ and caused considerable spatial memory deficits. AβOs injections into the CA3 hippocampal region impaired rat performance in the Oasis maze spatial memory task, decreased hippocampal glutathione levels and overall content of plasticity-related proteins (c-Fos, Arc, and RyR2) and increased ERK1/2 phosphorylation. In contrast, in hippocampus-derived mitochondria-associated membranes (MAM) AβOs injections increased RyR2 levels. Rats fed with NAC for 3-weeks prior to AβOs injections displayed comparable redox potential, RyR2 and Arc protein contents, similar ERK1/2 phosphorylation and RyR2 single channel activation by Ca2+ as saline-injected (control) rats. NAC-fed rats subsequently injected with AβOs displayed the same behavior in the spatial memory task as control rats. Based on the present in vivo results, we propose that redox-sensitive neuronal RyR2 channels partake in the mechanism underlying AβOs-induced memory disruption in rodents.