The pancreases of one to ten day old mice, Chinese hamters and Mongolian gerbils were examined by electron microscopy. Any essential species or sex differences were not recorded. In the ductules there were endocrine cells, sometimes reaching the lumen. Endocrine cells were also seen in buds on the ductules. Mitosis occurred in acinar, centroacinar, ductule, A—, B—, and capillary endothelial cells. The ductule cells exhibited cilia and signs of ceritriole replication. The various islet parenchymal cell types could be differentiated in all animals. Other findings were perinuclear fibril bundles, structural variation of the secretory granules, dilated intercellular spaces and signs of emiocytosis. The results indicate that in the species investigated, new formation of endocrine cells occurs in the neonatal period both by proliferation and development of endocrine cells from the ductules and by mitotic division of the islet parenchymal cells. No morphologically detectable lesions were found in the islets of newborns of the Chinese hamster which has a hereditary trait for the development of diabetes mellitus.


Evaluating the thermal effects and variations in temperature of rolling pneumatic tires, is a very important factor in safe performance of the vehicles. Normally, the transient thermal investigation of rolling tires is performed by tire test rigs. However, experimental analysis is a very time and cost consuming process and because of technical limitations, the tests cannot be carried out in most severe conditions. In this work, a validated finite element model is proposed for transient thermal investigation of rolling pneumatic tires. Compared with the experimental tests, the current study gives satisfactory results for temperature distribution of the tire.


Few fields in medical science involve as wide a range of specialties and expertise as vaccinology. It encompasses the research, development, and manufacturing processes of vaccines, their incorporation into immunization programs, and the logistic and clinical aspects of their use. Commissioning experts to write chapters with a minimum of jargon, minutiae, and redundancy for a book with a target audience of immunologists, microbiologists, clinical trial specialists, epidemiologists, economists, policy-setting public health officials, and practitioners who administer the resulting products and provide follow-up care, is challenging. But the experienced editors of this book have achieved this goal. Dr. Bloom was previously a Mycobacterium immunologist at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and is now dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Lambert is a vaccine immunologist at the University of Geneva.

The Vaccine Book first covers the impact of disease, including chapters on vaccine economics and finance policy, and the potential for widespread vaccination to change the epidemiology of the target disease. One example is the herd effect of childhood rubella vaccination, which postpones infection in nonimmunized women into their childbearing years. The next section reviews the immune system, and here lies the book's greatest disappointment. Its chapter on basic immunology is confusing and presumes familiarity with terms and concepts without antecedent explanation. It lacks a logical flow in describing what is yet known of the (infinitely?) complex immune system and its many "up-" and "down-regulating" feedback loops. Readers hoping for a chapter-length "Immunology 101" course would be advised to turn elsewhere (1,2)

The phased stages of clinical trials are covered in excellent chapters by accomplished authors with practical insights. Another section shows how knowledge of microbial pathogenesis can affect vaccine design, including Rolf Zinkernagel's well-written chapter on immunologic memory. Another chapter on parasite pathogenesis, however, delves too deeply into the immunity of Leishmania as a case study.

Stanley Plotkin's thoughtful overview of the 11 disease-specific chapters annotates new vaccine technologies as well as current issues of debate, such as replacing the live oral polio vaccine worldwide with injectable, inactivated polio vaccine once the eradication program breaks the chain of wild-virus circulation, to avoid reverse mutations and resulting vaccine-associated paralysis. Plotkin also provides a comprehensive table of vaccine types currently available or in active clinical development.

Remaining sections of The Vaccine Book cover the ethics of research and use of vaccines, their safety and controversies, and their introduction into healthcare systems. The editors conclude with major future challenges, such as circumventing microbial escape, vaccines for chronic and autoimmune diseases, and maintaining public support of immunization in the face of anti-vaccine movements.

The breadth of vaccinology inevitably requires leaving out some topics. There is no chapter on measles vaccines, used universally for a major cause of childhood death and disability. Manufacturing steps such as fermentation, purification, formulation, fill, and finish are not described. There is little on quality assurance and regulation, such as the investigational new drug application process and current good manufacturing practice, although good clinical practice is mentioned. Despite these gaps, compared to this field's authoritative encyclopedia (3), at three times The Vaccine Book's mass and four times its pages, this handy 1.1-kg compilation is a more comfortable read, indeed.


Microbial auto-aggregation and co-aggregation, leading to biofilm or floc formation, widely occur in natural systems. This study was conducted to investigate the extent of bacterial auto-aggregation and co-aggregation in activated sludge and their contributions in activated sludge floc formation. In this study, an activated sludge sample was separated into a supernatant part (planktonic community) and a sediment part (floc community) by centrifugation at 650×g for 2 minutes. 197 strains were isolated from both communities. These isolates belong to 18 phylotypes based on molecular identifications. Similar phylogenetic distributions of these isolates were observed in planktonic and floc communities, suggesting a similar community structure exists in these communities. 1 strain was picked from each phylotype to conduct further characterization on auto-aggregation and co-aggregation. Three types of bacterial autoaggregation patterns were observed: (1) aggregating bacteria (F): bacteria have constant high aggregation abilities. (2). bacteria with varying aggregation capability at different growth stage (VF). (3) Non-aggregating bacteria (NF): bacteria do not aggregate. The VF type bacteria are the most dominant one. The results of co-aggregation characterization indicated that co-aggregation relationship between bacteria in activated sludge is complex, varying at different growth time. Strain S13, which is identified as Acinetobacter johnsonni, has a negative effect on the aggregation of other strains.


Abstract The Union Government took notice of the current phase of the Naxalite challenge with concern, for the first time, in 1998. Since then, it has been playing a coordinating role among the various affected states to address the challenge. It has also been advising the affected states on ways to deal with the challenge. By 2003, the Union Government had put in place a two-pronged approach to address the Maoist challenge – that of a development response and a security response. However, all along, the Union Government's response has largely been security-centric. A political response to the Maoist challenge is, as yet, missing.


Based on count results, we estimated the population of Mariana fruit bats (Pteropus mariannus Desmarest) on Sarigan, Mariana Islands, to number 150-200 bats in 1999, 185-235 bats in 2000, and about 300-400 bats in 2001. Our results, plus those of two previous surveys, indicate that bat abundance on the island probably remained relatively stable at about 125-235 animals during much of the period from 1983 to 2000, then increased suddenly in 2001, most likely due to immigration from a neighboring island. Sarigan's population differs from those of larger islands in the archipelago by usually having smaller roost sizes, typically 3-75 bats, and large numbers of solitary bats that at times comprise up to half of the population. Colonies and smaller aggregations were composed primarily of harems with multiple females, whereas a nearly equal sex ratio occurred among solitary animals. Colonies roosted in isolated coconut trees in open grasslands and in native forest stands of various sizes, but avoided dense coconut forest. An estimated 30-50% of harem and solitary females possessed young in July 1999. Bats were recorded feeding on just six species of plants, which partly reflects the island's impoverished flora. We speculate that fruit bat abundance on Sarigan is limited primarily by food availability rather than hunting losses, in contrast to some other islands in the Marianas. Our study supports the contention that populations of P. mariannus in the northern Marianas are usually sedentary, but that interisland movements of larger numbers of bats may occur rarely.


Spiking Neuron Networks (SNNs) are often referred to as the 3rd generation of neural networks. They derive their strength and interest from an accurate modelling of synaptic interactions between neurons, taking into account the time of spike emission. SNNs overcome the computational power of neural networks made of threshold or sigmoidal units. Based on dynamic event-driven processing, they open up new horizons for developping models with an exponential capacity of memorizing and a strong ability to fast adaptation. Today, the main challenge is to discover efficient learning rules that might take advantage of the specific features of SNNs while keeping the nice properties (general-purpose, easy-to-use, available simulators, etc.) of current connectionist models (such as MLP, RBF or SVM). The present survey relates the history of the "spiking neuron" and summarizes the most currently in use models of neurons and networks, in Section 1. The computational power of SNNs is addressed in Section 2 and the problem of learning in networks of spiking neurons is tackled in Section 3, with insights into the tracks currently explored for solving it. Section 4 reviews the tricks of implementation and discuss several simulation frameworks. Examples of application domains are proposed in Section 5, mainly in speech processing and computer vision, emphasizing the temporal aspect of pattern recognition by SNNs. Keywords: Spiking neurons, Spiking neuron networks, Pulsed neural networks, Synaptic plasticity, STDP.


This new monograph documents seven consecutive, groundbreaking nights of monumental, solo, body-art performances by the internationally renowned artist, Marina Abramovic, during the Fall of 2005 in the famous rotunda of New York City's Guggenheim Museum. It includes a new piece created by Abramovic specifically for the project, as well as Abramovic's renditions of six other seminal works (by five other artists and herself) from the formative decade, 1965-1975. The works include reenactments of Vito Acconci's "Seedbed" (1972), in which the artist occupied the space under a false floor, masturbating and speaking through a microphone to visitors above; Valie Export's "Action Pants: Genital Panic" (1969) in which Export walked through a movie theater in crotchless pants, challenging the audience to turn from the images of women on the screen to a real female body; and Abramovic's own "Lips of Thomas" (1975), in which she ate a kilogram of honey and drank a liter of red wine before breaking her glass with her hand, incising a star in her stomach with a razor blade, whipping herself until she "no longer felt pain," then lying down on an ice cross while a space heater suspended above her caused her to bleed even more profusely. Also included, Bruce Nauman's "Body Pressure, " Gina Pane's "The Conditioning, " and Joseph Beuys's critical exploration, "How To Explain Pictures of a Dead Hare." In this important series, Abramovic gives us the opportunity to recall, revive and preserve major historical performance pieces, all of which are inherently ephemeral, in a completely original way. With an interview by the esteemed Guggenheim curator, Nancy Spector.


Quantum networks create a completely new way for communication, and the most important function of a quantum network is to generate long-distance quantum entanglement to serve a number of quantum applications. As the scale of the network expands, in order to establish end-to-end entanglement between two remote nodes, entangled pairs need to be generated and distributed among multiple repeaters along the path from the source to the destination, which requires a specific protocol to negotiate resource allocations and quantum operations among the repeaters. Thus, to realize such remote entanglement distribution in a quantum network, designing a stable and reliable protocol becomes urgent and necessary. In this article, we focus on how to guarantee the generation rate of entangled pairs between any two quantum nodes to meet the requirements of various quantum applications in a large-scale quantum network. We present a connection-oriented entanglement distribution protocol inspired by the connection-oriented communication model in classical networks. Our protocol is located in the network layer of the quantum network to enable end-to-end quantum communication. Three main features are provided by the proposed protocol: 1) it is reliable and can guarantee the successful entanglement generation; 2) it can reduce the influence of quantum decoherence via reducing the latency caused by resource competition; and 3) it can guarantee the rate of generating entanglement between two quantum nodes according to the requirement of quantum applications.


Ediacaran Doushantuo (Formation) embryo-like fossils (EDEFs, ca. 600 Ma) from South China display cellular and sub-cellular structures and provide a unique window on the early evolution of multicellular eukaryotes. But there have been widely disparate interpretations of these fossils. Here we report new fossil embryo-like forms from the Doushantuo phosphorite that exhibit a meroblastic cleavage pattern. Our results from high-resolution propagation phase contrast–synchrotron radiation X-ray microtomography (PPC-SRµCT) demonstrate that these fossils preserve features directly comparable to those of modern meroblastic animal embryos that utilize discoidal cleavage. Given that discoidal-type meroblastic cleavage occurs only in metazoans, the phylogenetic positions of these fossils probably fall into the animal branch of the holozoan tree. Meroblastic as well as holoblastic cleavage forms were thus present by ca. 600 Ma, substantiating the conclusion derived from molecular clock estimates that a variety of metazoan lineages had evolved by the mid-Ediacaran after the termination of the Marinoan glaciation, if not earlier.


Introduction and purpose: The elderly population is increasing and the situation of this age group to improve their health and prevention of diseases is necessary. The aim of this study was assessed the health among elderly men living in Shiraz and Yasuj cities. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive and analytical study was conducted in 2015. To collect data, 380 elderly men in Shiraz and Yasuj were selected via random clustering sampling method and information was collected using 7-dimension standard questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS statistical software version 20 at levels of descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings:The mean of four dimensions of the elderly health for the study was 77.07 ± 15.03.Determination coefficient R2 statistics also show that 25.8% of the health self-assessment variations were explained by three independent variables remaining in the equation, including selfesteem, health behaviors and medical history. Variables such as age, education and medical history class identity were significantly associated with health self-assessment. Conclusion: knowing the status in the health of a community of people who are planning to have its future society will help in reasonable estimates. One of the important objectives of the health system in each country is to protect the health of all people in the community. For this, all aspects of health, physical, mental and social life need to be taken into consideration in all stages of life. Health is not just a biological, and social factors are also involved in determining the health of people.


Isotopic and trace element data for basaltic lavas from the Springerville volcanic field, east-central Arizona, define three distinct mantle components involved in magma genesis in this part of the Colorado Plateau-Basin and Range transition zone. Correlated isotopic and trace element variations indicate that Springerville alkalic basalts were derived by mixing between components from a depleted asthenospheric source, an enriched lithospheric source, and a lithospheric source that exhibits radiogenic Pb and relatively nonradiogenic Sr characteristics. Tholeiitic basalts from the Springerville field equilibrated in the enriched mantle lithosphere and subsequently interacted with crust. Two of the distinct mantle components correspond to Zindler and Hart's proposed mantle isotopic end members PREMA and EMI, and the third mantle component suggests the possible existence of a HIMU-type reservoir. These observations have implications for the origin of enriched isotopic compositions in oceanic-island magmatism and support the theory that delamination of the subcontinental lithosphere is a feasible mechanism to recycle enriched components back into the mantle to be erupted at anomalous oceanic islands.


The third International Symposium on Angiostrongylus and Angiostrongyliasis was held April 8–9, 2010, at the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand. Twenty-nine researchers from 7 countries attended the symposium. The symposium's theme was "Advances in the disease, control, diagnosis and molecular genetics of the genus Angiostrongylus and angiostrongyliasis."

In discussing the epidemiology of the disease, it was noted the first reported case of human angiostrongyliasis came from Taiwan in 1945. Since then, several outbreaks and >2,800 cases of this disease have been reported worldwide. However, the number of cases is probably underestimated given that many physicians might be unaware of angiostrongyliasis because of its rarity; thus, numerous cases might have gone unreported or unrecognized.

Although angiostrongyliasis was mainly prevalent in the Pacific islands and Southeast Asia, increasing numbers of natural foci of the disease have been reported because of increased global trade and travel. Pilar Foronda Rodriguez, University of La Laguna, Spain, reported Angiostrongylus cantonensis in Rattus rattus in Tenerife, Canary Islands, and confirmed the island as a natural focus of this disease (1). Lv Shan, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, reported natural infection by A. cantonensis in 7 provinces in China, including Fujian, Zhejiang, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan, and confirmed these provinces as natural foci.

Diagnosis of the infection can be difficult. Recovery of the nematode from an infected patient confirms human angiostrongyliasis. However, the frequency of detecting these nematodes is low. Presumptive diagnosis can be based on clinical symptoms, medical history, and laboratory findings in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. A history of eating intermediate hosts is also crucial for diagnosis of angiostrongyliasis.

In 2006, a total of 160 persons, 100 of whom were hospitalized, were associated with an angiostrongyliasis outbreak in Beijing, China. This finding is comparable with the total number of infections recorded in China over the past decade. Chenghong Yin of Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University, China, reported the diagnosis criteria of angiostrongyliasis used during the outbreak. The criteria included the following indices: 1) epidemiology, 2) clinical symptoms, 3) complete blood count, 4) cerebrospinal fluid investigation, 5) immunologic examination, 6) imaging examination, and 7) etiologic examination. Etiologically and clinically positive patients were further defined. Any patient showing larvae was definitively etiologically positive, and displaying indices 1–4 were considered clinically positive, and those with indices 5 and/or 6 were considered to be displaying auxiliary signs consistent with angiostrongyliasis.

In recent years, immunologic detection of this infection has been rapidly developed. Xiaoguang Chen, Southern Medical University, China, purified the major antigenic protein AC32 from adult A. cantonensis, and constructed an AC32-ELISA kit to detect specific immunoglobulin (Ig) G in serum samples of patients. AC32 of A. cantonensis was subsequently found to be a valuable candidate antigen with high sensitivity and specificity for immunodiagnosis of angiostrongyliasis. Xiaoxian Gan, Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences, China, and Praphathip Eamsobhan, Mahidol University, Thailand reported a simple and rapid dot-immunogold filtration assay to detect a specific IgG against A. cantonensis that uses crude extracts from adult A. cantonensis as the antigen and protein A conjugated with colloid gold as the detection marker. This immunoassay was highly sensitive (90.5%, 19/21) and specific (98.0%, 98/100). However, some cross-reactivity against serum samples from patients with Trichinella spiralis infection and schistosomiasis was observed. No cross-reactivity against serum samples from patients with other infections of helminthiasis (e.g., cysticercosis, clonorchiasis, and fasciolopsiasis) or tuberculosis was reported. Therefore, this assay is not only rapid and simple without requiring special instrumentation, but also rather sensitive and specific for the detection of IgG against A. cantonensis infection.

There is no specific treatment for angiostrongyliasis. Treatment predominantly relies on symptomatic relief, such as antiinflammatory corticosteroid therapy. Kittisak Sawanyawisuth, Khon Kaen University, Thailand reported a series of studies on the treatment of this disease. In 2000, Sawanyawisuth et al. conducted a prospective, placebo-controlled and double-blind study to assess prednisolone treatment of angiostrongyliasis. Patients in the treatment group were given a 2-week course of prednisolone (60 mg/day), and patients in the control group were given placebo. Results suggested that a 2-week course of prednisolone was beneficial in relieving headache in patients with eosinophilic meningitis. In 2007, a prospective, randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study indicated that a 2-week course of albendazole appeared to reduce the duration of headache in angiostrongyliasis. In 2009, they conducted a prospective, randomized and controlled study to compare the efficacy of combined prednisolone/albendazole and prednisolone alone therapies for the treatment of angiostrongyliasis. One hundred four patients were divided into combined treatment and prednisolone alone groups, 53 and 51 patients, respectively. The dosages of prednisolone and albendazole were 60 mg/day taken orally in 3 divided doses and 15 mg/kg/day taken as 2 divided doses after meals for 2 weeks, respectively. However, the results indicated that combined prednisolone/albendazole treatment of patients with angiostrongyliasis was no better than prednisolone alone (2). In conclusion, the corticosteroid treatment was beneficial for the patients, although the role of anthelmintic agents remains inconclusive. Therefore, it was not recommended that albendazole alone should be used for the treatment of angiostrongyliasis.

In addition to discussing these recent findings, a cooperative network among researchers and clinicians was established to share data from current and future research projects for the prevention, control and treatment of human angiostrongyliasis. We look forward to the 2012 International Symposium on Angiostrongylus and Angiostrongyliasis, which will be held in Guangzhou, China.


Abstract: The Wilderness Act created a national framework for the protection of wilderness areas. Although the statute defines wilderness as an area "untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain," it leaves room for the "public purposes of recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use." As such, the Wilderness Act clarifies that its purposes are "within and supplemental" to other land-use statutes, including statutes like the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), which created a national scheme for preserving historic places and structures. When considering the Wilderness Act relative to the NHPA, agencies and courts have interpreted agency obligations under each act differently. Though the historical context, text, and purpose of each statute indicate that historic preservation efforts should be permitted within wilderness areas, courts have read the two acts as mutually exclusive and held that the Wilderness Act takes precedence over the NHPA. The two statutes can be harmonized. To clarify the law in this area, however, Congress should amend the Wilderness Act to provide an express exception for preservation efforts in compliance with the NHPA.INTRODUCTIONThousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.1-John Muir[T]hese old buildings do not belong to us only; . . . they have belonged to our forefathers, and they will belong to our descendants unless we play them false. They are not in any sense our property, to do as we like with. We are only the trustees for those that come after us.2-William MorrisAlthough the American public has long contested the uses and purposes of wilderness,3 the concept of an open frontier of wild lands has never ceased to be a culturally and historically important aspect of America.4 Similarly, while not universally acknowledged, the study of history-whether by museum, textbook, or designation of historic landmark-has also wielded significant influence on American society.5 However, in the race to define and protect wilderness lands and historic monuments, the respective land-use schemes created by Congress did not explicitly account for each other.6 The resulting inconsistencies have leftagencies and courts alike in a predicament when determining whether and how to maintain protected historic structures located within designated wilderness areas.7Congress enacted the Wilderness Act8 in 1964 against a backdrop of competing ideologies regarding the value of wilderness, the rise of conservationism, and inter-agency conflict.9 For its time, the Wilderness Act was "the most far-reaching land preservation statute ever enacted."10 Through the creation of the National Wilderness Preservation System,11 the Wilderness Act established a national framework12 for the protection of designated wilderness areas via acts of Congress.13 Since designating the inaugural 9.1 million acres of wilderness,14 Congress has added over 100 million acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System.15 Today, approximately five percent of the United States is protected as wilderness.16 With few exceptions, wilderness legislation has enjoyed wide bipartisan support.17 In fact, every president following Lyndon Johnson has signed legislation protecting additional wilderness acreage.18In a similarly conservationist spirit, two years later Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).19 The purpose of the NHPA was to remedy ineffective federal historic preservation statutes.20 Like the Wilderness Act, the NHPA was "a watershed in preservation law, for it created a means by which the Nation's preservation goals could be achieved."21 The NHPA promotes the protection of historic resources at federal, state, and local levels. …


Abstract The policy of the European Commission prohibits hunting of migratory birds while they travel to their breeding grounds. To date, spring migration dates of ducks have mainly been determined using bird counts, but the validity of this sometimes disputed method has never been tested. We used ring-recovery data from close to 9,000 teal Anas crecca ringed in the Camargue, southern France, to determine the onset of spring migration. This method makes it possible to avoid potential biases linked to duck counts, and was used to test the validity of spring migration dates inferred from such counts. Depending on the type of analysis (intra- or inter-annual recoveries), teal appeared to start migrating from the Camargue during the first or second 10-day period of January, with no significant differences between years, and no effect of the bird's age or sex. However, when taking potential winter dispersion into account, we suggest that a conservative estimate for the onset of spring migration is the first 10-day period of February. Migration dates inferred from ring-recovery analyses were consistent with earlier results from duck counts, and provide a firm basis for policy making related to hunting. Though ringing data should be preferred when available, our study suggests that determining migration dates from bird counts may be a reliable method for teal, and potentially for other dabbling and diving ducks as well.


On 31 January 2018, the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) released its Labour Mobility Report during an event hosted on its premises. Representatives of the European Commission, fellow pharmacy organisations and other associations working on the realisation of a common training framework (CTF) had the opportunity to learn more about the views of hospital pharmacists on labour mobility and the EAHP's CTF project.

The report summarises the findings of the survey activity on the attitudes and perspectives of hospital pharmacists on labour mobility by the EAHP. The results collected from the 1039 participating hospital, clinical and community pharmacists in this document are descriptive and represent a snapshot of the current position. Overall, the information collected via the survey shows that hospital pharmacists have an appetite for labour mobility which is currently not realised due to recognition barriers.

The survey activity forms part of the EAHP's CTF project which the associations embarked on in 2014. Its initiation was influenced, on the one hand, by the Pharmine project and, on the other hand, by the 2013 amendment of the Professional Qualification Directive which created the possibility to set up CTFs. In the first stage of the CTF project, the EAHP worked on securing voluntary agreement across countries about the knowledge, skills and attitudes/behaviours that underpin advanced practice in the hospital sector.

Overall, 85% of hospital pharmacists and heads of hospital pharmacy that participated in the survey would support the creation of a CTF for the hospital pharmacy specialisation. Development of the profession, facilitation of exchange of expertise, standardisation in the quality of education and increase of mobility opportunities are in their opinion benefits to be gained by creating a new tool for automatic cross-border recognition of the hospital pharmacy specialisation.

Moreover, the standardisation of professional training would not only lead to an overall enhancement …


Forecasting a large set of time series with hierarchical aggregation constraints is a central problem for many organizations. However, it is particularly challenging to forecast these hierarchical structures. In fact, it requires not only good forecast accuracy at each level of the hierarchy, but also the coherency between different levels, i.e. the forecasts should satisfy the hierarchical aggregation constraints. Given some incoherent base forecasts, the state-of-the-art methods compute revised forecasts based on forecast combination which ensures that the aggregation constraints are satisfied. However, these methods assume the base forecasts are unbiased and constrain the revised forecasts to be also unbiased. We propose a new forecasting method which relaxes these unbiasedness conditions, and seeks the revised forecasts with the best tradeoff between bias and forecast variance. We also present a regularization method which allows us to deal with high-dimensional hierarchies, and provide its theoretical justification. Finally, we compare the proposed method with the state-of-the-art methods both theoretically and empirically. The results on both simulated and real-world data indicate that our methods provide competitive results compared to the state-of-the-art methods.


A variety of spectroscopic and biochemical studies of recombinant site-directed mutants of rhodopsin and related visual pigments have been carried out. These studies have elucidated key structural elements common to visual pigments, such as a conserved disulfide bond. In addition, systematic analysis of the chromophore-binding pocket in rhodopsin and cone pigments has led to an improved understanding of the mechanism of the opsin-shift, and of particular molecular determinants underlying color vision in humans. Identification of conformational changes which occur upon rhodopsin photoactivation has been of particular recent concern. Assignment of these molecular alterations to specific regions in the receptor has been attempted by studying native opsin regenerated with synthetic retinal analogues or recombinant opsins regenerated with 11-cis-retinal. Individual molecular groups that undergo structural alterations during photoactivation have been identified. Analysis of particular mutant pigments in which specific groups are locked into their respective "on" or "off" states has provided a framework to identify determinants of the active conformation as well as the minimal number of intramolecular transitions required to switch between inactive and active conformations. A simple model for the active state of rhodopsin can be compared to structural models of its ground state to localize chromophore-protein interactions that may be important in the photoactivation mechanism.


Three N-acetyltransferase genes (NAT*) were detected in inbred parental and congenic mice. Direct sequencing of NAT2* and liver cytosolic N-acetylation activity determinations with NAT2-specific (p-aminobenzoic acid) and NAT2-selective (2-aminofluorene) substrates have established that the acetylator congenic A.B6 and B6.A mice are genotypically and phenotypically identical to the parental B6 ("wild-type"; rapid acetylator) and A (mutant; slow acetylator) mice, respectively, from which they originated. The apparent KM for p-aminobenzoic acid and thermal inactivation rates determined with liver cytosol from the mutant (A and B6.A) mice were 3-fold and one order of magnitude higher than the corresponding values with liver cytosol from the wild-type (B6 and A.B6) strains. Northern blotting and immunoblotting revealed hepatic NAT2 mRNA and protein bands of equal size and intensity, regardless of the NAT2* genotype or phenotype of the animals. Incubation of liver cytosol from mutant A and B6.A mice at 37 degrees C for 6 hr resulted in virtual cessation of p-aminobenzoate N-acetylation activity, whereas the steady-state level of immunoreactive NAT2 remained unchanged. The results indicate that the amino acid change (N99I) in mutant NAT2* from slow acetylator mice does not hinder the synthesis of hepatic NAT2 protein, but, rather, leads to production of a conformationally modified NAT2 molecule that resists degradation by tissue proteases but is labile and catalytically impaired.


In recent years there has been increasing attention to the potentially disruptive influence of disinformation on elections. The most common forms of disinformation in elections include the dissemination of 'fake news' in order to discredit opponents or to influence the voting process, the falsification or manipulation of polling data, and the use of fake election monitoring and observation. This article presents an overview of the phenomenon of disinformation in elections in both democratic and undemocratic environments, and discusses measures to reduce its scope and negative impact.


The lost letter technique is an unobtrusive method to investigate attitudes in a particular population. Ostensibly lost letters from senders who apparently belong to different groups or addressed to recipients from apparently different groups are dispersed in public places, and return rates represent a measure of altruistic or discriminatory behavior toward one group or another. In two field experiments using the lost letter technique, we investigated the influence of group membership and the presence or absence of a doctorate degree as an indicator of competence on the likelihood of receiving helping behavior. Experiment 1 showed that a generic member of a low-status ethnic out-group (Turks living in Germany) was the target of discrimination, while a generic member of a non-stigmatized out-group (French in Germany) was not. Moreover, when the name of the member from the stigmatized out-group was (vs. was not) preceded by a doctorate degree, more of the allegedly lost letters were returned. There were no such differential effects for recipients who were members of the in-group (Germans) or the non-stigmatized out-group (French). Experiment 2 showed that a recipient from the stigmatized out-group (Turk) with a doctorate degree received more letters when the sender was German versus Turkish (i.e., from the recipient's own group). Overall, the sender's ethnic group membership was an important factor for the likelihood of receiving an ostensibly lost letter, in that fewer letters arrived from a sender with a Turkish (vs. German) name. We conclude that the likelihood of altruistic behavior toward out-group members can increase when in-group members intend to communicate with competent out-group members. Therefore, under certain conditions, the presentation of a highly competent member of an otherwise stigmatized out-group may serve as a discrimination buffer.


Abstract Increasing numbers of citizens from the eastern and southern regions of the USSR sought and obtained residence in the 'two capitals' of Leningrad and Moscow following the Second World War. This article exposes the uniqueness of late Soviet periphery to core migration, all the while placing it within a global post-colonial framework. Soviet policies that promoted the 'friendship of peoples' spared migrants from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Asian regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic the ethnic violence and ghettoization that accompanied parallel movements to Western industrial capitals. Most appreciated the opportunities that awaited them, even as social spending on the periphery forestalled substantial economic migration. This paper argues nonetheless that subtle tensions existed on official and unofficial levels. Oral histories as well as sociological surveys demonstrate that nationalist and racist ideas and encounters challenged the friendship of peoples. Migration emerges as a complex and personal process as Asian residents of Leningrad and Moscow weighed possibilities, benefits, and risks of integration or separation.


In order to provide the information on their Hall voltage, sensitivity, and drift with temperature, a new simpler lumped circuit model for the evaluation of various Hall cells has been developed. In this sense, the finite element model proposed by the authors in this paper contains both geometrical parameters (dimensions of the cells) and physical parameters such as the mobility, conductivity, Hall factor, carrier concentration, and the temperature influence on them. Therefore, a scalable finite element model in Cadence, for behavior simulation in circuit environment of CMOS Hall effect devices, with different shapes and technologies assessing their performance, has been elaborated.


Integrated models of the ecology of migratory species requires tracking of individual migratory organisms throughout the annual cycle. Here, we report the first information on the movement patterns of nine Upland Sandpipers (Bartramia longicauda) that were captured at breeding sites in Kansas and Massachusetts, and tracked with GPS and PTT tags to nonbreeding sites in South America. Upland Sandpipers were extreme migrants that regularly made nonstop flights that were >5,000 km in length and lasted up to 7 days. Sandpipers traveled up to 20,000 km per year in their annual movements. Our project resulted in a series of new discoveries. Sandpipers regularly crossed major ecological barriers during migration, which included long oceanic flights, high elevation mountains, and tropical forests. Migrating birds used known stopover sites in the central flyway of North America and eastern slope of the Andes in South America, and a subset of birds wintered in core nonbreeding sites in the Pampas ecoregion of Uruguay and Argentina. We documented new staging sites at canefields in the mountain valleys of Colombia, grasslands in the Llanos of Venezuela, and at airports along the Atlantic Coast of the US. Unexpectedly, some sandpipers spent the nonbreeding season on river islands in the Amazon basin, and pastures in the Cerrado ecoregion of Brazil; areas not previously known to host overwintering Upland Sandpipers. Like many other migratory birds in the Western Hemisphere, Upland Sandpipers had elliptical migration routes within the Southern Hemisphere, moved among separate activity areas during the nonbreeding season, migrated faster during southbound than northbound migration, and spent more time at nonbreeding than breeding sites. Collectively, the birds used sites across much of northern South America as a broad front migrant. Overall, the migratory patterns of Upland Sandpipers were more similar to migratory landbirds than to shorebirds that typically stage at wetlands and coastal estuaries. Upland Sandpipers should be buffered against habitat loss and degradation at local sites within their migratory range, but it may be difficult to protect specific sites or broad landscapes that would be needed to conserve a high percentage of the global population.


ABSTRACT We provide the first description of nest architecture and composition, adult construction behavior, and egg characteristics for the genus Rhytipterna. We provide these data for a nest of the Rufous Mourner (Rhytipterna h. holerythra) found under construction and followed through clutch completion and subsequent failure at La Selva Biological Station, Heredia, Costa Rica. Given the historically labile taxonomic placement of the genus Rhytipterna, our observations provide important additional lines of evidence further supporting its affinity to Myiarchus within the Tyrannidae. We highlight our record of the incorporation of shed reptile skins in the nest lining, only the second instance of this nest character within Tyrannidae outside of the genus Myiarchus. The phylogenetic distribution of this specialized nesting trait suggests the possibility of a single origin near the base of the subclade Tyranninae. Received 29 August 2016. Accepted 30 November 2016.


We address the problem of statically checking control state reachability (as in possibility of assertion violations, race conditions or runtime errors) and plain reachability (as in deadlock-freedom) of phaser programs. Phasers are a modern non-trivial synchronization construct that supports dynamic parallelism with runtime registration and deregistration of spawned tasks. They allow for collective and point-to-point synchronizations. For instance, phasers can enforce barriers or producer-consumer synchronization schemes among all or subsets of the running tasks. Implementations are found in modern languages such as Habanero Java. Phasers essentially associate phases to individual tasks and use their runtime values to restrict possible concurrent executions. Unbounded phases may result in infinite transition systems even in the case of programs only creating finite numbers of tasks and phasers. We introduce an exact gap-order based procedure that always terminates when checking control reachability for programs generating bounded numbers of coexisting tasks and phasers. We also show verifying plain reachability is undecidable even for programs generating few tasks and phasers. We then explain how to turn our procedure into a sound analysis for checking plain reachability (including deadlock freedom). We report on preliminary experiments with our open source tool.


Any autonomous system embedded in a dynamic and changing environment must be able to create qualitative knowledge and object structures representing aspects of its environment on the fly from raw or preprocessed sensor data in order to reason qualitatively about the environment and to supply such state information to other nodes in the distributed network in which it is embedded. These structures must be managed and made accessible to deliberative and reactive functionalities whose successful operation is dependent on being situationally aware of the changes in both the robotic agent's embedding and internal environments. DyKnow is a knowledge processing middleware framework which provides a set of functionalities for contextually creating, storing, accessing and processing such structures. The framework is implemented and has been deployed as part of a deliberative/reactive architecture for an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle. The architecture itself is distributed and uses real-time CORBA as a communications infrastructure. We describe the system and show how it can be used to create more abstract entity and state representations of the world which can then be used for situation awareness by an unmanned aerial vehicle in achieving mission goals. We also show that the framework is a working instantiation of many aspects of the revised JDL data fusion model.


It may be too late to achieve environmental justice for some indigenous peoples, and other groups, in terms of avoiding dangerous climate change. People in the indigenous climate justice movement agree resolutely on the urgency of action to stop dangerous climate change. However, the qualities of relationships connecting indigenous peoples with other societies' governments, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations are not conducive to coordinated action that would avoid further injustice against indigenous peoples in the process of responding to climate change. The required qualities include, among others, consent, trust, accountability, and reciprocity. Indigenous traditions of climate change view the very topic of climate change as connected to these qualities, which are sometimes referred to as kin relationships. The entwinement of colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization failed to affirm or establish these qualities or kinship relationships across societies. While qualities like consent or reciprocity may be critical for taking coordinated action urgently and justly, they require a long time to establish or repair. A relational tipping point, in a certain respect, has already been crossed, before the ecological tipping point. The time it takes to address the passage of this relational tipping point may be too slow to generate the coordinated action to halt certain dangers related to climate change. While no possibilities for better futures should be left unconsidered, it's critical to center environmental justice in any analysis of whether it's too late to stop dangerous climate change.


A real-time, rapid emergency control (EC) model is proposed to cope with sudden water pollution accidents in long distance water transfer project. The EC model outputs the method of EC based on pollutant properties. A generalized form of EC model is proposed and tested with a demonstrative project. The rapid prediction formulas of emergency control parameters (ECPs) are proposed under different states of water diversion. The closing times of check gates and pollution range are calculated by the rapid prediction formulas of ECPs. A case study is examined under the scenario of a sucrose spill in the demonstrative project conducted in the Fangshui to Puyang channel of the Beijing–Shijiazhuang Emergency Water Supply Project in the middle route of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project. The relative errors of peak concentration and arrival time of peak concentration are less than 20%. However, we could not use an actual toxic soluble pollutant to validate the EC model, so we performed the experiment with sucrose to test the EC model based on its concentration variation. The final result shows that the model is able to play a fundamental role in the decisions involved on Emergency Environmental Decision Support System.


Cartogram drawing is a technique for showing geography-related statistical information, such as demographic and epidemiological data. The idea is to distort a map by resizing its regions according to a statistical parameter by keeping the map recognizable. This article describes an R package implementing an algorithm called RecMap which approximates every map region by a rectangle where the area corresponds to the given statistical value (maintain zero cartographic error). The package implements the computationally intensive tasks in C++. This paper's contribution is that it demonstrates on real and synthetic maps how recmap can be used, how it is implemented and used with other statistical packages.


Over the next year, Pacific Alliance partners of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru are uniquely placed to lead regional efforts to build a Latin American digital single market—a common set of rules for digital trade that would facilitate commerce among the largely Spanish-speaking region's increasingly connected and technology-savvy businesses and consumers. As Rob Atkinson writes for Latin Trade Magazine, this is a real opportunity because the largely common language of Spanish would mean that digital companies in Latin America would more easily have access to a market of close to half a billion consumers. To help achieve this, Rob recommends that these four nations advance and endorse an ambitious digital trade framework focused on modernizing rules around data and intermediary liability, reducing the cost and complexity of cross-border transactions, and centralizing spectrum management.


AIM
To examine false-positive HIV DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results in children, and the potential implications for the paediatric HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

METHODS
A review was done of records over a 6-year period of children less than 18 months old at an HIV treatment site in South Africa, to evaluate those with an initial 'false'-positive HIV DNA PCR result, but later proven to be HIV-uninfected with HIV DNA PCR and/or quantitative HIV RNA PCR tests. We calculated the influence of changing HIV transmission rates on predictive values (PV) of HIV DNA PCR tests in a hypothetical population of all HIV-exposed infants over a 1-year period. (Positive PV: proportion of individuals with a positive test with disease; negative PV: proportion of individuals with negative test and no disease).

RESULTS
Of 718 children, 40 with an initial positive HIV DNA PCR test were subsequently proven to be HIV-uninfected, resulting in a positive PV of 94.4%. Most (75%) uninfected children had PMTCT interventions and were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic (77.5%). Calculations using a test specificity of 99.4%, as reported previously, show a decrease in positive PV using a single-test strategy from 98.6% at 30% HIV transmission rate, to 94.8% at 10% transmission, to 62.5% at 1% transmission. Reduction in test specificity further decreases positive PV at low transmission rates.

CONCLUSION
Decreasing mother-to-child HIV transmission rates reduce the positive predictive value of a single HIV DNA PCR test result, necessitating adaptations to diagnostic algorithms to avoid misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment, especially with early initiation of antiretroviral therapy in asymptomatic infants.


Independent, competent boards of directors and audit committees are said to be important mechanisms of corporate governance. The purpose of the present study is to empirically examine the association between audit committee composition and audit quality. Specifically, the link between the proportion of non-executive directors on an audit committee, financial qualifications of directors and the number of audit committee meetings held in a year are investigated and expected to have a positive association with the quality of the audit firm used. Audit quality is proxied by industry specialization. The results support the link between a higher proportion of non-executive directors on an audit committee and use of an industry specialist audit firm. Other measures of audit committee quality (those with a higher proportion of directors with financial qualifications and those that meet more frequently) are not significantly associated with the use of an industry specialist audit firm. Sensitivity analysis shows that the presence of an audit committee is linked to use of an industry specialist audit firm.


A series of fluorescent molecularly imprinted nanogels to detect irinotecan (CPT11) were prepared and characterized. A set of amino acids and napthalimide polymerisable derivatives allowed to obtain polymers as soluble fluorescent nanoparticles by high dilution imprinted synthesis. The direct detection of irinotecan in human plasma was obtained by fluorescence quenching of the naphtalimide-based imprinted materials. The plasma sample treated with acetonitrile allowed the detection of irinotecan in the 10nM – 30μM range. The LOD was 9.4 nM, with within-run variability 10% and day to day variability 13%.


Since it first emerged in Wijsman's seminal work [29], the Wijsman topology has been intensively studied in the past 50 years. In particular, topological properties of Wijsman hyperspaces, relationships between the Wijsman topology and other hyperspace topologies, and applications of the Wijsman topology in analysis have been explored. However, there are still several fundamental open problems on this topology. In this article, the author gives a brief survey on these problems and some up-to-date partial solutions.


The damages caused by floods remain an issue in the Chi River Basin, Thailand. Therefore, an integrated flood management framework needs to be developed to minimize the negative effects of floods of different magnitude. In response, a hydrological model (SWAT) and a hydraulic (1D/2D SOBEK) model were integrated to simulate floods in detailed way and to analyse the current system. The developed modelling framework enabled to analyse the impacts of different structural and non-structural measures based on economic and technical efficiency criteria. An optimum combination of aforesaid measures was then chosen since it could considerably reduce flood extent and its damage. Additionally, the study illustrates the effects of land use changes on floods, which indicated little or no significant potential impact on flood regime at river basin level, but rather at sub-basin scale. This finding is important for a better understanding of the scale and direction of impacts of future developments.


Over the last 25 years AVESTOR has developed a revolutionary design for stationary lithium-metal-polymer (LMP) batteries. Through extensive research and development, AVESTOR's efforts have resulted in a battery that offers a new level of high energy density, reliability and long life under the most extreme environmental conditions. Since 2004, LMP-technology batteries have been deployed in volume by various North American telecommunications operators in existing applications as well as in new ones. Despite the price difference with VRLA batteries, service providers are finding multiple applications where it makes economic sense to use LMP batteries. The high energy density of the LMP batteries allows the telecommunications operators to increase their back-up time without having to add on to their infrastructure. The wide operating temperature range of the LMP batteries offers the flexibility to install the LMP batteries in harsh environments without the use of external climate control equipment and still assure a long life. Furthermore, the alarming features integrated in LMP batteries give the telecommunications operators the ability to have an efficient back-up power system. The paper will describe, from the service providers' point of view, the applications where they have found it makes sense to use LMP batteries and what impact it has on their day-to-day operations. Specifically how does the usage of LMP batteries affect their maintenance, installation and engineering activities as well as the resource allocations to those activities. In addition, this paper will describe what criteria the service providers used in their decision process to deploy LMP batteries in specific applications and the results versus initial expectations


OBJECT
In this study the authors sought to estimate the frequency, seriousness, and delay of rebleeding in a homogeneous series of 20 patients whom they treated between May 1987 and May 1997 for arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs) that were revealed by intracranial hemorrhage (ICH). The natural history of intracranial dural AVFs remains obscure. In many studies attempts have been made to evaluate the risk of spontaneous hemorrhage, especially as a function of the pattern of venous drainage: a higher occurrence of bleeding was reported in AVFs with retrograde cortical venous drainage, with an overall estimated rate of 1.8% per year in the largest series in the literature. However, very few studies have been designed to establish the risk of rebleeding, an omission that the authors seek to remedy.

METHODS
Presenting symptoms in the 20 patients (17 men and three women, mean age 54 years) were acute headache in 12 patients (60%), acute neurological deficit in eight (40%), loss of consciousness in five (25%), and generalized seizures in one (5%). Results of the clinical examination were normal in five patients and demonstrated a neurological deficit in 12 and coma in three. Computerized tomography scanning revealed intracranial bleeding in all cases (15 intraparenchymal hematomas, three subarachnoid hemorrhages, and two subdural hematomas). A diagnosis of AVF was made with the aid of angiographic studies in 19 patients, whereas it was a perioperative discovery in the remaining patient. There were 12 Type III and eight Type IV AVFs according to the revised classification of Djindjian and Merland, which meant that all AVFs in this study had retrograde cortical venous drainage. The mean duration between the first hemorrhage and treatment was 20 days. Seven patients (35%) presented with acute worsening during this delay due to radiologically proven early rebleeding. Treatment consisted of surgery alone in 10 patients, combined embolization and surgery in eight, embolization only in one, and stereotactic radiosurgery in one. Three patients died, one worsened, and in 16 (80%) neurological status improved, with 15 of 16 AVFs totally occluded on repeated angiographic studies (median follow up 10 months).

CONCLUSIONS
The authors found that AVFs with retrograde cortical venous drainage present a high risk of early rebleeding (35% within 2 weeks after the first hemorrhage), with graver consequences than the first hemorrhage. They therefore advocate complete and early treatment in all cases of AVF with cortical venous drainage revealed by an ICH.


Hilb, Nora, Simon Shapiro and Sheryl Shapiro. Slither and Slide : What's Outside . Toronto:  Annick Press, 2012. Print. Nora Hilb, who is listed as lead author on this book, is a prolific illustrator living in Argentina.  The text is by Toronto authors Simon and Sheryl Shapiro. Together, this team of three has produced an entertaining and educational book which progresses through the seasons from spring to winter. Each two page spread has four integrated parts. On the left page is a photograph of something outside. The first is of a fruit tree in blossom. On the facing page is an image of children outside, doing something that mirrors what is in the photograph.  In the first case, to mirror the tree, they are watering a plant. The accompanying text is in the form of a three line rhyme about what the children are doing. The rhyme is followed by one word in large capital letters. For example, one of the winter photographs shows a row of wind turbines and is matched with a drawing of a child with a pinwheel. The accompanying text reads, "The blustery wind/that blows in from the west/ for windmills and pinwheels, it's really the best/ WHIRR!" One can easily imagine reading the rhyme to a child and then spelling the word out at the end as a learning activity. Many children will learn to recite the rhymes. The high-quality photographic images are the work of a variety of people. Hilb's drawings are whimsical, with lots of bright colours and action. The page pairs are fun. The image of a waterfall is paired with an image of children at the beach dumping water from one bucket to another. The rainbow image is paired with children colouring with a rainbow of crayons. The picture of the black bear is paired with an image of a child in a bear-costume pretending to scare his Dad. Overall this is an attractive book that incorporates a little learning and lots of ways to engage and amuse small children. Highly recommended. Recommendation:  4 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, immediately labeled "the Arab Spring," are best described as processes rather than outcomes. Despite being a common area of media focus due to decades-long geopolitics, the Arab Spring, as a mediatized meta-event, has led to the reemergence of the region as a discursive territory. The communicative spaces that opened up during and in the aftermath of the uprisings allowed for a multiplicity of topics to reenter public discourse across local, national, and transnational scales. In the process, seasoned debates such as religious sectarianism and democratic institutionalization gained magnitude. More specific debates such as Turkey's role as a model/antimodel added new discursive aspects to the multitopic ensemble. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the communicative and scalar dimensions in the mediation of the Arab Spring by way of taking the debates on Turkey as a case in point.


 Abstract — The construction industry and housing subsector are fraught with risks that have the potential of negatively impacting on the achievement of project objectives. The success or otherwise of most construction projects depends to large extent on how well these risks have been managed. The recent paradigm shift by the subsector to use of formal risk management approach in contrast to hitherto developed rules of thumb means that risks must not only be identified but also properly assessed and responded to in a systematic manner. The study focused on identifying risks associated with housing development projects and prioritisation assessment of the identified risks in order to provide basis for informed decision. The study used a three-step identification framework: review of literature for similar projects, expert consultation and questionnaire based survey to identify potential risk factors. Delphi survey method was employed in carrying out the relative prioritization assessment of the risks factors using computer-based Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) software. The results show that 19 out of the 50 risks significantly impact on housing development projects. The study concludes that although significant numbers of risk factors have been identified as having relevance and impacting to housing construction projects, economic risk group and, in particular, 'changes in demand for houses' is prioritised by most developers as posing a threat to the achievement of their housing development objectives. Unless these risks are carefully managed, their effects will continue to impede success in these projects. The study recommends the adoption and use of the combination of multi-technique identification framework and AHP prioritization assessment methodology as a suitable model for the assessment of risks in housing development projects.


Solid state drives perform random reads more than 100x faster than traditional magnetic hard disks, while offering comparable sequential read and write bandwidth. Because of their potential to speed up applications, as well as their reduced power consumption, these new drives are expected to gradually replace hard disks as the primary permanent storage media in large data centers. However, although they may benefit applications that stress random reads immediately, they may not improve database applications, especially those running long data analysis queries. Database query processing engines have been designed around the speed mismatch between random and sequential I/O on hard disks and their algorithms currently emphasize sequential accesses for disk-resident data. In this paper, we investigate data structures and algorithms that leverage fast random reads to speed up selection, projection, and join operations in relational query processing. We first demonstrate how a column-based layout within each page reduces the amount of data read during selections and projections. We then introduce FlashJoin, a general pipelined join algorithm that minimizes accesses to base and intermediate relational data. FlashJoin's binary join kernel accesses only the join attributes, producing partial results in the form of a join index. Subsequently, its fetch kernel retrieves the attributes for later nodes in the query plan as they are needed. FlashJoin significantly reduces memory and I/O requirements for each join in the query. We implemented these techniques inside Postgres and experimented with an enterprise SSD drive. Our techniques improved query runtimes by up to 6x for queries ranging from simple relational scans and joins to full TPC-H queries.


Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been subjected to considerable public debate. In particular, this debate has concerned PPP financing and its implications. Using insights from agency theory, this study aims to develop a theoretical understanding of PPP financing. The following research question is investigated: How does the privatization of financing decrease or increase agency costs in social infrastructure PPPs? A comparative case study consisting of four Norwegian PPP projects with different financial configurations is undertaken. The findings suggest that the private sector is risk averse, increasing the cost of capital. In addition, private financing does not seem to have the intended incentive effect.


This paper proposes a new approach for modeling investor fear after rare disasters. The key element is to take into account that investors' information about fundamentals driving rare downward jumps in the dividend process is not perfect. Bayesian learning implies that beliefs about the likelihood of rare disasters drop to a much more pessimistic level once a disaster has occurred. Such a shift in beliefs can trigger massive declines in price-dividend ratios. Pessimistic beliefs persist for some time. Thus, belief dynamics are a source of apparent excess volatility relative to a rational expectations benchmark. Due to the low frequency of disasters, even an infinitely-lived investor will remain uncertain about the exact probability. Our analysis is conducted in continuous time and offers closed-form solutions for asset prices. We distinguish between rational and adaptive Bayesian learning. Rational learners account for the possibility of future changes in beliefs in determining their demand for risky assets, while adaptive learners take beliefs as given. Thus, risky assets tend to be lower-valued and price-dividend ratios vary less under adaptive versus rational learning for identical priors.


A detailed water balance and conceptual flow model was calculated and developed for the Sandspruit catchment for the period 1990 to 2010 on a winter rainfall water-year (1 April - 31 March) basis. The Sandspruit catchment (quaternary catchment G10J) is located in the Western Cape Province of South Africa and is a tributary of the Berg River. It contributes significantly to the salinisation of the mid- to lower-reaches of the Berg River and thus the hydrological drivers need to be quantified and conceptualised in order to develop salinity management strategies. Various components of the water balance, i.e. precipitation, evaporation, streamflow, recharge, etc., were monitored and quantified. In addition, stable environmental isotopes and water balance modelling were used to perform hydrograph separation as well as to quantify components of the water balance. Annual streamflow in the catchment during the period of observation was variable, ranging between 0.026 mm∙a-1 and 75.401 mm∙a-1. Streamflow volumes also exhibit high variability between water years. Catchment annual rainfall varied between 351 and 655 mm∙a -1 , averaging at 473 mm∙a -1 . On average, 6.5% of rainfall was converted to streamflow during the period of observation. Evapotranspiration was found to be the dominant component of the water balance, as it comprises, on average, 94% of precipitation in the catchment. Groundwater recharge was calculated to average at 29 mm∙a -1 . The water balance model (J2000) performed well during the simulation period with all measures of performance exhibiting acceptable values. Simulation results indicate that streamflow is driven by interflow from the soil horizon (94.68% of streamflow), followed by overland flow (4.92% of streamflow). These results, together with the physiographic conditions evident in the catchment, were used to develop a conceptual flow model. Streamflow is interpreted to be driven by quickflow, i.e. overland flow and interflow, with minimal contribution from groundwater, and is also more dependent on the rainfall distribution in time rather than on the annual volume. The correlation between average annual streamflow and average rainfall was observed to be poor, suggesting that alternative factors, e.g. the spatial distribution of winter wheat, the temporal distribution of rainfall, climatic variables (temperature), etc., exert a greater influence on streamflow. The water balance and conceptual flow model will form the basis for the application of distributed hydrological modelling in the Sandspruit catchment and the development of salinity management strategies. Results from this investigation, e.g. ET estimates, methods to quantify groundwater recharge, hydrograph separation, etc., could potentially be extrapolated to other semi-arid areas.


PURPOSE
To create a database of relative proton stopping power ratios (RPSPRs)of various phantom materials, especially those that simulate different kinds of human tissue. More importantly, we intend to use these stopping powers to gain a better understanding of and more accurately estimate range uncertainties in heterogeneous phantoms and, ultimately, in patient treatment plans.

METHODS
RPSPRs were determined using two independent techniques to measure the range shift produced by the various materials. The first technique used a PTW water tank scanning system with a PTW TN23343 Markus chamber to measure and compare the percent depth dose profiles of uniform proton beams with and without the various materials of interest blocking the beam. The second technique was similar to the first, except that an IBA Zebra, a water equivalent multi-layer ionization chamber system, was used to measure the percent depth dose profiles. Each material was evaluated using unmodulated proton beams of two different energies to examine possible stopping power energy dependencies.

RESULTS
Currently, we have obtained RPSPR data for three materials that compose the CIRS Model 002LFC IMRT Thorax Phantom. We have also measured range shifts for Lucite and homogeneous rods from a Gammex RMI 467 Electron Density CT Phantom. The range shifts, based on the distal 90% ranges, measured with the water tank and Zebra agree within 0.45 mm, with a mean difference of 0.2 mm, and with no dependence on the energy of the incident proton beam. The difference in RPSPRs between the two measurement techniques was no more than 0.045, with a mean difference of 0.011.

CONCLUSION
The PTW water tank scans and Zebra measurements have allowed us to accurately determine the RPSPRs of different materials used to simulate human tissue. For the materials that we measured, the stopping powers had no apparent energy dependence.


If D is an integral domain with identity having quotient field K, the pseudo-radical of D is defined to be the intersection of all nonzero prime ideals of D. Consideration of the pseudo-radical arises naturally in examining the relation between the statements "D has Jacobson radical zero" and "D[u] has Jacobson radical zero, where ueK". Theorem 4 proves that the first statement implies the second. As a corollary it follows that if M is a prime ideal of the polynomial ring R[X] over a commutative ring R and if P=MnR, then M is an intersection of maximal ideals of R[X] if P is an intersection of maximal ideals of R. Consequently, if R is a Hubert ring, R[X] is also a Hubert ring. The remainder of the paper is devoted to a study of domains having nonzero pseudo-radical. Goldman has defined in [6] the concept of a Hubert ring: the commutative ring R with identity is a Hubert ring if each proper prime ideal of R is an intersection of maximal ideals; here proper means an ideal different from R. The terminology is motivated by the observation that Hubert's Nullstellensatz may be interpreted as asserting that each proper prime ideal of the polynomial domain K[Xlf —, Xn] for K a field, is an intersection of maximal ideals. In work done independently but at approximately the same time, Krull introduced in [10] the concept of a Jacobson ring; the reason for the terminology being obvious from the definition: the commutative ring R with identity is a Jacobson ring if for each proper ideal A of R, the radical of R/A and the Jacobson radical of R/A coincide. From these two definitions it is easily seen that R is a Hubert ring if and only if R is a Jacobson ring. [10; p. 359]. In the remainder of this paper we shall use the term Hubert ring for the notions described above.


Adaptive governance is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the interaction of locally driven collaborative efforts with a hierarchy of governmental regulation and management and is thought to be capable of navigating social−ecological change as society responds to the effects of climate change. The assertion of Native American water rights on highly developed water systems in North America has triggered governance innovations that resemble certain aspects of adaptive governance, and have emerged to accommodate the need for Indigenous water development and restoration of cultural and ecological resources. Similar innovations are observed in the assertion of Indigenous voices in Australia. This presents an opportunity to analyze the emergence of adaptive processes within complex legal systems. We explore the role of law in locally driven innovation in this context, concluding that any system of governance that requires greater flexibility will only be viewed as legitimate, and thus succeed, if attention is given not only to adaptive capacity, but also to aspects of good governance. Through examples of the assertion of Indigenous rights, we illustrate critical links between adaptive capacity in water management, good governance, and law.


The present paper investigates the frequent but little studied phenomenon of child language brokering (CLB), focusing specifically on reported experiences of child-brokered events by representatives of Italian healthcare institutions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with healthcare providers and general practitioners in a medium-sized town in North-East Italy. The aim of the interviews was to highlight recurrent patterns in the commissioning of interpreting services, as well as institutional perceptions of language brokering in general (be it professional or ad hoc), and of CLB in particular. Overall, respondents, while expressing their concerns for the ethical, social and cultural implications of CLB, "defended" it as one of the main, if not the only, available resources to interface with adult migrants in the Italian context.


Although feminist organizational theory frequently refers to the association between rationality and masculinity, this association tends to be stated rather than argued for. This article examines, from a philosophical and sociological perspective, how these two concepts have become genealogically so closely and inseparably intertwined. It proposes that it is the early philosophical and sociological interpretations of reason and rationality that linked masculinity and rationality. To explore the connection between rationality and masculinity that is so fundamental to management and, more broadly, organizational discourse, is the purpose of this article. Commencing with a brief overview of pre-Cartesian concepts of rationality, the main focus of the article is on modern conceptions of rationality, starting with the philosophy of Descartes. It examines the influence of the ideas of Francis Bacon, Enlightenment interpretations of rationality and the influence of Weberian rationality and subsequent interpretations of this concept of rationality by early organizational theorists. Finally, it demonstrates, via a case study of strategic management, how contemporary organizational discourse continues to reflect many of the assumptions about masculinity and rationality that are deeply embedded in more traditional organizational discourse. The article concludes with a number of suggestions for a way forward for critical gender studies that moves beyond the standard feminist critique of organizational discourse and practice.


In a transmission line oscillator (TLO) a linear wave travels along a piece of cable, the transmission line, and interacts with terminating electrical components. A fixed time delay arises due to the transmission time through the transmission line. Recent experiments on a TLO driven by a negative resistor demonstrated rich delay-induced dynamics and high-frequency chaotic behaviour. Furthermore, good agreement was found with a neutral delay differential equation (NDDE) model. In this paper we perform a numerical bifurcation analysis of the NDDE model of the TLO. Our main focus is on homoclinic orbits, which give rise to complicated dynamics and bifurcations. For small time delay there is a homoclinic orbit to a steady-state. However, past a codimension-two Shil'nikov–Hopf bifurcation the homoclinic orbit connects to a saddle-type periodic solution, which exists in a region bounded by homoclinic tangencies. Both types of homoclinic bifurcations are associated with accumulating branches of periodic solutions. We summarize our results in a two-parameter bifurcation diagram in the plane of resistance against time delay. Our study demonstrates that the theory of homoclinic bifurcations in ordinary differential equations largely carries over to NDDEs. However, we find that the neutral delay nature of the problem influences some bifurcations, especially convergence rates of folds associated with the homoclinic tangencies.


PURPOSE
To determine the visual and refractive outcome of photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) and laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) in eyes with prior posterior chamber phakic intraocular lens implantation for high myopia.

METHODS
We studied a series of 37 consecutive eyes of 31 patients who underwent LASIK or PRK for residual refractive error following collamer posterior chamber intraocular lens (IOL) (Staar Surgical Implantable Contact Lens) implantation into a phakic eye. Twenty-eight eyes had LASIK and nine eyes had PRK. Mean follow-up was 8.1 +/- 4.7 months after laser ablation (range, 3 to 18 mo).

RESULTS
The preoperative mean spherical equivalent refraction prior to phakic posterior chamber IOL implantation was -17.74 +/- 4.89 D (range, -9.75 to -28.00 D). Following phakic IOL implantation and prior to LASIK or PRK, mean spherical equivalent refraction was -2.56 +/- 2.34 D (range, -0.25 to -8.75 D). One month following LASIK or PRK, mean spherical equivalent refraction was -0.24 +/- 0.52 D (range, -1.50 to +1.50 D), 3 months following LASIK or PRK, mean spherical equivalent refraction was -0.19 +/- 0.50 D (range, -1.50 to +1.00 D). The refraction was within +/-1.00 D of emmetropia in 36 eyes (97.2%) and within +/-0.50 D in 31 eyes (83.7%). Three eyes developed anterior subcapsular opacities several weeks after laser ablation, one eye developed macular hemorrhage 4 weeks after laser ablation, and one eye had corticosteroid induced ocular hypertension.

CONCLUSIONS
LASIK or PRK can be used to treat the residual refractive error following posterior chamber phakic IOL implantation.


Evolutionary psychologists have put forward that there are evolved differences in risk taking between men and women. Potentially, these also play out in every day behaviours, such as in traffic. We hypothesised that (perceived) gender would influence using a pedestrian crossing. In addition, we also explored if a contextual factor, presence of daylight, could modify risk taking behaviour. 558 pedestrians were directly observed and their use of a crossing near a Metro station in a large city in the North East of England was coded. Using logistic regression, we found evidence that women were more inclined than men to use the crossing. We found no evidence for a contextual effect of daylight or an interaction between daylight and gender on use of the crossing. We discuss the limitations and implications of this finding with reference to literature on risk taking.


ABSTRACT Capstone experiences function as a process in which students consolidate knowledge and skills throughout their degree programme and apply this understanding towards real-world contexts. This process is most often understood, in undergraduate programmes, as a transformation of identity, moving from "student" to "professional". However, for English teaching students at the graduate level, capstone experiences deepen existing professional knowledge and expertise. This process of self-assessment and reflection on teaching can transform and regenerate these experienced English language teachers and their teaching practices. Aiming to explore the value of graduate level capstone experiences in just these regenerative and transformative processes, this study employs a symbolic interactionist framework in analysing data collected from semi-structured interviews utilising a narrative frame approach with a group of experienced Japanese English teachers who have recently completed graduate capstones and returned to their teaching roles. Perceiving capstone experiences as objects through which these graduate students view their developing professional identities, the findings reveal that the reflective space afforded to students through the capstone enabled the students to discern a junction between theoretical principles from graduate courses and practical application. A discussion centring on the implications of graduate capstone experiences for teachers is given.


At fifteen, Earl Burrus Dickerson stowed away on a train in Canton Mississippi, fleeing the racial oppression of his native South. But Chicago, the boy's destination, was no haven of racial fairness and equality. His flight north was in fact the beginning of a journey that would last a lifetime - and would forever pit Dickerson against the force of racial injustice. Earl B. Dickerson's story, told here for the first time is one of courage and character, of remarkable accomplishment in the face of terrible odds; it is also emblematic of the twentieth-century struggle for civil rights - a crucial chapter of African American history and it was lived by one uncompromising individual. In this book, Robert J. Blakely tells how Dickerson (1891-1986) worked his way through preparatory schools and college, a segregate officer's training school, and law school at the University of Chicago. The story follows Dickerson's career as general counsel to the first insurance company owned and operated by African Americans; the first African American Democratic alderman elected to the Chicago City Council; a member of FDR's first Fair Employment Practices Committee leader of the movement that broke the color barrier to membership in the Illinois Bar Association; and, perhaps most famously, the power behind Hansberry v. Lee, the U.S. Supreme Court case that marked the beginning of the end of restrictive real estate covenants - one of the most pernicious legal tools of segregation in the North. Blakely gives us a sense of the man behind the achievements, the life that defied conventions and statistics, and the world in which ""the dean of Chicago's black lawyers became a pioneering architect for equal opportunity in American life.


The French Conseil constitutionnel was by no means a likely candidate to refer a case to the Court of Justice under Article 267 TFEU. Such a bold move was highly unexpected in view of its limited jurisdiction, its usual emphasis on the supremacy of the French Constitution, and its constitutional identity narrative. Yet, the hardly thinkable became true in April 2013 in connection with the implementation of the European Arrest Warrant. In response to a cooperative Conseil, the ECJ displayed its willingness to accommodate the requirements deriving from domestic constitutional law. In doing so, it offered a positive illustration of Melloni and Akerberg Fransson by promoting the application of national standards of protection of human rights in cases falling within the scope of application of EU Law, yet not entirely determined by it.


Despite the longstanding insider trading debate, there is little empirical research on insider trading laws, especially in a comparative context. The article attempts to fill that gap. I find that countries with more prohibitive insider trading laws have more diffuse equity ownership, more accurate stock prices, and more liquid stock markets. These findings are generally robust to controlling for measures of disclosure and enforceability and suggest that formal insider trading laws (especially their deterrent components) matter to stock market development. The article suggests further avenues of empirical research on the specific mechanisms through which insider trading laws might matter and the political economy of their adoption.


Vasoactivity is an important physiological indicator of cardiovascular health which is frequently measured using ex vivo vessels to determine functional mechanisms and evaluate pharmacological responses. Currently, there are no imaging methods available to assess vasoactivity in multiple vascular beds of living animals noninvasively. In this work, we have developed methods to use photoacoustic tomography to assess vasoactivity in vivo in systemic vasculature of living animals. A spherical-view photoacoustic tomography system was used to monitor acute vasodilation in the whole abdomen of a pregnant mouse in response to injection of G-1. After 3D image reconstruction, the diameter of the iliac artery and photoacoustic signal intensity of a placenta over time was measured. The artery and placenta had differential response to the vasodilator G-1. We validated the observed vasodilation of artery by monitoring the change in cross-sectional diameter of an individual artery using standard B-mode ultrasound imaging.


We demonstrate propagation of terahertz waves confined to a semiconductor surface that is periodically corrugated with V-shaped grooves. A one-dimensional array of V-grooves is fabricated on a highly-doped silicon surface, using anisotropic wet-etching of crystalline silicon, thereby forming a plasmonic waveguide. Terahertz time domain spectroscopy is used to characterize the propagation of waves near the corrugated surface. We observe that the grating structure creates resonant modes that are confined near the surface. The degree of confinement and frequency of the resonant mode is found to be related to the pitch and depth of the V-grooves. The surface modes are confirmed through both numerical simulations and experimental measurements. Not only does the V-groove geometry represent a new and largely unexplored structure for supporting surface waves, but it also enables the practical fabrication of terahertz waveguides directly on semiconductor surfaces, without relying on reactive-ion etching or electroplating of sub-millimeter metallic surfaces.


This work aimed to evaluate the effects of
different individual heights of cut on structural characteristics of Brachiaria hibrida cv. Mulato I in four periods of the year. The study was
carried out at the Fazenda Experimental Vale do Acarau, in Sobral, Ceara,
Brazil, from January to December, 2008. The experimental design was a split plot, with the plots representing four pasture conditions through manual cuts of
10 cm, 20 cm, 30 cm and 40 cm heights, which were done every 30 days. Each
treatment had three replications. The subplots were represented by four periods
of evaluation: January-February-March, April-May-June, July-August-September and October-November-December. Fertilization was performed
with 350 kg of N/ha, divided into monthly applications. Irrigation was
conducted in alternate days during the dry season. The variables studied were:
mean height before cutting (cm); dry matter content (%); total dry matter
production (t/ha); percentage of leaves; percentage of stems; percentage of dead
material; leaf blade/stem ratios; number of total leaves per tiller; number of
live leaves per tiller; average size of leaves; and tiller density. Cutting at
10 cm caused a decrease in total dry matter production, underestimating the
potential production. Cutting heights between 20 and 30 cm contributed
positively to increase the total number of leaves, number of green leaves,
average size of the leafs and total dry matter production. Under the present
experimental conditions, cutting around 40 cm was not recommended because of a decreasing in
the leaf/stem ratio and a increasing in stem fraction and dry matter content, compromising the
structure of the canopy.


Purpose To determine the reproducibility of intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) parameters measured in upper abdominal organs with magnetic resonance (MR) imagers from different vendors and with different field strengths. Materials and Methods This prospective study was approved by the independent ethics committees of Kanton Bern and Kanton Zurich, and signed informed consent was obtained from all participants. Abdominal diffusion-weighted images in 10 healthy men (mean age, 37 years ± 8 [standard deviation]) were acquired by using 1.5- and 3.0-T MR imagers from three different vendors. Two readers independently delineated regions of interest that were used to measure IVIM parameters (diffusion coefficient [Dt], perfusion fraction [Fp], and pseudodiffusion coefficient [Dp]) in the left and right lobes of the liver, and in the pancreas, spleen, renal cortex, and renal medulla. Measurement reproducibility between readers was assessed with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Variability across MR imagers was analyzed by using between- and within-subject coefficients of variation (CVs) and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results Between-reader reproducibility was high for Dt (ICC, 94.6%), intermediate for Fp (ICC, 81.7%), and low for Dp (ICC, 69.5%). Between- and within-subject CVs of Dt were relatively high (>20%) in the left lobe of the liver and relatively low (<10%) in the renal cortex and renal medulla. CVs generally exceeded 15% for Fp values and 20% for Dp. ANOVA indicated significant differences (P < .05) between MR imagers. Conclusion IVIM parameters in the upper abdomen may differ substantially across MR imagers. (©) RSNA, 2015 Online supplemental material is available for this article.


The study of trauma in journalism tends to assume that trauma exposure (whether it has been a single event or a series of cumulative episodes) is past and finite. However, this article argues that the notion of trauma exposure as temporally located in the past fails to adequately capture the experiences of local, indigenous journalists living and working in contexts of protracted conflict or violence. There is a growing, if contested, acknowledgement that existing conceptualizations of traumatic stress, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have limited utility in conditions of ongoing violence and danger. In contrast, and based on a participant observation study conducted over three years, this article proposes a spectrum of continuous traumatic stressors and charts the continuous traumatic stress (CTS) of four local reporters in Colombia, living and working in a context of intractable conflict. In this setting, where local journalists have become agents for peace, CTS conjoins the mental wellbeing of individual reporters with their capacity for peace-building.


Older adults' performance decrements can sometime be traced back to inferior strategic choices compared to their younger counterparts. Additionally, older adults often fail to revise their strategic choices with task experience (Bieman-Copland & Charness, 1994; Brigham & Pressley, 1988; Lovett & Schunn, 1999; Price, Dunlosky, & Hertzog, 2008; Touron & Hertzog, 2004a, 2004b; Touron, Hoyer, & Cerella, 2004). Metacognitive models of strategy selection suggests that beliefs, prior knowledge, goals, and task representation influence strategic decisions (e.g., Winne & Hadwin, 1998). No studies to date have attempted to compare task representation in older and younger adults to determine whether older adults' poor strategic choices might be driven by an impoverished understanding of the tasks they are asked to engage in. In two studies we used a pathfinder methodology to elicit conceptual knowledge about a novel chemistry task. In both studies, more conceptual knowledge was related to superior task performance in both younger and older adults. However, we found no evidence of age-related deficits in task representation, formation, or utilization. Surprisingly, participants' task representation scores did not improve following task practice. However, performance improved over trials, even for items that had to be learned with task practice, suggesting that task representation updating did occur. These findings provide indirect evidence of task representation updating in both younger and older adults. However, no age deficits in the ability to update task representations were found. Exploratory analyses suggest that performance in younger adults was related to motivational issues, whereas performance in older adults was driven by higher levels of processing speed and crystallized intelligence.


According to generally accepted accounting practice, the objective of financial statements is to provide useful information to the primary user groups of such statements, regardless of the size of the entity. The primary users of the financial statements of SMEs are the owners, South African Revenue Services (SARS) and bankers. The recognition, measurement and disclosure requirements of full IFRSs do not result in cost-effective and useful information being provided to the users of the financial statements of SMEs (non-listed companies, close corporations and other small entities, irrespective of their legal form), because these users do not need the extensive and complex information provided in general purpose financial statements. Consequently, an accounting standard is required to differentiate between general and limited purpose financial statements. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued an exposure draft (ED 222) on IFRS for SMEs in February 2007. These stipulated modifications relating mainly to relaxed disclosure requirements and are more applicable to medium-sized entities. According to a survey among preparers of financial statements in June 2007, these developments may not be adequate for the purposes of smaller entities, irrespective of their legal form. Accordingly, the study recommends that a formal, separate set of simplified differential reporting standards be developed for smaller entities.


The article provides critical reflections upon Dr. M. Verkerk's 'Triple I Model' which aims to guide engineers in their work designing complex systems. The model suggests including stakeholders in the design process, in order to search for inherent values of the designed situation, and to design in an ideal-seeking mode. I do applaud the effort made as such as I do the mentioned three features of the model. However, I have also identified a set of challenges and needs for further development of the model and suggest some avenues for seeking support from the domain of systems thinking.


Decline of Corymbia calophylla (marri) in the south-west of Western Australia (WA) has been an increasing source of concern in recent years, due to a canker disease caused by Quambalaria coyrecup. More recently Q. pitereka has been implicated in leaf and shoot blight, which has been observed over the last five years to extend to flowering parts at all stages of development. This symptomology is not typical of Quambalaria shoot blight (QSB) in its origin of eastern Australia, and this study is the first investigation of the disease on flowering structures. Marri flowers are invaluable to the W A beekeeping industry and to native fauna, for which reason this study was conducted to ascertain the extent, causes and possible impacts of the disease. Six surveys conducted over a 13 month period determined that QSB was widespread over the C. calophylla distribution range, causing deformities and early termination of flowering structures, and was associated with three different species of Quambalaria. DNA sequen6es of 23 isolates obtained in this study confirmed the presence of Q. cyanescens and Q. pitereka with the latter identified as the primary blight pathogen of both vegetative and reproductive tissues.