We use HST/ACS imaging of 100 early-type galaxies in the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey to investigate the nature of diffuse star clusters (DSCs). Compared to globular clusters (GCs), these star clusters have moderately low luminosities (MV > −8) and a broad distribution of sizes (3 < rh < 30 pc), but they are principally characterized by their low mean surface brightnesses which can be more than three magnitudes fainter than a typical GC (μg > 20 mag arcsec ). The median colors of diffuse star cluster systems are red, 1.1 < g − z < 1.6, which is redder than metal-rich GCs and often as red as the galaxy itself. Most DSC systems thus have mean ages older than 5 Gyr or else have super-solar metallicities implying that diffuse star clusters are likely to be long-lived, surviving for significant fraction of a Hubble time. We find that 12 galaxies in our sample contain a significant excess of diffuse star cluster candidates. Nine of them are morphologically classified as lenticulars (S0s), and five of them visibly contain dust. We also find a substantial population of DSCs in the halo of the giant elliptical M49, associated with the companion galaxy VCC 1199. Most DSC systems appear to be both aligned with the galaxy light and associated with galactic disks, but at the same time many lenticular galaxies do not host substantial DSC populations, and environment and clustercentric radius do not appear to be good predictors of their existence. Diffuse star clusters in our sample share similar characteristics to those identified in other nearby lenticular, spiral, and dwarf galaxies. Unlike luminous GCs, whose sizes are constant with luminiosity, DSCs are bounded at the bright end by an envelope of nearly constant surface brightness. We suggest that populations of diffuse star clusters preferentially form, survive, and coevolve with galactic disks. Their properties are broadly consistent with those of merged star cluster complexes, and we note that despite being 3–5 magnitudes brighter than DSCs, ultra-compact dwarfs have similar surface brightnesses. The closest Galactic analogs to the DSCs are the old open clusters. We suggest that if a diffuse star cluster population did exist in the disk of the Milky Way, it would be very difficult to find. Subject headings: galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD — galaxies: evolution — galaxies: star clusters, globular clusters: general — open clusters and associations: general


A series of experiments were conducted to examine the effect of herbal
supplementation as a growth and health promoters. An in vitro procedure was used to
determine the antibacterial activity of the fruit of Solanum torvum, whole plant of
Euphorbia hirta, and rhizomes of Zingiber officinale, Curcuma longa and Zingiber
zerumbet. Among the five herbal plants studied only the aqueous extract of Euphorbia
hirta showed considerable growth-inhibiting activity against Staphylococcus aureus.
Phytochemical screening and a toxicity evaluation of the selected plants was carried out
in experiment II. Phytochemical screening study showed that selected plants contained
volatile oils, tannins, alkaloids, saponins, flavonoids. Alkaloids and steroids were only
detected in the aqueous extract of Euphorbia hirta. Toxicity evaluation also showed that
based on liver enzyme and histopathology the herbal aqueous extracts were not toxic
when administered 2,000 mg/kg body weight by the oral route. Experiment III was conducted to examine the effects of dietary Euphorbia hirta
supplementation on growth performance, nutrient digestibilities, digesta pH and ileal
microbial population. 600 one-day-old broilers (Cobb-500) were housed in 30 pens of
20 birds each until day 42. The dietary treatments were: (1) basal diet (control), (2)
basal diet + 0.02 g/kg virginiamycin (VM), (3) basal diet + 1.5 g/kg acidifier
(OrgacidsTM) (OA), (4) basal diet + 2.5 g/kg E. hirta (EH2.5), (5) basal diet + 5 g/kg
E. hirta (EH5.0) and (6) basal diet + 7.5 g/kg E. hirta (EH7.5). The higher levels of
E. hirta inclusion (7.5 g/kg) improved FCR of broiler chickens at 42 days of age. The
highest AMEn and protein digestibility were observed in EH7.5 group. On day 21, the
total aerobic bacteria counts in the ileum content of the EH2.5, VM and control groups
were significantly higher (P<0.05) than the other groups. OA and VM supplementation
significantly increased (P<0.05) Lactobacillus count at day 21 and the lowest
Lactobacillus count was noted in the EH7.5 birds. At 42 days, feeding of EH2.5
promoted greater numbers of lactobacillus, to compare with other groups and the lowest
Lactobacillus count was enumerated in the control birds. On day 21, except for ileum
and cecumn, OA significantly reduced (P<0.05) pH value. The trend in pH value of the
gastrointestinal tract on day 42 and 21 was similar.


At the present time, real-time web-based imaging AI analytics for chest radiography is proving to be useful in assisting radiologists as a companion, in detecting an abnormality or mass on checkup chest films. It may reduce some cost for unnecessary studies, for instance chest tomosynthesis or high resolution computed tomography (CT) chest examinations. Sampling-case studies found that suspicious lesions especially lung nodules, parenchymatous disease and pneumothorax are sensitive for detection. However, AI analytics are not yet achieving satisfactory results in the detection of bony structures, heart and mediastinal lesions. Furthermore, it also may cause false positive results when a chest film examination is not a true PA (posterior-anterior) or AP (anterior-posterior) position.

Keywords:
artificial intelligence, AI, chest image, chest radiograph, chest tomosynthesis, fractured ribs, chest screening, pulmonary tuberculosis

Address Correspondence to author:
Thanis Saksirinukul, MD Radiology Department, Bangkok Hospital, 2 Soi Soonvijai 7, New Petchburi Rd, Bangkok 10310, Thailand. email: email@example.com

Received: June 5, 2018
Revision received: June 7, 2018
Accepted after revision: July 5, 2018
BKK Med J 2018;14(2): 59-63

DOI: 10.31524/bkkmedj.2018.09.011


The exploits of the Persian kings are famous, but who has heard of Irdabama, a formidable landowner who controlled a huge workforce and ran her own wine and grain business? This book is the first to examine the economic and political importance of women in the first Persian empire (559-331 BC). Governed by Achaemenid kings and their satraps, this vast realm stretched from Asia Minor to India. Ancient Greek writers on Persian history give us a glimpse of the influential role played by some individual women at these courts, but these are sporadic and hardly reliable accounts of a few colourful femme fatales in the royal family, designed to show up the scandalous machinations of barbarian women gaining political control and causing the decline and effeminacy of the Persian kings. This book is the first to demonstrate the true importance of not only royal but non-royal women in Persia, with the benefit of contemporary Persian and Babylonian sources. By approaching the subject from a Near Eastern perspective, and thoroughly re-examining the Greek sources, the author brings to life a rich and much more detailed picture of the role of women in ancient Persia.


In this study, large-eddy simulation is combined with a turbine model to investigate the influence of atmospheric thermal stability on wind-turbine wakes. The simulation results show that atmospheric stability has a significant effect on the spatial distribution of the mean velocity deficit and turbulence statistics in the wake region as well as the wake meandering characteristics downwind of the turbine. In particular, the enhanced turbulence level associated with positive buoyancy under the convective condition leads to a relatively larger flow entrainment and, thus, a faster wake recovery. For the particular cases considered in this study, the growth rate of the wake is about 2.4 times larger for the convective case than for the stable one. Consistent with this result, for a given distance downwind of the turbine, wake meandering is also stronger under the convective condition compared with the neutral and stable cases. It is also shown that, for all the stability cases, the growth rate of the wake and wake meandering in the vertical direction is smaller compared with the ones in the lateral direction. This is mainly related to the different turbulence levels of the incoming wind in the different directions, together with the anisotropy imposed by the presence of the ground. It is also found that the wake velocity deficit is well characterized by a modified version of a recently proposed analytical model that is based on mass and momentum conservation and the assumption of a self-similar Gaussian distribution of the velocity deficit. Specifically, using a two-dimensional elliptical (instead of axisymmetric) Gaussian distribution allows to account for the different lateral and vertical growth rates, particularly in the convective case, where the non-axisymmetry of the wake is stronger. Detailed analysis of the resolved turbulent kinetic energy budget in the wake reveals also that thermal stratification considerably affects the magnitude and spatial distribution of the turbulence production, dissipation, and transport terms.


We demonstrate the reconstruction of one- and two-dimensional objects by numerically backpropagating measured scattered terahertz transients. The spatial resolution determined by the Sparrow criterion is found to correspond to approximately 30% of the peak wavelength and 85% of the mean wavelength of the power spectrum of the single-cycle waveform.


The four ITER Electron Cyclotron Upper Launchers (UL) are designed to control Magneto-Hydrodynamic instabilities with the deposition of Electron Cyclotron power. According to the present design, each launcher comprises two rows of four input waveguides, whose output beam is focused and driven towards the plasma by four sets of mirrors. In order to study the beam-launcher interaction throughout quasi-optical propagation, with particular attention to straylight behaviour, and to verify analytical calculations, a 3D model of the UL optical system has been implemented with the electromagnetic code GRASP (R) and the Physical Optics method. Detailed description of the components are introduced: pure hybrid mode HE11 from cylindrical waveguide as input beams, real shapes of the mirror contours, semi-analytical description of the ellipsoidal surfaces of focussing mirrors. A conceptual calculation scheme has been developed in order to take into account not only the direct contribution of the single source on its next scatterer but also the first order indirect effects: crosstalk from different lines of the same row and crosstalk from different rows have been evaluated after reflection on the first and third set of mirrors. The evaluations presented have been performed on the preliminary UL design, the last major milestone before finalization; however, the numerical model is suitable to be applied to future evolutions of the setup and/or other configurations.


Objective- To evaluate tail vertebra as an autogenous cortical bone and cancellous bone for filling ulnarsegmental bone defect in dogs.
Design- Experimental study.
Animals- Eight adult mongrel dogs with an average age of 37.S months and average body weight of17.62 kg.
Procedure- The animals were randomly divided into two groups. A bone defect (2.S-cm) was created on the middle portion of the right ulna in all dogs. Ulna was fixed by intramedullary pinning. In 5 dogs (test group) ulnar bone defects were filled with tail vertebra, after tail docking. Cancellous bone harvested fromthe il iac cres t was also used to promote bone healing in the ho st-graft inter face s. In the other 3 dogs(control group) ulnar bone defect s were not filled. Po stoperative clinical assessment was includ edmeasurement of body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, and evaluation of the degree of lameness. Radiographic assessment of bone based on the process of bone healing and consolidation of the host-graft interface, periosteal reaction, and soft tissue swelling were performed immediately and at the weeks 1, 3, S,7, 10, 13 and 17 after surgery.


Schwannomas of the nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses are very rare. We report the case of a 50-year-old woman with a schwannoma arising from the nasal septum. We discuss the clinical presentation, differential diagnosis, imaging characteristics and treatment of this rarely encountered lesion. Schwannoma (neurilemmoma) is a benign neoplasm arising from Schwann cells in the peripheral nerve sheath. It can arise throughout the body, but is most commonly observed in the head and neck. This region accounts for 25–45% of all schwannoma [1]. Tumors arising from nasal septum are extremely rare with only less than 20 cases been reported in the English literature [1–8].


In late 2011 The Swedish Society of Radiation Physics formed a working group to concentrate on the Quality Assurance of modern radiation therapy techniques. The given task was to identify and summarise the different QA strategies in Sweden and also the international recommendations. This was used to formulate recommendations for practical guidelines within Sweden. In this paper a brief summery of the group's work is presented. All the Swedish radiation therapy centres do a pre treatment verification measurement as QA for every new IMRT and VMAT plan. Physicists do it and they believe it to be time consuming. A general standpoint from all the centres was that new guidelines and legislation is needed to allow QA that does not require a measurement. Based on various international publications and recommendations the working group has presented two strategies, one where all new plans are checked through measurement and one where no measurement is needed. The measurement- based strategy is basically the same as the one used today with an extended machine QA part. The other presented strategy is process oriented where all the different parts of the treatment chain are checked separately. The final report can be found in Swedish on http://www.radiofysik.org.


In this book, written by David Ashton and Johnny Sung, the ILO is responding to the widespread interest in learning and training in high performance work organizations (HPWOs) and has taken up the challenge of identifying and documenting these innovative practices.  The book looks at many aspects of workplace learning and training and considers these aspects from the perspective of workers as well as employers, including the prospective benefits for the different parties.  It also examines the role governments can play in fostering high performance work practices and, in particular, encouraging enterprises to make better use of their employees' skills.  This book contributes to the ILO's strategic objective of creating greater opportunities for women and men to secure decent work.  The HPWOs create the scenario for a win-win outcome: the companies benefit through increased productivity, and the employees gain through improved quality of working life – decent employment – and increased remuneration compared to more traditional enterprises. The recent research, for the first time, shows how high performance work practices increase productivity. The book also shows that employees in HPWOs often have more stable employment and that equity issues are dealt with in a more open and fair manner due to the commitment of managers and workers alike. Mutual trust is an essential element of high performance work practices.


This research aims to enhance our knowledge of Inte rnet purchase behavior by proposing a new model which draws from three disciplines: consumer behavior, decision analysis and IS. A research methodology has been designed to capture t he dynamic process that Internet shoppers follow when they are engaged in a shopping experien ce and the influences of their interactions with the environment on their behavior. Data from a n Internet panel data provider, video recording sessions and questionnaires will be colle cted to capture the purchase behavior process and establish the contextual factors and the possibilities of cross-channel behavior in the three different sectors of banking, groceries and mobile phones. The proposed model will be revised based on the results of our study. The theoretical and empirical results will inform the three literatures of this study. Companies will also be a ble to devise winning strategies by better understanding their consumers' Internet shopping be havior.


Abstract Background Identification of the immune response against tuberculosis is vital to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities. The objective of this study was to determine IL (interleukin)-18 and IL-27 responses of peripheral blood mononuclear cells to early secreted antigen (ESAT-6) and culture filtrate protein-10 (CFP-10) stimulation in children with a (+) or (−) tuberculin skin test (TST) with in-house tuberculosis contact. Methods We enrolled 40 children aged 1 to 5 years who had an in-house contact with a tuberculous adult. Blood samples were obtained from all children for QuantiFERON tuberculosis (TB) gold in tube (QFT-GIT), and peripheral blood mononuclear blood cell culture tests. The subjects were grouped as TST (−) QFT-GIT (−), TST (+) QFT-GIT (−), and TST (+) QFT-GIT (+). Supernatant of peripheral blood mononuclear cell culture was separated with and without stimulation of ESAT-6 and CFP-10, and IL-18 and IL-27 levels were measured with enzyme linked immunoassay (ELISA) test. Results The study group included 22 boys and 18 girls with mean age 4.25 ± 0.9 years. IL-18 and IL-27 levels were statistically significant in ESAT-6/CFP-10-stimulated supernatants of peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) samples among the three groups (p = 0.000, p = 0.007, respectively). IL-18 levels between the TST (−) QFT-GIT (−) and TST (+) QFT-GIT (+) groups were significantly different (p = 0.026). Both IL-18 and IL-27 levels were significantly different between ESAT-6/CFP-10 stimulated PBMC supernatants of TST (−) QFT-GIT (−) and TST (+) QFT-GIT (−) groups (p = 0.000, p = 0.003, respectively). Conclusion Low IL-18 and IL-27 responses of peripheral blood mononuclear cells in children with Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine may play a role in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection after in-house contact.


Knowledge of the provenance of crustal volatiles and the processes by which they are released is extremely important for the dynamics of magmatic systems. Presented here are the results of multiple investigations, which aim to understand magmatic volatile contamination from contrasting but complementary perspectives. The main methodologies used include He and C isotope values and CO2/3He ratios of volcanic gases and fluids; simulation of magma-carbonate interaction using high-pressure high-temperature experimental petrology; X-ray microtomography of vesiculated xenoliths and computer modeling. Findings show that the contribution from upper crustal volatiles can be substantial, and is dependant on the upper crustal lithology on which a volcano lies, as well as the composition of the magma supplied. Carbonate dissolution in particular is strongly controlled by the viscosity of the host magma. The details of the breakdown of vesiculated xenoliths is complex but has wide reaching implications, ranging from the dissemination of crustally derived materials through a magma body to highlighting that crustal volatiles are largely unaccounted for in both individual volcano and global volatile budgets. In synthesizing the conclusions from each of the individual perspectives presented, I propose the contribution of volatiles from crustal sources to play a significant role in many geological systems. This volatile component should be taken into consideration in future research efforts.


States are reticent to support the idea that they have human rights obligations to people other than their own. However decades of United Nations consideration and human rights standard-setting in the area of international cooperation have advanced interpretations of the obligation whereby economic and other policies should be designed in such a way as to avoid causing injury to the interests of developing States and to the rights of their people, and, moreover, should actively seek to address existing deprivations. This latter obligation to fulfil socio-economic rights elsewhere gives rise to a host of important legal issues that provide the focus for this article. Should we understand the obligations to be those of individual States or can we speak of collective legal obligations in this area? Is the extraterritorial obligation to fulfil socio-economic rights limited to the transfer of financial resources, and if not what else might it entail? Are they best framed as secondary obligations triggered only if the rights-holder's own State is unable or unwilling to fulfil them or as simultaneous obligations? If, as per the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and its monitoring Committee we recognise capacity as a basis to assist, how might the obligations among all those States with capacity be divided? In complying with these positive obligations of international assistance and cooperation what would constitute an unreasonable cost on the part of a State acting extraterritorially? In exploring these questions, this paper offers insights from the author's membership in the Drafting Committee of the 2011 Maastricht Principles on the Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and presents the current state of legal play.


Viticulture in the Mediterranean region has been improved by agronomic methods based on ecophysiological and genetic knowledge of the species and varieties cultivated. Plant growth, yield and quality are highly dependent on climate. Grape sugar content and wine alcohol content are considered as important quality parameters. The objective of our study is to analyse the effects of the current global change on the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV) in red wines from vineyards located in the Montsant Designation of Origin (DO) (Priorat County, north-eastern Spain). We present an annual series of percentage of ABV in red wines over the 1984-2008 period (25 years), which is one of the longest series of this viticultural variable in Spain. We do not detect any significant trend of alcohol levels in red wines from the Montsant DO along the 1984-2004 subperiod, but a sharp increase about 1% (by volume) is observed after 2004; we statistically checked that the last four years constitute an outlier period in the series. We consider climate evolution over the 1984-2004 period in the study area in order to find some relation with alcohol levels in red wines. Agronomic practices and land cover changes are also taken into account. Results show that the interannual variability of the alcohol levels in red wines are partially explained by temperature and precipitation conditions few days before the vintage. The high percentages of ABV since 2005 may be associated with new trends in viticulture techniques rather than with climate change.


. The wave of students' deviant behaviour causing strikes and violence among other deviance had hit a number of schools in Kisumu District and disrupted learning in the recent years. The Study therefore sought to find out the factors contributing to deviant behaviour among students. The purpose of the study was to examine the causes of deviance, management and administration of the students' discipline in secondary schools. \ To carry out the research, the study employed a descriptive survey research design in order to get the perception and views of the Head teachers, Deputy Head teachers, Heads of Guidance and Counseling, and students. Related literature for this study revealed that unless appropriate measures were taken, the vice would continue. The study population constituted 65 secondary schools, 65 Head Teachers, 65 Deputy Head Teachers, 65 Heads of Guidance and Counseling, 947 Teachers and 13,707 Students in Kisumu District. The sample for the study constituted 22 Head Teachers, 22 Deputy Head Teachers, 22 Heads of Guidance and Counseling department and 275 Students. Data was collected by use of questionnaires and in-depth interview schedules. The findings of the study showed that there were gaps to be filled in the management and appropriate measures to control deviance among students .Guidance and Counseling featured prominently as a measure to enhance management strategy for curbing deviance.


Laughing Whitefish, a novel by Robert Traver, the pen name of former Michigan Supreme Court Justice John Voelker, is the fictionalized story of a case that reached the Michigan Supreme Court three times, culminating in Kobogum v. Jackson Iron Co., 43 N.W. 602 (Mich. 1889). The petitioner, Charlotte Kobogum, an Ojibwe Indian from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, brought suit to recover under a note issued to her father, Marji Gesick, by the mining company in the 1840s. The company had promised a share in the company because he had led them to one of the largest iron ore deposits in the country, the famed Jackson Mine. Despite the company's defense that Mr. Gesick was a polygamist and therefore Ms. Kobogum could not be his legitimate heir, the Michigan Supreme Court held that state courts had no right to interfere with internal, domestic relations of reservation Indians, and upheld the claim. Justice Voelker's tale is a powerful defense of the decision, and offers insights into why state courts should recognize the judgments of tribal courts even today.


If one takes a broad, panoramic perspective on comparative constitutional law, the familiar narrative of the rise of world constitutionalism suggests a fairly straightforward and uniform answer to the most general question of the place of constitutional law in a legal system. So, too, the logically prior question of what constitutional law is. The "postwar paradigm" posits in its essential features, first, that constitutional law is the law codified in a country's written constitution, mostly establishing the ground rules of government and protecting certain basic rights, and second that this law sits at the apex of its legal system. It is the supreme law of the land, entrenched to reflect and preserve its primacy, and authoritatively interpreted and applied by a high court with the power to set aside conflicting non-constitutional law. Zooming in, however, on the theory and practice of constitutionalism in certain specific contexts reveals that both questions have recently become interestingly more complex and the answers provided more nuanced and diverse. So, for example, what constitutional law is and the line between it and other law, what forms it can take and the judicial techniques it may employ, have been helpfully complicated by the development of theories of both the common law and the statutory constitution in various English-speaking countries in recent years. Similarly, three different views of the general place of constitutional law in a legal system have been defended or described in different contexts, which form a spectrum running from political to legal constitutionalism, and finally to what may be called "total constitutionalism." Less globally, and perhaps also more familiarly, there are robust ongoing practical and scholarly debates about the place of constitutional law in certain specific areas of a country's legal system. Thus, the old question of the relative importance and centrality of constitutional law to issues of rights protection versus governmental structure has been raised in a surprising variety of contexts and with interestingly different conclusions in recent years. The issue of the scope of constitutional law within the sphere of private conduct/private law has been a prominent one in recent bouts of constitution-making and judicial implementation, triggering much scholarly interest. Similarly, the debate about the role of constitutional law versus legislative politics in securing social and economic welfare has been enlivened and extended by recent experience, particularly in South Africa and Eastern Europe. Overall, this increasingly rich literature suggests the importance of a genuinely comparative perspective that takes contextualized constitutional discourses seriously and results in distinct and broader conceptions of constitutional phenomena than provided by either purely domestic constitutional law or more abstract, philosophical reflection. Here, as elsewhere, focus on both sameness and difference, on paradigm and particularity, seems to offer the most useful and illuminating general methodology for the discipline.


It is assumed that the river runoff process can be approximated by a Markov process. The process is thus described by M distribution functions: F n ( q t , t ; q t-1 ; t -1;…; q t-n , t-n ), t ≡ 1, 2, …, M where M is the number of time intervals within the year, n - the order of the Markov process and q t , in general, is a vector representing runoff at several sites in a river or neighbouring rivers. Fundamental hypothesis of relations between multivariate distributions and corresponding marginal distributions is given. A finite difference scheme for multisite and multilag generation of river runoff is derived. The derivation is based on the multivariate normal distribution. Different methods for determination of the order of the finite difference scheme are discussed as well as the influence of model order and method of parameter estimation on properties of the model.


BACKGROUND
Supportive therapy is often used in everyday clinical care and in evaluative studies of other treatments.

OBJECTIVES
To review the effects of supportive therapy compared with standard care, or other treatments in addition to standard care for people with schizophrenia.

SEARCH METHODS
For this update, we searched the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group's register of trials (November 2012).

SELECTION CRITERIA
All randomised trials involving people with schizophrenia and comparing supportive therapy with any other treatment or standard care.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
We reliably selected studies, quality rated these and extracted data. For dichotomous data, we estimated the risk ratio (RR) using a fixed-effect model with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Where possible, we undertook intention-to-treat analyses. For continuous data, we estimated the mean difference (MD) fixed-effect with 95% CIs. We estimated heterogeneity (I(2) technique) and publication bias. We used GRADE to rate quality of evidence.

MAIN RESULTS
Four new trials were added after the 2012 search. The review now includes 24 relevant studies, with 2126 participants. Overall, the evidence was very low quality.We found no significant differences in the primary outcomes of relapse, hospitalisation and general functioning between supportive therapy and standard care.There were, however, significant differences favouring other psychological or psychosocial treatments over supportive therapy. These included hospitalisation rates (4 RCTs, n = 306, RR 1.82 CI 1.11 to 2.99, very low quality of evidence), clinical improvement in mental state (3 RCTs, n = 194, RR 1.27 CI 1.04 to 1.54, very low quality of evidence) and satisfaction of treatment for the recipient of care (1 RCT, n = 45, RR 3.19 CI 1.01 to 10.7, very low quality of evidence). For this comparison, we found no evidence of significant differences for rate of relapse, leaving the study early and quality of life.When we compared supportive therapy to cognitive behavioural therapy CBT), we again found no significant differences in primary outcomes. There were very limited data to compare supportive therapy with family therapy and psychoeducation, and no studies provided data regarding clinically important change in general functioning, one of our primary outcomes of interest.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
There are insufficient data to identify a difference in outcome between supportive therapy and standard care. There are several outcomes, including hospitalisation and general mental state, indicating advantages for other psychological therapies over supportive therapy but these findings are based on a few small studies where we graded the evidence as very low quality. Future research would benefit from larger trials that use supportive therapy as the main treatment arm rather than the comparator.


The concept of cloud computing has recently changed how hardware, software, and information are handled. However, security challenges and credibility requirements have never changed and may have increased. Protecting cloud computing and providing security for its resources and users is one of the critical challenges. As a result, most users are afraid to use their resources, because many security problems must be met. For example, authentication and reliability are major security constraints and must be provided in a cloud computing environment. There is a wide range of authentication protocols in use, but the researcher has recommended the Kerberos protocol to represent and test it in a complex environment such as a mixed cloud environment.
A model has been developed to implement Kerberos authentication in a hybrid cloud computing environment to securely access the cloud computing services provided. This model is represented using the OPNET Modeler 14.5 simulation system. The network efficiency was measured before and after the hacker. Findings presented in this research are supporting the ability of the Kerberos protocol to prevent illegal access to cloud computing services, whether from within the private cloud or the public cloud. While maintaining the efficient performance of the network.


There is a growing global water crisis and that this is one of the of the most significant threats the world is facing. Climate change is one of the key drivers of the water crisis as it changes the global water cycle, increases variability in availability and water stress and scarcity, as well as degrading water quality. Water can also be a risk for conflict and instability. It can also be a trigger for conflict at the local level. However, a range of factors and intervening variables are likely to influence whether conflict arises. At the international level, whilst political tensions in some basins are, water historically has more often led to cooperation than conflict between countries. This paper considers interactions between water, climate change and conflict as a spectrum that includes protests, through political tensions to violent conflict, at different scalar levels of analysis. However, the local, intrastate and international levels are linked. This rapid literature review provides a snapshot of this literature and largely focuses on literature from 2017 onwards. Whilst in the literature, water and climate change are often linked to conflict and instability through climate change's impacts on water security, the consensus in the literature reviewed for this report is that this does not mean there are direct causal linkages. Establishing whether or not incidences of water-related conflict, or conflict over water is increasing, is challenging and contested.


Insect-inspired surfaces repel bubble jets. Cavitation refers to the formation and collapse of vapor bubbles near solid boundaries in high-speed flows, such as ship propellers and pumps. During this process, cavitation bubbles focus fluid energy on the solid surface by forming high-speed jets, leading to damage and downtime of machinery. In response, numerous surface treatments to counteract this effect have been explored, including perfluorinated coatings and surface hardening, but they all succumb to cavitation erosion eventually. Here, we report on biomimetic gas-entrapping microtextured surfaces (GEMS) that robustly entrap air when immersed in water regardless of the wetting nature of the substrate. Crucially, the entrapment of air inside the cavities repels cavitation bubbles away from the surface, thereby preventing cavitation damage. We provide mechanistic insights by treating the system as a potential flow problem of a multi-bubble system. Our findings present a possible avenue for mitigating cavitation erosion through the application of inexpensive and environmentally friendly materials.


Summary

1. To determine the consequences of dispersal and gene flow for temporary pond water mites (Hydrachnida), we compared distributional, genetic and morphological characters in the closely related species Arrenurus angustilimbatus and A. rufopyriformis. The former has larvae that parasitise and disperse on adult mosquitoes, whereas larvae of the latter forego any association with hosts.

2. Allometrically adjusted egg size and gonopore size were found to be useful characters for distinguishing between females of the two species.

3. Arrenurus angustilimbatus possesses a broader and more continuous geographic distribution than its 'direct developing' counterpart. Allozyme heterozygosity was higher and population differentiation lower in A. angustilimbatus. In addition, populations of A. rufopyriformis were morphologically divergent, whereas populations of A. angustilimbatus were not. Isolation by distance analyses on both genetic and morphological characters indicated that the results were not biased by different sampling regimes for the two species.

4. These results demonstrate the importance of mosquito parasitism for maintaining ecological and genetic linkages between A. angustilimbatus populations. More broadly, we hypothesise that insect-mediated dispersal has contributed to the ecological and evolutionary success of water mites, because the Hydrachnida lack other obvious adaptations for dispersing in space or time.


In today's life Intrusion Detection System gain the attention, because of ability to detect the intrusion access efficiently and effectively as security is the major issue in networks. This system identifies attacks and reacts by generating alerts or blocking the unwanted data/traffic. Intrusion Detection System mainly classified as Anomaly based intrusion detection systems that have benefit of detecting novel attacks having false positive rate, and Misuse based intrusion detection systems fails to detect the novel attacks. The proposed system includes Genetic algorithm and the data mining method of fuzzy logic which is a class association rule mining. Genetic algorithm is used to extract the rules which are required for anomaly detection system. The use of the fuzzy logic in proposed model deals with mixed types of attribute and avoid sharp boundary problem. As association rule mining is used to extract the sufficient rules for the user purpose rather than to extract all the rules which are useful for the misuse detection. KDD dataset from the MIT Lincoln Laboratory is used which provides high detection rates. Keywords— Data Mining, Rule Mining, Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Genetic Algorithm (GA), Network Security, Fuzzy Logic.


Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been identified as the first choice treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Although a significant proportion of patients benefit from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, another still fails to respond to CBT. To improve outcomes, new targets of intervention have been broadened, but no clear and comprehensive conceptualizations of the disorder have been suggested. In the last few years, in the context of Schema Therapy (ST), several specific models have been proposed for the treatment of Axis I diagnostic categories (according to the classification of DSM IV), in addition to the more well-known conceptualizations related to Personality Disorders. Concerning OCD, several studies have investigated the effectiveness of ST in the treatment of OCD, but only few have tried to elaborate a conceptualization of the disorder in terms of modes. This lack of knowledge and shared conceptualization might lead to difficulties in planning and evaluating effective interventions. The aim of this work is to present a conceptualization of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that results from the integration between the Cognitive Therapy framework, as proposed by Mancini and collaborators, and the framing in terms of modes, in line with ST, starting from the research data available. In particular, the rationale of the intervention will be proposed, aimed at accepting the risk of committing mistakes or of coming into contact with disgusting substances. This general aim will then be articulated in sub-aims, which may direct it, in a more specific way, on the basis of the different modes that characterize the experience of obsessive patients.


Due importance is not accorded by scientists to public outreach activities, probably due to their busy research and administrative schedule. However, even if they want to devote their time they cannot do it in a sustained manner because of "(over) specialization". Creative science communication is hindered by alleged 'egoist' feeling that it is an act of "copying" and "over-simplification" making the purists cringe to the core. However, it must be borne in mind that all current science is combinatorial. It derives from a diverse set of disciplines and research that has already been done by generations. It's a networked knowledge that needs to be effectively communicated to the masses by combining the disparate pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill and talent that are accumulated over the lifetime. These need to be stitched together or recombined into new creations for easy understanding and consumption of the common people. Science communicators need to cross-pollinate to create and evolve new ideas. Science communication to the common people needs an assortment of techniques that can appeal to the "interested" and "non-interested" participants as well. Both these constituents are an important segment, hence efforts should be made to make science communication a participatory event rather than a unidirectional flow of information. The participatory model should strive at creating an ambience of reflection and rumination, on the ideas that are floating around, so that the information that is being discussed can seep into the psyche of interested as well as un-interested participants. Hence, the effective communication of a scientific idea also rests on the shoulders of the participant, and not just on the communicator. This will induce the communicator to explore new, innovative and effective ways to reach the audience. The new integrated social media platform can be harnessed since it provides an opportunity to effectively engage with a wide spectrum of common people comprising students, teachers, academicians, aspiring scientists and technologists, not just locally but globally. This approach will encourage wide participation and greater returns on time invested. It will also give quantifiable metrics on their impact.


In this paper, we propose a bank-based explanation for the decade-long Japanese slowdown following the asset price collapse in the early 1990s. We start with the well-known observation that most large Japanese banks were only able to comply with capital standards because regulators were lax in their inspections. To facilitate this forbearance the banks often engaged in sham loan restructurings that kept credit flowing to otherwise insolvent borrowers (that we call zombies). Thus, the normal competitive outcome whereby the zombies would shed workers and lose market share was thwarted. Our model highlights the restructuring implications of the zombie problem. The counterpart of the congestion created by the zombies is a reduction of the profits for healthy firms, which discourages their entry and investment. In this context, even solvent banks do not find good lending opportunities. We confirm our story's key predictions that zombie-dominated industries exhibit more depressed job creation and destruction, and lower productivity. We present firm-level regressions showing that the increase in zombies depressed the investment and employment growth of non-zombies and widened the productivity gap between zombies and non-zombies.


Various diseases or disruption could affect all of the patients handled at any clinic or hospital. The health problems would be varied, depending on the disease or systemic disruption that ailed the patient. This research aims to figure out the spread of said health problems in the patients handled at Klinik Hewan Jogja between January and June 2018. A numerical representation of afflictions that ails the patients in a clinic or a hospital during a period of time would provide the information needed to anticipate several diseases, facilitate easier treatment and follow-up actions for certain ailments, offer prevention methods, and lastly to yield data for clients' education. The data gathered is also vital to give a general picture the problems that frequent a certain area, thus imparting important information to all other clinics or hospitals in the said region.


Despite the myth of marginality and irrelevance, Africa has always played an important role in international politics. The slave trade, the Scramble for Africa and subsequent colonial period, the proxy wars of the Cold War, and the increasing importance of the continent's natural resources all demonstrate how significant Africa has been to the wider global political economy. 'Africa's international relations' considers the implications for Africa's international relations and discusses interests, old and new. The continent is increasingly important in international relations and is attracting interest from a huge array of actors such as China, India, and Brazil. It also considers the question of aid and the concept of pan-Africanism.


This paper has investigated the environmental challenges faced by Peri urban settlements in the Lagos Megacity. An intense study of the Isheri, Ibafo and Sagamu Interchange areas along the Lagos Ibadan Expressway axis was done. Socio economic characteristics, housing and environmental conditions as well as rural urban linkages were done to determine the flow of interaction between the settlements and the Lagos Metropolis. Data collection was by the administration of structured questionnaires on household heads of which 46 were sampled in Isheri, 113 in Ibafo and 191 in Sagamu Interchange areas respectively. Survey was by systematic random sampling. The study revealed a high level of interaction between the settlements and the Lagos Megacity as over 60% of respondents in the study area commute daily to work in Lagos. The study also revealed that land value, rental value in these peri-urban settlements had increase since 2005 when the highest rate of population influx was observed. Furthermore, environmental challenges especially poor infrastructure and security concerns had exacerbated. The paper concluded by suggesting strategies for mitigating these challenges and they include the introduction of participatory planning mechanisms as well as the enforcement of development control


The program transformation tool Coccinelle is designed for making changes that is required in many locations within a software project. It has been shown to be useful for C code and has been been adopted for use in the Linux kernel by many developers. Over 6000 commits mentioning the use of Coccinelle have been made in the Linux kernel. Our artifact, Coccinelle4J, is an extension to Coccinelle in order for it to apply program transformations to Java source code. This artifact accompanies our experience report "Semantic Patches for Java Program Transformation", in which we show a case study of applying code transformations to upgrade usage of deprecated Android API methods to replacement API methods. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Software and its engineering → Software notations and tools


The effects of the elemental substitution on the 1212 phase formation and
superconducting properties of (Tl,Bi)(Sr,Ti)2Ca0.9Y0.1Cu2O7 and
(Tl,Pb)(Sr,M)2CaCu2O7 (M = Yb, Sb) series have been investigated. The samples
were prepared using high purity oxides by solid state and precursor method. Crystal
structures of the samples were analyzed using X-ray powder diffraction method
while microstructures were investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Measurements of electrical resistance were carried out using standard four-pointprobe
method. Powder X-ray diffraction patterns for
Tl0.9Bi0.1Sr2-yTiyCa0.9Y0.1Cu2O7 (y = 0 – 0.5) with Bi, Ti and Y triple substitution
revealed that all the samples consist mostly of major 1212 and minor 1201 crystalline
phases. Temperature dependent resistance measurements on
Tl1-xBixSr1.9Ti0.1Ca0.9Y0.1Cu2O7 (x = 0 – 0.6) showed optimum superconductivity for
x = 0.3 with Tc onset of 93.3 K and Tc zero of 68.2 K Temperature dependent electrical
resistance measurements on Tl1-mPbmSr1.8Yb0.2CaCu2O7 (m = 0.1– 0.5) showed
metallic normal state behaviors and increase in Tc zero from 61.1 K at m = 0.1 to a
maximum value of 101.1 K at m = 0.5. Substitutions of Yb at Sr-site of
Tl0.5Pb0.5Sr2-nYbnCaCu2O7 with n = 0 – 0.6 increased value of in Tc zero from 62.2 K at
n = 0 to a maximum value of 101.1 K at n = 0.2. Substitution of Pb at Tl-site and Sb
at Sr-site in Tl1-qPbqSr1.8Sb0.2CaCu2O7 (q = 0.1 – 0.6) promote 1212 phase formation
and increased in Tc zero from 26.1 K at q = 0.1 to 80.2 K at q = 0.5. From this study, it
is found that apart from the Tl and Ca sites, Sr-site substitution is also effective in
optimizing critical temperature, Tc and critical current density, Jc of Tl1212 samples.
The results were discussed in terms of the concept of average copper valence and
ionic radius of elements.
i


Sparse coding is a basic task in many fields including signal processing, neuroscience and machine learning where the goal is to learn a basis that enables a sparse representation of a given set of data, if one exists. Its standard formulation is as a non-convex optimization problem which is solved in practice by heuristics based on alternating minimization. Re- cent work has resulted in several algorithms for sparse coding with provable guarantees, but somewhat surprisingly these are outperformed by the simple alternating minimization heuristics. Here we give a general framework for understanding alternating minimization which we leverage to analyze existing heuristics and to design new ones also with provable guarantees. Some of these algorithms seem implementable on simple neural architectures, which was the original motivation of Olshausen and Field (1997a) in introducing sparse coding. We also give the first efficient algorithm for sparse coding that works almost up to the information theoretic limit for sparse recovery on incoherent dictionaries. All previous algorithms that approached or surpassed this limit run in time exponential in some natural parameter. Finally, our algorithms improve upon the sample complexity of existing approaches. We believe that our analysis framework will have applications in other settings where simple iterative algorithms are used.


New results are presented on the pharmacokinetics of the fluorescing fraction of Photofrin II in patients with an early cancer in the oesophagus or the buccal cavity. The light-induced fluorescence signal shows a relatively high contrast between tumor and surrounding normal tissue at short times after i.v. injection. The magnitude of this contrast appears to correlate with the staging of the cancer, the more invasive tumors showing the highest contrast. Some early results on the ex vivo fluorescence analysis of biopsies taken on patients injected with the new sensitizer meta-tetra(hydroxyphenyl)chlorin (mTHPC) demonstrate the selectivity of this efficient second generation photosensitizer for advanced lung cancer. mTHPC appears to have good properties for photodetection and has a rather high rate of photobleaching. The significant of the latter is discussed in relation to simplifying light application in PDT.


Information gathering and assimilation is normally performed by data mining tools and Online analytic processing (OLAP) operating on historic data stored in a data warehouse. Data mining and OLAP queries are very complex, access a significant fraction of a database and require significant time and resources to be executed. Therefore, it has been impossible to draw the data analysis benefits in operational data environments. When it comes to analysis of operational (dynamic) data, running complex queries on frequently changing data is next to impossible. The complexity of active data integration increases dramatically in distributed applications which are very common in automated or e-commerce applications.

We suggest a remote data analysis approach to find hidden patterns and relationships in distributed operational data, which does not adversely affect routine transaction processing. Distributed data integration on frequently updated data has been performed by analysing SQL commands coming to the distributed databases and aggregating data centrally to produce a real-time view of fast changing data. This approach has been successfully evaluated on data sources for over 30 data sources for hotel properties. This paper presents the performance results of the method, and its comparative study of the state-of-the art data integration techniques. The remote approach to data integration and analysis has been built into a scalable data monitoring system. It demonstrates the ease of application and performance results of operational data integration.


Chapter 1 History and foundation by Alagan Anpalagan. This book chapter deals with history and foundation of cognitive radio. In recent years wireless communications have experienced an unprecedented success for the rapidity of their diffusion and for their impact in the life of human society. The technologies used in wireless communications are far from being mature and many changes induced by their progress are still to come. Cognitive radio is one of these technologies and is regarded as a key technology to increase efficiency in wireless communications. In many circumstances the spectrum assigned to wireless communications is not fully used. The main goal of cognitive radio is to improve the exploitation of the spectrum. The idea is to let the unlicensed users to access the spectrum left unused by the licensed users. In this chapter the main steps of the brief history of cognitive radio are presented including issues related to policy regulations that have influenced the technology and alternative technical solutions as software defined radio. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of future applications in wireless communications and of the challenges that they pose to cognitive radio. This is a well written and informative chapter that deals with an important technology. I suggest to read it. Chapter 6 MIMO systems and cooperative networks performances by Kosai Raoof, Maha Ben Zid. This chapter deals with MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) systems. This is a technology used to in wireless communications to improve transmission robustness and to increase spectral efficiency. The relation between MIMO systems and wireless sensor networks is investigated. Spatially distributed wireless sensor networks are deployed for many different purposes, let us mention, for example, environment monitoring missions or surveillance missions. Cooperative networks with virtual MIMO channels are studied, in particular networks aware of their environment are considered. These are cognitive networks that operate in wireless form. This last feature is the bridge that links them to cognitive radio. In fact the cognitive radio technology is used to allocate spectrum to the users of the cognitive network in an adaptive way. This book chapter deals with a specific application, however, this is a very important application and this work is written in a way that makes it readable by a wide audience technically oriented readers. I suggest to read it.


Activism on the Web examines the everyday tensions that political activists face as they come to terms with the increasingly commercialized nature of web technologies and sheds light on an important, yet under-investigated, dimension of the relationship between contemporary forms of social protest and internet technologies.

Drawing on anthropological and ethnographic research amongst three very different political groups in the UK, Italy and Spain, the book argues that activists' everyday internet uses are largely defined by processes of negotiation with digital capitalism. These processes of negotiation are giving rise to a series of collective experiences, which are defined by the tension between activists' democratic needs on one side and the cultural processes reinforced by digital capitalism on the other. In looking at the encounter between activist cultures and digital capitalism, the book focuses in particular on the tension created by self-centered communication processes and networked-individualism, by corporate surveillance and data-mining, and by fast-capitalism and the temporality of immediacy.

Activism on the Web suggests that if we want to understand how new technologies are affecting political participation and democratic processes, we should not focus on disruption and novelty, but we should instead explore the complex dialectics between digital discourses and digital practices; between the technical and the social; between the political economy of the web and its lived critique.


Calls for councillors to change are nothing new, even from staunch defenders of local democracy. But one critical question has been sidestepped: Why have councillors been persistently constructed as a 'problem' for local government? This article draws upon Foucault to detect the emergence and sedimentation of an overriding problematisation of councillors. Our genealogical analysis of a range of public commissions and inquiries, policy documents and academic discourses reveals a 'deficiency narrative', forged during the managerialist turn in the 1960s and subsequently reframed in the 1990s and 2000s through the lens of community leadership. We show that the exclusions and methodological limits of this imaginary blinker studies of councillors, leaving an unhelpfully normative stance within local government studies. Such deficits also lead to a 'smoothing out' of the complexity of local politics, downplay local dynamics and political work, and miss important insights into the practices of local democracy.


This paper investigates the potential of civic crowdfunding as an innovative and collective option for contributing to the production of local public goods. It is articulated around two pillars. The first section provides a general understanding of crowdfunding practices and focuses principally on its civic component. Civic crowdfunding should be distinguished from other types of crowdfunding since it pursues an objective of general interest and mainly concerns place-based projects instigated by citizens and civil society organisations. The aim of this section is to better understand this field, from the general principles to the specific characteristics of actors and their motivations. The second section goes a step further towards the analysis of this practice with regards to the provision of local public goods. Crowdfunded local public goods usually belong to a specific category of public goods, "urban commons", which generate significant challenges in terms of production, governance and sustainability. Building on the theory of contracts to better understand the interaction among stakeholders in this process, a new model of co-production relying on civic crowdfunding is proposed. Subnational governments would have a key role to play in enabling this practice and facilitating citizen empowerment through the mobilisation of platforms assets. Civic crowdfunding can provide opportunities for subnational governments in terms of citizens/user information, funding, communication, trust and territorial attractiveness. This paper outlines a series of key questions to guide policy makers in experimenting this practice.


This paper assesses farmers' incentives and conditioning factors that hinder or promote adaptation strategies and evaluates its impact on crop productivity by utilizing household level data collected in 2011 from nationally representative sample households in Malawi. We distinguish between (i) exposure to climatic disruptions, (ii) bio-physical sensitivity to such disruptions, (iii) household adaptive capacity in terms of farmers' ability to prepare and adjust to the resulting stress, and, finally, (iv) system-level adaptive capacity that serve as enabling factors for household-level adaptation. We employ a multivariate probit (MVP) and instrumental variable technique to model farming practice selection decisions and their yield impact estimates. We find that exposure to delayed onset of rainfall and greater climate variability as represented by the coefficient of variation of rainfall and temperature is positively associated with the choice of riskreducing agricultural practices such as tree planting, legume intercropping, and soil and water conservation (SWC); however, it reduces the use of inputs (such as inorganic fertilizer) whose risk reduction benefits are uncertain. Biophysical sensitivity of plots increases the likelihood of choice of tree planting and SWC. In terms of household adaptive capacity, we find that wealthier households are more likely to adopt both modern and sustainable land management (SLM) inputs; and are more likely to adopt SLM inputs on plots under more secure tenure. In terms of system-level adaptive capacity, results show the key role of rural institutions, social capital and supply-side constraints in governing selection decisions for all practices considered, but particularly for tree planting and both organic and inorganic fertilizer. Finally for productivity, we find that on average use of both modern and SLM practices have positive and statistically significant impact on productivity of maize. For SLM practices that also respond to exposure and sensitivity, these results provide direct evidence of their potential to aide households in adapting to further climate change. Results presented have implications for understanding and overcoming barriers to selection for each practice, distinguishing structural aspects such as exposure and sensitivity from potential interventions at the household or systemic levels linked to adaptive capacity.


BACKGROUND
Residual C-peptide is detected in many people for years following the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes; however, the physiologic significance of low levels of detectable C-peptide is not known.

METHODS
We studied sixty-three adults with type 1 diabetes classified by peak mixed-meal tolerance test (MMTT) C-peptide as negative (<0.007; n =15), low (0.017-0.200; n =16), intermediate (>0.200-0.400; n =15), or high (>0.400 pmol/mL; n =17). We compared the groups' glycemia from continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), β-cell secretory responses from a glucose-potentiated arginine (GPA) test, insulin sensitivity from a hyperinsulinemia euglycemic (EU) clamp, and glucose counterregulatory responses from a subsequent hypoglycemic (HYPO) clamp.

RESULTS
Low and intermediate MMTT C-peptide groups did not exhibit β-cell secretory responses to hyperglycemia, whereas the high C-peptide group showed increases in both C-peptide and proinsulin (P ≤0.01). All groups with detectable MMTT C-peptide demonstrated acute C-peptide and proinsulin responses to arginine that were positively correlated with peak MMTT C-peptide (P <0.0001 for both analytes). During the EU-HYPO clamp, C-peptide levels were proportionately suppressed in the low, intermediate, and high C-peptide compared to the negative group (P ≤0.0001), whereas glucagon increased from EU to HYPO only in the high C-peptide group compared to negative (P =0.01). CGM demonstrated lower mean glucose and more time-in-range for the high C-peptide group.

CONCLUSION
These results indicate that in adults with type 1 diabetes, β-cell responsiveness to hyperglycemia and α-cell responsiveness to hypoglycemia are only observed at high levels of residual C-peptide that likely contribute to glycemic control.


Adobe's Acrobat software, released in June 1993, is based around a new Portable Document Format (PDF) which offers the possibility of being able to view and exchange electronic documents, independent of the originating software, across a wide variety of supported hardware platforms (PC, Macintosh, Sun UNIX etc.). The fact that the imageable objects are rendered with full use of Level 2 PostScript means that the most demanding requirements can be met in terms of high-quality typography, device-independent colour and full page fidelity with respect to the printed version.
PDF possesses an internal structure which supports hypertextual features, and a range of file compression options. In a sense PDF establishes a low-level multiplatform machine code for imageable objects but its notion of hypertext buttons and links is similarly low-level , in that they are anchored to physical locations on xed pages. However, many other hypertext systems think of links as potentially spanning multiple files, which may in turn be located on various machines scattered across the Internet. The immediate challenge is to bridge the "abstraction gap" between high-level notions of a link and PDF's positionally-anchored low-level view. More specifically, how can Mosaic, WWW and Acrobat/PDF be configured so that the notions of "link ", in the various systems, work together harmoniously? This paper reviews progress so far on the CAJUN project (CD-ROM Acrobat Journals Using Networks) with particular reference to experiments that have already taken place in disseminating PDF via e-mail, Gopher and FTP. The prospects for integrating Acrobat seamlessly with WWW are then discussed.


Author(s): Beketayev, Kenes | Abstract: This doctoral dissertation explores and advances topology-based data analysis and visualization, a field that concerns itself with creating tools for gaining insights from scientific data, thus supporting the process of scientific knowledge discovery. In particular, the study proposes two novel analytical techniques, inspired by domain-specific problems and presents a study of error of approximation for these techniques. The first part of the dissertation focuses on a specific problem that arises in computational chemistry. Analysis of transformation pathways is a well-known tool for the investigation of chemical systems and has implications for the design of chemical reactions and materials. However, existing techniques for analyzing transformation pathways either lack the required level of detail for such analyses, or they are limited to low-dimensional data. These issues, complicated by the noise in data and by issues of handling periodic boundaries, are addressed by a novel technique, which involves the extraction of a topological structure, the ``Morse complex,'' and visualizing it as a graph, augmented with additional information, enabling the desired end-user analysis. The technique is then successfully applied to the analyses of two different types of chemical data, which demonstrates its utility. The second part of the dissertation concentrates on the problem of enabling the comparison of data sets in terms of their topologies. In particular, the focus is on enabling the comparison between different instances of the same topological structure, namely a contour tree. One possible solution to this problem is to correlate contour trees in terms of the geometric proximity of their critical points. In order to visualize this correlation, a novel technique combines the extraction of the contour trees, dimensionality reduction, graph drawing, and contours construction. The technique produces a visual metaphor called a ``geometry-preserving topological landscape.'' The utility of the technique is demonstrated through a comparative analysis of data sets based on their corresponding landscapes. The remainder of the dissertation is dedicated to studying the problem of error quantification for the proposed techniques, as well as for more general settings. In particular, the focus is on approximation methods used to reconstruct a domain. For example, by studying the ability of these techniques to preserve topological information, one can derive method selection recommendations, which are potentially generalizable to various topological data analysis techniques. To address this problem, a novel definition of a difference measure for topological abstraction, the ''merge tree,'' is presented and subsequently used to evaluate the previously mentioned approximation methods. The resulting recommendations are found to support the selection of approximation methods for the two proposed techniques.


It has been shown (e.g. Wells et al., 2011) that whilst individuals can use both face and voice quality to make judgements of perceived attractiveness and health, in face-voice compounds, face quality typically overshadows (dominates) the judgement. It has also been shown that priming about environmental pathogen load can have a significant effect on a range judgements and behaviours (e.g. Dunn & Chambers, 2011; Little et al., 2011). Here we report on two experiments (Exp. 1 & Exp. 2), in which we explored the effects of implicit pathogen priming on face/voice attractiveness ratings (Exp. 1) and voice health ratings (Exp. 2). In Exp. 1 we show that although average attractiveness ratings for component (face or voice) and compound (face-voice) targets do not significantly change, following priming, the amount of variance accounted for by the component voice ratings in relation to the compound face-voice ratings, significantly increased, thereby removing face overshadowing. In Exp. 2 we show that whilst priming significantly shifts voice health judgements, relative to baseline, there is also a significant difference between priming the past environment (time of target stimulus collection) or the present environment (time of rating). The difference was such that priming the past produced a significantly smaller shift in voice ratings than priming the present. The findings from both experiments demonstrate that personal preference changes when pathogen load is perceived to be high, and that temporal information mediates this influence. These findings are consistent with a behavioural immune system hypothesis (e.g. Schaller & Duncan 2007).


Summary 1. The relatedness of individuals can influence their behaviour and changes in the degree of female relatedness in spring may influence the demography of vole populations (Lambin & Krebs 1991a). Here we report on an experiment testing the effect of relatedness on the demography of Townsend's vole (Microtus townsendii) populations (kin and non-kin treatments) over three consecutive springs. 2. Most nestlings were marked before weaning such that we knew which recruits were related to one another and to which adult female. The average size of matrilineal groups was experimentally manipulated by selectively removing voles of known origin and by preventing predation by birds of prey. 3. Nearest neighbours had their nests closer to one another on the kin treatment, but there were no differences in home range size between treatments. Homeranges of females present on both treatments were smaller in a spring of high density than in the springs with lower density. 4. Female survival was better on the kin treatment. Within the kin treatment, females with at least one first degree relative as a neighbour survived better than females without such a relative. No such difference was observed within the nonkin treatment. 5. Females in the kin treatment gave birth to their first spring litter 5-7 days later than females in the non-kin treatment, possibly as a consequence of space sharing with related neighbours. The weaning success of the first spring litter was significantly higher on the kin tratment than on the non-kin treatment, but there were no differences in the weaning success of females with and without related neighbours within treatments. The presence of immigrant females on the non-kin treatment and not on the kin treatment may have caused the difference in weaning success between the treatments. 6. We conclude that female relatedness influences the pattern of space use and the survival of females in spring. The presence of immigrant females attempting to establish in the population has a pronounced effect on the weaning success of residents.


If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped America


Software for the production of sign languages is much less common than for spoken languages. Such software usually relies on 3D humanoid avatars to produce signs which, inevitably, necessitates the use of animation. One barrier to the use of popular animation tools is their complexity and steep learning curve, which can be hard to master for inexperienced users. Here, we present PE2LGP, an authoring system that features a 3D avatar that signs Portuguese Sign Language. Our Animator is designed specifically to craft sign language animations using a key frame method, and is meant to be easy to use and learn to users without animation skills. We conducted a preliminary evaluation of the Animator, where we animated seven Portuguese Sign Language sentences and asked four sign language users to evaluate their quality. This evaluation revealed that the system, in spite of its simplicity, is indeed capable of producing comprehensible messages.


Mobile technologies imply many opportunities for marketing, in particular a direct communication with consumers without time or location barriers. However, some aspects of mobile marketing such as mobile advertising still require further research. The diffusion of mobile technologies is considered a factor that may impact consumers' perceptions and behavior. Consumer attitudes toward mobile advertising are an important issue, but little is known about the role of m-commerce diffusion in attitude formation. Consumer attitudes toward mobile advertising may therefore differ across countries. This paper investigates whether consumers in more advanced markets concerning m-commerce show a different attitude toward mobile advertising than consumers in less developed markets. We present two empirical studies conducted in Japan and Austria. The results indicate that entertainment and informativeness are significant antecedents in both samples, but with different strengths of relationship.


Objectives: To evaluate the outcome of vital pulp therapy in primary teeth with irreversible pulpitis by using calcium-enriched mixture (CEM) cement according to clinical and radiographic assessment. Participants and Methods: Fifty primary molar teeth with irreversible pulpitis in 50 children aged 6-8 years underwent pulpotomy using CEM cement as the dressing material. Following pulpotomy, pain intensity was evaluated by use of a visual analog scale at 1 and 7 days from the treatment and in clinical appointments at 3, 6 and 12 months after baseline. Radiographic evaluation was performed at 6 and 12 months. Data were analyzed using the McNemar test. Results: A total of 42 children (mean age 7.26 ± 0.82 year) completed the study. After one day treatment 56 % of children reported complete relief of pain and after 7 days 62% reported the same. However, two children complained of increased pain 1 day after treatment. None of the children reported pain in the subsequent appointments. One child complained of tenderness in percussion after 6 months. Pulp canal obliteration was the most common change in the radiographic assessment. There was no significant difference between clinical (92.8%) and radiographic (90.4%) success (p=0.990). Conclusion: Pulpotomy using CEM cement could present a successful treatment in primary molar teeth with irreversible pulpitis.


The productivity slowdown in European countries is among the major stylized facts of the last two decades. Several explanations have been proposed: some focus on demand-side effects, working through Kaldor's second law of economic growth (also known as Verdoorn's law), others on supply-side effects determined by misallocation of factors of production, caused either by labour market reforms or by perverse effects of financial integration (in Europe, related to adoption of the euro). The latter explanation is put forward by some recent studies that indicate how low interest rates brought about by monetary union may have lowered productivity by inducing capital misallocation. The aim of this paper is to investigate the robustness of the latter empirical findings and to compare them with the alternative explanation offered by the post-Keynesian growth model, which instead emphasizes the relation between foreign trade and productivity, along lines that go back to Adam Smith. To do so, we use a panel of industry-level data extracted from the EU KLEMS database, comparing these alternative explanations by panel cointegration techniques. The results shed some light on the role played by the single currency in structural divergences between euro area member countries.


I. The monthly changes in the distribution and abundance of the Copepoda in the southern North Sea have been investigated from June 1932 to December 1937 by using the Continuous Plankton Recorder. This was towed at a standard depth of 10 metres by ships sailing on regular lines from Hull to Rotterdam, to Bremen and towards the Skagerrak, and later from London to Esbjerg.
2. The methods are described and those limitations which apply more particularly to the Copepoda are discussed (pp. 175 to 186 and 198 to 203).
3. The first part of the report deals with the Copepoda as a whole, i.e. the total population. The difference between the summer and winter distributions is stressed. The variations in numbers from year to year are found to be considerable and it is suggested that they are sufficiently large to be reflected in the success or failure of the broods of those fish which are at some period of their development dependent upon the Copepoda for food.
4. The second part deals with the data concerning the constituent species or groups of allied species ; a list of these is given on p. 197.
5. The group Paracalanus + Pseudocalanus was by far the most abundant and together with the genera Temora and Acartia was found to be responsible for most of the fluctuations in the population (pp. 205 to 208).
6. The distributions, seasonal and spatial, of the other common forms are described, with the exception of that of Oalantts finmarchicus which is to be the subject of a later report.
7. The recorder results are compared with the findings of the International Council survey from 1902 to 1908; some marked disagreements are discussed (pp. 227 to 232).
8. The appearance of the northern forms Oandacia armata and Metridia lucens during the winters of 1932-33, 1933-34 and 1937 are recorded (pp. 222 to 223)
9. A summarised account of the main seasonal changes in the area is given (pp. 232 to 234) and followed by a brief comparison of the 5½ years investigated.


Does prosody help word recognition? This paper proposes a novel probabilistic framework in which word and phoneme are dependent on prosody in a way that reduces word error rates (WER) relative to a prosody-independent recognizer with comparable parameter count. In the proposed prosody-dependent speech recognizer, word and phoneme models are conditioned on two important prosodic variables: the intonational phrase boundary and the pitch accent. An information-theoretic analysis is provided to show that prosody dependent acoustic and language modeling can increase the mutual information between the true word hypothesis and the acoustic observation by exciting the interaction between prosody dependent acoustic model and prosody dependent language model. Empirically, results indicate that the influence of these prosodic variables on allophonic models are mainly restricted to a small subset of distributions: the duration PDFs (modeled using an explicit duration hidden Markov model or EDHMM) and the acoustic-prosodic observation PDFs (normalized pitch frequency). Influence of prosody on cepstral features is limited to a subset of phonemes: for example, vowels may be influenced by both accent and phrase position, but phrase-initial and phrase-final consonants are independent of accent. Leveraging these results, effective prosody dependent allophonic models are built with minimal increase in parameter count. These prosody dependent speech recognizers are able to reduce word error rates by up to 11% relative to prosody independent recognizers with comparable parameter count, in experiments based on the prosodically-transcribed Boston Radio News corpus.


Complex policy problems in today's world require sound evidence for good decisions. Yet what constitutes sound evidence can often itself become a matter of political contention. Using original qualitative interview, focus group and document analysis, this thesis finds both that many Canadian organizations with a mandate for communicating scientific information (knowledge transfer) are working to bring together researchers and end-users into various forms of direct contact (known as interaction practices) and that different social groups have concerns with these interactions. Through using interaction practices to improve communication efforts by establishing end-user/researcher relationships, the socially constructed boundaries that exist between science and politics become blurred. When the science communicated has controversial political implications, this blurring becomes problematic, "polluting" the wider credibility of the science communicated. This thesis uses "boundary theory" to argue that organizations engaging in knowledge transfer must be aware of these risks, and in controversial political topics, work to span rather than blur these boundaries, in order to protect scientific credibility necessary to successfully communicate scientific information in politically controversial situations.


A multiple-scattering approach is used to solve the radiative transfer
 equation in order to describe the angular and optical depth dependence of diffuse
 intensity propagating through an unsupported particulate slab perpendicularly
 illuminated with unpolarized electromagnetic radiation. Boundary reflections are
 taken into account for the unscattered radiation, as is each of the successive
 reflection and scattering orders, which are characterized by corresponding average
 path-length parameters and forward-scattering ratios. The optical depth dependence
 of the reflection- and scattering-order coefficients is displayed for given values
 of the particle size parameter, particle volume fraction, relative refractive index,
 and optical thickness of the slab. Diffuse intensity patterns at a given optical
 depth, and the angular dependence of the reflected and transmitted intensities, are
 also considered.


OBJECTIVES
Despite the fact that transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) continues being the gold standard for the surgical treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), the good results obtained with the use of new energy sources have led to their use in daily practice.

METHODS
Between September 2005 and January 2007, we have treated 63 patients with KTP laser photoselective vaporization of the prostate (PVP) in our service. Preoperatively we asked for IPSS, performed physical exam, digital rectal exam, abdominal , renal, bladder and prostatic ultrasound measuring postvoid residual volume, as well as flowmetry and PSA determination. Patients were revised after 1, 3, 6 and 12 months, undergoing uroflowmetry, IPSS, ultrasound and PSA; a satisfaction survey was also fulfilled at this interviews.

RESULTS
Mean age was 67 years (range 58-85) and mean preoperative prostatic volume was 48cc (range 34-67), mean preoperative IPSS was 17.7 and mean maximum flow 8.1 mL/s. 12 patients presented post void residual volume larger than 100 mL. Most patients presented medium or high anaesthetic risk. Mean operative time was 64 minutes (range 45-95). In most cases we used just one fibre, and mean energy released was 175,000 Joules (range 85,000-24,000). Mean hospital stay was 32.2 hours (range 19-55). In postoperative revisions we could state a significant decrease of IPSS, improvement in maximum flow, and also good or very good satisfaction degree in about 80% of the patients. Only 3 of them presented hematuria that needed to be attended by the urologist, none of them needed transfusion. One patient was admitted for severe urinary infection and eight patients referred irritative low urinary tract symptoms in their first postoperative checkup.

CONCLUSIONS
KTP laser PVP is a safe, reproducible technique with optimal short and middle term outcomes, which should be considered as the first choice surgical treatment in elderly patients, patients with chronic anaemic diseases or anticoagulated, and patients with high anaesthesic or surgical risk.


ome numerical and experimental investigations are made on the performance of five different hyperelastic constitutive models (second order polynomial, Yeoh, Arruda-Boyce, Ogden and Marlow) in tension and compression modes. First, the results of the tensile and compression tests on a rubber sample were used to determine the parameters of the models by curve fitting methods. Next, by using an algorithm based on adaptive meshing technique and minimizing the Mises Equivalent Stress, the best finite element mesh of the tensile and compression specimens were obtained. These finite element meshes were then employed for the simulation of the tests, and the predicted force-displacements curves were compared by the experimentally measured data. It is found that the Marlow model gives the best result provided that the stress-strain curve of the simple tension experiment is available.


A booming field in physics research today is the search for extra dimensions. This is something that has been thought about and discussed in both the scientific and non-scientific world for a long time. Many physicists are currently attempting to answer the question: "is our world really four dimensional?" The purpose of this research, however, is not to answer that question. The purpose of this work is to help reveal four-dimensional artifacts in our perceived three-dimensional world in order to help a student, even a non-physicist, to understand and visualize how the extra spatial dimensionality, if present, might reveal itself in measurements. To that end, models of non-trivial four-dimensional objects have been constructed that have consequences large enough to be easily measured and understood in an intuitive fashion. In building and analyzing data from two, three, and four-dimensional model systems with non trivial interactions, large and conceptually transparent consequences of extra spatial dimensions have been discovered.


Host and parasite populations live in highly variable natural environments. This thesis explores how the population dynamics and genetic population structure of an important spring-bloom phytoplankton species, the diatom Asterionella formosa, are affected by such environmental variation and by parasitism by its fungal parasite, the chytrid Zygorhizidium planktonicum. Asterionella is often the dominant spring-bloom species in temperate lakes and rivers. The spring-bloom is a key event in the yearly seasonal dynamics of lakes and provides the first peak in primary production determining all further events in the lake foodweb. Even though Asterionella reproduces predominantly by asexual cell division, it shows high genetic diversity (i.e. high percentage of different genotypes) in natural populations in Lake Maarsseveen (NL). This is surprising as we would expect selection for the best adapted genotypes and therefore erosion of genetic diversity at population level. How genetic diversity is maintained in populations of asexually reproducing organisms is still an actively debated question in ecology. Two mechanisms, amongst others, may promote maintenance of such high population genetic diversity: (i) fluctuating selective advantage of genotypes in variable environments (i.e. genotype-by-environment interactions) and (ii) parasite mediated selection against (initially) common host genotypes. Both theories can be combined in the disease triangle concept proposed by McNew and Stevens in 1960. This concept explains the occurrence and severity of disease as an interaction and interdependency of three factors: the host, the parasite and their shared environment. In this thesis we combined field studies in a natural host-parasite population in Lake Maarsseveen with controlled laboratory experiments. We showed that, over the last 30 years, climate change has changed the parasite occurrence pattern. Experimental and field studies showed that the host has a cold and a hot thermal refuge from chytrid infection, so-called windows of infection-free growth. If winter water temperatures stay above this threshold, the parasite remains active, hampers the development of a host bloom and thereby removes its own basis for an epidemic development later in the season. Temperature is, however, not the only environmental factor that affects the population dynamics of hosts and parasites. In stratified lakes, also other abiotic environmental conditions such as light intensity and nutrient availability change with season but also with depth. Host and parasite populations responded to different environmental factors, and the importance of environmental factors changed again with depth. Moreover, high levels of parasite infection affected the genetic architecture of its host population. Laboratory experiments testing the role of temperature, phosphorus concentration and / or parasitism showed that the selective advantage and the susceptibility to disea se of different Asterionella genotypes depended on the level of such environmental factors. That means that the fitness and susceptibility to disease of a particular Asterionella genotype changed with temperature environment. Hence, environmental variability in time and space may change the potential selection pressure on hosts as well as the specificity of host-parasite interactions. Such context dependence in genotype performance can support the maintenance of genetic diversity even in an isolated population of asexually reproducing organisms


To elucidate molecular mechanisms in heart development, Yi et al. have used a genetic screen for Drosophila mutants. Five mutants were observed in which the cardioblast layer of the heart does not adhere to the adjacent layer of pericardial cells. This phenotype is labeled as "broken hearted." Gene cloning shows that this phenotype arises from mutations in genes that encode components of the geranylgeranyl synthesis pathway downstream of HMG-CoA reductase. Statins inhibit this pathway, and treatment with statins during development yielded a similar phenotype. Hence, isoprenoid biosynthesis functions in heart development, with defects in geranylgeranylation of the G-protein Gγ1 causing severe defects in heart formation because of abnormal adhesion of cardioblasts to pericardial cells. Because of the conservation of mechanisms in heart formation, these findings may illuminate mammalian heart development and congenital heart disease and also the effects of statins on heart function. P. Yi, Z. Han, X. Li, E. N. Olson, The mevalonate pathway controls heart formation in Drosophila by isoprenylation of Gγ1. Science 313, 1301-1303 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The positive effect of globalization has continued to impact FDI inflow to developing countries during the last decade except for the rising influence of political risk in host locations. Mixed outcomes have trailed the findings related to the studies on FDI and political risk relationship and in particular on African countries like Nigeria.This paper investigated the effect of political risk on FDI inflow to Nigeria using secondary data from 2000 to 2014 using simple linear regression. The study combined from select variables, the institutional factors with location determinants peculiar to Nigeria's risk environment. It is found that political risk holds a positive and significant association with FDI to Nigeria but not close enough to inhibit the inflow of foreign investment to the country.However, the findings provide a strong basis for policy shift in relation to security, country promotion and rebranding as well strengthening of institutions.


The concepts of freedom, empowerment and self can have meanings in one context while having very different meanings in another context. Showing these differences involves showing the different contexts and the different meanings within the contexts. Toward this goal, one context is submersion in ideology and manas. (1) The other context is exposure or awareness of ideology and manas. Some writings of Marx and Thich Nhat Hanh (2) can be very helpful with defining, illuminating and exploring submersion in ideology and manas as one context; exposure or awareness of ideology and manas as another context; and concepts and contexts of freedom, empowerment and self within these two contexts. Ideology, as part of critical theory is defined first and then manas, as a part of Buddhism, is defined. As an operational definition for this paper, ideology is how sense is made. Sense is made by ideology. Sense is made ideologically. In that way, ideology is what determines, defines and explains the reality a person experiences. Ideology does not directly determine the physical reality, but it does determine how we understand and experience and engage the physical reality. Ideology is not our ideas, but it shapes and arranges those ideas. It is not our self, but it constructs and explains our senses of self, the world and our relationships with the world and its parts. In these ways, we think through ideology, but it is very difficult to think about ideology because ideology is our thinking. It is through unconsciousness or unawareness of ideology that we receive our consciousness, our sense of reality. In this way, our reality requires our being unconscious. We are manifestations of ideologies. They make us. We are them. However, by exposing ideology, we do not have to be ideologues. We can be free from ideologies. We can be without them if we become aware of them. In some ways, this issue of exposure of ideology may be similar to aspects of Buddhism. According to Buddhism, everything that we have experienced or perceived includes the feelings, desires, ideas and all other content of our consciousness. These experiences and perceptions are stored and preserved as a form of "seeds" (3) in our store consciousness. (4) Those seeds manifest within the conditions of their manifestation. For example, when someone says something bad to us (one of the conditions of anger), the person 'waters' the seed of anger and we can get angry (manifestation). When those "seeds" manifest, manas, which also arises from the store consciousness, erroneously clings to the arising (e.g., anger) which is the manifestation of "seeds" in our store consciousness caused by various conditions, and believes the arising as 'mine, I, self (e.g., 'my' anger, 'I' am angry, 'you' made 'me' angry). Therefore, manas is what makes our sense of separate self possible when, in reality, we are manifestation of non-me (5) elements. Because the notion of "self" itself is a delusion of manas, what we do with the sense of "self" is easily distorted by this delusion and most of our suffering results from this sense of separate self. According to Buddhism, we can get out of this trap through "deep looking into the impermanent and interdependent nature of reality." In this way, looking deeply at our conditionings can illuminate the delusions of self and the ideological sense of self. This delusional and ideological sense of self both connects and conflicts with writings of Marx and Althusser. These connections and conflicts can be introduced through Althusser and then elaborated through Marx. The connection with Althusser occurs when Althusser says, ... Marx said that it is in ideology (as the locus of political struggle) that men become conscious of their place in the world and in history, it is within this ideological unconsciousness that men succeed in altering the "lived" relation between them and the world and acquiring that new form of specific unconsciousness called "consciousness. …


From where does Kant's categorical imperative come? Can Kant's moral vision lead to the virtue of love? To help answer these questions, this paper will set Kant's philosophy against the life of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe. Fr. Kolbe, the martyr of Auschwitz, led a life of love for God and his fellow man so whole in its calling, one is at times unsurprised by this final and most famous act of sacrifice. In allowing his life to be exchanged for that of a prisoner designated to die from isolation at the baleful camp, the Pole bore testament to his faith's highest ideals. What prompted his final, fateful choice and how close does his faith's own imperative approach love? Fr. Kolbe will be compared to Kant in that the former, through his faith, presented an adherence to something beyond human imperatives. Ultimately, this essay will seek to answer whether the differences between imperatives and attainments truly separate Kant from Kolbe.