Aims To compare the efficacy and safety of 3% diquafosol ophthalmic solution with those of 0.1% sodium hyaluronate ophthalmic solution in patients with dry eye in China and Singapore. Methods A total of 497 patients with dry eye (Schirmer's test, 5 mm; fluorescein and RB score, 3 points) from China and Singapore were randomised to receive either diquafosol ophthalmic solution (diquafosol) or sodium hyaluronate ophthalmic solution (HA) at 1:1 ratio. The fluorescein staining scores and rose bengal (RB) subjective symptom scores and tear film breakup time were evaluated before treatment and 2 and 4 weeks after start of treatment. Results In the diquafosol group, changes in fluorescein and RB scores compared with baseline at week 4 or at the time of discontinuation were −2.1±1.5 and −2.5±2.0, respectively. Compared with the HA group, changes in fluorescein score were non-inferior and changes in RB score were superior (p=0.019). In addition, diquafosol and HA improved tear film breakup time by 1.046±1.797 and 0.832±1.775 s, respectively (no significant intergroup difference). Adverse event onset rates were 16.3% (40 of 246 subjects) and 10.0% (25 of 251 subjects) in the diquafosol group and HA group, respectively, with borderline significant intergroup differences (p=0.046), while adverse drug reaction incidence rates were 12.2% (30 of 246 subjects) and 6.0% (15 of 251 subjects), respectively (p=0.019). Only mild adverse drug reactions (>2%) in the form of eye discharge, itching or irritation were observed. Conclusions Diquafosol improved fluorescein staining score in a manner similar to HA, and significantly improved RB score compared with HA. Trial registration number NCT01101984.


This paper presents the formulation of an integrated Back Flow Cell Model (IBFCM) for ozonation processes by incorporating together the contactor hydrodynamics, mass transfer, ozone decay in water, microbial inactivation, and disinfection by-products formation to describe the significance of their interrelated nature in determining the overall process performance. It also summarizes the experimental procedures that could be used to quantify the characteristic parameters for each process component. The model applicability was then illustrated by comparing the predictions with the experimentally observed dissolved ozone profiles. Further analysis was made to demonstrate the model application for predicting the disinfection efficiency and disinfection by-products formation simultaneously. From these analyses, it was also found that during the ozonation of natural waters, the ozone decay could not be described by the simple first order rate expression.


Submarine Groundwater discharge (SGD) is an important pathway for material transport and one of the most accurate approaches for measuring SGD fluxes is using the natural radioactive tracer radon. Radon-222 exists in high concentrations in groundwater and low concentrations in seawater and forms from the decay of heavier elements which are more prevalent in immature sediments. The goal of this study was to understand the spatial distribution and fluxes of groundwater discharge around the southwestern part of St. Catherine's Island using radon-222. We hypothesized that there were several areas of groundwater discharge coming from the island, and that the fluxes would be comparable to fluxes from similar study areas. In December 2016 we conducted our radon survey by boat around the southwestern part of the island and measured radon concentrations in surface waters using a RAD-7 continuous radon monitor. Our collection took place during low tide, because the outgoing tide draws more groundwater to the surface than during high tide. During the survey we also took several discrete groundwater samples from areas along the shore that showed active groundwater discharge. We created a standard mass-balance mixing model to quantify the groundwater discharge. We identified several areas of SGD around the southwestern part of the island with groundwater fluxes comparable to previous studies. A more extensive investigation of the site can help determine if the rate of groundwater discharge correlates with seasonal changes and varying tidal conditions.


"Network Analysis" is a new approach which its main focus is on the relations among actors, not individual actors and their attributes in order to discover the gaps, overlaps, isolations, pendants and centralities in networks. As a result, this approach could be useful for "evaluation". "Evaluation" is one of the most important stages of Strategic planning and some failure in operational plans is just due to some inappropriate pre and post evaluations. Preparing operational plans as a guideline for governments is another important stage of strategic planning and management. Hence, pre and post evaluations of these plans lead to prevent changes in strategic plans and increase the time and money saving. In Iran, according to industrial plan development and in order to privatization, some industries such as textile confront some strategic problems. In this regard, we prepared an operational plan for textile industry of Iran including important strategies, problems, plans and activities and the organizations responsible to execute each activity by Hoshin Kanry Model. Then, we used Network Analysis to delineate and analyze this strategic management network in which nodes are considered as organizations and relations are viewed as their collaborations in the same activities. UCINET, Netdraw Softwares, and centrality measures were used for analyzing and visualizing the plan. The end results showed that Network Analysis is a useful approach to pre and post evaluation of operational plans and helps planners and managers to discover the strengths and weaknesses of strategic plans


ABSTRACT The primary objective of the current project was to convey authentic science to students in out-of-school student laboratories. High school students have diverse and partially wrong concepts of scientists' work. To convey more realistic concepts, we developed videos of scientists working on relevant and up to date scientific topics. These videos, covering different work fields of scientists, were integrated into experimental stations as part of the student lab. Half of the participating students performed the experimental part only (n = 117), whereas the other half of students (n = 119) additionally watched the videos. The results of a pre-post comparison show significant increases for previously underestimated work fields, such as artistic (d = 0.94) and social (d = 0.51) aspects, for the video group. Furthermore, the perceived authenticity in the student laboratory was also promoted by the videos (d = 0.47). In conclusion, videos were shown to be a suitable option to promote the perceived authenticity in out-of-school student laboratories and to convey an authentic concept of scientists` work.


OBJECTIVE
To observe the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) on serum testosterone (T), estradiol (F2), luteotropic hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), progesterone (P), and prolactin (PRL) in patients with Sjögren's Syndrome (SS) in order to analyze the correlation between the adjustment effect of EA and changes of hormone levels.

METHODS
Fifty-seven middle-aged and old women with SS were divided into medication group (n=27) and acupuncture group (n=30). Patients in acupuncture group were treated with EA (80 Hz, 2.5 mA) of Shenshu (BL 23), Taixi (KI 3), Hegu (LI 4), etc. for 30 min, once every other day, and those of medication group were treated with oral administration of hydroxyl-chloroquine (6 mg/kg per day), oral transfer agent liquid, Vit B1, Vit B2, Vit C, fish-liver oil, one tablet/time, t.i.d., and pilocarpine (20 mg/d), continuously for 2 months. Venous blood samples were collected before and after the treatment to examine contents of the abovementioned sex hormones by using electro-chemiluminescent immunoassay (CLIA).

RESULTS
(1) Before the treatment, no significant differences were found between two groups in the levels of serum T, E2, LH, FSH, P and PRL (P > 0.05). After the treatment, self-comparison of each group showed that serum EF and T contents in acupuncture group increased significantly (P < 0.01) and serum LH content decreased significantly (P < 0.01); while in medication group, only serum LH decreased markedly (P < 0.05) in comparison with its basic value of pretreatment. No significant changes were found in serum P, FSH and PRL levels in both groups after the treatment (P > 0.05). The results suggested that the therapeutic effect of acupuncture group was better than that of medication group in regulating multiple sex hormones.

CONCLUSION
EA can effectively adjust E2, T and LH levels in Sjögren's Syndrome patients and improve most patients' clinical symptoms, and the therapeutic effect of EA is better than that of medication.


Pebble Bed Modular Reactors are advanced nuclear reactors and are being developed
to possess inherent safety and reliability. This is achieved by utilizing a sequence of
passive thermal storage and heat transfer mechanisms, to perform long term decay heat
removal. The Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS) facilitates this long term decay
heat removal. The purpose of this study was to develop a one-dimensional,
homogeneous two-phase flow model in order to perform investigative thermal-fluid
studies on the concept designs of the standpipes of a typical RCCS system, such as that
proposed for PBMR .
An extensive literature survey was conducted and revealed that numerous research
projects have been done in the field of passive heat removal systems. It was found that
the two-phase homogeneous model was used by many authors to investigate the
characteristics of natural circulation systems; however, discrepancies were found in the
implementation strategy of the two-phase friction multiplier. Research proved that the
theoretically derived, homogeneous multiplier were applicable to this study.
A simulation model was developed to perform investigative studies on the standpipes of
the RCCS. This model is capable of simulating various fundamental phenomena, found
in natural convective boilers, including heat transfer in the sub-cooled and nucleate
boiling regions. The model was verified with experimental data obtained from Kyung
and Lee (1996). The simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental
data, even though deviations were observed in the mid heat flux region. These
deviations occur due to flow oscillations that were not modelled in this study.
The two concepts (U-Tube and Annulus) of typical RCCS stand pipes were compared
with each other, subjected to a heat load of 23 MW. The effect of the heater and riser
diameter, as well as the effect of different reactor power profiles (constant and axial
varying) on the flow characteristics were investigated. It was found that the annulus
concept performed better, compared to the U-Tube, due to lower wall temperatures and
higher flow rates.


Using seismic activity and the Meishan earthquake sequence that occurred from 1904 to 1906, a scenario for short-term probabilistic seismic hazards in the Chiayi region of Taiwan is assessed. The long-term earthquake occurrence rate in Taiwan was evaluated using a smoothing kernel. The highest seismicity rate was calculated around the Chiayi region. To consider earthquake interactions, the rate-and-state friction model was introduced to estimate the seismicity rate evolution due to the Coulomb stress change. As imparted by the 1904 Touliu earthquake, stress changes near the 1906 Meishan and Yangshuigang epicenters was higher than the magnitude of tidal triggering. With regard to the impact of the Meishan earthquake, the region close to the Yangshuigang earthquake epicenter had a +0.75 bar stress increase. The results indicated significant interaction between the three damage events. Considering the path and site effect using ground motion prediction equations, a probabilistic seismic hazard in the form of a hazard evolution and a hazard map was assessed. A significant elevation in hazards following the three earthquakes in the sequence was determined. The results illustrate a possible scenario for seismic hazards in the Chiayi region which may take place repeatly in the future. Such scenario provides essential information on earthquake preparation, devastation estimations, emergency sheltering, utility restoration, and structure reconstruction.


In this article, we present a method that provides prompt detection of the presence of cancer cells inside the 2-mm margin of tissue surrounding the tumor after excision using spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS). SORS was developed to detect subtle changes in soft tissue spectra in the 100n2000 ?m range and tested on excised breast tissues. The results display a very high specificity and sensitivity (100% and 95%, respectively) of classification between positive and negative tumor margins. SORS is a clinically feasible method, suitable for the real-time, intraoperative assessment of tumor margins at the micrometer level.


This article considers situations in which plaintiffs seek nonmonetary judgments, for instance, custody of a child or an injunction. The primary questions of interest concern when parties will be likely to settle and, if so, what the nature of their settlements will be. The answers to these questions are different from what they are when plaintiffs seek purely monetary awards. In that case settlements involve only money payments whereas here they involve as well disposition of the nonmonetary things sought (who obtains custody of a child). Also, as is well known, when plaintiffs seek monetary judgments the parties will be inclined to settle to save litigation costs and reduce risk if they agree about the likelihood of plaintiff success at trial, but here that is not necessarily true. (For example, custody of a child may well be considered vital by each parent, making each unwilling to relinquish the chance of securing custody through trial for any amount in the range of what the other could pay.)


Science and technology have never known such advances as in the last 60 years. Consequently, the ideas and objects from the people that have made the events and milestones of scientific evolution in their university research laboratories deserve to be carefully stored, despite the sheer mass, diversity and no doubt redundancy of information. One method of doing this consists of safeguarding information selectively and virtually in multimedia databases, which can be consulted via web sites devoted to our modern scientific and technological heritage. These multimedia items include descriptions and photos of instruments, patents, coursework notes, prototypes, but also videos of interviews with researchers, and explanatory animations, all of which can be used to create coursework in scientific culture for master degrees, to create exhibitions on start up companies from recent innovations, to reconstitute the history of a research laboratory, to make collections of objects performing a common function but that are geographically distant, to describe the career of an exceptional researcher, and so on. Work of this kind has been started locally, at the University of Nantes, for the last 10 years or so, and the methodologies developed have spread to several other regions in France, under the supervision of the Paris museum of scientific invention, the Musee des Arts et Metiers. This report aims to describe the different objectives, the methodologies used, the results obtained, the successes and challenges, the advantages and limitations, the outcomes and the international potential of such a project.


Channel sharing is known as a unique solution to satisfy the increasing demand for the spectral-efficient communication. In the channel sharing technique, several users concurrently communicate through a shared wireless medium. In such a scheme, the interference of users over each other is the main source of impairment. The task of performance evaluation and signaling design in the presence of such interference is known as a challenging problem. In this thesis, a system including n parallel interfering AWGN transmission paths is considered, where the power of the transmitters are subject to some upper-bounds. For such a system, we obtain a closed form for the boundaries of the rate region based on the Perron-Frobenius eigenvalue of some non-negative matrices. While the boundary of the rate region for the case of unconstrained power is a well-established result, this is the first result for the case of constrained power. This result is utilized to develop an efficient user removal algorithm for congested networks. In these networks, it may not be possible for all users to attain a required Quality of Service (QoS). In this case, the solution is to remove some of the users from the set of active ones. The problem of finding the set of removed users with the minimum cardinality is claimed to be an NP-complete problem [3]. In this thesis, a novel sub-optimal removal algorithm is proposed, which relies on the derived boundary of the rate region in the first part of the thesis. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other known schemes.


A growing number of foreign subsidiaries nowadays specialize in relatively narrow sets of activities in the multinational enterprise (MNE) value chain and perform different roles in it. The scientific problems addressed in this paper are the potential determinants of the roles that the foreign subsidiaries fulfill in the value chains of MNEs. An in-depth analysis of a subsidiary role within the value chain of the MNE is required to recognize exactly how its potential internal and external determinants matter to the subsidiary and the whole MNE, and understand by what means the specific role can be given to or earned by affiliates in the company. The main cognitive goal of the paper is the identification of the relations which may be observed between the factors indicating the subsidiary role in the value chain of an MNE. The fulfillment of this aim requires the development of a theoretical framework that will present the hypothetical relations between the potential variables, and – since the potential variables are latent – a presentation of the variables' indicators. While aiming at the accomplishment of this goal, the author uses secondary sources of information encompassing mainly the international business literature, and uses deductive reasoning.


This article analyzes Internal Revenue Code § 162(m), which in general denies public companies a deduction for annual non-performance-based compensation in excess of $1,000,000 paid to senior executive officers. Congress enacted § 162(m) with the intent to reduce the overall level of executive compensation and to influence the composition of executive compensation in favor of components that are more sensitive to firm performance. Notably, § 162(m) represents the most direct Congressional effort to influence executive compensation design. In light of recent events, Congress is being called upon to once again address the perceived problem of overgenerous executive pay packages. Accordingly, it is an opportune time to study the impact of § 162(m). This article predicts the likely effects of § 162(m) under the two currently prevailing (but opposing) views of how executive compensation arrangements are negotiated in the public company context, ultimately concluding that the provision is likely ineffective under either view. In addition to predicting the likely effect of § 162(m), the article discusses the empirical studies of its impact since its enactment almost fifteen years ago. Finally, the article describes some of the unintended incidental effects of the provision, such as its discouragement of certain compensation components that are arguably more efficient than the components typically used by public companies.


Sustainability assessment is emerging as a form of impact assessment with the concept of sustainability at its heart. This thesis contributes to the process of theory-building for sustainability assessment through an exploration of the development of this policy tool within the Western Australian context. Through an analysis of the sustainability assessments of the Gorgon gas development on Barrow Island and the South West Yarragadee water supply development, and a process of personal reflection, I explore the potential of sustainability assessment to contribute to a more sustainable society by facilitating learning.

While the focus of traditional forms of impact assessment has typically been 'exterior' forms of knowledge and learning relating to the potential impacts of a proposal, or to process methodologies and governance arrangements, in this thesis I argue that sustainability assessment processes should also facilitate 'interior' forms of learning that excavate and challenge underpinning assumptions about the organisation of society, including shared discourses and storylines, as well as personal views and beliefs.

To achieve this aim, I maintain that sustainability assessment should be a proactive process that is integrated with the proposal development, framed by an open question and guided by a 'sustainability decision-making protocol' that operationalises sustainability for the decision at hand. It should be guided by a structured process framework that assures attention is given to issues that might otherwise be neglected. Each step of the process framework should represent a space for inclusive deliberation, with the concept of sustainability itself acting as a catalyst for learning and reflexivity.
Located within the institutions of modern industrial society, deliberative sustainability assessment processes can contribute to the emergence of an 'integral sustainability' that embraces and reconnects the interior and exterior, collective and individual dimensions of policy-making and of society in general. The influence of sustainability assessment can thus extend beyond the immediate decision at hand to contribute to a momentum for societal change towards a more sustainable future.


This paper presents SiRiUS, a secure file system designed to be layered over insecure network and P2P file systems such as NFS, CIFS, OceanStore, and Yahoo! Briefcase. SiRiUS assumes the network storage is untrusted and provides its own read-write cryptographic access control for file level sharing. Key management and revocation is simple with minimal out-of-band communication. File system freshness guarantees are supported by SiRiUS using hash tree constructions. SiRiUS contains a novel method of performing file random access in a cryptographic file system without the use of a block server. Extensions to SiRiUS include large scale group sharing using the NNL key revocation construction. Our implementation of SiRiUS performs well relative to the underlying file system despite using cryptographic operations.


This paper offers a corpus-driven investigation into the formulaic nature of Early Modern English medical genres. The aim of this study is to answer three related questions: (1) to what extent various text categories in medical discourse share the same lexico-syntactic choices?; (2) what stable and fixed lexico-syntactic patterns repeat across various texts related to medicine?; and (3) is there a diachronic dimension to the employment of these repetitive strings? The study is based on the recently published electronic corpus of Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT, 1500–1700, Taavitsainen et al. 2010) and uses the lexical bundle method (Biber et al. 1999) to extract 3-grams from the normalized version of the corpus. The diachronic distribution of 3-grams across medical texts shows an increase in the number of text categories which share lexical bundles. When it comes to specific 3-grams, the paper presents a diachronic overview of the most prominent semantic areas where overlaps of fixed strings occur among text categories, e.g. quantification, body parts, time and sequence, or ingredients. The study has also found important overlaps in purely functional contexts, e.g. in clarification, modality or efficacy expressions, and in structural frames, e.g. copula constructions and prepositional phrase fragments. With the help of an objective, frequency-driven corpus tool, the common lexico-syntactic core of early modern medical discourse could be established. At the same time, clusters of text categories sharing the same preferences could emerge.


Stefanova, G., v. vaSSileva and M. vlahova, 2013. human lactoferrin changes leaf morphology and pathogen resistance of Medicago sativa l. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 19: 701-708 human lactoferrin (h lf) is an iron-binding glycoprotein having antimicrobial activity, which is known to be involved in iron absorption and cell growth and proliferation. this study aimed investigation of the effect of h lf expression on leaf epider - mal cell morphology of transgenic alfalfa plants ( Medicago sativa l.), which exhibited enhanced resistance to bacterial patho - gens. leaf epidermal parameters were measured and a clear tendency of increasing size and decreasing number of pavement cells was found, which seemed to be related to h lf-cell cycle inhibition and compensatory cell enlargement. furthermore, stomatal density was lower on both leaf surfaces of transgenic plants, probably due to lf-induced inhibition of stomatal devel - opment as well. In addition, transgenic plants exhibited some characteristics, such as significant elongation of leaf epidermal cells, reduction in overall leaf size, and occasionally visible reduction of leaf chlorophyll content, which are usually related to a condition of iron deficiency, and in our case might due to iron chelation properties of hLf. Based on our observations, we as - sume that h lf expression changed leaf morphology, which partially contributed to the improved pathogen resistance of alfalfa in addition to the direct antimicrobial effect of the recombinant protein.


Transects were done in desertscrub on limestone to characterize the flora of the westernmost Chihuahuan Desert. Most of the sites (15) were in the Municipios of Agua Prieta and Naco in northeastern Sonora, with single sites near Ascension, northwestern Chihuahua and east of Douglas in southeastern Arizona. A total of 236 taxa were recorded on transects. Dicot perennial herbs (66 species) were the most numerous life forms, followed by annual herbs (36 species), subshrubs (36 species), and woody shrubs (33 species). The most diverse limestone floras were on Rancho La Morita in the Municipio of Naco (87 to 119 taxa/transect), Rancho La Calera (88 taxa), and Cerro El Caloso and Cerrito Los Janitos (84 taxa each) in the Municipio of Agua Prieta. Chihuahuan desertscrub at its western limits is a mixture of typical Chihuahuan species that reach Texas and Coahuila with western and tropical species in associations that are regionally distinct from other parts of the Chihuahuan Desert.


Criminal proceedings are socially unequal. But are they discriminatory? The impunity of some corresponds, in fact, to the ruthless condemnation of others, including due to miscarriages of justice or for minor offenses. Sociology, without being able to be definitive as to whether or not there is organized discrimination and how, presents sociographic data of the prison population. A population that is impoverished, young, male, poorly educated. Psychology contributes with likely causes of predisposition to fulfil the role of prisoner: family disruption, school failure, exclusionary cultures. Practitioners on the ground recognize pre-offenders before the age of criminal responsibility. The police demand convictions from an early age, from experience, recognizing in them the new generation of criminals who will soon commit crimes of their own. Will the analytical model most used in social theory, separating the political, economic, social and cultural dimensions, be the most appropriate to explain what the social role of the prisoners might be? What happens to the people living in the negative side of these dimensions? There is a consensus about the influence of the economic situation on the likelihood of someone being incarcerated. But there is no agreement as to how institutional processes with such symbolic and political importance as the criminal courts accept being part of a socially selective process so admittedly unjust: how do these organs of sovereignty offer themselves to fulfil a purpose so patently opposed to their doctrinal aims, and how do they gain political legitimacy by doing so? How is it that they sometimes are used to incarcerate the politically or merely socially inconvenient among us? Given that we are in the presence of a global phenomenon (all states and all powers use sequestration as a form of social control) we ask ourselves whether the typical dimensions used by social theory serve the needs of understanding prisons. Is the social role of prisoners economic, political, cultural, of status? How does this explain the centrality of gender and stigma? How to, in practice, explain the normative inconsistencies and claims of the special dangerousness of young men? Why has torture in the prisons become an internationally recognized fact by the custodial states, to the point of they themselves recognizing their incompetence to abolish such prohibited and disgusting practices? Around the hypothesis that the bulk of prisoners are modern scapegoats unconsciously created by states, according to a traditional formula for appeasing feelings of vindictiveness, we discuss the explanatory relevance of this anthropological hypothesis to the study of prisons.


This paper provides a preliminary insight into the status of the diffusion and maturity of 'Green IT' as well as some of the driving and inhibiting factors that influence it. The paper is largely descriptive and is based on a survey of 143 organisations from Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Overall, the findings indicate that organisations are developing the 'right mind-set', taking a number of 'softer actions', and investing in new technologies to use IT as part of the solution to pursue both eco-efficiency and eco-sustainability objectives. Nevertheless, the state of Green IT among the surveyed organisations can be considered at the early stage of maturity. In particular, the results indicate that the disposal of IT in an environmentally friendly manner is the most relevant organisational concern about Green IT. It is therefore not surprising that there is significantly more attention paid to the policy and practice in the end-of-IT-life management aspect of Green IT. On the other hand, attention to Green IT sourcing is the least adopted. The need for greater IT efficiency and the pursuit of tangible cost savings from IT operations are the primary drivers for adopting Green IT which have to be articulated in the strategy of an organisation. Likewise, the cost of greening IT and unclear business values from greening IT top the list of the factors that inhibit Green IT adoption. Limitation of the small sample size withstanding, the findings of this study hint at differences in Green IT initiatives among US, New Zealand and Australian organisations. In Australia and New Zealand, environmental consideration is the primary concern. In US the primary concern appears to be energy efficiency and cost reduction. Thus, while Australian and New Zealand organisations are leading the 'softer' side of Green IT policies and practices to reduce the environmental impact of IT, US organisations are far more advanced in the adoption of technologies and practices that reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency.


The volume of image guided interventions and therapy is rapidly increasing, because of associated better clinical outcome and reduced patient strain. During such minimally invasive medical treatment the clinician relies on radiological images, often produced in real-time, to guide the intervention. Prior to treatment, diagnosis and intervention planning is frequently performed using tomographical images, which provide a detailed representation of the patient's anatomy and pathology. In this thesis the fusion of those different types of images is presented, in order to provide the clinician with more relevant data to guide the procedure. Since the fusion is performed during the clinical intervention, it is essential that the technical steps can be executed within limited time. Furthermore, it is vital that the resulting fused representations are easy to interpret. The technical approaches that are described here to achieve this goal comprise fast and intuitive visualization of the fused data and rapid co-registration of multiple image datasets. In order to achieve an optimal performance the parallel computation power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) has been exploited in the visualization and registration algorithms. Regarding visualization, a dedicated direct volume rendering approach was developed, taking the particularities of the GPU into account. This volume rendering technique has been applied in the efficient fused visualization of multiple datasets, and in the interactive rendering for autostereoscopic displays. An elastic B-spline driven registration method has been mapped on the GPU to accomplish minimal computation times. Furthermore, registration algorithms especially designed for peri-interventional usage were examined. A registration method only using the geometry information of the X-ray C-arm system has been described, and a dedicated registration algorithm targeted at real-time vascular images has been developed. The proposed techniques have been validated individually, and have been evaluated together in three concrete clinical applications: multi-modal roadmapping for neuro-vascular treatment, multi-modal needle puncture planning and tracking, and CT fusion with X-ray angiography for stent placement within coronary artery disease treatment.


Abstract. The problem of data assimilation can be viewed as one of synchronizing two dynamical systems, one representing "truth" and the other representing "model", with a unidirectional flow of information between the two. Synchronization of truth and model defines a general view of data assimilation, as machine perception, that is reminiscent of the Jung-Pauli notion of synchronicity between matter and mind. The dynamical systems paradigm of the synchronization of a pair of loosely coupled chaotic systems is expected to be useful because quasi-2D geophysical fluid models have been shown to synchronize when only medium-scale modes are coupled. The synchronization approach is equivalent to standard approaches based on least-squares optimization, including Kalman filtering, except in highly non-linear regions of state space where observational noise links regimes with qualitatively different dynamics. The synchronization approach is used to calculate covariance inflation factors from parameters describing the bimodality of a one-dimensional system. The factors agree in overall magnitude with those used in operational practice on an ad hoc basis. The calculation is robust against the introduction of stochastic model error arising from unresolved scales.


In 1991, during an experiment to compare low-frequency seismic noise on a basaltic and a sediment covered seafloor (NOBS), we recorded teleseisms on the Juan de Fuca ridge, the Gorda ridge, and the adjacent Cascadia Basin with the SNAG ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS). These data provide an indication of the type of data that may be obtained from future experiments to record teleseisms and may be helpful in designing these experiments and analyzing the results.
 We found that although seafloor noise is dominated by microseisms in the band 0.1 to 0.3 Hz, there is a well-developed minimum in noise from about 0.03 to 0.1 Hz (the noise notch). In this noise notch, teleseisms can be most easily detected. In the Cascadia area, the overall noise levels are such that only teleseismic events with magnitude greater than 6.5 were usefully recorded. A magnitude 6.6 event in the New Britain area (Δ = 89°) produced usable P- and surface-wave data only in this noise notch.
 In the band 0.03 to 0.1 Hz, the character of compressional waves is very sensitive to water depth and the type of sensor. We show that pressure sensors are especially sensitive to reverberation in the ocean and that motion sensors (seismometers) are less sensitive to ocean reverberations and will record teleseismic phases with less distortion than pressure sensors.
 The Cascadia data indicate enhanced P amplitudes at sites on the ridge axes that could be due to focusing caused by a low-velocity lens. These data suggest that amplitude information may be as, or even more, useful than P delay times for determining upper mantle structure.


This research presents the development of techniques to handle two issues in data classification: noise and imbalanced data problems. Noise is a significant problem that can degrade the quality of training data in any learning algorithm. Learning algorithms trained by noisy instances generally increase misclassification when they perform classification. As a result, the classification performance tends to decrease. Meanwhile, the imbalanced data problem is another problem affecting the performance of learning algorithms. If some classes have a much larger number of instances than the others, the learning algorithms tend to be dominated by the features of the majority classes, and the features of the minority classes are difficult to recognise. As a result, the classification performance of the minority classes could be significantly lower than that of the majority classes. It is therefore important to implement techniques to better handle the negative effects of noise and imbalanced data problems.

Although there are several approaches attempting to handle noise and imbalanced data problems, shortcomings of the available approaches still exist. For the noise handling techniques, even though the noise tolerant approach does not require any data preprocessing, it can tolerate only a certain amount of noise. The classifier developed from noisy data tends to be less predictive if the training data contains a great number of noise instances. Furthermore, for the noise elimination approach, although it can be easily applied to various problem domains, it could degrade the quality of training data if it cannot distinguish between noise and rare cases (exceptions). Besides, for the imbalanced data problem, the available techniques used still present some limitations. For example, the algorithm-level approach can perform effectively only on specific problem domains or specific learning algorithms. The data-level approach can either eliminate necessary information from the training set or produce the over-fitting problem over the minority class. Moreover, when the imbalanced data problem becomes more complex, such as for the case of multi-class classification, it is difficult to apply the re-sampling techniques (the data-level approach), which perform effectively for imbalanced data problems in binary classification, to the multi-class classification. Due to the limitations above, these lead to the motivation of this research to propose and investigate techniques to handle noise and imbalanced data problems more effectively.

 This thesis has developed three new techniques to overcome the identified problems. Firstly, a cleaning technique called the Complementary Neural Network (CMTNN) data cleaning technique has been developed in order to remove noise (misclassification data) from the training set. The results show that the new noise detection and removal technique can eliminate noise with confidence. Furthermore, the CMTNN cleaning technique can increase the classification accuracy across different learning algorithms, which are Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), k- Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), and Decision Tree (DT). It can provide higher classification performance than other cleaning methods such as Tomek links, the majority voting filtering, and the consensus voting filtering.

Secondly, the CMTNN re-sampling technique, which is a new under-sampling technique, has been developed to handle the imbalanced data problem in binary classification. The results show that the combined techniques of the CMTNN resampling technique and Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) can perform effectively by improving the classification performance of the minority class instances in terms of Geometric Mean (G-Mean) and the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. It generally provides higher performance than other re-sampling techniques such as Tomek links, Wilson's Edited Nearest Neighbor Rule (ENN), SMOTE, the combined technique of SMOTE and ENN, and the combined technique of SMOTE and Tomek links.

For the third proposed technique, an algorithm named One-Against-All with Data Balancing (OAA-DB) has been developed in order to deal with the imbalanced data problem in multi-class classification. It can be asserted that this algorithm not only improves the performance for the minority class but it also maintains the overall accuracy, which is normally reduced by other techniques. The OAA-DB algorithm can increase the performance in terms of the classification accuracy and F-measure when compared to other multi-class classification approaches including One-Against-All (OAA), One-Against-One (OAO), All and One (A&O), and One Against Higher Order (OAHO) approaches. Furthermore, this algorithm has shown that the re-sampling technique is not only used effectively for the class imbalance problem in binary classification but it has been also applied successfully to the imbalanced data problem in multi-class classification.


The Dwell-on-Red (DoR) signal treatment aims to reduce the number and severity of pedestrian-vehicle crashes that occur during high-alcohol hours (HAH) at signalised intersections. The treatment involves reverting to an all-red phase when there is no traffic demand during late evening and early morning. This causes vehicles to slow down or stop thereby reducing average speeds on intersection approaches. Lower speed is known to be beneficial to traffic safety particularly for vulnerable road-users. DoR was trialled at a metropolitan intersection in Melbourne. An observational study was carried out at this intersection and revealed a number of serious safety problems during late evening hours. As part of the evaluation of effectiveness speed and flow data were collected using detectors placed 10 and 50 metres upstream of the stop-line. The treatment was found to bring about a significant reduction in average speed at both detector positions. Significant changes were also found in the proportions of vehicles travelling at less than or equal to 30 km/h and greater than 50 km/h at the 10 metre detector position, and for speeds greater than 50 km/h at the 50 metre detector position. These findings indicate a potential reduction in fatal and serious injury risk. While DoR has a minimal impact on traffic performance, its effectiveness was found to be heavily dependent on traffic-flow. This aspect has an important bearing on future applications.


This paper describes an integrated six-beam homodyne laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) system based on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) full platform technology, with on-chip photo-diodes and phase modulators. Electronics and optics are also implemented around the integrated photonic circuit (PIC) to enable a simultaneous six-beam measurement. Measurement of a propagating guided elastic wave in an aluminum plate (speed ≈ 909 m/s @ 61.5 kHz) is demonstrated.


Biodiversity loss causes are variable, interactive and rather anthropogenic. Genetic variability, between and within species, has multiple fundamental values. Forest ecosystem diversity has an important role in evolution, selection and improvement processes aiming at the satisfaction of human needs. Serbian spruce (Picea omorika Panc./Purkyne) is an endemic species of the Balkan Peninsula and a tertiary relic. The conservation of this endemic species is necessary not only its rarity and vulnerability, but also on the account of its valuable pioneer qualities. Taking into account qualities of Serbian spruce, the model of Serbian spruce genetic diversity conservation was designed by the application of multiple population breeding system (MPBS), conservation method in which the population with the function of genetic conservation was subdivided into subpopulations, each having an effective population size. The proposed model of conservation of the total Serbian spruce genetic diversity can become an adequate solution for the prevention of further narrowing and also of the extension of the narrow range of the species.

 Key words: Serbian spruce, adaptability improvement, multiple population breeding system, genetic diversity conservation.


We present a framework for learning multimodal representations from unlabeled data using convolution-free Transformer architectures. Specifically, our Video-Audio-Text Transformer (VATT) takes raw signals as inputs and extracts multimodal representations that are rich enough to benefit a variety of downstream tasks. We train VATT end-to-end from scratch using multimodal contrastive losses and evaluate its performance by the downstream tasks of video action recognition, audio event classification, image classification, and text-to-video retrieval. Furthermore, we study a modality-agnostic, single-backbone Transformer by sharing weights among the three modalities. We show that the convolution-free VATT outperforms state-of-the-art ConvNet-based architectures in the downstream tasks. Especially, VATT's vision Transformer achieves the top-1 accuracy of 82.1% on Kinetics-400, 83.6% on Kinetics-600, 72.7% on Kinetics-700, and 41.1% on Moments in Time, new records while avoiding supervised pre-training. Transferring to image classification leads to 78.7% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet compared to 64.7% by training the same Transformer from scratch, showing the generalizability of our model despite the domain gap between videos and images. VATT's audio Transformer also sets a new record on waveform-based audio event recognition by achieving the mAP of 39.4% on AudioSet without any supervised pre-training. VATT's source code is publicly available.


This research deals with the prospects for application of modern nanomaterials as exemplified by carbon nanotubes for development of new classes of precision measuring instruments or for significant improvement of the performance of existing sensors and systems based on sensors. Carbon nanotubes have been known since the end of the 20th century, but production of high-quality carbon nanotubes on a commercial scale has become possible relatively recently, owing, inter alia, to researches of Russian scientists. Carbon nanotubes have unique properties which hold much promise for their use in different areas of science and technology. Thus, use of nanotubes in precision instrument engineering can solve a number of problems, such as increase in reliability, accuracy, durability, weight and size reduction, etc. Fiber optic gyroscopes based on microstructured optical fiber are considered in this research as an example to demonstrate that use of carbon nanotubes allows significant reduction of the temperature differences in the fiber and that such reduction, in its turn, leads to lower dependence of the FOG characteristics on the temperature effects under actual operating conditions. A mathematical model of the equivalent thermal conductivity of a microstructured fiber loop, all or some channels of which are filled with carbon nanotubes, has been developed in this research. A comparative analysis has been made of the distribution of heat in coils with the considered and traditional fibers under different temperature effects – harmonic, random and stepped.


We present the photoelectrochemical (PEC) regeneration of nicotinamide cofactors (NADH) coupled with the enzymatic synthesis of formate from CO2 towards mimicking natural photosynthesis. The water oxidation-driven PEC platform exhibited high yield and the rate of NADH regeneration was compared to many other homogeneous, photochemical systems. We successfully coupled solar-assisted NADH reduction with enzymatic CO2 reduction to formate under continuous CO2 injection.


Youth enterprise programmes (YEPs) have received substantial government funding and influenced the lives of thousands of young people yet have rarely been the subject of in-depth research. Consequently, there is little evidence on which to assess youth enterprise as a form of public policy. This thesis presents new research to help address this 'gap' in knowledge.
This thesis presents a longitudinal study of youth enterprise experiences. It asks what sorts of identities 'disadvantaged' young people hoped to actualise through youth enterprise, how identities are influenced by a YEP and how identities develop through the process of planning, launching, trading in and, often, failing in business. These processes are conceptualised using a novel theoretical framework, the Relational Identity Development Model, which conceptualises identity as emergent from biographical experience and as in relationship with discursive and material structures.
The 'disadvantaged' young people in this study hoped to actualise a range of frustrated identifications by starting a YEP business and, so, cannot be understood as simple 'types'. They wrote business plans that can be understood as lifeplans based on the discourse of enterprise as an open route of opportunity. These lifeplans were largely actualised during business launch (although few young people actualised the 'intention' in their business plans to become independent of benefits while trading). When start-up capital was exhausted, YEP participants lacked the material and social resources required to sustain their businesses. Business failure was interpreted in individualised terms, resulting in either devastating self-blame or a belief that, by learning from experience, each individual could employ their personal agency to found a new, profitable business.
Business failure most commonly led to planning a new business but, again, these ventures were poorly resourced and seemed likely to fail. Ultimately, then, this thesis challenges the assumption that youth enterprise leads into paid work and argues that, as it stands, youth enterprise cannot be seen as an effective policy of social inclusion.


The results of this pilot study show that using a commercial Merchantek 266 nm Nd:YAG laser system, laser ablation -inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometric analysis of fluid inclusions in quartz is possible. Fifteen elements (Li, Na, K, Mg, Fe, As, Rb, Sr, Sn, Ba, Mo, U, W, Mn, and Pb) were determined for aqueous fluid inclusions from the Zinnwald Sn deposit (Ore Mountains, Germany). The concentrations of the measured major and trace elements are in good agreement with literature data for the same location. A first evaluation of the data shows that the high temperature inclusions (Th: 400 - 370 °C) contain high Fe and Na concentrations as well as Sn contents typical of tin-bearing fluids. A decrease in salinity from the high temperature fluid inclusions to low temperature secondary inclusions probably reflects a dilution trend of the magmatic fluid by external fluids.


This paper is part of a symposium on Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl's recent book, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society. Posner and Weyl argue for the use of quadratic voting, or QV, for conducting voting for ballot measures and (perhaps) representative government. The original version of Posner and Weyl's QV would allow literal vote buying, in which the wealthy could decide how many votes to allocate in an election such as one to decide whether to build a public park. In the current version of their proposal, contained in their book, Posner and Weyl advocate a modified version of QV in which all voters receive an equal number of "credits" which they can then vote quadratically across ballot measures over time or among a number of candidates for office. They argue that such a system will allow "a passionate minority" to "outvote an indifferent majority" and that "the outcome of the vote should maximize the well-being of the entire group, not the well-being of one subset at the expense of another." Their chapter on QV begins with a vignette of a rural Japanese voter saving up his money to cast a large number of votes in favor a measure repealing gun control in rural areas.
In this short response, I express some skepticism about the creation of the radical egalitarian voting market Posner and Weyl suggest, and argue instead for QV-based public financing of elections. First, I argue that the kind of tradeoffs that modified QV elections require are both normatively undesirable and likely beyond the rational capacity of voters, especially in a politically polarized political environment fueled by social media and disinformation. Second, I argue that the caveats and constraints Posner and Weyl build into their model makes modified QV risky and impractical as an actual voting reform, as compared to other voting methods that reflect intensity, such as cumulative voting. Third, I briefly argue that QV public financing of elections through campaign finance vouchers is both practical and can achieve many of the benefits Posner and Weyl suggest for their voting market without some of the drawbacks I have identified.


Students may have difficulty in understanding some of the complex concepts which they have been taught in the general areas of science and engineering. Whilst practical work such as a laboratory based examination of the performance of structures has an important role in knowledge construction this does have some limitations. Blended learning supports different learning styles, hence further benefits knowledge building. This research involves an empirical study of how vodcasts (video-podcasts) can be used to enrich learning experience in the structural properties of materials laboratory of an undergraduate course.

Students were given the opportunity of downloading and viewing the vodcasts on the theory before and after the experimental work. It is the choice of the students when (before or after, before and after) and how many times they would like to view the vodcasts. In blended learning, the combination of face-to-face teaching, vodcasts, printed materials, practical experiments, writing reports and instructors' feedbacks benefits different learning styles of the learners. For the preparation of the practical, the students were informed about the availability of the vodcasts prior to the practical session. After the practical work, students submitted an individual laboratory report for the assessment of the structures laboratory. The data collection consisted of a questionnaire completed by the students, follow-up semi-structured interviews and the practical reports submitted by them for assessment.

The results from the questionnaire were analysed quantitatively, whilst the data from the assessment reports were analysed qualitatively. The analysis shows that most of the students who have not fully grasped the theory after the practical, managed to gain the required knowledge by viewing the vodcasts. According to their feedbacks, the students felt that they have control over how to use the material and to view it as many times as they wish. Some students who have understood the theory may choose to view it once or not at all. Their understanding was demonstrated by their explanations in their reports, and was illustrated by the approach they took to explicate the results of their experimental work. The research findings are valuable to instructors who design, develop and deliver different types of blended learning, and are beneficial to learners who try different blended approaches. Recommendations were made on the role of the innovative application of vodcasts in the knowledge construction for structures laboratory and to guide future work in this area of research.


This essay introduces the special section "The Politics of Feminist Politics," which brings together the work of feminist scholars of the Middle East and South Asia to highlight the silences, exclusions, and occlusions that mark the transregional imaginative geographies of both "feminism" and "Islam." Together, these essays suggest that careful analysis of the languages of justice, forms of social and political life, and embodied realities that belong to particular places and times can unseat the "common sense" of liberal feminist discourse and trouble its universalist claims. These essays track the everyday languages and institutions of governance, policing, and morality by working carefully through diverse fields, including legal cases and reasoning, histories of education, dynamics of marriage, arts of linguistic transformation, politics of religious argument, legitimations of state power, and political economies of labor and housing. They analyze the circulations of terms and bodies in the public sphere and in public space, drawing attention not only to the social exclusions and selective silencings that often attend feminist projects but also to their points of openness and to possibilities for a more inclusive politics.


MICROBIAL DESALINATION CELL: A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH FOR BRACKISH WATER DESALINATION AND WASTEWATER TREATMENT WITH BIOELECTRICITY GENERATION Surajbhan Sevda1, Zhen He2, Ibrahim M. Abu-Reesh*1 1Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar 2Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA *Corresponding author: email@example.com Abstract The shortage of the fresh water has become a more and more serious issue because of the rapid increase in human population and resource consumption. Although water is an abundant natural resource available in the earth, only 3% of the water is potable and the other 97 % (seawater) is not potable. To meet the demand for fresh water, desalination processes are used for removing salt from seawater. The major limitation with current desalination processes (membrane or thermal) is the high energy requirement. Therefore, new technologies are required to reduce energy consumption by desalination. Among the new developments, microbial desalination cell (MDC) has a great potential as a low-energy desalination process with significant benefits such as simultaneous wastewater treatment. MDC is a new technology in which salt water can be desalinated without using any external energy source (except that for pumping water). The exoelectrogenic-bacteria in the anode of an MDC oxidize biodegradable substrate in wastewater and transfer the electrons to the anode electrode. Those electrons flow through an external circuit to the cathode electrode where they are used to reduce external electron acceptors such as oxygen. Unlike microbial fuel cell (MFC) from which an MDC is derived, an MDC contains a middle chamber between the anodic and cathodic chambers formed by a pair of anion exchange membrane and cation exchange membranes. This middle chamber works as a desalination chamber like that in an electrodialysis (ED). The potential difference between the anode and cathode electrodes drives the migration of ions out of the desalination chamber, with cations (Na+) migrating to the cathodic chamber and anion (Cl-) moves to the anodic chamber. As a result, salts are removed from the saltwater. MDC technology could be attractive in Qatar and the region because of strong demand for cost effective desalination technologies for desalination of seawater through linking to conventional desalination process, or of brackish water. This paper will introduce the fundamentals and future prospects of MDC technology.


Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is able to operate under both asynchronous and synchronous burst departures. Although the asynchronous approach is generally assumed in OBS owing to its simplicity and low technical requirements, it has been shown that performance improvements, in terms of the overall burst loss probability, can be achieved under synchronous operation. Moreover, when effective contention resolution mechanisms are applied such improvements are significant. Since perfect synchronisation is not a viable solution, we propose a novel operation mode with relaxed technical requirements, the quasi-synchronous (QS) operation. In this paper, the performance of the QS operation mode is evaluated by an exact analytic expression, assuming a Poisson burst arrival process and a singlewavelength scenario. This mathematical analysis is completed with numerical results that validate its accuracy. Furthermore, we tackle the issue of not having well-aligned clock information between network nodes by proposing a novel re-synchronisation mechanism for OBS networks. Finally, a performance study of the QS operation under different deflection routing techniques is presented. Results show that our novel QS approach achieves significant performance benefits with respect to the asynchronous operation while avoiding the architectural complexity of the synchronous scheme.


A contention-based opportunistic feedback protocol has been proposed in the literature, to achieve multiuser diversity for the downlink transmission of a multiuser wireless system, with the assumption that the incoming data for the active users are infinitely backlogged. However, this assumption is not valid if the authors consider the finite-length queuing effect in practical systems. By taking not only the channel states, but also the queuing states into account, the authors propose an improved opportunistic feedback protocol with multiuser diversity, and analyse its performance with adaptive modulation and coding. Additionally, instead of solving a system of equations directly, a simple iterative method is proposed to obtain the stationary distribution of the system, where the system behaviour is modelled by a two-dimensional finite-state Markov chain. Numerical results demonstrate that the authors proposed protocol is superior to the protocol in the literature in terms of the average throughput, the average spectral efficiency and the average packet delay, when considering the queuing dynamics.


Abstract Objective To examine the extent of substance use and explore which baseline factors predicted current problematic substance use 18 years after treatment in surviving patients. Methods: This longitudinal cohort study used a mailed self-report questionnaire on a group of patients with long-term problematic substance use, and high psychiatric comorbidity, 18 years after they received treatment for substance use disorders. A consecutive sample of patients with substance use disorders (n = 287, mean age 38.6 years, 72% male; 45% alcohol use disorder only and 55% other substance use disorders) was recruited in 1997 and 1998. Baseline measurements included the Composite International Diagnostic Interview, the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory II, the Hopkins Symptom Checklist 25 and demographic data. In the 18-year follow-up study (n = 91), the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test and the Drug Use Disorders Identification Test were used. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify predictors of having current problematic substance use 18 years after treatment for participants with full data collection at baseline (n = 75). Results: Of the 91 participants who responded at the 18-year follow-up study, 47 (52%) had no current problematic substance use and 44 (48%) had current problematic substance use during the past 12 months. Of participants with no current problematic substance use, 17 (36%) reported total abstinence from alcohol, illicit substances and misuse of pharmaceuticals during the past 5 years. Mental distress measured with the Hopkins Symptom Checklist 25 at baseline predicted having current problematic substance use 18 years after treatment (n = 75). Conclusions: In a group of patients with long lasting substance use disorders and high psychiatric comorbidity that entered treatment, close to half of those participating at a follow-up study had current problematic substance use during the past 12 months 18 years later. Mental distress at baseline predicted having current problematic substance use 18 years after treatment, adjusted for other factors. Self-reported general mental health symptoms can be a relevant predictor of the long-term course of substance use disorders.


The aim of this study was to determine the remaining dentin thickness (RDT) in the apical 4 mm following four cleaning and shaping techniques. Sixty human adult extracted mandibular incisors and 60 mesial buccal canals of mandibular molars were assigned to five groups of 12 teeth for each tooth type: Step-down stainless steel hand instrumentation, Lightspeed, Profile GT and 0.4 taper, K3 "g pack," control group. After instrumentation the teeth were sectioned at 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5 mm short of working length (WL) and evaluated for the minimum RDT at each level. ANOVA of RDT showed significant differences among levels and techniques. For incisors, no technique yielded greater RDT than the other techniques (p < 0.0001). For molars, K3 had greater RDT than the other techniques (p = 0.0006) at the 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5 mm levels. While there were significant statistical differences in RDT among techniques at different levels, further study would be required to determine any significant clinical difference in RDT.


The study estimated vegetable demand elasticities in Bangladesh by using Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model with corrected Stone price index. The study was conducted in Sherpur, Mymensingh Sadar under Mymensingh district and Ramna Thana under Dhaka Municipality. The household expenditure survey data was used in the study. The study revealed that the income (expenditure) elasticity for fresh vegetable was 0.58. The compensated and uncompensated own price elasticities indicated that all food items were price inelastic. Where estimated uncompensated own price elasticity of vegetables at the national level indicated that if the price of vegetables falls by 10% the demand for vegetables would increase by 4.09%. Of this total increase in demand, 3.61% is purely due to price effect (i.e. the substitute effect) as the compensated elasticity suggests. The estimates of cross price elasticities indicated that the substitution effects of price change were not strong. Therefore, government price intervention might not lead to considerable price repercussion in the economy.


Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are commonly produced by many rodents, including all muroids investigated to date (18 genera). The overall adaptive significance of USVs within muroid rodents is not well understood. Most research has focused on the muroid genera Mus and Rattus . Within even these two relatively closely related genera, USV functions vary. Additionally, research on Mus and Rattus has been conducted exclusively in the laboratory and may be subject to laboratory effects. In order to contribute toward understanding the function of Peromyscus USVs, the context in which USVs are produced in the wild is investigated. Wild syntopic Peromyscus californicus and P. boylii are used as an example to explore 1) species differences in the spectral characteristics of USVs, and 2) interactions in USV production between two syntopic species. Both species vocalized, and the most commonly recorded USV motifs were 1-5 syllable vocalizations (SV). There are species differences in spectral characteristics of 1-5 SV USVs, but there is also high variability within each species. On average, P. boylii vocalizes 8 kHz higher than P. californicus . Frequencies do overlap between species, but frequency measurements can be used reliably to assign USVs to one of the two species, based on binary logistic regression and/or discriminant function analysis. Sixty-two percent of P. californicus and 82% of P. boylii USVs recorded occurred on the 42 nights (out of 123) when both species vocalized. Thirty-seven percent of P. californicus USVs and 52% of P. boylii USVs occurred within 5 minutes of an USV from a heterospecific. There were positive correlations between species in USV production on 8 out of 11 nights when each species produced more than 3 USVs, suggesting interactions between P. californicus and P. boylii do occur. Further research is warranted to understand the context and extent of the interactions.


The successful setting up and management of micro and small businesses, and tourism related businesses in particular, is dependent on a range of situational and contextual factors (Gartner 1988, 1989; Reynolds 1991; Watson et al. 1998; Jack and Anderson 2002). When very small and micro businesses are considered, the owner's social and economic contexts are strongly inter-related, and to interpret economic action, one needs to take into account the social context where it takes place (Granovetter 1985; Aldrich and Zimmer 1986; Curran et al. 1993; Greenbank 2001; Jack and Anderson 2002). In remote rural areas, particularly in peripheral locations, tourism businesses have been widely promoted and relied upon as a means of addressing the social and economic challenges they are going through (Sharpley 2002; Shaw and Williams 2002; Getz et al. 2004). But tourism businesses have to face the typical weakness of small firms, combined with the constraining characteristics of peripheral destinations (Dahles 1997; Morrison 1998a; Morrison and Thomas 1999; Irvine and Anderson 2004; Getz and Carlsen 2005). The supporting resources base for firm setting up is considered to be much smaller and much harder to access (Smallbone et al. 1993; Stearns et al. 1995; Patterson and Anderson 2003; Skuras et al. 2003). In such circumstances, the owners' social personal networks play very important roles, either in the provision of immediate support, or by giving access to contacts and to resources outside the local area (Jack and Anderson 2002). But social networks can either facilitate or inhibit venture development (Casrud and Johnson 1989). Particularly with micro and/or family owned businesses, the two sub-systems are so strongly embedded, that any family issue is likely to influence the business and vice-versa, both in a positive as well as in a negative way (Stafford et al. 1999; Danes 2006). Social networks are acknowledged as important sources of strength, synergies and resources to businesses (e.g. Lynch; 2000; Habbershon et al. 2003; Buhalis and Peters 2006; Sharma 2008; Tinsley and Lynch 2008), but can also lead to dysfunctional consequences, and conflict between both systems may arise (Danes 2006; Werberl and Danes 2010). Therefore, this research aims at contributing to an under researched topic: the understanding of the role and importance of social relationships, in the small business setting up and management context. Theories of social networks, social capital and social support were considered as providing an appropriate conceptual framework. To accomplish the proposed goals and objectives a sequential, multi-methods approach was adopted, because the topic of social support, and mostly social hindrance, were under-conceptualized in the small businesses context. The first stages of qualitative data collection (interviews and subsequent group discussion) informed the structure and content of a questionnaire to be used in the main stage of quantitative data collection. The quantitative research was conducted in the Alto Alentejo and Oeste regions (Portugal), with 180, face-to-face completed questionnaires, based on a stratified random selection of tourism business owners. Data collected has enabled the identification of who within business owners' personal network has affected their business initiative, how and with what outcomes, at different moments in time. Helpful and unhelpful behaviours, both from family and people within the personal circle have been identified and submitted to uni and multi analysis. The underlying types of social support and social hindrance were identified. At the theoretical level, this research has demonstrated the benefits of combining theories of social network and social capital, traditionally widely used in small business research, with theory of social support. A richer understanding of the role of social relationships in the business' context was achieved. This research has also contributed to the conceptualization of negative social interactions, and the term social hindrance is suggested, as opposed to social support. The multi-dimensionality and multiplexity of both constructs has been demonstrated. At the practical level, the findings indicate that social relationships, notably from family and friends, play an important role in the setting up and management of small tourism businesses, namely through the provision of emotional support, informational support and practical aid and assistance. The results demonstrate that there is, indeed, a positive relationship between social support and business performance, whilst negative social interactions, conceptualized as social hindrance, are less likely to affect business performance and success than expected. However, caution is suggested regarding the findings relating to negative social interaction considering the positive association between social desirability and reporting of social hindering behaviours. The study discusses not only the theoretical implications but also the practical ones, namely in the development of policies that aim at facilitating the setting up and management of small tourism businesses in rural areas. Future areas of research are suggested, both with regard to exploring in further detail the data collected and in terms of new and enhanced research approaches.


According to Thomas Kuhn, the entrenchment of a paradigm, especially in the critical stages when facing anomalies, requires the further suppression of competing ideas. This essay addresses the unconscious entrenchment of European modernist aesthetics in the everyday, especially in the American suburbs of the 1950s, and its popular and cultural manifestations. Taking Levittown as a starting point, modernist architectural principles have since its construction radiated into the mass-housing market and materialized in housing development projects that have led to the rise of suburbia and, more recently, the New Urbanism. Despite the conventional separations of modernism from the more criticized mass-housing development, the same principles of security, shelter, community, and utopia are present in each. Presented by some architects as a postmodernist aesthetic, the central tenets of modernism are still pursued and reimagined as timeless principles in the building of new housing communities, recycled and reconstituted to meet the dreams and desires of the public—a utopia that is both avant-garde and kitsch.


Performing measurements of the properties of antihydrogen, the bound state of an antiproton and a positron, and comparing the results with those for ordinary hydrogen, has long been seen as a route to test some of the fundamental principles of physics. There has been much experimental progress in this direction in recent years, and antihydrogen is now routinely created and trapped and a range of exciting measurements probing the foundations of modern physics are planned or underway. In this contribution we review the techniques developed to facilitate the capture and manipulation of positrons and antiprotons, along with procedures to bring them together to create antihydrogen. Once formed, the antihydrogen has been detected by its destruction via annihilation or field ionization, and aspects of the methodologies involved are summarized. Magnetic minimum neutral atom traps have been employed to allow some of the antihydrogen created to be held for considerable periods. We describe such devices, and their implementation, along with the cusp magnetic trap used to produce the first evidence for a low-energy beam of antihydrogen. The experiments performed to date on antihydrogen are discussed, including the first observation of a resonant quantum transition and the analyses that have yielded a limit on the electrical neutrality of the anti-atom and placed crude bounds on its gravitational behaviour. Our review concludes with an outlook, including the new ELENA extension to the antiproton decelerator facility at CERN, together with summaries of how we envisage the major threads of antihydrogen physics will progress in the coming years.


A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a temporary infrastructureless network, formed by a set of mobile hosts that dynamically establish their own network on the fly without relying on any central administration. Mobile hosts used in MANET have to ensure the services that were ensured by the powerful fixed infrastructure in traditional networks, the packet forwarding is one of these services. The resource limitation of nodes used in MANET, particularly in energy supply, along with the multi-hop nature of this network may cause new phenomena which do not exist in traditional networks. To save its energy a node may behave selfishly and uses the forwarding service of other nodes without correctly forwarding packets for them. This deviation from the correct behavior represents a potential threat against the quality of service (QoS), as well as the service availability, one of the most important security requirements. Some solutions have been recently proposed, but almost all these solutions rely on the watchdog technique as stated in S. Marti et al. (2000) in their monitoring components, which suffers from many problems. In this paper we propose an approach to mitigate some of these problems, and we assess its performance by simulation.


The English Novel in History 1700-1780 provides students with specific contexts for the early novel in response to a new understanding of eigtheenth-century Britain. It traces the social and moral representations of the period in extended readings of the major novelists, as well as evaluatiing the importance of lesser known ones. John Richetti traces the shifting subject matter of the novel, discussing: * scandalous and amatory fictions * criminal narratives of the early part of the century * the more disciplined, realistic, and didactic strain that appears in the 1740's and 1750's * novels promoting new ideas about the nature of domestic life * novels by women and how they relate to the shift of subject matter This original and useful book revises traditional literary history by considering novels from those years in the context of the transformation of Britain in the eighteenth century.


Bailey (2002) stated that Catholic Schools prefer to teach a Religious Education that is Catholic in deepening the faith of their Catholic students. However, they have Religious Education subjects and programs that are not sensitive and considerate to the beliefs and practices of non-Catholic students. To come up with Religious Education programs and subjects that are sensitive to the religious and spiritual development of both Catholic and non-Catholic students, it is appropriate to understand first their perspective toward religion. The objectives of the study are to investigate how Catholic and non-Catholic college students in a certain Catholic University perceive Religion, and to determine if there are significant differences in these perspectives. The researcher used a descriptive research design and a quantitative descriptive method in describing the current context and perceptions of Catholic and non-Catholic students toward religion. A survey questionnaire developed by Baring et al. (2018) was utilized in gathering data, and purposive sampling was used in selecting 200 college students as respondents. An independent-sample t-test was the statistical method used in determining the significant difference of the two independent variables. The findings showed that there are specific significant differences toward the perception of Catholic and non-Catholic students on spirituality and religiosity, especially in terms of the identity dimension of Religion. However, there are more similarities than differences in their perceptions of religion.


A new spicule-bearing genus of Spumellaria (Radiolaria) Cuboctostylus, and three new specics - Cuboctostylus kasinzovae, C. sakhalinensis, and C. trifurcatus, are described from the Late Cretaceous deposits of Sakhalin (Russia). This genus has many characters in common with the Lower-Middle Cretaceous genus Pyloctostylus Dumitrica, from which it differs essentially in having no pylome and the spicule centrally placed. The genus has also some characters in common with the Paleozoic family Polyentactiniidae and the Cenozoic family Orosphaeridae.


n In the tourism literature a lot of attention is paid to different approaches towards tourism development, especially when it comes to developing countries. Often it is argued that it is necessary to come to a sustainable approach, whereby it is stressed that attention should be paid to the way tourism organizations influence (and are influenced by) the natural environment as well as the cultural, and economical context in which they are situated. Although the debates on sustainable forms of tourism development are a positive direction for the tourism field, we will argue in this paper that these debates will not really contribute to the progress of the field as long as there is a lack of local accounts of actors in such tourism destinations. By presenting empirical data from Belize and the Dominican Republic, the aim is to move beyond the dominant 'sus-tainability discourse' in the field of tourism in which mass-tourism is per definition 'bad' and small-scale tourism is 'good', and gain an insight into what is actually going on at the micro level.


Reading Friedrich Hayek's late work as a neoliberal myth of the state of nature, this article finds neoliberalism's hostilities to democracy to be animated in part by a romantic demand for belonging. Hayek's theory of spontaneous order expresses this desire for belonging as it pretends the market is capable of harmonizing differences so long as the state is prevented from interfering. Approaching Hayek's work in this way helps to explain why his conceptions of both pluralism and democracy are so thin. It also suggests that neoliberalism's assaults upon democracy are intimately linked to its relentless extractivism. Yet the romantic elements in Hayek's work might have led him toward a more radical democratic project and ecological politics had he affirmed plurality for what it enables. I conclude with the suggestion that democratic theory can benefit from learning to listen to what Hayek heard but failed to affirm: nature's active voice.


Does finance affect economic growth? A number of studies have identified a positive correlation between the level of development of a country's financial sector and the rate of growth of its per capita income. As has been noted elsewhere, the observed correlation does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. This paper examines whether financial development facilitates economic growth by scrutinizing one rationale for such a relationship; that financial development reduces the costs of external finance to firms. Specifically, we ask whether industrial sectors that are relatively more in need of external finance develop disproportionately faster in countries with more developed financial markets. We find this to be true in a large sample of countries over the 1980s. We show this result is unlikely to be driven by omitted variables, outliers, or reverse causality.


This article shows how Melville's Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature's most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato's challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how poets create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic's philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of poetry that Plato should willing allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law's agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if they are to do justice. Paradoxically, the novella also shows how poetry can save law's agents, particularly the more Platonic, from Captain Vere's veer, a dangerous turn from fully legal justice to false and fatal severity. Captain Vere has a tragic flaw all too common among leaders otherwise completely conscientious and competent: When faced with a range of courses - all legal, moral, and practicable - Vere invariably charts the most personally painful. Part of his no pain, no gain course steers him into fastidious studies that exclude both mere fiction and pure theory, ironically banishing Plato himself along with his poets. But Vere's own story, with its narrator's frequent theoretical interruptions and occasional allusions to Plato, demonstrates that the reading of just such stories may deliver leaders like him from over-harsh treatment of themselves and their most vulnerable charges. The novella, then, not only reveals Captain Vere's veer; it also shows a way to avert that ever dangerous, often fatal tack. If the studious captain had been prepared to study stories like his own, his readings might have made him a vastly better guardian of his symbolic flock, particularly of Billy Budd, his most innocent sheep; had Starry Vere been more a philosopher-king and less a surrogate father-god, he need never have made his excruciating mistake, sacrificing his most beloved foster son to save their microcosmic world.


The anatomical, chemical, and physico-mechanical properties of the fibres of C. pangorei were investigated in this study. The results indicate that the rind region that is split and used in mat making contains compactly arranged fibrovascular bundles and a discontinuous patch of fibrous sheath. The frequency and the R/T ratio of the bundles were high in the rind region and were indicative of fibre strength. Lignin and cellulose, the major cell wall substances, were localized with heterochromatic, fluorescent, and natural dyes. The holocellulose content was high (82.2 %), and the lignin content was comparatively low (13.28 %) as analyzed by the method of Doree. Very thick walled, thick walled, very thin walled, and thin walled fibres were characterized when fibres were macerated, and their derived values indicated a high Slenderness and Runkell ratio that is indicative of tear resistance. The tenacity and percentage elongation of the split culm strands was also high, and this implies high strength of the fibre strands. The fibre of this mat sedge thus has favorable characteristics to be potentially utilized in the mat and silkmat industry. Furthermore the plant's annual harvesting period, biomass, and appropriate fibre characteristics makes this sedge very attractive as an alternative fibre source in the miscellaneous plant fibre industry.


The Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi spacecraft routinely observes high-energy emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Here we present the second catalog of LAT-detected GRBs, covering the first 10 yr of operations, from 2008 to 2018 August 4. A total of 186 GRBs are found; of these, 91 show emission in the range 30–100 MeV (17 of which are seen only in this band) and 169 are detected above 100 MeV. Most of these sources were discovered by other instruments (Fermi/GBM, Swift/BAT, AGILE, INTEGRAL) or reported by the Interplanetary Network (IPN); the LAT has independently triggered on four GRBs. This catalog presents the results for all 186 GRBs. We study onset, duration, and temporal properties of each GRB, as well as spectral characteristics in the 100 MeV–100 GeV energy range. Particular attention is given to the photons with the highest energy. Compared with the first LAT GRB catalog, our rate of detection is significantly improved. The results generally confirm the main findings of the first catalog: the LAT primarily detects the brightest GBM bursts, and the high-energy emission shows delayed onset as well as longer duration. However, in this work we find delays exceeding 1 ks and several GRBs with durations over 10 ks. Furthermore, the larger number of LAT detections shows that these GRBs not only cover the high-fluence range of GBM-detected GRBs but also sample lower fluences. In addition, the greater number of detected GRBs with redshift estimates allows us to study their properties in both the observer and rest frames. Comparison of the observational results with theoretical predictions reveals that no model is currently able to explain all results, highlighting the role of LAT observations in driving theoretical models.


There is increasing interest in estimating the causal effects of treatments using observational data. Propensity-score matching methods are frequently used to adjust for differences in observed characteristics between treated and control individuals in observational studies. Survival or time-to-event outcomes occur frequently in the medical literature, but the use of propensity score methods in survival analysis has not been thoroughly investigated. This paper compares two approaches for estimating the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) on survival outcomes: Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (IPTW) and full matching. The performance of these methods was compared in an extensive set of simulations that varied the extent of confounding and the amount of misspecification of the propensity score model. We found that both IPTW and full matching resulted in estimation of marginal hazard ratios with negligible bias when the ATE was the target estimand and the treatment-selection process was weak to moderate. However, when the treatment-selection process was strong, both methods resulted in biased estimation of the true marginal hazard ratio, even when the propensity score model was correctly specified. When the propensity score model was correctly specified, bias tended to be lower for full matching than for IPTW. The reasons for these biases and for the differences between the two methods appeared to be due to some extreme weights generated for each method. Both methods tended to produce more extreme weights as the magnitude of the effects of covariates on treatment selection increased. Furthermore, more extreme weights were observed for IPTW than for full matching. However, the poorer performance of both methods in the presence of a strong treatment-selection process was mitigated by the use of IPTW with restriction and full matching with a caliper restriction when the propensity score model was correctly specified.


Keynote speaker Marcia Ann Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine, discussed the importance of getting to the root of what makes violence against women. She stressed the importance of looking at what makes men act violent, taking down barriers of reporting violence, and analyzing other contributing factors. Panelist Aurora Salamone from the New York City Department for the Aging then discussed domestic abuse against elders, stressing that domestic violence in the household does not all the sudden stop at a certain age. Panelist Kimberly A. Madden from from the Jewish Association for Services of the Aged discussed how violence against elders is similar to violence at younger ages because of the cycle of violence but different because of how the power is exerted and how someone can get out of the situation. Louisa Gilbert, co-director of the Social Intervention Group at Columbia, then discussed how drug use contributes to abuse of women and how it creates barriers for them from getting help. Holly Devine from Barrier Free Living Domestic Violence Program then described her work at her transitional shelter for disabled men and women who have become homeless. Jenny Rivera, professor CUNY School of Law, discussed the shortcomings of legal solutions for women being abused.


Youth suicide is a global public health concern. Despite significant differences in suicide rates depending on age, sex, and country, young people remain a key target for prevention and intervention with late adolescence (15–19 years) identified as a time of heightened risk and increased clinical focus worldwide.1 Among the many stressors that increase vulnerability to suicide in young people, social risk factors including poverty, bullying, academic pressures, and social isolation play key roles.2

Suicide prevention may be considered an issue for specialist mental health services. However, given that many of the determinants of suicide lie at the heart of social adversity, there is a strong need for the shared role and responsibility between health, social care, education, the justice system, and the voluntary sector. Within a multifaceted public health approach to suicide prevention, we highlight the vital role of primary care.

GPs are often the first and the last healthcare contact for those who die by suicide3 and a trusted source for help-seeking for mental illness in young people.4 While the general practice consultation holds exceptional potential to support young people at risk of suicide,5 there are unique challenges that often prevent GPs from providing optimal care to this cohort.6 These include time constraints, heavy workload, and a lack of integration with specialist mental health services, which means that most of the time GPs have to manage complex cases in relative isolation.6 An identified lack of specialist education has also left many GPs feeling ill equipped to meet the multiple, diverse, and complex needs of young …


Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the most important development challenge of the 21st century. Poverty is higher in most African countries than elsewhere in the developing world. According to the recently published Report of the Commission for Africa, economic growth in Africa is necessary for substantially reducing poverty. Among three proposed policy options, the Commission recommends that African countries invest significantly in agriculture. But policy makers in the region face a dilemma: which subsector within agriculture will yield the highest return for a given budget? This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to simulate productivity gains in sub-Sahara African agriculture subject to trade-offs between gains in crops and gains in livestock. The simulated results suggest three conclusions. First, most of the sub-Sahara Africa economies gain more from research and development (R&D) investment in crops than from R&D investment in livestock but this conclusion is not true everywhere. The SACU (South African Customs Union) economies and Madagascar benefit from a sharing of R&D investment between crops and livestock. Second, when R&D is focused on food crops, a sharing of investment funds between crops and livestock is beneficial to other economies too. Third, in economies where a sharing of R&D investment between crops and livestock is beneficial (e.g., Botswana), general economic growth boosts the benefits from R&D investment in livestock.


Polypharmacy is the use of 5 or more medications per day and high level polypharmacy is the use of 10 medications or more per day by a patient. Perioperative patients form a significantly large population who are prescribed additional drugs for pain relief and infection prophylaxis. This study is aimed to estimate the prevalence of polypharmacy among perioperative elderly patients and to determine the predictors and outcomes of polypharmacy. This was a prospective observational study conducted among elderly patients aged 60 years or more who were admitted to the surgical wards for elective or emergency surgical procedures at a tertiary care teaching hospital from May 2014 to April 2015. Data were collected using a structured case report format. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise demographic characteristics, prescription patterns and outcomes. Predictors were evaluated using univariate analysis followed by regression analysis. About 135 patients were screened and 117 patients were included in the study. Prevalence of polypharmacy was 84.6% and prevalence of high level polypharmacy was 11.1%. The most common drugs related to surgery being used were pantoprazole (87.2%), pethidine (64.1%) and ondansetron (46.2%). Whereas, the most common surgery unrelated drugs prescribed were short acting human insulin (36.8%), amlodipine (29.1%) and metformin (22.2%). The number of adverse drug reactions encountered in our study was 7 and none was life threatening. The duration of hospital stay (adjusted odds ratio; 95% confidence intervals: 2.505; 1.239, 5.064) and number of co-morbidities (adjusted odds ratio; 95% confidence intervals: 1.927; 1.057, 3.514) were the significant predictors of polypharmacy. In conclusion, polypharmacy was high among elderly perioperative patients in our setting. Comorbidities and prolonged duration of hospital stay were important predictors of polypharmacy in elderly surgical patients.


The article examines the structure and content of professional competence as the basic level of education of a teacher.Social realities and the trends in education reflecting them are characterized by the focus on specialists who are competent in their field and who have a professional pedagogical culture. Modern conditions of the educational process contain a new potential for professional development: the variability and flexibility of the educational system contributes to the optimal choice of an individual educational path and permanent professional growth. Building the logic of professional development should proceed from the laws of the educational process and the formation of the teacher's