In this article, we examine the problem of tourist trails located in city peripheries, using a case study of trails in the Cerro Pan de Azúcar, a geographic area in the central-eastern suburbs of Medellín, Colombia. To this end, extant literature was examined regarding issues such as urban development, city peripheries, popular neighbourhoods, tourist trails and the territory. Additionally, with an exploratory methodology and fieldwork based on visual prospecting, participatory work with local communities and surveying topographic profiles, the study area was contextualised and technical data sheets were developed, which provide data on the trails studied. The findings are translated into technical information that contribute to promoting and preserving the environment to the extent that recognising the trails and promoting local inhabitants make these paths a viable alternative for social, environmental and economic development. Conclude that it is necessary to draw attention to the issue of peripheral trail preservation on any municipal administration's agenda, as otherwise, they inevitably tend to disappear.


Clinical bottom line A comprehensive search of the available veterinary literature found three studies which assess whether feeding wet or dry maintenance diets place cats at an increased risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) diagnosis. None of the three studies found any significant benefit of feeding either diet in reducing the risk of CKD. However, the criteria used to diagnose CKD was not standardised across any of the three studies. There is currently insufficient evidence that feeding a wet maintenance diet will help to reduce the risk of CKD but further studies are needed to assess whether diet can play some role in reducing the risk of CKD diagnosis.


We show that Yao's XOR Lemma, and its essentially equivalent rephrasing as a Direct Product Lemma, can be re-interpreted as a way of obtaining error-correcting codes with good list-decoding algorithms from error-correcting codes having weak unique-decoding algorithms. To get codes with good rate and efficient list decoding algorithms, one needs a proof of the Direct Product Lemma that, respectively, is strongly derandomized, and uses very small advice. We show how to reduce advice in Impagliazzo's proof of the Direct Product Lemma for pairwise independent inputs, which leads to error-correcting codes with O(n/sup 2/) encoding length, 0/sup /spl tilde//(n/sup 2/) encoding time, and probabilistic 0/sup /spl tilde//(n) list-decoding time. (Note that the decoding time is sub-linear in the length of the encoding.) Back to complexity theory, our advice-efficient proof of Impagliazzo's hard-core set results yields a (weak) uniform version of O'Donnell results on amplification of hardness in NP. We show that if there is a problem in NP that cannot be solved by BPP algorithms on more than a 1 - 1/(log n)/sup c/ fraction of inputs, then there is a problem in NP that cannot be solved by BPP algorithms on more than a 3/4 + 1/(log n)/sup c/ fraction of inputs, where c > 0 is an absolute constant.


This monograph provides a detailed account of the collapse of the communist regime in Afghanistan and considers steps that can be taken to consolidate post-communist rule. After outlining the historical evolution of the Afghanistan problem, the authors trace the process by which the communist regime progressively unravelled and show why UN efforts to negotiate an internal settlement between the communists and the resistance proved fruitless. They then examine the issues that will need to be addressed if fair elections - endorsed by a wide range of Afghan political groups - are to be held. A discussion of future constitutional arrangements highlights the potential advantages of federalism, consociationalism and parliamentarism. The authors conclude with a plea for generous reconstruction aid, without which, they assert, Afghan politics will prove too competitive for democratic institutions to survive.


The triaxial compression test is one of the most common standard tests for determining the stress-strain behavior and strength parameters of soils under drained and undrained conditions. The use of the test method in asphaltic mixtures is less well known and seldom practiced. This paper describes the use of the triaxial compression test for asphaltic mixtures for determining their engineering properties such as the friction angle φ, the cohesion, c, and the elastic compression modulus, E. Effects of test temperatures, strain rate, and confining pressures on the compressive behavior of asphalt concrete were studied. The results showed that the friction angle is primarily a function of aggregate friction and interlocking, being independent of test temperature and strain rate. The cohesion, on the other hand, is largely dependent on the binder and fines mixture being sensitive to both test temperature and strain rate changes. The confining pressures have no influence on c and φ, but have significant influence on the compression modulus. E. The tests can be conducted at controlled temperatures, constant strain-rate, and confining pressures so as to allow the determination of the basic engineering stress-strain and strength properties of these materials under controlled environmental conditions. Using these properties, a constitutive plasticity model based on the Drucker-Prager yield condition can then be applied in an axisymmetric finite element model to describe the mechanical behavior of the asphaltic material in triaxial compression. Analysis shows that the plasticity model is able to describe the stress-strain behavior of the triaxial specimen to failure, predicting both the failure strain and the failure stress fairly accurately. Comparison of analysis with measured lateral deformation at failure also show good agreement. Thus it seems that a simple idealized elastic-perfectly-plastic constitutive model, whose parameters can be determined from a triaxial compression test at constant strain-rate, is adequate to describe the behavior of asphaltic mixtures, loaded in compression to failure.


We compute the Bayesian evidence for models considered in the main analysis of Planck cosmic microwave background data. By utilizing carefully defined nearest-neighbor distances in parameter space, we reuse the Monte Carlo Markov chains already produced for parameter inference to compute Bayes factors B for many different model-data set combinations. The standard 6-parameter flat cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant (ΛCDM) is favored over all other models considered, with curvature being mildly favored only when cosmic microwave background lensing is not included. Many alternative models are strongly disfavored by the data, including primordial correlated isocurvature models (lnB=-7.8), nonzero scalar-to-tensor ratio (lnB=-4.3), running of the spectral index (lnB=-4.7), curvature (lnB=-3.6), nonstandard numbers of neutrinos (lnB=-3.1), nonstandard neutrino masses (lnB=-3.2), nonstandard lensing potential (lnB=-4.6), evolving dark energy (lnB=-3.2), sterile neutrinos (lnB=-6.9), and extra sterile neutrinos with a nonzero scalar-to-tensor ratio (lnB=-10.8). Other models are less strongly disfavored with respect to flat ΛCDM. As with all analyses based on Bayesian evidence, the final numbers depend on the widths of the parameter priors. We adopt the priors used in the Planck analysis, while performing a prior sensitivity analysis. Our quantitative conclusion is that extensions beyond the standard cosmological model are disfavored by Planck data. Only when newer Hubble constant measurements are included does ΛCDM become disfavored, and only mildly, compared with a dynamical dark energy model (lnB∼+2).


Abstract The late Cretaceous Kızıldağ ophiolite forms one of the best exposures of oceanic lithospheric remnants of southern Neotethys to the north of the Arabian promontory in Turkey. The ultramafic to mafic cumulate rocks, displaying variable thickness (ranging from 165 to 700 m), are ductiley deformed, possibly in response to syn-magmatic extension during sea-floor spreading and characterized by wehrlite, olivine gabbro, olivine gabbronorite and gabbro. The gabbroic cumulates have an intrusive contact with the wehrlitic cumulates in some places. The crystallization order of the cumulus and intercumulus phases is olivine (Fo86−77)±chromian spinel, clinopyroxene (Mg#92−76), plagio- clase(An95−83), orthopyroxene(Mg#87−79). The olivine, clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene and plagioclase in ultramafic and mafic cumulate rocks seem to have similar compositional range. This suggests that these rocks cannot represent a simple crystal line of descent. Instead the overlapping ranges in mineral compositions in different rock types suggest multiple magma generation during crustal accretion for the Kızıldağ ophiolite. The presence of high Mg# of olivine, clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene, and the absence of Ca-rich plagioclase as an early fractionating phase co-precipitating with forsteritic olivine, suggest that the Kızıldağ plutonic suite is not likely to have originated in a mid-ocean ridge environment. Instead the whole-rock and mineral chemistry of the cumulates indicates their derivation from an island arc tholeiitic (IAT) magma. All the evidence indicates that the Kızıldağ ophiolite formed along a slow-spreading centre in a fore-arc region of a suprasubduction zone tectonic setting.


Android introduced runtime permissions in order to provide users with more contextual information to make informed decisions as well as with finer granularity when dealing with permissions. In this work, we identified that the correct operation of the runtime permission model relies on certain implicit assumptions which can conveniently be broken by adversaries to illegitimately obtain permissions from the background while impersonating foreground apps. We call this detrimental scenario false transparency attacks. These attacks constitute a serious security threat to the Android platform as they invalidate the security guarantees of 1) runtime permissions by enabling background apps to spoof the context and identity of foreground apps when requesting permissions and of 2) Android permissions altogether by allowing adversaries to exploit users' trust in other apps to obtain permissions. We demonstrated via a user study we conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk that mobile users' comprehension of runtime permissions renders them susceptible to this attack vector. We carefully designed our attacks to launch strategically in order to appear persuasive and verified the validity of our design strategies through our user study. To demonstrate the feasibility of our attacks, we conducted an in-lab user study in a realistic setting and showed that none of the subjects noticed our attacks. Finally, we discuss why the existing defenses against mobile phishing fail in the context of false transparency attacks. In particular, we disclose the security vulnerabilities we identified in a key security mechanism added in Android 10. We then propose a list of countermeasures to be implemented on the Android platform and on app stores to practically tackle false transparency attacks.


Metal-on-metal (MoM) hip joint replacements have been increasingly used for younger and more
active patients in recent years due to their improved wear performance compared to conventional
metal-on-polymer bearings. MoM bearings operate at body temperature within a corrosive joint
environment and therefore are inevitably being subjected to wear and corrosion as well as the
combined action of tribo-corrosion. Issues such as metal sensitivity/metallosis associated with high
levels of metal ion release triggered by the wear and corrosion products remain critical concerns.
During the past few decades, significant research has been conducted into understanding the
wear/lubrication mechanisms within the MoM hip joints in order to improve their performance and
thereby prolonging their life. However, not much attention has been given to the combined effect of
wear and corrosion of such devices in the hip joint environment, in addition, the role of third body
particles and the effects of proteins have not been well understood. In this work, a systemic approach is presented for the first time for the mapping of abrasion and
tribo-corrosion performance of a cast CoCrMo (F75) in simulated hip joint environments. The
effects of third body particles have been studied in the MoM context using 4 ?m SiC, 1 ?m and 300
nm Al2O3, as well as sub-micron BaSO4. Modified tribo-testers (micro-abrasion,
nanoindenter/scratching) incorporating a novel electrochemical cell have been used to monitor the
abrasion-corrosion behaviour of the alloy in situ. The effects of solution chemistry, abrasives size /
concentration and presence of proteins on the wear / corrosion level, wear-corrosion mechanisms,
and the depassivation/repassivation kinetics of the CoCrMo have been explored. A variety of surface
and sub-surface characterization techniques have been employed to identify the microstructual wear
mechanism interactions. Results show that the change of protein concentration (0, 25% and 50%
bovine serum) and pH (pH 7.4 and pH 4.0) of the test solutions can significantly influence the
protein adsorption behaviour, which subsequently influence the wear rates (synergy), wear
mechanisms as well as the wear-induced corrosion currents of the CoCrMo. For abrasion-corrosion
tests, reducing abrasive size from 4 ?m to 300 nm and/or abrasive volume concentration from 0.238
vol% to 0.006 vol% results in different abrasion-corrosion wear mechanisms (rolling or grooving
abrasion) and the average wear-induced corrosion currents show a linear correlation with wear rates
for 4 ?m and 1 ?m abrasives. For low volume concentration (< 0.03 vol%) slurries containing
bovine serum, organo-metallic conglomerates have been found within the wear scars. These
conglomerates help separate the surfaces, impose less damage to the surface passive film and polish
the wear scars through a chemical mechanical polishing mechanism. In addition, tribo-corrosion
tests at micro-/nano- scales reveal the effects of single abrasive particle on the surface/sub-surface
microstructual change. This investigation has revealed the nanoscale wear mechanisms that generate
nanoscale wear debris, the mechanical mixing of the surface nanostructure with adsorbed denatured
protein and also the slip/dislocation systems that are present near and on abraded surfaces that are
likely to disrupt the surface passive films. The findings give a better understanding of the evolution
of the sub-surface nanocrystalline structures and tribo-layers formation seen for the retrieved
implants. This near surface nanostructure layer and phase transformation might offer better wear
resistance through these inherent self-protecting mechanisms (i.e. increased hardness); conversely, it
may become the precursors to debris ejection and enhanced ion-release into the CoCrMo joints. This work established an experimental technique that gives greater understanding of the tribocorrosion
behaviour of cast CoCrMo in simulated hip joint environments. In particular, the roles of
third body abrasive particles and proteins have been addressed, which are relevant to clinical
applications. The material multi-scale wear mechanisms as well as the evolution of the surface / subsurface
microstructures and tribo-layers have been elucidated, which provide new insights into the in
vivo wear mechanisms of CoCrMo. The findings of this study may provide some important
indications for improved MoM joint materials, design, manufacture and evaluation.


A brief review of laser-induced material modification in glassy materials is presented. The mechanisms of energy transfer from the laser and the subsequent structural modifications are reviewed. Specific features of femtosecond (fs) and continuous wave (CW) laser irradiation of glass are presented and the impact of the process parameters on the properties is discussed. The diverse responses exhibited by various glass families are presented and contrasted, with a focus on the use of these materials and processes for a wide variety of novel applications. Finally, suggestions of future directions for laser-induced material modification are presented.


Early in Wilhelm Heinse's eccentric novel Hildegard von Hohenthal (1796) his characters confront the problem of how music works on the senses. The novel's hero, Kapellmeister Lockmann, tunes a piano—to an idiosyncratic temperament of his own invention—as he proposes an intensely physical model for musical listening. He uses this demonstration, while simultaneously trying to start a love affair with the novel's heroine, Hildegard von Hohenthal, to reclaim older ideas about natural temperaments and key characteristics in an era of heightened interest in the anatomy of cognition. But Heinse's own opinions are not always the same as those of his characters. Drawing on his notebooks, I trace how Heinse struggled to come to terms with opposing views of his friend and colleague, the anatomist Samuel Thomas Soemmering, and of the philosopher Immanuel Kant of how sound affects the body. Soemmering's Uber das Organ der Seele (1796) and Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (1790) both act as intertexts and paratexts to the novel, and Heinse more than once splits his own opinions about both books between his characters. The tuning scene addresses important questions about the hierarchy of the senses, the creation of musical meaning, and the freedom of performers and listeners to form their own interpretations of music. Heinse's naturalist ideas about musical agency rub against the grain of a narrative—still current today—dominated by a transaction between heroic composers on the one side and awe-struck listeners on the other. To re-assess these ideas is to re-imagine a crucial hinge in music history.


Most of the progenitors of type Ia supernovae in nearby spiral galaxies may be white dwarf−normal star binary systems. Type Ia supernovae are key tools for measuring distances on a cosmic scale. They are generally thought to be the thermonuclear explosion of an accreting white dwarf in a close binary system. The nature of the mass donor is still uncertain. In the single-degenerate model it is a main-sequence star or an evolved star, whereas in the double-degenerate model it is another white dwarf. We show that the velocity structure of absorbing material along the line of sight to 35 type Ia supernovae tends to be blueshifted. These structures are likely signatures of gas outflows from the supernova progenitor systems. Thus, many type Ia supernovae in nearby spiral galaxies may originate in single-degenerate systems.


This work considers services marketing theory regarding consumer evaluations. A common assertion within the services marketing literature is that services are more difficult to evaluate than goods. Part of this work examines this assertion by theoretical and empirical means. Several evaluative dimensions are examined (perceived evaluation difficulty, perceived processing effort, certainty of evaluation, predictive ability and the use of information sources). The results suggest that consumers do not find services more difficult to evaluate than goods. A second purpose of this study was to investigate evaluative effects of product intangibility. Product intangibility is conceptulised as a three-dimensional construct. The three dimensions are: abstractness, generality and lack of pre-purchase inspection possibilities. The results support this multi-dimensional conceptualisation of the product intangibility construct. Also, the results suggest that the different intangibility dimensions give rise to different effects with respect to consumers product evaluation. Abstractness has a negative influence over perceived evaluation difficulty, whilst generality has a positive influence over perceived evaluation difficulty. The effects regarding the use of information sources exhibited an opposite pattern, where the abstractness dimension supported predictions made in the services marketing literature, whilst the generality dimension opposed these. No effects related to the evaluative dimensions are found with respect to lack of pre-purchase inspection possibilities except for the use of a couple information sources. In view of the observed results a distinction between goods and services based on consumer evaluations is questionable.


We introduce a periodic form of the iterated algebraic K-theory of ku, the (connective) complex K-theory spectrum, as well as a natural twisting of this cohomology theory by higher gerbes. Furthermore, we prove a form of topological T-duality for sphere bundles oriented with respect to this theory.


Complete and accurate reference genomes and annotations provide fundamental tools for characterization of genetic and functional variation. These resources facilitate elucidation of biological processes and support translation of research findings into improved and sustainable agricultural technologies. Many reference genomes for crop plants have been generated over the past decade, but these genomes are often fragmented and missing complex repeat regions. Here, we report the assembly and annotation of maize, a genetic and agricultural model crop, using Single Molecule Real-Time (SMRT) sequencing and high-resolution genome map. Relative to the previous reference genome, our assembly features a 52-fold increase in contig length and significant improvements in the assembly of intergenic spaces and centromeres. Characterization of the repetitive portion of the genome revealed over 130,000 intact transposable elements (TEs), allowing us to identify TE lineage expansions unique to maize. Gene annotations were updated using 111,000 full-length transcripts obtained by SMRT sequencing. In addition, comparative optical mapping of two other inbreds revealed a prevalence of deletions in the region of low gene density region and maize lineage-specific genes.


Interview with attorney and Army Air Forces veteran Edward J. Drake. The interview includes Drake's personal experiences about being a B-17 pilot in the European Theater during World War II, youth and education in Dallas, Texas, enlistment in the Aviation Cadet Program, various training programs, bombing transportation facilities during and after the Ardennes Offensive, crash-landing in Belgium after his plane was hit, and linking up with American troops. Additionally, Drake talks about his assignment to the 91st Bomb Group, the routine for a typical mission, formation flying, flying through enemy flak, rest and relaxation on-base and in London, recuperating from a collapsed lung, his return to combat for three more missions, and his return to the crash site of his plane 57 years later. The interview includes an appendix with "The Last Flight of 'Jezebel,'" written by Drake.


Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is one of the few oncogenic human viruses known to date. Its large genome encodes more than 85 proteins and includes both unique viral proteins as well as proteins conserved amongst herpesviruses. KSHV ORF20 is a member of the herpesviral core UL24 family, but the function of ORF20 and its role in the viral life cycle is not well understood. ORF20 encodes three largely uncharacterized isoforms, which we found were localized predominantly in the nuclei and nucleoli. Quantitative affinity purification coupled to mass spectrometry (q-AP-MS) identified numerous specific interacting partners of ORF20, including ribosomal proteins and the interferon-stimulated gene product (ISG) oligoadenylate synthetase-like protein (OASL). Both endogenous and transiently transfected OASL co-immunoprecipitated with ORF20, and this interaction was conserved among all ORF20 isoforms and multiple ORF20 homologs of the UL24 family in other herpesviruses. Characterization of OASL interacting partners by q-AP-MS identified a very similar interactome to that of ORF20. Both ORF20 and OASL copurified with 40S and 60S ribosomal subunits, and when they were co-expressed, they associated with polysomes. Although ORF20 did not have a global effect on translation, ORF20 enhanced RIG-I induced expression of endogenous OASL in an IRF3-dependent but IFNAR-independent manner. OASL has been characterized as an ISG with antiviral activity against some viruses, but its role for gammaherpesviruses was unknown. We show that OASL and ORF20 mRNA expression were induced early after reactivation of latently infected HuARLT-rKSHV.219 cells. Intriguingly, we found that OASL enhanced infection of KSHV. During infection with a KSHV ORF20stop mutant, however, OASL-dependent enhancement of infectivity was lost. Our data have characterized the interaction of ORF20 with OASL and suggest ORF20 usurps the function of OASL to benefit KSHV infection.


Project co-funded by the European Commission within the 6th Framework Programme Dissemination Level PU Public X PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission services) RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission services) CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission services) The information in this document is provided as is, and no warranty is given or implied that the information is fit for any particular purpose. The user thereof uses the information at its sole risk and liability.


This thesis looks to reposition West Side Story (Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise, 1961) as an example of (neo-)modernist art. Placing the film within its context of Hollywood musicals, I see West Side Story as a particularly rich locus in which to study the genre's modernist impulses. Using the theories of Miriam Hansen's vernacular modernism and John Orr's neo-modernism primarily, I examine the film's formal aspects, especially that of colour. Seeing the cinematic screen as analogous to a painter's canvas, I draw comparisons with modern art of the period, particularly the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School. The film's precarious blending of expressionism and realism is an interesting one, and I tease out the ramifications of this binary throughout. Orr describes neo-modernist film as having two structures of feeling --the cool apocalypse and tragicomedy-and I argue that West Side Story contains elements of both, nearing a vernacular neo-modern sublime in the process.


Uniform polyhedra consist of regular faces and congruent vertices. Allowing for nonconvex faces and vertex figures, there are 75 such polyhedra, as well as 2 infinite families of prisms and antiprisms. A recently discovered uniform way of computing their vertex coordinates is the basis for our program to display all of these solids, among which are many beautiful and stunning shapes. We will also develop some utilities for drawing spherical triangles and for storing properties of objects in a flexible way.


Current empirical estimates of racial and other unwarranted disparities in sentencing suffer from two pervasive flaws. The first is a focus on the sentencing stage in isolation. Studies control for the "presumptive sentence" or closely related measures that are themselves the product of discretionary charging, plea-bargaining, and fact-finding processes. Any disparities in these earlier processes are built into the control variable, which leads to misleading sentencing-disparity estimates. The second problem is specific to studies of sentencing reforms: they use loose methods of causal inference that do not disentangle the effects of reform from surrounding events and trends. This Article explains these problems and presents an analysis that corrects them and reaches very different results from the existing literature. We address the first problem by using a dataset that traces cases from arrest to sentencing and by examining disparities across all post-arrest stages. We find that most of the otherwise-unexplained racial disparities in sentencing can be explained by prosecutors' choices to bring mandatory minimum charges. We address the problem of disentangling trends using a rigorous method called regression discontinuity design. We apply it to assess the effects of the loosening of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines in United States v. Booker. Contrary to prominent recent studies, we find that Booker did not increase disparity, and may have reduced it.


The inductive biases of graph representation learning algorithms are often encoded in the background geometry of their embedding space. In this paper, we show that general directed graphs can be effectively represented by an embedding model that combines three components: a pseudo-Riemannian metric structure, a non-trivial global topology, and a unique likelihood function that explicitly incorporates a preferred direction in embedding space. We demonstrate the representational capabilities of this method by applying it to the task of link prediction on a series of synthetic and real directed graphs from natural language applications and biology. In particular, we show that low-dimensional cylindrical Minkowski and anti-de Sitter spacetimes can produce equal or better graph representations than curved Riemannian manifolds of higher dimensions.


Sabah with its mega-biodiversity is believed to harbour various chitinolytic microorganisms which exhibit optimal chitinase activities at the local ambiance. Bacterial strain BRI 1 was recovered from mangrove soil in Kota Belud, Sabah using Chitinase Detection Agar, pH6.5. The strain BRI 1 was placed under the genus Streptomyces as its physical morphology showed typical streptomycete appearance on solid medium. This was further supported with the analysis of its amplified ~1.5kb 16S rDNA fragment in which it showed close relation to Streptomyces sp.Amplification of family 18 chitinase gene generated an amplicon of 397 bp. Similarly, amplification of family 19 chitinase gene resulted in 342 bp amplicon. Chitinase identity of both amplicons were confirmed in which they showed similarity to chitinase genes from Streptomyces sp.. Crude chitinase activity of BRI 1 showed 8.61 Unit, a three-fold higher than the activity exhibited by Streptomyces griseus which only showed 2.54 U in a triplicate assay using chitin azure as enzymatic substrate. The data resulted in this report serve as a platform for further investigations involving characterization of the chitinases and manipulation of the chitinase genes.


Australia has quarantine policies and surveillance activities considered to be among the best in the world with regards to many exotic pests and diseases, but it has very low levels of preparedness against surra, a deadly infectious disease of animals caused by the blood-borne protozoan parasite Trypanosoma evansi. The country is currently free of surra, but the disease is endemic to many countries in Southeast Asia, some of whose geographical proximity to northern Australia is a cause for concern. The parasite has a very wide host range and is transmitted mechanically through the bite of blood-feeding tabanid flies, particularly those species which have a tendency to switch hosts during a blood meal. Because Australia has many tabanid species and many potential host animals, surra is recognized as a major threat to local livestock industries and wildlife. Previous experimental studies have indicated that infection with T. evansi can cause acute disease and high mortality in marsupials. Consequently, surra is one of the priority exotic diseases listed on the North Australia Quarantine Strategy (NAQS) program. However, the major limiting factor for Australia's biosecurity plans and disease preparedness with regards to surra is the lack of information on the transmission dynamics and relative impact among the various animal species in northern Australia because little is known about the ecology of available tabanid species and nothing is known about their vectorial capacity, host preferences and host range.

The major aims of this research project were therefore to evaluate and compare the vectorial potential of the various tabanid species among some of the major animal species in north Queensland, as well as evaluate the flies' ecological preferences and responses to current surveillance techniques. Successful mechanical transmission of surra depends to a large extent on the blood feeding behaviour of the tabanid species attracted to particular host animals and the responses of the animals to attack by tabanid flies. Because the pathogen survives for a relatively short period on tabanid mouthparts, interrupted feeding is considered to be the most important single factor responsible for the role of tabanids in mechanical transmission. Therefore the relative vectorial potential of the different tabanid species was estimated by assessing the feeding success, feeding duration and feeding frequency of the most abundant tabanid species in the study area, using direct field observations on horses, pigs and kangaroos as well as using electrocuting nets around horses. Tabanid host preferences were evaluated by serological analysis of trap-caught tabanids using ELISA to identify blood meals originating from cattle, horses, pigs and macropods, which are among the most abundant potential hosts in north Queensland.

Twelve tabanid species were identified during the studies, and the most abundant were Pseudotabanus silvester Bergroth, Tabanus pallipennis Macquart, T. townsvilli Ricardo, T. dorsobimaculatus Ricardo and T. strangmannii Ricardo. Their feeding behaviour varied with fly species and host species, and the findings predict that some species such as T. pallipennis will be better vectors, while others such as P. silvester are unlikely vectors. Surra could infect all host types studied and pigs are likely to be potential reservoirs of the infection, while macropods are a key host type for most tabanid species and probably face the highest risk in the event of surra incursion. The highest frequency of host blood identified in tabanids was from macropods (61-80% in five tabanid species) even in locations where estimated densities of macropods were relatively lower than other potential hosts. Therefore the prevalence of large populations of wallabies and feral pigs in northern Australia is an important risk factor for the rapid spread of surra and would present a major challenge for effective control of the disease.

Assessment of current surveillance techniques showed that octenol-baited Nzi traps performed well at indicating the presence of tabanid species in the area, could reliably predict the activity of some tabanid species on animals, but were not reliable for other tabanid species. Trapping tabanids in different types of habitat for two consecutive wet seasons showed that most tabanid species preferred savannah woodland to open grassland, although T. pallipennis maintained relatively high populations in both types of habitat while P. silvester was only found in woodland areas. Woodland areas proved to be the better habitat type for routine surveillance.

The findings from these studies facilitate much better prediction of the risk of surra incursion and form a basis for design of rational surveillance, quarantine and intervention strategies. Predictive risk models for surra can now be based not only on general abundance of tabanids, but also on the relative risk to specific hosts and relative vectorial capacity of different tabanid species, hence making the models more reliable. Available options to minimise attack by tabanids and transmission of surra among domestic animals are discussed, and the urgent need to develop strategies to protect the marsupials of Australia is highlighted.


Background/Aim:- A study of voting decisions in The Weakest Link TV game show has shown the contestants tend to avoid their nearest neighbours (Goddard, Hylton, Parke & Noh, 2013), presumably this is because the vote carries negative connotations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test whether vote valence affects voting behaviour in other voting scenarios. Procedure:- Participants were undergraduate Psychology students (n=233) attending an orientation lecture during their first induction week. A unique seat number was assigned and once seated, participants were given a response sheet, with a seating plan of the lecture, and instructed to cast a vote for someone else in the lecture theatre by placing an 'X' on the seating plan. Vote valence varied (-5,-1,0,+1, +5) according to how many 'vouchers' were to be added/subtracted in an ensuing lottery for course related 'prizes'. Result/Discussion:- Participants significantly avoided voting for their nearest neighbour when their vote carried a negative weight, However, those making a positive valence vote, showed an opposite pattern whereby, they were more likely to pick their nearest neighbour. We suggest that for our participants the 'fairness norm' was stronger in negative valence voters compared to positive valence voters (Leliveld, Beest, Dijk & Tenbrunsel, 2009). Hence, 'valence' and the 'neighbour effect' are robust biasing elements in decision making probably operating at an unconscious, implicit level.


Introduction Growing evidence in the literature supports the accuracy of sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy in early-stage cervical cancer. One-step nucleic acid amplification (OSNA) is a rapid assay able to detect cytokeratin 19-mRNA in SLNs, and it can be used for intra-operative detection of low-volume metastases. The aim of this study was to evaluate the rate of low-volume metastasis in SLNs detected by OSNA in patients with early-stage cervical cancer. Secondary aims were to define the sensitivity and the negative predictive value of SLN biopsy assessed with OSNA. Methods After IRB approval, consecutive patients who underwent surgery for International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage IA1 with lymph-vascular space involvement to IB1 between November 2017 and July 2019 and had SLN biopsy and pelvic lymphadenectomy were included. SLNs were detected with indocyanine-green cervical injection and sent intra-operatively for OSNA. Results Eighteen patients underwent SLN assessment with OSNA and systematic pelvic lymphadenectomy in the study period. Four (22.2%) patients had unilateral and 14 (77.8%) had bilateral mapping. OSNA detected micro-metastasis in 6/18 (33.3%) patients. All micro-metastases were detected in patients with bilateral SLN mapping. The sensitivity and negative predictive value of SLN in detecting lymph node metastasis with OSNA calculated per pelvic sidewall were 85.7% and 96.1%, respectively. The false negative rate in mapped sidewalls was 14.3%. Discussion This is the first series entirely processing SLNs for OSNA in early-stage cervical cancer. OSNA is able to intra-operatively detect low-volume metastases in SLNs. Further studies are necessary to confirm the accuracy of this technique and to assess survival implications of low-volume metastases detected by OSNA.


Electrowetting-on-dielectric devices typically have operating voltages of 10-20 V. A reduction in the operating voltage could greatly reduce the energy consumption of these devices. Herein, fully reversible one-electrolyte electrowetting of a droplet on a solid metal surface is reported for the first time. A reversible change of 29° for an 800 mV step is achieved. The effects of surface roughness, electrolyte composition, electrolyte concentration and droplet composition are investigated. It was found that there is a dramatic dependence of the reversibility and hysteresis of the system on these parameters, contrary to theoretical predictions. When a 3-chloro-1-propanol droplet is used, a system with no hysteresis and a 40° change in angle are obtained.


To develop biotinylated pH-responsive glycopolymers and investigate their performances as anticancer drug delivery nanocarriers, bromide-terminated biotin was synthesized and then used to initiate the polymerization of D-gluconamido ethyl methacrylate (GAMA) and 2-(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate (DEA) monomers via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). Two biotinylated pH-responsive copolymers with similar degree polymerization (DP) chain segments, Biotin-P(GAMA- b -DEA) and Biotin-P(GAMA- co -DEA), were prepared by block or random architectures, respectively. The chemical compositions and self-assembly behavior of glycopolymers were characterized. The results show that the block glycopolymer self- assembles in water medium into core-shell structure assembly containing PGAMA shell and PDEA core with the 28 nm in diameter, while the random glycopolymer remains water-soluble state above pH 7.4. Both glycopolymers possess the loading ability of the BTZ with encapsulation efficiency (EE %) and loading capacity (LC %) of 83.7% and 8.4%, 78.7% and 7.9%, and the release behavior was kept at low constants with 20% and 26% cumulative amount even after 24 hours at pH 7.4, respectively. The study is expected to give the light to the development of new intelligent drug carrier system with excellent biological compatibility.


We consider some definitions of tangent space to a Radon measure μ on ℝn that have been given in the literature. In particular, we focus our attention on a recent distributional notion of tangent vector field to a measure and we compare it to other definitions coming from 'geometric measure theory', based on the idea of blow-up. After showing some classes of examples, we prove an estimate from above for the dimension of the tangent spaces and a rectifiability theorem which also includes the case of measures supported on sets of variable dimension.


A core value in restorative justice is to balance offender needs, victim needs, and the needs of the community. Critiques of wide scale implementation of restorative justice practices, both within and outside the criminal justice system, have highlighted the need to prioritize victims' needs above all else. As South Africa moves closer towards translating restorative justice policy to practice the question that arises is : 'Do restorative justice practices really prioritize the needs of victims, or is it more a case of 'compulsory compassion'; using victims to help reform and reintegrate offenders into society, justify diversion from the criminal justice system, reduce court rolls and alleviate overcrowding in our correctional facilities? If not, how then can we ensure that the needs of victims are met and the proclaimed outcomes of restorative justice are indeed victim focused? The question of whether a shift from punitive to restorative justice would benefit victims is a very complex one and evidence of how satisfied victims are with restorative justice processes can play only a small role in helping us answer the question. Therefore, the vexing question is how best to effectively and innovatively integrate restorative processes into the formal criminal justice system so that the most important outcome i.e. empowerment for victims may be achieved? While restorative justice initiatives are increasingly prominent in juvenile justice legislation in many jurisdictions internationally, this new paradigm may still be viewed as merely a small scale response to minor crime and disputes/conflict where crimes regarded as not sufficiently serious for a full scale penal response, would then be diverted to restorative justice programmes. Such a development would allow the criminal justice system to step up its response to minor crimes which might individually seem trivial but collectively constitute a major social problem, without overloading the system. Although attractive to governments, from a victim's perspective there are clear limitations and dangers inherent with this approach. The incorporation of restorative justice ideas and techniques into the criminal justice process may not turn out to be in any broader sense about restorative justice. For example, the idea of victim offender mediation may be taken up, but without an emphasis on achieving restorative outcomes, but rather a source of useful ideas and techniques in the fight against crime, especially youth crime, with no fundamental change in the character or focus of the criminal justice system. This article aims to expand the debate and consider critically the advantages and shortcomings of restorative justice, especially in cases of intimate violence (taking into account the extraordinarily high rates of violent crime against women and children in South Africa). An integrated, multi-sectoral approach involving collaboration with the relevant government departments (National Prosecuting Authority, Departments of Social Development, Justice, Safety and Security, Health, Correctional Services and Education) is suggested so that clear strategies may be developed to facilitate responses from the moment a crime occurs until the final restorative elements have been completed. Victim services and support would need to be made available regardless of whether the accused offender is apprehended or not, which should continue to be available at the request of the victim regardless of the pace of the processes determining offender accountability. The primary aim of restorative justice initiatives should be to provide better services for victim and heal and strengthen communities (with possible long term crime prevention effects). The article highlights the difficulties associated with applying restorative approaches in cases of intimate violence against women and children, and proposes that the primary focus should be on victim safety and not merely offence seriousness and willingness of the offender to participate. In this regard some important practical and ethical questions for restorative justice practitioners are raised. Clearly the agenda for implementation and strengthening of restorative practices in the criminal justice system has to go hand in hand with victim support and empowerment, for which many policies already exist. Perhaps a future South African model for the implementation of restorative justice should keep the empowerment of victims at the forefront.


This is the first comparative study of a highly unlikely group of authors: eighteenth-century women peasants in England, Scotland, and Germany, women who, as a rule, received little or no formal education and lived by manual labor, many of them in dire poverty. Among them are the English washerwoman Mary Collier, the English domestic servants Elizabeth Hands and Molly Leapor, the German cowherd Anna Louisa Karsch, the Scottish diarywoman Janet Little, the Scottish domestic servant Christian Milne, and the English milkmaid Ann Cromartie Yearsley. Their literature is here linked with one of the major eighteenth-century aesthetic trends in all three countries, the Natural Genius craze, which culminated in highland primitivism in Scotland and England, and in the Sturm und Drang in Germany. Kord's analysis of the peasant women's works and the bourgeois response enables us to find new answers to questions that have centrally influenced our thinking about what makes art Art. Kord's book provides a fresh look at some of this fascinating literature, and at the roles and attitudes of the lower classes and of women in the Art world of the day. It also advances a revolutionary thesis: that the eighteenth-century bourgeoisie established itself as the dominant cultural class not primarily, as is commonly held, in opposition to aristocratic culture, but more importantly through its dissociation from and suppression of lower-class art forms.
SUSANNE KORD is Professor and Head of the Department of German at University College London. Her book Little Detours: The Letters and Plays of Luise Gottsched was published by Camden House in 2000.


The meaning of an object, Paula Findlen tells us, is in perpetual change. Why an object is valued and how it might be perceived or represented by its users and viewers can be dramatically different at each moment in an object's life. One example that Findlen uses in her introduction is the 'Akan Drum', which featured in the BBC Radio 4/British Museum joint project 'A History of the World in 100 Objects'. The drum originated in the Ghana region of West Africa in the early 18th century, but was later found in the English Colony of Virginia by Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum. While in Ghana, the drum would have been played during religious ceremonies, but it is believed to have traveled across the Atlantic on a slave ship, where drumming was a frequent accompaniment to the enforced dancing of African captives. It was acquired by the British Museum around 1750, where is currently sits on display, and is now thought to be one of the oldest African-American objects to survive. The drum evokes a history of Ghanaian ceremony and religious ritual, the capture, enslavement and trafficking of humans, the suppression of African music in the British colonies, the collision of African and English culture created by the slave trade as well as Hans Sloane's curiosity about slavery and its associated artefacts. As Findlen says, the drum makes the history of these moments 'tangible and concrete' (p. 6). Through this example and many more, Findlen and the other contributors reveal the multiple lives of objects and how a singular thing like a wooden drum can bear witness to a 'wide range of human experience' (pp. 5–6).


A novelist who has specialized in creating tales of the rich and well placed offers an insider's view of one of the wealthiest segments of an affluent city: Jewish upper--class life in New York.Working with diaries, letters, and personal reminiscences supplied by members of interwoven families--Loeb, Lehman, straus, seligman, and Guggenheism, among others--Stephen Birmingham has assembled a remarkable composite portrait. some of his tales are wildly funny. others are poignant. All are set within a world of numbing opulence--Fifth Avenue mansions, chateaux on Long Island, castles in Westchester, vast art collections--millions given away so quietly and steadily that they have never properly been counted. This economic power and unique culture was played out alongside--but never a part of--the gentile establishment.Remarkable individuals, resplendent dynasties--out of the elegant fabric of their lives, Birmingham has fashioned superb social history.


Inverse models are generally derived from empirical behavior and expressed in terms of one or more driving forces and a set of empirical parameters that are "identified" using measurements. Once identified, a model can be used for a variety purposes, including performance monitoring, diagnostics, retrofit analysis, measurement and verification of efficiency improvements, and on-line control optimization. In this paper, a semi-empirical inverse model or a "grey-box" model is developed to estimate the power consumption of a direct expansion (DX) air conditioning system that handles the cooling requirement of a residential building. This "grey-box" model approach requires fewer parameters and training data and provides better extrapolation than other popular empirical or "black-box" models. The model is based on physical system performance parameters and not only on a single compressor or coil, so it can provide a clear performance map of the air conditioning system in residential buildings. The training and validation data used for model construction in this paper comes from manufacturer's detailed DX unit performance models, which closely matches equipment performance in the field.


BACKGROUND
We aimed to directly compare high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I (hs-cTnI) and high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) in the detection of functionally relevant coronary artery disease (fCAD).

METHODS
Consecutive patients referred with clinical suspicion of fCAD and no structural heart disease other than coronary artery disease were included. The presence of fCAD was based on rest/stress myocardial perfusion single-photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography and coronary angiography. hs-cTnI and hs-cTnT concentrations were measured in a blinded fashion. Diagnostic accuracy was quantified using the area under the ROC curve (AUC) and evaluated both for uniform use in all patients and for sex-specific use in women and men separately. The prognostic end point was major adverse cardiac events (MACEs; cardiovascular death or myocardial infarction) within 2 years. For the prognostic performance, we used a multivariable model comparison with the Akaike information criterion (AIC).

RESULTS
fCAD was detected in 613 of 2062 patients (29.7%) overall, 112 of 664 of women (16.9%), and 501 of 1398 of men (35.8%). hs-cTnI and hs-cTnT had comparable diagnostic accuracy when assessed for uniform use in all patients (AUC, 0.68 vs 0.66; P = 0.107) and separately in women (AUC, 0.68 vs 0.63; P = 0.068) and men (AUC, 0.65 vs 0.64; P = 0.475). However, women required lower rule-out cutoffs to achieve high sensitivity, and men needed higher rule-in cutoffs to achieve high specificity. hs-cTnI and hs-cTnT were strongly and independently associated with MACE within 2 years (P < 0.001), with comparable prognostic accuracies by the AIC.

CONCLUSIONS
hs-cTnI and hs-cTnT provide moderate and comparable diagnostic accuracy. Sex-specific cutoffs may be preferred. The prognostic utility of both troponins is comparable.


To study future communication needs between pedestrians and shared automated vehicles (SAVs), an interface that communicates the intentions of SAVs to pedestrians was designed and implemented in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This enabled the exploration of behaviors and experiences of 34 pedestrians when encountering SAVs, both with and without the interface, in several street crossing situations. All pedestrians assessed the level of perceived safety and comfort directly after each encounter with the SAV. The results show that the pedestrians' level of perceived safety and comfort is higher in encounters with the interface than in encounters without the interface. This may have a positive influence on the acceptance of SAVs, and implies that future SAVs may gain from this, or similar interface.


What does it mean to be or have a body in a particular time and place? Three new scholarly investigations of women's encounters with medicine in contemporary Ecuador answer this question concretely, while also presenting new ways of understanding "local biologies" (Lock and Nguyen, 2010). In these works, women's bodies— always viewed and experienced as deficient in some way—become fascinating sites for exploring the ways that unequal material conditions and cultural ideas about gendered embodiment are lived and interpreted. This is the new urban ethnography of Latin America, placing the experiences of women as social and economic actors front and center. These three books, all written by anthropologists, expand and enrich myriad areas of intellectual inquiry, including medical anthropology/sociology, body studies, and gender studies. They also delve into people's consumption of private and public health care (including the Social Security–funded health system) in Ecuador. These different modes of health care offer similar services but radically different conditions, wait times, and treatment of patients. Each book illustrates that the choices open to patients, whether they are seeking cosmetic surgery, assisted reproduction technologies, or lupus care, vary with location and ability to pay. A few recent studies of feminine embodiment have addressed gender and cosmetic surgery elsewhere in Latin America (Edmonds, 2010; Hofmann, 2013; Ochoa, 2014). In Cuerpos en re-construcción: El consumo de cirugía estética en la ciudad de Ambato, Ecuadorian anthropologist Casandra Herrera Caicedo presents a study of upper-class women in Ecuador's tenth-largest city who have opted for cosmetic surgery. Most of these women do not work outside the home, and many go to the gym daily; their lives differ radically from those of the working-class or poor women who are more frequently the focus of social research. This lively and pioneering portrayal of women cosmetic surgery patients' decision making is at its strongest when describing communication within a tight circle of well-to-do ambateñas and presenting moving first-person narratives of women's lives, which are now divided into "before" and "after" surgery. Although the


Thermal transport in graphene is strongly influenced by strain. We investigate the influence of biaxial tensile strain on the thermal conductivity of zigzag and armchair graphene (AG and ZG) using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations (NEMD). We observe that the thermal conductivity is significantly reduced under strain with a maximum reduction obtained at equi-biaxial strain. It is interesting to note that the high lateral to longitudinal strain ratios reduce the negative impact of strain on the thermal conductivity of AG and ZG. The in-plane acoustic modes are found to be the major heat carriers in unstrained graphene but are severely softened due to strain, and hence, their contribution to the conductivity drops down significantly. Strain alleviates the out-of-plane fluctuations in graphene and the group velocity of the out-of-plane acoustic mode (ZA) increases due to the linearisation of its dispersion relation. These factors result in the dominance of ZA mode in the thermal transport of strained graphene. Significant increase in the size dependence of the thermal conductivity of strained graphene is observed, which is attributed to the long-wavelength ZA phonons. The discrepancies between the results of BTE studies and NEMD are also discussed. This study suggests that biaxial strain can be an effective method to tune the thermal transport in graphene. Our findings can lead to better phonon engineering of graphene for various nanoscale applications.


PURPOSE
Health professions education scholarship units (HPESUs) in the United States are large in number and diverse in purpose, activities, and contributions. Although each of these units shares a commitment to scholarship, there is no synthetic framework to accurately represent and evaluate their activities and contributions. This study aimed to provide such a framework.

METHOD
The authors examined data collected from 11 U.S. HPESU directors. Interviews occurred between April 2015 and February 2016. The research team used a combination of deductive and inductive qualitative techniques to analyze the interview transcripts. The deductive portion drew on Boyer's four-part framework of scholarship; the inductive portion produced a new conceptualization of scholarship at the HPESU level.

RESULTS
The scholarly activities of HPESUs generally align with Boyer's four types of scholarship-discovery, integration, application, and teaching. However, this categorization fails to capture the interconnectedness and variety of purposes served by these activities. Both are important when considering how best to represent the scholarly contributions made by HPESUs. From their analysis of interviews, the authors developed a three-part framework characterizing HPESU scholarly activities: supporting a scholarly approach to education, supporting educational scholarship within the institution, and supporting HPESU members' scholarship.

CONCLUSIONS
The authors contend that the three-part, unit-level framework for scholarship constructed in this study brings clarity and understanding to the purpose, activities, and contributions made by HPESUs in the United States. The proposed framework may allow unit directors to better justify and advocate for the resources needed to further promote the work of HPESUs.


"In the decade ahead, Turkey will continue to face geo-political uncertainty in its relations with Russia and the Caspian Sea region, driven until now by the contentious interaction between Russian and US policies in the Caspian region." Turkey's international relations have gone through many dramatic changes in the past decade, but none so striking as the transformation of its relationship with the former Soviet Union. The collapse of the USSR and the independence of its 15 successor states have brought Turkey both opportunities and risks to its North and East. Thus far, Turkish engagement in post-Soviet Eurasia has brought substantial benefit to the Turkish economy as well as something of a boost to Turkey's geo-political significance and prestige. However, the transformation of the former Soviet space has not yet run its course, and the balance of power in Eurasia remains fundamentally unsettled. In the decade ahead, Turkey will continue to face geo-political uncertainty in its relations with Russia and the Caspian Sea region, driven until now by the contentious interaction between Russian and US policies in the Caspian region. At the same time, a rise in Turkey's economic links with both Russia and the Caspian states seems likely. If Turkey is able to pursue a balanced and moderate policy in Eurasia, it should be able to realize further economic benefits through trade and investment--while also helping to reduce the chances of a deterioration in the region's geo-political climate. The specific geo-political danger for Turkey is the growing strategic competition between two emerging blocs centered on the Caucasus. Azerbaijan and Georgia, still feeling threatened by their large, unsteady and assertive neighbor to the North, have sought to guarantee their independence from Russia by aligning themselves with Turkey and the US. In an effort to stem this decline in its influence over the South Caucasus, Russia has deepened its informal partnership with Iran and Armenia, each of which has its own reasons for cooperating with Moscow. The situation has not yet reached the point where it poses an imminent threat to security and stability in the region. However, the coalescence of these states into two blocs has prevented the emergence of anything resembling a geo-political equilibrium in and around the Caucasus. Today's trends could hold the seeds of confrontation in the region--one in which Turkey would be centrally and unavoidably involved. Ironically (though perhaps inevitably), the chief area of geopolitical contention is also the one which holds the greatest prospect for regional economic gain--the energy sector. Russia and the Caspian region will be crucial in providing the natural gas that Turkey needs to support rapid economic growth. The participation of Turkish companies in the Caspian oil and gas boom also offers tremendous opportunities for the Turkish private sector as well as the state oil company, Turkish Petroleum (TPAO). At the same time, the debate over new pipeline routes for the export of oil and gas from the Caspian has become a focal point for the strategic competition mentioned above. The politicization of the pipeline issue has helped to create and solidify the two opposing blocs, and it has contributed to tensions in Turkish-Russian relations--while also increasing uncertainty and political risk in the Caucasus. In the next 12 months, commercial factors resulting from the ongoing push of the Caspian states and their foreign partners to develop and export oil and gas should go a long way toward clarifying the pipeline situation in the Caspian. For Turkey, the challenge during this period will be to keep the focus on economics and environmental concerns without allowing itself to be drawn toward incautious rhetoric and political confrontation. This paper surveys Turkey's relationships with the Caspian region and Russia and, in particular, its role in the politics and economics of regional energy development. …


The ability of bivalent Salmonella typhi-Shigella sonnei vaccine strain 5076-1C to stimulate an intestinal immunoglobulin A response in humans was evaluated by detecting gut-derived, trafficking antibody-secreting cells (ASC) in peripheral blood. Following vaccination, an immunoglobulin A-ASC response to O antigens of S. typhi and S. sonnei was observed in 10 of 13 and 13 of 13 vaccine recipients, respectively. Experimental challenge with pathogenic S. sonnei stimulated an ASC response to the S. sonnei O antigen in all subjects who developed clinical illness. The magnitude of the ASC response to challenge was significantly greater than that resulting from vaccination. Furthermore, compared with the response of the unimmunized controls, individuals previously immunized with 5076-1C demonstrated a significantly greater ASC response following challenge with S. sonnei.


Neuronal migrations follow vascular pathways In the developing brain, various types of cells migrate from their birthplaces to their workplaces. Oligodendrocyte precursors, which develop to form the insulating sheaths that make signal transmission along an axon faster, travel farther than many. Tsai et al. now show just how the oligodendrocyte precursor cells find their way (see the Perspective by Dejana and Beltsholtz). The progenitor cells follow along the endothelial cells of the vasculature. Disrupting endothelial cells interfered with oligodendrocyte migration, leaving some sections of the brain deficient in insulators. Science, this issue p. 379; see also p. 341 Cells that migrate far and wide through the developing brain follow blood vessels to find their way. [Also see Perspective by Dejana and Beltsholtz] Oligodendrocytes myelinate axons in the central nervous system and develop from oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) that must first migrate extensively during brain and spinal cord development. We show that OPCs require the vasculature as a physical substrate for migration. We observed that OPCs of the embryonic mouse brain and spinal cord, as well as the human cortex, emerge from progenitor domains and associate with the abluminal endothelial surface of nearby blood vessels. Migrating OPCs crawl along and jump between vessels. OPC migration in vivo was disrupted in mice with defective vascular architecture but was normal in mice lacking pericytes. Thus, physical interactions with the vascular endothelium are required for OPC migration. We identify Wnt-Cxcr4 (chemokine receptor 4) signaling in regulation of OPC-endothelial interactions and propose that this signaling coordinates OPC migration with differentiation.


Perspective on the papers by Olsen et al (see 109) and Lucas et al (see 120)

The diagnostic skills acquired by the physician has traditionally been regarded as the art of medicine. The emphasis later moved to focusing on the science of medicine, especially nowadays when imaging technology and molecular medicine are major players that pervade all facets of clinical practice. At least the importance of communication skills is afforded high priority in the training of doctors at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This Perspective is designed as an over-arching comment relating to a quartet of articles (two original papers linked with their cognate perspectives) in this issue of the journal which deal with failure to thrive (FTT).1–4 We need to analyse qualitatively whether there is any art or science on offer when considering this clinical phenomenon which, until recently, was peculiar to paediatrics. At present, it is a term that is used in gerontology to describe an elderly patient who undergoes a process of functional decline, progressive apathy and a loss of willingness to eat and drink that culminates in death.5 The Institute of Medicine has defined FTT in this context in clear terms, including eliminating its usage in the normal consequence of ageing, or as a synonym for dementia or as a description of a terminal disease.6 Where is there such clarity that FTT is used as a label for problems at the beginning of the age span?

The word thrive has several connotations …


Stratigraphic Evolution of Foreland Basins - A strong case can be made that foreland basins are where the casual links between sedimentation and tectonic events were first recognized, as evidenced by the interpretations of geologists working in classic foreland areas. This Special Publication was derived from a Research Symposium entitled ?Stratigraphic Sequences in Foreland Basins ?held at the AAPG-SEPM joint annual meeting on June, 1992, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This volume provides a well-balanced perspective of current research on foreland basin stratigraphy and also serves as another element in the evolving framework that comprises our understanding of foreland basins. Given that so many of earth?s resources are found in foreland basins and that foreland basin strata often provide the only preserved record of the tectonic events that led to basin development, the impetus for continued studies of foreland basin strata should remain for many generations of geologists to come.


The annualized interest rate for a payday loan often exceeds 10 times that of a typical credit card, yet this market grew immensely in the 1990s and 2000s, elevating concerns about the risk payday loans pose to consumers and whether payday lenders target minority neighborhoods. This paper employs individual credit record data, and Census data on payday lender store locations, to assess these concerns. Taking advantage of several state law changes since 2006 and, following previous work, within-state-year differences in access arising from proximity to states that allow payday loans, I find little to no effect of payday loans on credit scores, new delinquencies, or the likelihood of overdrawing credit lines. The analysis also indicates that neighborhood racial composition has little influence on payday lender store locations conditional on income, wealth and demographic characteristics.


Due to increasing number of cases of thyroid gland disorders nowadays, there are rising trends of thyroid gland surgeries and interventions which requires comprehensive data regarding the gland. This study was done to find out the changes in the size of the thyroid follicle in different age groups. The age groups were Group A - upto 20 years, Group B – 21-50 years and Group C – above 50 years. The study was conducted on 60 human thyroid glands in the Department of Anatomy in collaboration with Department of Pathology, Pt. B. D. Sharma Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak in North Indian population. The diameter of the thyroid follicle was measured by Image Analyzer. The study revealed that the mean size of the thyroid follicle was found to be in Group A - 56.38±14.12 μm, Group B - 130.08±30.67 μm and Group C - 96.05±12.86 μm. The study concluded that the mean size of the thyroid follicle was found to be higher in Group B (21-50 years) followed by Group C (above 50 years) followed by Group A (below 20 years).


With most avenues to pursue justice for Syrian victims of international crimes blocked, Syrian and international justice actors within civil society and formal institutions are active in exploring ways to seek some form of justice and accountability. In doing so, many of them use the language of transitional justice as the most promising paradigm to keep justice on the international agenda and to resist the prevailing defeatism about the possibility to advance justice in the absence of a transition, as well as to remedy the marginalization of victims' experiences and narratives. Many of these actors are not only interested in criminal accountability. They also seek to stretch the boundaries of what is imaginable in terms of justice, beyond existing mechanisms and even beyond the judicial realm. They are striving to open up the justice imagination. In a maximalist sense, they are foraging for more ambitious justice narratives that can accommodate the victims' lived experiences. In a minimalist sense, they are resisting the erasure or invisibilization of the experiences of millions of Syrians affected by hackneyed justice narratives. This article refers to the work of these justice actors to expose and conceptualize some of the shortcomings of mainstream transitional justice discourses.


Corporate governance is becoming an important issue in the German real estate industry. Some of the major issues facing German real estate companies today as they try to gain and maintain investorIs confidence are for example: standardized property valuation, transparency, executive compensation, board member qualification and board appraisal, investorIs relations and corporate rating. The purpose of the paper is to describe the status quo of corporate governance in German real estate companies as well as trends and recent developments and changes. Despite the differences in corporate control structure, Germany has made substantial progress over the past years in increasing transparency, independence and professionalism in most German boards. The German Corporate Governance Code has put many different laws in one framework and made GermanyIs corporate governance rules transparent for both national and international investors. Being member of a supervisory board is no more regarded as a purely honorary function, with little time involvement, low pay and virtually no liability, but as a professional task. Board members have increased the time they commit to their role and are now very concerned about liability. Germany is following the international trend for convergence in practice and content. It is trying to adopt best practice from other countries, as long as it does not clash with the German legal structure. While many of the worldIs largest publicly listed companies have understood that transparency and investorIs relations are important, this lesson has not yet been learned by the majority of German real estate companies. Focusing on standardized appraisal methods, good investorIs relations, qualified managers and transparency will be on the agenda for the next years. The foundation of the Initiative Corporate Governance of the German Real Estate industry will speed up the development of good governance throughout the industry and set quality standards.


Background A growing body of interest was addressed to the concept of minimal rather than overt hepatic encephalopathy as a subclinical manifestation in chronic hepatitis B- and C-infected patients with normal liver function. This study aims to neuropsychologically and neurophysiologically assess those patients for minimal cognitive impairment and its correlates. Patients and methods Thorough neuropsychological evaluation including Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Trail Making Test, Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test, and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and neurophysiological (P300-evoked potential) assessment were conducted on untreated blood donors with hepatitis C virus (n=24) and hepatitis B virus (n=16) infection and 40 healthy controls. Results All tools of assessment showed a significant difference between cases and controls that suggests higher incidence of depression and cognitive dysfunction among hepatitis patients with no difference between B and C types of infection apart from BDI, which showed higher scores (more depressive features) among hepatitis C rather than B. Among variables such as patient age, BMI, BDI, and viral load titer, only BDI showed a significant positive correlation with such impairments. Conclusion Neuropsychological- and neurophysiological-based evidence of cognitive impairment was proved to be significantly present among cases with chronic hepatitis B and C infection. The value of such evaluation in the management plan of such group of patients needs further future studies.


Surface mining and in situ mining are briefly reviewed and compared. It is verified that the inherent advantages of in situ mining over surface ruining point out that in situ mining should be seriously considered as the mining method to be used on the Moon. The reasons are (1) Less launch weight, (2) Less operating personnel, (3) Less operating cost, (4) Dramatically reduces the environment surface impact caused by mining, (5) Less maintenance, (6) Less unit operations, and (7) No handling of raw materials on the surface of the Moon. Also, because in situ mining is simpler than any other mining method here on Earth, its application to the Moon means, less EVA time, more amenability to automation, less requirement for support from the Earth and less infrastructure to be built on the Moon. Tables 2 to 9, appended to this paper compare in situ mining and surface mining and explain why the 7 factors listed above support the application of in situ mining instead of surface mining for the production of local resources on the Moon. The operating costs for typical surface mining and in situ mining operations were broken down into two separate tables (4 and 5).


The introduction highlights a developmental perspective on children's and youth prosocial behavior in risky and vulnerable contexts. The six empirical papers published in this Special Section are considered within a multilevel, multidimensional framework and reflect a diversity of methodological approaches. The studies each provide foundational work that informs theory, builds our knowledge base, and has important intervention implications. We highlight the contributions of each study and present recommendations for future developmental research on prosocial behaviors.


We introduce a framework for sparsity structures defined via graphs. Our approach is flexible and generalizes several previously studied sparsity models. Moreover, we provide efficient projection algorithms for our sparsity model that run in nearly-linear time. In the context of sparse recovery, we show that our framework achieves an information-theoretically optimal sample complexity for a wide range of parameters. We complement our theoretical analysis with experiments demonstrating that our algorithms also improve on prior work in practice.


Introduction: Chemerin as a new adipokine has recently been studied for its crucial role in adipocyte differentiation and insulin signaling. In this study, chemerin levels were determined in the serum of pregnant women of the same gestational age with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and compared with those of healthy pregnant women for their impact on the metabolic process and incidence of gestational diabetics. Materials and Methods: After obtaining a written consent of each individual, totally 200 serum samples were collected from the healthy and gestationally diabetic pregnant women groups. In addition to chemerin, other effective biochemical and metabolic factors of carbohydrate and lipid were determined. Leptin content of cord blood was measured in 100 infants from healthy (50) and gestational diabetes (50) groups. Results: Mean serum chemerin levels of pregnant women with gestational diabetes (152.4±46.5 μg/dl) were significantly higher (p<0.001) in comparision with those of non-diabetic pregnant women (128.7±43.7 μg/dl). Serum chemerin levels were significantly associated with metabolic syndromerelated parameters, including body mass index (BMI) (P<0.05), Homeostasis Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) (P<0.001), fasting insulin (P<0.001) and fasting blood (p<0.01) was conducted. Serum chemerin was not significantly correlated with cord blood leptin. Conclusion: Serum chemerin levels were higher in pregnant women with gestational diabetes than their nondiabetic pregnant counterparts. Serum chemerin was also independently associated with markers of insulin resistance, and body mass index. Leptin, biochemical and metabolic parameters of mother's infants were not correlated between the two groups.


The District of Columbia Circuit in 1977 coined the term "essential facilities" to refer to a doctrine it traced 65 years of prior Supreme Court jurisprudence, and every federal circuit has recognized the essential facilities doctrine with similar elements. The United States Supreme Court, however, has never actually used the words "essential facilities" in a holding. In 1989, concerned by what he perceived to be the potential overuse of the essential facilities doctrine, Professor Phillip Areeda published his well-known article "Essential Facilities: An Epithet in Need of Limiting Principles". As the name suggests, this article made a provocative point - that the essential facilities doctrine was in need of "limiting principles," without which it would be overused and lead to mistaken and counterproductive results. The article explores how the growing academic criticism of the essential facilities doctrine has gone too far. By and large, the case law has dealt adequately with the "essential facilities doctrine," and it throws the baby out with the bath water to forget the important core case that justified the doctrine in the first place. Worse still, thinking of Professor Areeda and his followers as solely critics of the essential facilities doctrine runs the especial risk of failing to enforce the antitrust laws where even the doctrine's critics agree antitrust enforcement makes sense - efforts by regulated monopolies (such as the telephone network) to exact monopoly rent by stifling competition in unregulated markets that depend on the monopoly's facility.


The so-called phonetic loan characters in transmitted early texts and what are generally called 'phonologically related textual variants' in excavated late Warring States to early Western Han manuscripts can both be accounted for by systematic structural variability of character forms in the early Chinese writing system. In the process of inventing a compound character for a given word, alternative choices were available from sets of graphs that denote meanings of the same semantic category and from ones that stand for words with the same syllabic value for use as components in any new character. These non-unique selections of graphic components for one and the same word are reflected in the writing system of the Zhou period respectively as systematic alternations of signific and phonophoric elements of the same functional value, viz., Synonymous Significs (SS) and Equivalent Phonophorics (EP). The fact that refined Western Zhou ritual bronze inscription texts circulated across regions together with the apparent overall agreement on the use of phonetic components between the Qin and Chu scripts in all likelihood testifies to the existence of an elaborate orthographic meta-system, as opposed to the writing system itself at any given time or any individual region, well before the Warring States period. In reading a Chu manuscript in comparison with its transmitted counterpart or examining it for the study of historical phonology, we ought to consider the probability of SS and EP originating from an early period as a part of the historical meta-system.


This paper focuses on the choice of a supervised learning algorithm and possible data preprocessing in the domain of data-driven haptic simulation. This is done through a comparison of the performance of different supervised learning techniques with and without data preprocessing. The simulation of haptic interactions with deformable objects using data-driven methods has emerged as an alternative to parametric methods. The accuracy of the simulation depends on the empirical data and the learning method. Several methods were suggested in the literature and here we provide a comparison between their performance and applicability to this domain. We selected four examples to be compared: singular learning mechanism which is artificial neural networks (ANN), attribute selection followed by ANN learning process, ensemble of multiple learning techniques, and attribute selection followed by the learning ensemble. These methods performance was compared in the domain of simulating multiple interactions with a deformable object with nonlinear material behavior.


Supposed or potential Devonian igneous rocks in the accretionary complex of southern Chile were investigated using sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe U–Pb dating of zircon, with Hf- and O-isotope analyses of selected grains. Ages of 384 ± 3 and 382 ± 2 Ma are confirmed for two igneous bodies (another having been previously dated at 397 ± 1 Ma). Detrital zircon ages in the host rocks, some associated with Devonian marine fossils, indicate maximum possible sedimentation ages of c. 330 – 385 Ma. Devonian ages of 391 ± 10 and 374 ± 3 Ma for plutonic rocks at the western edge of the North Patagonian Massif are somewhat older than those of orthogneisses in the western flank of the Andes near Chaitén (361 ± 7 and 364 ± 2 Ma). O and Hf isotopes indicate that the Devonian intrusions in the accretionary complex crystallized from mantle-derived magmas, whereas those in the North Patagonian Massif show a strong crustal influence, corresponding to oceanic and continental margin subduction environments of magma genesis, respectively. Devonian zircon provenance in the accretionary complex was from the North Patagonian Massif and not from the mantle-derived intrusions, suggesting that the accretionary complex formed an integral part of the Gondwana margin during Devonian–Carboniferous times. Supplementary material: Description of analytical methods and tables of isotope analytical data are available at http://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.2336728.


We determined the position of the first order frequency of a vertical sinusoidal fringe pattern in Fourier Transform Profilometry (FTP) using a proposed fringe counting algorithm. It was observed that the position varies proportionally with the frequency of the fringe pattern. With this observation we were able to show that the pixel position of the first order frequency is equal to the fringe count. A fringe counting algorithm is then proposed to determine the number of fringes. Results show that the proposed algorithm was able to obtain accurate fringe counts of the patterns with different frequencies. With this approach automated detection of the first order frequency is achieved which helps in speeding up the algorithm for FTP. In the case where the frequency of the projected fringe pattern is changed. The proposed method will be able to automatically determine the parameters needed for FTP.


The BIP framework provides a methodology supported by a tool chain for developing software for embedded systems. The design of a BIP system follows the decomposition in behavior, interaction and priority. The first step comprises the division of desired behavior of a system into components. In a second step interactions and their priorities are added between the components. Finally, machine code is generated from the BIP model. While adding interactions it is possible to overconstrain a system resulting in potential deadlocks. The tool chain crucially depends on an automatic tool, D-Finder, which checks for deadlock-freedom.
 This paper reports on guaranteeing the correctness of the verdict of D-Finder. We address the problem of formally proving deadlock-freedom of an embedded system in a way that is comprehensible for third party users and other tools. We propose the automatic generation of certificates for each BIP model declared safe by D-Finder. These certificates comprise a proof of deadlock-freedom of the BIP model which can be checked by an independent checker. We use the Coq theorem prover as certificate checker. Thus, bringing the high level of confidence of a formal proof to the deadlock analysis results.
 With the help of certificates one gets a deadlock-freedom guarantee of BIP models without having to trust or even take a look at the deadlock checking tool. The proof of deadlock-freedom fundamentally relies on the computation of invariant properties of the considered BIP model which is carried out by D-Finder and serves as basis for certificate generation. Encapsulating these invariants into certificates and checking them is the most important subtask of our methodology for guaranteeing deadlock-freedom.


Pedagogical practices in singing need to be responsive to the challenges and leverage the affordances of engaging young singers growing up in today's fluid and fast-changing digital age in deep, meaningful, and enduring learning of western music and singing traditions. Little is known about the extent to which singing engagement fosters transformative experiences and very little empirical research has examined potential factors leading to engagement in transformative singing experiences. This research draws on transformative music engagement (TME) as a perspective for understanding and developing transformative pedagogical approaches in choral singing education. Theory and practice are interrelated and examined in relation to the transformative paradigm through (1) case study interviews with singing leaders from four countries (Cuba, Kenya, Ukraine, Denmark) using ethnographic encounters and narrative inquiry to identify key attributes of transformative singing leadership (TSL), and (2) an action research study involving an interrelated 16-week program development component and study using an innovative retrospective assessment procedure to examine 50 secondary school students' perceptions of transformative singing engagement (TSE) involving two singing capacities (embodied physicality and communicative expression) and three learning capacities (engaged agency, connectivity, and values/self-beliefs). The TSE program development draws on an emergent curriculum approach as well as insights gained through findings from the case study interviews with singing leaders, and a deliberate practice model. The TSE program seeks ways of negotiating students' diverse learning styles, maintaining and developing the 'doing' of music, and enhancing cultural awareness within music learning. Learning opportunities for each of these priorities were created through transformative pedagogy and reflective practice. Through a conceptual lens of transformative learning, this inquiry explores firstly, how teachers of singing and choral directors/leaders of singing can make singing more accessible, relevant, and transformative to learners, and secondly, what pedagogical practices are effective in engaging singing learners in ways that are transformative through deep level connections between skills, relationship building, engaged agency, and positive values in singing. In the case studies involving ethnographic encounters, four main attributes of singing leadership emerged: (1) developing skill and expression, (2) fostering resiliency, (3) forming cultural singing identities and intersectionalities, and (4) promoting social innovation. Findings from the TSE study with secondary school students showed positive conceptual shifts in students' perceptions across all comparison variables. The findings also suggest the importance of integrating across singing and learning capacities for TSE to enable students to engage in personal meaning making in and through singing. This research identifies key affordances of transformative singing leadership and transformative singing engagement, which can assist both learners and leaders of singing in creating deep, meaningful, and enduring learning opportunities.


Bryozoans have played a significant ecological role in many shallow marine benthic communities since the Ordovician and are important contributors to carbonate sediment production in many modern cool-water marine environments. Correlation between bryozoan colonial growth forms and environments in which the organisms lived allows for the application of growth forms as paleoenvironmental indicators. This can be done as either (1) a characterization of regional environmental or distributional data within a comprehensive study; or (2) as a predictive tool applied in an unknown setting using limited data. A number of workers have demonstrated this potential in biological, paleontological, and sedimentological studies. Growth-form distributions established independently from, and later compared to, environmental factors provide for the greatest predictive utility. Problems encountered in methodology need to be addressed before bryozoan colonial growth forms can achieve their full potential as paleoenvironmental indicators. Methodological problems include those associated with specimen abundance versus species richness, numeric versus volumetric frequency, relative versus absolute abundance, and changes within growth forms among localities versus changes among growth forms within localities (facies). A procedure is proposed that combines species richness and specimen abundance, as well as information about distributions within growth forms and within localities, into a single, comparable data set. An example is provided using bryozoans from the cool-water Lacepede Shelf of southern Australia.


OBJECTIVE
To assess pedicle screw-rod fixation (PSRF) of the canine lumbosacral junction (LSJ) ex vivo and in vivo.

STUDY DESIGN
Ex vivo cadaver study and in vivo pilot study.

SAMPLE POPULATION
Six canine cadaveric lumbosacral spinal specimens and 3 Greyhound dogs diagnosed with degenerative lumbosacral stenosis (DLSS).

METHODS
Ex vivo study: PSRF of the LSJ was performed in 6 spinal specimens using guidelines and was evaluated by radiography, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging. In vivo study: 3 Greyhounds diagnosed with DLSS had dorsal laminectomy and partial discectomy combined with PSRF of the LSJ. Curettage of the endplates with insertion of an autologous cancellous bone graft was performed to promote spinal fusion. During 18-month follow-up, dogs were monitored by clinical evaluation, diagnostic imaging, and force plate analysis. Dogs were euthanatized for reasons unrelated to PSRF or their lumbosacral disease, and postmortem imaging and histopathologic investigations of the LSJ were performed.

RESULTS
Ex vivo study: Sixteen of 24 inserted screws had an acceptable placement. In vivo study: Ten of 12 inserted screws had acceptable placement. Clinical signs of ``lower'' back pain resolved at 4 weeks after surgery. Diagnostic imaging and histopathology showed no bony spinal fusion of the LSJ. Force plate analysis revealed a trend toward improved pelvic limb function relative to preoperative function.

CONCLUSIONS
PSRF of the LSJ of large breed dogs is technically possible. Improvements to the surgical technique to induce spinal fusion and assessment in a larger sample size are required before it can be recommended.


The present thesis deals with the investigation of some perovskite related complex cobaltates. The phases Sr2Co2-xGaxO5 (0.3 ≤ x ≤ 0.7), Sr2Co2-xAlxO5 (0.3 ≤ x ≤ 0.5), Sr1-xBixCoO3-y (0.1 ≤ x ≤ 0.2), Sr0.75Y0.25Co1-xGaxO2.625 (0.125 ≤ x ≤ 0.375) and Sr0.75Y0.25Co1-xFexO2.625+δ (0.125 ≤ x ≤ 0.625) were synthesised and characterised. All these compounds crystallises with similar structures, they are all composed by altering layers of octahedra and tetrahedra although in the two former, the tetrahedra are organised in chains (the Brownmillerite structure), while in the latter three the tetrahedra arranges as segregated Co4O12 units (the 314 type structure). The techniques X-ray and neutron diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, thermal analysis and magnetic measurements were used to track structural and important physical properties.


Acetylation coordinates the DNA double-strand break processing with autophagy. Although it is best known for its role in regulating chromatin dynamics, new roles for protein acetylation as a reversible posttranslational modification have continued to emerge. Noting that key DNA repair and checkpoint proteins are acetylated, Robert et al. investigated the role of acetylation in the DNA damage response. Exposure to the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor valproic acid (VPA) inhibited double-strand break (DSB) resection and Mec1 (the yeast ortholog of human checkpoint kinase ATR) signaling in budding yeast, and analysis of early events in DSB processing revealed that the abundance of two proteins involved in DSB resection, Sae2 and Exo1, was markedly reduced. Acetylation has been implicated in degradation of proteins by autophagy, and various analyses indicated that VPA induced autophagy in yeast, as it does in mammals. VPA enhanced the amount of HA-tagged Sae2 immunoprecipitated with anti-acetyl-Lysine antibodies, and a combination of pharmacological and genetic analysis indicated that autophagy contributed to Sae2 degradation. The effects of VPA on Sae2 stability, DSB processing, and checkpoint activation were replicated in yeast bearing mutations in the HDACs Hda1 and Rpd3, whereas loss of the histone acetyltransferase Gcn3 attenuated the VPA-mediated decrease in Sae2 stability. The authors thus conclude that acetylation coordinates the ATR checkpoint and DSB processing with autophagy. Potenski and Klein provide commentary. T. Robert, F. Vanoli, I. Chiolo, G. Shubassi, K. A. Bernstein, R. Rothstein, O. A. Botrugno, D. Parazzoli, A. Oldani, S. Minucci, M. Foiani, HDACs link the DNA damage response, processing of double-strand breaks and autophagy. Nature 471, 74–79 (2011). [PubMed] C. J. Potenski, H. L. Klein, The expanding arena of DNA repair. Nature 471, 48–49 (2011). [PubMed]


The article examines three issues of sovereign debt litigation related to Venezuelan debt securities listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE): pari passu clauses, collective action clauses (CACs) and immunities. Firstly, the analysis focuses on the 14 sovereign bonds of the Republic and the kind of pari passu stipulated in them. Research shows that the majority of these bonds have old pari passu clauses, broad interpretations of which pose potential risks for the Republic. This conclusion is supported by the Argentinian pari passu experience. Secondly, research of the CACs, as suggested by the International Capital Market Association, is presented. This allows for the identification of the thresholds required to either avoid or accomplish debt restructuring. Once the thresholds are determined, the study analyzes what sort of CACs exist with respect to the Venezuelan securities. It appears that Venezuela has old generation CACs. Accordingly, it is concluded that restructuring processes would be required on a bond by bond basis, and consequently that the CACs structure of the Republic's securities are weak.
Finally, the notions of sovereign immunities as well as United Nations special immunities are considered in relation to the main Venezuelan asset: Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. In this section the commercial purpose of the company is evaluated particularly in light of the experience of the Banco Central de la Republica Argentina before N.Y. courts during the 2000s. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the potential grant of UN immunities with respect to Venezuelan assets, analogous to that which took place in the case of Iraq in 2003.