Protective mechanisms of casein-based microcapsules containing mannitol on Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactococcus lactis ssp. cremoris, changes in their secondary protein structures, and glass transition of the microcapsules were studied after spray- or freeze-drying and after 10 wk of storage in aluminum foil pouches containing different desiccants (NaOH, LiCl, or silica gel) at 25°C. An in situ Fourier transform infrared analysis was carried out to recognize any changes in fatty acids (FA) of bacterial cell envelopes, interaction between polar site of cell envelopes and microcapsules, and alteration of their secondary protein structures. Differential scanning calorimetry was used to determine glass transition of microcapsules based on glass transition temperature (T(g)) values. Hierarchical cluster analysis based on functional groups of cell envelopes and secondary protein structures was also carried out to classify the microencapsulated bacteria due to the effects of spray- or freeze-drying and storage for 10 wk. The results showed that drying process did not affect FA and secondary protein structures of bacteria; however, those structures were affected during storage depending upon the type of desiccant used. Interaction between exterior of bacterial cell envelopes and microencapsulant occurred after spray- or freeze-drying; however, these structures were maintained after storage in foil pouch containing sodium hydroxide. Method of drying and type of desiccants influenced the level of similarities of microencapsulated bacteria. Desiccants and method of drying affected glass transition, yet no T(g) ≤25°C was detected. This study demonstrated that the changes in FA and secondary structures of the microencapsulated bacteria still occurred during storage at T(g) above room temperature, indicating that the glassy state did not completely prevent chemical activities.


Scatterometer Radar Backscatter Calibration since the first SeaSat-A Satellite Scatterometer (Birer et al., 1982), the Amazon tropical rain forest has been recognized as a spatially large extent, homogeneous radar calibration target. During the commissioning of NSCAT (1996) and later QuikSCAT (1999), CFRSL worked with the JPL Scatterometer Cal/Val team to perform normalized radar cross section (Sigma-0) calibrations using the Amazon (see Zec et al., 1999-A and 1999-B) [1]. It is important to continue this activity using RapidSCAT to validate the Sigma-0 measurement provided in the L-1A data product, and moreover the time series of these backscatter observations can be used to establish an improved Ku-band Amazon calibration site for future on-orbit radar calibration [2]. Unfortunately, the Amazon radar backscatter (Sigma-0) exhibits a time of day dependence that is not well characterized, and for the sun-synchronous polar orbiting satellites (SeaSat-A, ADEOS-I and QuikSCAT), the observations occur at specific times of day, during the morning and night passes. But now with the low-earth-orbit of the ISS, there will be an orderly orbit precession, which allows the region to be uniformly sampled over the 24-hour period [3]. Also, since the RapidSCAT employs a conical scanning geometry, we can examine the isotropic nature of Amazon backscatter established by Zec's (1998-A) analysis of NSCAT and later (1999-B) of QuikSCAT observations [4]. Thus, observations, collected over the RapidSCAT two-year mission will sample the Amazon with high spatial/temporal resolution, as a function of time of day, and over seasons. We propose to analyze these data to develop a high spatial resolution Sigma-0 Amazon map that can be used by future satellite radar missions.


Ergonomic Design Thinking (EDT) is a project management methodology that takes advantage of two important concepts or themes in carrying out project actions. The first is Design Thinking itself, a project management approach originally proposed by Tim Brown, who knew beforehand the full potential of design tools, techniques and maybe we should add idiosyncrasies. Designers have "their own way" of following through and carrying out issues such as deadlines and sequences, for example. This logic is similar to another important theme: ergonomics. The main objective of ergonomics is adapting work systems to workers themselves. By doing so, its professionals dig deep into the social technical fabric of a workplace and use recurrent and iterative strategies in order to search for a perfect fit for a given workstation. EDT as a modeling guide for workspace projects have been used in Brazil for quite some time. This text outlines an interesting experience in which EDT was used as a conception tool in building a new health safety and environmental (HSE) management system model for construction sites. A real case–an ongoing construction work–was used to contextualize the experiment and better define the vari ous instruments of this HSE model. Due to the work environment and predominant job characteristics available, the EDT approach did quite well in terms of serving its project management purpose, as it was confirmed when the new system became fully functional.


The present study compares the effects of short-term treatments with captopril and enalapril, administered in equipotent antihypertensive doses, on the regional vascular resistances and on the regional vascular responsiveness to vasopressor agents of adult spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). Three groups of animals were treated by gavage with captopril (100 mg/kg), enalapril (25 mg/kg), or distilled water for 8 days. Arterial blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), plasma renin concentration (PRC), and plasma converting-enzyme activity (CEA) were measured. Cardiac index (CI), total peripheral resistance (PR), and organ flow distribution were determined using microspheres. Renal and mesenteric vascular responsiveness to vasopressor agents was evaluated by continuous measurement of renal and mesenteric blood flows with miniaturized pulsed Doppler flow probes. Data showed that in the anesthetized SHR the two drugs induced similar reductions in BP, PR, and HR, without affecting CI. They simultaneously produced a strong converting-enzyme inhibition as evidenced by the suppression of angiotensin I effects accompanied by a potentiation of angiotensin II responses, a reduction in CEA, and an increase in PRC. Organ flows were similarly and homogeneously increased, especially in the kidneys, in both treated groups. Norepinephrine (NE) vasoconstrictor responses were abolished in the mesenteric vascular bed by both drugs, but in the renal, NE responses although completely abolished by captopril were only partially reduced by enalapril. It thus appears that diminished vascular responsiveness to NE, especially in the case of captopril, is probably involved along with converting-enzyme inhibition in the antihypertensive action of converting enzyme inhibitors (CEI), the mechanism of the difference between captopril and enalapril remaining still speculative.


Forces acting between individual grains in a powder can have a critical and controlling effect on powder bulk behaviour. Operations such as powder flow, fluidisation, compaction, agglomeration and mixing are all influenced significantly by the intensity of interparticle forces. This is especially true when the particle size falls below around 100 mum at which point the surface forces outweigh the force due to gravity acting on a single particle. Studies of cohesion using bulk powder samples are of limited use because it is difficult to decouple the fundamental mechanisms of interparticle force from other contributions to cohesion such as variations in the powder microstructure, or geometric interlocking of individual particles. A review of the relevant literature has unearthed conflicting evidence associated with the influence of relative humidity (RH) on both bulk powder cohesion and interparticle force. Therefore there is a need for experimental force studies at the scale of the individual particle to identify the fundamental mechanisms that prevail and resolve some of the apparent uncertainty that currently exists. A custom built force instrument, incorporating Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) technology, was designed, constructed and commissioned. This instrument was used to quantify the interactions between particles of around 40 mum in diameter and flat surfaces as a function of the relative humidity of the surrounding air. Interactions between soda-lime glass surfaces, gold surfaces and amorphous quartz surfaces were studied. Striking results were obtained on soda-lime glass surfaces upon decreasing the RH from > 70% to around 40%. At this point the glass surfaces suddenly exhibited a strong repulsion upon approach. The range of this repulsion was observed at separation distances as great as 250 nm. Once the surfaces were brought into contact the strong repulsion was accompanied by a very large force of adhesion. This strong repulsion and associated peak value of adhesion was not observed at other RH values and was specific to desorption rather than adsorption. Force curves for gold and quartz surfaces showed no such repulsion and peak adhesion. It is thought that the critical humidity coincides with the formation of a complete monolayer of adsorbed water molecules. A number of possible explanations have been offered for the effect and its uniqueness to soda-lime glass in the present experiments. Theoretical calculations of adhesion force have been performed based on the concept of capillary meniscus formation. Calculations give values of around 17000 nN for a sphere 40 mum in diameter and a contact angle of 20°. These values are somewhat larger than measured values in all cases apart from peak adhesion. It is thought that at low humidities there is insufficient water adsorbed to overcome the effect of surface roughness. Contact occurs at asperities, which reduces the expected contact area and hence leads to an adhesive force that is lower than predicted. At humidities > 80% the experiments show evidence of capillary elongation upon surface separation. This implies that the surface adsorbed film is mobile with bulk liquid being drawn into the bridge under the action of the surface tension force. The associated increase in bridge volume and the change in bridge curvature with I elongation will tend to equalise the Laplace pressure inside the bridge and therefore give a value of adhesion that is lower than predicted.


Natural gradient descent, which preconditions a gradient descent update with the Fisher information matrix of the underlying statistical model, is a way to capture partial second-order information. Several highly visible works have advocated an approximation known as the empirical Fisher, drawing connections between approximate second-order methods and heuristics like Adam. We dispute this argument by showing that the empirical Fisher---unlike the Fisher---does not generally capture second-order information. We further argue that the conditions under which the empirical Fisher approaches the Fisher (and the Hessian) are unlikely to be met in practice, and that, even on simple optimization problems, the pathologies of the empirical Fisher can have undesirable effects.


ABSTRACT

Between December 2015 and March 2016, fog water was collected at the subtropical mountain cloud forest site Ailaoshan in SW China at 2476 m above mean sea level. An active fog collector was employed to collect 117 samples during more than 140 hours of fog, covering 6 major fog events. The chemical analysis included acidity and inorganic ion concentrations. The median pH values of the fog events varied between 3.7 and 4.2, characterizing the fog water as acidic (pH < 5.0) to very acidic (pH < 4.0). The ion composition was dominated by H+, NH4+, SO42– and NO3–, which made up more than 86% of the total ionic concentration (TIC). The generally rather high ion concentration levels cannot be explained by nearby emission sources but rather by long-range transport of air pollutants from various sources in East Asia. During one event on February 8, 2016, it is evident that it was the emissions from a large coal-fired power plant in Myanmar that led to high concentrations of sulphuric acid. This pilot study of fog chemistry in rural, mountainous SW China should be complemented by studies spanning the moist summer monsoon season and covering more chemical species.


Path constitution theory has emerged as a promising combination of two contrasting perspectives on technological innovation: path dependence, which focuses on historically embedded, contingent processes that are more or less beyond the control of actors, and path creation, which emphasizes mindful contributions from powerful actors. However, the current path constitution literature focuses on macro- and multi-level inquiry without addressing the specific processes, opportunities, and challenges related to organizational (micro-level) technological innovation. Against this backdrop, we draw on the innovation and path literature as well as a case study of telehealth innovation in a public health organization to theorize how technological innovation paths constitute in organizational contexts. The proposed theory distinguishes between innovation path status and innovation path trajectory to help researchers understand and explain how organizations transform and reinforce path constitution patterns, how innovation paths may merge with or separate from other paths, and how organizations may arrive at a lock-in that challenges them to break out from dominant and seemingly irreversible action patterns.


(firstname.lastname@example.com) Background and Aims: Taking impression from angulated implants has always been a great challenge in clinic. In this regard, studies on sectional trays are very few. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the dimensional and angular accuracy of impressions using full arch and sectional trays. Materials and Methods: Four implants (4.3 × 12 mm) (Implantium, Dentium) were placed in the first premolar and molar regions of a Kennedy class I mandibular acrylic model with 30° lingual angulation. Twenty open special trays (Full arch & Sectional) were made on the primary cast. The impressions were taken using vinyl polysiloxane (VPS) and were poured with type IV dental stone. The coordinate measuring machine (CMM) was used to measure the dimensional (Z, Y, X) and angular (θ) coordinates of implants. The data were analyzed using and t-test and SPSS 22. Software. Results: The type of tray had no significant effect on the dimensional accuracy in X, Y and Z axes (P>0.05) and total linear displacement (r); However, it significantly affected the angular accuracy (∆  ) (P<0.05). Conclusion: Sectional tray yields less rotational displacement in impressions made of


An evaluation of the performance of the IEEE 802.11e medium access control (MAC) for quality-of-service (QoS) support in 802.11 networks has been carried out in a fiber-fed wireless local area network (WLAN) scenario. The effect of the additional optical path delay on the effectiveness of the new mechanisms of the 802.11e extension for efficiency increase, i.e., the burst transmission, and new ACK policies have been investigated. It is shown by means of analysis and simulations that although the fiber delay degrades the performance of the new mechanisms, compared with the original 802.11 MAC, significant throughput improvement can be gained when burst transmission is used with the Immediate, Block, or No ACK policies in fiber-fed networks. An experimental evaluation of the throughput improvement with the 802.11e extension is also reported. Our measurements, supported by simulations, show that higher layer operation can have a significant effect on the performance of the new MAC mechanisms, especially when transmission errors are present.


Universities have two major tasks; generating knowledge through research and educating students for academia, the public sector and the industry. In this paper, the authors explore how engineering education can support industrial needs on two fronts: creating a case study platform for research and preparing graduating engineering students to become more capable engineers when beginning their working life in industry, by applying the ""University as a laboratory"" concept. ""University as a laboratory"", as coined by Henriksson (2017), means that research-based case study projects are brought into educational courses where students are assigned to work as engineering designers, and researchers can observe problem solving patterns and evaluate different methodologies (also presented by Henriksson and Johansen (2016)). Though the concept have been presented earlier (Henriksson and Johansen 2016, Henriksson 2017), a more thorough evaluation is in order to further understand the effects of integrating research and education in the ""University as a laboratory"" concept. This is done through the performance and evaluation of a research-based engineering design education project in collaboration with automotive industrial partners; a project on lightweight and sustainable product and production development. The study evaluates three aspects of the project; the researchers' view, the teachers' view and the students' view. Data on all three aspects has been gathered through group interviews, observations and written assignments during the project, as well as interviews with participating students one year after the end of the project and workshops with researchers and teachers involved in the project. Analysis has been done on a qualitative basis, to investigate whether case projects are suitable for deep understanding in engineering fields and whether project courses are suitable to test different approaches of integrated product and production development.


There are multiple oxides that exhibit metal-to-insulator transition, V O2 is one of them. What makes it unique is that the transition occurs at near room temperature, thereby making the energy cost of switching very low. The material had amassed a large amount of attention from scientific community over the past few years, resulting in low power devices like phase change field-effect transistors with switching times on the order of picoseconds. The deposition of V O2 can be approached via chemical vapour deposition, evaporation, sputtering, or sol-gel. The focus of my work was the reactive RF sputtering approach to depositing polycrystalline V O2 thin films. The optimal deposition parameters were demonstrated to be 500°C substrate temperature and 10.2%-10.3% partial oxygen flow using a 2" target at 200W RF power. Resulting growth rate was about 1.5 nm/min. The quality of V O2 was studied using device level S-parameter measurements of insertion loss using vector network analyzer while changing temperature from 25°C to 100°C. Future plans for further improvement of the material deposited and solutions for localized heating using wave-shaped Au/Cr micro-heaters are provided.


Solar-hydrogen generation represents a promising alternative to fossil fuels for the large-scale implementation of a clean-fuel transportation infrastructure. A significant amount of research resources has been allocated to the development of photoelectrochemical components (i.e. photovoltaic and water splitting catalysts) that are able to spontaneously split water in the presence of solar irradiation, which has led to major advances in the solar-fuels field. At the same time, only limited attention has been given to understanding the key aspects that drive economically viable solar-fuel generators. This study presents a generalized approach to understand the economic factors behind the design of solar-hydrogen generators composed of photovoltaic components integrated with water electrolyzers. It evaluates the underpinning effects of the material selection for the light absorption and water splitting components on the cost of the generated fuel ($ per Kg of H2). The results presented in this work provide insights into important engineering aspects related to the sizing of devices and the use of light concentration components that, when optimized, can lead to costs below $2.90 per kilogram of hydrogen after compression and distribution. Most significantly, the analysis demonstrates that the cost of hydrogen is defined primarily by the light-absorbing component (up to 97% of the cost) while the material selection for the electrolysis components has, to a large extent, minor effects. The findings presented here can help direct research and development efforts towards the fabrication of deployable solar-hydrogen generators that are cost competitive with commercial energy sources.


In this study, we examined the effect of contact use on the gender earnings gap in urban China, by taking into account the existence of self-selection effect. We theorised two sources of individuals' self-selected job obtainment behaviour; namely, the structuralised gender-segregated employment environment and one's internalisation of the structural constraints. Based on data collected from the highly marketized Chinese city Xiamen, our estimations from the Endogenous Switching Regression model show that there is indeed a significant tendency, in which women with marketable qualifications use social contacts to find jobs, even though their obtained income would have increased significantly had they chosen not to rely on contacts to find jobs. Men enjoyed premiums from their job search strategies, whether they relied on contact use or not.


BACKGROUND/AIM
In a condition of pain in the Achilles tendon insertion there are multiple structures involved, such as the Achilles tendon itself, the retrocalcaneal bursa and a bony protrusion at the calcaneal tuberosity called Haglund's deformity. The innervation patterns of these structures are scarcely described, and the subcutaneous calcaneal bursa is traditionally not considered to be involved in the pathology. This study aimed at describing the innervation patterns of the four structures described above to provide a better understanding of possible origins of pain at the Achilles tendon insertion.

METHODS
Biopsies were taken from 10 patients with insertional Achilles tendinopathy, which had pathological changes in the subcutaneous and retrocalcaneal bursae, a Haglund deformity and Achilles tendon tendinopathy as verified by ultrasound. The biopsies were stained using immunohistochemistry in order to delineate the innervation patterns in the structures involved in insertional Achilles tendinopathy.

RESULTS
Immunohistochemical examinations found that the subcutaneous bursa scored the highest using a semi-quantitative evaluation of the degree of innervation when compared to the retrocalcaneal bursa, the Achilles tendon, and the calcaneal bone.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that the subcutaneous bursa, which is traditionally not included in surgical treatment, may be a clinically important factor in insertional Achilles tendinopathy.


The paper describes and evaluates unemployment insurance savings accounts (UISAs) – a relatively new and not well-known way of providing unemployment benefits. The UISAs reduce work disincentives by allowing recipients to keep their own unused unemployment contributions, and offer the possibility to extend coverage to informal sector workers. In addition, if integrated with mandatory pension systems (and even social pensions), UISAs can be rapidly deployed and at a low cost, thus becoming a realistic tool to protect workers from the effects of the financial crisis. Even during normal times, the integration with the pension system – and social security in general – would give more flexibility to individuals in the management of short and long term savings (i.e., pension wealth) while avoiding unnecessary administrative costs. The paper discusses issues related to incentives, redistribution, and viability, and outlines a policy framework for design and implementation. It argues that the UISAs system is especially attractive for developing countries, where the "self-policing" nature of the system is particularly important given a much larger informal sector and weaker administrative capacity in comparison to developed countries.


This article seeks to analyze Taiwan's two diplomatic policy guidelines, "viable diplomacy" and "diplomatic truce" through offensive realism. According the offensive realism's assumption, China is likely to become a potential hegemon in the East Asia and may attempt to change the status quo in the future. For the reason China is now becoming a major problem affecting regional security. Moreover, China is the most significant factors for impacting Taiwan's diplomacy. Therefore, this article introduces the China's possible actions at first, and then assesses the effects and influences of both Taiwan's new diplomatic policy guidelines under the rising Chinese hegemon. The argument of the article is the Taiwan's diplomatic situation has remained stable under these guidelines, but Taiwan may be regarded as a China's ally against the U.S. and Japan. With this development, Taiwan needs to strengthened its political, economic and military relations with the other countries in this region and attempt to avoid regarding as a only partner of China to jointly change the current security situation in regional special flash point, such as Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute.


This paper presents the results of the second year of graduate attribute assessment at Queen's University. Select courses in first year and fourth year were used to assess students learning against indicators developed for the majority of the 12 graduate attributes specified by CEAB. Assessment measures including the results of exams, reports, and presentations were used and will be discussed. Student and faculty perceptions about graduate attributes, gathered from focus groups and surveys, are being gathered.


Facial analysis is a promising approach to detect emotions of players unobtrusively; however approaches are commonly evaluated in contexts not related to games or facial cues are derived from models not designed for analysis of emotions during interactions with games. We present a method for automated analysis of facial cues from videos as a potential tool for detecting stress and boredom of players behaving naturally while playing games. Computer vision is used to automatically and unobtrusively extract 7 facial features aimed at detecting the activity of a set of facial muscles. Features are mainly based on the Euclidean distance of facial landmarks and do not rely on predefined facial expressions, training of a model, or the use of facial standards. An empirical evaluation was conducted on video recordings of an experiment involving games as emotion elicitation sources. Results show statistically significant differences in the values of facial features during boring and stressful periods of gameplay for 5 of the 7 features. We believe our approach is more user-tailored, convenient, and better suited for contexts involving games.


Abstract Late Cretaceous carbon isotope curves generated for localities in Europe, Asia, and the deep-sea records have provided the foundation for development of a contiguous, intercontinental chemostratigraphic framework. Despite the development of carbon isotope records from selected stratigraphic intervals in the Western Interior Basin, however, a comprehensive δ13C record comparable to those developed in Europe and Asia, and from ODP sites, had not yet been completed. This study reports a new, high-resolution Cenomanian to Campanian carbon isotope record for the central Western Interior Basin of North America that makes a key contribution to the intercontinental correlation. The curve is correlated to the well-developed molluscan biostratigraphic framework for the Western Interior Basin, as well as a revised geochronology based on integration of new radioisotopic dating and astrochronology developed in the same core records from where the δ13C data were derived. The new δ13C record reflects not only major perturbations in the global carbon cycle, such as the mid-Cenomanian Event and the Cenomanian–Turonian Ocean Anoxic Event 2, but also smaller excursions that have been recognized in records from Europe and Asia. This shows that the Western Interior shallow epeiric sea was not isolated for any appreciable part of Cenomanian to early Campanian time—it consistently recorded changes in the global marine carbon cycle observed elsewhere. A critical attribute of the chemostratigraphic dataset produced in this study is its linkage with a revised Late Cretaceous time scale. Assignment of revised ages to Western Interior carbon isotope events that are globally expressed will allow export of the improved time scale to localities within and outside the Western Interior where similar carbon isotope records have been generated. This chronostratigraphic tool will allow a number of stratigraphic and geochemical hypotheses to be more rigorously tested.


Using set theory in the first part of his book, and proof theory in the second, Gaisi Takeuti gives us two examples of how mathematical logic can be used to obtain results previously derived in less elegant fashion by other mathematical techniques, especially analysis. In Part One, he applies Scott- Solovay's Boolean-valued models of set theory to analysis by means of complete Boolean algebras of projections. In Part Two, he develops classical analysis including complex analysis in Peano's arithmetic, showing that any arithmetical theorem proved in analytic number theory is a theorem in Peano's arithmetic. In doing so, the author applies Gentzen's cut elimination theorem. Although the results of Part One may be regarded as straightforward consequences of the spectral theorem in function analysis, the use of Boolean- valued models makes explicit and precise analogies used by analysts to lift results from ordinary analysis to operators on a Hilbert space. Essentially expository in nature, Part Two yields a general method for showing that analytic proofs of theorems in number theory can be replaced by elementary proofs.Originally published in 1978.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


This study tackles the relationship between dividend policy and market value of companies in the UK through three empirical models.

The aim of the first model was to test the validity of the Irrelevant Theory empirically by exploring the relationship between dividend type (cash dividend, share dividend and share repurchase), earnings (EPS) and investment policy (retained earnings per share) with the market value of a company. This is achieved through the use of annual and semi-annual data for 362 companies in different UK sectors by adopting Panel Data for the period extending from 1998 to 2007 (twenty periods), where the fixed-effect (within) regression model was used to examine this sample .

The second model examines if companies favour the investment policy dividend policy by investigating whether or not companies follow a residual dividends policy. This has been identified by following the methodology of Baker and Smith (2006), based on the calculation of Standardized Free Cash Flow (SFCF) for 590 UK companies in different sectors for the period from 1998 to 2007 by using annual data.

The third model seeks to explore managerial preferences regarding dividend type and the most important factors affecting the company management when setting dividends policy. In this respect, the importance of the following factors has been tested: the company's market value; the financing decision; the investment decision; signaling theory; agency theory; and shareholder structure. The questionnaire methodology used for this model where it was distributed to 1319 UK companies in different sectors. The number of responses was 208 responses is equivalent to 15.77% of the total distributed).

The study arrived at a number of important results that can be summarized as follows: 1) The invalidity of the Irrelevant Theory, as the results show that there is a relationship between dividend policy and market value of a company; 2) There is a relationship between earnings, investment policy and the market value, which indicates that the dividends policy, announced earnings and investment policy work together in affecting the market value of a company; 3) UK companies, on the whole, do not adopt a residual dividends policy, implying no preference for investment policy over dividend policy, except for the two sectors banking and insurance companies where the results showed that they follow the residuals dividends policy 4) Most UK companies' managements prefer cash dividends to other venues choices because of its easy implementation; and 5) The most important factor affecting UK companies' managements when they set their dividends policy is shareholder structure while the least factor listed in importance is agency theory.


Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are an efficient tool to describe and model the underlying behaviour of many phenomena. HMMs assume that the observed data are generated independently from a parametric distribution, conditional on an unobserved process that satisfies the Markov property. The model selection or determining the number of hidden states for these models is an important issue which represents the main interest of this thesis. Applying likelihood-based criteria for HMMs is a challenging task as the likelihood function of these models is not available in a closed form. Using the data augmentation approach, we derive two forms of the likelihood function of a HMM in closed form, namely the observed and the conditional likelihoods. Subsequently, we develop several modified versions of the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC) approximated under the Bayesian principle. We also develop several versions for the deviance information criterion (DIC). These proposed versions are based on the type of likelihood, i.e. conditional or observed likelihood, and also on whether the hidden states are dealt with as missing data or additional parameters in the model. This latter point is referred to as the concept of focus. Finally, we consider model selection from a predictive viewpoint. To this end, we develop the so-called widely applicable information criterion (WAIC). We assess the performance of these various proposed criteria via simulation studies and real-data applications. In this thesis, we apply Poisson HMMs to model the spatial dependence analysis in count data via an application to traffic safety crashes for three highways in the UK. The ultimate interest is in identifying highway segments which have distinctly higher crash rates. Selecting an optimal number of states is an important part of the interpretation. For this purpose, we employ model selection criteria to determine the optimal number of states. We also use several goodness-of-fit checks to assess the model fitted to the data. We implement an MCMC algorithm and check its convergence. We examine the sensitivity of the results to the prior specification, a potential problem given small sample sizes. The Poisson HMMs adopted can provide a different model for analysing spatial dependence on networks. It is possible to identify segments with a higher posterior probability of classification in a high risk state, a task that could prioritise management action.


QLD Premier's Book Awards - Winner History book award In 1925 DH Lawrence described a 'huge, restless, modern Sydney, whose million inhabitants seem to slip like fishes from one side of the harbour to the other'. What was true then had been the case for centuries before, and decades since. Sydney Harbour has been a defining element for the people who have lived around it since the time of the harbour clans - a means of communication, a barrier, a resource to be exploited, a place of beauty, spirit and meaning. Sydney Harbour explores the story of the waterway from the time of the Gameragal, Gadigal and others to contemporary debates about the future of the 'working harbour'. A beautifully written, compelling book, it lays out the interaction between the glittering harbour and the people who inhabited and shaped it and attached meaning to it.


Currently, psychiatric and behavioral problems are the number one health problem among young people ages 10-18 (Blum, 1987; Bushong, Coverdale, & Battaglia, 1992). Psychiatric and behavioral disorders, including depression, can have devastating effects at this age and often lead to school failure, violence and suicide (Birmaher & Brent, 1998; Lewinsohn, Rohde, Klein, & Seeley, 1999). Moreover, research indicates that depressed youths are being seriously under-diagnosed and under-treated, causing a great burden to both individuals and society (Blum, Beuhring, Wunderlich, & Resnick, 1996; Hirschfeld, et al., 1997; Horwath, Johnson, Klerman, & Weissman, 1994). Depression that originates in adolescence will often persist into adulthood if not adequately treated (Lewinsohn, Rohde, Klein, & Seeley, 1999; Weissman, et al., 1999). Further, mental health services are often unavailable (Katon, et al., 1996) and even when they are available, real or perceived barriers limit utilization for our youth (Angold, et al., 1998; Blum, 1991; Lamarine, 1995). For example, a large statewide study of student access to health services in Oregon found that many adolescents felt they needed, but did not receive, medical care for personal or emotional problems (Zimmer-Gembeck, Alexander, & Nystrom, 1997). In 1990, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommended that education about depression and suicide prevention be integrated into the educational system (Committee on School Health, 1990). More recently, the Surgeon General's "Call to Action to Prevent Suicide, 1999" advocated 15 recommendations centered on three principals- Awareness, Intervention and Methodology (AIM). These recommendations strongly urge that training about suicide risk assessment and treatment be instituted for all human service professionals including clergy, teachers, correctional workers and social workers. While a number of programs have been designed to disseminate knowledge and to provide interventions for depression and suicide (Shaffer & Craft, 1999), almost no literature to date has been published about programs designed to train teachers and school personnel. Teachers and/or parents are the primary sources to observe and gather information concerning the behavioral problems of children and adolescents (Gresham, 1984; Verhulst, Koot, & Van Der Ende, 1994). However, they commonly feel either poorly equipped or reluctant to consider that a child's academic or social difficulties may be related to poor emotional health (Lamarine, 1995). Nevertheless, educators have considerable experience observing a range of normal child and adolescent behavior (Verhulst, Koot, & Van Der Ende, 1994), and are in a favorable position to identify significant developmental and behavioral problems (Kazdin, 1990; Resnick, et al. 1997). Indeed, research has shown it frequently falls to the schools and the teaching profession to provide the initial link to treatment (Adelman & Taylor, 1999; Klein, McNuity, & Flatau, 1998). In an effort to more effectively handle the emotional, social and psychological problems of our youth, many schools are now attempting to provide some version of onsite mental health services (Adelman & Taylor, 1999; Flaherty, Weist, & Warner, 1996; Jepson, Juszczak, & Fisher, 1998; King, 1996; Waxman, Weist, & Benson, 1999). In addition, when surveyed, many youth identify school personnel as important resources for health and counseling needs (Fotheringham & Sawyer, 1995; Klein, McNulty, & Flatau, 1998; Shaffer, Garland, Vieland, Underwood, & Busner, 1991). Because childhood and adolescent depression is treatable and early identification and treatment have shown to be effective (Hirschfeld, et al., 1997; Weissman, et al., 1999), public health approaches are needed to enhance early recognition and interventions for young people who suffer from depression. …


Plasma fluctuations in the scrape-off layer (SOL) of the TCV tokamak exhibit statistical properties which are universal across a broad range of discharge conditions. Electron density fluctuations, from just inside the magnetic separatrix to the plasma–wall interface, are described well by a gamma distributed random variable. The density fluctuations exhibit clear evidence of self-similarity in the far SOL, such that the corresponding probability density functions collapse upon renormalization solely by the mean particle density. This constitutes a demonstration that the amplitude of the density fluctuations is simply proportional to the mean density and is consistent with the further observation that the radial particle flux fluctuations scale solely with the mean density over two orders of magnitude. Such findings indicate that it may be possible to improve the prediction of transport in the critical plasma–wall interaction region of future large scale tokamaks.


Using governorate-level national data and household survey data, we build a typology of farm households in Egypt that allows us to describe how different farm households behave in response to policy and environmental changes affecting their resources, welfare, and opportunities in output and input markets. One of the major contributions of this study is the building of a unique dataset that combines various data sources at different levels of aggregation, providing the information needed to model the farm typology. We used this dataset as the input of a multi-step procedure that includes the use of principal components and cluster analyses to identify 14 household types. To illustrate possible uses of the typology, we look at the vulnerability of the different types of households to projected changes in temperature, water availability, and water demand from crops due to climate change, and discuss which farmers, production systems, and regions will be most affected by climate shocks. We assumed that increased temperatures by 2050 would result in increased water demand and reduced yields for most crops due to heat stress and harsher growing conditions. We define three climate change scenarios that differ in the expected water flows of the Nile into the Aswan High Dam. Results of simulations using a household model suggest that Egypt is likely to experience a significant reduction in output, agricultural labor demand, and cultivated area because of climate change, although the severity of this outcome will depend on the magnitude of changes in the Nile's flow. Most affected by these changes will be small and average households producing field crops. Our results suggest that to mitigate the risks and possible future impacts of climate change, the country will need to: Move away from policies supporting production of cereals and water-inefficient crops towards diversification of production into water-efficient high-value crops; facilitate the access of skilled resource-poor producers to capital and markets; and create opportunities for off-farm employment and income for smallholders that are using resources inefficiently.


Jews were excluded from most professions in medieval, predominantly Christian Europe. Bigotry was widespread, yet Jews were accepted as doctors and surgeons, administering not only to other Jews but to Christians as well. Why did medieval Christians suspend their fear and suspicion of the Jews, allowing them to inspect their bodies, and even, at times, to determine their survival? What was the nature of the doctor-patient relationship? And did the law protect Jewish doctors in disputes over care and treatment? Joseph Shatzmiller explores these and other intriguing questions in the first full social history of the medieval Jewish doctor. Based on extensive archival research in Provence, Spain, and Italy, and a deep reading of the widely scattered literature, Shatzmiller examines the social and economic forces that allowed Jewish medical professionals to survive and thrive in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe. His insights will prove fascinating to scholars and students of Judaica, medieval history, and the history of medicine.


Fishery production is highly dependent on fish growth and environmental factors; primary production and temperature are the two most important variables affecting almost all biological rates, especially individual growth or population production rate. The growth of European anchovy, Engraulis encrasicolus , was compared between two populations inhabiting different ecosystems: the Tyrrhenian Sea, characterized by riverine inputs and the Strait of Sicily, an oligotrophic area. The effects of habitat conditions on growth was also evaluated using literature data on other of European anchovy populations. Water temperature was confirmed to be a determinant factor for anchovy growth at the species level positively affecting the length at age-1. On the contrary, a negative relationship was found between chlorophyll-a and the length at age-1. These findings suggested that size at age-1 is strongly dependent on habitat conditions. The age structure differed significantly between the two populations, with the Tyrrhenian stock dominated by age-1 fish.


Normal cellular functions of hamartin and tuberin, encoded by the TSC1 and TSC2tumor suppressor genes, are closely related to their direct interactions. However, the regulation of the hamartin-tuberin complex in the context of the physiologic role as tumor suppressor genes has not been documented. Here we show that insulin or insulin growth factor (IGF) 1 stimulates phosphorylation of tuberin, which is inhibited by the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor LY294002 but not by the mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitor PD98059. Expression of constitutively active PI3K or active Akt, including Akt1 and Akt2, induces tuberin phosphorylation. We further demonstrate that Akt/PKB associates with hamartin-tuberin complexes, promoting phosphorylation of tuberin and increased degradation of hamartin-tuberin complexes. The ability to form complexes, however, is not blocked. Akt also inhibits tuberin-mediated degradation of p27kip1, thereby promoting CDK2 activity and cellular proliferation. Our results indicate that tuberin is a direct physiological substrate of Akt and that phosphorylation of tuberin by PI3K/Akt is a major mechanism controlling hamartin-tuberin function.


School sports classes are a key part of physical and mental development, yet in many countries these classes are gender segregated. Before institutionalised segregation can be condoned it is important to tackle assumptions and check for an evidence-based rationale. This presentation aims to analyse the key arguments for segregation given in comment-form response to a recent media article discussing mixed school sports (Lawson, 2013).

The primary argument given was division for strength, ability or protection (75% comments). It is a common, but false assumption, that young female bones are more breakable or girls more fragile when given the same level of exercise. Schools already have fairly homogenous groupings due to age-based classes. At school age variation within gender is larger than variation between genders, yet there is no tendency to segregate a sports class on the basis of height or strength, only to segregate for gender.

The secondary argument was that keeping children separate avoids behavioural issues including self-consciousness, sexual harassment or discrimination (13% comments). As segregation isn't realistic as a life-long strategy, we must question the validity of losing this controlled opportunity to teach respect. Indeed, people raised in segregated environments as minors have been shown to experience greater social anxiety in the adult world.

Segregation moves gender politics to identity politics. There is no evidence for widely-held scientifically-valid reasons to segregate gender at school, yet it is socially accepted. Teaching curriculums are often blamed for specifying game-based activities, but there's no physiological reason why in the UK boys play football and girls rounders, or in the USA soccer is considered a "girls sport" and baseball is "for boys". Children's development is shaped by the environment and value systems they are placed in. If we are to condone belief in individual variation over stereotyping the curriculums should enforce this.


The use of solution mixing followed by gelation to make ultrahomogeneous glasses and ceramics of various oxide compositions for laboratory expernmentation, with first organic and later principally colloidal inorganic, precursors was developed over 30 years ago. Major technologies that use the solution-sol-gel route have been developed to make nuclear fuel pellets, ceramic fibers, thin coatings, and abrasive grain. Ilhis article reviews the early history and summarizes present research in this field, particularly new processes aimed at achieving xerogel precursors of maximum heterogeneity with respect either to composition or to structure. Such nanocomposites provide major advantages in lowering sintering temperatures, refining microstructure, and controlling morphology and final phase composition.


Motivated by the human's ability to continually learn and gain knowledge over time, several research efforts have been pushing the limits of machines to constantly learn while alleviating catastrophic forgetting. Most of the existing methods have been focusing on continual learning of label prediction tasks, which have fixed input and output sizes. In this paper, we propose a new scenario of continual learning which handles sequence-to-sequence tasks common in language learning. We further propose an approach to use label prediction continual learning algorithm for sequence-to-sequence continual learning by leveraging compositionality. Experimental results show that the proposed method has significant improvement over state-of-the-art methods. It enables knowledge transfer and prevents catastrophic forgetting, resulting in more than 85% accuracy up to 100 stages, compared with less than 50% accuracy for baselines in instruction learning task. It also shows significant improvement in machine translation task. This is the first work to combine continual learning and compositionality for language learning, and we hope this work will make machines more helpful in various tasks.


Abstract The links between large-scale silicic volcanism and plutonism offer insights into the dynamics of crustal magmatic systems and growth of continental crust. In Hong Kong, voluminous silicic ignimbrites and linked plutons record a ~26 Myr period of magmatism from ~164 to 138 Ma. We present data from these linked volcanic-plutonic assemblages at the Lantau and High Island caldera complexes, with an emphasis on the ~143–138 Ma activity from the latter. To track the evolution of these magmatic systems, U-Pb dating and trace element analyses using secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) were carried out on zircons from 21 samples from both volcanic and plutonic samples. The SIMS age data sets divide into two groups across volcanic and plutonic origins: (1) seven samples with unimodal age spectra [five of which have the same mean value as the published Isotope Dilution Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry (ID-TIMS) age from the same sample]; and (2) 14 samples yielding multiple age components. Age patterns from both groups suggest that the previously separated ~143 Ma Repulse Bay (RBVG) and ~141–140 Ma Kau Sai Chau volcanic groups (KSCVG) instead represent activities over a single ~5 Myr period. Direct linkages previously proposed between some volcanic and plutonic units for this period (e.g., High Island Tuff, Kowloon Granite) are no longer supported, and magmatism represented by exposed plutons continued until 137.8 ± 0.8 Ma (Mount Butler Granite). Under CL imagery, a wide range of zircon textures identified in both volcanic and plutonic samples is indicative of complex processes, some of which are identified through trace element data coupled with textural characteristics. Overall, intra-grain (cores vs. rims; sector-zonation) and intra-sample variations in trace element abundances and ratios are larger than those between samples. Zircon chemistries in both volcanic and plutonic samples fall into two groups during the ~5 Myr history of the High Island caldera magmatic system. One group (RBVG and "cold" granites) includes inherited grains back to 164 Ma and wider ranges in Hf, Y, total trivalent elements, Th and U concentrations and Th/U, Yb/Gd, and U/Yb ratios than the other (KSCVG and "hot" granites). Two possible evolutionary models of the High Island caldera magmatic system are: (1) the system randomly tapped a single crustal domain that fluctuated in temperature as a result of varying interactions of hotter melts, or (2) the volcanic and plutonic records reflect the interplay of two crustal domains with contrasting "low-" and "high-temperature" characteristics. In Hong Kong, some plutonic bodies were comagmatic with large-scale volcanism, while others were emplaced at shallow crustal levels independently of volcanism, matching the current two end-member views of the volcanic-plutonic relationship.


Suppression of T-cell responses by host-derived regulatory factors is a key event leading to viral persistence. Antibody blockade of either IL-10 or programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) during viral persistence enhances T-cell function and reduces viral titers. Because blockade of these immunoregulatory networks represents a powerful approach to establish immune control during persistent infection, it is important to determine whether these immunoinhibitory factors act independently or jointly and if combined blockade of these factors further enhances T-cell immunity and viral clearance. Herein, we demonstrate that the IL-10 and PD-L1 immunosuppressive pathways are mechanistically distinct. As a result, simultaneous blockade of IL-10 and PD-L1 was significantly more effective in restoring antiviral T-cell responses than blockade of either alone, and led to substantially enhanced control of an established persistent viral infection. Thus, combinatorial blockade of multiple immune-regulatory molecules may ultimately restore the T-cell responses required to tip the balance from viral persistence to immune-mediated control or elimination of persistent infection.


We estimate the effect of a teenage birth on the educational attainment of young mothers in Cape Town, South Africa. Longitudinal and retrospective data on youth from the CAPS dataset are used. We control for a number of early life and pre-fertility characteristics. We also reweight our data using a propensity score matching process to generate a more appropriate counterfactual group. Accounting for respondent characteristics reduces estimates of the effect of a teen birth on dropping out of school, successfully completing secondary school, and years of schooling attained. Our best estimates of the effect of a teen birth on high school graduation by ages 20 and 22 are -5.9 and -2.7 percentage points respectively. The former is significant at the 5% level,while the latter is not statistically significant. Thus, there appears to be some `catching up' in educational attainment by teen mothers. We find only limited support for the hypothesis that there is heterogeneity in the effect of a teen birth, depending on the actual age of the first birth. By age 22, none of the estimates for high school graduation or years of schooling are statistically significant, regardless of the specific age at which the teen birth occurred. Despite this, we do find evidence that a teen birth does correlate with reduced educational expectations. The proportion of teen mothers who report an expected final educational attainment of high school graduation or greater is about 15 percentage points lower than the matched set of non-teen mothers, but this is not manifest amongst the girls whom we know will subsequently become teen mothers at some point after these expectations are measured.


This article delves into the conquest and early years of colonization of Española from the perspective of the "structure of the conjuncture." By doing so it prioritizes the Indigenous perspective of conquest, particularly that of the cacique Guacanagarí, who formed the first alliance with the Spaniards in 1492. The article follows the development of the historic alliance, digging beneath the surface of historical chronicles to reveal Indigenous cosmology and agency throughout the skirmishes and intrigue of colonization. In so doing it shows that during the first years of Caribbean colonization, the Spaniards were not in control as all actors were engaging in a novel environment, the structure of the conjuncture. The situation did change by the early 1500s, but the imprint of the structure of the conjuncture was felt for decades to come.


Movie Censorship and American Culture Francis G. Couvares, Editor. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. The second edition of this edited book is virtually unchanged from the original published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1996 except for a new preface by the editor. The work consists of the editor's introduction and eleven chapters. Most of the authors see connections between the historic cultural struggles in the United States as a result of ethnic and religious differences, immigration, and the commercialization of mass culture, and movie censorship. Attempts to censor or regulate motion picture content were particularly widespread in the 1920s and 1930s, although they extend to the present day. The early censorship efforts were led by reform groups such as the Women's Christian Temperance League and the General Federation of Women's Clubs or religious coalitions such as the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the National Council of Churches. As the authors point out, activists campaigned for federal, state and local censorship and consumer boycotts of the movies arguing that youth, women, and rural citizens were particularly vulnerable to the corrupting influences of the cinema. In arguing their points, many of the authors rely on recent books on movies and mass media, documents of the National Film Board of Review in the New York Public Library, archives of the Hollywood Production Code Administration and records of state and local censorship boards and reform groups. Daniel Czitrom's chapter on early theater licensing and the beginnings of movie censorship in New York City is particularly insightful and helpful. He notes that the Motion Picture Exhibitors Association began self-censorship as early as 1909 when the center of the industry was in New York City. When Hollywood became the heart of the industry the motion picture producers formed another voluntary censorship body, the National Board of Review. This organization formed the foundation for the later establishment of codes of censorship by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) under the leadership of William Hays, former Republican official and US Postmaster. "Mothering the Movies" a chapter by Alison M. Parker is a fascinating study of the role of the WCTU in attempts to censor the movies. The WCTU's efforts were aided by the US Supreme Court ruling in 1915 which argued that movie censorship and particularly prior restraint, did not violate the constitutional protections under the first and fourteen amendments of the US Constitution. Richard Maltby in his chapter focuses on the role of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors in its censorship or alteration of plays, novels, and scripts to meet the demands of the Hays office. Editor Francis G. Couvares's study of the role of Protestant and Catholic interest groups in the censorship battles is particularly useful for scholars. …


Design optimizations of flexure-based mechanisms take a lot of computation time, in particular when large deformations are involved. In an optimization procedure statically deformed configurations of many designs have to be obtained, while finding the statically deformed configuration itself requires tens to hundreds of load step iterations. The kinematically started deformation method (KSD-method) [1] computes deformed configurations fast by starting the computation from an approximation. This approximation is obtained by allowing the mechanism only to move in the motion-direction, based on kinematic equations, using data of the flexure joints in the mechanism. This is possible as flexure based mechanisms are typically designed to be kinematically determined in the motion directions. In this paper the KSD-method is extended such that it can also be applied without joint-data, such that it is not necessary to maintain a database with joint-data. This paper also shows that the method can be used for mechanisms containing joints that allow full spatial motion. Several variants of the KSD method are presented and evaluated for accuracy and required computation time. One variant, which uses joint-data, is 21 times faster and shows errors in stress and stiffness below 1%, compared to a conventional multibody analysis on the same model. Another variant, which does not use joint-data, reduces the computation time by a factor of 14, keeping errors below 1%. The KSD-method is shown to be helpful in design optimizations of complex flexure mechanisms for large range of motion.


UNLABELLED
OBJECTIVES. To test for socioeconomic differences in some biological and behavioral risk factors for obesity in a representative and contemporary sample of adolescents.

METHODS
Cohort study of 2 016 randomly selected 12- and 15-year-olds representative of Northern Ireland, studied in 2000. We tested for differences in obesity risk factors based on a priori hypotheses between adolescents from affluent (n=487) versus deprived (n=237) families. Potential risk factors were dietary energy and macronutrient intake, habitual physical activity, TV viewing and computer use, and physical fitness.

RESULTS
Adolescents of higher socioeconomic status reported significantly lower habitual energy intake (210 kJ/kg/d SD 80 vs. 229 kJ/kg/d SD 91, p < 0.01); significantly higher levels of habitual physical activity (physical activity score 25.9 SD 16.6 vs. 20.9 SD 16.4, p < 0.001), and had significantly higher cardiorespiratory fitness (estimated VO2 max 46.2 ml/kg/min SD 8.4 vs. 43.4 ml/kg/min SD 8.3, p < 0.001). Prevalence of overweight and obesity (BMI >85th percentile) in the cohort was 29.1% and was slightly but not significantly higher in the low (33.8%) versus the high (28.5%) socioeconomic groups.

CONCLUSIONS
Differences in some of the biological and behavioral risk factors for obesity exist between adolescents of different socioeconomic status in Northern Ireland. These may help explain the basis of established socioeconomic differences in obesity risk.


The recent volatility of population redistribution trends in the U.S. continues to stimulate the demographic imagination. This research sheds new light on this subject through an examination of newly designated metro areas, which collectively constitute the largest source of national metropolitan growth in two of the past three decades. The results show that, over this period, new metro areas have consistently drawn the majority of migrants from inter-state exchanges with existing metro territory and that these exchanges are greatest from census divisions that achieved metropolitan dominance prior to 1920. Employment data also reveal a strong positive association between FIRE activities and net in-migration. Together, these findings suggest that traditional processes of urban concentration, while present, now play a secondary role in the development of new metro centers, thus challenging conventional theories of metropolitanization where we might most expect them to apply.


An extended, generalised version of two-dimensional linearised potential flow theory of fully unsteady fluid flow-sediment bed interaction is presented. In contrast to previous potential flow instability models, for flow systems of rippled or dune-covered equilibrium beds, fluid-sediment flow system instability is predicted by the present model without the inclusion in the analyses of any explicit phase lag between local flow conditions and local sediment transport rate. Potential flow theory, while not providing an adequate description of bed form generation from plane bed conditions, is nevertheless found to correctly describe instances of accelerated bed form development observed for fluid-sediment flow systems.


Background: Primary Sjogren's Syndrom(SS) is an autoimmune disease with diverse clinical presentation. This study was conducted to describe the clinical and immunological picture of SS in patients seen in the main hospital in Qatar. Methods: We reviewed all the medical records of patients seen at Hamad medical corporation between 1997 and 2002 who met the classification criteria for primary SS. Eighteen patient met these criteria. Results: Female to male ratio were 9:1. The average age at the time of diagnosis was 40.6 (range from 24-61) with a period of 2.3 years before the diagnosis was established. Dry eyes and/or dry mouth were the presenting symptoms in 66%. Parotid swelling alone or with other symptoms were the presenting symptoms in 17%..Renal tubular acidosis were seen in 17% and fatigue in 44%. Shirmer test was positive in 85% and lip biopsy in 80% of patients in whom the tests were done.Anti-SS-A/Ro were positive in 71% and Anti-SS-B/La were positive in 50%. Conclusion: Our results are almost similar to other studies in the west.


Jamuna River is one of the principal rivers of Bangladesh, changing continuously due to erosion and accretion over the past decades. This analysis evaluates the East Bank and the West Bank erosion and accretion between 1996 and 2015 for Jamuna River. An unsupervised classification algorithm and post-classification change employing skills in Geographic Information System are performed to evaluate spatial and temporal dynamics of erosion and accretion for different points of Jamuna River using Bangladesh. Landsat image (1995, 2005, 2015). The correctness of the Landsat-produced map ranges from 82% to 84%. It has been evidently observed that changes in the proportion of erosion and accretion differ in different points of Jamuna River. The highest eroded area is 3.82 square kilometers (km2) during the period of 1995 to 2005 and the highest accreted area is 6.15 square kilometers (km2) during the period of 1995 to 2015. The erosion and accretion values fluctuated from place to place. The changing trend of Riverbank is creating many socio-economic problems in the proximate areas.


A database of over 280 chemicals has been compiled by using a mouse 3T3-L1 fibroblast-like cell line in exponential growth, exposed to chemicals for 72 hours in a 96-well tissue culture plate format, and determining cell number via the Kenacid blue (KB) assay for total protein. Ranking the chemicals according to their basal cytotoxicity, expressed as the concentration (mM) that inhibits increase in total cellular protein over 72 hours by 50% (the ID50 value) shows a wide range of ID50 values, from 0.00003mM to 10,096mM. This information includes the results for MEIC chemicals 1–50, and we have now added basal cytotoxicity data for 23 of the next 25 MEIC chemicals. When the neutral red uptake (NRU) assay was performed with the same cell cultures, before the KB assay, very similar indications of basal cytotoxicity were obtained. Comparisons between the results with 3T3-L1 cells and with a human fibroblast-like cell line, BCL-D1 showed a significant difference in order of magnitude of the ID50 value for only 5 of 52 chemicals. However, there was a difference in ID50 value of more than one order of magnitude for 8 of 24 chemicals tested with an undifferentiated teratocarcinoma cell line, F9.


The flat-spectrum radio quasar PKS 1441+25 at a redshift of z = 0.940 is detected between 40 and 250 GeV with a significance of 25.5σ using the MAGIC telescopes. Together with the gravitationally lensed blazar QSO B0218+357 (z = 0.944), PKS 1441+25 is the most distant very high energy (VHE) blazar detected to date. The observations were triggered by an outburst in 2015 April seen at GeV energies with the Large Area Telescope on board Fermi. Multi-wavelength observations suggest a subdivision of the high state into two distinct flux states. In the band covered by MAGIC, the variability timescale is estimated to be 6.4 ± 1.9 days. Modeling the broadband spectral energy distribution with an external Compton model, the location of the emitting region is understood as originating in the jet outside the broad-line region (BLR) during the period of high activity, while being partially within the BLR during the period of low (typical) activity. The observed VHE spectrum during the highest activity is used to probe the extragalactic background light at an unprecedented distance scale for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy.


Indestructible Truth is one of the most thorough introductions to the Tibetan Buddhist world view ever published; at the same time it is also one of the most accessible. The author presents complex and sophisticated teachings and practices in nontechnical language, using engaging stories and personal anecdotes to illustrate his points. Indestructible Truth presents Tibetan Buddhism in its traditional form but also shows how the Tibetan traditions are applicable to the problems and challenges of modern life in the West. In Indestructible Truth, Tibetan Buddhism is introduced not as an exotic religion, but rather as an expression of human spirituality that is having a profound impact on the modern world. In addition, it presents the point of view of meditation and the practice of the spiritual life, paying special attention to contemplative practice and meditation as taught in the Kagyu and Nyingma schools.


Abstract This article revisits, analyzes and critiques Bruce Chatwin's 1987 bestseller, The Songlines,1 more than three decades after its publication. In Songlines, the book primarily responsible for his posthumous celebrity, Chatwin set out to explore the essence of Central and Western Desert Aboriginal Australians' philosophical beliefs. For many readers globally, Songlines is regarded as a—if not the—definitive entry into the epistemological basis, religion, cosmology and lifeways of classical Western and Central Desert Aboriginal people. It is argued that Chatwin's fuzzy, ill-defined use of the word-concept "songlines"2 has had the effect of generating more heat than light. Chatwin's failure to recognize the economic imperative underpinning Australian desert people's walking praxis is problematic: his own treks through foreign lands were underpropped by socioeconomic privilege. Chatwin's ethnocentric idée fixe regarding the primacy of "walking" and "nomadism," central to his Songlines thématique, well and truly preceded his visits to Central Australia. Walking, proclaimed Chatwin, is an elemental part of "Man's" innate nature. It is argued that this unwavering, preconceived, essentialist belief was a self-serving construal justifying Chatwin's own "nomadic" adventures of identity. Is it thus reasonable to regard Chatwin as a "rogue author," an unreliable narrator? And if so, does this matter? Of greatest concern is the book's continuing majority acceptance as a measured, accurate account of Aboriginal belief systems. With respect to Aboriginal desert people and the barely disguised individuals depicted in Songlines, is Chatwin's book a "rogue text," constituting an act of epistemic violence, consistent with Spivak's usage of that term?


In many applications that track and analyze spatiotemporal data, movements obey periodic patterns; the objects follow the same routes (approximately) over regular time intervals. For example, people wake up at the same time and follow more or less the same route to their work everyday. The discovery of hidden periodic patterns in spatiotemporal data could unveil important information to the data analyst. Existing approaches for discovering periodic patterns focus on symbol sequences. However, these methods cannot directly be applied to a spatiotemporal sequence because of the fuzziness of spatial locations in the sequence. In this paper, we define the problem of mining periodic patterns in spatiotemporal data and propose an effective and efficient algorithm for retrieving maximal periodic patterns. In addition, we study two interesting variants of the problem. The first is the retrieval of periodic patterns that are frequent only during a continuous subinterval of the whole history. The second problem is the discovery of periodic patterns, whose instances may be shifted or distorted. We demonstrate how our mining technique can be adapted for these variants. Finally, we present a comprehensive experimental evaluation, where we show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed techniques.


The FTC completed its antitrust investigation of Google in 2013 and, finding no evidence of antitrust violations, decided not to bring an enforcement action against the company. Although the FTC has concluded its investigation, Google's competitors and critics, unhappy with the outcome, continue to raise issues and criticize the FTC's decision. In this brief article we discuss the FTC's decision and assess the merits of the claims still being raised. The critics' case against Google rests on certain assumptions about how the markets in which it operates function. But these are technology markets, constantly evolving and complex; most assumptions, and even "conclusions" based on data, are imperfect at best. The market realities in which Google operates, while not dispositive, strongly challenge the logic and thus the relevance of many of the contentions still being maintained by Google's critics.
The public claims by Google's critics and the best information we have on the thinking of the regulators investigating the company reflect an over-simplified and inaccurate conception of the competitive conditions facing Google and its competitors. The reality is far more complex and, if properly understood, paints a picture that undermines the basic, essential elements of an antitrust case against the company.
Competitors continue to claim that their problems competing with Google are cognizable antitrust problems rather than the consequences of vigorous competition, shifting consumer demand, and their own business decisions. However, there is significant evidence indicating that these claims are unfounded.


As a large asteroid encounters a smaller body, its gravitational attraction perturbs the trajectory of the smaller asteroid. The method of astrometric mass determination uses a least-square algorithm to simultaneously solve for both the orbit of the small asteroid, and the mass of the larger asteroid required to produce the observed perturbation. Since the perturbations are quite small, the observations of the smaller asteroid must be highly precise; and the perturbations of other asteroids must be accounted for.

Current practice, however, is to assume that all observations of a given era have the same uncertainty, and that the errors in these observations are uncorrelated. These assumptions are unrealistic; and they lead to sub-optimal masses and orbits. We therefore pursue development of an observational error model that provides realistic estimates of the uncertainties and correlations in asteroid observations.

In the course of our first attempt to construct the error model, we detected a significant bias in the observations of numbered asteroids, due to position-dependent errors in the star catalogs from which the observations were reduced. Before proceeding further, we developed a method to remove these biases, and undertook extensive calculations to validate its performance. Implementing this technique, we completed development of the error model, and demonstrated that it produces orbits that are both more accurate, and more precise. We then used the new error model to iteratively refine an integrated ephemeris of 300 large asteroids, which allowed us to deduce the masses of 28 main-belt asteroids. These include the first published masses of 5 Astraea (1.255±0.003 × 10⁻¹² M⊙) and 39 Laetitia (2.83±0.73 × 10⁻¹² M⊙).

After combining our mass estimates with those of other authors, we studied the bulk porosities of over 50 main-belt asteroids; and after reviewing the collisional evolution of main-belt asteroids, we concluded that asteroids as large as 300 km in diameter may be loose gravitational aggregates. This finding will place a specific constraint on models of main-belt collisional evolution. Additionally, we found that C-type asteroids tend to have significantly higher macroporosity than S-type asteroids; and after reviewing thermal models of asteroid accretion, we concluded that distant C-type asteroids likely have a cometary-type structure and composition that results from a lack of global heating following their initial accretion.


To the Editor of JAMA

 Dr Ioannidis writes against our proposals to abandon statistical significance in scientific reasoning and publication, as endorsed in the editorial of a recent special issue of an American Statistical Association journal devoted to moving to a "post p<0.05 world." We appreciate that he echoes our calls for "embracing uncertainty, avoiding hyped claims…and recognizing 'statistical significance' is often poorly understood." We also welcome his agreement that the "interpretation of any result is far more complicated than just significance testing" and that "clinical, monetary, and other considerations may often have more importance than statistical findings."
 Nonetheless, we disagree that a statistical significance-based "filtering process is useful to avoid drowning in noise" in science and instead view such filtering as harmful. First, the implicit rule to not publish nonsignificant results biases the literature with overestimated effect sizes and encourages "hacking" to get significance. Second, nonsignificant results are often wrongly treated as zero. Third, significant results are often wrongly treated as truth rather than as the noisy estimates they are, thereby creating unrealistic expectations of replicability. Fourth, filtering on statistical significance provides no guarantee against noise. Instead, it amplifies noise because the quantity on which the filtering is based (the p-value) is itself extremely noisy and is made more so by dichotomizing it.
 We also disagree that abandoning statistical significance will reduce science to "a state of statistical anarchy." Indeed, the journal Epidemiology banned statistical significance in 1990 and is today recognized as a leader in the field.
 Valid synthesis requires accounting for all relevant evidence—not just the subset that attained statistical significance. Thus, researchers should report more, not less, providing estimates and uncertainty statements for all quantities, justifying any exceptions, and considering ways the results are wrong. Publication criteria should be based on evaluating study design, data quality, and scientific content—not statistical significance.
 Decisions are seldom necessary in scientific reporting. However, when they are required (as in clinical practice), they should be made based on the costs, benefits, and likelihoods of all possible outcomes, not via arbitrary cutoffs applied to statistical summaries such as p-values which capture little of this picture.
 The replication crisis in science is not the product of the publication of unreliable findings. The publication of unreliable findings is unavoidable: as the saying goes, if we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research. Rather, the replication crisis has arisen because unreliable findings are presented as reliable.


When learning models that are represented in matrix forms, enforcing a low-rank constraint can dramatically improve the memory and run time complexity, while providing a natural regularization of the model. However, naive approaches for minimizing functions over the set of low-rank matrices are either prohibitively time consuming (repeated singular value decomposition of the matrix) or numerically unstable (optimizing a factored representation of the low rank matrix). We build on recent advances in optimization over manifolds, and describe an iterative online learning procedure, consisting of a gradient step, followed by a second-order retraction back to the manifold. While the ideal retraction is hard to compute, and so is the projection operator that approximates it, we describe another second-order retraction that can be computed efficiently, with run time and memory complexity of O ((n + m)k) for a rank-k matrix of dimension m x n, given rank-one gradients. We use this algorithm, LORETA, to learn a matrix-form similarity measure over pairs of documents represented as high dimensional vectors. LORETA improves the mean average precision over a passive- aggressive approach in a factorized model, and also improves over a full model trained over pre-selected features using the same memory requirements. LORETA also showed consistent improvement over standard methods in a large (1600 classes) multi-label image classification task.


Lycopersicon esculentum, Mill, commonly referred to as tomato is a highly perishable crop. However, the rate and extent of spoilage depends on several factors. To overcome this problem there is the need to develop simple, cost-effective and easily adaptable preservation techniques and to do this requires a better understanding of the farm management system of farmers. A study was carried out to determine the current farm practices, postharvest problems, preservation methods and marketing practices of farmers. Surveys using questionnaires were carried out in selected major tomato growing areas in Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions. The results of the study show that tomato is cultivated mainly by male youth with basic educational background. Cultivation is on the average three times a year and it is mainly on rented plots. The `Power' variety is the predominant variety for cultivation in Ghana. There is also the rampant abuse of agrochemicals by most of the farmers. The farmers carry out neither on-farm nor off-farm storage of the fresh tomato fruits. The major postharvest problems of the farmers are the need for permanent purchasing outlets and the stabilization of the unit price per box of tomato. This calls for a significant look at the distribution system for tomatoes. JOURNAL OF THE GHANA SCIENCE ASSOCIATION Volume 1 Number 1, July (1998) pp. 55-59


Current discussions on the future of cataloging describe a "crisis" that has been going on longer than most realize. However, new challenges posed by the Internet have given increased attention to a more complete transformation of bibliographic control. Contributions by Calhoun and others have shown that much can be gleaned from research in fields beyond library and information science, namely in documenting how people actually react to information and the process they employ in its discovery. While many technical solutions have been offered in these discussions, the author considers the more elusive social and moral dimensions which help explain why what has been described as a "crisis" continues.


Abstract. Cirrus clouds play a key role in the radiative and hydrological balance of the upper troposphere. Their correct representation in atmospheric models requires an understanding of the microscopic processes leading to ice nucleation. A key parameter in the theoretical description of ice nucleation is the activation energy, which controls the flux of water molecules from the bulk of the liquid to the solid during the early stages of ice formation. In most studies it is estimated by direct association with the bulk properties of water, typically viscosity and self-diffusivity. As the environment in the ice–liquid interface may differ from that of the bulk, this approach may introduce bias in calculated nucleation rates. In this work a theoretical model is proposed to describe the transfer of water molecules across the ice–liquid interface. Within this framework the activation energy naturally emerges from the combination of the energy required to break hydrogen bonds in the liquid, i.e., the bulk diffusion process, and the work dissipated from the molecular rearrangement of water molecules within the ice–liquid interface. The new expression is introduced into a generalized form of classical nucleation theory. Even though no nucleation rate measurements are used to fit any of the parameters of the theory the predicted nucleation rate is in good agreement with experimental results, even at temperature as low as 190 K, where it tends to be underestimated by most models. It is shown that the activation energy has a strong dependency on temperature and a weak dependency on water activity. Such dependencies are masked by thermodynamic effects at temperatures typical of homogeneous freezing of cloud droplets; however, they may affect the formation of ice in haze aerosol particles. The new model provides an independent estimation of the activation energy and the homogeneous ice nucleation rate, and it may help to improve the interpretation of experimental results and the development of parameterizations for cloud formation.


Agricultural intensification is one of the main drivers of farmland bird declines, but effects on birds may be confounded with those of climate change. Here we examine the effects of intensification and climate change on a grassland breeding wader, the Black-tailed Godwit Limosa l. limosa, in the Netherlands. Population decline has been linked to poor chick survival which, in turn, has been linked to available foraging habitat. Foraging habitat of the nidifugous chicks consists of uncut grasslands that provide cover and arthropod prey. Conservation measures such as agri-environment schemes aim to increase the availability of chick foraging habitat but have not yet been successful in halting the decline. Field observations show that since the early 1980s, farmers advanced their first seasonal mowing or grazing date by 15 days, whereas Godwits did not advance their hatching date. Ringing data indicate that between 1945 and 1975 hatching dates advanced by about 2 weeks in parallel with the advancement of median mowing dates. Surprisingly, temperature sums at median mowing and hatching dates suggest that while the agricultural advancement before 1980 was largely due to agricultural intensification, after 1980 it was largely due to climate change. Examining arthropod abundance in a range of differently managed grasslands revealed that chick food abundance was little affected but that food accessibility in intensively used tall swards may be problematic for chicks. Our results suggest that, compared with 25 years ago, nowadays (1) a much higher proportion of clutches and chicks are exposed to agricultural activities, (2) there is little foraging habitat left when chicks hatch and (3) because of climate change, the vegetation in the remaining foraging habitat is taller and denser and therefore of lower quality. This indicates that for agri-environment schemes to make a difference, they should not only be implemented in a larger percentage of the breeding area than the current maxima of 20-30% but they should also include measures that create more open, accessible swards.


In developing countries, milk is adulterated to meet demand and increase profit. Often the milk is diluted with water, and sugar, urea, and starch are added to mimic the color, consistency, and nitrogen content of the real thing. Since laboratory tests for detecting these adulterants are difficult to perform in a field setting, we developed an inexpensive, paper analytical device (MilkPAD) to detect these analytes in milk. All of the reagents, buffers, and enzymes needed to perform each test are stored in dry form in the paper. The user just needs to pipette several drops of the milk onto each reaction area, wait 40 minutes, and take a cell phone photo of the test card. The test card can colorimetrically detect a variety of starches (0.005% w/v), urea (in excess of 70 mg dL−1), and the sugars glucose and sucrose (in excess of 0.1 mM). The sensitivity and specificity of the MilkPAD is greater than 90% for detection of any of these adulterants at concentrations that are typically found in adulterated milk.


It is shown how key predictor parameters for the spatial estimation of PV yield, self
-consumption and thereby economic and social indicators can be extracted from a GIS system and introduced into a Bayesian Network model. This model endogenises the uncertainties and incorporates spatial variability inherent in these parameters. Empirical monthly and annual yield measurements obtained from over 600 PV installations have been obtained and
compared with estimated yields obtained by two key solar tools used for performance estimation in the UK – these are PVGIS and the UK Government's Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for domestic buildings. Mean bias estimates and
root mean square error estimations were obtained for each tool and the results used to construct an uncertainty distribution in PV yield prediction given key input parameters such as system rating, orientation and tilt. This uncertainty was used to furnish a probabilistic graphical model with a prior distribution for PV yield estimation. This was integrated into a Geographical Information (GIS) system furnished with roof and building stock parameters including roof attributes obtained from lidar data. Elements held in a vector layer of the GIS system can be selected and the resultant distributions of input parameters automatically fed to the model to yield a posterior distribution of
the PV yield. The model is able to propagate the yield uncertainty to other probabilistic models, including ones which predict the internal rate of return and self
-consumption. The latter is in turn predicted by empirical marginal
distributions of domestic electricity consumption. Thus with a given posterior distributions of PV yield, new posterior
distributions for the internal rate of return, self-consumption and carbon
emission savings are automatically
calculated. By integration with GIS this novel approach allows the spatial analysis of the uncertainty pertaining to representative risk factors for PV adoption in the UK, and facilitate the estimation by installers, investors, and local authorities in a manner which endogenises uncertainty.


This essay is a chapter in a forthcoming book, Progress in International Organization, which updates Professor Manley O. Hudson's 1932 book of the same title. In the introduction to his book, Hudson predicted that "when the history of our times comes to be written . . . our generation will be distinguished, above all else . . . for the progress which we have made in organizing the world for co-operation and peace." Yet Hudson's interwar generation is today best known to history for its naive appeasement of Axis aggression. The chapter first reviews how and why Hudson's generation failed to enforce international law during the 1930s against Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan, and Mussolini's Italy, and how this failure contributed to the outbreak of World War II. Then it turns to one of the greatest security challenges of our time - the proliferation of nuclear weapons - and examines how and why the international community is again failing to take the enforcement measures necessary to prevent a major calamity. The chapter posits that while great progress has been made in many areas of international organization since Hudson's book was published in 1932, there has been relatively little progress on an issue pivotal to organizing the world for peace and security: enforcing international law against dangerous rogue states. Efforts to dissuade today's most dangerous rogue states - Iran and North Korea - from developing nuclear arsenals are often as toothless as were the efforts to dissuade the Axis powers from aggression prior to World War II. The results coming out of the Security Council today are sometimes practically indistinguishable from the results that emerged from the League of Nations during the interwar period. While the interwar generation was blinded in considerable part by naive ideology, the Security Council today is being rendered ineffectual by avarice. The international community's hesitation to firmly enforce international law against Germany, Italy and Japan contributed to World War II's 60 million deaths in six years. War in this atomic age could be even deadlier. The fruits of progress in other areas of international organization once again risk being spoiled by a failure to firmly enforce international law against rogue states.


Heart may rarely be affected by primary or secondary tumors. Rarely, arterial tumor embolization may be first and/or most important issue during the course of the tumor. Most common sites of arterial tumor occlusions are common femoral and popliteal arteries.

A 77-year-old-man admitted with chest pain and cough. Thoracic computed tomography revealed a heterogenous ill-defined mass originated from left upper lobe bronchus extending and invading hilar structures. Fiberoptic bronchoscopy revealed an endobronchial lesion on the orifice of lingular bronchus. In PET/CT, increased FDG uptake of satellite lesion on upper lobe destructing the fourth rib posteriorly, and probably metastatic mass invading left ventricule of the heart were conspicuous.

![Figure][1]

Echocardiograpghy confirmed an intracardiac mobile mass, implanted to the lateral wall. On the 10th day, cyanosis of the right arm developed. It was due to right brachial artery occlusion confirmed by anjiography. Urgent embolectomy was performed and clott specimens were sampled. Histopathological examination of embolectomy material showed atypic squamous cells, thus final report was metastatic lung cancer.

Arterial embolization highlights the advanced disease, poor prognosis with significant co-morbidity. Embolectomy is often enough for symptomatic relief. This unique case illustrates the quite rare occurence of peripheric tumor embolization originated from metastatic heart disease.

 [1]: pending:yes


How does abstract structure emerge during language learning? On some accounts, children's early syntax emerges from direct generalizations from particular lexical items, while on others, syntactic structure is acquired independently and follows its own timetable. Progress on differentiating these views requires detailed developmental data. Using parental reports of vocabulary and grammar abilities, previous analyses have shown that early syntactic abstraction strongly depends on the growth of the lexicon, providing support for lexicalist and emergentist theories. Leveraging a large cross-linguistic dataset, we replicate and extend these findings, demonstrating similar patterns in each of four languages. Moreover, the power of our dataset reveals that there are measurable effects of age over and above those attributable to vocabulary size, and that these effects are greater for aspects of language ability more closely tied to syntax than morphology. These findings suggest non-lexical contributions to the growth of syntactic abstraction that all theories must address.


In this paper, the effect of grey level quantization on the ability of co-occurrence probability statistics to classify natural textures is studied. Generally, as a function of increasing grey levels, many of the statistics demonstrate a decrease in classification ability while a few maintain constant classification accuracy. None of the individual statistics show increasing classification accuracy throughout all grey levels. Correlation analysis is used to rationalize a preferred subset of statistics. The preferred statistics set (contrast, correlation, and entropy) is demonstrated to be an improvement over using single statistics or using the entire set of statistics. If the feature space dimension only allows for a single statistic, one of contrast, dissimilarity, inverse difference normalized, or inverse difference moment normalized, is recommended. Testing that compares (using all orientations separately), the average of all orientations and look direction averaging, when determining the co-occurrence features, indicates that the look direction or all orientations is preferred. The Fisher linear discriminant method is used for all classification testing. The Fisher criterion is used as a separability index to provide insight into the classification results. Testing is performed on Brodatz imagery as well as two separate SAR sea-ice data sets.


This paper is the outcome of a reflection on the MIP report 2020, a collection of information and data used to describe the scenario on youth innovation and entrepreneurship in agrifood sector in Mediterranean countries. In particular, it highlights the need to study innovation in Mediterranean regions under the lens of social and institutional innovation. It is argued that social and institutional innovation are key drivers of the development of Innovation Ecosystems. The paper discusses the main findings - and relevant case studies - of the MIP report, with a specific attention to the role of the Innovation Support Organizations. It is noted that while in the field of institutional innovation there are signs of official activity, in the field of social innovation there is no or very limited attempt to embody social innovation into national policy frameworks. However, the article identifies interesting bottom-up initiatives that may constitute the basis for new policy initiatives.