PURPOSEFUL HISPANIC-SERVING INSTITUTION IDENTITY FORMATION FOR LATINO STUDENT SUCCESS: A Conceptual Model and Plan to Create a Culture Supporting Latino Student Success at a Predominantly White Community College Planning to become a Hispanic-Serving Institution Laura Flores Cailloux Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Joe Lott, Assistant Professor, College of Education This study and practical application is intended to provide institutional guidance in the absence of direct research findings about creating an effective institutional culture at a predominantly White community college transitioning to a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Many higher education institutions in the United States are on the verge of HSI designation based on demographic shifts in student body composition, but becoming an HSI does not guarantee an institution is ready to support Latino student success in terms of equitable educational attainment (F. Contreras, Malcom, & Bensimon, 2008). Since the literature is nearly silent on institutional cultures which support Latino student success in any higher education context, this research will attempt to bridge the gap between what is known about Latina/o student retention and persistence at the community college and a conceptual model of a supportive institutional culture with the practical outcome of a plan for institutional change. Qualitative research on Latina/o student achievement at community colleges was analyzed utilizing thematic synthesis to develop a conceptual model of Latina/o community college student success. From these themes a conceptual model of institutional culture supportive of Latina/o student success is proposed as well as a planning process to facilitate rethinking the organizational culture to better support Latina/o students.


House or Face? The neural mechanisms of spatial attention are well known, unlike nonspatial attention. Baldauf and Desimone (p. 424, published online 10 April) combined several technologies to identify a fronto-temporal network in humans that mediates nonspatial object-based attention. There is a clear top-down directionality of these oscillatory interactions, establishing the inferior-frontal cortex as a key source of nonspatial attentional inputs to the inferior-temporal cortex. Surprisingly, the mechanisms for nonspatial attention are strikingly parallel to the mechanisms of spatial attention. Brain imaging reveals how the brain can selectively attend to one of two overlapping objects. How we attend to objects and their features that cannot be separated by location is not understood. We presented two temporally and spatially overlapping streams of objects, faces versus houses, and used magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to separate neuronal responses to attended and unattended objects. Attention to faces versus houses enhanced the sensory responses in the fusiform face area (FFA) and parahippocampal place area (PPA), respectively. The increases in sensory responses were accompanied by induced gamma synchrony between the inferior frontal junction, IFJ, and either FFA or PPA, depending on which object was attended. The IFJ appeared to be the driver of the synchrony, as gamma phases were advanced by 20 ms in IFJ compared to FFA or PPA. Thus, the IFJ may direct the flow of visual processing during object-based attention, at least in part through coupled oscillations with specialized areas such as FFA and PPA.


The Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS-P6), also called ResourceSat-1, was launched in a polar sun-synchronous orbit on October 17, 2003. It carries three sensors: the high-resolution Linear Imaging Self-Scanner (LISS-IV), the medium-resolution Linear Imaging Self-Scanner (LISS-III), and the Advanced Wide-Field Sensor (AWiFS). These three sensors provide images of different resolutions and coverage. To understand the absolute radiometric calibration accuracy of IRS-P6 AWiFS and LISS-III sensors, image pairs from these sensors were compared to images from the Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat-7 Enhanced TM Plus (ETM+) sensors. The approach involves calibration of surface observations based on image statistics from areas observed nearly simultaneously by the two sensors. This paper also evaluated the viability of data from these next-generation imagers for use in creating three National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) products: land cover, percent tree canopy, and percent impervious surface. Individual products were consistent with previous studies but had slightly lower overall accuracies as compared to data from the Landsat sensors.


A deeper understanding of the water‐splitting hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) mechanism during photocatalytic processes is crucial for the rational design of efficient photocatalysts. In particular, the HER mechanism promoted by multielement hybrid structures remains extremely challenging and elusive. Herein, an in situ photoelectrochemical/Raman measurement system is employed to monitor the HER mechanism of hybrid nanostructures under realistic working conditions via operando Raman spectra and linear‐sweep voltammetry curves. As a proof of concept, tunable composition transition metal dichalcogenides MoS2xSe2(1−x) nanosheets are used as a model photocatalyst to unveil the corresponding photocatalytic mechanism. The spectroscopic studies reveal that hydrogen atoms can be adsorbed to active sulfur and selenium atoms via intermediate species formed during the photocatalytic process. More importantly, the studies demonstrate that an exponential relationship exists between the number of reactive electrons and the Raman intensity of intermediate species, which can serve as a guideline to directly evaluate the HER performance in photocatalysts by comparing the Raman intensities of the intermediate species. As a simple, intuitive, and general analytical method, the designed operando Raman measurement approach provides a new tool for elucidating catalytic reaction mechanisms in a realistic and complex environment; and strategically improving H2 production performance of multielement photocatalysts.


In arid regions, an oasis plays an important role. It is nearly the only support of living and economic development for the local people. In recent years, the recession of the oasis areas appeared to be significant in Northwest China. It caused a series of environmental problems and part of the area even became the source of sandstorms. In this article, the long-term vegetation change of the Ejina Oasis, which is located in the downstream area of the Heihe River basin, was analyzed based on remote sensing data. The quantitative relationship between the runoff of the Heihe River and the vegetation change of the Ejina Oasis from 1989 to 2006 was established using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) time-series. The vegetation growth of the Ejina Oasis depends on the runoff of the Heihe River. The time lag of the impact of the runoff on the vegetation of the Ejina Oasis is 1 year. The smallest water amount that can sustain the demand of the eco-environment of the Ejina area was estimated. The result can serve as a reference for decision-making processes at the government level, finally allowing for a better allocation of water resources in the Heihe River basin.


The intracontinental Atlas Mountains of northwest Africa are prominent tectonic elements in the broader, diffuse plate boundary zone between the converging African and Eurasian plates. This study focuses on constraining the recent shortening rate across the NE-SW striking Middle Atlas Mountains, which are obliquely oriented to the NNW-SSE direction of Late Cenozoic plate convergence. In the southwestern part of the Folded Middle Atlas, fault scarps of Quaternary alluvium, including a 4 meter composite scarp and a 1 meter single event scarp, attest to recent faulting along the mountain front. Detailed topographic mapping of the scarps provides a basis for geomorphic analysis and degradation modeling. To place these active tectonic observations in a larger context, the fault and fold geometry has been assessed by completing a 12.5 km balanced cross-section. Degradation modeling results suggest the Middle Atlas Mountains are shortening at a rate of 0.03 – 0.05 mm/yr, which is lower than the geodetic estimates. This implies that shortening at a regional scale is being accommodated by an alternative mechanism such as strike-slip motion.


We explain how fluctuations of ratios can constrain and falsify the statistical model of particle production in heavy ion collisions, using $K/\pi$ fluctuations as an example. We define an observable capable of determining which statistical model, if any, governs freeze-out in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. We calculate this observable for $K/\pi$ fluctuations, and show that it should be the same for RHIC and LHC energies, as well as independent of centrality, if the Grand-Canonical statistical model is an appropriate description and chemical equilibrium applies. We describe variations of this scaling for deviations from this scenario, such as light quark chemical non-equilibrium, strange quark over-saturation and local conservation (canonical ensemble) for strange quarks. We also introduce a similar observable capable, together with the published $K^*/K$ measurement, of ascertaining if an interacting hadron gas phase governs the system between thermal and chemical freeze-out, and of ascertaining its duration and impact on hadronic chemistry.


Sr2+ induced myosin phosphorylation and stress development in both skinned and K+-depolarized, Ca2+-depleted, intact swine carotid media. Although higher concentrations of Sr2+ than Ca2+ were required for phosphorylation and stress development, the dependence of stress on phosphorylation was the same in intact tissues. K+ depolarization in the presence of 5 mM Sr2+ produced a transient in phosphorylation (53.2 +/- 5.1% at 1 min, falling to a steady-state value of 21.7 +/- 2.0%) in Ca2+-depleted tissues in which intracellular stores were refilled with Sr2+. Stress developed without a transient (T1/2 = 0.70 min) to a steady state of 89.7 +/- 2.0% of the stress induced by K+ depolarization in the presence of 1.6 mM Ca2+ (K-PSS). Cross-bridge cycling rate as measured by isotonic shortening velocity was proportional to myosin phosphorylation throughout the contraction. When intracellular stores were not refilled with Sr2+, phosphorylation rose to a sustained value of 28.8 +/- 2.7% and stress developed slowly (T1/2 = 2.9 min) to a steady state of 95.9 +/- 1.5% K-PSS-induced stress. Therefore, an initial phosphorylation transient induced by intracellular Sr2+ release only accelerated stress development without significant effects on steady-state stress or phosphorylation (as was true for Ca2+- induced responses). We concluded that Sr2+ substitutes for Ca2+ in phosphorylation and regulation of the latch state in the swine carotid media.


The city of Honolulu, Hawaii is currently planning and developing a new rail transit system. While Honolulu has supportive density and topography for rail transit, questions remain about its ability to effectively integrate urban design and accessibility across the system. Every transit trip begins and ends with a walking trip from origins and to destinations: transportation planning must account for pedestrian safety, comfort, and access. Ildefons Cerda's 19th century utopian plan for Barcelona's Eixample district produced a renowned, livable urban form. The Eixample, with its well-integrated rail transit, serves as a model of urban design, land use, transportation planning, and pedestrian-scaled streets working in synergy to produce accessibility. This study discusses the urban form of Honolulu and the history and planning of its new rail transit system. Then it reviews the history of Cerda's plan for the Eixample and discusses its urban form and performance today. Finally it draws several lessons from Barcelona's urban design, accessibility, and rail transit planning and critically discusses their applicability to policy and design in Honolulu. This discussion is situated within wider debates around livable cities and social justice as it contributes several form and design lessons to the livability and accessibility literature while identifying potential concerns with privatization and displacement.


In this paper, we describe the problem of recommending conference sessions to attendees and show how novel extensions to traditional model-based recommender systems, as suggested in Adomavicius and Tuzhilin [CHECK END OF SENTENCE], can address this problem. We introduce Recommendation Engine by CONjoint Decomposition of ITems and USers (RECONDITUS)-a technique that is an extension of preference-based recommender systems to recommend items from a new disjoint set to users from a new disjoint set. The assumption being that preferences exhibited by users with known usage behavior (e.g., past conference session attendance), which can be abstracted by projections of user and item matrices, will be similar to ones of new (different) users where the basic environment and item domain are the same (e.g., new conference). RECONDITUS requires no item ratings, but operates on observed user behavior such as past conference session attendance. The RECONDITUS paradigm consists of projections of both user and item data, and the learning of relationships in projected space. Once established, the relationships enable predicting new relationships and provide associated recommendations. The approach can encompass several traditional data mining problems where both clustering and prediction are necessary. RECONDITUS has been evaluated using data from the Oracle OpenWorld conference.


The improvement and further development of a laboratory catchment and rainfall simulator is described. The rainfall simulator enabled the reproduction of rainfall of any intensity between 0 and 120mm/hr, with properties similar to those of natural rainfall. The rainfall simulator was subsequently linked to a process control computer, which could control the apparatus to produce either a single or a series of rainstorms. Storms with uniform or varying rainfall intensities could be simulated, with the resulting runoff and percolation being measured and then-recorded by the computer. A description is given of the hardware and computer programmes which were developed to operate the equipment. An experimental programme was conducted on the apparatus to examine the relationships between intensity, runoff and infiltration, and other hydrological properties of a catchment. Particular attention was given to a soil's infiltration capacity, which was found to vary with rainfall intensity. This lid to the derivstion of an infiltration equation in which rainfall intensity is a variable. A study of the rate of recovery of a soil's infiltration capacity enabled an empirical formula to be established which enables a soil's infiltration capacity to be determined at a time after rainfall has ceased.


Four methods for measuring quantities of 12 plant-available nutrients were compared using three sandy soils in a series of three experiments. Three of the methods use different ion-exchange resin forms—bags, capsules, and membranes—and the fourth was conventional chemical extraction. The first experiment compared nutrient extraction data from a medium of sand saturated with a nutrient solution. The second and third experiments used Nakai and Sheppard series soils from Canyonlands National Park, which are relatively high in soil carbonates. The second experiment compared nutrient extraction data provided by the four methods from soils equilibrated at two temperatures, "warm" and "cold." The third experiment extracted nutrients from the same soils in a field equilibration. Our results show that the four extraction techniques are not comparable. This conclusion is due to differences among the methods in the net quantities of nutrients extracted from equivalent soil volumes, in the proportional representation of nutrients within similar soils and treatments, in the measurement of nutrients that were added in known quantities, and even in the order of nutrients ranked by net abundance. We attribute the disparities in nutrient measurement among the different resin forms to interacting effects of the inherent differences in resin exchange capacity, differences among nutrients in their resin affinities, and possibly the relatively short equilibration time for laboratory trials. One constraint for measuring carbonate-related nutrients in high-carbonate soils is the conventional ammonium acetate extraction method, which we suspect of dissolving fine CaCO3 particles that are more abundant in Nakai series soils, resulting in erroneously high Ca2+ estimates. For study of plant-available nutrients, it is important to identify the nutrients of foremost interest and understand differences in their resin sorption dynamics to determine the most appropriate extraction method.


This paper presents the preliminary results of research on the Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian pottery corpus from the fort of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham, located 300 km west of Alexandria within ancient Libya (Tjemeh). It focuses on defining typical shapes and characteristics of the assemblage, as well as investigating its possible origins. It presents the results of a portable X-ray fluorescence analysis of the Egyptian pottery and concludes that approximately 44% of the Egyptian-style pottery is of non-Nilotic origin, most likely locally sourced. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v09i1_nielsen


Due to increasing electrical energy power supply, thermal efficiency and the desire to reduce CO2 emissions, creep-resistant high chromium steels are becoming widely developed and applied for components of electric power plants under high pressure at high temperature. The limited design factors such as strain histories, damage evolution and lifetime are important factors when creating the components of a power plant. Obtaining a long-term (100,000h, over 11 years) creep data is time consuming and costly, hence long-term creep data is very limited, and the extrapolation using the conventional empirical methods may not be reliable due to limited data (Chen et al., 2011; Shrestha et al., 2013; Ghosh et al., 2013). To design against failures, creep damage constitutive equations have the advantage of traceability from the physics based constitutive equation to the fundamental microstructural and damage behaviour. Thus, creep modelling constitutive equations for materials of the critical components of, for example, power plants and other safety critical systems, are a key issue in the research of materials.

In the past decade, a range of creep damage constitutive equations have been developed to describe creep damage behaviour for high chromium steel, however, some models are only based on creep deformation (creep microstructural degradation) and are not really concerned with cavitation damage, which is a dominant factor in creep rupture; most of them are proposed based on high stress levels of high chromium steel and extended to a low stress level, the modelling results fail to explore the phenomenon of stress breakdown. Besides, the cavitation damage equations were developed on experimental data of pure metal and super alloy, the fundamental nature of the evolution of creep cavitation damage is still unclear and necessary to solve for high chromium steel. Thus, the aim of this research project was to develop a novel creep damage constitutive equation for high chromium steel based on the mechanism of cavitation damage under a wide range of stress levels.

This research made contributions to the specialised knowledge on the following three aspects. Firstly, a modified hyperbolic sine law, which describes the relationship between minimum creep strain and applied stress, was applied to high chromium steel. Through which we found that the modelling results fitted better with published experimental data by NIMS in comparison with conventional functions such as power law, hyperbolic sine law and linear power law. The other two aspects of innovation in the development of creep damage constitutive equation had been achieved. Secondly, using the quantitatively analysed results of the cavity size distribution along grain boundary by the superior 3D technology of X-ray micro-tomography, a novel creep cavitation damage equation was developed and applied to describe the evolution of cavity along grain boundary in the creep process for high chromium steel. Thirdly, the novel creep damage constitutive equations, that coupled appropriate creep deformation mechanisms with the new cavitation damage equation, were successfully applied to high chromium steel under a wide range of stress level according to comparisons made between the modelling results of novel creep damage constitutive equations, classic uniaxial KRH constitutive equations and experimental data for P91 steel at 600℃ and also applied to P91 steel at 625℃.


New York City is a "traditional" destination for Caribbean immigrants, with the earliest influx occurring at the turn of the twentieth century (Bogen, 1987; Bryce- Laporte, 1979; Conway, 1989; Richardson 1989). Notably, the post 1965 era has witnessed remarkable growth of Caribbean enclave communities in New York City, with several influxes from the region among the largest of the "Newest New Yorkers" (NYC Department of City Planning, 1992; 1996). In addition, other Latin American immigrant groups have also viewed New York City as an attractive gateway, but their experiences are less well documented. This World City has also undergone considerable economic restructuring in the last twenty years. The dramatic effects of such a fundamental transformation should be reflected in the immigration patterns, and the adjustments natives and immigrants made during the cyclical changes in fortune of the regional economic landscape (Waldinger, 1992; Wright and Ellis, 1996).


Artikli eesmark on jalgida regilaulu kui Eesti folkloristika paraadžanri kaekaiku Eesti sovetiseerimise ajajargul 1940.–1950. aastatel ja selle kaudu eesti folkloristide kohandumisi muutuva teaduspoliitikaga. Kuna sojajargset Eestit voib lugeda koloniseerituks Noukogude Liidu poolt, tuvastatakse sotskolonialismi tunnuseid Eesti sojajargses folkloristikas. Vaatluse alla voetakse regilaulu muutuv positsioon ametlikus retseptsioonis ning folkloristlikel valitoodel. Kuna noukogude ajajarku esitatakse sageli eesti rahvakultuuri oitseajana, vaadeldakse lahemalt rahvaloomingu viljelemist harrastajate ja professionaalsete kunstnike tasemel, rahvusliku vormi sotsialistliku sisuga taitmist. The purpose of the paper is to follow how Estonian folklorists adapted changing science policy in the 1940s and 1950s, and how an elite genre of the Estonian folklore – regilaul –  was treated in the course of the Sovietization of Estonian humanities and cultural life. There are several distinctive features of the Soviet colonization in the post-war Estonian folkloristics. First, an extensive reform of the organization of the academic institutions took place in annexed Estonia, following the example of organizational structures in Soviet Russia's Academy of Sciences. The most specific feature of the Soviet colonialism was the extremely strong dependence of the peripheries on the colonial centre. Academic life in Estonia was guided by the resolutions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which were observed and monitored closely by local authorities at the plenary meetings of the Estonian Communist Party and further discussed at the meetings of local academic institutions. These discussions were followed by waves of reassessments, (self) criticism and repressions. Folklorists from the Baltic republics were supervised and "assisted" by Russian folklorists in terms of the methods of the Soviet folkloristics at the union-wide conferences held in Moscow, the Soviet colonial centre. Direct models were taken over to reorganize folkloristic fieldwork and research in the spirit of the new ideology. The third specific feature of the Soviet colonialism was the adaption of Soviet pidgin, colonial discourse, which proliferated especially during the last years of the Stalinist era, from 1948 to 1953. Research in any discipline was limited by the Marxist method; any deflection in it was considered renegade and therefore punishable. In Estonian folkloristics, however, the mastering of the Marxist method comprised largely of clever usage of the colonists' slogans and formulae, such as "bourgeois-nationalist", "formalism", "cosmopolitanism" versus "internationalism", "objectivism", and "anti-patriotic" etc. Oft-repeated labels carried no actual meaning; far from any rationale, they were rather formulaic weapons of fighting with enemies, tools of revaluing and (self) criticism. In the end of the 1950s, the use of most grievous lexis declined, but in general, the Soviet discourse was adapted. The altering position of regilaul in the folkloristic writings and fieldwork is discussed in the paper. The last years of the Stalinism, the hierarchy of the folklore genres was turned upside down and classical folklore genres were marginalized because mainstream Soviet folkloristics were focused on contemporary "Soviet folklore" and amateur cultural activities. Estonian folklorists adapted the new reality expeditiously, implementing a sort of mimicry. Fieldwork was carried on in areas with vivid traditional culture, such as Setumaa and Kihnu Island, using the collection of Soviet folklore as pretext. Folklorists did not change their collecting methods and continued to collect traditional folklore genres. Examples of contemporary "folk creations" were documented randomly and unsystematically; all the more were these findings proudly brought before the public at the union-wide forums and in the local press. In these years, curiosa like eulogies to the Lenin and Stalin, collective farms and the Soviet Army in the form of regilaul were documented. After the death of Stalin, Estonian folklorists returned to the classical folklore genres, though overemphasizing the motifs of "class struggle" and "heroism of the working crowds" in the old oral poetry. Due to the existing  stereotypes regarding favouring ethnic minorities and folk culture under the Soviet regime,  the paper takes a closer look to the use of folklore or/and folk creations at both the amateur and professional level of cultural activities. Although Soviet propaganda hailed the blossoming of the folk cultural activities, not all branches of the folk culture were allowed to blossom. Certainly, "folk" and "national" cannot be seen as synonyms. The concept of folklore was blurred because of the parallel concept of folk creations, which included non-traditional cultural activities. Folklorists were forced to deal with amateur cultural activities. In the professional level, the slogan of "socialist content in national form" marked deterioration, simplification and impoverishment regarding means of artistic expression. Instead of folklore pieces, the national epic "Kalevipoeg" was used as an exemplary to the professional artistic creations. Because of sophisticated stylistic features and lyricist mood of regilaul , conflicting to the Soviet aesthetics, becoming inspired by the regilaul tradition was out of the question for artists of the Stalinist era. Enforced simplicity and conservatism caused innovation in literary and musical creations in 1960s, broadening the use of regilaul in professional culture.


In child welfare, the difference we can make as lawyers for parents, children, and the state, and as judges, is to prevent children from entering foster care unnecessarily. And we can end a child's stay in foster care as quickly as possible. To do that, we have to fight against a powerful narrative of child welfare and against the accepted "top-down" paradigm of legal services.In this essay, Professor Fraidin suggests that we can achieve our goals of limiting entries to foster care and speeding exits from it by looking for the strengths of the people involved in our cases, rather than their weaknesses. We can look for what they can do, rather than what they can't. We can focus on their abilities, not the shortcomings over which we often obsess — like drug addiction, impatience, illiteracy, poverty. We can start from a premise that families involved with child welfare are bundles of assets, rather than collections of problems. If we can do all this, we can help families build, rather than watch them fall.


A series of experiments were undertaken to investigate the effect of ionic strength and the concentration of free sodium ions in the resin gel on the performance of the diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT) technique. When the free sodium ion concentration in the resin gel was estimated by the time-dependent release into solution, it agreed with a previous estimate. However, equilibration with different volumes of water gave a higher value, suggesting that inherent averaging in the time-dependent release method underestimates the free concentration. DGT measurements of Cu and Cd were made over a wide range of ionic strengths (from 3 μmol l−1 to 0.8 mol l−1). For all the ionic strengths above 100 μmol l−1 there was no significant difference between measurements made by DGT and measurements made directly on the solution using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Below 100 μmol l−1 results were erratic. They did not comply with a theory that predicts high results for DGT based on enhancement of the diffusion coefficient of trace metal cations by counter diffusion of sodium ions. When Cd in solutions with a range of ionic strengths was measured by DGT there was no difference whether the resin gels were in Na or Ca form. Rather than counter diffusion of Na ions, it is suggested that the spurious behaviour at low ionic strength is due to interactions of the trace metals with the diffusion gel when there are insufficient excess cations present.


The mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) plays an essential role in regulating fluid and electrolyte homeostasis. Amongst hematopoietic cells, also macrophages express the MR but, unlike kidney or colon, they do not co-express the enzyme 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type II (11β-HSDII). Consequently, glucocorticoids (GC) in macrophages are able not only to activate the GC receptor (GR) but also the MR, and the balance between both effects determines macrophage fate. It had been hypothesized that the absence of the MR induces polarization towards alternatively activated macrophages (AAM), which are known to have anti-inflammatory and wound-healing features. The aim of this study was to obtain further insight into the role of the MR in macrophage polarization and its effects on neuroinflammation in vivo.
This work shows that MR knockout macrophages are skewed towards an AAM phenotype. However, these AAMs have different characteristics compared to those induced by IL-4 and IL-13. In vitro, MR knockout macrophages are characterized by reduced iNOS and increase in Arginase1 expression. This is supported by in vivo results obtained by inducing experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) mimicking multiple sclerosis (MS) in MRlysMcre and MRflox/flox mice. In this disease model, the mutant mice suffer significantly less from EAE than control mice. Macrophages both from the spinal cord and the peritoneal cavity of diseased MRlysMcre mice show a polarization towards the AAM phenotype. Histological analysis of MRlysMcre mice suffering from EAE confirmed that the pathophysiological features were less severe compared to control mice. Thus, ablation of the MR in macrophages induces their polarization towards AAM thereby ameliorating EAE.
Since MR disruption from early development on may induce compensatory mechanisms, new transgenic mice should be developed allowing for an inducible and reversible deletion of the MR in the hematopoietic system. To this end lentiviral vectors for the inactivation of the MR by RNA interference were successfully developed and tested. They were produced at high titers, injected into fertilized mouse oocytes and transgenic offspring was identified that had integrated the new vector. In the future, this new model should become instrumental in analyzing the role of the MR in the control of the immune system.


The current framework for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of water quality in community drinking water supplies consists of sequential rules for either single contaminants or small groups of similar contaminants. For both substantive and pragmatic reasons, promulgating less frequent rules for larger contaminant classes may be desirable. Such a change would require the expansion of existing regulatory evaluation technologies to account for joint occurrence distributions of the contaminants. This paper extends existing methods for modeling the distributions of a single contaminant in community water system source waters to the simultaneous consideration of multiple contaminants. It considers alternatives for addressing the implementation difficulties inherent in the multivariate setting, providing solutions of general methodological interest. Through case studies involving arsenic, sulfate, magnesium and calcium, it shows how jointly modeling contaminants provides better fit and predictive power than marginal models, and emphasizes how inferences about critical regulatory quantities can be improved through joint modeling. The methods presented in this paper make significant progress in redressing several shortcomings of existing analyses.


Abstract Between 2008 and 2010, academics in five European countries collaborated on an EU-funded project, Training Inter-cultural and Bilingual Competences in Health and Social Care (TRICC). Among TRICC's aims was to deepen understanding of informal interpreting through eliciting the perspectives of interpreters themselves. To identify commonalities and differences in the experiences, attitudes and practices of informal interpreters in distinct settings, the Dutch and Turkish partners interviewed 15 young migrant adults in the Netherlands and 15 Kurdish speakers in Istanbul respectively, asking them about emotional and technical aspects of interpreting, and about their expectations and roles, communicative challenges and actions. Thematic analysis of the 30 interviews corroborated the findings of previous research – namely, that informal interpreters are highly visible, use diverse communicative strategies, adopt various roles, and occasionally speak as primary interlocutors. Noticeable differences between the two sets of interpreters included their attitudes towards interpreting and their preferences for informal versus professional interpreting, both of which can be better understood in the light of the cultural backgrounds of the interpreters and the institutional and political frameworks within which they interpret. This comparative study appears to support Angelelli 's (2004a) claim that interpreted events are heavily influenced by socio-political and cultural contexts.


The Safeguarding Children Research Initiative (Davies & Ward, 2012) was a
programme of fifteen studies commissioned by the Department of Health and what is
now the Department for Education, each of which explored a different aspect of
safeguarding children. This paper brings together the findings of these studies to explore the types of strategies that have been shown to promote positive long-term outcomes for children and young people at risk of maltreatment. The authors ighlight the potential harm caused to children when they are exposed to maltreatment and demonstrate the range of interventions that have been developed to improve their long-term outcomes. The paper provides examples of universal, targeted and intensive services with a strong
evidence base for success. The most effective intensive interventions are found to be those that prevent the occurrence or re-occurrence of altreatment, address the underlying factors associated with maltreatment and the various stages associated with the process of change. The authors also examine the supplementary issues practitioners need to be aware of when considering the choice of intervention, including some of the obstacles to providing support, such as the nature of the evidence base, the extent to
which different agencies work together to provide services for vulnerable children and families, the availability of resources and the ways in which children and families move between different parts of the child welfare system. If practitioners are to make best use of the available interventions, it is important that they select those underpinned by robust evidence showing that positive outcomes have been achieved for families in similar circumstances


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In this paper the dynamics of a single machine connected to infinite bus power system is analyzed. Such analysis requires a certain level of system modeling. The main system components models are the synchronous machine, excitation system and the Power System Stabilizer. The Matlab/Simulink is used as a programming tool to analyze the system performance. According to the system performance a proper design for the Power System Stabilizer (PSS) using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is carried out. Then the designed PSS is implemented in the model and the dynamic system response is analyzed. Since the simulation results without the PSS showed unacceptable system response, the system response with the PSS has improved and the PSS succeeded to stabilize an unstable system.


Behavior trees have become increasingly popular as an action selection mechanism for non-player characters in games. A different approach to the action selection problem is represented by emotional behavior networks. They are a dynamic, goal-driven decision-making model, which focuses on using emotions for decision making, incorporating various psychological theories concerning emotions. In this paper, we compare behavior trees to emotional behavior networks from a design and functionality point of view.


This comprehensive set includes thorough examinations of the QurA!n in Wherry's essential four volume commentary. There is also an excellent overview of Islam by the well known scholar Edward Sell, The Faith of Islam which examines the history of Islam, the different forms of Islam and religious practice. This set will prove to be an excellent historical resource for anyone interested in western scholarship of Islamic doctrine, and the writings in the QurA!n


AIMS
Cardiac troponin (cTn) assays with improved sensitivity are increasingly utilized for the assessment of patients admitted because of suspected acute coronary syndrome (ACS). However, data on the clinical consequences of the implementation of such assays are limited.

METHODS AND RESULTS
In a retrospective register-based study (37 710 coronary care unit admissions; SWEDEHEART registry), we compared the case mix, the use of diagnostic procedures, treatments, and 1-year all-cause mortality 1 year before the implementation of a cTn assay with improved sensitivity (study period 1) and 1 year thereafter (study period 2). During study period 2, more at-risk patients were admitted and more patients had cTn levels above the myocardial infarction cut-off (ACS patients +13.1%; non-ACS patients +160.1%). cTn levels above this cut-off exhibited stronger associations with mortality risk in study period 2 (adjusted HR 4.45 [95% confidence interval, CI, 3.36-5.89]) compared with period 1 (adjusted HR 2.43 [95% CI 2.11-2.80]), similar as for the cTn ratio relative to the respective 99th percentile. While there was no multivariable-adjusted increase in the use of diagnostic procedures, significant trends towards more differentiated treatment depending on the cause of cTn elevation, i.e. ACS or non-ACS, were noted.

CONCLUSIONS
The implementation of a cTn assay with improved sensitivity was associated with an increase in the number of patients who due to their cTn-status were identified as suitable for beneficial therapies. There was no inappropriate increase in hospital resource utilization. As such, cTn assays with improved sensitivity provide an opportunity to improve the clinical management of patients with suspected ACS.


The Indo-Pacific lionfishes (Pterois volitans [Linnaeus, 1758] and P. miles [Bennett, 1828]: Family Scorpaenidae) are the first nonnative marine fishes to establish in the Western North Atlantic/Caribbean region. The chronology of the invasion was reported last year (Schofield 2009) using records from the US Geological Survey's Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database. This article provides an update of lionfish geographic spread (as of October 2010) and predictions of future range.


Recognizing the need to improve the quality of financial disclosure by private sector firms in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Inter-American Development Bank sponsored a conference in September 29-30, 1997 entitled Financial Disclosure and the Development of Financial Markets: The Impact of the Adoption of International Accounting Standards and Auditing Practices, held at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The conference provided information on recent agreements regarding international accounting standards and was intended to generate support for the adoption of highquality accounting and auditing standards by countries of the region. This volume includes a selection of the papers commissioned for the conference and it forms part of the program to implement the overall capital and financial market development strategy. Included in the Book are case studies of Mexico, Venezuela, and a review of international accounting standards.


The tutorial aims to provide the IR researchers with an understanding of how the patent system works, the challenges that patent searchers face in using the existing tools and in adopting new methods developed in academia.
 At the same time, the tutorial will inform the IR researcher about the unique opportunities that the patent domain provides: a large amount of multi-lingual and multi-modal documents, the widest possible span of covered domains, a highly annotated corpus and, very importantly, relevance judgements created by experts in the fields and recorded electronically in the documents.
 The combination of these two objectives leads to the main purpose of the tutorial: to create awareness and to encourage more emphasis on the patent domain in the IR community. Table 1 provides details on how the tutorial covers the topics of the SIGIR conference.


The temporal and spectral features of the acoustic signatures of aircraft and highway vehicles are used to train two types of neural networks. The detection and classification performances of the networks are then evaluated using an independent set of data. The types of networks evaluated are (i) feedforward with backpropagation training, and (ii) probabilistic nets with maximum‐likelihood training. The results demonstrate accurate classification as to type of vehicle during aircraft takeoff or under load conditions for heavy trucks, depending on the signal‐to‐noise ratio. Neural nets appear to offer a promising vehicle classifier for monitoring airport and highway traffic for compliance with noise regulations.


Crack tips in silica glass in moist atmosphere are filled with an equilibrium liquid condensation of a few hundred nanometers length. Not only does this local environment affect the chemistry of slow crack propagation by stress corrosion, but it also has an important mechanical effect due to its highly negative Laplace pressure. The present article presents an original technique for measuring the physical properties of the liquid condensation in terms of the Laplace pressure and critical condensation distance. This is achieved by combining in situ atomic force microscopy measurements of the condensate length and optical determination of the crack closure threshold in a double cleavage drilled compression specimen.


Evaluating fatigue and fatigability's association with physical function is of public health importance because among the older population almost 38.7% report one or more disabilities. Fatigue is also one of the most commonly reported reasons (65.5 episodes per 100 person-months) for restricted activity among community-dwelling older adults. Past research has only examined the relationship between fatigue and physical function, generally showing positive associations. However, fatigability may be a more useful concept when examining whether fatigue can predict physical function because it classifies fatigue in relation to a specific activity of fixed intensity making it a more objective measurement. Measuring perceived fatigability in place of physical activity may be a cost effective and less time consuming option when studying decline in physical function in older adults. Reducing fatigability and increasing physical activity can also potentially delay older adults entering the disablement pathway and improve their quality of life. A literature review highlighting major studies in the field of fatigue and fatigability may shed light on the gap in literature concerning the effects of fatigue on adverse health outcomes. This work is of public health importance as the symptom of fatigue is highly prevalent in older adult populations and if let unaccounted for can result in disability and worsened quality of life.


As organizations face a loss of people due to retirement, resignation, or disability, leaders are paying more attention to their talent management strategies, from grooming internal successors to aggressively recruiting from their competitors. The need is most acute in technical and other 'knowledge' areas, where the loss of a particular skill set demands an equally focused response. "Invaluable Knowledge" clarifies the unique (and urgent) issues of attracting, developing, retaining, and transferring the knowledge of IT professionals, engineers, accountants, analysts, and other specialists. The book's structure follows a typical talent cycle, from identifying recruitment challenges, to hiring and training top talent, to building career development initiatives, and finally, to laying the groundwork for the next generation. "Invaluable Knowledge" makes an indisputable case for the importance of this specific facet of talent management, and offers practical examples, repeatable processes, and a multitude of specific tips to help any organization's talent strategists create seamless transitions and maintain critical knowledge functions indefinitely.


Ley determinant (Fuc alpha 1----2Gal beta 1----4[Fuc alpha 1---- 3]GlcNAc beta 1----R) defined by mAb BM-1 is highly expressed in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected T cell lines and in CD3+ peripheral mature T cells of patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) or with AIDS-related complex (ARC). Ley expression increased greatly in the CD3+ population in the advanced stage of AIDS when the CD4+ population decreased greatly. Six other carbohydrate antigens tested by their respective mAbs were not detected in these same cells. None of the carbohydrate antigens tested by the seven mAbs used in this study were found in noninfected T cell lines and in normal peripheral blood lymphocytes.


In the midst of dramatic corruption scandals, South American countries have passed some of the most noteworthy anticorruption legislation in the region's history. This Article examines the wave of anticorruption reforms and how international law, and in particular anticorruption treaties, has had an important influence on the content of these reforms. Specifically, this Article argues that that the OECD Anti-Bribery Working Group has acted as a political entrepreneur, advocating for specific and meaningful reforms. The influence of international law was critical in ensuring that the reforms adopted during these corruption scandals were robust and that the opportunity presented by these scandals was not lost. This Article also makes several important contributions to the growing field of anticorruption law. First, it applies a theory of government decision-making during crises to the South American corruption crisis. Drawing on theories of reform during financial crises, this Article explains how corruption crises present unique opportunities for popular reforms to take hold. Second, this Article discusses how political entrepreneurs, including the international bodies responsible for implementing anticorruption treaties, can use international law and global standards to promote meaningful reforms. Third, this Article traces recent anticorruption reforms in multiple South American countries to illustrate these processes in action. This Article illustrates how countries that were members of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention responded systematically differently to corruption crises than non-member countries. Finally, this Article demonstrates how interwoven international and national law have become in the anticorruption field. International law not only has influence by providing global rules, but also by offering credible policy recommendations in times of national crisis.


Unsupervised learning approaches, such as Sparse Partial Least Squares (SPLS), may provide useful insights into the brain mechanisms by finding relationships between two sets of variables (i.e. Views) from the same subjects. The algorithm outputs two sets of paired weight vectors, where each pair expresses an "effect" between both views. However, each effect can be described by a different number of variables. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to find multivariate associations between combinations of clinical/behavioural variables and brain voxels/regions which provides an unique solution with different levels of sparsity per weight vector pair. The effects described by the weight vector pairs are ranked by how much data covariance they explain. The proposed method was able to find statistically significant effects or relationships in a dementia dataset between clinical/demographic information and brain scans. Its adaptive nature allowed not only to determine an optimal sparse solution, but also provided the flexibility to select the adequate number of clinical/demographic variables and voxels to describe each effect, which enabled it to distinguish the effects associated with age from the ones associated with dementia.


New to English law? Need to know how rules are made, interpreted and applied? This popular and well-established textbook will show you how. It simplifies legal method by combining examples with an account of rules in general: the who, what, why and how of interpretation. Starting with standpoint and context, it identifies factors that give rise to doubts about the interpretation of a rule and recommends a systematic approach to analysing those factors. Questions and exercises integrated in the text and on the accompanying website will help you to develop skills in reading, interpreting and arguing about legal and other rules. The text is fully updated on developments in the legislative process and the judicial interpretation of statutes and precedent. It includes a new chapter on 'The European Dimension' reflecting the changes brought about by the Human Rights Act 1998.


Ten healthy male and seven female volunteers were exposed to dry heat (in a Finnish sauna 80 degrees C) 1 h twice a day for 7 days. The levels of ACTH in plasma, cortisol, TSH, thyroid hormones, testosterone, gonadotropins, prolactin and GH in serum and urinary excretion of catecholamines were determined before the experiment, and on the first, third and seventh days. Females participated only in prolactin studies. During the experiments there were no statistically significant changes in serum thyroid hormones, TSH, testosterone, FSH and LH levels. Serum cortisol and plasma ACTH decreased and urinary catecholamine increased slightly at the end of the experiment (P less than 0.05). Serum GH and prolactin in males exhibited 16- and 2.3-fold increases (P less than 0.01), respectively. In females serum prolactin rose over four-fold (P less than 0.01). The GH rise in response to hyperthermia declined after the third day but prolactin remained elevated at the end of the experiments in males. The release of prolactin in females was also high and may be associated with the transient amenorrhoea that occurred in five out of seven subjects after the experiment. The increased release of prolactin and perhaps that of GH may be associated to the heat-exposure-induced dehydration.


Markov decision processes (MDPs) are often used for modelling distributed systems with probabilistic failure or randomisation. We consider the problem of model repair for MDPs defined as follows: if the MDP fails to satisfy a property, we aim to find new values for the transition probabilities so that the property is guaranteed to hold, while at the same time the cost of repair is minimised. Because solving the MDP repair problem exactly is infeasible, in this paper we focus on approximate solution methods. We first formulate a region-based approach, which yields an interval in which the minimal repair cost is contained. As an alternative, we also consider sampling based approaches, which are faster but unable to provide lower bounds on the repair cost. We have integrated both methods into the probabilistic model checker PRISM and demonstrated their usefulness in practice using a computer virus case study.


Cell wall recalcitrance is a major constraint for the exploitation of lignocellulosic biomass as renewable resource for energy and bio-based products. Transcriptional regulators of the lignin biosynthetic pathway represent promising targets for tailoring lignin content and composition in plant secondary cell walls. A wealth of research in model organisms has revealed that transcriptional regulation of secondary cell wall formation is orchestrated by a hierarchical transcription factor (TF) network with NAC TFs as master regulators and MYB factors in the lower tier regulators. However, knowledge about the transcriptional regulation of lignin biosynthesis in lignocellulosic feedstocks, such as Miscanthus, is limited. Here, we characterized two Miscanthus MYB TFs, MsSCM1 and MsMYB103, and compared their transcriptional impact with that of the master regulator MsSND1. In Miscanthus leaves MsSCM1 and MsMYB103 are expressed at growth stages associated with lignification. Ectopic expression of MsSCM1 and MsMYB103 in tobacco leaves was sufficient to trigger secondary cell wall deposition with distinct sugar and lignin composition. Moreover, RNA-seq analysis revealed that the transcriptional responses to MsSCM1 and MsMYB103 overexpression showed extensive overlap with the response to MsSND1, but were distinct from each other, underscoring the inherent complexity of secondary cell wall formation. Together, MsSCM1 and MsMYB103 represent interesting targets for manipulations of lignin content and composition in Miscanthus towards tailored biomass.


This study explores the feasib0ility of implementing the curriculum and action-planning components of the HealthKick (HK) intervention in eight low-resourced schools in the Western Cape, South Africa. Process evaluation comprising workshops and personal interactions with teachers and principals were followed up with semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, along with a questionnaire and evaluation sheet, during three implementation phases. Since promoting healthy habits during the early formative years is of key importance, the research team actively intervened to ensure successful implementation of the curriculum component. Time constraints, teachers' heavy workload, and their reluctance to become involved in non-compulsory activities, were the main reasons for non-compliance in using the curriculum document. Furthermore, the priorities of the teachers were not necessarily those of the researchers. However, findings indicate that with an appropriate introduction and continued interaction and support, the integration of specific healthy lifestyle outcomes into a curriculum can be sustainable if teachers are well informed and motivated. Key words: action-planning process; curriculum intervention; healthy lifestyle; nutrition; physical activity; primary school


An inveterate notebook keeper, Northrop Frye continually jotted down his ideas and thoughts as he worked through the complex schemes of his criticism. Volumes 5 and 6 of the Collected Works are the notebooks that he kept while writing his two final books, "Words with Power" and "The Double Vision". They provide a record of what he was reading and thinking as he struggled with the implications of those projects. In a sense they are the workshops out of which the books were constructed. While focusing on the works-in-progress, the 3684 entries presented here range over diverse territory, never failing to surprise, delight, and provoke. In these notebooks, for instance, we find comments triggered by a detective story Frye is reading, a lecture he has to prepare, a glance at the books on his shelves, a quotation he remembers, a letter received, or the memory of a trip. In many respects, the notebooks reveal a Frye who is quite different from the critic who made his reputation with "Fearful Symmetry" and "Anatomy of Criticism", displaying aspects of his personality and thought that are not apparent in his books and essays. The notebooks show us the unbuttoned Frye, a complex man capable of both spiritual transcendence and hard-headed pragmatism. Here, for instance, his criticism of Catholicism is far more acerbic than in anything he published. Likewise, his rejection of both Marxist and feminist ideology is far more pointed than elsewhere. These two volumes include seven of Frye's handwritten notebooks and five collections of his typed notebooks - all previously unpublished. The material is the record of an extraordinary intellectual odyssey, an odyssey that is, at its base, deeply spiritual.


It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from the work. All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. Copyright and IPR is retained by the creators or other copyright holders. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the End User Agreement .


This paper proposes an agent-based current differential relay for use with a communication network. Agents are software processes capable of searching for information in networks, interacting with pieces of equipment, and performing tasks on behalf of their owners (relays). Results illustrating the performance of the agent-based differential method proposed acting within a communication structure are presented for different traffic conditions. These results also show that a dedicated utility Intranet is a viable and recommended option as a communication media for the proposed scheme.


This paper reviews alternative methods of evaluating the effectiveness of investments in urban stormwater quality improvement. Experience in the related area of control of dry-weather flows is presented. Results indicate that no single measure of performance or effectiveness has emerged. Primary reliance is still placed on specifying a required level of treatment. Even with proven treatment technology and relatively uniform influent, the effluent variability is similar to urban runoff. Next, methods of risk assessment are presented from the perspective of their potential applicability to evaluating urban runoff control programs. Interest in benefit-cost analysis, cost-effectiveness, and cost-risk analysis has been rekindled in the 1980's due to concern over the enormous cost of control programs.


Abstract Recent studies have emphasized that faunal change is typically brief and most commonly occurs at sequence boundaries and major flooding surfaces. The Upper Ordovician of the Cincinnati, Ohio, region records a major biotic invasion in the Richmondian Stage, which offers an opportunity to test these generalizations and to understand how episodes of faunal change are reflected in the structure of ecological gradients. The early Cincinnatian (C1–early C4 depositional sequences) displays two relatively stable faunal gradients, with the primary gradient reflecting onshore-offshore setting and the secondary gradient reflecting substrate consistency. During the mid-C4 sequence, dominant taxa of the shallow subtidal are extirpated, while deep subtidal taxa expand into those habitats, leading to a loss of cross-shelf faunal differentiation. This faunal breakdown is accompanied into the mid-C5 by a series of ecological epiboles, indicating an ongoing flux in ecological associations. The onshore-offshore gradient is reestablished in the C5, albeit with new associations dominated by or containing immigrant taxa. Recognition of this gradient is hindered by widespread increased abundance of bryozoans and by the delayed appearance of at least seven common genera of brachiopods and corals. The Richmondian Invasion plays out over multiple sequences and is not confined to a brief interval at the beginning of a sequence. These faunal changes do not coincide with sequence boundaries or major flooding surfaces and therefore cannot be sequence stratigraphic artifacts, nor can they represent a geologically instantaneous faunal response to sea-level change.


This study is a part of a research effort to develop the Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction (QUIS). Participants, 150 PC user group members, rated familiar software products. Two pairs of software categories were compared: 1) software that was liked and disliked, and 2) a standard command line system (CLS) and a menu driven application (MDA). The reliability of the questionnaire was high, Cronbach's alpha=.94. The overall reaction ratings yielded significantly higher ratings for liked software and MDA over disliked software and a CLS, respectively. Frequent and sophisticated PC users rated MDA more satisfying, powerful and flexible than CLS. Future applications of the QUIS on computers are discussed.


We introduce multiplicative LSTM (mLSTM), a novel recurrent neural network architecture for sequence modelling that combines the long short-term memory (LSTM) and multiplicative recurrent neural network architectures. mLSTM is characterised by its ability to have different recurrent transition functions for each possible input, which we argue makes it more expressive for autoregressive density estimation. We demonstrate empirically that mLSTM outperforms standard LSTM and its deep variants for a range of character level modelling tasks, and that this improvement increases with the complexity of the task. This model achieves a test error of 1.19 bits/character on the last 4 million characters of the Hutter prize dataset when combined with dynamic evaluation.


Genetic diversity of 11 cultivars of soybean (Glycine max) from a VIR (N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources) collection was analyzed by the AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism) technique. From 18 tested primer combinations, both of them were selected for further analysis. From these two primer combinations (E32/M60 and E32/M59), 90 DNA fragments were obtained, 39 (43%) of them were polymorphic. Unique DNA fragments were found in accessions SibNIISHoz 6, Soer-4, Determinant. The Jaccard's similarity indices varied from 0.79 (between Sonata and Ugra) to 0.94 (between Ugra and Garmoniya) with an average of 0.775. Cluster analysis placed the cultivars into the several groups but separation in groups was not related to their origin or biological characteristics, even though cultivars Nordik and Soer-4 (cultivars recommended for Central Black Earth region of Russia) clustered together on the dendrogram. The obtained high values of Jaccard genetic similarity index and low level of polymorphism and differentiation illustrated a relatively low genetic diversity in our studied cultivars, which correlated with different other studies on soybean genetic diversity with AFLP-analysis.


Contemporary societies are currently subjected to very rapid and radical social changes and, as a consequence, struggle with their outcomes. The results range from the unforeseen repercussions of globally shifting political powers, through rising nationalisms, to prolonged economic, environmental, political and humanitarian crises. Critical analysis of the theories focused on the phenomena of authoritarianism, escapism, political myth, and conformity allows for outlining a comprehensive picture of the universally recognized opposition between freedom and security. From the distinction between the positive and negative freedom to the ambiguity surrounding the concept of "freedom from fear", the fundamental dilemma is viewed from a historical perspective and illustrated with modern examples, emphasizing its current validity, insightfulness and potential in analyzing contemporary global problems. This approach allows for in-depth analyses of diversified social and political issues, such as the North African-European refugee crisis, rising nationalisms in the Western world, or a marked shift in political and social perspectives worldwide, from modern escapism to the birth of new myths of state.


ABOUT THE BOOKDo any of the following problems sound familiar to you?"I just don't know where to start studying. I feel overwhelmed by the information.""I've bought all the CBT-style videos and books, and have even been on a course, but I don't feel ready to take the exam and I don't know if I ever will.""I've been studying for a long time now, but I haven't booked the exam yet because I just don't feel ready."For every ten students who start out towards the CCNA qualification, nine quit. They don't quit because of laziness but because they became overwhelmed with information and didn't even know where to start. They sat down to study from one of the 'big name' manuals and half an hour later found themselves staring blankly at the same page. Can you imagine how frustrating that feels?You see, most authors throw you in at the deep end and expect you to get on with it. They forget that you have a full time job, a long journey back home, family commitments and any number of challenges going on in your life. The last thing you have time for is to write out a detailed study plan with plenty of review sessions.If only somebody could tell you what to study each day, every day. If only you could open your study guide and see which bit of theory to read, which lab to do and which exam to take. You could then get on with the task of studying and getting that exam nailed.This is where Cisco CCNA in 60 Days comes in. Written in response to feedback from thousands of students using my online CCNA in 60 days program, my classroom courses and my other online Cisco training websites this book is the final piece in the studying puzzle.HOW IT WORKSEvery day you read your theory module, you review yesterdays lesson, do a lab and then answer some review questions.The next day you do the same until you reach the review sessions where you cement all your knowledge with more labs and review as well as some practise exams. If that wasn't enough, you have a cram guide to read daily and an online Subnetting review site to really hone your subnetting skills.At the 30 day mark you can take your CCENT exam and move into your ICND2 study sessions or just take your CCNA exam at the end of 60 days. If you fall behind no problem, just pick up where you left off.Having a problem with motivation and distractions? No problem, just read the detailed goal setting guide to turbo boost your productivity and motivation.WHAT'S COVERED?Every subject Cisco want you to know for your exams is covered with labs, theory, exams, reviews and crams. From RIP to OSPF, from VLSM to CIDR, IPv4 to IPv6, STP to CDP. Every exam topic is covered in detail many times over.Just when you think you are ready you are hit with challenge labs and more exams to ensure you are more than ready for the tricky Cisco exams. There are over 60 labs in total. Some with careful explanations and some you have to work out for yourself.ABOUT THE AUTHORSPaul Browning used to work at Cisco TAC but left in 2002 to start his own Cisco training company. He has authored several Cisco manuals as well as created one of the biggest online Cisco training websites used by many thousands of students.Farai Tafa is a dual CCIE who consults for large blue chip companies in the USA. He is an expert in network design and installation as well as an acknowledged expert in voice and security.


Background Liver disease is associated with soybean lipid in parenteral nutrition (PN). This has led to the development of alternative intravenous lipid emulsions (ILEs). Purpose Here we compare the effects of Lipoplus (medium chain triglyceride combined with soybean and fish oil) in treatments of 7 days vs. longer treatments. Material and methods Retrospective observational study using pharmacotherapeutic records of premature infants who initiated PN between December 2012 and May 2014 in a tertiary care hospital. Infants were Included with a gestational age <34 weeks and birth weight between 0.5 and 2 kg. Data recorded included gender, gestational age, body weight and total (TB), conjugated (CB) and unconjugated bilirubin (UB) (mg/dL). Comparisons were made with t-tests. Results Of the 17 infants selected, 10 (58.8%) (7 male, 3 female) were treated for 5 to 7 days (Group A) and 7 (41.2%) (5 male, 2 female) were treated for more than a week (Group B). Mean gestational age was 29 weeks for both groups. Average weight at the beginning of PN was 1.37 kg for Group A and 1.03 kg for Group B. Differences vs. baseline were observed between the two treatments: Group A = CB: 0.35 vs. 0.39; p = n.s. UB: 7.9 vs. 11.25; p = 0.04. TB: 8.25 vs. 11.61; p = 0.04. Group B = CB: 1.71 vs. 1.5; p = n.s. UB: 7.74 vs. 6.15; p = n.s. TB: 9.46 vs. 4.47; p = 0.04. A significant increase in CB and TB was observed in group A, therefore a significant decrease in TB was detected in group B. Conclusion We found that treatments longer than 7 days with new ILEs significantly lowered TB levels in premature infants as described previously.1 On the other hand, shorter treatments with alternative ILEs might have an effect similar to the use of soybean oil–based emulsion in that previous study, where CB even showed a significant increase. References and/or Acknowledgements Rayyan et al. 2012 No conflict of interest.


This paper considers the problem of realizing an input signal with a desired autocorrelation sequence satisfying both input and output constraints for the system it is to be applied to. This is a important problem in system identification. Firstly, the properties of the identified model are highly dependent on the used excitation signal during the experiment and secondly, on real processes, due to actuator saturation and safety considerations, it is important to constrain the inputs and outputs of the process. The proposed method is formulated as a nonlinear model predictive control problem. In general this corresponds to solving a non-convex optimization problem. Here we show how this can be solved in one particular case. For this special case convergence is established for generation of pseudo-white noise. The performance of the algorithm is successfully verified by simulations for a few different auto-correlation sequences, with and without input and output constraints.


The Torridonian succession of NW Scotland comprises three groups, deposited during late Mesoproterozoic to early Neoproterozoic time, the Stoer, Sleat and Torridon. Previous workers have inferred that each was formed in a rift basin and that each is internally conformable. New fieldwork and detrital zircon age data indicate that this model is incorrect. Our main findings are as follows: (1) the facies characteristics and detrital zircon data for the Sleat Group indicate that it is genetically unrelated to the Torridon Group; (2) the Sleat and Stoer Groups contain features suggestive of deposition in extension-related basins that predate the c. 1.0 Ga Grenville Orogeny; (3) the base of the Applecross–Aultbea succession of the Torridon Group is an unconformity; (4) the Applecross–Aultbea succession is most objectively interpreted as a non-marine molasse. The significance of these data is that they can be used as a constraint to test and define tectonic models for the deposition of the Torridonian succession and geological evolution of the Scottish Highlands. The view that the Torridonian rocks record deposition in a suite of long-lived rifts whereas the rest of the consanguineous Laurentian margin experienced collisional and orogenic episodes becomes equivocal and in need of reassessment, if not outright abandonment.


This study aimed to analyze policy effectiveness of loan for delaying timber harvesting for smallholder private forest business (Pinjaman Tunda Tebang Hutan Ra k yat ; hereinafter will be referred as PTT-HR). The analysis will be used to provide recommendations for improving PTT-HR scheme included scaling out and scaling up of the scheme for improving economic benefits and supporting smallholder private forest business as well as for strengthening farmer's welfare. Field survey was conducted in October–November 2013 in two districts in Central of Java, Indonesia namely Blora and Wono sobo District as recipient of PTT-HR from Public Service Agency for Forest Development Financing Center (BLU Center of P2H) Ministry of Forestry, Republic of Indonesia. The results showed that PTT-HR policy has implemented effectively based on evaluation parameter derived from the objectives of policy namely the age of the stands for loan collateral, the capabilities for improving farmer's welfare, utilization of loan, perception of the farmers regarding to the ease of the process and purpose of loan utilization, and the capability of loan repayment. However, this research has not been answered the aspect of PTT-HR policy implementation efficiency.


ABSTRACT:"Moving the body is like religion and moving my body is the portal to that place." This is one woman's description of her practice of hoop dancing, a form of hula hooping that combines adult sized hoops and dance music. Her experience is not unique; in fact, the number of descriptions of hooping as a practice that is "like religion" serves as the basis of our research. In this essay, we examine the connection between embodied experiences in the hoop, the identification of those experiences as religious or spiritual, and the communities that are created as hoopers attempt to continually recapture the experiences (of flow) that they deem extraordinary. New religions studies is a field interested in the emergence of new religious paths, and our contribution to this academic discourse is in the form of an ethnography of value of the hoop community as an emerging religious path. Our work attempts to reconceptualize newness in the field through innovations in the hoop community. We examine the ways hoopers deem transformational experiences within the hoop as spiritual or religious and how they construct paths to truth and authenticity through embodied practice. These new religious movements are not institutional nor are they tied to formal creeds; rather, they reflect the ways in which religion has become a category of experience that can create meaningful communities of practice for individuals.


Previous research indicates that interindividual differences in the ability to perceive one's own bodily signals (interoceptive sensitivity, IS) are associated with disordered eating behavior and weight problems. But representative and prospective data in children are lacking and therefore, the exact nature of these observed associations remains unclear. Data on IS measured by heartbeat perception ability in 1657 children between 6 and 11 years of age were collected on the basis of two measurement points with a year distance in time. Stability of the construct and its prospective association with different food approach behaviors [assessed via parent questionnaires (Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire and Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire)] as well as with weight status were analyzed via structural equation modeling. Main results were that only in overweight children external and emotional eating behavior were predictive for later IS, whereas no such relation was found in normal weight children. There was no direct relation between IS and body mass index. For the first time, we could show that eating behavior and IS in middle childhood are prospectively related to each other. But surprisingly, our data indicate that altered interoceptive processes rather follow than precede non-adaptive eating behavior patterns in overweight children. This suggests a possible crucial role of faulty learning mechanisms in eating behavior early in life, undermining the later confidence in one's body.


The molecular organization in Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) monolayers for five organic dyes with a common chromophore moiety was studied. With the use of transmission and reflection-absorption (FT)IR spectroscopy (RAIRS), the orientation of the chromophore units in the LB monolayer was determined. The results obtained with carbonyl and C=C stretching vibrations exclude a flat-on orientation of the chromophore moiety and may be rationalized in terms of a tilted head-on organization of the chromophore on the Ag, ZnS, and Ge surfaces. The tilt angle, φ, formed between the direction of the dynamic dipole moment and the normal to the surface of the film was determined from the combined infrared data obtained in a transmission geometry and in RAIRS. The aromatic-aromatic interaction plays a significant role in determining the molecular alignment in the Langmuir and LB monolayers.


This paper proposes a new real and reactive power coordination controller for a unified power flow controller (UPFC). The basic control for the UPFC is such that the series converter of the UPFC controls the transmission line real/reactive power flow and the shunt converter of the UPFC controls the UPFC bus voltage/shunt reactive power and the DC link capacitor voltage. In steady state, the real power demand of the series converter is supplied by the shunt converter of the UPFC. To avoid instability/loss of DC link capacitor voltage during transient conditions, a new real power coordination controller has been designed. The need for reactive power coordination controller for UPFC arises from the fact that excessive bus voltage (the bus to which the shunt converter is connected) excursions occur during reactive power transfers. A new reactive power coordination controller has been designed to limit excessive voltage excursions during reactive power transfers. PSCAD-EMTDC simulation results have been presented to show the improvement in the performance of the UPFC control with the proposed real power and reactive power coordination controller.


Recent years have witnessed a cornucopia of synthetic methods for fabricating carbon–metal nanocomposites. Nonetheless, achieving a cooperative synergy of zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterials and metal nanocrystals is still uncommon. To this end, we performed a controllable structural design comprising customizable alternating layers of active and functional zero-dimensional nanomaterials, which were intimately assembled together. This unique highly-ordered multilayer configuration was afforded by a judicious layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly strategy, enabling the rational and tunable construction of a series of well-defined metal/graphene quantum dots (M/GQDs)n (M = Au, Ag, Pt) multilayers. This strategy allows the direct assembly of customized units of positively-charged graphene quantum dots (GQDs) and negatively-charged metal nanocrystals (NCs), which were integrated in an alternating stacked fashion under a pronounced electrostatic attractive interaction. Moreover, these multilayer thin films demonstrate remarkably efficient and versatile catalytic performance toward the selective organic transformation of aromatic nitro compounds, electrocatalytic methanol oxidation and photoelectrochemical water splitting under simulated solar light irradiation under ambient conditions, attributed to the cooperative synergy of the metal NC and GQD building blocks. More significantly, the catalytic performances of the (M/GQDs)n (M = Au, Ag, Pt) multilayer thin films are tunable via the assembly cycle and sequence, as well as by selecting different metal NC types. This work highlights the significance of the customizable design of GQDs–metal-based systems for various advanced chemical-to-energy conversion applications.


This work presents the new method for wavefront reconstruction from a digital hologram recorded in off-axis configuration. The main feature of the proposed algorithm is a good ability for noise filtration due to the original formulation of the problem taking into account the presence of noise in the recorded intensity distribution and the sparse phase and amplitude reconstruction approach with the data-adaptive block-matching 3D technique. Basically, the sparsity assumes that low dimensional models can be used for phase and amplitude approximations. This low dimensionality enables strong suppression of noisy components and accurate revealing of the main features of the signals of interest. The principal point is that dictionaries of these sparse models are not known in advance and reconstructed from given noisy observations in a multiobjective optimization procedure. We show experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.


Learning curves for Gaussian process regression are well understood when the 'student' model happens to match the 'teacher' (true data generation process). I derive approximations to the learning curves for the more generic case of mismatched models, and find very rich behaviour: For large input space dimensionality, where the results become exact, there are universal (student-independent) plateaux in the learning curve, with transitions in between that can exhibit arbitrarily many over-fitting maxima; over-fitting can occur even if the student estimates the teacher noise level correctly. In lower dimensions, plateaux also appear, and the learning curve remains dependent on the mismatch between student and teacher even in the asymptotic limit of a large number of training examples. Learning with excessively strong smoothness assumptions can be particularly dangerous: For example, a student with a standard radial basis function covariance function will learn a rougher teacher function only logarithmically slowly. All predictions are confirmed by simulations.


Membership in the American Medical Association (AMA) has suffered a precipitous decline in membership since the 1970s and, with it, a loss in revenue. The expansion of subsidized student memberships has bolstered its official membership number; only 12.6 percent of physicians who have completed their training now belong. The AMA strengthened its alliances with specialty societies and even tried to restructure the organization around organizational (rather than individual) membership: two hundred specialty societies are incentivized to encourage their members to join the AMA. Earlier federal policies supported by the AMA that gave it a central role in recommending Medicare reimbursement policies have established a membership pipeline for the AMA partly because specialty societies need to influence reimbursement policies. Commercial products have also helped subsidize AMA lobbying efforts that reinforce its historical position, despite a loss of members.


There is an increasing interest in the area of knowledge management (KM) within organisations and academia. Because of the emergent nature of the field there is a lack of classification of suitable knowledge management models to use in conducting further research, literature evaluation and organisational applications. This paper discusses the definitions and classifications of knowledge management, representing a wide spectrum of views from mechanistic to more socially orientated. An evaluative framework is established from which three knowledge management models can be critically discussed. Three KM model classifications are critiqued, namely knowledge category models, intellectual capital models and socially constructed models. Finally a modified KM model is tentatively suggested to act as a useful guide for further research and organisational application. This model takes a holistic approach to scientific and socially constructed knowledge, assuming the need for both emancipatory and business benefits from KM. The model represents KM as a highly recursive process, rather than sequential.


The distribution of different phenotypes of the complement component C3 and a possible correlation with body weight were investigated in five Danish strains (A, C, D, E, J) of farmed trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss Walbaum). All strains showed the presence of the f1 and f2 alleles; two of these strains also expressed the s allele. Most common was the f1 allele (> 68%); rarest was the s allele (<9% or absent). In the J strain, a significantly higher frequency of the f1 allele was observed. Only in the D strain was a linkage indicated between the mean values of body weight of trout and different C3 phenotypes (P = 0.002); the mean body weight of individuals with the f1 phenotype was also lower than that of the f1/f2 and s/f1 phenotypes. This result, however, is not conclusive, as it was observed in only one of the five strains and because the number of individuals in some of the phenotype groups was very small.

The reactivity of monoclonal antibody Hyb106-1 that reacts with a carbohydrate epitope on the serum immunoglobulin molecule was also investigated in the five rainbow trout strains. The percentage of positively reacting trout sera varied from 9% to 43%. In the D and the E strains, positive individuals showed a significantly (P = 0.036, resp. P = 0.005) lower body weight than did the negative individuals.

No linkage between the reactivity with monoclonal antibody Hyb106-1 and the f1 and f2 alleles of complement component C3 was observed. However, individuals that reacted negatively with the carbohydrate marker expressed only the s allele, possibly caused by a low number of samples expressing the s allele.


Emotional state before sleep affects the subsequent sleep onset. The purpose of this study was to investigate how positive/ negative emotion before sleep effected hypnagogic state. The movies eliciting positive or negative emotion were presented before sleep. Hypnagogic imagery was recorded as a probe of emotional experience and EEG microstate analysis was used for finding the emotion related EEG activities. The score of emotion ratings for hypnagogic imagery indicated that positive emotion was reported in not only positive condition but also in negative condition. This implied that hypnagogic state might be accompanied by positive emotion. Comparing the appearance of maps obtained from microstate analysis between conditions, the map of right temporal activity was significantly greater in positive condition while the map of the left frontal activity was greater negative condition. These results suggested that the emotion not just in presleep but also in hypnagogic state was involved in sleep onset process.


This research considers the impact of Scottish romanticism on the construction of literary identity in the Canadas prior to Confederation (1867). I argue that early Scottish dominance in literary Canada, and similarities faced by both countries in defining a sense of self—including participation in a wider empire (or Union), populations divided by language and religion, and the need for a distinct identity in the face of a dominant neighbour to the south—all contributed to a tendency on the part of Canadians to look to Scotland as a model. Through an examination of early Canadian literature and on-going British constructions of the colony, the thesis considers the manner in which Scottish romantic strategies of literary nationalism are deployed and manipulated in the process of articulating a Canadian identity. Particular attention is paid to the works of John Galt and Major John Richardson, while tropes examined include the construction of landscape and settlement narratives, stadial histories, the historical novel, national tale and the depiction of a national history, and the manipulation of a romanticised Scottish military past in constructing Canadian history.


A scheme for monochromatic terahertz (THz) generation via cascading enhanced Cherenkov-type difference frequency generation (DFG) in a sandwich-like waveguide is proposed. The novel scheme has the potential to overcome the quantum-defect limit and to provide an efficient output coupling. This process is elucidated by developing a coupled-mode theory and taking into account the pump depletion, waveguide mode properties, and THz output coupling. The effect of cascading enhancement is analyzed by comparing with non-cascaded DFG situation. It is predicted that THz power can be boosted by nearly 8-fold with a 400 MW/cm2 pump in a 40-mm-long Si-LiNbO3-Si waveguide.


Renewable energy integration into multi energy grids (MEG) is gradually getting popular due to the rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources and the global concern on GHG emissions through fossil fuel based energy conversion technologies. However, seasonal changes in solar and wind energy potentials make it challenging to increase the renewable energy capacity especially for urban applications where demand for energy services show a complex variation. According to recent literature, connecting multi energy hubs (MEHs) to a MEG can be a promising method to address the aforementioned challenge. However, a quantitative analysis of the improvement of system autonomy and renewable energy integration through multi energy hubs is missing. In this work, Homer microgrid design tool is used to analyze the sensitivity of the grid integration level to the renewable energy integration process of a multi energy hub. Heating and electricity demand of the MEH and the energy flow through Solar PV panels, wind turbines, boiler and battery bank are evaluated on hourly basis. Homer, microgrid simulation tool is used to evaluate the sensitivity of electricity cost to renewable energy capacity and energy storage.


On April 26–27, 2010, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Detroit Regional Chamber co-sponsored their fourth annual forum on health care. This year's program focused on how payment reform within the health care value chain can improve health care delivery. It also explored the role of employers in promoting better health among their employees.


This is a study of the clothing and textile research base using author cocitation analysis. The study uses a custom database from a 15 year period, containing all citations in the field's leading journal: the Clothing and textile Research Journal. These citations are converted to cocitation counts, with the top cited authors being selected for further study. Using principal component analysis, the study identifies and measures the structure of the research base. The structure is mapped in four segmentations: as a complete 15 year block, and in three five-year segments. From the 15 year block, the core of the clothing and textile research base is made visible. From the three five-year blocks the study captures field dynamics and trends. Finally, an initial interpretation is offered as to the meaning of the results and analyses. This document has great potential for bibliometricians as a case study in author cocitation analysis. During the course of the analysis, the author proposes a novel cocitation counting algorithm that reduces the processing time and power needed for converting citations to cocitation matrices. The study also documents key bibliometric data such as citation distributions. For clothing and textile scholars, the study provides the largest and most quantitative analysis to date of their research base. It also provides immense base data from which other studies can be done.


The current study was designed to investigate commercially feasible vineyard management practices across a range of intensities to evaluate the effects of these practices on Pinot Noir fruit and wine composition. Over three growing seasons, 2006, 2007 and 2008, two aspects of crop load management (node number retained at winter pruning and bunch removal) and two aspects of canopy management (leaf removal and shoot trimming) were investigated on a Scott Henry training system. To evaluate the effect on fruit and wine composition, individual treatments in the field were harvested, processed and fermented separately. Ferments were approximately 10 kg in size and winemaking was carried out at the micro winery at Tamar Ridge Estates' Kayena vineyard.
Winter pruning levels of 10, 20, 30 or 40 nodes per vine were applied to the same vines for consecutive seasons. The bunch removal trial removed 20% or 40% of bunches at four different stages of the season: fruit set, pea size, 10% veraison and 90% veraison. In the 2006 season, 20% or 40% of leaves were removed on upper and lower shoots at four different stages of the season (fruit set, pea size, 10% veraison, 90% veraison). For the 2007 and 2008 seasons, four different leaf removal treatments were applied removing the basal four leaves, the middle section four leaves, the apical four leaves or removing no leaves on vines shoot trimmed to approximately 12 nodes on upper and lower shoots. The shoot trimming trial varied the length which shoots were trimmed to on upper and lower shoots. In the 2006 season, upper shoot length only was varied (6, 12 or 22 nodes per shoot) with approximately 12 nodes per shoot on lower shoots. For the 2006 and 2007 seasons, an additional treatment was added reducing lower shoot length to 6 nodes with 12 nodes per shoot on upper shoots.
Yields varied up to three-fold as a result of pruning treatments, yet the predicted decline in fruit and wine composition as a result of increasing node number was only seen in seasons of cool weather conditions. Yield was varied 1.5-fold in the bunch removal trial and only in the season of cooler than average ripening period was bunch removal effective in improving fruit and wine composition. Leaf removal as a canopy management tool was effective for reducing Botrytis cinerea pressure, however little fruit and wine composition differences were seen between no leaf removal and the commercial standard of the removal of basal leaves in the fruiting zone. The shoot trimming trial indicated that reducing shoot length from the commercial standard was detrimental to fruit and wine composition, but increasing shoot length did little to improve wine composition.
The influence of weather within seasons was found to override the effects of the viticultural management practices and the responses of fruit and wine composition could be interpreted within the context of the weather conditions of each season. During seasons of warmer than average temperatures, in particular during the ripening period, viticultural management of Pinot Noir vines had little effect on fruit and wine composition. In contrast, viticultural management in cooler than average seasons did affect fruit and wine composition and may repay the investment in terms of improved wine composition and therefore quality.


The paper highlights the interrelation of the notions of piracy, musical work and genius composer. It is shown how the metaphor of the pirate requires a treasured object to steal. This object is the immaterial musical work, composed by a musical genius. Although this genius is a myth of romanticism, it is also shown how it is founded on an ancient notion of "monosexuality." This notion, it is argued, has negative consequences for composers, musicians and listeners alike. Together, the metaphors of the pirate, the genius and the work constitute a figure of thought that at the beginning of the 21st century fulfills a legitimizing function for a malfunctioning copyright. It is therefore suggested that the pirate metaphor be jettisoned along with that of the romantic genius and the immaterial musical work. In its stead the mothership connection may be a more constructive metaphor.


Background: Scalp involvement is not directly evaluated in patients with dermatomyositis (DM). Therefore, the exact frequency of scalp dermatomyositis (SDM) and its clinical and trichoscopic characteristics have been poorly described. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and clinical and dermoscopic features of SDM in patients diagnosed with DM. Methods: We performed a descriptive prospective, cross-sectional observational study that included all patients diagnosed with DM at a Mexican academic institute over the course of a year. Results: Twenty-four out of 31 patients with DM had scalp involvement at clinical examination, with a prevalence of 77.4%. SDM was clinically characterized by erythema in all cases, scales in 20 (83.3%) patients, nonscarring alopecia in 21 (87.5%) patients, pruritus in 17 (70.8%) patients, and poikiloderma of the scalp in 16 (51.6%) patients. Twenty-eight patients were evaluated by trichoscopy. The most consistent finding was the presence of enlarged capillaries, found in 20 (71.4%) cases, followed by peripilar casts (57.1%) and tufting and interfollicular scales in 14 (50%) cases. Twenty-two patients also had positive nail fold capillaroscopic features similar to those observed by trichoscopy. Limitations: The simple size was limited. Conclusions: Scalp involvement and alopecia are common in patients with DM, and trichoscopy shows features similar to those found at capillaroscopy. Trichoscopy is a very important tool for diagnosis of scalp involvement in patients with DM.