Hybrid Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) collectors are an emerging technology thatcombines PV and solar thermal systems in a single solar collector producing heat andelectricity simultaneously. The focus of this thesis work is to evaluate the performance ofunglazed open loop PVT air system integrated on a garage roof in Borlange. As it isthought to have a significant potential for preheating ventilation of the building andimproving the PV modules electrical efficiency. The performance evaluation is importantto optimize the cooling strategy of the collector in order to enhance its electrical efficiencyand maximize the production of thermal energy. The evaluation process involvesmonitoring the electrical and thermal energies for a certain period of time and investigatingthe cooling effect on the performance through controlling the air mass flow provided by avariable speed fan connected to the collector by an air distribution duct. The distributionduct transfers the heated outlet air from the collector to inside the building.The PVT air collector consists of 34 Solibro CIGS type PV modules (115 Wp for eachmodule) which are roof integrated and have replaced the traditional roof material. Thecollector is oriented toward the south-west with a tilt of 29 ᵒ. The collector consists of 17parallel air ducts formed between the PV modules and the insulated roof surface. Each airduct has a depth of 0.05 m, length of 2.38 m and width of 2.38 m. The air ducts areconnected to each other through holes. The monitoring system is based on using T-typethermocouples to measure the relevant temperatures, air sensor to measure the air massflow. These parameters are needed to calculate the thermal energy. The monitoring systemcontains also voltage dividers to measure the PV modules voltage and shunt resistance tomeasure the PV current, and AC energy meters which are needed to calculate theproduced electrical energy. All signals recorded from the thermocouples, voltage dividersand shunt resistances are connected to data loggers. The strategy of cooling in this workwas based on switching the fan on, only when the difference between the air ducttemperature (under the middle of top of PV column) and the room temperature becomeshigher than 5 °C. This strategy was effective in term of avoiding high electricalconsumption by the fan, and it is recommended for further development. The temperaturedifference of 5 °C is the minimum value to compensate the heat losses in the collectingduct and distribution duct.The PVT air collector has an area of (Ac=32 m2), and air mass flow of 0.002 kg/s m2.The nominal output power of the collector is 4 kWppv (34 CIGS modules with 115Wppvfor each module). The collector produces thermal output energy of 6.88 kWth/day(0.21 kWth/m2 day) and an electrical output energy of 13.46 kWhel/day (0.42 kWhel/m2day) with cooling case. The PVT air collector has a daily thermal energy yield of 1.72kWhth/kWppv, and a daily PV electrical energy yield of 3.36 kWhel /kWppv. The fan energyrequirement in this case was 0.18 kWh/day which is very small compared to the electricalenergy generated by the PV collector. The obtained thermal efficiency was 8 % which issmall compared to the results reported in literature for PVT air collectors. The smallthermal efficiency was due to small operating air mass flow. Therefore, the study suggestsincreasing the air mass flow by a factor of 25. The electrical efficiency was fluctuatingaround 14 %, which is higher than the theoretical efficiency of the PV modules, and thisdiscrepancy was due to the poor method of recording the solar irradiance in the location.Due to shading effect, it was better to use more than one pyranometer.


Increasing water demand in coastal regions has resulted in the construction of weirs and barrages in coastal freshwaters. These form barriers to migrations of estuarine and euryhaline marine fishes and crustaceans. This study assessed the impact of loss of marine–estuarine–freshwater connectivity caused by a weir at the outlet of Lake Mzingazi, a coastal lake on the subtropical east coast of South Africa. Facultative catadromous estuarine and euryhaline marine fishes were most affected by the weir, which blocked their upstream migration. These fishes were absent in the lake and were prevented from accessing potential nursery habitat. Crustaceans were less affected by the outlet weir. Salinity tolerances of most penaeid prawn species occurring in southern African estuaries prevent penetration into freshwater reaches of connected systems. Movements of palaemonid prawns which either spawn in or have larvae dependant on estuarine water, and the marine spawning brachyuran Varuna litterata, were not completely impeded by the weir. These species have larvae and juveniles that can climb over the weir in its present form. Historically, the lake served as an estuarine nursery and its physico-chemistry and habitats still offer viable and valuable habitat to estuarine species. There is therefore great potential value in installing a fish ladder at the lake outlet that can be used by juvenile fishes and crustaceans. Re-establishing marine–estuarine–freshwater connectivity here will reinstate a natural migration route that has been impeded for over 70 years and partially restore the ecosystem to its original state.


The sequelae from forgotten stents carry significant morbidity and costs. In this study, we attempt to identify potential risk factors that may make patients less likely to follow up for stent removal so that more effective prevention efforts may be directed at these persons. A single-institution retrospective analysis of 187 consecutive patients who had stents placed between January 2010 and December 2010 was performed. Chart review was conducted to see if patients had undergone stent removal beyond the intended maximal stent life (MSL). Patients who were lost to follow-up were contacted to determine if stents were overdue. Logistic regression was performed to determine risk factors. Of the 187 patients who had stents placed, 147 had the stent removed before MSL and 28 had stents removed after the MSL. Twelve patients could not be contacted and were excluded from the analysis. Within our cohort of 175 patients, 48% were males, 73% were minorities (33% Latino, 30% Black, 8% Asian, and 2% Native American), 39% did not speak English, 79% were unemployed, 73% were uninsured, and 35% were married. Among the patients with forgotten stents, 68% were male, 64% were minorities (32% Latino, 29% Black, 4% Native American, and 0% Asian), 82% were unemployed, 39% did not speak English, 93% were uninsured, and 43% were married. Multivariate regression analysis demonstrated that uninsured patients (odds ratio [OR], 6.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4-28.2; P value 0.01) and males (OR, 2.8; CI, 1.2-6.8; P=0.02) had statistically significant associations with forgotten stents. Men were 2.8 times more likely to have forgotten stents than females. Patients without health insurance were six times more likely to have forgotten stents than patients with insurance. As efforts are made to prevent forgotten stents, increased attention should be given to these higher-risk patient populations.


We have realized millimeter-size rf inductors on silicon using a polyimide mold–copper electroplating coil technology. Subsequently, the coils are assembled with magnetic cover plates of commercially available bulk Ni–Zn ferrites of high resistivity. Using the magnetic flux-amplifying ferrite plates, we obtain a 40% enhancement of the inductance and a 25% enhancement of the quality factor (Q=10–20) for frequencies up to 0.2 GHz. Our results indicate the large potential of using bulk ferrites for rf applications in a hybrid inductor assembly process.


67 The purpose of adjuvant chemotherapy after curative resection of colon cancer is eradication of micrometastatic disease, decreasing the recurrence and improving the overall survival. However, chemotherapy may have risk of side effects, and decrease the quality of life. Therefore, the decision making to adding chemotherapy should be made under considering the balance between the risk of recurrence and chemotherapy. The advantage of adjuvant chemotherapy in stage III colon cancer is well proven by many randomized controlled trials and now it is regarded as a standard treatment [1]. As for the regimen, traditional 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and leucovorin, capecitabine monotherapy, FOLFOX, or CAPOX are recommended. However, in stage II colon cancer, if the curative resection was performed, the prognosis is very good and the overall survival after curative resection is reported around 80% [2,3]. The role of adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer is minimal and remains an area of great controversy [4]. And which patients will benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy and what chemotherapy to use also remain an area of great controversy. Because patients with stage II colon cancer comprise a heterogeneous combination including stage IIA (pT3N0), stage IIB (pT4aN0), and stage IIC (pT4bN0). Current guidelines recommend adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II colon cancer for the patient with high-risk factors for recurrence such as poorly differentiated histology (exclusive of those cancers that are high microsatellite instability [MSI-H]), lymphatic/vascular invasion, bowel obstruction, < 12 lymph nodes examined, perineural invasion, localized perforation, or close, indeterminate or positive margins. As for the adding oxaliplatin, according to the subgroup analysis of MOSAIC and NSABP C-07 trial, no significant benefit was found by adding oxaliplatin to 5-FU and leucovorin to stage II colon cancer [5,6]. Therefore, considering the potential risk of side effects of oxaliplatin including neuropathy, it is not recommended to adding oxaliplatin in stage II colon cancer patients. Another factors should be considered is mismatch repair or MSI testing. it should be performed before deciding adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II colon cancer, because MSI-H patients may have a good prognosis and do not benefit from 5-FU adjuvant therapy [7]. The authors tried to find which patient could omit the adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer. And they found that the patients with only one high-risk factor for the recurrence may not have significant benefit by adjuvant chemotherapy [8]. However, it should be interpreted cautiously, because to prove a small potential benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer, large population are inevitably needed. In conclusion, considering all above factors, conversation between clinicians and patients regarding the potential risks and benefits with adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II colon cancers is very important for decision making. And personalized treatment should be performed. Editorial Korean Journal of Clinical Oncology 2018;14:67-68 https://doi.org/10.14216/kjco.18012 pISSN 1738-8082 ∙ eISSN 2288-4084


Objective: Complementary and alternative medicine methods are being used in many societies due to lack of adequate response to medical treatment or feared possible side effects in chronic diseases requiring long-term treatment. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of complementary and alternative medicine methods in children with allergic rhinitis. Materials and Methods: The study was planned as a cross-sectional study in children with allergic rhinitis between June-October 2015 at the Tepecik Training and Research Hospital. A data collection form consisting of 31 questions was used. These questions were posed to the mothers of the children with allergic rhinitis who had been followed up at least for three months at the pediatric allergy outpatient clinic. Results: The study included 100 patients (77 boys, 23 girls). The median age of the patients was 13.3 years (min=4, max=17). Eightytwo percent of the patients had moderate/severe allergic rhinitis, 91% had persistent allergic rhinitis, and 63% had seasonal allergic rhinitis. Seventy-five percent of the patients were using more than one medication. Fourteen percent of the patients used complementary and alternative medicine methods. However, these treatments had been recommended to 36% of the patients. The patients who used and did not use complementary and alternative medicine methods were no different by means of age, severity of disease, duration of disease, multiple drug use, income of the family, place of residence, family type, and education level of mother and father (p>0.05). The most commonly recommended method was herbal treatments in 62.5% and the most commonly used method also was herbal treatments in 77.7%. The most commonly used methods were black seed/black seed oil, black radish/honey and local application of tea for the treatment of conjunctivitis. Conclusion: In our study, complementary and alternative medicine therapies were used in 14% of patients with allergic rhinitis and it was found that the most commonly used methods were black seed/ black seed oil, black radish/honey and tea for the treatment of conjunctivitis. The use of complementary and alternative medicine is not uncommon among children with allergic rhinitis although it is less frequent when compared to other chronic diseases. Keeping in mind that such therapies might have certain side effects, patients should be questioned about the use of these methods.


The goal of this study was to examine whether the security of the relationship between mothers and children influenced the relation between maternal emotional expressiveness and aspects of children's social development. Fifty-one preschool children (M age = 52.80 months) and their mothers took part in the study. At their homes, mothers completed the Attachment Q-set. At the lab, children completed a measure of their representations of family relationships, while mothers completed measures of maternal emotional expressiveness and reports of the child's social competence. Findings supported the idea that the quality of the attachment relationship moderated the influence of maternal positive expressiveness. For children who were low in attachment security, maternal positive expressiveness was an important predictor of representations of relationships. For those who were high in attachment security, maternal positive expressiveness was unrelated to social development. Overall, the pattern of findings suggests that high levels of maternal positive expressiveness may compensate for a lack of attachment security in promoting social development.


Concession contracts are one of the most popular PPP arrangements. However, there are still a few problems regarding the successful implementation of such arrangements, such as estimating a realistic figure for the demand of services offered by the facility. Lake of demand, or demand variation, is a widespread practice when developing infrastructure projects. In the case of concessions, such practices are the origin of significant risk as the forecasted demand is a key variable in the financial and economic evaluation of any PPP project that needs to be accurately identified and then managed. Demand forecasting is a complex and dynamic process, as several inter-related qualitative and quantitative factors affect demand. This paper proposes a system dynamics-based method in which different factors affecting demand are considered and modelled holistically. The system dynamics concept has been employed to build up a set of cause-effect diagrams which will finally be incorporated to develop a conceptual demand model. This model establishes the causal structure of the demand system, which will help to portray and define the impacts of different factors on demand volume.


[1] High-resolution wind products based on space-borne scatterometer measurements by ASCAT and SeaWinds are used widely for various purposes. In this paper the quality of such products is assessed in terms of accuracy and resolution, using spectral analysis and triple collocation with buoy measurements and NWP model forecasts. An experimental ASCAT coastal product is shown to have a spectral behavior close to k−5/3 for scales around 100 km, as expected from theory and airborne measurements. The NWP spectra fall off more rapidly than the scatterometer wind spectra starting at scales of about 1000 km. Triple collocation is performed for four collocated data sets, each with a different scatterometer wind product: ASCAT at 12.5 km and 25 km, and SeaWinds at 25 km processed in two different ways. The spectral difference between scatterometer wind and model forecast is integrated to obtain the representation error which originates from the fact that global weather models miss small-scale details observed by the scatterometers and the buoys. The estimated errors in buoy winds and model winds are consistent over the data sets for the meriodional wind component; for the zonal wind component consistency is less, but still acceptable. Generally, enhanced detail in the scatterometer winds, as indicated at high spatial frequencies by a spectral tail close to k−5/3, results in better agreement with buoys and worse agreement with NWP predictions. The accuracy of the scatterometer winds is about 1 ms−1 or better. The calibration coefficients from triple collocation indicate that on average the ASCAT winds are slightly underestimated.


As the most popular of the popular genres, romance novels are an important site of investigation for cultural disability studies, a field concerned with the effects that representations of disability have on the world. The article explores the productive potentials of a dialogue between cultural disability studies and popular romance studies. With a focus on selected novels by Mary Balogh, a bestselling author of historical romance, the argument is that the frequent use of disabled characters, and the way in which those characters are depicted, positions all disabled characters as potential romantic actants, and encourages readers to reflect critically upon how they conceptualize disability.


The seventh international census of Whooper Swans in Britain, Ireland, Iceland and the Isle of Man took place in January 2015, to update estimates of the size and midwinter distribution of the Icelandic Whooper Swan population. The 34,004 swans recorded represented a 16% increase in numbers compared to the previous census in 2010, a 155% increase on counts made in 1995, and was the highest census total to date. The drivers behind this increase have yet to be determined, but it seems that it is not solely attributable to an improvement in breeding success in recent years and that changes in survival rates and perhaps interchange with the Northwest Mainland Europe population may also be accountable for the trend. Overall, 35.5% of the population (12,083 birds) was recorded in England, 34.9% (11,852) in the Republic of Ireland, 11.1% (3,784) in Scotland, 10.4% (3,518) in Northern Ireland, 7.4% (2,520) in Iceland and < 1% (247) in Wales and the Isle of Man. There was a significant decline in the proportion of birds wintering in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in comparison with the 2010 census, whilst conversely England saw a notable increase. Although a higher proportion of the population was recorded in Scotland in 2015 than in 2010, the results indicate a continuation of the overall shift to the southeast in the swans' winter distribution, recorded since the first international census in 1986. As in previous censuses, the majority of birds in Britain and Ireland were on pasture and arable land, whereas in Iceland the birds were found mainly on riverine and coastal habitats.


Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. (King James Version) If people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed. (The Message) (Proverbs 29:18) Urban ministry's challenges are many: changes in population, aging infrastructure, and limited resources all contribute to the difficulty of ministry in urban centers.1 Yet there are few resources available to equip church leadership for ministry in these communities. Congregational and denominational models hearken back to their rural beginnings and have long ceased to be adequate to respond to the urban challenge.2 Discussion of leadership development for these congregations identifies both lay and clergy leadership as important in effective ministry. However, the emphasis in training materials and programs has been primarily on professional clerical leadership.3 The biblical model of church leadership is one of shared leadership, where all the baptized are called to minister to the world in Christ's name.4 In order to face the challenges of urban ministry congregational leaders, both clergy and lay, must come together with a common vision and must be equipped with the skills and resources to address the needs of congregations constantly living with change, especially when the favorite stance of most churches is "this is how it has always been done." As Rosabeth Moss Kanter says in her foreword to Lovett Weems's insightful leadership text Church Leadership: Vision, Team, Culture, and Integrity, "The task of leadership is change. Leaders inspire others to their best efforts in order to do better, to attain higher purposes."5 According to Weems, a "picture of a preferred future" must be in place before people can "let go of the past and permit change to take place."6 In the urban context, congregations have experienced dramatic change. The ability to envision how things can be different and moving people to work together to build that reality is essential to a vibrant community. Without a vision of a new way of being, churches will suffer from their resistance to the buffeting of constant change, a reality of urban centers. How does church leadership facilitate a congregation to see, receive, and live into that new vision? Weems's elements of effective leadership identify vision as the central element from which all other leadership tasks take their direction.7 My years in urban ministry have shown that prayerfully reflecting and clarifying a congregations vision for ministry is essential for the revitalization of churches. This ongoing reflection and articulation of a church's identity and call can galvanize the gifts of the congregation for ministry and fill believers with a renewed sense of purpose. The result is friends and neighbors attracted by the energy and passion of the congregation for ministry as the community benefits from a vital congregation reaching out in service in Christ's name. Over the past twenty-five years I have worked with congregations in some of the poorest communities in the urban United States, and have seen churches come alive when given the tools, skills, and knowledge to do ministry. They corne to see the changes around them as a dynamic and responsive call, not as something to be feared. Most recently rny work with Holy Faith Episcopal Church in Inglewood, California, has taught me again that although there is resistance and fear of change in every congregation (every person), possibilities that are envisioned and informed by reality can become the unifying force for people to change and welcome the challenge. Holy Faiths vision is summarized in the welcome statement that appears on the worship bulletin and other materials: As God's house, Holy Faith opens its doors to everyone. God's love is constant and Holy Faith celebrates the beauty in each one of us because we are all created in God's image. …


Engineering education is crucial to developing and graduating successful engineers whose work spans the sustainability of agricultural, digital and regional communities and hence contributes directly to the futures of those communities. Consequently it is vital that the field of engineering education research is as current and comprehensive as possible, in order to maximise the quality of engineering teaching and learning programs.
This paper deploys a recent evaluative framework for analysing the engineering education research field (Borrego & Bernhard, 2011) to interrogate selected elements of that field as they pertain to Australian undergraduate and postgraduate engineering education. In particular, the paper explores current themes in the literature related to curriculum, teaching and assessment practices; the acquisition of professional skills and graduate attributes; and issues of graduate employability and continuing professional development. This account highlights the engineering education research field as diverse, multifaceted, increasingly politicised and subject to the interplay of competing interests and multiple demands.
More widely, the authors argue that the themes elicited from the contemporary engineering education research field reflect significant research priorities and outcomes that are central to enhancing Australian and international agricultural, digital and regional communities. This is because successful graduates from engineering programs are integrally involved in envisaging, devising, testing and evaluating the technologies that underpin these varied domains of human activity. The sustainable and potentially transformative futures of these communities depends in large part on the effectiveness of the engineering programs and the research that informs them.


Background: Changes in hormone levels especially testosterone and cortisol occur as a result of exercise intensity. In other words, the exercise intensity significantly influences these changes. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of aerobics-resistance (concurrent) exercise intensities on the serum testosterone and cortisol levels in the active men. Methods: In this clinical trial, 10 healthy men were included in their combined activities in low, medium, and high levels. Different intensities (aerobic activity such as running on a treadmill at a speed of 8, 6.9, and 11.2 mph and resistance exercise on 45%, 65%, and 85% of maximum strange, maximum of six moves) were considered for all participants for unity. Blood samples were measured in three phases (baseline, immediately after exercise, and 24 hours after training contracts) at three levels. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated normal data and Bonferroni post hoc test were conducted. Results: The results showed that cortisol and plasma lactate concentration was declined immediately before and 24 hours after the combined exercise with the significant level of activity (P < 0.05). Joint action at different intensities resulted in significant changes not in testosterone level (P < 0.05). Conclusion: In this study, the intensity of training as an independent variable influencing the changes in the levels of testosterone and cortisol has been recommended; so highly sportaffected hormonal changes during the combined exercise should be considered more than that in one exercise.


Cape clawless otters, Aonyx capensis, are widely distributed in South Africa, as elsewhere on the continent. They occur in a wide variety of environments and most aquatic habitats, from freshwater lakes to the marine littoral,and even in episodic rivers in arid areas,provided freshwater sources are adequate and sufficient food is available. This animal is not much affected by turbid water as it locates prey by touch, and usually forages close to shores or banks. Evidence of presence in given localities and habitats, distributed over a large area of the Northern, Western, and Eastern Cape provinces, was deduced from signs (faecal deposits or distinctive tracks) on land. Accepting the inherent pitfalls of this approach we nevertheless feel using it is acceptable for a first approximation of habitat preferences over a large geographical area. Results point to areas with dense reed beds and a rocky substrate on banks being used most intensively, probably on account of a localized high food biomass.


Most listed firms have concentrated ownership structures. However this ownership type is problematic. A clinical analysis reveals that the corporate governance in these firms in terms of liability, voice and exit faces important design problems. Our analysis shows that the corporate governance of these firms is mainly aimed at checking the shareholders manager agency problem leaving the controlling shareholder-minority agency problem unresolved. Therefore it is crucial to provide growing companies with commitment tools that allow them to access capital markets and to raise funds from outside investors in better terms without having to give up the benefits of control. This leads us to a proposal that could improve the protection of outside investors while maintaining the informational benefits of concentrated ownership structures: a "Say-on-Dividend" policy. This proposal is centered in empowering independent directors and activist and institutional investors in the design of dividend policy as informed intermediaries that can represent the voice of the outside investors in the control of the funds that they invest in the firm.


Dieulafoy's lesions (DLs) are rare and cause gastrointestinal bleeding resulting from erosion of dilated submucosal vessels. The most common location for DL is the stomach, followed by duodenum. There is little information about duodenal and jejunal DLs. Challenges for diagnosis and treatment of Dieulafoy's lesions include the rare nature of the disease, asymptomatic patients, bleeding symptoms often requiring rapid diagnosis and treatment in symptomatic patients, variability in the diagnosis and treatment methods resulting from different lesion locations, and the risk of re-bleeding. For these reasons, there is no universal consensus about the diagnosis and treatment approach. There are few published case reports and case series recently published. Most duodenal DLs are not evaluated seperately in the studies, which makes it difficult to determine the optimal model. In this study, we summarize the general aspects and recent approaches used to treat duodenal DL.


This doctoral research critically analyses third party protection in the carriage of goods by sea. The author is motivated to evaluate the rationale behind the protection of third parties in the carriage of goods by sea in the light of a new theoretical framework. The research takes into account the fact that the carriage of goods by sea is presently part of the supply chain and third parties, together with the parties of the contract, form what the author calls a multilateral common enterprise.
The existing literature in the area focuses on the legal framework of the topic but fails to consider the fact that third parties can and should be seen under a different light. This work is driven by the idea that such a topic must be tackled with a deeper understanding of the rationale and by adding modern theory to a long-established practice. Changing the perspective will provide the necessary scope to make the law more appropriate for present times.
Thus far, third parties have been considered merely a risk for the parties to the contract of the carriage of goods by sea; this research contends that they are a factual part of it and should henceforth be treated as such. They should receive protection for what they represent in the shipping industry, not just for what the main parties to the contract choose to extend to them.
The thesis analyses the legal framework of third party protection through the lens of the supply chain. No longer is the carriage of goods by sea an isolated part of the trade; it is fully integrated within it. To date, the law – contractually, internationally and domestically – has acknowledged this issue, but it has not addressed it in an appropriate manner regarding third party protection. The aim of this thesis is to do just that and, in doing so, to make a significant contribution in the field.


This paper uses cross country regression analysis on a large set of countries to consider two hypotheses. The first is that increased public debt as a percentage of the economy reduces confidence in financial institutions. The second is that increased public debt relative to the economy lowers economic expectations. If it is true that increased public debt reduces expectations or diminishes confidence in financial institutions, then it will lower investment. As a consequence, not only will there be lower present aggregate demand resulting in lower current economic output and employment as a result of higher public debt, but there will also be lower future economic growth. The findings of the paper are consistent with both hypotheses.


We assess synchronization of oscillators that are coupled via a time-varying stochastic network, modeled as a weighted directed random graph that switches at a given rate between a set of possible graphs. The existence of any graph edge is probabilistic and independent from the existence of any other edge. We further allow each edge to be weighted differently. Even if the network is always instantaneously not connected, we show that sufficient information is propagated through the network to allow almost sure synchronization as long as the expected value of the network is connected, and that the switching rate is sufficiently fast.


In this article, we review the state‐of‐the‐art techniques in mining data streams for mobile and ubiquitous environments. We start the review with a concise background of data stream processing, presenting the building blocks for mining data streams. In a wide range of applications, data streams are required to be processed on small ubiquitous devices like smartphones and sensor devices. Mobile and ubiquitous data mining target these applications with tailored techniques and approaches addressing scarcity of resources and mobility issues. Two categories can be identified for mobile and ubiquitous mining of streaming data: single‐node and distributed. This survey will cover both categories. Mining mobile and ubiquitous data require algorithms with the ability to monitor and adapt the working conditions to the available computational resources. We identify the key characteristics of these algorithms and present illustrative applications. Distributed data stream mining in the mobile environment is then discussed, presenting the Pocket Data Mining framework. Mobility of users stimulates the adoption of context‐awareness in this area of research. Context‐awareness and collaboration are discussed in the Collaborative Data Stream Mining, where agents share knowledge to learn adaptive accurate models.


In times of great transition of the European construction sector to energy efficient and nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB), a market observation containing qualitative and quantitative indications should help to fill out some of the current gaps concerning the EU 2020 carbon targets. Next to the economic challenges, there are equally important factors that hinder renovating the existing residential building stock and adding newly constructed high-performance buildings. Under these circumstances this report summarises the findings of a cross-comparative study of the societal and technical barriers of nZEB implementation in 7 Southern European countries. The study analyses the present situation and provides an overview on future prospects for nZEB in Southern Europe. The result presents an overview of challenges and provides recommendations based on available empirical evidence to further lower those barriers in the European construction sector. The paper finds that the most Southern European countries are poorly prepared for nZEB implementation and especially to the challenge/opportunity of retrofitting existing buildings. Creating a common approach to further develop nZEB targets, concepts and definitions in synergy with the climatic, societal and technical state of progress in Southern Europe is essential. The paper provides recommendations for actions to shift the identified gaps into opportunities for future development of climate adaptive high-performance buildings.


The evolution of microprocessor design in the last few decades has changed significantly, moving from simple inorder single core architectures to superscalar and vector architectures in order to extract the maximum available instruction level parallelism. Executing several instructions from the same thread in parallel allows significantly improving the performance of an application. However, there is only a limited amount of parallelism available in each thread, because of data and control dependences. Furthermore, designing a high performance, single, monolithic processor has become very complex due to power and chip latencies constraints. These limitations have motivated the use of thread level parallelism (TLP) as a common strategy for improving processor performance. Multithreaded processors allow executing different threads at the same time, sharing some hardware resources. There are several flavors of multithreaded processors that exploit the TLP, such as chip multiprocessors (CMP), coarse grain multithreading, fine grain multithreading, simultaneous multithreading (SMT), and combinations of them.To improve cost and power efficiency, the computer industry has adopted multicore chips. In particular, CMP architectures have become the most common design decision (combined sometimes with multithreaded cores). Firstly, CMPs reduce design costs and average power consumption by promoting design re-use and simpler processor cores. For example, it is less complex to design a chip with many small, simple cores than a chip with fewer, larger, monolithic cores.Furthermore, simpler cores have less power hungry centralized hardware structures. Secondly, CMPs reduce costs by improving hardware resource utilization. On a multicore chip, co-scheduled threads can share costly microarchitecture resources that would otherwise be underutilized. Higher resource utilization improves aggregate performance and enables lower cost design alternatives.One of the resources that impacts most on the final performance of an application is the cache hierarchy. Caches store data recently used by the applications in order to take advantage of temporal and spatial locality of applications. Caches provide fast access to data, improving the performance of applications. Caches with low latencies have to be small, which prompts the design of a cache hierarchy organized into several levels of cache.In CMPs, the cache hierarchy is normally organized in a first level (L1) of instruction and data caches private to each core. A last level of cache (LLC) is normally shared among different cores in the processor (L2, L3 or both). Shared caches increase resource utilization and system performance. Large caches improve performance and efficiency by increasing the probability that each application can access data from a closer level of the cache hierarchy. It also allows an application to make use of the entire cache if needed.A second advantage of having a shared cache in a CMP design has to do with the cache coherency. In parallel applications, different threads share the same data and keep a local copy of this data in their cache. With multiple processors, it is possible for one processor to change the data, leaving another processor's cache with outdated data. Cache coherency protocol monitors changes to data and ensures that all processor caches have the most recent data. When the parallel application executes on the same physical chip, the cache coherency circuitry can operate at the speed of on-chip communications, rather than having to use the much slower between-chip communication, as is required with discrete processors on separate chips. These coherence protocols are simpler to design with a unified and shared level of cache onchip.Due to the advantages that multicore architectures offer, chip vendors use CMP architectures in current high performance, network, real-time and embedded systems. Several of these commercial processors have a level of the cache hierarchy shared by different cores. For example, the Sun UltraSPARC T2 has a 16-way 4MB L2 cache shared by 8 cores each one up to 8-way SMT. Other processors like the Intel Core 2 family also share up to a 12MB 24-way L2 cache. In contrast, the AMD K10 family has a private L2 cache per core and a shared L3 cache, with up to a 6MB 64-way L3 cache.As the long-term trend of increasing integration continues, the number of cores per chip is also projected to increase with each successive technology generation. Some significant studies have shown that processors with hundreds of cores per chip will appear in the market in the following years. The manycore era has already begun. Although this era provides many opportunities, it also presents many challenges. In particular, higher hardware resource sharing among concurrently executing threads can cause individual thread's performance to become unpredictable and might lead to violations of the individual applications' performance requirements. Current resource management mechanisms and policies are no longer adequate for future multicore systems.Some applications present low re-use of their data and pollute caches with data streams, such as multimedia, communications or streaming applications, or have many compulsory misses that cannot be solved by assigning more cache space to the application. Traditional eviction policies such as Least Recently Used (LRU), pseudo LRU or random are demand-driven, that is, they tend to give more space to the application that has more accesses to the cache hierarchy.When no direct control over shared resources is exercised (the last level cache in this case), it is possible that a particular thread allocates most of the shared resources, degrading other threads performance. As a consequence, high resource sharing and resource utilization can cause systems to become unstable and violate individual applications' requirements. If we want to provide a Quality of Service (QoS) to applications, we need to enhance the control over shared resources and enrich the collaboration between the OS and the architecture.In this thesis, we propose software and hardware mechanisms to improve cache sharing in CMP architectures. We make use of a holistic approach, coordinating targets of software and hardware to improve system aggregate performance and provide QoS to applications. We make use of explicit resource allocation techniques to control the shared cache in a CMP architecture, with resource allocation targets driven by hardware and software mechanisms.The main contributions of this thesis are the following:- We have characterized different single- and multithreaded applications and classified workloads with a systematic method to better understand and explain the cache sharing effects on a CMP architecture. We have made a special effort in studying previous cache partitioning techniques for CMP architectures, in order to acquire the insight to propose improved mechanisms.- In CMP architectures with out-of-order processors, cache misses can be served in parallel and share the miss penalty to access main memory. We take this fact into account to propose new cache partitioning algorithms guided by the memory-level parallelism (MLP) of each application. With these algorithms, the system performance is improved (in terms of throughput and fairness) without significantly increasing the hardware required by previous proposals.- Driving cache partition decisions with indirect indicators of performance such as misses, MLP or data re-use may lead to suboptimal cache partitions. Ideally, the appropriate metric to drive cache partitions should be the target metric to optimize, which is normally related to IPC. Thus, we have developed a hardware mechanism, OPACU, which is able to obtain at run-time accurate predictions of the performance of an application when running with different cache assignments.- Using performance predictions, we have introduced a new framework to manage shared caches in CMP architectures, FlexDCP, which allows the OS to optimize different IPC-related target metrics like throughput or fairness and provide QoS to applications. FlexDCP allows an enhanced coordination between the hardware and the software layers, which leads to improved system performance and flexibility.- Next, we have made use of performance estimations to reduce the load imbalance problem in parallel applications. We have built a run-time mechanism that detects parallel applications sensitive to cache allocation and, in these situations, the load imbalance is reduced by assigning more cache space to the slowest threads. This mechanism, helps reducing the long optimization time in terms of man-years of effort devoted to large-scale parallel applications.- Finally, we have stated the main characteristics that future multicore processors with thousands of cores should have. An enhanced coordination between the software and hardware layers has been proposed to better manage the shared resources in these architectures.


The effects of modification on the surface of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) by argon (Ar) and oxygen (O2) plasma treatment were investigated. SiNWs were fabricated via metal-assisted electroless etching. The fabricated SiNWs samples were subjected to plasma treatment with different plasma source (Ar, O2 and mixed Ar-O2). The Raman spectra of SiNWs exhibited slight shift in peaks that due to laser heating. Based on surface wettability, subjecting SiNWs to plasma treatment decreases its surface roughness that makes the SiNWs samples hydrophilic. The percentage reflectance of the SiNWs samples have furtherly decrease that causes increase in percentage absorbance when subjected to plasma treatment.  The change in I-V characteristics were also studied. Reduction on conductivity of the plasma treated SiNWs samples were observed due to the increased surface to volume ratio.


Eolian sedimentation was widespread in the Rocky Mountains (Rockies herein) during the middle and late Cenozoic. Although changes to eolian depositional environment have significance for tectonics, paleoclimate, and paleogeography, little is known regarding the timing of initiation and the provenance of these eolian sedimentary rocks in the Rockies. Here we study the timing of a transition to eolian depositional environments in the central Rockies and the adjacent Great Plains during the middle Cenozoic, and use sandstone petrography and detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology to constrain the provenance of the eolian sedimentary rocks. Our samples have compositions of Qm44F27Lt29 (Qm is monocrystalline quartz, F is feldspar, and Lt is total lithics), Q47F27L26 (Q is total quartz, L is total non-quartzose lithics), and Qm64P28K8 (P is plagioclase and K is potassic feldspar), and zircon age populations of 17–44 , 45–218 Ma, 220–708 Ma, 948–1326 Ma, 1332–1816 Ma, and 1825–3314 Ma. The youngest zircon population was derived from distal volcanism in western and southwestern North America, and the other populations were derived directly from local Precambrian basements on Laramide ranges and recycled from Paleozoic–lower Cenozoic strata distributed along flanks of Laramide ranges and on the Sevier hinterland. The maximum depositional ages, based on the mean U-Pb ages of the youngest clusters of zircon grains, are generally consistent with the available ash radiometric dates for the latest Eocene–early Miocene samples, confirming that detrital zircon maximum depositional ages can be used to constrain depositional ages when ash beds or dateable minerals in ash beds were not present and when synchronous magmatic activity was intense. The occurrence of eolian deposition initiated during the latest Eocene–early Oligocene and became younger eastward, suggesting eastward progressive drying in the central Rockies. The diachronous drying may have resulted from the combined effect of renewed uplift of the Cordilleran hinterland and central Rockies during the late Eocene and global cooling at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. The provenance data presented here suggest that during the latest Eocene–early Oligocene, the westerlies and possibly the dry summer monsoon winds transported unlithified fluvial sediments and pyroclastic materials eastward and northeastward, and formed massive eolian deposits in the central Rockies and the adjacent Great Plains. The eolian sedimentation continued into the Miocene and largely blanketed the Precambrian basement cores on Laramide ranges. The unlithified Oligocene eolian sediments were further eroded and recycled into the latest Oligocene–Miocene eolian sedimentary rocks.


Standing in line is one of the most common social behaviors in public spaces but can be challenging for blind people. We propose an assistive system named LineChaser, which navigates a blind user to the end of a line and continuously reports the distance and direction to the last person in the line so that they can be followed. LineChaser uses the RGB camera in a smartphone to detect nearby pedestrians, and the built-in infrared depth sensor to estimate their position. Via pedestrian position estimations, LineChaser determines whether nearby pedestrians are standing in line, and uses audio and vibration signals to notify the user when they should start/stop moving forward. In this way, users can stay correctly positioned while maintaining social distance. We have conducted a usability study with 12 blind participants. LineChaser allowed blind participants to successfully navigate lines, significantly increasing their confidence in standing in lines.


L84 Lw St 105G Logic and Critical Analysis Introduction to the elementary tools of logic required for constructing and critically evaluating arguments and the claims they support. Topics include: the nature of an argument; argument structure; how arguments can fail both in structure and in content; formal and informal fallacies; propositional logic and predicate calculus; and critical analysis of rhetorical strategies for presenting arguments. Students will be encouraged to develop critical reasoning skills that can be widely applied. Same as L30 Phil 100G Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: NSM, AN Arch: NSM Art: NSM BU: HUM


Analyzing the historical development of the American civil service great thinkers in personnel management assuring equal employment opportunity in the organization public personnel administration and the law public personnel administration outside the United States a comparative examination of national civil service and personnel reforms politicians and development of China's civil service system the economy and public personnel administration demographic changes and diversity in personnel - implications for public administrators human resource planning recruitment of personnel a review of research regarding criteria used to select job applicants placing the individual into the organization - staffing and classification in human resource management the practice of performance appraisal compensation administration and the human resource management function pension fund management budgeting human resource requirements comparable worth and pay equity - from legal principle to negotiating point race norming, validity generalization, and employment testing personnel training and development promotion of personnel - career advancement turnover of personnel motivation of personnel - a synthesis of current research the practice of employee discipline productivity and quality management strategic human resource management management of volunteers professionalism and the public sector.


The focus of several studies has been the relationship between antiretroviral therapy and cardiovascular disease, in particular the outcome of atherosclerosis in HIV-infected patients with low HDL-c levels. HIV-disease itself results in changes in the lipid metabolism. Reduced HDL-c in untreated HIV-infection is partially corrected after the initiation of ART, but longterm treatment may lower HDL-c again and in addition raises other cholesterol fractions even further.
It has however been established that NNRTIs, such as nevirapine and efavirenz, increase HDL-c levels potently. Nevirapine has been documented to increase HDL-c and improve TC/HDL-c ratio more so than does efavirenz. The less atherogenic lipid profile of nevirapine may make it a suitable component in first-line regimens for HIV-positive patients with multiple risk factors of CHD, such as low HDL-c.
In second-line regimens nevirapine has also been found effective. In treatmentexperienced patients, the PI component could be substituted for nevirapine in order to simplify treatment and to improve PI-initiated lipid abnormalities, but correction of all the cholesterol fractions may not be accomplished.


In this work, we focus on the task of Automatic Question Generation (AQG) where given a passage and an answer the task is to generate the corresponding question. It is desired that the generated question should be (i) grammatically correct (ii) answerable from the passage and (iii) specific to the given answer. An analysis of existing AQG models shows that they produce questions which do not adhere to one or more of the above-mentioned qualities. In particular, the generated questions look like an incomplete draft of the desired question with a clear scope for refinement. To alleviate this shortcoming, we propose a method which tries to mimic the human process of generating questions by first creating an initial draft and then refining it. More specifically, we propose Refine Network (RefNet) which contains two decoders. The second decoder uses a dual attention network which pays attention to both (i) the original passage and (ii) the question (initial draft) generated by the first decoder. In effect, it refines the question generated by the first decoder, thereby making it more correct and complete. We evaluate RefNet on three datasets, viz., SQuAD, HOTPOT-QA, and DROP, and show that it outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods by 7-16% on all of these datasets. Lastly, we show that we can improve the quality of the second decoder on specific metrics, such as, fluency and answerability by explicitly rewarding revisions that improve on the corresponding metric during training. The code has been made publicly available .


Abstract To achieve real-time control of fusion plasmas, the flux distribution and derived quantities have to be calculated within the time of the machine control cycle, which in the case of the ASDEX-Upgrade experiment can be as small as 1 ms. To this end we have developed a fast numerical solver for the Grad-Shafranov equation, which allows exploitation of the parallel capabilities of modern multicore processors. Our implementation, termed GPEC (Garching parallel equilibrium code), is based entirely on open-source software components. For a numerical grid of size 32 × 64, our new code requires only 0.04 ms (0.11 ms for 64 × 128) for a single call of the Grad-Shafranov solver using a standard Intel Xeon quad-core CPU (3.2 GHz). We also show the first GPEC benchmark results obtained on the Intel Sandy Bridge eight-core server processor and demonstrate the relevance of the new solver for application in plasma equilibrium codes.


A closed set of three simultaneous partial differential equations is derived for the solution of the average irradiance and the irradiance variance of focused laser beams in turbulence. The equations are uniformly valid for arbitrary scintillation levels. Examples of solutions calculated by finite difference techniques are shown to fit typical atmospheric and laboratory data well. Analytic solutions derived for asymptotic conditions are in good agreement with the related classic perturbation results. The model also provides interesting physical insight into the phenomena of saturation and supersaturation.


Climate change fiction is a new literary phenomenon that emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century in response to what may be society's greatest challenge. Climate change is already part responsible for extreme weather events, flooding, desertification and sea level rise, leading to famine, the spread of disease, and population displacement. Cli-fi novels and films are typically set in the future, telling of disaster and its effect on humans, or they depict the present, beset by dilemmas, conflicts or conspiracies, and pointing to grave consequences. At their heart are ethical and political questions: will humankind rise to the challenge of acting collectively, in the interest of the future? What sacrifices will be necessary, and is a green dictatorship our only hope for survival as a species? Each chapter in this volume offers a way of reading a particular literary text or film, drawing attention to themes, formal features, reception, contribution to public debate, and issues for class discussion. Popular novels and films (Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capitol trilogy, Michael Crichton's State of Fear, Ian McEwan's Solar, and The Day after Tomorrow) are examined alongside lesser known writing (for instance J. G. Ballard's «proto-climate change» novel The Drowned World and Antti Tuomainen's Finnish thriller, The Healer), and films not generally thought of as being about climate change (Frozen and Take Shelter). The book, which includes an introduction tracing the emergence and influence of cli-fi, is directed towards general readers and film enthusiasts as well as teachers and students. Written in an accessible style, it fills the gap between academic studies and online blogs, offering a comprehensive look at this timely new genre.


This eagerly anticipated update to the popular Photoshop CS2 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide uses a combination of task-based instruction and strong visuals to teach beginning and intermediate users how to create great-looking images with Photoshop. Best-selling authors Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas take readers step by step through all of today's Photoshop essentials: from importing digital photos through basic color manipulation and image correction to painting, masking, using filters, and more. Hot topics like working with Camera Raw, using the improved Photomerge command (that aligns and blends layers automatically) to stitch together images, making selections using the new Quick Selection tool and Refine Edge feature, and Smart Filters are all covered. Both beginning users, who want a thorough introduction to the topic, and more advanced users, who are looking for a handy reference, will find what they need here. In this new edition, using a fresh new design and now illustrated in full color, the authors have streamlined the text by focusing on the most efficient means of accomplishing a task, rather than explaining all possible methods. By the end of the book, users will have a solid foundation for working in Photoshop CS3.


Walter Benjamin's 1931 essay "A Short History of Photography" is a landmark in the understanding and criticism of the medium, offering surprising new takes on such photographic pioneers as David Octavius Hill and Nicephore Niepce and their aesthetic and technical achievements.

On Photography presents a new translation of that essay along with a number of other writings by Benjamin, some of them presented in English for the first time. Translator and editor Esther Leslie sets Benjamin's work in context with prefaces to each piece and contributes a substantial introduction that considers Benjamin's engagement with photography in all its forms, including early commercial studio photography, the uses of photography in science, and much more.


Sensor Technologies: Healthcare, Wellness and Environmental Applications explores the key aspects of sensor technologies, covering wired, wireless, and discrete sensors for the specific application domains of healthcare, wellness and environmental sensing. It discusses the social, regulatory, and design considerations specific to these domains. The book provides an application-based approach using real-world examples to illustrate the application of sensor technologies in a practical and experiential manner. The book guides the reader from the formulation of the research question, through the design and validation process, to the deployment and management phase of sensor applications. The processes and examples used in the book are primarily based on research carried out by Intel or joint academic research programs. Sensor Technologies: Healthcare, Wellness and Environmental Applications provides an extensive overview of sensing technologies and their applications in healthcare, wellness, and environmental monitoring. From sensor hardware to system applications and case studies, this book gives readers an in-depth understanding of the technologies and how they can be applied. I would highly recommend it to students or researchers who are interested in wireless sensing technologies and the associated applications. Dr. Benny Lo Lecturer, The Hamlyn Centre, Imperial College of London This timely addition to the literature on sensors covers the broad complexity of sensing, sensor types, and the vast range of existing and emerging applications in a very clearly written and accessible manner. It is particularly good at capturing the exciting possibilities that will occur as sensor networks merge with cloud-based big data analytics to provide a host of new applications that will impact directly on the individual in ways we cannot fully predict at present. It really brings this home through the use of carefully chosen case studies that bring the overwhelming concept of 'big data' down to the personal level of individual life and health. Dermot Diamond Director, National Centre for Sensor Research, Principal Investigator, CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, Dublin City University "Sensor Technologies: Healthcare, Wellness and Environmental Applications takes the reader on an end-to-end journey of sensor technologies, covering the fundamentals from an engineering perspective, introducing how the data gleaned can be both processed and visualized, in addition to offering exemplar case studies in a number of application domains. It is a must-read for those studying any undergraduate course that involves sensor technologies. It also provides a thorough foundation for those involved in the research and development of applied sensor systems. I highly recommend it to any engineer who wishes to broaden their knowledge in this area!" Chris Nugent Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Ulster What youll learnThe relevant sensing approaches and the hardware and software components required to capture and interpret sensor data. The importance of regulations governing medical devices. A design methodology for developing and deploying successful home- and community-based technologies, supported by relevant case studies. Health, wellness, and environmental sensing applications and how they work. The challenges and future directions of sensing in these domains. Who this book is for Sensor Technologies: Healthcare, Wellness and Environmental Applicationsis targeted at clinical and technical researchers, engineers, and students who want to understand the current state of the art in sensor applications in these domains. The reader gains a full awareness of the key technical and non-technical challenges that must be addressed in the development of successful end-to-end sensor applications. Real-world examples help give the reader practical insights into the successful development, deployment, and management of sensor applications. The reader will also develop an understanding of the personal, social, and ethical impact of sensor applications, now and in the future.


As author and illustrator, Caldecott Medalist Mordicai Gerstein takes readers on a journey to the age of the woolly mammoth in The First Drawing. In this lesson, students explore the book, tracing the footsteps of a young boy who lived so many years ago and realize they are not so different from him. Children today face many of the same communication challenges, as does the main character, and have a need to express personal ideas and beliefs. Students identify their own interests and compare them to those of their classmates. With a partner, children explore communicating through imagery to express an idea or personal interest. Students explore and describe cultural similarities and difference between present day and the characters of the story. To finish the lesson, students work in groups to create a wall mural of Cave Art illustrating key aspects of what they consider important in our culture today.


Electrical Impedance Tomography is an imaging technique with high potential in medical imaging. As of today the resolution is very low and measurement errors have a huge influence on the result. In order to improve the results, the currents that are applied to perform the measurements have to be chosen carefully, and the best method to do so has not been found yet. For analytical and numerical convenience the spaces of the currents and voltages are often assumed to be L2(∂Ω). However, recent studies have shown that by introducing spaces that are more involved with the weak formulation of the problem, the algorithm of finding optimal currents gives significantly different results. In addition the transition from posing the problem as a Neumann-to-Dirichlet experiment to posing it in a Robin-to-Dirichlet sense is often neglected due to the very similar nature of the resulting calculations. This thesis investigates the impact of changing the boundary value problems in Electrical Impedance tomography from Neumann-to-Dirichlet to Robin-to-Dirichlet. Several combinations of spaces for the Dirichlet and Robin data will be examined analytically and then compared to the according Neumann/Dirichlet spaces in a numerical simulation.


PURPOSE
This study assessed the current employment status of dental hygienists practicing in Hong Kong, investigated factors affecting their employment, evaluated the satisfaction of local dental hygienists and their employers, and explored the career prospects of dental hygienists in Hong Kong.

METHODS
All registered dental hygienists (n = 64), all dentists who employed dental hygienists (n = 25), and a systematic sample of dentists who did not employ dental hygienists (n = 278) were surveyed in June 1994 concerning employment situation, salaries, job satisfaction, and opinions on future prospects for dental hygienists.

RESULTS
Response rates were 86% for dental hygienists (n = 55), 88% for employers (n = 22), and 63% for dentists at large (n = 175). Among the dental hygienists, 87% still were employed as dental hygienists, and both the dental hygienists and their employers agreed that the employment situation was satisfactory; however, several dental hygienists were considered to be working below their level of qualification. Major reasons for dentists not to employ a dental hygienist were having only one operatory and having an inadequate number of patients. In general, employers expressed satisfaction with the performance of the dental hygienists. Major reasons for employing a dental hygienist were that a dental hygienist would add professional and economical benefit to their clinic. Few dentists would support expanded duties for dental hygienists.

CONCLUSIONS
In Hong Kong, dental hygienists and their employers comprise a small group with limited impact on oral healthcare services. Dental hygienists' perceptions of their future roles and ambitions are higher than those of their employers. To further the development of dental services in Hong Kong and meet documented oral healthcare needs in the population, greater utilization of dental hygienists should be promoted.


Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the best predictor of training and/or match load using session RPE. Design and Methods: 20 NCAA DI male soccer players participated in the study during the 2014 and 2015 competitive seasons. Players completed 15.20 ± 1.05 matches for a total of 304 individual data points and 29.90 ± 1.89. training sessions for a total of 598 individual data points. GPS variables (total distance, High-intensity running distance, and Player load) were analyzed with session RPE using Pearson product-moment correlations. To evaluate various methods of session RPE, "match duration" was recorded using eight different definitions: total match duration including warm-up and half-time, total match duration and warm-up, total match duration and half-time, total match duration only, minutes played including warm-up and half-time, minutes played and warm-up, minutes played and half-time, and minutes played only. A one-way ANOVA with repeated measures was used to determine if differences existed between the eight session RPE calculations. Results: Results from the ANOVA showed that all session RPE measures were significantly different from one another (P < 0.05). Very large correlations were reported between session RPE calculated using minutes played and total distance (0.81), while session RPE calculated using match duration showed less magnitude (0.57). Conclusions: Minutes played should be used to calculate session RPE as it was found to most closely reflect the actual workloads incurred during competitive matches. (Journal of Trainology 2017;6:26-30)


Standard deep reinforcement learning algorithms use a shared representation for the policy and value function, especially when training directly from images. However, we argue that more information is needed to accurately estimate the value function than to learn the optimal policy. Consequently, the use of a shared representation for the policy and value function can lead to overfitting. To alleviate this problem, we propose two approaches which are combined to create IDAAC: Invariant Decoupled Advantage Actor-Critic. First, IDAAC decouples the optimization of the policy and value function, using separate networks to model them. Second, it introduces an auxiliary loss which encourages the representation to be invariant to task-irrelevant properties of the environment. IDAAC shows good generalization to unseen environments, achieving a new state-of-the-art on the Procgen benchmark and outperforming popular methods on DeepMind Control tasks with distractors. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/rraileanu/idaac.


Traditionally insulin has been considered the 'gold standard' for the treatment of diabetes in pregnancy but since 2015 the UK guidelines have also recommended metformin, an oral blood glucose lowering drug. The routine use of metformin in pregnancy is however controversial. Metformin has been shown to cross the placenta and we do not know if it affects the growth or long term development of children who were exposed in the womb. With increasing numbers of women in the UK taking metformin during their pregnancy more research is needed to determine its potential harms or benefits. This study aims to use routinely collected administrative data to explore the effect of metformin on maternal and infant health and early childhood educational achievement.As metformin is not commonly used in pregnancy, and some of the pregnancy complications in which we are interested are rare, it is necessary to use data from as large an area as possible. Through the Administrative Data Research Network (ADRN) we aim to access prescribing records, mother and child health records and educational records from all 4 regions of the UK. The outcomes among pregnant women, or infants, who were exposed to metformin will then be compared to those who were not.The findings of this research will help women and their health care providers make more informed decisions about their care. As one of the first, if not the first, projects conducted within the ADRN using data from all 4 regions of the UK this project will also help to clarify the processes involved and assist in the design and conduct of future UK wide projects.


Therapeutic progress in aggressive myeloid malignancies such as acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and advanced myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPNs) has been slow. This is partially due to the heterogeneity of the diseases and the lack of molecular understanding, which delays effective drug development. There will be potentially three rather effective avenues to arrive at novel molecular vulnerabilities that can be therapeutically exploited. First, is identifying disease-specific mutations or other genomic aberrations (i.e. translocations, aberrant methylation) that will result in targeting affected and closely associated genes. Second, is tracing disease evolution over time, clonal evolution by various approaches, many of which will include current genomic tools and assays. Third, a more unbiased, broad discovery approach either with small molecule screens or, in our opinion, by identification of specific molecular vulnerabilities by RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi is a mechanistically rather agnostic high-throughput approach to find essential targets, alone or in combination with commonly used anti-cancer agents. In this paper we will briefly summarise some ideas and early results of RNAi screens, with a focus on hypomethylating agents and how RNAi can identify rational combination therapies with 5-azacytidine that can be rapidly translated into the clinical setting.


The main purpose of this study is to develop a bankruptcy prediction model for the small business firm. Data was collected from the Dallas Small Business Administration (SBA), making this study specific to its decision makers. Existing research has produced models which predominately use financial ratios and information measures either independently or combined, and a few research models have used economic trends. This study varies from past studies in that it includes regional economic variables from the states of Texas.
A sample of three-year data for 138 firms included fifteen bankrupt firms. This proportion of bankrupt/nonbankrupt firms approximates the proportion of repayed/defaulted loans in the SBA. Stepwise regression, set at the .15 level of significance, reduced a total of fifty-three variables to nine. These nine variables were then used to test twelve predictive models. All twelve models tested improved the SBA repayment rate and only two of the twelve would have caused the SBA to deny loans to applicants who eventually repaid.
The study determined the model that included financial ratios, information measures, and Texas economic variables as best. It was also demonstrated that some of the variables used in this model could be eliminated without decreasing the predictive power of the model. The best of twelve models improved the SBA default rate by 40 percent without denying a loan to any applicant that eventually repaid.


Transferring large or multiple genes into primary human stem/progenitor cells is challenged by restrictions in vector capacity, and this hurdle limits the success of gene therapy. A paradigm is Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), an incurable disorder caused by mutations in the largest human gene: dystrophin. The combination of large‐capacity vectors, such as human artificial chromosomes (HACs), with stem/progenitor cells may overcome this limitation. We previously reported amelioration of the dystrophic phenotype in mice transplanted with murine muscle progenitors containing a HAC with the entire dystrophin locus (DYS‐HAC). However, translation of this strategy to human muscle progenitors requires extension of their proliferative potential to withstand clonal cell expansion after HAC transfer. Here, we show that reversible cell immortalisation mediated by lentivirally delivered excisable hTERT and Bmi1 transgenes extended cell proliferation, enabling transfer of a novel DYS‐HAC into DMD satellite cell‐derived myoblasts and perivascular cell‐derived mesoangioblasts. Genetically corrected cells maintained a stable karyotype, did not undergo tumorigenic transformation and retained their migration ability. Cells remained myogenic in vitro (spontaneously or upon MyoD induction) and engrafted murine skeletal muscle upon transplantation. Finally, we combined the aforementioned functions into a next‐generation HAC capable of delivering reversible immortalisation, complete genetic correction, additional dystrophin expression, inducible differentiation and controllable cell death. This work establishes a novel platform for complex gene transfer into clinically relevant human muscle progenitors for DMD gene therapy.


Evolution is a complex algorithmic solution to life's most pressing challenge, that of survival. It is a mixture of numerous textbook optimization techniques. Natural selection, the preferential replication ofthe fittest, encodes the multiplicative weights update algorithm, which in static environments is tantamount to exponential growth for the best solution. Sex can be interpreted as a game between different agents/genes with identical interests, maximizing the fitness of the individual. Mutation forces the exploration of consistently suboptimal solutions. Are all of these mechanisms necessary to ensure for survival? Also, how is it that despite their contradictory character (e.g., selection versus mutation) they do not cancel each other out? We address these questions by extending classic evolutionary models to allow for a dynamically changing environment. Sexual selection is well suited for static environments where we show that it converges polynomially fast to monomorphic populations. Mutations make the difference in dynamic environments. Without them species become extinct as they do not have the flexibility to recover fast given environmental change. On the other hand, we show that with mutation, as long as the rate of change of the environment is not too fast, long term survival is possible. Finally, mutation does not cancel the role of selection in static environments. Convergence remains guaranteed and only the level of polymorphism of the equilibria is affected. Our techniques quantify exploration-exploitation tradeoffs in time evolving non-convex optimization problems which could be of independent interest.


Broad-sample evidence that examines the effect of disclosure regulation is widespread in accounting research — often justified by its greater generalizability relative to narrow-sample evidence. Badia et al. (this issue) takes a different approach by focusing on the effect of disclosure rules in a narrow sample of U.S. and Canadian oil and gas companies. In this discussion, I argue that the contention that broad samples make research on disclosure regulation generalizable is a misconception and that the narrow-sample approach has many advantages and often advances knowledge more than broad-sample research. The key advantage of a narrow sample is that, everything else equal, we generally understand the institutional setting that generated the evidence better. Institutional details allow researchers to more precisely identify the changes that the regulation caused, assess the validity of untestable identification assumptions, and, as a field, it improves our ability to take a Bayesian approach to causal inferences. I illustrate these points by contrasting the evidence in Badia et al. to evidence from broad-sample studies on the effect of IFRS adoption and other major disclosure regulation.


An interesting problem in proof theory is to find representations of proof that do not distinguish between proofs that are 'morally' the same. For many logics, the presentation of proofs in a traditional formalism, such as Gentzen's sequent calculus, introduces artificial syntactic structure called 'bureaucracy'; e.g., an arbitrary ordering of freely permutable inferences. A proof system that is free of bureaucracy is called canonical for a logic. In this dissertation two canonical proof systems are presented, for two logics: a notion of proof nets for additive linear logic with units, and 'classical proof forests', a graphical formalism for first-order classical logic. Additive linear logic (or sum–product logic) is the fragment of linear logic consisting of linear implication between formulae constructed only from atomic formulae and the additive connectives and units. Up to an equational theory over proofs, the logic describes categories in which finite products and coproducts occur freely. A notion of proof nets for additive linear logic is presented, providing canonical graphical representations of the categorical morphisms and constituting a tractable decision procedure for this equational theory. From existing proof nets for additive linear logic without units by Hughes and Van Glabbeek (modified to include the units naively), canonical proof nets are obtained by a simple graph rewriting algorithm called saturation. Main technical contributions are the substantial correctness proof of the saturation algorithm, and a correctness criterion for saturated nets. Classical proof forests are a canonical, graphical proof formalism for first-order classical logic. Related to Herbrand's Theorem and backtracking games in the style of Coquand, the forests assign witnessing information to quantifiers in a structurally minimal way, reducing a first-order sentence to a decidable propositional one. A similar formalism 'expansion tree proofs' was presented by Miller, but not given a method of composition. The present treatment adds a notion of cut, and investigates the possibility of composing forests via cut-elimination. Cut-reduction steps take the form of a rewrite relation that arises from the structure of the forests in a natural way. Yet reductions are intricate, and initially not well-behaved: from perfectly ordinary cuts, reduction may reach unnaturally configured cuts that may not be reduced. Cutelimination is shown using a modified version of the rewrite relation, inspired by the game-theoretic interpretation of the forests, for which weak normalisation is shown, and strong normalisation is conjectured. In addition, by a more intricate argument, weak normalisation is also shown for the original reduction relation.


Iron overload is a systemic disorder and is either primary (genetic) or secondary (exogenous iron administration). Primary iron overload is most commonly associated with hereditary hemochromatosis and secondary iron overload with ineffective erythropoiesis (predominantly caused by β-thalassemia major and sickle cell disease) that requires long-term transfusion therapy, leading to transfusional hemosiderosis. Iron overload may lead to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, in addition to cardiac and endocrine complications. The liver is one of the main iron storage organs and the first to show iron overload. Therefore, detection and quantification of liver iron overload are critical to initiate treatment and prevent complications. Liver biopsy was the historical reference standard for detection and quantification of liver iron content. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is now commonly used for liver iron quantification, including assessment of distribution, detection, grading, and monitoring of treatment response in iron overload. Several MR imaging techniques have been developed for iron quantification, each with advantages and limitations. The liver-to-muscle signal intensity ratio technique is simple and widely available; however, it assumes that the reference tissue is normal. Transverse magnetization (also known as R2) relaxometry is validated but is prone to respiratory motion artifacts due to a long acquisition time, is presently available only for 1.5-T imaging, and requires additional cost and delay for off-line analysis. The R2* technique has fast acquisition time, demonstrates a wide range of liver iron content, and is available for 1.5-T and 3.0-T imaging but requires additional postprocessing software. Quantitative susceptibility mapping has the highest sensitivity for detecting iron deposition; however, it is still investigational, and the correlation with liver iron content is not yet established. ©RSNA, 2018.


The recent discipline of ecophysiology investigates physiological adaptations of organisms to their environment. This opens for testing new research questions, such as more thorough investigations of the link between environmental stressors and physiological responses, or the role of stress as a biomarker of health and fitness. Many studies support the cort-fitness hypothesis, which predicts a negative relationship between stress and fitness, but they also show that this relationship is not linear. Animals need stress to keep themselves alert for hazards, but detrimental effects can occur at high release levels or in chronic situations. This review focuses on causes, mechanisms and consequences of stress on large herbivores, both for individual fitness and population dynamics. Stress is a multidimensional physiological response that challenges internal stability, and can be measured through "stress hormones". These however fluctuate depending on a range of factors, and can be measured in different ways, depending on the research question. Therefore, caution should be taken when interpreting results. Stress can be described based on duration (acute or chronic) and type of stressor (physical or psychological). Chronic stress inhibits the body from returning to homeostasis, and can have a range of physiological consequences ultimately affecting fecundity, offspring survival and immunity. Although studies on the ecophysiology of wild animals, and especially large herbivores, are scarce, there is evidence that individual effects of stress can scale up to population dynamics. Rangifer, due to its peculiar ecology, is particularly sensitive to the rapidly increasing human disturbance. Although so far only few studies provided physiological measures of stress hormones, these documented the occurrence of nutritional stress, and succeeded in establishing a causal link between human disturbance and physiological stress. This review shows that there is reasons to believe that stress does matter, both at an individual and population level. There is an urgent need for more interdisciplinary studies to establish the link between different type of stressors and stress responses, and to better understand the relationship between stress, individual fitness and population dynamics. In particular, there is a need for studies on wild species that seem particularly sensitive to stress, such as Rangifer, in order to plan sound management and conservation strategies.


Addressing students' authentic selves and spiritual journeys poses pedagogical challenges, particularly for new faculty. The author reflects on his challenges and triumphs experienced while teaching Issues in Science and Religion at DePaul University's School for New Learning, to highlight three effective strategies: multiple and varied means for students to expose their authentic selves in safe environments; disclosure of one's authentic self to students to model spiritual reflection; and frequent reinforcement and clarification of course objectives and assessment criteria. The author provides examples of practices and discusses the value of collegial and institutional support and faculty development opportunities.


The first cases of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) were reported by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta in the United States in 1981. At the time of completion of this thesis the numbers of cases of AIDS worldwide has risen to well in excess of 100 000. Dr. Roger Brittain, District Medical Officer and a Director of the Expert Systems and Decision Support Unit (ESDSU) at the University of Warwick believed that Information Technology could play a role in overcoming some of the problems related to AIDS. Principle among these was the problem of shortages of clinical and other expertise about this disorder in the United Kingdom. This thesis describes research relating to the attempts of a development team from the ESDSU to develop a computer based tool for resolving the problems of a dearth in AIDS-related expertise via an Action Research Programme. My role in the development team was principally in the areas of design and knowledge acquisition relating to the project. This thesis therefore concentrates on the design, knowledge acquisition and evolution of the computer based decision support tool that was developed.

The thesis describes the application of Expert Systems and Information Systems Approaches to the problem and how these approaches were both shown to have deficiencies. However it seemed that the deficiencies in each approach were complementary. This led to the development of a model for a computer based decision support tool that inherited features of both an expert system and an information system. This "hybrid" tool was termed an expert advisory system and was designed to address multiple user groups with varying levels of expertise within each user group.

The process of developing the Expert Advisory System model led to the invention of development aids such as the Domain Dictionary. Also it highlighted an often ignored problem in computer based decision support tools, that of responsibility for the advice of the tool. The problems of validation of an "active" decision support tool in which advice is accessed via a consultation are highlighted in the complex area of Medicine. This thesis proposes a possible solution in the form of an editorial board which would be responsible for the validation and maintenance of expertise contained in the decision support tool.


Independent profiles were developed for the visual and flavor/texture characteristics of four commercial and eight new table grape cultivars from the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada breeding program (Summerland). Twelve judges evaluated 11 visual attributes, plus degree of liking (visual), under natural light, and then evaluated 10 flavor/texture attributes, plus degree of liking (flavor/texture), under red light. Visual attributes were assessed for both clusters (color, color uniformity, conformation, size, frequency of shot berries, stem thickness) and berries (size, color uniformity, shape, skin markings). Flavor/texture attributes included skin friability, skin thickness, initial juice release, seededness, flesh firmness, fruit flavor, labrusca flavor, sweetness, sourness and bitterness/astringency. Data were analyzed by analysis of variance and principal component analysis. Cultivars profiled included those with small round to large oblong berries. Visual characteristics of cultivars ranged from clusters with a high degree of shouldering and/or tightly packed berries, to those with low shouldering and/or loosely-packed berries. Flavor/texture characteristics of cultivars ranged from those with sweet fruity berries with high skin friability to berries with sour, bitter/astringent flavors with low skin friability (slip skin). Cultivars with the greatest degree of visual liking (highly correlated with berry and cluster size, shape, and color uniformity) included Festivee as well as Summerland Selections 494, 495, 537, and 651. Those with greatest degree of flavor/texture liking (highly correlated to flesh firmness, skin friability, sweetness, and fruity flavor) included Lakemont, plus Summerland Selections 535 and 651. These analyses contributed to the knowledge required for naming and release of new cultivars from the breeding program.


Pearls -- small white beads of purity and perfection. It is no wonder that they have fascinated and bewitched cultures the world over for thousands of years. But just what is it about this ancient gem that has so closely bonded it to our lives, our culture, and our bodies? "People and Pearls" explores and reveals the power of pearls, with their remarkable ability to bestow upon their wearer a sense of mystery, elegance, and grace. It offers a personal look at the world's most celebrated jewel through portraits of the most memorable personages throughout civilization to have worn them -- from Queen Elizabeth to Uma Thurman, from Josephine Baker to Marilyn Monroe. It recounts the stories of particular strands of pearls that have such an enthralling history about them that they seem to take on a life of their own. Embellishing the text are more than one hundred lavish illustrations, photography as unique as the subject of the book: These are seductive, beautiful works of ail. Some are humorous. Some are as snapshots from a personal diary. Some are breathtakingly romantic, such as the portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse wearing only her pearls. And some -- like the timeless elegance of Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's "-- are dreamlike visions that are simply unforgettable. Masterfully written and beautifully designed, "People and Pearls" is not only a cultural, historical, and personal look at the magic of pearls-it is the definitive photographic book on the subject.


Pulse propagation in high-gain optical fiber amplifiers with normal group-velocity dispersion has been studied by self-similarity analysis of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation with gain. For an amplifier with a constant distributed gain, an exact asymptotic solution has been found that corresponds to a linearly chirped parabolic pulse that propagates self-similarly in the amplifier, subject to simple scaling rules. The evolution of an arbitrary input pulse to an asymptotic solution is associated with the development of low-amplitude wings on the parabolic pulse whose functional form has also been found by means of self-similarity analysis. These theoretical results have been confirmed with numerical simulations. A series of guidelines for the practical design of fiber amplifiers to operate in the asymptotic parabolic pulse regime has also been developed.


Outbreak of early mortality syndrome (EMS) or acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) in whiteleg shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) and black tiger shrimp (P. monodon) was first documented in August 2011 in Eastern Thailand. The disease subsequently spread to almost all shrimp production areas in 2012 until the early part of 2016. These episodes of AHPND outbreaks consequently impacted the shrimp industry as evidenced by significant reduction in the production of farmed shrimps, shortage of raw materials for the shrimp export industry, and reduction of global shrimp supply from Thailand. Following the discovery of Vibrio parahaemolyticus as the causal agent of AHPND, PCR techniques subsequently became available for the rapid and accurate detection of AHPND in cultivated shrimps. The Department of Fisheries (DOF) consequently included AHPND in the National Surveillance Program focusing on the investigation of risk factors responsible for the outbreak and concomitant spread of the disease. As a result, the quality of broodstock and postlarvae (PL) and as well as farm management practices, i.e. pond bottom and water preparation, stocking density, feeds and feeding practices, and water quality fluctuations were identified as key risk factors associated with AHPND outbreaks. By and large, the DOF has undertaken mitigating measures to control and prevent further outbreaks of AHPND including the improvement of sanitation in marine shrimp broodstock and PL hatcheries, quality evaluation and disease screening of broodstocks and PL, detection of pathogens in soil and water samples, and acquisition of new broodstocks for improved genetic diversity. To date, Thailand's shrimp industry has gradually recovered from the devastating effects of AHPND since 2015. Heptopancreatic microsporidiosis (HPM) caused by Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei (EHP), a sporeforming microsporidian, is another emerging disease of cultured penaeids in Thailand. EHP was first documented in farmed P. monodon in 2004, however, its impact was not clearly evaluated at that time. EHP was again observed in P. vannamei in 2014 at the same period of AHPND outbreak in Thailand. In the field, EHP could be transmitted horizontally through feeding of the EHPcontaminated feed and feces from infected shrimp. Samples collected from numerous shrimp farms showed that EHP was heavily present in both ponds with successful and failed crops indicating that EHP infection in shrimp may not be a significant contributing factor to a failed production run. In vitro challenge likewise showed that there was no correlation between EHP and white feces syndrome. However, EHP infection at significantly high levels could affect shrimp growth. One of the mitigating measures to control EHP infection in cultured shrimp is the reduction of contamination in hatcheries and grow-out facilities. Despite the negative impacts of AHPND and HPM on the shrimp industry of Thailand, all parties of the shrimp sector have been working in concert to attain the projected annual shrimp production volume of approximately 300,000 metric tons (MT) in 2016. D ow nl oa de d by [A no ny m ou s] fr om h tt p: // re po si to ry .s ea fd ec .o rg .p h on M ar ch 3 1, 2 02 0 at 6 :5 4 AM C ST