Background : Health systems in order to confirmity with changing conditions and responding to community needs, community needs to change and continuous improvement of their structure, function, and subsequent evaluationindicators. Therefore the purpose of this study was to evaluate effect of health system reform plan on performance indicators.
Materials and Methods : This study was a cross-sectional descriptive study using data from the years 1392 to 1394, the years before and after the implementation of healthcare reform was carried out. The population consisted of all hospitals of the Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (14 Hospitals). For data analysis using SPSS version 16, Paired sample T tests and Wilcoxon software were used.

Results: After health system reform plan all indicators had better than before and this development was significant in all cases. After health reform plan average length of stay was slightly increased (0.5%), although this was not significant statistically (P = 0.653). Before the health reform plan, the difference between the average bed occupancy indicator only for educational and non-educational centers were significant statistically (p = 0/05), but after the reform mean for all the indicators except indicator of average length of stay (p = 0/038), was significant.

Conclusion: The health system reform plan has been positive changes in indicators of hospital performance. Therefore, while considering the current trend of continuous improvement, the continuity of the project was advised based on the results of this study.

Keywords: Healthcare reform, Performance indicators, Evaluation, Hospitals, Lorestan.


On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately-held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its Board of Directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies. Amazon had been courting Zappos since 2005, hoping a merger would enable Amazon to expand and strengthen its market share in soft line retail categories. While Amazon's interest intrigued Zappos' senior executives, they had not felt the time was right, until now. Amazon's offer-10 million shares of stock (valued at $807 million), $40 million in cash and restricted stock units for Zappos' employees and a promise that Zappos could operate as an independent subsidiary-was on the table. Zappos' financial advisor, Morgan Stanley, estimated the future equity value of an IPO to be between $650 million and $905 million; this estimate skewed the Amazon offer-at least in financial terms-toward the high end of Zappos' estimated market value. Hsieh and Lin, Zappos' CEO and COO respectively, knew that much of Zappos' growth, and hence its value, had been due to the company's strong culture and obsessive emphasis on customer service. In 2009, they were focusing on the three C's-clothing, customer service and company culture-the keys to the company's continued growth. Hsieh and Lin had only a few days to consider whether to recommend the merger to Zappos' board at their July 21st meeting.


Efficient handling of containers at a terminal can reduce the overall vessel sojourn times and minimise operational costs. The internal transport of containers in these terminals is performed by vehicles that share a common guide path. The throughput capacity of a terminal may increase by increasing the number of vehicles; however, simultaneously congestion may reduce the effective vehicle speed. We model this situation accurately using a traffic flow-based closed queuing network model. The vehicle internal transport is modelled using a load-dependent server that captures the interaction between the number of vehicles in a transport segment and the effective vehicle speed. Using a non-linear traffic flow model, we show that the throughput reductions due to vehicle congestion can be as large as 85%. Hence, the effect of vehicle congestion during internal transport cannot be ignored. The model can also be used to determine the appropriate number of vehicles required to achieve the required terminal throughput by explicitly considering the effect of vehicle congestion.


External differentiation refers to the various relationships the EU has with neighbouring countries with which it has a formal agreement. There is a general principle that the more access associated countries have to the EU Single Market, the more regulatory alignment they must accept. There is, however, no standard formula for achieving this. The only standardised arrangement is the European Economic Area and even that varies in detail for the individual states. Otherwise the arrangements differ according to concerns about sovereignty, sectoral interests, regulatory styles, power politics and the salience of particular issues and the overall trajectory of associated states towards or away from the EU.


The overwhelming voice in the SHRM literature over the past two decades has advocated 'soft' human or employee relations over 'harder' , more prescriptive management science; with much of the literature focusing on the application of high-commitment management (HCM), or high involvement work systems (HIWS), as a way of achieving competitive advantage. Although there has been substantial effort expended to establish a link between such practices and improved firm outcomes, the research has rarely focused on the role of the Human Resource practitioner from the incumbent's perspective, in implementing and supporting these outcomes. This study uses an approach combining semi-structured interviews, a face to face structured questionnaire based on Ulrich's (1993) HR role framework, combined with a Delphi study to examine the role of the Human Resource professional within the Australian metals mining industry.

Results from the study indicate that the role of the HR professional within the Australian metals mining industry has not developed as consistent with the dominant discourse on Strategic Human Resource Management in the HRM and SHRM literature. Rather, the evidence suggests that the current HR practitioner is more focussed on operational activities and in performing the 'employee champion' role, instead of the 'strategic' role.

In the case of the Australian Metals Mining Industry (AMMI) the study has identified that contextual constraints have contributed significantly to the operational focus of the HR role, and that these should not be ignored when examining the implementation of SHRM practices. The results of this study challenge the application of a SHRM 'best practice' approach in achieving competitive advantage, and point to a need for re-examining harder, operationally focused but contextually sensitive approach to HRM practices


With an efficient greenhouse screening method, the first resistance to the soybean aphid (Aphis glycines Matsumura) was found in cultivated soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] germplasm. No resistance was found in 1425 current North American soybean cultivars, 106 Maturity Group (MG) 000 through VII Asian cultivars, and in a set of 11 'Clark' isolines possessing different pubescence traits. Dense pubescence did not provide protection against the soybean aphid. Resistance was discovered and established in three ancestors of North American genotypes: 'Dowling', 'Jackson', and PI 71506. Expression of resistance in those genotypes was characterized in choice and nonchoice tests. In choice tests, significantly fewer aphids occurred on Dowling, Jackson, and PI 71506 plants compared with susceptible cultivars (P = 0.05). Aphid populations did not develop on Dowling and Jackson in nonchoice tests, indicating that there was a negative impact on aphid fecundity on those cultivars. That evidence combined with observations of aphid mortality on those cultivars suggested that antibiosis-type resistance contributed to the expression of resistance. Possible donors of resistance to Dowling and Jackson were identified. In nonchoice tests, population development on PI 71506 was not significantly different from development on susceptible cultivars, indicating that antixenosis was more important in that genotype. Resistance was expressed in all plant stages. Dowling provided season-long protection against aphids equal to the use of the systemic insecticide imidacloprid [1-[(6-Chloro-3-pyridinyl)methyl]-N-nitro-2-imidazolidinimine) in a field test. Four other germplasm accessions, 'Sugao Zarai', 'Sato', 'T260H', and PI 230977, had levels of resistance not significantly different from Dowling, Jackson, and PI 71506 in a choice test (P = 0.05).


The first two parts of the paper lay out some background ideas about the nature of plural societies, and about the various ways that groups and inviduals engage interculturally within them (see Berry, 2007, for more detail). The third part  examines more closely the meaning of integration and multiculturalism, using concepts and findings from cross-cultural and social psychology. A final section considers the possibility of rooting social solidarity on these concepts.


What makes a study valid or invalid? In 2013, the Hastings Law Journal published a law review article by law professor Deborah Denno entitled What Real-World Cases Tell Us About Genetic Evidence. This article questioned the validity of an article that we published in Science: The Double Edged-Sword: Does Biomechanism Increase or Decrease Judges' Sentencing of Psychopaths? Denno's trenchant critique focused on our use of experimental, rather than archival, methodology, and revealed a misunderstanding of the diverse goals of empirical legal research. One study, which in our case investigated the impact of biological explanations of criminal behavior on sentencing, is not meant to answer the universe of potentially relevant questions. This is as true in science as it is in law. Rather, experimental and archival projects complement each other by asking and answering different questions aimed at different forms of validity. We describe archival and experimental research methods, and then explain how their design impacts external validity, including concerns of ecological validity, robustness, and generalizability; internal validity; and construct validity. We appreciate Denno's questions about external validity in particular, specifically asking how and under what conditions a particular set of experimental effects might occur in real court cases. However, the questions she poses do not challenge the internal validity of our study — that is, its ability to identify particular causal factors that influence judges' ratings and sentencing decisions in the particular set of conditions and case features we tested. By explaining the tradeoffs between different forms of validity, this brief article may serve as a helpful tool for scholars in law, psychology, and other social sciences, as well as attorneys and judges who rely on empirical legal research in their work.


In her article "A Cross-Cultural Approach to Brokeback Mountain" Jono Van Belle draws on insights from film theory and cultural narratology in order to analyse Annie Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain" and its filmic adaptation by Ang Lee. Van Belle's analysis is about how culturally different worldviews play a role in the construction of meaning by audience and she links the different narrative levels of semantics, genre typology, and worldviews in the short story and the film to the scholarship of the story. Further, Van Belle argues that worldviews and the problematics of gayness represented in "Brokeback Mountain" and its filmic adaptation would gain insight following in-depth research by comparative analyses between Eastern and Western epistemologies.


L. Baillie Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK M.D. Barton University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia E.J. Bartowsky The Australian Wine Research Institute, Glen Osmond, Australia A. Bosch Universitat de Barcelona, Spain O. Braissant Department of Urology, University Hospital of Basel, Basel, Switzerland J. Brojatsch Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City, NY, USA P. Calik Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey M.L. Chikindas Department of Food Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA P.J. Collier School of Contemporary Sciences, University of Abertay, Dundee, UK D.J. Colquhoun Norwegian Veterinary Institute, Oslo, Norway C. Cooper Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden J.E. Cooper Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, UK D.A. Cowan Department of Genetics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria Z. Cui Department of Microbiology, Nanjing Agricultual University, Nanjing, China S.P. Cummings School of Applied Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK M. Dow BioSciences Institute, University College Cork, Ireland N. Fegan Food Science Australia, Brisbane, Australia J.E. Flaherty Department of Science and Mathematics, Coker College, Hartsville, SC, USA C. Gilbert Laboratoire de Microbiologie et Génétique Moléculaire, Université Claud Bernard Lyon, Lyon, France B.F. Gilmore School of Pharmacy, Queen's University Belfast, UK J. Glassey University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK M. Gougouli Department of Food Science & Technology, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece P.C. Gowland Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK I.R. Grant Queen's University Belfast, UK J. Guard USDA-ARS, Athens, GA, USA K.A. Hammer School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia C.R. Jackson USDA-ARS Resistance Research Unit, Athens, GA, USA B.V. Jones School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Brighton, UK M. Koenen The Netherlands G. LaPointe Laval University, Quebec, Canada L. Laurens National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA A.B. Leaphart Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC, USA J.T. Lisle USGS, Center for Coastal & Watershed Research, St Petersburg, FL, USA J.A. McGarvey USDA-ARS Plant Mycotoxin Research Unit, Albany, CA, USA J.-Y. Maillard Cardiff School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK B. Mayo IPLA-CSIC, Villaviciosa, Spain A. Moodley Department of Veterinary Disease Biology, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Denmark F. Mozzi CERELA-CONICET, Tucumán, Argentina D.R. Noguera University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA G.-J.E. Nychas Department of Food Science & Technology, Laboratory of Food Microbiology & Biotechnology of Foods, Athens, Greece F. Pinzari Council for Agricultural Research and Economics Research Centre for Soil-Plant System [CREA-RPS], Rome, Italy A.H. Rickard School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA C.P. Saint Water Centre for Water Management and Re-use, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, Australia A.S. Sant'Ana Department of Food Science, Faculty of Food Engineering, University of Campinas, Brazil P. Setlow University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT, USA R. Seviour Biotechnology Research Centre, La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia P. Silley MB Consult Limited, Hampshire, UK M.B. Taylor University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa K. Thomas University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK M. Upton School of Biomedical & Healthcare Sciences, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK V.P. Valdramidis University of Malta, Malta K. Venema Benefi cial Microbes Consultancy, the Netherlands T.M. Wassenaar Molecular Microbiology and Genomics Consultants, Tannenstrasse, Zotzenhein, Germany T.J. Welch USDA-ARS National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture, Leetown, WV, USA J. Wells USDA-ARS, Meat Animal Research Center, NE, USA R. Zdor Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI, USA N.-Y. Zhou Center for Applied & Environmental Microbiology, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China


Thirty-seven samples of naturally occurring phenolic compounds were evaluated using three common in vitro assays for total antioxidant activity (TAC) testing: the Trolox Equivalent Antioxidant Capacity (TEAC), the Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Potential (FRAP) and the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay, in addition to the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent reactivity (FCR). We found that antioxidant hierarchies depended on the choice of assay and applied ANOVA analyses to explore underlying structure-TAC dependencies. In addition to statistically confirming the empirically established connection between flavonoid ring-B catechol and high TEAC or FRAP, new correlations were also found. In flavonoids, (i) hydroxyl groups on ring-B had a positive effect on all four TAC assays; (ii) the presence of a 3-hydroxyl group on ring-C increased TEAC and FRAP, but had no effect on DPPH or FCR; (iii) Phenolic acids lacking a 3-hydroxyl group had significantly lower FRAP or DPPH than compounds having this structure, while TEAC or FCR were not affected. Results demonstrated that any TAC-based ranking of phenolic rich samples would very much depend on the choice of assay, and argue for use of more than one technique. As an illustration, we compared results of the above four assays using either grapevine leaf extracts or synthetic mixtures of compounds prepared according to major polyphenols identified in the leaves.


Smart grid (SG) is regarded as the next generation power grid, which implements an innovative idea for a highly automated and integrated power system.
The two-way energy and information flows in the SG, together with the smart devices, bring new perspectives to energy management and demand response. Meanwhile, innovative grid components, such as microgrid (MG) and electric vehicle, are emerging as new applications which bring many benefits as well as more chanllegens in SG.
Therefore, we explore possible solutions to these chanllegening but interesting problems.

In this dissertation, we first present an introduction of the SG, and the research involved in different areas of SG. We then investigate an online algorithm for energy distribution in a SG environment. The proposed online algorithm are quite general, suitable for a wide range of utility, cost and pricing functions. And it is asymptotically optimal without any future information.
Following this, we then propose a distributed online algorithm. Comparing to the previous one, it solves the online problem in a distributed manner and mitigates the user privacy issue by not sharing user utility functions.
Both algorithms are evaluated with trace-driven simulations and shown to outperform a benchmark scheme.

We then propose a hierarchical power scheduling approach to optimally manage power trading, storage and distribution in a smart power grid with a Macrogrid and cooperative MGs.
We develop online algorithms both for cooperative MGs and the Macrogrid.
The proposed hierarchical power scheduling algorithms are evaluated with trace-driven simulations and are shown to outperform several existing schemes with considerable gains.

Also, we also introduce the simultaneous inference for power generation forecasting from renewable energy resources. We then apply it for solar intensity prediction using a real trace of weather data, where the performance is demonstrated over existing approaches.


This paper presents how advanced social media platforms can be exploited to construct and share contextual spaces enabling the instantiation of agile personal learning environments or informal knowledge management solutions. The usefulness of open plugins to collect resources from the cloud in such dedicated contextual spaces is discussed. The mechanisms for the personalization of spaces from an interaction point of view once populated with resources and their sharing across platforms are also detailed. Results are illustrated with the case of the Graasp platform developed in the framework of European research projects in Technology Enhanced Learning.


The influence of fermentation on antioxidant activity, total phenol, total flavonoid and phenolic compounds of sea fennel and also volatile compounds of sea fennel essential oil was investigated and compared with fresh samples. Antioxidant activity, total fenolic and flavonoid contents decresed from 89.79 to 63.13%; from 259.58 to 77.92 mg/100 g; from 2114.67 to 390.50 mg/100 g, respectively. Twenty-six and thirty-three components of sea fennel oils were identified in raw and fermented sea fennel, accounting to about 99.99% and 99.44% of the total oil, respectively. The raw and fermented sea fennel leaves contained 22.31 and 1.32% sabinene, 12.08% and 7.45% limonene, 10.30% and 11.61% β-phellandrene, 8.59% and 9.17% (Z)-β-ocimene, 7.08% and 3.55% α-pinene, 28.36% and 42.05% γ-terpinene, 2.57% and 8.64% terpinene-4-ol, respectively. Dominant phenolic compounds were (+)-catechin, gallic acid, 3,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid and p -coumaric acid. Generally, all of the phenolic compounds reduced the effect of microorganisms during,. However, essential oil contents of sea fennel were not effected from fermentation process.


Three‐dimensional models of seagrass canopies were constructed by treating leaves as flexible strips that fall under their own weight into naturalistic canopy structures. Canopy structures incorporated shoot density, canopy height, and physical and along‐length optical characteristics of leaves from an empirical data set of six seagrass canopies from a reef lagoon in Puerto Morelos, Mexico. Multiple runs of a radiosity method radiative transfer model elucidated the dependence of various canopy optical properties on incident radiance zenith angle, such as within‐canopy diffuse attenuation, the absorption of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) by different canopy‐complex components, along‐leaf variation in PAR absorption, and canopy bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs). Intersite variation in mean PAR absorption by green leaf sections was primarily associated with leaf area index (LAI). Variation in PAR absorption with incident radiance angle was generally small for incident angles within Snella's window (< 49°). Within canopies, absorption by water itself had a negligible effect. Canopy BRDFs were not Lambertian and exhibited features related to canopy architecture. Model outputs validated well in terms of energy conservation and empirical measurements of within‐canopy PAR attenuation. The model framework has clear applications to improve understanding of seagrass canopy light harvesting and photosynthetic carbon fixation and to aid the development of quantitative biooptical remote sensing methods for seagrass beds.


Sky Writer is a collaborative communication medium that augments the traditional display of a UAV pilot and allows other stakeholders to communicate their needs and intentions to the pilot. UAV pilots engaging in time-critical missions, such as urban disaster responses, often must allocate most of their cognitive capacity towards flight tasks, making communication and collaboration with other stakeholders difficult or dangerous. Sky Writer addresses the needs of stakeholders while requiring minimal cognitive effort from the UAV pilot. The application presents stakeholders with an interface that provides contextual flight information and a live video stream of the flight. Stakeholders are able to sketch directly on the video stream or use a spotlight indicator that is mirrored across all displays in the system, including the pilot's display. The application can be used in any modern web browser and works with traditional and touch devices. Concept experimentation performed at Disaster City with two pilots indicated that the spotlight feature was particularly useful while the UAV was in motion, and the sketching features were most useful while the UAV was stationary. The system will be tested with professional responders soon to determine its efficacy in a simulated response, and to inform the ongoing design process.


Understanding value chains requires knowledge of the needs of customers and how these needs are met by different suppliers of marketing or value-adding services. The need for these marketing services and costs of supplying these are reflected in marketing margins or the difference in the prices of the various marketing levels in the chain. This study analyzed lettuce supply chains in Benguet and mapped 3 chains, including the value-adding activities and the governance mechanisms such as contracts and payment terms that exist in the chain. Some new roles have emerged due to recent developments in the market. Some wholesalers became "commissioners" and "disposers," and some individuals played dual roles along the chain. A few farmers became "disposers," and a few "disposers" eventually became farmers. Marketing margins were also computed for a sample chain including the cost of value-adding activities to show a more accurate distribution of benefits across key actors in the chain. Higher gross margins were due to higher costs of providing marketing services, which indicates a competitive market. There are opportunities in the lettuce chains to respond to increasing demand for salad vegetables. While lettuce producers and other actors in the chain respond to these market requirements such as producing new lettuce varieties, there are issues that need to be addressed to improve efficiency and performance of the chain.


By the detailed analysis of the modern development of the mechanics of deformable media can be found the deep internal contradiction. From the one hand it is declared that the deformation and fracture are the hierarchical processes which are linked and unite several structural and scale levels. From the other hand the sequential investigation of the hierarchy of the deformation and destruction is not carried out. The book's aim is filling this mentioned gap and investigates the hot topic of the fracture of non-ideal media. From the microscopic point of view in the book we study the hierarchy of the processes in fractured solid in the whole diapason of practically used scales. According the multilevel hierarchical system ideology under "microscopic we understand taking into account the processes on the level lower than relative present strata. From hierarchical point of view the conception of "microscopic fracture can be soundly applied to the traditionally macroscopic area, namely geomechanics or main crack propagation. At the same time microscopic fracture of the nanomaterials can be well-grounded too. This ground demands the investigation on the level of inter-atomic interaction and quantum mechanical description. The important feature of the book is the application of fibred manifolds and non-Euclidean spaces to the description of the processes of deformation and fracture in inhomogeneous and defected continua. The non-Euclidean spaces for the dislocations' description were introduced by J.F. Nye, B.A. Bilby, E. Kr ner, K. Kondo in fiftieth. In last decades this necessity was shown in geomechanics and theory of seismic signal propagation. The applications of non-Euclidean spaces to the plasticity allow us to construct the mathematically satisfying description of the processes. Taking into account this space expansion the media with microstructure are understood as Finsler space media. The bundle space technique is used for the description of the influence of microstructure on the continuum metrics. The crack propagation is studied as a process of movement in Finsler space. Reduction of the general description to the variational principle in engineering case is investigated and a new result for the crack trajectory in inhomogeneous media is obtained. Stability and stochastization of crack trajectory in layered composites is investigated. The gauge field is introduced on the basis of the structure representation of Lie group generated by defects without any additional assumption. Effective elastic and non-elastic media for nanomaterials and their geometrical description are discussed. The monograph provides the basis for more detailed and exact description of real processes in the material. The monograph will be interesting for the researchers in the field of fracture mechanics, solid state physics and geomechanics. It can be used as well by the last year students wishing to become more familiar with some modern approaches to the physics of fracture and continual theory of dislocations. In Supplement, written by V.V.Barkaline, quantum mechanical concept of physical body wholeness according to H. Primas is discussed with relation to fracture. Role of electronic subsystem in fracture dynamics in adiabatic and non-adiabatic approximations is clarified. Potential energy surface of ion subsystem accounting electron contribution is interpreted as master parameter of fracture dynamics. Its features and relation to non-euclidean metrics of defected solid body is discussed. Quantum mechanical criteria of fracture arising are proposed. Key Features: - Crack represent as a quasi-particle - Finsler metric is taken as intrinsic metric of non-ideal body - Crack is propagate along the geodesic lines - Hierarchical nature of the fracture taking into account - Non-Archimedian numbers are characterized the chaotic properties of hierarchical space Key Features: - Crack represent as a quasi-particle - Finsler metric is taken as intrinsic metric of non-ideal body - Crack is propagate along the geodesic lines - Hierarchical nature of the fracture taking into account - Non-Archimedian numbers are characterized the chaotic properties of hierarchical space


Empowerment is a process in which an individual will be aware of his needs, internal demands, capabilities, and acquire necessary abilities aiming to achieve requests. Native notion of socio-economic empowerment, effective factors on growth and its barriers were studied by two qualitative (grounded theory) and quantitative (correlation analysis) in this research. Depth interview techniques, focus group discussions, participatory and direct observation were used for qualitative data collection, Scott and GYF questionnaire was used for 111 samples for quantitative data collection in order to examine the obstacles of women's empowerment based on three factors: attitude and the amount of experience, training, and women's socio-economic status (employment) in the form of 33 items. The qualitative results show that employment, balancing income and expenses, savings and entrepreneurship have influential and determining role in continuation and sustainability of people's economic empowerment. The overall results of qualitative research show that some relatives who live together, family-orientation, social capital, cooperation, social correlation, and supporting each other are some effective factors on empowerment growth. Also, the results of quantitative research indicate that two factors: training and employment are the most important effective factors on vulnerable women's empowerment in empowerment staff of Tehran Municipality.


Let K / Q_p be a finite Galois extension and D a (phi,Gamma)-module over the Robba ring B and N_dR(D) its associated p-adic differential equation.

In the first part we give a generalization of the Bloch-Kato exponential map for D using continuous Galois-cohomology groups H^i(G_K, W(D)) for the B-pair W(D) associated to D. We construct a big exponential map Omega_D,h for cyclotomic extensions of K for D in the style of Perrin-Riou extending techniques of Berger, which interpolates the generalized Bloch-Kato exponential maps on the finite levels.

In the second part we extend two definitions for pairings on D and its dual D^*(1) (resp. on N_dR(D) and its dual N_dR(D^*(1))) and prove a generalization of the reciprocity law, which relates these pairings under the big exponential map.

Finally, we give some results on the determinant associated to Omega_D,h, and formulate an integral version of a determinant conjecture in the semi-stable case. Further, we define i-Selmer groups and show under certain hypothesis a torsion property.


Metamorphic Conglomerate. Approximate Relation to known geologic Horizon .—The geologic position of the limestone and quartzite of the Rutland valley has lately been determined definitely,[*][1] the limestone paleontologically and the quartzite stratigraphically.

Occurring next below the limestone, the quartzite is the northern continuation of the Clarksburg-mountain quartzite, in Massachusetts, in which Walcott has found the Olenellus fauna characteristic of the Lower Cambrian horizon. About one mile north of Rutland village, in Vermont, Dr Wolf and Dr Foerste were fortunate enough to find Lower Cambrian fossils in a silicious limestone that lies superjacent to the quartzite. Northeast of Rutland the quartzite is found associated with a sandy phyllitic schist that belongs to a series of metamorphosed clastics having a vitreous quartzite or conglomerate at its base. This whole series, barring the Lower Cambrian quartzite and limestone, has been subjected to the most intense dynamic action. The sequence of the different members . . .

 [1]: #fn-2


There has been a marked shift towards learning and consuming information through video. Most academic research, however, is still distributed only in text form, as researchers often have limited time, resources, and incentives to create video versions of their work. To address this gap, we propose, deploy, and evaluate a scalable, end-to-end system for crowdsourcing the creation of short, 5-minute research videos based on academic papers. Doing so requires solving complex coordination and collaborative video production problems. To assist coordination, we designed a structured workflow that enables efficient delegation of tasks, while also motivating the crowd through a collaborative learning environment. To facilitate video production, we developed an online tool with which groups can make micro-audio recordings that are automatically stitched together to create a complete talk. We tested this approach with a group of volunteers recruited from 52 countries through an open call. This distributed crowd produced over 100 video talks in 12 languages based on papers from top-tier computer science conferences. The produced talks consistently received high ratings from a diverse group of non-experts and experts, including the authors of the original papers. These results indicate that our crowdsourcing approach is a promising method for producing high-quality research talks at scale, increasing the distribution and accessibility of scientific knowledge.


It has been suggested that developmental prosopagnosia (DP) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are co-occurring conditions; i.e., that the incidence of DP is greater in ASD than in the general population, and vice versa. Consistent with this suggestion, several case studies have described individuals with ASD who also exhibit severe face recognition difficulties. These reports document a number of anecdotes widely regarded as classic hallmarks of DP, including the use of hairstyle, voice and clothing cues for identity recognition. Despite the hypothesized relationship between the two conditions, virtually nothing is known about the effects of co-occurring DP on the perceptual abilities of individuals with ASD, or the effects of co-occurring ASD in DP. The present study sought a better understanding of this co-occurrence, and the respective influence of ASD and DP on face and object recognition. A novel three group design was employed, allowing direct comparison of 18 observers with ASD, 18 with DP and 18 typically developing controls. All participants completed measures of prosopagnosic and autistic traits, and completed objective measures of face and object recognition ability. Consistent with the co-occurrence hypothesis, we found that i) individuals with ASD reported more prosopagnosic traits, and ii) individuals with DP reported more autistic traits, than controls. A subset of the ASD group reached the threshold for prosopagnosia and a subset of the DP group reached cut-off for clinically significant levels of autistic traits. As expected, prosopagnosic traits correlated closely with face recognition ability. Interestingly however, autistic traits were not predictive of face recognition ability once prosopagnosic traits were accounted for, but were associated with wider object recognition ability. These results have important implications for future research addressing visual perception in ASD and DP. A better appreciation of this co-occurrence may help to understand the heterogeneity seen in these conditions. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


ABSTRACT This paper analyses police officer perspectives on the seriousness of potential misconduct or unethical behaviour, and the factors that might shape whether they would report their colleagues' misdemeanours. It compares responses from police officers in UK three forces, looking at potentially corrupt behaviours described in a series of scenarios. The discussion includes why some types of misdemeanour seem more likely to be reported and the potential effects of a newly introduced formal Code of Ethics. In terms of differences between ranks and roles, and different responses from different services, the study suggests that the way police culture operates is significant and needs to be more widely addressed. The study used scenario-based questionnaires to elicit views about the seriousness of certain police behaviours and to ask whether officers would report colleagues' misdemeanours. It develops a previous survey by one of the authors which conducted a similar survey published in 2005. Using the same questionnaire the new study examined a larger and more diverse sample of serving officers (n = 520). This new study compares responses from police officers in three UK forces, geographically distributed across the country and have differing characteristics in terms of size, rurality, population density and policing priorities.


The surface response, in terms of drainage pattern changes, to the Cretaceous geodynamic reorganization of the Andean subduction zone between 36°S and 41°S is reconstructed through the geochronology-based provenance study of alluvial detrital zircons. The age spectra obtained by 500 spot U-Pb ages record an eastward provenance of detritus coming from the foreland during the Early Cretaceous backarc extensional stage, followed by westward-sourced clastics coming from the Cordillera during the Cenomanian. This drainage pattern reversal fits the regional unconformity in the sedimentary record that is linked to the geodynamic reorganization of the continental margin from an extensional to a compressional regime, forcing the Neuquen Basin to evolve from a retroarc to a foreland stage. After this inversion, the clastic systems progressively returned to be mainly fed by the foreland, due to the uplift of the peripheral bulge as a consequence of the Late Cretaceous thrust front migration. This tectonic evolution of the Neuquen Basin and the related response of the drainage pattern are thought to be the surface expression of the dip decrease of the Benioff subduction zone.


The article illustrates how the South Africa–Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD), a doctoral research preparation programme for candidates on the African continent, evolved from an aid programme to an exemplary model of innovation, namely SANTRUST, an ownership-driven partnership within the framework of internationalization. This model of innovation includes a programme with a novel approach to focus on redress in South Africa, particularly for Black women researchers. The research design for this inquiry used an intrinsic case study, with interviews, observations and document analysis as data collection strategies. The case study revealed how SANTRUST, the innovation model, which is now the fully-fledged South-owned programme, sustained the SANPAD aid programme. The key finding revealed that SANTRUST in its relationship with research universities has matured into an example of sustainable national and international cooperation within a knowledge network paradigm.


In the last 15 years, several Multivariate GARCH (MGARCH) models have appeared in the literature. Recent research has begun to examine MGARCH specifications in terms of their out-of-sample forecasting performance. In this paper, we provide an empirical comparison of a set of models, namely BEKK, DCC, Corrected DCC (cDCC) of Aeilli using historical data of 89 US equities. Our methods follow part of the approach described in Patton and Sheppard (2009), and the paper contributes to the literature in several directions. First, we consider a wide range of models, including the recent cDCC model and covariance shrinking. Second, we use a range of tests and approaches for direct and indirect model comparison, including the Weighted Likelihood Ratio test of Amisano and Giacomini (2007). Third, we examine how the model rankings are influenced by the cross-sectional dimension of the problem.


The success of pretrained word embeddings has motivated their use in the biomedical domain, with contextualized embeddings yielding remarkable results in several biomedical NLP tasks. However, there is a lack of research on quantifying their behavior under severe "stress" scenarios. In this work, we systematically evaluate three language models with adversarial examples – automatically constructed tests that allow us to examine how robust the models are. We propose two types of stress scenarios focused on the biomedical named entity recognition (NER) task, one inspired by spelling errors and another based on the use of synonyms for medical terms. Our experiments with three benchmarks show that the performance of the original models decreases considerably, in addition to revealing their weaknesses and strengths. Finally, we show that adversarial training causes the models to improve their robustness and even to exceed the original performance in some cases.


Literature indicated the need to include a variety of skills in architecture pedagogy to better enable students to establish their footing in professional practice. This study attempted to understand perceptions of fourth year architecture students at two programs regarding their preparation for professional practice. Observations in design studios, interviews with faculty teaching the studio, and focus group interviews with selected students provided data for this study. Five concerns associated with professional practice emerged: (1) Budgetary concerns, (2) Understanding the Design Firm Dynamics, (3) Communicating in the Field, (4) Technical and Legal concerns, and (5) Precedent Studies. These are discussed and implications derived for architecture education which may also be relevant to the pedagogical structure for other fields in higher education ********** A fourth year architecture student on the first day of my internship, I faced my first reality check. My boss walked me to my station saying, "Forget everything they taught you in school. Let's start over." At that point I was nurturing dreams of getting my architecture degree, stepping into a perfect world of architecture, creating master-pieces and watching them materialize all over the town and country. The internship was an eye-opener, not shattering, but reshaping the dreams. Architecture offices are often concerned about the curricula in schools that focus on creativity more than practical issues like budgets and construction management. This study resulted from a personal need to understand other students' perceptions of their preparedness for the entry and eventual absorption into professional practice. The need to identify these perspectives was further reinforced by literature as the research progressed. This paper presents opinions from students at two architecture programs about their preparation for professional practice. Student opinions provided important insights and the paper suggests strategies for architecture pedagogy, which may also be relevant to other higher education fields, to provide students with a realistic perspective of what they may expect upon graduation. Background Literature Akin (2002) argued that in order for professional education to succeed, there should be substantial representation of applications and actions in professional practice in the core of educational experience. Literature in architecture provides extensive references to the need for incorporating skills in architecture education to better prepare students for professional practice. Most importantly, scholars stress upon the differences between perceptions of architects versus that of their clients. Kaupinnen (1989) stated that architects' thought process and their perception of buildings can be very different from and may even conflict with the way the public views it. Deasy (1974) elaborated this concept and discussed the difference between the designers' orderly and systematic world against the human world which is constantly changing and influenced by chance. There is a difference between the visualization abilities of designers and their clients. Architects need to develop interpersonal skills in relationship to clients and other professionals, but also become better at listening and responding to, and communicating with building users and the public (Nicol & Pilling, 2000). Tsow and Beamer (1985) stated that the major tool of architects is graphic skills which the client is not fluent in reading and assimilating. They argued that it is essential for architecture students to learn to verbalize and write architecture and the thought process during design. Students need to acquire abilities to communicate their ideas to clients and understand their requirements. Akin (2002) argued that professional education requires substantial representation of applications and actions in professional practice in the core of educational experience. …


This paper surveys estimates of New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) parameters that have been obtained by fitting fully specified dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models to U.S. data. We examine various sources of identification in the context of a simple analytical model. DSGE model-based NKPC estimates tend to be fragile and sensitive to the model specification, in particular if marginal costs are treated as an unobserved variable. Estimates of the NKPC slope lie between 0 and 4. If the observations span the labor share, which is in most instances the model-implied measure of marginal costs, then the slope estimates fall into a much narrower range of 0.005 to 0.135. No consensus has emerged with respect to the importance of lagged inflation in the Phillips curve.


Accurately representing aerosol‐cloud interactions in global climate models is challenging. As parameterizations evolve, it is important to evaluate their performance with appropriate use of observations. In this investigation we compare aerosols, clouds, and their interactions in three global climate models (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory‐Atmosphere Model 3 (AM3), National Center for Atmospheric Research‐Community Atmosphere Model 5 (CAM5), and Goddard Institute for Space Studies‐ModelE2) to Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite observations. Modeled cloud properties are diagnosed using a MODIS simulator. Cloud droplet number concentrations (N) are computed identically from satellite‐simulated and MODIS‐observed values of liquid cloud optical depth and droplet effective radius. We find that aerosol optical depth (τa) simulated by models is similar to observations in many regions around the globe. For N, AM3 and CAM5 capture the observed spatial pattern of higher values in coastal marine stratocumulus versus remote ocean regions, though modeled values, in general, are higher than observed. Aerosol‐cloud interactions were computed as the sensitivity of ln(N) to ln(τa) for coastal marine liquid clouds near South Africa (SAF) and Southeast Asia where τa varies in time. AM3 and CAM5 are more sensitive than observations, while the sensitivity for ModelE2 is statistically insignificant. This widely used sensitivity could be subject to misinterpretation due to the confounding influence of meteorology on both aerosols and clouds. A simple framework for assessing the sensitivity of ln(N) to ln(τa) at constant meteorology illustrates that observed sensitivity can change from positive to statistically insignificant when including the confounding influence of relative humidity. Satellite‐simulated versus standard model values of N are compared; for CAM5 in SAF, standard model values are significantly lower than satellite‐simulated values with a bias of 83 cm−3.


This paper reports data obtained from the use of a bespoke video game – The Rise of Li'Ttledot – in promoting a sense of participatory citizenship among young learners. The game  was  developed  through  funding  awarded  by  the  Ministry  of  Education  in Singapore, and was piloted in a primary school. Citizenship education illustrates well the  truism  that  the  learning  of  values  is  better  caught  than  taught.  The  game  was situated within a wider curricular program which included the use of question cardsin  a  post-gameplay  dialogic  session  between teacher and  students.  The  structure  and scaffolds thusly afforded helped the pupils in the primary school to abstract from their experiences within the game, to relevant school-based examples.


ABSTRACT The rising share of farm work in India undertaken by women – a phenomenon commonly referred to as the feminization of agriculture – raises questions about the changing character of rural India, particularly with regards to women's social and economic roles. Based on an analysis of four sets of occupational data drawn from the Indian Census (1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011), this paper demonstrates that, as a process driven largely by the outmigration of men from rural areas, the feminization of agriculture has no necessary relationship with wider INDICATORS of women's social or economic empowerment. Instead, women's growing participation in agriculture appears to be strongly related to several indicators of poverty. This paper concludes that women's growing contribution of labour in agriculture adds to the already heavy work burdens of most rural women, thereby further undermining their well-being, and suggests that the feminization of agriculture may better be described as the feminization of agrarian distress.


Structure-From-Motion (SFM) methods, using stereo data, are among the best performing algorithms for motion estimation from video imagery, or visual odometry. Critical to the success of SFM methods is the quality of the initial pose estimation algorithm from feature correspondences. In this work, we evaluate the performance of pose estimation algorithms commonly used in SFM visual odometry. We consider two classes of techniques to develop the initial pose estimate: Absolute Orientation (AO) methods, and Perspective-n-Point (PnP) methods. To date, there has not been a comparative study of their performance on robot visual odometry tasks. We undertake such a study to measure the accuracy, repeatability, and robustness of these techniques for vehicles moving in indoor environments and in outdoor suburban roadways. Our results show that PnP methods outperform AO methods, with P3P being the best performing algorithm. This is particularly true when stereo triangulation uncertainty is high due to a wide Field of View lens and small stereo-rig baseline.


Antibiotic resistance is now a large threat with worldwide agreement that we will fall into a post-antibiotic era unless there is suitable treatment alternatives discovered. In recent years, chronic wounds have become a major burden on society and treatment is complicated. Honey has been widely used as a topical treatment for wounds yet there is much discourse between studies examining its effect and still some of its antimicrobial effect has not been characterized. In this thesis we investigate some characteristics of 13 novel Lactic acid bacterial (LAB) symbionts originating from the honey stomach of the western honeybee. The LABs involvement in honey production and their antimicrobial action against many environmental bacteria and yeasts hypothesizes that these LAB symbionts may be a good alternative to antibiotics for the topical treatment of chronic wounds.
First we investigated the effect of stress on the extracellular protein production of all 13 LAB separately. We revealed that this extracellular production varied between species and genera, and that different microbial stressors had varying effects. These putative proteins may have links with the LAB survival in their niche possibly in attachment or as antimicrobials. Secondly, we investigated some characteristics of the LAB and discovered a link between the therapeutic effect of honey and these symbionts. We identified a myriad of bioactive substances that the LAB produce and had broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against human pathogens including antibiotic resistant species. The effect varied between species, but all 13 LAB combined were the most effective. Finally we investigated the antimicrobial effect the LAB symbionts had together in a standardized concentration with heather honey, in vitro against human and animal pathogens, and in vivo in two pilot studies. We showed once again the LAB formulation had broad-spectrum activity when combined. When applied to chronic wounds on horses and finally on humans, we saw in both cases remarkable results towards wound healing. Bacterial diversity was also investigated and we observed that the wounds were polymicrobial in nature and bacterial diversity varied between subjects, but there were a number of genera that are readily identified throughout the majority of samples. This thesis studies the hypothesis of a novel LAB microbiota as an alternative tool in wound management and provides knowledge about these symbionts' therapeutic and antimicrobial characteristics in vitro and in vivo. It contributes to an understanding of how interdisciplinary research can proceed starting from basic knowledge to medical applications. In conclusion, further work, including more in vitro experiments and controlled clinical trials, could in a future perspective establish these LAB symbionts as an alternative to antibiotics in wound treatment, and possibly other infections.


Background. A congenital heart defect (CHD) can increase the risk of mental health problems in affected children and their parents. The extent to which risk factors for these problems are shared in families or are specific to the individual family member is unclear. Method. Prospective data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa; n = 93 009) were linked with a nationwide CHD registry, and 408 children with CHD were identified. Mothers' reports on child internalizing problems and their own distress were assessed by questionnaires at child ages 6, 18 and 36 months. A structural model was applied to distinguish between familial (shared) factors and individual-specific factors for mental health problems. Results. CHD was a substantial risk factor for problems in children and their mothers at all time points. CHD contributed on average 31% and 39% to the variance in children's and mothers' problems respectively. Both shared familial and individual-specific factors unique to CHD families contributed to risk for mental health problems. Whereas individual-specific risk factors contributed to the stability of problems in mothers, the effect of these factors lasted only a short time in children. Mutual influences over time were found between the mother's and the child's mental health at 18 and 36 months. Conclusions. The burden of CHD in a child is shared between family members but is also specific to the individual. This study points to a need for both an individual and a family-based approach to provide psychological support to children with CHD and their parents.


Anthonomus (Cnemocyllus) decipiens Dietz is designated as type species of Cnemocyllus Dietz. The twenty-three North American species assigned to the Anthonomus subgenus Cnemocyllus include ten previously placed in the subgenus: A. albus Hatch, A. decipiens LeConte, A. dorothyae Hatch, A. elongatus LeConte, A. jacobinus Dietz, A. juncturus Fall, A. ligatus Dietz, A. pictus Blatchley, A. quesnelensis Sleeper, and A. tenuis Fall; three species formerly in Anthonomus but not in Cnemocyllus: A. stolatus Fall, A. inermis Boheman, and A. ornatulus Dietz; two species once in Epimechus Dietz but subsequently transferred to Anthonomus: A. arenicolor (Fall) and A. canoides (Fall); and eight new species: A. californiensis, new species (California and Baja California); A. bajaensis, new species (Baja California); A. intermedius, new species (Utah); A. extensus, new species (British Columbia, California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington); A. deserticolus, new species (Arizona, Baja California, California, Guerrero, New Mexico, Sonora, and Texas); A. schuhi, new species (California and Oregon); A. latus, new species (California); and A. squamoerectus, new species (California and Oregon). The species of Anthonomus in the subgenus Cnemocyllus are distinguished from other Anthonomini by the combination of having vestiture of more-or-less broad, dense scales, 6 or 7 antennal funicular articles, a slender endophallic transfer apparatus and, in most, the slightly to strongly curved metatibia of the male. The tarsal claws are variable, toothed or untoothed. The names Anthonomus cycliferus (Fall), A. malkini Hatch and A. summeri Hatch are placed in new synonymy under A. jacobinus Dietz; A. cretaceus (Champion) is placed in new synonymy under A. decipiens LeConte; A. imbricus Hatch is placed in new synonymy under A. quesnelensis Sleeper; A. mannerheimi Dieckmann (A. brunnipennis Mannerheim, not Curtis) and A. subvittatus LeConte are placed in new synonymy under A. inermis (Boheman); A. minutus Hatch is placed in new synonymy under A. dorothyae Hatch. Adults of many of the species of the subgenus Cnemocyllus have been collected on plants in the family Asteraceae. The larvae of several of the species are known to develop on these plants.


Forest road networks are exposed to damage by traffic, climate, timber harvesting and vegetation. To maintain their functionality, they must be maintained regularly. Periodical maintenance is required when the forest road surface layer is deteriorated and eroded. Well-graded material is required for replacing the forest road surface and often has to be sourced from gravel storage areas, which is costly and requires a large number of truck trips. Therefore, converting non-graded aggregate available on site into well-graded aggregate with a mobile stone crusher is considered a viable alternative.The present study was carried out during a periodical maintenance treatment at the Bavarian State Forest Enterprise and the effect of employing a mobile stone crusher was evaluated with regard to (1) forest road load bearing capacity development during a one-year period post-treatment, (2) particle size distribution of the surface layer material before and after crushing, and (3) its cost compared to other alternatives. Samples were collected pre- and post-operation for particle size distribution analysis, load bearing capacity was measured repeatedly with a light falling weight deflectometer and compared to an untreated reference section and cost of the treatment was compared to two alternatives.The mobile stone crusher was capable of reducing the non-graded to well-graded/close-to-well-graded material and particle size distributions aligned well with the recommendations for lime-water bonded surfaces. Load bearing capacity exceeded the threshold of 40 MN m-2 (Evd, elastic modulus dynamic) for primary forest roads at all times. It increased significantly after the treatment and remained on a significantly higher level throughout the following year. Absolute and relative increases were higher than on the untreated reference section. The treatment variant involving a mobile stone crusher and material available on site was substantially cheaper (5.31 € m-1) than to supply non-graded (16.29 € m-1) or well-graded (19.82 € m-1) material by truck. Material and transport costs represented 67% and 82% of the total costs in the latter two cases. It can be concluded that mobile stone crushers are capable of producing at least close-to-well-graded forest road surface aggregate and that forest road load bearing capacity can be significantly and lastingly increased at only a part of the costs of the alternatives. A maximum of cost and resource efficiency and environmental soundness can be attained when enough surface aggregate is available on site. If this is not the case, sourcing non-graded material as local as possible is the next best alternative.


In the current study NCAA Division I student-athletes (n = 2,440) completed a Web-based survey assessing their willingness to seek mental skills training, perceptions of the potential benefits of mental training for their team, and support of possible roles for a sport psychology consultant at their institution. Multiple chi-square tests revealed significant (p < .001) dependence of respondents' ratings on gender, sport type (individual vs. team), prior experience with a sport psychology consultant, and perceived effectiveness of prior experience (low, moderate, high). Generally, females were more receptive than males, individual and team sport athletes were interested in different types of mental skills, athletes with prior consulting experience were more open than those with none, and athletes with highly effective prior experience were more receptive than those with less effective experience. These findings extend previous research examining collegiate student-athletes' attitudes toward sport psycholog...


The equality between wages and marginal revenue products is a backbone of competitive labor markets. This study will seek to test the congruity between the two in the market for players in daily fantasy hockey games. Any observed and statistically significant incongruity would lead to the conclusion that an individual can earn long run profit playing daily fantasy games. Both fixed effects and pooled regressions are employed to isolate inequalities between prices and expected marginal revenue products for players in daily fantasy hockey games. Any deviation of such could potentially be explained by utility maximizing gamblers or incomplete information. Robust results suggest that players playing at home and players playing against weak opponents relative to their own team strength are undervalued. Players who have performed above their average performance in recent games are overvalued. Although it is clear expected marginal revenue products and prices do not equate, performance is still largely random and hard to predict.


Dislocation structures in fatigue were investigated with special consideration given to the compatibility of the macroscopic observation by an optical microscope and the microscopic observation by a transmission electron microscope (TEM). First, previous works are reviewed from this point of view, that is, the compatability of macro- and microscopic observations. It is postulated that this viewpoint is very important for both the elucidation of fatigue mechanism and the construction of crack nucleation models. Second, the experiments are planned and carried out, and the results are discussed in this direction. Copper polycrystalline sheets with a thickness of 0.1 mm are used for the preparation of specimens for fatigue testing. The specimen contains an artificial hole of 200 μm diameter. The fatigue processes at the edge of the hole were observed successively with an optical microscope. In the early stage of the fatigue test, slipbands initiated at the hole edge and subsequently cracks nucleated after stress cycles of N ≅ 8 x 105. The foil specimens for TEM observation were prepared from the sheet specimens that were tested for various numbers of cycles, say, N = 2 x 10 5 , 4 x 105, and 8 x 105. Every effort was made to show the correspondence between the site of TEM observation and that of macroscopic observation. Since it was very difficult to thin the edge of a hole sufficiently, only a few specimens were available for TEM observation though more than 100 sheet specimens were tested. The first part of the paper poses five fundamental questions; especially considered in the direction described above are (1) the relationship between vein structures and persistent slipbands (PSBs), (2) the relationship between crack nucleation and PSBs, and (3) dislocation structure at the stress concentration or stress gradient. Conclusions may be summarized as follow: (1) Vein structures and ladder structures in PSBs are closely related. (2) In the fatigued copper polycrystal specimens with no hole, PSBs with ladder structure can develop in certain grains of the specimen. (3) At the edge of a hole of the specimens which contain a hole, however, PSBs with ladder structure are unlikely to be formed. (4) The crack nucleation sites at the edge of a hole are PSBs without ladder structure.


In In recent years, fuzzy logic has been increasingly used to improve conventional methods especially in pattern recognition fields. This research present proposed system to recognize isolated Arabic characters, using a approach of fuzzy logic. The proposed system does not requires segmentation of the Arabic words or Arabic texts to characters but entered three different shape for every isolated Arabic character saved in many templates, after then applied laws and stages of fuzzy logic, save the results in different files, enter four shape for the character we wanted to recognize different from the three shapes were saved then compare the results recognition with the saved results of characters ,we used for testing the characters ( Alif , Baa ,Geam ,Dal ,Raa,Seen ,Dhad ,T'ta, Ain ,Faa ,Kaf , Lam , Mem ,Haa ,Waw ,Yaa ).Recognition results shown at many figures in the paragraph the experimental results for two different shapes Arabic isolated characters(Ain, Faa). The proposed system was tested on 96 different shape of characters and a 88% recognition success rate was obtained. The proposed system has been implemented and tested on Matlab R2008b environment.


Malnutrition is a quiet pandemic affecting millions of people throughout the world. It has high Public Health significance because of the sheer number of people affected by malnutrition, the fact that vulnerable populations disproportionately suffer the effects of malnutrition, and because these effects are severe, long lasting, and cumulative. Also, malnutrition exacerbates the cycle of poverty inherent in most under-developed countries. This essay designs a community health assessment, which focuses on school-aged children (ages 5-14) in Wakiso District Uganda. The proposed assessment focuses on the first four stages of the PRECEDE-PROCEED model to determine the community's views about childhood malnutrition, barriers preventing proper nutrition, and the potential modifiable factors related to malnutrition in Wakiso District Uganda. It recommends a social assessment of the target community utilizing surveys, an epidemiological assessment analyzing anthropomorphic measures of malnutrition indicators, and an ecological assessment incorporating Photo voice methodology. The assessment is designed to determine the issues present in the community related to access, availability and utilization of food because modifying these factors through an intervention has the potential to greatly influence the malnutrition of a specific population, according to the UNICEF Model of the Causes of Malnutrition. To achieve these goals, this essay examines the current available literature on the topic of malnutrition, malnutrition assessment, and qualitative and quantitative measures of malnutrition. A gap exists in the literature with regards to the prevalence of malnutrition among school-age children. This essay's proposed community health assessment for the primary school children of Wakiso District Uganda (ages 5-14) can help to fill that gap.


Due to increased student numbers and constraints on facilities and time (a compressed timetable to enable M.A provision in an already overused space) there has been a growing trend for students to engage with un-assessed work.
Throughout FADA students are engaged with professional practice through putting on some kind of a show, this takes many forms, and occurs throughout the 3 levels of UG study. The project will engage the student team across FADA to look at what is being delivered un-assessed and whether this should be assessed, the focus will be a case study of the internal fashion show, now in its 4th year. This work builds on existing material and creates a library of reference, strengthening the body of research.

The work references the theory set out by Etienne Wenger (Communities of Practice)
"groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly."

The fashion show is organised, designed and predominately fundraised by the students, facilitated by an associate professor. It is a good example of active learning and demonstrates many skills that lead to employability. Much of this data is qualitative and will be collected through discussion and research groups which will be documented by film .
The majority of the work often falls to a set of elected, or self nominated students, this project will ask the students to document what they do, assess the skills that are needed, developed and demonstrated, along with logging time spent on this activities, providing quantitative data.
A second arm of the research will be to interview students on other courses such as graphics, and illustration and PFD, to find what projects they work on that are un-assessed and gauge whether the work is comparative.
This is timely as discussion within the sector is happening around employability and professional practice, with interest in the TEF, and the quality of teaching ad learning being delivered, related to value perceived by the students.
 There is a need for students to meet the needs of industry, this project will enable discussion around how students can best demonstrate and recognise these skills. It will address weather and how these skills can be best assessed.

Input and feedback from students is valued and this project will ensure that the student voice is heard in relation to un-assessed projects.


ABSTRACT FROM: Webb RT, Antonsen S, Mok PL, et al . National Cohort Study of Suicidality and Violent Criminality among Danish Immigrants. PLoS ONE 2015;10:e0131915.

Immigrant populations in the European Union (EU) have grown considerably in recent years with over 1 in 10 residents born in another country, two-thirds of whom come from beyond the EU.1 There is a need to better understand the impact of increasing diversity within immigrant populations and the nature of psychosocial difficulties caused by adversities, such as racism and marginalisation. In Denmark, the risk of mental illness is elevated across the spectrum of psychiatric disorders in immigrants.2 There is a strong correlation between violence to others and self-harming behaviours.3 Previous studies on violence among immigrants have mainly focused on the USA, most recently on serious violence in Mexican immigrant populations.4

Webb et al studied a cohort of over two million people born within a 23-year period and residing in Denmark on their 10th birthday. The Danish system of assigning a single personal identification number to each resident allowed the researchers to link records from several national databases, including the National Crime Register, Psychiatric Central Research Register and National Patient Register, to extract information about violent offending, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide. The study aimed to compare absolute risk between five categories: native Danes, intercountry adoptees, first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants with one foreign-born parent and second-generation immigrants with two foreign-born parents. The study also aimed to calculate gender-specific incidence rate ratios and cumulative incidence rates until age 40 years, for adverse events in each group. Covariates that were identified included psychiatric diagnosis, parental income, employment status and educational attainment. The study also …


Rotating-disk flow has been investigated not only as a simple model of cross flow instability to compare with swept-wing flow but also for industrial flow applications with rotating configurations. However the exact nature of laminar-turbulent transi- tion on the rotating-disk flow is still major problem and further research is required for it to be fully understood, in particular, the laminar-turbulent transition process with absolute instability. In addition the studies of the rotating-disk turbulent boundary- layer flow are inadequate to understand the physics of three-dimensional turbulent boundary-layer flow. In present thesis, a rotating-rotating disk boundary-layer flow has been inves- tigated experimentally using hot-wire anemometry. A glass disk with a flat surface has been prepared to archieve low disturbance rotating-disk environment. Azimuthal velocity measurements using a hot-wire probe have been taken for various conditions. To get a better insight into the laminar-turbulent transition region, a new way to describe the process is proposed using the probability density function (PDF) map of azimuthal fluctuation velocity. The effect of the edge of the disk on the laminar-turbulent transition process has been investigated. The disturbance growth of azimuthal fluctuation velocity as a function of Reynolds number has a similar trend irrespective of the various edge conditions. The behaviour of secondary instability and turbulent breakdown has been in- vestigated. It has been found that the kinked azimuthal velocity associated with secondary instability just before turbulent breakdown became less apparent at a cer- tain wall normal heights. Furthermore the turbulent breakdown of the stationary mode seems not to be triggered by its amplitude, however, depend on the appearance of the travelling secondary instability. Finally, the turbulent boundary layer on a rotating disk has been investigated. An azimuthal friction velocity has been directly measured from the azimuthal velocity profile in the viscous sub-layer. The turbulent statistics normalized by the inner and outer sclaes are presented.


The study of genotype x environment interaction is critical for accurate cultivar evaluation in large multi-environment trials. Cultivars that exhibit high levels of mean performance and stability across a wide range of environmental conditions are desirable for rice production. Pure-line varietal and hybrid rice cultivars are commercially produced in the U.S.; however, little research has been conducted comparing their stability for grain yield and milling quality. In this study, 15 hybrid and varietal cultivars were grown in 10 environments from 2005 to 2007 to determine the performance and stability of rough rice yield, whole milled rice percentages, and whole-grain rice yield. Stability was analyzed using the coefficient of variation, Shukla's Stability Variance statistic with environment means as a covariate, and the Cultivar Superiority Measure. The hybrid rice cultivars XP723 and CLXL730 were ideal for high and stable rough rice and whole-grain rice yields on the basis of the cultivar superiority measure; however, for whole milled rice percentage alone, they were among the least desirable cultivars. Among the varietal cultivars, Catahoula and Jupiter were ideal cultivar selections for high and stable whole-grain rice yields. The results of this study indicate that the stability and performance of hybrid and varietal cultivars differ according to the trait of interest.


This exploratory study describes in portrait form the motivational goals of adolescents entering minor seminaries in the Philippines and Indonesia from a developmental and cross-cultural lens. Anchored on Ford's (1992) taxonomy of human goals, a researcher developed instrument, duly validated and tested for reliability, was fielded to 421 student adolescents of 6 minor seminaries. Data yielded quantitatively were substantiated by qualitative information culled from the respondents' written journals. Results of the study indicate that while the ranks of main goal categories of the two respondent groups were generally the same, the l-test showed significant differences in their motivational goals relative to the following: affective goals (entertainment, tranquility, happiness, bodily sensation and physical well-being); cognitive goals (exploration and understanding); subjective goals (transcendence); integrative social responsibility goals (belongingness and social responsibility); and, task goals (mastery, management, material gain and safety).


We use N-body/photometric galaxy simulations to examine the impact of sample variance of spectroscopic redshift samples on the accuracy of photometric redshift (photo-z) determination and calibration of photo-z errors. We estimate the biases in the cosmological parameter constraints from weak lensing and derive requirements on the spectroscopic follow-up for three different photo-z algorithms chosen to broadly span the range of algorithms available. We find that sample variance is much more relevant for the photo-z error calibration than for photo-z training, implying that follow-up requirements are similar for different algorithms. We demonstrate that the spectroscopic sample can be used for training of photo-zs and error calibration without incurring additional bias in the cosmological parameters. We provide a guide for observing proposals for the spectroscopic follow-up to ensure that redshift calibration biases do not dominate the cosmological parameter error budget. For example, assuming optimistically (pessimistically) that the weak lensing shear measurements from the Dark Energy Survey could obtain 1σ constraints on the dark energy equation of state w of 0.035 (0.055), implies a follow-up requirement of 150 (40) patches of sky with a telescope such as Magellan, assuming a 1/8 deg2 effective field of view and 400 galaxies per patch. Assuming (optimistically) a VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey-like spectroscopic completeness with purely random failures, this could be accomplished with about 75 (20) nights of observation. For more realistic assumptions regarding spectroscopic completeness, or with the presence of other sources of systematics not considered here, further degradations to dark energy constraints are possible. We test several approaches for making the requirements less stringent. For example, if the redshift distribution of the overall sample can be estimated by some other technique, e.g. cross-correlation, then follow-up requirements could be reduced by an order of magnitude.


Objectives. To review current evidence of efficacy of Ginkgo biloba extract EGb 761® in dementia with behavioural and psychological symptoms (BPSD). Methods. Randomized, placebo-controlled trials assessing the effects of EGb 761® in dementia patients with BPSD were included if the diagnosis was made in accordance with internationally accepted criteria, the treatment period was at least 22 weeks, outcome measures covered BPSD and at least two of the following domains of assessment, i.e. cognition, activities of daily living and clinical global assessment, and methodological quality was adequate. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) model was used to calculate the pooled effect estimates and to compare effects of EGb 761® and placebo; furthermore, combined risk differences of response rates were calculated. Results. Four published trials were identified, involving altogether 1,628 outpatients with mild to moderate dementia. Least-square mean differences for change from baseline in cognition, BPSD (including caregiver distress rating), activities of daily living, clinical global impression, and quality of life favoured EGb 761® (P < 0.001 for all comparisons). Conclusions. The pooled analyses provide evidence of efficacy of EGb 761® at a daily dose of 240 mg in the treatment of out-patients suffering from Alzheimer's, vascular or mixed dementia with BPSD.


Renal failure is one of the major health problems in the world. Any gaps in the patient care may affect the patient adherence and quality of life. As part of a multi-disciplinary patient care strategy, clinical pharmacy service has led to improvement in patient care. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the role of medication reconciliation in renal failure patients and to observe the effect of medication alert card and patient counseling in medication reconciliation. In control, Drug Related Problems (DRPs) were identified only by chart review. In test group, one arm containing patients with DRPs were identified using medication reconciliation alone and in second arm, patient counseling and medication alert card was used in addition to reconciliation. Patient data were recorded on a standard template obtained from The Manitoba Renal Program (Canada). DRPs were recorded. Knowledge was assessed with a questionnaire before and after counseling and it was quantified. More number of DRPs was identified by means of medication reconciliation. Patient counseling and medication alert card had a significant role in medication reconciliation. The study was statistically significant with P<0.05. Medication reconciliation in renal failure helps to identify more number of drug related problems. Patient counseling and medication alert card have effectively improved the effect of reconciliation in renal failure patients and thus could improve clinical outcomes and quality of life.


In the paper, we consider Hilbert spaces of functions on infinite graphs, and their compactifications. We arrive at a sampling formula in the spirit of Shannon; the idea is that we allow for sampling of functions f defined on a continuum completion of an infinite graph G, sampling the continuum by values of f at points in the graph G. Rather than the more traditional frequency analysis of band-limited functions from Shannon, our analysis is instead based on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces built from a prescribed infinite system of resistors on G.


Light-Emitting Electrochemical Cells (LECs) with a simple device structure ITO/Ru complex/Ga:In were prepared by using heteroleptic ruthenium(ii) complexes containing 2-(2-hydroxyphenyl)-1-(4-bromophenyl)-1h-imidazo[4,5-f][1,10]phenanthroline (hpbpip) as the π-extended ligand. After ancillary ligand modification, the [Ru(hpbpip)(dmbpy)2](ClO4)2 complex shows a deep red electroluminescence emission (2250 cd m(-2) at 6 V) centered at 685 nm, 65 nm red-shifted compared to the [Ru(bpy)3](ClO4)2 benchmark red-emitter at a very low turn voltage (2.6 V), demonstrating its potential for low-cost deep-red light sources. Moreover, the PL quantum yield of the [Ru(hpbpip)(bpy)2](ClO4)2 complex was revealed to be higher (0.121) than the benchmark standard [Ru(bpy)3](2+) (0.095).


Writing to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on March 21, 1838, Nathaniel Hawthorne proposed to "make a great hit, and entirely revolutionize the whole system of juvenile literature" in America (15: 266). This first experiences with that genre, though not particularly successful, had nonetheless indicated professional possibilities, and thus during three separate periods of his literary career, he wrote for the juvenile audience. Did Nathaniel Hawthorne "make a great hit" with appreciative audiences and lucrative publications? Did he "entirely revolutionize" America's juvenile literature by turning young readers (and the parents who bought books for them) away from the informative, didactic, and evangelical writing that were their staples, and toward the works of fancy and imagination that had been anathema to them? While the answer to the first question is "yes," the answer to the second is both "yes" and "no." Hawthorne did eventually make a "hit" in the juvenile market with literature that signified a "whole new system" in that genre, but his writing for children occurred within evolving literary, cultural, and--above all--personal contexts that fostered his revolution, a revolution indeed but one for which he was not solely responsible and one that had consequences beyond those he sought. Hawthorne's entry into the world of the Transcendentalist Peabody sisters and their associates facilitated his departure from widely held expectations for juvenile literature, a genre that necessarily encodes an author's implied or expressed beliefs about the nature of the child. Hawthorne's notions about children, his depictions of them, and his writing for them were complicated and enriched by his transitions from bachelor to fiance, then to husband of Sophia, and to father of Una, Julian and Rose. These successive personal contexts permitted Hawthorne to interrogate boundaries between fact and fiction, to destabilize historical narrative, and to legitimate and promote imaginative literature, thereby enriching his--and the nation's--(juvenile) literature. (1) First Period: 1835-1837, the Future Citizen and "Fact" In 1835, the bachelor Nathaniel Hawthorne, residing with his mother and sisters on Herbert Street in Salem, published "Little Annie's Ramble" anonymously in Youth's Keepsake. This sketch did not produce appreciative general audiences for reasons to be examined later, (2) so Hawthorne turned to what he hoped would be more profitable ventures. With occasional assistance from his sister Elizabeth, he compiled dry-as-dust biographical, historical, (pseudo-) scientific, and geographical material for the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. (3) This kind of writing, according to John C. Crandall in "Patriotism and Humanitarian Reform in Children's Literature, 18251860," had as its "prime motive ... to turn out young patriots and future solid citizens who would preserve the glorious traditions and persevere in the execution of American ideals" (4). Remuneration for work in American Magazine was disappointing, but Hawthorne had produced what was expected of juvenile literature at that time; therefore, Samuel Goodrich invited him to write for Peter Parley's Universal History on the Basis of Geography. Goodrich is now remembered as the publisher of The Token, where some of Hawthorne's early stories had appeared anonymously, but Goodrich was then more widely known as the pseudonymous "Peter Parley," the prolific, well-loved writer of juvenile literature, and narrator who provided continuity among items in the Universal History. Goodrich's prodigious production included seventy-nine volumes that can be ascribed to him with certainty (that is, volumes not produced by hack writers--like Hawthorne--for Goodrich), and, by the mid-1800s, seven million Peter Parley books had been sold (Long 158-59). Goodrich's determination to produce informative literature for children arose from public and private motives. …


Climate model based projections suggest a drying of the central European summer climate toward the end of the century. In this study we investigate the influence of the spatial resolution of an atmosphere-only climate model (EC-Earth at two resolutions, ∼25 and ∼112 km horizontal) on the simulated summer drying in this area. High resolution models have a more realistic representation of circulation in the current climate and could provide more confidence on future projections of circulation forced drying. We find that the high resolution model is characterized by a stronger drying in spring and summer, mainly forced by circulation changes. The initial spring drying intensifies the summer drying by a positive soil moisture feedback. The results are confirmed by finding analogs of the difference between the high and medium-resolution model circulation in the natural variability in another ensemble of climate model simulations. In the current climate, these show the same precipitation difference pattern resulting from the summer circulation difference. In the future climate the spring circulation also plays a key role. We conclude that the reduction of circulation biases due to increased resolution gives higher confidence in the strong drying trend projected for central Europe by the high-resolution version of the model.


The objective of this project was to develop a plan for deploying a statewide Road Weather Information System (RWIS) to support both current New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) operations and future Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) applications. To develop the plan, various information and data sources were investigated, including the current condition of NYSDOT's RWIS network, potential RWIS station sites, data needed for supporting statewide MDSS applications, and New York State (NYS) meteorological zones. A Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based bi-level model was developed to optimize the RWIS network, considering contiguous segments having similar maintenance requirements and the associated characteristics (e.g., meteorology, traffic, etc.) that can affect the required road maintenance. Optimally, the recommended RWIS network shall provide and monitor timely road weather condition for decision making by road maintenance agencies, which ultimately leads to a higher level of service and reduced weather-related congestion delay and accidents, reduced cost, redundancy and environmental/ecological impacts, more efficient use of manpower, contractor services, fleet and asset management, and increased accountability resulting in prudent and efficient spending. It is expected that the proposed RWIS network in conjunction with NYSDOT's MDSS will significantly reduce cost of road maintenance and increase safety, mobility, and productivity of, particularly in the adverse weather during winter time.


Abstract. Renovation of plant equipment of petroleum refineries or chemical factories have recently been frequent, and the demand for 3D asbuilt modelling of piping systems is increasing rapidly. Terrestrial laser scanners are used very often in the measurement for as-built modelling. However, the tangled structures of the piping systems results in complex occluded areas, and these areas must be captured from different scanner positions. For efficient and exhaustive measurement of the piping system, the scanner should be placed at optimum positions where the occluded parts of the piping system are captured as much as possible in less scans. However, this "nextbest" scanner positions are usually determined by experienced operators, and there is no guarantee that these positions fulfil the optimum condition. Therefore, this paper proposes a computer-aided method of the optimal sequential view planning for object recognition in plant piping systems using a terrestrial laser scanner. In the method, a sequence of next-best positions of a terrestrial laser scanner specialized for as-built modelling of piping systems can be found without any a priori information of piping objects. Different from the conventional approaches for the next-best-view (NBV) problem, in the proposed method, piping objects in the measured point clouds are recognized right after an every scan, local occluded spaces occupied by the unseen piping systems are then estimated, and the best scanner position can be found so as to minimize these local occluded spaces. The simulation results show that our proposed method outperforms a conventional approach in recognition accuracy, efficiency and computational time.


Objectively quantifying the value of player actions in football (soccer) is a challenging problem. To date, studies in football analytics have mainly focused on the attacking side of the game, while there has been less work on event-driven metrics for valuing defensive actions (e.g., tackles and interceptions). Therefore in this paper, we use deep learning techniques to define a novel metric that values such defensive actions by studying the threat of passages of play that preceded them. By doing so, we are able to value defensive actions based on what they prevented from happening in the game. Our Defensive Action Expected Threat (DAxT) model has been validated using real-world event-data from the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 English Premier League seasons, and we combine our model outputs with additional features to derive an overall rating of defensive ability for players. Overall, we find that our model is able to predict the impact of defensive actions allowing us to better value defenders using event-data.


volume index (SVI) and zone settling velocity (ZSV) are parameters to quantify the settleability of activated sludge. Natural wastes commonly enter the environment as useless material. The assessment of the influence these materials have on activated sludge settleability was the principal objective of this research. Natural wastes used included: maize stalk, almond shell, coconut shell, walnut shell, hazelnut shell, egg shell, peanut hull, and pine bark. The experiments were conducted in five stages and three iterations, based on the standard methods. Average values of SVI for the control (blank) sample was 823 mL/g. The optimum dosage of different natural wastes reduced SVI value to 100 mL/g (88 percent decrease). The average value of ZSV for the control (blank) sample was 1.222 m/h and different natural wastes increased ZSV of the control samples by up to 2 to 3 times. With this increase in ZSV, Surface Overflow Rate (SOR) could also be increased without losing its efficiency. Activated sludge return with natural additives caused an improvement in sludge settleability. Jar tests revealed that natural wastes typically act mainly as ballasting agents and to some extent as coagulator which causes a reduction in SVI.


This essay deals with the problem of the status of colours, traditionally considered as the paradigmatic case of secondary qualities: do colours exist only as aspects of experience or are they real properties of objects, existing independently of human and animal perception? Recently, John Campbell has argued in favour of the simple view of colours, according to which colours are real properties of objects. I discuss the place of Campbell's position in a debated which was started by John Mackie and continued by John McDowell, and defend it from a criticism due to Michael Smith. I conclude that the simple view is a philosophically credible position. Subsequently, I consider an alleged contradiction between the simple view and semantic externalism pointed out by Jim Edwards. I suggest that a supporter of the simple view may consistently maintain semantic externalism, if she also accepts epistemological externalism about the canonical warrant of perceptual judgements.


The astronomical sciences have had rather little impact on our day-to-day lives, but from ancient times their philosophical impact has been very great. Primitive man could see that there were many unreachable things in the skies about which he knew nothing; undoubtedly the appearance of the heavens had much to do with the formulation of primitive religions. In recent centuries, as we have learned more and more about the universe and our place in it, man has seemed to occupy an ever-decreasing position of importance in his total universal environment. The skies no longer turn solely about the earth; the other stars no longer turn solely about our sun. The sun has become a normal undistinguished star situated in our galaxy, and our galaxy is but one of billions of similar galaxies strewn throughout space, with no indication that our own position in space has any special significance. The pace of discovery in astronomy and space science has been particularly hectic during the last decade, and this has led to an intense intellectual ferment in the field. In this article, I will skim quickly over a few of the highlights of the research discoveries that have been made, and at the end I will try to indicate what our present philosophical outlook is toward the universe in general.


Few studies have demonstrated that subjects with Covid have breathless at rest, fever, sore throat and other pneumonia like symptoms and are known to respond effectively towards Drug therapy which boosts their immunity Physiotherapy is very well studied to improve immunity by imposing various exercises on the affected part, thus strengthening that part Deep breathing and chest expansion exercises are known to be effective in treating subjects with such symptoms Various exercises have been demonstrated for subjects with Covid According to authors' knowledge there is very less number of studies demonstrating the effectiveness of the exercise protocol formed for Covid subjects The objective of the study is to investigate the short term effectiveness of Structured Exercise Protocol on respiratory parameters in subjects with Covid It is an experimental study conducted on 50 Covid positive subjects who were given regular chest physiotherapy including deep breathing exercises, segmental breathing exercises, chest expansion exercises and dedicated prone lying The results demonstrated that: modified Borg's scale of dyspnoea, SPO2, Respiratory rate, Xray changes, Heart rate and number of active cough extraction showed significant changes Dedicated prone lying along with regular chest physiotherapy showed great improvement in respiratory parameters


Abstract Visually speaking, Robert Capa made Israel. Through that act he erased Palestine. The vision Capa developed of Israel is captured in the 303 published photographs that he took over the course of three trips in 1948–50. This article explores the ideological frameworks that shaped Capa's understanding of Israel/Palestine and probes the concealed context of his images. The analysis shows that Capa covered his topic through an ideologized lens that depicted Israel as a heroic nation of Holocaust survivors and victors of war, while the Palestinians and the Nakba were hidden from view. Capa's vision was important because he was an internationally renowned photographer who was not an official Israeli propagandist, yet his images served that function.