Face cognition is considered a specific human ability, clearly differentiable from general cognitive functioning. Its specificity is primarily supported by cognitive-experimental and neuroimaging research, but recently also from an individual differences perspective. However, no comprehensive behavioral data are available, which would allow estimating lifespan changes of the covariance structure of face-cognition abilities and general cognitive functioning as well as age-differences in face cognition after accounting for interindividual variability in general cognition. The present study aimed to fill this gap. In an age-heterogeneous (18-82 years) sample of 448 adults, we found no factorial dedifferentiation between face cognition and general cognition. Age-related differences in face memory were still salient after taking into account changes in general cognitive functioning. Face cognition thus remains a specific human ability compared with general cognition, even until old age. We discuss implications for models of cognitive aging and suggest that it is necessary to include more explicitly special social abilities in those models.


The roundtable on "Emerging Military Technologies Applied to Urban Warfare" brought together governmental, military and academic experts from various disciplines, including law, ethics, political science, philosophy, engineering and strategic studies. Over two days, experts from across Australia considered three areas of emerging technology and their intersection with urban warfare: cyber-capabilities, new robotics and autonomous weapons, and human modification technologies. In the final session, the roundtable discussed the influence of new technologies on military and strategic decision-making processes, with a focus on the implications in urban environments.


Hip fracture incidence rates appear to be declining in Western populations. Utilizing comprehensive incident hip fracture data from radiology reports, we determined changes in hip fracture rates in southeastern Australia between 1994–1996 and 2006–2007 for residents aged 55 years or older. During this period, the population at risk increased by 47% for men and 40% for women. Although the absolute number of hip fractures increased by 53% in men and 4.4% in women, standardized hip fracture ratios were 0.92 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.79–1.08] and 0.69 (95% CI 0.62–0.77), respectively. Marked reductions in hip fracture rates were observed for women: 32% for ages 75 to 84 years and 29% for ages 85 years or older. Data from the Geelong Osteoporosis Study were used to identify changes in body composition and lifestyle that might have influenced hip fracture risk in women during this period. Between 1993–1997 and 2004–2008, there was an increase in adiposity, bone mineral density (BMD), healthy lifestyles, and exposure to bone‐active drugs; use of hormone therapy declined. Thus hip fracture incidence rates have decreased from the mid‐1990 s to the mid‐2000 s, the effect being greater among women. Our data also suggest that the recent increase in adiposity and consequent increase in BMD at the hip may have contributed to this decline. However, improved efficacy and increased uptake of antifracture drug treatments, other cohort effects, or other environmental influences cannot be excluded. © 2011 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.


The TeraGrid [1] is a grid computing project for building a world-class comprehensive distributed infrastructure for scientific discovery. TeraGrid comprises many heterogeneous systems that enable high performance computing, data management/storage, and scientific visualization, and access to scientific data collections from facilities across the country. TeraGrid uses advanced networking systems, software technologies, and operations and support activities to tie these fundamental resources together into a production cyberinfrastructure for science and research. Allocations, accounting, security, resource monitoring, consulting, and documentation are among the services that each TeraGrid Resource Provider (RP) implements to meet their sitespecific needs while operating within the TeraGrid environment. The purpose of the TeraGrid User Portal [2] is to serve as a launch pad for new users and a control panel for current users by integrating RP resources, services, and information into a single web interface serving a national community of computational researchers. The first version of the TeraGrid User Portal [3] addresses the most fundamental issue for integrating TeraGrid resources: extension and integration of existing, centralized TeraGrid accounting and security services with a clear and comprehensive production portal interface. In addition, the portal provides simple access to existing TeraGrid user-centric information and services such as documentation, consulting, allocation request and renewal, and resource monitoring. This paper discusses the motivation, architecture, technology, and challenges used to build an enterprise portal for the TeraGrid. It also illustrates techniques, such as load balancing, redundancy, and user auditing, that are required to ensure performance, reliability, and traceability of the portal environment.


Social discrimination based on geographic variation in territorial signals is taxonomically widespread—most studies have found stronger reactions to local than to foreign signals. In birds with male-only song, this discrimination is thought to result in social exclusion and has been suggested as a behavioral barrier to interpopulation genetic exchange. However, little information exists on duetting species in this context, and nothing is known of how "mixed-dialect" pairs are perceived, despite their confirmed occurrence. We addressed these deficiencies using a duetting, endangered Passerine, the kōkako (Callaeas wilsoni). We used reciprocal stereo playback experiments between 2 fragmented populations to present duets from local and foreign dialects (Experiment 1). Additionally, we assessed responses to mixed-dialect pairs by synthesizing duets, a novel technique, to determine which sex contributes the most salient duet components (Experiment 2). Territorial pairs vocally responded to local duets with less delay, and produced more song phrases with a lower diversity, than they did in response to playback of foreign duets. Pairs responded to mixed-dialect duets with equal overall strength regardless of the sex of the local component. Responses to mixed and pure local duets were qualitatively similar. From an evolutionary perspective, this suggests that mixed-dialect pairs can successfully defend territories without social penalties, improving the likelihood of cross-dialect gene flow. These findings have particular importance for conservation efforts like translocation, which often involve individuals from multiple, culturally distinct populations.


The design of Ranque–Hilsch vortex tube (RHVT) seems to be interesting for refrigeration and air conditioning purposes in industry. Improving thermal efficiency of the vortex tubes could increase the operability of these innovative facilities for a wider heat and cooling demand to this end; it is of an interest to understand the physical phenomena of thermal and flow patterns inside a vortex tube. In this work, the flow phenomena and the thermal energy transfer in RHVT are studied for three RHVT: straight, divergent, and convergent vortex tubes. A three-dimensional numerical analysis of swirling or vortex flow is performed, verified, and validated against previous experimental and numerical data reported in literature. The flow field and the temperature separation inside an RHVT for different configuration of straight, five angles of divergent hot tube (1 deg, 2 deg, 3 deg, 4 deg, and 6 deg) and five angle of convergent hot tube (0.5 deg, 0.8 deg, 1 deg, 1.5 deg, and 2 deg) are investigated. The thermal performance for all investigated RHVTs configuration is determined and quantitatively assessed via visualizing the stream lines for all three scenarios.


Consumption of foods rich in dietary fiber has attracted considerable attention for lowering blood cholesterol and triglycerides through attenuation of gut microbiome. Diets rich in fiber may provide substrates for microbes to digest and proliferate. In response, products of microbial digestion enter systemic circulation and support host energy homeostasis. In the present study, rats with hypercholesterolemia (HC) were supplemented with probiotics (PB) and Agaricus bisporus mushroom to examine the antidyslipidemia effects. Forty adult rats were divided into five treatment groups. The rats in the control group were fed only a chow maintenance diet (CON; n = 8), whereas an atherogenic diet (chow diet supplemented with 1.5% cholesterol and 0.5% cholic acid) was offered to the remaining rats to induce hypercholesterolemia (HC group; n = 32). Rats developed HC following a 24-day continuous supplementation with the atherogenic diet. From day 25 onward, the HC group was further divided into HC-CON, HC-PB (supplemented with PB at 1 mg/rat/day), HC-AB (supplemented with A. bisporus at 5% of diet), and HC-AB.PB (supplemented with both A. bisporus and PB). After 6 weeks of supplementation, rats were killed to collect blood to determine serum lipid profile, oxidative stress, and for metagenomics analysis of colon contents. Results showed that all supplementations corrected HC-induced oxidative stress. Furthermore, A. bisporus supplementation corrected HC-induced dyslipidemia (P ≤ .05). Blautia and Bifidobacterium were the most dominant bacterial genera in HC-AB and HC-PB groups, respectively. Phylum Firmicutes and class Clostridia predominantly occupied the gut microbiome in all groups. However, no significant differences were observed in microbiome diversity and clustering patterns among study groups. In conclusion, supplementation of A. bisporus mushroom and probiotics can lower oxidative stress and dyslipidemia with partial effects on the phylogenetic makeup in the gut microbiome.


Both attention and masking sounds can alter auditory neural processes and affect auditory signal perception. In the present study, we investigated the complex effects of auditory-focused attention and the signal-to-noise ratio of sound stimuli on three different auditory evoked field components (auditory steady-state response, N1m, and sustained field) by means of magnetoencephalography. The results indicate that the auditory steady-state response originating in primary auditory cortex reflects the signal-to-noise ratio of physical sound inputs (bottom–up process) rather than the listener's attentional state (top–down process), whereas the sustained field, originating in nonprimary auditory cortex, reflects the attentional state rather than the signal-to-noise ratio. The N1m was substantially influenced by both bottom–up and top–down neural processes. The differential sensitivity of the components to bottom–up and top–down neural processes, contingent on their level in the processing pathway, suggests a stream from bottom–up driven sensory neural processing to top–down driven auditory perception within human auditory cortex.


First-passage time densities and quantiles are important metrics in performance analysis. They are used in the analysis of mobile communication systems, web servers, manufacturing systems as well as for the analysis of the quality of service of hospitals and government organisations. In this report we look at computational techniques for the first-passage time analysis on highlevel models that translate to Markov and semi-Markov processes. In particular we study exact first-passage time analysis on semi-Markov processes. Previous studies have shown that it is possible to analytically determine passage times by solving a large set of linear equations in Laplace space. The set of linear equations arises from the state transition graph of the Markov or semi-Markov process, which is usually derived from high-level models such as process algebras or stochastic Petri nets. The difficulty in passage time analysis is that even simple high-level models can produce large state transition graphs with several million states and transitions. These are difficult to analyse on modern hardware, because of limitations in the size of main memory. Whilst for Markov processes there exist several efficient techniques that allow the analysis of large chains with more than 100 million states, in the semi-Markov domain such techniques are still less developed. Consequently parallel passage time analyser tools currently only work on semi-Markov models with fewer than 50 million states. This study extends existing techniques and presents new approaches for state space reduction and faster first-passage time computation on large semi-Markov processes. We show that intelligent state space partitioning methods can reduce the amount of main memory needed for the evaluation of first-passage time distributions in large semi-Markov processes by up to 99% and decrease the runtime by a factor of up to 5 compared to existing semi-Markov passage time analyser tools. Finally we outline a new passage time analysis tool chain that has the potential to solve semi-Markov processes with more than 1 billion states on contemporary computer hardware.


This paper develops a Bayesian method for estimating and testing the parameters of the endogenous switching regression model and sample selection models. Random coefficients are incorporated in both the decision and regime regression models to reflect heterogeneity across individual units or clusters and correlation of observations within clusters. The case of tobit type regime regression equations are also considered. A combination of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, data augmentation and Gibbs sampling is used to facilitate computation of Bayes posterior statistics. A simulation study is conducted to compare estimates from full and reduced blocking schemes and to investigate sensitivity to prior information. The Bayesian methodology is applied to data sets on currency hedging and goods trade, cross-country privatisation, and adoption of soil conservation technology. Estimation and inference results on marginal effects, average decision or selection effect as well as model comparison are presented. The expected decision effect is broken down into average effect of individual's decision on the response variable, decision effect due to random components, and differential effect due to latent correlated random components. Application of the proposed Bayesian MCMC algorithm to real data sets reveal that the normality assumption still holds for most commonly encountered economic data.


This paper continues the investigations of previous papers in this series, and attention is confined to exceptional arcs. Given a special constructing sequence for an exceptional arc, the associated sequence of local linking matrices is defined, and the cofinality class of this sequence is shown to be an invariant of the oriented local arc type of the exceptional arc. This paper also gives a set of sufficient conditions for an arc to have a constructing sequence. The paper closes with examples which show that there exist uncountably many locally nonamphicheiral exceptional arcs of any penetration index. No two of the locally nonamphicheiral exceptional arcs exhibited here can be distinguished by the invariant of nonoriented local arc type developed previously.


Neotropical wildlife has gained much interest in sustainable food production. The use of several indigoes species in food consumption. There is significant increase of food import from developed countries to developing countries. The cost of grains on the international market are increasing. Exportation of food from developed countries to developing countries are decreasing. So there is a need to investigate indigenous flora and fauna for food. The Caribbean is a net importer of food. It has an opportunity to develop local flora and fauna for food. Indigenous species of plant and animals are not fully understood/investigated. Indigenous species are well adapted to the environmental conditions of the tropics. The neotropics has 70% of world biodiversity, 604 species of birds, 502 species of reptiles, 140 species of amphibians and 89 species of mammals (Ojasti 1996; Garcia 2008). All the meat that are nowadays consumed, comes from animals that were once wild such as: the Muscovy duck, Turkey and Guinea Pig all originate in this part of the world.


The aim of the article is to evaluate the technical efficiency improvement of the Czech, Polish and Slovak corporate milk processors in the period 2008 – 2013 to identify the possible source of low competitiveness of the Czech and Slovak milk processors towards Poland. The analysis was based on individual data of 130 milk processors (NACE 10.51). The sample covers medium-sized and large companies only. Deflated data on sales, material and energy costs, staff costs and depreciation were used as output and inputs for efficiency calculation. The DEA method was used for calculation of technical efficiency, Malmquist index estimated the efficiency change in time. Two-sample t-test and the analysis of variance enhanced by Sheffe's test verified the statistical hypotheses. The results proved that the Czech and Slovak milk processors had lower efficiency improvement than Polish companies. Investment activity did not significantly affect the efficiency improvement. The Czech and Slovak milk processors should effectively use quite big amount of public subsidies from the Rural Development Programme in the period 2014 – 2020 to improve the efficiency since the Polish companies outstripped the Czech and Slovak companies in the period 2007 2013.


The electronic conductance of polymer–carbon nanotube multilayered composite films assembled by the spin-spray layer-by-layer method is investigated. Our measurements show that the film conductance per bilayer σ1 vanishes for film thickness below a critical value, and above this threshold it grows logarithmically with the number of polyelectrolyte bilayers kl. The results of our experiments are interpreted using a stratified quasi-two-dimensional conducting-network model, in which the junction resistance between nanotubes deposited in different bilayers is a function of the interlayer distance. Using scaling arguments and numerical simulations, we show that the linear dependence of the junction resistance on the layer separation leads to the logarithmic behavior σ1 ∼ log kl for large kl, as observed in our experiments. Properties of our stratified-network model are investigated, and we show that with proper rescaling, different sets of experimental measurements can be collapsed onto a master curve. The overall shape of the master curve is determined by a single dimensionless parameter characterizing the slope of the junction-resistance function.


We study the linear codes and their extensions associated with sets of points in the plane corresponding to cubic curves. Instead of merely studying linear extensions, all possible extensions of the code are studied. In this way several new results are obtained and some existing results are strengthened. This type of analysis was carried out by Alderson, Bruen, and Silverman [ J. Combin. Theory Ser. A , 114(6), 2007] for the case of MDS codes and by the present authors [ Des. Codes Cryptogr. , 47(1-3), 2008] for a broader range of codes. The methods cast some light on the question as to when a linear code can be extended to a nonlinear code. For example, for $p$ prime, it is shown that a linear $[n,3,n-3]_p$ code corresponding to a non-singular cubic curve comprising $n> p+4$ points admits only extensions that are equivalent to linear codes. The methods involve the theory of Redei blocking sets and the use of the Bruen-Silverman model of linear codes.


By combining mass loss and tidal evolution of close-in planets, we present a qualitative study on their tidal migrations. We incorporate mass loss in tidal evolution for planets with different masses and find that mass loss could interfere with tidal evolution. In an upper limit case (β = 3), a significant portion of mass may be evaporated in a long evolution timescale. Evidence of greater modification of the planets with an initial separation of about 0.1 AU than those with a = 0.15 AU can be found in this model. With the assumption of a large initial eccentricity, the planets with initial mass 1 MJ and initial distance of about 0.1 AU could not survive. With the supposition of β = 1.1, we find that the loss process has an effect on the planets with low mass at a ∼ 0.05 AU. In both cases, the effect of evaporation on massive planets can be neglected. Also, heating efficiency and initial eccentricity have significant influence on tidal evolution. We find that even low heating efficiency and initial eccentricity have a significant effect on tidal evolution. Our analysis shows that evaporation on planets with different initial masses can accelerate (decelerate) the tidal evolution due to the increase (decrease) in tide of the planet (star). Consequently, the effect of evaporation cannot be neglected in evolutionary calculations of close-in planets. The physical parameters of HD 209458b can be fitted by our model.


From the moment Christian Dior unveiled his famed New Look collection in Paris on February 12, 1947, women's fashion changed forever. Still one of the most revered names in fashion, Dior is known today for its unique couture dresses. This gorgeous volume continues the homage paid by famed photographer Patrick Demarchelier to one of the most important and influential fashion houses in the world. Working closely with the House of Dior, Demarchelier showcases the extraordinary gowns made in the Dior ateliers from 1947 to today. Along-side dresses designed by Dior himself, creations by the designers who succeeded him show the continuity of the house's rich heritage up to the absolute modernity of Raf Simon's designs. Sumptuously illustrated and beautifully designed, this book-a must for every fashion library-immortalises the archetype of haute-couture glamour.


Nowadays, the route management is very important to make sure the user can
arrive to the destination much fastest. In the transportation industry, the route that
been generated should consider the cost and time constraint which is dependently
on the distance of the route. Although from human logical thinking, the route can be
generated easily but the calculation of checking the route whether it is optimal route
or not is difficult and will take long time to be implemented. This research study with
the development of the Optimal Route Checking Using Genetic Algorithm system
should solve this scenario. By taking the bus services in Universiti Teknologi MARA
as sample, the research has used the genetic algorithm approach to solve the
problem which is similar to the Travel Salesman Problem. The genetic algorithm
approach that been used in this research has been proven by other research study
before that it will easily handle this types of problem where the optimal solution will
be generated. But the GA will not generate the best solution. The objective of this
research is to develop the system that will check the route according to two criteria
which is distance and time. Beside that, this research also has to fulfill the objective
of find the comparison of the three types of selection methods which roulette wheel
selection, tournament selection and rank selection. The GA operators that involved
in this development are two-point crossover and fix mutation for reproduction
phase. For the development of the prototype, the Active Server Page and Java
script programming language with Microsoft Access database has been chosen in
order to make the system can be publish online and easily retrieve by the user
anywhere. This research has achieved the result that meets the objective and
found the best selection method that can be used to handle the similar problem with
this research.


Differential Pulse (DP) voltammetry, spectrophotometry, fluorescence emission spectroscopy and docking simulations were employed to investigate the interaction of an anticancer drug Bicalutamide (BIC) with CT-DNA (Calf thymus-DNA). At modified single walled carbon nanotube carbon paste (SWCNT-CP) electrode the anticancer drug BIC produced a well-defined cathodic reduction peak which decreased on addition of CT-DNA. On increasing concentrations of CT-DNA no shift of peak potential of BIC was observed, characteristic of Groove binding mode of interaction. A binding constant (K) of 2.13 × 106 M-1 was determined by DP voltammetric method. In addition, the interaction of BIC with CT-DNA was further examined by spectrophotometric and fluorescent emission techniques. Interestingly, the binding constants (K) obtained through spectrophotometric method and voltammetric technique was in close agreement. However, the groove binding interaction of drug and DNA was also revealed by spectroscopic studies which were supported by theoretical docking studies.


In 1899 H. S. Jennings published a paper entitled "The psychology of the protozoan." In 1904 he published another called "The behavior of the Paramecium." The second edition of Ernst Meumann's book on the "economy and technique of memory" was published in 1908; its third edition, translated into English and published in 1913, was called The Psychology of Learning. These events serve as markers for the historical introduction into scientific practice of the two categories that would become fundamental to American psychology by the middle of this century: behaviour and learning. By the mid 1930s psychology would become almost universally defined as the science of behaviour and its principal explanatory category would be learning. While both "behaviour" and "learning" had long been part of ordinary discourse, there is no evidence that they assumed any kind of technical, scientific significance until around 1900 for the former and just before 1913 for the latter.A similar picture emerges for most, probably all, major psychological categories. "Intelligence" developed as a biological category in the 19th century but was first applied to humans in its modern psychological form in 1904. "Motivation" appeared first in education in 1916, and then in psychology only in 1928. "Personality," long a moral or theological category, then a psychiatric category, first took on its psychological meaning in the 1920s. The same decade saw the first appearance of "attitude" in its current technical, psychological sense. And psychologists did not generally speak of their subject matter in terms of "variables" until the 1930s. It is the fascinating story of how psychologists in this century came to define and speak of their objects of investigation that Kurt Danziger recounts in this book.Returning to the examples of behaviour and learning, one might ask how it happened that two categories, to which philosophers and scientists had been largely indifferent prior to the turn of the century, should have become so utterly indispensable by mid century? According to Danziger, the success of evolution theory in biology had much to do with it. Among other things, evolution implied the continuity of species. The minds of humans had to have qualitatively similar counterparts among lower animals. This recognition led to the establishment of comparative psychology as a biological discipline. But to speak of the minds of protozoa made biologists uncomfortable. Mental processes were necessarily inferred from observable movements, so why not just talk about those? As the prevailing scientific motive shifted from understanding to control, behaviour became all that really mattered since control could only be exercised from the perspective of external conditions. Thus J. B. Watson urged psychologists to forget inferring anything about internal, unobservable states and processes. Watson's stand was subsequently softened somewhat by later neo-behaviourists and behavioural scientists, but the resulting behavioural methodology remained to shape the subject matter, however it was called.But the reduction to behaviour alone left an explanatory vacuum. This was quickly filled by learning, supported by comparative psychology's emphasis on the organism's capacity to make adjustments to environmental demands. Indeed, the capacity to adapt had already in 1884 been asserted by biologists as the criterion of mind in animals. In contrast to instinct, what made animals, including human beings, different from one another was their degree of modifiability. Some organisms are more adaptive than others, and thus more successful. Another boost came from a growing concern in industry for the training of practical skills. Thus some of the earliest studies of what became know as "learning" were in telegraphy, typewriting, and stenography. The growth of standardized schooling with its need for efficiency in training was also important. The new category of learning appeared to unify the other diverse processes that had traditionally preoccupied educationists, like habit formation, memory, and association. …


This article aims to understand how the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of the franchise system may impact franchisor–franchisee relationship quality, given the conflicting forces for standardization/uniformity and franchisee desire for autonomy. A cross-sectional research design, involving a mail questionnaire survey, was employed to collect data from a sample of franchisors operating in the UK. The hypotheses specified in the study were tested using regression (including moderated regression) analyses. The results revealed that EO was significantly and positively related to relationship quality (as perceived by the franchisor). In addition, the recruitment of entrepreneurial franchisees was found to have a positively significant impact on relationship quality. The structural support systems used by franchisors to encourage franchisee entrepreneurial activities were not found to moderate the relationship between EO and relationship quality. The results suggest that systems with EO and entrepreneurial franchisees may enjoy better relations.


This paper introduces Tribes, a new turn-based strategy game framework. Tribes is a multi-player, multi-agent, stochastic and partially observable game that involves strategic and tactical combat decisions. A good playing strategy requires the management of a technology tree, build orders and economy. The framework provides a Forward Model, which can be used by Statistical Forward Planning methods. This paper describes the framework and the opportunities for Game AI research it brings. We further provide an analysis on the action space of this game, as well as benchmarking a series of agents (rule based, one step look-ahead, Monte Carlo, Monte Carlo Tree Search, and Rolling Horizon Evolution) to study their relative playing strength. Results show that although some of these agents can play at a decent level, they are still far from human playing strength.


BACKGROUND
Biologic glenoid resurfacing was developed in 1988 as an alternative to total shoulder arthroplasty in selected (usually younger) patients with primary, posttraumatic, or postreconstructive glenohumeral arthritis. A variety of biologic surfaces, including anterior capsule, autogenous fascia lata, and Achilles tendon allograft, have been combined with a humeral hemiarthroplasty.

METHODS
From November 1988 to November 2003, thirty-four patients (thirty-six shoulders) who were managed with biologic glenoid resurfacing and humeral head replacement either with cement (ten shoulders) or without cement (twenty-six shoulders) were followed prospectively. The study group included thirty men and four women with an average age of fifty-one years. The diagnoses included primary glenohumeral osteoarthritis (eighteen shoulders), postreconstructive arthritis (twelve), posttraumatic arthritis (five), and osteonecrosis (one). Anterior capsule was used for seven shoulders, autogenous fascia lata for eleven, and Achilles tendon allograft for eighteen. All shoulders were assessed clinically and with serial radiographs.

RESULTS
The mean American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons score was 39 points preoperatively and 91 points at the time of the most recent follow-up. According to Neer's criteria, the result was excellent for eighteen shoulders, satisfactory for thirteen, and unsatisfactory for five. Glenoid erosion averaged 7.2 mm and appeared to stabilize at five years. There were no revisions for humeral component loosening. Complications included infection (two patients), instability (three patients), brachial plexitis (one patient), and deep-vein thrombosis (one patient). Factors that appeared to be associated with unsatisfactory results were the use of capsular tissue as the resurfacing material and infection.

CONCLUSIONS
Biologic resurfacing of the glenoid can provide pain relief similar to total shoulder arthroplasty. It allows selected younger patients to maintain an active lifestyle, including weight-lifting and manual work, without the risk of polyethylene wear. On the basis of this and previous reviews, we currently recommend Achilles tendon allograft as the preferred resurfacing material when this option is chosen.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Therapeutic Level IV. See Instructions to Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.


David Jack was the Director of Research and Development of Allen & Hanburys Ltd and then Glaxo Holdings plc from 1961 to 1987. His aim over all these years was to concentrate the companies' research on inventing treatments for common diseases such as those affecting the respiratory, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular systems. Under his research direction, Glaxo became one of the most successful pharmaceutical companies in the world. Medicines that he invented—salbutamol, salmeterol, beclamethasone dipropionate and fluticasone propionate—revolutionized the treatment of bronchial asthma by cutting down the incidence of acute asthma attacks, preventing hospital admissions and reducing the death rate from the disease. He also invented ranitidine for the treatment of peptic ulcer, which became the best-selling pharmaceutical product in the world. He was also responsible for the invention of sumatriptan for the treatment of migraine and ondansetron for the prevention of radiotherapy-induced nausea. David Jack was one of the most successful inventors of new medicines in the twentieth century.


Given the severe threats against Earth's coral reef ecosystems, there is an urgent need to collect baseline data such that the condition of these endangered habitats can be tracked over the coming decades. Many of the most spectacular coral reefs are found in remote locations that are only accessible by research ships; therefore, little is known about the vast majority of the planet's reefs. In order to fill in a critical knowledge dearth in an ecologically important section of Melanesia, the Khaled bin Sultan's Living Oceans Foundation carried out coral reef surveys in both the far southern and far northern regions of New Caledonia as part of their "Global Reef Expedition." There was a particular emphasis on monitoring the health of the resident pocilloporid corals, which, like all reef-building scleractinians, are engaged in a mutualistic relationship with intracellular dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium. Of the 120 Pocillopora spp. colonies analyzed in detail, 10 were found to be outliers based on a series of multivariate statistical approaches. These aberrantly behaving colonies differed from statistically normal ones in demonstrating higher expression levels of two host coral and four Symbiodinium mRNAs. Furthermore, all 10 colonies were found in the relatively more densely populated and mined south; no outliers were uncovered in the northern atolls, which encompass some of the most pristine and aesthetically appealing reef ecosystems in the world. That being said,


Abstract. Seasonal snow cover is an important temporary water storage in high-elevation regions. Especially in remote areas, the available data are often insufficient to accurately quantify snowmelt contributions to streamflow. The limited knowledge about the spatiotemporal variability of the snowmelt isotopic composition, as well as pronounced spatial variation in snowmelt rates, leads to high uncertainties in applying the isotope-based hydrograph separation method. The stable isotopic signatures of snowmelt water samples collected during two spring 2014 snowmelt events at a north- and a south-facing slope were volume weighted with snowmelt rates derived from a distributed physics-based snow model in order to transfer the measured plot-scale isotopic composition of snowmelt to the catchment scale. The observed δ18O values and modeled snowmelt rates showed distinct inter- and intra-event variations, as well as marked differences between north- and south-facing slopes. Accounting for these differences, two-component isotopic hydrograph separation revealed snowmelt contributions to streamflow of 35 ± 3 and 75 ± 14 % for the early and peak melt season, respectively. These values differed from those determined by formerly used weighting methods (e.g., using observed plot-scale melt rates) or considering either the north- or south-facing slope by up to 5 and 15 %, respectively.


Both the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community and the Operations Research (OR) community are interested in developing techniques for solving hard combinatorial problems. OR has relied heavily on mathematical programming formulations such as integer and linear programming, while AI has developed constrained-based search and inference methods. Recently, we have seen a convergence of ideas, drawing on the individual strengths of these paradigms. Furthermore, there is a great deal of overlap in research on local search and meta-heuristics by both communities. Problem structure, duality, and randomization are overarching themes in the study of AI/OR approaches. I will compare and contrast the different views from AI and OR on these topics, highlighting potential synergistic benefits. 1


The unfolded protein response (UPR) is a signaling cascade triggered by conditions that cause the accumulation of improperly folded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The ER stress response results in increased expression of genes containing the ER stress response element in their promoters and include the genes for ER chaperones, such as grp78 and ERp72. Parker et al. identified the molecular identity of the ER stress-response-element binding factor (ERSF) involved in regulating ER stress-responsive gene activity. ERSF is the ubiquitous transcriptional regulator TFII-I (best known for its role in activating TATA-less promoters), and its role in UPR is dependent on a consensus tyrosine phosphorylation site, and its activity is enhanced by interaction with the transcriptional regulator ATF6. UPR triggers an increase in TFII-I itself, suggesting a positive feedback system for up-regulation of ERSF genes. R. Parker, T. Phan, P. Baumeister, B. Roy, V. Cheriyath, A. L. Roy, A. S. Lee, Identification of TFII-I as the endoplasmic reticulum stress response binding element factor ERSF: Its autoregulation by stress and interaction with ATF6. Mol. Cell. Biol. 21, 3220-3233 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The yeast Dbf4-dependent kinase (DDK) (composed of Dbf4 and Cdc7 subunits) is an essential, conserved Ser/Thr protein kinase that regulates multiple processes in the cell, including DNA replication, recombination and induced mutagenesis. Only DDK substrates important for replication and recombination have been identified. Consequently, the mechanism by which DDK regulates mutagenesis is unknown. The yeast mcm5-bob1 mutation that bypasses DDK's essential role in DNA replication was used here to examine whether loss of DDK affects spontaneous as well as induced mutagenesis. Using the sensitive lys2ΔA746 frameshift reversion assay, we show DDK is required to generate "complex" spontaneous mutations, which are a hallmark of the Polζ translesion synthesis DNA polymerase. DDK co-immunoprecipitated with the Rev7 regulatory, but not with the Rev3 polymerase subunit of Polζ. Conversely, Rev7 bound mainly to the Cdc7 kinase subunit and not to Dbf4. The Rev7 subunit of Polζ may be regulated by DDK phosphorylation as immunoprecipitates of yeast Cdc7 and also recombinant Xenopus DDK phosphorylated GST-Rev7 in vitro. In addition to promoting Polζ-dependent mutagenesis, DDK was also important for generating Polζ-independent large deletions that revert the lys2ΔA746 allele. The decrease in large deletions observed in the absence of DDK likely results from an increase in the rate of replication fork restart after an encounter with spontaneous DNA damage. Finally, nonepistatic, additive/synergistic UV sensitivity was observed in cdc7Δ pol32Δ and cdc7Δ pol30-K127R,K164R double mutants, suggesting that DDK may regulate Rev7 protein during postreplication "gap filling" rather than during "polymerase switching" by ubiquitinated and sumoylated modified Pol30 (PCNA) and Pol32.


This book is a tutorial designed to instruct the reader in use and application of immunochemical methods of analysis for environmental contaminants. A brief introduction describes basic principles and the advantages and disadvantages of the technology, and gives a listing of references which supply more detail. Preparation of the laboratory for use of this technology and the general scientific considerations prior to using the technology are discussed. Detailed step-wise procedures are given for analysis of selected analytes, triazine herbicides, carbaryl, paraquat, and p-nitrophenols, etc. In addition to the specific immunoassay methods, a series of support techniques necessary to perform immunochemical methods are described.This book provides specific instruction for certain analytes, but also serves to familiarize the novice reader with many generic concepts needed to successfully utilize immunochemistry technology including: applications, sampling, sample preparation, extraction, cleanup, quality assurance, methods development and optimization, data handling and troubleshooting. It is not necessary for the reader to actually perform the immunoassays given in this user's guide to obtain familiarity with these concepts. The guide is written so that the information presented can be applied to other immunoassays not given here. Thus, the strength of the guide is its universal applicability to immunoassay methods.


Introduction: Catabolism of muscle and loss of function are complications that can occur during the course of HIV infection, and are commonly seen in a majority of adolescents with vertically transmitted Human Immunodeficiency Virus-type 1 (HIV-1). The levels of CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes, reference markers for the treatment of vertically transmitted HIV-1, also decline as the disease progresses. Alterations on these reference markers may be associated with neuromuscular force parameters in sedentary adolescents that have potential as prognostic indicators for treatment administration. Objective: To investigate the relationship between maximal isometric muscular contraction force and levels of CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes in sedentary, vertically transmitted HIV-1 positive adolescents. Methods: The sample consisted of twenty individuals, adolescents (N= 9 males, 11 females, age 1517 years), vertically transmitted HIV-1 patients from Institute of Infectious Diseases Emilio Ribas in São Paulo, Brazil, who were undergoing HAART therapy randomly selected to participate in the study. The number of CD4+ and CD8+ cells was determined by flow cytometry using BD FacsCalibur Multitest Equipment, and Multiset-BD software. Viral load was determined using b-DNA methodology, on Siemens System Versátil 440 equipment. All analyses followed standard procedures approved by the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Muscular strength measurements were completed in the morning after blood collection and weight and height measurements. Prior to starting, patients were familiarized with all testing procedures and strength exercises that were used for testing. After the warm up, maximum voluntary isometric muscular strength of the elbow flexors and knee extensors were assessed using an electric dynamometer (EMG210C, EMGLAB System of Brazil). Each patient made three attempts with a rest interval of two minutes between trials. The highest isometric force and torque value were recorded and used for analyses. Results: Upper body force (r=0.70, p=0.001) and maximal torque (r=0.69, p=0.001) were significant correlated with CD4+ count. Similar observations between CD4+ count and lower body muscular force (r=0.62, p=0.005) and maximum torque (r=0.61, p=0.007) were also observed. CD8+ was not associated with any strength measures. Conclusion: CD4+ lymphocytes showed a strong correlation with force parameters in sedentary HIV-1 positive adolescents. Given that those individuals with higher TCD4+ counts showed a tendency towards manifesting higher muscle strength, this may be used as a predictor to indicate the level of physical capacity of patients and consequently help optimize treatment. Further research is needed to explore the potential prognostic value of muscle strength parameters in HIV-1 positive adolescents.


Advantages of concrete are freedom of shape, possibilities to integrate other functions and components, to build structures with limited maintenance costs, ease of use and very high durability. The use of sustainable building materials is important because they are used in large volumes. A significant reduction of the environmental impact can convince owners to select concrete instead of other building materials. Effective concrete production requires an adequate rate of strength development, which is especially important for prefabricated elements and ready-mix applications with a high early age strength requirement. This paper discusses the influence of the mix design on the global warming potential and the relative strength cost, the ratio between strength and environmental cost; 3 conventional vibrated concrete (CVC) mixtures and 9 self-compacting concretes (SCC's) selected from literature are compared for the age of 24 hours and 28 days. Quantifying the trade-off between the use of Portland cement and other mixture components is important information to balance production requirements and to determine the environmental impact of concrete structures produced with SCC.


The telecommunications services industry has experienced very large technological progress in the past decades, as measured by technological output metrics. However, the industry's economic output statistics do not appear to reflect this. Between 2010 and 2015, for example, data usage in the UK expanded by around 900% but real Gross Value Added (GVA) for the industry fell by 4%. While the direction of growth in Telecoms GVA is not the same for all countries, there nonetheless appears to be a wider disconnect between the technological performance and economic measurement of the industry in the UK. This paper argues this can be primarily resolved through strengthening the deflators that are applied to nominal output to produce real GVA. This paper contrasts two methodologically distinct options to estimate the potential bias in the current deflator, informed by both an economic and engineering perspective. Our findings indicate that the current deflator is upward biased and that telecommunications services prices could have fallen between 35% and 90% between 2010 and 2015, considerably more than the current deflator, suggesting the need for continued research in this area.


A key barrier to building performant, remotely managed and self-optimizing multi-sensor, distributed stream processing edge applications is high programming complexity. We recently proposed DataX [1], a novel platform that improves programmer productivity by enabling easy exchange, transformations, and fusion of data streams on virtualized edge computing infrastructure. This paper extends DataX to include (a) serverless computing that automatically scales stateful and stateless analytics units (AUs) on virtualized edge environments, (b) novel communication mechanisms that efficiently communicate data among analytics units, and (c) new techniques to promote automatic reuse and sharing of analytics processing across multiple applications in a lights out, serverless computing environment. Synthesizing these capabilities into a single platform has been substantially more transformative than any available stream processing system for the edge. We refer to this enhanced and efficient version of DataX as DataXe. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first serverless system for stream processing. For a real-world video analytics application, we observed that the performance of the DataXe implementation of the analytics application is about 3X faster than a standalone implementation of the analytics application with custom, handcrafted communication, multiprocessing and allocation of edge resources.


Construction is a trade where the dominating production strategy is engineer-to-order. House-builders can pre-engineer their design to different degrees, resulting in variations of the engineer-to-order strategy: design-to-order, adapt-to-order, and engineer-to-stock. This variation causes different settings for the use of platforms in house-building. The aim of this research is to diversify the engineer-to-order production strategy and its consequences for platform organization by studying its use in house-building. The multiple case study on four engineering/contractor firms reports the core capabilities for engineer-to-order firms: procurement and tendering, market knowledge, engineering, multi-skilled manufacturing, and coordination of sales and manufacturing. Design-to-order, adapt-to-order and engineer-to stock were shown to be production strategies in use in house-building. In design-to-order platforms parts of the platform are undefined while engineer-to-stock platforms are fully predefined. Coordination between market and manufacturing is a crucial capability when engaging in platform organization. When an engineering firm and a contractor collaborate to fulfil client needs, the coordination capability between market and manufacturing was shown to be low. The case study shows that specialized contractors who integrate the supply chain towards a specific market segment benefit fully from the platform concept, while contractors with a wider scope could focus on standardization of processes rather than products.


Renal vein thrombosis is the most frequent unrelated to vascular catheters thrombosis, with the highest incidence in the neonatal period. Risk factors include shock, dehydration, perinatal asphyxia, polycythemia, cyanotic heart disease, sepsis, maternal diabetes, traumatic births. There are few literature data regarding inherited prothrombotic anomalies. We report a premature newborn's case, 36 weeks gestational age, of thrombophilic mother, who developed in the first 48 hours postnatally jaundice and thrombocytopenia, then hematuria and a mass in the left flank. Doppler ultrasound revealed left renal vein thrombosis. Despite heparin treatment, the thrombotic process extended. Factor V (Leiden) mutation was identified. Conclusions. Although infants with this presentation are typically treated with anticoagulants, there is a lack of evidence-based guidelines. A case-control study is required to investigate whether maternal prothrombotic disorders may be a risk factor for neonatal thrombotic processes.


When we move on snow, sand, or mud, the ground deforms under our feet, immediately affecting our gait. We propose a physically based model for computing such interactions in real time, from only the kinematic motion of a virtual character. The force applied by each foot on the ground during contact is estimated from the weight of the character, its current balance, the foot speed at the time of contact, and the nature of the ground. We rely on a standard stress-strain relationship to compute the dynamic deformation of the soil under this force, where the amount of compression and lateral displacement of material are, respectively, parameterized by the soil's Young modulus and Poisson ratio. The resulting footprint is efficiently applied to the terrain through procedural deformations of refined terrain patches, while the addition of a simple controller on top of a kinematic character enables capturing the effect of ground deformation on the character's gait. As our results show, the resulting footprints greatly improve visual realism, while ground compression results in consistent changes in the character's motion. Readily applicable to any locomotion gait and soft soil material, our real-time model is ideal for enhancing the visual realism of outdoor scenes in video games and virtual reality applications.


Infiltration is often assumed to occur with little or no impedance from the air within the vadose zone. If this assumption is not valid air counterflow may occur, while the infiltration rate and degree of saturation within the transmission zone may be significantly reduced. Accurate predictions of infiltration rates are important for applications such as moisture balance calculations and predictions of pore water pressures in landslide triggering. Existing results for confined infiltration show contradictory evidence for either air pressure remaining at a threshold or continual increase of air pressure. In this paper, the effect of air entrapment is investigated in the laboratory using recently developed techniques of unsaturated transparent porous media and digital photograph interpretation. These techniques enable the full saturation profile to be quantified every 5 s. The experimental data are used to quantify the decrease in infiltration rate and degree of saturation within the transmission zone in the confined infiltration, to accurately locate the wetting front, and to assess the stability of the wetting front. The results confirm previous observations in which infiltration in an open system was observed to occur significantly faster than in a closed system. However, in this study, the air pressure ahead of the wetting front was observed to reach a threshold value, which was a function of the ponding height and suction at the wetting front. A Green‐Ampt infiltration model based on this observation of air confinement was observed to provide a better fit to the experimental data than the one based on the continual increase in air pressure assumption.


Most of patients with cryptococcal meningitis in China were not HIV victims. Profile of the diseases in patients with non-HIV infection was poorly understood. We summarized the epidemiology and clinical characteristics of cryptococcal meningitis in China. A comprehensive analysis of the reported cases of cryptococcal meningitis in China was conducted, covering publications from 1981 to 2013 from CNKI database. Among the 306 reports and 6514 cases about cryptococcal meningitis, there were 21% patients with HIV infection, 39% with other underlying diseases and 40% without underlying diseases. Main underlying diseases in non-HIV/AIDS patients were tuberculosis (10.46%), liver disease (9.83%), systemic lupus erythematosus (7.00%), diabetes (5.26%), kidney disease (3.16%), lung disease (2.97%), and cancer (2.01%). About 60.8% cases were reported in males. From 1981-2013 total patients of cryptococcal meningitis were increased. Patients who received treatment of amphotericin B (AmB) with 5-flucytosine, AmB with Fluconazole, and the combination of AmB+5-FU+FCZ were 495, 411, 266 persons (total 1501 cases) and got a total efficiency of 70.1%, 70.8%, and 74.8% respectively. The survival rate of cryptococcal meningitis patients without HIV infection is higher than those with HIV infection (p<0.05). The result shows that most patients of cryptococcal meningitis have underlying diseases and there is a connection between cryptococcal meningitis and immunodeficiency in China.


From its beginnings in 1916, the Optical Society has designated a special category of
 membership to individuals who have made unique, unparalleled contributions to the
 field of optics. This column highlights the careers of five optical pioneers who became
 honorary members in the 1940s and 1950s: Theodore Lyman (1941), C.V. Raman
 (1941), R.W. Wood (1944), R.A. Millikan (1950) and Arnold Sommerfeld (1950).


The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROP-ICS) mission was selected by NASA as part of the Earth Venture Instrument (EVI-3) program. The overarching goal for TROPICS is to provide nearly all-weather observations of 3-D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones, including: (1) relationships of rapidly evolving precipitation and upper cloud structures to upper-level warm-core intensity and associated storm intensity changes; (2) the evolution of precipitation structure and storm intensification in relationship to environmental humidity fields; and (3) the impact of rapid-update observations on numerical and statistical intensity forecasts of tropical cyclones. TROPICS will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements (median refresh rate of 40 minutes for the baseline mission) over the tropics that can be used to observe the thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm lifecycle. TROPICS comprises six CubeSats in three low-Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat will host a high performance radiometer to provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapor profiles using three channels near the 183 GHz water vapor absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation measurements (when combined with higher resolution water vapor channels), and a single channel at 206 GHz that is more sensitive to precipitation-sized ice particles. This observing system offers an unprecedented combination of horizontal and temporal resolution to measure environmental and inner-core conditions for tropical cyclones on a nearly global scale and is a major leap forward in the temporal resolution of several key parameters needed for assimilation into advanced data assimilation systems capable of utilizing rapid-update radiance or retrieval data.


Numerous studies have suggested a role for natural killer (NK) cells in attenuation of HIV-1 disease progression via recognition by killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) of specific HLA class I molecules. The role of KIR and HLA class I has not been addressed in the context of maternal-infant HIV-1 transmission. KIR and HLA class I B and C genes from 224 HIV-1-infected mothers and 222 infants (72 infected and 150 uninfected) from South Africa were characterized. Although a number of significant associations were determined in both the total group and in the nevirapine (NVP) exposed group, the most significant findings involved KIR2DL2 and KIR2DL3 and HLA-C. KIR2DL2/KIR2DL3 was underrepresented in intrapartum (IP)-transmitting mothers compared to non-transmitting (NT) mothers (P = 0.008) and remained significant (P = 0.036) after correction for maternal viral load (MVL). Homozygosity for KIR2DL3 alone and in combination with HLA-C allotype heterozygosity (C1C2) was elevated in IP-transmitting mothers compared to NT mothers (P = 0.034 and P = 0.01 respectively), and after MVL correction (P = 0.033 and P = 0.027, respectively). In infants, KIR2DL3 in combination with its HLA-C1 ligand (C1) as well as homozygosity for KIR2DL3 with C1C2, were both found to be underrepresented in infected infants compared to exposed uninfected infants in the total group (P = 0.06 and P = 0.038, respectively) and in the sub-group of infants whose mothers received NVP (P = 0.007 and P = 0.03, respectively). These associations were stronger post MVL adjustment (total group: P = 0.02 and P = 0.009, respectively; NVP group: P = 0.004 and P = 0.02, respectively). Upon stratification according to low and high MVL, all significant associations fell within the low MVL group, suggesting that with low viral load, the effects of genotype can be more easily detected. In conclusion this study has identified a number of significant associations that suggest an important role for NK cells in maternal-to-infant HIV-1 transmission.


In eucalypts, inbreeding may occur under open-pollination (OP) or when
effective population sizes are reduced by intensive selection. Breeding strategies
employing inbreeding have also been suggested. This Thesis examines inbreeding
in three widespread and commercially important temperate eucalypts: Eucalyptus
globulus, E. nitens and E. regnans.

Inbreeding depression was severe for growth traits in all species. Flowering
was also depressed in E. nitens, whereas pilodyn penetration and relative bark
thickness were unaffected. In a long term E. regnans study, the survival of inbred
progenies was significantly lower than outcrosses. However, the mortality of selfs
obscured an increase in inbreeding depression with age for growth traits. In most
traits examined, inbreeding depression was associated with levels of quantitative
dominance, however, some traits exhibited inbreeding depression but no
dominance, suggesting the action of rare alleles with major effect.

Inbred progenies were virtually absent from OP families from closed native E.
globulus forests, however, outcrossing rates were lower in families from isolated
parents. Biparental inbreeding may also be important under OP in native stands, as
mating nearest neighbour depressed growth equivalent to half-sib inbreeding.
However, the selection against selfs observed in E. regnans, suggested most
inbreds are eliminated by reproductive maturity thereby reducing the level of
inbreeding in natural populations and the ability to purge genetic load. The fitness
of parents under OP did not appear to be related to additive differences but may be
correlated with outcrossing rate. However, it is argued that mixed mating is
evolutionary stable, favoured by the reproductive ecology of the species.

Heritabilities estimated from OPs were greatly inflated compared to
heritabilities estimated from outcross progenies in E. regnans and E. nitens,
particularly for traits that exhibited inbreeding depression. A reduction in
outcrossing rate from 1.0 to 0.8 in E. globulus was associated with lower breeding
value estimates, suggesting variability among families in outcrossing rates may
inflate heritabilities estimates and bias breeding values. In the E. regnans study,
inflated heritabilities and additive variances estimated from OPs approximated
outcross parameters as inbreds were selected against. However, OP heritabilities
were also reduced as stand development enhanced of variation within OP families.
In addition, OPs overestimated age-age correlations and poorly predicted outcross
performance.

Mixed model methods were developed to account for dominance and
inbreeding, and were applied to self and outcross progenies of E. regnans.
Ignoring inbreeding depression biased breeding values for diameter, but dominance
was unimportant. Accounting for rare deleterious alleles improved the model,
however, breeding values predicted under a simple model were almost perfectly
correlated with those under a more complex model.


There is a growing interest in determining whether factors other than cognitive ability and previous academic performance can influence academic success in medical school (Ferguson, James, & Madeley, 2002). This is due to the limited number of places available on a medical degree and the focus upon personal qualities that are expected of medical students when they graduate and become practicing physicians (Powis, Bore, Munro, & Lumsden, 2005). There are a large numbers of potential characteristics that may be useful in medical school. However, few have attempted to reduce this number into more meaningful dimensions. In addition, the academic performance literature has focussed on the psychometric properties of assessments and largely overlooked the structure of academic performance.

The aim is to combine the two divergent literatures and explore the dimensionality of medical student's dispositional characteristics, and the underlying structure of medical school assessments. This is in order to determine whether dimensions of dispositional characteristics are predictive of different types of assessment.

181 medical students completed a battery of questionnaires during the first week of term in Year 1. Academic performance variables consisted of assessment undertaken by students during the first two years of medical school.

Chapter 5 presents a Principal Components Analysis of assessments. Results suggest that there are three underlying dimensions in the data corresponding to Scientific Knowledge Assessment, Interpersonal Skills Assessment, and Practical Skills Assessment. The results are discussed in terms of current models of desired outcomes in education.

Chatper 6 presents a Principal Components Analysis of dispositional characteristics in medical students. The results suggest that the 21 measured dispositions had three underlying dimensions corresponding to Emotionality, Intrinsic Motivation, and Interpersonal Traits. The results are discussed in terms of how the traits might theoretically combine in addition to the statistical combination of traits.

Chapter 7 presents a series of five Hierarchical Linear Regressions to determine if the trait complexes identified in chapter 6 differentially predict performance on traditional measures of academic performance, and the three dimensions of performance identified in chapter six.

Overall results suggest that previous academic performance and cognitive ability are consistent predictors of academic performance in medical school as such their continued use in selection procedures seems appropriate. Both GCSE and A-Levels differentially predicted types of performance. In addition, emotionality significantly predicted Year 1 performance and performance in practical skills assessment. This study therefore provided support for a three dimensional model of medical student academic performance. However the influence of trait complexes warrants further investigation later in a medical career.


Mathematics and Science for Sport and Exercise introduces students to the basic mathematical and scientific principles underpinning sport and exercise science. It is an invaluable course companion for students who have little prior experience of maths or science, and an ideal revision aid for higher level undergraduate students. The book explains the basic scientific principles that help us to understand sport, exercise and human movement, using a wide range of well-illustrated practical examples. Written by three leading sport scientists with many years experience teaching introductory courses, the book guides beginning students through those difficult to grasp areas of basic maths and science, and identifies the common problems and misconceptions that students often experience. It includes coverage of key areas such as: science of physical states - gas, liquid and solid science of biomechanics, motion and energy mathematical formulae, calculus, and differential equations statistics scientific report writing key concepts such as pressure, torque and velocity self-test features and highlighted key points throughout each chapter. Fully referenced, with guides to further reading, this book is an essential companion for all students on foundation or undergraduate level courses in sport and exercise science, kinesiology, and the human movement sciences.


Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are a novel design of solar cell which could be used as power producing windows or skylights. These nanocrystalline solar cells are currently the subject of intense research in the field of renewable energy as a low-cost photovoltaic device. The light adsorption occurs in dye molecules adsorbed on a highly porous structure of TiO2 porous film. The photo-conversion efficiencies of the DSSCs have been recently reported to reach 11%. Despite the progress in the efficiency and stability of these solar cells there are many fundamental aspects of their operation that are still unknown. One process, for which there is limited information, is the time taken to upload the dye on the TiO2 nanoporous film. Dye is adsorbed onto a TiO2 working electrode by dipping it into the dye solution for periods of several hours to several days. However, such long dipping times are not economic for industrial production of DSSCs. It has been shown recently that the time taken for dye uptake on the solar cell has an impact on its efficiency. The factors controlling this process are not yet fully understood. We develop a model based on the Langmuir isotherms to study and understand the diffusion and adsorption of the dye molecules in TiO2 nanotube films and compare our theoretical results to the experimental results. Our modelling results show that the adsorption of dye into the TiO2 nanotubes is controlled by the diffusion coefficient, the adsorption-desorption ratio and the initial dye concentration. The competition between the electron transport to the anode and the electron transfer to I3 ions in the electrolyte determines the efficiency of the collection of photoinjected electrons. The important parameter in this process is the electron diffusion length Ln, which is determined by the effective electron diffusion coefficient and life time. Efficient cells are characterized by a value of Ln that considerably exceeds the TiO2 film thickness. We introduce a new reliable and efficient approach to estimate the electron diffusion length in dye sensitized solar cells. This approach is based on the multiple trapping model which involves calculating the effective electron diffusion coefficient Dn and life time τn at the same quasi Fermi level. We show that in this context Ln = √ Dnτn = L0, where Ln and L0 are the effective and free electron diffusion length respectively. Dn and τn are used to interpret the experimental intensity modulated photocurrent and photovoltage spectroscopic data. The good agreement between theory and experiment demonstrates that our model provides a powerful approach to estimate the diffusion length in terms of realistic devices. The microwave technique is now a well established tool for contactless measurements of charge carriers in semiconductors. A 3D simulation model was developed for the study of photogenerated charge carriers by microwave reflectance techniques in DSSCs. This model is able to reproduce several features of the experimental results, and suggests that the microwave technique is a good measure of photoconductivity.


In this eloquent introduction to early Christian thought, eminent religious historian Robert Louis Wilken examines the tradition that such figures as St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and others set in place. These early thinkers constructed a new intellectual and spiritual world, Wilken shows, and they can still be heard as living voices in the modern world.In chapters on topics including early Christian worship, Christian poetry and the spiritual life, the Trinity, Christ, the Bible, and icons, Wilken shows that the energy and vitality of early Christianity arose from within the life of the Church. While early Christian thinkers drew on the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of the ancient world, it was the versatile vocabulary of the Bible that loosened their tongues and minds and allowed them to construct the world anew, intellectually and spiritually. These thinkers were not seeking to invent a world of ideas, Wilken shows, but rather to win the hearts of men and women and to change their lives. Early Christian thinkers set in place a foundation that has endured. Their writings are an irreplaceable inheritance, and Wilken shows that they can still be heard as living voices within contemporary culture.


ON 17 MARCH 2004, VIOLENCE ERUPTED between Kosovar Serbs and Albanians in Mitrovica, a flashpoint in Kosovo and a microcosm of the province's many difficulties. Over the next three days, the trouble spread throughout the UN protectorate; most incidents involved ethnic Albanian mobs targeting minority residents (Serbs were the main victims, but Roma and Bosnians were also affected). NATO troops, assisted by local and international police forces, eventually restored order, but not before another bloody chapter was added to the region's history: over 20 dead, hundreds of injured, thousands of displaced people, in addition to hundreds of destroyed houses and the destruction or damage of Serbian religious sites.In the days following the violence, key officials from the international community openly confessed their surprise that such acts could, once again, occur in the Balkans, especially with the continued presence of nearly 20,000 NATO (or Kosovo force, KFOR) troops and thousands of international police officers. This is a troubling reminder that some of the people who are responsible for nation-building in the Balkans either ignore the region's history, or share the mistaken belief that the mere presence of international peacekeepers can contain a tense situation that involves economic despair, political uncertainty, and the festering wounds of the past. Given the continued fragility of Kosovo and much of the western Balkans four years after the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, it is useful to re-examine the lessons of history. Understanding the antecedents of the problems facing the Balkans can help statesmen avoid past mistakes. As a starting point, we must reconsider the unresolved "eastern question."The eastern question, or what to do with the European possessions of the Ottoman empire-or the "sick man of Europe," as it came to be known in the 19th century-was supposed to have been settled by the First World War and its aftermath. The treaties of St. Germain and Neuilly (1919), Trianon (1920), and Sevres and Lausanne (1920 and 1923, respectively) dealt with the territory of the western Balkans which previously belonged to either the Habsburg or Ottoman empires. The treaties merely confirmed the existence of a new, multiethnic polity-"the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes," or Yugoslavia. From the beginning, this was an artificial construct that was kept alive first by fears of irredentist Italy and Hungary, then by the brilliant statesmanship of Tito, and later by the false sense of relative prosperity that was maintained by the loans that allowed socialist industries to provide jobs and a respectable standard of living in the 1960s and 1970s. ButTito's death in 1980 and the economic reckoning later that decade provided the background for the resurgent nationalism of Slobodan Milosevic and his Croatian counterpart, Franjo Tudjman, and the catastrophic wars of the 1990s. Thus the eastern question was never actually "solved"; it merely became the Yugoslav experiment. The second World War, the advent of Tito, and the Cold War contained the latent nationalistic tensions that existed between Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Macedonians, and Albanians. But the economic stagnation of the late 1980s and the collapse of the eastern bloc brought out the worst manifestations of Balkan nationalism.The negative consequences of the unsolved eastern question continue to linger, in spite of the NATO military intervention under US leadership that stopped the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s. The final status of Kosovo, a UN protectorate since 1999 but still nominally a part of Serbia, may be discussed in 2005, in spite of the resistance of Belgrade and, perhaps, of Serbia's traditional protector and veto-wielding member of the security council, Russia.1 Meanwhile, Montenegrin politicians have expressed their intention to hold a referendum on their continued participation in the state union of Serbia and Montenegro, the successor state to the former Yugoslavia. …


Abstract Bat mortality caused by terrestrial wind-power plants has been documented and offshore wind-power developments may have similar effects. Determining which bat species occur offshore, how far they range from shore, and predictors of high activity may be helpful to developers and wildlife managers. We studied bat activity off the mid-Atlantic coast, using ultrasonic detectors mounted on ships in spring and fall 2009 and 2010. We investigated the association between nightly bat activity and weather variables, including wind speed, air temperature, and barometric pressure. Echolocation passes of bats totaled 166; maximum detection distance from shore was 21.9 km, and mean distance was 8.4 km. Most passes were identifıed as Lasiurnis borealis (Eastern Red Bats), representing 78% of bats identifıed to species or species group. Bat activity decreased as wind speed increased, but activity did not differ with distance from shore. Offshore wind projects proposed for locations beyond the maximum detection distances noted in our study would likely have few impacts on seasonal movements; however, depending on their location and operating protocols, projects closer to shore could result in fatalities similar to those reported at onshore wind facilities.


One factor which contributed to Ireland's economic growth during the 'Celtic Tiger' era was access to a cheap flexible labour supply. The Irish state played a central role in facilitating and shaping this labour supply, through its formulation of immigration policies and its role in influencing labour market structure, thereby influencing the nature of the workers who entered the Irish labour market. Placing the analysis of Irish immigration policy within the unfolding global systems of flows of people and capital prevents the classification of Ireland, or any country, as a unique experience. Economically driven moves by the Irish state, specifically in terms of labour supply, are evident in the recruitment drives supported through the Celtic Tiger and with the expansion of the European Union in 2004. This paper outlines how Ireland's immigration policy during the Celtic Tiger shaped the labour market by determining which workers did what jobs. It also discusses the nature of the Irish state and how this ...


Augmenting pretrained language models (LMs) with a vision encoder (e.g., Flamingo) has obtained the state-of-the-art results in image-to-text generation. However, these models store all the knowledge within their parameters, thus often requiring enormous model parameters to model the abundant visual concepts and very rich textual descriptions. Additionally, they are inefficient in incorporating new data, requiring a computational-expensive fine-tuning process. In this work, we introduce a Retrieval-augmented Visual Language Model, Re-ViLM, built upon the Flamingo, that supports retrieving the relevant knowledge from the external database for zero and in-context few-shot image-to-text generations. By storing certain knowledge explicitly in the external database, our approach reduces the number of model parameters and can easily accommodate new data during evaluation by simply updating the database. We also construct an interleaved image and text data that facilitates in-context few-shot learning capabilities. We demonstrate that Re-ViLM significantly boosts performance for image-to-text generation tasks, especially for zero-shot and few-shot generation in out-of-domain settings with 4 times less parameters compared with baseline methods.


Triturus cristatus is one of Europe's most rapidly declining amphibians and has been the subject of conservation concern in the UK since 1975. Despite its widespread decline and continued threats from development, T. cristatus remains widely distributed in the UK countryside. Traditional farming practices, such as the digging of ponds for livestock, created suitable habitats for T. cristatus and consequently the species was much more common in the past. Over the last 70 years the nature of farming has fundamentally changed and the modern landscape provides a comparatively degraded habitat for wildlife. The value of farmland for T. cristatus in the UK is often overlooked by conservation efforts for the species, even though it is a valuable habitat and essential for providing connectivity between adjacent populations. Much effort is focussed on the small number of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) or Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) but these cover a very small part of the UK landmass. T. cristatus has been protected by law in the UK since 1981, and as a result an estimated minimum of £45 million is spent each year to avoid killing or injuring individual newts where populations are affected by development. In contrast land in agricultural production covers 71% of the UK but funding for proactive conservation of the species across this habitat is minimal and very difficult to obtain. This thesis has investigated the ecology of T. cristatus on farmland in North West England. Data were collected from a total of 32 ponds on 11 sites. Population size estimates are presented for eight farm ponds and are compared with those from three non-farmed ponds. Population size varied markedly between ponds and sites, and some farm ponds supported very small numbers of newts. Population estimates fluctuated markedly between years, highlighting the importance of long term studies. Isolated ponds supported relatively large numbers of individuals, and indeed the highest population estimate was recorded in an isolated pond. This demonstrates that isolation in itself is not a limiting factor for population size. In total, 4693 individuals captured during this study were weighed and measured, and the data were used to compare body condition index (BCI) between populations. There was no clear difference between BCI at farmed and non-farmed sites, suggesting that BCI of T. cristatus on farmland was not adversely affected by modern farming practices. There was an inverse relationship between age and body condition. The age structure of 13 populations was estimated based on skeletochronology of 548 adults. Individuals in the farmed landscape survived to a maximum estimated age of 14 years, only one year less than the maximum age recorded during this study. Twenty individuals were estimated at 12 years or older. Fourteen of these were from farmed and six were from non-farmed populations. This indicates that both the aquatic and terrestrial habitat of the farmed landscape is sufficient to allow newts to fulfil their natural lifespan. The estimated age of sexual maturity for the majority of individuals was 2-3 years. The median estimated age across all populations was 6.5 years for males and seven years for females. It appears that individuals do not breed as soon as they reach sexual maturity and thus remain in the terrestrial habitat for a much longer period of their lives than previously thought. Males always returned to the pond earlier than females of the same age. In both sexes, individuals aged 8 years and over were on average captured approximately three weeks prior to younger individuals. Whether population isolation has had any measurable effect on T. cristatus was investigated using a genetic study of 23 populations on 13 sites. There was no evidence of a loss of genetic diversity through isolation. This study supported the conclusion of other research that dispersal distances for T. cristatus can be much greater than reported by capture-mark-recapture (C-M-R) studies. At one of the farmed sites (Moss Shaw Farm), populations just over 1 km apart were assigned similar genetic characteristics, indicating genetic mixing of those populations. This shows that the modern agricultural landscape is still capable of facilitating the dispersal of individuals. The results of this research demonstrate that the agricultural landscape in the UK can continue to provide a suitable habitat for T. cristatus. Efforts to engage with farmers and landowners to enlist their support for the conservation of this species will therefore be worthwhile.


The Reserve Bank of New Zealand sets monetary policy to achieve two operational objectives: to keep future annual inflation between 1 and 3 percent over the medium term (with a focus on the 2 percent mid-point) and to support maximum sustainable employment (MSE). The target inflation rate is observable data measured by the Consumers Price Index and produced by Stats NZ. However, the maximum sustainable level of employment is not directly measurable. The Reserve Bank has always monitored the labour market. Such analysis is important for understanding the transmission of monetary policy and avoiding unnecessary volatility in the real economy. The aspect which is new in the current environment is the concept of maximum sustainable employment as an operational objective. The analysis in this Note provides an initial consideration of this new part of the Reserve Bank's mandate, allowing us to document our current thinking and learnings about the labour market. This Note evaluates how well measures of labour market slack are able to explain and forecast key variables – non-tradables inflation, wage inflation, and employment growth. The 44 measures explored in this paper capture aspects of the labour market that are covered in previous Reserve Bank publications, as well as aspects that are new to us. We evaluate the Reserve Bank's more-traditional measures of capacity pressure. We also evaluate additional labour market indicators, including measures of underemployment, underutilisation, flows in and out of employment, and different dimensions of unemployment, including unemployment by region, age, and ethnicity. Our results show that labour market indicators that are particularly sensitive to business cycle fluctuations are better at forecasting employment, wages growth, and non-tradables inflation. These well-performing measures include Maori and youth unemployment rates, a reduced form Philips curve model, underutilisation, and the job finding rate. This exercise may give us some indication of which measures we should pay closer attention to when assessing where employment is compared to MSE. We still see value in keeping track of the full suite of labour market indicators. Different measures can be informative in different situations, and monetary policy formulation benefits from having a holistic view of the labour market over time. By consolidating all these indicators in one suite, we have a more detailed picture of the labour market.


Abstract. The normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a useful tool for studying vegetation activity and ecosystem performance at a large spatial scale. In this study we use the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) total water storage (TWS) estimates to examine temporal variability of the NDVI across Australia. We aim to demonstrate a new method that reveals the moisture dependence of vegetation cover at different temporal resolutions. Time series of monthly GRACE TWS anomalies are decomposed into different temporal frequencies using a discrete wavelet transform and analysed against time series of the NDVI anomalies in a stepwise regression. The results show that combinations of different frequencies of decomposed GRACE TWS data explain NDVI temporal variations better than raw GRACE TWS alone. Generally, the NDVI appears to be more sensitive to interannual changes in water storage than shorter changes, though grassland-dominated areas are sensitive to higher-frequencies of water-storage changes. Different types of vegetation, defined by areas of land use type, show distinct differences in how they respond to the changes in water storage, which is generally consistent with our physical understanding. This unique method provides useful insight into how the NDVI is affected by changes in water storage at different temporal scales across land use types.


A 1-D Canopy Interface Model (CIM) was developed in order to better simulate the effect of urban obstacles on the atmosphere in the boundary layer. The model solves the Navier-Stokes equations on a high-resolved gridded vertical column. The effect of the surface is simulated testing a set of theories and urban parameterizations. The final proposition guarantees its coherence with past theories in any atmospheric stability and terrain configuration. Obstacle characteristics are computed using surface and volume porosities in each cell of the model domain. These porosities are used to weight several terms in the Navier-Stokes equations. A 1.5-order turbulence closure is used in order to compute the turbulent coefficients with the TKE. The mixing length takes into account the density of the obstacles and their height. The turbulent scheme is designed in order to keep CIM coherent with the Prandtl theory in neutral atmospheric conditions and with the MOST in stratified atmospheric stability when CIM is used over plane surfaces. The modifications brought to the main governing equations are discussed following theoretical analysis and experiences with CIM, simulating the averaged meteorological variables (wind speed, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), temperature and humidity). Simulations are compared with analytical solutions, when possible, and also simulations issued from a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. The results show how constant values, usually prescribed, can be theoretically estimated and how the buoyancy term of the turbulent kinetic energy balance equation should be adjusted accordingly. After modifications, it is shown that CIM is coherent with past propositions in any case of atmospheric stabilities over plane surfaces. The use of CIM in presence of obstacles is based on the extension of the 1.5 order turbulence closure to compute the turbulent coefficients with the TKE. CIM shows simulations in good agreement with the CFD simulations in the presence of obstacles. It is able to reproduce an inertial sub-layer as described by the Prandlt and constant-flux layer theory above a displacement height over a homogeneous canopy.


In 1883, Otto von Bismark had a "change of heart" regarding colonialism. Through shrewd diplomacy and secrecy, the German Chancellor was able to spring the reality of German colonies on the world, particularly in the last available or unclaimed regions in Africa and Oceania where the Germans subsequently encroached upon British territory. One of Germany's first colonies was Southwest Africa, or present-day Namibia, where a German businessman secured the purchase of a large tract of the Skeleton Coast from indigenous rulers and then requested the protection of the German Reich, which Berlin granted to him. The result was a vicious dispute of private claims between German and British citizens and an entangled diplomacy between the two empires. In Britain, both Tory and Liberal governments tried to prevent the Germans from establishing themselves so close to their precious Cape Colony and both later attempted to confine the German territory so that the Afrikaners in the Transvaal could not link up with the Germans. Eventually, London and Cape Town would only succeed in the latter. Both Britain and the Cape failed to produce any evidence of prior official claims to the Skeleton Coast. In fact, any official British presence there had been previously withdrawn, leaving a vacuum, because of the bloody wars between the indigenous tribes. They had "left the door wide open" for the Germans to walk into southern Africa, and when they tried to close this door, the British found Bismark's foot firmly established in it. Humiliatingly, Bismark forced both London and Cape Town to support Germany's control of Southwest Africa by turning down offers of annexation from indigenous tribes or from British traders (with one such trader even trying to establish an independent republic) who wanted a British presence there. In the end, Britain admitted to the world that this was German soil. Although Southwest Africa was not a prosperous German colony at first, requiring many subsidies from the Reich, it became the most popular desti nation for German colonists far exceeding the other German colonies in Africa and Oceania due to the relatively small native population and large tracts of seemingly vacant land. Yet as the 20th century came, Southwest African mining began to profit and the discovery of diamonds created an economic boom which finally made Southwest Africa a valuable asset to the German Reich. The German colonists did have, and created, some problems with the indigenous population or particularly with the Herero and Nama tribes. Although the German colonial government was able to gain control over them in the 1890's, they had an explosive rebellion in the early years of this century which pushed German policy to a horrifying extreme, rivaling even the later Third Reich in its brutality. Yet just as the German colonial government had gained total control over Southwest Africa and just as the colony had become profitable with a hopeful future, World War I gave Britain and the Union of South Africa the pretext to invade the German colony. Despite the South African rule over the territory until just recently when Namibia became independent, the German impact on the region is as fundamental as the genetic makeup of a living creature.


This paper offers an optimality-theoretic analysis of synchronic Galician plural formation that explains the distribution of allomorphs in the standard dialect as well as the patterns of dialectal variation. Gliding serves to parse a nasal or lateral coda in the nucleus, thus avoiding the complex cluster that would have resulted from plural attachment. Epenthesis takes place in the plural of l-final singulars when gliding would otherwise result in an unstressed extra heavy coda or a violation of minimality. The plurals of singulars ending in a nasal avoid epenthesis if this requires parsing of a velar nasal in the onset. Non-normative dialects such as the Eastern varieties also repair clusters through vocalization of the singular-final nasal, but a front nasal is preferred to the back unrounded one of normative Galician; Southern dialects resort to nasal and lateral deletion in the plural.


After eight years of heated controversy, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was signed into law by president Bush on April 20, 2005. Proponents of the Act claimed that it would cure the bankruptcy crisis and that the wealthy would no longer be allowed to abuse the system at the expense of hard-working American families. Opponents cast the legislation as a dream come true for the credit card companies, claiming that it would serve only to enrich the rich at the expense of the poorest of the poor. One of the key issues that emerged from what became a battle of catchy sound bites was the impact that the legislation would have on women and this Article takes as its starting premise that all of this attention on the effects on women of bankruptcy reform and other economic issues is a very good thing. As this Article demonstrates, however, it is imperative to foreground the ways in which issues of gender, race, and class matter in considering financial concerns as women's issues. Otherwise, reform efforts made on behalf of women will, in fact, harm women. Specifically in the context of bankruptcy reform, this Article performs an intersectional analysis of the Congressional debates that reveals the privileging of certain women over others, as well as the construction of an ideal and unreal image of women that works to perpetuate economic insecurity for all women. The Article then proposes a re-envisioned reform agenda that takes into account how intersectionality matters in money matters and moves toward a goal of financial well-being for all.


The Kenyan Government in its effort to strenzthen the caoacitv of LA.."') Ie ~services introduced the LATF in 1999, increasing the allocation to the fund from Shs.Ib in FY 1999/2000 to Ksh.7.5b in FY 2006/07. The County Council of Garissa allocation increased from Kshs 4,052,720.00 in 1999/2000 to Kshs 50,153,956.00 in 2006/2007. It's in the light of the increased allocation and eight years after the introduction of the fund, that the study sought to assess its impact on service delivery to the residents of the County Council of Garissa. The study involved administration of structured and semi-structured questionnaires to the respondents (34 Council employees and councillors, respondents who were considered to have vital information for the study). 29 of the questionnaires were properly filled and the response rate of eighty-five percent was considered adequate for the purposes of the study. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics where percentages based on frequencies were calculated. The data are presented using tables. Findings from the study indicate that after the introduction of LATF, the quality of services offered improved and the council was able to offer additional services according to seventy-six percent of the respondents, while it did not for twenty-four percent of the respondents. With the exception of reservations from twenty-four percent of the respondents, it can be concluded that LATF has enabled the council to offer additional services and improve the quality of its services. Other findings indicate that ninety percent of the respondents agree that the council holds the annual LASDAP meetings at ward level to identify projects to be undertaken. Further, they concurred that the final list of projects generally reflects those identified during the consultative meetings. However, ten percent of the respondents disagreed indicating that it's the chief officers together with councilors who identify projects to be undertaken. More awareness is therefore needed to bring on board all residents individually or through representatives. In addition, the council has been preparing and submitting its annual budget within stipulated deadlines thereby avoiding financial penalties for noncompliance. However, the council does not always implement and complete all budgeted for projects. Measures should be put in place by the relevant authorities to ensure implementation of budgeted for projects and adherence to the budget. Also, internal audit is not regularly done according to eighty-six percent of the respondents in contrast with eighty-three percent of the respondents who agree that external audits are regularly done on LATF. The internal audit unit should be established and empowered to perform its mandate.