Persons with severe dementia suffer from major cognitive impairment, and are in need of considerable caring services. They commonly react with problematic behaviors, such as resistance and aggression in close care (e.g., morning care situations). Nonpharmacological treatments such as care interventions should be used to enhance mutuality in encounters and minimize problematic behaviors. Music Therapeutic Caregiving (MTC) is one such intervention and involves the caregiver singing for or together with the persons with dementia during caregiving. MTC is proposed to decrease expressions of aggressive behaviors and enhance communication between persons with dementia and their caregivers. In addition, it has been suggested that MTC can enhance the posture and sensory awareness of persons with dementia, as well as alter the characteristics of the emotions and moods of both the caregivers and the persons with dementia. This thesis was designed with the aim of demonstrating if and in that case how the intervention of using MTC impacted the participants in this study, which included patients with severe dementia and their caregivers. Five studies were included in this thesis, each of which focused on specific aspects of morning care situations with or without the use of MTC. The first study (I) aimed to describe professional caregivers" experiences of caring for persons with dementia during morning care situations without and with MTC. The second study (II) aimed to present professional caregivers ́ experiences of persons with dementia during morning care situations without and with MTC. The third study (III) aimed to describe how persons with dementia and their caregivers express verbal and non-verbal communication and make eye contact during the caring activity "getting dressed" during morning care situations without and with MTC. The fourth study (IV) was a single case study and described expressed emotions and expressions of resistiveness to care in two nursing home residents with severe dementia, during morning care situations without and with MTC. Study V aimed to describe expressions of emotions and resistiveness to care among persons with dementia during morning care situations without and with MTC. Study I revealed that during usual morning care situations (without the use of MTC), the caregivers often had problems reaching the persons with dementia and described a struggle when it was necessary to physically restrain some patients due to aggression and resistance. They found consolation when the persons with dementia showed them affection. In study II, the persons with dementia were described as not mentally present during usual morning care situations, and their resistance and aggression lead to difficulties in communicating and cooperating. Study III revealed that the caregivers communicated mainly with verbal instructions and body movements, and that they seldom invited the persons with dementia to participate in the communication. The responses of persons with dementia were at times active and compliant, and other times confused, disruptive, resistant and aggressive. During MTC, the caregivers described a feeling of well-being, as positive emotions seemed dominant for both the caregivers (study I) and the persons with dementia (study II). The caregivers sense of well-being led to a joyful and positive encounter with the persons with dementia (study I). In study II, caregivers found the persons with dementia better able to express themselves appropriately. Expressions of positive emotions were dominant amongst patients and they were mainly described as relaxed, self-confident, and pliable. Study III also showed that the persons with dementia commonly responded to caregivers" communication in a composed manner, by being active, compliant and relaxed. Study III further revealed that the caregivers seemed more interested in communicating with the persons with dementia and solicited mutual engagement. In study IV, both residents increased positive expressed emotions, while the negative expressed emotions and resistance decreased. Study V also revealed that the positive emotions, such as pleasure and general alertness significantly increased during MTC, while resistant behaviors, such as pulling away, grabbing objects and adduction, were significantly reduced. From this thesis, it can be concluded that the use of MTC during morning care situations with persons with dementia can increase their positive expressed emotions, decrease their negative expressed emotions and resistance to care, and lead to a more positive interaction for both them and their caregivers. It can also be concluded that MTC can enhance communication between persons with dementia and their caregivers during caring and thus increase the mutuality in the encounter, thereby facilitating an interpersonal relation during morning care situations. More research concerning MTC is needed and should be conducted using larger samples, different data collection and analysis methods, as well as different care situations.


The document provides background information of the content of the 6th European Conference on Corporate R&D (CONCORDi 2017. Seville, 27-29 September 2017). After a short introduction, the challenges that the EU is expected to face over the coming decades are proposed, considering the thematic focus of the selected papers. Then the contents of the papers' contribution are presented. Finally, the key subjects of the contribution by the invited speakers and the policy-stakeholders panellists are introduced.


Recent advances in center-based clustering continue to improve upon the drawbacks of Lloyd's celebrated $k$-means algorithm over $60$ years after its introduction. Various methods seek to address poor local minima, sensitivity to outliers, and data that are not well-suited to Euclidean measures of fit, but many are supported largely empirically. Moreover, combining such approaches in a piecemeal manner can result in ad hoc methods, and the limited theoretical results supporting each individual contribution may no longer hold. Toward addressing these issues in a principled way, this paper proposes a cohesive robust framework for center-based clustering under a general class of dissimilarity measures. In particular, we present a rigorous theoretical treatment within a Median-of-Means (MoM) estimation framework, showing that it subsumes several popular $k$-means variants. In addition to unifying existing methods, we derive uniform concentration bounds that complete their analyses, and bridge these results to the MoM framework via Dudley's chaining arguments. Importantly, we neither require any assumptions on the distribution of the outlying observations nor on the relative number of observations $n$ to features $p$. We establish strong consistency and an error rate of $O(n^{-1/2})$ under mild conditions, surpassing the best-known results in the literature. The methods are empirically validated thoroughly on real and synthetic datasets.


Foreword. Preface. How to use this book. What is evidence? The Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group. Scope of this book. Methods for the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth. Group reviews. Abridgement of the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth abstracts in this book. Systematic review protocols. Effectiveness icons. How to locate the original review. A brief guide to the format of results in Cochrane reviews. Acknowledgements. Authors. Chapter 1. The Context of Care for Pregnant Women. Chapter 2. Antenatal Care. 2.1 Pre-pregnancy evaluation. 2.2 General antenatal care. 2.3 Behaviour/advice during pregnancy. 2.4 Nutrition during pregnancy. 2.5 Weight gain in pregnancy. 2.6 Symptoms during pregnancy. 2.7 Use of medicines during pregnancy. 2.8 Miscarriage. Chapter 3. Medical Problems During Pregnancy. 3.1 Hypertension during pregnancy. 3.2 Anaemia during pregnancy. 3.3 Diabetes mellitus. 3.4 Thrombocytopenia. 3.5 Inherited coagulation defects. 3.6 Thrombophilias. 3.7 Haemoglobinopathies. 3.8 Thromboembolic disease. 3.9 Myasthenia Gravis. 3.10 Cardiac disease. 3.11 Renal disease. 3.12 Epilepsy. 3.13 Human immunodeficiency virus infection (HIV). 3.14 Other viral infections. 3.15 Malaria. 3.16 Other infections. 3.17 Respiratory illness. 3.18 Liver disease. 3.19 Thyroid disease. 3.20 Haemorrhoids. 3.21 Psychiatric disorders. 3.22 Skin diseases. Chapter 4. Disorders Affecting the Unborn Baby. 4.1 Routine assessment of the baby during pregnancy. 4.2 Prenatal diagnosis. 4.3 Impaired growth and wellbeing of the unborn baby. 4.4 Blood group incompatibilities - prevention and treatment. 4.5 Death of the unborn baby. Chapter 5. Pregnancy Complications. 5.1 Prelabour rupture of membranes. 5.2 Preterm birth. 5.3 Prolonged pregnancy. 5.4 Multiple pregnancy. 5.5 Antepartum haemorrhage. 5.6 Infection during pregnancy. Chapter 6. Induction of Labour. 6.1 Specific indications for labour induction. 6.2 Techniques of labour induction - primary reviews. 6.3 Techniques of labour induction - secondary reviews. Chapter 7. Care During Childbirth. 7.1 Place of birth. 7.2 Routine care during labour. 7.3 Pain during labour. 7.4 Slow progress during labour. 7.5 Shoulder dystocia. 7.6 Abnormal presentations and positions of the baby. 7.7 Babies with compromised condition during labour . 7.8 Cord prolapse. 7.9 Perineal trauma. 7.10 Operative vaginal birth. 7.11 Caesarean section. 7.12 Pregnancy following caesarean section. 7.13 Extrauterine pregnancy. 7.14 Postpartum haemorrhage and retained placenta. 7.15 Inversion of the uterus. Chapter 8. Care After Childbirth. 8.1 Basic care of mother and baby. 8.2 Perineal pain. 8.3 Family planning. 8.4 Perinatal death. 8.5 Medical conditions after childbirth. 8.6 Unhappiness after childbirth. 8.7 Breastfeeding. Chapter 9. Rogues' Gallery. Index.


Abstract The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) "Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C" presented the ambitious target of needing to achieve zero net emissions by 2050 in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement (IPCC, 2018). This report led some governments and jurisdictions to declare a climate emergency (Climate Emergency Declaration, 2019) and prompted the rise of movements of activism and civil disobedience such as the School Strike for the Climate and Extinction Rebellion. The reach of these civil actions extends beyond those directly involved, potentially increasing wider public awareness of climate change. Here, we examine trends in indicators of this wider public awareness and engagement and compare these with major global movements of civil disobedience focussed on climate, the release of substantive climate reports, and global governmental gatherings on climate change. We show that these global movements may be increasing public awareness of, and stimulating public engagement with, issues of climate change. .. Civil disobedience movements such as School Strike for the Climate are raising public awareness of the climate change emergency. Global Change Biology, Online First 1-3.


Considering the needs of high rotating speed and high efficiency in the modern machines, the decreasing clearance between the rotor and the stator is a necessary design. To improve the performance efficiency of these kinds of machines, the radial clearance between the rotating rotor and the stator becomes smaller and smaller. As a result, it is easier for rotor-stator rub to happen and the normal operation of machines will be affected more severely. When a rub-impact happens, the partial rub arises at first. During a complete period, the rub and impact interactions occur between the rotor and stator once or fewer times. Gradual deterioration of the partial rub will lead to the full rub and then the vibration will affect the normal operation of the machines severely. The majority of works was focused on the development of some mathematical models in order to make the rubbing phenomenon more accurately to be understood in the past few decades. Now in our work general model of a rub-impact rotor-bearing system is set up and the corresponding governing motion equations are given. The rubbing model consists of the following forces i.e., radial elastic impact and the tangential Coulomb type of friction. Through numerical calculations, rotating speeds, unbalance and stiffness values are used as control parameters to investigate their effect on the rotor-dynamic system with the help of time histories, phase plane plots, whirl orbits. Complicated motions, such as periodic, quasi-periodic even chaotic vibrations, are observed under different operating conditions. Stator flexibility effects are also studied using a modified Jeffcott rotor model .Numerical methods employed in our work are Newmark's method and Runge-Kutta method .The Graphs that have been obtained from both methods were compared Finite Element Model of the rotor dynamic system is developed with 2-noded Timoshenko beam elements. The rotary degrees of freedom are eliminated by static condensation. The Campbell diagram is obtained by accounting both gyroscopic effect and Viscous damping matrices. The Newmark time integration scheme is adopted again by incorporating the intermittent rubbing forces at the central node simulating the rigid disk stator interactions and we are trying to get the results, to compare with the obtained results. The thesis is organized as follows: Chapter-1 describes introduction to rotor dynamic problem and literature survey. Chapter-2 deals with the dynamic modeling and equations of motion of various models considered in the present work. Chapter-3 describes the results part as solution of these equations. Chapter-4 gives summary and conclusions of the work.


Law teachers today face classes filled with students from a multitude of backgrounds with profoundly different learning styles, levels of academic preparation and readiness. The more traditional model of intelligence posits four or five learning styles that classify students in their primary learning mode, such as visual, kinesthetic and experiential. Gardner's more recent notion of multiple "intelligences" more profoundly expands on learning styles by linking them with actual ability to learn and perform in a specific context. We propose an additional "intelligence" of sorts – "academic intelligence." This intelligence refers broadly to a student's actual level of "academic preparation," i.e., a student's readiness or ability to engage productively with an academic environment and to benefit from that interaction. We believe a student's academic intelligence is about more than simply cognitive skills; it's akin to culture, including not only cognitive, but also affective and social skills, all of which contribute to an entering student's success in law school. Our observation after years of teaching is that some students enter law school with a part of their "academic intelligence" missing or under-developed and these students are unsuccessful despite hard work and teacher's best efforts. Teachers' frustration with students' inability to "get it" transforms these students into the "Other," and therefore unknowable and unreachable on an academic level. This Essay concludes that "otherness" is not immutable, but rather is amenable to various teaching methods laid out in this essay. This Essay begins by emphasizing the teacher's responsibility to bridge the gap between students' readiness and the course objectives. Next, it highlights the failure of traditional law school pedagogy to reach the under-prepared student. To conclude, we suggest a framework for addressing the cognitive component of academic intelligence, which emphasizes the importance of teaching academic and legal reasoning skills explicitly. We discuss in detail, as examples, teaching the academic skill of case briefing and the legal reasoning skill of issue spotting in a core first-year course.


In this paper we develop a model of an eligible family's decision to take or not to take child care subsidies. This decision depends on the net benefits the family expects to derive from the subsidies over their expected duration. We contend that such a demand-side model for the take-up of child care subsidies and use of the term 'take-up' rate are only appropriate for programs that guarantee services to all eligible applicants. After welfare reform, most states do not offer such guarantees. For states that do not guarantee subsidies, the proportion of the eligible population that receives subsidies is better called a service rate than a take-up rate. Modeling service rates requires consideration of both governments' decisions (the supply side) and families' decisions (the demand side) regarding child care subsidies. We survey the general literature on take-up rates for social welfare programs and review existing estimates of the take-up rates and service rates for child care subsidy programs in various states. Using administrative data and survey data for states that guarantee subsidies for all eligible families, we estimate the family-level take-up rate for child care subsidies to be around 40% in early 2000. For states that do not guarantee subsidies, service rates range from 14% in Minnesota to 50% in Massachusetts. Finally, we suggest indicators to assess the trade offs that governments are making when designing and funding their child care subsidy programs. We use the percent of federally eligible families that receive child care subsidies and public expenditures per subsidized child to discern the relative importance that states place on using child care subsidies (1) to facilitate parental work and (2) to prepare its future work force by improving services to low-income children. For Rhode Island, we find increasing emphasis on the latter between 1996 and 2000. We also find that the Illinois subsidized child care program places relatively more emphasis on parental work facilitation, while Minnesota's program makes a more substantial investment in children through relatively more comprehensive and in-depth services.


How NPS helped my career: "I had many years of engineering experience before the DL program. When I had success, they were due to intuition, not firm knowledge. With my MSSE, you understand what factors are involved in the overall success of an engineering effort, and I am confident in my knowledge of how to apply best practices to achieve that success. Additionally, my ongoing professional relationships with NPS faculty have provided me with valuable insights into the implications of new concepts or approaches."


Surface topology has been shown to play a crucial role in the adhesive ability of gecko-inspired, embossed films. Herein, we report the use of Pattern Replication In Non-wetting Templates (PRINT) to design micro- and nano-embossed films in order to explore the relationship between surface chemistry, feature size, feature geometry, and shear adhesion. Ketone-containing elastomers were synthesized from various amounts of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, and 2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl acetoacetate. Due to the presence of the ketone, elastomer functionalization was demonstrated with various oxyamine-, hydrazine-, and hydrazide-terminated ligands. Films were also shown to be non-cytotoxic for future applications in biomedically related fields. This system may allow for the design of flexible adhesives that can be selectively tailored for a range of applications.


In this paper, we discuss the properties of a class of latent variable models that assumes each labeled sample is associated with set of different features, with no prior knowledge of which feature is the most relevant feature to be used. Deformable-Part Models (DPM) can be seen as good example of such models. While Latent SVM framework (LSVM) has proven to be an efficient tool for solving these models, we will argue that the solution found by this tool is very sensitive to the initialization. To decrease this dependency, we propose a novel clustering procedure, for these problems, to find cluster centers that are shared by several sample sets while ignoring the rest of the cluster centers. As we will show, these cluster centers will provide a robust initialization for the LSVM framework.


Many foreign and small companies trying to enter the United States biopharmaceutical market make avoidable errors in their early clinical phase drug development and clinical trials. They need to first understand the risks that they must endure with patent law, regulatory hurdles, the complexity and duration of the necessary clinical trials, and the large cost of drug development, which often necessitates raising substantial capital from investors. If appropriate capital for these clinical studies must be raised, then the company must be able to clearly articulate a realistic expected return on investment to these individuals. So, they must also understand the market, its exclusivity, and the competition. This must all be put together in a sleek pitch deck. Early errors frequently begin with too few, inadequate, or poorly constructed patents. These and other risks and errors may be prevented by the use of an experienced product development team. Many of these errors could be avoided if companies used more experienced drug development professionals to assist them in selecting the optimum patent strategy, regulatory plan, budget, contract research organization (CRO), clinical investigators, and etc. It is hoped that this opinion piece will help make early clinical trials more effective and save time and money.


© Copyright 2016 SAE International. This work presents turbulent premixed combustion modeling in spark ignition engines using G-equation based turbulent combustion model. In present study, a turbulent flame speed expression proposed and validated in recent years by two co-authors of this paper is applied to the combustion simulation of spark ignition engines. This turbulent flame speed expression has no adjustable parameters and its constants are closely tied to the physics of scalar mixing at small scales. Based on this flame speed expression, a minor modification is introduced in this paper considering the fact that the turbulent flame speed changes to laminar flame speed if there is no turbulence. This modified turbulent flame speed expression is implemented into Ford in-house CFD code MESIM (multi-dimensional engine simulation), and is validated extensively. The predictions of the modified turbulent flame speed expression are compared to a wide range of experimental data of turbulent flame speed from various flame configurations and conditions, with the same values of the model constants. The quantitative comparisons are found to be very good with experimental data beyond the usually restricted range for existing turbulent flame speed models. Finally, applications of the new turbulent flame speed combustion model to the burn rate simulation of several spark ignition engines/operating conditions have been carried out. The simulated incylinder pressures and burn rates are compared with experimental data and good agreements are found for low tumble ratio engine operating conditions.


The state-of-the-art machine teaching techniques overestimate the ability of learners in grasping a complex concept. On one side, since a complicated concept always contains multiple fine-grained concepts, students can only grasp parts of them during a practical teaching process. On the other side, because a single teaching sample contains unequal information in terms of various fine-grained concepts, learners accept them at different levels. Thus, with more and more complicated dataset, it is challenging for us to rethink the machine teaching frameworks. In this work, we propose a new machine teaching framework called Attentive Machine Teaching (AMT). Specifically, we argue that a complicated concept always consists of multiple features, which we call fine-grained concepts. We define attention to represent the learning level of a learner in studying a fine-grained concept. Afterwards, we propose AMT, an adaptive teaching framework to construct the personalized optimal teaching dataset for learners. During each iteration, we estimate the workers' ability with Graph Neural Network (GNN) and select the best sample using a pool-based searching approach. For corroborating our theoretical findings, we conduct extensive experiments with both synthetic datasets and real datasets. Our experimental results verify the effectiveness of AMT algorithms.


CONTEXT
Mothers are in an important position to prevent obesity in their children by shaping early diet and activity patterns. However, many mothers of overweight preschool children are not worried about their child's weight.

OBJECTIVE
To explore mothers' perceptions about how they determine when a child is overweight, why children become overweight, and what barriers exist to preventing or managing childhood obesity.

DESIGN
Three focus groups with 6 participants in each. Participant comments were transcribed and analyzed. Themes were coded independently by the 6 authors who then agreed on common themes.

SETTING
A clinic of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children in Cincinnati, Ohio.

PARTICIPANTS
Eighteen low-income mothers (13 black, 5 white) of preschool children (mean age of 44 months) who were at-risk for later obesity. All but 1 mother had a body mass index (BMI) >/=25 kg/m(2), and 12 mothers had a BMI >/=30 kg/m(2). All but 1 child had a BMI >/=85th percentile for age and sex, and 7 had a BMI >/=95th percentile. Results. Mothers did not define overweight or obese in their children according to how height and weight measurements were plotted on the standard growth charts used by health professionals. Instead, mothers were more likely to consider being teased about weight or developing limitations in physical activity as indicators of their child being overweight. Children were not believed to be overweight if they were active and had a healthy diet and/or a good appetite. Mothers described overweight children as thick or solid. Mothers believed that an inherited tendency to be overweight was likely to be expressed in the child regardless of environmental factors. In trying to shape their children's eating, mothers believed that their control over the child's diet was challenged by other family members. If a child was hungry, despite having just eaten, it was emotionally difficult for mothers to deny additional food.

CONCLUSIONS
Health professionals should not assume that defining overweight according to the growth charts has meaning for all mothers. Despite differing perceptions between mothers and health professionals about the definition of overweight, both groups agree that children should be physically active and have healthy diets. Health professionals may be more effective in preventing childhood obesity by focusing on these goals that they share with mothers, rather than on labeling children as overweight.


The status of food security in Uganda is worrying. The share of Ugandans suffering from food insecurity measured in terms of caloric intake is alarmingly high with low rates of income poverty. Based on the 2005/06 Uganda National Household Survey data, the study provides insights into access to food at household level. More importantly, the study shows that average caloric intake stood at 1,970 calories per person per day, which is below the minimum caloric requirement of 2,200 calories. As such, a population of 17.5 million Ugandans in 3.1 million households were unable to meet the minimum caloric requirement in 2006. This raises questions on whether Uganda will be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1: halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. While Uganda is on track to halve extreme poverty, it is less likely to halve extreme hunger by 2015. Yet the results suggest that food insecurity and income poverty are closely linked. Similarly, food insecurity at household level is closely linked to child nutrition status. In other words, antipoverty interventions and interventions to address food insecurity and child nutrition status have to be closely linked. The results further suggest that income growth, land under cultivation, changes in food prices and education attainment of household head significantly impact on caloric intake. There are significant seasonal fluctuations in dietary intakes – calories and protein. Improving post harvest storage technologies and preservation methods; creating remunerative employment especially for the urban population; and strengthening the food distribution mechanisms would go a long way in addressing these seasonal fluctuations. Food insecurity is also marked with significant spatial variations that need to be taken into account in designing anti‐food insecurity interventions. The famine that hit some districts during 2009 demonstrates that adverse effects on the agricultural sector directly increase vulnerability to food insecurity. At the same time, increasing land under cultivation improves food security at household level. This suggests that improving agricultural productivity is a key to long‐term food security.


Electroless copper deposition is used in the fabrication of integrated circuit (IC) interconnections, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) devices and printed circuit board (PCBs). In order to meet the long term usage of chemical bath for electroless deposition, an eco- friendly copper methane sulphonate (CuMS) was used to prepare the chemical bath for Cu deposit. The deposition parameters such as temperature, pH, Cu ion concentration and para-formaldehyde concentration were optimized at 28 °C with 3 g/L of CuMS, 10 g/L of para-formaldehyde for the pH of 12.75.The deposition rate was increased for high concentration of Cu and para-formaldehyde in the chemical bath. Highly stable bath was achieved at 28 °C with 1 ppm thiourea content and produced uniform Cu film surface with larger grains. Good quality and (200) oriented Cu thin film with larger crystallite size was observed with 1 ppm thiourea added bath.


In this paper we evaluate the poverty and distributional effects of fiscal spending and trade policies within a simultaneous framework. We provide the first systematic analysis testing for the existence of complementarities between trade and fiscal spending policies using data from Latin America. We show that the benefits of trade openness especially for the low income and middle class household groups greatly depend on the size of the government-provided social and human capital. Conversely, the benefits of publicly-provided of social-human capital for the poor depend to a large extent on the degree of openness of the trade regime. Social-human capital has a much smaller effect on household incomes when trade is restricted and may even have a deleterious effect if trade is sufficiently restricted. Efforts to promote trade have lower positive effects for households if the per capita social and human capital is low.


The most commonly employed theories of corporate social performance (CSP) tend to ignore firm-level processes and structures as sources of competitive advantage. But, by taking a resource-based view (RBV), and by enhancing a firm's capability to engage in socially responsible activities, it can potentially create its own competitive advantages. We examine four major components of CSP—community relations, the environment, diversity, and employee relations. And we show that the ability of a firm to develop its knowledge and skills—as well as policies and implementation plans and procedures—in each of these areas is a potential resource that may in fact provide competitive advantages and higher organizational performance, bringing benefits to both society and the firm.

The community dimension evaluates the firm's performance in relationship to philanthropic giving and community support. The environmental aspect considers such firm stewardship activities as pollution prevention, global warming, and recycling. The diversity component measures CSP considering such factors as board member diversity and a firm's hiring, evaluation, training, and promotion policies concerning women and minorities. The employee relations dimension examines such socially responsible human resource practices as innovative employee involvement programs and profit sharing. Together, these capabilities can provide tangible and intangible resources that can provide the firm with competitive advantages. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Representation of sub-element scale variability in snow accumulation and ablation is increasingly recognized as important in distributed hydrologic modelling, Representing sub-grid scale variability may be accomplished through numerical integration of a nested grid or through a lumped modelling approach. We present a physically based model of the lumped snowpack mass and energy balance applied to a 26-ha rangeland catchment with high spatial variability in snow accumulation and melt. Model state variables are snow-covered area average snow energy content (U), the basin-average snow water equivalence (W a ), and snow-covered area fraction (A f ). The energy state variable is evolved through an energy balance. The snow water equivalence state variable is evolved through a mass balance, and the area state variable is updated according to an empirically derived relationship, A f (W a ), that is similar in nature to depletion curves used in existing empirical basin snowmelt models. As snow accumulates, the snow covered area increases rapidly. As the snowpack ablates, A f decreases as W a decreases. This paper shows how the relationship A f (W a ) for the melt season can be estimated from the distribution of snow water equivalence at peak accumulation in the area being modelled. We show that the depletion curve estimated from the snow distribution of peak accumulation at the Upper Sheep Creek sub-basin of Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed compares well against the observed depletion data as well as modelled depletion data from an explicit spatially distributed energy balance model. Comparisons of basin average snow water equivalence between the lumped model and spatially distributed model show good agreement, Comparisons to observed snow water equivalence show poorer but still reasonable agreement. The sub-grid parameterization is easily portable to other physically based point snowmelt models. It has potential application for use in hydrologic and climate models covering large areas with large model elements, where a computationally inexpensive parameterization of sub-grid snow processes may be important.


Background: Socioeconomic status is strongly associated with smoking prevalence and social class differences contribute substantially to social inequalities in mortality. This research investigated socioeconomic and country variations in smokers' knowledge that smoking causes heart disease, stroke, impotence and lung cancer, that smoke contains cyanide, mercury, arsenic and carbon monoxide, and whether nicotine causes most of the cancer. Methods: Data were from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey, a cohort survey of over suppl_ adult smokers from four countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Data were collected via telephone interviews in 2002. Results: Higher education and income were associated with higher awareness. For example, the odds of knowing that smoking causes heart disease, stroke and lung cancer were respectively 71%, 34% and 83% larger for respondents with high versus low income. The odds of knowing that smoke contains cyanide, mercury, arsenic and carbon monoxide were respectively 66%, 26%, 44% and 108% larger for respondents with a university degree than those with a high school diploma or lower level of education. Results also revealed that awareness of harms of smoking was generally the highest in Canada and the lowest in the UK. Conclusions: Lower socioeconomic status was associated with lower awareness of the harms of smoking and misunderstanding around nicotine. There is a need to improve knowledge of the dangers of smoking among the disadvantaged segments of the population.


In Taiwan, current policy encourages parents to participate fully in their children's education and to
regard themselves as their children's first teacher. There is, however, little data about whether mothers
do indeed perceive themselves as a "teacher" of English language and literacy to their pre-school-aged
children in home contexts. Nor is it clear how they enact this role and responsibility during everyday
interactions with their children. This study investigated Taiwanese mothers' views about their role in
their children's English language learning. Six mothers of children aged three to six years participated in
an extended semi-structured interview. While mothers used the term "teaching" to refer to their practices
with their child, their views about appropriate practices and their perceived capability as a parent-teacher
varied considerably. The findings contribute to our understanding of how mothers respond to, and are
affected by, educational policies regarding English language learning in very young children.


In this paper, a description of a control system for basic grip movements for a low-cost hand prosthesis is presented. The idea is to provide movements to those people who do not have fingers due to congenital malformations, considering that the movements of their wrists are complete. The wrist movements are acquired by means of the Myo bracelet, which has wireless communication. The Myo bracelet has eight myoelectric sensors and an IMU, i.e., non-invasive sensors that are positioned around the forearm. The gestures read by means of the Myo bracelet are processed by the control system to send the commands to the small electric actuators installed in the prototype hand prosthesis.


A General Defocusing Particle Tracking (GDPT) method is proposed for tracking the three-dimensional motion of particles in Lab-on-a-chip systems based on a set of calibration images and the normalized cross-correlation function. In comparison with other single-camera defocusing particle-tracking techniques, GDPT possesses a series of key advantages: it is applicable to particle images of arbitrary shapes, it is intuitive and easy to use, it can be used without advanced knowledge of optics and velocimetry theory, it is robust against outliers and overlapping particle images, and it requires only equipment which is standard in microfluidic laboratories. We demonstrate the method by tracking the three-dimensional motion of 2 μm spherical particles in a microfluidic channel using three different optical arrangements. The position of the particles was measured with an estimated uncertainty of 0.1 μm in the in-plane direction and 2 μm in the depth direction for a measurement volume of 1510 × 1270 × 160 μm(3). A ready-to-use GUI implementation of the method can be acquired on .


Background/Aims: The role of dietary protein in bone health is controversial. The objective of the present study was to examine the association between protein intake, dietary calcium, and bone structure measured by broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA). Methods: Our analysis includes 8,178 female study participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Potsdam Study. Ultrasound bone measurements were performed on the right os calcis, and BUA was determined. Dietary intake was assessed by a standardized food frequency questionnaire. We applied linear regression models to estimate the association between dietary protein and BUA. Results: After multivariate adjustment, high intake of animal protein was associated with decreased BUA values (β = –0.03; p = 0.010) whereas high vegetable protein intake was related to an increased BUA (β = 0.11; p = 0.007). The effect of dietary animal protein on BUA was modified by calcium intake. Conclusion: High consumption of protein from animal origin may be unfavourable, whereas a higher vegetable protein intake may be beneficial for bone health. Our results strengthen the hypothesis that high calcium intake combined with adequate protein intake based on a high ratio of vegetable to animal protein may be protective against osteoporosis.


The demand for educational software is growing exponentially with the surge of interest in educational reform, the Internet, and distance learning. Educational applications must be flexible because curricula and teaching styles vary greatly among institutions, locations, and even among instructors at the same institution. To meet these needs, a wide array of small-scale, casual developers at universities, research labs, and small businesses develop educational software, but no dominant solution or supplier has seemed to emerge. In this market, smaller suppliers often cannot produce full solutions without depending on the capabilities of other vendors. Until now, components have remained largely the province of full-time programmers. However, component technologies are likely to expand toward an audience that comprises considerably less technical and more domain-oriented users whose job descriptions typically don't include software development. Thus, the lessons learned could become increasingly important to developing good software for any application domain. Having component developers collaborate with domain experts to build applications may be the future of software development. This group of component developers discusses what they've learned in collaborating with educators on educational software components.


ABSTRACT Malgachebates peyrierasi n. gen. n. sp., collected from Ankarongambe Forest Station, Tamatave province, mid-eastern Madagascar, is described and illustrated based on adult specimens. The new genus is easily distinguishable by the following combination of character states: rectilinear notogastral structure near dorsosejugal furrow; microsculpture of notogastral cuticle devoid of foveate pattern, only small acicula and furrows present; a pair of notogastral depressions; macropore opening operculate or not, situated directly on cuticular surface; opisthosomal gland and opening of podocephalic canal on large conical apophysis; upper surface of epimeres plate-like and at different levels; sejugal apodeme present; epimeral sejugal furrow deeper than other furrows; seven pairs of genital setae; aggenital setae absent; larval scalp with three gibbose areas separated by transverse furrows.


Abstract. The paper presents an investigation of aerosol seasonal variations in several urban–industrial regions in Ukraine. Our analysis of seasonal variations of optical and physical aerosol parameters is based on the sun-photometer 2008–2013 data from two urban ground-based AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) sites in Ukraine (Kyiv, Lugansk) as well as on satellite POLDER instrument data for urban–industrial areas in Ukraine. We also analyzed the data from one AERONET site in Belarus (Minsk) in order to compare with the Ukrainian sites. Aerosol amount and optical depth (AOD) values in the atmosphere columns over the large urbanized areas like Kyiv and Minsk have maximum values in the spring (April–May) and late summer (August), whereas minimum values are observed in late autumn. The results show that fine-mode particles are most frequently detected during the spring and late summer seasons. The analysis of the seasonal AOD variations over the urban–industrial areas in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine according to both ground-based and POLDER data exhibits the similar traits. The seasonal variation similarity in the regions denotes the resemblance in basic aerosol sources that are closely related to properties of aerosol particles. The behavior of basic aerosol parameters in the western part of Ukraine is different from eastern and central regions and shows an earlier appearance of the spring and summer AOD maxima. Spectral single-scattering albedo, complex refractive index and size distribution of aerosol particles in the atmosphere column over Kyiv have different behavior for warm (April–October) and cold seasons. The seasonal features of fine and coarse aerosol particle behavior over the Kyiv site were analyzed. A prevailing influence of the fine-mode particles on the optical properties of the aerosol layer over the region has been established. The back-trajectory and cluster analysis techniques were applied to study the seasonal back trajectories and prevailing directions of the arrived air mass for the Kyiv and Minsk sites.


PURPOSE
To compare the traditional Snake model and Balloon-Snake model on automatic organ contouring.

METHODS
For tumors in brain, chest and abdomen, two patients were enrolled for each part. Grey matter, lung and liver for each patient were contoured automatically by Snake model and Balloon-Snake model, and were also contoured manually by radiologist respectively. Characteristics and dynamic capabilities were compared between the two models.

RESULTS
The traditional Snake model will bring good contouring Result only if the primary contour is close enough to the target edge. But, if the force field area is relatively small, the automatic contouring will not bring good Result on boundary deep concave. The Balloon-Snake model can overcome those shortcomings and improve the traditional Snake model. However, the primary model of Balloon-Snake can not cross border, doesn't work well on boundary cracks reconstruction, has small force field.

CONCLUSIONS
The Balloon-Snake model improved the traditional Snake model and has better dynamic capabilities. It has also more practical value on automatic organ contouring.


In continuous lines of cultured Drosophila cells two forms of cytoplasmic actin, designated II and III, are detected after a 25- to 120-min pulse label with [35S]methionine. However, only one of these, actin II, accumulates in the cell. With the use of a pulse-chase protocol and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, it has been found that actin III is synthesized as a precursor of the more stable cytoplasmic actin II. The half-life of actin III was estimated to be approximately 50 min.


'The bitter tragedy of human life- horrors of death, attack, retreat, advance, and the great game of Destiny and Chance. ' In The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581), Torquato Tasso set out to write an epic to rival the Iliad and the Aeneid. Unlike his predecessors, he took his subject not from myth but from history: the Christian capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The siege of the city is played out alongside a magical romance of love and sacrifice, in which the Christian knight Rinaldo succumbs to the charms of the pagan sorceress Armida, and the warrior maiden Clorinda inspires a fatal passion in the Christian Tancred. Tasso's masterpiece left its mark on writers from Spenser and Milton to Goethe and Byron, and inspired countless painters and composers. This is the first English translation in modern times that faithfully reflects both the sense and the verse form of the original. Max Wickert's fine rendering is introduced by Mark Davie, who places Tasso's poem in the context of his life and times and points to the qualities that have ensured its lasting impact on Western culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


In his introduction to Philosophical Naturalism, Papineau mentions that he had intended, at one time, to call the book Philosophical Physicalism. In the end, he writes, he rejected that title, partly for fear that the term "physicalism" might have suggested commitment to a metaphysical position tied closely to the ontology and categories dictated by current physics, a commitment he is anxious not to incur; and partly because the concerns of the book as a whole are wider than would have been suggested by the rejected title. Nevertheless, the early chapters of the book make it clear that the first choice of title would have been, in some ways, a more accurate guide to the character of Papineau's convictions about a number of central issues in metaphysics, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Specifically, Papineau's views about the relationships between what he calls "the special" and the physical in general, and between the psychological and the physical in particular, fall into a sector of naturalist territory that is indisputably physicalistic. I shall concentrate here on two lines of thought from these early chapters: the first, Papineau's characterisation of physicalism, by means of the two doctrines he calls "supervenience" and "token congruence", in Chapter 1; the second, a puzzle he raises in Chapter 2 for those who are content with a physicalism sufficiently weak to allow for variable realisation.


Two separate scientific communities are shown to have studied one common phenomenon, azimuthally rotating dense plasma structures, also called spokes, in pulsed-power E × B discharges, starting from quite different approaches. The first body of work is motivated by fundamental plasma science and concerns a phenomenon called the critical ionization velocity, CIV, while the other body of work is motivated by the applied plasma science of high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS). Here we make use of this situation by applying experimental observations, and theoretical analysis, from the CIV literature to HiPIMS discharges. For a practical example, we take data from observed spokes in HiPIMS discharges and focus on their role in charged particle transport, and in electron energization. We also touch upon the closely related questions of how they channel the cross-B discharge current, how they maintain their internal potential structure and how they influence the energy spectrum of the ions? New particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collisional simulations that shed light on the azimuthal drift and expansion of the spokes are also presented.


The national news media, as now practiced, were born in the 1950s, revealed their strength in the 1960s (Vietnam), asserted it in the 1970s (Watergate), and were hammered for it in the 1980s. By the mid- and late 1980s, after historic libel suits, with the press knocking off presidential candidates and Supreme Court nominees, unraveling the Reagan presidency, and in a position to overwhelm any individual or institution, a new era in press-public tension had arisen from the depths of America's civic religion: fair play. In this account of the media mandarins' rise to uneasy domination, Richard M. Clurman gives an intimate critical report of the media in the 1980s, the stormiest years in press history until the present time, and a harbinger of the present day. Beginning with the invasion of Grenada, he takes his readers--event by event--through the biggest uproars in history, raising questions from both the media's and the public's perspective on the key troubling press issues of our time. Why is the press accused of being so negative, so biased, so left-wing, so anti-establishment? Whenever people read or see something they know about, why is it so often wrong, naive, unfair, or all of the above? Why do the media arrogantly try to tell people what to think? Is there no line between privacy and the people's "right to know"? How can the public and government answer back after the media have spoken? Using the Westmoreland v. CBS and the Sharon v. Time trials as emblematic of how things go wrong, the author draws graphic lessons for improved press conduct and wiser public perception. This is an insider's look at what is right and what is wrong with the media's attitudes toward their work played against public and government expectations.


Measuring energy consumption is a challenging task faced by developers when building mobile apps. This paper presents EMaaS: a system that provides reliable energy measurements for mobile applications, without requiring a complex setup. It combines estimations from an energy model with - typically more reliable, but also expensive - hardware-based measurements. On a per scenario basis, it decides whether the energy model is able to provide a reliable estimation of energy consumption. Otherwise, hardware-based measurements are provided. In addition, the system is accessible to the community of mobile software practitioners/researchers in the form of a Software as a Service. With this service, we aim at solving current problems in the field of energy efficiency in mobile software engineering: the complexity of hardware-based power monitor tools, the reliability of energy models, and the continuous need of data to build energy models.


There is growing concern globally over issues of aviation safety. Awareness of previous failures and their causes is one of the most important factors in determining risks and hazards in any new operational systems. This requires experience of accidents and failures across a broad spectrum of complex systems. Every accident occurs as a result of a chain of errors, and if one of the "links" making up that chain can be broken, the accident might be prevented - and becomes merely an "incident." If you collect detailed data from a range of "incidents," relating to how they occurred, and develop a consistent method for analyzing that data, you can create a potentially valuable resource to assist in accident prevention. Serious Accidents and Human Factors proposes an original and structured approach to accident prevention. In an interesting and readable collection of accounts of major accidents, drawn mainly from the aviation industry, Masako Miyagi investigates incident reports analytically and reveals the critical information hidden therein that could avert a full-blown accident or disaster. She applies an innovative analytical technique - multidimensional analysis of incident reports (MAIR), using Quantification Method III to validate the results and focus upon individual components identified within the causal chain of events that precede an accident. She advocates wider acceptance and use of the Incident Report Analysing System, ideally administered by a neutral and independent body, to help prevent accidents not only in aviation but in relation to all complex systems, such as nuclear power plants. Serious Accidents and Human Factors offers aviation industry personnel, as well as those involved more generally with safety, risk assessment, and accident prevention in other industries, a comprehensive understanding of the accident causation chain, events contributing to that chain, and a method for identifying and eliminating causal factors in a pro-active way. Copublished with Professional Engineering Publishing. For orders from Europe and the Middle East, please contact Professional Engineering Publishing, tel 44 1284 763 277 or fax 44 1284 704 006.


This thesis contests the scope of the Women in Development (WID) perspective in understanding women's position in rural Bangladesh. It critically investigates how women perceive work and examines the effects of paid work on their lives. It discusses local women's engagement with globalization, modernization and neo-liberal capitalism, manifested in the proliferation of garment factories, modern farming, labour migration and microcredit interventions. The central question is whether, being influenced by such external forces, participation in paid work brings benefits to all women. The thesis examines how local women's understanding of work and the good life is not uniform but varies according to age, and social status (i.e. class and caste). It also highlights that by failing to recognize women's multiple interpretations of these issues, WID policies, such as the National Women's Policy of Bangladesh (2011), may adversely affect the lives of some poor as well as affluent women.
It is common for many poor, and some affluent women in riverine char land villages to participate in paid work along with doing household chores. They do not think of such work as an expression of gender equality, but as 'cooperation' necessary for the welfare, even the basic survival of their households. This thesis argues that by encouraging poor women to take part in income earning work, the National Women's Policy of Bangladesh (2011), guided by the WID perspective, often increases women's daily burden albeit they benefit some women. Also, earning an income does not always improve women's status within their households and the wider community.
Microcredit organizations are part of women's engagement in income generating activities. Though they encourage poor women to become entrepreneurs, not all women possess the necessary skills to be successful. They overlook that some poor women are involved in small enterprises without credit interventions, and participate in enterprising work as part of their household responsibilities. By focusing on the profit making demands of microcredit agencies, the thesis argues for the attention to the varied effects that access to microcredit and participation in market oriented enterprising work have on women. In a similar vein, it highlights how women's experiences of labour migration, both local and overseas, are also varied and have ambiguous impacts on women's lives. While for some women it is a source of social mobility, increased independence and improved lifestyle, for others it causes conflict, exploitation and loss of honour.
The thesis questions the potential of the economic growth model of development, modeled after the Western capitalism and identifies accommodation of the variation of women's understanding of work and the good life as one of the main challenges for further women's development. It stresses the need to acknowledge women's multiple realities and their own interpretations of being in the world to ensure improvements in their lives.


The near-obsessive attention of community bankers to interest spread" and earning asset yield levels--the most visible components in increasing or decreasing profitability--tend to override the attention paid to all other ingredients in assessing performance levels. Because these two components are no doubt the most visible stats, the result is that cost-control factors relating to non-interest expenses consistently tend to take a back seat when bankers are reviewing overall performance. Yet there's much more to the picture. My primary objective here is to draw attention to recent significant changes in noninterest expense levels in community banks. In addition, I'd like to offer another look at a measure of successful performance beyond traditional interest spread analysis. A standard challenged by reality Over the years, community bankers became quite accustomed to benchmark statistics regarding noninterest expense categories. In time, they accepted the traditional industry standard 3% of average assets in total noninterest expenses. Yet, in recent periods this norm has been challenged, and successfully defeated with ever-increasing efficiencies in technology, information processing, automated support systems, and management control tools. Several periods ago, total noninterest expense (on average) for community banks dipped below the 3% norm, and is currently in the 2.75% to 2.8% range--a significant decline. This decline played a key role in profitability, yet it was consistently overshadowed by net interest spread stats. In fact, in many community banks, this component of profitability often offsets an under par performance in interest margins, and results in higher overall earnings. What comprises noninterest expense? Where have most efficiencies occurred? While this varies greatly among banks (and market areas), a database of performance in this area provides good insight. The database consists of about 23 community banks, with average assets ranging from a low of $300 million to about $2 billion. Here are some findings from this sample: * Of the average 2.80% (of average period assets) in noninterest expenses, a bank's profit centers (lending, branches, etc.) comprise just over half, averaging about 1.46%. * Cost/support centers (back office support functions) generate the remaining 1.34%. * The significant declines in recent periods have occurred in the latter category, which has seen a reduction of about 20 basis points. * Profit centers, with their continued delivery costs, talent costs, and product development costs, absorb a higher (and increasing) share of noninterest costs. * With an effective, in-place departmental profitability system, cost statistics by department/function are readily available, and an excellent tool to assess the efficiency (or lack of!) by department and compare to other "peer" group members. Getting in the ballpark While the database is admittedly a bit limited, it has proven to be quite effective as a gauging tool in assessing performance versus averages. Statistics are gathered quarterly, categorized, and averages, as those shown in the table below, are generated. The operating expenses of each department shown are just that; direct expenses relating to the specific department, with any unrelated or questionable expenses removed and posted to the proper responsibility center. The objective, of course, is to identify the total cost (unembellished) of each department, so that reasonable comparisons can be made. As an example, probably the most frequent error in posting departmental expenses occurs in the human resources area. Often, the postings include the total bank costs for pensions, employee benefits, etc. Of course, as with any other general type expenses, these costs must be removed, and re-allocated throughout the bank on specific bases. Since much has been written and discussed regarding efficiency in profit center functions, we will concentrate on the bank's "cost/support" departments, the primary area of improvement in recent periods. …


Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) for osteoporotic traits have identified over 1000 associations; however, their impact has been limited by the difficulties of causal gene identification and a strict focus on bone mineral density (BMD). Here, we used Diversity Outbred (DO) mice to directly address these limitations by performing the first systems genetics analysis of 55 complex skeletal phenotypes. We applied a network approach to cortical bone RNA-seq data to discover 72 genes likely to be causal for human BMD GWAS associations, including the novel genes SERTAD4 and GLT8D2. We also performed GWAS in the DO for a wide-range of bone traits and identified Qsox1 as a novel gene influencing cortical bone accrual and bone strength. Our results provide a new perspective on the genetics of osteoporosis and highlight the ability of the mouse to inform human genetics.


"The Manipulation of Consent" is a major contribution to our knowledge of the mechanisms by which elites instill in the lower classes the beliefs, values, and attitudes that legitimate their subordinate position in the social order. Youssef Cohen explores the case of Brazil, where the working class was relatively quiescent in the face of the authoritarian regime established by force in 1964. Drawing on recent advances in the theory of the state and the study of power relations, as well as on modern methods of social inquiry, he reveals the techniques of ideological control in the concrete setting of modern Brazilian society. The result is an unusually illuminating case study that blends theoretical exposition, conceptually informed historical analysis, and a wealth of emperical data. "The Manipulation of Consent" makes a substantial addition to the understanding of Brazilian politics, the study of power relations, and the theory of the state.


Objectives Recent studies demonstrate autoantibodies are powerful tools to interrogate molecular events linking cancer and the development of autoimmunity in scleroderma. Investigating cancer risk in these biologically relevant subsets may provide an opportunity to develop personalised cancer screening guidelines. In this study, we examined cancer risk in distinct serologic and phenotypic scleroderma subsets and compared estimates with the general population. Methods Patients in the Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center observational cohort were studied. Overall and site-specific cancer incidence was calculated in distinct autoantibody and scleroderma phenotypic subsets, and compared with the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results registry, a representative sample of the US population. Results 2383 patients with scleroderma contributing 37 686 person-years were studied. 205 patients (8.6%) had a diagnosis of cancer. Within 3 years of scleroderma onset, cancer risk was increased in patients with RNA polymerase III autoantibodies (antipol; standardised incidence ratio (SIR) 2.84, 95% CI 1.89 to 4.10) and those lacking centromere, topoisomerase-1 and pol antibodies (SIR 1.83, 95% CI 1.10 to 2.86). Among antipol-positive patients, cancer-specific risk may vary by scleroderma subtype; those with diffuse scleroderma had an increased breast cancer risk, whereas those with limited scleroderma had high lung cancer risk. In contrast, patients with anticentromere antibodies had a lower risk of cancer during follow-up (SIR 0.59, 95% CI 0.44 to 0.76). Conclusions Autoantibody specificity and disease subtype are biologically meaningful filters that may inform cancer risk stratification in patients with scleroderma. Future research testing the value of targeted cancer screening strategies in patients with scleroderma is needed.


This paper studies contagious equilibrium in infinitely repeated matching games. The innovation is to identify a key statistic of contagious punishment that, used together with a recursive formulation, generates tractable closed-form expressions for continuation payoffs, off equilibrium. This allows a transparent characterization of the dynamic incentives created by contagious punishment schemes.


Second harmonic generation (SHG) results from molecules which are polarized by an external electric field often provided by an intense laser beam. The polarizability depends on firstly the intrinsic structural properties of the substance and hence the second-order nonlinear susceptibility, and secondly the intensity and polarization direction of the incident light. The polarization characteristics of the beam are therefore of interest. In this letter, we discuss some considerations in SHG microscopy of collagen when the incoming beam is circularly polarized, and present some supporting results as well as a numerical analysis. We propose a quasi-crystal model of collagen microstructure in an effort to further our understanding on this protein.


The goal of this research was the fabrication of thin films with magneto-optic (MO) properties. Accomplishment of this task was achieved via sol-gel processing of rare-earth and aluminum substituted yttrium-iron garnet (RxY3-xAlyFe5-yO12, R,Al:YIG), where R= Bi, Gd, Er, Ho. Detailed are the processing conditions, parameters and results leading to R,Al:YIG films with MO response. Success was attained with a 0.25M Gd,Al:YIG solution spin coated for 120 seconds at 3500rpm onto a (111) gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG) substrate and calcinated at 900°C for 4 hours. Samples were characterized via x-ray diffraction (XRD), magneto-optical loop tracer, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), profilometry and optical microscopy.


We demonstrate simultaneous dual-wavelength operation of a self-seeded dye laser. The laser cavity consists of one dye cell, two pairs of grating and tuning mirrors, and two reflecting mirrors. This configuration can be decomposed with two grazing-incidence cavities and a standing-wave cavity. The self-seeded dual-wavelength output beams are collinear and independently tunable. We were able to vary the output powers at the two wavelengths smoothly by changing the cavity length of a master oscillator.


In this study we evaluated the antibacterial activity of the crude hydroalcoholic extracts, fractions, and compounds of two plant species, namely Rosmarinus officinalis and Petroselinum crispum, against the bacteria that cause urinary tract infection. The microdilution method was used for determination of the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC). The crude hydroalcoholic extract of R. officinalis displayed in vitro activity against Gram-positive bacteria, with satisfactory MBC for the clinical isolate S. saprophyticus. The fractions and the pure compound rosmarinic acid did not furnish promising results for Gram-negative bacteria, whereas fractions 2, 3, and 4 gave encouraging results for Gram-positive bacteria and acted as bactericide against S. epidermidis as well as E. faecalis (ATCC 29212) and its clinical isolate. R. officinalis led to promising results in the case of Gram-positive bacteria, resulting in a considerable interest in the development of reliable alternatives for the treatment of urinary infections.


We report on the second harmonic generation of deep UV light in beta -BaB(2)O(4) (BBO) waveguides pumped by a frequency-doubled continuous-wave Nd:YAG laser. An output power of 0.32 mW at 266 nm has been achieved for an internal pump power of 670 mW. Optical channel waveguides in BBO crystals were produced by He(+) ion implantation, lithographic masking and ion etching. The linear and nonlinear optical properties and the power handling capability of these waveguides are presented.


The proliferation of mobile devices such as smart phones and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) opens new ways for developing mobile E-commerce systems (so called Mobile-commerce or M-commerce system). In Mcommerce systems, we still see many common components that we have in standard E-commerce applications, such as web servers and database servers. However, these new applications raise some unique challenges. For example, the limitations of mobile devices (e.g., small screen size and reduced CPU performance) implies that software development is partly different from desktop applications. Questions which are posed when designing M-commerce system include: "What kind of information do the users want to access via mobile devices?", "How can we provide useful applications with limited user input facility?", "How can we test a distributed M-commerce system?" In this paper, we discuss about some software development issues for mobile commerce systems from our experiences while developing an M-commerce system for tourists. Our prototype, easyHotel, is an useful software that allows booking hotel rooms via mobile phones.


Introduction and Objectives The microbial communities present in CF sputum are polymicrobial and consist of bacteria, viruses and fungi. Although stratified studies have demonstrated a change in the CF bacterial microbiota with increasing age, individual patients have not been followed longitudinally across stable phases and exacerbation episodes period of time. The aim of this study was to follow CF patients who were either homo- or heterozygous for the F508del mutation over a period of up to 20 months to assess how the bacterial and fungal communities fluctuate over this period to determine whether a shift in the microbiota could be linked with acute pulmonary exacerbations. Methods Adult CF patients were recruited and spontaneously expectorated sputum samples were collected. DNA was extracted from the samples and PCR-DGGE was used to analyse the bacterial and fungal communities using universal primer sets. Results Routine microbial culture identified a mean of 1.52 bacterial species and 0.62 fungal species, whereas molecular analysis found a mean of 12.24 bacterial species and 1.41 fungal species across the cohort. The composition of the bacterial communities between patients varied significantly according to gender and being culture positive for P aeruginosa. Patients homozygous for the F508del mutation had more rich fungal communities than heterozygotes. However, a bacterial or fungal community characteristic for pulmonary exacerbations was not observed. Conclusions Our data clearly demonstrates that bacterial and fungal communities in the CF lower respiratory tract are more diverse than previously thought. Furthermore, the microbial communities in the lower respiratory tract of CF patients are subject are selected by predisposing factors such as gender but still remain unique to individual patients. Monitoring the microbial communities has found that although they are subject to some fluctuation a characteristic community does not assemble to cause acute pulmonary exacerbations. Furthermore, particular bacterial taxa were present throughout the sampling period, suggesting that current antimicrobial therapies are not adequate at removing these taxa.


EU and national policy-makers argue that the single services market is a key to EU growth, but that many barriers to services market access remain. Grasping the scope, nature and economic meaning of these barriers, however, has proven rather difficult. This is exactly what the present CEPS Special Report helps the reader to do. We trace all market access barriers in services, as far as the data allow, and attempt to understand their nature and economic meaning (given that they are usually forms of domestic regulation) and discuss aspects of the measurement of restrictiveness. We make a sharp distinction between market access barriers restrictions in a non-EU WTO/GATS environment and intra-EU ones, and demonstrate the significant difference in ambition between the two. The paper specifies in detail the progress made by the EU's horizontal reform in services markets, documenting the removal of many cross-border obstacles to trade in services and establishment. Finally, following these conceptual and descriptive analyses, a brief assessment of access restrictiveness indices is provided for both the non-EU WTO environment and for intra-EU services access barriers.


We investigate the effects of blood flow and extravascular tissue shearing on diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS) signals from deep tissue, using an ex vivo porcine kidney model perfused artificially at controlled arterial pressure and flow. Temporal autocorrelation functions g(1)(τ) of the multiply scattered light field show a decay which is described by diffusion for constant flow, with a diffusion coefficient scaling linearly with volume flow rate. Replacing blood by a non-scattering fluid reveals a flow-independent background dynamics of the extravascular tissue. For a sinusoidally driven perfusion, field autocorrelation functions g(1)(τ, t′) depend on the phase t′ within the pulsation cycle and are approximately described by diffusion. The effective diffusion coefficient Deff(t′) is modulated at the driving frequency in the presence of blood, showing coupling with flow rate; in the absence of blood, Deff(t′) is modulated at twice the driving frequency, indicating shearing of extravascular tissue as the origin of the DWS signal. For both constant and pulsatile flow the contribution of extravascular tissue shearing to the DWS signal is small.


Numerical experiments on nonlinear amplifying dispersive media such as single-mode doped light guides (exhibiting both gain saturation and linear losses) have revealed a new effect, namely, the formation of autosolitons, which are solitary waves with all their parameters independent of the initial amplifying pulse and governed only by the medium parameters. In contrast with a soliton in the Kerr dispersive medium (described by the nonlinear Schrodinger equation), the autosoliton is formed in a medium with a positive sign of dispersion as well as in a medium with a negative sign of dispersion. The dependences of the main parameters of the autosoliton on the medium parameters are described.


This thesis examines information-processing in chronic pain. "Schematic"
processing is investigated selective memory for pain-related information is explored
in depressed and non-depressed chronic pain patients, depressed non pain-patients and
controls. A memory bias for sensory adjectives is found in the non depressed chronic
pain group, while a tendency to over-recall both sensory and affective compared to
neutral information is found in the depressed chronic pain group. No memory bias
is observed in an acute pain group, and the implications of this are discussed. A
possible cognitive avoidance mechanism is identified in depression.
A questionnaire assessing beliefs about pain ("conceptual" processing) is
developed and validated, and shown to differentiate between chronic pain patients
and controls. The impact of two interventions for chronic pain (surgery and
cognitive-behavioural management) on schematic and conceptual processing is
investigated prospectively. In general the endorsement of organic beliefs decreases
while the emphasis on psychological beliefs increases post-intervention. Evidence is
found to suggest that surgery, but not cognitive-behavioural treatment, reverses pain-related
memory biases. This is discussed in relation to changes in pain intensity.
Evidence is provided to suggest that beliefs are causally related to several pain-related
measures including anxiety, depression, health locus of control, cognitive
coping strategies and activity levels.
A word completion paradigm is employed to explore further the role of schematic
processing in chronic pain, and finally, a lexical decision task is used to assess the
role of word frequency effects in information-processing in chronic pain. These
results suggest that memory biases in chronic pain cannot be explained by frequency
effects, hence addressing the validity of the memory biases described earlier in the
thesis.


Abstract Plotting order-ranked data is a standard technique that is used in estimating the probability of extreme weather events. Typically, observations, say, annual extremes of a period of N years, are ranked in order of magnitude and plotted on probability paper. Some statistical model is then fitted to the order-ranked data by which the return periods of specific extreme events are estimated. A key question in this method is as follows: What is the cumulative probability P that should be associated with the sample of rank m? This issue of the so-called plotting positions has been debated for almost a century, and a number of plotting rules and computational methods have been proposed. Here, it is shown that in estimating the return periods there is only one correct plotting position: P = m/(N + 1). This formula predicts much shorter return periods of extreme events than the other commonly used methods. Thus, many estimates of the weather-related risks should be reevaluated and the related building cod...


This thesis is a study on the effects of varying surface tension along an interface separating two fluids. Varying surface tension leads to tangential forces along the interface. This is often called the Marangoni effect. These forces are discussed in detail, and two test cases are considered to analyse the Marangoni effect, and to verify the present implementation. The first test studies steady-state two-phase flow where the fluids are separated with plane interfaces and the flow is driven by a linear surface-tension gradient. The second case is an analysis of the initial forces on a two-dimensional droplet due to a linear surface-tension gradient. The tests indicate that the present implementation is capable of simulating two-phase flow with a given surface-tension gradient. The underlying model is a two-phase flow model for Newtonian fluids with constant viscosity and density. The two-phase model is based on the Navier-Stokes equations coupled with a singular surface force, which together with the difference in fluid properties induces discontinuities across the interface. The Navier-Stokes equations are solved using a projection method, and a combination of the level-set method for capturing the interface and the ghost-fluid method (GFM) for handling the interface discontinuities. The thesis also discusses the effect of surfactants on an interface. The presence of surfactants reduces the local surface tension, and a non-uniform surfactant distribution results in varying surface tension and the Marangoni effect. A surfactant model is reviewed, where an equation of state couples the surface tension to the surfactant concentration and a transport equation is used to solve the surfactant mass-conservation.


Coproducts of the ethanol industry are a concentrated package of crude protein (CP) which can be fed to beef cows in conjunction with low quality forage to make economical diets that meets nutrient requirements. With this pairing, having excess dietary CP is likely; however the effects of these excessive CP diets on beef cow reproduction have not been made clear. In addition, the effects of excess dietary CP from feedstuffs that differ in rumen degradability are not known. In the present study, we studied the effects of diets containing 150% of metabolizable protein (MP) requirements from a moderately high (corn gluten meal) or low (soybean meal) rumen undegradable protein (RUP) fraction on reproductive function around the time of ovulation. We observed that excess dietary RUP enhanced dominant follicle growth and ovulatory parameters, while excess dietary rumen degradable protein (RDP) improved circulating progesterone concentration post ovulation. Based on these data, source of CP when fed to excess may have differential impacts on reproductive function in mature beef cows. However, the mechanisms by which these physiological alterations occur are unknown at this time. Thus, more research is warranted to elucidate how source and amount of CP, when supplemented in low quality forage-based diets, may influence reproductive function in beef cows.


The Centralia #5 Mine disaster of 1947 was the mine explosion that should have never happened. Not months, but years before the explosion both state and federal mine inspectors were writing negative reports about the mine. Both inspectors were submitting quarterly reports and getting no results either from the mine operator or the state and federal agencies that were the governing bodies over the mines. When the explosion occurred shortly after 3 o'clock in the afternoon on March 25, all those that had been informed of the imminent danger had blood on their hands. From the corporate giant that owned the mine to the governor who had been informed of the dangers in the mine, and all others involved would be exposed as the perpetrators of the crime that killed 111 miners and left behind many widows and orphans. Six investigations were launched to find out who was ultimately to blame for the tragedy. Unfortunately for those who perished the blame falls on a bureaucracy-laden mining community and not on individual error or malpractice. Many rules, regulations, and laws resulted from this event, but the needless death toll in Centralia would stand as just another case where the miner is expendable and corporate profits rule over human life. Mine History and Background The Centralia #5 Mine was sunk in 1907 south of Centralia in the small community of Wamack by the Centralia Coal Company, a division of Bell and Zoller headquartered in Chicago. H.F. McDonald of Chicago was President of the company and W. P. Young of Glencoe was Operating Vice-President. By 1937 the #5 mine was the only holding left in Centralia owned by the Centralia Coal Company. The previous four mines fell victim to lagging technology and poor production and were shut down. At the time of the explosion in March of 1947, Bell and Zoller's #5 mine was 630 feet deep and consisted of several miles of underground tunnels. The company employed 267 miners at Centralia on day and night shifts with an average daily production of 2200 tons. This tonnage and amount of manpower qualified it as a small to medium size mine. Coal miners in Centralia were not unlike other miners around the country - tough, hard working, and rugged. The miners found a sense of purpose in the United Mine Workers. Because of the affiliation with the United Mine Workers, laborers saw an increase in wages and pension funds and an improvement in general working conditions. Pension funds became important after mine disasters that involved the death of miners. The pension funds helped support widows and orphans in addition to helping pay for funeral expenses. Under the autocratic direction of John L. Lewis, coal mines were urged to modernize their technology to compete with the rising oil and natural gas industries. In 1946 with 600,000 dues paying members, the UMWA was proud that, "It has been very successful in demanding and receiving for its members many of the things that make up the American dream."1 The UMWA became an important part in emphasizing safety and promoting regulations to prevent mining disasters. Unfortunately, the union was not very successful in its efforts to encourage the enforcement of both state and federal laws governing safety for mine workers. The training that could have saved miners in the Centralia #5 mine should have been provided by the union. This was the claim of Harry Nierman, the mine superintendent. This was an attempt to lay blame on the union for not protecting its workers; however, a retired Mine and Minerals board member claims that safety training was not the responsibility of the union in 1947. This responsibility fell on the company, including the mine superintendent and underground bosses.2 Prior to the large-scale disaster of 1947, the death toll for the #5 mine had been only four shot-firers in 1921. With this being the only death toll greater than two men this should have indicated that the mine was relatively safe and was not a major concern for the operator or the workers. …


The Upper Triassic Snyder quarry of north-central New Mexico yields the remains of numerous individuals of the phytosaur Pseudopalatus buceros, as well as other vertebrates. The majority of the phytosaurian skeletal elements in the quarry are associated with skulls, so the phytosaur postcrania are clearly those of P. buceros. We describe the postcranial material of
P. buceros, with accompanying illustrations and metrics. In examining this suite of postcranial
material, it is apparent that sexual dimorphism in P. buceros is restricted solely to the skull, as none of the postcrania differ substantially. There is no obvious quantitative relationship between length of any given appendicular element and its midshaft width, though it appears that
the midshaft width may increase more than the length, leading to a more robust bone in adults.
This thickening of the midshaft could aid in supporting the weight of an adult animal.
Keywords: Parasuchidae, archosaur, postcrania, dimorphism, phytosaur


Thought-provoking and richly visual, Nature Morte brings together, for the first time, the poignant, provocative re-imaginings of the traditional still life by over 180 international contemporary artists. This visually stunning and timely book reveals how leading artists of the 21st century are reinvigorating the still life, a genre previously synonymous with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Old Masters. Michael Petry's careful selection celebrates works by emerging and established artists alike, from all over the globe, including John Currin, Elmgreen & Dragset, Robert Gober, Renata Hegyi, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Beatriz Milhazes, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Peyton, Marc Quinn, Gerhard Richter, Sam Taylor-Wood and Ai Wei Wei. Short and compelling introductions begin each chapter and are followed by dramatic, visually led spreads that pair each work with a perceptive reading of its significance to the still-life tradition. Petry's engaging, provocative text reveals how contemporary practitioners are revisiting the major motifs of the still life and translating them for the modern world. Petry explores the timeless themes of life, death and the irrevocable passing of time in these new works for our modern world; artworks that invite us to pause and reconsider what it means to be human.


Advances in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) has great societal impact. Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) or automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems have brought valuable insight for the red-light or speed limit enforcement, electronic payment systems, and traffic surveillance. These systems comprise of four separate
phases: image acquisition, localisation, segmentation, and character recognition. Blocked or covered licence plates (LPs) and images taken under bad environmental situations, lightings, size and orientation variations are some of the bottlenecks of ALPR systems. In real-time operations e.g. ITS, ALPR process has to operate rapidly and accurately. Real-time applications of ALPR systems require the fast and accurate detection of LPs becomes even one single miss detection or lack of detection might
cause problems. That is why the localisation phase of ALPR systems seem to be the
most crucial one, determining the speed and the accuracy of the whole system. Popular search-dependent algorithms cannot afford to keep up with the challenges of ALPR systems, due to their computational complexity. This motivates development of search-free methods in this thesis. The proposed methods can be categorised into five groups; algorithms based on: saliency map and local variance; incorporating hierarchical saliency; multiple LPL (license plate localisation) via likelihood estimation; incorporating the differences in distributions, such as by negentropy, and finally through a deep convolution neural network approach for LPL. The first proposed algorithm does not need to search the image and it is based on estimations of saliency and local variance (using L1 − norm). It also uses Gabor
function to exploit directionality for validating and choosing the right LP. In this algorithm, traditional saliency map detection (SMD) method locates the cars in images in a very fast, search-free approach. Next proposed approach modifies the traditional SMD method by means of directionality and a new definition of saliency, called saliency based ALPR (SB-ALPR). In addition, L1 −norm is used to better identify the pattern of characters and numbers in the LP regions. Experimental results show an average 94.77% accuracy, 61.52 ms execution time and 40.2 ms processing time per LP, which is a remarkable achievement in comparison to the performance of the previous algorithm using traditional SMD method. A search-free LP localisation algorithm on the basis of 3-D Bayesian saliency estimation is the next proposed method. In this algorithm, 3-D objects are traced by means of object/shadow detection and removal and Bayesian method for object recognition. This algorithm consists of three fundamental phases: object/shadow detection and object recognition. For the object detection phase, the background image and the moving objects are detected. To eliminate the shadows, a new approach,
in which we discriminate the shadows from their corresponding objects, is exploited and for tracking purpose, the relations between the objects in sequential frames are determined via Bayesian method. The results show that, unlike the previous algorithm, in this proposed method the image backgrounds are more accurately subtracted and
the shadows eliminated by an accuracy of approximately 70%. Object recognition phase is also subjoined to the algorithm, which performed well. In another novel approach the distance between the distributions by means of negentropy is combined with the saliency based ALPR. We then utilise the Bayesian
decision making method for selecting the LP from the detected candidates. This proposed algorithm shows an accuracy of 96% and a computation time of 80ms per plate, which is an outstanding improvement over the classic touchstone techniques. In the last proposed method a deep convolution neural network is successfully used for LPL. Following this approach the network learns the necessary filters at each layer and generates new patterns by convolving the filters with the images in previous layers.


This paper is designed to study the effect of motivation, family environment, and student characteristics on academic achievement. The study was conducted on 388 high school students (193 males and 195 females) from Abu Dhabi District, United Arab Emirates (UAE). A Likert-type instrument that consisted of three parts (scales) was used to measure students' level of motivation, parental influences, and students' characteristics, while academic achievement was measured using student's GPA. Calculations were also breakdown by gender to assess differences between male and female students. Students' mean level of motivation was less than the means of parental influence and student's characteristics. No gender differences were observed on the variables measured by the instrument. Correlations between each of motivation, family environment, student characteristics and academic achievement were small and practically not significant. Remarkably high correlation value was observed between motivation and students characteristic. The highest correlation value was observed between family environment and students' characteristics. Results were discussed on the light of other studies' findings and results. ********** Intelligence is not the only determinant of academic achievement. High motivation and engagement in learning have consistently been linked to reduced dropout rates and increased levels of student success (Kushman, Sieber, & Harold, 2000). Development of academic intrinsic motivation in students is an important goal for educators because of its inherent important for future motivation as well as for student's effective school functioning (Gottfried, 1990). The few studies that have examined motivation in young children have found that it is a week predictor of achievement (Stipek & Ryan, 1997). The family is the primary social system for children. Rollins and Thomas (1979) found that high parental control were associated with high achievement. Cassidy and Lynn (1991) included a specific factor of the family's socioeconomic status, crowding, as an indicator of how being disadvantaged affects educational attainment. They found that a less physically crowded environment, along with motivation and parental support, were associated with higher educational levels of children. Religiosity as an aspect of the family environment is another independent variable possibly influencing academic achievement (Bahr, Hawks, & Wang, 1993). Cassidy and Lynn (1991) explored how family environment impacts motivation and achievement. This means that motivation served as a mediating variable between home background, personal characteristics, and educational attainment. Higher-achieving students are likely to have the following characteristics: positive feelings about their school experiences; attribute their success in high school to such things as hard work, self-discipline, organization, ability, and high motivation; tend to watch relatively little television during the school week; tend to associate with students who also were successful in school; and avid readers (WEAC, 2005). This paper is designed to study the effect of motivation, family environment, and student characteristics on academic achievement. Research in this area should increase the awareness to concentrate on student's motivation in an effort to increase effective school functioning in the later years and eventually improve our educational stature. Review of the Literature Early motivational theorists in psychology attempted to explain motivation in many different settings and for many kinds of behaviors (Weiner, 1990). Motivation is referred to as multidimensional: it measures impulsive and deliberate action, is concerned with the internal and external factors, and observes causes for behavior. Harter (1983) proposed a model of mastery or effectance motivation, describing the effects of both success and failure experiences on mastery motivation. …


This thesis examines suicide in Boston's Ethiopian Community. The act of suicide and individual cases are explored through participant narratives. Narratives from family members and acquaintances of those who died by suicide are examined. I rely on in-depth (N=8) and follow-up interviews (N=7). Drawing heavily on culturally constructed notions of self, this thesis explores what it has meant for persons of the Ethiopian community to lose fellow members to suicide. Intersections of emotions, constructions of choice and agency, and idealized notions of self emerge as central themes. The body, in life and death, is situated as a vehicle for communicating dis-eased social relationships and unrealistic cultural expectations. Participants position their perceptions of the deceased in relation to popular preconceived notions of life in the United States and stresses encountered during and after the immigration process. Memory of Ethiopia, the United States, immigration, and the suicide are significant for understanding the rigidity of culturally authoritative truths. This thesis emphasizes the progressive and beneficial methodology of an anthropological investigation into suicide. Understanding the reasons and acquiring specific knowledge about Ethiopian suicide in the United States can contribute to current


Introduction. A number of viruses have been implicated in viral myocarditis; however, there has been no previous report of human metapneumovirus (hMPV) causing this condition. Discovered in 2001, hMPV is typically associated with upper respiratory illness, mainly affecting children. Case Presentation. We report the case of a 25-year-old man with acute systolic heart failure from viral myocarditis secondary to the hMPV. The patient was initially admitted to the general medical ward but developed increasing oxygen requirements resulting in transfer to the cardiac intensive care unit. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging was used to help confirm the diagnosis. He was treated with intravenous diuretics, and afterload and preload agents, and he was subsequently discharged home after seven days of hospitalization. Discussion. hMPV is typically a respiratory pathogen; however, it was associated with in myocarditis in our patient. Due to the recent ability to detect this virus, we may see more cases of this, particularly during peak months of infection. Conclusion. This is the first case description of myocarditis associated with hMPV infection.