Human identification is currently one of the most outstanding areas of Forensic Sciences. Forensic anthropology is a branch of the Forensic Sciences concerned with the application of general anthropological knowledge and methods to the process of law. Postmortem human identification is one of the major areas of study and research in Legal Medicine and Forensic Dentistry and both sciences work with the same type material and the human body in several conditions. Every human being has an identity in life, which should be recognized after death both for family consolation and for juridical purposes. Therefore, the aim of this literature review was to discuss and elaborate on the relationship between Forensic Anthropology and Molecular Biology in the expert practice of Forensic Dentistry. The use of DNA profile tests in Forensic Dentistry offers a new perspective in human identification. Molecular biology techniques should definitely be added to the constellation of investigative resources of the forensic sciences, providing a variety of tools to Forensic Anthropology practice in human identity research, especially when the usual identification methods fail due to the deleterious effects of heat, trauma or autolytic processes on the body or body remains.


In a world where the metrics of the carbon economy have become a major issue, it may come as a surprise that intact cold desert shrublands can sequester significant amounts of carbon, both as biomass and in the form of SOC (soil organic carbon). Xerophytic shrubs invest heavily in belowground biomass, placing fixed carbon in an environment where it turns over only very slowly. In order for humans to gain this important ecosystem service, desert shrublands must be kept intact and prevented from frequent burning. The biggest threat to shrubland integrity is the invasion of exotic annual grasses that increase fire frequency to the point that most shrubs can no longer persist. Not only do annual grasslands sequester very little carbon, they also increase the turnover rate of existing SOC. From the point of view of carbon sequestration, restoring the many millions of hectares of annual grass dysclimax in the Interior West to functioning shrubland ecosystems should have high priority. The elimination of perennial understory vegetation and cryptobiotic crusts is a nearly inevitable consequence of livestock grazing in deserts. This opens these systems to annual grass invasion, subsequent burning, and loss of a major carbon sink, a heavy price to pay for the minimal economic gains derived from direct use of these intrinsically unproductive lands for livestock production. On a more immediate scale, the conversion of stable desert shrublands to annual grasslands that burn frequently has also created major issues with windblown dust. Good evidence exists to show that deposition of this dust on mountain snowpack can have the effect of reducing water yield by causing premature melting. Water is clearly the most limiting resource for agriculture in our region, and protecting mountain watersheds from dust deposition should become another important priority. As climate disruption in all its forms becomes a major threat to production agriculture, it is imperative that serious steps be taken to minimize this threat, including restoration of degraded shrubland ecosystems, and prevention of degradation of shrublands that are still intact. Here the argument is made that the best use of cold desert shrublands is mitigation of both short term and long term climate disruption.


Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (Psa) is a bacterium whose virulent form (Psa-V) causes severe infections of kiwifruit, particularly Actinidia chinensis 'Hort16A'. Lenticels on kiwifruit canes function as pores, allowing gaseous exchange. The lenticellular structure penetrates through the periderm, potentially allowing bacterial entry and subsequent cortex infection. Bacteria have been observed inside and directly below lenticels from ca 3-year-old woody tissue from the field. To investigate this pathway of bacterial infection further, lenticels from three wood ages were inoculated with a strain of Psa-V at 10 9 cfu/ml. Brown staining was observed on lenticels 3 days after inoculation on the youngest wood (< 1 year old). Lenticels were sectioned 2 and 4 weeks after inoculation, and isolations were conducted from sterilised tissue after 4 weeks. Psa was visible inside lenticels of the youngest wood 2 weeks postinoculation, and was also isolated from the youngest tissue after 4 weeks. Bacteria were not observed in lenticels of older wood, and Psa was not isolated.


This study examines the relationship between transracial adoption and racial and ethnic identity development from a parent's perspective. By listening to stories and hearing experiences of these parents, the writer was able to obtain an idea regarding how the family as a whole views race and how the child expresses his or her differences within the family context. A review of the literature indicates that transracial adoption is an ongoing debate because of the importance of finding a permanent placement for a child and the potential loss of a cultural heritage by not living with a family of the same race or ethnicity. This study is a qualitative exploratory study, involving semi-structured interviews with five families who have adopted transracially. The main findings of this study are that the participants have largely adopted a colorblind approach when raising their children, that the children of these participants bring up questions or concerns about being different from their parents, and that exposure to people of the same race or ethnicity as the children varied family to family. The implications of this study include more in depth interviews with more families, interviewing transracially adopted children, and providing trainings and support groups for families adopting or having adopted


AYAS, S., 2015. The effects of different regimes on tomato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum l. Var. Hazal) yield and quality characterictics under unheated greenhouse conditions. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 21: 1235–1241 The aim of this study was to determine the effect of deficit irrigation on yield for tomato grown under unheated greenhouse condition. The research was carried out at the Agricultural Research Station of Yenisehir High School of Uludag University in Bursa, Turkey, in 2007. In the study, water was applied to tomato as 1.00, 0.75, 0.50, 0.25 and 0.00% (as control) of evaporation from a Class A Pan corresponding to 2 day irrigation frequency. Irrigation water applied ranged from 65 to 564 mm, and water consumption ranged from 95 to 568 mm. The effect of irrigation water level on the yield, fruit height, fruit diameter, fruit weight and dry matter were found to be significant. The highest yield was 91.0 t ha -1 . Crop yield response factor (k y ) was found as 0.99 The highest values for water use efficiency (WUE) and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) were found to be 17.37 and 13.92 kg m -3 for the K2 cp treatment. Under the conditions that water resources are scarce, it can be recommended that K2 cp treatment is most suitable as a water application level for tomato irrigation by drip irrigation under unheated greenhouse condition.


Cavity optomechanics is applied to study the coupling behavior of interacting molecules in surface plasmon systems driven by two-color laser beams. Different from the traditional force–distance measurement, due to a resonant frequency shift or a peak splitting on the probe spectrum, we have proposed a convenient method to measure the van der Waals force strength and interaction energy via nonlinear spectroscopy. The minimum force value can reach approximately 10−15  N, which is 3 to 4 orders of magnitude smaller than the widely applied atomic force microscope (AFM). It is also shown that two adjacent molecules with similar chemical structures and nearly equal vibrational frequencies can be easily distinguished by the splitting of the transparency peak. Based on this coupled optomechanical system, we also conceptually design a tunable optical switch by van der Waals interaction. Our results will provide new approaches for understanding the complex and dynamic interactions in molecule–plasmon systems.


Litchi is a tasty fruit that is commercially grown for food consumption and nutritional benefits in various parts of the world. Due to its biological activities, the fruit is becoming increasingly known and deserves attention not only for its edible part, the pulp, but also for its peel and seed that contain beneficial substances with antioxidant, cancer preventive, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory functions. Although literature demonstrates the biological activity of Litchi components in reducing tumor cell viability in in vitro or in vivo models, data about the biochemical mechanisms responsible for these effects are quite fragmentary. This review specifically describes, in a comprehensive analysis, the antitumor properties of the different parts of Litchi and highlights the main biochemical mechanisms involved.


The annual Congress of the Spanish Association of Cuniculture (ASESCU) was held in Calahorra (La Rioja) on 30-31st October of 2008. The 33th edition was devoted to study different strategies to enhance the farm profitability. The high increment in the feeding and the low price of the meat has been the main responsible of the decrease in the profitability in the last 2 years. Different possibilities to reduce the feed conversion ratio (FCR) both in fatteners and females were discussed in two sessions. Furthermore, a total of 15 communications were presented in 5 working sessions: Meat quality in commercial or wild rabbits, Genetic and Reproduction, with a focus on new selection criteria and semen quality, Management and economy, with a study of the costs, Nutrition, with strategies to reduce mortality and Pathology, with references to different pathologies.


We propose an extension to language models for information retrieval. Typically, language models estimate the probability of a document generating the query, where the query is considered as a set of independent search terms. We extend this approach by considering the concepts implied by both the query and words in the document. The model combines the probability of the document generating the concept embodied by the query, and the traditional language model probability of the document generating the query terms. We use a word embedding space to express concepts. The similarity between two vectors in this space is estimated using a weighted cosine distance. The weighting significantly enhances the discrimination between vectors. We evaluate our model on benchmark datasets (TREC 6--8) and empirically demonstrate it outperforms state-of-the-art baselines.


Non-equilibrium synthesis methods allow the alloying of bulk-immiscible elements into multinary nanoparticles, which broadens the design space for new materials. Whereas sputtering onto solid substrates can combine immiscible elements into thin film solid solutions, this is not clear for sputtering of nanoparticles in ionic liquids. Thus, the suitability of sputtering in ionic liquids for producing nanoparticles of immiscible elements is investigated by co-sputtering the systems Au–Cu (miscible), Au–Ru and Cu–Ru (both immiscible), and Au–Cu–Ru on the surface of the ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide [Bmim][(Tf)2N]. The sputtered nanoparticles were analyzed to obtain (i) knowledge concerning the general formation process of nanoparticles when sputtering onto ionic liquid surfaces and (ii) information, if alloy nanoparticles of immiscible elements can be synthesized as well as (iii) evidence if the Hume-Rothery rules for solid solubility are valid for sputtered nanoparticles. Nanoparticle characteristics were found to depend on elemental miscibility: (1) nanoparticles from immiscible elemental combinations showed bigger mean diameters ranging from (3.3 ± 1.4) nm to (5.0 ± 1.7) nm in contrast to mean diameters of nanoparticles from elemental combinations with at least one miscible element pair ((1.7 ± 0.7) nm to (1.8 ± 0.6) nm). (2) Nanoparticles from immiscible combinations showed compositions with one element strongly dominating the ratio and very narrow differences between the highest and lowest fraction of the dominating element (Cu94Ru6 to Cu100Ru0; Au96Ru4 to Au99Ru1) in contrast to the other compositions (Au64Cu36 to Au81Cu19; Au83Cu13Ru4/Au75Cu22Ru3 to Au87Cu11Ru2). Accompanying atomistic simulations using density-functional theory for clusters of different size and ordering confirm that the miscibility of Au–Cu and the immiscibility of Au–Ru and Cu–Ru govern the thermodynamic stability of the nanoparticles. Based on the matching experimental and theoretical results for the NP/IL-systems concerning NP stability, a formation model of multinary NPs in ILs was developed.


We present an experimental study of three calibration methods for spherical reference surfaces in Fizeau interferometry. The ball average, which relies on averaging measurements of a test ball surface over sufficiently many random rotations of the ball, is theoretically an absolute technique but can be very laborious. On the other hand, a recently introduced double-pass technique, comparing the two halves of the reference surface, is able to determine the point-symmetric contribution in as few as three measurements but does not detect the point-antisymmetric portion. Finally, the point-symmetric errors of the reference surface can be captured in a single, so-called "cat's-eye" measurement. Our study tries to answer the question of which of the techniques is preferable in practice. We find that the answer depends on the required uncertainty, and it appears that the new double-pass technique represents a practical and reasonable trade-off between expediency and accuracy.


Extracted from text ... Executive intelligence:
what all great leaders have
16 Management Today October 2006
In today's work place an individual cannot
become a star executive without possessing
a unique type of business 'smarts'
that is called executive intelligence. Historically,
business 'smarts' has been a bit
like the word 'indecency.'
As Supreme Court judge, Potter Stewart,
once said when asked to define the
latter, "I can't tell you what it is, but I know
it when I see it." Still, we have all caught
glimpses of this kind of intelligence, even
in everyday situations, as the example below
illustrates.
A truck was jammed ..


A feeding trial has been conducted to compare feeding value of low and high protein dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS), and corn gluten meal (CGM) to brown layer in the tropics. Both types of DDGS was included at level 0%, 4%, 8%, 12%, and 16% in the diet while CGM was included at 0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, and 8% in similar content of metabolizable energy (ME) value (2650 kcal/kg) and protein (17%). Each dietary treatment was fed to 4 birds in individual wire cage and replicated 5 times. The trial was performed for 10 weeks and egg production, egg weight, feed intake was measured. At the end of feeding period, manure was collected and analyzed for moisture content while samples of eggs were measured for yolk color and the yolk was analyzed for xanthophyll level. Result showed that feeding Lopro DDGS, Hipro DDGS, and CGM did not affect egg production (egg mass, egg number, and egg weight), however, feeding DDGS resulted in less feed intake (111 g/day) compared to  feeding CGM (114 g/day). Feeding DDGS up to 16% did not affect egg production and similar to feeding CGM up to 8%. Feeding high level of DDGS or CGM did not significantly affect the moisture content of excreta which were between 78.1%-81.9%. Increasing levels of DDGS or CGM increased yolk color score related to the higher level of xanthophylls content in egg yolk. The coloring ability of CGM to egg yolk was higher than that of DDGS. In conclusion, DDGS can be fed to layer up to 16% without affecting egg production while CGM can be fed up to 8% in the diet. DDGS can be used as source of yellow pigment for egg yolk as also found in CGM.


PURPOSE
To compare the performance of standard automated perimetry (SAP), frequency-doubling technology (FDT) perimetry, and short-wavelength automated perimetry (SWAP) in detecting glaucoma.

METHODS
One hundred thirty-two eyes of 95 glaucoma patients and 37 normal subjects had retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) imaging and visual field testing by SAP, Matrix FDT perimetry, and Swedish interactive thresholding algorithm (SITA) SWAP at the same visit (all perimeters by Carl Zeiss Meditec, Inc., Dublin, CA). Visual field defects were confirmed with two or more consecutive examinations by the same types of perimetry. Glaucoma was defined with the reference to the RNFL thickness deviation map score (≥ 4, glaucomatous; ≤ 2, normal). The sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of MD (mean deviation) and PSD (pattern standard deviation) of the perimetries were compared.

RESULTS
Taking all glaucoma patients into consideration, the sensitivity was highest for Matrix FDT perimetry (69%), followed by SAP (68%), and then SITA SWAP (59%). When the analysis included only patients with early glaucoma, the sensitivity decreased to 52%, 46%, and 34%, respectively, with a significant difference detected between Matrix FDT perimetry and SITA SWAP (P = 0.034). The specificity was ≥ 97% for all perimetries. The AUCs of MD and PSD followed a similar order, with Matrix FDT perimetry having the greatest AUC (0.89-0.94), followed by SAP (0.87-0.94), and then SITA SWAP (0.69-0.90). There were significant differences in sensitivities at 90% specificity between Matrix FDT perimetry and SITA SWAP (P ≤ 0.005 for MD; P ≤ 0.039 for PSD).

CONCLUSIONS
The performance for glaucoma detection was comparable between FDT perimetry and SAP. FDT perimetry had a higher sensitivity for detecting glaucoma than did SWAP at a comparable level of specificity.


Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of common neurodevelopmental disorder often comorbid with epilepsy. There are no existing guidelines on how to manage these two conditions when they are comorbid. To identify relationship between epilepsy and ADHD and to know role of antiepileptics and safety of stimulant like methylphenidate in such conditions from existing literature, we searched articles published in clinical journals available online between 1990-2010, with these key words in medline:children, epilepsy, seizure, comorbid, ADHD, treatment. Relevant abstracts were further selected for their focus on current topic. Cross references were extracted. Finally relevant articles that included original research articles, reviews and abstracts of non-english literature were used. Children with epilepsy may manifest with symptoms of ADHD. Children with ADHD may develop epilepsy. Some antiepileptics like phenobarbitone, gabapentin, topiramate may not be helpful in controlling behavioral symptoms of ADHD. Stimulants are the main stay of pharmacotherapy for ADHD but there is risk of decreasing seizure threshold in children with comorbid epilepsy especially when their epilepsy is not well controlled. Existing evidence is not in favor of screening children with ADHD for EEG abnormality before starting stimulant therapy.


This chapter describes an innovative modeling and simulation approach using newly proposed Advanced Game-based Mathematical Framework (AGMF), Unified Game-based Acquisition Framework (UGAF) and a set of War-Gaming Engines (WGEs) to address future space systems acquisition challenges. Its objective is to assist the DoD Acquisition Authority (DAA) to understand the contractor's perspective and to seek optimum Program-and-Technical-Baseline (PTB) solution and corresponding acquisition strategy under both the perspectives of the government and the contractors. The proposed approach calls for an interdisciplinary research that involves game theory, probability and statistics, and non-linear programming. The goal of this chapter is to apply the proposed war-gaming frameworks to develop and evaluate PTB solutions and associated acquisition strategies in the context of acquisition of future space systems. Our simulation results suggest that our optimization problem for the acquisition of future space systemsmeets the affordability and innovative requirements with minimum acquisition risk.


Abstract According to several studies, poverty in rural Ethiopia has fallen significantly since the early 1990s, thanks to improved governance and economic liberalisation policies. This paper presents several arguments that challenge this view. The first questions the methodological foundations of the data from which these positive trends are derived: we argue that the original sampling frame was too small and unrepresentative to provide a basis for extrapolating national poverty levels or trends. The second argument questions the conceptual underpinnings of these studies: poverty estimates based on levels of current consumption fail to allow for non-income dimensions of wellbeing, nor for confounding factors such as seasonality, annual rainfall and food aid receipts. The third strand considers alternative sources of data on changes in wellbeing in Ethiopia: recent qualitative studies report that the poor perceive themselves as poorer and more vulnerable than poverty headcount figures suggest. Finally, we report findings from our own survey in chronically poor and historically famine-prone Wollo. First, a significant proportion of households in the study area are destitute – destitution being defined as inability to meet basic needs, lack of key productive assets, and dependence on transfers. Secondly, the numbers of destitute people, and of people vulnerable to becoming destitute, have increased over the past ten years. Thirdly, the crisis of livelihoods underlying this trend is affecting entire communities – the dominant pattern is an aggregate downward shift, rather than stratification – and the decline of wealthier households is exacerbating the vulnerability of the poorest. These findings cast serious doubts on generalisations about poverty trends in Ethiopia. At the very least, national-level data need to be disaggregated: improving national trends may conceal pockets of entrenched poverty and a deepening livelihoods crisis in parts of rural Ethiopia.


TQM has become a competitive strategy for organisations and has been widely implemented throughout the world. Over the previous three decades, there has been a dramatic growth globally in the implementation of total quality management (TQM) in many organisations with the aim of improving the quality of their products and services, and meeting customers' needs. Although the literature in the field relates the success of many organisations in the implementation of TQM, it also refers to the fact that there have been some failures or shortcomings and barriers to the implementation of TQM. These failures or barriers to adoption and implementation are due not only to a lack of top management commitment or weak understanding of total quality management, but also encompass organisational cultural factors.
The purpose of this research is to assess the level of TQM implementation, and to explore the influence of organisational culture on TQM implementation in Libyan banks. In addition, this research identifies the main obstacles that affect the implementation of TQM in Libyan banks.
This study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve the objectives of the research. A questionnaire was designed to determining the level of TQM implementation in Libyan banks, and to identify the causal relationships between factors, in order to explore the influence of organisational culture on TQM implementation. Complimentary semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers and supervisors to gain a greater understanding of some additional issues with regard to TQM practice and organisational culture.
The results of data analysis show that the level of TQM implementation in Libyan banks was low. The competing value framework (CVF) as proposed and tested by Denison and Spreitzer (1991) was used to explore the influence of organisational culture types on TQM implementation factors in Libyan banks. The findings showed that group culture and developmental culture had a positive influence on all TQM implementation factors. In addition, hierarchical culture and rational culture did not have any influence on TQM implementation factors in this context.
Moreover, the study revealed that some of the obstacles that affected the achievement of a high level of TQM implementation in Libyan banks were: a lack of top management commitment; a lack of training programmes relating to quality management; and a weak focus on customer expectations and satisfaction.
The findings of this study make an original contribution to the academic and practical knowledge of TQM. It is the first exploratory study to have assessed TQM implementation, and to have investigated the influence of organisational culture types on TQM implementation in Libyan banks. Besides presenting some recommendations for Libyan banks, the research offers suggestions for further research in this area.


The natural environment endures natural and humaninduced changes. Remote sensing has been providing monitoring oriented solutions by a series of methodologies which contribute to prudent environmental management. Analysis of multi-temporal satellite images for the observation of the land changes often includes error prone classification and changedetection techniques. The present study takes advantage of the temporal continuity of multi-temporal classified images, in order to model change trends and reduce classification uncertainty, based on reasoning rules. By revealing misclassification prone areas, training site selection is targeted. Moreover, computational tools are developed in order to disclose the alterations in land use dynamics and offer spatial reference to the pressures that land use classes impose. The proposed procedures are tested upon Landsat time series imagery, depicting the National Park of Ainos in Kefallinia, Greece.


The reaction of isoprene with OH radicals has been investigated by ab initio molecular orbital theory. We report the energetics of four different pathways, involving the direct addition of OH to four of the carbon atoms. Calculations have been performed using both density functional theory (BHandHLYP) and Moller–Plesset perturbation theory to the second-order (MP2). Two pre-reactive complexes have been identified, whose stabilization energy with respect to the separated reactants is about 12 kJ mol−1. Their structure is similar to the ones previously reported for OH–ethene and OH–propene adducts: the OH radical is placed over either one of the double bonds at a distance of about 2.1 A, with the H atom pointing towards the C–C bond. The geometries of the transition states corresponding to OH addition at the four different positions have been optimized. The calculated apparent activation energies are negative for addition at the terminal carbon atoms and in excellent agreement with the experimental measurements. Direct addition at the internal carbon atoms involves much higher energy barriers, and these pathways are expected to be negligible at normal temperatures. Thus, the observed formation of 3-methylfuran must occur after radical addition to the terminal carbon atoms, following a pathway such as the one proposed by R. Atkinson, S. M. Aschmann, E. C. Tuazon, J. Arey and B. Zielinska, Int. J. Chem. Kinet., 1989, 21, 594 (). Calculated overall rate constants are obtained, in excellent agreement with experimental values. The two-parameter equation for the calculated overall rate coefficient was found to be (2.12 ± 0.42) × 10−11 exp[(384 ± 55)/T] cm3 molecule−1 s−1, while the best fit for the four channels studied here correspond to the following expressions: k1 = (2.25 ± 0.51) × 10−11 exp[(253 ± 62)/T], k2 = (9.60 ± 1.18) × 10−13 exp[(−2871 ± 35)/T], k3 = (1.81 ± 0.22) × 10−12 exp[(−1567 ± 33)/T], and k4 = (2.39 ± 0.27) × 10−12 exp[(676 ± 33)/T] cm3 molecule−1 s−1.


The aim of this study was to investigate the histolopathological effect of doxorubicin on rat kidney tissue. The drug was administrated by rats at the dose of (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) mg/kg intrapertonial every (84) hr for the three weeks and the doses of (1, 2, 3) mg/kg intrapertonial every 84 hrs for six weeks. The animals were scarified after 48 hr. of last injection. The study revealed congestion, thrombus, blood vessels hemorrhage, vaculation in the cells of glomerular tuft and tubular, tubuo-interstitial degeneration, tubular casts. The injury score revealed significantly increasing in the degree of injury in glomerules in the animals that received 5 mg/kg of doxorubicin for three weeks and also significantly increasing in the degree of injury in glomerules of the animals that received 3 mg/kg of doxorubicin for six weeks as compared with control animals. We concluded that the doxorubicin has histopathological effect on kidney. Available online at http://www.vetmedmosul.org/ijvs


Looking forward to the not-so-far future, wireless networks will comprise centralised processing, mixed macro and small cells deployments as well as new radio technologies in order to support very high data rates and traffic types that are characterised by connectionless and sporadic transmission of short packets such as those employed by machine to machine communication devices. In current radio access networks, there is a very clear difference between the fronthaul and backhaul. In comparison with the advent of centralised radio access networks, the difference between the fronthaul and backhaul networks has been shifted further away from the user. Subsequently, in the latest propositions for 5G architectures, they are being merged into an `xhaul' (crosshaul) network where the fronthaul and backhaul concepts no longer exist. In particular instead of using a dedicated centralised processing pool for a set of cellular access points, the idea of using centralised processing within the core network has emerged. With the use of network function virtualisation and centralised processing in data centres, cloud-RANs can be used to provide access to the distribution antenna, removing the need for backhauling and fronthauling. The cloud-RAN can perform the duties of the Mobility Management Entity and Serving Gateway and at the same time can also process each cellular access point's analogue processing using a flexible virtualised software environment. Assuming this is used along with split processing, what needs also to be addressed is the means of communication between the cloudRAN and the distribution antenna. Traditional solutions such as the common public radio interface might not be sufficient to meet all requirements. Largely, Ethernet is being proposed. When Ethernet is used, software-defined networking (SDN) can also be used to dynamically control data flows to and from the cloud-RAN, as well as providing additional benefits, such as network slicing, allowing multiple cellular operators to use the same xhaul infrastructure. This chapter, therefore, largely elaborates on xhaul networks by investigating the potential of SDN to provide an effective user experience for the services provided. The control of specific services such as billing, roaming and registration could then be sent via alternative links such as satellite links, as latency for these packets are not critical, resulting in reduced packet delay on the data plane. It is apparent that for Gbps wireless connectivity, targeted by 5G, the data rate requirements on the centralised cloud xhaul link will be in the range of several Gbps with a latency requirement close to 1 ms.


The Complete Anthology of short stories written by AA Navis is the most complete collection of all short stories that have been written by Navis for fifty years of work. Based on a description and interpretation of data, theoretically, this study aims to (1) reveal the author's ideas and re-attempt the update against the ideologies of traditional Minangkabau society in ALCN which includes a description of Minangkabau culture, AA Navis with the process of creativity, as well as tradition and renewal, (2) develop and accumulate the research on the sociology of literature. Practically, this study aims to (1) provide advice and offers to the reader to constantly adapt and socialize to the demands and needs of the time by relying on rationality and morality, (2) provide an understanding of the short stories contained in ALCN. The research used the descriptive method of description of the facts followed by analysis of activities that include (1) forms the natural understanding of Minangkabau culture, AA Navis and authorship, (2) disclosure of Navis' thoughts through theory and methods of sociological literature proposed by Swingewood Alan and Diana Laurenson, and (3) tradition and renewal efforts against traditional notions of ALCN. The results showed that the various ideas of Navis in ALCN are reflections of society psychological level and lead to a contradictive dialectical. Various complexity of community problems root on two things: (1) human nature is no longer guided by the nature, (2) the policy was decided without considering the principle of K4 (appropriateness and usefulness of togetherness and equality). Some thought the updates offered in ALCN are (1) awareness of human self to always adapt to the demands of the times, (2) implementation of worship should be interpreted rationally by humanitarian considerations, (3) renewal is a change in attitude towards a more humane and civilized; (4) acceptance of outside elements should be based on the principle of benefit and suitability, (5) philosophy stems renewal in humans and humanity, of nature as the basis for the interpretation and reasoning and rational thought. Key words: Nature, dialectical, religion, dan humanity


With the increasing virtualization of resources, reference service, and instruction, college students have fewer reasons to visit the academic library, a place they believe lacks relevance in their lives. This article explores the idea of revitalizing academic libraries by reconsidering the place of pleasure reading in them. Considerable research has been conducted on reading in the last quarter century. Reading serves a host of essential functions, far more than we have ever guessed. The first part of this paper looks at the social, psychological, moral, emotional, and cognitive role it plays in our lives. The second half examines readers' advisory services that we can borrow or adapt from public libraries, services that can attract new users, promote lifelong reading, and transform academic libraries to be more community, user, and reader focused.


This study was carried out to isolate, screen and characterize arsenic (As) resistant bacteria from As contaminated soils of Dumrakandi and Matlab under Faridpur and Chandpur districts and to evaluate their efficiency in reducing As toxicity against rice seedlings during germination. Thirteen strains were isolated from the soils which showed resistance to different levels of sodium arsenite (viz. 5, 10, 20 and 40 mM) in both agar plate and broth assay using BSMY I media. Among the isolates, BTL0011, BTL0012, BTL0015 and BTL0022 showed highest resistance to 40 mM sodium arsenite. Gram staining and KOH solubility test revealed that five strains were gram positive and rest eight was gram negative. They grew well in the liquid media at pH 5.5 to 8.5. In-vitro rice seedling bioassay with two superior isolates (BTL0011 and BTL0022) revealed that As resistant strains significantly enhanced seed germination of BRRI dhan29 and BRRI dhan47 at 60 ppm As. This study was laid out in CRD with three replications. The performance of BTL 0022 was superior to BTL0011. The overall results suggest that BTL0011 and BTL0022 can be used for bioremediation of As contaminated soils and to increase the germination and seedling growth of rice in As contaminated soils. Res. Agric., Livest. Fish.2(2): 229-237, August 2015


This paper describes a novel, high-voltage vertical FET (HWFET) for high power RF applications. The silicon MOSFET provides improved power density, RF gain, and ruggedness over competing device technologies. A unique flip-chip packaging strategy also provides thermal and reliability advantages. Both a 25 Watt and a 100 Watt embodiment of the structure exhibit over 20 dB of gain with >45% efficiency from 1.2 to 1.4 GHz in a package that is approximately 1/4 the size of competing device technologies. A 300 Watt version of the device exhibits >15.5 dB of gain with > 46% efficiency from 1.03 to 1.09 GHz.


What do porn films tell us about our own erotic impulses? What can we learn about our culture's sexual attitudes, fears, and fantasies from the ways that porn films are designed and produced? In this book, Dr. Robert J. Stoller, one of the world's leading experts on human sexual behavior, joins with I. S. Levine, a professional writer with long experience in X-rated video making, to examine the ideas and psychological makeup of the participants in an adult heterosexual X-rated video, Stairway to Paradise. Their interviews with performers, writers, directors, producers, and technicians provide extraordinary insights into the technical aspects of this type of video, the motivations and backgrounds of the people involved, and the porn industry's view of the video's intended audience. Stoller, Levine, and the porn filmmakers have wide-ranging discussions about the aesthetics, ethics, and etiquette of the porn industry; the hostility that Dr. Stoller claimed underlies all erotic excitement; the liberating-and educational-function of porn in a puritanical culture; the misconceptions of antiporn crusaders; the impact of aids on the participants; and the future of the porn film industry. The authors hope that if we understand how and why a pornographic work is created, we will be better able to understand the implications of the legal and moral issues it raises.


All multimedia content, but especially video, has in recent years grown in both volume and importance. In order for this increasing amount of video material to be useful, it is important to be able to find the parts of it which are relevant to any given circumstance. The field of video retrieval works on addressing this challenge by offering means to retrieve video sequences from a larger pool which are similar to a query. Such retrieval processes commonly rely on textual annotations which often need to be added manually to a video in order to make it retrievable. In contrast, content-based video retrieval operates not on such external metadata but rather on the content of a video itself.

The aim of this thesis to make several contributions to the field of content-based video retrieval. It begins with an analysis of one of the largest and most diverse contemporary sources of video material - web video - as it is found in the wild. The analysis outlines several properties of such video material obtained from two large online video platforms and compares them with the properties of several video collections which are commonly used in research. The results of this comparison led to the creation of a new research video dataset which is scheduled to be used for multiple large video retrieval evaluation campaigns.

Next, the notion of similarity, especially in the visual domain, is explored as it is perceived by humans. A human-labelled ground-truth dataset of pair-wise image similarity is obtained through an online platform which made use of both crowdsourcing and gamification strategies for input acquisition. This dataset serves as the basis for a number of experiments which aim at exploring the interrelation between the multitude of options to compute the distance between two features describing visual content and the humanly perceived visual similarity. The insights gained from these experiments might help to support the decision on which distances to use when implementing content-based retrieval systems.

Finally, a content-based video retrieval engine is implemented which supports multiple modalities for query expression. This engine - which goes by the name Cineast - forms a vital component of the content-based retrieval stack vitrivr which has been made publicly available as open-source software. Cineast, and by extension vitrivr, has later been extended to concurrently support multiple media types besides video, such as images, audio and three dimensional models. This makes vitrivr a full-fledged content-based multimedia retrieval stack.


Abstract. Information content analyses on cloud top altitude (CTOP) and geometrical thickness (CGT) from multi-angular A-band measurements in the case of monolayer homogeneous clouds are conducted. In the framework of future multi-angular radiometer development, we compared the potential performances of the 3MI (Multi-viewing, Multi-channel and Multi-polarization Imaging) instrument developed by EUMETSAT, which is an extension of POLDER/PARASOL instrument and MSPI (Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager) developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Quantitative information content estimates were realized for thin, moderately opaque and opaque clouds for different surface albedo and viewing geometry configurations. Analyses show that retrieval of CTOP is possible with a high accuracy in most of the cases investigated. Retrieval of CGT is also possible for optically thick clouds above a black surface, at least when CGT > 1–2 km and for thin clouds for CGT > 2–3 km. However, for intermediate optical thicknesses (COT ≃ 4), we show that the retrieval of CGT is not simultaneously possible with CTOP. A comparison between 3MI and MSPI shows a higher information content for MSPI's measurements, traceable to a thinner filter inside the oxygen A-band, yielding higher signal-to-noise ratio for absorption estimation. Cases of cloud scenes above bright surfaces are more complex but it is shown that the retrieval of CTOP remains possible in almost all situations while the information content on CGT appears to be insufficient in many cases, particularly for COT


Abstract Solar geoengineering appears capable of reducing climate change and the associated risks. In part because it would be global in effect, the governance of solar geoengineering is a central concern. The Earth System Governance (ESG) Project includes many researchers who, to varying degrees, utilize a common vocabulary and research framework. Despite the clear mutual relevance of solar geoengineering and ESG, few ESG researchers have considered the topic in substantial depth. To stimulate its sustained uptake as a subject within the ESG research program, we identify significant contributions thus far by ESG scholars on the subject of solar geoengineering governance and survey the wider solar geoengineering governance literature from the perspective of the new ESG research framework. Based on this analysis, we also suggest specific potential lines of inquiry that we believe are ripe for research by ESG scholars: nonstate actors' roles, polycentricity, public engagement and participation, and the Anthropocene.


With the recent advances in nanoscale science and engineering, materials containing reinforcement with superior mechanical properties can be found in many advanced products. The accurate prediction of the mechanical properties of this class of compositematerials is important to ensure the reliability of the products. Characterization methods based contact probe such as nano-indentation and scratch tests have been developed in recent years to measure the mechanical properties of the new class of nanomaterials. This paper presents a constitutive modeling framework for predicting the mechanical properties of nanoparticle reinforced composite materials. The formulation directly considers the effects of inter-nanoparticle interaction and performs a statistical averaging to the solution of the problem of two-nanoparticle interaction. Final constitutive equations are obtained in analytical closed form with no additional material parameters. The predictions from the proposed constitutive model are compared with experimental measurement from nanoindentation tests. This constitutivemodel for nanoparticle reinforced composites can be used to determine the volume concentration of the reinforcing nanoparticles in nano-indentation test.


The tremendous workload produced by multiple assessments that aim for a learner-centered approach to learning in huge classes and the inability to provide results timeously, often results in lecturers' maintaining teacher-centered approaches to learning even if they appreciate the benefits of learner-centered approaches. One steptoward a learner-centered approach is to incorporate peer assessment. In this study we went one step further and combined peer assessment with e-learning. Interactive online peer assessment can lessen the workload on lecturers and may be an important step towards designing courses that are learner-centered.
In this study we report on the lessons and experiences of an interactive online peer assessment system. An evaluative case-study approach was undertaken. The theoretical underpinning of this study is activity theory. Lecturers monitored and evaluated the progress of the students who undertook this course and this article is a report of the study.
Interactive online peer assessment can be enhanced if support structures and tools are readily available. For interactive online peer assessment to work there needs to be a paradigm shift at an institutional level, at the lecturer level, as well as role clarity, and a willingness on the part of the students to accept a shift in their role in the learningprocess. The outcome of the intervention was generally positive but some of the findings indicated that technical problems experienced during the course by students contributed to their negative attitudes toward interactive online peer assessment.


The lumbar facet joint (FJ) is a unique structure located on the posterior spine. The joint is composed of two articular facets from adjacent vertebrae, which are connected by a flexible and strong facet capsular ligament (FCL) (Figure 1). Two FJs (one on each side of the spinous process) are located at every spine level and along with the IVD, create a motion segment. During spinal flexion and extension, the FCL undergoes a complex motion, with extension and shear dominating the deformation (Figure 2). The collagenous FCL guides and restricts the relative motion of adjacent vertebra in flexion.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


To understand how speech is produced by individual human beings, it is fundamentally important to be able to determine exactly the three-dimensional shape of the vocal tract. The vocal tract is inaccessible so its exact form is difficult to determine with live subjects. There is a wide variety of methods that provide information on the vocal tract shape. The technique of Electropalatography (EPG) is cheap, relatively simple, non-invasive and highly informative. Using EPG on its own, it is possible to deduce information about the shape, movement and position of tongue-palate contact during continuous speech. However, data provided by EPG is in the form of a two-dimensional representation in which all absolute positional information is lost. This thesis describe the development of an enhanced Electropalatography (eEPG) system, which retains most of the advantages of EPG while overcoming some of the disadvantages by representing the three-dimensional (3D) shape of the palate. The eEPG system uses digitised palate shape data to display the tongue-palate contact pattern in 3D. The 3D palate shape is displayed on a Silicon Graphics workstation as a surface made up of polygons represented by a quadrilateral mesh. EPG contact patterns are superimposed onto the 3D palate shape by displaying the relevant polygons in a different colour. By using this system, differences in shape between individual palates, apparent on visual inspection of the actual palates, are also apparent in the image on screen. The contact patterns can be related more easily to articulatory features such as the alveolar ridge since the ridge is visible on the 3D display. Further, methods have been devised for computing absolute distances along paths lying on the palate surface. Combining this with calibrated palate shape data allows measurements accurate to 1 mm to be made between contact locations on the palate shape. These have been validated with manual measurements. The sampling rate for EPG is 100Hz and the data rate is equivalent to 62 bits per 10ms. In the past few years, some coding (parameterization) methods have been introduced to try to reduce the amount of data while retaining the important aspects. Feature coding methods are proposed here and several parameters are investigated, expressed in terms of both conventional measures such as row number, and in absolute measures of distance and area (i.e. mm and mm2). Features studied include location of constriction and degree of constriction. Finally, in order to reduce the amount of data while retaining the spatial information, composite frames that represent a series of EPG frames are computed. Measures of goodness of the composite frames that do and do not use 3D data are described. Some example are given in which fricative data has been processed by generating a composite frame for the entire fricative, and computing an area estimate for each row of the composite frame using the assumption of a flat tongue. This thesis demonstrates the current capability and inherent flexibility of the enhanced electropalatography system. In the future, the eEPG system can be extended to compute volume estimates again using a flat tongue model. By incorporating information on the tongue surface provided by other imaging methods such as ultrasound, more accurate area and volume estimates can be obtained.


When wind blows over a stratified lake an interface tilt is often generated, and internal waves usually appear after the wind stops. Internal waves in lakes are studied in many literatures, but most assume a hydrostatic pressure balance. In this thesis we discuss the internal Poincaré waves and Kelvin waves in a rotating, continuously stratified, flat-bottom, circular lake with fully nonlinear and nonhydrostatic effects. An analytical solution is derived for the linearized system and it provides initial conditions used in the MIT General Circulation Model (MITgcm). This model is chosen due to its non-hydrostatic capability. Both Poincaré waves and Kelvin waves are considered. The analytical solution of the linear system is verified numerically when the wave amplitude is small. As the wave amplitude increases the waves become more nonlinear. Poincaré waves steepen and generate solitary-like waves with shorter wavelengths, but most of the energy contained in these waves is transferred back and forth between the parent wave and the solitary-like waves. Kelvin waves, on the other hand, steepen and lose their energy to solitary-like waves. The appearance of the solitary-like waves is not absolutely clear and higher resolution is required to clear up the details of this process. This conclusion agrees with de la Fuente et al. (2008) who discussed the internal waves in a two-layer model. Moreover, in the Kelvin waves case, unexpected small waves are generated at the side boundaries and travel inwards. The wave amplitude and wavelength of these spurious waves become smaller as the horizontal resolution increases. One possible reason to explain these waves is the use of square grids to approximate the circular lake.


A fundamental problem in differential geometry is to characterize intrinsic metrics on a two-dimensional Riemannian manifold M2 which can be realized as isometric immersions into R3. This problem can be formulated as initial and/or boundary value problems for a system of nonlinear partial differential equations of mixed elliptic-hyperbolic type whose mathematical theory is largely incomplete. In this paper, we develop a general approach, which combines a fluid dynamic formulation of balance laws for the Gauss-Codazzi system with a compensated compactness framework, to deal with the initial and/or boundary value problems for isometric immersions in R3. The compensated compactness framework formed here is a natural formulation to ensure the weak continuity of the Gauss-Codazzi system for approximate solutions, which yields the isometric realization of two-dimensional surfaces in R3. As a first application of this approach, we study the isometric immersion problem for two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds with strictly negative Gauss curvature. We prove that there exists a C1,1 isometric immersion of the two-dimensional manifold in R 3 satisfying our prescribed initial conditions. To achieve this, we introduce a vanishing viscosity method depending on the features of initial value problems for isometric immersions and present a technique to make the a priori estimates including the L∞ control and H−1–compactness for the viscous approximate solutions. This yields the weak convergence of the vanishing viscosity approximate solutions and the weak continuity of the Gauss-Codazzi system for the approximate solutions, hence the existence of an isometric immersion of the manifold into R3 satisfying our initial conditions. The theory is applied to a specific example of the metric associated with the catenoid.


Ethics education is an important area for counselors-in-training as well as practicing counselors. Particularly difficult for counselor trainees are the gray areas of ethics where the relationships between ethics, the law, and the counseling process are not clear. Practicing counselors may feel isolated when they need a reality check or immediate feedback regarding an ethics issue. Some ethics violations are easily recognizable whereas others are more subtle or may be clouded by the emotions of the counselor or client. Ongoing training in ethics is required in some locations for recertification. A panel format is described with the sharing of professional attitudes at its center. The use of ethics panels with experienced counselors who work in various settings provides new and experienced counselors with an opportunity to examine ethical decision-making processes of other practitioners. Gray areas of ethical concern are more evident in interactive panel formats. Addressing ethical issues from the multi-disciplinary perspectives of several practitioners provides counselors with a rich training experience. Contains 14 references. (Author/EMK) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** Interactive Ethics I kr) kr) Running Head: INTERACTIVE ETHICS


Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an increasingly common cause of liver disease worldwide. HCV may be present in saliva suggesting possible transmission via oral fluids. However the precise influence of peripheral blood carriage of HCV upon the frequency and load of HCV in oral fluids remains unknown.
The objectives of the study were to determine the frequency of oral carriage of HCV and determine the influence of plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) HCV levels upon HCV levels in oral fluids.
The study group comprised 85 patients with treated (18) or untreated (67) HCV infection resident in northern Brazil. HCV 5'-NCR and NS5b regions were detected by quantitative Real Time PCR and nested block based PCR respectively in whole saliva, plasma, CD2+, CD14+, CD19+, and CD45+ PBMCs for both methods.
Approximately 32% of the total group had detectable HCV RNA in whole saliva. In contrast HCV was present in 82.5% of plasma and up to 82.1% of PBMC. There was no significant difference in the genotypes between oral and blood compartments and no evidence of genetic diversity within the oral compartment. There was no correlation between the salivary prevalence of HCV with load of plasma. HCV RNA viral load in saliva was almost always below the level of quantification.
Given the low viral load presented in patient with a high plasma titration in the 30% saliva positive patients, HCV transmission via the saliva is highly unlikely, but cannot be discarded. There is no evidence for HCV compartmentalization as sequences from different compartments were closely related, although mutations were identified more frequently within genotype 1b in all compartments. This finding suggest a new trend towards hepatitis C evolution, as genotypes 1a and 1b do not usually differentiate in terms of treatment outcome, being both traditionally related to poor antiviral response.


Scientific experimental data generated by all the bionomic technologies is characterized by heterogeneity in its representation formats, constituents, and generation processes and, therefore, also in its usage. Using the proteomics domain we demonstrate the important role of provenance information o manage, interpret and analyze experimental data. We present a novel approach that employs an ontology as a knowledge model to automatically create semantic provenance information for high-throughput mass spectrometry (MS) data in the glycoproteomics domain. The Semantic Provenance Annotation of Data in protEomics (SPADE) implementation is based on the ProPreO ontology, a large-process ontology ( ~500 classes, 40 named relationships with 170 class-level restrictions, and 3.1 million instances) that models the complete experimental protocol for MS-based glycoproteomics data analysis. The semantic provenance information created in SPADE enables biologists to query over the semantic provenance information and retrieve exact data using "train-of-thought" expressive queries in SPARQL query language. We also discuss our current work in extending the ProPreO ontology to support toxicological metabolomics experimentation using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Our strategic goal is to use Semantic Provenance information by pattern recognition and data mining algorithms for comparative or correlation analysis of Liquid Chromatography MS (LCMS) and NMR spectroscopy experimental data as part of toxicological metabolomics studies.


In an increasingly digitized environment, enterprises face new challenges. Enabled by ubiquitous Internet accessibility, people, places, and products have become more interconnected and are gradually merging into the Internet of Everything. Simultaneously, a new generation of connected customers is emerging that is establishing new requirements for the capabilities of enterprises to communicate, interact, and respond to unforeseen events. As customer satisfaction is the central source of future competitiveness, companies must initiate a transformation towards a connected enterprise. By analyzing the characteristics of the connected customer, this paper presents guidelines for enterprises to address customer needs adequately and manage their operations in the Internet of Everything. Building upon established enterprise architecture frameworks, we apply a Design Science Research procedure to derive four practical recommendations. Thus, enterprises must manage their business processes holistically, implement information systems and standards for data exchange, provide mechanisms for real-time business intelligence, and determine their optimal degree of connectivity.


We introduce JuS (JavaScript under Scrutiny), a first step towards a static-analysis tool for JavaScript based on a program logic in the style of separation logic. In particular, we focus on reasoning automatically about the JavaScript variable store. Because of prototype-based inheritance and with statements, even reasoning about variables is not trivial in JavaScript. We evaluate our tool on examples from the Firefox test suite which illustrate the scoping mechanism of the JavaScript variable store.


Sulphur and carbon analyses of drill cuttings, mineral saturation state calculations and reaction path modelling were used to assess the effects of boiling and phase separation, cooling, magmatic gas input and extent of fluid-rock reaction in order to get insight into the source, transport and precipitation of sulphur and carbon and associated metals in the Reykjanes geothermal system. Reservoir temperatures range from 275 to 310°C and the estimated pH from ~4.5 to ~5.0 with uncertainties up to 0.5 pH units. Geothermal reservoir waters seem to be the formed upon mixing of seawater with very small amount of magmatic gas followed by reaction with basalts. The reservoir water is relatively close to saturation with respect to most minerals observed in the system including quartz, albite, chlorite, epidote, prehnite and pyrite. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the reservoir water are close to an apparent equilibrium with the clinozoisite-calcite-quartz-prehnite mineral assemblage but CO2 may also be source controlled by magmatic input corresponding to about 0.1 to 1 wt% magmatic gas to seawater ratio. The H2 and H2S concentrations are considered to be controlled by the buffer pyrite-prehnite-magnetite-quartz-clinozoisiteanhydrite or pyrite-wollastonite-magnetite-anhydrite-quartz. Carbon content in drill cuttings notably increases from ~0.01 to ~2.0 wt% as depth decreases in the uppermost 1100 m. Below that depth, concentrations range from <0.5 ppm to a maximum of ~0.03 wt%. At reservoir conditions, carbon precipitation may be precluded, due to the effects of temperature, pH and reduced availability of cations, and leaching from rocks seems to occur. Calcite precipitates and builds up in the altered rocks above background carbon at depths <1100 m, corresponding to depth of boiling. Sulphides concentrations range from <0.01 to ~1.2 wt% in altered rocks with no markable trend as a function of depth. Reservoir water with metal concentrations based on downhole samples was observed to be supersaturated with respect to most sulphide minerals and become increasingly more supersaturated upon boiling and cooling, in addition to sulphide being quantitatively removed from solution upon boiling mostly into pyrite but also sphalerite, galena and covellite. Under these conditions, sulphide minerals have the potential to form both in the reservoir and upon fluid ascent resulting in homogeneous sulphide precipitation as a function of depth. Sulphates in rocks range from ~0.02 to 1.8 wt%, with the highest values observed in the uppermost 400 m. Anhydrite precipitation occurs preferentially in the shallowest part of the system mainly due to heated seawater-rock interaction. Total sulphur vertical distribution pattern at Reykjanes may reflect either significant sulphides precipitation at all depths due to high metal concentrations in the reservoir water or enhanced sulphur precipitation due to additional sulphur supply from seawater intruding at all depths, or both. Finally, based on age and extension constrains for the geothermal system, average mass of mineralization of 700, 315 and 1054 tonne/yr were obtained for sulphide, sulphate and carbon, respectively, over the life time of the system taken to be 20000 years.


A novel approach to creating a vaccine to treat melanoma has demonstrated promising effectiveness in a new laboratorystudy led by researchers at The Wistar Institute . About a third of melanoma patients might benefit from such a vaccine. The study appeared in a recent issue of Cancer Research. In the study, the scientists used a small protein called a peptide found in approximately 70 percent of melanomas, but not in normal cells, to stimulate immune cells called killer T cells to attack the melanoma cells. Another type of immune cell called a monocyte was used to present the peptide, BRAF V600E, to the killer T cells to trigger their attack on the melanoma cells. "In our experiments, we saw a strong cancer-killing immune response when killer T cells are stimulated with this peptide," says Dorothee Herlyn, D.V.M., senior author on the study and a professor in the Immunology Program and Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at Wistar. "The results emphasize the potential of this approach for creating an effective melanoma vaccine, and we hope to move toward human clinical trials as soon as possible." A substantial proportion of melanoma patients, about 50 percent, have killer T cells able to recognize the BRAF V600E peptide. Combining the prevalence of the peptide among melanoma patients - about 70% - with the number of patients whose immune cells are able to respond to the peptide suggests that a vaccine based on BRAF V600E could treat approximately a third of all melanoma patients. Herlyn adds that the specificity of the peptide - the fact that it is found only in melanoma cells, not normal cells - suggests that the toxicity of any vaccine based on the peptide would be minimal. Killer T cells sparked into action by the vaccine would target only the cancer cells, sparing healthy cells entirely. Looking ahead to possible human clinical trials, another member of the scientific team, University of Pennsylvania assistant professor Brian Czerniecki, M.D., Ph.D., is working to prepare yet another type of immune cell, called a dendritic cell, to present the BRAF V600E peptide to killer T cells. Dendritic cells have as their primary job the presentation of foreign materials to the immune system, and the expectation is that dendritic cells presenting the BRAF V600E peptide would trigger the killer T cells even more effectively than the monocyte cells used in the current study. Indeed, such prepared dendritic cells might serve as the basis for a treatment vaccine that could be taken into human clinical trials. Herlyn is senior author on the Cancer Research study. The lead author is Rajasekharan Somasundaram, also at Wistar. The additional Wistar coauthors are Rolf Swoboda, Laura Caputo, and Laszlo Otvos (now at Temple University). The remaining coauthors are Barbara Weber, Patricia Volpe, Patricia van Belle, Susan Hotz, David E. Elder, Lynn Schuchter, DuPont Guerry, and Brian J. Czerniecki of the University of Pennsylvania, and Francesco M. Marincola with the National Institutes of Health. Support for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement Program of the Pennsylvania Department of Health.


Purine and pyrimidine triplex-forming oligonucleotides (TFOs), as potential antibacterial agents, were designed to bind by Hoogsteen and reverse Hoogsteen hydrogen bonds in a sequence specific manner in the major groove of genomic DNA at specific polypurine sites within the gyrA gene of E. coli and S. pneumoniae. Sequences were prepared by automated synthesis, with purification and characterisation determined by high performance liquid chromatograpy, capillary electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. Triplex stability was assessed using melting curves where the binding of the third strand to the duplex target, was assessed over a temperature range of 0-80°C, and at pH 6.4 and 7.2. The most successful of the unmodified TFOs (6) showed a Tm value of 26 °C at both pH values with binding via reverse Hoogsteen bonds. Binding to genomic DNA was also demonstrated by spectrofluorimetry, using fluorescein-labelled TFOs, from which dissociation constants were determined. Modifications in the form of 5mC, 5' acridine attachment, phosphorothioation, 2'-0-methylation and phosphoramidation, were made in order to. increase Tm values. Phosphoramidate modification was the most with increased Tm values of 42°C. However, the final purity of these sequences was poor due to their difficult syntheses. FACS (fluorescent activated cell sorting) analysis was used to determine the potential uptake of a fluorescently labelled analogue of 6 via passive, coJd shock mediated, and anionic liposome aided, uptake. This was established at 20°C and 37°C. At both temperatures anionic lipid-mediated uptake produced unrivalled fluorescence, equivalent to 20 and 43% at 20 and 37°C respectively. Antibacterial activity of each oligonucleotide was assessed by viable count anaJysis relying on passive uptake, cold shocking techniques, chlorpromazine-mediated uptake, and, cationic and anionic lipid-aided uptake. All oligonucleotides were assessed for their ability to enhance uptake, which is a major barrier to the effectiveness of these agents. Compound 6 under cold shocking conditions produced the greatest consistent decline in colony forming units per ml. Results for this compound were sometimes variable indicating inconsistent uptake by this particular assay method.


The actualising of the commimity of believers within public worship The youth experiences the public service in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Church of Africa as cold and dead. According to investigations it feels that the public service lacks warmth and intimate atmosphere. Therefore this article wants to investigate the community of believers in the church. The question of how the church can realise the community of believers is raised. To reach this point, firstly the Bible and the articles of faith is investigated, and after that a look is taken at the nature of the public service, and the actualising of the believers.


Many elliptic partial differential equations can be solved numerically with near optimal efficiency through the uses of adaptive refinement and multigrid solution techniques. It is our goal to develop a more unified approach to the combined process of adaptive refinement and multigrid solution which can be used with high order finite elements. The basic step of the refinement process is the bisection of a pair of triangles, which corresponds to the addition of one or more basis functions to the approximation space. An approximation of the resulting change in the solution is used as an error indicator to determine which triangles to divide. The multigrid iteration uses a red-black Gauss-Seidel relaxation in which the black relaxations are used only locally. The grid transfers use the change between the nodal and hierarchical bases. This multigrid iteration requires only O(N) operations, even for highly nonuniform grids, and is defined for any finite element space. The full multigrid method is an optimal blending of the processes of adaptive refinement and multigrid iteration. So as to minimize the number of operations required, the duration of the refinement phase is based on increasing the dimension of the approximation space by some fixed factor which is determined to be the largest possible for the given error-reducing power of the multigrid iteration. The result is an algorithm which (i) uses only O(N) operations with a reasonable constant of proportionality, (ii) solves the discrete system to the accuracy of the discretization error, (iii) is able to achieve the optimal order of convergence of the discretization error in the presence of singularities. Numerical experiments confirm this for linear, quadratic and cubic elements. It is believed that the method can also be applied to more practical problems involving systems of PDE's, time dependence, and three spatial dimensions.


Visual language grounding is widely studied in modern neural image captioning systems, which typically adopts an encoder-decoder framework consisting of two principal components: a convolutional neural network (CNN) for image feature extraction and a recurrent neural network (RNN) for language caption generation. To study the robustness of language grounding to adversarial perturbations in machine vision and perception, we propose Show-and-Fool, a novel algorithm for crafting adversarial examples in neural image captioning. The proposed algorithm provides two evaluation approaches, which check if we can mislead neural image captioning systems to output some randomly chosen captions or keywords. Our extensive experiments show that our algorithm can successfully craft visually-similar adversarial examples with randomly targeted captions or keywords, and the adversarial examples can be made highly transferable to other image captioning systems. Consequently, our approach leads to new robustness implications of neural image captioning and novel insights in visual language grounding.


Contemporary artists exploring Jewish identity in the UK are caught between two exclusions, broadly speaking: an art community that that sees itself as 'post –identity' and a 'black' art scene that revolves around the organizations that emerged out of the Identity debates of the 1980s and 1990s, namely Iniva, Third Text, Autograph. These organizations and those debates, don't usually include Jewish identity within their remit as Jewish artists are considered to be well represented in the British art scene and, in any case, white. Out of these assumptions, questions arise in relation to the position of Jews in Britain and what is at stake for an artist in exploring Jewish Identity in their work. There is considerable scholarship, relatively speaking on art and Jewish Identity in the US (such as Lisa Bloom; Norman Kleeblatt; Catherine Sousslouf), which inform the debates on visual culture and Jews. In this chapter, I will be drawing out some of the distinctions between the US and the UK debates within my analysis, building on my own writing over the last ten years as well as the work of Juliet Steyn, Jon Stratton and Griselda Pollock.

In short, this chapter aims to explore the problematic of what Jewish Identity can offer the viewer as art; what place such art inhabits within a wider artistic context and how, if at all, it is received. There is a predominance of lens based work that explores Identity arising out of the provenance of feminist practices and the politics of documentary that will be important in the framing of the work. I do not aim to consider what constitutes a Jewish artist, that has been done elsewhere and is an inadequate and somewhat spurious conversation . I will also not be focusing on artists whose intention is to celebrate an unproblematised Jewishness (however that is constituted in any given work). Recent artworks and scholarship has in any case rendered the trumpeting of attachment to any singular identity anachronistic at best. I will focus on artists working in the UK who incorporate questions of Jewishness into a larger visual enquiry that build on Judith Butler's notion of identity as process or performative as well as the more recent debates and artwork that consider the intersectionality of identifications that co-constitute provisional identities (Jones, Modood, Sara Ahmed, Braidotti/Nikki S Lee, Glenn Ligon). The case studies to think through these questions of identity, will be artworks by Susan Hiller, Doug Fishbone and Suzanne Triester. In thinking through works by these artists, I will also serve to contextualise them, situating them briefly within the history of the landmark exhibition in the UK, Rubies and Rebels and the work of Ruth Novaczek, Lily Markewitz, Oreet Ashery and myself.


Biological and social networks are composed of heterogeneous nodes that contribute differentially to network structure and function. A number of algorithms have been developed to measure this variation. These algorithms have proven useful for applications that require assigning scores to individual nodes–from ranking websites to determining critical species in ecosystems–yet the mechanistic basis for why they produce good rankings remains poorly understood. We show that a unifying property of these algorithms is that they quantify consensus in the network about a node's state or capacity to perform a function. The algorithms capture consensus by either taking into account the number of a target node's direct connections, and, when the edges are weighted, the uniformity of its weighted in-degree distribution (breadth), or by measuring net flow into a target node (depth). Using data from communication, social, and biological networks we find that that how an algorithm measures consensus–through breadth or depth– impacts its ability to correctly score nodes. We also observe variation in sensitivity to source biases in interaction/adjacency matrices: errors arising from systematic error at the node level or direct manipulation of network connectivity by nodes. Our results indicate that the breadth algorithms, which are derived from information theory, correctly score nodes (assessed using independent data) and are robust to errors. However, in cases where nodes "form opinions" about other nodes using indirect information, like reputation, depth algorithms, like Eigenvector Centrality, are required. One caveat is that Eigenvector Centrality is not robust to error unless the network is transitive or assortative. In these cases the network structure allows the depth algorithms to effectively capture breadth as well as depth. Finally, we discuss the algorithms' cognitive and computational demands. This is an important consideration in systems in which individuals use the collective opinions of others to make decisions.


Inference in high-order graphical models has become important in recent years. Several approaches are based, for example, on generalized message-passing, or on transformation to a pairwise model with extra 'auxiliary' variables. We focus on a special case where a much more efficient transformation is possible. Instead of adding variables, we transform the original problem into a comparatively small instance of submodular vertex-cover. These vertex-cover instances can then be attacked by existing algorithms (e.g. belief propagation, QPBO), where they often run 4-15 times faster and find better solutions than when applied to the original problem. We evaluate our approach on synthetic data, then we show applications within a fast hierarchical clustering and model-fitting framework.


One of the main purposes of textual documents collation is to identify a base text or closest witness to the base text, by analyzing and interpreting differences also known as types of changes that might exist between those documents. Based on this fact, it is reasonable to argue that, explicit identification of types of changes such as deletions, additions, transpositions, and mutations should be part of the collation process. The identification could be carried out by an interpretation module after alignment has taken place. Unfortunately existing collation software such as CollateX and Juxta's collation engine do not have interpretation modules. In fact they implement the Gothenburg model [1] for collation process which does not include an interpretation unit. Currently both CollateX and Juxta's collation engine do not distinguish in their critical apparatus between the types of changes, and do not offer statistics about those changes. This paper presents a model for both integrated and distributed collation processes that improves the Gothenburg model. The model introduces an interpretation component for computing and distinguishing between the types of changes that documents could have undergone. Moreover two architectures implementing the model in order to solve the problem of interactive collation are discussed as well. Each architecture uses CollateX library, and provides on the one hand preprocessing functions for transforming input documents into CollateX input format, and on the other hand a post-processing module for enabling interactive collation. Finally simple algorithms for distinguishing between types of changes, and linking collated source documents with the collation results are also introduced.


We propose a method for information extraction and presentation using recorded eye gaze data, i.e., life-log video data. We call our method Gaze Cloud, which essentially uses gaze information for the generation of thumbnail images. One of the usages of wearable computing, personal life-logs are becoming increasingly possible. However, an aspect that needs to be addressed is information retrieval through different browsing methods. It is also well known that human memory recall is aided by effective presentation of information. Our propose method Gaze Cloud calculates the importance of information from gaze data that is consequently used for the generation of thumbnail images. This method performs the calculation using the eye gaze duration and hot spot information. Additionally, we construct a prototype daily-use wearable eye tracker system.


Species of the family Pinnotheridae constitute an ideal group for morphometric studies due to their complex morphological adaptations. These adaptations respond to the selective pressure of a symbiotic life style. This study describes the relative growth and morphometric features of the symbiotic pea crab Austinixa aidae (associated with the ghost shrimp Callichirus major), from the sandy beaches in the southwest Atlantic, Brazil. Significant differences were detected in the biometric proportions, particularly the chelar propodus length and carapace width, of each sex. These dimensions were also related to the size at which the individuals reached morphological sexual maturity (5.1 mm of carapace width for both sexes). Males and females were 2.4 times wider than long, which corresponds to the principal adaptation developed by Austinixa species to live in cryptic environments. Moreover, juveniles were proportionally more rounded. The changes in the biometric proportions of carapace length and width of A. aidae were more pronounced in males and females, adaptations that facilitate roaming within the galleries of their hosts.


The health costs of in-person schooling during the pandemic, if any, fall primarily on the families of students, largely due to the fact that students significantly outnumber teachers. Data from North Carolina, Wisconsin, Australia, England, and Israel covering almost 80 million persondays in school help assess the magnitude of the fatality risks of in-person schooling (with mitigation protocols), accounting for the age and living arrangements of students and teachers. The risks of in-person schooling to teachers are comparable to the risks of commuting by automobile. Valued at a VSL of $10 million, the average daily fatality cost ranges from $0.01 for an unvaccinated young teacher living alone to as much as $29 for an elderly and unvaccinated teacher living with an elderly and unvaccinated spouse. COVID-19 risk avoidance may also be more amenable to Bayesian updating and selective protection than automobile fatalities are. The results suggest that economic behaviors can sometimes invert epidemiological patterns when it comes to the spread of infectious diseases in human populations. Casey B. Mulligan University of Chicago Department of Economics 1126 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 and NBER email@example.com


A novel combination of a packaged GaAs MMIC with a microstrip-coupled slot high performance 180° hybrid constitutes a downconverter, which provides the very low intermodulation level required by some TV applications. The packaged chip was mounted on a substrate together with a high performance and seldom-used MIC 180° hybrid. No adjustable filters are required due to the broadband behavior of the whole downconverter. This feature is required for cost reduction. A double-balanced mixer and the LO balun have been integrated in the same chip. A properly biased cold FET was used in the mixer to achieve low distortion frequency mixing. An active phase splitter was chosen as the LO balun in order to get small phase errors over a wide frequency band. The MIC 180° hybrid, which makes use of microstrip lines, slot lines and coupled-slot lines, was used as the RF balun. The topology used for this hybrid makes it very useful for balanced mixers, since there is no crossing of MIC transmission lines. On the other hand, there are no active elements, so no distortion is added to the downconverter. The hybrid was designed with an intensive use of a quasy-planar electromagnetic simulator. MMIC package modeling is also discussed in the paper. The MMIC was fabricated using the F20 process of the GEC Marconi foundry. Conversion losses of 8.5 dB can be obtained for the whole downconverter with a LO drive of 5.5 dBm. A 3rd order intercept point of 21 dBm of output power and a spectral purity in the complete RF frequency band of more than 70 dB were achieved.


Multiverse scenarios in cosmology assume that other universes exist "beyond" our own universe. They are an exciting challenge both for empirical and theoretical research as well as for philosophy of science. They could be necessary to understand why the big bang occurred, why (some of) the laws of nature and the values of certain physical constants are the way they are, and why there is an arrow of time. This essay clarifies competing notions of "universe" and "multiverse"; it proposes a classification of different multiverse types according to various aspects how the universes are or are not separated from each other; it reviews the main reasons for assuming the existence of other universes: empirical evidence, theoretical explanation, and philosophical arguments; and, finally, it argues that some attempts to criticize multiverse scenarios as "unscientific", insisting on a narrow understanding of falsification, is neither appropriate nor convincing from a philosophy of science point of view.


Abstract Objectives To investigate the effectiveness of routine ultrasonography in the third trimester in reducing adverse perinatal outcomes in low risk pregnancies compared with usual care and the effect of this policy on maternal outcomes and obstetric interventions. Design Pragmatic, multicentre, stepped wedge cluster randomised trial. Setting 60 midwifery practices in the Netherlands. Participants 13 046 women aged 16 years or older with a low risk singleton pregnancy. Interventions 60 midwifery practices offered usual care (serial fundal height measurements with clinically indicated ultrasonography). After 3, 7, and 10 months, a third of the practices were randomised to the intervention strategy. As well as receiving usual care, women in the intervention strategy were offered two routine biometry scans at 28-30 and 34-36 weeks' gestation. The same multidisciplinary protocol for detecting and managing fetal growth restriction was used in both strategies. Main outcome measures The primary outcome measure was a composite of severe adverse perinatal outcomes: perinatal death, Apgar score <4, impaired consciousness, asphyxia, seizures, assisted ventilation, septicaemia, meningitis, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, intraventricular haemorrhage, periventricular leucomalacia, or necrotising enterocolitis. Secondary outcomes were two composite measures of severe maternal morbidity, and spontaneous labour and birth. Results Between 1 February 2015 and 29 February 2016, 60 midwifery practices enrolled 13 520 women in mid-pregnancy (mean 22.8 (SD 2.4) weeks' gestation). 13 046 women (intervention n=7067, usual care n=5979) with data based on the national Dutch perinatal registry or hospital records were included in the analyses. Small for gestational age at birth was significantly more often detected in the intervention group than in the usual care group (179 of 556 (32%) v 78 of 407 (19%), P<0.001). The incidence of severe adverse perinatal outcomes was 1.7% (n=118) for the intervention strategy and 1.8% (n=106) for usual care. After adjustment for confounders, the difference between the groups was not significant (odds ratio 0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.70 to 1.20). The intervention strategy showed a higher incidence of induction of labour (1.16, 1.04 to 1.30) and a lower incidence of augmentation of labour (0.78, 0.71 to 0.85). Maternal outcomes and other obstetric interventions did not differ between the strategies. Conclusion In low risk pregnancies, routine ultrasonography in the third trimester along with clinically indicated ultrasonography was associated with higher antenatal detection of small for gestational age fetuses but not with a reduced incidence of severe adverse perinatal outcomes compared with usual care alone. The findings do not support routine ultrasonography in the third trimester for low risk pregnancies. Trial registration Netherlands Trial Register NTR4367.


OBJECTIVE
BRAF V600E is a common oncogenic driver in a variety of primary brain tumors. Dual inhibitor therapy using dabrafenib (a selective oral inhibitor of several mutated forms of BRAF kinase) and trametinib (a reversible inhibitor of MEK1 and MEK2) has been used successfully for treatment of metastatic melanoma, anaplastic thyroid cancer, and other tumor types, but has been reported in only a few patients with primary brain tumors and none with pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma. Here, the authors report on the substantial clinical response and reduction in cutaneous toxicity in a case series of BRAF V600E primary brain cancers treated with dual BRAF/MEK inhibitor therapy.

METHODS
The authors treated 4 BRAF V600E patients, each with a different type of primary brain tumor (pilocytic astrocytoma, papillary craniopharyngioma, ganglioglioma, and pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma) with the combination of dabrafenib and trametinib.

RESULTS
The patients with pilocytic astrocytoma, pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma, and papillary craniopharyngioma experienced near-complete radiographic and complete clinical responses after 8 weeks of therapy. A substantial partial response (by RANO [Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology] criteria) was observed in the patient with ganglioglioma. The patient with craniopharyngioma developed dramatic, diffuse verrucal keratosis within 2 weeks of starting dabrafenib. This completely resolved within 2 weeks of adding trametinib.

CONCLUSIONS
Dual BRAF/MEK inhibitor therapy represents an exciting treatment option for patients with BRAF V600E primary brain tumors. In addition to greater efficacy than single-agent dabrafenib, this combination has the potential to mitigate cutaneous toxicity, one of the most common and concerning BRAF inhibitor-related adverse events.


Introduction: Insufficient physical activity is the fourth leading cause of death globally. Increased physical activity improves the physical and psychological well-being and decreases the incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and cancer. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted among 267 adults from a rural area of Kancheepuram District in Tamil Nadu, South India. Cluster sampling method was used. Clusters were selected randomly. Within each clusters, the simple random sampling method was used to select the individual participants. Data were collected using the World Health Organization's standard Global Physical Activity Questionnaire. Results: Overall prevalence of insufficient physical activity among adults in a rural area of South India was 22.5% (17.88–27.85) (n = 60), and the prevalence of sufficient physical activity was 77.5 (72.2–82.08) (n = 207). Among overall physical activity, major contribution was from work (75%) followed by transport time activity (18%) and the least by leisure-time physical activity, which was only 7%. With increase in age, level of adequate physical activity was decreasing (adjusted odds ratio (0.95 [0.92–0.98], P < 0.001). Insufficient physical activity was not associated with any other studied factors (gender, employment, education, occupation, and marital status). Conclusion: In a rural area of South India, the physical activity was contributed majorly by work domain and least by other domains. Leisure-time physical activity in rural community was poor and to be encouraged in future by community interventions.


In the information society, the role of private sector entities in gathering information for and about users has long been a most critical issue. Therefore, intermediaries have become a main focus of privacy regulations, especially in jurisdictions with a strong tradition of privacy protection such as Europe. In a landmark case, the ECJ ruled that an internet search engine operator is responsible for the processing that it carries out of personal data which appear on web pages published by third parties. The recognition by the European Union of a so called "right to be forgotten" (RTBF) has ignited disgruntled reactions from civil society and legal scholars, especially in the United States. Meanwhile, proposals for the adoption of a similar right have appeared in several jurisdictions, including Brazil, Japan, Korea, and Russia. Supposedly, the right to be forgotten would endanger freedom of expression (FoE) and access to information. Apparently, factoids — defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact" — dominated the recent debate surrounding the right to be forgotten. This paper will discuss and debunk these factoids, review data protection legislation in Europe, and explore the legal and policy implications of the newly emerging right to be forgotten. Finally, the idea that extra-territorial application of the RTBF might unleash a kraken that can break down the Internet will be contextualized within the present political scenario. The extra-territorial application of the RTBF follows in the footsteps of a global move towards data protectionism against the de facto market dominance of US Internet conglomerates. Global blocking governed by a nationality principle — as suggested by CNiL and other EU institutions — would put at rest these protectionist concerns.


The Complete Guide to Polo is the perfect resource for anyone interested in finding out more about this exciting game, especially those new to the sport. It discusses the history and evolution of the sport that we know today and its migration from India to Asia to Europe, and finally the Americas. It describes in detail the equipment used by both horse and rider, and offers advice on choosing one kind of equipment over another. The Complete Guide to Polo covers the horsemanship skills needed to excel in the game, and breaks down the swing into bite-sized chunks for analysis. It looks at basic polo strategy, explains the finer aspects of the rules of the sport, and compares the differences between the US and UK rule books. All in all it offers a great foundation for the beginner or intermediate player, the patron, or the spectator.


In this thesis, we present results from detailed gas phase studies of intrinsic properties of fullerenes (C60) and clusters of fullerenes as probed by slow multiply charged (atomic or cluster) ions in combination with coincidence time-of-flight mass spectrometry. We have investigated the structures, stabilities, and the electron mobilities of multiply charged clusters of fullerenes, (C60)nr+ (r=2-5). We found that the (C60)nr+ cluster ions are weakly bound by van der Waals forces and the electric conductivity is high in strong contrast to the typical characteristics of other van der Waals type clusters and fullerene crystals (fullerite), where the charge is strongly localized. The high charge mobility was rationalized within the framework of a novel classical static over-the-barrier model for two conducting spheres used to describe multiple charge transfer processes between two neighboring fullerenes in the cluster. The model results showed that electron transfer is possible as soon as the C60-C60 system is charged, consistent with earlier experimental results from slow C60q+ + C60 collisions where an electric contact is established (during the very short interaction time of the collision) between the two molecules at distances outside the binding distance in the C60-C60 system. The present electrostatic model was also used to guide the interpretation of the measured kinetic energy releases in the fragmentation of multiply charged dimers, (C60)2r+ → C60r1+ + C60r2+. In like manner, we have measured kinetic energy releases in the break-ups of multiply charged monomer fullerene ions with the aid of fragment-ion momentum spectroscopy. This yielded an excellent platform for investigations of the projectile and target dependencies on various intrinsic features such as the ultimate Coulomb stability limits for C60r+ and C70r+ ions, competition between different reaction pathways, and multi-fragmentation processes. The experimental results for the stability limits for multiply charged fullerenes are discussed in view of recent high level Density Functional Theory calculations of C60r+ → C58(r-1)+ + C2+ transition states and our electrostatic model. The Density Functional Theory results are also used to check the validity and limitations of the classical model regarding the description of fragmentation processes, while a comparison with advanced molecular dynamic calculations of Ar8++Na40 collisions were made for investigating its applicability for charge transfer processes. We found that the present model indeed is useful for describing main features in inherent complex molecular processes at sufficiently low collision velocities. In addition, we propose an extension of the present model to consider two dielectric spheres immersed in a dielectric medium, which might be applied also outside the cluster research field.