Flannery O Connor (1925 1964) ranks among the foremost writers of fiction in American literature. Her short stories, in particular, are considered models of the form. Born in Savannah, O Connor spent most of her life in Georgia and infused her work with southern characters, themes, and landscapes. A devout Catholic, she addressed the mystery of God s grace in everyday life, often amid the grotesque, the shocking, and the violent. In this first full-length biography of the writer, Jean W. Cash draws upon extensive interviews with O Connor s friends, relatives, teachers, and colleagues as well as on the writer s voluminous correspondence to provide a sensitive, balanced portrait of a fascinating woman. As Cash demonstrates, O Connor s sheltered childhood, extraordinary intellect, spiritual certainty, and unique personality including a wry sense of humor combined not only to make her something of an outsider but also to foster her literary genius. As a child, her favorite activities were reading, writing stories, and drawing. Perhaps more unusual was her childhood feat of teaching a rooster to walk backwards. Her passion for exotic fowl later found expression in the peacock symbolism in her fiction. The family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1938, and there O Connor attended high school and college. She left the South in 1945 and entered the graduate writing program at the University of Iowa, where she completed several chapters of her first novel, Wise Blood. She went on to live at the Yaddo writers colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, and she might have spent her most creative years in the North if illness had not interfered. However, lupus the same disease that had killed her father forced her to return to Milledgeville, where she lived and wrote for the remaining fourteen years of her life under the protective care of her mother. The latter chapters of Cash s biography address O Connor s adjustment to her debilitating illness and to a more circumscribed existence. As Cash explains, she learned to accommodate her mother s insular outlook, and in many ways her fiction profited artistically during this period. Her friendships and active correspondence added to the variety and vitality of her life. She also traveled widely on the lecture circuit and reviewed books for a local Catholic publication. Even in her illness and relative isolation in Milledgeville, O Connor continued to live a richly rewarding and creative life. The Author: Jean W. Cash is professor of English at James Madison University."


On the basis of the recent data set published by Thomel [1992], the ammonoid biochronology of the Cenomanian Stage of southeastern France is reevaluated. A data set comprising 138 ammonite species from 40 sections is processed with the unitary association method [Guex, 1977, 1991]. A logical succession of analyses optimizes these data and stresses the major inconsistencies in the original documentation. It leads to the construction of a sequence of 27 unitary associations which are grouped into 7 laterally reproducible association zones. Application of this revised zonation highlights lateral facies changes even in the distal part of the basin as well as some diachronism at the species level (inclusive of some index species). It also suggests a sequence of progressively dampened pulsations in the rates of faunal turnovers during the early and middle Cenomanian, until equilibrium was reached during the late Cenomanian to the early Turonian, without any apparent change at the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary. This trend was also accompanied by significant changes in species diversity, with an abrupt doubling during the late early Cenomanian and a protracted decrease from the late-middle Cenomanian onwards. Finally, this zonation is compared to the current synthetic scales of southeastern France and of the Anglo-Paris Basin.


CONTEXT
Depression and low perceived social support (LPSS) after myocardial infarction (MI) are associated with higher morbidity and mortality, but little is known about whether this excess risk can be reduced through treatment.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether mortality and recurrent infarction are reduced by treatment of depression and LPSS with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), supplemented with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant when indicated, in patients enrolled within 28 days after MI.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS
Randomized clinical trial conducted from October 1996 to April 2001 in 2481 MI patients (1084 women, 1397 men) enrolled from 8 clinical centers. Major or minor depression was diagnosed by modified Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria and severity by the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD); LPSS was determined by the Enhancing Recovery in Coronary Heart Disease Patients (ENRICHD) Social Support Instrument (ESSI). Random allocation was to usual medical care or CBT-based psychosocial intervention.

INTERVENTION
Cognitive behavior therapy was initiated at a median of 17 days after the index MI for a median of 11 individual sessions throughout 6 months, plus group therapy when feasible, with SSRIs for patients scoring higher than 24 on the HRSD or having a less than 50% reduction in Beck Depression Inventory scores after 5 weeks.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Composite primary end point of death or recurrent MI; secondary outcomes included change in HRSD (for depression) or ESSI scores (for LPSS) at 6 months.

RESULTS
Improvement in psychosocial outcomes at 6 months favored treatment: mean (SD) change in HRSD score, -10.1 (7.8) in the depression and psychosocial intervention group vs -8.4 (7.7) in the depression and usual care group (P<.001); mean (SD) change in ESSI score, 5.1 (5.9) in the LPSS and psychosocial intervention group vs 3.4 (6.0) in the LPSS and usual care group (P<.001). After an average follow-up of 29 months, there was no significant difference in event-free survival between usual care (75.9%) and psychosocial intervention (75.8%). There were also no differences in survival between the psychosocial intervention and usual care arms in any of the 3 psychosocial risk groups (depression, LPSS, and depression and LPSS patients).

CONCLUSIONS
The intervention did not increase event-free survival. The intervention improved depression and social isolation, although the relative improvement in the psychosocial intervention group compared with the usual care group was less than expected due to substantial improvement in usual care patients.


Material being deposited in Prydz Bay is glaciogenic, aeolian, and biogenic.
Terrigenous material is entrained by basal glacial erosion and introduced to the
sea via iceberg rafting, meltout, and rollover in the periphery of Prydz Bay
where iceberg drift tracks are determined by ocean currents. It accounts for the
deposition of about 8 Mt a-1
.
Aeolian processes transport debris from coastal oases into the manne
environment in the summer or onto fast sea-ice during the winter. Sea-ice
breaks out and releases the debris into the water column as it melts within a
few hundred kilometres ofthe source, accounting for approximately 1 Mt a-1 of
sediment.
The skeletons of phytoplankton settle to the sea floor directly or via the faecal
pellets of predacious zooplankton. Although production is geographically
uniform, the deposition of the resultant ooze depends on bottom currents
concentrating the fine material in deep water basins ( eg. Amery Depression).
Approximately 0. 7 5 Mt of such material is deposited annually.
The deposition of the remains of calcareous organisms is important in water
depths above 400 m, mainly on the shelf break, due to a shallow Calcite
Compensation Depth and Lysocline. Approximately 0.5 Mt of calcite is
deposited annually.
Sediments are reworked by iceberg turbation between 200 and 720 m water
depth producing iceberg turbate, an admixture of the current sediment supply
and underlying relict tills. Elsewhere, the sediment is a Siliceous Mud and
Ooze (SMO) which broadly represents the contemporary sediment supply.
Sedimentation rates are at the lower end of the range of Antarctic rates:
between 0.08 mm a-1 and 0.16 mm a-1
. Were the sediments sourced from the
Lambert Glacier, sedimentation rates would be an order of magnitude higher, indicating that the source of the glacial constituent is smaller, probably the
glaciers along the coast. As such, sedimentary changes in Prydz Bay during
the Holocene are indicative of small scale climate change rather than any large
scale change required to affect the Lambert Glacier catchment.
The sub-surface sedimentology offshore from the Smsdal Glacier indicates that
a significant marine influence existed in the area during the last glacial
maximum, and the Lambert Glacier was not grounded in the Svenner Channel
during this period. The sub-surface geology of Heidemann Valley in the
Vestfold Hills also suggests that ice extent during the last glacial maximum was
not as extensive as previously thought, with glacial ice not extending as far as
the coast.


Most ideas about the pathogenesis of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) are dominated by a 'consensus model' first articulated around 1962. This model invokes 'Virchow's triad' and attributes thrombogenesis in veins to some combination of 'hypercoagulability', 'stasis' and 'intimal injury'. This arose as a by-product of studies on the mechanisms of haemostasis and bleeding diatheses that were at best only indirectly relevant to thrombosis, and there are reasons for doubting the causal significance of 'hypercoagulability' and 'stasis' in the aetiology of DVT. Proponents of the consensus model make little reference to a substantial literature, mostly historical, that: (a) emphasizes the significance of the venous valve pockets (VVP) and blood rheology in DVT pathogenesis; and (b) describes morphological features specific to venous thrombi that a valid aetiological model must explain. This literature provides the basis for an alternative hypothesis of DVT aetiology, published some 30 years ago, which has been experimentally corroborated and is compatible with recent cell and molecular biological studies of the venous endothelium. We review this alternative hypothesis, considering its potential value for future research on DVT and embolism, and its significance for clinical practice.


Understanding Teachers' Perceptions of Bullying for Developing Teacher Detection and Intervention by Christopher S. Hazeltine MA, New York University, 2006 BS, State University of New York College at Oneonta, 2004 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Educational Leadership for Teaching and Learning Walden University February 2018 Abstract Bullying behaviors can have lasting adverse consequences for teachers, victims, offenders, and bystanders. Teachers are often not prepared with the knowledge required for appropriate interventions. The purpose of this study was to understand teachers' perceptions of bullying in one of the largest urban school districts in the United States.Bullying behaviors can have lasting adverse consequences for teachers, victims, offenders, and bystanders. Teachers are often not prepared with the knowledge required for appropriate interventions. The purpose of this study was to understand teachers' perceptions of bullying in one of the largest urban school districts in the United States. Guided by Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, which holds that individuals impact and should be impacted by various environmental systems around them, the study was focused on teachers' understanding of detection and intervention of bullying in the school setting. A qualitative single case study design was used. Fifteen urban, middle school teachers who reported having experience with bullying behaviors were recruited using purposive sampling. Data were collected through 60-minute, individual, semistructured interviews and a review of documents pertaining to bullying. Data were analyzed employing Braun's and Clarke's thematic analysis. All data were examined for patterns or commonalities across the various sources for emergent themes. The themes that emerged are signs of bullying, difficulty in identifying bullying, confidence in identifying bullying, initial steps to intervene, confidence in intervening, school policies and initiatives, perceptions of regulations and initiatives, and need for education and training. Teachers' perceptions may reflect an understanding of school bullying that involves a range of factors, including individual, school, community, and familial elements. Results of this study may support social change by serving as a basis for professional development for preparing teachers to recognize and intervene in school bullying, thereby allowing students to learn in nonthreatening school environments. Understanding Teachers' Perceptions of Bullying for Developing Teacher Detection and Intervention


Cast iron is widely used due to low price, good machining and good damping capability. However, it has huge friction. In certain automotive components such as cylindrical liner, cast iron is used. The biggest challenge in cylinder liner is obtaining lower friction and wear. The main aim of the paper is to experimentally investigate the characteristics of wear induced by the sliding contact piston ring cylinder liner without lubrication. The modified material of spherical graphite cast iron has been explored. The indenter load, hardness and wear are of main particular interest. The pin on disk tribotester is used to obtain the characteristics of wear volume, wear width and wear depth. The other purpose of this research is to observe the characteristics of cylinder liner wear of spheroidal graphite cast iron from Klaten, Indonesia. The results show that low indenter load causes wear depth and volume. This finding is in a good agreement with published works. In addition, it is found that the material hardness also greatly affects the wear depth, wear volume and wear width.


Timing is a key factor for an earthquake monitoring system and may affect the determination of earthquake location and related studies. In this work, we examined the telemetry delay within the Central Weather Bureau Seismic Network (CWBSN) from 1991 to 2011 and found that the timing systems, at most of the stations in the CWBSN, could contain an approximate 0.2 sec telemetry delay. Based on our results, the telemetry delay was found to cause a 0.2 sec shift in earthquake origin times during the earthquake location process. However, the delay may not cause a significant difference in earthquake location results.


Shape Similarity and Retrieval 2 2 Abstract Although there is a growing need for Content-Based Image Retrieval systems, their use is often hampered by significant computational complexity and their inability to explain to their users the reasoning behind the similarity and retrieval processes they employ. This paper introduces Turning Function Difference (TFD), an efficient novel shape-matching method, which is based on the curvature of the shape outline and is translation, rotation and scale invariant. The method produces information about the correspondence of points belonging to the compared shapes that are used during the explanation process. TFD explains its results through an alignment and a visual animation process that highlights the similarities between the model images and each one of the selected images as perceived by the method. The proposed shape-matching method is used in the G Computer Vision (GCV) library, a single-object image retrieval system that utilizes information about the objects' outlines and explains the reasoning behind the selection of similar images to the user. The implemented system is freely available for download to all interested users.


Abstract This study explores how virtual desktops hosted within a cloud computing environment can be used as a data capture tool to undertake research exploring web-browsing and web-searching behaviour. It details the protocol used to observe the task-orientated web interactions of 105 university and school aged participants within the confines of a research experiment and considers the comparability between data collected remotely via virtual desktops and data collected in a controlled environment. Data collected remotely via virtual desktops is found to be comparable to data collected in the field across a number of key statistics, with remote data collection making recruitment and participation more convenient, whilst potentially reducing response bias. The protocol detailed has broad potential for adaption where there is a need to remotely capture participants' web-use in a cost-effective and non-technical manner. Limitations with the protocol are identified and possibilities for future adaptations are discussed.


Water is the most important resource to all life on our planet. The impact that buildings have on the consumption of this resource throughout their life cycle (planning, construction, operation and deconstruction) but mainly during the operation phase, has resulted in very high and unsustainable consumption patterns. Sustainable development, while a long-term goal, requires that the preservation of natural resources becomes a central point of any project strategy. Water is of vital importance to human life, it should be preserved to ensure its availability for a long period of time. However, little concern has been given to the importance of introducing a selection of more efficient solutions to save water in buildings and consequently increase sustainability in the construction sector. In this context it is on the design phase that the main resource saving water measures should be considered. Research on saving water involves an analysis of quantitative and qualitative measures and their adaptation to different contexts. Nowadays there are systems of voluntary certification of sustainable construction, which can help the design phase to achieve sustainability. This paper discusses a set of measures to reduce water consumption and enable a more efficient use of this resource in residential buildings. The measures presented are focused on user awareness campaigns, systems of rainwater and grey water recycling, the use of more efficient devices and reduction of leaks. The measures are analyzed and compared taking into account the consumption patterns for each device both inside and outside a domestic building and its effective reduction in water consumption


The first Europeans who walked on borderlands soil at the beginning of the sixteenth century found themselves in a region that had been occupied continuously for tens of thousands of years. Except for eastern Texas, the northern extremity of New Spain was generally arid or semi-arid, but occasionally extremely arid. Aridity increased as one moved west from Texas and Coahuila to New Mexico and Chihuahua and then to Arizona and Sonora and the Californias. This aridity not only conditioned man-land relationships but ethnic relationships as well. Although population density in the far north was low, the region housed scores of different Indian groups many of whom spoke languages unintelligible to one another. They covered a wide cultural spectrum, ranging from completely sedentary to primarily nomadic. In terms of initial Spanish contacts the Yaqui, Mayo, Seri, Pueblo, Opata Concho, Eudeve, Apache, Comanche, Tarahuamara, Tepehuan, Tobosos, Pima, Gila, and Yuma were among the most important. Unlike central Mexico where the races came together, confronted one another, and grudgingly worked out the mechanisms for co-existence in a relatively short period of time, the same process in the borderlands consumed the better part of three centuries. It was not simply a matter of lack of interest on the part of the Spanish crown or individual Spanish adventurers, although this factor may have played some role. More to the point, the geographical extension of this area was huge and the Spaniards who initiated the cultural contacts were relatively few in number. When early rumors of fantastic northern wealth proved to be chimeras, initial enthusiasm about the region quickly waned.


Where Is East Asia in STS?Wen-yuan Lin; John Law ABSTRACT The international spread of STS has reshaped the discipline in many ways, pushing it from its original core focus on technoscience in Euro-America to embrace new and wider agendas in other locations. For the practitioners of STS in East Asia, the complex relations between geographical region and forms of knowledge in technoscience are firmly on the agenda, and they have conceptualized these in a range of different and sometimes contradictory ways. The multiplicity of East Asian STS is also reflexively refracted in different assumptions about the character and location of the discipline in relation to other regional versions of STS. In what follows we simplify the complexities of a large and sophisticated body of writing by exploring a double question. On the one hand, we ask how scholars conceptualize the location of East Asian technoscience in the world. And on the other, a related question, we consider how they imagine the location of East Asian STS in relation to other forms of STS. We suggest that it is possible to identify at least six distinct spatially related strategies for understanding knowledge and technoscience in the East Asian literatures. In this article, we characterize these as diffusion, distortion, circulation, localizing, translation, and mistranslation and argue that East Asian STS may be understood as distinctive in the way it collaborates with other forms of STS not only because it identifies and characterizes other and different East Asian empirical contexts, but also because it makes possible the exploration of alternative and situated methodological approaches.


We propose a semi-parametric and dynamic rank factor model for topic modeling, capable of (i) discovering topic prevalence over time, and (ii) learning contemporary multi-scale dependence structures, providing topic and word correlations as a byproduct. The high-dimensional and time-evolving ordinal/rank observations (such as word counts), after an arbitrary monotone transformation, are well accommodated through an underlying dynamic sparse factor model. The framework naturally admits heavy-tailed innovations, capable of inferring abrupt temporal jumps in the importance of topics. Posterior inference is performed through straightforward Gibbs sampling, based on the forward-filtering backward-sampling algorithm. Moreover, an efficient data subsampling scheme is leveraged to speed up inference on massive datasets. The modeling framework is illustrated on two real datasets: the US State of the Union Address and the JSTOR collection from Science.


BACKGROUND--There is mounting clinical evidence that ethanol toxicity to the pancreas is linked with glutathione depletion from oxidative stress but there is not experimental proof that this occurs. AIMS AND METHODS--The effect of acute ethanol ingestion (4 g/kg) on the pancreatic content of reduced (GSH) and oxidised (GSSG) glutathione, malondialdehyde (MDA), and carbonyl proteins were therefore studied in the rat. RESULTS--Ethanol caused a significant reduction in GSH (p < 0.02) and an increase in GSSG (p < 0.005), MDA (p < 0.05), and carbonyl proteins (p < 0.05) in the rat pancreas. The GSH/GSSG ratios were significantly decreased after ethanol, especially in rats pretreated with diethylmaleate (DEM), a GSH blocker. Administration of ethanol after DEM further increased the rate of lipid and protein oxidation. Pretreatment with cyanamide (an inhibitor of aldehyde dehydrogenase) but not with 4-methylpyrazole (an alcohol dehydrogenase inhibitor) caused higher production of GSSG and MDA. CONCLUSIONS--These findings indicate that acute ethanol reduces the pancreatic content of GSH, which seems to be protective against ethanol toxicity, since its depletion is accompanied by increased oxidative damage to cell structures. The further increase of lipid peroxidation and GSSG production in the presence of cyanamide suggests that acetaldehyde might be responsible for the oxidative changes that occur in pancreatic cells after ethanol administration.


Drawn from extensive, new and rich empirical research across the UK, Canada and USA, Queer Spiritual Spaces investigates the contemporary socio-cultural practices of belief, by those who have historically been, and continue to be, excluded or derided by mainstream religions and alternative spiritualities.

As the first monograph to be directly informed by 'queer' subjectivities whilst dealing with divergent spiritualities on an international scale, this book explores the recently emerging innovative spaces and integrative practices of queer spiritualities. Its breadth of coverage and keen critical engagement mean it will serve as a theoretically fertile, comprehensive entry point for any scholar wishing to explore the queer spiritual spaces of the twenty-first century.


We present investigations on the coherence of the emission from the fundamental mode of an AlGaInAs/GaAs quantum-dot microcavity laser. We measure the first-order field-correlation function g(1)(τ) with a Michelson interferometer, from which we determine coherence times of up to 20 ns for the highest pump powers. To fully characterize the coherence properties of the cavity emission, we apply a phenomenological model that connects the first- and second-order correlation functions. Hereby it is possible to overcome the limited sensitivity of the streak camera used for photon-correlation measurements, and thus to extend the accessible excitation-power range for g(2)(τ) down to the thermal regime.


Abstract Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally on the rise worldwide. This trend has made it convenient for governments to "contain" the virus by externalizing it, rather than taking costly but ultimately more effective domestic mitigation measures. We argue that the pervasive use of external border controls in the face of the coronavirus reflects growing anxieties about border security in the modern international system. To a great extent, fears relating to border security have become a resource in domestic politics—a finding that does not bode well for designing and implementing effective public health policy.


Fault domain boundaries are characteristic features of segmented rift systems and have been recreated in analogue models. Two end member conceptual models of fault domain boundaries currently exist. 1) Accommodation zones, which are broad regions of overlapping normal faults and which trend oblique to the rift axis. 2) Transfer zones, which are discrete sub-vertical fault systems that directly link en-echelon normal fault domains. These structures are commonly believed to segment natural rift systems on a variety of scales and impact directly upon the stratigraphic and magmatic evolution of a basin.

The NE Atlantic Margin is a volcanic passive margin which has undergone a series of rift events culminating with continental breakup in the Early Cenozoic. From potential field, seismic reflection, seismic refraction and ocean bottom seismometer datasets, a series of rift-oblique lineaments (loosely referred to as 'transfer zones') have been identified which are commonly inferred to compartmentalise and laterally offset structural highs and depocentres developed within the Mesozoic – Cenozoic rift basins. A range of hypotheses are proposed to explain the origin of these lineaments, including fault domain boundaries, basin-wide strike-slip faults and other, non-tectonic origins. Using well-calibrated 2D and 3D seismic data, this study critically assesses the structural, stratigraphic and magmatic evidence for the rift-oblique lineaments in the Faroe-Shetland Basin and Voring Basin, both located upon the NE Atlantic Margin.

Results from the Faroe-Shetland Basin show structures previously attributed to basin-wide strike-slip deformation can be more simply explained as igneous intrusions, hydrothermal vent complexes, gas chimneys and/or faults that transfer extensional strain between en-echelon rift segments (i.e. fault domain boundaries). There is little evidence to suggest that activity along a series of discrete, basin-wide lineaments controlled Paleocene sedimentation in the basin.

In the northern Voring Basin, a previously identified fault domain boundary (the Rym Accommodation Zone) is analysed to understand if, and how strain is transferred between two adjacent fault domains. The results of this study highlight major differences between the offset rift segments in view of the style of rifting, timing, the loci of faulting, the relative uplift and subsidence histories as well as the impact of variations in the deep crustal structure. Analyses reveal that strain is not fully transferred across the fault domain boundary, with significant variation in beta factors calculated for each rift segment. The structural style within the Rym Accommodation Zone is complex, with the rotation of normal fault orientations, major relay ramp formation and rift perpendicular normal oblique faulting observed, elements that are not present in most existing conceptual models of accommodation zones. The results also imply that transfer zones may be an integral part of a larger accommodation zone rather than an opposite end member as previously believed.

In the final aspect of the study, a second rift-oblique lineament is analysed in the northern Voring Basin: the Gleipne Lineament. Results highlight the close structural relationship between the Gleipne Lineament and underlying basement structure, with the lineament acting as a conduit for sediment to enter the Voring Basin during phases of rifting. Under periods of minimal upper crustal deformation, the lineament exerted a lesser control upon basinal sedimentation. The Rym Accommodation Zone in contrast did not source sediment into the Voring Basin, instead, it compartmentalised the basin during rifting which increased the complexity of the predicted basin fill. Increased Late Paleocene intrusive and extrusive igneous deposits are observed along the strike of both lineaments but are not directly linked to active tectonic deformation.

In conclusion, rift-oblique lineaments are unlikely to be basin-wide features and each appears to be unique in its structural style and geological origin. In turn, this means that different lineaments are likely to have different impacts upon the stratigraphical and magmatic development of a basin. Previous inferences that basin-wide lineaments have controlled sediment entry and transport within rift basins on the NE Atlantic Margin need to be substantiated on a case-by-case basis. The results of this study are further considered and discussed to predict the nature of rift-segmenting structures in the sub-basalt region of the Faroe-Shetland Basin, which is poorly resolved by current 2D and 3D seismic imaging.


In a retrospective study conducted to determine the prevalence of snakebites in villages neighboring a university hospital in southern Sierra Leone, a total of 66 (4.71±2.52) victims reported having been bitten by snakes in 11 out of 14 villages surveyed. More female (2.57±1.38) than male (2.14±1.14) victims were reported, but the difference between the mean number of female and male victims bitten by snakes was not statistically significant (t-test; P>0.05). No fatality was reported during the period studied. Only 3 cases of snakebites were recorded by the hospital during the same period, and nearly all victims reported having sought treatment from herbalists despite the close proximity to the hospital. Herbalists indicated utilizing 18 species of plants as anti-venoms, of which Alchornea cordifolia (Schum & Thonn) Muell. Arg., Gouania longipetala Hemsl., Cnestis ferruginea DC, Rauvolfia vomitoria Afz, Elaeis guineensis Jacq., Microdesmis keayana J. Leonard and Sterculia tragacantha Lindl, have also been recorded as anti-venom plants in other countries. Future studies should examine the extent of snakebite in other parts of the country and assess the socio-economic implications on victims and their families.


The interaction of textual and photographic information in an integrated text/image database environment is being explored. Specifically, our research group has developed an automatic indexing system for captioned pictures of people; the indexing information and other textual information is subsequently used in a content-based image retrieval system. Our approach presents an alternative to traditional face identification systems; it goes beyond a superficial combination of existing text-based and image-based approaches to information retrieval. By understanding the caption accompanying a picture, we can extract information that is useful both for retrieving the picture and for identifying the faces shown. In designing a pictorial database system, two major issues are (1) the amount and type of processing required when inserting new pictures into the database and (2) efficient retrieval schemes for query processing. Our research has focused on developing a computational model for understanding pictures based on accompanying descriptive text. Understanding a picture can be informally defined as the process of identifying relevant people and objects. Several current vision systems employ the idea of top-down control in picture understanding. We carry the notion of top-down control one step further, exploiting not only general context but also picture-specific context. >


Translated by Henrik Rosenmeier, A History of Ancient Philosophy charts the origins and development of ancient philosophical thought. For easy reference, the book is divided chronologically into six main parts. The sections are further divided into philosophers and philosophical movements:

 Pre-Socratic Philosophy, including mythology, the Pythagoreans and Parmenides
 The Great Century of Athens, including the Sophists and Socrates
 Plato, including The Republic, The Symposium and The Timaeus
 Aristotle, including The Physics, The Metaphysics and The Poetics
 Hellenistic Philosophy, including the Sceptics, the Stoics, the Epicureans and Cicero
 Late Antiquity, including Neoplatonism, Origen and St Augustine.

This comprehensive and meticulously documented book is structured to make ancient philosophical thought and ancient thinkers accessible. It contains:

 full references to primary sources
 detailed interpretations of key philosophical passages, including surveys of previous philosophical readings
 an overview of the development of ancient philosophical thought
 discussions of the relationships between philosophers and their ideas
 analyses of key philosophical concepts and ideologies including ontology, epistemology, logic, semantics, moral and political philosophy, theology and aesthetics
 explanations of Greek philosophical terminology.


Most interactive narratives fail to live up to their names. Static interactive narratives (e.g., fixed story graphs) tend to lack a large enough possibility space to allow for a sense of creation and ownership on the part of the player. Dynamic narratives can employ techniques that undercut, or remove entirely, the significance of player interaction. This paper introduces a proposal for a new system that lets the user continuously select from system generated sets of story events to include in an evolving narrative. Though this work is still in its preliminary stages, it could be an advance in interactive storytelling, allowing for a large possibility space of quality stories that truly depend on user input and interaction for their creation.


The purpose of the paper is to report on the effectiveness of macroeconomic
 courses in informing and educating Greek students during an actual economic
 crisis. To achieve this end, we rely upon an introductory macroeconomics
 course that focuses upon the severe Global Financial Crisis that got
 underway in 2008. We conducted a survey for examining how well Greek
 students understood the effects of this deep and prolonged crisis. What is
 innovative about our testing is that we undertook a statistical evaluation
 of responses of two cohorts of students drawn from Spring, 2014 and 2015 -
 as the crisis intensified from one year to the next. To the very best of our
 knowledge, such an exercise had not yet been attempted; namely, of measuring
 students? comprehension of a crisis and comparing the valuations of two
 cohorts of students as this particular crisis grew increasingly severe. Our
 findings suggest that students were confident that they achieved a
 comprehensive understanding of the variables underlying the Greek Economic
 Crisis. As the crisis escalated, students place increased importance on
 their university as a main source of information that influenced and helped
 in forming their perceptions of the economic crisis. However, our findings
 suggest that the university courses did not serve as their primary source of
 their information. In conclusion, the crisis helps to exposed gaps in the
 undergraduate curriculum that could be remedied through bringing in a better
 selection of up-to-date class materials.


We present a framework for solving the strategic problem of assigning transboundary water resources to demand centres under uncertainty in the water exogenous inflow in the reservoirs and other segments of the basin system along the time horizon. The functional to maximise is the probability of satisfying different targets on the stored water and different demands over a set of scenarios. A scenario tree-based scheme is used to represent the Deterministic Equivalent Model (DEM) of the stochastic mixed 0-1 programme with complete recourse. The constraints are modelled by a splitting variable representation via scenarios and, so, a Stochastic Integer Programming (SIP) scheme can be used to exploit the excess probability functional structure as well as the non-anticipativity constraints for the water assignment.


This document describes and discusses the fisheries ontologies developed for use within the Fish Stock Depletion Assessment System (FSDAS). All ontologies are publicly available from the FAO website, from http://www.fao.org/aims/aos/fi. This document is organized as follows. In Chapter 1 we place our work in the context of the WP7 case study. In Chapter 2 we describe previous attempts to create ontologies for the fisheries domain. In Chapter 3 we recap the user requirements presented in our previous deliverable D7.1.1, with special attention to the functionalities needed for modelling, population and maintenance. In Chapter 4 we describe the domains and the data on which the ontologies described here are based. In Chapter 5 we describe the fisheries database where the data used to populate the fisheries ontologies is stored; we also introduce the tool used for population of the ontologies. In Chapter 6 we describe the models of all ontologies produced. In Chapter 7 we discuss some features of the ontologies. In Chapter 8 we summarize the lessons learned in the course of this work. Finally, in Chapter 9 we draw our conclusions. This document also includes four Annexes: the list of naming conventions adopted (Annex I), an essential glossary of fisheries terms (Annex II) a list of acronyms (Annex III) and a report on the conversion of the XML schema for fisheries factsheets into an ontology.


Using a many-body theory, we discuss some fundamental issues of femtomagnetism in magnetic electronic systems. We address the question of how spin may couple to transient optical coherence during time scales shorter than the photoexcitation duration and the characteristic times of interaction with the lattice. We also discuss the role of the competition between magnetic exchange and spin–orbit interactions in the nonthermal temporal evolution regime. Using density matrix equations of motion, we predict a femtosecond collective spin tilt leading to nonthermal magnetization modulation and all-optical ultrafast switching between different metastable magnetic states of (Ga,Mn)As ferromagnets. This spin dynamics is triggered by carrier coherences and by nonthermal populations photoexcited along the {111} equivalent directions of the Brillouin zone, which can be controlled by tuning the laser frequency/intensity and by using a small magnetic field. We present femtosecond magneto-optical spectroscopy experimental results that agree with our predictions. Our results indicate the possibility of reading the (Ga,Mn)As magnetic memory at THz speeds limited only by the pulse duration.


In the past years, multi-core processors and clusters of multi-core processors have emerged to be promising approaches to meet the growing demand for computing performance. They deliver scalable performance, certainly at the costs of tedious and complex parallel programming. Due to a lack of high-level abstractions, developers of parallel applications have to deal with low-level details such as coordinating threads or synchronizing processes. Thus, parallel programming still remains a difficult and error-prone task. In order to shield the programmer from these lowlevel details, algorithmic skeletons have been proposed. They encapsulate typical parallel programming patterns and have emerged to be an efficient and scalable approach to simplifying the development of parallel applications. In this paper, we present a Java binding of our skeleton library Muesli. We point out strengths and weaknesses of Java with respect to parallel and distributed computing. A matrix multiplication benchmark demonstrates that the Java Generics deliver poor performance, thus the Java implementation is unable to compete with the C++ implementation in terms of performance.


From its upcoming first flight, NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS) will represent a gamechanging opportunity for smallsats. On that launch, which will propel the Orion crew vehicle around the moon, the new exploration-class launch vehicle will deploy 13 6U CubeSats into deep-space, where they will continue to a variety of destinations to perform diverse research and demonstrations. Following that first flight, SLS will undergo the first of a series of performance upgrades, increasing its payload capability to low Earth orbit from 70 to 105 metric tons via the addition of a powerful upper stage. With that change to the vehicle's architecture, so too will its secondary payload accommodation for smallsats evolve, with current plans calling for a change from the first-flight limit of 6U to accommodating a range of sizes up to 27U and potentially ESPA-class payloads. This presentation will provide an overview and update on the first launch of SLS and the secondary payloads it will deploy. Currently, flight hardware has been produced for every element of the vehicle, testing of the vehicle's propulsion elements has been ongoing for years, and structural testing of its stages has begun. Major assembly and testing of the Orion Stage Adapter, including the secondary payload accommodations, will be completed this year, and the structure will then be shipped to Kennedy Space Center for integration of the payloads. Progress is being made on those CubeSats, which will include studies of asteroids, Earth, the sun, the moon, and the impacts of radiation on organisms in deep space. They will feature revolutionary innovations for smallsats, including demonstrations of use of a solar sail as propulsion for a rendezvous with an asteroid, and the landing of a CubeSat on the lunar surface. The presentation will also provide an update on progress of the SLS Block 1B configuration that will be used on the rocket's second flight, a discussion of planned secondary payload accommodations on that configuration of the vehicle, and a look at the current state of planning of upcoming missions and what that could mean for deep-space smallsat flight opportunities. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20170008079 2017-10-01T09:51:58+00:00Z


STUDENTS CAN LEARN GREAT LESSONS when placed in decision-making roles. Simulating a Senate confirmation hearing can give students a glimpse of how government works and a chance to evaluate historical figures and issues. Any simulation, however, is an imperfect imitation of a real event. Having to make a decision based on incomplete information reveals some of the limits of our knowledge and wisdom. Middle school students wrestle with these challenges, and several others, in the following simulation. A Qualified Choice Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States." The news media often closely cover debates in the Senate over the nomination of Supreme Court justices, cabinet secretaries, and heads of government institutions such as the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Sometimes these hearings become heated debates, but historically, the Senate usually approves a president's choice for an appointment. If such senate hearings are ongoing during the school year, this lesson links to current events as well as to civics and history. An ambassador is one who lives in a foreign country while officially representing his or her home nation. The appointment of ambassadors is usually not contested greatly in the Senate. Ambassadors are routinely confirmed without much discussion, but in this activity, there may be some debate among students because they receive, in the simulation, information about the candidate that could prove to be controversial. In this simulation, students must ask themselves, * What should be the qualifications of an ambassador? * Does the fictitious nominee, Karl B. Fennin, meet these qualifications? Why or why not? * What else would I like to know about Mr. Fennin and his history of public service before deciding whether he is qualified to be an ambassador to France? Classroom Procedures 1. Tell students that you want them to learn about the process of appointing and confirming an ambassador to a foreign country, for example, France. 2. Select two students to write down ideas on the front board that their fellow students state about the possible qualifications of the job of ambassador. Give the whole class about five minutes to brainstorm qualifications, then have students discuss the resulting list. Do the students think it would be important for an ambassador to * speak the language of the host nation? * be tolerant of other ethnic groups and cultures? * be skilled at diplomacy and negotiation? * be loyal to his home country? * be candid and open? (Or be demure and circumspect?) * be known for evenhandedness and a cool temper? (Or be known as loud and aggressive?) 3. Divide the class into groups of five students each. Pass out Handout 1 about ambassadorial nominee Karl B. Fennin, and ask students to silently read it. The handout includes quotes from Mr. Fennin's writings, and it mentions a few of his activities. One might think, from reading these selections, that Mr. Fennin might be a rather narrow-minded and eccentric person. 4. Have the groups of students (i.e., the senators) develop questions to ask this ambassadorial candidate based on their list of qualifications and what they have now read about the nominee in the handout. 5. The students now act as members of the Senate subcommittee--they interview the nominee, "Karl B. Fennin," as played by the teacher. In this role, the teacher should answer questions in the spirit of Benjamin Franklin (to the best of your ability), without revealing the actual source of this persona. Each group takes turns asking a prepared question, until all of them have been asked. …


BACKGROUND
Protocols for evaluating cardiovascular fitness for wheelchair-dependent persons are still scarcely accessible due to the requirements such as specialized equipment and expertise in community or public healthcare settings. This study aimed to assess the potential of secondary utilization of musculoskeletal fitness components for estimating peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) in paraplegic men.

METHODS
Thirty-three paraplegic men (T1-L3) aged 23-63 years underwent anthropometry (height, weight and calculated body mass index and body surface area) and upper-body musculoskeletal fitness tests (back-scratch, arm-curls and handgrip strength tests) and performed a graded exercise test with an arm-crank ergometer on two non-consecutive days. To determine the relationship between VO2peak and various kinanthropometric parameters and derive a regression model that predicts the VO2peak, uni- and multivariate analyses were conducted, respectively.

RESULTS
Maximal numbers of arm curls on either arm (r=0.486, P=0.004) and the back-scratch distance (r=0.426, P=0.013) were moderately correlated with VO2peak. Moreover, among the indices of handgrip strength, average handgrip strength of both hands divided by the body surface area showed a strong correlation coefficient with VO2peak (r=0.674, P<0.001). Multivariate linear regression analysis indicated that muscular endurance and strength were the main predictors for estimating VO2peak. Considering shoulder flexibility, age, and anthropometric variables, the regression model showed the highest adjusted R2 of 0.811 and lowest standard error of estimate of 3.54 mL·kg-1·min-1 (P<0.001). The Bland-Altman plots indicated good agreement between actual and estimated VO2peak. The mean absolute prediction error was 11.9%.

CONCLUSIONS
Musculoskeletal fitness and anthropometric components may be predictive factors of a new conceptual modality estimating concomitant cardiorespiratory fitness beyond their traditional health-related indications.


This paper discusses the case for expanding active labor market policy in recession. We find that there is reasonable case for relying more heavily on certain kinds of programs. The argument is tied to the varying size of the lock-in effect in boom and recession. If programs with relatively large lock-in effects should ever be used, they should be used in a downturn. The reason is simply that the cost of forgoing search time is lower in recession. We also provide new evidence on the relative effectiveness of different kinds of programs over the business cycle. In particular we compare an on-the-job training scheme with (traditional) labor market training. We find that labor market training is relatively more effective in recession. This result is consistent with our priors since labor market training features relative large lock-in effects.


Multiple biases characterize face recognition behavior in adults. For example, middle-aged adults have superior recognition for similarly aged adult faces compared to those of older adults or children (i.e., own-age bias, OAB) and for faces of individuals from within their own gender (i.e., own-gender bias, OGB). However, the developmental trajectories of these biases and the influences shaping them are largely unknown. A recent model (Scherf et al., 2012) predicts that adolescence, and puberty in particular, may be a unique developmental period in which critical transformations in face recognition behavior (e.g., these biases) emerge. The present study examined how the OAB and OGB develop over the course of adolescence by dissociating the relative effects of age and puberty. To do so, we tested age-matched adolescents in early and later stages of puberty, as well as prepubescent children (6-8) and young adults (18-25 years) in an old/new face recognition paradigm. Participants completed 4 separate blocks, including male and female faces from developmental groups matching participant groups (6-8, 11-14 early puberty, 11-14 late puberty, 18-25; see figure 1). Adults were the only group to exhibit an OAB. All three developmental groups were more accurate at recognizing adult faces, not faces from their own peer age group. In terms of gender biases (see figure 2), only adult males evinced an OGB (e.g., more accurate at recognizing own-gender faces). Children were more accurate at recognizing female compared to male faces, regardless of their own gender. Adolescents in early puberty did not exhibit any clear pattern of gender biases, whereas age-matched adolescents in later puberty showed an emerging OGB. These results are consistent with the notion that experiences with caregivers in childhood shape early face recognition biases, and that puberty uniquely influences the salience of gender, but not age, in face recognition behavior during adolescent development. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Abstract Commodity trading firms occupy a central position in global supply chains and their activities have been associated with financial instability, social upheaval and manifold forms of ecological devastation. This paper examines these companies in the context of debates regarding corporate financialization. We find that since the 2003–2011 commodity boom, trading firms have become less financialized in terms of the source of their profits as they have shifted away from financial activities. However, they have become more financialized in terms of the destination of profits, with dividend and share repurchase commitments reaching new heights after 2015. In view of this finding, we inquire into whether trading firms' growing commitment to shareholder payouts will encourage them to continue to prioritize short-term returns, or whether instead these firms' linkages to financial markets will lend clout to financial activists concerned by the long-term environmental and social consequences of their operations. Ultimately, we find several sources of commodity trader resilience which insulate them from shareholder resolutions and divestment campaigns aimed at curbing ecological destruction and human rights abuses in their supply chains. We accordingly suggest that pressures from activist investors must be complemented with more wide-ranging efforts to defend living systems across the planet.


PurposeWorking-from-home (WFH) practice has been adopted by many companies of a variety of industries in a diverse manner; however, it is not until the recent outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic WFH gains worldwide popularity. With so many different views out there and based on work–family balance theory, this study aims to find out the factors which affect peoples' WFH effectiveness and whether they want the extended WFH practice when the pandemic crisis is over.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopted an online survey approach by posting questionnaires on the university website and different social media channels to collect views from full-time Hong Kong workers who have had WFH experience during the coronavirus outbreak. A total of 1,976 effective responses were collected for the data analysis.FindingsThe findings of this study indicate that WFH effectiveness is improved by personal and family well-being but reduced by environmental and resource constraints. When workers are experiencing higher WFH effectiveness, they have a higher preference for WFH even after the pandemic; the female workers preferred WFH twice per week, while the male workers more often preferred WFH once per week. Finally, workers from the management and the self-employed levels demonstrated a lower preference for WFH, compared to the front-line and middle-grade workers.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils to provide a timely reflection on workers' post-pandemic WFH preference, the factors affecting their WFH effectiveness and the demographic differences inducing to the differentiated preferences.


The aim of this study was to investigate if physiotherapists had knowledge and skills in applying Bobath-based therapy (BB), also referred to as Neurodevelopmental Treatment, in the care of stroke patients and if they generally used the therapy in daily practice. This is because of the important emphasis placed on documenting the extent of the therapy given to the client groups compared in outcome studies measuring the efficacy of therapeutic interventions. The study took place as an intervention check for a large outcome study measuring the effects of BB therapy. BB therapy had been implemented on six wards, whereas six other wards did not use this approach. The physiotherapist's (n=38) knowledge and skills in making decisions about applying the BB principles in all wards was measured in two steps. In step 1, the physiotherapists received a questionnaire focusing on their physiotherapy strategy, and Bobath education. In step 2, they received a case vignette describing a stroke patient and questions concerning the content of the physiotherapy provided to this patient. An expert panel judged the therapists' responses to the questions of both steps. Of the physiotherapists working in the BB wards, 14 (74%) therapists generally used BB principles, whereas four (21%) therapists did not (one was uncertain). Of the physiotherapists working in the non-BB wards (n=19), three (16%) did use BB therapy whereas 10 (52%) therapists did not use the therapy (six responses were missing). The study showed that within the BB wards, the physiotherapists had followed sufficient BB education, as judged by a panel of experts, and demonstrated the knowledge and skills in applying the BB therapy, whereas in the other wards they did not. BB wards could therefore participate in the experimental group of the study measuring the effects of the Bobath therapy, and the non-BB wards could serve as proper control wards.


In this paper, we propose a multi-timescale replay (MTR) buffer for improving continual learning in RL agents faced with environments that are changing continuously over time at timescales that are unknown to the agent. The basic MTR buffer comprises a cascade of sub-buffers that accumulate experiences at different timescales, enabling the agent to improve the trade-off between adaptation to new data and retention of old knowledge. We also combine the MTR framework with invariant risk minimization, with the idea of encouraging the agent to learn a policy that is robust across the various environments it encounters over time. The MTR methods are evaluated in three different continual learning settings on two continuous control tasks and, in many cases, show improvement over the baselines.


Cloud computing providers' and customers' services are not only exposed to existing security risks, but, due to multi-tenancy, outsourcing the application and data, and virtualization, they are exposed to the emergent, as well. Therefore, both the cloud providers and customers must establish information security system and trustworthiness each other, as well as end users. In this paper we analyze main international and industrial standards targeting information security and their conformity with cloud computing security challenges. We evaluate that almost all main cloud service providers (CSPs) are ISO 27001:2005 certified, at minimum. As a result, we propose an extension to the ISO 27001:2005 standard with new control objective about virtualization, to retain generic, regardless of company's type, size and nature, that is, to be applicable for cloud systems, as well, where virtualization is its baseline. We also define a quantitative metric and evaluate the importance factor of ISO 27001:2005 control objectives if customer services are hosted on-premise or in cloud. The conclusion is that obtaining the ISO 27001:2005 certificate (or if already obtained) will further improve CSP and CC information security systems, and introduce mutual trust in cloud services but will not cover all relevant issues. In this paper we also continue our efforts in business continuity detriments cloud computing produces, and propose some solutions that mitigate the risks.


A some of you might have read in the March issue, next month we are launching an updated and redesigned version of BioTechniques. Our redesign has been months in the making, and we are very proud of the way that it has come together. But as with any major change, there were hard decisions that had to be made. So, after this month, we will be saying goodbye to two of our regular news features— the "Scientist Profile" and the "Troubleshooting Forum." Although these articles have graced the pages of BioTechniques for a decade, it is time to make some changes in our format as we begin a new era. The "Scientist Profile" has been in print for nearly 11 years now. In that time, profiles of more than 100 leaders and visionaries in the scientific community have been published in BioTechniques. From the outset, the idea behind the profile was a simple one: Provide a window into the lives of established scientists from around the globe so that others can learn more about how and why they do what they do. Over the years, different people have taken a swing at writing our profiles, and the style of the article has changed too. In the beginning, Lynn Lederman provided narratives on researchers working in various fields. Lynn interviewed a wide range of people, providing glimpses into both the personal histories and important discoveries of some amazing scientists. In 2009, associate editor Kristie Nybo picked up the torch, and she has been writing our profiles ever since. Kristie's interviews have asked probing questions, allowing these wonderful men and women to explain, in their own words, what led to a successful life in science. For me, the profile has always been an interesting and illuminating read. Getting a "behindthe-scenes" glimpse into the scientific process encouraged me when I was a researcher and has continued to enthrall me through the years. And what more can you ask from any column? Informational and entertaining, we suspect the profile has been an inspiration for many researchers throughout the years. The "Troubleshooting Forum" column is somewhat younger than the "Scientist Profile," but has traditionally ranked highly in our reader surveys. The genesis of this column came when the editors realized there were wonderfully informative threads of questions and answers on our molecular biology forum pages (http://molecularbiology.forums.biotechniques.com/) that deserved to be seen by an even wider audience. When someone in a lab has a perplexing question or a challenging experiment and needs help, the community is able to provide valuable explanations and suggestions. And if one person is asking a question, there are very likely many others out there with the same problem. Both the questions and the answers often provide unique insights and possible solutions for scientists to explore. Over the years, the "Troubleshooting Forum" has addressed questions in fields ranging from genomics to genetics and proteomics to biophysics. No topic has been left out. Kristie Nybo has also been compiling this column from forum posts, but the information and the direction of each article truly comes from you, the readers. This is your column—edited by the staff but written by the BioTechniques audience. And this is what made "Troubleshooting Forum" so unique—it was a "crowdsourced" feature column before crowd-sourced efforts became popular. In the end, we are not completely saying goodbye to either of these columns—they will appear again later, albeit in a slightly different form online. One realization we came to during the redesign effort was that these two print columns should be online to take advantage of their potential. Imagine a profile with the addition of a podcast, an image gallery, or links to a collection of important articles. How much more insight could be gained by taking advantage of the additional possibilities offered through the web? And when it comes to the "Troubleshooting Forum," providing links on the web page to other topics or methods related to the question at hand could spur both discussion and advances for our readers. These articles should be online. I do want to thank everyone who has contributed to these articles in print over the past decade. From the writers and the editors who worked on the main text, to the scientists who so generously gave of their time for an interview or two, to the community of methods developers and tinkerers who answered the questions posed in our molecular biology forums—everyone had a little hand in making these features successful, something I hope will continue as we move into the next era at BioTechniques.


This thesis is dedicated to femtosecond combs as a tool for optical frequency metrology and as an integral part of an optical clock. After an overview of optical frequency measurement techniques, the design of two frequency combs based on mode-locked femtosecond lasers as they were at the beginning of my project is described. The first comb is based on an Er:fibre laser operating at a central wavelength of 1550 nm with a repetition rate of 100 MHz. The second is a Ti:sapphire-laser-based comb operating at a central wavelength of 810 nm with a repetition rate of 87 MHz. Improvements to the original design of the Ti:sapphire comb are detailed in the next chapter. A novel f -to-2f self-referencing scheme based on a pair of Wollaston prisms and employing a PPKTP crystal for SHG results in up to 20 dB enhancement of the signal to noise ratio in the carrier-envelope offset frequency beat signal f0 and in up to 15 dB lower phase noise in the f0 beat signal compared to a Michelson interferometer based system. Next, the factors influencing the stability and accuracy of the microwave reference signal and the performance of two synthesisers used for the stabilisation of the frequency combs were investigated. It is shown that stability of the maser reference signal is reduced by the distribution system by factor of 1.5. A fractional frequency change of 4.1(0.7) × 10 (K/h) was measured for the better of the two synthesisers (an IFR 2023A) indicating that for accurate frequency measurements the synthesiser signal should be monitored to enable systematic frequency corrections to be made. Finally, an absolute frequency measurement of the electric quadrupole clock transition in a frequency standard based on a single Yb trapped ion is described. The result f = 688 358 979 309 310 ± 9 Hz agrees with an independent measurement made by the PTB group within the uncertainty of the measurements.


Walter Kalaidjian. American Culture Between the Wars: Revisionary Modernism and Postmodern Critique. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. xvi + 316 pp. $55.00 cloth; $18.50 paper.The avant-garde, popular, and working-class texts that Walter Kalaidjian discusses in his new work attempt to revise episodes in American culture that together constitute what he calls "a neglected cultural history" (8). Concentrating on such supposedly marginal moments in American culture as the Russian Revolution, the Harlem renaissance, the radical experimentations of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, and the popular interventions of feminism, Kalaidjian dexterously blurs the boundaries between high and low culture, politics and aesthetics, and academicism and popular forms. Kalaidjian's book is divided into five chapters, each of which is, in turn, nicely divided into subsections dealing with a more specific aspect of the theme that the chapter treats. The first chapter, entitled "Revisionary Modernism," discusses the role of transnationalism during the interwar years as a key episode in the shaping of American culture. Within the chapter, Kalaidjian pays particular attention to the influence of the Russian avant-gardes in the formation of a strong Marxist-socialist consciousness in America. The second chapter explores how various "subgroups." like the Chicago John Reed Club, the New Negro movement, and the politicized aesthetics of Diego Rivera, Hugo Gellert, and Louis Lozowick, among others, "signaled a communicative difference from the dominant ideological signs of American commodity culture" (61). The section on Diego Rivera is perhaps the best part of the whole book. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss feminist concerns and radical movements in poetry respectively. Kalaidjian places these two important contemporary movements vis-a-vis the economic, political, and social concerns that he claims inform these movements. The work of authors who tend to reclaim the mode of "cultural critique," whose political edge, Kalaidjian claims, "cuts through the semiosis of everyday life and goes to the heart of postmodern spectacle," is the concern of chapter 5. This chapter criticizes the postmodern emphasis on the disappearance of the "real" (263).Kalaidjian's purpose is not, however, simply to subvert the traditional, learned critical paradigm. His text shows that in High Modernism, Eliot, Pound, and Stevens, for instance, cohabited with the Dynamo group of poets. Kalaidjian's conflation of such apparently dissimilar poetic modes is not aimed at privileging one over the other. He argues, correctly I believe, that a thorough understanding of the period should take into account both discourses, since frequently the existence of one can throw light onto the other. One commonplace of High Modernist criticism, for instance, is to focus on the ahistorical stance most of the canonical poets adopted. By centering their discursive practices on transcendental concerns, poets like Eliot and Stevens ignored the urgent economic conditions affecting the country. This kind of anti-High Modernist discourse proves futile because it does not move further from the figures it supposedly attacks. Anti-Eliot discourse is, as it were, still focused on Eliot. Kalaidjian pushes beyond this sterile and circular critical move and cleverly shows, for example, how Ben Mait recasts Hart Crane's mythic bridge into a more politicized language to accommodate The Bridge to the discourse of political criticism. Kalaidjian argues that this kind of poetry arose from the period's deep dissatisfaction with American culture's emphasis on an increasingly automated labor process. Thus the critical veneration of such ahistorical writers as Eliot and Pound parallels the fate of society where workers "found themselves increasingly alienated from ever more automated systems of production, engineered and administered by a new class of technological experts" (154). Sol Funaroff, similarly, in "What the Thunder Said: A Fire Sermon," rearticulates Eliot's transcendental and historically unspecific resolution of social disillusion by turning it into a "materialistic vision of international class revolt, linking the unrest of pre-revolutionary Russia to depression era America" (154). …


Deep sea sediments in the Weddell Sea and Scotia Sea collectively record ca. 147 million years of interaction between ocean bottom circulation and increased sediment supply before, and after, the first Antarctic ice sheets advanced to the shelf edge. Seismic stratigraphy is a useful tool to decipher past and present dynamics of the Antarctic ice sheets, but existing Weddell Sea – Scotia Sea stratigraphic correlations only use sections of seismic reflection profiles and trace reflectors locally. In order to map the regional stratigraphy, we constructed the first continuous, ca. 5000 km long, seismic transect from 25 multichannel seismic reflection profiles in the Antarctic Seismic Data Library System. The transect starts in the south-eastern Weddell Sea, crosses the Powell Basin near the Antarctic Peninsula, and ends in the western Scotia Sea. We mapped six major, continuous, high amplitude reflectors and interpret these unconformities to represent depositional processes related to pre-glacial, transitional and glacial regimes. Basement ages from published regional magnetic anomaly data, and ODP boreholes in the Weddell Sea and Antarctic Peninsula, provided sparse chrono-stratigraphic control. Our results are consistent with stratigraphic models in the Scotia Sea, but lower horizons in the south-eastern Weddell Sea are re-interpreted. Interestingly reflector WS-4, interpreted to represent the transition from pre-glacial to glacial regime, correlates to the Eocene/Oligocene boundary in the south-eastern Weddell Sea (34 Ma, chron C13), but to the middle to late Miocene (12.6 Ma, chron C5A) near the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Sea. Regional age variation of a reflector indicates the extent and duration of the depositional process and as such, our model suggests sediment supply to the deep Weddell Sea increased from east to west, in response to the advancement of the East Antarctic ice sheet, followed by the West Antarctic ice sheet and late Miocene Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet development.


Presentation delivered at the 44th International Congress of the World Association for the History of Veterinary Medicine held from the 27-29 of February 2020 at The Farm Inn Hotel and Conference Centre, Pretoria, South Africa


Pathologic differentiation of tissue of origin in tumors found in the lung can be challenging, with differentiation of mesothelioma and lung adenocarcinoma emblematic of this problem. Indeed, proper classification is essential for determination of treatment regimen for these diseases, making accurate and early diagnosis critical. Here, we investigate the potential of epigenetic profiles of lung adenocarcinoma, mesothelioma, and nonmalignant pulmonary tissues (n = 285) as differentiation markers in an analysis of DNA methylation at 1413 autosomal CpG loci associated with 773 cancer-related genes. Using an unsupervised recursively partitioned mixture modeling technique for all samples, the derived methylation profile classes were significantly associated with sample type (P < 0.0001). In a similar analysis restricted to tumors, methylation profile classes significantly predicted tumor type (P < 0.0001). Random forests classification of CpG methylation of tumors--which splits the data into training and test sets--accurately differentiated mesothelioma from lung adenocarcinoma over 99% of the time (P < 0.0001). In a locus-by-locus comparison of CpG methylation between tumor types, 1266 CpG loci had significantly different methylation between tumors following correction for multiple comparisons (Q < 0.05); 61% had higher methylation in adenocarcinoma. Using the CpG loci with significant differential methylation in a pathway analysis revealed significant enrichment of methylated gene-loci in Cell Cycle Regulation, DNA Damage Response, PTEN Signaling, and Apoptosis Signaling pathways in lung adenocarcinoma when compared with mesothelioma. Methylation profile-based differentiation of lung adenocarcinoma and mesothelioma is highly accurate, informs on the distinct etiologies of these diseases, and holds promise for clinical application.


The recent growth in wireless communications presents a new challenge to multimedia communications. Digital image transmission is a very common form of multimedia communication. Due to limited bandwidth and broadcast nature of the wireless medium, it is necessary to compress and encrypt images before they are sent. On the other hand, it is important to efficiently utilize the limited energy in wireless devices. In a wireless device, two major sources of energy consumption are energy used for computation and energy used for transmission. Computation energy can be reduced by minimizing the time spent on compression and encryption. Transmission energy can be reduced by sending a smaller image file that is obtained by compressing the original highest quality image. Image quality is often sacrificed in the compression process. Therefore, users should have the flexibility to control the image quality to determine whether such a tradeoff is acceptable. It is also desirable for users to have control over image quality in different areas of the image so that less important areas can be compressed more, while retaining the details in important areas. To reduce computations for encryption, a partial encryption scheme can be employed to encrypt only the critical parts of an image file, without sacrificing security. This thesis proposes a scalable and secure image representation scheme that allows users to select different image quality and security levels. The binary space partitioning (BSP) tree presentation is selected because this representation allows convenient compression and scalable encryption. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is chosen as the encryption algorithm because it is fast and secure. Our experimental result shows that our new tree construction method and our pruning formula reduces execution time, hence computation energy, by about 90%. Our image quality prediction model accurately predicts image quality to within 23dB of the actual image PSNR.


INTRODUCTION
During the metabolic processes of malignant wounds, bacteria produce a large amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are responsible for malodors and may have a major impact on the patient's quality of life with a risk of isolation.

OBJECTIVE
A translational study was conducted on 32 malignant breast wounds by combining the identification of bacterial strains present on wounds, the identification of VOCs produced by these bacterial strains, and sensory evaluation to assess odor intensity and quality of odorous bacteria.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Thirty-two patients with malignant breast cancer wounds > 10 cm2 at various stages of the disease (curative or palliative) were included in the protocol. Volatile organic compounds were collected from primary dressings by headspace solid-phase microextraction and then analyzed by gas chromatography separation coupled with a mass spectrometer detector analysis. Microbiological samplings were taken and analyzed on agar plates. The odors of selected bacteria were assessed by a panel of staff members.

RESULTS
Proteus mirabilis and Fusobacterium necrophorum seem to produce the strongest and most typical malignant wound odor. The VOCs were analyzed and dimethyl disulfide, dimethyl trisulfide, phenol, indole, and 3-methylbutanal were found to be produced by bacteria generating the most typical wound odor.

CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests the bacteria present in wounds may be responsible for odors. In addition, these findings could pave the way to engineer new types of dressings and to develop an evaluation method to assess their efficiency both quantitatively and qualitatively as well as improve quality of palliative care and comfort for women with malignant wounds.


This paper develops a two-sector, two-country model, where firms in a differentiated products sector choose between exporting and multinational expansion as alternative modes of foreign market penetration, based on a trade-off between proximity and concentration advantages. The differentiated sector is characterized by multi-stage production, with increasing returns at the corporate level associated with some activity such as R&D, scale economies at the plant level, and a variable transport cost that rises with distance. A pure multinational equilibrium, where two-way horizontal expansion across borders completely supplants two-way trade in differentiated products, is possible even in the absence of factor proportion differences. It is more likely the greater are transport costs relative to fixed plant costs, and the greater are increasing returns at the corporate level relative to the plant level. The model also establishes conditions for a mixed equilibrium, in which national and multinational firms coexist.


It is in the context of the increasing use and popularity within the education sector of the social media platform Twitter, and acknowledgement that research into the use of social media is generally under developed (Antheunis et al, 2013), that a study was made of educational research participants' perspectives in relation to the experience of being engaged through Twitter to participate in research activity. Drawing on the data collected through 167 online survey responses completed by educational professionals, the participant experience is identified to relate to three inter-related themes - subject matter, curiosity and the influence which stems from the way the Twitter platform operates. Identified are a number of considerations for future education research practice which makes use of the Twitter platform.


There are hundreds of different enteric microorganisms that are known to infect humans. In recent years, we have seen an increased reliance on surface water and water recharge or reuse, which are perceived as a more vulnerable source than groundwater in terms of the microbial quality of water. Bacteriophages have been extensively researched as water quality indicators. Antibiotic resistance analysis (ARA) of fecal coliforms and fecal streptococci has been used to determine sources of fecal pollution in natural water. Microbial monitoring is a cornerstone of any watershed quality assessment. Most raw drinking water sources are susceptible to significant water quality changes as stresses are placed on the surrounding environment due to natural, accidental, or intentional contaminations. Groundwater supplies are derived primarily from wells. Water from shallow wells or "hand-dug" wells is not considered groundwater because it is usually under the influence of surface water via runoff and infiltration and hence can have many of the characteristics of surface water. There are several types of physical methods for the treatment and/or disinfection of water, such as reverse osmosis, distillation, and use of UV light. Chlorination is probably the oldest and most widely used form of drinking water disinfection. It has several advantages which make it appealing and have bolstered its popularity. Advanced oxidation processes are processes for producing OH radicals for the oxidation of organic and inorganic impurities in water. Recently, biological treatment has been driven by the concern of increased biodegradable organic matter (BOM) in ozonated waters.


While exergy analysis is by now commonly used on the system level to identify losses and recommend ways for reducing them, its use on the "intrinsic", field, level where the exergy of a process is calculated as a function of location and time, is still developing. Intrinsic exergy analysis is a most useful method for identifying and understanding the specific reasons for exergy losses in a process, and in devising methods for their reduction. A good example, which is the sample case of this paper, is the analysis of exergy losses in combustion processes, which are known to be responsible for around 30 % of the fuel potential to produce power. In this paper we develop a methodology for intrinsic exergy analysis and for its use for process improvement, using the case of combustion of a n-heptane droplet as example. The time-dependent continuity, energy and species conservation equations together with the reaction kinetics, state equations, and temperature and concentration dependent transport properties, are solved numerically to determine the temperature and concentrations fields. These results are then used to calculate the rates of local entropy generation to determine the spatial and temporal irreversibilities produced during the combustion process, as well as the exergy efficiency. The results obtained indicate, among other things, that after ignition has taken place, the exergy loss (or entropy generation) component most responsible for the overall exergy loss is the chemical entropy, having the same order of magnitude as the rest of the entropy generation terms combined for all the cases evaluated. The computed exergy efficiency for the base case is 68.4%, in agreement with previous droplet combustion exergy studies. To develop guidelines for the process improvement, the sensitivity of the second law efficiency to the initial gas temperature (Tgi ), reaction rate (ω), and combustion duration were analyzed. The results generated several promising improvement avenues.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


Maturity models are helpful business tools that refine and develop the way organizations conduct their businesses and benchmark their maturity status against a scale or with industry peers. They serve to better prioritize the actions for improvement and control the progress in reaching the target maturity stage. To the best of our knowledge, very few survey papers are available on data management maturity models in academia, from which we studied their data and findings. In this context, our paper summarizes and organizes a variety of research that is related to or encompasses the data management field. Consequently, this paper is of interest both for scientists as well as practitioners from different industries and fields as it aims to highlight the importance of maturity models in the field of data management. From an academic perspective, our survey delivers a thorough literature review as it investigates maturity models that are either for or related to data management. Moreover, it offers a comparative analysis in terms of the main concepts and features associated with these models through a developed metamodel. This proposed framework describes the functional coverage of data management maturity models where models can be compared and evaluated based on their approaches to identify and categorize the data management related functions. As a result, this metamodel can serve as a tool for researchers who can exploit this framework to position future maturity models.


Policing has become a topic of intense public scrutiny and protest in the aftermath of several recent highly questionable and violent police–citizen encounters including the acts of police violence against George Floyd in Minneapolis (MN), Breonna Taylor in Louisville (KY), and Jacob Blake in Kenosha (WI). These encounters have led to large-scale street protests, the legitimization of the Black Lives Matter movement, and what many commentators perceive as a "national reckoning" on the issue of racial justice. The focus of our research is on police crime—a particular form of police misconduct that involves the criminal arrest of police officers. Our work is designed to identify cases in which law enforcement officers have been arrested for any type of criminal offense(s). One area of police scholarship that has thus far been neglected is the relationship between citizen race and the perpetration of police crime. We are aware of no existing empirical studies on whether, and if so, to what degree, citizen race is associated with crimes committed by police officers. The public has been forced to re-examine and question the role and legitimacy of police against the backdrop of protests and concerns about how police may contribute to racial injustice and discrimination. The broadest research issue involved an examination of the association between police crime and the race of the victim. Our goal was to identify and examine any racial disparities of police crime overall and within specific types of police crime. The analyses compared police crimes committed against Black victims to all other police crimes identified within the dataset. More specifically, we examined the degree to which police crimes perpetrated against Black victims tend to be more violent than those perpetrated against non-Black victims. CHAID regression models were utilized to explore any multivariate relationships between race and police crime. Data were derived from published news articles using the Google News search engine and its Google Alerts email update service. Our database currently includes information on more than 18,700 cases of police crime from years 2005–2021. The study utilized data derived from this larger project. The study examined those cases of police crime in which we have identified a victim and recorded information on the race of the victim. The dataset for this study includes information on 865 criminal arrest cases of sworn nonfederal law enforcement officers within the United States from 2005 through 2014.


Digital discrimination is a form of discrimination whereby users are automatically treated unfairly, unethically or just differently based on their personal data by a machine learning (ML) system. Examples of digital discrimination include low-income neighbourhood's targeted with high-interest loans or low credit scores, and women being undervalued by 21% in online marketing. Recently, different techniques and tools have been proposed to detect biases that may lead to digital discrimination. These tools often require technical expertise to be executed and for their results to be interpreted. To allow non-technical users to benefit from ML, simpler notions and concepts to represent and reason about digital discrimination are needed. In this paper, we use norms as an abstraction to represent different situations that may lead to digital discrimination. In particular, we formalise non-discrimination norms in the context of ML systems and propose an algorithm to check whether ML systems violate these norms.


The growing availability of big data has induced new storing and processing techniques implemented in big data systems such as Apache Hadoop or Apache Spark. With increased implementations of these systems in organizations, simultaneously, the requirements regarding performance qualities such as response time, throughput, and resource utilization increase to create added value. Guaranteeing these performance requirements as well as efficiently planning needed capacities in advance is an enormous challenge. Performance models such as the Palladio component model (PCM) allow for addressing such problems. Therefore, we propose a metamodel extension for PCM to be able to model typical characteristics of big data systems. The extension consists of two parts. First, the meta-model is extended to support parallel computing by forking an operation multiple times on a computer cluster as intended by the single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) architecture. Second, modeling of computer clusters is integrated into the meta-model so operations can be properly scheduled on contained computing nodes.


Including essays on Browning, Ruskin, Stevens, Heaney, and others, this volume begins with an argument that poetry has a job to do: it is one of man's basic tools for keeping himself in touch with the world. The next essay confronts one of the enduring problems of interpretation: how do you know your interpretation is "correct"? Other essays represent different approaches to literature that add to the reader's understanding of the texts. They attempt to sort out dramatic relationships, clarify the role of imagery, identify prosodic accomplishments, or understand the reasons for poet's revisions of his manuscript. Two of the essays discuss the critical methods of two famous 19th-century critics, Poe and Ruskin.


I am currently in the final stages of editing, designing, developing and publishing an app devoted to the work of the Dutch designer Wim Crouwel. The app is a multi-media extension of the catalogue for the Design Museum's recent Crouwel show. I was co-editor, co-designer and co-publisher of the printed catalogue.

The app is a vastly expanded version of the printed catalogue. It contains video and audio components, typographic animations, and images of the actual exhibition – none of which could be included in the printed version.

The project involved looking closely at the relationship between a printed book (in this case, the existing Crouwel catalogue) and a proposed electronic version (in this case, a fully interactive app). It is clear that if books and apps are to co-exist, then both formats require a reason to exist. In my researches, I have concluded that both formats have merits and demerits – some obvious, some less obvious. For example – the addition of audio and video components to an app are clear benefits, but less obvious are devices possible within the app such as integrated footnotes (click on a link and it appears in the body of the text next to its source – not elsewhere.)

More and more institutions and commercial organisations – as well as anyone with an interest in publishing – are searching for ways of utilising app technology as a publishing medium; this project provides a design and editorial methodology for achieving this. It will be available shortly from iTunes.

The dual appearance of printed books and books-as-apps is still in its infancy. There are only a handful of physical design books that co-exist with app versions – and those that do exist are stilted affairs - making minimal use of the new interactive publishing format.

Our aims to be a first in the sector; unlike most book-into-app productions where the book is developed and then migrated to the app platform with minimal adjustment for the new electronic format with its extensive possibilities for re-inventing the publishing model. Wim Crouwel the app, is not a format conversion – it is developed to fully utilise app technology in a new and dynamic way.

The development of the Wim Crouwel app has been developed under the scrutiny of the Design Museum curatorial staff, and with Crouwel himself. Apple software engineers are also currently subjecting it to scrutiny before being passed for distribution in iTunes.


After the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999, the new college undertook an in-depth internal administrative reform under the political leadership of Romano Prodi and Neil Kinnock. One big chapter of this reform dealt with senior personnel policy. New procedures were implemented, merit was upgraded as the main criteria for senior appointments, and compulsory redeployment was introduced. Against this background, the research was conducted in order to assess the extent to which these new measures have changed the way senior appointments take place inside the Commission, particularly in terms of influence coming from national governments. By assessing several hundred appointments and redeployments of director generals, deputy director generals and directors – and through interviews with 37 top Commission officials – the thesis revealed what substantive and systemic changes have progressively taken place since the early years of the Prodi Commission, as compared to the pre-reform situation (i.e. Santer Commission). Principal-agent theory was used to frame the research and derive the main hypotheses on the possible development in the relation between EU member states and the Commission. Among the main overall findings of the research, the empirical assessment revealed that 1) the role played by nationality in senior Commission appointments has undoubtedly decreased with the implementation of the reform; 2) the role of member states in senior appointments has changed little from Santer to Prodi, due to the complementary finding that this role was already rather limited prior to the reform (a finding which runs against the mainstream literature on this issue); 3) mobility was a senior management tool that certainly helped the Commission to bring forward change to the administrative culture, but did not come to represent a tool used to resist member states' pressures; and 4) unfit candidates have no longer a chance to be promoted to the upper echelons of the Commission administration.


Numerous microbes inhabit the human intestine, many of which are uncharacterized or uncultivable. They form a complex microbial community that deeply affects human physiology. To identify the genomic features common to all human gut microbiomes as well as those variable among them, we performed a large-scale comparative metagenomic analysis of fecal samples from 13 healthy individuals of various ages, including unweaned infants. We found that, while the gut microbiota from unweaned infants were simple and showed a high inter-individual variation in taxonomic and gene composition, those from adults and weaned children were more complex but showed a high functional uniformity regardless of age or sex. In searching for the genes over-represented in gut microbiomes, we identified 237 gene families commonly enriched in adult-type and 136 families in infant-type microbiomes, with a small overlap. An analysis of their predicted functions revealed various strategies employed by each type of microbiota to adapt to its intestinal environment, suggesting that these gene sets encode the core functions of adult and infant-type gut microbiota. By analysing the orphan genes, 647 new gene families were identified to be exclusively present in human intestinal microbiomes. In addition, we discovered a conjugative transposon family explosively amplified in human gut microbiomes, which strongly suggests that the intestine is a 'hot spot' for horizontal gene transfer between microbes.


We report on the measurement of the group index of fused silica in the zero dispersion region by pulse delay measurements. Our results differ from the calculated values of the group index from the literature by less than 1·10−5. The dispersion within the 1200–1340 nm range is also studied by means of auto and cross-correlation measurements. The results are in good agreement with the known dispersion of fused silica.