Sixty-four Azawak male calves were used to study the effect of nocturnal grazing (NG) and supplementation (S) in the dry season on forage and water intake, faecal output, eating time and weight changes of cattle in the Sahel. Treatments were factorial combinations of four levels of NG (0, 2, 4 and 6 h/day) and two levels of S (0 and 608 g dry matter (DM) per animal per day). All animals were allowed to graze 10 h during the day and were weighed every 2 weeks during the 70-day experimental period. Eight oesophageally fistulated steers were used in a cross-over design to sample the diet (forage) selected during the day and at night by supplemented and non-supplemented animals. Extrusa crude protein and in vitro organic matter digestibility were not influenced by supplementation ( P > 0·05). Time spent eating during the day or at night were not affected by supplementation but total eating time increased by 39·4 (s.e. 2·1) min/h of NG. Forage intake increased with increase in NG, while total food intake (forage + supplement) increased with supplementation (82·4 v. 92·1 (s.e. 2·4) g DM per kg M 0·75 per day). The supplemented animals also drank more water than the non-supplemented (26·2 v. 24·8 l per animal per day). Average live-weight change (LWC) increased by 24·4 (s.e. 8·7) and 9·3 (s.e. 6·2) g/h of NG in non-supplemented and supplemented animals, respectively. Supplementation improved LWC (‐107 v. 99 g/day, s.e. 14, P < 0·05). Night grazing improves dry season performance and its effect decreases when cattle are supplemented.


Abstract The rule of temporary refuge forms the cornerstone of the response of States to large-scale influx of refugees. In the context of civilians fleeing armed conflict, this legal rule imposes a positive obligation on all States to admit and not to return anyone to a situation where there is a risk to life, and to provide basic rights commensurate with human dignity. Also implicit in the rule is the expectation of shared responsibility for large numbers of refugees and of international cooperation towards finding durable solutions. This article examines the customary international law of temporary refuge (also known as temporary protection) in relation to the Syrian conflict. It discusses implementation of the rule in the practice of three countries neighbouring Syria, and in the EU. It finds that the practice of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan has been consistent with the rule of temporary refuge. However, the EU has decided not to use the Temporary Protection Directive; instead individual Member States have relied on the Refugee Convention and EU law, combined with various other measures not pertinent to temporary protection. It is concluded that shared responsibility is the linchpin of temporary refuge. Absent this keystone, the rule of temporary refuge is likely to continue to be implemented primarily in a regional context by those countries nearest to the country affected by the conflict, as in the case of Syria.


Have you ever wondered why so many heroes--from Odysseus to Tom Sawyer--journey to the underworld? Or why virgin births occur in so many stories around the world?In the first comprehensive view of mythology directed toward the general reader, Shirley Park Lowry tells why we find recurring patterns and symbols in stories that are centuries--or continents--apart. Drawing upon tales ranging from the ancient Middle East to modern North America, Lowry shows how "myths reflect and dramatize ordinary experience, illuminating our deepest and least articulated hopes, fears, and quandaries. Their extravagant plots and images are recognizable because they are the language of our own dreams."Lowry defines what myths are; why they are important; what they share with folk tales, dreams, and fantasies; how we developed a symbolic language and what such symbols as blood, milk, sunlight, and monsters mean; how heroes from Moses and Jesus to Charlemagne and Superman relate to one another; and how myths reconcile us to life's limitations.


During early embryonic development, many inductive interactions between tissues depend on signal transduction processes. We began to test the possibility that G-proteins participate in the signal transduction pathways that mediate neural induction. The expression during Xenopus development of three G alpha subunits, G alpha 0, G alpha i-1 and G alpha s-1, was characterized. The three maternally expressed genes showed different expression patterns during early development. Whole-mount in situ hybridization revealed that all three genes were expressed almost exclusively in the gastrula ectoderm and predominantly in the neuroectoderm in the neurula embryo. In order to investigate the involvement of these proteins in neural induction, we overexpressed the G-protein alpha subunits by injecting the G alpha mRNAs into fertilized eggs. Overexpression of G alpha s-1 increased the ability of gastrula ectoderm to become induced to neural tissue approximately four-fold. Overexpression of G alpha 0 and G alpha i-1 had less pronounced effects on neural competence, and inhibition of the G alpha 0 and G alpha i-1 proteins by pertussis toxin did not change the neural competence of the exposed gastrula ectoderm. Overexpression of the G alpha 0 and G alpha i-1 genes did, however, inhibit the normal disappearance of the blastocoel during gastrulation, suggesting a role for these G-proteins in regulating this process. The data also suggest a specific role for the G alpha s subunit in mediating the initial phases of neural induction.


With the recent advances in regenerative medicine, nanotechnology has created a niche for itself as a promising avenue in this field. Innumerable studies have been carried out by researchers using virus-based methodologies for the purpose of epigenetic reprogramming. Although this method is ostensibly safe, nonetheless, they are tagged with the risk of viral genome integration into the host genome or insertional mutagenesis. Transient transfection by the use of nanocarriers is the best way to overcome these problems. This review focuses on some of the significant works carried out by researchers utilizing nanocarrier systems that have shown promising results and thus created a landmark in the epigenetic reprogramming.


Excerpt] Nowadays, more and more employers are willing to employ persons with a disability after learning about their working capacity. However, some employers who wish to offer them employment opportunities might have concern over their accommodation in workplace and have reservation about employing them. In fact, there are various services offered by different organisations with a view to facilitating open employment of persons with a disability so that they could fit in to their work and integrate into society. This handbook is published by the Selective Placement Division of the Labour Department in order to enhance the confidence of employers who have already employed disabled staff or those who wish to employ persons with a disability by introducing a range of support services and the means through which these services could be acquired. We hope that by introducing these support services to employers and disabled employees, the working relationship between them will be enhanced.


Given data in the form of a collection of (x,y) pairs of real numbers, the symbolic function identification problem is to find a functional model of the form y = f(x) that fits the data. This paper describes a system for solution of symbolic function identification problems that combines a genetic algorithm and the Levenberg-Marquardt nonlinear regression algorithm. The genetic algorithm uses an expression-tree representation rather than the more usual binary-string representation. Experiments were run with data generated using a wide variety of function models. The system was able to find a function model that closely approximated the data with a very high success rate.


The pharmacopoeias of most African countries are available and contain an impressive number of medicinal plants used for various therapeutic purposes. Many African scholars have distinguished themselves in the fields of organic chemistry, pharmacology, and pharmacognosy and other areas related to the study of plant medicinal plants. However, until now, there is no global standard book on the nature and specificity of chemicals isolated in African medicinal plants, as well as a book bringing together and discussing the main bioactive metabolites of these plants. This book explores the essence of natural substances from African medicinal plants and their pharmacological potential. In light of possible academic use, this book also scans the bulk of African medicinal plants extract having promising pharmacological activities.

 The book contains data of biologically active plants of Africa, plant occurring compounds and synthesis pathways of secondary metabolites.

 This book explores the essence of natural substances from African medicinal plants and their pharmacological potential

 The authors are world reknowned African Scientists.


The authors of Austere Realism describe and defend a provocative ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. Terence Horgan and Matjaz [hacek over z] Potrc [hacek over c] argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, Horgan and Potrc [hacek over c] consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call "blobjectivism"--the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos ("the blobject"), which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts. The arguments in Austere Realism are powerfully made and concisely and lucidly set out. The authors' contentions and their methodological approach--products of a decade-long collaboration--will generate lively debate among scholars in metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy. Terence E. Horgan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. Matjaz [hacek over z] Potrc [hacek over c] is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana.


The passive continental margins which surround the North Atlantic region have been subject to widespread post-Triassic exhumation, the timing, magnitude and causes of which are debated. Exhumation of up to 6km (but more generally ≤3km) has been shown to have affected the Western UK Continental Shelf. This region contains a series of intra-plate extensional basins which formed during Permian-Jurassic rifting. Using a combination of palaeothermal (apatite fission-track analysis and vitrinite reflectance data) seismic and compaction data, this study has revealed an exhumation history of far greater complexity than previously suspected across the Southwest UK, with regional kilometer-scale exhumation episodes beginning during the Upper Triassic-Lower Jurassic (215-195Ma), Lower Cretaceous (140-120Ma), early Paleogene (75-55Ma), Eocene-Oligocene (35-20Ma) and Neogene (20-10Ma). Upper Triassic-Lower Jurassic exhumation appears confined to the footwalls of major basin bounding faults, suggesting footwall uplift was the principal cause of this episode of exhumation. Lower Cretaceous exhumation corresponds with continental breakup SW of Britain, suggesting a causative link. Early Paleogene exhumation was coeval with the Laramide phase of Alpine orogeny suggesting a causative link and additionally, marked heterogeneities in the pattern of this exhumation have been identified, casting doubt on the previously invoked role of plume-related epeirogenesis. Eocene-Oligocene and Neogene exhumation coincides temporally with the Pyrenean and Late Alpine compressional episodes. Seismic data shows that early and late Cenozoic exhumation was probably caused by compressional deformation related to Alpine orogenesis and/or Atlantic ridge-push. These observations imply that events at plate margins have exerted the primary control upon intra-plate exhumation in the Southwest UK onshore and offshore basin system with local faults providing an important control on the distribution of this exhumation


Developmental expression of marker genes representative of different mature cell types can be used to study differentiation of cell lineages. We used immunohistochemistry to study expression in developing mouse lung of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), Clara cell 10-KD protein (CC10), and surfactant protein-A (SP-A), markers that are differentially expressed in neuroendocrine cells, Clara cells, and Type II alveolar cells. Two distinct developmental phases were revealed. The earlier phase (embryonic days 13-15; E13-E15) was characterized by CGRP, CC10, and SP-A immunostaining in all epithelial cells of the distal airways, with the three patterns being virtually identical in adjacent sections. The later phase (E16-E18) was characterized by emergence of staining of the differentiated cell types. These expression patterns were recapitulated in serumless organ culture, demonstrating that information necessary to generate both phases of gene expression is present within the lung analage by E11. We conclude that CGRP, CC10, and SP-A are co-expressed in most or all cells of the distal lung epithelium at E13-E15 and later become restricted to different cell lineages. This transient expression in progenitor cells of gene products characteristic of diverse differentiated cell types may reflect an underlying mechanism of gene regulation.


Communication-induced checkpointing protocols that ensure rollback-dependency trackability (RDT) guarantee important properties to the recovery system without explicit coordination. However, to the best of our knowledge, there was no garbage collection algorithm for them which did not use some type of process synchronization, like time assumptions or reliable control message exchanges. This paper addresses the problem of garbage collection for RDT checkpointing protocols and presents an optimal solution for the case where coordination is done only by means of timestamps piggybacked in application messages. Our algorithm uses the same timestamps as off-the-shelf RDT protocols and ensures the tight upper bound on the number of uncollected checkpoints for each process during all the execution.


The authors report the measured performance of an integrated N*N multiplexer fabricated using SiO/sub 2//Si waveguides. The insertion loss for N=7 was typically lower than 2.5 dB, and crosstalk was less than -25 dB. The multiplexer response is approximately periodic. In each period the multiplexer accepts, from each input waveguide, a total of N channels, and it efficiently transmits each channel to a particular output port. Similarly, each output port receives N channels, one from each input port. Thus, the total number of channels that can be transmitted simultaneously is N/sup 2/, which requires N optical frequencies.<<ETX>>


In this article we examine accounts of emotional experiences in one organization. Drawing upon data from inter views across a range of employees, we analyse aspects of emotion, identity and power. Adopting a constructionist perspective we use a method of discourse analysis to analyse how participants constructed emotions according to tacitly understood rules regarding appropriate emotional displays. These rules were made visible through an examination of the participants' positioning strategies as they described emotional experiences. Our findings suggest that, rather than an institutionally held level of appropriate articulations of emotionality, there was a role-related, socially located rule system linked to separate categories of teachers, managers and administrative employees. The contribution of the article is threefold. First, we use in-depth case data from 44 semistructured inter views to analyse how teachers and managers/administrators in a UK-based further education (FE) college constructed emotions according to certain rules (informal norms) regarding appropriate kinds of emotional displays. Teachers acknowledged and upgraded labelled emotions, while managers and administrators denied and downgraded accounts of emotional experiences. Second, we discuss the implications of talk about emotion for the (re)production of teachers' and managers/administrators' work identities. Third, we consider how people's talk about emotions was bound-up in relations of power.


OBJECTIVE
In this analysis, the authors sought to identify variables triggering an additional resection (AR) and determining residual intraoperative tumor volume in 1.5-T intraoperative MRI (iMRI)-guided glioma resections.

METHODS
A consecutive case series of 224 supratentorial glioma resections (WHO Grades I-IV) from a prospective iMRI registry (inclusion dates January 2011-April 2013) was examined with univariate and multiple regression models including volumetric data, tumor-related, and surgeon-related factors. The surgeon's expectation of an AR, in response to a questionnaire completed prior to iMRI, was evaluated using contingency analysis. A machine-learning prediction model was applied to consider if anticipation of intraoperative findings permits preoperative identification of ideal iMRI cases.

RESULTS
An AR was performed in 70% of cases after iMRI, but did not translate into an accumulated risk for neurological morbidity after surgery (p = 0.77 for deficits in cases with AR vs no AR). New severe persistent deficits occurred in 6.7% of patients. Initial tumor volume determined frequency of ARs and was independently correlated with larger tumor remnants delineated on iMRI (p < 0.0001). Larger iMRI volume was further associated with eloquent location (p = 0.010) and recurrent tumors (p < 0.0001), and with WHO grade (p = 0.0113). Greater surgical experience had no significant influence on the course of surgery. The surgeon's capability of ruling out an AR prior to iMRI turned out to incorporate guesswork (negative predictive value 43.6%). In a prediction model, AR could only be anticipated with 65% accuracy after integration of confounding variables.

CONCLUSIONS
Routine use of iMRI in glioma surgery is a safe and reliable method for resection guidance and is characterized by frequent ARs after scanning. Tumor-related factors were identified that influenced the course of surgery and intraoperative decision-making, and iMRI had a common value for surgeons of all experience levels. Commonly, the subjective intraoperative impression of the extent of resection had to be revised after iMRI review, which underscores the manifold potential of iMRI guidance. In combination with the failure to identify ideal iMRI cases preoperatively, this study supports a generous, tumor-oriented rather than surgeon-oriented indication for iMRI in glioma surgery.


The Water and Wastewater Companies for Climate Mitigation (WaCCliM) project aims to improve the efficiency of water and wastewater companies in Mexico, Peru, Thailand, and Jordan, reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and improve the carbon balance of the water sector, while maintaining and/or improving service levels. As part of the project, hydraulic modelling software was used to simulate the Cusco, Peru drinking water transmission system and evaluate various scenarios (water loss reduction, pump replacement, and system reconfiguration) and their energy impacts. Results showed the transmission system's pumping energy could be reduced up to 40 percent depending on the scenario. A holistic view on the total urban water cycle has also helped to identify that a combined effort to conserve water at the end user level, reduce water loss, reuse water, and rainwater harvesting will ultimately make the biggest impact on the transmission system's energy consumption and GHG emissions, and lead to the most sustainable and resilient urban water management for SEDACUSCO and the City. This study has also demonstrated that water distribution system models can play an invaluable role in water utility climate change mitigation and adaptation planning.


We applied independent component analysis (ICA) to hyperspectral images in order to learn an efficient representation of color in natural scenes. In the spectra of single pixels, the algorithm found basis functions that had broadband spectra and basis functions that were similar to natural reflectance spectra. When applied to small image patches, the algorithm found some basis functions that were achromatic and others with overall chromatic variation along lines in color space, indicating color opponency. The directions of opponency were not strictly orthogonal. Comparison with principal-component analysis on the basis of statistical measures such as average mutual information, kurtosis, and entropy, shows that the ICA transformation results in much sparser coefficients and gives higher coding efficiency. Our findings suggest that nonorthogonal opponent encoding of photoreceptor signals leads to higher coding efficiency and that ICA may be used to reveal the underlying statistical properties of color information in natural scenes.


Abstract The classic minimum critical mass problem, posed and solved by Goertzel using multigroup diffusion theory, is revisited and reformulated in terms of the two-group transport equation with isotropic scattering. A new variational principle is constructed from which it is possible to derive the conditions necessary for a minimum critical mass. This condition is that the angular thermal flux ψt([bold]r, [bold]Ω) and a quantity ϕt([bold]r, [bold]Ω) related to the adjoint flux, must obey the constraint [integral]dΩψt([bold]r, [bold]Ω)ϕt([bold]r, [bold]Ω) = constant. Contrary to the behavior noted in diffusion theory, this condition does not correspond to a flat thermal flux in the core. This is a major conclusion of the present work. To find the associated solutions, we develop a coupled set of integral equations for the components of the angular flux in the core. We then show that, for weakly absorbing moderators, the lowest order approximation to this set provides an accurate representation of the minimum mass conditions. It also emerges that the flat flux is a very good representation of the true flux. With the above assumptions, the problem reduces to that of solving a Fredholm equation of the first kind for the fuel mass distribution across the core. We solve this equation numerically for the case of an infinitely reflected, infinite slab and compare the results with those from diffusion theory. The transport theory results show one very interesting and important feature, namely, a steep rise in fuel concentration as the boundary is approached which goes to infinity at the boundary. This is in contrast to the diffusion theory result which requires an ad hoc addition of surface delta functions for a solution to exist. Thus we come to the conclusion that the increased surface concentration of fuel is a natural consequence of transport theory but not of diffusion theory. This is the second major conclusion of this work. Detailed numerical results are presented for 235U-graphite and 235U-water mixtures.


Sentence segmentation of speech aims at determining sentence boundaries in a stream of words as output by the speech recognizer. Typically, statistical methods are used for sentence segmentation. However, they require significant amounts of labeled data, preparation of which is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and expensive. This work investigates the application of multi-view semi-supervised learning algorithms on the sentence boundary classification problem by using lexical and prosodic information. The aim is to find an effective semi-supervised machine learning strategy when only small sets of sentence boundary-labeled data are available. We especially focus on two semi-supervised learning approaches, namely, self-training and co-training. We also compare different example selection strategies for co-training, namely, agreement and disagreement. Furthermore, we propose another method, called self-combined, which is a combination of self-training and co-training. The experimental results obtained on the ICSI Meeting (MRDA) Corpus show that both multi-view methods outperform self-training, and the best results are obtained using co-training alone. This study shows that sentence segmentation is very appropriate for multi-view learning since the data sets can be represented by two disjoint and redundantly sufficient feature sets, namely, using lexical and prosodic information. Performance of the lexical and prosodic models is improved by 26% and 11% relative, respectively, when only a small set of manually labeled examples is used. When both information sources are combined, the semi-supervised learning methods improve the baseline F-Measure of 69.8% to 74.2%.


Big-Data streaming applications are used in several domains such as social media analysis, financial analysis, video annotation, surveillance, medical services and traffic prediction. These applications, running on different types of platforms from mobile devices to servers, are characterized by a highly-variable stochastic input data stream, stringent delay constraints and complex task graphs. Several software and hardware optimization techniques have been proposed to maximize the execution quality and the throughput of these applications and to minimize their energy consumption on many-core platforms. By analyzing the existing techniques, one can observe that most solutions classify as a hardware-based task-specific optimization, or as an operating system scheduler optimization, or yet as a load shedding mechanism at the application level. Each of these categories is limited in scope and can be blind to the nature of the program, the data being processed or the characteristics of the hardware. Big-Data streaming applications, due to their wide range of host hardware and content and dynamically-changing input streams, expose the fragmentation of the optimization techniques and create a clear need for a better approach. In this thesis, I propose a suite of energy-efficient hardware-software co-design techniques to bridge the gap between modern Big-Data streaming applications and existing many-core platforms. I choose to model the task graph of the class of applications I consider here by a direct acyclic graph (DAG). First, at the application layer, I propose a unified DAG monitoring solution to process online the general DAG model of the application and provide a set of relevant information that is leveraged at run time by a connected scheduler. At the operating system layer, I propose three different online scheduling solutions for many-core platforms which leverage the feedback from both the application and the hardware layers. The first scheduler addresses the problem of minimizing the energy consumption and the deadlines miss rates of multimedia applications. It takes advantage of the output of the DAG monitoring solution to adapt the mapping of the tasks of multimedia applications to the hardware according to the detected performance and targeted quality of service. The second and third schedulers address the problem of maximizing the quality and throughput and minimizing the energy consumption of Big-Data stream mining applications with single and multiple streams originating from different sources. To cope with the dynamically-changing Big-Data characteristics, the schedulers integrate machine-learning techniques to learn the environment dynamics and the application requirements and adapt the scheduling policy to the desired quality of service. I show that the proposed schedulers are able to scale the execution of data-mining applications to the system capability even in the presence of concept drift. Last, at the hardware layer, to address existing system architectures limitations and to increase even more the throughput, I propose a novel low-power many-core architecture for modern Big-Data stream mining applications that integrates a novel flexible memory hierarchy able to adapt to the dynamic data-driven nature of the input data stream.


This paper emphasizes the necessity of formally bringing qualitative and quantitative criteria of ergonomic design together, and provides a novel complementary design framework with this aim. Within this framework, different design criteria are viewed as optimization objectives, and design solutions are iteratively improved through the cooperative efforts of computer and user. The framework is rooted in multiobjective optimization, genetic algorithms, and interactive user evaluation. Three different algorithms based on the framework are developed, and tested with an ergonomic chair design problem. The parallel and multiobjective approaches show promising results in fitness convergence, design diversity, and user satisfaction metrics.


Avicennia marina is a true mangrovespecies and is growing at the forefront of the zone system of mangrove plantgrowth. A. marina growing on landwith a high saline stress the roots are always flooded. These plants bear fruitmore than 3 times a year and the fruit can be used as food as long as it isproperly processed to remove toxic materials. The research aims to find out howmuch the ability of some chelating agents to reduce the fruit Lead (Pb) of the starchcontent A. marina so worthy as food forhumans. The results showed that the fruit powder A. marina turned out to contain heavy metals lead (Pb). The contentof lead in the wheat A. marina fruit isreduced by a solution of lime, Na2EDTA and it still meets thethreshold maximum Pb content in the wheat based SNI 7387:2009 number ie 0.5 mg kg-1.   Given the extent of the spread of plant andhigher fruit production A. marina, thenuse the fruit as a food starch can be developed. One important requirement isthe use of starch production process must be well controlled in order to limit themaximum allowable Pb content in flour is not exceeded.


This chapter reviews the existing information regarding the advances made in developing fungal vaccines. In general, infections with Histoplasma capsulatum, Blastomyces dermatitidis, Coccidioides immitis, and Paracoccidioides brasiliensis occur in otherwise normal hosts. There are at least two principal reasons why a fungal vaccine should engage innate immunity. The first is that optimal activation of the innate system enhances the likelihood that a vigorous cellular immune response will develop. The second reason centers on the fact that many of the patients who develop serious fungal infections manifest some form of immune deficiency. The chapter also concentrates on fungal vaccine development for Candida albicans, which is the most common Candida species currently causing invasive disease. Important risk factors for candidal disease include impaired cellular immunity, intravenous catheters, exposure to broad-spectrum antibiotics, dysfunctional or absent phagocytes, total parenteral nutrition, and implantation of prosthetics. The chapter provides an overview of the accomplishments in the field of fungal vaccination. Clearly, there are numerous candidate vaccines and at least two have entered the early phases of clinical study. Although the usefulness of the monoclonal antibody (MAb) to Candida neoformans polysaccharide or the antibody to hsp90 of C. albicans is not known, the mere fact that these compounds made it into the clinical arena is a sufficient impetus for further development. The area is an exciting one, and one that requires an interdisciplinary approach utilizing expertise in fungal biology, pathogenesis, and immunology.


Agriculture could play a prominent role in U.S. efforts to address climate change if farms and ranches undertake activities that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. These activities may include shifting to conservation tillage, reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops, changing livestock and manure management practices, and planting trees or grass. The Federal Government is considering offering carbon offsets and incentive payments to encourage rural landowners to pursue these climate-friendly activities as part of a broader effort to combat climate change. The extent to which farmers adopt such activities would depend on their costs, potential revenues, and other economic incentives created by climate policy. Existing Federal conservation programs provide preliminary estimates of the costs of agricultural carbon sequestration.


Advances in neuroscience are beginning to shape law and public policy, giving rise to the field of "neurolaw." The impact of neuroscientific evidence on how laws are written and interpreted in practice will depend in part on how neurolaw is understood by the public. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey experiment, this article presents the first evidence on public approval of neurolaw. We find that the public is generally neutral in its support for neuroscience-based legal reforms. However, how neurolaw is framed affects support based on partisanship: Republicans' approval of neurolaw decreases when neuroscience is seen as primarily serving to reduce offender culpability, whereas Democrats' approval is unaffected by how neurolaw is framed. These results suggest that both framing and partisanship may shape the future of neuroscience-based reforms in law and policy.


Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, this profoundly original work explores the nature of physical suffering. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Henry Kissinger. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme cases to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry goes on to analyse the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self. Finally she turns to examples of artistic and cultural activity; actions achieved in the face of pain and difficulty.


This paper argues that aboriginal rights in Canada have been greatly affected by 19 century governmental and social conflicts within the Canadian colonial state. These conflicts, largely over the ownership of land and regulatory authority between the federal government and the provinces necessarily impacted the First Nations on the ground while affecting how their legal claims were recognized and implemented. In particular they impacted the legal efficacy of treaty rights, the scope of rights recognised by the courts and an expansive legally protected notion of indigenous sovereignty. As a result, the rights now protected under sec. 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act 1982 are more restricted than the text might imply.


The successful conservation of endangered mussel communities requires, in part, a thorough understanding of the processes that shape their distribution. Therefore, we tested the prediction that (1) the distribution of host fishes explains a significant amount of variation in mussel community composition. In addition, because mussel distribution also depends on spatial processes and environmental variables, we predicted that (2) the distribution and community composition of mussels in Ontario varies across eight contiguous watersheds, flowing into three different basins of the Great Lakes (Huron, St. Clair and Erie); and (3) environmental variables also explain part of the mussel distribution.


Between 2008 and 2015 over 305,000 people were reported missing in Australia, an average of 38,159 reports each year. Youths aged 13–17 years were most likely to go missing; half of all people reported missing between 2008 and 2015 were in this age group and less than 10 percent were children. More than sixty percent of those who go missing return or are found within 48 hours. Ninety-eight percent are ultimately located, most alive. Collecting data on the circumstances of those who go missing will assist in developing a national picture of vulnerable population groups and predicting outcomes for these groups.


Graphene saturable absorber mirror (SAM) was successfully fabricated by transferring large-size graphene flake on dielectric coating mirror. The graphene transferred on the mirror was tested by Raman spectrum measurement and scanning electron microscope imaging. With the graphene SAM, passive Q-switching and continuous wave (CW) mode locking were experimentally demonstrated in a bulk laser at 2 μm wavelength.


Scholars have long struggled to understand why individual preferences for redistribution often diverge widely from their material self-interest. The puzzle is acute in Latin America, largely democratic and yet one of the most unequal regions in the world. Using an original online survey experiment spanning 8 countries and 12,000 respondents across Latin America, we find significant evidence for an under-explored explanation: misconceptions regarding the distributional effects of current tax policy. Treated respondents who are informed that an increase in the value-added tax (VAT) is regressive are significantly more likely to prefer policy reforms that make the tax more progressive. We are further able to identify mechanisms. A large fraction of respondents underestimate the regressivity of the VAT. Their misperceptions are linked to fundamental views about the world: these respondents are disproportionately right-leaning and more likely to attribute success to individual effort than luck. Despite the deep-rooted nature of their misperceptions, treatment effects are largest among individuals who believe the VAT is not regressive. These findings contribute both to understanding the political economy of redistribution and the potential for information interventions to shift support for fiscal adjustment policies protecting the most vulnerable.


Across the world, informal (unpaid) caregiving has become the predominant model for community care: in the UK alone, there are an estimated 6.5 million caregivers supporting family members and friends on a regular basis, saving health and social care services approximately £132 billion per year. Despite our collective reliance on this group (particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic), quality of life for caregivers is often poor and there is an urgent need for disruptive innovations. The aim of this study was to explore what a future roadmap for innovation could look like through a multi-stakeholder consultation and evaluation. An online survey was developed and distributed through convenience sampling, targeting both the informal caregiver and professionals/innovators interested in the caregiver demographic. Data were analysed using both quantitative (summary statistics) and qualitative (inductive thematic analysis) methods in order to develop recommendations for future multi-stakeholder collaboration and meaningful innovation. The survey collected 174 responses from 112 informal caregivers and 62 professionals/innovators. Responses across these stakeholder groups identified that there is currently a missed opportunity to harness the value of the voice of the caregiver demographic. Although time and accessibility issues are considerable barriers to engagement with this stakeholder group, respondents were clear that regular contributions, ideally no more than 20 to 30 min a month could provide a realistic route for input, particularly through online approaches supported by community-based events. In conclusion, the landscape of digital health and wellness is becoming ever more sophisticated, where both industrial and academic innovators could establish new routes to identify, reach, inform, signpost, intervene and support vital and vulnerable groups such as the caregiver demographic. Here, the findings from a consultation with caregivers and professionals interested in informal caring are presented to help design the first stages of a roadmap through identifying priorities and actions that could help accelerate future research and policy that will lead to meaningful and innovative solutions.


Background: Attrition in studies of substance use disorder treatment is problematic, potentially introducing bias into data analysis. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the effect of participant compensation amounts on rates of missing data and observed rates of drug use. Methods: We performed a secondary analysis of a clinical trial of buprenorphine/naloxone among 152 treatment-seeking opioid-dependent subjects aged 15–21 during participation in a randomized trial. Subjects were randomized to a 2-week detoxification with buprenorphine/naloxone (DETOX; N = 78) or 12 weeks buprenorphine/naloxone (BUP; N = 74). Participants were compensated $5 for weekly urine drug screens and self-reported drug use information and $75 for more extensive assessments at weeks 4, 8, and 12. Results: Though BUP assignment decreased the likelihood of missing data, there were significantly less missing data at 4, 8, and 12 weeks than other weeks, and the effect of compensation on the probability of urine screens being positive was more pronounced in DETOX subjects. Conclusion: These findings suggest that variations in the amount of compensation for completing assessments can differentially affect outcome measurements, depending on treatment group assignment. Scientific Significance: Adequate financial compensation may minimize bias when treatment condition is associated with differential dropout and may be a cost-effective way to reduce attrition. Moreover, active users may be more likely than non-active users to drop out if compensation is inadequate, especially in control groups or in groups who are not receiving active treatment.


Pathogens in sunlit surface waters can be damaged directly by UVB light. Indirect inactivation by reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by sunlight interacting with external sensitizer molecules may also be important, but this mechanism has not been conclusively demonstrated. To better understand the role of ROS, we investigated the inactivation of MS2 coliphage, a commonly used surrogate for human enteric viruses, in water samples irradiated with a solar simulator and containing different types of sensitizers: waste stabilization pond (WSP) constituents, Fluka humic acid (FHA), and Suwannee River humic acid (SRHA). Inactivation of MS2 by the indirect mechanism was significant for all three sensitizers, and the efficiency of the sensitizers at inactivating MS2 was FHA > SRHA > WSP. Both dissolved and particulate fractions in the WSP water contributed to inactivation. In the WSP water, the indirect process was quantitatively more importantthan direct damage by UVB light, due to the rapid attenuation of UVB compared to the longer wavelengths that may initiate the indirect mechanism. Singlet oxygen (1O2) was the most important ROS involved in the inactivation of MS2. The addition of histidine, a 1O2 quencher, decreased inactivation, whereas inactivation rate constants increased in solutions of D20. Selective quenchers for other ROS showed little or no protective effect. Inactivation in WSP water was a function of the steady-state 102 concentration and could be described by a second-order rate expression.


This article examines employment rates for persons in their teens and early 20s during April and May 2021 compared to April and May 2019. Employment rates for teens are significantly higher in Spring 2021 than in Spring 2019. However, individuals ages 20-24 experienced significantly lower employment rates in Spring 2021 than in Spring 2019. Differing employment patterns for these two age groups are unlikely to reflect childcare issues or lingering COVID-19 concerns. Restaurant employment rates suggest that weak labor demand is likely not the predominant factor. One plausible explanation is that teenagers are less influenced by generous unemployment insurance benefits.


Abstract: The long run research findings will be disseminated through publications. However, researchers may have created some local content which should be circulated immediately. Online magazines can be one solution through content curation to immediately circulate the research findings. Content curation is not just sharing all kinds of content you stumble upon or source. It's most of all about doing it in a smart and audiencecentric way, by focusing on specific topics you want to curate content about. This workshop introduce various tools on Publish online magazine (Content curation) to increase the visibility and enhance the impact of research work.


(c) 2000 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.


The second of the two great epic poems attributed to Homer, "The Odyssey" takes place after the Trojan War and tells the story of Odysseus' voyage home to Ithaca and his wife, Penelope. Odysseus' journey is a perilous one, for he encounters a wide array of heart-pounding adventures and precarious mythical creatures on his way. Supported by numerous full-length essays, this updated volume offers various critical approaches to exploring this enrapturing tale of magic and heroism.


Avibactam is a non‐β‐lactam β‐lactamase inhibitor intended for use as a fixed‐dose combination with ceftazidime for the treatment of certain serious Gram‐negative infections. As avibactam is primarily excreted unchanged in the urine, renal impairment may affect its pharmacokinetics. This phase 1 study investigated the effect of renal impairment and hemodialysis on avibactam pharmacokinetics and safety. Healthy controls and subjects with increasing degrees of renal impairment received a single 30‐minute intravenous (IV) infusion of avibactam (100 mg). Anuric subjects requiring hemodialysis received the same infusion pre‐ and posthemodialysis, separated by a 7‐ to 14‐day washout. Blood and urine samples were collected, and pharmacokinetics were analyzed using noncompartmental methods. The relationships between avibactam total plasma clearance (CL) or renal clearance (CLR) and creatinine clearance (CrCL) were evaluated by linear correlation analysis. Safety was also monitored. Increasing severity of renal impairment was associated with decreasing CL and CLR and increasing exposure and terminal half‐life (t1/2). Avibactam CL and CLR demonstrated an approximately linear relationship with CrCL comparable to that previously observed for ceftazidime. In patients requiring hemodialysis, >50% of the administered avibactam was removed during a 4‐hour hemodialysis session, demonstrating that avibactam should be administered after hemodialysis. No new safety findings were reported. To conclude, avibactam dose adjustment is warranted in patients with renal impairment based on the severity of impairment. Because the slope of the linear relationship between avibactam total plasma CL and CrCL is similar to that of ceftazidime, renal impairment dose adjustments should maintain the currently advised 4:1 ratio of ceftazidime:avibactam.


Prosopis cineraria (L.) Druce is extensively lopped for fodder by farmers in the arid and semi arid areas of Rajasthan and Haryana. Generally, complete lopping is practiced. The effect of different lopping intensities on the leaf fodder yield of this species has been studied and the results are reported in the present paper. Based on the above study, it can be concluded that the fodder yield was generally more from the trees that are lopped annually as compared to those lopped once in two years or once in three years. It was also observed that, the yield of forage increases as the tree girth increases. The results obtained led to the conclusion that Prosopis cineraria trees should be lopped annually to gainmaximumfodder yield. It can also be concluded that the trees with an optimum girth (girth>60cms) should be lopped for higher returns in the form of fodder production.


Frequent Adjective + Noun sequences in the British National Corpus based on the most frequent 'central' adjectives were examined in their use as noun premodifiers and in other uses (predicative, adverbial, or with N being the head of a noun phrase). Hyphenated and non-hyphenated occurrences were taken into account. An investigation of the presence of these sequences in dictionaries shows a relatively strong correlation with frequency of occurrence, as well as with hyphenated spelling. Six Adj + N sequences were more closely examined in the Periodicals and Spoken sections of the BNC, and evidence of reanalysis was found in changes of scope, predicative uses of an adjectival nature, adverbial uses, and occurrences of Adj + N as subjects or objects with restricted sense. A small, but not negligible, proportion of unambiguously lexicalized occurrences was found. Finally, the accentual behaviour of Adj + N sequences was investigated in a laboratory experiment. The prevalence of the /12/ accentual pattern across the frequency of occurrence range and in attributive as well as predicative uses showed that degree of lexicalization had no influence on the stress pattern.


The acute association between interpersonal violence, alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and mental health issues is relatively unexplored. Violence-related ambulance attendances were analysed, differentiated by type of violence and by victim or aggressor of violence, as well as the co-occurrence of alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and mental health issues. Ambulance attendances related to victims of violence had few co-occurring issues beyond alcohol and drug misuse. In contrast, attendances related to aggressors were more complex, with high proportions of co-occurring mental health, self-harm, and alcohol and drug issues. These findings demonstrate the utility of ambulance data for surveillance of interpersonal violence.


Solubility is the crucial factor for drug effectiveness, independence of the route of administration. Large proportions of newly discovered drugs are water insoluble, and therefore poorly bioavailable contributing to deserted development effort. These so-called 'Brickellia 'candidates can now be delivered by formulating them into Nanosuspension. Nanosuspension technology solved the problem of drugs which are poorly aqueous soluble and less bioavailability. Stability and bioavailability of the drugs can be improved by the Nanosuspension technology. Preparation of Nanosuspension is simple and applicable to all drugs which are aqueous insoluble. Nanosuspensions are prepared by using wet mill, high pressure homogenizer, emulsion-solvent evaporation, melt emulsification method and super critical fluid techniques. Nanosuspension can be prepared by using stabilizers, organic solvents and other additives such as buffers, salts, polyols, osmogent and cryoprotectant. Nanosuspensions can be delivered by oral, parenteral, pulmonary and ocular routes. Nanosuspensions can also be used for targeted drug delivery when incorporated in the ocular inserts and mucoadhesive hydrogels.


In this paper we present a new form of texture mapping that produces increased photorealism. Coefficients of a biquadratic polynomial are stored per texel, and used to reconstruct the surface color under varying lighting conditions. Like bump mapping, this allows the perception of surface deformations. However, our method is image based, and photographs of a surface under varying lighting conditions can be used to construct these maps. Unlike bump maps, these Polynomial Texture Maps (PTMs) also capture variations due to surface self-shadowing and interreflections, which enhance realism. Surface colors can be efficiently reconstructed from polynomial coefficients and light directions with minimal fixed-point hardware. We have also found PTMs useful for producing a number of other effects such as anisotropic and Fresnel shading models and variable depth of focus. Lastly, we present several reflectance function transformations that act as contrast enhancement operators. We have found these particularly useful in the study of ancient archeological clay and stone writings.


1. To investigate the relative degree to which human IgG and other plasma proteins bind to cell membranes of the full-term human placenta, suspensions of membranes mixed with radio-iodinated proteins were incubated at pH 6·5 and subjected to Sepharose 2B column chromatography. The amount of labelled protein associated with membrane protein in membrane-containing fractions of the eluate was then determined. 2. Binding of IgG and each of the four subclasses of IgG was appreciable. Binding of IgG was markedly reduced if membranes were incubated at pH 8·0 rather than 6·5. Binding of labelled IgG was inhibited by excess of unlabelled IgG but not by excess of unlabelled albumin. Placental membranes bound much more IgG than did erythrocyte membranes. 3. Binding of insulin was relatively greater than that of IgG, whereas binding of IgE, IgM, IgA, albumin, transferrin and polyvinylpyrrolidone was much less than that of IgG and each of its subclasses. 4. The relative binding of IgG and fragments of the IgG molecule was, in decreasing order of magnitude: light chains, IgG, Fc, heavy chains and F(ab′) 2 . 5. The results are consistent with Brambell9s hypothesis for the mechanism of the transmission of passive immunity from mother to young. In particular the data are consistent with the existence of a limited number of IgG specific receptors on the microvillus membrane of the syncytial trophoblast. Such receptors could protect IgG molecules from degradation during their transplacental transport. The submolecular region of the IgG molecule involved in specific membrane binding appears to be common to all four subclasses and to include the Fc region.


Shape deformation is a common practice in digital image editing, but can unrealistically stretch or compress texture detail. We propose an image editing system that decouples feature position from pixel color generation, by resynthesizing texture from the source image to preserve its detail and orientation around a new feature curve location. We introduce a new distortion to patch-based texture synthesis that aligns texture features with image features. A dense correspondence field between source and target images generated by the control curves then guides texture synthesis.


Wireless sensor networks have emerged a few years ago, enabling large scale sensing at low cost. There are many interesting problems related to this new sensing tool: designing robust and small hardware, defining adapted routing protocols, minimizing the energy consumption of each component, synchronizing the sensors, etc. In this thesis, we focus on the processing of the sensed data within the network itself. We study a specific network signal processing problem, called distributed average consensus. In this problem, the sensors, which are connected in a wireless network, need to know the average of all the measurements in the network. Instead of gathering the data at a central node, which would compute the average and broadcast it to the network, average consensus algorithms offer a distributed solution to the averaging problem. By local message passing and iterative local computations only, nodes can learn the average of the measurements. More precisely, in average consensus algorithms, nodes iteratively compute local weighted averages that conserve the global average of the estimates in the network. The estimates at each node contract until they all converge to the average. Many distributed average consensus algorithms were designed and the literature is vast. This thesis starts by classifying the existing algorithms. Then it describes a small number of useful techniques, which can handle the analysis of all the algorithms. Preexisting algorithms as well as algorithms that we designed are revisited with these unifying and simple techniques. In addition, the performance of the algorithms depends on the topology of the network, and a variety of networks are explored: simple graphs as circles or trees, lattices, random geometric graphs, complete graphs etc. Finally, an extension of average consensus to voting consensus is derived. In particular, we show that with two bits of memory at each node, a network can reach consensus in finite time on majority, when the initial measurements are binary. Distributed algorithms to compute majority with finite memory for ternary and quaternary signals are also given.


We study a prototypical problem in empirical Bayes. Namely, consider a population consisting of $k$ individuals each belonging to one of $k$ types (some types can be empty). Without any structural restrictions, it is impossible to learn the composition of the full population having observed only a small (random) subsample of size $m = o(k)$. Nevertheless, we show that in the sublinear regime of $m =\omega(k/\log k)$, it is possible to consistently estimate in total variation the \emph{profile} of the population, defined as the empirical distribution of the sizes of each type, which determines many symmetric properties of the population. We also prove that in the linear regime of $m=c k$ for any constant $c$ the optimal rate is $\Theta(1/\log k)$. Our estimator is based on Wolfowitz's minimum distance method, which entails solving a linear program (LP) of size $k$. We show that there is a single infinite-dimensional LP whose value simultaneously characterizes the risk of the minimum distance estimator and certifies its minimax optimality. The sharp convergence rate is obtained by evaluating this LP using complex-analytic techniques.


The purpose of this project is to help increase retention of newly licensed registered nurses (NLRN) at a large community medical center. The medical center loses approximately 20 NLRNs per year which is costly for the medical center. The loss of NLRN can be attributed to decreased job satisfaction, poor nursing competence and lateral violence between the nursing staff. Evidence shows that mentorship is a proven, evidence-based approach to solving these issues and more (Hodgson & Scanlan, 2013). Not only can mentorship help increase retention, address lateral violence, increase job satisfaction and nursing competence but, it can also help enhance NLRN nurses' professional and personal growth. A mentor can help guide the mentee into becoming more involved in the community medical center as well as promote professional development by encouraging the mentee into achieving higher levels of education and reaching for loftier career goals. The emotional support provided by the mentor helps to increase the confidence of the NLRN by bridging the gaps between preceptorship and patient care. Literature shows that mentorship creates more unity within the unit thus increasing nursing competence which then leads to increased patient care (Jewell, 2013). The large medical center is interested in all of these factors and thus requested a formalized, standard, evidence-based nurse mentorship program to be implemented on all floors of the hospital. The Entry-level MSN CNL (EL-MSN CNL) student team conducted a quality improvement project to address these needs by developing a formalized mentorship program for newly licensed registered nurses at a large community medical center.


Abstract Nonlinear instability in a supersonic boundary layer at Mach 4.8 with two-dimensional roughness is investigated by means of spatial direct numerical simulations (DNS). It was previously found that an important effect of a two-dimensional roughness is to increase significantly the amplitude of two-dimensional waves downstream of the roughness in a certain frequency band through enhanced instability and transient growth, while waves outside this band are damped. Here, we investigate the nonlinear secondary instability induced by a large-amplitude two-dimensional wave, which has received a significant boost in amplitude from this additional roughness-induced amplification. Both subharmonic and fundamental secondary excitation of the oblique secondary waves are considered. We found that even though the growth rate of the secondary perturbations increases compared to their linear amplification, only in some of the cases was a fully resonant state attained by the streamwise end of the domain. A parametric investigation of the amplitude of the primary wave, the phase difference between the primary and the secondary waves, and the spanwise wavenumber has also been performed. The transient growth experienced by the primary wave was found to not influence the secondary instability for most parameter combinations. For unfavourable phase relations between the primary and the secondary waves, the phase speed of the secondary wave decreases significantly, and this hampers its growth. Finally, we also investigated the strongly nonlinear stage, for which both the primary and the subharmonic secondary waves had a comparable, finite amplitude. In this case, the growth of the primary waves was found to vanish downstream of the transient growth region, resulting in a lower amplitude than in the absence of the large-amplitude secondary wave. This feedback also decreases the amplification rate of the secondary wave.


Iran, as a developing country, most attention has focused on the industrial and service sectors, and ignored agriculture as one of the most populous part of the economic activity. This has created concerns that the traditional structure and rural livelihoods in many parts of the country that does not use this part of their all opportunities present. In this study using SWOT analytical method to identify strengths, weaknesses agriculture and the opportunities and threats in this sector, This study based agricultural properties introduced strategies based on the agriculture properties, the introduction of the sector's biggest problem is a lack of understanding of the economic structure of agricultural sector and emphasizing the need for to target policies discusses the importance of adopting the policies in the agricultural sector. The sustainability of resources in the country increased, the effectiveness of other inputs also increased to an acceptable level. Return to the fundamental role of agriculture in the economy that the industrial and service sectors in order to support the growth of the welfare of the community.


Estimates from an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is used in an iterative learning control (ILC) algorithm applied to a realistic two-link robot model with flexible joints. The angles seen from the arm side of the joints (arm angles) are estimated by an EKF in two ways: 1) using measurements of angles seen from the motor side of the joints (motor angles), which normally are the only measurements available in commercial industrial robot systems, 2) using both motor-angle and tool-acceleration measurements. The estimates are then used in an ILC algorithm. The results show that the actual arm angles are clearly improved compared to when only motor angles are used in the ILC update, even though model errors are introduced.


A cultural companion guide to Havana in the 'Cities of the Imagination' series. From its humble birth as a few thatched huts along the shoreline, Havana has emerged from five hundred years of turbulent history as the most fascinating city in the Caribbean. Spain's "Pearl of the Antilles" was in turn plundered by pirates, invaded by foreign fleets and then turned into a Mafia-run playground under US tutelage. Since 1959 the seat of Fidel Castro's revolutionary regime, Havana is now shaking off forty years of blockade to face the new challenges of mass tourism. A city whose fabric has always been threatened by hurricanes and political upheaval, Havana has developed a wild edge, an energy and an alluring exoticism that have intrigued and enchanted visitors as diverse as Alexander von Humboldt, Anais Nin, Lorca and Sartre. Claudia Lightfoot explores Havana's history and its paradoxes: a city where architectural treasures survive among crumbling tenements; where a vibrant street life takes place amid shortages; where revolutionary politics, machismo and a thriving black market coexist against a background of salsa, griteria and baseball. * The city of architecture: fortresses, mansions and Art Deco exuberance; baroque facades and balconies; an eclectic cityscape. * The city of politics and exile: the colonial and neo-colonial years; wars, dictators and revolution; Jose Marti and Che Guevara; the diaspora and the dream of Miami. * The city of literature, art and music: Carpentier, Lezama Lima and Cabrera Infante; passion and irony; Graham Greene and Hemingway; Wilfredo Lam and Nelson Dominguez; Afro-Cuban roots; salsa,


Viewed in broad sweep, the most dramatic change in eastern Asia in the past 25 years may be the associational revolution that has accompanied the region's spectacular economic growth and integration. Asian and transPacific relations have been transformed less by changes in regime type and diplomatic initiatives, though there certainly have been examples of both, than by the ways that people and organizations have connected to each other across national boundaries. All this in an Asian neighbourhood in which the principles of sovereignty and non-interference reign supreme, regional institutions are comparatively weak, and divided states and Cold War tensions remain unresolved.The frame of "Asia Pacific" and its multiple variants was invented in the mid-1980s, largely as a way of capturing the trans-Pacific interest in the growing markets of Asia and finding a way to create some kind of community or commonality as an overlay on economic transactions. An act of parliament created the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada in 1984. In its aspirations, achievements, and failures, it has embodied the Canadian attempt to cement the Canadian place in a trans- Pacific world in the making.Commercial and economic issues have been the principal focus of the foundation's activities from the outset, even as its architects and some of its leaders held to a much broader conception that also highlighted political, security, cultural, and educational domains. The nurturing of bilateral political relations and the commitment to building multilateral institutions for Ottawa has been mainly a complement to economic objectives. The Canadian economy is now much more closely integrated into Asia as Canadian consumers, producers, and citizens see in their daily lives.Despite the economic focus and the absolute growth in the levels of trade, in relative terms Canada's significance in Asia continues to slide. Trade dependence on the US is only slightly reduced and the capacity for Canadian businesses to become integral parts of the global value and supply chains centred in Asia remain comparatively weak.The paradox of these 25 years is that Canadian policymakers have aimed at commerce while the real fields of Canadian success often have been elsewhere. Chief among these have been the enormous human flows in immigration from Asia to Canada, the presence of Canadians in Asia, travel and tourism, and student recruitment. Historians may have difficulty pinpointing a major economic triumph but little problem finding a vast array of people-to-people contacts and Canadian initiatives in building the sinews of international society within Asia and across the Pacific.In the billiard-ball world of state-to-state relations in the Asia Pacific, Canada has at most been an intermittent and second-tier player. It has scored occasional successes in intergovernmental institutions like Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and in bilateral relations, especially with China, Japan, South Korea, and ASEAN under Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments and with India under the current Conservative government.The unsung hero has been the Canadian role in the nongovernmental and semi-governmental arenas that have blossomed in the Asia-Pacific era. In a context of rapid economic and social change in east and southeast Asia, the sprouts of multilateralism have taken root. Canada's involvement has both made a lasting contribution in Asia and coincided with the way that foreign policy is made and implemented at home.The fact that the Harper government is comparatively less interested in Asia Pacific than its predecessors and has virtually shut down the interactive processes inside Canada and with Asian partners does not diminish the record of accomplishment nor dim its future prospects.TRACK-TWO DIPLOMACYThe idea of "second track" or "track-two" diplomacy crept into the lexicon of international relations in the early 1980's. …


In light of increasing anthropogenic influences on natural waters and climate change, it is important to advance our understanding of the intricate interactions between biological, geochemical and physical processes that control constituent dynamics within aquatic systems. Among those constituents, dissolved oxygen (O2) is a well-established indicator for biological activity and is also involved in most biogeochemical processes in both the water column as well as in the upper region of the sediment. While the different aspects of O2 dynamics and their flux pathways are well investigated with the boundaries of each discipline, interdisciplinary studies are, at present, still relatively scarce. Within this multidisciplinary thesis, O2 dynamics in the water column and at the sediment-water interface (SWI) were investigated using state-of-the-art high-resolution tools on seasonally stratified shelf seas (central North Sea) as well as on cold seep habitats at continental margins (off Chile). The aim of those studies is that of further investigating the role of the hydrodynamics in modulating costituent transport, with emphasis on O2 transport. The central North Sea process study on thermocline mixing and O2 fluxes, which was performed with a turbulence profiler, fast O2 microsensors and moored current measurements, revealed the occurrence of a second-mode, near-inertial internal wave. Zones of enhanced vertical shear of horizontal velocity and concomitant strong stratification were observed at the upper and lower limits of the interior layer where turbulence levels were also found to be a factor of ten higher than in the central interior region. High-resolution O2 measurements further revealed a well-established O2 maximum which occurred at the lower limit of the interior layer, from which a considerable, yet overlooked, O2 flux towards the bottom boundary (BBL) was observed. It was hypothesized that due to this additional O2 source, the carbon turnover between the thermocline and the BBL is much larger than previously regarded. To overcome the shallow-depth rating limitations of fast O2 sensor systems such as that used on the presented North Sea study, a newly designed fast O2 system with deep sea ratings was developed based on pressure-compensated Clark-type microsensors. The system was embedded on a microstructure profiler and successfully tested at the Chilean continental margin. The O2 gradients above the O2 minimum were twice as high as reported by the standard O2 sensor from the ship-operated CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth). The fast O2 system also proved to be accurate and fast enough to detected step-like structures in water-column O2 profiles. Those were similar to the step-like structures observed in temperature and salinity that characterize a double-diffusive system (i.e., finger regime). Controls on benthic O2 and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) fluxes were also investigated on two cold-seeps habitats at the Chilean continental margin using a state-of-the-art in-situ microprofiling transecting unit and corresponding flow measurements. The first habitat was characterized by recurrent bacterial mat coverage and the frequent occurrence of sulfide; conversely, the second habitat was less sulfidic with limited bacterial mat coverage. While H2S fluxes were found to vary little between the habitats, the average diffusive O2 uptake rate (DOU) was a factor of two higher in the more sulfidic habitat. The major contributions to the observed DOUs were seemingly dominated by sulfide oxidation and, to a lesser extent, by the particulate organic matter input from the overlaying water. Both habitats showed the occurrence of periods of transport limitation resulting from a flow-driven diffusive boundary layer (DBL) which modulated DOU. This limitation was more pronounced in the more sulfidic habitat, suggesting that increased geochemical activity might lead to increased physically-driven dampening of O2 uptake. The implications of this transport limitation are therefore not only of importance for seep O2 dynamics but also for organically enriched continental margins and shelfs characterized by enhanced O2 uptake rates. The results of this thesis also showed that the combination of high-resolution constituent measurements and accurate physical characterization is currently the best approach to further advance the knowledge on the O2 dynamics.


Session 3

Center for Data-Science (CDS) initiatives seem to pop up all around the globe at the moment. Considering the data deluge phenomena, the motivation behind such initiatives may seem trivial. However, a closer look reveals that the purpose, success conditions and managerial principles for CDS initiatives are much less clear. CDSs are neither private companies, nor traditional research entities. What would be a suitable organizational model and philosophy – designed to avoid pitfalls other science-based movements have faced in the history?
Beyond the seemingly trivial purpose of being (analytical) service providers, each such initiative needs to build their own strategy for survival, success and long-term impact. They also need to accomplish this feat in a way to differentiate themselves from other initiatives. To this end, the body of knowledge produced by management science in the form of methods, organizational models and best practices can be helpful. This talk will focus on some potential pitfalls and the potential contribution of design theory and innovation management methods for CDS initiatives.


Palladium or palladium silver alloy composite membranes have been produced by
electroless plating on either porous a-A!2 O 3 supports or porous stainless steel supports. It
was found that the tin introduced into the membrane when using the tin-sensitisationactivation
procedure decreased the durability of the membrane when being subjected to
elevated temperatures. Two other activation procedures were used successfully for
plating palladium on a-A!2 O3 supports. Membranes made via these new activation
procedures could withstand more temperature cycles than those made via the tinsensitisation-
activation procedure.
The osmosis technique developed previously by other workers was used in this
research to repair and produce membranes of higher quality. It was found that use of a
very high osmotic pressure (3M NaCl aqueous solution) could improve the quality of a
membrane by compressing the deposited palladium layer.
Palladium-silver membranes were produced by plating followed by heattreatment,
resulting in the formation of a palladium and silver alloy. The presence of
hydrogen was helpful in this process.
It was found experimentally that CO, H2 O, n-C4Hio and iso-C4Hio reduced the
permeation of hydrogen through a palladium or palladium-silver composite membrane,
while nitrogen had a neutral effect. Addition of CO and H2 O did not change any surface
structure of the membrane, but retarded the permeation of hydrogen by competitive
adsorption. Therefore, their effect disappeared after the membrane was purged by pure
hydrogen for a short period of time. The adsorption tendency of H2 O was stronger than
that of CO, so the former retarded the permeation of hydrogen more.
The presence of n-C4Hio and iso-C4Hio caused the hydrogen permeability to
decrease, and the permeability lost could not be completely recovered with a hydrogen purge. In the presence of dehydrogenation catalyst, the effect of these hydrocarbons
became much more severe, and a hydrogen purge could not recover the permeability.
This was due to the dehydrogenation product (olefin) causing some coke deposition on
the membrane. Dilute oxygen/nitrogen mixtures could burn off the coke, leading to the
recovery of the permeability.
In the research, it was found that the hydrogen permeability of a composite
palladium-silver membrane was affected by the permeation direction. For pure hydrogen,
direction from the support to the metal film would give a higher hydrogen permeance, but
for a hydrogen mixture with nitrogen, the result was just opposite. From the simulated
results, it was found that the permeation direction from the metal film to the support
could make the hydrogen permeation rate deviate from Sievert's law.
The dehydrogenation of iso-butane was studied in a fixed bed and in a palladiumsilver
membrane reactor. Pt/A^Os was used as the catalyst. While in a fixed bed reactor,
total pressure reduced both the conversion of iso-butane and the selectivity of iso-butene,
this was not the case in the palladium-silver membrane reactor. The removal of hydrogen
from the reaction zone ensured that the experimental conversions of iso-butane in the
membrane reactor were higher than the equilibrium values. The iso-butene selectivity
was also increased in the membrane reactor and a flow rate of sweep gas had a favourable
effect on the conversions and the selectivity. The hydrogen permeability of the membrane
was much higher than the required hydrogen removal in this research, so the controlling
step of the reaction was the activity of the catalyst. Counter-current sweep produced only
slightly higher conversion than co-current sweep, but in the present work the co-current
sweep mode was better than the counter-current sweep mode, because of a higher
hydrogen partial pressure at the reactor end leading to less catalyst deactivation.


Summary Recent surveys investigating the molecular biology of Giardia lamblia revealed two distinct assemblages with different clinical outcomes. However, there is not a universal compromise about the clinical effects of each assemblage, warranting further studies. Here, we report the results of the first analyses of the assemblages of G. lamblia in Manisa province located in western Turkey, together with their relationships with the symptoms and DNA sequence analyses of the PCR products. DNA samples were isolated from the stools of 63 patients infected with G. lamblia and 54 DNA samples, amplified successfully with PCR, were digested with the enzyme Xho I for RFLP. Thirty-eight of 54 samples (70.4%) were found to be in Assemblage A, while the remaining 16 samples (29.6%) were found to be in Assemblage B. The number of female patients was found significantly higher in Assemblage B (P=0.18). There was a statistically significant relationship between the occurrence of both abdominal pain and diarrhea and Assemblage B (chi-square, 10.52; P<0.05). No other statistically significant relationship was detected between the assemblages and neither with the symptoms nor with the age groups of the patients. The comparison of the DNA sequences of the PCR products from two assemblage B (one subtype B1 and one B) and one assemblage A samples both with each other and with other DNA sequences in the NCBI website by multialignment analyses, revealed specific regions for assemblages B (B1-B) and A on tpi gene region. Further studies with more patients are required to assess these initial results. Now, our aim is to design a probe for tpi gene region to set up a real-time PCR assay that is easier to conduct and requiring shorter time for the analyses.


A recent opinion poll indicated that Sinn Fein is now neck and neck with Fine Gael to be the majority party in the South. In Dublin, it is already the largest party, commanding 26 percent of the vote. This transformation is remarkable. In the early nineties, Sinn Fein was almost a pariah party in the South. Its members were visited regularly by the Special Branch, their voices were banned from RTE and its activists were vilified by the wider media. The overwhelming message of official Ireland was that they - rather than the British army or its loyalist allies - were responsible for a war that had cost over 4,000 lives. Despite dropping their traditional policy of abstentionism, Sinn Fein could make no headway at the ballot box. In the 1992 election, they achieved less than 2 percent of the vote.


Agriculture represents an important economic sector in Georgia, with a gross farm income of 4.91 and 6.75 billion dollars in 02 and 03, respectively. However, agriculture is facing pressure to improve its efficiency because of global competition and population growth. Water is an integral component in agricultural production and farmers must use this resource as efficiently as possible. Conventional tillage systems, which disrupt the soil surface and bury large amounts of crop residue, typically lose up to 30% of received rainfall in the form of runoff. These tillage systems also decrease irrigation efficiency due to increased evaporation. Conservation tillage systems reduce soil disturbance and maintain crop residue on the soil surface which protects the soil from erosive forces, moderates soil temperature, provides weed control, improves infiltration, and reduces evaporation. Soils under conservation tillage have increased water storage capacity due to additional soil organic matter. Properly managed soils protect surface water (e.g. streams and lakes) because sediment transport through runoff is reduced. Conservation tillage benefits agriculture and helps protect our natural resources.


5'-Nucleotidases (5'NTs) are catabolic enzymes of the nucleotide metabolism. They catalyze dephosphorylation of deoxyribo- and ribonucleoside monophosphates and constitute an important control point in the regulation of intracellular nucleotide pools for the maintenance of correct DNA and RNA synthesis.By removing the alfa-phosphate group from a nucleotide, the 5'NTs release the nucleoside to pass the plasma membrane by facilitated diffusion. Depending on the cellular need for nucleotides, the nucleosides can either exit the cell for reuse elsewhere or be imported and subsequently phosphorylated by nucleoside and nucleotide kinases.The knowledge of how nucleotides are metabolized has been used for rational design of nucleoside analogues that are used in treatment of cancer and viral diseases. These drugs are phosphorylated within the cell to become active. Their dephosphorylation by 5'NTs might be one of the mechanisms behind the resistance experienced by patients towards such drugs.This thesis describes structure-function studies on four of the seven known human 5'-NTs. The focus of the work is on the substrate specificity and regulation of these enzymes. Inactive variants of the mitochondrial and cytosolic deoxynucleotidases and the cytosolic 5'-nucleotidase II were used to characterize the structural basis for their substrate specificity in high detail.Based on structures of the apoprotein and activator/activator+substrate complexes of cytosolic 5'-nucleotidase II, a mechanism for the allosteric activation of this enzyme was presented. In this mechanism, the activator induces a conformational change that involves conserved residues of the active site. The conformational change drastically increases the enzyme affinity for the phosphate moiety of the substrate.


Senior citizens from all walks of life face a gauntlet of physical, psychological, and social hurdles. But do the disadvantages some people accumulate over the course of their lives make their final years especially difficult? Or does the quality of life among poor and affluent seniors converge at some point? The End Game "investigates whether persistent socioeconomic, racial, and gender divisions in America create inequalities that structure the lives of the elderly.Corey Abramson s portraits of seniors from diverse backgrounds offer an intimate look at aging as a stratified social process. They illustrate that disparities in wealth, access to health care, neighborhood conditions, and networks of friends and family shape how different people understand and adapt to the challenges of old age. Social Security and Medicare are helpful but insufficient to alleviate deep structural inequalities. Yet material disadvantages alone cannot explain why seniors respond to aging in different ways. Culture, in all its variations, plays a crucial role.Abramson argues that studying the experience of aging is central to understanding inequality, in part because this segment of the population is rapidly growing. But there is another reason. The shared challenges of the elderly declining mobility and health, loss of loved ones and friends affect people across the socioeconomic spectrum, allowing for powerful ethnographic comparisons that are difficult to make earlier in life. The End Game" makes clear that, despite the shared experiences of old age, inequality remains a powerful arbiter of who wins and who loses in American society."


Abstract : Emulation is defined as an intermediate stage of simulation where the model represents the 'as specified' mechanical plant and equipment, but not the control logic required to drive it. This thesis investigates the utility of providing a computer representation of the functional elements to be controlled by system control programs. These representations or 'emulators' mimic the behavior of the system, or factory being controlled. The advantages of such a scheme are that developers of control software, are able to test out new control methodologies without actually connecting to the hardware system under control. This thesis investigates system control for automated manufacturing systems and identifies how emulation can be used as a valid tool in reducing the implementation time of such systems. The functions and characteristics of system control are identified as well as the problems associated with their implementation. The problems are then categorized to identify where emulation is a valid tool for problem resolution. This thesis is concluded by a description of a software demonstration which validated the concept of using emulation to solve system control problems.


The following thesis contains four empirical chapters focusing on the contagion, interest rate, foreign exchange rate, and investment risk exposures of financial institutions, respectively. Chapter 1 provides an overarching view of the four empirical chapters and the main objective of the thesis. Chapter 2 examines the return and volatility spillovers among the financial sector portfolios across the global financial markets from an US investor's perspective. The potential influence of the recent financial crisis on the return and risk interdependence among these sector portfolios has also been evaluated. Financial institutions with different characteristic and size have been examined separately as well as jointly. Chapter 3 and 4 investigate the interest rate and foreign exchange rate risk exposures of financial institutions, respectively. In chapter 3, we evaluate the impact of changes in term structure on the equity value of financial intermediaries across major economies. In chapter 4, the influences of both domestic and foreign currency fluctuations on the equity value of financial intermediaries are explored. Furthermore, we split the sample period into pre- and post-crisis period to investigate the potential impact of recent financial crisis on the interest rate and foreign exchange rate risk exposure of these financial intermediaries under examination. Chapter 5 focuses on the investment risk faced by financial institutions (mainly non-banking financial service firms, e.g. mutual funds, pension funds and hedge funds). We shed light on the economic value of correlation timing for dynamic asset allocation strategies. In order to further evaluate the influence of the rebalancing frequency on the economic value of the correlation timing, we assess the performance of the dynamic asset allocation strategy on both daily and monthly basis. Finally, chapter 6 provides the concluding remarks that summarize the thesis.


Abstract. Despite their potential as a valuable source of individual turbine power performance and turbine array energy production optimization information, nacelle-mounted anemometers have often been neglected because complex flows around the blades and nacelle interfere with their measurements. This work quantitatively explores the accuracy of and potential corrections to nacelle anemometer measurements to determine the degree to which they may be useful when corrected for these complex flows, particularly for calculating annual energy production (AEP) in the absence of other meteorological data. Using upwind meteorological tower measurements along with nacelle-based measurements from a General Electric (GE) 1.5sle model, we calculate empirical nacelle transfer functions (NTFs) and explore how they are impacted by different atmospheric and turbulence parameters. This work provides guidelines for the use of NTFs for deriving useful wind measurements from nacelle-mounted anemometers. Corrections to the nacelle anemometer wind speed measurements can be made with NTFs and used to calculate an AEP that comes within 1 % of an AEP calculated with upwind measurements. We also calculate unique NTFs for different atmospheric conditions defined by temperature stratification as well as turbulence intensity, turbulence kinetic energy, and wind shear. During periods of low stability as defined by the Bulk Richardson number (RB), the nacelle-mounted anemometer underestimates the upwind wind speed more than during periods of high stability at some wind speed bins below rated speed, leading to a steeper NTF during periods of low stability. Similarly, during periods of high turbulence, the nacelle-mounted anemometer underestimates the upwind wind speed more than during periods of low turbulence at most wind bins between cut-in and rated wind speed. Based on these results, we suggest different NTFs be calculated for different regimes of atmospheric stability and turbulence for power performance validation purposes.


We are currently living in an era where many aspects of our daily lives are coordinated through mobile devices. The amount of mobile phone applications and social networks currently in the market are vast and growing at an exponential rate. Many applications offer users a unique experience to post a vast array of content such as messages, videos, pictures, recipes and so forth.

The purpose of this project is to show how important storytelling is in our daily lives and the impact that the stories could have on us through the application StoryTellerApp. This application will give the users the ability to perform many actions using voice recordings.

The users can record, store and share their stories with other users and the rest of the world through the application and social networks.

The intended audience of StoryTellerApp are the Android phone holders with a Facebook account who actively share information via the social networks such as Facebook, twitter or WhatsApp.

I have built this project using different technologies such as Android Studio to create the application layout and functionality, visual studio and Asp.Net to create a web API that interacts with the android application and SQL Server Management Studio to store the database.


From Google's auto-correction of spelling errors to Netflix's movie suggestions, machine-learning systems are a part of our everyday life. Both private and state actors increasingly employ such systems to make decisions that implicate individuals' substantive rights, such as with credit scoring, government-benefit eligibility decisions, national security screening, and criminal sentencing. In turn, the rising use of machine-learning systems has led to questioning about whether they are sufficiently accurate, fair, and transparent. This Article builds on that work, focusing on how opaque technologies can subtly erode the due-process norm of participation.
To illuminate this issue, this Article examines the use of predictive coding — a form of technology-assisted review in which supervised machine-learning software is taught to predict the relevance of collected documents for discovery productions. The use of predictive coding in civil discovery highlights the new challenge to the participation norm because the processes generally do not provide any explanations for the outputs, much less non-technological accounts that are tied to the underlying substantive legal issues. Thus, even if predictive coding results in reasonably complete, accurate, and cost-efficient productions, the "black-box" nature of the process may harm the element of legitimacy that comes from litigants understanding and being able to more fully participate in judicial processes. This harm, however, has not been addressed by the developing jurisprudence, probably because most of the early cases involved high-stakes litigation between sophisticated parties who could afford computer experts. But the participation issue — and related equality concerns — will become increasing problematic as the technology's use expands beyond this privileged posture. In response to these issues, this Article proposes a reinvigorated Mathews framework that explicitly weighs predictive coding's impact on the participation norm to better future proof the doctrine.


We provide a systematic study of the problem of finding the source of a rumor in a network. We model rumor spreading in a network with the popular susceptible-infected (SI) model and then construct an estimator for the rumor source. This estimator is based upon a novel topological quantity which we term rumor centrality. We establish that this is a maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for a class of graphs. We find the following surprising threshold phenomenon: on trees which grow faster than a line, the estimator always has nontrivial detection probability, whereas on trees that grow like a line, the detection probability will go to 0 as the network grows. Simulations performed on synthetic networks such as the popular small-world and scale-free networks, and on real networks such as an internet AS network and the U.S. electric power grid network, show that the estimator either finds the source exactly or within a few hops of the true source across different network topologies. We compare rumor centrality to another common network centrality notion known as distance centrality. We prove that on trees, the rumor center and distance center are equivalent, but on general networks, they may differ. Indeed, simulations show that rumor centrality outperforms distance centrality in finding rumor sources in networks which are not tree-like.


The mitochondria are key players in mediating cell death or survival. The release of mitochondrial proteases contributes to cell death during apoptosis. However, knockout of genes encoding the mitochondrial proteases HtrA2 or Parl results in increased susceptibility to apoptosis of lymphocytes and neurons; thus, the function of these enzymes in cell death and survival is complex. Chao et al. screened for genes that suppressed apoptosis of fetal liver cells null for Janus kinase 2 and identified the gene Hax1, which encodes an antiapoptotic protein that is localized to the mitochondrial intermembrane space through a C-terminal transmembrane domain and that has BH1- and BH2-like domains, which make it related to Bcl-2 proteins. When the gene was disrupted in mice, the phenotype, loss of lymphocytes and neurodegeneration in the striatum and cerebellar cortex, was similar to the phenotype of mice lacking functional HtrA2 or Parl. Thus, the authors investigated whether these three proteins have a functional interaction that is important for setting the threshold for apoptosis. Hax1 and HtrA2 had been previously reported to interact in a yeast two-hybrid screen. HtrA2 is synthesized as an inactive precursor that is cleaved within the mitochondria to produce the active form. Chao et al. found that the abundance of processed HtrA2 was decreased in Hax1-null mouse tissues. Furthermore, when COS-7 cells were transfected with both HtrA2 and Hax1 or with HtrA2 and Parl, the abundance of processed HtrA2 was increased compared with that in cells only transfected with HtrA2. In addition, coimmunoprecipitation experiments with endogenous proteins or those from transfected cells showed that Hax1 interacted with both HtrA2 and Parl. Thus, the authors suggest that Hax1 aids in the presentation of HtrA2 to Parl for processing and activation. How this affects apoptosis was the next question. Although knockout of Bax, Bak, or Bim (genes encoding proapoptotic Bcl-2 proteins) did not alleviate the neurodegeneration found in the Hax1-deficient animals, knockout of Bax or Bim did rescue Hax1-deficient lymphocytes from cell death induced by cytokine withdrawal. Activated T cells that were deficient in Hax1 or that had a mutated HtrA2 with disrupted protease activity showed faster kinetics for the appearance of the activated form of Bax, an event associated with apoptosis. Thus, the proteins of the intermembrane space appear to contribute to regulation of apoptosis before mitochondrial membrane permeabilization. J.-R. Chao, E. Parganas, K. Boyd, C. Y. Hong, J. T. Opferman, J. N. Ihle, Hax1-mediated processing of HtrA2 by Parl allows survival of lymphocytes and neurons. Nature 452, 98-102 (2008). [PubMed]