Since the pioneering research work of C. W. Tang and S. A. VanSlyke in 1987, organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) have attracted a great attention due to their possible application as display components or as new light sources1.
 To produce a full color display or a white light source, red, green and blue phosphorescent emitter combinations are required. So far, stable organic light emitting diodes with deep blue phosphorescent emitters could not be realized.
 In this thesis the degradation mechanisms of blue phosphorescent OLEDs were investigated. The lifetime stability of devices containing FIrpic as blue emitter has been a major concern for organic blue emitting devices. To gain a deeper knowledge about the purity of FIrpic and how the purity is influenced by sublimation steps, non-sublimated and sublimated FIrpic were analyzed via high pressure liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS). Moreover, a detailed chemical analysis was carried out for a complete blue emitting device consisting of hole transporting material 4,4'–Bis(N-(1-naphthyl)-N-phenyl-amino)biphenyl (α-NPD), an electron transporting material Bis(2-methyl-8-quinolinolato-N1,O8)-(1,1'-biphenyl-4-olato)aluminum (BAlq) and using a phosphorescent host-guest system with 4,4',4''-Tri(N-carbazolyl)triphenylamin (TCTA) as host and Bis(4,6-difluorophenylpyridinato-N,C2)picolinatoiridium (FIrpic) as guest molecule. Several isomerization products of the emitting material FIrpic were detected massspectrometrically in pristine devices. In addition, an increase of the concentration of these isomers and the formation of an additional isomer of the octahedral iridium complex FIrpic was detected in stressed devices.
 Beside isomer formation and chemical degradation of the emitting material, changes in the ligand sphere of the cyclometalated complex, especially the cleavage of an electronwithdrawing group from one of the ligands of the heteroleptic phosphorescent emitter FIrpic could be monitored after the deposition and aging process. Moreover, an additional isomer of the degradation product (FIrpic - 1F) could be detected in aged devices.
 Furthermore, the characteristics and chemical compositions of the hole transport material α-NPD after thermal evaporation process were investigated in detail. HPLC/MS results revealed that vacuum-deposited devices that containing α-NPD as a hole transporting material a chemical transformation is taking place. A new structural isomer of the hole transporting material was identified, and characterized using a highly specific and selective instrumentation of LC-MS(n) ion trap with atmospheric pressure photo ionization.
 In this work it could be shown that not only octahedral iridium complexes but also organic compounds undergo chemical transformation and finally form new degradation products during the manufacturing process of blue phosphorescent OLEDs.
 Interestingly, trace amounts of the degradation products of the hole transporting material α-NPD was observed as well, using HPLC/MS analysis. The dissociation of the N-C bond of α-NPD, which seems to prone to rupture during the evaporation and aging process, was in good accordance with the expeorimental LDI/TOF/MS results.
 BAlq is often used as an electron transport material in phosphorescent organic lightemitting devices (PhOLED). Despite the significance of the lifetime of full color OLEDs in practical uses, little is known about the stability of aluminum (III) bis (2-methyl-8-quinolinate)-4-phenylphenolate (BAlq) in presence of humidity. To gain a deeper insight into a chemical failure of BAlq thin layer chromatography was applied. Overall, the reaction of BAlq with traces of H2O leads to the accumulation of 8-hydroxyquinaldine (8-Hq) and 4-phenylphenol.
 Chemical reaction mechanisms of OLED materials during device operation can be monitored using laser desorption ionization (LDI) coupled with a time of flight mass spectrometer. The comparison of experimental data of pristine and aged devices revealed that new reaction products are formed during device operation. Crosslinking and coupling products of TCTA fragments to the α-NPD core were observed. The hole transporting material α-NPD and the host-molecule TCTA show chemical reactions in terms of oligomerization during device operation. Ten new reaction products were characterized via LDI/TOF/MS. Dissociation, isomerization, oligomerization and ligand exchange mechanisms were observed that take place under operation conditions. Rearrangement processes of the OLED materials in a driven device might have a considerable influence on the device performance and can limit the lifetime of the blue emission.
 The different mechanistic pathways of the possible degradation products and reaction products could be a failure mode of organic electroluminescent devices that include phosphorescent metal complexes.


Unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones, are recently gaining increased research attention across various fields due to their flexibility and application potential. The steady increase in the number of amateur drones demands more stringent regulations on their allowed route, mass, and load. However, these regulations may be violated accidentally or deliberately. In these cases, spying with drones, transfer of dangerous payloads, or losing reliable drone control can represent a new hazard for people, governments, and business sector. The technologies to detect, track, and disarm possible aerial threats are therefore in prompt demand. To this end, ubiquitous cellular networks, and especially 5G infrastructures based on the use of millimeter-wave radio modules, may be efficiently leveraged to offer the much needed drone detection capabilities. In this work, we propose to exploit 5G millimeter-wave deployments to detect violating amateur drones. We argue that the prospective 5G infrastructure may provide all the necessary technology elements to support efficient detection of small-sized drones. We therefore outline a novel technology and system design perspective, including such considerations as the density of base stations, their directional antennas, and the available bandwidth, among others, as well as characterize their impact with our ray-based modeling methods.


In an attempt to optimize a high yield, high efficiency artificial photosynthetic protein we have discovered unique energy and spatial architecture limits which apply to all light-activated photosynthetic systems. We have generated an analytical solution for the time behavior of the core three cofactor charge separation element in photosynthesis, the photosynthetic cofactor triad, and explored the functional consequences of its makeup including its architecture, the reduction potentials of its components, and the absorption energy of the light absorbing primary-donor cofactor. Our primary findings are two: First, that a high efficiency, high yield triad will have an absorption frequency more than twice the reorganization energy of the first electron transfer, and second, that the relative distance of the acceptor and the donor from the primary-donor plays an important role in determining the yields, with the highest efficiency, highest yield architecture having the light absorbing cofactor closest to the acceptor. Surprisingly, despite the increased complexity found in natural solar energy conversion proteins, we find that the construction of this central triad in natural systems matches these predictions. Our analysis thus not only suggests explanations for some aspects of the makeup of natural photosynthetic systems, it also provides specific design criteria necessary to create high efficiency, high yield artificial protein-based triads.


From its earliest roots, art was used to codify and communicate what is fashionable, powerful and luxurious. Recently, however, through institutional mega art projects like the Fondation LV and the Fondazione Prada, fashion seeks not just to legitimize itself, but to position itself as patron-cum-collaborator. Up until now the art world has been happy to take the money, but has been ambivalent towards the commercialization that co-branding brings. However, the highest grossing exhibits at hallowed cultural institutions – like the McQueen retrospective at the Met – have been fashion based. It seems, as of late, the fashion industry has gone past sponsorship and now seems to be colonizing the environs of the art world itself. These new imbrications hold significance for a broad range of related topics such as creative appropriation, feminist theory, and issues of gendered representation and power. As such, the politics of criteria for inclusion and collection must now become a necessary aspect of the dialogue within fashion, art and museum studies, and the thinking that situates them as discrete entities that exist within autonomous domains irrelative to each other also needs to be challenged. This article explores the cartography between autonomous art culture, fashion marketing, and fashion exhibition, and the increased blurring of their overlapping
borders. It also looks at the commercialization of the museum and fine art institutional domain.


Abstract.  When females are inseminated by multiple males, male paternity success (sperm precedence) is determined by the underlying processes of sperm storage and sperm utilization. Although informative for many questions, two‐male sperm competition experiments may offer limited insight into natural mating scenarios when females are likely to mate with several males. In this study, genetic markers in Tribolium castaneum are used to trace paternity for multiple sires, and to determine whether displacement of stored sperm that occurs after a third mating equally affects both previous mates, or if fertilizations are disproportionately lost by the female's most recent mate. For 20 days after triple‐matings, first males retain significantly higher paternity success (relative to first male paternity in double‐matings) compared with second males. These results demonstrate that when females remate before sperm mixing occurs, sperm stratification results in differential loss of sperm from the most recent mate. This study provides insight into the mechanisms underlying sperm precedence in a promiscuous mating system, and suggests that T. castaneum females could limit paternity success of particular mates by remating with more highly preferred males.


Writing matters: it plays a key role in the circulation of ideas in society and has a direct impact on the development of democracy. But only a few get to do the kind of writing that most influence this development. The Politics of Writing examines writing as a social practice. The authors draw on critical linguistics, cultural studies and literacy studies, as they explore and analyse: * the social context in which writing is embedded * the processes and practices of writing * the purposes of writing * the reader-writer relationship * issues of writer identity. They challenge current notions of 'correctness' and argue for a more democratic pedagogy as part of the answer to the inequitable distribution of the right to write.


Parallel database systems have to support both inter-transaction as well as intra-transaction parallelism. Inter-uansaction parahelism (multi-user mode) is required to achieve high throughput, in particular for OLTP transactions, and sufficient cost-effectiveness. Irma-transaction parallelism is a prerequisite for reducing the response time of complex and data-intensive transactions (queries). In order to achieve both goals dynamic strategies for load balancing and scheduling are necessary which take the current system state into account for allocating transactions and subqueries to processors and for determining the degree of intra-transaction parallelism. We study the load balancing problem for parallel join processing in Shared Nothing database systems. In these systems, join processing is typically based on a dynamic redistribution of relations to join processors thus making dynamic load balancing strategies feasible. In particular, we study the performance of dynamic load balancing strategies for determining the number of join processors and for selection of the join processors. In contrast to previous studies on parallel join processing, we present a multi-user performance analysis for both homogeneous and heterogeneous/mixed workloads as well as for different database allocations.


Over the past decades, the great technological advances made in airborne and space sensors have led to a significant improvement in remote sensing methods and techniques used for studying worldwide natural ecosystem disturbances. More commonly, optical sensors are chosen for detecting landscapes transformation, however, in addition to the problematics associated to this technology due the requirement of certain technical and environmental conditions (sunlight, no cloud-coverage), these systems may offer a significant lower performance when studying the post-disturbance evolution. In response to this challenge, this research aims to highlight the capabilities of Synthetic Aperture Radar - SAR satellite sensors for investigating the environmental evolution of forest areas affected by Mediterranean fire events. The use of a multitemporal analysis of ESA-Sentinel 1 SAR and Landsat 7 & Sentinel 2 optical satellite image series allowed us to explore the post-fire natural evolution of the areas affected by the Doñana national park forest fire occurred in June-July 2017 in two different ways: 1. Monitoring radar image intensity changes to evaluate environmental disturbances within the affected areas; 2. Comparing the response of both optical and radar satellite systems to the extraction of long-term environmental information. The results obtained from both the backscatter signal analysis and the systems comparison illustrate the SAR technology's efficiency in detecting and studying temporal changes in the natural conditions of the areas affected by fire events.


Objective: To obtain a multi-stakeholder perspective of community pharmacy practice change. Design: Qualitative study. Setting: Community pharmacy in rural Mississippi. Participants: Fourteen key stakeholders of the patient care practice including pharmacists (n=4), support staff (n=2), collaborating providers (n=4), patients (n=3), and a payer (n=1). Intervention: Semi-structured interviews and participant-observation techniques were used. Main outcome measures: Description of the community pharmacy's practice and business model and identification of practice change facilitators. Results: Change facilitators for this practice included: a positive reputation in the community, forming solid relationships with providers, and convenience of patient services. Communication in and outside of the practice, adequate reimbursement, and resource allocation were identified as challenges. Conclusions: This case study is a multi-stakeholder examination of community pharmacy practice change and readers are provided with a real-world example of a community pharmacy's successful establishment of a patient care practice.


Previous research found racial identity predictive of psychological distress among African American students at predominantly White colleges. This study examined these relationships among 154 African American undergraduates attending a historically Black university. Racial identity was independent of psychological distress, suggesting that African American students' racial identity predicts psychological distress only in settings in which they are the minority. ********** Racial identity can be viewed as a person's perception of sharing a common racial heritage with a particular racial group (Helms & Parham, 1990). According to Helms (1990, 1995), racial identity is characterized by certain ways of responding to cultural or racial stimuli in the environment or within one's psyche. At times, such responses are within conscious awareness; at other times, however, reactions to racial stimuli may be processed unconsciously. At the core of Helms's (1990, 1995) theory is Cross's (1971, 1991) Nigrescence model, which consists of various stages of Black racial identity that individuals experience in a process of affirming their Blackness. These stages determine the way in which African American individuals respond to racial stimuli. Helms and Parham (1990) applied Cross's (1971, 1991) model to the development of a measure for assessing racial identity, the Black Racial Identity Attitude Scale (RIAS-B), which was subsequently revised to operationalize these stages as more continuous ego statuses rather than as discrete stages (Helms, 1995) to emphasize their fluid nature. Although individuals at each of these statuses primarily respond according to one status, they may at times exhibit elements of thinking characterized by other statuses (Helms & Parham, 1990). Each status enables individuals to understand and respond to racial information in increasingly complex ways and eventually to establish a positive, self-affirming racial identity (Helms, 1999). The RIAS-B includes four statuses that correspond to Cross's (1971, 1991) model. In the first status of this model, Conformity (formerly known as Pre-Encounter), individuals devalue Black people and culture, deny their own Black identity, and idealize White people and White culture. After intense negative experiences with White people or very positive experiences with other Black people that challenge their former racial perspective, Black individuals may progress to the Dissonance (formerly known as Encounter) status of racial identity. Individuals at this status experience ambivalence, confusion, and anger about their socioracial identity and commitment. The Immersion/Emersion status develops as Black individuals immerse themselves in Black culture. Individuals engaged at this level tend to idealize everything that is considered to be part of Black culture and to denigrate everything considered part of White culture. At the final status of racial identity development, Internalization, individuals are positively committed to their socioracial group and demonstrate a capacity to respond objectively to members of their own racial group as well as to members of the dominant racial group. An accumulating body of research on this topic has related racial identity to various aspects of mental health, including psychological well-being (Carter, 1991), levels of distress (Parham & Helms, 1985a), and coping ability (Neville, Heppner, & Wang, 1997). In general, pre-encounter (Conformity status), encounter (Dissonance status), and immersion (Immersion/Emersion status) attitudes have been associated with greater levels of distress (Carter, 1991; Parham & Helms, 1985a, 1985b), lower self-esteem (Munford, 1994; Parham & Helms, 1985a; Wilson & Constantine, 1999), and lower general well-being (Carter, 1991; Pyant & Yanico, 1991). Recently, researchers examining racial identity have begun using more complex study designs. …


The Commission shall, if appropriate, submit legislative proposals with a view to amending other Union legal acts on the protection of personal data, in order to ensure uniform and consistent protection of natural persons with regard to processing. This shall in particular concern the rules relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to processing by Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data.


We establish new, and surprisingly tight, connections between propositional proof complexity and finite model theory. Specifically, we show that the power of several propositional proof systems, such as Horn resolution, bounded-width resolution, and the polynomial calculus of bounded degree, can be characterised in a precise sense by variants of fixed-point logics that are of fundamental importance in descriptive complexity theory. Our main results are that Horn resolution has the same expressive power as least fixed-point logic, that bounded-width resolution captures existential least fixed-point logic, and that the polynomial calculus with bounded degree over the rationals solves precisely the problems definable in fixed-point logic with counting. By exploring these connections further, we establish finite-model-theoretic tools for proving lower bounds for the polynomial calculus over the rationals and over finite fields.


This study examined sources and frames in the debate over whether to teach evolution or intelligent design in public schools. A content analysis of 12 newspapers from Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania was conducted to see how geography and sourcing affected the framing of the controversial science issue. Established patterns of reporting science were repeated in the news coverage, but location and sources played an important role in how the issue was framed. The frames varied by region, suggesting a new direction for future research of framing.


To understand the soil nutrient status of pear orchards in Beijing, we investigated their fertilization situation, including the fertilizer type, amount, and period. Furthermore, soil samples were collected at a depth of 0 to 40 cm to determine the contents of soil nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The status of nutrient profits and losses was analyzed. The results showed that 50% of the pear orchards received organic fertilizer as a single nutrient source, and 35.7% of the pear orchards received a combined application of organic fertilizer and chemical fertilizer. Most pear orchards received organic fertilizer in autumn, but the application of chemical fertilizer occurred mainly before germination and during fruit expansion. The average nutrient input to the investigated pear orchards was 569.6 kg/ha for N, 855.0 kg/ha for P2O5, and 448.1 kg/ha for K2O, and the corresponding proportion of organic fertilizer was 76.9%, 88.0%, and 85.8%, respectively. However, the pear orchards had surpluses of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, with average surplus amounts as high as 445.5, 794.3, and 321.4 kg/ha, respectively. Among all pear orchards surveyed, 93.33% faced environmental risks and 37.04% faced leaching risks. The average content of soil phosphorus was 2.23 times its critical value, and 64.29% of the studied pear orchards exceeded the critical value. Most pear orchards had surplus potassium, with 26.92% exceeding 500 kg/ha. This study provides a basis for soil improvement, high-quality production of fruits, and efficient utilization of pear orchards in Beijing.


Memory studies has moved from the cultural collective, rooted within the bounds of the nation state, to the transnational or transcultural, which in recent years has come to account for the circulation of "memory cultures" in an increasingly complex, globalised and violent world. In what follows, the essays in this special issue on Transnational Memory and Traumatic Histories are briefly introduced and contextualised within this transcultural framework.


PURPOSE
To determine prognostic factors correlated with outcomes after autologous hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) in children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We studied 219 children who received autologous HSCT for AML in first complete remission (CR) and 73 children in second CR and who were reported to the Autologous Blood and Marrow Transplant Registry. Among 29 of 73 patients who underwent transplantation in second CR, duration of first CR was > or = 12 months.

RESULTS
Three-year cumulative incidences of relapse were 37% (95% CI, 31% to 44%), 60% (95% CI, 41% to 74%), and 36% (95% CI, 20% to 53%) for children in first CR, second CR after a short (< 12 months) first CR, and second CR after a long (> or = 12 months) first CR, respectively. Corresponding 3-year probabilities of leukemia-free survival were 54% (95% CI, 47% to 60%), 23% (95% CI, 10% to 39%), and 60% (95% CI, 42% to 75%). In multivariate analyses, risks of relapse, mortality, and treatment failure (relapse or death, inverse of leukemia-free survival) were higher for patients in second CR after a short first CR than for the other two groups. Transplant-related mortality, treatment failure, and overall mortality rates were higher in older (> 10 years) children.

CONCLUSION
Duration of first CR seems to be the most important determinant of outcome. Results in children who experience treatment failure with conventional chemotherapy support the use of autologous transplantation as salvage therapy if such patients achieve a subsequent CR.


We study settings in which, prior to playing an incomplete information game, players observe many draws of private signals about the state from some information structure. Signals are i.i.d. across draws, but may display arbitrary correlation across players. For each information structure, we define a simple learning efficiency index, which only considers the statistical distance between the worst-informed player's marginal signal distributions in different states. We show, first, that this index characterizes the speed of common learning (Cripps, Ely, Mailath, and Samuelson, 2008): In particular, the speed at which players achieve approximate common knowledge of the state coincides with the slowest player's speed of individual learning, and does not depend on the correlation across players' signals. Second, we build on this characterization to provide a ranking over information structures: We show that, with sufficiently many signal draws, information structures with a higher learning efficiency index lead to better equilibrium outcomes, robustly for a rich class of games and objective functions. We discuss implications of our results for constrained information design in games and for the question when information structures are complements vs. substitutes.


The noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) in the brainstem shows early signs of protein pathologies in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. As the LC's small size (approximately 2.5 mm in width) presents a challenge for molecular imaging, the past decade has seen a steep rise in structural and functional Magnetic Resonance (MR) studies aiming to characterise the LC's changes in ageing and neurodegeneration. However, given its position in the brainstem and small volume, great care must be taken to yield methodologically reliable MR results as spatial deviations in transformations can greatly reduce the statistical power of the analyses at the group level. Here, we suggest a spatial transformation procedure and a set of quality assessment methods which allow LC researchers to achieve the spatial precision necessary for investigating this small but potentially impactful brain structure. Using a combination of available toolboxes (SPM12, ANTs, FSL, FreeSurfer), individual structural and functional 3T LC scans are transformed into MNI space via a study-specific anatomical template. Following this, the precision of spatial alignment in individual MNI-transformed images is quantified using in-plane distance measures based on slice-specific centroids of structural LC segmentations and based on landmarks of salient anatomical features in mean functional images, respectively. Median in-plane distance of all landmarks on the transformed structural as well as functional LC imaging data were below 2 mm, thereby falling below the typical LC width of 2.5 mm suggested by post-mortem data. With the set of spatial post-processing steps outlined in this paper and available for download, we hope to give readers interested in LC imaging a starting point for a reliable analysis of structural and functional MR data of the LC and to have also taken a first step towards establishing reporting standards of LC imaging data.


Simone de Beauvoir did not expressly refer to Kant when dealing with the question of woman in The second Sex. Nevertheless, I believe that there are important similarities between her way of building the concept of woman and the trajectory of Kant's arguments in his synthetic epistemology. In this essay I would like to shed new light on de Beauvoir's concept of woman while making use of Kantian theory of knowledge. I will be dealing here, then, with the possible consequences of the de Beauvoir-Kant analogy for the comprehension of de Beauvoir's conceptualization of what it means to be a woman. I argue that by means of such analogy it is possible to shed light on a specific interpretation of de Beauvoir's perspective on the question of woman, i.e., the interpretation according to which de Beauvois can be considered neither a pure essentialist, or a thinker pointing to essentialism, nor a pure constructivist calling to an absolute nominalist position regarding the concept of "woman." In other words, I argue that the comparison between de Beauvoir's approach to the question of woman and Kant's approach to the question of knowledge calls for an understanding of de Beauvoir as arguing for a synthesis between so-called a priori elements constituting women on one side and the social, cultural, historical, external features which construct them on the other. By way of this analogy I support a particular understanding of de Beauvoir-one that considers her a synthetic thinker-and which stands in opposition to certain well-accepted interpretations of her position regarding the specific question of woman. De Beauvoir: Constructivist, Essentialist, or Synthetic? In the following, I shall argue that similarly to Kant regarding the question of knowledge, de Beauvoir can be seen as proposing a synthetic approach to the understanding of the concept of woman. Women's existence, from this point of view, is understood as a product of both a priori, immanent conditions on one side, and external, social, cultural and historical conditions on the other.1 The analogy with Kant may help to illuminate this take on de Beauvoir's approach. (As I will later show, this interpretation has already been defended in different ways by some de Beauvoir scholars.) I will briefly present the two interpretations which are contested by de Beauvoir as synthetic, in order to describe later the synthetic approach which can be supported by the analogy Kant-de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir as Constructivist De Beauvoir has been hardly read as pointing toward a pure constructivist approach to the question of woman. One of the few important readings of de Beauvoir which sees her as arguing for the inexistence of women in nature, and their construction only as a product of social and historical conditions, is the reading of Judith Butler, who-using de Beauvoir's famous statement from The second Sex on becoming a woman rather than being born one-relates to de Beauvoir as her predecessor regarding the constructivist theory of woman (Butler 1998). Butler argues: Indeed, it becomes unclear when one takes Simone de Beauvoir's formulation to its unstated consequences, whether gender need be in any way linked by with sex, or whether this conventional linkage is itself culturally bound. If gender is a way of "existing" one's body, and one's body is a "situation," a field of cultural possibilities both received and reinterpreted, then gender seems to be a thoroughly cultural affair. That one becomes one's gender seems now to imply more than the distinction between sex and gender. Not only is gender no longer dictated by anatomy, but anatomy does not seem to pose any necessary limits to the possibilities of gender. (Butler 1998, 38-39) Butler's reading of de Beauvoir as conflating sex and gender, and as arguing for an unnecessary relationship between anatomy and gender features-i.e., as constituting an early Butlerian-has been broadly contested. …


Excerpt] Luvernel Clark is shop steward of ACTWU Local 1742 in Knoxville, Tennessee and chairperson of the Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network's Maquiladora Committee which participated in a worker exchange to Mexico in the summer of 1991. She works at Allied Signal, in a plant that had 3000 employees in 1971, but today has less than 400, The jobs were sent by Allied first to a non-union "greenfield" location in Greenville, Alabama in 1982, and from there to Agua Prieta, Mexico. Fran Ansley, associate professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and member of the TIRN delegation, interviewed Clark for Labor Research Review.


Robotic vehicles (RVs) are being adopted in a variety of application domains. Despite their increasing deployment, many security issues with RVs have emerged, limiting their wider deployment. In this paper, we address a new type of vulnerability in RV control programs, called input validation bugs, which involve missing or incorrect validation checks on control parameter inputs. Such bugs can be exploited to cause physical disruptions to RVs which may result in mission failures and vehicle damages or crashes. Furthermore, attacks exploiting such bugs have a very small footprint: just one innocent-looking ground control command, requiring no code injection, control flow hijacking or sensor spoofing. To prevent such attacks, we propose RVFUZZER, a vetting system for finding input validation bugs in RV control programs through control-guided input mutation. The key insight behind RVFUZZER is that the RV control model, which is the generic theoretical model for a broad range of RVs, provides helpful semantic guidance to improve bug-discovery accuracy and efficiency. Specifically, RVFUZZER involves a control instability detector that detects control program misbehavior, by observing (simulated) physical operations of the RV based on the control model. In addition, RVFUZZER steers the input generation for finding input validation bugs more efficiently, by leveraging results from the control instability detector as feedback. In our evaluation of RVFUZZER on two popular RV control programs, a total of 89 input validation bugs are found, with 87 of them being zero-day bugs.


We compute the CP violating decay asymmetries relevant for baryogenesis scenarios involving the out of equilibrium decays of heavy particles, including the finite temperature effects arising from the background of light thermal particles which are present during the decay epoch. Thermal effects can modify the size of CP violation by a sizeable fraction in the decay of scalar particles, but we find interesting cancellations in the thermal corrections affecting the asymmetries in the decays of fermions, as well as in the decay of scalars in supersymmetric theories. We also estimate the effects which arise from the motion of the decaying particles with respect to the background plasma.


Although the fundamental ideas underlying research efforts in the field of computer vision have not radically changed in the past two decades, there has been a transformation in the way work in this field is conducted. This is primarily due to the emergence of a number of tools, of both a practical and a theoretical nature. One such tool, celebrated throughout the nineties, is the geometry of visual space-time. It is known under a variety of headings, such as multiple view geometry, structure from motion, and model building. It is a mathematical theory relating multiple views (images) of a scene taken at different viewpoints to three-dimensional models of the (possibly dynamic) scene. This mathematical theorygave rise to algorithms that take as input images (or video) and provide as output a model of the scene. Such algorithms are one of the biggest successes of the field and they have many applications in other disciplines, such as graphics (image-based rendering, motion capture) and robotics (navigation). One of the difficulties, however, is that the current tools cannot yet be fully automated, and they do not provide very accurate results. More research is required for automation and high precision. During the past few years we have investigated a number of basic questions underlying the structure from motion problem. Our investigations resulted in a small number of principles that characterize the problem. These principles, which give rise to automatic procedures and point to new avenues for studying the next level of the structure from motion problem, are the subject of this paper.


The motor-cortex is recognized as the origin of the major direct path from cortex to muscles. Although it has been studied for over a century, relatively little is known about how the motor cortex facilitates reach-to-grasp movements. We collected a rich dataset from monkeys trained to reach and grasp objects of different shapes, presented at various orientations and spatial locations. We simultaneously recorded single-unit activity from motor cortical areas (mainly the caudal bank of the pre-central gyrus), EMG activity from selected muscles (in the arm, wrist and hand) and high-resolution kinematic data from the wrist and hand. We show that motor-cortical neurons modulate their activity in an object specific manner, resulting in object specific co-activation of muscles and joint movements. We studied the multivariate relationships between the firing rates of individual neurons, EMG, joint angles and joint angle velocities and found that both EMG and kinematic features were encoded in the neural firing rates. Kinematic features were much better predictors of neural firing rates than EMG. We found that the best predictors of neural firing rates were neither individual muscles or joints, nor kinematic or EMG synergies extracted using PCA/ICA, but neuron-specific combinations of EMG and kinematic features. We show better predictions of both muscle activations and JA values by combining the activity of a few tens of sequentially recorded neurons; suggesting that neural activity contains synergistic information related to EMG, not independently present in individual neurons. By using functional connectivity, defined as the probability of observing changes in EMG following spikes from a trigger neuron, we further elucidated motor cortical activity to muscle activation. By studying both the short-time scale functional connectivity, on the order of milliseconds; and long-time scale functional connectivity, on the order of hundreds of milliseconds, we found that flexible long-time scale functional connections between individual neurons and muscles were modulated by kinematic features that could account for the relatively weaker neural firing rate relation to EMG. To support our findings, we show examples of simultaneous short-time scale functional connectivity and conclude that neuronal-muscular functional connectivity is flexible and task-dependent.


By replacing cement with alternative ashes, such as sewage sludge ashes (SSA) from mono-incineration plants, it is possible to reduce CO2-emmision from the production of cement. SSA contains a large amount of phosphate which can be extracted before addition in concrete. The Danish Standard DS/EN 450-1 states an upper limit for total phosphorus in concrete, but it does not account for the solubility. The aim of this study is to determine an upper limit for soluble phosphorus in concrete, thus minimizing the formation of calcium phosphate to an acceptable level. The analysis will be based on the setting and workability. When adding soluble phosphorus salts to a mortar the setting process is extended with no pronounced difference between different soluble phosphorus salts. It is therefore assumed, that the soluble phosphorus (SP) influences the concrete setting. A logarithmic relationship between the increased addition of SP and the initial setting time is seen. By comparison with the limit for an initial setting time established in DS/EN 450-1 it is possible to establish a limit for SP of 0.54 wt% cement. When studying the workability an objective limit for SP of 0.16 wt% cement can be established. SSA from the Danish mono-incineration plant at Spildevandscenter Avedore is examined. At a pH-value of 13 it is possible to replace 55% and 16% of the cement, based on the set limits, with SSA from Spildevandscenter Avedore, before it is necessary to extract SP from SSA before adding to the concrete mixture. Former studies have shown a replacement of up to 20% of the cement with SSA is feasible regarding compressive strength, and therefore it is necessary to consider the limit for SP of 0.16% wt% cement.


Background The Spectrum computer package is used to generate national AIDS mortality estimates in settings where vital registration systems are lacking. Similarly, InterVA-4 (the latest version of the InterVA programme) is used to estimate cause-of-mortality data in countries where cause-specific mortality data are not available. Objective This study aims to compare trends in adult AIDS-related mortality estimated by Spectrum with trends from the InterVA-4 programme applied to data from a Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) in Nairobi, Kenya. Design A Spectrum model was generated for the city of Nairobi based on HIV prevalence data for Nairobi and national antiretroviral therapy coverage, underlying mortality, and migration assumptions. We then used data, generated through verbal autopsies, on 1,799 deaths that occurred in the HDSS area from 2003 to 2010 among adults aged 15-59. These data were then entered into InterVA-4 to estimate causes of death using probabilistic modelling. Estimates of AIDS-related mortality rates and all-cause mortality rates from Spectrum and InterVA-4 were compared and presented as annualised trends. Results Spectrum estimated that HIV prevalence in Nairobi was 7%, while the HDSS site measured 12% in 2010. Despite this difference, Spectrum estimated higher levels of AIDS-related mortality. Between 2003 and 2010, the proportion of AIDS-related mortality in Nairobi decreased from 63 to 40% according to Spectrum and from 25 to 16% according to InterVA. The net AIDS-related mortality in Spectrum was closer to the combined mortality rates when AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) deaths were included for InterVA-4. Conclusion Overall trends in AIDS-related deaths from both methods were similar, although the values were closer when TB deaths were included in InterVA. InterVA-4 might not accurately differentiate between TB and AIDS deaths.


Background The attenuated positive symptoms syndrome (APSS) is considered an at-risk indicator for psychosis. However, the characteristics and developmental aspects of the combined or enriched risk criteria of APSS and basic symptom (BS) criteria, including self-experienced cognitive disturbances (COGDIS) remain under-researched. Method Based on the Structured Interview of Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS), the prevalence of APSS in 13- to 35-year-old individuals seeking help in an early recognition program for schizophrenia and bipolar-spectrum disorders was examined. BS criteria and COGDIS were rated using the Schizophrenia Proneness Instrument for Adults/Children and Youth. Participants meeting APSS criteria were compared with participants meeting only BS criteria across multiple characteristics. Co-occurrence (APSS+/BS+, APSS+/COGDIS+) was compared across 13–17, 18–22 and 23–35 years age groups. Results Of 175 individuals (age = 20.6 ± 5.8, female = 38.3%), 94 (53.7%) met APSS criteria. Compared to BS, APSS status was associated with suicidality, higher illness severity, lower functioning, higher SIPS positive, negative, disorganized and general symptoms scores, depression scores and younger age (18.3 ± 5.0 v. 23.2 ± 5.6 years, p < 0.0001) with age-related differences in the prevalence of APSS (ranging from 80.3% in 13- to 17-year-olds to 33.3% in 23- to 35-year-olds (odds ratio 0.21, 95% confidence interval 0.11–0.37). Within APSS+ individuals, fewer adolescents fulfilled combined risk criteria of APSS+/BS+ or APSS+/COGDIS+ compared to the older age groups. Conclusions APSS status was associated with greater suicidality and illness/psychophathology severity in this help-seeking cohort, emphasizing the need for clinical care. The age-related differences in the prevalence of APSS and the increasing proportion of APSS+/COGDIS+ may point to a higher proportion of non-specific/transient, rather than risk-specific attenuated positive symptoms in adolescents.


For a single transmit and receive antenna system, a new constellation design is proposed to combat errors in the phase estimate of the channel coefficient. The proposed constellation is a combination of PSK and PAM constellations, where PSK is used to provide protection against phase errors, while PAM is used to increase the transmission rate using the knowledge of the magnitude of the channel coefficient. The performance of the proposed constellation is shown to be significantly better than the widely used QAM in terms of probability of error. The proposed strategy can also be extended to systems using multiple transmit and receive antennas.


Migration of Gammarus pulex pulex (Linnaeus, 1758), G. fossarum Koch in Panzer, 1836, and Echinogammarus berilloni (Catta, 1878) has been studied in a small French chalk stream, the Slack. Three different approaches to investigate both up- and downstream migration were used: (1) migration survey, with a sampling program of migration at intervals of two weeks or a month at twelve localities in the river Slack; (2) continuous measurement of migration at three habitats with very stable, normal and very unstable environmental conditions, respectively, lying within 100 m of one another and populated by the same species, G. fossarum; (3) finally, marking experiments in order to identify and trace animals with a given behaviour. Both drift and upstream migration show a considerable microgeographic variation, which is larger for Gammarus than for E. berilloni. During the relatively warm year of 1975, the migration activity of E. berilloni was stronger than in 1974. Upstream migration was concentrated in early summer, while drift fluctuated during the year. Most animals migrated during the night, although the diel variation in drift was quite different from that in upstream migration. Water temperature and its diel fluctuations have a large effect on non-accidental migration. Changes in chemical composition of the water seem to be important as well. Light conditions have only a slight influence on migration patterns. Physical disturbance of the riverbed (for instance by wading cows or the scouring effect of spates) influences migration rather negatively. The mean size of migrating animals was larger than the average size of the standing crop. Upstream migrants were larger during hours of high upstream migration activity, while the animals that drifted in peak hours were usually smaller than those drifting in hours of low activity. Both up- and downstream migration proved to be a constant behaviour; most drifters of a particular night drifted again the following night and most upstream migrants moved again upstream after they had been marked. In particular our results on microgeographic and seasonal variation show clearly that a quantitative approach to migration would have been premature. Secondly, they make a direct correlation between production and drift unrewarding. The continuous measurement of migration showed that for this type of investigation field work is preferable to laboratory experimentation, since it gives more reliable results than those achieved under laboratory conditions.


Premenopausal women demonstrate preferential accumulation of adiposity in the gynoid region a distribution which shifts towards the abdominal region after the menopausal transition. Although estrogen is implicated as a major player in determining body fat distribution the mechanisms behind estrogenic action(s) in adipose tissue of women are still unclear. The global aim of this project was to determine if local estrogen influences regional adiposity in premenopausal women. Specifically we investigated the influence of local estradiol on adipose tissue lipolysis as well as estrogen receptor content and adipocyte size in abdominal and gluteal subcutaneous adipose tissue of overweight-to-moderately-obese premenopausal women.  Eighteen overweight-to-moderately-obese Caucasian (CA n=9) and African American (AA n=9) women were recruited. Between 15 and 17 of these women took part in each of the three studies. We found the influence of estradiol on lipolysis to be adipose tissue depot specific and treatment dependent with estradiol perfusion blunting the response to lipolytic stimulation under some conditions while potentiating this response in others. Furthermore we found differences in abdominal and gluteal estrogen receptor alpha and estrogen receptor beta protein content potentially revealing region specific actions of estrogen through these estrogen receptors in adipose tissue. Finally we found racial differences in adipose tissue morphology as indicated by variations in adipocyte diameter populations in CA and AA women (higher proportion of medium size adipocytes in abdominal and gluteal subcutaneous adipose tissue of CA and higher proportion of small adipocytes in gluteal region of AA) which could underlie the increased chronic disease risk in AA compared to CA women for a given body mass index (BMI).  Our findings indicate depot specific influence of estradiol on lipid mobilization may play a role in the predominant gluteal-femoral body fat distribution of premenopausal women. It is possible that depot specific effects of estradiol may be a result of regional differences in estrogen receptor content. Racial divergence in adipocyte morphology is an adipose tissue characteristic potentially underlying differing disease risk between CA and AA women of similar BMI. The integration of these results provides insight towards a more complete understanding of regional adiposity in overweight-to-obese premenopausal women but future studies must be conducted to uncover the interaction between estrogen receptor content and local estrogen action as well as the direct physiological consequences of these findings.


We review evidence supporting the conclusion that renal dysfunction underlies the development of all forms of hypertension in humans and experimental animals. Indexes of global renal function are generally normal in the early stages of most genetic forms of hypertension, but renal function is clearly impaired in long-established hypertension. Studies in our laboratory over the past decade summarized below have established that the renal medulla plays an important role in sodium and water homeostasis and in the long-term control of arterial pressure. Development of implanted optical fibers for measurement of cortical and medullary blood flows with laser-Doppler flowmetry and techniques for delivery of vasoactive compounds into the medullary interstitial space enabled us to examine determinants of medullary flow (nitric oxide, atrial natriuretic peptides, kinins, eicosanoids, vasopressin, renal sympathetic nerves, etc). We have shown in spontaneously hypertensive rats that the initial changes of renal function begin as a reduction of medullary blood flow in the absence of changes of cortical flow. Long-term medullary interstitial infusion of captopril, which preferentially increased medullary blood flow, resulted in a lowering of arterial pressure. In normal Sprague-Dawley rats, selective reduction of medullary flow with medullary interstitial or intravenous infusion of small amounts of NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester resulted in hypertension. These and other studies we review show that although blood flow to the inner renal medulla comprises less than 1% of the total renal blood flow, changes in flow to this region can have a major effect on sodium and water homeostasis and on the long-term control of arterial blood pressure.


Book synopsis: The first full and sustained discussion of Parfit's views on objectivity in ethics
Leading philosophers respond to Parfit's criticisms and advance our understanding of the arguments
An essential companion volume to Parfit's On What Matters, Volume Three
In the first two volumes of On What Matters Derek Parfit argues that there are objective moral truths, and other normative truths about what we have reasons to believe, and to want, and to do. He thus challenges a view of the role of reason in action that can be traced back to David Hume, and is widely assumed to be correct, not only by philosophers but also by economists. In defending his view, Parfit argues that if there are no objective normative truths, nihilism follows, and nothing matters. He criticizes, often forcefully, many leading contemporary philosophers working on the nature of ethics, including Simon Blackburn, Stephen Darwall, Allen Gibbard, Frank Jackson, Peter Railton, Mark Schroeder, Michael Smith, and Sharon Street. Does Anything Really Matter? gives these philosophers an opportunity to respond to Parfit's criticisms, and includes essays on Parfit's views by Richard Chappell, Andrew Huddleston, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Bruce Russell, and Larry Temkin. A third volume of On What Matters, in which Parfit engages with his critics and breaks new ground in finding significant agreement between his own views and theirs, is appearing as a separate companion volume.


Background: There are limited studies documenting the prevalence of malignancies and the cancer screening practices of the uninsured population. Cancer survivors require continued cancer surveillance and screening for recurrence and second primaries. However, screening may be suboptimal among the uninsured. Our objective was to identify and document the screening rates and adherence to ACS guidelines in our local uninsured community. Methods: Demographic data, cancer history and associated cancer screening measures were extracted from electronic medical records of patients managed in 8 free clinics between January 2016 and December 2017 in the Tampa Bay Area. Frequencies, proportions, and Pearson correlation coefficients were used to describe the population and statistically significant relationships. Using the ACS cancer screening recommendations, the charts were reviewed for appropriate cancer screening. Results: From manual chart review, 6,958 charts were reviewed and 201 (2.89%) patients had a diagnosis of cancer. The average age was 55.58 years and 134 (66.67%) were women. Most common malignancies included breast cancer (49, 24.38%), prostate (18, 8.96%), colorectal (13, 6.47%), leukemia/lymphoma (11, 5.47%), cervical (10, 4.98%), melanoma (10, 4.98%), ovarian (9, 4.48%), thyroid (9, 4.48%), renal (6, 2.99%), bladder (5, 2.49%), and uterine (5, 2.49%). Of the 201 patients diagnosed with cancer, 104 (51.74%) met the guidelines for a screening mammogram; however, only 49 (47.12%) had this completed. 115 (57.21%) met the guidelines for a screening Papanicolaou smear; 28 (24.35%) had it completed. 145 (72.14%) met the guidelines for a screening colonoscopy; 23 (15.86%) had it completed. 39 (19.4%) met the guidelines for prostate screening; 3 (7.69%) had it completed. Of the 201 patients, 14 (6.97%) reported a greater than 30 pack smoking history but no patients were screened with a low-dose CT of the thorax. Of the 10 patients with melanoma, 3 (30%) mentioned having routine skin exams. Conclusions: The uninsured population have many barriers to obtaining health care and appropriate screening for malignancies. This retrospective chart review highlights the need for easier access to screening. Increasing screening rates in the uninsured population will decrease cancer mortality as well as being cost effective to the community. It is important for free clinic providers to emphasize guideline-directed cancer screening at every visit.


In this paper we present an extension of a phrase-based decoder that dynamically chunks, reorders, and applies phrase translations in tandem. A maximum entropy classifier is trained based on the word alignments to find the best positions to chunk the source sentence. No language specific or syntactic information is used to build the chunking classifier. Words inside the chunks are moved together to enable the decoder to make long-distance re-orderings to capture the word order differences between languages with different sentence structures. To keep the search space manageable, phrases inside the chunks are monotonically translated, thus by eliminating the unnecessary local re-orderings, it is possible to perform long-distance re-orderings beyond the common fixed distortion limit. Experiments on German to English translation are reported.


Technology strategy for a diversified corporation must be developed consistently with the general strategies of the individual business units and the corporation as a whole. Among the issues covered in this note are the level of R&D spending, allocation of resources to technology programs, trade-offs between long-term and short-term projects, the balance of product and process development, and R&D efforts aimed at further diversification. Various organizational and analytical approaches to the development of technology strategy are outlined.


This paper presents preliminary analysis of the Panama Canal Expansion from the viewpoint of salinity in the Gatun Lake and the utilization of neural networks. This analysis utilized simulation modeling and artificial intelligence. We have built several discrete and system dynamics simulation models of the current Panama Canal operations and the future expansion which have been validated with historical and projected data and Turing/expert validation by engineers of the Panama Canal Authority. The simulation models have been exercised in order to generate enough information about the future expansion. This information has been used to develop neural networks that have the capability to indicate the volume of the Gatun Lake and its respective salinity taking into consideration lockages, spillovers, hydropower generation, fresh water supply volumes, and environmental factors such as precipitation, tides, and evaporation. Support vector machines were used to build time series regression models of the evaporation of Gatun Lake.


Background The optimal timing to start continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) for acute kidney injury (AKI) in critically ill ICU patients has not been accurately estimated. The proposed risk, injury, failure, loss, end-stage kidney disease (RIFLE) criteria for diagnosis of AKI may provide a method for nephrologists to decide the 'optimal timing' for starting dialysis. Objective Our study aimed to analyze the correlation between RIFLE stages at the start of CRRT and 90-day survival rate and to detect the effect of the timing of CRRT on poor kidney outcome in 90-day survivors. Patients and methods A retrospective cohort analysis was performed on the data of 96 critically ill patients with AKI in ICU treated with CRRT during a 2-year period in international extended care hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from January 2015 to January 2017. Information such as age, sex, RIFLE stage, sepsis, sepsis-related organ failure assessment score, number of organ failures before CRRT, CRRT time, survival, and kidney outcome conditions at 90 days after CRRT started was collected. According to their baseline severity of AKI at the start of CRRT, the patients were assigned to three groups according to the increasing severity of RIFLE stages, group I (risk of renal dysfunction, R), group II (injury to the kidney, I), and group III (failure of kidney function, F), using RIFLE criteria. The poor kidney outcome was classified as RIFLE-L (loss of kidney function, L) or RIFLE-E (end-stage kidney disease, E) using RIFLE criteria. The correlation between RIFLE stage and 90-day survival rate was analyzed among these three groups. Additionally, the association between RIFLE stage and the poor kidney outcome (RIFLE-L+RIFLF-E) in the 90-day survivors was analyzed. Results Of the overall 96 patients, 48 survived to 90 days after the start of CRRT. There were 14, 20, and 62 patients in group I, II, and III, respectively, with corresponding 90-day survival rate of 78.5% (11/14), 60% (12/20), and 40.3% (25/62) (P<0.01, compared among groups). The percentage of the poor kidney outcome of 90-day survivors in the three groups was 18.18% (2/11), 25% (3/12), and 56% (14/25), respectively (P<0.01). After adjustment for other baseline risk factors, the relative risk for the 90-day mortality significantly increased with baseline RIFLE stage. Conclusion The RIFLE classification may be used to predict 90-day survival after starting CRRT and the poor kidney outcome of 90-day survivors in the critically ill patients with AKI treated with CRRT. Early versus late initiation of dialysis before RIFLE-F stage may be the optimal timing.


Two models of software testing, developed previously by T. Downs (see IEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol.SE-11, no.4, p.375-86, 1985, and IEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol.SE-12, no.9, p.979-87, 1986), are generalized to incorporate a greater degree of realism. This generalization leads to three new models. A fourth model, which has been developed using a different line of reasoning, is also presented. The performance of these models as reliability predictors is assessed by applying them to 16 sets of failure data collected from various software development projects. Comparisons of performance are made with the two earlier models and with two variants of the model of B. Littlewood and L. Verall (1973). Three distinct measurers of performance are employed. The performance of the new models is generally superior to that of the older models with one model showing outstanding performance under all three measures. >


Abstract. A significant increase in the summertime occurrence of a high pressure area over the Beaufort Sea, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and Greenland has been observed since the beginning of the 2000s, and particularly between 2007 and 2012. These circulation anomalies are likely partly responsible for the enhanced Greenland ice sheet melt as well as the Arctic sea ice loss observed since 2007. Therefore, it is interesting to analyse whether similar conditions might have happened since the late 19th century over the Arctic region. We have used an atmospheric circulation type classification based on daily mean sea level pressure and 500 hPa geopotential height data from five reanalysis data sets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, NCEP/NCAR, ERA-20C, and 20CRv2) to put the recent circulation anomalies in perspective with the atmospheric circulation variability since 1871. We found that circulation conditions similar to 2007–2012 have occurred in the past, despite a higher uncertainty of the reconstructed circulation before 1940. For example, only ERA-20C shows circulation anomalies that could explain the 1920–1930 summertime Greenland warming, in contrast to 20CRv2. While the recent anomalies exceed by a factor of 2 the interannual variability of the atmospheric circulation of the Arctic region, their origin (natural variability or global warming) remains debatable.


Frankfurter is certainly right in suggesting that we need to focus on procedure and understand that seemingly technical rules can have huge implications for the access to justice in a society. It is for this reason that I find this conference so interesting. I am also pleased that the conference has a comparative component for reasons beyond my good fortune to have been invited to Australia. Societies governed by the rule of law have many things in common, and we can learn from one another. The flip side is the problem I have alluded to about globetrotting constitutionalists. Unless we are willing to learn about some of the nitty-gritty details, our comparisons will be superficial for the reasons Frankfurter proffered. I believe that what helps bridge this dilemma is to try to place the esoteric rule of procedures in a broader context of a constitutional or legal order. This becomes essential if we are trying to make normative judgments, either comparatively or for our own systems.


One of the most striking tax developments in recent years, and one that continues to attract considerable attention, is the adoption by several countries of a form of 'flat tax'. Discussion of these quite radical reforms has been marked, however, more by assertion and rhetoric than by analysis and evidence. This paper reviews experience with the flat tax, seeking to redress the balance. It stresses that the flat taxes that have been adopted differ fundamentally, and that empirical evidence on their effects is very limited. This precludes simple generalization, but several lessons emerge: there is no sign of Laffer-type behavioral responses generating revenue increases from the tax cut elements of these reforms; their impact on compliance is theoretically ambiguous, but there is evidence for Russia that compliance did improve; the distributional effects of the flat taxes are not unambiguously regressive, and in some cases they may have increased progressivity, including through the impact on compliance; adoption of the flat tax has not resolved common challenges in taxing capital income; and it may have strengthened, not weakened, the automatic stabilizers. Looking forward, the question is not so much whether more countries will adopt a flat tax as whether those that have will move away from it.


Environmental problems are of many different kinds and share some features. Approaches to decision making has to match those features. A classification of approaches to prepare environmental decision-making is suggested with respect to degree of aggregation. Neoclassical Cost-Benefit analysis is then criticized and Positional Analysis (PA) suggested as an alternative. The concept of economics is reconsidered and the purpose of PA clarified. Systems thinking, positional thinking (largely in non-monetary terms) and a way of analysing interests are presented.


The promotion of the Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) technology relies on the priorities of the European Commission that includes the Circular Economy as a major challenge (European Commission, 2018).To this end, under the EU Research and Innovation Programme (Horizon 2020), the Commission will demonstrate the opportunities for moving towards a circular economy at European level with large-scale innovation projects. Romania is part of this program, and is trying to implement CCU technologies in near future. While Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies are well known, studied and are starting to be implemented, the usage of captured CO2 is less taken into account at present. These technologies involve the participation of more entities in several industrial branches, and the result is often only capturing CO2 in a cycle, which eventually is reaching to the atmosphere but later and after being used in some technological processes.


Another Proof of the Preceding Theory was produced as part of a residency run by Artists in Archeology in conjunction with the Stonehenge Riverside project. The film explores the relationship between science, work and ritual, imagining archaeology as a future cult. As two robed disciples stray off from the dig, they are drawn to the drone of the stones and proceed to play the henge like a gigantic Theremin. Just as a Theremin is played with the hand interfering in an electric circuit and producing sound without contact, so the stones respond to the choreographed bodily proximity. Finally, one of the two continues alone to the avenue at Avebury, where the magnetic pull of the stones reaches its climax. Shot on VHS, the film features a score by Zuzushi Monkey, with percussion and theremin sounds mirroring the action. The performers are mostly artists and archeologists from the art and archaeology teams. The archeologists were encouraged to perform their normal work in the robes, in an attempt to explore the meeting points of science and ritual and interrogate our relationship to an ultimately unknowable prehistoric past where activities we do not understand are relegated to the realm of religion. Stonehenge has unique acoustic properties, it's large sarsen stones are finely worked on the inside, left rough on the outside, intensifying sound waves within the inner horseshoe, but since their real use, having been built over centuries, remains ambiguous, the film proposes that our attempts to decode them may themselves become encoded in their cumulative meaning for future researchers.


This paper explores the dual and seemingly contradictory potential of self-study research to illuminate our fears, anxieties, tensions and uncertainties as teacher educators, whilst acting as a catalyst for community building. This self-study research was conducted during the founding year of a new school of education, drawing data from surveys and interviews with faculty about their own self-study research and participation in one another's studies. Through these collective self-studies, faculty members constructed and negotiated their identities as teacher educators and as a school of education. As researchers and researched participants, the faculty of the new school of education moved during that first year between vulnerability and community, a process illuminated by their self-study research.


The UK has a chequered past in relation to its compliance with EU law. In some instances, it has gone beyond the minimum requirements imposed by its EU parent in providing protection for individuals (see for instance the UK's implementation of Art. 9 of the Motor Vehicle Insurance Directive 2009/103/EC). Regrettably, however, there is a greater number of examples where the UK has failed in its transposition obligations. One area where a significant disconnect exists between national and EU law is third party motor vehicle insurance. This is perhaps justifiable in some instances given the evolution of the domestic and EU laws, their original incarnation compared with modern requirements, and the effects of judicial interpretation and the creativity of the Court of Justice of the European Union. However, other inconsistencies are less easy to accept. There are an increasing number of errors in interpretation, historic and contemporary, which necessitate a comprehensive review of the national law, a policy review of the state's abrogation of its responsibilities to the victims of uninsured and untraced drivers, and corrective action to prevent liability being imposed on the UK.


The efficiency of solid waste collection is influenced by the type of vehicle used,
methods of collection and the type of area served with the r2 values equal to 100%.
Mechanical collection with a lifter has been proven to be the most efficient
(0.39 minute/lot) compared to manual collection by open lorry which is the
least efficient (5.11 minute/lot). In terms of area served, collection of waste in
residential areas is the most efficient at about 0.19 minute/lot. The semimechanical
collection method is relatively cheaper (RM415,720/lorry.year)
than manual collection (RM435,290/lorry.year). In addition, the collection of
solid waste by private agencies is relatively cheaper than collection by government
agencies.


A persistent issue in environmental economics is whether growth is sustainable. Pollution is a key driver of sustainability, which we define as an economy exhibiting falling pollution damages at its balanced growth path. We deduct air pollution and carbon dioxide damages from the national accounts for 163 countries between 1998 and 2018. Global pollution intensity fell from 1998 to 2008, remaining flat thereafter. China highlights the importance of defining sustainability in terms of damages; between 2011 and 2018, physical measures of environmental quality improved, but monetary damage increased by 50 percent. Sustainability based on emissions ignores this rise in damage.


Wild‐type transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTRwt‐CM) is caused by the deposition of wild‐type transthyretin (TTR) amyloid fibrils in the heart. The age at diagnosis of ATTRwt‐CM is reported to be approximately 70–80 years, and patients commonly present with non‐disease‐specific cardiac abnormalities, such as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and diastolic dysfunction. The disease can be fatal if left untreated, with an approximate survival of 3–5 years from diagnosis. An oral TTR stabilizer, tafamidis, has enabled early intervention for the treatment of ATTRwt‐CM. However, awareness of ATTRwt‐CM remains low, and misdiagnosis and a delay in diagnosis are common. This review discusses the epidemiology, characteristics, treatment strategy, and red‐flag symptoms and signs of ATTRwt‐CM based on the published literature, as well as recent advances in diagnostic modalities that enable early and accurate diagnosis of the disease. We also discuss an algorithm for early and accurate diagnosis of ATTRwt‐CM in daily clinical practice. In our diagnostic algorithm, a suspected diagnosis of ATTRwt‐CM should be triggered by unexplained left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), which is LVH that cannot be explained by an increased afterload due to hypertension or valvular disease. In addition, heart failure symptoms, laboratory test results (N‐terminal pro‐B‐type natriuretic peptide, high‐sensitivity troponin T, or high‐sensitivity troponin I), electrocardiogram and imaging (echocardiogram or cardiac magnetic resonance) data, age (≥60 years), and medical history suggestive of ATTRwt‐CM (e.g. carpal tunnel syndrome) should be examined. Detailed examinations using bone scintigraphy and monoclonal protein detection tests followed by tissue biopsy, amyloid typing, and TTR genetic testing are warranted for a definite diagnosis of ATTRwt‐CM.


Observers of the European policy-making process are inevitably struck by the contrast between cumbersome decision-making processes on the one hand and simultaneous swift policy developments on the other. Many policies seem to be stuck for long periods in the Council, while at the same time similar measures are introduced under a different guise along a different path. A case in point is European anti-poverty policy. At the very time when this measure was bogged down in a Council deadlock, it was reintroduced by the Commission, couched in different terms in a new political context. In the end it was elevated to official status in the Amsterdam Treaty. A further example of a similar process was in European telecommunications policy which initially met with strong resistance from member states. As a result of the Commission's skilful use of all kinds of soft measures, such as offering research funds to industry and actively creating a supportive policy network, it finally became established as a regular European policy. Or, to cite an example from general procedure: the main avenue of European policy-making in the Council often stalls because of the need for consensus, whereas Court rulings and Commission decisions are not hindered by this requirement. Consequently, the emphasis of European policy expansion has often shifted to the European Court of Justice's and the Commission's legal interpretation of rules which exist under the Treaty of Rome. This has given European policies a bias in favour of free trade and free competition. At the same time market-correcting measures and the pursuit of distributive goals remain entangled in the gridlock of Council decision-making processes and are pushed into the background. Again, however, they re-emerge in bits and pieces and under a different guise in new contexts as a result of successful circumvention of Council deadlocks. Why is it that European policies which stagnate in the main political arena, materialize in other shapes and forms elsewhere? And what are the typical escape routes when the main political avenue is blocked? I argue that the formal institutional structure of the European Union together with the diversity of member states' interests would regularly lead to an impasse in decision-making were it not for the existence of different paths of institutionalization which have emerged to circumvent impending deadlock. This overt and covert institutionalization creates a European political space, meaning "a widely shared system of rules and procedures to define who actors are, how they make sense of each other's actions and what types of actions are possible". It has developed in three different ways; firstly, straightforward changes made to existing rules as a result of intepretation and negotiated modifications; secondly, the explicit and implicit development of new soft or informal institutions, such as information and monitoring, mobilization and network building, and the spontaneous emergence of social conventions, as a way of expanding the areas of European activity; and thirdly, "kitchen politics", i.e. more covert ways of overcoming formal institutional obstacles to decision-making. Such covert ways involve committing actors to policy decisions, the implications of which are not spelt out in advance, by concealing planned or on-going changes from the general public, as well as by re-labeling and re-contextualizing issues in order to embed them in a different choice situation which helps overcome a deadlock. These three different modes of effecting change-as will be shown in the following-can be observed in the most diverse areas of European policy-making and generally result in a widening of European policy activities. They constitute the ways in which the rule structures governing the European policy space are elaborated, or adapted, through interpretation, legislation, the development of shared understandings of norms and procedures, but also by committing unwitting actors to a subsequent widening of European activities: they are is the central theme of this volume as indicated in the introductory essay by Stone, Fligstein, and Sandholtz. Since modes of institutionalization where there is member-state resistance to the introduction of more European activities are of particular interest in this article, by logical implication the question also arises as to the conditions under which deepening institutionalization does not occur, and a development in the opposite direction takes place, narrowing the scope of European activities. In other words, the systematic points where turns in the other direction occur-steps of de-institutionalization, as it were-have to be identified as well. This chapter is divided into two sections: first, the three basic modes of overt and covert institutionalization and their theoretical foundations are discussed, each illustrated by empirical examples of European policy-making. In the second stage the question is raised as to consequences of the different modes of institutionalization and the conditions under which these different paths of deepening European institutionalization do not normally occur.


Background: Vitamin D, a fat-soluble vitamin that now is recognized as a prohormone that recently has an important role in the reproductive health. Vitamin D deficiency (VDD) had high prevalence worldwide and was estimated to affect about 50% of the population worldwide. Hypovitaminosis D related to several health problems in women such as infertility, polycystic ovarian syndrome endometriosis, and pregnancy-related complications such as preeclampsia and caesarian section. Objective: The aim of the study is to evaluate the serum level of Vitamin D in sample of Al-Hilla women at reproductive age. Materials and Methods: The total number included in the study was 500 patients. They were companions of patients visiting specialist gynecologic and obstetric private clinics in Hilla City from first of October 2017 to end of March 2018 the patients were grouped into three groups according to their age: Group 1: Patients aged (15–30) years. Group 2: Patients aged 31–40 years. Group 3: Patients aged more than 40 years and premenopausal. The data were collected which were then analyzed statistically and registered. Results: Whole sample mean serum Vitamin D level 15.85 ± 7.69 and the percentage of deficiency over all the sample was 76%. Regarding the result in each group, Group 1 include 350 patients, mean age (23.8 ± 3.96), and mean serum Vitamin D level (16.16 ± 7.69), t-test was statistically significant P < 0.05. Group 2 include 119 patients, mean age (35.2 ± 2.9), and mean serum Vitamin D level (15.14 ± 7.42), t-test was statistically significant P < 0.05. Group 3 include 31 patients, mean age (42.81 ± 1.45), and mean serum Vitamin D level (14.82 ± 7.77), t-test was statistically significant P < 0.05. Conclusion: Results of our study revealed a widespread, severe VDD in women at reproductive age with aproportion of deficiency in the whole sample of 76% and proportion of insufficiency 18% while only 7% had sufficient Vitamin D Serum level.


On Easter Sunday, 1873, in the tiny hamlet of Colfax, Louisiana, more than 150 members of an all-black Republican militia, defending the town's courthouse, were slain by an armed force of rampaging white supremacists. The most deadly incident of racial violence of the Reconstruction era, the Colfax Massacre unleashed a reign of terror that all but extinguished the campaign for racial equality. LeeAnna Keith's The Colfax Massacre is the first full-length book to tell the history of this decisive event. Drawing on a huge body of documents, including eyewitness accounts of the massacre, as well as newly discovered evidence from the site itself, Keith explores the racial tensions that led to the fateful encounter, during which surrendering blacks were mercilessly slaughtered, and the reverberations this message of terror sent throughout the South. Keith also recounts the heroic attempts by U.S. Attorney J.R. Beckwith to bring the killers to justice and the many legal issues raised by the massacre. In 1875, disregarding the poignant testimony of 300 witnesses, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in U.S. v. Cruikshank to overturn a lower court conviction of eight conspirators.This decision virtually nullified the Ku Klux Klan Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871--which had made federal offenses of a variety of acts to intimidate voters and officeholders--and cleared the way for the Jim Crow era. If there was a single historical moment that effectively killed Reconstruction and erased the gains blacks had made since the civil war, it was the day of the Colfax Massacre. LeeAnna Keith gives readers both a gripping narrative account of that portentous day and a nuanced historical analysis of its far-reaching repercussions.


Research shows that in order to reduce recidivism rates in prisons, financial education and other life skills should be a mandatory topic in our prison systems. By creating a learning environment conducive to the specialized needs of this audience, an inmate's ability to set goals, recognize wants and needs, maintain bank accounts, create a budget, manage debt, and use credit wisely can be achieved. By introducing interactive, experiential learning tools from Extension, the educator can open doors to financial discussions, questions, and collaborations that are easily adaptable to prison life or to future home lives.


Two-dimensional images of synthetic industrial diamond particles were obtained
using a camera, framegrabber and PC-based image analysis software. Various
methods for shape quantification were applied, including two-dimensional shape
factors, Fourier series expansion of radius as a function of angle, boundary fractal
analysis, polygonal harmonics, and corner counting methods. The shape parameter
found to be the most relevant was axis ratio, defined as the ratio of the minor axis to
the major axis of the ellipse with the same second moments of area as the particle.
Axis ratio was used in an analysis of the sorting of synthetic diamonds on a vibrating
table. A model was derived based on the probability that a particle of a given axis
ratio would travel to a certain bin. The model described the sorting of bulk material
accurately but it was found not to be applicable if the shape mix of the feed material
changed dramatically. This was attributed to the fact that the particle-particle
interference was not taken into account.
An expert system and a neural network were designed in an attempt to classify
particles by a combination of four shape parameters. These systems gave good results
when discriminating between particles from bin I and bin 9 but not for neighbouring
bins or for more than two classes.
The table sorting process was discussed in light of the findings and it was
demonstrated that the shape distributions of sorted diamond fractions can be quantified in a useful and meaningful way.


This paper investigates the impact of backreflection lights on upstream transmission in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) single-fiber loopback access networks, where a WDM light source is located at the central office (CO) and each optical network unit (ONU) includes an optical modulator with optical amplifiers. This study considers backreflection lights from two sources, the continuous wave (CW) light at the CO (Reflection-I) and the modulated signal at the ONU (Reflection-II). It is confirmed, for the first time, that the impact of Reflection-II increases strongly with ONU gain. To estimate the impact of these backreflection lights, a simple intensity noise estimation scheme is presented. This scheme clarifies that the acceptable transmission line losses is 10 dB for 1.25 Gb/s under the optical return loss (ORL) of -32 dB.


Miombo woodlands are the most extensive vegetation type in Africa south of the equator. These dry tropical woodlands cover some 2.5 million hectares and are home to over 40 million people. Miombo products are very important to the livelihoods and basic needs of an additional 15 million urban Africans. The book demonstrates how much livelihood strategies of rural communities depend on miombo goods and services, and indicates the strong differentiation of uses within communities and in space and time. The ecological constraints to human activity in the region are clearly articulated, ranging from nutrient-poor soils to the presence of the tsetse fly. The authors also trace the host of policies that have influenced miombo woodlands and their uses, from pre-colonial times to the present. The current importance of miombo products in markets, both locally and globally, is documented in a chapter on trade patterns. Options for management are outlined, including silvicultural treatment, fire management and grazing regimes. Institutional arrangements, both local and state, for the management of the woodlands are investigated, and the authors examine how local communities can be empowered to manage and benefit from the woodlands. The final chapter proposes a conceptual model of how all the diverse social, economic, political and ecological processes interact to shape how the household and woodland situations are changing. This conceptual framework is then used to identify key issues for research, which will reduce gaps in current understanding and facilitate formulation of new management strategies, policies and institutions. The Miombo in Transition is a resource for researchers, with over 250 pages reviewing and synthesising over 400 studies. There are numerous figures, tables and plates. The book contains contributions by a number of researchers, and yet has managed to ensure coherence, close linking of chapters and complete coverage of material through authors' workshops and tight editorial control. Each chapter was reviewed by international experts both in draft and final format, resulting in the high quality of the final produc


Among abiotic stresses, high salinity stress is the most severe environmental stress. High salinity exerts its negative impact mainly by disrupting the ionic and osmotic equilibrium of the cell. In saline soils, high levels of sodium ions lead to plant growth inhibition and even death. Salt tolerance in plants is a multifarious phenomenon involving a variety of changes at molecular, organelle, cellular, tissue as well as whole plant level. In addition, salt tolerant plants show a range of adaptations not only in morphological or structural features but also in metabolic and physiological processes that enable them to survive under extreme saline environments. The main objectives of my dissertation were understanding the main physiological and biomolecular features of plant responses to salinity in different genotypes of horticultural crops that are belonging to different families Solanaceae (tomato) and Cucurbitaceae (melon) and Brassicaceae (cabbage and radish). Several aspects of crop responses to salinity have been addressed with the final aim of combining elements of functional stress response in plants by using several ways for the assessment of plant stress perception that ranging from destructive measurements (eg. leaf area, relative growth rate, leaf area index, and total plant fresh and dry weight), to physiological determinations (eg. stomatal conductance, leaf gas exchanges, water use efficiency, and leaf water relation), to the determination of metabolite accumulation in plant tissue (eg. Proline and protein) as well as evaluation the role of enzymatic antioxidant capacity assay in scavenging reactive oxygen species that have been generated under salinized condition, and finally assessing the gene induction and up-down regulation upon salinization (eg. SOS pathway).


A kind of temperature sensor designed with sheathed thermocouple was introduced. A suitable procedure for troubleshooting was worked out for the sensor fault case occurred during the process of monitoring the oil temperature of a gas turbine. Depending on the primary analysis of trouble phenomenon, trouble principle was analyzed. Detection means like electrical measurement, flaw inspection, local disassembly, etc. were utilized comprehensively to locate the exact fault cause. The sensor coupling technique for connecting the sheathed thermocouple tail and the electric connector was optimized and improved. In order to avoid hidden trouble resulted from production manufacturing segment and improve the fault tolerance in product assembly, three different optimization schemes were proposed and compared with each other. By an overall consideration of sensor safety, reliability and maintainability, the best solution has been adopted to solve the sensor fault. Experience was accumulated for design optimization of the same type of sensor. Keywords: Sheathed Thermocouple, Temperature Sensor, Troubleshooting, Technique Optimization, Maintainability


BACKGROUND
Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) can be divided to CRS without nasal polyps (CRSsNP) and eosinophilic and non-eosinophilic CRS with nasal polyps (CRSwNP). There is little evidence on the efficacy of glucocorticoids and macrolides in different phenotypic patients. The aim of this study was to compare the benefit of glucocorticoids and macrolides following endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) in different phenotypic CRS.

METHODS
This study was a prospective single-blind comparative effectiveness trial. A total of 187 Chinese patients with CRS were stratified to CRSsNP and eosinophilic and non-eosinophilic CRSwNP group and then randomized to receive fluticasone propionate nasal spray at 200 microgram or clarithromycin tablet at 250 mg once daily for 3 months after ESS. Oral prednisone was given as a rescue therapy after the stop of study medication. Patients were assessed before ESS and 1, 3, 6 and 12 months after dosing. Symptom severity was scored by patients using visual analog scale method and endoscopic findings were scored by the senior physician blinded to treatment according to European Position Paper on Rhinosinusitis and Nasal polyps 2012.

RESULTS
The total and individual symptom scores, and total and individual endoscopic domain scores were reduced significantly after ESS in both medication groups, whereas no significant difference was observed for two medications at most follow-up visits in each subtype of CRS. No difference in the frequency of subjects with rescue therapy or refractory CRS was found between two medication groups either.

CONCLUSIONS
We could not show significant difference of effect between fluticasone propionate and clarithromycin in the post-operative treatment for CRSsNP and eosinophilic and non-eosinophilic CRSwNP patients.


First-principles calculations are used to investigate the partial dislocations in 4H-SiC. We have shown that the Peierls barriers are strongly dependent on the dislocation core structures. Our results have revealed that the asymmetric reconstruction does not possess midgap states while the symmetric reconstructions, characterized by dangling bond on like atoms along the dislocation line, are always electrically active. We suggested that under forward bias, the free energies of the symmetric reconstructions are dynamically lowered by continuous electron-hole transitions between the respective deep levels and valence/conduction bands.


To compete in today"s manufacturing markets, it is necessary to have diverse product lines that can be manufactured and delivered to the customer in the shortest time possible. Producing a large range of products in a short amount of time is only possible through efficient and effective manufacturing practices. One way to improve the efficiency of a manufacturing system is to reduce the time required to change from product "A" to product "B". This will decrease the lead time of the product and increase the overall equipment effectiveness for the equipment used to process the product. Decreasing the time required to change between the manufacture of two products is known as changeover reduction. In this thesis three strategies are described for reducing changeover times for vertical CNC milling machines for a company that manufactures industrial equipment. The first changeover reduction strategy is focused on the implementation of the single minute exchange of die methodology. This method is widely used throughout the manufacturing industry as a systematic, and extremely effective, way to decrease changeover times. The setting of this research provided an excellent opportunity to implement the methodology. The second strategy developed a way to schedule all of the components of the same product so that the components are processed during the same time period. The third strategy utilized the rank order clustering algorithm to create a schedule that organizes jobs into groups that share similar changeover activities, such as the required tools and fixtures. After observing and analyzing six changeovers, a methodology was developed to arrange the changeover tasks in order to maximize the manufacturing time of the CNC milling machines. Applying the proposed changeover methodology to one of the analyzed changeovers shows that a significant reduction in changeover time is possible. It was also found that scheduling components of the same product so that they are produced in the same time period reduces the overall changeover time of the product. Lastly, applying the rank order clustering algorithm reduced the number of tool and fixture changeovers. If the methods described in this thesis are implemented, then a reduction in changeover time should be seen. Applying the discussed methods will also result in improved overall equipment effectiveness and a reduced lead time. These methods can also be applied to other companies with similar changeover problems.


BACKGROUND
Occupational asthma commonly results in work-related changes in serial peak expiratory flow (PEF) measurements. Whether alveolitis can result in similar changes is unknown.

AIMS
To identify differences and similarities of serial PEF between workers with occupational alveolitis and asthma seen during an outbreak investigation in a factory with metal-working fluid exposure.

METHODS
Workers with respiratory symptoms and rest-day improvement were identified by questionnaire. Each was asked to measure PEF 8 times daily for 4 weeks at home and work. Alveolitis was subsequently diagnosed from a validated scoring system including radiological changes, carbon monoxide diffusing capacity, bronchoalveolar lavage and biopsy results. Occupational asthma was confirmed with a positive Oasys score >2.5 and a mean rest-work PEF >16 l/min from serial 2-hourly PEF measurements. The Oasys PEF plotter calculated differences between rest and workdays for mean PEF, diurnal variation and the scores were used to confirm an occupational effect (Oasys, area between curve and time point). Records were compared between the alveolitis group and the group with occupational asthma without alveolitis.

RESULTS
Forty workers with occupational asthma and 16 with alveolitis had indistinguishable PEF changes on workdays in terms of magnitude (median reduction 18.5 and 16.1 l/min, respectively) and diurnal variation. Immediate reactions were more common with occupational asthma and late reactions more common with alveolitis.

CONCLUSIONS
PEF responses to metal-working fluid aerosols do not distinguish occupational asthma from alveolitis except in timing. They can be used to identify the workplace as the cause of asthma and also alveolitis.


Mike Rustin discusses his lifelong involvement in the New Left, which began when he was still at school. He describes the history of the First New Left, including the role played within it by figures such as Stuart Hall, Edward Thompson and Raymond Williams, and the role of the New Left in student politics in Oxford University, where Michael was a student and a leading member of the Labour club. He looks at the changing relationships between the New Left and the Labour Party in the 1960s and the publication of the May Day Manifesto in 1967. He also discusses the founding of the New Left Review and the transition from the time of its first editor, Stuart Hall, to that of its second, Perry Anderson, as well his two terms as a member of its editorial board, and his continuing disagreements and agreements with its editorial direction. His reflections on contemporary politics include a discussion of the relationship of New Left ideas to current movements and the Labour Party, a critique of vanguardism, and the founding of Soundings. Michael Rustin talks to Sally Davison and Jeremy Gilbert.