We present calculations on the multiple ionization of argon at the photon energy 123 eV and pulse duration 50 fs. At that photon energy, it is possible to drive the two-photon resonant Auger transition 2p → 4p, whose lifetime is 5.5 fs, much shorter than the pulse duration. The excitation of a 2p electron to the 4p state thus creates a hole which decays by an Auger process. We have also included above-threshold ionization from the outer shells of the neutral and singly ionized species, which becomes significant at intensities of the order of ∼1015 W cm−2 and higher. The populations of the various ionic species were obtained through the solution of the kinetic equations governing their production and decay during the pulse. The effect of the intensity distribution in the interaction volume has also been evaluated. We have further shown that doubly hollow ionic states of the type 3s03pn with 2 ⩽ n ⩽ 6 are created, which can decay only via spontaneous emission, with lifetimes orders of magnitude longer than the pulse duration. These hollow-ion states can potentially serve as a starting point for a variety of experimental investigations on doubly excited states.


Recent studies have consistently found that in the United States, black job applicants are hired at a greater rate by establishments with black hiring agents than by those with white hiring agents. The results of this examination of data from the 1992–94 Multi-City Employer Survey suggest two proximate reasons for this pattern: black hiring agents receive applications from blacks at greater rates than do white hiring agents, and they hire a greater proportion of blacks who apply. The authors suggest that moving more blacks into positions with hiring authority within firms might help to alleviate the persistent unemployment difficulties of African Americans.

http://econ2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/rosburg/Stoll, Raphael, and Holzer - Black Job Applicants and Hiring Officer%27s Race.pdf


This guide suggests resources for finding information concerning key health problems, cultural traditions affecting health care and the organization of health services in various countries.


1 Th 4:3-8 (particulary vv.3-6) is full of exegetical problems. Almost all the leading concepts of the passage present problems of interpretation: pornei/a, skeuo~j, u(perbei/nein, pleonekte=in, a)delfo/j. On the basis of the two main interpretations of two of them, namely skeuo~j and a)delfo/j, the author rejects the current explanations of the section and claims for a better understading that takes into account to the parameters of the text, the context, the persons addressed, and the historical significance of the bearing terms. According to the writer, Paul has no concrete case of adulterous behavior in mind, but gives a general apostolic exhortation and warns the members of this church (men and women alike) against the dangers of such a behavior.


Objective Migraine is a common form of headache that is a major burden for patients who often seek emergency care. The goal of this study was to compare the effectiveness of intravenous non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication (dexketoprofen) with paracetamol (acetaminophen) in the treatment of an acute migraine attack. Materials and methods This prospective, randomised, double blind, controlled study was conducted in a tertiary care emergency unit. Study patients were randomised into two groups to receive either 50 mg of dexketoprofen trometamol or 1000 mg of paracetamol intravenously by rapid infusion in 150 mL of normal saline. Pain reduction was measured at baseline, and after 15 and 30 min, using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS)) as the primary outcome. VAS is a measurement tool ranging from 0 (no pain) to 100 mm (worst pain). Results 200 patients were included in the final analysis. Mean (SD) age of the study subjects was 30.1±11 years and 81% (n=162) were women. Median reduction in VAS score at 30 min was 56 (IQR 30–78.5) for the paracetamol group and 55 (IQR 34–75) for the dexketoprofen group, with a difference of 1 mm (95% CI −7 to 10) between the two groups. Conclusions Intravenous paracetamol and dexketoprofen appear to produce equivalent pain relief for migraine in the emergency department. ClinicalTrials.gov No NCT01730326.


Concerns have been expressed by employers that many young people coming into the workforce do not have the mathematical skills that are desired. Concerns have also been expressed about the increasing departure of school mathematics from the demands of daily life. These concerns are not confined to Australia and it is suggested that something may be amiss with the secondary mathematics curriculum. This study is concerned with identifying and closing any gaps that may exist between mathematics that is taught in secondary school and that practiced in daily life.
This study opens with an investigation of the development of mathematics and
mathematics education in order that the reasons for the mathematics that is currently taught in
secondary schools can be best understood. Previous research regarding the mathematics that is
used in everyday life is extended and compared with the mainstream syllabus of today as
exhibited in text books used in the classroom. The lessons that have been learned from
observations of past and present practices are finally drawn together to propose a new secondary
mathematics course. In addition to improving the numeracy of students, it is expected that
additional benefits will accrue in the reduction of the common anxiety in students that is
associated with mathematics, and an easing of the ever-increasing shortage of specialist
mathematics teachers.
The solution that is offered is to approach secondary mathematics from a lateral point of
view with the design of a bipartite course. The core or compulsory syllabus of the proposed
course concentrates on the mathematics found in daily life so that all students leave school
familiar and confident in their ability to perform simple mathematical tasks with a high degree of
accuracy time after time. Those students who have a deeper interest in mathematics would be
able to choos e an elective mathematics syllabus where they can study with others of a like mind.


The design choices made in the planning of a new bus rapid transit (BRT) or busway corridor (e.g., use of a center-lane or curbside configuration, counterflow lanes, and open or closed stations) affect not only the operational performance of the system but also the risks of crashes, injuries, and fatalities on the facility over its lifetime. With data from nine BRT systems and busways around the world (including Bogotá, Colombia; Curitiba, Brazil; Mexico City, Mexico; and Delhi, India), some of the road safety impacts of major BRT–busway corridor design characteristics are illustrated. The approach included a combination of crash frequency modeling, road safety inspections, and interviews with transit agency staff and safety experts. Center-lane systems tended generally to be safer than were curbside systems, and counter flow lanes were the most dangerous possible configuration. Some of the features that provide higher passenger capacity (such as multiple bus lanes and multiple docking bays at stations) may introduce new types of conflicts and crashes. In the planning of any bus system, trade-offs often need to be made between capacity, safety, and pedestrian accessibility along the corridor. This study provides the necessary elements for successfully integrating road safety considerations into the design and operation of future BRT systems and busways.


Amorphous polylactic acid (PLA)/cellulose nanofiber (CNF) composites were prepared using the solution casting method. We investigated the effects of the CNFs on the PLA's rheological and thermal properties and on its foaming behavior. The rheological measurements showed that the incorporated CNFs substantially increased the PLA's viscosity in a low frequency range. This was attributed to both the interaction between the PLA molecular chains and the CNFs and the entanglement of CNFs. A batch foaming visualization system showed that the CNFs were effective cell-nucleating agents, and that they suppressed cell coalescence during the foaming process. In solid-state batch foaming processes, the addition of CNFs led to higher cell densities and decreased cell sizes in the composite foams. As the CNF content was increased, the cell-nucleating power and the resultant cell density increased. The cell sizes became more uniform. The improved foam morphology was also attributed to the CO2- and the CNF-induced crystallization during the gas-saturation and foaming processes. Thermal and wide angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) analyses showed that the presence of CNFs and CO2 enhanced the PLA's crystallization kinetics. An amorphous grade of PLA with a 12% D-content developed a high crystallinity of 21% after CO2 gas saturation. The formed crystals, especially those around the CNFs, promoted cell nucleation by local stress variations that were generated in the surrounding area. The crystals and CNFs also increased the PLA's viscosity, which restricted cell growth and reduced cell coalescence. On the other hand, due to increased stiffness, an excessive CNF content suppressed foaming.


Possible oscillations in the Antarctic climate are investigated through statistical analysis of meteorological variables recorded at Neumayer polar station, located at Ekstrom Shelf Ice, Atka Bay, northeastWeddell Sea (7039'S,0815'W). Meteorological variables recorded at this station cover the period 1982 to 2011 with a 3 hours time resolution. At intraseasonal time scales spectral analysis reveals a strong diurnal cycle in the temperature and wind records. A wavelet analysis reveals that diurnal cycle is relatively strong (weak) during the warm (cold) Antarctic season. A persistent oscillation with a period of 35-40 days, with highest amplitude during the cold Antarctic season, was identified also in the temperature record. These oscillations dominate also intraseasonal variability of the wind record. Singular spectrum analysis reveals strong annual and semiannual cycles in the temperature and wind records. The amplitude of semiannual cycle shows decadal variations. Interannual variability of temperature record is dominated by a 5-6 year oscillation. A persistent cycle with a period of about 2 years was identified in the wind record. The origin of intraseasonal to interannual oscillations mentioned above are discussed in connection
with the relevant modes of climate variability at these time scales: the Madden-Julian Oscillation, the Antarctic Oscillation, the Quasi-biennial Oscillation and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. The seasonal variability in the strength of diurnal and 35-40 days cycles as well as decadal variability in the amplitude of semiannual and annual cycles are analyzed based both on internal and external forcing with focus on the role of the solar forcing. Possible implications of these results in the interpretation of climatic signal in the Antarctic ice cores are also presented.


We study the economics of Bitcoin transaction fees in a simple static partial equilibrium model with the specificity that the system security is directly linked to the total computational power of miners. We show that any situation with a fixed fee is equivalent to another situation with a limited block size. In both cases, we give the optimal value of the transaction fee or of the block size. We also show that making the block size a non binding constraint and, in the same time, letting the fee be fixed as the outcome of a decentralized competitive market cannot guarantee the very existence of Bitcoin in the long-term.


ABSTRACT Generic evaluation of Diospyros L. (Ebenaceae) for the Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of Madagascar project necessitates the following nomenclatural actions: 12 new combinations are proposed for species originally described in Maba J.R.Forst. & G.Forst, or Tetraclis Hiern; two new combinations are proposed for species originally described in Olax L.; four new combinations are proposed resulting from the elevation of infraspecific taxa to the rank of species; two species are each provided with a new name; and 52 names (some of which are placed into synonymy) are lectotypified.


In spite of its high commercial value, very few information are available on the biological feature of the Golden grey mullet in Tunisian waters (central Mediterranean). These data would be of great help in identifying the current stock state. In this study, Gonado Somatic Index (GSI), Hepato Somatic Index (HSI), condition factor (K), Length at first sexual maturity TL 50 was calculated and the fecundity was estimated using the volumetric method. The Gonado Somatic Index (GSI) indicated that the spawning season of the Golden grey mullet extends from October to December. The monthly variation of Hepato-Somatic Index (HSI) indicates that L. aurata saves lipid reserves in liver. The species is sexually mature at 23.73, 23.84 and 23.79 cm TL respectively for female, male and combined sexes. In the present study the sex-ratio was unbalanced, with females dominating among large size individuals (TL > 24 cm). Absolute fecundity with a mean value of 286564 varied from a minimum of 210400 eggs for age 4 and a maximum of 533600 for age 7+.


Our paper empirically investigates the structure of transport costs for interregional trade, by using the micro-data of freight charge. We focus on road transport, reflecting the fact that trucking has a dominant share in transporting goods between regions in many countries (in Japan, 91.2% of overall domestic freight volume in 2005). An advantage of our method is that our data represent the costs actually incurred by shippers or carriers, unlike those based on indirect information, or constructed data. Another feature of our paper is to consider the cost structure of each shipment. This is in contrast to many other studies using firm-level data. We present a microeconomic model of inter-regional freight transportation based on careful formulation of cost structure in trucking firm and market equilibrium. We consider that output of transportation service is a bundle of multiple characteristics, such as distance (d), volume (q) and time (t). This is different from the conventional definition of output variable in transportation, i.e., the product of quantity and distance (q*d, according to the above notations). We derive the freight charge equation for empirical analysis based on the market equilibrium, which is derived in a similar manner to the hedonic theory. We use the micro-data from the 2005 Net Freight Flow Census (NFFC), in which information on freight charge and other variables for individual shipment (origin, destination, volume, shipping time) are obtained. The data for other explanatory variables such as distance, toll payment and wage are obtained from various sources. By estimating the parameters of freight charge equation, we investigate the effects of various factors on the level of freight charge. We also examine the existence of scale economies with respect to lot size (weight) and long-haul economies: transport cost per unit weight is decreasing with weight; transport cost per distance is decreasing with distance. Main results are summarized as follows. (1) There are very strong scale economy and long-haul economy: elasticity of freight charge with respect to lot size and distance evaluated around the sample mean are -0.55 and 0.60, respectively. Consequently, the unit freight charges have similar values if the values of q*d are the same. This suggests that the conventional definition of output, ton km, turns out to be a good approximation. (2) Degree of market competition (represented by the number of trucking firms per 1000 population) has significant effect on freight charge: elasticity is 0.09.


High-quality (YbxY1-x)3(Sc1.5Ga0.5)Ga3O12 (Yb:YSGG) (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25, 0.5, and 1) single crystals have been successfully grown by the optical floating zone (OFZ) method. The phase purity and atomic structure were analyzed in detail by employing X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) with Rietveld refinement. Chemical composition was measured and investigated by X-ray fluorescence (XRF). The results of thermal survey show that the thermal conductivity declines from 6.543 W·m−1·K−1 for YSGG to 3.708 W·m−1·K−1 for the 50 at.% Yb3+-doped crystal, but rises to 4.425 W·m−1·K−1 for the 100 at.% sample (YbSGG). The systematically spectroscopic investigations suggest that the crystal field of Yb3+ in Yb:YSGG crystals is almost independent of the Yb3+ dopant concentration and the fluorescence quenching only appears in the high Yb3+-doped crystal.


There continues to be significant uncertainty over the scope of Aboriginal rights in Canada, which results in significant uncertainty for infrastructure development in the energy sector. Developing a framework for determining fair and reasonable compensation for potential impacts to Aboriginal title is therefore a pressing need for governments as well as proponents. This article explores options on how to ensure greater certainty in the process of determining appropriate compensation for impacts to Aboriginal title. It conducts an analysis of the nature of Aboriginal title, the present compensation methodology for all land types, and the Australian experience with these matters. The article is intended to consider compensation for impacts to Aboriginal title, although it is recognized that impacts to Aboriginal title are not the sole challenges arising from energy infrastructure development in Canada. Also, the proposed framework does not suggest that all infringements to Aboriginal title can be justified with appropriate compensation and there may be situations where no level of payment can compensate for the impact to the community's way of life. The article concludes there are at least three potential approaches to determine appropriate compensation for impacts to Aboriginal title, and regardless of the method chosen all will require extensive reform from the present approach.


Congress and more than a dozen states have statutorily expanded the scope of religious liberty beyond that provided for in the U.S. Constitution. These Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs), modeled closely after the federal progenitor, afford heightened protection to religious objectors by mandating that laws substantially burdening religious exercise pass strict scrutiny. In this Comment, I analyze how courts should address claims for exemption under religious freedom statutes when the religious exercise to be accommodated is speech. When applied to laws that are otherwise valid under a less rigorous standard, RFRAs discriminate in favor of religiously motivated speech. The literature has largely focused on whether this privilege afforded to religious viewpoints violates establishment and free speech principles.I aim to show that although RFRAs' speaker-based privilege is constitutionally defensible, the government nonetheless has a compelling interest in promoting equality in speech opportunities among speakers. In considering requests for accommodation of religiously motivated speech, the government should assert its countervailing interest in enforcing the law. However, not all religious exercise that can be conceptualized as speech would yield harms of speaker inequality and marketplace distortion if accommodated. I develop a heuristic to guide courts in applying the government's compelling interest in expressive equality by identifying situations in which accommodation would either advantage religious viewpoints in public debate or foster religious communities. The following discussion of these issues adds a new perspective to the debate concerning RFRAs' application to speech, and strikes a balance between religious liberty and expressive equality.


How does the experience of prostate cancer affect masculine embodiment?

Qualitative study using an ethnographic approach.

Clinics in the UK.

14 men with prostate cancer and 5 healthcare professionals (1 surgeon, 1 radiotherapist, and 3 specialist nurses).

Data were collected through individual interviews, observation of consultations and treatment and waiting areas over 18 months, and from media reports. Interview transcripts and field notes were analysed thematically.

(1) Physical change: living with a new body . After prostate cancer, men found that their bodies no longer conformed to conventional ideas of masculinity. Some men accepted changes stoically, while others sought help in managing their losses. Some men were particularly concerned about loss of sexual function, whereas others were more concerned about incontinence: "I did not want my testicles operated on and become incontinent. That would be the end of my life…" Men who received sufficient advance information on their cancer and treatment options appeared to adapt more successfully. Those who lacked control expressed anger and frustration and focused on the damage done to their body. (2) Diagnosis . Most men …


This is an Editorial and does not have an abstract. Please download the PDF or view the article in HTML.


Social distancing requirements associated with COVID-19 have led to school closures. In April, 192 countries had closed all schools and universities, affecting more than 90 percent of the world's learners: over 1.5 billion children and young people. Closures are expected to reduce schooling and lead to future losses in earnings. Starting from the assumption that every additional year of schooling translates to 8 percent in future earnings, this paper estimates and confirms the loss in marginal future earnings on the basis of a four-month shutdown. The authors also estimated the losses by level of education. The findings show that the school closures reduce future earnings. It is also likely that students from low-income countries will be affected most, where the earning losses will be devastating. These estimates are conservative, assuming closures end after four months, with schools re-opening in the new academic year, and that school quality will not suffer.


Many real-world control problems involve conflicting objectives where we desire a dense and high-quality set of control policies that are optimal for different objective preferences (called Pareto-optimal). While extensive research in multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) has been conducted to tackle such problems, multi-objective optimization for complex continuous robot control is still under-explored. In this work, we propose an efficient evolutionary learning algorithm to find the Pareto set approximation for continuous robot control problems, by extending a state-of-the-art RL algorithm and presenting a novel prediction model to guide the learning process. In addition to efficiently discovering the individual policies on the Pareto front, we construct a continuous set of Pareto-optimal solutions by Pareto analysis and interpolation. Furthermore, we design seven multi-objective RL environments with continuous action space, which is the first benchmark platform to evaluate MORL algorithms on various robot control problems. We test the previous methods on the proposed benchmark problems, and the experiments show that our approach is able to find a much denser and higher-quality set of Pareto policies than the existing algorithms.


In 1907, the United States federal government declared that any American woman marrying a foreigner had to assume the nationality of her husband, and thereby denationalized thousands of American women. This study follows the variations in women's nationality rights, citizenship law and immigration policy in the United States during the late Progressive and interwar years, placing the history and impact of "derivative citizenship" within the broad context of the women's suffrage movement. Making use of primary sources, and utilizing documents from many leading women's reform organizations, government agencies, Congressional hearings and federal litigation involving women's naturalization and expatriation, Candice Bredbenner provides a contemporary feminist perspective on key historical, political and legal debates relating to citizenship, nationality, political empowerment, and their implications for women;s legal status in the United States.


It has been 80 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial, but the debate between science and religion has never been as heated as it is now. Recent efforts to introduce "intelligent design" into science classes will likely lead to a major Supreme Court ruling on the issue. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, is a preeminent evolutionary scientist—and the author of the most widely used high school biology textbook in America. He is perfectly suited to address this controversial topic on many fronts.


Abstract Weissite, Cu2−xTe (x ≈ 0.21), a very rare copper telluride, occurs in a sample from the Gambatesa mine, Val Graveglia, Liguria, Italy, where it occurs as purplish black anhedral grains up to 0.1 mm in length and shows a black streak. No cleavage is observed and the Vickers hardness (VHN100) is 142 kg/mm2. Weissite is dark bluish black, weakly pleochroic, and moderately anisotropic in bluish tints. Reflectance percentages in air for Rmin and Rmax are 37.0, 38.4 (471.1 nm), 33.2, 34.2 (548.3 nm), 31.2, 32.1 (586.6 nm), and 28.6, 31.0 (652.3 nm), respectively. Weissite is trigonal and belongs to the space group P3m1 with the following unit-cell parameters: a = 8.3124(7) Å c = 21.546(1) Å , V = 1289.3(2)Å3, and Z = 24. Electron microprobe analyses gave the chemical formula (Cu1.62Ag0.04Au0.04Fe0.04Sb0.04)∑=1.78(Te0.96S0.02Se0.02). The crystal structure has been solved and refined to R = 1.95%. It consists of Cu and Te polyhedra forming complex crystal-chemical environments as is typical of many intermetallic compounds. The exceedingly short bond distances observed among the metals are discussed in relation to other copper tellurides and pure metals.


Occupation-based social classifications are important social indicators, but are easily misunderstood. Using survey data from the UK and Sweden, we summarize the empirical relations between a number of alternative occupation-based social classifications. Results indicate similarity between most measures, though there are often quite considerable differences in the properties of related classifications according to the level of detail at which they have been operationalized (such as the number of categories). While these findings may seem unsurprising, they are in conflict with canonical theoretical interpretations attributed to occupation-based measures, where the level of detail is often overlooked, whereas the concepts associated with different measures are emphasized.


Gower and Hand (1996) provide a unified biplot theory in which biplots are seen as multivariate analogues of ordinary scatterplots. In this paper a perspective is given on a biplot based approach to problems in discrimination. Various types of biplots are introduced for use when performing discriminant analysis in different situations. The focus is on discriminant analysis with categorical predictors. In particular it is shown how biplot based procedures can efficiently overcome the well-known problems that occur with binary predictors in the presence of reversals in log likelihood ratios, i.e. where the log likelihood ratio depends only on the number of positive coded elements of a random vector but it is not a monotone function of this number.
It is argued that generalised biplot methodology allows the inclusion of categorical variables in a natural way by defining a distance matrix where both continuous and categorical variables contribute to the inter-point distances. A proposal is made where such distance matrices together with non-parametric procedures such as MARS and BRUTO are used as input to the non-linear biplot method to perform discriminant analysis. The potential of this proposal to address the reversal problem is investigated by means of a simulation study.Conditions favourable to linear discriminant analysis as well as non-linear discriminant analysis are considered. Examples of the associated biplots are provided.


Background: During the year 2015, Chennai and the South Indian coast experienced devastating floods due to unprecedented rains. Indiscriminate damage to housing, communication and transport networks, and health facilities ensued affecting the lives of thousands of people. Objective: To assess the morbidity profile of patients attending the medical camps conducted at Chennai during the postflood period. Methodology: In our study, the investigators with their health team conducted camps in Thiruvallur - one of the worst affected districts during the floods between November and December 2015. Data were collected regarding age, gender, and presenting health problems. Total number of patients seen in camps was 5633. Results: It was observed that among people who came to the camp, common health problems were as follows - 46.84% had acute respiratory tract infections, 24.87% with acute gastroenteritis, 18.6% had fever, and 14.41% with skin problems. Conclusion: Due to provision of safe drinking water and epidemic prevention measures, epidemic outbreaks have been averted. However, strengthening of existing health care systems is required to handle the burden of acute gastrointestinal and respiratory infections during disasters such as floods.


BACKGROUND
Gonadotrophin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRHa) are commonly used in assisted reproduction technology (ART) cycles to prevent a luteinising hormone surge during controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH) prior to planned oocyte retrieval, thus optimising the chances of live birth.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the effectiveness of the different GnRHa protocols as adjuncts to COH in women undergoing ART cycles.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the following databases from inception to April 2015: the Cochrane Menstrual Disorders and Subfertility Group Specialised Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in the Cochrane Library (2015, Issue 3), MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and registries of ongoing trials. Reference lists of relevant articles were also searched.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing any two protocols of GnRHa used in in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles in subfertile women.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently selected studies, assessed trial eligibility and risk of bias, and extracted the data. The primary outcome measure was number of live births or ongoing pregnancies per woman/couple randomised. Secondary outcome measures were number of clinical pregnancies, number of oocytes retrieved, dose of gonadotrophins used, adverse effects (pregnancy losses, ovarian hyperstimulation, cycle cancellation, and premature luteinising hormone (LH) surges), and cost and acceptability of the regimens. We combined data to calculate odds ratios (OR) for dichotomous variables and mean differences (MD) for continuous variables, with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). We assessed statistical heterogeneity using the I² statistic. We assessed the overall quality of the evidence for the main comparisons using 'Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation' (GRADE) methods.

MAIN RESULTS
We included 37 RCTs (3872 women), one ongoing trial, and one trial awaiting classification. These trials made nine different comparisons between protocols. Twenty of the RCTs compared long protocols and short protocols. Only 19/37 RCTs reported live birth or ongoing pregnancy.There was no conclusive evidence of a difference between a long protocol and a short protocol in live birth and ongoing pregnancy rates (OR 1.30, 95% CI 0.94 to 1.81; 12 RCTs, n = 976 women, I² = 15%, low quality evidence). Our findings suggest that in a population in which 14% of women achieve live birth or ongoing pregnancy using a short protocol, between 13% and 23% will achieve live birth or ongoing pregnancy using a long protocol. There was evidence of an increase in clinical pregnancy rates (OR 1.50, 95% CI 1.18 to 1.92; 20 RCTs, n = 1643 women, I² = 27%, moderate quality evidence) associated with the use of a long protocol.There was no evidence of a difference between the groups in terms of live birth and ongoing pregnancy rates when the following GnRHa protocols were compared: long versus ultrashort protocol (OR 1.78, 95% CI 0.72 to 4.36; one RCT, n = 150 women, low quality evidence), long luteal versus long follicular phase protocol (OR 1.89, 95% CI 0.87 to 4.10; one RCT, n = 223 women, low quality evidence), when GnRHa was stopped versus when it was continued (OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.42 to 1.33; three RCTs, n = 290 women, I² = 0%, low quality evidence), when the dose of GnRHa was reduced versus when the same dose was continued (OR 1.02, 95% CI 0.68 to 1.52; four RCTs, n = 407 women, I² = 0%, low quality evidence), when GnRHa was discontinued versus continued after human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) administration in the long protocol (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.49 to 1.64; one RCT, n = 181 women, low quality evidence), and when administration of GnRHa lasted for two versus three weeks before stimulation (OR 1.14, 95% CI 0.49 to 2.68; one RCT, n = 85 women, low quality evidence). Our primary outcomes were not reported for any other comparisons.Regarding adverse events, there were insufficient data to enable us to reach any conclusions except about the cycle cancellation rate. There was no conclusive evidence of a difference in cycle cancellation rate (OR 0.95, 95% CI 0.59 to 1.55; 11 RCTs, n = 1026 women, I² = 42%, low quality evidence) when a long protocol was compared with a short protocol. This suggests that in a population in which 9% of women would have their cycles cancelled using a short protocol, between 5.5% and 14% will have cancelled cycles when using a long protocol.The quality of the evidence ranged from moderate to low. The main limitations in the evidence were failure to report live birth or ongoing pregnancy, poor reporting of methods in the primary studies, and imprecise findings due to lack of data. Only 10 of the 37 included studies were conducted within the last 10 years.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
When long GnRHa protocols and short GnRHa protocols were compared, we found no conclusive evidence of a difference in live birth and ongoing pregnancy rates, but there was moderate quality evidence of higher clinical pregnancy rates in the long protocol group. None of the other analyses showed any evidence of a difference in birth or pregnancy outcomes between the protocols compared. There was insufficient evidence to make any conclusions regarding adverse effects.


Modular programming facilitates the creation and reuse of large software, and has recently gathered considerable interest in the context of Answer Set Programming (ASP). In this setting, forgetting, or the elimination of middle variables no longer deemed relevant, is of importance as it allows one to, e.g., simplify a program, make it more declarative, or even hide some of its parts without affecting the consequences for those parts that are relevant. While forgetting in the context of ASP has been extensively studied, its known limitations make it unsuitable to be used in Modular ASP. In this paper, we present a novel class of forgetting operators and show that such operators can always be successfully applied in Modular ASP to forget all kinds of atoms – input, output and hidden – overcoming the impossibility results that exist for general ASP. Additionally, we investigate conditions under which this class of operators preserves the module theorem in Modular ASP, thus ensuring that answer sets of modules can still be composed, and how the module theorem can always be preserved if we further allow the reconfiguration of modules.


Energy consumption in new buildings can be reduced at the design stage. This study optimizes the ventilation system design of a new residential building located in a warm climate (Southern Italy). Different system options of horizontal air-ground heat exchangers (HAGHEs), also called earth-to-air heat exchangers (EAHX), have been considered to search for the optimal configuration. The thermal behaviour of the obtained configurations has been modelled by the dynamic simulation software TRNSYS 17. The pipe numbers, the air flow rate, and the soil thermal conductivity are among the simulated building components. For each of them, different design options have been analysed to study how each parameter impacts the building thermal behaviour in winter and summer. The operative air temperature (TOP) has been evaluated inside the building prototype to investigate the indoor comfort. The paper demonstrates that HAGHEs permit to assure a suitable indoor climatization if the building envelope is optimized for a warm area. These conditions require high values of heat storage capacity to keep under control the internal temperature fluctuations, especially in summer. The paper confirms the importance of geothermal systems and design optimization to increase energy savings.


From October 2005 to January 2006, Oxford Archaeology (OA)
undertook an archaeological evaluation at land to the north of Gloucester
and immediately north-west of the village of Innsworth in Gloucestershire
(NGR SO 852 212). OA carried out the evaluation on behalf of CgMs
Consulting.
The site is approximately 120 hectares (300 acres) in extent and is
currently under consideration for mixed-use development. This first phase
of evaluation work comprised a proposed number of 217 evaluation
trenches with a further 37 being added later. In the event, access problems
prevented some of the trenches being opened. A total of 188 trenches were
excavated at this stage of the investigation.
As well as providing good overall coverage of the site area the evaluation
trenches were also targeted at anomalies previously identified by
geophysical survey. Three principal areas of archaeological activity were
identified by trenching, thus confirming the interpretations of this survey.
A double-ditched enclosure of late Iron Age/early Roman date was located
to the north of the evaluated area. Within the enclosure were shallow
linear features and small pits/postholes, possibly evidence of structures.
Within the central area of the evaluation were a large number of ditches,
some inter-cutting, and forming square and rectangular enclosures. The
layout suggests a probable farmstead with large quantities of ceramic
evidence dating to the late Iron Age/early Roman period. Some features
contained Roman material from the 2nd-4th centuries, suggesting the site
was in use for some time. Leading away north-west from this area was a
contemporary parallel ditch arrangement, very possibly a trackway/droveway.
In the south-east corner of the evaluated area numerous inter-cutting
ditches and discrete features including pits/postholes indicative of
settlement were recorded. Linear and curvilinear features were identified
and the ceramic evidence suggests a fairly long-lived area of activity.
However, it seems likely that the main focus of this possible settlement
activity lies beyond the east boundary of the evaluated area.
Away from these concentrations were ditches typical of field systems from
the late prehistoric and Roman periods. Most features were undated,
however. Medieval plough furrows were revealed in areas across the site,
together with a few post-medieval and modern features.


Reallocation of reservoir storage capacity for different water use purposes is regarded as one of the representative strategies for supplying water for human and environmental needs under the difficult situation of new reservoir construction. However, there are impacts of reservoir storage reallocation on river/reservoir systems because each reservoir in a multiple reservoir system is operated by priority order, not by natural order. Accordingly, this study focuses on evaluating the relative impact of reservoir location on a system of 14 multiple-purpose reservoirs and hydrology characteristics modification. The natural and priority orders are considered for three reallocation strategies. The comparison results of reliability, flood frequency, and economic flood damage indicate that individual reservoir storage reallocation has an impact on nearby reservoirs and river systems at downstream points, which are located directly below the reservoir. The multiple reservoir storage reallocation plans are reliable strategies for lessening the impacts on river/reservoir operating systems.


Background: Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors during young adulthood can have negative impacts on health for the rest of a person's life. University students are in a transition stage to adulthood and face considerable changes in their life during their time at university. Therefore, the evaluation of their lifestyle and its changes over time using a valid and reliable tool is very important. This study aimed at assessing reliability and validity of the Persian version of the Healthy Lifestyle Scale for University Students (HLSUS).
Methods: The HLSUS was developed by Wong et al., based on Pender's Health Promotion Model, and was translated into Persian using forward/backward translation methods. Content validity of the scale was assessed by a panel of eleven experts. Moreover, Cronbach alpha coefficient was calculated to examine internal consistency. The construct validity was assessed via detecting the factor structure of measurements on a sample of 400 students from different faculties of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Scale-item correlations and known group analyses were used to evaluate. convergent and discriminant validity.
Results: The HLSUS demonstrated good content validity (content validity index [CVI] values 0.80-1.00 and content validity ratio [CVR] values 0.71-1.00), internal consistency (α = 0.87) and test–retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.89). Based on exploratory factor analysis, it was determined that the eight factor solution was optimal for distinguishing the underlying factors.
Conclusion: The Persian version of the HLSUS demonstrated initial reliability and validity.


Making learners aware of their mistakes is a frequent strategy used by practitioners; the common assumption is that doing this will ultimately lead to improvements in motor behavior. However, making someone aware of their errors, especially in front of their peers, can cause the person to feel embarrassed or ashamed. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of induced shame on the performance of a novel motor skill. More specifically, how shame affects the frequency of self-controlled feedback and the learning of a novel motor skill. Participants (N = 80) practiced a manual tracking task on a rotary pursuit tracker. Participants were quasi-randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions (i.e., shame SC, shame shame-yoked, neutral shame-yoked, neutral SC, neutral neutral-yoked, and shame neutral-yoked). Participants assigned to the shame conditions were told during practice that their performance was below average, whereas participants in the neutral conditions were told that their performance was average. The results of the study indicated that shame did not have a meaningful effect on motor performance or learning. It was also concluded that the frequency of requested feedback was not significantly different between the two self-control groups (i.e., shame-SC and neutral-SC).


Different sampling procedures are applied to monitor water quality in agricultural catchments in the Nordic countries. The need for comparing monitoring results from the Nordic countries was the incentive for establishing a project aimed at comparing estimates of nutrient losses determined using different sampling strategies. Three different sampling methods were compared in three Norwegian catchments: weekly flow-proportional composite sampling (FPCS), weekly composite sampling with temporally equidistant subsampling every second hour (TECS) and temporally equidistant weekly point sampling (PS). Differences in load estimated between the three tested sampling strategies were smaller for nitrogen than for phosphorus or suspended solids. Point sampling tended to miss some of the peaks in concentrations of phosphorus and suspended solids, particularly during flow events, causing significantly lower load estimates for phosphorus and suspended solids by point sampling compared with composite sampling strategies. Flow-proportional composite sampling gave the most reliable data for event-responsible compounds or when the predictability of peaks was low. Based on this investigation, and similar studies in the other Nordic countries, a flow-proportional sampling strategy is recommended for studies of water quality in agricultural streams.


One of the most important discoveries of modern linguistic theory is that abstract structural properties of utterances place subtle restrictions on how we can use a given form or description. For the past thirty years, these restrictions have been explored for possible clues to the exact nature of the structural properties in question. In The Syntax of (In)dependence Ken Safir explores these structural properties and develops a theory of dependent identity interpretations that also leads to new empirical generalizations. These generalizations range across a wide class of empirical phenomena, including the distribution of crossover effects, bound variables in ellipsis, functional answers to questions, resumptive pronoun constructions, (anti-) reconstruction effects, and proxy readings.Safir approaches these interpretive issues from the perspective that the structural properties of all natural languages reflect an innate linguistic capacity, as embodied in Universal Grammar (UG). This monograph explores the way a particular syntactic restriction imposed by UG limits the range of dependent identity interpretations that a sentence can have and hence the range of possible entailments it can have on the basis of these anaphoric interpretations. Although certain of these interpretations may be favored by manipulating a discourse, the work focuses on interpretive restrictions that cannot be repaired by discourse accommodation. More specifically, Safir's main proposal is dependent identity interpretations are restricted by a c-command prohibition and not by a c-command licensing condition-- that c-command does not license dependencies but plays a role in ruling them out. Although cross-linguisitic discussion in the main text is very limited, Safir adds an appendix on scrambling and reconstruction that focuses on scrambling in Hindi.


A GROUP OF 11 AMUSIC INDIVIDUALS WITH MANDARIN as their first language were tested on a two-tone discrimination task. In addition, a four-tone sequence task with an additional initial reference note and a final return to the reference note (i.e., AABA) was employed to assess if repeating the reference note resulted in an improvement of pitch discrimination for amusic individuals. The findings showed that the amusic participants had difficulty discriminating two-tone pairs and four-tone sequences relative to 11 control participants. The performance of the amusic group on the four-tone sequence was not better than that predicted based upon their performance during the two-tone task, indicating that repetition of the reference note did not aid performance. The findings suggest that tonal language experience may not facilitate fine-grained pitch discrimination for amusics who speak Mandarin Chinese as their first language.


The growing network density and unprecedented increase in network traffic, caused by the massively expanding number of connected devices and online services, require intelligent network operations. Machine Learning (ML) has been applied in this regard in different types of networks and networking technologies to meet the requirements of future communicating devices and services. In this article, we provide a detailed account of current research on the application of ML in communication networks and shed light on future research challenges. Research on the application of ML in communication networks is described in: i) the three layers, i.e., physical, access, and network layers; and ii) novel computing and networking concepts such as Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and a brief overview of ML-based network security. Important future research challenges are identified and presented to help stir further research in key areas in this direction.


Photography and Collaboration offers a fresh perspective on existing debates in art photography and on the act of photography in general. Unlike conventional accounts that celebrate individual photographers and their personal visions, this book investigates the idea that authorship in photography is often more complex and multiple than we imagine - involving not only various forms of partnership between photographers, but also an astonishing array of relationships with photographed subjects and viewers. Thematic chapters explore the increasing prevalence of collaborative approaches to photography among a broad range of international artists - from conceptual practices in the 1960s to the most recent digital manifestations. Positioning contemporary work in a broader historical and theoretical context, the book reveals that collaboration is an overlooked but essential dimension of the medium's development and potential.


The notion pervasive in the popular media of the racist Southerner is a stereotype with serious implications. Despite recent evidence showing that slavery and even plantations were plentiful in the North into the early 19 th Century, people commonly ascribe a higher level of racist predisposition to individuals living in the South. This paper looks at the period between 1950 and 1970 to see if cities from the former Confederacy responded differently to the Civil Rights Movement as compared to cities from the former Union along two different segregation indices. The results show that while Southern cities had significantly higher levels of racial isolation, there was no significant difference in the way Southern segregation changed over the course of the Civil Rights Movement relative to the North.


Backround: Lip-split incision has been traditionally used to manage the primary oral cavity tumour to ascertain clear surgical margins. Small tumour excision is routinely carried out per orally; however, there is a paucity of data vis-à-vis with the oncological safety of per oral approach in T2/T3 excision of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Objective of the study: We compared per oral access over the transoral access in terms of assessing the tumour free surgical margins. Settings & Design: A prospective, interventional, double-blind, randomized control study was conducted among 20 histopathologically proven participants with previously untreated OSCC scheduled for curative intent. Subjects & Method: Participants were randomly allocated to the two intervention used. The primary outcome variables evaluated were the adequacy of the surgical margin. Additionally, the primary tumour resection time between two interventions was assessed. Results: The primary tumour resection time will be significantly extended in Peroral access & no significant difference will be seen pertaining to the adequacy of a safe surgical margin between two intervention. Peroral access will be a choice of surgical approaches that preserve function, minimize complications and maximize cosmetic outcome. Conclusion: Surgical approaches that minimalize complications, preserve function with the optimal cosmetic outcome should be utilized whenever feasible. Peroral access may offer significant advantages like avoiding transoral trauma, fastens the healing time & affords better & faster recovery.


In this paper, we investigate the value of knowledge [V(K)] in a service organization where knowledge is strictly uncodified and used as a supplement to data and information in the decision logic in a service parts replenishment problem. An earlier case study by the authors has revealed that automotive service parts managers often have considerable knowledge about special supply chain events that alter demand-such as a recall for a failing component, production rate changes, and discontinuation notices. Likewise, service parts managers know about local conditions that will influence service part sales, including weather conditions and changes in the service and body shop schedules. In this paper, we develop a methodology for assessing the value of this knowledge, including a service parts demand model with parameters that are estimated and updated using a Bayesian approach. We demonstrate how the V(K) can be quantified via a simulation of the effect of knowledge in the replenishment process for six selected service part categories. As the V(K) is an important input to the economic justification of information technologies, the development of a methodology that quantifies its value is an important contribution to the management of information systems.


"This paper uses a computable general equilibrium approach to simulate two opposing views describing regional trade agreements either as building blocks for or stumbling blocks to multilateral trade liberalization. This study focuses on the free trade agreement (FTA) between the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) and the European Union (EU). Results show that although a regional trade agreement may slightly raise welfare among the members of the agreement, the cost to nonmembers can be high. In this paper we argue that multilateral liberalization and a regional free trade agreement between the EU and CEMAC are not mutually exclusive. Regional trade agreements should be complementary and consistent with a multilateral agreement, not an attempt to replace it. The regional breakdown in our design considers 14 regions, allowing for country-specific analysis for one least-developed country (Democratic Republic of Congo) and one non-least-developed country (Cameroon). Multilateral liberalization amplifies welfare gain for Cameroon. The Democratic Republic of Congo, with its weaker institutional capacity, is affected negatively. An EU-CEMAC FTA without multilateralism produces gains for both Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The gain for Cameroon is, however, moderate compared with that achieved when the EU-CEMAC FTA is accompanied with a multilateral agreement." from authors' abstract


Abstract This is the second of two companion papers. The first paper describes model calculations and nuclear data evaluations of photonuclear reactions on isotopes of C, O, Al, Si, Ca, Fe, Cu, Ta, W, and Pb for incident photon energies up to 150 MeV. This paper describes the steps taken to process these files into transport libraries and to update the Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) and MCNPX radiation transport codes to use tabular photonuclear reaction data. The evaluated photonuclear data files are created in the standard evaluated nuclear data file (ENDF) format. These files must be processed by the NJOY data processing system into A Compact ENDF (ACE) files suitable for radiation transport calculations. MCNP and MCNPX have been modified to use these new data in a self-consistent and fully integrated manner. Verification problems were used at each step along the path to check the integrity of the methodology. The resulting methodology and tools provide a comprehensive system for using photonuclear data in radiation transport calculations. Also described are initial validation simulations used to benchmark several of the photonuclear transport tables.


Background: Aging is a multifactorial process characterized by organ loss of function and degeneration, but the mechanisms involved remain elusive. We have shown recently that catecholamine metabolism drives the accumulation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions in dopaminergic cells, which likely contribute to their degeneration during aging. Here we investigated whether the well-documented degeneration and altered function of adrenals during aging is linked to catecholamine production in the medulla followed by accumulation of mtDNA deletions. Material and Methods: We analyzed adrenal medullary and cortical samples of both murine and human origin covering a wide range of ages for mtDNA deletion content, mtDNA copy number, mitochondrial and cellular integrity as well as aging-related tissue changes such as fibrosis. Results: Indeed, we demonstrate in mice and humans that the adrenal medulla accumulates a strikingly high amount of mtDNA deletions with age, causing mitochondrial dysfunction in the adrenal medulla, but also in the cortex, accompanied by apoptosis and, more importantly, by severe inflammation and remarkable fibrosis. Additionally, a concomitant and dramatic loss of medullary and cortical cells is observed in old animals. Conclusion: Our results show that accumulation of mtDNA deletions, and the ensuing mitochondrial dysfunction, is a hallmark of adrenal aging, further strengthening the hypothesis that catecholamine metabolism is detrimental to mtDNA integrity, mitochondrial function and cell survival. Moreover, the cell loss potentially induced by mitochondrial dysfunction could explain the decline in adrenal hormonal and steroidal secretion during aging.


Yields of pearl millet [Pennisetum americanum (L.) Leeke]-a rainfed crop grown mainly on light soils in the semiarid and arid regions--are often reduced by water deficit when rains end early. The comparative response of this crop to varying intensity and timing of water deficit during flowering and grain-filling was investigated in field experiments using a line-source sprinkler system. The soil was an Alfisol (Udic Rhodustalf) with approximately 60 mm of plant-extractable moisture. Genotypes differing in maturity were used to simulate differing timings of terminal stress. Grain yields were linearly reduced with increasing intensity of stress in all genotypes. Yield reduction rate was dependent on the time of stress onset in relation to time of flowering, as earlier-flowering genotypes partially escaped stress. Grain number per unit area and grain size were reduced by intensity of water deficit. Grain yield and grain number, but not grain size, were affected by the time of stress onset at all intensities. Across the entire data set, stress intensity and timing accounted for 75% of the variation in measured grain yield. An advance in time of onset of stress by a day caused a 0.9% reduction in relative grain yield, compared to a 0.7% reduction in relative grain yield for each 1% additional irrigation deficit. Effects of timing of stress increased significantly with increase in stress intensity. The results emphasize the importance of timing and intensity of stress when comparing genotypes of different maturity groups using line-source gradient system, or when selecting genotypes for drought-prone environments.


Time-domain induced polarisation and magnetic data were acquired to map and characterise the
decommissioned and un-engineered municipal solid waste disposal site of the Kwame Nkrumah
University of Science and Technology, located in the Kumasi Metropolis of Ghana. In this survey, 13
induced polarisation profiles 500–800 m long and 26 magnetic profiles 400–800 m long were acquired.
In addition, two boreholes were drilled to help in the interpretation of the geophysical data. The study
was carried out with the aim of determining the risk posed by the waste deposit to the quality of the soil
and the ground water system, which is the main potable water supply for the Secondary School, the
University Teaching Hospital and the Veterinary School, situated within the catchment area of the site.
Full-decay 2-D time-domain induced polarisation inversions in terms of Cole–Cole parameters were
used for interpreting the induced polarisation data. The chargeability, resistivity and normalised chargeability
distributions, together with the magnetic results, aided in a full characterisation of the site geology,
the waste and the associated pollution plume. In particular, clear contrasts in resistivity and the
polarisation parameters were found between the saprolite layer and the granitic bedrock, which are the
main lithological units of the area. Furthermore, it was found that the Kwame Nkrumah University of
Science and Technology waste deposit is characterised by a low-chargeability and low-resistivity signature
and that the low-resistivity area spreads out from the waste deposit into the permeable saprolite
layer, indicating the presence of a leachate plume. A fracture zone in the granitic bedrock beneath the
waste deposit, which is a potential conduit for leachate contamination of the ground water system, was
also identified. The study thus provides the information needed for assessing the future impact of the
waste on the water quality in the area and for designing risk-mitigation actions.


ABSTRACT
 Ocean quahogs [Arctica islandica (Linnaeus, 1769)] are the longest-lived, noncolonial animal known today, with a maximum life span exceeding 500 y. Ocean quahogs are a commercially important bivalve, inhabiting the continental shelf of the North Atlantic Basin. Although considerable information exists on the growth and physiology of A. islandica, limited information is available regarding recruitment; accordingly, sustainably managing the fishery is a challenge. To investigate long-term recruitment trends, the age of ocean quahogs from Georges Bank which were fully recruited to the commercial fishery (>80 mm shell length) was determined by analysis of annual growth lines in the hinge plate. Ages of animals representing the fully recruited size range were used to develop an age—length key, enabling reconstruction of the population age frequency. The population age frequency showed that the Georges Bank population experienced an increase in recruitment beginning in the late 1890s. Initial settlement, documented by a few ocean quahogs that were much older, occurred much earlier, in the early 1800s. Following the late 1890s increase in recruitment, the population expanded rapidly reaching carrying capacity in 20–30 y. Recruitment was more or less continuous after this expansion, consistent with maintenance of a population at carrying capacity. Unusually large year classes were not observed, nor were significant periods of high recruitment interspersed with periods of low recruitment. The relationship of growth rate with age for the oldest clams was assessed using the time series of yearly growth increments and the resulting relationship fitted to three models (von Bertalanffy, Gompertz, and Tanaka's ALOG curve). The ALOG model was clearly superior because it allows for persistent indeterminate growth at old age, rather than the asymptotic behavior of the other two and because it allows for a rapid change in growth rate at what is presumed to be maturity.


Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a counseling approach that is versatile and can be applied in many professional settings. Therefore, teaching MI skills to multidisciplinary groups simultaneously has the potential to be quite beneficial for strengthening the MI skills of different groups. This paper describes a project in which professionals and students from psychology and nutrition/ dietetics were trained in MI in an attempt to bolster both groups' ability to implement MI as part of a larger health intervention project. Specifically, we outline the common themes that emerged among the trainees' experiences. Implementing a multidisciplinary training program in which trainees use their expertise and contribute to the training process appeared to have created a rich learning environment.


Cell polarity is a fundamental property of cells. The identification of conserved polarity regulators that control polarity in a variety of distinct tissues raises a number of questions. How are the same components used and integrated in tissue-specific ways to give rise to the wide variety of polarized tissues? What are the downstream components through which the polarity program acts? We developed a tissue-specific affinity purification/mass spectrometry approach for C. elegans based on in vivo biotinylation of Avi-tagged proteins of interest by the bacterial biotin ligase BirA. Tissue-specific biotinylation is accomplished by expressing BirA from a tissue-specific promoter, while the Avi-tagged protein is expressed from its native regulatory sequences. Biotinylated bait proteins are subsequently purified and interacting proteins identified by mass spectrometry. We confirmed the tissue-specificity of our approach and applied it to several polarity proteins. Tissue-specific purification of DLG-1 and CDC-42 resulted in the identification of several known interaction partners, demonstrating that our approach can identify valid interactions from specific tissues. It is important to gain a detailed mechanistic understanding of the proteins that regulate polarity. The functioning of a protein can in large part be dictated by the protein interactions it engages in. Here, we expand the concept of Y2H-based interaction domain mapping to the genome-wide scale. We generated a human prey library by fragmenting an ORFeome collection with ultrasonication and demonstrated the quality of the library by screening it with polarity and cell division proteins. We identified several interactions previously described in literature as well as novel interactions, and validated 55% of all identified interactions by affinity purifications in cell culture. The best approach for studying the function of a protein in vivo is to precisely modify the genome to express a mutated protein that for example lacks interaction domains. We developed the CRISPR/Cas9 system for C. elegans to be able to specifically engineer its genome. By expressing a guide RNA the Cas9 endonuclease is targeted to a specific locus in the genome where it creates a double strand break. Imprecise repair of the break can yield mutations and we obtained mutants for all four genes tested. Several other groups independently adapted the CRISPR/Cas9 system for C. elegans, and we reviewed the different approaches taken. We used our CRISPR/Cas9 approach to gain a better understanding of the functioning of the Crumbs proteins in C. elegans. While the Crumbs protein is essential for epithelial polarity and viability in Drosophila, the two Crumbs homologs identified in C. elegans thus far do not appear to play a major role in polarity establishment. We identified a third Crumbs homolog in C. elegans, which localizes in a polarized pattern in several tissues. We developed a variation of our CRISPR/Cas9 approach to delete entire genes, and generated a triple Crumbs deletion mutant. Remarkably, animals lacking all three Crumbs homologs are viable. Overexpression of all three Crumbs homologs caused changes in the localization pattern of the polarity protein PAR-3, suggesting that the C. elegans Crumbs homologs play a non-essential role in polarity establishment.


Coordination in healthcare networks becomes more and more important to enable integrated care scenarios and to increase quality and efficiency in treatment processes. After identification of shortfalls in existing concepts and solutions a process-oriented approach is introduced which enhances integrated care scenarios by IT-driven coordination of interorganizational treatment processes – the concept of process-based e-service logistics. The concept is guided by process orientation, service orientation and individualization. A meta-orchestration approach is presented that implements the concept of process-based e-servicelogistics by execution of individual treatment processes, identification of coordination tasks between network actors, and dynamic allocation of e-services.


"Net neutrality" refers to the principle that broadband providers should not limit the content and applications available over the Internet. Long a rallying cry of techies and academics, it has become one of the central pillars of the Obama Administration's telecommunications policy. The Federal Communications Commission's efforts to regulate the "onramp to the Internet" have attracted significant attention from the telecommunications industry and the academic community, which have debated whether the proposed restrictions violate broadband providers' First Amendment rights. But there is an additional constitutional implication of net neutrality that has not yet been sufficiently addressed in the scholarly literature: the Takings Clause.This article argues that under the Supreme Court's Takings Clause jurisprudence, the Commission's proposed net neutrality rules effect a permanent physical occupation of private broadband networks and therefore take broadband providers' property without just compensation. In essence, net neutrality would grant Internet content providers a permanent virtual easement across privately-owned broadband networks to deliver content to end-users. It thus would deprive broadband providers of the right to exclude others from their networks - a right that the Court's takings jurisprudence has repeatedly dubbed "one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property." At the very least, the Takings Clause issue raises a serious constitutional question regarding the Commission's authority to adopt net neutrality regulations without clear authority from Congress to do so. The Commission should therefore seek explicit Congressional approval before promulgating net neutrality rules, rather than continuing to freelance at the periphery of its regulatory authority.


Contemporary Scenography investigates scenographic concepts, practices and aesthetics in Germany from
1989 to the present. Facing the end of the political divide, the advent of the digital age and the challenges of globalization, German-based designers and scenographers have reacted in a variety of ways to these shifts in the cultural landscape.

The edited volume, a compilation of 12 original chapters written in collaboration with acclaimed scenographers,
stage designers and distinguished scholars, offers fresh insights and in-depth analyses of current artistic concepts, discourse and innovation in this multifaceted, dynamic field. The book covers a broad spectrum of scenography, including theatre works by Katrin Brack, Bert Neumann, Aleksandar Denic, Klaus Grunberg, Vinge/Muller and Rimini Protokoll, in addition to scenography in museums, exhibitions, social spaces and in various urban contexts.

Presenting a range of perspectives, the volume explores the interdisciplinarity of contemporary scenography and its ongoing diversification, raising questions relating to cultural heritage, genre and media specificity, knowledge transfer, local versus global practices, internationalization and cultural exchange. Combined with a set of stimulating examples of scenographic design in action – presented through interviews, artists' statements and case studies – the contributors develop a theoretical framework for understanding scenography as an art practice and discourse.


Duration: March 2000 - May 2000

This was a short, joint investigation between the National AIDS Trust, The Lesbian and Gay Foundation (formerly Healthy Gay Manchester and Manchester Lesbian & Gay Switchboard) and Sigma Research. It was intended to inform the development of the English National Sexual Health Strategy (prior to its merger with the National HIV Strategy) by the Department of Health. The Department of Health commissioned this research on the sexual health needs of Gay men and Lesbians, and identified access to services and health promotion as two areas of special interest.

A survey was developed to elicit the views of Lesbians, Gay men and Bisexuals on what the forthcoming strategy (a) should be trying to achieve and (b) how to achieve it.

A short, self-completion questionnaire was used (two sides of a single sheet of A4), with a Freepost return facility. The questions covered: demographics; health concerns; obstacles to sexual health; and experiences of sexual health service. Respondents were recruited from Gay and Lesbian community groups, Lesbian & Gay pubs and bookstores in London and Manchester.

Respondents were included if they were 16 years or older and resident in England and either: (i) homosexually active in last five year, and / or (ii) Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual identity. The final sample included 497 women and 417 men. The report to the Department of Health included twenty specific recommendations intended to inform the National Strategy.


ABSTRACT Among its many features of strictly domestic nature, the ditched enclosure site of Camino de las Yeseras incorporates a series of singular faunal deposits that do not seem to represent consumption refuse. These deposits that appear in strategic places of the site often feature very biased representations of the animals' skeletons . In addition, considerable time and effort appears to have been put into the correct placement of these remains. In one instance this meant covering with red ochre the bones themselves. Combined, these lines of evidence reveal a treatment of the carcasses that goes well beyond what one would attribute to utilitarian slaughtering and consumption, pointing instead to some kind of ritual. Some features of this presumably ritual processing exhibit parallels with other regions of Spain, but the sheer faunal diversity recorded in this case renders Camino de las Yeseras an exceptional case in the Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula.


Background: There are a number of reports linking magnetic field exposure to increased risks of Alzheimer's disease and motor neuron disease. Methods: The mortality experienced by a cohort of 83 997 employees of the former Central Electricity Generating Board of England and Wales was investigated for the period 1973–2004. All employees were employed for at least six months with some employment in the period 1973–82. Computerised work histories were available for 79 972 study subjects for the period 1971–93. Information on job and facility (location) were used to estimate exposures to magnetic fields. Two analytical approaches were used to evaluate risks, indirect standardisation (n = 83 997) and Poisson regression (n = 79 972). Results: Based on serial mortality rates for England and Wales, deaths from Alzheimer's disease and motor neuron disease were unexceptional. There was an excess of deaths from Parkinson's disease of borderline significance. No statistically significant trends were shown for risks of any of these diseases to increase with lifetime cumulative exposure to magnetic fields (RR per 10 μT-y: Alzheimer's disease 1.10 (95% CI 0.90 to 1.33); motor neuron disease 1.06 (95% CI 0.86 to 1.32); Parkinson's disease 0.88 (95% CI 0.74 to 1.05)) Conclusions: There is no convincing evidence that UK electricity generation and transmission workers have suffered increased risks from neurodegenerative diseases as a consequence of exposure to magnetic fields.


Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors---both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities---seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities---both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks---vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/0198296940/toc.html


The author addresses the public health policy challenge posed by the increasing numbers of immigrant girls and women in the United States affected by female genital mutilation (FGM), a traditional ritual health practice in which part or all of the external genital structures are removed from females, usually during childhood. The practice is common today in 26 African nations and affects 100 to 126 million women and girls worldwide. The significant lifelong negative health impact of FGM has been documented. Recent developments in British domestic health and social policy are reviewed to provide insights. The definition of FGM, prevalence, health impact, and history of the practice are presented. Implications for the development of health and social services policies and programs in the United States are drawn.


While numerous strategies exist for biomarker discovery, the bottleneck to product development and routine use at the clinic is in the verification phase of candidate biomarkers. The aim of this study was to establish a robust and high-throughput product ion monitoring (PIM) assay that is potentially capable of rapidly verifying candidates from discovery phase experiments. Using prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a model biomarker, and a routinely used mass spectrometer for discovery platforms, an ion trap (LTQ, Thermo), the utility of this instrument to perform PIM was explored. The proteotypic doubly charged intact peptide LSEPAELTDAVK ( m/ z 637) fragmenting to m/ z 943 (PAELTDAVK) was monitored. A limit of detection of 10 attomoles with a coefficient of variation (CV) of <20% was obtained for a purified recombinant PSA digest. Immunoextraction of endogenous PSA from serum using a monoclonal antibody on a 96-well microtiter plate, followed by PIM on the LTQ, enabled quantification of PSA down to less than 1 ng/mL with a limit of detection of 0.1 ng/mL and CVs < 20%. Mascot searching and ion ratio confirmation further supported the conclusion that the quantified moiety in serum was the PSA peptide. We conclude that this methodology could be adapted quickly and easily to other candidates, thus providing a much needed technology to bridge the gap between discovery and validation platforms.


The Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE) conducted an evaluation of a cluster of citizen security projects. The main objective was to identify what factors explained the implementation performance of the projects, and what lessons could be learned from these experiences. This Background Paper presents the results of one of these diagnostics for Nicaragua. Following the introduction, the country profile begins with an overview of the Nicaraguan context in terms of geography, demographics, economy, as well as recent political history (section II). It then builds a diagnostic that covers different forms of violence and crime (section III) as well as main risk and protective factors (section IV), based on available statistics and specialized international and local literature. In section V, the paper reviews the strategy adopted by the Government throughout the last decade to respond to main forms of violence and crime, it describes the budget allocation to citizen security over recent years. Finally, section VI presents the IDB citizen security project part of the comparative evaluation, and summarizes various exercises that OVE undertook to provide additional background information and analysis.


This working paper was written for the New England Public Policy Center's third annual conference: "The Dynamic between Municipal Revenue Sources and the State-Local Relationship in New England". It relies on data from the U.S. Census to examine the dynamic between municipal revenues and the state-local relationship in New England. The analysis shows that—compared with the nation as a whole—municipal governments in New England rely very heavily on the property tax. They also have limited or no access to local-option revenues such as sales taxes, and they rely less on fees and other nontax sources. ; Although some research has shown that the local property tax can help counter fluctuations in state aid, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine all limit the percent by which local governments may increase their property tax collections from one year to the next. Municipalities in these states are more vulnerable to changes in state aid, and more bound by constraints on other revenue sources. ; New England states and municipal governments will face enormous fiscal pressures as their populations age dramatically and they face higher pension and health care costs. This analysis suggests the need for policymakers to consider new local revenue sources and state aid formulas.


Maps identifying areas prone to channel erosion within agricultural fields could be useful for conservation planners. The objective of this study was to test an approach for creating such maps with logistic regression and neural networks. Survey grade elevation measurements were obtained from on a Central Kentucky farm. The elevation measurements were used to create 4 by 4-m digital elevation models (DEMs) from which terrain attributes were derived. Areas exhibiting evidence of erosion caused by overland water flow sufficient to justify the placement of grassed waterways were identified. The terrain attributes were used as predictor variables and models were fit using the field assessments of soil erosion. Leave-one-field-out validation analysis was conducted to assess the quality of predictions maps. For the models created with logistic regression, an average of 14% of the 4 by 4-m grid cells in noneroded areas were incorrectly classified as being eroded and 16% of cells in eroded areas were incorrectly classified as noneroded. For neural network analysis, these error rates were 15 and 19%, respectively. Most of these errors occurred because the analyses did not exactly define the shapes of the eroded features; however, both logistic regression and neural networks identified most waterway features in all fields. The proposed three-variable logistic regression model for erosion prediction should only be tested with datasets constructed using identical procedures for DEM creation and terrain analysis. This approach could improve the efficiency and accuracy of field site assessments for conservation planning.


Breeding for heat tolerance is complicated by the polygenic nature of the trait and genetic engineering awaits delineation of the molecular mechanisms. To understand heat-tolerance mechanisms in cotton (Gossypum hirsutum L.), the world's most important natural fiber crop, this study compared expression of selected heat-stress response genes between heat-tolerant (VH260 and MNH456) and heat-sensitive (ST213 and ST4288) cotton genotypes. Cotton orthologs of selected Arabidopsis heat-stress response genes included two heat-stress transcription factors, three heat-shock proteins, and the general stress response genes: ascorbate peroxidase and the calcium-dependent stress responder, ANNAT8. The seedlings and flowering plants of each genotype were exposed to heat (38°C) for 1 to 3 hours or days, respectively, followed by RNA isolation from the seedlings and ovaries of flowering plants for gene expression analysis by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reactions. All genes, except the heat-shock protein GHSP26, were found to be induced exclusively in the heat-tolerant lines. The genotype VH260, which reportedly is tolerant to extreme heat (45°C), was found to display much higher induction of these genes than MNH456, the heat-tolerance level of which has not been thoroughly studied. Further, VH260 showed high gene induction in both seedlings and ovaries, whereas MNH456 showed lower induction levels. Strong heat tolerance in VH260 most likely is based on early induction of multiple mechanisms coordinately functioning to defend the plants against membrane damage, protein denaturation, and oxidative stress, in addition to rapid sensing of heat stress to signal the defense processes at the flowering stage towards minimizing yield losses and increasing boll retention during heat stress.


Background Gambling disorder is a relatively common psychiatric disorder recently re-classified within the DSM-5 under the category of 'substance-related and addictive disorders'. Aims To compare white matter integrity in patients with gambling disorder with healthy controls; to explore relationships between white matter integrity and disease severity in gambling disorder. Method In total, 16 participants with treatment-resistant gambling disorder and 15 healthy controls underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). White matter integrity was analysed using tract-based spatial statistics. Results Gambling disorder was associated with reduced fractional anisotropy in the corpus callosum and superior longitudinal fasciculus. Fractional anisotropy in distributed white matter tracts elsewhere correlated positively with disease severity. Conclusions Reduced corpus callosum fractional anisotropy is suggestive of disorganised/damaged tracts in patients with gambling disorder, and this may represent a trait/vulnerability marker for the disorder. Future research should explore these measures in a larger sample, ideally incorporating a range of imaging markers (for example functional MRI) and enrolling unaffected first-degree relatives of patients.


During the last two decades the debate about corruption and ways to understand and contain it acquired a new intensity and concentrated focus. However, applications to contain it sustainably are of mixed success. The World Bank (WB) defined corruption as "the abuse of public office for private gain". This is one of the most commonly used definitions of corruption within the public domain. The expanded definition of the WB distinguishes between "isolated" and "systemic" corruption, World Bank Report (1997: 9-10). The WB"s definition fails to accept the general nature of corruption as being systemic a concept that suggests interdependence on deviate behaviour in public and/or private sector institutions. Corruption is a function of dishonesty, a lack of integrity and the abuse of private and/or public office for personal gain. In order to understand corruption systemically, it should be perceived as a subsystem of a social system that is embedded in ethics, the economy, politics, science and technology, and aesthetics. Systemic corruption is not only an impairment of integrity, virtue and moral principle(s), but a departure from the original purpose, processes, structure, governance and context of systems created with the intention to be pure and correct and to enable development. The multidimensional dynamics of corruption to take on various "masks", make it an elusive phenomenon. As a complex subsystem, corruption takes on a life of its own that is self sustaining corruption strengthens corruption. Corruption is a pervasive social pathology with various co-producers that all contribute to corruption. In the absence of root causes, systemic corruption cannot be analysed but needs to be dissolved in the context of the particular environment, taking into consideration the interrelationships between its structure, purpose, governance and processes. To address corruption sustainably, corruption should be first be understood as a complex systemic phenomenon.


This article provides an overview of an ongoing program of research designed to investigate the effectiveness of haptic cuing to redirect a user's visual spatial attention under various conditions using a visual change detection paradigm. Participants visually inspected displays consisting of rectangular horizontal and vertical elements in order to try and detect an orientation change in one of the elements. Prior to performing the visual task on each trial, the participants were tapped on the back from one of four locations by a vibrotactile stimulator. The validity of the haptic cues (i.e., the probability that the tactor location coincided with the quadrant where the visual target occurred) was varied. Response time was recorded and eye-position monitored with an eyetracker. Under conditions where the validity of the haptic cue was high (i.e., when the cue predicted the likely target quadrant), initial saccades predominantly went to the cued quadrant and response times were significantly faster as compared to the baseline condition where no haptic cuing was provided. When the cue validity was low (i.e., when the cue provided no information with regard to the quadrant in which the visual target might occur), however, the participants were able to ignore haptic cuing as instructed. Furthermore, a spotlight effect was observed in that the response time increased as the visual target moved away from the center of the cued quadrant. These results have implications for the designers of multimodal (or multisensory) interfaces where a user can benefit from haptic attentional cues in order to detect and/or process the information from a small region within a large and complex visual display.


The President (Sir Peter Kent) commented that a full scale case of the effect of varying thickness of an incompetent layer was thought to be provided by the Zagros orogenic belt. In the southeast, where abundant salt extrusions over a long period indicated a thick mobile layer at depth, folds were short and irregular. In the middle stretches (the 'Fars Platform') the characteristic feature was of very long relatively simple cylindrical folds. The latter were clearly related to abscherung, but the rarity of salt extrusions and their pattern was compatible with a halite layer of limited thickness, sufficient to facilitate simple folding without complex flowage. Dr. R. Cave remarked that the laboratory models of gravity tectonics described closely simulate the concept in Davies & Cave (1967) that much of the folding and related structure in the Lower Palaeozoic rocks of mid-Wales may be related to sliding under gravity. In a recent survey of part of mid-Wales by the Institute of Geological Sciences it was concluded that the pile of Lower Palaeozoic sediment was still wet and largely non-lithified when deformation commenced. This deformation was not confined to an early Devonian orogenic spasm and the concept relates it to mass movement of sediment down a westward declivity, from the shelf margin in east Wales. Structures in the extreme west, for instance near Aberystwyth in the Aberystwyth Grits and in underlying formations further north, are thought to have resulted from collapse of a pile of sediment which had accumulated on, or at


Perhaps the best-known American diplomatist of this century, Henry Kissinger is a major figure in world history, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and arguably one of the most brilliant minds ever placed at the service of American foreign policy, as well as one of the shrewdest, best-informed, and most articulate figures ever to occupy a position of power in Washington. The eagerly awaited third and final volume of his memoirs completes a major work of contemporary history. It is at once an important historical document and a brilliantly told narrative of almost Shakespearean intensity, full of startling insights, unusual (and often unsparing) candor, and a sweeping sense of history. It begins with the resignation of Richard Nixon -- including Kissinger's final assessment of Nixon's tortured personality and the self-inflicted tragedy that ended his presidency and made Kissinger, for a time, the most powerful man in American government, as well as an intimate and definitive portrait of the man whom Kissinger knew perhaps more closely than anyone -- and then takes the reader through the years of Gerald Ford's administration, in which Kissinger continued to play a decisive role, both as Secretary of State and as the symbol of the continuity of American foreign policy. It shows us a moving and admiring picture of President Ford as a man of decency, shrewd judgment, courage, and decisiveness who led the country through a period of renewal. Kissinger details the agony of the final U.S. extrication from Vietnam -- with the rise of an increasingly hostile Congress determined to micromanage American foreign policy and the evisceration of the American intelligence community and itsconsequences for American power -- and takes us inside the White House to show our leaders in a time of crisis. Indeed, crisis is what this book abounds in: the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam, the "Mayaguez" incident and the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, the origins of the war in Lebanon -- above all the continuing crisis of the Cold War at its perilous height. Here are brilliant scenes, as only an insider could write them, of the shaping of American foreign policy in the Ford era: the famous shuttle diplomacy by which Kissinger brought a wary Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat together to begin the return of the Sinai to Egypt and usher in the final reconciliation of Egypt and Israel, the Vladivostok meeting with Leonid Brezhnev that advanced the process of nuclear limitation, the uneasy dialogue with China, the tragedy of the Kurds, the search for European security and freedom -- all the major decisions, conferences, and crises that shaped the world we live in, and that still, in many cases, remain major areas of engagement for the United States. Kissinger recounts in detail his visits to Africa, which led to major initiatives in Southern Africa, including the historic decision of the white settler government of Rhodesia to accept majority rule, and tells the story of U.S. policy in the Americas, including revealing accounts of policies toward Cuba and Chile in the 1970s. Above all, here are intimate, candid, and sharply intelligent portraits of world leaders, from Mao Zedong teasing Kissinger with a characterist mixture of brutality and acerbic subtlety, to Leonid Brezhnev, confused, unwell, desperately trying to conceal the Soviet Union's growingdifficulties with a facade of blustering bravado, as well as a galaxy of European, Middle Eastern, Asian, Latin American, and African leaders. Here is a work of scholarship, wisdom, and history, written not by desk-bound academic historian, but by the man who shaped much the history about which he writes, and who perhaps more than any other helped to form the post-Cold War world in which we live, and define America's relationship to the world as the last superpower. No work of history about the Cold War or the inner workings of government and diplomacy is as revealing, thought-provoking, and far-reaching as this. "Years of Renewal" is the triumphant conclusion of a major achievement and a book that will stand the test of time as a historical document of the first rank.


Color vision is considered a marker of cone function and its assessment in patients with retinal pathology is complementary to the assessments of spatial vision [best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA)] and contrast detection (perimetry). Rod-cone and chorioretinal dystrophies—such as choroideremia—typically cause alterations to color vision, making its assessment a potential outcome measure in clinical trials. However, clinical evaluation of color vision may be compromised by pathological changes to spatial vision and the visual field. The low vision Cambridge Color Test (lvCCT) was developed specifically to address these latter issues. We used the trivector version of the lvCCT to quantify color discrimination in a cohort of 53 patients with choroideremia. This test enables rapid and precise characterization of color discrimination along protan, deutan, and tritan axes more reliably than the historically preferred test for clinical trials, namely the Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue test. The lvCCT demonstrates that color vision defects—particularly along the tritan axis—are seen early in choroideremia, and that this occurs independent of changes in visual acuity, pattern electroretinography and ellipsoid zone area on optical coherence tomography (OCT). We argue that the selective loss of tritan color discrimination can be explained by our current understanding of the machinery of color vision and the pathophysiology of choroideremia.