This paper examines the construction of power and pride in relation to the political allegory in The Pride of Life (c. 1350). The play, although fragmentary, being the earliest existing morality, remains pivotal in our understanding of the dramatic form of morality plays, even though it combines the dramatic potential of both the mystery as well as the morality plays. This morality constructs a character which reveals the subversiveness of medieval thinking; on the one hand, royal power is God given, on the other, one of the most frequently used motifs are related to the idea of corruptive power; kings and nobility are the target of the most severe criticism in all morality plays. It is the humble who are cherished and the powerful who are chastised. Referring to the sin of (worldly) pride the play presents a context for a philosophical and political reading. The greater their social status the greater the spiritual fault represented by their use of transgressive language, and therefore the greater the degree of sin. Rulers who abuse their power are evil, but low status characters who use transgressive language are generally more sinful. "These social distinctions are especially significant in the biblical plays, while social differences are less important in the fifteenth century moralities, which dramatize the corruption of humanity in general. In both genres however, dramatists vary their use of forms, style, and contexts associated with transgressive language to create subtle and didactically pointed characterizations." (Forest-Hill 2000: 26). In allegorical exposition the moral sense is not a matter of taking events or people from Scripture simply as literal examples of general moral truths, as Cain might be taken as an example of the sin of envy (which in fact is modus exemplificativus). Burrow claims that allegorical significances (in the narrower sense) belong, like the literal events which carry them to time and history (Burrow 1982: 101). Hence, although the literal level of allegory stands for the actual events, one has to agree with the medieval philosopher Hugh of Saint-Victor that history follows the order of time, while allegory follows the order of knowledge (Minnis 1988: 82). Being more or less a conscious hypostatization of ideas, allegory is related to medieval cosmology. The four levels of meaning (literal, allegorical, tropological or moral and anagogical), illuminate and rationalize the structure of authority, both spiritual and temporal, within its society providing working analogies (1) in both a literal and non-literal framewor k, and as such allegory remains essentially related to the sense of concern about man's duties and destiny that had inspired it. Authority and hierarchy were frequent preoccupations of theologians and political writers (if one may force such a distinction). The bragging King (2) sees his office and place in the hierarchy primarily in the literal sense. He is wealthy and powerful, surrounded by skillful flatterers. Consciously, he remains careless whereas unconsciously he wrestles with the unknown opponent who he, at the time, cannot place in the hierarchy of beings. The unknown (to him) force, Death however, is inevitable and stronger than his reign. The whole Christian life-pattern is set forth in cosmic terms inviting the spectator to acknowledge the existing hierarchies and his own human insignificance: "Qwhen pou art grauen on grene/per metis fleys & molde;/pen helpith litil, I wene,/pi gay croun of golde" (ll. 443-446). The moral allegory offered here is chiefly concerned with virtue. What at first appears to be an entirely pragmatic account of the corruption of vice gradually becomes a deeper concern with human choices and freedom offered by unadulterated faith and enslavement in the hands of the vices. In The pride of life power is conferred by wealth , and wealth in turn signifies demonic control, both in the sense of being immersed in the world as well as one's flesh. …


Background COVID-19 seroprevalence data has been scarce, especially in less developed countries with a relatively low infection rate. Methods A locally developed rapid IgM/IgG test kit was used for screening hospital staff and patients who required procedural treatment or surgery in 33 hospitals in Thailand from April 8 to June 8, 2020. A total of 587 participants were tested--459 were hospital staff and 128 were pre-procedural patients. (Thai Clinical Trials Registry: TCTR20200426002) Results Overall, 3.4% of the participants (20 of 587) had positive immunoglobulin M (IgM) and none had positive immunoglobulin G. Hospitals located in the central part of Thailand had the highest IgM seroprevalence (7.4%). Preprocedural patients had a higher rate of positive IgM than the hospital staff (7.0% vs. 2.4%). Participants with present upper respiratory tract symptoms had a higher rate of positive IgM than those without (5.9% vs. 2.7%). Three quarter (77%, 452 of 587) of the participants were asymptomatic, of which, twelve had positive IgM (2.7%) which consisted of 7 of 369 healthcare workers (1.9%) and 5 of 83 preprocedural patients (6.0%). Conclusions COVID-19 antibody test could detect a substantial number of potential silent spreaders in Thai community hospitals. Antibody testing should be encouraged for mass screening, especially in asymptomatic individuals.


A critical exploration of one of the most exciting, original and influential figures to emerge in contemporary film, Guillermo del Toro: Film as Alchemic Art is a major contribution to the analysis of Guillermo del Toro's cinematic output. It offers an in-depth discussion of del Toro's oeuvre and investigates key ideas, recurrent motifs and subtle links between his movies. The book explores the sources that del Toro draws upon and transforms in the creation of his rich and complex body of work. These include the literary, artistic and cinematic influences on films such as Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone, Cronos and Mimic, and the director's engagement with comic book culture in his two Hellboy films, Blade II and Pacific Rim. As well as offering extensive close textual analysis, the authors also consider del Toro's considerable impact on wider popular culture, including a discussion of his role as producer, ambassador for 'geek' culture and figurehead in new international cinema. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/guillermo-del-toro-9781441184023/#sthash.UWGTohTV.dpuf


Cuban politics has long been remarkable for its passionate intensity, and yet few scholars have explored the effect of emotions on political attitudes and action in Cuba or elsewhere. This book thus offers an important new approach by bringing feelings back into the study of politics and showing how the politics of passion and affection have interacted to shape Cuban history throughout the twentieth century. Damian Fernandez characterizes the politics of passion as the pursuit of a moral absolute for the nation as a whole. While such a pursuit rallied the Cuban people around charismatic leaders such as Fidel Castro, Fernandez finds that it also set the stage for disaffection and disconnection when the grand goal never fully materialized. At the same time, he reveals how the politics of affection - taking care of family and friends outside the formal structures of government -has paradoxically both undermined state regimes and helped them remain in power by creating an informal survival network that provides what the state cannot or will not. Damian J. Fernandez is Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations at Florida Atlantic University.


Mortgage valuation reports have long been one of the lines of defence in helping commercial banks protect their assets, minimize losses, and make well-informed lending decisions. The study was kick-started because of the increase in non-uniformity of valuation reports in form of common standard of reporting, terminology and presentation with the fact that clients to valuation profession around the world have been getting much more sophisticated and analytical in their approach to investment. The aim of the study is to evaluate the quality of Nigerian mortgage valuation reports standard with a view to providing information that will enhance valuation practice. The study examined the major components of Mortgage Valuation Reports produced by Valuers in the study area, among others. Questionnaire and interview instruments were administered on five hundred and thirty eight (538) registered firms in Awka, Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt. Data obtained were analysed with the use of the following statistical tools: Relative Importance Indices (RII), and Frequency Distribution. The descriptive statistical test (Frequency Distribution) reveal that forced sale value is been used by most of the practitioners till date as basis of valuation instead as description of the circumstance under which mortgage value (market value) is conducted. The study also established that some of the components of mortgage valuation reports in the study area do not fully fall in line with Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) guidance notes or International Valuation Standards (IVS) and the reports lack uniformity. It is therefore recommended that the Estate Surveyor and Valuer should state the identity of the mortgagor clearly as well the state of the financial and market situation of the property, the extent of survey when the survey takes more than a day to be completed, there should be a difference between date of valuation and date of the report if it is not concluded at the same date, and state of the town planning zoning/approval. The Valuers are expected to combine these aspects along with other data to produce good valuation reports. Indexed TermsEvaluation, Mortgage, Mortgage value, Nigeria, Quality, Valuation report,


This study presents the anonymization of consumer data in a district-level smart grid using the k-anonymity approach. The data utilized in this study covers the demographic information and associated energy consumption of consumers. The anonymization process is implemented at the prosumer level, considering their importance in sharing flexibility and distributed generation at the low voltage grid, and the fact that they need to interact with each other and the grid while keeping their data private. The proposed approach is tested under three anonymization scenarios: prosecutor, journalist and marketer. The smart grid data are investigated mostly under the prosecutor scenario with three risk levels: lowest, medium and highest. The results of the k-anonymity approach are compared to k-map and k-map + k-anonymity. No difference has been found between the three investigated approaches for the selected data set. Since, the aim of the k-anonymity is to not transform the information about any individual record among those k-1 individual, the recorded type and the number of attributes play a key role for the anonymization process. One of the risk is the using continuous attributes in the anonymization process which may cause the information lose in the anonymization process such as near real time energy consumptions. Hence we have focused on to anonymization of the consumers' demographic information, rather than their energy consumption.


Climate change is expected to affect both the average level and the variability of crop yields. In this modelling study, we quantified mean and inter-annual variability of grain yield for maize Zea mays L., winter wheat Triticum spp. L. and winter canola Brassica napus L. for climatic conditions corresponding to current and doubled atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Climate scenarios with and without taking into account changes in the inter-annual variability of climate were developed from the output of a regional climate model for the time window 2071 to 2100. Climate change effects on the mean yield of maize and canola were consistently negative, but a positive impact was simulated for mean yield of winter wheat for elevated CO2 concentration. The coefficient of yield variation increased in the scenarios for maize and canola, but decreased for wheat. Higher thermal time requirements increased mean yield and reduced yield variability for all crops. Shifts in the sowing dates had a beneficial impact on the yield of maize, but not on the yield of canola and wheat. It is concluded that in the Alpine region, the potential effect of climate change is crop-specific. However, the introduction of new cultivars may provide means by which to maintain or even increase current productivity levels for most of the crops.


A new light-chain marker has been detected in normal mouse serum immunoglobulin light chains by gel isoelectric focusing. The marker (Ef2) involves the presence of two major and several minor bands in the normal light-chain IF profiles. Strains expressing the marker IF bands are designated Igk-Ef2a, whereas those lacking the bands are Igk-Ef2b. The majority of inbred strains are Igk-Ef2a. Strains found to be Igk- Ef2b are NZB/BlNJ, BDP/J, C58/J, I/LnJ, CE/J, and P/J. The strain distribution of the alleles differs from the distribution of alleles at the Ly-2 and Ly-3 loci, suggesting the new marker may represent a separate locus. Genetic studies have shown that Igk-Ef2 locus is closely linked to Igk-Ef1 and Hd loci on Chromosome 6, indicating that it is also closely linked to Ly-3. The relative importance of the bands controlled by the Igk-Ef2 locus suggests that the entire normal light- chain pool could be controlled by as few as 100 such loci.


Covering the key functional areas of LTE Self-Organising Networks (SON), this book introduces the topic at an advanced level before examining the state-of-the-art concepts. The required background on LTE network scenarios, technologies and general SON concepts is first given to allow readers with basic knowledge of mobile networks to understand the detailed discussion of key SON functional areas (self-configuration, -optimisation, -healing). Later, the book provides details and references for advanced readers familiar with LTE and SON, including the latest status of 3GPP standardisation.Based on the defined next generation mobile networks (NGMN) and 3GPP SON use cases, the book elaborates to give the full picture of a SON-enabled system including its enabling technologies, architecture and operation. Heterogeneous networks including different cell hierarchy levels and multiple radio access technologies as a new driver for SON are also discussed.Introduces the functional areas of LTE SON (self-optimisation, -configuration and healing) and its standardisation, also giving NGMN and 3GPP use casesExplains the drivers, requirements, challenges, enabling technologies and architectures for a SON-enabled systemCovers multi-technology (2G/3G) aspects as well as core network and end-to-end operational aspectsWritten by experts who have been contributing to the development and standardisation of the LTE self-organising networks concept since its inceptionExamines the impact of new network architectures (Heterogeneous Networks) to network operation, for example multiple cell layers and radio access technologies


How should the executive branch respond to globalization? The president's executive order on international regulatory cooperation provides a blueprint. The branch will turn to regulatory cooperation to make progress in freeing trade and will encourage a particular approach to that cooperation—harmonization—that was eschewed during the successful European integrative project. The executive order, which is assessed in this Article, represents a welcome political endorsement of a phenomenon that was previously pursued by agencies acting largely on their own remit. It is also an attempt to galvanize the use of regulatory cooperation by other agencies disinclined to pursue it in the past. In addition to analyzing how the executive order is meant to work, this Article argues that while the executive's approach is promising, it must be paired with a commitment to political oversight to ensure that regulatory globalization remains legitimate. There are signs that the president is beginning to provide this commitment through the executive order; the Article identifies a roadmap for its continuation and a role for Congress as well.


Recent studies of olfactory blocking have revealed that binary odorant mixtures are not always processed as though they give rise to mixture-unique configural properties. When animals are conditioned to one odorant (A) and then conditioned to a mixture of that odorant with a second (X), the ability to learn or express the association of X with reinforcement appears to be reduced relative to animals that were not preconditioned to A. A recent model of odor-based response patterns in the insect antennal lobe predicts that the strength of the blocking effect will be related to the perceptual similarity between the two odorants, i.e. greater similarity should increase the blocking effect. Here, we test that model in the honeybee Apis mellifera by first establishing a generalization matrix for three odorants and then testing for blocking between all possible combinations of them. We confirm earlier findings demonstrating the occurrence of the blocking effect in olfactory learning of compound stimuli. We show that the occurrence and the strength of the blocking effect depend on the odorants used in the experiment. In addition, we find very good agreement between our results and the model, and less agreement between our results and an alternative model recently proposed to explain the effect.


Hallucinations in children are of grave concern to parents and clinicians, but aren't necessarily a symptom of mental illness. In adults, hallucinations usually are linked to serious psychopathology; however, in children they are not uncommon and may be part of normal development (Box, page 54). A hallucination is a false auditory, visual, gustatory, tactile, or olfactory perception not associated with real external stimuli. (1) It must be differentiated from similar phenomenon such as illusions (misperception of actual stimuli), elaborate fantasies, imaginary companions, and eidetic images (visual imag es stored in memory). Common, yet a cause for concern Epidemiologic studies show 2.8% of adults report hallucinations before age 21. (2) Nonpsychotic children as young as age 5 have reported hallucinations. (3) Hallucinatory phenomenon may be present in 8% to 21% of all 11-year-old children; two-thirds of these patients have no DSM-TV-TR diagnosis. (4), (5) However, 1 evaluation of 62 nonpsychotic hallucinating children treated in a psychiatric emergency department (ED): * 34% had depression * 22% had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) * 21% had disruptive behavior disorders * 23% had other diagnoses. (6) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Studies suggest that children who have hallucinations but no other psychotic symptoms have a better long-term prognosis than those with additional psychotic symptoms. (7) A 17-year longitudinal study of children with hallucinations and concurrent emotional and conduct problems found: * up to 50% of patients still experience hallucinations at age 30 * hallucinations did not significantly predict clinical outcome at age 30 * childhood hallucinations did not increase the risk for psychosis, depression, organic brain disorder, or other psychiatric illnesses. (7) In a study of children with psychosis and disruptive disorders, at 2-to 8-years follow-up 50% met criteria for major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, or schizophreniform disorders, (8) In a 15-year longitudinal study of 11-year-olds, self-reported psychotic symptoms--such as delusional beliefs and hallucinatory experiences--predicted a high risk of schizophreniform disorder at age 26. (9) These studies suggest that experiencing significant disruptions in thoughts and perceptions during childhood may be related to later development of prominent mood and thought disorders. Differential diagnosis Table 1 lists possible causes of hallucination in children. (6), (10-13) Hallucinations during childhood can occur in the context of several psychiatric disorders, including: Table 1 Possible causes of hallucinations in children and adolescents Normal development Nonpsychotic psychopathoiogy Psychosocial adversity Psychotic illness Stress Family dysfunction Deprivation Developmental difficulties Sociocultural interaction (immigration) Poorly differentiated male and female family roles Presence or absence of different mother figures Cultural factors (witches, ghosts, spiritualism) Hallucination of deceased parent, when unresolved mourning persists in the surviving parent Source: References 6, 10-13 * schizophrenia * schizophreniform disorders * mood disorders with psychotic features (Table 2). (14) Table 2 Content of hallucinations may point to their cause Schizophrenia or other May hear several voices making a critical psychotic disorders commentary Command hallucinations telling patients to harm themselves or others Bizarre voices like 'a computer in my head' or aliens Voices of someone familiar or a 'relative' Visual hallucinations of devils, scary faces, space creatures, and skeletons Depressive disorders Usually a single voice speaking from outside the patient's head with derogatory or suicidal content Bipolar disorder Usually involves grandiose ideas about power, worth, knowledge, family, or relationship Bereavement Usually a transient (visual or auditory) perception of the deceased person Posttraumatic stress Transient visual hallucinations, usually disorder with phobic content Source: Reference 11 They can also manifest as comorbid or associated symptoms of disorders not commonly associated with hallucinations, such as ADHD, disruptive disorders, anxiety disorders, and prodromal clinical states. …


Students diagnosed with moderate to severe disabilities often struggle to stay on-task and in their seat during classroom lessons. When students are off-task, they are not attending or participating in learning activities, which impacts their ability to acquire new skills. Practical whole class interventions that can be easily implemented are needed to keep students focused and in their seat. The current study provided calming background music during daily learning activities to determine whether on-task, specifically in-seat, behavior would increase in relation to when background music was not provided. Three students participated in an A-B-A-B single case design study where the baseline conditions had no background music and the intervention phases included background music. Results demonstrated an increase of in-seat behavior across the study sample. This indicates that providing background music in a special day class setting may be useful to increase in-seat behavior in special education students with a diagnosis in the moderate to severe range.


This study continues an examination of power relationships within the agricultural publishing triad: advertisers, periodicals, and producer readers. It focuses on the views of farmers about the farm periodicals they read and the agricultural marketers that advertise in those periodicals. A mail survey was used to learn the opinions and observations of farmers in a nationwide sample. The sample of 497 was randomly drawn from a government database by a commercial data supply service. Three waves of letters were used along with a $1 incentive. The 198 completed responses came from 29 states. Results indicate that producers are quite discerning and insightful in what they read. Furthermore, a majority expressed concern about advertiser-editorial relationships. Most said they see evidence of advertiser influence in the form of editorial trade-offs and bias in what stories are covered (or not covered) and how topics are handled. Results of a credibility index indicate there is much room for improvement. Authors suggest that farm publishers and advertisers should reconsider their relationships if they wish to address readers' concerns and improve their credibility. In a highly competitive environment, increased credibility has positive bottom-line implications for all partners in the triad.


The Productora Cu-Au-Mo deposit is hosted by a hydrothermal breccia complex in the Coastal Cordillara of Region III, northern Chile. Mineralisation at Productora extends discontinuously over 8 km in a northeast-oriented corridor. The current resource, which includes the neighbouring Alice porphyry Cu-Mo deposit, is estimated at 236.6 Mt grading 0.48 % Cu, 0.10 g/t Au and 135 ppm Mo.
The district is characterised by hydrothermal mineralisation associated with Mesozoic arc magmatism along the convergent South American plate margin. The Andean tectonic cycle led to the formation of orogen-parallel metallogenic belts, each representing discrete epochs of mineralisation characterised by distinctive deposit styles and a stepped eastward younging of the deposits. During the Mesozoic, a range of deposit styles formed under extensional conditions in central and northern Chile, including small porphyry Cu, large iron oxide-Cu-Au (IOCG), magnetite-apatite, manto-Cu and precious metal epithermal deposits.
The Mesozoic mineral systems in Northern Chile formed within a convergent tectonic regime where evolving subduction style, magmatic arcs and associated back-arc basin stratigraphy, plutonic complexes and the crustal scale syn-arc strike-slip Atacama Fault Zone (AFZ) evolved in response to changes in the prevailing geodynamic conditions. The Productora deposit is hosted within a thick sequence of broadly coeval rhyolite to rhyodacite lappili tuffs (`128.67 ± 1.29 Ma; U-Pb_(zircon)`) and breccias between two major intrusions; the Cachiyuyito tonalite (129.8 ± 0.1 Ma) and Ruta Cinco granodiorite batholith (`92.05 ± 1 Ma; U-Pb_(zircon)`). Several phases of intermediate- and mafic-dykes cross cut the deposit. The deposit is hosted in a domain of structural complexity defined by major northwest-striking faults (normal obliqueslip with dextral strike-slip and northeast side up dip-slip) that crosscut major north to northeast-striking faults (normal oblique-slip with sinistral strike-slip, and east-side up dip-slip movement).
Hydrothermal breccias, tectonic breccias, veins and alteration assemblages observed on two cross sections at Productora have been separated into five paragenetic stages. Stage 1 produced quartz - pyritecemented hydrothermal breccia with muscovite alteration. Stage 2 formed a chaotic matrix-supported tectonic breccia with kaolinite - muscovite – pyrite alteration. Stage 3 tourmaline – pyrite – chalcopyrite ± magnetite ± biotite-cemented hydrothermal breccias are associated with K-feldspar ± albite alteration. Stage 4 veins contain chalcopyrite ± pyrite ± sericite, illite, epidote and chlorite, and stage 5 veins contain calcite. The stage 3 breccias have been further subdivided into five facies based on their mineralogy. The Productora hydrothermal system crosscuts earlier-formed sodic-calcic alteration and magnetite-apatite mineralisation associated with the Cachiyuyito stock.
The breccia complex formed as a result of at least two stages of hydraulic fragmentation (stage 1 and stage 3) and one tectonic breccia event (stage 2), which shows evidence of multiple episodes of reactivation. Alteration minerals are consistent with moderate temperature ( 300°C) alkaline fluids during stage 3. Lower temperature (<300°C), weakly acidic fluids prevailed during stages 4B and 4C, and alkaline fluids predominated during stages 4A, 4D and 5.
Main stage mineralisation is associated with the stage 3 hydrothermal breccia (average grade 0.34–0.62 % Cu, 0.8–0.14 g/t Au, 66–128 ppm Mo) and stage 2 tectonic breccia (average grade 0.8 % Cu, 0.21 g/t Au, 141 ppm Mo). Chalcopyrite is the dominant hypogene Cu-sulphide mineral and occurs predominantly as stage 3 breccia cement and syn-breccia veins with pyrite in equal proportion. Chalcopyrite and pyrite are disseminated in the stage 2 breccias. Pyrite is elevated in the south compared to the north, and chalcopyrite:pyrite ratios are ~1.00 and <0.25 respectively. Gold and Cu are strongly associated spatially, and synchrotron XRF and LA-ICP-MS analyses indicate that Au occurs as micron to sub-micron grains on pyrite and chalcopyrite grain boundaries. In this study, mineralisation at Productora was dated using Re-Os on stage 3 molybdenite at 130.1 ± 0.6 Ma.
The Alice Cu-Mo porphyry deposit is situated 400 m to the west of Productora. Mineralisation occurs as disseminated chalcopyrite and quartz – pyrite – chalcopyrite ± molybdenite vein stockwork hosted by a granodiorite porphyry stock (121.1 ± 2.1 Ma). Potassic alteration (biotite ± actinolite replacing hornblende) is associated with quartz – sulphide veins. Mineralisation was dated by Re-Os on molybdenite at 124.1 ± 0.6 Ma (within error of the porphyry stock). The margins and deeper parts of the system are overprinted by albite ± epidote ± sericite alteration, which locally caused destruction of biotite and chalcopyrite. The Alice porphyry is spatially associated with the Silica Ridge lithocap, which is characterised by massive textureless quartz-altered rock above domains of alunite, pyrophyllite and dickite.
At Productora, `δ^(34)`\(S_{sulphide}\) values range between -8.5 and +2.2 ‰. This is consistent with a magmatic sulphur source and fluids evolving under oxidising conditions with no significant input from evaporateor seawater-sourced fluids. Stage 3 tourmalines (n = 8) have average initial Sr of 0.70397, consistent with Cretaceous intrusive rocks and mantle-derived Sr. One stage 4 epidote sample returned a more radiogenic initial Sr value of 0.70525, indicating fluid mixing or fluid- wall rock interaction. An eNd value of +5.2 (n = 1, tourmaline) is consistent with the Cretaceous and Jurassic igneous rocks of the region. LA-ICP-MS analysis on stage 3 pyrite (n = 8) for Pb isotopes and trace elements indicate low Pb content ( 530 ppm).
Supergene mineralisation in the north of Productora (chrysocolla, malahcite and Cu-wad) is indicative of a geochemically mature weathering environment developed under near neutral to alkaline pH. In the south, the supergene assemblage is less mature (chalcocite/digenite) and indicates in-situ weathering of chalcopyrite.
Quantitative and predictive geometallurgical models have been developed to integrate geological findings with geometallurgical data in order to advance ore body knowledge at Productora. To improve the understanding of mineralogical variability across the deposit, whole rock geochemistry (33-element ICP-MS) has been converted to mineral proportions through calculated mineralogy using linear programming for each assay interval in the deposit. Calculated mineralogy results for major minerals, including quartz, K-feldspar, albite, pyrite, iron oxides, chalcopyrite and molybdenite, are excellent (`R^2 > 0.8`) when compared with the measured mineralogy by quantitative X-ray diffraction. A new sample classification scheme for dominant Cu-species (oxide, transitional-oxide, transitional-sulphide, sulphide or insoluble) was also developed based on sequential leach data and S wt%. The new scheme enabled domains of weak acid insoluble Cu-wad to be identified. Machine learning algorithms were used to predict Cu-species class using a series of nine proxies (sample depth in drill hole, Ca %, Cu %, Fe %, K %, Mn ppm, S %, Ln(Cu/S) and the logged regolith term). The optimum algorithm was Bagging-REPTree with five iterations. Applied to the training set with ten-fold cross validation, the model is 67.6 % accurate. The model is most successful at recognising sulphide, transitional-sulphide and insoluble samples with accuracy of 70.2 %, 87.5 % and 67.8 % respectively against the training set.
Based on textural, mineralogical, stable and radiogenic isotope data, the Productora breccia complex is inferred to be a magmatic-hydrothermal breccia complex formed as a result of explosive volatile fluid release at depths causing brecciation and alteration of the overlying rock mass. Metal-bearing fluids were of magmatic affinity and evolved under oxidising conditions. Despite sharing many similarities with the Andean IOCG clan (strong structural control, regional sodic-calcic alteration, local U), fluid evolution at the Productora Cu-Au-Mo deposit is consistent with that of a porphyry magmatic hydrothermal breccia (sulphur-rich, acid alteration assemblages and relatively low magnetite, <5 wt%). The Productora camp provides an excellent example of the close spatial association of Mesozoic magnetite-apatite, porphyry (Alice) and a magmatic-hydrothermal breccia mineralisation styles, a relationship seen throughout the Coastal Cordillera of northern Chile.


Denmark has been portrayed as a country with a focus on full employment, gender equality and high level of participation on the labour market. It has historically further been built upon consensus and class-compromises and known for flexi-curity. The active labour market policy has focused on how to ensure not only a work-first approach, but that a constant upgrading of qualifications would guarantee that the individual citizen could have the qualification to enter and to stay on the labour market. A core question is whether the focus on flexi-curity including upgrading of skills and integration on the labour market has been withering away towards a sharper focus on a work first approach, where activation is used as a stick more than a carrot, also implying that rights' as citizens has been increasingly reduced, and, thereby increased the role of citizens as labourer on the labour market. The article concludes, based on a detailed case-analysis of Denmark, that profound changes has taken place over the last 10-15 years implying that the active labour market policy has strengthened its focus on work-first. Access to benefits has moved in a less citizen based direction, and the principles of universality and generosity of benefits has been gradually eroded. Furthermore, that the social partner's role has been reduced among other things also due to lower union density rates. A short comparison with the other Nordic countries is used as a background for depicting the changes. However, by the end of 2011 a few changes perhaps marking a shift towards a human-capital approach has taken place.


At initialization, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are equivalent to Gaussian processes in the infinite-width limit, thus connecting them to kernel methods. We prove that the evolution of an ANN during training can also be described by a kernel: during gradient descent on the parameters of an ANN, the network function (which maps input vectors to output vectors) follows the so-called kernel gradient associated with a new object, which we call the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK). This kernel is central to describe the generalization features of ANNs. While the NTK is random at initialization and varies during training, in the infinite-width limit it converges to an explicit limiting kernel and stays constant during training. This makes it possible to study the training of ANNs in function space instead of parameter space. Convergence of the training can then be related to the positive-definiteness of the limiting NTK. We then focus on the setting of least-squares regression and show that in the infinite-width limit, the network function follows a linear differential equation during training. The convergence is fastest along the largest kernel principal components of the input data with respect to the NTK, hence suggesting a theoretical motivation for early stopping. Finally we study the NTK numerically, observe its behavior for wide networks, and compare it to the infinite-width limit.


Book synopsis: Amid the turmoil of economic crisis, Greece has become the first European experiment of left rule in a sea of neoliberalism. What happens when a government of the Left, committed to social justice and the reversal of austerity, is blackmailed into following policies it has fought against and strongly opposes? What can the experience of the Syriza government tell us about the prospects for the Left in the twenty-first century?In this engaging and provocative book, Costas Douzinas uses his position as an 'accidental politician', unexpectedly propelled from academia into the world of Greek politics as a Syriza MP, to answer these urgent questions. He examines the challenges facing Syriza since its ascent to power in 2015 and draws out the theoretical and political lessons from one of the boldest and most difficult experiments in governing from the Left in an age of neoliberalism and austerity.


Hierarchical subdivision techniques remove the need for a-priori meshing of surfaces when approximating global illumination. In addition they allow a progressive refinement of the solution. However, when subdivision is based upon Monte Carlo methods, due to the stochastic nature of such techniques, subdivision decisions cannot be made unless a sufficiently large number of samples have been considered. Shadow boundaries are one of the main features such subdivision algorithms are designed to detect, but mesh elements that are in shadow receive less light, and hence are slower to subdivide. In this paper we investigate methods for modifying the Monte Carlo hierarchical subdivision algorithm to improve the detection of shadow boundaries and caustics.


This thesis describes an actuarial structure for the practical analysis of motor insurance premium rating. An underlying theme emphasises that judgements are being made taking into account many factors e.g. economical, statistical and technical, therefore it is necessary to bring into the decision process a group of interested persons. In addition even though data are used to explain the proposed methods, it is the framework which is important and not the omission of some of the data e.g. important rating factors. The basis for premium projecting is discussed together with a critical discussion of various measures of surplus. A new measure is developed referred to as 'proposed to existing' which measures the effect of premium adjustments after taking into account the portfolio distribution. Another theme is to encourage a detailed within-portfolio analysis. An example, using data supplied by an Insurance Company helps to highlight the structure. The analysis commences by sub-dividing the data into important underwriting rating factors. The claim experience is further divided by claim proportions and the three main types of claims cost: accidental damage, third party property damage and third party bodily injury. By sub-dividing the data into multiway cells both exposure and claim numbers become very small, hence statistical modelling is used to smooth the data and to reduce variation. A critical review of past models in respect of claim proportions and accidental damage costs is made. In addition a pragmatic approach to third party bodily injury is carried out. To obtain an office premium the modelled claim experience is combined with economic factors such as inflation and expenses. Details of fitting the additive model by Orthogonal Weighted Least Squares is described. This converts the office premium into a 'points table'. An advantage of this 'points table' is that it can be used to compare various different sets of assumptions. A brief reference to the competitive market position is then made. An analysis of surplus is developed together with a worked example, which highlights the importance of claim proportions and the level of claims cost.Finally, the last chapter gives a summary of further research work which has been indicated as this thesis has developed.


Prediction of external stability for segmental retaining walls reinforced with geogrid and backfilled with residual soil was carried out using statistical methods and artificial neural networks (ANN). Prediction was based on data obtained from 234 segmental retaining wall designs using procedures developed by the National Concrete Masonry Association (NCMA). The study showed that prediction made using ANN was generally more accurate to the target compared with statistical methods using mathematical models of linear, pure quadratic, full quadratic and interactions.


ABSTRACT Five aspects of the BJP's election campaign contributed to its success in 2019. The first is the personal appeal of the prime minister, which again played a major role, like it did in 2014, as Narendra Modi led a hyper-personalized campaign. Second, this campaign focused on security-related themes which were especially relevant in the context of the India-Pakistan tensions. Third, the BJP campaign strategy was backed by the most formidable election campaign machinery assembled by any party in India since Independence. Fourth, the BJP saturated the public space with the prime minister's image, adroitly using the traditional mainstream media as well as social media. The party used religious appeal to address its core base of supporters while projecting the prime minister's image as a protector and sentinel. Fifth, the latter three aspects of the BJP's campaign were fuelled by unprecedented levels of campaign expenditure and by the opacity of political funding in India, which the BJP had made more impenetrable through the introduction of electoral bonds. The combination of these factors show that the 2019 elections were not business as usual; their singularity largely due to the decline of institutions regulating the electoral process, including the Election Commission of India.


This thesis is concerned with two different problems in harmonic analysis: the multilinear Kakeya theorem, and Wolff-type inequalities for paraboloids. Chapter 1 gives an overview of both of these problems. In Chapter 2 we investigate an important special case of the multilinear Kakeya theorem, the so-called "bush example". While the endpoint case of the multilinear Kakeya theorem was recently proved by Guth, the proof is highly abstract; our aim is to provide a more elementary proof in this special case. This is achieved for a significant part of the three-dimensional case in the main result of the chapter. Chapter 3 is a study of the endpoint case of a mixed-norm Wolff-type inequality for the paraboloid. The main result adapts an example of Bourgain to show that the endpoint inequality cannot hold with an absolute constant; there must be a dependence on the thickening of the paraboloid. The remainder of the chapter is a series of case studies, through which we establish positive endpoint results for certain classes of function, as well as indicating specific examples which need to be better understood in order to obtain the full endpoint result.


Heart and Soul: One Hit, One Miss Deal, Terrence & Bolman, Lee. (1995). Leading with soul: an uncommon journey of spirit. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Apps, Jerold. (1996). Teaching from the heart. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publ. Co. At the dawn of civilization when formal education was born, educators divided into two camps. One camp, the Sophists, believed education ought to lead the student to material success, strengthen the ego, and provide the tools to further one's personal ambition. They taught rhetoric, their goal to win the argument whatever the cost. Their curriculum included science, language, and practical subjects. In the other camp sat the Platonists. Named for our friend Plato, they were truth seekers and taught the dialectical process. The purpose of the dialectic, borrowed from Plato's teacher Socrates, was to pose a series of challenging questions to an assertion in order to discover the truth of an issue. The Platonists believed that education should lead the student to discover the ultimate truth of all things so that humankind as a whole might be lifted a little closer to the light. They proposed a liberal arts approach to education. One approach feeds the ego; the other feeds the soul. This has been the background for the debate in education for centuries. Today, the Sophists hold the reigns in education with objective testing, measurable outcomes, the emphasis on science, technology, and business curricula. Many practitioners believe something is missing, or has been lost in modern education, and in response to this emptiness, a few lonely Platonists are starting to appear on the horizon. Some educators in that vanguard are Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal with their book Leading with Soul, and Jerold Apps with his book Teaching from the Heart. We first encountered Terry Deal and Jerry Apps at the 1998 Mountain Plains Adult Education Association Conference last spring in Colorado. Following their presentations, we eagerly purchased both books. Leading with Soul In their book Leading with Soul, Terry Deal and Lee Bolman try to apply ancient concepts of spirituality and morality to the current climate of the business world where Sophism runs rampant. Deal and Bolman, both authors, professors and consultants, do a great job of outlining the moral and spiritual vacuum in our society that prompted them to write this book. Their narrative device follows the traditional format of many parables of a mystical or spiritual nature - the conversations between a seeker and a sage. It is here, in our opinion, that the book fails. The narrative centers on Steve Camden, a high-powered executive stuck in a traditional leadership role and up against a wall in his career and his personal life. Steve's boss sends him to meet with Maria, a mysterious person who had built a huge reputation for herself in the business world before becoming a mystical recluse. Steve's relationship with Maria is the journey that forms the core of the book as she prompts him to find himself and thereby revitalize his flagging company. At the heart of the seeker-meets-sage format lies the persona of the sage. Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan and the archetypal Sufi's teacher-on-the-road represent enlightened beings. The character of Maria falls short of that standard. She comes across more like a New Age psychoanalyst than an enlightened being. This makes the whole format of the book seem contrived and forced. We believe the authors were trying for Carlos Castaneda but unfortunately ended up with Jonathon Livingston Seagull. The dialogues sound the way we imagine two social scientists might imagine dialogues with an enlightened being, for example when Maria tries to show Camden "Leadership comes from the hearts of leaders": Aren't you their leader? He paused and scanned the snow-covered landscape. See the branches sinking under the weight of the snow? he asked. Yes. …


We present an approach for the automatic reconstruction of neurons from 3D stacks of electron microscopy sections. The core of our system is a set of possible assignments, each of which proposes with some cost a link between neuron regions in consecutive sections. These can model the continuation, branching, and end of neurons. The costs are trainable on positive assignment samples. An optimal and consistent set of assignments is found for the whole volume at once by solving an integer linear program. This set of assignments determines both the segmentation into neuron regions and the correspondence between such regions in neighboring slices. For each picked assignment, a confidence value helps to prioritize decisions to be reviewed by a human expert. We evaluate the performance of our method on an annotated volume of neural tissue and compare to the current state of the art [26]. Our method is superior in accuracy and can be trained using a small number of samples. The observed inference times are linear with about 2 milliseconds per neuron and section.


The central theme of this working paper is the way that the racial wage hierarchy evolved in South Africa over the period 1993 to 1999 amongst full-time regular employees of normal working age, but excluding those in the primary sector and the defence forces. We find that the transition to democratic rule in 1994 was accompanied by an improvement in the wage position of the majority African workforce relative to all other racial groups, but that these gains were not fully preserved through the latter half of the decade. The persistence of racial wage differences following the repeal of all overt discriminatory laws and regulations points to the need for concerted policy interventions to reverse the legacy of apartheid. We review the range of policy initiatives that have been taken by the South African Government since 1994 in the light of our empirical findings.


This paper presents a model for the control of the radiation pattern of a circular array of antennas, shaping it to address the radiation beam in the direction of the user, in order to reduce the transmitted power and to attenuate interference. The control of the array is based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) of the type RBF (Radial Basis Functions), trained from samples generated by the Wiener equation. The obtained results suggest that the objective was reached.


Herein we report the synthesis of mesoporous ruthenium oxide (MP-RuO2) using a template-based approach. The catalytic efficiency of the prepared MP-RuO2 was compared to commercially available ruthenium oxide nanoparticles (C-RuO2) as heterogeneous catalysts for water oxidation. The results demonstrated superior performance of MP-RuO2 for oxygen evolution compared to the C-RuO2 with respect to recyclability, amount of generated oxygen, and stability over several catalytic runs.


At least two giant volcanic debris-avalanche deposits are associated with the Colima Volcanic Complex located in the western part of the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt. One avalanche originated from Volcan de Colima (3820 m), probably 4300 yr ago. A much larger avalanche originated from Nevado de Colima (4240 m) 18500 yr ago; it traveled more than 120 km from its source and covered an area of at least 2200 km 2 , almost twice the area of any previously described avalanche deposit. This older debris avalanche is the second largest (by volume) known, has the longest travel distance yet reported, and has one of the lowest height/length ratios (0.04). The avalanche material was probably hot during emplacement and, after initial slope failure, may have behaved similarly to a pyroclastic flow. Such large long-runout landslides from volcanic or nonvolcanic constructs present a serious geologic hazard that must be considered in risk assessment.


Fabrication of microstructures containing active compounds, such as fluorescent dyes and nanoparticles have been exploited in the last few years, aiming at applications from photonics to biology. Here we fabricate, using two-photon polymerization, microstructures containing the fluorescent dyes Stilbene 420, Disodium Fluorescein and Rhodamine B. The produced microstructures, containing dyes at specific sites, present good structural integrity and a broad fluorescence spectrum, from about 350 nm until 700 nm. Such spectrum can be tuned by using different excitation wavelengths and selecting the excitation position in the microstructure. These results are interesting for designing multi-doped structures, presenting tunable and broad fluorescence spectrum.


Glaciotectonic deformation of the Late Devensian sediments exposed at St Bees, Cumbria is represented by minor extensional faults resulting from ice-sheet loading of the unconsolidated sediments accompanied by thrusting and folding. The highly deformed northern part of the section has numerous thrust faults associated with fold structures that verge predominantly to the SE, but with some NW-vergent (backthrust) structures. A high-resolution seismic reflection survey confirms that the thrust structures form a linked fault system that detaches at, or slightly above bed rock, which is here composed of Triassic, St Bees sandstones. In the less deformed southern part of the section, the seismic survey has imaged bedding with a southerly component of dip in the St Bees sandstone cut by steep north-dipping extensional faults which, to some extent, control rockhead topography. An integrated approach combining structural geology and high-resolution seismic reflection surveying has enabled the construction of a balanced cross-section which estimates a minimum of 115 m (22%) cumulative shortening due to glaciotectonic processes. Minor structures observed in the St Bees cliffs and larger structures interpreted from the seismic profile are compatible with a critical wedge model for deformation caused by an overlying thick ice wedge with a SE-dipping surface slope.


Eruption patterns of parasitic volcanoes are discussed in order to study their correlation to the activities of their parental polygenetic volcanoes. The distribution density of parasitic vents on polygenetic volcanoes is diversified, probably corresponding to the age and structure of parental volcanoes. Describing existing parasitic cones contextually in relation to parental volcanoes is as indispensable as collecting observational data of their actual formations. In the present paper, spatial distributions of parasitic cones are classified tentatively into the following three categories: individually radial, directionally radial and annular determined according to feature's placement around the central axes of the parental volcanoes. The formations of parasitic vents are discussed from the standpoint of material mechanics. Derived from this approach, the maximum shear stress model suggests the possibility of twin parasites, and their existence on particular volcanoes verifies the possible validity of this interpretation though it may be not necessarily universally applicable to every volcano due to various effects of volcanism and lack of complexity in the model. Some characteristics of parasitic eruptions are discussed, such as monogenetic activity of parasitic vents and simultaneous eruptions of summit craters and parasitic vents. Parasitic volcanism proves to be not merely an auxiliary feature of its parental volcano but closely correlated with magma plumbing systems.


This research briefly investigates the significance of two Chinoiserie motifs, dragons and phoenixes that are frequently applied by the Persian artists from 13 th century to 15 th century when Chinese influence on Persian manuscripts was apparent in Persian illustrated manuscript. In Persian manuscript painting, mythical elements are of great significance. Many manuscript paintings convey a sense of the failure of evil and vicious mythical creatures like dragons and demons, before angelic forces, present in form of heroes with supernatural powers. Demons were considered destructive and a continuous danger to mankind, animals plants and crops. They were known as khrafstra and they included rodent, frogs, lizards, tortoise, spiders and insects such as well as wasps, ants and beetles. Cats were also regarded destructive as they belonged to the same harmful family of tigers and lions. Extraordinary monsters were also amongst these creatures that were challenged by human heroes. They frequently appeared in the form of serpents or dragons (azhi). The most significant of these was the giant with three heads who ate humans and was known as Azhi Dahaka (modern Persian azhdaha). Similar three-headed man-devouring monster appeared as Zahhak in Firdowsi's Shahnameh. The subject of dragon attacking heroes is deeply entrenched in Persian epic literature. Another mythical character Phoenix, a symbolic holy firebird, which can be seen not only in Chinese and Persian paintings but equally present in Arabian, Greeks, Roman, Phoenician, Indian and Egyptian mythologies. Numerous legendary birds are known in the Mazdean mythology; however, most renowned bird is Saena, known to us the Simurgh of the Persians. Simurgh known from the Middle Persian language as Sinmurw, is also recognized in Avesta 'the bird Saena', with mythical powers in the creation of world. Described in Avesta, in the centre of the Vourukasha (heavenly sea in Zoroastrian mythology) mother of all trees grew which was the source of all plants. This tree is identified as the Saena Tree, a tree of all remedies or tree of all seeds and it produced the seeds of all plants. This first tree was having the nest of the legendary bird, Seana (Senmurv in Pahlavi, Simurgh in Persian). These motifs such as dragons, phoenixes are modified into Persian narrative according to the demand of pure Persian subject matter, style and iconography provided by Persian epic and romantic literature.


The most common method used for authentication is Textual passwords. But textual passwords are in risk to eves dropping, dictionary attacks, social engineering and shoulder surfing. Graphical passwords are introduced as alternative techniques to textual passwords. Most of the graphical schemes are helpless to shoulder surfing. To address this problem, text can be combined with images or colors to generate session passwords for authentication. Session passwords can be used only once and every time a new password is generated. In this paper, two techniques are proposed to generate session passwords using text and colors which are resistant to shoulder surfing. These methods are suitable for Personal Digital Assistants.


Prefabrication offers substantial benefits including reduction in construction waste, material waste, energy use, labor demands, and delivery time, and an improvement in project constructability and cost certainty. As the material cost accounts for nearly 70% of the total cost of the prefabrication project, to select a suitable material supplier plays an important role in such a project. The purpose of this study is to present a method for supporting supplier selection of a prefabrication project. The proposed method consists of three parts. First, a list of assessment criteria was established to evaluate the suitability of supplier alternatives. Second, Building Information Modelling (BIM) was adopted to provide sufficient information about the project requirements and suppliers' profiles, which facilitates the storage and sharing of information. Finally, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to rank the importance of the assessment criteria and obtain the score of supplier alternatives. The suppliers were ranked based on the total scores. To illustrate how to use the proposed method, it was applied to a real prefabrication project. The proposed method facilitates the supplier selection process by providing sufficient information in an effective way and by improving the understanding of the project requirements.


In practice there is still a "piecemeal approach towards proliferation" and argued that a genuinely comprehensive and global approach to non-proliferation would involve the integration of policy "on nuclear and other WMD non- proliferation, arms control, and disarmament with strategy on conventional weapons to implement a holistic approach within a new Strategic Concept for the Regulation of Arms Possession and Proliferation.

A major push is needed, not just to control the conventional weapons trade, but also to "reduce holdings of major weapons systems, ordnance stocks and production.

There are longstanding legal commitment in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to "general disarmament" of all weapons apart from those needed for internal policing.

In terms of timescale, one could look at getting the job done in the course of a decade. If we have timetables for global warming, and if we think that it is practical to get to grips with the entire climate of the planet, we should also see that it is practical to get to grips with weaponry.


Abstract The aim of the research was to study the features of accumulation of heavy metals by assimilation apparatus of coniferous and deciduous arboreous plants. The research identified excess of factual concentrations for Arsenic in mining rock in relation to values stated in IPC (indicative permissible concentrations). It is stated that the metals can be divided into three groups according to their absolute content in unit of foliage biomass. The element of excessive concentration is Mn, medium concentration is characteristic for Pb and Zn and low concentration is observed for Sb, Cr, As, Cu, Ni and Sn. Calculation of coefficient of biological accumulation of the metals under research has shown its high values for Crimean pine. The data presented for Black locust indicate low values of coefficient of biological accumulation, which is best noticeable for Chromium, Antimony and Tin. It is determined that a small amount of Sb and Sn are a subject to uptake by Black locust leaves, whilst for Crimean pine needles, Sb and As are characterised by the lowest inflow. The average content of lead is 209.11 kg·ha−1 for Crimean pine in all age groups of trees, whilst for Black locust, this index is only 15.52 kg·ha−1, which is 13.5 times less. Zinc accumulation is better performed by Black locust leaves, and it gradually decreases with increasing age. No definite trend of redistribution and subsequent accumulation of copper depending on tree species and age was found.


The rapid advancement and widespread use of large language models (LLMs) have raised significant concerns regarding the potential leakage of personally identifiable information (PII). These models are often trained on vast quantities of web-collected data, which may inadvertently include sensitive personal data. This paper presents ProPILE, a novel probing tool designed to empower data subjects, or the owners of the PII, with awareness of potential PII leakage in LLM-based services. ProPILE lets data subjects formulate prompts based on their own PII to evaluate the level of privacy intrusion in LLMs. We demonstrate its application on the OPT-1.3B model trained on the publicly available Pile dataset. We show how hypothetical data subjects may assess the likelihood of their PII being included in the Pile dataset being revealed. ProPILE can also be leveraged by LLM service providers to effectively evaluate their own levels of PII leakage with more powerful prompts specifically tuned for their in-house models. This tool represents a pioneering step towards empowering the data subjects for their awareness and control over their own data on the web.


Judge-made constitutional doctrine, though by no means the primary cause of rising inequality, has played an important role in reinforcing and exacerbating it. This Symposium Essay examines judges' role with particular focus on the areas of labor and education. It shows that judges have acquiesced to legislatively structured economic inequality, while also restricting the ability of legislatures to remedy it. Moreover, for several decades, even the Supreme Court's more liberal members have offered only tepid opposition to economically regressive constitutional interpretations, sometimes helping shape them. Yet, while much constitutional law relating to the distribution of economic and political power and the nonexistence of social welfare rights now seems indisputable, sometimes even quintessentially American, regressive holdings were once hotly contested and deeply divided. Indeed, the losing side had equally strong, if not stronger, doctrinal arguments.
These descriptive observations, in turn, form the basis for three claims about the future of constitutional law. First, judges matter. Progressives ought not lose sight of their importance. Although strong arguments counsel against turning to courts as primary agents for social and economic change, courts are critical in constructing the political economy. Second, for those who object to economic inequality, mere resistance to the Trump agenda and efforts to return to the constitutional status quo ante are not enough. In particular, the liberal embrace of judicial minimalism has contributed to the fortification of economic inequality; a fundamental shift is needed. Third, such change is plausible, not utopian. Particularly if Americans begin to challenge inequality in the political and social realm, constitutional change in the courts will become not only imperative but also achievable.


Isokinetic resistance is frequently used to strength profile healthy athletes and to evaluate the status of injured athletes involved in rehabilitation programs. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the reliability of peak torque, torque acceleration energy, endurance ratio, average power, and total work measures obtained with a Cybex isokinetic dynamometer. Fifteen college students underwent a test - retest procedure for right and left knee flexion and extension, shoulder flexion and extension, and shoulder internal and external rotation. Highest reliability coefficients were found for peak torque, torque acceleration energy, average power, and total work measures. Lower coefficients were observed for the endurance ratio measure. Higher reliability was generally observed for the knee extension/ flexion test procedure than for the shoulder tests.


The Handbook of West European Pension Politics provides scholars, policy-makers and students with a complete overview of the political and policy issues involved in pension policy, and well as case studies of contemporary pension politics (1980 to present) in 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The book is suitable as a text for courses in comparative politics, European Studies, social policy, comparative public policy and public administration. Each chapter is written by an expert on pension politics and is presented in a standardized format with standardized tables and figures that describe: political institutions; government coalitions, parliamentary and electoral majorities; the party system; the pension system; proposed and enacted pension reforms.


OBJECTIVE
The extent of involvement of cyclooxygenase (COX)-mediated inflammation in type 1 diabetes is unknown, and the association between the COX- and cytokine-mediated inflammatory responses in type 1 diabetes is not fully understood.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Plasma high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), 24-h urinary and plasma 15-keto-dihydro-prostaglandin F(2alpha) (a metabolite of prostaglandin F(2alpha) [PGF(2alpha)] and an indicator of COX-mediated inflammation), serum amyloid protein A (SAA), and interleukin (IL)-6 (indicators of inflammation) were measured in 38 subjects with type 1 diabetes and 41 healthy age- and sex-matched control subjects.

RESULTS
The inflammatory indicators (urinary 15-keto-dihydro-PGF(2alpha), P < 0.01; IL-6, P < 0.04) were increased in men with diabetes. CRP and SAA did not show any significant difference between the diabetic and the control subjects. Urinary levels of 15-keto-dihydro-PGF(2alpha) correlated with the degree of glycemic control, HbA(1c) (r = 0.42, P < 0.0005). No correlation was found between the duration of diabetes and the inflammatory biomarkers or metabolic measurements.

CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that an early low-grade inflammatory process reflected by elevated levels of PGF(2alpha) and IL-6 is involved in type 1 diabetes. Thus, both COX- and cytokine-mediated inflammatory pathways are significantly related to type 1 diabetes.


In this paper, we propose a decision support system (DSS) for the greening of data centers to help the environment, hence promoting sustainability. As society continues the relentless shift towards electronic communications there is a growing demand for greater storage and processing on data centers. A potential area of improvement is to gain greater server utilization rates since traditionally the phenomenon of "server sprawl" occurs where more servers are added to the data center without seeking greater utilization rates on existing servers first. This implies maintaining more servers than actually needed that translates to greater carbon dioxide emissions causing potential environmental problems. Presently, average server utilization rates in most data centers are rather low, and we make the claim that utilization rates should be increased so that we can lower the number of servers for enhanced sustainability. A shift to the cloud could potentially be useful here. Some servers can be phased out with their operations being hosted on the cloud instead. We propose an approach based on data mining using CBR and decision trees to build a DSS that would help make decisions pertaining to issues such as server sprawl and migration to the cloud in order to promote data center sustainability. We provide recommendations based on our DSS that would be useful to data center operators in academia and industry.


The Improved Limb Atmospheric Spectrometer (ILAS)-II sensor aboard the Japanese ADEOS-II satellite was launched into its sun-synchronous orbit on 14 December 2002 and performed solar occultation measurements of trace species, aerosols, temperature, and pressure in the polar stratosphere until 25 October 2003. Vertical trace gas profiles obtained with the balloon version of the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS-B) provide one of the sparse data sets for validating ILAS-II version 2 and 1.4 data. The MIPAS-B limb emission spectra were collected on 20 March 2003 over Kiruna (Sweden, 68° N) at virtually the same location that has been sounded by ILAS-II about 5.5 h prior to the sampling of MIPAS-B. The intercomparison of the new ILAS-II version 2 (Northern Hemispheric sunrise) data to MIPAS-B vertical trace gas profiles shows a good to excellent agreement within the combined error limits for the species O 3 , N 2 O, CH 4 , H 2 O (above 21 km), HNO 3 , ClONO 2 , and CFC-11 (CCl 3 F) in the compared altitude range between 16 and 31 km such that these data appear to be very useful for scientific analysis. With regard to the previous version 1.4 ILAS-II data, significant improvements in the consistency with MIPAS-B are obvious especially for the species CH 4 and H 2 O, but also for O 3 , HNO 3 , ClONO 2 , NO 2 , and N 2 O 5 . However, comparing gases like NO 2 , N 2 O 5 , and CFC-12 (CCl 2 F 2 ) exhibits only poor agreement with MIPAS-B such that these species cannot be assumed to be validated at the present time.


THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF children became a significant public issue in Ireland in the s, with frequent media reports about the issue. In the main these focused on the issue of abuse of children by members of the clergy and religious orders. Headline cases included the abuse perpetrated by Fr Brendan Smyth, a priest of a religious order who was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse of children and subsequently died in prison, and Fr Sean Fortune, a diocesan priest, who committed suicide before his court trial for abuse. While child sexual abuse by clergy was widely exposed in the early s, a subsequent additional scandal was the failure of the institutional Catholic Church to respond adequately to earlier complaints of abuse, and, in particular, to respond adequately to those who experienced abuse. As part of its response to the problem, the Irish Catholic bishops commissioned an independent research agency – the Health Services Research Centre (HSRC) at the Department of Psychology, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) – to undertake a programme of research on its behalf. Part of the remit to the research group was to examine the effects on the general public of child sex abuse by clergy. This was done by means of a national telephone survey (N=,), full details of which are reported elsewhere (Goode, McGee & O'Boyle, ). The survey itself took four months to complete. About half-way through the data collection period in , the main UK public service television channel (BBC) screened a documentary entitled 'Suing the Pope' which dealt in detail with complaints made to Church authorities about Sean Fortune and the alleged subsequent mishandling of those complaints. This programme was reported in some detail in the Irish media before its showing, and had a high number of Irish viewers since UK channels are accessible in Ireland. The documentary was also reported extensively in other media after screening and was subsequently re-shown on Irish public service channel RTE. The first TV screening provided a point of differentiation within the survey, with some  participants having responded before the screening and  afterwards. It


Idiopathic adhesive capsulitis is a common but poorly understood cause of a dysfunctional painful shoulder affecting daily routine. A prospective study comparing the functional outcome following hydrodilatation with manipulation and manipulation alone for idiopathic frozen Shoulder was undertaken. 158 patients (168 shoulders) with idiopathic adhesive capsulitis were treated with manipulation alone and hydrodilatation with manipulation. 88 shoulders underwent hydrodilatation with manipulation and 80 shoulders with manipulation alone. The initial evaluation included the recording of a detailed history and assessment of pain, range of motion, and function. The outcome evaluation included assessment of pain, range of motion, and function; Oxford Shoulder Scoring and completion of the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder, and Hand (DASH) Questionnaire. The mean duration of follow-up was twelve months. With Hydrodilatation plus manipulation 77% patients had a satisfactory outcome, 20 % had fair outcome, and 3 % were not satisfied with the treatment. With manipulation alone 52% patients had a satisfactory outcome, 45% reported a fair outcome, and 3% were not satisfied with the treatment. Hydrodilatation is a simple and effective add on to the routinely done manipulation procedures to obtain better results.


Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) is a major adverse event associated with cancer treatments. There are clinical practice guidelines that assist practitioners in managing CINV. Many cancer centers develop protocols for physicians and pharmacists to guide prophylaxis and breakthrough treatments of CINV based on published guidelines. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the outcome differences between pharmacist and physician -driven management of CINV in adult hospitalized cancer patients in a large academic medical center. This is a single center retrospective chart review study. The primary outcome of the study was the number of breakthrough antiemetic doses needed throughout the hospitalization. A total of 106 adult patients receiving inpatient chemotherapy were reviewed for CINV management. Fifty-five patients (52%) were managed according to the pharmacist-driven protocol, and fifty-one patients (48%) were managed by the physician. There was no difference between the two groups in the primary outcome. Patients in the pharmacist-managed group needed 6.4 breakthrough antiemetic doses; whereas, patients in the physician managed group needed 5.9 doses throughout the hospital stay (P-value = 0.7). No difference was seen when results were adjusted for length of hospitalization. There was a difference in adherence to the institution CINV guidelines favoring the pharmacist-driven approach (85% versus 33%, P < 0.0001). In conclusion, pharmacist-run protocol for CINV management was as effective as the standard of care. Protocols that are based on practice guidelines may offer the advantage of care standardization and potential cost savings.

Type: Student Project


This chapter focuses on the experiences of Latin@ transnational preservice teachers as they detail their (bi) literate lives through multimodal texts, specifically digital timelines and literacy narratives. Using qualitative methods, the authors examine the ways in which the production of multimodal texts became the medium through which participants could reflect on their own literacy processes through reflection and sharing. Preservice teachers were also asked to discuss their understandings of writing pedagogy and how they envisioned their future classrooms. Most of the Latin@ participants reported multiple language use and a variety of contexts where they learned about literacies. In addition, the multimodal and digital aspects of the assignments assisted students in recalling memories, widening their views of what counts as literacy, and fostering more inclusive writing pedagogy. Providing future classroom teachers with opportunities for engaging in mulitimodal composing along with critical reflection has the potential to transform and disrupt dominant ideologies towards literacy practices and English language dominance. Understanding the complex literacy practices of preservice teachers may also lead to shaping the future of literacy instruction to better serve an increasingly multilingual, multicultural student population. Minda Morren López Texas State University – San Marcos, USA Carol Brochin University of Texas – El Paso, USA DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6042-7.ch062


Baryons constitute about 4% of our universe, but most of them are missing and we do not know where and in what form they are hidden. This constitute the so-called missing baryon problem. A possibility is that part of these baryons are hidden in galactic halos. We show how the 7-year data obtained by the WMAP satellite may be used to trace the halo of the nearby giant spiral galaxy M31. We detect a temperature asymmetry in the M31 halo along the rotation direction up to about 120 kpc. This could be the first detection of a galactic halo in microwaves and may open a new way to probe hidden baryons in these relatively less studied galactic objects using high accuracy CMB measurements.


Loss and fragmentation of natural and semi-natural vegetation caused by agricultural intensification are related to many declines in shrubland bird populations, but they have received little conservation attention and research effort. In the Llanos de Ojuelos, a semiarid agricultural landscape in Mexico, patches of natural shrubland and nopal (or prickly pear) Opuntia spp. orchards harbour 60% of the regional avifauna, but prior to this study their value as nesting habitat for birds has not been assessed. In 2014 we recorded 143 nests of 25 species, 45% of which were of Mourning Doves Zenaida macroura. The nesting birds recorded account for 38% of all species known to use these habitats in this region and the number of nesting species is larger than in other North American semiarid and arid shrublands. Shrublands and orchards were not different in any habitat attributes measured, nor in the densities of nests found in them, but there were significantly more species nesting in shrublands. Nest height and visibility were not different between habitats, except for Mourning Doves, which nested at a lower height in orchards. Neither attribute affected nest success, except for in Black-chinned Sparrow Spizella atrogularis for whom successful nests were less visible. The assemblages of nesting birds might be explained better by particular plants used as nest substrate than by habitat attributes. Catclaws Mimosa aculeaticarpa var. biuncifera, Huisaches Vachellia farnesiana and V. schaffneri and nopal plants supported 56% of all nests, the latter being particularly important for Mourning Doves, while scarce Central-Mexico Yucca Yucca decipiens trees supported 40% of nesting species. There were interspecific differences in the phenology of nesting, which matched the feeding requirements of the young. Nopal orchards seem to provide abundant complementary food for birds that nest in shrubland patches. Nopal orchards and shrubland patches dotting the landscape may make the dominant agricultural matrix of the southern part of the Central Plateau of Mexico less detrimental to shrubland birds. Our study supports the idea that small patches of secondary shrubland can aid in biodiversity conservation in anthropized landscapes, a role that in this region is provided by shrubland remnant patches as well as nopal orchards.


The treatment or prevention of child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) disorders often requires an individualized, sequential approach to intervention, whereby treatments (or prevention efforts) are adapted over time based on the youth's evolving status (e.g., early response, adherence). Adaptive interventions are intended to provide a replicable guide for the provision of individualized sequences of interventions in actual clinical practice. Recently, there has been great interest in the development of adaptive intervenions by investigators working in CAMH. The development of such replicable, real-world, individualized sequences of decision rules to guide the treatment or prevention of CAMH disorders represents an important "next step" in interventions research. The primary purpose of this special issue is to showcase some recent work on the science of adaptive interventions in CAMH. In this overview article, we review why individualized sequences of interventions are needed in CAMH, provide an introduction to adaptive interventions, briefly describe each of the articles included in this special issue, and describe some exciting areas of ongoing and future research. A hopeful outcome of this special issue is that it encourages other researchers in CAMH to pursue creative and significant research on adaptive interventions.


Sewage sludge effects to cropland have been evaluated in a long-term field experiment which started in 1988 and is still underway in the eastern part of the Po Valley (Italy), on a silty-loam soil. Each autumn municipal-industrial wastewater sludge has been applied at 5 and 10 Mg DM ha -1 yr -1 as anaerobically digested slurry (liquid), belt filtered material (dewatered) and composted with wheat straw, on a winter wheat - maize - sugar beet rotation. The 15 years continuous application of sludge significantly increased organic matter, total N, Olsen P, Cu and Zn content in the topsoil, with greater effects at the highest rate. Composted sludge favoured the highest OM topsoil increase. Sludge spreading improved soil fertility and crop yields, but it was associated with possible negative environmental effects: on water, due to increased phosphorus availability, and on soil ecology, due to zinc build up in the topsoil. The results confirmed that compulsory application rates based on real crop nitrogen requirements and matching Nitrate EU Directive, undoubtedly can guarantee a sound sustainability in sewage sludge recycling on cropland in the long run.


This paper is about measuring state dependence in dynamic discrete outcomes. I develop a nonparametric dynamic potential outcomes (DPO) model and propose an array of parameters and identifying assumptions that can be considered in this model. I show how to construct sharp identified sets under combinations of identifying assumptions by using a flexible linear programming procedure. I apply the analysis to study state dependence in unemployment for working age high school educated men using an extract from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Using only nonparametric assumptions, I estimate that state dependence accounts for at least 30–40% of the four‐month persistence in unemployment among high school educated men.


Until the 1980s, it was presumed that technical change in most communications services could easily be monitored from centralized state and federal agencies. This presumption was long outdated prior to the commercialization of the Internet. With the Internet, the long-forecast convergence of voice, video, and text bits became a reality. Legislation, capped by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, created new quasi-standards such as "fair" and "reasonable" for the FCC and courts to apply, leading to nonstop litigation and occasional gridlock.This book addresses some of the many telecommunications areas on which public policy makers, corporate strategists, and social activists must reach agreement. Topics include the regulation of access, Internet architecture in a commercial era, communications infrastructure development, the Digital Divide, and information policy issues such as intellectual property and the retransmission of TV programming via the Internet.


T-cell receptor γ alternate reading frame protein (TARP) is expressed by human prostate epithelial, prostate cancer, and mammary cancer cells, but is not found in normal mammary tissue. To date, this protein has only been described in humans. Additionally, no animal model has been established to investigate the potential merits of TARP as tumor marker or a target for adoptive tumor immunotherapy. In this study conducted to characterize feline T-cell receptor γ sequences, constructs very similar to human TARP transcripts were obtained by RACE from the spleen and prostate gland of cats. Transcription of TARP in normal, hyperplastic, and neoplastic feline mammary tissues was evaluated by conventional RT-PCR. In felines similarly to the situation reported in humans, a C-region encoding two open reading frames is spliced to a J-region gene. In contrast to humans, the feline J-region gene was found to be a pseudogene containing a deletion within its recombination signal sequence. Our findings demonstrated that the feline TARP ortholog is transcribed in the prostate gland and mammary tumors but not normal mammary tissues as is the case with human TARP.


Focussing on the work of Sir John Kingman, one of the world's leading researchers in probability and mathematical genetics, this book touches on the important areas of these subjects in the last 50 years. Leading authorities give a unique insight into a wide range of currently topical problems. Papers in probability concentrate on combinatorial and structural aspects, in particular exchangeability and regeneration. The Kingman coalescent links probability with mathematical genetics and is fundamental to the study of the latter. This has implications across the whole of genomic modelling including the Human Genome Project. Other papers in mathematical population genetics range from statistical aspects including heterogeneous clustering, to the assessment of molecular variability in cancer genomes. Further papers in statistics are concerned with empirical deconvolution, perfect simulation, and wavelets. This book will be warmly received by established experts as well as their students and others interested in the content.


The main objective of this research is to investigate the most vital issue in the realm of branding - what makes a brand powerful, from the perspective of brand image. This concept has yet to gain due recognition as relatively little recent original research has been published on brand image. The research was undertaken in the fragrances industry in the UK.
This research explores the brand image concept as a determinant of brand success; therefore, first and foremost, this concept has to be defined in terms of the nature of image - conveyed approach versus received approach, the notion of components structure and in terms of the concept elements. The original definition proposed is described as the "Three Dimensions' Brand Image" model (functional needs, nonfunctional needs and brand personality) and has been built from the assumption of creating a practical facet, where the marketer will be able to identify the meaning of each dimension and reinforce every one of them in his attempt to create brand image strategy. Therefore, a number of hypotheses have been tested with regard to the model structure as follows: the importance of brand personality dimension and non-functional dimension in high and low brand image situations in comparison to other dimensions was explored in revealing the notion's component structure, and the importance of price and special feeling elements in comparison to other brand image elements was researched in revealing the concept's elements. Finally, the link between brand image concept and brand success phenomenon was explored to define this concept in terms of a managerial marketing concept.
This research focuses on men's and women's fragrances product groups because apart from the tangible facet of brand in these product groups, there is a significant meaning to brand personality facet, which makes this very appropriate for this research into "image". The research method for data collection was firstly based on focus groups interviews, and then on a survey (personal interviews) which took place during the months of March and April 1997 in four department stores of Debenhams in which 320 respondents participated.
The findings of the research show evidence of the proposed "Three Dimensions' Brand Image" model existence, where the concept brand image is described as an amalgamation of two schools of thought, one which emphasizes the dependence of
brand image creation upon the individual psyche, and the other which sees the marketers as the image creators. In addition, the findings show that in high and low brand image situations the functional dimension is perceived as the most important one, the next one is the non-functional dimension and the least important is the brand personality dimension. The research's findings show evidence of existence between
brand image and brand success where high brand image leads to high brand success and low brand image leads to low brand success.
The most important contribution of the proposed model as a new definition of brand image is its ability to act as an applied marketing concept for creating and managing the image of a brand, and by doing so it ceases to be purely a theoretical concept.


This paper examines the impact of health status on poverty status, accounting for the endogeneity of health status. Using exogenous measures of health status from the South African Integrated Health Survey, we instrument for health status while allowing for covariation among the unobservables influencing both health and household poverty status. Health status, as captured by the body mass index, is shown to strongly influence poverty status. Households that contain more unhealthy individuals are 60% more likely to be income poor than households that contain fewer unhealthy individuals, and this finding appears invariant to the choice of poverty line.


I will out-line a process of using intertextuality as a device for creating interdisciplinary links in teaching and learning. Using intertextuality as a key tool to stimulate learners to explore and formulate relationship between literature/ history, language/culture and theology, English language/ literature, language/sociology. Using a multicultural teaching approach. I will introduce three texts; Daniel Defoe's The Life and Adventure of Robins Crusoe as the hypotext (1719), Derek Walcott's Pantomime (1980), and Samuel Selvon's Moses Ascending (1975). These texts will act as the base for the extraction of relationship formation which will give learners the ability to form links to other text and the world around them. I will introduce two-three-minute video clips in order to demonstrate how a similar scene can give learners different skills and knowledge experiences which can be beneficial in other subject areas. These texts were chosen with the aim of giving learners exposure to such topics as equality and stratification, but in a twist of comedy. The main concepts come from studies done by Mikhail Baktin's (2010) and Julia Kristeva's (1980) The methods employed for using intertextuality as an interdisciplinary tool varies depending on the goal of linkage to the core material. In studies done by Sort, where students discussed certain selected texts it was determined that their interpretations of the same events were different (1986). Their ability to form relationships to other subject areas was determined by their pre-knowledge, age and cultural background. The method which I would like to present involves using a 3-way link approach to the hypotext. The hypotext is explored using: (step 1) written text, games, video or movies, (Step 2) Students explore and form links to the sub-text. (step 3) Teacher and students from links to other disciplines. This type of methodology is effective both with first language speakers and second language speakers and even with student who study in specialized divisions such as International Baccalaureate (IB) diplomas and undergraduate programs.


In the photo-series On Not Becoming Der Wanderer (after Caspar David Friedrich), Snaefellsnes, Iceland (2018), Bevan makes multiple attempts to reach a position that embodies Der Wanderer in Caspar David Friedrich's painting Der Wanderer uber dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog). Friedrich's painting shows a single man (Der Wanderer) standing with his back to the spectator on a rocky peak above the clouds. Having (supposedly) conquered the precipice, he stands transfixed in contemplation of an unknown future; here is a figure of both power and vulnerability. This is a seminal landscape painting that emerged around 1818 during the period of Romanticism, exploring new religious, spiritual and mythological desires or longings to be part of nature.

Bevan's photo-series intentionally evokes Friedrich's painting, while never fully realising it. In its absence, the painting is present as a mythical image, and all attendant discourse surrounding the original work is brought to bear by association. In the act of failing to reach the position of Der Wanderer, Bevan presents alternative states that are limited by the capacity to play out an idealized (painted) image - a comment on the human condition, and a passing interplay between photography, painting and performance. Bevan is unable to trigger the photograph and get to the desired pose within the self-timed 10 seconds, intentionally compromised by the status of being at once behind and then in front of the camera. Furthermore, but not exhaustively, this series is also a champion of the 'superposition' as a preferred but messy status of existence. In a rejection to collapse into the singular, decisive and absolute moment of the original work, Bevan's multiple states of indetermination, self-reflexively identify with the elemental concept of Der Wanderer himself, who is similarly encountering the indeterminate.

In this way, at a number of levels the photo-series embodies the notion and principle of myth itself.


Subclinical vitamin B12 and folate deficiency is common in the elderly. The clinical significance remains unresolved. There is not a universally accepted set of laboratory criteria for diagnosis, however subclinical deficiency is important to diagnose since it is easy to treat. Currently available measures of vitamin concentrations are, except in pronounced deficiency, unreliable. Plasma tHcy and serum MMA are potentially more reliable markers of intracellular vitamin status. The overall aim was to estimate the prevalence of B-vitamin deficiency and atrophic gastritis, to calculate health related reference intervals for plasma tHcy/serum MMA, to explore the dependence of glomerular filtration rate on these metabolites, and to study the effect of oral B-vitamin therapy both on biochemical and clinical outcome. The thesis is based on a population-based study of 209 community-dwelling subjects, mean age 76 years. The study included a double-blind placebo controlled intervention with an oral daily combination of vitamin B12 (0.5mg), folic acid (0.8mg) and B6 (3mg) during four months. Elevated plasma tHcy and serum MMA was found in 53% and 11%. Vitamin B12 deficiency occurred in 7.2%, folate deficiency in 11%, atrophic gastritis in up to 14%. Healthrelated upper reference limits for the metabolites were higher than those commonly used. After adjustment for glomerular filtration rate also within it's normal range, the fraction of subjects with elevated plasma tHcy diminished significantly. Plasma tHcy and serum MMA correlated inversely with movement and cognitive performance. Vitamin therapy significantly decreased plasma tHcy (32%) and serum MMA (14%) but failed to improve movement or cognitive performance. Atrophic gastritis did not cause reduced vitamin absorption. In conclusion, elevated levels of plasma tHcy and serum MMA were common and more frequent than actual B-vitamin deficiency. The prevalence of "elevated" plasma tHcy may be overestimated unless adjusted for glomerular filtration rate. Atrophic gastritis was not uncommon and correlated to inferior B-vitamin status. Short-term oral B vitamin treatment normalized plasma tHcy and serum MMA levels also in subjects with atrophic gastritis, but did not affect movement or cognitive performance.