Background: A significant percentage of women in India suffer from dysfunctional uterine bleeding (DUB), which has a negative impact on physical and social life. Norethisterone and low-dose combined oral contraceptive (COC) pills are used in the treatment of DUB. Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of norethisterone and low-dose COC pills in reduction of blood loss in DUB. Materials and Methods: A prospective randomized interventional study was conducted with patients with DUB. Pretreatment pictorial blood loss assessment chart (PBAC) and hemoglobin in blood were obtained from patients. Then, Group I (n = 50) and Group II (n = 50) patients were provided treatment with norethisterone and low-dose COC pills, respectively. Posttreatment PBAC and hemoglobin level in blood was obtained after 6 months of treatment. Improvements in PBAC and hemoglobin level (difference between posttest and pretest value) were compared by unpaired t-test with α = 0.05. Results: Mean age of Group I and Group II patients was 28.62 ± 9.84 and 28.42 ± 10.08 years, respectively. Improvement in PBAC score in patients treated with norethisterone versus low-dose COC pill was −98.62 ± 7.82 versus −96.44 ± 8.74 (P = 0.19). Improvement in hemoglobin level in patients treated with norethisterone versus low-dose COC pill was 2.75 ± 1.06 gm/dL versus 2.71 ± 0.86 gm/dL (P = 0.84). Conclusion: Norethisterone and low-dose COC pills were found to be equally efficacious in reducing bleeding in DUB. Hence, any one of the drugs can be used in the treatment of DUB according to patients' profile. However, considering the side effects, low-dose COC pills may be a better choice.


Within the SDG4-Education 2030, the IBE-UNESCO sees curriculum as a key component for building robust education systems. The curriculum leads all core aspects of education that are known to determine quality, inclusion and relevance, such as content, learning, teaching, assessment and teaching and learning environments among others. It is through the curriculum that we can understand the goals, the social imaginary and the aspirations that a country wants to achieve. In this sense, the curriculum is the foundation for an effective education system that ensures quality learning for all learners and the preparation of active glo-local citizens. Flexibility is the key for the curriculum to be effectively implemented throughout the education system and a well-designed curriculum framework serves this purpose. Based on the idea that education reforms that have achieved positive outcomes are grounded in solid curriculum proposals, this report proposes an in-depth comparative analysis of the curriculum frameworks of five countries, namely, Brazil, Cambodia, Finland, Kenya and Peru. This exercise was carried out to understand the extent to which countries present and discuss the scope of their education systems, new pedagogical approaches as well as teaching and learning methodologies and assessment techniques, among others. The results of this document has allowed to have a clearer picture of the implications that a curriculum framework has for countries that are or have recently undergone an education reform as well as to understand what are the current education trends in terms of curriculum reform that are happening worldwide.


Deep neural networks have been playing an essential role in many computer vision tasks including Visual Question Answering (VQA). Until recently, the study of their accuracy was the main focus of research but now there is a trend toward assessing the robustness of these models against adversarial attacks by evaluating their tolerance to varying noise levels. In VQA, adversarial attacks can target the image and/or the proposed main question and yet there is a lack of proper analysis of the later. In this work, we propose a flexible framework that focuses on the language part of VQA that uses semantically relevant questions, dubbed basic questions, acting as controllable noise to evaluate the robustness of VQA models. We hypothesize that the level of noise is negatively correlated to the similarity of a basic question to the main question. Hence, to apply noise on any given main question, we rank a pool of basic questions based on their similarity by casting this ranking task as a LASSO optimization problem. Then, we propose a novel robustness measure Rscore and two largescale basic question datasets (BQDs) in order to standardize robustness analysis for VQA models.


[1] Global calculations of the radiative forcing (RF) that is due to contrails for various crystal shapes are performed. A radiative transfer model, which takes into account ice crystals' single-scattering properties both calculated and acquired from the literature, is used to simulate solar and infrared fluxes. Contrail RF includes results obtained for 10 various, randomly oriented in space, crystal habits such as hexagonal plates and hexagonal columns with different aspect ratios, among others. The global and annual mean shortwave, longwave, and net contrail RF, averaged over all crystal models and assuming an optical depth of 0.3 at visible wavelengths, are −5.7, 16.8, and 11.1 mW/m2, respectively. Simulations performed for the clear-sky (without background cloudiness) conditions show a similar net radiative forcing of 11.0 mW/m2, but stronger shortwave (−9.9 mW/m2) and longwave (20.9 mW/m2) RFs compared with those of the cloudy case. The influence of ambient clouds on the net contrail RF is small and depends only slightly on the contrail optical depth and particle shape. However, the particle shape has a strong impact on the contrail RF. A ratio of the RFs' standard deviation to the mean value, derived using 10 different ice particle models, is about 0.2 for the shortwave, 0.14 for the longwave, and 0.23 for the net radiation. An even larger uncertainty, besides the optical model, in global contrail RF estimations is the assumed optical depth. Model simulations show a 27% difference in RF related to a change of the contrail optical depth by ±0.1 from the reference value of 0.3 (at 550 nm). This value is almost invariant to the choice of crystal model, ranging between 25% and 28%.


Solution casting under ambient conditions of thin films of the ferroelectric copolymer poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) is highly attractive for cost-effective production of flexible memory devices. However, rough and porous films obtained under ambient conditions typically give a low yield of working devices. A major challenge is ambient water vapor condensing into the drying solution, causing non-solvent vapor-induced phase separation (VIPS). By integrating solution-stage modeling, microscopic analysis and thin-film device characterization, we show that the hydrophilicity of solvent is a deciding factor in obtaining properly functioning capacitive memory elements based on P(VDF-TrFE) under ambient conditions. Our numerical study, involving the ternary phase diagram of the polymer/water/solvent blend as well multicomponent dynamic phase field modeling, predicts the occurrence of VIPS for a given solvent hygroscopicity and demonstrates an increase in early stage domain size with decreasing relative humidity, whereas the opposite trend is predicted for the rate of demixing. Experimentally observed morphologies are consistent with the numerical simulations. For a sufficiently low solvent hygroscopicity, >90% production yield of devices operating at voltages on par with upscaled thin-film flexible electronics is achieved.


Region of interest (ROI) plays an important role in medical image analysis. In this paper, a new approach to ROI extraction based on the curve evolution is proposed. Different from the existent method, the proposed approach is efficient both in segmentation results and computational cost. The deforming curve is modeled as a monotonically marching front under a positive speed field, where a region speed function is derived by minimizing the new defined ROI energy, and integrated with the edge-based speed function. The curve evolution model integrating the ROI information has a large propagation range and could even drive the front in low-contrast and narrow thin areas. Moreover, a multi-initial fast marching algorithm, which permits the user to plant several seed curves as the initial front and evolves them simultaneously, is developed to fast implement the numerical solution. Selective planting seed curves could help the local growth and thus may further improve the segmentation results and reduce the computational cost. Experiments by our approach are presented and compared with that of the other methods, which show that the proposed approach could fast extract low-contrast and narrow thin ROI precisely.


I. INTRODUCTION There is no federalism constituency within Congress. Not only do federal lawmakers and national lobbyists gladly sacrifice federalism in order to advance other interests, but state officials also "have systematic political interests that often cause them to undermine federalism."1 In explaining why both state and federal officials discount federalism, John McGinnis and Ilya Somin's Federalism vs. States' Rights: A Defense of Judicial Review in a Federal System provides an important and persuasive critique of the claim that the national political process inevitably protects federalism.2 My comments will extend Federalism v. States Rights in two ways. First, I will posit an alternative explanation as to why the national political process does not value structural federalism. In particular, I will argue that even if the American people were well informed about the benefits of federalism, they would still trade off those benefits in order to secure other policy objectives. For this reason, I think McGinnis and Somin are wrong in suggesting that informed voters would likely value federalism over other objectives and, consequently, that the problem with the political process policing federalism is that Americans are "know nothings" who have little incentive to learn about, let alone "monitor[,] the federal state balance."3 As I will argue in section II of this Comment, there is no reason to believe that the problem with federalism is that the principals (the American voters) lack the impetus to check their agents (state and federal officials). The problem is more pervasive: No one really cares about federalism.4 Second, by looking at congressional responses to the Rehnquist Court's federalism revival, I will argue that the Court could successfully pursue a more ambitious theory of structural federalism. In short, because interest groups, voters, and elected officials care more about underlying policy issues than about structural protections, there is no federalism constituency to block the Rehnquist Court's reinvigoration of federalism. This conclusion is in tension with McGinnis and Somin's contention that federal and state officials strongly support deferential judicial review of federalism issues and, as such, might resist additional judicial tightening of Congress's powers. II. FEDERALISM AND THE NATIONAL POLITICAL PROCESS Americans have low levels of political knowledge and almost no knowledge of the division of power between federal and state governments.5 Extrapolating from social science research on political knowledge, McGinnis and Somin offer a common sense explanation for voter ignorance on federalism: Unlike issues such as gun control, same sex marriage, and the death penalty, federalism is "too abstract and complicated to engage the passion of citizens."6 What, then, of Americans who are well-informed about the federal-state balance, including the benefits of federalism outlined in Federalism vs. States ' Rights'? Would they trade off federalism for other objectives? The answer to this question is important. One premise of the principal-agent theory that animates McGinnis and Somin's analysis is that informed Americans would not sacrifice structural federalism. Otherwise, there would be no need for judicial enforcement of federalism to protect the interests of voter/principals. Voter/principals, instead, would simply be part of a governmental system that regularly discounts federalism. Under this scenario, the Supreme Court might still protect federalism. But the rationale for such protection would not be moored to principal-agent theory. The justification for judicial protection of federalism, instead, would be tied to judicial efforts to advance the public interest or the Court's belief that the text and original meaning of the Constitution mandate judicial enforcement of federalism.7 McGinnis and Somin, to their credit, call attention to some of the reasons that informed voters might subordinate federalism to substantive policy objectives. …


A method is developed to quantify systematic errors in two types of sea surface temperature (SST) observations: bucket and engine-intake measurements. A simple linear model is proposed where the SST measured using a bucket is cooled or warmed by a fraction of the air–sea temperature difference and the SST measured using an engine intake has a constant bias. The model is applied to collocated nighttime observations made at moderate wind speeds, allowing the effects of solar radiation and strong vertical gradients in the upper ocean to be neglected. The analysis is complicated by large random errors in all of the variables used. To estimate coefficients in this model, a novel type of linear regression, where errors in two variables are correlated with each other, is introduced. Because of the uncertainty in a priori estimates of the error covariance matrix, a Bayesian analysis of the regression problem is developed, and maximum likelihood approximations to the posterior distributions of the model parameters are obtained. Results show that the temperature change in bucket SST resulting from the air–sea temperature difference can be detected. The analysis suggests that bucket SST may be in error by a fraction from 0.12° 0.02° to 0.16° 0.02°C of the air–sea temperature difference. When this temperature change of the bucket SST is accounted for, a warm bias in engine-intake SST in the mid- to late 1970s and the 1980s was found to be smaller than that suggested by previous studies, ranging between 0.09° 0.06° and 0.18° 0.05°C. For the early 1990s the model suggests that the engine-intake SSTs may have a cold bias of 0.13° 0.07°C.


This study was conducted in Mizewa watershed which is located in Blue Nile Basin (BNB) to estimate on-site financial cost of erosion in terms of yield reduction taking maize as representative crop. For this purpose, discharge measurement and runoff sampling was made during the rainy season of 2011 at the outlet of three sub watersheds within Mizewa catchment; lower Mizewa (MZ0), Upper Mizewa (MZ1) and Gindenewur (GN0). The samples were filtered to separate the sediment which was subsampled for determination of suspended sediment concentration (SSC), sediment fixed NO3 -, NH4 + and available phosphorous (P) contents. The filtered water was used to assess dissolved nitrate and dissolved phosphate. The on-site financial cost of erosion was estimated based on productivity change approach (PCA) focusing on available NP losses. The result revealed that the SSC and its NP content varied in space and time, in which higher and lower SSC occurred towards the beginning and end of the rainy season, respectively. The mean seasonal discharge was found to be 2.12±0.75, 1.49±0.52 and 0.57±0.20 m3/ sec at MZ0, MZ1 and GN0 stations in that order while the corresponding sediment concentration was 510±370 mg/l, 230±190 mg/l and 370±220 mg/l. This led to the total suspended sediment loss (SSL) of 4 ton/ha/year, 2 ton/ha/year and 3 ton/ha/year from the respective subwatersheds. The on-site financial cost due to N and P lost associated with SSL was estimated to be USD 200/ha, USD 186/ha and USD 227/ha from MZ0, MZ1 and GN0 watersheds, respectively. The study revealed that the economic impacts of soil erosion which is variable based on the characteristics of land resources and management practices are immense and deserve due attention. The result may help in sensitizing both farmers and decision-makers about the risk of soil erosion and in targeting management practices to overcome the challenges.


Respect for and protection of each individual's inherent human dignity as envisaged by 10 of the Constitution is a foundational principle in our law. It has, therefore, come as no surprise that Fabricius J recently found in Stransham-Ford v Minister of Justice and Correctional Services and Others 2015 (4) SA 50 (GP) that the common law sanction against assisted suicide, infringes the right to human dignity of patients who find themselves in a state of constant, unbearable pain as a result of a terminal illness. This brave and ground-breaking judgment may be the first step in paving the way for the legalisation of assisted suicide in our law.


Atmospheric conditions at Chajnantor have been monitored since April 1995. Starting then, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), joined by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), and the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO), have operated atmospheric and weather monitoring equipment to characterize the observing conditions for a large radio interferometer for astronomy at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths. The data have demonstrated Chajnantor is an exceptionally good site. In this work, we examine the atmospheric transparency at Chajnantor before direct measurements begun. We first show the surface water vapor pressure at Chajnantor is a good estimator of the daily-average atmospheric transparency by direct correlation with measurements of optical depth at 225 GHz. Next, we show the surface water vapor pressure at the Calama airport correlates reasonably well with the surface weather conditions at Chajnantor. These findings then allow us to examine the transparency at Chajnantor since 1973 through the analysis of the Calama surface weather data. Besides, we also include here a determination of the strength of the so-called Bolivian winter (regional monsoon) based on a normalized index calculated out of surface water vapour pressure. This index helps us to get the annual regional humidity trend, and in turn can be useful to compare the atmospheric observing conditions from year to year.


The abortifacient effects of five plant species commonly used by Nigerian traditional birth attendants to achieve relatively painless delivery, hasten fetal delivery and evacuate retained placenta were investigated. Aqueous extracts of the plants were prepared and screened pharmacologically using isolated smooth muscle preparations and pregnant animals. The extracts were also subjected to toxicological and phytochemical studies. The extracts contracted isolated uterine smooth muscle preparation and potentiated oxytocin‐induced responses of the uterus. In the whole animal, the extracts caused expulsion of fetuses in the third trimesters of pregnancy. These results appear to justify their traditional uses.


Groundwater provides a vital source of drinking water for rural communities in many parts of Africa, particularly in the dry season when there are few safe alternative sources. This paper summarises results from a study (n = 428) assessing dry season water quality, both microbiological and inorganic chemistry, in handpump equipped boreholes (HPBs) across the Ethiopia Highlands (n = 142), Malawi (n = 162) and Uganda (n = 124) using a stratified, randomised sampling design. This study seeks to examine general water quality by randomly sampling rural groundwater supplies across larger areas with different geology and climate. The majority, 72%, of HPBs surveyed provide good quality dry season drinking water as defined by WHO drinking water quality criteria. Within this overall picture, the most notable constraints were from thermotolerant coliforms (TTCs), which exceeded the WHO drinking water guideline of zero colony forming units (cfu/100 ml) in 21% of sites (range 0–626 cfu/100 ml). TTC contamination was found to have a significant and positive correlation with annual average rainfall (ρ = 0.2, p = 0.00003). Across all three countries, WHO health based chemical drinking water quality values were exceeded at 9% of sites and were found for manganese (4%), fluoride (2.6%) and nitrate (2.5%); arsenic concentrations were below the guideline value of 10 μg l−1 (range < 0.5–7 μg l−1). The high percentage of Mn exceedances (14% ± 5.2% >400 μg l−1) found in drinking water sources in Uganda challenges the decision by WHO not to formalise a health-based guideline for Mn. While the overall level of microbiological contamination from HPBs is low, results from this study strongly suggest that at a national and regional level, microbiological contamination rather than chemical contamination will provide a greater barrier to achieving targets set for improved drinking water quality under the UN-SDG 6. Efforts should be made to ensure that boreholes are properly sited and constructed effectively to reduce pathogen contamination.


In the last decades, a growing industry has been created in relation to building envelope retrofits. Linked to the lack of financial capacity of many building owners, innovative instruments such as energy performance contracts have been promoted by public bodies. This kind of instruments require of detailed energy assessment processes in order to define the expected heat load reduction and the associated economic flows between building owners and Energy Services Companies. When dealing with building envelopes, existing methods for building envelope heat loss characterization require of substantial efforts in terms of equipment and time, which makes them difficult to apply in real practice. In this paper, a novel method is proposed based on whole-building heat load assessment by means of heat meters, and analytical calculations of building envelope transmission heat load coefficients. This method, which requires minimal or no additional equipment, can be used over historical data from District Heating systems. It assigns a specific load fraction to building envelope heat transfer and allows to assess the expected reduction due to the building envelope retrofit. Numerical and experimental data is presented based on an educational building in the city of Burgos, Spain.


In the 21st century public health protection of citizens faces new challenges brought by the social-economic situation which was highly influenced by the demographic ageing of the population, science technology progress, intensifying integration of European countries, globalisation processes and climate warming. Considering these factors the World Health Organization has set goals for the health protection sector in 2001 not only to improve people's health, to protect them from diseases and their wasting outcomes, but also to implement legitimate expectations by improving the quality of medical service, that is, implementing advanced information technologies in health care institutions and thus allowing the development of an eHealth system. The survey was conducted in May–August 2012, in the largest Out-patient clinics of Vilnius City-Centro Out-patient clinics and Seskinės Out-patient clinics. 400 questionnaires were distributed to health care specialists that are providing health care services using health information systems. 320 completed questionnaires were received. The aim of the study is to analyse and evaluate the opinions of health care services providing solutions for specialists about the impact of information technology in facilities performance changes. Key findings. 1. More frequently than other health care specialists, the health care specialists who considered their computer literacy as very high tended to think that the development of information technologies is essential for the polyclinic. Health care specialists who considered their computer literacy as very high reported that information technologies had facilitated the accessibility and quality of health care services as well as the use of information technologies in work places greatly facilitated the provision of health care services. Significant positive correlation was established between the employees' self-evaluation of computer literacy competencies and the facilitation of accessibility and provision of health care services. 2. It was determined that with the rise in seniority of an employee, the evaluation of positive impact of information technologies decreases. Older health care specialists more often, compared to younger health care specialists, tended to think that the impact of information technologies to accessibility and provision of health care services is insignificant.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Dendritic cells (DC) primed with tumor antigens can effectively mediate the regression of a variety of established solid malignancies in both murine and human models. Several experimental studies indicate that apoptotic bodies are an optimal source of tumor antigens for ex vivo priming of DC. However, the clinical use of killed tumor cells as a source of antigens will require an optimal methodology to induce effective tumor cell apoptosis.

DESIGN AND METHODS
The goal of this study was to compare the efficiency of three agents for inducing neoplastic B lymphocyte apoptosis; staurosporine, infection by modified vaccinia (MVA) viral particles and ultraviolet C (UVC) radiation.

RESULTS
The three methods were finely tuned to induce apoptosis in more than 90% of tumor cells after 24 hours of exposure. However, the viability of monocyte-derived DC, loaded with B-cell tumor apoptotic bodies induced by staurosporine or MVA viral particles, decreased dramatically within 48 hours after phagocytosis of the killed neoplastic cells. The persistence of the apoptosis-inducing agents in the apoptotic bodies and not in the tumor supernatant, was responsible for the observed damage to DC viability. In contrast, DC viability was not affected after uptake of tumor cells killed through UVC-irradiation. Furthermore, B-lymphoblastic cell line (LCL)-specific T cells were reactivated by DC loaded with apoptotic bodies induced by UVC-rays.

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
Since the method used to induce tumor cell apoptosis might be detrimental to DC viability, these findings should be considered when designing anticancer vaccination programs.


The IRS has heard every possible excuse for missed deadlines. Like teachers, IRS personnel inevitably listen to tales of dogs who eat important documents dogs, computers that crash and grandmothers who die (sometimes repeatedly). So when a taxpayer offers "my attorney got sick" as an excuse a late estate tax return, it is not surprising that the argument meets resistance. In Freeman v. United States, the executor of a decedent's estate sought a refund of penalties paid for filing a late return. In a suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the estate argued that the illness of the estate's attorney constituted "reasonable cause" for late filing, and thus any penalties under IRC § 6651(a) were improper. The court disagreed with the estate, and the penalty was upheld. The Freeman case is a clear reminder that executors have certain responsibilities that they cannot delegate to others.


Software development methodologies are becoming increasingly abstract, progressing from low level assembly and implementation languages such as C and Ada, to component based approaches that can be used to assemble applications using technologies such as JavaBeans and the .NET framework. Meanwhile, model driven approaches emphasise the role of higher level models and notations, and embody a process of automatically deriving lower level representations and concrete software implementations. The relationship between data and software is also evolving. Modern data formats are becoming increasingly standardised, open and empowered in order to support a growing need to share data in both academia and industry. Many contemporary data formats, most notably those based on XML, are self-describing, able to specify valid data structure and content, and can also describe data manipulations and transformations. Furthermore, while applications of the past have made extensive use of data, the runtime behaviour of future applications may be driven by data, as demonstrated by the field of dynamic data driven application systems. The combination of empowered data formats and high level software development methodologies forms the basis of modern game development technologies, which drive software capabilities and runtime behaviour using empowered data formats describing game content. While low level libraries provide optimised runtime execution, content data is used to drive a wide variety of interactive and immersive experiences. This thesis describes the Fluid project, which combines component based software development and game development technologies in order to define novel component technologies for the description of data driven component based applications. The thesis makes explicit contributions to the fields of component based software development and visualisation of spatiotemporal scenes, and also describes potential implications for game development technologies. The thesis also proposes a number of developments in dynamic data driven application systems in order to further empower the role of data in this field.


Abstract Description of inhomogeneous dielectric properties of a solvent in the vicinity of ions has been attracting research interests in mathematical modeling for many years. From many experimental results, it has been concluded that the dielectric response of a solvent linearly depends on the ionic strength within a certain range. Based on this assumption, a new implicit solvent model is proposed in the form of total free energy functional and a quasi-linear Poisson-Boltzmann equation (QPBE) is derived. Classical Newton's iteration can be used to solve the QPBE numerically but the corresponding Jacobian matrix is complicated due to the quasi-linear term. In the current work, a systematic formulation of the Jacobian matrix is derived. As an alternative option, an algorithm mixing the Newton's iteration and the fixed point method is proposed to avoid the complicated Jacobian matrix, and it is a more general algorithm for equation with discontinuous coefficients. Computational efficiency and accuracy for these two methods are investigated based on a set of equation parameters. At last, the QPBE with singular charge source and piece-wisely defined dielectric functions has been applied to analyze electrostatics of macro biomolecules in a complicated solvent. A set of computational algorithms such as interface method, singular charge removal technique and the Newtonfixed- point iteration are employed to solve the QPBE. Biological applications of the proposed model and algorithms are provided, including calculation of electrostatic solvation free energy of proteins, investigation of physical properties of channel pore of an ion channel, and electrostatics analysis for the segment of a DNA strand.


Within the European Union one of the main single market priorities has been the reform of public procurement. Purchasing has traditionally been in the clerical domain but is fast becoming a strategic priority for business success. With the push for reform came the introduction of European Procurement Directives which operate in the fields of public supplies, works, services, utilities and compliance. Each member state is required to implement these into their own legislation.Since the legislation is complex and detailed it makes it a prime candidate for some form of decision support system. Staff at the University of Ulster have developed an innovative PC based system known as GALLOP - Guided Academic Learning to Legislation On Purchasing. The key objective was to design a system which would eliminate the need to wade through masses of legislation and would provide a comprehensive means of working through stages involved in a typical high value purchase. It was essential that students with limited computer experience would find it easy to learn and 'user friendly'. These needs are reflected in the overall design of the system and its content.This paper examines an application of Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) within the particular field of public procurement law. The issues discussed are the need for compliance with the public procurement legislation and the contribution of IT to business/legal education. The implementation and application of the GALLOP system is outlined and future developments examined.


ABSTRACT: The requirement for continuous improvement in the coal industry to achieve the combination of lower costs, greater capital efficiency and higher production. Longwall panels are now being mined at a faster rate requiring a commensurate increase in development rates. Development operations that cannot deliver continuity of longwall mining result in substantial flow on costs for the entire mine – from higher unit costs, lower production and loss of reliable supplier status in the coal market. A development unit which can remain well ahead of the longwall as a result of an efficient system – machines; human resources; supply logistics and efficient planning and scheduling is a vital factor in delivering a productive longwall mine. While capital solutions are often used to increase production, they may not lead to improved profitability. Often, a more efficient approach is to generate improvements through better management of existing equipment. Through an analysis of the development delays at an Australian longwall mine, a number of potential areas for improvement have been identified. Increasing operating time is one aspect of increasing roadway development rates and the second is increasing the cutting rate. The time and motion study which was carried out at the same mine identified the bolting and


Whether public lending to firms effectively eases credit constraints has been widely studied for very small businesses. The evidence documented for larger firms refers to lending that is significantly subsidized and targeted to these businesses, so the estimated positive effects may reflect poor allocation of public credit. This paper investigates the impact on its beneficiaries of a wide, untargeted and unsubsidized, lending program in Colombia. We use data on all non-micro manufacturing firms and all formal credit operations. After correcting for potential selection biases using econometric techniques, we find that Bancoldex loans increase firms' employment, purchases of inputs, investment, and output for small (but non-micro) firms, while large firms experience increases in variable inputs, but not on investment. While both short-term and long-term Bancoldex loans are found to have positive impacts on output, input demand and employment, only long-term loans increase investment. Moreover, short-term loans have a larger impact on input demand than long-term loans. Our findings also indicate that Bancoldex' beneficiaries end up with improved overall credit conditions after receiving Bancoldex credit: the amount of credit received goes up, the duration of the loans increases, and beneficiaries are able to establish credit relationships with more financial intermediaries. Though the interest rates go down, in this dimension the effect is small.


In Lissoclinum cyclopeptide alkaloids, oxazole, thiazole, oxazoline and thiazoline moieties alternate with std. amino acid residues. These five-membered heterocyclic rings result from condensation of serine, threonine and cysteine side chains with the preceding carbonyl groups in a peptide sequence. The unique macrocyclic heterocyclic scaffolds present in Lissoclinum cyclopeptides are expected to offer great opportunities for mol. recognition. In our research work a novel C3-sym. scaffold has been efficiently synthesized. In this analog of Lissoclinum cyclopeptides the oxazole and thiazole moieties are replaced by imidazole units. The scaffold exhibits the property that variable receptor arms can be easily attached by simple alkylation reactions. The utility of the scaffold as a skeleton for large receptors has been examd. with a corresponding trisbipyridyl deriv. toward phloroglucinol.


Detailed studies of MgZnO-based metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) solar-blind ultraviolet photodetector with different electrode structures are performed. A two-dimensional physical model is established based on the Poisson's equation and time-dependent continuity equations, which is verified by our experimental data of conventional electrode MSM detector. The steady-state characteristics and transient response of semicircular and triangular electrode MSM detectors are also investigated by this model. Compared with the conventional electrode, semicircular and triangular electrode devices exhibit a substantial improvement on the photocurrent. At a bias of 10 V, the steady-state saturated photocurrents for semicircular and triangular electrode devices are 14.69 nA and 24.37 nA respectively, corresponding to a 20.5% and 100% increase over the conventional electrode detector. Meanwhile, the transient peak photocurrents reach 31.38 nA and 52.09 nA respectively, both of which are notably larger than that of conventional device.


In the modern world of cell biology, it is understood that virtually all cells in the body continuously synthesize a multitude ofproteins, and the pathways of synthesis and secretion of these proteins are well established. The continuous turnover of cells in many tissuesis also an accepted idea, and embryonic and adult stem cells are of central importance, both for the cellular economy and in malignant transformation. None of these phenomena were understood at the beginning of the career of Charles Philippe Leblond, and his extraordinary contributions to these fields have fundamen–tally changed our concepts of cell biology.


This report describes a survey of weather impacts on current Washington State Department of Transportation (DOT) snow-and-ice control maintenance operations and how weather information is currently used within the DOT. The report further describes the capabilities of the meteorological community to provide meteorological and pavement condition data and the forecasting of future conditions. Finally, the report describes pilot programs which are recommended to investigate the ability of the Washington State DOT to reduce costs and improve resource allocation through the use of weather information in the snow-and-ice control decision process.


The Indian manufacturing sector has grown at an impressive average rate of 9.5 per cent annually since 2003-04. Its sustained growth is crucial for generating employment opportunities needed to absorb the rapidly expanding workforce. In this context, this paper reviews the current state of the sector and focuses on determinants of its competitiveness. The paper finds that Indian manufacturing sector exhibits a great deal of regional variation and a marked dualism between the organized and the unorganized segments in terms of both productivity and wage levels. The level of labour absorption in the organized manufacturing sector has been weak as reflected in the declining labour intensity in this sector. This does not augur well for achieving inclusive growth. We also find that although there have been significant changes in the composition of exports in the last 20 years; India is still a very small player at the global level, especially in knowledge intensive and advanced technology products. Finally, the paper explores India's potential for transforming itself into a hub of mass manufacturing. We find that the main constraints in doing so have been the low level of R&D, relative lack of skilled personnel and relatively low FDI levels.


Target tracking consists of two main steps: measurement-to-track data association and track filtering. When multiple targets are present in proximity, both steps are more prone to errors. The more the measurement covariances for multiple targets overlap, the greater the data association ambiguity. This chapter presented three sets of techniques for achieving good performance in the face of this ambiguity. One option is to incorporate features into the measurement-to-track cost matrix. This can be a reasonable approach, if the chosen feature is readily and accurately observable and if it segregates the target set. Regardless of the chosen cost function, another approach to resolving measurement-to-track ambiguity is to defer the decision until additional scans of measurements have been collected. The MHT uses this approach, which works well in cases where the ambiguity is likely to resolve overtime. In some cases, the targets may be unresolved or very closely-spaced for long periods of time, necessitating cluster tracking.


According to the importance of technological capability in economic growth and enhancing welfare of countries, the subject of technological capability evaluation is marked particularly over recent years. Various international models related to technological capability evaluation have been designed and introduced. Regarding to inherent specifications of these indices which have got some defects, in this study it is tried to introduce a composite index in this field considering existent experiences for evaluating technological capabilities of countries more precisely in various aspects. Also it is tried that a more applicable index for various countries especially developing ones which have got an unbalanced development mostly is designed by provision of the logical weights resulting from the application of factor analysis.  . Corresponding Author : email@example.com In this study, 17 indicators were selected among 37 valid international indicators in the field of technological capability. In the following, these indicators were put in 3 aspects on the basis of factor analysis and then specific weights were assigned to these aspects and indicators. Finally, based on these indicators in the 3 aspects, the index of World Technological Capability Monitoring was established and introduces. Technological capability levels of 69 countries along with Iran were investigated. In this evaluation, in spite of acceptable situation in aspects of technology development infrastructure and innovation capability, Iran faces serious problems in the aspect of investment quality. At last it should be mentioned that composite index for technological capability monitoring adds new abilities to other international indexes in case of technology capability evaluation.


Behind the scenes, a revolution is taking place in primary and secondary education. Once thought sacrosanct, the principle of local lay control has come under growing attack. In the 1970s and 1980s, governors sought greater influence by promulgating academic standards and even taking over failing schools. Mayors soon followed, with some wresting control of struggling local school systems. Atop this, the president and Congress greatly extended their reach into U.S. classrooms with enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which requires annual reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8, tougher yardsticks to measure whether pupils are making sufficient progress, and penalties for schools that persistently fall short. The result is a spider's web of responsibility. It is difficult, if not impossible, to figure out where accountability lies. Not only have municipal, state, and federal authorities reasserted control over the separate education government that the nation long ago created, but an array of other institutions --including the courts, community-based organizations, and education management companies --are also deeply involved in school decisions. These trends have created a growing gap between those who make education policy and those responsible for the results. What's more, they have contributed to widespread confusion about how to fix public education. In Who's in Charge Here? some of the finest minds in education cut through the confusion to analyze key issues such as the Constitution's role in allocating responsibility for education, the pros and cons of growing federal control, how to ensure a supply of talented teachers for the underprivileged, the impact of the school-choice movement, and the expanding non-academic role of schools. Other chapters explore the history of U.S. education governance and propose principles for creating a new system that especially benefits the children who are most in need. The question of who should be in charge of America's schools is likely to occupy the nation for years to come. Based on extensive scholarship and practical experience, Who's in Charge Here? is an important contribution to this critical debate.


Justice blind to - or blinded by - race Drawing on previously untapped sources, these nine community studies represent some of the best new work on how racial justice can be shaped by the particulars of time and place. Although each essay is anchored in the local, several larger themes emerge across the volume - such as the importance of personality and place, the movement of former slaves from the capriciousness of "plantation justice" to the (theoretically) more evenhanded processes of the courts, and the increased presence of government in daily American life. Local Matters cites a wide range of examples to support these themes. One essay considers the case of a quasi-free slave in Natchez, Mississippi - himself a slaveowner - who was "reined in" by his master through the courts, while another shows how federal aims were subverted during trials held in the after-math of the 1876 race riots in Ellenton, South Carolina. Other topics covered range from blacks and the ballot in Washington Country, Texas, to slaves, crime, and the common law in New Orleans.


Usage of software engineering research in industrial practice is a well-known challenge. Synthesis of knowledge from multiple research studies is needed to provide evidence-based decision-support for industry. The objective of this paper is to present a vision of how a knowledge translation framework may look like in software engineering research, in particular how to translate research evidence into practice by combining contextualized expert opinions with research evidence. We adopted the framework of knowledge translation from health care research, adapted and combined it with a Bayesian synthesis method. The framework provided in this paper includes a description of each step of knowledge translation in software engineering. Knowledge translation using Bayesian synthesis intends to provide a systematic approach towards contextualized, collaborative and consensus-driven application of research results. In conclusion, this paper contributes towards the application of knowledge translation in software engineering through the presented framework.


BACKGROUND
As lung cancer screening with low-dose CT scanning is implemented, an increasing number of people will be diagnosed with pulmonary nodules. Primary care clinicians care for the vast majority of these patients, but their experiences with communication and managing distress in this population are not well understood.

METHODS
We conducted qualitative interviews of 15 primary care providers (PCPs) at two academic medical centers who care for patients with pulmonary nodules. We used qualitative description analysis, focusing on clinicians' information exchange and other communication behaviors.

RESULTS
Most PCPs believed they had inadequate information to counsel patients regarding lung nodules, although this information is desired. PCPs were concerned patients could "fall through the cracks" but did not have access to a reliable system to ensure follow-up adherence. They were limited by time, knowledge, and resources in providing the preferred level of care. Most PCPs did not discuss the specific risk a nodule was lung cancer, in part because they did not have ready access to this information. PCPs believed most patients did not have substantial distress as a result of nodule detection. Most PCPs did not include patients when making decisions about the follow-up plan.

CONCLUSIONS
PCPs often lack systemic resources to optimize patient-centered approaches when discussing incidental pulmonary nodules with patients. With the advent of lung cancer screening, pulmonologists can assist primary care colleagues by providing accurate information to counsel patients and assisting in managing conversations about the risk of cancer. Pulmonologists should support efforts to implement reliable systems to ensure adherence to follow-up.


ASP.NET MVC 4 introduces web developers to ASP.NET MVC, along with the history of web applications on the Microsoft platform. Developers will dive into each part of this framework and will learn how to leverage each piece to its fullest with code examples. Viewers will learn how to create well-structured MVC web applications from scratch, add libraries and dependencies to the web application without creating unnecessary coupling, create dynamic web pages and screens that: accept, validate, and process user input. Viewers will also learn how to expose complex data to the application users through screens, extend the MVC framework to create cross-cutting behavior with minimal code, and develop using HTML5, CSS3, jQuery to create MVC web applications that function equally well on desktops, tablets and smartphones. About the Author: Jeffrey Palermo is the President & COO of Headspring, a software engineering firm based in Austin, TX. Featured on the Inc. 500 and Austin Fast 50, Headspring gained attention in 2011 by winning the "National Best and Brightest Companies to Work For"? award as well as the 2012 Austin Business Journal "Best Places to Work"? list. Having studied and observed software history, trends, fads, and the constant pendulum swing that is the technology industry, Jeffrey prefers a "no surprises" approach to serving clients by providing the right solution to their unique problem. He is a six-time recipient of the "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional"? (MVP) award and has spoken and facilitated at industry conferences such as: VSLive, DevTeach, the Microsoft MVP Summit, and Microsoft Tech Ed. He also speaks to user groups around the country as part of the INETA Speakers' Bureau. A graduate of Texas A&M University, an Eagle Scout, and an Iraq war veteran, Jeffrey holds his share of certifications, has published many magazine articles, and has written two books. He is a recent MBA graduate of the Jack Welch Management Institute.


Inactivation of p53 by mutation occurs in half of human tumours. The majority of these mutations affect the DNA-binding core domain and hence impair DNA binding and hinder transcription of p53 target genes. A wealth of data indicates that even cancers carrying wild type p53 protein, evolve mechanisms to render the p53 pathway inactive. Thus, inactivation of the p53 response, either by mutation or the alternative mechanisms, allows unpurturbed tumour growth. Recent work identified Anterior Gradient-2 (AGR2) as a protein overexpressed in wild type p53 expressing tumours and it was subsequently shown that AGR2 inhibits p53 pathway. In this study I confirmed that AGR2 protein inhibits p53 and AGR2 depletion potentiates p53-dependent DNA damage response. As there were no physiological signals known that regulate the AGR2-p53 axis, here I set out to identify pathways that activate or inhibit AGR2. I found that transforming growth factor β(TGF- β) triggers AGR2 protein reduction and this is concomitant with the stabilisation and increased activity of p53 protein. TGF-β halts AGR2 transcription in a SMAD4- dependent manner and triggers AGR2 protein degradation involving an ATM kinase. I found that SMAD nuclear interacting protein (SNIP1) mediated the ATMdependent AGR2 degradation. Interestingly, SNIP1 overexpression by itself promoted AGR2 protein degradation. I found that AGR2 protein degradation was proteasome independent and involed autophagy-lysosomal degradation pathway. As the mechanism of p53 inhibition by AGR2 is not known, I reasoned that identifying interactors of AGR2 may potentially further our understanding of the mechanism accounting for AGR2-mediated p53 inhibtion. I isolated the ATP binding protein Reptin in the yeast two-hybrid system and subsequently validated it as an AGR2 binding partner. Mutations of the two ATP binding motifs in Reptin resulted in altered oligomerization and thermostability of Reptin and affected the AGR2-Reptin complex stability. I also identified the Reptin docking site and it was mapped to a divergent octapeptide loop. I found that AGR2-Reptin complex coimmunoprecipitated with the p53 protein. Subsequently, I showed that Reptin protein can influence p53 activity, and depending on local concentration, either inhibit the transcription of p53-genes or chaperone its DNA binding activity. Interestingly, I found that Reptin formed a stable complex, independent of AGR2, with p53 R175H, p53 F270A, p53 S269D and p53 S269A, which has implication for the Reptin function in cancers bearing mutant form of p53 protein.


We use two-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamic numerical calculations to show that highly collimated relativistic jets can be produced in neutron star merger models of short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) without the need for a highly directed engine or a large net magnetic flux. Even a hydrodynamic engine generating a very wide sustained outflow on small scales can, in principle, produce a highly collimated relativistic jet, facilitated by a dense surrounding medium that provides a cocoon surrounding the jet core. An oblate geometry to the surrounding gas significantly enhances the collimation process. Previous numerical simulations have shown that the merger of two neutron stars produces an oblate, expanding cloud of dynamical ejecta. We show that this gas can efficiently collimate the central engine power much like the surrounding star does in long-duration GRB models. For typical short-duration GRB central engine parameters, we find jets with opening angles of an order of 10° in which a large fraction of the total outflow power of the central engine resides in highly relativistic material. These results predict large differences in the opening angles of outflows from binary neutron star mergers versus neutron star–black hole mergers.


Lambda-grids are richly interconnected collections of plentiful, geographically-distributed computing and storage resources. This rich connectivity is enabled by dedicated dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical paths. With abundant bandwidth in the center of the network (many DWDM links), contention and sharing bottlenecks move from the network core to end systems. In such networks, traditional TCP is insufficient to provide acceptable performance. We identify the key communication characteristics of this radically different network, introducing a new multipoint-to-point communication pattern for data-intensive application. We evaluate several promising rate-based data transport protocols (RBUDP, SABUL/UDT and GTP) for lambda-grids under a range of communication patterns (single stream, multiple parallel streams, converging streams, and rapid transitions). Our experiments use a range of performance metrics, including sustained throughput and loss rate, inter- and intra-protocol fairness, protocol overhead, and rate adaptation speed to flow transitions. The results provide insights into the capabilities of these three protocols and also for improvements in design and implementation of rate-based protocols.


Author: Xu, Xiaohui. MS Institution: Purdue University Degree Received: December 2018 Title: Investigation of Energetic Materials and Plasmonic Nanostructures Using Advanced Electron Microscopy Techniques Committee Chair: Lia Stanciu and Volkan Ortalan Investigation of laser-matter interaction has been an important research topic which is closely related to applications in various fields including industry, military, electronics, photonics, etc. With the advent of ultrafast transmission electron microscope (UTEM), in situ investigation of the interaction between pulsed laser and nanostructured materials becomes accessible, with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. Here, we studied two categories of materials with the help of UTEM, namely, energetic materials and plasmonic nanostructures. The results demonstrate that UTEM provides a novel and convenient way for the investigation the structural and morphological change of energetic materials under external stimuli at nanoscale. Also, UTEM makes it possible to visualize the light-induced welding between plasmonic nanostructures at real time, which helps to reveal more details about the mechanisms involved. Furthermore, we studied the formation of some novel structures by combing different gold and silver nanostructure.


The aim of this work was to perform the microbiological and physicochemical characterization of surimi made from waste of piramutaba filleting. The results of physicochemical characterization of the waste and surimi were: moisture (76.37 and 79.11%), total lipids (5.35 and 0.74%), proteins (14.92 and 10.79%), ash (3.03 and 2.35%), pH (6.9 and 7.4), caloric value (109.15 and 77.86 kcal.g –1 ), and water activity (both 0.98), respectively. The results of the levels of total volatile bases were 7.29 mgN/100 –1 g (waste) and 7.01% carbohydrate (surimi). The values of total lipids and proteins were reduced during the preparation of surimi, probably due to successive washes during the processing. Waste and surimi were examined microbiologically and are in compliance with required parameters. The results show a loss of red (a* parameter) and yellow (b* parameter) color. On the other hand, the L* parameter (lightness) increased after the processing of surimi. It can be concluded that piramutaba waste can be used for surimi preparation and as a source of nutrients for human consumption, providing an alternative use of these wastes avoiding their disposal polluting the environment.


Freedman, Lovasz and Schrijver characterized graph parameters that can be rep- resented as the (weighted) number of homomorphisms into a fixed graph. Several extensions of this result have been proved. We use the framework of categories to prove a general theorem of this kind. Similarly as previous resuts, the characteri- zation uses certain infinite matrices, called connection matrices, which are required to be positive semidefinite.


Beginning with the 'frog-leg experiment' by Galvani (1786), followed by the demonstrations of Volta pile by Volta (1792) and lead-acid accumulator by Plante´ (1859), several battery chemistries have been developed and realized commercially. The development of lithium-ion rechargeable battery in the early 1990s is a breakthrough in the science and technology of batteries. Owing to its high energy density and high operating voltage, the Li-ion battery has become the battery of choice for various portable applications such as note-book computers, cellular telephones, camcorders, etc. Huge efforts are underway in succeeding the development of large size batteries for electric vehicle applications. The origin of lithium-ion battery lies in the discovery that Li+-ions can reversibly be intercalated into/de-intercalated from the Van der Walls gap between graphene sheets of carbon materials at a potential close to the Li/Li+ electrode. By employing carbon as the negative electrode material in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the problems associated with metallic lithium in rechargeable lithium batteries have been mitigated. Complimentary investigations on intercalation compounds based on transition metals have resulted in establishing LiCoO2 as the promising cathode material. By employing carbon and LiCoO2, respectively, as the negative and positive electrodes in a non-aqueous lithium-salt electrolyte, a Li-ion cell with a voltage value of about 3.5 V has resulted. Subsequent to commercialization of Li-ion batteries, a number of research activities concerning various aspects of the battery components began in several laboratories across the globe. Regarding the positive electrode materials, research priorities have been to develop different kinds of active materials concerning various aspects such as safety, high capacity, low cost, high stability with long cycle-life, environmental compatibility, understanding relationships between crystallographic and electrochemical properties. The present review discusses the published literature on different positive electrode materials of Li-ion batteries, with a focus on the effect of particle size on electrochemical performance.


Flat surfaces decorated with micro- and nanostructures are important tools in biomedical research used to control cellular shape, in studies of mechanotransduction, membrane mechanics, cell migration and cellular interactions with nanostructured surfaces. Existing methods to fabricate surface-bound nanostructures are typically limited either by resolution, aspect ratio or throughput. In this work, we explore electron beam lithography based structuring of the epoxy resist SU-8 on glass substrate. We focus on a systematic investigation of the process parameters and determine limits of the fabrication process, both in terms of spatial resolution, structure aspect ration and fabrication throughput. The described approach is capable of producing high-aspect ratio, surface bound nanostructures with height ranging from 100 nm to 4000 nm and with in-plane resolution below 100 nm directly on a transparent substrate. Fabricated nanostructured surfaces can be integrated with common techniques for biomedical research, such as high numerical aperture optical microscopy. Further more, we show how the described approach can be used to make nanostructures with multiple heights on the same surface, something which is not readily achievable using alternative fabrication approaches. Our research paves an alternative way of manufacturing nanostructured surfaces with applications in life science research.


Abstract This paper reports the radula structure and diets of trochid ( Thalotia conica, Prothalotia lehmanni) and columbellid (Pyrene bidentata) gastropods that reside amongst the terminal leaf clusters of the seagrass, Amphibolis griffithii, in shallow, subtidal regions of south-western Australia. Both trochids possessed similar rhipidoglossan radulae that swept diatoms, small encrusting coralline algae and other organisms from the seagrass leaves. Pyrene bidentata used similar food resources but also consumed some larger food fragments (e.g. hydroid colonies) with its rachiglossan radula. Snail diets most closely reflected the range and abundance of epiphytes on leaves in summer. During particularly the winter, certain diatoms were disproportionately present in snail diets, either through active food selection or because some diatoms were patchily distributed on leaves. Although unidentifiable materials accounted for about 20–35% by volume of food present in snail stomachs, our data support the view th...


This report is an output from the Global Framework for Climate Services Adaptation Program in Africa (GFCS-APA) Tanzania country activities. The aim of the report is to establish a baseline for monitoring "User Satisfaction with Climate Services" at the national, district, and local levels, with a focus on the programme target districts of Longido and Kiteto. A qualitative approach was employed to document 1) existing institutional coordination and steering mechanisms for a dedicated climate services platform at the national level; 2) respondents' awareness of and access to climate information and services at national, district and local levels; 3) respondents' perceptions of the 'usability' of climate information and services, and 4) the role of indigenous knowledge (IK) about weather, climate, and related adaptation options. Following Cash et al., (2003), we analyzed "user satisfaction" in relation to respondents' perceptions of the credibility, salience, and legitimacy of climate information and services. Key findings include: 1) A national steering mechanism for climate services has been adopted, but there is a need to strengthen institutional coordination across all scales; 2) Awareness of and access to climate information and services are highly variable across institutional scales, indicating a need for increased awareness of the concept of climate services as well as efforts to enhance delivery of climate information; 3) Perceptions of the credibility of climate information and services are paramount to increasing user satisfaction, and depend upon respondents' experience using climate information in practice. Mismatches between the timing of decision-making and the production and delivery of forecasts, as well as the limited spatial and temporal resolution of climate information and products, undermine the salience of climate information. The way in which forecasts are currently packaged and communicated presents additional challenges to understanding and interpreting the information for practical decision-making. At the local level, disparities in capacities to access and benefit from climate information and services and the potential for climate information to take on political implications when attached to specific advice pose challenges to the legitimacy of climate information and services development. 4) IK was seen as being particularly important to decision-making at local levels, where it gains its credibility through the long-term observations it is based on, as well as the experience that communities already have working with this knowledge. Incorporating IK within climate services development is necessary to enhance the legitimacy of the processes and the applicability of the knowledge that is generated to local decision-making, but there are a number of challenges to incorporating scientific and indigenous knowledges. The findings highlight that improving user satisfaction with climate services will be a long-term process that requires capacity building among producers, intermediaries, and users at all levels, particularly to promote innovation in delivery, communication, and tailoring of climate services products. Developing knowledge that is salient, credible, and legitimate in particular decision-making contexts will also require long-term collaboration, as well as transparency about the strengths and limitations of scientific information and open dialogue about the various ways in which stakeholders at different scales assess the credibility of climate information. Based on the analysis, the authors put forward twelve recommendations to improve user satisfaction with climate information and services in Tanzania in the future. Language of Report: English Rapporten kan bestilles fra: CICERO Senter for klimaforskning P.B. 1129 Blindern 0318 Oslo Eller lastes ned fra: http://www.cicero.uio.no The report may be ordered from: CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo) PO Box 1129 Blindern 0318 Oslo, NORWAY Or be downloaded from: http://www.cicero.uio.no


This paper begins by describing some patterns in home price movements over recent decades. It then discusses some distinguishing characteristics of housing markets that will contribute to determining prices going forward: Housing is heterogeneous, making prices hard to measure. Home prices are subject to inertia and are sticky downward. Housing markets have traditionally been quantity clearing markets, with excess inventories absorbed only as new households are formed. And housing markets depend critically on credit market conditions and monetary policy. Two opposite scenarios for future home prices are both plausible: The first, noting among other things the many "underwater" mortgages and unsold inventories and the likelihood of a severe recession, foresees a slow recovery. The second observes that the market clearing process has been orderly so far and that deep regional housing busts in the past have sometimes been followed by quick recoveries, suggesting that a more rapid turnaround is possible.


Significance Skin pigmentation reflects strong local adaptation to latitude after humans migrated around the globe. In the Northern Hemisphere, the gene SLC24A5 plays a key role in the genetic basis of light skin pigmentation, where a nonsynonymous mutation in the gene has swept to fixation in contemporary Europeans. Although considered European-specific, we find this mutation at an unexpectedly high frequency in light-skinned KhoeSan from South Africa, far exceeding the European gene flow during colonial migration. Using haplotype analysis and comprehensive demographic modeling including positive selection, we show that this is an example of surprisingly strong adaptation of a recently introduced allele, via back-to-Africa migration, which occurred less than 2,000 y ago. Skin pigmentation is under strong directional selection in northern European and Asian populations. The indigenous KhoeSan populations of far southern Africa have lighter skin than other sub-Saharan African populations, potentially reflecting local adaptation to a region of Africa with reduced UV radiation. Here, we demonstrate that a canonical Eurasian skin pigmentation gene, SLC24A5, was introduced to southern Africa via recent migration and experienced strong adaptive evolution in the KhoeSan. To reconstruct the evolution of skin pigmentation, we collected phenotypes from over 400 ≠Khomani San and Nama individuals and high-throughput sequenced candidate pigmentation genes. The derived causal allele in SLC24A5, p.Ala111Thr, significantly lightens basal skin pigmentation in the KhoeSan and explains 8 to 15% of phenotypic variance in these populations. The frequency of this allele (33 to 53%) is far greater than expected from colonial period European gene flow; however, the most common derived haplotype is identical among European, eastern African, and KhoeSan individuals. Using four-population demographic simulations with selection, we show that the allele was introduced into the KhoeSan only 2,000 y ago via a back-to-Africa migration and then experienced a selective sweep (s = 0.04 to 0.05 in ≠Khomani and Nama). The SLC24A5 locus is both a rare example of intense, ongoing adaptation in very recent human history, as well as an adaptive gene flow at a pigmentation locus in humans.


We present a novel hierarchical framework for high resolution, nonrigid facial expression tracking. The high quality dense point clouds of facial geometry moving at video speeds are acquired using a phase-shifting based structured light ranging technique. To use such data for temporal study of the subtle dynamics in expressions and for face recognition, an efficient nonrigid facial tracking algorithm is needed to establish intra-frame correspondences. In this paper, we propose such an algorithmic framework that uses a multi-resolution 3D deformable face model, and a hierarchical tracking scheme. This framework can not only track global facial motion that is caused by muscle action, but fit to subtler expression details that are generated by highly local skin deformations. Tracking of global deformations is performed efficiently on the coarse level of our face model with one thousand nodes, to recover the changes in a few intuitive parameters that control the motion of several deformable regions. In order to capture the complementary highly local deformations, we use a variational algorithm for non-rigid shape registration based on the integration of an implicit shape representation and the Free Form Deformations (FFD). Due to the strong implicit and explicit smoothness constraints imposed by the algorithm, the resulting registration/deformation field is smooth, continuous and gives dense one-to-one intra-frame correspondences. User-input sparse facial feature correspondences can also be incorporated as hard constraints in the optimization process, in order to guarantee high accuracy of the established correspondences. Extensive tracking experiments using the dynamic facial scan of five different subjects demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of our proposed framework.


Chapter 5 of the Sexual Offences Amendment Act strives to achieve two objectives. It makes post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) accessible to victims of sexual assault, whether a charge is laid or not. In addition, it allows for the victim or the investigating officer to make application for the forcible disclosure of the HIV status of the accused, within 90 days of the assault. It is argued that the provision of PEP to victims of sexual assault is required by section 27(1) of the Constitution, and is an obligation that the state should assume and discharge efficiently and ably. However, it is considered that the provisions compelling the accused to disclosure his HIV status to the victim and investigating officer serve no medical purpose, and seriously infringe a number of important constitutional rights. The authors go on to argue that a magistrate has to be satisfied that a prima facie case has been made that the accused sexually assaulted the victim before compelling disclosure. Given the seriousness of this finding, it is very likely to be robustly contested by the accused and consequently victims may have to testify twice, initially at these proceedings and subsequently at the criminal proceedings. They argue that the medical, legal and support services provided to the victim should be upgraded and improved. The authors identify some clinics that are operating with reasonable efficiency. They argue that the simplistic solution of compelling the accused to disclose his HIV status is aimed at making up for the inadequacies of policing and the inability to prosecute effectively. They also submit that the test results may bring false hope and result in poor choices being made regarding treatment. They submit that the testing provisions may not be in the medical best interests of the patient and the provisions are not reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society and consequently unconstitutional.


About 80% of federal appellate decisions are non-precedential. This Article examines the practical consequences for district courts and litigants confronting inconsistent appellate opinions issued by the same federal circuit. Specifically, this is a case study comparing the divergent binding and non-precedential opinions applying one frequently invoked constitutional theory within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the "state-created danger" theory of substantive due process. The comparison demonstrates that the risks of non-precedential opinions are real. During the six-year interval between binding state-created danger decisions, the Third Circuit created inconsistent non-precedential opinions on the identical legal theory. Doctrinal divergence between the Third Circuit's binding and non-precedential opinions has undermined the predictive value of precedential state-created danger decisions, creating an obstacle to settlement at both the trial and appellate levels. In turn, district courts' unpredictable application of the non-precedential opinions has undermined the critical appellate functions of ensuring that like cases are treated alike, that judicial decisions are not arbitrary, and that legal issues resolved at the appellate level need not be relitigated before the district courts. The practice of issuing non-precedential opinions is justified on efficiency grounds, as a mechanism for overburdened appellate courts to manage their dockets. But doctrinal inconsistency between the Third Circuit's precedential and non-precedential opinions undercuts the efficiency rationale because doctrinal divergences may have led plaintiffs and defendants to value cases differently - potentially leading to more litigation, fewer settlements, and additional need for judicial decision-making. This Article proposes several reforms to reduce doctrinal inconsistency between precedential and non-precedential opinions. Because an appellate court should weigh the same considerations in making each of its publication decisions, the Third Circuit should replace its amorphous publication guideline with specific criteria. The Article concludes by suggesting that, consistent with the common law tradition of empowering the applying court to assess the persuasive value of a judicial decision, the Third Circuit should no longer refuse to cite its own non-precedential opinions, and should follow several circuits in expressly according persuasive value to its non-precedential opinions.


Planning in an on-line robotics context has the specific requirement of a short planning duration. A property of typical contemporary scenarios is that (mobile) robots perform similar or even repeating tasks during operation. With these robot domains in mind, we propose database-driven macroplanning for STRIPS (DBMP/S) that learns macros – action sequences that frequently appear in plans – from experience for PDDL-based planners. Planning duration is improved over time by off-line processing of seed plans using a scalable database. The approach is indifferent about the specific planner by representing the resulting macros again as actions with preconditions and effects determined based on the actions contained in the macro. For some domains we have used separate planners for learning and execution exploiting their respective strengths. Initial results based on some IPC domains and a logistic robot scenario show significantly improved (over non-macro planners) or slightly better and comparable (to existing macro planners) performance.


We report the observation of over 100 new high-lying odd levels in atomic uranium between 32 600 and 34 200 cm−1 using tunable laser techniques. These augment the 32 odd levels previously determined in this energy regime by conventional atomic spectroscopy. The method used in these studies, multistep photoionization under pulsed dye laser excitation, was also employed to make J assignments, measure radiative lifetimes, and to obtain absorption cross sections of transitions involving these levels.


This article frames the concepts of use and non-use in terms of Ingold's understanding of life as on-going movement along multiple lines, or meshwork, and tangles of relationships to people, places, and things. In addition, I draw on practice theory and the turn to ontology, which argues that any one technology is enacted as multiple technologies via different practices. Based on a study of engagement with Facebook among the young old (age 60 to 70), I argue that use and non-use can be understood in terms of the different versions of a technology enacted or envisioned. A person's engagement with a technology is a knot in the tangle of lines that are the trajectories of technologies and of people's lives.


There are now many online, digital resources in the humanities, and their creation is funded by various governmental, academic, and philanthropic sources. What happens to these resources after completion is very poorly understood. No systematic survey of digital resource usage in the humanities has ever been undertaken—and the factors for use and non-use of digital resources are unknown. The LAIRAH (Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities) Project is a 15-month long study into the factors which determine long-term use and neglect of digital resources in the Arts and Humanities. Using quantitative Deep Log Analysis techniques to understand real-time user behaviour and qualitative user workshops to gain an understanding of user approaches to digital resources in the arts and humanities, the study identifies factors that may predispose a digital resource to become used or neglected in the long-term. This article provides an overview of the techniques used in the LAIRAH project, and presents some preliminary results that may be of use to both the creators of digital resources in the humanities, and the funders of these projects, to ensure that significant intellectual effort and time, and financial resources, are not wasted in the creation of projects that are then neglected by the user community.


Involuntary musical imagery (INMI) describes the everyday phenomenon of having a tune stuck in the head. Research has established the ubiquity of this form of spontaneous cognition but the predictive role of individual differences is still debated. This study examines the impact of everyday musical behaviors and subclinical obsessive compulsive attributes on INMI experiences. In total 1,536 participants completed three online questionnaires; a novel inventory of musical behavior and INMI, and a standardized obsessive compulsion (OC) inventory. Exploratory factor analysis (N = 512) and structural equation modelling (N = 1,024) were applied. Everyday singing and music listening positively predict length and frequency of reported INMI episodes, respectively. No relationships were found with musical training. High OC was positively related to INMI frequency and disturbance, but only indirectly to INMI episode length and unpleasantness. The identified contributory factors of INMI experiences are discussed in the context of musical memory and spontaneous mental activity.


In this study, a robust backstepping approach for the control problem of the variable-speed wind turbine with a permanent magnet synchronous generator is presented. Specifically, to overcome the negative effects of parametric uncertainties in both mechanical and electrical subsystems, a robust controller with a differentiable compensation term is proposed. The proposed methodology ensures the generator velocity tracking error to uniformly approach a small bound where practical tracking is achieved. Stability of the overall system is ensured by Lyapunov-based arguments. Comparative simulation studies with a standard proportional-integral-type controller are performed to illustrate the effectiveness, feasibility and efficiency of the proposed controller.


Projects supported by the Directorate for Population (S&T/POP) of the U.S. Agency for International Development and aimed at increasing for-profit private sector involvement in providing family planning services and products are described. Making products commercially available through social-marketing partnerships with the commercial sector, USAID has saved $1.1 million in commodity costs from Brazil, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Peru. Active private sector involvement benefits companies, consumers, and donors through increased corporate profits, healthier employees, improved consumer access at lower cost, and the possibility of sustained family planning programs. Moreover, private, for-profit companies will be able to meet service demands over the next 20 years where traditional government and donor agency sources would fail. Using employee surveys and cost-benefit analyses to demonstrate expected financial and health benefits for businesses and work forces, S&T/POP's Technical Information on Population for the Private Sector (TIPPS) project encourages private companies in developing countries to invest in family planning and maternal/child health care for their employees. 36 companies in 9 countries have responded thus far, which examples provided from Peru and Zimbabwe. The Enterprise program's objectives are also to increase the involvement of for-profit companies in delivering family planning services, and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of private volunteer organizations in providing services. Projects have been started with mines, factories, banks, insurance companies, and parastatals in 27 countries, with examples cited from Ghana and Indonesia. Finally, the Social Marketing for Change project (SOMARC) builds demand and distributes low-cost contraceptives through commercial channels especially to low-income audiences. Partnerships have been initiated with the private sector in 17 developing countries, with examples provided from the Dominican Republic, Liberia and Ecuador. These projects have increased private sector involvement in family planning, thereby promoting service expansion at lower public sector cost.


Jews and Judaism in the 21st Century: Human Responsibility, the Presence of God and the Future of the Covenant, edited by Edward Feinstein. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing 2007. 166 pp. $24.99. Jews and Judaism in the 21st Century: Human Responsibility, the Presence of God and the Future of the Covenant is a collection of lectures and conversations that took place over four days in March 2005 in celebration of Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis's eightieth birthday. As founder of several innovative synagogue movements that have been influential throughout America and, most recently, creator of Jewish World Watch, an organization that has formulated a Jewish response to the genocide in the Sudan, Rabbi Schulweis has been a central figure in 20th and 21st century Judaism. In this book four prominent Jewish leaders, Rabbi David Ellenson, Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg Rabbi Harold Kushner, and Rabbi David Hartman, together with the honoree, gently debate issues of central concern to the contemporary Jewish community. These rabbis make compelling arguments for the necessary and even healthy diversity of ways to be a Jew in the twenty-first century, all the while pointing toward what is shared over time and across denominations. The reader of this book will feel like the proverbial "fly on the wall" and will be rewarded by some wonderful insights that shed light on how pivotal moments in twentieth-century Jewish experience will continue to inform the direction of Jewish life and thought into the twenty-first. Because of their prominent positions as Jewish leaders, and, often, common experience, these men know each other personally, and they can readily refer to each other's key ideas. This makes for easy and informed dialogue among them that gives the collection a personal tone. There is a predictable overlap in their upbringing education, and career paths that also lends a friendly ambience to their conversations. Representing three branches of Judaism, all have been pulpit rabbis and thus bring congregational experience to this collection. In addition, all have higher degrees beyond rabbinic ordination, including Ph.D.s from secular institutions, and throughout their careers they have had regular intersection with other religious communities and secular Jews. The result of their coming together is a warm and deferential series of conversations in the context of celebrating the life and work of Rabbi Harold Schulweis. Part I of Jews and Judaism in the 21" Century is an edited collection of lectures given by each participant on the topic of "How Have You Changed? How Have We Changed?" The book opens with Rabbi Schulweis's address, "Globalism and the Jewish Conscience." Citing an array of Jewish texts, and drawing frequently from Abraham Joshua Heschel, he makes the case that Judaism is from its origins a global religion, concluding that Jews are called upon to sanctify the universe through responsible action toward all humans in partnership with God. Rabbi Ellenson echoes this theme in "Building a World in Which God Would Be Happy to Live," posing two questions he deems inextricably related and, thus, central for contemporary Jews: "How do we treat our own people, and how do we treat others?" (p. 37). In "From Destruction to Redemption," Rabbi Greenberg chooses to focus on two central events of the twentieth century, the Shoah and establishment of the State of Israel. (Indeed, both events are frequently present throughout the book.) In "Covenant of Love" Rabbi Hartman links three eras, biblical, rabbinic and the foundation of Israel, stating that each era represents "three aspects of the covenant" in which "God is the energizing principle for a deep moral and social activism within the community "(p. …


A new material description for sheet metal forming using Finite Elements has been developed. The description consists of a yield criterion and a hardening rule. In contrast to most former criteria the new criterion is based on multi-axial stress states. The yield criterion is extended with a physically based hardening rule, in which the flow stress depends on the strain and strain rate. A Limiting Dome Height test is used to examine the material description.


This article discusses the likely Australian copyright implications of an increasingly popular form of digital music expression: the music mash-up, a majority of which are created from pre-existing audio/sound recordings and video without permission of the copyright owner. In examining this issue, the analysis of the courts in the recent Larrikin music copyright infringement cases are examined. Consideration of the implications of music mash-up creation to moral rights is also considered. In the hypothetical scenario that a music mash-up artist is accused of copyright infringement, consideration is given as to the likely outcome of the application of the fair dealing exceptions under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Finally, a suggestion is made as to the direction of future law reform in this area.


Abstract The lava domes in the northwestern (Cuma), northern (Punta Marmolite) and central (Accademia) parts of the Phlegrean Fields are the subject of this study. The Cuma and Punta Marmolite trachyphonolitic lava domes are among the oldest Phlegrean products cropping out. The Cuma rocks have an agpaitic groundmass, with early alkali feldspar, Fe-rich clinopyroxene, Fe-edenite and sodalite and late rosenbuschite, fluorite, baddeleyite, pyrochlore, britholite, monazite, aegirine (often Zr-rich) and exceptionally Fe–Mn-rich olivine. The bulk-rock compositions at Cuma have some of the highest concentrations of Zn, Mn, Zr, Nb, Th, U and lanthanides among the Phlegrean Fields rocks, and some of the lowest MgO, P2O5, Sr, Eu and Ba. The Punta Marmolite dome is chemically less evolved, and lacks characteristic agpaitic minerals, but features alkali feldspar, sodalite, nepheline and relatively Na-poor, Fe-rich hedenbergite, with rare Ca-rich plagioclase xenocryst cores. The Accademia dome, belonging to the recent activity, is latitic to trachytic in composition, has highly forsteritic olivine (with chromiferous spinel inclusions), calcic plagioclase and Mg-rich diopside (± phlogopite) xenocrysts in an evolved host rock (with phenocrysts and microlites of alkali feldspar, Fe-rich clinopyroxene, Fe-rich amphibole, magnetite, Fe-rich olivine and accessory baddeleyite, zirconolite and fluorite). There is clear evidence of open-system magma crystallization in the form of interaction between a crystallizing, primitive shoshonitic basalt in a reservoir already filled by rather evolved trachytic magma. The magmatic evolution towards the evolved compositions is dominated by crystallization of more and more Na-rich alkali feldspar in a Cl-, F-rich and relatively H2O-poor environment. Input of mafic magma is evident in many trachytic eruptions of the Phlegrean Fields and even in the products of the Campanian Ignimbrite, but eruptions having mineral assemblages rich in xenocryst phases as well as eruptions virtually free of mafic magma input are also frequently observed throughout the history. This suggests a variable pattern of open- and closed-system crystallization, which may or may not be linked to explosive activity, and that can be caused by intermittent supply of basaltic magma from depth.


The genomes of classical inbred mouse strains include genes derived from all three major subspecies of the house mouse, Mus musculus. We recently posited that genetic diversity in the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IGH) gene loci of C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice reflects differences in subspecies origin. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted high‐throughput sequencing of IGH gene rearrangements to document IGH variable (IGHV), joining (IGHJ) and diversity (IGHD) genes in four inbred wild‐derived mouse strains (CAST/EiJ, LEWES/EiJ, MSM/MsJ and PWD/PhJ) and a single disease model strain (NOD/ShiLtJ), collectively representing genetic backgrounds of several major mouse subspecies. A total of 341 germline IGHV sequences were inferred in the wild‐derived strains, including 247 not curated in the international ImMunoGeneTics information system. By contrast, 83/84 inferred NOD IGHV genes had previously been observed in C57BL/6 mice. Variability among the strains examined was observed for only a single IGHJ gene, involving a description of a novel allele. By contrast, unexpected variation was found in the IGHD gene loci, with four previously unreported IGHD gene sequences being documented. Very few IGHV sequences of C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice were shared with strains representing major subspecies, suggesting that their IGH loci may be complex mosaics of genes of disparate origins. This suggests a similar level of diversity is likely present in the IGH loci of other classical inbred strains. This must now be documented if we are to properly understand interstrain variation in models of antibody‐mediated disease.


A nanodot array morphology gradually develops on SiO2 surface when a thin bi-layer of Au and Si undergoes ion irradiation. An increasing amount of gold silicide is detected as islands on the insulator surface evolve into nanodots as a function of increasing ion fluence. Different stages of evolution from islands to nanodots are found to be driven by the localized melting of Au along the ion-track and dewetting of the metal film. Dewetting is accompanied by sputter-erosion and mixing of Au and Si at the bi-layer interface due to ion energy deposition. Interestingly, a gradual transition in wettability of the surface from the hydrophilic to the hydrophobic one is observed with the growth of nanodots, which is correlated with the compositional variation. The experimental results indicate a route towards the controlled growth of composite nanodots on an insulator surface having hydrophobic properties using ion irradiation.


Summary form only given. We address programming abstractions for building protocols from smaller, reusable microprotocols. The existing protocol frameworks, such as Appia and Cactus, either restrict the amount of concurrency between microprotocols, or depend on the programmer, who should implement all the necessary synchronisation using standard language facilities. We develop J-SAMOA: a framework for a synchronisation augmented microprotocol approach in Java. It has been designed to allow concurrent protocols to be expressed without explicit low-level synchronisation, thus making programming easier and less error-prone. We describe versioning concurrency control algorithms. They are used by the runtime system of our framework to guarantee that the concurrent execution of a protocol is equivalent to a serial execution of its microprotocols. This guarantee, called the isolation property, ensures consistency of session or message-specific data maintained by microprotocols.


Photoreceptor cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) channels regulate Ca2+ influx in rod and cone photoreceptors. cGMP, the native ligand of the photoreceptor CNG channels, has been associated with cytotoxicity when its levels rise above normal due to defects in photoreceptor phosphodiesterase (PDE6) or regulation of retinal guanylyl cyclase (retGC). We found a massive accumulation of cGMP in CNGA3-deficient retina and investigated whether cGMP accumulation plays a role in cone degeneration in CNG channel deficiency. The time course study showed that the retinal cGMP level in Cnga3−/−;Nrl−/− mice with CNGA3 deficiency on a cone-dominant background was sharply increased at postnatal day 8 (P8), peaked around P10–P15, remained high through P30–P60, and returned to near control level at P90. This elevation pattern correlated with photoreceptor apoptotic death, which peaked around P15–P20. In Cnga3−/−;Gucy2e−/− mice lacking retGC1, cone density and expression levels of cone-specific proteins were significantly increased compared with Cnga3−/−, consistent with a role of cGMP accumulation as the major contributor to cone death caused by CNG channel deficiency. The activity and expression levels of cGMP-dependent protein kinase G (PKG) were significantly increased in Cnga3−/−;Nrl−/− retina compared with Nrl−/−, suggesting an involvement of PKG regulation in cell death. Our results indicate that cGMP accumulation in photoreceptors can itself exert cytotoxic effect in cones, independently of CNG channel activity and Ca2+ influx.


Teachers' continuing professional development, that is an essential part of their professional career, is the subject of constant demand of them and of each educational reform interest. The rapid growth of technology and the choices of teaching and learning that it provides give possibilities for synchronous and asynchronous methods of distance continuing training which get over the problems traditional face to face methods create. A synchronous e-learning software provide virtual environment of teaching in which the possibility for enhance interactive and collaborative learning is given. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the perspectives of physical educators for the synchronous online teaching method process. The participants were 15 in-service teachers of elementary physical education who took part in a training program which was conducted with the synchronous Centra software. The results show the participants' satisfaction from the particular instructive method and their conviction that it allows the active presence and the collaborative learning, without influences by the lack of physical presence in the same space of instructor and learners.


We analyse the structural changes that have characterised the organisation of industrial R&D over the last 25 years. Taking Mowery's work (Industrial and Corporate Change, 2009, 18(1), 1–50) on the US as a starting point, we reconsider the different aspects of structural change he examined, discuss their impact and the overall logic underlying them. We then examine Europe to discover to what extent these structural changes have occurred in recent years. While a certain structural evolution is perceptible, it is not on the same scale as that analysed for the US. Finally, we consider the extent to which the new structures are more or less 'efficient' than previous ones. We conclude with the implications for R&D and innovation policy implications. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.