Background:Actinic Keratosis (AK) lesions are cutaneous neoplasms develop as a result of chronic UV exposure.Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is used in conjunction with molecular oxygen to elicit cell death (phototoxicity). Aim of work: Investigation of complete responses ratesafter daylight photodynamic therapy using methylene blue versus cryotherapy in the treatment of AKs. Patients and Methods:We conducted out an experimental study at Dermatology, Venereology and Andrology Department, Zagazig University Hospitals on 30 AK patients suitable for daylight photodynamic therapy with methylene blue (DL-MB/PDT) (liposomal-loaded methylene blue gel 10%) in 15 patients (group I) and cryotherapy in the other 15 patients (group II). Results: there was no statistical significant difference between groups I and II in response to treatment.Group I showed 86.7% partial response and 13.3% complete response and group II showed partial response 80% and complete response 20%. Absence of response to daylightMB/PDT was not observed. In our study, there was no statistically significant relation between response and demographic, history and clinical data in group I and group II. Conclusion: In conclusion, MB/PDT is a useful and safe therapeutic method for treating AKs, which had advantages over cryotherapy. We believe that MB is an excellent alternative as the advantages of MB include its high safety profile, low cost as it is routinely available in hospital pharmacies.


In this article the empirical data about the usage of e-services by rural dwellers and small and medium enterprises are presented. The survey was carried out all over Lithuania with the purpose to analyze the peculiarities how small and medium enterprises (SME) and rural dwellers use e-services and to distinguish a demand for e-services in rural Lithuanian regions. The results show that the use of e-services among SMEs is determined by the general demand of communication with concrete state institutions. Citizens usually use public services in traditional ways; electronic means are used very rarely. However, making comparison between citizens who use public e-services at least once with those who use e-services constantly, it was noticed that e-services are quite popular, especially talking about such services as e-services of involvement in higher education, public libraries, employment agencies, e-government, post, city public transport and public information announcement.


In this study, we examined the site‐specific effects of a large episodic flood on the riparian vegetation within the floodplain of the San Luis Rey River in southern California. Using multispectral airborne videography, we quantified percent cover of riparian vegetation, cultivated agricultural land, urban surfaces, upland vegetation, bare soil, and water within 22 sections of flood‐plain, both before and after a large flood (January 13, 1993). We also quantified the amount of these cover types within bands of the watershed 1 km wide × 5 km long directly upstream of each floodplain site. The amount of riparian vegetation destroyed by the flood within each section varied from nearly zero to almost 40% of pre‐flood coverage. The magnitude of loss in riparian vegetation was most strongly related to the amount of riparian vegetation initially present in the floodplain and the amount of urban surfaces in the nearby watershed. These results suggest that riparian vegetation within the San Luis Rey River floodplain is generally at high risk of destruction from large floods, and that this risk is exaggerated in areas with high urban development. We infer from these results that sites near existing large areas of intact riparian vegetation and away from urban development will have the highest potential for successful long‐term restoration.


When The Heritage Foundation asked me to address the subject, "What's Right About American Culture," I was particularly challenged by the idea. My wife, Diane, immediately commented "That will probably be a very short speech." Praising the current state of our national culture does not come naturally to me. I talk much more frequently about "What's Wrong with American Popular Culture." But recently, I had the great privilege of giving a lecture in Warsaw. And what struck me there--as I think it strikes any Americans who travel in Eastern Europe--is the absolute fascination with all things American, the tremendous eagerness to learn about American culture. And after all, let's understand that our popular culture, including many aspects of that popular culture that conservatives disdain, is hugely accepted, in fact enthusiastically accepted, around the world. EXPORTING AMERICA In every country on earth, the most popular form of movies is American movies. The most popular form of music is American music. And even when it comes to television, American television shows are disproportionately popular. Now, clearly, something is right about American culture, not only because of its popularity abroad but because of its impact on the wider world. This is a point that Ben Wattenberg makes, with great glee, as a rebuke to those of us who criticize American popular culture. He offers a challenge: If this popular culture is so terrible, then why is it that the liberating force of American music, movies, and television helped to inspire, by all accounts, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe? We all remember the inspiring example of the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia. Would that those young people in the streets who helped to bring that about were singing Dvorak or Smetana or Janacek, their great national composers. But they weren't. They were singing American rock music. They were craving American jeans. They were interested in, God help us, Madonna and the rest of what we would call American trash culture. Somehow this popular entertainment, which seems to have such a negative and devastating impact here at home, has exerted liberating influence abroad. So, how can that be? What, after all, is right about American culture? There are three underlying themes that have always been part of the American experience, of our national culture, of that unique outlook that we would describe as American, and those elements are still palpably present in American popular culture: First, an overriding and transcendent belief in self-improvement, in the ability of the individual to transform himself into virtually anything he wishes; Second, a great emphasis on tolerance and diversity. Finally, an underlying rude, rowdy, and very consistent disrespect for all established authority. All of these tendencies have been present in this country and played a role in our national consciousness since colonial days. And all of them are still there, even in the sometimes frightening and barren worlds of popular music, television, and motion pictures. After sketching out how these cultural themes have helped to shape the country for the last 350 years, we also have to ask why their influence has become somewhat problematic for our society today. ONE BY ONE The idea of self-improvement, the ability to transform oneself into something new, is almost a direct product of our unique geographical circumstances. To get here, everybody had to cross an ocean at one time or another. That necessary voyage has always represented a defining experience. That act of crossing an ocean meant that you left your old world behind and came to a new world. This inevitably conveys the idea of a fresh start, becoming a new person. Perhaps this nowhere is more dramatically illustrated than in the instance of Georgia, which, of course, a lot of us think of as the home of Scarlett O'Hara and Tara. …


Excerpt] Agriculture should provide safe and nutritious food to people. In the People's Republic of China (PRC ) and many other developing members of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), agriculture is also the main source of income for rural residents. Yet as compared with the total labor force absorption, the contribution of agriculture to gross domestic product is very small, suggesting lower productivity, often resulting in poverty. Recognizing the invaluable contribution of agriculture to the PRC 's development, the government has been prioritizing agricultural modernization in its policy agenda with an aim to further improve the agricultural sector's productivity and efficiency. ADB's support to the sustainable development of agriculture in the PRC covers broad areas ranging from irrigation infrastructure and farmland upgrading to agribusiness development and food safety. The Dryland Sustainable Agriculture project commenced in 2009 with ADB assistance supports the development of partnerships between private agro-enterprises and farmers using contract farming arrangements to strengthen farm productivity, food production, and processing capacity in 27 counties in Gansu, Henan, and Shandong provinces. After 6 years, the project has delivered considerable amount of outputs in terms of facilities established and farmers engaged, showing promise in achieving its outcome. Concurring with the request from the Ministry of Agriculture, the project executing agency, ADB provided a grant to study the experiences arising from the project with respect to developing sustainable farmer–enterprise partnerships particularly contract farming models. Equally important, the study examines the issues involved in current contract farming practices and recommends policies that may help resolve them.


This study investigated the extent faculty members in the University of Benin, Benin City. Nigeria, use internet services for instructional purposes. The study set out to find out the most popular areas of internet usage among faculty members and to determine the role of gender in such usage. A questionnaire made up of 18 Likert-type items, were distributed to 300 faculty members and 258 usable copies of the questionnaire were returned and used for the study. Results revealed that 13 of the items were significant as the most recurring internet usages among faculty members. The most popular internet uses were in writing and publication of journal articles. word processing, searching for relevant instructional materials, accessing of reference materials and the use of internet in courses. The data did not find any significant difference between male and female in internet usage. ********** There is a universal recognition of the need to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education in this era of globalization where the free flow of information via satellite and the internet holds sway in the global information dissemination of knowledge. Integrating ICT into teaching and learning is quite daunting, complex and tasking. On the other hand, the National University Commission (NUC), the regulatory body for Nigeria's University System, took a step further sometime ago towards making the ivory towers computer literate. The NUC made it clear that Nigeria's educational system, particularly the universities, must embrace ICT to make them competitive in the international global systems. In a workshop on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) organized for ICT managers from the universities across the country in December 2003, the chairman, House of Representative Committee on Education made it clear that Nigerian universities have no alternative than to embrace ICT in order to assert themselves and maintain global competitiveness. He said: Like their counterparts in the western world, they should embark on massive implementation and commissioning of campus-wide local area networks, digitization of library materials, computerization of Management Information system, aggressive e-learning programme and enabled internet connectivity, which is the only physical evidence of your membership of global knowledge society (The Guardian: 45). There is no doubt that ICT can play significant role in the orderly development and management of Universities. It is in realization of this fact that the University of Benin has invested heavily in acquiring ICT in the past five years to support teaching and learning. During this period, the university has initiated several IT projects such as UB Technologies which has extended internet services to the immediate university community. Also, the university has computerized several of its operations such as students enrolment, course registration, payroll and widespread used of information and technology in teaching and learning. In fact, most of the offices of academic staff in the university are linked to the internet and lecturers are embracing the culture of ICT revolution in order to assert themselves and maintain global competitiveness. The research described in this paper set out to find and examine how ICT use was permeating a whole university and being implemented as a tool used by lecturers for teaching and learning across the curriculum. The reports in this paper focused on a single case of a university, where ICT is used for teaching and learning in all the faculties. Applications of Information and Communication Technologies need to be evaluated so that stakeholders, potential users and decision makers can be fully informed. Research on the application of the internet in teaching and learning is growing and its contribution to the promotion of knowledge in the educational setting can fully be ascertained through adequate research. …


This paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to evaluate the economic repercussions of cryptocurrency. We assume that cryptocurrency offers an alternative currency option to government currency for households and we have an endogenous supply and demand for cryptocurrency. We estimate our model with Bayesian techniques using monthly data for the period 2013:M6-2019:M3. Our results indicate a substitution effect between the real balances of government currency and cryptocurrency in response to technology, preferences and monetary policy shocks. In addition, real balances of cryptocurrency exhibit a countercyclical reaction to these shocks. Moreover, we find that government currency demand shocks have larger effects on the economy than shocks to cryptocurrency demand. Our results also show that cryptocurrency productivity shocks have negative effects on output and on the exchange rate between government currency and cryptocurrency, with a more pronounced negative reaction to output if the central bank increases its weight to government currency growth. Overall, our results provide novel insights on the underlying mechanisms of cryptocurrency and spillover effects to the economy.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the association between sustaining a second anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and (1) time to return to sport, (2) symmetrical muscle function, and (3) symmetrical quadriceps strength at the time of return to sport in young athletes after primary ACL reconstruction.

DESIGN
Prospective cohort study.

METHODS
Patient demographics and results from 5 tests of muscle function (2 strength tests and 3 hop tests) were extracted from a rehabilitation registry. A questionnaire was sent to athletes (15-30 years old) who were involved in knee-strenuous sport before the injury and had undergone primary ACL reconstruction to determine time of return to knee-strenuous sport (preinjury Tegner Activity Scale score of 6 or greater). We used the Cox proportional hazard regression model to analyze time to event.

RESULTS
One hundred fifty-nine (32% of the initial sample) athletes (mean ± SD age, 21.5 ± 4.4 years; 64% female) were included. Athletes with a higher preinjury Tegner Activity Scale score had a higher rate of second ACL injury (hazard ratio = 2.1; 95% confidence interval: 1.2, 3.6; P<.01). Athletes who returned to knee-strenuous sport before 9 months after reconstruction had a higher rate of second ACL injury (hazard ratio = 6.7; 95% confidence interval: 2.6, 16.7; P<.001). There was no association between symmetrical muscle function or quadriceps strength and second ACL injury.

CONCLUSION
Returning to knee-strenuous sport before 9 months after ACL reconstruction was associated with an approximately 7-fold increased rate of sustaining a second ACL injury. Achieving symmetrical muscle function or quadriceps strength was not associated with new ACL injury in young athletes. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2020;50(2):83-90. doi:10.2519/jospt.2020.9071.


Calendar or timeline techniques have developed in parallel and are used in life course research, and health behaviour and treatment studies. Both types of research seek to reconstruct histories or events in order to understand phenomena. Unsurprisingly a research strategy that seeks to represent events from memory is fraught with recall error thereby influencing consistency, completeness, and accuracy of data. Strategies can be employed to improve data quality so informants can more accurately access long term memory. One such strategy involves producing a graphical timeframe against which historical information can be represented. This is said to stimulate memory facilitating accuracy of recall and fidelity of data. There are minor variations in the application of calendar techniques, unsurprising given the different methodological heritage, nevertheless there are common characteristics. These include: graphical display of the dimension of time, use of one or more thematic axis (representing the data domains) and event or landmark cues that temporally bound the research.
The Department of Health (England) in 2008 funded a series of public health initiatives in nine 'Healthy Towns'. These initiatives were targeted on facilitating healthier lifestyles in local populations and importantly learning from projects about "what works". One "Healthy Town" – Healthy Halifax – funded ten embedded project streams all designed to encourage adoption of health lifestyles by the population living in four wards with poorest health outcomes. The challenge presented to the local evaluation team was capturing which, if any, of the projects made a difference to health lifestyles of local populations. Calendar technique were incorporated in research design to accurately represent the life history of each project and capture the antecedents, attributes and consequences of project delivery that might illuminate 'what works'. This presentation will offer a critical appraisal of the utility of calendar technique as a methodological approach for capturing process evaluation.


Why are teenagers so prone to moodiness and melodrama? Research by Shen et al. on mice suggests that neurosteroids, which potentiate γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-mediated chloride conductance and are antianxiety agents in adults, actually act to promote excitability and stimulate anxiety during puberty. Shen et al. found that the neurosteroid known as THP (3α-OH-5α[β]-pregnan-20-one) decreased, rather than increased, chloride conductance through a specific GABA receptor composed of α4β2δ subunits when this receptor was expressed in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells. In female mice, the abundance of the α4 and δ subunits, which were determined as critical for this reversed effect of THP, increased at the onset of puberty, whereas these subunits were barely detectable in prepubertal and adult animals. Electrophysiological recordings of hippocampal slices of pubertal mice confirmed that THP reduced GABA-mediated tonic inhibitory current and increased neuronal excitability, which is consistent with these GABA receptors serving as extrasynaptic tonic inhibitors of neural activity. In contrast, THP increased tonic current and neuronal excitability before puberty or in mice in which the δ subunit was knocked out. In vivo, administration of THP to pubertal mice or induction of stress, which raises endogenous production of THP, increased anxiety, measured as a reduction in the time spent in the open arm of an elevated maze. This was in contrast to the behavior of prepubertal and adult mice in which THP increased time spent in the open arm, representing an anxiolytic effect. Inhibition of THP production prevented the pro- or antianxiety effects of previous exposure to stress, thus confirming that in adults and adolescents THP is produced in response to stress despite causing opposite behavioral responses. In adult animals, withdrawal of THP stimulates the appearance of α4 and δ subunits. At the onset of puberty, THP declined, and administration of THP to the pubertal mice prevented the increase in α4 and δ subunits, thus confirming that THP also controls GABA receptor composition in both adult and adolescent mice. Thus, THP appears to be one of the keys to controlling anxiety and understanding adolescent behavior. The implications of this research for teenagers are discussed by McCarthy. H. Shen, Q. H. Gong, C. Aoki, M. Yuan, Y. Ruderman, M. Dattilo, K. Williams, S. S. Smith, Reversal of neurosteroid effects at α4β2δ GABAA receptors triggers anxiety at puberty. Nat. Neurosci. 10, 469-477 (2007). [PubMed] M. M. McCarthy, GABA receptors make teens resistant to input. Nat. Neurosci. 10, 397-399 (2007). [PubMed]


The main aim of this article is to show how a possible theoretical articulation between Uexküll's notion of Funktionskreis and the stratificational model of semiotic structures proposed by Louis Hjelmslev can be made. In order to bridge the gap between these two models, Luis Prieto's model of cognition will be used. The advantage of Prieto's model is that it retains the Hjelmslevian stratificational ideas (i.e. a semiotic structure is made up of an expression and a content plane, each one with a dimension of form and substance), while it also pays attention to agency and practice. To put it briefly, according to Prieto the foundation of practice and knowledge is to be found on aisthesis. Hence, as in Uexküll, there is a way to merge action with perception, while retaining the semiotic structure that makes such a merging possible. The key point, however, is that Prieto's model calls for an "ontological commitment" to the substance strata (both in expression and in content to some extent). Therefore, bridging Uexküll and Hjelmslev via Prieto suggests a possible way to provide a general structural model of semiosis which is closer to semiotic realism than to immanentism usually attributed to structuralism.


Single crystals of molybdenum were deformed in tension at 195°K, 273°K, 373°K and 473°K. The influence of deformation temperature and intermediate annealing treatments at 473°K and 422°K on the electrical resistivity was investigated. All resistivity measurements were made at 4.2°K. The results indicated that: (1) Point defects are created during deformation at 195°K and 273°K, (2) The rate with respect to strain at which these defects are produced is an inverse function of the deformation temperature, (3) Some or all of the point defects are mobile at 422°K and either diffuse together or to dislocations, and (4) This movement of the point defects does not affect the flow stress. No definite conclusion was reached on the dislocation model responsible for the results.


This study considered the problem of understanding and use of risk management methods in construction projects and their representation in the literature and their practical application. Research of trends in risk management was conducted using studies from the EBSCO database that were published in the period from 1999 to 2015. The focus included the development of two terms, namely traditional and holistic approach to risk management as well as to uncertainty and opportunity management. The trend of leading standards in the field of project management, PMBoK and ISO 31000 indicated full support for the modernization of risk management that focused on the risks as well as potential opportunities in the project. The findings also revealed that the global practices continued to lack awareness of risk management and its benefits for project goals. A similar situation was found in Croatia by observing project management practices in two case studies, namely Project Zagrebačka obala in Rijeka and a Project of SEECEL Zagreb. Primarily, the lack of education and communication between experts are important issues requiring attention in practice and academics. It is necessary to gradually introduce standards over time to prepare for progress in managing uncertainties and adopting more holistic approaches.


Switzerland is not only one of the oldest democracies in the world, but also an enduring model of peaceful multiethnic policy, characterized by a Constitution that is constant flux. The new Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation took effect on January 1, 2000; and it is with the intention of staying abreast of the constitutional changes and of the case law of the Federal Court that the authors have prepared the current volume. A general introduction of the constitutional history and the foundations of the Swiss political system are followed by the following issues: Sources of Swiss Constitutional Law; Organisational Design of the Swiss Confederation; Federalism in General and the Position of the Cantons and the Municipalities in the Swiss Confederation; Citizenship, Fundamental Rights and Liberties and their Judicial Protection, Protection of Minorities, Judicial Control of Administrative Action; Treaty and Foreign Affairs Powers, Taxing and Spending Powers, the Relationship between the State and the Church.


In recent years it has become increasingly apparent that conventional electrical networks cannot meet the requirements of the 21st century. These include reliability, efficiency, liberalisation of electricity markets, as well as effective and seamless integration of various types of renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, and customers as players. The emergence of new technologies such as distributed control, monitoring devices, and tremendous advances in information and communication technology have paved the way to realize the Smart Grid concept. This book identifies and discusses the tools required to ensure the interoperability among the various digitally-based components of the Smart Grid. Topics covered include an introduction to the smart grid concept; smart grid versus conventional electric networks; smart grid infrastructure; interoperability standards; communication system and its cyber security; international standard IEC 61850 and its application to smart grids; power system protection under smart grid environment; application of smart grid concept to distribution networks; integration of electric vehicles; energy storage systems; and the smart transmission grid. Introduction to the Smart Grid: Concepts, Technologies and Evolution is essential reading for researchers, engineers and advanced students working in energy engineering.


In recent years, with the popularization of deep learning frameworks and large datasets, researchers have started parallelizing their models in order to train faster. This is crucially important, because they typically explore many hyperparameters in order to find the best ones for their applications. This process is time consuming and, consequently, speeding up training improves productivity. One approach to parallelize deep learning models followed by many researchers is based on weak scaling. The minibatches increase in size as new GPUs are added to the system. In addition, new learning rates schedules have been proposed to fix optimization issues that occur with large minibatch sizes. In this paper, however, we show that the recommendations provided by recent work do not apply to models that lack large datasets. In fact, we argument in favor of using strong scaling for achieving reliable performance in such cases. We evaluated our approach with up to 32 GPUs and show that weak scaling not only does not have the same accuracy as the sequential model, it also fails to converge most of time. Meanwhile, strong scaling has good scalability while having exactly the same accuracy of a sequential implementation.


Previous research has shown that rats can profit from watching an expert demonstrator preform a simple foraging task. The purpose of the present experiment was to examine whether observing a skilled rat perform a difficult foraging task could influence performance by the observer. The present research also examined whether familiarity with the demonstrator would have an effect on imitation. In this experiment, the testing arena contained 12 towers arranged in a circle with six of them baited. The cues to finding the bait were three different and distinctive wall posters and the pattern of the baited towers. Twelve rats were randomly assigned to be either a demonstrator or an observer. In the first phase of the experiment, the six demonstrator rats were exposed to the task over 50 trials to become skilled demonstrators. In the second phase the observer rats were placed inside the arena with an opportunity to observe the demonstrators perform and then had the opportunity to perform the task themselves. Results revealed that both the demonstrators and observers performed equally over their first 20 trials. Thus, no imitation effects or familiarity effects were found.


Quantum mechanics, in its standard formulations, is well-known to suffer from conceptual and technical problems such as the quantum measurement problem and what might be called the 'problem of ontology' (i.e., the problem that it is unclear what the ontology of the physical world is according to standard quantum mechanics). In the 20th century, one of the most promising approaches developed to address these problems was "stochastic mechanics", originally proposed by Imres Fenyes in 1952, and again by Edward Nelson in 1966. In stochastic mechanics, the central goal is the reconstruction of quantum mechanics from a more fundamental theory of point particles interacting with a classical-like ether medium, where the interaction causes the particles to undergo a diffusion process on configuration space that conserves the total energy of the particles on the average. In this way, the measurement problem can easily be solved and there is no problem of ontology. On a formal level, stochastic mechanics succeeds in this central goal. However, as pointed out in 1989 by Wallstrom, on a technical level, stochastic mechanics runs into the technical problem that it cannot recover the Schroedinger equation of quantum mechanics unless an ad hoc supplementary condition is assumed; namely, that the circulation of the 'current velocity' of the diffusing particles is quantized in integer multiples of Planck's constant (basically the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition of the Old Quantum Theory). This observation was one of the primary reasons that research interest in stochastic mechanics diminished significantly in the '90's and onward. In this thesis, I reformulate stochastic mechanics so that the aforementioned quantization condition arises as a natural consequence of the classical point particles interacting with the classical-like ether. This is done by combining stochastic mechanics with a proposal by Louis de Broglie and David Bohm, in which an elementary particle in its rest frame is viewed as a localized periodic phenomenon of fixed frequency, from which it follows that the phase of the periodic phenomenon in the lab frame satisfies a relation that's equivalent to the quantization condition. In doing so, it is argued that the stochastic mechanics approach can once again be regarded as a viable approach to reconstructing quantum mechanics. In addition to reformulating stochastic mechanics, I show that stochastic mechanics yields straightforward and empirically viable models of semiclassical Newtonian gravity and electrodynamics, simply by incorporating classical Newtonian gravitational and electrostatic interactions between the particles. I also show how the Schroedinger-Newton equation and the Schroedinger-Coulomb equation arise as mean-field approximations from within these stochastic mechanical models of semiclassical Newtonian gravity and electrodynamics, and how classical Newtonian gravity can be recovered from a center-of-mass description of many interacting stochastic mechanical particles. Thus I argue that stochastic mechanics has novel implications for the problem of combining quantum mechanics with gravity in a semiclassical way (at least at the Newtonian level), and that it has certain advantages over other approaches to combining quantum mechanics and gravity semiclassically (e.g., approaches based on standard quantum mechanics or other alternative quantum theories).


In general, second language (L2) learners have limited vocabulary knowledge. In addition, they often have difficulty identifying, recognizing, or recalling the vocabulary necessary for a certain situation. This limitation and those three factors result in problematic talk where repair, improvement, and practice are merited. The purpose of the present study, following a conversation analytic (CA) perspective, explores how vocabulary-related communication problems are resolved when a low proficient learner (LPL) and a high proficient learner (HPL) communicate during their pair-work activities. In particular, this research studies the sequence of turns and repair in the talk. The study revealed that (1) the repair is mostly initiated by the LPL, (2) the HPL can be a crucial language source in the classroom, and (3) problems are caused by insufficient vocabulary knowledge and not comprehending a correctly-pronounced word. This study reveals the importance of students' pair-work (especially pair-work activities when the students have disparate English proficiency) in the language classroom and suggests communication strategies.


The validity of the manmade global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives policies, including doing nothing. Without scientific forecasts for all three aspects of the alarm, there is no scientific basis to enact regulations. In effect, the warming alarm is like a three-legged stool: Each leg needs to be strong. Despite repeated appeals to global warming alarmists, we have been unable to find scientific forecasts for any of the three legs. We drew upon scientific (evidence-based) forecasting principles to audit the forecasting procedures used to forecast global mean temperatures by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — leg "1" of the stool. This audit found that the IPCC procedures violated 81% of the 89 relevant forecasting principles. We also audited forecasting procedures, used in two papers, that were written to support regulation regarding the protection of polar bears from global warming — leg "3" of the stool. On average, the forecasting procedures violated 85% of the 90 relevant principles. The warming alarmists have not demonstrated the predictive validity of their procedures. Instead, their argument for predictive validity is based on their claim that nearly all scientists agree with the forecasts. This count of "votes" by scientists is not only an incorrect tally of scientific opinion, it is also, and most importantly, contrary to the scientific method. We conducted a validation test of the IPCC forecasts that were based on the assumption that there would be no regulations. The errors for the IPCC model long-term forecasts (for 91 to 100 years in the future) were 12.6 times larger than those from an evidence-based "no change" model. Based on our own analyses and the documented unscientific behavior of global warming alarmists, we concluded that the global warming alarm is the product of an anti-scientific political movement. Having come to this conclusion, we turned to the "structured analogies" method to forecast the likely outcomes of the warming alarmist movement. In our ongoing study we have, to date, identified 26 similar historical alarmist movements. None of the forecasts behind the analogous alarms proved correct. Twenty-five alarms involved calls for government intervention and the government imposed regulations in 23. None of the 23 interventions was effective and harm was caused by 20 of them. Our findings on the scientific evidence related to global warming forecasts lead to the following recommendations: End government funding for climate change research. End government funding for research predicated on global warming (e.g., alternative energy; CO2 reduction; habitat loss). End government programs and repeal regulations predicated on global warming. End government support for organizations that lobby or campaign predicated on global warming.


In eukaryotic translation initiation AUG recognition of the mRNA requires accommodation of Met-tRNAi in a "PIN" state, which is antagonized by the factor eIF1. eIF5 is a GTPase activating protein (GAP) of eIF2 that additionally promotes stringent AUG selection, but the molecular basis of its dual function was unknown. We present a cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) reconstruction of a 48S pre-initiation complex (PIC), at an overall resolution of 3.0 Å, featuring the N-terminal domain (NTD) of eIF5 bound to the 40S subunit at the location vacated by eIF1. eIF5 interacts with and allows a more accommodated orientation of Met-tRNAi. Substitutions of eIF5 residues involved in the eIF5-NTD/tRNAi interaction influenced initiation at near-cognate UUG codons in vivo, and the closed/open PIC conformation in vitro, consistent with direct stabilization of the codon:anticodon duplex by the wild-type eIF5-NTD. The present structure reveals the basis for a key role of eIF5 in start-codon selection.


Polyurethane (PU) coatings were successfully produced using unmodified kraft lignin (KL) as an environmentally benign component in contents of up to 80 wt%. Lignin samples were precipitated from industrial black liquor in aqueous solution working at room temperature and different pH levels (pH 2 to pH 5). Lignins were characterized by UV-Vis, FTIR, pyrolysis-GC/MS, SEC and 31P-NMR. Results show a correlation between pH level, OH number and molecular weight Mw of isolated lignins. Lignin-based polyurethane coatings were prepared in an efficient one step synthesis dissolving lignin in THF and PEG425 in an ultrasonic bath followed by addition of 4,4-diphenylmethanediisocyanate (MDI) and triethylamine (TEA). Crosslinking was achieved under very mild conditions (1 hour at room temperature followed by 3 hours at 35 °C). The resulting coatings were characterized regarding their physical properties including ATR-IR, TGA, optical contact angle, light microscopy, REM-EDX and AFM data. Transparent homogeneous films of high flexibility resulted from lignins isolated at pH 4, possessing a temperature resistance up to 160 °C. Swelling tests revealed a resistance against water. Swelling in DMSO depends on index, pH of precipitation and catalyst utilization for PU preparation. According to AFM studies, surface roughness is between 10 and 28 nm.


Turbines remain one of the most efficient devices for extracting energy from a flowing fluid. In a gas turbine engine, axial flow turbines are used to extract energy from the working fluid and drive the compressor, to which they are mechanically connected. To maximize the performance of the axial flow turbine, it is necessary to carry out a design optimization of the components while suitably accounting for losses generated by secondary flows. An axial flow turbine rig is designed, fabricated, and installed to better understand and improve upon secondary flow models used in design procedures. The rig is driven by a blower operating at a constant speed, capable of delivering a maximum airflow rate of 0.4 kg/s and a maximum pressure rise of 500 mbar across the device. The axial flow turbine is mechanically connected to a dynamometer capable of operating at a full load capacity of 5 kW and a maximum rotational speed of 10,000 RPM.
 The axial flow turbine, housed between the blower and dynamometer, consists of nozzle guide vanes followed by a rotor. The design pressure ratio is chosen as 1.04, based on the blower delivery conditions and dynamometer specifications. For an initial design, a low-pressure ratio low rotor speed design was selected, allowing for easy installation and testing of the rotating components. The design space for the axial flow turbine was generated by varying flow and geometrical parameters in suitable steps, using a program written in MATLAB 2020a. Using the input variables and applying free vortex theory for three-dimensional blade design, the aerodynamic design of the axial flow turbine was carried out. The axial flow turbine design is experimentally tested with suitable pressure measurements at every station. Experiments are conducted for four different air mass flow rates. At each air mass flow, the rotor speed is varied by increasing/decreasing the dynamometer load. The data is recorded and compared with the design point. The difference between the design and measured performance parameters is observed to be within acceptable limits.


There are a plethora of governance instruments for operationalizing human rights obligations on water and sanitation at multiple levels of governance. The realization that the human right to water and sanitation depends on the discourses and approaches used in a country to implement it implies that it is not self-evident that implementing the right will lead to inclusive development. The inclusive development aims at not only social inclusion but also ecological and relational inclusion, where the latter aims at ensuring that the structural causes of inequality are also addressed. Relying on an extensive literature review and jurisprudence on the human right to water and sanitation, we develop an ideal-typical conceptual framework for assessing the human right to water and sanitation with inclusive development as an imperative. Our framework is based on the premise that governance instruments are valueladen tools which can steer social changes depending on the contextual political paradigm which can be garnered from the goals, ownership models, accountability mechanisms and incentives of actors involved in the governance process. We, therefore, propose a simple model for assessing whether the governance instruments for operationalizing the human right to water and sanitation will, in fact, lead to inclusive development. Keywords : Human Rights, Governance, Water and Sanitation


This article discusses the artwork of Greenlandic-Danish Pia Arke (1958–2007), and the 'India Cycle' by Marguerite Duras. It suggests that Duras' and Arke's respective works constitute global narratives, and that both approach what may be termed 'the essential trait' of contemporary global history. This essential trait is made present through the pertinent figure of a subaltern female subject, occupying a 'decolonial position' at the margin of the global order. The article presents a model through which this figure may be understood and emphasizes the figure's importance for urgent political and theoretical problems, such as the veil and Islamophobia. The author also discusses Arke's striking originality, which has not achieved the attention it deserves. Through calculated ambiguity, meticulous research practices and incorporation of oral history, Arke provided a visual record of the construction of the Arctic native and the role of ethnography and photography in colonial conquest.


Pregnancy is a time when a woman experiences a number of unexpected biological, psychological and social changes. Traditionally, woman sought guidance and help from their mothers and/or social circles to learn how to tackle these changes. With the advent of the mobile revolution, women are now turning to mobile applications to do the same. In this article, we review a pregnancy tracking mobile application called Ovia, in the light of the comments made by mothers using it from around the world. We learn that women like Ovia because it allows them to track, monitor and explore their pregnancy journey by receiving personalized guidance.


Introduction. Usually the presence of a conglomerate in a stratigraphic series of rocks is a matter of considerable importance to the geologist. He naturally infers the presence of a break in the continuity of sedimentation; an orographic movement of greater or less extent; erosion of a preexisting formation. He sees, in his mental review, the waves sorting and depositing sand, pebbles and bowlders derived from the uplifted land. The idea of the lapse of a period of time of considerable and often long duration is formed as he recalls orographic movement, erosion and unconformity of deposition. If the conglomerate is near the base of some formation or series of formations, he views it as almost conclusive evidence of the marked change that introduced the new deposits. This is all fair induction from observed facts, and it is the general and approved experience of geologists. When I ventured to describe to . . .


In this paper we argue that the growing importance of the stock mark et i s one central element of t he s o called New Economy. W e analyse the economic and political reasons, the mechanisms and consequences of the increasing capital market orientation of enterprises. In the first section we want to show the fundamental difference between the maximisation of the stock price and of the profitability of the corporation. T he r easons o f the increasing c apital m ark et o rientation a re d ealt w ith in the second section. In the third section we are discussing the shareholder value concept. The institutional changes we can find in the German Corporate Governance system which are connected with the shareholder value debate are described in the fourth section. The last section sums up the consequences and the specific contradictions of the increasing capital market orientation like the contradiction between long-term and short-term maximisation of returns, the impending hollowing-out of firm competencies, and the proliferation of cash burning business models.


Aquaporin-4 (AQP4) is the major water channel expressed in fast-twitch skeletal muscle fibers. AQP4 is reduced in Duchenne and Becker Muscular Dystrophies, but not in caveolinopathies, thus suggesting an interaction with dystrophin or with members of the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex (DGC) rather than a nonspecific effect due to muscle membrane damage. To establish the role of sarcoglycans in AQP4 decrease occurring in muscular dystrophy, AQP4 expression was analyzed in muscle biopsies from patients affected by Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophies (LGMDs) 2C-F genetically confirmed. In all the LGMD 2C-F (2α-, 1β-, 2γ-, 1δ-deficiency), AQP4 was severely decreased. This effect was associated to a marked reduction in α1-syntrophin levels. In control muscle AQP4 did not show a direct interaction with any of the four sarcoglycans but, it co-immunoprecipitated with α1-syntrophin, indicating that this modular protein may link AQP4 levels with the DGC complex. To determine whether AQP4 expression could be affected in other LGMDs due to the defect of a membrane protein not associated to the dystrophin complex, we examined AQP4 expression in 6 patients affected by dysferlin deficiency genetically confirmed. All the patients displayed a reduction of the water channel, and AQP4 expression appeared to correlate with the severity of the muscle histopathological lesions. However, differently from what observed in the sarcoglycans, α1-syntrophin expression was normal or just slightly reduced. These results seem to indicate an additional mechanism of regulation of AQP4 levels in muscle cells.In accordance with a specific effect of membrane muscle disorders, AQP4 protein levels were not changed in 3 mitochondrial and 3 metabolic myopathies. In conclusion, AQP4 expression and membrane localization are markedly reduced in LGMD 2B-2F. The role of AQP4 in the degenerative mechanism occurring in these diseases will be the object of our future research.


Spring Fever? Climate Change And Water Quality In Our Local Lakes Natalia Elizabeth Woodward Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor David Fluharty School of Marine and Environmental Affairs Eutrophication, a state in which a body of water becomes over-enriched with nutrients, remains one of the biggest water quality problems both in the United States and globally. Although nutrient pollution that causes eutrophication is regulated in the United States under the Clean Water Act (CWA), eutrophication remains a significant threat. Continued land-use change, internal regeneration of nutrients, and climate change all continue to contribute to nutrient loads that lead to eutrophication. This thesis is comprised of two chapters that aim to address the interplay between external and internal nutrient sources in lakes in the face of climate change. In the first chapter I examine how climate change impacts the internal nutrient cycling in two neighboring lakes in western Washington (USA). I found that climate variability can drive the internal regeneration of phosphorus in lakes that exhibit summer anoxia. This implies that climate change has the potential to increase nutrient loads in highly productive lakes, thereby increasing the risk of eutrophication in these systems in spite of control on external nutrient inputs. In the second chapter, I review the Clean Water Act and the policy tools implemented under it by which we manage external nutrient inputs. I found that the Clean Water Act is very good at addressing easy-to-identify point sources of nutrient pollution, but is much less effective at addressing diffuse, nonpoint sources. These results suggest that in order to maintain acceptable water quality in the future, we may need to be more aggressive with nonpoint source pollution that we currently are, particularly for productive lakes that exhibit summer anoxia. This information may also help managers allocate resources for nutrient control and identify lakes that are particularly at risk of eutrophication into the future.


Abstract. The frequency of life forms in the fossil record is largely determined by the extent to which they were mineralised at the time of their death. In addition to mineral structures, many fossils nonetheless contain detectable amounts of residual water or organic molecules, the analysis of which has become an integral part of current palaeontological research. The methods available for this sort of investigations, though, typically require dissolution or ionisation of the fossil sample or parts thereof, which is an issue with rare taxa and outstanding materials like pathological or type specimens. In such cases, non-destructive techniques could provide a valuable methodological alternative. While Computed Tomography has long been used to study palaeontological specimens, a number of complementary approaches have recently gained ground. These include Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which had previously been employed to obtain three-dimensional images of pathological belemnites non-invasively on the basis of intrinsic contrast. The present study was undertaken to investigate whether 1H MRI can likewise provide anatomical information about non-pathological belemnites and specimens of other fossil taxa. To this end, three-dimensional MR image series were acquired from intact non-pathological invertebrate, vertebrate and plant fossils. At routine voxel resolutions in the range of several dozens to some hundreds of micrometers, these images reveal a host of anatomical details and thus highlight the potential of MR techniques to effectively complement existing methodological approaches for palaeontological investigations in a wide range of taxa. As for the origin of the MR signal, relaxation and diffusion measurements as well as 1H and 13C MR spectra acquired from a belemnite suggest intracrystalline water or hydroxyl groups, rather than organic residues.


Abstract The Chinese cultural factor guanxi (personal relationships) has an important influence on the implementation and effectiveness of HRM practices in China. However, few studies have investigated how guanxi influences performance appraisal in organisations with different ownership structures. We investigated this issue by studying three banks operating in mainland China: a state-owned bank, a foreign-owned bank and a city commercial bank. Both quantitative (survey of 308 employees) and qualitative data (22 in-depth interviews) were used. Macro-level convergence and micro-level divergence were found among the banks. The reform of the performance appraisal system in the state-owned bank indicated a degree of convergence towards a form commonly found in Western banks, at least on the surface. However, there were differences at the implementation level in the three banks. The perceived influence of guanxi on performance appraisal was strongest in the state-owned bank and weakest in the foreign-owned bank. The reasons for this included generational differences in cultural values, the international experience of employees and managers, and the degree of alignment between senior managers and others over the purpose of appraisal. The study demonstrates the mutability of cultural characteristics in different organisational settings.


The purpose of this research is to reveal and compare the language
proficiency profiles of Purdue's Chinese and Indian graduate applicants in
various disciplines to take a step towards the development of Language
Proficiency Literacy (LPL) of graduate admissions decision makers. The study
argues that before being able to offer LPL development opportunities to
admissions decision-makers, language testers need to gain admissions literacy
in their specific academic context. One way this can be achieved is by
analyzing graduate admissions data to see patterns of test score use in each
discipline and to reveal language proficiency profiles of graduate applicants.
Providing admissions decision makers with information about the linguistic
characteristics of their applicants can be a very helpful step towards
enhancing LPL in the context of graduate admissions.

One of the analyses conducted towards the goal LPL
development in the context of graduate admissions was a Cluster Analysis
procedure followed by a Chi-square analysis to compare the language proficiency
profiles of graduate applicants from various L1 backgrounds based on scores on
the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The study found three
language proficiency profiles in graduate applicants' TOEFL data: 1) the
'unbalanced' profile, which consists of applicants who have higher scores in
the subskills of reading and listening, and comparatively lower scores on
speaking and writing, 2) the 'balanced medium' profile, which represents
students who have moderate scores across all four subskills, and 3) the
'balanced high' profile, which consists of applicants who have high scores
across all four subskills. The study found evidence for the interaction between
graduate applicant test-takers' L1 background and belonging to a balanced or an
unbalanced language proficiency profile, which highlights the importance of
considering subskill scores in addition the total score when using language
proficiency test scores to select graduate students from specific L1
backgrounds.


This paper examines the existence of the Halloween effect for some Arab countries equity markets. The data set used in this study constitutes of daily stock prices for 9 Arab equity markets in the Middle East region. Following Bouman and Jacobsen (2002), we use regression analysis with dummy variables to test for the existence of the Halloween effect in some Arabian equity markets; which is equivalent to a simple mean test. A highly significant Halloween effect documented for 7 out of 9 Arabic equity markets in the Middle East region even after adjustments have been made for January effect.


Videogames have historically used networking either to connect players for competition or cooperation or to provide an ephemeral connection to allow the upload, comparison, or assessment of single-player achievement data. The majority of videogames take place on a screen and on established platforms each of which have physical, technical, and sociocultural constraints that dictate how a player will interact. Recent art games, such as those by Jason Rohrer and the Atari VCS games of Ian Bogost highlight experiments in a more focused use of the medium from concept to interaction, both between the player and the software but also foregrounding the code (both social codes and actual software) of the games. These artists are part of a growing movement of videogame creators that are involved not only as designers but also as cultural critics invested in the analysis of platforms and the distribution of their games. This thesis documents the development and exhibition of Gaming the Network Poetic, a series of five videogames developed by the author. This was itself an experiment in both the use of networking and in the exhibition of a cohesive art object incorporating these games. The work is then contextualized through the analysis of game-based art movements, the contemporary independent (or "Indie") games movement, and contemporary software/code-based art. Also, given that much of the theory around videogames is rooted in literary criticism, philosophy, and cultural history, these disciplines are also referenced throughout the discussion. ii Further, this thesis will address questions about the aesthetic, mechanical, and audience-related considerations of developing and installing videogames in a contemporary art space that shows mostly static work. What roles does the audience play in such an environment? How can videogames create meaning? How does one communicate emotion through a single videogame? How does the open networking of several videogames quickly add complexity, and how can that complexity be managed? What are the issues involved in choosing particular hardware and software platforms on which to present the work?


Sequence-stratigraphical scheme for the Neopalaeozoic units of the Calingasta-Uspallata basin in the western flank of the Precordillera. The Upper Palaeozoic Majaditas, Hoyada Verde / El Paso and Tres Saltos Formation (Precordillera of western Argentina) were selected to build a sequence stratigraphic framework due to the existence of laterally extensive and thick exposed sections, unconformable contact with pre-Carboniferous basement, and the presence of fossils and glacially-influenced intervals. The key surfaces used were: a) sequence boundaries, characterized by drastic basinward facies shift, b) initial flooding surfaces, accompanied by landward facies shift, and c) maximum flooding surfaces or intervals, representing the maximum landward expansion of marine conditions. Finingand coarsening-upward stacking patterns were used to define the transgressive (TST) and highstand (HST) system tracts. Sequence I rests unconformably on basement. The basal section consists of glacially-influenced deposits of a lowstand wedge. In the Hoyada Verde Formation, glacial deposits are capped by a striated boulder pavement, indicative of ice abrasion on the shelf, in turn overlain by thin-bedded diamictites (early TST), followed by IRD (ice-rafted detritus) free mudstones with fossils (late TST). Sequence II is bound by an erosional unconformity that reflects a drastic basinward shift in facies: coarse-grained sandstones and conglomerates rest on open marine mudstones and fine-grained sandstones of Sequence I. This surface coincides with the contact between the Hoyada Verde Formation (and equivalent El Paso Formation) and the Tres Saltos Formation, east of Barreal, and the contact between the Diamictitico and Rojo I Members of the Majaditas Formation farther south. The HST is dominated by coarsening-upward successions in the Rojo II and Superior Members of the Majaditas Formation. Majaditas Formation further south. A large scale, finingto coarsening-upwards vertical stacking pattern evolution indicates the passage from the TST to HST. The HST is dominated by coarsening upward successions or parasequences, as exemplified in the Miembro Rojo II and Superior Members of the Majaditas Formation.


Association football is now the global sport, consumed in various ways by millions of people across the world. Throughout its history, football has been a catalyst as much for social cohesion, unity, excitement and integration as it can be for division, exclusion and discrimination. A Sociology of Football in a Global Context examines the historical, political, economic, social and cultural complexities of the game across Europe, Africa, Asia and North and South America. It analyses the key developments and sociological debates within football through a topic-based approach that concentrates on the history of football and its global diffusion; the role of violence; the global governance of the game by FIFA; race, racism and whiteness; gender and homophobia; the changing nature of fans; the media and football's financial revolution; the transformation of players into global celebrities; and the growth of football leagues across the world. Using a range of examples from all over the world, each chapter highlights the different social and cultural changes football has seen, most notably since the 1990s, when its relationship with the mass media and other transnational networks became more important and financially lucrative.


RSK2 is a widely expressed serine/threonine kinase, and its activation enhances cell proliferation. Here, we report that ATF1 is a novel substrate of RSK2 and that RSK2-ATF1 signaling plays an important role in EGF-induced neoplastic cell transformation. RSK2 phosphorylated ATF1 at Ser-63 and enhanced ATF1 transcriptional activity. Docking experiments using the crystal structure of the RSK2 N-terminal kinase domain combined with in vitro pulldown assays demonstrated that eriodictyol, a flavanone found in fruits, bound with the N-terminal kinase domain of RSK2 to inhibit RSK2 N-terminal kinase activity. In cells, eriodictyol inhibited phosphorylation of ATF1 but had no effect on the phosphorylation of RSK, MEK1/2, ERK1/2, p38 or JNKs, indicating that eriodictyol specifically suppresses RSK2 signaling. Furthermore, eriodictyol inhibited RSK2-mediated ATF1 transactivation and tumor promoter-induced transformation of JB6 Cl41 cells. Eriodictyol or knockdown of RSK2 or ATF1 also suppressed Ras-mediated focus formation. Overall, these results indicate that RSK2-ATF1 signaling plays an important role in neoplastic cell transformation and that eriodictyol is a novel natural compound for suppressing RSK2 kinase activity.


The emergence of broadband Internet technologies, such as cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) systems, has reopened debates over how the Internet should be regulated. Advocates of network neutrality and open access to cable modem systems have proposed extending the regulatory regime developed to govern conventional telephone and narrowband Internet service to broadband. A critical analysis of the rationales traditionally invoked to justify the regulation of telecommunications networks - such as natural monopoly, network economic effects, vertical exclusion, and the dangers of ruinous competition - reveals that those rationales depend on empirical and theoretical preconditions that do not apply to broadband. In addition, the current policy debate treats access to networks as a unitary phenomenon that fails to take into account how different types of access requirements can affect network performance in widely divergent ways. The current debate also fails to capture how individual network elements can interact in ways that can be quite unpredictable. In this Article, Professors Spulber and Yoo analyze broadband access using a theory of network configuration based on a branch of mathematics known as graph theory, which captures the interactions between individual components that cause networks to behave as complex systems. This theory yields a five-part classification system that provides insights into the effect of different types of access on network cost, capacity, reliability, and transaction costs.


Flow around a square cylinder controlled using plasma actuators (PAs) is numerically investigated by direct numerical simulation in order to clarify the most effective location of actuator installation and to elucidate the mechanism of control effect. The Reynolds number based on the cylinder diameter and the free-stream velocity is set to be 100 to study the fundamental effect of PAs on two-dimensional vortex shedding, and three different locations of PAs are considered. The mean drag and the root-mean-square of lift fluctuations are found to be reduced by 51% and 99% in the case where two opposing PAs are aligned vertically on the rear surface. In that case, a jet flow similar to a base jet is generated by the collision of the streaming flows induced by the two opposing PAs, and the vortex shedding is completely suppressed. The simulation results are ultimately revisited in the frame of linear sensitivity analysis, whose computational cost is much lower than that of performing the full simulation. A good agreement is reported for low control amplitudes, which allows further discussion of the linear optimal arrangement for any number of PAs.


The murine Hox-3.5 gene has been mapped and linked genomically to a position 18 kb 3' of its most 5' locus neighbour, Hox-3.4, on chromosome 15. The sequence of the Hox-3.5 cDNA, together with the position of the gene within the locus, show it to be a paralogue of Hox-2.6, Hox-1.4 and Hox-4.2. The patterns of embryonic expression for the Hox-3.5 gene are examined in terms of three rules, proposed to relate a Hox gene's expression pattern to its position within the locus. The anterior boundaries of Hox-3.5 expression in the hindbrain and prevertebral column lie anterior to those of Hox-3.4 and all other, more 5'-located Hox-3 genes. Within the hindbrain, the Hox-3.5 boundary is seen to lie posterior to that of its paralogue, Hox-2.6, by a distance equal to about the length of one rhombomere. Patterns of Hox-3.5 expression within the oesophagus and spinal cord, but not the testis, are similar to those of other Hox-3 genes, Hox-3.3 and Hox-3.4.


The strain evolution of a GaN layer grown on a high-temperature AlN interlayer with varying AlN thickness by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition is investigated. In the growth process, the growth strain changes from compression to tension in the top GaN layer, and the thickness at which the compressive-to-tensile strain transition takes place is strongly influenced by the thickness of the AlN interlayer. It is confirmed from the x-ray diffraction results that the AlN interlayer has a remarkable effect on introducing relative compressive strain to the top GaN layer. The strain transition process during the growth of the top GaN layer can be explained by the threading dislocation inclination in the top GaN layer. Adjusting the AlN interlayer thickness could change the density of the threading dislocations in the top GaN layer and then change the stress evolution during the top GaN layer's growth.


Network pruning reduces the computation costs of an over-parameterized network without performance damage. Prevailing pruning algorithms pre-define the width and depth of the pruned networks, and then transfer parameters from the unpruned network to pruned networks. To break the structure limitation of the pruned networks, we propose to apply neural architecture search to search directly for a network with flexible channel and layer sizes. The number of the channels/layers is learned by minimizing the loss of the pruned networks. The feature map of the pruned network is an aggregation of K feature map fragments (generated by K networks of different sizes), which are sampled based on the probability distribution.The loss can be back-propagated not only to the network weights, but also to the parameterized distribution to explicitly tune the size of the channels/layers. Specifically, we apply channel-wise interpolation to keep the feature map with different channel sizes aligned in the aggregation procedure. The maximum probability for the size in each distribution serves as the width and depth of the pruned network, whose parameters are learned by knowledge transfer, e.g., knowledge distillation, from the original networks. Experiments on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and ImageNet demonstrate the effectiveness of our new perspective of network pruning compared to traditional network pruning algorithms. Various searching and knowledge transfer approaches are conducted to show the effectiveness of the two components. Code is at: this https URL.


The challenge of replicating research results has posed a significant impediment to the field of molecular biology. The advent of modern intelligent systems has led to notable progress in various domains. Consequently, we embarked on an investigation of intelligent monitoring systems as a means of tackling the issue of the reproducibility crisis. Specifically, we first curate a comprehensive multimodal dataset, named ProBio, as an initial step towards this objective. This dataset comprises fine-grained hierarchical annotations intended for the purpose of studying activity understanding in BioLab. Next, we devise two challenging benchmarks, transparent solution tracking and multimodal action recognition, to emphasize the unique characteristics and difficulties associated with activity understanding in BioLab settings. Finally, we provide a thorough experimental evaluation of contemporary video understanding models and highlight their limitations in this specialized domain to identify potential avenues for future research. We hope ProBio with associated benchmarks may garner increased focus on modern AI techniques in the realm of molecular biology.


Where the event of a great action is left doubtful, there the Poet is left Master. Dryden, preface to Don Sebastian The rumors surrounding the role of Antonio Salieri in the death of Mozart have transformed these artists into the subjects of art. In 1830 and 1981 respectively, Alexander Pushkin and Peter Shaffer brought this story of envy and murder to life in distinctively different dramas. Setting aside any issues of direct influence, the question remains--how did these two artists engage the Mozart/Salieri myth in very different social and intellectual contexts? The aspects of this rumor turned myth that take center stage in each work represent diverse interpretations not only of the historical figures and the rumors surrounding Mozart's death but also of the dominant themes--envy, art, genius, man's relationship to God, and fame. Both Pushkin and Shaffer chose Salieri as their primary vehicle for the exploration of these themes; thus, it is the two Salieris and their views of Mozart and the world that reveal a larger myth of envy, fame, and recognition that is both timeless in nature and shaped by each author's time and implied audience. Moreover, by comparing the divergences in the medium, characterization, and thematic focus employed by each author we can see how the artistic interpretation of the Mozart/Salieri rumor engages the core legends of envy represented by the mythical figures of Cain and Herostratus. (1) The differences between Pushkin's "fifth act" Little Tragedy and Shaffer's stage play are most immediately evident in the scope and length of each work. Shaffer's text is replete with stage directions and includes instruction on scenery, costume, and tempo, while, in contrast, Pushkin's minimal inclusion of secondary text has led directors, critics, actors, and readers/viewers to question its theatricality. (2) While Pushkin's drama features only the title characters and a blind fiddler, whose contribution is musical rather than verbal, Shaffer's play includes Mozart's wife, extensive mention of his father, the emperor, various representatives of the court, and venticelli, or little winds, who are defined as purveyors of information, gossip, and rumor. Shaffer expands on the biography of Mozart while Pushkin limits biographical information to mention of the artist's wife, his insomnia, and an incident just preceding the events of the play. Finally, the titles are worthy of note. Shaffer's single-character title, Amadeus, may be read as reflecting his audience's greater familiarity with Mozart and a sense of artistic irony in the contrast between the title and Salieri's domination of the audience's attention. While Shaffer's title may not indicate the same degree of connection and equanimity between the characters as Pushkin's, through Salieri's exclamation, "For the rest of time whenever men say Mozart with love, they will say Salieri with loathing!... I am going to be immortal after all!" Shaffer expresses the same reinforcement of the myth that unites the two composers. (3) The presentation of time differs in the plays as a result of the medium within which each author works. I would compare Pushkin's vision of time in Motsart i Salieri to a panoramic snapshot in which the before and after are understood via the audience's historical knowledge. As S. Bondi reminds us, "And then Mozart enters--and all the many emotional and historical associations with this name immediately surface in the viewer's mind. The same is true for the name Salieri, which was just as familiar as Mozart's name to Pushkin's contemporaries." (4) Although Mozart's future is not explicitly depicted, it is conveyed to the audience on the historical level through their familiarity with the composer and fictively through Salieri's monologues. Shaffer jumps between the historical past, historical present (Salieri after Mozart's death), and even the future through Salieri's invocation of mediocrities now and to come and implication of the audience; the comparatively expansive treatment of time may be attributed to the overall broader scope of his drama and to the audience's relative distance from the characters' lives and the rumors that surrounded them. …


This paper builds on existing research on the determinants of terrorism by looking at new measures of poverty in addition to political freedom, population fractionalization, and other country characteristics. The findings of this paper reinforce the conclusions of existing literature that political freedom is a key determinant of terrorism, with the greatest risk coming from countries that are middling between liberal democracy and authoritarian control. Further, this paper supports recent conclusions that linguistic fractionalization and geography are both related to terrorist risk as well. The new finding in this paper is that adult unemployment rate is also a significant predictor of terrorism, though it can only explain a small portion of the overall terrorist risk in a country. This paper also suggests that the Gini Index of economic inequality may also have a significant correlation with terrorist risk. The results overall imply that exclusion from the economy can be a motivator for terrorism just as exclusion from politics can be, regardless of the overall wealth of a country. This article is available in Undergraduate Economic Review: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol1/iss1/6 Undergraduate Economic Review A publication of Illinois Wesleyan University


BACKGROUND
 The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented mitigation efforts that disrupted the daily lives of millions. Beyond the general health repercussions of the pandemic itself, these measures also present a challenge to the world's mental health and health care systems. Considering that traditional survey methods are time-consuming and expensive, we need timely and proactive data sources to respond to the rapidly evolving effects of health policy on our population's mental health. Many people in the United States now use social media platforms such as Twitter to express the most minute details of their daily lives and social relations. This behavior is expected to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, rendering social media data a rich field to understand personal well-being.

 OBJECTIVE
 This study aims to answer three research questions: (1) What themes emerge from a corpus of US tweets about COVID-19? (2) To what extent did social media use increase during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic? and (3) Does sentiment change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

 METHODS
 We analyzed 86,581,237 public domain English language US tweets collected from an open-access public repository in three steps. First, we characterized the evolution of hashtags over time using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling. Second, we increased the granularity of this analysis by downloading Twitter timelines of a large cohort of individuals (n=354,738) in 20 major US cities to assess changes in social media use. Finally, using this timeline data, we examined collective shifts in public mood in relation to evolving pandemic news cycles by analyzing the average daily sentiment of all timeline tweets with the Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (VADER) tool.

 RESULTS
 LDA topics generated in the early months of the data set corresponded to major COVID-19–specific events. However, as state and municipal governments began issuing stay-at-home orders, latent themes shifted toward US-related lifestyle changes rather than global pandemic-related events. Social media volume also increased significantly, peaking during stay-at-home mandates. Finally, VADER sentiment analysis scores of user timelines were initially high and stable but decreased significantly, and continuously, by late March.

 CONCLUSIONS
 Our findings underscore the negative effects of the pandemic on overall population sentiment. Increased use rates suggest that, for some, social media may be a coping mechanism to combat feelings of isolation related to long-term social distancing. However, in light of the documented negative effect of heavy social media use on mental health, social media may further exacerbate negative feelings in the long-term for many individuals. Thus, considering the overburdened US mental health care structure, these findings have important implications for ongoing mitigation efforts.


Multiple breath inert gas washout (MBW) is a lung function technique to measure ventilation inhomogeneity. The technique was developed more than 60 years ago, but not much used for many decades. Technical improvements, easy protocols and higher sensitivity compared with standard lung function tests in some disease groups have led to a recent renaissance of MBW. The lung clearance index (LCI) is a common measure derived from MBW tests, and offers information on lung pathology complementary to that from conventional lung function tests such as spirometry. The LCI measures the overall degree of pulmonary ventilation inhomogeneity. There are other MBW-derived parameters, which describe more regional airway ventilation and enable specific information on conductive or acinar ventilation inhomogeneity. How this specific ventilation distribution is exactly related to different disease processes has not entirely been examined yet. MBW measurements are performed during tidal breathing, making this technique attractive for children, even young children and infants. These benefits and the additional physiological information on ventilation inhomogeneity early in the course of lung diseases have led to increasing research activities and clinical application of MBW, especially in paediatric lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis (CF). In these patients, LCI detects early airway damage and enables monitoring of disease progression and treatment response. Guidelines for the standardisation of the MBW technique were recently published. These guidelines will, hopefully, increase comparability of LCI data obtained in different centres or intervention trials in children and adults. In this non-systematic review article, we provide an overview of recent developments in MBW, with a special focus on children. We first explain the physiological and technical background to this technique with a short explanation of several methodological aspects that are important for understanding the principle behind the technique and enable high quality measurements. We then provide examples of MBW application in different lung diseases of children and adults, with regards to both clinical application and research activities. Lastly, we report on ongoing clinical trials using MBW as outcome and give an outlook on possible future developments.


Guided by Critical Raced-Gendered epistemologies and methodologies, this study investigated life experiences of six Latina teachers who were former English Language Learners (ELL) and are currently becoming English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers in an urban community. Multiple data sources such as interviews, open-ended autobiographical surveys, anecdotal notes, reflection journals, online discussions, and field observation notes were collected over two years and analyzed through inductive analysis in conjunction with Grounded theory. The findings present counter-narratives to dominant yet deficit narratives of minority teacher education. Salient themes included teachers9 support versus institutional racism; strength of motherhood and female family support versus traditional gender roles; agency and advocacy versus marginalized socio-cultural environments. In their journeys from ELLs to ESL teachers, constant negotiation between the conflicting life experiences and critical self-positioning turned out to be crucial.


The degree to which foraging individuals are able to appropriately modify their behaviors in response to dynamic environmental conditions and associated resource availability can have important fitness consequences. Despite an increasingly refined understanding of differences in foraging behavior between individuals, we still lack detailed characterizations of within-individual variation over space and time, and what factors may drive this variability. From 2014 to 2017, we used GPS transmitters and accelerometers to document foraging movements by breeding adult Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) in the northern Gulf of Mexico, where the prey landscape is patchy and dynamic at various scales. Assessments of traditional foraging metrics such as trip distance, linearity, or duration did not yield significant relationships between individuals. However, we did observe lower site fidelity and less variation in energy expenditure in birds of higher body condition, despite a population-level trend of increased fidelity as the breeding season progressed. These findings suggest that high-quality individuals are both more variable and more efficient in their foraging behaviors during a period of high energetic demand, consistent with a "rich get richer" scenario in which individuals in better condition are able to invest in more costly behaviors that provide higher returns. This work highlights the importance of considering behavioral variation at multiple scales, with particular reference to within-individual variation, to improve our understanding of foraging ecology in wild populations.


Recently, an institutional "Difficult Intubation Drill" has been conceived and started at the University Hospital Zurich, which is intended to sustainably improve the handling of difficult airway situations. The drill consists of a weekly course in the airway management SkillsLab of the university to which all staff members of our department are subjected to participate. The hardware of the drill is a standardized difficult intubation cart consisting of 4 airway rescue techniques arranged in successive drawers that represent also the priority and order of use of these 4 devices: 1. SensaScope®, 2. Fastrach®, 3. laryngeal tube, and 4. transtracheal oxygenation and jet ventilation. This actual choice of devices and techniques represent the actual algorithm for the unexpected failed intubation. Repeated assessments of the educational results and clinical outcome of this airway course will possibly contribute to adaptations and modification of the difficult intubation cart and its clinical use.


Despite the availability of effective treatment options for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), these treatments are highly under-utilized. One of the most cited barriers to treatment among people with PTSD symptoms is public stigma. In fact, the majority of the population experiences a potentially traumatic event (PTE) in their lifetime and should contribute to an assumption of a lack of stigma toward people with PTSD symptoms. Yet, it may be that the stigma perceived by people with PTSD symptoms is more nuanced than what is seen in stigma for other disorders. More often than not, people who experience a PTE will be resilient to its effects. Of particular interest is whether people who are resilient against PTEs may harbor stigmatizing attitudes toward people who develop PTSD. Resilience research has demonstrated that although self-enhancement—a tendency to evaluate oneself in an overly positive manner—promotes resilience and protects against PTSD development, it also leads to negative social interactions. Self-enhancers tend to focus on others' flaws as a way of bolstering their own self-image. As such, self-enhancement may be a key variable in understanding the nature of stigma attitudes toward people with a diagnosis of PTSD. Due to the relative lack of research into public stigma behaviors toward people diagnosed with PTSD, the current study was designed to examine whether self-enhancement contributes to the creation of stigmatizing behaviors toward people diagnosed with PTSD. A total of 114 college students were randomly assigned to read one of two vignettes which varied in the perceived responsibility for the PTE, and completed measures of trauma history, PTSD symptoms, resilience, self-enhancement, personal stigma, and social distance. All participants endorsed at least one historic PTE. Selfenhancement moderated the relationship between PTE and PTSD development such that high self-enhancers with relatively few PTE experienced fewer PTSD symptoms—at high levels of PTE, the effects of self-enhancement fell away. That is, as the number of PTEs increased, high self-enhancers were just as likely to endorse PTSD symptoms as low self-enhancers. Perceived controllability moderated the relationship between selfenhancement and personal stigma, but only for females. Additionally, self-enhancement demonstrated a moderate positive relationship with personal stigma toward and desired social distance from people with PTSD symptoms. When observing others' experience of distress, self-enhancers may view those people as weak and engage in stigmatizing behaviors as a result. These findings suggest that by tailoring anti-stigma programs to address characteristics of self-enhancement that contribute to stigmatizing attitudes, the success of such programs could be increased. Reduction of stigma could increase treatment utilization, thereby decreasing the potential impact of PTSD for the individual and society. THE DUAL ROLE OF SELF-ENHANCEMENT: PROTECTION AND STIGMA


This paper introduces a model in which greater inequality reduces growth in economies with low levels of financial development but that this effect is attenuated in economies with more developed systems. The model also predicts that individuals in economies with developed financial markets have a higher tolerance to inequality. Using a panel dataset that covers a large number of countries, this paper shows empirical evidence that is consistent with the main predictions of the model. Overall, this paper's major findings highlight that some of the pernicious effects of inequality can be attenuated by improving access to credit. (JEL D3, E6, P1, O4, I2)


Irregular sampling occurs in many time series modeling applications where it presents a significant challenge to standard deep learning models. This work is motivated by the analysis of physiological time series data in electronic health records, which are sparse, irregularly sampled, and multivariate. In this paper, we propose a new deep learning framework for this setting that we call Multi-Time Attention Networks. Multi-Time Attention Networks learn an embedding of continuous time values and use an attention mechanism to produce a fixed-length representation of a time series containing a variable number of observations. We investigate the performance of our framework on interpolation and classification tasks using multiple datasets. Our results show that our approach performs as well or better than a range of baseline and recently proposed models while offering significantly faster training times than current state-of-the-art methods.


The resource curse literature underscores the fact that extractive economies face challenges in diversifying their economies. What is less explored are the public finance challenges encountered in these economies when the extractive industries are completely owned by the private sector. Using a recently compiled dataset on public revenues, expenditures and debt, this paper explores the nexus between the privatized extractive sector operations and public finance policies of the Cape Colony between 1810 and 1910. The paper finds that despite the natural resource endowment, the Cape Colony became heavily indebted and had huge budget deficits by the time it joined the Union of South Africa in 1910. After the discovery of diamonds, competition for resource-rents caused a slowdown and in some instances reversed the progress made in consolidating state institutions. The drive towards a national program of development inherent in self-governing colonies was overturned when the competition for resource-rents culminated in rent-seeking led by the interests in the monopolized extractive sector. Rather than being the main source of government revenues and a basis for inclusive economic progress, as expected in a self-governing settler colony, diamonds became a trap through the operations of what I call a 'Minerals-Railway complex'. The insights from the paper have important implications for our understanding of both settler colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as the management of natural resources in developing economies.


: Drawing on various aspects of Peirce's philosophy, the article shows how iconicity and hypoiconicity are derived from a logic of the icon postulated in 1906. The first part deals with the nature of this logic, the second with the derivation of the icon, index and symbol, while a third part discusses and illustrates the three hypoicons, image diagram and metaphor, with particular emphasis on the relation between metaphorical form and abductive inference. Some of the implications of iconicity theory for iconology and linguistics are discussed in the conclusion.


In this study we provide a new examination of the incentive effects of welfare rules on family structure. Focusing on the AFDC and TANF programs, we first emphasize that the literature, by and large, has assumed that the rules of those programs make a key distinction between married women and cohabiting women, but this is not a correct interpretation. In fact, it is the biological relationship between the children and any male in the household that primarily determines how the family is treated. In an empirical analysis conducted over the period 1996 to 2004 that correctly matches family structure outcomes to welfare rules, we find significant effects of several welfare policies on family structure, both work-related policies and familyoriented policies, effects that are stronger than in most past work. Many of our significant effects show that these rules led to a decrease in single motherhood and an increase in biological partnering. For all of our results, our findings indicate that the impact of welfare rules crucially hinges on the biological relationship of the male partner to the children in the household.


According to most scholars, Jim Crow's death elevated African Americans even as white departures depressed them, condemning blacks to isolated neighborhoods, segregated schools, and crumbling urban cores. To counter such reversals, liberals endorsed the consolidation of urban and suburban zones, hoping that such moves might thwart flight, promote integration, and ameliorate the effects of what scholars began in the 1970s to term "institutional" or "structural" racism. Initially such efforts focused primarily on schools, but quickly expanded to include other types of consolidation as well, including the consolidation, or merger, of major metropolitan areas and surrounding counties. While the rubric of consolidation has tended to enjoy a progressive cast, certain aspects of metropolitan mergers bode ill for African Americans, particularly in the area of electoral influence. For example, St. Louis City boasts a comparative black majority of 47.9% (with whites totaling 46.4% and Asians 3.1%), while the adjoining county claims only 23.7% African American residents. As this essay shall demonstrate, full integration of the two entities would lead blacks to lose significant electoral clout, particularly over county positions like the prosecutor's office, leaving them politically weaker across the board.


We study a small open economy characterized by two empirically important frictions— incomplete financial markets and an inability of the government to commit to policy. We characterize the best sustainable fiscal policy and show that it can amplify and prolong shocks to output. In particular, even when the government is completely benevolent, the government's credibility not to expropriate capital varies endogenously with the state of the economy and may be "scarcest" during recessions. This increased threat of expropriation depresses investment, prolonging downturns. It is the incompleteness of financial markets and the lack of commitment that generate investment cycles even in an environment where first-best capital stock is constant.


Fast fashion, which carries high-end designs to the mass market at affordable price ranges quickly, has gained success. However, fast fashion is often criticized for spurring people to buy multiple clothes at once with little perceived value, and discard them quickly. As an antithesis of fast fashion, the apparel industry has been increasingly interested in slow fashion. However, there has been lack of theoretical understanding of slow fashion. This dissertation is aimed at investigating the slow fashion movement by identifying potential slow fashion consumers (Study I), and ways to create customer values toward slow fashion products to increase purchase intention and willingness to pay a price premium (Study II). By Churchill's (1978) scale item generation and purification procedures, a preliminary study found 15 items that accounted for five dimensions of consumer orientation to slow fashion: Equity, Authenticity, Functionality, Localism and Exclusivity. These dimensions elucidated that slow fashion is related to, but distinctive from existing environmental and social sustainability concepts. Targeting nationwide U.S. consumers, respondents of this study were selected by the quota sampling method with consideration to age, gender and geographical location of respondents. The online survey URL was sent to a total of 1,000 respondents, and the final 221 completed responses were analyzed. In Study I, consumers were classified into four consumer groups based on the five orientations to slow fashion: High involvement in slow fashion group, traditional group, exclusivity oriented group, and low involvement in slow fashion group. To understand characteristics of each group, the groups were profiled by the Schwartz value, apparel consumption behaviors and demographic variables. Based on their profiles, subjects of each group except for those in the low involvement group were evaluated to be potential slow fashion consumers. Three groups were found to be different by their orientation to slow fashion, personal values, consumption behaviors, etc.: Different marketing strategies were suggested to address the needs of each group effectively. On the basis of the customer value creation framework, Study II tested how each dimension of consumer orientation to slow fashion increased perceived customer value on slow fashion products, which in turn positively influences consumer's purchase intention and willingness to pay a price premium. The results of the structural equation modeling revealed that consumer orientation toward Exclusivity enhances perceived customer value on slow fashion products. Moreover, the perceived customer value increased the consumer's purchase intention and willingness to pay a price premium. This study extended academic understanding of slow fashion through empirical identification of slow fashion dimensions, profiling of potential slow fashion consumers and confirming factors related to creating customer values and its consequences. In addition to detailed marketing implications, this study further provided suggestions for the U.S. government policy and consumer education program to achieve sustainability and foster the U.S. domestic apparel industry.


This paper proposes a framework for formal verification of industrial automation software in an intuitive way. The IEC 61499 function block architecture is assumed to be the input language, and the Intelligent Mechatronic Components (IMC) architecture is assumed as an underlying design pattern for the applications, which implies autonomous control logic in each IMC and their compositions to systems in a plug-and-play way. Then the system is automatically verified using model checking and the counter examples for the failed model checking properties are played back step-by-step and state-by-state in the simulation model that most industrial automation control systems would have built as the basis for initial testing. Net Condition Event Systems formalism (a modular extension of Petri net) is used to model the decentralized control logic and discrete-state dynamics of the plant. The model is then subjected to model checking using the ViVe/SESA tool chain. The method's application is illustrated using a simple pick and place manipulator. A closed loop model of Plant and Controller is used. Controller is extensively verified for safety, liveliness and functional properties of the robot. We then show how a counter example for deadlock detected by the model checker is played back in the simulation model for visualizing how exactly the system deadlocked.