Students in grades four through twelve from fourteen schools learned to build their own immersive virtual environments (VEs). This required them to decide on the theme of their VE, to determine what objects to place in it and what behaviors these objects would exhibit, to model their objects using CAD software, to specify the form and function of the VE for professional programmers to use as they assembled the VE, and to perform assigned tasks when they visited the VE. Although the level and nature of student activity varied from school to school, the students were generally very successful. The VEs they constructed revealed a great deal about how they constructed an understanding of the content their VE represented. Data from a questionnaire showed that they enjoyed building and visiting their VE, and that their enjoyment, ability to work in the VE, success, and their sense of presence were all interrelated. Data from a small subset of students showed that building a VE improved low-ability students' (but not high-ability students') understanding of the VE's content. These findings were interpreted within a framework built from constructivist theories of learning and understanding.


With the widespread influence of human activities on marine ecosystems, evaluation of ecological status provides valuable information for conservation initiatives and sustainable development. To this end, many environmental indicators have been developed worldwide and there is a growing need to evaluate their performance by calculating ecological status in a wide range of ecosystems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. This study calculated and contrasted sixteen indicators of ecological status from three methodological categories: abundance measures, diversity parameters and characteristic species. This selection was applied to coastal benthic ecosystems at Sept-Îles (Québec, Canada), an important industrial harbor area in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and related to habitat parameters (organic matter, grain size fractions, and heavy metal concentrations). Nearly all indicators highlighted a generally good ecological status in the study area, where communities presented an unperturbed profile with high taxa and functional diversities and without the dominance of opportunistic taxa. Some correlations with habitat parameters were detected, especially with heavy metals, and bootstrap analyses indicated quite robust results. This study provides valuable information on the application of environmental indicators in Canadian coastal ecosystems, along with insights on their use for environmental assessments.


OBJECTIVE
In this study, a Hemodialysis Eating Index (HDEI) suitable for hemodialysis (HD) patients in Taiwan was developed based on the dietary recommendations of the U.S. National Kidney Foundation for HD patients and the Taiwanese 2011 Daily Food Guide. The HDEI was used to explore HD-associated cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors.

METHODS
In this prospective study, 108 HD patients from 2 HD centers in Taiwan were recruited as participants in 2010. All participants were older than 20 years. Patient CVD risk factor and 3-day dietary data were collected, and their HDEI scores were calculated. The HDEI scores comprise 12 food-related factors: the consumption of vegetables, fruits, total grains, whole grains, high-protein foods, high biological values, red and white meat, fish, oils, saturated fatty acids or trans fatty acids, nuts, and the duration of multivitamin use. The scores ranged from 5 to 100, and SAS software version 9.3 was used to perform statistical analyses. A P value less than .05 was considered statistically significant.

RESULTS
The HDEI scores and serum albumin (Alb) levels were significantly and positively correlated. The participants were divided into 2 groups on the basis of the median HDEI score of 72.2. Two months after HDEI evaluation, the high-HDEI scoring group exhibited significantly decreased levels of serum total cholesterol and increased hemoglobin (Hb) levels.

CONCLUSION
The HDEI can be used to reflect selected nutritional status markers, such as Alb and Hb levels and CVD risk factors, for HD patients. The HDEI can also serve as an eating index for HD patients in Taiwan to facilitate CVD prevention.


Sound Source Localization (SSL) is an essential function for robot audition and yields the location and number of sound sources, which are utilized for post-processes such as sound source separation. SSL for a robot in a real environment mainly requires noise-robustness, high resolution and real-time processing. A technique using microphone array processing, that is, Multiple Signal Classification based on Standard EigenValue Decomposition (SEVD-MUSIC) is commonly used for localization. We improved its robustness against noise with high power by incorporating Generalized EigenValue Decomposition (GEVD). However, GEVD-based MUSIC (GEVD-MUSIC) has mainly two issues: 1) the resolution of pre-measured Transfer Functions (TFs) determines the resolution of SSL, 2) its computational cost is expensive for real-time processing. For the first issue, we propose a TF interpolation method integrating time-domain-based and frequency-domain-based interpolation. The interpolation achieves super-resolution SSL, whose resolution is higher than that of the pre-measured TFs. For the second issue, we propose two methods, MUSIC based on Generalized Singular Value Decomposition (GSVD-MUSIC), and Hierarchical SSL (H-SSL). GSVD-MUSIC drastically reduces the computational cost while maintaining noise-robustness in localization. H-SSL also reduces the computational cost by introducing a hierarchical search algorithm instead of using greedy search in localization. These techniques are integrated into an SSL system using a robot embedded microphone array. The experimental result showed: the proposed interpolation achieved approximately 1 degree resolution although we have only TFs at 30 degree intervals, GSVD-MUSIC attained 46.4% and 40.6% of the computational cost compared to SEVD-MUSIC and GEVD-MUSIC, respectively, H-SSL reduces 59.2% computational cost in localization of a single sound source.


Abstract. Precipitation susceptibility to aerosol perturbation plays a key role in understanding aerosol–cloud interactions and constraining aerosol indirect effects. However, large discrepancies exist in the previous satellite estimates of precipitation susceptibility. In this paper, multi-sensor aerosol and cloud products, including those from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO), CloudSat, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) from June 2006 to April 2011 are analyzed to estimate precipitation frequency susceptibility SPOP, precipitation intensity susceptibility SI, and precipitation rate susceptibility SR in warm marine clouds. We find that SPOP strongly depends on atmospheric stability, with larger values under more stable environments. Our results show that precipitation susceptibility for drizzle (with a −15 dBZ rainfall threshold) is significantly different than that for rain (with a 0 dBZ rainfall threshold). Onset of drizzle is not as readily suppressed in warm clouds as rainfall while precipitation intensity susceptibility is generally smaller for rain than for drizzle. We find that SPOP derived with respect to aerosol index (AI) is about one-third of SPOP derived with respect to cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC). Overall, SPOP demonstrates relatively robust features throughout independent liquid water path (LWP) products and diverse rain products. In contrast, the behaviors of SI and SR are subject to LWP or rain products used to derive them. Recommendations are further made for how to better use these metrics to quantify aerosol–cloud–precipitation interactions in observations and models.


Sixteen years into the transition, the problem of high joblessness has not been solved. Of the three explanations commonly discussed (i.e. ongoing reallocation; finished reallocation with redundant labour; wrong choice of institutional framework), we concentrated on the ongoing reallocation hypothesis. We show that there is a negative correlation between job creation in the private sector and unemployment. We also show that long-term unemployment depends on current and past values of short-term unemployment and that this path-dependence fades away as soon as we reach time t-3. We interpret this result as an indication that the process of reallocation started at the beginning of the 1990s still influences today's labour market. We address three components of the transition debate: shock therapy versus gradualism; privatization; and political change. Contrary to Godoy and Stiglitz (2006), we do not find gradualism superior to shock therapy in terms of private sector growth. In addition, we confirm that full privatization is positively associated with job destruction in the state sector. Finally, we show that during early years of democratization the state sector was dismantled more vigorously than in other periods.


The spread of influence among individuals in a social network can be naturally modeled in a probabilistic framework, but it is challenging to reason about differences between various models as well as to relate these models to actual social network data. Here we consider two of the most fundamental definitions of influence, one based on a small set of "snapshot'' observations of a social network and the other based on detailed temporal dynamics. The former is particularly useful because large-scale social network data sets are often available only in snapshots or crawls. The latter however provides a more detailed process model of how influence spreads. We study the relationship between these two ways of measuring influence, in particular establishing how to infer the more detailed temporal measure from the more readily observable snapshot measure. We validate our analysis using the history of social interactions on Wikipedia; the result is the first large-scale study to exhibit a direct relationship between snapshot and temporal models of social influence.


A major source of constraint is state water allocation law, which defines rights for water use and development, including in some cases restrictions on place of use that limit transfer. Powers of state governments to control water transfer to locations outside the state of origin are restricted by the powers of the federal government regarding interstate commerce. The federal role also encompasses direct participation in water development activities, including projects involving significant water transfers. The federal government also regulates water development by others. The existing institutional framework is necessarily complex, but excessive complexity should be controlled.


Abstract Objective: The objectives of the present article were to (a) describe the main characteristics of bicycle crashes with regard to the road environment, crash opponent, cyclist, and crash dynamics; (b) compare individuals who describe their health after the crash as declined with those who describe their health as not affected; and (c) compare the number of injured cyclists who describe their health as declined after the crash with the predicted number of permanent medical impairments within the same population. Methods: A sample of individuals with specific injury diagnoses was drawn from the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition (STRADA) database (n = 2,678). A survey form was used to collect additional information about the crash and the health-related outcomes. The predicted number of impaired individuals was calculated by accumulating the risk for all individuals to sustain at least a 1% permanent medical impairment, based on the injured body region and injury severity. Results: Nine hundred forty-seven individuals (36%) responded, of whom 44% reported declined health after the crash. The majority (68%) were injured in single bicycle crashes, 17% in collisions with motor vehicles, and 11% in collisions with another cyclist or pedestrian. Most single bicycle crashes related to loss of control (46%), mainly due to skidding on winter surface conditions (14%), followed by loss of control during braking (6%). There was no significant difference in crash distribution comparing all crashes with crashes among people with declined health. The predicted number of impaired individuals (n = 427) corresponded well with the number of individuals self-reporting declined health (n = 421). Conclusions: The types of crashes leading to health loss do not substantially differ from those that do not result in health loss. Two thirds of injuries leading to health loss occur in single bicycle crashes. In addition to separating cyclists from motorized traffic, other preventive strategies are needed.


INTRODUCTION
Gallstone is implicated for hepatocellular injury due to chronic extra hepatic large bile duct obstruction with or without repeated episodes of cholangitis.

AIM
To study the liver changes in patients undergoing operative procedure for gallstone disease and to determine the relationship between severity of these changes with position of biliary calculus in biliary tree.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Sixty patients who underwent operative procedure for gallstone disease between October 2013 and September 2015 were evaluated. The Liver Function Test (LFT) was done preoperatively and postoperatively. Intraoperative liver biopsy was taken. The histopathological changes of liver and their severity were noted.

RESULTS
The most commonly observed liver function abnormality both in cholelithiasis (12.8%) and choledocholithiasis patients (50%) was increased alkaline phosphatase. Most commonly observed liver histology changes in patients with cholelithiasis was nonspecific reactive hepatitis (46.9%) and in choledocholithiasis was chronic cholestasis (50%). Patient with choledocholithiasis showed significant changes (p<0.001) in liver histopathology and LFT as compared to cholelithiasis.

CONCLUSION
Patients with gallstone diseases developed significant functional as well as structural hepatic changes. Though the change was more significant in patient with choledocholithiasis compared to cholelithiasis, early operative procedure is recommended in all gallstone disease patients to prevent potential liver damage, irrespective of position of biliary calculi in biliary tree to prevent morbidities associated with it.


This paper represents an approach to discerning the kind of climatic signal that land snails might record. The study uses previous analyses of the Achenheim molluscs, whose time series can be compared with ice-core records or marine records. Terrestrial molluscs are characteristic of the environment in which they live, mainly mirroring prevailing climate and vegetation. As a result of this relatively close connection between biotope and mollusc assemblages, reconstructions of past environments can be made that agree generally with results from pollen analyses. In this way, malacofaunas in loess sections permit determination of environmental variability and climatic change. Loess deposits, however, correspond to a particular environment. Decreasing or increasing dust deposition affects the molluscan assemblages by altering the environmental conditions for better or for worse. The variation in the mollusc diversity index in Achenheim shows a striking correspondence with dust-flux variation. There is only a low correlation between diversity index and temperature, precipitation or moisture estimates.


The purpose of this experiment was to assess the impact of smartphone usage on social interactions. Previous studies have examined the relationship between smartphone usage and social relationships, but little or none with experimental designs. A particular question was whether smartphone use can detract from the establishment of commitment to a new organization and its members (specifically a university program). It was hypothesized that students who limit their smartphone use would have higher levels of belongingness and commitment to their new program and to their new college and less newcomer anxiety than students in the control group. Twenty incoming freshmen (male = 1, females =19) from a New England university completed pre-tests and post-tests. Participants attending a pre-planned college freshman retreat were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (n = 6) or the control group (n = 6), where the experimental group were asked to limit their smartphone use on the two-day retreat. The between group variable had three levels (experimental retreat group, control retreat group, and a non-retreat comparison group) and the within group variable was time of measurement (pre-retreat test and post-retreat test). Change in six dependent variables from pre-test to post-test was measured, including college anxiety, affective group commitment, and attitudes toward smartphone use along four dimensions (attachment, social connectedness, exclusion, and social assurance). Results only indicated a significant difference between the experimental and control group on the smartphone exclusion variable (U = 3.5, p = .03). This study should be replicated with a stronger manipulation of the independent variable (full limitation of smartphone use vs. regular use) and include a larger sample.


The area of the Maltese Islands is 316 km , and with an official coastal length of 180 km(^2) possess a high ratio of coastal length to area. The physical properties of the coast include a highly indented and largely accessible coastline having a low sloping profile, on the north, east and south-east littoral of Malta, presenting inlets, bays and deep harbours. Most of the recreational, industrial and coastal residential areas are situated around these areas together with a wide range of fortifications and military defensive structures built as part of the coastal defensive network of Malta over the last five centuries. In contrast, the other parts of the coast, including Gozo, consists of a largely inaccessible coastline made up of cliffs and boulder scree slopes with the few indentations marking sandy beaches. These areas have a high aesthetic quality. The rapid pace of development over last half-century has witnessed an economic transformation from an economy based on British military spending to one based on the development of coastal areas for marine-related services, tourism and residential and second-home development. Coastal land use conflicts have intensified with economic development and as people have sought to make a more use of the coast. This thesis is concerned with the evaluation of the coastal land use in the Maltese Islands. A historical overview of the coast is first presented, then a methodology for the mapping, surveying and estimation of the land uses along the coastal zone of the Maltese Islands is developed. This is based on a number of coastal field surveys that the author participated in between 1989 and 1998. The coastal zone was divided into sixteen segments and mapping is covered by sixteen land uses. The main results were that coastal development was centred in areas where a high natural coastal indentation and good physical accessibility of the coast were present, these, in turn, gave rise to land use conflict. In addition, civil engineering works and modifications such as rock-cutting, jetties, breakwaters and, in densely populated areas, promenades, intensified land use conflict. A notable difference in the type of coastal development processes to the north (tourism) and south (industry) of the Great Fault is evident. The thesis also includes the part played by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority in influencing coastal land uses, the main land use modifications proposed in the European Union accession talks and a brief assessment of the land use situation in selected localities in 2003.


AIM AND OBJECTIVES
This education-focused paper presents a discussion of possible data sources used in patient safety issues specific to fall reduction in hospital inpatient care settings.

BACKGROUND
Although hospitals and clinicians in the USA have been implored to improve care and reduce events that harm patients (falls), studies to date have failed to clearly address the facility system-level factors for falls. Making meaningful approaches to modify risk factors is clearly overdue.

DESIGN
Discursive paper.

METHOD
Possible data sources for answering patient fall-related research questions in hospital settings are categorised as: (1) archived hospital data, (2) surveys of patients/families/clinicians, (3) interviews and focus groups of patients/families/clinicians, (4) publicly available data sets and (5) published legal cases. The complexities of research in fall prevention are illustrated using the conceptual models. Examples were included to illustrate the use of these data sources.

DISCUSSION
Data-related issues include: (1) unit of analysis, (2) computer data processing capabilities, (3) merging data sets from different sources and (4) data abstraction, aggregation and data analytic techniques.

CONCLUSIONS
The trend to use multiple data sources to answer research questions is gradually emerging. To demonstrate effective fall prevention efforts across hospitals, publicly available data sets can be reliable sources for analyses to inform policymakers about meaningful fall prevention programmes that result in positive outcomes.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Challenges to develop and evaluate any interventions to eliminate risk factors for falls often relate to selecting feasible interventions and whether staff members accept the interventions and adhere to adopting the intervention. Using multiple data sources with time factors to cross-validate the sufficiency of nurses' knowledge with their practice patterns may be more productive. This need further supports the importance of this paper about possible data sources used in the research on patient safety specific to fall reduction for adults in hospital inpatient care settings.


The efficacy of a Vitex agnus castus preparation (Strotan capsules) was investigated in a randomized double blind study vs. placebo. This clinical study involved 52 women with luteal phase defects due to latent hyperprolactinaemia. The daily dose was one capsule (20 mg) Vitex agnus castus preparation and placebo, respectively. Aim of the study was to prove whether the elevated pituitary prolactin reserve can be reduced and deficits in luteal phase length and luteal phase progesterone synthesis be normalized. Blood for hormonal analysis was taken at days 5-8 and day 20 of the menstrual cycle before and after three month of therapy. Latent hyperprolactinaemia was analysed by monitoring the prolactin release 15 and 30 min after i.v. injection of 200 micrograms TRH. 37 complete case reports (placebo: n = 20, verum: n = 17) after 3 month of therapy were statistically evaluated. The prolactin release was reduced after 3 months, shortened luteal phases were normalised and deficits in the luteal progesterone synthesis were eliminated. These changes were significant and occurred only in the verum group. All other hormonal parameters did not change with the exception of 17 beta-estradiol which rouse up in the luteal phase in patients receiving verum. Side effects were not seen, two women treated with the Vitex agnus castus preparation got pregnant. The tested preparation is thought to be an efficient medication in the treatment of luteal phase defects due to latent hyperprolactinaemia.


Providing landowners and natural resource managers information on financial rates of return (ROR) plays a vital role in providing and promoting forest management. I combined Timber Mart-South stumpage price data with forest inventory data spanning 17 years from the Southern Research Station, Forest Inventory and Analysis work unit for the States of Arkansas and Mississippi. This dataset was used to compute simple and adjusted financial ROR. The study area encompassed 63.4 million acres of which 37.4 million acres were in timberland. A total of 11 325 sample plots, of which 6 416 were classified as forest, made up the initial dataset. The study's timeframe spanned three decades, with MS surveys conducted in 1977, 1987, and 1994, while AR were in 1978, 1988, and 1995. Of these 6 416 plots, 245 were classified as sapling-seedling sized stands 1977 to 1978, sawtimber size 1994 to 1995, and having no harvesting or disturbance (< 5 percent all live removals or mortality) occurring on them at any time during the survey time span. Another 41 plots where classified as sapling-seedling sized stands in 1977 and had 20 to 50 percent of their all live volume removed during the 1987 to 1988 survey. These 41 plots had no harvesting, mortality, or disturbance during any other forest inventory and were classified as sawtimber size by the mid-1990s. I studied the annual rate of change (both monetary and volume) from the point which harvesting occurred on the thinned stands. Therefore, these preliminary results pertain to changes that occurred between the 1987 to 1988 and 1994 to 1995 surveys. The average annual volume growth of all live trees on the undisturbed plots was 2.2 percent per year, while the 41 thinned stands' volume growth was 4.6 percent per year. The average real ROR on the undisturbed stands was 15.7 percent per year using a simple financial maturity model, and 8.6 percent per year using an adjusted financial maturity model. The thinned stands grew at a higher rate, as their real rate of value change was 19.9 percent and 10.1 percent per year for the simple and adjusted financial maturity models, respectively. All volume and value change differences between undisturbed and thinned stands proved to be statistically significant. Combining long-term/large-scale forest inventories with price data has the potential to guide landowner decisions by offering insights into forest management dynamics.


This paper empirically investigates the relationship between TV news coverage and the GIIPS countries' bond yield spreads using daily data between January 1, 2007 and December 1, 2016. We employ 1,542,233 human coded news items from evening news shows of leading TV stations in 12 countries which include 37,859 news on the EU, on the Eurozone and on country-specific economic issues. We find that an increasing share of news about the Eurozone reduces yield spreads, especially when the news has a positive tonality. This hints at the effectiveness of political communication through the media by European institutions and in particular the European Central Bank (ECB). In conjunction with the tonality of the news, we find that country-specific news have a significant impact on GIIPS yield spreads. A higher share of positive/negative news is positively associated with a decrease/increase of the GIIPS yield spreads vis-a-vis Germany. Moreover, some news is not immediately and completely priced in by market participants when it is released. In addition, this peculiar effect of country specific news is stronger when the respective news is aired on the North American media market.


Clinical engagement is often removed from everyday social processes familiar to Māori (indigenous people of Aotearoa [New Zealand]), as it can focus on health consumerism rather than communication and connection. The health encounter is not a routine social engagement, patients often feel unwell and experience a range of emotions; feeling unsure, vulnerable, nervous and out of their comfort zone. Patients are faced with health literacy (HL) demands, such as new information, words and concepts and may be faced with making quick decisions. Feeling guided, supported and safe are important factors in interactions with health professionals. Drawing on a literature review and some of the findings from a Kaupapa Māori Evaluation which analysed some participants' perspectives of the effectiveness and impact of a cardiovascular disease (CVD) medicines health literacy intervention trial, this paper provides a distal understanding of interpersonal dynamics of HL that is vital to understanding how it might be more useful in the context of Māori communities. The paper highlights a shared health system experience expressed by CVD patients as their yearning for whanaungatanga (relationship, kinship, connection) and reciprocal and responsive relationships; a space to be ourselves, to be Māori.


This thesis describes research work undertaken in the field of image mining (particularly medical image mining). More specifically, the research work is directed at 3-D image classification according to the nature of a particular Volume Of Interest (VOI) that appears across a given image set. In this thesis the term VOI Based Image Classification (VOIBIC) has been coined to describe this process. VOIBIC entails a number of challenges. The first is the identification and isolation of the VOIs. Two segmentation algorithms are thus proposed to extract a given VOI from an image set: (i) Volume Growing and (ii) Bounding Box. The second challenge that VOIBIC poses is, once the VOI have been identified, how best to represent the VOI so that classification can be effectively and efficiently conducted. Three approaches are considered. The first is founded on the idea of using statistical metrics, the Statistical Metrics based representation. This representation offers the advantage in that it is straightforward and, although not especially novel, provides a benchmark. The second proposed representation is founded on the concept of point series (curves) describing the perimeter of a VOI, the Point Series representation. Two variations of this representation are considered: (i) Spoke based and (ii) Disc based. The third proposed representation is founded on a Frequent Subgraph Mining (FSM) technique whereby the VOI is represented using an Oct-tree structure to which FSM can be applied. The identified frequent subtrees can then be used to define a feature vector representation compatible with many classifier model generation methods. The thesis also considers augmenting the VOI data with meta data, namely age and gender, and determining the effect this has on performance. The presented evaluation used two 3-D MRI brain scan data sets: (i) Epilepsy and (ii) Musicians. The VOI in this case were the lateral ventricles, a distinctive VOI in such MRI brain scan data. For evaluation purposes two scenarios are considered, distinguishing between: (i) epilepsy patients and healthy people and (ii) musicians and non-musicians. The results indicates that the Spoke based point series representation technique produced the best results with a recorded classification accuracy of up to 78.52% for the Epilepsy dataset and 84.91% for the Musician dataset.


The fabrication of high-quality strontium-doped lanthanum manganite films remains a challenge up to this date. One of the best candidate for simple and efficient fabrication of high-quality films is the chemical solution deposition (CSD) method. In CSD, the resulting film quality strongly depends on the precursor material used, i.e. nitrate or acetate route, the chelating agents, and heat treatment parameters. In this work, we focus our investigation on the effect of using different chelating agents to the resulting surface morphology of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 film fabricated via the acetate-based CSD. The result shows that among the chelating agents used in this work, the citric acid as the sole chelating agent produced the best quality film in terms of surface quality and grain connectivity.


Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUS) are characterized by a high productivity of plankton asso- ciated with large commercial fisheries, thus playing key bi- ological and socio-economical roles. Since they are popu- lated by several physical oceanic structures such as filaments and eddies, which interact with the biological processes, it is a major challenge to study this sub- and mesoscale activ- ity in connection with the chlorophyll distribution. The aim of this work is to make a comparative study of these four upwelling systems focussing on their surface stirring, using the Finite Size Lyapunov Exponents (FSLEs), and their bi- ological activity, based on satellite data. First, the spatial distribution of horizontal mixing is analysed from time aver- ages and from probability density functions of FSLEs, which allow us to divide each areas in two different subsystems. Then we studied the temporal variability of surface stirring focussing on the annual and seasonal cycle. We also pro- posed a ranking of the four EBUS based on the averaged mixing intensity. When investigating the links with chloro- phyll concentration, the previous subsystems reveal distinct biological signatures. There is a global negative correlation between surface horizontal mixing and chlorophyll standing stocks over the four areas. To try to better understand this inverse relationship, we consider the vertical dimension by looking at the Ekman-transport and vertical velocities. We suggest the possibility of a changing response of the phyto- plankton to sub/mesoscale turbulence, from a negative effect in the very productive coastal areas to a positive one in the open ocean. This study provides new insights for the under- standing of the variable biological productivity in the ocean, which results from both dynamics of the marine ecosystem and of the 3-D turbulent medium.


System programming languages such as C grant compiler writers freedom to generate efficient code for a specific instruction set by defining certain language constructs as undefined behavior. Unfortunately, the rules for what is undefined behavior are subtle and programmers make mistakes that sometimes lead to security vulnerabilities. This position paper argues that the research community should help address the problems that arise from undefined behavior, and not dismiss them as esoteric C implementation issues. We show that these errors do happen in real-world systems, that the issues are tricky, and that current practices to address the issues are insufficient.


In decentralized control systems with linear dynamics, quadratic cost, and Gaussian disturbances (also called decentralized LQG systems) linear control strategies are not always optimal. Nonetheless, linear control strategies are appealing due to their analytic and implementation simplicity. In this paper, we investigate decentralized LQG systems with partial history sharing information structure and identify finite-dimensional sufficient statistics for such systems. Unlike prior work on decentralized LQG systems, we do not assume partial nestedness or quadratic invariance. Our approach is based on the common information approach of Nayyar et al., 2013 and exploits the linearity of the system dynamics and control strategies. To illustrate our methodology, we identify sufficient statistics for linear strategies in decentralized systems where controllers communicate over a strongly connected graph with finite delays, and for decentralized systems consisting of coupled subsystems with control sharing or one-sided one step delay sharing information structures.


Mangroves are highly productive environments that play important ecological and socioeconomic roles; however, they have been impacted to different degrees in most countries worldwide. The knowledge of which organisms inhabit this environment and their ecological interactions is the first step towards its conservation. The natural variability of environmental factors in mangroves provides numerous niches available to different species. Meiofauna have patchy patterns of distribution that are related to the availability of resources. Hence, meiofauna are expected to present a high diversity of different taxa occupying the different microhabitats offered by mangroves. This work aims to test the hypothesis that the assemblage structure of Nematoda varies significantly among mangrove microhabitats and to contribute knowledge on the meiofauna diversity in mangrove environments. This work was carried out in a mangrove region at Pernambuco state, Northeastern Brazil. Qualitative samples were collected in nine microhabitats which show different characteristics mainly in terms of presence of vegetation or another organism and sediment grain size. Univariate and multivariate analysis were applied to Nematoda genera abundance data. Our results demonstrate the existence of significant differences among microhabitats regarding nematode assemblage structure corroborating the hypothesis. Different Nematoda assemblages are present in at least seven microhabitats. These assemblages are composed of nematode genera with different trophic and morphological features, demonstrating a strong relationship between morphological diversity and ecological plasticity. Furthermore, this study also demonstrates the importance of the conservation of this ecosystem and its attributes.


Most approaches to crime analysis focus on geographical crime mapping, which is helpful in identifying crime clusters and allocating police resources, but does not explain why a particular crime took place. Applied Crime Analysis presents a model that brings statistical anchoring, behavioral psychopathology, and victimology from the social sciences together with physical and crime scene evidence to provide a complete picture of crime. This hands-on guide takes theoretical principles and demonstrates how they can be put into practice using real case examples. In addition to covering key topics such as staged crime scenes, false reports, and criminal motivations, the book's includes a final chapter on report writing, showing readers how to use their findings to successfully advance to prosecution and succeed in court. * Presents a model that takes social science concepts, including statistical anchoring, behavioral psychopathology, and victimology and connects them with crime scene evidence to examine and analyze crime* Puts crime analysis theory into practice with real-world examples highlighting important concepts and best practice* Includes a report writing chapter to demonstrate how this approach can strengthen criminal cases and succeed in court* Instructor materials include a Test Bank, Powerpoint lecture slides, and Instructor's Guide for each chapter


This paper presents the construction, mathematical modeling and testing of a scaled universal hydraulic Power Take-Off (PTO) device for Wave Energy Converters (WECs). A specific prototype and test bench were designed and built to carry out the tests. The results obtained from these tests were used to adjust an in-house mathematical model. The PTO was initially designed to be coupled to a scaled wave energy capture device with a low speed and high torque oscillating motion and high power fluctuations. Any Energy Capture Device (ECD) that fulfils these requirements can be coupled to this PTO, provided that its scale is adequately defined depending on the rated power of the full scale prototype. The initial calibration included estimation of the pressure drops in the different components, the pressurization time of the oil inside the hydraulic cylinders and the volumetric efficiency of the complete circuit. Since the overall efficiency measured during the tests ranged from 0.69 to 0.8 and the dynamic performance of the PTO was satisfactory, the results are really promising and it is believed that this solution might prove effective in real devices.


Machine learning decision systems are getting omnipresent in our lives. From dating apps to rating loan seekers, algorithms affect both our well-being and future. Typically, however, these systems are not infallible. Moreover, complex predictive models are really eager to learn social biases present in historical data that can lead to increasing discrimination. If we want to create models responsibly then we need tools for in-depth validation of models also from the perspective of potential discrimination. This article introduces an R package fairmodels that helps to validate fairness and eliminate bias in classification models in an easy and flexible fashion. The fairmodels package offers a model-agnostic approach to bias detection, visualization and mitigation. The implemented set of functions and fairness metrics enables model fairness validation from different perspectives. The package includes a series of methods for bias mitigation that aim to diminish the discrimination in the model. The package is designed not only to examine a single model, but also to facilitate comparisons between multiple models.


With the growing amount of published RDF datasets on similar domains, data conflict between similar entities (same-as) is becoming a common problem for Web of Data applications. In this paper we propose an algorithm to detect conflict of same properties values of similar entities and select the most accurate value. The proposed algorithm contains two major steps. The first step filters out low ranked datasets using a link analysis technique. The second step calculates and evaluates the focus level of a dataset in a specific domain. Finally, the value of the top ranked dataset is considered. The proposed algorithm is implemented by Java Programming Language and is evaluated by geographical datasets containing "country" entities.


This study evaluates the use of two Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques in calculating the three-dimensional flow and bed shear stress distribution in a regulated river reach near Trondheim, Norway. The two different CFD codes being used in this study are: one commercial FLOW-3D and an in-house program, SSIIM, developed by the third author (NRBO). One of the primary differences between the programs is that FLOW-3D uses an orthogonal, structured grid, while SSIIM uses a non-orthogonal unstructured grid. Flow-3D computes the location of the free water surface based on a volume of fluid method. In the current study, the water surface profile was computed using a 1D backwater computation with SSIIM. Both programs use first- or second-order schemes for the convective term in the Navier–Stokes equations, and the study investigated both options for the two different models. The computed results were compared to ADCP measurements obtained from three cross sections of the river. The comparison showed a good agreement between calculated and measured velocities when using higher-order discretization schemes. Using a first-order upwind scheme, the results deteriorated somewhat due to false diffusion. The results of this current study could be beneficial for the estimation of fluvial erosion, which causes severe damages to riverine areas.


Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century, and broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. The apocalyptic "Howl", originally written as a performance piece, became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956. It is considered to be one of the defining works of the Beat Generation, standing alongside that of Burroughs, Kerouac, and Corso. In it, Ginsberg attacks what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States at the time, and takes on issues of sex, drugs and race, simultaneously creating what would become the poetic anthem for US counterculture.


Turnover and attrition of online faculty and adjunct faculty is a reality. While there are no reported national statistics or data on annual turnover/attrition for online faculty/adjunct, the overall costs of recruiting, training, and replacing faculty/adjunct can be staggering. Moreover, the short and long term effects of online faculty/adjunct who are not properly trained through recruitment and retention plans can result in faculty/adjunct attrition, student attrition, low graduation rates, legal action, and negatively affect the reputation of an institution. Therefore, online programs administrators must be cognizant of "costs" associated with faculty/adjunct turnover/attrition and understand the inherent importance of recruitment, retention and incentive plans related to program sustainability.


A line of previous studies indicate that, while the traditional case-dialogue method of law teaching does not diminish students' skill of legal reasoning, it fails to produce any significant learning gains. The study reported in this paper examines the impact of introducing to a traditional law school course a short writing exercise accompanied by formative feedback from the instructor. The study involved 82 students from a single section of the first-semester Legal Process (Civil Procedure I) course. All students completed a pre-test, mid-test, and post-test. Each test used multiple choice questions designed to assess students' legal reading and cross-case reasoning skills. Half of the class (Group 1) completed the writing exercise before the mid-test and while they were in the midst of the personal jurisdiction unit which was the subject of the assignment. The other half of the class (Group 2) completed the writing exercise after the mid-test and prior to the post-test, two weeks following the completion of the personal jurisdiction unit.The study results indicate that both Group 1 and Group 2 achieved some significant learning gains. This finding supplements the findings of previous studies that indicate that no significant learning gains result when the traditional teaching method is used exclusively. It is noteworthy that Group 1 achieved significantly greater learning gains than Group 2, indicating that a writing exercise completed in the midst of a unit of study is more beneficial than an exercise completed following the completion of a unit of study. This finding held true across the entire span of the study. Thus, students in Group 2 failed to catch up to students in Group 1 even after completing the writing exercise. In addition, LSAT scores failed to predict the learning gains for Group 1, while these aptitude scores did predict gains for Group 2. Thus, low LSAT students in Group 1 benefited as much as high LSAT students in Group 1, while this was not true for students in Group 2.In summary, this study indicates that the introduction of a modest educational intervention (i.e., a short writing assignment accompanied by formative feedback) within the context of a traditional law course produces greater learning gains than those produced by the traditional teaching method alone. This was especially true for students who completed the writing exercise while they were in the midst of struggling with the relevant substantive law material.


The main purpose of this study was to investigate the economic adjustments and income
adequacy of Malay female-headed households (FHHs) in Malaysia. The study
attempted to answer the following six research questions; what are the economic
resources, sources of income and economic adjustments before and after the women
becoming FHHs, and what are the factors significantly influence the economic status,
objective and subjective income adequacy of FHHs? Secondary data collected among
female headed households for the study entitled female headed household within the
context of poverty carry out in 1994195 was used in this research. The data was
analyzed using Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS). The procedures used were
descriptive statistics, t-tests, multiple regression and multiple discriminant analysis.
The data analysis indicated that FHHs had access to limited economic resources. One of
the main economic adjustments undertaken by the women was getting involved in
employment to support their living. Three models explaining the economic status,
objective and subjective income adequacy for widows, divorcees and all FHHs were
tested in this research. Divorcee's economic status was significantly explained by
education, income earned from employment, and ownership of properties while
widow's economic status was significantly explained by ownership of properties, and
other sources of income. Training, education, and income earned from employment
contributed significantly to discriminate the divorcee's objective income adequacy. For
widows it was found that income earned from other sources, employment, and
remittance from children contributed significantly to discriminate the widow's objective
income adequacy. Among FHHs there were only 34.2% divorcees and 27.9% widows
whose income was adequate. When subjective income adequacy was analyzed there
were 13% divorcees and 14.8% widows who perceived that their income is adequate.
After taking into account all sources of income, majority of FHHs in this study; widows
or divorcees were poor. Their low level of educational attainment and lack of skills
contributed to such situation. Improve education and skills can be one of the strategies
to help FHHs cope with the changing status from being intact family to female headed.
To enhance the economic status of FHHs and reduce the incidences of poverty, relevant
policies and more integrated programs should be formulated targeted FHHs. Addressing
the needs of female headed households can be one of the effective strategies to sustain
the low level of poverty in Malaysia.


Without losing sight of each field's historical development, they provide modern bridges by which students can observe the cognitive underpinnings of animal learning and the descendants of associationism currently under scrutiny by human memory psychologists-in short, a state-of-the-art presentation that makes clear the commonalities (and contrasts) of human and animal research. Learning and Memory includes the most recent findings in the fields: the study of choice, operant behavior and economics, behavior theory and memory, implicit memory and unconscious memory, connectionism, concepts and generic memory, and networks of memories. In presenting these latest findings, the authors develop selective lines of research rather than merely listing research finding after research finding. This approach not only clearly shows students which findings support (or do nor support) hypotheses, but it also gives students a firm sense of how experiments are conducted, and science developed. In addition, a unique chapter, Chapter 14, "Memory and the Decision-Making of Everyday Life," concludes the book. Drawing from the previous chapters, it explains how normal memory processes lead to the heuristics and strategies that guide our everyday thinking. Taking up heuristics, representativeness, covariation detection, and schema-based reasoning, including animal and human research, this chapter provides even more integration of the fields.


According to the LED spectra measured in the rated current, Gauss distribution function and asymmetric Gaussian distribution function methods are used to simulate the individual LED spectrum. Based on this mathematical model, 32 LEDs are used to synthesize arbitrary spectral distribution of the light source. Processing the spectral data with multiple linear regressions, CIE illuminant A and CIE illuminant D65 are simulated. The results show that for each LED, different Gauss models should be used. The simulation results are quite satisfying. However, there is a difference between the simulation results and the experimental results. The spectral evaluation indices of fitted both CIE illuminant A and CIE illuminant D65 do not exceed 2.5%. But in experiment, because of the changes of the peak wavelength and the FWHM caused by the current, the spectral evaluation indices of fitted CIE illuminant A and CIE illuminant D65 are around 5%.


Cladistic analyses of chromosomal banding patterns from 48 species of cryptodiran turtles, combined with a fossil-based method for estimating rates of karyotypic change, show that karyotypic evolution was twice as fast and involved different types of rearrangements in Mesozoic turtles when compared to more recent forms. The deceleration in rate of karyotypic change is correlated with decelerated morphological change and is indicative of adaptive evolution. Comparisons of banded karyotypes reveal that some chromosomes have remained unchanged for at least 200 million years.


This article uses the first domestic violence case filed against the United States in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to discuss the politics of gender and domestic violence. We discuss how gender-neutral frameworks of the case in the U.S. ignore the interpersonal gender and power issues which often attend domestic violence cases. The case before the IACHR was arguably more successful in addressing gender by drawing from the human rights literature on women's rights. However, given that this case is the first human rights charge against the United States by a domestic violence survivor, the specifically gendered framework and unique nature of the crime could be potentially limiting for other domestic violence cases. We conclude by offering an alternative framework for domestic violence intervention in human rights cases.


Live vaccines can prevent unrelated infections and may temporarily protect against COVID-19 Prophylactic vaccination is the most effective intervention to protect against infectious diseases. The commonly accepted paradigm is that immunization with both attenuated virus (live but with substantially reduced virulence) and inactivated (killed virus particles) vaccines induces adaptive and generally long-term and specific immunity in the form of neutralizing antibodies and/or activating pathogen-specific cellular immune responses. However, an increasing body of evidence suggests that live attenuated vaccines can also induce broader protection against unrelated pathogens likely by inducing interferon and other innate immunity mechanisms that are yet to be identified. The stimulation of innate immunity by live attenuated vaccines in general, and oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) in particular, could provide temporary protection against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).


In eukaryotes, the degradation of cellular mRNAs is accomplished by Xrn1p and the cytoplasmic exosome. Because viral RNAs often lack canonical caps or poly-A tails, they can also be vulnerable to degradation by these host exonucleases. Yeast lack sophisticated mechanisms of innate and adaptive immunity, but do use RNA degradation as an antiviral defense mechanism. One model is that the RNA of yeast viruses is subject to degradation simply as a side effect of the intrinsic exonuclease activity of proteins involved in RNA metabolism. Contrary to this model, we find a highly refined, species-specific relationship between Xrn1p and the "L-A" totiviruses of different Saccharomyces yeast species. We show that the gene XRN1 has evolved rapidly under positive natural selection in Saccharomyces yeast, resulting in high levels of Xrn1p protein sequence divergence from one yeast species to the next. We also show that these sequence differences translate to differential interactions with the L-A virus, where Xrn1p from S. cerevisiae is most efficient at controlling the L-A virus that chronically infects S. cerevisiae, and Xrn1p from S. kudriavzevii is most efficient at controlling the L-A-like virus that we have discovered within S. kudriavzevii. All Xrn1p orthologs are equivalent in their interaction with another virus-like parasite, the Ty1 retrotransposon. Thus, the activity of Xrn1p against totiviruses is not simply an incidental consequence of the enzymatic activity of Xrn1p, but rather Xrn1p co-evolves with totiviruses to maintain its potent antiviral activity and limit viral propagation in Saccharomyces yeasts. Consistent with this, we demonstrated that Xrn1p physically interacts with the Gag protein encoded by the L-A virus, suggesting a host-virus interaction that is more complicated than just Xrn1p-mediated nucleolytic digestion of viral RNAs.


Background: Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA or C8) has hepatotoxic effects in animals. Cross-sectional epidemiologic studies suggest PFOA is associated with liver injury biomarkers. Objectives: We estimated associations between modeled historical PFOA exposures and liver injury biomarkers and medically validated liver disease. Methods: Participants completed surveys during 2008–2011 reporting demographic, medical, and residential history information. Self-reported liver disease, including hepatitis, fatty liver, enlarged liver and cirrhosis, was validated with healthcare providers. Alanine aminotransferase (ALT), γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT) and direct bilirubin, markers of liver toxicity, were obtained from blood samples collected in the C8 Health Project (2005–2006). Historically modeled PFOA exposure, estimated using environmental fate and transport models and participant residential histories, was analyzed in relation to liver biomarkers (n = 30,723, including 1,892 workers) and liver disease (n = 32,254, including 3,713 workers). Results: Modeled cumulative serum PFOA was positively associated with ALT levels (p for trend < 0.0001), indicating possible liver toxicity. An increase from the first to the fifth quintile of cumulative PFOA exposure was associated with a 6% increase in ALT levels (95% CI: 4, 8%) and a 16% increased odds of having above-normal ALT (95% CI: odds ratio: 1.02, 1.33%). There was no indication of association with either elevated direct bilirubin or GGT; however, PFOA was associated with decreased direct bilirubin. We observed no evidence of an effect of cumulative exposure (with or without a 10-year lag) on all liver disease (n = 647 cases), nor on enlarged liver, fatty liver, and cirrhosis only (n = 427 cases). Conclusion: Results are consistent with previous cross-sectional studies showing association between PFOA and ALT, a marker of hepatocellular damage. We did not observe evidence that PFOA increases the risk of clinically diagnosed liver disease. Citation: Darrow LA, Groth AC, Winquist A, Shin HM, Bartell SM, Steenland K. 2016. Modeled perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) exposure and liver function in a Mid-Ohio Valley community. Environ Health Perspect 124:1227–1233; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1510391


Background: Shift workers who experience sleep disturbances and exposure to light at night could be at increased risk for alterations in physiologic functions that are circadian in nature. Methods: We investigated rotating shift work and menstrual cycle patterns in the Nurses' Health Study II using cross-sectional data collected in 1993 from 71,077 nurses aged 28–45 years who were having menstrual periods and were not using oral contraceptives. Log-binomial regression was used to estimate relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: Eight percent of participants reported working rotating night shifts for 1–9 months, 4% for 10–19 months, and 7% for 20+ months during the previous 2 years. Irregular cycles (>7 days variability) were reported by 10% of participants. Seventy percent of women reported menstrual cycles of 26–31 days, 1% less than 21 days, 16% 21–25 days, 11% 32–39 days, and 1% 40+ days. Women with 20+ months of rotating shift work were more likely to have irregular cycles (adjusted RR = 1.23 [CI = 1.14–1.33]); they were also more likely to have cycle length <21 days (1.27 [0.99–1.62]) or 40+ days (1.49 [1.19–1.87]) (both compared with 26–31 days). For irregular patterns and for 40+ day cycles, there was evidence of a dose response with increasing months of rotating shift work. Moderately short (21–25 days) or long (32–39 days) cycle lengths were not associated with rotating shift work. Conclusions: Shift work was modestly associated with menstrual function, with possible implications for fertility and other cycle-related aspects of women's health.


The first 1 MW PV park in Sweden was installed in 2014. A concern from the grid owner perspective is how the growing number of PV installations will influence the power quality in their grids. The power quality impact from the 1 MW park was demonstrated to fall within the regulating limitations in EIFS 2013:1 for the following aspects: voltage changes, voltage harmonics, interharmonics, and voltage unbalance. However, the slow voltage variations were exceeding the Swedish industry recommendations (AMP) governing a single production source. This deviation occurred during 0.74% of the studied two-month period. To meet AMP recommendations it would have been necessary to install a separate cable intended only for the solar park itself and connected closer to the substation. Perhaps a more appropriate alternative would have been to connect the solar park on the closest 20 kV grid.


In this paper, a new methodology for tolerating link as well as node defects in self-adaptive reconfigurable networks will be presented. Currently, networked embedded systems need a certain level of redundancy for each node and link in order to tolerate defects and failures in a network. Due to monetary constraints as well as space and power limitations, the replication of each node and link is not an option in most embedded systems. Therefore, we will present a hardware/software partitioning algorithm for reconfigurable networks that optimizes the task binding onto resources at runtime such that node/link defects can be handled and data traffic on links between computational nodes will be minimized. This paper presents a new hardware/software partitioning algorithm, an experimental evaluation and for demonstrating the applicability, an implementation on a network of FPGA-based boards.


Dr. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, a senior research fellow at the Newberry Library, studied American Indian and colonial American history for over six decades. In this interview she discusses little-known themes including African and Indian coexistence and cooperation, beginning in I6I9 in the Chesapeake Bay region, and spanning Louisiana, Minnesota, New York, Northern Mexico, Ohio, Spanish Florida, and Texas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including an Underground Railroad from Michigan into Canada. Also discussed are a system of inter-Indian diplomacy that stretched across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and the long history of attempts by the U.S. government to assimilate American Indians.


Using a new database for the late 19th century, when the pound sterling circulated all over the world, this paper provides the first review of critical empirical issues in the economics of international currencies. First, we report evidence in favor of the search-theoretic approach to international currencies. Second, we give empirical support to strategic externalities. Third, we provide strong confirmation of the existence of persistence. Finally, we reject the view that the international monetary system is subject to pure path dependency in that it cannot remain locked into some past equilibrium. Our conclusion is that, for the late 19th century at least, money and trade were complements.


Sequential two-dimensional forward modelling of source rock maturation along a north–south 600 km megaregional profile across the northern Gulf of Mexico Basin illustrates the coupled influence of allochthonous salt evolution and overpressure development on source rock maturation. Model results indicate that allochthonous salt evolution strongly affected local and regional source rock maturation, while overpressure development had a minor impact. Within the lower slope portion of the profile (south of the Sigsbee escarpment to the Tabular Salt/Minibasin province), localized thermal lows associated with salt stock development locally retarded the maturation of source rocks, while the slow development of overpressures effected little influence on the maturation. Within the centre of the profile (offshore Louisiana shelf), however, the evolution of allochthonous salt sheets and shallow salt structures locally and regionally lowered the oil generation window. The timing of overpressures in this region, related to the progradation of the Cenozoic marine depocentre, may have accelerated the maturation of middle Eocene source rocks, although the deeper Turonian source rocks had reached maturation at the time of greatest overpressure development. In the northern portion of the profile (southern Louisiana), the Terrebonne salt sheet lowered the oil generation window and retarded the maturation of the middle Eocene source rocks.


A metamorphic core complex of latest Oligocene age crops out in the Kazdağ mountain range in northwest Turkey. The footwall of the core complex consists of gneiss, amphibolite and marble metamorphosed at 5 ± 1 kbar and 640° ± 50 °C. The average muscovite and biotite Rb/Sr ages from the gneisses are 19 Ma and 22 Ma, respectively, and imply high temperature metamorphism during latest Oligocene times. The hangingwall is made up of an unmetamorphosed Lower Tertiary oceanic accretionary melange with Upper Cretaceous eclogite lenses. The hangingwall and footwall are separated by an extensional ductile shear zone, two kilometres thick. Mylonites and underlying high-grade metamorphic rocks show a N-trending mineral lineation with the structural fabrics indicating down-dip, top-to-the-north shear sense. The shear zone, the accretionary melange and the high-grade metamorphic rocks are cut by an undeformed granitoid with a 21 Ma Rb/Sr biotite age, analytically indistinguishable from the Rb/Sr biotite ages in the surrounding footwall gneisses. The estimated pressure of the metamorphism, and that of the granitoid emplacement, indicate that the high-grade metamorphic rocks were rapidly exhumed at ∼ 24 Ma from a depth of ∼ 14 km to ∼ 7 km by activity along the shear zone. The subsequent exhumation of the metamorphic rocks to the surface occurred during Pliocene–Quaternary times in a transpressive ridge between two overstepping fault segments of the North Anatolian Fault zone. The high-grade metamorphic rocks of the Kazdağ range are surrounded by voluminous calc-alkaline volcanic and plutonic rocks of Late Oligocene–Early Miocene age, which formed above the northward-dipping Hellenic subduction zone. The magmatic arc setting of the core complex and stratigraphic evidence for subdued topography in northwest Turkey prior to the onset of extension suggest that the latest Oligocene regional extension was primarily related to the roll-back of the subduction zone rather than to the gravitational collapse.


Park Jee Hwan MS, Purdue University, August 2020. Grid-based Cyclic Multi-robot Allocation for Object Carrying. Major Professors: Galen King, Byung-Cheol Min. In this thesis, we are addressing new method of object transportation using multi-robot system. The new method of object transportation is called A grid-based cyclic robot allocation (GCRA) method which consists multiple spherical robots. The object is placed on top of group of spherical robots before the transportation. The rotation of the multiple spherical robots cause the displacement of the object and reach the goal location based on the direction and speed of the rotation of the robots. The GCRA method for spherical robots is proposed along with specific stability criterion, which designs the formation of the multi-robot system. The formation is created based on the customized grid which is to be modified based on the properties of the object. The shape and the center of gravity of the shape define the horizontal gap, gx and vertical gap, gy. All the possible locations of spherical robots is the cross points of grid which implies that gx and gy defines the distance between the robots and based on the boundary of the robots placed underneath the object, the condition of the stability is defined. It also identifies minimum number of robots required based on the arbitrary shape of an object for stable omni-directional translation of the object on a 2 dimensional space. The desired positions and formation of the robots is identified based goal position of the object. Under centralized system, position control is applied to drive the robots to the desired positions. The position control simultaneously makes the object mobile and maintain the stability of the object. Mathematical proof of the proposed method is shown verifying the stability of the transportation process with the assumptions of no slip between the robots and the object. 2 Dimensional Simulation results of robot allocation using GCRA for several arbitrary shapes certify the proposed method.


In common with all retroviruses, the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) contains duplicated long terminal repeat (LTR) sequences flanking the proviral genome. These LTRs contain identical poly(A) signals, which are both transcribed into RNA. Therefore, to allow efficient viral expression, a mechanism must exist to either restrict promoter-proximal poly(A) site use or enhance the activity of the promoter-distal poly(A) site. We have examined the use of both poly(A) sites using proviral clones. Mutation of the previously defined upstream activatory sequences of the 3' LTR poly(A) site decreases the efficiency of polyadenylation when placed in competition with an efficient downstream processing signal. However, in the absence of competition, these mutations have no effect on HIV-1 polyadenylation. In addition, the 5' LTR poly(A) site is inactive, whereas a heterologous poly(A) site positioned in its place is utilized efficiently. Furthermore, transcription initiating from the 3' LTR promoter utilizes the 3' LTR poly(A) signal efficiently. Therefore, the main determinant of the differential poly(A) site use appears to be neither proximity to a promoter element in the 5' LTR nor the presence of upstream activating sequences at the 3' LTR. Instead, we show that the major splice donor site that is immediately downstream of the 5' LTR inhibits cleavage and polyadenylation at the promoter-proximal site. The fact that this poly(A) site is active in a proviral clone when the major splice donor site is mutated suggests that the selective use of poly(A) signals in HIV-1 is mediated by a direct inhibition of the HIV-1 poly(A) site by downstream splicing events or factors involved in splicing.


During the course of three decades, Joseph Stalin's Gulag, a vast network of forced labour camps and settlements, held many millions of prisoners. People in every corner of the Soviet Union lived in daily terror of imprisonment and execution. In researching the surviving threads of memoirs and oral reminiscences of five women victimised by the Gulag, Paul Gregory has stitched together a collection of stories from the female perspective, a view in short supply in the literature. Capturing the fear, paranoia, and unbearable hardship that were hallmarks of Stalin's Great Terror, Gregory relates the stories of these five women--from different social strata and regions--in vivid prose, from their pre-Gulag lives, through their struggles to survive in the repressive atmosphere of the late 1930s and early 1940s, to the difficulties facing the four who survived as they adjusted to life after the Gulag. -- These firsthand accounts illustrate how even the wrong word could become a crime against the state. Gregory begins with a synopsis of Stalin's rise to power, the roots of the Gulag, and the scheming and plotting that led to and persisted in one of the bloodiest, most egregious dictatorships of the twentieth century.


In the Chihuahuan Desert, there are many cacti species considered to be at risk due to illegal extraction, land-use change and overgrazing. To reduce their illegal extraction, ex situ plant propagation has been suggested. However, the literature regarding seed germination biology of these species is scarce. We investigated the effect of light on germination percentages and germination rate (t50) in seeds of 28 cactus species from the Chihuahuan Desert. Seeds were incubated at a 14-h daily photoperiod (light) and in continuous darkness at 25°C for 30 d, after which seeds failing to germinate in darkness were transferred to light for 30 d. Only 11 of the species had non-dormant seeds, germinating ≥70% in the light; thus an evaluation of the effect of light versus darkness on germination was confined to them. All species were positively photoblastic, and all of them had seeds weighing <1 mg. Ten species did not germinate in darkness, and one species had only 7% germination. From these 11 species, 8 did not germinate to a significantly higher percentage when the same set of seeds was transferred from dark to light, suggesting that darkness had triggered secondary dormancy (skotodormancy). To our knowledge, these results are the first to show that darkness triggers secondary dormancy in cacti. Implications of having a light requirement for germination and having small seeds to accumulate a persistent soil seed bank are discussed. These results contribute to understanding the germination biology of cactus species at risk, and could enhance the propagation of large numbers of cultivated individuals outside their habitats, promoting ex situ conservation.


Although Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Jean Renoir do not pontificate about "eternal verities or analytical niceties," as Irving Singer remarks in Three Philosophical Filmmakers, each expresses, through his work, his particular vision of reality. In this study of these great directors, Singer examines the ways in which meaning and technique interact within their different visions.Singer's account reveals Hitchcock, Welles, and Renoir to be not only consummate artists and inspired craftsmen but also sophisticated theorists of film and its place in human experience. They left behind numerous essays, articles, and interviews in which they discuss the nature of their own work as well as more extensive issues. Singer draws on their writings, as well as their movies, to show the pervasive importance of what they did as dedicated filmmakers.Hitchcock used his mastery of contrived devices not as mere formalism divorced from content, Singer notes, but in order to evoke emotional responses that are meaningful in themselves and that matter greatly to millions of people. Singer's discussion of Hitchcock's work analyzes, among other things, his ideas about suspense, romance, and the comic. Singer also makes a detailed comparison of the original Psycho with Gus Van Sant's recent remake. Considering the work of Welles, Singer shows how and why the theme of vanished origins -- "the myth of the past" -- recurs in many of his films, starting with the Rosebud motif in Citizen Kane and continuing much later in his little-known masterpiece The Immortal Story. Expanding upon Renoir's comment that his own films were "always the same film," Singer studies his entire work as a coherent though evolving search for contact and "conversation" with the audience. While recognizing the primacy of technique, Renoir used cinematic artifice in the service of that humanistic aspiration.


Coupled ocean-atmosphere processes in the Indian Ocean amplify changes in Indo-Pacific climate under glacial conditions. The mechanisms driving glacial-interglacial changes in the climate of the Indo-Pacific warm pool are poorly understood. Here, we address this question by combining paleoclimate proxies with model simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum climate. We find evidence of two mechanisms explaining key patterns of ocean cooling and rainfall change interpreted from proxy data. Exposure of the Sahul shelf excites a positive ocean-atmosphere feedback involving a stronger surface temperature gradient along the equatorial Indian Ocean and a weaker Walker circulation—a response explaining the drier/wetter dipole across the basin. Northern Hemisphere cooling by ice sheet albedo drives a monsoonal retreat across Africa and the Arabian Peninsula—a response that triggers a weakening of the Indian monsoon via cooling of the Arabian Sea and associated reductions in moisture supply. These results demonstrate the importance of air-sea interactions in the Indian Ocean, amplifying externally forced climate changes over a large part of the tropics.


When dealing with node or link failures in Software Defined Networking (SDN), the network capability to establish an alternative path depends on controller reachability and on the round trip times (RTTs) between controller and involved switches. Moreover, current SDN data plane abstractions for failure detection (e.g. OpenFlow "Fast-failover") do not allow programmers to tweak switches' detection mechanism, thus leaving SDN operators still relying on proprietary management interfaces (when available) to achieve guaranteed detection and recovery delays. We propose SPIDER, an OpenFlow-like pipeline design that provides i) a detection mechanism based on switches' periodic link probing and ii) fast reroute of traffic flows even in case of distant failures, regardless of controller availability. SPIDER can be implemented using stateful data plane abstractions such as OpenState or Open vSwitch, and it offers guaranteed short (i.e. ms) failure detection and recovery delays, with a configurable trade off between overhead and failover responsiveness. We present here the SPIDER pipeline design, behavioral model, and analysis on flow tables' memory impact. We also implemented and experimentally validated SPIDER using OpenState (an OpenFlow 1.3 extension for stateful packet processing), showing numerical results on its performance in terms of recovery latency and packet losses.


This paper presents a novel method for instruction folding in Java execution. The approach is to use an asynchronous co-processor for execution of Java bytecode. The folding is done in the same pipeline stage with instruction decoding. The co-processor is designed using asynchronous techniques to provide low power usage with reasonable performance. The co-processor can be used in a single CPU and single co-processor environment or in a network of multiple CPUs and co-processors. The co-processor does not need to know what kind of environment it is placed in, as all communication goes through an interface unit designed especially for that environment. This modularity of the design makes the co-processor more reusable and allows system level scalability. This work is a part of a project focusing on design of an advanced Java co-processor for Java intensive SoC applications.


ABSTRACT This paper seeks to explain why Hollywood's dominant firms are narrowing the scope of creativity in the contemporary period (1980–2015). The largest distributors have sought to prevent the art of filmmaking and its related social relations from becoming financial risks in the pursuit of profit. Major filmed entertainment, my term for the six largest distributors, must discount expected future earnings to present prices with the forward-looking logic of capitalisation; and uncertainty about where creativity in cinema is going can produce financial uncertainty about the future earning potential of new film projects. Conversely, a degree of confidence in the expected future earnings of Hollywood cinema can increase when the art of filmmaking and broader social world of mass culture are ordered by capitalist power [Nitzan, J. and Bichler, S., 2009. Capital as power: a study of order and creorder. New York: Routledge]. For the period of 1980–2015, major filmed entertainment lowered its risk relative to the period before, 1960–79. This historical process of risk reduction is the effect of major filmed entertainment making the wide-release strategy (a.k.a., saturation booking) more predictable through an aggressive implementation of the blockbuster style and the high concept standard.


Background Inbreeding depression occurs when the offspring produced as a result of matings between relatives show reduced fitness, and is generally understood as a consequence of the elevated expression of deleterious recessive alleles. How inbreeding depression varies across environments is of importance for the evolution of inbreeding avoidance behaviour, and for understanding extinction risks in small populations. However, inbreeding-by-environment (I×E) interactions have rarely been investigated in wild populations. Methodology/Principal Findings We analysed 41 years of breeding events from a wild great tit (Parus major) population and used 11 measures of the environment to categorise environments as relatively good or poor, testing whether these measures influenced inbreeding depression. Although inbreeding always, and environmental quality often, significantly affected reproductive success, there was little evidence for statistically significant I×E interactions at the level of individual analyses. However, point estimates of the effect of the environment on inbreeding depression were sometimes considerable, and we show that variation in the magnitude of the I×E interaction across environments is consistent with the expectation that this interaction is more marked across environmental axes with a closer link to overall fitness, with the environmental dependence of inbreeding depression being elevated under such conditions. Hence, our analyses provide evidence for an environmental dependence of the inbreeding×environment interaction: effectively an I×E×E. Conclusions/Significance Overall, our analyses suggest that I×E interactions may be substantial in wild populations, when measured across relevant environmental contrasts, although their detection for single traits may require very large samples, or high rates of inbreeding.


The existence of the growth optimal portfolio (GOP), also known as the Kelly portfolio, is vital for a financial market to be meaningful. The GOP, if it exists, is uniquely determined by the market parameters of the primary security accounts. However, markets may develop and new security accounts become tradable. What happens to the GOP if the original market is extended? In this paper we provide a complete characterization of market extensions which are consistent with the existence of a GOP. We show that a three fund separation theorem applies for the extended GOP. This includes, in particular, the introduction of a locally risk free security, the savings account. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a consistent exogenous specification of the prevailing short rates.


Articles about cybersecurity events like data breaches and ransomware attacks are common, both in general news and technical sources. Automatically extracting structured information from these can provide valuable information to inform both human analysts and computer systems. In this paper we describe how cybersecurity events can be described via semantic schemas, examined through an initial set of five event types. Using a collection of 1,000 news articles annotated with these event types, including their semantic roles, arguments, realis, and coreference, we detail a modular, deep-learning based information extraction (IE) pipeline, which extracts useful event information with high accuracy. We argue that the event argument set considered here can support many other cybersecurity events, facilitating the extension to new cybersecurity event types, such as distributed denial of service and SQL injection attacks.


Previous research has suggested that different racial groups have differing expectations of body size, but Asian Americans have largely been absent from this literature. Thick Dumpling Skin, a blog that focuses on body image issues and eating disorders in the Asian American community, provides an opportunity to study this unexplored topic. Thick Dumpling Skin is highly interactive and features submitted posts from multiple users. Using qualitative content analysis to code archived blog posts from 2011 to 2014, this paper studies how online users in this community come to embody stereotypes regarding the Asian body. In my analysis, I discuss how users define the ideal Asian body in ways that make thinness and Asian-ness synonymous. To members of this community, being a fat Asian is a contradiction and threat to their Asian identity. Using the microaggressions literature, I examine the potential psychological consequences of not fitting the ideal Asian body. This paper also asserts that Asians do subscribe to a thin ideal, but it is not the same ideal held by whites. I conceptualize the need to attain the perfect Asian body as the embodiment of the model minority stereotype.


This review illustrates the interaction between law and finance in the particular case of the taxation of constructive sales. The focus is on the treatment of variable prepaid forward contracts and the rules regarding these instruments articulated by Revenue Ruling 2003-7 and the recent case involving Philip Anschutz (Anschutz Co. et al. v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue 2011). Simple models are used to show how the tests established by the law fail to reflect important financial considerations, such as the volatility of asset returns and the riskiness of dividend payments. These models provide examples that form the basis for a critique of the current rules and also indicate a possible path for future reform and improvement of the law, namely the addition of a delta-based test to the existing rules. The analysis presented here aims to encourage future work that applies financial theory to critique and improve legal rules in a wide range of other situations.


Abstract Bowlby's (1969/1982) ideas of attachment as an interactional system provide the basis for an understanding of the development of adaptive and maladaptive working models of the self and other. More specifically, attachment theory can offer an in-depth understanding into the development of a depressotypic self-schema. Attachment theory is set alongside research into adolescent depression in order to illustrate the importance of the primary attachment relationship in protecting adolescents in our society from developing depressive symptomatology. Therefore, current research in adolescent depression is viewed through the lens of attachment theory. This view is complemented by an exploration of the role of culture in the production of gender differences in depression. Thus, a tripartite model of adolescent depression, including the individual, family relationships, and socio-cultural factors is offered as being of potential value for clinicians and researchers in this area.


The first in-depth scholarly study in English of the Japanese performance medium kamishibai , Sharalyn Orbaugh's Propaganda Performed illuminates the vibrant street culture of 1930s Japan as well as the visual and narrative rhetoric of Japanese propaganda in World War II.


Previous work revealed that visual semantic information conveyed by gestures can enhance degraded speech comprehension, but the mechanisms underlying these integration processes under adverse listening conditions remain poorly understood. We used MEG to investigate how oscillatory dynamics support speech–gesture integration when integration load is manipulated by auditory (e.g., speech degradation) and visual semantic (e.g., gesture congruency) factors. Participants were presented with videos of an actress uttering an action verb in clear or degraded speech, accompanied by a matching (mixing gesture + "mixing") or mismatching (drinking gesture + "walking") gesture. In clear speech, alpha/beta power was more suppressed in the left inferior frontal gyrus and motor and visual cortices when integration load increased in response to mismatching versus matching gestures. In degraded speech, beta power was less suppressed over posterior STS and medial temporal lobe for mismatching compared with matching gestures, showing that integration load was lowest when speech was degraded and mismatching gestures could not be integrated and disambiguate the degraded signal. Our results thus provide novel insights on how low-frequency oscillatory modulations in different parts of the cortex support the semantic audiovisual integration of gestures in clear and degraded speech: When speech is clear, the left inferior frontal gyrus and motor and visual cortices engage because higher-level semantic information increases semantic integration load. When speech is degraded, posterior STS/middle temporal gyrus and medial temporal lobe are less engaged because integration load is lowest when visual semantic information does not aid lexical retrieval and speech and gestures cannot be integrated.


During multidisciplinary design of welded aircraft components, designs are principally optimized upon component performance, employing well-established modelling and simulation techniques. On the contrary, because of the complexity of modelling welding process phenomena, much of the welding experimentation relies on physical testing, which means welding producibility aspects are considered after the design has already been established. In addition, welding optimization research mainly focuses on welding process parameters, overlooking the potential impact of product design. As a consequence, redesign loops and welding rework increases product cost. To solve these problems, in this article, a novel method that combines the benefits of design of experiments (DOE) techniques with welding simulation is presented. The aim of the virtual design of experiments method is to model and optimize the effect of design and welding parameters interactions early in the design process. The method is explained through a case study, in which weld bead penetration and distortion are quality responses to optimize. First, a small number of physical welds are conducted to develop and tune the welding simulation. From this activity, a new combined heat source model is presented. Thereafter, the DOE technique optimal design is employed to design an experimental matrix that enables the conjointly incorporation of design and welding parameters. Welding simulations are then run and a response function is obtained. With virtual experiments, a large number of design and welding parameter combinations can be tested in a short time. In conclusion, the creation of a meta-model allows for performing welding producibility optimization and robustness analyses during early design phases of aircraft components.


Purpose This study was performed to examine whether applying triamcinolone acetonide paste as a lubricant to endotracheal tubes (ETTs) reduces the incidence and severity of postoperative sore throat (POST) more effectively than applying chlorhexidine gluconate jelly. Methods This was a randomized controlled clinical trial. Patients enrolled in the study were ages 20 to 70 yr, American Society of Anesthesiologists' physical status I and II, and scheduled for elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The patients were divided randomly into two groups, the chlorhexidine group and the triamcinolone group. Prior to endotracheal intubation, ETTs in the chlorhexidine group were lubricated with 0.1% chlorhexidine gluconate jelly, whereas the ETTs in the triamcinolone group were lubricated with 0.1% triamcinolone acetonide paste 0.5 mg. During the 24 hr after the operation, we recorded the incidence and severity of POST and the incidence of cough, hoarseness, dysphagia, nausea, and dry throat. Results Of the 150 patients initially enrolled, 143 patients were included in the study. The incidence of POST was significantly lower in the triamcinolone group compared with the chlorhexidine group (difference = 52.4%; 95% confidence interval, 36.8% to 64.2%; P \ 0.001). The severity score for the triamcinolone group was significantly lower than that for the chlorhexidine group. The frequencies of coughing, hoarseness, dysphagia, nausea, and dry throat were similar in the two groups for the first 24 hr after surgery. Conclusions Triamcinolone acetonide paste applied along the length of the ETT resulted in clinically important and statistically significant decreases in the incidence and severity of POST compared with the application of chlorhexidine jelly. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, CT00908817).


Activin A promotes fetal mouse testis development, including by driving Sertoli cell proliferation and cord morphogenesis, but its mechanisms of action are undefined. We performed RNA-seq on testicular somatic cells from fetal activin A-deficient mice (Inhba KO) and wildtype littermates at embryonic ages E13.5 and E15.5. Analysis of whole gonads provided validation, and cultures with a pathway inhibitor discerned acute from chronic effects of altered activin A bioactivity. Activin A deficiency predominantly affects the Sertoli cell transcriptome. New candidate targets include Minar1, Sel1l3, Vnn1, Sfrp4, Masp1, Nell1, Tthy1 and Prss12. Importantly, the testosterone (T) biosynthetic enzymes present in fetal Sertoli cells, Hsd17b1 and Hsd17b3, were identified as activin-responsive. Activin-deficient testes contained elevated androstenedione (A4), displayed an Inhba gene dose-dependent A4/T ratio, and contained 11-keto androgens. The remarkable accumulation of lipid droplets in both Sertoli and germ cells at E15.5 indicated impaired lipid metabolism in the absence of activin A. This demonstrates for the first time that activin A acts on Sertoli cells to determine local steroid production during fetal testis development. These outcomes reveal how compounds that perturb fetal steroidogenesis can function through cell-specific mechanisms and indicate how altered activin levels in utero may impact on testis development.


As the primary coastal land use decisionmakers in Southern California, local governments will make choices that will shape the region's resilience to sea-level rise. To implement adaptation plans effectively, local governments must understand the ways law enhances their adaptive capacity by providing them with the necessary legal authority to take actions to adapt to changing sea-level conditions. Additionally, local governments must appreciate legal risks—that is, potential legal limitations on adaptation tools, as well as potential liability to private parties for harms related to the adverse effects both of adaptation actions and sea-level rise itself. This article identifies how local governments can harness legal doctrines to support aggressive, innovative strategies to achieve successful sea-level rise adaptation outcomes for Southern California while minimizing legal risk. We broadly outline likely sea-level rise impacts in Southern California, and evaluate the risks and opportunities of potential protection, accommodation, and retreat adaptation strategies that local governments could deploy. We focus primarily on four categories of legal issues that may be implicated as Southern California localities plan for the impacts of sea-level rise: 1) the California Coastal Act, 2) the public trust doctrine, 3) the constitutional takings doctrine, and 4) the California Environmental Quality Act. We divide our analysis of these legal doctrines into their potential interactions with both private development and critical municipal infrastructure like roads, power plants, and ports. Overall, we demonstrate how Southern California local governments can harness their existing regulatory authority to support aggressive sea-level rise adaptation strategies and, through proactive planning and smart decisionmaking, mitigate potential legal liabilities.


In our article, we investigate the affective economy of national-populist image circulation on Facebook. This is highly relevant, since social media has been an essential area for the spread of national-populist ideology. In our research, we analyse image circulation as affective practice, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. We use computational data analysis methods to examine visual big data: image fingerprints and reverse image search engines to track down the routes of thousands of circulated images as well as make discourse-historical analysis on the images that have gained most attention among supporters. Our research demonstrates that these existing tools allow social science research to make theory-solid approaches to understand the role of image circulation in creating and sustaining national and transnational networks on social media, and show how national-populist thinking is spread through images that catalyse and mobilise affects – fear, anger and resentment – thus creating an effective affective economy.


Objective Deficiency of anabolic sex steroids is common in heart failure (HF). The pathophysiological implications of this phenomenon, however, have not been fully elucidated. This clinical study investigated the significance of low serum androgen levels in HF. Design Prospective cohort study. Patients and Methods In 191 consecutively recruited men with HF (mean age 64 years; New York Heart Association (NYHA) class I–IV 24%/35%/35%/6%) and reduced (ejection fraction (EF) ≤40%, n=96) or preserved (EF >40%, n=95) left ventricular function total and free serum testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) were measured. The median observation period was 859 days. Results During follow-up 53 patients (28%) died. Whereas total serum testosterone was normal in most patients (91%), free testosterone and DHEAS were reduced in 79% and 23%, respectively. DHEAS and free testosterone, but not total testosterone, were inversely associated with NYHA class (both p<0.01). Lower free testosterone and DHEAS and higher SHBG predicted all-cause mortality risk (hazard ratio (HR) 0.89, 95% CI 0.82 to 0.96 per 1 ng/dl free testosterone, p=0.004; HR 0.95, 95% CI 0.89 to 1.00 per 10 μg/dl DHEAS, p=0.058; and HR 1.18, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.33 per 10 nmol/l SHBG, p=0.006, respectively; adjusted for age and NYHA class). However, further adjustment for carefully selected confounding factors abolished these associations. Conclusion In male HF patients, low serum levels of androgens are associated with adverse prognosis, but this relation is confounded by indicators of a poor health state. The results suggest that low serum androgens develop as a sequel of this progressive multifaceted systemic disorder.