Network Fundamentals, CCNA Exploration Companion Guide is the official supplemental textbook for the Network Fundamentals course in the Cisco Networking Academy CCNA Exploration curriculum version 4. The course, the first of four in the new curriculum, is based on a top-down approach to networking. The Companion Guide, written and edited by Networking Academy instructors, is designed as a portable desk reference to use anytime, anywhere. The books features reinforce the material in the course to help you focus on important concepts and organize your study time for exams. New and improved features help you study and succeed in this course: Chapter objectivesReview core concepts by answering the focus questions listed at the beginning of each chapter. Key termsRefer to the updated lists of networking vocabulary introduced and highlighted in context in each chapter. GlossaryConsult the comprehensive glossary with more than 250 terms. Check Your Understanding questions and answer keyEvaluate your readiness with the updated end-of-chapter questions that match the style of questions you see on the online course quizzes. The answer key explains each answer. Challenge questions and activitiesStrive to ace more challenging review questions and activities designed to prepare you for the complex styles of questions you might see on the CCNA exam. The answer key explains each answer. How ToLook for this icon to study the steps you need to learn to perform certain tasks. Packet Tracer Activities Explore networking concepts in activities interspersed throughout some chapters using Packet Tracer v4.1 developed by Cisco. The files for these activities are on the accompanying CD-ROM. Also available for the Network Fundamentals Course Network Fundamentals, CCNA Exploration Labs and Study Guide ISBN-10: 1-58713-203-6 ISBN-13: 978-1-58713-203-2 Companion CD-ROM The CD-ROM provides many useful tools and information to support your education: Packet Tracer Activity exercise files v4.1 VLSM Subnetting Chart Structured Cabling Exploration Supplement Taking Notes: a .txt file of the chapter objectives A Guide to Using a Networkers Journal booklet IT Career Information Tips on Lifelong Learning in Networking This book is part of the Cisco Networking Academy Series from Cisco Press. The products in this series support and complement the Cisco Networking Academy online curriculum.


This paper describes a structured methodology for decomposing the conceptual design problem in order to facilitate the design process and result in improved conceptual designs that better satisfy the original customer requirements. The axiomatic decomposition for conceptual design method combines Alexander's network partitioning formulation of the design problem with Suh's Independence Axiom. The axiomatic decomposition method uses a cross-domain approach in a House of Quality context to estimate the interactions among the functional requirements that are derived from a qualitative assessment of customer requirements. These interactions are used in several objective functions that serve as criteria for decomposing the design network. A new network partitioning algorithm is effective in creating partitions that maximize the within-partition interactions and minimize the between-partition interactions with appropriate weightings. The viability, usability, and value of the axiomatic decomposition method were examined through analytic comparisons and qualitative assessments of its application. The new method was examined using students in engineering design capstone courses and it was found to be useable and did produce better product designs that met the customer requirements. The student-based assessment revealed that the process would be more effective with individuals having design experience. In a subsequent assessment with practicing industrial designers, it was found that the new method did facilitate the development of better designs. An important observation was the need for limits on partition size (maximum of four functional requirements.) Another issue identified for future research was the need for a means to identify the appropriate starting partition for initiating the design.


We study whether Norwegian Investors should include commodities in their portfolios. Firstly, we discuss the correlation and dispersion between commodities and international equity markets, in addition to possible time trends in the correlation and dispersion between the commodity and the equity market. Secondly, we analyze the return-to-risk tradeoff and the mean-variance efficiency when adding commodities to traditional portfolios. We find no added improvement to the mean-variance efficiency or Sharpe ratio of traditional buyand-hold equity strategies. Moreover, we find that there are no significant time trends between the MSCI world index and S&P GSCI all commodities return correlations in both USD and NOK. We also find that there are significant, but small, positive time trends in return correlations between the Oslo Exchange All Share and the S&P GSCI all commodities.


We found that the standard B3LYP and dispersion-corrected B3LYP-D3 methods predicted completely opposite energy order for the Lewis acid-base adducts formed by Ih-C60 or D5h-C70 with normal C2-bound (nNHC) and abnormal C5-bound (aNHC) N-heterocyclic carbenes. By using the validated B3LYP-D3 method and taking the solvent effects into account, the exclusive formations of the nNHC-C60/70 (Li et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2011, 133, 12410-12413) and aNHC-Sc3N@Ih-C80 complexes (Chen et al. Chem. Sci., 2016, 7, 2331-2334) in two recent experiments were suggested to be thermodynamically and kinetically controlled, respectively. In contrast to the reported reactions of endohedral metallofullerenes, aNHC-Sc3N@Ih-C80 hardly isomerizes to the low-energy normal adducts under heat treatment probably due to the substantial energy barrier and excess NHC reagent used in the experiment. Furthermore, the highly regioselective addition of aNHC to the triple-hexagon-junction carbon atom of Sc3N@Ih-C80 was rationalized by using the frontier molecular orbital theory.


This paper draws from social science literature on Whiteness and anti‐racism as well as personal classroom experience to examine the obstacles educators face in teaching anti‐racism to White college students. Emphasis is placed on popular perceptions and common definitions of the word 'racism' as it is used in mainstream American society. The authors explore the problems that arise when trying to define anti‐racism accurately. Whiteness is critically discussed and analyzed as a cultural myth and as a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to White Americans' adoption of an anti‐racist philosophy and practice. Ultimately, the authors stress the importance of reflexivity in the classroom, both for students and teachers, and of dialogue as a tool to create counter‐hegemonic narratives. This dialogue is intended to make systems of privilege and oppression visible, specifically focusing on how students may effectively challenge covert racism in their daily interactions.


A review is given on archaeoastronomy in Armenia and astronomical knowledge reflected in the Armenian culture. Astronomy in Armenia was popular since ancient times and Armenia is rich in its astronomical heritage, such as the names of the constellations, ancient observatories, Armenian rock art (numerous petroglyphs of astronomical content), ancient and medieval Armenian calendars, astronomical terms and names used in Armenian language since II-I millennia B.C., records of astronomical events by ancient Armenians (e.g. Halley's comet in 87 B.C., supernovae explosion in 1054), the astronomical heritage of the Armenian medieval great thinker Anania Shirakatsi's (612-685), medieval sky maps and astronomical devices by Ghukas (Luca) Vanandetsi (XVII-XVIII centuries) and Mkhitar Sebastatsi (1676-1749), etc. For systemization and further regular studies, we have created a webpage devoted to Armenian archaeoastronomical matters at Armenian Astronomical Society (ArAS) website. Issues on astronomy in culture include astronomy in ancient Armenian cultures, ethnoastronomy, astronomy in Armenian religion and mythology, astronomy and astrology, astronomy in folklore and poetry, astronomy in arts, astrolinguistics and astroheraldry. A similar webpage for Astronomy in Armenian Culture is being created at ArAS website and a permanent section "Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture" has been created in ArAS Electronic Newsletter. Several meetings on this topic have been organized in Armenia during 20072014, including the archaeoastronomical meetings in 2012 and 2014, and a number of books have been published. Several institutions are related to these studies coordinated by Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory (BAO) and researchers from the fields of astronomy, history, archaeology, literature, linguistics, etc. are involved.


CONFIGURABLE COMPUTER SYSTEMS CAN SUPPORT DATAFLOW COMPUTING by Anish Arvind Sathe This work presents a practical implementation of a uni-processor system design. This design, named D2-CPU, satisfies the pure data-driven paradigm, which is a radical alternative to the conventional von Neumann paradigm and exploits the instruction-level parallelism to its full extent. The D2-CPU uses the natural flow of the program, dataflow, by minimizing redundant instructions like fetch, store, and write back. This leads to a design with the better performance, lower power consumption and efficient use of the onchip resources. This extraordinary performance is the result of a simple, pipelined and superscalar architecture with a very wide data bus and a completely out of order execution of instructions. This creates a program counter less, distributed controlled system design with the realization of intelligent memories. Upon the availability of data, the instructions advance further in the memory hierarchy and ultimately to the execution units by themselves, instead of having the CPU fetch the required instructions from the memory as in controlled flow processors. This application (data) oriented execution process is in contrast to application ignorant CPUs in conventional machines. The D 2CPU solves current architectural challenges and puts into practice a pure data-driven microprocessor. This work employs an FPGA implementation of the D 2-CPU to prove the practicability of the data-driven computer paradigm using configurable logic. A relative analysis at the end confirms its superiority in performance, resource utilization and ease of programming over conventional CPUs. CONFIGURABLE COMPUTER SYSTEMS CAN SUPPORT DATAFLOW COMPUTING by Anish Arvind Sathe A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering


Owing to the explosive growth of data driven by e-commerce, social media, and mobile apps, data outsourcing and integration have become two popular Internet services. These services involve one or more data owners (DOs), many requesting clients, and a service provider (SP). The DOs outsource/synchronize their data to the SP, and the SP will provide query services to the requesting clients on behalf of DOs. However, as a third-party server, the SP might alter (leave out or forge) the outsourced/integrated data and query results, intentionally or not. To address this trustworthy issue, the SP is expected to deliver their services in an authenticatable manner, so that the correctness of the service results can be verified by the clients. Unfortunately, existing work on query authentication cannot preserve the privacy of the data being queried. Furthermore, almost all previous studies assume only a single data source/owner, while data integration services usually combine data from multiple sources. In this dissertation, we take the first step to study the authentication of location-based queries with confidentiality and investigate authenticated online data integration services. Cost models, security analysis, and experimental results consistently show the e↵ectiveness and robustness of our proposed schemes under various system settings and query workloads.


Purpose: To investigate the potential of using low‐spatial resolution (LR) correlated‐sampling Monte Carlo (CMC) to implement rapid high‐resolution (HR) dose computation in heterogeneous media for low‐energy brachytherapy‐ seed planning. Methods: An in‐house MC engine (PTRAN) was used to simulate a prostate patient case using 78 I‐125 Model 6711 seeds. CMC, which scores the dose difference, DD, between highly correlated histories in homogeneous and inhomogeneous geometries, was previously shown to improve efficiency by factors of 5–10. A CMCLR DD solution on a LR 2×2×2 mm grid was interpolated onto a HR 1×1×1 mm grid, on which the homogeneous water TG‐43 solution was computed. This summation of the CMCLR and HR TG‐43 solutions, CMCLR‐HR, was evaluated against the conventional HR Monte Carlo heterogeneous dose simulation (MCHR). Both voxel‐by‐voxel differences between CMCLR‐HR and MCLR and impact on prostate CTV dose‐volume histograms (DVH) were quantified for a non‐water prostate tissue assignment and for voxel‐to‐ voxel tissue variations typical of a post‐implant CT. Results: The CMCLR‐ HR and MCHR DVHs agreed within 2% for both prostate assignments. 57.6%, 79.7, and 93.9% of the voxels had percentage errors relative to MCHR within 1%, 3%, and 5%, respectively, for uniform CTV media compared to 29.7%, 45.3%, and 59.5% voxel frequencies using post‐implant voxel assignments. Regions with errors exceeding 3% in the uniform medium case corresponded to high dose‐gradients contrasted with a spatially random distribution of errors for the non‐uniform prostate. Conclusions: CMCLR‐HR is accurate within 3% for regions with uniform‐like tissues and small dose‐gradients. CMCLR‐HR duplicates DVHs within 2% suggesting application that CMCLR‐HR is would be useful in Monte Carlobrachytherapy plan optimization. Supported by Grant R01‐CA46640


This report looks at how traffic control rooms are behind the curve of available technology. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) realized a need to create TRAMLAB, in order to set up an environment which contains a virtual control room where technologies such as surveillance, traffic control, incident detection, and management can be tested before implementation. The three objectives for this study are as follows: (1) Evaluate existing operations in the control room of the Mn/DOT Traffic Management Center and make recommendations for increasing the efficiency of their operations; (2) Enhance TRAMLAB by enhancing the user interface and integrating it with a microscopic simulator; and (3) Enhance the utilities of the simulator by adding features such as an automated initial state creator and a module for presenting the output of simulation. In spite of the completion of the TRAMLAB objectives, there is still room for further expansion and improvements. One example includes incorporation of algorithms for detecting the malfunctioning of field devices such as detectors. Another improvement would be to expand TRAMLAB for urban street actuated and adaptive control (as opposed to pre-timed only) incorporating actuated control interfaces as well as SCOOT and SCATS or other traffic-responsive schemes. Further, a web interface can be developed to provide the non-university users with access to TRAMLAB.


Two new species, Melinnopsis gardelli sp. nov. and Melinnopsis chadwicki sp. nov. (Annelida, Ampharetidae, Melinninae), are described from deep waters off the east coast of Australia. One hundred and 11 specimens were collected during RV Investigator voyage IN2017_V03 in May–June 2017 using a beam trawl at lower bathyal depths (1000–2500 m). This is the first record of Melinnopsis from the eastern Australian coast. The two new species are morphologically similar, but differ by methyl blue staining pattern, shape of thoracic uncini and pigmented glandular bands above the nuchal slits. Melinnopsis gardelli sp. nov. has a conspicuous stained band on the dorsum ending between chaetigers 9 and 10, uncini with three teeth above the rostral tooth and lacks glandular bands, while M. chadwicki sp. nov. has a faint stained band on the dorsum ending at chaetiger 5, uncini with two teeth above the rostral tooth and possesses glandular bands. They also show differences in bathymetric distribution as M. gardelli sp. nov. was collected around 2500 m and M. chadwicki sp. nov. around 1000 m depth. Phylogenetic relationships among the new species and other members of the family Ampharetidae were assessed using the nuclear 18S and the mitochondrial 16S and cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene fragments. The results revealed that M. gardelli sp. nov. and M. chadwicki sp. nov. form a monophyletic clade and are genetically distinct from each other and all other analysed species. This is the first time molecular data have been used to describe a species in the genus Melinnopsis.


The Internet has challenged social psychological theories of influence that have focussed on interpersonal perceptions of trustworthiness, expertise and similarity, and normative attributions of social identity. As knowledge is increasingly decentralised and user-generated, new questions arise about how online participants identify which information to adopt or reject. This thesis examines which social psychological and social network analytic features predict attitude and behaviour change using information gathered about 47,643 related avatars in the virtual community Second Life. Using data collected over three studies from online surveys and data accessed from the application's computer servers, it describes why the structure of a social system, an individual's position in a social group, and the structural content of an online relationship have been effective at predicting when influence occurs. The first study assessed the relationship between network strength and attributions of trust, credibility, social comparison and prototypicality. Results suggested that network theories that describe influence on the basis of network strength do so because it implicates interpersonal and normative features of influence,, evident in this community by the amount of offline information account holders disclose to online contacts. The second study examined the features that predicted attitudes to sexual activity in the virtual world. In the online space, perceptions of norms were the strongest predictors of personal attitudes, and network features identified how accurate and inaccurate they were. The third study followed the diffusion of the new voice service through Second Life over a nine-month period. Network features emerged as most important immediately before and after an innovation achieved critical mass, but the psychological features assured that diffusion persisted during periods of slow uptake. The results extended the theoretical understanding of the interplay between psychological and network processes in the adoption of attitudes and behaviour


This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. I find that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later, when schoolchildren entered the labor market. (JEL D83, I21, I26, N33, Z12)


Most 3D object retrieval and matching methods only consider geometric similarity. This paper introduces a novel descriptor, Shape-Colour Histograms, to match objects with similar shape and appearance. This is motivated by the requirement to concatenate captured 3D video sequences for animation production. A quantitative evaluation based on the Receiver-Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve is presented to compare the performance of conventional 3D shape descriptors and new shape-colour descriptors with temporal filtering in the task to match 3D video sequences. 3D shape descriptors including Shape Histogram, LightField are considered. Evaluation shows that filtered Shape-Colour Histograms outperform descriptors using shape only. Finally, temporal Shape-Colour Histograms are applied to a publically available database of 3D video of people to identify optimal transitions and synthesize 3D character animation. Results demonstrate the accurate matching of surface shape, appearance and motion at transition points.


We use femtosecond two-color mid-infrared spectroscopy to study the dynamics of aqueous solutions of salts in HDO:D2O. We find that the lifetime of the O–H stretch vibration of HDO molecules in the solvation shell of the halogenic anions Cl−, Br−, and I− is much longer than the lifetime of the O–H stretch vibration of the HDO molecule in bulk D2O solution. This difference in lifetime allows for a clear separation of the response of the solvation shell from that of the bulk liquid. A detailed investigation of the spectral dynamics of the solvating HDO molecules reveals that the hydrogen-bond dynamics of these molecules are much slower than the hydrogen-bond dynamics of bulk liquid water.


Nanoelectromechanical (NEM) switches have the potential to complement or replace traditional CMOS transistors in the area of ultra-low-power digital electronics. This paper reports the demonstration of prototype circuits including the first 3-stage ring oscillator built using cell-level digital logic elements based on curved NEM switches. The ring oscillator core occupies an area of 30 μm × 10 μm using 6 NEM switches. Each NEM switch device has a footprint of 5 μm × 3 μm, an air gap of 60 nm and is coated with amorphous carbon (a-C) for reliable operation. The ring oscillator operates at a frequency of 6.7 MHz, and confirms the simulated inverter propagation delay of 25 ns. The successful fabrication and measurement of this demonstrator are a key milestone on the way towards an optimized, scaled technology with sub-nanosecond switching times, lower operating voltages and VLSI implementation.


With widespread use of machine learning methods in numerous domains involving humans, several studies have raised questions about the potential for unfairness towards certain individuals or groups. A number of recent works have proposed methods to measure and eliminate unfairness from machine learning models. However, most of this work has focused on only one dimension of fair decision making: distributive fairness, i.e., the fairness of the decision outcomes. In this work, we leverage the rich literature on organizational justice and focus on another dimension of fair decision making: procedural fairness, i.e., the fairness of the decision making process. We propose measures for procedural fairness that consider the input features used in the decision process, and evaluate the moral judgments of humans regarding the use of these features. We operationalize these measures on two real world datasets using human surveys on the Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) platform, demonstrating that our measures capture important properties of procedurally fair decision making. We provide fast submodular mechanisms to optimize the tradeoff between procedural fairness and prediction accuracy. On our datasets, we observe empirically that procedural fairness may be achieved with little cost to outcome fairness, but that some loss of accuracy is unavoidable.


This article advances a new conception of labour history as the history of industrial relations, understood broadly as the changing relationships between workers, trade unions, employers and the state. The first half of the paper examines the major interpretative traditions in British labour history, from the Webbs and the 'Oxford School' to the postwar social historians and the 'rank-and-filists'. It shows that despite their many differences, both institutionalists and social historians explain the development of labour institutions by reference to the objective interests of social groups, and goes on to raise some theoretical objections to this form of explanation. The second half of the paper draws on the findings of recent research on the history of work and industrial relations in late nineteenth and twentieth century Britain to argue that relationships between workers and employers were shaped less by informal groups or spontaneous social and economical processes than by institutional forces: by organizations such as trade unions, shop stewards' committees, business enterprises, employers' associations and the state; and by the rules and procedures governing their interaction such as collective agreements, conciliation and arbitration boards, wages councils and legislati.


Tumours arising from in and around the brain in which some cells grow and multiply uncontrollably due to loss of mechanisms that control normal cells growth. Because of the location, significant long-term impairment to intellectual and neurological function is possible. They can also be life threatening if not treated promptly. The cause of primary brain tumorsis unknown. However, primary brain tumours are the second most common cancer in children and the most common solid neoplasm of childhood, representing about 20% of all pediatric cancers. For example, between 2001 and 2005, 4,181children aged 0-14 years were diagnosed with cancer in Canada, and between 2000 and 2004, 676 died from this disease. The incidence of primary pediatric brain tumours is approximately 2.76 to 4.28 cases per 100,000 children. The reported incidence of pediatric brain tumours has been increasing over the last three decades, probably due to improved diagnostics. Refinements in imaging, surgical technique and adjunctive therapies have led to longer survival in children with brain tumours. As more children survive a cancer diagnosis, the need for long-term monitoring and follow-up care continues to grow.


Neural networks (NNs) are recognized as very effective techniques when facing complex retrieval tasks in remote sensing. In this paper, the potential of NNs has been applied in solving the unmixing problem in hyperspectral data. In its complete form, the processing scheme uses an NN architecture consisting of two stages: the first stage reduces the dimension of the input vector, while the second stage performs the mapping from the reduced input vector to the abundance percentages. The dimensionality reduction is performed by the so-called autoassociative NNs, which yield a nonlinear principal component analysis of the data. The evaluation of the whole performance is carried out for different sets of experimental data. The first one is provided by the Airborne Hyperspectral Scanner. The second set consists of images from the Compact High-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on board the Project for On-Board Autonomy satellite, and it includes multiangle and multitemporal acquisitions. The third set is represented by Airborne Visible/InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer measurements. A quantitative performance analysis has been carried out in terms of effectiveness in the dimensionality reduction phase and in terms of the accuracy in the final estimation. The results obtained, when compared with those produced by appropriate benchmark techniques, show the advantages of this approach.


The Ronchi grating is applied to measure the large-aperture aspheric surfaces in a quantitative way on the basis of self-made software which includes Ronchi null grating design, collection of Ronchi graph, and data processing. The measured concave parabolic mirror has a diameter of 630 mm and an F number of 1.34. The measurement result is approximately the same as that of the ZYGO interferometer. This analysis software and test method establish a good foundation for the quantitative measurement of the big error about the large-aperture aspheric surfaces of the next generation telescope.


Introductions: This study documented the frequency, indications, and outcome of emergency obstetric hysterectomies in a tertiary care hospital in Nepal. Methods: This was a nine years retrospective study of peripartum hysterectomy at Patan Hospital, Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Nepal, during 2006 to 2014. Patients' charts were retrieved from the medical record section for review. Study variables included previous obstetric history, details of the index pregnancy, indications for peripartum hysterectomy, outcome of the hysterectomy and infant morbidity. Results: There was total of 73,130 deliveries. Emergency peripartum hysterectomies was performed in 28 (0.04%),of which 23 (82%) after cesarean and 5 (18%) after vaginal delivery. The primary indication for hysterectomy was uterine atony with postpartum hemorrhage, and placental causes with PPH and uterine rupture. Twelve (43%) patients had postoperative complications. There was one maternal and two neonatal mortalities, and one stillbirth. Conclusion: The rate of emergency peripartum hysterectomy in our institute is low at 0.04%, primarily due to uterine atony with postpartum hemorrhage. Keywords: maternal morbidity mortality, peripartum hysterectomy, postpartumhemorrhage, uterineatony


In The Souls of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois wrote that the question whites wanted to ask him was: "How does it feel to be a problem?" In The Heart of Whiteness, Robert Jensen writes that it is time for white people in America to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question and to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, they are the problem. While some whites would like to think that we have reached "the end of racism" in the United States, and others would like to celebrate diversity but are oblivious to the political, economic, and social consequences of a nation-and their sense of self-founded on a system of white supremacy, Jensen proposes a different approach. He sets his sights not only on the racism that can't be hidden, but also on the liberal platitudes that sometimes conceal the depths of that racism in "polite society." The Heart of Whiteness offers an honest and rigorous exploration of what Jensen refers to as the depraved nature of whiteness in the United States. Mixing personal experience with data and theory, he faces down the difficult realities of -racism and white privilege. He argues that any system that denies non-whites their full humanity also keeps whites from fully accessing their own. This book is both a cautionary tale for those who believe that they have transcended racism, and also an expression of the hope for genuine transcendence. When white people fully understand and accept the painful reality that they are indeed "the problem," it should lead toward serious attempts to change one's own life and join with others to change society. Robert Jensen is the author of Citizens of the Empire. He is a professor of media ethics and journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.


This thesis examines two panel data sets of 48 states from 1981 to 2009 and utilizes ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed effects models to explore the relationship between rural Interstate speed limits and fatality rates and whether rural Interstate speed limits affect non-Interstate safety. Models provide evidence that rural Interstate speed limits higher than 55 MPH lead to higher fatality rates on rural Interstates though this effect is somewhat tempered by reductions in fatality rates for roads other than rural Interstates. These results provide some but not unanimous support for the traffic diversion hypothesis that rural Interstate speed limit increases lead to decreases in fatality rates of other roads. To the author's knowledge, this paper is the first econometric study to differentiate between the effects of 70 MPH speed limits and speed limits above 70 MPH on fatality rates using a multi-state data set. Considering both rural Interstates and other roads, rural Interstate speed limit increases above 55 MPH are responsible for 39,700 net fatalities, 4.1 percent of total fatalities from 1987, the year limits were first raised, to 2009.


Genetic variants in GABRA2 have previously been shown to be associated with alcohol measures, electroencephalography (EEG) β waves and impulsiveness-related traits. Impulsiveness is a behavioral risk factor for alcohol and other substance abuse. Here, we tested association between 11 variants in GABRA2 with NEO-impulsiveness and problem drinking. Our sample of 295 unrelated adult subjects was from a community of families with at least one male with DSM-IV alcohol use diagnosis, and from a socioeconomically comparable control group. Ten GABRA2 SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) were associated with the NEO-impulsiveness higher impulsiveness correspond to the minor alleles identified in previous alcohol dependence studies. All ten SNPs are in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with each other and represent one effect on impulsiveness. Four SNPs and the corresponding haplotype from intron 3 to intron 4 were also associated with Lifetime Alcohol Problems Score (LAPS, P < 0.03) (not corrected for multiple testing). Impulsiveness partially mediates (22.6% average) this relation between GABRA2 and LAPS. Our results suggest that GABRA2 variation in the region between introns 3 and 4 is associated with impulsiveness and this effect partially influences the development of alcohol problems, but a direct effect of GABRA2 on problem drinking remains. A potential functional SNP rs279827, located next to a splice site, is located in the most significant region for both impulsiveness and LAPS. The high degree of LD among nine of these SNPs and the conditional analyses we have performed suggest that all variants represent one signal.


Reflected-light microscopy of semitransparent material, such as unstained nervous tissue, is usually unsatisfactory because of low contrast and light scattering. In a new microscope both the object plane and the image plane were scanned in tandem so that only light reflected from the object plane was included in the image. The object was illuminated with nearly incoherent light passing through holes in one side of a rotating scanning disk (Nipkow wheel) which was imaged by the objective into the object plane. Reflected-light images of these spots were conducted to the opposite side of the same disk. Light could pass from the source to the object plane, and from the object to the image plane, only through optically congruent holes on opposite side of the rotating disk. The image obtained had better contrast and sharpness for some semitransparent material than possible in usual reflected-light microscopy.


This chapter intends to contribute to a better understanding of career development over the lifespan by examining individual and contextual factors contributing to life-long career development. Considering manifold changes in the work environment as well as throughout an individual's career, we review classic theories of career development in the beginning of this chapter. We then describe changes in today's careers, and depict modern career theories, such as the protean or the boundaryless career. Subsequently, we elaborate on sources of change over the lifespan from an individual perspective: We explain how changes in personality, work values, or goal setting influence career development. From an organizational perspective, we describe how changes in the psychological contract or various age norms may influence the career development of employees. In the last part of this chapter, we outline central career developmental issues for individuals over the lifespan and point out recommendations for organizations in order to help promote meaningful, fulfilling, and sustainable career development over the lifespan.


Contemporary research on externalities from FDI suffers from two central problems. First, estimates of such externalities may be biased when FDI is endogenous to the empirical model. Second, there is an important lack in empirical research regarding the identification of structural factors influencing the type and level of FDI-induced externalities. The goal of the thesis is to address both issues. It starts with a theoretical discussion of FDI and externalities, followed by an overview of contemporary empirical research, highlighting the main estimation problems. Next, theories of agglomeration economies are discussed, in an attempt to identify a determinant of FDI-induced externalities in the form of geographical proximity of manufacturing activities. This discussion, supported by an overview of the limited related available empirical evidence, indicates that this concept is a likely candidate to be such a determinant. The next two chapters use unpublished and thus far unexplored data from the 1993 Mexican economic census to estimate FDI-induced externalities in Mexican manufacturing industries. In this part, the main empirical model is developed and estimated. In addition, the robustness of the initial findings of this empirical model is assessed. Furthermore, the estimation issues that are identified in the first part of the thesis are addressed. Most importantly, I introduce an instrumental variable estimation that controls for the problem of endogenous FDI. This instrumental variable estimation functions satisfactorily; as such, it represents the first successful empirical unbiased estimation of FDI-induced externalities in a cross-sectional setting. Finally, the last part of the thesis offers empirical evidence of the effects of geographical proximity on FDI-induced externalities. The findings indicate that geographical proximity does influence such externalities in a multi-faceted fashion. First, the level of geographical concentration of an industry enhances the occurrence of positive externalities within an industry. Second, from a regional point of view, geographical proximity enhances the occurrence of externalities that arise within and between industries in a region. Third, FDI-induced externalities that arise between industries also appear to spill over between neighbouring regions.


The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) secured an agreement in 1989 among its member states to ban the international trade in ivory. This disruption of the international ivory market was intended to reverse a sharp decline in the African elephant population, which resulted from widespread poaching for ivory in the previous decade. The continent's overall population of elephants increased after the ban, but an analysis of elephant population data from 1979 to 2007 found that some of the 37 countries in Africa with elephants continued to lose substantial numbers of them. This pattern is largely explained by the presence of unregulated domestic ivory markets in and near countries with declines in elephant populations.


With a low incidence of Salmonella infection, salmonellosis is an uncommon problem in Scotland. It occurs in both immune-compromised and immune-competent patients. We present two cases of salmonellosis in immune-competent patients who had had a history of gastroenteritis. Diagnosis was delayed in one patient; however, both patients received appropriate treatment and made good recovery following their respective illnesses. Apart from acting as a reminder to consider salmonellosis as a differential diagnosis when managing patients with infective process, the cases also highlight the importance of concise history taking, and the importance of cultures-and-sensitivities in managing infectious cases.


This paper focuses on the study of the synergistic effect in coal/biomass blend briquettes combustion on behavior of Al, As, Ba, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ga, K, Mn, Mo, Ni, P, Pb, Si, V, W, Zn, Zr and characterization of raw materials and bottom ashes. The manufacturing of coal/biomass briquettes although not commonly used is an attractive approach, as briquettes combustion is more technologically advantageous than the fluidized bed combustion. In the same time this technology is a way to render valuable materials of low calorific power and results in diminishing polluting emission. Raw materials and briquettes from different blends of pitcoal/sawdust were subjected to combustion in a 55 kW-boiler. The total content of elements after digestion in the HNO 3 ― HF mixture and the content in water leachate at a solid/liquid ratio of 1:2 were determined both in raw materials and bottom ash by ICP-OES. The total content of elements was higher in pitcoal than in sawdust. The synergistic effect depends both on coal/biomass ratio in blend and element nature. The water leachable fraction of elements from ash decreased along with the increase of sawdust weight excepting macronutrients (K, P) and Si.


Abstract The knowledge of fossil plant-insect interactions is almost entirely restricted to evidences of feeding behavior. Records of endophytic oviposition are relatively scarce, with previous earliest reports from the Middle to the early Late Triassic. Nevertheless, several Paleozoic insect taxa have been suspected of this reproductive behavior, but without any direct evidence. Specimens of Calamites cistii (Sphenophyta; Pennsylvanian, France) are described showing endophytic cavities, located in the outer cortex of the stem, a tissue that is rarely preserved. This new record shifts the appearance of this behavior back 60 Ma. Possible tracemakers are representatives of the Odonatoptera (Odonata and related extinct taxa), Palaeodictyopteroidea (extinct palaeopterous orders), and Archaeorthoptera (Orthoptera and related extinct orders). The antiquity of the insect endophytic oviposition behavior suggests that it could have been important during the emergence and diversification of the insect group.


Abstract The blunt snout bream Megalobrama amblycephala is the economically most important cyprinid fish species. As an herbivore, it can be grown by eco-friendly and resource-conserving aquaculture. However, the large number of intermuscular bones in the trunk musculature is adverse to fish meat processing and consumption. As a first towards optimizing this aquatic livestock, we present a 1.116-Gb draft genome of M. amblycephala, with 779.54 Mb anchored on 24 linkage groups. Integrating spatiotemporal transcriptome analyses, we show that intermuscular bone is formed in the more basal teleosts by intramembranous ossification and may be involved in muscle contractibility and coordinating cellular events. Comparative analysis revealed that olfactory receptor genes, especially of the beta type, underwent an extensive expansion in herbivorous cyprinids, whereas the gene for the umami receptor T1R1 was specifically lost in M. amblycephala. The composition of gut microflora, which contributes to the herbivorous adaptation of M. amblycephala, was found to be similar to that of other herbivores. As a valuable resource for the improvement of M. amblycephala livestock, the draft genome sequence offers new insights into the development of intermuscular bone and herbivorous adaptation.


As a result of the ABA's revisions to Standard 509, Consumer Information, there is now a much greater universe of publicly available information about law school scholarship programs. In this article, I present what is now known about conditional scholarship programs based on a review of law school websites conducted between March 19 and July 21, 2013, from which I was able to compile a complete list of law schools with conditional scholarship programs, with only one-year scholarships, with good standing (or guaranteed) scholarships and with only need-based scholarships. The article includes an analysis of the information we have on conditional scholarship programs by looking at the prevalence of conditional scholarship programs among law schools across different rankings categories and by looking at the extent to which scholarship retention differs among law schools across different rankings categories. The article also looks at geographic "clumping" of law schools without conditional scholarship programs. The article concludes with some general thoughts on the impact of conditional scholarships across legal education. (This draft contains minor revisions based on a rechecking of law school webpages in July 2013 and some email exchanges. The draft also contains a url to a Law School Transparency webpage with a complete listing of law schools indicating whether or not the school had a conditional scholarship program in 2011-12, and if so, the number of students who received a conditional scholarship and the number who had the conditional scholarship reduced or eliminated.)


Fast Hadamard transform (FHT) belongs to the family of discrete orthogonal transforms and is used widely in image and signal processing applications. In this paper, a parameterizable and scalable architecture for FHT with time and area complexities of O(2(W+1)) and O(2N2), respectively, has been proposed, where W and N are the word and vector lengths. A novel algorithmic transformation for the FHT based on sparse matrix factorization and distributed arithmetic (DA) principles has been presented. The architecture has been parallelized and pipelined in order to achieve high throughput rates. Efficient and optimized field-programmable gate array implementation of the proposed architecture that yield excellent performance metrics has been analyzed in detail. Additionally, a functional level power analysis and modeling methodology has been proposed to characterize the various power and energy metrics of the cores in terms of system parameters and design variables. The mathematical models that have been derived provide quick presilicon estimate of power and energy measures, allowing intelligent tradeoffs when incorporating the developed cores as subblocks in hardware-based image and video processing systems


Zernike polynomials are an orthonormal set of scalar functions over a circular domain, and are commonly used to represent wavefront phase or surface irregularity. In optical testing, slope or curvature of a surface or wavefront is sometimes measured instead, from which the surface or wavefront map is obtained. Previously we derived an orthonormal set of vector polynomials that fit to slope measurement data and yield the surface or wavefront map represented by Zernike polynomials. Here we define a 3-element curvature vector used to represent the second derivatives of a continuous surface, and derive a set of orthonormal curvature basis functions that are written in terms of Zernike polynomials. We call the new curvature functions the C polynomials. Closed form relations for the complete basis set are provided, and we show how to determine Zernike surface coefficients from the curvature data as represented by the C polynomials.


It is easy to admire Derrick Bell for the passion of his principles, and to empathize with the pain he feels for his people. Those same emotions, however, are so often conveyed with such rhetorical acrimony that his considerable merits as a role model - as well as his standing as an impartial scholar engaged in objective and well-reasoned analysis - have come to be substantially diminished. Nevertheless Bell's letters have a disturbing resonance, a tintinnabulation that gives many people of good will second thoughts about the quest for equality in America. Professor Bell certainly has a right to his opinions, even those that conjure up a conspiracy of white supremacists or fly in the face of objective fact and clearly-viewed experience. Nor need he publicly repudiate every racist who comes down the pike. But when his own teaching smacks of their patent bigotry, his colleagues in the academy have the right - no, the moral obligation - to challenge and condemn it, and to chastise the teacher.


The work carried out in this paper includes developing and analyzing mathematical models of vehicle structures involved in head-on collisions with different obstacles. Crash analysis of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-rigid fixed barrier in full and offset collision events is presented using a mathematical methodology and dynamic responses are obtained with the aid of an analytical approach using Incremental Harmonic Balance Method (IHBM). Moreover, optimized vehicle structures with additional energy absorbers are presented and analyzed. The rail deformation and occupant deceleration are used for interpreting the results. It is proven from numerical simulations that development and analysis of mathematical models are efficient tools for estimating the dynamic response for different frontal collision events. It is also shown that mathematical models are flexible and useful in optimization studies. Furthermore, it is shown that IHBM is an effective method to solve dynamic problems, with strong nonlinear stiffness and dampening characteristics, effectively and accurately. It is also proven that significant improvements to both deformation and deceleration injuries are obtained and crash severity are minimized using optimized vehicle structures.


Intracellular viral double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is detected by the protein RIG-1, which has a C-terminal domain that binds dsRNA and two N-terminal caspase recruitment domain (CARD) domains. RIG-1 stimulates the coordinated activation, through distinct pathways, of multiple transcription factors, including NF-κB, IRF3, and ATF2, which act together to regulate the expression of type-1 interferons, such as interferon-β (IFN-β), and thus promotes the response to viral infection (see McWhirter et al.). CARD domains bind to other CARD domains; thus, Seth et al. investigated the possible role of a novel protein with an N-terminal CARD domain, which they named MAVS (for mitochondrial antiviral signaling), in mediating the downstream effects of RIG-1. Overexpression of MAVS in HEK293 cells activated IRF-3, NF-κB, and JNK (which activates ATF-2); transcriptionally activated a luciferase reporter controlled by the IFN-β promoter; and increased the abundance of endogenous IFN-β. MAVS silencing with siRNA abolished expression of IFN-β in response to Sendai virus, poly(I:C) (which mimics viral dsRNA), or overexpression of the RIG-1 N-terminal fragment. Moreover, MAVS overexpression protected cells from vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV)-mediated death, whereas MAVS silencing sensitized the cells. Mutational analysis indicated that the MAVS CARD domain and a C-terminal transmembrane region were necessary and sufficient for MAVS signaling. Both confocal microscopy and fractionation indicated that MAVS localized to the mitochondria. Mitochondrial localization depended on the transmembrane domain; replacing this sequence with analogous domains from mitochondrial membrane proteins (Bcl-xL or Bcl-2) preserved MAVS activity, whereas targeting to other membranes reduced it. Thus, MAVS appears to represent a novel protein that acts downstream of RIG-1 to coordinate the response to viral infection and to provide an unexpected link between mitochondria and the immune response. Two other groups, Xu et al. and Kawai et al., have identified this same protein as an adapter acting downstream of RIG-1 to stimulate IFN-β expression. R. B. Seth, L. Sun, C.-K. Ea, Z. J. Chen, Identification and characterization of MAVS, a mitochondrial antiviral signaling protein that activates NF-κB and IRF3. Cell 122, 669-682 (2005). [PubMed] L.-G. Xu, Y.-Y. Wang, K.-J. Han, L.-Y. Li, Z. Zhai, H.-B. Shu, VISA is an adapter protein required for virus-triggered IFN-β signaling. Mol. Cell. Published online 8 September 2005 (doi: 10.1016/S109727650501556X). [Online Journal] T. Kawai, K. Takahashi, S. Sato, C. Coban, H. Kumar, H. Kato, K. J. Ishii, O. Takeuchi, S. Akira, IPS-1, an adaptor triggering RIG-1- and Mda5-mediated type 1 interferon induction. Nat. Immunol. Published online 28 August 2005 (doi: 10.1038/ni1243). [PubMed] S. M. McWhirter, B. R. tenOever, T. Maniatis, Connecting mitochondria and innate immunity. Cell 122, 645-647 (2005). [PubMed]


All living organisms have evolved by developing concomitant physiological and behavioral adaptations to environment. Through these processes, biological rhythms, such as reproduction, can be synchronized by environmental cues, which include not only the light/dark cycle itself but also the feeding pattern. These adaptations depend on two highly conserved and interrelated systems: an endogenous timing system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. In mammals, the biological circadian rhythms are controlled by a "master oscillator," the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus (SCN). Through neural signals to paraventricular nucleus of hypothalamus (PVN), the SCN also modulates the activation of the HPA axis, ultimately resulting in the circadian rhythm of glucocorticoid secretion by the adrenal cortex. Glucocorticoids, in turn, are well known for their important role in the regulation of energy homeostasis. Accordingly, obese animals exhibit increased glucocorticoid levels and are more susceptible to glucocorticoid-induced anabolic effects. In parallel, glucocorticoids modulate reproductive function and fertility: at physiological levels, glucocorticoids control the timing of puberty onset and gonadal steroidogenesis, as well modulate the immune system, which determines conception and pregnancy progression. However, stress-induced glucocorticoid secretion may exert a dual effect on reproductive function.


Premature return to play (RTP) following sports-related concussion (SRC) is associated with significant morbidity including risk of neurological and non-neurological injury, persistent post-concussion symptoms and chronic neurological deficits. Assessing athletes for RTP is critical but these decisions are currently based on clinical assessments that are subject to bias and symptomatic reporting that rely on compliance. An objective and easily obtained biomarker that can indicate recovery following SRC would aid clinicians to make safer RTP decisions. We performed a systematic review to identify potential biomarkers from saliva, urine and blood sources that could inform the clinical RTP decision. The MEDLINE database was searched. Inclusion criteria were studies focusing on adults diagnosed with SRC, fluid biomarkers from blood, saliva or urine and clinical recovery from SRC or at RTP. We assessed each biomarker for their time course post SRC and relationship to clinical recovery. Secondary outcomes included correlation with symptom scores and predictive value for prolonged RTP. We identified 8 studies all investigating blood-based markers of diffuse axonal injury (tau, NFL, SNTF), neuroglial injury (NSE, VLP-1, UCH-L1, S100B, GFAP), inflammation and hormonal disturbances. Tau, SNTF, UCH-1, GFAP, S100B and the inflammatory cytokine MCP-4 are raised post SRC and return to baseline by RTP. Changes in tau, NFL, SNTF, GFAP and MCP-4 post SRC correlate with severity of concussion as measured by symptom severity or RTP duration. There is only preliminary case-reporting for hormonal biomarkers. The evidence is limited by a lack of highly powered studies, variation in use of athletic and Contact sport controls (CSC) and a lack of consistent sampling and assessment protocols. There is promise for biomarkers to aid RTP decisions following SRC, most notably in use alongside clinical assessment in RTP criteria to allow greater precision in identifying mild and severe concussion.


PURPOSE
This study compared linear (LP) and undulating periodization (UP) on strength changes in untrained women when total workload and average training intensity were matched by the end of training.

METHODS
Twenty females (20 +/- 2 yr) were conditioned (3 wk) and assessed for one-repetition maximum squat (1RMSQ) and bench press (1RMBP) before being assigned to LP or UP training (9 wk), with training performed at 3 d.wk. Maximal strength, average power output during squat jumps with countermovement (SQJpwr) and bench press throws (BPTpwr), body mass, limb girth, and muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) were assessed at baseline (T1) and after every 3 wk (T2, T3, and T4) to differentiate the efficacy of LP and UP training.

RESULTS
Both groups improved significantly (P < 0.05) in 1RMSQ (LP 34.8%, UP 41.2%), 1RMBP (LP 21.8%, UP 28.3%), SQJpwr (LP 10.4%, UP 9.5%), BPTpwr (LP 11.1%, UP 13.8%), arm girth (LP 1.14%, UP 1.73%), and thigh girth (LP 1.58%, UP 1.99%), with no significant difference between them. Muscle CSA for the LP group increased significantly at T2 before maintaining similar hypertrophic responses until T4, whereas the UP group recorded significant increments from T1 to T2 and T2 to T3, before stabilizing between T3 and T4. Pooled CSA increase was higher than previously found (6.8% at T2, 11.3% at T3, and 11.8% at T4).

CONCLUSIONS
The comparison of LP and UP training with matched volume load and intensity suggests that both programs were equally adept in improving different strength qualities in active but untrained women. In addition, muscle hypertrophic responses were larger and occurred earlier than previously reported.


Our ultimate goal is to provide a framework and a methodology which will allow users, and not only system developers, to construct complex reasoning systems by composing existing modules, or to add new modules to existing systems, in a ``plug and play'''' manner. These modules and systems might be based on different logics; have different domain models; use different vocabularies and data structures; use different reasoning strategies; and have different interaction capabilities. This paper makes two main contributions towards our goal. First, it proposes a general architecture for a class of reasoning modules and systems called Open Mechanized Reasoning Systems (OMRSs). An OMRS has three components: a reasoning theory component which is the counterpart of the logical notion of formal system, a control component which consists of a set of inference strategies, and an interaction component which provides an OMRS with the capability of interacting with other systems, including OMRSs and human users. Second, it develops the theory underlying the reasoning theory component. This development is motivated by an analysis of state of the art systems. The resulting theory is then validated by using it to describe the integration of the linear arithmetic module into the simplification process of the Boyer-Moore system, NQTHM.


In its 2016 decision in GS Media, C-160/15 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) sought to clarify under what conditions the provision of a link to a work protected by copyright made available on a third-party website (where it is freely accessible) without a licence from the relevant rightholder falls within the scope of the right of communication to the public within Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive. In its decision the CJEU held that whether linking to unlicensed content falls within or outside the scope of Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive depends – crucially – on whether the link provider has a profit-making intention or knowledge of the unlicensed character of the work linked to. This article assesses the implications of the GS Media decision in respect of linking, and – more generally – the construction of the right of communication to the public. The main conclusion is that GS Media imposes a re-consideration of what amounts to an act of communication to the public. Yet, the forthcoming CJEU decisions in pending references for a preliminary ruling (Filmspeler, C-527/15, and Ziggo, C-601/15) might lead to a relaxation of the concept of 'indispensable intervention', thus broadening the notion of who makes an act of communication to the public. Ultimately the discussion undertaken in this contribution suggests that the concept of 'communication to the public' has been undergoing an evolution. The next frontier for Article 3(1) of the InfoSoc Directive appears to be not just a determination of what amounts to an act of communication to the public, but also who makes an act of communication to the public. The latter in particular is the next question for the CJEU to tackle, and also poses significant – and not entirely worked out – challenges to EU policy- and law-making.


Many cyber-physical systems comprise several control applications sharing communication and computation resources. The design of such systems requires special attention due to the complex timing behavior that can lead to poor control quality or even instability. The two main requirements of control applications are: (1) robustness and, in particular, stability and (2) high control quality. Although it is essential to guarantee stability and provide a certain degree of robustness even in the worst-case scenario, a design procedure which merely takes the worst-case scenario into consideration can lead to a poor expected (average-case) control quality, since the design is solely tuned to a scenario that occurs very rarely. On the other hand, considering only the expected quality of control does not necessarily provide robustness and stability in the worst-case. Therefore, both the robustness and the expected control quality should be taken into account in the design process. This paper presents an efficient and integrated approach for designing high-quality cyber-physical systems with robustness guarantees.


There is continuous interest in the genetic determinants of plasma triglycerides (TGs) and phospholipids and their role in the etiology of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Here, we report the results of a Dutch genome wide association study (GWAS) of an in-house developed lipidomics platform, focusing on 90 plasma lipids. Lipids were assessed by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry in participants from the Leiden Longevity Study, the Netherlands Twin Register and the Erasmus Rucphen Family (ERF) study and meta-analysed, resulting in a sample size of 5537 participants. In addition, we performed genetic correlation analyses between the 90 plasma lipids and markers of metabolic health, as well as vascular pathology and CVD combining our GWAS results with publicly available GWAS outputs. We replicated previously known associations between 34 lipids and 10 lipid quantitative trait loci (lipQTL) (GCKR, APOA1, FADS1, SGPP1,TMEM229B, LIPC, PDXDC1, CETP, CERS4 and SPTLC3) with metabolome-wide (P < 1.61 × 10−9) significance. Moreover, we report 6 novel phospholipid-related and 5 triglyceride (TG)-related loci: SGGP1 (SM21:0), SPTLC3 (SM21:0 and SM25:1), FADS1 (LPCO16:1, PC38:2, PEO36:5, PEO38:5, TG56:5, TG56:6, and TG56:7), TMEM229 (LPCO16:1), GCKR (TG50:2), and APOA1 (TG54:4). In addition, we report suggestively significant (P < 5 × 10−8) associations mapping to eleven novel lipid quantitative trait loci (lipQTLs), three of which are supported by mining previous GWAS data: MAU (PC34:4), LDLR (SM16:0), and MLXIPL (TG48:1 and TG50:1)). Genetic correlation analysis indicates that one specific specific sphingomyelin, SM22:0, shares common genetic background with CVD. Levels of SM22:0 also positively associate with carotid artery intima-media thickness in the ERF study, and this observation is independent of LDL-C level. Our findings yield higher resolution of plasma lipid species and new insights in the biology of circulating phosholipids and their relation to CVD risk.


As enacted in 1964, Title VII prohibited discrimination on the basis of religion, but it soon became obvious that for meaningful protection of religious belief in the American workplace, accommodation of religious practice was necessary as well. The EEOC formulated regulations defining lack of accommodation as a form of religious discrimination, but that view was rejected by the courts. In response, Congress in 1972 amended Title VII to require that even employers without religious bias must reasonably accommodate employee religious practices. Since 1972 virtually all courts and commentators have treated Title VII religion claims as either disparate treatment or accommodation cases. Seldom do courts or scholars consider the confluence of the two. What happens, though, if an accommodation case is suffused with bias or even hostility to the religious objector? Does the case follow the traditional bias framework or does it follow the accommodation framework or does it follow both? Since most courts place cases into one framework or another, it is hard to know how prevalent mixed bias/accommodation cases are. The erroneous classification of a Title VII religion case can have negative consequences for plaintiffs in individual cases and for the general development of Title VII religion case law. This essay explores the interrelationship between accommodation and discrimination in Title VII religion cases. The essay begins with discussion and analysis of three typical Title VII mixed disparate treatment/ accommodation cases, demonstrating how malleable and ill-defined the lines between Title VII disparate treatment and accommodation cases can be. These cases show that it is likely that a good number of Title VII religion cases straddle the two frameworks, and that some number of those cases that do straddle are unnecessarily pigeonholed into one framework or another.The essay then analyzes the legislative history and the EEOC regulations of the 1964 statute and the 1972 accommodation amendments to glean congressional and administrative guidance that might prove useful in reconciling the two frameworks. That analysis reveals that a critical distinction between the two frameworks is employer neutrality in the workplace as to the religious beliefs of its employees. This finding allows two observations. The first, that employers cannot defend disparate treatment religious discrimination using accommodation framework defenses. The second, that an alternative, more integrated approach to Title VII religion cases, one requiring courts (judges or juries) always to determine first whether the employer is neutral toward religion in the workplace, allows religious discrimination and accommodation frameworks to be merged in a meaningful way, minimizing the chance of erroneous framework classification decisions by judges and attorneys. The essay concludes that use of an integrated framework will enhance the uniformity and coherence of Title VII religion case doctrine.


People are stupid when it comes to their online postings. The recent spate of social-networking websites has shown that people place shocking amounts of personal information online. Unlike more traditional modes of communication, the unique nature of these websites allows users to hide behind a veil of anonymity. But while social-networking sites may carry significant social benefits, they also leave users - and their personal information - vulnerable to hacking and other forms of abuse. This vulnerability is playing out in courtrooms across the country and will only increase as social-networking use continues to proliferate. This Article addresses the evidentiary hurdle of authenticating social-networking evidence, a novel legal issue confronting courts today. The Article explains and critiques four approaches used by different jurisdictions, concluding that each approach fails to adequately address the critical issue of authorship. The anonymous nature of social-networking websites, coupled with the extent of users' personal information available online, raises serious concerns about the authorship of any piece of evidence posted to one of these sites. Litigants are using social-networking postings in court, attributing authorship to a particular person without demonstrating a sufficient nexus between the posting and the purported author. Absent this nexus, however, the evidence fails to meet even the low hurdle of authentication. To remedy this problem, this Article proposes that courts shift their focus from account ownership and content to authorship of the evidence. Working within the existing rules of evidence, this approach underscores the importance of fairness and accuracy in the outcome of judicial proceedings that involve social-networking evidence.


The passionate, poignant, and triumphant story of two-time Olympic gold medal-winning beach volleyball icon Misty May-Treanor. More than any Olympics in history, the 2008 Beijing Summer Games captured the world's imagination, and Misty May-Treanor became one of the biggest U.S. stars on the global stage. Now she shares the story of her life and remarkable athletic career. Destined for beach volleyball superstardom, having been raised on famed Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, Misty talks about the personal and professional challenges she has faced and the life lessons she has learned in the process. From growing up with two driven, competitive, accomplished athlete parents and living in a volatile household rocked for years by their alcoholism to the heartbreaking death of her mother from cancer, Misty reveals intimate details never before publicly discussed. She tells behind-the-scenes stories about her eight-year climb to the top of beach volleyball with partners Holly McPeak and Kerri Walsh; her career-threatening injuries; her role on ABC's hit television show Dancing with the Stars; and of course, her historic two Olympic gold medals and the special rewards they've brought. Offering an unprecedented glimpse into the life of a cherished celebrity sports icon and an ambassador for women's athletics, Misty will touch, inspire, and empower readers everywhere.


Littorina saxatilis is a common intertidal gastropod on shores of the North Atlantic, and an important study species for evolutionary investigations. Its congener L. arcana is much less widely distributed, but both species are common at Old Peak, Yorkshire, UK. The parasite profiles of L. saxatilis and L. arcana from this shore were determined histologically, revealing a ciliated protist, Protophrya ovicola, an unidentified apicomplexan (present in <1% L. saxatilis) and three trematode parasites tentatively assigned to Renicola sp., Microphallus similis and M. pygmaeus. The profile data include prevalence information and associated histology. Protophrya ovicola associated predominantly with the wave ecotype of L. saxatilis (65%) rather than the crab ecotype (16%). Microphallus similis occurred at a higher prevalence in the L. arcana population (38%) in comparison with the L. saxatilis population (11%). Overall, there appeared to be a lower prevalence of trematodes in the high-shore L. saxatilis. By modelling the occurrence of individual parasites and shell morphometrics, an assessment of parasite-associated morphological change was conducted. We conclude that parasitism appeared not to cause shell-shape change, but rather that snails of a certain shell shape were more likely to display infection. Records of parasites in L. saxatilis and L. arcana are briefly reviewed, showing that the diversity of parasites reported here is relatively low.