Cervical cancer is the most common female genital tract malignancy in Nigeria and majority of the patients present with advanced disease. It is a preventable cancer as there are well-defined treatable premalignant phases. The objective of the study is to review the burden of cervical cancer, its screening modalities, and practice of screening and treatment in low resource countries with emphasis on Nigeria. This is a review involving internet and literature search. While developed countries have recorded significant reduction in the incidence of cervical cancer owing to organized screening programs, treatment of premalignant cervical lesions, and follow-up of treated cases, developing countries including Nigeria are yet to optimally utilize screening services due to lack of organized population-based screening programs with only pockets of screening services which are at best opportunistic. This has not reduced the incidence of cancer because only a fraction of the target population is covered. Apart from this, loss to follow-up is rampant. The level of awareness of cervical cancer and its preventive strategies are low among the population and policymakers in Nigeria. There is no organized screening program, and the few services available are only opportunistic with little or no impact. Development of cervical cancer screening policy and institution of organized screening program targeted at covering ≥80% of population at risk is fundamental. There is also a need for widespread education of the populace on the burden of cervical cancer and the public health importance of the disease using the mass media, counseling at antenatal clinics, and the involvement of men will contribute immensely to reduction in the incidence of cervical cancer. Decentralization of services by incorporation of cervical screening and treatment in primary health care programs will ensure adequate rural-urban coverage.


This review begins with a subject that is familiar to all urban historians of the Middle Ages. Citizenship was one of the most ubiquitous forms of social and political organization in medieval towns. Yet, as Pierre Racine points out, in 'La citoyenneté en Italie au Moyen Âge', Le Moyen Âge, 115 (2009), 87–108, it is perhaps surprising that there have been so few studies devoted specifically to the right of citizenship in the Italian cities of the communal period. Racine's discussion is focused upon the period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, that is, from the formation of the communes to the emergence of princely states in northern and central Italy, when many of the city-states disappeared. If citizenship was in some ways a burden which entailed liability to taxation and the fulfilment of military service, it was fundamentally a privilege. Thus, the thirteenth-century communal governments of cities such as Piacenza appointed officials charged with investigating cases of 'false citizens'. Citizenship was acquired largely on the basis of more or less permanent residence and the ownership of a house in the city and it allowed the citizen to participate in the popular assembly, where the important questions concerning the election of officials and the problems of daily life were debated and decided. In emphasizing the emotional attachment which citizens felt towards their urban patria, Racine addresses the cultural as well as juridical meaning of citizenship.


Abstract: Social construction has been recognized as a prominent place in social sciences generally which contributes to the study of deviance, social problems, social movements, the self, the gender, race, education, health, emotions, family, disability, and other areas (Cromby 1999; Hibberd 2005; Burr 2007; Daly 2007; Harris 2010; Lock & Strong 2010). And it becomes the useful background for identifying and selecting suitable theoretical perspective, methodology as well as research methods, on collecting data and generating meanings from data, for many topics in both qualitative and quantitative research (Crotty 1998; ten Have 2004). Applying social construction as epistemological background supports social researchers to find suitable ways on creating the research framework, on approaching to sensitive topics as well as on generating data from those in vulnerable groups.On looking at brief history of social construction and its variations, this paper aims at identifying its core and appropriate implications for social work education and research in Vietnam contexts.  Keywords: Social constructionism, social research, methodology, Vietnam, social work.


Oxidative stress and neuronal energy depletion are characteristic biochemical hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD). It is therefore conceivable that pro-energetic and antioxidant drugs such as alpha-lipoic acid might delay the onset or slow down the progression of the disease. In a previous study, 600mg alpha-lipoic acid was given daily to nine patients with AD (receiving a standard treatment with choline-esterase inhibitors) in an open-label study over an observation period of 12 months. The treatment led to a stabilization of cognitive functions in the study group, demonstrated by constant scores in two neuropsychological tests (the mini mental state exam, MMSE and the Alzheimer's disease assessment score cognitive subscale, ADAScog). In this report, we have extended the analysis to 43 patients over an observation period of up to 48 months. In patients with mild dementia (ADAScog < 15), the disease progressed extremely slowly (ADAScog: +1.2 points/year, MMSE: -0.6 points/year), in patients with moderate dementia at approximately twice the rate. However, the progression appears dramatically lower than data reported for untreated patients or patients on choline-esterase inhibitors in the second year of long-term studies. Despite the fact that this study was not double-blinded, placebo-controlled and randomized, our data suggest that treatment with alpha-lipoic acid might be a successful 'neuroprotective' therapy option for AD. However, a state-of-the-art phase II trial is needed urgently.


We propose a model of cycles of distrust and conflict. Overlapping generations of agents from two groups sequentially play coordination games under incomplete information about whether the other side consists of "extremists" who will never take the good/trusting action. Good actions may be mistakenly perceived as bad/distrusting actions. We also assume that there is limited information about the history of past actions, so that an agent is unable to ascertain exactly when and how a sequence of bad actions originated. Assuming that both sides are not extremists, spirals of distrust and conflict get started as a result of a misperception, and continue because the other side interprets the bad action as evidence that it is facing extremists. However, such spirals contain the seeds of their own dissolution: after a while, Bayesian agents correctly conclude that the probability of a spiral having started by mistake is sufficiently high, and bad actions are no longer interpreted as evidence of extremism. At this point, one party experiments with a good action, and the cycle restarts. We show how this mechanism can be useful in interpreting cycles of ethnic conflict and international war, and how it also emerges in models of political participation, dynamic inter-group trade, and communication - leading to cycles of political polarization, breakdown of trade, and breakdown of communication.


Vilfredo Pareto's Manual of Political Economy is a 'classic' study in the history of economic thought for many reasons, the most noteworthy of which include the setting of general equilibrium economics within a choice theoretic framework based on the opposition between tastes and obstacles; the definitive formulation of economic efficiency, including the surplus approach to collective welfare; the technically flawed but nonetheless insightful treatment of path dependence in consumer theory; and the introduction of non-competitive market analysis to the general equilibrium economics. In so doing, Pareto's general study of economic equilibrium not only substantially extended the contributions to economic theory made by Leon Walras, his predecessor in the Chair of Political Economy at the University of Lausanne, it did so in a manner that was often contrary to Walras's own thinking on the formalisation of economic theory. . This English language 'critical edition' of Pareto's Manual of Political Economy - a revised and extended translation of the 'Edizione critica' published in Italian in 2006 - is a very significant book for two main reasons. First, it is the only variorum translation of the Italian language Manuale di Economia Politica, originally published in 1906, and the subsequent French language Manuel d'Economie Politique, originally published in 1909. Second, it includes extensive contributions from the editors including annotations, to clarify particular points in Pareto's text; editors' notes, to critically reflect on major themes in Pareto's text and to draw attention to the historical influences that led to their development and their anticipation of, or influence on, subsequent ideas that emerged in economics; and notes to the 1909 mathematical appendix, to highlight the mix of insight and imperfection in Pareto's mathematical economics.


The current work examined the areas of religiosity, values and adolescent development. The recent literature with regard to the nature of religiosity as a measure of an individual'' commitment to a particular religion was explored. The issues of measurement and definition were outlined, and a position was taken as to the multi-dimensionality of religiosity. The recent work on values by Schwartz (1992) was also explored. Values were defined and the theory of a universal set of values, as well as the relationship of values to each other was outlined, along with the organisation of those individual values into value types. The relationship between values and religiosity was explored. The area of adolescent development, based on the theory of psychosocial development proposed by Erikson (1968, 1977) was also explored. This understanding of the nature of adolescent development has suggested that adolescents must explore issues such as politics and religion as part of that stage of development. It was suggested that adolescent development, therefore, had a significant possibility of impacting on the relationship between values and religiosity. This possible impact of adolescent development on both values and religiosity was suggested.


When the icebreaker Oden passed between 39°36'S, 57°46'W and 39°59'S, 58°11'W on 20 November 2007, an extraordinary observation was made. A feeding Pygmy Right Whale Caperea marginata, a species rarely seen, was attended by eight Grey Phalaropes Phalaropus fulicarius, two Slender-billed Prions Pachyptila belcheri, and four Wilson's Storm Petrels Oceanites oceanicus. The birds returned to feed around the head of the whale every time it surfaced, presumably copepod plankton straining out between the baleen. The site is off Rio de la Plata estuary where nutrient rich freshwater meets cold water of the Malvinas (Falkland) Current, creating a hotspot with high levels of plankton food. The conditions were extraordinarily favourable for observation with a calm sea, no wind and only a very weak swell. Six multispecies feeding groups were seen with a total of 42 species of birds, eleven species of whales, dolphins and porpoises, and three species of seals. Dusky Dolphins Lagenorhynchus obscurus and Great Shearwaters Puffinus gravis were predominant in the groups.


Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that primarily impinges the dopaminergic neurons in a particular region of Brain termed as Substantia Nigra. The disease affects more than 1900 people per 100,000 aged 80 years and above. Furthermore, men are 1.5 times more prone than their counterpart. Potential biomarkers escalated the precise diagnosis and helped to initiate treatment to limit its adversity. The current therapeutic schemes are focused on administration of Dopamine precursor, Dopamine agonist, Monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitor, Catechol-o-methyl transferase (COMT) inhibitors and deep brain stimulation. The CNS delivery focuses mainly on increasing the dopamine level in the brain. CNS drug delivery faces a crucial challenge of crossing Blood Brain Barrier. Blood-Brain Barrier Penetration can be attained by several techniques. Conventional drug therapy yields harmful affects to the patients without much therapeutics. It is visible that crossing BBB is quite strenuous process. It is mandatory for developing a novel approach untangling these situations. Nanotechnology-based formulations like nanosuspensions, nanotubes etc. promotes the penetration of drug across the sophisticated barrier without creating any deterioration to cells or organs. Several novel routes for drug administration reduce dose intake with increased and precise pharmacological action. Nanoformulations and Novel routes of drug administration are a promising tool to enhance the action of drug which helps to abate the symptoms of the Disease and assist in the betterment in treatment.


This paper deals with Tanzania's policy on maize production and marketing in recent years, focusing on its panterritorial pricing policy of setting a uniform price for the country, regardless of location or transport costs. After having played a useful role toward achieving regional equality and diversified production, this pricing policy began to have some adverse effects of its own creation, and eventually the whole system was plagued with soaring operational costs


This paper proposes a reflection on the relationship of new construction in an old context focusing on the recognition of the value of contemporary work which, historically, was introduced starting from post-war reconstructions. The article presents the methodologies and results of research that was first financed by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and later, by the Liguria Region for the purposes of cataloguing the modern and contemporary architectural heritage in the Region since the post-war period to-date, and highlighting its value for the purposes of its future protection and enhancement. Assigning values to recent and very recent architectural production is, in fact, variegated and controversial which, in many ways has established a dialogue with the old fabric.


Mountain worship has always been one of the central features of Korean cultural landscape. While specific traditions of mountain culture have been utilized by North Korea's leadership for the purpose of promotion of the state ideology, in South Korea mountain culture has acquired different forms. We argue that contemporary South Korean ki suryŏn (氣 修練) practices for perfection of mind and body constitute such manifestation of mountain-related culture. The ancient tradition of mountain gods (山神, sanshin) is a source from which the legendary figures of New Goddesses on Mt. Paektu emerge. We study origination and development of Paektu-related myths of South and North Korea, focusing on two divinities. The first goddess is Ch'ŏnsŏnnyŏ (天仙女, the Woman of Heaven) from the contemporary legend of GiCheon (氣天, Kich'ŏn), one of the ki suryŏn training methods. Our second goddess is Kim Chŏng-suk, the first wife of Kim Il-sŏng, founder of North Korea. In order to study simultaneous processes of origination and development of Mt. Paektu-related myths of South and North Korea, we consider sources from different fields of knowledge, such as folklore, art, philosophy and religion, politics, literary criticism, political science and environmental science. We apply an interdisciplinary approach to two seemingly incompatible processes of mythmaking of contemporary South and North Korea. The two countries, divided geographically, politically, economically, have for many centuries been one nation and one people, one language and one culture. This commonality has not disappeared into the depth of history, but comes to the cultural surface even in this most difficult contemporary time.


Rationale Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is often associated with age-related systemic abnormalities that adversely affect the prognosis. Whether these manifestations are linked to the lung alterations or are independent complications of smoking remains unclear. Objectives To look for aging-related systemic manifestations and telomere shortening in COPD patients and smokers with minor lung destruction responsible for a decline in the diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO) corrected for alveolar volume (KCO). Methods Cross-sectional study in 301 individuals (100 with COPD, 100 smokers without COPD, and 101 nonsmokers without COPD). Measurements and Main Results Compared to control smokers, patients with COPD had higher aortic pulse-wave velocity (PWV), lower bone mineral density (BMD) and appendicular skeletal muscle mass index (ASMMI), and shorter telomere length (TL). Insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and glomerular filtration rate (GFR) were similar between control smokers and COPD patients. Smokers did not differ from nonsmokers for any of these parameters. However, smokers with normal spirometry but low KCO had lower ASMMI values compared to those with normal KCO. Moreover, female smokers with low KCO, had lower BMD and shorter TL compared to those with normal KCO. Conclusions Aging-related abnormalities in patients with COPD are also found in smokers with minor lung dysfunction manifesting as a KCO decrease. Decreased KCO might be useful, particularly among women, for identifying smokers at high risk for aging-related systemic manifestations and telomere shortening.


PURPOSE
This study evaluated a cancer case management pilot program focusing on palliative care, the Omega Life Program (OLP), by assessing whether the program was associated with reduced hospital utilization.

METHODS
A retrospective observational study of patients with cancer who enrolled in the OLP (intervention) compared to those who chose not to enroll (comparison) from January 1, 2005 to February 28, 2007. Patients were included in the primary analyses if they died by the end of the study period and were enrolled in the program at least 1 week before death. Patients were followed from the time of referral until death. Outcomes included whether or not the patients had any admissions during this period and, for patients with at least one admission, the total number of inpatient hospital admissions, inpatient days, and hospital costs.

RESULTS
Approximately 75% of eligible patients enrolled in the OLP; 60% were older than 50 and 60% were female. Of included patients in the intervention group (n = 69), 59% had no admissions compared to 15% of patients in the comparison group (n = 20). However, among patients who had at least one admission, the mean number of hospital admissions, inpatient days, and hospitals costs were not significantly different between the groups.

CONCLUSIONS
In this pilot study, patients in the OLP had significantly reduced odds of having any hospital admissions compared to those in usual care. This type of program may improve outcomes for patients, but further research is needed to evaluate outcomes using larger samples and more rigorous study designs.


Over the past 15 years, the number of occupational therapists entering the practice area of mental health has greatly declined. To determine the possible reasons for this decline, a random sample of 450 occupational therapy students who graduated in 1986 was surveyed to identify those factors that influence practice choice. Participants were asked to indicate their practice preferences at five points in time: before admission to the academic program, after completion of the academic program, after completion of Level I fieldwork, after completion of Level II fieldwork, and at first employment. The results from 212 questionnaires (a 47% response rate) indicated that the distribution of practice choices remained relatively consistent over time. After completion of the academic program, the choice of mental health practice was seen as negative. Specific negative influences were topic content, teaching methods, and teacher effectiveness. Level I fieldwork was perceived as a negative experience in all five practice areas, but was perceived most negatively in mental health. Level II fieldwork most influenced practice preferences. Specific positive factors were the student supervisor and the patient caseload.


The Canadian federal government is in search of processes and approaches to address mounting complex challenges in the public sector. Design thinking is an approach that has been used lately in many Canadian government departments to facilitate innovation. Yet, academic literature about design thinking in the Canadian context of policy development is sparse. Research conducted in this thesis furthers new thinking in this area. A design thinking workshop based on a collaborative interdisciplinary approach was used to gain insights into the potential barriers and benefits of design thinking in the Canadian public sector.
Experienced designers and public sector experts were invited to participate in a policy design challenge. The findings revealed potential alternative solutions requiring increased interdisciplinary collaboration among government policy makers and design practitioners, incorporating experienced designers into the policy process and using results to bolster academic literature. Keywords: design thinking, policy making, innovation, Canadian public sector, interdisciplinary collaboration


This issue brief reviews ways to make the GST most effective within the confines of the structure already negotiated. It builds on publications under the Independent Global Stocktake (iGST)—a collaborative effort by climate modelers, analysts, campaigners, and advocates that aims to support the GST process. It was prepared on the basis of a multiyear research effort by multiple organizations under the iGST's "Designing a Robust Stocktake" discussion series, which analyzes the GST from a variety of angles, such as mitigation, adaptation, finance, and equity. The publications in this series were produced through targeted interviews, webinars, written feedback, and direct inputs.


Molecule possessing ankyrin-repeats induced by lipopolysaccharide (MAIL) is a nuclear IkappaB protein that is also known as interleukin-1-inducible nuclear ankyrin repeat protein and inhibitor of nuclear factor kappaBzeta (IkappaBzeta). We previously observed that MAIL-deficient mice were affected by atopic dermatitis-like skin lesions and demonstrated the importance of MAIL in the skin. In this study, we investigated MAIL expression in mouse keratinocytes. MAIL mRNA was constitutively expressed in the skin epidermis. MAIL expression was also confirmed in primary keratinocytes and the PAM212 keratinocyte cell line. The inhibitors of nuclear factor kappaB (NF-kappaB)-Bay11-7082 and the IkappaBalphaM supersuppressor-considerably downregulated MAIL expression in the keratinocytes. Immunoreactivity for NF-kappaB components was localized in the cytoplasm and nucleus of normal unstimulated keratinocytes. The expression level of MAIL in the skin did not change following lipopolysaccharide (LPS) administration to mice. Interestingly, in accordance with the in vivo findings, the MAIL expression level did not change following LPS stimulation even in primary keratinocytes; however, MAIL expression was strongly increased by interleukin-1 stimulation. These results collectively suggest that the constitutive expression of MAIL in keratinocytes is controlled, at least in part, by NF-kappaB and that there may be LPS-specific repressive mechanisms that inhibit MAIL induction.


Fetal MRI has become established in clinical practice over the past decade. MRI is indicated when conditions do not favor fetal ultrasound such as cases of maternal obesity or anhydramnios.1 It has also been shown that fetal MRI may discriminate among tissue components that do not display impedance differences on ultrasound; for instance, laminae in the developing brain.2 These advantages, along with MR's ability to delineate small structures, such as cranial nerves, has furthered its use as an adjunct to ultrasound in fetal imaging.1 Applications for fetal MRI are growing. The development of improved methods for fetal imaging, including availability of ultrafast sequences,3 has also furthered adoption.


The Jalisco block of southwestern Mexico records the initial stages of continental rifting superimposed on a convergent continental margin. Pliocene- Quaternary eruptions in north-northwest-trending graben systems within the block produced extraordinarily diverse lava types, including minette, leucitite, absarokite, and andesite. Interspersed with these are several basaltic shield volcanoes that have compositional similarities to lavas from oceanic islands. Evidence of Miocene Basin and Range extension, which is seen around much of the Gulf of California, is found only along the northern margin of the Jalisco block. Large volumes of alkali basalt were also erupted during the late Miocene at several locations along this northern margin. We propose that Pliocene- Quaternary extension and associated volcanism within the confines of the Jalisco block are consequences of complex plate-boundary reorganizations that are causing the block to rift away from the Mexican mainland


The Population Health Division of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing commissioned a research project into priority setting to be completed in two stages. The first stage involved a review of priority setting models by Segal and Chen1. The second stage involved case study of the application of the best performing Health Sector Wide Disease Based Model (HsW). Osteoarthritis (OA) was chosen as a suitable case study for application and further refinement of the model. It is an extremely common condition, affecting 2.2 million Australians, and responsible for a substantial reduction in their quality of life. An estimated $1,000 million is spent each year on the management of OA, largely to address symptoms. The number of potential modalities for reducing disease burden in persons at risk and those with established disease is large, covering primary care, pharmacological interventions, physical therapies, surgical interventions and population health initiatives. The major focus of interventions is to enhance quality of life, largely to control pain and extend physical function, thus a priority setting exercise in OA provides a unique opportunity to explore methods for the measurement and comparison of quality of life outcomes.


Despite the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), disabled Americans face substantial barriers to entry into the workplace, lack material supports including health care and transportation, and may not receive reasonable accommodation that best supports their functioning. In addition, individuals with impairments have difficulty qualifying as disabled for disability protections. In light of these problems, some commentators suggest that a civil rights or antidiscrimination approach to disability discrimination - an approach for which activists fought for twenty years prior to the enactment of the ADA - may not adequately address disability discrimination. Some critics advocate a return to the social welfare model that ADA activists struggled to avoid, namely, a model focused on material supports for disabled persons. I argue that reforming disability law requires a blend of the civil rights and social welfare models as informed by a novel lens: vulnerability as universal and constant. The current antidiscrimination approach to disability law reform is limited because it views disability as a narrow identity category and fragments disability protection. Fragmentation, a new concept I develop in this Article, results when susceptibility to disability discrimination is treated as if it arises in discrete environments, such as the workplace and particular places of public accommodation. Viewing vulnerabilities as situational generates a host of problems: it results in a patchwork of protections that do not coalesce to allow meaningful social participation, fails to appreciate the hyper-vulnerability (extreme sensitivity) of disabled individuals to certain environmental changes, artificially restricts the protected class by creating a false perception that some individuals with significant impairments are not disabled because they are able to function in particular circumstances or environments, and disregards the benefits of conceptualizing vulnerability to impairments as affecting disabled and nondisabled persons alike. Interpreting Martha Fineman's theory of vulnerability and applying it for the first time within disability legal studies, I argue that vulnerability to disability and the vulnerabilities disabled individuals experience more acutely than those without disability are both universal and constant. The shared vulnerabilities of disabled and nondisabled individuals suggest the need to restructure completely social institutions to respond to barriers to work and social participation. For practical reasons, I advocate a compromise focused on disabled persons with regard to accommodation for employment and some aspects of social participation: a move away from the standard antidiscrimination approach, which fragments protections, to an approach that treats vulnerability as extending across environments and enables a broader provision of material supports for disabled individuals. In particular, the reasonable accommodation mandate should be expanded with governmental supports to allow disabled workers accommodations both inside and outside the workplace that facilitate their employment. Additionally, a dialogue between employers and employees about accommodating disability should be mandatory, and employees should be entitled to reasonable accommodation that supports their preferred methods of functioning. Given the current legal structures in place, however, recognizing vulnerability to illness as universal suggests the need for universal health care, or treating access to health care as a matter of social welfare rather than disability law.


The report presents the findings of an independent evaluation into the 'i-Care' project, which was launched by Trafford Council and funded by NHS Health Education North West (HENW) as an Integrated Care Demonstrator Site. The project sought to support change management and workforce development across the Council's health and social care services during a period of transformation activity in mid-to-late 2015. The evaluation assessed the project according to its aims, including but not limited to workforce development, shaping service demand/need, deepening/widening relationships with partners, integrating commissioning cultures, and the roll out of family based skills training. To do so, project documentation was reviewed, and workforce and multi-agency employees were consulted through an online survey (37 responses), focus groups (21 responses) and interviews (4 responses). Interviews were also conducted with service users (3 responses).

The findings indicate that the project has clearly met the majority of its intended outcomes. The evaluation found that the intended outcomes relating to workforce understanding of the financial situation that Trafford Council faces, as well as understanding of and support for the changes that CFW is undertaking, appear to have been fully met. Some areas for improvement were highlighted, however, around levels of comfort with the changes and resilience amongst the CFW workforce and multi-agency employees. Service users also appear to feel listened to and to be engaging more/becoming more self-reliant. Any recommendations offered are tentative, and somewhat limited in their ability to offer precise solutions. The evaluation makes a number of recommendations, including the continuation of the Tackling Engagement and workforce development training; the exploration of longer contracts with partner organisations; and, for senior leaders to spend more time with front line staff in order to keep the needs of workforce/service users at the heart of any future changes.


Consistency of yield and quality of seed are traits not yet optimised by the brassica seed industry in New Zealand. As of 2008, seed producers in Canterbury, New Zealand, exported approximately $18m of brassica seed. However, there is a need to increase both seed quantity and/or quality. The plant hormone group, the cytokinins, regulates many stages of plant growth and development, including cell division and enhancement of sink strength, both of which are important processes in seed development and embryonic growth. The two gene families targeted in this project play a key role in maintaining cytokinin homeostasis. Isopentenyl transferase (IPT) catalyzes the rate limiting step in the formation of cytokinins, and cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase (CKX) irreversibly inactivates cytokinins. The aim of this project was to identify those cytokinin gene family members expressing specifically during the early phases of pod and seed development. Initially this study used a rapid-cycling Brassica rapa (RCBr) because of its rapid life cycle, then, as the project developed, a commercial crop of forage brassica (B. napus) was studied. Reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) and BLAST analysis was used to identify putative IPT and CKX genes from RCBr and B. napus. Quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to measure the expression of individual gene family members during leaf, flower, pod and seed development. BrIPT1, -3, and -5, and BrCKX1, -2, -3, and -5/7 and were shown to express differentially both temporally and spatially within RCBr root, stem, leaf, seed, and pod tissues. BnIPT1, 3 and 7 and BnCKX1, 2, 5 and 7 were also differentially expressed. Particularly strong expression was shown by BrIPT3, BrIPT5 and BrCKX2 in developing seeds. Both Brand BnIPT3 expressed strongly in maturing leaves. In normal plant growth and development, biosynthesis and metabolism of cytokinin is tightly regulated by the plant. Increasing the levels of cytokinins during seed development, either by over expressing IPT3 or IPT5, or decreasing the expression of CKX2, or both, could potentially increase both seed yield and seed vigour.


Questions: The floristic distinctiveness of ancient woodland relative to recent woodland is commonly measured by Ancient Woodland Indicator (AWI) species richness. However, focusing on a pre-defined subset of species means that wider community-level differences may be overlooked. Can ancient semi-natural, ancient replanted, and recent woodland herb layer communities be distinguished by alpha, beta, and gamma diversity? How are any differences partitioned across AWI and non-AWI species communities?
Location: Cotswolds, South-West UK.
Methods: To quantify AWI and non-AWI responses to stand history in ancient semi-natural, ancient replanted, and recent woodland, we conducted floristic surveys of 45 sites. Using a modelling approach, we tested the relative and additive contribution of alpha scale AWI and non-AWI species richness to woodland distinctiveness. Ordination was applied to analyse beta species composition distinctiveness, and multilevel pattern analysis was used to examine which species were significant contributors to gamma scale richness differences.
Results: AWI species richness models significantly distinguished ancient semi-natural woodland from both ancient replanted and recent woodland at the alpha scale. For the classification of ancient semi-natural woodland and recent woodland, the hierarchical inclusion of non-AWI alpha richness resulted in a superior and more significant model. AWI gamma richness was numerically similar for all three woodland categories, whereas non-AWI was more varied. AWI and non-AWI species composition showed significant beta diversity differences among all woodland types, with six species being significant drivers of differences.
Conclusions: Our results have revealed previously undetected complexity in the contributions of AWI and non-AWI species to floristic distinctiveness of ancient woodland. In addition to traditional AWI species, the non-AWI assemblage also exhibited a sensitivity to habitat continuity that: (a) adds weight to the argument that ancient woodland is floristically distinct from recent woodland; and (b) provides a useful measure of success for ancient replanted woodland restoration.


The general message of this article is that the standard approach to knowledge economy is becoming increasingly inadequate, because even within the same market system different countries take different paths of social development. The paper argues that formal institutional arrangements, implemented according to EU recommendations and backed by EU financing, merely touch upon the surface of the problem. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce a conceptual and analytical framework and address key issues related to knowledge economy and society. The paper stresses the role of informal institutions, embeddedness, and the concept of social trust.


Scalable and continuous roll-to-roll manufacturing is at the heart of the promise of low-cost and high throughput manufacturing of solution-processed photovoltaics. Yet, to date the vast majority of champion organic solar cells reported in the literature rely on spin-coating of the photoactive bulk heterojunction (BHJ) layer, with the performance of printed solar cells lagging behind in most instances. Here, we investigate the performance gap between polymer solar cells prepared by spin-coating and blade-coating the BHJ layer for the important class of modern polymers exhibiting no long range crystalline order. We find that thickness parity does not always yield performance parity even when using identical formulations. Significant differences in the drying kinetics between the processes are found to be responsible for BHJ nanomorphology differences. We propose an approach which benchmarks the film drying kinetics and associated BHJ nanomorphology development against those of the champion laboratory devices prepared by spin-coating the BHJ layer by adjusting the process temperature. If the optimization requires the solution concentration to be changed, then it is crucial to maintain the additive-to-solute volume ratio. Emulating the drying kinetics of spin-coating is also shown to help achieve morphological and performance parities. We put this approach to the test and demonstrate printed PTB7:PC71BM polymer solar cells with efficiency of 9% and 6.5% PCEs on glass and flexible PET substrates, respectively. We further demonstrate performance parity for two other popular donor polymer systems exhibiting rigid backbones and absence of a long range crystalline order, achieving a PCE of 9.7%, the highest efficiency reported to date for a blade coated organic solar cell. The rational process transfer illustrated in this study should help the broader and successful adoption of scalable printing methods for these material systems.


Former colonies of the British Empire, Hong Kong and Australia inherited the common law system and the basic structure of legal education and training from England and Wales and remain the closest siblings in terms of proximity in distance and the high degree of similarity between their respective frameworks for legal education and training. This article first summarizes the major reviews of legal education and training in these three jurisdictions: England and Wales, Australia and Hong Kong over the last four decades and argues that while these reviews are keen on investigating 'what' is lacking in the curriculum and 'what' needs to be changed to equip graduates for the challenges of the day, they do not seem to have shown the same level of enthusiasm in identifying 'how' the intended outcomes prescribed can be achieved. Nevertheless, law schools in these jurisdictions recently began to tap on, and combine with the improved classroom pedagogy, clinical legal education and internship, innovative teaching tools and solutions in an attempt to deliver more enhanced learning experience to students. The article examines the role ascribed to technology in legal education and training with a particular reference to SimPLE, a e-learning platform developed in England and Wales which has been put to use in Australia as well, and the reform initiatives taken, and planned to be taken, by the Department of Professional Legal Education at the University of Hong Kong in its Postgraduate Certificate in Laws programme. This article concludes by pointing out the importance of collaboration among stakeholders including teachers, university administration and the legal profession in effecting a more active role of technology in legal education and training of today.


For more than 15 years, the World tourism organization and other major multilateral organizations have worked on the development of reliable tools for assessing tourism related to others economic activities in a country: the tourism satellite account. Its implementation at a sub-national level is a challenging endeavour and requires going beyond this framework. A regional tourism economic account is a good answer to the demand for regional tourism economic data and to highlight the problematic of employment with a tourism employment module. This combination sheds a new light on the role of tourism in creating, preserving and diversifying jobs in the economy. We developed a regional tourism economic account (RTEA), based on the supply-side, in order to take advantage of the existence a system of regional accounts and to respond to the lack of domestic tourism data. All these developments have been applied in a French overseas region, Reunion Island. The results show their feasibility. The others ultra-peripheral regions of European Union, others European islands and more generally small island tourism economies can benefit from this experience, (i.e. all regions in which a system of regional account has been implented).


The frequency of intensional and non-first-order definable operators in natural languages constitutes a challenge for automated reasoning with the kind of logical translations that are deemed adequate by formal semanticists. Whereas linguists employ expressive higher-order logics in their theories of meaning, the most successful logical reasoning strategies with natural language to date rely on sophisticated first-order theorem provers and model builders. In order to bridge the fundamental mathematical gap between linguistic theory and computational practice, we present a general translation from a higher-order logic frequently employed in the linguistics literature, two-sorted Type Theory, to first-order logic under Henkin semantics. We investigate alternative formulations of the translation, discuss their properties, and evaluate the availability of linguistically relevant inferences with standard theorem provers in a test suite of inference problems stated in English. The results of the experiment indicate that translation from higher-order logic to first-order logic under Henkin semantics is a promising strategy for automated reasoning with natural languages. The paper is accompanied by the source code (cf. SUPP. FILES ) of the grammar and reasoning architecture described in the paper.


Although the social aspects of economical, juridical and religious activities in ancient Athens have long been acknowledged, I argue in my dissertation that the consequences of these insights have been insufficiently appreciated. In most studies of Athenian society an institutional or constitutional approach still prevails. Many scholars commonly describe Athenian society in black and white terms as consisting of a small group of politically active, Athenian-born, adult men opposite a large group of non-citizens, including women, metics, and slaves. However, many ancient sources, from court trials to sacred laws, abundantly demonstrate that membership of the polis was not defined as a legal status with political privileges but was rather conceived of in terms of sharing or participating in the community (as metechein tes poleos), especially in the religious obligations (ta hiera) of the polis. This notion has several important consequences that can be further explored. For instance, it is one of the main aims of Professor Josine Blok's VICI-project on Athenian citizenship at the University of Utrecht, of which my PhD is part, to clarify the important role of participation in polis cults for a better understanding of Athenian citizenship. In the same line of thought, I suggest that the Athenian polis should be understood as a participatory society in which everybody, including people who are traditionally labelled 'non-citizens' or 'outsiders', held a particular position or status on account of differentiated group participation in the community. In other words, I argue that participation in polis affairs created, maintained and negotiated a sliding scale of membership of the Athenian community on which each group held a position of its own according to an acknowledged status. To illustrate this I have investigated how metic status was negotiated in the context of polis religion, arguably the most important area of public polis life in which all members of the Athenian community participated in various ways. Looking at the ways in which a widely diverse amalgam of resident foreigners was incorporated as a coherent group of metics into the participatory communities of several polis festivals (i.e. the Panathenaia, the Lenaia, the City Dionysia, the Hephaisteia, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Bendideia and several religious activities organised in the demes) and how they were differentiated and associated with the other participating groups I offer an alternative view on the status of metics as members of the Athenian community rather than as outsiders because of their exclusion from most political and juridical activities. In the end, I hope to have demonstrated 1) that polis membership largely depended on active and differentiated participation in the polis community, especially in polis religion, and should therefore be perceived as a fluid concept and 2) that metics should not be understood as 'outsiders'; instead they held their own specific polis membership on account of their participation in several important polis festivals.


Information and Living Systems: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives / MIT Press, 2011 / 414 pages / 0262201747, 9780262201742 / George Terzis, Robert Arp / 2011 Information shapes biological organization in fundamental ways and at every organizational level. Because organisms use information--including DNA codes, gene expression, and chemical signaling--to construct, maintain, repair, and replicate themselves, it would seem only natural to use information-related ideas in our attempts to understand the general nature of living systems, the causality by which they operate, the difference between living and inanimate matter, and the emergence, in some biological species, of cognition, emotion, and language. And yet philosophers and scientists have been slow to do so. This volume fills that gap. Information and Living Systems offers a collection of original chapters in which scientists and philosophers discuss the informational nature of biological organization at levels ranging from the genetic to the cognitive and linguistic. The chapters examine not only familiar information-related ideas intrinsic to the biological sciences but also broader information-theoretic perspectives used to interpret their significance. The contributors represent a range of disciplines, including anthropology, biology, chemistry, cognitive science, information theory, philosophy, psychology, and systems theory, thus demonstrating the deeply interdisciplinary nature of the volume's bioinformational theme. DOWNLOAD http://relevantin.org/2gfGs7v.pdf


Harry Caldecote is the most charming man you'll ever meet, a convivial academic who devotes his life to others. He is on call when his alcoholic niece falls into strange hands, when his brother threatens to emulate Wordsworth, when his son's lesbian lodger is beaten up by her girlfriend. He endures misplaced seductions, swindles and aggressive dogs just to keep the peace at the King's pub in Shepherd's Hill. But when the Adams' Institute of Cultural and Commercial History in America offers him the opportunity to do 'whatever he wanted to do' in a picturesque lakeside town, he faces a choice between freedom or responsibility - and whether to take charge of his own life.


Background Despite the seriousness of dengue-related disease, with an estimated 50–100 million cases of dengue fever and 250,000–500,000 cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome each year, a clear understanding of dengue pathogenesis remains elusive. Because of the lack of a disease model in animals and the complex immune interaction in dengue infection, the study of host response and immunopathogenesis is difficult. The development of genomics technology, microarray and high throughput quantitative PCR have allowed researchers to study gene expression changes on a much broader scale. We therefore used this approach to investigate the host response in dengue virus-infected cell lines and in patients developing dengue fever. Methodology/Principal Findings Using microarray and high throughput quantitative PCR method to monitor the host response to dengue viral replication in cell line infection models and in dengue patient blood samples, we identified differentially expressed genes along three major pathways; NF-κB initiated immune responses, type I interferon (IFN) and the ubiquitin proteasome pathway. Among the most highly upregulated genes were the chemokines IP-10 and I-TAC, both ligands of the CXCR3 receptor. Increased expression of IP-10 and I-TAC in the peripheral blood of ten patients at the early onset of fever was confirmed by ELISA. A highly upregulated gene in the IFN pathway, viperin, was overexpressed in A549 cells resulting in a significant reduction in viral replication. The upregulation of genes in the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway prompted the testing of proteasome inhibitors MG-132 and ALLN, both of which reduced viral replication. Conclusion/Significance Unbiased gene expression analysis has identified new host genes associated with dengue infection, which we have validated in functional studies. We showed that some parts of the host response can be used as potential biomarkers for the disease while others can be used to control dengue viral replication, thus representing viable targets for drug therapy.


Sir Edmund Leach argues that doctors in the modern world, fortified by the traditional concept that the life of the sick person must at all costs be preserved, are to some extent guilty of the false antitheses current today between youth and age. Moreover youth means health, age illness and senility. Until this imbalance is corrected society will be in danger of `a kind of civil war between the generations'. Society must be taught again that mortality cannot be avoided or conquered by medical science, and at the same time that `health' is not enshrined in the young alone.


The psychopathic personality can be conceptualized as three interrelated dimensions, (a) an interpersonal style of glibness, grandiosity, and manipulation; (b) an affective disposition of callousness, lack of empathy, and unemotionality; and (c) a behavioral/lifestyle dimension of impulsivity, need for stimulation, and irresponsibility, underpinning a higher order construct, psychopathic personality. The authors used a self-report questionnaire (The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory) to study the importance of genetic and environmental influences on psychopathic personality traits in a sample of 1,090 monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs, aged 16-17 years. Results showed a strong genetic influence behind the higher order "psychopathic personality" factor, underpinned by the three psychopathic personality dimensions. Over and above the effects to the higher order factor, significant unique genetic influences were also found in the callous/unemotional and in the impulsive/irresponsible dimension, but not in the grandiose/manipulative dimension. The authors propose that this latent psychopathic personality factor is a meaningful target for future etiological research.


What do clients want and need? In the 1980s, personal financial planning was touted as the future growth area for CPA firms. What some didn't realize was how much depends on marketing. PFP is a crowded field there are so many players CPAs must position themselves properly to succeed. In the 1990s, opportunities remain. * The United States is on the verge of the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in its history. Almost $5 trillion will change hands over the next 20 years, with nearly $1 trillion to be transferred by the end of the decade. * U.S. households with $1 million or more in investable assets hold $4.3 trillion in assets. Estimates indicate that less than one-half of these assets are professionally managed. * Changes outside the accounting profession mean CPAs must scramble harder for a smaller piece of the pie. The advent of personal computers with software that lets small businesses keep their own books cut practice revenue for some firms. Legislation changed tax practices dramatically; yearend tax planning became a thing of the past for most clients. * Overall concern about personal finances is surprisingly high. Changes in tax policy, baby boomers' heightened awareness of retirement issues, the volatility of investment markets and an increasingly elderly population who fear estate taxes will greatly reduce the amount of assets they can pass to their children have spurred consumer interest in the financial planning process. The American Institute of CPAs personal financial planning division sponsored a study to enable it to better understand what clients needed, expected and valued in CPA financial planners. The goal, according to PFP division director Phyllis Bernstein, was to gain insights that would allow the AICPA and its members to promote CPAs to key target groups as the "premier financial planning advisers" and for CPAs themselves to learn how to deliver services that clients would value. (The sidebar on pages 52--53 reports on another survey of how consumers perceive CPA--financial planners.) The research was done in two phases: * Internal focus groups with members of the PFP division to examine how clients choose financial planners, the competition in the PFP market and what messages CPA financial planners should convey to current and prospective clients. * Eight external focus groups, conducted by an opinion research firm, in three markets (New York City, Chicago and Portland, Oregon) with 45 users of either financial planning services or CPAs. SURVEY FINDINGS Both groups revealed that CPAs must overcome a number of barriers to be considered credible providers of PFP services. The broad definition of a "financial planner" that respondents provided was someone qualified to organize finances as well as to provide advice, guidance and alternative strategies. Many participants already used different advisers (stockbrokers, lawyers and insurance agents) and turned to each individually for separate needs. Some of the focus groups' key findings included: * Clients expected a long-term professional relationship with their planners because they anticipated adjustments would be needed as objectives changed. * The most common trigger for hiring a financial planner was entering a new stage of life: growing older, having children, increased income or assets and a lack of time to handle one's own affairs. * Experience or track record and professional reputation and references were the most important factors considered in selecting a planner. * Compensation also was important. Most participants favored paying fees instead of commissions. * Responsiveness to client needs was more important than the planner's education or the cost of the advice. The least expensive planner typically was not the best one; communication between client and planner was much more valuable. * Promoting the AICPA personal financial specialist (PFS) designation may be the most effective way to differentiate CPA financial planners from others who do financial planning. …


Nanocrystals with multiple compositions and hetero-interfaces have received a great attention due to promising multifunctional and synergistic physicochemical properties. In particular, hetero-interfaces have been at the focal point of nanocatalyst research because the strain caused by lattice mismatches between different phases is the dominant determinant of surface energy and catalytic activity. The ensemble effects of different materials phases have also contributed to the interest in hetero-interfaced multicomponent materials. Until now, hetero-interfaces have largely been regarded as static and the dynamic movement of components within the multicomponent material phases has received little attention, although the dynamic movement of individual components within multicomponent materials can revise the interpretation of the catalytic behaviors of these materials and lead to fascinating opportunities for nanostructure synthesis. In this study, we demonstrate unprecedented cation migrations within a sulfide matrix induced by surface strain modulation initiated by cation exchange. Specifically, Cu and Ag cations in the sulfide matrix were initially segregated to form a Janus structure. This Janus configuration was then transformed into a core-shell Cu2-xS@Ag2S structure via surface Pt doping. When the surface strain was relieved by a reduced Pt concentration at the nanoparticle surface, the core-shell transitioned back into a Janus structure. We expect that the facile composition fluctuations in multiphasic nanostructures will expand synthetic methodologies for the design and synthesis of intricate nanostructures with useful physicochemical properties.


One of the most controversial policy questions in all of institutional mental disability law is the extent to which patients in psychiatric hospitals have a right to voluntary sexual interaction. The resolution of this matter involves the resolution of difficult and sensitive questions of law, social policy, clinical judgment, politics, religion, and family structures.As difficult as these questions are in cases involving civil hospitals, the difficulties are exacerbated when the topic is the application of the right in forensic hospitals. Such facilities typically house individuals involved in the criminal justice system (either those who may be incompetent to stand trial, those who have been found to be incompetent to stand trial, those who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity, or, in some cases, those convicted of crimes). These statuses raise public concerns about the populations in question, the extent to which they are entitled to exercise civil rights while institutionalized, and the potential additional danger that might be associated with the granting of sexual freedom to this population. A different set of difficulties are present when we consider the application of this right in hospitals (whether civil or forensic) in Asia, where the notion of "patients rights" regrettably lags far behind the construction of such rights in Western nations.It is impossible to meaningfully come to grips with the multiple issues presented in this paper without also coming to grips with the social attitude of sanism, an irrational prejudice of the same quality and character of other irrational prejudices that cause (and are reflected in) prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry. Sanism infects both our jurisprudence and our lawyering practices; it is largely invisible and largely socially acceptable, is based predominantly upon stereotype, myth, superstition, and deindividualization. It is sustained and perpetuated by our use of alleged "ordinary common sense" (OCS) and heuristic reasoning in an unconscious response to events both in everyday life and in the legal process.In this paper, I will (1) discuss the state of the law that applies to sexual autonomy in psychiatric institutions, (2) review the social policy issues as they relate to (a) forensic patients, (b) Asia, (3) explain the pernicious impact of sanism, and (4) seek to offer some tentative solutions to the underlying dilemmas.


In the context of an update of their hydropower plants, the Hydroelectric Company KWO plans an adaption of their powerhouses Innertkirchen 1 and 2. One aim of the project is, among many others, an optimized restitution regime of the turbined water to the Aare River. Therefore, a compensation basin is planned to reduce the currently pronounced hydro-peaking. The basin is situated downstream of the Hasliaare and the Gadmerwasser confluence, next to the outlets of the two powerhouses. The spatial situation and the geology implicate strong restrictions regarding the volume of the compensation basin, allowing for a storage capacity of approximately 20'000 m3. This volume is more than doubled by a voluminous tailrace tunnel between the turbines and the basin. The regulation of the basin is assured by a flap gate and a radial gate. The basin intents to limit hydro peaking, and thereby ameliorates the ecology of the Aare River between the basin and Lake of Brienz. It will facilitate to access the Gadmerwasser for the fishes, which is known as excellent spawning ground. The efficiency and reliability of the basin regulation structures is a key item for the operation of the two powerhouses. The basin outlet gates were thus model-tested at the Laboratory of Hydraulic Constructions of EPFL, Switzerland, to assure an sufficient discharge capacity even for elevated water levels in the Aare River, to avoid unwanted erosion on the area, to avoid sedimentation of the structure by the bed load of the Aare River, and to generated acceptable conditions for fish passage along the Aare River. The modeled hydraulic perimeter covered the basin outlet structure, a length of some 250 m of the Aare River, as well as a part of the compensation basin. The model is set-up with a geometrical scale factor of 1:40 and operated under the similitude of Froude. In the experiments, the efficiency of the basin regulation gates is tested. Additionally, water levels, flow velocities and the erosion of the river bed are measured. The paper describes this particular case study with some optimization steps; finally leading to a solution with satisfies the principle requests. Given the importance of the ecological aspects and the Swiss legislation, the present compensation basin can provide ideas and concepts for similar structures to foresee in the near future.


In the last couple years, new editions of the two most prominent election law casebooks have been released, and one entirely new casebook has been published. This is an opportune moment, then, both to review the volumes and to assess the state of the field. Fortunately, both are strong. All of the casebooks are wellorganized, thorough in their coverage, and full of insightful commentary. And the field, at least as presented by the volumes, is impressively confident in its substantive and methodological choices. There is a high level of consensus as to both the subject areas that election law should include and the analytical methods that it should employ. Instructors looking to select a casebook thus are faced with an embarrassment of riches. Because all of the volumes are excellent, my suggestion is that instructors make their choice based on their own substantive and methodological inclinations. Those who are most interested in representational issues and in doctrinal context should select Issacharoff, Karlan, and Pildes. Those who wish to emphasize campaign finance and empirical political science should choose Lowenstein, Hasen, and Tokaji. And those who want to focus on democratic theory, history, and an unusually wide array of sources should pick Gardner and Charles. There is no going wrong here.


Studying complex systems is increasingly important in many science domains. Many features of complex systems make it difficult for students to develop deep understanding. Our previous research indicated that a function-centered conceptual representation is part of the disciplinary toolbox of biologists, suggesting that it is an appropriate representation to help students develop deep understanding. This article reports on the results of two experiments that investigate how hypermedia using a conceptual representation influences pre-service teachers' and middle school students' learning of a complex biological system, the human respiratory system. We designed two versions of instructional hypermedia based on the structure–behavior-function conceptual representation. One hypermedia was function-centered which emphasized the function and behavior of the system, whereas the other was focused on the structure of the system. We contrasted the instructional effectiveness of these two alternative conceptual representations. The results of both studies indicated that participants using the function-centered hypermedia developed deeper understanding than those using the structure-centered version. This proof-of-concept study suggests that the function-centered conceptual representation is a powerful way to promote complex systems understanding. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 1023–1040, 2009


DEVS is a formalism intended to model both discrete and continuous systems. The use of discrete events, rather than time steps, as the basis for simulation has been shown to reduce the computation time in many applications. Parallel DEVS is an extension to standard DEVS, which provides means to handle simultaneous scheduling. In this paper, we present an implementation of the parallel DEVS simulation protocol that uses a modified time warp optimistic algorithm for shared memory multiprocessor machine. This implementation is designed to execute the DEVS models in parallel and, at the same time to correctly simulate every model defined in terms of DEVS specification. Two test cases and the DEVSFIRE example are used to verify this algorithm. Preliminary experimental results are presented that show the implementation can speedup a DEVS simulation.


Wisden was first published in 1864, the same year that William Gilbert Grace, then aged 16, made his debut in first-class cricket. The great man made his first appearance in the 1865 edition and two years later Wisden reported his 224 not out against Surrey at The Oval. From then on, W.G. was the main headline in each year's annual as he cast his considerable shadow over the game. Today the continuing interest in, and influence of, Grace on cricket is remarkable. Wisden on Grace records the highlights of an astonishing playing career - W.G. remains not only one of the top ten run-scorers of all time, but also one of the top ten wicket-takers - with notable scorecards, match reports and records. But the real treasures are to be found in the opinions and articles written about - and sometimes by - W.G. during his lifetime and afterwards. Whether it is first-class status for matches, the professionalism debate, or the question of throwing, the game's eternal issues are to be found here. Wisden on Grace also celebrates W.G.'s extraordinary family. The Graces remain the only family to have fielded three brothers in the same Test side for England, and all the Graces - W.G., E.M., their tragic younger brother G. F., and W.G. Grace junior - feature here, as do the obituaries of all the Graces (including W.G.'s mother and his wife). In the year of the centenary of W.G.'s death, Wisden's tribute to Grace gives a clear picture of the way that Grace and the game in general have been viewed over the past 150 years, and is a delight for any cricket lover.


Part of the Sport in the Global Society series, this innovative and creative text explores collective history, memory, and sport culture, tracking the passage of sports away from England. The author investigates why 'elite' English sports - such as rugby and cricket - became national sports in New Zealand and Australia, and asks why 'working class' English sports - such as football - have travelled less well to these areas. Focusing on these sports, the author tracks narratives and myths, tracing the passage of colonial truths, behaviours and practices. Clearly defined sections in the book focus on: sport and tourism sport and history sport and memory. Using a refreshingly broad range of sources to analyze differences between popular culture and sporting memory, this book offers new perspectives on sport and makes an interesting reference for masters and postgraduate readers in sport and cultural studies.


BACKGROUND
Examination of the epidemiology and timing of trauma deaths has been deemed a useful method to evaluate the quality of trauma care.

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of trauma care in a regional trauma system and in a university hospital in Brazil by comparing the timing of deaths in the studied prehospital and in-hospital settings to those published for trauma systems in other areas.

METHODS
We analyzed the National Health Minister's System of Deaths Information for the prehospital mortality and we retrospectively collected the demographics, timelines, and trauma severity scores of all in-hospital patients who died after admission through the Emergency Unit of Hospital das Clinicas de Ribeirao Preto between 2000 and 2001.

RESULTS
During the study period, there were 787 trauma fatalities in the city: 448 (56.9%) died in the prehospital setting and 339 (43.1%) died after being admitted to a medical facility. In 2 years, 238 trauma deaths occurred in the studied hospital, and we found a complete clinical set of data for 224 of these patients. The majority of deaths in the prehospital setting were caused by penetrating injuries (66.7%), whereas in-hospital mortality was mainly because of blunt traumas (59.1%). The largest number of in-hospital deaths occurred beyond 72 hours of stay (107 patients-47%).

CONCLUSION
The region studied showed some deficiencies in prehospital and in-hospitals settings, in particular in the critical care and short-term follow-up of trauma patients when compared with the literature. Particularly, the late mortality may be related to training and human resources deficiency. Based on the timeline of trauma deaths, we can suggest that the studied region needs improvements in the prehospital trauma system and in hospital critical care.


Abstract. Historical maps, like other thematic maps, have their specifics that need to be taken into account when preparing them. A historical map is compiled by a cartographer and a historian. These are professionals with different education (humanistic and technical) and different approaches to work. This results in different authors' trains of thoughts, which may be a source of mistakes in upcoming historical maps. Hidden errors that none of the experts thinks about because they do not know about them or because they seem to be irrelevant in their point of view, are especially serious. The objective of the article is to present the most common unknown unknowns in the preparation of historical maps which the authors acquired during the design of the Academic Atlas of Czech History, the Czech Historical Atlas and other historical maps.Incorrectly portrayed historical boundaries is the first type of error. If the main topic of a map are historical boundaries in particular, i.e. a political or administrative map is designed, the historian specializing in political affairs usually prepares the documents for the cartographer with great care. But if the historian asks for displaying historical boundaries only as support information for the map readers (e.g. for a migration map), they only specify a general requirement (e.g. borders up to 1938). Sometimes, they also provide a background map with these boundaries, which, however, is often in a too small scale. The cartographer, who is inexperienced in the creation of historical maps, then adopts the underlying map uncritically without asking or searching for more detailed sources (larger scale maps, text description of the boundaries) on their own. Also, the cartographer usually does not have deep knowledge of historical development. Then, the cartographer might miss some territorial change, which leads to omissions in the map. Alternatively, a certain part of the border is depicted to a wrong date. The historian does not alert the cartographer to the error because they consider (from their point of view) this small border deviation to be within the limit of the map language. Or, they have no idea what can be considered generalization for the given map scale and what goes beyond that. For historians, in general, the map is rather an illustration complementing their relevant text. The historian also often does not distinguish maps according to their positional accuracy (i.e. it is generally true that a map with a topographic background, harmonized with thematic elements, is more reliable than a map in the form of "colour spots") and it is sufficient for them if a phenomenon or a territory is described in the legend or in the text accompanying the map (written view). Therefore, the cartographer must notify the historian of inappropriate background sources and ask for better quality ones.The historian often demands in good faith that the upcoming map will capture several historical boundaries of different years. However, the cartographer must verify each partial state, harmonize it with other boundaries and water features and solve different levels of generalization of the data sources. As the number of boundaries increases, the map key is becoming more complicated (issues of colour and map sign structure resolution, border line overlaps). This leads to a substantial increase in the time needed for the preparation of the map. In addition, more information (boundaries) degrades the readability of the map and the map user may not be able to understand it correctly despite the hard work on the cartographer's part. In these cases, it is advisable to explain patiently the principle that less is more or, if there is no other way, divide a complex subject into multiple maps.The way how to write names of sites and locations (settlements) can also be an unknown unknown for both parties. There are usually no problems with current names of settlements based on the Latin script. More difficult, but manageable, is to agree on a system of romanization of non-Latin-script names (e.g. Arabic to Czech). A problem arises in historical maps. The historian and the cartographer should, after mutual discussion, find out whether they will use current names, historical names or common exonyms. Should historical names be used, it is necessary to determine what system of romanization will be used – whether from the official language for a given place and epoch or otherwise. In the case of the preparation of an atlas, it is necessary to enforce that the proposed system will be used by all authors to ensure the uniformity of the work. The cartographer must also consider the technical limitations of computer fonts, which rarely contain all required glyphs for proper romanization.The examples of unknown unknowns in historical maps preparation show that the ideal state would be if the mapmaker graduated from both cartography and the appropriate discipline of history or historical geography. However, in Czechia, there is insufficient demand for historical maps so that such an expert could hardly make a living off making historical maps only. Thus, cooperation of historians and cartographers is crucial. Communication, mutual learning, high-quality sources for maps and the willingness to discuss the upcoming map with other experts are the key prerequisites to success in eliminating errors. Enough time to prepare maps is another essential precondition.


A procedure is described whereby preshadowed replicas can be obtained from frozen biological specimens which have been cut and then etched by sublimation of the ice from their surfaces. Electron micrographs showing details of the internal structure of plant virus crystals are presented to demonstrate the values of the procedure. Crystals of purified tobacco ringspot virus and squash mosaic virus and some portions of turnip yellow mosaic virus crystals have been shown to exhibit hexagonal packing. Sections through in situ crystals of tobacco mosaic virus show the rods to be parallel within each layer and arranged in a square net as viewed end on. Individual rods in each layer of the latter measure 300 mµ in length and are somewhat tilted with respect to the rods of adjacent layers. This results in the formation of a herring-bone appearance when a crystal is cut perpendicular to its hexagonal face. It is suggested that the procedure outlined here might well serve to supplement other procedures for the preparation of many cytological specimens for electron microscopy.


Different than the conventional queueing systems, in spatial queues, servers travel to the customers and provide service on the scene. This property makes them applicable to emergency response systems (e.g. ambulances, police, fire brigades) and on-demand transportation systems (e.g. shuttle bus services, paratransit, taxis). The difference between the spatial queues and conventional queueing systems is various types of customers and servers and different service rates for different customer-server pairs. For the Markovian arrival and service characteristics, one of the methods to find system performance measures is to model and calculate steady state probability of the Markov chain for the hypercube queueing model (HQM) (Larson, 1974). One of the obstacles on the way to apply HQMs to real life problems is the size of the problem; it grows exponentially with the number of servers and a linear system with exponential number of variables should be solved for each instance. In this research, in order to increase scalability of the problem, we propose two new models. In addition to that, we modeled the problem by using Monte Carlo simulation and tested the convergence and stability properties of the simulation results and compare them with stationary distributions.


Summary
Twenty-six commercial formulations of fungicides at six concentrations were evaluated in vitro for their efficacy on mycelial growth of Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (anamorph Chalara fraxinea). The results are presented as EC50, EC90 and minimal inhibitory concentration values; the comparisons with the recommended application concentrations showed that 10 of the 26 fungicides were highly effective in their ability to inhibit the mycelial growth of the pathogen. The eight most effective fungicides identified based on multiple comparisons analysis were azoxystrobin, bitertanol, captan (in two-component preparation with trifloxystrobin), difenoconazole, kresoxim-methyl, spiroxamine (in multicomponent preparation with tebuconazole and triadimenol), tebuconazole and trifloxystrobin. Azoxystrobin, difenoconazole, kresoxim-methyl, mancozeb, myclobutanil, pyrimethanil, tebuconazole and trifloxystrobin were selected to verify their effectiveness in in planta tests. During two field tests in nurseries, it was found out that tebuconazole (triazole), trifloxystrobin and kresoxim-methyl (strobilurins) and mancozeb (dithiocarbamate) were significantly effective against H. fraxineus. The best results were gained with tebuconazole, when mean percentage of diseased saplings was 16.3%, whereas in the control, it was 63.6%. The combination and alternation of fungicides from the triazole, strobilurine and dithiocarbamate chemical groups should be an effective tool for protecting ash saplings in forest nurseries. Moreover, exact timing of the treatment reflecting rainfall and development of first symptoms in the foliage will be also important.


i»?Rapid trade-led economic growth in emerging Asia has been shifting the global economic and industrial centres of gravity away from the north Atlantic, raising the importance of Asia in world trade but also altering the commodity composition of trade by Asia and other regions. What began with Japan in the 1950s and the Republic of Korea and Taipei,China from the late 1960s has spread to the much more populous ASEAN region, the People's Republic of China, and India. This paper examines how that growth and associated structural changes are altering agricultural markets in particular and thereby food security. It does so retrospectively and by projecting a model of the world economy that compares alternative growth strategies, trade policy scenarios and savings behaviors to 2030. Projected impacts on sectoral shares of gross domestic product (GDP), "openness†to trade and the composition and direction of trade are drawn out, followed by effects of the boom in non-farm sectors on agricultural self-sufficiency and real food consumption per capita in Asia and elsewhere. The paper concludes by drawing implications for policies that can address more efficiently Asia's concerns about food security and rural-urban income disparity than the trade policy measures used by earlier-industrializing Northeast Asia.


This report provides an overview of the economic and institutional developments in East Timor up to September 1999 and the immediate impact of the violent events that followed the August 30, 1999 referendum to decide East Timor's future status. The report presents the key elements of the strategy recommended by IMF staff to the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) to rebuild the institutions needed to support economic activity and public administration, including external financing requirements, technical assistance, and macroeconomic management training needs. Finally, the report assesses implementation of the strategy and discusses the steps that should be taken to ensure that the strategy will help East Timor to prepare to face future challenges.


This paper offers a new approach to the issue of transnational corporate liability for human rights violations and more generally an inquiry into the place of domestic legal experiences in theorizing about transnational law. Grounded in a study of the Holocaust restitution litigation of the 1990s, we explain corporate liability as a type of bureaucratic liability and explore in depth the relationship between the Holocaust litigation and the theory of structural reform litigation developed in the U.S. to address the bureaucratic structure of rights violations. We read the restitution litigation in light of pluralist reformulations of structural reform, in which norms are not enunciated in a hierarchical manner by the judge but are produced contextually through dialogue between court and parties. We use this analysis to challenge contemporary theoretical treatments of transnational corporate responsibility for human rights violations and suggest more promising directions for theorization.


Organizations increasingly embed IT into physical products to develop new product innovations. However, there is wide variance in the outcomes of the IT-embedded product (ITEP) innovation process. In this paper, we posit that the IT unit's involvement in the ITEP innovation process could positively influence the outcomes. ITEP innovations become part of complex ecosystems in which they interact with their developers, customers, and other ITEPs. These developments suggest new roles for IT units of organizations. Yet, there is dearth of theory explaining how the IT unit of a firm could contribute to the firm's development of ITEP innovations in ways to create customer value and improve firm performance. This paper seeks to address this gap. ITEP innovations present new challenges for organizations. This paper builds on complexity science to articulate the challenges and explain how the IT unit can increase an organization's capacity to cope with them. First, the paper adopts Wheeler's (2002) "net-enabled business innovation model" to structure the key stages of innovation that an organization goes through in developing new ITEPs. Second, the paper articulates IT-specific uncertainties and challenges entailed in each of the four stages. Third, the paper develops hypotheses explaining how the IT unit could increase the effectiveness of each stage by helping to address these uncertainties and challenges. Finally, the paper empirically tests and finds support for the hypotheses in a sample of 165 firms. The paper contributes to the literature on IT-enabled business innovations by developing and validating a new theoretical explanation of how IT units increase the effectiveness of the ITEP innovation process.


There is a growing recognition of the dangers of electoral violence. Yet, the theoretical foundation for systematic research and for adequate policy is still underdeveloped. This article aims to develop the theoretical understandings of strategies to manage and prevent electoral violence. This is accomplished by integrating research conducted within the two academic discourses on democratization and conflict management and also by drawing on the experiences from the conflict-ridden province KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The five strategies identified are monitoring, mediation, legal measures, law enforcement and self-regulating practices. In the article, the functions and mechanisms of the strategies are discussed. In addition, we analyse the limitations and usefulness of each of the strategies in turn and also provide suggestions on how to improve electoral security.


Current cognitive-behavioural sexual offender treatment programmes request that
offenders recall detailed information regarding cognitions, emotions and behaviour in
relation to their offending as a means of addressing issues such as claiming
responsibility for the offence, social skills training and relapse prevention. However, it
was hypothesised that should this offender group demonstrate overgeneralised
autobiographical memory recall the efficacy of these fundamental treatment
components would be restricted. Therefore, convicted male sexual offenders against
children were recruited in order to investigate autobiographical memory recall, and its
association with attributional style and social problem-solving.
Twelve offender participants completed the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT;
Williams & Broadbent, 1986), Internal, Personal, and Situational Attributions
Questionnaire (IPSAQ; Kinderman & Bentall, 1996a) and the Social Problem-Solving
Inventory -
Revised (SPSI-R; D'Zurilla, Nezu & Maydeu-Olivares, 1997).
Demographic data were collected using a general information questionnaire devised by
the researcher and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Rush, Shaw & Emery,
1979) and the Symptom Checklist
-
90 -R (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1994) were
implemented in order to screen for depression and general psychopathology. Twelve
male non-offender control participants were also recruited who matched the offender
participants on age and level of intellectual ability based on the Raven's Standard
Progressive Matrices (SPM; Raven, 1976).
The results indicated that the offender group recalled significantly more overgeneral
event memories than the control sample, and that this difference prevailed when
depressed mood was controlled for. The offender group was also found to endorse
4
negative problem orientation (NPO) and avoidance style (AS) problem-solving
strategies significantly more than the control group, and scored significantly poorer on
overall social problem-solving (SPS) ability on the SPSI-R. However, when depressed
mood was controlled for only a non-significant trend remained suggesting that the
offender group implemented avoidance strategies more than the controls. Although, no
significant group differences were found for attributional style, the data did highlight
greater external attribution for positive than negative events suggestive of a selfblaming
cognitive bias in the offender group, which is not consistent with the sexual
offence literature.
It is postulated that overgeneralised autobiographical memory recall in the offender
group is associated with the use of a cognitive style implemented during development in
order to defend against negative affect as a result of deviant sexual interests and in some
instances a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). It is also proposed that a tendency
towards avoidance is associated with and exacerbates overgeneral memory recall


Objective— High-density lipoprotein (HDL) lipid composition and function may better reflect cardiovascular risk than HDL cholesterol concentration. This study characterized the relationships between HDL composition, metabolism, and function in metabolic syndrome (MetS) patients and how changes in composition after weight loss (WL) and exercise treatments are related to function. Approach and Results— Plasma samples from MetS patients (n=95) and healthy individuals (n=40) were used in this study. Subsets of the MetS group underwent 12 weeks of no treatment (n=17), WL (n=19), or WL plus exercise (WLEX; n=17). HDL was isolated using density-gradient ultracentrifugation. The HDL lipidome was analyzed by mass spectrometry, and particle size determined by nuclear magnetic resonance. Cholesteryl ester transfer protein activity and ex vivo HDL cholesterol efflux capacity (CEC) were assessed. The HDL lipidome in the MetS patients was substantially different from that in healthy individuals, mean particle size was smaller, and CEC was lower. Several HDL phospholipid and sphingolipid species were associated with HDL diameter and CEC. The HDL lipidome and particle size were modified toward the healthy individuals after WL and WLEX treatments, with greater effects observed in the latter group. Cholesteryl ester transfer protein activity was reduced after WL and WLEX, and CEC was improved after WLEX. Conclusions— WLEX treatment in MetS patients normalizes the HDL lipidome and particle size profile and enhances CEC. HDL lipids associated with diminished CEC may represent novel biomarkers for early prediction of HDL dysfunction and disease risk and may represent potential therapeutic targets for future HDL therapies. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00163943


Children (13-18 months, 20-25 months, and 26-34 months) who had experienced trauma injuries were recruited in a hospital Emergency Room and subsequently interviewed about them within days (if verbal) and after 6, 12, and 18 or 24 months. The youngest children demonstrated little long-term verbal recall, whereas a few children in the intermediate group, who could not narrate about past events at time of injury, could verbally recall the target events 18 months later. Most of the oldest children, who had narrative skills at time of injury, demonstrated good verbal recall 2 years later. Illustrative case histories were described. Accuracy of recall was low for the youngest children, and although the majority of older children's recalled information was accurate, there were still many errors.


A vast majority of adults believe that class size reductions are a good way to improve the quality of public schools. Reviews of the research literature, on the other hand, have provided mixed messages on the degree to which class size matters for student achievement. Here I will discuss a substantial, but overlooked, body of experimental work on class size that developed prior to World War II. These field experiments did not have the benefit of modern econometrics, and only a few were done on a reasonably large scale. However, they often used careful empirical designs, and the collective magnitude of this body of work is considerable. Moreover, this research produced little evidence to suggest that students learn more in smaller classes, which stands in contrast to some, though not all, of the most recent work by economists. In this essay, I provide an overview of the scope and breadth of the field experiments in class size conducted prior to World War II, the motivations behind them, and how their experimental designs were crafted to deal with perceived sources of bias. I discuss how one might interpret the findings of these early experimental results alongside more recent research.


Schizophrenia is of mysterious causation. It is not infectious, not congenital, but shows familial aggregation, the Mendelian genetics indicating involvement of multiple codominant genes with incomplete penetrance. This is the pattern for autoimmune diseases, such as Graves' disease of the thyroid, where forbidden clones of B lymphocytes develop, and cause thyrotoxicosis by secreting autoantibodies that react with the thyroid gland's receptor for thyroid-stimulating hormone from the pituitary gland. In 1982, Knight postulated that autoantibodies affecting the function of neurons in the limbic region of the brain are a possible cause of schizophrenia. Today, this is even more probable, with genes predisposing to schizophrenia having being found to be immune response genes, one in the MHC and two for antibody light chain V genes. Immune response genes govern the immune repertoire, dictating the genetic risk of autoimmune diseases. The simplest test for an autoimmune basis of schizophrenia would be trial of immunosuppression with prednisone in acute cases. The urgent research need is to find the microbial trigger, as done by Ebringer for rheumatoid arthritis and for ankylosing spondylitis. This could lead to prophylaxis of schizophrenia by vaccination against the triggering microbe.


Prior research has extensively studied individual adoption and use of information systems, primarily using beliefs as predictors of behavioral intention to use a system that in turn predicts system use. We propose a model of acceptance with peer support (MAPS) that integrates prior individual-level research with social networks constructs. We argue that an individual's embeddedness in the social network of the organizational unit implementing a new information system can enhance our understanding of technology use. An individual's coworkers can be important sources of help in overcoming knowledge barriers constraining use of a complex system, and such interactions with others can determine an employee's ability to influence eventual system configuration and features. We incorporate network density (reflecting "get-help" ties for an employee) and network centrality (reflecting "give-help" ties for an employee), drawn from prior social network research, as key predictors of system use. Further, we conceptualize valued network density and valued network centrality, both of which take into account ties to those with relevant system-related information, knowledge, and resources, and employ them as additional predictors. We suggest that these constructs together are coping and influencing pathways by which they have an effect on system use. We conducted a 3-month long study of 87 employees in one business unit in an organization. The results confirmed our theory that social network constructs can significantly enhance our understanding of system use over and above predictors from prior individual-level adoption research.


In this paper we propose a queueing model with a batch service with both event and time counter. Its lower power consumption is an improvement over the batch service with only an event counter which probably causes a longer mean response time. If there are few events in the queue, the event counter cannot reach the lower boundary of the number of events, and thus the computer system will require a longer waiting time to reach the threshold number of events to start servicing. So we propose a new mechanism by combining a time counter with the event counter, thereby reducing both mean response time and power consumption. We derive the system probabilities of running and waiting from the system state transition diagram. These probabilities help us learn the relationship between power consumption, system response time and batch size under the batch service. Moreover, we can adjust the batch size to estimate an acceptable response time and find the trade-off between both the amount of power saving and the mean response time in computer systems.