This instructional bookshowcases techniques to parameterise human agents in empirical agent-based models(ABM). In doing so, it provides a timely overview of key ABM methodologies and the most innovative approaches through a variety of empirical applications. It features cutting-edge research from leading academics and practitioners, and will provide a guide for characterising and parameterising human agents in empirical ABM. In order to facilitate learning, this text shares the valuable experiences of other modellers in particular modelling situations. Very little has been published in the area of empirical ABM, and this contributed volume will appeal to graduate-level students and researchers studying simulation modeling in economics, sociology, ecology, and trans-disciplinary studies, such as topics related to sustainability. In a similar vein to the instruction found in a cookbook, this text provides the empirical modeller with a set of 'recipes' ready to be implemented. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a powerful, simulation-modeling technique that has seen a dramatic increase in real-world applications in recent years. In ABM, a system is modeled as a collection of autonomous decision-making entities called agents. Each agent individually assesses its situation and makes decisions on the basis of a set of rules. Agents may execute various behaviors appropriate for the system they representfor example, producing, consuming, or selling. ABM is increasingly used for simulating real-world systems, such as natural resource use, transportation, public health, and conflict. Decision makers increasingly demand support that covers a multitude of indicators that can be effectively addressed using ABM. This is especially the case in situations where human behavior is identified as a critical element. As a result, ABM will only continue its rapid growth. This is the first volume in a series of books that aims to contribute to a cultural change in the community of empirical agent-based modelling. This series will bring together representational experiences and solutions in empirical agent-based modelling. Creating a platform to exchange such experiences allows comparison of solutions and facilitates learning in the empirical agent-based modelling community. Ultimately, the community requires such exchange and learning to test approaches and, thereby, to develop a robust set of techniques within the domain of empirical agent-based modelling. Based on robust and defendable methods, agent-based modelling will become a critical tool for research agencies, decision making and decision supporting agencies, and funding agencies. This series will contribute to more robust and defendable empirical agent-based modelling.


PURPOSE
There are no published survival data after chemoradiotherapy (chemoRT) in pathologically documented stage IIIB non-small-cell lung cancer. Studies of radiotherapy (RT) alone or chemotherapy followed by RT yield 5-year survivals less than 10%. The Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) employed the same concurrent chemoRT induction regimen used in its predecessor trimodality trial to determine the efficacy, safety, and long-term outcome of replacing postinduction surgery with additional chemoRT.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Eligible patients for SWOG-9019 had pathologic documentation of T4N0/1, T4N2, or N3 stage IIIB non-small-cell lung cancer. They had pulmonary function adequate to withstand combined-modality therapy, identical to the requirements of the previous trial with postchemoRT surgery. Induction therapy was two cycles of cisplatin plus etoposide (PE) concurrent with once-daily thoracic RT (45 Gy). In the absence of progressive disease, RT was completed to 61 Gy, with two additional cycles of cisplatin plus etoposide.

RESULTS
Fifty eligible patients were accrued with tumor-node (TN) substage confirmed on central review: 18, T4N0/1; 12, T4N2; and 20, N3. Grade 4 neutropenia was the most common toxicity (32%). Grade 3/4 esophagitis occurred in 12% and 8%. Median follow-up was 52 months, and overall median survival was 15 months (10 to 22, 95% confidence interval). Three- and 5-year survivals were 17% and 15% (5-year T4N0/1, 17%; T4N2, 13%; and N3, 15%).

CONCLUSION
Feasibility and long-term survival support the application of these results as a standard against which mature outcomes of chemoRT trials with new chemotherapy agents can be compared. These results also justify use of the SWOG-9019 approach as a control arm in ongoing phase III trials.


Polyline glyphs are minimized thumbnails of polylines from parallel coordinates. Since such glyphs may augment the usability of parallel coordinates, the authors investigate whether there are benefits to be derived from using polyline glyphs that are dynamically linked to parallel coordinates as opposed to the use of the latter visualization technique alone. They also identify user tasks that can be effectively solved if parallel coordinates dynamically linked to polyline glyphs are used. This study adds to the body of previous work a discussion on the features of the polyline glyphs that facilitate the exploration and understanding of multivariate data. Moreover, the authors conduct an empirical study in which parallel coordinates dynamically linked to polyline glyphs are used to solve four tasks. The main finding is that polyline glyphs can facilitate a better insight into the similarities between the multivariate signatures of data items and information acquisition if visual clutter hinders the use of parallel coordinates. The study also reveals that if visual clutter does not occur in parallel coordinates and the polylines from the latter can be differentiated, individuals tend not to use polyline glyphs to study multivariate signatures.


With the aging of America, policy concerns at the intersection of housing and health for older Americans are growing. In a signal study a decade ago, the Commission on Affordable Housing and Health Facility Needs for Seniors in the 21st Century, also known as the Seniors Housing Commission, released its report to Congress on the challenges facing all levels of government and society in ensuring support for housing and health needs as the population ages. This paper examines the housing and health status of older Americans roughly a decade after the Commission's report. It provides a profile of the housing, functional status and health status of the near old, individuals aged 55 through 64, and Americans aged 65 and older, using the most recent data available from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). These data were drawn from interviews with approximately 25,000 Americans in 2010, as the nation was slowly transitioning out of the Great Recession. The paper is designed to lay out basic facts about the current state of housing and health among older Americans, and should be a useful statistical reference for policymakers, advocates and media interested in these issues in an aging society.


This work is concerned with a better understanding of the influences that sparse long-chain branching has on the rheological and processing behavior of commercial metallocene polyethylene (mPE) resins. In order to clarify these influences, a series of six commercial polyethylenes was investigated. Four of these resins are mPE resins having varying degrees of long-chain branching and narrow molecular weight distribution. The remaining two resins are deemed controls and include a highly branched low-density polyethylene and a linear low-density polyethylene. Together, the effects of long-chain branching are considered with respect to the shear and extensional rheological properties, the melt fracture behavior, and the ability to accurately predict the flow through an abrupt 4:1 contraction geometry.

The effects that sparse long-chain branching (Mbranch > Mc) has on the shear and extensional rheological properties are analyzed in two separate treatments. The first focuses on the shear rheological properties of linear, sparsely branched, and highly branched PE systems. By employing a time-molecular weight superposition principle, the effects of molecular weight on the shear rheological properties are factored out. The results show that as little as 0.6 LCB/104 carbons (<1 LCB/molecule) significantly increases the zero-shear viscosity, reduces the onset of shear-thinning behavior, and increases elasticity at low deformation rates when compared to linear materials of equivalent molecular weight. Conversely, a high degree of long-chain branching ultimately reduces the zero-shear viscosity. The second treatment focuses on the relationship between long-chain branching and extensional strain-hardening behavior. In this study, the McLeish-Larson molecular constitutive model is employed to relate long-chain
branching to rheological behavior. The results show that extensional strain hardening arises from the presence of LCB in polyethylene resins, and that the frequency of branching in sparsely branched metallocene polyethylenes dictates the degree of strain hardening. This observation for the metallocene polyethylenes agrees well with the proposed mechanism for polymerization.

The presence of long-chain branching profoundly alters the melt fracture behavior of commercial polyethylene resins. Results obtained from a sparsely branched metallocene polyethylene show that as few as one long-chain branch per two molecules was found to mitigate oscillatory slip-stick fracture often observed in linear polyethylenes. Furthermore, the presence and severity of gross melt fracture was found to increase with long-chain branching content. These indirect effects were correlated to an early onset of shear-thinning behavior and extensional strain hardening, respectively. Conversely, linear resins exhibiting a delayed onset of shear-thinning behavior and extensional strain softening were found to manifest pronounced slip-stick fracture and less severe gross melt fracture. The occurrence of surface melt fracture appeared to correlate best with the degree of shear thinning arising from both molecular weight distribution and long-chain branching.

The ability to predict the flow behavior of long-chain branched and linear polyethylene resins was also investigated. Using the benchmark 4:1 planar contraction geometry, pressure profile measurements and predictions were obtained for a linear and branched polyethylene. Two sets of finite element method (FEM) predictions were obtained using a viscoelastic Phan-Thien/Tanner (PTT) model and an inelastic Generalized Newtonian Fluid (GNF) model. The results show that the predicted profiles for the linear PE resin were consistently more accurate than those of the branched PE resin, all of which were within 15% of the measured vales. Furthermore, the differences in the predictions provided by the two constitutive models was found to vary by less than 5% over the range of numerical simulations obtained. In the case of the branched PE resin, this range was very narrow due to loss of convergence. It was determined that the small differences between the PTT and GNF predictions were the result of the small
contraction ratio utilized and the long relaxation behavior of the branched PE resin, which obscured the influence of extensional strain hardening on the pressure predictions. Hence, it was expected that numerical simulations of the 4:1 planar contraction flow for the mildly strain hardening metallocene polyethylenes would not be fruitful.


Background: Postpartum maternal morbidity is becoming
a major public health concern worldwide due to impact of modern development in
feto-maternal medicine and maternal care. Major acute and
long term maternal morbidities which may occur during obstetric management
affect the life and reproductive career of women. Objective: To assess the
trends, risk factors and pattern of postpartum maternal morbidity in Ikot
Ekpene a local community in southern Nigeria. Materials and Methods: This was
a 4-year prospective cross sectional observational study carried out in the
maternity section of General Hospital Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
between 2008 and 2011. Parturients managed in the hospital for postpartum
morbidity were recruited for the study. Relevant information was obtained from
structured questionnaire administered to the patients and those extracted from
other medical records in the course of managing the patients. This was analysed
using the SPSS computer statistical package. Result: A total of 5760 women
delivered during the period, of which 296 (5.1%) were treated for postpartum
morbidity. Most of the patients (46.9%) were between 31 and 40 years old and
68.8% were of low educational background. Half of the deliveries with
morbidity were conducted by unskilled attendants. The most common maternal
morbidity encountered included primary postpartum haemorrhage (22.2%), genital
sepsis (16.1%), and hypertensive disorders (12.8%). Anaemia (12.8%) and
malaria (11.1%) were the commonest non obstetrics causes of morbidity. It was
relatively more common with delivery attended by untrained personnel. There
was significant reduction in morbidity in the last 2 years of this study. Conclusion:
The incidence of postpartum morbidity in the Ikot Ekpene is still high with a
downward trend over the years. Obstetric haemorrhage, hypertensive disorders,
anaemia and genital tract sepsis were the common causes and were commoner with
delivery attended by unskilled personnel. It is hoped that supervision of
deliveries by skilled medical attendants, improvement in general health and
educational level will reduce postpartum morbidity in this rural community.


Because of their simplicity, axisymmetric mass distributions are often used to model gravitational lenses. Since galaxies are usually observed to have elliptical light distributions, mass distributions with elliptical density contours offer more general and realistic lens models. They are difficult to use, however, since previous studies have shown that the deflection angle (and magnification) in this case can only be obtained by rather expensive numerical integrations. We present a family of lens models for which the deflection can be calculated to high relative accuracy (10-5) with a greatly reduced numerical effort, for small and large ellipticity alike. This makes it easier to use these distributions for modeling individual lenses as well as for applications requiring larger computing times, such as statistical lensing studies. A program implementing this method can be obtained from the author.


Scant attention has been paid by legal theorists to the relationship between law and animals. The paucity of literature on the subject reflects the assumption that animals lack moral status and are wholly outside the sphere of our normative understanding of the social order. Concerning itself primarily with the literature of medieval Christian bestiaries, this essay seeks to uncover a structural link between the didactic language of animals and the constitution of the interior domain of legal subjectivity. It will be argued that any understanding of the symbolic dimension of law, and thus any understanding of the link between law and the norms of subjectivity, needs to take seriously the specific function provided by this seemingly esoteric branch of literature. More specifically, it will be argued that the symbology of animals exposes the importance of theological concepts of salvation and redemption that remain tethered to current notions of legality and personhood.


A geomagnetic observatory is a permanent facility where magnetic declination and inclination are recorded in conjunction with the temporal evolution of the magnetic field components. Polar regions are scarcely covered by observational points then the contributions from observatories located there are particularly relevant. The geomagnetic observatory at Concordia station, Dome C - Antarctica is located in the inner part of the continent, its position is favorable for two key reasons, i) data are unaltered by the "coastal effect" and ii) crustal effect is negligible due to the thickness, almost 3 km, of ice coverage. Nevertheless, these latter conditions imply an unconsidered aspect which characterizes the entire station and every structure laying on the ice surface: the dome on which Concordia station resides is sliding horizontally and moving vertically with a velocity of few millimeter to centimeters per year as indicated by independent geodetic observations. This slow and continuous movement has a puzzling effect on the trend of horizontal components of the magnetic field, sampled in a time window of a decade since the establishing of the observatory in 2005. During the International Polar Year (2007-2009) the observatory was upgraded with new equipment fulfilling the requirements of the Intermagnet consortium, and becoming an observatory member in 2011. In this paper are illustrated the strategy adopted to track any possible displacement of the observatory reference points (i.e. the azimuth mark, the pillar position) and all the ordinary and extraordinary actions required for collecting high quality data.


We present an Expectation-Maximization algorithm for the fractal inverse problem: the problem of fitting a fractal model to data. In our setting the fractals are Iterated Function Systems (IFS), with similitudes as the family of transformations. The data is a point cloud in ${\mathbb R}^H$ with arbitrary dimension $H$. Each IFS defines a probability distribution on ${\mathbb R}^H$, so that the fractal inverse problem can be cast as a problem of parameter estimation. We show that the algorithm reconstructs well-known fractals from data, with the model converging to high precision parameters. We also show the utility of the model as an approximation for datasources outside the IFS model class.


Darwin's Principle of Divergence explains sympatric speciation as gradual and directional. Contradicting evidence suggests that species' traits evolve saltationally. Here, we model coevolution in exploiter-victim systems. Victims (resource population) have heritable, mutable cue phenotypes with different levels of defense. Exploiters have heritable, mutable perceptual phenotypes. Our simulations reveal coevolution of victim mimicry and exploiter specialization in a saltational and reversible cycle. Evolution is gradual and directional only in the specialization phase of the cycle thereby implying that specialization itself is saltational in such systems. Once linked to assortative mating, exploiter specialization provides conditions for speciation.


The report and data for this study is included. The survey questionnaire is located in the Appendix of the report and should be used when interpreting the data.


In this paper, I provide evidence that currency stop-loss orders contribute to rapid, self-reinforcing price movements, or "price cascades." Stop-loss orders, which instruct a dealer to buy (sell) a certain amount of currency at the market rate once the rate has risen (fallen) to a prespecified level, generate positive-feedback trading. Theoretical research on the 1987 stock market crash suggests that such trading can cause price discontinuities, which would manifest themselves as price cascades. ; My analysis of high-frequency exchange rates offers three main results that provide empirical support for the hypothesis that stop-loss orders contribute to price cascades: (1) Exchange rate trends are unusually rapid when rates reach exchange rate levels at which stop-loss order have been documented to cluster. (2) The response to stop-loss orders is larger than the response to take-profit orders, which generate negative-feedback trading and are therefore unlikely to contribute to price cascades. (3) The response to stop-loss orders lasts longer than the response to take-profit orders. Most results are statistically significant for hours, although not for days. Together, these results indicate that stop-loss orders propagate trends and are sometimes triggered in waves, contributing to price cascades. Stop-loss propagated price cascades may help explain the well-known "fat tails" of the distribution of exchange rate returns, or equivalently the high frequency of large exchange rate moves. The paper also provides evidence that exchange rates respond to noninformative order flow.


Cyclin E binds and activates the cyclin-dependent kinase Cdk2 and catalyzes the transition from the G1 phase to the S phase of the cell cycle. The amount of cyclin E protein present in the cell is tightly controlled by ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis. Here we identify the ubiquitin ligase responsible for cyclin E ubiquitination as SCFFbw7 and demonstrate that it is functionally conserved in yeast, flies, and mammals. Fbw7 associates specifically with phosphorylated cyclin E, and SCFFbw7catalyzes cyclin E ubiquitination in vitro. Depletion of Fbw7 leads to accumulation and stabilization of cyclin E in vivo in human andDrosophila melanogaster cells. Multiple F-box proteins contribute to cyclin E stability in yeast, suggesting an overlap in SCF E3 ligase specificity that allows combinatorial control of cyclin E degradation.


Introduction Individuals who have been exposed to a traumatic event can develop profound feelings of guilt, shame and anger. Yet, studies of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have largely investigated changes in PTSD symptoms relating to a sense of ongoing fear or threat and the effectiveness of such treatments for post-trauma related guilt, shame or anger symptom reduction is comparatively not well understood. Methods This review systematically examined the effectiveness of existing treatment approaches for three symptoms associated with exposure to traumatic events: guilt, shame and anger. Studies included had to be published after 2010 with a sample size of n=50 or greater to ensure stable treatment outcome estimates. Results 15 studies were included, consisting of both civilian and (ex-) military population samples exposed to a wide range of traumatic events (eg, combat-related, sexual abuse). Findings indicated a moderate strength of evidence that both cognitive-based and exposure-based treatments are similarly effective in reducing symptoms. Cognitive-based treatments were found to effectively reduce post-trauma related guilt and anger, while exposure-based treatments appeared effective for post-trauma related guilt, shame and anger. Conclusions The findings suggest the importance of confronting and discussing the traumatic event during therapy, rather than using less directive treatments (eg, supportive counselling).Nonetheless, while these results are promising, firm conclusions regarding the comparative effectiveness and long-term impact of these treatments could not be drawn due to insufficient evidence. Further empirical research is needed to examine populations exposed to traumatic events and investigate which treatment approaches (or combination thereof) are more effective in the long-term.


N etworks of quantum-entangled qubits (Fig. 1) could transform communication and computation, enabling a fundamentally secure quantum internet [1] or a universal quantum computer [2]. Photons seem to be the best option for connecting the qubits, or "nodes," because they can travel great distances along well-defined paths through waveguides, fibers, or free space. For the node, there are many more contenders, including trapped ions, trapped atoms, warm atomic vapors, quantum dots, rare-earth dopants in a crystal, and defects in diamond called nitrogen vacancy centers. However, none of these options are ideal, and each must satisfy multiple physical requirements at once. Three of the most important criteria have now been met by a relative newcomer to the qubit arena—a silicon point defect embedded in diamond. Focusing on one such defect, Christian Nguyen and colleagues at Harvard University report that they can read out its state in a single shot, make it communicate efficiently


Sagittal alignment has become a hot topic in the world of orthopedics, particularly as it pertains to adults with spine deformities and coexisting pain, activity limitations, and health-related quality of life. It is reported that the prevalence of spinal deformity in the older adult will continue to increase. Clinicians across disciplines recognize the myriad of variation that exists in sagittal alignment, and that there is not one ideal norm to ascribe to. Relatively new to the spine deformity community has been the discovery of the relationship between the pelvis and the femur (pelvic incidence) in dictating lumbar lordosis and overall spinal alignment. While it is acknowledged that variation exists, there is now evidence that there is a limited range within which we can compensate for loss of sagittal alignment and still function well. When compensations run out, the quality of life becomes affected. These alignment variations, compensations, and in some cases, loss of alignment all together have clinical implications for the physiotherapist working with the older adult population. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the current state of evidence-informed knowledge around spinopelvic parameters as they relate to the adult with spine deformity and offer clinical implications for the conservative care practitioner.


While the dynamics and mathematics of passive dynamic walking (PDW) models have been extensively researched, it has not been until recently that they have been used for practical applications in rehabilitation and gait analysis. In this study, we evaluate the validity of using a two dimensional PDW for human gait analysis. Here, a PDW model is compared to recorded kinematic and kinetic walking data under normal conditions. We also study asymmetric gait by imposing a shank mass asymmetry and comparing it to a PDW model under the same asymmetric conditions. Kinematic and kinetic data for normal gait was taken from one subject using a motion capture system and a force plate, respectively. Gait under the asymmetric shank mass conditions was recorded by measuring the drifting radius of curvature from five participants walking blindfolded with a mass attached to their shank. While the PDW model lacks ankles (dorsiflexion), joint damping, and joint stiffness, the kinematics, kinetics, and gait asymmetry were comparable. Kinetic comparisons show agreement in general ground reaction force magnitude and profile. Kinematic results yield a good match in temporal and spatial gait characteristics. Asymmetric analysis of gait demonstrated that the PDW model can accurately predict the direction of step asymmetry.


There is perhaps no more important access point into the key issues of modern political and legal theory than the questions raised by the interaction of law and religion in contemporary constitutional democracies. Of course, much classical political and moral theory was forged on the issue of the relationship between religious difference and state authority. John Locke's work was directly influenced by this issue, writing as he did about the just configuration of state authority and moral difference in the wake of the Thirty Years' War. Yet debates about the appropriate role of religion in public life and the challenges posed by religious difference also cut an important figure, in a variety of ways, in the writings of Hobbes, Rousseau, Spinoza, Hegel, and much of the work that we now view as being at the centre of the development of modern political philosophy.


Abstract—Moving object detection (MOD) is an important issue in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). There are two important moving objects, pedestrians and scooters in ADAS. In real-world systems, there exist two important challenges for MOD, including the computational complexity and the detection accuracy. The histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) features can easily detect the edge of object without invariance to changes in illumination and shadowing. However, to reduce the execution time for real-time systems, the image size should be down sampled which would lead the outlier influence to increase. For this reason, we propose the histogram of uniformly-oriented gradient (HUG) features to get better accurate description of the contour of human body. In the testing phase, the support vector machine (SVM) with linear kernel function is involved. Experimental results show the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method. With SVM classifiers, the real testing results show the proposed HUG features achieve better than classification performance than the HOG ones.


In this column, readers are encouraged to share their expertise and experiences with computer tech? nology as it relates to college mathematics. Articles illustrating how computers can enhance pedagogy, solve mathematics problems, and model real-life situations are especially welcome. Classroom Computer Capsules feature new examples of using the computer to enhance teach? ing. These short articles demonstrate the use of readily available computing resources to present or elucidate familiar topics in ways that can have an immediate and beneficial effect in the classroom. Send submissions for both columns to Richard Johnsonbaugh.


The Internet of Musical Things (IoMusT) is an emerging research area consisting of the extension of the Internet of Things paradigm to the music domain. Interoperability represents a central issue within this domain, where heterogeneous objects dedicated to the production and/or reception of musical content (Musical Things) are envisioned to communicate between each other. This paper proposes an ontology for the representation of the knowledge related to IoMusT ecosystems to facilitate interoperability between Musical Things. There was no previous comprehensive data model for the IoMusT domain, however the new ontology relates to existing ontologies, including the SOSA Ontology for the representation of sensors and actuators and the Music Ontology focusing on the production and consumption of music. This paper documents the design of the ontology and its evaluation with respect to specific requirements gathered from an extensive literature review, which was based on scenarios involving IoMusT stakeholders, such as performers and audience members. The IoMusT Ontology can be accessed at: https://w3id.org/iomust#.


Models for understanding and controlling oscillations in the flow past a rectangular cavity are developed. These models may be used to guide control designs, to understand performance limits of feedback, and to interpret experimental results. Traditionally, cavity oscillations are assumed to be self-sustained: no external disturbances are necessary to maintain the oscillations, and amplitudes are limited by nonlinearities. We present experimental data which suggests that in some regimes, the oscillations may not be self-sustained, but lightly damped: oscillations are sustained by external forcing, such as boundary-layer turbulence. In these regimes, linear models suffice to describe the behaviour, and the final amplitude of oscillations depends on the characteristics of the external disturbances. These linear models are particularly appropriate for describing cavities in which feedback has been used for noise suppression, as the oscillations are small and nonlinearities are less likely to be important. It is shown that increasing the gain too much in such feedback control experiments can lead to a peak-splitting phenomenon, which is explained by the linear models. Fundamental performance limits indicate that peak splitting is likely to occur for narrow-bandwidth actuators and controllers.


A new ultrawide-band (UWB) microwave radar sensor operating from 0.6 to 5.6 GHz has been developed using microwave integrated circuits for pavement subsurface characterization. UWB antennas operating from 0.5-10-GHz have been designed and tested for use in the sensor. A new simple, yet effective, accurate procedure was also developed to compensate for the common amplitude deviations and nonlinear phase errors produced by the inherent imperfection of the system. The developed compensation method is applicable to other systems and effectively reduces the potential masking of adjacent targets as well as facilitating and increasing the accuracy for target identification of the sensor. The sensor has been used to assess a pavement sample with less than 0.1 in of error in the pavement's layer thickness. The developed system represents the first UWB stepped-frequency radar sensor completely realized using microwave integrated circuits over the frequency range of 0.6-5.6 GHz for subsurface sensing applications.


For five decades, rising US income and wealth inequality has been driven by wage repression and production realignments benefitting the top one percent of households. In this inaugural book for Cambridge Studies in New Economic Thinking, Professor Lance Taylor takes an innovative approach to measuring inequality, providing the first and only full integration of distributional and macro level data for the US. While work by Thomas Piketty and colleagues pursues integration from the income side, Professor Taylor uses data of distributions by size of income and wealth combined with the cost and demand sides, flows of funds, and full balance sheet accounting of real capital and financial claims. This blends measures of inequality with national income and product accounts to show the relationship between productivity and wages at the industry sector level. Taylor assesses the scope and nature of various interventions to reduce income and wealth inequalities using his simulation model, disentangling wage growth and productivity while challenging mainstream models.


The hardenability of steels is dependent on the type and amount of alloying elements present. Ni and Cu are commonly used in PM industry and can boost the hardenability of PM steels resulting in improved mechanical performance. In this study the effect of Cu or Ni additions on the hardenability of material grades pre-alloyed with Cr is investigated by generating and comparing the respective CCT diagrams. Results from mechanical testing from a previous study as well as metallographic investigation are used for getting a full picture regarding the hardenability of those steels. These results can be a useful tool for designing and controlling the heat treatment of PM steels.


Economic projections for the world economy, particularly in relation to the construction of Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) baselines, are generally rather conservative and take scant account of the wide range of possible evolutions authorized by the underlying economic mechanisms considered. Against this background, we adopt an 'open mind' to the projection of world trade trajectories. Taking a 2035 horizon, we examine how world trade patterns will be shaped by the changing comparative advantages, demand, and capabilities of different regions. We combine a convergence model fitting three production factors (capital, labour and energy) and two factor-specific productivities, alongside a dynamic CGE model of the world economy calibrated to reproduce observed elasticity of trade to income. Each scenario involves three steps. First, we project growth at country level based on factor accumulation, educational attainment and efficiency gains, and discuss uncertainties related to our main drivers. Second, we impose this framework (demographics, gross domestic product, saving rates, factors and current account trajectories) on the CGE baseline. Third, we implement trade policy scenarios (tariffs as well as non-tariff measures in goods and services), in order to get factor allocation across sectors from the model as well as demand and trade patterns. We show that the impact of changing baselines is greater than the impact of a policy shock on the order of magnitude of changes in world trade patterns, which points to the need for care when designing CGE baselines.


Even though play has been widely recognized as a social and cultural practice where children naturally learn, evidence shows that international school practices have tended to reduce spaces for play, relegating it to nearly sporadic levels. Teaching practices in initial education have become increasingly scholastic; despite being recognized as a foundational principle, play has been left to the side of central learning activities, which may affect the development of children. For Chile, a country where standardized assessments have permeated the entire educational system, research has reported a schema of classes centered on adulthood that progressively structure and stiffen classroom activities. Play makes its appearance only as an instructional resource (instructional play), and does so with no measurable certainty of its effectiveness on impacting learning. Given such a gap in the literature regarding how teachers understand play-based education and their motivations toward implementing it at school, this work aimed to explore teacher motivations toward game-based learning in educational contexts under a mixed-methods sequential design. The first stage of the research design surveyed 221 primary education teachers (87.8 % women; average, 29.05 years ± SD 8.74; average teaching experience, 3.67 years ± SD 6.15) with the Motivation Scale for the use of educational games (Munoz & Valenzuela, 2014) based on the Expectancy Value motivational theory. In the second stage, four focus groups were formed to inquire about the conceptions that these teachers hold regarding play in school settings. Focus group participants were, in total, 29 currently-active primary education teachers (6 men, and 23 women; average age, 41 years ± SD 11.16). Quantitative results show high valuation for different components of motivation, though with significant differences. The most valued dimension corresponded to utility , while the least were expectancy and cost components. No differences were observed by sex or by years of professional experience. These results are consistent with teacher self-reports, who indicate that time, cost, and lack of knowledge in implementing games are inhibiting factors for effective inclusion in the classroom. Moreover, teachers tended not to recognize themselves as players, or engage in play with students; rather, they believe their function is to observe and monitor to maintain order. Within costs , teachers also included loss of control in the classroom as a relevant element: the freedom (or even chaos) that classroom play can lead to is seen as a threat to the teacher. Additionally, teachers have a vague, non-specific –or even idealized– conception of games. They may see play as a series of classroom activities that are decidedly not within educational play; or, even if characterizing games as spontaneous, voluntary, dynamic, and entertaining activities, do not recognize these attributes when placing games in educational contexts. Indeed, games are seen as tools rather than a methodology in itself. Some also idealize play from "the way things used to be", arguing that children no longer know how to play and blaming new technologies as responsible for this "lack of play" in present childhood. This background highlights the need for explicit evidence-based training of future teachers in the use and incorporation of games as an educational resource.


Age-related decline occurs in several aspects of fluid, speed-dependent cognition, particularly those related to attention. Empirical research on visual attention has determined that attention-related effects occur across a range of information processing components, including the sensory registration of features, selection of information from working memory, controlling motor responses, and coordinating multiple perceptual and cognitive tasks. Thus, attention is a multifaceted construct that is relevant at virtually all stages of object identification. A fundamental theme of attentional functioning is the interaction between the bottom-up salience of visual features and top-down allocation of processing based on the observer's goals. An underlying age-related slowing is prominent throughout visual processing stages, which in turn contributes to age-related decline in some aspects of attention, such as the inhibition of irrelevant information and the coordination of multiple tasks. However, some age-related preservation of attentional functioning is also evident, particularly the top-down allocation of attention. Neuroimaging research has identified networks of frontal and parietal brain regions relevant for top-down and bottom-up attentional processing. Disconnection among these networks contributes to an age-related decline in attention, but preservation and perhaps even increased patterns of functional brain activation and connectivity also contribute to preserved attentional functioning.


Mangrove ecosystems are tropical/subtropical communities of primarily tree species that grow in the intertidal zone. These tidal communities are important coastal ecosystems that are valued for a variety of ecological and societal goods and services (fig. 1). Mangrove wetlands are important filters of materials moving between the land and sea, trapping sediment, nutrients, and pollutants in runoff from uplands and preventing their direct introduction into sensitive marine ecosystems such as seagrass beds and coral reefs. Mangroves serve as nursery grounds and refuge for a variety of organisms and are consequently vital to the biological productivity of coastal waters. Furthermore, because mangroves are highly resilient to disturbances such as hurricanes, they represent a self-sustaining, protective barrier for human populations living in the coastal zone. Mangrove ecosystems also contribute to shoreline stabilization through consolidation of unstable mineral sediments and peat formation. In order to help conserve mangrove ecoystems, scientists with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) at the National Wetlands Research Center are working to more fully understand the dynamics that impact these vital ecosystems. Sea-Level Rise, Peat Formation, and Habitat Stability


Modern programs rely on large application programming interfaces (APIs). The Android framework comprises 231 core APIs, and is used by countless developers. We examine a sample of 4,900 distinct crash stack traces from 1,800 different Android applications, looking for Android API methods with undocumented exceptions that are part of application crashes. For the purposes of this study, we take as a reference the version 15 of the Android API, which matches our stack traces. Our results show that a significant number of crashes (19%) might have been avoided if these methods had the corresponding exceptions documented as part of their interface.


Background. In most academic disciplines journals play an important role in disseminating findings of research among the disciplinary community members. Understanding a discipline's body of journals is therefore of grave importance when looking for previous research, compiling an overview of previous research and and in order to make a decision regarding the best place for publishing research results. Furthermore, based on Bradford's Law of scattering, one can assume that in order to be able to compile a satisfying overview of previous research a wide range of journals has to be scanned, but also that there are some 'core' journals which are of more importance to specific disciplines than others.

Aim. This thesis aims to compile a comprehensive master list of journals which publish articles of relevance to Library and Information Science (LIS). A method to rank journals by their importance is introduced and some key characteristics of the disciplines body of journals are discussed. Databases indexing the disciplines journals are also compared.

Method. The master list of LIS journals was created by combining the journal listings of secondary sources indexing the field's literature. These sources were six databases focusing on LIS literature: INFODATA, Current Contents, Library and Information Science Abstracts, Library Information Science Technology Abstracts, Information Science and Technology Abstracts, and Library Literature and Information Science, the LIS subsection in three databases with a general focus: Social Science Citation Index, Academic Search Premier, and Expanded Academic ASAP, and the listing of LIS journals from the Elektronische Zeitschriften Bibliothek. Problems related to editorial policies and technical shortcomings are discussed, before comparing: predominant publication languages, places of publication, open access, peer review, and the ISI Journal Impact Factors (JIF). Journals were also ranked by the number of occurrences in multiple databases in order to identify 'core' publications. The number of journals overlapping between databases are estimated and a matrix giving the overlap is visualized using multi dimensional scaling. Lastly, the degree of journals overlapping with other disciplines is measured.

Results. A comprehensive master list of 1,205 journals publishing articles of relevance to LIS was compiled. The 968 active journals are mostly published in English, with one third of the journals coming from the US and another third from the UK and Germany. Nearly 16% of all journals are open access, 11% have a ISIJIF, and 42% are peer reviewed. Fifteen core journal could be identified and a list of the top fourteen journals published in Germany is introduced. Databases have between five to 318 journals in common and the journal collection shows an substantial overlap with a wide range of subjects, with the biggest journal overlap with Computing Studies, and Business and Economics.

Conclusion. The aim of compiling a comprehensive list of LIS journal was achieved. The list will contribute to our understanding of scholarly communication within the LIS discipline and provide academics and practitioners with a better understanding of journals within the discipline. The ranking approach proved to be sufficient, showing good similarity with other studies over the last 40 years. The master list of LIS journals has also potential use to further research.


Abstract: This study quantified methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) production from beef heifers and cows classified for residual feed intake adjusted for off-test backfat thickness (RFIfat) and reared in drylot during cold winter temperatures. Individual performance, daily feed intake, and RFIfat were obtained for 1068 crossbred and purebred yearling heifers (eight trials) as well as 176 crossbred mature cows (six trials) during the winters of 2015–2017 at two locations. A portion of these heifers (147 high RFIfat; 167 low RFIfat) and cows (69 high RFIfat; 70 low RFIfat) was monitored for enteric CH4 and CO2 emissions using the GreenFeed Emissions Monitoring (GEM) system (C-Lock Inc., Rapid City, SD, USA). Low RFIfat cattle consumed less feed [heifers, 7.80 vs. 8.48 kg dry matter (DM) d-1; cows, 11.64 vs. 13.16 kg DM d-1] and emitted less daily CH4 (2.5% for heifers; 3.7% for cows) and CO2 (1.4% for heifers; 3.4% for cows) compared with high RFIfat cattle. However, low RFIfat heifers and cows had higher CH4 (6.2% for heifers; 9.9% for cows) and CO2 yield (7.3% for heifers; 9.8% for cows) per kilogram DM intake compared with their high RFIfat pen mates. The GEM system performed at air temperatures between +20 and -30 °C. Feed intake of heifers and mature cows was differently affected by ambient temperature reduction between +20 and -15 °C and similarly increased their feed intake at temperatures below -15 °C. In conclusion, low RFIfat animals emit less daily enteric CH4 and CO2, due mainly to lower feed consumption at equal body weight, gain, and fatness.


BACKGROUND
Ovarian cancer is the seventh most common cause of cancer death in women world-wide. Treatment consists of a combination of surgical debulking and platinum-based chemotherapy, alone or in combination with paclitaxel. Between 55% and 75% of women who respond to first-line therapy relapse within two years of completing treatment. Second-line chemotherapy is palliative and aims to reduce symptoms and prolong survival. Increased understanding about the molecular basis of ovarian cancer has led to the development of novel agents, such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and their effectiveness and toxicities in women with advanced ovarian cancer needs to be assessed.

OBJECTIVES
To compare the effectiveness and toxicities of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors alone or in combination with standard chemotherapy in the treatment of ovarian cancer.

SEARCH STRATEGY
We searched the Cochrane Gynaecological Cancer Group Trials Register, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) Issue 4, 2010, MEDLINE and EMBASE up to October 2010. We also searched registers of clinical trials, abstracts of scientific meetings, and reference lists of included studies, and contacted experts in the field.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing anti-EGFR agents with or without conventional chemotherapy versus conventional chemotherapy alone or no treatment in women with histologically proven ovarian cancer.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently abstracted data and assessed risk of bias. We reported adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for overall and progression-free survival and risk ratios (RRs) comparing adverse events in women who received gemcitabine plus pertuzumab and gemcitabine plus placebo.

MAIN RESULTS
We found only one completed and three ongoing RCTs that met our inclusion criteria. The completed trial randomised 131 women with relapsed ovarian cancer to receive gemcitabine and pertuzumab or placebo and gemcitabine (control). There was no statistically significant difference in overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS) and response between women who received gemcitabine and pertuzumab and those who received control, although PFS approached borderline significance (adjusted HR = 0.66, 95% CI 0.43 to 1.03; P = 0.06). The trial reported a higher rate of adverse events in the gemcitabine and pertuzumab arm for most outcomes, but most were not statistically significant (although many approached borderline significance) because the trial lacked statistical power due to its relatively small size and the low number of observed events. The trial was at moderate risk of bias.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
EGFR inhibitors, including pertuzumab, may add activity to conventional chemotherapy for treatment of platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. Certain subsets of women with particularly aggressive tumours resistant to conventional chemotherapy may benefit from EGFR inhibitor treatment. Further RCTs are necessary before EGFR inhibitors are introduced as first- or second-line treatment of ovarian cancer.


ObjectiveTo evaluate in Gram-negative sepsis patients the human monoclonal immunoglobulin M antibody (MAB-T88) directed at the enterobacterial common antigen which is a specific surface antigen closely linked to lipopolysaccharide and shared by all members of the Enterobacteriaceae family of Gram-negative bacteria. DesignProspective, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial. SettingThirty-three academic medical centers in the United States. PatientsPatients were entered with a clinical diagnosis of sepsis, the presence of either shock or multiple organ dysfunction, and presumptive evidence for Gram-negative infection. InterventionsPatients received a single intravenous infusion, over 30 mins, of either 300 mg of MAB-T88 formulated in albumin, or placebo (albumin). Measurements and Main ResultsThe primary analysis group was prospectively identified as those patients with documented evidence of an infection with bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae at any site. The primary end point was survival within the first 28 days. A total of 826 patients were enrolled with 55% (n = 455) in the primary analysis group. There were no significant differences between the intervention and control primary analysis group study groups for sites of infection, severity of illness, underlying medical conditions, adequacy of antibiotic or surgical treatment, or other baseline variables except for a higher frequency of chronic renal failure in the MAB-T88 group (4.4% vs. 1.3%, p = .051). The average Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II scores were 26.8 ± 8.6 (mean ± sd) in the MAB-T88-treated group and 26.5 ± 8.3 in the placebo-treated group (p = .72). There was no significant difference between MAB-T88- and placebo-treated groups during the first 28-day all-cause mortality in the primary analysis group (34.2% vs. 30.8%, p = .44) or in all 826 patients enrolled (37.0% vs. 34.0%, p = .36). On subset analysis, the use of MAB-T88 was not associated with significant mortality trends. More adverse events were seen with the use of MAB-T88 in the bacteremic enterobacterial common antigen group (p < .05). ConclusionsUse of the human monoclonal antibody, MAB-T88, did not improve the mortality in patients with presumed Gram-negative sepsis or in those patients with proven enterobacterial common antigen infections. No subset trends were identified that would support further investigation of this agent in sepsis.


This state-of-knowledge review provides a synthesis of the effects of fire on cultural resources, which can be used by fire managers, cultural resource (CR) specialists, and archaeologists to more effectively manage wildland vegetation, fuels, and fire. The goal of the volume is twofold: (1) to provide cultural resource/archaeological professionals and policy makers with a primer on fuels, fire behavior, and fire effects to enable them to work more effectively with the fire management community to protect resources during fuels treatment and restoration projects and wildfire suppression activities; and (2) to provide fire and land management professionals and policy makers with a greater understanding of the value of cultural resource protection and the methods available to evaluate and mitigate risks to CR. The synthesis provides a conceptual fire effects framework for planning, managing, and modeling fire effects (chapter1) and a primer on fire and fuel processes and fire effects prediction modeling (chapter 2). A synthesis of the effects of fire on various cultural resource materials is provided for ceramics (chapter 3), lithics (chapter 4), rock art (chapter 5), historic-period artifacts/materials (chapter 6), and below-ground features (chapter 7). Chapter 8 discusses the importance of cultural landscapes to indigenous peoples and emphasizes the need to actively involve native people in the development of collaborative management plans. The use and practical implications of this synthesis are the subject of the final chapter (chapter 9).


What effect does bureaucratic responsiveness have on citizen participation? Since the 1940s, attitudinal measures of perceived efficacy have been used to explain participation. The authors develop a "calculus of participation" that incorporates objective efficacy—the extent to which an individual's participation actually has an impact—and test the model against behavioral data from the online application Fix My Street (n = 399,364). A successful first experience using Fix My Street is associated with a 57 percent increase in the probability of an individual submitting a second report, and the experience of bureaucratic responsiveness to the first report submitted has predictive power over all future report submissions. The findings highlight the importance of responsiveness for fostering an active citizenry while demonstrating the value of incidentally collected data to examine participatory behavior at the individual level.


During hibernation, thirteen-lined ground squirrels (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) regularly cycle between bouts of torpor and interbout arousal (IBA). Most of the brain is electrically quiescent during torpor but regains activity quickly upon arousal to IBA, resulting in extreme oscillations in energy demand during hibernation. We predicted increased functional capacity of brain mitochondria during hibernation compared with spring to accommodate the variable energy demands of hibernation. To address this hypothesis, we examined mitochondrial bioenergetics in the ground squirrel brain across three time points: spring (SP), torpor (TOR), and IBA. Respiration rates of isolated brain mitochondria through complex I of the electron transport chain were more than twofold higher in TOR and IBA than in SP (P < 0.05). We also found a 10% increase in membrane potential between hibernation and spring (P < 0.05), and that proton leak was lower in TOR and IBA than in SP. Finally, there was a 30% increase in calcium loading in SP brain mitochondria compared with TOR and IBA (P < 0.01). To analyze brain mitochondrial abundance between spring and hibernation, we measured the ratio of copy number in a mitochondrial gene (ND1) vs. a nuclear gene (B2M) in frozen cerebral cortex samples. No significant differences were observed in DNA copies between SP and IBA. These data show that brain mitochondrial bioenergetics are not static across the year and suggest that brain mitochondria function more effectively during the hibernation season, allowing for rapid production of energy to meet demand when extreme physiological changes are occurring.


There is extensive international debate over the contribution of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The potential for the BRI to make a substantial contribution to realising the SDGs has been acknowledged by leading global, regional, and national representatives. The BRI as a developmental project with global reach is heavily backed financially by China, and reflects the need for stronger instruments to implement and deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs. Yet, there are practical challenges in the BRI–SDG relationship set against an international debate centred on concerns, criticisms, and 'pushback'. This article assesses this relationship and provides a comprehensive examination of China–Kenya cooperation under the BRI and its implications for Kenyan implementation of the SDGs. Its arguments are based on both official documents and data, and primary research. Its findings contribute to the discussion on the potential of the BRI for Africa's sustainable development.


This article aims to determine if the adoption of Integrated Reporting by large private sector companies in South Africa has led to an improvement in the quality of sustainability-related information disclosed. This was done in two stages. The first stage comprised a literature review with the aim to develop an evaluation matrix that can be used to access the quality of the sustainability-related information being disclosed within Integrated Reports. During the second stage, empirical evidence was obtained by assessing the sustainability reporting disclosures made by the best performers according to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Sustainability Index. The Integrated Reporting process is still in the development phase with many companies only now developing methodologies to measure their various impacts. The study found that, although many companies are attempting or claiming to be creating Integrated Reports, the level of integration is still very low. Few companies have incorporated or understood the importance of environmental and social sustainability in achieving long-term success. It is hoped that this research will provide an evaluation matrix to assess the information disclosed within Integrated Reports as well as provide insights into the implementation challenges experienced by the early adopters in South Africa.


Most times, we choose goods and avoid evils. Sometimes, goods and evils choose us, which quickly grabs our attention. How do our brains represent our values so that we can choose? How do things we love or loathe automatically capture our attention? To investigate these two cognitive processes, we performed two experiments to study neuronal representations of value (worth) and salience (importance) in the primate brain.

First, we tested whether neurons in LIP and amygdala encode the value or salience of choice-options early during value-based decision-making. To dissociate value from salience, we recorded neurons from LIP and the amygdala in monkeys making value-based decisions among options promising different reward-sizes and options threatening different penalty-sizes. Value increases with promised-reward but decreases with threatened-penalty. Salience increases with the intensity of both promises and threats.

LIP neurons fired more for options promising more reward and also fired more for options threatening more penalty. Amygdala neurons fired more for options promising more reward but fired less for options threatening more penalty. Whereas LIP encoded salience early during decision-making, reflecting automatic capture of attention by the more important options, the amygdala encoded value early during the decision-making process.

Second, we tested whether early reward-effects in neurons in LIP and amygdala depended on early automatic capture of visual attention by a more rewarding option. We dissociated cue-reward from cue-salience in LIP and amygdala using choice-options that could not acquire salience. The near-identical physical appearance of these precluded early automatic capture of attention by the large-reward option but not the monkeys' ability to make optimal value-based decisions.

LIP did not encode reward early during decision-making, only later and weakly. The number of LIP neurons with reward-effects was no greater than expected by chance. In amygdala, reward-effects were stronger and earlier than in LIP. Significant numbers of single amygdala neurons signaled the reward-size of the choice-option. Early reward-effects depend upon cue-salience in LIP but not the amygdala.

The results from both experiments are consistent with the view that, early during value-based decision-making, neurons in LIP encode cue-salience whereas neurons in amygdala encode cue-value.


ABSTRACT Human papillomavirus (HPV) is believed to cause cervical cancer. Thousands of women develop cancer and other diseases caused by HPV each year. HPV 16 and 18 types are found in approximately 70% of cervical cancers. Micronuclei are small chromosomal fragments that are considered indicators of DNA damage. AgNOR positive dots are useful for assessing proliferation. We investigated the relation between HPV-DNA, micronuclei and AgNOR in smear samples. Three groups were defined: HPV negative, 16/18 positive and other high-risk groups (31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 66 and 68) (HR). After typing, micronuclei were identified by Papanicolaou staining and AgNOR regions were detected by silver staining. Serum reactive protein (CRP) also was measured. We found that the average age of HPV negative patients was significantly greater than for the HPV positive groups. We also found that CRP levels were significantly higher in the HPV 16/18 positive group than HPV negative and other HPV group. We found that the number of micronuclei in the HPV 16/18 group was significantly greater than for the HPV negative group. Also, we found that AgNOR staining for the HPV 16/18 group was significantly greater than for the HPV negative group. We found that CRP level, cell proliferation and genome instability were increased in HPV positive patients. The AgNOR and micronucleus tests were useful for evaluating cell proliferation and DNA damage.


The subduction zone volatile cycle is key to understanding the petrogenesis, transport, storage and eruption of arc magmas. Volatiles control the flux of slab components into the mantle wedge, are responsible for melt generation through lowering the solidi of mantle materials and influence the crystallizing phase assemblages in the overriding crust. Further, the rates and extents of degassing during magma storage and decompression affect magma rheology, ultimately control eruption style and have consequences for the environmental impact of explosive arc volcanism. This book highlights recent progress in constraining the role of volatiles in magmatic processes. Individual book sections are devoted to tracing volatiles from the subducting slab to the overriding crust, their role in subvolcanic processes and eruption triggering, as well as magmatic-hydrothermal systems and volcanic degassing. For the first time, all aspects of the overarching theme of volatile cycling are covered in detail within a single volume.


With our background in clinical ophthalmic research, mainly of the anterior eye, Bausch and Lomb have asked us to produce an independent report of some of the interesting findings coming out of the research journals each month. As a busy practitioner, this should allow you to keep more up-to-date with cutting edge clinical research and allow you to locate the articles when you want to know more about a topic highlighted.


A novel low-threshold amplification scheme for bichromatically coupling three upper states including a metastable state is investigated. Based on model calculations, it is possible to amplify coherent vacuum-ultraviolet emission in Kr gases without population inversion at the probed transition. In this system, therefore, media that are the same as those used for lasing (e.g., Kr) can be used as the incoherent pumping source. The low-threshold amplification is attained when the spontaneous emission at the probed transition is modulated through population trapping in the upper states by two intense coupling lasers. The possibility of continuous amplification of vacuum-ultraviolet emission in this model is discussed.


[1] The energy input to the upper ocean Ekman layer is assessed for the Southern Ocean by examining the rotary cross spectrum between wind stress and surface velocity for frequencies between 0 and 2 cpd. The wind stress is taken from European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ERA-40 reanalysis, and drifter measurements from 15 m depth are used to represent surface velocities, with an adjustment to account for the vertical structure of the upper ocean. The energy input occurs mostly through the nonzero frequencies rather than the mean. Phenomenologically, the combination of a stronger anticyclonic wind stress forcing associated with a greater anticyclonic response makes the contribution from the anticyclonic frequencies dominate the wind energy input. The latitudinal and seasonal variations of the wind energy input to the Ekman layer are closely related to the variations of the wind stress, both for the mean and for the time-varying components. The contribution from the near-inertial band follows a different trend, increasing from 30°S to about 45°S and decreasing further south, possibly a consequence of the lack of variance in this band in the drifter and wind stress data.


This article aims to demonstrate the confirmation or the refutation of the hypothesis that there is a connection between fiscal policy and economic development. The study begins with an overview of the main theoretical contributions. A few indicators that give the measure of the economic development are analysed for the sample of the Central and South Eastern European countries, members of the EU. The empirical analysis seeks to establish the relevance of the main determinants of the economic development (GDP per capita) and the three levers of the fiscal policy (fiscal pressure, the share of public expenditure in GDP and budgetary balance in the share of GDP), for each country, of the sample of the 12 countries of Central and South Eastern Europe, the new members of the European Union, during 2001-2010.


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A largely overlooked side effect in most studies of morphological priming is a consistent main effect of semantic transparency across priming conditions. That is, participants are faster at recognizing stems from transparent sets (e.g., farm) in comparison to stems from opaque sets (e.g., fruit), regardless of the preceding primes. This suggests that semantic transparency may also be consistently associated with some property of the stem word. We propose that this property might be traced back to the consistency, throughout the lexicon, between the orthographic form of a word and its meaning, here named Orthography-Semantics Consistency (OSC), and that an imbalance in OSC scores might explain the "stem transparency" effect. We exploited distributional semantic models to quantitatively characterize OSC, and tested its effect on visual word identification relying on large-scale data taken from the British Lexicon Project (BLP). Results indicated that (a) the "stem transparency" effect is solid and reliable, insofar as it holds in BLP lexical decision times (Experiment 1); (b) an imbalance in terms of OSC can account for it (Experiment 2); and (c) more generally, OSC explains variance in a large item sample from the BLP, proving to be an effective predictor in visual word access (Experiment 3).


Forthcoming enlargement of the EU is one of the main reasons why so called discussion about the future of Europe was started. The need to define and to discuss the questions concerning integrating Europe reveals from the lack of democracy and transparency of the EU political system and not effective EU activity in a few areas. The author of the article analyses legal mechanism of sharing the competence and reveals the influence of the member-states in the European Union decision making processes. The decision making in supranational level is a very multidimensional process: the process involves the wide range of political subjects, and the process itself is under the impact of various both external and internal factors. That turns the decision making process into a very interesting research object. The paper consists of two parts. There are the competence borders of the European Union and the member-states analysed in the first part of the paper. Taking into account the aspects of Lithuania's situation it will have to delegate the part of legislation, prosecution, judicial and budgetary powers. And the second part discusses the influence of national states in the EU decision making process. The author concludes the Lithuania that does not hold the informal power in decision making process will be able to influence using relative power. The Nice model is the most favourable to achieve these goals. In this case the comparative power of Lithuania would be the biggest in the decision making process.


The dual reciprocity boundary element method (DRBEM) and the differential quadrature method (DQM) are applied to solve the 2D, unsteady natural convection flow in enclosures under an externally applied magnetic field. Vorticity transport and energy equations are transformed to modified Helmholtz equations by utilising forward difference with relaxation parameters for the time derivatives, and approximating also Laplacian terms at two consecutive time levels. Thus, the need of another time integration scheme and very small time increment is eliminated. Inhomogeneities in modified Helmholtz equations are approximated with two types of radial basis functions. Solutions are obtained with both DRBEM and DQM for Ra and Ha values up to 106 and 300; respectively, and compared. DRBEM and DQM give almost the same accuracy, but DQM uses considerably small number of grid points resulting with less computational work.


We introduce a class of metric spaces which we call "bolic". They include hyperbolic spaces, simply connected complete manifolds of nonpositive curvature, euclidean buildings, etc. We prove the Novikov conjecture on higher signatures for any discrete group which admits a proper isometric action on a "bolic", weakly geodesic metric space of bounded geometry.


BACKGROUND Adult height has been inversely associated with coronary heart disease risk in several studies. The mechanism for this association is not well understood, however, and this was investigated by examining components of stature, cardiovascular disease risk factors and subsequent coronary heart disease in a prospective study. METHODS All men aged 45–59 years living in the town of Caerphilly, South Wales were approached, and 2512 (89%) responded and underwent a detailed examination, which included measurement of height and sitting height (from which an estimate of leg length was derived). Participants were followed up through repeat examinations and the cumulative incidence of coronary heart disease—both fatal and non-fatal—over a 15 year follow up period is the end point in this report. RESULTS Cross sectional associations between cardiovascular risk factors and components of stature (total height, leg length and trunk length) demonstrated that factors related to the insulin resistance syndrome—the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance, fasting triglyceride levels and total to HDL cholesterol ratio—were less favourable in men with shorter legs, while showing reverse or no associations with trunk length. Fibrinogen levels were inversely associated with leg length and showed a weaker association with trunk length. Forced expiratory volume in one second was unrelated to leg length but strongly positively associated to trunk length. Other risk factors showed little association with components of stature. The risk of coronary heart disease was inversely related to leg length but showed little association with trunk length. CONCLUSION Leg length is the component of stature related to insulin resistance and coronary heart disease risk. As leg length is unrelated to lung function measures it is unlikely that these can explain the association in this cohort. Factors that influence leg length in adulthood—including nutrition, other influences on growth in early life, genetic and epigenetic influences—merit further investigation in this regard. The reported associations suggest that pre-adult influences are important in the aetiology of coronary heart disease and insulin resistance.


In the recent years, the scientific debate on the evaluation of the profitability of energy-efficient constructions and refurbishments has reached maturity. Several studies have faced the issue by focusing on the comparison between the costs incurred to improve building energy efficiency and the expected savings. Moreover, different methods and criteria to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of such works have been proposed.The most widespread criteria are the Simple Payback Time (SPBT), the Net Present Value (NPV), and the Internal Rate of Return (IRR). More recently, the importance of the Cost-Optimal methodology has grown significantly. The first criterion presents several simplifications, which make it not completely able to model all the aspects related to energy efficiency investments. NPV and IRR, on the contrary, allow to consider variables such as the financing structure; nevertheless, their implementation is complex and time-consuming. The last method, which relies on the Life Cycle Cost Analysis, allows to compare the cost-optimal level of minimum energy performance for different energy efficiency measures, without, however, dealing with the profitability of the investment itself from a business-oriented perspective.Besides the aforementioned framework, the Cost of Conserved Energy was proposed in 1984 as a simplified statistic for the comparison of retrofit investments with energy purchase. Based on the same rationale, more recently, the Energy Cost Efficiency Index has been developed. Both of them allow to consider, during the evaluation process, several assumptions about the uncertainty of future energy prices and different approaches to the investment.The aim of the research is to provide a critical review of the above mentioned indicators for evaluating the profitability of energy efficiency investments, and compare them by assuming a set of criteria that represent their ease of implementation, the stage of the design and construction process in which they can be better applied, the accuracy of the outcomes, and so forth.The different methods are then applied to a number of case studies representative of various construction and refurbishment typologies, in order to highlight their strengths and weaknesses by comparing the outcomes.The research highlights that simplified methodologies can lead to results comparable to those deriving from the application of more sophisticated techniques, whether some boundary conditions are defined.


Tattoo removal has long been a vexing problem. Although many methods have been involved, most of them are destructive and frequently cause scarring. However Qswitched ruby lasers have been successfully used to remove blue and black tattoos without the usual risks of textural change or scarring (Reid et aI1983). The major difference between this method and the others is that radiation from this laser induces preferential injury to cells containing tattoo pigment only. A major disadvantage of this method is the very high cost of the equipment, and in additional the red tattoos do not respond to red ruby light. This thesis investigates using a high power density xenon flashlamp for the removal of tattoos. The proposed method is based on the same principle as the Q-switched ruby laser, but has potential to remove various coloured tattoos, and to cost rather less than one tenth of the cost of a Q-switched ruby laser. In this thesis the spectral match between absorption of tattoo dyes and radiation of xenon flashlamp has been analysed. I suggest suitable treatment parameters for removal of tattoo using selective photothermolysis after calculation base on some histological studies. The theory of the xenon flashlamp system was analysed in order to design a flashlamp system, and some experimental trials on different pulse durations and brightness were carried out. I report on preliminary clinical trials on a volunteer's tattoos, using different pulse length and energy densities produced by various xenon flashlamps. The overall findings given by our preliminary experiments confirm that a xenon flashlamp with an appropriate energy density and pulse duration C1Ul selectively induce responses in a tattooed area by the mechanism of selective photothermolysis. These clinical trials suggest that an energy density of 8 J cm2 is probably the useful treatment threshold for 100 Its pulses. © May 29, 1993 by Huaying Zhang


Jenny Helena Florence O'Hara was born in 1892 in Madoc, Ontario. She married Robert Newton Pincock in 1915. He was an osteopath. Her sister, Minnie O'Hara married Fred Maines in 1922. He was educated at Victoria University in Toronto and was an ordained minister who had served with the YMCA overseas during the First World War. In 1927, Jenny, Minnie and Reverend Fred Maines began to hold seances. They worked in collaboration with Mr. William Cartheuser who was an American medium. Jenny Pincock's Trails of Truth documents these seances. Most of the seances took place at 47 Church Street, St. Catharines which was the residence of Reverend Maines. Other participants in the seances included: Dr. E.J. Pratt and his wife Viola; poet W.W.E. Ross and other local citizens. The group were basically middle class, well-educated citizens.
The Maines and Pincocks began the Church of the Divine Revelation in St. Catharines, Ontario on Sept. 6, 1930 with Fred Maines as the ordained minister. He remained in this position from 1930-1935. Dr. Anderson (in spirit form) provided instructions for the running of the church. In 1931, the United Church of Canada into which Maines had originally been ordained suspended him because of his foray into spiritualism. Maines was also ordained into the spiritualist ministry. In 1932, they established the Radiant Healing Centre which was also located in St. Catharines, Ontario. On the Radiant Healing Centre correspondence it states that the centre is "under guidance of 'Dr. Anderson' who manifests in direct voice through psychic powers of Dr. William Cartheuser". William worked for the New York section of the American Society for Psychical Research. He also maintained a home at Lily Dale Spiritualist Camp, New York. Jenny spent summers working as a librarian at Lily Dale.
It was thought that a seance could provide alternative medicine. The proponents of this train of thought did not believe in a division of medicine and faith. They believed in a unity of spirit, mind and body. Supposedly, voices emanated from trumpets (aluminum cones) which were used for the seances. These voices were distinctly different from the medium's voice. The trumpets were also known to levitate. People felt as if they were being touched and taps on the table were heard. "Dr. Anderson" was an old-fashioned (deceased) doctor who supposedly dispensed medical wisdom and sympathy. The spirits at the Healing Centre did not rely on direct physical contact, but worked though prescribed movements of the participants which meant that healing could take place over great amounts of time or space. When members of the church joined as a group, even in absentia, they sent forth a radiant healing light. The healing force could be realized and dispensed by the 'angelic helpers'.
Newton Pincock died in 1928, but was said to perform osteopathic treatments after his death as the force of his spirit would apply itself to the body. In 1935, Jenny Pincock broke ties with William Cartheuser. She began to suspect that William had let his mind influence the messages from the spirit, but she did not doubt his powers as a medium.
A publication called Progression was produced by this group, with its first issue being put out in October of 1932. Publication ceased in 1938. Women were particularly drawn to this spiritualist type of religion. Women were encouraged to take control over their minds and bodies whereas in biomedical circles they were deemed weak and powerless.


This major reference work, now in its fourth edition, is an extensive and authoritative guide to the most frequently cited academic economists throughout the world. As with the previous editions, each of the entries is written by the entrants themselves and gives pertinent biographical data, principal fields of interest, chief publications and a statement of their principal contributions to economics as they – and not the editors – perceive them. This edition includes only living economists whose articles, published in the period 1990–2000, have been most frequently cited and as such it is the most up-to-date biographical dictionary of the leading players in the economics profession.


Most advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients are accompanied by brain metastasis which is the major cause of increased mortality. The fusion rearrangement of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene is an important feature of brain metastasis in lung cancer. The novel ALK inhibitors alectinib and lorlatinib are shown to be effective against NSCLC brain metastasis, while their underlying mechanism of action is unclear. Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) proteins and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play important roles in brain metastasis by regulating the blood-brain barrier (BBB). To reveal the molecular function of alectinib and lorlatinib, we explored their effects on the cellular levels of EMT markers: VIM and FN1 and the matrix metalloproteinases MMP-9 and MMP-7. The mRNA and protein levels of VIM, FN1, MMP-9, and MMP-7 were elevated in H3122 cells. However, upon alectinib and lorlatinib treatment, the levels were significantly reduced. Similar results were obtained when these experiments were performed either in a dose-dependent or time-dependent manner. Furthermore, alectinib and lorlatinib also inhibited the cell viability and migration of H3122 cells. Interestingly, in comparison to individual drugs, the combination of alectinib and lorlatinib was found to be substantially more effective. Overall, these results suggest that alectinib and lorlatinib possibly function through the downregulation of MMPs and EMT in NSCLC metastasis.


Multi-level constitutional systems institutionalize power-splitting arrangements among governments sharing power over territory and people. These arrangements produce a diffusion of sovereign authority among multiple partial sovereigns who together constitute the whole of a self-contained political community. Critical to the success of such arrangements is the effectiveness of protections afforded the residuary power holders. In the United States, structural protections of the residuary powers of the states have been characterized as a mere truism: not a grant of positive power to the States, but merely a provision of descriptive and reassuring value. Between 1789 and the present, application of the principle by the federal courts has produced both a flexible and efficient system of national governance in which the political accountability of federally elected officials serves as the primary source of the protection of federalism and a significant diminution of those residual powers in favor of the general government. Germany has allocated power a little differently to the federal government, providing a limited power for federal legislation to be vetoed by the Lander represented in the Bundesrat, and a monopoly in the Lander over the implementation of federal law. Since the adoption of the Grundgesetz the resulting system of cooperative federalism has preserved much Lander power over implementation but little power over legislation. The resulting system imposes obligations to consult among all levels of government if legislation is to be passed and implemented. In each case, constitutional text has served only as the starting point for the development of very different articulations of judicial visions of the constitutional state. The European Union, as a supra-national organization with multi-level constitutional characteristics, has avoided a strong adherence to either the German or American models of federalism. All the same, the Institutions of the E.U., the methods for enacting regulations, and emerging principles of legislative restraint (among the most well known of which is the principle of subsidiarity), have produced a system with substantial formal respect for Member State authority, a certain amount of inefficiency, and a historic tendency to encourage the migration of state power to the federal or general government. This has been accomplished through the articulation by the courts of a vision of the European Union that was not necessarily apparent from a reading of the Treaties. The proposed E.U. Constitution attempts to build a more formalized and institutionalized federalism on the foundation of the current system of European power sharing, but with more direct protections for Member State power. It is not clear that any amount of writing in a Constitutional document memorializing vertical power sharing arrangements can fully protect subordinate units of government against a shifting of power towards the center. This paper evaluates the efficacy of this proposed multi-constitutional arrangement to define and protect against erosion of the residual powers of the Member States. Using the experiences of the American and German federations, as well as that of the pre-Constitution E.U. as analytical templates, the paper suggests that no amount of textual protection of residuary authority, even in systems in which substantial power is retained by the constituent parts of the federation, can guarantee against the shifting of power from Member State to central government. The European Court of Justice, bounded by constitutional traditions that favor a German approach to constitutional interpretation, may instead adopt the nationalizing approach of the American courts in its interpretation of ambiguities and lacunae in the draft European Constitution's federalism provisions.


Intracellular bodies such as nucleoli, Cajal bodies, and various signaling assemblies, represent membraneless organelles, or condensates, that form via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS)1,2. Biomolecular interactions, particularly homotypic interactions mediated by self-associating intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDRs), are thought to underlie the thermodynamic driving forces for LLPS, forming condensates that can facilitate the assembly and processing of biochemically active complexes, such as ribosomal subunits within the nucleolus. Simplified model systems3–6 have led to the concept that a single fixed saturation concentration (Csat) is a defining feature of endogenous LLPS7–9, and has been suggested as a mechanism for intracellular concentration buffering2,7,8,10. However, the assumption of a fixed Csat remains largely untested within living cells, where the richly multicomponent nature of condensates could complicate this simple picture. Here we show that heterotypic multicomponent interactions dominate endogenous LLPS, and give rise to nucleoli and other condensates that do not exhibit a fixed Csat. As the concentration of individual components is varied, their partition coefficients change, in a manner that can be used to extract thermodynamic interaction energies, that we interpret within a framework we term polyphasic interaction thermodynamic analysis (PITA). We find that heterotypic interactions between protein and RNA components stabilize a variety of archetypal intracellular condensates, including the nucleolus, Cajal bodies, stress granules, and P bodies. These findings imply that the composition of condensates is finely tuned by the thermodynamics of the underlying biomolecular interaction network. In the context of RNA processing condensates such as the nucleolus, this stoichiometric self-tuning manifests in selective exclusion of fully-assembled RNP complexes, providing a thermodynamic basis for vectorial ribosomal RNA (rRNA) flux out of the nucleolus. The PITA methodology is conceptually straightforward and readily implemented, and it can be broadly utilized to extract thermodynamic parameters from microscopy images. These approaches pave the way for a deep understanding of the thermodynamics of multi-component intracellular phase behavior and its interplay with nonequilibrium activity characteristic of endogenous condensates.


Synchronous VLSI design is approaching a critical point, with clock distribution becoming an increasingly costly and complicated issue and power consumption rapidly emerging as a major concern. The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in asynchronous logic which promises to liberate digital design from the inherent problems of synchronous systems. This activity has revealed a need for modelli ng and simulation techniques suitable for the asynchronous design style. The concurrent process algebra Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is particularly suitable for the specification of asynchronous systems. This paper discusses a framework for the distributed simulation of asynchronous hardware, adopting Balsa, a CSP-like notation, as a hardware description language.


We present a new matrix inverse with applications in the theory of bilateral basic hypergeometric series. Our matrix inversion result is directly extracted from an instance of Bailey's very-well-poised 6-psi-6 summation theorem, and involves two infinite matrices which are not lower-triangular. We combine our bilateral matrix inverse with known basic hypergeometric summation theorems to derive, via inverse relations, several new identities for bilateral basic hypergeometric series.


Low levels of recruitment into randomised controlled trials is a recurring difficulty and one that potentially threatens the validity of any RCT (Donovan et al, 2002a; 2002b). In cognate fields, research has been carried out with trial participants and other service users to understand the likely difficulties associated with recruitment from user perspectives and to modify recruitment materials and methods to maximise participation (Edwards et al, 1998; Featherstone and Donovan, 1999). However, the vast majority of this work has taken place with service users who would not experience communication challenges in participating in the research in the first place. By contrast, this paper concerns a study in which service users with aphasia and/or dysarthria worked alongside researchers, within a participatory action research framework, to design the recruitment materials that would be used in a large RCT (the ACTNoW trial).