In this paper we describe the pass-through behavior of a major U.S. supermarket chain for 78 products across 11 categories. Our data set includes retail prices and wholesale prices for stores in 15 retail price zones for a one-year period. For the empirical model, we use a reduced-form approach that focuses directly on equilibrium prices as a function of exogenous supply-and demand-shifting variables. The reduced-form approach enables us to identify the theoretical pass-through rate without specific assumptions about the form of consumer demand or the conduct of a category-pricing manager. Thus, our measurements of pass-through are not constrained by specific structure on the underlying economic model. The empirical pricing model includes costs of all competing products in the category on the right-hand side not only the cost of the focal brand and yields estimates of both own-brand and cross-brand pass-through rates.

Our results provide a rich picture of the retailer's pass-through behavior. We find that pass-through varies substantially across products and across categories. Own-brand pass-through rates are, on average, more than 60% for 9 of 11 categories, a finding that is at odds with the claims of manufacturers about retailers in general. Importantly, we find substantial evidence of cross-brand pass-through effects, indicating that retail prices of competing products are adjusted in response to a change in the wholesale price of any given product in the category. We find that cross-brand pass-through rates are both positive and negative. We explore determinants of own-brand and cross-brand pass-through rates and find strong evidence in multiple categories of asymmetric retailer response to trade promotions on large versus small brands. For example, brands with larger market shares, and brands that contribute more to retailer profits in the category, receive higher pass-through. We also find that trade promotions on large brands are less likely than small brands to generate positive cross-brand pass-through, i.e., induce the retailer to reduce the retail price of competing smaller products. On the other hand, small share brands are disadvantaged along three dimensions. Trade promotions on small brands receive low own-brand pass-through and generate positive cross-brand pass-through for larger competing brands. Moreover, small share brands do not receive positive cross pass-through from trade promotions on these larger competitors. We also find that store brands are similarly disadvantaged with respect to national brands.


This paper compares the influence a video self-avatar and a lack of a visual representation of a body have on height estimation when standing at a virtual visual cliff. A height estimation experiment was conducted using a custom augmented reality Oculus Rift hardware and software prototype also described in this paper. The results show a consistency with previous research demonstrating that the presence of a visual body influences height estimates, just as it has been shown to influence distance estimates and affordance estimates.


From the algebraic point of view, image reconstruction is an under-determined problem, due to the fact that the projection measurements are a lot fewer than the unknown pixels. Discrete algebraic reconstruction technique (DART) is an algorithm used to cope with this situation. DART solves a discrete linear inverse problem by combining an algebraic reconstruction procedure with a threshold segmentation. In order to improve accuracy, the TvMin+DART algorithm modified the subroutines of DART by exploiting total variation minimization technique (TvMin). However, this algorithm was developed for only binary images. In this paper, our TvMin+DART algorithm will be generalized to handle multilabel images as well, and an experimental research to compare the proposed method with the original DART and the conventional filtered backprojection (FBP) will be presented.


Transferring molecular nanostructures from one surface to another in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) by mechanical contact might be a possible route to avoid the severe limitations of in situ molecular synthesis on technologically relevant template surfaces. Here, transfer printing in UHV of molecular structures between metal surfaces is investigated by a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. The authors present the complete procedure of the printing and characterization process. Microstructured Au-coated MoS₂ samples exhibiting a periodic pillar structure are used as stamp surfaces with Au(111) single crystals as target surface. Polymers of 1,3,5-tris(4-bromophenyl)benzene molecules and graphene nanoribbons with an armchair edge structure are grown on the pillars of the stamp surface. After bringing the two surfaces in mechanical contact, the transferred material is found on the target while decapping occurs on the stamp surface. Polymer structures are probably buried under the transferred stamp material, and in rare cases, evidence for molecular structures is found in their vicinity.


An odor mitigation technology that is drawing a lot of attention in Midwestern livestock producing states is the strategic use of shelterbelts – purposefully planted trees and shrubs arranged in linear patterns around production facilities; a technical term for this technology is Vegetative Environmental Buffers or VEBs. Research suggests that VEBs can play an important, incremental low-cost role in bio-physically and socially mitigating odor.


In the December 2015 Paris Agreement, nations of the world agreed to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the second half of the century. For developed countries, accomplishing that goal requires a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. As ambitious and even unachievable as that goal may seem, some developed countries have already made considerable progress in conceptualizing and even adopting legal approaches for achieving decarbonization. This paper describes the approaches being taken in two major developed country jurisdictions — California and Germany — and suggest lessons from that experience that could be useful to the United States.


Hereditary angioedema (HAE) types I and II are autosomal dominant conditions characterized by recurrent attacks of edema formation in the subcutaneous tissue of the body or walls of the upper respiratory or gastrointestinal tract. Frequently, prodromal symptoms occur before an HAE attack. If certain prodromal symptoms were determined to be both sensitive and specific in predicting an acute HAE attack, treatment at the time of the prodrome could prevent development of an attack and decrease morbidity and mortality associated with HAE. The goal is to determine the frequency and timing of prodromal symptoms occurring before HAE attacks. After Institutional Review Board approval, a four-page survey was produced, using a focus group of patients with HAE and was assessed by HAE patients and physicians with expertise in HAE for cognitive reliability. Once devised, the questionnaire was sent to 158 HAE patients. The survey focused on questions related to prodromal symptoms that patients developed before their last HAE attack. Forty-six patients returned the survey and 40 (87.0%) reported the presence of prodromal symptoms before their last HAE attack. Forty-four of 46 (95.7%) reported having had prodromal symptoms before HAE attacks in the past. The most commonly reported prodromal symptoms included unusual fatigue, rash, and muscle aches. Prodromes occur frequently before HAE attacks. This high frequency suggests that prodromal symptoms could be a reliable indication to begin treatment to prevent an acute HAE attack, thus decreasing the anxiety associated with having an HAE attack.


Current models of the classification problem do not effectively handle bursts of particular classes coming in at different times. In fact, the current model of the classification problem simply concentrates on methods for one-pass classification modeling of very large data sets. Our model for data stream classification views the data stream classification problem from the point of view of adynamic approach in which simultaneous training and test streams are used for dynamic classification of data sets. This model reflects real-life situations effectively, since it is desirable to classify test streams in real time over an evolving training and test stream. The aim here is to create a classification system in which the training model can adapt quickly to the changes of the underlying data stream. In order to achieve this goal, we propose an on-demand classification process which can dynamically select the appropriate window of past training data to build the classifier. The empirical results indicate that the system maintains a high classification accuracy in an evolving data stream, while providing an efficient solution to the classification task.


Description of personality traits by Chinese adjectives: A trial on university students Studies on personality-related Chinese adjectives suggest either a five-factor or seven-factor structure. In the current investigation, we selected a bigger adjective pool of personality-related adjectives, and tested them on the university students in Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern China. In Study 1, we administered the the self-rating scales of the 650 adjectives in 610 subjects. Five factors emerged clearly, and named as "Intelligent", "Emotional", Conscientious", "Unsocial" and "Agreeable". We then selected 20 adjectives with highest target loadings for each factor to develop a short version of the self-report rating scales, the Chinese Adjective Descriptors of Personality (CADP). In study 2, we administered the 100-adjective CADP to 720 university students in the four areas of China. Again, five-factor structures were confirmed. Loadings of the individual adjectives on the target factor were satisfactory, and the internal alphas for each personality scale were high. Most CADP scales were intercorrelated. There were, however, no significant gender differences in regard to CADP scales. The five-factor structures found in our report were comparable to the Openness to Experiences (or Intellect), Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreeableness found in other cultures. The normative data of the CADP is presented.


Language testing guidelines like the Common European Framework of Referencefor Languages (CEFR) have been very influential for language testing and assessment,yet the way they define proficiency levels using 'can-do-statements' hasoften been criticized as being too vague. In the present chapter, I will take acorpus-based approach towards spoken accuracy in advanced German learnerEnglish and report on the findings of an error analysis of the most error-pronecategory in the German component of the Louvain International Database ofSpoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI). Focusing on verb-tense related errors,the present study not only reveals what is especially error-prone in the case ofadvanced German learners of English in this category (e.g. reported speech,conditionals), but it also shows that even at an advanced level, learners appearto form a fairly heterogeneous group with regard to the number of errors.However, the types of errors committed at this proficiency level are quite systematic,and this allows for a thorough description of advanced learners' errorprofiles. In the final section of this chapter, I will take these findings to suggesta text-centred description of different proficiency levels in advanced Germanlearners' speech at the university level and sketch out some avenues for futureresearch.


with the cooperation of Robert V. D. CampbellThis collection of technical essays and reminiscences is a companion volume to I. Bernard Cohen's biography, Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. After an overview by Cohen, Part I presents the first complete publication of Aiken's 1937 proposal for an automatic calculating machine, which was later realized as the Mark I, as well as recollections of Aiken's first two machines by the chief engineer in charge of construction of Mark II, Robert Campbell, and the principal programmer of Mark I, Richard Bloch. Henry Tropp describes Aiken's hostility to the exclusive use of binary numbers in computational systems and his alternative approach.Part II contains essays on Aiken's administrative and teaching styles by former students Frederick Brooks and Peter Calingaert and an essay by Gregory Welch on the difficulties Aiken faced in establishing a computer science program at Harvard. Part III contains recollections by people who worked or studied with Aiken, including Richard Bloch, Grace Hopper, Anthony Oettinger, and Maurice Wilkes. Henry Tropp provides excerpts from an interview conducted just before Aiken's death. Part IV gathers the most significant of Aiken's own writings. The appendixes give the specs of Aiken's machines and list his doctoral students and the topics of their dissertations.


The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is likely to see the Kyoto Protocol finally coming into force. While this will be a moment to celebrate, there is no cause to be complacent. Although a step in the right direction, the Kyoto Protocol was always an imperfect agreement and has been made all the more imperfect by the fact that the world's largest polluter has decided to stay out of the consensus and those who have agreed to join have demanded and received changes that have weakened the Protocol considerably. It is time, therefore, to begin thinking about the shape of the global climate regime in its post-Kyoto phase.


Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), a form of psychotherapy, is the most empirically supported treatment for anxiety, but new research into psychological treatments for anxiety is warranted because clinical improvement is not achieved by between 20% and 80% of the clinical population receiving CBT or other empirically supported psychological treatments. One recently developed approach is Behavioural Activation Therapy for Anxiety (BATA), first reported in 2009 by Turner and Leach who identified that Behavioural Activation (BA), though recognised as an effective treatment for depression, had rarely been applied to anxiety despite functional similarities. BATA has been written as a structured protocol, based on setting goals and scheduling activities, that brings clients into contact with naturally occurring sources of positive reinforcement for "clinically healthier", socially-valid behaviours. This study included nine single case recipients of BATA ranging in age from 19 to 52 years old who met DSM-IV criteria for a non-trauma anxiety condition, assigned to one of three groups according to residence and type of delivery: Metropolitan In-Person, Metropolitan Videoconferencing, and Regional/Remote Videoconferencing. In each case, following a baseline period, BATA was applied in 12 weekly, 60-minute individual therapy sessions. Treatment outcomes were evaluated using A-B-C phase change analysis with repeated measures. Eight out of nine participants showed significant reduction in self-reported anxiety symptoms. A corresponding significant decrease in anxiety symptoms overall across all the participant groups was shown by an omnibus/global analysis, replicating the original Turner and Leach findings that featured an older group of participants. No differences were found between the Metropolitan and Regional/Remote groups or between the Metropolitan and Videoconferencing groups which provided evidence that BATA can be delivered as effectively by videoconferencing as when delivered face-to-face in-person.


Process Analytical Technology, or "PAT" is the term given to analytical instruments developed to measure certain attributes of product within the manufacturing process, eliminating, or substantially minimising the need for sampling for off-line analysis. This approach has several key advantages over traditional off-line analysis methods and includes process measurements in situ with instant access to data which facilitates rapid decisions during product development and manufacture. While the time between sampling and off-line results may range from minutes to days depending on the test being performed and the analytical structures in place, many PAT systems are capable of real-time measurement results enabling control decisions to be made based not just on a process recipe, but also on the true critical quality attributes (CQAs) of the material at that point in time. This allows for a more dynamic process, compensating for variabilities such as raw material variations or mechanical wear in processing components, and supports compliance with newer QA initiatives such as continuous verification. Additionally, the automated nature of PAT allows for greater data generation with minimal operator time when compared to testing samples at-line or off-line.


Territorial control is central to the understanding of violent armed conflicts, yet reliable and valid measures of this concept do not exist. We argue that geospatial analysis provides an important perspective to measure the concept. In particular, measuring territorial control can be seen as an application of calculating service areas around points of control. The modeling challenge is acute for areas with limited road infrastructure, where no complete network is available to perform the analysis, and movements largely occur off road. We present a new geospatial approach that applies network analysis on a hybrid transportation network with both actual road data and hexagon‐fishnet‐based artificial road data representing on‐road and off‐road movements, respectively. Movement speed or restriction can be readily adjusted using various input data. Simulating off‐road movement with hexagon‐fishnet‐based artificial road data has a number of advantages including scalability to small or large study areas and flexibility to allow all‐directional travel. We apply this method to measuring territorial control of armed groups in Sub‐Saharan Africa where inferior transport infrastructure is the norm. Based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's (UCDP) Georeferenced Event Data (GED) as well as spatial data on terrain, population locations, and limited transportation networks, we enhance the delineation of the specific areas directly controlled by each warring party during civil wars within a given travel time.


ABSTRACT FACT (facilitates chromatin transcription) consists of two essential subunits, Spt16 and Pob3, and functions as a histone chaperone. Mutation of spt16 results in a global loss of nucleosomes as well as aberrant transcription. Here, we show that the majority of nucleosome changes upon Spt16 depletion are alterations in nucleosome fuzziness and position shift. Most nucleosomal changes are suppressed by the inhibition of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) activity. Surprisingly, a small subgroup of nucleosome changes is resistant to transcriptional inhibition. Notably, Spt16 and distinct histone modifications are enriched at this subgroup of nucleosomes. We also report 1,037 Spt16-suppressed noncoding transcripts (SNTs) and found that the SNT start sites are enriched with the subgroup of nucleosomes resistant to Pol II inhibition. Finally, the nucleosomes at genes overlapping SNTs are more susceptible to changes upon Spt16 depletion than those without SNTs. Taken together, our results support a model in which Spt16 has a role in maintaining local nucleosome stability to inhibit initiation of SNT transcription, which once initiated drives additional nucleosome loss upon Spt16 depletion.


This paper examines the effects of structural changes on the distribution of net value added and the difference between net value added and agricultural income over time. We present and discuss the changes in the distribution of net value added (land, labor, capital, and farm operator income) over time. Net value added by U.S. agriculture grew significantly from $18 billion to 1960 to $95 billion in 1996. We examine regional differences in net value added using the Theil entropy measure. The inequality (dispersion) of net value added increased over time. The increased inequality represented both increases in regional dispersion in net value added and increases in the average inequality in net value added in each region. Thus, the net value added is becoming less alike across the U.S. We also examined the inequality in the components of net value added. The greatest dispersion occurred in returns to land followed by returns to capital. Therefore, changes in the dispersion of net value added by agriculture are explained by differences in the payments to non-operator landlords and to capital.


In this paper, improved light extraction using cone-shaped deep-pillar nanostructures is demonstrated on the Honeycomb-type vertical GaN light-emitting diodes (VLEDs). In order to produce ordered, cone-shaped deep-pillar patterns on the surface of an n-type GaN, double-layered polystyrene (PS) nanospheres of 500-nm size were coated onto the n-GaN layer by a simple spin-coating. Then, immediately after the O2 plasma ashing for double-layered PS beads, the Ni metal was deposited and lifted off to form a hard mask for deep pillar etching. Then, the three VLEDs-the reference VLED with no patterns and the two VLEDs with ordered, cone-shaped pillar patterns of 1.0 and 1.5 μm depth on the n-type GaN surface-were prepared for comparison. As a result, the output power for the proposed VLEDs with 1.0- and 1.5-μm-deep cone-shaped patterns has been increased by 200% and 214%, respectively, at 350 mA as compared to the reference VLED. There was a slight sacrifice of operational voltage and leakage current. The improved optical properties are attributed to the multiple scattering of light from the sidewall of the cone-shaped patterns and the increased surface dimension.


Capsule Networks have shown encouraging results on \textit{defacto} benchmark computer vision datasets such as MNIST, CIFAR and smallNORB. Although, they are yet to be tested on tasks where (1) the entities detected inherently have more complex internal representations and (2) there are very few instances per class to learn from and (3) where point-wise classification is not suitable. Hence, this paper carries out experiments on face verification in both controlled and uncontrolled settings that together address these points. In doing so we introduce \textit{Siamese Capsule Networks}, a new variant that can be used for pairwise learning tasks. The model is trained using contrastive loss with $\ell_2$-normalized capsule encoded pose features. We find that \textit{Siamese Capsule Networks} perform well against strong baselines on both pairwise learning datasets, yielding best results in the few-shot learning setting where image pairs in the test set contain unseen subjects.


For several years Australian herpetologists familiar with the lizards of northeastern Queensland have been aware that there was a large undescribed species of skink associated with the rainforests between Cooktown and the Tully River on the Atherton Tableland. The new species was recognized to be similar to Sphenomorphus nigricaudis a Papuan-Australian species that reaches the southern limit of its distribution at the base of Cape York Peninsula (Cogger 1975 and Greer 1979). The new species was never collected in large numbers, but over the years the number of specimens has slowly grown to where there are now a total of 36. I have recently examined all of this material and in this paper I present a formal description of the species, summarize its natural history and discuss its relationships.


New design methods for educating designers are needed to adapt the attributes of haptic interaction to fit the embodied experience of the users. This paper presents educationally framed aesthetic sensitizing labs: 1) a material-lab exploring the tactile and haptic structures of materials, 2) a vibrotactile-lab exploring actuators directly on the body and 3) a combined materials- and vibrotactile-lab embedded in materials. These labs were integrated in a design course that supports a non-linear design process for embodied explorative and experimental activities that feed into an emerging gestalt. A co-design process was developed in collaboration with researchers and users who developed positioning and communications systems for people with deafblindness. Conclusion: the labs helped to discern attributes of haptic interactions which supported designing scenarios and prototypes showing novel ways to understand and shape haptic interaction.


The aim of the present study was to evaluate relationships between early production of gesture, gesture-plus-word combinations and transitional forms on successive lexical and syntactic skills. Twenty-four children interacting with their mothers were observed. We found that complementary gesture-plus-word combinations and transitional forms use at 18 months were related with lexical skill and MLU — but not with utterance complexity — at 24 months; supplementary gesture-plus-word combinations use at 18 months, instead, was related with utterance complexity, but not with lexical skill and MLU. These relationships are explained in terms of increasing communicative competence in the child and also in terms of the adult's contribution to linguistic development.


The phylogeny of the Stenogastrinae wasps is still under discussion and their systematic incomplete. In the present work we used geometric morphometrics, a technique based on a rigorous statistical assessment of shape, to compare the forewings of fif teen species of Stenogastrinae wasps belonging to four different genera to ascertain whether this approach may be used as a reliable method in the study of the taxonomy of the group. The results show that the wing vein junctions can be diagnostic for both genus and species identification. For the first time in this subfamily, we propose a phylogenetic classification of the spe cies based on wing morphology that largely agrees with the cladistic data available at genus level and reflects the differ ences among species in terms of nesting material and architecture of their nest.


A find of Pirottaea from dead stems of Silene dioica collected in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park is described. The material possesses very well developed setae, is assigned to Nannfeldt's evolutionary lineage 2, and within the lineage differs from Pirottaea pilosissima known from stems of Geranium sylvaticum by shorter and up to 4-septate setae. Peziza sphaerioides var. lychnidis was revised and found to be conspecific with our material, but invalid. The earliest valid description of the taxon was found and a new combination is proposed. Results of a revision of several specimens of Pirottaea spp. published from the area of the Czech Republic are given.


Fog water deposition can represent an important part of the atmospheric water, nutrient and pollutant inputs in specific areas such as mountainous or coastal regions (Shimadera et al., 2011). In order to determine the potential of fog water deposition on plants, a field experiment has been performed in the northeast of France to determine fog droplet deposition velocity on different types of plants. The main objective is to improve deposition models by enabling them to accurately account for water inputs from fog or low clouds at ground level. The flux of deposited fog water was estimated by exposing plants to fog and weighing them with a precision balance. Contrary to other flux measurement methods, the weighing method is simple to set up. Three plant types (small conifers, grass and cabbages) plus bare soil were used as impaction and deposition surfaces. A Particulate Volume Monitor (PVM-100) provided the liquid water content (LWC) to calculate fog droplet deposition velocities, and a Fog Monitor (FM-120), the characterization of the droplet size distribution. Two fog events with different features (visibility, LWC and droplet number) were compared with regard to deposition velocity. When wind speed was below 4 m s–1, mean fog droplet deposition velocities ranged from less than 2.2 cm s–1 on bare soil to 40 cm s–1 on cypress. Thus, the impaction of fog droplets can be an important part of fog water deposition on plants. © Taiwan Association for Aerosol Research.


Institutional investors expect infrastructure to deliver long-term stable returns but gain exposure to infrastructure predominantly through finite-horizon closed private funds. The cash flows delivered by infrastructure funds display similar volatility and cyclicality as other private equity investments, and their performance similarly depends on quick deal exits. Despite weak risk-adjusted performance and failure to match the supposed characteristics of infrastructure assets, closed funds have received more commitments over time, particularly from public investors. Public institutional investors perform worse than private institutional investors. ESG preferences and regulations explain 25$\%$–40$\%$ of their increased allocation to infrastructure and 30$\%$ of their underperformance.


Aim/Purpose This study aims at (1) extending an existing theoretical framework to gain a deeper understanding of the technology acceptance process, notably of the Facebook social network in an unexplored Middle East context, (2) investigating the influence of social support theory on Facebook adoption outside the work context, (3) validating the effectiveness of the proposed research model for enhancing Facebook adoption, and (4) determining the effect of individual differences (gender, age, experience, and educational level) amongst Facebook users on the associated path between the proposed model constructs. Background Social networking sites (SNSs) are widely adopted to facilitate social interaction in the Web-based medium. As such, this present work contends that there is a gap in the existing literature, particularly in the Middle East context, as regards an empirical investigation of the relationship between the social, psychological, individual, and cognitive constructs potentially affecting users' intention to accept SNSs. The present research, therefore, attempts to address this deficit. The relevance of this work is also considered in light of the scarcity of empirical evidence and lack of detailed research on the effect of social support theory with regard to SNS adoption in a non-work context. Methodology A quantitative research approach was adopted for this study. The corresponding analysis was carried out based on structural equation modelling (SEM), more specifically, partial least squares (PLS), using SmartPLS software. Earlier research recommended the PLS approach for exploratory studies when extending an existing model or developing a new theory. PLS is also a superior method of complex causal modelling. Moreover, a multi-group analysis technique was adopted to investigate the moderating influence of individual differences. This method divides the dataset into two groups and then computes the cause and Predicting the Adoption of Social Media 234 effect relationships between the research model variables for each set. The analysis of an in-person survey with a sample of Facebook users (N=369) subsequently suggested four significant predictors of continuous Facebook use. Contribution This study contributes to the body of knowledge relating to SNSs by providing empirical evidence of constructs that influence Facebook acceptance in the case of a developing country. It raises awareness of antecedents of Facebook acceptance at a time when SNSs are widely used in Arab nations and worldwide. It also contributes to previous literature on the effectiveness of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) in different cultural contexts. Another significant contribution of this study is that it has reported on the relevance of social support theory to Facebook adoption, with this theory demonstrating a significant and direct ability to predict Facebook acceptance. Finally, the present research identified the significant moderating effect of individual differences on the associated path between the proposed model constructs. This means that regardless of technological development, individual gaps still appeared to exist among users. Findings The findings suggested four significant predictors of continuous Facebook use, namely, (a) performance expectancy, (b) peer support, (c) family support, and (d) perceived playfulness. Furthermore, behavioral intention and facilitating conditions were found to be significant determinants of actual Facebook use, while individual differences were shown to moderate the path strength between several variables in the proposed research model. Recommendations for Practitioners The results of the present study make practical contributions to SNS organizations. For example, this research revealed that users do not adopt Facebook because of its usefulness alone; instead, users' acceptance is developed through a sequence of variables such as individual differences, psychological factors, and social and organizational beliefs. Accordingly, social media organizations should not consider only strategies that apply to just one context, but also to other contexts characterized by different beliefs, perceptions, and cultures. Moreover, the evidence provided here is that social support theory has a significant influence on SNSs acceptance. This suggests that social media organizations should provide services to support this concept. Furthermore, the significant positive effect of perceived playfulness on the intention to use SNSs implied that designers and organizations should pay further attention to the entertainment services provided by social networks. Recommendations for Researchers To validate the proposed conceptual framework, researchers from different countries and cultures are invited to apply the model. Moreover, a longitudinal research design could be implemented to gather data over a longer period, in order to investigate whether users have changed their attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and intention by the end of the study period. Other constructs, such as individual experience, compatibility, and quality of working life could be included to improve the power of the proposed model. Impact on Society Middle Eastern Facebook users regard the network as an important tool for interacting with others. The increasing number of Facebook users renders it a tool of universal communication and enjoyment, as well as a marketing network. However, knowledge of the constructs affecting the application of SNSs is valuable for ensuring that such sites have the various functions required to suit different types of user.


The aim of this paper was to characterize clinical engineering from the perspective of scientific publications. First of all, the most significant factors that influence the change in health systems are briefly exposed. Then, clinical engineering is defined and its main functions and evolution within the development of the health system is explained. Finally, the author describes the state of the field from the viewpoint of the scientific publications; an apparent lack of interest in the engineering community to publish scientific research was observed. This behavior can be seen in the clear declining tendency in the number of citations and the number of publications (in volume or quantity) in major scientific journals in the field. Finally, current challenges and future developments must be addressed to accomplish a better positioning of the specialty in the publishing world.


Conservation of Mahonia leschenaultii was achieved through multiple axillary shoot formation in single node cultures, in vitro and ex vitro rooting of the shoots, and successful reintroduction and establishment of the rooted plants in the forests of Palani hills in Southern India. A preliminary experiment on the culture of young nodal explants (1.0-1.5 cm) from field-grown plants in different basal nutrient media revealed high frequency bud beak in Schenk and Hildebrandt (SH) medium followed by Woody Plant medium and Murashige Skoog medium in 4 weeks. Subsequent culture of both shoot tips (0.5-0.8 cm) and nodes for 6 weeks in SH medium supplemented with various concentration of cytokinins resulted in optimal formation of 3.6 shoots in 80% of the nodes against 1.35 shoots in 75% of the shoot tips in the presence of 2.0 and 1.0 mg/l benzyl adenine (BA), respectively. Invariably, the resident apical and axillary meristems grew into a single shoot (1.0-1.8 cm) in 1-2 weeks followed by the characteristic differentiation of additional buds from its base. A synergistic combination of 1.0 mg/l BA and 0.02 mg/l indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) induced the maximum number (5.9) of axillary shoot formation which were relatively high (75%) when the explant was collected during May-June and the fifth nodes from the top of the growing shoots were used. Repeated subculture of the nodes from shoot cultures at 5-6 week intervals in medium supplemented with reduced concentrations of the growth regulators (0.5 mg/l BA, 0.01 mg/l IAA) through at least 10 passages enabled consistent production of 6-7 shoots per node at 92% success rate without loss of vigour, growth and morphological abnormalities. Shoots of 3-6 cm were rooted in vitro in the presence of 1.0 mg/l indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) and hardening in the mist house at 76-78% and these rooted plants established in a potting medium of river sand and top soil (1:1) under constant mist irrigation. The plants reared in the nursery for 5-8 weeks were successfully reintroduced into the natural forest segment of the Institute's campus (MSL 200 m) at Palode and Vattakanal shola forests of Palani hills (MSL 2500 m) with establishment frequencies of 78.8 and 90.6, respectively, after 18 months. Growth characteristics of the plants (height, number of leaves and branches) reintroduced into native habitat at Vattakanal were better than those at Palode. Genetic fidelity of the 12-month old plants established in the nursery/field was confirmed by analysis of amplified products of genomic DNA obtained with random primers.


With growing popularity of green building rating systems, LEED and GSAS projects are becoming a building industry standard in Qatar. Furthermore, more projects targeting higher rating in green building certification has become a trend. A large number of green buildings have been focused on in terms of energy and water efficiency, where a high level of certification can be achieved and their performance can be easily translated and expressed into numeric terms. Media tends to highlight efficiencies in green buildings that are broadcasted as high-performance buildings. Although non-quantifiable benefits of green buildings such as enhanced occupant's productivity, health and comfort are equally important, emphasis on human factor has drawn relatively less attention to the green building design process. Considering the significance of cost incurred for building occupants in facility operation, worker's wages and expenses are much higher than the utility cost or any other operation costs. Especially, low energy and water tariffs in Qatar actually lower financial feasibility of high energy and water performance green buildings than those in other countries. In addition, due to hot weather conditions in Qatar, people spend more hours indoor than outdoor compared with other climate zone countries. In this regard, building occupant's health and comfort should be more importantly treated in the context of green building in Qatar. According to a study on Qatari public health, a large percentage of students in Qatar experience allergic diseases (asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema) and communicable diseases (influenza and hepatitis). Such diseases result in absenteeism and poor academic performance. Knowing that Doha was ranked the 12th worst ambient air quality in fine particles by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014, prevalence of such diseases indicates that indoor environment is not sufficiently protected from polluted outdoor conditions. The diseases eventually burden the national healthcare cost to attend patients and potentially deteriorate Qatari businesses as well as education performance resulted from high absenteeism. This paper aims to first understand the level of the occupant's satisfaction in indoor air quality and thermal comfort based on a survey questionnaire for typical operating buildings in Qatar, and strives to find the correlation between indoor environment quality in Qatari buildings and locally prevalent allergic and communicable diseases. The study finally aims to determine the root causes of health-related indoor environmental quality issues and to suggest improvements in design, construction and operation of a green building implementation.


The influence of mass-transport limitations on the initial reaction rates of a lipase-catalyzed stereoselective esterification reaction has been investigated for two structurally different gelatin-based gels. The time to reach equilibrium is much longer in pelleted hydrogels (pseudo-solid aqueous gels; PAGs) than in pelleted microemulsion-based gels (MBGs). R/S-(+/-)-2-Octanol and hexanoic acid were used as substrates. The reaction takes place by imbibition of the substrate-containing organic solvent into pores of the pelleted gel. To minimize the diffusion distances, the macroscopic surface areas of the gels were increased by granulating the gel pellets. The experimentally obtained initial reaction rates in granules were in good agreement with the theoretically obtained values from extrapolation to infinitely large areas. However, the still low initial reaction rates in the hydrogels compared to those in microemulsion-based gels cannot be explained by diffusion limitations. This finding was supported by the similar activation energies in both gels in granulated form. Changes in apparent molar standard enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs energy for the activated complex formation were also estimated. The low reaction rate in hydrogels might thus be due to partial denaturation of the enzyme during the preparation step, to higher surface energy, or to the influence of a different solvent environment on the enzyme in these gels than in the microemulsion-based gels. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.


Precipitation in urine-separating toilets (NoMix toilets), waterless urinals, and conventional urinals causes severe maintenance problems. Additionally, the partial fixation of nutrients in precipitates may affect the later use and treatment of source-separated urine. The goal of this study was to characterise the mineral composition of the precipitates and to identify the main causes for precipitation. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the main crystalline compounds are struvite, hydroxyapatite, and calcite. We measured concentrations in the solutions of the traps and of the urine collection tank for estimating saturation indices, extent of urea degradation, urine dilution, and elimination of solutes. Our results indicate that bacterial urea degradation triggers precipitation. The composition of the precipitates depends on the urine dilution with flushing water: in low diluted urine, struvite is the main compound, while calcite dominates in systems with high urine dilution. HAP occurs over a wide range of dilution factors. A high fraction of phosphate is incorporated into the precipitates. Dilution with tap water increases this fraction by providing the limiting calcium and magnesium ions. Currently, constructing exchangeable traps seems to be the best solution to deal with problematic precipitation.


EDITED BY ANNE BURNS AND HELEN DE SILVA JOYCE National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2005, 77pp, ISBN 1 74138 103 7 This is the most recent book in a series that deals with teaching and learning in the classroom. The specific focus of this book is the explicit support of reading and writing in adult ESL teaching, investigated through classroom projects within the framework of an action research approach. It consists of three sections: the first outlines the theoretical ideas underpinning the book, the second deals with the nature of action research, and the third and longest section presents the participating teachers' own accounts of their research projects. It is accompanied by a DVD containing excerpts of their classroom teaching.


We present Placeto, a reinforcement learning (RL) approach to efficiently find device placements for distributed neural network training. Unlike prior approaches that only find a device placement for a specific computation graph, Placeto can learn generalizable device placement policies that can be applied to any graph. We propose two key ideas in our approach: (1) we represent the policy as performing iterative placement improvements, rather than outputting a placement in one shot; (2) we use graph embeddings to capture relevant information about the structure of the computation graph, without relying on node labels for indexing. These ideas allow Placeto to train efficiently and generalize to unseen graphs. Our experiments show that Placeto requires up to 6.1x fewer training steps to find placements that are on par with or better than the best placements found by prior approaches. Moreover, Placeto is able to learn a generalizable placement policy for any given family of graphs, which can then be used without any retraining to predict optimized placements for unseen graphs from the same family. This eliminates the large overhead incurred by prior RL approaches whose lack of generalizability necessitates re-training from scratch every time a new graph is to be placed.


Among the genus Potimirim, the sexual system has been studied only in Potimirim mexicana, which was suggested as being a sequential protandric shrimp. The genus Potimirim comprises five described species that occur in drainages along the western Atlantic coast. We tested the hypothesis that there is a common shared sexual system pattern for the genus Potimirim, and that both species reported for Brazil (P. brasiliana and P. potimirim) are sequentially protandric. The animals were analysed with respect to sex, external morphology and nature of the gonads. We found similar results for both species: females were significantly larger than males; the appendix masculina increased significantly as the carapace enlarged; all adult males had cincinnuli and only well-developed testes; all females lacked cincinnuli and had only well-developed ovaries; and all males and females had a non-prehensile third pereopod. The absence of any characteristic that could be interpreted as evidence of sex change indicates that these species are gonochoric species. Therefore we concluded that there is no sexual system shared by all members of this genus. Additionally, we compared our results with a molecular phylogeny previously proposed for the genus Potimirim, as the baseline to discuss the sexual system in this genus.


For decades, the standard procedure when screening for candidate anticancer drug combinations has been to search for synergy, defined as any positive deviation from trivial cases like when the drugs are regarded as diluted versions of each other (Loewe additivity), independent actions (Bliss independence), or no interaction terms in a response surface model (no interaction). Here, we show that this kind of conventional synergy analysis may be completely misleading when the goal is to detect if there is a promising in vitro therapeutic window. Motivated by this result, and the fact that a drug combination offering a promising therapeutic window seldom is interesting if one of its constituent drugs can provide the same window alone, the largely overlooked concept of therapeutic synergy (TS) is reintroduced. In vitro TS is said to occur when the largest therapeutic window obtained by the best drug combination cannot be achieved by any single drug within the concentration range studied. Using this definition of TS, we introduce a procedure that enables its use in modern massively parallel experiments supported by a statistical omnibus test for TS designed to avoid the multiple testing problem. Finally, we suggest how one may perform TS analysis, via computational predictions of the reference cell responses, when only the target cell responses are available. In conclusion, the conventional error-prone search for promising drug combinations may be improved by replacing conventional (toxicology-rooted) synergy analysis with an analysis focused on (clinically motivated) TS. Mol Cancer Ther; 13(7); 1964–76. ©2014 AACR.


Successfully delivering Solutions via Patterns In Patterns-Based Engineering, two leading experts bring together true best practices for developing and deploying successful software-intensive systems. Drawing on their extensive enterprise development experience, the authors clearly show how to deliver on the promise of a patterns-based approachand consistently create higher-quality solutions faster, with fewer resources. Lee Ackerman and Celso Gonzalez demonstrate how Patterns-Based Engineering (PBE) can help you systematically overcome common obstacles to success with patterns. By bringing discipline and clarity to patterns usage, their techniques enable you to replicate your success broadly and scale patterns to even the largest projects. The authors introduce powerful ways to discover, design, create, package, and consume patterns based on your organizations experience and best practices. They also present extensive coverage of the nontechnical aspects of making patterns work, including a full chapter of guidance on clearing up misconceptions that stand in your way. Coverage includes Using patterns to optimize the entire development lifecycle, including design, coding, testing, and deployment Systematically managing the risks and economic returns associated with patterns Effectively implementing PBE roles, tasks, work products, and tools Integrating PBE with existing development processes, including eXtreme Programming, Scrum, and OpenUP Using Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) with patterns Whether youre an architect, designer, developer, analyst, project manager, or process engineer, Patterns-Based Engineering will help you to consistently derive greater business value and agility from patterns.


We study a novel class of mechanism design problems in which the outcomes are constrained by the payments. This basic class of mechanism design problems captures many common economic situations, and yet it has not been studied, to our knowledge, in the past. We focus on the case of procurement auctions in which sellers have private costs, and the auctioneer aims to maximize a utility function on subsets of items, under the constraint that the sum of the payments provided by the mechanism does not exceed a given budget. Standard mechanism design ideas such as the VCG mechanism and its variants are not applicable here. We show that, for general functions, the budget constraint can render mechanisms arbitrarily bad in terms of the utility of the buyer. However, our main result shows that for the important class of sub modular functions, a bounded approximation ratio is achievable. Better approximation results are obtained for subclasses of the sub modular functions. We explore the space of budget feasible mechanisms in other domains and give a characterization under more restricted conditions.


Communities of practice within initial teacher education (ITE) is the focus of this study and the ITE course in question is a Bachelor of Education in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) with a current enrolment of approximately 200 Malaysian students (100 first year, 100 second year). This 'community of practice' is unique in that the students training to be teachers here will return to Malaysia to both complete their training and develop their career, they are not being trained to work in the UK. Since September it has been interesting to observe how the first year students have settled in and to hear on occasion what they have learned from the 'seniors', which is how they refer to the second year group. This observed knowledge transfer was the catalyst for the current research as it prompted questions as to how much, and what exactly, the second years were passing on to their young peers. Lave and Wenger (1991: 98) define a community of practice as 'a system of relationships between people, activities, and the world: developing with time, and in relation to other tangential and overlapping communities of practice'. The Malaysian community of practice may be influenced by a number of factors including other initial teacher education course students they interact with and the UK educational system which they observe throughout their own course.
The current study is in its infancy and is initially focusing on the development and organisation of this Malaysian community of practice and how new members at the periphery learn and move towards being a core member of the community. The preliminary results from focus group data gathered in relation to the issues outlined above will be discussed as will the next stage of the research.


In this issue of European Journal of Pain you will find a paper by Bank and colleagues (Bank et al., 2015) entitled Intended and unintended (sensori-)motor coupling between the affected and unaffected upper limb in complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Bank et al. measured intentional and unintentional coupling of limb movements in 20 patients with upper-limb CRPS and 40 healthy controls in an attempt to differentiate impairments in voluntary and automatic sensorimotor processes in CRPS patients. The participants performed wrist flexion–extension movements in tasks known to engage intentional inter-limb coupling: active bimanual movements, requiring in-phase or anti-phase patterns with the two hands; kinaesthetic tracking, requiring active unimanual movements to consciously track automated (passive) movements of the opposite limb; and unintentional inter-limb coupling (active unimanual movements timed to a metronome while ignoring automated, passive movements of the opposite limb). Two results stand out: (1) performance was impaired in CRPS patients in tasks engaging intentional but not unintentional coupling of limb movements; (2) variability in performance of all movement tasks was significantly greater in CRPS patients than in healthy controls. Interestingly, motor impairment and variability were greatest when the affected limb was the voluntarily active limb.


This paper investigates how financial troubles among Japanese banks in the second half of the 1990s were viewed by the market. Two indicators, the Japan premium and the stock price index of the banking sector in Tokyo, were examined. Econometric tests were employed to see whether different kinds of investors saw the banking crisis differently, and what kind of news had most impacts on market pricing of Japanese banks. Our findings are as follows. (1) Factors that pushed up the Japan Premium most were the Daiwa Bank incidence in the fall of 1995, failures of large financial institutions in November 1997, and uncertainties in the resolution of banking problem in fall 1998. (2) The bank stock index declined (in relative to the general stock index) most in bank failures, in particular by the Yamaichi Securities failure in November 1997. (3) Individual failures of financial institutions may or may not have impact on other banks' stock prices. (4) The bank stock index and the general stock index historically had co-movements, but the structural changes occurred in the co-movement relationship at around the summer of 1995. (5) News that affected Japan premium and bank stocks are sometimes different. The bank stock price index Granger-causes the Japan premium, but the reverse does not hold. The result is consistent with the view that Japan premium reflects both domestic structural problems and banks' liquidity problem in the euro dollar market, while the bank stock prices reflect the former only.


Ischemia/reperfusion injury is an unavoidable consequence of organ transplantation that results in the generation of reactive oxygen species and the initiation of an inflammatory response. The characteristic features of ischemia/reperfusion injury involve the activation of endothelium by reactive oxygen species and inflammatory cytokines, induction of adhesion molecules (for example, P-selectin and E-selectin), adherence of platelets, and infiltration by leukocytes consisting initially of neutrophils with subsequent infiltration by monocytes, macrophages, and T lymphocytes. In this review, we consider the current evidence for involvement of chemokines during the period after ischemia/reperfusion injury and examine the temporal relation between chemokine expression and leukocyte infiltration. Changes in the profile of chemokines after ischemia/reperfusion injury, in association with upregulation of endothelial adhesion molecules, may contribute to the immunogenicity of a transplanted organ by increasing its ability to recruit particular leukocyte subsets at specific time points after ischemia/reperfusion injury.


Title of Dissertation: On-Chip Thermoelectric Cooling of Semiconductor Hot Spot Peng Wang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Avram Bar-Cohen Assistant Professor Bao Yang Department of Mechanical Engineering The Moore's Law progression in semiconductor technology, including shrinking feature size, increasing transistor density, and faster circuit speeds, is leading to increasing total power dissipations and heat fluxes on silicon chip. Moreover, in recent years, increasing performance has resulted in greater nonuniformity of on-chip power dissipation, creating microscale hot spots that can significantly degrade the processor performance and reliability. Application of conventional thermal packaging technology, developed to provide uniform chip cooling, to such chip designs results in lower allowable chip power dissipation or overcooling of large areas of the chip. Consequently, novel thermoelectric cooler (TEC) has been proposed recently for on-chip hot spot cooling because of its unique ability to selectively cool down the localized microscale hot spot. In this dissertation the potential application of thermoelectric coolers to suppress on-chip hotspots is explored using analytical modeling, numerical simulation, and experimental techniques. Single-crystal silicon is proposed as a potential thermoelectric material due to its high Seebeck coefficient and its thermoelectric cooling performance is investigated using device-level analytical modeling. Integrated on silicon chip as an integral, on-chip thermoelectric cooler, silicon microcooler can effectively reduce the hotspot temperature and its effectiveness is investigated using analytical modeling and numerical simulation, and found to be dependent of doping concentration in silicon, electric contact resistance, hotspot size, hotspot heat flux, die thickness and microcooler size. The other novel on-chip hotspot cooling solution developed in this dissertation is to use a mini-contact enhanced TEC, where the mini-contact pad connects the silicon chip and the TEC to concentrate the thermoelectric cooling power onto a spot of top surface of the silicon chip and therefore significantly improve the hotspot cooling performance. Numerical simulation shows hotspot cooling is determined by thermal contact resistance, thermoelectric element thickness, chip thickness, etc. Package-level experiment demonstrates that spot cooling performance of such mini-contact enhanced TEC can be improved by about 100%. ON-CHIP THERMOELECTRIC COOLING OF SEMICONDUCTOR HOT SPOT


Induction is a pervasive tool in computer science and mathematics for defining objects and reasoning on them. Coinduction is the dual of induction and as such it brings in quite different tools. Today, it is widely used in computer science, but also in other fields, including artificial intelligence, cognitive science, mathematics, modal logics, philosophy and physics. The best known instance of coinduction is bisimulation, mainly employed to define and prove equalities among potentially infinite objects: processes, streams, non-well-founded sets, etc. This book presents bisimulation and coinduction: the fundamental concepts and techniques and the duality with induction. Each chapter contains exercises and selected solutions, enabling students to connect theory with practice. A special emphasis is placed on bisimulation as a behavioural equivalence for processes. Thus the book serves as an introduction to models for expressing processes (such as process calculi) and to the associated techniques of operational and algebraic analysis.


People are living longer. The average life expectancy at birth in colonial Virginia was under 25 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy in the United States was still only 47.3 years. However, life expectancy has since increased dramatically, to 70.8 years in 1970 and 76.9 years in 2000. Today there are over 70,000 centenarians, and the U.S. Census Bureau expects this to increase to about 800,000 by 2050. Progress in lengthening lifespan is thought to have resulted from medical and public health efforts, rising standards of living, better education, improved nutrition, and more salubrious lifestyles.

Are there intrinsic limits to human lifespan? Despite dramatic improvement in average life expectancy, maximum documented lifespan in humans has remained at about 100−120 years throughout history. Most people do not live this long, however, because of disease (including age-related disease) and, perhaps also, physiological changes associated with "normal" aging. It has been proposed that such pathological and physiological factors may be interrelated, in that the aged are more prone to disease and have more limited adaptive capacity than younger adults. About 80% of older adults have age-related disorders like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease, and 50% have at least two. Thus, aging has been described as a "risk factor" for various diseases, but the practical value of identifying such a non-modifiable risk factor—as opposed to modifiable risk factors like diet or hypertension—is unclear. Some have gone so far as to consider aging the "cause" of age-related diseases, although this does not explain why such diseases do not develop in everyone, nor why different individuals get different diseases. Aging (i.e., becoming chronologically old) is inevitable, but age-related diseases may not be.

A major goal of modern medicine is to preserve quality of life. Applied to the elderly, this translates into concepts like "successful", "healthy", or "optimal" aging, which are considered to comprise avoiding disease and disability, maintaining good cognitive and physical function, and remaining actively engaged in life. These objectives require the coordinated efforts and combined insights of scientists studying the basic biology of aging—gerontologists—and those focused on age-related disease—geriatricians, internists, neurologists, and others. The major goal of this journal is to provide a forum that will help to fill the current gap between studies of the basic biology of aging and of aged-related disease.


Information technologies have fostered changes in job responsibilities, task
content, and human interactions. The changing tools, methods and strategies
of businesses compel workers worldwide in all capacities to re-examine and
re-evaluate their skills and knowledge. Consequently, this change has also
resulted in a need to re-evaluate and redesign office jobs systematically.
This study examines the relationship between information technology and the
job of the administrative support personnel captured through their use of
information processing technologies. An empirical survey involving 506
administrative support personnel from service industries was carried out via a
structured mail questionnaire. Results indicated that respondents used
elementary to intermediate levels of both technical and non-technical skills
with most information technologies. A major conclusion is that
administrative support personnel are not assuming greater responsibility for performing high-level tasks, such as managerial tasks, that involved the use of
non-text handling technologies. This is contrary to reports and claims made
by management that administrative support personnel were operating in an
administrative capacity, performing tasks at a managerial level, and assuming
greater responsibility.
Findings in this study have also indicated that information technology skill
levels affect support workers' perception of the job characteristics. However,
it was concluded that the more skilled administrative support personnel are in
using information technologies, the higher their perceptions of internal work
motivation. This study is aimed at providing input in designing and
redesigning of office jobs that are both meaningful to the workers as well as
the employers and for educators to deliver curricula that are relevant and
competitive.Therefore, management must redesign administrative support
jobs to take advantage of information technologies to perform higher-levels
administrative and managerial tasks so as to enhance workers' job satisfaction
levels. More importantly, office management educators must provide students
with higher and advanced information technologies knowledge and skills so
that they are able to accept new challenges and excel in their profession upon
entering the job market.


The interaction of IGF-II with the insulin receptor (IR) and type 1 insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF-1R) has recently been identified as potential therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer. Understanding the interactions of IGF-II with these receptors is required for the development of potential anticancer therapeutics. This work describes an efficient convergent synthesis of native IGF-II and two non-native IGF-II analogues with coumarin fluorescent probes incorporated at residues 19 and 28. These fluorescent analogues bind with nanomolar affinities to the IGF-1R and are suitable for use in fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) studies. From these studies the F19Cou IGF-II and F28Cou IGF-II proteins were identified as good probes for investigating the binding interactions of IGF-II with the IGF-1R and its other high affinity binding partners.


With the aging of the general population and an increasing number of stroke survivors, there is growing interest in outpatient stroke rehabilitation as a both an extension of and less expensive alternative to inpatient hospital-based programs. In this chapter, we evaluate the effectiveness of three forms of outpatient rehabilitation, which we have defined as: hospital-based, community-based and early supported discharge. Each will be evaluated again standard or traditional care for an outpatient stroke patient.


The collaborative development of text-based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) has afforded writers an electronic medium for the discussion, production, and publication of e-literature. A MUD is designed to provide an immersive and interactive experience, and is achieved by the creation of a code-based structure that supports a literary text. However, when multiple contributors are involved there is a tension between the inherently fixed nature of literature and the more fluid versioning of software. In many software development environments, ownership over a work is considered to be counter-productive, whereas authorship of literature is assumed more freely and, as a means of contextual explication, is actively encouraged. MUDs must therefore function under colliding principles of authorship and ownership. The production of a large MUD's literary text is conceived similar to the cinematic production of a film, with the lead designer of a MUD assuming the role of a 'director'. The production and proliferation of electronic literature presents new and unique challenges to both the longitudinal administration of a MUD and to the coherence of the literary text. Cohesion of both work and text is hindered by the potentially out-dated, though still functioning, software code of earlier versions of the MUD. Further complications arise during the integration of a new literary text with the already established text of the MUD: style, grammar, language, and thematics, for example, must be uniform. A creative writer, whose intent is to produce a new literary text for a MUD, may be confronted by an already-established literature, into which his or her literary text must be incorporated. The limitations of the code base itself may likewise limit the creative scope for expression. A contributor is limited to only those interactive elements that are supported by the underlying coding architecture. Old versions of code must remain compatible with newer versions, and the opportunities for coherent revision of the entirety of creative output are limited by available developer expertise and the scope of the exercise. A MUD is structurally and creatively dynamic, yet all elements must cohere. We discuss the collaborative development of creative works within the context of software communities, and how systems such as auteur theory have difficulty in providing a theoretical framework for multi-author software projects that have creative outputs, even in those hierarchical projects where they would seem most appropriate. We outline how players in these environments encounter a rich and varied literary experience that is an amalgamation of multiple authors and styles of writing. We discuss relevant models for analysing and understanding this type of e-literature, and provide guidelines for how they can be altered to allow for a more effective application.


An important component of many scientific computations is the matrix-vector multiplication. An efficient parallelization of the matrix-vector multiplication would instantly lower computation times in many areas of scientific computing, and enable solving larger problems than is currently possible. A major obstacle in development of this parallelization is finding out how to distribute the matrix data over all processors without introducing a large communication cost. This problem can be accurately modelled by the matrix partitioning problem with an appropriate cost function. In this thesis, an optimal branch-and-bound algorithm for 2-way matrix partitioning is developed. Since matrix partitioning is NP-Complete, a polynomial time algorithm is not expected to exist. However, several lower bounds on the cost of branches of the branching-tree are introduced in this thesis, reducing the computation time of the optimal algorithm significantly. Comparisons with Integer Linear Programs that solve the same problem show that the branch-and-bound method is efficient in solving the 2-way matrix partitioning problem. The algorithm was able to find the optimal 2-way partitioning of 75% of all matrices of the University of Florida Sparse Matrix Collection [12] with at most 200 rows or columns. Finally, several suggestions for further research on optimal bipartitioning matrices are given. In Chapter 3, using information on common characteristics of optimal solutions, a new heuristic method is developed that attempts to find good solutions in polynomial time. This heuristic is not based on hypergraphs, as most publicly available partitioners are, but uses a novel partitioning model. The model assigns individual rows and columns to different processors, ensuring a low computation time, and allows for 2-dimensional partitionings, ensuring a high solution quality. In its current form, the heuristic partitions the matrix in p parts directly when solving the p-way partitioning problem, avoiding the possible negative effects of recursive bisection. Furthermore, a multilevel scheme is included to enable solving extremely large matrices in reasonable time. Comparison of the solution quality of the new heuristic with that of the state-of-the-art matrix partitioning software Mondriaan 3.0 [40] shows that for some matrices, the new heuristic performs significantly better. Finally, in Appendix A, an orthogonal array testing method is applied in order to find better default values for the parameters of Mondriaan 3.0. This results in values that produce solutions that have, on average, a 10.4 % smaller cost than the default values would produce. Furthermore, the results indicate that the quality of the initial partitioning in the multilevel scheme has a large impact on the final solution quality.


Human centronuclear and myotubular myopathies belong to a genetically heterogeneous nosological group with clinical variability ranging from fatal disorder to mild weakness. The severe X-linked form is attributed to more than 200 different mutations in the myotubularin encoding gene (MTM1). In contrast, there are no reports regarding the molecular etiology or linkage studies on the autosomal forms of the disease. Labrador retrievers affected by spontaneous centronuclear myopathy (cnm) have clinical and histological features of the human disorder and represent the first model of recessive autosomal centronuclear myopathy. We previously mapped the cnm locus to the centromeric region of canine chromosome 2. No gene of the MTM1 family maps to the human homologous chromosomal region. Described herein is a disease-associated insertion within PTPLA exon 2, found in both alleles of all affected Labradors and in a single allele in obligate carriers. The inserted tRNA-derived short interspersed repeat element (SINE) has a striking effect on the maturation of PTPLA mRNA, whereby it can be spliced out, partially exonized or involved in multiple exon-skipping. As a result, the amount of wild-type transcripts falls to 1% in affected muscles. This example therefore recapitulates cumulative SINE-associated transcriptional defects that have been previously described as exclusive consequences of independent mutations. Although the function of PTPLA in metazoa remains unknown, the characterization of a hypomorphic mutation in Labradors with centronuclear myopathy provides new clues about the molecular complexity of skeletal myofiber homeostasis. These results also suggest that impaired PTPLA signaling might be implicated in human myopathies.


This thesis is concerned with the problem of how to outline regions of interest in medical images, when
the boundaries are weak or ambiguous and the region shapes are irregular. The focus on machine learning
and interactivity leads to a common theme of the need to balance conflicting requirements. First,
any machine learning method must strike a balance between how much it can learn and how well it
generalises. Second, interactive methods must balance minimal user demand with maximal user control.
To address the problem of weak boundaries,methods of supervised texture classification are investigated
that do not use explicit texture features. These methods enable prior knowledge about the image to
benefit any segmentation framework. A chosen dynamic contour model, based on probabilistic boundary
tracking, combines these image priors with efficient modes of interaction. We show the benefits of the
texture classifiers over intensity and gradient-based image models, in both classification and boundary
extraction.
To address the problem of irregular region shape, we devise a new type of statistical shape model
(SSM) that does not use explicit boundary features or assume high-level similarity between region
shapes. First, the models are used for shape discrimination, to constrain any segmentation framework
by way of regularisation. Second, the SSMs are used for shape generation, allowing probabilistic segmentation
frameworks to draw shapes from a prior distribution. The generative models also include
novel methods to constrain shape generation according to information from both the image and user
interactions.
The shape models are first evaluated in terms of discrimination capability, and shown to out-perform
other shape descriptors. Experiments also show that the shape models can benefit a standard type of
segmentation algorithm by providing shape regularisers. We finally show how to exploit the shape
models in supervised segmentation frameworks, and evaluate their benefits in user trials.


To test the association of HLA-DR antigens with high-responder and low-responder status to either beef or pork insulin, insulin antibodies in diabetic sera were separated into those with average low and those with average high affinity and their insulin-binding capacities for each insulin determined. Significantly less binding of pork insulin by the high affinity antibodies occurred in the group of patients with DR3 antigens compared with those with DR4 antigens (p less than 0.01) and DR3/4 antigens (p less than 0.01). The difference in the binding capacity of beef insulin by the high affinity antibodies between the groups with DR3 and DR4 antigens was less pronounced but still significant. The high-responder status of DR3/4 antigens to pork insulin suggests that the gene or genes associated with HLA-DR4, and responsible for a high response to pork insulin, are dominant to genes associated with HLA-DR3 and a low response. If extended to human insulin and different HLA-DR and HLA-B antigen patterns, these finding should help in the therapeutic selection of the appropriate insulin and thus reduce the induction of an anti-insulin response in patients with diabetes.


The most austral zone of the Southern Cone of South America, which is sometimes under the influence of the Antarctic Ozone Hole (AOH), occasionally receives enhanced levels of ultraviolet B radiation (UV-B: 280-320 nm). Ultraviolet erythemal irradiance measurements began in 1999 by the University of Magallanes in Punta Arenas (Lat. 53.0o S; Lon. 70.9o W), Chile, with the installation of four instruments in different locations in the Magallanes region, which is the southernmost region in Chile and the nearest to the Antarctic Continent. Data from Solar Light instruments, the Brewer spectrophotometer (Serial 180) and the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) from 1999 to 2005 for the Magellan's Region is presented in this paper. These data show a significant number of days in 2004 with low ozone concentrations, specifying that recovery of the ozone column at these latitudes is still uncertain. Data of erythemal measurements from the stations that are part of the Magallanes network were analyzed, with extra attention given to the spring-summer period when the activity of the AOH is more intense. On several occasions important decreases down to 20-53% in the total ozone column were observed. Along with these decreases, increased levels of UV-B radiation were observed. When compared to normal daily concentration values of the total ozone, the days with increased UV-B levels reached values between ~50 and ~200% above normal at the different stations.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether principles-based vs rules-based accounting standards have an effect on measures of financial reporting quality and earnings management strategies.

Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a firm-year-specific variable that captures the extent to which firms' accounting and operating behavior is affected by the characteristics of a specific standard in the USA. Measures of absolute accruals, financial misconducts, signed abnormal accruals and abnormal cash flows are used to assess the effects.

Findings
The results show that absolute magnitude of accruals and probability of financial misconduct is lower, and accrual earnings management is higher when firms' standards are more based on principles. The study also suggests that potentially costlier real earnings management is a consequence of rules-based standards.

Research limitations/implications
This study relies heavily on measures from the prior accounting literature, hence, care has been exercised in generalizing the findings.

Practical implications
This study has direct implications for a number of stakeholders, including standard setters, policymakers, securities regulators, researchers, investors, financial statement preparers and auditors. For example, the future development of accounting standards can be supported by the empirical conclusions in this study together with previous standard-setting ambitions, commentaries, experiments and analytical work.

Originality/value
This study extends prior single-country studies on reporting quality and cross-country studies on transition effects of firms switching from local to International Accounting Standards by observing the impact of accounting standard characteristics on additional measures of reporting quality and accrual as well as real earnings management when holding institutional factors constant. The study also offers archival evidence complementing prior commentaries, experiments and analytical work.


Broadband power line communications (BPLC) network is regarded as a promising technology to provide high quality audio/video services in digital homes. However, the frequency and time-varying characteristics of the channel in PLC network will cause unpredictable packet loss during the transmission, so that the retransmission is inevitable in order to guarantee the service integrity. This paper proposes a fast retransmission method by introducing the internal node to join the work of retransmission based on the packet loss indication from the destination node. The proposed mechanism can be deployed in the system suffered with burst or constant packet loss. Comparing with the traditional retransmission method which totally relies on the source node, the proposed mechanism can reduce the retransmission step and improve the target packet hit rate for both unicast and multicast services.


This paper investigates current approaches to the process of managing strategy within the construction industry. The results from nine case studies have been summarised under the headings of: defining the process of developing strategy; activities and outputs associated with the strategic process; strategic tools and techniques used in the process; outputs to the strategic process and factors that govern strategic success time scale for planning horizons; the level of personnel involvement; and the most important factors for successful implementation of strategy. The strategic frameworks adopted by the case study organisations have been combined into a single framework for managing the strategic process. Several issues of strategic concern were identified and recommendations have been put forward under three headings: development of the strategic process; improvement of internal and external audits; and increased application of appropriate tools and techniques.


This paper discusses the legal effects of a seemingly paradoxical situation: an international agreement falls at least in part within the exclusive competence of the Community, and yet the Member States are parties to the agreement and the Community is not. This situation, while not common, is not as unusual as we might imagine. It may occur for several reasons: it may be decided that it is in the Community interest, for political or other reasons, that the Member States rather than the Community should participate; it may be the case that only States, and not regional economic integration organisations (REIOs) such as the EC, are entitled to participate; it may be that when the agreement was originally concluded the Member States were competent - since then, however, EC exclusivity has 'supervened'. In cases such as these the European Court of Justice has taken the view that the Member States party to the agreement are acting on behalf of the Community, and in its interests. The legal questions explored in this paper arise out of the fact that the international agreement is not formally a 'Community agreement' within the scope of Article 300 EC and thus the matters regulated by that provision, including the binding nature of the agreement as far as the Community is concerned, and its place in the Community legal order, are not expressly resolved. Although these agreements are in some senses anomalous, and their position in the Community legal order may be ambiguous, they also illustrate the constraints under which the Member States – although fully sovereign States – may operate as a result of their Community obligations, the way in which the international identity of the Union may be represented by the Member States, and the accommodations possible between the demands of the Community legal order and the practical exigencies of international treaty-making.


Comparative political economists who use historical institutionalism have made great contributions in describing what happened in cases of political economic change in advanced industrialized democracies, but they have great difficulty explaining much of why this happened. This paper argues that a discursive institutionalist analytic framework helps to explain why, and it will show how by offering methodological guidelines for the analysis of ideas and discourse in action. It will focus on such issues as the timing and content of change, both revolutionary and evolutionary; the agents and context of change through their articulation of ideas in discursive interactions in both the meaning-based frameworks of communication and the structural frameworks elucidated by historical institutionalists. The paper illustrates throughout with examples from the historical and discursive institutionalist literatures on national capitalisms and welfare states.


Patient and facility level determinants of non-concordance with recommended breast cancer treatment Jean Alison McDougall Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Christopher I. Li Public Health – Epidemiology Background: Guidelines for the management of early stage invasive breast cancer include locoregional and systemic treatments that, on average, prolong disease-free and overall survival. Yet, a considerable proportion of women do not receive some or all of the guideline recommended breast cancer care. Disparities in the receipt of radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and endocrine therapy by patient and treatment facility characteristics may contribute to demographic differences in breast cancer survival. Methods: This population-based cohort study enrolled women aged 20 – 69 years, diagnosed with stage I, II, or IIIA breast cancer in the Seattle-Puget Sound area between 2004 and 2011, who were identified through the local Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results cancer registry. Concordance with National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline recommendations and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)/NCCN Quality Measures (QMs) was assessed for 1,344 women using data collected from cancer registry records and patient self-report. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the association between patient and facility characteristics and non-concordance with NCCN guidelines and QMs. Results: Compared to women with uninterrupted insurance coverage, women who did not have insurance at some point during their breast cancer treatment had a 3.5-fold (95% CI: 1.0-10.5) higher likelihood of non-concordance with NCCN guidelines for radiation therapy, and a 3.5-fold (95 % CI 1.210.5) higher likelihood of non-concordance with NCCN guidelines for chemotherapy. Low income was consistently associated with risk of non-concordance, with multivariate odds ratios of 2.3 (95% CI: 1.04.9) for radiation therapy guidelines, 4.6 (95% CI: 1.8-11.6) for chemotherapy guidelines, and 3.7 (95% CI: 1.4-9.7) for endocrine therapy guidelines associated with an annual family income of <$50,000 relative to that of ≥$90,000. Conclusions: Economic factors were associated with non-receipt of most forms of recommended treatment. Interventions, such as patient navigation, may help remove individual-level barriers to the receipt of guideline-concordant breast cancer treatment in uninsured, underinsured, and low-income women.


'Lockdown' periods in response to COVID-19 have provided a unique opportunity to study the impacts of economic activity on environmental pollution (e.g., NO2, aerosols, noise, light). The effects on NO2 and aerosols have been very noticeable and readily demonstrated, but that on light pollution has proven challenging to determine. The main reason for this difficulty is that the primary source of nighttime satellite imagery of the earth is the SNPP-VIIRS/DNB instrument, which acquires data late at night after most human nocturnal activity has already occurred and much associated lighting has been turned off. Here, to analyze the effect of lockdown on urban light emissions, we use ground and satellite data for Granada, Spain, during the COVID-19 induced confinement of the city's population from 14 March until 31 May 2020. We find a clear decrease in light pollution due both to a decrease in light emissions from the city and to a decrease in anthropogenic aerosol content in the atmosphere which resulted in less light being scattered. A clear correlation between the abundance of PM10 particles and sky brightness is observed, such that the more polluted the atmosphere the brighter the urban night sky. An empirical expression is determined that relates PM10 particle abundance and sky brightness at three different wavelength bands.


The research described in this thesis details the design, construction, and experimental results in developing a virtual cathode oscillator (vircator) high power microwave (HPM) source. The HPM source utilizes two independent vircators to create simultaneous microwave signals whose frequencies are variable from approximately 1 GHz to 3 GHz. The vircators are powered by a pulsed power modulator. The modulator consists of a thyratron-switched capacitor bank that pulse charges a water transmission line through a pulse transformer. An output pulse is created by a pressurized oil switch with an output risetime of 20 ns. The capacitor bank is charged to 30 kV by a bank of power supplies. A 1:10 pulse transformer charges the water line to 300 kV in approximately 2.5 s. The output pulse from the water line is stepped up to 250 kV by an inductive adder. This signal is utilized to simultaneously drive the two, 32 Ω vircators in parallel with a 70 ns long pulse. Experimental results were collected for both the pulsed power system as well as the dual vircator HPM source. The vircators were characterized individually first to analyze the tunability of the sources. They were then connected in parallel to show frequency independence in order to create tunable multi-frequency HPM pulses.


Richard E. Snow conceived of individuals' performances as the result of a transaction between their aptitudes and the particular characteristics of the situation in which a performance occurred over time. By aptitudes he meant the cognitive, conative, and affective resources that an individual brings to the situation. By situation he meant the characteristics of a particular environment (e.g., test) that afforded or impeded-that assisted or constrained-certain courses of goal-directed action for different individuals. In relation to achievement tests, Snow proposed that individuals' test performances emerged from the organization of their demographic background and intellectual history; an "assembly" of cognitive, conative, and affective processes needed to more or less effectively respond to a series of situation-embedded test tasks (e.g., multiple-choice items); and the ways in which the demand characteristics and opportunities of the tasks were attuned to or mismatched with individuals' aptitude resources. Performance and its determinants were not viewed as static but rather as dynamic processes unfolding over time at the interface of person and situation. From this reasoning and related empirical findings, Snow concluded that a new multivariate approach to validating interpretations of achievement test scores was needed. In this introduction to this special issue, we describe some of Snow's "big ideas" regarding issues of aptitude, person-situation transactions, and test validity. We then describe the design of the "high school study" we undertook, after Snow's passing in 1997, to explore some of these ideas further.


Lateral ordering, position, and number control of self-organized epitaxial semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) are demonstrated. Straight linear InAs QD arrays are formed by self- organized anisotropic strain engineering of an InGaAsP/InP (10 0) superlattice template in chemical beam epitaxy. The QD emission wavelength at room temperature is tuned into the important 1.55 mum telecom wavelength region through the insertion of ultrathin GaAs interlayers. Guided self-organized anisotropic strain engineering is demonstrated on shallow- and deep-patterned GaAs (3 1 1)B substrates by molecular beam epitaxy for the formation of complex InGaAs QD arrays. Lateral positioning and number control of InAs QDs, down to a single QD, are demonstrated on truncated InP (100) pyramids by selective-area metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy. Sharp emission around 1.55 mum is observed well above liquid nitrogen temperatures. The regrowth of a passive waveguide structure establishes submicrometer-scale active- passive integration. The demonstrated control over QD formation is the key to future functional nanophotonic devices and paves the way toward the ultimates of photonic-integrated circuits operating at the single and multiple electron and photon level with control of the quantum mechanical and electromagnetic interactions.


A retrospective review of the management of vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia 3 (VIN 3) over a 16-year period from 1981 to 1997 was conducted. Complete information was available for analysis on 101 patients. The mean age was 53.9 years (range 14–102 years). The mean duration of follow-up was 36 months (range 2–184 months). Fifty-eight percent of patients presented with pruritus. The disease was multifocal in 51% and unifocal in 49% of cases and the left labium majus was the most frequently affected site (27%). Co-existent or previous genital disease was identified in 39% of patients and 8% had a history of invasive gynecological cancer. Histologic evidence of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection was found in 31% of patients. Wide local excision was the most frequently used treatment modality (78%). Thirty-eight percent of patients required at least one further treatment for recurrent disease. Smoking, multifocality, HPV effect, and positive surgical margins were not found to be significant predictors of recurrence. There were three (3%) cases of progression to invasive squamous cell carcinoma of the vulva, one at 6, 7, and 7 years after initial treatment.


Conflict over territorial control in divided societies is widespread, frequently violent and difficult to resolve, and thus merits systematic analytical and empirical engagement. Extending the discussion of territorial approaches to conflict management in divided societies beyond the usually narrower focus on federation and autonomy, this article develops the concept of territorial self-governance as a form of state construction and conflict management, arguing that it encompasses five distinct arrangements from confederation and federation to federacy, devolution and decentralisation and illustrates their manifestations with examples from 12 countries across three continents. The article establishes and tests a framework to explain their emergence, examines the conditions under which they are combined with other conflict management strategies, such as power sharing, and reflects on their track record of providing stability in divided societies, finding it more promising than its critics allow.


This paper uses a finite element model to investigate the stability of the Twin-Towers of the World Trade Center, New York for a number of different fire scenarios. This investigation does not take into account the structural damage caused by the terrorist attack. However the fire scenarios included are based upon the likely fires that could have occurred as a result of the attack. A number of different explanations of how and why the Towers collapsed have appeared since the event. None of these however have adequately focused on the most important issue, namely 'what structural mechanisms led to the state which triggered the collapse'. Also, quite predictably, there are significant and fundamental differences in the explanations of the WTC collapses on offer so far. A complete consensus on any detailed explanation of the definitive causes and mechanisms of the collapse of these structures is well nigh impossible given the enormous uncertainties in key data (nature of the fires, damage to fire protection, heat transfer to structural members and nature and extent of structural damage for instance). There is however a consensus of sorts that the fires that burned in the structures after the attack had a big part to play in this collapse. The question is how big? Taking this to the extreme, this paper poses the hypothetical question, " had there been no structural damage would the structure have survived fires of a similar magnitude " ? A robust but simple computational and theoretical analysis has been carried out to answer this question. Robust because no gross assumptions have been made and varying important parameters over a wide range shows consistent behaviour supporting the overall conclusions. Simple because all results presented can be checked by any structural engineer either theoretically or using widely available structural analysis software tools. The results are illuminating and show that the structural system adopted for the Twin-Towers may have been unusually vulnerable to a major fire. The analysis results show a simple but unmistakable collapse mechanism that owes as much (or more) to the geometric thermal expansion effects as it does to the material effects of loss of strength and stiffness. The collapse mechanism discovered is a simple stability failure directly related to the effect of heating (fire). Additionally, the mechanism is not dependent upon failure of structural connections.