Current systems for editing BRDFs typically allow users to adjust analytic parameters while visualizing the results in a simplified setting (e.g. unshadowed point light). This paper describes a real-time rendering system that enables interactive edits of BRDFs, as rendered in their final placement on objects in a static scene, lit by direct, complex illumination. All-frequency effects (ranging from near-mirror reflections and hard shadows to diffuse shading and soft shadows) are rendered using a precomputation-based approach. Inspired by real-time relighting methods, we create a linear system that fixes lighting and view to allow real-time BRDF manipulation. In order to linearize the image's response to BRDF parameters, we develop an intermediate curve-based representation, which also reduces the rendering and precomputation operations to 1D while maintaining accuracy for a very general class of BRDFs. Our system can be used to edit complex analytic BRDFs (including anisotropic models), as well as measured reflectance data. We improve on the standard precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) rendering computation by introducing an incremental rendering algorithm that takes advantage of frame-to-frame coherence. We show that it is possible to render reference-quality images while only updating 10% of the data at each frame, sustaining frame-rates of 25-30fps.


Lake Baikal (Russia) contains a variety of turbidite systems in different tectonic and depositional settings that provide tests for the role of Quaternary climatic change on turbidite system growth. During Pleistocene glacial climates, all types of systems exhibit increased sediment supply (high sedimentation rates, high net sand percent, thick sand turbidites) and progradation. During Holocene interglacial climate, all systems exhibit reduced sediment supply and retreat. Seismic profiles from the large Selenga Fan and small Tompuda Fan show (1) maximum fan growth during the late Pleistocene glacial melt time, where lobes and large channels reached the distal outer fan, and (2) fan retreat during the transition to the fully developed Holocene interglacial climate. For example, the Selenga Fan surface lobes backstepped ∼55 km from the distal outer fan to the distal inner fan, and the large outer fan surface channel (∼750 m wide, ∼20 m levee relief) evolved to a smaller surface channel (∼450 m wide, ∼13 m levee relief) that extended only to the end of the inner fan. These results show that Quaternary climate controls the growth of the Lake Baikal turbidite systems in a setting where there are no significant water-level changes, which often are cited as the main control on turbidite system growth. The Lake Baikal and other marine turbidite systems suggest that climatic control of sediment supply, unrelated to sea-level lowering and tectonic effects, may have been a much more important control for turbidite systems than previously believed, not only during the Pleistocene, but perhaps also for ancient systems.


The histologic effects of a contact ultrasound applicator were compared with those of the immersion applicator that is currently used clinically for the treatment of glaucoma. The applicator coupling cone uses a distensible rubber membrane that can be inflated to control stand-off distance relative to the surface of the eye. This feature allows the focal point of the therapeutic beam to be placed at selective depths. Histologic comparisons of lesions in rabbit and pig eyes showed lesions in the sclera and ciliary body that were similar to those produced by the immersion transducer when the same focal position was used. Moving the focal point to a greater depth resulted in less superficial damage, yet still produced ciliodestruction. Damage to the blood supply of the ciliary body, as found in human cadaver eyes, may be an additional mechanism of action of therapeutic ultrasound, and perhaps of other transscleral high-energy modalities.


President Theodore Roosevelt was famous for remarking that one should "talk softly and carry a big stick." Justice Powell did not need a big stick, garnering long-term acceptance of his views by writing soft-spoken concurrences that served to limit the reach of broadly framed majority and plurality opinions. This paper focuses on Powell's ability to influence the path of the law through arguably precedential concurrences as opposed to withholding his vote from the majority and then dissenting. We examine cases during the 1975-1981 Terms when his vote was the fifth vote necessary to form a majority and when his was but the sixth or seventh vote; in our data set, the Powell opinion often was taken by lower courts as stating the holding of the Court. Powell's preference for concurrence and his position as the swing vote during much of his tenure on the Court allowed him to have a significant impact on future courts and cases, and may serve as a salutary example for judges on multimember courts.


Hybrid Diagnosis Engine (HyDE) is a general framework for stochastic and hybrid model-based diagnosis that offers flexibility to the diagnosis application designer. The HyDE architecture supports the use of multiple modeling paradigms at the component and system level. Several alternative algorithms are available for the various steps in diagnostic reasoning. This approach is extensible, with support for the addition of new modeling paradigms as well as diagnostic reasoning algorithms for existing or new modeling paradigms. HyDE is a general framework for stochastic hybrid model-based diagnosis of discrete faults; that is, spontaneous changes in operating modes of components. HyDE combines ideas from consistency-based and stochastic approaches to model- based diagnosis using discrete and continuous models to create a flexible and extensible architecture for stochastic and hybrid diagnosis. HyDE supports the use of multiple paradigms and is extensible to support new paradigms. HyDE generates candidate diagnoses and checks them for consistency with the observations. It uses hybrid models built by the users and sensor data from the system to deduce the state of the system over time, including changes in state indicative of faults. At each time step when observations are available, HyDE checks each existing candidate for continued consistency with the new observations. If the candidate is consistent, it continues to remain in the candidate set. If it is not consistent, then the information about the inconsistency is used to generate successor candidates while discarding the candidate that was inconsistent. The models used by HyDE are similar to simulation models. They describe the expected behavior of the system under nominal and fault conditions. The model can be constructed in modular and hierarchical fashion by building component/subsystem models (which may themselves contain component/ subsystem models) and linking them through shared variables/parameters. The component model is expressed as operating modes of the component and conditions for transitions between these various modes. Faults are modeled as transitions whose conditions for transitions are unknown (and have to be inferred through the reasoning process). Finally, the behavior of the components is expressed as a set of variables/ parameters and relations governing the interaction between the variables. The hybrid nature of the systems being modeled is captured by a combination of the above transitional model and behavioral model. Stochasticity is captured as probabilities associated with transitions (indicating the likelihood of that transition being taken), as well as noise on the sensed variables.


The lateralization of neuronal processing underpinning hearing, speech, language, and music is widely studied, vigorously debated, and still not understood in a satisfactory manner. One set of hypotheses focuses on the temporal structure of perceptual experience and links auditory cortex asymmetries to underlying differences in neural populations with differential temporal sensitivity (e.g., ideas advanced by Zatorre et al. (2002) and Poeppel (2003). The Asymmetric Sampling in Time theory (AST) (Poeppel, 2003), builds on cytoarchitectonic differences between auditory cortices and predicts that modulation frequencies within the range of, roughly, the syllable rate, are more accurately tracked by the right hemisphere. To date, this conjecture is reasonably well supported, since – while there is some heterogeneity in the reported findings – the predicted asymmetrical entrainment has been observed in various experimental protocols. Here, we show that under specific processing demands, the rightward dominance disappears. We propose an enriched and modified version of the asymmetric sampling hypothesis in the context of speech. Recent work (Rimmele et al., 2018b) proposes two different mechanisms to underlie the auditory tracking of the speech envelope: one derived from the intrinsic oscillatory properties of auditory regions; the other induced by top-down signals coming from other non-auditory regions of the brain. We propose that under non-speech listening conditions, the intrinsic auditory mechanism dominates and thus, in line with AST, entrainment is rightward lateralized, as is widely observed. However, (i) depending on individual brain structural/functional differences, and/or (ii) in the context of specific speech listening conditions, the relative weight of the top-down mechanism can increase. In this scenario, the typically observed auditory sampling asymmetry (and its rightward dominance) diminishes or vanishes.


ABSTRACT Light scattering by kaolinite dust samples at 532 nm is studied using a newly developed laboratory apparatus. During the experiments, dust samples are suspended in water, aerosolized by a nebulizer, and then injected into the scattering zone, with or without going through a diffusion drier, to generate either dried dust particles or water droplets with dust inclusions. The light source is a dual wavelength (532 and 1064 nm) diode-pumped solid state laser. Light scattered by an ensemble of particles is collected by a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, which is mounted on the rotating arm of a stepper motor. The stepper motor rotates the CCD to cover the scattering angle range from 3° to 177°. Polarized scattering light is measured for the horizontally and vertically polarized incident light. The apparatus is calibrated, using pure water droplets as the scattering media. The response function with respect to the scattering angle is obtained by comparing the measurements with Lorenz–Mie calculations and then used in the later data analysis. Measurements show that the backward scattering features of the water droplets are smoothened due to their dust inclusions. Numerical simulations and measurements are extensively compared and discussed. It is found that the Lorenz–Mie theory is inadequate to reproduce the scattering phase functions of either dust particles or water droplets with dust inclusions. A nonspherical aggregate model is applied to simulate the scattering phase functions. The simulation is able to reproduce the overall scattering features; however, substantial discrepancies still exist due to uncertainties in particle shape and refractive index. Copyright © 2018 American Association for Aerosol Research


Question/Issue: Institutional and transaction costs theories highlight the idea that group affiliated firms outperform unaffiliated firms in emerging economies. The persistence of superior performance for group affiliated firms is, however, questioned by the fast and recent development of markets and institutions in these countries. In this article, we explore this link between firm performance and the evolution of institutional environment. Research Findings/Insights: The setting of the empirical investigation is India in the post-reform era (post 1990). We test for effects of business group affiliation on firm performance over a 17 year time period from 1990 to 2006. Our findings show that (i) the performance benefits of group affiliation erode with the evolution of the institutional environment; (ii) older affiliated firms are better able to cope with institutional transition than younger affiliated firms; (iii) service-sector affiliated firms are better able to cope with institutional transition than manufacturing-sector affiliated firms. Theoretical/Academic Implications: Our findings both support the institution - and transaction costs-based theory of business groups, and extends it by incorporating a dynamic and longitudinal component. They also demonstrate - in line with recent works - that the benefits of group membership differ for different types of member firms. Practitioner/Policy Implications: The article has implications for both managers and policy makers. Managers of business groups should timely adapt their strategy to the evolution of the institutional environment. Policy makers should, instead, devote attention to the consequences of their policies because they may undermine the efficiency of large national companies.


This research was conducted to develop a richer understanding of resistant behavior displayed by adults in the adult learning environment. Resistant behavior occurs when a student declines the learning opportunity by mentally withdrawing, or by co-opting the instructor's agenda, or by attacking the instructor directly. This research addressed two questions. The first was, "How do instructors perceive the underlying dynamics, or causes they cite, of the hostile resistant behavior they have observed and experienced in the learning environment?" The second question was "How do instructors interpret episodes of hostile resistant behavior?" This qualitative research provides an in depth exploration of the experiences of the participating instructors with hostile resistant behavior in adult graduate education. The participants were veteran teachers accustomed to handling resistant behavior, yet this experience stopped them in their tracks. The hostile resistant behaviors may represent a subcategory of resistance not previously researched, and could happen to anyone. This could be challenging for the most seasoned professional. Interviews were guided by grounded theory concepts as described by Strauss and Corbin. Open-ended interviews were modeled on the work of Seidman. The selected instructors had a minimum of twenty years experience in higher education. They were professionally adept, seasoned educators of adults. Key findings were that: participants were unable to anticipate the onset of resistant behavior; the behavior was persistent and intense; the instructors were unable to isolate causes or develop effective coping strategies; the instructors' emotional reactions included a pattern of surprise, confusion, and cynicism; the emotional impact on the participants was often strong and lasting. The dissertation provided recommendations for further research in instructorcentric; studentcentric; and institution-centric categories. Instructor-centric recommendations included: expansion into additional academic disciplines and the training world; effect of on-line delivery methods; impact on instructors' professional reputations; and transformational experience. Student-centric recommendations addressed changes that might be associated with the make up of the student body, such as age and culture; and the effect of the resistant behavior on other members of the class. Institution-centric recommendations included suggestions regarding hostile work environment; protective measures for instructors; and institutionalized support networks.


Aim. The aim of the study was to evaluate the population mortality seasonal dynamics in the settings of emergency medical care availability. Methods. The study was conducted in Sumgait based on the medical certificates of death data analysis for 2013. The average daily number of deaths from all causes and from circulatory system diseases, the monthly number of death cases proportion in the structure of annual death cases, the proportion of deaths from circulatory system diseases among the total number of deaths were calculated. Results. The average daily number of deaths from all causes was 4.42, including 2.72 cases - from circulatory system diseases. The average daily number of death cases from all causes below the annual average rate was observed in June, July, August and September, and when performing the seasonal analysis - in summer and autumn; from circulatory system diseases - in January, June, September and December. The winter and spring increase in all-cause mortality rate was registered, whereas the mortality rate peak was characteristic for February and March. In the seasonality analysis the largest proportion of death cases number from circulatory system diseases in the structure of total annual mortality rate was in the spring. The proportion of deaths from circulatory diseases among the death causes of Sumgait population was 61.5±1.2%. In winter, the proportion of deaths from circulatory system diseases in the structure of causes of death from all causes was minimal (53.3±2.3%), and in the summer - the maximum (68.9±2.4%). Conclusion. The regularity of mortality seasonal dynamics in Sumgait is the winter-spring increase and summer decrease in all-cause mortality rate; distinctive feature of the mortality seasonal dynamics in Sumgait is associated with mortality risk increase in spring due to circulatory system diseases.


ABSTRACT Wellhead chokes are widely used in the petroleum industry. Owning to the high sensitivity of oil and gas production to choke size, an accurate correlation to specify choke performance is vitally important. The aim of this contribution was to develop effective relationships among the liquid flow rate, gas liquid ratio, flowing wellhead pressure, and surface wellhead choke size using the support vector machines (SVMs). The accurate data set was gathered from the 15 different fields containing 100 production samples from the vertical wells at wide ranges of wellhead choke sizes. This computational model was compared with the previous developed correlations in order to investigate its applicability for subcritical two phase flow regimes through wellhead chokes. Results confirmed amazing capability of the SVM to predict liquid flow rates. The value of R2 obtained was 0.9998 for the SVM model. This developed predictive tool can be of massive value for petroleum engineer to have accurate estimations of liquid flow rates through wellhead chocks.


E-portfolios allow students to demonstrate competencies and reflect upon experiences, documenting academic preparation and career readiness. Creating e-portfolios enables students to enhance their learning by giving them a better understanding of their skills, as well as where and how they need to improve to meet academic and career goals. Additionally, the digital artifacts that students accumulate can be used to assess learning at the course, program, department, and institutional level. This report reviews how selected higher education institutions have implemented assessment e-portfolio systems that demonstrate and assess learning.


Unsupervised and self-supervised learning approaches have become a crucial tool to learn representations for downstream prediction tasks. While these approaches are widely used in practice and achieve impressive empirical gains, their theoretical understanding largely lags behind. Towards bridging this gap, we present a unifying perspective where several such approaches can be viewed as imposing a regularization on the representation via a learnable function using unlabeled data. We propose a discriminative theoretical framework for analyzing the sample complexity of these approaches. Our sample complexity bounds show that, with carefully chosen hypothesis classes to exploit the structure in the data, such functional regularization can prune the hypothesis space and help reduce the labeled data needed. We then provide two concrete examples of functional regularization, one using auto-encoders and the other using masked self-supervision, and apply the framework to quantify the reduction in the sample complexity bound. We also provide complementary empirical results for the examples to support our analysis.


We present a bottom-up assembly route for a large-scale organization of plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) into three-dimensional (3D) modular assemblies with core/satellite structure. The protein-assisted assembly of small spherical gold or silver NPs with a hydrophilic protein shell (as satellites) onto larger metal NPs (as cores) offers high modularity in sizes and composition at high satellite coverage (close to the jamming limit). The resulting dispersions of metal/metal nanoclusters exhibit high colloidal stability and therefore allow for high concentrations and a precise characterization of the nanocluster architecture in dispersion by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Strong near-field coupling between the building blocks results in distinct regimes of dominant satellite-to-satellite and core-to-satellite coupling. High robustness against satellite disorder was proved by UV/vis diffuse reflectance (integrating sphere) measurements. Generalized multiparticle Mie theory (GMMT) simulations were employed to describe the electromagnetic coupling within the nanoclusters. The close correlation of structure and optical property allows for the rational design of core/satellite nanoclusters with tailored plasmonics and well-defined near-field enhancement, with perspectives for applications such as surface-enhanced spectroscopies.


By incorporating real time into the analysis of sales and purchases, the phenomena of product innovation, advertising and distribution, the provision of consumer credit, and, ultimately, the production of a changing workforce all become intrinsic to microeconomic analysis.In mainstream economics the series of purchases, say, of a personal computer, then of software upgrades, peripherals, on-line services, and so on are analyzed as discrete transactions. McDermott instead links such purchases withing a "sale/purchase state" occupying the period beginning with the initial purchase of the PC and ending only when all of the PC's services have been exchanged to the buyer. In transforming the analysis of contemporary sales and purchases, Economics in Real Time draws a radically diferent picture of the terrain of a modern economy.John McDermott is Professor Emeritus of Labor Studies at the State University of New York, Old Westbury.


Kinematic analysis has provided important insights into the biology of growth by revealing the distribution of expansion within growing organs. Modern methods of kinematic analysis have made use of new image-tracking algorithms and computer assisted evaluation, but these methods have yet to be adapted for examination of growth in a variety of plant species or for analysis of graviresponse. Therefore a new image-analysis program, KineRoot , was developed to study spatio-temporal patterns of growth and curvature of roots. Graphite particles sprinkled on the roots created random patterns that could be followed by image analysis. KineRoot tracks the displacement of patterns created by the graphite particles over space and time using three search algorithms. Following pattern tracking, the edges of the roots are identified automatically by an edge detection algorithm that provides root diameter and root midline. Local growth rate of the root is measured by projecting the tracked points on the midline. From the shape of the root midline, root curvature is calculated. By combining curvature measurement with root diameter, the differential growth ratio between the greater and lesser curvature edges of a bending root is calculated. KineRoot is capable of analyzing a large number of images to generate local root growth and root curvature data over several hours, permitting kinematic analysis of growth and gravitropic responses for a variety of root types.


This article develops a non-linear model of the ordo salutis with Christ at the centre. It shows that each individual event is a manifestation of what Christ has done and a call to faith in him. Faith is shown to comprise of consensus (agreement) and fiducia (trust). Through this model, the creative tension between the objective (indicative) and the subjective (imperative) dimensions of the gospel as well as the tension between God's eschatological time and our unfulfilled time are maintained in such a way that they both complement and limit each other. This tension, it is argued, is intrinsically linked to the way in which Christ continues to be present within our world as both Lord and Spirit. As Lord, Jesus is proclaimed as the One who has already overcome our broken reality; as the Spirit, Christ continues to be vulnerable to be resisted and rejected by us. As the Spirit of the risen Lord, he is nevertheless able to perform miracles and overcome our broken reality as the gospel is proclaimed. A short analysis of the way in which the Bible refers to some of the events in the ordo salutis confirms the legitimacy of this model. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: It is argued that this model overcomes many objections against the traditional understanding of the ordo salutis. By challenging the underlying presuppositions of both Arminiaism and Calvinism, this article provides a unique alternative which does justice to key insights from both traditions and adds a new voice to the ongoing debate between Arian, Pelagian and semi-pelagian theologians, on the one side, and Reformed theologians, on the other side. It thus makes a significant intradisciplinary contribution to systematic theology. It also aligns the universality of salvation in Christ as the second Adam to the continuing need for a personal faith response to Christ.


We used the gracilis rausde vascular bed to bioassay blood from the two renal veins, vena cava, and aorta continuously for the presence of rasoactive agents before and for 45 minutes after partial occlusion of the left renal artery in dogs. Compared to comparable blood samples from control dogs, left renal venous, vena caral, and aortic blood, but not right renal venous blood, from dogs with renal artery constriction developed vasoconstrictor activity. This was associated with increased renin concentration in plasma from toe left renal vein and the vena cava and an increase in systemic arterial pressure. In dogs pretreated with indomethacin, blood from the right renal vein also showed vasoconstrictor activity. Pretreatment with antirenin serum abolished all of the differences between control and experimental dogs. These findings suggest that during acute unilateral renal artery constriction the constricted kidney releases renin and toe contraJateral kidney releases prostaglandins in sufficient quantity to produce systemic vascular effects.


The Grammar of the English Tense System forms the first volume of a four-volume set, The Grammar of the English Verb Phrase. The other volumes, to appear over the next few years, will deal with mood and modality, aspect and voice.

The book aims to provide a grammar of tense which can be used both as an advanced reference grammar (for example by MA-level or postgraduate students of English or linguistics) and as a scientific study which can act as a basis for and stimulus to further research. It provides not only a wealth of data but also a unique framework for the study of the English tense system, which achieves great predictive and explanatory power on the basis of a limited number of relatively simple rules.

The framework provided allows for an analysis of the semantics of individual tenses which reflects the role of tenses not only in locating situations in time relative to speech time but also in relating situations in time relative to one another to form temporally coherent discourse. Attention is paid to the relations between tenses. On the one hand, we can identify sets of tenses linked to particular temporal areas such as the past or the future. These sets of tenses provide for the expression of a system of temporal relations in a stretch of discourse in which all the situations are located within the same temporal area. On the other hand, there are many contexts in which speakers might in theory choose between two or more tenses to locate a situation (e.g., when we choose between the past tense and the present perfect to locate a situation before speech time), and the book examines the difference that a choice of one or the other tense may make within a discourse context.

The book moves from a detailed exploration of the meaning and use of individual tenses to a thorough analysis of the way in which tenses can be seen to function together as sets, and finally to a detailed examination of tenses in, and tenses interacting with, temporal adverbials.

Original data is used frequently throughout the book to illustrate the theory discussed.


High-quality point clouds have recently gained interest as an emerging form of representing immersive 3D graphics. Unfortunately, these 3D media are bulky and severely bandwidth intensive, which makes it difficult for streaming to resource-limited and mobile devices. This has called researchers to propose efficient and adaptive approaches for streaming of high-quality point clouds. In this paper, we run a pilot study towards dynamic adaptive point cloud streaming, and extend the concept of dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) towards DASH-PC, a dynamic adaptive bandwidth-efficient and view-aware point cloud streaming system. DASH-PC can tackle the huge bandwidth demands of dense point cloud streaming while at the same time can semantically link to human visual acuity to maintain high visual quality when needed. In order to describe the various quality representations, we propose multiple thinning approaches to spatially sub-sample point clouds in the 3D space, and design a DASH Media Presentation Description manifest speci.c for point cloud streaming. Our initial evaluations show that we can achieve signi.cant bandwidth and performance improvement on dense point cloud streaming with minor negative quality impacts compared to the baseline scenario when no adaptations is applied.


The household head characteristics of smallholder cassava farmers supplying raw materials to the major commercial starch processors in Nigeria were examined alongside their market participation categories. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 96 farmers working in clusters in the eight cassava producing states. Data were analyzed using a combination of descriptive and inferential statistics, including the use of independent sample t-test technique to compare farmer's characteristics for the farmers' market participation categories. Results revealed that majority of the farmers were farming for subsistence with only 19.80% selling up to 50% of their farm produce as against 80.20% who sold less. Average mean values were found to be higher for the high market participants compared with the low participants for the age, farming experiences, education, farm size, gender, marital status, household size, training, season of harvesting and fertilizer use, but lower for use of credit, improved cassava variety, harvesting method, farming time devotion, and road access. Only farm size, gender and harvesting season at p<0.01 level and training at p<0.05 level were found to be statistically significant in distinguishing the high and low market participation categories. Policies and programmes aimed at promoting market participation among cassava farmers in Nigeria should be more impactful if directed at these significant factors. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 6 (2): 42-56, December, 2016


Electrospun polymeric nanofibers with flexible three-dimensional porous structures and high surface-to-volume ratio are potential resources for several novel applications in the fields of microand nanoscale filtration, water desalination, drug delivery, life sciences, catalysis, and energy harvesters. Functionalized polymeric fibers with enhanced molecular orientation, surface textural morphologies, and piezo-, pyro-, and ferroelectric properties are of technical and commercial interest around the world. Several emerging technologies including electrical polarization, vacuum plasma treatment, corona discharge, surface fluorination, and chemical treatments to functionalize the polyvinylidene fluoride nanofibers are discussed as potential applications of electroactive materials.


24-hour cycles of light and dark are one of the most significant factors in the built environment that affect human health and wellbeing. In addition to stimulating visual responses, light induces a range of circadian, physiological and behavioral responses in humans, including sleep quality, hormone production, alertness and cognitive performance. These nonvisual responses are primarily mediated via a novel type of photoreceptors that contain the photopigment melanopsin. These photoreceptors can function independently of the classical photoreceptors, rods and cones used for seeing, thus the human eye plays a dual role in detecting light. Since the overall purpose of lighting is to serve the needs of humans, the discovery of the melanopsin-containing photoreceptors should be addressed in architectural lighting design and engineering in buildings. The optimal daily doses of light and dark needed for synchronizing circadian rhythms or promoting other physiological and behavioral nonvisual responses are currently unknown, however there are evidences that light can have beneficial or harmful effects depending on the timing of the light exposure. Daytime light exposure can reduce sleepiness and improve performance but light exposure should be avoided at night, where it can suppress melatonin production resulting in circadian disruption. Human-centered approaches are rarely applied to evaluate building performance, where conventional recommendations for lighting are mainly based on the amount of brightness at a horizontal work plane. One of the challenges is to assess the amount of light received by occupants throughout the 24-hour day, whether the light source is daylight or electric. This paper summaries major implications of the interplay between light and dark for human nonvisual health in the built environment and discusses recent concepts that aim to integrate these findings into practice for supporting healthy lighting design.


Results of picosecond Raman scattering of the excited state of Rhodamine 560 are reported. Both two-and three-color transient spectroscopy are accomplished with a time resolution of ~10 psec. The method was coherent anti-Stokes Raman probing of the excited states with the Stokes field from a broadband synchronously pumped dye laser. The anti-Stokes signal is detected by using a multichannel spectrometer system.


Traumatic insult, ischemia, or degenerative disorder can damage neuronal cell bodies, axons, or synapses in the complex circuitry of the central nervous system (CNS). Peripheral as well as central injuries induce tremendous changes at the molecular, cellular, and system levels in the spinal cord and brain, which lead to devastating losses of functions including sensory, motor, and higher-order functions. Symptoms related to functional deficits depend on the site and extent of injury. Functional deficits caused by neural injury reflect the disruption of the intricate central neural circuits.

After injury, neuronal death or dysfunction occurs in affected areas. Sometimes, however, certain changes may occur in the adjacent and/or remote areas of the nervous system. The CNS possesses plasticity to respond to injury of either the peripheral nerves, the spinal cord, or the brain. Due to neural plasticity, lost functions may be restored. The plastic changes are often maladaptive as shown in neuropathic pain and are exacerbated hypersensitivity.

Although the regeneration capacity of central neurons is limited, extensive changes can occur in the CNS circuitry after injury, reflecting neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity can modify the functions of the CNS including the brain and spinal cord, thereby providing opportunities for improving the limited ability of the CNS to recover from functional deficits. Axonal sprouting of survived neurons, new synapse formation, and factors produced by neurons and glia help reestablish the neural networks and functions. For example, at the cellular level, axonal sprouting, and dendritic arborization appear in injured areas. Peri-injury area and the repaired area of the injured tissue are getting attention for processes through which functional recovery occurs. In these areas, growth-promoting factors and growth-inhibitory proteins are released after injury. Genes which are related to survival, repair, and plasticity are also activated following injury. Enhanced electrical and chemical activities are expected to promote axonal sprouting, contributing to functional recovery. Indeed, axonal outgrowth after injury may be dependent on activities of neural circuits. Otherwise, silent synapses, pathways, or circuits may be activated.

Changes in the central neural circuits which are related to injured neurons play a crucial role not only in functional deficits but also in functional recovery. Furthermore, a variety of strategies including external interventions to manipulate neuroplasticity may be beneficial to improve functional recovery.

In this special issue, we focus on postinjury neural plasticity in central neural networks. Papers covering a wide spectrum of studies related to neural injury are included. The scientific reports updated results of both basic experimental studies in animals and clinical studies in humans. The original research articles as well as a review cover the field of neuroplastic changes in the CNS after injury and functional recovery.

Behavioral hypersensitivity may be related to biochemical alterations in the spinal cord. H. Y. Kim et al. show that elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the spinal cord sensitized dorsal horn neurons and produced hyperalgesia in normal rats. M. C. Lee et al. report the relationship between the alteration of spinal GABAergic inhibition and mechanical hypersensitivity following unilateral chronic compression of dorsal root ganglion in rats.

Peripheral nerve injury can induce plastic changes in the spinal cord and the brain. In this regard, using an animal model of peripheral nerve injury, R. Won and B. H. Lee show that contralateral metabolic activation to nerve injury is related to behavioral crossed-withdrawal reflex in rats. Furthermore, J. Han et al. report that PKM zeta signaling in the insular cortex of the brain is involved in the modulation of neuropathic pain.

In relation to spinal cord injury, B. Azam et al. report experimental data suggesting that plastic changes of the 5-HT system mediated by aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase cells might happen primarily in the subchronic phase and its function could be compensated by plastic changes of other modulation systems in longer chronic phase.

Stem cell therapy may be helpful to improve functional recovery after spinal cord injury. Experimentally, J. B. Iorgulescu et al. show that the combination of putrescine with Schwann cells improves functional recovery in rats with spinal cord injury. Clinically, J. C. Shin et al. report that the transplantation of human neural stem/progenitor cells (hNSPCs) into the injured cervical spinal cord is safe and provides modest neurological benefit up to 1 year after transplants.

Brain injury is much more dynamic and multifactorial compared to peripheral or spinal injury. In relation to functional recovery after brain injury, K. J. Cho et al. report that statins may affect not only the outcome of stroke by the recovery of noradrenergic (NA) neuronal circuitry but also the NA circuit's function after transient focal cerebral ischemia in mice. J. Song et al. provide experimental data suggesting that PKA inhibitor H89 may contribute to functional recovery after ischemic stroke by regulating neuronal death and proteins related to synaptic plasticity in mice. Clinically, J. P. Makela et al. report covarying excitability measured with navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation and magnetoencephalography in the lesioned and nonlesioned hemispheres of stroke patients. As a systematic review, E. Wogensen et al. present a topic related to the effects of exercise on cognitive recovery after acquired brain injury in animal models.

This special issue compiles the state-of-the-art studies on central neuroplasticity after neural injury. We hope that this special issue will contribute to a better understanding of underlying mechanisms of neuroplasticity following neural injury and to development of novel neuromodulation strategies for functional recovery after injury.


We are now beginning to understand that the gut dysbiosis is a risk factor for various human diseases including inflammatory bowel diseases, allergies, metabolic disorders and liver disease. An increasing number of studies have also suggested that gut microbiota is closely associated with tumors such as colorectal cancer. Increasing impact of gut dysbiosis is recognized with the progression of liver injury from mild fatty liver disease to advanced liver cirrhosis (1), where the enterohepatic circulation is considered to strengthen a relation between gut microbiome and the liver. However, the clinical studies suggesting the linkage of gut dysbiosis with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are scarce and inconclusive. The insight on the role of gut microbes in hepatocarcinogenesis mainly comes from animal experiments (2).


Bruno Latour, or love-network theory: An essay in the anthropology of knowledge Bruno Latour is one of the most influential social science theoreticians today. Yet even his admirers admit they are at a loss when trying to grasp the guiding principles of Latourian thought. Indeed, one can't help wondering if there is anything in common between the ethnographic observation of an endocrinology laboratory, the analysis of Charles Péguy's writing style, the anthropological criticism of Modernism, an apocalyptic discourse on Anthropocene, the semiotic study of religious speech, the Actor-Network Theory, and philosophical inquiry into plurality of modes of existence. Latour stresses that his works are part of a "great hidden project", although he does not bother to explain of what this project consists. In this paper, I attempt to throw light on the riddle of Latour's "hidden project" and to figure out its meaning. My analysis is premised on the hypothesis that Latour's system should be interpreted as a form of worldview, similar to what anthropologists used to call cosmologies when studying societies outside the Western world. Like most worldviews in the European tradition, the Latourian cosmology is rooted in the question of evil and salvation. This allows us to perceive the unity of the Latourian system, which aims at transforming the European civilization, including a new reformation of the Christian religion. Latour promises to free us from the errors of Modernism and, at the same time, to renew our conception of ontology, science, religion, politics, ecology and ethics.


Granitoids of the Kaaien, Areachap and Kakamas Terranes of the Namaqua-Natal Province have now been dated with sufficient precision that they can be divided into three clusters relative to the ~1220 Ma collision events of the Namaqua Orogeny. The 1371 to 1220 Ma pretectonic cluster correspond mainly to the arc-related Areachap and Korannaland Groups. The proposed Augrabies Suite comprises 1203 to 1146 Ma syntectonic granitoids and the lower Koras Group extrusives in the Kaaien Terrane. 'Stitching granites' like the Riemvasmaak Granite intrude both the Kakamas and Areachap Terranes, showing that they were adjacent during Augrabies Suite emplacement. The post-tectonic 1113 to 1078 Ma Keimoes Suite, for which a revised definition is proposed, includes the Straussburg Granite and Friersdale Charnockite, which are the main topic of this work as well as the upper Koras bimodal volcanic rocks and intrusions. We used U-Pb ion probe zircon dating, laser ablation ICPMS Hf isotope analysis and electron microanalysis to investigate the geochronology, crustal residence ages and emplacement depths of these two granites. The Straussburg Granite in the Areachap Terrane was previously regarded as a syn- to late-tectonic granite because of its foliated appearance. It is now dated at 1090 ± 9 Ma (2σ error) by a U-Pb zircon discordia upper intercept, with a lower intercept of 322 ± 170 Ma reflecting lead loss during the overlying Karoo sediment deposition and diagenesis. Its foliation is interpreted as having formed during magmatic emplacement. It is thus post-tectonic, apart from discrete shear zones which reflect uplift and transcurrent movements. It is coeval within error with the undeformed upper Koras 1104 to 1092 Ma bimodal volcanic rocks exposed in the adjoining Kaaien Terrane and correlated dykes and intrusions. Despite the overlap in age, the coarse-grained Straussburg Granite is clearly older, because it must have cooled and been uplifted from a depth of 22 km and been juxtaposed with the Kaaien Terrane before it was fractured and intruded by numerous fine-grained Koras quartz porphyry dykes. The Friersdale Charnockite is an undeformed mafic-felsic hybrid rock which occurs in both the Kakamas and Areachap Terranes, thus it was emplaced after their juxtaposition following the ~1220 Ma collision events. Two samples of the charnockite give indistinguishable weighted mean 207 Pb- 206 Pb ages for concordant magmatic zircon. Combining the ages gives 1078 ± 10 Ma for the magmatic crystallisation. The Friersdale Charnockite is thus younger than the 1090 ± 9 Ma Straussburg Granite at the 66% (or 1σ) confidence level although the ages overlap at the 95% (or 2σ) confidence level. A few of the cores are older xenocrysts, two being much older and some around 1100 Ma. Lu-Hf zircon model crustal residence ages for magmatic zircon give a range of 2181 to 1789 Ma for the Friersdale Charnockite and 2370 to 2003 Ma for the Straussburg Granite. Together with petrographic and field data, this suggests that both magmas are hybrids which were assimilating material of different ages at the same time as zircon crystals were forming. The Friersdale Charnockite also contains xenocrysts aged 1725 ± 20 and 1475 ± 15 Ma, confirming the presence of Palaeoproterozoic crust in the lower crust. Published Sm-Nd T DM crustal residence ages support this interpretation. A common feature of most of the 1100 to 1080 Ma felsic rocks is their close association with mafic magma, seen as mafic xenoliths, coeval basalt lavas or mineralogical evidence for hybridization. It is suggested that mantle melts were generated due to late-Namaqua transcurrent movements causing pressure release in mantle already heated by the 1112 to 1106 Ma subcontinental-scale Umkondo plume. Mafic intrusions triggered melting of a crust comprising layers with different crustal residence ages. This had been previously assembled during the collisions as the Mesoproterozoic Kakamas and Areachap Terranes overrode the Archaean to Palaeoproterozoic Kaapvaal and Rehoboth Terranes. The granitic components mixed with each other and with the mafic magma, giving rise to the hybrid granitic magmas.


Daily precipitation in the UK has changed over the period 1961–2000, becoming on average more intense in winter and less intense in summer. Recent increases in total winter precipitation are shown to be mainly due to an increase in the amount of precipitation on wet days, with a smaller contribution in the western UK from a trend towards more wet days. If the wet–day amounts are modelled using a gamma distribution, then positive trends in its scale parameter are found across almost all of the UK, consistent with an increased frequency of heavy winter precipitation. Non–parametric analyses confirm an increase in the contribution of heavy events to winter precipitation totals. Analysis of multi–day sequences of heavy rainfall indicate a corresponding increase in their frequency. Results for summer show almost opposite trends: decreased precipitation totals (driven more equally by fewer wet days and reduced wet–day amounts), decreases in gamma scale parameter (although accompanied by a trend towards a less positively skewed distribution) and decreases in the occurrence of heavy precipitation (whether defined parametrically or non–parametrically). A more sparse network of weather stations with data back to 1901 suggests that the recent winter changes are unusual, while the recent summer changes are not, though the poorer coverage reduces the confidence in these longer–period results.


Urbanization and the growth of cities have contributed to increase the load of contaminants in the environment. Among contaminants, air pollutants remain a major cause of concern due to their capacity to affect large populations and the fact that several adverse health effects associated with exposure to air pollution have been described in the past few years. This article reviews and discusses some methodological issues involved in the assessment of these health effects. The first issue relates to environmental health indicators (EHI). These indicators can be seen as measures that summarize aspects of the relationship between health and the environment. The EHI methodology proposed by the World Health Organisation for the development of environmental health actions has been applied in the area of air quality. A second aspect relates to the assessment of exposure to air pollution. This is perhaps the most difficult task for studies in this area. Issues concerning different microenvironments (indoor and outdoor) are relevant and should be taken in to account in order to minimize the errors associated with the correct assessment of exposure to air pollutants. Lastly, a brief discussion of the main epidemiological study designs used to examine the association between air pollution and health effects is presented. The advantages and disadvantages of the main study types and their main applications are discussed. These are not the only essential issues when studying the deleterious health effects of air pollution on health. However, in order to have sound environmental health policies one needs well designed and conducted epidemiological studies taking in to account these main issues. In this manner, better information will be available to those involved in the decision-making process regarding air quality in our cities.


In previous work we introduced KNOWITALL a data-driven, Web-based information extraction system. This paper focuses on the task of automatically extending the system's initial ontology by extracting subclasses of given general classes and by discovering other closely related classes. We first show that the basic KNOWITALL model can be easily extended to accommodate high-precision subclass extraction (SE) and that subclass knowledge can lead to increases by a factor of 10 in the number of class instances extracted by KNOWITALL. Second, we introduce two methods that on average increase the number of subclasses extracted by the SE module itself by a factor of 3. Next, we show how the model can be extended to achieve high-quality related class extraction (RCE), which consists of discovering new classes closely related to the set of known classes. Of the classes discovered by KNOWITALL, in the test domains of Geography and Computers, 79.5% were bona-fide related classes.


This book collects the best practices FPGA-based Prototyping of SoC and ASIC devices into one place for the first time, drawing upon not only the authors' own knowledge but also from leading practitioners worldwide in order to present a snapshot of best practices today and possibilities for the future. The book is organized into chapters which appear in the same order as the tasks and decisions which are performed during an FPGA-based prototyping project. We start by analyzing the challenges and benefits of FPGA-based Prototyping and how they compare to other prototyping methods. We present the current state of the available FPGA technology and tools and how to get started on a project. The FPMM also compares between home-made and outsourced FPGA platforms and how to analyze which will best meet the needs of a given project. The central chapters deal with implementing an SoC design in FPGA technology including clocking, conversion of memory, partitioning, multiplexing and handling IP amongst many other subjects. The important subject of bringing up the design on the FPGA boards is covered next, including the introduction of the real design into the board, running embedded software upon it in and debugging and iterating in a lab environment. Finally we explore how the FPGA-based Prototype can be linked into other verification methodologies, including RTL simulation and virtual models in SystemC. Along the way, the reader will discover that an adoption of FPGA-based Prototyping from the beginning of a project, and an approach we call Design-for-Prototyping, will greatly increase the success of the prototype and the whole SoC project, especially the embedded software portion. Design-for-Prototyping is introduced and explained and promoted as a manifesto for better SoC design. Readers can approach the subjects from a number of directions. Some will be experienced with many of the tasks involved in FPGA-based Prototyping but are looking for new insights and ideas; others will be relatively new to the subject but experienced in other verification methodologies; still others may be project leaders who need to understand if and how the benefits of FPGA-based prototyping apply to their next SoC project. We have tried to make each subject chapter relatively standalone, or where necessary, make numerous forward and backward references between subjects, and provide recaps of certain key subjects. We hope you like the book and we look forward to seeing you on the FPMM on-line community soon (go to www.synopsys.com/fpmm).


Summary
In an effort to elucidate the state of immunity acquired by mice given curative treatment for a malaria infection, white mice infected with Plasmodium berghei were treated with primaquine diphosphate and subsequently exposed to various infectivity procedures for determining whether plasmodia had been completely eradicated or merely reduced to subpatent, chronic levels. Test of cure procedures included: (a) serial blood smears continuing at intervals for 5 weeks; (b) subinoculation of blood into recipients; (c) splenectomy of donors with subinoculation of spleens into recipient mice; and (d) sacrifice of donors with subinoculation of total organ content into recipients.
Blood examination was an adequate criterion for demonstrating radical cure in mice following primaquine therapy since all mice presumed cured on the basis of post-treatment blood smears failed to transmit the infection to recipients inoculated with their blood or organs. Splenectomy did not produce relapses in any of the cured mice.
An apparent attenuation of the infection was noted in recipients of blood and organs from treated animals.
One group of mice, with parasitemias on one or more occasions following therapy, apparently underwent spontaneous cure since they failed to transmit the infection to recipients by any infectivity procedure employed. Furthermore, splenectomy did not evoke relapses in these animals. Therefore, although serial blood smears taken after treatment are adequate for selection of mice uncured by drug therapy, the parasitemia state of such mice cannot be relied on for prognosticating the ultimate infection status of the animal and its consequent immune response to challenge infections.


Hanabi is a multiplayer cooperative card game, where only your partners know your cards. All players succeed or fail together. This makes the game an excellent testbed for studying collaboration. Recently, it has been shown that deep neural networks can be trained through self-play to play the game very well. However, such agents generally do not play well with others. In this paper, we investigate the consequences of training Rainbow DQN agents with human-inspired rule-based agents. We analyze with which agents Rainbow agents learn to play well, and how well playing skill transfers to agents they were not trained with. We also analyze patterns of communication between agents to elucidate how collaboration happens. A key finding is that while most agents only learn to play well with partners seen during training, one particular agent leads the Rainbow algorithm towards a much more general policy. The metrics and hypotheses advanced in this paper can be used for further study of collaborative agents.


Sulfur-cycling microorganisms impact organic matter decomposition in wetlands and consequently greenhouse gas emissions from these globally relevant environments. However, their identities and physiological properties are largely unknown. By applying a functional metagenomics approach to an acidic peatland, we recovered draft genomes of seven novel Acidobacteria species with the potential for dissimilatory sulfite (dsrAB, dsrC, dsrD, dsrN, dsrT, dsrMKJOP) or sulfate respiration (sat, aprBA, qmoABC plus dsr genes). Surprisingly, the genomes also encoded DsrL, which so far was only found in sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms. Metatranscriptome analysis demonstrated expression of acidobacterial sulfur-metabolism genes in native peat soil and their upregulation in diverse anoxic microcosms. This indicated an active sulfate respiration pathway, which, however, might also operate in reverse for dissimilatory sulfur oxidation or disproportionation as proposed for the sulfur-oxidizing Desulfurivibrio alkaliphilus. Acidobacteria that only harbored genes for sulfite reduction additionally encoded enzymes that liberate sulfite from organosulfonates, which suggested organic sulfur compounds as complementary energy sources. Further metabolic potentials included polysaccharide hydrolysis and sugar utilization, aerobic respiration, several fermentative capabilities, and hydrogen oxidation. Our findings extend both, the known physiological and genetic properties of Acidobacteria and the known taxonomic diversity of microorganisms with a DsrAB-based sulfur metabolism, and highlight new fundamental niches for facultative anaerobic Acidobacteria in wetlands based on exploitation of inorganic and organic sulfur molecules for energy conservation.


The Smithsonian's Recovering Voices Initiative partnered with the NGO Cultural Survival to host a conference titled Our Voices on the Air: Reaching New Audiences through Indigenous Radio in Washington, DC, from July 31 through August 2, 2012. The conference convened Indigenous radio producers, linguists, and language and media advocates from Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and the United States, and featured panel discussions, workshops, and one-on-one interviews with participating producers. By providing an opportunity for radio producers committed to broadcasting content in Indigenous languages to share their experiences and learn about each others' approach to developing content, the conference inspired the production of innovative programming and promoted collaborations to enhance the role that Indigenous language radio plays within communities around the world. In every community, the struggle for language revitalization and access to community radio reflects a larger effort for human rights and self-determination in communities around the world. Many participants shared their experiences of intimidation and government intervention in their radio and revitalization work. Yet radio is a strong and widely accessible educational medium, and communities can developed and sustain a station with relative ease. In some communities, a dynamic combination of immersion programs for youth and community radio broadcasts in endangered languages has led to significant revitalization. At the conference, producers and language activists also created new collaborations with participants, sharing content across their stations and formalizing two interrelated broadcast networks, one based in the US and the other in Peru.

Cultural Survival and Smithsonian continue collaborating with local Indigenous radio producers to expand on the stories and recordings from the conference to develop an international radio series for broadcast to a wide community and public radio audience. The series will tell the story of the endangerment of the world's languages, the importance of revitalizing these languages, and the crucial role that community radio programming can play in revitalizing Indigenous languages.

Practical information, large-scale strategies, inspiration for a shared struggle, and a desire to inform the broader public about these issues created a successful conference that Wena Tait from a Maori-language station elegantly summed up with these words: Survival is the treasured goal for all of us, and our language is our strength.


Background: The use of tobacco is the single most preventable cause of death and disease in our society and despite the information delivered through materials or messages to increase awareness of the harms of tobacco, many people continue to smoke. Smoking in Rwanda is prohibited in public areas although staff in a large hospital in Kigali continue to smoke. The question arises whether the smoking behaviour of these hospital workers is due to a lack of knowledge regarding the health consequences of tobacco use, and if they are aware of strategies that can be used to help give up smoking. The smoking rates of health workers is important as it has been shown that nurses who smoke are less likely to intervene with smoking cessation programmes with patients and less inclined to advocate tobacco control policies. Method: A descriptive survey was used to establish the knowledge and practices of smoking among staff members of a large hospital in Kigali, Rwanda. A sample of 135 people was drawn from a population of 600 staff members who were working in the hospital for the year 2003. Results: Responses were received from 122 participants. The proportion of smokers amongst the participants was found to be 12.2%, which is higher than the estimation of prevalence of smoking amongst adults in Rwanda (10.6%). Conclusion: Despite a comprehensive ban of smoking advertisements, as well as restrictions on smoking in public areas by the government in Rwanda, the findings in this study revealed that the number of smokers is still high even in settings that offer health care services to the public.


The concept of multiscale modeling embodies the idea that a comprehensive description of a material will require an understanding over multiple time and length scales. A multiscale model requires that descriptions at all levels be consistent with each other, which can be particularly demanding for advanced materials and complex fluids. For crystalline materials, emerging modeling approaches have married small-and intermediate-scale descriptions in a highly effective manner, but challenges remain at long time and length scales. For soft materials, such as polymers or liquid crystals, modeling techniques have adopted a more or less systematic coarse-graining approach, in which atomic and molecular details are gradually blurred as one seeks to describe longer length scales. This approach presents its own brand of challenges. And, in spite of rapid advances, entire classes of materials, including amorphous glasses, foams, and gels, have resisted attempts to describe their structure and dynamics over long and relevant length and time scales. This issue of MRS Bulletin covers some areas of materials modeling in which enormous advances have been made, but which continue to raise intriguing questions and formidable challenges.


In this paper, a new method for robot path rolling planning in a static and unknown environment based on grid modelling is proposed. In an unknown scene, a local navigation optimization path for the robot is generated intelligently by ant colony optimization (ACO) combined with the environment information of robot's local view and target information. The robot plans a new navigation path dynamically after certain steps along the previous local navigation path, and always moves along the optimized navigation path which is dynamically modified. The robot will move forward to the target point directly along the local optimization path when the target is within the current view of the robot. This method presents a more intelligent sub-goal mapping method comparing to the traditional rolling window approach. Besides, the path that is part of the generated local path based on the ACO between the current position and the next position of the robot is further optimized using particle swarm optimization (PSO), which resulted in a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm that incorporates ACO and PSO. Simulation results show that the robot can reach the target grid along a global optimization path without collision.


A nation of 1.25 billion people composed of numerous ethnic, linguistic, religious, and caste communities, India is the world's most diverse democracy. Drawing on his extensive fieldwork and experience of Indian politics, Sumantra Bose tells the story of democracy's evolution in India since the 1950s—and describes the many challenges it faces in the early twenty-first century. Over the past two decades, India has changed from a country dominated by a single nationwide party into a robust multiparty and federal union, as regional parties and leaders have risen and flourished in many of India's twenty-eight states. The regionalization of the nation's political landscape has decentralized power, given communities a distinct voice, and deepened India's democracy, Bose finds, but the new era has also brought fresh dilemmas. The dynamism of India's democracy derives from the active participation of the people—the demos. But as Bose makes clear, its transformation into a polity of, by, and for the people depends on tackling great problems of poverty, inequality, and oppression. This tension helps explain why Maoist revolutionaries wage war on the republic, and why people in the Kashmir Valley feel they are not full citizens. As India dramatically emerges on the global stage, Transforming India: Challenges to the World's Largest Democracy provides invaluable analysis of its complexity and distinctiveness.


Author(s): Pathak, Deepak | Advisor(s): Darrell, Trevor; Efros, Alexei A. | Abstract: Generalization, i.e., the ability to adapt to novel scenarios, is the hallmark of human intelligence. While we have systems that excel at recognizing objects, cleaning floors, playing complex games and occasionally beating humans, they are incredibly specific in that they only perform the tasks they are trained for and are miserable at generalization. Could optimizing towards fixed external goals be hindering the generalization instead of aiding it? In this thesis, we present our initial efforts toward endowing artificial agents with a human-like ability to generalize in diverse scenarios. The main insight is to first allow the agent to learn general-purpose skills in a completely self-directed manner, without optimizing for any external goal.To be able to learn on its own, the claim is that an artificial agent must be embodied in the world, develop an understanding of its sensory input (e.g., image stream) and simultaneously learn to map this understanding to its motor outputs (e.g., torques) in an unsupervised manner. All these considerations lead to two fundamental questions: how to learn rich representations of the world similar to what humans learn?; and how to re-use such a representation of past knowledge to incrementally adapt and learn more about the world similar to how humans do? We believe prediction is the key to this answer. We propose generic mechanisms that employ prediction as a self-supervisory signal in allowing the agents to learn sensory representations as well as motor control. These two abilities equip an embodied agent with a basic set of general-purpose skills which are then later repurposed to perform complex tasks.We discuss how this framework can be instantiated to develop curiosity-driven agents (virtual as well as real) that can learn to play games, learn to walk, and learn to perform real-world object manipulation without any rewards or supervision. These self-directed robotic agents, after exploring the environment, can generalize to find their way in office environments, tie knots using rope, rearrange object configuration, and compose their skills in a modular fashion.


A collection of letters in a small painted box passed down through three generations of a London family is the starting point for a vivid account of a three-month journey up and down the Nile in a bygone age. The letters, like a time capsule, bring to life a lost world of Edwardian travel and social mores, of Egypt on the brink of the modern age, of the great figures of Egyptology, of aristocrats and archaeologists. In 1907/08 Ferdinand Platt (known to his family as Ferdy) traveled to Egypt as personal physician to the ailing 8th Duke of Devonshire-one of the giant statesmen of the late Victorian age-and his family party, recounting his adventure in letters to his young wife in England. Throughout the journey Ferdy not only reported on the sights of the country around him, with his amateur Egyptologist's eye, and the people he met along the way (including Howard Carter and Winston Churchill) but also recorded his private thoughts and intimate observations of a formal and stratified society, soon to be witness to its own extinction. Introduced by Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson and Ferdy's great-nephew Julian Platt, the letters open an intriguing window onto travel in Egypt during the Belle Epoque and the golden age of Egyptology.


A knowledge representation (KR) language using constraints programming technique is considered. Each knowledge base structuring scheme has merits and demerits, each should be applied for the purpose it best serves, the prime focus being on creating well-grained and efficient KR. The use of the object-oriented approach makes it possible to unify various means of KR such as frames, semantic networks, and production rules as well as methods of constraint programming within the framework of one language. In this paper issues related to representation and reasoning with defaults and constraints in the EHCPRs system and its suitable implementation are taken up.


The legal concept of 'amicus curiae' (friend of the court) was unknown in Israeli law until 1999 when, in the course of a well-known legal decision (the Kuzli case), the Israeli Supreme Court adopted this common law concept as part of Israeli law. Almost fifteen years have elapsed since the legal precedent set in Kuzli, during which time the criteria for participation as an amicus curiae have been established. The aim of this study was to empirically explore and analyse the ways in which the procedural institution of amicus curiae has been used and adopted under Israeli law, and the extent to which it has influenced judicial decisions. The study has used empirical methods, including the collection of quantitative data from computerised databases in Israel concerning cases in which an application to be recognised as an amicus curiae was made. The main findings indicate that, over the last decade, the number of applications for recognition as an amicus curiae has grown steadily. Most of these applications were made by non-governmental organisations in attempting to support private individuals engaged in legal proceedings against the state or for-profit corporations. The findings reveal that the courts have approved most of these applications.


Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) signaling is supposed to be triggered by a dramatic ligand-induced conformational change of the extracellular domain from a closed, self-inhibited tethered monomer, to an open untethered state, which exposes a loop required for dimerization and activation. The ectodomain also untethers spontaneously, but the molecular mechanism is still unknown. Experiments with the mAb806 antibody have suggested the existence of a third untethered state, still uncharacterized, appearing transiently during the tethered to untethered transition, and which exposes a cryptic epitope hidden in the known structures. Here, molecular dynamics simulations of two ectodomain mutants (R84K and G39R) targeting a hinge at domain I-II interface highlight the possibility of such additional intermediate conformer. The new conformation is untethered but surprisingly compact, and originates from a large rotation of domain I that exposes the mAb806 epitope, in a similar way as the EGFRvIII deletion does. The present findings not only point to different molecular processes for ligand-dependent and spontaneous untethering, but also suggest that domain I-II mutation clusters and the EGFRvIII deletion may share a common structural mechanism, based on the removal of an steric hindrance from domain I that restricts dimerization.


Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS), preeclampsiaHELLP (haemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelet count) syndrome, and some other autoimmune syndromes like catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome (CAPS), are microangiopathic disorders that can be diagnosed during pregnancy. Although the underlying physiopathological mechanisms differ, the clinical consequences are very similar in all of them, so that it is very difficult to establish a differential diagnosis. Since each disease has its own treatment particularities, and maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality are high when treatment is not appropriate, gynaecologists need to have a thorough understanding of differentiating characteristics of these disorders. TTP is more common in women, with a peak incidence in the fourth decade of life, and 10% of all cases occur during pregnancy. In the absence of adequate diagnosis and treatment, the maternal and foetal mortality rate approaches 90%. Preconceptional counselling should be provided to women with prior episodes of TTP or congenial Upshaw-Schulman syndrome.


Immunotherapy for cancer has had two main approaches that have lead to clinical applications. The first is stimulating immune responses to tumor cells with cytokines or cellular immunotherapy and the second is blocking tumor immune evasion and the associated inhibition of T-cell activation with antibodies to the CTLA-4 receptor, PD-1 receptor or PD-L1. We have taken a different approach and have developed therapeutic cancer vaccines that are a combination of tumor antigens (whole cells or proteins) with biological adjuvants (the cytokines IL-2 and GM-CSF). This study is a Phase 1a/1b clinical trial of a PSA/IL-2/GM-CSF vaccine in recurrent prostate cancer in hormone-naive and hormone-independent patients. Major inclusion criteria include adenocarcinoma of the prostate, rising serum PSA and no measurable disease. Phase 1a examines the rate of dose limiting adverse events (DLAEs) in an initial course of 6 vaccinations ("induction vaccination"). The Phase 1b examines the rate of DLAEs with a continued course of an additional 6 vaccinations ("maintenance vaccine"). All patients will receive intradermal injections of the PSA/IL-2/GM-CSF vaccine at weeks 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, and 15. In an additional 28 patients the six maintenance vaccines will alternate IL-2 and the complete vaccine (PSA/IL-2/GM-CSF) at weeks 23, 27, 31, 35, 39 and 43. To date, twelve of twenty patients in the Phase 1a portion of the trial have received at least one vaccine injection and ten patients have received all 6 vaccines. Seven of the ten patients that have received 3 vaccines had increased responses to PSA in a lymphocyte blastogenesis assay and five of the nine patients had an increase in their response after 6 vaccines. None of the patients vaccinated in the Phase 1a portion have had a DLAE and enrollment continues in the Phase 1a. Citation Format: Jonathan F. Head, Gregory A. Daniels, Michelle McKinney, Weg Ongkeko, Jessica Wang-Rodriguez, Kyoko Sakamoto, Robert L. Elliott. Phase 1 clinical trial of a therapeutic prostate cancer vaccine containing PSA/IL-2/GM-CSF in PSA defined biochemical recurrent prostate cancer patients. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR Inaugural International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Translating Science into Survival; September 16-19, 2015; New York, NY. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Immunol Res 2016;4(1 Suppl):Abstract nr A048.


Guayabano fruit juices were exposed to gamma ray doses of 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 KGy, stored for 0, 4 and 8 days, and used for treatment of Vigna radiate (L.) Wilczek seedlings. The effects on V. radiate were evaluated using the following parameters: root and shoot lengths, % survival, % survivors that .flowered and formed pods, pod yield, pod length and seedset. Except for plant survival and pod length, all the other characters were significantly affected by irradiated juices. Chlorophyll mutants were not produced. Increased frequency of viable leaf variants was observed in the M2 seedlings of plants treated with irradiated juice.


Background: While physical activity (PA) provides many physical, social, and mental health benefits for older adults, they are the least physically active age group. Ecological models highlight the importance of the physical environment in promoting PA. However, results of previous quantitative research revealed inconsistencies in environmental correlates of older adults' PA that may be explained by methodological issues. Qualitative studies can inform and complement quantitative research on environment-PA relationships by providing insight into how and why the environment influences participants' PA behaviors. The current study aimed to provide a systematic review of qualitative studies exploring the potential impact of the physical environment on older adults' PA behaviors. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in databases of various disciplines, including: health, architecture and urban planning, transportation, and interdisciplinary databases. From 3,047 articles identified in the physical activity, initial search, 31 articles published from 1996 to 2012 met all inclusion criteria. An inductive content analysis was performed on the extracted findings to identify emerging environmental elements related to older adults' PA. The identified environmental elements were then grouped by study methodologies [indoor interviews (individual or focus groups) vs spatial methods (photo-voice, observations, walk-along interviews)]. Results: This review provides detailed information about environmental factors that potentially influence older adults' PA behaviors. These factors were categorized into five themes: pedestrian infrastructure, safety, access to amenities, aesthetics, and environmental conditions. Environmental factors especially relevant to older adults (i.e., access to facilities, green open spaces and rest areas) tended to emerge more frequently in studies that combined interviews with spatial qualitative methods. Conclusions: Findings showed that qualitative research can provide in-depth information on environmental elements that influence older adults' PA. Future qualitative studies on the physical environment and older adults' PA would benefit from combining interviews with more spatially-oriented methods. Multidisciplinary mixed-methods studies are recommended to establish quantitative relationships complemented with in-depth qualitative information.


Successful risk management strategies for agribusiness firms based on futures and options contracts are contingent on their ability to accurately forecast basis. This research addresses three primary questions as they relate to basis forecasting accuracy: (a) What is the impact of adopting a time-to-expiration approach, as compared to the more common calendar-date approach? (b) What is the optimal number of years to include in calculations when forecasting livestock basis using historical averages? and (c) What is the effect of incorporating current basis information into a historical-average-based forecast? Results indicate that use of the time-to-expiration approach has little impact on forecast accuracy compared to using a simple calendar approach, but forecast accuracy is improved by incorporating at least a portion of current basis information into basis forecasts.


We propose OFDM to improve key generation rate of frequency-coded QKD system. Simulation results show raw keylength of 20 kbits/s for link lengths upto 50 km. Frequency guard bands and the choice of orthogonal sub-carrier spacing reduces noise power, leading to lower QBER and increased link length.


ABSTRACT The basidiomycete Oncobasidium theobromae was identified as the cause of a devastating disease of cacao named vascular-streak dieback (VSD) in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s. VSD now causes losses among cacao seedlings and kills branches in mature cacao trees throughout Southeast Asia and parts of Melanesia. The characteristic symptoms include a green-spotted chlorosis and fall of leaves beginning on the second or third flush behind the stem apex, raised lenticels, and darkening of vascular traces at the leaf scars and infected xylem. Eventually complete defoliation occurs and, if the fungus spreads to the trunk, the tree will die. O. theobromae is a highly specialized, near-obligate parasite of cocoa. It is a windborne, leaf-penetrating, vascular pathogen, and may have evolved as an endophyte on an as yet unidentified indigenous host. The rate of disease spread on cocoa is limited because basidiocarps develop only on fresh leaf scars during wet weather, and basidiospores remain viable for a few hours on the night they are shed. Consequently, very few new infections occur beyond 80-m from diseased trees. Transmission of the disease through seed or infected cuttings has not been demonstrated. Strict quarantine measures applied to the movement of intact plants are crucial in reducing spread of the disease. Integrated management, including the planting of less susceptible genotypes, nursery construction and management, canopy pruning and shade management, provides effective control.


Patents on software and business methods appear to have a pivotal position in today's economy, yet they have remained a policy backwater in which scope of patentable subject matter has expanded without legislative input. This is changing as Europe struggles with patent reform. A push by the European Commission to validate and promote software patents has been opposed by many companies and professionals, and especially the open source community. In this process, it has become clear that Europe opposes the broad non-technical patents on business methods that are now available in the U.S., signaling a major rift in international standards of patentability.

Recent hearings held by competition agencies in the U.S. show severe problems of overpatenting that extend beyond software to much of the ICT sector. These problems have been ignored by the Commission, which despite a pro forma effort to address economic issues, clearly feels more comfortable framing the issue in legal terms. In outlining what a properly developed policy framework would look like, the paper stresses the need to understand why software is different from other technologies, why the disclosure function of the patent system is failing, the build-up of risk and uncertainty and its effect on industry structure, and the international political economy of information process patents.


At present five species of Armadillidiidae, all belonging to the genus Armadillidium Brdt., are known from the Netherlands. These five species are Armadillidium vulgare (Latr.), A. nasutum B.-L., A. opacum (Koch), A. album Dollf., and A. pulchellum (Zenk.). The species will be dealt with in this order. Of every species, with the exception of A. vulgare, an enumeration is given here of the material present in the collection of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie at Leiden, the material collected in greenhouses excluded. Armadillidium (Armadillidium) vulgare (Latreille) This species, which is known also under the name Armadillidium cinereum (Zenk.), is the most common species of the genus from the Netherlands. It may be found throughout our country, and is often met in the neighbourhood of human settlements. It is therefore of no use to give here a list of the abundant Dutch material of this species present in the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie at Leiden. Armadillidium (Pseudosphaerium) nasutum Budde-Lund Meerssen (southern part of the province Limburg); among Marchantia; June 10, 1927; leg. F. P. Koumans. — 24 specimens 4-11 mm. The specimens mentioned above were already reported upon by Koumans (1928), they are the only representatives of the species found up till now in the Netherlands in the open. The species is rather common in several Dutch greenhouses. Armadillidium nasutum occurs in Central and Northwest Italy, in Spain, in the western part of France, in Southern England and in the Netherlands; it attains in our country the northern limit of its range of distribution in the open.


Purpose
While it is essential to further research the growing diversity in western metropolitan cities, little is currently known about how the members of various ethnic communities acculturate to multicultural societies. The purpose of this paper is to explore immigrants' cosmopolitanism and acculturation strategies through an analysis of the food consumption behaviour of ethnic consumers in multicultural London.

Design/methodology/approach
The study was set within the socio-cultural context of London. A number of qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews, observation and photographs were used to assess consumers' acculturation strategies in a multicultural environment and how that is influenced by consumer cosmopolitanism.

Findings
Ethnic consumers' food consumption behaviour reflects their acculturation strategies, which can be classified into four groups: rebellion, rarefaction, resonance and refrainment. This classification demonstrates ethnic consumers' multi-directional acculturation strategies, which are also determined by their level of cosmopolitanism.

Research limitations/implications
The taxonomy presented in this paper advances current acculturation scholarship by suggesting a multi-directional model for acculturation strategies as opposed to the existing uni-directional and bi-directional perspectives and explicates the role of consumer cosmopolitanism in consumer acculturation. The paper did not engage host communities and there is hence a need for future research on how and to what extent host communities are acculturated to the multicultural environment.

Practical implications
The findings have direct implications for the choice of standardisation vs adaptation as a marketing strategy within multicultural cities. Whilst the rebellion group are more likely to respond to standardisation, increasing adaptation of goods and service can ideally target members of the resistance and resonance groups and more fusion products should be exclusively earmarked for the resonance group.

Originality/value
The paper makes original contribution by introducing a multi-directional perspective to acculturation by delineating four-group taxonomy (rebellion, rarefaction, resonance and refrainment). This paper also presents a dynamic model that captures how consumer cosmopolitanism impinges upon the process and outcome of multi-directional acculturation strategies.


The application of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) in multiobjective optimization is currently receiving growing interest from researchers with various backgrounds. Most research in this area has understandably concentrated on the selection stage of EAs, due to the need to integrate vectorial performance measures with the inherently scalar way in which EAs reward individual performance, that is, number of offspring. In this review, current multiobjective evolutionary approaches are discussed, ranging from the conventional analytical aggregation of the different objectives into a single function to a number of population-based approaches and the more recent ranking schemes based on the definition of Pareto optimality. The sensitivity of different methods to objective scaling and/or possible concavities in the trade-off surface is considered, and related to the (static) fitness landscapes such methods induce on the search space. From the discussion, directions for future research in multiobjective fitness assignment and search strategies are identified, including the incorporation of decision making in the selection procedure, fitness sharing, and adaptive representations.


The question addressed by this dissertation is how the human brain builds a coherent representation of the body, and how this representation is used to recognize its own body. Recent approaches by neuroimaging and TMS revealed hints for a distinct brain representation of human body, as compared with other stimulus categories. Neuropsychological studies demonstrated that body-parts and self body-parts recognition are separate processes sub-served by two different, even if possibly overlapping, networks within the brain.
Bodily self-recognition is one aspect of our ability to distinguish between self and others and the self/other distinction is a crucial aspect of social behaviour. This is the reason why I have conducted a series of experiment on subjects with everyday difficulties in social and emotional behaviour, such as patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). More specifically, I studied the implicit self body/face recognition (Chapter 6) and the influence of emotional body postures on bodily self-processing in TD children as well as in ASD children (Chapter 7). I found that the bodily self-recognition is present in TD and in ASD children and that emotional body postures modulate self and others' body processing.
Subsequently, I compared implicit and explicit bodily self-recognition in a neuro-degenerative pathology, such as in PD patients, and I found a selective deficit in implicit but not in explicit self-recognition (Chapter 8). This finding suggests that implicit and explicit bodily self-recognition are separate processes subtended by different mechanisms that can be selectively impaired.
If the bodily self is crucial for self/other distinction, the space around the body (personal space) represents the space of interaction and communication with others. When, I studied this space in autism, I found that personal space regulation is impaired in ASD children (Chapter 9).


A two‐stage laboratory method is presented for rapid estimation of the soil water retention function ψ(θ) and the hydraulic conductivity function K(θ) from near saturation to air dry. The pressure head, h, at the bottom of an initially saturated soil core was stepwise decreased whenever the outflow rate had essentially ceased. After attaining this near‐equilibrium at ψ = −160 cm, the bottom boundary was sealed, the soil surface was uncovered, and the evaporation rate at a controlled constant temperature was measured. The ψ(θ) was determined by curve‐fitting of the equilibrium outflow and psychrometric data obtained from soil samples after evaporation, while the K(θ) was estimated inversely using cumulative evaporation amounts and the final water content profile. The simulated cumulative evaporation and final water content profiles from the optimized parameter values agreed well with the measured data. The root mean square errors for evaporation and the final water content profile were less than 0.022 cm and 0.011, respectively. In addition to close agreement with the simulation, agreement with independent K(θ) data obtained from a steady‐state, direct method confirm the reliability of the method presented here.


The business elite constitutes a small but strikingly influential subset of the population, oftentimes affecting important societal outcomes such as the consolidation of political power, the adoption of corporate governance practices, and the stability of national economies more broadly. Here we analyze a unique dataset of all MBA students at a top 5 MBA program. After matching students on all available characteristics (e.g., age, grade scores, industry experience, etc.) - i.e. creating twin pairs - we find that the distinguishing characteristics between students who do well in job placement and those who do not is their network. Further, we find that the network differences between the successful and unsuccessful students develops within the first month of class and persists thereafter, suggesting a network imprinting that is persistent. Finally, we find that these effects are pronounced for students who are at the extreme ends of the distribution on other measures of success - students with the best expected job placement do particularly poorly without the right network (descenders), whereas students with worst expected job placement pull themselves to the top of the placement hierarchy (ascenders) with the right network.


John Pilger is one of the world's most renowned investigative journalists and documentary film-makers. In this fully updated collection, he reveals the secrets and illusions of modern imperialism. Beginning with Indonesia, he shows how General Suharto's bloody seizure of power in the 1960s was part of a western design to impose a 'global economy' on Asia. A million Indonesians died as the price for being the World Bank's 'model pupil'. Ina shocking chapter on Iraq, he allows us to understand the true nature of the West's war against the people of that country. And he dissects, piece by piece, the propaganda of the 'war on terror' to expose its Orwellian truth. Finally, he looks behind the picture postcard of his homeland, Australia, to illuminate an enduring legacy of imperialism, the subjugation on the First Australians.


To provide a future vision of alternative viewpoints moving forward in creativity research, four different perspectives are offered. The first perspective, "Wildfire 2008: Creativity with a Human Touch," offers surprising humanistic and individualistic practitioner insights from breakthrough campaigns. The second viewpoint, "Creative and Effective Advertising: Balancing Spontaneity and Discipline," emphasizes the role of discipline in developing creative advertising that is effective while still being spontaneous. The third perspective, "Defining the Necessary Components of Creative, Effective Ads," provides a functional model of how creativity works in ads. In the last viewpoint, "The Concept of 'Imaginative Intensity' in Advertising," an imaginative intensity concept is offered for future research consideration as the role of the consumer, agency, and clients change.


Security of water distribution networks (WDNs) through early warning systems is one of the topics of research over the last two decades to safeguard human health and the environment against accidental and intentional contamination. Several methodologies have been suggested by different researchers for placement of sensors in WDNs which can provide early warning. Owing to the cost of both placing and maintaining the sensors, the number of these must be limited. This constraint makes the sensor deployment locations crucial in early warning systems. In this paper various methodologies suggested for sensor placements have been broadly classified based on the number of performance objectives as single and multi-objective sensor location problems. Various objectives and their significance in the context of sensor placement strategy have been discussed. A complete review of literature is presented to understand complexities in the sensor design problems and to determine the directions in which research is heading. Several challenges for the design of robust sensor network for large WDNs with less computational efforts are discussed and recommendations are presented.


Pure sine wave transformers are very important nowadays when it comes to using ds power sources for both low and high-power applications. These inverters not only increase the efficiency of the power system but also prevent electrical components from damaging. Much work has been done in the field of pure sine wave inverter but for a waveform with low number of harmonics along with high efficiency is still an open challenge. There are techniques available to do this, but the need to adapt to a solution that is easy to implement as well as specifically for low energy applications. In this paper, a multi-vibration technique is used to generate a square wave which is then split into two square waves of the same frequency by the 4017-decade counter to hold the H-bridge inverter. The output of the H-bridge inverter contains harmonics that are filtered using a low pass filter. Thus, we get a pure sin wave in the output.


Rationale: Severe hypertriglyceridemia is the 3rd-leading cause of acute pancreatitis. Current treatment option for hypertriglyceridemia associated with acute pancreatitis is mainly supportive measures, including adequate fluid supply, pain management, and broad-spectrum antibiotics if necessary. Extracorporeal method by mean of plasmapheresis is effective in reducing serum level of triglyceride. It has been proposed to have therapeutic potential in limited small sample studies. Patient concerns: A retrospective review of therapeutic effect of double filtration plasmapheresis in treating hypertriglyceridemia associated with acute pancreatitis was conducted by enlisting 3 patients who meet the criteria for the present study. Diagnoses: Three patients met the criteria for hypertriglyceridemia (serum level >800 mg/dL) associated with acute pancreatitis (either with elevated serum level of lipase and/or amylase and/or with computed tomography evidence of acute pancreatitis). Interventions: Patients received double filtration plasmapheresis. Outcomes: We found that an effective reduction of triglyceride was achieved on an average of 84.7% as a result of a single session of plasmapheresis. All 3 of our patients survived, but needed extended hospitalization. Lessons: A substantial clinical trial is required to further assess the effectiveness of plasmapheresis in managing of acute pancreatitis in the setting of hypertriglyceridemia.