BACKGROUND: This article considers whether failure to include a patient's subjective experiences in a psychiatric assessment can result in an inadequate diagnosis of psychotic symptoms. A psychodynamic approach gives specific attention to a patient's subjective experiences. AIM: To investigate whether a psychodynamic assessment of psychotic symptoms based on the structural interview devised by Kernberg can be useful in clinical practice. METHOD: First of all, the psychodynamic assessment of reality testing is described. This is followed by an investigation of the extent to which this method is compatible with the findings of the cognitive model for psychoses. Then some interrater-reliability studies are discussed. RESULTS: Within the psychodynamic interview the focus on inducing anxiety and on withholding contextual information from the patient is compatible with the cognitive model for psychoses. Reliability studies should be confined to delusions and hallucinations. CONCLUSION: Psychodynamic assessment can be a useful addition to the standard psychiatric assessment of psychotic symptoms. However, further studies of the reliability of the psychodynamic assessment are required.


The Casimir force for charge-neutral, perfect conductors of non-planar geometric configurations have been investigated. The configurations are: (1) the plate-hemisphere, (2) the hemisphere-hemisphere and (3) the spherical shell. The resulting Casimir forces for these physical arrangements have been found to be attractive. The repulsive Casimir force found by Boyer for a spherical shell is a special case requiring stringent material property of the sphere, as well as the specific boundary conditions for the wave modes inside and outside of the sphere. The necessary criteria in detecting Boyer's repulsive Casimir force for a sphere are discussed at the end of this thesis.


This study aims to examine the impact of gamified learning using Quizizz on English as a second language (ESL) learners' grammar achievement. The pre-/post-test control group design was applied to research 63 English-majored freshmen. 20 multiple-choice quizzes were designed based on grammar points included in the basic grammar course over a 10-week intervention period. There were 33 students from the experimental group doing the quizzes on Quizizz, while 30 participants from the control group did the same quizzes on paper. The findings indicate that although students from the two groups both improved their marks on the post-test compared to the pre-test, students from the treatment group got significantly higher scores than those from the control group on the achievement test. However, educators are supported to consider using this gamified learning platform as a supportive tool besides choosing the appropriate instructional content to optimize the quality of their teaching.


This essay surveys Macaulay's early literary and cultural ambitions as he outlined them in the 1820s and then his later successes of the 1850s. It focuses primarily upon his efforts to recast neoclassical epic narrative and ideology for a modern liberal readership and to challenge the growing dominance of the novel. After establishing the cultural context for Macaulay's literary and historical plans, efforts, and final achievements, the argument turns to the tension between, on the one hand, his history's mid-Victorian, progressive, and liberal ideology and, on the other, its traditional epic presumptions--in particular, his history's need to preserve the ideal of heroic individual agency and to celebrate the war victories of its central actor, William III. Finally, as a detailed case study of the workings of this basic tension, the essay takes up a reading of chapter 12 of the history: its sources, its rhetoric, and its representative relation to the larger history. Widely regarded as one of the finest of Macaulay's chapters, one that he labored over with particular care, chapter 12 typifies the basic unit of his narrative art, even as it offers up a deeply vexed account of the liberal conquest of Ireland. I. Macaulay's Greatness in Theory Woodstock, as we have seen, placed upwards of 8,000 pounds in the hands of Sir Walter's creditors. The Napoleon (first and second editions) produced for them a sum which it startles me to mention 18,000 pounds. (2:576) J.G. Lockhart, The Life of Sir Walter Scott (1838) December 12, 1848.--Longman called. A new edition of 3,000 copies is preparing as fast as they can work. I have reason to be pleased. Of [Scott's] Lay of the Last Minstrel two thousand two hundred and fifty copies were sold in the first year; of Marmion two thousand copies in the first month; of my book three thousand copies in the first ten days. Black says there has been no such sale since the days of Waverley. (2:161) November 11, 1857.--Huzza! Good news! Lucknow relieved. Delhi ours. The old dotard a prisoner. God be praised! Another letter from Longman. They have already sold 7,600 copies. This is near 6,000 pounds, as I reckon, in my pocket. But it gratified me, I am glad to be able to say with truth, far, very far, less than the Indian news. I could hardly eat my dinner for joy. (2:284) G.O. Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (1876) Macaulay' s History of England (1848-61) was and remains one of the most spectacular tales of bestsellerdom in publishing history. (1) Sometimes said to have been outsold in America only by the Bible--a curious mythical status it now seems to share with the Da Vinci Code--The History of England's unprecedented numbers remain a substantial fact (Plumb 255). (2) It is probably the one thing about it (other than that its 2,000+ pages, divided into twenty-five chapters and spread over five volumes, really tell the narrower history of the reigns of James II and William III, of the events leading up to and following from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, of the struggle for freedom first against the Stuarts within England and then against Louis XIV's France in Europe) still well known--but, of course, only then to serious students of English literature. When another, nearly as momentous publishing event, Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88), burst upon the literary and historical scene, Gibbon cautiously insinuated himself into a triumvirate of historians along with David Hume and William Robertson (Gibbon 114). For Gibbon, this new tradition demonstrated that British literature could at last boast of historian-writers worthy of comparison with the best from other major European and Classical literatures in a genre that vied with epic and tragedy in the highest ranks of the classical literary hierarchy. In short, to be a great historian was to stand at the summit of literary and cultural achievement. …


[Abstract] The assessment of credit risk of real-estate of Chinese banks has become a hot point nowadays. Traditional gross risk-evaluation methods are mainly Discriminant Analysis (DA) and logistic regression, and the most common approach is a credit rating system based on logistic regression. Yet the daily ripening neural network technique has opened up a new idea for experts in fields of bank credit and credit evaluation. In this paper, two methods-the logistic model and the BP-neural network technique, are compared in their application in the evaluation of credit risk of real-estate in Chinese banks and then tested with samples of listed real estate agencies. Results show that the BP-neural network technique has superiority over the logistic model in quantizing and classifying gross risk of real estate agencies. [Keywords] Credit risk in real estate agencies; logistic model; BP-neural network Introduction Along with the capitalization process of housing and urbanization, real estate is improving. That real estate fever keeps warming has gradually engendered bad assets for several commercial banks. As a result, they are likely to adopt a discreet and conservative strategy when getting involved in housing credit. In view of this, it is necessary to select an appropriate evaluation method for credit rating to effectively warn of housing credit risks. Traditional risk assessment methods include Discriminant Analysis (DA) and Logistic Regression. Altaian (1968) built a famous warning model of multi- variables, the Z-model, by using multi- variate discriminate analysis and then revised it as the ZETA model. Ohlson (1980) is the first one who used the logistic regression model to warn of financial risks. Wiginton (1980) applied a logistic regression model and discriminant analysis to credit rating and then compared the two methods, which showed that the former was better than the latter. Tang Youyu (2002) tested the accuracy of the Logistic Model by sampling 5 listed companies with good financial conditions and 5 companies with bad conditions from the Shanghai and Shenzhen Securities markets. Qi Zhiping, Yu Miaozhi (2002) got satisfactory results by building a Logitstic Model with quadratic terms and intercross terms. However, the common limitations of these methods are that they focus on financial analysis of companies, but ignore the facts of projects involved. Good projects will help enterprises with poor performance get out of bad conditions, but those methods tend to reject loans. On the other hand, the generality of these models is bad. They need to re-estimate the parameters of samples when the environment and time change. Through continuous learning, neural networks can now find the law from a large number of complex data in an unknown pattern. Continuous learning overcomes the complexity of traditional analysis and the difficulties of selecting an appropriate function, since it puts forward a higher request in Basel Treaty on total risk evaluation models about the classification of credit rating and the grades have to fall into the five categories as banks have noted. A neural network approach meets these needs well, and credit risk can be better involved in this model. In 1992, Jensen (1992) used a BP neural network to categorize loan corporations, and the accuracy of rating was up to 76%-80%. Trippi and Turba (1996) introduced the application of neural networks in finance and investment. In 2000, David West modeled five different neural networks to investigate the accuracy of credit rating marked by commercial banks. Malhotra (2002) used neuron-fuzzy system to differentiate "credit-good" and "credit-bad" borrowers. Wang Chunfeng (1999) adopted the neural network technique to evaluate the credit risks of commercial banks. Yu Ruifeng (2007) introduced an index system to firm credit risk assessment using the BP neural network based on supply chains to evaluate loan applicants' total solvency. …


This paper explores what we have learnt about how to instigate, negotiate or otherwise secure pro-poor government in towns and cities of the global South. With competition for scarce resources, the processes of urban development, and specifically the acquisition of land and basic services, are intensely political. While the nature of urban poverty differs, there is a consistent set of needs related to residency in informal settlements; tenure is insecure and there is a lack of access to basic services, infrastructure, and sometimes other entitlements. Households and communities have to negotiate these collective consumption goods in a context in which political relations are primarily informal, with negotiations that take place away from the transparent and accountable systems of 'modern' government. Clientelist bargaining prevails. Much of the existing literature is polarised, either critiquing clientelism for its consequences, or arguing that it has been dismissed without any grounded assessment of what might take its place and any considered analysis of what it has managed to deliver. In this paper I explore how networks and federations of the urban poor seeking to access secure tenure and basic services have sought to advance their cause and the interests of their members. These organised collectives recognise that they have to challenge clientelist practice; however leaders also recognise that, given existing power relations, they have to work from within to change the realities of clientelism. Their own relative powerlessness means that confrontation is not an effective strategy. To strengthen their influence, they have to make common cause with those in need across the city building a unified and aware movement, and they have to establish their own legitimacy as agencies operating in the public interest and towards the common good. As and when they gain an increased influence, they seek greater flexibility from the city bureaucracy and to reduce the hierarchical highly vertical relations between the urban poor and the political elite. To maintain and extend their advances towards a pro-poor politics, they act to strengthen public accountabilities.


The market for derivatives with payoffs contingent on the credit quality of a number of reference entities has grown considerably over recent years. The risk analysis and valuation of such multi-name structures often relies on simulating the performance of the underlying credits. In this paper we discuss the simulation of correlated unpredictable default arrival times. Our algorithm is based on the compensator of default. We construct this compensator explicitly in a multi-firm structural model with correlated defaults and imperfect asset and default threshold observation. It is shown how the model parameters can be estimated from readily available equity and single-name credit derivatives market data.


Students of comparative constitutional design grapple with myriad complex normative and empirical issues. Prominent among them is the relative effectiveness of different governance regimes. Concerns stemming from the perceived malfunctioning of modern democracies have intensified efforts to diagnose and rectify the supposedly proliferating ills. The seemingly solid post-1978 Chinese record of steadily managing intricate societal challenges has highlighted the possible advantages of the country's tightly controlled top-down institutional apparatus and its potential value as a model worth broadly exploring and even embracing on a meaningful scale. This view, authoritatively and vigorously articulated by an influential and prolific political philosopher and his academic associates, has evolved to a point whereby the Chinese constitutional order and contemporary experience are portrayed as being capable of fruitfully supplanting democratic structures or, alternatively, productively revitalising them. Yet, on the whole, this remains a controversial politico-legal proposition, conceptually problematic and lacking sufficient factual support.


This study presents the modeling of water behavior in hydraulically-fractured of shale gas wells. A five layers model represents a hydraulically-fractured shale gas well was built in Sensor reservoir simulator through Pipe-It, integrated asset management software. Stress dependent permeability multiplier is applied in the model to represent the permeability enhancement in the zone close to the fracture face during the fracturing stimulation. An implicit black-oil logarithmic model with a total of grid number of 5,800 and thickness of 200 ft is used as the base case model. The horizontal well extends through the reservoir in x-direction. The fracture is located in the center of x-axis, while the tip of the fracture is in the middle of y-axis. Water behavior in the fracture for this study is represented by water saturation within the fracture grids. A better understanding of water behavior in the fracture and its effects on the production profile was obtained through several sensitivity cases, which include number of layers, perforation location, matrix permeability, gas production rate, and shut-in time. Based on the sensitivity tests, it was observed that high water saturation in the fracture is found when the perforation is located in the uppermost layer of the model. For matrix permeability sensitivity, the total kh for the model is maintained at a constant. Reservoir with high matrix permeability in the uppermost layer gives higher water saturation in the fracture. The varying gas production rates influence the water saturation in the fracture. Higher gas rates result in higher water saturation in the fracture. The water saturation profile analysis based on the rate sensitivity shows that a critical gas rate to feed the water from the matrix to the fracture is expected to exist. Water saturation profiles in the matrix have relatively the same profile according to shut-in sensitivity. These differing water saturation profiles on the shut-in sensitivity indicate delayed of water feed from the matrix to the fracture. Also, different perforation locations affect the water production profile, but not on the gas production profiles. Both gas and water production profiles are not significantly affected by different matrix permeability values. Rate sensitivity shows that higher gas rate results in higher total water production. Shut-In period also affects the production profiles. Gas and water productions are observed to decrease with an increased shut-in time due to the delay of production. It is noteworthy that the differences in total water productions are substantial. This is due to shut-in period after water injection reduces water recovery, as compared to immediate production after water injection. From the sensitivities applied to the model, water saturation in the fracture is generally affected by all sensitivity parameters, thus also affects production profiles. This study contributes to having a better understanding in the water behavior in the fracture and the production profiles of shale well gas.


Orthographic images compose an efficient and economic way to represent aerial images. This kind of information allows to measure two-dimensional objects and relate these to Geographic Information Systems. This paper deals with the computation of a true orthographic image given a set of overlapping perspective images. These are, together with the internal and external calibration the only input to our approach. These few requirements form a large advantage to systems where the digital surface model (DSM), e.g. provided by LIDAR data, is necessary. We used a Bayesian approach and define a generative model of the input images. In this, the input images are regarded as noisy measurements of an underlying true and hence unknown orthoimage. These measurements are obtained by an image formation process (generative model) that involves apart from the true orthoimage several additional parameters. Our goal is to invert the image formation process by estimating those parameters which make our input images most likely. We present results on aerial images of a complex urban environment.


There are identified within the discourse a number of notions regarding the term information. This paper sets out to explore these sometimes-conflicting notions of information. The reason why conflicting notions occur is the result of different perspectives and understanding of the term information. Within the discourse two camps are identified, firstly, those who identify information as a resource and those who identify information as a processual approach enacted by individuals. The former is not uncommon within the business environment given the relationship seen between information and technology; this view simplifies information as merely structured data. The latter approach requires the involvement of individuals or more succinctly human understanding and interpretation. By viewing information as a processual process enacted by humans one is identifying an alternative view of how information is created, managed, used and developed. The aim is to discuss both views to gain clarity and understanding in terms of why the various and conflicting notions of information impact on its use within organisations. What is highlighted within this paper is that information is a complex and ambiguous term. There is no easy 'off-the shelf' solution to managing information. One potentially successful approach is to view information from an epistemological perspective. This requires those having to deal with this complex and ambiguous term a starting point from which to build and gain both an individual and an organisational understanding in terms of the use of information. This allows individuals to set direction, decide where to focus their effort and ultimately how to gain some control over this vital and important issue of 'information'.


Cellular lipid remodeling is important in a variety of situations, such as during apoptosis, and often specifically involves changes in anionic lipids. Yeung et al. describe the occurrence of localized changes in the surface potential of the inner aspect of the plasma membrane during receptor phagocytosis in macrophages. Localized alterations were observed in surface charge at the base of the phagocytic cup, whereas the rest of the plasma membrane remained unaffected. The surface potential change was caused by lipid remodeling during phagocytosis and involved phosphoinositide hydrolysis and phosphatidylserine redistribution. Furthermore, when the surface charge was diminished locally, several signal transduction proteins dissociated from the membrane. T. Yeung, M. Terebiznik, L. Yu, J. Silvius, W. M. Abidi, M. Phillips, T. Levine, A Kapus, S. Grinstein, Receptor activation alters inner surface potential during phagocytosis. Science 313, 347-351 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


String Theory is the result of the conjunction of three conceptually independent elements: (i) the metaphysical idea of a nomological unity of the forces, (ii) the model-theoretical paradigm of Quantum Field Theory, and (iii) the conflict resulting from classical gravity in a quantum world - the motivational starting point of the search for a theory of Quantum Gravity. String Theory is sometimes assumed to solve this conflict: by means of an application of the (only slightly extended) model-theoretical apparatus of (perturbative) Quantum Field Theory, interpreting gravity as the result of an exchange of gravitons, taken here to be dynamical states of the string. But, String Theory does not really solve the conflict. Rather it exemplifies the inadequacy of the apparatus of Quantum Field Theory in the context of Quantum Gravity: After several decades of development it still exists only in an essentially perturbative formulation (with minor non-perturbative extensions and vague ideas with regard to a possible non-perturbative formulation). And, due to its quantum field theoretical heritage, it is conceptually incompatible with central implications of General Relativity, especially those resulting from the general relativistic relation between gravity and spacetime. All known formulations of String Theory are background-dependent. And no physical motivation is given for this conceptual incompatibility.
On the other hand, although String Theory identifies all gauge bosons as string states, it was not even possible to reproduce the Standard Model. Instead, String Theory led to a multitude of internal problems - and to the plethora of low-energy scenarios with different nomologies and symmetries, known as the String Landscape. All attempts to find a dynamically motivated selection principle remained without success, leaving String Theory without any predictive power. The nomological unification of the fundamental forces, including gravity, is only achieved in a purely formal way within the model-theoretical paradigm of Quantum Field Theory - by means of physically unmotivated epicycles like higher dimensionality, Calabi-Yau spaces, branes, etc.
Finally, the possibility remains that some of the central (implicit) assumptions of String Theory are physically wrong. On the one hand, the idea of a nomological unity of the forces could be simply wrong. On the other hand, even if a nomological unity of all fundamental forces should be realized in nature, the possibility remains that gravity is not a fundamental force, but a residual, emergent and possibly intrinsically classical phenomenon, resulting from a quantum substrate without any gravitational degrees of freedom.


In the remote Kingdom of Castalia, the scholars of the Twenty Third century play the Glass Bead Game. The elaborately coded game is a fusion of all human knowledge - of maths, music, philosophy, science, and art. Intrigued as a school boy, Joseph Knecht becomes consumed with mastering the game as an adult. As Knecht fulfils his life-long quest he must contend with unexpected dilemmas and the longing for a life beyond the ivory tower.


Title of dissertation: A HYBRID MODEL FOR FATIGUE LIFE ESTIMATION OF POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITES Kevin R. Uleck, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Anthony J. Vizzini Department of Aerospace Engineering A major limitation of current fatigue life prediction methods for polymer matrix composite laminates is that they rely on empirical S-N data. In contrast to fatigue life prediction methods for metals which are based on physical crack growth models, the heart of fatigue life models for composites is empirical S-N data for each specific material system and specific loading conditions. This implies that the physical nature and processes responsible for tensile fatigue are not well understood. In this work a mechanism-based approach is used to model the damage growth and failure of uniaxial polymer matrix composites under uni-axial tension-tension fatigue loading. The model consists of three parts: an initial damage model, a damage growth model, and a tensile failure model. The damage growth portion of the model is based on fracture mechanics at the fiber/matrix level. The tensile failure model is based on a chain of bundles failure theory originally proposed for predicting the static strength of unidirectional laminates using fiber strength distributions. The tensile fatigue life prediction model developed in this work uses static tensile strength data and basic material properties to calculate the strength degradation due to fiber-matrix damage growth caused by fatigue loading and does not use any experimental S-N data. The output of the model is the probability of failure under tensile fatigue loading for a specified peak load level. Experimental data is used to validate and refine the model and good correlation between the model and experimental data has been shown. The principal contribution of this work is a hybrid-mechanistic model for analyzing and predicting the tension-tension fatigue life behavior of uniaxial polymer matrix composites. This model represents the very foundation to build upon a comprehensive model for fatigue. It demonstrates the validity of the ideas as they apply to uniaxial laminates that may in turn be used to apply to more complex laminates. Additionally, because the model is mechanism based it can be used for evaluation of the effects of constituent property changes such as matrix stiffness and toughness, or environmental conditions such as temperature and moisture. A HYBRID MODEL FOR FATIGUE LIFE ESTIMATION OF POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITES


While we often assume media are highly effective tools for learning, research shows an unpredictable relationship between text and audience response, with variable interpretation being the norm. This can be especially problematic in anthropology, whose central goal is to understand different cultures; some studies suggest that films may reinforce ethnocentrism, especially if used without framing or analysis. We report on a project that studied student responses to media, offering practical guidelines for effective use in the classroom.


This article addresses some of the uniqueness and many of the similarities between working as a sign language interpreter and working as a public service interpreter in the UK. It gives a brief introduction to the history of the British Deaf community and the genesis of modern day British Sign Language (BSL). It then introduces the ever expanding areas where interpreters work and gives some examples of the care needed when working in the medical domain. It gives examples of the types of intercultural sensitivity needed by sign language interpreters and the pragmatic relevance needed in their renderings into English and BSL. Finally, it demonstrates that working with the British Deaf community is much like working with any minority language/group in the UK.


A novel manifold has been developed, catalytic in phosphorus (V), that promotes the dehydration reaction of an alcohol to give the symmetrical ether product. This has been achieved through the development of a novel dioxyphosphorane catalyst that, in conjunction with a triflic acid cocatalyst, conducts the coupling reaction without the need for any additional stoichiometric reagents. This has allowed the omission of the explosive diazo-compounds that are required in the widely-accepted Mitsunobu conditions, and has reduced the amount of inconvenient and difficult-to-remove phosphorus waste that is usually associated with phosphorus-mediated reactions. This work constitutes the first example of a phosphorus (V)-catalysed Mitsunobu-type etherification reaction.


We describe the preparation of hierarchical polystyrene nanoporous membranes with a very narrow pore size distribution and an extremely high porosity. The nanoporous structure is formed as a result of unusual degradation of the poly(4-vinyl pyridine) block from self-assembled poly(styrene)-b-poly(4-vinyl pyridine) (PS-b-P4VP) membranes through the formation of an unstable pyridinium intermediate in an alkaline medium. During this process, the confined swelling and controlled degradation produced a tunable pore size. We unequivocally confirmed the successful elimination of the P4VP block from a PS-b-P4VPVP membrane using 1D/2D NMR spectroscopy and other characterization techniques. Surprisingly, the long range ordered surface porosity was preserved even after degradation of the P4VP block from the main chain of the diblock copolymer, as revealed by SEM. Aside from a drastically improved water flux (∼67% increase) compared to the PS-b-P4VP membrane, the hydraulic permeability measurements validated pH independent behaviour of the isoporous PS membrane over a wide pH range from 3 to 10. The effect of the pore size on protein transport rate and selectivity (a) was investigated for lysozyme (Lys), bovine serum albumin (BSA) and globulin-γ (IgG). A high selectivity of 42 (Lys/IgG) and 30 (BSA/IgG) was attained, making the membranes attractive for size selective separation of biomolecules from their synthetic model mixture solutions.


Governments devote considerable resources on reducing the incidence of low birth weight with the reasoning that low birth weight is the cause of poor infant health. Much of what we know on the causal link between these variables comes from developed countries. However, these estimates may have limited external validity to the developing world if families with more resources are better able to remediate the effects of poor neonatal health. This study uses unique, rich data and a within-twin identification strategy to estimate the effect of low birth weight on infant mortality in Brazil. We document that the effects of low birth weight are much larger than those derived from the US and Norwegian context. This finding suggests that applying from these economies to poorer countries may be misleading for cost-benefit assessments of policy.


There is a substantial difference between traditional industrial systems and systems resultant from emerging production paradigms in terms of both conceptualization and implementation. Backwards compatibility is fundamental in assessing the potential transitional period whereby legacy technology will operate under the conceptual framework of modern approaches. However, before this point can be reached it is necessary to further investigate, assess and quantify the behavior of modern approaches that increasingly rely in self-organization. This article's goal is to give an overview of the behavioral assessment problematic, in the context of self-organizing mechatronic systems, and provide a discussion on opportunities to explore rule-extraction techniques to better understand the influence of design and configuration on the overall system behavior. Although the discussion widely applies to almost all emerging production paradigms the Evolvable Production System paradigm is used as case to bring context and clarity to the discussion.


Decentralized digital currency systems known as cryptocurrencies are a breakthrough in electronic payments: the absence of a central authority can avoid the risk that a not fully reliable government seizes assets or causes hyperinflation, very small transactions can be made without incurring high costs and transactions can be traced, thus providing a tool to counter laundering and tax evasion. Furthermore, decentralization provides robustness against many attacks. Despite these advantages, cryptocurrencies have still not become mainstream solutions, because of scarce users' inclination to adopt them as a privileged payment tool. This is mostly due to the absence of a structured form of control, which also prevents from having some credit insurance. Moreover, some present and future attacks, like quantum computer-based attacks, may threaten their security. In this paper we define new technical solutions to allow cryptocurrencies to become trusted tools for secure and verifiable digital transactions, and also for deposits, while preserving decentralization and users' privacy. Based on a thorough security analysis, a new cryptocurrency model is first defined, exploiting a set of secure and post-quantum cryptographic primitives. Then, a secure supervision and authentication network is designed, which allows to control transactions, while guaranteeing users' privacy. A robust reputation system for this context is also proposed, which helps to increase users' trust and to reduce misconduct.


When cash is received for services, it typically will constitute gross income to the recipient. But what if the payments are made in a noncommercial setting such as the payment by a parent to a child for mowing the lawn or performing household chores? As discussed later in this Essay, there are reasons to conclude that such payments do not constitute income. The problem of how to treat receipts from a noncommercial activity frequently arises in the context of an exchange of services. A similar problem arises when services are provided by several persons pursuant to a pooling of labor to accomplish a common noncommercial goal.The regulations state that if a taxpayer receives services from another as payment for services rendered by the taxpayer, each party will realize gross income equal to the value of the services received from the other. If services were received as full or partial payment for property, the value of the services received would be included in the amount realized on the sale of the property. The tax problems that arise in connection with the receipt of services mostly occur when services are exchanged, and this Essay addresses that situation and will deal only incidentally with a payment of cash or other property for services.


The LS-APGD microplasma has shown potential as a combined atomic and molecular (CAM) ionization source, though to this point it has been solely interfaced with large, laboratory-scale instruments. There are many instances wherein reduced-format, lower operating overhead, analyzers are appropriate. To this end, the LS-APGD has been coupled with an Advion ExpressionL Compact Mass Spectrometry (CMS) for the analysis of diverse samples. This instrument has been previously travel hardened in accordance to MIL-SPEC-810, demonstrating its suitability for in-field analysis. The coupling of the LS-APGD to this instrument expands its capability for diverse analyses, with early-stage figures of merit presented here. With this new coupling, a thorough optimization of both the instrument ion optics and the LS-APGD operating parameters was necessary as this platform does not have a direct method for collisional dissociation of potentially-deleterious molecular species. Under the optimized conditions, analytical response curves were constructed for Na, Rb, Cs, and Tl, demonstrating detection limits between 17.6–146 ng mL−1 (single ng, absolute). Furthermore, CAM sampling capabilities can be realized upon changing from a 2% HNO3 to a 70 : 30 MeOH : H2O solvent system, providing molecular-level chemical information readily obtained from atomic ionization sources such as the inductively coupled plasma (ICP-MS). Here detection limits between 1–32 nM (single pg, absolute) were obtained for caffeine, acetaminophen, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabidiol, sulfadimethoxine, terfenadine, and reserpine. The unique features of the CAM ionization source on this flexible MS platform hold promise for many operation environments.


We have examined the role of thiol-disulfide exchange reactions during the penetration of cells by Sindbis virus. The protein-protein association that form the rigid icosahedral lattice of the Sindbis virus envelope have been shown to be stabilized by disulfide bridges, and reduction of these critical disulfide bridges during cell penetration may be the mechanism by which the rigid protein lattice is disrupted prior to fusion (R. Anthony and D. T. Brown, J. Virol. 65:1187-1194, 1991; R. Anthony, A. Paredes, and D. T. Brown, Virology 190:330-336, 1992). Reduction of disulfide bridges occurs at near neutral pHs via thiol-disulfide exchange reactions, and these reactions can be blocked by covalent modification of the thiol involved. In this study, the effects of the reducing agent 2-mercaptoethanol on Sindbis virus-mediated cell-cell fusion from without and the effects of the membrane-impermeable thiol-alkylating reagent 5,5'-dithiobis(2-nitrobenzoic acid) on Sindbis virus penetration were determined. The presence of exogenous reducing agent was found to induce fusion from without under conditions unfavorable to both typical Sindbis virus-mediated fusion from without and cysteine-mediated thiol-disulfide exchange reactions. In addition, the thiol-alkylating reagent was found to inhibit Sindbis virus entry when present during infection. These results are consistent with a model for Sindbis virus entry in which reduction of critical disulfide bridges at the cell surface disrupts the rigid protein-protein associations of the envelope, allowing membrane fusion and release of the viral genome into the cell.


Magnesium porphyrazinates substituted with eight (p-tolyl) and (o-tolyl) units on the peripheral positions have been synthesized for the first time by cyclotetramerization of 1,2-bis(p-tolyl)maleonitrile and 1,2-bis(o-tolyl)maleonitrile in the presence of magnesium butanolate. Their demetalation by the treatment with trifluoroacetic acid resulted in partially oxidized products, namely, octakis(p-tolyl)-2-seco-porphyrazine-2,3-dione and octakis(o-tolyl)-2-seco-porphyrazine-2,3-dione. Further reactions of these products with copper(II) acetate, zinc(II) acetate and cobalt(II) acetate have led to the metallo derivatives, [octakis(p-tolyl)-2-seco-2,3-dioxoporphyrazinato]M(II) and [octakis(o-tolyl)-2-seco-2,3-dioxoporphyrazinato]M(II) (M = Cu, Zn, Co). These novel compounds have been characterized by elemental analysis, together with FT-IR, 1H NMR, UV-vis and mass spectral data.


The modified mouthparts group is perhaps the largest of the four major Hawaiian Drosophila clades, yet has received relatively little taxonomic attention during the past 40 years. This study reviews unplaced species and the ceratostoma, freycinetiae, semifuscata, and setiger subgroups, with descriptions of 22 new species. We hope this work encourages greater study of the biology of this important group.


A quality-of-transmission- (QoT-) aware routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) technique suitable for multifiber wavelength-routed all-optical networks supporting class-based lightpaths (LPs) is proposed, where QoT is evaluated not only for any candidate LP being set up but also for already-set-up LPs. In this paper, QoT refers to the quality of transmission at the physical layer and quality of service (QoS) refers to the network-level quality issues. Four performance improvement techniques are proposed: (1) preempting an existing low-quality (LQ) LP by a high-quality (HQ) connection considering bandwidth utilization to provide better QoS for HQ traffic; (2) class-based buffering of connection requests in edge switches to provide the chance of setup for the LPs that are going to be blocked, and therefore, improving the performance of the LP setup; (3) differentiated routing in which LQ LPs are routed through large dispersion paths and HQ LPs through small dispersion paths; and (4) wavelength ordering to reduce crosstalk in switches and interchannel crosstalk on fibers. Our performance evaluations show the effectiveness of the proposed improvements in reducing blocking probability.


This memo intends to provide a complete discussion of the protocols
and techniques used to embed DoD standard Internet Protocol datagrams
(and its associated higher level protocols) on Network Systems
Corporation's HYPERchannel equipment. This document is directed
toward network planners and implementors who are already familiar with
the TCP/IP protocol suite and the techniques used to carry TCP/IP
traffic on common networks such as the DDN or the Ethernet. No great
familiarity with NSC products is assumed; an appendix is devoted to a
review of NSC technologies and protocols.


In this paper, to solve the problem of active vibroseismic monitoring of the processes of fracturing and dilatancy in seismicand volcano-prone zones, we take into account the dynamic characteristics of the wave field, in addition to a tracking change in the coefficients of medium anisotropy and propagation velocities of Pand S-waves earlier proposed by A.S. Alekseev. Thereby, the waveform variations and nonlinear transformation of wave fields associated with the geodynamic processes developing in destruction source zones will be taken into account. The efficiency of the approach proposed was confirmed by the results of experimental investigations with the method of vibrational sounding of mud volcanoes of the Taman mud volcano province and the tectonic fracture in the Novosibirsk region. The problem of estimating the dynamics of geodynamic processes in the destruction source zone becomes a multiparametric problem, which can be solved by the pattern recognition methods.


The analysis of deformable 3D shape is often cast in terms of the shape's intrinsic geometry due to its invariance to a wide range of non-rigid deformations. However, object's plasticity in non-rigid transformation often result in transformations that are not completely isometric in the surface's geometry and whose mode of deviation from isometry is an identifiable characteristic of the shape and its deformation modes. In this paper, we propose a novel generative model of the variations of the intrinsic metric of deformable shapes, based on the spectral decomposition of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. To this end, we assume two independent models for the eigenvectors and the eigenvalues of the graph-Laplacian of a 3D mesh which are learned in a supervised way from a set of shapes belonging to the same class. We show how this model can be efficiently learned given a set of 3D meshes, and evaluate the performance of the resulting generative model in shape classification and retrieval tasks. Comparison with state-of-the-art solutions for these problems confirm the validity of the approach.


Linked Data (LD) provides principles for publishing data that underpin the development of an emerging web of data. LD follows the web in providing low barriers to entry: publishers can make their data available using a small set of standard technologies, and consumers can search for and browse published data using generic tools. Like the web, consumers frequently consume data in broadly the form in which it was published; this will be satisfactory in some cases, but the diversity of publishers means that the data required to support a task may be stored in many different sources, and described in many different ways. As such, although RDF provides a syntactically homogeneous language for describing data, sources typically manifest a wide range of heterogeneities, in terms of how data on a concept is represented. This paper makes the case that many aspects of both publication and consumption of LD stand to benefit from a pay-as-you-go approach to data integration. Specifically, the paper: (i) identifies a collection of opportunities for applying pay-as-you-go techniques to LD; (ii) describes some preliminary experiences applying a pay-as-you-go data integration system to LD; and (iii) presents some open issues that need to be addressed to enable the full benefits of pay-as-you go integration to be realised.


Terminal heme-copper oxidases (HCuOs) are transmembrane proteins that catalyze the final step in the respiratory chain - the reduction of O2 to H2O, coupled to energy conservation by generation of an electrochemical proton gradient. The most extensively investigated of the HCuOs are the aa3-type oxidases, to which cytochrome c oxidase (CytcO) belongs, which uses energy released in the O2-reduction for proton pumping. The bacterial nitric oxide reductases (NORs) have been identified as divergent members of the HCuO-superfamily and are involved in the denitrification pathway where they catalyze the reduction of NO to NO2. Although as exergonic as O2-reduction, this reaction is completely non-electrogenic. Among the traditional HCuOs, the cbb3-type oxidases are the closest relatives to the NORs and as such provide a link between the aa3 oxidases and the NORs. The cbb3 oxidases have been shown to pump protons with nearly the same efficiency as the aa3 oxidases, despite low sequence similarity.This thesis is focused on measurements of membrane potential generating reactions during catalysis in the CytcO and the cbb3 oxidase from Rhodobacter sphaeroides, and the NOR from Paracoccus denitrificans, using a time resolved electrometric technique. The pH dependence of the membrane potential generation in CytcO showed that only one proton is taken up and that no protons are pumped, at high pH. An additional kinetic phase was also detected at high pH that presumably originates to from charge-transfer within the K-pathway. Possible reasons for uncoupling, and the extent of charge-transfer, were studied using structural variants of CytcO. The measurements established that electrons and protons are taken up from the same side of the membrane in NOR. In addition, the directionality for proton uptake in cbb3 oxidase appeared to be dependent on the choice of substrate while proton pumping was indicated to occur only during O2-reduction.


We introduce a bounding volume hierarchy based on the Slab Cut Ball. This novel type of enclosing shape provides an attractive balance between tightness of fit, cost of overlap testing, and memory requirement. The hierarchy construction algorithm includes a new method for the construction of tight bounding volumes in worst case O(n) time, which means our tree data structure is constructed in O(n log   n) time using traditional top‐down building methods. A fast overlap test method between two slab cut balls is also proposed, requiring as few as 28–99 arithmetic operations, including the transformation cost. Practical collision detection experiments confirm that our tree data structure is amenable for high performance collision queries. In all the tested benchmarks, our bounding volume hierarchy consistently gives performance improvements over the sphere tree, and it is also faster than the OBB tree in five out of six scenes. In particular, our method is asymptotically faster than the sphere tree, and it also outperforms the OBB tree, in close proximity situations.


In this age of information overload, providing useful recommendations to the users of E-commerce websites is an important and challenging problem. Personalized item ranking to recommend top-N items of interest to a user is more challenging in the case of implicit feedback data. Due to the lack of explicit user preferences, a model-based approach like matrix factorization is not effective for implicit user feedback. However, a neighborhood-based technique like Item-based collaborative filtering (IBCF) has shown better performance for implicit user feedback data and is a popular technique due to its scalability property. Although better than matrix factorization based technique for implicit feedback data, IBCF generates low-quality recommendations when data is sparse. In this work, we propose a method to address the problem of IBCF due to the sparseness of data by incorporating the meta-information related to items, and hybridization is done by forming a heterogeneous item information network. The proposed method uses a meta-path based framework for generating personalized item ranking and generates good quality recommendations in real time. The interest of users and popularity of items are leveraged simultaneously to improve the quality of recommendations. To find the intrinsic interest of users from the implicit feedback data, we perform the personalized weight learning to integrate the semantics of various meta-paths in the network. Experimental evaluation of the proposed method using the real-world data shows that the proposed method performs better than IBCF.


The optimal method for considering different genetic models in association studies is not clear. We compared analytical strategies that use different genetic models to analyze genotype–phenotype information from association studies of quantitative traits in unrelated individuals. We created simulated datasets where the minor alleles are causal with an additive, dominant, or recessive mode of inheritance over a range of allele frequencies. We then computed power to detect these causal alleles using one or a combination of statistical models in a standard regression framework, including corrections for the multiple testing incurred by analyzing multiple models. Our results show that, as expected, maximal power is achieved when we test a single genetic model that matches the actual underlying mode of inheritance of the causal allele. When the inheritance pattern of the causal allele is unknown, the co‐dominant model, a single two degrees of freedom test, has good overall performance in any of the three simple modes of inheritance simulated. Alternatively, it is slightly more powerful to analyze all three genetic models together (additive, dominant, and recessive), but only if the significance thresholds used to correct for analyzing multiple models are appropriately determined (such as by permutation). Finally, a commonly employed approach, testing the additive model alone, performs poorly for recessive causal alleles when the minor allele frequency is not close to 50%. Our observations were confirmed by analyzing an existing genetic association dataset in which we detect the effect of a KCNJ11 variant on insulinogenic index in unrelated non‐diabetic individuals. Genet. Epidemiol. 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Functional connectivity (FC) between regions of the brain can be assessed by the degree of temporal correlation measured with functional neuroimaging modalities. Based on the fact that these connectivities build a network, graph-based approaches for analyzing the brain connectome have provided insights into the functions of the human brain. The development of graph neural networks (GNNs) capable of learning representation from graph structured data has led to increased interest in learning the graph representation of the brain connectome. Although recent attempts to apply GNN to the FC network have shown promising results, there is still a common limitation that they usually do not incorporate the dynamic characteristics of the FC network which fluctuates over time. In addition, a few studies that have attempted to use dynamic FC as an input for the GNN reported a reduction in performance compared to static FC methods, and did not provide temporal explainability. Here, we propose STAGIN, a method for learning dynamic graph representation of the brain connectome with spatio-temporal attention. Specifically, a temporal sequence of brain graphs is input to the STAGIN to obtain the dynamic graph representation, while novel READOUT functions and the Transformer encoder provide spatial and temporal explainability with attention, respectively. Experiments on the HCP-Rest and the HCP-Task datasets demonstrate exceptional performance of our proposed method. Analysis of the spatio-temporal attention also provide concurrent interpretation with the neuroscientific knowledge, which further validates our method. Code is available at https://github.com/egyptdj/stagin


Background and Aims: Patients with fibromyalgia frequently present with symptoms similar to those experienced by patients with gluten-related disorders, raising the possibility that a subgroup of these patients could be experiencing underlying gluten sensitivity. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a gluten-free diet (GFD) compared with a hypocaloric diet (HCD) among patients with fibromyalgia. Methods: Adult patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia were randomly allocated to receive a GFD or a HCD over a 24-week period. The primary outcome measure was the change in the number of gluten sensitivity symptoms. The following secondary outcomes were evaluated: body mass index, Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Brief Pain Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory-II, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Short-Form Health Survey, Patient Global Impression Scale of Severity, Patient Global Impression Scale of Improvement, and adverse events. Results: Seventy-five subjects were randomly allocated to receive either a GFD (n=35) or an HCD (n=40). The least squares mean change in the total number of gluten sensitivity symptoms from baseline did not differ significantly between the GFD and HCD groups (−2.44±0.40 for the GFD; −2.10±0.37 for the HCD; P=0.343). Similarly, the 2 dietary interventions did not differ in any of the remaining measured secondary outcomes. Both dietary interventions were well tolerated. Conclusions: Both dietary interventions were associated with similar beneficial outcomes in reducing gluten sensitivity symptoms and other secondary outcomes. However, despite its specificity, GFD was not superior to HCD in reducing the number of gluten sensitivity symptoms or secondary outcomes.


Superconductivity of transition metal dichalcogenide 1T-TiTe2 under high pressure was investigated by first-principles calculations. Our results show that the superconductivity of 1T-TiTe2 exhibits very different behavior under hydrostatic and uniaxial pressure. The hydrostatic pressure is harmful to the superconductivity, while the uniaxial pressure is beneficial to the superconductivity. The superconducting transition temperature TC at ambient pressure is 0.73 K, and it reduces monotonously under the hydrostatic pressure to 0.32 K at 30 GPa, while TC increases dramatically under the uniaxial pressure along the c axis. The established TC of 6.34 K under the uniaxial pressure of 17 GPa, below which the structural stability is maintained, is above the liquid helium temperature of 4.2 K. The increase of the density of states at the Fermi level, the red-shift of the phonon density of states/Eliashberg spectral function F(ω)/α2F(ω), and the softening of the acoustic modes with pressure are considered as the main reasons that lead to the enhanced superconductivity under uniaxial pressure. In view of the previously predicted topological phase transitions of 1T-TiTe2 under the uniaxial pressure (Q. Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. B: Condens. Matter Mater. Phys., 2013, 88, 155317), we consider 1T-TiTe2 as a possible candidate in transition metal chalcogenides for exploring topological superconductivity.


For large parts of their history intellectual property law and antitrust law have worked so as to undermine innovation competition by protecting too much. Antitrust policy often reflected exaggerated fears of competitive harm, and responded by developing overly protective rules that shielded inefficient businesses from competition at the expense of consumers. By the same token, the IP laws have often undermined rather than promoted innovation by granting IP holders rights far beyond what is necessary to create appropriate incentives to innovate. Perhaps the biggest intellectual change in recent decades is that we have come to see patents less as a species of monopoly and more as a kind of property. While a good development overall, this makeover in conception has contributed to some less desirable expansions in the patent system. The "propertization" of patent law has not been attended by requirements that apply to other types of property. One principle of property law is that claimants have the obligation to articulate clear boundaries of ownership. Another is that property owners must communicate timely and effective notice of their claims, because the cost of giving notice is typically much lower than the cost of searching. Although one should not push the point too far, antitrust law, which is judge made, claims relatively more freedom from interest group capture than does statutory IP law. And if antitrust tribunals go too far, Congress can be trusted to respond to the voices of IP holders, who have consistently shown themselves to be a more effective interest group than IP users or consumers. For its part, IP law can take some important lessons from the road that antitrust has taken toward reform and redemption. Roughly 40 years ago antitrust pursued a course of protecting small competitors at consumers' expense and even condemning such practices precisely because they reduced costs. Then in the late 1970s the Supreme Court dramatically shifted the ground, requiring not only that injury be clearly proven, but also that it be the right kind of injury – that is, injury to competition and not merely injury to the plaintiff. This transformation was accomplished entirely by the Supreme Court, largely in the face of Congressional indifference and in apparent conflict with a private injury statute that guarantees liberal recovery for every kind of injury. Intellectual property law would profit by continuously examining its root motivations as antitrust law does.


In Melody Land, Robert 'V. Gibb. Walter Jacobs, Inc. We have few good collections of first pieces for the violin. The foreword signed by the author declares the publication to be useful as a supplement to their regular method used. I see no reason why "In Melody Land" itself cannot be used as method. Open strings and proper additions of technical requirements are made as logically as any instruction method known to me. Get this publication-you will be delighted with it. LEE M. LoCKHART


Atrial fibrillation (AF) is common in ICU patients and is associated with a two- to fivefold increase in mortality. This paper provides a reappraisal of the management of AF with a special focus on critically ill patients with haemodynamic instability. AF can cause hypotension and heart failure with subsequent organ dysfunction. The underlying mechanisms are the loss of atrial contraction and the high ventricular rate. In unstable patients, sinus rhythm must be rapidly restored by synchronised electrical cardioversion (ECV). If pharmacological treatment is indicated, clinicians can choose between the rate control and the rhythm control strategy. The optimal substance should be selected depending on its potential adverse effects. A beta-1 antagonist with a very short half-life (e.g., esmolol) is an advantage for ICU patients because the effect of beta-blockade on cardiovascular stability is unpredictable in those patients. Amiodarone is commonly used in the ICU setting but has potentially severe cardiac and noncardiac side effects. Digoxin controls the ventricular response at rest, but its benefit decreases in the presence of adrenergic stress. Vernakalant converts new-onset AF to sinus rhythm in approximately 50% of patients, but data on its efficacy and safety in critically ill patients are lacking.


ABSTRACT Opposition to new housing at higher densities is a pervasive and understudied problem, and an obstacle to both urban sustainability and housing affordability. Most existing research on housing opposition focuses on subsidized affordable housing, rather than new market-rate development. Scholars also tend to examine opponents' stated concerns, which often overlap and may obscure their underlying motivations. This article uses a survey-framing experiment, administered to over 1,300 people in Los Angeles County, to isolate different arguments against new market-rate housing and measure their relative persuasive power. We test the impact of common anti-housing arguments, such as traffic congestion, but also introduce the idea that residents might dislike development because they dislike developers. We find strong evidence for this idea: opposition to new development increases by 20 percentage points when respondents learn that a developer is likely to earn a large profit. This effect is similar in magnitude to arguments that new housing will harm neighborhood character. Our findings show that some opposition to housing is motivated not by residents' fears of their own losses, but resentment of others' gains.


Abstract Because of the antimicrobial resistance crisis, lectins are considered novel drug targets. Pseudomonas aeruginosa utilizes LecA and LecB in the infection process. Inhibition of both lectins with carbohydrate‐derived molecules can reduce biofilm formation to restore antimicrobial susceptibility. Here, we focused on non‐carbohydrate inhibitors for LecA to explore new avenues for lectin inhibition. From a screening cascade we obtained one experimentally confirmed hit, a catechol, belonging to the well‐known PAINS compounds. Rigorous analyses validated electron‐deficient catechols as millimolar LecA inhibitors. The first co‐crystal structure of a non‐carbohydrate inhibitor in complex with a bacterial lectin clearly demonstrates the catechol mimicking the binding of natural glycosides with LecA. Importantly, catechol 3 is the first non‐carbohydrate lectin ligand that binds bacterial and mammalian calcium(II)‐binding lectins, giving rise to this fundamentally new class of glycomimetics.


Integer Programming (IP) is a powerful and widely-used formulation for combinatorial problems. The study of IP over the past several decades has led to fascinating theoretical developments, and has improved our ability to solve discrete optimization problems arising in practice. This thesis makes progress on algorithmic solutions for IP by building on combinatorial, geometric and Linear Programming (LP) approaches.
We use a combinatorial approach to give an approximation algorithm for the feedback vertex set problem (FVS) in a recently developed Implicit Hitting Set framework [44, 45]. Our algorithm is a simple online algorithm which finds a nearly optimal FVS in random graphs. We also propose a planted model for FVS and show that an optimal hitting set for a polynomial number of subsets is sufficient to recover the planted subset.
Next, we present an unexplored geometric connection between integer feasibility and the classical notion of discrepancy of matrices [66]. We exploit this connection to show a phase transition from infeasibility to feasibility in random IP instances. A recent algorithm for small discrepancy solutions [56] leads to an efficient algorithm to find an integer point for random IP instances that are feasible with high probability.
Finally, we give a provably efficient implementation of a cutting-plane algorithm for perfect matchings. In our algorithm, cuts separating the current optimum are easy to derive while a small LP is solved to identify the cuts that are to be retained for later iterations. Our result gives a rigorous theoretical explanation for the practical efficiency of the cutting plane approach for perfect matching evident from implementations [38, 69].
In summary, this thesis contributes to new models and connections, new algorithms and rigorous analysis of well-known approaches for IP.


Changes of the electrical charges across the surface cell membrane are absolutely necessary to maintain cellular homeostasis in physiological as well as in pathological conditions. The opening of ion channels alter the charge distribution across the surface membrane as they allow the diffusion of ions such as K+, Ca++, Cl−, Na+. Traditionally, voltage-gated ion channels (VGIC) are known to play fundamental roles in controlling rapid bioelectrical signaling including action potential and/or contraction. However, several investigations have revealed that these classes of proteins can also contribute significantly to cell mitotic biochemical signaling, cell cycle progression, as well as cell volume regulation. All these functions are critically important for cancer cell proliferation. Interestingly, a variety of distinct VGICs are expressed in different cancer cell types, including metastasis but not in the tissues from which these tumors were generated. Given the increasing evidence suggesting that VGIC play a major role in cancer cell biology, in this review we discuss the role of distinct VGIC in cancer cell proliferation and possible therapeutic potential of VIGC pharmacological manipulation.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of allogeneic bone marrow mesenchymal stromal/stem cell transplantation (BM-MSCT) for patients with ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA)-resistant primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). Ten patients were enrolled in this trial of BM-MSCT. All patients were permitted to concurrently continue their previous UDCA treatment. The efficacy of BM-MSCT in UDCA-resistant PBC was assessed at various time points throughout the 12-month follow up. No transplantation-related side effects were observed. The life quality of the patients was improved after BM-MSCT as demonstrated by responses to the PBC-40 questionnaire. Serum levels of ALT, AST, γ-GT, and IgM significantly decreased from baseline after BM-MSCT. In addition, the percentage of CD8+ T cells was reduced, while that of CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ T cells was increased in peripheral lymphocytic subsets. Serum levels of IL-10 were also elevated. Notably, the optimal therapeutic outcome was acquired in 3 to 6 months and could be maintained for 12 months after BM-MSCT. In conclusion, allogeneic BM-MSCT in UDCA-resistant PBC is safe and appears to be effective.


ABSTRACT To investigate the molecular evolution of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in a large metropolitan area in Germany, 398 nonrepetitive MRSA isolates recovered from patients from various teaching and nonteaching hospitals in Cologne between 1984 and 1998 were characterized by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). On this basis, 95 representative isolates were selected and further investigated by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), spa typing, and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing. Overall, there were 9 MLST types and 16 spa types. The most prevalent sequence types (STs) were ST239 (38% of isolates), ST247 (29%), and ST228 (18%); the most prevalent spa types were 37 (32%) and 51 (29%). ST239 comprised five major PFGE types and various unique PFGE patterns, and ST5 comprised two PFGE types. While the same PFGE pattern was not observed among strains with different STs, spa type 37 was observed among strains representing two different STs (ST239 and ST241), and these belonged to the same clonal complex as single-locus variants. ST239 was the earliest predominant ST, with the highest prevalence from 1984 to 1988 (96%), followed by ST247 from 1989 to 1993 (83%) and ST228 from 1994 to 1998 (40%). Spa type 37 was the most prevalent from 1984 to 1988 (96%), spa type 51 was the most prevalent from 1989 to 1993 (83%), and spa types 1 and 458 were the most prevalent from 1994 to 1998 (26% and 14%, respectively). The prevalence of SCCmec type III decreased from 96% from 1984 to 1988 to 8% from 1989 to 1993, the prevalence of SCCmec type I increased from 4% from 1984 to 1988 to 97% from 1989 to 1993 and decreased to 62% from 1994 to 1998. While the genetic diversity of MRSA increased from 1984 to 1998, one prevalent ST usually accounted for most of the isolates in a given time period.


With the present day's exponential growth of the (tele-)communications market, the explosion of the number of mobile communication customers, and the tremendous growth of the number of IP hosts, ensuring the reliability of communication services is one of the most challenging tasks in today's software engineering. This Thesis addresses this problem by providing a new method for increasing confidence in the implementation of communication services. We developed an approach for monitoring and testing communications services that are built on top of a middleware. Specifically, we show how to monitor a communication service and how to use the monitored information to test at runtime whether the behavior of the service conforms to constraints. The constraints are extracted from the requirements, expressed using a formal method. The approach advocated in this Thesis consists in combining the power of formal methods, which have reached a high degree of maturity in the academic domain, with a testing methodology, that fit the industrial needs, in order to test the implementation of a communication service. The developer can thus focus on the testing rather then on how the testing is performed. To solve this problem (1) we designed a monitoring mechanism that is able to observe at run-time, the events occuring in the system under scrutiny, (2) designed a testing mechanism that checks at runtime if properties expressed using Temporal Logic, are violated by the execution of the application, (3) implemented a prototype tool, MOTEL (MOnitoring and TEsting tooL). With our approach the tester need only to specify the properties. The other steps involved in the testing processes are performed automatically. According to the content of the properties the instrumentation is added in the system to be tested. This instrumentation reports a consistent order of the events occurring to a central Observer. Within this Observer, the properties, which are independent of the implementation language, are translated into deterministic automata. At run-time these automata are used, according to the events reported by the instrumentation to the Observer, to check if the properties are violated. Thus, our monitoring and testing mechanism fits well in the development process because it does not add noticeable new steps for the developer. In this thesis we put together many concepts and solutions from various domains (distributed systems, middleware, object-oriented development, CORBA, communication services, formal method, Temporal Logic, automata theory, monitoring, testing). By enhancing, developing and combining, and integrating them together, we reached a high level of integration that provides a new, powerful and useful functionality to test the implementation of communication services. We believe that there is not a more valuable argument for the application and practical relevance of our approach in the industry, than the introduction and use of our method and tool in and by the industry. Our partner, Alcatel, is currently integrating MOTEL in the distributed platform PERCO.


Across the nation, one work zone fatality occurs every 10 h (about 2.3 per day) and one injury, every 13 min (110 per day). Speed limit compliance in and around work zones concerns transportation agency officials because excessive speeds have proved to be primary causes of crashes in work zones. As much as 25% of fatal crashes in work zones may have involved high speeds. Research was conducted with the use of a changeable message sign with radar (CMSR) at one work zone location on a four-lane, divided highway in Arizona. The CMSR, which was triggered by radar-detected speed, provided feedback to drivers about the amount of their potential traffic fine. A review of the literature indicated that this type of feedback has received only limited study. The CMSR alternated one speed feedback message, "Your Speed XX mph," with another, "Possible Fine $XXX." The dollar amount varied according to the speed of the vehicle. The coupling of speeding-fine feedback with alternating feedback on vehicle speed led to an observed reduction of speeds in the tested work zone. Reductions in mean speeds were modest, at approximately 4 mph. However, the impact on excessive speeders was significant. The number of speeders that traveled 5 and 10 mph, or more, above the speed limit decreased by one-fourth. At the extreme speeds of 15, 20, and 25 mph over the speed limit, the number of speeding vehicles was reduced in each case by half.


Since the 1990's development of industrial trawl fisheries of Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh has attracted due to its high demand and abundance of fish and shrimp resources. This paper investigates Bangladeshi industrial trawl fishery by employing a bioeconomic model and an input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis. The fundamental objective of this paper is to provide the technique through which long run sustainability can reach an optimum utilization of the resource efficiently to protect marine biodiversity and regenerate fish stocks. For this purpose, a conventional economic model is used simultaneously with a biological population growth model to develop a bioeconomic model. In order to achieve optimal steady state solutions, i.e., optimum levels of stock, harvest and effort are determined and efficiency is compared for five years. This study demonstrates that engine power, and fishing experience strongly affect technical efficiency. Results show that the Bangladesh trawl fishery is not managed and operated optimally and efficiently. Present situation of high effort level, less harvest amount and less fish stock signifies that the danger of depletion of the resource cannot be excluded . Finally, the study will propose some fishery strategies for Bangladesh, such as banning the inefficient trawlers to protect the resource.


Meta-learning for few-shot learning allows a machine to leverage previously acquired knowledge as a prior, thus improving the performance on novel tasks with only small amounts of data. However, most mainstream models suffer from catastrophic forgetting and insufficient robustness issues, thereby failing to fully retain or exploit long-term knowledge while being prone to cause severe error accumulation. In this paper, we propose a novel Continual Meta-Learning approach with Bayesian Graph Neural Networks (CML-BGNN) that mathematically formulates meta-learning as continual learning of a sequence of tasks. With each task forming as a graph, the intra- and inter-task correlations can be well preserved via message-passing and history transition. To remedy topological uncertainty from graph initialization, we utilize Bayes by Backprop strategy that approximates the posterior distribution of task-specific parameters with amortized inference networks, which are seamlessly integrated into the end-to-end edge learning. Extensive experiments conducted on the miniImageNet and tieredImageNet datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method, improving the performance by 42.8% compared with state-of-the-art on the miniImageNet 5-way 1-shot classification task.


DO INTERNATIONAL NORMS INFLUENCE STATE BEHAVIOR? The Limits of International Law. Jack L. Goldsmith & Eric A. Posner, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 262, $ 29.95 (hardcover) I. INTRODUCTION For the past few decades, lawyers and social scientists have been trying to explain why states do or do not comply with international law. Broadly speaking, prevailing theories on the issue of compliance can be divided into three groups. One group of theorists focuses on state interests as the key determinant of state behavior in the international system. Within this group, neorealists assume that states are primarily interested in maximizing power1 whereas neoliberals take a broader view of state interests, viewing both wealth and power as important state interests.2 Both groups, however, take state interests as a given, and seek to explain state behavior in the international system in terms of state interests. The other two groups of theorists, by contrast, believe that state interests themselves require explanation. Instead of taking state interests as a given, these theorists examine the forces that shape states' preferences. One group of theorists focuses on domestic political forces that shape states' foreign policy decisions.3 Another group focuses on the ways in which international norms and institutions influence state interests and state behavior.4 Though a variety of labels attach to different schools of thought, this Review will refer to the three types of theories as "state interest" theories, "domestic politics" theories, and "international norms" theories.5 International legal scholars who have attempted to explain why states comply with international law typically endorse some variant of international norms theory.6 By contrast, Professors Goldsmith and Posner's recent book, The Limits of International Law (Limits), falls squarely within the long tradition of state interest theories.7 Limits contends that states comply with international law when it is in their interest to do so, and that "international law emerges from states acting rationally to maximize their interests."8 Limits combines some new material with revised versions of several previously published articles.9 By integrating these materials in a single volume, Limits constitutes Goldsmith and Posner's first attempt to articulate a comprehensive theory of international law. Limits contends that most state behavior associated with international law can be explained in terms of four basic models, which are labeled "coercion," "cooperation," "coordination" and "coincidence of interest."10 The simplicity of this theory is one of the book's greatest strengths. Limits uses these four models to explain an extraordinarily wide range of state behavior, including the creadon, modification, and subsequent compliance with both treaty law and customary international law. The simplicity of the theory presented in Limits, however, is also the book's greatest weakness. Limits assumes that "state interests at any particular time [are] an unexplained given."11 By adopting this simplifying assumption, Limits largely ignores the insights developed by domestic politics theorists. Whereas the authors are merely indifferent to domestic politics theories, they are openly hostile to international norms theories. Indeed, one of the authors' main goals is to persuade readers that international norms do not influence state behavior. They fail to accomplish that goal. This Review presents a critical assessment of the theory presented in Limits. Part I provides a brief summary of Goldsmith and Posner's theory. Part II tests the theory by analyzing the evolution of international law and state practice, especially U.S. practice, related to the juvenile death penalty. Part III tests the theory by analyzing the evolution of China's policy and practice related to nuclear proliferation. The analysis in Parts II and III demonstrates that the United States and China have both altered their policies and practices to conform to international norms. …


AbstractFor Hegel, logic does not essentially consist of formal categories used to think about non-logical content. Rather, it consists of formal categories which are also themselves the content of logic. The idea that logic is its own form and its own content means that forms are used to think through other forms such that the same logical determination is a form in one context and a content in another. The generation of form and content out of one another—which precludes the need for the importation of external content into logic—is part of Hegel's definition of the logical category of 'life' in his Science of Logic. A living logic is a logic that accounts for its own self by means of its own self. Through contrasting this idea of logic with formal logic, and logical life with natural life, this essay provides a snapshot of how Hegel views the activity of living, self-determining logic.


The increased availability of genetic information online has led to growing concerns regarding health disparities among racial and ethnic groups and the need to examine the role of race/ethnicity in genetic testing awareness. Online users from a national representative sample were analyzed to explain the racial/ethnic differences in genetic testing awareness. The analysis indicated that health-related knowledge, online information-seeking behaviors, and information trust of the Internet were correlated with the prediction for awareness of online genetic testing information in different ethnic groups. The study also highlights these differences and identifies the priority ranking of the factors that reflect racial gaps. These findings suggest that the diversities in amount of trust of online information sources, education initiatives of health services, and knowledge of the existence of clinical trials and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention need to be considered more closely for racial/ethnic subgroups.


We present TRIAD, a new persistent key-value (KV) store based on Log-Structured Merge (LSM) trees. TRIAD improves LSM KV throughput by reducing the write amplification arising in the maintenance of the LSM tree structure. Although occurring in the background, write amplification consumes significant CPU and I/O resources. By reducing write amplification, TRIAD allows these resources to be used instead to improve user-facing throughput.

TRIAD uses a holistic combination of three techniques. At the LSM memory component level, TRIAD leverages skew in data popularity to avoid frequent I/O operations on the most popular keys. At the storage level, TRIAD amortizes management costs by deferring and batching multiple I/O operations. At the commit log level, TRIAD avoids duplicate writes to storage.

We implement TRIAD as an extension of Facebook's RocksDB and evaluate it with production and synthetic workloads. With these workloads, TRIAD yields up to 193% improvement in throughput. It reduces write amplification by a factor of up to 4x, and decreases the amount of I/O by an order of magnitude.


The paper analyses the information content of trades in Bund futures and German government bonds before and during the 1998 financial market turbulences and tests whether the contributions to price discovery of the two market segments were constant over time. The results suggest that, under the normal market conditions prevailing in the first half of the year, between 19% and 33% of the variation in the efficient price was due to trading in the spot market. In the aftermath of the recapitalisation of LTCM, by contrast, the bond market's share in price discovery dropped to zero, with information becoming incorporated into prices only in the futures market. This decline can be traced to an unusually high proportion of large client trades that were executed against dealer inventory, which suggests that they were primarily motivated by liquidity rather than by information. On the methodological side, the paper computes information shares and factor weights based on the Gonzalo-Granger decomposition in markets with different trading frequencies. In addition, the paper captures variations over time by using a sequence of break point tests.


The ability to provide real time feedback concerning a person's activity level and energy expenditure can be beneficial for improving activity levels of individuals. Examples include biofeedback systems used for body weight and physical activity management and biofeedback systems for rehabilitation of stroke patients. A critical aspect of any such system is being able to accurately classify data in real-time so that active and timely feedback can be provided. In the paper we demonstrate feasibility of real-time recognition of multiple household and athletic activities on a cell phone using the data collected by a wearable sensor system consisting of SmartShoe sensor and a wrist accelerometer. The experimental data were collected for multiple household and athletic activities performed by a healthy individual. The data was used to train two neural networks, one to be used primarily for sedentary individuals and one for more active individuals. Classification of household activities including ascending stairs, descending stairs, doing the dishes, vacuuming, and folding laundry, achieved 89.62% average accuracy. Classification of athletic activities such as jumping jacks, swing dancing, and ice skating, was performed with 93.13% accuracy. As proof of real-time processing on a mobile platform the trained neural network for healthy individuals was timed and required less than 4ms to perform each feature vector construction and classification.


In this welcome continuation of her fabulously successful "Knitting On, Over and Beyond the Edge" series, Nicky Epstein shows crocheters how to add her signature embellishments to their projects. She has created nearly 200 spectacular edgings, all with written instructions, charts and photographs, along with amazing projects that showcase them magnificently. A little red jacket, cropped, shaped and adorned with oversize buttons, features pretty scalloping. The adorable pink t-shirt provides a perfect example of how a little crocheting can transform an existing garment into a one-of-a-kind boutique-quality piece. Among her other fashion-forward designs: an ecru crystal shoulder cape, hat band and bracelet and multicolour top. As with all Nicky's other books, this is sure to be a hit!


The present work aims to identify critical materials in water electrolysers with potential future supply constraints. The expected rise in demand for green hydrogen as well as the respective implications on material availability are assessed by conducting a case study for Germany. Furthermore, the recycling of end‐of‐life (EoL) electrolysers is evaluated concerning its potential in ensuring the sustainable supply of the considered materials. As critical materials bear the risk of raising production costs of electrolysers substantially, this article examines the readiness of this technology for industrialisation from a material perspective. Except for titanium, the indicators for each assessed material are scored with a moderate to high (platinum) or mostly high (iridium, scandium and yttrium) supply risk. Hence, the availability of these materials bears the risk of hampering the scale‐up of electrolysis capacity. Although conventional recycling pathways for platinum, iridium and titanium already exist, secondary material from EoL electrolysers will not reduce the dependence on primary resources significantly within the period under consideration—from 2020 until 2050. Notably, the materials identified as critical are used in PEM and high temperature electrolysis, whereas materials in alkaline electrolysis are not exposed to significant supply risks.


Cataclasis, a friction-dependent mechanism of deformation involving fracture and rigid-body rotation, occurs during faulting of sandstone in the upper crust. Two stages of cataclasis of a sandstone are represented by (1) mildly deformed cataclastic sandstone that is shattered but contains many original grains that have not been fragmented and (2) gouge so severely deformed that the few surviving grains are almost surrounded by a fine-grained matrix of crushed grains. Gouge is restricted to shear fractures and larger slip planes within the natural fault zones, whereas cataclastic sandstone usually pervades the fault zone. Grain size and sorting of gouge decrease as a function of increasing confining pressure and increasing displacement along a shear fracture. In cataclastic sandstone associated with gouge, microfractures ate strongly oriented parallel to the maximum principal compressive stress. These microfractures, which are extension fractures, may be used to determine the orientation of the stress field during faulting. Rigid-body rotation is important during Cataclasis, and grains rotate in a manner that agrees with the sense of shear on the fault plane.


The aim of this dissertation is to understand the molecular chemistry of nanomaterials and to correlate their structures to their functions. The first part of this dissertation explores how we can use precursor chemistry to develop a synthetic approach to novel structures of nanomaterials. There will be a demonstration of morphology control in lead chalcogenide nanocrystals following an investigation of the precursor chemistry which gives valuable information on precursor decomposition during the crystal growth. At the same time, there will be a discussion about how we can understand structure-dependent properties of nanomaterials using advanced spectroscopic techniques. Well-established synthetic approaches discussed in the first part allow for the study of morphology-dependent optical properties of lead chalcogenide nanocrystals, including the shape-dependent electronic level structure of lead chalcogenide nanomaterieals and the symmetrydependent phonon modes of lead chalcogenide nanocrystals. For the second part of this dissertation, I will address the importance of ligand and surface chemistry of colloidal nanomaterials. New ligand systems will be introduced which allow a variety of interesting studies in chemical, optical, and electrical analyses of nanomaterials. Especially flexible electronic devices using low temperature process of thiocyanate chemistry will be demonstrated for lead chalcogenide nanomaterials to show promising opportunities of these ligand systems. For the electronic transport in a 1-dimensional confined system, NWs-based field-effect transistors are studied with post-processed surface treatment. Investigating the role of chemical treatment reveals how the surface/interface chemistry of NWs affects the electronic tranposport in 1-dimensional confined nanostructures. To sum up, this dissertation first focuses on the molecular chemistry of nanostructures to help understand the synthesis and ligand/surface chemistry of nanomaterials. This understanding then enables us to study the optical and electric properties of these materials with various morphologies and assembled structures. With the ability to control the size, shape, and composite materials of the individual building blocks, I hope this dissertation can aid in the formation of collective ensembles with tunable material properties and structures. The ultimate goal is the creation of nanomaterial-based devices with programmable performances. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Chemistry First Advisor Christopher B. Murray This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/979


This paper introduces effective numerical methods for the planning and fast replanning of safe motions to ensure the safety, balance, and integrity of humanoid robots over the whole motion duration. Our safe methods do not depend on, nor are connected to, any type of modeling or constraints. To plan safe motions, certain constraints have to be satisfied over a continuous interval of time. Classical methods revert to time-grid discretization, which can be risky for the robot. We introduce a hybrid method to plan safe motions, which combines a classical unsafe method with a verification step that checks constraint violation and computes excess by the usage of interval analysis. When the robot meets unexpected situations, it has to replan a new motion, which is often too time consuming. Hence, we introduce a new method to rapidly replan safe motions, i.e., in less than 2 s CPU time. It computes offline feasible subsets in the vicinity of safe motions and finds online a solution in these subsets without actually recomputing the nonlinear constraints. Our methods are validated by the use the HOAP-3 robot, where the motions are run with no balance controller.


Search User Interfaces (SUIs) represent the gateway between people who have a task to complete, and the repositories of information and data stored around the world. Not surprisingly, therefore, there are many communities who have a vested interest in the way SUIs are designed. There are people who study how humans search for information, and people who study how humans use computers. There are people who study good user interface design, and people who design aesthetically pleasing user interfaces. There are also people who curate and manage valuable information resources, and people who design effective algorithms to retrieve results from them. While it would be easy for one community to reject another for their limited ability to design a good SUI, the truth is that they all can, and they all have made valuable contributions. Fundamentally, therefore, we must accept that designing a great SUI means leveraging the knowledge and skills from all of these communities. The aim of this book is to at least acknowledge, if not integrate, all of these perspectives to bring the reader into a multidisciplinary mindset for how we should think about SUI design. Further, this book aims to provide the reader with a framework for thinking about how different innovations each contribute to the overall design of a SUI. With this framework and a multidisciplinary perspective in hand, the book then continues by reviewing: early, successful, established, and experimental concepts for SUI design. The book then concludes by discussing how we can analyse and evaluate the on-going developments in SUI design, as this multidisciplinary area of research moves forwards. Finally, in reviewing these many SUIs and SUI features, the book finishes by extracting a series of 20 SUI design recommendations that are listed in the conclusions. Table of Contents: Introduction / Searcher-Computer Interaction / Early Search User Interfaces / Modern Search User Interfaces / Experimental Search User Interfaces / Evaluating Search User Interfaces / Conclusions


Since the 1980s, the figure of the 'girl' has become one of the most prominent subject positions offered up in British fashion magazines (Jobling 1999). This way of constructing femininity harks back to the observation made by Roland Barthes, in 1967, that the rhetoric of fashion 'reproduces, on the level of clothing, the mythic situation of Women in Western civilization, at once sublime and childlike' (1990: 242). This article argues that both facets – the sublime and the childlike – continue to inform constructions of femininity in contemporary fashion magazines, with the niche publication, Lula, girl of my dreams, being a particularly marked example. Methods of textual and discourse analysis are employed to make sense of written and visual excerpts, drawing from issues of Lula spanning 2006 to 2012. Discourses on Romantic childhood and discourses on 'high' fashion – both of which construct their objects as 'pure' – are shown to intersect on the pages of Lula thus producing the Lula girl as otherworldly creature, while disavowing the less palatable aspects of the fashion industry that bring her into being. Inviting nostalgic recollection of childhood, the Lula girl is shown not to recall childhood in any objective sense but rather to reconstruct childhood through the mythic tropes of Romantic innocence. The possible appeal of this vision of womanhood for both magazine producers and consumers is theorized through the concept of 'investment' as well as recent debates on pleasure and politics in feminist media studies. Ultimately, the Lula girl is shown to facilitate imaginary solutions for real-life frustrations by dissolving the contradictions of normative femininity as well as encompassing elements excluded from contemporary definitions of adulthood.