The inhibitive action of the extract of Picralima nitida leaves toward 1.0 M HCl corrosion of aluminum was examined. Gravimetric (weight loss), potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy techniques were used in the corrosion inhibition process. In all the method used, the P. nitida leaves extract acted as good corrosion inhibitor of aluminum in 1.0 M HCl solution. Maximum inhibition efficiency of 84.09% was obtained with inhibition concentration of 1.2 g/l. It showed that the extract of P. nitida leaves has excellent inhibitive ability for the corrosion inhibition process. The values of kads are relatively small indicating that the interaction between the adsorbed extract of picralimanitida molecules and aluminum surface is a physical process. The P. nitida extract protected the aluminium against pitting corrosion. The level of protection increases with increasing extract concentration. The P. nitida leave extract inhibited both cathodic and anodic reactions and acted as mixed-type inhibitor.


President Obama was widely criticized for "dithering" over the decision of whether to add more troops in the Afghanistan War. Yet Presidents and Congresses over the past decade escaped similar opprobrium for "dithering" in the face of the long-scheduled one-year repeal of the estate tax beginning January 1, 2010, to be followed by the reinstatement of the tax on January 1, 2011. Although the "smart money" agreed after the passage of the Bush tax cuts in 2001 that the Administration and Congress would never allow the repeal-reinstatement scenario to play out, that is precisely where we now find ourselves. In this TePoel Lecture and Keynote Address, delivered at Creighton University School of Law on April 16, 2010 as part of a Symposium on Estate Planning: Moral, Ethical, and Religious Perspectives, I discuss what the failure to enact a new estate tax law by the end of 2009 tells us about the state of our tax law and politics.The lecture first discusses the history and purpose of the estate tax (and companion gift tax and generation-skipping tax). For eighty-five years, there was a rough consensus that the estate tax raised needed revenue, enhanced the progressivity of the tax system, and helped curb concentrations of wealth, in line with the experience of other countries. But the estate tax consensus evaporated in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s, as anti-tax advocates turned large swaths of the public and politicians against the estate tax, culminating in the 2001 Bush tax cuts (which unfolded in a context very similar to the recent health care reform legislation). It is especially ironic that the political establishment allowed the estate tax to expire at a time with a greater need than ever for the revenues, progressivity, and wealth redistribution produced by the estate tax. The lecture discusses several consequences of the expiration of the estate tax, including the impact on the timing of deaths and the chaos confronting estate planners, tax lawyers, and accountants during this interregnum period - including the distribution of a decedent's property where the estate planning documents employ formula clauses tied to the estate tax; the roles of lifetime non-charitable gifts and charitable gifts; the application of the new basis rules in the absence of IRS guidance; and the specter of Congress retroactively bringing back the estate tax. Although a unanimous Supreme Court sixteen years ago (United States v. Carlton, 512 U.S. 26 (1994)) gave a wide constitutional berth to Congress in enacting retroactive tax legislation, each passing day adds to the potential retroactive reach-back and increases the possibility in this Tea Party age that Justice Scalia's critique of "bait-and-switch" taxation will attract more adherents. The lecture concludes by discussing three recent celebrity deaths - Casey Johnson, Ruth Lilly, and Dan Duncan - and asks whether any of those estates might contest a retroactive re-imposition of the estate tax. In many ways, a successful constitutional challenge would be a fitting denouement to the costs of estate tax dithering.


We determined inter- and intrarater Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) scoring agreement for four trained examining physicians who evaluated 10 clinically stable multiple sclerosis patients. These patients had previously been determined to have EDSS scores of 1.0 to 3.5 and were scheduled to participate in a funded clinical trial of intramuscular recombinant interferon-beta. Intrarater reliability was greater than interrater reliability for scoring the EDSS and all of its component functional systems scores (FSS). Specifically, individual examiners were able to reproduce three serial examination scores on the same patient on the same day (intrarater agreement) within 1.0 EDSS or 2.0 individual FSS points. Reproducible scoring across examiners (interrater agreement), however, could only be accomplished within 1.5 EDSS or 3.0 individual FSS points. Additionally, the interrater scoring variability in our patients is greater than that previously reported for patients with higher EDSS scores. We conclude that clinical trials that employ the EDSS as an outcome measure of treatment efficacy should include inter- and intrarater agreement data for all examining physicians. Most importantly, studies using a single examining physician to evaluate individual patients throughout the course of a clinical trial will require less change in the EDSS to reliably measure disease activity than will studies using more than one examining physician to evaluate individual patients throughout the trial.


The new heterogeneous catalyst based on MoO2(acac)2 immobilized on superparamagnetic nanoparticle functionalized with dendrimer was synthesized. The dendrimer with amine and sulfur functional groups offer proper positions for a strong connection between MoO2(acac)2 and support. The synthesized catalyst was characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy, ICP, TGA, SEM, TEM, and XRD. This catalyst showed high activity in the epoxidation of alkene with tert-BuOOH. These reactions displayed the best performance in the present of 1,2-dichloroethan as a solvent and 0.0108 mmol of the catalyst. The use of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) as support facilitates the separation of the catalyst from the reaction media by simple magnetic decantation. Eventually, the catalyst can be recovered and reused without a decrease in its catalytic activity and significant Mo leaching for five times.


New investment techniques and new types of shareholder activists are shaking up the traditional ways of equity investment that informs much of our present-day corporate law and governance. Savvy investors such as hedge funds are using financial derivatives, securities lending transactions, and related concepts to decouple the financial risk from shares. This leads to a distortion of incentives and has potentially severe consequences for the functioning of corporate governance and of capital markets overall. Taking stock of the different decoupling strategies that have become known over the past several years, this book then provides an evaluation of each from a legal and an economic perspective. Based on several analytical frameworks, the author identifies the elements of equity deconstruction and demonstrates the consequences for shareholders, outside investors, and capital markets. On this basis, the book makes the case for regulatory intervention, based on three different pillars and comprising disclosure, voting right suspension, and ex-post litigation. The book concludes by developing a concrete, comprehensive proposal on how to address the regulatory problem. Overall, this book contributes to the debate about activist investment and the role of shareholders in corporate governance. At the same time it raises a number of important considerations about the role of equity investment more generally.


A current trend on the Internet is the increasing surveillance of its users. A few big service providers have divided most of the user-facing Internet between them, observing and recording the activities of their users to increase profits. Additionally, government agencies have been found to practice mass surveillance. With regard to this it becomes even more important to provide online services that protect the privacy of their users and avoid censorship by single, powerful entities. To reach these goals, a trusted third party should be avoided. A prototype service which fulfills these goals is DPS-Discuss, a decentralized, pseudonymous online discussion application. It uses the libraries BitNym and Peer-Tor-Peer for pseudonym management and anonymous communication.


The need for auditors" independence is very crucial for the success of audit process. Independence of the auditors manifests in technical, investigative and reporting forms. For the audit report to be publicly accepted as reflecting the true and fair view the auditors must be seen to be indeed truly independent. One way the auditor"s independence manifests is in the nature of audit report issued by the auditors. This study therefore examines the nexus between the auditor"s independence and the nature of audit report issued. Using audit fees as a measure of audit independence we examined the relationship between the audit fees and the nature of audit reports of Twenty-Seven (27) publicly quoted companies in Nigerian Stock Exchange between 2002 and 2006 period. The results of the analysis show that there is a positive but insignificant relationship between the auditor independence (measured by audit fees) and the nature of the audit reports issued by the auditors. Most of the companies under investigations issued unqualified audit reports. Since audit fee is used to estimate independence it therefore means that the higher the audit fee the lower the auditor independence and the higher the incidence of issuing unqualified audit reports. Keywords: Auditor independence, audit fees, audit report, qualified audit report, and unqualified audit report.


Export of organic matter from the surface to deeper waters often shows much smaller seasonal variations than primary production or nitrate‐based new production in mid‐ to high‐latitude marine systems. The mechanisms underlying this pattern remain poorly understood, but seasonal shifts in food web structure and dynamics have been implicated. We report here on an ecosystem modeling analysis of a high‐resolution (biweekly) time series of biomass, production, and export flux (sediment trap) measurements conducted in 1991 in Bonne Bay (Newfoundland). This time series shows the classical pattern of a spring bloom followed by a summer low biomass period, yet export is bimodal, with maxima during spring and late summer. The ecosystem model was forced by diagnostic vertical mixing calculations based on temperature and salinity records taken every 3 d and hourly wind data. The physical analysis indicated that the nitrate flux into the euphotic zone during summer was equivalent to that during the spring and fall seasons and accounted for half of the summer export. Statistical adjustments of the parameters of the ecosystem model indicated that strong production of dissolved organic carbon during the spring bloom, high temperature dependence of microbial activity, and physico‐chemical particle aggregation played key roles in explaining the remainder of the summer export. Seasonal changes in trophic pathways between spring and summer, such as a shift from a herbivorous to a microbial food web, played a comparatively smaller role. Our modeling analysis suggests that physical mixing processes and physico‐chemical aggregation processes are at least as important as shifts in food web trophic pathways in explaining the postbloom export flux in mid‐ to high‐latitude marine systems.


Successfully implement Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 with easy-to-follow instructions and examples Overview Plan, install, and implement Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 with real-world advice from a Microsoft Dynamics GP MVP Learn how to set up the core modules in Microsoft Dynamics GP effectively following detailed, step-by-step instructions Discover additional tools and resources available for your Dynamics GP In Detail Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 is a sophisticated Enterprise Resource Planning system with a multitude of features and options. The implementation of Dynamics GP is usually considered to be complex, and can be very confusing for both end users and consultants. Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 Implementation will show you how to effectively implement Dynamics GP 2013 with ease. "Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 Implementation" is a focused, step-by-step tutorial covering the basics of Microsoft Dynamics GP, from licensing to design, before moving on to more complex topics such as implementation planning, installation, setup, and training. Learn how to plan and execute your Dynamics GP implementation from start to finish. You will start off by learning how to plan a successful Dynamics GP 2013 implementation. You will then move on to learn the important questions to ask, the key setup details that should be decided upfront, and how to plan the infrastructure. Detailed descriptions of all the setup options for the core Dynamics GP modules as well as practical advice on setup will guide you through the myriad of options available in this powerful application. This book will also cover how to import initial data and how to find out what additional resources and tools are available for Microsoft Dynamics GP. With many detailed and practical examples, "Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013" Implementation will help you plan and complete a successful Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 implementation. What you will learn from this book Put together an effective implementation team and discover key concepts for an effective implementation Plan out the details of your Dynamics GP implementation Navigate through infrastructure choices and planning Install SQL Server 2012 and Dynamics GP 2013 with ease Understand the meaning of setup options for the core Dynamics GP modules such as General Ledger, Bank Reconciliation, Payables Management, Receivables Management, and more Learn about important concepts for training users on Microsoft Dynamics GP by planning whom, when, and how many users to train Discover additional resources and tools available for Dynamics GP Approach A step-by-step guide for planning and carrying out your Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 implementation. Detailed descriptions and illustrations of setup screens and practical examples and advice are included for the Dynamics GP system and core modules. Who this book is written for If you are a new or existing Microsoft Dynamics GP consultant or an end user who wants to implement, install, and set up core modules of Dynamics GP 2013, then this book is for you. A basic understanding of business management systems and either Dynamics GP or a similar application is recommended.


The embedment of states in a multilevel government environment created by rule- based international organizations, also impacts upon the position of subnational entities in federal and quasi-federal states. In this multilevel government environment, subnational constitutionalism is not merely defined by the power of subnational authorities to adopt their own constitution, but also by the power to define their position in relation to other layers of authority. This is in particular true for EU member states, considering the intensity of the European integration process. The European, national and subnational systems are thus intertwined. (Quasi-)federal constitutional systems adopt different strategies, ranging from a centralist to a dualist approach. A comparative analysis, using indicators for measuring these approaches, provides us with prototypes for a centralist approach (the UK), a gate-keeper approach (Germany) and a dualist approach (Belgium). At the same time, these indicators can be used to refine the model for the positioning of legal systems on a gliding scale from unitary to con-federal states.


ABSTRACT A new species of Lagaropsylla. Jordan & Rothschild, 1921 from Madagascar(Insecta, Siphonaptera, Ischnopsyllidae). This paper describes a new species of the genus Lagaropsylla Jordan & Rothschild, 1921, collected in the Makay Mountains in Madagascar, on the bat Otomops madagascariensis Dorst, 1953. Male differs from L. obliqua Smit, 1957 and L. hoogstraali Smit, 1957 by the hamulus shape, which is markedly higher than large, exhibiting a small "tooth" backwards of the apex; and differs from L. consularis Smit, 1957 by the preoral tuber, the pronotal comb and the ductus ejaculatorius shapes. Female has a sclerite at the ductus bursae base and differs from L. consularis by the preoral tuber shape and rather short spines on the comb. The new species' discovery is explained, in one hand, by the rarity of the host, and, in the other hand, by the lack of previous bats and ectoparasites studies in the remote Makay Mountains. A new parasite-host association between Araeopsylla martialis (Rothschild, 1903) and O. madagascariensis is mentioned.


Contextual advertising is a form of textual advertising usually displayed on third party Web pages. One of the main problems with contextual advertising is determining how to select ads that are relevant to the page content and/or the user information in order to achieve both effective advertising and a positive user experience. In this study, we propose a translation method that learns the mapping of the contextual information to the textual features of ads by using past click data. The contextual information includes the user's demographic information and behavioral information as well as page content information. The proposed method is able to retrieve more preferable ads while maintaining the sparsity of the inverted index and the performance of the ad retrieval system. In addition, it is easy to implement and there is no need to modify an existing ad retrieval system. Extensive evaluations showed the effectiveness of our approach.


Made-in USA Myriad choices exist for American girls within the image systems of this post-feminist era. Women's sports have hit the popular airwaves with professional basketball teams, an Olympic hockey team and stellar media focus on teenage figure skating, gymnastics and tennis stars. Women run companies, have careers in medicine, law and politics - domains previously off-limits. Women "making it" in the corporate world abound as role models for girls. Yet alongside the career triumphs of American women, and the frequent use of the hype-term "Girl Power" in current advertising and journalism, reports of a chronic loss of self-esteem, eating disorders, bodily mutilation, teenage pregnancy, sexually-transmitted diseases and suicide among American adolescents proliferate. In fact, the decline in girls' self-esteem has become a given in mainstream news reportage. The visual landscape of teenage girlhood in the United States is contradictory, with wealthy models, actresses and sports stars defining the terms of youth success and "regular girls" often presented by the news media as troubled or in trouble. The ultra-thin body of the teenage girl-woman continues to serve as the commodified Maiden, Made-in the USA, a "model citizen" against which our culture measures its standards of beauty. For young girls, Barbie is the ideal teenager with the sparkly, dreamy clothes, the tiny, Cinderella shoes, and that impossibly sexy body. For feminists, she's the bimbo we love to hate. The teenage girl's own body falls under the scrutiny of her own often cruel comparative gaze, a gaze that alternately identifies with the Maidens of popular culture and rejects them wholesale as objects of a consumerist culture. And yet this supermodel aspect of the Maiden continues to wield clout as a substantial on-the-arm consort of the male power structure. Cultural taboos surrounding menstruation and the expression of girls' sexual desire continue to mute the language of the female body, while beauty panic causes girls to scrutinize every inch of their skin, muscle, bone and fat cells in a hobbled language of fashion-based imitation - the performance of the feminine. Although teenage models and actresses are continually glorified by the mass media in their nymph-beauty state, real-life teenage girls are being scrutinized as an "at risk" population by many scholars and journalists. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1996) by psychologist Mary Pipher was designed as a clarion call, an "eye-opening look at the everyday dangers of being young and female," and was on The New York Times bestseller list for over two years, 1996-98. This book has become a popular Bible for the documentation of this "national phenomenon" of girls' diminishing self-esteem, as well as their eating disorders and self-mutilation - a guidebook that raises many fear-based questions and concerns. "America is a girl-destroying place," says Pipher.(1) The statistics of self-esteem loss are grim - less than a third of girls polled in the American Association of University Women's (AAUW) 1990 study of adolescents aged 11-15 entitled "Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America," responded positively to the statement "I am happy the way I am" compared with nearly half of the boys.(2) Yet little focus has been given to the girls who do succeed - not as models, rock stars, actresses or Olympic athletes - but as happy, productive, outspoken, creative individuals. Peggy Orenstein's SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap (1994) documented the effects of the drop in self-esteem among adolescent girls indicated by the AAUW's startlingly high statistics. Exploring the "real life" applications of these findings, Orenstein profiled female students in two middle schools, one largely middle-class and predominantly white, the other a multicultural, inner-city school. What she revealed in her investigative journalism is a system ill-equipped to foster self-confidence in girls. …


Objectives: Previous research suggests an association between working alliance, the collaborative and affective bond between patient and therapist, and improved therapeutic treatment outcomes within treatment of severe mental illness (SMI). However, little is known about the mechanisms through which working alliance improves outcomes in this population. Through investigating key elements of recovery within SMI, two possible mediators—patient activation and hope—appear particularly relevant to the relationship between working alliance and improved treatment outcomes. The current study aimed to examine patient activation and hope as potential mediators in the relationship between working alliance and improved depression in individuals with SMI. Additionally, the current study investigated whether or not the patient's evaluation of which provider is most important to their recovery significantly moderated the relationship between working alliance and patient activation/hope.Methods: The current study was a secondary analysis of longitudinal (baseline, 6-month, and 12-month) data comparing two interventions aimed at reducing treatment provider burnout in community mental health settings primarily serving individuals with SMI. Participants (maximum N for analyses = 346) completed measures of working alliance with a linked provider on their treatment team, patient activation, hope, and depression at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. Using moderated mediation analysis, 6-month patient activation and 6-month hope were examined as mediators in the relationship between baseline working alliance and 12-month improved depression (change score between 12-month and baseline depression). Additionally, whether or not the patient deemed their linked provider as most important to their recovery was tested as a moderator in the relationship between baseline working alliance and 6-month patient activation/hope.Results: Overall, the current study's hypothesized model was not supported. Baseline working alliance did not significantly predict improved depression 12 months later. Further, both patient activation and hope measured at month 6 in the study did not significantly mediate the relationship between working alliance quality at baseline and improved depression at month 12. Additionally, whether or not the patient believed their linked provider was most important to their recovery did not significantly moderate the relationship between baseline working alliance and 6-month patient activation or 6-month hope. However, results indicate that better quality working alliance at baseline did significantly predict higher patient activation at 6 months. Lastly, the current study found a significant positive correlation between importance of provider and baseline working alliance.Discussion: Results suggest that improvement in depression may not be a key SMI treatment outcome that relates to working alliance, patient activation, and hope. Further, fostering a positive working alliance (e.g., collaboratively developing goals/tasks in-session) may increase patient's ability, willingness, and confidence in managing their own mental health care. Additionally, a positive working alliance may also contribute to how important the patient believes the provider is to their recovery. However, those that have seen their provider for longer (e.g., more chronically ill) may be less active in managing their own mental health care. Limitations and possible future directions are discussed.


A nanostructure is a system in which at least one external dimension is in the nanoscale, it means a length range smaller than 100 nm. Nanostructures can be natural or synthetic and determine the physicochemical properties of bulk materials. Due to their high surface area and surface reactivity, they can be an efficient alternative to remove contaminants from the environment, including heavy metals from water. Heavy metals like mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As), lead (Pb), and chromium (Cr) are highly poisonous and hazardous to human health due to their non-biodegradability and highly toxic properties, even at trace levels. Thus, efficient, low-cost, and environmentally friendly methodologies of removal are needed. These needs for removal require fast detection, quantification, and remediation to have heavy metal-free water. Nanostructures emerged as a powerful tool capable to detect, quantify, and remove these contaminants. This book chapter summarizes some examples of nanostructures that have been used on the detection, quantification, and remediation of heavy metals in water.


One fundamental challenge in choosing an examination form to assess student achievements is to find an examination which, both encourages students to continuously elaborate the course content and constitutes a learning process itself. The objective of this paper is to share and reflect on the development and implementation of a new theme-based examination in a six credit course in Product Ergonomics given in the engineering programme Design and Product Development at Linkoping University, Sweden. The course runs during four months and has two parts: one theoretical and one applied. The former focuses on theoretical ergonomic topics, models and methods while the latter is a project aiming at consolidating the students' understanding of the theory by implementing the knowledge in a product development case. To encourage the students to adapt a deep learning approach, the traditional written mid-term exam for the theoretical part was abandoned and another concept developed. In the new concept, the theoretical part was split onto six weekly themes. Each theme was introduced at the beginning of the week by highlighting main theories and models followed by a group-work assignment to be elaborated on by the students during the week. The theme was examined at the end of the week through a short written exam and a seminar to discuss and reflect upon the theme. From a student perspective, the positive outcome of the theme-based examination was peer learning and a more active learning style. The students appreciated the theme-based structure of the course. Occasionally, some students commented that weekly examinations could be perceived as stressful. The teachers perceived the students to be more acquainted with ergonomics theory and methods which increased the quality of the course project. The reported themebased assessment is one example of implementing among others the CDIO syllabus parts 2.2 and 3.1 and CDIO standards 8 and 11.


In this thesis the design and analysis of SIS-mixers (SIS: superconductor-isolator-superconductor) for the use as low-noise and broad-band detectors in the submm-region for astronomical observations is described. The SIS-mixers have been developed for the frequency band 2 (636-802 GHz) of the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) on ESA�s space-observatory Herschel. The required performance baseline has been defined by the HIFI-consortium in terms of the estimated noise temperature contribution of the mixer to be 110 K at 636 GHz and 150 K at 802 GHz. In the frequency region between 80 GHz and 900 GHz Heterodyne SIS mixers are established as the best devices for low noise mixing with a high spectral resolution (mixing of the signal radiation with local oscillator, LO). For the HIFI band 2 mixers, the technology of Nb/Al-Al2O3/Nb-junctions has been used with junction areas of 0.5-1.0 um2, a target value for the current density jc of 15 kA/cm2 and a gap-voltage of 2.75-2.77 mV. For the compensation of the SIS-junction�s intrinsic capacitance and the optimized power coupling to the tunnel junction, two types of matching circuits have been theoretically modelled and experimentally studied: (1) three-step transformer single junction devices and (2) double-junction devices. This has been done for two material combinations: for an all-superconductive micro strip NbTiN/SiO2/Nb, and for the superconductor/normal-conductor combination NbTiN/SiO2/Al. A numerical tool has been developed and applied in order to define the optimum set of fabrication parameters and strip line geometry for the lithography masks. From a large number of fabricated devices the SIS-junctions with the optimum noise performance have been selected to be integrated in the HIFI instrument as flight-mixers. The selection and characterization of devices has been done based on the DC I-V-curves, heterodyne hot-cold characterization and spectral analysis in a Fourier-transform-spectrometer at 4 K. For a comparison of the noise data with the HIFI requirements, the measurement setup has been characterized and its noise contributions have been subtracted. The single-junction devices with Nb top-wiring have shown the optimum noise performance. This is in accordance with the presented simulations. The optimum measured mixer noise contribution for a SIS-mixer has been determined to depend on the DC-quality Q; a higher Q is a measure for a low leakage current and an indication for a low device shot-noise. The measured noise performance of the flight-mixers is compliant with the HIFI baseline over 80% of the band, as has been confirmed in the HIFI integration tests. For the fabricated SIS-wafers a good absolute accuracy of the junction area AJ (below 5%) and a large current density jc = 13−14 kA/cm2 have been identified to be crucial for the optimum noise performance. AJ via the intrinsic capacitance and the normal resistance of the tunnel junction mainly determines the resonance frequency of the whole device. For a more complete theoretical analysis of a SIS-mixer a numerical tool has been developed which allows the calculation of the noise- and gain band-pass based on the three-frequency approximation of the Quantum Theory of Mixing. This tool has been used to verify the power design calculation, and to evaluate the optimum fabrication parameters for future designs of SIS-devices. The effect of four fabrication parameters (NbTiN-quality, gap-voltage VGap, current density jc and DC-quality Q) on the mixer performance has been evaluated. Based on the calculated data jc and Q have been identified as the most critical fabrication parameters for the mixer performance. A second result of the simulation is a significant reduction in mixer noise for an increased DC-quality up to Q = 8 − 10, but less improvement for a larger Q. And finally, for large micro-strip losses (30-40%) as for NbTiN/SiO2/Nb-microstrips around 800 GHz an increase in current density jc has resulted in a significant reduction of the calculated mixer noise contribution. This suggests a strong potential to reduce the noise temperatures in this frequency region with AlN-barriers, which are currently developed at KOSMA and promise current densities around and above 30 kA/cm2. The absolute calculated noise data deviate with a factor 2 from the measured data. But the calculated results show a good agreement with the measured noise data regarding the frequency-, bias-voltage and LO-power dependence. Thus the applied model is expected to give reliable estimates for relative variations in noise performance.


When a light scalar field is present during inflation, its value varies on superhorizon scales, modulating the preheating process at the end of inflation. Consequently, the amplitude of the gravitational wave (GW) background produced during preheating is also modulated. The observed energy density of this background appears therefore anisotropic at different angles in the sky. We provide a master formula for the angular power spectrum Cl of the anisotropies in the GW background from preheating, valid for any scenario where the anisotropies are due to the superhorizon modulation of a light degree of freedom. Using lattice field theory simulations of massless preheating with g2/λ = 2, we find a flat angular spectrum l(l+1)Cl ≈ 3 × 10−4, which represents a strong anisotropy of ∼ 1% variations on large angular scales. For our choice of couplings, long wavelengths are amplified most strongly during parametric resonance, which is crucial for the development of the anisotropies. If future direct detection GW observatories are capable of detecting backgrounds of cosmological origin, they {may also} be able to detect this effect. This could eventually become a powerful tool to discriminate among inflationary and preheating scenarios.


Order independent transparency (OIT) proves challenging for modern rasterization-based renderers. Rendering without transparency can limit the quality of visual effects, so researchers have proposed various algorithms enabling and approximating OIT. Unfortunately, this work generally has restrictions limiting its applicability. To identify directions for improvement, we performed an in-depth categorization of existing transparency techniques and placed them on a multi-dimensional continuum. This categorization shows how prior published techniques relate to each other and highlights unexposed parts of the continuum where further research may prove beneficial. We also describe two new OIT algorithms that occupy previously unexplored regions of this continuum. These novel algorithms include stochastic layered alpha blending (SLAB), which provides a parameter to explicitly transition along the continuum between stochastic transparency and k-buffers, and multi-layered coverage blending (MLCB), which explicitly decorrelates visibility and opacity in multi-layered alpha blending.


Job Involvement (JI) is defined as employee's psychological identification with current job. Some researchers argue that JI is explained only by intrinsic variables. In contrast, others use organizational variables as drivers of JI. The purpose of Current research is to explain JI using simultaneously two important but ignored organizational drivers, as organizational justice (OJ) and job characteristics (JC). OJ is conceptualized by three dimensions as distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Also, JC model is divided, as Henchman and Oldham (1976) suggested, into five dimensions as task variety, task identity, task significance, job autonomy, and feedback. The question is: do OJ and JC dimensions can explain and predict variance of JI? By selecting systematically random 140 employees from Iranian custom affairs organization (ICAO), standard questionnaire is sent in order to fill it based on self-report. Structural equation modeling approach results show that distributive and procedural justices, task variety task identity, autonomy, and feedback have significantly positive impacts on JI, but interactional justice and task significance do not. Some practical and theoretical suggestions and recommendations are presented at the end of report. Key words: job involvement, organizational justice, job characteristics, ICAO.


Assam is basically an agricultural state and about 80 per cent of the people lives in villages. Agriculture and animal husbandry are the twin occupations upon which most of the rural people of Assam are dependent for their livelihood. Though, Assam as well as India has a substantial livestock population yet the production of milk and other livestock product is about the lowest in the world. In absence of sufficient grazing ground for maintaining cattle, sheep, goat on pasture, the importance of cultivation of forage crops to provide feed economically for production of milk, for draught animals need special emphasis. Improved package of practices based forage cultivation is still in its infancy stage in Assam and people generally depend on locally available forage. However, the grazing grounds are shrinking mainly due to population explosion which resulted in low availability of green forage making grazing animals malnourished both for maintenance and production. Nutrition is an integral part of livestock development. In dairy industry green grasses constitute the major ingredient of animal diet. Moreover, green grasses provide most of the essential vitamins and minerals required by the herbivorous animals. The effort made by the Animal Husbandry & Veterinary Department since 1960s to promote cultivation of high yielding fodder grasses in Assam met with negligible progress, although it is of paramount importance for the all-round development of livestock industry in the region. Scarcity of green grasses can greatly be reduced and cost of maintaining such animals in a commercial farm can be greatly reduced when cultivation of high yielding grasses viz. napier, hybrid napier, guinea, para grass, cowpea, maize, oats, teosinte, sorghum, subabul etc. are practiced within the farm premises. However, for selection of the type of grass to be cultivated in a particular farm yard for optimum performance, one should have a clear knowledge about the soil type. Animals are dependent on plants and plants on soil. Soil supplies all the essential micro and macro minerals required by the plant. Soil also supplies trapped atmospheric nitrogen to the plants. Thus soil makes the main natural media for cultivation of various plants including the fodder grasses. However, different fodder grasses needs different kinds of soil for their optimum growth. Efforts have been made to analyse the forage production, availability scenario and to suggest measures for ensuring maximum availability of fodder for sustaining livestock production in Assam.


In this paper we analyze the effects of adverse selection due to asymmetric information on the optimizing behavior of risk neutral firms and banks in a competitive loan market. Realized film returns have the monotone likelihood ratio property (MLRP) with respect to quality, in the sense of Milgrom (1981). This property encompasses the assumptions which characterize previous models such as Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) and De Meza and Webb (1987), allowing for a more general framework. Moreover, similary to Milde and Riley (1988), the present model has loans of variable size, as opposed to the fixed loan size of Stiglitz and Weiss and De Meza and Webb. The references to a parameter of "organizational complexity"of the firm, defined by the prevailing type of economies of scale and costs, and to a Wilson (1977) construction of the contracting game, whereby uninformed lenders move first in a three-stage pure strategy game, differentiate the present model from Milde and Riley's with respect to two main elements: (i) while Milde and Riley's model is based on three different and unrelated cases, our model is able to subsume the various cases within a unified framework; (ii) while Milde and Riley's assumptions rule out the possibility of pooling equilibria, the Wilson construction in our model entails the possibility of both separating and pooling equilibria. In particular, pooling equilibria obtain whenever applicants of different quality have indifference curves so similar that banks are unable to screen out their projects. This result strengthens the possibility of credit rationing even in the presence of signaling through the size of the loan. Both separating and pooling equilibria entail the possibility of type I" credit rationing of given quality types.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the prevalence of cardiovascular disease among elderly people and to investigate the use of cardiovascular medication in this group.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.

SETTING
A quarter in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

METHODS
As a part of the 'Rotterdam elderly study', the cardiovascular anamnesis of 7.983 responding persons > or = 55 years (3105 men and 4878 women) was obtained by means of a questionnaire.

RESULTS
Twelve and 4% of men and women, respectively, had at some time had a myocardial infarction, and 5 and 4% a stroke. Almost 7% of both sexes had anamnestic symptoms of angina pectoris. Coronary bypass surgery and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty were done in 4% and 1% of men and 1% and 0.5% of women, respectively. Of all participants 43% used at least one drug for cardiovascular purposes. Half of these used two or more, and a quarter used three or more drugs. Among women, diuretics were the most commonly used drug for cardiovascular purposes (21%), whereas among men beta-blocking agents were most common (15%).

CONCLUSION
Cardiovascular diseases are common among elderly men and women. Many of them take at least one drug for cardiovascular purposes.


This chapter presents accessibility requirements that need to be considered in the design, implementation and evaluation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to ensure they are inclusive. Accessibility requirements take in account particular needs, preferences, skills and situations of diverse learners, e.g. people with disabilities, elderly people and foreign students. The accessibility needs have to be considered in the design and implementation of MOOCs' interfaces, contents and learning/assessment activities. Due to its open and massive nature, with an adequate implementation, MOOCs can overcome inclusion barriers for the benefit of potential learners worldwide, both able and disabled. For evaluation, there are accessibility evaluation tools that identify accessibility problems in the content, semantic and structural elements of a website that can be used to evaluate the level of accessibility of MOOCs. Additional expert-based and user-based evaluations are always recommended in order to achieve valid results.


Abstract In this article we aim to single out a part of Foucault's trihedrals of spatialization – discourses and practices, that is, technologies of power that have their spatialized frames. In order to analyse them we use the concept of a trihedral, not a triangle, because we noticed that several lines can be drawn from any angle and can form new spaces. In such a manner we are able to see their multiplication, separation and parallelisms. Using the trihedrals of spatialization we detect in Foucault's work, besides the demands for a certain (spatialized) ontology, the existence of no less significant geo‐epistemology as knowledge and discourses that are formed in spaces and as the space formed through knowledge/power/discourses. We face a polyvalent character of the angles of the trihedrals and try to avoid the labyrinth into which their multiplication pulls us. The article pays special attention to Foucault's elementary trihedral, life–work–language, in which man came to life as a being who works, speaks and reproduces in a new shape – as population. In this trihedral the angles/concepts are only seemingly separated: they overlap, mix, collide and intertwine in a game that cannot end. That is why this is only a snapshot of the many trihedrals; a possible aggregate of combinations, yet in no case coherent and homogenous. In that sense this article is not an attempt to systematize Foucault's thought but to identify one of the many possible models/matrices for understanding the meaning of his spatial turn and his analysis of power.


Self excited instabilities or oscillations of a cavitating full load vortex rope occur due to an interaction between the gas volume and the acoustic waves. From the onset of the oscillations, the amplitudes grow until they reach a maximum, called the "limit cycle". The aim of this paper is to predict and to simulate this full load instability with its corresponding "limit cycle". The test case is a reduced scale model installed on test rig in the Laboratory for Hydraulic Machines at the EPFL. An advanced hydro acoustic vortex rope model is developed to take into account the energy dissipation due to thermodynamic exchange between the gas and the surrounding liquid. Three key hydro acoustic parameters are set up using both steady CFD simulations and analytical models. First of all, parameters are assumed to be constant and time domain simulation is divergent without reaching the limit cycle. However frequency of instability is well predicted. Then inclusion of nonlinear parameters is found to lead to a limit cycle of finite amplitude. Prediction is compared with results from experiments and is in good agreement. It is shown that nonlinearity of the viscoelastic damping parameter, modelling the energy dissipation, is decisive to reach the limit cycle. Moreover, an energy approach is developed to understand the interaction process between the mass source and the system dissipation to reach the equilibrium at the limit cycle. It brings out that over one period the dissipation can provide energy to the system whereas the mass source dissipates to ensure the equilibrium.


Today's data deluge enables organizations to collect massive data, and analyze it with an ever-increasing number of concurrent queries. Traditional data warehouses (DW) face a challenging problem in executing this task, due to their query-centric model: each query is optimized and executed independently. This model results in high contention for resources. Thus, modern DW depart from the querycentric model to execution models involving sharing of common data and work. Our goal is to show when and how a DW should employ sharing. We evaluate experimentally two sharing methodologies, based on their original prototype systems, that exploit work sharing opportunities among concurrent queries at run-time: Simultaneous Pipelining (SP), which shares intermediate results of common sub-plans, and Global Query Plans (GQP), which build and evaluate a single query plan with shared operators. First, after a short review of sharing methodologies, we show that SP and GQP are orthogonal techniques. SP can be applied to shared operators of a GQP, reducing response times by 20%-48% in workloads with numerous common sub-plans. Second, we corroborate previous results on the negative impact of SP on performance for cases of low concurrency. We attribute this behavior to a bottleneck caused by the push-based communication model of SP. We show that pull-based communication for SP eliminates the overhead of sharing altogether for low concurrency, and scales better on multi-core machines than push-based SP, further reducing response times by 82%-86% for high concurrency. Third, we perform an experimental analysis of SP, GQP and their combination, and show when each one is beneficial. We identify a trade-off between low and high concurrency. In the former case, traditional query-centric operators with SP perform better, while in the latter case, GQP with shared operators enhanced by SP give the best results.


The Australian front-of-pack labelling system, Health Star Rating (HSR), does not include whole grain (WG) in its algorithm, but uses dietary fibre (DF), despite Dietary Guidelines recommending WG over refined grain (RG) foods. This study aimed to determine how effectively HSR differentiates WG and RG foods. Product label data were collected 2017–18 from bread, rice, pasta, noodles, flour and breakfast cereals (n = 1127). Products not displaying HSR, DF per 100 g, and %WG ingredients were excluded, leaving a sample of 441 products; 68% were WG (≥8 g/manufacturer serving). There was a significant difference (p < 0.001) in HSR between WG bread and breakfast cereal over RG varieties, yet the mean difference in stars depicted on the pack was only 0.4 for bread and 0.7 for breakfast cereal. There was no difference for rice (p = 0.131) or flour (p = 0.376). Median HSR also poorly differentiated WG. More WG foods scored 4–5 stars compared to RG, yet there was notable overlap between 3.5–5 stars. DF content between RG and WG subcategories was significantly different, however wide variation and overlap in DF highlights that this may not be a sufficient proxy measure, raising concerns that the HSR algorithm may not adequately communicate the benefits for consumers of swapping to WG foods.


While recent work on financialisation of everyday life has elucidated the reshaping of everyday consumers as risk-taking investors, the role of financial advisors (FAs) has been overlooked even though they are key intermediaries in articulating households and individuals into circuits of global finance. Through a financial ecologies approach, this paper focuses on FAs to reveal the ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in their professional practice as varied modes of corporate management and organisational practices lead to differentiated encounters that shape the financial knowledge and investment decisions of clients. Empirical analysis is based on industry reports, regulatory documents, personal interviews and ethnographic fieldwork at professional training and networking events. The findings demonstrate how professional intermediaries like FAs are vital in explaining the shifting and uneven configuration of investor subjects. A critical analysis of FAs reveals how the decision-making process and investment practices of consumers are fraught with knowledge asymmetries and embedded in distinctive financial ecologies with variegated outcomes. The ecologies concept also offers greater topological finesse in explaining the resilience or fragility of relational formations, the entanglement of diverse elements and motivations in the variegated formation of investor subjects, and the operation of constitutive ecologies within the financial system.


Pleistocene open-system pingo scars have been identified within the Ridge and Valley province in central Pennsylvania. The features are elliptical basins, averaging 20 by 50 m in plan and 4 m in depth, bounded by low ramparts. Located beyond the limit of Pleistocene glaciation, they closely resemble features reported as pingo scars in England, and they are dated at 12.8 ka by radiocarbon analysis of their basal fill. These scars are clear evidence of the existence, depth, and continuity of permafrost in the eastern United States at the end of the Pleistocene. They show that perennially frozen ground extended to at least 5 m in some places, at the same time that the ground nearby was unfrozen.


Online recommender systems should be always aligned with users' current interest to accurately suggest items that each user would like. Since user interest usually evolves over time, the update strategy should be flexible to quickly catch users' current interest from continuously generated new user-item interactions. Existing update strategies focus either on the importance of each user-item interaction or the learning rate for each recommender parameter, but such one-directional flexibility is insufficient to adapt to varying relationships between interactions and parameters. In this paper, we propose MeLON, a meta-learning based novel online recommender update strategy that supports two-directional flexibility. It is featured with an adaptive learning rate for each parameter-interaction pair for inducing a recommender to quickly learn users' up-to-date interest. The procedure of MeLON is optimized following a meta-learning approach: it learns how a recommender learns to generate the optimal learning rates for future updates. Specifically, MeLON first enriches the meaning of each interaction based on previous interactions and identifies the role of each parameter for the interaction; and then combines these two pieces of information to generate an adaptive learning rate. Theoretical analysis and extensive evaluation on three real-world online recommender datasets validate the effectiveness of MeLON.


This article reviews prominent criticism of the United Supreme Court's decision in Aspen Skiing v. Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp. in 1985. The criticism offered by Priest & Lewinsohn, Carlton, and Easterbrook, among others, is anchored on the proposition that a firm with monopoly power should be accorded wide discretion in engaging in a refusal to deal with rivals. After an analysis of the facts of Aspen, I conclude that the Supreme Court's holding is warranted because of the substantial efficiency gains from the joint conduct, including the offering of an improved product that could not be offered without the joint conduct. The facts of Aspen also suggest that harm to the monopolist's rival may be exacerbated in industries associated with high fixed and low marginal costs, as is likely the case in the skiing industry. The Court's decision is also buttressed by the low risk incurred by the defendant monopolist engaging in exclusionary conduct. These conclusions suggest caution in embracing the "profit sacrifice test" or other tests that would tend to shield monopolists from liability for exclusionary conduct.


Photoinduced electron transfer (PeT)-type fluorescent molecular switches are often applied in ion-selective sensors. Zinc-targeting sensors that contain an anilino-based electron donor (aka, the PeT 'switch') have multiple advantages over those with an aliphatic amino switch. In addition to the lower pKa value of an aniline than that of a comparably substituted aliphatic amine, which reduces the interference of pH on the spectral properties of the attached fluorophore, the oxidation potentials of anilino groups are lower than those of aliphatic amino counterparts, which make them better electron donors in PeT. The effectiveness of anilino as a PeT switch is evaluated in a series of zinc-sensitive sensors that contain different fluorophores, zinc-binding ligands, and alkyl linkers between ligand and fluorophore. The abilities of these compounds to distinguish high and low intracellular zinc concentrations in living cells are demonstrated.


This research explores how grief is socially constructed, by analysis of the everyday language people use when talking about grief associated with the sudden or unexpected death of a family member. The study deconstructs grief talk in transcripts of interviews with ten participants recently bereaved. The texts were read and discourses producing grief and subjectivity are illustrated. With grief being constituted through language, this was analysed by use of Potter and Wetherell (1992) model of discourse analysis. The study tends to support the notion that there are idiosyncratic aspects to grief which are constructed and constituted in multiple discourses. Grief, is constructed as inner complex emotions that are influenced by social and cultural factors which bring understanding and meaning to the loss. Grief is something that people 'do' rather than something that is 'done' to them, and therefore, is personal management as people deal and cope with a mixture of other emotions and thoughts which are embodied within the individual. These emotions and thoughts to some extent are able to be controlled. Grief, although an inner complex emotional response to death, is dealt with and managed in social relatedness. However, there are aspects of grief that could not be constructed linguistically, suggesting that grief is not entirely socially or culturally constituted. Thus, there may be aspects to grief which are never resolved, as there are no words to give meaning to that experience. Grief, has many determinants which affect the outcome of bereavement.


The results of the South African Waste Sector Survey (for 2012) show that the formal waste sector employs a minimum of 29,833 people. The majority of these employees are situated within large enterprises (77.5% of private waste sector employees) and metropolitan municipalities (64.9% of public sector employees). The minimum financial value of the formal waste sector (public and private) is R15.3 billion, or 0.51% of GDP. The majority of this revenue is situated within large enterprises (88.0% of private sector revenue) and metropolitan municipalities (80.4% of public sector revenue). An estimated 62.0% of the total revenue generated from waste activities, was done so by companies which had been in the industry for more than 25 years. Young waste companies (less than five years) contributed a minimum of R188 million into the economy in 2012. This new understanding of the South African waste sector creates the opportunity for dialogue between the public and private sectors, identifies opportunities for investment in alternatives to landfilling, and creates a baseline for further investment in waste research, development and innovation


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the safety and efficacy of etanercept in the treatment of uveitis associated with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).

METHODS
Children who met the American College of Rheumatology diagnostic criteria for JIA with active uveitis, who had anterior chamber cells of >/=1+ or requiring topical corticosteroid >/=3 times daily, and who were on a stable regimen for arthritis treatment were eligible. Study participants received etanercept (0.4 mg/kg) or placebo administered subcutaneously twice weekly for 6 months. All participants received open-label etanercept for an additional 6 months.

RESULTS
Five patients received placebo and 7 received etanercept. Three of the 7 patients treated with etanercept and 2 of the 5 placebo-treated patients were considered ophthalmic successes (P = 1.0). One patient in each treatment group was considered a treatment failure. Three of the 7 etanercept-treated and 2 of the 5 placebo-treated patients were neither successes nor failures by our definition. There were no serious adverse events for any patient during the entire study period. Reports of minor infections were comparable in each treatment group, 71% for etanercept and 60% for placebo (P = 0.58).

CONCLUSION
In this small pilot study there was no apparent difference in the anterior segment inflammation between patients treated with etanercept and placebo. The stringent criteria used to measure ophthalmic success of treatment and the small patient population limit the implications of our findings.


We propose a method for hierarchical clustering based on the decision tree approach. As in the case of supervised decision tree, the unsupervised decision tree is interpretable in terms of rules, i.e., each leaf node represents a cluster, and the path from the root node to a leaf node represents a rule. The branching decision at each node of the tree is made based on the clustering tendency of the data available at the node. We present four different measures for selecting the most appropriate attribute to be used for splitting the data at every branching node (or decision node), and two different algorithms for splitting the data at each decision node. We provide a theoretical basis for the approach and demonstrate the capability of the unsupervised decision tree for segmenting various data sets. We also compare the performance of the unsupervised decision tree with that of the supervised one.


Title: OPTIMIZATION OF STATION LOCATIONS AND TRACK ALIGNMENTS FOR RAIL TRANSIT LINES Xiaorong Lai, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Directed by: Dr. Paul Schonfeld, Professor Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Designing urban rail transit systems is a complex problem, which involves the determination of station locations, track geometry, right-of-way type, and various other system characteristics. The existing studies overlook the complex interactions between railway alignments and station locations in a practical design process. This study proposes a comprehensive methodology that helps transit planners to concurrently optimize station locations and track alignments for an urban rail transit line. The modeling framework resolves the essential trade-off between an economically efficient system with low initial and operation cost and an effective system that provides convenient service for the public. The proposed method accounts for various geometric requirements and real-world design constraints for track alignment and stations plans. This method integrates a genetic algorithm (GA) for optimization with comprehensive evaluation of various important measures of effectiveness based on processing Geographical Information System (GIS) data. The base model designs the track alignment through a sequence of preset stations. Detailed assumptions and formulations are presented for geometric requirements, design constraints, and evaluation criteria. Three extensions of the base model are proposed. The first extension explicitly incorporates vehicle dynamics in the design of track alignments, with the objective of better balancing the initial construction cost with the operation and user costs recurring throughout the system's life cycle. In the second extension, an integrated optimization model of rail transit station locations and track alignment is formulated for situations in which the locations of major stations are not preset. The concurrent optimization model searches through additional decision variables for station locations and station types, estimate rail transit demand, and incorporates demand and station cost in the evaluation framework. The third extension considers the existing road network when selecting sections of the alignment. Special algorithms are developed to allow the optimized alignment to take advantage of links in an existing network for construction cost reduction, and to account for disturbances of roadway traffic at highway/rail crossings. Numerical results show that these extensions have significantly enhanced the applicability of the proposed optimization methodology in concurrently selecting rail transit station locations and generating track alignment. OPTIMIZATION OF STATION LOCATIONS AND TRACK ALIGNMENTS FOR RAIL TRANSIT LINES


The river inflow in a natural lake with important suspended sediment load during floods, can impact water quality by mobilizing dissolved matters like phosphorous from deep to surface waters. Generally due to thermal stratification in prealpine lakes, the water column is stable. It does not mix vertically unless acted on by outside forces, for example, currents or winds. Since Lake Lugano has a strong thermal stratification, river inflow exhibits different modes of density currents, from surface flows and thermocline intrusion to bottom currents. Turbidity currents are the direct cause of the downward water flow, and at the same time at the origin of upward directed flow. In this study, the impact of river born turbidity currents in Lake Lugano under varying ambient conditions was investigated using field measurements at the inflow river and inside the lake, together with a full three-dimensional numerical model of the entire lake. The paper characterizes the induced circulation of the turbidity plume and gives some indications on the relevance of turbidity currents on the lake.


This work is intended as an educational aid, dealing with high-frequency (HF) electromagnetic wave propagation in guiding environments. It is aimed at advanced senior and first-year graduate students who are familiar with the usual engineering mathematics for wave equations, especially analytic functions, contour integrations in the complex plane, etc., and also with rudimentary saddle-point (HF) asymptotics. After an introductory overview of issues and physical interpretations pertaining to this broad subject area, detailed attention is given to the simplest canonical, thoroughly familiar, test environment: a (time harmonic) line-source-excited two-dimensional infinite waveguide with perfectly conducting (PEC) plane-parallel boundaries. After formulating the Green's function problem within the framework of Maxwell's equations, alternative field representations are presented and interpreted in physical terms, highlighting two complementary phenomenologies: progressing (ray-type) and oscillatory (mode-type) phenomena, culminating in the self-consistent hybrid ray-mode scheme, which usually is not included in conventional treatments at this level. This provides the analytical background for two educational MATLAB packages, which explore the dynamics of ray fields, mode fields, and the ray-mode interplay. The first package, RAY-GUI, serves as a tool to compute and display eigenray trajectories between specified source/observer locations, and to analyze their individual contributions to wave fields. The second package, HYBRID-GUI, may be used to comparatively display range and/or height variations of the wave fields, calculated via ray summation, mode-field summation, and hybrid ray-mode synthesis.


This paper aims to achieve more insight into the complex interplay between the "external" market regulations and "internal" regulations (corporate governance) of energy firms. In recent years, many countries have deregulated the incumbent energy monopolies and have introduced new modes of regulation. However, the new incentive schemes do not represent an unmitigated success story. A major problem seems to be the neoclassical framework that is used for the analysis of energy markets. Therefore, an important goal of this paper is to clarify the boundaries of neoclassical regulation theory. There are two restrictions that hamper the neoclassical analysis of energy markets. The first is the difficulty of overcoming the widely held "black box" view of firms. The second is the idea that agents always make rational choices. The paper proposes a kind of theoretical division of labor for understanding the effectiveness of regulatory schemes in energy markets. Neoclassical economics points out to the sources of market failure, and helps to identify where in particular on the supply chain one is likely to observe natural monopolies. Transaction cost economics explains appropriate governance of vertical relations along the supply chain. And organizational theories can elucidate what happens within firms: their response to regulation, competition, and relations with suppliers. A research agenda for the third component is proposed, drawing on insights from New Sociological Institutionalism and organizational behavior.


SUMMARY Members of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily exist in bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals and play key roles in the efflux of xenobiotic compounds, physiological substrates, and toxic intracellular metabolites. Based on sequence relatedness, mammalian ABC proteins have been divided into seven subfamilies, ABC subfamily A (ABCA) to ABCG. This review focuses on recent advances in our understanding of ABC transporters in the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We propose a revised unified nomenclature for the six yeast ABC subfamilies to reflect the current mammalian designations ABCA to ABCG. In addition, we specifically review the well-studied yeast ABCC subfamily (formerly designated the MRP/CFTR subfamily), which includes six members (Ycf1p, Bpt1p, Ybt1p/Bat1p, Nft1p, Vmr1p, and Yor1p). We focus on Ycf1p, the best-characterized yeast ABCC transporter. Ycf1p is located in the vacuolar membrane in yeast and functions in a manner analogous to that of the human multidrug resistance-related protein (MRP1, also called ABCC1), mediating the transport of glutathione-conjugated toxic compounds. We review what is known about Ycf1p substrates, trafficking, processing, posttranslational modifications, regulation, and interactors. Finally, we discuss a powerful new yeast two-hybrid technology called integrated membrane yeast two-hybrid (iMYTH) technology, which was designed to identify interactors of membrane proteins. iMYTH technology has successfully identified novel interactors of Ycf1p and promises to be an invaluable tool in future efforts to comprehensively define the yeast ABC interactome.


A Book entitled Writing and reading war: Rhetoric, Gender, and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts, was published in 2008 by the Society of Biblical Literature. This book opened new insights for understanding ancient warfare, especially topics like the rhetoric of war, the role played by the Assyrians, the feminization of cities, the role of YHWH, and ethics of war, to name only a few. The LXX book Judith, which is also a war book, has not yet been critiqued or investigated in relation to these new insights. The authors of this article scrutinize Judith by using certain criteria set forth in the book and find a few surprising parallels, including the role played by the Assyrian army, the gender of the city Bethulia, the rhetoric of war, and ethics of war. These findings provide new insights on the nature of the war in Judith.


Foreword by Beth MassiSenior Program Manager, Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Basic 2010 Unleashed is the most comprehensive, practical reference to modern object-oriented programming with Visual Basic 2010. Written by Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, a long-time leader of the global VB community, this book illuminates the core of the VB language and demonstrates its effective use in a wide variety of programming scenarios. Del Sole covers both Visual Basic 2010 Professional Edition for professional developers and the Express Edition for hobbyists, novices, and students. Writing for VB programmers at all levels of experience, he walks through using VB 2010 for data access, user interface development, networking, communication, and many other tasks. For those moving from structured languagesincluding VB 6he offers detailed guidance on building effective object-oriented code. He also demonstrates how to make the most of Microsofts underlying .NET platform to write more robust and powerful software. This books broad coverage includes advanced features such as generics and collections; a thorough introduction to the Visual Studio 2010 IDE and Visual Studio Team System; a full section on data access with ADO.NET and LINQ; practical overviews of WPF and WCF; coverage of web and cloud development with Silverlight and Azure; and advanced topics such as multithreading, testing, and deployment. Understand the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, .NET Framework 4.0, and the anatomy of a VB 2010 application Debug VB applications and implement error handling and exceptions Build efficient object-oriented software with classes, objects, namespaces, and inheritance Work with advanced object-oriented features, including interfaces, generics, delegates, events, and collections Organize, create, and improve classes with the Visual Studio Class Designer Access data with LINQincluding LINQ to Objects, SQL, DataSets, Entities, XML, and Parallel LINQ Build modern Windows applications with WPF controls, brushes, styles, and templates Develop web-centric applications using ASP.NET, Silverlight, and Windows Azure Services cloud computing Create and consume WCF services and WCF Data Services Use advanced .NET 4.0 platform capabilities, including assemblies, multithreading, parallel programming, P/Invoke, and COM interoperability Perform advanced compilations with MSBuild Localize and globalize VB 2010 client applications Alessandro Del Sole, Microsoft MVP for Visual Basic, is well-known throughout the global VB community. He is community leader on the Italian VB Tips and Tricks website that serves more than 41,000 developers and a frequent contributor and blogger at MSDNs Visual Basic Developer Center. He is the author of three books about .NET development with Visual Basic. ON THE WEB: Download all examples and source code presented in this book from informit.com/title/9780672331008 Category:Microsoft Programming Covers:Visual Basic 2010 User Level:Intermediate


Using a two-dimensional wave flume and a two-videocamera system, mechanism and process of multiple bar formation were investigated in the light of breaker-induced vortices. A fixed-bed experiment revealed that (1) the vortex formed at the wave break point can be classified into three: oblique, A-type horizontal, and B-type horizontal vortices; (2) the vortex formed in the surf zone is always oblique; and (3) the location of a vortex reaching bottom can be described by wave properties and the bottom slope, and its water depth can be expressed by breaker height alone. A movable-bed experiment indicated that bars are initiated by the vortices reaching bottom in the surf zone; the number of bars formed coincides with the number of such vortices. Suspension of the bottom sediment due to vortex action and the mean-drift-velocity pattern can play an important role in multiple bar formation; mechanism for break-point bar formation is "convergence", while that for inner bar formation is "congestion". Two major modes for the development of multiple bars were found: simultaneous and successive: these depend on the interaction of vortex action and topography in the surf zone. Multiple-bar features such as trough spacing and crest depth could be explained from vortex features found through the fixed-bed experiment.


The distribution of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo in the south-west of Western Australia is shown. The breeding seasons of five species of cockatoo breeding in the Three Springs area are listed. All these species have winter-spring breeding seasons. The Red-tailed Black Cockatoo is the only species that breeds in the autumn as well. Breeding data for six female Red-tailed Black Cockatoos for the four breeding seasons from late 1974 to autumn 1976 are given. A survey of the literature shows the paucity of information on breeding seasons of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo and the need for more detailed information throughout their range is pointed out.


Abstract. The use of digital documentation techniques has led to an increase in opportunities for using documentation data for valorization purposes, in addition to technical purposes. Likewise, building information models (BIMs) made from these data sets hold valuable information that can be as effective for public education as it is for rehabilitation. A BIM can reveal the elements of a building, as well as the different stages of a building over time. Valorizing this information increases the possibility for public engagement and interest in a heritage place. Digital data sets were leveraged by the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) for parts of a virtual tour of the Senate of Canada. For the tour, workflows involving four different programs were explored to determine an efficient and effective way to leverage the existing documentation data to create informative and visually enticing animations for public dissemination: Autodesk Revit, Enscape, Autodesk 3ds Max, and Bentley Pointools. The explored workflows involve animations of point clouds, BIMs, and a combination of the two.


Since the discovery of Na/K-ATPase, evidence has accumulated to suggest that 1 mol of ATP hydrolysis occurs via the Na(+)-occluded ADP-sensitive phosphoenzyme, the K(+)-sensitive phosphoenzyme and the K(+)-occluded enzyme accompanying active transport of 3Na(+) and 2K(+) according the Post-Albers scheme. However, some controversial issues have arisen concerning whether the functional unit of the enzyme is an alpha beta-protomer or a much higher oligomer, which would be related to the mechanism of transport, either sequential or simultaneous. Detailed studies of oligomer interaction and the reactivity of the enzyme and a comparison of the extent of phosphorylation with ligand-binding capacities in the presence or absence of ATP hydrolysis and others strongly suggest that the functional unit of the enzyme in the membrane is a tetraprotomer, (alpha beta)(4). They also suggest that each reaction intermediate of the Post-Albers scheme, respectively, reflects half of the site property of the intermediate and that another half binds ATP. These data may be useful not only to answer the long-standing question of whether the mechanism functions in the presence of both Na(+) and K(+) but also contribute to a better understanding of the mechanism of P-type pump ATPase in general.


It is our purpose to study abstractly and in general, the structure of the set of all double cosets of a group with respect to a subgroup. In our first section we allow the groups to be infinite, and focus on a ternary collineation relation. If X, Y, Z are double cosets, we say they are collinear if there exists xeX,y eY,zeZ with x y z=l. This relation is abstracted and forms the basis of that section. In the second section we essentially insist the groups are finite, and count the double cosets which products from two cosets can appear in (i.e., count all Z with x yeZ for xe X, y e Y). We abstract the properties that these numbers possess, and study their implications. The orbit space of conjugacy classes of a finite group can be taken as a set of double cosets (in the holomorph of the group). This set has a natural dual, and in certain instances other sets of double cosets have one also. We study this situation in the third and last section by use of a complex matrix which enjoys some of the properties of the character table of a finite group; this may be thought of as another approach (slightly different than Brauer's pseudogroups) to character tables as a thing in themselves.


The year 2010 left unforgettable memories for Indonesian people because of the Mega Eruption of Mt. Merapi, which was predicted as the biggest eruption since 1870. Lahar became a dangerous secondary hazard around the Mt. Merapi watershed. The lahar event record until February 2011 in Gendol Watershed showed less instances of lahar occurrence compared with other areas, such as River Putih WS (>10 events), River Apu WS (>5 events), etc. This paper provides literature analysis, stratigraphy study analysis, and also temperature measurement reports, in association with lahar triggered factors in the Gendol Watershed. Previous stratigraphy survey data on Gendol River (Newhall et al., Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 2000) shows that the pyroclastic deposit material allows water infiltration because of its porosity. The conditions of a deep clay (impermeable) layer and no water table found up to ±11m depth support rain water infiltration. The post eruption pyroclastic deposit is still at a high temperature (±105°C), which causes some infiltrated water to be evaporated. Less runoff will promote a smaller amount of sediment transport and less risk and lower destructive force of a lahar event. Over a sufficient period, the pyroclastic deposit will be consolidated and compacted as a result of the cementation process of active pyroclastic elements (solidified by chemical bonding). Hot pyroclastic material in the Gendol River after the Mount Merapi Eruption 2010 could have acted as a resistor for lahar. The resist period was ±145 days, from the first eruption until the significant lahar event. The influential resistance factors are thickness, density, porosity, riverbed gradient, rain intensity, and temperature of the pyroclastic deposit. It gives enough time for urgent action (human relocation), environment mitigation, reconstruction, and remediation in the watershed. This fact was the empirical basis for the Monitoring, Simulation, Prevention and Remediation of Dense and Debris Flows IV 97 www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3533 (on-line) WIT Transactions on Engineering Sciences, Vol 73, © 201 WIT Press 2 doi:10.2495/DEB120091 emergency countermeasure priority rating of several lahar rivers, in a volcanic eruption event.


The article considers the issues of the relationship between business investment activities and the economic and social development of the regions. Based on the statistical data analysis it is shown that the decrease in investment activities negatively affects all key indicators of regional development after a short period of time. The current level of the regional investment activities can be characterized as unsatisfactory and preventing from achieving the declared goals of the development of the Russian Federation. The paper shows that a peculiarity defining Russian economy is that its significant part is actually controlled by natural monopolies. At the same time, they themselves are strongly sensitive to all the problems of socioeconomic development of the country's territories and, therefore, are parties concerned in ensuring sustainable and qualitative growth of regional economies. Today many of the natural monopolies implement large-scale investment programs with allocated substantial resources. The analysis of these investment programs showed that they all contain components that contribute to the development of the region where the manufacturing facilities or transportation capacities of these companies are located. It is concluded that a systemic state investment policy aimed at stimulating real investments, rather than "portfolio" ones, is required to address the problem of sustainable economic growth. Moreover, when drawing up investment programs for natural monopolies and regional development plans, it is important to coordinate all these plans, to reconcile state strategic planning with regional development programs, and those with the development programs for natural monopolies and regional businesses. It is proposed to amend the legislation governing the processes of strategic planning at the regional and federal levels aimed at optimization of the state investment planning system and encouragement of the private sector participation in regional investments.


In this essay, the author discusses her understanding of art education in relation to her exhibited artworks, which were developed on the basis of research on particular historical figures in Singapore. These historical figures were referred to in the book entitled Ah Ku and Karayuki-san:-Prostitution in Singapore, 1870-1940 , written by James Francis Warren who is a renowned ethnohistorian and professor at Murdoch University in Australia. According to Warren (2003), both terms referred to prostitutes. Ah Ku was a term that was used to address in Cantonese 2 a woman or lady irrespective of age, the polite way to address a Chinese prostitute in colonial Singapore 3 . Karayuki-san was the word used traditionally by the Japanese of Amakusa Island and the Shimabara Peninsula, Northwest Kyushu, to describe rural women who emigrated to Southeast Asia and the Pacific in search of a livelihood. The author translated the contents of Warren's book into a series of paintings that were used as an art education tool to educate viewers about the history of Ah Ku and Karayuki-san. In this essay, the author addresses her understanding of art education, re-defines the history of Chinese and Japanese immigrant prostitutes as part of Singapore cultural heritage, and describes the research methods used to derive the artworks as well as the exhibition format to explain the relationship between the meanings of the paintings and Warren's book.


Individuals with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) experience inflammation that may target any organ within the body, including the central and peripheral nervous systems. Additionally, these individuals often demonstrate psychological dysfunctions including emotional and cognitive deficits; however, research is inconsistent as to the nature and cause of these dysfunctions. While there are multiple factors that may increase risk for variability in cognitive function, such as population differences, socioeconomic status (SES), mood disorders (depression and anxiety), medication effects, and disease activity, these factors do not reliably predict the severity and extent of cognitive deficits. A growing body of animal research associates autoantibodies (Abs) in SLE with cognitive impairment. A specific Ab that targets Nmethyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDAR) and neuronal DNA, referred to as DNRAb, is associated with hippocampal damage and spatial memory deficits in mice. The goal of this project was to examine the relationship between the DNRAb and cognitive deficits specific to spatial-relational learning and memory within a sample of SLE patients. Two cohorts of healthy controls (HCs) and SLE patients were recruited. Cohort A included 33 HCs and 39 SLE participants (23 DNRAb-, 11 DNRAb+, 5 unknown Ab status). Cohort B included 11 HCs and 21 SLE participants (11 DNRAb-, 10 DNRAb+). All participants completed measures of emotional functioning and neuropsychological measures of visuospatial learning and memory, processing speed, and executive function. Cognitive testing of spatial memory and relational learning was evaluated by two laboratory-developed computerized tasks. Antibody status was determined after participants were recruited in the study. Overall, compared to SLE patients, HCs were significantly more accurate, and thus had better performance on the Spatial Memory and Relational Learning Tasks. The DNRAb+ group was significantly less accurate than HC on both computerized measures. However, the DRNAbdid not differ from either groups on the Spatial Memory Task, and performed similarly to the DRNAb+ group on the Relational Learning Task. This work provides a foundation for future research to analyze how SLE and Ab status could influence cognitive functioning. Future studies can continue to examine subtle cognitive deficits in SLE, consider the possibility of other brain areas to compensate for cognitive deficits in SLE, and provide additional breakthroughs to guide interventions for SLE patients. SPATIAL RELATIONAL MEMORY NMDAR SLE v


This paper deals with issues of web-conferencing systems accessibility and usability. These systems and applications are becoming increasingly popular in the educational process. Unfortunately, the majority of webconferencing systems are not designed for users with disabilities. The aim of this paper is to describe possibilities of web-conferencing system for teaching handicapped students and explain the benefits of using this solution for common education. The main part of testing the hypothesis and possibilities were carried out in the Adobe Acrobat Connect system which is commonly used in the educational process at CULS.


The streaming instability is a mechanism to concentrate solid particles into overdense filaments that undergo gravitational collapse and form planetesimals. However, it remains unclear how the initial mass function of these planetesimals depends on the box dimensions of numerical simulations. To resolve this, we perform simulations of planetesimal formation with the largest box dimensions to date, allowing planetesimals to form simultaneously in multiple filaments that can only emerge within such large simulation boxes. In our simulations, planetesimals with sizes between 80 km and several hundred kilometers form. We find that a power law with a rather shallow exponential cutoff at the high-mass end represents the cumulative birth mass function better than an integrated power law. The steepness of the exponential cutoff is largely independent of box dimensions and resolution, while the exponent of the power law is not constrained at the resolutions we employ. Moreover, we find that the characteristic mass scale of the exponential cutoff correlates with the mass budget in each filament. Together with previous studies of high-resolution simulations with small box domains, our results therefore imply that the cumulative birth mass function of planetesimals is consistent with an exponentially tapered power law with a power-law exponent of approximately -1.6 and a steepness of the exponential cutoff in the range of 0.3-0.4. (Less)


Philip Hensher brings us another slice of contemporary life, this time the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of a small English town. Hanmouth, situated where the river Hand flows into the Bristol channel, is usually quiet and undisturbed. But it becomes the centre of national attention when an eight-year-old girl vanishes. This tragic event serves to expose the range of segregated existences in the town, as spectrums of class, wealth and lifestyle are blurred in the investigation. Behind Hanmouth's closed doors and pastoral facade, the extraordinary individual lives of the community are laid bare. The undisclosed passions of a quiet international aid worker are set against his wife, seemingly a paragon of virtue to the outside world; a recently-widowed old woman tells a story that details her late discovery of sexual gratification; and the Bears have a memorable party. As the search for the missing girl continues, the case is made for increased surveillance, and old notions of privacy begin to crack. King of the Badgers is a powerful study of the vital importance of individuality and the increasingly intrusive hand of political powers. Like its predecessor, it is another devastating -- but frequently very funny -- portrait of England from one of this country's finest novelists.


BACKGROUND
The interpretation of the results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) has traditionally emphasized statistical significance rather than clinical importance. Our aim was to assess the quality of reporting of factors related to clinical importance in a sample of published RCTs.

METHODS
A random sample of 27 (of a total of 266) RCTs published in 5 major medical journals over a 1-year period were reviewed by 4 independent reviewers for factors considered important in the interpretation of the clinical importance of study results: identification of a clearly defined primary outcome, reporting of the expected difference between groups used in the calculation of sample size (the delta value) and whether it was based on the minimal clinically important difference of the intervention, the statistical significance of the results, presentation of pertinent confidence intervals, and the authors' interpretation of the clinical importance of the results.

RESULTS
Twenty-two of 27 (81%) articles explicitly reported a single primary outcome. Of the 20 articles that included a sample size calculation, 18 (90%) reported a delta value. Two of the 18 (11%) articles explicitly stated that the delta value was chosen to reflect the minimal clinically important difference of the intervention. For the primary outcomes, confidence intervals surrounding the point estimates of the efficacy of the interventions were reported in 11 of 27 (41%) studies. The study results were interpreted from the perspective of clinical importance in 20 of 27 (74%) of the articles. Of these 20 reports, 5 (25%) provided justification for their clinical interpretation of the results.

INTERPRETATION
Authors of RCTs published in major general medical and internal medicine journals do not consistently provide their own interpretation of the clinical importance of their results, and they often do not provide sufficient information to allow readers to make their own interpretation.


Stackable credentials—sequential postsecondary awards that allow individuals to progress on a career path—can enhance the labor market prospects of middle-skill workers. In light of recent labor market changes, these credentials may represent an important buffer against job displacement. However, very little evidence exists as to what constitutes a stackable credential and how many persons have obtained them. We distinguish three types of stacking—progression, supplemental, and independent. Using national, survey, and college-system-level datasets, we estimate that between 3 and 5 percent of the college-educated population have stackable credentials. However, there are several substantial empirical challenges in identifying stackable credentials related to the ordering of awards and to the degree of skill complementarity across awards. Significantly, we find that general vocational awards—earned at any institution and typically not credit-bearing—are often conflated with stackable certificates. The incidence of these awards is far greater than of stackable credentials. A review of the evidence shows that certificates convey modestly positive gains in earnings, but there is no evidence that stacking yields earnings gains. Finally, despite frequent changes in skills needs across the economy, we identify barriers to the expansion of stackable credentials.


Series arrays of 50 gradiometer superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDS) and 100 magnetometer SQUIDs have been fabricated using Nb/AlO/sub x//Nb junctions with a planarized all-refractory technology for superconductivity (PARTS), the white noise of these arrays has been measured. The individual devices are 50-pH, 2-hole and 100-pH, 1-hole SQUIDs with integrated single turn input coils, 1- mu m/sup 2/ and 0.5- mu m/sup 2/ junctions, and PtRh shunt resistors. The input coil inductance of 10 nH will effectively match with a wide bandwidth to miniature pick-up loop structures for various experiments. Ideally, the coupled energy sensitivity should remain constant as devices are added in series, while the output impedance rises to a level practical for direct coupling to room-temperature electronics. The output impedance of the arrays is 250-1000 Omega . The white noise was measured directly with an ultra low noise preamplifier at room temperature. The best result was Phi /sub N/=0.12 mu Phi /sub 0// square root Hz with a corresponding coupled energy sensitivity of 56 h.<<ETX>>


Abstract. Most landslide hazard assessment algorithms in common use are applied to small regions, where high-resolution, in situ, observables are available. A preliminary global landslide hazard algorithm has been developed to estimate areas of potential landslide occurrence in near real-time by combining a calculation of landslide susceptibility with satellite derived rainfall estimates to forecast areas with increased potential for landslide conditions. This paper presents a stochastic methodology to compare this new, landslide hazard algorithm for rainfall-triggered landslides with a newly available inventory of global landslide events, in order to determine the predictive skill and limitations of such a global estimation technique. Additionally, we test the sensitivity of the global algorithm to its input observables, including precipitation, topography, land cover and soil variables. Our analysis indicates that the current algorithm is limited by issues related to both the surface-based susceptibility map and the temporal resolution of rainfall information, but shows skill in determining general geographic and seasonal distributions of landslides. We find that the global susceptibility model has inadequate performance in certain locations, due to improper weighting of surface observables in the susceptibility map. This suggests that the relative contributions of topographic slope and soil conditions to landslide susceptibility must be considered regionally. The current, initial forecast system, although showing some overall skill, must be improved considerably if it is to be used for hazard warning or detailed studies. Surface and remote sensing observations at higher spatial resolution, together with improved landslide event catalogues, are required if global landslide hazard forecasts are to become an operational reality.


The extracellular matrix (ECM) has long been regarded as a packing material; supporting cells within the tissue and providing tensile strength and protection from mechanical stress. There is little surprise when one considers the dynamic nature of many of the individual proteins that contribute to the ECM, that we are beginning to appreciate a more nuanced role for the ECM in tissue homeostasis and disease. Articular cartilage is adapted to be able to perceive and respond to mechanical load. Indeed, physiological loads are essential to maintain cartilage thickness in a healthy joint and excessive mechanical stress is associated with the breakdown of the matrix that is seen in osteoarthritis (OA). Although the trigger by which increased mechanical stress drives catabolic pathways remains unknown, one mechanism by which cartilage responds to increased compressive load is by the release of growth factors that are sequestered in the pericellular matrix. These are heparan sulfate-bound growth factors that appear to be largely chondroprotective and displaced by an aggrecan-dependent sodium flux. Emerging evidence suggests that the released growth factors act in a coordinated fashion to drive cartilage repair. Thus, we are beginning to appreciate that the ECM is the key mechano-sensor and mechano-effector in cartilage, responsible for directing subsequent cellular events of relevance to joint health and disease.