In this thesis the electrochemical deposition of polypyrrole (PPy) into nanowire and bulk morphologies is reported. The electrochemical properties of the different conformations of PPy were examined in order to ascertain their conductivities and surface areas. This could determine the optimisation for further modification of the polymer with, e.g., copper structures forming an electrochemical sensor for the detection of the nitrate ion. PPy nanowires were electrodeposited onto gold electrodes using slightly acidic anions (Na2HPO4) and non-acidic anions (LiClO4) at a fixed potential of 0.80 V vs. SCE. The nanowires produced had an average diameter of ca. 89.2 nm, n = 50. Bulk PPy was electrodeposited using similar conditions, but the pH of the solution system was reduced using concentrated HClO4. This resulted in a bulk polymer with a higher surface area, so a second bulk polymer, of similar surface area to the nanowire films, was formed by reducing the electrodeposition time/charge consumed. Both of these bulk polymers were compared with the nanowire morphology of PPy using the electrochemical techniques of cyclic voltammetry, (CV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, (EIS). Impedance data were fitted to equivalent circuits and the polymer resistance, the double-layer capacitance and the polymer capacitance were determined. The results indicated that the electrochemical properties of the polymers changed as the polymers went from an oxidised to a reduced state, i.e., their resistances and ability to store energy, confirming their optimum working potential range.
The second section of this thesis seeks to develop a miniaturised analytical device that can deliver real-time information on changes in tissue pH. Many different pH probes exist, but they present many limitations including fragility, difficulty in miniaturising, potential drift, and difficulties in accurately measuring pH in solutions of varying ionic strength. There therefore remains a pressing need for more robust, pH sensors that can accurately sense pH changes in hostile surroundings, e.g., the highly resistive tissue found in the clinical environment.
In this study, carbon paste electrodes (CPEs) and carbon fibre electrodes (CFEs) were modified with a quinone containing diazonium salt, FBRR, by electrochemical deposition. In buffered media, the quinone/hydroquinone redox system involves
changes of the protonation state of the molecule, resulting in the observation that potentials vary with pH in a Nernstian manner. This behaviour was used as the basis of the electrochemical pH sensor. Various deposition conditions were employed to give the optimum and most efficient method, while organic and aqueous solvents were employed as the supporting electrolytes. Using either solvent the electrochemical techniques of CV, and linear sweep voltammetry, (LSV), were applied, optimising FBRR deposition by varying parameters such as potential window, scan rate and number of cycles/sweeps. Modified CPEs were calibrated for their pH response by CV, showing a response slope of −60.36 ± 0.89 mV/pH, n = 23. The surfaces of bare and derivatised CPEs were analysed by scanning electron microscopy, (SEM), coupled with energy dispersive X-ray, (EDX).
After in-vitro development of a working pH sensor, a full characterisation was carried out, over the required pH range. This aimed to assess the sensor sensitivity, operational and storage stability, biocompatibility, and the effects that multiple interferences, found in the in-vivo environment had on the sensor performance. In-vivo voltammetry conditions were mimicked by changing the operational temperature and using a physiologically suitable reference electrode. An extensive study into the effect that the carbon: silicone oil content of CPEs had on the electrochemical properties of the modified electrodes was carried out using CV and corroborated by SEM and EDX surface analyses. These analyses concluded that although the electrodes appeared to perform better when exposed to proteins and lipids, the level of improvement did not justify the additional two days required in the manufacturing process of the sensor.
The in-vivo application of the pH sensor was subsequently examined. The sensor was inserted into the hind limb muscle of anaesthetised rats. A pH change was induced locally to the limb by applying a tourniquet to restrict the blood flow and induce ischemia. This caused an increase in CO2 levels thus reducing the pH. After a short period of time, ca. 10 minutes, the tissue pH was allowed to recover. To induce an increase in the pH, injections of NaHCO3 were administered locally showing an immediate change in the observed potential, which recovered soon after. These changes in potential, of which pH was a contributing factor, were successfully recorded in real-time.


Roland Barthes refers to speech as the theatrical and unpredictable other of the written word, freed of the former's "tactical" feature. The semiotic conclusion is that the written word introduces "a new image-repertoire, that of 'thought'" (Barthes, "The Grain of the Voice"). In our encounter with documentary film and media, the experience of first person testimony, framed confessions and forged memory work present us with an "aesthetics of ambiguity" (Waughan, 1999) where the logics of Barthes' binary is upset, if not ruled out. It is very often the case that the documentary attraction of framed speech, or of an unfolding confession, is invoked by the paradoxical combine of the spontaneous gesture of the filmed subject, and the intentional framing and editorial control of the filmmaker. What is often at stake in the experienced realm of cinema is precisely, as Jean Epstein suggested, "a certain degree of contradiction between image and speech, of falsehood between the eye and the ear", and, we may add, between what the person says and her gestures, between the words and the character of the voice (Epstein, 1955).The aim of my paper will be to exemplify documentary approaches to memory work where strategies of re-enactment provide a means to escape the conventions of the talking head. Instead, closer attention is paid to the unfolding of speech, the drama of body language and telling moments of silence, the texture and character of a specific voice, and the filmmaker-subject encounter, which may not be seen or heard, but which may add to the experience of the film. References to scholarly work on the aesthetics and ethics of documentary film and media (Renov, Honess Roe, Sobchack, Marks, Piotrowska, Wahlberg) will meet with my Epstein-inspired notion of phonogenie which I discuss in relation to the gallery films by the Swedish artist Tova Mozard, in particular Stora Scenen (2011) and Repertoar/Repertoire (Tova Mozard, 2013).


Drug courts have been on the rise for the past few decades, providing an alternative criminal supervision system for individuals struggling with addiction and drug dependence. Drug courts provide an intensive supervision model, by responding swiftly to probation violations with a series of graduated sanctions. Assuming that drug courts are here to stay, the inevitable question arises: What should the court do if a person cannot abstain from using drugs or otherwise violates the conditions of the drug court? This Note argues that drug courts need to provide a more transparent and consistent method for administering sanctions, drawing upon a model of probation reform, Project HOPE, and the recent reclassification of addiction as "substance use disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V). This Note argues that, similar to Project HOPE, drug courts should provide a menu of potential sanctions to participants upon entering the drug court, however this Note also argues that, unlike Project HOPE, the sanctions should vary based upon whether the violation is disease-driven or non-disease-driven. This solution upholds both the therapeutic and penal components of the drug court, and is most likely to lead to compliance with drug court conditions.


Snow algae are cold-tolerant photosynthetic microbes growing on snow and ice. In order to investigate the factors affecting snow algal growth, the temporal changes in algal abundance on surface snow were studied over four winters in an experimental station in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, where seasonal snow is usually present from late December to early April. Snow algae appeared on the snow surface in February, and the initial algae were likely to be deposited on the snow by winds. The timing of the algal appearance varied among years, from early-February in 2011 to late-February in 2015, and is likely to be determined by a period of no snowfall and air temperatures above the melting point. Algal abundance generally increased until the disappearance of snow. The maximum algal concentration was found in 2011, which corresponds to the year when the period from algal appearance to the disappearance of snow was the longest (80 days) among the four winters. The results suggest that snow algae keep growing unless snowfall occurs and air temperature drops to freezing point, and that the algal abundance is likely to be correlated with the duration of algal growth. The algal growth curve in 2011 could be reproduced by a Malthusian model with a growth rate of 0.22 d −1 .


Digital watermarking of multimedia content has become a very active research area over the last several years. Digital watermarking is the process of embedding watermark into a digital signal. A digital watermark is a digital signal or pattern inserted into a digital document and carries information unique to the copyright owner, the creator of the document or the authorized consumer. This paper presents various watermark attack. Watermark attack is any processing (ability of unauthorized users) that may remove, detect and estimate, write or modify the raw watermarking bits (watermark).In this paper, we review watermarking applications areas such as ownership assertion, copy control, finger printing etc.


A volume in Research in Social Issues in Management Series Editors: Stephen W. Gilliland, The University of Arizona, Dirk D. Steiner, Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipolis and Daniel P. Skarlicki, The University of British Columbia This volume in Research in Social Issues in Management expands our understanding of organizational justice and applies justice theories to develop models of ethical behavior in organizations. At a time of global economic recession and frequent business and accounting scandals, many people are questioning the ethics of business leaders. Whether these challenges are actual or perceived, models grounded in organizational justice theories provide powerful insights and suggest new ways of looking at leadership ethics. By examining what it means to be just and examining relationships between justice and ethicality, the chapters in this volume have provided conceptual models for understanding ethical challenges facing organizations. The chapters are organized around two related themes. The first theme is expanding models of organizational justice. After 30 years of research, a natural question is whether we have reached the useful limits in developing theories of organizational justice. The clear answer you will see after reading these chapters is no, as each chapter pushes our thinking in new directions. The second theme is applying organizational justice theories to develop models of ethical and unethical behavior in organizations. The models address topics of greed, dehumanization, and moral contracts.


List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Duchamp and Invisible Reality, 1911-1912 1 Duchamp's First Quest for the Invisible: X-Rays, Transparency, and Internal Views of the Figure, X-Rays: History and Popularization Duchamp's Painting and X-Rays, 1911-1912 Picabia, Cubism, and X-Rays 2 The Invisible Reality of Matter Itself: Electrons, Radioactivity, and Even Alchemy, Spring and Summer Giving Form to Electrons Munich Works, Summer 1912: Radioactivity, Alchemy, and Chemistry Munich Works, Summer 1912: First Borrowings from the Language of Technology Part II: The Transition from Painter to Artist as Engineer-Scientist, Fall 3 From Painter to Engineer, I: Depersonalization of Drawing Style and Adoption of Human-Machine Analogies, Fall New Approaches to the Drawn Line Duchamp, the Machine, and Human-Machine Analogies The "Jura-Paris Road" Project 4 The Lure of Science: Imaginative Scientists (Crookes, Tesla) and Scientific Imaginations (Jarry, Roussel) Sir William Crookes (1832-1919): Science and the Unknown Nikola Tesla (1856-1943): Science as Spectacle Alfred Jarry (1873-1907): Themes of Electromagnetism and Electricity in "Docteur Faustroll" and "Le Surmale" Raymond Roussel (1877-1933): Scientific Machines in "Impressions d'Afrique" 5 From Painter to Engineer, II: A Rousselian Dialogue with the Equipment of Science and Technology Begins, "Painting of Precision": "Chocolate Grinder (No. 1)" and "Chocolate Grinder (No. 2)" "Beauty of Indifference": "Musical Erratum," the "3 Standard Stoppages," and the Early Readymades Part III: "Playful" Science and Technology in The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 6 Toward the Large Glass: The Box of 1914 and General Introduction to the Glass The "Box of 1914" and the Model of Leonardo's Science New York, 1915: Execution of the "Large Glass" Begins 7 First Conceptions of the Bride and Her Interaction with the Bachelors The Theme of Collision: From Popular Culture to Science and Beyond The Bride as Automobile The Bride as a Modern Automaton Descended from Villiers's "L'Eve future" 8 The Large Glass as a Painting of Electromagnetic Frequency Hertzian Waves and Wireless Telegraphy in French Culture and Avant-Grade Literature Communication via Electromagnetic Waves in the Art and Theory of Kupka Wireless Telegraphy, Telepathy, and Radio Control in the "Large Glass" "Appareils Enregistreurs" and Other Indexical Signs in the "Large Glass" 9 Other Scientific and Technological Dimensions of the Bride Meteorology and the Eiffel Tower The Bride as an Incandescent Lightbulb Biology and the Bride: J.-H. Fabre and Remy de Gourmont 10 Other Scientific and Technological Dimensions of the Bachelors, I: The Bachelor Apparatus as Playground of the Would-Be Physical Chemist Old and New Identities in the Bachelor Apparatus Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, the Liquefaction of Gases, and Jean Perrin's "Molecular Reality" 11 Other Scientific and Technological Dimensions of the Bachelors, II: The Unknown Mobile and Desire Dynamo, Playful Mechanics, and Agriculture in the Large Glass Rediscovering the Mobile, the Desire Dynamo, and Aspects of Energy and Power in the Bachelor Apparatus Playful Mechanics in the Chariot and the Juggler/Handler of Gravity The Chariot as the "Plow of Life" in Duchamp's "Machine Agricole" Part IV: Conclusion 12 Conclusion, I: New Thoughts on Style and Content in Relation to Science and Technology in Duchamp's Large Glass The Musee des Arts et Metiers, Roussel, and Duchamp's Humorous Invention of a "Plastically Imaged Mixture of Events" The "Large Glass" as a Scientific-Technological Allegory of Love and Life: The Virgin, Persephone, and the Eiffel Tower 13 Conclusion, II: An Overview of Duchamp's Playful Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Early Works From Bergsonian Cubism to Science and Invention: A "Continuum of... Magnetization or of Repulsion" A Review of Science, Technology, and Self-Fashioning in Duchamp's Early Works, the "Large Glass" Project, and the Readymades The "Large Glass" in the Context of Early Twentieth-Century Modernism 14 Coda: Extensions and Echoes of the Large Glass Electricity and Electromagnetism in Duchamp's Later Works The 1950s Legal Tablet Listings: Thoughts of Another "Box"? Appendix A: The Collection of Notes Duchamp Contemplated in His 1950s Legal Tablet Listings Appendix B: A Note on the Construction of Duchamp as Alchemist Notes Outline of Bibliography Bibliography Indexes


Traditional pedagogic language descriptions are grammar-based and oversimplified, ignoring important aspects of the way text is created, for example through complex collocational attraction (Sinclair 1991) or lexical priming (Hoey 2005, this volume). If a teaching methodology is to allow for the full complexity of language, it needs to make more productive use of the learner's creativity, treating the learner not as a passive consumer of rules, but as a researcher, exploring a corpus of texts – a pedagogic corpus. Such a methodology has profound implications for materials writers. Specifically, materials writers need to:– select texts to form an appropriate pedagogic corpus;– prepare communicative tasks to enable learners to process those texts for meaning;– provide form-focused activities to encourage learners, with teacher guidance, to develop a model of the language for themselves.


In this work, the thermodynamic interrelationship of the two known polymorphs of p-aminobenzoic acid has been explored, and primary nucleation in different organic solvents investigated. The solubility of both polymorphs in several solvents at different temperatures has been determined and the isobaric solid-state heat capacities have been measured by DSC. The transition temperature below which form α is metastable is estimated to be 16 °C by interpolation of solubility data and the melting temperature of form β is estimated to be 140 °C by extrapolation of solubility data. Using experimental calorimetry and solubility data the thermodynamic stability relationship between the two polymorphs has been estimated at room temperature to the melting point. At the transition temperature, the estimated enthalpy difference between the polymorphs is 2.84 kJ mol−1 and the entropy difference is 9.80 J mol−1 K−1. At the estimated melting point of form β the difference in Gibbs free energy and enthalpy is 1.6 kJ mol−1 and 5.0 kJ mol−1, respectively. It is found that the entropic contribution to the free energy difference is relatively high, which explains the unusually low transition temperature. A total of 330 nucleation experiments have been performed, with constant cooling rate in three different solvents and with different saturation temperatures, and multiple experiments have been carried out for each set of conditions in order to obtain statistically significant results. All performed experiments resulted in the crystallization of the high-temperature stable α-polymorph, which is kinetically favoured under all evaluated experimental conditions. The thermodynamic driving force required for nucleation is found to depend chiefly on the solvent, and to be inversely correlated to both solvent polarity and to solubility.


This volume brings together more than a decade of information collected in the field and lab on the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a northeast African mammal unique for its physical characteristics and eusociality. Nearly blind and virtually hairless, naked mole-rats inhabit large subterranean colonies in which only one female and her one to three mates conceive offspring, while the young from previous litters maintain and defend the group as do workers in colonies of the social insects. In this first major treatise on naked mole-rats an international group of researchers covers such topics as the evolution of eusociality, phylogeny and systematics of the rodent family Bathyergidae, population and behavioral ecology and genetics of naked mole-rats in the field, vocal and nonvocal behaviors, social organization and divisions of labor within colonies, and climatic, social, and physiological factors affecting growth, reproduction, and reproductive suppression.In addition to the editors, the contributors are D. H. Abbott, M. W. Allard, N. C. Bennett, R. A. Brett, S. H. Braude, B. Crespi, S. V. Edwards, C. G. Faulkes, L. M. George, R. L. Honeycutt, E. A. Lacey, C. E. Liddell, E. McDaid, K. Nelson, K. M. Noonan, J. O'Riain, J. W. Pepper, H. K. Reeve, and D. A. Schlitter.


Existing work on software patches often use features specific to a single task. These works often rely on manually identified features, and human effort is required to identify these features for each task. In this work, we propose CC2Vec, a neural network model that learns a representation of code changes guided by their accompanying log messages, which represent the semantic intent of the code changes. CC2Vec models the hierarchical structure of a code change with the help of the attention mechanism and uses multiple comparison functions to identify the differences between the removed and added code. To evaluate if CC2Vec can produce a distributed representation of code changes that is general and useful for multiple tasks on software patches, we use the vectors produced by CC2Vec for three tasks: log message generation, bug fixing patch identification, and just-in-time defect prediction. In all tasks, the models using CC2Vec outperform the state-of-the-art techniques.


The purpose of this study is accomplished by evaluating the possibilities and limitations in the treatment of partially stretched edentulous skeletal prosthesis, using special items of maintenance, support and stabilization, depending on each patient's specific clinical picture.The study group is made of a total of 15 patients who received removable prostheses or restorations that presented, at least at the level of an arcade, a form of subtotal edentation.The dentist has the difficult task to postpone as much as possible the installing of total edentation. Dentist's natural question is not whether, but when you will need a total replacement? A factor of predictability in this respect is the status of periodontal and endodontic tooth arch position, structural integrity, the way of retention of the prostheses and costs. The right strategy to approach the case is closely related to the hygiene and overall disease status.The superiority of overdenture must be notified, the one that uses special retention elements but one must not neglect the specific aspects of pre and pro prosthetic therapies in the context of ensuring favorable premises for the completion of prosthetic therapy and the correlation of course options according to the overall health and oral hygiene factors.


I Â ntroduction:Intravenous drug use is an increasing social challenge and a predisposing condition to infective endocarditis. Data on infective endocarditis in intravenous drug users in our society are limited. The aim of this study is determining the clinical features, site of involvement and bacteriologic findings of infective endocarditis in intravenous drug users. Â Materials and Methods: In this descriptive study, injection drug users who admitted at Infectious Diseases Ward, Imam Reza Hospital in a 5 years period (2001-2005), were reviewed and patients characteristics, the results of blood cultures, echocardiographic study, chest imaging and other standard blood testing were collected in questionnaires. Statistical analysis of data was done by SPSS-11 software. Â Results: A total of 38 cases of infective endocarditis occurred in 34 patients. All of these patients were men with a mean (+/- SD) age of 30.4 +/- 7.1 years. The tricuspid valve was involved in 26 cases (74.3), the mitral valve in 4 cases (11.4), the mitral and tricuspid valve in 4 cases (11.4), and the mitral and aortic valve in 1 case (2.9). The blood cultures were negative in 28.9 0f cases; microorganisms identified in positive blood cultures included Staphylococcus aureus (77.8, MRSA in 33.3 and MSSA in 44.4 of cases), Enterococcus(7.4), Streptococcus pyogenes (7.4) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (7.4). Eight patients (21.1) underwent surgery, and nine (23.7) of patients died. Â Conclusion: Infective endocarditis in intravenous drug users affects the right side of the heart more commonly. Staphylococcus aureus is still the most frequent organism isolated from blood cultures, but the frequency of methicillin resistant staphylococci, organisms with higher resistance to medical therapy, is increasing. Thus, the suggested empirical regimen for the treatment of infectious endocarditis is a combination of cloxacillin, gentamycin and vancomycin. This regimen would be changed on the basis of the results of the blood culture and the pattern of antibiotic susceptibility.


Ethnographic examples of stone-tool makers in Australia and archaeological examples from three different areas in the western United States indicate that the availability of lithic raw materials is an important variable conditioning stone-tool production technology. Attributes of availability such as abundance and quality of lithic raw materials condition the production of formal- vs. informal-tool types. Poor-quality raw materials tend to be manufactured into informal-tool designs. High-quality lithic raw materials tend to be manufactured into formal-tool designs when such materials occur in low abundance. When high-quality materials occur in great abundance both formal- and informal-tool designs are manufactured. Other factors, such as residential mobility or sedentism, are found to be less-important determinates of lithic-production technology.


The rapid growth of wireless mobile devices has led to saturation and congestion of wireless channels – a well-known fact. In the recent years, this issue is further exacerbated by the everincreasing demand for traffic intensed multimedia content applications, which include but are not limited to social media, news and video streaming applications. Therefore the development of highly efficient content distribution technologies is of utmost importance, specifically to cope with the scarcity and the high cost of wireless resources. To this aim, this thesis investigates the challenges and the considerations required to design efficient techniques to improve the performance of wireless networks. Since wireless signals are prone to fluctuations and mobile users are, with high likelihood, have difference channel qualities, we particularly focus on the scenarios with heterogeneous user distribution. Further, this dissertation considers two main techniques to cope with mobile users demand and the limitation of wireless resources. Firstly, we propose an opportunistic multicast scheduling to efficiently distribute or disseminate data to all users with low delay. Secondly, we exploit the Millimeter-Wave (mm-Wave) frequency band that has a high
potential of meeting the high bandwidth demand. In particular, we propose a channel access mechanism and a scheduling algorithm that take into account the limitation of the high frequency band (i.e., high path loss). Multicast scheduling has emerged as one of the most promising techniques for multicast applications
when multiple users require the same content from the base station. Unlike a unicast scheduler which sequentially serves the individual users, a multicast scheduler efficiently utilizes the wireless resources by simultaneously transmitting to multiple users. Precisely, it multiplies the gain in terms of the system throughput compared to unicast transmissions. In spite of the fact that multicast schedulers are more efficient than unicast schedulers, scheduling for multicast transmission is a challenging task. In particular, base station can only chose one rate to transmit to all users. While determining the rate for users with a similar instantaneous channel quality is straight forward, it is non-trivial when users have different instantaneous channel qualities, i.e., when the channel is heterogeneous. In such a scenario, on one hand, transmitting at a low rate results in low throughput. On the other hand, transmitting at a high rate causes some users to fail to receive the transmitted packet while others successfully receive it but with a rate lower
than their maximum rate. The most common and simplest multicasting technique, i.e., broadcasting, transmits to all receivers using the maximum rate that is supported by the worst receiver.
In recent years, opportunistic schedulers have been considered for multicasting. Opportunistic multicast schedulers maximize instantaneous throughput and transmit at a higher rate to serve only a subset of the multicast users. While broadcasting suffers from high delay for all users due to low transmission rate, the latter causes a long delay for the users with worse channel quality as they always favor users with better channel quality. To address these problems, we designed an opportunistic multicast scheduling mechanism that aims to achieve high throughput as well as low delay. Precisely, we are solving the finite horizon problem for multicasting. Our goal is that all multicast users receive the same amount of data within the shortest amount of time. Although our proposed opportunistic multicast scheduling mechanism improves the system throughput and reduces delay, a common problem in multicast scheduling is that its throughput performance is limited by the worst user in the system. To overcome this problem, transmit beamforming can be used to adjust antenna gains to the different receivers. This allows improving the SNR of the receiver with the worst channel SNR at the expense of worsening the SNR of the better channel receivers. In the first part of this thesis, two different versions of the finite horizon problem are considered: (i) opportunistic multicast scheduling and (ii) opportunistic multicast
beamforming. In recent years, many researchers venture into the potential of communication over mm-Wave band as it potentially solves the existing network capacity problem. Since beamforming is capable to concentrate the transmit energy in the direction of interest, this technique is particularly beneficial to improve signal quality of the highly attenuated mm-Wave signal. Although directional beamforming in mm-Wave offers multi-gigabit-per-second data rates, directional communication
severely deteriorates the channel sensing capability of a user. For instance, when a user is not within the transmission coverage or range of the communicating users, it is unable to identify the state of the channel (i.e., busy or free). As a result, this leads to a problem commonly known as the deafness problem. This calls for rethinking of the legacy medium access control and scheduling mechanisms for mm-Wave communication. Further, without omni-directional transmission,
disseminating or broadcasting global information also becomes complex. To cope with these issues, we propose two techniques in the second part of this thesis. First, leveraging that recent mobile devices have multiple wireless interface, we present a dual-band solution. This solution exploits the omni-directional capable lower frequency bands (i.e., 2.4 and 5 GHz) to transmit control messages and the mm-Wave band for high speed data transmission. Second, we develop a decentralized scheduling technique which copes with the deafness problem in mm-Wave through a learning mechanism.
In a nutshell, this thesis explores solutions which (i) improve the utilization of the network resources through multicasting and (ii) meet the mobile user demand with the abundant channel resources available at high frequency bands.


Although reports indicate that a majority of students in Uganda are sexually abused while in school, sexual harassment and its impact on educational attainment is a rampant yet understudied problem (The Uganda National Strategic Plan on Violence Against Children in Schools, 2015). While harassment in schools by teachers and students is not the only factor leading to high dropout rates among students, the behavior of teachers and students in school, and the lack of discipline towards their actions is an internal contribution to this effect. This study aims to better understand the perceptions on what constitutes "sexual harassment" in Uganda (specifically sexual harassment in schools), if this conversational definition matches up with what the legal definition currently is, and to also assess the effectiveness of reporting systems on sexual harassment and what can be done to improve what is currently inefficient. Through focus groups with secondary school students and university students (n=13), as well as key informant interviews (n=10), participants were asked how they defined sexual harassment, how they came to know about it, and the barriers they saw to speaking up about it. Findings indicate that though the perceptions and definitions of sexual harassment are varied, young people perceive this to be a problem of great concern in schools. Despite this perception, schools themselves effectively foster a culture of silence around the topic of sexual harassment, ultimately resulting in ineffective reporting procedures and an environment that shames and mentally disturbs survivors. Recommendations include comprehensive anti-sexual harassment education mechanisms and the creation of distinct anti-sexual harassment policies that separate this action from other forms of "bad behavior" that violate schools' codes of conduct. Content warning: mentions of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual violence, and rape 1 The researcher will be using the word "survivor" rather than "victim" in this study, as it is more empowering to the individual, and the commonly accepted word now when discussing sexual violence. SCHOOLING SILENCE Mieszczanski v Table of


No environmental issue triggers such feelings of hopelessness as global climate change. Many areas of the world, including regions of the United States, have experienced a wide range of unusually dramatic weather events recently. Much climate change analysis forecasts horrors of biblical proportions, such as massive floods, habitat loss, species loss, and epidemics related to warmer weather. Such accounts of impending disaster have helped trigger extreme reactions, wherein some observers simply dismiss global climate change as, at the very worst, a minor inconvenience requiring modest adaptation. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that an American federal government known for institutional gridlock has accomplished virtually nothing in this area in the last decade. Policy inertia is not the story of this book, however. Statehouse and Greenhouse examines the surprising evolution of state-level government policies on global climate change. Environmental policy analyst Barry Rabe details a diverse set of innovative cases, offering detailed analysis of state-level policies designed to combat global warming. The book explains why state innovation in global climate change has been relatively vigorous and why it has drawn so little attention thus far. Rabe draws larger potential lessons from this recent flurry of American experience. Statehouse and Greenhouse helps to move debate over global climate change from bombast to the realm of what is politically and technically feasible.


We use a novel numerical approach that fully couples the energy, momentum, and continuum equations to investigate the physics of extension and breakup of cold continental lithosphere to form new ocean basins. Unlike hot continental systems, where fl at-lying detachment faults are nucleated in the strong part of the upper crust, cold continental systems have fl at-lying detachment faults nucleating in the strong upper mantle at a relatively early stage. These detachment faults subsequently control the development of a mantle core complex and associated crustal structures. The observed structures are analogous to those developed in mid-crustal core complexes during extension of relatively thick and hot continental crust. In the cold environment, however, a strong elastic layer is developed within the mantle, shifting the stress-bearing part of the system to below the Moho. Our modeling results reproduce key tectonic elements of a natural system (the Iberia margin, offshore the Iberian Peninsula) by stretching a randomly perturbed, unpatterned lithosphere. Results also explain the "upper plate paradox" by doming of continental lithospheric mantle separated from the crust by two diffuse detachment zones dipping toward the two future continental margins. Doming is facilitated by channel fl ow of the lower crust. Keywords: extension, detachment faults, passive margin, numerical


Successful strategic planning determines the ultimate fate of an enterprise. Many high-technology enterprises lack a comprehensive framework that facilitates an integrated approach. Derived from the diverse, extant literature on leadership, technology management, marketing and new product development, a Generic Value Tree offers a solution. This comprehensive schema highlights the linkage between technology and marketplace. It represents an objectives hierarchy that asserts that maximising enterprise equity demands a strategic focus on four branches: pursuing strategic intent; nurturing an intelligent enterprise; designing innovative goods and services; and amassing user preference. Its usefulness is tested in two settings: one relies on secondary data; the other relies on primary data collected in a field setting at an actual strategic planning session. The Generic Value Tree is a valuable diagnostic tool in the search for sustainable competitive advantage.


Midwest ISO's real-time market design with energy and ancillary service co-optimization is reported in this paper. The key components of Midwest ISO's real-time market are described including intra-day reliability commitment, transmission security management, real-time dispatch and pricing. The RT SCED formulation at the core of the real-time dispatch and pricing market is presented. Numerical examples are included to illustrate the primary features of the real-time market.


Abstract Background: The present study was a randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate the perioperative effect of epidural dexmedetomidine, in conjunction with intrathecal bupivacaine. Method: In this trial, 60 male patients of American Society of Anesthesiologists' grades I and II, between 20–50 years of age, and posted for elective lower limb orthopaedic surgery, were selected. After written informed consent was obtained and a thorough preanaesthetic check-up carried out, the patients were randomly divided into two groups using the manual envelope randomisation technique. Group I received 2.5 ml of 0.5% bupivacaine intrathecally, plus 10 ml normal saline (NS) epidurally (control). Group II received 2.5 ml of 0.5% bupivacaine intrathecally, plus 2.0 μg/kg dexmedetomidine epidurally, made up to 10 ml with NS (study). Results: We observed a significant prolongation in the duration of analgesia to 424.1 minutes (Group II) in patients receiving epidural dexmedetomidine, in comparison to 140.0 minutes in patients receiving saline (Group I). There was a significant fall in the pulse rate and mean arterial pressure five minutes following epidural dexmedetomidine in Group II patients, which lasted throughout the study period. The majority of the patients in Group II were sedated, yet arousable, by verbal commands or light tactile stimulus (sedation scale 3–4) 10 ± 5 minutes following administration of dexmedetomidine in the epidural space. This decrease in the level of consciousness lasted for 45 ± 5 minutes. Conclusion: The addition of 2 μg/kg dexmedetomidine epidurally to 2.5 ml of intrathecal bupivacaine prolongs the duration of analgesia, and decreases the requirement of rescue analgesics in patients undergoing lower-limb orthopaedic surgery, with a significant fall in pulse rate and mean arterial pressure.


For over 40 years the citation databases from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) have provided a unique and incisive tool not just for researching the academic literature but for measuring and evaluating it as well. With the emergence of the World Wide Web this tool has been developed to place cited reference searching directly within the control of the user. Improved access to information is one feature of the Web, in particular through the mechanism of the Web link. The convergence of citation searching and Web linking towards citation linking will be examined in the paper with reference to two examples: Web of Science, a new service for scientists and social scientists from ISI, and an Open Journal of Cognitive Science developed by the Open Journal project. Web of Science provides links to the literature, links to holdings, to document delivery, and integration with bibliographic tools. Using citations -- the links made by authors themselves -- users can navigate between their current work and a priori work in the archives of the research literature or take a recent paper and move forward, tracking the citations dynamically. Literature searching is incomplete without links to the primary journal literature. The Open Journal of Cognitive Science, a collaborative work between the project and ISI, illustrates how the Web model of linking has been extended, linking from the abstracted literature to the full-text journal. Both implementations are illustrated in the paper.


Linda is a coordination language designed to support process creation and inter-process communication within conventional computational languages. Although the Linda paradigm touts architectural and language independence, it often suffers performance penalties, particularly on local area network platforms. Instructional footprinting is an optimization technique with the primary goal of enhancing the execution speed of Linda programs. The two main aspects of instructional footprinting are instructional decomposition and code motion. This paper addresses the semantic issues encountered when the Linda primitives, IN and RD, are decomposed and moved past other Linda operations. Results are presented showing significant speedup when instructional footprinting is used.<<ETX>>


Abstract Throughout the high Arctic, from northern Canada (Pearya) to eastern Greenland, Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Taimyr and Severnaya Zemlya and, at lower Arctic latitudes, in the Urals and the Scandinavian Caledonides, there is evidence of the Grenville–Sveconorwegian Orogen. The latest orogenic phase (c. 950 Ma) is well exposed in the Arctic, but only minor Mesoproterozoic fragments of this orogen occur on land. However, detrital zircons in Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic successions provide unambiguous Mesoproterozoic to earliest Neoproterozoic (c. 950 Ma) signatures. This evidence strongly suggests that the Grenville–Sveconorwegian Orogen continues northwards from type areas in southeastern Canada and southwestern Scandinavia, via the North Atlantic margins to the high Arctic continental shelves. The widespread distribution of late Mesoproterozoic detrital zircons far to the north of the Grenville–Sveconorwegian type areas is usually explained in terms of long-distance transport (thousands of kilometres) of either sediments by river systems from source to sink, or of slices of lithosphere (terranes) moved on major transcurrent faults. Both of these interpretations involve much greater complexity than the hypothesis favoured here, the former involving recycling of the zircons from the strata of initial deposition into those of their final residence and the latter requiring a diversity of microcontinents. Neither explains either the fragmentary evidence for the presence of Grenville–Sveconorwegian terranes in the high Arctic, or the composition of the basement of the continental shelves. The presence of the Grenville–Sveconorwegian Orogen in the Arctic, mainly within the hinterland and margins of the Caledonides and Timanides, has profound implications not only for the reconstructions of the Rodinia supercontinent in early Neoproterozoic time, but also the origin of these Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic mountain belts.


Yoga research citations from 1948 to 2020 in PubMed were filtered and sorted in 10-year intervals to explore the occurrence and time frame of change in (1) the focus of research; (2) the number of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), systematic reviews (SRs), and meta-analyses (MAs); (3) health conditions researched for yoga as therapy; (4) journals with yoga research; and (5) the research on yoga from different countries. Publications on yoga between 1948 and 1970 (1.25%) focused on exceptional abilities of experienced yoga practitioners, apparently related to the spiritual goal of yoga; from 1971 to 2000 (6.87%), the focus was on yoga in health and therapy; and from 2001 to 2020 (91.88%), research publications on yoga increased and continued to focus on health and therapy, with fewer RCTs relative to the SRs and MAs on yoga in PubMed. Publications on yoga reported the following health conditions most often: from 1981 to 1990, (1) asthma, (2) stress, and (3) diabetes; from 1991 to 2000, (1) stress followed by (2) asthma, anxiety, and pain (all three with equal percentages); from 2001 to 2010, (1) depression, (2) stress, and (3) anxiety; and from 2011 to 2020, (1) stress, (2) depression, and (3) pain. The journals publishing research on yoga in PubMed have changed between 1971 and 2020 as follows: highly clinically relevant, broad-interest medical journals (1971 to 1990); journals relevant to mind-body interventions (1991 to 2000); and specialized journals for complementary and alternative medicine, particular branches of medicine, or research study designs (2001 to 2020). The highest yoga research output from 1971 to 1980 came from the United Kingdom (RCTs); from 1981 to 1990 the most research came from the United States (RCTs); from 1991 to 2000 the most research came from India (RCTs) and the United Kingdom (SRs); from 2001 to 2010 the most research came from the United States (RCTs, SRs) and the United Kingdom (MAs); and from 2011 to 2020 the most research came from the United States (RCTs, SRs, MAs). The trends in yoga research from this analysis reflect increased research related to yoga and health while suggesting areas for future research based on the strengths and gaps that have emerged.


Using a panel of Major League Baseball team attendance data for the period 1950 to 2003, the authors determined that after controlling for team quality and other factors, a new modern era ballpark adds 22 to 30 percent to total attendance over a 10-year period and, on average, generated present-value stadium revenues of $272 million for the franchise. Since the construction costs for the group of 14 modern ballparks averaged $99 million in private money and $198 million in public funds, there were two results with important implications for public finance. First, the revenue estimates were less than the typical cost of most modern stadiums, indicating that the projects generated positive rents for team owners only due to public subsidization. Second, the ratio of recipient benefits to subsidy expenses indicated that public spending on construction of replacement stadiums was a less effective method for subsidizing franchise owners than direct lump-sum payments. Furthermore, the preference for stadiuproject subsidies over cash subsidies can not be explained by the desire of local officials to improve the quality-of-play of the team. Due to non-complementarity between new stadiums and team success, team profits are maximized when an owner "pockets" increases in revenue rather than reinvesting in the team's level of on-field quality.


Firms are increasingly rushing to invest in a variety of technologies or sales force automation (SFA) to increase the performance of their sales forces. Research has shown, however, that a high proportion of SFA projects fail. The high failure rate of SFA projects can be explained by the lack of appropriate planning, resulting in a gap between management and the sales force in perceptions and usefulness of SFA. This paper explores the barriers to performance that the pharmaceutical sales force face when operating in a mobile working setting. The paper also explored the perception of the sales force with regard to a number of mobile solutions that could provide the sales representatives with the necessary support to deal with the barriers to performance they face in the course of their everyday work. This is achieved through a case study of a midsized multinational pharmaceutical company


ABSTRACT The 2016 M w  7.8 Kaikōura earthquake continued a notable decade of damaging earthquake impacts in New Zealand. The effects were wide ranging across the upper South Island, and included two fatalities, tsunami, tens of thousands of landslides, the collapse of one residential building, and damage to numerous structures and infrastructure. We present a preliminary overview focused on the seismological aspects of this earthquake and the corresponding seismological response effort. The earthquake rupture was extremely complex, involving at least 13 separate faults extending over ∼150  km, from the epicenter in north Canterbury to near the Cook Strait. We use backprojection and slip inversion methods to derive preliminary insights into the rupture evolution, identifying south‐to‐north rupture, including at least three distinct southwest‐to‐northeast propagating phases. The last phase is associated with a strong second pulse of energy release in the northern half of the rupture zone ∼70  s after rupture initiation, which we associate with the Kekerengu–Needles faults where some of the largest surface displacements (dextral) were observed. The mechanism of the mainshock was oblique thrust and relocated aftershocks show a range of thrust and strike‐slip mechanisms across three dominant spatial clusters. GeoNet datasets collected during the Kaikōura earthquake will be crucial in further unraveling details of the complex earthquake rupture and its implications for seismic hazard. Ground motions during the earthquake exceeded 1 g at both ends of the rupture. Spectral accelerations exceeded 500‐year return period design level spectra in numerous towns in the upper South Island, as well as in parts of the capital city of Wellington at critical periods of 1–2 s, influenced by site/basin and directivity effects. Another important part of the response effort has been the provision of earthquake forecasts, as well as consideration of the implications of slow slip on the Hikurangi subduction interface triggered as a result of the Kaikōura earthquake.


Introduction Patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) suffer premature cardiovascular disease and poor prognosis after revascularisation procedures. Following saphenous vein bypass grafting, smooth muscle cell (SMC) plasticity is vital to graft adaptation and subsequent patency. We recently demonstrated that T2DM-SMC exhibit an aberrant phenotype distinct from non-diabetic (ND)-SMC which is driven by increased expression of microRNAs miR−143 and −145. This study investigated potential diabetic stimuli that modulate miR-143/145 and alter SMC phenotype. Methods Cultured ND-SMC were exposed to candidate stimuli (glucose, insulin, inflammatory cytokines, transforming growth factor beta [TGFβ]) for 48h. SMC morphology (area, F-actin staining), function (proliferation) and miR-143/145 expression (real-time RT-PCR) were subsequently evaluated. Mechanisms were explored using antimiR transfection and/or neutralising antibodies. Results Only exposure to TGFβ promoted a robust T2DM phenotype in ND cells; i.e. increased miR-143/145 (p<0.001), increased cell area (p<0.05), disrupted F-actin and reduced proliferation (p<0.05, all n=5), effects that were reversed by antimiR-143/145 transfection (p<0.01, n=6). However, treatment of T2DM-SMC with TGFβ receptor (TGFβRII) neutralising antibody did not reinstate ND characteristics (n=4). Conclusion TGFβ confers a T2DM phenotype in ND-SMC that is driven by upregulation of miR-143/145. Interestingly, inhibition of TGFβ signalling per se did not restore a ND phenotype in T2DM-SMC suggesting that previous in vivo exposure of SMC to elevated circulating levels of TGFβ may be the perpetrator of persistent changes in phenotype and function that are not easily reversed. These observations support the notion of "metabolic memory", a phenomenon likely to be epigenetic in nature and currently under investigation.


De novo sequencing, a process to find the whole genome or the regions of a species without references, requires much higher computational power compared to mapped sequencing with references. The advent and continuous evolution of next-generation sequencing technologies further stress the demands of high-throughput processing of myriads of short DNA fragments. Recently announced sequence assemblers, such as Velvet, SOAPdenovo, and ABySS, all exploit parallelism to meet these computational demands since contemporary computer systems primarily rely on scaling the number of computing cores to improve performance. However, most of them are not tailored to exploit the full potential of these systems, leading to suboptimal performance. In this paper, we present ccTSA, a parallel sequence assembler that utilizes coverage to prune k-mers, find preferred edges, and resolve conflicts in preferred edges between k-mers. We minimize computation dependencies between threads to effectively parallelize k-mer processing. We also judiciously allocate and reuse memory space in order to lower memory usage and further improve sequencing speed. The results of ccTSA are compelling such that it runs several times faster than other assemblers while providing comparable quality values such as N50.


Abstract. Remarkably low mean September sea ice area in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) was observed in 2011 (146 × 103 km2), a record-breaking level that was nearly exceeded in 2012 (150 × 103 km2). These values were lower than previous September records set in 1998 (200 × 103 km2) and 2007 (220 × 103 km2), and are ∼60% lower than the 1981–2010 mean September climatology. In this study, the processes contributing to the extreme light years of 2011 and 2012 were investigated, compared to previous extreme minima of 1998 and 2007, and contrasted against historic summer seasons with above average September ice area. The 2011 minimum was associated with positive June through September (JJAS) surface air temperature (SAT) and net solar radiation (K*) anomalies that facilitated rapid melt, coupled with atmospheric circulation that restricted multi-year ice (MYI) inflow from the Arctic Ocean into the CAA. The 2012 minimum was also associated with positive JJAS SAT and K* anomalies with coincident rapid melt, but further ice decline was temporarily mitigated by atmospheric circulation which drove Arctic Ocean MYI inflow into the CAA. Atmospheric circulation was comparable between 2011 and 1998 (impeding Arctic Ocean MYI inflow) and 2012 and 2007 (inducing Arctic Ocean MYI inflow). However, preconditioning was more apparent leading up to 2011 and 2012 than 1998 and 2007. The rapid melt process in 2011 and 2012 was more intense than observed in 1998 and 2007 because of the thinner ice cover being more susceptible to anomalous thermodynamic forcing. The thinner sea ice cover within the CAA in recent years has also helped counteract the processes that facilitate extreme heavy ice years. The recent extreme light years within the CAA are associated with a longer navigation season within the Northwest Passage.


The article analyzes the causes of an extreme social event in the format of a global pandemic. They are associated with the "re-quantization of reality" — the change of universal attractors of the historical process, which set specific ways of regulating system structures. The old system-forming meaning of the development of society as a Zoopopulation has finally exhausted its regulatory possibilities; the new meaning is just beginning to integrate social elements for the transition to a psychosocial formation. The clash and struggle of old and new causal connections generates causal dissonance, leads to an increase in entropy in social systems, which, in turn, generates an extremum that threatens humanity with self — destruction-an omnicide. The specifics of a possible suicide of humanity is of relative importance: epidemics, earthquakes, asteroid crashes, and other variants of global misery can threaten and increase until a new sense of development dominates the social consciousness. A real pandemic is the best time for a quantum transition from the old regulation to the new: as soon as the new anthropic principle of managing causal connections prevails, the disease will disappear, and civilization will pass to a new period of its development.


A 30 year old male presented with the complaint of progressive dyspnoea. Cardiovascular examination showed tachycardia and loud second sound in the pulmonary area. ECG showed T wave inversion in lead III and chest X-ray showed dilatation of the pulmonary artery. Echocardiography showed mildly dilated right atrium/right ventricle, mild tricuspid regurgitation and moderate pulmonary arterial hypertension. Venous Doppler of the bilateral lower limbs showed deep vein thrombosis of both the lower limbs. HRCT (high resolution CT) showed pleural thickening in the apical segment of the left upper lobe and scattered ground glass attenuation in the apical basal segment of both the lower lobes, which were suggestive of thromboembolism. CECT (contrast enhanced CT) of chest showed pulmonary artery thrombosis of the left lower lobe segmental and interlobar artery. Protein S activity was 25 %( normal range: 77-143%), protein C activity was 82 %( normal range: 70-130%) and antithrombin III was 119(normal range: 80-120).


Research suggests that maternal exercise in pregnancy may have beneficial effects on the brain function of offspring. This study sought to determine if voluntary wheel running during pregnancy improves depression-like behavior, temporal order memory, and hippocampal neurogenesis in both female and male offspring mice. Pregnant mice were allowed to run voluntarily by introducing running wheels into the housing cages throughout the gestational period. Male and female mice offspring at the age of 8- to 9-week-old were then tested on the temporal order task and forced swim test, then euthanized for immunostaining for examining adult hippocampal cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation. Results showed that both male and female pups had reduced depression-like behavior, while only male offspring demonstrated improvement in temporal order memory. Immunostaining revealed that male offspring showed an increase in the number of immature neurons in the ventral hippocampus, whereas female offspring showed enhanced cell proliferation in the dorsal hippocampus. These findings indicate that maternal voluntary wheel running benefits both female and male offspring on reducing depression-like behavior, but with gender effect on promoting hippocampal cell proliferation, neuronal differentiation, and temporal order memory.


Specific RNA recognition of proteins containing the double-strand RNA-binding domain (dsRBD) is essential for several biological pathways such as ADAR-mediated adenosine deamination, localization of RNAs by Staufen, or RNA cleavage by RNAse III. Structural analysis has demonstrated the lack of base-specific interactions of dsRBDs with either a perfect RNA duplex or an RNA hairpin. We therefore asked whether in vitro selections performed in parallel with individual dsRBDs could yield RNAs that are specifically recognized by the dsRBD on which they were selected . To this end, SELEX experiments were performed using either the second dsRBD of the RNA-editing enzyme ADAR1 or the second dsRBD of Xlrbpa, a homolog of TRBP that is involved in RISC formation. Several RNA families with high binding capacities for dsRBDs were isolated from either SELEX experiment, but no discrimination of these RNAs by different dsRBDs could be detected. The selected RNAs are highly structured, and binding regions map to two neighboring stem-loops that presumably form stacked helices and are interrupted by mismatches and bulges. Despite the lack of selective binding of SELEX RNAs to individual dsRBDS, selected RNAs can efficiently interfere with RNA editing in vivo.


BACKGROUND
 Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), the most common neuropathy, is caused by a compression of the median nerve in the carpal tunnel and is related to aging. The initial symptom is numbness and pain of the median nerve distributed in the hand area, while thenar muscle atrophy occurs in advanced stages. This atrophy causes failure of thumb motion and results in clumsiness; even after surgery, thenar atrophy does not recover for an extended period. Medical examination and electrophysiological testing are useful to diagnose CTS; however, visits to the doctor tend to be delayed because patients neglect the symptom of numbness in the hand. To avoid thenar atrophy-related clumsiness, early detection of CTS is important.

 OBJECTIVE
 To establish a CTS screening system without medical examination, we have developed a tablet-based CTS detection system, focusing on movement of the thumb in CTS patients; we examined the accuracy of this screening system.

 METHODS
 A total of 22 female CTS patients, involving 29 hands, and 11 female non-CTS participants were recruited. The diagnosis of CTS was made by hand surgeons based on electrophysiological testing. We developed an iPad-based app that recorded the speed and timing of thumb movements while playing a short game. A support vector machine (SVM) learning algorithm was then used by comparing the thumb movements in each direction among CTS and non-CTS groups with leave-one-out cross-validation; with this, we conducted screening for CTS in real time.

 RESULTS
 The maximum speed of thumb movements between CTS and non-CTS groups in each direction did not show any statistically significant difference. The CTS group showed significantly slower average thumb movement speed in the 3 and 6 o'clock directions (P=.03 and P=.005, respectively). The CTS group also took a significantly longer time to reach the points in the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 11 o'clock directions (P<.05). Cross-validation revealed that 27 of 29 CTS hands (93%) were classified as having CTS, while 2 of 29 CTS hands (7%) did not have CTS. CTS and non-CTS were classified with 93% sensitivity and 73% specificity.

 CONCLUSIONS
 Our newly developed app could classify disturbance of thumb opposition movement and could be useful as a screening test for CTS patients. Outside of the clinic, this app might be able to detect middle-to-severe-stage CTS and prompt these patients to visit a hand surgery specialist; this may also lead to medical cost-savings.


During development, the fruit of some paprika (Capsicum annuum L.) cultivars shows a change in color from green to dark purple (e.g., 'Mavras') or lilac (e.g., 'Tequila'). However, this purple coloration is rare among paprika cultivars and disappears in ripened fruit, which are red. Therefore, we investigated the mechanism causing this color change in the cultivars Mavras and Tequila to better understand how purple ripened fruit could be generated. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analyses of the anthocyanin contents of the fruit indicated that anthocyanin was undetectable in green fruit, accumulated in dark purple or lilac ones, and then decreased again in red ones in both cultivars. Furthermore, expressions of most of the analyzed anthocyanin biosynthesis–related genes and genes for their transcription factors increased in dark purple or lilac fruit and decreased in red ones, i.e., it was synchronized with the changes in anthocyanin contents. Furthermore, anthocyanin degradation activity as a result of peroxidases was detected at all stages but increased when the lilac or dark purple color started to fade. Thus, the development of purple coloration is caused by increased anthocyanin biosynthesis, whereas the fading of this coloration is a result of both a decrease in anthocyanin biosynthesis and an increase in anthocyanin degradation. At the ripening stage, the green pigment (chlorophyll) contents decreased, whereas the red pigment (carotenoid, particularly capsanthin) contents increased. However, these timings did not completely coincide with the timing of anthocyanin degradation, suggesting that the content of each pigment is individually regulated, and so purple, green, and red coloration could be freely expressed in mature paprika fruit.


This document presents objectives for an interoperable protocol for
the Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP). The
document aims to establish a set of focused requirements for the
development and evaluation of a CAPWAP protocol. The objectives
address architecture, operation, security, and network operator
requirements that are necessary to enable interoperability among
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) devices of alternative designs.
This memo provides information for the Internet community.


The efficacy of capsular polysaccharide (CP)-specific antibodies elicited by active immunization with vaccines composed of Staphylococcus aureus types 5 and 8 CP linked to Pseudomonas aeruginosa exoprotein A or with immune immunoglobulin G (I-IgG) obtained from vaccinated plasma donors was tested in lethal and sublethal bacterial mouse challenge models. A dose of 2 x 10(5) CFU of S. aureus type 5 CP per mouse administered intraperitoneally (i.p.) with 5% hog mucin was found to cause 80 to 100% mortality in BALB/c mice within 2 to 5 days. Mice passively immunized i.p. 24 h earlier or subcutaneously 48 h earlier with 0.5 ml of I-IgG showed significantly higher average survival rates than animals receiving standard IgG or saline (P < 0.01) following the bacterial challenge. Animals actively immunized with the monovalent type 5 CP-P. aeruginosa exoprotein A conjugate showed a survival rate of 73% compared with 13% in phosphate-buffered saline-immunized animals. The prechallenge geometric mean titer of type 5 CP antibodies in animals that died was significantly (P < 0.05) lower than that of animals which survived the challenge (95.7 versus 223.6 micrograms/ml, respectively). The IgG was further evaluated in mice challenged i.p. with a sublethal dose of 5 x 10(4) CFU per mouse. Serial blood counts were performed on surviving animals at 6, 12, 24, and 48 h. Surviving animals were sacrificed at 72 h, and bacterial counts were performed on their kidneys, livers, and peritoneal lavage fluids. Animals receiving I-IgG had lower bacterial counts in blood samples and lower bacterial densities in kidneys, livers, and peritoneal lavage samples than mice immunized with standard IgG (P < 0.05). These data suggest that S. aureus type 5 CP antibodies induced by active immunization or administered by passive immunization confer protection against S. aureus infections.


We establish bounds on Black–Scholes implied volatility that improve on the uniform bounds previously derived by Tehranchi. Our upper bound is uniform, while the lower bound holds for most options likely to be encountered in practical applications. We further demonstrate the practical effectiveness of our new bounds by showing how the efficiency of the bisection algorithm is improved for a snapshot of SPX option quotes.


What is the difference between the efferent spike train of a neuron with a large soma versus that of a neuron with a small soma? We propose an analytical method called the decoupling approach to tackle the problem. Two limiting casesthe soma is much smaller than the dendrite or vica versaare theoretically investigated. For both the two-compartment integrate-and-fire model and Pinsky-Rinzel model, we show, both theoretically and numerically, that the smaller the soma is, the faster and the more irregularly the neuron fires. We further conclude, in terms of numerical simulations, that cells falling in between the two limiting cases form a continuum with respect to their firing properties (mean firing time and coefficient of variation of inter-spike intervals).


In this thesis several important proteins are investigated from a structural perspective. Some of the proteins are disease related while other have important but not completely characterised functions. The techniques used are general as demonstrated by applications on metabolic proteins (CYP21, CYP11B1, IAPP, ADH3), regulatory proteins (p53, GDNF) and a transporter protein (ANTR1). When the protein CYP21 (steroid 21-hydroxylase) is deficient it causes CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia). For this protein, there are about 60 known mutations with characterised clinical phenotypes. Using manual structural analysis we managed to explain the severity of all but one of the mutations. By observing the properties of these mutations we could perform good predictions on, at the time, not classified mutations. For the cancer suppressor protein p53, there are over thousand mutations with known activity. To be able to analyse such a large number of mutations we developed an automated method for evaluation of the mutation effect called PREDMUT. In this method we include twelve different prediction parameters including two energy parameters calculated using an energy minimization procedure. The method manages to differentiate severe mutations from non-severe mutations with 77% accuracy on all possible single base substitutions and with 88% on mutations found in breast cancer patients. The automated prediction was further applied to CYP11B1 (steroid 11-beta-hydroxylase), which in a similar way as CYP21 causes CAH when deficient. A generalized method applicable to any kind of globular protein was developed. The method was subsequently evaluated on nine additional proteins for which mutants were known with annotated disease phenotypes. This prediction achieved 84% accuracy on CYP11B1 and 81% accuracy in total on the evaluation proteins while leaving 8% as unclassified. By increasing the number of unclassified mutations the accuracy of the remaining mutations could be increased on the evaluation proteins and substantially increase the classification quality as measured by the Matthews correlation coefficient. Servers with predictions for all possible single based substitutions are provided for p53, CYP21 and CYP11B1. The amyloid formation of IAPP (islet amyloid polypeptide) is strongly connected to diabetes and has been studied using both molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo energy minimization. The effects of mutations on the amount and speed of amyloid formation were investigated using three approaches. Applying a consensus of the three methods on a number of interesting mutations, 94% of the mutations could be correctly classified as amyloid forming or not, evaluated with in vitro measurements. In the brain there are many proteins whose functions and interactions are largely unknown. GDNF (glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor) and NCAM (neural cell adhesion molecule) are two such neuron connected proteins that are known to interact. The form of interaction was studied using protein--protein docking where a docking interface was found mediated by four oppositely charged residues in respective protein. This interface was subsequently confirmed by mutagenesis experiments. The NCAM dimer interface upon binding to the GDNF dimer was also mapped as well as an additional interacting protein, GFRα1, which was successfully added to the protein complex without any clashes. A large and well studied protein family is the alcohol dehydrogenase family, ADH. A class of this family is ADH3 (alcohol dehydrogenase class III) that has several known substrates and inhibitors. By using virtual screening we tried to characterize new ligands. As some ligands were already known we could incorporate this knowledge when the compound docking simulations were scored and thereby find two new substrates and two new inhibitors which were subsequently successfully tested in vitro. ANTR1 (anion transporter 1) is a membrane bound transporter important in the photosynthesis in plants. To be able to study the amino acid residues involved in inorganic phosphate transportation a homology model of the protein was created. Important residues were then mapped onto the structure using conservation analysis and we were in this way able to propose roles of amino acid residues involved in the transportation of inorganic phosphate. Key residues were subsequently mutated in vitro and a transportation process could be postulated. To conclude, we have used several molecular modelling techniques to find functional clues, interaction sites and new ligands. Furthermore, we have investigated the effect of muations on the function and structure of a multitude of disease related proteins.


The importance of fluvial dissection in upland blanket peat erosion is well-established but knowledge of the significance of peatland gully system development is limited. This thesis investigates the stability of upland blanket peat in relation to recent re-vegetation and historical erosion of peatland gully systems. It combines regional morphological surveys in a GIS framework with detailed field and laboratory analyses. Detailed research was carried out at three study areas across Northern England: The Cheviot (Northumberland), Moor House (North Pennines) and Wessenden Head Moss (Southern Pennines). A regional-scale investigation into gully development at the three sites demonstrated that the end members (Type 1 and Type 2 dissection) in Bower's 1960 classification of dissection types could be identified but a revised dissection classification including a third category of anastomosing dissection was needed. Regional variations in erosion and gully form were observed. The most extensive aerial erosion was on The Cheviot (80 %) and least at Moor House (48 %). Re-vegetation was most well-established at Moor House (80 % of the eroded peat) and least on Wessenden Head Moss (45 % of the eroded peat). The local topography of each site was the key in explaining erosion patterns. Linear dissection dominated on steeply sloping ground and anastomosing dissection on gentle sloping summit areas. Dendritic dissection occurred on intermediate slopes. Approximate slope angles for the dentritic transitional zone vary in relation to the local topography; however, the means for the three study sites are 3.7 (Moor House), 4.9 (The Cheviot) and 1.4 (Wessenden Head Moss).Local-scale variations in erosion were observed on the interfluves and within existing gully systems. On the interfluves peat accumulation rates were estimated from Spheroidal Carbonaceous Particle deposition. Average rates were 0.5 mm yr(^-1) under moorland grass and 1.2 mm yr(^-1) under heather. Erosion potential of these sites was estimated from rainfall simulation experiments. The potential for erosion was high (243 t km(^-2), 0.243 mm yr(^-1)), though not atypical of local directly measured erosion rates. However, experimental results showed that sediment production rarely occurred below a rainfall intensity of 12 mm hr(^-1) (high intensity for the Pennines) and with a presence of an intact vegetation cover sediment is only locally entrained and re-deposited and actual erosion under current climatic conditions is likely to be low. The onset of peat erosion was estimated by comparing eroded and uneroded cores. It is thought the most recent phase of erosion resulted from climatic change and land management and occurred some 570 years ago on Wessenden Head Moss and between 300 - 330 years ago at Moor House and on The Cheviot. Over the last approximate 50- years, infilling and re-vegetation of the bases of gully systems has been observed. The peat within the gully stratigraphy appears to be eroded, re-deposited or grown in situ. The future of upland blanket peat will likely involve further stabilisation of the gully systems; however, in severely eroded areas where the peat is totally stripped and surface hydrological regime destroyed, the peat will not recover.


Cloud computing enables a vast deployment of online services in virtualized infrastructures, making it crucial to provide fast fault-tolerance for virtual machines (VM). Unfortunately, despite much effort, achieving fast and multi-core scalable VM fault-tolerance is still an open problem. A main reason is that the dominant primarybackup approach (e.g., REMUS) transfers an excessive amount of memory pages, all of them, updated by a service replicated on the primary VM and the backup VM. This approach makes the two VMs identical but greatly degrades the performance of services. State machine replication (SMR) enforces the same total order of inputs for a service replicated across physical hosts. This makes most updated memory pages across hosts the same and they do not need to be transferred. We present Virtualized SMR (VSMR), a new approach to tackle this open problem. VSMR enforces the same order of inputs for a VM replicated across hosts. It uses commodity hardware to efficiently compute updated page hashes and to compare them across replicas. Therefore, VSMR can efficiently enforce identical VMs by transferring only divergent pages. An extensive evaluation on PLOVER, the first VSMR system, shows that PLOVER's throughput on multi-core is 2.2X to 3.8X higher than three popular primary-backup systems. Meanwhile, PLOVER consumed 9.2X less network bandwidth than both of them. PLOVER's source code and raw results are released on github.com/ hku-systems/plover.


A planar integrated optical device based on the interaction of two spatial eigenmodes with a single eigenmode ring resonator is presented. Solutions for the output mode amplitudes are determined theoretically and are shown to be strong functions of the relative phases of the two input modes. A device was fabricated in a polymer-silicon material system by a photolithographic process. The modal response as a function of wavelength is measured by the twin-fiber interferometer technique through fringe visibility. It is found that sharp visibility lineshapes may be achieved through the adjustment of input mode phase and twin-fiber spacing on the radiated output beam. These sharp lineshapes are also possible in the presence of high loss in the resonator. The on-chip test device incorporates a single mode to two-mode converter and a far-field wavefront sampler. The measured fringe visibility slope with respect to wavelength reaches a maximum value of 74 nm- 1 which is 56 nm-1 larger than a single mode waveguide coupled to a single mode microring with the same ring loss and 15 dB extinction ratio. Such sharp lineshapes in visibility may be exploited for optical applications in sensing, communications, and computing.


A mere three years ago, the voluntary and non-binding nature of technical standards was still deemed self-evident. Standards, it was believed, would never be seen as parts of EU law. In the meantime, however, the James Elliott Construction case (C-613/14) caused a serious crisis of faith in this regard. Holding that it has jurisdiction to interpret a European harmonised technical standard adopted by the European Committee for Standardisation ('CEN'), the EU Court of Justice ('CJEU') forewarned that it would play a more active role in the interpretation and legality assessment of harmonised technical standards. In the wake of that judgment, the European Parliament in July 2017 additionally also called for more control and accountability mechanisms to be put in place, albeit in ways diametrically opposed to what the CJEU had proposed just eight months earlier. This post will compare and contrast the Parliament's proposals with the CJEU's approach in James Elliott Construction, inviting the European Commission to reconcile both institutions' positions as part of its on-going modernisation initiatives in this field.


Consumers increasingly demand more transparent information about the sustainability performance of products and services. Thus companies aim at measuring and communicating the environmental performance of products. But which indicators enable a consistent measurement of the environmental sustainability of a product? Some major European initiatives have been launched, focusing in most cases on the indicator Carbon Footprint. But the Carbon Footprint does not take into account resource scarcity and tradeoffs between different environmental categories, including the use of raw materials, water and land. In this paper, we present a pilot study assessing a more comprehensive set of indicators, which was conducted in 2008 with a number of Austrian companies. In contrast to the single indicator approach, a set of five indicators was selected and tested for the assessment of the environmental sustainability performance of products: Abiotic Material Rucksack, Biotic Material Rucksack, Water Rucksack, Actual Land Use and Carbon Footprint. In an ongoing Austrian research project, we currently explore, whether this indicator set can be further developed into an integrated and Web-based Business Resource Intensity Index (BRIX).


Japan experienced increases in labor force participation (LFP) of the elderly in recent years, as have other advanced countries. In the present study, we overview the employment trend of the elderly in Japan, and examine what factors have contributed to its increase since the early 2000s. Improved health and longevity, increasing education levels, and a shift towards less physically demanding jobs have allowed the elderly to stay longer in the labor force. However, elderly employment rebound and its timing are more closely linked to changes in social security incentives, especially increases in the eligibility age for public pension benefits. More broadly, reduced generosity in social security programs since the mid-1980s has been a key driver of the long-term trend change in elderly employment. A series of social security reforms have helped utilize the elderly's potential work capacity, accumulated due to improving health conditions and other favorable factors for LFP in the elderly.


This study aimed at assessing the management of examination malpractice in selected Technical Education Vocational Entrepreneurship (TEVET) institutions on the Copperbelt Province. Therefore, the study was designed to investigate the forms of examination malpractice, assess the causes of examination malpractice, examine the effectiveness of the TEVETA examination guidelines in curbing examination malpractice, determine the challenges faced in curbing malpractice and establish measures to help in curbing examination malpractice in selected TEVET institutions on the Copperbelt Province. Qualitative methods were largely employed in the study. Case study design was employed in this study, whose study sample was 145, comprising of students, lecturers, Examinations Officers and an Assessment Specialist at TEVETA. Data collection was done through focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and semi-structured questionnaires. Data was analysed through thematic analysis. The study established that examination malpractice was real in TEVET institutions. This was evident from the three forms of examination malpractice that emerged from the study namely individually enhanced, technologically enhanced and collaborative cheating methods occur in the learning institutions. It was also found that personal factors, academic factors, social factors, psychological factors and environmental factors were the causes of examination malpractice in the institutions. The findings of the study further showed that TEVETA examination regulations were effective Journal of Lexicography and Terminology | Volume 3, No. 2. (Pub. 20.12.2019) 32 in curbing examination malpractice. Lastly, the study revealed that the institutions were faced with challenges in curbing the vice which included inadequate sensitization programmes and inadequate implementation of examination guidelines. The study made recommendations that TEVETA should intensify the monitoring of teaching and how examinations were conducted as well as to take an active role in sensitising students about the dangers of examination malpractice.


This paper presents an implementation case study for business-centric SOA test framework. The reference architecture of SOA system is usually layered: business process layer, service layer, and computing resource layer. In the architecture, there are so many subsystems to affect system performance, moreover they relate with each other. As a result, in the respect of overall performance, it is usually meaningless to measure each subsystem's performance separately. In SOA system, the performance of the business process layer with which users keep in contact depends on the summation of the performance of the other lower layers. Therefore, measuring performance of the business layer includes indirect measurement of the other SOA system layers. We devised a business-centric SOA test framework in which activities and control primitives in business process managers are simulated to invoke commands or services in a test scenario. That is, in the test framework, a real business process scenario can be replaced to a mimicked business process test scenario, which is executed in a test proxy based on event mechanism. In this paper, we present the concept of business process activity simulation, 2-layered test suites model, and reference architecture.


The BASC-SRP-COL is a standardized self-report measure that is specifically designed to measure college students' perceived levels of positive and negative aspects of personality. As college student mental health problems become more prevalent, it is important to have valid and reliable tools for assessment with this population. After reviewing the research, relevant diagnostic trends, and results found in the BASC-SRP-COL normative sample, it was hypothesized that gender differences would be found in a sample of college students who completed the BASC-SRP-COL. Participants for the proposed study were undergraduate students attending one of two colleges in either North Carolina or Georgia. Gender differences in clinical scales and adaptive scales were examined. For clinical scales, it was hypothesized that males would score higher on the Alcohol Abuse scale, the Atypicality scale, and the Sensation Seeking scale; that females would score higher on the Anxiety and Somatization scales; and that no significant gender differences would be identified on the Attention Problems scale, the Depression scale, the Hyperactivity scale, the Locus of Control scale, the School Maladjustment scale, the Sense of Inadequacy scale, and the Social Stress scale. For the adaptive scales, it was hypothesized that males would score higher on the Self-Esteem scale; females would score higher on the Interpersonal Relations scale and the Relations with Parents scale; and no significant gender differences would be determined on the Self-Reliance scale. A one-way between-groups MANOVA was conducted to investigate gender differences on the BASC-SRP-COL rating scale. Results confirmed that college males were more likely to report higher self-esteem and were more likely to engage in behaviors related to alcohol abuse and sensation seeking. Additionally, college females were more likely to report higher levels of anxiety and somatization. Finally, no significant gender differences were found on the remaining scales. Results were compared with those of the BASC-SRP-COL normative study and with other research. Suggestions for future research and recommendations for college prevention programs were discussed.


The ability to model only primaries is very desirable in seismic exploration and can find broad applications in modeling, imaging, data processing, and interpretation. In this article, "primaries" mean the primary transmitted or reflected waves that involve only single interactions (transmission or reflection) at interfaces (sharp discontinuities) inside a heterogeneous medium. Primary-only modeling usually is much faster and more memory-efficient than full-wave methods, and, in addition, can provide "clean" seismograms free from multiples—a feature useful in testing certain features of migration/imaging or velocity analysis algorithms. This ability of modeling primary-only events also means the method can eliminate pure multiples from full-wave seismograms. The potential applications of primary-only modeling go beyond seismic modeling. For example, it can be applied as an extended one-way propagator to migration/imaging using unconventional waves (such as turning waves), reflected waves, or duplex waves ...


A nanoscale thermal anemometry probe (NSTAP) has been developed to measure velocity fluctuations at ultra-small scales. The sensing element is a free-standing platinum nanoscale wire, 100 nm × 2 μm × 60 μm, suspended between two current-carrying contacts and the sensor is an order of magnitude smaller than presently available commercial hot wires. The probe is constructed using standard semiconductor and MEMS manufacturing methods, which enables many probes to be manufactured simultaneously. Measurements were performed in grid-generated turbulence and compared to conventional hot-wire probes with a range of sensor lengths. The results demonstrate that the NSTAP behaves similarly to conventional hot-wire probes but with better spatial resolution and faster temporal response. The results are used to investigate spatial filtering effects, including the impact of spatial filtering on the probability density of velocity and velocity increment statistics.


Venture development funds ("VDFs") are products of state and local government law that use public funds to invest in local start-ups, in the hope that these companies will then attract venture capital investment. Existing analysis by legal scholars largely assumes that establishing a private venture capital market is essential to encouraging entrepreneurship. This article challenges that assumption. It argues that VDFs and other policies focused on encouraging venture capital are outmoded and inconsistent with the ultimate economic development goals of state and local governments. In many industries, entrepreneurs can now get by with less capital because the cost of developing a product is rapidly declining due to technological advances (e.g., cloud computing) and other developments (e.g., the ability to market an app through Apple's App Store). But venture capital funds continue to seek out investments in a small number of industries that still require a great deal of capital, such as biotech firms trying to develop new drugs. This narrow focus is inconsistent with the advice of economic development experts to pursue industry-neutral policies that broadly encourage entrepreneurial activity in all of its forms. Also, policies oriented towards venture capital may undermine goals of employment diversity and stability because companies seeking venture capital pursue particularly high-risk business strategies that often fail. This article recommends that state and local governments shift their policies to encourage, or at least not hinder, alternatives to venture capital.


This paper describes the collaboration between Michigan Technological University and A&D Technology Inc. to develop a hardware briefcase for training purposes with data acquisition and control software. A&D Technology currently provides in depth iTest software training for their customers. However, there is no related hardware training component. A&D Technology wishes to provide a more in depth training experience using relevant hardware. The hardware training component would present customers with real world scenarios that may occur when using the software. Therefore, faculty and students have designed a briefcase with discrete and modular I/O for hardware training purposes to be used in conjunction with the iTest software. The briefcase is mobile and can be brought to customer locations for training. The hardware briefcase communicates with the iConnect data acquisition hardware through a computer with corresponding software. Components in the hardware briefcase include: Beckhoff Modular I/O, various discrete I/O such as push buttons, switches, and indicator LEDs. Another feature of this design is the incorporation of a stepper motor and timing belt system with a proximity sensor to detect rotations of the timing belt. The briefcase also includes a heater, fan, and thermocouple combination for analog data acquisition and control. The thermocouple data can be obtained from a thermocouple module as well as an analog input module. Thus, it allows conversion from a voltage signal to a corresponding temperature value. A training manual is being developed, which will contain labs involving analog and discrete I/O, enabling a user to develop problem solving skills and further enhance experience with the iTest software. The training manual is designed to be a heavily engaging activity. The first lab is an introductory lab designed to familiarize the user with the iTest software and the hardware briefcase. As the labs progress, the user will have to use problem solving skills to become familiar with the iTest software and iConnect hardware. The last lab is a troubleshooting lab that simulates what a customer might face in industry.


Most safety oriented organizations have established their accidents classification taking into account the magnitude of the combined adverse outcomes on humans, assets and the environment without considering the accidents" potential and the actual attempts of the involved persons to intervene with the accident progress. The specific research exploited a large sample of an aviation organization accident records for an 11 years" time period and employed frequency and chi-square analyses to test a new accident classification scheme based on the distinction among the safety events with or without human intervention on the accident scene, indicating the management or not of their ultimate consequences. Furthermore, the research depicted the effectiveness of personnel strains to alleviate the accident potential outcomes and studied the contribution of time, local and complexity factors on the accident control attempt and the humans" positive or negative interference. The specific newly proposed accident classification successfully addressed the "controlled" or "uncontrolled" traits of the safety events studies, prior their severities consideration, and unveiled the effectiveness of personnel efforts to compensate for the adverse accident march. The portion between controlled and uncontrolled accidents in terms of the human intervention along with the effectiveness of the later may comprise a useful safety performance indicator that can be adopted by any industry sector and may be recommended through international and state safety related authorities.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate a widely used intervention to reduce college student alcohol use, we studied student drinking patterns at colleges that employed social norms marketing programs and those that did not.

METHOD
We examined responses of students in the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS) 1997, 1999 and 2001 data sets at 37 colleges that employed social norms marketing programs and at 61 that did not. Information about the students' drinking behavior and their familiarity with social norms marketing messages at their schools was analyzed, as were college administrators' reports about the implementation of social norms marketing campaigns. Schools were grouped on the basis of student reports of exposure to programmatic materials. Trend analyses were conducted on seven standard measures of alcohol consumption, including annual and 30-day use, frequency, usual quantity and volume consumed, heavy episodic use, and drunkenness.

RESULTS
Almost half of the CAS colleges sampled adopted social norms programs. Those that did were more likely to have large enrollments, not to be religiously affiliated and to have high rates of alcohol use. No decreases were noted in any of the seven measures of alcohol use at schools with social norms programs, even when student exposure and length of program existence were considered. Increases in measures of monthly alcohol use and total volume consumed, however, were observed at schools employing social norms programs.

CONCLUSIONS
This study does not provide evidence to support the effectiveness of social norms marketing programs, as currently utilized, in reducing alcohol use among college students.


Purpose - – The audit of corporations is now dependent on the examination of corporate computer systems. Although tools and techniques have been available for decades, there are major limitations on the audits of corporate systems by external auditors. This paper aims to examine external auditor usage of technology benefiting from a unique opportunity of reviewing a large CPA firm's audit work papers and interviewing their audit staff to examine the following questions: are auditors using the available technological tools? What are the difficulties they face in using these tools? Are there mediators to enhance usability? Why and what circumstances surround their absence? Design/methodology/approach - – The authors use a cross-sectional, case-based field study comparing four engagements in a major audit firm. Findings - – This paper concludes that the characteristics of the audit team largely determine the levels of technology utilization. Furthermore, the integration of technology support teams and auditors may improve usability, and, consequently, increase technology adoption. Research limitations/implications - – The paper includes information about four audit engagements. Given that audit firms have different cultures, practices and employee competencies, and hence emphasize the use of technology to varying degrees, it would be desirable to expand this study to reflect these variations. Practical implications - – The paper presents a discussion of the reasons why auditors do not fully use technology and provide tools to increase its usability. Originality/value - – The paper benefits from a unique opportunity of interviewing audit teams of a large firm, as well as through reviewing their work papers.


It is not too much to say that the mobile game market has made a shared growth, together with the domestic smartphone distribution rate(31 million units). At present, the distribution of the smartphone has a lot of influences on the smartphone game market, in which the number of game users having a preference for an easy, simple game, and competing with actual personal acquaintances is ever increasing. This study, in an effort to look into what influence the game sound has on game scores consequent on user"s characteristic among the smartphone game components, compared the game results through in-depth interviews with a game sound developer and a user group, and the sound/non-sound experiences in the course of playing games. As a result of conducting this research, it was found that age and game experience showed a significant difference on game results. On the basis of this research result, this study intends to suggest the direction of smartphone game production development that could meet both a game supplier and a user"s demand.