Deficiency of Vitamin D in the Indian subcontinent is emerging as a major noninfectious epidemic. To correlate vitamin D deficient children with the asthma and allergic rhinitis classification and pulmonary function tests. We studied 66 children with asthma and allergic rhinitis between 6 to 12 years of whom 33 cases were administered Vitamin D and 33 controls who were not given Vitamin D. The ethical committee approval was taken. It was a prospective, randomised and comparative study. Data was analysed using mean, standard deviation and pairedt test. The study revealed 42 (63.6%) males and 24 (36.4%) females. The Asthma classification depicted mild persistent in 37 (56.1%) followed by intermittent 16 (24.2%) and moderate persistent 12 (18.2%). Maximum cases of allergic rhinitis were moderate persistent 42 (63.6%). The Children who received vitamin D had significant improvement of Forced Expiratory Volume in the first second (FEV1, p-0.000), Forced Vital Capacity (FVC, p-0.005), FEV1: FVC% (p-0.002) and Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR, p-0.000). The control group showed significant improvement in the PEFR parameter (p- 0.0077). The case group showed marked improvement in the lung functions. Adherence to the duration of therapy for a period of 10 weeks with Vitamin D is mandatory.


Although the historical impact of banking and financial institutions on the formation of the contemporary Caribbean has been profound and pervasive, the historical writing on banking and finance in the Caribbean has largely been neglected and marginalized. This essay explores the reasons behind this historiographical neglect while surveying the history of banking in the Caribbean across five hundred years and four overlapping eras—the prebanking era, the colonial era, the nationalist era, and the era of denationalization. It concludes with a consideration of recent approaches to, and a call for additional critical interdisciplinary studies of, the history of banking in the Caribbean.


Sixth form colleges have a long established and valued position within the post-16 education sector in the UK. Despite maintaining a reputation for high quality provision and student success rates, there is very little literature which focuses on this as an institution compared to schools and general further education colleges. Furthermore, there is little research which focuses on students undertaking vocational programmes of study at sixth form, as opposed to the academic A-level qualification which is viewed as its' 'staple provision'. This research attempts to address this through an exploration of sixth form college practices and how these serve to shape the learning experiences of the students.
Immersed within the SFC context, the researcher adopted the dual role of researcher and student support assistant. Informed by the interpretivist epistemology of symbolic interactionism the researcher employed an ethnographic methodology over one academic term, utilising the methods of participant observation and interviews. The participants comprise a cohort of BTEC First Diploma Health and Social Care (level 2) students and teachers. The data are presented in a story followed by a thematic analysis. The subsequent discussion of findings is structured according to a theoretical framework which rejects deterministic assumptions of intelligence located within the minds of individuals and instead posits learning as an inherently social, reciprocal process with others. It draws upon Communities of Practice theory (Wenger, 1998) as a way of understanding how participation in learning is enabled or disabled and Vygotskian theory (1978) as a way of understanding the mechanisms of learning. Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model (1979, 2005) provides an overarching and unifying aspect of the theoretical framework, enabling consideration of the complex proximal and distal factors which shape the learning experiences of students.
This research reveals some important considerations for policy makers and providers of SFC. It discusses ways in which college practices and the learning relationships established between students and teachers serve to enable or disable participation in the learning process. Furthermore, it illustrates the complex and intricate web of factors present in the lives of students and how these are shaped not only by the proximal features of their learning community, but by the more distal, wider features of government educational policy.


Programmers often have to implement custom graph traversals by hand as either there are no suitable text-book algorithms for their tasks, or their problems are too complex for a pure querying language that lacks modularity or static typing. Our new Scala-based graph traversal language uses an effectful stack that adapts monads and type classes. Arbitrary graph effect computations and graph processing rules can be defined and composed in a modular and statically typed way. Custom graph traversals become expressible in a concise notation, run both in-memory and on graph databases, and also allow for parallelization. We evaluate the usability of our approach by detecting occurences of an anti-pattern in a Java source code archive. Our approach outperforms the well-known Gremlin approach due to parallelization.


Arsenic contamination of drinking water is widely recognised as a major public health concern, with global hotspots in Bangladesh, India, Argentina and China. This is not solely a problem that affects developing countries; it is estimated that over 13 million consumers in North America, primarily in western states, rely on groundwater with an arsenic content of greater than 10µg/L (USEPA) and require treatment. Alaska is typical of many western states in that arsenic contamination of groundwater is both natural and anthropogenic in origin. The latter is directly attributable to metal mining operations that expose sulphide minerals, especially arsenopyrite (FeAsS), to air oxidation and decomposition, with subsequent release of toxic metals. Arsenic is particularly mobile in aqueous environments because it exists as various anionic species in trivalent and pentavalent oxidation states. Further, the toxic trivalent species H3AsO3 has neutral charge in acidic conditions and therefore is not readily absorbed by clay minerals. Consequently, the oxidation state of arsenic in water samples is of great importance in predicting toxicity and mobility. Preservation of arsenic speciation is difficult and a number of different procedures have been proposed, but there is always some possibility of species transformation between the sample site and the laboratory. Separation of arsenic species at the sampling point is therefore an attractive alternative.


Lemon is a fruit easily found and produced throughout the year [1]. This fruit is widely used in the food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries mainly due to the essential oil present in its peel [2,3]. The main components of this fruit are limonene, p-cymene, terpenenol and citral, the first being the main constituent of its essential oil [4,5]. In this context and regarding the constant and unrestrained use of chemical preservatives, especially antibiotics, as well as due to the fact that many microorganisms develop resistance in relation to these antibiotics, substances that are naturally present in foods that can act on microorganisms, retarding their development and increasing the useful life of foods where they are present have been studied, as is the case of this work, whose aim was to study the possibility of extracts (alcoholic and aqueous cold and hot) of the Sicilian lemon peel at proportions of 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 100% to have antimicrobial activity against bacteria Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus and yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae.


Cellular telephones, Wi-Fi, and electricity have revolutionized our communications and lifestyles. Wireless technologies have become one of the fastest growing industries, with billions of users around the world. While many of us enjoy and depend on these modern conveniences, an increasing number of people are becoming sensitive or allergic to the electromagnetic fields used to operate our modern technologies. Research in this area indicates that those who have no observable ill effects may still be compromised at a subtle level. Sensitive individuals may have one or more ailments, such as stomach aches, headaches, muscle pains, poor sleep, or "mystery symptoms" that are difficult to diagnose and treat because few physicians are familiar with the real cause. The growth of coverage of Wi Fi will probably increase rather than slow, so it is essential that people be able to protect themselves. Many devices are available that claim to protect against electromagnetic pollution. One of the most thoroughly tested is the PRANAN family of devices. Various laboratory tests have documented the effectiveness of these systems in stabilizing various physiological processes. This article explores the possible mechanisms by which these effects are achieved. The surfaces of the devices have interesting geometrical patterns corresponding to ancient images found throughout nature, art and architecture. The well-known mathematics behind the symbols is referred to as the Golden ratio, Golden mean, Golden section, or Phi. Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages have spent endless hours contemplating this simple ratio and its properties. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. Because of the well-documented physiological effects of the PRANAN devices, we explore the possibility that the geometrical patterns on the surfaces of the devices reveal physical relationships between the geometry of electromagnetic fields in space (the quantum vacuum) and living tissues. This concept, remarkable is it may seem, is supported by recent developments in quantum physics that have demonstrated the underlying mathematics of Phi in relation to magnetic fields.


Chair's Introduction (E. Verdin). Beyond the double helix: writing and reading the histone code (Y. Wang, et al.). The indexing potential of histone lysine methylation (G. Schotta, et al.) A model for step-wise assembly of heterochromatin in yeast (D. Moazed, et al.). H2B Ubiquitylation and deubiquitylation in gene activation (A. Wyce, et al.). Structural and chemical basis of histone acetylation (R. Marmorstein). Phosphorylation and acetylation of histone H3 at inducible genes: two controversies revisted (L. Mahadevan, et al.). HDAC7 regulates apoptosis in developing thymocytes (E. Verdin, et al.). Dual roles of histone deacetylases in the control of cardiac growth (T. McKinsey and E. Olson). Chromatin modifications as clues to the regulation of antigen receptor assembly (D. Ciccone and M. Oettinger). General discussion I Histone modifications in X inactivation. The HDAC complex and cytoskeleton (J. Kovacs, et al.). Tat acetylation: a regulatory switch between early and late phases in HIV transcription elongation (M. Ott, et al.). Dynamics of the p53 acetylation pathway (W. Gu, et al.). Regulation of the NF-kB action by reversible acetylation (W. Greene and L. Chen). General discussion II p300 and DNA repair. Reversal of gene silencing as a therapeutic target for cancer - roles for DNA methylation and interdigitation with chromatin (S. Baylin). Transcription regulation by histone deacetylases (S. Wang, et al.). Molecular and cellular basis for the anti-proliferative effects of the HDAC inhibitor LAQ824 (P. Atadja, et al.). Histone deacetylase inhibitors: development as cancer therapy (P. Marks, et al.). General discussion III PML-RAR hypermethylation in leukemia. Index of Contributors. Subject Index.


Season-ending injuries, particularly those to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), continue to occur at a high rate in many sports. Although multiple factors are thought to contribute to this injury rate, no study has looked at possible psychological influences. Therefore, the present hypothesis suggests that there exists an emotional trauma that affects athletes after seeing someone in their own sport sustain a serious injury. This traumatic response could result in a change in performance tactics that could result in injury to oneself ("injury contagion"). Students numbering 459 (N= 459; 277 males and 182 females) from four ski academies were studied. Results from psychological testing showed an increase in the use of fear words and phrases after injury to a teammate. As a result, it is recommended that coaches and other personnel maintain a heightened awareness of teammates' emotions after a team member sustains a significant injury.


Magnetic Particle Imaging promises great potential for various imaging scenarios with medical purpose. In order to meet this potential, one of the key factors is that the size and the shape of the sampling area need to be adaptable to the aimed applications. An interesting approach to achieve this within medical and technical safety limits is by use of focus fields. However, even with current focus-field approaches, an enlargement in axial direction remains a challenging task. Recently, a use of an elongated sampling trajectory was proposed to address this challenge. Such an elongation can be achieved either by superimposing an orthogonal oriented linear focus field to a 2D trajectory or by an additional continuous movement in axial direction. The resulting elongated trajectory allows for a larger axial coverage of a scanned object. However, based on the physical properties of the signal generation, the elongation length needs to be limited to avoid signal loss or the occurrence of artifacts. In this work, a simulation based artifact analysis is carried out for Lissajous trajectories to determine an elongation limit that allows for both, the avoidance of signal loss and artifacts.


The introduction of virtual reality (VR) games as an occupational therapy (OT) treatment tool is an attempt to use technology as purposeful activity that is more relevant to a modern patient population than traditional art and craft based activities. It is unclear however if VR games are suitable for clinical applications and the current project examines the usability of video-capture VR games in spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation.

Participants were 10 male acute SCI patients with complete and incomplete SCI (C5 – L2), and ages ranging from 23 – 56 years (mean = 40.5 years; SD = 14.07). Time post injury was 3 – 6 months (mean = 4 months; SD = 1.25).

The first study examined console-based VR games. Participants engaged with three different VR game types: a purely physical game, a physical and cognitive game, and a purely cognitive game. Patients were interviewed about their experience using a 45 point usability questionnaire, and the attending therapists completed a similar survey. Both patients and therapists agreed that VR games increase motivation to attend therapy, and motivate patients to perform past their perceived limits of movement and endurance. The VR games used did not overexert patients and did not cause any extra pain or discomfort. Results suggest that patients with limited experience of computer technology, and over a wide range of ages and social backgrounds, could use the VR games successfully and independently.

The second study looked at an equivalent PC-based VR game to determine if there are advantages in using this platform. Participants engaged in a purely physical VR game and were interviewed using a questionnaire as before. The attending therapists completed a similar feedback form. Results showed the PC based VR game was equivalent to the console game in functionality and ease of use, but had the advantage of being more portable and easier to set up and operate.

These findings support the idea that VR games are an appropriate and useful compliment to conventional OT. In addition, patients found that having their image and real-time movements displayed onscreen was useful feedback to correct posture and direct upper limb movements.

Final Report presented to the NRH Ethics Committee - November 2006


Women's productive activities, particularly in industry, empower them economically and enable them to contribute more to overall development. Whether they are involved in small or medium-scale production activities, or the informal or formal sectors, women's entrepreneurial activities are not only a means for economic survival but also have positive social repercussions for the women themselves and their social environment. This study sought to assess the factors that affect women entrepreneurs in establishing their businesses. A sample of 325 women entrepreneurs in different sectors from five towns (Assayta, Logia, Mille, Awash and Chifra) were taken for the study using snowball and simple random sampling. In the process of answering the basic questions, a questionnaire that includes demographic profiles, characteristics of women entrepreneurs and their enterprises, factors that affect the women entrepreneurs in MSEs was designed in an open and closed-ended and Likert scales. Moreover, interviews were held with top officials of MSEs. The study also made use of simple statistical tools such as tables and percentages. Mean and standard deviation was also calculated for analyzing the collected data. The results of the study indicate inadequate access to training and low educational background and conflicting gender roles, social acceptability and, network with outsiders were the major social factors that affect women entrepreneurs.


Whether constructing on undeveloped land or on an existing developed site, there is a risk of encountering unexpected objects when excavating. With today's technology in Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), this risk can generally be mitigated. Using Whiting-Turner's construction of Stanford University's new ChEM-H & SNI Building as an example, this case study discusses the use of GPR for underground mapping, as well as various ways to implement GPR technology. The ChEM-H & SNI site had many underground utilities that required precise pot-holing to verify locations. Although pot-holing is widely used, it is a destructive method, it is time and labor intensive and can easily miss buried objects ("hit or miss"). Thus, this paper researches Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to determine if the technology would have been a viable option for Whiting-Turner to identify and locate the underground utilities at the subject site prior to excavation. GPR is geophysical method that uses radar pulses to image the subsurface. This method can identify a variety of media including rock, soil, ice, water, structures, utilities and sewer systems, and it is nondestructive.


With structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images, conventional methods for the classification of schizophrenia (SCZ) and healthy control (HC) extract cortical thickness independently at different regions of interest (ROIs) without considering the correlation between these regions. In this paper, we proposed an improved method for the classification of SCZ and HC based on individual hierarchical brain networks constructed from structural MRI images. Our method involves constructing individual hierarchical networks where each node and each edge in these networks represents a ROI and the correlation between a pair of ROIs, respectively. We demonstrate that edge features make significant improvement in performance of SCZ/HC classification, when compared with only node features. Classification performance is further investigated by combining edge features with node features via a multiple kernel learning framework. The experimental results show that our proposed method achieves an accuracy of 88.72% and an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) of 0.9521 for SCZ/HC classification, which demonstrate that our proposed method is efficient and promising for clinical applications for the diagnosis of SCZ via structural MRI images. Therefore, this paper provides an alternative method for extracting high-order cortical thickness features from structural MRI images for classification of neurodegenerative diseases such as SCZ.


Deaths from heavy vehicle crashes represent 16% of the national road toll, with an estimated cost to society of $2 billion per year. The future will see a significant growth in road freight transport, and so this problem is likely to increase. This paper presents key findings from a research program on heavy vehicle safety undertaken by ARRB and funded by Austroads. Projects include the safety of heavy vehicles in urban areas, and in rural and remote areas; the interaction between heavy vehicles and the road system; and heavy vehicle driver gap selection at intersections. Future research directions are also provided.


Extensive isothermal-isobaric (NPT) molecular dynamics simulations at many different temperatures and pressures have been carried out in the well-known Kob-Andersen binary mixture model to monitor the effect of pressure (P) and temperature (T) on the dynamic properties such as the viscosity (\eta) and the self-diffusion (Di) coefficients of the binary system. The following results have been obtained: (i) Compared to temperature, pressure is found to have a weaker effect on the dynamical properties. Viscosity and diffusion coefficients are found to vary exponentially with pressure up to a certain high pressure after which the nature of exponential dependence changes. This change is rather sharp. (ii) With temperature, on the other hand, both viscosity and diffusion show super-Arrhenius dependence. Viscosity and diffusion coefficients fit well also to the mode coupling theory (MCT) prediction of a power law dependence on the temperature. The MCT critical temperature (Tc) for both the two dynamical properties are significantly higher than the corresponding critical temperature T\eta 0 obtained by fitting to the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann (VFT) equation. (iii) The critical temperature for viscosity (T\eta 0) is considerably larger than that for the diffusion coefficients (T D4 0) implying the decoupling between diffusion and viscosity in deeply supercooled liquid. (iv) The nature of the motion of small particles change from continuous to hopping dominated once the larger ones are frozen. (v) The potential energy of the system shows a minimum against density at a relatively high density when the latter is changed by applying pressure at a constant temperature.


"To tend the cheek to the smiter and be filled with shame." -Lamentations 3:30 "It is difficult to forgive Heidegger." -Levinas Who Persecutes Me? Levinas' characterization of the subject in Otherwise than Being as the very articulation of persecution is one of the most outrageous moments in this text's often outrageous assault upon the Enlightenment assumption that ethical responsibility can be confidently founded upon the autonomy of the rational individual.1 In his account, Levinas portrays my summons to responsibility as emerging not from out of my own capacity to reason coherently in a community of similarly-endowed beings but in the very incoherency of my suffering underneath the hand of the other who would rise up against me and strike me out from the human community altogether. An action that would seem to express the very failure of the ethical becomes in a most unsettling paradox its guarantor. Before a chance to reason out my responsibility could have ever been given, Levinas argues, a blow has already been undergone and my autonomy already interrupted by the approach of another who persecutes me. To suffer responsibility before a reason can be given justifying this burden is to find I am responsible beyond my own means. In the approach of the persecutor, Levinas instructs me, I learn not only to be responsible for my own ethical practices but also, scandalously for those who would start with autonomy, to be responsible even for the other's responsibility. In making this claim, Levinas allies himself with a position, long held in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as in many other religious traditions, that the call to responsibility does not so much elevate as leave oneself humbled by and attentive to others-service (avodah) rather than excellence (arete) being the ultimate measure by which the good might make itself known. But who exactly delivers this blow and in what manner? In response to the first half of this questions, Oona Eisenstat has argued against jumping too quickly to the conclusion that identifies the other by whom I am persecuted as a particular sort of human who treats me unjustly, say, the Nazi guard at Auschwitz, or the terrorist murdering innocents on a city street.2 Further, to identify the blow undergone with only the spectacular violence of the Shoah, or yet other acts of genocide and political mayhem, would also be a mistake. My persecution then does not necessarily imply either my innocence or guilt. The neighbor who is my friend, as much as the stranger without means, are my persecutors, as is, as well, the foe who would murder me. To notice this "equivocation," or better, "enigma,"3 in the philosophical meaning of persecution for Levinas is not to deny a specific linkage between the rhetoric of this passage and the Shoah, complete with its death camps, its annihilative cruelty and its multiple genocides.4 Yet Eisenstat worries, rightly so, about an onticizing or historicizing of the Levinasian scene of persecution to the point that its full force is lost and even perverted. After all, most of those who will have read Levinas never were and never could have been a death camp inmate, or even, G-d forbid, one of those who inflicted a blow upon a death camp inmate. To read Levinas' words as if they were simply about that particular historical situation would be to engage in a morally devastating appropriation of the other's suffering that would belie the very point Levinas is trying to make. Further, identifying the blow in this manner would put most of Levinas' readers at a safe distance from it. Since I am neither the persecutor nor persecuted of the Shoah, I would be outside at least the direct purview of what is being invoked in the passage. So, even if Levinas' language alludes to the violence of the death camp, as well as to other innumerable scenes of persecution, it is also necessary to keep in mind that any other who comes before me is my persecutor. …


Sub-Resolution Assist Features (SRAFs) have been used extensively to improve the process latitude for isolated and semi-isolated features in conjunction with off-axis illumination. These SRAFs have typically been inserted based upon rules which assign a global SRAF size and proximity to target shapes. Additional rules govern the relationship of assist features to one another, and for random logic contact layers, the overall ruleset can become rather complex. It has been shown that model-based placement of SRAFs for contact layers can result in better worst-case process window than that obtained with rules, and various approaches have been applied to affect such placement. The model comprehends the specific illumination being used, and places assist features according to that model in the optimum location for each contact hole. This paper examines the impact of various illumination schemes on model-based SRAF placement, and compares the resulting process windows. Both standard illumination schemes and more elaborate pixel-based illumination pupil fills are considered.


In specific fields, medical education at many universities is rather theoretical and the amount of practical training is limited. A significant improvement can be achieved using virtual reality training stations with lifelike visual, acoustic, tactile, and kinesthetic feedback. Particularly, when simulating procedures that require direct contact with the patient body, a realistic haptic simulation addressing tactile and kinesthetic senses can be essential for the acceptance of virtual simulation stations. A purely passive phantom may provide realistic haptic feedback, but its properties cannot be changed over time. This paper presents the haptic display of the Munich Knee Joint Simulator, which was developed to improve training and education of physical knee joint examinations. The haptic interface comprises a combination of passive phantom segments providing realistic tactile sensations, and strong actuators generating highly dynamic kinesthetic force feedback. A 3 degree of freedom (DOF) manipulator was developed in this study to drive the thigh prosthesis and one 6 DOF industrial robot was used to actuate the shank prosthesis. Both manipulators are driven by hybrid admittance-impedance controllers capable of simulating the complex dynamics of the thigh and the shank. Both actuators are equipped with a 6 DOF force torque sensor and they are virtually coupled by an analytical knee joint model. The proposed setup is capable of simulating a mechanical stiffness as high as 80 kN/m in the translatory DOF and simultaneously allows free motion in the rotatory DOF. Experimental tests of the simulator with orthopedic physicians proved the usability of the proposed concept.


America's complex system of multi-layered government faces new challenges as a result of rapidly changing economic, technological, and demographic trends. An aging population, economic globalization, and homeland security concerns are among the powerful factors testing the system's capacity and flexibility. Major policy challenges and responses are now overwhelmingly intergovernmental in nature, and as a result, the fortunes of all levels of government are more intertwined and interdependent than ever before. This volume, cosponsored by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), defines an agenda for improving the performance of America's intergovernmental system. The early chapters present the current state of practice in intergovernmental relations, including discussion of trends toward centralization, devolution, and other power-sharing arrangements. The fiscal underpinnings of the system are analyzed, along with the long-term implications of current trends in financing at all levels. The authors identify the principal tools used to define intergovernmental management-grants, mandates, preemptions --in discussing emerging models and best practices in the design and management of those tools. Intergovernmental Management for the 21st Century a pplies these crosscutting themes to critical policy areas where intergovernmental management and cooperation are essential, such as homeland security, education, welfare, health care, and the environment. It concludes with an authoritative assessment of the system's capacity to govern, oversee, and improve. Contributors include Jocelyn Johnston (American University), Shelley Metzenbaum (University of Maryland), Richard Nathan (SUNY at Albany), Barry Rabe (University of Michigan), Beryl Radin (American University), Alice Rivlin (Brookings Institution), Ray Sheppach (National Governors Association), Frank Shafroth (George Mason University), Troy Smith (BYU-Hawaii), Carl Stenberg (University of North Carolina), Carol Weissert (Florida State University), Charles Wise (Indiana University), and Kenneth Wong (Brown University).


UNESCO has recommended the launch of pilot projects to use biosphere reserves as learning laboratories or spaces to address the gap between biosphere reserve knowledge systems (scientific, experiential, and indigenous) and the imperative for wider sustainable development. In this regard, a pilot project in the Cat Ba Biosphere Reserve CBBR) in northern Vietnam has been initiated. The project has three major aims that address: • the needs of UNESCO/MAB and the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) initiative by contributing to sustainable development knowledge and education globally; • the environment (e.g. biodiversity), livelihood of people (e.g. poverty alleviation) and economic benefits (such as sharing in the revenue from a booming tourism industry); and • the adoption of policies and processes by Government and management bodies to ensure that long term sustainable management will become institutionalised and ongoing. This paper discusses the use of systems thinking concepts and tools in creating learning laboratories for sustainable development. The biosphere reserve and sustainable development literature as well as the learning laboratories for sustainable development concept will be briefly described. The importance of systems thinking methodology and applications to deal with ever-increasing complexities of sustainable development will be discussed. A Causal Loop Model of Cat Ba Biosphere Reserve integrating policy, social, environmental, and economic dimensions has been developed to identify key leverage points and where systemic interventions will be most effective (potential research projects). This model also serves as a platform for research collaboration through alliances and multi-disciplinary teams to address the various domains, leverage points, and interventions identified. The model and approach could serve as a pilot for other biosphere reserves in Vietnam and globally.


A large portion of the Voltaian Basin lies within the drought-prone areas of Ghana. A vast majority of the inhabitants of the basin is rural-based farmers who depend mainly on water from ponds with ephemeral streams and depressions for water. During the dry period these surface supplies are usually exhausted leaving the farmers desperate and highly exposed to water-borne diseases. Groundwater development offers the best alternative in this area. However, attempts to improve the groundwater situation have been beset with problems associated with exploration and development methodologies, to the point that certain areas have been excluded from groundwater exploration due to their unfavourable morphological and geological setting. This paper attempts to address this teething problem by combining the use of remote sensing techniques, geology and geophysics. Follow-up field studies have revealed that it is possible to find sustainable groundwater for most of the communities if regional surveys take precedence over local site investigations. This would involve higher cost in the short term while the long term results would be cost-effective.


Point-of-care (POC) diagnostic platforms have the potential to enable low-cost, large-scale screening. As no single biomarker is shed by all ovarian cancers, multiplexed biomarker panels promise improved sensitivity and specificity to address the unmet need for early detection of ovarian cancer. We have configured the programmable bio-nano-chip (p-BNC)—a multiplexable, microfluidic, modular platform—to quantify a novel multi-marker panel comprising CA125, HE4, MMP-7, and CA72-4. The p-BNC is a bead-based immunoanalyzer system with a credit-card–sized footprint that integrates automated sample metering, bubble and debris removal, reagent storage and waste disposal, permitting POC analysis. Multiplexed pBNC immunoassays demonstrated high specificity, low crossreactivity, low limits of detection suitable for early detection, and a short analysis time of 43 minutes. Day-to-day variability, a critical factor for longitudinally monitoring biomarkers, ranged between 5.4% and 10.5%, well below the biologic variation for all four markers. Biomarker concentrations for 31 late-stage sera correlated well (R 1⁄4 0.71 to 0.93 for various biomarkers) with values obtained on the Luminex platform. In a 31 patient cohort encompassing earlyand late-stage ovarian cancers along with benign and healthy controls, the multiplexed p-BNC panel was able to distinguish cases from controls with 68.7% sensitivity at 80% specificity. Utility for longitudinal biomarker monitoring was demonstrated with prediagnostic plasma from 2 cases and 4 controls. Taken together, the p-BNC shows strong promise as a diagnostic tool for large-scale screening that takes advantage of faster results and lower costs while leveraging possible improvement in sensitivity and specificity from biomarker panels. Cancer Prev Res; 8(1); 37–48. 2014 AACR.


Characteristics of the spreads of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) are not widely known despite commonly use. This study aims to evaluate whether PRP stays within the injected area by using ultrasonography, to improve understanding of the spreads of intratendinous injected PRP. Thirty-nine patients (15 males, 24 females; mean age, 49.3 years), who had symptoms on their elbows (> 6 months) and diagnosed as lateral (25 elbows) or medial (14 elbows) tendinopathies of elbow, were included. The severity of tendon pathology was assessed by ultrasonography as tear or no tear. Immediately after ultrasound-guided PRP injection, ultrasound images were evaluated to assess the area of PRP distribution, which was defined as the presence of fluid or microbubbles. Ultrasound revealed that 13 elbows had tendon tear and 26 had no tear, respectively. Post-injection ultrasound confirmed the injected PRP was within the tendon in all cases. The mean distance of distribution from the injection site was 12.6 mm (5.0-26.0 mm). There was no difference in the distance of PRP distribution between tendon tear and no tear. Injected PRP spread to soft tissue outside the tendon in 20 of 39 cases. Intra-articular extension of PRP was observed in 5 cases. Although PRP remained intratendinous after the injection in all cases, some portion tended to spread outside from the injection site in a short space of time. Postinjection ultrasonographic imaging has a value for observing the spreading patterns of intratendinous PRP injection.


BACKGROUND
Interest in lysosomal storage disorders, a collection of more than 40 inherited metabolic disorders, has increased because of new therapy options such as enzyme replacement, stem cell transplantation, and substrate reduction therapy. We developed a high-throughput protocol that simplifies analytical challenges such as complex sample preparation and potential interference from excess residual substrate associated with previously reported assays.

METHODS
After overnight incubation (16-20 h) of dried blood spots with a cassette of substrates and deuterated internal standards, we used a TLX-2 system to quantify 6 lysosomal enzyme activities for Fabry, Gaucher, Niemann-Pick A/B, Pompe, Krabbe, and mucopolysaccharidosis I disease. This multiplexed, multidimensional ultra-HPLC-tandem mass spectrometry assay included Cyclone P Turbo Flow and Hypersil Gold C8 columns. The method did not require offline sample preparation such as liquid-liquid and solid-phase extraction, or hazardous reagents such as ethyl acetate.

RESULTS
Obviating the offline sample preparation steps led to substantial savings in analytical time (approximately 70%) and reagent costs (approximately 50%). In a pilot study, lysosomal enzyme activities of 8586 newborns were measured, including 51 positive controls, and the results demonstrated 100% diagnostic sensitivity and high specificity. The results for Krabbe disease were validated with parallel measurements by the New York State Screening Laboratory.

CONCLUSIONS
Turboflow online sample cleanup and the use of an additional analytical column enabled the implementation of lysosomal storage disorder testing in a nationwide screening program while keeping the total analysis time to <2 min per sample.


Motoneurons are particularly sensitive to mutations in mitofusin-2 (MFN2) that cause the neurological disorder Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2A (CMT2A). MFN2 is a mitochondrial outer membrane protein that, together with its homologue MFN1, fuses mitochondria in most tissues. In this issue of the JCI, Zhou and colleagues show that increasing MFN1 expression in neurons can curtail neurological defects in a CMT2A mouse model. These results show that the ratio of MFN1 to MFN2 can explain the tissue specificity of CMT2A and indicate that augmentation of MFN1 in the nervous system has potential as a possible therapeutic strategy for CMT2A.


This paper proposes a situation and context-aware complex activity recognition system where we use on-body sensor information along with other context information to infer mobile user activities which are both concurrent and interleaved. We develop and validate our complex activity recognition algorithm for detecting these multiple complex activities. Activities are mapped onto situations using spatio-temporal analysis. We further build a test-bed in the social-networking domain to test and validate our approach in different scenarios using mobile devices.


Earlier experiments indicates that motor unit activity during isometric contractions can be imaged using a high-definition ultrasound scanner. In this study, ultrasound raw-data is analysed in MATLAB to localize and quantify the signal contributions from individual motor units during a muscle twitch. It is believed that imaging of mechanical response of contracting muscles can contribute to a more explicit study of muscle physiology and a more dexterous method for prosthetic control. Two different experiments were executed during this study, one for determining the time delay between ECG electrode and ultrasound response and one for imaging muscle activity during an isometric contraction. Both test setups consisted of a GE-Vingmed Vivid E9 ultrasound scanner and an ML6-15 linear probe, where the scans were executed by using "Strain rate"-mode in the test option "Msc TVI" with a frequency of 15MHz, which resulted in frame rates between 120 and 220, depending on the depth of the scan. To determine the time delay, an ECG electrode was connected to the probe and then submerged in a bucket filled with water and the last two ECG electrodes, where the time delay between the two responses were measured in MATLAB. To image muscle activity in a sequence of ultrasound strain rate images, the probe were placed in a clamped and fixed position over the biceps, giving images perpendicular to muscle fibers. Scans of isometric muscle contractions were recorded, with ECG electrodes placed on each side of the probe to detect associated motor unit action potentials. The measurements of the time delay between EMG and ultrasound response shows that there are an expected time delay between 6.68ms and 15.38ms, depending on the propagation velocity of the motor unit action potentials. This indicates that motor unit activity can be captured in ultrasound strain rate image sequences. Motor unit behaviour in strain rate image sequences can be used for locating individual motor units, but this method struggles to identify overlapping motor units as individual. It was found that PCA for feature extraction in combination with a cluster based classification algorithm would be a more robust and time-saving method for localization of individual motor units.


PAGE "Real Talk: Blackness and Whiteness in the Works of Jefferson Pinder, Dave Chappelle, and Aaron McGruder" will examine twenty-first century constructions of race by African Americans. I am interested in how visual artist Jefferson Pinder, comedian Dave Chappelle, and comic artist Aaron McGruder interrogate and incorporate race, particularly whiteness, into their respective works. Each artist challenges hegemonic constructions of race, utilizing technology and taking full advantage of our visualized culture to present their examinations of race. I selected the artists because of their intimate knowledge of their respective crafts, their use of popular culture, and their diverse perspectives on race in America. Additionally, the artists share a regional background in that they came of age while living in the Washington, DC metro area, which I believe heavily informs their racial views. Inside their world of the visual arts, comic strips, and television, I argue that the artists are examining blackness while re-defining what it means and inserting, visually, whiteness into the discourse. These black constructions of race have always existed; however, I suggest that the post-soul generation is expanding concepts of race by taking the constructions from the shadows of African American culture and situating them in mainstream culture. In this attempt to challenge homogenous notions of race, the artists cull from several disciplines, which call for an interdisciplinary approach. Employing an interdisciplinary method, I will use theories of race and theories of representation. Additionally, theoretical approaches from art history, visual culture, studies oftelevision, and film studies help frame and ground my research. This twenty-first century discourse from African American cultural workers makes my dissertation timely because it captures an important transition in American culture carried out through the combination of art, media, and racial discourse.


This paper examines the scope for a rights-based perspective on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by focusing on right to water. The paper adapts Hohfeldian framework of elements of a right developed by Wenar. According to this, a right should be interpreted in terms of powers, privileges, claims and immunities. This framework highlights the inter-connections between various aspects of governance and the effectiveness of a right to water. The conjecture whether the poor are more likely to have access to water when there is a right to water is examined with data (from WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme) pertaining to a small sample of countries where a right to water has been promulgated and some others where such right has not been promulgated. The impact of governance on improving access to water is examined using indicators from Governance Matters V (Kaufman et al., 2006). This analysis suggests that mechanisms of governance may be more important in improving access to water than a formal articulation of a right to water. Some challenges to operationalising a right to water are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Abstract In Buddhist Burma, a variety of ritual has been found pertaining to quite differentiated aspects of religion. This rich ritual landscape remains under-examined due partly to the Buddhist-studies bias of most of the scholars looking at religion in Burma. In this paper, I develop comparative analysis of a class of ritual, namely that of initiation, in three components of Burmese religion: Buddhist monasticism, Buddhist esotericism, and spirit worship. At least from the present analytic perspective, the three components considered could be taken as encompassing the entire Buddhist religious sphere in Burma. Looking at initiation rituals in these three 'paths' is a means of understanding how they frame contrasting kinds of differently valued religious practice, and of showing that, although not often discussed, rituals do matter in Burma because they help to distinguish categories of action according to their relative religiosity. By doing so, I aim to give a sense of the real diversity of the Burmese ritual landscape, which until recently was rarely taken into account, and to contribute to the on-going debate in the field of Buddhist studies on what could be encapsulated as the question of Buddhism and spirit cults in Southeast Asian Theravada.


Background: We have recently reported the utility of iris-pupil area ratio as a sensitive index of borderline changes in sympathetic activity and the stress associated with it in primates and ca- nines. As minimal increase in sympathetic activity can lead to micro vascular constriction, which is often observed in patients suffering from myocardial infarction, we hypothesised here that iris-pupil area ratio will serve as a predictor of risk of myocardial infarction in humans. Materials and Methods: To test our hypothesis, we analysed and compared the digital images of the eyes of celebrities who succumbed to myocardial infarction with that of healthy celebrities. Most recent digital images of the celebrities available in the public database were used for our analy- sis. Iris-pupil area ratio of both eyes was measured using NIH Image-J software. Results: The iris-pupil area ratio was significantly lower in celebrities who succumbed to myocardial infarction compared to healthy cohorts (4.875 ± 1.506 Vs. 6.978 ± 1.499; p <0.001). To assess the correlation of age with iris-pupil area ratio we performed regression analysis of the data from each of the cohorts. The age Vs iris-pupil area ratio regression analysis in celebrities who succumbed to myocardial infarction had positive correlation (correlation coefficient of 0.06889), while healthy celebrities showed negative correlation (correlation coefficient of 0.03775). Although the correlation between age and iris-pupil area ratio was weak, a higher negative correlation (correla- tion coefficient of 0.387) was observed in a cohort of 50 to 80 years old healthy celebrities. Conclusion: The lower iris-pupil area ratio observed in celebrities who succumb to myocar- dial infarction possibly suggests increased sympathetic activity and microvascular constriction, which supports the merit of iris-pupil area ratio as a non-invasive tool in predicting myocardial infarction.


The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) aims to enhance the efficiency of the Kyoto Protocol by providing greenhouse gas emission credits from projects in developing countries. Its unequal distribution among host countries gives rise to both concerns of equity and the question about the volume of carbon credits that can be generated by offset mechanisms. It is expected that more advanced developing countries with greater abatement potential host more CDM projects. The econometric analysis of CDM project distribution finds that economic development and growth, fossil fuel, and renewable energy generation, as well as links to developed countries and institutional quality positively affect the number of projects hosted. Furthermore, more advanced developing countries pursue a higher share of projects without any direct involvement from developed countries.


Epidermal scales among modern reptiles are morphologically diverse and serve a variety of functions ranging from moisture balance to chemoreception. Despite being predominantly squamous‐skinned (scaly), the functional implications of this type of integument have never before been explored for a dinosaur. Re‐examination of the holotype of the theropod Juravenator starki (Kimmeridgian, Late Jurassic) reveals previously unseen diversity in its epidermal covering. In addition to the presence of short monofilaments on the dorsal and ventral parts of the tail, we identify distinctive scale patterns corresponding to discrete longitudinal bands of scutate, tuberculate and ornamented scales along the length of the tail. In modern squamous‐skinned amniotes, variation in scale architecture can be linked to functional differences between scale types. In Juravenator, distinctive circular nodes associated with the ornamented scales have recently been interpreted as integumentary sense organs. We also suggest that it is likely that the snake‐like scutate scales on the underside of the tail fulfilled a role related to mechanical protection rather than locomotory function. Whereas the literature on theropod epidermal structures has been dominated by discussions on the evolution and diversity of feathers, this study highlights the complexity of squamous integument in Juravenator, which is revealed as one of the most complex among known theropods. An exploration of the epidermal structures found in Juravenator and other non‐avian theropods reveals great complexity in the type and distribution of these structures across the clade, suggesting potential for the future inquiry into their taxonomic and biological importance.


Humans have slowly built more productive societies by slowly acquiring various kinds of capital, and by carefully matching them to each other. Because disruptions can disturb this careful matching, and discourage social coordination, large disruptions can cause a "social collapse," i.e., a reduction in productivity out of proportion to the disruption. For many types of disasters, severity seems to follow a power law distribution. For some of types, such as wars and earthquakes, most of the expected harm is predicted to occur in extreme events, which kill most people on Earth. So if we are willing to worry about any war or earthquake, we should worry especially about extreme versions. If individuals varied little in their resistance to such disruptions, events a little stronger than extreme ones would eliminate humanity, and our only hope would be to prevent such events. If individuals vary a lot in their resistance, however, then it may pay to increase the variance in such resistance, such as by creating special sanctuaries from which the few remaining humans could rebuild society.


Purpose: To analyze and model visual acuity (VA) in geographic atrophy (GA) secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods: The course of VA was analyzed using Turnbull's estimator in 226 eyes with uni- or bilateral GA due to AMD (151 patients; mean age 74.0 ± 7.6 years; mean follow-up time 33.4 ± 23.4 months) from the natural history FAM (Fundus-Autofluorescence Imaging in AMD) study. The variables 'age at baseline', 'gender', 'lesion size', 'diagnosis of the fellow eye', 'status of the fovea', 'focality of the lesion' and 'pattern' were evaluated for effects on predicting VA using linear mixed-effects models. Results: Mean VA at baseline was 0.6 (Snellen 20/80) ± 0.4 logMAR [range -0.1 to 1.8 (20/17 to hand motions)], showing an estimated mean increase of 0.181 (95% CI 0.152-0.210) and 0.256 (0.214-0.300) after 2 and 4 years of follow-up, respectively. The percentage of eyes with a loss of ≥3 lines was 34% by 2 years and 47% by 4 years. Linear mixed model analysis suggested that 65% of VA variability could be explained by the assessed predictor variables. The strongest effect was found for the 'status of the fovea' (0.69 logMAR units between 'definitively spared fovea' and 'definitive foveal involvement', p < 0.001). The second strongest effect was identified for 'total lesion size' (effects between 0.02 and 0.09 logMAR units for each mm depending on foveal involvement, p < 0.001, square root transformed values). Conclusions: These findings underscore the importance of GA lesion characteristics as these have the strongest impact on VA. Natural history data and modeling VA to other variables will be helpful for refining outcome parameters and estimating possible benefits of therapeutic interventions.


A recurrent theme in the literature on trilingual language use is the question of whether there is a specific "trilingual competence." In this paper we consider this question in the light of codeswitching patterns in two dyadic trilingual conversations between a mother and daughter conducted in (Lebanese) Arabic, French, and English. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of codeswitching in both conversants shows that, despite the fact that both subjects are fluent in all three languages, uses of switching are significantly different for mother and daughter across a number of features, including relative frequency of different switch types, and the incidence of hybrid constructions involving items from two or more languages. The subjects appear to display qualitatively distinct profiles of competence in the trilingual mode. This in turn leads to the conclusion that the facts of trilingual language use are best characterized in terms of "multicompetence" (Cook, 1991). The paper concludes with some further reflections on the uniqueness of trilingual language use (an "old chestnut" in trilingualism research, cf. Klein, 1995).


ISSUES
Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) is a critical issue impacting HIV disease management from a national and global perspective. In Jamaica (population 2.6 million), 2% of women in antenatal clinics are HIV-positive and mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT) accounted for 7% of all reported cases in 2002. Notwithstanding this, VCT was ad hoc and not standardized. In 2003, a structured VCT programme was developed islandwide with over 300 VCT service providers and 16 qualified trainers.

DESCRIPTION
We describe the challenges and successes of VCT provided by five trained research nurses in the Perinatal HIV/AIDS Programme in Kingston which services 19,000 pregnant women per year in three major maternity centres and their 42 feeder antenatal clinics.

LESSONS LEARNED
The VCT model used was group education, opt-out individual testing, individual post-test counselling for seropositives and informing seronegatives of their negative status. Major challenges encountered included lack of quality control of the counselling process and lost opportunities for un-booked women who presented in labour However successes enjoyed included client assessment of risk behaviours with appropriate lifestyle changes, increased uptake of HIV testing and adherence to care for themselves and their infants, as well as reduction in stigma.

RECOMMENDATIONS
VCT has proven to be an important intervention that enabled improvement in the awareness, prevention and control of HIV in Jamaican pregnant women. Nurses who are appropriately trained in VCT can play a pivotal role in successful provision of VCT services.


Deterministic goal programs for employee scheduling decisions attempt to minimize expected operating costs by assigning the ideal number of employees to each feasible schedule. For each period in the planning horizon, managers must first determine the amount of labor that should be scheduled for duty. These requirements are often established with marginal analysis techniques, which use estimates for incremental labor costs and shortage expenses. Typically, each period in the planning horizon is evaluated as an independent epoch. An implicit assumption is that individual employees can be assigned to schedules with as little as a single period of work. If this assumption violates local work rules, the labor requirements parameters for the deterministic goal program may be suboptimal.

As we show in this research, this well-known limitation can lead to costly staffing and scheduling errors. We propose an employee scheduling model that overcomes this limitation by integrating the labor requirements and scheduling decisions. Instead of a single, externally determined staffing goal for each period, the model uses a probability distribution for the quantity of labor required. The model is free to choose an appropriate staffing level for each period, eliminating the need for a separate goal-setting procedure. In most cases this results in better, less costly decisions. In addition, the proposed model easily accommodates both linear and nonlinear under- and overstaffing penalties. We use simple examples to demonstrate many of these advantages and to illustrate the key techniques necessary to implement our model. We also assess its performance in a study of more than 1,700 simulated stochastic employee scheduling problems.


AbstractThis article is concerned with the relationship between a witness' narrative style and judgments of jurors based on that style. It takes as its starting point the Duke University Law and Language Project results that a witness using a narrative style is judged more credible than a witness using a fragmented style. The main argument of this article is that it is not the use of narrative per se, but rather a particular narrative style that is valued in the courtroom. Data from a day of testimony in a murder trial is used to demonstrate two opposing narrative styles in testimony: that of the law enforcement officer and that of some nonexpert witnesses. It is shown first that the style of the law enforcement officers differs from ordinary conversation in its extreme explicitness. It is hypothesized that jurors will associate this style of delivery with credibility. It is further hypothe-sized that witnesses will lose credibility to the extent that they deviate from this style. After demonstrating the differences in the styles, the article draws on experimental work of other researchers to suggest that trial outcomes can be affected by the narrative style of the witness. (Linguistics)


On December 18, 1970, Baneberry, a 42-TJ (10-kt) nuclear device, was detonated at a depth of 278 m in hole U8d at the Nevada Test Site. A shock-induced fissure near ground zero opened and vented radioactive gases and debris into the atmosphere. Calculational results describe the sequence of dynamic phenomena that very likely produced the vent. The calculations predict the experimentally observed surface motion and long positive-velocity pulse. The surface fissure through which the material vented is approximately the same radial distance from ground zero as the maximum horizontal displacement is calculated to be. Also, the calculations indicate an explosive-induced extension of the Baneberry fault to the surface. This extension was observed in pictures of the surface motion and later confirmed by postshot on-site inspection. The final calculated cavity radius is very close to the measured Baneberry cavity radius. Finally, the calculations indicate that an open fracture path was generated that runs from the cavity to the Baneberry fault, up the fault to the spall region, and then vertically to the surface. This vent path predicted by the calculations is roughly consistent with the vent path found from the radioactivity in postshot drill holes. The extensions in computational capabilities inmore » this work advance the state-of-the-art for numerical simulation of the containment aspects of underground nuclear tests.« less


sDNA is world leading spatial network analysis software, compatible with both GIS and CAD and using industry standard network representation. We compute accessibility and predict flows of pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles and public transport users; these inform models of health, community cohesion, land values, town centre vitality, land use, accidents and crime. We provide a simpler alternative to transport models, particularly for sustainable transport


Author(s): Kuslikis, Todd | Abstract: Official Website: Click Here Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief is the holistic solution you've been looking for – and the best part? It's designed for men and women over the age of 45. This was like a breath of fresh air because I was so tired of seeing these natural remedies for knee pain that requires you to move like a 20-year old. If we can move like a 20-year-old, we must not have that bad of knee pain. So, if there's one thing I can tell you about Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief, it's that you – yes, even you can do it. Even if you have severe knee pain, you'll be able to do this program because it's based on three levels that gradually decrease pain and build up your knee strength. Intrigued? As you should be! Here's what else I discovered. About the Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief Program Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief is a three-step system that provides you with 5-minute exercises to do each day to start alleviating that nagging knee pain. The exercises are based on a 1000-year-old holistic ritual that was used back in time to treat all kinds of pain and discomfort. As the world progressed towards pharmaceuticals and nasty side effects, many of the best natural remedies were forgotten. It's only now that people are starting to recognize that prescription medications aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing and/or are resulting in harmful side effects that the world is starting to go back to ancient practices. And I know you can relate because you're here reading this. You're either taking those harmful drugs and hating every moment, or aren't taking anything and are living in pain.Well, this holistic ritual will help you finally get what you're going after – pain relief.Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief is broken down into four different sections to help you easily progress through, both the program, and your knee pain. They are:Introduction GuideQuick start to the ritualCompanion GuideDetailed instructions and videos of the movementPain Reduction TrackerFollow your progress to keep improving your knee strengthVideo LibraryVideos showing you how to do the movementsAs for the holistic remedy itself, it consists of a 5-minute set of movements to do each day. However, you simply can't jump into exercises – pardon the pun. So, the Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief has broken down everything into a three-step system: Level 1: Pain Eliminator Stage (2 weeks)Level 2: Knee Rejuvenation Stage (2 weeks)Level 3: Knee Renewal Stage 2 weeks) In the first week, you do basic exercises that help alleviate pain and build strength, muscle and ligaments around your knee. The second level increases the movements just a bit to keep the strength going, and the third ups the movements even more.It's actually funny because when you look at the movements in the third level before starting the system, you're like "There's no way I can do that!" But once you've completed two weeks at level one and another 2 weeks at level 2, you can do the level 3 movements. So, the real way of looking at it is, "Wow! I'll be able to do that in four weeks!?"In addition to the contents of the program specifically, you receive some extra bonuses, which are:1-Minute Rejuvenation Finishers and Video LibraryPostural Alignment Guide and Video LibraryThis help you to continue on your newfound journey to youthful, healthy and comfortable movements.Now for the best part – all of this comes with a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee. Since you only need 6 weeks to complete the 3 different levels, you have more than enough time to see its effects and decide whether or not it's something you wish to continue with. And the entire program is online. So, all you have to do is download the content onto your desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone and you're ready to go.About the CreatorThe creator of the Feel Good Knees for Fast Relief is certainly worth mentioning because this is where the pudding is. Todd Kuslikis is a personal trainer and injury prevention expert who specializes in Eastern and Western holistic practices. He has helped thousands of people alleviate pain naturally, from nursing home residents to professional athletes and even the US military. In fact, his expertise is so highly sought after that he even contributes to various online health publications.Brief Summary of the Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief SystemNow, as a 45+ individual with knee pain, I understand that your biggest concern is likely whether or not you can do the movements. I was concerned about the same thing, and although I mentioned how the three-levels progress you naturally without adding strain, you may still be weary. I don't blame you. I was too!So, I wanted to give you a sneak peek at some of the movements you'll be doing in each level. This should help you see just how easy and viable the program is for you.Level 1: Pain Eliminator Stage (2 weeks) Some of the exercises include:Standing Pigeon (slight back bend stretch)Reach the Sky (big stretch upwards)Seated Pillow Squeezers (squeezing a pillow in-between your knees)Level 2: Knee Rejuvenation Stage (2 weeks) Some of the exercises include:Seated Towel Presses (pressing knee downwards into a rolled-up towel)Seated Leg Raises (lifting legs up and down)Laying Pillow Squeezers (squeezing a pillow in-between your knees)Some of the exercises include:By this point, your knees are feeling great! So, it's time to up the movements just a bit. Here are some examples of these exercises:Wall Sit (sitting against a wall)Wall Sit With Towel Squeeze (sitting against a wall while squeezing a pillow in between your knees)Reverse Lunge (shifting your weight into your front foot, and then switching)The VerdictTo make it even easier, everything you need to know to properly do the movement is provided to you in each level of the Feel Good Knees for Fast Pain Relief. You get pictures, detailed, step-by-step instructions, videos and even the number of sets you should do. The tracker makes it easy to follow your tracker and if at the end of it, you decide it's not for you, you can opt for the 60 Day Money Back Guarantee. But can you really go wrong with a 5-minute ritual that comes straight from Western and Eastern holistic practices?


"The book contains a practical approach and real actions that can transform the credibility and alignment of IT to the business." --Myron Hrycyk, CIO, NYK Logistics UK & Eire "A significant addition to the Enterprise Architect's bookshelf." --Rupert Brown, Principal Architect, Merrill Lynch Global Business Technology EMEA Many IT deployments fall short of delivering value to the businesses that pay for them. On top of this, the combined forces of rapid business change and technology innovation frequently outpace the ability of IT organisations to make sense of their implications. With business activity and IT now so intimately intertwined, organizations urgently need a framework which allows them to align IT capabilities with business strategies and priorities in a way that is sustainable. A team of IT-expert authors with more than 80 years' combined experience have interviewed dozens of CIOs, IT directors and other senior technical and business decision makes to find out what works and what doesn't. The result is a handbook for organizations of all sizes that want to improve the value of their IT investments, thus enabling their IT capabilities to play a more pivotal business role. Written in plain English that does not descend into technical detail, The Technology Garden provides practical advice for organizations looking to achieve sustainable IT-business alignment. To do so, it defines: * Six key principles - a distillation of best practice that readers can apply directly to the domain of IT-business alignment * A framework for their application - a pragmatic roadmap for the application of the principles * Adoption guidelines - a set of self-assessment checklists that readers can use to understand where they are on the IT-business alignment roadmap and how to progress. With groundbreaking research and proven approaches, this blueprint enables readers to understand what is at the heart of IT-business alignment. Combining IT research, analysis and real-world insight, The Technology Garden is the ultimate no-nonsense guide.


A novel design of a transverse magnetic (TM)-pass waveguide polarizer based on Si on an X-cut, Y-propagation Ti:LiNbO3 planar waveguide is presented. The eigenvalue functions of such structure have been obtained by using Wenzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) method with modified Airy functions. The intervals of the silicon thickness have been found which result in transverse electric (TE) light suffering strong attenuation while TM wave propagating with fairly low loss. A planar waveguide polarizer is fabricated and its polarization-dependent measurements lead to the best polarization extinction ratio ~34 dB and the insertion loss <0.4 dB.


Crowdfunding has been a buzzword for a significant period of time, but not involving equity or debt securities in Colorado. Crowdfunding made national headlines when it was authorized by Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS) Act of 2012, but three years later the Securities and Exchange Commission has not yet adopted rules to implement the JOBS Act requirements for crowdfunding.In April 2015, after passing both the House and the Senate of the Colorado General Assembly, H.B. 15-1246 was signed into law by Governor John Hickenlooper. Although the law becomes effective on August 5, 2015, the availability of crowdfunding as an alternative tool for capital formation in Colorado is dependent upon rulemaking by the Colorado Division of Securities.This paper discusses state crowdfunding pursuant to the federal intrastate securities exemption generally, the law as adopted in Colorado, and the rulemaking required to implement the Colorado Crowdfunding Act.


Multicore architectures have found their way into many areas of application by now. While this allows for the execution of several tasks in parallel, software still has to be adapted for the specific architectures to utilize the available resources effectively. Thus, the development of code that may be run in parallel is oftentimes left to human experts, who are faced with the challenge of supporting different systems and their peculiarities.
While there are standardized means to realize multithreaded software more easily, like for example OpenMP, it still remains a tedious and time-consuming task. Additionally, a programmer may introduce severe errors rather quickly, if the software is not carefully engineered. Fortunately, automatic tools exist which are based on a specific mathematical representation known as the polyhedral model. On the one hand, such representations may only describe certain code structures, since they are based on linear expressions. On the other hand, this allows to exactly define and test what may be parallelized, due to correct analysis results, as for example dependency analyses. Furthermore, powerful program transformations can be defined in a very abstract manner, using methods from linear algebra.
One of these tools is Polly, which may automatically generate parallelized code without any manual preparation. Polly is a subproject of the LLVM compiler framework and operates solely on a low-level intermediate representation. This brings several advantages since this representation is language independent and can be deployed on multiple platforms.
However, the generation of multithreaded code is currently limited to a specific OpenMP runtime environment. In this work we will therefore present an extension to the existing infrastructure, which enables the use of an additional implementation and therefore expands Polly's field of application.


Erosion and landslides along the bluffs bordering the Mississippi River in Natchez, Miss. became an emergency situation when the only road to residents below the bluff was cut off from the town. Natchez received funds from the Natural Resources Conservative Service to begin repair, and the Congress has also authorized funds for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do further stabilization work. The bluffs themselves have been declared national historic landmarks, and at least one of the homes sitting at the edge is also a Historic Landmark. All the homes along the edge have lost their front yards due to the erosion and have only rear access. The city awarded a design/build team to build a temporary road to stabilize the bluffs and restore the orginal road. The work includes a variety of innovative geotechnical remediation technologies. This is the first time soil nails have been used in the wind-blown silt that is called Mississippi loess. It is also the first time single-bore multiple-anchor ground anchors have been used in the U.S. Soil mixing augers were used to install soldier piles, and this was also a first. Finally, a unique mix of several technologies was used to build out a section of the uppermost retaining wall in order to restore front yards to the home-owners who live at the top of the bluffs. Lightweight aggregate was used to reduce the loads on the retaining wall. The Corps will continue to stabilization work with further funds, using many of the same techniques as on this project.


The paper explores an egalitarian norm widely accepted today, which I call the Marital Non-Hierarchy Standard. According to this standard, marital relationships should be non-hierarchical; neither partner may be more dominant than the other. The Marital Non-Hierarchy Standard is exceptional: in almost all associations, including many financial, professional, educational and recreational ones, in almost all spheres of life, some hierarchies, within certain limits, are widely believed to be morally legitimate. I argue that in marital relations, too, some hierarchies should be accepted as morally legitimate. It might be argued that marital relations should be loving, and love requires that lovers will have the same degree of power. However, contemporary analyses of love show that love is consistent with (some) hierarchies. It might also be argued that justice requires that lovers will have equal power. However, theories of distributive justice such as Rawls's, Sen's, Dworkin's, and almost all others allow some marital hierarchies. Thus, both the love requirement and the justice requirement allow some hierarchical marital relationships and conflict with the Marital Non-Hierarchy Standard. Until other justifications for this standard are presented, it is unclear why it should be endorsed.


Hybrid energy systems (HESs) for renewable energy sources are an interesting solution to power stand-alone systems. However, the energy management of such systems is quite complex when it relies on a central controller. With a central controller, the energy management system (EMS) has to be redesigned when the configuration is changed (for example, with the addition of a new device). This paper proposes a distributed EMS to control the energy flow in the HES. This distributed controller is based on multiagent-system (MAS) technology. With this concept, a HES is seen as a collection of different elements that collaborate to reach a global coordination. The agent approach for HES is explained, and a MAS is presented. Finally, a simulation model of the HES controlled by a MAS is proposed, and the system reaction is detailed.


This paper describes a method of uncertainty evaluation for axi-symmetric measurement machines which is compliant with GUM and PUMA methodologies. Specialized measuring machines for the inspection of axisymmetric components enable the measurement of properties such as roundness (radial runout), axial runout and coning. These machines typically consist of a rotary table and a number of contact measurement probes located on slideways. Sources of uncertainty include the probe calibration process, probe repeatability, probe alignment, geometric errors in the rotary table, the dimensional stability of the structure holding the probes and form errors in the reference hemisphere which is used to calibrate the system. The generic method is described and an evaluation of an industrial machine is described as a worked example. Type A uncertainties were obtained from a repeatability study of the probe calibration process, a repeatability study of the actual measurement process, a system stability test and an elastic deformation test. Type B uncertainties were obtained from calibration certificates and estimates. Expanded uncertainties, at 95% confidence, were then calculated for the measurement of; radial runout (1.2 µm with a plunger probe or 1.7 µm with a lever probe); axial runout (1.2 µm with a plunger probe or 1.5 µm with a lever probe); and coning/swash (0.44 arc seconds with a plunger probe or 0.60 arc seconds with a lever probe).


We use infrared, radiocarbon, and stable isotope analyses to investigate the purity of cellulose extracted from wood using a rapid processing technique. Replicate laboratory standards processed using the standard Brendel method are not significantly different with respect to delta(18)O from those prepared using traditional techniques, although the process does result in a slight acetylation of the wood samples. Radiocarbon comparisons, however, show significant differences. We conclude that the standard Brendel method is appropriate for developing stable isotope time series for high-resolution isotope dendroclimatology but must be used with caution for precision radiocarbon measurements.


Lorraine Hansberry's hit play of 1957, A Raisin in the Sun, centered on the decision of an African American family in Chicago, the Youngers, to move to a house in a white neighborhood. The play is set in the post WWII era, but many of its scenes and actions relate back to real estate practices that began at the turn of the century and that continued to evolve into the mid-century and to some degree beyond. During those decades, housing development and finance increased dramatically in scale, professionalization and standardization. But in their concern for their predominantly white consumers' preferences for segregation, real estate developers, brokers, financial institutions, and finally governmental agencies adopted standard practices that excluded African Americans from many housing opportunities, and that then reinforced white preferences for housing segregation.

Many seemingly minor actions in the play reflect the way that African Americans had been sidelined in the earlier decades' evolving real estate practices—not just the family's overcrowded apartment, but also more subtle cues, such as the source of the initial funds for the new house, the methods for its finance, and the legal background to the white homeowners' effort to discourage the purchase. This paper, a draft chapter for the forthcoming law-and-literature collection, Power, Prose and Purse, pinpoints these and other small clues, and describes how standardizing real estate practices dating from the turn of the century effectively crowded out African American consumers like the Youngers, with consequences that we continue to observe in modern patterns of urban segregation.


The Global Strain Rate Map (GSRM) of Kreemer et al. (2003) was the main result of Project II-8 of the International Lithosphere Program. The GSRM is a numerical velocity gradient tensor field model for the entire Earth's surface that describes the spatial variations of horizontal strain rate tensor components, rotation rates, and velocities. The model consists of 25 rigid spherical plates and ∼25,000 0.6° by 0.5° deformable grid areas within the diffuse plate boundary zones ( e.g. , western North America, central Asia, Alpine-Himalaya belt). The model provides an estimate of the horizontal strain rates in diffuse plate boundary zones as well as the motions of the spherical caps. This is one of the first successful models of its kind that includes the kinematics of plate boundary zones in the description of global plate kinematics.

The vast majority of the data used to obtain the GSRM comes from horizontal velocity measurements obtained using Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements. The latest model version of May 2004 ( i.e. , GSRM version 1.2) includes 5,170 velocities for 4,214 sites worldwide (Holt et al. 2005). Most geodetic velocities are measured within plate boundary zones. The observed velocities are obtained from 86 different (mostly published) studies. The model includes additional constraints on the style (not magnitude) of the strain rate tensor inferred from moment tensors of shallow earthquakes. In addition, geologic strain rates in central Asia inferred from Quaternary faulting data are fit simultaneously with the geodetic velocities to improve the model there. See Kreemer et al. (2000, 2003) for more details.

It was always a goal of the GSRM project to support long-term forecasts of seismicity based on tectonic deformation. Two recent developments make this especially timely. First, the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP; Jordan et al. 2007) is accepting global …


Optical vortices in linear and nonlinear media may exhibit propagation dynamics similar to hydrodynamic vortex phenomena. Analytical and numerical methods are used to describe and investigate the interaction between vortices and the background field. We demonstrate that optical vortices that have quasi-point core functions, such as optical vortex solitons, may orbit one another at rates that are orders of magnitude larger than those with nonlocalized cores.


When congestion becomes a problem on a road or road network, there are generally three main solution areas available to tackle it: construction, pricing or traffic management. Traffic management became an increasingly preferred option towards the end of the twentieth century as an alternative to construction in many cases. Traffic management proves a more efficient alternative and focusses on influencing traffic flows such that the existing road and network capacity is more effectively utilised resulting in a reduction in congestion. The effectiveness of traffic management is dependent on the ability to influence traffic flow. However, traffic contains a relatively large amount of stochastic behaviour, which is connected to human driving behaviour. The fluctuations that occur in traffic flow due to this stochastic behaviour have a large effect on the effectiveness of traffic management. Furthermore, uncertainty between time dependant scenarios has also shown to have a large influence on the outcome of the analysis of traffic management measures. In the past, little attention has been paid to these effects. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to give insight into the stochastic fluctuations and uncertainty in traffic flow for the application of traffic management measures and to propose tools that allow these effects to be analysed and subsequently modelled in aggregated macroscopic flows. In doing this, the necessity to consider uncertainty and fluctuations for traffic management is also demonstrated. Stochastic processes are considered as uncertainty, which describes day-to-day uncertainties between traffic flows, and fluctuations, which describes microscopic variability in the traffic flow. Three main areas are focussed on: the analysis of variations in traffic, modelling fluctuations and uncertainty in traffic, and the visual communication of uncertainty from traffic models.


The sphenoidal tubercle is a bone elevation located in the anterior edge of the infratemporal crest of the sphenoid greater wing, where the temporal and lateral pterygoid muscles have their origin. This bone accident presents varied morphology s its description and denomination are a topic of discussion. 60 dry skulls obtained from the morphology laboratory of the Biomedical Basic Sciences Department of the University of Talca were used for a morphological and morphometric analysis of the sphenoidal tuberc le including its morphology, diameters (anteroposterior, transverse and vertical) and the distance to the grooves for the maxillar y artery and maxillary nerve. Sphenoidal tubercle had a prevalence of 98.4 % of all dry skulls analyzed with a bilateral presentation in the 76.6 % of the cases. According to its different forms of presentation established by Cáceres et al., (2016) the pyramidal form was the most frequent with a 25.7 %. The average diameters were of 4.12 mm anteroposterior, 5.50 mm transverse and 3.89 mm vertical. The average dist anc to the grooves of the maxillary artery and maxillary nerve were 9.04 mm and 7.6 mm, respectively. Sphenoidal tubercle is a cons tant bone accident with a variated morphology and measures. Due to its anatomical relations with important neurovascular elements su ch as the maxillary artery and the maxillary nerve, it may be used as a reference point for surgical access to the infratemporal foss a. From thi analysis we establish that the denomination of "infratemporal process" is more accurate, because the development of this bone a ccident is from muscular traction performed by the lateral pterygoid muscle and the deep portion of the temporal muscle causing great v ariations in its morphology, probably due to external and functional parameters or even influenced by the biotype.


iNTeresT iN MaChiN e learning can be traced back to the early days of computer science. Alan Turing himself conjectured that some form of automatic learning would be required to endow a computer with artificial intelligence. The development of machine learning, however, has not always lived up to these ambitious beginnings. The first flood of interest in machine learning was generated by Rosenblatt's perceptron. The perceptron is a simple thresholded linear classifier that can be trained from an online sequence of examples. Intriguingly, from a theoretical point of view, the number of mistakes during training can be bounded in terms of intuitive geometric properties that measure a problem's difficulty. One such property is the margin, or the distance of the most "borderline" example to the perceptron's decision boundary. First highlighted by the mistake bound in perceptrons, the margin would come to play an important role in the subsequent development of machine learning; however, its importance in Rosenblatt's time was not fully realized. Interest in perceptrons waned after a critical study by Minsky and Papert that catalogued their limitations. Machine learning developed in other directions during the 1970s–1980s with such innovations as decision trees, rule-learning methods for expert systems, and self-organizing maps. However, in the late 1980s, there was a resurgence of interest in architectures that used perceptrons as basic building blocks. In particular, the limitations highlighted by Minsky and Papert were overcome by multilayer networks in which perceptron-like nodes appeared as simple computing elements. These so-called neural networks were trained by a biologically inspired backpropagation algorithm that performed gradient descent on error-based cost functions. This line of work not only raised hopes of creating machines that were able to learn, but also understanding the basic mechanisms behind biological learning. After a period of intense activity, however, history seemed to repeat itself with early enthusiasm overreaching actual accomplishments. The study of support vector machines (SVMs) initiated a new approach to machine learning that focused more on statistical foundations and less on biological plausibility. SVMs are trained by minimizing a convex cost function that measures the margin of correct classification. This is the same margin that measures the mistake complexity in perceptrons, but in SVMs the optimization is justified by a rigorous statistical analysis. This approach to binary classification has proven effective in a wide range of applications from text classification ("Is this article related to my search query?") to bioinformatics ( "Do these microarray profiles indicate cancerous cells?"). Indeed, a 1999 paper on SVMs by Thorsten Joachims recently won the field's award for having the most significant and lasting impact. SVMs were originally formulated for problems in binary classification where the goal is simply to distinguish objects in two different categories. In the following paper, the authors significantly extend the applicability of this approach to machine learning. The paper considers problems that cannot easily be reduced to simple classification— that is, where the goal is to predict a more complex object than a single binary outcome. Such problems arise in many applications of machine learning, including search engine ranking and part-of-speech tagging. For a long time, researchers attempted to solve such problems by using simple-minded reductions to binary classification problems. These reductions failed to exploit any information about the structure of predicted objects. For example, conventional SVMs can be applied to the problem of part-of-speech tagging by considering each word of a sentence based on the surrounding words. This approach ignores the fact that the tags of nearby words are mutually constraining—what is really needed is a self-consistent sequence of tags. The approach described here incorporates this type of structure through representations similar to those of probabilistic graphical models, such as Markov random fields. Moreover, the models in this approach are trained by optimizing measures of discriminative performance that are of most interest to practitioners. The authors describe a principled framework for predicting structured objects with SVMs. They show that the required optimization involves an exponentially large number of constraints in the problem size. The combinatorial explosion reflects the large number of possible misclassifications when predicting structured objects. Remarkably, the authors show that despite the apparently unmanageable number of constraints, an ∈-accurate solution can be found by a cuttingplane algorithm that only considers O(1/∈) constraints. The algorithm is described here, along with examples of real-world applications in information retrieval and protein sequence alignment. The impressive variety of applications considered in the paper is yet another reminder that the scope of machine learning expands with each new generation of researchers.


Objectives: To evaluate the performance of convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures to distinguish eyes with glaucoma from normal eyes. Materials and Methods: A total of 9,950 fundus photographs of 5,388 patients from the database of Eskişehir Osmangazi University Faculty of Medicine Ophthalmology Clinic were labelled as glaucoma, glaucoma suspect, or normal by three different experienced ophthalmologists. The categorized fundus photographs were evaluated using a state-of-the-art two-dimensional CNN and compared with deep residual networks (ResNet) and very deep neural networks (VGG). The accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of glaucoma detection with the different algorithms were evaluated using a dataset of 238 normal and 320 glaucomatous fundus photographs. For the detection of suspected glaucoma, ResNet-101 architectures were tested with a data set of 170 normal, 170 glaucoma, and 167 glaucoma-suspect fundus photographs. Results: Accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity in detecting glaucoma were 96.2%, 99.5%, and 93.7% with ResNet-50; 97.4%, 97.8%, and 97.1% with ResNet-101; 98.9%, 100%, and 98.1% with VGG-19, and 99.4%, 100%, and 99% with the 2D CNN, respectively. Accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity values in distinguishing glaucoma suspects from normal eyes were 62%, 68%, and 56% and those for differentiating glaucoma from suspected glaucoma were 92%, 81%, and 97%, respectively. While 55 photographs could be evaluated in 2 seconds with CNN, a clinician spent an average of 24.2 seconds to evaluate a single photograph. Conclusion: An appropriately designed and trained CNN was able to distinguish glaucoma with high accuracy even with a small number of fundus photographs.


Objective: Fat-soluble vitamin (FSV) deficiency is a well-recognized consequence of cholestatic liver disease and reduced intestinal intraluminal bile acid. We hypothesized that serum bile acid (SBA) would predict biochemical FSV deficiency better than serum total bilirubin (TB) level in infants with biliary atresia. Methods: Infants enrolled in the Trial of Corticosteroid Therapy in Infants with Biliary Atresia after hepatoportoenterostomy were the subjects of this investigation. Infants received standardized FSV supplementation and monitoring of TB, SBA, and vitamin levels at 1, 3, and 6 months. A logistic regression model was used with the binary indicator variable insufficient/sufficient as the outcome variable. Linear and nonparametric correlations were made between specific vitamin measurement levels and either TB or SBA. Results: The degree of correlation for any particular vitamin at a specific time point was higher with TB than with SBA (higher for TB in 31 circumstances vs 3 circumstances for SBA). Receiver operating characteristic curve shows that TB performed better than SBA (area under the curve 0.998 vs 0.821). Including both TB and SBA did not perform better than TB alone (area under the curve 0.998). Conclusions: We found that TB was a better predictor of FSV deficiency than SBA in infants with biliary atresia. The role of SBA as a surrogate marker of FSV deficiency in other cholestatic liver diseases, such as progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis, &agr;-1-antitrypsin deficiency, and Alagille syndrome in which the pathophysiology is dominated by intrahepatic cholestasis, warrants further study.


ABSTRACT

Cooking oil fumes (CF) coming from night market stalls exhaust contain substantial amounts of air pollutants such as carbonyl compounds that may contribute to outdoor air pollution and may have adverse health effects on the Taiwanese population. Carbonyl emission characteristics depend on several factors, which include but are not limited to, the cooking style and food material being used. The current study evaluated carbonyl compound emissions from two scenarios: a standard kitchen cooking classroom with a stack gas tunnel and night market food stalls. The different cooking styles and food types cooked using a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove, such as grilled chicken with (GCS) and without sauce (GC), mixed barbecue with sauce (MBS), grilled vegetables with sauce (GVS), stir-fried oyster omelet (OM), fried Taiwanese chicken nuggets (FN) in the kitchen cooking classroom, and grilled chicken with (GCS) and without sauce (GC), stir-fried oyster omelet (OM), grilled vegetables with sauce (GVS), and fried steak (FS) in the night market were evaluated for carbonyl carbon emissions. OM from the kitchen classroom and GCS from the night market showed the highest mean total carbonyl compound concentrations (1850 ± 682 ppb and 1840 ppb). Formaldehyde was found to be the most predominant carbonyl compound, with contribution percentages ranging from 70.9–99.58% of the total carbonyl emission factors in CFs. Grilled vegetables with sauce had the highest emission factor magnitude of 274 µg kg–1 wt. Factors such as the addition of sauce and grilling were also observed to increase carbonyl compound emissions. Corresponding health risks of carbonyl compounds in CFs for the night market vendors were also assessed. All values for cancer risk (R) were above the standard R value for workplace exposure, and HQ values were all greater than 1, suggesting a high risk for adverse health effects. Although our reported values were relatively high due to our sampling conditions, our study was first to be conducted in Taiwan and holds an important contribution to the global existing data of carbonyl compound emissions.