Cell cycle transitions are generally triggered by variation in the activity of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) bound to cyclins. Malaria-causing parasites have a life cycle with unique cell-division cycles, and a repertoire of divergent CDKs and cyclins of poorly understood function and interdependency. We show that Plasmodium berghei CDK-related kinase 5 (CRK5), is a critical regulator of atypical mitosis in the gametogony and is required for mosquito transmission. It phosphorylates canonical CDK motifs of components in the pre-replicative complex and is essential for DNA replication. During a replicative cycle, CRK5 stably interacts with a single Plasmodium-specific cyclin (SOC2), although we obtained no evidence of SOC2 cycling by transcription, translation or degradation. Our results provide evidence that during Plasmodium male gametogony, this divergent cyclin/CDK pair fills the functional space of other eukaryotic cell-cycle kinases controlling DNA replication.


ABSTRACT We explore the motivations behind the electoral success of the Lega and the Five-star Movement at the 2018 Italian general election. In most of the literature on populism, the success of the new European populist parties is interpreted as stemming from the process of globalisation, which has produced the so-called 'modernisation losers': 'cultural losers' (people who are disorientated by changes in values, by new waves of migration and by the loss of national sovereignty to the European Union) and 'economic losers' (those for whom the globalisation process has meant economic hardship, downward social mobility and occupational uncertainty). It is these 'modernisation losers' who are claimed to have voted for the populist parties. To this two-fold theoretical hypothesis, we added another: the rise in populism can be explained by the democratic malaise, and particularly by the crisis of mainstream parties, which have steadily lost their function as a link between the people and politics. We analyse the role of these three antecedents of populism – labelled as cultural, economic and political – drawing on 2018 Italian National Election Studies (ITANES: see www.itanes.org/en) data. Votes for the Lega were motivated by 'cultural populism', while those for the Five-star Movement could be ascribed to 'political populism', stemming from citizens' growing mistrust – generalised and latent in Western democracies – of political institutions, activated in Italy by favourable structural conditions and external circumstances.


Publicly-traded companies have the power to pass sunlight bylaws to address hedge fund activism. Sunlight bylaws would require activist hedge funds to publicly disclose any strategic proposals and their financial interests in companies earlier and at thresholds lower than current securities laws. Sunlight bylaws would also require disclosure of additional information, including: (1) the percentage of the fund's portfolio invested in the company; (2) the fund manager's compensation; (3) the fund manager's investment in the fund; (4) the fund's portfolio turnover; and (5) the fund's prior holding periods after any announcements of an ownership interest and a strategic proposal. Academic proponents of hedge fund activism defend activism based on the theory that activist hedge fund managers are systematically better agents for long-term stockholders than the incumbent board and executive management. These proponents argue that fund managers have large stakes in their funds, the funds' profitability is highly contingent on the financial performance of its investments, and the funds hold relatively few concentrated investments. Sunlight bylaws would target factual information essential to that claim and require its disclosure in succinct, summary form. Sunlight bylaws would also state that if a stockholder violates them, that stockholder cannot nominate a candidate for a seat on the board or propose any issue for the next stockholders' vote. But institutional investors and proxy advisory firms support hedge fund activism in the abstract, and a board that passed a sunlight bylaw might precipitate litigation or a proxy fight. Public companies should therefore, on a case-by-case basis, request the same or similar information when an activist that has held shares for a brief period of time makes a strategic proposal. Public companies should negotiate confidential treatment of any disclosures for a period of time so that the activist can reap the full benefit of the short-term increase in share price after the disclosure of its investment and strategic proposal some academics and institutional investors think necessary to incent activism. But public companies should also make very clear that they reserve the right to publish any questions that the activist refuses to answer or for which it insists on confidential treatment. And the other stockholders, who likely invest over longer timeframes, should carefully consider any information that the activist discloses — or, equally importantly — refuses to disclose.


The objective of the present study was to compare quantitatively the neuropathology of two subtypes of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), viz., sporadic CJD (sCJD) and variant CJD (vCJD). The vacuolation ('spongiform change'), surviving neurons, glial cell nuclei, and deposits of the disease form of prion protein (PrPsc) were quantified in histological sections of the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum in 11 cases of sCJD and 15 cases of vCJD. Three aspects of the quantitative pathology of each histological feature were studied: overall abundance (density or coverage), spatial distribution parallel to the tissue boundary, and laminar distribution across gyri of the cerebral cortex. Overall vacuole density was greater in sCJD than in vCJD in some regions while overall neuronal densities were greater in vCJD. In cerebral cortex, vacuoles and PrPsc deposits were distributed in clusters which exhibited a regular distribution parallel to the pia mater, this type of spatial pattern being more frequent in sCJD than in vCJD. In some cortical gyri there were differences in laminar distribution between subtypes, viz. the vacuolation was more generally distributed across cortical laminae in sCJD, neuronal loss was often greater in upper laminae in vCJD but in lower laminae in sCJD, and PrPsc deposits were more frequently distributed in upper laminae in vCJD but in lower laminae in sCJD. A significant gliosis affected lower cortical laminae in both sCJD and vCJD. Hence, there were differences in degeneration of cerebral cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum in sCJD and vCJD, which may reflect variations in disease aetiology and propagation of PrPsc through the brain.


To the Editor: Dr. da Silva's letter raises several important points. My article, however, was never intended to be comprehensive. The choice of which emerging infectious diseases to include was difficult, especially in a country where many endemic infections continue at a high prevalence and others, thought to be controlled, are reemerging. As Dr. da Silva states, many reports (in Portuguese and English) discuss infectious diseases in Brazil; however, this information is rarely current. The information about measles in my article is a case in point. At the time of my article, an outbreak causing national concern was occurring in Brazil; it has since been controlled. A further problem is that the most detailed and reliable studies are generally of only a regional or local nature, for example, the recent excellent report by Merchan-Hamann (1) on the situation of endemic diseases in north and northeastern Brazil and other references cited by Dr. da Silva. To obtain current information at the national level and provide numerical data rather than merely discuss current trends, I focused on notifiable diseases. As Dr. da Silva states, schistosomiasis has continued to decrease both in the number of cases and associated illness. Onchocerciasis has been restricted to a small focus in northern Brazil for many years, and a recent report of a new focus in the state of Goias has yet to be confirmed. In my opinion, neither infection could be considered emerging. An important helminthiasis that perhaps should be mentioned is Bancroftian filariasis with a main focus in Recife and minor foci in Belem and Alagoas. Because of traditional and novel control strategies, the number of cases is declining in all foci. The information I used about hepatitis is confirmed by the National Reference Center on Viral Hepatitis of the Ministry of Health. Febrile illnesses in the Amazon are the great enigma and probably provide the cover for many new diseases that may still emerge. For example, only approximately 20% of blood slides taken from suspected malaria patients in the Amazon are confirmed as positive, which leaves at least one million cases of febrile illness per year undiagnosed. I am unaware of any data that show Mayaro and Oropouche viruses as the most common cause of these illnesses. Dr. da Silva's letter provides useful additional information on bacterial diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and a number of low-prevalence diseases that may in time prove to be important emerging infections.


Professor Rebecca Tushnet's Article elucidates a number of difficulties in copyright that flow from judicial failures to treat images consistently and rigorously. She argues that courts both assess copyrightability and evaluate potential infringement in ways that rely on a naive understanding of the way artists create, and indeed, the way viewers receive works of art. The problem is particularly pronounced with respect to what Tushnet calls non-textual works because copyright law's default to textuality means that the tools and methods that judges use misalign with the objects of their examination.In this Essay, I explain why I am less than fully convinced by Tushnet's exclusive focus on the visual (or visual exceptionalism). I argue that copyright's adjudication of all expressive works, not simply visual ones, falls short of ideal. Tushnet's illuminating analysis helps us see partly why that is. Expressive works — whether visual or verbal or constituted in some other fashion, such as aural, or kinetic — pose a particular and typically unacknowledged problem for courts. Tushnet shows us how, in dealing with images, courts abandon interpretation, or believe it unnecessary. Images are either interpretively opaque — too difficult or impossible to see through and thus adjudicate — or they are transparent — too obvious to necessitate interpretation. Tushnet's emphasis is on the visual yet her powerful insight may be used as a lens through which to understand copyright's problems with all expressive works. All expressive works require an interpretive step that courts do not typically acknowledge, a step that delineates what method of interpretation a court will adopt. Thus all cases involving expressive works stand to benefit from the improvements and adjustments Tushnet proposes.My Essay calls into question the difference Tushnet builds between visual works and other kinds. I argue that while differences between the visual and the verbal do in some instances exist, the differences may not hold the weight that Tushnet's visual exceptionalism attributes to them. These differences may, as Tushnet discusses, be the product of such far-ranging causes as cultural construction, or innate biological tendency; and or they may be a function of pragmatic considerations embedded in technical and institutional and generic contexts, as I argue. Both visual and verbal modes of expression conform to, or resist or rework, generic and theoretical conventions (such as romance, pastoral, noir, the sentimental; or realism, modernism, surrealism, avant-gardism, postmodernism, respectively). Whether or not it acknowledges it openly, copyright law traffics in aesthetic theories when it deals with artistic works. It follows therefrom that if copyright suffers from aesthetic naivete, images and words probably suffer equally. If this view is accurate, the issue is less one of visual exceptionalism, and more one of copyright's need to develop a more finely-tuned (or simply more consistent) way of treating expressive works. A fix offered for one might also be a fix well-suited to the others.


ndividuals working in digital applications tend to prefer the Time Domain Reflec-tometer (TDR), while those involved in traditional RF applications consider the Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) to be a laboratory staple. The push for ever-faster data rates has fueled an analytical rethinking of high-speed digital signaling. Contemporary wisdom views high-speed digital systems as high-frequency applications, where more traditional microwave analysis techniques apply. Once this concept is embraced, engineers often exploit the strengths of both the TDR and VNA, combining time and frequency domain analysis to accelerate design and development cycles. Both instruments can measure impedance, time delay, phase delay and reflection coefficient so they are often thought of as equals. This begs the question: Is there a quantifiable difference in measurement uncertainty between the TDR and VNA? Characterizing the time delay of a passive device, such as coaxial cable assembly is a common use for the TDR and VNA. It is therefore an ideal vehicle for a performance comparison. How do the two compare under ideal test conditions , and the less-than-ideal environment of production testing? Do both instruments possess similar levels of measurement precision? This article answers these questions by examining the measurement uncertainty and repeat-ability of the TDR and VNA. DESCRIPTION OF EXPERIMENT To understand the capabilities of any measurement system, it is important to test the sys-tem's response to a variety of inputs to avoid erroneous conclusions. For this discussion, the term " input " refers to a " Device Under Test " (DUT), which in this experiment were different cable assemblies from a variety of manufacturers , having a range of insertion loss and VSWR characteristics. In a manner consistent with commonly used production test practices, measurements of the time delay of the cable assemblies described above were measured with a TDR and a VNA. The resulting measurement uncertainty of the two instruments under these conditions was then compared. A sample of six new cable assemblies were used in the experiment, each equipped with SMA pin connectors. Table 1 details their loss, VSWR and physical length characteristics. The electrical data in Table 1 was acquired through VNA analysis. The experiment consisted of two rounds of testing. Within a round, each sample was connected to the TDR or VNA and measured five consecutive times, without being disconnected or disturbed (" repeat testing "). After five measurements, the sample was


The series Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science was conceived in the broadest framework of interdisciplinary and international concerns. Natural scientists, mathematicians, social scientists and philosophers have contributed to the series, as have historians and sociologists of science, linguists, psychologists, physicians, and literary critics.  The series has been able to include works by authors from many other countries around the world.  The editors believe that the history and philosophy of science should itself be scientific, self-consciously critical, humane as well as rational, sceptical and undogmatic while also receptive to discussion of first principles. One of the aims of Boston Studies, therefore, is to develop collaboration among scientists, historians and philosophers.  Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science looks into and reflects on interactions between epistemological and historical dimensi  ons in an effort to understand the scientific enterprise from every viewpoint


Advanced reduction processes (ARPs) are treatment processes that involve combining reducing reagents and activating tools to produce highly reactive reducing free radicals. The process has proven effective for treating oxidized contaminants, and the effects of process variables on the degradation kinetics of various target contaminants have been investigated in our previous studies. In natural environments, natural organic matter (NOM) is found in surface or ground water. NOM absorbs UV light and can react with photochemically produced radicals, thus affecting target contaminant photochemical reactions and further influencing the efficiency of ARP. This study examines the impact of humic acid (HA) and Suwanee River NOM on bromate reduction rates with UV irradiation using a low-pressure mercury UV lamp. The effects of the sulfite dose, solution pH, and light intensity are studied and the pseudo-first-order rate constants in the presence of HA ( k obs,HA ) are compared to those observed in the absence of HA ( k obs ). At low HA concentrations of 1 mg L −1 , k obs,HA was larger than k obs ; however, k obs,HA was less than k obs at higher HA concentrations. Furthermore, k obs,HA did not increase with increasing sulfite doses in the presence of HA, which is unlike the behavior of k obs .


Bifurcated magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium states are computed for ITER hybrid scenario and RFX-mod SHAx configurations with very flat or reversed core magnetic shear conditions. In the ITER studies, the minimum inverse rotational transform qmin is near unity, while for RFX-mod it is 1/8. Two equilibrium states are obtained: one is axisymmetric, the other displays a 3D helical core. In tokamak devices, the structure resembles a saturated ideal MHD internal kink mode. In the reversed-field pinch, the structure is seven-fold toroidally periodic. The equilibrium magnetic field spectrum in the Boozer coordinate frame is calculated in both the ITER and RFX-mod configurations and the implications are discussed. The RFX-mod equilibria are strongly unstable to external ideal MHD kink modes, which become stabilized with a closely fitting conducting shell when the equilibrium state has a weak reversed core shear. It is marginally unstable with a monotonic q-profile. Unstable modes are driven by the Ohmic current, with pressure and Pfirsch–Schlüter currents having a very weak effect. The external kink mode spectrum is dominated by coupled m = 1, n = 6 and m = 2, n = 13 Fourier components, which revert to m = 1, n = 8 and m = 2, n = 15 terms with a conducting wall in proximity to the plasma–vacuum interface.


While the landscape of constitutional rights of procedure at a criminal trial is well developed, the picture of which of these rights apply at sentencing proceedings is much murkier. The scope of protection provided at sentencing and the principles governing which trial rights apply at sentencing and which do not have not been well understood. The advent of sentencing guidelines systems has increased the importance of these issues. This article systematically canvasses trial rights at sentencing, identifying which rights apply, which do not and which remain in doubt. The results are presented in both summary and detailed form. The Article also explores possible rationales for the results that emerge and identifies a previously unarticulated principle that appears to govern them. Briefly put, under this "best-estimate" principle, rights which are directed primarily at determining the correct result apply at sentencing, while those designed to offer special protection to a defendant's liberty or autonomy interests do not. The article also uses the "best-estimate" principle to explain how the rest of the picture of trial rights at sentencing is likely to be filled in if the Court continues on the path of the last fifty years. The article then examines explanations for, and some broader implications of, these descriptive conclusions. First, the article explores how the Court's decisions might have come to match the best-estimate principle through an unarticulated due process balancing test. In this view, the defendant's residual liberty interest - an interest in a sentence that is not "too high" - is balanced against the state's interest in an appropriate and reasonably expedient outcome. Next, the article contends that courts may be expected to defend this balance. When faced with changes in the nature of the remaining liberty interest at stake in sentencing, courts will defend the balance either by imposing substantive limitations on what can be decided at sentencing or by adding more procedures. The article explains how the Court's recent decisions in Apprendi v. New Jersey, Ring v. Arizona, and Harris v. United States are best understood (indeed, perhaps can only be understood) in this light. These decisions impose the substantive limitations on what can be decided at sentencing that are necessary (but only those that are necessary) for preserving the Court's conception of a defendant's liberty interest at sentencing that underlies its procedural decisions. Finally, the article briefly considers the possible effect of guidelines sentencing systems on the model the Court has created.


This paper discusses a portion of the outcome of a study undertaken by the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ) on commission from the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry under the project title of FY2007 Research for Promotion of Natural Gas Development and Utilization (Study of Natural Gas Supply and Demand Trends in Asia Pacific and Atlantic Markets). The scope of the above study included a fixed-point observation survey on the on-going status of countries that are either exporting or importing LNG as well as trends in the LNG markets, which potentially may have an impact on Japans natural gas supply and demand situation. In the following sections, an overview will be presented in sequence on the natural gas supply and demand situation, natural gas trading, the LNG chain, and LNG supply and demand balance.


The increasing prevalence of E. coli bloodstream infections is a serious public health problem. We used genomic epidemiology in a One Health study conducted in the East of England to examine putative sources of E. coli associated with serious human disease. E. coli from 1,517 patients with bloodstream infections were compared with 431 isolates from livestock farms and meat. Livestock-associated and bloodstream isolates were genetically distinct populations based on core genome and accessory genome analyses. Identical antimicrobial resistance genes were found in livestock and human isolates, but there was limited overlap in the mobile elements carrying these genes. Within the limitations of sampling, our findings do not support the idea that E. coli causing invasive disease or their resistance genes are commonly acquired from livestock in our region. ABSTRACT Livestock have been proposed as a reservoir for drug-resistant Escherichia coli that infect humans. We isolated and sequenced 431 E. coli isolates (including 155 extended-spectrum β-lactamase [ESBL]-producing isolates) from cross-sectional surveys of livestock farms and retail meat in the East of England. These were compared with the genomes of 1,517 E. coli bacteria associated with bloodstream infection in the United Kingdom. Phylogenetic core genome comparisons demonstrated that livestock and patient isolates were genetically distinct, suggesting that E. coli causing serious human infection had not directly originated from livestock. In contrast, we observed highly related isolates from the same animal species on different farms. Screening all 1,948 isolates for accessory genes encoding antibiotic resistance revealed 41 different genes present in variable proportions in human and livestock isolates. Overall, we identified a low prevalence of shared antimicrobial resistance genes between livestock and humans based on analysis of mobile genetic elements and long-read sequencing. We conclude that within the confines of our sampling framework, there was limited evidence that antimicrobial-resistant pathogens associated with serious human infection had originated from livestock in our region. IMPORTANCE The increasing prevalence of E. coli bloodstream infections is a serious public health problem. We used genomic epidemiology in a One Health study conducted in the East of England to examine putative sources of E. coli associated with serious human disease. E. coli from 1,517 patients with bloodstream infections were compared with 431 isolates from livestock farms and meat. Livestock-associated and bloodstream isolates were genetically distinct populations based on core genome and accessory genome analyses. Identical antimicrobial resistance genes were found in livestock and human isolates, but there was limited overlap in the mobile elements carrying these genes. Within the limitations of sampling, our findings do not support the idea that E. coli causing invasive disease or their resistance genes are commonly acquired from livestock in our region.


"When we are sure that we are on the right road, there is no need to plan our journey too far ahead; no need to burden ourselves with doubts and fears as to the obstacles that may bar our progress. We cannot take more than one step at a time." - Orison Swett Marden


This thesis aimed to develop a running heat tolerance test (RHTT) to assess changes in heat tolerance
and to investigate the mechanism and optimisation of heat acclimation (HA) for female athletes.
The first study introduced a RHTT and assessed its repeatability. Results demonstrate good agreement,
strong correlations and small differences between repeated trials. The typical error of measure values
suggested low within-participant variability. Furthermore, the RHTT was effective in differentiating
between individuals' physiological responses, demonstrating that heat tolerance lies along a continuum.
The second study examined the sensitivity of the RHTT to changes in heat tolerance and to evaluate
individual responses to HA. Results demonstrate that the RHTT is sensitive to changes in heat tolerance
and that the magnitude of adaptation is highly individual; supporting the use of the RHTT in future
investigations.
Reducing thermal strain through HA in not fully understood for a female population. The third study
compared males' and females' temporal patterning to short-term HA (STHA; 5-d) and long-term HA
(LTHA; 10-d). The RHTT was used to quantify changes in heat tolerance. The results confirm that whilst
STHA may be effective in achieving partial adaptation in males and females, females require LTHA to
establish reductions in thermoregulatory and cardiovascular strain.
Improved thermotolerance following HA, reduces disruptions to cellular homeostasis principally, but not
exclusively, by increasing basal heat shock protein 72 following transcription of its gene (Hsp 72 mRNA)
as part of the heat shock response (HSR). The fourth study compared males' and females' Hsp72 mRNA
response during STHA and LTHA. The similar transcription of Hsp72 mRNA observed in all participants
suggests that there are no differences in the endogenous criteria to elicit the HSR between sexes.
The fifth study assessed the effectiveness of preceding STHA with a passive heat exposure (HAsauna) in
females. HAsauna resulted in reductions in thermoregulatory, cardiovascular and perceptual strain. The
adaptation pathway was likely mediated in part, by plasma volume expansion and an improved
thermoeffector and thermosensitivity response of the sudomotor function.
Together, evidence in this thesis supports the notion that special considerations need to be taken when
using HA to attenuate thermoregulatory strain in female athletes prior to training and competing in the
heat.


The global economic crises that have emerged over the past few years have put a tremendous strain on (and remains a challenge for) all the major economies of the world. Whilst achieving a balance of retaining front line services for citizens and keeping staff, and making economies fit for purpose in the long term is a challenging task, procurement can have a substantial role to play in achieving this. Sound public procurement policy brings immediate and tangible macroeconomic benefits, where more cost-effective procurement relaxes budgetary pressure and creates fiscal space. The public sector represents about 40-45% of the world's economies; in some African countries it can be as much as 80%. The public procurement process displays major differences in the way it is organised and operated across the world: different organisational structures; different types of governments; different regulatory, legislative and funding arrangements, and, of course, different cultures. This research aims to look at the influencing factors of public procurement policy and its development in Libya.
The revolution domino effect of the Arab Spring in the region in late 2010 occurred because of a number of reasons, predominantly economic, social and political. However, these reasons were mostly magnified by two factors; a young population and high unemployment. Whilst public procurement has become more complex, the balance of the various socioeconomic goals has left officials in government to deal with a wide range of issues. This is particularly true when it comes to the development of the pertinent procurement policies. Procurement policy can contribute immensely to job creation and employment, strengthening of industries, regional involvement, enhancing diversity, securing development aid, and sustainability. According to authorities in he field, the origin of all procurement policy is political. Strategic procurement policy has been adopted by states that have recognised that the procurement function can be developed to harmonise procurement policies with wider government policies. A government (such as Libya's new Transitional Government which is currently dealing with an ailing economy, high unemployment and social fragility) may use public procurement as a tool for economic development, job creation and, ultimately, stabilisation. The intention of this research is to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on state public procurement policy and its development, whilst emphasising inputs and the transformational processes operating in the construction of public policy in Libya. This research attempts to explain how public procurement policies are developed but also what influences that development, and why. The contribution to knowledge will be achieved by identifying barriers within the Libyan context and reporting back into the current scholarly literature. This research also aims to identify findings that may well be used for legislative advocacy in the current Libyan public policy discourse.


Although different concepts regarding the analysis of the phenomenon of religious re-affiliation do exist, they are most of the time lumped together under the buzzword "conversion", thereby conflating the nuances and social realities of the phenomenon and limiting this concept's validity. Starting off from Richard V. Travisano's differentiation between conversion and alternation and taking into account Arthur D. Nock's concept of adhesion, this paper investigates different modes of change of religious affiliation. Drawing from Frauke Kurbacher's conceptualization of what constitutes conviction, it re-assesses what is commonly understood as religious conversion through an analysis of different manifestations of re-affiliation with Islam in West European societies. The author juxtaposes converts to 'reflexive Islam' (who internalize their faith as a new system of belief in an individualized, cognitive process which leads to a broadening of their perspective and the strengthening of their self-identity as well as of their self-esteem and their agency) to youths who join groups which advocate Salafi interpretations of Islam (where role-taking within a collective identity is of particular importance) and those who engage in jihadism (where an us-against-them perspective becomes absolute). This includes an analysis of the re-affiliate's motives and of the social implications of his or her choice. The aim of this paper is to refine an empirically based understanding of the concept of religious conversion through differentiating it from other forms of religious re-affiliation. Therefore, the paper will predominately focus on conversion, referring to alternation and adhesion as functionally different forms of religious re-affiliation to emphasize the differences between the different concepts and thus reduce the fuzziness of the term.


Treated wastewater represents a significant potential source of reclaimed water for some beneficial reuses. However, public concern over the risks/health-related hazards of wastewater reuse has limited the general acceptability of reuse systems in many countries. It is important to manage the operation of recycled water systems in such a way that it will not adversely affect public health and the environment. Management of recycled water involves process control and compliance monitoring. This paper presents proposed unit process monitoring guidelines to classify the performances of treatment units according to the pollutant removal efficiencies and frequency of sampling to test for effluent quality suitable for reuse. The paper also highlights the procedure for proper inspection of treatment facilities to ensure optimum performances. It proposes minimum quality requirements for different reuse activities in South Africa such as domestic (toilet flushing, watering private gardens), irrigation (crops, landscape, public parks and golf courses, cemeteries), industrial (system cooling and process water) and other activities (construction works, street cleaning, fire protection, groundwater recharge). By employing the wastewater treatment monitoring and sampling procedures proposed in this paper, health-related hazards can be minimized while public confidence in reuse schemes will be enhanced.


This article contributes to a political economic theory centred on the concept of "audience labour". First, the previous use of the concept of audience labour is briefly traced and the process of rethinking the concept as the basis of a political economic theory is begun. Second, a theory of the audience labour process is developed, drawing on previous theories of audience activities of cultural consumption as productive activities of signification and adapting Marx's theory of the human labour process to the audience labour process. Third, a political economy of audience labour is outlined. As a theory of the basic processes through which communicative capital can control and extract value from audience labour, it describes the exploitation of audience labour and accumulation of communicative capital through distribution relationships of rent and interest. Finally, the continuing centrality of audience labour exploitation in the digital era is discussed.


Interest in emotional intelligence has bloomed over the last few years. That it has become a standard concept in general and applied psychology, as well as in applied business settings, is indubitable. Is this popularity warranted? Casting a shadow over the concept of emotional intelligence are concerns about its meaningfulness and the construct and predictive validity of its various measures. The following series of letters explores various issues surrounding emotional intelligence and leadership including: whether emotional intelligence is theoretically needed for leadership, the types of emotional intelligence tests that may hold the most promise, methodological standards for testing whether emotional intelligence matters, evidence from the neuroscience literature on emotions and intelligence, and evidence regarding the links between leader emotional intelligence and follower outcomes. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


The hypothesis presented here is that cancer is not a phenomenon where the normal functions of the human body break down (like diabetes mellitus or renal failure) but rather a well planned and well coordinated physiological response (similar to the inflammatory response). 'Cancer initiating genes' are presumed neoplastic DNA sequences involved in sensing genome deterioration, consequently enhancing preservation. This genetic trait, different from the concept of oncogenes, actively triggers the neoplastic transformation once genome deterioration is sensed. This self destructive, altruistic phenomenon, obviously devastating to the organism, is nevertheless shown to be a possible mechanism of natural selection. The survival advantage of cancer initiation is discussed using both the concepts of group selection and gene selection. Natural selection, the driving force of evolution, is believed to operate solely on the basis of phenotype differences among individuals. In this paper cancer is hypothesized to be a mechanism that directly scrutinizes the gene contents of the individual, therefore representing natural selection based on genotype differences.


This article presents ethnographic information on terrace farming that was collected to ground archeological interpretations of cross-channel terraces known as lama-bordos in the Mixteca Alta region of southern Mexico. Ethnographic interviews asked about labor organization and the labor requirements of terrace construction, and also documented agroecological knowledge associated with terrace farming. The integration of ethnographic and archeological data indicate that lama-bordo terracing started 3,400 years ago and today lama-bordos continue to be built, maintained, and farmed at the household level, in ways that correspond with the recorded stratigraphies of Prehispanic lama-bordo terraces. Even in contemporary contexts of government agricultural programs and global markets, farmers continue to grow food and build their lives around lama-bordos using a complex body of knowledge about the weather, plants, soils, and the behavior of pests. The continuation of this land-use and food-producing strategy for over three millennia attests to the longevity, effectiveness, and resilience of this ancestral practice that has been a cornerstone for Mixtec society and survival.


The major goal of this article is to examine some properties of the passive crosslinguistically and the ensuing ramifications for a universal theory of the passive. Building on my previous work (Kallulli 2006a, b), this article argues for a uniform derivation of the passive and the anticausative construction. The main claim is that passives and anticausatives differ only with respect to the respective building blocks that enter syntactic computation but both arise through the same operation, namely suppression of a feature in v . Passive constructions across languages can be made compatible by relegating the differences to simple combinatorial properties of verb and prepositional types and their interactions with other event functors/aspectual operators, which are in turn encoded differently morphologically across languages.


Our understanding of the pathogenesis of bladder cancer has improved considerably over the past decade. Translating these novel pathobiological discoveries into therapies, prevention, or strategies to manage patients who are suspected to have or who have been diagnosed with bladder cancer is the ultimate goal. In particular, the chemoprevention of bladder cancer development is important, since urothelial cancer frequently recurs, even if the primary cancer is completely removed. The numerous alterations of both oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes that have been implicated in bladder carcinogenesis represent novel targets for therapy and prevention. In addition, knowledge about these genetic alterations will help provide a better understanding of the biological significance of preneoplastic lesions of bladder cancer. Animal models for investigating bladder cancer development and prevention can also be developed based on these alterations. This paper summarizes the results of recent preclinical and clinical chemoprevention studies and discusses screening for bladder cancer.


Purpose: W e evaluated the impact of lower energy transurethral microwave thermotherapy on quality of life and quality of sexual function in patients w ith benign prostatic hyperplasia (B PH ). M aterials and Methods: A total of 50 patients with BPH were randomized to receive either lower energy transurethral microwave thermotherapy treatment (Prostasoft 2.0)* or placebo treatment and followed for 26 weeks after treatment. A ll patients completed a Madsen symptom score and quality of life questionnaire to assess acceptability, daily activities, psychological well-being, social activities and improvement in quality of life. A sexual function questionnaire was used to assess changes in sexual function after microwave thermotherapy. Results: A significant difference in voiding parameters and symptom score was found between the transurethral microwave thermotherapy and sham groups. Maximum uroflow changed from 9.6 ml. per second at baseline to 13.9 ml. per second and from 9.9 ml. per second at baseline to 9.6 ml. per second at 26 weeks for transurethral microwave thermotherapy and sham groups, respectively. Madsen score improved from 13.2 to 5.3 for the transurethral microwave thermo therapy group and from 11.9 to 9.1 for the sham group. For quality of life measures, a statistically significant difference in favor of the transurethral microwave thermotherapy group was found only for the acceptability item. A t baseline and after 26 weeks no statistically significant difference was observed between the 2 groups for Quality of Life measures documenting sexual function. However, almost 20% of patients treated by either transurethral microwave thermo therapy or sham claimed at 26 weeks after treatment that treatment had influenced sexual


With the publication of the Dymaxion House in 1929, Buckminster Fuller became an overnight sensation in the world of American architecture. It was an uncompromising design and spectacularly novel. The living areas were hexagonal and attached around a central supply tower, and the multistory interior was fully climate-controlled. The house was conceived as completely self-sufficient a " all the necessary supply modules were contained in the tower, including water and wastewater, energy production, and air filters. The rooms were equipped with the most modern furnishings and fixtures. The approximately 150 m2 house weighed just 3 tons, cost no more than a car, and was designed to be constructed and dismantled anytime and anywhere. The house reflected Fullera (TM)s basic technological principle, his determination to achieve the greatest possible utility at the smallest possible cost in terms of energy and materials by making use of everything that science and technology have to offer. With its self-supporting structure and self-sufficiency, it also reflected another of Fullera (TM)s axioms: a oeA house should be completely self-sufficient and autonomous, just like a persona . The Dymaxion House (which was only actually realized in other variants, such as the Wichita House) is widely viewed as a precursor to his geodesic domes.


As the staggering costs of the criminal justice system continue to rise, many states have begun to look for non traditional ways to pay for criminal prosecutions and to shift these costs onto criminal defendants. Many states now impose a surcharge on defendants who exercise their constitutional rights to counsel, confrontation, and trial by jury. As these "user fees" proliferate, they have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of criminal prosecutions and the way we think of constitutional rights. The shift from government funding of criminal litigation to user funding constitutes a privatization of criminal procedure. This intrusion of market ideology into the world of fundamental constitutional rights has at least two broad problems: it exacerbates structural unfairness in a system that already disadvantages poor people, and it degrades how we conceive of those rights. This Article proposes solutions to ameliorate the harshest effects of these rights-based user fees but also argues for the importance of resisting the trend of the privatization of constitutional trial rights.


The coating and cathodic protection protect pipeline against the corrosion. The failure of these two defense systems leads to corrosion failure of pipelines. Any changes in chemical, physical or electrochemical properties of coating which affect their properties to isolate tFhe pipes from the corrosive atmosphere is considered as failure of coating. The failure mechanism and the gap analysis need to be continuously done for improvements in specifications and its executions. Majority of the global oil and gas pipelines are being protected externally with either 3-Layer Polyolefin coating system or fusion bonded coatings. Some of the gas pipelines are provided with a flow improvement internal coatings considering nil corrosive challenges on internal surfaces. The failures in the external coating appear in the form of edge disbondment from cutbacks and near holidays, complete loss of adhesion of coating, loss of cohesion within coating, cracking in the coating, swelling & blistering around holidays, distortions in the coating, electro osmosis, electrophoresis and highly alkaline atmosphere near holidays, continual increase in CP currents and corrosion of the substrate. The internal surfaces of pipes are suffering corrosion mainly due to presence of corrosive gases viz. carbon dioxide, oxygen, condensates and other corrosive substances even in traces. The common methods like Dehydration, Inhibitors, Buffering, Biocide and Cleaning pigs are not adequate to protect the pipelines to from the corrosion. A very thin internal flow coat can hardly resist any corrosion and gets failed.
 This paper presents the in-depth analysis of the major causes of coating failures and the improvements required in the external and internal coating selections, specifications, coating applications, testing and its maintenance.


On the last pages of The Visible and the Invisible, MerleauPonty investigates "the bond between flesh and idea, and the internal armature which [it] manifests and which it conceals." Flesh and idea are intertwined in that the body reflects on itself in the act of perception and, one could add, action. A correlative bond lies in communication theory as the operational difference between ego and alter-ego. This article investigates the non-semiotic intertwinement of 'flesh' in art perception and theory based on communication theory in performance art (body art). The thesis is that 'flesh' in performance art is presented as absolute presence, but flesh can only be perceived through a reflective bearing.


Despite its importance to experimental design, statistical power (the probability that, given a real effect, an experiment will reject the null hypothesis) has largely been ignored by the NLP community. Underpowered experiments make it more difficult to discern the difference between statistical noise and meaningful model improvements, and increase the chances of exaggerated findings. By meta-analyzing a set of existing NLP papers and datasets, we characterize typical power for a variety of settings and conclude that underpowered experiments are common in the NLP literature. In particular, for several tasks in the popular GLUE benchmark, small test sets mean that most attempted comparisons to state of the art models will not be adequately powered. Similarly, based on reasonable assumptions, we find that the most typical experimental design for human rating studies will be underpowered to detect small model differences, of the sort that are frequently studied. For machine translation, we find that typical test sets of 2000 sentences have approximately 75% power to detect differences of 1 BLEU point. To improve the situation going forward, we give an overview of best practices for power analysis in NLP and release a series of notebooks to assist with future power analyses.


This paper reports on a study that investigated the beliefs about language learning of 120 Iranian EFL students and 16 EFL teachers. The primary aim of the study was to reveal whether there was any difference between the beliefs of Iranian students and teachers regarding different aspects of language learning such as grammar teaching, error correction, culture, target language use, computer-based technology, communicative language teaching strategies and assessment. Data were collected using a 24-item questionnaire. It was concluded that there were some differences between the Iranian students' and teachers' beliefs regarding what procedures were most effective in bringing about language learning. Discussion of the findings and implications for further research are also articulated.


For tasks that need to be accomplished in unconstrained environments, as in the case of Urban Search and Rescue (USAR), human-robot collaboration is considered as an indispensable component. Collaboration is based on accurate models of robot and human perception consistent with one another, so that exchange of information critical to the accomplishment of a task is performed efficiently and in a simplified fashion to minimize the interaction overhead. In this paper, we highlight the features of a human-robot team, i.e. how robot perception may be combined with human perception based on a task-driven direction for USAR. We elaborate on the design of the components of a mixed-initiative system wherein a task assigned to the robot is planned and executed jointly with the human operator as a result of their interaction. Our description is solidified by demonstrating the application of mixed-initiative planning in a number of examples related to the morphological adaptation of the rescue robot.


Much of previous attention on decision trees focuses on the splitting criteria and optimization of tree sizes. The dilemma between overfitting and achieving maximum accuracy is seldom resolved. A method to construct a decision tree based classifier is proposed that maintains highest accuracy on training data and improves on generalization accuracy as it grows in complexity. The classifier consists of multiple trees constructed systematically by pseudorandomly selecting subsets of components of the feature vector, that is, trees constructed in randomly chosen subspaces. The subspace method is compared to single-tree classifiers and other forest construction methods by experiments on publicly available datasets, where the method's superiority is demonstrated. We also discuss independence between trees in a forest and relate that to the combined classification accuracy.


The study of oceans is an essential aspect from strategic, economic and ocean engineering points of view. Recent advancements in SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging) technology for under water applications including naval defence demand a clear understanding of the sound propagation in the ocean which is vital for detection of a target. As compared to deep waters, the detection in coastal waters is relatively a challenging task. Detection becomes still complex in the littoral waters. To ensure success in these highly complex oceanic regions, high resolution descriptions/predictions of past, current and future conditions (hindcast, nowcast and forecast) as well the analysis of open ocean, coastal, and nearshore/littoral zones around the Indian continent is an essential pre-requisite. At any given situation, the detection and discrimination of an underwater target is highly dependant on the propagation characteristics of the medium, the surface and bottom boundaries, leaving apart the efficiency of the SONAR system and the type of the target. It can be either a SONAR performance model or an operational model for tactical warfare; one has to have the predicted sound speed for the 3-dimensional ocean environment concerned since it is not always feasible to depend only on measurements. There are on-going programs of collecting and analyzing ocean and atmospheric data and a wide range of research and development activities, some of which are reviewed/presented in this paper with typical examples. In addition to in-situ measurements, significant progress has been achieved in India by demonstrating the utility of satellite based remote sensing data for oceanographic research and applications. By utilizing the existing and on-going experimental data from the regions of interest, it has become feasible for implementation of an integrated "Naval Operational Ocean Prediction System" consisting of wave, tide, circulation and internal wave models. The ocean environmental information predicted by these ocean models shall provide necessary inputs to the SONAR range prediction models for routine operational use, tactical operations and simulating warfare scenarios.


The genetic control of root weight, root volume and root to shoot weight ratio was studied in peas (Pisum
sativum L.) at flowering. The four populations used were developed from crosses between lines and
cultivars differing in size of the root systems. Plants of the F1, F2 , back cross and parental generations
were evaluated in pots filled with soil: sand mixture, in a completely randomized design. A generation
means analysis was used to determine the inheritance of the root characteristics. Root weight and volume
exhibited moderate to high broad-sense heritability (0.41 - 0.81 for root weight, and 0.44 - 0.77 for
root volume). Additive and dominance effects were important in the inheritance of root weight and
volume in all populations, while epistatic effects were important only in two populations. The importance
of the genetic parameters in the inheritance of root to shoot weight ratio was unclear. With the presence
of large additive effects and high heritability, estimates for root weight and volume, selection for superior
pure lines with large root systems should be effective.


In many countries, the state owns or manages forests in the national interests of economic development, ecosystem service provision or biodiversity conservation. A national approach to reducing deforestation and forest degradation and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) will thus most likely involve governmental entities at different governance levels from central to local. Sub-national governments that implement REDD+ activities will generate carbon ecosystem services and potentially other co-benefits, such as biodiversity conservation, and in the process incur implementation and opportunity costs for these actions. This occasional paper analyses the literature on ecological fiscal transfers (EFTs), with a focus on experiences in Brazil and Portugal, to draw lessons for how policy instruments for intergovernmental transfers can be designed in a national REDD+ benefit-sharing system. EFTs can be an effective policy instrument for improving revenue adequacy and fiscal equalization across a country. They facilitate financial allocations based on a sub-national government's environmental performance, and could also partly compensate the costs of REDD+ implementation. We find that intergovernmental EFTs targeting sub-national public actors can be an important element of policy mix for REDD+ benefit sharing, particularly in a decentralized governance system, as decisions on forest and land use are being made at sub-national levels. Given the increasing focus and interest on jurisdictional REDD+, EFTs may have a role in filling the shortfall of revenues for REDD+ readiness and for implementing enabling actions related to forest governance. If EFTs are to have efficient and equitable outcomes, however, they will require strong information-sharing and transparency systems on environmental indicators and performance, and the disbursement and spending of EFT funds across all levels


Main memories are becoming sufficiently large that most OLTP databases can be stored entirely in main memory, but this may not be the best solution. OLTP workloads typically exhibit skewed access patterns where some records are hot (frequently accessed) but many records are cold (infrequently or never accessed). It is still more economical to store the coldest records on secondary storage such as flash. This paper introduces Siberia, a framework for managing cold data in the Microsoft Hekaton main-memory database engine. We discuss how to migrate cold data to secondary storage while providing an interface to the user to manipulate both hot and cold data that hides the actual data location. We describe how queries of different isolation levels can read and modify data stored in both hot and cold stores without restriction while minimizing number of accesses to cold storage. We also show how records can be migrated between hot and cold stores while the DBMS is online and active. Experiments reveal that for cold data access rates appropriate for main-memory optimized databases, we incur an acceptable 7-14% throughput loss.


The box type and parabolic solar cookers are commonly used for cooking of food in the noon. Among them, box type solar cooker is more popular due to its simplicity of handling and operation. The cooking applications of Glass Tube Type Solar Cooker have their applications in increasing the rate of evaporation of waste water, in food processing, for making drinking water from brackish and seawater. It produces a high temperature around 200°C and the food gets cooked in less time. Solar cooker must constantly be realigned with the orbiting sun for maximum effectiveness. Glass Tube Type Solar Cooker concentrates light to a larger surface, so it is slightly more tolerant for marginal errors of alignment. KeywordsEvacuted Tube; Design and analysis; litreture survey; performance and testing;result and features


Word Version
 July 17, 2013
 To the Administrator Addressed:
 SUBJECT: Continuation of Texas SUCCESS - Student Success Initiative Online Reading and Math Resources
 The purpose of this letter is to inform school districts and open-enrollment charter schools that the existing online mathematics and reading resources currently available through TEA's Texas SUCCESS (Students Using Curriculum Content to Ensure Sustained Success) initiative will be continued for the 2013-2014 school year. These resources were initially made available to students, parents, and teachers beginning August 24, 2012.  Throughout this first year of implementation, many districts have indicated that these resources have proven valuable.
 Texas SUCCESS is designed to provide Texas public school students withaccess to interactive math and reading programs in grades 3-8 under the Student Success Initiative (SSI).  The interactive online math and reading programs are currently provided by:
 Think Through Math, which provides an online interactive math program including live bilingual tutors to engage and assist students as they work to strengthen their math skills and deepen their understanding of math concepts.
 Istation, which  provides an online interactive reading program consisting of engaging, interactive content in a game-like format.
 These online programs support students at all skill levels and, more importantly, encourage and enable progress and achievement as students move through the activities and curriculum.  Each program assesses an individual student according to his/her skill level and then automatically assigns and delivers appropriate curriculum tailored to that student's abilities. Meaningful reporting tools available through both programs inform teachers and parents when an intervention is needed or confirm that the student is on the right path.  With free, 24/7 access to these online adaptive programs at school and at home, teachers, students and parents are equipped with the necessary tools to build confidence and promote academic success.
 TEA's designated SSI Support Center at Region 20 Education Service Center has established a single web portal from which students, parents, and schools may access resources from both Texas SUCCESS providers. A series of webinars, presentations, and toolkits are available in the Support section of the website to acquaint educators and other stakeholders with the various components of these online resources and provide information on the enrollment process. The SSI Support Center will continue to work with districts and both Texas SUCCESS providers and share materials that can be sent home to parents informing them of the online resources and instructions on how to access the resources from home.
 Information about other related SSI components will be provided in subsequent To the Administrator Addressed letters.
 For additional information and to sign up for these resources, visitwww.texassuccess.org.To contact the SSI Support Center email@example.com or call 877.315.4918 (toll free).
 Sincerely,
 Anita Givens
 Associate Commissioner
 Standards and Programs


Mutations in BRAF are commonly seen in thyroid carcinoma and can have therapeutic and prognostic implications. The BRAF V600E mutation is seen in approximately 40% of cases of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), and is associated with aggressive clinicopathological features, higher recurrence rate, and disease related mortality. Significant advances have occurred in the development of new therapeutic targets of the MAP kinase pathway, which is activated in the setting of BRAF mutations, including BRAF and mitogen extracellular kinase (MEK) inhibitors. BRAF alterations other than V600E are less common in PTC, and their clinical significance remains to be established. Here we present a case of a male with poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma, with papillary and follicular features, who was noted to have a BRAF K601E mutation. The patient was subsequently treated with a BRAF inhibitor, dabrafenib, and MEK inhibitor, trametinib.


The ratio of tissue RNA to DNA (R/D) is a widely used index of recent growth and nutritional condition in larval and juvenile fish. To date, however, no standard technique for measuring nucleic acids has been adopted. Because methodological details can affect the estimate of R/D, researchers using different analytical protocols have been unable to compare ratios directly. Here, we report on the results of an international interlaboratory calibration of 4 spectrofluorometric protocols to quantify nucleic acids. Replicate sets of 5 tissue samples and 2 standards (common standards) were supplied to each of 5 researchers for analysis with their own methods and standards. Two approaches were evaluated for mitigating the observed differences in values: 1) the use of common nucleic acid standards and 2) standardizing to a common slope ratio (slope of DNA standard curve/slope of RNA standard curve or m DNA / m RNA ). Adopting common standards slightly reduced the variability among protocols but did not overcome the problem. When tissue R/Ds were standardized based on a common m DNA / m RNA slope ratio, the variance attributed to analytical protocol decreased dramatically from 57.1% to 3.4%. We recommend that the ratio of the slopes of the standard curves be provided to facilitate intercomparability of R/D results among laboratories using different spectrofluorometric methods for the analysis of nucleic acids in fish. Heyer, Faulk, and A portion of this study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MAR970902, MAR2002-01591) and the European Union funded project NTAP (EVK3-CT-2000-00022; ELOISE contribution no. 525/40). This is contribution no. 3956 from the University of for Biological and contribution no. 1404 from the


The dynamics of the total intensity and of each individual mode of a microchip laser have been studied. Because of the nonlinear mode coupling by spatial hole burning, the intensity fluctuation of each longitudinal mode can be described by N relaxation frequencies, where N is the number of lasing modes. Owing to the small cross-saturation coefficient between the longitudinal modes, the total intensity exhibits a behavior much more complex than the regular relaxation oscillations usually observed. As a result of the short photon lifetime of the microchip laser this unstable behavior of the total intensity can easily be observed even when the number of modes is small. For each longitudinal mode, we also observed beating and antiphase dynamics between two coupled states of orthogonal polarization. Numerical simulations permit a good description of the experimental results.


Splash parks have been associated with infectious disease outbreaks as a result of exposure to poor water quality. To be able to protect public health, risk factors were identified that determine poor water quality. Samples were taken at seven splash parks where operators were willing to participate in the study. Higher concentrations of Escherichia coli were measured in water of splash parks filled with rainwater or surface water as compared with sites filled with tap water, independent of routine inspection intervals and employed disinfection. Management practices to prevent fecal contamination and guarantee maintaining good water quality at splash parks should include selection of source water of acceptable quality.


1. introduction, Foreign Investments and Common Concerns, Tullio Treves Part 1: General International Law Issues 2. The Jurisprudence of Investment Treaty Tribunals: Betweeen public good and common concern, Stephan Schill 3. Regulatory Measures, Standards of Treatment and the Law Applicable to Investment Disputes, Paolo Bertoli and Zeno Crespi Reghizzi 4. Investor Rights and Well-Being: Remarks on the interpretation of investment treaties in light of other rights, Luigi Crema 5. Necessity Exceptions, the Argentine Crisis and Legitimacy Concerns: Or the Benefits of a Public International Law Approach to Investment Arbitration, Christina Binder 6. The Role of Amicus Curiae in Investment Disputes: Striking a balance between confidentiality and broader policy considerations, Chiara Ragni 7. Standards and Guidelines: Some interfaces with private investments, Laurence Boisson de Chazournes Part 2: Institutional Aspects 8. The World Bank Guidelines on the Treatment of Foreign Direct Investment 20 Years On, Francesco Seatzu 9. Non Trade Values Protection and Investment Protection in EU Investment Policy, Anna De Luca 10. Going Green at the European Investment Bank: An environmental policy for non EU lending, Sara De Maria 11. Promoting Investments in Sustainable Development Through Multilateral Environmental Agreements, Francesca Romanin Jacur Part 3: Common Concerns: Selected Issues 12. Mapping Environmental Concerns in International Investment Agreements: How far have we gone?, Michele Potesta 13. Environmental Expropriation in International Investment Law, Paolo Vargiu 14. Applying Corporate Social Responsibility to Foreign Investments: Failures and prospects, Angelica Bonfanti 15. Foregin Investments in the Offshore Energy Industry: Investment protection v. energy security v. protection of the marine environment, Seline Trevisanut 16. Right to Property, Investments and Environmental Protection: The perspectives of the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights, Cesare Pitea 17. The Protection of Cultural Rights and Cultural Heritage in International Investment Law and Arbitration, Giulia Bigi 18. International Investment Law and the International Protection of Workers' Rights, Stefano Brugnatelli 19. Public Interest Concerns in International Investment Arbitration in the Water Services Sector, Attila Tanzi 20. Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Investment Protection, Annamaria Viterbo


This report combines two primary problems under general disaster considerations. First, a methodology is presented to identify vulnerable transportation infrastructure, which is defined as the set of network links, the damage of which results in the maximum disruption of the network's origin-destination connectivity. The disrupting agent is permitted a limited number of resources with which to damage the network. The measure of disruption, resulting from the damage, is based on a given set of traffic conditions, the availability of alternate paths, and roadway design characteristics. A bi-level mathematical programming model represents the interaction of the traffic assignment and the disruption measure. This bi-level model allows the problem to be viewed as a game between an evil entity, who seeks to disrupt the network, and a traffic management agency that routes vehicles so as to avoid vulnerable links to the greatest degree possible while meeting origin-destination demands. The second problem is to mathematically describe household decision making behavior in an emergency evacuation. Traditional transportation network evacuation models have omitted a commonly observed sociological phenomenon - that families gather together before evacuating an area. This omission can lead to overly optimistic evacuation times, and the evacuation models fail to capture underlying traffic patterns that only arise during times of crises. Two linear integer programs are developed to model the decision making behavior; the first describes a meeting location selection process and the second assigns trip chains for drivers to pick up family members who may not have access to a vehicle. The mathematical programs are combined with a traffic assignment-simulation package for evacuation analysis. Interactions between the two problems are also explored. Evacuation conditions are examined when the traffic management agency routes traffic around vulnerable links. The impact of the unusual traffic patterns, that arise using the household decision making behavior evacuation model, is evaluated in terms of shifts in the relative vulnerability of the transportation links. Finally, the routing strategies are evaluated for extensions in network evacuation times.


The Supreme Court's treatment of religion under the First Amendment has shifted significantly in the past quarter century. Though the Court had focused on separation for the Establishment Clause and accommodation for the Free Exercise Clause for several years, the Court has begun to increasingly shift its focus to an emphasis on neutrality. Unlike prior years when religion was viewed as either particularly threatening or needy, the Court has begun to treat religion the same as other societal influences and values—no better and no worse. Although there have been exceptions, such as with regard to religion in public schools, a neutrality paradigm began to emerge as dominant when addressing religion issues. The Supreme Court's decision last term in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church and School v. EEOC marked an important departure from the neutrality paradigm. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment create a ministerial exception to antidiscrimination laws, meaning that, at least for certain ministerial positions, religious organizations must be accommodated and exempted from an otherwise general and neutral law. Though not overturning or replacing the neutrality paradigm that has emerged in recent decades to resolve many religion-related issues, Hosanna-Tabor does make a significant dent in the paradigm. The Court recognized two basic principles, the implications of which stretch far beyond the immediate facts of the case. First, the Court made clear that religion has a unique status under the Constitution, being granted protection beyond what other values and ideas might have under free speech. Second the Court in Hosanna-Tabor essentially recognized that religious institutions have a right of autonomy that frees them from certain types of government interference. Though the majority opinion did not characterize it as such, the rationales given and precedents cited all point in the direction of a special right of autonomy that religious institutions enjoy pursuant to their unique status under the Constitution. This autonomy interest does not insulate religious institutions from government regulations; far from it. But it does protect religious organizations from government interference with their core identity and function, such as doctrine, faith, mission, and governance. This Article will discuss the potential impact of Hosanna-Tabor, arguing that the Court in effect recognized an autonomy interest for religious organizations that protects them from the application of anti-discrimination laws as they relate to matters of leadership, governance, and mission. Part I discusses the background of the decision, examining the emergence of the neutrality paradigm for resolving issues relating to religious rights. Part II discusses the Hosanna-Tabor decision. Part III briefly discusses the impact of Hosanna-Tabor with regard to two areas: (1) the limits it puts on Smith; and (2) its expansion of religious associational rights. Finally, Part IV briefly examines the scope of the ministerial exception, its application to issues of governance and membership, and how the autonomy interest intersects with the neutrality paradigm.


Since independence, India has struggled to provide its people with universal health coverage. Whether defined in terms of financial protection or access to and effective use of health care, the majority of Indians remain irregularly and incompletely covered. Finally, and most recently, a new generation of Government-Sponsored Health Insurance Schemes (GSHISs) has emerged to provide the poor with financial coverage. Briefly, the main objective of these new GSHISs was to offer financial protection against catastrophic health shocks, defined in terms of an inpatient stay. Between 2007 and 2010, six major schemes have emerged, including one sponsored by the Government of India (GOI) and five state-sponsored schemes. This new wave of schemes provides fully subsidized coverage for a limited package of secondary or tertiary inpatient care, targeting below poverty populations. Similar to the private voluntary insurance products in the country, ambulatory services including drugs are not covered except as part of an episode of illness requiring an inpatient stay. The schemes have organized hospital networks consisting of public and private facilities, and most care funded by these schemes is provided in private hospitals. Ostensibly, the objective of any health insurance scheme is to increase access, utilization, and financial protection, and ultimately improve health status. Due to lack of evaluations and analyses of household data, the authors of this book do not examine the impact of health insurance in terms of these objectives. This book is not meant to highlight problems of the GSHISs, but rather to raise potential challenges and emerging issues that should be addressed to ensure the long-term viability of these schemes and secure their place within the health finance and delivery system.


Delay testing at the operational system clock rate can detect system timing failures caused by delay faults. However, delay fault coverage in terms of the percentage of the number of tested faults may not be an effective measure of delay testing. A quantitative delay fault coverage model to provide a figure of merit for delay testing is presented. System sensitivity of a path to a delay fault along that path and the effectiveness of a delay test are described in terms of the propagation delay of the path under test and the delay defect size. A new statistical delay fault coverage model is established. A defect level model is also proposed as a function of the yield of a manufacturing process and the new statistical delay fault coverage. A new delay testing strategy driven by the defect level for delay faults is proposed. >


Background: Hypertension is a major health problem worldwide. Increased vascular resistance, sodium retention & sympathetic over activity contributes to the blood pressure elevation. Plant foods may be beneficial in decreasing blood pressure (BP). Recently much attention has been focused on plant foods that may be beneficial in preventing Hypertension, metabolic syndrome and possibly reduce the risk of various diseases. This clinical study was conducted to test the effectiveness of a structured intervention on BP of primary hypertensive subjects. Aim: To study the effect of Tender Coconut Water (TCW) on BP of Primary hypertensive subjects. Methods and Material: 70 subjects were selected randomly sample for 6 weeks of the intervention program. Among them 40 subjects were selected as the experimental group and 30 300ml/day for 6 weeks whereas the control group was instructed to follow the same routine without modifications. One initial, two mid intervention (after every 15 days) and one final (post intervention) BP recorded for both the groups. The obtained data was statistically analyzed. Results: The mean systolic BP of experimental group and control group were decreased from 145.8 mm Hg and 141mm of Hg to 135.3 mm of Hg and 140 mm of Hg respectively. The mean diastolic BP of experimental group and control group were decreased from 93.7 mm H g and 90.9 mmHg to 86.9 mm of Hg and 89.7 mm of Hg respectively. Conclusion: Irrespective of cause of hypertension TCW has beneficial effect on BP. TCW contains high amount of potassium which causes vasodilatation and also improve the endothelial function.


We present Keck II laser guide star adaptive optics observations of the brown dwarf WISEP J061135.13−041024.0 showing it is a binary with a component separation of 0.″4. This system is one of the six known resolved binaries in which the magnitude differences between the components show a reversal in sign between the Y/J band and the H/K bands. Deconvolution of the composite spectrum results in a best-fit binary solution with L9 and T1.5 components. We also present a preliminary parallax placing the system at a distance of 21.2 ± 1.3 pc. Using the distance and resolved magnitudes we are able to place WISEP J061135.13−041024.0 AB on a color–absolute magnitude diagram, showing that this system contributes to the well-known "J-band bump" and the components' properties appear similar to other late-type L and early-type T dwarfs. Fitting our data to a set of cloudy atmosphere models suggests the system has an age >1 Gyr with WISE 0611−0410 A having an effective temperature (Teff) of 1275–1325 K and mass of 64–65 MJup, and WISE 0611−0410 B having Teff = 1075–1115 K and mass 40–65 MJup.


Many of the existing approaches for program comprehension rely on the linguistic information found in source code, such as identifier names and comments. Semantic clustering is one such technique for modularization of the system that relies on the informal semantics of the program, encoded in the vocabulary used in the source code. Treating the source code as a collection of tokens loses the semantic information embedded within the identifiers. We try to overcome this problem by introducing context models for source code identifiers to obtain a semantic kernel, which can be used for both deriving the topics that run through the system as well as their clustering. In the first model, we abstract an identifier to its type representation and build on this notion of context to construct contextual vector representation of the source code. The second notion of context is defined based on the flow of data between identifiers to represent a module as a dependency graph where the nodes correspond to identifiers and the edges represent the data dependencies between pairs of identifiers. We have applied our approach to 10 medium-sized open source Java projects, and show that by introducing contexts for identifiers, the quality of the modularization of the software systems is improved. Both of the context models give results that are superior to the plain vector representation of documents. In some cases, the authoritativeness of decompositions is improved by 67%. Furthermore, a more detailed evaluation of our approach on JEdit, an open source editor, demonstrates that inferred topics through performing topic analysis on the contextual representations are more meaningful compared to the plain representation of the documents. The proposed approach in introducing a context model for source code identifiers paves the way for building tools that support developers in program comprehension tasks such as application and domain concept location, software modularization and topic analysis.


In this thesis, I study the use of regulation as a redistributive policy and its implications on economic and political outcomes.

In the first chapter of this thesis, I remark that regulation has distributive and welfare consequences, making it a powerful political tool. I show that when the regulation is on goods for which all of the citizens have similar consumption behaviour, a highly unequal society funds the costs of those goods mostly through general taxation; instead of tariffs charged to users. Importantly, when the poor have access to only the essential goods in the economy, regulation becomes a strong political tool, and it is poverty rather than inequality that determines the use of regulation.

In the second chapter, I start with the observation that corporations devote costly efforts to gain access to candidates before elections. These pre-electoral attempts take many forms and commonly result in a welfare loss. Then, I explore the consequences of the access of a monopolistic firm to a candidate on the regulatory policy. I show that when the firm transfers a private interest to a popular candidate, regulation results in gains for both the firm and the candidate; and a welfare loss for the voters. Instead, this welfare loss does not take place when the firm uses campaign contributions as signals to communicate private information. From this perspective, there are benefits in permitting interest groups to fund political campaigns.

The third chapter is motivated by the fact that developing countries subsidise the tariffs of public utilities such as electricity or transportation with high costs in terms of the quality and sustainability of the utility provisions. Even when governments repeatedly claim that the main goal of these subsidies is to improve the well-being of the poor, most literature has explained the use of these tools is driven by income inequality rather than the poverty rate. In contrast, I study the effect of the size of the poor on the choice of the mix of regulation and other traditional forms of redistributive policy. I begin by showing that the poor are better characterised by their consumption bundle than their income. Consequently, when the public utilities are essential for the poor, a higher poverty rate leads to a larger amount of subsidies to utilities and a smaller size of income redistribution.


When language is processed, brain activity occurs not only in the classic 'language areas' such as Broca's area, but also in areas which control movement. Our systems of understanding, including higher level cognition, are rooted in bodily awareness which needs to be developed as a precursor to intellectual reasoning. Cognition is embodied, and this concept may offer a radical new way of improving school education by improving children's systems of physical understanding. A new classroom physical intervention, called Move4words, based on embodied cognition, was developed for pupils aged 7–13 years and trialled with 348 typical pupils in 10 mainstream UK schools. Three pilot controlled trials showed significant improvements in academic performance, particularly for struggling pupils performing in the lowest 20 percent. Effect sizes were large for the lowest achievers: Hedges' g = 0.86 for national examinations at age 11 (KS2 SATs) and g = 1.24 for progress through National Curriculum Levels in reading, writing and maths. Performance gains were maintained for at least 1 year after the end of the intervention.


ABSTRACT Background and Objective HIV and herpes simplex virus type-2 (HSV-2) are sexually transmitted infections, with HSV-2 being nearly 10 times as infectious as HIV. HSV-2 prevalence has been established as an objective biomarker and a proxy measure of sexual risk behavior. HIV epidemics appear to be emerging in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, but the time course and future size of these epidemics are still unknown. We assessed HIV epidemic potential across regions using the association between HSV-2 and HIV prevalence, and based on a global systematic review of HIV and HSV-2 prevalence and meta-analyses. Methods Sources of data were PubMed and Embase databases, and country-level reports. Data on the prevalence of HIV (PHIV) and of HSV-2 (PHSV2) in the same population were extracted from eligible studies. Our analysis included all population groups except adolescents and injecting drug users, where the dominant mode of HIV transmission was not sexual. Studies with sample sizes of less than 50 were excluded. Odds ratios were calculated as (PHSV2/ (1- PHSV2)) / (PHIV/ (1- PHIV)), and relative risks as (PHSV2/ PHIV). Meta-analyses were conducted incorporating the inverse variance method and using a random-effects model to pool summary estimates of odds ratios and relative risks in different geographical regions. Results The meta-analysis included 662 study measures with a total population of 590,220 individuals from 67 countries. The pooled odds ratio of HSV-2 prevalence relative to HIV prevalence was low in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and North America/West Europe, 6.0 (95% CI 5.5-6.5), 10.4 (95% CI 9.2- 11.8), and 13.0 (95% CI 9.9- 17.8), respectively. We found high odds ratios in East Europe 73.6 (95% CI 32.8-165.5), MENA 38.0 (95% CI 15.2-95.0), and Latin America 30.4 (95% CI 22.4-41.4). The pooled estimates of relative risks followed the same pattern as the odds ratios across all regions. Discussion The small odds ratios in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and North America/West Europe suggest established HIV epidemics that have likely reached saturation. Meanwhile, the large odds ratios in MENA, East Europe, and Latin America, suggest emerging HIV epidemics that have not yet reached their epidemic potential. These results corroborate recent data about the trend of HIV epidemics in these regions. The findings are of concern for MENA as they suggest that the HIV epidemics are likely to grow within this decade and the next one. HIV response in MENA needs to be expanded through bio-behavioral surveillance, voluntary counseling, testing, and treatment services, and focus on HIV prevention.


Occupational therapy practice is grounded in the delivery of occupation-centered, patient-driven treatments that engage clients in the process of doing to improve health. As emerging technologies, such as medical imaging, find their way into rehabilitation practice, it is imperative that occupational therapy practitioners assess whether and how these tools can be incorporated into treatment regimens that are dually responsive to the medical model of health care and to the profession's foundation in occupation. Most medical imaging modalities have a discrete place in occupation-based intervention as outcome measures or for patient education; however, sonographic imaging has the potential to blend multiple occupational therapy practice forms to document treatment outcomes, inform clinical reasoning, and facilitate improved functional performance when used as an accessory tool in direct intervention. Use of medical imaging is discussed as it relates to occupational foundations and the professional role within the context of providing efficient, effective patient-centered rehabilitative care.


Two new U-Pb dates (sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe on zircon) have an important bearing on the age of the Marinoan (Elatina) glaciation, a presumed global chronostratigraphic marker that has been previously poorly constrained in terms of its numerical age. In the Grassy Group of King Island, intermediate sills dated as 575 ± 3 Ma intrude an Elatina-equivalent diamictite (the Cottons Breccia), cap carbonate, and postglacial shale. The sills are locally vesicular, stratigraphically limited, probably intruded at shallow depth, and probably closely postdate the end of Marinoan glaciation. In the Togari Group of northwest Tasmania, a rhyodacite flow dated as 582 ± 4 Ma underlies the Croles Hill Diamictite, which is at least partly glaciogenic. No cap carbonate is known from the Croles Hill Diamictite, but in other respects its stratigraphic setting is similar to the Cottons Breccia. The two dates together support a significantly younger age (ca. 580 Ma) for the Marinoan glaciation than some previous estimates, and suggest correlation with the Gaskiers Formation of Newfoundland. The new data cannot exclude the possibility of a ca. 620 Ma age for the Marinoan glaciation, as suggested by recent evidence from outside Australia, but this would require a more complex and much less probable interpretation of the Tasmanian stratigraphic relationships.


A 12 week old baby boy of South East Asian ethnicity was admitted in winter with a three day history of cough, coryza, rapid breathing, and reduced feeding. The initial diagnosis was bronchiolitis. He deteriorated on the second day after admission with worsening respiratory distress.

Testing for respiratory syncytial virus in his nasopharyngeal aspirate was negative, and he had normal inflammatory markers and white blood cell count. A chest radiograph was taken (fig 1⇓). He was started on intravenous amoxicillin because pneumonia was suspected.

Fig 1 Day 1

Two days later he developed high grade fever and needed oxygen. While taking a history from his parents, they explained that the boy's grandmother, who had looked after him since the first week of life, was visiting from Pakistan and was being investigated for chronic cough.

(1) Fig 1⇑ shows an anteroposterior chest radiograph. The abnormalities are a …


This paper presents an optimization framework for the regionalization problem. Having a set of regions for which an allocation problem is defined in the presence of nonlinear spatial characteristics related to grouping of the regions, one has to solve the allocation-and-grouping problem.

Indications are given as to the nature of nonlinear spatial characteristics, making the grouping aspect of the problem appear together with an exemplary form of the model.

The complexity of a problem thus conceived makes the direct application of complete enumeration, dynamic programming and branch-and-bound impossible. Thus, an iterative scheme is proposed in which the partial and simplified problems are solved at each step of the iterative procedure.

In order to follow this procedure, a method was required that would yield groupings or clusters optimizing a certain objective function. A new, general, objective function for clustering is formulated, providing both optimal partitions and the number of clusters. It is presented along with the method in the second part of the paper in which other methods of solving the regionalization problem are also reviewed.


BACKGROUND
A pterygium is a fleshy, wing-shaped growth from the conjunctiva, crossing over the limbus onto the cornea. Prevalence ranges widely around the world. Evidence suggests that ultraviolet light is a major contributor in the formation of pterygia. Pterygia impair vision, limit eye movements, and can cause eye irritation, foreign body sensation, and dryness. In some susceptible patients, the pterygium can grow over the entire corneal surface, blocking the visual axis.Surgery is the only effective treatment for pterygium, though recurrences are common. With simple excision techniques (that is, excising the pterygium and leaving bare sclera), the risk of recurrence has been reported to be upwards of 80%. Pterygium excision combined with a tissue graft has a lower risk of recurrence. In conjunctival autograft surgery, conjunctival tissue from another part of the person's eye along with limbal tissue is resected in one piece and used to cover the area from which the pterygium was excised. Another type of tissue graft surgery for pterygium is amniotic membrane graft, whereby a piece of donor amniotic membrane is fixed to the remaining limbus and bare sclera area after the pterygium has been excised.

OBJECTIVES
The objective of this review was to assess the safety and effectiveness of conjunctival autograft (with or without adjunctive therapy) compared with amniotic membrane graft (with or without adjunctive therapy) for pterygium. We also planned to determine whether use of MMC yielded better surgical results and to assess the direct and indirect comparative costs of these procedures.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched CENTRAL (which contains the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Trials Register) (Issue 10, 2015), Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid MEDLINE In-Process and Other Non-Indexed Citations, Ovid MEDLINE Daily, Ovid OLDMEDLINE (January 1946 to November 2015), EMBASE (January 1980 to November 2015), PubMed (1948 to November 2015), Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature Database (LILACS) (1982 to November 2015), the metaRegister of Controlled Trials (mRCT) (www.controlled-trials.com) (last searched 21 November 2014), ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov) and the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (www.who.int/ictrp/search/en). We did not use any date or language restrictions in the electronic search for trials. We last searched the electronic databases on 23 November 2015.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We included in this review randomized controlled trials that had compared conjunctival autograft surgery (with or without adjunctive therapy) with amniotic membrane graft surgery (with or without adjunctive therapy) in people with primary or recurrent pterygium.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently screened search results and assessed full-text reports from among the potentially eligible trials. Two review authors independently extracted data from the included trials and assessed the trial characteristics and risk of bias. The primary outcome was the risk of recurrence of pterygium at 3 months and 6 months after surgery. We combined results from individual studies in meta-analyses using random-effects models. Risk of recurrence of pterygium was reported using risk ratios to compare conjunctival autograft with amniotic membrane transplant.

MAIN RESULTS
We identified 20 studies that had analyzed a total of 1947 eyes of 1866 participants (individual studies ranged from 8 to 346 participants who were randomized). The studies were conducted in eight different countries: one in Brazil, three in China, three in Cuba, one in Egypt, two in Iran, two in Thailand, seven in Turkey, and one in Venezuela. Overall risk of bias was unclear, as many studies did not provide information on randomization methods or masking to prevent performance and detection bias.The risk ratio for recurrence of pterygium using conjunctival autograft versus amniotic membrane transplant was 0.87 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.43 to 1.77) and 0.53 (95% CI 0.33 to 0.85) at 3 months and 6 months, respectively. These estimates include participants with primary and recurrent pterygia. We performed a subgroup analysis to compare participants with primary pterygia with participants with recurrent pterygia. For participants with primary pterygia, the risk ratio was 0.92 (95% CI 0.37 to 2.30) and 0.58 (95% CI 0.27 to 1.27) at 3 months and 6 months, respectively. We were only able to estimate the recurrence of pterygia at 6 months for participants with recurrent pterygia, and the risk ratio comparing conjunctival autograft with amniotic membrane transplant was 0.45 (95% CI 0.21 to 0.99). One included study was a doctoral thesis and did not use allocation concealment. When this study was excluded in a sensitivity analysis, the risk ratio for pterygium recurrence at 6 months' follow-up was 0.43 (95% CI 0.30 to 0.62) for participants with primary and recurrent pterygium. One of the secondary outcomes, the proportion of participants with clinical improvement, was analyzed in only one study. This study reported clinical outcome as the risk of non-recurrence, which was seen in 93.8% of participants in the conjunctival limbal autograft group and 93.3% in the amniotic membrane transplant group at 3 months after surgery.We did not analyze data on the need for repeat surgery, vision-related quality of life, and direct and indirect costs of surgery due to an insufficient number of studies reporting these outcomes.Thirteen studies reported adverse events associated with conjunctival autograft surgery and amniotic membrane transplant surgery. Adverse events that occurred in more than one study were granuloma and pyogenic granuloma and increased intraocular pressure. None of the included studies reported that participants had developed induced astigmatism.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
In association with pterygium excision, conjunctival autograft is associated with a lower risk of recurrence at six months' after surgery than amniotic membrane transplant. Participants with recurrent pterygia in particular have a lower risk of recurrence when they receive conjunctival autograft surgery compared with amniotic membrane transplant. There are few studies comparing the two techniques with respect to visual acuity outcomes, and we identified no studies that reported on vision-related quality of life or direct or indirect costs. Comparison of these two procedures in such outcome measures bears further investigation. There were an insufficient number of studies that used adjunctive mitomycin C to estimate the effects on pterygium recurrence following conjunctival autograft or amniotic membrane transplant.