The Engineering Pilot plant at Murdoch University is one of the unique process facilities that currently exists in any universities in Australia. It provides an opportunity for Instrumentation and Control engineering students studying at Murdoch University to explore various control methods and strategies to extend their range of knowledge in this area with the aid of physical instruments and software provided in the pilot plant.

The purpose of this thesis project is to devise a strategy to improve the process measurements in the pilot plant through investigation of theory and implementation of Steady State Data Reconciliation and Online Dynamic Data reconciliation and to observe and testify if data reconciliation can improve process control performance with a more accurate set of measurements

This project has been divided into three different stages with the first stage being, the understanding of data reconciliation, understanding of DR using existing case studies, followed by the investigation of the physical implementation and foundation work of data reconciliation in the pilot plant, and finally the testing and conclusion as to whether or not data reconciliation can improve the process measurements and consequently the control results.

Results of the implementation of data reconciliation indicated the improvement of process measurements. Non-Linear Tank and Needle Tank have shown considerable measurement improvement with the implementation of data reconciliation on the measuring variables of both tanks. Flow rate in, flow rate out, and levels of both tanks were monitored and measured except the flow going into Non-linear Tank were estimated as there were no measuring device available for that particular variable.

Ball Mill Tank and Cyclone Underflow Tank were also investigated with a recycle stream, steady state data reconciliation have also been implemented at this process system and helps to improve a better understanding of data reconciliation applications.

Dynamic data reconciliation were also implemented at the Needle Tank in the pilot plant for case study investigation, the results obtained is of what was expected and proved that DDR can provide significant contribution in terms of improving process control performance of the process system in the future.


Limited access to quality feeds and reliable feed supply are amongst the priority constraints of smallholder pig production in Uganda. Among the feeds given to pigs, sweetpotato (SP), banana and other root tubers residues are common. However, information on farmers' perceptions and practices on the proper use of these residues for pig feeding is limited. Therefore, this study aimed at assessing those aspects, as well as to identify opportunities for better use of these residues in the pig-SP systems. A qualitative survey was undertaken in Masaka and Kamuli, two districts of Uganda with high pig population and SP production. Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and Key Informant Interviews (KII) were undertaken with 80 small scale pig and SP producers and 24 key informants. Results from this study revealed that the majority of pig farmers in those districts use SP and other RTB crop residues as animal feed. During the rainy season, farmers scored high the utilization of SP crop residues, with the latter being the leading contributor to the pig diet especially in the rural area. SP crop residues are usually fed to pigs fresh without processing. Among the residues, fresh raw vines represent the largest part fed to pig (70%), as compared to roots and peels. The way these residues are offered vary, for example in peri-urban areas with easier access to commercial feeds, farmers feed the crop residues mixed with concentrates; whereas in rural areas with limited access to commercial feeds, crop residues tend to be given without supplementation. However, the full potential of SP and other RTB crop residues for pig feeding is not yet fully exploited as farmers accept that a large amount is wasted (37% in Masaka and 40% in Kamuli). In Masaka, the proportion of SP crop residues utilized at household level mostly for pig feeding was 40%, while in Kamuli was 52%. This study demonstrated that there is potential for better use of SP and other RTB crop residues as pig feed in the smallholder pig farming systems in Uganda, but the major constraint as pointed out by farmers is the poor access to technologies for preserving these resources. Therefore, there is a need for further exploration of strategies for conserving SP and other RTB crop residues during the harvesting period for use in pig feeding during times of feed scarcity.


It might be easy to imagine that physical models only rep-resent a small portion of the universe of appropriate force feedback controllers for haptic new media; however, we argue the contrary in this work, in which we apply creative physical model design to re-examine the science of feedback stability. For example, in an idealized analog haptic feedback control system, if the feedback corresponds to a passive physical model, then the haptic control system is guaranteed to be stable, as we show. Furthermore, we argue that it is in fact necessary that the feedback corresponds to a passive physical model. Otherwise, there exists a passive user-haptic device transfer function that can drive the feedback control system unstable. To simplify the mathematics, we make several assumptions, which we discuss throughout the paper and reexamine in an appendix. The work implies that besides all of the known advantages of physical models, we can argue that we should employ only them for designing haptic force feedback. For example, even though granular synthesis has traditionally been implemented using signal modeling methods, we argue that physical modeling should still be employed when controlling granular synthesis with a haptic force-feedback device.


In the time since the rise of the Internet, it has often been claimed that it has the potential to contribute to the quality of democracy by fostering citizens' involvement in politics. So far, empirical evidence regarding this purported effect has been mixed, and many questions about the consequences of specific forms of political Internet use (PIU) have remained unanswered. This study expands the knowledge about the relation between PIU and political involvement by examining the effect of active and passive forms of PIU on citizens' political involvement: more specifically, interest and voter turnout during election times. The results obtained from a panel study of a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 985) reveal a positive relation between particular forms of PIU on the one hand and voter turnout and political interest on the other hand. In addition, for two specific forms of PIU, the positive effect on voter turnout is more prevalent for citizens who exhibit lower levels of political interest.


A vanadium 2,6-naphthalenedicarboxylate, VIII(OH)(O2C–C10H6–CO2)·H2O, denoted as COMOC-3as (COMOC = Center for Ordered Materials, Organometallics and Catalysis, Ghent University), has been synthesized under hydrothermal conditions by means of both a solvothermal and a microwave synthesis procedure. The structure shows the topology of an aluminium 2,6-naphthalenedicarboxylate, the so-called MIL-69 (MIL = Materials of the Institute Lavoisier). After calcination at 250 °C in air, the VIII center was oxidized to VIV with the structure of VIVO(O2C–C10H6–CO2) (COMOC-3). The oxidation process was verified by cyclic voltammetry and EPR spectroscopy. The crystallinity was investigated by variable-temperature XRD. The title compound is stable against air and moisture. The catalytic performance of COMOC-3 was examined in the liquid-phase oxidation of cyclohexene. COMOC-3 exhibited similar catalytic performance to MIL-47 [VO(O2C–C6H4–CO2)]. The compound is reusable and maintains its catalytic activity through several runs.


Arachidonic acid (AA) stimulates the adhesion of cells, such as the metastatic breast carcinoma cell line MDA-MB-435, to extracellular matrix proteins, such as collagen. Kennett et al. show that exposure of cells to AA stimulates activation of protein kinase Cμ (PKCμ) and the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase and promotes adhesion of MDA-MB-435 to collagen. Not only was PKCμ activated by phosphorylation in response to AA, it was translocated to the membrane and cleaved by calpain, which resulted in the accumulation of a truncated, activated cytosolic form of PKCμ. Pharmacological inhibition of PKCμ or calpain decreased cell adhesion in response to AA. Stimulation of phosphorylation of PKCμ or p38 was independent of each other, on the basis of pharmacological inhibition experiments. However, inhibition of p38 activity did decrease the calpain-mediated proteolysis of PKCμ. Thus, p38 may provide feedback on the PKCμ arm of the pathway not at the level of activation, but at the level of proteolysis by calpain and subsequent subcellular redistribution of the truncated active form of PKCμ. S. B. Kennett, J. D. Roberts, K. Olden, Requirement of protein kinase Cμ activation and calpain-mediated proteolysis for arachidonic acid-stimulated adhesion of MDA-MB-435 human mammary carcinoma cells to collagen type IV. J. Biol. Chem. 279, 3300-3307 (2004). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The inconsistent distribution and representation of image and text make it quite challenging to measure their similarity, and construct correlation between them. Inspired by neural machine translation to establish a corresponding relationship between two entirely different languages, we attempt to treat images as a special kind of language to provide visual descriptions, so that translation can be conduct between bilingual pair of image and text to effectively explore cross-modal correlation. Thus, we propose Cross-modal Bidirectional Translation (CBT) approach, and further explore the utilization of reinforcement learning to improve the translation process. First, a cross-modal translation mechanism is proposed, where image and text are treated as bilingual pairs, and cross-modal correlation can be effectively captured in both feature spaces of image and text by bidirectional translation training. Second, cross-modal reinforcement learning is proposed to perform a bidirectional game between image and text, which is played as a round to promote the bidirectional translation process. Besides, both inter-modality and intra-modality reward signals can be extracted to provide complementary clues for boosting cross-modal correlation learning. Experiments are conducted to verify the performance of our proposed approach on cross-modal retrieval, compared with 11 state-of-the-art methods on 3 datasets.


By the year 2020, the number of newly graduated nurses entering into nursing has been predicted to inadequately offset the anticipated number of experienced nurses retiring from the profession. In addition, recent estimates show newly graduated nurse turnover rates range from 14% to 60% during their first years of practice. A purposeful review of the literature was performed in order to gain insight into the process of transitioning from student to practicing nurse and to determine needs, experiences, and outcomes associated with newly graduated nurses in acute care settings. Once common intellectual, emotional, socio-cultural, and physical experiences were identified, an educational pamphlet was constructed. The purpose of creating such a pamphlet was to provide useful information, highlight specific common needs, and suggest resources and strategies to supplement newly graduated nurses throughout their transition period and socialization process. Current research shows newly graduated nurses can successfully transition into acute care settings with the provision of pertinent information; the guidance from key stakeholders including, educators, managers, and administrators; and the support of preceptorship, mentorship, and orientation programs. Positive transitional periods are associated with increased reports of job satisfaction and with lower voluntary turnover rates among newly graduated nurses.


The most expanded fcc-structured alkali fulleride, Cs3C60, is a Mott insulator at ambient pressure because of the weak overlap between the frontier t1u molecular orbitals of the C603− anions. It has a severely disordered antiferromagnetic ground state that becomes a superconductor with a high critical temperature, Tc of 35 K upon compression. The effect of the localised t1u3 electronic configuration on the properties of the material is not well-understood. Here we study the relationship between the intrinsic crystallographic C603− orientational disorder and the molecular Jahn–Teller (JT) effect dynamics in the Mott insulating state. The high-resolution 13C magic-angle-spinning (MAS) NMR spectrum at room temperature comprises three peaks in the intensity ratio 1:2:2 consistent with the presence of three crystallographically-inequivalent carbon sites in the fcc unit cell and revealing that the JT-effect dynamics are fast on the NMR time-scale of 10−5 s despite the presence of the frozen-in C603− merohedral disorder disclosed by the 133Cs MAS NMR fine splitting of the tetrahedral and octahedral 133Cs resonances. Cooling to sub-liquid-nitrogen temperatures leads to severe broadening of both the 13C and 133Cs MAS NMR multiplets, which provides the signature of an increased number of inequivalent 13C and 133Cs sites. This is attributed to the freezing out of the C603− JT dynamics and the development of a t1u electronic orbital glass state guided by the merohedral disorder of the fcc structure. The observation of the dynamic and static JT effect in the Mott insulating state of the metrically cubic but merohedrally disordered Cs3C60 fulleride in different temperature ranges reveals the intimate relation between charge localization, magnetic ground state, lifting of electronic degeneracy, and orientational disorder in these strongly-correlated systems.


The embedded wavelet image coders such as SPIHT [1] or JPEG 2000 [2] allow an efficient progressive transmission of digital images. However, the bitstreams generated by these coders are very sensitive to channel noise, and error protection is necessary to ensure acceptable reconstruction fidelity. One of the most successful protection systems for embedded wavelet coders was recently proposed by Sherwood and Zeger [3] who partitioned the bitstream of information bits into packets of fixed length and protected these packets by using a concatenation of a cyclic redundancycheck (CRC) coder for error detection and a rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) coder for error correction. A challenging task is to find an optimal error protection for such systems [4]; that is, an assignment of the available channel rates to the packets that minimizes the expected reconstruction error (measured, for example, by the peaksignal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)) subject to a total bit rate constraint. An alternative proposed in [4] is to maximize the expected number of error-free received source bits for this target total bit rate. Though suboptimal in the PSNR sense, this approach has two advantages. First, an optimal protection can be determined with a fast algorithm [4, 5]. Second, the solution is independent of both the source coder and the test image. Thus, the algorithm can also be implemented by the receiver, avoiding the need for sending side information, which would have to be strongly protected. In progressive decoding, a very good performance is desirable not only at the target total rate, but also at all intermediate rates. In particular, a good image quality at the lowest rates is very useful in internet browsing because it allows the receiver to stop the transmission at an early stage whenever necessary. In this paper, we consider an error protection strategy that maximizes the average expected number of error-free received source bits over all intermediate rates. We prove many interesting properties of an optimal solution, present a linear-time algorithm (linear in the number of packets) for computing a solution, and compare its progressive performance (number of error-free received source bits and PSNR) to that of the standard strategy that is optimal at the target total rate [4] for the SPIHT and JPEG 2000 source coders with a binary symmetric channel and an RCPC channel coder.


As today's organizations become more globally oriented, their leaders must help those they lead deal with an increasingly prevalent source of conflict—social identities. Our social identities are made up of the aspects of ourselves that are tied to the various demographic and cultural groups to which we belong. Learning how to deal with social identity conflicts isn't easy, but it is possible.


In Part I [J. 28 1896 (2011) of this paper, the physical model for fully developed speckle is ex- amined based on two critical assumptions. (i) It is assumed that in the object plane, the speckle field is delta correlated, and (ii) it is assumed that the speckle field in the observation plane can be described as a Gaussian random process. A satisfactory simulation technique, based on the assumption that spatial averaging can be used to replace ensemble averaging, is also presented. In this part a detailed experimental investigation of the three- dimensional speckle properties is performed using spatial averaging. The results provide solid verification for the predictions presented in Part I. The results are not only of theoretical interest but have practical implications. Techniques for locating and aligning the optical system axis with the camera center, and for measuring out-of-plane displacement, are demonstrated. © 2011 Optical Society of America OCIS


Cortical responses to continuous stimuli as recorded using either magneto- or electroencephalography (EEG) have shown power at harmonics of the stimulated frequency, indicating nonlinear behavior. Even though the selection of analysis techniques depends on the linearity of the system under study, the importance of nonlinear contributions to cortical responses has not been formally addressed. The goal of this paper is to quantify the nonlinear contributions to the cortical response obtained from continuous sensory stimulation. EEG was used to record the cortical response evoked by continuous movement of the wrist joint of healthy subjects applied with a robotic manipulator. Multisine stimulus signals (i.e., the sum of several sinusoids) elicit a periodic cortical response and allow to assess the nonlinear contributions to the response. Wrist dynamics (relation between joint angle and torque) were successfully linearized, explaining 99% of the response. In contrast, the cortical response revealed a highly nonlinear relation; where most power ( $\sim 80$ %) occurred at non-stimulated frequencies. Moreover, only 10% of the response could be explained using a nonparametric linear model. These results indicate that the recorded evoked cortical responses are governed by nonlinearities and that linear methods do not suffice when describing the relation between mechanical stimulus and cortical response.


This paper explains the tourism traffic geographic information system and its main functions, and introduces the wide application of tourism geographic information system for transportation in the transportation industry from various aspects, carries on the prospect of development in the future. The tourist traffic geographic information system will promote the development of tourism industry has become a symbol of scientific and efficient traffic management. In the system design based on the principles of combining the existing data to construct the tourism transport, by which the planning management information system frame and function modules of the system could be detailed designed, tourism transport related to information system development and application can improve the optimization. Geographic information system is based on computer graphics, combined with the geography of Surveying and mapping, with the development of computer software and hardware, the ultimate development of global application, for example USA government enacted the information superhighway, digital earth strategy, are based on the geographic information system platform based! After the introduction of geographic information system in our country in the last century eighty's, the same is the rapid development, is widely used in the measurement of "forestry and fisheries" municipal transportation and many other industries.


In May 1998, India shocked the world - and many of its own citizens - by detonating five nuclear weapons in the Rajasthan desert. Why did India bid for nuclear weapon status at a time when 149 nations had signed a ban on nuclear testing? What drove India's new Hindu nationalist government to depart from decades of nuclear restraint, a control that no other nation with similar capacities had displayed? How has U.S. nonproliferation policy affected India's decision making? "India's Nuclear Bomb" is the definitive, comprehensive history of how the world's largest democracy, has grappled with the twin desires to have and to renounce the bomb. Each chapter contains significant historical revelations drawn from scores of interviews with India's key scientists, military leaders, diplomats and politicians, and from declassified U.S. government documents and interviews with U.S. officials. Perkovich teases out the cultural and ethical concerns and vestiges of colonialism that underlie India's seemingly paradoxical stance. India's nuclear history challenges leading theories of why nations pursue and hang onto nuclear weapons, raising important questions for international relations theory and security studies. So, too, the blasts in Rajasthan have shaken the foundations of the international nonproliferation system. With the end of the Cold War and an even more chaotic international scene, Perkovich's analysis of an alternative model is timely, sobering, and vital.


Context: Induction of general anesthesia and mandatory low-ambient temperature in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) suite renders the pediatric patient prone to fall in core temperature. Previously done studies have shown mixed results with core temperature showing both rise and fall. Aims: The aim of this study is to evaluate which effect, hypothermia or hyperthermia, predominates in children anesthetized for MRI. Is the change in temperature the same across age groups and for different MRI scanners?. Settings and Design: Prospective, observational study in a tertiary care teaching hospital. Subjects and Methods: Two hundred and fifty children of age between 1 month and 16 years scheduled for MRI under propofol-based total intravenous anesthesia (TIVA) were recruited. A baseline core temperature (pre-scan) was recorded with the pediatric nasopharyngeal temperature probe after induction of anesthesia and also after the scan in the recovery room. Results: The study shows that there is a significant fall in temperature of 1.022°C (CI = 0.964, 1.081) following MRI (P < 0.001) but the difference across different age groups and type of MRI scanner used are not significant. There is a significant correlation between duration in the MRI room and a decrease in temperature (P value = 0.003). Using simple linear regression analysis, it is found that if there is a 1-min increase in the duration of MRI, there is a decrease of 0.006°C in temperature. Conclusion: Vigilant temperature preservation strategies have to be maintained during the time the anesthetized child is present in the MRI suite. MRI compatible active warming devices are warranted especially in high turnover centers.


Land use change and climate variability are two key factors impacting watershed hydrology, which is strongly related to the availability of water resources and the sustainability of local ecosystems. This study assessed separate and combined hydrological impacts of land use change and climate variability in the headwater region of a typical arid inland river basin, known as the Heihe River Basin, northwest China, in the recent past (1995–2014) and near future (2015–2024), by combining two land use models (i.e., Markov chain model and Dyna-CLUE) with a hydrological model (i.e., SWAT). The potential impacts in the near future were explored using projected land use patterns and hypothetical climate scenarios established on the basis of analyzing long-term climatic observations. Land use changes in the recent past are dominated by the expansion of grassland and a decrease in farmland; meanwhile the climate develops with a wetting and warming trend. Land use changes in this period induce slight reductions in surface runoff, groundwater discharge and streamflow whereas climate changes produce pronounced increases in them. The joint hydrological impacts are similar to those solely induced by climate changes. Spatially, both the effects of land use change and climate variability vary with the sub-basin. The influences of land use changes are more identifiable in some sub-basins, compared with the basin-wide impacts. In the near future, climate changes tend to affect the hydrological regimes much more prominently than land use changes, leading to significant increases in all hydrological components. Nevertheless, the role of land use change should not be overlooked, especially if the climate becomes drier in the future, as in this case it may magnify the hydrological responses.


I kid you not.  This is a time in Pacific regional history where as a middle-aged Tongan woman with European, Maori, and Samoan ancestries who was born and raised in New Zealand, I teach students taking my undergraduate papers how not to go about making stereotypical assumptions.  The students in my classes are mostly Maori and Pakeha (white, European) New Zealanders.  They learn to interrogate typecasts produced by state policy, media, and academia classifying the suburbs of South Auckland as overcrowded with brown people, meaning Pacific Islanders; overburdened by non-communicable diseases, like obesity and diabetes; and overdone in dismal youth statistics for crime and high school drop-outs.  And then some well-meaning but incredibly uninformed staff members at the university where I am a senior lecturer have a bright idea to give away portions of roast pig on a spit to Pacific Islanders at the South Auckland campus open day.
Who asked the university to give us free roast pig?  Who asked us if this is what we want from a university that was planted out South in 2010 to sell degrees to a South Auckland market predicted to grow to half a million people, largely young people, in the next two decades? (AUT University, 2014).  Who makes decisions about what gets dished up to Pacific Islanders in South Auckland, compared to what their hopes might be for university education prospects?  To rephrase Julie Landsman's essay, how about "confronting the racism of low expectations" that frames and bounds Pacific Islanders in South Auckland when a New Zealand university of predominantly Palangi (white, European) lecturers and researchers on academic staff contemplate "closing achievement gaps?" (Landsman, 2004).
Tackling "the soft bigotry of low expectations" set upon Pacific Islanders getting into and through the university system has prompted discussion around introducing two sets of ideas at Auckland University of Technology (The Patriot Post, 2014).  First, a summer school foundation course for literacy and numeracy on the South campus, recruiting Pacific Islander school leavers wanting to go on to study Bachelor's degrees.  Previously, the University of Auckland had provided bridging paths designed for young Pacific peoples to step up to degree programmes (Anae et al, 2002).
Second, the possibility of performing arts undergraduate papers recognising a diverse and youthful ethnoscape party to an Auckland context of theatre, drama, dance, music, Maori and Pacific cultural performance, storytelling, and slam poetry (Appadurai, 1996).  Although this discussion is in its infancy and has not been feasibility scoped or formally initiated in the university system, it is a suggestion worth considering here.
My inquiry is frank: Why conflate performance and South Auckland Pacific Islanders?  Does this not lend to a cliched mould that supposes young Pacific Islanders growing up in the ill-famed suburbs of the poor South are naturally gifted at singing, dancing, and performing theatrics?  This is a characterisation fitted to inner-city Black American youth that has gone global and is wielded to tag, label, and brand urban Pacific Islanders of South Auckland.  Therefore, how are the aspirational interests of this niche market reflected in the content and context of initiatives with South Auckland Pacific Islander communities in mind?


Why dedicate today such a symposium on animal production to innovation and the evolution of this notion in the Mediterranean area? Because innovation has become crucial in an uncertain world: innovation to anticipate, to adapt, to remain competitive or even to survive. In the near future, what would be the keys of the evolution of livestock systems? How to support the innovation process, how to guide it, how to articulate innovation with research and extension? We have shown that, in the present context of increasing globalization, the innovation process is core to multiple tensions that the actors of innovation cannot ignore. Facing such tensions, we suggest to take into account the need to prepare a range of solutions; but also to anticipate the economical, social and environmental effects of innovations; and more broadly, looking forward to the consequences of their emergence and dissemination on the development of agriculture and territories. Then, we have elaborated some proposals to stimulate capabilities of the livestock sector to innovate : how to create new ways of producing? If a model-based design is adapted for exploring breaking systems, a step-by-step design gives more room for learning process and reducing risk. So, it is suitable for a progressive involvement of breeders. However, methods for rule-based innovation (whose aims are fixed) are no more usable when aims are questioned (for instance by dramatically new environmental or social stakes). New competences are then required and new validation criteria should be invented. Such a process of exploration should be called 'innovative design' whose sources are themselves diversifying.


This paper presents a method to extract the foreground images from live videos by means of automatic object segmentation. The parameters such as colour, motion of the pixel and image texture or more specifically texture constraints are used for segmentation. A cellular neural network which combines both colour as well as motion of pixels which varies from frame to frame is implemented which helps in accurately separating the boundaries and thus reducing misclassifications. The global motion of pixels is calculated by computing the forward and backward displaced frame differences (DFDs) with the respect to the current frame. The texture constraint for each pixel to be labeled is calculated from the difference between their corresponding texture descriptors and the texture prior models which is provided by the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) histogram. Finally by means of the randomized texton searching algorithm and graph cut frame work the foreground is extracted from the video.


This document describes the Mesh-enhanced Service Location Protocol (mSLP). mSLP enhances the Service Location Protocol (SLP) with a scope-based fully-meshed peering Directory Agent (DA) architecture. Peer DAs exchange new service registrations in shared scopes via anti-entropy and direct forwarding. mSLP improves the reliability and consistency of SLP DA services, and simplifies Service Agent (SA) registrations in systems with multiple DAs. mSLP is backward compatible with SLPv2 and can be deployed incrementally.


Using data from the state of Hawaii input-output (I-O) table, the economic impact of the transportation sector in Hawaii was described, modeled, and forecast under a number of alternative scenarios. Transportation is compared with the key economic sectors in the state in output, exports, household consumption, visitor spending, number of employees, and compensation of employees. Next, the overall transportation sector was disaggregated into key activities and functions to present a more complete picture of the important role of transportation in Hawaii. A computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the economy with a special focus on transportation is developed. Because tourism is the state's leading sector, the effects of both an increase and a decrease in visitor expenditures were modeled. Both measuring the economic importance of transportation in Hawaii and estimating probable consequences of potential economic changes are of interest. The visitor industry dominates Hawaii's economy, with small increases in visitor expenditures contributing significantly to the gross state product. Transportation industries, along with restaurant and accommodation services, account for a disproportionately large share of this growth. Key residential transportation sectors (transit and motor vehicles) contract in response to cost increases generated by a growth in visitor demand. The use of the I-O table and CGE modeling provides a useful analytical and planning tool for evaluating economic scenarios within a region such as Hawaii. The increased availability of both data sets and new modeling techniques offers opportunities to planners, engineers, and transportation policy makers.


Open angle glaucoma is a chronic disease of the optic nerve, where damage to the visual field can result in loss of vision. There is currently no cure for the disease. The four studies presented within this thesis aimed to explore aspects of the impact of glaucoma on patients' everyday living and quality of life. The studies were designed to capture aspects of the 'journey' in glaucoma which may be particularly challenging for the patient; the initial stage, where quality of life may be reduced and the accompanying burden of ongoing disease monitoring; and the end stage, where significant loss of vision will likely cause visual disability and the daunting prospect of undergoing high-stakes ocular surgery. In the first study, the relationship between visual field loss (measured using mean deviation [MD]) and vison-related quality of life was assessed. Evidence indicated that glaucoma has a negative impact on vision-related quality of life, even in the earliest stage of the disease. However, the relationship is likely to be non-linear, as certain phases of the disease are more likely to have a greater impact than others. Specifically, each 1 decibel reduction in MD was associated with a decline of 2.3 (out of 100) units on a quality of life metric in the early stage of glaucoma (p<0.001), and 4.6 units in advanced disease (p=0.009). In the second study, vision-related quality of life was assessed amongst a cohort of newly-diagnosed glaucoma patients taking part in a randomised glaucoma therapy clinical trial. Responses on patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) were assessed for group differences between treatment arms of the trial. In addition, group differences in quality of life between the stable patients and those with glaucomatous progression was compared. There were no statistically significant differences on PROMs between the two trial arms. Differences between stable and progressing glaucoma patients were observed only on PROMs specific to glaucoma (Glaucoma Quality of Life-15, p = 0.02; Glaucoma Activity Limitation-9, p = 0.02). In the third study, the equivalence of visual field measurement outcomes were assessed between patients attending standard glaucoma care services and those attending a novel glaucoma service, a virtual clinic. Average MD measurements for 250 patients in the virtual clinic were compared with a 'big data' repository of patients in the standard glaucoma service, which was used to calculate expected MD values. The speed of visual field progression between the two groups was also assessed. In the first analysis, 12 (4.8%; 95% confidence interval 2.5% to 8.2%) virtual clinic patients scored outside the 90% expected values based on the big data repository. In the second analysis, 1.9% (95% confidence interval 0.4% to 5.4%) virtual clinic patients had visual field changes outside of the expected 90% limits. In the fourth study, patient and surgeon experiences of advanced glaucoma surgery were assessed in a qualitative analysis. Interview transcripts underwent thematic analysis where, for the patients, key emerging themes included the emotional impact surgery, developing coping mechanisms, and how to improve the patient's surgical journey. For the surgeons, themes included strategies for risk reduction, views on training, and the emotional impact of performing surgery on advanced glaucoma patients. To conclude, these studies highlight aspects of the patient journey in glaucoma where the disease may be most burdensome and troubling for the patient. Some practical changes, such as performing monitoring measurements in a virtual clinic, or augmented surgical care services for patients with advanced disease may help to ease the burden of glaucoma. In addition, the findings from these studies can help to improve understanding of the glaucoma journey and serve as an effective resource for learning, support, and professional development for patients, relatives, and carers, as well as professionals specialising in eye care.


Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was one of the preeminent Abstract Expressionists and a spokesperson for that generation of artists. During a career that lasted half a century, he created a large and varied body of work, constantly reinventing and refining his signature motifs. He produced some of the most innovative and profound imagery of the 20th century, such as the Elegy to the Spanish Republic, Iberia, Open, and Summertime in Italy series, as well as one of the largest and most inventive oeuvres in collage. This monumental catalogue raisonne documents 1,209 paintings on canvas and panel, 722 paintings on paper, and 889 collages, providing extensive information about each work. In the first volume, the authors present an overview of Motherwell's career, and discuss key topics including the tension between figuration and abstraction in his work, his role as a spokesperson for modernism, and the changing nature of the critical reception of his work. This volume also contains a richly detailed, illustrated chronology of his life. Exquisitely designed and produced, this catalogue will be the definitive reference on Robert Motherwell's paintings and collages for years to come.


Cyclic nucleotides are so‐called intracellular second messenger molecules used by all cells to transform environmental signals into an appropriate response. Interest in the cyclic nucleotides cAMP and cGMP in malaria parasites followed early observations that both molecules might be involved in distinct differentiation events within the sexual phase of the life cycle that is required for transmission of parasites to the mosquito vector. Completed genome sequences combined with biochemical and genetic studies have confirmed the presence of the main enzymatic components of cyclic nucleotide signalling in the parasite. Dissection of their functions is underway and is giving initial insights into some of the cellular processes, which are regulated by these signalling pathways. Malaria parasites occupy terminally differentiated red blood cells for a significant proportion of their life cycle, but although there is some evidence of potential roles for the residual host cell signalling machinery in parasite development, details are few. A major gap in our knowledge is the nature of the cell surface receptors, which might trigger cyclic nucleotide signalling in the parasite.


Proceedings: AACR 103rd Annual Meeting 2012‐‐ Mar 31‐Apr 4, 2012; Chicago, IL

(Background and Aim) Previously, we have reported a genetically engineered mouse pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) progression model which has pancreatic-specific transforming growth factor-beta receptor type II knockout in the context of Kras activation. This model shows PDAC with 100 % penetrance and recapitulates the signature of human PDAC well. Using this model, we explored novel treatment for PDAC targeting tumor microenvironment. (Materials and Methods) To investigate whether the mice model is suitable for the drug screening, the mice were treated with gemcitabine, which is the standard drug for human PDAC, by i.p. injection. To the next, for single agent treatment, mice were treated with axitinib, which is a multi-kinase inhibitor, or candesartan, which is an anigiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB), respectively. For combined agent experiment, mice were treated with axitinib or candesartan and gemcitabine. Treatment continued until 8 weeks of age. Moreover, for the survival analysis, the drug treatment was continued until the mice became distressed according to the same schedule stated above. In vivo anti-tumor effect and survival time were assessed. Immunostaining of tumor tissue for caspase 3, Ki67, CD31, F4/80, α-SMA, and VEGF was performed. Azan staining also performed for the assessment of fibrosis in the tumor. (Results) Gemcitabine showed anti-proliferative effect and prolonged overall survival of these mice compared to control, as well as human cases. Median survival time of single use of axtinib group was significantly longer and that of candesartan group was tended to be longer than that of control group. Axitinib and candesartan group showed significantly stronger anti-tumor effect in vivo. In the combined treatment experiment, gemcitabine plus axitinib or candesartan group showed statistically significant longer survival and more anti-tumor effect than that of gemcitabine, axtinib or candesartan alone-treated group. Axitinib group showed significantly higher caspase 3 staining and lower Ki67 staining than that of control, however, candesartan group showed no change of these staining, compared to control. Microvessel density, F4/80, and α-SMA staining of axitinib and candesartan group was significantly lower than that of control. VEGF expression of candesartan group was significantly lower than that of control. Azan staining showed significantly lower fibrosis in axitinib and candesartan group compared to control. (Conclusion)Targeting tumor microenvironment, such as angiogenesis, immune cell infiltration and fibrosis, using multi-kinase inhibitor or ARB in addition to gemcitabine, may be a promising therapeutics for PDAC.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 4383. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-4383


A firm premise of urban redevelopment is the need for public action to deal with the practical problems of urban land assembly: numerous small parcels, fragmented ownership, and balkanized derivative interests, all of which hinder spontaneous market-driven transformations. Relying on the process of eminent domain to assemble land has been the stalwart convention of urban revitalization as practiced in the U.S. during the decades following World War II. Nonetheless, the use of eminent domain powers is fraught with obvious political problems. Because it is politically unpopular, public officials typically use it only as a last resort, and they are on the defensive from the first announcement of condemnation intentions. Because it is inherently controversial, ensuing litigation inevitably delays projects, sometimes terminally so. While government often prevails in judicial contests of condemnation, the process is not without its costs, as evident in the Kelo case, which intensified rather than diminished the controversy in the court of public opinion. Given that the condemnation process is so cumbersome and costly, inherently litigious, and full of political risks, what other policy options exist to effectuate public ambitions that call for land assembly? In particular, what is the applicability of land readjustment schemes to public/private redevelopment projects commonly pursed in U.S. cities today? In this paper I explore the lessons learned from the redevelopment of Times Square at 42nd Street, where 13 acres of prime, if blighted, land was assembled by the customary method of condemnation. This experience vividly argues for a more efficient strategy, though in such large-scale redevelopment project where issues of overall control and the redefinition of land uses are often paramount, land readjustment schemes may be difficult to apply. Land readjustment, however, may be a useful mechanism to rationalize land-use patterns in failed subdivisions, obsolete cooperative apartment houses, older inner-city suburbs or neighborhoods blighted by failed projects of any kind. In these situations, land readjustment is potentially a much more efficient process than governmental site ownership precisely because the original owners are retained as participants, thereby eliminating the need for an Request-For-Proposal (RFP) process to choose redevelopers. The process creates either salable publicly owned parcels or public improvements, both potentially at no cost to the public, while at the same time improving property values and thus, the tax base. Land readjustment schemes are complex. They require large up-front expenditures of time and cost, tricky valuations of contributed interests and determinations of cost-equivalent land, and holdouts; in addition, the length of time it takes to execute a readjustment scheme defines owners' opportunity cost of pooling their land interests. To discuss the application of a land-readjustment model to urban land assembly for public/private redevelopment, I review three core policy issues (the creation of new economic interests, the balance of public objectives and private interests, and the implications for public finance of a voluntary land-pooling system) and discuss the perceived difficulties arising from the politics of development opposition and the fragmented character of city property markets. Where these politics obstacles are not dominant, land readjustment schemes hold greater potential application. In particular, the model of a joint-stock development corporation holds much promise in cities and states where the politics of development are less fractious and more consensual.


Newcastle disease virus (NDV) caused an outbreak among commercial broiler chickens in the educational farm of Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University-Egypt. Its velogenicty was characterized by Intracerebral pathogenicity index (ICPI) of 1.65. The outbreak raised concerns regarding the role of quails as a neighbouring bird to the broiler chickens in the affected farm in transmission of this virus to chickens. 35 days old quails were infected oculo-nasal with velogenic strain of Newcastle disease virus accompanied with chickens were in contact with these infected quails to determine the role of quails in the epidemiology of ND infection. Hemagglutination inhibition (HI) antibodies were measured for assessment of antibody response as well as oro-pharynx swabs were used for detection of the virus shedding. The susceptibility of quails to NDV infection was more resistant than that were observed in chickens. 6.6-13.3% of challenged non-vaccinated quails were died in contrast to 80-100% mortality in experimentally infected chickens till the end of experiment 3 weeks after challenge. Up to 13.3% of infected quails exhibited general clinical signs in contrast to 100% of non vaccinated chickens shown clinical signs were primarily respiratory. Infected quails could excrete infectious virus from the oro-pharynx for a shorter period than that observed with infected in-contact chickens in special to the vaccinated groups the shedding was reduced significantly either in quails and chickens. The results confirmed that some of the naturally occurring NDV virulent strains can cause the disease in quails but in a mild form, and that quails play an important role in the epidemiology of ND and its transmission to chickens causing heavy economic losses. These results underscore the need to develop new vaccine strategies for use in quails to protect birds from both disease and infection to reduce virus shedding and its spreading.


We present early-time optical through infrared photometry of the bright Swift gamma-ray burst (GRB) 080607, starting only 6 s following the initial trigger in the rest frame. Complemented by our previously published spectroscopy, this high-quality photometric data set allows us to solve for the extinction properties of the redshift 3.036 sightline, giving perhaps the most detailed information to date on the ultraviolet continuum absorption properties of any sightline outside our Local Group. The extinction properties are not adequately modeled by any ordinary extinction template (including the average Milky Way, Large Magellanic Cloud, and Small Magellanic Cloud curves), partially because the 2175 Å feature (while present) is weaker by about a factor of two than when seen under similar circumstances locally. However, the spectral energy distribution is exquisitely fitted by the more general Fitzpatrick & Massa parameterization of Local-Group extinction, putting it in the same family as some peculiar Milky Way extinction curves. After correcting for this (considerable, AV = 3.3 ± 0.4 mag) extinction, GRB 080607 is revealed to have been among the most optically luminous events ever observed, comparable to the naked-eye burst GRB 080319B. Its early peak time (trest < 6 s) indicates a high initial Lorentz factor (Γ>600), while the extreme luminosity may be explained in part by a large circumburst density. Only because of its early high luminosity could the afterglow of GRB 080607 be studied in such detail in spite of the large attenuation and great distance, making this burst an excellent prototype for the understanding of other highly obscured extragalactic objects, and of the class of "dark" GRBs in particular.


The present work shows that the maximum-entropy method can be applied to a sample of neuronal recordings along two different routes: (1) apply to the sample; or (2) apply to a larger, unsampled neuronal population from which the sample is drawn, and then marginalize to the sample. These two routes give inequivalent results. The second route can be further generalized to the case where the size of the larger population is unknown. Which route should be chosen? Some arguments are presented in favour of the second. This work also presents and discusses probability formulae that relate states of knowledge about a population and its samples, and that may be useful for sampling problems in neuroscience.


Determining the magnitude and kinetics, together with the phenotypic and functional characteristics of responding CD8 T cells, is critical for understanding the regulation of adaptive immunity as well as in evaluating vaccine candidates. Recent technical advances have allowed tracking of some CD8 T cells responding to infection, and a body of information now exists describing phenotypic changes that occur in CD8 T cells of known Ag-specificity during their activation, expansion, and memory generation in inbred mice. In this study, we demonstrate that Ag but not inflammation-driven changes in expression of CD11a and CD8α can be used to distinguish naive from Ag-experienced (effector and memory) CD8 T cells after infection or vaccination. Interestingly and in contrast to inbred mice, tracking polyclonal CD8 T cell responses with this approach after bacterial and viral infections revealed substantial discordance in the magnitude and kinetics of CD8 T cell responses in outbred hosts. These data reveal limitations to the use of inbred mouse strains as preclinical models at vaccine development and suggest the same dose of infection or vaccination can lead to substantial differences in the magnitude and timing of Ag-specific CD8 expansion as well in differences in protective memory CD8 T cell numbers in outbred individuals. This concept has direct relevance to development of vaccines in outbred humans.


Functional foods are one of the fastest increasing fields in the global food industry since they are positively perceived by the consumers as dietary strategies to reduce the inci dence of illness in the humankind. Actually, the use of biotechnological strategies, based on the use of functional and specific strains and sustainable technologies, such as high-pressure homogenization, can be a great chance to create innovation in the dairy field. Critical discussion on the actual scenario is the main topic of this chapter.


This essay is an undergraduate student essay responding to the Counterstory Seminar Project  assignment associated with the Martinez and Smith article (within this issue 4.1): "Critical Theory, Critical Race Representations: Counterstory as Literary Intervention"


Methods based on nanotechnologies play a growing role in biomedical research. Quantum
dots (QDs) are a group of engineered fluorescent nanoparticles suited for advanced
imaging applications. The substitution of the particle's surface with defined molecular
structures could enable the adoption as targeted contrast agents or therapeutic devices for
a variety of clinical approaches. However, important aspects such as the basic surfacedependent
behavior of non-targeted QDs in the organism and arising health effects upon
systemic administration remain incompletely understood. Acute inflammatory effects for
instance are often initiated on the microcirculatory level and are probably relevant for
cardiovascular pathologies observed in epidemiologic and experimental studies of certain
nanoparticles. Most in vitro studies show that the surface structures of QDs and other
nanoparticles seem to be predominantly accountable for different cytotoxic effects and a
variable potential to liberate proinflammatory cytokines. Currently, no systematic in vivo
studies have addressed surface-dependent interactions of QDs on the level of the
microcirculation and assessed the resulting impact on biokinetics as well as on
proinflammatory parameters. Thus, this thesis aimed to i) analyze the incidence of QDsurface-
dependent acute microvascular interactions and their influence on key biokinetic
parameters and ii) investigate acute immunomodulatory effects on the multistep process
of leukocyte recruitment in vivo. For this, three types of commercially available QDs with
different surface modifications: carboxyl-QDs, amine- and polyethylene glycol-QDs
(amine-QDs) and polyethylene glycol-QDs (PEG-QDs) were used. The physicochemical
characterization was done by dynamic light scattering (DLS) analysis and microscale
thermophoresis. In a first set of experiments, circulating half-lives, tissue distribution in
different organs, and hepatic as well as renal clearance were measured. Ex vivo analysis
of QD tissue distribution was performed on selected tissue samples via transmission
electron microscopy (TEM) and two-photon microscopy. By combining reflected-light
oblique transillumination (RLOT) and fluorescence in vivo microscopy of the murine M.
cremaster, interactions of QDs with components of the microcirculation as well as
leukocyte migration parameters were visualized and quantified. The extreme short
circulating half-life of anionic carboxyl-QDs was related to pronounced clearance by the
mononuclear phagocyte system. Beyond this, further investigations showed, for the first
time, that the continuous capillary endothelium of skeletal and heart muscle tissue has the
capacity to directly extract carboxyl-QDs from the circulation by means of caveolaemediated
endocytosis. Carboxyl-QDs were also taken up by perivascular macrophages in
the surgically exposed but not in the native M. cremaster and led to a significant increase
of adherent and (subsequently) transmigrated leukocytes in this model. Further
experiments provided evidence for a probable involvement of mast cells in the
intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1)- and endothelial (E)-selectinmediated
modulation of leukocyte recruitment. This process is most likely initiated by the
endocytosis of carboxyl-QDs through activated perivascular macrophages. The primary
activation of tissue-resident perivascular macrophages seems to be the consequence of
tissue damage related to the surgical preparation of the cremaster muscle. This is
supposedly a prerequisite for the endocytosis of carboxyl-QDs whereupon endothelial and
mast cells seem to be secondarily activated in a paracrine fashion that then leads to an
increase in leukocyte recruitment.


The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) will be the largest solar telescope in the world, and will be able to provide the sharpest views ever taken of the solar surface. The telescope has a 4m aperture primary mirror, however due to the off axis nature of the optical layout, the telescope Mount has proportions similar to an 8 metre class telescope. The Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) includes both the telescope Mount and the 16m diameter laboratory table or Coudé Rotator. The Coudé Rotator supports the full instrument suite of up to 40 tonnes and has full rotation capabilities similar to the Mount azimuth axis. The TMA has been going through the design, fabrication and assembly process since 2009 with Ingersoll Machine Tool's and this culminated with the Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT). The preparation for the FAT started not long after the Final Design Review was complete and planning continued through the assembly stages. The official Factory Acceptance testing of the Coudé Rotator was conducted during May/Jun 2014 and the Mount in Feb through Apr 2015. This paper provides an overview and discussion of the testing that was carried out. The depth and extent of testing will be described with discussion on what we would do differently next time. Also details of the preparation / process that lead into the testing will be presented. Most importantly the results will be summarized and lessons learned during the testing provided as well as discussion on how this influences the planned site assembly and extent of re-test post assembly.


In the present paper, speech and language intervention was investigated in order to explore the use and function of defusing practices. Defusing practices may be viewed as a special form of mitigation. In previous research, including studies on clinical interaction, mitigation has been described mainly as devices used in order to reduce the unwelcome effects of an utterance, or reduce the discomfort of bad news. Defusing practices, however, appear to serve somewhat different functions, which are examined here. Data comprises video and audio recordings of eight intervention sessions with children with language impairment (LI), and six intervention sessions with adults with aphasia, The analysis revealed the following kinds of defusing practices: circumscriptions/figurative language, diminutive words, words like 'try' or 'test', placing the problem outside of the patient, collective pronouns, diminishing the speech and language pathologist's own competence, encouragement, and references to well-known phenomena. If speech and language therapists (SLPs) are made aware of the practice and function of defusing, they may make conscious use of these practices in order to reduce face-threatening situations in intervention


Abstract. This study examines the uncertainty in calculating the fundamental climatological characteristics of precipitation in the East Asia region from multiple fine-resolution gridded analysis data sets based on in situ rain gauge observations and data assimilations. Five observation-based gridded precipitation data sets are used to derive the long-term means, standard deviations in lieu of interannual variability and linear trends over the 28-year period from 1980 to 2007. Both the annual and summer (June–July–August) mean precipitation is examined. The agreement amongst these precipitation data sets is examined using two metrics including the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) defined as the ratio between long-term means and the corresponding standard deviations, and Taylor diagrams, which allow examinations of the pattern correlation, the standard deviation, and the centered root mean square error. It is found that the five gauge-based precipitation analysis data sets agree well in the long-term mean and interannual variability in most of the East Asia region including eastern China, Manchuria, South Korea, and Japan, which are densely populated and have fairly high-density observation networks. The regions of large inter-data-set variations include Tibetan Plateau, Mongolia, northern Indo-China, and North Korea. The regions of large uncertainties are typically lightly populated and are characterized by severe terrain and/or extremely high elevations. Unlike the long-term mean and interannual variability, agreement between data sets in the linear trend is weak, both for the annual and summer mean values. In most of the East Asia region, the SNR for the linear trend is below 0.5: the inter-data-set variability exceeds the multi-data ensemble mean. The uncertainty in the spatial distribution of long-term means among these data sets occurs both in the spatial pattern and variability, but the uncertainty for the interannual variability and time trend is much larger in the variability than in the pattern correlation. Thus, care must be taken in using long-term trends calculated from gridded precipitation analysis data for climate studies over the East Asia region.


This paper presents the thermophysical and rheological properties of water-base drilling fluids at low temperature range (-5 to 20°C) expected for the fluid temperature of the offshore drilling at the Nankai Trough. These physical properties are fundamental data for the drilling simulator and also design factors for a heat exchanger to cool down the drilling fluids. The measurement systems for the rheological and thermal characteristics, such as thermal conductivity and heat capacity, have been set up. The drilling fluid density were varied from 1100 to 2000 kg/m3 (9.16 to 16.7 ppg) using barite. Especially, the drilling fluids with high salt concentration were mainly focused in present measurements. Then, the experimental equations against the fluids density for the thermal and rheological properties have been presented in order to estimate the parameters used in the simulations. Furthermore, a simplified estimation for heat transfer rate at casing pipe has been carried out using the measurement data to investigate the effect of the property changes in the casing pipe


Everyone wants to visit New York at least once. The Big Apple is a global tourist destination with a dizzying array of attractions throughout the five boroughs. The only problem is figuring out where to start - and that's where the city's tour guides come in. These guides are a vital part of New York's raucous sidewalk culture, and, as "The Tour Guide" reveals, the tours they offer are as fascinatingly diverse - and eccentric - as the city itself. Visitors can take tours that cover Manhattan before the arrival of European settlers, the nineteenth-century Irish gangs of Five Points, the culinary traditions of Queens, the culture of Harlem, or even the surveillance cameras of Chelsea - in short, there are tours to satisfy anyone's curiosity about the city's past or present. And the guides are as intriguing as the subjects, we learn, as Jonathan R. Wynn explores the lives of the people behind the tours, introducing us to office workers looking for a diversion from their desk jobs, unemployed actors honing their vocal skills, and struggling retirees searching for a second calling. Matching years of research with his own experiences as a guide, Wynn also lays bare the grueling process of acquiring an official license and offers a how-to guide to designing and leading a tour. Touching on the long history of tour-giving across the globe as well as the ups and downs of New York's tour guide industry in the wake of 9/11, "The Tour Guide" is as informative and insightful as the chatty, charming, and colorful characters at its heart.


The determinants of recovery rates on defaulted loans and bonds for North American corporate issuers over a period of 21 years include seniority, security, type of initial default event, and a wide variety of firm-specific, industry-specific, and macroeconomic factors. Results of univariate analysis and multivariate regressions corroborate results elsewhere on the effect of seniority, security, and macroeconomic factors. Recovery rates are also strongly affected by the type of event precipitating default, the amount of debt an issuer has outstanding that is subordinate to the defaulted security, the tangibility of issuer assets, the prevailing credit spreads at the time of default, and the market-to-book ratio of the firm and its industry prior to default. Seniority and security are the two most important influences, followed by debt cushion, leverage, and asset tangibility. Industry and macroeconomic factors are sometimes very strongly correlated with recovery rates.


We report the modification of the bending elastic modulus kc of lipid bilayers (here DMPC) by small amounts (c ≤5 mol %) of (i) small amphiphiles which exchange between the bilayer and the aqueous phase (e.g. the ion carrier valinomycin and the Ca++ carrier A23187) and (ii) amphiphiles solubilized in the membrane (cholanic acid). Large reductions of the bending stiffness may be induced by a few percent of the solutes, e.g. 1 mol % of valinomycin reduce kc by a factor of two. The effect is rationalised in terms of local thinning of the bilayer. The strong effect of solutes on kc contrasts with its weak dependence on the lipid structure since the C18:0/C18:1-lipid stearoyl-oleoyl-phosphatidyl-choline (SOPC) exhibits only a 15% higher value of kc than DMPC. The effect of temperature on the flicker behaviour was analysed in order to establish correlations between the effective tension and the excess area of the quasi-spherical vesicles. The temperature dependence of the bilayer excess area for a DMPC vesicle leads to the thermal expansion coefficient, β, for which a value of β= 10.4 ×10-3 K-1 is obtained. A much stronger tendency for budding on μm-scale (micro budding) during thermal area expansion of POPC and SOPC compared to DMPC was observed.


In ultracold quantum gases, the interactions between the individual atoms can be controlled by applying magnetic bias fields. As magnetic field fluctuations limit the precision here, typically a feedback loop needs to be employed to regulate the current through a pair of Helmholtz coils. No commercially available magnetic field sensor allows to measure large fields directly with high enough precision, leading to many unsatisfactory solutions being used in experiments. Here, we demonstrate a direct magnetic field stabilization in a regime previously not accessible, using NV centers as the magnetic field sensor. This allows us to measure and stabilize fields of 4.66 mT down to 12 nT RMS noise over the course of 24 h, measured on a 1 Hz bandwidth. We achieve a control of better than 1 ppm after 20 min of integration time, ensuring high long-term stability for experiments. This approach extends direct magnetic field control to strong magnetic fields, which could enable new precise quantum simulations in this regime.


Copy negative of the front of the First Presbyterian Church, located at 410 Avenue A in Palestine, Texas. It is a red-brick building with white stone accents that has a Gothic architecture design including leaded stained glass and Tiffany memorial windows. There is a tall silver spire above the tower on the left side of the building. A smaller building is visible to the left.


This study examines the barriers and facilitators of community based vocational instruction (CBVI) for students with moderate to significant disabilities as identified by special educators. Community based vocational instruction (CBVI) involves students with disabilities receiving repeated instruction on vocational and other job related skills in community settings (Kim & Dymond, 2010). An electronic survey was sent to high school and transition special education teachers from four states including Utah, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Colorado. One hundred thirty-five participants completed the survey. Almost two-thirds of the respondents had a master's degree and one-third a bachelor's degree. The majority of respondents were high school and transition special education teachers. There was a wide range of teaching experience among respondents. The survey data were complied to identify the major barriers and facilitators of CBVI. The results show that major barriers to CBVI were staffing and transportation. Facilitators to CBVI were adequate and knowledgeable staff, transportation, and established community vocational training sites. Significant findings from the survey include increases in CBVI teacher training resulting in greater CBVI engagement among students. Rates of CBVI among transition age students exceed those in high school. Findings will add to the research literature by operationalizing barriers and facilitators to CBVI, providing data from special educators on rankings of both, and offer perspectives of educators on ways to create opportunities for increased community experience for youth with disabilities.


Abstract Background Establishing neurobiological markers of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is essential to aid in diagnosis and treatment development. Fear processing deficits are central to PTSD, and their neural signatures may be used as such markers. Methods Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of seven Pavlovian fear conditioning fMRI studies comparing 156 patients with PTSD and 148 trauma-exposed healthy controls (TEHC) using seed-based d-mapping, to contrast neural correlates of experimental phases, namely conditioning, extinction learning, and extinction recall. Results Patients with PTSD, as compared to TEHCs, exhibited increased activation in the anterior hippocampus (extending to the amygdala) and medial prefrontal cortex during conditioning; in the anterior hippocampus-amygdala regions during extinction learning; and in the anterior hippocampus-amygdala and medial prefrontal areas during extinction recall. Yet, patients with PTSD have shown an overall decreased activation in the thalamus during all phases in this meta-analysis. Conclusion Findings from this metanalysis suggest that PTSD is characterized by increased activation in areas related to salience and threat, and lower activation in the thalamus, a key relay hub between subcortical areas. If replicated, these fear network alterations may serve as objective diagnostic markers for PTSD, and potential targets for novel treatment development, including pharmacological and brain stimulation interventions. Future longitudinal studies are needed to examine whether these observed network alteration in PTSD are the cause or the consequence of PTSD.


Despite the recent successes in robotic locomotion control, the design of robot relies heavily on human engineering. Automatic robot design has been a long studied subject, but the recent progress has been slowed due to the large combinatorial search space and the difficulty in evaluating the found candidates. To address the two challenges, we formulate automatic robot design as a graph search problem and perform evolution search in graph space. We propose Neural Graph Evolution (NGE), which performs selection on current candidates and evolves new ones iteratively. Different from previous approaches, NGE uses graph neural networks to parameterize the control policies, which reduces evaluation cost on new candidates with the help of skill transfer from previously evaluated designs. In addition, NGE applies Graph Mutation with Uncertainty (GM-UC) by incorporating model uncertainty, which reduces the search space by balancing exploration and exploitation. We show that NGE significantly outperforms previous methods by an order of magnitude. As shown in experiments, NGE is the first algorithm that can automatically discover kinematically preferred robotic graph structures, such as a fish with two symmetrical flat side-fins and a tail, or a cheetah with athletic front and back legs. Instead of using thousands of cores for weeks, NGE efficiently solves searching problem within a day on a single 64 CPU-core Amazon EC2 machine.


Plastid transformation is a well-established tool for biotechnology as it allows highexpression levels of proteins and as it provides biological transgene containment because of maternal inheritance of cytoplasmic genes in most crops. In basic research the function and regulation of plastid encoded genes can be further studied with the help of plastid transformation.
This study is focused on the three most critical steps to achieve plastid transformation in Arabidopsis thaliana and Rapid-Cycling Brassica rapa (RCBr), the establishment of a regeneration protocol, the construction of species specific
vectors and the use of different transformation protocols.
First, to allow the generation of fertile plants out of transformed cells, a reliable regeneration protocol was established. Fertile plants of Arabidopsis thaliana were
obtained with high regeneration efficiencies from cotyledons, seed derived calli and protoplasts. In RCBr, fertile plants could be regenerated from tissue culture of
hypocotyls.
For introduction of genes into plastids, appropriate vectors with different selection and visual markers were constructed. These ensure site specific integration of desired sequences and enable selection of transformed cell lines. In this study, species specific vectors for Nicotiana tabacum, Arabidopsis thaliana and RCBr were designed and cloned, using aminoglycoside resistance markers such as the aadA gene (confers resistance to spectinomycin and streptinomycin), the nptII or the aphA6 gene (conferring resistance to kanamycin). To allow the selection through the herbicides phosphinothricin or bialaphos, the bar gene was employed. In addition, fluorescence markers such as GFP, DsRed and AmCyan were taken as visual markers.
After the establishment of a regeneration protocol and the construction of specific vectors, two different protocols for plastid transformation, the particle gun- or
PEG (Polyethylene glycol)-mediated transformation method, were applied. However, no transformed plant in Arabidopsis thaliana and RCBr could be recovered so far. That the transformation protocol does work in principal could be
shown by the use of Nicotiana tabacum. Plastids of Nicotiana tabacum were successfully transformed using both transformation methods and AmCyan as new visual marker. Out of these experiments, fertile homoplasmic tobacco plants could be obtained as was shown by Southern blot analysis and reciprocal crosses. Thus, the functionality of the used transgene expression cassettes was clearly proven.


Speaker recognition is a process to recognize someone by their voice. The goal of speaker recognition is to extract, characterize and recognize the information about speaker identity. In this paper, we discuss both conventional and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach to speaker recognition system. The proposed system comprises three main modules, a feature extraction module to extract necessary features from speech waves, a Vector Quantization (VQ) module to generate the speaker codebook and an ANN module to classify the speakers based on their high discriminative power. The proposed intelligent learning system has been applied to a case study of text-dependent speaker recognition system and the performance is evaluated by applying two types of feature extraction techniques: Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficients (LPCC). Experiment shows that the new proposed system provides significantly higher performance compare to conventional method.


Poverty, illbeing and wellbeing The development environment Stakeholders in community development The principles of community development The features and outcome of community development The community as main actor in community development The place and role of community development workers Community development workers and their organisations Participatory decision-making, problem-solving and management Communication skills Group facilitation and leadership development Conflict resolution, mediation and negotiation Mobilisation and motivation Operational writing Meetings Public speaking Contact-making Participatory research methodology The start of a project Planning and implementation Evaluation and control The training dialogue Planning and presenting a training workshop.


We propose an approach to secure on-demand mobile ad hoc network (MANET) routing protocols by leveraging low-complexity trustworthy MANET modules (TMM). Such TMMs, which perform some trivial hard-wired functions involving simple logical and hash operations, can be realized at low cost. We describe the functionality of such TMMs to offer a sound trusted computing base (TCB) for securing MANETs. We outline an approach to secure two popular on demand protocols the ad hoc on demand distance vector (AODV) protocol, and the dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol by leveraging the TCB.


Asymmetric rolling, in which the circumferential velocities of the upper and lower rolls are different, can give rise to intense plastic shear strains and in turn shear deformation textures through the sheet thickness. The ideal shear deformation texture of fcc metals can be approximated by the <111> // ND and {001}<110> orientations, among which the former improves the deep drawability. The ideal shear deformation texture for bcc metals can be approximated by the Goss {110}<001> and {112}<111> orientations, among which the former improves the magnetic permeability along the <100> directions and is the prime orientation in grain oriented silicon steels. The intense shear strains can result in the grain refinement and hence improve echanical properties. Steel sheets, especially ferritic stainless steel sheets, and luminum alloy sheets may exhibit an undesirable surface roughening known as ridging or roping, when elongated along RD and TD, respectively. The ridging or roping is caused by differently oriented colonies, which are resulted from the <100> oriented columnar structure in ingots or billets, especially for ferritic stainless steels, that is not easily destroyed by the conventional rolling. The breakdown of columnar structure and the grain refinement can be achieved by asymmetric rolling, resulting in a decrease in the ridging problem.


Carbon nanotubes are used to provide increased electrical conductivity for polymer matrix materials, thus offering a method to monitor the structure's health. This work investigates the effect of impact damage on the electrical properties of multi- scale composite samples, prepared with woven fiberglass reinforcement and epoxy resin modified with as-received multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Moreover, this study addresses potential bias from manufacturing, and investigates the effectiveness of resistance measurements using two- and four-point probe methods. Transmission electron microscopy and static tensile tests results were used to evaluate, respectively, the dispersion of MWCNTs in the epoxy resin and the influence of the incorporation of these nanoparticles on the static tensile properties of the matrix, and interpret results from the resistance measurements on impacted speci- mens. In this study, the four-point probe method is shown to be much more repeatable and reliable than the two-point probe method. V C 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 128: 2797-2806, 2013


Ecologic studies of Venezuelan encephalitis (VE) virus at a marsh habitat near the epicenter of the 1969 outbreak in Guatemala revealed that the virus was enzootic there. VE virus was isolated yearly during 1968-1973 from sentinel hamsters exposed during the rainy seasons and from mosquitoes collected during July and August 1970. Hamsters yielded 41 strains of VE virus and virus was detected within 2 km of the edge of the marsh, in its interior, and at its western extreme 18 km from the central study site at La Avellana. One strain of virus came from a hamster that died in the dry season of January 1970. Culex mosquitoes yielded 20 strains of VE virus and Mansonia and Aedes one each. Culex (Melanoconion) and Aedes taeniorhynchus were most prevalent near the marsh. Hemagglutination-inhitibion (HI) and neutralization antibody tests of sera showed that wild terrestrial mammals (opossums and rodents), humans, and dogs, but not wild birds, were frequently infected. Seven of 16 susceptible residents of villages at the edge of the marsh developed antibodies without symptoms during an 18-month period between September 1971 and February 1973. Only 1 of 5 sentinel rabbits, and none of 30 sentinel chickens developed VE HI antibody during August-September 1971, a period when virus activity was readily detected by the use of sentinel hamsters. Five strains of group C arbovirus (one identified as Nepuyo) were recovered from sentinel hamsters during 1968 to 1970, and one strain of Nepuyo virus was isolated from the blood of a person with a febrile illness during 1972. Two strains of Patois group arboviruses were isolated from Culex mosquitoes during 1970.


In most of the planet, large herbivore communities have been replaced by livestock, but this process is reversing in many places. Here, we outline and review the pathways of "megaherbivore rewilding transitions" in three social-ecological-systems of subtropical Argentina. In the extensive arid high-elevation Puna plateau we observed a "rapid rewilding pathway" where the reduction of livestock was accompanied by the recovery of native camelid populations from near extinction in a few decades. In the forest-grassland ecotone, decreasing livestock favored higher fire frequency, probably limiting the speed of native herbivore recovery in an "increasing fire pathway". In lowland montane forests, the recovery of native herbivore communities appears to be lagged by fragmentation, local extinctions and human pressure, representing a case of "connectivity-limited rewilding". These typologies exemplify the complexity of outcomes resulting from livestock diminishing density, and provide a framework to understand and optimize processes of large herbivore rewilding according to different social-ecological contexts.


Abstract. Thermokarst lakes are important emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. However, accurate estimation of methane flux from thermokarst lakes is difficult due to their remoteness and observational challenges associated with the heterogeneous nature of ebullition. We used high-resolution (9–11 cm) snow-free aerial images of an interior Alaskan thermokarst lake acquired 2 and 4 days following freeze-up in 2011 and 2012, respectively, to detect and characterize methane ebullition seeps and to estimate whole-lake ebullition. Bubbles impeded by the lake ice sheet form distinct white patches as a function of bubbling when lake ice grows downward and around them, trapping the gas in the ice. Our aerial imagery thus captured a snapshot of bubbles trapped in lake ice during the ebullition events that occurred before the image acquisition. Image analysis showed that low-flux A- and B-type seeps are associated with low brightness patches and are statistically distinct from high-flux C-type and hotspot seeps associated with high brightness patches. Mean whole-lake ebullition based on optical image analysis in combination with bubble-trap flux measurements was estimated to be 174 ± 28 and 216 ± 33 mL gas m−2 d−1 for the years 2011 and 2012, respectively. A large number of seeps demonstrated spatiotemporal stability over our 2-year study period. A strong inverse exponential relationship (R2 >  =  0.79) was found between the percent of the surface area of lake ice covered with bubble patches and distance from the active thermokarst lake margin. Even though the narrow timing of optical image acquisition is a critical factor, with respect to both atmospheric pressure changes and snow/no-snow conditions during early lake freeze-up, our study shows that optical remote sensing is a powerful tool to map ebullition seeps on lake ice, to identify their relative strength of ebullition, and to assess their spatiotemporal variability.


Background Despite steady gains in life expectancy, individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease still experience rapid pulmonary decline throughout their clinical course, which can ultimately end in respiratory failure. Point-of-care tools for accurate and timely information regarding the risk of rapid decline is essential for clinical decision support. Objective This study aims to translate a novel algorithm for earlier, more accurate prediction of rapid lung function decline in patients with CF into an interactive web-based application that can be integrated within electronic health record systems, via collaborative development with clinicians. Methods Longitudinal clinical history, lung function measurements, and time-invariant characteristics were obtained for 30,879 patients with CF who were followed in the US Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry (2003-2015). We iteratively developed the application using the R Shiny framework and by conducting a qualitative study with care provider focus groups (N=17). Results A clinical conceptual model and 4 themes were identified through coded feedback from application users: (1) ambiguity in rapid decline, (2) clinical utility, (3) clinical significance, and (4) specific suggested revisions. These themes were used to revise our application to the currently released version, available online for exploration. This study has advanced the application's potential prognostic utility for monitoring individuals with CF lung disease. Further application development will incorporate additional clinical characteristics requested by the users and also a more modular layout that can be useful for care provider and family interactions. Conclusions Our framework for creating an interactive and visual analytics platform enables generalized development of applications to synthesize, model, and translate electronic health data, thereby enhancing clinical decision support and improving care and health outcomes for chronic diseases and disorders. A prospective implementation study is necessary to evaluate this tool's effectiveness regarding increased communication, enhanced shared decision-making, and improved clinical outcomes for patients with CF.


Background:The 1997 State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) program allowed states to expand Medicaid to uninsured children through age 18 in families under 200% of the federal poverty level. Prepregnancy insurance coverage of adolescents may help reduce unintended pregnancies, address other medical issues, and allow for early and adequate prenatal care for those carrying to term. Objectives:We tested the effects of SCHIP implementation on insurance coverage for teenage mothers and investigated whether these effects varied by type of state SCHIP program—Medicaid expansion, stand-alone program, or some combination of these. Research Design:We used Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System data from 1996 through 2000 and difference-in-differences analysis to analyze coverage changes for teenage mothers (age <20) relative to those for mothers aged 20–24 years old, a group whose Medicaid eligibility was not affected by SCHIP policies. Population Studied:Our raw sample of teenage and older mothers in Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Florida, Maine, New York, and West Virginia equaled 23,171 (811,638 weighted). Results:SCHIP implementation was associated with an almost 10 percentage point increase in prepregnancy coverage among teens under age 17. Although there were increases in both public and private coverage only the latter was statistically significant. The only statistically significant increase in Medicaid coverage, equal to almost 16 percentage points, was among 18-year-olds in states with Medicaid expansion programs. Conclusions:The temporary extension of SCHIP allows time to consider how to maintain the program's potentially positive effect on the reproductive health of adolescents.


Antitrust policy over the last 25 years can claim substantial achievements: the stated terms of the debate have shifted to consumer welfare and efficiency; the 1982 and subsequent Merger Guidelines and the Hart-Scott-Rodino review process provide safe havens, comparative predictability, and effective protection against suits filed after a deal is done; and large-firm monopolization cases have become less frequent, though the Microsoft case represents a notable exception. However, antitrust policy is still not founded on a solid empirical understanding of its effects in practice, and the bipartisan consensus under the Clinton and Bush administrations has allowed a partial return to the policies of the 1970s with benefits that are speculative at best.


Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli (DEC) are often disseminated through the fecal matter of livestock and waste products including slurry and manure. The study aimed to characterize archived DEC recovered from cattle fecal matter, manure and slurry for quinolone resistance and extended spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) with focus on trends in antimicrobial susceptibility patterns. The susceptibility of the bacteria was tested using standard laboratory procedures. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was carried out to detect the presence of qnrA, qnrB, qnrS genes and β-lactamase producing genes (blaESBL) such us blaTEM and blaSHV. About 91% of DEC strains were multidrug resistant (MDR) with non-susceptibility to ≥1 agent in ≥3 antimicrobial classes. The most common resistance was to amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (96.36%), followed by tretacycline (89.09%), ceftazidime (76.36%), and cefotaxime (70.780%). qnrS (18.2%) was the most prevalent quinolone resistant genes, followed by qnrB (7.2%) and qnrA (2%). blaTEM (5.45%) was most prevalent than blaSHV genes (3.6%). blaTEM and blaSHV genes were identified in double or multiple-carrying with qnrS and qnrB, no Beta-lactamase (ESBLs) producing strains were observed. This result highlights the importance of livestock fecal matter, manure, and slurries as a significant public health concern and a repository of antibiotic resistant gene.

 Key words: Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli (DEC), Livestock's fecal matter, manure, slurry, antibiotics resistance, quinolone resistance genes, blaTEM, blaSHV, Burkina Faso.


Controlling Quantum Plasmonics Electron tunneling across cavities could potentially induce a quantum mechanical plasmon mode that would be important in nano-electronics, catalysis, nonlinear optics, or single-molecule sensing, but has been expected to occur only at length scales beyond the reach of current state-of-the-art technology. Using a system of plasmonic dimers comprising silver nanocubes bridged by a molecular self-assembled monolayer, Tan et al. (p. 1496; see the Perspective by Nordlander) observed quantum plasmonic tunneling between the resonators and were able to tune the frequency of this tunneling plasmon resonance via selection of the molecular tunnel junctions. Moreover, the effects were observed at length scales that are technologically accessible. The optical properties of silver plasmonic dimers depend on the selection of bridging molecules. [Also see Perspective by Nordlander] Quantum tunneling between two plasmonic resonators links nonlinear quantum optics with terahertz nanoelectronics. We describe the direct observation of and control over quantum plasmon resonances at length scales in the range 0.4 to 1.3 nanometers across molecular tunnel junctions made of two plasmonic resonators bridged by self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). The tunnel barrier width and height are controlled by the properties of the molecules. Using electron energy-loss spectroscopy, we directly observe a plasmon mode, the tunneling charge transfer plasmon, whose frequency (ranging from 140 to 245 terahertz) is dependent on the molecules bridging the gaps.


Abstract syntax trees are an alternative representation to syntactic structures commonly found in NLP systems. This representation allows for sharing of structures across languages, making it well suited to serve as a translation interlingua. Grammatical Framework is a grammar formalism that captures cross-linguistic generalizations through the use of abstract syntax. The Resource Grammar Library (GF-RGL) in GF implements multilingual grammars for over 30 languages.

Universal Dependencies (UDs) is a parallel effort to use shared structures to analyse sentences in different languages. The set of part-of-speech tags and functions are shared across languages. The linguistic data available from this project is annotated data i.e. sentences annotated with UD structures in over 40 languages.

The main contribution of this thesis is to bridge these two representations: despite the similar motivation behind these two efforts, the representations used vary significantly. Hence, we propose a conversion method to convert the abstract syntax trees in GF to the structures used in UD.We find that the correspondence between GF-RGL and UD is significant, and the differences between the two raise interesting questions about the level of abstraction. We also present practical applications to our method: (1) the use of GF parser as a dependency parser and (2) to bootstrap UD treebanks from GF treebanks.

Another topic addressed in this thesis is the problem of out-of-vocabulary words that comes up in symbolic systems. We address this problem in the context of part-of-speech tagging and statistical dependency parsing. We propose a simple method to use a distributional thesaurus to replace unknown words and show through empirical evaluation that our method improves both overall accuracies and accuracies for unknown words. Our method is generic and can be adapted to fit other NLP systems.


An experiment has been conducted from February 2008 to April 2008. The objective of this research was to analize the influence of a variety of water levels to the activity of nitrate reductase enzyme (NRA) and the production of soybean ( Glycine max ) var. Burangrang, and to analize the correlations between the NRA and the production. Cultivar Burangrang was the main subject of the experiment. The application of the treatment was followed by the complete random design consisting of one factor with three replicates. The factor was the water levels of field capacity, 90%, 70%, 50%, 30%, and 10% of the field capacity. Every replicate consisted of 8 treatment units, and thus the whole of treatment units were 144. The water level treatment was given once per day. NRA is calculated based on the amount of nitrite produced from an assay. Nitrate was reacted using 1% sulfanilamide in 3N HCL and 0.02% napthylethylendiamide . The color was then determined using spectrophotometer at 540 nm. The result of the research indicated that the administration of water at 90% of field capacity resulted in the highest average of NRA due to good water efficiency. The best average of water efficiency for production was obtained from the variety of water quality of 70%. So it can be concluded that variety of water quality had significant influence to NRA and production. NRA had positif correlation with production. Key words: activities nitrate reductase, soybean, water quality.


Why do mothers fail to breastfeed their babies?

The majority of mothers know breastfeeding gives their baby the best start in life: improved health, superior intelligence, and closer emotional attachment are just a few of the crucial benefits. Yet a mere 17% of mothers are still breastfeeding when their babies are three months old. Why?

There are plenty of books out there that offer excuses. Tiredness, sore nipples, low milk supply, breasts too big, breasts too small, excess marketing by artificial milk companies… the list goes on. This is the first book to look for answers in the mothers themselves.

Controversial author and The Alpha Parent blogger Allison Dixley argues mothers fail to breastfeed because women undermine each other, using a toxic mix of deception, guilt, excuses, envy, contempt, defensiveness and sabotage. Drawing on academic research in psychology, biology, philosophy and anthropology, she sheds light on the hidden emotions of early motherhood, and reveals the deep and widespread damage artificial feeding can have on a mother's confidence in her body, her mothering and in other women.

Heart-wrenching, polemic and ultimately a call to action, this is a book that will make you angry, but a book that will make you think.