Today's software development is driven by software processes and practices that when followed increase the chances of building high quality software products. Not following these guidelines results in increased risk that the goal for the software's quality characteristics cannot be reached. Current process analysis approaches are limited in identifying and understanding process deviations and ultimately fail in comprehending why a process does not work in a given environment and what steps of the process have to be changed and tailored.
In this work I will present a methodology for formulating, identifying and investigating process violations in the execution of software processes. The methodology, which can be thought of as "Process Conformance Testing", consists of a four step iterative model, compromising templates and tools. A strong focus is set on identifying violations in a cost efficient and unobtrusive manner by utilizing automatically collected data gathered through commonly used software development tools, such as version control systems. To evaluate the usefulness and correctness of the model a series of four studies have been conducted in both classroom and professional environments. A total of eight different software processes have been investigated and tested. The results of the studies show that the steps and iterative character of the methodology are useful for formulating and tailoring violation detection strategies and investigating violations in classroom study environments and professional environments.
All the investigated processes were violated in some way, which emphasizes the importance of conformance measurement. This is especially important when running an empirical study to evaluate the effectiveness of a software process, as the experimenters want to make sure they are evaluating the specified process and not a variation of it.
Violation detection strategies were tailored based upon analysis of the history of violations and feedback from then enactors and mangers yielding greater precision of identification of non-conformities.
The overhead cost of the approach is shown to be feasible with a 3.4% (professional environment) and 12.1% (classroom environment) overhead.
One interesting side result is that process enactors did not always follow the process for good reason, e.g. the process was not tailored for the environment, it was not specified at the right level of granularity, or was too difficult to follow. Two specific examples in this thesis are XP Pair Switching and Test Driven Development. In XP Pair Switching, the practice was violated because the frequency of switching was too high. The definition of Test Driven Development is simple and clear but requires a fair amount of discipline to follow, especially by novice programmers.


In this study, novel drug carriers were developed for the treatment of skin conditions such as psoriasis, aging, or ultraviolet damage using micro/nanocapsules and micro/nanospheres of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate). The sizes of the particles were in the micron range and were loaded with retinyl palmitate and Dead Sea Water. In some tests, MgCl2 was used as a substitute for Dead Sea Water for accurate determination of released ions of Dead Sea Water. Encapsulation efficiency and loading of water-soluble excipients Dead Sea Water and MgCl2 were almost eight times lower than the hydrophobic compound retinyl palmitate. The particles were not cytotoxic as determined with the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide test using L929 mouse fibroblasts, BALB/3T3 mouse embryo fibroblasts, and HaCaT human keratinocytes. Ames test showed that the carriers were not genotoxic. The particles penetrated the membrane of human osteosarcoma cells Saos 2 and accumulated in their cytoplasm. No reactive oxygen species production could be detected which indicated low or no inflammatory response toward the particles. In the tests with intact human skin, 1.2% of the retinyl palmitate–loaded poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) particles penetrated into the human skin, but when the skin was without stratum corneum and increased to 6.9%. In conclusion, these carriers have shown a significant potential as topical drug delivery systems in the personalized treatment of skin diseases because their contents could be modified according to a patient's needs and several drugs could be loaded in one type of microparticle, or several populations, each carrying a different drug, can be used in the treatment.


Background Consent forms have lengthened over time and become harder for participants to understand. We sought to demonstrate the feasibility of creating a simplified consent form for biobanking that comprises the minimum information necessary to meet ethical and regulatory requirements. We then gathered preliminary data concerning its content from hypothetical biobank participants. Methodology/Principal Findings We followed basic principles of plain-language writing and incorporated into a 2-page form (not including the signature page) those elements of information required by federal regulations and recommended by best practice guidelines for biobanking. We then recruited diabetes patients from community-based practices and randomized half (n = 56) to read the 2-page form, first on paper and then a second time on a tablet computer. Participants were encouraged to use "More information" buttons on the electronic version whenever they had questions or desired further information. These buttons led to a series of "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs) that contained additional detailed information. Participants were asked to identify specific sentences in the FAQs they thought would be important if they were considering taking part in a biorepository. On average, participants identified 7 FAQ sentences as important (mean 6.6, SD 14.7, range: 0–71). No one sentence was highlighted by a majority of participants; further, 34 (60.7%) participants did not highlight any FAQ sentences. Conclusions Our preliminary findings suggest that our 2-page form contains the information that most prospective participants identify as important. Combining simplified forms with supplemental material for those participants who desire more information could help minimize consent form length and complexity, allowing the most substantively material information to be better highlighted and enabling potential participants to read the form and ask questions more effectively.


A potential decrease in capital reservation required by the regulator motivates banks to use advanced approaches to operational risk assessment. The acturial approach may also be useful from the standpoint of controlling the operational risks. The loss distribution approach, among others, is now considerably popular in banks all over the world. This paper shows why operational risk frequency and severity should be modeled separately under the LDA method and examines some problems regarding the modeling of operational loss severities. The study provides a complete scheme for using LDA. It gives arguments in support of using more complicated models against the simpler ones and vice versa as well. This paper analyses the connections between different distributions used to model operational risk. It emphasizes three distinctive features of operational risk data, i. e., skewness, kurtosis and a presence of the heavy tail. The notion of «fat tail» is re-introduced in comparison with the heavy tail. The article offers several graphical procedures to determine the presence of the heavy tail in a sample of operational risk data. Authors substantiate the need to use statistical models with two or more parameters. Theoretical aspects of EVT application to operational risk modeling are given. This study notes the POT method threshold choice dilemma and analyzes four different approaches to find the value of this threshold. The methods considered in this paper make up a powerful mathematical apparatus for operational risk modelling. However, some weak spots of the popular POT method are shown. Application of certain generalized models for operational risk modeling is suggested for further study.


In her compendious study, [of the folktale of the runaway wife] Leavy argues that the contradictory claims of nature and culture are embodied in the legendary figure of the swan maiden, a woman torn between the human and bestial worlds. --"The New York Times Book Review" This is a study of the meaning of gender as framed by the swan maiden tale, a story found in the folklore of virtually every culture. The swan maiden is a supernatural woman forced to marry, keep house, and bear children for a mortal man who holds the key to her imprisonment. When she manages to regain this key, she escapes to the otherworld, never to return. These tales have most often been interpreted as depicting exogamous marriages, describing the girl from another tribe trapped in a world where she will always be the outsider. Barbara Fass Leavy believes that, in the societies in which the tale and its variants endured, woman was the other--the outsider trapped in a society that could never be her own. Leavy shows how the tale, though rarely explicitly recognized, is frequently replayed in modern literature. Beautifully written, this book reveals the myriad ways in which the folktales of a society reflect its cultural values, and particularly how folktales are allegories of gender relations. It will interest anyone involved in literary, gender, and cultural studies.


The presence of bypass diodes that mitigate the negative effects of partial shading (PS) conditions produces multiple peak characteristics at the output of a photovoltaic (PV) array. Conventional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods develop errors under certain circumstances and detect the local maximum power point (LMPP) instead of the global maximum power point (GMPP). Several artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods have been used to modify the performance of conventional controllers. However, these methods have either not completely solved the PS problem or resulted in considerably complicated and unreliable methodologies, as well as require further development to be used in high-speed applications. This study aims to design, develop, and verify a novel rapid, reliable, and cost-effective method called adaptive radial movement optimization (ARMO) to diminish the effect of the PS problem in the MPP detection for PV systems with additional dynamic applications. The main advantages of ARMO are its improved tracking speed and significant reduction in output fluctuations during the tracking period. An extensive experimental verification has been conducted to provide a fair evaluation of the proposed method compared with conventional and recently developed methods under similar conditions while being applied to a unique PV system and DC/DC converter.


Abstract Objective: In this study, we measured microbial growth and endotoxin production in the intravenous anesthetic propofol using 10 different microbial strains; 6 isolated from outbreak cases and 4 from laboratory stock cultures. Design: In each trial, endotoxin-free glass tubes containing 10 ml propofol were inoculated with 10°-103 CFU/ml of the test organism and incubated at 30°C for 72 hours. Setting: In May and June 1990, the Centers for Disease Control received reports of 5 outbreaks in 5 states of postsurgical patient infections and/or pyrogenic reactions. Epidemiologic and laboratory investigations implicated extrinsic contamination of an intravenous anesthetic, propofol, as the probable source of these outbreaks. Results: After 24 hours, 9 of the 10 cultures increased in viable counts by 3 to 6 logs. At least 1 ng/ml of endotoxin was produced within 24 hours by Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, and Acinetobacter calcoaceticus subspecies anitratus. Conclusions: Propofol can support rapid microbial growth and endotoxin production. To avoid infectious complications, scrupulous aseptic technique should be used when preparing or administering this anesthetic.


Advances in infrared laser technology and detection sensitivity have made time-resolved chiral vibrational spectroscopy experimentally feasible. Here we describe our recent efforts in detecting, for the first time, transient vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) signals with picosecond time resolution. The absorption changes of the cobalt (-)-sparteine complex Co(sp)Cl 2 after visible excitation of a d-d excited state was probed in the CH-stretch region by alternating left- and right-handed circular polarized mid IR laser pulses. VCD spectra can be sensitive reporters of peptide and protein secondary structure or the absolute configuration of chiral organic compounds in solution. Recent developments are presented, which may in the future allow us to access this information in the course of fast chemical reactions.


A key goal of research in conversational systems is to train an interactive agent to help a user with a task. Human conversation, however, is notoriously incomplete, ambiguous, and full of extraneous detail. To operate effectively, the agent must not only understand what was explicitly conveyed but also be able to reason in the presence of missing or unclear information. When unable to resolve ambiguities on its own, the agent must be able to ask the user for the necessary clarifications and incorporate the response in its reasoning. Motivated by this problem we introduce QRAQ (Query, Reason, and Answer Questions), a new synthetic domain, in which a User gives an Agent a short story and asks a challenge question. These problems are designed to test the reasoning and interaction capabilities of a learningbased Agent in a setting that requires multiple conversational turns. A good Agent should ask only non-deducible, relevant questions until it has enough information to correctly answer the User's question. We use standard and improved reinforcement learning based memory-network architectures to solve QRAQ problems in the difficult setting where the reward signal only tells the Agent if its final answer to the challenge question is correct or not. To provide an upper-bound to the RL results we also train the same architectures using supervised information that tells the Agent during training which variables to query and the answer to the challenge question. We evaluate our architectures on four QRAQ dataset types, and scale the complexity for each along multiple dimensions.


A continuous flow synthesis of menthol starting from citronellal catalysed by scrap catalytic converters is reported. The reaction was conducted in a tandem system connecting in series two catalytic systems, with the first having Lewis acid properties (favouring the cyclisation of citronellal to isopulegols) and the second having hydrogenation catalytic activity (catalysing the hydrogenation of isopulegols to menthols). A Lewis acid catalyst was prepared by supporting iron oxide nanoparticles over a waste material, i.e. the ceramic core of scrap catalytic converters (SCATs) via a microwave assisted method. Most importantly, SCATs, containing a low residual noble metal content, could be directly employed in the second step as hydrogenation catalysts. The reaction was performed studying the influence on the yield and selectivity to (−)-menthol of various reaction parameters (T, p and flow rate). Under the best reaction conditions (at a flow rate of 0.1 mL min−1 and at 373 K and 413 K for cyclisation and hydrogenation steps respectively) a conversion of >99% of (+)-citronellal to (−)-menthol with 77% final yield was achieved.


This study examined middle- and high-school students' perceptions of teacher adaptations to meet the special learning needs of students in the general education classroom. Individual interviews were conducted with 95 middle- and high-school students who represented the following groups: low achievers, average achievers, high achievers, learning disabilities, and English as a second language. All students felt they needed further teacher assistance to learn from their textbooks and that they would benefit from using learning strategies. Students also identified grouping preferences and the types of teacher adaptations they perceived as most helpful. Implications of the findings for inclusion of students with learning disabilities in general education classrooms are provided.


Background Poor frontal plane knee control is suggested to be a risk factor for anterior cruciate ligament injuries. Both 3D motion analysis and less complex methods, such as 2D video analysis and subjective assessments, have been used to assess frontal plane knee motion. However, the agreement between all three methods has not been investigated. Objective To determine the agreement between 3D and 2D motion analysis and real-time observational assessment of frontal plane knee control in a vertical drop jump (VDJ) landing. Design Observational study. Setting Research laboratory. Participants 119 Norwegian female elite handball players. Risk factor assessment Players performed a VDJ during which movement was recorded with a 3D motion analysis system, a digital video camera, and real-time observational screening in frontal plane. Main outcome measurements 3D and 2D knee-to-ankle separation ratios were calculated to assess frontal plane knee control. A physiotherapist independently scored the knee control as "good", "reduced" or "poor". All variables were assessed at peak knee flexion. Results Correlations between 3D and 2D knee-to-ankle-separation ratios and 2D and 3D versus real-time observation ranged from 0.63 to 0.75. Mean 3D and 2D knee-to-ankle-separation ratios were significantly lower for players being scored with "poor" compared to those with "reduced" or "good" frontal knee control. Conclusion Compared with the "gold standard" (3D analysis), both 2D motion analysis and real-time observations seem to be feasible tests to assess frontal knee control. The injury predictive value of the VDJ screening test remains to be answered.


EDITOR,—Before recommending periconceptional folic acid-containing multivitamin supplementation universally for the prevention of neural tube defects one would also want to be sure that it was doing no harm. A UK study showed the over-representation of worries and anxiety among children at age 7–10 years born to mothers with periconceptional multivitamin supplementation. In our previous study based on a short term postnatal follow up of 3356 infants (mean age 11 months) born to mothers supplemented with multivitamin or placebo-like trace element in the periconceptional period, the results of the tests of mental and behavioural development were similar in the two groups. However, atopic dermatitis was found more often in the multivitamin group. We now summarise the results of long term follow up to the ages of 2 and 6 years with respect to the occurrence of atopic dermatitis (and other allergies) and anxiety. The children were born to mothers who had been supplemented with multivitamin (including 0.8 mg of folic acid) or trace elements in the Hungarian randomised, double blind, controlled trial. Altogether 200 case and 200 control children were randomly selected with equal sex distribution for each age group (2 and 6 years) and they were examined by a double blind method. Of the 800 invited children, 625 (78%) took part in the study, 336 (84%) in the 2 year and 289 (72%) in the 6 year age groups. Parents of 120 children did not want to participate, 44 families had a new unknown address, three children died after the short term follow up study, four had severe congenital abnormalities, and four were unable to cooperate at the psychometric behavioural examinations. The occurrence of atopic dermatitis based on a medically documented case history did not diVer significantly between the two nutritional groups at 2 years (32/176 (18.2%) in the multivitamin and 19/160 (11.9%) in the trace element group) and at 6 years (12/147 (8.2%) v 11/142 (7.7%)). The occurrence of other allergies including bronchial asthma, obstructive bronchitis, pseudocroup and food allergies were similar in the two nutritional groups at 2 years (21.0% in the multivitamin and 29.4% in the trace element) and at 6 years (30.6% v 33.8%). At 2 years of age, developmental quotient was measured by the Brunet-Lezine method, while at 6 years intelligence quotient was measured by the Budapest Binet and Raven tests. In addition, the Goodenough man drawing test was used. There was no significant diVerence in the mental development of children between the multivitamin and trace element groups. Anxiety was measured by the child version of thematic aperception test in 6 year old children. Five levels of anxiety were examined but 'extremely low' did not occur, while 'extremely high' was found only in two children of the trace element group. The proportion of children scoring 'above average' levels of anxiety was not higher in the multivitamin group and we were thus unable to confirm the previous UK finding. In conclusion, no adverse eVect was observed in children whose mothers had received periconceptional multivitamin supplementation.


A new genus of graptolites named Lithuanograptus has been found in Lithuania and studied by the present author (Paskevicius, 1972, 1976) in the Silurian Llandovery cyphus zone of the Rasytė Formation and the following 4 species have been described: L. fusiformis Pask., L. obuti Pask., L. minimus Pask. and L. serus Pask. Loydell (1992) treated this genus as a junior synonym of Metaclimacograptus and attributed the species of L. minimus and L. serus to this genus. The author of the present paper agrees to the attribution of these species to the genus Metaclimacograptus . Nevertheless, a genotype L. fusiformis of Lithuanograptus and its species L. fusiformis and L. obuti differ significantly from Metaclimacogratus by fusiform rhabdosome, massive virgella and structure of thecae – a flattened geniculum surrounding and fully covering the thecal excavations, types of medial and interthecal septa and other features. Therefore, the author considers Lithuanograptus with L. fusiformis and L. obuti being separate genus and species. Moreover, the paper presents the holotypes of the mentioned two species with the material, diagnosis, age and detection sites.


We examined cytoskeleton-associated forms of NF proteins during axonal neuritogenesis in cultured dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons and NB2a/d1 neuroblastoma. In addition to filamentous immunoreactivity, we observed punctate NF immunoreactivity throughout perikarya and neurites. Immuno-electron microscopy revealed this punctate immunoreactivity to consist of non-membrane-bound 75 nm round/ovoid structures consisting of amorphous, fibrous material. Endogenous and microinjected NF subunits incorporated into dots prior to their accumulation within filaments. A transfected GFP-conjugated NF-M incorporated into dots and translocated at a rate consistent with slow axonal transport in real-time video analyses. Some dots converted into a filamentous form or exuded filamentous material during transport. Dots contained conventional kinesin immunoreactivity, associated with microtubules, and their transport into axons was blocked by anti-kinesin antibodies and nocodazole. These oligomeric structures apparently represent one form in which NF subunits are transported in growing axons and may utilize kinesin as a transport motor.


Climate is one of the main factors controlling winegrape production. Bioclimatic indices describing the suitability of a particular region for wine production are a widely used zoning tool. Seven suitable bioclimatic indices characterize regions in Europe with different viticultural suitability, and their possible geographical shifts under future climate conditions are addressed using regional climate model simulations. The indices are calculated from climatic variables (daily values of temperature and precipitation) obtained from transient ensemble simulations with the regional model COSMO-CLM. Index maps for recent decades (1960–2000) and for the 21st century (following the IPCC-SRES B1 and A1B scenarios) are compared. Results show that climate change is projected to have a significant effect on European viticultural geography. Detrimental impacts on winegrowing are predicted in southern Europe, mainly due to increased dryness and cumulative thermal effects during the growing season. These changes represent an important constraint to grapevine growth and development, making adaptation strategies crucial, such as changing varieties or introducing water supply by irrigation. Conversely, in western and central Europe, projected future changes will benefit not only wine quality, but might also demarcate new potential areas for viticulture, despite some likely threats associated with diseases. Regardless of the inherent uncertainties, this approach provides valuable information for implementing proper and diverse adaptation measures in different European regions.


Understanding criminals' personality characteristics could engender appropriate solutions for preventing crimes and treating criminals and the aim of the current work is to predict criminals' (robbers, swindlers and smugglers) personality characteristics by using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) in committing type of crime. The research falls under the applied category in terms of goal while in terms of nature it is among surveydescriptive researches. The sample under investigation includes 480 people who were selected by way of classified random sampling method in a systematic form from among the population of criminals in the Central Prison, province of Kermanshah. The tool used in this paper is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) (short form of 71 questions). The results obtained from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) indicated that prevalence of anti-social personalitycharacteristics and mental weakness among robbers; depression, anti-social personality and schizophrenia among swindlers as well as anti-social traits, mental weakness and schizophrenia among smugglers are seen significantly. Also, the results of the variance analysis demonstrated that there is a significant difference between the (MMPI) clinical scales among three groups of criminals (robbers, swindlers and smugglers) on D scales (depression), Pd (Psychopathy deviation), Pt (Anxiety and psychosis), Sc (Schizophrenia) and Ma (Hypomania) (p<%5). Research findings revealed that criminals enjoy lower level of normal and positive personality dimensions. To sum up, we can infer that all personality characteristics exist in the population of criminals and therapy experts need to pay attention to all sorts of personalities for treating criminals affected with personality disorder.


Walking buses have been set up at many schools in Britain as a way of providing an alternative to the car as a means of travel to school. A walking bus is a group of children who walk to school along a set route, collecting other children along the way at 'bus stops', escorted by several adult volunteers, one of whom is at the front ('the driver') and another is at the back ('the conductor'). Each walking bus has a co-ordinator who ensures that there are sufficient volunteers and registers the children who wish to use it. The report examines a number of walking buses that have been set up in Hertfordshire, the area immediately to the north of London. The purpose of the evaluation of walking buses is to establish what the effects of walking bus are, and, as far as possible, establish a methodology that can be used to examine systematically initiatives to encourage children to use alternatives to the car, such as cycle training and pedestrian skills training, as well as walking buses. The data collected for the evaluation exercise comprises two parts: a postal questionnaire to schools across Hertfordshire and more detailed research on five case study walking buses within the county. This report presents the results from these two surveys. In Hertfordshire, the number of walking buses grew rapidly from one in early 1998. Four years later, there were 68 in 41 schools registered in the county. One year after that, there were 26 at 22 schools registered. This suggests that the number may have peaked. The walking buses had an average of 14 children registered to use them, with a range from 3 to 41. On average, 10 children used each walking bus, escorted by three or four volunteers. The children ranged in age from Nursery (age 3-4) up to Year 6 (age 10-11) but there was a clear peak in Year 2 (age 6-7), with a tailing off amongst older children. Of the 26 walking buses for which detailed information was supplied in the postal survey, twelve had ceased to operate by the time of the survey. In nine cases this was because of a lack of volunteers to escort the walking bus. For three of them, nobody was available to co-ordinate that walking bus. Five walking buses closed because there were too few children. Three of these also had a shortage of volunteers. In only one case was the closure of the walking bus not associated with a shortage of one or more out of children, volunteers and a co-ordinator. Walking buses have not been closed because they did not achieve the objectives for which they were set up. For head teachers, the main objectives of setting up walking buses were to relieve traffic congestion around the school, and to increase walking, particularly to give the children more exercise. The walking buses were seen as fairly successful in achieving these objectives. When the views of the head teachers of schools that had set up walking buses were compared with those of schools that had not, it was found that the former had greater recognition of the social aspects of walking buses whereas the latter have greater expectations in terms of reducing congestion, and improving the children's road safety skills and mental alertness. About 62% of the children using walking buses had previously travelled to school by car. Some children used the walking bus fewer than five days a week. Overall, the reduction in the number of children travelling by car seems to be about 50% of the number of children on a walking bus. On average, each child who previously travelled by car who switched to walking, walked for 22 minutes on the walking bus each time it was used. For a child that uses the walking bus every day, this is nearly two hours of extra physical activity a week. Putting these two concepts together, suggests that walking buses can make a significant contribution to children's volumes of physical activity. Given that only a small proportion of the children at a school use a walking bus, it would not be expected that there would be an observable reduction in traffic, except, perhaps, in very specific locations, such as at the school gate. This lack of reduction in traffic is compounded by the fact that many of the cars would continue to be used by a parent travelling to work or elsewhere at the time of the school trip. Walking buses are perceived by all those involved, to have benefits for the children, the parents and the school, particularly the social benefits to the children and the more indirect benefits in terms of sending out a visual message as to the importance of walking. Some negative outcomes or disadvantages of walking buses were reported by smaller numbers of respondents. They centred on the perceived lack of benefits, time losses and negative social outcomes. Benefits or disadvantages to parents in terms of time saving or losses were seen to be important in maintaining participation on the walking bus. This becomes even more critical for those parents acting as volunteers. Implementation processes were seen as being important in explaining why walking buses do not attract more car drivers. The availability and location of volunteers often determines the route of the walking bus such that it loses its strategic capability. 'Trailblazers' do not necessarily create pathways for subsequent, more targeted, walking buses. Responsibility for maintaining walking buses rests neither with the school, nor with the walking bus co-ordinator. It could well be that walking buses need a 'champion' within the school if they are to be a long-term initiative. This, however, sits uneasily with their selling point as necessitating little school input. The contribution of the co-ordinator to the success of the walking bus should not be overlooked. The personality and organisational ability of the co-ordinator will have an impact on the operation and long-term future of the walking bus. The loss of an effective co-ordinator may well have an impact on the continuation of the walking bus. There are a number of characteristics of walking buses, which may be useful for explaining effectiveness and longevity. Formal or informal structures and benefits to volunteers are amongst some that have been identified by this evaluation exercise. In the schools in Hertfordshire, the key source of information about walking buses was Hertfordshire County Council, but the initiative to set up a walking bus often came from within the school. The vast majority of head teachers of schools without walking buses were aware of the concept. The main reason that walking buses have not been set up at these schools is the lack of parental interest or support. For some schools the nature of the catchment area would make it difficult to recruit enough children to form a walking bus. Otherwise the main problems are concerns about traffic danger and the lack of the head teacher's time to start the process. Most of the schools which responded to the postal questionnaire regard children's travel to and from school as a policy issue for the school. Of course, one reason that some schools did not respond to the survey may be because they do not regard travel to and from school as a relevant issue for them. The schools have taken or intend to take a wide variety of actions to address travel to school issues, including education and training of the children, setting up travel plans, and working with the County Council. This report illustrates the role and behaviour of walking buses in Hertfordshire. Given that Hertfordshire is an area where walking buses evolved earlier than many other parts of Great Britain, there may be useful lessons for interested parties elsewhere. In particular, it may help to stem the potential decline after the first cohort of children and their mothers have left the walking bus. There are a number of good reasons to encourage children to walk rather than go by car, in terms of their health and the environment, both in the short and long term. Walking buses can help to break down the barriers to walking perceived by parents and children, in terms of concerns about the children's safety, competence and knowledge. Therefore, walking buses should be encouraged.


SS-cream (Severance Secret cream) is made up of extracts from 9 natural products for treating premature ejaculation (PE). SS-cream has been proved to be effective in the treatment of PE in pilot clinical studies. It has also been found to have a potentiating effect of their erectile capacity in some patients. Therefore, we investigated the pharmacological actions of SS-cream and the extracts of its individual components in rabbit corpus cavernosal smooth muscle to realize the effect of SS-cream on penile erection. Extracts of Bufonis Venenum induced a dose-related contraction of rabbit corpus cavernosal muscle, which was significantly inhibited by phentolamine. Extracts of Caryophylli Flos induced a dose-related relaxation in the muscle strips precontracted with phenylephrine (5 x 10(-6)M; PHE). Caryophylli Flos caused a dose-dependent inhibition of the PHE induced contraction and also inhibited the contractility of Bufonis Venenum. Other extracts, when used individually or in a mixture, induced a dose-related relaxation in the precontracted muscle strips with PHE. SS-cream began to exert a relaxing effect at the concentration of 0.05 mg/ml in the muscle strips precontracted muscle strips with PHE (5 x 10(-6)M); causing dose-dependent relaxation with a maximal effect at 0.2 mg/ml. The relaxation effect of SS-cream was partially inhibited by endothelial disruption and by pretreatment with methylene blue, pyrogallol, atropine, and indomethacin, although they were not statistically significant. The results show that SS-cream has a relaxing effect on cavernosal smooth muscle. And it is partly related with enhancing the NO/cyclic GMP pathway although the relaxation mechanism in detail remains to be elucidated. Therefore, SS-cream may be effective for future treatment of mild erectile dysfunction, in addition to its role for premature ejaculation.


Abstract Studies show that electromobility will emerge in urban areas. As urban mobility solutions are changing, electromobility is intended with a big potential of sustainable innovation. Nevertheless, changing the mobility culture depends on certain requirements. According to Urri, the automobile development lies in breaking the dominant role of cars which results in a development deadlock. In order to change the mobility culture, the mental approach to mobility options and the infrastructural conditions need to be considered as two central factors. Future mobility isn´t about less mobility, but rather a different way of being mobile and using different types of mobility solutions. This paper presents a research project that is based on the systemic-relational approach. It seeks to develop and introduce the conditions of electromobility in an urban area without a well-frequented local public transport by a networked innovation cooperation in four development areas. The central goal of this work is the integrated development of service innovation of technical and non-technical manner based on the network of project partners, the city council and the university. A change towards electromobility means changing infrastructure, market actors and business models. It signifies a change of social-cultural systems regarding mobility habits, practices and values. One of our main results show that the emotional perception by using experiences of electromobility has a positive effect on its social acceptability which raises the "flow factor" of electromobility.


Like John Updike, Martin Amis is the pre-eminent novelist-critic of his generation. The War Against Cliche is a selection of his reviews and essays over the past quarter-century. It contains pieces on Cervantes, Milton, Donne, Coleridge, Jane Austen, Dickens, Kafka, Philip Larkin, Joyce, Waugh, Lowry, Nabokov, F. R. Leavis, V. S. Pritchett, William Burroughs, Anthony Burgess, Angus Wilson, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Shiva and V. S. Naipaul, Kurt Vonnegut, Iris Murdoch, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Don DeLillo, Elmore Leonard, Michael Crichton, Thomas Harris - and John Updike. Other subjects include chess, nuclear weapons, masculinity, screen censorship, juvenile violence, Andy Warhol, Hillary Clinton, and Margaret Thatcher.


Abstract. Ecosystems play a fundamental role in climate change mitigation by photosynthetically fixing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it for a period of time in organic matter. Although climate impacts of carbon emissions by sources can be quantified by global warming potentials, the appropriate formal metrics to assess climate benefits of carbon removals by sinks are unclear. We introduce here the climate benefit of sequestration (CBS), a metric that quantifies the radiative effect of fixing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and retaining it for a period of time in an ecosystem before releasing it back as the result of respiratory processes and disturbances. In order to quantify CBS, we present a formal definition of carbon sequestration (CS) as the integral of an amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere stored over the time horizon it remains within an ecosystem. Both metrics incorporate the separate effects of (i) inputs (amount of atmospheric carbon removal) and (ii) transit time (time of carbon retention) on carbon sinks, which can vary largely for different ecosystems or forms of management. These metrics can be useful for comparing the climate impacts of carbon removals by different sinks over specific time horizons, to assess the climate impacts of ecosystem management, and to obtain direct quantifications of climate impacts as the net effect of carbon emissions by sources versus removals by sinks.


We establish a methodology and present baseline data for a long-term grassy woodland restoration study that commenced in 2007 in two nature reserves (Mulligans Flat, Goorooyarroo (35° 9–13' S; 149° 9–12' E)) totalling 1386 ha on the northern boundary of Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory in south eastern Australia. The experimental infrastructure comprises 96 × 1 ha sites established in Eucalyptus blakelyi / Eucalyptus melliodora dominated woodland. These are being subjected to varying kangaroo grazing pressure and augmentation with logs, while burning treatments are planned. One reserve (Mulligans Flat) has been fenced for feral predator control and contains half the sites, forming a companion experiment to Goorooyarroo. Our baseline floristic study comprised estimates, at the site level, of ground layer biomass, species biomass, ground cover types and soil (0–10 cm) properties. From these data we conclude that the groundlayer vegetation is dominated by Joycea pallida, Austrodanthonia spp., Themeda australis and Aristida ramosa. These grasses varied in abundance according to differences in soil pH, phosphorus and to a lesser extent nitrates. Forb frequencies were highly sensitive to nitrate levels with annual exotic forbs dominating at high nitrate sites. More generally, soil nutrient levels and exotic species in some sites indicated areas of previous pasture improvement activities. Biomass estimates indicated extremely high grazing pressure, sufficient to negatively affect the habitat quality for ground-dependent fauna and some soil processes. These data will provide an important basis for examining rates of ecosystem recovery under different restoration strategies.


Three-dimensional (3D) shape recognition has drawn much research attention in the field of computer vision. The advances of deep learning encourage various deep models for 3D feature representation. For point cloud and multi-view data, two popular 3D data modalities, different models are proposed with remarkable performance. However the relation between point cloud and views has been rarely investigated. In this paper, we introduce Point-View Relation Network (PVRNet), an effective network designed to well fuse the view features and the point cloud feature with a proposed relation score module. More specifically, based on the relation score module, the point-single-view fusion feature is first extracted by fusing the point cloud feature and each single view feature with point-singe-view relation, then the pointmulti- view fusion feature is extracted by fusing the point cloud feature and the features of different number of views with point-multi-view relation. Finally, the point-single-view fusion feature and point-multi-view fusion feature are further combined together to achieve a unified representation for a 3D shape. Our proposed PVRNet has been evaluated on ModelNet40 dataset for 3D shape classification and retrieval. Experimental results indicate our model can achieve significant performance improvement compared with the state-of-the-art models.


OBJECTIVE
Obesity is associated with cognitive deficits; however, the mechanisms are unclear, especially among otherwise healthy adults. Our objectives were to examine (a) whether obesity is linked to elevations in fasting glucose and (b) whether these elevations are associated with cognitive impairment among otherwise healthy young adults.

METHOD
Participants were 35 normal weight adults and 35 young adults with obesity who completed a task from the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics-4 (ANAM-4). Measured body mass index (BMI) and fasting blood glucose levels (mg/dL) were examined.

RESULTS
Persons with obesity had higher fasting glucose levels than normal weight persons (p = .03). After applying Bonferroni correction for multiple tests, higher fasting glucose predicted less accurate performance on tests of inhibitory control: Go/No-Go Commission Errors (β = .33, p = .004). No effects were observed for sustained attention or working memory (ps ≥. 049). Persons with glucose levels in the prediabetes range had nearly twice as many errors as those with normal glucose, a large effect that was independent of BMI.

CONCLUSIONS
Young adults who were obese but otherwise healthy had higher fasting glucose levels compared with normal weight peers. Higher glucose levels were associated with poorer cognitive performance on tests of inhibitory control, especially among individuals with prediabetes levels. Thus, subclinical elevations in blood glucose may contribute to cognitive impairment and, ultimately, greater impulsivity-well in advance of the development of chronic disease states (e.g., insulin resistance or Type 2 diabetes) and independently of excess adiposity--though prospective studies are needed to determine directionality of this relationship.


We simulate the optical and electrical responses in gallium-doped graphene. Using density functional theory with a local density approximation, we simulate the electronic band structure and show the effects of impurity doping (0–3.91%) in graphene on the electron density, refractive index, optical conductivity, and extinction coefficient for each doping percentage. Here, gallium atoms are placed randomly (using a 5-point average) throughout a 128-atom sheet of graphene. These calculations demonstrate the effects of hole doping due to direct atomic substitution, where it is found that a disruption in the electronic structure and electron density for small doping levels is due to impurity scattering of the electrons. However, the system continues to produce metallic or semimetallic behavior with increasing doping levels. These calculations are compared to a purely theoretical 100% Ga sheet for comparison of conductivity. Furthermore, we examine the change in the electronic band structure, where the introduction of gallium electronic bands produces a shift in the electron bands and dissolves the characteristic Dirac cone within graphene, which leads to better electron mobility.


Article history: Received 25 July 2014 Received in revised form 8 July 2014 Accepted 25 November 2014 Available online 16 December 2014


This paper concerns women's representation in co-operatives, identifies if women's representation influences and contributes to co-operatives´ development and is based on secondary data and on interviews conducted with four women managers. The study carries forward the exploration of a link between representation of women and the character and structure of co-operatives. Relations between the members of co-operatives are meant to anchor cooperatives economic and social values in the political process. Legitimised actors interact in order to secure their view of reality. Women are considered to take into account social issues and want to get power without wishing to control others but influence a sustainable development. They are considered to have a holistic view and try to understand the consequences their decisions have on other people and the development. In order to increase the representation of women in cooperatives, the following arguments are given: the issue of democracy, the issue of resource use, and the issue of interest. The results illustrate that women's representation is a matter of increasing democracy and widening the basis for decision-making possibilities. It is a means to raise new questions, like social, cultural and environmental issues, and new dimensions of thinking and to consider everyone's interest economic and social. My observations on the issue indicate that women as en interest group manifest different value dimensions. It is argued, it is particularly important to consider women's interests and representation in co-operatives and thus create conditions allowing women influence cooperatives successful development and bring cooperative issues into the public eye.


JO ER G LE H M AN N G et ty Im ag es I T'S A COOL NOVEMBER DAY NEAR BOLOGNA, ITALY. WE ARE STROLLING THROUGH THE WOODS WITH truffle hunter Mirko Illice and his little dog, Clinto. Clinto runs back and forth among the oak trees sniffing the ground, pausing, and then running again. Suddenly, he stops and digs furiously with both paws. "Ah, he's found an Italian white truffle," Mirko explains. "He uses both paws only when he finds one of those." Mirko gently pulls the excited dog from the spot and pushes through the soil with his fingers. He extracts a yellowish brown lump the size of a golf ball and sniffs it. " Benissimo, Clinto," Mirko intones. Though not the finest example of the species, Tuber magnatum —which grows only in northern Italy, Serbia and Croatia—Clinto's find will fetch a nice price of about $100 at the Saturday market.


AIM
To evaluate the efficacy of irrigation of periodontal pockets by using ozonated water and 0.2% chlorhexidine (CHX) gluconate as adjuncts to scaling and root planing in the management of chronic periodontitis.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
For the present study, 20 patients in the age group of 30-60 years, suffering from chronic periodontitis presenting with at least one site with an almost similar pocket depth of 4-6 mm in both the quadrants of maxillary arch was taken. Irrigation was done after 2 weeks of scaling and root planning on the same day with ozonated water and 0.2% chlorhexidine gluconate for two and half minutes. The clinical parameters like gingival index, probing pocket depth (PPD) and clinical attachment level (CAL) were recorded for both the groups at the baseline visit.They were subsequently recalled after 4 weeks and 3 months interval from the baseline visit. Data thus collected was compiled and put to statistical analysis.

RESULTS
The present study showed significant results in both the groups with regards to the improvement in the clinical parameters. When comparison was made between the two groups, ozonated water showed slightly better improvement than the chlorhexidine group. However, a statistically significant difference was seen only with Plaque score.

CONCLUSION
Subgingival irrigation with ozonized water is beneficial than present conventional therapeutic modalities. Ozonated water restricts the formation of dental plaque and reduces the number of subgingival pathogens thereby treating periodontal diseases.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Ozone therapy is proving to be a new useful treatment modality which offers great benefits to the patients. The strong antimicrobial power of ozone, along with its ability to stimulate the circulatory system and modulate the immune response, makes it a remedial agent of choice in the treatment of various infectious oral diseases. The study was conducted to justify the routine use of ozone as a treatment modality in effective management of periodontal diseases.


The Placynthium nigrum group in the Iberian Peninsula consists of P. dolichoterum (Nyl.) Trevis., P garovaglii (A. Massal.) Malme, P. nigrum (Huds.) Gray, P tantaleum (Hepp) Hue and P. tremniacum (A. Massal.) Jatta. Ecological and distributional data, and a discussion of diagnostic characters of taxonomic value are provided. All taxa are clearly differentiated by their ascospores. P. tantaleum and P. tremniacum are new to Portugal. From many species there are new records for several provinces.


During the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, representations and warranties (contractual statements enforceable through legal action) may have given investors false assurance that mortgage loans were being properly underwritten. This assurance in turn may have contributed to overinvestment in mortgage-backed securities in two ways. First, the assumption that legally enforceable penalties associated with reps and warranties would deter lax underwriting may have led to less monitoring of these contracts than would otherwise have occurred. In turn, the lack of monitoring of actual underwriting practices enabled the spread of lax lending practices. The existence of these reps and warranties and the potential penalties associated with them did not deter lax underwriting. Paradoxically, after the fact, the reps and warranties were enforced and this enforcement contributed to a tightening of credit beyond historic norms. Post-crisis, lenders' fears over put-back exposure caused them to scale back, particularly on government lending to creditworthy borrowers. The reps and warranties as used in mortgage lending in the run-up to the crisis were part of the procyclicality of lending, both in the easing and tightening phases of the lending cycle. We suggest reforms to add to the deterrent value of reps and warranties. Particularly we suggest a shift to the countercyclical techniques including dynamic provisioning to increase the in terrorem effect of representations and warranties. Nonetheless such changes would be useless unless they were adopted throughout the lending industry, otherwise, just those entities with risky practices would increase their market share. And next time such entities are more likely to be thinly capitalized, as the lesson of capital exposure to legal risk has been learned, thus further reducing the deterrence effect of reps and warranties, going forward.


This chapter presents both a brief diachronic and a more substantial synchronic contemporary snapshot of an area of the country – the Fenland of the East Midlands and East Anglia – where dialects of the North of England border those of the south. The area is important for a number of reasons: firstly it is one that has received a good deal of diachronic dialectological commentary over the past 150 years about its border status. Secondly, changing local geographical circumstances – both of the physical, geomorphological kind, and the (resulting) socio-economic kind – have, for some variables, optimised the emergence and retention of a relatively sharply defined north-south isogloss, whereas for others they have blurred it. The North-South dialect boundary simultaneously shows both stable and dynamic characteristics. Thirdly, the Fenland area straddles two of the most iconic isoglosses in English dialectology – the FOOT-STRUT boundary and the TRAP-BATH boundary. Here, two of the most enregistered variants of Northern Englishes – [ʊ] for STRUT and [a] for BATH – both come into contact with their southern counterparts. Following a brief introduction exploring how the Fenland has become an important dialect boundary, the paper examines three areas of the Fens. For each, an outline will be presented of both the phonological system (adopting Wells' (1982) lexical set approach, and in the manner of the presentations of the urban phonologies in Foulkes and Docherty (1999)), as well as the main non-standard grammatical characteristics of the three Fenland varieties.


Aim Ecogeographical variation of body size in vertebrates (e.g. Bergmann's rule) has long been recognized. However, the patterns and causes of intra-specific ecogeographical variation of body size in ectotherms, and in amphibians in particular, are strongly debated. We identified the relationship between bioclimatic variables and body size predicted a priori by alternative hypotheses (heat balance, endurance, seasonality, starvation resistance, water availability, primary productivity, parental investment) proposed to explain ecogeographical patterns of body size in ectotherms, and we evaluated the relative support of these hypotheses in explaining variation in body size of the Italian crested newt, Triturus carnifex. Location Twenty-three populations covering the whole range of T. carnifex (Austria, Croatia, Italy and Slovenia). Methods We obtained data on body size (snout–vent length, SVL) of 2639 adult newts from direct measurements and the literature; we obtained high-resolution environmental data for the sampled localities. We used an information-theoretic approach to evaluate the support of the data for the different hypotheses. We also integrated information on population genetics in our models. Results We observed strong geographical variation of body size. The best Akaike information criterion (AIC) models showed that populations with larger body size are associated with cold climates and secondarily with high primary productivity. Furthermore, sexual dimorphism increases in cold climates, as the increase in body size was stronger for females. When taking into account population genetics, we did not find support for relationships with the other variables. Main conclusion Our results are consistent with three hypotheses proposed to explain ecogeographical variation in amphibians: heat balance, increased parental investment of females and productivity. Information theory provides the framework for comparing hypotheses rather than looking for patterns. We suggest that evaluating the support for mechanisms can provide better insights than simply assessing whether ecogeographical variation is in agreement with some 'rule'.


Robbing a bank is the staple crime of thrillers, movies and newspapers. But, say Barry Reilly, Neil Rickman and Robert Witt, bank robbery is not all it is cracked up to be. With access to a unique data set, they give us the low‐down on the economics of the bank heist.


A number of questions involving T-nilpotence are studied. § 1 contains characterizations of left and two-sided T-nilpotent rings in terms of (transfinite) annihilator series and a list of ring constructions which preserve T-nilpotence. In §2 the radical theory of T-nilpotence is investigated. It is shown that a left T-niϊpotent ring belongs to a radical (resp. semisimple) class precisely when the zeroring on its additive group does so, and that there are no interesting radical classes which consist entirely of left T-nilpotent rings. § 3 is devoted to an examination of the effect which chain conditions on the type set of a suitably restricted torsion-free abelian group G have on the kinds of ring multiplication which G admits. Some conditions are given which are sufficient to ensure that every multiplication on G is (two-sided) T-nilpotent. A result from § 2 is used to show that certain homogeneous groups do not admit nontrivial nilpotent multiplications. In the final brief section an example is used to show that whereas twosided T-nilpotent rings satisfy the idealizer condition, the same need not be true of a left T-nilpotent ring.


This study was conducted in three communities of artisanal fishermen from Ilhabela, located on the northern coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The objective was to analyze the preferences, taboos and medicinal indications of fish and thus representing one of the interactions of fishermen with fish stocks. Data collection was conducted through interviews with the aid of semi-structured questionnaires. We interviewed 25 families, 29 residents in three communities studied during our fieldwork for data collection. Five interviews were done in Jabaquara Beach, 6 in Fome Beach and 14 Serraria Beach. During the interviews, 18 species were cited as preferred for consumption, 11 species considered to be taboo (food prohibited), 5 species were cited as avoided as food, and 4 species indicated in case of illness. The families of fishermen prefer to consume finfish and do not consume puffer fish, the latter probably due to its toxic characteristic. Fish such as little tunny, largehead hairtail, shark, serra mackerel and king mackerel are avoided by unhealthy people and in cases of wounds, inflammation, pregnancy and postpartum. Other fish, such as sea chubs, silver porgy, bluefish and grouper are reported as medicinal in these situations. Aspects related to fish consumption are part of the knowledge of fishermen and their families and provide a wealth of information that combined to biological information is useful for the conservation of fishery resources. Data such as those presented in this study, regarding the use of aquatic animals for treatment of diseases, could serve as a basis for future studies on substances that contain active elements in curing diseases.


The present investigation was undertaken to study changes in the testis and epididymis in the late phase of experimental Trypanosoma cruzi infection in guinea pigs. Testicular and epididymal atrophy were observed in infected animals. Histopathological alterations were observed in the seminiferous epithelium, involving inhibition of the process of spermatogenesis beyond certain stages (kinetic data) and morphological changes mainly in the primary spermatocytes. In the testis the disturbances were restricted to focal areas. The epididymis of infected animals showed marked tubular atrophy and the contents of the epididymal tubules closely reflected the state of the seminiferous epithelium. A marked diminution of ganglion cells in the juxtaprostatic pelvic autonomic ganglia of experimentally infected guinea pigs could be displayed by quantitative studies of serial sections. Application of the osmic acid-zinc iodide technic allowed observations on the autonomic fibers and their endings in the epididymis. Degenerative lesions in the fibers, ascribable to the destruction of neurons in the juxtaprostatic ganglion, were observed in infected animals. Our experimental results were consistent with the hypothesis that the destruction of nerve cells in the juxtaprostatic pelvic autonomic ganglion is the main factor in the pathological changes, which may be classified as "post-chagasic orchiopathy and epididymopathy."


OBJECTIVE Animal studies suggest that hyperlipidemia may play a direct role in glomerular damage. In patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), dyslipidemia occurs early in the course of nephropathy and may be involved in the progression of renal disease. CASES We report on two young NIDDM patients with marked hyperlipidemia and proteinu ria, in whom renal biopsy demonstrated nondiabetic glomerulopathy. In both cases, the decrease in blood lipid levels was associated with a major decrease in proteinuria. Episodes of hyperlipidemia were associated with a resumption of heavy protcinuria in one patient with serum triglyceride levels and proteinuria being closely correlated. CONCLUSIONS These two cases suggest that hyperlipidemia has an important rolein the pathogenesis of glomerular disease.


As the low-power-consumption requirement of integrated circuits for biomedical applications (e.g., wearable sensor nodes operating with and without batteries, and implantable medical devices powered by batteries and wireless charging) becomes more stringent, the data converter design evolves toward mircrowatt and submircrowatt power consumption. In this brief, a 400-nW successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC) is presented. A trilevel switching scheme with common-mode reset, redundant algorithm, and a time-domain comparator is proposed and implemented to achieve ultralow power consumption. The redundant algorithm mitigates the offset error caused by the level mismatch of the trilevel switching scheme, whereas the trilevel switching scheme simplifies the switching logic of the redundant algorithm. Fabricated in a 0.18-μm CMOS process, the proposed SAR ADC achieves a signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 50 dB, which is equivalent to an 8-bit effective number of bits, at an 80-kS/s conversion rate. The figure of merit is 19.5 fJ/conversion step.


Imperata cylindrica (Cogongrass, Speargrass) is a diploid C4 grass that is a noxious weed in 73 countries and constitutes a significant threat to global biodiversity and sustainable agriculture. We used a cost‐effective genotyping‐by‐sequencing (GBS) approach to identify the reproductive system, genetic diversity and geographic origins of invasions in the south‐eastern United States. In this work, we demonstrated the advantage of employing the closely related, fully sequenced crop species Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench as a proxy reference genome to identify a set of 2320 informative single nucleotide and insertion–deletion polymorphisms. Genetic analyses identified four clonal lineages of cogongrass and one clonal lineage of Imperata brasiliensis Trin. in the United States. Each lineage was highly homogeneous, and we found no evidence of hybridization among the different lineages, despite geographical overlap. We found evidence that at least three of these lineages showed clonal reproduction prior to introduction to the United States. These results indicate that cogongrass has limited evolutionary potential to adapt to novel environments and further suggest that upon arrival to its invaded range, this species did not require local adaptation through hybridization/introgression or selection of favourable alleles from a broad genetic base. Thus, cogongrass presents a clear case of broad invasive success, across a diversity of environments, in a clonal organism with limited genetic diversity.


We measure the in-band dispersion penalty in a cascade of five 50-GHz low-dispersion linear-phase fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) and compare the results with conventional apodised FBGs. At the 0.5-dB power penalty level, the usable bandwidth of a single linear-phase FBG (40 GHz) is twice as wide as that of a conventional apodised FBG (19 GHz). The bandwidth-utilization factor of a single linear-dispersion grating is 89%, while for the five-grating cascade, it is 76%. To our knowledge, these are the highest values reported to date for cascaded optical devices. The corresponding factors for the conventional gratings are 53% and 31%. We also measure the additional penalty on a dropped channel caused by a cascade of five adjacent-channel gratings. The bandwidth narrowing due to the adjacent-channel FBGs is 6 GHz both for linear-phase and conventional FBGs, giving a usable bandwidth of 34 GHz (linear-phase) and 13 GHz (conventional).


Optical flow estimation is one of the most studied problems in computer vision, yet recent benchmark datasets continue to reveal problem areas of today's approaches. Occlusions have remained one of the key challenges. In this paper, we propose a symmetric optical flow method to address the well-known chicken-and-egg relation between optical flow and occlusions. In contrast to many state-ofthe- art methods that consider occlusions as outliers, possibly filtered out during post-processing, we highlight the importance of joint occlusion reasoning in the optimization and show how to utilize occlusion as an important cue for estimating optical flow. The key feature of our model is to fully exploit the symmetry properties that characterize optical flow and occlusions in the two consecutive images. Specifically through utilizing forward-backward consistency and occlusion-disocclusion symmetry in the energy, our model jointly estimates optical flow in both forward and backward direction, as well as consistent occlusion maps in both views. We demonstrate significant performance benefits on standard benchmarks, especially from the occlusiondisocclusion symmetry. On the challenging KITTI dataset we report the most accurate two-frame results to date.


Two recent phenomena have transformed the nature of world trade: the explosive growth of Chinese trade, and the growth of vertically specialized trade due to international production fragmentation. While vertical specialization may explain much of the growth and unique features of Chinese trade, few papers have quantitatively assessed these two phenomena together. In part, this is because it is difficult to measure just how vertically specialized Chinese trade is. The unique features of China's extensive processing trade cause both the identification of imported intermediate goods, and their allocation across sectors, to depend upon the Chinese trade regime. In this paper, we estimate the vertical specialization of Chinese exports, addressing these two challenges. Using two Chinese benchmark input-output tables, and a detailed Chinese trade dataset which distinguishes processing trade from other forms of trade, we develop a new method of identifying intermediate goods imported into China. Vertical specialization is then estimated using two methods. The first method uses the Hummels, Ishii and Yi (2001) measure, the official benchmark IO tables, and incorporates our identification correction. The second method follows the first, but also incorporates the Koopman, Wang and Wei (2008) method of splitting the benchmark IO tables into separate tables for processing and normal exports, in order to address the allocation problem. Results show strong evidence of an Asian network of intermediate suppliers to China, and the two methods provide a range of estimates for the foreign content of Chinese exports. In 2002 aggregate exports ranges between 25% and 46%, with some individual sectors are as high as 52%-95%. Across destinations, under both methods, the vertical specialization of Chinese exports declines with the level of development of the trading partner.


For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favouring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduced national and global economic welfare and inhibited agricultural trade and global economic growth. They almost certainly added to inequality and poverty in developing countries, since three-quarters of the world's billion poorest people depend directly or indirectly on farming for their livelihood. During the past three decades, however, numerous developing country governments have reduced their sectoral and trade policy distortions, while some high-income countries also have begun reducing market-distorting aspects of their farm policies. This chapter surveys the changing extent of policy distortions to prices faced by farmers over the past half-century in high-income, developing and transition economies. It also provides a summary of new empirical estimates from a global economy-wide model that show how much could be gained by removing remaining interventions. It concludes with words of caution as to what could occur if a failure to conclude the WTO's Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations led to protection growth in emerging economies.


CleanJava is a formal annotation language for the Java programming language to support a Cleanroom-style functional program verification technique that views programs as mathematical functions. It needs a suite of support tools including a checker that can parse annotations and check them for syntactic and static semantic correctness. The two key requirements of the checker are flexibility and extensibility. Since the language is still under development and refinement, it should be flexible to facilitate language experimentation and accommodate language changes. It should be also extensible to provide base code for developing more advanced support tools like an automated theorem prover. In addition, it should recognize Java syntax, as CleanJava is a superset of Java. In this paper we describe our experience of developing a CleanJava checker called CJC and explain how we met the above requirements by using an open-source Java compiler. We expect our techniques and the lessons that we learned be useful to others implementing Java-like languages. Keywords—formal annotation language; parser; static checker; CleanJava; JastAddJ


A semi-analytical model for the optical properties of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) is presented. Results from the model offer a good physical understanding of the optical behavior of SiNWs. It is shown that light trapping within ordered nanowires only happens over a small wavelength band (20–75 nm) that is dependent on the diameter of the nanowires, not length. Furthermore, wavelength tunable absorption peaks can be achieved in ordered SiNWs by adjusting the geometrical parameters. A good match between the model and experimental results confirms the validity of the proposed effective index model.


Gomphotheres existed in the Siwaliks from the middle Miocene (14.2Ma) to the middle Pleistocene (0.8Ma) and became extinct later on. In this paper, we tried to discuss the reasons of such extinction of gomphotheres in the lower Pleistocene time span by considering Linear Enamel Hypoplasia (LEH) among 114 isolated tooth samples to assess whether ecological changes correlate with the stress factor in gomphotheres. For this purpose, the Siwalik gomphotheres were divided into two groups viz. early gomphotheres (middle Miocene to late Miocene) and late gomphotheres (Pliocene to middle Pleistocene). We presented the hypothesis, that as the gomphotheres are characterized by the brachydonty and relied on browsing for their feeding while inhabiting the semi forest land setting thus, expected to have higher stress in Plio-Pleistocene time span as vegetational change around ~6 Ma may have exerted stress on late gomphotheres. The results for the occurrence of frequency of LEH indicated severe ecological stress in late gomphotheres (33%). The significant differences were found (P < 0.05) among the early gomphotheres and late gomphotheres which can be correlated to the vegetational change from C 3 to C 4 , higher aridity indices and intensified seasonality after the late Miocene vegetational shift which may have resulted in substantial faunal turnover, extinction and speciation. We assume that such palaeoecological changes forced a competition with more pronounced grazers like of family Elephantidae and Bovidae resulting in extinction of gomphotheres during the late Pleistocene in the Siwaliks of Pakistan.


Article type: Original Article Background: Diabetes mellitus is the most common metabolic disorder with many complications such as neuropathic pain which relief from it is a dilemma. Objectives: To investigate the effect of hydroethanolic extract of Rubus fruticosus on neuropathic pain in diabetic rats. Materials and Methods: In this experimental case –control study, forty eight male Wistar rats (250±20 g) were divided randomly to non-diabetic and diabetic groups. Streptozotocin (60 mg/kg, intra-peritoneal) was used to induce experimental diabetes. Each group was divided into three groups: receiving orally normal saline, 100 and 200 mg/kg doses of Rubus fruticosus extract for 30 days. At the end; the rats were subjected to Tail-Flick test. The data were analyzed by one-way and two-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's test in SPSS 21. Results: In a paired comparison, all diabetic groups had shorter latency of tailflicking time (p < 0.01) and lower pain tolerance threshold. Also among diabetic rats, significant differences existed between saline group and group receiving the extract at a dose of 100 mg/Kg (p < 0.01), between saline group and the group receiving the extract at a dose of 200 mg/Kg (p < 0.001) and also between the groups receiving extract at two different doses (p < 0.001). But, only diabetic group receiving the extract at a dose of 200 mg/Kg showed positive significant difference with non-diabetic control group (p < 0.01). Conclusions: The hydroethanolic extract of Rubus fruticosus can heighten the pain tolerance threshold and reduce the neuropathic pain induced by diabetes mellitus.


This
study evaluated the effects of expected and perceived division of childcare and
household labor on mothers' relationship satisfaction during their transition
to parenthood. Mothers were administered a questionnaire during their third
trimester of pregnancy and received a follow-up phone interview three months
postpartum. During the second wave of data collection, all mothers in this
study were at home with their child. Findings indicated that mothers with lower
prenatal expectations about postnatal division of labor had greater
relationship satisfaction three months postpartum. Additionally, mothers also
had greater relationship satisfaction at three months postpartum when they
reported receiving more help with childcare from their partner than they had
expected during their pregnancy.


Humic substances are ubiquitous in soils and sediments and because of their agricultural and environmental importance have been the subject of much research. The Maillard (browning) reaction involving the polycondensation of carbohydrates and amino acids has been postulated as being an important abiotic pathway for humic substance formation. However, the catalytic role of minerals common in soils and sediments in the Maillard reaction and the resultant formation of humic substances in nature is little understood and the effect of light is unknown. In the present dissertation it is shown that birriessite, a tetravalent manganese oxide common in soil and sediment environments, exerted a pronounced catalytic effect on the Maillard reaction between glucose and glycine both at room temperature (25°C) and particularly at 45°C, a surficial soil temperature frequently encountered in tropical and subtropical regions, and even in temperate regions during the summer months. Light, even of moderate intensity, exerted asignificant promoting effect on browning in the glucose-glycine-birnessite system. The catalytic effect of birnessite on the Maillard reaction was still evident even under conditions of complete darkness and therefore may occur at any depth in soil and related environments. Molecular topological analysis was applied to investigate the initial reaction between glucose and glycine to form the Amadori compound fructosylglycine which is an intermediate product in the Maillard reaction. The calculations indicate that the reaction between glucose and glycine, in the absence of birnessite, to form the Amadori compound is slow. Polyphenols in terrestrial and aquatic environments are regarded as important precursors in the formation of humic substances. In the presence of catechol, the accelerating effect of birnessite on the polymerization and polycondensation in the glucose-glycine-catechol ternary system was even more dramatic compared with the catalytic effect on the Maillard reaction alone. This points to a linking of the polyphenol and Maillard reaction pathways into an integrated pathway – a significant advancement in the understanding of natural humification processes.


This book uses techniques of Fourier series and functional analysis to deal with certain problems in differential equations. The Fourier series and functional analysis are merely tools; the authors' real interest lies in the differential equations that they study. It has been known since 1967 that a wide variety of sets {ewikt} of complex exponential functions play an important role in the control theory of systems governed by partial differential equations. However, this book is the first serious attempt to gather all of the available theory of these "nonharmonic Fourier series" in one place, combining published results with new results by the authors, to create a unique source of such material for practicing applied mathematicians, engineers and other scientific professionals.


The egression of new technologies has led to the development of new security concerns. The current technology is inadequate to handle new security challenges in fields of networking, banking and health care. Security concerns arise in both wired and wireless communication medium. The wireless communication covers small area, lacks in security and data loss. In wired communication, the layout of wires and amplifiers increases the infrastructure cost. To overcome the above problem, we propose Power line carrier communication with (Physically Unclonable Function) PUF to secure the data. The proposed model Power line carrier communication with PUF is termed as PPUF. To improve data security in wired communication without new infrastructure for establishing the communication network in the hospital, we apply Quantum Fourier PUF to access individual modules and enable data encryption over the transmission line of Power Line Communication. The Quantum Fourier PUF performs better than existing PUF models in terms of lower order of magnitude delays, energy consumption, and resilience to various attacks.


The bog mosses, Sphagnum, lack any obvious anatomical specialization inside the stem but have a well-developed system of water conduction in capillary spaces among pendent branches around the stem. It has hitherto been assumed that this was the main route for solute transfer too. We describe experiments showing that there is rapid and quantitatively important transport within the stems. The tracers 32P and 14C were supplied to S. recurvum. When applied below the top of the plant they moved to the apex whether external mass flow was upward or downward. Autoradiographs showed high concentration of tracers in the stem. Steaming the stem above and below the site of application prevented tracer movement. An experiment lasting four weeks on S. papillosum showed that after 14C labelling almost all that part of the alcohol-soluble fraction that moved did so from older parts to the apex, with very little transfer to the insoluble fraction, to neighbours, or into the gas phase. For the soluble fraction in the capitulum, the conductance for 14C from below was about the same as that of its loss in respiration. The conductance to the insoluble fraction was about twice as great, and to neighbours about half as much. A longer experiment showed that predominately acropetal transport continued for at least 22 weeks in five species. By that time about 25% of the remaining 14C label was incorporated in the new tissues. The stem of S. recurvum contains a central mass of parenchyma 20-50 cells across. The end walls of the parenchyma cells have perforations approximately 100 nm across at a density of 7-13 μm-2. A single cell wall has about 1500 perforations. They probably house plasmodesmata. These results indicate that Sphagnum has an effective mechanism for retaining and relocating solutes within it. This property, coupled with the ability to grow in a very low supply of solutes, and to make the environment acid by cation exchange, may be seen as causes of the widespread success of Sphagnum.


Between 1950 and 1973, a process of absolute convergence was at work between the technological leader, the USA, West European countries and Japan. The catching up process between developed countries gradually vanished between 1973 and 1995. On the one hand, we had a revival of US labour productivity growth while, on the other hand most, European countries and Japan have registered a steep decline in their productivity. This paper nvestigates the source of these diverging trends. First we use an econometric test developed by Bai and Perron in order to find and measure breaks in productivity trends over the long term. It appears that although technological change played an important role in the US revival between 1995 and 2001 it is the low increase in employment between 2001 and 2007 than explains the continuing rise in productivity. The technological factor does not contribute either to explain the growth rate decline in other developed countries. Even if they were lagging behind the US in investing in these new technologies they had considerably increased their efforts. One crucial element in explaining these diverging trends is the change in the labour content of growth both in the US where it is declining and in most European countries where it increases. This article uses various data bases in order to find out the time and frequency in productivity trend breaks both at the macro-economic level and at the sectoral level. The most up to date data for 2008 tend to confirm our diagnosis of divergence.


OBJECTIVES
Determine whether macerated extract of garlic (Allium sativum) for 18 weeks is equal to or better than Captopril in its hypotensive effect in rats.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We performed an experimental in vivo study with Holtzman male rats divided into five groups using 100, 500 and 1,000 mg kg of garlic extract, Captopril 100 mg/kg and a vehicle group. 50 mg/kg L-NAME (NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester) was administered intraperitoneally which elevated blood pressure after the third day. Statistical analysis consisted of Student's t-test for paired means, ANOVA and Scheffe multiple comparison.

RESULTS
The macerated garlic extracted by a hydroalcoholic process administered for 18 weeks resulted in a decrease in blood pressure in experimental animals. In the analysis of treatments on mean arterial pressure (MAP), significant differences were obtained after the third day. The comparison of the MAP final versus MAP basal (no difference in averages) and the hypotensive effect (%) were: garlic-100 (p=0.008), 59.8%; ajo-500 (p=0.021), 80.6%; garlic-1000 (p=0.034), 88.5%; captopril (p=0.437), 99.9%; and vehicle-only (p=0.001), 0%.

CONCLUSIONS
The macerated garlic given for an 18-week period effectively produced a hypotensive effect in rats with hypertension induced by L-NAME.


Objectives This study provides insights into the validity and acceptability of Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) and profile-case Best Worst Scaling (BWS) methods for eliciting preferences for health care in a priority-setting context. Methods An adult sample (N = 24) undertook a traditional DCE and a BWS choice task as part of a wider survey on Health Technology Assessment decision criteria. A 'think aloud' protocol was applied, whereby participants verbalized their thinking while making choices. Internal validity and acceptability were assessed through a thematic analysis of the decision-making process emerging from the qualitative data and a repeated choice task. Results A thematic analysis of the decision-making process demonstrated clear evidence of 'trading' between multiple attribute/levels for the DCE, and to a lesser extent for the BWS task. Limited evidence consistent with a sequential decision-making model was observed for the BWS task. For the BWS task, some participants found choosing the worst attribute/level conceptually challenging. A desire to provide a complete ranking from best to worst was observed. The majority (18,75%) of participants indicated a preference for DCE, as they felt this enabled comparison of alternative full profiles. Those preferring BWS were averse to choosing an undesirable characteristic that was part of a 'package', or perceived BWS to be less ethically conflicting or burdensome. In a repeated choice task, more participants were consistent for the DCE (22,92%) than BWS (10,42%) (p = 0.002). Conclusions This study supports the validity and acceptability of the traditional DCE format. Findings relating to the application of BWS profile methods are less definitive. Research avenues to further clarify the comparative merits of these preference elicitation methods are identified.


Seasonality in the tourism sector has been a major concern for policy makers, managers and other stakeholders. Many studies have analysed seasonality from the point of view of the number of visitors. However, there appear to be no studies focusing on seasonality in prices and on how to smooth out seasonal patterns. This paper analyses how hotel characteristics affect seasonality in prices using brochure data on 1,776 hotels in 32 sun-and-beach destinations in 11 countries. The authors find that, after controlling for destination-specific variables that may cause variations in prices through demand shifts (such as climatic conditions, exchange rates or marketing expenditures), more hotel services and higher star ratings are associated with fewer seasonal variations in hotel prices.


ABSTRACT In this article, we examine the effect of estimation biases – introduced by model misspecification – on the impulse responses analysis for dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Thereby, we use full and limited information estimators to estimate a misspecified DSGE model and calculate impulse response functions (IRFs) based on the estimated structural parameters. It turns out that IRFs based on full information techniques can be unreliable under misspecification.


The resolution of optimization problems is of great interest nowadays and has encouraged the development of various information technology methods to attempt solving them. There are several problems related to Software Engineering that can be solved by using this approach. In this paper, a new alternative based on the combination of population metaheuristics with a Tabu List to solve the problem of test cases generation when testing software is presented. This problem is of great importance for the development of software with a high computational cost and which is generally hard to solve. The performance of the solution proposed has been tested on a set of varying complexity programs. The results obtained show that the method proposed allows obtaining a reduced test data set in a suitable timeframe and with a greater coverage than conventional methods such as Random Method or Tabu Search.


Physical phantoms are needed for the evaluation and optimization of new digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) systems. Previously, we developed an anthropomorphic phantom based on human subject breast CT data and fabricated using commercial 3D printing. We now present three key advancements: voxelized 3D printing, photopolymer material doping, and 2D inkjet printing of lesion inserts. First, we bypassed the printer's control software in order to print in voxelized form instead of conventional STL surfaces, thus improving resolution and allowing dithering to mix the two photopolymer materials into arbitrary proportions. We demonstrated ability to print details as small as 150μm, and dithering to combine VeroWhitePlus and TangoPlus in 10% increments. Second, to address the limited attenuation difference among commercial photopolymers, we evaluated a beta sample from Stratasys with increased TiO2 doping concentration up to 2.5%, which corresponded to 98% breast density. By spanning 36% to 98% breast density, this doubles our previous contrast. Third, using inkjet printers modified to print with iopamidol, we created 2D lesion patterns on paper that can be sandwiched into the phantom. Inkjet printing has advantages of being inexpensive and easy, and more contrast can be delivered through overprinting. Printing resolution was maintained at 210 μm horizontally and 330 μm vertically even after 10 overprints. Contrast increased linearly with overprinting at 0.7% per overprint. Together, these three new features provide the basis for creating a new anthropomorphic physical breast phantom with improved resolution and contrast, as well as the ability to insert 2D lesions for task-based assessment of performance.


: The protected area (PA) coverage is used as an indicator of biodiversity protection worldwide. The effectiveness of using PAs as indicators has been questioned due to the diversity of designations included in such measures, especially those PAs established for other purposes than biodiversity protection. Although international standards have been developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the policies on the ground have been developed independently of the IUCN categories. This makes the use of IUCN categories dubious measures of biodiversity conservation. A management plan is crucial for effective management of the parks and for guidance on how biodiversity should be prioritized against other goals. We therefore analyzed the aims and the regulations in management plans of alpine PAs in Spain as a first step for evaluating conservation performance. We used content analysis and CAiv to assess how aims and regulations vary in relation to three explanatory factors: IUCN categories, Vegetation Zones and Autonomous Communities. We found the aims of many parks to be vague, without clear indication on how to prioritize biodiversity goals. Furthermore only 50% of them actually have a management plan, which strengthens our argument about unclear guidance of PA management. Although aims could partly be related to IUCN categories, the regulations showed no clear relationship to international policies, which reflects that aims are not necessarily implemented in practice. Devolution to Autonomous Communities could be one explanation for the large variation in management practices among parks. Further studies are needed to evaluate the impact of such policies on biodiversity.


We investigated the effects of the lyophilisation medium (enzyme plus buffer salt and additives) and of water activity (a(w)) on the catalytic properties of lipase from Chromobacterium viscosum (lipase CV) in organic solvents; catalysis of ester and lactone synthesis were compared and, despite the similarities of the reactive groups involved in these reactions, some interesting differences were observed. Including 2-[N-morpholino]ethanesulfonic acid (MES) buffer in the lyophilisation medium of lipase CV increased its catalytic activity in transesterification and lactonisation, although the buffer salt requirement for maximal activity differed between the two reactions. Sorbitol, glucose, lactose, 18-crown-6 (crown ether 18-C-6), beta-cyclodextrin and bovine serum albumin were employed as alternative additives in the transesterification reaction, but were not as effective as MES buffer. Salt hydrates were used to investigate the effect of a(w) on esterification and lactonisation reactions catalysed by lipase CV. The maximum rate of hexadecanolide synthesis in toluene occurred at a(w) = 0.48. The optimum a(w) for the transesterification reaction in heptane/alcohol mixtures depended on the alcohol substrate employed (1-heptanol, 2-heptanol, or 3-methyl-3-hexanol) but not on the acyl donor (p-NP acetate or caprylate). The optimum a(w) values for both reactions were unchanged when a common solvent system (toluene/1-heptanol) was employed, indicating that the dependence of enzyme activity on a(w) is an intrinsic property of the enzyme-catalysed reaction and not a function of the solvent or other additives.


Education expects an import work in the progression and improvement of a state. Progression of any country depends on its capability rate and nature of guidance in that country. Thusly, it is the key needs of nations. Unfortunately, our very own country Pakistan is a backward one concerning its capability rate. For sure, even various poor countries have advanced education rate as stand out from Pakistan. Our approach structure and need is accountable for this. Advanced education has mind boggling essentialness in the improvement of a country. Nevertheless, unfortunately, its centrality is yet to be recognized in Asian countries. For more than 70 years, Pakistan has been endeavoring to rouse their informative standard by giving quality education to their students yet there are various obstructions and snags that are rising. These troubles (sum, worth, quality, etc) are incredibly typical in nature anyway require fitting approach to address in the most ideal manner. This study in like manner researches the activity of Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan in introducing these changes. By using subjective research method the assessment grasps an illustrative research approach to manage present a comprehensive point of view on the key change exercises in HEC both to the extent substance and technique, study features the significant issues and difficulties in the development education of Pakistan.


Strong self-focusing and defocusing of optical radiation with Gaussian spatial and temporal distribution due to cascading second harmonic generation without a significant change in the beam profile and the pulse shape for the fundamental wave under the condition of group velocity matching in the axial-symmetric case for a bulk medium is considered, and the maximum intensity of an optical beam increases in 70 times (or more) in comparison with the intensity of incident optical radiation. This result is obtained for pulse duration, which belongs to a time interval from microseconds to picoseconds, for which the dispersion of group velocity is negligible. Self-focusing of laser radiation allows the realization of the mode that is similar to Kerr-lens mode locking, but for laser systems generating the optical radiation with a duration from microseconds to picoseconds.


The pathophysiology of stroke is complex. Adaptive and maladaptive signalling occurs between multiple cell types in the brain. There is crosstalk between central and systemic responses. And there are overlapping pathways during initial injury and subsequent repair. These numerous feed-forward and feed-back interactions have made it difficult to translate experimental discoveries into clinical applications. An emerging hypothesis in biomedical research now suggests that contrary to a traditional model, translation may not be efficiently obtained without a rigorous understanding of mechanisms. Hence, to optimize diagnostics and therapeutics for stroke patients, it is necessary to identify and define causal mechanisms. Mirroring the multi-compartment interactions in stroke pathophysiology, bench-to-bedside, and bedside-back-to-bench advances in stroke may be best achieved with inter-disciplinary collaborations between basic research, neuroimaging, and broadly based clinical science. Causation can then be two-fold, ie, dissecting mechanisms and targets, as well as developing future scientists who can blur the boundaries between basic, translational, and clinical research. In systems theory, a critical goal is to distinguish causation from correlation. In stroke research, causation may perhaps be found through a collaborative search for mechanisms.


This is a simple postcard, addressed to "Mrs. James Y. Paris," in the care of Dan Tompkins, written by someone named "Hallie." The identity of Hallie is unknown, but she listed her return address as a postbox at Duke University. Mrs. James Y. Paris is Florence Paris (1871-1954), wife of James Paris, a farmer in Sylva with whom she had many children. Records show Florence's last name spelled both "Paris" and "Parris" but the other biographic information is identical.Presumably, Paris was staying with Tompkins at the time, but it is unclear why. Census records from 1940 show that Dan had more than just himself and his wife Emily in the house; he also had his mother, Annie Tompkins, 21-year-old Marjorie Grindstaff, and Addie and Sadie Luck (70 and 62). Evidently, Dan was in the practice of letting women stay at his house. So, perhaps it was under similar circumstances that Florence Paris was staying with him.This letter is housed in the Special Collections department of the Hunter Library at Western Carolina University.