The aim of this paper is to determine how microgels adsorb at a model oil-water interface and how they adapt their conformation to compression, which gives rise to surface elasticity depending on the microgel packing. The structure of the film is determined by the Langmuir films approach (forced compression) and compared to spontaneous adsorption using the pendant drop method. The behaviour of microgels differs significantly from that of non-deformable particles but resembles that of linear polymers or proteins. We also correlate the properties of microgels spontaneously adsorbed at model interfaces to their forced adsorption during emulsification. Finally we propose a route to easily control a posteriori the microgel packing at the surface of droplets and the flow properties of emulsions stabilised by the microgels.


Tumor cells transmit endoplasmic reticulum stress to macrophages to promote an inflammatory microenvironment. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response, which is associated with production of proinflammatory cytokines in tumor cells and macrophages, has been implicated in cancer progression and tumor growth. Noting that inflammation has itself been implicated in malignant transformation and cancer progression, Mahadevan et al. explored the hypothesis that ER stress could provide a mechanistic link whereby tumor cells signal to macrophages to promote an inflammatory microenvironment. Conditioned medium from cancer cell lines experiencing ER stress (in response to thapsigargin treatment or glucose deprivation) stimulated an increase in the abundance of transcripts encoding ER stress response genes in macrophages [J744 cells or bone marrow–derived macrophages (BMDM)] and in Xbp-1 splicing (also indicative of ER stress). Macrophages exposed to such conditioned medium also showed increased abundance of CD86 (indicative of activation) and of transcripts encoding proinflammatory cytokines, and increased secretion of proinflammatory cytokines. The response of BMDM lacking either Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2), which is up-regulated under ER stress and has been implicated in macrophage activation by tumor-derived versican, or interleukin-6 receptor (IL-6R), which recognizes a proinflammatory cytokine (IL-6) secreted by cancer cells and macrophages, to ER stress–conditioned medium was undiminished. Thus, neither TLR2 nor TL-6R appeared to mediate transmission of the ER stress response. In contrast, the increase in abundance of transcripts encoding proinflammatory cytokines or the ER stress response genes Grp78, Gadd34, and Chop in response to ER stress–conditioned medium was attenuated in BMDM lacking TLR4 and potentiated by concomitant exposure to the TLR4 ligand lipopolysaccharide. Intraperitoneal injection of tumor ER stress–conditioned medium stimulated an increase in Grp78, Chop, Xbp-1, and spliced Xbp-1 in mouse liver. The authors thus conclude that factors released from cancer cells undergoing ER stress allow them to transmit ER stress to macrophages, recruiting them into contributing to an inflammatory microenvironment that promotes tumor progression. N. R. Mahadevan, J. Rodvold, H. Sepulveda, S. Rossi, A. F. Drew, M. Zanetti, Transmission of endoplasmic reticulum stress and pro-inflammation from tumor cells to myeloid cells. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 6561–6566 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


BACKGROUND
Several jurisdictions mandate the presence of an independent support person during police interviews with vulnerable people. The current study investigated police officers' experiences and perceptions of these volunteers during interviews with people with intellectual disability(ies) (ID).

METHODS
The sample comprised 229 police officers who attended a mandatory firearms training course in Melbourne, Australia, in 2010.

RESULTS
Participants commonly reported utilizing independent support persons and displayed a fair understanding of their role. Overall, volunteers were engaged more frequently than family/friends; police considered the volunteers to be more impartial during interviews, whereas family/friends provided a greater level of emotional support to interviewees.

CONCLUSIONS
Independent support persons need to demonstrate two quite different types of support to people with intellectual disability(ies) during police interviews; these require quite different skill sets and suggest the need for more tailored training and support for these volunteers. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.


An observational and theoretical study of the structure and propagation of the Madden-Julian Oscillation Ángel F. Adames Co-Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Title of Chair John M. Wallace Atmospheric Sciences Title of Chair Daehyun Kim Atmospheric Sciences This study is composed of two parts. In the first part of this dissertation, the large-scale circulation features that determine the structure and evolution of MJO-related moisture and precipitation fields are examined using a linear analysis protocol based on daily 850minus 150-hPa global velocity potential data. The analysis is augmented by a compositing procedure that emphasizes the structural features over the Indo-Pacific warm pool sector (60◦E−180◦) that give rise to the eastward propagation of the enhanced moisture and precipitation. It is found that boundary layer (BL) convergence in the low level easterlies to the east of the region of maximum ascent produces a deep but narrow plume of equatorial ascent that moistens the mid-troposphere, while weakly diffluent flow above the BL spreads moisture away from the equator. Vertical advection of moisture from this plume of ascent accounts for the eastward propagation of the positive moisture anomalies across the Maritime Continent into the western Pacific. When the convection is first developing over the Indian Ocean, horizontal moisture advection contributes to both the eastward propagation and the amplification of the positive moisture anomalies along the equator to the east of the region of enhanced convection. The results of the first part of the dissertation are used to develop a linear wave theory for the MJO, shown in part two. The theory is largely based on a framework previously developed by Sobel and Maloney. In this treatment, column moisture is the only prognostic variable and the horizontal wind is diagnosed as the forced Kelvin and Rossby wave responses to an equatorial heat source/sink. In contrast to the original framework, the meridional and vertical structure of the basic equations are treated explicitly, and values of several key model parameters are adjusted, based on observations. A dispersion relation is derived that adequately describes the MJO's signal in the wavenumberfrequency spectrum and defines the MJO as a dispersive equatorial moist wave with a westward group velocity. On the basis of linear regression analysis of satellite and reanalysis data, it is estimated that the MJO's group velocity is ∼40% as large as its phase speed. This dispersion is the result of the anomalous winds in the wave modulating the mean distribution of moisture such that the moisture anomaly propagates eastward while wave activity propagates westward. The moist wave grows through feedbacks involving moisture, clouds and radiation, and is damped by the advection of moisture associated with the Rossby wave. Additionally, a zonal wavenumber dependence is found in cloud-radiation feedbacks which causes growth to be strongest at planetary scales. Our results suggest that this wavenumber dependence arises from the non-local nature of cloud-radiation feedbacks; that is, anomalous convection spreads upper-level clouds and reduces radiative cooling over an extensive area surrounding the anomalous precipitation.


Pre-paid housing sales contract is a consumer contract between the consumer and the seller. This contract is mostly made in the form of preliminary property sales contract. Right to claim between the parties will be arised with this contract. Therefore, it is also possible for the consumer to transfer this right. It is controversial whether the income obtained from the transfer of this right will be taxed under the Income Tax Law. There are three main views on this issue, which were discussed in the doctrine before. According to the first, this gain is a capital gain. Secondly, this gain is an occasional commercial gain. According to the last opinion, this gain cannot be evaluated under the Income Tax Law and therefore cannot be taxed. Within the scope of this study, these views in the doctrine were examined. One of the results achived in this subject is that the terms are not in line with the terminology of civil law. In fact, the concept of "the right to buy housing" should be corrected as the right to claim. Also it is concluded that the income obtained from the transfer of the claim will not be considered as an capital gain within the scope of of the Income Tax Code. The expansion of the article of the law to include this gain, is primarily against the principle of the legality of the tax which sourced from the Constitution. Finally, it is stated that this gain cannot be described as occasional commercial gain if it is obtained from the preliminary property sales contract which is risen from the pre-paid housing sales. Since only the consumer can be a party of a pre-paid housing sale, this prevents all transactions from being considered as commercial.


While acoustic communications are still considered the most prominent technology to communicate under water, other technologies are being developed based, e.g., on optical and radio-frequency electromagnetic waves. Each technology has its own advantages and drawbacks: for example, acoustic signals achieve long communication ranges at order-of-kbit/s rates, whereas optical signals offer order-of-Mbit/s transmission rates, but only over short ranges. Such diversity can be leveraged by multimodal systems, which integrate different technologies and provide the intelligence required to decide which one should be used at any given time. In this paper, we address a fundamental part of this intelligence by proposing optimal multimodal routing (OMR), a novel routing protocol for underwater networks of multimodal nodes. OMR makes distributed decisions about the flow in each link and over each technology, at any given time, in order to advance a packet toward its destination; in doing so, it prevents bottlenecks and allocates resources fairly to different nodes. We analyze the performance of OMR via simulations and in a field experiment. The results show that OMR successfully leverages all technologies to deliver data, even in the presence of imperfect topology information. To permit the reproduction of our results, we share our simulation code.


Under the rationale that behavioral studies may contribute to the conservation of threatened species, we analyzed mating behavior of the crayfish Austropotamobius italicus in the laboratory. Our objectives were to investigate whether nonrandom mating by size occurs in this species and to explore the role exerted by mate choice and male-male competition in inducing mating. We observed 17 "quartets" (one female and three differently sized males), divided into three groups based on the female size. To understand the influence of male-male competition on mating, we compared six quartets with six "duets" (one female and one male). Our results clearly show that mating in A. italicus is nonrandom caused by the clear mating advantage of larger males. In fact, as compared to smaller size categories, large males paired more often and for a longer time, and interrupted the final phase of mating less frequently. Male size-advantage mostly derives from an active female choice for large partners, combined with dominance of big males in intrasexual competition. However, a restricted mating period and the low number of receptive females may make males relatively indiscriminate in their overt behavior towards females. Female selection of big males and male-male competition over mates, also in the form of sperm competition, should result in a skewed reproductive success among males. As a consequence, populations with few big males would be characterized by a low heterozigosity and therefore by little genetic variation upon which selection acts. Our results should warn managers to pay more attention to the size structure of crayfish populations that are used for reintroductions.


We consider the problem of designing a survey to aggregate non-verifiable information from a privacy-sensitive population: an analyst wants to compute some aggregate statistic from the private bits held by each member of a population, but cannot verify the correctness of the bits reported by participants in his survey. Individuals in the population are strategic agents with a cost for privacy, ie, they not only account for the payments they expect to receive from the mechanism, but also their privacy costs from any information revealed about them by the mechanism's outcome---the computed statistic as well as the payments---to determine their utilities. How can the analyst design payments to obtain an accurate estimate of the population statistic when individuals strategically decide both whether to participate and whether to truthfully report their sensitive information' We design a differentially private peer-prediction mechanism [Miller et al. 2005] that supports accurate estimation of the population statistic as a Bayes-Nash equilibrium in settings where agents have explicit preferences for privacy. The mechanism requires knowledge of the marginal prior distribution on bits bi, but does not need full knowledge of the marginal distribution on the costs ci, instead requiring only an approximate upper bound. Our mechanism guarantees ε-differential privacy to each agent i against any adversary who can observe the statistical estimate output by the mechanism, as well as the payments made to the n-1 other agents j ≠ i. Finally, we show that with slightly more structured assumptions on the privacy cost functions of each agent [Chen et al. 2013], the cost of running the survey goes to 0 as the number of agents diverges.


Background: nowadays Wikipedia is one of the main on-line sources of general information. It contains several items about nosocomial infections and their prevention, together of items on virtually every scientific topic.
This study aims to assess whether Wikipedia can be considered a reliable source for professional updating, concerning Healthcare-associated Infections (HAI).
Methods: Wikipedia has been searched in order to gather items on HAI. 387 items were found with a search string. The field of research was reduced at those articles (27 items) containing exhaustive information in relation to prevention of HAI. The messages contained in those articles were than compared with the recommendations of a selected guideline (NICE 2003), completed by a literature search, with the aim of testing their reliability and exhaustivity.
Results: 15 Wiki items were found and 51 messages selected. NICE guidelines contained 119 recommendations and 52 more recommendations has been found in a further literature search. 45.1% of Wikipedia's messages were even found in the guidelines. On this percentage, 21.6% completely agreed with the messages of the guidelines, 15.7% partially agreed, 3.9% disagreed and 3.9% showed different level of evidence in different articles. Moreover, 54.9% of Wikipedia's messages were not included in the guidelines and 84.2% of the recommendations contained in the guidelines were not present in Wikipedia.
Conclusions: Wikipedia should not be considered as a reliable source for professional updating on HAI.


Researchers studying the role institutions play in causing and confronting environmental change use a variety of concepts and methods that make it difficult to compare their findings. Seeking to remedy this problem, Oran Young takes the analytic themes identified in the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) Science Plan as cutting-edge research concerns and develops them into a common structure for conducting research. He illustrates his arguments with examples of environmental change ranging in scale from the depletion of local fish stocks to the disruption of Earth's climate system.Young not only explores theoretical concerns such as the relative merits of collective-action and social-practice models of institutions but also addresses the IDGEC-identified problems of institutional fit, interplay, and scale. He shows how institutions interact both with one another and with the biophysical environment and assesses the extent to which we can apply lessons drawn from the study of local institutions to the study of global institutions and vice versa. He examines how research on institutions can help us to solve global problems of environmental governance. Substantive topics discussed include the institutional dimensions of carbon management, the performance of exclusive economic zones, and the political economy of boreal and tropical forests.


Language and communication are central to shaping concepts such as kinship categories. In 1860, Lewis Henry Morgan heard an Iowa man on a Nebraska reservation describe a small boy as "uncle." Fascinated, he embarked on lifelong research into the kinship systems of the world's cultures, which culminated in a typology of kin categories (see the figure, panel A) (1, 2). Work on kinship categories flourished for a hundred years, but then became unfashionable. Yet, kinship is crucial to the transmission of human genes, culture, mores, and assets. Recent studies have begun to reinvigorate the study of kinship categories (3, 4). On page 1049 of this issue, Kemp and Regier (5) explore the relation between observed kinship systems and all possible such systems (the potential "design space"). They suggest that actual kinship systems optimize both ease of conception and communicative import. On page 998 in this issue, Frank and Goodman (6) provide an experimentally grounded characterization of communicative optimization.


We consider the semiparametric regression Xtβ+φ(Z) where β and φ(·) are unknown slope coefficient vector and function, and where the variables (X,Z) are endogeneous. We propose necessary and sufficient conditions for the identification of the parameters in the presence of instrumental variables. We also focus on the estimation of β. An incorrect parameterization of φ may generally lead to an inconsistent estimator of β, whereas even consistent nonparametric estimators for φ imply a slow rate of convergence of the estimator of β. An additional complication is that the solution of the equation necessitates the inversion of a compact operator that has to be estimated nonparametrically. In general this inversion is not stable, thus the estimation of β is ill-posed. In this paper, a √n-consistent estimator for β is derived under mild assumptions. One of these assumptions is given by the so-called source condition that is explicitly interprated in the paper. Finally we show that the estimator achieves the semiparametric efficiency bound, even if the model is heteroscedastic. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate the reasonable performance of the estimation procedure on finite samples.


Critically ill patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) are highly susceptible to healthcare‐associated infections caused by fungi. A prospective sequential survey of invasive fungal infections was conducted from May 2006 to April 2008 in 38 ICUs of 27 Italian hospitals. A total of 384 fungal infections (318 invasive Candida infections, three cryptococcosis and 63 mould infections) were notified. The median rate of candidaemia was 10.08 per 1000 admissions. In 15% of cases, the infection was already present at the time of admission to ICU. Seventy‐seven percent of Candida infections were diagnosed in surgical patients. Candida albicans was isolated in 60% of cases, Candida glabrata and Candida parapsilosis in 13%, each. Candida glabrata had the highest crude mortality rate (60%). Aspergillus infection was diagnosed in 32 medical and 25 surgical patients. The median rate was 6.31 per 1000 admissions. Corticosteroid treatment was the major host factor. Aspergillosis was demonstrated to be more severe than candidiasis as the crude mortality rate was significantly higher (63% vs. 46%), given an equal index of severity, Simplified Acute Physiology Score (SAPS‐II). The present large nationwide survey points out the considerable morbidity and mortality of invasive fungal infections in surgical as well as medical patients in ICU.


With the rapid increase in uptake of cloud services, issues of data management are becoming increasingly prominent. There is a clear, outstanding need for the ability for specified policy to control and track data as it flows throughout cloud infrastructure, to ensure that those responsible for data are meeting their obligations. This paper introduces Information Flow Audit, an approach for tracking information flows within cloud infrastructure. This builds upon CamFlow (Cambridge Flow Control Architecture), a prototype implementation of our model for data-centric security in PaaS clouds. CamFlow enforces Information Flow Control policy both intra-machine at the kernel-level, and inter-machine, on message exchange. Here we demonstrate how CamFlow can be extended to provide data-centric audit logs akin to provenance metadata in a format in which analyses can easily be automated through the use of standard graph processing tools. This allows detailed understanding of the overall system. Combining a continuously enforced data-centric security mechanism with meaningful audit empowers tenants and providers to both meet and demonstrate compliance with their data management obligations.


Information on grazing land conservation practices and their effectiveness in controlling nonpoint source pollution and watershed health at the watershed/landscape scale is necessary for future planning and resource allocation. The objectives of this study were to test the ability of the Agricultural Policy/Environmental eXtender (APEX) model to simulate hydrologic and soil processes at the watershed scale and utilize the model to evaluate the benefit of rangeland in reducing sediment loading and the benefit of potential conservation practices within a rangeland watershed. The model was calibrated and validated for stream flow and sediment yield for two watersheds within the Cowhouse Creek Watershed in north-central Texas: Cowhouse Creek Watershed upstream of Pidcoke (CCUP) Watershed (1,178 km2 [290,966 ac]) and Clear Creek (CC) Watershed (57.3 km2 [14,153 ac]). Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies for the watersheds ranged from 0.62 to 0.71 and 0.71 to 0.81 for monthly and annual stream flow, and from 0.51 to 0.84 and 0.60 to 0.84 for monthly and annual sediment yields, respectively. The percent errors ranged from −9.3% to 12.7% for stream flow and from −22.6% to 11.5% for sediment yield. In addition to APEX model calibration/validation, various modeling scenarios (e.g., cropland expansion and brush control/reduced grazing rate conservation practices) were derived and analyzed for the CCUP watershed. The cropland expansion scenario analysis (less than 0.1% continuous corn to 39% continuous corn) indicated that the current rangeland has the benefit of reducing sediment loading by 65%. Rangeland conservation practice scenario modeling identified substantial reductions in overland sediment losses for conversion of range brush to range grass on Evant soil areas, with an average reduction of 58.8% from treated areas. However, the sediment loading to the CCUP watershed outlet at Pidcoke was only reduced by 7% due to the low treated area of 6%. The reducing stocking rate scenario was less effective compared with brush removal since the current 10 ha cattle−1 (24 ac cattle−1) was not considered a heavy stocking rate. Reducing the current stocking rate to 15 ha cattle−1 (37 ac cattle−1) reduced sediment loading by 5%. This study shows that the APEX model is able to replicate measured stream flow and sediment yields for rangeland watersheds with satisfactory performance based on well-accepted statistical criteria.


In the spring of 2011, the UC San Diego Research Cyberinfrastructure (RCI) Implementation Team invited researchers and research teams to participate in a research curation and data management pilot program. This invitation took the form of a campus-wide solicitation. More than two dozen applications were received and, after due deliberation, the RCI Oversight Committee selected five curation-intensive projects. These projects were chosen based on a number of criteria, including how they represented campus research, varieties of topics, researcher engagement, and the various services required. The pilot process began in September 2011, and will be completed in early 2014. Extensive lessons learned from the pilots are being compiled and are being used in the on-going design and implementation of the permanent Research Data Curation Program in the UC San Diego Library. In this paper, we present specific implementation details of these various services, as well as lessons learned. The program focused on many aspects of contemporary scholarship, including data creation and storage, description and metadata creation, citation and publication, and long term preservation and access. Based on the lessons learned in our processes, the Research Data Curation Program will provide a suite of services from which campus users can pick and choose, as necessary. The program will provide support for the data management requirements from national funding agencies.


The response of idealised cermets comprising approximately 60% by volume steel spheres in a Sn/Pb solder matrix is investigated under a range of axisymmetric compressive stress states. Digital volume correlation (DVC) anal`ysis of X-ray micro-computed tomography scans (μ-CT), and the measured macroscopic stress-strain curves of the specimens revealed two deformation mechanisms. At low triaxialities the deformation is granular in nature, with dilation occurring within shear bands. Under higher imposed hydrostatic pressures, the deformation mechanism transitions to a more homogeneous incompressible mode. However, DVC analyses revealed that under all triaxialities there are regions with local dilatory and compaction responses, with the magnitude of dilation and the number of zones wherein dilation occurs decreasing with increasing triaxiality. Two numerical models are presented in order to clarify these mechanisms: (i) a periodic unit cell model comprising nearly rigid spherical particles in a porous metal matrix and (ii) a discrete element model comprising a large random aggregate of spheres connected by non-linear normal and tangential "springs". The periodic unit cell model captured the measured stress-strain response with reasonable accuracy but under-predicted the observed dilation at the lower triaxialities, because the kinematic constraints imposed by the skeleton of rigid particles were not accurately accounted for in this model. By contrast, the discrete element model captured the kinematics and predicted both the overall levels of dilation and the simultaneous presence of both local compaction and dilatory regions with the specimens. However, the levels of dilation in this model are dependent on the assumed contact law between the spheres. Moreover, since the matrix is not explicitly included in the analysis, this model cannot be used to predict the stress-strain responses. These analyses have revealed that the complete constitutive response of cermets depends both on the kinematic constraints imposed by the particle aggregate skeleton, and the constraints imposed by the metal matrix filling the interstitial spaces in that skeleton.


Objectives: To describe the incidence and magnitude of femoral neck fracture shortening in patients age younger than 60 years. Secondarily, to examine predictors of fracture shortening. Design: Retrospective chart review. Setting: Level I trauma centre. Patients/Participants: Sixty-five patients with a median age of 51 years (interquartile range: 42–56 years) were included. Seventy-one percent were male, 75% were displaced fractures, and 78% were treated with cancellous screws. Intervention: Internal fixation with multiple cancellous screws or sliding hip screw (SHS) + derotation screw. Main Outcome Measurements: Radiographic femoral neck shortening at a minimum of 6 weeks after fixation. Results: Fifty-four percent of patients had ≥5 mm of femoral neck shortening (22% had between ≥5 and <10 mm and 32% ≥10 mm). Initially, displaced fractures shortened more than undisplaced fractures (mean: 8.1 vs. 2.2 mm, P < 0.001), and fractures treated with SHS + derotation screw shortened more than fractures with cancellous screws alone (10.7 vs. 5.5 mm, P = 0.03). Even when adjusting for initial fracture displacement, fractures treated with SHS + derotation screw shortened an average of 2.2 mm more than fractures treated with screws alone (P = 0.03). Conclusions: The incidence of clinically significant shortening in our young femoral neck fracture population was higher than anticipated, and 32% of patients experienced severe shortening of >1 cm. Our findings highlight the need for further research to determine the impact of severe shortening on functional outcome and to determine if implant selection affects fracture shortening. Level of Evidence: Prognostic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.


we analyse the relationship between firms' access to credit and unemployment in the second section. The third section is dedicated to the literature on institutional and legal determinants of the access to credit. In the fourth section, we both complete and moderate the view developed in the second section, stressing the complex interactions that exist between financial arrangements and labour market institutions. The final section concludes.


Introduction
In the past, Hypertension in childhood was not considered a problem but in the last few decades, it has gradually become a source of concern especially as children are known to maintain their blood pressures into adulthood. Therefore, hypertensive children are at risk of developing cardiovascular complications earlier in adulthood. In our own environment, the prevalence of hypertension in children is undocumented, hence the purpose of this study.

Methods
Two hundred children aged between 3-17 years were recruited into this study from two public schools-one primary, one secondary in a semi urban community in Uyo metropolis. The blood pressure of respondents was measured in accordance with the technique described by the 4th Task Force on Blood Pressure Control in Children. The height and weight of all eligible subjects was measured using a stadiometer and a calibrated scale respectively. Body Mass Index (BMI) was assessed for each subject and World Health Organization (WHO) charts of BMI for age and sex were used as reference standards. Waist circumference was measured according to the technique described in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Results
The prevalence of hypertension and prehypertension was found to be 3.5% and 2.5% respectively in this study. Only age (OR = 1.74, p = 0.005, 95%CI = 1.186-2.566), BMI (OR = 1.54, p = <0.001, 95% CI = 1.249-1.913) and waist circumference (OR = 1.16, p = 0.002, 95%CI = 1.056-1.271) were found to significantly predict the development of high blood pressure.

Conclusion
The prevalence of hypertension and prehypertension in this study was found to be low. Hypertension/prehypertension was more likely to develop with increasing age, BMI and waist circumference.


This symposium will review recent advances in the simulation methods for evaluation of novel breast imaging systems - the subject of AAPM Task Group TG234. Our focus will be on the various approaches to development and validation of software anthropomorphic phantoms and their use in the statistical assessment of novel imaging systems using such phantoms along with computational models for the x-ray image formation process. Due to the dynamic development and complex design of modern medical imaging systems, the simulation of anatomical structures, image acquisition modalities, and the image perception and analysis offers substantial benefits of reduced cost, duration, and radiation exposure, as well as the known ground-truth and wide variability in simulated anatomies. For these reasons, Virtual Clinical Trials (VCTs) have been increasingly accepted as a viable tool for preclinical assessment of x-ray and other breast imaging methods. Activities of TG234 have encompassed the optimization of protocols for simulation studies, including phantom specifications, the simulated data representation, models of the imaging process, and statistical assessment of simulated images. The symposium will discuss the state-of-the-science of VCTs for novel breast imaging systems, emphasizing recent developments and future directions. Presentations will discuss virtual phantoms for intermodality breast imaging performance comparisons, extension of the breast anatomy simulation to the cellular level, optimized integration of the simulated imaging chain, and the novel directions in the observer models design.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Review novel results in developing and applying virtual phantoms for inter-modality breast imaging performance comparisons; 2. Discuss the efforts to extend the computer simulation of breast anatomy and pathology to the cellular level; 3. Summarize the state of the science in optimized integration of modules in the simulated imaging chain; 4. Compare novel directions in the design of observer models for task based validation of imaging systems. PB: Research funding support from the NIH, NSF, and Komen for the Cure; NIH funded collaboration with Barco, Inc. and Hologic, Inc.; Consultant to Delaware State Univ. and NCCPM, UK. AA: Employed at Barco Healthcare.; P. Bakic, NIH: (NIGMS P20 #GM103446, NCI R01 #CA154444); M. Das, NIH Research grants.


Abstract The theme of this paper centres on the divergence and convergence of housing policy in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as reflected in the development of the private rented sector (PRS) in both jurisdictions. Using a historical comparative analysis of key indicators, this paper aims not just to present an accurate picture of the state of policy towards the PRS in both jurisdictions, but to situate this analysis within the overall development of the two housing systems. The paper postulates that while Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are both reflective of the Anglo-Saxon tradition in housing, historical factors have led to different housing pathways and clearly identifiable differences in policy outcomes. Housing policy and housing tenure mix in both jurisdictions diverged significantly during the twentieth century, showing examples of path dependency at work, but there is clear evidence of convergence in recent decades. The withdrawal from direct social housing provision and the changing role of the private rented sector are examined and an example of convergence theory at work is analysed.


Graduate education can be utilized by working professionals as an advancement to their careers. This paper presents the results of a Delphi survey sent to 31experts in the construction industry. A survey questionnaire was developed to ask the participants about their perceptions of the relevance of the current graduate-level construction management courses in developing senior-level construction managers. A curriculum analysis of 34 graduate CM programs in the United States was conducted. The resulting data from the curriculum analysis is utilized in developing the survey questionnaire. The study is part of a larger research Delphi study that aimed at identifying the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities required for senior-level managers in the construction industry. Two phases of the survey were sent to participants in this Delphi study. The results of the study indicate that the current graduate programs in construction management across the United States of America are not adequately focused on developing senior-level construction managers.


Recent developments in high throughput profiling of individual neurons have spurred data driven exploration of the idea that there exist natural groupings of neurons referred to as cell types. The promise of this idea is that the immense complexity of brain circuits can be reduced, and effectively studied by means of interactions between cell types. While clustering of neuron populations based on a particular data modality can be used to define cell types, such definitions are often inconsistent across different characterization modalities. We pose this issue of cross-modal alignment as an optimization problem and develop an approach based on coupled training of autoencoders as a framework for such analyses. We apply this framework to a Patch-seq dataset consisting of transcriptomic and electrophysiological profiles for the same set of neurons to study consistency of representations across modalities, and evaluate cross-modal data prediction ability. We explore the problem where only a subset of neurons is characterized with more than one modality, and demonstrate that representations learned by coupled autoencoders can be used to identify types sampled only by a single modality.


The lamins are intermediate filament proteins that form a fibrous layer at the periphery of the nucleus. Experiments in cell-free systems have suggested that mammalian lamins A and C mediate an interaction between chromatin and the inner nuclear membrane that is essential for the reformation of the nucleus after mitosis. Other investigations, however, have suggested that lamins A and C are absent from myeloid cells and myeloid leukemia cell lines. To further investigate this apparent paradox, highly sensitive Western blotting techniques were utilized in the present study to examine the expression of lamins A and C in a series of human myeloid leukemia cell lines and in bone marrow samples from patients with acute nonlymphocytic leukemia (ANLL) and chronic myelogenous leukemia. Western blotting revealed that HL-60 progranulocytic leukemia cells contained an average of 0.1 x 10(6) copies of lamins A and C per cell compared to 0.5 x 10(6) copies of lamin B1 (the quantitatively prominent human B-type lamin) per cell. During the process of phorbol ester-induced maturation to macrophages, the mRNA for lamins A and C increased in abundance, with a concomitant 4-fold increase in the average cellular content of these polypeptides. To rule out the possibility that the low but detectable levels of lamins A and C observed in untreated HL-60 cells reflected incipient maturation, the content of lamins A and C was analyzed in ANLL cell lines that do not mature toward granulocytes or monocytes. Lamins A and C were readily detected in cell lines (KG1a, HEL, Mo-7e) derived from patients with a variety of subtypes of ANLL. Expression of lamins A and C was not limited to myeloid cell lines. These polypeptides were also detectable in marrow samples from 9 of 26 patients with ANLL including at least 1 patient from each of the 5 subtypes of ANLL examined. In contrast, only 1 of 12 marrow samples from patients with aggressive phase chronic myelogenous leukemia and chronic myelogenous leukemia in blast crisis contained readily detectable lamins A and C. The implications of these findings for current hypotheses regarding the functions of the lamin polypeptides are discussed.


Buckling characteristics of composite sandwich plates with corrugated core under transverse loading is studied using finite element method. The sandwich construction constitutes of a repetitive corrugated core and two face panels. The corrugated core has either a triangular shape or a rectangular shape. The material for both face and core panels has the same laminate construction, which is either a [±α]S or a [0/α]S. The fiber orientation angle α in the laminates is varied from 0 to 90o. The study first considers the local deformations of the face panels and the web panels. It then determines the buckling modes and critical buckling loads of the sandwich structures. The effect of fiber orientation angle on the critical buckling loads of the sandwich plates with two different core shapes is demonstrated.


Rapid advances in information technology and telecommunications (IT and T) are impacting on a changing world in which boundaries, whether they are at local, national and international levels are now less clearly marked. The so-called information superhighway is reaching and linking many regional, rural and remote communities so that the world itself has become a small global village. This leads to the assumption that the power of information technology and telecommunications is inescapable and unresistable. A logical response to a changing and challenging world is to prepare global villagers for acculturation into a new IT and T discourse community. However, potential IT and T users are human not virtual beings and fear, anxiety, confusion, resistance and inspiration are part of the acculturation process towards an IT and T discourse community. In this paper the concepts of acculturation and discourse community are discussed and applied to IT and T discourse generally and educational multimedia in particular. A paradigm shift is occurring in education with the introduction of IT and T, and strategies have to be developed to facilitate acculturation of new users to this paradigm to prevent hostility and rejection of the advantages they bring to regional, rural and remote communities. Three aspects of acculturation in education are presented and discussed. The implementation of acculturation in the context of IT and T is explored through a description of the provision of rural health education and training opportunities in the small Island State of Tasmania.


Central Java's economy in 2004 has a higher economic growth and inflation than 2003. Economic growth on supply side was influenced by three economic sectors (trade, hotel & restaurant, manufacturing industry, and services). On demand side, economic growth was influenced by private consumption, government consumption, and export. The prior determinance of inflation in 2004 is come from supply side: volatile foods and clothes (cost push inflation). On demand side, inflation was influenced by communication and financial services. Banking sector (commercial bank and rural bank) has a good performance in 2004. All of banking performance indicators were increased, i.e. total asset, total deposit, credit, and loan to deposits ratio. Meanwhile, ratio of non performing loans was declined. Central Java's export in 2002-2004 has increased significantly that be dominated by four prime industries (textile, furniture, wearing apparel, and products of wood). The contribution of four industries is 76,04% of total export. Businessmen and exporters have been understood that high level competitiveness of the export commodities is major precondition to compete in international market. This awareness makes optimism spirit of businessmen to increase Central Java's export performance. Outlook of Central Java's economy in 2005 is predicted will have a higher economic growth with higher inflation than 2004. Two dominant economic sectors (manufacturing industry sector and trade, hotel & restaurant sector) will lead its growth on supply side. Private consumption, investment, and export will be a prime mover of growth on demand side. The administered price, especially increasing of oil (BBM) price, will be a prior determinance of inflation in 2005. Outlook of banking sector, especially on credit, also has a good prospect. This is based on increasing trends of real sector and household needs, stability of social and political condition, and infrastructure projects of central government that will be supported by banking sector. Outlook of Central Java's export in 2005 is depend on performance of export commodities of four industries above. To realize it, regional government of Central Java must create an export development program focusing on product quality improvement. Meanwhile, the linked institutions (public and private institutions) on export development must cooperate on implementing and sustainable program to realize an effective synergism.


Ginger (Zingiber officinale) supplements are being promoted for arthritis treatment in western societies on the basis of ginger's traditional use as an anti-inflammatory in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. However, scientific evidence of ginger's antiarthritic effects is sparse, and its bioactive joint-protective components have not been identified. Therefore, the ability of a well-characterized crude ginger extract to inhibit joint swelling in an animal model of rheumatoid arthritis, streptococcal cell wall-induced arthritis, was compared to that of a fraction containing only gingerols and their derivatives. Both extracts were efficacious in preventing joint inflammation. However, the crude dichloromethane extract, which also contained essential oils and more polar compounds, was more efficacious (when normalized to gingerol content) in preventing both joint inflammation and destruction. In conclusion, these data document a very significant joint-protective effect of these ginger samples and suggest that nongingerol components are bioactive and can enhance the antiarthritic effects of the more widely studied gingerols.


The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues and challenges of liquidity risk management in Islamic banks. At the same time, the authors are going to identify the sources of liquidity risk in Islamic banks and the common instruments used to mitigate liquidity mismatches in both sides of their balance sheets. The study is a qualitative study that uses secondary sources of data to describe and analyze risk mitigation in the Islamic banking context. Data were collected from libraries by referring to books, journals from both online and offline sources. The research objectives were addressed by critically analysing various issues from both the Islamic principles and contemporary applications. The authors found that Islamic liquidity management is an important building block for stable and efficient banking. Even though there are several attempts, for example, i) organized tawarruq (commodity murabahah), ii) salam sukuk and iii) short-term ijarah sukuk, to find solutions to the incessant problems of liquidity faced by majority of Islamic banks, there are still several underlying problems such as i) in terms of deficiency in infrastructure especially in countries where Islamic finance is still at an early stage, ii) lack of hedging instruments and iii) Shariah restrictions on some instruments. Regulatory bodies should come up with more innovative practices of Islamic liquidity management to solve unresolved theoretical issues and also meeting market requirements for liquidity.


Changes in the AASHTO fatigue design equations for truck-induced gust loads have been made in recent years. However, there has not been any long-term field testing of cantilevered traffic signal structures to verify the design equations. In this study, two cantilevered traffic signal structures were monitored in field testing to determine the effects of truck-induced gust loads. Over 400 truck events were observed in the field, but only eighteen trucks produced a detectable effect on the cantilevered traffic signal structure. Interestingly, the truck-induced gusts caused a greater effect in the out-of-plane direction (same direction as traffic flow) instead of the in-plane direction that is included in the AASHTO Specifications. It was determined that overall natural wind gusts produce a larger response in cantilevered traffic signal structures than gusts produced by trucks passing beneath the signals.


These studies by an academic who is also a former practising lawyer seek to establish the principles of biblical law as represented in the Sinai traditions. Specific topics covered include adultery, family law, slavery, animals and wealth; respect for life and the general biblical moral tradition are also discussed. The collection also deals with wider issues of prophecy and law, the relationship of torah and mishpat (especially in relation to Second Isaiah), and laws in the book of Ruth, and includes a discussion of the place of biblical law in contemporary society.


The Arctic is a region in transformation. Warming in the region has been amplified, as expected from ice‐albedo feedback effects, with the rate of warming observed to be ∼0.60 ± 0.07°C/decade in the Arctic (>64°N) compared to ∼0.17°C/decade globally during the last three decades. This increase in surface temperature is manifested in all components of the cryosphere. In particular, the sea ice extent has been declining at the rate of ∼3.8%/decade, whereas the perennial ice (represented by summer ice minimum) is declining at a much greater rate of ∼11.5%/decade. Spring snow cover has also been observed to be declining by −2.12%/decade for the period 1967–2012. The Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass at the rate of ∼34.0 Gt/year (sea level equivalence of 0.09 mm/year) during the period from 1992 to 2011, but for the period 2002–2011, a higher rate of mass loss of ∼215 Gt/year has been observed. Also, the mass of glaciers worldwide declined at the rate of 226 Gt/year from 1971 to 2009 and 275 Gt/year from 1993 to 2009. Increases in permafrost temperature have also been measured in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere while a thickening of the active layer that overlies permafrost and a thinning of seasonally frozen ground has also been reported. To gain insight into these changes, comparative analysis with trends in clouds, albedo, and the Arctic Oscillation is also presented.


Gesture-based programming is a new paradigm to ease the burden of programming robots. By tapping in to the user's wealth of experience with contact transitions, compliance, uncertainty and operations sequencing, we hope to provide a more intuitive programming environment for complex, real-world tasks based on the expressiveness of nonverbal communication. A requirement for this to be accomplished is the ability to interpret gestures to infer the intentions behind them. As a first step toward this goal, this paper presents an application of distributed perception for inferring a user's intentions by observing tactile gestures. These gestures consist of sparse, inexact, physical "nudges" applied to the robot's end effector for the purpose of modifying its trajectory in free space. A set of independent agents-each with its own local, fuzzified, heuristic model of a particular trajectory parameter observes data from a wristforce/torque sensor to evaluate the gestures. The agents then independently determine the confidence of their respective findings and distributed arbitration resolves the interpretation through voting.


Dynamic regulation of cellular metabolism is important for maintaining homeostasis and can directly influence immune cell function and differentiation including Natural Killer (NK) cell responses. Persistent HIV-1 infection leads to a state of chronic activation, subset redistribution and progressive NK cell dysregulation. In this study we examined the metabolic processes that characterise NK cell subsets in HIV-1 infection, including adaptive NK cell subpopulations expressing the activating receptor NKG2C, which expand during chronic infection. These adaptive NK cells exhibit an enhanced metabolic profile in human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infected HIV-1 seronegative individuals. However, the bioenergetic advantage of adaptive CD57+NKG2C+ NK cells is diminished during chronic HIV-1 infection, where NK cells uniformly display reduced oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and limited fuel flexibility upon CD16 stimulation. Defective OXPHOS was accompanied by increased mitochondrial depolarisation and structural alterations indicative of mitochondrial dysfunction, suggesting that mitochondrial defects are restricting the metabolic plasticity of NK cell subsets in HIV-1 infection. The metabolic requirement for receptor stimulation was alleviated upon IL-15 pre-treatment enhancing mammalian target of rapamycin complex1 (mTORC1) activity and NK cell functionality in HIV-1 infection, representing an effective strategy for pharmacologically boosting NK cell responses.


The present bibliography on pelagic Tunicates has been compiled over a period of 4 years, mainly by the first author. It is meant, not as an official publication, but as a working aid for students of pelagic Tunicates. It comprises about 1300-1400 different titles of books and articles. For obvious reasons the mere listing of all those titles in alphabetical order would be impractical for specialized demands. Splitting this list in as many subheadings as possible in a way like the Zoological Record would be ideal. However, many articles and books are difficult to place under one heading; the same titles would have to be mentioned under a number of different headings. With as many headings as possible this would mean a multiplication of the 1300-1400 titles to an impractical amount. Moreover, at present only part (60%) of the titles mentioned below have been checked and abstracted by the authors; for specialized subheading all articles and books need to be studied. It was decided to meet both ends and an unspecialized subdivision was made into six headings: Copelata, Salpidae, Doliolidae, Pyrosomidae, General Zooplankton and General Tunicates. The important articles or books concerning more than one of the systematic groups have been listed under more than one heading. For instance: "Thompson, H. Pelagic Tunicates of Australia" can be found under Copelata as well as under Salpidae, Doliolidae or Pyrosomidae. General zooplankton papers or books, in which pelagic Tunicates are not a major subject, are not listed under several headings, but are compiled under "General Zooplankton". General articles or books on various subjects of the Tunicata as a whole are listed under "General Tunicates".


Hays (1996) was the first to describe the construct of intensive mothering beliefs, yet little empirical research exists to substantiate its prevalence among contemporary mothers and its implications for their lives. The purpose of this study was to examine the construct of intensive mothering beliefs and its longitudinal associations with maternal well-being for 210 full-time employed mothers of infants. Employment-specific guilt was examined as one explanatory mechanism through which intensive mothering beliefs impact maternal well-being. Contextual factors such as mothers' childcare satisfaction and workplace flexibility were examined as moderators of the link between intensive mothering beliefs and employment-specific guilt. Results of exploratory factor analyses suggested that the measure developed for this study reflected four domains of intensive mothering beliefs ("nonemployed ideal", "take responsibility", "self-sacrificing", and "protecting the child"). Results of structural equation modeling suggested that intensive mothering beliefs at 4 months were not predictive of maternal well-being at 16 months, and that employment-specific guilt did not mediate this association. However, intensive mothering beliefs at 4 months were associated positively with employment-specific guilt at 16 months. No moderation effects were observed for childcare satisfaction, however two indicators of workplace flexibility (perceived schedule control and flexible policies) moderated the associations between some domains of intensive mothering beliefs and employment-specific guilt.


A 45-year-old previously healthy woman presented to our ED with a 1-month history of left flank pain and fever after undergoing extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL). Upon an examination, she was found to have a large ecchymotic mass in the left flank area with severe tenderness (Picture 1). Abdominal CT demonstrated a very large, lobulated mass containing fluid and measuring more than 20 cm in length with rim enhancement within the left psoas and iliacus muscle and also involving the lower pole of the left kidney and peri-/pararenal space, subsequently displacing the left kidney anteriorly and causing mild hydronephrosis (Picture 2, 3). The formation of an abscess as a complication of ESWL is rare. Bacteria arising from the fragmented stone or entering by way of infected urine are thought to cause abscess formation by lodging in the damaged tissue and/or extravasated blood or urine (1). In this case, a culture of the aspirated pus revealed Citrobacter koseri. Percutaneous drainage combined with antibiotic therapy resulted in full a recovery.


The performance of the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) relevant to other developing regions has been poor over the last two decades, especially compared to Asian developing countries. FDI inflows are a catalyst for economic growth, employment and poverty reduction. This study examined whether good macro-level corporate governance, which is the way countries are managed and governed, can assist in promoting countries as potential investment locations. The Worldwide Governance Index, which has been developed by Kaufmann et al (1999, 2008, 2011), was used to objectively measure the performance of the SSA region. The region has generally been perceived to be negatively impacted by political risk, lack of government leadership, weak institutions, ineffective implementation of policies and a region susceptible to corruption. This study examined the relationship between macro-level governance performances of the SSA region and sought to determine whether this is a contributing factor which affects FDI inflows. The study used panel data fixed effect estimator for a sample of 45 SSA countries from 2002 to 2011. The findings have revealed that macro-level corporate governance has a positive impact and is statistically significant in attracting FDI inflows. In addition to the other factors which drive FDI inflows for the region, this provides an incentive to host countries to develop polices which can leverage and promote investment to the region, fundamentally addressing pressing social challenges and sustainable economic development and growth.


The evolution of the traditional Web into a Semantic Web and the continuous increase in the amount of data published as Linked Data open up new opportunities for annotation and categorization systems to reuse these data as semantic knowledge bases. Accordingly, Linked Data has been used by information extraction systems to exploit the semantic knowledge bases, which can be interconnected and structured in order to increase the precision and recall of annotation and categorization mechanisms. This paper describes TellMeFirst a software for the classification and enrichment of textual documents written in English and Italian. Although nowadays there are various works presenting solutions for text annotation and classification, this work is focused on describing and studying the use case of a Telecommunications Operator that has adopted TellMeFirst in order to generate value-added to two services available to its users: FriendTV and SOCIETY.


Success of student in open and distance learning (ODL) depends on level and various forms of information and communication technology (ICT) support services available to them. Online student support system has an important central role in ODL where students are geographically distant from teachers and institute. Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) is the first Distance Education University in South Asia which provides education to around 1.3 million students annually. To provide administrative and educational support to these large numbers of students an online support system is developed using latest open-source technologies to accumulate all the student queries on a single platform for better data analysis and quick response. The system is capable of handling queries coming from different sources e.g. email, website, telephone etc. In-built rating mechanism which is based on student vote on query response helps in improving the response quality. Custom reporting module helps in analyzing the nature and category of queries based on different related parameters. On each query initialization and response, student is automatically intimated via email and SMS. In this paper, technical design of online student support system is discussed followed by detailed query analytics.


This study was designed to determine the effects of acute toxicity of NeemAzal T/S on Nile tilapia ( Oreochromis niloticus) and to investigate the antioxidant effect of Lupine seeds on the gills and erythrocytes(EC) oxidative stress induced by NeemAzal T/S in Nile tilapia .Two doses of NeemAzal; 1/10 LC50:16 PPM (NA1) and 1/5 LC50:32 PPM (NA2) and three periods of 10, 20 and 30 days were used. Oxidative stress parameter, total peroxide (TP) and antioxidant enzyme activities, catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) as well as glycemia were measured. NA2 markedly decreased CAT and SOD activities in gills and erythrocytes at most periods, but NA1 had less effect. In turn, both doses significantly enhanced TP levels in gills and EC. Moreover, hyperglycemia was detected 30 days after control (NA) exposure. LS significantly curtailed or abolished the adverse effect of NA exposure on oxidative and antioxidant parameters in gills and EC. This may be attributed to the hypoglycemic effect of LS as well as its antioxidant efficiency. In conclusion, Lupine seed exerts a potent antioxidant activity against oxidative damages induced by NeemAzal T/S in Nil tilapia fish. Int J Appl Sci Biotechnol, Vol 3(2): 170-178 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijasbt.v3i2.12284


Professional and graduate mobility represents an increasing component of international migration streams due to the globalisation of markets, the expansion of the knowledge economy, and the global competition for talent. While in the last twenty years considerable attention was given to East-West mobility flows within Europe, little research has been done on mobile professionals' and graduates' occupational attainment abroad. In the thesis I analyse the social organisation of professional mobility, focusing on the determinants of mobility, the destination choice, and the job-seeking practices of East European professionals and graduates in London. Several bodies of literature deliver the conceptual basis for this research. Applying an economic sociological framework, I rely on three major currents among the theoretical approaches to migration and mobility: human capital, global cities and labour market segmentation theories. I use quantitative and qualitative techniques to analyse primary and secondary data, including an online survey and semi-structured interviews with Hungarian and Romanian professionals and graduates working in London, and London-based employers of East European graduates, as well as official statistics. While aiming to question the atomised economic individualism associated with well-educated migrants and to draw the profile of the potentially new 'Eurostars', the thesis reaches four main conclusions. First, I emphasise the need to investigate the social process leading to labour market incorporation of foreign professionals from a transnational perspective. I argue that the social structures and institutions at both destination and origin influence immigrants' labour market positions at destination. Second, I have found that mobility decisions are shaped by individual perceptions of relative deprivation when comparing their own social and occupational positions to the ones of members of groups they consider referential. Third, social ties act as centrifugal forces in sending professionals and graduates to either the top or the bottom of the occupational hierarchies at destination. Typically, however, professional and graduate mobility is a market-dependent phenomenon, influenced less by the existence of social ties, more by the supply and demand on the global labour, education and migration policy markets. These social institutions, together with social networks and migrants' self-selection contribute to the creation of labour market segments at destination. Finally, the thesis challenges the idea that the international transfer of human capital is a seamless process. Instead, I argue that it is the social aspects of human capital creation, transfer and appreciation which shape to a great extent what is socially recognised as being 'skilled' or 'highly qualified'. Being 'highly skilled' is an outcome of negotiations between employers and migrants on the socially constituted labour markets around the value and the value-attached significance of employable human capital.


Through measurements, researchers continue to produce large social graphs that capture relationships, transactions, and social interactions between users. Efficient analysis of these graphs requires algorithms that scale well with graph size. We examine node distance computation, a critical primitive in graph problems such as computing node separation, centrality computation, mutual friend detection, and community detection. For large million-node social graphs, computing even a single shortest path using traditional breadth-first-search can take several seconds.

In this paper, we propose a novel node distance estimation mechanism that effectively maps nodes in high dimensional graphs to positions in low-dimension Euclidean coordinate spaces, thus allowing constant time node distance computation. We describe Orion, a pro totype graph coordinate system, and explore critical decisions in its design. Finally, we evaluate the accuracy of Orion's node distance estimates, and show that it can produce accurate results in applications such as node separation, node centrality, and ranked social search.


Demanding ever-increasing throughput and processing power, space applications push the outer limits of conventional pattern-recognition technology. Optical correlators offer a siren's song of potential advantages over all-electronic devices. Realizing these advantages, however, will be difficult because of limitations on current spatial light modulators, key elements in an optical correlator. We propose a promising architecture that may overcome these limitations.<<ETX>>


3G, HSPA and FDD versus TDD Networking, Second Edition is the only book that contrasts the network capacity gains that may be achieved with the advent of adaptive antenna arrays and HSDPA-style adaptive modulation techniques in the context of FDD and TDD CDMA cellular networks. In the five years since the first edition of this book was published the wireless landscape has evolved further. The new book addresses the recent developments in the field of HSDPA-style wireless networking, focusing particularly on the issues and challenges of FDD versus TDD networking. These solutions are particularly powerful in shadow-faded scenarios, when the antenna array elements experience correlated, rather than independent fading. Furthermore, the flexible up-link/down-link time-slot allocation of TDD is beneficial for supporting the Wireless Internet, but results in erratic interference fluctuations, which is efficiently combated by the antenna arrays and adaptive modulation. Additionally, whilst the adaptive modulation aided system simply drops the instantaneous transmission rate during instances of high interference, conventional networks would drop the call. Builds on successful previous edition to include recent developments in the field of HSDPA-style wireless networking Provides an all-encompassing self-contained overview of the subject for a wide range of readers of all levels. Treats the topics of both physical-layer and network-layer aspects of wireless systems using a cross-layer optimization approach. One of the first books to contrast in detail both FDD and TDD networking. The material is presented clearly and logically allowing the uninitiated reader to commence reading it at fundamental non-mathematical conceptual level at the beginning of the book, while advanced readers can turn directly to the required chapter describing solutions to a number of wireless FDD or TDD networking problems. This book will inspire researchers, practicing engineers, operators, marketing engineers and advanced postgraduates.


Generally, food policy is required to play an important role in the following aspects for society, i.e., to ensure food security, to cope with structural changes in food consumption and to realise sustainable development. However, the issues of food security and sustainability have different meanings when they are considered at the global, regional, national and local levels. Research on food policy up to now has been focusing on investigating the relationship between average income level and corresponding food demand at country level. Research related to the impact of the income gap on food demand along with economic growth is also insufficient. In this research, the impact of economic growth on food consumption in Asia will be analysed by taking the income gap into consideration. It will also draw policy implications for food security and sustainability according to analytical results.


Rice is prime crop that contributes to food security and provides employment to a large number of populations in Nepal. More than 51% of the area of rice land in Nepal is rain-fed. Over the last few years, however, the country has been experiencing erratic rainfall, with less water available for rice cultivation, as well as temperature rise. There are both submergence (flooding) problems and drought in the main rice growing areas. Hence, there is a need to generate suitable rice technologies under such adverse conditions. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has initiated research in collaboration with the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences (IAAS) to develop suitable rice technologies for submergence and drought prone areas of Nepal. Various rice germplasm was brought from IRRI, Philippines, and research was conducted at NARC and IAAS as well as in farmers' fields following a program of Participatory Varietal Selection (PVS). Water-saving rice technologies as well as other technologies, including indigenous practices, were identified for utilizing less water for rice cultivation. Several varieties of rice under drought prone and under submergence conditions were identified, and have been recommended for cultivation by Nepalese farmers. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hn.v11i1.7209 Hydro Nepal Special Issue: Conference Proceedings 2012 pp.69-72


Most of the intellectual capital (IC) assessment tools are based on a "top-down" approach which does not explore deeply into the particular business process and the specific knowledge needs. Those IC assessment tools generally measure the intellectual capital of an organization as the return on intangible assets covering Human Capital (HC) such as staff skills, innovativeness and work experience, Structural Capital (SC) such as IT systems, documents and patents, and Relational Capital (RC) such as relationship with customers and suppliers. Traditional IC assessment tools with "IC reporting" deliverables aim at identifying useful knowledge that can create wealth for the organization in assessing the performance and value creation process. In contrary, a systematic "knowledge audit" is a process-oriented and stock-taking approach for evaluating the "knowledge healthiness" of an organization from the "bottom-up". There is potential to merge two methodologies into one integrated assessment tool to present a comprehensive IC reporting in an organization. Knowledge assets underpin the capabilities and core competencies of any organization. The importance of a knowledge audit is the first step in determining how knowledge is handled in mission critical business processes in an organization. Quality management processes are the main subsets inside an organization"s critical business processes. A knowledge audit provides an evidence based assessment of the knowledge assets within an organization, however, there is a lack of a systematic approach in the way knowledge audits are conducted. In addition, there is no standard way of measuring Intellectual Capital (IC) through a better understanding of knowledge assets that are captured from a knowledge audit. The two different streams of KM and IC are complementary and provide the cornerstones for the definition of a managerial framework to identify, assess, exploit and manage organizational knowledge. In view of the importance of the knowledge audit and the deficiencies in the standard ways of IC measurement, a structured knowledge audit approach has been applied. This paper presents an integration of knowledge audit and IC reporting approach which has been applied in a Quality Assurance (QA) Department of an electronics company, for knowledge assets stock-taking in six specified Value Added Quality Management Processes (VAQMP). More than 74 staff, over 4 corporate functions and 5 departments in two manufacturing plants, from different work levels involving 6 quality management processes from each plant, participated in the research. 52 Participants were provided with various knowledge audit forms to complete in order to provide information about the IT tools/platforms, documents, implicit knowledge, as well as the critical industrial technologies in each VAQMP process. Quantitative and qualitative analysis was then undertaken, including stakeholder analysis and the identification of critical knowledge workers, industrial technologies, crucial documents, implicit knowledge, as well as the knowledge fountain and knowledge discovery points of the process. The outcomes and effectiveness of the knowledge audit were evaluated in both KM and IC aspects. In most Intellectual Capital assessment tools, the workflow of the business process and the specific knowledge needs are not taken into account. On the other hand, this structured knowledge audit helps to identify critical organizational knowledge that needs to be captured and transferred for the healthy operation and sustainability of the quality management processes, in order to prevent quality crises. Finally, after the consolidation of the explicit and implicit knowledge inventories, as well as constructing an IC value tree, an intellectual capital statement for the Group Quality Assurance (GQA) Department was produced.


The power transformer is the most expensive and arguably the most important equipment item in a power system. Insulation failure in transformers can cause long term interruption to supply and loss of revenue and the condition assessment of the insulation is thus an important maintenance procedure. Oil-impregnated transformer insulation consists of mainly organic materials including mineral oil and cellulose-base paper and pressboard. The operating life of cellulose-based insulation, as with most organic insulation, depends heavily on its operating temperature rise above ambient. This paper reports results of a laboratory-based experimental investigation of partial discharge activity at high temperature in oil-impregnated insulation. The experiments reported here are part an on-going programme aimed at investigating the way in which insulation deterioration can be monitored and quantified by use of partial discharge diagnostics. Partial discharge patterns were recorded and analyzed during increasing and decreasing phases of the temperature. The effect of ageing of the insulation on the PD patterns in oil-impregnated insulation is also considered.


At sites of vascular injury, thrombin interacts with multiple procoagulant substrates, to mediate both fibrin clotting and platelet aggregation. But upon binding to thrombomodulin on the vascular endothelium, thrombin instead activates protein C, thereby functioning as an anticoagulant and attenuating clot formation. Upon infusion in vivo, both the procoagulant and anticoagulant effects of thrombin were observed. Preliminary studies indicating that thrombin's protein C activating and fibrinogen clotting activities could be dissociated by mutagenesis suggested to us that a thrombin variant that lacked procoagulant activity while retaining anticoagulant function might be an attractive antithrombotic agent. Using protein engineering, we introduced a single substitution, E229A, that substantially shifted thrombin's specificity in favour of the anticoagulant substrate, protein C. In monkeys, this modified thrombin functioned as an endogenous protein C activator demonstrating dose-dependent, reversible anticoagulation without any indication of procoagulant activity. Notably, template bleeding times were not prolonged, suggesting a reduced potential for bleeding complications.


Tuberculosis has appeared as a main world health problem with almost 1/3rd of the world society today infected with causative pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis). M. tuberculosis is a grampositive bacterium makes so many difficulties in its abolition totally. Rv3228 is a conserved hypothetical gene of M. tuberculosis. Rv3228 is an expected GTP/ATP binding protein. It also shows metal ion binding or GTPase activity. GTP/ATPs are energy-rich molecules that facilitate binding of respective protein factor either to ribosomes or to the tRNA. This manuscript considered some of the valuable aspects of Rv3228 protein being the function as unknown. The main visions of this study include retrieval of protein sequence database, multiple sequence alignment, string interaction study, sub-cellular localization, ligand binding prediction, B-cell and T-cell epitopes prediction, structure-based function prediction by COFACTOR and VICMpred. VICMpred predicts that this gene is a virulence factor. Ab-Inito modelling by RAPTOR X and validates by RAMPAGE, ERRAT, and VERIFY3D, mutation analysis by MAESTRO WEB SERVER. This study will be helpful in the development of new drugs and the treatment of tuberculosis disease.


Consensus opinion sees the U.S. economy growing by around 3 percent per year over the next few years, a high enough rate to keep unemployment low and outpace Europe. One problem with the consensus view is that it pays little heed to the very unusual nature of the American expansion. A minor downturn prompted by a bit of inflation and higher interest rates is one thing, and easily fixed by conventional means. But America's boom was unique and so, alas, will be its bust.


Highway infrastructure plays an important role in assuring the proper function of the nation's transportation. Highway alignment is an essential part of the highway planning and design phase, which has significant effects on the surroundings. Identifying optimal highway routes while using traditional methods requires significant time, cost, and effort, since it requires a comprehensive assessment of multiple factors, such as cost and environmental impacts. This study proposes an approach for managing highway alignment in the context of a larger landscape that integrates building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) capabilities. To support this integration, semantic web technologies are used to integrate data on a semantic level. Moreover, the approach also uses genetic algorithms (GAs) for optimizing highway alignments. A fully automated model is developed that enables data interoperability between BIM and GIS systems and also allows for data exchange between the integration model and the optimization algorithm. The model enables the full exploitation of features of the project and its surroundings for highway alignment planning. The proposed model is also applied to a real highway project to validate its effectiveness. The visualization model of the highway project and its surroundings provides a realistic three-dimensional image that produces a comprehensive virtual environment, where the project could be effectively planned and designed. That can help to reduce design errors and miscommunication, which, in turn, reduces project risks. Moreover, geological and geographical analyses help to identify geohazards and environmentally sensitive regions. The proposed model facilitates highway alignment planning by providing a cross-disciplinary approach to close the gap between the infrastructural and geotechnical planning processes.


Invariant Risk Minimization (IRM) is a recently proposed framework for out-of-distribution (o.o.d) generalization. Most of the studies on IRM so far have focused on theoretical results, toy problems, and simple models. In this work, we investigate the applicability of IRM to bias mitigation—a special case of o.o.d generalization—in increasingly naturalistic settings and deep models. Using natural language inference (NLI) as a test case, we start with a setting where both the dataset and the bias are synthetic, continue with a natural dataset and synthetic bias, and end with a fully realistic setting with natural datasets and bias. Our results show that in naturalistic settings, learning complex features in place of the bias proves to be difficult, leading to a rather small improvement over empirical risk minimization. Moreover, we find that in addition to being sensitive to random seeds, the performance of IRM also depends on several critical factors, notably dataset size, bias prevalence, and bias strength, thus limiting IRM's advantage in practical scenarios. Our results highlight key challenges in applying IRM to real-world scenarios, calling for a more naturalistic characterization of the problem setup for o.o.d generalization.


Voice pitch carries linguistic as well as non-linguistic information. Previous studies have described cortical tracking of voice pitch in clean speech, with responses reflecting both pitch strength and pitch value. However, pitch is also a powerful cue for auditory stream segregation, especially when competing streams have pitch differing in fundamental frequency, as is the case when multiple speakers talk simultaneously. We therefore investigated how cortical speech pitch tracking is affected in the presence of a second, task-irrelevant speaker. We analyzed human magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses to continuous narrative speech, presented either as a single talker in a quiet background, or as a two-talker mixture of a male and a female speaker. In clean speech, voice pitch was associated with a right-dominant response, peaking at a latency of around 100 ms, consistent with previous EEG and ECoG results. The response tracked both the presence of pitch as well as the relative value of the speaker's fundamental frequency. In the two-talker mixture, pitch of the attended speaker was tracked bilaterally, regardless of whether or not there was simultaneously present pitch in the speech of the irrelevant speaker. Pitch tracking for the irrelevant speaker was reduced: only the right hemisphere still significantly tracked pitch of the unattended speaker, and only during intervals in which no pitch was present in the attended talker's speech. Taken together, these results suggest that pitch-based segregation of multiple speakers, at least as measured by macroscopic cortical tracking, is not entirely automatic but strongly dependent on selective attention.


There is a need to provide low cost electric power systems in a number of locations around the world. However, the size and cost of renewable energy generators and storage increase when they are used alone, due to the stochastic nature of sources. Reliability similar to the grid power supply can only be achieved by combining more complementary energy sources in the presence of storage devices; thus creating a hybrid renewable or distributed energy system. The optimal sizing of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) is important in order to keep the system reliable with low investment cost and with adequate or full use of resources. In this work, the stochastic nature of renewable generation and demand and non-linear system characteristics are explored in the process of optimizing the size of a HRES. In achieving this, a hybrid optimization methodology was developed for the intention of matching the renewable generation with the demand of a site. The results showed that the demand profile dictates the size of a HRES and is as important as the optimization method. In previous studies, average hourly demand profiles for a day, total monthly load, seasonal daily load profile, average hourly demand profile repeated throughout the year have been iv examined, however, this work demonstrates that these demand profiles fail to represent real life electrical demand. As such, this work extends our understanding of the influence of demand, using multiple "real world" demand profiles, on sizing a HRES that result in varying temporal position of loads and the peak energy demand. It shows that the total daily demand of a site can vary significantly due to socio-demographic factors and that in sizing a HRES, the variation of the annual demand profile due to these factors must be considered. Moreover, it furthers this by exploring the random day to day variations of peak demand both in magnitude and temporal position throughout the year that occur due to the varying weather conditions and habits of the user. It was determined that the effect of this random variation of electrical load on the optimal size of a HRES was significant and an advanced method for sizing a HRES under these conditions was developed and demonstrated. Finally, a series of demand side management (DSM) options were proposed for the HRES and incorporated with the sizing method. It was shown that the investment costs could be significantly reduced with the introduction of each of the DSM options, in particular, by utilizing excess energy generated by the HRES to heat a thermal storage system.


Containing papers carefully compiled for both their historical importance and contemporary relevance, Family Medicine: The Classic Papers brings together a team of experts, led by global family medicine leaders Michael Kidd, Iona Heath and Amanda Howe, who explain the importance of each selected paper and how it contributes to international health care, current practice and research. The papers demonstrate the broad scope of primary health care delivered by family doctors around the world, showcasing some of the most important research ever carried out in family medicine and primary care. This unique volume will serve as an inspiration to current family doctors and family medicine researchers and educators, as well as to doctors in training, medical students and emerging researchers in family medicine.


This paper examines the extent to which the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) might be substituting for private health insurance coverage at the time of enrollment. Among children who were newly enrolled in SCHIP in 2002 in ten states, about 14 percent had private coverage that they could have retained as an alternative to SCHIP. Of this 14 percent, about half of parents reported that the private coverage was unaffordable compared with SCHIP. This suggests that relatively few SCHIP enrollees could have retained private coverage and that even fewer had parents who felt that the option was affordable.


The modern study of comparative religion emerged as a field of academic inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as European intellectuals began to analyze the mass of new data about ritual and belief from around the globe arriving in the metropole through circuits of trade, conquest, and empire. The founding figures of this new scholarly enterprise listed among their ranks a number of strong, vivid personalities - even some armchair anthropologists constituted minor forces of nature. One of the more overlooked figures in this era, but one who proved quite formidable to her peers, was Lady Frazer, the wife of Sir James George. Sir James was prominent in British intellectual life through the early decades of the twentieth century as one of the important systematizers and popularizers of the new world of human religious diversity. While the specifics of Frazer s theories were challenged even early in his career, up to his death he was lauded by his peers for an encyclopedic knowledge of ethnographic data and affable good cheer.Lady Frazer was another matter. Like many unsung late-Victorian women, she played a major role in her husband's career, managing important aspects of his speaking schedule, regulating much of his contact with other scholars, even playing an assertive role in supervising the planning and outfitting of various expeditions to collect new ethnographic data (see Fraser 1990; Talbot 1915). Lady Frazer was preoccupied with ensuring that the young ethnographers she and her husband supported took with them the precise sorts of recording equipment that she favored, and she pressed budding anthropologists to make the pilgrimage to Cambridge so that she could personally train them to use the equipment exactly as she preferred.1 This was no idle preoccupation - control of the equipment meant control over the evidentiary record produced by the equipment, and control ofthat evidentiary record was essential, in turn, for confirming what Lady Frazer considered to be a proper understanding of primitive culture.Given her strong personality and the trepidation with which she was commonly greeted, it is little wonder that Lady Frazer and others like her during these decades were greeted with regular comments concerning their personal mana. The notion of mana came into circulation among European intellectuals from ethnographic reports concerning beliefs in impersonal supernatural power among the Melanesiane, but the concept quickly made its way into correspondence, toasts, even obituaries, as a jocular commentary on the power of personality.2 This essay explores a basic question: What exactly might we learn about Lady Frazer and her peers - about the scope of their personal power and how this sense of potency was conceived - when we hear of their mana? In answer, I hope to show that while the term serves to mystify many crucial aspects of the operations of social power, this fascination with mana ultimately reveals important fundamental tendencies among early twentieth century scholars of comparative religion, and many of those tendencies continue to shape contemporary understandings of enchantment. Like many of their peers, these early scholars were fascinated - and perturbed - by the workings of power, particularly when that power appeared to exceed the orderly bounds of the natural. The cultural logic of modernity seemed to require that the potency of religion be channeled into very narrow straits, but religion - in both its licit and illicit forms - rarely complied. Scholars searched for a vocabulary to help them recognize this excessive and pervasive potency, and mana materialized as an idiom for comprehending mysterious supernatural powers. Yet the early discussions of mana are marked by an ambiguous reluctance to confront power directly, and that same ambiguity is reflected in our current difficulties in accessing the potency and valence of contemporary enchantment. Mana thus offered an occasion to acknowledge the confluence of agency, power, and enchantment, but it also served as a vehicle for further mystification. …


The interoperability specifications for electronic laboratory reporting specify the use of HL7, LOINC, SNOMED CT and UCUM. We explored the degree to which health care transactions comply with these standards by evaluating laboratory data captured in a health information exchange to support automated detection of public health notifiable diseases. We studied the NCD's ability to detect and report Lead, Influenza and MRSA. We found that due to incomplete LOINC mapping, alternate approaches such as keyword searches within local test names and codes could identify additional potentially reportable messages. We also found that non-adherence to HL7 messaging standards and inconsistently recorded laboratory results require the use of complex systems with complementary NLP techniques to accurately report notifiable conditions. We conclude that the incomplete adoption of and adherence to specified standards poses challenges to deploying processes that utilize real-world data for secondary purposes.


Novel, temperature-responsive molecularly imprinted polymers (TMIPs) based on potassium hexatitanate whiskers for selectively adsorbing sulfadiazine (SDZ) from aqueous media were prepared with methacrylic acid (MAA) and 4-vinylpyridine (4-VP) as cofunctional monomers and N-isopropyl acrylamide (NIPAM) as a temperature-responsive monomer. The template–monomer interactions were studied by molecular simulation. In particular, the effects of different kinds of crosslinkers on the selective recognition ability of the TMIPs in water media were investigated. The temperature–responsive adsorption performance and phase behavior of the molecularly imprinted polymers were studied by batch-mode binding experiments, swelling experiments, and contact angle testing. The results demonstrate that the combination of MAA, 4-VP, and NIPAM was a favorable temperature-responsive imprinted system for SDZ in water, and the cocrosslinking agent of ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) and N,N′-methylene bisacrylamide (MBA) was more suitable compared with either pure EGDMA or MBA. The adsorption kinetics and adsorption isotherms were analyzed by the fitting of different adsorption models. Also, the effect of the temperature on the recovery was investigated by the determination of the spiked SDZ in real-water samples with solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41769.


Hypertensive disorders are the most common medical complication of pregnancy and a major cause of neonatal and maternal morbidity and mortality in the UK and worldwide. Accurate recording of blood pressure measurement (BPM) is critical to ensure hypertension in pregnancy is correctly diagnosed and managed. Defective equipment and a failure to follow the correct BPM technique can lead to inaccurate readings. Studies have found this to be the case in both primary care and hospital settings. However, there is limited research evidence regards the condition of BPM equipment and BPM practice of health professionals working in maternity services.This study is unique in that it encompasses an audit of BPM equipment, an assessment of BPM practice among health professionals and the impact of continuing education within three U.K. maternity units. This was a descriptive evaluation study that included a baseline audit of 165 blood pressure devices and a practice survey questionnaire distributed to 436 health professionals. In addition, 57 observations of staff conducting BPMs were undertaken. This was followed by an intervention in the form of an education programme delivered to 163 members of staff. The impact of the intervention upon equipment and matched pairs of health professionals was evaluated by a follow up equipment audit of 119 blood pressure devices and practice survey of 46 members of staff who completed the education programme and 32 who did not. Data were analysed using non-parametric statistic tools that included Chi-Square, McNemar, Spearman, Mann-Whitney-U and Wilcoxon tests.The baseline survey found that out of 165 BP devices, 89% (148) had no indication of ever being serviced, 21% (28) failed calibration testing and that only 3% (5) devices were found to have no component faults. Out of the 22 automated devices surveyed, none had been independently validated as suitable for use on pregnant women. There was a lack of availability of large cuffs located across all three maternity units of the recommended size. The observed practice of 57 staff taking BPM did not comply with current BPM guidelines. The baseline practice survey findings revealed that 156 (63%) of the 246 respondents did not use the correct rate of deflation, 103 (42%) incorrectly used Korotkoff 4 for diastolic pressure and 188 (76%) could not correctly identify the effect of arm position on BP readings. Evaluation of the impact of the education programme upon the working condition of BP equipment and practice of BPM revealed some positive effects with a significant changes in overall practice questionnaire scores (before vs. after P=<0.001) in participants who attended the education programme compared to those who did not attend the education programme (P=0.982). Of the 119 BPM devices examined in the follow up survey there was a 13% increase in the number of devices that had evidence of servicing and a 6% increase in the number that passed calibration testing.Thus, the study identified that the accuracy of BP measuring equipment was questionable. Also, there were variances with the method of BPM technique and a lack of compliance with recommended guidelines on how BP should be measured. Updating staff on how to conduct an accurate BPM and raising awareness of the factors that affect accurate BPM has the potential to reduce the risk of obtaining an inaccurate BPM due to faulty equipment or incorrect technique. Quality improvement initiatives around the care of women with hypertensive disorders in pregnancy need to incorporate performance assessment of staff BPM technique and BP equipment accuracy assessment. Equipment should be in full working order, regularly serviced and maintained and defective equipment removed. Health professionals conducting BPM on pregnant women need to ensure that they access regular and appropriate updating on the recommended technique for BPM and have knowledge around servicing, calibration requirements, and validation requirements of BP devices. Perhaps most important of all is not to take for granted their competency in this basic but essential clinical skill.