Occupational therapy (OT) and physical therapy (PT) are related services that are provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA, 20 U.S.C. 1400 et seq.). Related services are provided under the IDEA to assist children with disabilities to benefit from special education. Nationally, there is a critical shortage of qualified personnel to provide related services in schools. Due to budget constraints, public school systems also experience challenges in competing with medical facilities to hire these personnel. Due to this combination of the critical shortage of qualified personnel and budgetary constraints, public school systems often times operate with staffing shortages. Therefore, it is important to develop evidence based practices that facilitate the efficient utilization of both personnel time and talent to provide these services in schools. To contribute to this evidence, the researcher investigated change in how OT and PT service providers utilized time in a large urban school district across four school years. These years are consistent with the years investigated by Goodrich, Hawkins, Burridge, and White (2009), who reported an increase across these years in the number of appropriate as opposed to inappropriate referrals generated for OT and PT services in this school district. In the later three years, three interventions designed to facilitate appropriate referrals were implemented. The interventions included training on using an education based decision making process when generating a referral, a modified referral form to guide campus personnel through using an education based decision making process, and the addition of a classroom based support service to the continuum of services provided by OT and PT services. In the current study, a RELATED SERVICE TIME UTILIZATION ii longitudinal analysis was conducted to measure if a significant change occurred in the proportion of time OT and PT service providers spent in various activities performed as a part of their work responsibilities when the increase in the proportion of appropriate referrals was reported. Therapy personnel increased the time spent in providing campus or classroom based support services and in travel. Time spent in providing screening and evaluation services remained stable across the years. The interventions implemented in this school district across these four years were supported as effective practices to improve the efficient utilization of OT and PT services provided in schools. These personnel were able to increase the proportion of time they were able to spend in providing the campus or classroom based support services, offering a proactive model of support in addition to the reactionary, referral driven, model. The referral process improved because less, more appropriate referrals were generated by campus teams (Goodrich, et al. 2009) the time spent in responding to these referrals remained relatively consistent across these years. This time was spent in responding to more appropriate referrals as opposed to being unnecessarily expended to respond to inappropriate referrals. In addition to these two changes in how these service personnel spent time across these years, the number of children recommended to receive OT and/or PT services as a part of the child's IEP increased. RELATED SERVICE TIME UTILIZATION iii Table of


The liberalisation process has been carried out in the name of consumers. Today, it appears that that process has probably brought economic advantages for them. Prices have come down and new goods/services have been made available on the markets concerned. In this paper, we analyse whether economic advantages have come together with improvements to the legal status of consumers, i.e. the protection they enjoy from a legal point of view. The study is based on an analysis of the provisions contained in the EC regulatory framework on electronic communications.


This is the seventh in a series of 10 articles dealing with the different types of loss that doctors will meet in their practice

This paper focuses on two common problems that arise when people come close to death, fear and grief. Fear is the psychological reaction to danger; grief the reaction to the numerous losses that are likely to occur in the course of an illness that is approaching a fatal outcome. Both can be expected to arise in patients, their families, and—though we are reluctant to admit it—in their doctors and other carers. Both fear and grief need to be taken into account if we are to mitigate the psychological pains of dying.

#### Summary points

We should never assume that we know what people with terminal illness fear

Most patients will benefit if we can help them to feel secure enough to share their fears

Fear can aggravate pain, and pain fear

Patients with life threatening illnesses experience a series of losses as the illness progresses

Grief is natural and needs to be acknowledged and expressed

Though it may seem obvious that people who are dying are likely to be afraid, we should not assume that we know what they fear. The box shows the fears, in approximate order of frequency, expressed to me by patients in a hospice. It is clear that fears of death itself come quite far down on the list. Difficult to quantify but of particular importance is reflected fear, the fear that people see in the eyes of those around them or hear in the questions that are not asked.1 Many problems in communication arise out of fear, and we may need to take time to create trust and a safe place in which people can begin to talk about the things that make …


This book argues that ideology is a prism through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov needs to be considered. It is thus the first attempt to foreground questions of ideology and politics within a field that has historically been resistant to such readings.
The perception of Nabokov as an apolitical writer is one which the author encouraged throughout the latter part of his career in his non-fictional writings and in the small number of well-rehearsed interviews that he gave. When questions of ideology and politics have arisen in scholarship, they have only been featured in passing or have merely re-confirmed the author's self-designation as an «old-fashioned liberal». When we consider that Nabokov lived through some of the most traumatic historical ruptures of the past century then this lack of reference to ideology in the critical literature appears quite revealing.
Through the analysis of works which have previously received little attention as well as new perspectives on better known works, this book demonstrates how ideology and politics were ever-present and had an indelible effect on Nabokov's literary aesthetics.


Cannabis and ecstasy are among the most widely used illicit drugs in the world. However, there are substantial concerns about their neurotoxic potential for brain and brain function. Despite previous research, some crucial questions regarding the causality, course and clinical relevance have remained unanswered, mainly because of methodological limitations. These limitations include the use of cross-sectional and retrospective designs with lack of baseline data and inadequate control of potential confounders, such as poly-substance use in ecstasy users. This thesis, as part of the larger Netherlands XTC Toxicity (NeXT) study, presents four functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies designed to overcome the limitations of previous studies and thus makes a significant contribution to the remaining questions concerning the potential neurotoxicity of ecstasy and its most commonly used co-drug cannabis. The studies presented in this thesis focused entirely on ecstasy or cannabis-induced functional consequences, in terms of sustained effects on human brain function in three cognitive domains, i.e. working memory, selective attention and episodic associative memory. In order to overcome the lack of baseline data, a prospective cohort study was performed in novice ecstasy users and persistent ecstasy-naive controls. 25 Novice users were examined before and after an episode of first ecstasy use. They were compared with 24 controls, also measured twice, and matched for gender, verbal IQ and cannabis use with the novice users. To deal with the potential confounding of poly-drug use in experienced ecstasy users, a large stratified sample with substantial variation in the amount and type of drug used was carefully composed, instead of a random recruitment among heavy ecstasy users. Subsequently, the effects of ecstasy and other drugs such as amphetamine, cocaine and cannabis could be separated with multiple regression analyses. In addition, the selective effects of frequent cannabis use were investigated in two cross-sectional fMRI studies where we compared task performance and related brain activity during working memory, attention and associative memory between groups of frequent cannabis users and cannabis-naive controls. Regarding the specific effects of ecstasy in the context of poly-substance use the results indicated that drug use was associated with reduced performance and altered brain activity for associative memory, but had little effect on working memory and attention. Importantly, memory performance was affected by amphetamine more than by ecstasy. Both drugs affected brain activity, but these effects were consistently in opposite direction, indicating separate mechanisms are at play. These findings suggest that previously reported effects of ecstasy on memory and memory-related brain function might be (partly) attributable to concomitant use of amphetamine rather than the use of ecstasy. Concerning the prospective cohort study in incident users the results showed no firm evidence for sustained effects of a low dose of ecstasy (median number of pills: 1.5) on cognitive brain function. With regard to cannabis, the results failed to show cognitive deficits or changes in cognitive brain function. It should be noted, however, that it can not be excluded that other assessment techniques measuring similar or different aspects of the brain and brain functioning could detect sustained changes in the brain or in brain functioning. Given the fact that the NeXT study is still in progress and entails an interconnected set of studies including other neuroimaging and neuropsychological assessments, a final conclusion regarding the neurotoxicity of ecstasy and cannabis is yet to be drawn.


The structural and magnetic properties of nickel manganite (NiMn(_2)O(_4)) have been investigated, for bulk, and thin film samples. NiMn(_2)O(_4) has partially inverted spinel structure, Mn(_v)Ni(_1-v)[Ni(_v)Mn(_2-v]O(_4), where v is the inversion parameter. Bulk samples were produced from co-precipitated metal hydroxides at various firing times and temperatures. Particular attention was given to determining the optimum preparation route. Nickel oxide was the major impurity encountered due to sub-optimal preparation conditions, but was difficult to detect using diffraction, due to considerable Bragg reflection overlap with those NiMn(_2)O(_4). Nickel oxide is believed to have been present in most samples studied by other researchers in the field. Pure material formed in air after firing for 48 hours in the region 780 C to 820 C; a much smaller range than previously reported. By controlling the cooling rate after firing, 0.7483(19) ≤ v ≤ 0.8830(22) was obtained; as determined by neutron diffraction measurements. Ferrimagnetic Curie temperatures (T(_c)) between 100 K and 147 K were obtained for the range of v studied; somewhat lower than previously reported. The magnetization below T(_c) exhibits P-type behaviour, which has hitherto not been observed in this compound. Evidence compatible with a local canted state at temperatures below -10 K was observed using muon spectrometry. The magnetic properties of electron-beam evaporated thin films of NiMn(_2)O(_4) were investigated with a custom built Alternating Gradient Field Magnetometer. The AGFM was initially constructed for a study of Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor (DMS) materials, and was capable of temperatures down to 77 K, and resolution of 14 pJT(^1). This instrument used a mechanically resonant quartz fibre sample holder, and piezoelectric detection. The response of the instrument to temperature drift, applied magnetic field, and differing sample properties is reported. The T(_c) of a typical thin film sample was measured, and v= 0.788(8) inferred from the relationship with T(_c), as determined for bulk material.


We study the interface between adsorbed water and stoichiometric, defect-free (110) rutile oxide surfaces of TiO2, RuO2, and IrO2 in order to understand how water influences the stabilities of the intermediates of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). In our model the water is treated as explicitly adsorbed H2O molecules, which are found to form two-dimensional water chains (layers) on all investigated oxide surfaces. The first chain formed by the most strongly bound H2O molecules is adsorbed on the 5-fold coordinated surface metal atoms. The second chain is composed of less strongly bound H2O molecules binding to bridging oxygens. The third chain interacts weakly and predominantly with the H2O molecules of the second layer, resembling bulk water. We find that the stability of the water layer close to the oxide surface is almost the same as the one found on flat metal surfaces, such as the Pt(111) surface, despite the highly different adsorption pattern of the water molecules. We show that the presence of ...


Future crewed deep space exploration missions such as those to Mars or a Near Earth Asteroid are characterised by extreme remoteness, high crew autonomy, reliance on the immediate habitat vehicle system, and the limited possibility for resupply or intervention from the ground. Human behaviour and performance issues represent a critical challenge for crew survival and mission success. Current biomedical research and development taxonomies emhpasise the need for addressing the experience of isolation and monotony particularly during uneventful, extended transfer stages to and from a destination in a confined, itinerant habitat vehicle. However, this aspect has received relatively little attention from an integrated habitability design perspective. At the same time, many of the in-flight psychological support measures employed in orbital long duration missions to date rely on close proximity to Earth and cannot be directly exported into an autonomous flight paradigm. This highlights the strategic design issue of establishing and extrapolating existing operational evidence-bases for unprecedented mission scenarios, and the potential for employing speculative approaches currently emerging within the industrial and interaction design disciplines.

This research project focused on these two aspects of a deep space mission scenario. Research question 1 addressed autonomous habitat design-based mitigation strategies to monotony. Question 2 considered design approaches in view of novel situational constraints.

In response to research question 1, the user experience of monotony was examined as a phenomenon of sensory, spatial and social isolation in relation to design provisions in the habitat vehicle. A review of behavioural health mitigation aspects recorded in published user accounts from extended orbital and simulator missions was conducted. It was found that users experienced aspects of monotony to varying degrees. In terms of countermeasures, three common design themes were identified: off-duty hardware interaction, plant growth facilities, and crew care packages. A set of design studies then translated the themes into the autonomous context of a remote deep space setting: the relationship of users with onboard hardware as manifested in practical jokes and hacking; their experience of the apparently sparse but awe inducing local natural context; and the integration of novelty provisions into an otherwise entirely familiar habitat. This was informed by additional ethnographic cases studies into user behaviour in space and analogue environments, conceptual design development, and operational application in two ground-based mission simulations (basic wear system in Mars500; olfactory intervention in MDRS). In synthesising these, a design rationale for mitigating the somewhat inevitable issue of monotony emerged. It directs emphasis towards accommodating in-flight support measures within existing onboard habitation systems in addition to providing separate support applications; and towards amplifying the positive factors of the local situational context through habitat design affordances, rather than predominantly providing diversions from its stressors.
Research question 2 investigated the spectrum of evidence and speculation available to the designer when addressing unparalleled mission settings. While only a limited existing body of evidence from previous missions can be drawn on directly, a range of analogous models exist in human research and operations. A feasibility study was conducted at the astronaut training division of the European Space Agency to develop a framework for capturing and integrating operational user evidence for future systems design. Contextualised by a documentary compilation and taxonomy of functional and representational modes of modelling and simulation, this highlighted the notion of design-relevant insights to be derived from user interaction with training mock-ups and simulators. In order to understand the extension of this interaction with models representing evidence towards the end of the spectrum of novel scenarios, the potential validity and application of speculative design, as manifested in the Designing Emotional Survival 4 fictional models of film production design, was examined. This involved a case study based on archive material from the Stanley Kubrick estate charting the design development of the habitation systems in 2001: A Space Odyssey by its team comprising both aerospace experts and film industry professionals, and the subsequent analysis of 36 film productions sampled according to the relative authenticity of their reference mission. The set of studies suggested that the potential merit of engaging in 'authentic' speculative design practice lies not necessarily in offering of a wide range of alternative conceptual design solutions.
Rather, it represents a heuristic tool to identify, channel and manifest a range of extended narratives of human activity that traditional evidence-based models only partially afford. Fusing evidence and speculation in integrated, experiential models thus lends itself to facilitating scenario-building efforts early on in the systems planning process. In reflecting its current position in aerospace, it is hence put forward that, beyond translating requirements into applied solutions, design can assume the role of a foresight tool. Finally, in view of a transfer of findings and linking to current interaction design theory, an argument is made from the critical design perspective for reading spaceflight settings and its designed systems as laboratory for the human condition as such. In an effort to contribute to the theoretical and practical consolidation of design as a spaceflight discipline at the interface of life sciences, human factors, space architecture and systems engineering, this exploratory inquiry offers applied and methodological points of departure to inform research and design practice into the behavioural dimension of deep space exploration missions, their analogues, and remote duty contexts in other extreme environments.


This paper reports for the first time zircon U-Pb ages of volcanic rocks and sands from Lutao and Lanyu, two islets off SE Taiwan in the north Luzon arc. The samples include (1) seven andesites from four volcanic units and three river/beach sands from Lutao and (2) five basaltic andesites from four volcanic units and two river/beach sands from Lanyu. The Lutao andesites contain abundant magmatic zircons, aging from ~1.54 to ~1.24 Ma for individual sample, which yielded an overall mean 206Pb/238U age of 1.31 ± 0.03 Ma (n=190, MSWD=2.6). This is slightly older than, or broadly coincident with, a mean 206Pb/238U age of 1.23 ± 0.03 Ma (n=103, MSWD=1.9) given by detrital zircons from the three sands. The Lanyu volcanics appear to have less abundant magmatic zircons, aging from ~2.72 to ~2.35 Ma for individual sample, which yielded an overall mean 206Pb/238U age of 2.61 ± 0.13 Ma (n=11, MSWD=1.8). This accords with a mean 206Pb/238U age of 2.69 ± 0.11 Ma (n=34, MSWD=4.7) obtained by detrital zircons from the two sands. The age data suggest that in Lutao and Lanyu the major volcanic eruptions occurred at ~1.3 and ~2.6 Ma, respectively. Moreover, volcanic samples from both islets contain various amounts of older inherited zircons, ~11% in Lutao and up to ~82% in Lanyu, which together with detrital zircons from the sands show main age peaks at ~150 Ma and ~1.9 and ~2.5 Ga, consistent with the notion for a "hidden" continental crust involved in the genesis of the northern Luzon magmatic arc.


Medak is one of the district of Telangana state which is known for its low nutrient soils, supporting growth of some of the inferior plant species in 2016(Feb)-2017 (Feb). In this research work vegetation found in the Medak district is being divided into two broad categories, that is forest vegetation and non- forest vegetation. The vegetation found in the field area was further divided into various groups depending on morphological characteristics shown by them. A vast exploration was conducted wherein the researchers have visited various areas to observe the versatility seen in the respective regions. It is been found that the field area is inhabited by various types of plants belonging to families like Leguminosae (104), Poaceae (83), Cyperaceae (49), Asteraceae (37), Euphorbiaceae (31), Acanthaceae (22), Rubiaceae (20), Lamiaceae (18), Convolvulaceae (17) and Amaranthaceae (15). During the studies, the predominant of the plant species observed belonged to Leguminosae family. This study can be further proceeded by doing a detailed analysis of the soil for its physicochemical characters which specifically supported the growth of Leguminosae members.


Modern engineering systems are complex socio-technical structures with a mission to offer services of high quality, while in parallel ensuring profitability for their owners. However, practice has shown that accidents are inevitable, and the need for the use of systems-theoretic tools to support safety-driven design and operation has been acknowledged. As indicated in accident investigation reports, the degradation of risk situation awareness (SA) usually leads to safety issues. However, the literature lacks a methodology to compare existing systems with their ideal composition, which is likely to enhance risk SA. To fill this gap, the risk SA provision (RiskSOAP) is a comparison-based methodology and goes through three stages: (1) determine the desired/ideal system composition, (2) identify the as-is one(s), (3) employ a comparative strategy to depict the distance between the compared units. RiskSOAP embodies three methods: STPA (System Theoretic Process Analysis), EWaSAP (Early Warning Sign Analysis) and dissimilarity measures. The practicality, applicability and generality of RiskSOAP is demonstrated through its application to three case studies. The purpose of this work is to suggest the RiskSOAP indicator as a measure for safety in terms of the gap between system design and operation, thus increasing system's risk SA. RiskSOAP can serve as a criterion for planning system modifications or selecting between alternative systems, and can support the design, development, operation and maintenance of safe systems.


Placodontia is a clade of durophagous, near shore marine reptiles from Triassic sediments of modern-day Europe, Middle East and China. Although much is known about their primary anatomy and palaeoecology, relatively little has been published regarding their life history, i.e. ageing, maturation and growth. Here, growth records derived from long bone histological data of placodont individuals are described and modelled to assess placodont growth and life-history strategies. Growth modelling methods are used to confirm traits documented in the growth record (age at onset of sexual maturity, age when asymptotic length was achieved, age at death, maximum longevity) and also to estimate undocumented traits. Based on these growth models, generalized estimates of these traits are established for each taxon. Overall differences in bone tissue types and resulting growth curves indicate different growth patterns and life-history strategies between different taxa of Placodontia. Psephoderma and Paraplacodus grew with lamellar-zonal bone tissue type and show growth patterns as seen in modern reptiles. Placodontia indet. aff. Cyamodus and some Placodontia indet. show a unique combination of fibrolamellar bone tissue regularly stratified by growth marks, a pattern absent in modern sauropsids. The bone tissue type of Placodontia indet. aff. Cyamodus and Placodontia indet. indicates a significantly increased basal metabolic rate when compared with modern reptiles. Double lines of arrested growth, non-annual rest lines in annuli, and subcycles that stratify zones suggest high dependence of placodont growth on endogenous and exogenous factors. Histological and modelled differences within taxa point to high individual developmental plasticity but sexual dimorphism in growth patterns and the presence of different taxa in the sample cannot be ruled out.


Second-order hyperpolarizibilities γ of the buckminsterfullerenes C70 at three different wavelengths were determined by third-harmonic generation in a toluene solution and compared with those of C60. Strong effects with γ exceeding 5 × 10−32 esu were observed in the three-photon resonant regime. The nonresonant measurements indicate a negative real hyperpolarizibility in C70 and a positive γ for C60, both of the order of 10−33 esu.


Serological tests for antibodies against specific EBV antigens are commonly used to define the state of the infection as well as for differential diagnosis with the other agents responsible for mononucleosis syndrome.The use of only three parameters (VCA IgG and IgM and IgG EBNA-1) is normally enough to distinguish acute and past infection in immunocompetent patients: the presence of VCA IgG and IgM without EBNA-1 IgG indicates acute infection, whereas the presence of VCA IgG and EBNA-1 IgG without VCA IgM is typical of past infection. These profiles (beyond the negative profile for all three markers indicating the absence of infection) cover the vast majority of situations that can be found in the routine laboratory. In a minority of cases, however, the serological pattern may sometimes be difficult to interpret: presence of VCA IgG without either VCA IgM or EBNA-1 IgG, simultaneous presence of VCA IgG,VCA IgM and EBNA-1 IgG, presence of EBNA-1 IgG without either VCA IgM or VCA-1 IgG. In order to interpret these serological patterns correctly, it is necessary to use other laboratory tests: VCA IgG avidity, immunoblotting for EBV IgG and IgMV, or a search for heterophile antibodies, anti-EA antibodies or viral genome by means of gene amplification techniques.


This chapter considers sources of vulnerability among innocent sexual abuse suspects to police-induced false confession. We suggest that sexual abuse suspects may be particularly vulnerable to false confession, primarily as a result of their enhanced sense of hopelessness that they might be believed or be able to establish their innocence. Moreover, we suggest this sense of hopelessness derives largely from two factors: first, their perception of the evidentiary situation they face; and, second, stereotypes associating fathers, step-fathers, priests, boy scout leaders, day care personnel and others with sexual abuse. That is, we suggest sexual abuse claims are often characterized by (1) seemingly credible claims of one or more victims, (2) against a suspect whose social category is consistent with stereotypes of sexual abusers, (3) lack of concrete physical evidence that could exonerate the suspect, and (4) testimony of professional and nonprofessional witnesses in seeming support of the occurrence of the abuse and/or the suspect's guilt that likewise cannot be refuted by concrete evidence. Sexual abuse suspects may therefore be less likely than most other innocent suspects to expect (a) that their claims of innocence will be believed in the absence of concrete proof of innocence, (b) that there will be a way to prove their innocence, or even (c) that there will be a way to effectively cast doubt on the validity of the alleged victim(s)' claims of guilt or other apparently abuse supportive testimony. A primary goal of interrogation tactics is to instill in suspects such a sense of hopelessness, which then makes it easier for the interrogator to convince the suspect that confession will result in better legal outcomes than denial. For many sexual abuse suspects this goal may have been effectively met before they enter interrogation.


This document contains forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as 'expect', 'would', 'will', 'potential', 'plans', 'prospects', 'estimated', 'aiming', 'on track' and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. We refer you to Syngenta's publicly available filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for information about these and other risks and uncertainties. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors. This document does not constitute, or form part of, any offer or invitation to sell or issue, or any solicitation of any offer, to purchase or subscribe for any ordinary shares in Syngenta AG, or Syngenta ADSs, nor shall it form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any contract therefor.


The explosive development of electronic media has brought to the market participants thousands of pieces of financial news which are released on different platforms every day. Many news wires published online are editorially controlled and can be relied as factual summary as opposed to fake news or disinformation. These news items provide a rich source of textual information which in a summative way represents the sentiment of the market. The sentiments influence or impact the asset price as well as the volatility of individual assets. In this study we have tested sentiment enhanced daily trading strategies. Alexandria Technology has provided us news sentiment metadata, which is used in this study. We have also resorted to `asset filters' which we use to restrict the universe of assets chosen for daily trades. We have considered quantified news sentiment and its impact on the movement of asset prices as a second time series data, which is used together with the asset price/return time series data. Our asset allocation strategy uses Second Order Stochastic Dominance (SSD); see \cite{roman2006portfolio, roman2013enhanced}. Following this modelling paradigm we compute daily trade schedules using a time series of historical equity price data. In contrast to classical mean-variance method this approach improves the tail risk as well as the upside of the return. In our recent research we have introduced news sentiment indicators such as News RSI (NRSI) and Derived RSI (DRSI) filters. These filters restrict the choice of asset universe for trading. Consistent performance improvement achieved in back-testing vindicates our approach.


What is the effect of programming languages on software quality? This question has been a topic of much debate for a very long time. In this study, we gather a very large data set from GitHub (729 projects, 80 Million SLOC, 29,000 authors, 1.5 million commits, in 17 languages) in an attempt to shed some empirical light on this question. This reasonably large sample size allows us to use a mixed-methods approach, combining multiple regression modeling with visualization and text analytics, to study the effect of language features such as static v.s. dynamic typing, strong v.s. weak typing on software quality. By triangulating findings from different methods, and controlling for confounding effects such as team size, project size, and project history, we report that language design does have a significant, but modest effect on software quality. Most notably, it does appear that strong typing is modestly better than weak typing, and among functional languages, static typing is also somewhat better than dynamic typing. We also find that functional languages are somewhat better than procedural languages. It is worth noting that these modest effects arising from language design are overwhelmingly dominated by the process factors such as project size, team size, and commit size. However, we hasten to caution the reader that even these modest effects might quite possibly be due to other, intangible process factors, e.g., the preference of certain personality types for functional, static and strongly typed languages.


As more features are added to the heavy-duty construction equipment, its complexity increases and early fault detection of certain components becomes more challenging due to too many fault codes generated when a failure occurs. Hence, there is a need to complement the present onboard diagnostics method with a more reliable diagnostics method for adequate condition monitoring of the heavy-duty construction equipment in order to improve uptime. Major components of the driveline (such as the gearbox, torque converter, bearings and axles) are components necessary to monitor. A failure among any of these major components of the driveline may result in the machine standing still until a repair is scheduled. In this paper, vibration based condition monitoring methods are presented with the purpose to provide a diagnostic framework possible to implement onboard for monitoring of critical driveline parts in order to reduce service cost and improve uptime. For the development of this diagnostic framework, sensor data from the gearbox, torque converter, bearings and axles are considered. Further, the feature extraction of the data collected has been carried out using adequate signal processing methods, which includes: Adaptive Line Enhancer and Order Power Spectrum respectively. In addition, Bayesian learning was utilized for adaptive learning of the extracted features for deviation detection. Bayesian learning is a powerful prediction method as it combines the prior information with knowledge measured to make updates. The results indicate that the vibration properties of the gearbox, torque converter, bearings and axle are relevant for early fault detection of the driveline. Furthermore, vibration provides information about the internal features of these components for detecting deviations from normal behavior. In this way, the developed methods may be implemented onboard for the continuous monitoring of these critical driveline parts of the heavy-duty construction equipment. Thus, if their health starts to degrade a service and/or repair may be scheduled well in advance of a potential failure and in that way the downtime of a machine may be reduced and costly replacements and repairs avoided


Risk management methods in water resources in the United States and elsewhere have been applied within the context of highly developed sets of planning criteria. In considering these methods, many of which are listed here, it is helpful to distinguish between the use of these techniques to assess risk and to manage risk. While the use of risk assessment and management methods for water resources planning varies widely among agencies, the robustness and resiliency of existing methods for risk management in water planning have the potential to serve effectively as the basis for adapting to changes in the supply and demand for water resulting from climate change. There are, however, substantial research, application, and technology transfer issues to be confronted.


Background: Speech and language is the most important skill for the child's development and scholastic performance. Awareness of the delay is important in the programs for early identification. Purpose: to assess the prevalence of speech and language delay in children from age group 0 to six years of age. Methodology: The speech and language development of children coming in the well baby clinic and daily pediatric clinic of age group from birth to 6 years were evaluated using Language Evaluation Scale Trivandrum (LEST). The prevalence of speech and language delay in each age group was calculated and also analyzed in the sociodemograhic profile. Results: A total of 102 children were studied in which 13.7% had language delay. 18% had questionable language delay and 15.7% had suspect language delay. Though among language delay mixed type was more, children had more difficulty in doing expressive items. Language delay was also found to be more prevalent in males, single child, first born child and children of working mothers. Parental age, education or socioeconomic status was not found to be related to language delay. Conclusion: The 13.7% prevalence of language delay in the children indicates the need of early identification and for it a simple screening tool like LEST is a must during the routine evaluation of young children in pediatric clinics. Health care givers and parents should ensure that babies grow up in a language rich, nurturing and stimulating environment right from birth onwards.


We report 13 high-precision light curves of eight transits of the exoplanet WASP-52 b, obtained by using four medium-class telescopes, through different filters, and adopting the defocussing technique. One transit was recorded simultaneously from two different observatories and another one from the same site but with two different instruments, including a multiband camera. Anomalies were clearly detected in five light curves and modelled as star-spots occulted by the planet during the transit events. We fitted the clean light curves with the jktebop code, and those with the anomalies with the prism+gemc codes in order to simultaneously model the photometric parameters of the transits and the position, size and contrast of each star-spot. We used these new light curves and some from the literature to revise the physical properties of the WASP-52 system. Star-spots with similar characteristics were detected in four transits over a period of 43 d. In the hypothesis that we are dealing with the same star-spot, periodically occulted by the transiting planet, we estimated the projected orbital obliquity of WASP-52 b to be λ = 3∘.8.∘ ± 8.∘4. We also determined the true orbital obliquity, ψ = 20° ± 50°, which is, although very uncertain, the first measurement of ψ purely from star-spot crossings. We finally assembled an optical transmission spectrum of the planet and searched for variations of its radius as a function of wavelength. Our analysis suggests a flat transmission spectrum within the experimental uncertainties.


Integrating field and laboratory data is possible if there are strong geologic criteria to relate them. This challenge demands understanding rocks from the fabric and mineralogy up to the architectural elements of rock bodies at a basinal scale. The geological properties of rocks, being them clastic, chemical or biochemical, influence reservoir quality and hydrocarbon producibility, but continental mudrocks/siltstones (shales) are by far more complex because of their depositional nature and highly variable vertical and lateral sedimentary characteristics. Grain size variability and sedimentary structures are common in these rocks. From outcrops, well logs and the source rocks of the Cuyana Basin (Argentina) could be characterized as deposited in lacustrine environments under a strong tectonic and climatic influence. Silty sandstones, limestones, massive and laminated bituminous shales developed in underfilled and balanced to overfilled lakes. They display parallel/inclined/rippled laminations, coarsening/fining upwards patterns, nodules, scour surfaces and pedogenic features. Total organic content may reach 14 % and corresponds to macro and micro floral remains, freshwater invertebrates and kerogen types I and II. These lithofacies are vertically stacked in patterns that can be related to cycles with different mechanical properties. In outcrops and with the help of seismic lines third order depositional sequences representing basin variations in accommodation space were recognized as low accommodation (LAS) to high accommodation (HAS) sequences developed in each of the three rifting stages. Using detailed information about mineralogy and fossil content climate was characterized and fourth order parasequences could be characterized. Fifth order (bedset-rhythms) cycles were interpreted on the basis of outcrops and well logs. Inorganic (especially clays) and organic content, pedogenic fabric, burrows and microfracturing represent weakness planes and as they vary according to these cycles, it was possible to model a mechanical cyclicity along the whole lacustrine column and to analyze their depositional controls. This integrated study has provided relevant data for the understanding of the geological and mechanical properties that will contribute to the optimization of fracture programs.


Abstract This paper describes the results of a study that uses the thermal performance of the repository to establish chemical separations and transmutation criteria for commercial spent nuclear fuel of benefit to a geologic repository, as measured by the allowable increase in utilization of repository space. The method for determining the chemical elements to be separated is based on the thermal performance of the repository. The important chemical elements are identified, the order of importance of the separated elements is established, and the relationship between the efficiency of the chemical separation and the resulting increase in utilization is determined. The proposed repository at Yucca Mountain is used as an example of a geologic repository for the purposes of illustrating the magnitude of the benefits that are possible and the implications for repository size and operation. This work is being done in support of the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, where numerous reactor, processing, and recycling strategies are being examined to determine the impact on issues important to the viability of nuclear electricity generation, including the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.


Abstract

In present work, a novel supported bucky paper (BP) membrane was fabricated and evaluated for humic acid (HA) removal from water. For better understanding the effect of operating variables, response surface methodology (RSM) was also applied. Three independent parameters namely TOC concentration (5, 10 and 15 mg l(-1)), operating time (10, 20 and 30 min) and transmembrane pressure (TMP) (1, 2 and 3 bar) were selected for TOC removal (%) and permeate flux analysis. The results revealed that the membrane could effectively remove HA primarily through electrostatic repulsion and then adsorption mechanisms. The study also showed that about 65% and 35% of the removed HA were through repulsion and adsorption mechanisms respectively. Based on analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was showed that the effect of TMP was strongly significant on the removal and flux (P-value <0.05). In addition, statistical test confirmed that RSM based on the Box-Behnken was a suitable method for optimizing the main operating variables for HA rejection using BP membrane (R-2=0.97). At optimum condition (TMP of 1.5 bar, TOC concentration of 12.7 mg l(-1)) and operating time of 13.5 min, removal obtained 67.4% and the flux was 233.4 lm(-2)h(-1).

In general, the synthesized BP membrane showed a relatively good rejection of HA and revealed antifouling properties over the filtration time.
Keywords

Author Keywords:Filtration; natural organic matter; carbon nanotubes; response surface methodology; Box-Behnken


In this paper, we investigate the relationship between exporting and productivity in the case of Vietnam using an extensive firm level panel dataset for the period 2005-11. We separate out productivity effects of exporting due to self-selection allowing us to identify the extent to which firms learn-by-exporting. We examine the relationship between exporting and productivity in foreign-owned firms and private domestic firms separately and find the former benefit more from exporting, particularly wholly foreign-owned firms. Our analysis suggests that these effects are likely to be attributed to initial productivity improvements due to entry into export markets suggesting that the productivity gains are associated with the removal of local market constraints. We also find some evidence of productivity improvement for domestic firms associated with exporting. These effects can be attributed to within-firm innovations in production processes and product quality.


cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the prevalence of MSD symptom and
also ascertain the association between MSD symptom and its risk factors among
automobile assembly line workers. A simple random sampling method was adopted and
data were collected via face-to-face interview and posture assessment method based on
Standardized Nordic Questionnaire (SNQ) and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA)
method from April to August 2008. A total of 232 assembly line workers with at least one
year job tenure participated in this study. The finding revealed that 78.4% of workers
reported MSD symptoms while low back had the highest prevalence of MSD symptoms
(50.9%). Three factors were found to be significantly associated with MSD symptom; age (χ2=5.609, p = 0.018), job tenure (χ2 = 8.260, p = 0.008) and awkward posture
(χ2 = 65.372, p =0.001). Logistic regression test indicated that young workers
(< 25 years old) were less likely to complain MSD symptoms (OR= 0.314, 95%CI=
0.129-0.770) compared to older workers. Moreover, workers with equal and more than
3 years job tenure were 2 times more likely to complain of MSD symptoms
(OR= 2.422, 95%CI= 1.042-5.629) when compared to those with less than 3 years job
tenure. In addition, workers in the very high RULA action level were 69 times
(OR= 69.383, 95%CI= 14.511-331.734) and workers in the high RULA action level
(OR=12.415, 95%CI= 5.210-29.458) were 12 times, more likely to complain MSD
symptom as compared to those workers in the low and intermediate RULA action level.
The high prevalence of MSD shows that MSD symptom is a significant problem among
automobile assembly line workers. Consistent with other studies, the result of this study
indicated that age, job tenure and awkward posture are the significant risk factors for
MSD symptom. In particular, this study proves that the prevalence of MSD symptom
increases as the RULA action level and job tenure increases. Thus, given the association
between awkward posture and prevalence of MSD symptom, this problem could be reduce
by decreasing RULA action level through appropriate ergonomic workstation design and
ergonomic training for workers.


This book is the first of its kind to examine the role of great powers in the international politics of climate change. It develops a novel analytical framework for studying environmental power in international relations, what counts as a great power in the environmental field, and what their special environmental responsibilities are. In doing so, the book connects International Relations (IR) debates on power inequality, great powers, and great power management, with global environmental politics (GEP) scholarship. The book brings together leading scholars in IR and GEP whose contributions focus on major environmental powers (United States, China, European Union, India, Brazil, Russia) and international institutions and issue areas (UN Security Concil, multilateral environmental agreements, international climate leadership, coal politics). The contributors to this volume examine how individual great powers have responded to the global climate challenge and whether they have accepted a special responsibility for stabilizing the global climate. They place emerging discourses on great power responsibility in the context of wider debates about international environmental leadership and climate change securitization. And they provide new insights into how international power inequality intersects with the global ecological crisis, and what special role great powers could and should play in the international fight against global warming.


THERE IS NO contemporary analysis that can possibly disregard China, a commercial, financial, and political presence of mythical proportion that has been created around a growth that, from a distance, looks like some strange miracle. (1) From the Southern Cone and at a distance of 10,000 miles, almost 40 hours of flights and stopovers or a number of weeks at sea to deliver cargoes, we try to imagine China and its people. In an enormous country, the Chinese number some 1.3 billion people who walk the opposite side of the globe. A great majority of them speak Mandarin, which is the most widely spoken language on Earth. They are there down under--on the other side of the planet--with their feet pointed directly at us. In 2006, China will probably leap from the seventh to the fourth most economically powerful nation on Earth, eclipsing the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. (2) After more than a quarter century of gradual market reforms in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and their impact in achieving an average economic growth of 9 percent per annum, the impetuous advance of the Asian power in economic and political terms, even the power of its ideas, has become evident. During the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain required 70 years to double the real per capita income of its population. When the United States emerged as the world's principal industrial power between 1890 and 1920, it took 35 years to double real per capita income. China has done it in nine years. (3) In 2005, China's foreign trade exceeded $1.4 trillion, an increase of 24 percent over the previous year; its trade surplus tripled to $101.9 billion; and the Central Bank of Beijing accumulated a reserve of $711 billion. China appears to have changed the nature of the world commodities market. It has replaced the United States as the principal consumer of coal, steel, copper, aluminum, magnesium, and zinc. The United States outpaces China only in oil consumption, but even there the Chinese are gaining. China's oil consumption has doubled since 1994, and current demand shows a 9 percent increase annually, while the rate of increase for the United States is 4 percent per annum. To appreciate China's impact on the world commodities market, consider what her insatiable consumption of commodities implies. Between 1990 and 2003, global oil consumption increased 13 percent; during the same period, Chinese consumption jumped 81 percent. Global demand for cement grew 52 percent; China's more than doubled. Demand for stainless steel increased 48 percent; China witnessed an eight-fold increase. Copper consumption rose 39 percent; in China, it soared 423 percent. Overall, China's increased demands have driven a sustained increase in the price of metals. Copper, for example, reached its highest price in 15 years in 2005. There is no doubt that China's inclusion in the World Trade Organization will have an impact on international trade. On the positive side for Latin America, China's doors are now open to a wide variety of Latin American goods. Moreover, because China can no longer openly subsidize certain products such as steel, it is having less of an effect on the international market. On the other hand, low salaries and labor costs in China are forcing Latin American countries to compete with Chinese workers in labor-intensive industries. Nevertheless, economic relations between China and Latin America are, and should remain, beneficial for all concerned, especially for those South American countries whose economies complement China's. Economic Exchange Latin American and Caribbean countries have an abundance of many of the key resources China needs, and they have centuries of experience in providing and exporting raw materials to industrialized or industrializing nations. If the PRC uses its "soft" economic power, it need not resort to heavy-handed persuasion in either region. Economic necessities have convinced many Latin American and Caribbean countries that trade with China provides a good counterbalance to trade asymmetry with the United States? …


It is likely that one or more gamma ray bursts within our galaxy have strongly irradiated the Earth in the last Gy. This produces significant atmospheric ionization and dissociation, resulting in ozone depletion and DNA‐damaging ultraviolet solar flux reaching the surface for up to a decade. Here we show the first detailed computation of two other significant effects. Visible opacity of NO2 is sufficient to reduce solar energy at the surface up to a few percent, with the greatest effect at the poles, which may be sufficient to initiate glaciation. Rainout of dilute nitric acid could have been important for a burst nearer than our conservative "nearest burst". These results support the hypothesis that the characteristics of the Late Ordovician mass extinction are consistent with GRB initiation.


In response to increased interest in the Precautionary Approach, various approaches have been applied to characterize the uncertainty of fisheries assessment projection results. Using three case studies, a comparison of some commonly applied techniques was undertaken to determine if different methods give similar perceptions of uncertainty in the short term, with the same, or very closely similar structural models. The techniques for estimating statistical uncertainty included the delta method, the parametric bootstrap of data, the nonparametric bootstrap of residuals and Bayes. Each method was used to derive cumulative frequency distributions of SSB for 1998 and of change in SSB for 1998 relative to 1992. These comparisons were contrasted against the sensitivity of uncertainty estimates to fundamental structural assumptions such as separability. Results displayed measurable and often repeatable patterns in differences between methods of estimating uncertainty, suggesting that these differences were peculiar to the methodology and assumptions. The delta method displayed distributions with longer left tails. Results from Bayes and bootstrap percentile methods were similar. Bias adjusted results were more conservative. Often however, differences could be greater when fundamental structural assumptions were altered, indicating that structural relationships must be either clearly established or proper account taken of this model uncertainty.


Experimental evolution is a powerful tool to understand the adaptive potential of populations under environmental change. Here, we study the importance of the historical genetic background in the outcome of evolution at the genome-wide level. Using the natural clinal variation of Drosophila subobscura , we sampled populations from two contrasting latitudes (Adraga, Portugal and Groningen, Netherlands) and introduced them in a new common environment in the laboratory. We characterized the genome-wide temporal changes underlying the evolutionary dynamics of these populations, which had previously shown fast convergence at the phenotypic level, but not at chromosomal inversion frequencies. We found that initially differentiated populations did not converge either at genome-wide level or at candidate SNPs with signs of selection. In contrast, populations from Portugal showed convergence to the control population that derived from the same geographical origin and had been long-established in the laboratory. Candidate SNPs showed a variety of different allele frequency change patterns across generations, indicative of an underlying polygenic basis. We did not detect strong linkage around candidate SNPs, but rather a small but long-ranging effect. In conclusion, we found that history played a major role in genomic variation and evolution, with initially differentiated populations reaching the same adaptive outcome through different genetic routes.


We develop an automated variational method for approximate inference in Gaussian process (GP) models whose posteriors are often intractable. Using a mixture of Gaussians as the variational distribution, we show that (i) the variational objective and its gradients can be approximated efficiently via sampling from univariate Gaussian distributions and (ii) the gradients wrt the GP hyperparameters can be obtained analytically regardless of the model likelihood. We further propose two instances of the variational distribution whose covariance matrices can be parametrized linearly in the number of observations. These results allow gradient-based optimization to be done efficiently in a black-box manner. Our approach is thoroughly verified on five models using six benchmark datasets, performing as well as the exact or hard-coded implementations while running orders of magnitude faster than the alternative MCMC sampling approaches. Our method can be a valuable tool for practitioners and researchers to investigate new models with minimal effort in deriving model-specific inference algorithms.


This volume contains those research papers presented at the Second International Conference on Tests and Proofs (TAP 2008) that were not included in the main conference proceedings1. TAP was the second conference devoted to the convergence of proofs and tests. It combines ideas from both areas for the advancement of software quality. To prove the correctness of a program is to demonstrate, through impeccable mathematical techniques, that it has no bugs; to test a program is to run it with the expectation of discovering bugs. On the surface, the two techniques seem contradictory: if you have proved your program, it is fruitless to comb it for bugs; and if you are testing it, that is surely a sign that you have given up on any hope of proving its correctness. Accordingly, proofs and tests have, since the onset of software engineering research, been pursued by distinct communities using rather different techniques and tools. And yet the development of both approaches leads to the discovery of common issues and to the realization that each may need the other. The emergence of model checking has been one of the first signs that contradiction may yield to complementarity, but in the past few years an increasing number of research efforts have encountered the need for combining proofs and tests, dropping earlier dogmatic views of their incompatibility and taking instead the best of what each of these software engineering domains has to offer. The first TAP conference (held at ETH Zurich in February 2007) was an attempt to provide a forum for the cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches from the testing and proving communities. For the 2008 edition we found the Monash University Prato Centre near Florence to be an ideal place providing a stimulating environment. We wish to sincerely thank all the authors who submitted their work for consideration. And we would like to thank the Program Committee members as well as additional referees for their great effort and professional work in the review and selection process. Their names are listed on the following pages. In addition to the contributed papers, the program included three excellent keynote talks. We are grateful to Michael Hennell (LDRA Ltd., Cheshire, UK), Orna Kupferman (Hebrew University, Israel), and Elaine Weyuker (AT&T Labs Inc., USA) for accepting the invitation to address the conference. Two very interesting tutorials were part of TAP 2008: "Parameterized Unit Testing with Pex" (J. de Halleux, N. Tillmann) and "Integrating Verification and Testing of Object-Oriented Software" (C. Engel, C. Gladisch, V. Klebanov, and P. Rummer). We would like to express our thanks to the tutorial presenters for their contribution. It was a team effort that made the conference so successful. We are grateful to the Conference Chair and the Steering Committee members for their support. And we particularly thank Christoph Gladisch, Beate Korner, and Philipp Rummer for their hard work and help in making the conference a success. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Microsoft Research Redmond, who financed an invited speaker.


The Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Mexico offer a variety of marine energy sources for exploitation. Although the Mexican government has made important efforts to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, national participation in clean energies is still limited in terms of electricity production. This paper presents a practical theoretical assessment of marine energy sources around Mexico, with the aim of identifying potential zones for subsequent, more detailed, technical evaluations and project implementations. The energy sources considered are ocean currents, waves, salinity, and thermal gradients. Using global databases, the percentages of energy availability for the defined thresholds were computed to establish the prospective regions with the most persistent power availability. This approach proved to offer more meaningful information than simple averaged values. Moreover, some environmental and socio-economic factors to be considered for future ocean energy resource assessments in Mexico were also discussed. The results show that the wave energy potential is highest in the northwest of Mexico (~2–10 kW/m for more than 50% of the time), and that there is a constant source of ocean current energy off Quintana Roo state (~32–215 W/m2 for more than 50% of the time). The thermal gradient power is more persistent in the southwest and southeast of the country, where ~100–200 MW can be found 70% of the time. The salinity gradient energy is strongest in the southeast of Mexico. The practical approach presented here can be extended to perform preliminary resources assessments in regions where information is scarce.


Cloud storage services allow users to outsource their data to cloud servers to save local data storage costs. However, unlike using local storage devices, users do not physically manage the data stored on cloud servers; therefore, the data integrity of the outsourced data has become an issue. Many public verification schemes have been proposed to enable a third-party auditor to verify the data integrity for users. These schemes make an impractical assumption—the auditors have enough computation capability to bear expensive verification costs. In this paper, we propose a novel public verification scheme for the cloud storage using indistinguishability obfuscation, which requires a lightweight computation on the auditor and the delegate most computation to the cloud. We further extend our scheme to support batch verification and data dynamic operations, where multiple verification tasks from different users can be performed efficiently by the auditor and the cloud-stored data can be updated dynamically. Compared with other existing works, our scheme significantly reduces the auditor's computation overhead. Moreover, the batch verification overhead on the auditor side in our scheme is independent of the number of verification tasks. Our scheme could be practical in a scenario, where the data integrity verifications are executed frequently, and the number of verification tasks (i.e., the number of users) is numerous; even if the auditor is equipped with a low-power device, it can verify the data integrity efficiently. We prove the security of our scheme under the strongest security model proposed by Shi et al. (ACM CCS 2013). Finally, we conduct a performance analysis to demonstrate that our scheme is more efficient than other existing works in terms of the auditor's communication and computation efficiency.


A simple, direct method is detailed for evaluating the lowest energy term arising from any electronic configuration. Only a single solution is obtained and no other allowed terms can be derived. The method entails assignment of magnetic quantum numbers to electrons in uncompleted shells, according to a uniform scheme and summation of these quantum numbers algebraically to afford a number, the absolute value of which is definitive for L. With the aid of a simple diagrammatic scheme both the resultant L and S vectors defining the ground state can be seen at a glance. The method is valid for ionic ground states and is illustrated with a number of examples for atomic and ionic configurations. All terms calculated are in agreement with the established values, and the conclusion seems permissible that the method can be applied with confidence toward prediction of ionic ground states as yet undetermined experimentally.


Aims: This study is to study the knowledge and awareness on autism among medical students and the factors which impact their knowledge on autism. Settings and Design: For the study, a multicenter cross-sectional research has been carried out among medical students in seven medical colleges in Mumbai. Subjects and Methods: A total of 201 final-year medical students from seven medical colleges in Mumbai completed the knowledge on childhood autism among healthcare workers (KCAHW) survey and a semi-structured pro forma. Of the 201 students, 152 are from the public medical colleges and 37 from the private medical colleges. Statistical Analysis Used: Data collected have been represented in the form of frequency and percentage. SPSS 20.0 is used to analyze the mean distribution of KCAHW scores. A value of P < 0.05 is regarded as statistically significant. Results: The total mean score in the KCAHW questionnaire is 11.85 ± 3.15 out of 19. This is considered as poor knowledge. Our study reveals that students' knowledge on autism is limited. Knowledge gaps identified in certain autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms are associated with the obsessive and compulsive repetitive pattern of behavior and that autism is associated with epilepsies. Conclusions: It is thus important that these children displaying ASD symptoms are diagnosed correctly and at the earliest. To enable this, doctors in all fields must be able to accurately identify the diagnostic features of autism both within and outside the four walls of the hospital.


Janet Reibstein's mother and two aunts grew up in New Jersey amid a close-knit, extended Jewish family set apart only by a genetic propensity for breast cancer. Over fifty years, the disease claims Janet's two aunts, then her mother, then a cousin. Finally Janet must face the far-reaching decision of whether to undergo a preemptive mastectomy herself. A history of the disease in America as well as a story of sisters, mothers and daughters, and the men who love them, Staying Alive is ultimately a tale of extraordinary strength and of the power of love in survival.


Little is known of the mechanisms governing functional recovery after ischemic brain injury, and there is no clinical therapy established to restore neurologic function after ischemic injury is complete. Even so, pronounced spontaneous recovery of function is often observed in a subset of patients. Resolution of neurological deficits after ischemia must occur through replacement of lost tissue via production of new neurons, or through changes in the structure, function, or connectivity of surviving neurons. This review focuses on the neuronal synapse as a potential locus for functional recovery. Selective disruption of synaptic elements is a characteristic feature of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, such as that seen in ischemic stroke or cardiac arrest. Ischemic damage to synapses occurs even in the absence of neuronal loss, and therefore might underlie the clinical disability observed in patients following mild or transient ischemia. We review evidence that recovery of lost synapses occurs after ischemic injury and that this recovery may be a necessary step for restoration of neurological function. The process of synapse loss and recovery can be examined in neuronal cultures and experimental stroke models. Such studies may help to gain a better understanding of the extracellular factors and intracellular cascades that facilitate recovery of synapses, and may result in therapeutic approaches to improve function after cerebral ischemia.


The entire infrastructure and culture of medicine is being transformed by digital technology, the Internet and mobile devices. Cyberspace is now regularly used to provide medical advice and medication, with great numbers of sufferers immersing themselves within virtual communities. What are the implications of this medicalization of cyberspace for how people make sense of health and identity? The Medicalization of Cyberspace is the first book to explore the relationship between digital culture and medical sociology. It examines how technology is redefining expectations of and relationships with medical culture, addressing the following questions: How will the rise of digital communities affect traditional notions of medical expertise? What will the medicalization of cyberspace mean in a new era of posthuman enhancements? How should we regard hype and exaggeration about science in the media and how can this encourage public engagement with bioethics? This book looks at the complex interactions between health, medicalization, cyberculture, the body and identity. It addresses topical issues, such as medical governance, reproductive rights, eating disorders, Web 2.0, and perspectives on posthumanism. It is essential reading for healthcare professionals and social, philosophical and cultural theorists of health.


OBJECTIVE To present an interesting and unusual case of double patella syndrome in a patient with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia. The pertinent clinical and radiographic findings and a brief review of the literature are discussed. CLINICAL FEATURES An 11-yr-old male patient suffered from occasional right hip pain and limited range of motion, as well as a nontender soft tissue mass in the right knee. Radiographic examination of the hips and knees demonstrated double-layered patellae and bilateral coxa magna deformity. INTERVENTION AND OUTCOME Although surgery was initially recommended, conservative chiropractic management was employed and resulted in complete resolution of the patient's presenting hip symptoms. CONCLUSION This case is the first reported of double patella seen on MRI and demonstrates the value of this technology in the noninvasive preoperative assessment of double patella syndrome. The patient's clinical and radiographic features led to the correct diagnosis.


The growth of InGaN quantum wells (QWs) by metal–organic vapour phase epitaxy is investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM). It is shown that for low growth temperatures the surface morphology of the thin InGaN well layer (1.5 nm) exhibits a meandering behaviour, i.e. the formation of valleys. Actually, threading dislocation terminations act as "bridge piles" hindering the step flow growth and consequently resulting in deep surface depressions. Then they coalesce to form valleys along the ⟨1100⟩ direction leaving low dislocation density areas in between. Time-resolved cathodoluminescence (TRCL) studies have been further carried out on such InGaN/GaN QWs. Monochromatic CL maps at the high energy side of the QW luminescence peak reproduces the same features as those observed by AFM. This means that the valleys are characterized by higher energy transitions compared to the energy of the maximum luminescence peak intensity. Thus, the main carrier radiative recombinations take place in between the valleys which are surrounded by large potential barriers. This phenomenon may explain the high efficiency of InGaN/GaN QWs despite the large density of dislocations.


During his many years as a senior executive at Starbucks, Howard Behar helped establish the Starbucks culture, which stresses people over profits. He coached hundreds of leaders at every level and helped the company grow into a world-renowned brand. Now he reveals the ten principles that guided his leadership - and not one of them is about coffee. Behar shows that if you think of your staff as people (not labour costs) they will achieve amazing results. He discusses the importance of building trust, telling hard truths, thinking independently, and more. And he shares inside stories of key turning points for Starbucks as it fought to hang on to its culture while growing exponentially.


We are at the start of a new wave of management. The recent financial crisis highlighted problems not just in the economic system, but also in the way that many companies are governed and managed. Now modern management has reached its end game and we approach a new era in leadership. Rather than the certainties of command and control, this new epoch will be based on co-operation and commitment. There has been a strategic revolution - instead of following the rules, we now have to make them. For some this represents great risk; for others it is an enormous opportunity.The Death of Modern Management is a how-to guide for surviving and thriving amidst the new uncertainties of contemporary business."...a joyride through new ideas, memorable stories and superb writing." Philip Kotler"Jo Owen gives a fascinating insight into how 21st century management now works. It is helpful to have someone with his experience, intellect and vision explain the radical changes in a way that makes sense and is immediately usable."Juliet Hope, CEO, Startup"Jo Owen delivers a robust and wide-ranging assault on the delusions of management, strategy, finance and marketing that have created an aura of justified mistrust around the modern corporation, but does so with wit, lucidity and lots of enlivening illustrations. The answers for 21st century business are helpfully accessible."Professor Nigel Nicholson, London Business School, author of Managing the Human Animal and Family Wars"...offers insights that help encourage different thinking." Director Magazine


Critical flicker fusion frequencies and visual contrast sensitivity were determined in 27 adult epileptic patients receiving carbamazepine monotherapy and in 24 healthy, drug-free control subjects. Flicker fusion thresholds were the same in patients and control subjects, whereas the contrast sensitivity was significantly reduced in the patient group at all spatial frequencies. There was a significant negative correlation between the plasma concentration of carbamazepine and the contrast sensitivity at 11.4 and 22.8 cycles per degree, indicating that the reduced contrast sensitivity was due to the drug therapy.


We discuss how to use Wang-Landau simulations in an efficient manner to investigate the statistical mechanics of individual lattice polymers and peptides adsorbed at a planar surface. For nearest neighbor interactions, we show that a single Wang-Landau simulation, recording the density of states as a function of numbers of internal contacts and of surface beads, is sufficient to give a full description of the phase behavior of both adsorbed and desorbed states of single molecules. It is not necessary to introduce a second confining wall. Moreover, moves are never rejected due to overlap with the surface.
The proposed "wall-free" method has already been applied to homo-polymers and hetero-polymers (lattice peptides using the HP model) on a uniform surface, and on regularly patterned surfaces. We give here a specific example to indicate how the relative adsorption strengths of a given peptide on different surfaces may be calculated.


Wikipedia has rapidly become an invaluable destination for millions of information-seeking users. However, media reports suggest an important challenge: only a small fraction of Wikipedia's legion of volunteer editors are female. In the current work, we present a scientific exploration of the gender imbalance in the English Wikipedia's population of editors. We look at the nature of the imbalance itself, its effects on the quality of the encyclopedia, and several conflict-related factors that may be contributing to the gender gap. Our findings confirm the presence of a large gender gap among editors and a corresponding gender-oriented disparity in the content of Wikipedia's articles. Further, we find evidence hinting at a culture that may be resistant to female participation.


Security has been widely recognized as one of the main obstacles to the adoption of Internet banking and it is considered an important aspect in the debate over challenges facing internet banking. The performance evaluation of e-banking websites requires a model that enables us to analyze the various imperative factors and criteria related to the quality and performance of e-banking websites. E- banking site evaluation is a complex and dynamic problem involving many factors, and because of the subjective considerations and the ambiguities involved in the assessment, Fuzzy logic (FI) model can be an effective tool in assessing and evaluating of e-banking security performance and quality. In this paper, we propose an intelligent performance assessment model for evaluating e-banking security websites. The proposed model is based on FI operators and produces four measures of security risk attack dimensions: direct internal attack, communication tampering attack, code programming attack and denial of service attack with a hierarchical ring layer structure. Our experimental results show that direct internal attack risk has a large impact on e-banking security performance. The results also confirm that the risk of direct internal attack for e-banking dynamic websites is doubled that of all other attacks.


The properties of variously structured beams, and their forms of interaction with nano-structured media, are indeed emerging as a new frontier in modern optics. This special Issue includes ten contributed papers focused on the most recent advances in structured light, structured media, and their synergy, targeting novel interactions of structured light with matter, developments in fundamental theory, and a wide range of real world applications.


With the aim of extending the coverage and improving the performance of impulse radio ultra-wideband (UWB) systems, this paper focuses on developing a novel single differential encoded decode and forward (DF) non-cooperative relaying scheme (NCR). To favor simple receiver structures, differential noncoherent detection is employed which enables effective energy capture without any channel estimation. Putting emphasis on the general case of multi-hop relaying, we illustrate an original algorithm for the joint power allocation and path selection (JPAPS), minimizing an approximate expression of the overall bit error rate (BER). In particular, after deriving a closed-form power allocation strategy, the optimal path selection is reduced to a shortest path problem on a connected graph, which can be solved without any topology information with complexity O(N3), N being the number of available relays of the network. An approximate scheme is also presented, which reduces the complexity to O(N2) while showing a negligible performance loss, and for benchmarking purposes, an exhaustive-search based multi-hop DF cooperative strategy is derived. Simulation results for various network setups corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed low-complexity JPAPS algorithm, which favorably compares to existing AF and DF relaying methods.


In 2012, I began studying for a part-time doctorate; since this was to take 5 years of my life, both inside and outside of work it had to be something I had a real interest in. One of my roles at the University was liaising with colleges in Malaysia. I had worked closely with Malaysian teachers at one college for over a decade, wanted to give them a voice, and make known their experiences of teaching one of our courses. This research investigates the application of the interpretative phenomenological analysis to a discipline where it has not been used before. The study explores the experiences of staff at one Malaysian college who are teaching a British undergraduate course. The influence of Chinese Heritage Culture on the identity of the teachers is examined in detail through the application of interpretative phenomenological analysis. The work finds that there are influences on Malaysian teachers not found in Western academics and that cultural influences and expectations of both students and staff play a large part in the way that teachers in Malaysia deliver a Western program.


Emerging donors, such as India, Brazil and South Africa, have provided assistance to other developing countries for many decades. However, the creation of dedicated aid agencies in emerging donor countries is a relatively new feature. The establishment of these aid agencies is often motivated by the objective of better coordinating and managing the increasing volume and scope of their development assistance activities. Since many of these emerging donors are also recipients of Official Development Assistance (ODA) from traditional donors, this institutionalization and professionalization of their development assistance raises some difficult questions. How do traditional donors perceive this new development in beneficiary countries and how do they respond to it in terms of aid allocations and co-operation arrangements? Do traditional donors still perceive beneficiary countries that are in a position to provide development assistance to other countries as being eligible to receive aid? These are the fundamental questions that this research study aims to answer. This research study is based on the hypothesis that the creation of dedicated aid agencies in beneficiary countries prompts traditional donors to either freeze, reduce or terminate ODA and rethink their development cooperation strategies. It argues that traditional donors perceive beneficiary countries with dedicated aid agencies as no longer in need of foreign assistance. In order to test this hypothesis and identify changes in the flow of aid, the research study compares official aid flow data for five selected traditional donors (France, Germany, the UK, the US and EU Institutions) to three emerging donor countries (India, Brazil and South Africa) before and after the establishment of dedicated aid agencies. The research further investigates whether other factors, such as beneficiary countries' socioeconomic performance and compliance with DAC norms and standards, play a role in traditional donors' aid allocation decisions. Alongside the quantitative analysis, the research uses semi-structured elite interviews with representatives of the five traditional donors as well as development cooperation experts to solicit qualitative responses. The findings of the quantitative and qualitative analysis suggest that the establishment of dedicated aid agencies in emerging donor countries does not have a negative impact on traditional donors' aid allocations. Other factors, such as the economic status of beneficiary countries, domestic debates and the strategic interests of traditional donors', seem to play a much more important role in this regard. In fact, traditional donors welcome the creation of such aid agencies and actively support beneficiary countries in this endeavour. Traditional donors expect that such aid agencies will promote transparency and accountability and increase the effectiveness of aid. The findings of this research study aim to assist emerging donors in managing the establishment of dedicated aid agencies in a more informed way by bringing in the views, concerns and expectations of traditional donors. for Philipp and Lena


This work aimed to interrogate the role that the starting graphitic material played on the physicochemical properties of graphene oxide (GO) sheets and their impact on mammalian cell viability following exposure to those flakes. Three different GO thin sheets were synthesised from three starting graphite material: flakes (GO-f), ground (GO-g) and powder (GO-p) using a modified Hummers' method. The synthetic yield of this methodology was found to differ according to type of starting material, with GO-p resulting in most efficient yields. Structural and morphological comparison of the three GO sheet types were carried out using transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Optical properties were measured using UV/visible and fluorescence spectroscopy. Surface characteristics and chemistry were determined using a battery of techniques. Exposure to human cells was studied using the human A549 lung epithelial cultures. Our results revealed that all three GO samples were composed of few-layer sheets with similar physicochemical and surface characteristics. However, significant differences were observed in terms of their lateral dimensions with GO-p, prepared from graphite powder, being the largest among the GOs. No cytotoxicity was detected for any of the GO samples following exposure onto A549 cells up to 48 h. In conclusion, the form and type of the starting graphite material is shown to be an important factor that can determine the synthetic yield and the structural characteristics of the resulting GO sheets.


ABSTRACT Adolescent dating and relationship violence is associated with health harms and is an important topic for sex education. School-based interventions addressing this have been effective in the USA, but schools in England confront pressures that might hinder implementation. We assessed the feasibility of, and contextual enablers/barriers to implementing Project Respect, a whole-school intervention. We conducted a pilot trial with process evaluation in six English secondary schools. Intervention comprised: training; policy-review; mapping and patrolling 'hotspots'; parent information; help-seeking app; and a curriculum (including student-led campaigns) targeting dating violence. Process evaluation included assessments of fidelity and interviews with the trainer and school staff. Schools delivered training and lessons partially or completely and made parent and app information available. Two schools conducted policy reviews; none patrolled hotspots or implemented campaigns. Implementation was strengthened where staff saw dating violence as a priority. Delivery was undermined where staff were insufficiently involved, lacked time for planning or struggled to timetable lessons, and where new school challenges undermined engagement. School-based health interventions must work to build staff buy-in and ensure they do not overburden schools. Dating and relationship violence might best be addressed in this context as a broader aspect of sex education.


We present a series of new differentially private (DP) algorithms with dimension-independent margin guarantees. For the family of linear hypotheses, we give a pure DP learning algorithm that benefits from relative deviation margin guarantees, as well as an efficient DP learning algorithm with margin guarantees. We also present a new efficient DP learning algorithm with margin guarantees for kernel-based hypotheses with shift-invariant kernels, such as Gaussian kernels, and point out how our results can be extended to other kernels using oblivious sketching techniques. We further give a pure DP learning algorithm for a family of feed-forward neural networks for which we prove margin guarantees that are independent of the input dimension. Additionally, we describe a general label DP learning algorithm, which benefits from relative deviation margin bounds and is applicable to a broad family of hypothesis sets, including that of neural networks. Finally, we show how our DP learning algorithms can be augmented in a general way to include model selection, to select the best confidence margin parameter.


Our current understanding of mid-Cretaceous global change is largely based on investigations of pelagic sections from southern Europe and deep sea drilling sites. Much less information exists from other continents and from hemipelagic sections deposited on continental margins. This investigation seeks to broaden our understanding of mid-Cretaceous global change by focusing on the record from hemipelagic sections deposited along the continental margin of northeastern Mexico. The major goals are to compare the record, timing, and extent of the Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs) in Mexico and other areas, and to determine the relationship between these events and the global burial of organic material using carbon isotopes. We have investigated four sections from the Sierra Madre Oriental, integrating biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy and carbon isotope stratigraphy. Carbon isotopes, measured on the organic carbon (C org ) fraction, show identical stratigraphic changes to curves from Barremian to lower Albian European and Pacific deep-sea sections. Our results add new detail to the C-isotope stratigraphy of the middle and late Albian interval. Three abrupt peaks in C org content correlate with OAE1a (early Aptian), OAE1b (early Albian) and an event in the late Aptian Globigerinelloides algerianus Zone. All three events are marked by short-term, 0.5-3 per mil decreases in C-isotope values followed by increases of similar magnitude. The decreases may reflect changes in the type of C org , the nature of carbon cycling, or an increase in hydrothermal activity. The increases in C-isotope values reflect widespread burial of C org . The similar shape of the C-isotope curves in Mexico and other areas, and the response of C-isotopes to the OAEs, indicate that the late Aptian episode was extensive, and that OAE1a and OAE1b were global. The three anoxic events appear to correlate with rising relative sea level. OAE1a also corresponds to major changes in nannofossil assemblages; the well-known "nannoconid crisis" can be easily recognized in the Mexican sections. This event is characterized by an increase in abundance of nannofossils and foraminifera in sediments, possibly reflecting a decrease in dilution as a result of the rise in relative sea level.


Lack of access to the courts to resolve domestic disputes is a national problem which deserves the attention of both family law scholars and practitioners. Family law scholars have exhaustively critiqued both the substantive and procedural law governing dissolution proceedings. This analysis of rules and standards, however, is rarely conducted with the explicit goal of maximizing access to the courts for people of low and moderate income. This paper begins by assessing the dimensions of the problem through an explanation of the existing domestic legal needs studies. This paper also presents a case study of a typical multi-issue domestic case to provide a context within which to explore procedural and other innovations aimed at both reducing formal requirements on simple domestic cases and replacing discretionary standards with structured, predictable rules. Procedural reforms identified in the paper include providing alternatives to full adversarial hearings in some domestic proceedings; relaxing barriers to non-attorney advice and representation; identifying the appropriate categories of cases for such procedural innovations; and designing appropriate mechanisms for informed pro se representation, including education programs and wider use of standardized forms.


Most efforts at developing time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET) instruments have focused on improving their time resolution, which is affected by many factors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of two new fast photomultiplier tubes (PMT) (Hamamatsu R9800 and R11194) for use as a TOF-PET detector, and to investigate the correlation of time resolution with time discrimination methods, the properties of the PMTs, the locations of the scintillation crystal on the PMT, and the size of the scintillation crystal. The PMTs evaluated in this study have fast rise time and short time jitter. The performance evaluation of the PMTs was conducted using a LYSO scintillation crystal. A 22Na source was placed between the testing detector and a reference detector (with a time resolution of 200 ps), and data were acquired by using the coincidence trigger of the two detectors. To determine the optimal time discrimination method, time resolutions were obtained using a leading-edge discriminator (LED) with various thresholds and a constant-fraction discriminator (CFD) with various CFD delays. The effects on time resolution of PMT properties, the crystal position on the PMT, and the size of the crystal were observed. Based on the comparison of time resolutions obtained by various time discrimination setups, the optimal setup was determined to be CFD with 1.0 ns CFD delay. When these PMTs were coupled with 4 mm × 4 mm ×10 mm LYSO crystal and CFD with 1.0 ns delay was used for time discrimination, the average time resolution (FWHM) for 7 R9800 was 200.5 ps and for 7 R11194 was 227.8 ps. The average energy resolutions were 11.1% and 11.8%, respectively. Time resolutions at the edge of the PMT were degraded due to light collection loss and worse transit time jitter. Time resolutions were inversely proportional to the square root of the numbers of photoelectrons per pulse. The numbers of photoelectrons increased proportionately with the blue sensitivity of individual PMTs. Time resolutions have a distinct dependence as a function of the length and cross-section of the crystal. The new fast PMT coupled with LYSO crystals allow for the improvement of timing performance in TOF-PET detectors. The results of this study will be of value as a guideline for optimizing the TOF-PET detector design using the fast PMTs.


In recent years there has been a marked growth in the use of wireless cellular telephones, PCs and the Internet. This proliferation of information technology has hastened the advent of wireless networks which aim to increase the accessibility and reach of communications devices. Ambient Intelligence (Ami) is a vision of the future of computing in which all kinds of everyday objects will contain intelligence. To be effective, Ami requires Ubiquitous Computing and Communication, the latter being enabled by wireless networking. The IEEE's 802.11 task group has developed a series of radio based replacements for the familiar wired ethernet LAN. At the same time another IEEE standards task group, 802.15, together with a number of industry consortia, has introduced a new level of wireless networking based upon short range, ad-hoc connections. Currently, the most significant of these new Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) standards is Bluetooth, one of the first of the enabling technologies of Ami to be commercially available. Bluetooth operates in the internationally unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band at 2.4 GHz. unfortunately, this spectrum is particularly crowded. It is also used by: WiFi (IEEE 802.11); a new WPAN standard called Zig- Bee; many types of simple devices such as garage door openers; and is polluted by unintentional radiators. The success of a radio specification for ubiquitous wireless communications is, therefore, dependant upon a robust tolerance to high levels of electromagnetic noise. This thesis addresses the optimisation of low power WPANs in this context, with particular reference to the physical layer radio specification of the Bluetooth system.


TRAYKOV, I. and M. VLADIMIROVA, 2015. Relationships between trophic state and physicochemical variables of some standing waterbodies on the territory of East-Aegean river Basin directorate, Bulgaria. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., Supplement 1, 21: 126–136 The objectives of the study were to describe the physicochemical variables and to assess the trophic state of the reservoirs Ovcharitsa, Byal Kladenets, Skalitsa, Zhrebchevo and the fi shponds of Nikolaevo. Sampling was conducted at four occasions between April and August 2013. The concentrations of nutrients and the Carlson's trophic state indices were used to assess the trophic state of the water bodies. The trophic state spans over several trophic categories – from oligo-mesotrophic to hypertrophic, with majority of the water bodies being eutrophic. Very strong positive correlation was observed between the transparency and the chlorophyl trophic state indices. Weaker, but still strong correlation was observed between the transparency and the phosphorus trophic state indices. The relationships between the trophic state indices depended on the depth of the water body and the infl uence of the heated waters from the thermal power station "Maritsa Iztok-2". The trophic state of the water bodies depends not only on the amount of the available nutrients, but also on the circulation pattern and the length of the vegetation period. The thermal pollution from large steam electric power plants not only changes the environmental factors, but also the relationships between the physicochemical variables and the biological communities in the water bodies. Our results show the different response of the studied variables in thermally infl uenced water bodies, compared to different unaffected by heated waters systems.


The authors review the clinical, radiological and pathological features of 6 cases of glomus tumors of the temporal bone. Out of the 6 patients, 5 were female; age was distributed between 22 and 76 years (mean 48 years). The main clinical features were hypoacusia, tinnitus and otoscopic findings suggestive of the diagnosis. In one case was noted the concomitant presence of a neurinoma of the VIII cranial nerve with a ipsilateral glomus tumor, and in another case there was a concomitancy of carotid body tumor with temporal glomus jugularis tumor. Metastases were not observed in any case. Tumoral lesions were successfully ressected employing microsurgical techniques and a multidisciplinary staff involving neurosurgeons, head and neck surgeons and otolaryngologists. Radioteraphy was not employed, neither pre-operative embolization. Some aspects related to the nosology, embriology, pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of this interesting type of neoplasms are discussed.