Securities class actions are supposed to vindicate the rights of investors injured by corporate fraud. Yet, despite multimillion or even multibillion dollar settlements, many injured investors never receive a dime in compensation. To receive money from a settlement in a securities class action, investors must comply with a cumbersome claims process, documenting their transactions in the defendant corporation's stock and detailing their losses. Faced with this hurdle, many investors never claim their share of the settlement funds. Courts continue to insist that investors comply with cumbersome claims processes because they do not think they have another way to accurately identify class members. Companies do not know who purchased their shares during the class period, nor has there been a global database that tracks securities purchases down to the level of individual shareholders. As a result, the only way to identify injured investors has been to require them to identify themselves, typically by filing a claim and documenting their transactions.

This Article argues that the time has come to modernize the distribution of settlement funds in securities class actions. There are two possible ways to modernize this process. The first approach relies on market innovation, proposing an automated system that collects the relevant transaction data from individual banks and brokers. Claims administrators could then use this data to calculate every class member's pro rata share of the settlement and send them their money. The second approach relies on regulatory innovation using the SEC's Consolidated Audit Trail, which, once it is up and running, will contain a complete record of nearly all securities transactions in the financial markets. The Consolidated Audit Trail will contain exactly the type of data needed to automate the distribution of settlement funds in securities class actions. Neither of these solutions is turnkey, and both would require the cooperation of courts and lawmakers, but they have the potential to revolutionize how investors recover money lost to corporate fraud.


In deriving elevation change rates (d H /d t ) from radar altimetry, the slope-induced error is usually assumed to cancel out in repeat measurements. These measurements, however, represent a location that can be significantly further upslope than assumed, causing an underestimate of the basin-integrated volume change. In a case-study for the fast-flowing part of Jakobshavn Isbrae, we show that a relatively straightforward correction for slope-induced error increases elevation change rates by up to several metres per year and significantly reduces the volume change error with respect to laser altimetry for the area of interest.


The control of a wind turbine to the mean wind speed in a gusty wind results in very poor performance. Fluctuations in wind speed with time constants shorter than the response time of a wind turbine results in operation away from optimum design conditions. The effectiveness of a turbine operating in a gusty wind is shown though the use of an unsteady performance coefficient, C e. This performance coefficient is similar in form to a power coefficient. However in order to accommodate unsteady effects, Ce is defined as a ratio of energy extracted to the total wind energy available over a set time period. The turbine's response to real wind data is modelled, in the first instance, by assuming a constant rotational speed operation. It is shown that a significant increase in energy production can be realized by demanding a Tip Speed Ratio above the steady state optimum. The constant speed model is then further extended to incorporate inertial and controller effects. Parameters dictating how well a turbine can track a demand in Tip Speed Ratio have been identified and combined, to form a non-dimensional turbine response parameter. This parameter characterizes a turbine's ability to track a demand in Tip Speed Ratio dependent on an effective gust frequency. A significant increase in energy output of 42% and 245% is illustrated through the application of this over-speed control. This is for the constant rotational speed and Tip Speed Ratio feedback models respectively. The affect of airfoil choice on energy extraction within a gusty wind has been considered. The adaptive control logic developed enables the application of airfoils demonstrating high maximum L/D values but sharp stalling characteristics to be successfully used in a VAWT design.


Offering the first comprehensive analysis of touchless fingerprint-recognition technologies, Touchless Fingerprint Biometrics gives an overview of the state of the art and describes relevant industrial applications. It also presents new techniques to efficiently and effectively implement advanced solutions based on touchless fingerprinting. The most accurate current biometric technologies in touch-based fingerprint-recognition systems require a relatively high level of user cooperation to acquire samples of the concerned biometric trait. With the potential for reduced constraints, reduced hardware costs, quicker acquisition time, wider usability, and increased user acceptability, this book argues for the potential superiority of touchless biometrics over touch-based methods. The book considers current problems in developing high-accuracy touchless recognition technology. It discusses factors such as shadows, reflections, complex backgrounds, distortions due to perspective effects, uncontrolled finger placement, inconstant resolution of the ridge pattern, and reconstruction and processing of three-dimensional models. The last section suggests what future work can be done to increase accuracy in touchless systems, such as intensive studies on extraction and matching methods and three-dimensional analytical capabilities within systems. In a world where usability and mobility have increasing relevance, Touchless Fingerprint Biometrics demonstrates that touchless technologies are also part of the future. A presentation of the state of the art, it introduces you to the field and its immediate future directions.


Special education policies can create structures of segregation and inequality. School leaders are often tasked with dismantling these structures while meeting expectations related to accountability policies. This case study involves a new principal at an urban school in a district with a long history of segregation reassigned to work at one of the more challenging schools in the district. The district had just begun making special education reforms across the district to increase the amount of access students with disabilities have in the general education classroom. The new principal was directed to raise student scores on state-mandated tests and to increase the inclusivity of the school. The case explores issues related to special education law, social justice leadership, response to intervention, school administration, and developing school culture.


Removal and detection of contaminants from waste water or other water sources continue to be a focus of research and a significant challenge when concentrations of the contaminant are low and water volumes are high. During the treatment of wastewater, removal of heavy metal ions is one of themain problems encountered bymost of the industries. In order to optimize wastewater treatment process, low cost materials are required with high pollutant-removal efficiency. In this study Mesoporous silica has been synthesized using biotemplate and later functionalized (FMS) as potential sorbent for the removal of heavy metal ions. They have a combined advantage of inorganic-organic composites with large surface area, uniform pore size distributions. In thiswork, functionalization of silica nanostructures with thiol-group has been investigated as a general method for chemical binding of variousmetal ormetal oxide particles to thiol-functionalized silica gel as adsorbent to remove toxic metal species from aqueous solutions. Since the FMS system has a large surface-to-volume ratio, surface modification of such materials with -SH group and chemical adsorption of metals can be useful in separation processes.


The deterioration behavior of Al 2 O 3 /Al-alloy interlayer bonding interfaces when immersed in molten Na were investigated. Two Al 2 O 3 cylinders were bonded in a vacuum bonding facility using an Al alloy interlayer, at a bonding temperature and compression of 590°C and 10MPa, respectively. After simple immersion or thermal cycling while immersed in molten Na or in air, four-point bending tests were executed. The cracks on the bonding interfaces were investigated. The results showed that Na had penetrated into the specimens that underwent immersion, and that the Al 2 O 3 /Al bonding interface seemed to be more susceptible to damage than Al and Al 2 O 3 themselves. Bending strength declined remarkably after thermal cycling while immersed. On the other hand, it scarcely declined during cycling in air. Striations observed on the fracture surface enabled us to measure the crack growth rate during the while-immersed thermal cycling, and thermal stresses found to promote the propagations of the cracks. The results of observation by transmission electron microscope (TEM) and analysis by energy dispersive X-ray analyzer (EDX) indicated that certain kinds of impurities concentrated on and near the bonding interface. It seems likely that some of these impurities weakened the bonds and others dissolved easily in the molten sodium, so we believe the concentrations of the impurities to be one of the causes of deterioration.


Photosynthesis and respiration of a heterotrophic dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans that contained Pedi- nomonas noctilucae as an endosymbiont, were examined on cultures and natural populations in Manila Bay, Philip- pines, using a Clark-type oxygen electrode. The cultures isolated from the inner Gulf of Thailand were of two types: one required external supply of Dunaliella tertiolecta as food (feeding strains) and the other did not (non-feeding strains). The non-feeding strains grew photoautotrophically for generations, but they also fed on D. tertiolecta, indicat- ing phagotrophy was facultative. Gross photosynthesis was at the same level in both types, but net photosynthesis was significantly higher in the non-feeding strains than the feeding ones. The difference was due to high respiration activity in the feeding strains. This was consistent with observations in the natural population of Manila Bay, where net photo- synthesis was significantly higher in cells lacking food vacuoles than those with food vacuoles. The relationship of pho- tosynthesis with irradiance was characterized by low intensity of light saturation and absence or weak photoinhibition, showing efficient utilization of a wide range of light intensities. P. noctilucae likely assures a supply of organic matter to the host, and facilitates survival of N. scintillans during shortages of food particles.


The current 'fake news' phenomenon is a modern manifestation of something that has existed throughout history. The difference between what happens now and what has happened before is driven by the nature of the internet and social media – and Facebook in particular. Three key strands of Facebook's business model – invading privacy to profile individuals, analysing mass data to profile groups, then algorithmically curating content and targeting individuals and groups for advertising – create a perfect environment for fake news. Proposals to 'deal' with fake news either focus on symptoms or embed us further in the algorithms that create the problem. Whilst we embrace social media, particularly as a route to news, there is little that can be done to reduce the impact of fake news and misinformation. The question is whether the benefits to freedom of expression that social media brings mean that this is a price worth paying.


Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the impact of a demanding work schedule involving long, cumulative work shifts on response time and balance-related performance outcomes and to evaluate the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders between day and night shift working nurses. Methods: A questionnaire was used to identify the prevalence of past (12-month) and current (7-day) musculoskeletal disorders. Nurses worked three 12-hour work shifts in a 4-day period. Reaction time and balance tests were conducted before and after the work period. Results: The work period induced impairments for reaction time, errors on reaction time tasks, and balance performance, independent of shift type. Musculoskeletal symptom prevalence was high in workers of both work shifts. Conclusions: Compressed work shifts caused performance-based fatigue in nurses. Reaction time and balance tests may be sensitive fatigue identification markers in nurses.


F. O. Matthiessen was a key player in an event which took place at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg in the summer of 1947 and which launched the legendary Salzburg Seminar and may be considered the birth of American studies in Europe. Matthiessen's reflections on this remarkable session, From the Heart of Europe, remains outstanding in its conjuring of a humanist vision amidst ruins. This travelogue, his last major—if largely forgotten—work published shortly before his suicide, has been variously reassessed as an elegiac document of his tragic failure, as a politically deluded scholar, and as a groundbreaking foray into sketching out a radically alternate transnational understanding of American studies avant la lettre. These highly diverging perspectives on Matthiessen's final book, in particular, and on the professional and personal troubles during his last years, more generally, account for the lasting myth-making fascination with Matthiessen, which has left its mark not only on academic discourses ranging from socialist criticism to queer theory but may also be found in the novels of May Sarton (Faithful Are the Wounds) and Mark Merlis (American Studies). Hence, this article reflects on Matthiessen's impact on the 1947 seminar and traces the legacy of this controversial founding father of American studies.


Analytical chemical results touch everyones lives can we eat the food? do I have a disease? did the defendant leave his DNA at the crime scene? should I invest in that gold mine? When a chemist measures something how do we know that the result is appropriate? What is fit for purpose in the context of analytical chemistry? Many manufacturing and service companies have embraced traditional statistical approaches to quality assurance, and these have been adopted by analytical chemistry laboratories. However the right chemical answer is never known, so there is not a direct parallel with the manufacture of ball bearings which can be measured and assessed. The customer of the analytical services relies on the quality assurance and quality control procedures adopted by the laboratory. It is the totality of the QA effort, perhaps first brought together in this text, that gives the customer confidence in the result. QA in the Analytical Chemistry Laboratory takes the reader through all aspects of QA, from the statistical basics and quality control tools to becoming accredited to international standards. The latest understanding of concepts such as measurement uncertainty and metrological traceability are explained for a working chemist or her client. How to design experiments to optimize an analytical process is included, together with the necessary statistics to analyze the results. All numerical manipulation and examples are given as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that can be implemented on any personal computer. Different kinds of interlaboratory studies are explained, and how a laboratory is judged in proficiency testing schemes is described. Accreditation to ISO 17025 or OECD GLP is nearly obligatory for laboratories of any pretension to quality. Here the reader will find an introduction to the requirements and philosophy of accreditation. Whether completing a degree course in chemistry or working in a busy analytical laboratory, this book is a single source for an introduction into quality assurance.


One of the difficulties in using fracture mechanics is in determining stress intensity factors of cracked structural and mechanical components. The cracks are often subjected to complex stress fields induced by external loads and residual stresses resulting from the surface treatment. Both stress fields are characterized by non-uniform distributions, and handbook stress intensity factor solutions are seldom available in such cases. The method presented below is based on the generalized weight function technique enabling the stress intensity factors to be calculated for any Mode I loading applied to a planar semi-elliptical surface crack. The stress intensity factor can be determined at any point on the crack tip contour by using the general weight function. The calculation is carried out by integrating the product of the stress field and the weight function over the crack area. Several examples of point-load weight functions and resulting stress intensity factors are presented in the paper. The method is particularly suitable for modeling fatigue crack growth in the presence of complex stress fields.


Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson asserted that no law "ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority." Since then, freedom of conscience has continued to be heralded as a fundamental principle of American society. Indeed, many current policy debates – most notably in the medical and military contexts – are predicated on the theory that claims of conscience are worthy of legal respect. This Article challenges established assumptions, concluding that claims about the importance of conscience in American society have been highly exaggerated.This Article first clarifies contemporary understandings of conscience by systematically analyzing its treatment in positive law. It looks beyond the traditional medical, military, and religious contexts, giving a descriptive account of law's treatment of conscience across various substantive realms, including tax evasion, civil disobedience, discrimination, and even violent terrorism. It demonstrates that legal accommodations are typically granted on an ad hoc basis, only to the extent that exercises of personal conscience align with generally accepted and politically palatable moral principles. If there is a consistent and principled justification for treating cases differently, our legal system has thus far failed to provide it.This Article argues that, in order for American law to reflect the kind of robust, autonomy-based respect for conscience to which every pluralistic society aspires, we must agree on a content-neutral guiding principle for negotiating future claims for legal accommodation. The alternative, the Article posits, is to concede that American society has abandoned the fundamental purpose of conscientious accommodation – namely, protecting the individual from oppressive majoritarian understandings of morality.


Following the positive results obtained regarding the molluscicidal properties of the latex of Euphorbia splendens that were corroborated in laboratory and field tests under restricted conditions, a field study was conducted in experimental streams located in an endemic area. After recording the average annual fluctuations of vectors in three streams, a solution of E. splendens latex at 12 ppm was applied in stream A, a solution of niclosamide at 3 ppm that was applied in stream B and a third stream (C) remained untreated for negative control. Applications of E. splendens and niclosamide resulted in a mortality of 100% among the snails collected in the streams A and B. No dead snails were found in the negative control stream. A monthly follow-up survey conducted during three consecutive months confirmed the return of vectors to both experimental streams treated with latex and niclosamide. This fact has called for a need to repeat application in order to reach the snails that remained buried in the mud substrate or escaped to the water edge, as well as, newly hatched snails that did not respond to the concentration of these molluscicides. Adults snails collected a month following treatment led us to believe that they had migrate from untreated areas of the streams to those previously treated.


This Campbell systematic review examines the effects of interventions to deter corporate crime. The review examines the effectiveness of formal legal and administrative strategies to lower the risk of non‐compliance. The authors summarized 106 studies, and the interventions are grouped into six intervention categories, each with sub‐categories. The intervention groups are: (1) laws, (2) punitive sanctions (e.g. arrest, fines, or a likelihood of prosecution), (3) non‐punitive actions by regulatory agencies (e.g. cease and desist orders) (4) regulatory policies (e.g. company inspections), (5) other sanctions, and (6) multiple treatments. Legal interventions have a small deterrent effect on company non‐compliance and at the geographical level. There is not enough data to determine the effects of legal interventions on deterring individual offending. Regulatory interventions have a modest but consistent deterrent effect on individual offending. Their effects on deterrence at the company level were mixed. The use of more than one intervention at the same time was found to have a small but consistent effect on deterring non‐compliance among individuals and among corporations. Evidence on the effects of the other interventions on non‐compliance was mixed. Conclusions about their effects therefore cannot be drawn. Overall, the quality of evidence was low, with several contradictory findings. Older studies were more likely to find significant effects, but this may reflect weaker study designs. Executive summary/Abstract BACKGROUND Corporate crime is a poorly understood problem with little known about effective strategies to prevent and control it. Competing definitions of corporate crime affect how the phenomenon is studied and implications for reducing it. Therefore, in this review, we use John Braithwaite's definition (1984: 6) which specifies that corporate crime is "the conduct of a corporation, or of employees acting on behalf of a corporation, which is proscribed and punishable by law." Consistent with this approach, this review focuses on various legal strategies aimed at companies and their officials/managers to curtail corporate crime. Interventions may be punitive or cooperative, but the goal is to prevent offending and increase levels of corporate compliance. OBJECTIVES Our overall objective is to identify and synthesize published and unpublished studies on formal legal and administrative prevention and control strategies—i.e., the actions and programs of government law enforcement agencies, legislative bodies, and regulatory agencies on corporate crime. We then assess the impact of these strategies on individual and company offending. Included are legal and administrative interventions such as new laws or changes in laws, inspections by regulatory agencies, punitive sanctions and non‐punitive interventions aimed at deterring or controlling illegal behaviors. CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION OF STUDIES We were highly inclusive in our selection criteria, including studies that encompass a wide variety of methodologies: experimental (e.g., lab studies or vignette surveys), quasi‐experimental (e.g., pre/post‐tests), and non‐experimental (e.g., correlational statistics using secondary data). The studies included also contained a wide variety of data (e.g., data from official agencies, corporate reports, individuals' survey responses, etc.). Our search included published and unpublished articles, reports, documents, and other readily available sources. The outcome of interest, corporate offending, could reflect actual behavior or behavioral intentions as reported by respondents. SEARCH STRATEGY Our search strategy included numerous online databases and other sources (41 in total) to identify published and unpublished studies consistent with our definition of corporate crime. Sixty‐nine search terms were generated to conduct the search, including specific terms associated with corporate offending (misconduct, corruption, unethical conduct, and organizational crime), offense type, and legal/regulatory strategies. For each database and search term, we tracked the number of "hits" gleaned from the search and determined whether the article related to corporate crime deterrence (broadly defined) and if there was quantitative evidence that might be coded for a systematic review. Studies meeting both criteria were considered "potentially eligible" and went through the next phase of eligibility coding. DATA COLLECT ION AND ANALYSIS This research proceeded in two phases—the first phase (through 2003) collected studies of any intervention type (legal and otherwise) that focused on corporate crime prevention and control. The second phase of the project focused exclusively on prevention and control strategies solely in the legal area. Reflecting the broader focus of the first phase, we created a coding protocol that included the entire domain of corporate crime prevention/deterrence research which included the specific treatment variables we are interested in here—legal restraints. Two hundred and sixty five studies were eligible for inclusion. From each included study, we coded various forms of data classified into and calculated multiple types of effect sizes. These included 1) the "standardized mean‐difference effect size" for analyses comparing two groups' performance on a continuous outcome, 2) the "product‐moment correlation effect size" for relationships in which both the independent variable and dependent variable are continuous (or assumed to represent a continuous construct), and 3) the "Odds‐Ratio Effect Size" when both the independent and dependent variables involved are dichotomous. Interventions were classified into six treatments and broken down by subgroups (unit of analysis and whether the design was cross‐sectional or longitudinal). We also conducted moderator analyses. MAIN RESULTS Out of the 40 possible treatment categories, we were able to calculate a mean effect size for 19. Although most showed a positive albeit non‐significant treatment effect, some (including a significant effect) were iatrogenic. Looking at the specific mechanisms, the impact of law on corporate crime showed a modest deterrent effect at the firm and geographical level of analysis (there was not enough data to calculate effect sizes for individuals). However, this finding is limited to cross‐sectional studies. For punitive sanctions, where there was substantially more data from which to calculate effect sizes, we observe a similar pattern: A tendency toward deterrence across units of analysis, with relatively few significant effects regardless of whether data are cross‐sectional or longitudinal. The one area where there appears to be a consistent treatment effect is in the area of regulatory policy, but only at the individual level. Effects for other levels are contradictory (with some positive and others iatrogenic) and none are statistically significant. Regarding moderator effects, the least methodologically rigorous designs— those that were not experimental versus experimental designs and those without statistical control variables versus controls were associated with a treatment effect. We also found that older studies were associated with stronger deterrent effects—perhaps because the older studies are less methodologically rigorous that those that are newer. Other moderator results were less clear (publication bias, country bias, disciplinary bias; offense type), but given how few of the analyses revealed strong treatment effects overall we think it is premature to draw any conclusions from these findings and call instead for more methodologically rigorous and focused studies particularly in the punitive sanction and regulatory policy areas.


This report analyzes the environmental impacts of the tourism industry, which is the third largest retail industry in the United States, behind only automotive dealers and food stores. In 1998, travel and tourism contributed $91 billion to the U.S. economy, supporting 16.2 million jobs directly and indirectly. While extensive research has documented the significant economic impact of such service industries as tourism, little has been written about their effect on environmental quality. This study uses a framework developed from the industrial ecology literature to assess the impacts of the tourism industry on the environment. Three categories of impact are discussed: direct impacts, including impacts from the travel to a destination, the tourist activities in and of themselves at that destination, such as hiking or boating, and from the creation, operation, and maintenance of facilities that cater to the tourist; "upstream" impacts, resulting from travel service providers' ability to influence suppliers; and "downstream" impacts, where service providers can influence the behavior or consumption patterns of customers. We have identified impacts from tourist-related transportation, including aircraft, automobiles, and recreational land and marine vehicles; tourist-related development, tourist activities, and direct impacts of the lodging and cruise industries. Although the direct impacts of the lodging and cruise industries and impacts of tourist-related transportation were not very significant, we found on the other hand that tourist activities can have significant impacts, depending on the type and location of activity. Tourist-related development can also have significant cumulative impacts on water quality and the aesthetics of host communities. Opportunity for upstream and downstream leverage within the tourism industry is considerable. Hotels can exert upstream influence on their suppliers to provide environmentally sound products, such as recyclable toiletries. Similarly, the cruise industry can use its leverage to convince suppliers to improve the environmental quality of shipboard products. Opportunity for downstream influence exists as well. Travel agents can influence where and how a tourist travels, and tour operators can educate tourists about ways to minimize their impact on the environment. The fragmented nature of the tourism industry is not conducive to regulation that encompasses all aspects of the industry. Therefore, educational efforts aimed at supporting existing regulations and encouraging environmentally responsible behavior where no regulations exist seem most promising as a management scheme. These educational efforts should be framed in accordance with the targeted audience (i.e., tourists and industry sectors). Tourists may be more receptive to educational initiatives that focus on the environmental benefits of altering their behavior, while industry sectors are more likely to be responsive to educational efforts that emphasize cost savings and an improved public image.


The ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used to search for the lepton flavor violating process Z -> e mu in pp collisions using 20.3 fb(-1) of data collected at root s = 8 TeV. An enhancement in the e mu invariant mass spectrum is searched for at the Z-boson mass. The number of Z bosons produced in the data sample is estimated using events of similar topology, Z -> ee and mu mu, significantly reducing the systematic uncertainty in the measurement. There is no evidence of an enhancement at the Z-boson mass, resulting in an upper limit on the branching fraction, B(Z -> e mu) < 7.5 x 10(-7) at the 95% confidence level.


Abstract. Fast plasma flows produced as outflow jets from reconnection sites or X lines
are a key feature of the dynamics in the Earth's magnetosphere. We have used
a polar plane simulation of the hybrid-Vlasov model Vlasiator, driven by
steady southward interplanetary magnetic field and fast solar wind, to study
fast plasma sheet ion flows and related magnetic field structures in the
Earth's magnetotail. In the simulation, lobe reconnection starts to produce
fast flows after the increasing pressure in the lobes has caused the plasma
sheet to thin sufficiently. The characteristics of the earthward and tailward
fast flows and embedded magnetic field structures produced by multi-point
tail reconnection are in general agreement with spacecraft measurements
reported in the literature. The structuring of the flows is caused by
internal processes: interactions between major X points determine the
earthward or tailward direction of the flow, while interactions between minor
X points, associated with leading edges of magnetic islands carried by the
flow, induce local minima and maxima in the flow speed. Earthward moving
flows are stopped and diverted duskward in an oscillatory (bouncing) manner
at the transition region between tail-like and dipolar magnetic fields.
Increasing and decreasing dynamic pressure of the flows causes the transition
region to shift earthward and tailward, respectively. The leading edge of the
train of earthward flow bursts is associated with an earthward propagating
dipolarization front, while the leading edge of the train of tailward flow
bursts is associated with a tailward propagating plasmoid. The impact of the
dipolarization front with the dipole field causes magnetic field variations
in the Pi2 range. Major X points can move either earthward or tailward,
although tailward motion is more common. They are generally not advected by
the ambient flow. Instead, their velocity is better described by local
parameters, such that an X point moves in the direction of increasing
reconnection electric field strength. Our results indicate that ion kinetics
might be sufficient to describe the behavior of plasma sheet bulk ion flows
produced by tail reconnection in global near-Earth simulations. Keywords. Magnetospheric physics (magnetospheric configuration and dynamics; plasma sheet) – space plasma physics (numerical simulation studies)


In the past, the phrase 'environmental allocations of water' has most often been taken to mean allocation of water to rivers. However, it is now accepted that groundwater-dependent ecosystems are an important feature of Australian landscapes and require an allocation of water to maintain their persistence in the landscape. However, moving from this theoretical realisation to the provision and implementation of a field-based management regime is extremely difficult. The following four fundamental questions are identified as being central to the effective management of groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs): (1) How do we identify GDEs in the field; put another way, which species or species assemblages or habitats are reliant on a supply of groundwater for their persistence in the landscape; (2) what groundwater regime is required to ensure the persistence of a GDE; (3) how can managers of natural resources (principally water and habitats), with limited time, money and other resources, successfully manage GDEs; and (4) what measures of ecosystem function can be monitored to ensure that management is effective? This paper explicitly addresses these questions and provides a step-by-step theoretical and practical framework for providing answers. In particular, this paper provides an introduction to some of the relevant literature and from this, presents a synthesis, presented in the form of a functional methodology for managing groundwater dependent ecosystems.


Over geologic timescales, chemical weathering in mountain landscapes may play an important role in regulating atmospheric CO2. Understanding the feedbacks between climate, tectonics, erosion rates, biota, and weathering has been a recent focus of research, but disentangling these complex relationships remains a challenge. One area of particular interest has been the potential for a kinetic limit to weathering and soil production. Studies in New Zealand's Southern Alps were among the first to clearly exceed proposed kinetic limits on soil production and demonstrate thresholds in the influence of precipitation on chemical weathering. Here we present a new dataset that addresses chemical weathering, soil production rates, and surface erosion rates, measured across an altitudinal transect in the Tararua Range on New Zealand's North Island. The transect spans a kilometer in relief, and receives 3.5-5.5 m of annual precipitation. Underlying bedrock comprises silty and sandy members of the same Cretaceous Greywacke, but subtle lithologic changes correspond to abrupt shifts in soil production rates and total weathering. Total weathering across the transect is roughly invariant for each lithology and reflects near-complete depletion of weatherable species, consistent with a previously proposed threshold in the influence of precipitation. However, spatial patterns in weathering differ markedly in saprolite and in soils. Deep weathering in saprolite decreases with elevation and makes up a large fraction of the total weathering. This pattern suggests that climate may influence saprolite weathering, even where the total weathering is supply-limited. Spatial patterns in saprolite and total weathering do not correlate with an abrupt vegetation transition from dense forest to alpine tussock, which may suggest that biota are more strongly affected by a temperature threshold or more complex biogeochemical cycling. We contrast these results with new and previously published data from the Southern Alps, which have a similar climate but experience rapid tectonic uplift. There, the fresh supply of minerals to soils provided by uplift and erosion may enable much faster weathering and soil production rates. Taken together, these observations suggest a strong lithologic and tectonic control on soil production and weathering rates in humid climates.


RNA viruses exist as genetically diverse populations displaying a range of virulence degrees. The evolution of virulence in viral populations is, however, poorly understood. On the basis of the experimental observation of an RNA virus clone in cell culture diversifying into two subpopulations of different virulence, we study the dynamics of mutating virus populations with varying virulence. We introduce a competition–colonization trade-off into standard mathematical models of intra-host viral infection. Colonizers are fast-spreading virulent strains, whereas the competitors are less-virulent variants but more successful within co-infected cells. We observe a two-step dynamics of the population. Early in the infection, the population is dominated by colonizers, which later are outcompeted by competitors. Our simulations suggest the existence of steady state in which all virulence classes coexist but are dominated by the most competitive ones. This equilibrium implies collective virulence attenuation in the population, in contrast to previous models predicting evolution of the population towards increased virulence.


A relatively new frontier for legal and policy analysis, technical barriers to trade (TBT's) have become more common as traditional border barriers have been reduced. This comprehensive Handbook comprises original essays by eminent trade scholars exploring the implications of the WTO's TBT Agreement.


There has been an impetus in recent years to increase railway train speeds and reduce journey
times. As train speeds have increased, other problems have manifested themselves, in particular
the consequent deterioration in ride quality at these higher operating speeds. Improvement in
suspension design is one option which can circumvent this problem. Suspension design for a
modem high-speed train has hitherto been a heuristic procedure directed towards optimising the
passive components of the suspension. Performance limits are now being reached with passive
suspensions due to the inherent trade-offs which need to be made in the design process. Active
suspension, which eases this inherent trade-off, has received a great deal of interest in both
academia and industry over recent years. A number of theoretical and experimental studies have
highlighted the potential benefits of active suspension technology. Theoretical studies have
concentrated on using simple vehicle models and although providing the initial impetus to active
suspension they have not given the industry full confidence in them. In contrast, experimental
studies have highlighted a number of problems, most notably the significant effect actuators can
have on the overall performance. [Continues.]


This paper presents a study on the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) filter design for change detection algorithms (CDA). More specifically, we are interested in CFAR filters used in CDA for low frequency ultra-wideband (UWB) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. The filter design performance was evaluated in terms of false alarm rate (FAR) and probability of detection (PD). For evaluation purposes, we considered a set of SAR images obtained with the CARABAS-II system. The results are compared with the ones presented in [1], where the same CDA was considered, except for the CFAR filter. The results show that relevant FAR performance improvements can be obtained by just modifying the CFAR filter parameters taking into account the image resolution and target characteristics.


Background Cerebral microbleeds can confer a high risk of intracerebral hemorrhage, ischemic stroke, death and dementia, but estimated risks remain imprecise and often conflicting. We investigated the association between cerebral microbleeds presence and these outcomes in a large meta-analysis of all published cohorts including: ischemic stroke/TIA, memory clinic, "high risk" elderly populations, and healthy individuals in population-based studies. Methods Cohorts (with > 100 participants) that assessed cerebral microbleeds presence on MRI, with subsequent follow-up (≥3 months) were identified. The association between cerebral microbleeds and each of the outcomes (ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, death, and dementia) was quantified using random effects models of (a) unadjusted crude odds ratios and (b) covariate-adjusted hazard rations. Results We identified 31 cohorts (n = 20,368): 19 ischemic stroke/TIA (n = 7672), 4 memory clinic (n = 1957), 3 high risk elderly (n = 1458) and 5 population-based cohorts (n = 11,722). Cerebral microbleeds were associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke (OR: 2.14; 95% CI: 1.58–2.89 and adj-HR: 2.09; 95% CI: 1.71–2.57), but the relative increase in future intracerebral hemorrhage risk was greater (OR: 4.65; 95% CI: 2.68–8.08 and adj-HR: 3.93; 95% CI: 2.71–5.69). Cerebral microbleeds were an independent predictor of all-cause mortality (adj-HR: 1.36; 95% CI: 1.24–1.48). In three population-based studies, cerebral microbleeds were independently associated with incident dementia (adj-HR: 1.35; 95% CI: 1.00–1.82). Results were overall consistent in analyses stratified by different populations, but with different degrees of heterogeneity. Conclusions Our meta-analysis shows that cerebral microbleeds predict an increased risk of stroke, death, and dementia and provides up-to-date effect sizes across different clinical settings. These pooled estimates can inform clinical decisions and trials, further supporting cerebral microbleeds role as biomarkers of underlying subclinical brain pathology in research and clinical settings.


The isolated pyridine-Ag(+)-pyridine unit (Py-Ag(+)-Py) is employed as a model system to characterize the recently observed Ag(+)-mediated base pairing in DNA oligonucleotides at the molecular level. The structure and infrared (IR) spectrum of the Ag(+)-Py(2) cationic complex are investigated in the gas phase by IR multiple-photon dissociation (IRMPD) spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations to determine the preferred metal-ion binding site and other salient properties of the potential-energy surface. The IRMPD spectrum has been obtained in the 840-1720 cm(-1) fingerprint region by coupling the IR free electron laser at the Centre Laser Infrarouge d'Orsay (CLIO) with a Fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometer equipped with an electrospray ionization source. The spectroscopic results are interpreted with quantum chemical calculations conducted at the B3LYP/aug-cc-pVDZ level. The analysis of the IRMPD spectrum is consistent with a σ complex, in which the Ag(+) ion binds to the nitrogen lone pairs of the two Py ligands in a linear configuration. The binding motif of Py-Ag(+)-Py in the gas phase is the same as that observed in Ag(+)-mediated base pairing in solution. Ag(+) bonding to the π-electron system of the aromatic ring is predicted to be a substantially less-favorable binding motif.


We study efficient computation of Minimax distances measures, which enable to capture the correct structures via taking the transitive relations into account. We analyze in detail two settings, the dense graphs and the sparse graphs. In particular, we show that an adapted variant of the Kruskal's algorithm is the most efficient approach for computing pairwise Minimax distances. However, for dense graphs we require a preprocessing step based on the Prim's algorithm, in order to reduce the set of candidate edges to be investigated. For each case, we study the correctness, efficiency and computational optimality of our approach. We perform numerical experiments on several datasets to validate the superior performance of our methods.


We present numerical investigations of parametric transfer in synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillators (SPOPOs) used for indirect mid-infrared pulse shaping. The introduction of an optical bandpass filter in the resonator results in transfer of intensity and phase profile of the input pump onto the output idler pulse. We investigate the effect of resonator parameters, process nonlinearity, and chromatic dispersion of the nonlinear crystal, on the SPOPO behavior and the transfer fidelity. We show numerically that parametric transfer from a broad-bandwidth pump pulse can be achieved with good fidelity and high efficiency for a broad range of parameters in a periodically poled lithium niobate SPOPO.


The von Bertalanffy growth model parameters (L ∞ and K) and mortality coefficients (Z, M and F) were estimated for 12 fish species caught by fishers in five Community-Based Fisheries Management project sites in Bangladesh. The exploitation ratio (E=F/Z) and gear selectivity (L 50 ) were also estimated for each species. The growth and exploitation parameters obtained were compared with available estimates to evaluate the consistency of the results with current knowledge about the species in the region. The estimates for L ∞ (7.0 – 24.0 cm) and K (1.077 ± 0.328 year -1 ) obtained were consistent with those available in literature. Relatively high K (and low L ∞ ) values, typical of short-lived tropical fishes, were obtained for nine species. Estimates for Z (1.86 – 6.55) and M (1.22 - 3.06) imply low annual rates of survival and high turnover rates. The estimates for M obtained were consistent with those available in the literature for the 12 species. The exploitation rate was estimated to be between 34 and 53% and the length at first capture was estimated to be approximately 32-56% of L ∞ . The study indicated that the length-at-first-capture/L ∞ seems to be a simple parameter which could be used to make a rapid assessment of the status of the stocks.


Establishing a knowledge-based economy and the transition from a resource-based to an innovation-based economy, which the Republic of Moldova opts for, requires changing the approaches of the regional economic development and reconsidering the research-development and innovation system to turn it into an important progress factor. While the elaboration and implementation of the National/Regional innovation strategy for smart specialisation (RIS 3) has become an important component of the cohesion policy for 2014‑2020 programming period and an ex-ante condition for the EU countries in accessing structural funds, in our country concerns in this area are only at an early stage of conceiving this concept and raising awareness of its importance. A particularly important role in speeding up and successfully implementing this process lies with universities. This paper analyses the importance of smart specialization for sustainable economic development, its concept and content, and argues the need of a strategic approach for economic development through the support of research and innovation. The paper characterizes the current situation in research-innovation-development in the country, Moldova's position in the international rankings, the challenges it faces and the actions to be followed in order to develop the smart specialisation strategy in Moldova. A particular attention is paid to the evaluation of the role of the universities in smart specialization strategy design and implementation. A comprehensive research methodology has been applied in the study, including methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, benchmarking, observation, economical-statistical methods and others. The study concludes that a key solution for an innovation-based economic development of the Republic of Moldova is the implementation of the smart specialization concept based on the European experience, which has been widely applied in the community countries and has proved its viability and necessity. One of the main stakeholders should become universities, which have a distinct mission in this process.


Falcons were a part of everyday life in the Aegean but also appear in Minoan-Mycenaean art in cult capacity as attending a goddess, being the possible ba bird of a deceased person, and in symbolic ornaments of falcon shape with distinct falcon attributes of sharp talons, hooked beaks, and neck curls.  These are possibly major signs of Egyptian influence reaching the Cyclades Islands as well as the Aegeanized Egyptian themes of Middle Bronze Age Minoan art.  The bird part of Aegean griffins and griffin wings show distinct origins in falcon traits.  The triangular hook markings of kestrels' underwing flight feathers are the basis of the "notched plume" wing pattern of Aegean griffins. The most suggestive presence of the Horus Falcon and the solar disk in the Aegean is the Middle Bronze Age Melos Island pottery bird designs where falcons have large red disk bodies resembling the solar disks of the Egyptian falcon gods. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v03i3_porter2


Between Dec. 1987 and Jan. 2002, twenty-five cases of clinical instability following mobile bearing total knee arthroplasty with meniscal bearings or rotating platforms presented for evaluation at our institution. These cases were retrospectively identified. All were performed at outside institutions by a variety of surgeons. All clinical examinations were performed by the authors. Nine cases were revised at our institution. All twenty-five cases had clinical evidence of severe coronal plane instability and pain. Eight cases had polyethylene dislocation or subluxation evident radiographically and clinically. Four cases had extensor mechanism dysfunction. Eighteen cases had symptoms immediately postoperatively. Twenty-three of the twenty-five cases had symptoms within two years postoperatively. Any potential long-term benefit of design innovations must be balanced with known problems leading to early failure. This paper is a review of a previously published manuscript by Dr.'s Moskal and Ridgeway [Ridgeway, S. R. and Moskal, J. T., "Early Instability with Mobile Bearing Total Knee Arthroplasty: A series of twenty-five cases," J. Arthroplasty, Vol. 19, No. 6, 2004, pp. 686–693]. The current manuscript has been updated with additional discussion and references covered in his planned presentation.


Adventitious roots of sufficient length and diameter must develop to assure that the photosynthetic surfaces receive sufficient water and nutrients before grass seedlings can be considered established. We evaluated development of crested wheatgrass [Agropyron desertorum (Fisch. ex Link) Schult.] and blue grama [Bouteloua gracilis (H.B.K.) Lag.] seedlings in the field to decide when they were established. Blue grams and crested wheatgrass seedlings, under the environmental conditions of this study, were considered established 21 days after emergence. At this time, crested wheatgrass seedlings had 4 leaves, 2 adventitious roots penetrating to a depth of at least 80 mm into the soil, and 1 tiller per plant. Blue grama seedlings had about 6 leaves, 2 adventitious roots penetrating to a depth of at least 100 mm into the soil, and 2 tillers per plant. Most seedlings that reached this stage by the end of the first growing season overwintered and survived the following growing season and provided adequate stands for both species.


The objective was to evaluate the effects of the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) genotype and gender on the response to donepezil treatment in Alzheimer's disease. ApoE genotyping was performed on 117 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease who were included in a 36-week open label trial of donepezil therapy. Of these 117 patients, who constituted the intent-to-treat population (ITT), 80 completed the trial, and constituted the evaluable population. Patients were treated blindly in relation to ApoE genotype. Outcome measures were Alzheimer's disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Component (ADAS-Cog), the Mini Mental State Examination, Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, and the Caregiver-rated Clinical Global Impression of Change. ITT analysis did not reveal significant differences between the responses of epsilon 4- and epsilon 4+ carriers according to the ADAS-Cog (P = 0.28). No differences were found either between the responses of men and women (P = 0.81), and there was no significant interaction between genotype and gender (P = 0.09). Other outcome measures all exhibited similar patterns of change to those seen using the ADAS-Cog. Consequently, these results do not support the hypothesis that the ApoE phenotype and gender are predictors of the response to donepezil in Alzheimer's disease patients.


Tahiti' lime, Citrus latifoliaTanaka grafted onto five citrus rootstocks: 'Swingle citrumelo' [Citrus paradisiMacf. x Ponsirus trifoliata (L.) Raf.], 'Carrizo' [C. sinensis x P. Trifoliata (L.) Raf.], 'HRS 812' [tangerine 'Sunki', C. reticulata x P. trifoliate (L.) Raf.], 'Rough lemon' [C. jambhiri] and 'Cleopatra' mandarin [Citrus reshni Hort. Ex Tan.] was evaluated at the Isabela and Corozal Substations, Puerto Rico. The parameters tree height, canopy diameter, canopy volume, efficiency, number and weight of fruits per tree, percentage of juice, total soluble solids, total soluble solids/acid ratio and efficiency were evaluated. The highest yield at Isabela was obtained on the rootstocks 'Rough lemon' and 'Swingle' with 42.7 and 35.9 kilograms of fruits, respectively. These values did not differ significantly from the yields obtained on the rootstocks 'HRS 812' (23.6 kg) and 'Cleopatra' (28.7 kg); however, they significantly exceeded the yield of 'Carrizo' rootstock (21.6 kg). At Corozal, the highest yields were recorded in the rootstocks 'Rough Lemon' (52.9 kg), 'HRS 812' (52.7 kg), and 'Swingle' (47.6 kg), which did not differ from that of 'Carrizo' (40.9 kg) but were significantly higher than that of 'Cleopatra'. At both locations, the parameters that define the quality of fruit were acceptable and very similar. In Isabela, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus, the bacteria associated with the disease known as "Huanglongbing" (HLB), was detected two years after the trees were planted. However, the trees continued producing fruits and there was no decline associated with the disease. After detecting the disease in this location we used an aggressive nutritional program which included foliar and soil fertilization.


To the Editor: The outbreak of chikungunya fever that started in the Indian Ocean Islands in early 2005 (1) spread through adjoining islands and appeared in peninsular India by late 2005 (2). It was first noticed in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in February 2006; it spread to Tamil Nadu in April 2006 and to Karnataka and Kerala in May. The western state of Gujarat also reported cases in April, but no cases were reported in May and June. The disease again reappeared in July and reached a peak in August. Later it affected the central Indian states of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. In most states, the outbreak declined by October 2006 (3,4).

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India, is an archipelago of >500 islands and islets situated in the Bay of Bengal, 1,200 km from peninsular India. People are constantly moving between mainland India and these islands. Chikungunya fever has previously not been reported from these islands.

During July and August 2006, medical professionals noticed an increase in the number of cases of febrile illness in Port Blair, the headquarters of the union territory and the only urban area in the islands. The total number of patients with fever who visited the 5 urban health centers (UHC) in the town went up from the baseline of 300–450 per day to 550–900 per day in July and August 2006. Most of the patients had associated joint pain. In view of the clinical features suggestive of chikungunya fever, the ongoing epidemic on mainland India, and the widespread presence of the vector, Aedes aegypti, within the urban area of Port Blair (5), chikungunya fever was suspected. To confirm this hypothesis, 17 persons who fulfilled the case definition of having an acute febrile illness associated with severe pain in multiple joints were selected from among the initial patients who went to the UHCs and the referral hospital in Port Blair. Among these study participants, 15 were adults and 2 were adolescents 15 years of age; 6 were female and 11 male. Four adults had febrile illness associated with joint pain; in these patients, weakness of all 4 limbs developed 3–15 days after onset of illness. All of the 4 patients with weakness had areflexic quadriplegia; 1 required ventilatory support. The patients with areflexic quadriplegia were treated with injections of methylprednisolone; all recovered within a week.

Blood samples were collected from these study participants. Serum samples were separated and sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune, for detection of anti–chikungunya virus (CHIKV) immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies. Samples were collected from 12 patients >4 days after the onset of symptoms. In the remaining patients, the interval between onset of symptoms and collection of blood samples was <4 days. Of the 17 study participants, 13 were positive for anti-CHIKV IgM antibodies. Three of 4 samples that were negative for IgM antibodies to CHIKV were collected <3 days after the onset of symptoms. Among these, 2 samples were subjected to reverse transcriptase–PCR by using the primers CHIKV/E1S (5′-TAC CCA TTC ATG TGG GGC-3′) and CHIKV/E1C (5′-GCC TTT GTA CAC CAC GAT T-3′), as described by Hasebe et al. (6); both were positive for CHIKV RNA. All these samples were tested for dengue IgM antibodies by using SD Bioline Dengue IgM Rapid Test (Standard Diagnostics Inc., Kyonggi-Do, South Korea), which uses a mixture of dengue recombinant envelop proteins and can detect all of the 4 dengue serotypes. None of the samples tested positive for dengue antibodies. Hence, CHIKV infection was confirmed in 15 of 17 patients.

India experienced the first confirmed outbreak of chikungunya fever in 1963–1964 in Kolkata (7) and in 1965 in Chennai. The last epidemic in India was reported from Barsi in the state of Maharastra in 1973 (8). However, during these outbreaks, Andaman and Nicobar Islands were not affected. Outbreaks of dengue fever and chikungunya fever are known to occur simultaneously, as has happened in several parts of India. However, during the current outbreak in Andaman Islands, dengue infection was not detected. (Dengue has never been reported in the islands.) As chikungunya fever is known for its mysterious pattern of dramatic outbreaks interspersed by periods of prolonged absence, the introduction of this virus to an unexposed population has great public health importance.

This outbreak could be a warning about preparedness for health authorities not only in these islands but also in other areas where chikungunya fever has not occurred previously. With the extent of human travel to and from areas with active chikungunya virus transmission, many areas where the disease has not previously been reported could be at risk. As an outbreak response, the Regional Medical Research Centre and Directorate of Health Services, Andaman and Nicobar Administration, has undertaken a comprehensive community-based survey to assess the impact of chikungunya fever and Aedes infestation levels. We are stepping up our applied field research to prevent future outbreaks of chikungunya fever, as well as dengue fever.


Objectives/Goals I really enjoyed my project this year. In my project, I tested how temperature affected the pigmentation of four different bacteria. From my research, I knew that the bacterium Serratia marcescens alters its color at different temperatures, and I wanted to explore this. I also wanted to see if this applied to other pigmented bacteria. Methods/Materials My project consisted of qualitative tests. First, I gathered my types of bacteria. I used Serratia marcescens, Rhodospirillum rubrum, Micrococcus luteus, and Sarcina aurantiaca. Next, I made agar from a powder. I then sterilized it and poured it into plates. After that, I made nutrient broth for the bacteria to grow in. I also sterilized this. I then inoculated the broth with the bacteria and let it grow for a few days. Next, I began my first set of tests. Using a pipette, I put each of the four bacteria onto two different plates. I then spread the bacteria with a bent glass tube. I let these incubate for two days and then observed them. I recorded the colors and drew images of the plates. I repeated this process eight times, doing tests at 25, 28, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, and 43 degrees Celsius. Results Analyzing my results, it appears that Serratia marcescens is a pretty special bacterium. All the other pigmented bacteria I tested held the same coloration, whereas Serratia marcescens lost its red pigmentation at 37 degrees Celsius. Conclusions/Discussion The pigment in Serratia marcescens is called prodigiosin. Once the growth temperature of Serratia marcescens is raised to 37 degrees, the pigment stops being produced. It is believed that an enzyme used in the production of prodigiosin is affected by the temperature so that the pigment is no longer made. As you can see, my project came up with some pretty interesting results.


Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic-cum-vascular disorder of numerous etiologies described by constant hyperglycemia with aggravations of sugar, fat and protein digestion coming about deformities in insulin emission, insulin activity or both. This issue is every now and again connected with long haul harm, which can prompt disappointment of organs like eyes, kidney, nerves, heart and veins.. In India, diabetes mellitus is influencing 33% of the grown-up populace. It is basically connected with wellbeing trouble just as high financial weight at individual and populace levels. A forthcoming observational investigation was completed in-patients confessed to general medication division of NMCH&RC determined to have diabetes mellitus endorsed with combination treatment of Metformin + Glimepiride and combination treatment of Metformin + Teneligliptin from September 2019 to February 2020. Information was gathered from case sheets of patients and evaluated for their monetary weight dependent on the expense per tablet for long term. Cost viability proportion for the patients with controlled blood glucose level by utilizing a specific medication was determined and likelihood to lessen the diabetes mellitus was assessed. Among 70 in-patients, 38 patients (54.29%) were males and 32 patients (45.71%) were females. Patients are between the age gathering of 41-60 years were more (48.57%). Majority of the patients were conceded with known history of diabetes mellitus (81.43%). A large portion of the patients were endorsed with combination treatment of Metformin + Glimepiride (81.42%) followed with Metformin + Teneligliptin (18.57%). There was a critical positive connection (i.e., p value= 0.5607) between perseverance examples of patients with drug treatment. Likelihood of patients taking combination treatment of Metformin + Glimepiride was 77.19% trailed by patients with combination treatment of Metformin + Teneligliptin. Combination treatment of Metformin + Glimepiride are having more Cost adequacy proportion. This investigation obviously indicated that combination treatment of Metformin + Glimepiride is the most practical treatment among other combination treatment to lessen monetary weight to the patient just as to diminish the entanglements. Pharmacoeconomic assessments can help in creation troublesome decisions judiciously and designate scant assets productively.


BACKGROUND
The diagnosis of heart failure is difficult, with both overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis occurring commonly in practice. Natriuretic peptides have been proposed as a possible test for assisting diagnosis. We assessed the diagnostic accuracy of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), including a comparison with atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP).

METHODS
Electronic searches were conducted of MEDLINE and EMBASE from January 1994 to December 2002 and handsearches of reference lists of included studies. We included studies that assessed the diagnostic accuracy of BNP against echocardiographic or clinical criteria or that compared the diagnostic accuracy of BNP with ANP. Two reviewers assessed studies for inclusion and quality and extracted the relevant data. A meta-analysis was performed by pooling the diagnostic odds ratios for studies that used a common reference standard.

RESULTS
Twenty studies were included. For the 8 studies (n = 4086) that measured BNP against the criterion of left ventricular ejection fraction of 40% or less (or equivalent), the pooled diagnostic odds ratio was 11.6 (95% confidence interval, 8.4-16.1). The pooled diagnostic odds ratio was greater, 30.9 (95% confidence interval, 27.0-35.4), in the 7 studies (n = 2374) that measured BNP against clinical criteria (generally a consensus view using all other clinical information). The diagnostic odds ratio was similar in studies conducted in general practice and in hospital settings. Three studies compared BNP with N-terminal-ANP, a precursor form of ANP, and pooling of the results of these studies showed BNP to be a more accurate marker of heart failure than NT-ANP.

CONCLUSIONS
Brain natriuretic peptide is an accurate marker of heart failure. Use of a cutoff value of 15 pmol/L achieves high sensitivity, and BNP values below this exclude heart failure in patients in whom disease is suspected. As the diagnostic odds ratio for BNP is greater when assessed against clinical criteria than against left ejection fraction alone, BNP may also be detecting patients with "diastolic" heart failure.


On September 5, 2006, a legal precedent was set for web accessibility. Federal judge Marilyn Patel sustained discrimination claims by the National Federation for the Blind against Target Corporation. She established that retailers must make their websites accessible to the blind under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Past research has indicated that eCommerce retailers have largely ignored W3C guidelines for making their sites accessible. This study examines web accessibility motivation under the lens of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). A model is developed linking accessibility behavior to a retailer's propensity to engage in CSR activities, the types of products and services sold, complexity of visual web content, and perceived threat of litigation resulting from an inaccessible site. Based on the model recommendations are suggested for future research. Thirty-two websites of the largest online retailers with a physical presence were analyzed using IBM's aDesigner accessibility tool for the three years before and one year since the commencement of the Target litigation. Results suggest that accessibility of sites has showed significant improvement since the Target case began.


Accumulation of unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of eukaryotic cells triggers the transcriptional activation of ER-resident molecular chaperones and folding enzymes to maintain cellular homeostasis. This process is known as the ER stress response or the unfolded protein response. We have identified tunicamycin induced 1 (TIN1), a plant-specific ER stress-inducible Arabidopsis thaliana gene. The TIN1 protein is localized in the ER; however, its molecular function has yet to be clarified. In this study, we performed functional analysis of TIN1 in planta. RT-PCR analysis showed that TIN1 is highly expressed in pollen. Analysis using the β-glucuronidase reporter gene demonstrated that the TIN1 promoter is active throughout pollen development, peaking at the time of flowering and in an ovule of an open flower. Although a T-DNA insertion mutant of TIN1 grows normally under ambient laboratory conditions, abnormal pollen surface morphology was observed under a scanning electron microscope. Based on the current and previous observations, a possible physiological function of TIN1 during pollen development is discussed.


Timing of the latest movement on the Santa Cruz Island fault, a dramatic physiographic feature of the southern boundary of the California Transverse Ranges, is demonstrated to be latest Pleistocene to Holocene in age. Faulting of dated terrace gravels confirms that the most recent rupture on the fault is no older than 11.78 {plus minus}0.1 ka. This represents an order of magnitude increase over the recency suggested by previous work and requires proportional increases in estimates of the minimum slip rate and seismic hazard posed by the fault. Uplifted latest Pleistocene to Holocene fill terraces are consistent with models of high rates of uplift and high sediment supply. Numerical solution of the interaction of sea-level rise with uplift at the west end of Santa Cruz Island predicts that the youngest strata in the faulted terrace sequence are about 6.1 ka. Reevaluation of high-resolution seismic sections just west of the island supports the latest Pleistocene to Holocene timing of the most recent rupture on the fault. The Santa Cruz Island fault apparently represents an active seismogenic element of southern California, the recent and high rate of activity of which have not been previously recognized.


This study employed a single-subject design to determine the effects of Social Stories TM treatment approach on the language and social skills, specifically turn-taking, of four children with autism spectrum disorders within the context of a summer language camp through East Carolina University. Four language measures and five behavioral measures were obtained through activities targeting behaviors included within the context of the Social Story. Three of the four participants displayed an increase in language measures while all four participants displayed an increase in at least one of the behavioral measures associated with turn taking. Language performance is thought to have been influenced by scaffolding and depended, in part, upon the language levels of the participants. Behavioral outcomes suggest that Social Stories can be feasible in increasing positive behaviors as well as decreasing negative behaviors.


A disproportionate number of the Supreme Court of Canada's recent cases on freedom of religion come out of Quebec and involve claims for reasonable accommodation. These decisions represent a point of national cleavage in two respects. First, in each case the Quebec Court of Appeal rejected the section 2(a) claims, and the Supreme Court of Canada overturned its decision. Second, the Supreme Court has often divided on national Lines with one or more francophone judges from Quebec writing a concurrence or a sharp dissent. Moreover, francophone judges from outside Quebec have also broken ranks with their colleagues. The cleavages on the Supreme Court have sometimes tracked a large and arguably growing divide between Quebec and the rest of Canada on these questions. I link this line of cases to earlier disputes about the constitutionality of Quebec's policies to promote the French language that were ultimately resolved by the Court. The fact that the Court spoke in a single voice in those earlier cases can be explained, in part, by the need to preserve its institutional legitimacy. This time, the point of dispute is not language, but religion. The Supreme Court is groping incrementally toward a kind of consensus position on the character of the "neutral" state to close this divide within the Court against the backdrop of an intense political debate on these issues in Quebec.


Here is an up-to-date, thoroughly researched biography of the world's most popular pop-punk band.
 Green Day is almost certainly the world's most popular pop-punk band. How they got there is the subject of Green Day: A Musical Biography, the first book to follow the band from their beginnings through the spring 2009 release of 21st Century Breakdown.
 Tracing the band's evolution from fiercely independent punks to a global powerhouse, Green Day starts with the members' earliest musical influences and upbringing and the founding of the punk club 924 Gilman Street that shaped their sense of community. Discussion of their conflicted feelings about signing to a major label explores the classic rock 'n' roll conundrum of "selling out," while details of their decline and 2004 rebirth offer an inspirational story of artistic rejuvenation. Interviews with the band members and key figures in their lives, excerpted from punk 'zines and other publications, offer a perspective on their methods of self-promotion and the image they have chosen to project over time.


Cardio-facio-cutaneous syndrome (CFC) is one of the RASopathies that bears many clinical features in common with the other syndromes in this group, most notably Noonan syndrome and Costello syndrome. CFC is genetically heterogeneous and caused by gene mutations in the Ras/mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway. The major features of CFC include characteristic craniofacial dysmorphology, congenital heart disease, dermatologic abnormalities, growth retardation, and intellectual disability. It is essential that this condition be differentiated from other RASopathies, as a correct diagnosis is important for appropriate medical management and determining recurrence risk. Children and adults with CFC require multidisciplinary care from specialists, and the need for comprehensive management has been apparent to families and health care professionals caring for affected individuals. To address this need, CFC International, a nonprofit family support organization that provides a forum for information, support, and facilitation of research in basic medical and social issues affecting individuals with CFC, organized a consensus conference. Experts in multiple medical specialties provided clinical management guidelines for pediatricians and other care providers. These guidelines will assist in an accurate diagnosis of individuals with CFC, provide best practice recommendations, and facilitate long-term medical care.


Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a key homeostatic role by suppressing immune responses. They have been targeted in mouse and human cancer studies to improve vaccine immunogenicity and tumor clearance. A number of commercially available drugs and experimental vaccine adjuvants have been shown to target Tregs. Infants have high numbers of Tregs and often have poor responses to vaccination, yet the role Tregs play in controlling vaccine immunogenicity has not been explored in this age group. Herein, we explore the role of CD4+FOXP3+CD127− Tregs in controlling immunity in infant males and females to vaccination with diphtheria–tetanus–whole cell pertussis (DTP) and/or measles vaccine (MV). We find correlative evidence that circulating Tregs at the time of vaccination suppress antibody responses to MV but not DTP; and Tregs 4 weeks after DTP vaccination may suppress vaccine-specific cellular immunity. This opens the exciting possibility that Tregs may provide a future target for improved vaccine responses in early life, including reducing the number of doses of vaccine required. Such an approach would need to be safe and the benefits outweigh the risks, thus further research in this area is required.


Course guide to support the CL 552 Methods of Literary Study: Theory and Practice of Literary Translation II taught by Robert E. Hegel (Spring 2009)


An electrophysiological bioassay was used to isolate the active compound from Hochuekkito (HET), which the current authors previously described as having potent agonist action against serotonin 2C receptors (5-HT2CR). Synthetic 5-HT2CR mRNA was injected into Xenopus oocytes to specifically express these receptors. Crude extracts and purified products were subjected to an electrophysiological bioassay using the voltage clamp method. HET stimulated a 5-HT2CR-induced current response, whereas Juzentaohoto (JTT), which has anti-depressive action similar to that of HET, did not. Current responses were not observed with an extract mixed with five types of herbal medicines common to HET and JTT but were detected with an extract with the five types of herbal medicines found in HET alone (Hoc5). When the responses to each of the five types of Hoc5 were examined, current responses were noted with Cimicifugae rhizoma (CR) and Citrus unshiu Markovich extracts. Since efficacy and the EC50 value were higher for CR, its constituents were separated using three-dimensional high-performance liquid chromatography and the current response at each of the isolated peaks was examined. One constituent displayed a strong response and was identified as a single substance with a molecular weight of 283.1393 based on liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. These results will contribute to the isolation of 5-HT2CR-stimulating constituents in HET and the identification of trace constituents with agonist action.


Historically the urban festival served as an occasion for affirming shared convictions and identities in the life of the city. Whether religious or civic in nature, these events provided tangible expressions of social, cultural, political, and religious cohesion, often reaffirming a particular shared ethos within diverse urban landscapes. Architecture has long served as a key aspect of this process exhibiting continuity in the flux of these representations through the parading of elaborate ceremonial floats, the construction of temporary buildings, the 'dressing' of existing urban space, the alternative occupations of the everyday, and the construction of new buildings and spaces which then become a part of the background fabric of the city.

This book examines how festivals can be used as a lens to examine the relationship between city and citizen and questions whether this is fixed through time, or has been transformed as a response to changes in the modern urban condition. Architecture, Festival and the City looks at the multilayered nature of a diverse selection of festivals and the way they incorporate both orderly (authoritative) and disorderly (subversive) components. The aim is to reveal how the civic nature of urban space is utilised through festival to represent ideas of belonging and identity. Recent political and social gatherings also raise questions about the relationship of these events to 'ritual' and whether traditional practices can serve as meaningful references in the twenty-first century.


OBJECTIVE: to present a case report of a child who developed sepsis by Salmonella enteritidis associated with the diagnosis of primary immunodeficiency. DESCRIPTION: a twenty-one months old boy presenting fever and skin lesions, bilateral pneumonia with pleural effusion and septic shock. Salmonella enteritidis was isolated in blood cultures and pleural fluid. The identification of the bacteria suggested the presence of the MIM syndrome. The diagnosis of IL-12Rb1 was confirmed after IL-12 and IFN-g levels were measured using patient cells in a culture medium. The results showed absence of IL-12 and the IFN-g post stimulation using BCG. COMMENTS: a severe infection by Salmonella enteritidis is strongly suggestive of an immune system dysfunction. Laboratory tests for humoral, cellular and innate immunity were performed. Interleukin 12 receptor b1 (IL-12 Rb1) deficiency was confirmed after specific laboratory evaluation. The use of INF-g is recommended in severe cases.


Every three years Tate Britain holds a Triennial exhibition showcasing new developments in recent art. This third Tate Triennial 2006 is curated by Beatrix Ruf, Director of the Kunsthalle in Zurich, who offers an international perspective on the present British art scene. She has brought together thirty-six artists who all explore a significant strand in contemporary art: the reuse and recasting of cultural material.

The exhibition features artists from across different generations who work with a diverse range of media: from film, painting, photography, and sculpture to installation and live work. Many of the works in this exhibition focus on themes of repetition, reprocessing and the appropriation of images and facts, on a spectrum between tribute and pastiche.

Different visual codes and imagery are being combined, often from competing rather than connecting influences, to create highly personal languages. Its forms range from the classic reiteration of motifs, collage and montage to file sharing and digital reproduction. While these approaches are most commonly associated with postmodernism, the Tate Triennial reveals how an entirely new range of possibilities is reinvigorating such processes in current art practice.


With the increase of e-learning by universities and educational institutes in the world through more electronic platforms, come the questions to researchers, educators and designers of electronic platforms about feasibility and using this method of learning. Are we achieving the desired goals and improving the quality of education? Are we improving their performance and ability to self-study without the need for a teacher? Is e-learning an effective and successful method from the students views? In this paper, we consider evaluate e-learning systems in statistics. We make an evaluation study, we analyze a students sample of the methods: Factor analysis, Logit model. The common aim of this evaluation is to provide data to justify the results or evidence to support that the e-learning platforms are helping the students to learn more effectively. The questionnaire covers information about e-learning evaluation criterias. Some of these criterias are: Navigability, applicability, instructional structure and interactivity.


OBJECTIVES: This paper describes two methods of estimating the age specific incidence rates of childhood burns from a prevalence survey of burn scars. METHODS: A prevalence survey of burn scars was carried out in 1992 on 15,742 Ghanaian children aged 5 years or less. Nine hundred and fifty five (6.1%) of these children had scars from burn, and for 630 (66%) of these children, additional information about the burn incident, including the child's age at the time of the burn, was obtained from the mother two to three months later. Thirty four per cent of mothers of children with burn scars were not interviewed due to absence, relocation, or inaccessibility. Age specific incidence rates of burns were estimated for eight age groups using two methods. In method I, the number of incident cases of burns for each age group were estimated from the burn scars by subtracting the estimated contribution of scars from burns that had occurred at earlier ages. In method II, the estimate was based on the mother's recall of the age of the child at the time of the burn. RESULTS: Slightly different results were obtained with the two methods, and problems were noted with both methods. CONCLUSION: We recommend the use of these methods for estimating age specific incidence rates from retrospective population surveys for health conditions which result in long term residual markers.


The availability of large scale event data with time stamps has given rise to dynamically evolving knowledge graphs that contain temporal information for each edge. Reasoning over time in such dynamic knowledge graphs is not yet well understood. To this end, we present Know-Evolve, a novel deep evolutionary knowledge network that learns non-linearly evolving entity representations over time. The occurrence of a fact (edge) is modeled as a multivariate point process whose intensity function is modulated by the score for that fact computed based on the learned entity embeddings. We demonstrate significantly improved performance over various relational learning approaches on two large scale real-world datasets. Further, our method effectively predicts occurrence or recurrence time of a fact which is novel compared to prior reasoning approaches in multi-relational setting.


Reuse can be the key to significant gains in productivity and development speed-up, and can yield savings with respect to several project cost items. Different kinds of reuse can be leveraged, ranging from simple source code "cut&paste" to architectural reuse. To the best of our knowledge there is few evidence in literature of real reuse experience in production environments, and previous work does not classify results according to a comprehensive taxonomy such as the one adopted here.

This paper presents the main results of a seven-year experience conducted by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) Central Administration in developing and maintaining Information Systems, leveraging open standards, open source platforms and tools and exploiting different kinds of internal and external reuse. Some of the most important software applications developed by our internal team are described here and figures are provided showing the benefits in terms of cost reduction and development speed-up.


The first wave of COVID-19 rapidly spread worldwide during the first half of 2020. Since August 2020, the second wave of COVID-19 has been rampaging across most countries, coinciding with the initial winter period. A third wave may likely occur during the late spring of 2021. These peaks coincided with annual winter flu season in countries located in northern and the southern-most latitudes, during their respective winter periods. Recently identified COVID-19 mutant has rapidly spread into many countries in the world, faster than the original COVID-19. An acquisition of gene mutation in spike-protein, this mutant developed increased infectiousness but less lethal than the original virus.


Nature is creating extraordinarily complex systems from rather simple building blocks by self assembly. Supramolecular chemistry is inspired by these thermodynamically controlled self assembly processes using them as a tool to create nanoscale architectures. Various examples of self assembled dendrimers are published that are based on different non covalent interactions. However, most examples in literature are restricted to unpolar solvents. In case of biological applications systems are of interest that form stable aggregates in water in the range of pH 5-8.
In the present work a pH triggered highly stable self assembly of homodimeric supramolecular dendrimers in pure water is reported. The system is based on guanidiniocarbonylpyrrole carboxylate zwitterions as efficient self complementary binding site and biocompatible 1st to 3rd generation polyglycerol dendrons.


Landfast ice covers large surface areas of the winter Siberian Seas. The immobile landfast ice cover inhibits divergent and convergent motion, hence dynamical sea ice growth and redistribution, decouples winter river plumes in coastal seas from the atmosphere, and positions polynyas at the landfast ice edge offshore. In spite of the potentially large effects, state-of-the-art numerical models usually do not represent landfast ice in its correct extent. A simple parametrization of landfast ice based on bathymetry and internal sea ice strength is introduced and its effects on the simulated Arctic Ocean are demonstrated. The simulations suggest that the Siberian landfast ice impacts the Arctic halocline stability through enhanced brine production in polynyas located closer to the shelf break and by redirecting river water to the Canadian Basin. These processes strengthen the halocline in the Canadian Basin, but erode its stability in the Makarov and Eurasian Basins.


Between AD c.860 and c.970, hundreds of thousands of silver coins (dirhams) from Central Asia reached Scandinavia, where evidence suggests adoption within market environments as commodity-money within a hacksilver currency. Although several hundred dirhams are found in hoards and as single-finds in Britain and Ireland, the extension of this 'economic' phenomenon here is rarely discussed due to a focus on social exchange. This bias comes from a failure to incorporate market-based network theory developed in recent Scandinavian Baltic studies on the back of that region's dirham influx, and the excavation there of market sites like Birka, Hedeby, and Kaupang probably responsible for their further dissemination.
Considered for the first time, then, this study allows an Insular dirham dataset assembled in a new database to be interpreted beyond the restrictive corpus of Viking-Age Insular exchange literature. The Baltic perspectives, centred on the nodal network role of hub markets like Hedeby in Jutland, offer the best model of how long-distance exchange operated in the period c.850-950. Accordingly, the nodal Insular Scandinavian import and export sites of Dublin and York are contextualised within the distribution of Insular dirham deposits to characterise the economic and social context of this network.
Beyond the dirhams, this 'Silver Route' network is considered responsible for the bi-directional trade of high-value commodities between Insular Scandinavia, England, and the Baltic. Thus, a new non-numismatic database includes pieces considered to have arrived in Britain and Ireland in concert with the dirhams. This database – included in a CD alongside the dirham data – includes metrological equipment, jewellery, amber, silk, and silver of Scandinavian Baltic, Eastern European, and Central Asian origin. Like the numismatic material, the non-numismatic data support a model of network kingdoms, defined as polities based on control of nodal/hub markets and influence over the trade routes connecting them, with the latter aspect requiring royal co-operation with independent long-distance and regional traders.
From this point of departure, a case is made for Ivarr and the Ui Imair using control of Dublin and York to introduce an import and currency package to Britain and Ireland from a possible homeland in a 'Danish Corridor' focussed on Kaupang and Hedeby. This idea of market-centric polities is alloyed by the use of post-substantivist economic theory, which argues that nodal-market sites encouraged the social and exchange conditions where market economics and production could flourish. While it is accepted that socially-embedded exchange dominated Viking-Age Scandinavia, post-substantivism allows for the increasing import of market exchange, and it is applied to Insular Scandinavia for the first time here.


Large knowledge graphs increasingly add great value to various applications that require machines to recognize and understand queries and their semantics, as in search or question answering systems. These applications include Google search, Bing search, IBM's Watson, but also smart mobile assistants as Apple's Siri, Google Now or Microsoft's Cortana. Popular knowledge graphs like DBpedia, YAGO or Freebase store a broad range of facts about the world, to a large extent derived from Wikipedia, currently the biggest web encyclopedia. In addition to these freely accessible open knowledge graphs, commercial ones have also evolved including the well-known Google Knowledge Graph or Microsoft's Satori. Since incompleteness and veracity of knowledge graphs are known problems, the statistical modeling of knowledge graphs has increasingly gained attention in recent years. Some of the leading approaches are based on latent variable models which show both excellent predictive performance and scalability. Latent variable models learn embedding representations of domain entities and relations (representation learning). From these embeddings, priors for every possible fact in the knowledge graph are generated which can be exploited for data cleansing, completion or as prior knowledge to support triple extraction from unstructured textual data as successfully demonstrated by Google's Knowledge-Vault project. However, large knowledge graphs impose constraints on the complexity of the latent embeddings learned by these models. For graphs with millions of entities and thousands of relation-types, latent variable models are required to exploit low dimensional embeddings for entities and relation-types to be tractable when applied to these graphs. The work described in this thesis extends the application of latent variable models for large knowledge graphs in three important dimensions. First, it is shown how the integration of ontological constraints on the domain and range of relation-types enables latent variable models to exploit latent embeddings of reduced complexity for modeling large knowledge graphs. The integration of this prior knowledge into the models leads to a substantial increase both in predictive performance and scalability with improvements of up to 77% in link-prediction tasks. Since manually designed domain and range constraints can be absent or fuzzy, we also propose and study an alternative approach based on a local closed-world assumption, which derives domain and range constraints from observed data without the need of prior knowledge extracted from the curated schema of the knowledge graph. We show that such an approach also leads to similar significant improvements in modeling quality. Further, we demonstrate that these two types of domain and range constraints are of general value to latent variable models by integrating and evaluating them on the current state of the art of latent variable models represented by RESCAL, Translational Embedding, and the neural network approach used by the recently proposed Google Knowledge Vault system. In the second part of the thesis it is shown that the just mentioned three approaches all perform well, but do not share many commonalities in the way they model knowledge graphs. These differences can be exploited in ensemble solutions which improve the predictive performance even further. The third part of the thesis concerns the efficient querying of the statistically modeled knowledge graphs. This thesis interprets statistically modeled knowledge graphs as probabilistic databases, where the latent variable models define a probability distribution for triples. From this perspective, link-prediction is equivalent to querying ground triples which is a standard functionality of the latent variable models. For more complex querying that involves e.g. joins and projections, the theory on probabilistic databases provides evaluation rules. In this thesis it is shown how the intrinsic features of latent variable models can be combined with the theory of probabilistic databases to realize efficient probabilistic querying of the modeled graphs.


A significant amount of work has transpired over the past several years in generating consensus-based standards that include ASME PCC-2 and ISO 24817 for developing composite repair systems. The intent in developing these standards has been to provide industry with guidelines for designing composite repair systems to ensure that damaged pipelines and piping systems are safely and properly reinforced. With the numerous composite repair systems currently available to pipeline operators, the importance of evaluating the capabilities of each system cannot be overstated. The fundamental design variables available to manufacturers are stiffness, strength, and thickness of the composite. A properly-designed repair system ensures that strains in the reinforced steel and reinforcing composite material do not reach unacceptable levels. This paper provides a basic overview of the design philosophy embedded into the current design codes, as well as presenting results associated with several specific studies that were conducted to evaluate composite repair performance.© 2010 ASME


Dionide hectori Reed, 1926, is shown on the basis of new collections from the type area in New Zealand to be a Tremadocian ceratopygide close to Hysterolenus. The species was placed in Taihungshania by Kobayashi (1941). It was provisionally retained in the Taihungshaniidae by Lu (1975) who made hectori type species of a new genus Hectoria (non Hectoria Trechmann, 1918). Ruapyge nom.nov. is proposed here for the reception of hectori. The original length/width ratio is determined by Wellman's method, with little consistency in results. Data from the strain ellipses constructed by Wellman's method are then used to calculate values for the attitude of the line of no finite longitudinal strain. The values obtained graphically do not agree with those derived from a formula given by Ramsay (1967); this contradictory situation is in need of explanation.


Author(s): Brown, Taylor NT; Herman, Jody | Abstract: There are ten states that require voters to provide photo identification in order to vote at the polls and mandate that those who do not do so undertake additional steps to ensure their vote is counted. Transgender people who are residents of these states with strict photo identification requirements for voting may face unique challenges when voting at the polls. To ensure that they are able to vote at the polls, potential voters need to make sure that their appearance, photo ID, and voter registration information match. In this report, we examine in detail the additional steps and costs that transgender people may encounter in order to vote at the polls in states with the strictest photo identification laws.