The Internet and subsequently the World Wide Web made it possible for individual authors and new, independently-produced electronic publications to reach vastly greater numbers of readers than had previously been possible. The proliferation of electronic versions of commercial print journals that followed, however, has so far done little to alter the formal structures, character and culture of scholarly journals from the user's perspective. The Web also represents the first large-scale use of a hypertext system, but hypertext developers have been disdainful of it as a limited implementation of other models. In turn, a criticism of some hypertext systems is that they have been too focused on system performance rather than the needs of users. This thesis examines the contention that augmenting the Web with a hypertext linking service will support the development of a new type of interconnected journal that allows users to explore individual lines of enquiry more efficiently. In this case the 'journal' frames a user-centric information environment, where selected documents can be distributed and accessed anywhere on the Web. Editorially-added links act as the binding between the resources selected for inclusion, and the selection and commentary on documents exercise the journal's editorial 'voice'. A 'journal' based on this model was built and subjected to extensive evaluation by a targetted specialist group. In a series of tests these users were invited to offer their views on this and more general journal models; because this was not a hypothetical model their responses could be cross-checked against the results of their experiences of using the new journal model. Thus, users could not hide their true preferences. Although small in number, the target evaluation group provided strong reactions both for and against the model, revealing some of the challenges that radical new electronic journal models face if the structure of the traditional printed journal is to be displaced in favour of journals that can properly exploit the prospect of fully interconnected and accessible networked distribution.


There are few studies on the neuroprotective effects of syringaldehyde in a rat model of cerebral ischemia. The study aimed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the neuroprotective effects of syringaldehyde on ischemic brain cells. Rat models of cerebral ischemia were intraperitoneally administered syringaldehyde. At 6 and 24 hours after syringaldehyde administration, cell damage in the brain of cerebral ischemia rats was obviously reduced, superoxide dismutase activity and nuclear respiratory factor 1 expression in the brain tissue were markedly increased, malondiadehyde level was obviously decreased, apoptosis-related cysteine peptidase caspase-3 and -9 immunoreactivity was obviously decreased, and neurological function was markedly improved. These findings suggest that syringaldehyde exerts neuroprotective effects on cerebral ischemia injury through anti-oxidation and anti-apoptosis.


Abstract This study reports on an investigation into the voice onset time (VOT) patterns of the plosives /p b t d/ in a group of 30 children aged 7 (n = 10), 9 (n = 10) and 11 (n = 10) years. Equal numbers of girls and boys participated in the study. Each child named a series of letter objects to elicit /p b t d/ in a syllable onset position with a fixed vowel context. VOT data were examined for age, sex and plosive differences with the following hypotheses: Firstly, that there would be sex differences in the VOT patterns of preadolescent children. Secondly, that the sex differences in VOT patterns would be linked to age and development, and that these would eventually become marked by the age of 11 years, by which time adult-like VOT values should have been achieved. Finally, that the extent of sex and age differences would be dependent upon the plosive being investigated. Results indicated patterns of decrease with age in the VOT values of /p b/ for the boys, with some evidence of increases in the VOT values of /t/ for the girls. In addition, 'voiced' and 'voiceless' cognates showed a more marked bimodal distribution in the girls' VOT patterns. This bimodal distribution was investigated by examining the degree of difference between the VOT values of voiced and voiceless cognate pairs /p b/ and /t d/, and examining the effects of age, sex and cognate pair. These results indicated that more marked sex differences in the 'voiced'/'voiceless' contrast emerged between the data of the 9- and 11-year-olds, a pattern, which was more marked for the alveolar plosives. These preliminary results confirmed all three hypotheses. The findings are presented and discussed both within a developmental and sociophonetic framework.


The A.D. 2011 Tohoku-Oki M w 9 earthquake ruptured the megathrust
up to the Japan Trench with a large displacement and caused
a catastrophic tsunami. This study is the first to use short-lived radioisotopes,
including those emitted by the damaged nuclear reactors at
the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (Japan), to document the
remobilization of the upper few centimeters of sediment as a highly
significant process triggered by the earthquake and its aftershocks.
Targeting the post-earthquake environment allowed characterization
of the sedimentary signature of this event for a better understanding
of paleoearthquakes in Japan and other tectonically active boundary
areas. The results stem from 23 piston cores recovered by the 2013
expedition NT13-19 of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science
and Technology. We document submarine homogeneous muddy flow
deposits that were triggered by ground motion in 2011. They are highly
enriched with excess (xs) xs 210 Pb, requiring only centimeters-deep
sediment remobilization over large areas of the seafloor. Some contain
 134 Cs and 137 Cs radioisotopes derived from the Fukushima nuclear
reactors, indicating that sedimentation persisted for at least 30 days
after the main shock. We found these deposits at all sampling sites in
an ∼5000 km 2 area of the seafloor in 4000–6000 m of water depth. The
study area extends for ∼260 km parallel to the strike of the trench.
The thickness of this "Tohoku layer" (3–200 cm) increases toward the
zone of maximum megathrust slip, where deposits are thickest. These
results demonstrate that the shaking of the seafloor above large megathrust
ruptures near the trench remobilized surficial unconsolidated
sediment for hundreds of kilometers. The characteristics of these
deposits may typify deposits resulting from large fault slips like that
of the Tohoku-Oki earthquake, but also other earthquake deposits,
contributing to their identification in the sedimentary record globally.


Rb-Sr and Pb/Pb whole rock isochrons for the "grey gneiss" complex yield typical Scourian ages of 2690 ± 140 m.y. and 2640 ± 120 m.y. respectively, probably dating Scourian metamorphism. Subsequent events (< 2100 m.y.) produced complete or partial loss of radiogenic 40Ar from minerals, but left the whole rock samples closed systems to Rb, Sr, U and Pb. The suggestion of an early Laxfordian granulite facies event followed by regional retrogression to amphibolite facies is thereby rendered most unlikely. Consideration of the initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio for the grey gneiss complex of 0.7014 ± 0.0007, as well as of the Pb isotope ratios, strongly suggests that the precursors of the "grey gneiss' complex were derived from upper mantle source regions not more than 100–200 m.y. prior to the Scourian metamorphism, and rule out the possibility that the complex represents the reworking of a significantly older gneissic basement complex with anything like normal crustal Rb/Sr ratios.


`Firestorms,' sudden bursts of negative attention in cases of controversy and outrage, are seemingly widespread on Twitter and are an increasing source of fascination and anxiety in the corporate, governmental, and public spheres. Using media mentions, we collect 80 candidate events from January 2011 to September 2014 that we would term `firestorms.' Using data from the Twitter decahose (or gardenhose), a 10% random sample of all tweets, we describe the size and longevity of these firestorms. We take two firestorm exemplars, #myNYPD and #CancelColbert, as case studies to describe more fully. Then, taking the 20 firestorms with the most tweets, we look at the change in mention networks of participants over the course of the firestorm as one method of testing for possible impacts of firestorms. We find that the mention networks before and after the firestorms are more similar to each other than to those of the firestorms, suggesting that firestorms neither emerge from existing networks, nor do they result in lasting changes to social structure. To verify this, we randomly sample users and generate mention networks for baseline comparison, and find that the firestorms are not associated with a greater than random amount of change in mention networks.


Acinetobacter baumannii persists in the medical environment and causes severe human nosocomial infections. Previous studies showed that low-level ethanol exposure increases the virulence of A. baumannii ATCC 17978. To better understand the mechanisms involved in this response, 2-D gel electrophoresis combined with mass spectrometry was used to investigate differential protein production in bacteria cultured in the presence or absence of ethanol. This approach showed that the presence of ethanol significantly induces and represses the production of 22 and 12 proteins, respectively. Although over 25% of the ethanol-induced proteins were stress-response related, the overall bacterial viability was uncompromised when cultured under these conditions. Production of proteins involved in lipid and carbohydrate anabolism was increased in the presence of ethanol, a response that correlates with increased carbohydrate biofilm content, enhanced biofilm formation on abiotic surfaces and decrease bacterial motility on semi-solid surfaces. The presence of ethanol also induced the acidification of bacterial cultures and the production of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), a ubiquitous plant hormone that signals bacterial stress-tolerance and promotes plant-bacteria interactions. These responses could be responsible for the significantly enhanced virulence of A. baumannii ATCC 17978 cells cultured in the presence of ethanol when tested with the Galleria mellonella experimental infection model. Taken together, these observations provide new insights into the effect of ethanol in bacterial virulence. This alcohol predisposes the human host to infections by A. baumannii and could favor the survival and adaptation of this pathogen to medical settings and adverse host environments.


Background Government policy has precipitated recent changes in the provision of harm reduction interventions – injecting equipment provision (IEP) and opiate substitution therapy (OST) – for people who inject drugs (PWID) in Scotland. We sought to examine the potential impact of these changes on hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission among PWID. Methods and Findings We used a framework to triangulate different types of evidence: 'group-level/ecological' and 'individual-level'. Evidence was primarily generated from bio-behavioural cross-sectional surveys of PWID, undertaken during 2008-2012. Individuals in the window period (1–2 months) where the virus is present, but antibodies have not yet been formed, were considered to have recent infection. The survey data were supplemented with service data on the provision of injecting equipment and OST. Ecological analyses examined changes in intervention provision, self-reported intervention uptake, self-reported risk behaviour and HCV incidence; individual-level analyses investigated relationships within the pooled survey data. Nearly 8,000 PWID were recruited in the surveys. We observed a decline in HCV incidence, per 100 person-years, from 13.6 (95% CI: 8.1–20.1) in 2008–09 to 7.3 (3.0–12.9) in 2011–12; a period during which increases in the coverage of OST and IEP, and decreases in the frequency of injecting and sharing of injecting equipment, were observed. Individual-level evidence demonstrated that combined high coverage of needles/syringes and OST were associated with reduced risk of recent HCV in analyses that were unweighted (AOR 0.29, 95%CI 0.11–0.74) and weighted for frequency of injecting (AORw 0.05, 95%CI 0.01–0.18). We estimate the combination of harm reduction interventions may have averted 1400 new HCV infections during 2008–2012. Conclusions This is the first study to demonstrate that impressive reductions in HCV incidence can be achieved among PWID over a relatively short time period through high coverage of a combination of interventions.


Objectives: High tibial osteotomy (HTO) has become a well-established treatment for unicompartmental osteoarthritis of the knee. Over the last 30 years, various techniques have been introduced to advance this procedure. The purpose of this study is to review the outcomes of patients who received medial opening wedge HTO over the last ten years (2002-2012) using a modern, low profile, medially based fixation device. In addition, we sought to determine if obese patients had a less favorable outcome than their non-obese counterparts. Methods: Ninety-three patients were identified from a surgical database as having undergone a HTO for medial compartment osteoarthritis of the knee with varus mal-alignment . All procedures were performed by one of two fellowship trained orthopedic surgeons from 2002-2012 utilizing a low profile fixation device and identical surgical technique. Minimum follow-up was one year for inclusion in the study. Outcomes were measured using Lysholm and WOMAC scores. Radiographs were evaluated to determine delayed union or non-union at the osteotomy site and surveillance was undertaken to evaluate post operative complications. Results: 93 patients were identified from the database, 63 (70%) were available for follow-up and are included in this analysis. Average follow-up time was 48 months (range 17 to 137). There were 44 males and 19 females. The average age was 45 years old. The average final Lysholm and WOMAC scores were 66.4 (range: 13-100) and 18.6 (range: 0-86) respectively. There was no significant difference in reported Lysholm or WOMAC scores between obese (BMI >30) and non-obese patients (p=.31;p=.69). Complications were as follows: 3 patients required a surgical lysis of adhesions, 2 patients developed an infection, and 1 patient experienced a delayed union. At final follow-up, 18 patients received additional treatment on the affected knee: 11 required removal of symptomatic hardware, 5 received viscosupplementation, 2 underwent a total knee replacement. Conclusion: Low profile, medial based devices used in the setting of HTO is an accepted treatment for unicompartmental osteoarthritis of the knee. At final follow-up, a majority of patients reported positive outcomes and few complications. 18 patients required additional treatment for osteoarthritis. In our analysis, obese patients faired equally as well as their non-obese counterparts, with no significant difference in outcomes scores or complication rate. Survivorship of high tibial osteotomy was excellent in this series, with only 2 patients having undergone total knee replacement at last follow-up.


Background: Various clinical and histological factors have helped in predicting the survival of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). However, there has been a need for more specialized diagnostic and prognostic factors to avoid subjective variation among opinion. Thus, fractal dimension (FD) can be used as an index of the morphological changes that the epithelial cells undergo during their transformation into neoplastic cell. In oral cancer study, nuclear FD (NFD) can be used as a quantitative index to discriminate between normal, dysplastic and neoplastic oral mucosa. Aim: To use nuclear fractal geometry to compare the morphometric complexity in the normal, epithelial dysplasia and OSCC cases and to verify the difference among the various histological grades of dysplasia and OSCC. It was fulfilled by estimating the FDs of the nuclear surface. Materials and Methods: Histopathologically diagnosed cases of epithelial dysplasia and OSCC were taken from the archives. Photomicrographs were captured with the help of Lawrence and Mayo research microscope. The images were then subjected to image analysis using the Image J software with FracLac plugin java 1.6 to obtain FDs. FD of ten selected nuclei was calculated using the box-counting algorithm. Statistical Analysis: was done using descriptive analysis, ANOVA and Tukey's honest significant difference post hoc tests with STATAIC-13 software. Results and Conclusion: NFD can provide valuable information to discriminate between normal mucosa, dysplasia and carcinoma objectively without subjective discrimination.


Line illumination geometries have advantageous properties for temporal focusing nonlinear microscopy. The characteristics of line temporal focusing (LITEF) in transparent and scattering media are studied here both experimentally and using numerical model simulations. We introduce an approximate analytical formula for the dependence of axial sectioning on the laser and microscope's parameters. Furthermore, we show that LITEF is more robust to tissue scattering than wide-field temporal focusing, and can penetrate much deeper into scattering tissue while maintaining good sectioning capabilities. Based on these observations, we propose a new design for LITEF-based tissue imaging at depths that could potentially exceed the out-of-focus physical excitation limit.


The paper examined the extent of availability and accessibility of electronic information resources to medical library users in south-South, Nigeria universities. The study adopted descriptive survey design to assess the availability of different types of electronic information resources and their accessibility to different categories of medical library users. The total population of the study comprised 226 medical library users of four federal universities in the south-South, Nigerian universities. Four (4) research questions guided the study. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire instrument. The Data were analysed using descriptive statistics of percentages, mean and standard deviations. The criterion mean of 2.5 was used to judge the responses as to whether they were negative or positive. Results from the study showed that the overall percentage of availability of electronic information resources in all the medical libraries studied was rather low, about 30.9% on the average. All electronic information resources studies were rarely accessible to all categories of users in medical libraries in the south-south, Nigerian universities. All respondents studied agreed that, inadequate information and communication technology skills, time constraints and inadequate library space did not constitute impediments to accessibility and competent use of electronic information resources rather, high cost of subscription, poor internet services, inadequate infrastructure, light fluctuations and lack of competent IT resource's persons were noted as major impediments in the libraries studied. The study recommends extension of library information services to clinics, regular subscription to electronic information resources, constant power supply and regular internet services for medical libraries.


A global overview of the ways in which contemporary artists draw on scientific and technological developments to explore new forms of creative expression. In the twenty-first century, some of the most dynamic works of art are being produced not in the studio but in the laboratory, where artists probe cultural, philosophical, and social questions connected with cutting-edge scientific and technological research. Their work ranges across disciplines—microbiology, the physical sciences, information technologies, human biology and living systems, kinetics and robotics—and takes in everything from eugenics to climate change to artificial intelligence. This comprehensive overview covers a dazzling array of work produced by some 250 artists from America, Japan, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the UK, and elsewhere. It presents a broad range of projects, from body art to bioengineering of plants and insects; from music, dance, and computer-controlled video performances to large-scale visual and sound installations. Special features include a full reading list and lists of pertinent museum collections, festivals, and research centers. 270+ color illustrations and photographs.


The Oligocene–Miocene Kailas Formation is exposed along strike for ∼1300 km within the southernmost Lhasa terrane. In this study, we documented the sedimentology, structure, and age of this unit exposed between 87°E and 90°E. Within this region, the Kailas Formation is composed of continental deposits dominated by conglomerate and sandstone, with lesser volumes of siltstone and paleosols. These rocks were deposited nonconformably on Gangdese Batholith and related volcanic rocks along their northern boundary, whereas to the south, the south-dipping Great Counter Thrust places them in contact with Xigaze forearc and melange units. We interpret the Kailas Formation to have been deposited in alluvial-fan and fluvial environments with sediment principally derived from the north. Based on sedimentology and structural relationships, we interpret these rocks to have formed in a north-south extensional setting. New zircon U-Pb ages from volcanic tuffs and flows show that Kailas Formation deposition is younger to the east: Deposition occurred between 26 Ma and 24 Ma in western Tibet (81°E), at 25–23 Ma north of Lazi (87.8°E), at 23–22 Ma near Dazhuka (89.8°E), and as late as 18 Ma southwest of Lhasa (92°E). Overall, basin development propagated eastward at a rate of ∼300 mm/yr. This pattern and rate of propagation are similar to that of the temporal-spatial distribution of adakitic and ultrapotassic magmatism within the Lhasa terrane to the north, which has been interpreted as a record of slab breakoff. Magmatism lags several million years behind Kailas basin development at most locations. We interpret the Kailas basin to have formed as the result of Indian slab shearing and breakoff, which began in western Tibet around 26 Ma and reached eastern Tibet by ca. 18 Ma.


For the past quarter-century, government and the private sector have relied heavily on risk assessment for making decisions, allowing widespread environmental deterioration. In this book, Mary O'Brien recommends a simple yet profound shift to another decision-making technique: "alternatives assessment." Instead of asking how much of a hazardous activity is safe (which translates into how much damage the environment can tolerate), alternatives assessment asks how we can avoid or minimize damage while achieving society's goals.Alternatives assessment is a simple, commonsense alternative to risk assessment. It is based on the premise that it is not acceptable to damage human and nonhuman health or the environment if there are reasonable alternatives. The approach calls for taking precautionary measures even if some cause-and-effect relationships have not been fully established scientifically. The process must involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action at all. Equally important, it must be democratic and include potentially affected parties.O'Brien not only makes a persuasive case for alternative assessment; she tells how to implement it. She also shows how this technique has profound implications for public health, for our stewardship of the environment, and for a truly democratic government.Published in association with the Environmental Research Foundation.


Colonic herniation through the esophageal hiatus is an unusual condition. Isolated trans-hiatal herniation of the transverse colon is very rare and only five cases have been reported. All these reported patients were symptomatic, and had dysphagia, epigastralgia, vomiting, dyspnea, cough, or palpitations. Hiatal hernia is an important clinical problem. Because of the severe complications of hiatal hernia, including bleeding, strangulation, and perforation, early diagnosis and treatment are important. A 75-year-old man who had prostate carcinoma was evaluated with multidetector computed tomography (MDCT). In this case, CT findings and clinical emphasis of the incidentally discovered isolated transverse colonic hiatal herniation was reviewed.


Objective: Despite a growing body of research supporting the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for depressed adolescents, few studies have investigated the role of the acquisition and use of CBT skills in accounting for symptom improvement. The present study examined the role of cognitive versus behavioral skills in predicting symptom improvement in depressed youth. Analyses considered different raters of patient skills (patient vs. therapist) as well as disaggregated between-patient versus within-patient effects. Method: Data were derived from a 12-week clinical trial of CBT for depressed adolescent females (N = 33; ages 13–18 years; 69.7% White). Both therapist-report and patient-report measures of CBT skills (skills of cognitive therapy) were acquired at 5 time points throughout therapy: Sessions 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12. Depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory-II) were assessed at every session. Results: Therapist and patient ratings of CBT skills showed small to moderate associations (rs = .20–.38). Intraclass correlation coefficients indicated that the majority of the variance in skills scores (61–90%) was attributable to within-patient variance from session to session, rather than due to between-patient differences. When disaggregating within-patient and between-patient effects, and consistent with a causal relationship, within-patient variability in both patient-rated (b = −2.55; p = .025) and therapist-rated (b = −2.41; p = .033) behavioral skills predicted subsequent symptom change. Conclusions: Analyses highlight the importance of the acquisition and use of behavioral skills in CBT for depressed adolescents. Findings also underscore the importance of disentangling within-patient from between-patient effects in future studies, an approach infrequently used in process-outcome research.


In 2009, Russia introduced a reform that changed the admissions process in all universities. Before 2009, admission decisions were based on institution-specific entry exams; the reform required universities to determine their decisions on the results of a national high-school test known as Unified State Exam (USE). One of the main goals of the reform was to make education in top colleges accessible to students from peripheral areas who typically did not enroll in university programs. Using panel data from 1994 to 2014, we evaluate the effect of the USE reform on student mobility. We find the reform led to a substantial increase in mobility rates among high school graduates from peripheral areas to start college by about 12 percentage points, a three-fold increase with respect to the pre-reform mobility rate. This was accompanied by a 40-50% increase in the likelihood of financial transfers from parents to children around the time of the move and a 70% increase in the share of educational expenditures in the last year of the child's high school. We find no effect on parental labor supply and divorce.


Group choice refers to the distribution of group members between two choice alternatives over time. The ideal free distribution (IFD), an optimal foraging model from behavioral ecology, predicts that the ratio of foragers at two resource sites should equal the ratio of obtained resources, a prediction that is formally analogous to the matching law of individual choice, except that group choice is a social phenomenon. Two experiments investigated the usefulness of IFD analyses of human group choice and individual-based explanations that might account for the group-level events. Instead of nonhuman animals foraging at two sites for resources, a group of humans chose blue and red cards to receive points that could earn cash prizes. The groups chose blue and red cards in ratios in positive relation to the ratios of points associated with the cards. When group choice ratios and point ratios were plotted on logarithmic coordinates and fitted with regression lines, the slopes (i.e., sensitivity measures) approached 1.0 but tended to fall short of it (i.e., undermatching), with little bias and little unaccounted for variance. These experiments demonstrate that an IFD analysis of group choice is possible and useful, and suggest that group choice may be explained by the individual members' tendency to optimize reinforcement.


The goal of semisupervised clustering/mixture modeling is to learn the underlying groups comprising a given data set when there is also some form of instance-level supervision available, usually in the form of labels or pairwise sample constraints. Most prior work with constraints assumes the number of classes is known, with each learned cluster assumed to be a class and, hence, subject to the given class constraints. When the number of classes is unknown or when the one-cluster-per-class assumption is not valid, the use of constraints may actually be deleterious to learning the ground-truth data groups. We address this by (1) allowing allocation of multiple mixture components to individual classes and (2) estimating both the number of components and the number of classes. We also address new class discovery, with components void of constraints treated as putative unknown classes. For both real-world and synthetic data, our method is shown to accurately estimate the number of classes and to give favorable comparison with the recent approach of Shental, Bar-Hillel, Hertz, and Weinshall (2003).


Objectives: To evaluate celluar and antibody mediated rejection in a group of patients after heart transplantation (HTX), performed in the authors' institution during a six-year period.
Method: A retrospective analysis of patients surviving ≥12 months after HTX was performed. Rejection was evaluated from the samples obtained during endomyocardial biopsy, and graft function was assessed using echocardiography. The duration of follow-up ranged from 12 to 72 months.
Results: In the 196 patients evaluated, 65 treated episodes of cellular rejection were recorded in 50 patients, with significant reduction on tacrolimus prophylaxis. Antibody mediated rejection occured in 5.6% of patients, and was complicated by graft dysfunction in 64%.
Conclusion: Contemporary immunosuppressive prophylaxis decreases the frequency of cellular rejection, allowing modification of endomyocardial biopsy schedule. Antibody mediated rejection is a relatively rare but clinically important complication after HTX, and necessitates combined agressive therapy.


The article offers a critical discussion of the welfare-to-work regime and developments since the Welfare Reform Act 2007 was enacted, with a particular focus on policies towards those who are incapacitated from work. It considers a new measure, the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) which is replacing both Incapacity Benefit and other forms of support such as the 'incapacitated from work' and 'disabled worker' categories of Income Support. As the article considers, this is just one of the strands in the government's evolving 'empowerment' agenda unveiled in A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering People to Work (2006, Cm 6730). This has the declared aim of increasing the labour market participation rates of sizeable groups such as those in receipt of Incapacity Benefit and those who are disabled, as well as lone parents, carers, older workers, and unemployed people in the ethnic minority communities. A critical assessment is made of wider reform objectives such as achievement of an overall national 'employment rate' of 80% - an increase of nearly 7% on the latest figures for the UK issued by the OECD's Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics, and the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey figures. Much of the article's attention is focused on the kind of interventions described in 'Reducing Dependency, Increasing Opportunity: Options for the Future of Welfare to Work' (David Freud: Department of Work and Pensions, March 2007).


The zeroth-order cross-reflection coefficients of a surface-relief grating are shown to be equal from experimental evidence and numerical evidence by use of rigorous coupled-wave analysis simulations. This result is valid for any range of grating parameters as well as for anisotropic media that have the optic axis in the surface plane. This result is corroborated by effective-medium theory, which models the gratings as thin layers of uniaxial anisotropic media that have the optic axis in the surface plane. For asymmetric grating profiles the zeroth-order reflection coefficients are no longer identical. This property has potential for scatterometry applications.


Somatic growth dynamics are an integrated response to environmental conditions. Hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) are long-lived, major consumers in coral reef habitats that move over broad geographic areas (hundreds to thousands of kilometers). We evaluated spatio-temporal effects on hawksbill growth dynamics over a 33-yr period and 24 study sites throughout the West Atlantic and explored relationships between growth dynamics and climate indices. We compiled the largest ever data set on somatic growth rates for hawksbills - 3541 growth increments from 1980 to 2013. Using generalized additive mixed model analyses, we evaluated 10 covariates, including spatial and temporal variation, that could affect growth rates. Growth rates throughout the region responded similarly over space and time. The lack of a spatial effect or spatio-temporal interaction and the very strong temporal effect reveal that growth rates in West Atlantic hawksbills are likely driven by region-wide forces. Between 1997 and 2013, mean growth rates declined significantly and steadily by 18%. Regional climate indices have significant relationships with annual growth rates with 0-or 1-yr lags: positive with the Multivariate El Nino Southern Oscillation Index (correlation = 0.99) and negative with Caribbean sea surface temperature (correlation = -0.85). Declines in growth rates between 1997 and 2013 throughout the West Atlantic most likely resulted from warming waters through indirect negative effects on foraging resources of hawksbills. These climatic influences are complex. With increasing temperatures, trajectories of decline of coral cover and availability in reef habitats of major prey species of hawksbills are not parallel. Knowledge of how choice of foraging habitats, prey selection, and prey abundance are affected by warming water temperatures is needed to understand how climate change will affect productivity of consumers that live in association with coral reefs.


This paper focuses on the fact that Russia is to see an accelerated and unregulated growth of the car fleet, while the development of the road network is seriously lagging behind. The paper looks at the theoretical aspects of the internalization of transport externalities and analyzes negative externalities of car use. It characterizes the key negative impacts that potentially need to be offset through transport tax. It is proved that the impacts are most prominent in areas with a higher rate of car ownership where a large part of the population develops strong automobile dependency. The hypothesis is put forth that the situations differ with regard to positive and negative externalities and, consequently, should determine different conditions for transport tax, the development of the road network and vehicle growth control policies. The model of transport tax that exists now in Russia is analyzed and its key advantages and disadvantages are outlined. This paper provides reasons for a conclusion that the current tax rates in Russia's regions are not aligned with the level of road infrastructure. New goals for the tax reform are proposed: to enhance its fiscal function and assign it a regulatory role. Conceptual provisions of a new transport tax model have been formulated and a differentiation system has been substantiated for territories and tax rates depending on a ratio of positive and negative effects of car use.


How does retirement influence subjective well-being? Some studies suggest retirement does not affect subjective well-being or may improve it. Others suggest it adversely affects it. This paper aims at advancing our understanding of the effect of retirement on subjective well-being by (1) using longitudinal data to tease out the retirement effect from age and cohort differences; (2) using instrumental variables to address potential reverse causation of subjective well-being on retirement decisions; and (3) conducting cross-country analyses, exploiting differences in eligibility ages for retirement benefits across countries and within countries. We use panel data from the US Health and Retirement Study and the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe. This allows us to use a quasi-experimental approach where variations in public pension eligibility due to country and cohort specific retirement ages help identify retirement effects. For both the U.S. and Europe we find that retirement is associated with higher levels of depression. However, when we use instrumental variables we find the opposite result. Retirement induced through Social Security pension eligibility is found to have a positive effect, reducing depression symptoms, although only marginally significant for the U.S. when considering the depression indicator. Retirement is not found to have a significant effect on life satisfaction measures for either the U.S. or Europe.


The Millennium Challenge Account's (MCA) focus on results and creating incentives for developing countries to enact good policy continues to hold promise for a well-needed change in government-driven international development assistance. The continued success of the MCA will depend on the ability of the leadership to allow the mission - to reduce poverty through growth - to guide decisions. The Criteria and Methodology for Determining the Eligibility of Candidate Countries for Millennium Challenge Account Assistance in FY2006 reemphasizes the MCC's commitment to economic freedom and a strong entrepreneurial environment as the driver of economic progress. However, it also contains troubling proposals for new indicators that lose sight of this focus. With so many problems surrounding development, it is tempting to construe the MCA as a new fix-all for development. However, this will not help developing countries or the MCA. Economic development brings social benefits such as better health, a clean environment, and quality education. The MCA must continue to encourage countries to enact policies that create the conditions for economic prosperity. If, rather, it attempts to stimulate the consequences of development before addressing its causes, it is almost assured to fail on both accounts. The process set forward to develop a new "Natural Resource Management" indicator must be reconsidered, and any new indicators must clearly demonstrate their relationship to the MCC's mission. The MCC needs to reconsider this and similar actions proposed in the report. These actions threaten to: Prioritize narrow interests over economic growth and are likely to achieve neither, Contradict the intent of the legislation that authorized the MCA and undermine its core principles, and Confuse the consequences of development with the causes of development, encouraging economically harmful policy. The importance of clearly articulating good indicators cannot be underestimated. Because of the strong incentives the MCA creates for countries wish to become eligible to receive funds, the MCA's influence reaches far beyond the dollars it spends. Poor choices now will have severe consequences as more countries tailor reforms to the indicators MCC chooses.


Objective: This study aims to develop application software about malarial infection and to compare the efficiency of the application software with a paper-based learning method. Methods: Application software containing malaria topics was developed by a software developer. The study participants were divided into two groups according to their learning performance. Before learning the material, all participants were tested with the same pre-test. The two groups used the application software and a paper-based method and performed a post-test. Differences between pre- and post-learning by two methods were compared using statistical software. Results: The result showed that ninety-four participants were enrolled in this study. Forty-seven participants (50%) learned about malaria using the application software, while forty-seven (50%) learned about the same topic using the paper-based method. The mean score of the post-test for both learning methods was significantly higher than the pre-test (p value<0.001). The results also indicated a statistical significance between the post-test score of 1st-year medical technology students and 2nd-year medical technology students (p value<0.001). Conclusions: Comparison between learning by using the application software and by using the paperbased method indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the two learning methods provided.


Industry cluster policies are a current trend in local economic development programmes and represent a major shift from traditional approaches. This trend has been coupled by an increasing interest in new media industry as a significant focus for regional development strategies. In England clusters and new media industry have therefore come to be seen as important tools in promoting local and regional economic development. This study aimed to ascertain the success of these policies. In order to achieve the aims of the study, the Birmingham new media industry was chosen for the study. In addition to an extensive review of the literature, semi-structured interviews were conducted with new media firms and Business Support Agencies (BSAs) offering programmes to promote the development of the new media industry cluster. The key findings of the thesis are that the concerns of new media industry when choosing their location do not conform to the industry cluster theory. Moreover, close proximity in geographical location of the industries does not mean there is collaboration and any costs saved as a result of close proximity to similar firms are at present seen as irrelevant because of the type of products they offer. Building trust between firms is the key in developing the new media industry cluster and the BSAs can act as a broker and provide neutral ground to develop it. The key policy recommendations are that new media industry is continually changing and research must continuously track and analyse cluster dynamics in order to be aware of emerging trends and future developments that can positively and negatively affect the cluster. Policy makers need to keep in mind that there is no uniform tool kit to foster the different sectors in cluster development. It is also important for them to be winning support and trust of new media firms since this is key in the success of the cluster. When cluster programs are introduced they must explain their benefits to industries more effectively in order to encourage them to participate in programmes. The general conclusions of the thesis are that clusters are a potentially important tool in local economic development policy and that the new media industry has a considerable growth potential. The kinds of relationships which cluster theory suggests develop between do not, as yet, appear to exist within the new media cluster. There are however, steps that the BSAs can take to encourage their development. Thus, the BSAs need to ensure that they establish an environment that enables growth of the industry.


In recent decades, immunotherapeutic strategies have been used to treat a wide range of pathologies, many of which were previously incurable, such as cancer and autoimmune disorders. Despite this unprecedented success, a considerable number of patients fail to respond to currently approved immunotherapies or develop resistance over time. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop the next generation of immune-targeted therapies. Various members of the Ig superfamily play essential roles in regulating leukocyte functions. One such group, the leukocyte Ig-like receptors (LILRs), have been implicated in both innate and adaptive immune regulation. Human inhibitory LILRs (LILRBs) are primarily expressed on leukocytes and mediate their signaling through multiple cytoplasmic immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory motifs. Engagement of LILRBs by endogenous and pathogenic ligands can markedly suppress immune responses, leading to tolerance or immunoevasion, whereas blocking these inhibitory receptors can potentiate immune responses. In this Review, we discuss the immunoregulatory functions of human LILRBs and the potential of targeting them to manipulate immune responses in various pathologies.


We address the following research question in this article: how can convenience theory in terms of motive, opportunity, and willingness explain deviant behaviour in the case of public procurement of healthcare services in a Norwegian municipality? This research is important, as it can identify motives at the individual and organisational level, opportunities at the organisational and societal level, and willingness at the individual level, even when there is not necessarily corruption involved. The application of convenience theory is by no means an excuse for violations of laws and regulations. Rather, this article demonstrates where prevention of misconduct and crime needs attention. It is particularly at the organisational level, where opportunity structures tend to enable commitment and concealment of illegitimate financial transactions. When auditing and other forms of control are de facto absent, where the blame game occurs, and where it is impossible to trace events because documents and e-mails have disappeared, then misconduct and crime become convenient options.


In 1750 the lower Medway Valley, the area between the towns of Maidstone and Rochester, was firmly part of Kent's 'Garden of England'. A century later, this tranquil, agrarian landscape had been transformed into a hive of industry and commerce, through the emergence of papermaking, cement manufacture, brickmaking, brewing, ship and barge building, seed crushing and engineering. The lower Medway Valley became synonymous with the production of Portland cement, stock bricks and the steam engines of Aveling and Porter, yet, by the end of the Second World War, much of this industry was gone. "The Medway Valley: A Kent Landscape Transformed", the first Victoria County History publication in Kent for over 75 years, charts this cyclical story of landscape change. It explores how the quiet, rural landscape of a collection of eight riverside parishes around Rochester was dramatically transformed during industrialization, before returning to its formal rural state. This volume traces the impact of industrial development and decline on the valley and its people. It details changing patterns of work and society, the creation of new settlements and the pivotal role of the river in all aspects of village life reflecting two centuries of change and upheaval.


Fluvial Geomorphology studies the biophysical processes acting in rivers, and the sediment patterns and landforms resulting from them. It is a discipline of synthesis, with roots in geology, geography, and river engineering, and with strong interactions with allied fields such as ecology, engineering and landscape architecture. This book comprehensively reviews tools used in fluvial geomorphology, at a level suitable to guide the selection of research methods for a given question. Presenting an integrated approach to the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, it provides guidance for researchers and professionals on the tools available to answer questions on river restoration and management.

Thoroughly updated since the first edition in 2003 by experts in their subfields, the book presents state-of-the-art tools that have revolutionized fluvial geomorphology in recent decades, such as physical and numerical modelling, remote sensing and GIS, new field techniques, advances in dating, tracking and sourcing, statistical approaches as well as more traditional methods such as the systems framework, stratigraphic analysis, form and flow characterisation and historical analysis.

This book:
- Covers five main types of geomorphological questions and their associated tools: historical framework; spatial framework; chemical, physical and biological methods; analysis of processes and forms; and future understanding framework.
- Provides guidance on advantages and limitations of different tools for different applications, data sources, equipment and supplies needed, and case studies illustrating their application in an integrated perspective.

It is an essential resource for researchers and professional geomorphologists, hydrologists, geologists, engineers, planners, and ecologists concerned with river management, conservation and restoration. It is a useful supplementary textbook for upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in Geography, Geology, Environmental Science, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and interdisciplinary courses in river management and restoration.


The paper focuses on the concept of technical rules (according to an Aristotelian interpretation, that is to say as propositions that express a necessity: if you want x, you must do y). The thesis argued is that this concept is helpful in coping with some of the problems of both teleological and deontological planning theories. In particular the concept is useful in emphasizing the role of technical knowledge in planning and in 'solving the relationship' between planning and politics in a way consistent with the characteristics of liberal and pluralist democracies.


Summary 1. Concern about the effects of habitat fragmentation has led to increasing interest in dispersal and connectivity modelling. Most modern techniques for connectivity modelling have resistance surfaces as their foundation. However, resistance surfaces for animal movement are frequently estimated without considering dispersal, despite being the principal natural mechanism by which organisms move between populations. 2. We collected Global Positioning System data over 10 years from 50 African lions Panthera leo (11 male natal dispersers, 20 adult males and 19 adult females) and used a path level analysis to parameterize demographic-specific resistance surfaces for the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) in Southern Africa. 3. Lion path selection varied according to demographic grouping: adult females were most averse to risky landscapes such as agro-pastoral lands, towns, areas of high human density and highways. Male natal dispersers were the least-risk averse suggesting they are potentially the most prone demographic to human–lion conflict. Adults of both sexes selected bushed grassland and shrubland habitats and avoided woodland. Male natal dispersers displayed the opposite trend suggesting con-specific avoidance and/or suboptimal habitat use. 4. We used the resistance surfaces to calculate factorial least-cost path networks for each demographic-specific resistance surface and present results that show substantial differences between predicted patterns of connectivity for male natal dispersers, adult females and adult males. 5. Synthesis and applications. Resistance surfaces are widely used to create connectivity models, which are promoted for use by conservation managers. Our results suggest that the demographic category used to parameterize resistance surfaces may lead to radically different conclusions about connectivity. Failure to include dispersing individuals when parameterizing resistance surfaces intended for connectivity modelling may lead to erroneous conclusions about connectivity and potentially unsound management strategies.


The study investigated 17 suicidal girls attending Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) sessions as a complementary therapy. In particular, the study focused on three main issues. First, whether the patients' happiness, warm emotions, awareness, relaxation, control, loquacity, and coordination improved over time. Second, whether riders and novices benefited equally from the therapy. Lastly, whether and how horse responsiveness and patient's motivation affected the outcome. Individual Growth Curves analysis was used to answer these questions. The results showed a significant improvement in awareness and coordination, and a small change in warm emotion and relaxation over time. Moreover, previous riding experience was related to higher scores in warm emotions, awareness, control, and coordination. However, this effect faded over time as the clients became more familiar with EAP. Finally, the patient's attitude, reflected in the horse's responses, influenced positively the overall outcome. In conclusion, beginners might need more time in order to feel comfortable with the EAP environment. Thus, it is crucial to set appropriate goals. Additionally, patient's motivation is an important factor for the success of the therapy, as it will be reflected in the horse's responsiveness, and will eventually lead to greater improvements. Overall, the results suggested that patients' experiences with horse riding, horse responsiveness, and motivation are important elements of EAP that are related to improvements in suicidal girls over time.


The focus of this paper is on the use of the concept of sexual exploitation in legislation concerning sexual expression by persons with mental impairment, with particular emphasis on persons with intellectual disability. Two main statutory approaches have been adopted in Australian jurisdictions. The first is prohibition of sexual acts between a person with intellectual disability and others who, by virtue of their employment, are in a position of ascendancy over that person. The second is the prohibition of sexually exploitative acts by any person towards a person with an intellectual disability. The major aim in this article is to critically examine these approaches and evaluate them according to the standards of being non-discriminatory, minimally restrictive of rights, and enforceable. It is argued that comprehensively cataloguing sexually exploitative acts is untenable, with the result that prohibition of all sexual exploitation is unenforceable. The alternative, namely legislation that prohibits sexual relations with any person employed to render any kind of service to the intellectually disabled person, would further restrict an already limited number of potential sexual partners. We suggest that a more useful approach would be to prohibit sexual activity in one-on-one relationships whose scope is commonly understood to exclude such acts, while allowing relations between workers or caregivers and the persons to whom they do not directly render services. This mechanism would have to be narrowly defined to have the desired effect of affording protection to vulnerable persons while preserving their right to sexual expression.


The focus of this project is the new learning medium called 'hypennedia'. Hypermedia is information presented in a non-sequential manner on a computer. One piece of information, be that text, graphics, audio or video, is linked to a related piece of information via interconnecting nodes, thus allowing exploratory and inquiry based learning with a high degree of learner control.
The study seeks to examine the use and effectiveness of hypermedia learning systems as a method of learning and lakes place within the industrial arena in the geographic location of Lancashire. The author concentrates on the users perception of this new learning medium and compares the findings against traditional learning methodologies.
The most appropriate pedagogy for illuminating learners views about educational innovations is explored and results in an illuminative evaluation incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods for data analysis.
A small intensive study is carried out to illuminate participants views of the effectiveness of the new innovation in a practical setting and then compares this to an equivalent tradition learning environment. A survey of industrial firms within Lancashire puts the study into context and evaluates the current usage of hypermedia learning systems within Lancashire.
The study revolves around constnjctivist learning theories where a learning medium creates a situation allowing the learner the freedom to exercise judgment about what is to be learnt and at what pace.
Hvpermedia systems would appear to be an ideal delivery mechanism for courseware which embodies constructivist approaches as they are structured to allow complete learner control.
Learning styles are investigated to evaluate whether a particular learner finds the system more effective or whether all learners can adapt the system to match their own preferred learning style. Patterns of interaction and activity within the hypennedia system show the learners adaptation of the coursework.
Effectiveness of the hypermedia learning system is measured by learners satisfaction of all aspects of the system including engagement, usability and interactivity. Observation of participant's performance and summative assessment scores gauge the learners success.
Opinions and performance are compared against each learners personal profile constructed from information about preferred learning styles, computer literacy, confidence, academic background, length of service, age and gender.
By conducting this analysis it is possible to interpret whether hypermedia learning systems are more effective to one particular type of learner or whether they offer a revolutionary new learning medium suitable for all learners.
The study is carried out on behalf of Lancashire County Council as part of an investigation looking into alternative learning strategies.
The findings show that hypennedia learning systems, as yet, have not been widely utilised by industry in Lancashire but their effectiveness has been proved, particularly for the confident, intelligent, computer literate learner. The implications of these findings are that hypermedia learning systems could soon become a common learning tool throughout industiy, especially if modified to include more navigational aids, feedback and guidance for the learner.


ABSTRACT It is widely acknowledged that there is an underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Science Foundation Ireland, the largest funder of STEM research in Ireland, has been developing initiatives to remove and mitigate any existing or perceived factors that may limit the participation of women in STEM careers. In this paper, we present a review of gender initiatives across our funding programmes since 2011 and highlight those that are supporting a stronger representation of women in STEM. Overall, we have seen an increase in female award holders from 21% in 2015, to 26% in 2017. In 2015, a gender initiative was introduced into SFI's Starting Investigator Research Grant Programme, which led to a 22 percentage point increase in female award holders compared to the 2013 call, when no gender initiative was in place. Science Foundation Ireland will continue to monitor the impacts of these actions, and to innovate and contribute to international best practice.


BACKGROUND
The Medical Death Certificate and the Death Statistics Bulletin were unified and implemented in the year 2009 in Spain. National statistics detected an unusual increase for diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertensive disease (HT) deaths in 2009, in relation to previous years trend.The objective is to study the documental causes of the increase, and describe the procedures and consequences in rates, after the revision and recodification of DM and HT.

METHODS
All death certificates in 2009 for diabetes and hypertension in the Region of Murcia (cases=670) were revised, according to previous guidelines for direct recoding after consultation to the certifying physician. A telephone survey to certifying physician was designed to determine the accuracy of the pattern of recoding. Kappa index and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were performed between initial and recoded causes. Confirmation rate and 95%CI was estimated after phone inquiry to the certifying physician, and the annual age-adjusted and age-specific rates from 1999 to 2009 (uncorrected and corrected) for DM and HT were calculated.

RESULTS
Simple agreement was 37% for DM and 30% for HT. The Kappa index between the initial and final causes was 49% (95%CI, 45 to 54%). Confirmation rates were 47% (95%CI, 43 to 52%) for DM and 38% (95%CI, 34 to 43%) for HT. The initial annual rates of 2009 for DM were corrected from 21.4 per 100,000 inhabitants to 17.1, and from 19.0 to 14.0 for hypertension. The respective specific age rates of 70 to 84 and older experienced similar reductions.

CONCLUSIONS
The revision restored temporal trends in mortality of DM and HT in 2009, and identified no variations from previous years. It was detected that the erroneous fulfillment of DM AND HT came from the new death certificate.


This essay discusses the current state of and potential future directions for information systems education structured around several key themes that have emerged as central in several large-scale IS education initiatives over the past 15 years. The core idea that connects all of these themes is the centrality of IS as a transformative enabler for virtually all goal-directed human activities. The essay emphasizes the role of IS as the initial integrative discipline that for decades has prepared its students to identify opportunities to fundamentally change multiple target domains with computational capabilities. Furthermore, the discussion recognizes the distinctive focus of IS on bringing multiple technologies together into systems that serve organizational and societal goals and underscores the responsibility to carefully consider implications and potential consequences of technologybased solutions. The essay also acknowledges the essential roles of formal quality assurance mechanisms (such as accreditation) and education-focused research as essential resources for the future of the discipline.


In early 2012, I was invited by Pilbara Writers group in Karratha to make a poetry map for the Pilbara region when they saw the Poetry 4 U website (http://poetry4U.org) where poems are pinned to geographic locations. I visited the Pilbara June 17 - 23, 2012 to commence the poetry mapping project with members of the Pilbara Writers group. By walking with video when writers took me to their favourite places I was able to document visceral intersubjective experiences of these places, of being there together, so that I could empathically share the writers' sense of landscape. This paper discusses what happens when a hodological approach is taken to explore connections and flows between poetic expressions, places and landscapes.


Original available here (Reuters) Chinese police are hunting a factory boss who enslaved mentally handicapped people, forcing them to work long hours without pay and beating them if they tried to escape, Chinese media reported on Tuesday. The boss of a construction materials factory in China's western Xinjiang province, hired about a dozen people, many of whom are mentally disabled, to grind rocks into powder, but did not provide clothing, pay or enough food for the workers, Chinese website tianshannet.com reported. He disappeared before police raided the factory on Monday morning, and may have fled with the workers -some of whom had been enslaved for up to four years -to Chengdu city in Sichuan province, the report said. His wife was being held by police. Incidents of forced labor have shocked China in the past, with slave bosses often preying on the mentally handicapped. In 2007, more than 1,000 people were found working as slaves in brick kilns in Shanxi province, following a father's desperate search for his missing teenage son. The central government vowed to prevent similar offenses, but cases are occasionally reported by Chinese media. Last December, Chinese human traffickers targeted mentally disabled people from the southwestern Sichuan province countryside, luring them into dangerous employment contracts and sometimes even killing them in mine accidents for compensation. "I have not asked the boss for the money yet," one worker who had been laboring at the factory for four years was cited by tianshannet.com as saying. The report did not say where the workers were originally from, though it said some were confused about their backgrounds. (Reporting by Huang Yan and Michael Martina; Editing by Alex Richardson )


Economists have long employed hedonic wage analysis to estimate income-fatality risk trade-offs, but some scholars have raised concerns about systematic measurement error and omitted variable bias in the empirical applications of this model. Recent studies have employed panel methods to remove time-invariant individual-specific characteristics that could induce bias in estimation. In an analogous manner, this paper proposes to exploit assortative matching on risk attitudes within married couples to control for worker characteristics that are unobserved to the econometrician. I develop and implement a modified hedonic wage estimator based on a within-couple differenced wage equation for full-time working married couples with the Current Population Survey Merged Outgoing Rotation Group over 1996-2002. The key assumption builds on the findings in the assortative matching literature that individuals often marry those who have common traits across many dimensions, including those that may influence worker wages and are correlated with observed occupational fatality risks. This estimator identifies the compensating differential for occupation fatality risk by using within-couple differencing to remove unobserved determinants of risk attitudes and risk-mitigation ability, on which couples match, from the error term. I find that the value of statistical life (VSL) varies from $9 to $13 million (2016$). The within-couple differenced VSL estimates are stable and more robust to variation in specification of the hedonic wage model than conventional, cross-sectional hedonic wage models. I also find that the value of statistical life takes an inverted-U shape with respect to age.


To what extent have Hollywood feature films shaped the meanings that Americans attach to alcoholics, their families, and the alcoholic condition? To what extent has the mass culture of the movie industry itself been conceptually shaped by a broad, external societal discourse? Norman Denzin brings to his life-long study of alcoholism a searching interest in how cultural texts signify and lend themselves to interpretation within a social nexus. Both historical and diachronic in his approach, Denzin identifies five periods in the alcoholism films made between 1932 and the end of the 1980s, and offers a detailed critical reading of thirty-seven films produced during these six decades.


As India becomes the center for global commercial surrogacy, infertile Indians themselves may be forced to seek assisted reproductive technology (ART) services elsewhere. The inability of Indian couples to access affordable, high-quality services in their home country may force them to become reproductive tourists—a phenomenon defined in this article as "reproductive exile." Reproductive exile bespeaks the "forced" nature of fertility travel, when infertile couples must leave their home country in order to access safe, effective, affordable, and legal infertility care. Their choice to use ARTs to produce a child is voluntary, but their travel abroad is not. Furthermore, the term exile takes on additional meanings in the South Asian context. South Asian laborers, both poor and middle-class, may feel forced to leave home in order to secure a living wage, send home remittances, save for their futures, and accrue enough money to access ART services. For many South Asians, Dubai is now the global hub for both labor migration and reproductive exile, owing to the long history of South Asian-Arab Gulf transnationalism, as well as Dubai's reputation for specializing in all manner of "high-tech" services. In this article, reproductive exile to global Dubai will be explored, along with three South Asian stories highlighting infertile couples' dreams of making a test-tube baby.


SUSTAIN is an influential multiple clusters (i.e., prototypes) model for categorization, in which the cluster nearer to the stimulus is activated for categorization. Due to that the cluster activation is the average of the dimensional similarity weighted by attention, the choice between clusters is little influenced by the dimension on which the similarity difference to the stimulus between clusters is negligible, even with equivalent dimensional attention weights and the clusters having the same distance difference on dimensions (e.g., 1 vs.2 on dimension 1 and 4 vs.5 on dimension 2). This is evident in modeling Experiment 1 in Erickson and Kruschke (1998) that SUSTAIN activates the rule-category cluster, which is actually farther to the critical item than the exception-category cluster. The computer simulation results suggest that the larger the learning rate, the more likely this similarity-distance contradiction occurs. With the SUSTAIN using the ALCOVE's similarity computation equation, this contradiction disappears.


General purpose GPU Computing (GPGPU) has taken off in the past few years, with great promises for increased desktop processing power due to the large number of fast computing cores on high-end graphics cards. Many publications have demonstrated phenomenal performance and have reported speedups as much as 1000× over code running on multi-core CPUs. Other studies have claimed that well-tuned CPU code reduces the performance gap significantly. We demonstrate that this important discussion is missing a key aspect, specifically the question of where in the system data resides, and the overhead to move the data to where it will be used, and back again if necessary. We have benchmarked a broad set of GPU kernels on a number of platforms with different GPUs and our results show that when memory transfer times are included, it can easily take between 2 to 50× longer to run a kernel than the GPU processing time alone. Therefore, it is necessary to either include memory transfer overhead when reporting GPU performance, or to explain why this is not relevant for the application in question. We suggest a taxonomy for future CPU/GPU comparisons, and we argue that this is not only germane for reporting performance, but is important to heterogeneous scheduling research in general.


After the deadly floods and earthquakes, more than two third Pakistanis were in urgent need of assistance. Malnutrition and homelessness are continuing threats to the victims of these disasters. The scope of destruction is so wide that instead of huge international donations and governmental efforts for relief and reconstruction, the situation is not healing effectively and the gap is enlarging day by day between supply and demand of houses. In early 2010, after these tragedies, Central Bank statistics revealed that now there is a total shortage of 8.8 million houses and 700,000 houses/year must be provided to cope with the increasing demand. Especially for low-income households, there is a dearth of financial resources to build/renovate damaged and destroyed houses; this is worsened by the fact that non-sustainable methods and materials that are used continue to be vulnerable in future disasters. There is an urgent need for policy change in Pakistan towards innovative housing strategies including financial and technical assistance programs.


Text classification is a general and important machine learning problem. For example, topic classification of text documents has been extensively studied for more than a decade, and simple word features are found to be very indicative of topics. Researchers have been focusing mostly on machine learning of classifiers instead of that of features. More recently, classification of sentiment, agreement and opinions in social media has drawn much attention, where individual word features are no longer sufficiently discriminative. Because good features are important to these tasks, engineering features becomes a crucial step in developing good text classification systems. However, feature engineering involves much manual work and is time-consuming.
Another challenge to many text classification tasks is limited labeled training data. Large amounts of unlabeled data are available but they are often not used in supervised classifier training. A big issue related to features caused by limited labeled data is that only limited features are seen, and classifiers trained by supervised learning cannot use features that are unseen in training data.
This thesis attempts to address both issues by applying machine learning to text features. A type of feature, i.e., phrase patterns, and the efficient algorithm to learn them from labeled training data, are proposed. Phrase pattern features are particularly useful for tasks involving modeling long-range complex behaviors as we see in social media data, and they are more flexible than n-gram features. The learned phrase patterns can contain both words and word classes, which improves generalizability. Significant performance improvements are observed in multiple conversational text classification tasks.
This thesis also proposes feature affinity and cluster regularization, which uses feature relationships learned from unlabeled data to regularize training. This regularization scheme converts supervised learning text classification to semi-supervised, and it is simple to control the relative importance of the knowledge learned from unlabeled data. Using this method, features that are unseen in the labeled data get non-zero weights due to their relationships to seen features. These algorithms are evaluated in topic and sentiment classification tasks, achieving significant improvements. This thesis also studies the problem of learning feature relationships for high-dimensional features using a mixture co-occurrence model, making our approach applicable to complex task classification tasks where large amounts of unlabeled data are available. Multiple conversational text classification tasks are studied in our experiments, and significant performance improvements are demonstrated.


OBJECTIVES
We developed trans-right axillary aortic valve replacement (TAX-AVR) as a more cosmetically superior approach to minimally invasive AVR. We herein retrospectively compared the safety and invasiveness between TAX-AVR and conventional AVR (C-AVR).

METHODS
TAX-AVR was performed under femorofemoral cardiopulmonary bypass. Creation of a small right axillary vertical skin incision was followed by anterolateral intercostal thoracotomy. AVR was performed using long-shafted minimally invasive instruments, a knot pusher and endoscopic assistance. From January 2007 to June 2016, 112 patients underwent TAX-AVR and 183 controls underwent first-time, isolated non-emergency C-AVR. The factors used to calculate the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation score and Society of Thoracic Surgeons score were adopted for propensity matching. Early mortality and major adverse cardiac and cerebral events were compared. The procedural time, postoperative intensive care unit stay and hospital stay were compared as markers of invasiveness.

RESULTS
Propensity matching generated 108 matched pairs with similar backgrounds. Thirty-day mortality occurred in 0 and 1 patient in the TAX-AVR and C-AVR groups, respectively. The major adverse cardiac and cerebral events rates were not significantly different between the groups. The average aortic clamp time was longer (100 vs 94 min), but the intensive care unit stay (1.2 vs 1.8 days) and hospital stay (10.0 vs 12.5 days) were shorter in the TAX-AVR group. Postoperative blood loss, transfusion and atrial fibrillation were lower in the TAX-AVR group. The average prosthesis size was 22 mm in both groups.

CONCLUSIONS
TAX-AVR is as safe as C-AVR and less invasive in terms of a shorter recovery period.


We develop an analytical approach to the dynamics of band populations of reverse saturable absorbers modeled by the three-level approximation of the five-level rate equations. We find high-accuracy approximate solutions to these rate equations, taking into account the temporal shape of the incident laser pulse for different regimes of excitation. The results obtained are confirmed by direct numerical integration of the rate equations and are verified by solution of the full system of the rate and the propagation equations. The validity ranges of the approximations are determined. We also prove that for input pulses that are much longer than the lifetime of the first excited state the ground-state depletion obeys the same functional dependence on the input fluence as in the case of rectangular input pulses. The dynamics of the excited states, however, explicitly depends on the pulse shape. We quantitatively estimate the effect of various parameters on the nonlinear absorption coefficient and discuss implementation of the approach by a beam propagation method to reduce the computational time.


Literature on South Asian migration to Britain points to the continuing importance of religion to migrants, particularly to Muslims. Religious continuity depends on effective transmission of beliefs, practices and values to younger generations. South Asians account for around three-quarters of British Muslims but within this group there is wide variation as regards socio-economic status, education, migration and settlement history, cultural norms and sectarian affiliation. This study considers the impact of migration on the religious nurture provided by two groups of second generation parents of South Asian Muslim origin in Peterborough: one group's background is in Pakistan, and the other group, the Khoja Shi'a Ithna'asheri, are East African Asian Muslims. This qualitative study is based on interviews with parents about their approaches to the
religious nurture of their children and the ways in which this was similar to or different from their own upbringing. In each group twenty-four parents, mostly mothers, took part in semi-structured interviews. These were supplemented by ethnographic observation to give a detailed account of religious nurture in the two communities.

The study investigates both formal and informal nurture as well as the family background contexts and the impact of children's schooling. Similarities and differences between the two communities are described and an explanatory framework in terms of trans nationalism and diaspora is suggested; the use of the concepts of 'community' and
A culture' is discussed with reference to the groups studied. Transgene rational differences in approaches to nurture are discussed in the context of changes attributable to migration and those linked to aspects of modern life at a global level. The analysis suggests that
differences are linked to socio-economic status and migration history, particularly as regards the 'once-mig rant' and 'twice-migranf character of the communities. Differences are also related to the conflation of religion and culture in the Pakistani families and to community support networks and the nature of the Shi'a religious calendar in the Khoja Shi'a Ithna'asheri ones. The study highlights the extent of Muslim diversity within the
two communities as well as differences between them.

Parents showed very high levels of commitment to the transmission of religious values and practices to the third generation. Levels of religious observance were variable but
had not declined overall across one generation. Most parents did not aspire to educational success for their children if it was to be achieved at the expense of religious continuity. They negotiated ways of maintaining Islamic requirements as they interpreted them whilst trying to 'fit in' with mainstream life in Britain.


SUMMARY: We present a novel typewriter application 'Hex-o-Spell' that is specifically tailored to the characteristics of direct brain-to-computer interaction. The high bandwidth at which a user may perceive information from the display is used in an appealing visualization based on hexagons. On the other hand the control of the application is possible at low bandwidth using only two control commands (mental states) and is relatively stable against delays and the like. The eectiveness and robustness of the interface was demonstrated at the CeBIT 2006 (world's largest IT fair) where two subjects operated the mental typewriter at a speed of up to 7.6 char/min. It was developed within the Berlin BrainComputer Interface project in cooperation with specialists for Human Computer Interaction.


Water balance approaches have been widely used to stimulate and forecast the average runoff and river discharge in small- and medium-sized basins. The analysis of water balance for Feesh Khabour River and Dohuk Dam catchment areas needs to be verified. This study used 24 alternative scenarios for assessing the robustness of adaptation decisions to water management practices. The discharge of Feesh Khabour River recorded at Zakho station, with a maximum flow rate of higher than 19.6 m cm d −1 and a minimum flow rate of 0.3 m cm d −1 , helps ensure that interbasin water transfer remains one of the most attractive alternatives for increasing the amount of water available in the Dohuk Dam for agricultural, domestic and tourism uses.


Drawing on an evaluative study of UK participation in a European disability programme (HELlOS I), this paper explores the extent to which and the ways in which disabled people were-or were not-involved in the programme as active participants rather than passive recipients, at local, national and European levels. The findings presented here draw attention to the different perspectives of the programme's various stakeholders and are discussed in relation to two broader themes. The first of these themes is the involvement of disabled people themselves in any programme aiming to promote the full participation of disabled people in society. The second is the role and value of formalized networks as a means of promoting information exchange and learning, as a prerequisite for promoting change in individuals (that is in day-to-day practice) and change in organizations (that is service developments). These two themes are pertinent to current developments in social work, with its explicit attention to anti-discriminatoiy practice and its strong tradition of valuing the learning gained from experience.


We present a complete toolflow that translates ANSI-C programs into asynchronous circuits. The toolflow is built around a compiler that converts C into a functional dataflow intermediate representation, exposing instruction-level, pipeline and memory parallelism. The compiler performs optimizations and converts the intermediate representation into pipelined asynchronous circuits, with no centralized controllers. In the resulting circuits, control is distributed, communication is achieved through local wires, and arbitration for datapath resources is unnecessary. Circuits automatically synthesized from Mediabench kernels exhibit excellent energy-delay.


Applied econometrics, known to aficionados as 'metrics, is the original data science. 'Metrics encompasses the statistical methods economists use to untangle cause and effect in human affairs. Through accessible discussion and with a dose of kung fu–themed humor, Mastering 'Metrics presents the essential tools of econometric research and demonstrates why econometrics is exciting and useful. The five most valuable econometric methods, or what the authors call the Furious Five--random assignment, regression, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity designs, and differences in differences--are illustrated through well-crafted real-world examples (vetted for awesomeness by Kung Fu Panda's Jade Palace). Does health insurance make you healthier? Randomized experiments provide answers. Are expensive private colleges and selective public high schools better than more pedestrian institutions? Regression analysis and a regression discontinuity design reveal the surprising truth. When private banks teeter, and depositors take their money and run, should central banks step in to save them? Differences-in-differences analysis of a Depression-era banking crisis offers a response. Could arresting O. J. Simpson have saved his ex-wife's life? Instrumental variables methods instruct law enforcement authorities in how best to respond to domestic abuse. Wielding econometric tools with skill and confidence, Mastering 'Metrics uses data and statistics to illuminate the path from cause to effect. Shows why econometrics is important Explains econometric research through humorous and accessible discussion Outlines empirical methods central to modern econometric practice Works through interesting and relevant real-world examples


We have modeled atmospheric effects, especially ozone depletion, due to a solar proton event which probably accompanied the extreme magnetic storm of 1–2 September 1859. We use an inferred proton fluence for this event as estimated from nitrate levels in Greenland ice cores. We present results showing production of odd nitrogen compounds and their impact on ozone. We also compute rainout of nitrate in our model and compare to values from ice core data.


The Concept of Group Rights in International Law offers a critical appraisal of the concept of group rights in international law on the basis of an extensive survey of existing group rights in contemporary international law. Among some of its findings is the observation that an ideological way of arguing about this legal category is widespread among scholars as well as practitioners; it sees this ideological framing as one of the main reasons why international law has so far been very reluctant to provide group rights and to call them by their name. Accordingly, the book re-evaluates the concept based on the experience with existing group rights in international law and pleads for a more pragmatic approach. Despite limitations with the concept, the overall thesis is that there is a role for group rights as a pragmatic tool allowing for a principled approach to substate groups through international law. Such an approach could turn group rights into an arguably minor, but nevertheless, highly relevant legal category of international law.


Research Findings: Big Math for Little Kids (BMLK) is a mathematics curriculum designed for 4and 5-year-old children. In this study, the curriculum was evaluated for effectiveness over two years, using a cluster-randomized controlled study. Over 750 children participated in the study and experienced either the BMLK curriculum or business-as-usual instruction. Students' mathematics knowledge was assessed using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) Direct Mathematics Assessment, an independent outcome measure not tied to the curriculum materials. The BMLK children significantly outperformed the business-as-usual control group, a difference that represents the equivalent of 1.6 months of additional instruction, with a medium effect size (Cohen's d=0.40). BMLK children also showed indications of improved mathematical language on piloted language tasks. Policy or Practice: These results suggest that the inclusion of thoughtful, developmentally appropriate mathematics curriculum can positively impact young students' achievement.


The Gas and Aerosol Measurement Sensor (GAMS) was deployed aboard the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the second SAGE III Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment (SOLVE II). GAMS acquired line-of-sight (LOS) direct solar irradiance spectra during the sunlit portions of ten science flights of the DC-8 between 12 January and 4 February 2003. Differential line-of-sight (DLOS) optical depth spectra are produced from the GAMS raw solar irradiance spectra. Then, DLOS ozone number densities are retrieved from the GAMS spectra using a multiple linear regression spectral fitting technique. Both the DLOS optical depth spectra and retrieved ozone data are compared with coincident measurements from two other solar instruments aboard the DC-8 platform to demonstrate the robustness and stability of the GAMS data. The GAMS ozone measurements are then utilized to evaluate the quality of the Wulf band ozone cross sections, a critical component of the SAGE III aerosol, water vapor, and temperature/pressure retrievals. Results suggest the ozone cross section compilation of Shettle and Anderson currently used operationally in SAGE III data processing may be in error by as much as 10–20% in the Wulf bands, and their lack of reported temperature dependence is a significant deficiency. A second, more recent, cross section database compiled for the SCIAMACHY satellite mission appears to be of much better quality in the Wulf bands, but still may have errors as large as 5% near the Wulf band absorption peaks, which is slightly larger than their stated uncertainty. Additional laboratory measurements of the Wulf band cross sections should be pursued to further reduce their uncertainty and better quantify their temperature dependence.


We present a recently developed learning model of work integrated learning in the Bachelor programs in Mechanical Engineering as well as Electronic and Computer Engineering at Umea University, Sweden. The model is based on an organized collaboration with our industrial partners in the surrounding geographic region. As a part of the collaboration, each participating student is guaranteed internships at a chosen company over the summer period. In the model, company based projects are integrated with some of the study program courses. Moreover, the participating students are given a possibility to perform their final thesis at the chosen company. We consider this collaboration as a "win-win situation" for the three parties involved in the learning model: the students, the University/faculty and the industrial partners. A number of positive effects have been observed and documented as follows: i) The integrated learning improves the learning process for the students, where learning, knowledge and practice are integrated into the engineering curricula. ii) The general quality of the study programs in the faculty has been developed and improved based on the professional skills as required by modern industrial companies. iii) The obtained advantage for the industrial partners has been to establish professional contacts with the students as well as the possibility to be acquainted with potential future employees. We will discuss the experiences of this learning model in relation to CDIO standard 7 (Integrated Learning Experiences) and 8 (Active Learning). It has been found that the company based projects promote interdisciplinary learning as well as fostering system building skills and personal communication skills. Moreover, the developed learning model supports the expected learning outcomes, especially with regard to interpersonal skills, teamwork and communication. Finally, we will investigate the learning theories that support the developed learning model from a pedagogical point of view.


Fiscal policy in Latin America has been historically imprudent and continues to be viewed with skepticism. At the same time, most countries have remained out of trouble for several years and were able to successfully conduct proactive countercyclical fiscal policy to fight the Great Recession, a historical first. This paper examines the last decade to assess progress, highlight weaknesses, and chart the way forward. The paper looks at structural fiscal balances, filtering out the business cycle and commodity price fluctuations to assess prudent fiscal policy concerning cyclical management and long-run sustainability. Up to the Great Recession countries deserved good grades, in the B range, on both counts. Afterwards, satisfactory cyclical management continued but, critically, extraordinary circumstances led to a regime change in the level of the underlying structural balance. Successful countercyclical fiscal policy was prudently undertaken in the crisis but not decisively unwound in its aftermath, leaving behind an unsatisfactory fiscal stance. With this "Incomplete" grades slipped to the C range and may end up as an F unless there is normalization to pre-crisis levels to regain sustainability. On a constructive note, the paper distills lessons from experience and charts the path of fiscal reform to reach an A grade.


Birth rates in primates have long been proposed to result from an interaction between ecological and social factors. We analyzed a variety of social and environmental variables to determine which ones best explain the observed variation in interbirth intervals across 14 baboon populations. Both the number of females in the group and mean annual temperature were found to be important, and a multivariate equation containing the quadratic components of both these variables accounts for almost all the observed variance in interbirth intervals. The quadratic relationship with temperature is explained in terms of the energetic costs of maintaining a stable body temperature at both low and high temperatures. The quadratic relationship with number of females results from relationships with both food availability and the costs of increasing intragroup competition as group size increases. Although females may be able to exert a certain degree of choice in their reproductive scheduling decisions, they are ultimately constrained by limits imposed upon them by the complex interactions between their ecological and demographic environment. Key words: baboons, birth rate, interbirth interval, intragroup competition, Papio, thermoregulation. [Behav Ecol 11:560–564 (2000)]