Background Several pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies are used to treat stable bronchiectasis of non-cystic fibrosis (CF) aetiology. Objective We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the evidence of the effectiveness of pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment options in patients with stable non-CF bronchiectasis with a focus on reducing exacerbations. Study selection Multiple databases were searched through September 2017. Outcomes included the number of patients with exacerbation events, mean number of exacerbations, hospitalisations, mortality, quality of life measures, and safety and adverse effects. Meta-analysis was conducted using the random effects model. Findings 30 randomised controlled trials enrolled subjects with non-CF bronchiectasis using different interventions. Moderate-quality evidence supported the effect of long-term antibiotics (≥3 months) on lowering the number of patients experiencing exacerbation events (relative risk 0.77 (95% CI 0.68 to 0.89)), reducing number of exacerbations (incidence rate ratio 0.62 (95% CI 0.49 to 0.78)), improving forced expiratory volume (litre) in the first second (FEV1) (weighted mean difference (WMD); 0.02 (95% CI 0.00 to 0.04)), decreasing sputum purulence scores (numerical scale of 1-8) (WMD −0.90 (95% CI −1.58 to −0.22)) and improving quality of life scores assessed by the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (WMD −6.07 (95% CI −10.7 to −1.43)). Bronchospasm increased with inhaled antibiotics while diarrhoea increased particularly with oral macrolide therapy. Conclusions Moderate-quality evidence supports long-term antibiotic therapy for preventing exacerbations in stable non-CF bronchiectasis. However, data about the optimum agent, mode of therapy and length of treatment are limited. There is paucity of high-quality evidence to support the management of stable non-CF bronchiectasis including prevention of exacerbations.


Computation and networking resources in mobile operating environments are much scarcer and more dynamic than in desktop operating environments. Mobile applications can leverage on the benefits of adaptive computing to optimize the QoS delivery based on contextual situations. Fuzzy control models have been successfully applied to various distributed network QoS management systems. However, existing models are either application-specific or limited to abstract modeling and simple conceptual scenarios which do not take into account overall model scalability. Specifically, the large number of QoS parameters in a mobile operating environment causes an exponential increase in the number of rules correspondingly increases the demand for processing power to infer the rules. Hierarchical fuzzy systems were introduced to reduce the number of rules using hierarchical fuzzy control, in which correlated linguistic variables are hierarchically inferred and grouped into abstract linguistic variables. In this paper, we propose a mobile QoS management framework that uses a hierarchical fuzzy control model to support a highly extensible and structured adaptation paradigm. The proposed framework integrates several levels of QoS abstractions derived from user-perceived requirements.


The Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 interglacial has been considered to be analogous
to the Holocene because of a similarity in the conditions of orbital forcing (low
eccentricity and precession), but the role of climatic feedback processes linking orbital drivers to climate signatures is not well understood. This thesis examines
palaeoceanographic sediment records from the South East Atlantic Ocean covering the last 50,000 years and the period encompassing MIS-11 (335-475 ka) to better understand how different facets of the climate systems were linked together in these
two periods of low orbital eccentricity. It is shown that palaeoceanographic changes
were closely linked to variations in Northern Hemisphere ice-volume via changes in the
mode of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). When ice-volume was high, a weaker MOC drove regional sea-surface warming and salinity increases; it also
produced corresponding changes in the South African monsoon system by displacing
the southern zone of Hadley Cell circulation over the study region. The interlinked
nature of these connections makes it difficult to establish an ultimate driver; for example, a precession-pacing of monsoon and sea-surface temperature proxies during
late MIS-11 could have been induced either by local (sub-tropical) insolation forcing or
by precession-modulation of ice-sheet margins. A direct comparison between identical
palaeoclimate datasets for the last 50,000 years and the MIS-11 interglacial suggests that the long duration of MIS-11 compared to subsequent interglacials may have arisen through a strengthening of oceanic heat transport during a period of high obliquity
approximately 15,000 years into the interglaical optimum. Although several Atlantic
Ocean records support this contention, refining this model will require the aquisition of
more geographically diverse records with more precise chronological constraints than
re currently available from the global ocean.


Extracted from text ... Professional Nursing Today November / December 2005 Vol. 9 No. 6 32
Leanne Rees RD (SA)
Introduction
Infants are born with an acquired
immunity system. The effectiveness
of this immunity drops significantly
over the first two months. Until after
8 weeks infants begin to build up
their own immune response to disease.
However, during this time, their
immune response is very weak compared
to that of an adult. They are
especially vulnerable to bacteria which
cause diarrhoea. It is for this reason
that extra care should be taken with
regards to bottle feeding, sterilisation
and basic hygiene practises. This ..


The immune system is a complex biological system with a highly distributed, adaptive and self-organising nature. This paper presents an artificial immune system (AIS) that exploits some of these characteristics and is applied to the task of film recommendation by collaborative filtering (CF). Natural evolution and in particular the immune system have not been designed for classical optimisation. However, for this problem, we are not interested in finding a single optimum. Rather we intend to identify a sub-set of good matches on which recommendations can be based. It is our hypothesis that an AIS built on two central aspects of the biological immune system will be an ideal candidate to achieve this: Antigen - antibody interaction for matching and antibody - antibody interaction for diversity. Computational results are presented in support of this conjecture and compared to those found by other CF techniques. Notes: Uwe Aickelin, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK


I investigate a dynamic oligopoly game where firms enter simultaneously
but compete hierarchically a la Stackelberg at each instant over time. They
accumulate capacity through costly investment, with capital acumulation
dynamics being affected by an additive shock the mean and variance of which
are known. The main findings are the following. First, the Stackelberg
game is uncontrollable by the leader; hence, it is time consistent. Second,
the leaders invest more than the followers; as a result, in steady state, the
leaders' capacity and profits are larger than the followers'. Therefore, the
present analysis does not confirm Gibrat's Law, since the individual growth
rate is determined by the timing of moves.


Many probabilistic models introduce strong dependencies between variables using a latent multivariate Gaussian distribution or a Gaussian process. We present a new Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for performing inference in models with multivariate Gaussian priors. Its key properties are: 1) it has simple, generic code applicable to many models, 2) it has no free parameters, 3) it works well for a variety of Gaussian process based models. These properties make our method ideal for use while model building, removing the need to spend time deriving and tuning updates for more complex algorithms.


Biological wastewater treatment processes harness the ability of microorganisms to break down and assimilate organic compounds that, if left untreated, cause detriment to the environment. Although this process occurs naturally, engineered systems are used to accelerate the process by optimizing bioreactor conditions to promote higher-than-typical biomass concentrations, thus increasing the rate of removal of biodegradable substances. However, in part due to the lack of an effective monitoring parameter for living biomass, these systems are rarely able to maximize efficiency and can be prone to debilitating upsets. Through years of research, LuminUltra Technologies Ltd. has developed test kits based on the measurement of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) for rapid and accurate monitoring of the concentration and health of living biomass at any location in a biological wastewater treatment system. The focus of this paper is on the advantages of Cellular ATP (cATP) as a measure of living biomass concentration compared to conventional parameters such as Mixed Liquor Suspended Solids (MLSS) or Mixed Liquor Volatile Suspended Solids (MLVSS), and will identify the opportunities for improvement through having this superior information. Such opportunities include the ability to optimize Food-to-Microorganism ratios, supplement feed rates, mixing efficiency / load balancing, respirometry analyses, and more.


Despite its significant associated costs, demand for robotic surgery continues to grow exponentially, with surgeons and patients alike increasingly gravitating towards health systems that provide access to robotic surgery. As it continues to develop its competitive advantage in robotic surgery, it is imperative for the modern health care systems to remain well-informed on the current state of robotic surgery and its role in improving health care quality and providing value to the system. The demand for robotic surgery is at an all-time high and continues to grow. Heavy marketing of da Vinci , and its role in improving minimally invasive surgery have led to substantial growth at hospitals and surgical centers around the country. However, current offerings require large initial capital investments and have high recurrent costs. Moreover, research to date has not proven robotic surgery superior to conventional laparoscopy for a majority of surgeries. As healthcare executives, this raises a dilemma: "Is robotic surgery worth it?" In short, the answer is "yes!" This requires careful consideration of several factors including a shift in frame of comparison, a focus on long-term outcomes, finding ways to increase robotic volume, and considering the effect of competition. The robotic surgery industry continues to grow exponentially; it is clear that it is here to stay. Intuitive Surgical has entrenched itself in the American Healthcare system with its aggressive marketing and advanced robotic surgery system. However, in current research, robotic surgery has not proven itself superior to conventional laparoscopy; costs often exceed those of laparoscopy. The increased demand and da Vinci's perceived flaws have sparked new competition aimed at improving value by improving quality and lowering costs. While more research is needed, this report suggests that it is indeed possible to derive significant value from robotic surgery.


ABSTRACT Nine new species of Muricidae from Guadeloupe, mainly collected during the 2012 KARUBENTHOS expedition, are described. Typhinellus lamyi n. sp. is compared with the similar species T. labiatus (Cristofori & Jan, 1832) from the Mediterranean Sea and T. occlusus (Garrard, 1963) from the Philippines. Dermomurex (Trialatella) pruvosti n. sp., D. (T.) boucheti n. sp., D. (T.) fajouensis n. sp. and D. (T.) tararensis n. sp. are compared with D. abyssicola (Crosse, 1865) occurring in the same area and with D. (T.) oxum Petuch, 1979 which ranges from Panama to Brazil. Pygmaepterys pointieri n. sp. and P. karukerensis n. sp. are compared with P. germainae Vokes & D'Attilio, 1980 and P. aliceae (Petuch, 1987). Muricopsis guadalupensis n. sp. is compared with M. caribbaea (Bartsch & Rehder, 1939) occurring throughout the Tropical West Atlantic and to M. marcusi Vokes, 1994 from Brazil. Lindapterys domlamyi n. sp. is compared with L. sanderi Petuch, 1987 from Barbados and Brazil and to the type species of the genus, L. vokesae Petuch, 1987 from the Early Miocene of Florida (USA). The name Murex hexagonus Lamarck, 1816, usually considered to be a primary homonym of Murex hexagonus (Gmelin, 1791), is rehabilitated (article 23.9.5, ICZN 1999). A lectotype of this species, is designated from the two syntypes housed in the MNHNG. Murex hexagonus is compared with other related Murexsul from the Caribbean area including M. oxytatus (Smith, 1938), M. zylmanae (Petuch, 1993), M. huberti (Radwin & D'Attilio, 1976), M. chesleri Houart, 2006, M. sunderlandi (Petuch, 1987), M. warreni (Petuch, 1993) and M. jahami Merle & Garrigues, 2011.


CASE STUDY Mr. M, a 65-year-old male, presented to his primary care physician with progressive fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and daily headaches for the past 3 weeks. His headaches were not associated with visual disturbances, cognitive deficits, or nausea/vomiting, and he had no history of migraines. He had a history of hypertension and hyperlipidemia, did not smoke, rarely drank alcohol, and had no recent illnesses or hospitalizations. His previous physical examination and laboratory studies 2 years ago were normal. The current physical examination revealed a plethoric yet well-appearing, well-nourished male in no acute distress. His lungs were clear to auscultation bilaterally without wheezes, rales, or rhonchi. He had a regular heart rate and rhythm without murmur. His abdomen was soft, without tenderness, distension, or palpable hepatosplenomegaly. Examination of the extremities was negative for edema. Distal pulses and sensation in the hands and feet were intact and equal bilaterally. Cranial nerves II to XII were deemed intact, and no gross focal deficits were observed. Complete blood count (CBC) revealed a slightly elevated white blood cell (WBC) count (14.6 × 109/L [normal range, 3.9–10.7 × 109/L; Wians, 2015]), erythrocytosis (red blood cell [RBC] count, 6.5 × 1012/L [normal range, 4.2–5.9 × 1012/L; Wians, 2015], hemoglobin, 19 g/dL [normal range, 14–17 g/dL; Wians, 2015], and hematocrit, 54.3% [normal range, 41%–51%; Wians, 2015]), thrombocytosis (platelet count, 500 × 109/L [normal range, 150–350 × 109/L; Wians, 2015]), and microcytosis (mean cell volume [MCV], 75 fL [80–100 fL; Wians, 2015]), which combined were cause for referral to a hematology/oncology clinic. During his hematology/oncology evaluation, Mr. M described "never feeling rested" and being unable to sleep with uncertain snoring habits. He was experiencing itching during hot showers yet did not have rashes and had not recently introduced a new soap. He had no family history of blood disorders and no personal history of blood clots. The second CBC and laboratory tests confirmed erythrocytosis (RBC count, 6.5 × 1012/L; hemoglobin, 18.9 g/dL; hematocrit, 54%) and microcytosis (MCV, 75 fL). Serum iron (22 μg/dL [normal range, 60–160 μg/dL]) and ferritin (5 ng/mL [normal range, 15–200 ng/mL]) were suggestive of iron deficiency, serum erythropoietin was 8 mU/mL (normal range, 4.0–18.5 mU/mL), and a Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) mutation analysis was positive for JAK2V617F. Platelet count remained 500 × 109/L and WBC count was 10.2 × 109/L.


OBJECT
Spinal cord herniation is a rare cause of progressive myelopathy and can be corrected surgically. In most previous reports, closure of the dural defect was the recommended procedure. The object of this paper is to describe a new procedure in which spinal cord constriction is released by enlarging the hiatus; additionally the postoperative results will be discussed.

METHODS
In nine patients with spinal cord herniation, enlargement of the dural defect was performed. In eight patients, neurological deficits resolved immediately after surgery. In one patient with a severe preoperative neurological deficit whose spinal cord herniated massively, deterioration occurred postoperatively. To date, no recurrence of herniation has been observed.

CONCLUSIONS
The goals of surgery are to reduce the herniation, return the spinal cord to the normal position, and prevent the recurrence of herniation. The use of sutures to close the dural defect has been the method of choice to date. The surgical space in front of the spinal cord, however, is insufficient to accommodate this procedure safely. Because symptoms are caused by the constriction of the spinal cord at the hiatus, surgical expansion of the hiatus allows the goals of surgery to be achieved. This procedure, which is technically easier and less invasive with regard to the vulnerable spinal cord than the closure of the dural defect, could be a viable alternative for the treatment of this rare disease.


Richard Hofstadter (1916 - 70) was America's most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including "The American Political Tradition", he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism's most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America - articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures - marked him as one of the nation's most important and prolific public intellectuals. In this masterful biography, David Brown explores Hofstadter's life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. According to Brown, Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America's hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy. By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years, as Brown shows, culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter's critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was "the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation," the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied. As this fascinating biography ultimately shows, Hofstadter's observations on the struggle between conservative and liberal America are relevant to our own times, and his legacy challenges us to this day.


In this paper, we propose the Interactive Text2Pickup (IT2P) network for human-robot collaboration which enables an effective interaction with a human user despite the ambiguity in user's commands. We focus on the task where a robot is expected to pick up an object instructed by a human, and to interact with the human when the given instruction is vague. The proposed network understands the command from the human user and estimates the position of the desired object first. To handle the inherent ambiguity in human language commands, a suitable question which can resolve the ambiguity is generated. The user's answer to the question is combined with the initial command and given back to the network, resulting in more accurate estimation. The experiment results show that given unambiguous commands, the proposed method can estimate the position of the requested object with an accuracy of 98.49% based on our test dataset. Given ambiguous language commands, we show that the accuracy of the pick up task increases by 1.94 times after incorporating the information obtained from the interaction.


Women, Citizenship and Difference, ed. by Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner. London and New York: Zed Books, 1999. xii + 261 pages. Index to p. 271. Ser. Postcolonial Encounters. $65 cloth; $22.50 paper. Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis, by Haideh Moghissi. London and New York: Zed Books, 1999. ix + 148 pages. References to p. 159. Index to p. 166. $55 cloth; $19.95 paper. A Daughter of Isis: The Autobiography of Nawal El Saadawi, by Nawal El Saadawi. Trans. by Sherif Hetata. London and New York: Zed Books, 1999. 294 pages. Photographs. $55 cloth; $19.95 paper. The memoir of Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian feminist of international repute, begins with a knot that laces much of her fiction: the triumvirate of God, logocentrism, and the father. Then, El Saadawi takes readers chronologically from her birth to the completion of her education and beginning of her medical career as a village doctor, sweeping through Egyptian history from her father's nationalist activism to her own consciousness of, and participation in, the demonstrations of the 1940s and early 1950s. Tracing large events of national history through a child's consciousness, El Saadawi offers a wonderful supplementary teaching text for modern history courses; regard, for instance, little Nawal's musings on intersections of imperialist and religious authority: "In my dreams I sometimes wondered whether Miss Hamer would go to Heaven or to Hell. Perhaps she might slip into Heaven in the same way as she used to slip into our classroom. I could not see her going to Hell since Satan spoke only Arabic, so that there was no way that Miss Hamer could understand him if he whispered evil temptations in her ears" (p. 98). The chronology of a life unfolds from the author's situation as she writes, far from Egypt, at a moment when many Egyptian intellectuals worry about physical safety, as they seek spaces in which to articulate their visions. Her meditations on the swings of memory and life center on the figure of her mother. If her father was an admired paragon of her early life (so marked a motif in feminist life stories), it is the mother's body, face, and words that recuperate that time and are crucial to recognizing the force-and the elusiveness-of memory. "I wrote to bring back my mother's face..." (p. 54). A difficult identification with the mother shapes memory: Her world was another world which made me shiver every time I thought of it, the world of the kitchen, smelling of onions and garlic, filled with smoke or soot rising from a kerosene-burning stove. The world of my father was the northern balcony, overlooking the flower nursery, open under the starry night, with Allah, and the Prophet Muhammad and the British and the king looking down on us (p. 60). El Saadawi invokes the history of female education in Egypt, alluding to her time at the famous Saniyya School. Her father, a Ministry of Education employee who rose through the ranks, supported female education in principle and Nawal's education materially, yet was reluctant to admit-and slow to accept-that she, rather than his male firstborn, was the academically inclined child. Her mother and aunts, making the "patriarchal bargains" that Deniz Kandiyoti has theorized so eloquently, are nevertheless role models in ways invisible to the young Nawal but present, sometimes uncomfortably, to the writer and fighter as she looks back. Uncles, on the other hand, are forces of reaction to be feared, avoided, and opposed; adult males in this autobiography could be models for many of El Saadawi's fictional male villains. Mother and father also enact a history of class tension and interaction. As in EI Saadawi's fiction, larger social forces are embodied in stark opposites that, literally, shine forth in different hues: the lighter, softer skins of her mother's landowning clan; the dark and sinewy hands of her paternal grandmother, wondrous exemplar of strong, down-to-earth peasant womanhood. …


Uncertainty quantification has received increasing attention in machine learning in the recent past. In particular, a distinction between aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty has been found useful in this regard. The latter refers to the learner's (lack of) knowledge and appears to be especially difficult to measure and quantify. In this paper, we analyse a recent proposal based on the idea of a second-order learner, which yields predictions in the form of distributions over probability distributions. While standard (first-order) learners can be trained to predict accurate probabilities, namely by minimising suitable loss functions on sample data, we show that loss minimisation does not work for second-order predictors: The loss functions proposed for inducing such predictors do not incentivise the learner to represent its epistemic uncertainty in a faithful way.


This correspondence presents a method for automatic setting of both constant and increasing thresholds to be used with the sequential similarity detection algorithm (SSDA) for a fast registration of digitized images. No a priori knowledge of image statistics is required. The usefulness of the method is proven in the cloud tracking.


Background: Currently, genetics is considered to be a major factor in the risk of osteoporosis and obesity.Therefore, we investigated possible association between TGFβ1 polymorphisms (rs: 1800470) with anthropometric and bone mineral density characteristics in postmenopausal women referred to Shariati Hospital in Tehran. Methods: In this study, 254 postmenopausal women aged 46 to 78 years were examined. Body composition measured by Body Composition Analyzer. Physical activity using the short form of physical activity questionnaire (IPAQ) was performed. Bone mineral density was measured by DEXA method. DNA samples from participants were genotyped using RFLP-PCR method. The results were analyzed by SPSS software version 20 and ANOVA method. Results: Our results showed that prevalence of osteoporosis in lumber and hip Tehranian women were 17.7% and 2.4% respectively. For first time in Iran, we found that genotype frequencies for TGFβ1 polymorphism (rs1800470) were: TT: 28.3%, TC: 48%, CC: 23.6% respectively. TGFβ1 polymorphism (rs1800470) in Iranian postmenopausal women after adjustment for age, age of menopause weight, physical activity, calorie intake were not associated with demography, body composition and bone bharacteristics (p>0.05). Conclusion: It seems that TGF-β1 variants (rs: 1800470) in postmenopausal Iranian women did not have direct association with bone mineral density and body composition.


Mast cell–derived particles provide a mechanism for the safe transport of signaling factors from inflamed tissues to the draining lymph nodes. The adaptive immune response to infection depends on the enhanced recruitment of lymphocytes to draining lymph nodes (DLN) and their retention therein, enhancing the likelihood that the appropriate lymphocytes will encounter antigen-presenting cells from the affected peripheral tissues. DLN undergo rapid growth and vascular remodeling to accommodate this process, but how the peripheral signals that stimulate them to do so reach the DLN has been unclear. Kunder et al. investigated the possibility that the insoluble granular particles released from mast cells (MC) during degranulation might act as chaperones that protect signaling molecules, such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF), on the journey from the periphery to the DLN. Scanning electron micrographs of isolated rat peritoneal mast cells revealed that exposure to a small molecule MC activator (compound 48/80) led to the gradual release of stable spherical particles. Immunoblot analysis of purified particles indicated that TNF was present in these particles; moreover, a green fluorescent protein (GFP)–TNF fusion protein localized to particles derived from a rat MC line or mouse bone marrow–derived MCs. Visualization of rat mesentery and mouse footpad lymphatics indicated that MC-derived particles trafficked within the lymphatic system, and particles from MCs activated in footpad were detected in DLN. MC-derived particles from wild-type mice stimulated lymph node hypertrophy when injected into the footpads of MC-deficient mice, whereas particles from mice lacking TNF did not. MC-derived particles are composed primarily of heparin proteoglycans and positively charged proteases, and TNF encapsulated in synthetic heparin-chitosan particles was more effective than soluble TNF at eliciting lymph node enlargement. The authors thus conclude that MC-derived particles provide a mechanism for the safe delivery of signaling factors from inflamed tissues to the DLN. C. A. Kunder, A. L. St. John, G. Li, K. W. Leong, B. Berwin, H. F. Staats, S. N. Abraham, Mast cell–derived particles deliver peripheral signals to remote lymph nodes. J. Exp. Med. 206, 2455–2467 (2009). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Individual differences in children's reading comprehension have been attributed to the level at which a reader is able to construct a coherent meaning-based mental representation of the situation described in a text (i.e., a "situation model"). However, although there is evidence that situation models contain perceptual information such as visual imagery, it is yet to be established whether visual imagery contributes to children's reading comprehension via its role in situation model construction. To investigate this, three studies were conducted with children in Grades 4 and 5 (age range: 8.08-11.17 years) as part of the current thesis.

Study 1 explored the utility of several measures of visual imagery and examined whether this construct is best captured by the differentiation of separate visual imagery processes in this younger population. Fifty-nine children completed five measures of visual imagery, each designed to capture a distinct subcomponent of the visual imagery system, including image generation, image maintenance, image scanning, image transformation, and image strength/vividness. It was found that the visual imagery measures were not highly related to one another and thus each represented a unique construct. However, not all of the included measures proved to be valid and reliable.

Utilising the measures of visual imagery that were found to have adequate psychometric properties in Study 1, Study 2 then examined the influence of different subtypes of visual imagery (image maintenance, image scanning and image transformation) on individual differences in reading comprehension. In addition, this study further investigated existing criticisms that traditional measures of reading comprehension do not capture all of the skills involved in situation model construction, by including two separate measures of reading comprehension: a traditional standardised measure (the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability), and a newer measure designed from cognitive theory, which measures higher-level comprehension processes separate to the effects of lower-level reading ability (the Diagnostic Assessment of Reading Comprehension; DARC). It was found that each subtype of visual imagery differentially predicted reading comprehension. In addition, each measure of reading comprehension was differentially influenced by variations in word reading ability and verbal working memory, with evidence that the Neale was more influenced by lower-level reading skills and simple verbal working memory, whereas the DARC was more influenced by non-verbal reasoning and complex verbal working memory. However, visual imagery was not found to be a reliable predictor of reading comprehension; although, this may have been due to an incongruity between the type of imagery that occurs during objective tasks of visual imagery and the visual simulation of narrative events.

Thus, Study 3 was designed to disrupt good and poor comprehenders' visual imagery during reading in order to determine whether good comprehenders show more reliance on visual imagery during comprehension than poor comprehenders. Unexpectedly, however, good comprehenders showed limited evidence of engaging in higher-level comprehension processes (i.e., predictive inferencing) even when imagery was not impaired. Despite this, important implications regarding the use of both textbase and imagery-based representations were revealed, as poor comprehenders displayed increased difficulty maintaining a verbal load during reading compared to a visuospatial load. This suggests that in comparison to good comprehenders, poor comprehenders may have a greater reliance on textbase over imagery-based representations during reading.

Overall, this thesis adds to the literature that suggests not all reading comprehension measures are interchangeable in regard s to the underlying skills that they measure. Further, visual imagery may be relevant to reading comprehension; yet, it is likely that this relationship will be further established through careful conceptualisation and measurement of visual imagery versus visual simulation. These findings have implications regarding the use of existing comprehension measures in research and practice, and may also aid future research that investigates the role of visual imagery in higher-level comprehension processes.


Prawn fishery along the east coast, in general, occurs in concentrations close to major estuaries and backwaters, for which varyingsources of Information are available. Little has been known about the prevalent prawn resources along the Cauvery Delta region off Cuddalore despite large scale exploitation since the introduction of trawl fishing. The fishing grounds along Cuddalore-Portonovo coast are commonly exploited by trawlers launched from four bases; Cuddalore (D.T.), Portonovo, Devinampatnam and Pazhayar, among which observations were restricted to Cuddalore (D.T.), which was the largest with more Infrastructure facilities. The salient feature of fishery of the region has been the multiplicity of species many o fwhich being more remunerative. The combination of P.indicus and M.dobsoni in dominant and the moderate catches of M.monoceros and P.semisulcatus, form the cream of commercial fishery.


The Panel on Plant Health assessed the risk to plant health from Phytophthora fragariae for the European Union and evaluated the current EU legislation and possible risk reduction options. The pest is present in most areas of Europe except southern Mediterranean regions. Entry through the plants for planting, but not seeds, pathway, is assessed as a major pathway, with the probability of entry rated as unlikely and the uncertainty as high. The probability of establishment is likely in the absence of existing disease control practices with low uncertainty. The probability of spread in the absence of a scheme for the production of certified plants for planting is considered to be very likely. With certification, spread is considered to be unlikely to moderately likely, depending on the inclusion of testing for the pathogen as part of certification. These ratings have medium uncertainty. Potential impact is rated as minor with medium uncertainty. The Panel evaluated the effectiveness of current EU legislation regarding the introduction and spread of P. fragariae. According to the regulation the import of Fragaria plants for planting, other than seeds, is prohibited from specified countries, whereas for import of these plants from other countries and for movement of these plants within the EU special requirements with respect to P. fragariae must be fulfilled. If the current legislation specific to P. fragariae were removed, no major consequences would be expected, unless the industry simultaneously ceased its voluntary certification activity. This is largely because of the important level of protection afforded to the industry by the widely used certification schemes for Fragaria, which significantly reduce the risks of entry, establishment, spread and impact. Certification schemes for the movement of Fragaria plants for planting offer the greatest efficiency and feasibility and the least uncertainty, especially if effective detection is incorporated into them.


We compared forest floor depth, soil organic matter, soil moisture, anaerobic mineralizable nitrogen (a measure of microbial biomass), denitrification potential, and soil/litter arthropod communities among old growth, unthinned mature stands, and thinned mature stands at nine sites (each with all three stand types) distributed among three regions of Oregon. Mineral soil measurements were restricted to the top 10 cm. Data were analyzed with both multivariate and univariate analyses of variance. Multivariate analyses were conducted with and without soil mesofauna or forest floor mesofauna, as data for those taxa were not collected on some sites. In multivariate analysis with soil mesofauna, the model giving the strongest separation among stand types (P = 0.019) included abundance and richness of soil mesofauna and anaerobic mineralizable nitrogen. The best model with forest floor mesofauna (P = 0.010) included anaerobic mineralizable nitrogen, soil moisture content, and richness of forest floor mesofauna. Old growth had the highest mean values for all variables, and in both models differed significantly from mature stands, while the latter did not differ. Old growth also averaged higher percent soil organic matter, and analysis including that variable was significant but not as strong as without it. Results of the multivariate analyses were mostly supported by univariate analyses, but there were some differences. In univariate analysis, the difference in percent soil organic matter between old growth and thinned mature was due to a single site in which the old growth had exceptionally high soil organic matter; without that site, percent soil organic matter did not differ between old growth and thinned mature, and a multivariate model containing soil organic matter was not statistically significant. In univariate analyses soil mesofauna had to be compared nonparametrically (because of heavy left-tails) and differed only in the Siskiyou Mountains, where they were most abundant and species rich in old growth forests. Species richness of mineral soil mesofauna correlated significantly (+) with percent soil organic matter and soil moisture, while richness of forest floor mesofauna correlated (+) with depth of the forest floor. Composition of forest floor and soil mesofauna suggest the two groups represent a single community. Soil moisture correlated highly with percent soil organic matter, with no evidence for drying in sites that were sampled relatively late in the summer drought, suggesting losses of surface soil moisture were at least partially replaced by hydraulic lift (which has been demonstrated in other forests of the region).


Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs. 2 Vols. Ed. Carl Lindahl, John McNamara, and John Lindow. (Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Pp. xxxiii + 1135, preface, acknowledgments, illustrations, indexes. $175 cloth) This large compilation consists of 306 entries in alphabetical order, each followed by "references and further reading." Many of the entries are only a page or two long; the longest, like "Folklore" and "Folktale" (both by Lindahl), can be 10 or 12 pages. There are comparatively lengthy entries on geographical areas by experts in the field: Arab-Islamic (Ulrich Marzolph), Baltic, Finno-Ugric (both by Thomas A. Dubois), English (McNamara and Lindahl), French (Francesca Canade Sautman), German (Leander Petzoldt), Hispanic (Samuel G. Armistead), Hungarian (Eva Pocs), Irish (Joseph Falaky Nagy), Italian (Guiseppe C. DiScipio), Jewish (Eli Yassif), Scandinavian (Stephen A. Mitchell), Scottish (McNamara), East Slavic (why not West Slavic as well?-Eve Levin), and Welsh (Elissa R Henken and Brynley F Roberts). We are told in the preface that traditions of the British Isles are favored in the choice of entries (however, the judicious findings of Ronald Hutton on subjects like Halloween, Samhain, and harvest festivals have not been utilized). Most expected topics can be found here, but surprisingly, nothing on Superstition, Luck, or Omen, and nothing on number symbolism except as used by Dante. What were the medieval equivalents-or lack thereof-for fear of the number 13 or of Friday the 13th? No obvious answer here. Church law is also neglected, for instance in the entries on Law and Marriage Traditions (no account of clandestine marriages in the latter). Many entries are not folkloric in any but the most general and unhelpful sense, i.e., everything is folklore-for instance, those on St. Andrew's Day (in contrast to a pertinent entry on St. Anne), Apollonius of Tyre, Bagpipe, Bal des Ardents, Bowed Strings, Boy Bishop, St. Catherine of Alexandria, Chanson de Geste, Chretien de Troyes, Courtly Love, and so on, ending with Zither. Some of these topics could easily have been given a folkloric emphasis, of course, which means that the editors should have re-worked the drafts submitted and returned them for the contributors' "approval." The editors, however, seem to have been so timid that they did not even venture to insert motif or tale-type numbers into entries where these are lacking, even though they list them in the indexes at the end of Volume 2. There is, by the way, no abbreviations page at the beginning, and two of the targeted audiences (nonfolkloric medievalists and nonfolkloric nonmedievalists) are likely to be mystified by "B160.1," "AT 1242A," and the like, unless they are dedicated enough or lucky enough to find the indexes at the end. The editors recount the instructions that they gave to contributors, telling them especially to be very specific in dating and in characterizing both medieval and nonmedieval phenomena. In general, the results are very satisfactory, but sometimes not, as with the Satan entry, where the pre-medieval material is confused and erroneous and the medieval data scattered and unsystematic. The mainly premedieval entries by J. K Elliott (notably, Jesus Christ, St. Joseph, St. Peter, Virgin Mary) are excellent, and in the Jesus entry he gives the proper dating to the Descensus addition to the Gospel of Nicodemus, viz., 5th to 6th century, wrongly dated to an earlier period in the Harrowing of Hell entry. It is astounding that even though the gargoyles of Notre Dame in Paris are labeled as "a postmedieval stereotype" in the Preface, they are featured on the covers of the volumes. Otherwise, the selection of illustrations in the work is very good. There are some survivals of critical stereotypes, for instance the idea that the Grail was thought of as the chalice rather than the dish of the Last Supper, and that Andreas Capellanus was chaplain of Marie de Champagne (Chretien, Grail); that Samhain was the beginning of the Celtic year (New Year's); that indulgences were "sold" (Purgatory); that there is an agreed-upon definition of courtly love and that "medieval literature employs a variety of terms for this kind of love" (Courtly Love); on the last point, it is truer to say that the same terms are used for a variety of loves in medieval literature. …


The main purpose of this study was to examine the various finance models that are presently being used to finance facilities and to provide information for the Texas legislature, the Texas Education Agency, and local school districts concerning facilities funding models that might be used in Texas. Based on the information gathered and analyzed, several conclusions are drawn and recommendations regarding state funding of capital projects in the State of Texas are made. The model recommended for Texas is one that provides for an equalized grant and includes formulas for the distribution of state money.


It is necessary to study the spatial evolution of clusters in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) mobile channel, which is one of the important features in cluster-based models. In this paper, we analyze the data collected from the massive MIMO mobile measurement campaign, with a 256-element virtual array at 3.5 GHz in line of sight (LoS) and non line of sight (NLoS) conditions, respectively. Firstly, the cluster-level angular power spectrums (APS), azimuth of departure (AoD) and azimuth of arrival (AoA), are shown to display the variation of clusters along with the measurement route. Secondly, the evolution of cluster number is presented, showing the changes of appearance and disappearance of the clusters, and the corresponding model based on birth-death process is built. Finally, the cumulative density functions (CDF) of radii of visibility regions (VR) are calculated, which are used to study the variations of VRs along with the measurement route, and lognormal distribution fits the CDFs well.


Modernization of public administration is important for Lithuanian public sector. It may be achieved by integration of quality management, its principles and methods to practice of public administration. European Organization for Quality acts as a catalyst and creates the mechanisms for public and private organizations, develops the new approaches to quality. Total Quality Management (TQM), as integral concept, is based on the participation of all employees, designed to continual improvement of processes oriented to customers' satisfaction. TQM may be effective in public sector when specific features of public organizations and their activities have been exposed and assessed. The bases of TQM quality management system embraces organizational structure, resources and processes. ISO 9000 family standards contains models and methods for creation of the original quality management system of any organization. The new ISO 9000:2000 standards represent some changes that might be more suitable for middle and small organizations. Quality awards stimulate management to improve activities and their results. Best example of the quality award program for public sector is The President's Quality Award in the USA. The program includes the Performance Excellence Criteria that are built upon a set of core values and concepts. The criteria define a quality system and are the basis for organizational self-assessment. The President's Award program could serve as methodical foundation for activities improvement of the public organization. The Lithuanian Quality Award may be extended to public administration sector.


This brief essay serves two purposes. The first is to make some general observations about criminal appeals. It thus outlines the substantial institutional and doctrinal differences between the appellate process in civil and criminal cases, notes the relative lack of scholarship devoted to the criminal appellate process, and suggests that the role of the judge in criminal cases is undertheorized. The second is to introduce the pieces in a symposium issue of the Marquette Law Review, most of which was presented at a conference held at Marquette University Law School and entitled "Criminal Appeals: Past, Present, and Future."


The impact of climate change on human survival and security, urban development is even more profound, and receives more and more attention. To explore the perceived status of urban residents for the risks of climate change and put forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions, taking Wuhan for example, from the microscopic point of urban residents, we use factor analysis to classify the perceived risks and recognized risk reduction measures, use cluster analysis to divide the urban residents into five groups, and use variance analysis to explore differences in the choice of measures between different cluster groups. We draw the following conclusions: the risk of deterioration of the ecological environment, the risk of economic damage, the risk of damage to the mental health, the risk of damage to the physical health and the risk of damage to the political harmony are the main risks of climate change for urban residents; individuals and families to develop good habits, businesses and governments to strengthen energy conservation, schools and other agencies to carry on the propaganda and education, carrying out multi-agent environment improvement, learn from the West are their recognized risk reduction measures. Depending on the perceived risk, the urban residents are clustered into five groups: those who are concerned about the body and politics, those who are concerned about the mental health, those who are concerned about the economic development, those who are concerned about the ecological safety, and those who ignore the climatic change. For the roles of individual and the family, business and government in the environmental protection, different groups have unanimous views, while for other measures, different groups have different understanding. It is concluded that individuals and families to develop environmentally friendly habits, government to strengthen regulation, businesses to take environmental responsibility, schools to strengthen publicity and education, and exploring the multi-agent participation, are the key to solving the problem.


In Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the Ninth Circuit upheld the certification of the largest employment discrimination class in history, with more than 1.5 million women employees seeking over $1.5 billion in damages. A crucial piece of evidence supporting class certification came from a sociologist who testified that he performed a social framework analysis to evaluate Wal-Mart against what social science research shows to be factors that create and sustain bias and found the company wanting. As authority for introducing this analysis, the expert and the Ninth Circuit relied on our prior work introducing the concept of social framework to refer to the use of general social science research to provide a context for the determination of specific factual issues in litigation. In this article, we review and recast the procedures originally proposed for apprising juries of general research results to assist in resolving the case before them. We then apply these updated procedures to the expert testimony in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, which promises to be a template for future employment discrimination litigation.Experience over the past 20 years has shown that that courts will typically allow general contextual information from social science research to be conveyed to the jury by expert witnesses rather than via instructions, as originally envisioned. Where this occurs, we believe it essential that courts limit expert testimony to a description of the findings of relevant and reliable research and of the methodologies that produced those findings, and preclude the witness from linking the general research findings to alleged policies and practices of a specific firm. The landmark class action of Dukes v. Wal-Mart illustrates the centrality of social framework evidence to modern employment litigation, as well as the need for courts to clarify and circumscribe the role of the experts who introduce them.


In the eighteenth century, Durham City was an important centre of political power, the nucleus of which was the cathedral whose own wealth and power was immense. The Bishop, as the King's representative, governed County Durham, and Durham City, as the capital of the palatinate, was a vibrant socio-economic centre. Those with means spent much of their free time patronising the large number of concerts, balls, assemblies, or theatrical productions that were frequently held in the city. For a musician, these public events provided ample opportunities to make a living. There were also opportunities to teach the children of wealthy patrons and to publish compositions. In consequence a large number of musicians came to the city, either to live or to visit, with race and assize weeks (the busiest time of the year) as a major focus of their employment.
The centre of musical life in Durham was the cathedral which dominated the production of both sacred and secular music. In order to attract good quality singers to the north, the cathedral's Chapter offered unusually high salaries to its lay-clerks. The clerks, as able singers, forged a high reputation as a musical force in the region at a time when the quality of sacred music and cathedral choirs was in serious decline. Some of the lay-clerks, most notably Edward Meredith and William Evance, would travel large distances to perform. Until 1763 the cathedral organist was James Hesletine who was succeeded by Thomas Ebdon. Both men were also involved in the local concert scene, although, under Hesletine, a significant dispute with the Newcastle musician Charles Avison took place which ultimately led to the establishment of a rival subscription series by Avison in partnership with John Garth.
Music permeated all levels of society at Durham. In addition to what was produced for concerts and at the cathedral, music was prevalent in many other arenas. Music formed part of worship in all of the city's churches, although it was only at St. Mary le Bow that it reached an appreciable standard. As part of the broader matrix of performances of secular music, Durham possessed its own musical society, and, as part of its wider public role, music performed a key role in civic and other ceremonial
occasions as well as for local freemasonry, an organisation to which many of Durham's musicians belonged. Other forms of music-making took place in the domestic environment, but it was also possible to find music performed in the city's
taverns. Furthermore, the performance of folk music and the presence of the town waits and military bands meant that music was commonly heard on the city's streets.
This thesis is based on a detailed study of several primary sources. The most important of these is the local newspapers, but ecclesiastical records, diaries, personal
letters, published books on music and local history, and the music itself (both printed and in manuscript), have also been closely examined. By means of this archival work
it has been possible to examine the whole spectrum of musical life across the city, a study which amply demonstrates that Durham was one of the most important
provincial musical centres outside London. In fact, notwithstanding its provincial location, Durham was by no means insular in its outlook, nor was it entirely backward-looking, as can be seen in the distinctly innovative and inventive work of Garth.


OBJECTIVE
To analyze the results from the "WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence", on the prevalence of intimate partner violence against women found in Brazil.

METHODS
This cross-sectional study was part of the "WHO Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against women", which was carried out in ten countries between 2000 and 2003. All the countries used a standardized structured questionnaire, devised for this study. In order to obtain data from contrasting settings within each country, the biggest city and a rural region were investigated whenever feasible. A representative sample of women aged 15 to 49 years was selected from the city of São Paulo and 15 municipalities in a rural region of the northeast, the Zona da Mata de Pernambuco. The study included 940 women from São Paulo and 1,188 from Zona da Mata de Pernambuco who had had an intimate partner at some time in their lives. Violence was classified as psychological, physical and sexual types, and was analyzed in relation to overlapping, recurrence of episodes, severity and when it occurred.

RESULTS
The women in São Paulo and Pernambuco respectively reported the following at least once in their lifetimes: psychological (N=383; 41.8% and N=580; 48.9%); physical (N=266; 27.2% and N=401; 33.7%); sexual (N=95; 10.1% and N=170; 14.3%) violence. There was significant overlapping among the types of violence, which seemed to be associated with the most severe types of violence. The greatest single type was psychological violence, in São Paulo and Pernambuco (N=164; 17.5% and N=206; 17.3%), and the smallest was sexual violence (N=2; 0.2% and N=12; 1.0%).

CONCLUSIONS
The results show that violence is a very common phenomenon. The findings reiterate previous international studies results with regard to high magnitude and overlapping of types of intimate partner violence.


In recent years, a growing number of deep model-based reinforcement learning (RL) methods have been introduced. The interest in deep model-based RL is not surprising, given its many potential benefits, such as higher sample efficiency and the potential for fast adaption to changes in the environment. However, we demonstrate, using an improved version of the recently introduced Local Change Adaptation (LoCA) setup, that well-known model-based methods such as PlaNet and DreamerV2 perform poorly in their ability to adapt to local environmental changes. Combined with prior work that made a similar observation about the other popular model-based method, MuZero, a trend appears to emerge, suggesting that current deep model-based methods have serious limitations. We dive deeper into the causes of this poor performance, by identifying elements that hurt adaptive behavior and linking these to underlying techniques frequently used in deep model-based RL. We empirically validate these insights in the case of linear function approximation by demonstrating that a modified version of linear Dyna achieves effective adaptation to local changes. Furthermore, we provide detailed insights into the challenges of building an adaptive nonlinear model-based method, by experimenting with a nonlinear version of Dyna.


The paper "Lance Armstrong, It wasn't just about the bike", examines the Lance Armstrong saga from a comparative perspective, examining what might happen if such a high profile saga erupted in other common law jurisdictions. In doing so, it draws on wider questions around the concept of cheating and the specific nature of doping and the measures in place to combat the threat of widespread abuse of performance enhancing substances. The standard of proof required in questions around non-analytical positives is examined and questions around next steps for sport such as a general amnesty are raised. It is also suggested that the code of silence pervading some sports around doping issues may be combatted by provisions such as the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and that this legislation may help to combat some of the mist that surrounds doping control in sport.


Various methods have been adopted to reduce orthodontic treatment time. These include biological approaches using vitamin D and prostaglandins; relaxin cytokines that include lymphocytes and monocytes-derived factors, receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa B ligand (RANKL), etc.; surgical methods such as corticotomy, piezocision, interseptal alveolar surgery, osteotomy, etc.; and noninvasive device-assisted methods such as mechanical vibration, photobiomodulation, etc. The biological and surgical approaches although more predictable have their own limitations of acceptance by patients. The present study, therefore, is a narrative review literature on the noninvasive methods to accelerate orthodontic tooth movement. A review of 56 articles related to the studies, using noninvasive methods, was done from 1987 to 2019. Photobiomodulation is one of the most studied noninvasive methods and has shown success in reducing the treatment time. More research is needed to make these methods more accessible and patient friendly.


June sucker, Chasmistes liorus, is an endangered lake sucker endemic to Utah Lake, Utah, USA. Over the last two decades, captive-raised June suckers have been stocked into Utah Lake to augment the wild population. However, it has become apparent that the fish stocked from captive stock may not always represent the typical June sucker morphology. To determine the utility of current captive brood lots to produce June sucker phenotypes, we characterized shape of the lip lobes on the lower jaw of each brood lot. We obtained offspring from within-lot crosses and characterized shape of the lower lips using geometric morphometrics. We compared shape of brood lots to reference samples of June sucker and reference samples of the co-occurring sister species, Utah sucker (Catostomus ardens). Mean shape of the lower lips among brood lots varies from typical June sucker morphology to shapes typical of Utah sucker. Three brood lots had mean shape scores somewhat similar to the reference June sucker mean, and five brood lots had mean shape scores more similar to the reference Utah sucker mean. All other brood lots were intermediate representing hybrid phenotypes. Utilization of all brood lots on a roughly equal basis for augmentation in Utah Lake will likely result in the loss of typical June sucker morphology in the lake within a few decades. We recommend use of brood lots that exhibit June sucker morphology and discontinuance of use of brood lots that represent Utah sucker morphology. In addition, selection on lower lip shape in captive brood lots may be required to recreate June sucker phenotypes from captive brood stock.


The critical current (Ic) of YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO) AFM plough micro-constrictions is measured as a function of temperature, width and the magnetic flux density (B), which was applied perpendicular to the YBCO ab-plane and surface of the bridges. C-axis oriented thin films of YBa2Cu3O7-x were deposited on MgO substrates using an inverted cylindrical magnetron (ICM) sputtering technique. The films were then patterned into 8-10 micron size strips, using standard photolithography and dry etching processes. Micro-bridges with widths between 1.9 microm to 4.1 microm were fabricated by using atomic force microscope (AFM) nanolithography techniques. Critical current versus temperature data shows a straight-line behavior, which is typical of constriction type Josephson junctions. The Ic versus B characteristics exhibited a modulation, and a suppression of the critical current of up to 84%. It was also found that the critical current increases with increasing constriction width.


The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) is a D + ―Li neutron source aimed at producing an intense high energy neutron flux (2 MW/m 2 ) for testing candidate fusion reactor materials. Under Broader Approach activities, Engineering Validation and Engineering Design Activities (EVEDAs) of IFMIF started on July 2007. Regarding the lithium (Li) target facility, design, construction, and tests of EVEDA Li test loop (ELTL) is a major Japanese activity. The detail design of the loop was started since early 2009. Construction of the loop was started at the middle of 2009, and completion is scheduled at the end of February 2011. This paper focuses on the design of the loop configuration and the major components. ELTL was designed to consist of two major Li loops, which are a main loop and a purification loop including an impurity monitoring loop. The main loop equips a target assembly which produces a high-speed free-surface Li flow to test the flow stability as the D + beam target. The maximum flow rate of an electromagnetic pump in the main loop was set to 3000 l/min, so that flow velocity in the target assembly is 20 m/s at the maximum. Regarding the purification loop, a cold trap and two hot traps and impurity monitors are installed in order to purify and monitor impurities in Li. The configuration of these components in addition to the specification and configuration of the whole loop is presented.


In this mini‐review, we focus on the potential of the endocannabinoid system as a target for novel therapies to treat gastrointestinal (GI) inflammation. We discuss the organization of the endocannabinoid signaling and present possible pharmacological sites in the endocannabinoid system. We also refer to recent clinical findings in the field. Finally, we point at the potential use of cannabinoids at low, non‐psychoactive doses to counteract non‐inflammatory pathological events in the GI tract, like chemotherapy‐induced diarrhea, as evidenced by Abalo et al. in the rat model.


The available literature has been surveyed to determine the parameters affecting fuelling requirements of spark ignition engines and their relation to engine performance and emissions. Theories and experiment relating to two phase and multi-component flows have also been examined and the techniques employed in the measurement of droplet sizes and liquid wall films have been reviewed. Following preliminary steady flow visualisation experiments to examine the trajectories of droplets discharging from the valve port an extensive practical investigation of the spectrum of droplet sizes formed by the break up of the wall film has produced results which have been correlated in terms of the important fuel and airflow parameters. It is concluded that the Sauter mean diameter of droplets formed by the break up of the wall film will vary between 70 and 150 m, depending on the operating conditions of the engine. The spectra of droplet sizes measured show that a significant proportion of the total mass of the wall film breaks into drops which will be too large to burn completely and, by comparison with measurements of unburned hydrocarbon emissions from engines supplied with a homogeneous mixture of air and gaseous hydrocarbons, it is concluded that the droplets from the wall film are likely to increase emissions by 50%.


Although online Q&A services have increased in popularity, the field lacks a comprehensive typology to classify different kinds of services into model types. This poster categorizes online Q&A services into four model types – community-based, collaborative, expert-based, and social. Drawing such a distinction between online Q&A models provides an overview for how these different types of online Q&A models differ from each other and suggests implications for mitigating weaknesses and bolstering strengths of each model based on the types of questions that are addressed within each. To demonstrate differences among these models an appropriate service was selected for each of them. Then, 500 questions were collected and analyzed for each of these services to classify question types into four categories – information-seeking, advice-seeking, opinion-seeking, and non-information seeking. The findings suggest that information-seeking questions appear to be more suitable in either a collaborative Q&A environment or an expert-based Q&A environment, while opinion-seeking questions are more common in community-based Q&A. Social Q&A, on the other hand, provides an active forum for either seeking personal advice or seeking non-information related to either self-expression or self-promotion.


On November 10, 1995, the Nigerian military government under General Sani Abacha executed dissident writer Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight other activists, and the international community reacted with outrage. The response was quick, decisive, and nearly unanimous: Nigeria is an outcast in the global village. The events that led up to Saro-Wiwa's execution mark Nigeria's decline from a post-colonial success story to its current military dictatorship, and few writers have been more outspoken in decrying and lamenting this decline than Nobel Prize laureate and Nigerian exile Wole Soyinka. In The Open Sore of a Continent, Soyinka, whose own Nigerian passport was confiscated 1994, explores the history and future of Nigeria in a compelling jeremiad that is as intense as it is provocative, learned, and wide-ranging. He deftly explains the shifting dramatis personae of Nigerian history and politics , arguing that 'a glance at the mildewed tapestry of the stubbornly unfinished nation edifice' is necessary to explain where Nigeria can go next. In the process of elucidating the Nigerian crisis, Soyinka opens readers to the broader questions of nationhood, identity, and the general state of African culture and politics at the end of the twentieth century. He examines the different ways in which a nation can be defined, and asks how these varying definitions impact the people who live under them? Soyinka concludes with a resounding call for international attention to this question: the global community must address the issue of nationhood to prevent further religious mandates and calls for ethnic purity of the sort that have turned Algeria, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sri Lanka into killing fields.


The body of science evaluating the potential impacts of unconventional natural gas development (UNGD) has grown significantly in recent years, although many data gaps remain. Still, a broad empirical understanding of the impacts is beginning to emerge amidst a swell of research. The present categorical assessment provides an overview of the peer-reviewed scientific literature from 2009–2015 as it relates to the potential impacts of UNGD on public health, water quality, and air quality. We have categorized all available original research during this time period in an attempt to understand the weight and direction of the scientific literature. Our results indicate that at least 685 papers have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that are relevant to assessing the impacts of UNGD. 84% of public health studies contain findings that indicate public health hazards, elevated risks, or adverse health outcomes; 69% of water quality studies contain findings that indicate potential, positive association, or actual incidence of water contamination; and 87% of air quality studies contain findings that indicate elevated air pollutant emissions and/or atmospheric concentrations. This paper demonstrates that the weight of the findings in the scientific literature indicates hazards and elevated risks to human health as well as possible adverse health outcomes associated with UNGD. There are limitations to this type of assessment and it is only intended to provide a snapshot of the scientific knowledge based on the available literature. However, this work can be used to identify themes that lie in or across studies, to prioritize future research, and to provide an empirical foundation for policy decisions.


Abstract Losses due to weeds in food crop production are discussed. Types of weeds differ from one crop to another; environmental conditions, crop management and other factors affect weed growth. Hand weeding is practised on small farms, even in upland crops where weed problems are more complicated. Some experiments with herbicides on food crops have been introduced by various institutions. Due to the rising cost of labour, especially on large-scale mechanised farms, chemical weed control will become more important. It is suggested that applied research in new methods of weed control as well as basic research in weed biology related to agriculture should be encouraged.


The objective of this project was to devise materials and bring together information that could be used by guidance personnel and teachers to help the grade eight student make pre-vocational course choices for grade nine at the Conception Bay South District Vocational School. -- Out of this overall objective there developed three sub-objectives which were as follows: -- 1. The development of an information package to be used by guidance personnel and teachers to help the grade eight student make pre-vocational course choices for grade nine at the Conception Bay South Pre-Vocational Pilot Project. -- 2. The development of an annotated bibliography on the pre-vocational courses and related areas that could be drawn on by teachers and counsellors to provide readily available career guidance information for grade eight students. -- 3. The development of ten slide-tape presentations, one on each pre-vocational course, to be used by teachers and counsellors to give the grade eight student an insight into what is involved in each course offered by the Conception Bay South Pre-Vocational Pilot Project. -- The achievement of each of objective resulted in three products as follows: -- 1. An information package for teachers and counselors. -- 2. An annotated bibliography. -- 3. Ten slide-tape presentations. -- This project took approximately six hundred and ten man hours to complete, and its approximate cost was $533.88 for materials. -- The overall evaluation of the three products was carried out by teachers, counsellors, a panel of experts, grade eight students, and grade nine students. All evaluators determined the that products were suitable for the purposes for which they were designed. -- The limiting factors in this project were as follows: -- 1. The amount of time that was available if the products were to be ready for the school year beginning in September of 1973. -- 2. Because of the time factor involved, the slides in some of the presentations do not completely cover the course. -- 3. The technical quality of the slide-tape presentations is limited in some cases. -- 4. The amount of money that was available for the preparation of the project. -- 5. Pre-vocational course content can be expected to change, and more up to date materials will be brought into the Department of Education, Audio-Visual Division. These factors may cause the present materials to become outdated. -- As a result of the project a number of recommendations were made. For use, the recommendations included getting the products into the schools where they can do the most good, using the information package and the slide-tape presentations for public relations purposes, having the information package drawn up into a handbook for students, having the information in the annotated bibliography distributed to guidance counsellors for use in their guidance programs, and having the materials examined for use elsewhere if the pre-vocational program is extended to other areas in Newfoundland. For improvement of the products, the recommendations included having the slide-tape presentations made over in other forms if the appropriate equipment cannot be made available, making improvements in the technical quality of the slide-tape presentations, having people in the actual occupations filmed for inclusion in the career areas discussed on the tape, having the materials on the typing course revised subsequent to the implementation of the new business fundamentals course, and having the electronics slide-tape presentation re-edited before it is presented to students. The general recommendations included having the three products brought up to date when they become obsolete, and having provision made for updating of the guidance materials available from the Department of Education, Audio-Visual Division.


Although glucocorticoids are also known as anti-allergic drugs, rare allergic side effects of glucocorticoids have been reported in the literature. These reactions vary from simple rash to anaphylaxis. Here, a patient who developed anaphylaxis several minutes after intravenous methylprednisolone administration is described. With this report, we want clinicians to be aware of rare side effects including anaphylaxis due to methylprednisolone, known as an anti-allergic drug. An 11-year-old female presented to an outside emergency clinic with ataxia, headache, blurred eyesight and being unable to sit without help for the last week. There was an upper respiratory tract infection within two weeks in her medical history. She seemed well and systemic examination revealed normal findings. Neurological exam showed ataxic gait with positive Romberg and Babinski signs. Eye examination revealed bilateral papillary edema. Laboratory investigations revealed normal CBC, ESR, CRP and routine biochemistry values. Cranial MR suggested pseudotumor cerebri and intravenous methylprednisolone pulse therapy was initiated at the pediatric ward. Several minutes later, a maculopapular rash appeared on her neck and trunk followed by nausea, tachypnea, dsypnea and tachycardia. Consequently, a type 1 hypersensitivity reaction was suspected so the infusion was stopped temporarily and an antihistaminic administered by the pediatrician. The symptoms were resolved but they reappeared when the infusion was restarted mistakenly. An anaphylactic reaction to methylprednisolone was considered and dexamethasone pulse was advised by the allergy unit instead of methylprednisolone. Previous tolerance to the oral form of methylprednisolone by the patient verified the presumption that the reaction was against an excipient. This case indicates that there may even be an allergic reaction to anti-allergic medications.


Archean cratons get a Hadean mash-up The vast majority of the rock record over Earth's 4.6-billion-year history has been destroyed through subduction and recycling back into the mantle. Although some slivers of 4-billion-year-old crust remain in the rock record, only isolated zircon mineral grains are dated to be older. However, O'Neil and Carlson found isotopic evidence of reworked basaltic crust more than 4.3 billion years old mixed into some of the 2.7-billion-year-old rocks of the Superior Province in Canada. Thus, our planet's oldest crust was reworked and retained during formation of at least one continental craton. Science, this issue p. 1199 The neodymium isotope ratios from a piece of Archean crust require inclusion of 4.2-billion-year-old Hadean crustal components. Geologic processing of Earth's surface has removed most of the evidence concerning the nature of Earth's first crust. One region of ancient crust is the Hudson Bay terrane of northeastern Canada, which is mainly composed of Neoarchean felsic crust and forms the nucleus of the Northeastern Superior Province. New data show these ~2.7-billion-year-old rocks to be the youngest to yield variability in neodymium-142 (142Nd), the decay product of short-lived samarium-146 (146Sm). Combined 146-147Sm-142-143Nd data reveal that this large block of Archean crust formed by reworking of much older (>4.2 billion-year-old) mafic crust over a 1.5-billion-year interval of early Earth history. Thus, unlike on modern Earth, mafic crust apparently could survive for more than 1 billion years to form an important source rock for Archean crustal genesis.


Despite a growing awareness that mistaken eyewitness identifications contribute significantly to wrongful convictions, most courts continue to apply federal due process criteria for admissibility of eyewitness identification that has proved useless in protect against the use of highly unreliable evidence. In response, this Article reviews the path-breaking decisions of several State Supreme Courts that have blazed their own trail. It explores the issues that courts have addressed, the rules they have devised, and the legal grounds for their decisions, and from this, concludes that State Supreme Courts can implement appropriate criteria that would in fact promote accuracy and fairness in the use of eyewitness identification.Part I briefly outlines and critiques the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on eyewitness identifications and due process. It treads on ground well-worn by scholars who have for decades decried the Court's failure to provide a due process test that would protect against the use of unreliable identification evidence. Part II explores the role that State appellate courts can play in developing a jurisprudence of eyewitness identification evidence that meaningfully incorporates social science research and carefully balances the interests of law enforcement and the accused. Finally, because of the superior role that judges have in protecting both constitutional and civil rights as well as the integrity of the administration of criminal justice, the article concludes that it is incumbent on State Supreme Courts to show leadership in developing solutions to the problems that plague this area . Accordingly, Part III argues that State Supreme Courts are well-suited to take an active part in the "laboratory" model of criminal justice that characterizes our federalist system.


Dyslexia is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that affects reading abilities and is predicted to be caused by a significant genetic component. Very few genetic susceptibility factors have been identified so far and amongst those, KIAA0319 is a key candidate. KIAA0319 is highly expressed during brain development but its function remains poorly understood. Initial RNA-interference studies in rats suggested a role in neuronal migration whereas subsequent work with double knock-out mouse models for both Kiaa0319 and its paralogue Kiaa0319-like reported effects in the auditory system but not in neuronal migration. To further understand the role of KIAA0319 during neurodevelopment, we carried out an expression study of the zebrafish orthologue at different embryonic stages. We report particularly high gene expression during the first few hours of development. At later stages, expression becomes localised in well-defined structures such as the eyes, the telencephalon and the notochord, supporting a role for kiaa0319 that is not restricted to brain development. Surprisingly, kiaa0319-like, which generally shows a similar expression pattern, was not expressed in the notochord suggesting a role specific to kiaa0319 in this structure. This study contributes to our understanding of KIAA0319 function during embryonic development which might involve additional roles in the visual system and in the notochord. Such a specific spatiotemporal expression pattern is likely to be under the controlled of tightly regulated sequences. Therefore, these data provide a framework to interpret the effects of the dyslexia-associated genetic variants that reside in KIAA0319 non-coding regulatory regions.


This qualitative research synthesis aims to describe and identify ethical opportunities and challenges
in interviewing young children in early childhood education and to explore interviewing as a means to
bring forward children's experiences of participation and inclusion. These objectives have been
studied through two different research cases in the Finnish early childhood education and care settings
with active learning approach. The identified opportunities were supporting to show emotions,
respecting diversity and special needs, enhancing the competence and agency of children, stimulating
humor, playfulness and imagination, and generating meaningful encounters and feelings of
empowerment. The challenges were building trust, identifying experiences from imaginary stories,
listening attentively, responding to difficult life situations of children, and addressing power
distribution. The paper highlights the possibilities for promoting children's inclusion and participation
through ethically considered interviewing and seeing research process as a chance to give them
experiences about competence, involvement and becoming listened to by adults.


To build public trust in government through ethical management of citizen resources, leaders of agencies should be intentional in their adoption of a Comprehensive Ethics Program (CEP) and in measuring the impact the program has on the ethical climate, observations of misconduct and reporting of misconduct. The purpose of this study was to investigate the outcomes of a CEP within a municipal government, five years after implementation. This was a mixed methods study where an electronic survey first measured perceptions of ethical climate followed by interviews with ethics administrators and anonymous employees. After five years, the municipal employees rated their environment as somewhat ethical through two measures; an overall ethics score (an average of 35 items from an ethical climate assessment), and a single item rating of the ethical climate by employees. Both measures can be used as a benchmark of organizational ethics health. Observations of misconduct were low in comparison to national statistics and reporting of misconduct was low in comparison to national statistics. Binary logistic regression was conducted on the overall ethics score and observations of misconduct and was statistically significant in distinguishing between employees who observe misconduct from those who do not. One ethics factor, ethical leadership, was also statistically significant in distinguishing between employees who observe misconduct and those who do not. Ethics factors that were not reliable predictors of observations of misconduct included the code of ethics, ethics resources, independent ethics commission, ethical decision-making, and informal ethical norms. Employees also rated the most effective components of the ethics program. Role modeling by peers, role modeling by supervisors, talking about ethics on the job, annual ethics training, the code of ethics, and the ethics handbook were rated as the most effective components. Six interviews with employees deepened the understanding of the quantitative data. Key themes of leadership and concerns about reporting and retaliation emerged through the interviews. CEP outcomes identified in the interviews included enhanced awareness and talking about ethics, seeking advice for ethical dilemmas, cross-departmental conversations, ethics code revisions, ethics resources for employees, and learning from training examples and interactive discussions.


Aims: To investigate the clinical picture and frequency of Bordetella pertussis and B parapertussis infections after introduction of acellular pertussis (acP) vaccines in Germany. Methods: Prospective surveillance for B pertussis and B parapertussis in 14 144 toddlers. Pertussis vaccination coverage was 86%, either with acP (75%) or whole cell pertussis (wcP) vaccine (11%). All children presenting with cough for more than seven days were examined for B pertussis and B parapertussis by culture, PCR, and serology (for cough duration ≥21 days). Results: There were 180 Bordetella infections; 116 (64%) were caused by B pertussis and 64 (36%) by B parapertussis. Incidence rates were 4.8 and 2.8 per 1000 person-years, respectively. Paroxysmal cough, post-tussive whooping, and vomiting ≥21 days was found in 53%, 22%, and 8% of all B pertussis cases and in 22%, 5%, and 0% of all B parapertussis cases, respectively. A total of 81/116 (70%) B pertussis cases and 56/64 (87.5%) B parapertussis cases had received at least one dose of pertussis vaccine. Typical pertussis with paroxysmal cough ≥21 days was present in 29/35 (83%) unvaccinated B pertussis cases, in contrast to 33/81 (41%) vaccinated B pertussis cases. Conclusion: Following the increase of pertussis vaccination coverage, we observed a relative increase of B parapertussis cases in comparison to B pertussis cases. In vaccinated children B pertussis disease frequently presented as a mild disease, clinically difficult to distinguish from diseases associated with coughing caused by B parapertussis and other viral or bacterial infections.


We have at our disposal detailed data on the life history of the brown locust, Locustana pardalina (Walk.). These data were obtained from cage experiments (Faure 1923 and 1932), and also from direct observations in the field (Smit 1939). Du Plessis (1938) undertook a detailed study of climatic conditions prevailing in the outbreak region from 1912 to 1937, and correlated these with the recent history of outbreaks, with a view to defining the conditions favourable for incipient swarming.


The evolutionary biology of Pierinae is described in three separate studies. In Part One, the population biology of the Orange Tip butterfly (Anthocharis card amines) is described. Colonies of this species are localised in riverbank habitats in Co. Durham. Using mark-recapture studies, the population size and movements of individual males were assessed. Studies of individual pre-adult survival indicated that food-plant related mortality and parasitisation were important causes of death. However a key-factor analysis for one population showed that failure of adult females to lay all their eggs was" the most Important factor influencing population size. The adaptiveness of oviposition behaviour was examined by following individual females and by mapping the distribution of eggs upon foodplants. It was shown that many aspects of oviposition choice were best interpreted as chance outcomes of searching behaviour. The observed differences in larval survival on different foodplants, and the constraints placed by time shortage on oviposition were used to construct a simple optimality model. It was shown that oligophagy, the typical condition of A. cardamines populations, leads to increased individual fitness when compared to monophagy. The effect of this stabilising selection on future speciation in Pierinae is discussed. The concept of effective population size is developed for A. cardainines and it is shown that allelic variation at one locus conforms to the predictions of sampling theory in small populations. Part two describes the mating behaviour of several Pierinae, and demonstrates that reproductive isolation in this group is not a result of male behaviour, but of female discrimination of male characters. The agreement of observed behaviour with the predictions of sexual selection is noted, and the likely effects of sexual selection in past and future speciation is discussed. Part three describes the amount of structural gene change that has occurred during the evolution of Pierinae It is shown that little genetic differentiation at such loci occurs prior to or during speciation. Rather, differentiation of species appears to occur at other loci, including those involved in local adaptation, as was described for montane and lowland populations of the Green-Veined White butterfly (Artogeia napi) in Co. Durham. The importance of these results to the wider field of speciation studies is discussed.


If you're exploring a career in digital imaging or design, then you're likely to encounter Photoshop along the way--you probably already have. But how well do you know it? Understanding Adobe Photoshop: Digital Image Concepts and Techniques goes beyond the school newspaper or internship and teaches you the fundamental digital imaging techniques in Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements that you'll need to succeed both in the classroom and the workforce. While many Photoshop books focus on features, tools, or techniques, this book covers both the basics and delves into specific skills, tricks, and uses in multimedia. With a friendly style and interactive DVD-ROM, Richard Harrington covers digital imaging basics (correcting, editing, sharpening, retouching, and presenting photos) and shows you real-world projects and exercises, including: digital painting; designing a CD/DVD label, magazine cover, and advertisements; creating Web sites/animations; and more!


An algorithm and its implementation to recompress video frame data, which is to be stored into external memory, are proposed, thereby enabling reduction of memory requirements and bandwidth. To support random access capability, frames are organized as 1/spl times/8-pixel arrays, which are then compressed into 32-bit segments. The compression ratio is fixed at 50%. For both compression efficiency and low complexity, modified Hadamard transform and Golomb-Rice (GR) coding are utilized. Objective and subjective video quality assessments are performed. Efficient hardware designs including GR encoding/decoding and packing/unpacking are also proposed to reduce the total compression/decompression latency cycles. The proposed hardware designs are suitable for the integration with MPEG-2 decoders thanks to fast operation and simple interface logic.


Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) considerably represents a great public health threat to the nation. It is a "functional gastrointestinal disorder" characterized by discomfort, pain in abdomen and altered intestinal motility, during the absences of any organic disorder. Limited evidences exists in terms of occurrence and determinants, with respect to the epidemiology of IBS in Arab countries. Therefore, this study aims to systematically explore previous evidences related to the incidence, prevalence, and natural history of IBS in Arab world. A literature search was commenced on PubMed, and CINAHL databases by using relevant keywords in order to retrieve studies conducted in the Arab world concerning the epidemiology of IBS. A total of 12 studies were selected after screening 35 articles. These studies were further appraised and reviewed systematically. Of the 35 articles evaluated, seven studies included cross-sectional study design with a prevalence ranging from 8.9% to 31.8%. Studies pertaining to the prognostic markers/risk factors were solely conducted in clinical–setting. Genetic expressions of various parasite (e.g. Dientamoeba fragilis), behavioral habit (emotional stress, anxiety) and viral infections (Hepatitis C virus and Hepatitis B) were amongst the investigated factors. Evidence extracted from these studies demonstrates a potential link between IBS and stress, HBV, HCV infections and co-occurrence of tension headache. The IBS pathogenesis is not yet fully understood due to limited evidence from population-based studies. Future research are warranted in the community based settings of the Arab world in order to identify the real burden of this disease at population level, to improve treatment strategies for IBS patients, and investigate its preventable risk factors.


There is a growing body of research that recognizes the potentials of biochar application in agricultural production systems. However, little is known about the effects of biochar, especially hydrochar, on production of containerized seedlings under nursery conditions. This study aimed to test the effects of hydrochar application on growth, quality, nutrient and heavy metal contents, and mycorrhizal association of containerized pine seedlings. The hydrochar used in this study was produced through hydrothermal carbonization of paper mill biosludge at 200 °C. Two forms of hydrochar (powder and pellet) were mixed with peat at ratios of 10% and 20% (v/v) under three levels of applied commercial fertilizer (nil, half and full rates). Application of hydrochar had positive or neutral effects on shoot biomass and stem diameter compared with control seedlings (without hydrochar) under tested fertilizer levels. Analysis of the natural logarithmic response ratios (LnRR) of quality index and nutrient and heavy metal uptake revealed that application of 20% (v/v) hydrochar powder or pellet with 50% fertilizer resulted in same quality pine seedlings with similar heavy metal (Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn and Cr) and nutrient (P, K, Ca and Mg) contents as untreated seedlings supplied with 100% fertilizer. Colonization percentage by ectomycorrhizae significantly increased when either forms of hydrochar were applied at a rate of 20% under unfertilized condition. The results of this study implied that application of proper rates of hydrochar from biosludge with adjusted levels of liquid fertilizer may reduce fertilizer requirements in pine nurseries.


In order to understand the microstructure changes during welding processes , aiming to design high intensity and tough weld structures, kinetic information about the phase transformation is essential. In our research group, in-situ observation systems consisting of undulator beam and imaging plate and two dimensional pixel detector have recently been used. The welding torch is driven by a stepping-motor in the system. These make it possible that phase transformation can be identified in real-time under the condition of directional-oriented solidification . In the present work, a combination of analyzing method: the in-situ observation system by X-ray diffraction technique using intense synchrotron radiation, and morphological observation by high-temperature laser scanning confocal microscopy is suggested to analyze the phase transformation during the welding process. Using the results acquired by these analysis methods, phase evolution of hypereutectoid carbon steel, during fusion welding was analyzed. The primary phase was directly identified as an austenite phase. Precipitation ofpearlite phase was observed, during cooling followed by the martensitic transformation.


A novel probe design for in situ fiber-optic Raman spectroscopy has been tested and employed for real-time monitoring of an epoxy curing. The epoxy system consists of diglycidylether of bisphenol-A and polyoxypropylenetriamine. The probe consists of a single fiber optic and a small section of Teflon® tubing. The tube acts as a waveguide and sample holder. Raman signal enhancements of 15 x were observed with the employment of the tube compared to those of spectra acquired with the single fiber alone. This analysis studied the C-H stretching region of the epoxide, where previously studies have centered around the fingerprint region. The small volume of the probe and large surface area allow it to be used effectively as a method of polymer thin-film measurement. It is also effective in bulk polymer measurements because of a negligible amount of heat trapped in the sample during curing. This gives the probe a temperature and reaction rate characteristic of the polymer surrounding it. Multivariate analysis was employed to interpret and analyze the numerous spectra taken during analyses. Multivariate techniques show that both curing and sample internal temperature information can be derived from the Raman spectra.


Global motion compensation (GMC) removes intentional and unwanted camera motion. GMC is widely applicable for video stitching and, as a pre-processing module, for motion-based video analysis. While state-of-the-art GMC algorithms generally estimate homography satisfactorily between consecutive frames, their performances deteriorate on real-world unconstrained videos, for instance, videos with predominant foreground, e.g., moving objects or human, or uniform background. Since GMC transformation of frames to the global motion-compensated coordinate is done by cascading homographies, failure in GMC of a single frame drastically harms the final result. Thus, we propose a robust GMC, termed RGMC, based on homography estimation using keypoint matches. RGMC first suppresses the foreground impact by clustering the keypoint matches and removing those pertaining to the foreground, as well as erroneous matches. For homography verification, we propose a probabilistic model that combines keypoint matching error, consistency of edges after homograhy transformation, the motion history, and prior camera motion information. Experimental results on the Sports Videos in the Wild, Holleywood2, and HMDB51 datasets demonstrate the superiority of RGMC.