Recent UK health policies have identified nurses as key contributors to public health strategies to reduce health inequalities, on the assumption that all nurses understand and wish to contribute to the public health agenda. Following the policy shift, public health content within pre-registration nursing curricula increased. Public health nurse educators come from varying backgrounds, and some had limited formal public health training or involvement in or understanding of policy required to contribute effectively to it. However, their knowledge of this subject, their understanding and interpretation of how it could be taught, was not fully understood.


The decoupling of content and distribution platform has changed television irrevocably. Potential opportunities promised by the integration of telecommunications, broadcast and Internet networks means television has become a strategic highland for relevant stakeholders including industry players and state regulators. In China, network convergence has been on the state agenda since the turn of the century, but has remained stubbornly hard to move forward. This article starts with a brief overview of the state policy development in relation to the three-network convergence. It then zooms in onto the case of over-the-top streaming as a microcosm of the convergence project by examining two critical moments in its development trajectory, highlighting a short-lived early experiment in 2005 and a more recent wave of solutions since 2010. It offers a contextualised analysis of market evolution and state regulatory approaches in this space as power negotiations play out in multiple dimensions including those between the state and market, between the central and local, and between sectorial interests. By doing so, this article reveals contestations, contradictions and challenges in the state-engineered convergence project.


We present miniaturized, focusing fan-out elements. The new micro-optical elements were fabricated using different technologies: double-sided injection moulding in polycarbonate, double-sided photolithography with subsequent transfer in quartz and direct laser writing in photoresist. The fan-out elements were characterized by measuring their efficiency and uniformity, the surface profiles of the microlenses were measured with a Twyman-Green interferometer. The overall performance of the combined, hybrid elements is demonstrated with intensity distributions recorded in the focal planes.


The report of the Commonwealth Observer Mission for Antigua and Barbuda's general election held on 12 June 2014. The mission was chaired by the Rt Hon Paul East QC, former Attorney General of New Zealand, and was comprised of 2 members in total.
The Mission found that the 2014 general election was conducted in a peaceful, credible and transparent manner. Voter turnout was high and the Mission commended the Electoral Commission on its management of the entire electoral process. The report makes a number of recommendations for consideration ahead of the next elections.


Shields (1936) found that the dimensionless shear stress necessary to move a cohesionless grain on a stream bed depended only on the grain Reynolds number. He ignored the degree of exposure of individual grains as a separate parameter. This report describes experiments to measure the dimensionless threshold stress and its dependence on grain protrusion, which was found to be very marked. The threshold stress for grains resting on the top of an otherwise flat bed in a turbulent stream was measured and found to be 0.01 –considerably less than previously-reported values of 0.03–0.06 for beds where all grains were at the same level. It is suggested that the new lower value be used in all turbulent flow situations where the bed is of natural sediments or unlevelled material. An hypothesis is proposed that the conventional Shields diagram implicitly contains variation with protrusion between the two extremes of (i) large grains and large Reynolds numbers, with small relative protrusion, and (ii) small grains, low Reynolds numbers, and protrusion of almost a complete grain diameter. In view of this, the extent of the dip in the Shields plot is explicable in that it represents a transition between two different standards of levelling as well as the transition between laminar and turbulent flow past the grains, the range of which it overlaps considerably.


There is evidence that individuals will sometimes withhold income transfers, such as bonuses, gifts, and cash transfers, from other members of the household (Ashraf (2009); Vogley and Pahl (1994)). In this paper, I show that the incentives to hide income under incomplete information over the quantity of resources available to the household differ for three different household resource management structures. I illustrate this with a simple two-stage game. In the first stage, one spouse receives a monetary transfer that is unobserved by her spouse, and she must decide whether to reveal or to hide it. In the second stage, spouses bargain over the allocation of resources between a household good and private expenditure. The three models differ in the resource allocation mechanism that takes place in second stage of the game: housekeeping allowance, independent management, and joint management. Results indicate that when one spouse receives a monetary transfer that is unobservable to her spouse, hiding is more likely to occur in households with a housekeeping allowance contract, compared to independent or joint management. In joint management households, however, a spouse may hide in equilibrium if the change in bargaining power associated with revealing the transfer is not significant enough to compensate for the loss in discretionary expenditure.


We develop a methodology to measure the quality levels of a number of releases of a software product in its evolution process. The proposed quality measurement plan is based on the faults detected in field operation of the software. We describe how fault discovery data can be analyzed and reported in a framework very similar to that of the QMP (quality measurement plan) proposed by B. Hoadley (1986). The proposed procedure is especially useful in situations where one has only very little data from the latest release. We present details of implementation of solutions to a class of models on the distribution of fault detection times. The conditions under which the families: exponential, Weibull, or Pareto distributions might be appropriate for fault detection times are discussed. In a variety of typical data sets that we investigated one of these families was found to provide a good fit for the data. The proposed methodology is illustrated with an example involving three releases of a software product, where the fault detection times are exponentially distributed. Another example for a situation where the exponential fit is not good enough is also considered. >


Architecture schools in India have been conducting aptitude tests for selecting students for admission to B. Architecture program. The reason for the conduct of such tests is a strong notion that students who perform well in such tests would be better suited to the creative needs of the program, and in turn, would be better professionals. In the case study, scores in aptitude test were correlated with various course performance variables for three successive classes of students. The results seem to suggest that aptitude tests may not be reliable indicators of performance in course program, even in the most vital course of them all—Architectural Design. Various explanations have been offered for the lack of correlation as tentative hypotheses for wider investigation.


We derived an analytical model for the junctionless double-gate metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (DG MOSFET) device, the principle of which has been recently demonstrated. Despite some similarities with classical junction-based DG MOSFETs, the charge-potential relationships are quite different and cannot be merely mapped on existing multigate formalisms. This is particularly true for the technological parameters of interest where reported doping densities exceed 1019 cm-3 for 10- and 20-nm silicon channel thicknesses. Assessment of the model with numerical simulations confirms its validity for all regions of operation, i.e., from deep depletion to accumulation and from linear to saturation.


Microbacterium sp. strain SGAir0570 was isolated from air samples collected in Singapore. Its genome was assembled using single-molecule real-time sequencing and MiSeq short reads. It has one chromosome with a length of 3.38 Mb and one 59.2-kb plasmid. It contains 3,170 protein-coding genes, 48 tRNAs, and 6 rRNAs. ABSTRACT Microbacterium sp. strain SGAir0570 was isolated from air samples collected in Singapore. Its genome was assembled using single-molecule real-time sequencing and MiSeq short reads. It has one chromosome with a length of 3.38 Mb and one 59.2-kb plasmid. It contains 3,170 protein-coding genes, 48 tRNAs, and 6 rRNAs.


IMPORTANCE
In rhinoplasty, techniques used to alter the shape of the nasal tip often compromise the structural stability of the cartilage framework in the nose. Determining the minimum threshold level of cartilage stiffness required to maintain long-term structural stability is a critical aspect in performing these surgical maneuvers.

OBJECTIVE
To quantify the minimum threshold mechanical stability (elastic modulus) of lower lateral cartilage (LLC) according to expert opinion.

METHODS
Five anatomically correct LLC phantoms were made from urethane via a 3-dimensional computer modeling and injection molding process. All 5 had identical geometry but varied in stiffness along the intermediate crural region (0.63-30.6 MPa).

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
A focus group of experienced rhinoplasty surgeons (n = 33) was surveyed at a regional professional meeting on October 25, 2013. Each survey participant was presented the 5 phantoms in a random order and asked to arrange the phantoms in order of increasing stiffness based on their sense of touch. Then, they were asked to select a single phantom out of the set that they believed to have the minimum acceptable mechanical stability for LLC to maintain proper form and function.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
A binary logistic regression was performed to calculate the probability of mechanical acceptability as a function of the elastic modulus of the LLC based on survey data. A Hosmer-Lemeshow test was performed to measure the goodness of fit between the logistic regression and survey data. The minimum threshold mechanical stability for LLC was taken at a 50% acceptability rating.

RESULTS
Phantom 4 was selected most frequently by the participants as having the minimum acceptable stiffness for LLC intermediate care. The minimum threshold mechanical stability for LLC was determined to be 3.65 MPa. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test revealed good fit between the logistic regression and survey data (χ23 = 0.92, P = .82).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
This study presents a novel method of modeling anatomical structures and quantifying the mechanical properties of nasal cartilage. Quantifying these parameters is an important step in guiding surgical maneuvers performed in rhinoplasty.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
5.


We examine the social antecedents of contributing to campaigns, with a particular focus on the role of population density and social networking opportunities. Using 10 years of US campaign contribution data from the Federal Election Commission and a national survey of party leaders, we find that recruiting contributors is easier in a densely populated region, where the daily opportunity of individuals being exposed to the same information via their social networks is high. Furthermore, the effect of population density is heterogeneous with respect to mobility: if a region has substantial commuting outflow, the chance of being mobilized from the place of residence decreases, but the chance of mobilization in their place of work increases. This analysis also reveals differences between political parties. Democrats are more dependent on social networking in population dense areas. This difference in the importance of social networking opportunities present in geographical space helps explain macro-level patterns in party fundraising.


There are several different parameters that affect the fretting fatigue behaviour of materials. The present work is focused on the influence of the wear damage evolution. Results of fretting fatigue experimental tests carried out on two different alloys (Al7175 and Ck45), in contact with a 34CrNiMo6 steel pad, as well as results of reciprocate sliding wear tests carried out with the same alloys, are presented. It was found that the synergistic effect between wear and fatigue is much dependent on the wear behaviour of the materials. It was also observed that the Al7175 alloy is more sensitive to fretting fatigue than the Ck45 alloy, this being justified by its lower resistance to damage by wear. The fretting fatigue tests were carried out in a fretting fatigue apparatus assembled on a servo hydraulic fatigue testing machine and the wear tests in a pinon-plate reciprocating wear machine. The surface damage characterisation was done by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).


Eye specific CDP-diacylglycerol synthase is a key regulator in the phototransduction pathway of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The enzyme is responsible for maintaining regeneration of phosphatidylinositol 4, 5 bisphosphate (PIP2) which is required for normal vision. The Drosophila eye-cds mutants display light dependent retinal degeneration. Mammalian homologues of Drosophila mutants such as eyeless and eyes absent have been associated with mammalian disease. Based on these studies and the discovery of CDS expression in human retina, this gene would appear to be a good candidate for causing a retinal phenotype in mammals. The aim of the work presented here has been to isolate and characterise the murine homologues of eye-cds. To this end both cDNA and genomic clones have been isolated using a combination of traditional molecular biology techniques and a bioinformatic approach. Using the identified clones, the structures of Cdsl and Cds2 have been confirmed. The clones were subsequently used to characterise the genes. In this thesis I have identified the expression pattern of both genes, showing that Cds2 is ubiquitously expressed in both the embryonic and adult mouse whereas Cdsl expression is more specific to the adult eye and brain. In addition, Cdsl has been shown to be expressed only in the rod photoreceptor cells within the retina. Cdsl and Cds2 clones were also used to map the genes to chromosome 5E1 and 2G1 respectively. The remit of this thesis was further expanded to include the potential function of the murine genes. To this end, transgenic constructs of both genes were made for the rescue of the mutant Drosophila phenotype and a construct was prepared as a first step in the generation of a Cds2 null mouse. In summary, the study reported in this thesis has succeeded in isolating and characterising the murine Cdsl and Cds2 genes. The expression pattern of the two genes has been determined both in a large panel of tissues and within specific cell types. The chromosomal location of both genes has been determined and constructs made for use in developing transgenic mice and flies for the study of gene function.


Abstrucf-This paper describes the development of two methods for automatic classification of molecular events. The methods are applied to experimental results obtained to study the interaction of a single microtubule with a single Ncd molecular motor. The data were previously obtained using optical trap assay, and have a very low signal-to-noise ratio of approximately 0.1. The first method can be viewed as a syntactic classification. In an alternative approach. radial basis neural networks, trained with simulated data generated by a system of stochastic, Langevin-like differential equations, are used for classification. Following classification. the molecular events are ensemble averaged separately for different types of events. The analysis of the results suggests the existence of Ncd-microtubule interaction events, which deviate from the traditional view on the kinetics of the Ncd-microtubule interactions. Tnis paper employs a novel paradigm, which emphasizes the importance of the modelbased, time-resolved filtering of the experimental data on molecular interactions, especially for the case of biological molecules, followed by the analysis of different goups of events, automatically segregated according to features revealed during the single realization analysis of the experimental results.


© Copyright 2015 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (https://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or firstname.lastname@example.com.


The stabilizing effect of grouping rotor blades in pairs has been assessed both, numerically and experimentally. The bending and torsion modes of a low aspect ratio high speed turbine cascade tested in the non-rotating test facility at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) have been chosen as the case study. The controlled vibration of 20 blades in travelling wave form was performed by means of an electromagnetic excitation system, enabling the adjustment of the vibration amplitude and inter blade phase at a given frequency. Unsteady pressure transducers located along the blade mid-section were used to obtain the modulus and phase of the unsteady pressure caused by the airfoil motion. The stabilizing effect of the torsion mode was clearly observed both in the experiments and the simulations, however the effect of grouping the blades in pairs in the minimum damping at the tested frequency was marginal in the bending mode. A numerical tool was validated using the available experimental data and then used to extend the results at lower and more relevant reduced frequencies. It is shown that the stabilizing effect exists for the bending and torsion modes in the frequency range typical of low-pressure turbines. It is concluded that the stabilizing effect of this configuration is due to the shielding effect of the pressure side of the airfoil that defines the passage of the pair on the suction side of the same passage, since the relative motion between both is null. This effect is observed both in the experiments and simulations.


Real-time fMRI neurofeedback allows to learn control over activity in a localized brain region. However, with fMRI, physiological factors such as the cardiac cycle and respiration interfere with the measurement of brain activation. In conventional fMRI studies this is usually mitigated by inclusion of motion parameters and/or physiological parameters as nuisance regressors at the analysis stage, allowing to correct for and filter out such confounders. In real-time fMRI, however, such an approach is not routinely feasible due to the necessity to process all signals during the runtime of an experiment. The absence of on-line correction can therefore compromise real-time fMRI study outcomes reporting volitional self-regulation capability as BOLD signal changes. This is especially true for BOLD signal changes in subcortical regions situated close to blood vessels or air cavities, such as the amygdala. We therefore aimed to establish the effects of motion, heart rate, heart rate variability, and respiratory volume on learning effects, which means here an increase in BOLD signal change over NF training, in an amygdala neurofeedback experiment. Specifically, we investigate motion parameters from two emotion regulation studies - performed at 3T and 7T scanners - and additionally acquired physiological variance for the latter one. Our results revealed differences in these parameters between groups and especially between regulation and resting periods within each participant. However, strictly considering these parameters as nuisance regressors in data analysis revealed that the learning of volitional self-regulation of the amygdala is not driven by motion and physiological changes. As validation of our real-time findings, we compare them to the gold standard of assessment of motion and physiology from the Human Connectome Project. Based on this, we recommend to carefully report neurofeedback study results including physiological nuisance regression. To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the effects of motion and physiological noise correction on neurofeedback BOLD effects.


Algal cultures can be very rapid and efficient means to generate biomass and regenerate the atmosphere for closed environmental life support systems. However, as in the case of mast higher plants, a significant fraction of the biomass produced by most algae cannot be directly converted to a useful food product by standard food technology procedures. This waste biomass wl l l serve as an energy drain on the overall system unless i t can be efficiently recycled without a signifiavlt loss of its energy content. We report experiments i n which cultures of the alga Scenedesmus obliauus were grown in the light and at the expense of an a & M carbon source, which either replaced or supplemented the actinic light. As part of these experiments we tested hydrolyzed waste biomass from these same algae to determine whether the algae themselves could be made part of the biological recycling p r m . Results indicate that hydrolyzed algal (and plant) biomass can serve as carbon and energy sources for the growth of these algae, suggesting that the efficiency of the closed system could be significantly improved using this recycling prccass.


This thesis attempts to draw together two distinct perspectives on literacy acquisition, an educational perspective and a psychological perspective. Written English has a complex orthography that has motivated academics since the 15th century to devise 'definitive' teaching methods. Throughout much of the 20th century two influential and mutually exclusive teaching approaches dominated literacy acquisition, i.e. ~whole language' and 'phonics'.
 Recently, empirical psychological investigation has opened a new debate into the cognitive underpinning required for successful literacy acquisition. A developmental psychological approach argues that literacy development should capitalise on children's naturally developing phonological awareness that generally progresses from large units of sound such as rhyme and syllables to small units of sound, such as phonemes. Conversely, an instructional psychological approach proposes that, irrespective of children's naturally developing ability, it is the phoneme and its correspondence with its visual counterpart, the grapheme, that needs to be brought to children's attention from the earliest stages of learning about written language.
 It will be argued from an educational perspective, that the whole language approach is sub-optimal for induction into an alphabetic script and most phonics approaches take too long to be effective, are too decontextualised, or require too much apparatus. In line with the small unit approach in psychology, it is proposed that the starting point for literacy acquisition is to focus pre-literate children's attention on the 44 English grapheme-phoneme correspondences that can be blended and segmented into phonetically pronounceable words. This proposal was investigated in an intervention study over a period of 8 weeks for 10 minutes a day, in a whole early-years class setting and an error free entertaining environment.
 Results showed that this significantly improved initial literacy acquisition for less advantaged children, suggesting that an early induction into the alphabetic principle provides children with "a framework for setting up a written language recognition and production system sufficient to drive the development of a self-teaching mechanism" (Share, 1995; Stuart, 2000).
 The practical implications of this finding have particular significance for the NLS, which proposes a later start and a two-year structured programme of phonics teaching.


What is the nature of law and what is the best way to discover it? This book argues that law is best understood in terms of the social functions it performs wherever it is found in human society. In order to support this claim, law is explained as a kind of institution and as a kind of artefact. To say that it is an institution is to say that it is designed for creating and conferring special statuses to people so as to alter their rights and responsibilities toward each other. To say that it is an artefact is to say that it is a tool of human creation that is designed to signal its usability to people who interact with it. This picture of law's nature is marshalled to critique theories of law that see it mainly as a product of reason or morality, understanding those theories via their conceptions of law's function. It is also used to argue against those legal positivists who see law's functions as relatively minor aspects of its nature.
This method of conceptualizing law's nature helps us to explain how the law, understood as social facts, can make normative demands upon us. It also recommends a methodology for understanding law that combines elements of conceptual analysis with empirical research for uncovering the purposes to which diverse peoples put their legal activities.


User participation is increasingly being seen as a way to mitigate the challenges that firms face in innovation, such as high costs and uncertainty of customer acceptance of their innovations. Thus, firms are establishing online platforms to support users in innovating services, such as iOS and Android platforms for mobile data service (MDS) innovation. Mobile phone platforms are characterized by technology (toolkits) and policy (rules) components that could influence user's innovation. Additionally, attributes of user innovators (lead userness) are expected to drive their innovation behavior. Yet it is unclear how these characteristics jointly impact users' service innovation outcomes. To address this knowledge gap, we propose a model that builds on user innovation theory and the work design literature to explain the influences of lead userness, design autonomy, toolkit support, and their interactions on user's innovation outcomes (innovation quantity) on these platforms. We conceptualize toolkit support in terms of two constructs (i.e., ease of effort and exploration), and design autonomy in terms of three constructs (i.e., decision-making autonomy, scheduling autonomy, and work-method autonomy). The model was tested using survey and archival data from two dominant mobile phone platforms (i.e., iOS and Android). As hypothesized, lead userness, exploration through toolkits, and ease of effort through toolkits positively affect users' innovation quantity. Additionally, decision-making autonomy and work-method autonomy influence innovation quantity, but scheduling autonomy does not. Further, the proposed three-way interactions between lead userness, toolkit support, and design autonomy constructs on users' quantity of MDS innovation are largely supported. The findings enhance our understanding of user innovation on mobile phone platforms.


This paper discusses hybrid cellular-broadcasting systems as an alternative for future delivery of wireless multimedia multicast services. A resource management framework is proposed, with the objective of minimizing the cost of multicasting transmissions. A comparison with traditional cellular and broadcasting systems is performed, showing the advantages of the hybrid solution under specific settings. Several implementation issues are investigated, as the number of broadcasting modulation and coding rates (MCR) and the importance of radio link monitoring. Dynamic control of the coverage of the broadcasting system by choosing from a pre-defined set of MCRs is shown to be the most important requirement for minimizing transmission cost. As the existing digital broadcasting technologies do not offer the possibility to dynamically change the MCR, several possibilities to overcome this are identified.


We argue that post-crisis bank regulation can explain large, persistent deviations from parity on basis trades requiring leverage. Documenting the financing cost and balance sheet impact on a broad array of basis trades for regulated institutions, we show that the implied return on equity on such trades is considerably lower under post-crisis regulation. In addition, although hedge funds would serve as natural alternative arbitrageurs, we document that funds reliant on leverage from a global systemically important bank suffer significant declines in assets and returns relative to unlevered funds. Thus, post-crisis regulation not only affects the targeted banks directly but also spills over to unregulated firms that rely on bank intermediation for their arbitrage strategies.


Aims: To summarise the available findings from published research that has focussed on the effect of diet on retinal microvascular characteristics. Design: Systematic review.Methods: A systematic Medline, EMBASE and PubMed search of relevant articles was conducted with coverage from the January 1, 1970 up to the January 10, 2013. Search terms were pilot tested for accuracy and modified. Articles were systematically excluded if the title and abstract were not relevant and full text manuscripts were obtained for all studies that were potentially relevant.Results: After combining all searches, 5370 abstracts were identified and screened. Of  these 20 were considered potentially relevant and full articles were retrieved for further evaluation. Eleven of these studies did not meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria, leaving 9 studies to be included in the review.Conclusions: To date, it has been suggested that a low glycemic Index (GI) diet, high dietary fibre intake and regular fish consumption attenuate retinal arteriolar narrowing and retinal venular widening which has been associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Conversely, it has been suggested that a high GI diet may predispose an individual to adverse retinal microvascular changes.


From the man whom BusinessWeek has called a "founding father" and the "hands-on implementer" of the Quality Movement comes a breakthrough approach to management and leadership. Just as Armand Feigenbaum's pioneering Total Quality Control changed the world's approach to quality and productivity, "The Power of Management Capital" will also transform the contemporary business landscape. "The Power of Management Capital" explains the new business model of "management capital" - what it is and how the deployment of management assets sets pacesetter companies apart from the also-rans and business failures of the past decade. Armand Feigenbaum and his brother Donald, an executive vice president at General Systems, Inc., provide a definition of the distinct components of management capital - it is the physical assets, the culture, the approach to innovation, the intellectual capital, the human resources, etc. - and then show how the deployment of each of these assets is key to successful growth and profitability.


Naive estimates of the statistics of large scale structure and weak lensing power spectrum measurements that include only Gaussian errors exaggerate their scientific impact. Non-linear evolution and finite volume effects are both significant sources of non-Gaussian covariance that reduce the ability of power spectrum measurements to constrain cosmological parameters. Using a halo model formalism, we derive an intuitive understanding of the various contributions to the covariance and show that our analytical treatment agrees with simulations. This approach enables an approximate derivation of a joint likelihood for the cluster number counts, the weak lensing power spectrum and the bispectrum. We show that this likelihood is a good description of the ray-tracing simulation. Since all of these observables are sensitive to the same finite volume effects and contain information about the non-linear evolution, a combined analysis recovers much of the "lost" information and obviates the non-Gaussian covariance. For upcoming weak lensing surveys, we estimate that a joint analysis of power spectrum, number counts and bispectrum will produce an improvement of about $30-40\%$ in determinations of the matter density and the scalar amplitude. This improvement is equivalent to doubling the survey area.


Pituitary tumors are monoclonal adenomas that account for about 10-15% of intracranial tumors. Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (CDK5) regulates the activities of various proteins and cellular processes in the nervous system, but its potential roles in pituitary adenomas are poorly understood. The kinase activity of CDK5 requires association with an activating protein, p35 (also known as CDK5 activator 1, p35). Here, we show that functional CDK5, associated with p35, is present in normal human pituitary and in pituitary tumors. Furthermore, p35 mRNA and protein levels were higher in pituitary adenomas than in the normal glands, suggesting that CDK5 activity might be upregulated in pituitary tumors. Inhibition of CDK5 activity in rat pituitary cells, reduced the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein that regulates vasculogenesis and angiogenesis. Our results suggest that increased CDK5-mediated VEGF expression might play a crucial role in the development of pituitary adenomas, and that roscovitine and other CDK5 inhibitors could be useful as anticancer agents.


Abstract. A new parameterization with three prognostic liquid water classes was implemented into the general circulation model (GCM) ECHAM5 with the aerosol module HAM in order to improve the global representation of rain formation in marine stratiform clouds. The additionally introduced drizzle class improves the physical representation of the droplet spectrum and, more importantly, improves the microphysical processes relevant for precipitation formation compared to the standard parameterization. In order to avoid a mismatch of the liquid and ice phase, a prognostic treatment of snow has been introduced too. This has a significant effect on the amount and altitude of ice clouds, which in turn affects not only the in- and outgoing radiation but also the parameterized collection rates. With the introduction of a prognostic precipitation scheme, a more realistic representation of both liquid and ice phase large-scale precipitation is achieved compared to a diagnostic treatment. An encouraging finding is that with the prognostic treatment the increase of the liquid water path in response to anthropogenic aerosols is reduced by about 25 %. Although the total net radiative forcing is decreased from −1.3±0.3 to −1.6±0.3 W m −2 from the control to the prognostic model version, the difference is within the interannual variability. Altogether the results suggest that the treatment of precipitation in global circulation models has not only a significant influence on the phase of clouds and their conversion rates, but also hints towards uncertainties related to a prognostic precipitation scheme.


Elderly churches have a unique shape with their high towers and long naves. There seems to be few if any reported measurement of pressure distribution on churches. Churches are naturally ventilated buildings and therefore when the wind speed is high the wind becomes an important driving force for ventilation. A model in scale 1:200 was built of a 19th century Swedish church provided with a crawl space. The pressure on the facade of the model was recorded in 42 points. With the aim of studying the ventilation of the church dedicated measuring points were located on windows, doors and in the positions corresponding to the location of the openings in the crawl space. Some field trials were undertaken with the scope of measuring the time history of the static pressure on the facade in some positions corresponding to measuring points on the wind tunnel model. Examples of these measurements are reported in the paper. With the aim of measuring the "region of influence" on the ground caused by the church, also the static pressure on the ground was recorded in the wind tunnel tests. The static pressure on ground was recorded with a pressure plate provided with 400 pressure taps arranged in a quadratic pattern.


Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) enables the assessment of intracellular, extracellular, and free water signals from multi‐shell diffusion MRI data. It is an insightful approach to characterize brain tissue microstructure. Single‐shell reconstruction for NODDI parameters has been discouraged in previous studies caused by failure when fitting, especially for the neurite density index (NDI). Here, we investigated the possibility of creating robust NODDI parameter maps with single‐shell data, using the isotropic volume fraction (fISO) as a prior. Prior estimation was made independent of the NODDI model constraint using a dictionary learning approach. First, we used a stochastic sparse dictionary‐based network (DictNet), which is trained with data obtained from in vivo and simulated diffusion MRI data, to predict fISO. In single‐shell cases, the mean diffusivity and raw T2 signal with no diffusion weighting (S0) was incorporated in the dictionary for the fISO estimation. Then, the NODDI framework was used with the known fISO to estimate the NDI and orientation dispersion index (ODI). The fISO estimated using our model was compared with other fISO estimators in the simulation. Further, using both synthetic data simulation and human data collected on a 3 T scanner (both high‐quality HCP and clinical dataset), we compared the performance of our dictionary‐based learning prior NODDI (DLpN) with the original NODDI for both single‐shell and multi‐shell data. Our results suggest that DLpN‐derived NDI and ODI parameters for single‐shell protocols are comparable with original multi‐shell NODDI, and the protocol with b = 2000 s/mm2 performs the best (error ~ 5% in white and gray matter). This may allow NODDI evaluation of studies on single‐shell data by multi‐shell scanning of two subjects for DictNet fISO training.


This paper explores the relationship between indigenous peoples' rights in international law and international environmental law. Two models underlie the protection of indigenous environmental rights. A "cultural integrity" model recognizes indigenous peoples' environmental rights as a corollary to the protection and preservation of indigenous culture. In the alternative 'self-determination" model, indigenous peoples' environmental rights flow from their recognition as distinct communities with an inherent degree of autonomy and control over their own development. Both models have the potential to transform international environmental law. Recognition of indigenous peoples' rights allows principles of international environmental law to pierce the veil of state sovereignty The cultural integrity model offers the potential to broaden the legal framework of international environmental law through the inclusion of human rights instruments. The self-determination model may lead to indigenous peoples' independent participation in international agreements addressing environmental concerns. There is a crucial difference between the models. The cultural integrity model incorporates a connection between indigenous rights and sustainable environmental management while the self-determination model is based on indigenous peoples' right to choose their own environmental policy. There is no inherent relationship between recognition of indigenous rights and sustainable environmental management in the latter model. The implications for international environmental law are more uncertain.


Our theoretical approach compares the relative efficacy of multiple theories of law and social control. From a general social threat perspective, we find that variables reflecting the size of the unemployed youth population and general measures of income inequality have positive impacts on a nation's rates of incarceration. We also find partial support for one of Durkheim's laws of quantitative change and penal evolution, in that, all else equal, nations with a more authoritarian form of government utilize incarceration at a higher rate than their more democratic counterparts. We also find that the institutional anomie perspective, which has previously been applied only to rates of crime, might also have implications for sanctioning practices. Specifically, a measure of socialist and/or communist government, adopted as a proxy for the decommodification of citizens from the labor market, is marginally related to lower rates of incarceration. As a whole, this research project points to new directions for understanding variation of penal practices in a sample of over 150 nations.


ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND
Homeopathic potencies 12CH and above cross the Avogadro number, and as such do not contain any original drug molecules in their aquous ethanol medium. It is thought H-bonded water structures preserved by ethanol carry the information of initial drug molecules. Potentized drugs show some differences with respect to their infrared (IR) absorption spectra. In a water-ethanol solution, free water molecules vary according the concentration of ethanol. In the present study the concentration of ethanol has been kept constant at 0.03 molar fraction in 6 different homeopathic potencies.

OBJECTIVE
To see whether different homeopathic potencies having fixed ethanol content show variation in free water molecules.

METHODS
Two potencies like 8CH and 32CH of three homeopathic drugs Natrum mur, Cantharis and Nux vomica were used in the study, and their ethanol concentration was kept fixed at 0.03 molar fraction. The control was considered to be aquous ethanol at the same concentration. Spectrum of pure water was also taken. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) absorption spectra were obtained in the wave number region of 4000 – 2800 cm-1. The half-width at half-maximum was measured for each spectrum. The intensity of each spectrum was normalized at 3410 cm-1 close to the peak. The difference spectrum (absorbance of drug solution – absorbance of pure water) for each drug and the control was obtained.

RESULTS
FTIR spectra showed variation in absorbance intensity on both the high and low frequency side of the O-H stretching band in different drugs as well as the control. The C-H stretching band of 2977 cm-1 also showed variation in intensity in different drugs. In the difference spectra the absorbance intensity at the dip at 3630 cm-1 varied in different drugs and the control. The decrease in intensity at 3630 cm-1 and subsequent rise in intensity at lower frequency region represent the level of free water molecules and strong alcoholic O-H band around 3250 cm-1, respectively.

CONCLUSION
The drug and the control solutions show distinct variation in their FTIR spectra. The drugs have different levels of bound and free water molecules although their ethanol concentration is same.

KEY WORDS
Homeopathic potencies, FTIR spectra, free water molecules, intensity and difference spectrum.


Heavy metals are among the most significant freshwater pollutants and pose severe threats to geographical biodiversity. Pollution by heavy metals such as Cd, Pb, etc. not only affects the productivity of crops, but also compromises the quality of the atmosphere and water bodies. By propagation through the food chain, this type of pollution also threatens the health and life of animals and human beings. Such metals are not required for routine functioning of the human body and can be toxic even at low concentrations. The pollution caused by heavy metals is a long-term and irreversible process. Even though small concentrations of some metals (Ca, K, Mg, Na etc.) are required for routine functioning of the human body, their accumulation in higher concentration becomes toxic to most life forms. Certain trace metals such as Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn, etc., at catalytic amounts as metalloenzymes and as cofactors of enzymes, are essential to living organisms for their normal physiological activities. But a high concentration of Cu has been correlated with liver damage and Zn may produce adverse nutrient interactions with copper.1-4 ICP-Optical Emission Spectroscopy a p p l i c a t i o n n o t e


The relationship between government debt, exports and economic growth has been the focus of a considerable number of academic studies in recent years. The economic crisis, which started in the United States mortgage market , quickly went global when mortgage-backed securities traded by financial institutions . Europe's response was immediate regarding the measures to tackle the crisis. The establishment of common strategies was the long term goal of the European Union (EU). This paper examines the relationship between government debt, exports and economic growth in the EU countries with the highest level of government debt, using panel data over the period 1990-2014. The Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) methods are used to estimate the long run relationship between the variables. In addition, the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) is used in order to investigate the causal relationship between the examined variables. The empirical results of the study revealed that there are both short and long run relationships. Findings suggest that that there is a unidirectional causality running from exports to economic growth as well as from exports and economic growth to government debt. The results provide evidence to support the export led-growth hypothesis. Exports are an important factor for economic development. Moreover, the results reveal that government debt is affected by exports both directly and indirectly through economic growth. Policy implications are then explored in the conclusions.


Airborne high resolution in situ measurements of a large set of trace gases including ozone (O 3) and total water (H 2 O) in the upper troposphere and the lowermost stratosphere (UT/LMS) have been performed above Europe within the SPURT project. SPURT provides an extensive data coverage of the UT/LMS in each season within the time period between November 2001 and July 2003. In the LMS a distinct spring maximum and autumn minimum is observed in O 3 , whereas its annual cycle in the UT is shifted by 2–3 months later towards the end of the year. The more variable H 2 O measurements reveal a maximum during summer and a minimum during autumn/winter with no phase shift between the two atmospheric compartments. For a comprehensive insight into trace gas composition and variability in the UT/LMS several statistical methods are applied using chemical, thermal and dynamical vertical coordinates. In particular, 2-dimensional probability distribution functions serve as a tool to transform localised aircraft data to a more comprehensive view of the probed atmospheric region. It appears that both trace gases, O 3 and H 2 O, reveal the most compact arrangement and are best correlated in the view of potential vorticity (PV) and distance to the local tropopause, indicating an advanced mixing state on these surfaces. Thus, strong gradients of PV seem to act as a transport barrier both in the vertical and the horizontal direction. The alignment of trace gas isopleths reflects the existence of a year-round extra-tropical tropopause transition layer. The SPURT measurements reveal that this layer is mainly affected by stratospheric air during winter/spring and by tropospheric air during autumn/summer. Normalised mixing entropy values for O 3 and H 2 O in the LMS appear to be maximal during spring and summer, respectively , indicating highest variability of these trace gases during the respective seasons.


Amphibole and mica 40Ar/39Ar ages as well as zircon, rutile and titanite U-Pb geochronology of eclogites and associated host rocks from the Higher Himalayan Crystalline Nappes (Indian Plate) in the Upper Kaghan Valley, Pakistan allow distinction of a multistage exhumation history. An Eocene age for peak-pressure metamorphism has been obtained by phengite 40Ar/39Ar (47.3 ± 0.3 Ma) and zircon U-Pb (47.3 ± 0.4 and 47.4 ± 0.3 Ma) ages from cover and basement gneisses. A very short-lived metamorphic peak and rapid cooling is documented by an amphibole 40Ar/39Ar age of 46.6 ± 0.5 Ma and a rutile U-Pb age of 44.1 ± 1.3 Ma from eclogites. Phengite and biotite ages from cover and basement sequences metamorphosed during the Himalayan orogeny are 34.5 ± 0.2 to 28.1 ± 0.2 Ma whereas youngest biotites, yielding 23.6 ± 0.1 and 21.7 ± 0.2 Ma, probably reflect argon partial resetting. The amphibole age, together with those derived from phengite and zircon demonstrate a rate of initial exhumation of 86–143 mm/a i.e . an extremely rapid transport of the Indian Plate continental crust from ultra-high pressure (UH P ) conditions back to crustal levels (47–46 Ma for transport from 140 to 40 km depth). Subsequent exhumation (46–41 Ma, 40–35 km) slowed to about 1 mm/a at the base of the continental crust but increased again later towards slightly higher exhumation rates of ca . 2 mm/a (41–34 Ma, 35–20 km). This indicates a change from buoyancy-driven exhumation at mantle depths to compression forces related to continent-continent collision and accompanied crustal folding, thrusting and stacking that finally exposed the former deeply-buried rocks.


Vascular rings have been well documented to cause respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms in infants and children. Few reports document symptomatic vascular rings in adults, and most have emphasized dysphagia as the predominant symptom. We present the case of a 36-year-old white male with a double aortic arch and progressive dyspnea on exertion. This led us to review previous reports of vascular rings in adults. Criteria for review consisted of anatomically complete vascular rings of the aortic arch in adults age 18 years or older. We identified 25 prior cases for review and included our recent patient. The most common vascular ring anomalies in our review of adults is double aortic arch (n = 12; 46%) followed by right aortic arch with aberrant left subclavian artery and ligamentum arteriosum (n = 8; 30%). Of 24 patients (66%), 16 were symptomatic. Reported symptoms involving the respiratory tract (n = 10 of 24; 42%) included dyspnea on exertion (n = 5), bronchitis (n = 2), recurrent pneumonia, stridor, and unspecified respiratory ailment (n = 1 each). Dysphagia was less common, occurring in eight patients (33%). Previously proposed mechanisms for respiratory tract symptoms include tracheomalacia, static or dynamic compression of the airways, intravascular volume infusion, and aspiration. We also propose exercise-induced dilatation of the aortic arch and age-dependent changes in thoracic compliance as potential mechanisms of dyspnea.


Recent gage restraint measurement system (GRMS) developments include the redesign of GRMS vehicles using a deployable split-axle instead of a freight truck mounted split-axle. This new test configuration results in boundary condition changes in the applied loads and split axle location, which influence test results. To ensure the equivalence of test results from these two systems, a comprehensive evaluation of the mechanistic basis for previous GRMS rulemaking was conducted and coupled with a fundamental investigation of factors influencing GRMS performance and inspection accuracy followed by field-testing to verify conclusions. Comparison tests between the original GRMS vehicle design and the redesigned vehicles identified the need to enhance the current gage widening ratio (GWR) equation to accommodate the increased range of vertical test loads represented by the different GRMS vehicles. GWR has been the leading source of test result discrepancies between the original GRMS design and redesigned vehicles over the same territory. The discrepancy between the inspections likely resulted from the increased range of vertical test loads represented by the distinct test vehicles, since GWR has treated vertical load as a constant. The Gage Widening Projection (GWP) parameter was proposed to replace GWR as a result of an ongoing investigation. GWR was originally developed as an indicator of fastener and tie performance by providing an extrapolated total gage widening deflection at a limiting load condition. Testing at the limiting load condition is not conducted because of the potential for damage to track components. A deflection at a lower load is extrapolated based on conservative track load-deflection behavior to the limit load, which represents an extreme but not unexpected gage widening event. The concept behind both GWP and GWR is similar. However, the GWP parameter includes vertical load as a variable, where GWR treated vertical load as a constant. The large variation in vertical load represented by the various test scenarios requires the consideration of variable vertical load in the extrapolation process to ensure an equivalent basis for inspection and safety. Based on analytical modeling and field-testing, the GWP parameter was found to perform more consistently between vehicles than GWR. A limiting condition based on a combination of deflection and load was selected to provide comparable inspection results and safety for both parameters. Additional testing has been conducted to further evaluate the data and indicates excellent performance of the GWP parameter, and perhaps merits further consideration regarding the limits.


The main objective of this chapter is to find a category system that is the most capable of describing Hungarian disagreement based on certain criteria set beforehand. As none of the rival approaches to disagreement to be introduced in this chapter seem to satisfy each criterion, a new taxonomy is proposed. Distinguishing between strategies and pragmatic force modifiers (PFMs), this new category system is more reliable and more capable of capturing the complex nature of (Hungarian) disagreements that the rival models. A detailed description of the metatheoretical research is provided including a step-by-step description of the analytical procedure(s) employed. By describing each step of the research along with the decisions and re-evaluations of the information at hand as well as the p-context, the chapter demonstrates the cyclic, retrospective and prismatic nature of the plausible argumentation process.


As a consequence of ongoing globalization processes and demographic change, many small and medium-sized companies face the problem of knowledge loss. To counteract this, companies are adopting Web 2.0 applications to accumulate and store the knowledge of their employees. However, little is known about the circumstances under which employees are willing to invest time in social media as a part of their work routine. Thus, this paper introduces an exploratory case study focusing the motivational factors that influence the use of an online expert community in business context. The results of the performed focus groups and interviews show that particularly intrinsic motivational factors are considered to be relevant. The attitude towards extrinsic motivational factors and related tangible motivational factors is highly controversial, whereas intangible motivational factors such as social and organizational motivational factors seem to have a positive impact on the motivation to use an intra-organizational online communities (OC). Supplementary motivational factors mentioned by the interviewees refer to the platform itself. Overall, the results indicate that the implementation of Web 2.0 applications in business contexts requires a tailored incentive system that suits to the company-specific requirements and takes into account the employees' needs.


In laboratory tests, just following the manufacturer's instructions of materials or equipments may not be enough to obtain reliable data. Thus, intra and inter-examiners studies may be required. The aim of this study was to illustrate the application of the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (r) in a study related to the color changing and hardness of composite resin conducted by two examiners. The color and hardness of 10 specimens of composite resin were evaluated by a colorimetric spectrophotometer and hardness tester, respectively, at two different times. Two trained examiners performed two measurements with an interval of one week. Specimens were stored in artificial saliva at 37±1oC for 7 days. The Intraclass Correlation was used for analysis of intra and inter-examiner reproducibility. The intra-examiner reproducibility was 0.79, 0.44 and 0.76 for L, a and b color coordinates for the examiner 1 and 0.84, 0.23, 0.21 for examiner 2. For hardness, r-values were 0.00 and 0.23 for the examiner 1 and 2, respectively, showing unsatisfactory agreement on color and hardness evaluation for both examiners. It was noted that only the observation of protocol for use of equipment and examiners training were not sufficient to collect reliable information. Thus, adjustments in the experimental protocol were made and devices were produced to standardize the measurements. The reproducibility study was performed again. For examiner 1, values as 0.90, 0.59 and 0.79 were verified for L, a and b coordinates and, for examiner 2 were obtained values of 0.90, 0.75, 0.95. In relation to hardness, r-values of 0.75 and 0.71 were obtained for examiners 1 and 2, respectively. The inter-examiner reproducibility was 0.86, 0.87, 0.91 for L, a and b coordinates and 0.79 for hardness. It was concluded that intra and inter-examiner calibration is essential for obtaining quality measurements in laboratory tests.


In this paper, we present a reanalysis of pig (Sus scrofa) remains from the Neolithic site of Qalat Jarmo, orig- inally excavated in the 1940s and 1950s. Employing modern zooarchaeological techniques, not available during the initial analyses, we explore the nature of swine exploitation strategies and demonstrate that pigs were most likely managed by the early 7th millennium (Pottery Neolithic) and perhaps earlier. Comparing biometric data with those from other sites in the region, we show that the Jarmo pigs exhibit evidence for size decrease associated with intensive management, but had not yet achieved the degree of dental or post-cranial size reduction seen in later Neolithic domestic populations. Although samples from the earliest (Pre-Pottery) occupation of the site are small, there is some evidence to suggest that domestic pigs were present at Jarmo as early as the late 8th millennium cal. BC. In either case, Jarmo likely represents the earliest appearance of pig husbandry along the Zagros flanks, and we discuss the mechanisms by which Neolithic technologies, including domesticated animals, spread to new regions. This project emphasises the value of curated faunal assemblages in shedding new light on the spread of Neolithic economies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Ralf Sander's earlier work was predominantly occupied with the human image.He developed in this context a very distinguished artistic form. The sculptures are made usually from one large log of wood of human size. The artist uses the shape and direction of the form of growth to develop the character of his work. Also the choice of tree plays a role. He has for example chosen soft wood as lime-wood for delicate female characters while his Joseph Beuys portrait was made from oak which contained pieces of bomb shell from WWII. Spiegelungen der Wirklichkeit was a group exhibition about German Realism that contained a number of Sander's earlier works, selected and curated by Prof. Dr. Karina Tuerr, for the Skulpturenforum Isernhagen, Duesseldorf, Germany


Criticism has been leveled against English textbooks on the grounds that they often fail to provide classroom learners with adequate opportunities for learning authentic language (Vellenga, 2004). This could be due to the fact that, instead of making use of authentic language samples native speakers produce, many textbooks draw on native speakers' intuitions about language use, which might not always be reliable. This study investigated the use of speech acts presented in Iranian high school English Textbooks I, II, and III. To this end, speech acts in the conversations segments of these books were analyzed from the perspective of Searle's (1976) speech act model and Lakoff's (1973) view of politeness. The results revealed that there were, in total, 298 instances of speech acts used in high school textbooks. It was also found that language functions in these books are presented unequally and some of them recur throughout the books, with no specific pattern being followed. Since high school English textbooks in Iran are not communication-oriented, it was concluded that these books cannot possibly develop pragmatic competence in language learners.


The pine shoot beetle (PSB), Tomicus piniperda is a recently established exotic pest of live pine in the southern Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada. Scotch pine, Pinus sylvestris L. is the most susceptible pine species, but the adult also attacks several other North American species of Pinus, This research investigated the dispersal behavior of beetles emerging from overwintering sites to aid in the development of effective monitoring and management practices. Scotch pine logs with overwintering PSB were sprayed with fluorescent pigments to mark dispersing beetles. These logs were placed in piles in the centers of three circular trap arrays of 8-unit Lindgren traps, baited with α-pinene, and placed at distances of 50, 100, 200, 300 and 400 meters from the center along equally spaced radii. An estimated average of 393 PSB, or 23.4% of the overwintering PSB, dispersed from each of three log piles during the initial spring dispersal flight, and 21.9% of these were captured in traps. Traps within 100 meters caught 56.0 to 67.8% of the marked PSB recovered. Most (95.3%) marked PSB were trapped within 400 meters, but 12 beetles (4.7%) were trapped 780-2,000 meters away in adjacent trap arrays. The dispersal pattern of the population, as indicated by trap catch, was to the northeast, in the direction of prevailing westerly/ southerly winds up to 4.77 m/s daily average during beetle flight. Regression analysis suggests that the PSB within the experimental area had a predicted dispersal distance of 900 meters in an area that contained numerous traps. Dispersal distances may be greater under of conditions of strong and steady winds or if traps or abundant host material removed fewer PSB from the dispersing population. The use of traps to monitor specific sites should consider the direction of prevailing winds. Trap catches of wild PSB suggest that optimal inter-trap spacing for efficient detection could be about 78 m.


The indigenous peoples (IPs) of the Philippines, numbering between 4.5 million to 10 million, live in mostly remote rural areas, and are generally regarded as marginalized owing to their geographic, economic, social, and political location. Their situation notwithstanding, this study shows that selected groups of IPs – the Sama-Tausugs, Aytas, and Dumagats – are no strangers to information and communication technologies, particularly the mobile phone. Their perceptions of the mobile phones are shaped by their present life world. But despite limited financial resources, low literacy level, and poor signal in their respective areas, the IPs have devised ways of acquiring and using the mobile phone to keep them connected to each other and to the "lowlanders." For the IPs of this study, mobile phone ownership and use have provided them access to and acceptance in the mainstream society.


Data centers have an important role in supporting cloud computing services (such as email, social networking, web search, etc.) enterprise computing needs, and infrastructure-based services. Data center networking is a research topic that aims at improving the overall performances of the data centers. It is a topic of high interest and importance for both academia and industry. Several architectures such as FatTree, FiConn, DCel, BCube, and SprintNet have been proposed. However, these topologies try to improve the scalability without any concerns about energy that data centers use and the network infrastructure cost, which are critical parameters that impact the performances of data centers. In fact, companies suffer from the huge energy their data centers use and the network infrastructure cost witch is seen by operators as a key driver for maximizing data centers profits and according to industry estimates, the united states data center market achieved almost US\$39 billion in 2009, growing from US\$16.2 billion in 2005 Moreover, the studies show that the installed base of servers has been increasing 12 percent a year, from 14 million in 2000 to 35 million in 2008. Yet that growth is not keeping up with the demands placed on data centers for computing power and the amount of data they can handle. Almost 30 percent of respondents to a 2008 survey of data center managers said their centers will have reached their capacity limits in three years or sooner. The infrastructure cost and power consumption are the first order design concern for data center operators. In fact, they represent an important fraction of the initial capital investment while not contributing directly to the future revenues. Thus, the design goals of data center architectures seen by operators are high scalability, low latency, low Average path length and especially low energy consumption and low infrastructure cost (the number of interface cards, switches, and links). Motivated by these challenges, we propose a new data center architecture, called VacoNet that combines the advantages of previous architectures while avoiding their limitations. VacoNet is a reliable, high-performance, and scalable data center topology that is able to improve the network performances in terms average path length, network capacity and network latency. In fact, VacoNet can connect more than 12 times the number of nodes in FlatNet without increasing the APL. Also, it achieves a good network capacity even with a bottleneck effect (bigger than 0.3 even for 1000 servers). Furthermore, VacoNet reduced the infrastructure cost by about 50%, and the power consumption will be decreased with more than 50000 watt compared to all the previous architectures. In addition, and thanks to the proposed fault tolerant algorithm, the new architecture shows a great performance even when the failure rate equals to 0.3, which means when about one third of the links failed, the connection failure rate is only 15%. By using VacoNet, operators can win till 2 million US dollars compared to Flatnet, Dcell, Bcube and Fattree. Both theoretical analysis and simulation experiments have conducted and validated to evaluate the overall performance of the proposed architecture.


Infantile or capillary hemangioma is the most common vascular tumor of childhood. The tumors most frequently affect the head and neck area, but rare cases of intracranial lesions have been reported. Their natural history is marked by initial rapid growth velocity followed by a plateau and, in most cases, subsequent involution. Although the lesions are considered benign, 10% of affected children develop life-threatening complications (mortality rate 20-80% in this subgroup). When surgical intervention or other methods of local control are not possible, therapeutic options are limited. Corticosteroids have been the mainstay of therapy but therapeutic response is not predictable and the infectious risk is not negligible. Interferon alpha-2a may also be effective but has significant toxicities. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) have been implicated in the pathogenesis of hemangiomas, and antiangiogenesis agents are being evaluated in the treatment of these tumors. Thalidomide may be an ideal therapy for life-threatening hemangiomas because it inhibits new blood vessel formation by antagonizing both the bFGF and VEGF pathways and has a more acceptable toxicity profile than other agents. The authors present the case of an infant born with a life-threatening, unresectable intracranial hemangioma in which treatment with thalidomide resulted in a good clinical outcome.


Background:Although Medicaid-enrolled children with a chronic condition (CC) may be less likely to use dental care because of factors related to their CC, dental utilization for this population is poorly understood. Objective:To assess the relationship between CC status and CC severity, respectively, on dental utilization for Iowa Medicaid-enrolled children. Research Design:Retrospective cohort study of Iowa Medicaid data (January 1, 2003 to December 31, 2006). Subjects:Medicaid-enrolled children aged 3 to 14 (N = 71,115) years. Measures:The 3M Corporation Clinical Risk Grouping methods were used to assess CC status (no/yes) and CC severity (episodic/life-long/malignancy/complex). The outcome variable was any dental utilization in 2006. Secondary outcomes included use of diagnostic, preventive, routine restorative, or complex restorative dental care. Results:After adjusting for model covariates, Iowa Medicaid-enrolled children with a CC were significantly more likely to use each type of dental care except routine restorative care (P = 0.86) than those without a CC, although the differences in the odds were small (4%–6%). Compared with Medicaid-enrolled children with an episodic CC, children with a life-long CC were less likely to use routine restorative care (P < 0.0001), children with a malignancy were more likely to use complex restorative care (P < 0.03), and children with a complex CC were less likely to use each type of dental care except complex restorative care (P = 0.97). Conclusions:There were differences in dental utilization for Iowa Medicaid-enrolled children by CC status and CC severity. Children with complex CCs were the least likely to use dental care. Future research efforts should seek to understand why subgroups of Medicaid-enrolled children with a CC exhibit lower dental utilization.


Following the structure of many commodity markets, we consider a reduced number of large firms and a competitive fringe of many small suppliers choosing quantities in an infinitehorizon setting subject to demand shocks. We show that a collusive agreement among the large firms may not only bring an output contraction but also an output expansion (relative to the non-collusive output level). The latter occurs during booms, when the fringe's market share is more important, and is due to the strategic substitutability of quantities (we will never observe an output-expanding collusion in a price-setting game). In addition and depending on the fringe's market share the time at which collusion is most difficult to sustain can be either at booms or recessions.


PROJECT DESCRIPTION: After a period of research/development, (funded by Arts Council of England 2009) 'Facts on the Ground' was produced by Live Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne. This unique project is part of a continuing exploration of verbatim/documentary theatre as a form and follows directly on from the creation of 'Motherland'. A piece of Documentary theatre, 'Facts on the Ground' combines pure verbatim with edited testimony and fictional writing based on stories and events from the West Bank region of Palestine. A series of interviews were carried out in Israel and the West Bank with those whose lives have been impacted by the construction of the Israeli security fence and the land confiscations, in particular those involved in the cultivation of the olive tree and associated products. The testimony provides insight into the daily lives of a community, breaking down stereotyped notions of 'Arab' society and offering a series of sad and moving stories from quite 'ordinary' individuals. Collaborators' contributions were: Steve Gilroy: writer and director, Richard Dawson: composer, Gez Casey: dramaturg, Kate Craddock, Ellie Clarke, William El Gardi, Simon Trinder, Jane Arnfield, Reza Kianpoor, Nitin Kundra: performers

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: 1 To explore the historical, social and cultural significance of the olive and its production as a lens through which to identify some of the key issues at the heart of arguments over territory, resources and statehood across the Middle East region. 2 To what extent does a process which combines the imagined and poetic with verbatim testimony undermine the authenticity associated with the genre of verbatim theatre? 3 Or, conversely does the juxta-positioning of these different forms create something akin to a 'surrealist jolt' questioning the assumption that 'Verbatim theatre' is inherently authentic and therefore more truthful?

DISSEMINATION AND ESTEEM: The project was produced as part of the International New Writing Festival (Different Stages) at Live Theatre (a theatre with a national and international reputation as a leading producing house). The performance received a four star review.


To get insight into the nature of the ionized gas in the nuclear region of LINERs, we performed a study of HST H α imaging of 32 LINERs. The main conclusion from this analysis is that, for the large majority of LINERs (84%), an unresolved nuclear source has been identified along with extended emission with equivalent sizes ranging from a few tens to a few hundredths of parsecs. Their morphologies do not appear to be homogeneous, since they are grouped into three classes: nuclear outflow candidates (42%), core- halo morphologies (25%), and nuclear spiral disks (14%). Clumpy structures reminiscent of young stellar clusters are not a common property of LINERs. The remaining five galaxies are too dusty to allow a clear view of the ionized gas distribution. A size-luminosity relation was found between the equivalent radius of the H α emission and the (2–10 keV) X-ray luminosities. Both ionized gas morphologies and the size-luminosity relation are indistinguishable from those of low-luminosity Seyferts, suggesting the same origin for the NLR of LINERs and Seyferts. A relation between soft X-rays and ionized gas has also been suggested for the first time in LINERs. From multiwavelength data, only four out of the 32 LINERs show no evidence of the AGN nature of their nuclear sources from multiwavelength data, but extremely obscured AGNs cannot be discarded given the Compton-thick signatures of their X-ray emission. For the confirmed AGN LINERs, their H α imaging favour core-halo and outflow morphologies (65% of the cases). Finally, their calculated Eddington ratios show that our LINER sources radiate in the sub-Eddington regime, with core-halo systems having on average higher Eddington ratios than do outflow candidates.


The boat-grave cemetery at Vendel, Uppland, is one of the iconic sites of first-millennium Sweden. The high-status grave-goods and weaponry have been widely displayed and studied since their discovery over 130 years ago. Yet it is rarely mentioned that the burial ground had been almost completely ransacked long before archaeologists stepped in. The celebrated finds are only a fraction of the wealth that was originally buried at the site. This is the first evaluation of the evidence of disturbance from Vendel since the excavations in the late 19th century. The ancient re-opening of the graves is reconstructed through the letters and diaries of the excavator, Hjalmar Stolpe, as well as the various preliminary and final reports. Evidence is presented that the main parts of the burials, notably the human bones, were systematically dug out of nearly every grave and removed from the site. The reopening probably took place during the Christianization period, before or during the construction of the nearby church in the 13th century. This is an example of the widespread reworking of monuments at this time, specifically highlighting the significance accorded to buried human remains.


Aim/Purpose: This article takes 'tourism decision-making behavior' as an entry point, and deeply analyzes the factors influencing the travel decision-making of Chinese 'American Travel' tourists and their degree of influence, so as to provide a reference for the development of Chinese outbound tourism.

Background: With the development of China's economy and the improvement in people's level, the outbound tourism market of Chinese residents has developed rapidly. The United States has become an important tourism destination country for Chinese residents' outbound tourism, and China has also become one of the important tourist source countries of American tourism. However, the rapid development of 'American tourism' has also caused competition problems in China's tourism industry. For example, prices and tourism products have become a means of competition among tourism enterprises. As the main body of consumption, tourists' decision-making behavior will be affected by various factors.

Methodology: Drawing lessons from previous scholars' research results on tourism decision-making behavior, the influencing factors of tourism decision-making behavior are summarized. A theoretical model and index system of factors influencing tourism decision-making behavior of Chinese residents 'Travel in the United States' are established, research hypotheses are put forward, questionnaire data are collected, and SPSS and Amos are used to analyze and verify the theoretical model.

Contribution: This research expands the literature on topics related to tourism decision-making in research and practice. It establishes a theoretical model and index system for the factors that influence the decision-making behavior of Chinese residents' 'American Travel' tourism. In addition, we propose countermeasures for tourism products, enterprises, and the government.

Findings: Prior knowledge and external information have a positive influence on tourism perception and value perception, and a negative influence on risk perception. Risk perception value perception has a positive and negative influence on tourism decision-making and tourism motivation, respectively. Tourism motivation has a positive influence on tourism decision-making and has a positive impact.

Recommendation for Researchers: According to the research conclusions of this article, the following counter-measures and suggestions are put forward from three aspects of tourism: products, enterprises, and governments.
On the basis of existing tourism products, relevant operating companies should pay more attention to the upgrading and transformation of tourism, leisure and entertainment products in scenic spots to increase the willingness of tourists to travel.
When considering corporate marketing and promotion plans, tourism companies operating related businesses should increase the weight of their marketing budgets in online marketing, increase investment in online marketing, and develop mobile applications that meet the preferences of Chinese residents in the United States.
Do a good job in the timely publication of safety reminders and local information. Safety is an important foundation for tourism development and the core concern of many tourists.

Future Research: Due to the important research on the impact of tourism activities, the influencing factors are many and complex, and the psychological process of tourism decision-making is carried out directly. There are still unconsidered factors that need to be studied in depth. In the future, it is possible to compare multiple resource-featured themes, and increase the characteristics of potential tourists, and the factors affecting the selection behavior of regional cultural tourists, and so forth, in order to make the research more applicable and practical instructive significance.


Harm reduction programs accept the reality of drug use while attempting to reduce its harmful consequences to individuals and society. This term, coined about 15 years ago in the U.K., has become a policy paradigm increasingly explored throughout most of the industrialized world. An example of a harm reduction program is the widely accepted substitution of methadone for the more "harmful" heroin. Programs that divert drug-involved offenders into treatment are another example of the operationalization of harm reduction policies.

In these 10 original chapters, international contributors discuss the philosophical basis and history of harm reduction policies and examine their outcome. They also cover controversial topics related to harm reduction, especially conflicts between the public health system where most programs are located, and a worldwide criminal justice system that further marginalizes drug users. Included in this book are descriptions of programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia.

The editors provide the context with a substantive introductory chapter focusing on the nature of harm reduction. The first part contains five chapters presenting the American perspectives on harm reduction; Part II includes five chapters presenting international perspectives from countries with particularly innovative harm reduction programs and policies.


During screening for biosurfactant-producing, n-alkane-degrading marine bacteria, six heterotrophic bacterial strains were isolated from enriched mixed cultures, obtained from sea water/sediment samples collected near the isle of Borkum (North Sea), using Mihagol-S (C14,15-n-alkanes) as principal carbon source. These Gram-negative, aerobic, rod-shaped bacteria use a limited number of organic compounds, including aliphatic hydrocarbons, volatile fatty acids, and pyruvate and its methyl ether. During cultivation on n-alkanes as sole source of carbon and energy, all strains produced both extracellular and cell-bound surface-active glucose lipids which reduced the surface tension of water from 72 to 29 mN m-1 (16). This novel class of glycolipids was found to be produced only by these strains. The 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that these strains are all members of the gamma-subclass of the Proteobacteria. Their phospholipids ester-linked fatty acid composition was shown to be similar to that of members of the genus Halmonas, although they did not demonstrate a close phylogenetic relationship to any previously described species. On the basis of the information summarized above, a new genus and species, Alcanivorax borkumensis, is described to include these bacteria. Strain SK2T is the type strain of A. borkumensis.


The study reported here investigates the predictive validity of language assessments by 'Direct Entry' programs at an Australian University – programs developed on site for Non English Speaking Background international students, principally to provide (i) pre-entry academic and language preparation and (ii) language assessment for university admissions purposes. All 138 students in the sample had entered degree studies via one of the three programs that made up the locally-developed Direct Entry pathway. Inferential statistics (correlation and regression) showed the assessments awarded by two programs to satisfactorily predict academic outcomes, while predictive validity for one was not demonstrated. Descriptive statistics (mean pass rates and academic averages) then revealed a pattern of relatively poor academic performance in certain university disciplines to which particular Direct Entry programs were dedicated. Informed by principles of language program evaluation, the study's outcomes were seen as both summative and formative: remedial strategies are accordingly recommended. While the specific relevance of the study's findings is to the particular institutional context in which the study was conducted, the study instantiates a perspective on language assessment validation of broader relevance in an Australian context where locally-developed Direct Entry programs – about which the research literature is largely silent – are increasingly widespread.


Building on current interest in the regulation of child pornography, this article goes back to the 1950s, recovering a lost history of how southern segregationists used the battle against obscenity to counter the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Itself focused on the psychological development of children, Brown sparked a discursive backlash in the South focused on claims that the races possessed different cultures and that white children would be harmed joined a larger, regional campaign, a constitutional guerilla war mounted by moderates and extremists alike that swept onto cultural, First Amendment terrain even as the frontal assault of massive resistance succumbed to federal might. A radical re-reading of prevailing understandings of southern resistance to Brown, this article posits that civil rights proved much more culturally contingent than scholars have so far recognized, reframing the manner in which we understand Brown, its progeny, and current constitutional debates over the relationship between rights and race.


In this study, two kinds of mesoporous materials were prepared. The first was a silica mesostructure grown within a porous aluminium oxide membrane columnar material (hybrid-AOM). This was prepared using a sol-gel technique with Pluronic P123 triblock copolymer as the structure-directing agent and tetraethyl orthosilicate as the inorganic source. The hybrid-AOM had a similar pore size distribution to that of as-prepared SBA-15 but showed an amorphous character, as demonstrated by nitrogen adsorption and SAXRD. The second type of material was a continuous mesoporous silica thin film, prepared by the dip-coating technique using Pluronic F127 triblock copolymer as the structure-directing agent and the same silica source as hybrid-AOM. The film, which was self-assembled on substrates such as indium tin oxide (ITO), glass and gold, exhibited long-range ordered mesostructures after several treatments and aging. Grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering method (GISAXS) showed that the thin film contracted in a direction perpendicular to the substrate after drying and surfactant removal.Removal of the surfactant template from both materials in order to create porous silica was achieved by calcination, ethanol extraction and peroxide-Fe treatments. Calcination was found to be the best method to remove surfactant from both mesostructures (hybrid-AOM and thin film). However, this was found to cause cracking and crumpling of the hybrid-AOM with the evaporated gold being easily peeled off after calcination. Ethanol extraction was thus applied where calcination was not suitable. The surfactant removal was confirmed using an infrared spectroscopy and the structure was confirmed after extraction using 1D X-ray diffraction (XRD). The surface morphology, porosity and crystallinity of the mesostructures prepared were characterized by nitrogen adsorption, scanning electron microscopy and small angle XRD. To form modified electrodes, the hybrid-AOM template was coated by evaporation with pure gold on one side, whilst the mesostructured thin film was grown on either gold or ITO. The permeability of the void space for both hybrid and thin film samples was calculated from the cyclic voltammetry response of a neutral probe (FcMeOH). Cationic ([Ru(bpy)3]2+) and anionic (I-) electroactive species were used to observe the electrochemical response under different pH regimes. FcMeOH was also used to study the effect of KCl concentration on the silica surface charge. Gold and platinum were electrochemically deposited using mesoporous silica as a template.


Metal is part of the Westernised, commercial pop and rock music industry that has imposed itself on the rest of the world… metal has played and continues to play a key role in the globalised entertainment industries. (Hill and Spracklen, 2010, p.vii)

The term 'heavy metal' was first used as an adjective relating to popular music in the late 1960s, however in the early 1970s the expression began to be employed as a noun and therefore as a descriptor for a music genre (Walser, 1993, p.7). Heavy metal has therefore existed for approximately four decades. In the past five years there has been a dramatic increase in academics researching and studying the area (Scott and Von Helden, 2010, p.ix). This is evidenced by the world's first scholarly conference on the metal genre, 'Heavy Fundametalisms – Music, Metal and Politics', being held in Salzburg, Austria in 2008 (Sheppard, 2008). To date, the focus of this academic study has tended to address the importance and relevance of metal from a historical, sociological, cultural, musicological and political science perspective (e.g. Weinstein, 1991; Walser, 1993; McIver, 2000, 2002, 2005; Kahn-Harris, 2007) and additionally, Weinstein points to metal studies comprehending the fields of economics, literature, communications and social psychology (Weinstein, 2011, p.243). In contrast, this paper focuses on the specific approaches and techniques involved in music production for this style and builds on the author's previous work in the area


Audio Sentiment Analysis is a popular research area which extends the text-based sentiment analysis to depend on effectiveness of acoustic features extracted from speech. However, current progress on audio sentiment analysis mainly focuses on extracting homogeneous acoustic features or doesn't fuse heterogeneous features effectively. In this paper, we propose an utterance-based deep neural network model, which has a parallel combination of CNN and LSTM based network, to obtain representative features termed Audio Sentiment Vector (ASV), that can maximally reflect sentiment information in an audio. Specifically, our model is trained by utterance-level labels and ASV can be extracted and fused creatively from two branches. In the CNN model branch, spectrum graphs produced by signals are fed as inputs while in the LSTM model branch, inputs include spectral centroid, MFCC and other recognized traditional acoustic features extracted from dependent utterances in an audio. Besides, BiLSTM with attention mechanism is used for feature fusion. Extensive experiments have been conducted to show our model can recognize audio sentiment precisely, and demonstrate our ASV are better than traditional acoustic features or vectors extracted from other deep learning models. Furthermore, experimental results indicate that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art approaches by 9.33% on MOSI.


Bringing together essays by a distinguished international group of leading and emerging scholars of sexuality and gender, this stimulating and accessible collection explores a range of theoretical and "real world" perspectives current in the field. Treating these approaches as complementary, Sexuality, Gender and Power fosters critical conversations about sexuality across disciplinary, cultural, national and ideological boundaries. Underpinned by a broad editorial commitment to intersectionality, the chapters deploy approaches that range from historical materialism to queer theory, and from contract theory to theories of the gendered sexual self to address recurrent questions around agency, power, identity and self-hood. Theoretical debates inform and are informed by more empirically oriented chapters focusing on topics such as gay identity in contemporary Croatia, sexual politics in the Commonwealth Caribbean,  western "tango tourists," sexual violence in war, prostitution, femme fashion, changing sexual norms in China and Taiwan, and feminist politics in the 2008 US presidential campaign. Each chapter is interesting and important in its own right; taken together, they advance gender theory and research by developing a complex conception of sexuality that explores intersections between and amongst theories, levels of analysis and identities, linking case studies to international trends and theoretical debates to everyday experiences.


The research on ASEAN marketing communication attribute is scarce; therefore, this research is the preliminary research to develop a sound marketing strategy for the ASEAN as ONE collaboration promotion @goaseantv. An exploratory research for the period January until December 2015 @goaseantv findings show that there are only 4 countries promoted among 10 ASEAN member countries.There are 6 topics with the minimum 1.0 eigen value, the marketing communication attributes extracted are ASEAN tourism destination promotion and the scenic proposition, since @goaseantv is an extension information channel from GOASEANTV, therefore there are two popular TV program which are The Eco Traveler and Go Fast Go Home that promoted throught the channel.Furthermore, @goaseantv also has a program to promote halal food, which is Halal Foodie. Finally, this research proposes that The ASEAN as ONE should integrate all ASEAN countries in the @goaseantv marketing communication platform. The majority of activities promoted in @goaseantv is in Malaysia, therefore the @goaseantv should consider to improve the other countries promotion proportion, a collaboration with the ASEAN countries tourism channel should developed to promote a sound ASEAN As ONE brand association.


The transition of the built environment is a key issue of sustainable development. The paper describes a methodology based on material flow analysis (MFA) to explore material stocks in urban systems in order to make these materials available for urban mining. Switzerland is taken as an example. For the management on a national or regional scale exploration steps on lower scales are crucial. MFA is combined with architectural know how and approaches inspired by geosciences (urban geology). Buildings and infrastructure are the main processes, since they are the main carriers of material stocks within the urban system. For the exploration of urban stocks in buildings, the combination of material contents which are related to specific construction systems and layouts of rooms with their frequency of occurrence is introduced as "ark-house method". The focus on the genesis of the built environment gives the basis for future development options by scenario techniques.


Beneath sub-equatorial Africa, there is convincing evidence for a gigantic, slow, velocity anomaly within the lower mantle that is inferred to be a thermochemical superplume. Here, we define the spatial and temporal pattern of uplift across the northern edge of this putative superplume by analyzing stratal geometries and stacking velocities of Neogene sedimentary rocks. These marine deposits are imaged on a dense grid of seismic reflection profiles that straddle the southwest African coastal shelf. Inverse modeling of stacking velocity profiles demonstrates that there have been at least two significant phases of uplift. A post-Pliocene uplift event increases from 0 to ~500 m elevation over a distance of ~1000 km, in close agreement with geophysical estimates of the present-day variation of dynamic topography. An earlier phase of uplift occurred in middle Oligocene time (ca. 30–35 Ma ago). We propose a two-stage development of epeirogeny in which a Middle Oligocene phase of uplift may be related to initiation and growth of the African superplume. Post-Pliocene denudation records rapid (100–250 m/Ma) vertical motions generated by upper mantle convection, which vary on length scales of 500–1000 km. Our results support the existence of a convective circulation system that has operated on different temporal and spatial scales beneath the African plate.