Osteopetrosis also known as Albers-Schonberg disease or marble bone disease is a rare genetic metabolic bone disorder characterized by a marked increase in bone density caused by a defect in bone remodeling due to failure of normal osteoclast function. It is classified into three forms: Infantile malignant autosomal recessive osteopetrosis, intermediate osteopetrosis and autosomal dominant (AD) osteopetrosis. Malignant infantile osteopetrosis is a rare severe fatal disorder with an average incidence of 1:200,000-1:300,000 [1]. The diagnosis is confirmed by radiology. Bone marrow aspiration in such cases is difficult and usually leads to dry tap. Trephine biopsy is essential in these cases to obtain bone marrow picture. Here we are reporting a case of infantile malignant osteopetrosis in a 6 months old female.


This study examined user engagement with ZeroPhobia, a self-guided app-based virtual reality (VR) Cognitive Behavior Therapy for acrophobia symptoms using cardboard VR viewers. Dutch acrophobic adults (n = 96) completed assessments at baseline and immediately following treatment. Primary outcome measures were the Acrophobia Questionnaire (AQ) and the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ). Usage data consisted of number of VR sessions practiced, practice time, and fear ratings directly after practicing. Results show that of the 66 participants who played at least one level, the majority continued to finish all levels, spending on average 24.4 min in VR. Self-reported fear consistently decreased between the start and finish of levels. Post-test AQ scores depended quadratically on time spent in VR. Higher pre-test AQ scores were significantly associated with subjective anxiety after the first level and a reduction of post-test AQ scores, but not with number of sessions, suggesting it might be more beneficial to play one level for a longer time period instead of practicing many VR levels. Results also show an optimum exposure level at which increasing practice time does not result in increased benefit. Self-guided VR acrophobia treatment is effective and leads to consistent reductions in self-reported anxiety both between levels and after treatment. Most participants progressed effectively to the highest self-exposure level, despite the absence of a therapist.


What was the story? In the oral version of their presentations, the participants in this symposium generally prefaced their remarks with descriptions of their service in government. They wished to acknowledge their biases and to admit how the jobs they held had shaped their perspectives. So perhaps I should also state how my experience has shaped my views of impeachment, especially because my perspective on impeachment differs from that of my co-participants. Generally speaking, the other participants served in high government positions, and so they think in terms of policy, but I served as a trial lawyer, so I come to impeachment asking the trial lawyer's question: What is the story? In the debate over impeachment, the prosecutors thought that President Clinton's actions represented a threat to the rule of law. The defenders denied this charge. Both sides agreed that the story was about the rule of law, and the articles to which I am responding employ the same metaphors. My thesis is that the prosecutors, the defenders, and those who spoke at the symposium all chose the wrong story; had I been the prosecutor, I would have told a story about breach of trust. As events transpired, the defenders were delighted to be telling the wrong story. The prosecutors were incompetent enough to choose the rule of law as their theme, and the defenders were glad to join issue on this favorable terrain. One wonders why the prosecutors made such a bad choice. Perhaps the prosecutors avoided the breach-of-trust issue because this theme would have acted as a double-edged sword. They might have thought it easy to demonstrate that President Clinton was not worthy of our trust, but perhaps they did not wish to call attention to their own untrustworthiness. The Republicans, who comprised a majority of the House Judiciary Committee, failed to earn our trust because of their irresponsible behavior. They released the report by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr ("Starr Report") without editing out irrelevancies; they compromised the tradition of grand jury confidentiality by releasing transcripts; they failed to adopt a clear set of procedures before beginning the process; and they failed to conduct an independent inquiry. They then compounded these mistakes by sending [*pg 194] thirteen Members of the House of Representatives to the Senate to manage their presentation. The thirteen Members made the Keystone Kops look efficient. Because the House Republicans failed to demonstrate that they deserved our trust, it is no surprise that they also failed to show that President Clinton did not. One would have thought that it would have been easy, that making the case that President Clinton was untrustworthy would not have been beyond their competence. But it was. Their mistake seems to have been two-fold. First, they focused on sex by releasing the unedited Starr report, which distracted public attention from President Clinton's acts of perjury and obstruction of justice. Second, when they tried to switch the topic away from sex, and back to perjury and obstruction of justice, they chose to describe President Clinton's acts as a threat to the rule of law rather than as a breach of trust. Their misplaced emphasis on the rule of law crippled their attempts at persuasion by making them sound rigid, dogmatic, and abstract. If the story of President Clinton's perjuries and his obstructions of justice had been told as a story about breach of trust, the Republican House Managers would have had several advantages; most importantly they could have shed the handicap of abstractness. Their talk about the rule of law was necessarily abstract because to argue that President Clinton's perjuries were a threat, they had to generalize. The House Managers had to argue the theme "what if everybody . . . ," which ultimately led away from what President Clinton did. By moving the argument away from the details, their rhetoric became ever less incisive, and ever more pompous. One possible response to my assertion - the House Republicans were foolish to have cast their charges as a story about the rule of law - is to gasp in astonishment, "What could be more important than the rule of law?" When I made my remarks at the symposium on September 24, 1999, a member of the audience stated, "I find it rather disturbing that anyone would suggest that perjury is not a serious enough threat to the rule of law to warrant impeachment and removal from office." I responded that this astonishment is natural and understandable, indeed inevitable, to anyone who has been educated into the legal imagination. However, this line of thinking assumes that the legal imagination should govern. We all know that the public did not judge President Clinton's perjuries to be serious, and I surmise that they did not judge him harshly because they sympathized with his motives for lying - to conceal sexual trespasses. The public could forgive those motives. To be sure, by the standards of the law, President Clinton's motives for his perjuries were irrelevant, but one must remember that our Constitution begins, "We, the People, . . ." One should also remember what President Lincoln did not say: President Lincoln did not hold out government "of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers" as a worthy ideal. If we judge President Clinton by the standards of legal justice, then of course he should have been impeached and convicted, but if we judge him by the standards of popular justice, then the outcome is rather more doubtful.


In this article, we present a review of recent studies on workplace innovation (WPI) from a work and organizational psychology (WOP) perspective, with the aim of showing the potential advantages of taking a WOP perspective on WPI. We first outline a few different conceptualisations of WPI and of its main outcomes, that is, quality of working life and organizational performance. Next, we examine the intersections between research in WOP and WPI, specifically focusing on how an understanding of organizational and work-related dynamics can influence the effectiveness of WPI practices. Third, in an attempt to facilitate the integration of research on WOP and WPI and to disentangle the mechanisms underlying the effective implementation of WPI policies, we present evidence on three critical concepts in WOP and their relationship to WPI: job autonomy, job flexibility and participation in organizational life. Finally, we discuss some practical implications for Work and Organizational Psychologists interested in WPI implementation.


Article history: Received 25 June 2014 Received in revised form 8 July 2014 Accepted 14 September 2014 Available online 10 October 2014


Doctrine and scholarship recognize two basic models of enforcing the law: the comprehensive model, under which law-enforcers try to apprehend and punish every violator within the bounds of feasibility; and the randomized model, under which law enforcers economize their efforts by apprehending a small number of violators and heightening their penalties so as to make violations unattractive. This Article supplements this list of options by developing a strategic model of law enforcement. Under this model, law enforcers concentrate their effort on the worst, or most rampant, violators at a given point in time while leaving all others unpunished. This enforcement strategy will force violators into a cascaded retreat: to avoid detection as one of the worst violators, every individual wrongdoer will bring the level of his unlawful activity down to the point of inconspicuousness - a process that will repeat itself several times to society's benefit. This Article identifies the circumstances that call for the strategic model's adoption and illustrates the model's potential as an enforcement tool in diverse areas of the law that include employment discrimination, election districting, and copyright protection.


The intention of this thesis is to identify and address the methodological challenges with Universal Design. Since Universal Design can be understood as both a design approach and a design philosophy, challenges in both understandings are examined. The increased visibility of the disabled, and the baby boom that followed the years after The Second World War created a need for products accommodating the different user abilities of people of all ages, and this was the aim of Universal Design. Universal Design aims to capture a wide as possible user base, but putting the disabilities in context is difficult, and basing a design on a users lack of abilities can be constraining the designer from reaching creative and appropriate solutions. Universally designed products are also closely related assistive technology, which may stigmatize its users and hinder people from using such products. To counter these challenges, Vision in Product Design (ViP) is proposed as an alternative way of achieving Universal design in mainstream products. As a context-based, and interaction-driven design approach, it may be easier to find the appropriate and relevant context factors making more suitable products for more people. Identifying the challenges of Universal Design has revealed that there are alternative ways of interpreting what universality means for mainstream products. There has also been raised questions whether user abilities is a good starting point when designing universal products. Identifying social exclusion as a wicked problem shows that there are no correct or incorrect ways of approaching it. However, including human universals and human motivational goals into the definition of universal design, could provide solutions that are more inclusive than it is today.


Describes and evaluates visual looming as a monocular range sensing method for mobile robots. The looming algorithm is based on the relationship between the displacement of a camera relative to an object, and the resulting change in the size of the object's image on the focal plane of the camera. We have carried out systematic experiments to evaluate the ranging accuracy of the looming algorithm using a Pioneer 1 mobile robot equipped with a color camera. We have also performed noise sensitivity for the looming algorithm, obtaining theoretical error bounds on the range estimates for given levels of odometric and visual noise, which were verified through experimental data. Our results suggest that looming can be used as a robust, inexpensive range sensor as a complement to sonar.


As the lone Tamil in the Sri Lankan dressing-room, let alone the focus of more accusations and unwanted attention than any other contemporary sportsman, Muttiah Muralitharan personifies the outsider. As a symbol of all-round sporting excellence, annexing this particular record ought to defy parallel or dispute. Skill, consistency, endurance and perseverance, that quartet of prize assets, are all imperative. In his case, one can add forbearance.

No great cricketer, and perhaps no great sportsman, has divided writers, officials and public quite like "Murali", as he is known. The cause is his action, based as it is on an alliance between the game's most flexible wrist and a deformed elbow that has convinced thousands that he is not bowling his rich variety of spinning deliveries, but illegally throwing them.


Neuropeptide-like immunoreactivity has a widespread distribution in the nematode nervous system (Sithigorngul et al. 1990) and sequences of more than 150 neuropeptides have been predicted from the genomes of C. elegans (Nelson et al. 1998; Nathoo et al. 2001). Here we report a preliminary assessment of the biological activity of six of these on the somatic muscle of the parasitic nematode A. suum. Three of these are encoded by flp (FMRFamide-like peptides) genes and three by nlp (neuropeptide-like precursor) genes. Two of the latter show some sequence similarity to myomodulin, and one to buccalin, molluscan neuropeptides. The effect of the peptides on the body wall muscle of A. suum was determined using an in vitro preparation of dorsal muscle strips as described by Trim et al. (1997). A 1 cm section of muscle was placed in an organ bath attached to an isometric transducer and perfused with artificial perienteric fluid (composition (mM): NaCl 67, sodium acetate 67, MgCl2 5.6, CaCl2 3, KCl 3, Tris-Cl 5; pH 7.6). The excitatory neuromuscular junction transmitter acetylcholine (ACh; 10 µM) was added for 1 min and then washed out. This elicited a rapid and reversible contraction. This was repeated twice to obtain contractions of reproducible amplitude. Subsequently the neuropeptide was added to the preparation 2 min prior to ACh, and the amplitude of the contraction to ACh in the presence of the peptide was expressed as a percentage of the average amplitude of the three contractions prior to the addition of neuropeptide. None of the neuropeptides had a marked effect on basal muscle tension. However, three had a potent effect on the contraction elicited by ACh, with two acting as inhibitors and one as a potentiator. The results are summarised in Table 1. In conclusion, all three of the RF-amide neuropeptides had potent effects, and one of the myomodulin-like peptides had a weak inhibitory action. Further studies are in progress to assess the activity of these peptides in C. elegans.


Nowadays, with the advancement of technology, world is trending toward high mobility and dynamics. In this context, intersection management (IM) as one of the most crucial elements of the transportation sector demands high attention. Today, road entities including infrastructures, vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as motorcycles, moped, scooters, pedestrians, bicycles, and other types of vehicles such as trucks, buses, cars, emergency vehicles, and railway vehicles like trains or trams are able to communicate cooperatively using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications and provide traffic safety, efficiency, infotainment and ecological improvements. In this paper, we take into account different types of intersections in terms of signalized, semi-autonomous (hybrid) and autonomous intersections and conduct a comprehensive survey on various intersection management methods for heterogeneous connected vehicles (CVs). We consider heterogeneous classes of vehicles such as road and rail vehicles as well as VRUs including bicycles, scooters and motorcycles. All kinds of intersection goals, modeling, coordination architectures, scheduling policies are thoroughly discussed. Signalized and semi-autonomous intersections are assessed with respect to these parameters. We especially focus on autonomous intersection management (AIM) and categorize this section based on four major goals involving safety, efficiency, infotainment and environment. Each intersection goal provides an in-depth investigation on the corresponding literature from the aforementioned perspectives. Moreover, robustness and resiliency of IM are explored from diverse points of view encompassing sensors, information management and sharing, planning universal scheme, heterogeneous collaboration, vehicle classification, quality measurement, external factors, intersection types, localization faults, communication anomalies and channel optimization, synchronization, vehicle dynamics and model mismatch, model uncertainties, recovery, security and privacy.


Jerusalem artichoke has been cultivated in various regions without any special breeding technique. As a food, Jerusalem artichoke has a characteristic flavour and functional ingredients including inulin, other dietary fibers, minerals and traces of polyphenol. The production of chips from Jerusalem artichoke was examined in this study because it contains high amount of inulin. Inulin gives health promoting effects especially for the people suffering from diabetes. Firstly,chips production from Jerusalem artichoke was studied in the scope of properties like moisture, oil, color, texture, sensory. After cleaning, tubers prepared in specified size and slices were cooked in the deep fat fryer or microwave oven. The best results obtained for frying and microwave oven application of Jerusalem artichoke were obtained at 180℃ for 240s treatment time and at 600 W for105s, respectively.


For many librarians, institutional repositories (IRs) promised significant change for academic libraries. We envisioned enlarging collection development scope to include locally produced scholarship and an expansion of library services to embrace scholarly publication and distribution. However, at the University of Rochester, as at many other institutions, this transformational technology was introduced in the conservative, controlled manner associated with stereotypical librarian culture, and so these expected changes never materialized. In this case study, we focus on the creation of our institutional repository (a potentially disruptive technology) and how its success was hampered by our organizational culture, manifested as a lengthy and complicated set of policies. In the following pages, we briefly describe our repository project, talk about our original policies, look at the ways those policies impeded our project, and discuss the disruption of those policies and the benefits in user uptake that resulted.


I. INTRODUCTION The condition known as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome ("AIDS") was first reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 1981. (2) By 1983, scientists had identified a new human retrovirus called HIV or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, that was responsible for AIDS. (3) Since that time, the number of persons with HIV infection and AIDS has grown and HIV/AIDS now effects every country in the world. In July 1996, an estimated 22 million persons across the world were living with HIV infection. (4) Medical experts now know that HIV is a progressive disease that attacks the body at the outset and even during the Early Disease Stage, or so-called "asymptomatic stage," HIV continues to have severe deteriorating physical effects. But during this "asymptomatic" stage, most individuals generally have no outward manifestations of the HIV disease. (5) This fact raises the issue of whether a person with HIV who is asymptomatic can be held to be "disabled" for purposes of the protections of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Prior to the passage of the ADA in 1990, the term "individual with a handicap" had been clearly established under federal disability laws to include all people with HIV. Every reported decision under the Rehabilitation Act and the Fair Housing Amendment Act had determined that asymptomatic HIV was protected as a per se disability. (6) Prior to 1997, only a few Courts had faced the issue of whether a plaintiff with asymptomatic HIV was disabled under the ADA. (7) In 1997, the Fourth and First Circuit Courts of Appeal decided cases in direct conflict with one another, opening the door for the U. S. Supreme Court to review the issue of the definition of disability under the ADA because of the split created by these Circuit Court opinions. The two cases, Abbott v. Bragdon (8) and Runnebaum v. NationsBank of Maryland, N.A. (9) both involved plaintiffs who were HIV-positive but asymptomatic. The Abbott Court held that asymptomatic HIV was a disability and therefore the plaintiff who was seeking dental treatment was protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act. (10) The Runnebaum Court, on the other hand, took the opposite view and found that the plaintiff was not disabled within the meaning of the ADA and therefore was not protected from the alleged discriminatory firing by his employer. (11) This article explores the divergent analysis applied to the two cases and then discusses the Supreme Court's opinion in Bragdon v. Abbott. Finally, the article discusses what questions remain unanswered as a result of the Bragdon v. Abbott decision. II. MEDICAL BACKGROUND OF HIV HIV is a human virus that can infect and replicate in numerous types of human cells. (12) Certain immune-system T-cells, white blood cells contain a surface protein known as CD4 and are particularly susceptible to HIV infection. (13) Infected T-cells (T-cells that are "CD4+") eventually die, and as the number of such cells decreases, the body's ability to fight infection also decreases. The infected individual's CD4+ cell count is thus "the best predictive marker of relative risk for developing HIV-related opportunistic diseases. (14) As a result, HIV disease is viewed as progressing in stages that correspond to a level of CD4+ cells or that result in an AIDS-defining condition in the patient. (15) HIV disease begins with exposure to and infection by HIV. After infection, HIV immediately attacks the cells of the immune system. HIV attaches to the CD4 receptor on the surface of a T-cell and its membrane fuses with that of the host cell, injecting the viral genetic material into the host T-cell. (16) The host cell can then become a factory for the production of more copies of HIV's genetic material, and these copies spread to other cells. (17) Within two to four weeks after initial infection, high levels of circulating HIV can be detected. (18) As a result of this attack on the cells, HIV infection induces a chronic and progressive process with a broad spectrum of manifestations and complications from primary infection to life-threatening opportunistic infections. …


President Nixon's historic trip to China in February 1972 marked the beginning of a new era in Sino-American relations. For the first time since 1949, the two countries established high-level official contacts and transformed their relationship from confrontation to collaboration. Over the subsequent twenty years, however, U.S.-China relations have experienced repeated cycles of progress, stalemate, and crisis, with the events in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 the most recent and disruptive example. Paradoxically, although relations between the two countries are vastly more extensive today than they were twenty years ago, they remain highly fragile. In this eagerly awaited book, China expert Harry Harding offers the first comprehensive look at Sino-American relations from 1972 to the present. He traces the evolution of U.S.-China relations, and assesses American policy toward Peking in the post- Tiananmen era. Harding analyzes the changing contexts for the Sino-American relationship, particularly the rapidly evolving international environment, changes in American economic and political life, and the dramatic domestic developments in both China and Taiwan. He discusses the principal substantive issues in U.S.-China relations, including the way in which the two countries have addressed their differences over Taiwan and human rights, and how they have approached the blend of common and competitive interests in their economic and strategic relationships. He also addresses the shifting political base for Sino-American relations within each country, including the development of each society's perceptions of the other, and the emergence and dissolution of rival political coalitions supporting and opposing the relationship. Harding concludes that a return to the Sino-American strategic alignment of the 1970s, or even to the economic partnership of the 1980s, is less likely in the 1990s than continued tension or even confrontation over such issues as trade, human rights, and the proliferation of advanced weapons. But he also explains the importance of maintaining normal working relations with China in order to promote security in East Asia, protect the global environment, and encourage an open, more realistic and stable relationship with China. Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Book of 1992 Award winner for excellence in publishing from the Association of American Publishers


For this proposal 114 surface sediment samples from the Equatorial and Southwestern Pacific were analysed,
recovered during three cruises: Genesis III-RR9702A, NEMO-Me0005A and PUCK: Valparaiso-Talcahuano.
A total of 19 different species (or groups in some cases) were identified using petrographic microscope.
Five biogeographic coccolithophore zones have been established taking into account the distribution
patterns of the taxa and some physical parameters such as temperature and salinity. These zones are:
-Tropical North, characterized by an assemblage mainly composed of Gephyrocapsa oceanica,
Florisphaera profunda, «small» Gephyrocapsa and Gephyrocapsa muellerae.
- Equatorial, basically dominated by placoliths.
-Tropical South, where F.profunda, G.oceanica, «small» Gephyrocapsa, Calcidiscus leptoporus, Emiliania
huxleyi and G.muellerae are dominant. Characteristic taxa are Umbilicosphaera sp., Calcisosolenia
sp., Oolithotus sp., Syracosphaera spp. and Rhabdosphaera clavigera.
-Subtropical South, with an assemblage dominated by gephyrocapsids, F.profunda, C.leptoporus and
Helicosphaera carteri.
-Transitional-Subpolar, where «small» Gephyrocapsa is the most abundant taxa, although E.huxleyi,
G.muellerae, C.leptoporus, G.oceanica, F.profunda, C.pelagicus (very abundant in this zone) and
H.carteri are also well represented.


Introduction . The existing sowing machines do not provide a single feeding of the bulbs with a planting (sowing) unit that leads to a violation of the agrotechnical requirements of planting bulbs. It is necessary to search new solutions to preserve the position of the bulbs in the furrow with the bottom down and their regularly spaced distribution. Materials and Methods. The article presents the design for a prototype for a planting ma - chine equipped with a forked-roller sowing unit for orienting the onion-sowing into a fur row. Testing the forked-roller sowing unit were carried out on a flat area where the physical and mechanical properties of the soil were determined on the days of sowing, and the in dices of the quality of the onion-sowing were determined. The study of the effect of the sowing machine speed on the quality of the onion-seed bulb landing was determined by the change in the translational speed of the sowing unit in the range of 0.8 m/s to 1.2 m/s with a variation interval of 0.1 m/s. The indicators of the quality of the planting of the bulbs were determined by the opening of the closed furrow. The results of laboratory-field studies of the planting machine prototype are presented. Results. The results of laboratory-field studies of a planting machine equipped with a forked-roller sowing unit for planting onion bulbs are presented. The optimal technologi cal parameters are determined experimentally. It was determined the number of bulbs that are for up is 51 % and the regularity of planting by the forked-roller sowing unit – 79 %. These figures are provided at the forward speed of the planting machine V M = 0.9–1.0 m/s, the height of the fall of the bulb H A = 0.12 m, and the rotation frequency of the landing drum n Б = 0.47 c -1 . Discussion and Conclusions. The use of a forked-roller sowing unit makes it possible to increase the proportion of onions planted by bottom down by 200 %, and the uniformity of planting bulbs by 19 %, in comparison with a belt sowing unit.


We propose forecasting functional time series using weighted functional principal component regression and weighted functional partial least squares regression. These approaches allow for smooth functions, assign higher weights to more recent data, and provide a modeling scheme that is easily adapted to allow for constraints and other information. We illustrate our approaches using age-specic French female mortality rates from 1816 to 2006 and age-specic Australian fertility rates from 1921 to 2006, and show that these weighted methods improve forecast accuracy in comparison to their unweighted counterparts. We also propose two new bootstrap methods to construct prediction intervals, and evaluate and compare their


Power system security analysis is often strongly tied with contingency analysis. To improve Monte Carlo simulation, many different contingency selection techniques have been proposed in the literature. However, with the introduction of more variable generation sources such as wind power and due to fast changing loads, power system security analysis will also have to incorporate sudden changes in injected powers that are not due to generation outages. In this paper, we use importance sampling for injected-power simulation to estimate the probability of system failure given a power system grid state. A comparison to standard crude Monte Carlo simulation is also performed in a numerical example and indicates a major increase in simulation efficiency when using the importance sampling technique proposed in the paper.


The status of human rights in Southeast Asia is under increasing scrutiny as the process of community building culminates in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). National, regional, and external civil society actors now populate the ASEAN "human rights space" pressuring member governments and ASEAN institutions. This article investigates the status of human rights in the 10 member states of ASEAN by presenting the patterns of ratification, reservation, and fulfillment of the core global human rights treaties. This analysis suggests that, despite a growing number of treaty ratifications, compliance with the standards those treaties include remains elusive. Reservations, resistance to the optional protocols, and nonsubmission of reports to the relevant treaty bodies suggest that ratification has not led to full compliance. The article concludes that Southeast Asian states will continue to diversify with regard to human rights, placing great strain not only on the AICHR but ASEAN itself.


Also available as an e-book The book argues that the decision-making processes within international organizations and other global governance bodies ought to be subjected to procedural and substantive legal constraints that are associated domestically with the requirements of the rule of law. The book explains why law — international, regional, domestic, formal or soft — should restrain global actors in the same way that judicial oversight is applied to domestic administrative agencies. It outlines the emerging web of global norms designed to protect the rights and interests of all affected individuals, to enable public deliberation, and to promote the legitimacy of the global bodies. These norms are being shaped by a growing convergence of expectations of global institutions to ensure public participation and representation, impartiality and independence of decision-makers, and accountability of decisions. The book explores these mechanisms as well as the political and social forces that are shaping their development by analysing the emerging judicial practice concerning a variety of institutions, ranging from the UN Security Council and other formal organizations to informal and private standard-setting bodies.


ABSTRACT The recruitment of overseas trained teachers (OTTs) in England is a matter that has received as much attention inside the United Kingdom as outside. Education systems in small island and developing states, especially, were believed to have been placed 'at risk' following the departure of experienced and qualified teachers. Correspondingly, the presence of OTTs in England has contributed to, inter alia, workforce stability, behavioural management solutions and curriculum enhancement. Despite these contributions, however, very little is known about the career progression of OTTs in England. Through a tracer study of OTTs recruited between 2001 and 2008, in the first phase of teacher migration to the UK, this qualitative study explored the perceived factors that facilitate and/or hinder the progression of Caribbean OTTs in England. Drawing on postmodernism, critical and social identity theories, this paper examines how institutional racism and discrimination play a part in restricting the promotion and career progression of OTTs.


The genetic relationships among 34 accessions of wild rice from Asia, Africa, America and Australia were analysed using RFLP technique. After southern blotting, DNA digestion pattern was hybridised with a highly repetitive DNA sequence of a retrotransposon from a gypsy family of mobile elements. A dendrogram was constructed from RFLP data in which the species clustered according to their genome designation (CC, BB, BBCC and CCDD genomes). Some species did not appear in the same group, for example, O. eichingeri from Africa and Sri Lanka clustered separately from each other. The same situation was observed for the accessions from China of O. officinalis , which cluster together showing a close relationship with O. rhizomatis , and O. eichingeri (both of CC genome). Also, the tetraploid BBCC from India of O. officinalis appears in the same cluster of O. eichingeri and O. punctata (both from Africa) suggesting close phylogenetic relationship with the African genomes BB, CC and BBCC.


The vertical leakage characteristics are investigated for whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) in the microcylinder resonators with vertical semiconductor waveguiding. The mode coupling between HE and EH modes at the boundaries between the core and cladding layers results in a vertical leakage loss for the WGMs, if the transformed modes can propagate in the cladding layer. The core-layer-thickness-dependent vertical leakage loss caused by the internal interference is demonstrated and numerical simulated for the WGMs by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique. An oscillation of mode Q factor is found with the increase of the thickness of core layer due to the internal interference between the transmitted and reflected leakage modes, and the vertical leakage loss can be canceled at some thicknesses of the core layer because of the destructive interference. Furthermore, the vertical leakage loss can also be controlled by the external interference in the microcylinder resonator with two vertical coupled core layers. The enhancements of Q factors for both symmetric and antisymmetric modes are observed by varying the gap between the two core layers.


A mid- to late-Holocene synthesis of fire activity from the Mediterranean basin explores the linkages among fire, climate variability and seasonality through several climatic and ecological transitions. Regional fire histories were created from 36 radiocarbon-dated sedimentary charcoal records, available from the Global Charcoal Database. During the mid-Holocene 'Thermal Maximum' around 7500—4500 cal. BP, charcoal records from the northern Mediterranean suggest an increase in fire while records from the southern Mediterranean indicate a decrease associated with wetter-than-present summers. A North—South partition between 40° and 43°N latitude is apparent in the central and western Mediterranean. Relatively abrupt changes in fire activity are observed c. 5500—5000 cal. BP. Records of Holocene fire activity appear sensitive to both orbitally forced climate changes and shorter-lived excursions which may be related to North Atlantic cold events, possibly modulated by an NAO-like climate mechanism. In cases where human—fire interactions have been documented, the regional coherency between fire occurrence and climate forcing suggests a dominant fire—climate relationship during the early—mid Holocene. The human influence on regional fire activity became increasingly important after c. 4000—3000 cal. BP. Results also suggest that: (1) teleconnections between the Mediterranean area and other climatic regions, in particular the North Atlantic and the low latitudes monsoon areas, influenced past fire activity; (2) gradual forcing, such as changes in orbital parameters, may have triggered abrupt shifts in fire activity; (3) regional fire reconstructions contradict former notions of a gradual (mid- to late-Holocene) aridification of the entire region due to climate and/or human activities and the importance of shorter-term events; (4) Mediterranean fire activity appears hightly sensitive to climate dynamics and thus could be considerably impacted by future climate changes.


The evaluation of nutrient intake is essential for the definition of health policies and as guidance for the establishment of factors, which could be involved in the occurrence of disease. The study aims to describe energy, nutrients and ethanol intake and the prevalence of inadequate macronutrient intake of Portuguese adults, by gender, age and education. We collected information on 2389 adults (61.6% of women), living in Porto, Portugal, selected by random digit dialling. Dietary intake was estimated by a validated semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire, covering the previous year. Nutrient intake data was obtained using the software Food Processor Plus, adapted to Portuguese foods. The prevalence of nutrient inadequate intake was established by comparison with the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges of Dietary Reference Intakes: 10-35% (proteins), 45-65% (carbohydrates) and 20-35% (total fat). The average contribution of protein, carbohydrates, total fat and ethanol to the total daily energetic intake was 18.4%, 48.9%, 29.3% and 5.0%, respectively. The consumption of energy and macronutrients was inversely related with age and directly with education. The higher ethanol consumption was found among men with 50-64 years and less educated (= 4 years). More than 80% of the adult population of Porto reported an intake of protein, carbohydrates and total fat, according to the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Ranges of Dietary Reference Intakes. Total fat was the macronutrient with the highest prevalence of inadequate intake (17.1% in women and 21.0% in men).


Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are the current state-of-the-art for digital analysis of histopathological images. The large size of whole-slide microscopy images (WSIs) requires advanced memory handling to read, display and process these images. There are several open-source platforms for working with WSIs, but few support deployment of CNN models. These applications use third-party solutions for inference, making them less user-friendly and unsuitable for high-performance image analysis. To make deployment of CNNs user-friendly and feasible on low-end machines, we have developed a new platform, FastPathology, using the FAST framework and C++. It minimizes memory usage for reading and processing WSIs, deployment of CNN models, and real-time interactive visualization of results. Runtime experiments were conducted on four different use cases, using different architectures, inference engines, hardware configurations and operating systems. Memory usage for reading, visualizing, zooming and panning a WSI were measured, using FastPathology and three existing platforms. FastPathology performed similarly in terms of memory to the other C++-based application, while using considerably less than the two Java-based platforms. The choice of neural network model, inference engine, hardware and processors influenced runtime considerably. Thus, FastPathology includes all steps needed for efficient visualization and processing of WSIs in a single application, including inference of CNNs with real-time display of the results. Source code, binary releases, video demonstrations and test data can be found online on GitHub at https://github.com/SINTEFMedtek/FAST-Pathology/.


Theatre has gained wider use in organizational change processes, either as Forum Theatre inspired by Boal (1998, [1979] 2000) or as improvisation inspired by Johnstone (1981,1999); and in recent years, a number of authors have reflected upon this when seeking to understand its impact. Some suggest that theatre is a kind of laboratory where change takes place beside and after the work with theatre. Others, such as postmodernists, see theatre as a forum for revealing the oppression that can exist within organizations. This thesis takes another direction. Forum Theatre has been an inspiration; but, based on my experience of working with theatre improvisation as processes for organizational change, I have come to negate Boal's understanding of Forum Theatre as Theatre of the Oppressed. Instead I see conflicts between people in the organization as key. I argue for a link between theatre improvisation and understanding human interaction as complex responsive processes, and I come to see organizations and organizational change as temporal and constantly recreated through local interactions among people, where power relations, seen as dependency, are essential. The processes of relating involve responding to each other in recognisable and yet surprising ways, that is, with spontaneity. Spontaneity can be recognized as liveliness: one finds oneself in spontaneous activity when one becomes unsure of the response the other will take to one's gesture. Daring to be spontaneous is essentially risky because it challenges power relations, which themselves are maintained only by continuously responding to each other in ways that are mutually expected. Working with theatre improvisation is seen as paradoxically fictitious and real at the same time, because the actor's supposedly fictitious work is constantly met by a real response from the audience real in the sense that people react from their own experience. By experiencing this together, power relations are immediately changing not as a result of the work, but as a part of it. Theatre improvisation serves as an invitation to spontaneity, an invitation to be aware of changes in each other's reaction. The apparently fictitious character of the work makes it appear safe to do so.


Haplotype analysis has been used for narrowing down the location of disease-susceptibility genes and for investigating many population processes. Computational algorithms have been developed to estimate haplotype frequencies and to predict haplotype phases from genotype data for unrelated individuals. However, the accuracy of such computational methods needs to be evaluated before their applications can be advocated. We have experimentally determined the haplotypes at two loci, the N-acetyltransferase 2 gene (NAT2, 850 bp, n=81) and a 140-kb region on chromosome X (n=77), each consisting of five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We empirically evaluated and compared the accuracy of the subtraction method, the expectation-maximisation (EM) method, and the PHASE method in haplotype frequency estimation and in haplotype phase prediction. Where there was near complete linkage disequilibrium (LD) between SNPs (the NAT2 gene), all three methods provided effective and accurate estimates for haplotype frequencies and individual haplotype phases. For a genomic region in which marked LD was not maintained (the chromosome X locus), the computational methods were adequate in estimating overall haplotype frequencies. However, none of the methods was accurate in predicting individual haplotype phases. The EM and the PHASE methods provided better estimates for overall haplotype frequencies than the subtraction method for both genomic regions.


Progress is being made at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria) to develop molecular tools for marker-assisted selection that would complement and expedite conventional breeding approaches for genetic improvement of yams (Dioscorea spp.). F1 full-sib mapping populations were developed from crossing male and female parents of Dioscorea rotundata Poir. and Dioscorea alata L. that differ in specific traits of interest towards identification of molecular markers linked to those traits. Success in hybridization was validated based on DNA analysis with SSR markers on agarose gel. Traits for which the populations were developed included multiple tuber production, cooking quality and virus disease resistance in D. rotundata and anthracnose disease resistance, cooking quality and tuber oxidation in D. alata. Death of plants in the field and rotting of tubers in storage, possibly due to pests, diseases and other environmental factors were encountered, that led to the reduction in sizes of the populations. Low seed multiplication ratio necessitated two to three cycles of tuber multiplication of mapping population genotypes to achieve adequate numbers of seed tubers for field experimentation. These mapping populations are valuable tools for genetic analysis and molecular marker development in yam improvement programmes.


Problem definition

According to the European Union, the future (2050) will be completely energy neutral and circular. Renovation concepts are needed for making existing homes more sustainable, taking into account the housing qualities of the existing stock, changed requirements and housing requirements, accessibility of the concepts on a large scale and simultaneous technical, social, energetic and circular renovation. For terraced houses, many energy concepts and strategies are available for the energy transition in the direction of energy neutral, while for high-rise houses, little knowledge is available. In the area of renovation to circular, as far as feasible, little knowledge is available. The research, therefore, focuses on high-rise system houses from the Reconstruction period 1950-1975, with a focus on the energetic spatial part of the renovation concept.

Aim

The research aims to develop possible strategies for energetically upgrading existing Dutch high-rise system houses from the Reconstruction period to energy-neutral for large-scale application with a view to circularity. This objective has practical relevance: society benefits from large-scale upgrades to achieve European climate objectives. Corporations, which primarily own the Reconstruction high-rise flats for social rental, owners' associations and residents, benefit from new insights that can contribute to the circular energy upgrade of this stock. The theoretical relevance is to increase scientific knowledge in the field of energetic and circular upgrading.

Research methods

The existing high-rise housing stock from the Reconstruction Period (Flat 1.0) is mapped based on literature research and case studies to provide an answer to possible strategies for energy upgrading. The theoretical framework studies general system theory and various layers approaches to support the research. The essential concepts are defined using literature research. Flat 2.0 categories energetic adjustments focused on 'comfort upgrading'. The focus of a new generation of adaptations of Reconstruction of high-rise flats (Flat 3.0) is on spatial energy upgrading to energy-neutral apartments and on which design principles and technical and energetic principles they are based.

Conclusions

The system theory provides tools for determining the choice of modular or integral upgrading. The scale-up of upgrades requires a modular approach because of a few relationships beyond a specific system boundary of upgrade elements. Accessibility and a layered approach are essential conditions.

The simultaneity of the necessary technical, social, energetic and circular renovation, with the approximately 650,000 porch houses and 250,000 gallery houses that have to be renovated in a short time, provides an entirely different approach to the Flat 3.0 upgrade concept. This forces a radical approach in which an incremental approach is no longer sufficient. Scaling requires industrially oriented, innovative ideas.

Flat 3.0 describes five possible strategies in the form of positions relative to the thermal shell, and combinations between them, to limit heat loss.

Eliminating structural and building physical defects of the existing stock (Flat 1.0) is an opportunity for functional upgrading in the field of accessibility and social safety. Comfort upgrading (Flat 2.0) is the starting point. The technical upgrading of the shell of the building can take place in several ways: adapt the existing shell or place a new shell for the current shell. Both whether or not in combination with an extension or with gallery/balcony replacement due to thermal bridges or poor technical condition. Sixteen strategies are described for this. A simple building model shows the relationship between energy ambition and the amount of self-generated energy on or on the building. The building model shows that with a closedness of at least 40 % of the sun-oriented facade, 40 % of the access facade and 100 % of both end facades and roof, the generation of standardized building-related and user-related energy can be met on an annual basis. The possible closedness of the facade consists of 5 principal variants. The design of the upgrade depends on the construction method within which a construction system has been applied. A unique way is an entirely new circular 'overcladding' around the existing building envelope. The new industrial overcladding repairs defects in the old building envelope. Functionally, this means better wheelchair accessibility, better separation between public and private and more spacious balconies for increased living comfort. The roof zone and the front wall zone can serve as a place for additional housing for small families in the form of stacked and connected tiny active flat house modules. These modules designed for circularity simultaneously provide thermal upgrading of the relevant existing facade surfaces. To become energy-neutral or even energy-supplying, and thus also to meet the userrelated energy demand, the façade and roof area sustainable can generate energy. Enlargement of these energy-generating surfaces is an essential condition for a lower closedness of the residential facade.

Recommendations

The indicated directions for the upgrade of high-rise flats can be converted into specific elaborations for specific high-rise flats in particular contexts with particular clients. The detailing and materialization in support of the modular circular upgrade principle are central to this. Besides, financial feasibility based on circular business models and multiple value creation needs additional research.


Pedagogy and the way children learn are changing rapidly with the introduction of widely accessible computer technologies, from mobile apps to interactive educational games. Digital games have the capacity to embed many learning supports using the widely accredited VARK (visual, auditory, reading, and kinaesthetic) learning style. In this paper, we present a mathematics educational game MathRun for children age between 7--11 years old to practice mental arithmetic. We build the game as an interactive learning environment that fuses game mechanics with learning and uses the popular game genre "infinite runner" as the game mode. The game consists of an automatically generated infinite game map and mathematical questions also procedurally generated with varied levels of difficulty and complexity. A novel real-time performance evaluation method is developed for quantitative modeling the performance of the player. The model evaluates the performance in each primitive map block of the game map and level progression is automatically carried out based on the result of the evaluation. Therefore, the proposed game-based learning environment is adaptive to players with dynamic level progressions based on the combination of not only mathematics ability, but also gameplay skills of the player to facilitate learning processes through gameplay and appropriate adaptive progression of maths ability.


Commercial poultry production is associated with various stresses responsible for decreasing productive and reproductive performance of growing chicks, breeders and commercial layers. A growing body of evidence shows that most of stresses in poultry production at the cellular level are associated with oxidative stress. Recently, a concept of the cellular antioxidant defence has been revised with special attention paid to cellular redox status maintenance and cell signalling. In fact, antioxidant systems of the living cell are based on three major levels of defence and superoxide dismutase (SOD) is shown to belong to the first level of the antioxidant defence network. Cellular antioxidant defences are shown to include several options and vitagene activation in stress conditions is considered as a fundamental adaptive mechanism. The vitagene family includes various genes regulating synthesis of protective molecules including thioredoxins, sirtuins, heat shock proteins and SOD. However, by the time of writing no comprehensive review on the roles and effects of SOD in poultry biology has appeared. Therefore, the aim of this review is a critical analysis of the role of SOD in poultry biology with specific emphasis to its functions as an essential part of the vitagene network. From the analysis of the recent data related to SOD in poultry physiology and adaptation to stresses it is possible to conclude that: a) SOD as important vitagene is the main driving force in cell/body adaptation to various stress conditions. Indeed, in stress conditions additional synthesis of SOD is an adaptive mechanism to decrease ROS formation; b) If the stress is too high SOD activity is decreased and apoptosis is activated; c) there are tissue-specific differences in SOD expression which also depends on the strength of such stress-factors as heat, heavy metals, mycotoxins and other stressors; d) SOD is shown to provide an effective protection against lipid peroxidation in chicken embryonic tissues and semen; e) SOD is shown to be protective in heat and cold stress, toxicity stress as well as in other oxidative-stress related conditions in poultry production; f) there are complex interactions inside the antioxidant network of the cell/body to ensure an effective maintenance of homeostasis in stress conditions. Indeed, in many cases, nutritional antioxidants (vitamin E, selenium, carotenoids, phytochemicals, etc.) in the feed can increase SOD expression; g) nutritional means of SOD upregulation in stress conditions of poultry production and physiological and commercial consequences await further investigation; h) vitagene upregulation in stress conditions is emerging as an effective means for stress management.


The climate change is increasing the need of planning tools able to produce great territorial transformations. The urban configurations in Southern Europe, especially the late modern and contemporary neighbourhoods, are frequently situated in very dangerous hydrogeological areas. The local effects of the climate change process act as drivers on these areas, increasing the number of catastrophic impacts. On the one hand there is a need for a capacity to reduce the effects of the disaster in the social, physical and economic dimensions of local communities; on the other hand, there is a need to build tools for territorial adaptation, in order to avoid future impacts. It is more necessary than ever to develop a new urban planning tool to bridge the current risk with future climate-proof transformations.


Objectives: This study is aimed at examining the contribution of selected pregnancy and postnatal health care services to Infant Mortality (IM) in Southern Ethiopia. Method: Data were collected from 10 rural villages of the Sidama Zone, Southern Ethiopia, using a structured interview schedule. The 1,094 eligible women respondents were selected using a combination of simple random and multi-stage sampling techniques. The main outcome variable of the study (IM) was measured by reported infant deaths during the twelve months preceding the survey, and was estimated at 9.6% or 96 infant deaths per 1,000 births. Pregnancy and health care variables were used as the main explanatory variables along with other household and individual characteristics. Results: The predicted probabilities, using three models of logistic regression analysis, have shown that four pregnancy and postnatal health care variables (antenatal care, immunisation, exclusive breast feeding and wantedness of the pregnancy) and women's age are found to be significant predictors of IM in the study areas. Conclusions: Finally, based on the key findings, some recommendations are given: promoting of institutional delivery seeking behaviour through behavioural change communications, training more Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs), and maximising the use of the Health Extension Workers (HEWs) stationed at village level to make a house-to-house visit so as to encourage pregnant women to seek pregnancy and delivery care services.


Category coherence refers to the extent to which a category is perceived to be a meaningful whole (Patalano & Ross, 2002; Ross & Patalano, 2002). We tested the hypothesis that category coherence influences the extent to which a category is used in the generation of category-based causal explanations of social behavior and preferences. In Experiments 1a and b, participants were told that members of a category shared a particular preference (e.g., sky divers prefer fiction to non-fiction), and were asked to generate the most plausible explanation for the preference. Explanations generated for high coherence categories were more plausible than those generated for low coherence categories. In Experiment 2, high and low coherence categories were contrasted in the context of a single problem. Participants were told that members of two categories (e.g., people who are both sky divers and pianists) shared a particular preference and were again asked for the most plausible explanation of the preference. References to the high coherence category occurred more often than those to the low coherence category. It is concluded that coherence influences both category selection and quality of category-based causal explanation. Implications of this work and future research directions are discussed.


The Avenue in C. Eric Lincoln's fictional town is the principal residential street of the black community in Clayton City, a prototypical southern town languishing between the two world wars. Unpaved and marked by ditches full of frogs, snakes, and empty whiskey bottles on one side of town, it is the same street, though with a different name, that originates downtown. Only when it reaches the black section of Clayton City do the paving stop and the trash-filled ditches begin. On one side, it provides a significant address for the white people who live there. On the other, despite its rundown air, it is still the best address available to the town's black population. Some of them, in fact, are willing to go to any extreme, including murder, to get there.

In this novel, originally published in 1988, Lincoln creates with deft skill the drama that rises from the lives of the people of Clayton City. In turn amusing, disgusting, enraging, wistful, and, as one hears the secrets hidden deep in their hearts, shocking, they exist in a place whose vibrant personality is itself a unique configuration of geography, relationships, patterns of behavior, and events. It is also a place whose unspoken and hidden power lies in its crushing compulsion to maintain itself as it already is—a power that forces everyone to succumb to an inflexible social order.


Culturally sustainable environmental impact assessment (EIA) requires consideration of the impact of development on local people's cultural activities, including holding ceremonies, collecting resources, and learning skills, which are fundamental essences of Indigenous rights. While culturally sustainable EIA has become a common practice when a development project involves an Indigenous community, it is still argued that Indigenous cultural heritage is not adequately protected. This is due to the fact that Indigenous people do not always keep power in the post-approval stage of EIA, or the lack of practical measures to minimise the impact of development projects on Indigenous cultural heritage and to enhance the possibility of reaching a consensus among stakeholders. The Cultural Impact Assessment of the Saru River Region in Japan was the first investigation of a site to preserve an ethnic minority culture, with regards to a dam construction. In the second phase of the assessment project, research staff members, some of whom are of Ainu ethnicity, suggested alternative ceremony sites and conducted experimental transplants to protect the local cultural activities. The long-term investigation by research staff, in fact, influenced the direction of the dam construction. The developer agreed not to proceed with the construction until measures were taken to minimise the impact on cultural activities that would satisfy residents in the construction area. While still early to conclude that Indigenous participation in this assessment project has been successful, Indigenous participation has clearly enhanced the possibility of reaching a consensus. The project should be considered with other published EIA reports, in demonstrating a return from investing in EIA with Indigenous participation, with a practical means for realising Indigenous rights.


The in silico reconstruction of metabolic networks has become an effective and useful systems biology approach to predict and explain many different cellular phenotypes. When simulation outputs do not match experimental data, the source of the inconsistency can often be traced to incomplete biological information that is consequently not captured in the model. To address this problem, general approaches continue to be needed that can suggest experimentally testable hypotheses to reconcile inconsistencies between simulation and experimental data. Here, we present such an approach that focuses specifically on correcting cases in which experimental data show a particular gene to be essential but model simulations do not. We use metabolic models to predict efficient compensatory pathways, after which cloning and overexpression of these pathways are performed to investigate whether they restore growth and to help determine why these compensatory pathways are not active in mutant cells. We demonstrate this technique for a ppc knockout of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium; the inability of cells to route flux through the glyoxylate shunt when ppc is removed was correctly identified by our approach as the cause of the discrepancy. These results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach to drive biological discovery while simultaneously refining metabolic network reconstructions.


Abstract. The influence of wind and humidity on aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the Arabian sea is being investigated using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Level 3 (Collection-5) and NCEP (National Centres for Environmental Prediction) reanalysis data for the second phase of the Arabian Sea Monsoon Experiment (ARMEX-II) over the South East Arabian Sea (SEAS) in the pre-monsoon period (14 March–10 April 2003). In order to qualify MODIS data for this study, MODIS aerosol parameters were first compared with ship borne Microtops measurements. This showed correlations 0.96–0.97 in the case of spectral AODs and a correlation 0.72 for the angstrom exponents. The daily AOD data from MODIS and winds from NCEP reveal that the ship observed episodic enhancement and decay of AOD at the TSL (Time Series Location) during 23 March–6 April 2003 was caused by the southward drift of an aerosol pocket driven by an intensification and reduction of surface pressure in the North Western Arabian Sea with a low altitude convergence prevailing over SEAS. The AOD increase coincided with a decrease in the Angstrom exponent and the fine mode fraction suggesting the pocket being dominated by coarse mode particles. A partial correlation analysis reveals that the lower altitude wind convergence is the most influential atmospheric variable in modulating AOD over the ARMEX-II domain during the TSL period. However, surface winds at a distant zone in the north/north west upwind direction also had a moderate influence, though with a lag of two days. But this effect was minor since the winds were not strong enough to produce marine aerosols matching with the high AODs over the ARMEX-II domain. These findings and the similarity between MODIS column mass concentration and the ship borne QCM (Quartz Crystal Microbalance) measured coarse mode mass concentration, suggest that the aerosol pocket was mostly composed of coarse mode mineral dust in the lower atmospheric altitudes transported from the Arabian deserts.


Objective The main objective of this thesis was to explore the effects of diet on gastrointestinal symptoms in prostate cancer patients treated with local curative radiotherapy, by evaluating dietary intake prior to treatment (Study I), the psychometric properties of a new questionnaire on patient-reported gastrointestinal side effects (Study II), and the effect of a dietary intervention on acute and long-term gastrointestinal symptoms up to 2 years after radiotherapy completion (Study III-IV).Methods A total of 130 men with localized prostate cancer referred to dose-escalated radiotherapy (ED2 87-102 Gy, α/β=3 Gy) were recruited to a dietary intervention trial. Patients were randomized to receive either standard care plus the dietary intervention of a fibre- and lactose-restricted diet (intervention group, IG; n=64) or standard care alone (standard care group, SCG; n=66). Data on gastrointestinal symptoms and dietary intake were collected pre-treatment and at seven time points during a follow-up period of 26 months.Results Prior to treatment, grain products and milk products were major sources of energy. Unbalanced fatty acid intake and low intake of selenium were observed (Study I). Validation of the Gastrointestinal Side Effects Questionnaire (GISEQ) revealed satisfactory internal consistency, moderate concurrent validity and adequate responsiveness (Study II). There were no significant effects of the intervention on acute or long-term gastrointestinal symptoms, but a tendency towards lower prevalence and severity of bloating and diarrhoea in the IG compared to the SCG during radiotherapy. Gastrointestinal symptoms were predominantly mild, and the frequency of clinically relevant symptoms was merely a few percent. Dietary adherence in the IG was initially good, but tended to decline beyond 12 months post-radiotherapy (Study III-IV).Conclusions A fibre- and lactose-restricted diet was not superior to the habitual diet in reducing gastrointestinal symptoms in patients undergoing high-dose, small-volume radiotherapy for localized prostate cancer. The GISEQ enables assessment of patient-perceived change in symptoms, but further work is needed to strengthen its psychometric qualities. It is suggested that continued research in this area target patient categories referred to irradiation of larger pelvic volumes with a higher risk of gastrointestinal symptoms, and that dietary interventions incorporate established strategies to enhance adherence and effectiveness.


In this paper, we address the design of an attitude controller that achieves stable, and robust aggressive maneuverability for an unmanned helicopter. The controller proposed is in the form of a fuzzy gain-scheduler, and is used for stable and robust altitude, roll, pitch, and yaw control. The controller is obtained from a realistic nonlinear multiple-input-multiple-output model of a real unmanned helicopter platform, the APID-MK3. The results of this work are illustrated by extensive simulation, showing that the objective of aggressive, and robust maneuverability has been achieved.


Chronicling horrific events that brought the 20th century to witness the largest number of systematic slaughters of human beings in any century across history, this work goes beyond historic details and examines contemporary psychological means that leaders use to convince individuals to commit horrific acts in the name of a politial or military cause. Massacres in Nanking, Rwanda, El Salvador, Vietnam, and other countries are reviewed in chilling detail. But the core issue is what psychological forces are behind large- scale killing; what psychology can be used to indoctrinate normal people with a Groupthink that moves individuals to mass murder brutally and without regret, even when the victims are innocent children. Dutton shows us how individuals are convinced to commit such sadistic acts, often preceded by torture, after being indoctrinated with beliefs that the target victims are unjust, inhuman or viral, like a virus that must be destroyed or it will destroy society.


Here we report bipedal movement with a hydrostatic skeleton. Two species of octopus walk on two alternating arms using a rolling gait and appear to use the remaining six arms for camouflage. Octopus marginatus resembles a coconut, and Octopus (Abdopus) aculeatus, a clump of floating algae. Using underwater video, we analyzed the kinematics of their strides. Each arm was on the sand for more than half of the stride, qualifying this behavior as a form of walking.


A mathematical model to simulate oxygen delivery through a capillary to tissues under the influence of an external force field is presented. The multi-term general fractional diffusion equation containing force terms and a time dependent absorbent term is taken into account. Fractional calculus is applied to describe the phenomenon of sub-diffusion of oxygen in both transverse and longitudinal directions. A new computational algorithm, i.e., the new iterative method (NIM) is employed to solve the spatio-temporal fractional partial differential equation subject to appropriate physical boundary conditions. Validation of NIM solutions is achieved with a modified adomian decomposition method (MADM). A parametric study is conducted for three loading scenarios on the capillary-radial force alone, axial force alone and the combined case of both forces. The results demonstrate that the force terms markedly influence the oxygen diffusion process. For example, the radial force exerts a more profound effect than axial force on sub-diffusion of oxygen indicating that careful manipulation of these forces on capillary-tissues may assist in the effective reduction of hypoxia or other oxygen depletion phenomena.


John Waters Kirwan (1866-1949) played a pivotal role in the Australian Federal movement. At a time when the Premier of Western Australia Sir John Forrest had begun to doubt the wisdom of his resource rich but under-developed colony joining the emerging Commonwealth, Kirwan conspired with Perth Federalists, Walter James and George Leake, to force Forrest's hand. Editor and partowner of the influential Kalgoorlie Miner, the 'pocket-handkerchief' newspaper he had transformed into one of the most powerful journals in the colony, he waged a virulent press campaign against the besieged Premier, mocking and belittling him at every turn and encouraging his east coast colleagues to follow suit. A founding member of the Eastern Goldfields Reform League, which convened to bring Western Australia into the national union, he spearheaded the 'Separation for Federation' agitation, arguing in the Miner that, if the colony did not federate, the Goldfields should go it alone. Of itself, this was nothing more than an audacious bluff designed to humble Forrest and his supporters, but exploited by key players such as James, Leake, Alfred Deakin, Charles Cameron Kingston, Patrick McMahon Glynn and Josiah Symon, even Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, it proved an effective weapon. Chamberlain, in his controversial 27 April 1900 cable to Acting Governor Onslow, alluded to the 'agitation of the Federalist party…in goldfields' before urging Forrest to 'bring the Colony into Federation at once'. Friends since his days as editor of the Port Augusta Dispatch (1893-95), Kirwan enlisted South Australian lawyers and parliamentarians Kingston, Glynn and Symon to redraft his petition to the Queen and advise the Separatists. This thesis, the first full-length biography of John Waters Kirwan, is also the first to examine in detail his service to what Kingston called 'the sacred cause' of national unity. From his arrival in Queensland in 1889 to his Presidency of the Western Australian Legislative Council nearly 40 years later, it gives new weight to his contribution while pondering why, after such a spectacular debut, he failed to make the most of his short-lived Federal parliamentary career.


Metal nanoparticles have received much interest for their application in catalysis due to high surface-to-volume ratios resulting in more available active sites. Ideally these catalysts are heterogeneous and allow for facile separation from the catalytic reaction mixture making them ideal for industrial application. Dispersed metal nanoparticles are explored due to their high reactivity in solution and are stabilized by surfactants and polymers. However, it is difficult to determine whether or not a catalyst is truly heterogeneous as a certain degree of leaching from the metal nanoparticle is inevitable. Determining the mechanisms involved in nanocatalysis is also a challenge. In this study, a series of dispersed palladium nanocatalysts in the Suzuki reaction with phenylboronic acid and bromobenzene were characterized before and after catalysis to determine what changes occur. Samples where characterized before and after the catalytic reaction by XPS, SEM, and EDS to monitor changes in particle size and composition. Reaction mixtures after catalysis were analyzed by ICP-MS for leached palladium species to determine if concentrations were high enough for homogeneous catalysis to take place. The dispersed palladium nanoparticles studied experienced growth during the catalytic process and a significant amount of leaching. XPS analysis indicates the presence of aromatic species on the particle surface after the catalytic reaction. The aromatic species is likely biphenyl, the product of the catalytic reaction, as the presence of boron and bromine was not found in XPS and EDS analysis.


Recent findings of Taeniopteris-like foliage from the Carnian of Hopen, Svalbard, necessitated the re-evaluation of entire-margined Taeniopteris foliage from the Carnian flora of Neuewelt, Basel, Switzerland, revealing the illegitimate status of Taeniopteris angustifolia. The specimen from the Ladinian or Carnian (Lower Keuper) of Lower Franconia, Germany, on which the identification was based, was recently identified as the holotype of the marattialean fern Danaeopsis angustifolia, of which Taeniopteris angustifolia is the basionym. This implies that the Neuewelt specimens, which are different from the specimens from Franconia, lack any type and basionym, and a new species name is required. The specimens from Hopen as well as specimens elsewhere from Svalbard are identified as conspecific with the specimens from Neuewelt, and we here assign all specimens to Taeniopteris novomundensis sp. nov., which is thus known from the Carnian of Switzerland and Svalbard. Information on epidermal anatomy is not available, and the affinity of the species can, therefore, not be elucidated further, but is here interpreted as a cycadophyte. Several specimens from the Carnian of Franconia assigned to Taeniopteris angustifolia belong to a species different from Taeniopteris novomundensis, i.e. Taeniopteris kelberi. Earlier inclusion of some of the specimens now assigned to Taeniopteris novomundensis in Taeniopteris kelberi is unsupported. The typification and use of Taeniopteris are discussed in this framework.


Abstract This essay charts the entanglements and "blowback" effects of U.S. policy toward Latin American drug exports over the last century as the backdrop to today's cascading drug violence in northern Mexico. The history of cocaine reveals a series of major geopolitical shifts (closely related to U.S. interdictionist drug war policies) that bring drug commodity chains, illicit trafficking centers, and conflicts, over the long run, closer to the United States. It analyzes shifts from initial legal cocaine and small-time postwar smuggling of the central Andes to the concentrating 1970s–1990s "cartel" epicenter in northern Andean Colombia, to the 1990s political shift north to Mexican transhipment and organizational leadership. Violence around cocaine has intensified at every step, and the present conflict portends another shift in the chain.


Abstract. In this paper, we address the characterization of clouds and its inclusion in microwave retrievals in order to study its effect on tropospheric temperature profiles measured by TEMPERA radiometer. TEMPERA is the first ground-based microwave radiometer that makes it possible to obtain temperature profiles in the troposphere and stratosphere at the same time. In order to characterize the clouds a multi-instrumental approach has been adopted. Cloud base altitudes were detected using ceilometer measurements while the integrated liquid water was measured by TROWARA radiometer. Both instruments are co-located with TEMPERA in Bern (Switzerland). Using this information and a constant Liquid Water Content value inside the cloud a liquid profile is provided to characterize the clouds in the inversion algorithm. Microwave temperature profiles have been obtained incorporating this water liquid profile in the inversion algorithm and also without considering the clouds, in order to assess its effect on the retrievals. The results have been compared with the temperature profiles from radiosondes which are launched twice a day at the aerological station of MeteoSwiss in Payerne (40 km W of Bern). Almost 1 year of data have been analysed and 60 non-precipitating cloud cases were studied. The statistical analysis carried out over all the cases evidenced that temperature retrievals improved in most of the cases when clouds were incorporated in the inversion algorithm.


During the Second World War, American comic books were put to use for the war effort as carriers of propaganda. This thesis explores the propaganda in comics that were published with the cooperation of government and military institutions such as the Office of War Information and the United States Marine Corps. The propaganda contained within titles published in tandem with government institutions was primarily communicated through the interplay of the characters of the hero and the enemy or villain. Grouping these characters into recurrent types according to their characterisation allows for close reading of their particular propaganda function.
This thesis establishes a connection between the Office of War Information, The Dell Publishing Company, Parents' Magazine Press and Street and Smith Publications, carrying forward the work of Paul Hirsch (2014). Each of these publishers produced comics that included war related propaganda, as did the Office of War Information itself. Added to this sample are the war comics produced by Vincent Sullivan, the editor of Magazine Enterprises and its subsidiaries, that were published with the cooperation of the US Marine Corps and other military institutions. In addition, a sample of the comics of William Eisner are included in order to demonstrate that the same groupings of hero and enemy occur in fictional comic narratives as well as those that purport to be non-fictional. Similar to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's famous creation of Captain America, Eisner produced Uncle Sam in response to the rising patriotic fervour in 1941 as the country increasingly debated and prepared for war. Eisner was later enlisted to produce comics for the Pentagon on war related issues. There is also a discussion of Milton Caniff's contribution to the US military publication Pocket Guide To China and the Office of War Information publication The Life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States (1943).
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As a counterpoint to the propaganda function of each type of hero and enemy contained within the commercially published sample, this thesis analyses a selection of unpublished, soldier-illustrated comics from the Second World War thanks to privileged access to the Veterans History Project (2013) at the Library of Congress. These unpublished artefacts demonstrate that the comics medium allowed space for alternative voices to express their reaction to the conflict, resisting the wider propaganda narrative exhibited by the commercial sample and reacting to the loss of individuality and authoritarian structure of the military, while stylistically demonstrating the soldiers' affinity for comics such as George Baker's Sad Sack and anti-heroes such as Bill Mauldin's 'Willie and Joe'. In this way these soldier-illustrated comics presented a democratic counter-point to the lack of democracy within the armed forces (Alpers, 2003, 158) and exhibit a form of patriotism focused on the 'grassroots' elements of American everyday life and culture as opposed to the jingoistic and ideological patriotism of the commercial comics.
Methodologically, application of close reading to the content of comics' narratives, on the level of a particular panel, story, advertisement, or other content, reveals comics to be significant historical sources that offer insight into the propaganda embedded in the popular culture of the period. Critical discourse analysis is applied to the rhetorical elements of the comics in order to explore how many of them served to marganilise particular groups, identifying them as the 'enemy' in contrast with the 'hero' (Brundage, 2008). Similarly, a semiotic approach informed by the work of Roland Barthes (1973; 1987) is undertaken in order to understand the significance of both visual and rhetorical elements of the texts. Alongside this approach is the methodological assumption of the 'implied reader' advocated by Wolfgang Iser's (1978) that allows the analysis the virtual scope to discuss an idealised reader's potential response to each text. This notion of the 'implied reader' is counterbalanced by a consideration of Stuart Hall's (1980, 1997) three potential decoding positions in tandem with a consideration of the wider historical context.
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Once the groups of hero and enemy are identified, subsets of both groups are developed according to their characterisation and the attributes they display. This is done in order to facilitate analysis of the ideology communicated by each of these character types. Identifying the function of each type of hero and enemy makes a new contribution to the wider field of propaganda studies. This contribution encourages a greater understanding of the role played by comics during the Second World War in encouraging ideological propaganda as well as allowing for resistance to it.


Intro:
USER Alta is an electronic patient record software, used by care workers in the mental healthcare sector. It manages patient's data, like intakes, appointments, diagnosis, communication, personal information, medication, surveys, treatments and more. USER is currently only available on desktop computers, laptops or large tablets, therefor Impulse Info Systems decided to create an assignment to design a smartphone app of the existing USER software. This app should include functionality from USER which the target group needs to have available on their smartphones. The following report consists of three parts. First, research was done to determine software functionality that needed to be available on smartphones. Subsequently, a research about how this functionality can be brought to smartphones. And finally, a design phase where an interactive prototype of the app is designed with the previous research in mind.
Functionality Research:
To research which modules from the existing software systems have to be available on smartphones, a research has to be done. Firstly the target group was determined. Then USER was analysed by following a training and testing every module in the system. Subsequently, a preliminary list of suitable modules was made, these prequalification modules were surveyed by over 100 respondents from two companies. The survey was used to get a better impression of the target group and to determine which modules should be available in the smartphone app. These results were verified using usage data of every module in USER. A feature description for the smartphone app was made, based on the modules the results from the survey.
Smartphone Design Research:
Parallel to the functionality research, a research was done on how to properly design USER for smartphones. Including how data can be made available on smartphones: through a native, web or hybrid app. A decision was made to make a hybrid app and the possibilities for developing a hybrid app were researched. Furthermore, research was done about ergonomics on smartphones. Resulting in, for example, a proper placement of buttons on different screen sizes. Also, multiple aspects that are important for designing a smartphone app are documented. The interfaces and interaction with apps on different operating systems are compared. At last the visual identity, structure and philosophy behind USER are analysed. Much of this information is combined in the list of requirements. With the information about the functionality in the app and how the app should be made, the interactive prototype could be designed.
Interactive Prototype Design:
The results of the previous research were used to design an interactive prototype. First the list of requirements, feature description and workflow were created to be able to design the USER smartphone app efficiently. The workflow enabled to design many smartphone screens in a short period of time. The prototype was tested by colleagues who gave feedback during the design process. With a semifinal version of the prototype, a user test was done with people that never used USER before. The points for improvement were incorporated in the final interactive prototype. The feature description and interactive prototype were created such that they could be used for the development of a functional app.


This review aimed to explore the evidence base of psychodynamic therapy for personality disorder (PD). A systematic approach was applied to the literature search with the use of a clear inclusion/exclusion criteria and a quality assessment checklist. Nineteen studies investigating the use of psychodynamic therapy for PD were reviewed. Four randomised controlled trials (RCT) demonstrated superior results for psychodynamic therapy compared with another type of therapy, two RCTs found that cognitive-based therapies were superior and one RCT found no difference between therapies for PD. Another seven RCTs found positive results for psychodynamic therapies compared with a treatment as usual condition (n = 3) or another dynamic therapy (n = 4). Five non-RCTs were included with mixed findings for treating PD with psychodynamic therapy. Many of the included studies focusing on psychodynamic-based therapies with borderline personality disorder had positive outcomes, and concentrated on mentalisation-based therapy and transference-focused therapy. There were good outcomes for short- and long-term psychodynamic therapies with individuals with PD. Implications for developing services for treating PD are discussed. Research that addresses methodological issues and increases understanding of the ingredients of change in psychodynamic therapy for PD is also recommended.


Background Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs429358 (ε4) and rs7412 (ε2), both invoking changes in the amino-acid sequence of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, have previously been tested for association with multiple sclerosis (MS) risk. However, none of these studies was sufficiently powered to detect modest effect sizes at acceptable type-I error rates. As both SNPs are only imperfectly captured on commonly used microarray genotyping platforms, their evaluation in the context of genome-wide association studies has been hindered until recently. Methods We genotyped 12 740 subjects hitherto not studied for their APOE status, imputed raw genotype data from 8739 subjects from five independent genome-wide association studies datasets using the most recent high-resolution reference panels, and extracted genotype data for 8265 subjects from previous candidate gene assessments. Results Despite sufficient power to detect associations at genome-wide significance thresholds across a range of ORs, our analyses did not support a role of rs429358 or rs7412 on MS susceptibility. This included meta-analyses of the combined data across 13 913 MS cases and 15 831 controls (OR=0.95, p=0.259, and OR 1.07, p=0.0569, for rs429358 and rs7412, respectively). Conclusion Given the large sample size of our analyses, it is unlikely that the two APOE missense SNPs studied here exert any relevant effects on MS susceptibility.


The members of the three subfamilies (eag, erg, and elk) of the ether-a-go-go (EAG) family of potassium channel pore-forming subunits express currents that, like the M-current (IM), could have considerable influence on the subthreshold properties of neuronal membranes, and hence the control of excitability. A nonradioactive in situ hybridization (NR-ISH) study of the distribution of the transcripts encoding the eight known EAG family subunits in rat brain was performed to identify neuronal populations in which the physiological roles of EAG channels could be studied. These distributions were compared with those of the mRNAs encoding the components of the classical M-current (Kcnq2 and Kcnq3). NR-ISH was combined with immunohistochemistry to specific neuronal markers to help identify expressing neurons. The results show that each EAG subunit has a specific pattern of expression in rat brain. EAG and Kcnq transcripts are prominent in several types of excitatory neurons in the cortex and hippocampus; however, only one of these channel components (erg1) was consistently expressed in inhibitory interneurons in these areas. Some neuronal populations express more than one product of the same subfamily, suggesting that the subunits may form heteromeric channels in these neurons. Many neurons expressed multiple EAG family and Kcnq transcripts, such as CA1 pyramidal neurons, which contained Kcnq2, Kcnq3, eag1, erg1, erg3, elk2, and elk3. This indicates that the subthreshold current in many neurons may be complex, containing different components mediated by a number of channels with distinct properties and neuromodulatory responses.


Benefits of GIS might be readily apparent in urban areas, but what about areas with smaller populations? The County of Kauai serves a population base of approximately 60,000 people. Until very recently, many County-wide systems (not just GIS) have been primarily paper-based. Many people are reluctant to move away from familiar systems to computer-based alternatives. In addition, it has been difficult to convince decision makers that GIS is a worthwhile investment, as they typically tend to think of GIS as a tool for urban planners in very large cities. However, we have successfully implemented some small GIS applications, and as we build momentum, it's exciting to see that many people around the County are enthusiastic about this new technology. This paper will examine some of the issues that we have faced and offer suggestions to those in similar situations.


According to the proportionality objection to hell, infinite suffering is out of proportion to any wrong that finite human beings could commit and is hence unjust and inconsistent with God's moral perfection. The continuing-sin response concedes that eternal consignment to hell is out of proportion to the sins people commit during their earthly lives, but argues that people in hell continue to sin while in hell and, in this way, extend their consignment to hell ad infinitum. In this essay, I evaluate the continuing-sin response. In particular, I argue that whether there is a proportionality problem to begin with and whether the continuing-sin response succeeds as a response depends on the character of the suffering that is experienced in hell.


Recent studies have identified inattention (including distraction and drowsiness) as the main cause of accidents, being responsible of at least 25% of them. Driving distraction has been less studied, since it is more diverse and exhibits a higher risk factor than fatigue. In addition, it is present over half of the inattention involved crashes. The increased presence of In Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) adds to the potential distraction risk and modifies driving behaviour, and thus research on this issue is of vital importance. Many researchers have been working on different approaches to deal with distraction during driving. Among them, Computer Vision is one of the most common, because it allows for a cost effective and non-invasive driver monitoring and sensing. Using Computer Vision techniques it is possible to evaluate some facial movements that characterise the state of attention of a driver. This thesis presents methods to estimate the face pose and gaze direction of a person in real-time, using a stereo camera as a basic for assessing driver distractions. The methods are completely automatic and user-independent. A set of features in the face are identified at initialisation, and used to create a sparse 3D model of the face. These features are tracked from frame to frame, and the model is augmented to cover parts of the face that may have been occluded before. The algorithm is designed to work in a naturalistic driving simulator, which presents challenging low light conditions. We evaluate several techniques to detect features on the face that can be matched between cameras and tracked with success. Well-known methods such as SURF do not return good results, due to the lack of salient points in the face, as well as the low illumination of the images. We introduce a novel multisize technique, based on Harris corner detector and patch correlation. This technique benefits from the better performance of small patches under rotations and illumination changes, and the more robust correlation of the bigger patches under motion blur. The head rotates in a range of ±90o in the yaw angle, and the appearance of the features change noticeably. To deal with these changes, we implement a new re-registering technique that captures new textures of the features as the face rotates. These new textures are incorporated to the model, which mixes the views of both cameras. The captures are taken at regular angle intervals for rotations in yaw, so that each texture is only used in a range of ±7.5o around the capture angle. Rotations in pitch and roll are handled using affine patch warping. The 3D model created at initialisation can only take features in the frontal part of the face, and some of these may occlude during rotations. The accuracy and robustness of the face tracking depends on the number of visible points, so new points are added to the 3D model when new parts of the face are visible from both cameras. Bundle adjustment is used to reduce the accumulated drift of the 3D reconstruction. We estimate the pose from the position of the features in the images and the 3D model using POSIT or Levenberg-Marquardt. A RANSAC process detects incorrectly tracked points, which are not considered for pose estimation. POSIT is faster, while LM obtains more accurate results. Using the model extension and the re-registering technique, we can accurately estimate the pose in the full head rotation range, with error levels that improve the state of the art. A coarse eye direction is composed with the face pose estimation to obtain the gaze and driver's fixation area, parameter which gives much information about the distraction pattern of the driver. The resulting gaze estimation algorithm proposed in this thesis has been tested on a set of driving experiments directed by a team of psychologists in a naturalistic driving simulator. This simulator mimics conditions present in real driving, including weather changes, manoeuvring and distractions due to IVIS. Professional drivers participated in the tests. The driver's fixation statistics obtained with the proposed system show how the utilisation of IVIS influences the distraction pattern of the drivers, increasing reaction times and affecting the fixation of attention on the road and the surroundings.