AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To explore the contribution of family members in promoting and supporting the self-management of chronic conditions amongst adult family members.

BACKGROUND
The prevalence of chronic disease continues to grow globally. The role of the family in chronic condition management and support for self-management has received little attention.

DESIGN
A systematic review of qualitative literature using the Joanna Briggs Institute approach for qualitative systematic reviews.

METHODS
Ovid (MEDLINE, CINAHL and PsycINFO) were searched for the period of database inception-2016. The QARI (Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument) critical appraisal instrument was used to assess the quality of each study. Using the Joanna Briggs Institute-QARI data extraction tool, findings related to the family role in the self-management of chronic conditions were extracted and each finding rated according to Joanna Briggs Institute-QARI levels of credibility. Findings were categorised and synthesised to produce a final set of aggregated findings.

RESULTS
Families were key in constructing an environment that was conducive to family engagement and support. Adaptation within the family included maintaining cohesion between family members, normalisation and contextualisation of the chronic condition.

CONCLUSIONS
Whilst evidence on the value of the family in promoting positive health outcomes is clear, research on how families can specifically support the self-management of chronic conditions is emerging.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Family adaptability has been found to be the most powerful predictor of carer depression. Families may need support to change their home and family organisation to adapt to the challenges they face overtime. Change in roles and subsequent adaptation can be stressful, even for those family members at a distance. Nurses working in hospital and community settings can play an important role in assessing how families are adapting to living with chronic illness and to explore strategies to cope with challenges in the home setting.


Wenn einer eine Reise tut, dann kann er was erzahlen

When someone goes on a journey there will be lots to tell afterwards, according to the above Austrian saying. This is how we feel about our description of the journey that is multiple sclerosis. We will not focus on its aetiology, diagnosis, or treatment, but we will concentrate on the experiences of a patient (MD), his wife (IL), and the impressions of one of their children (ML). Looking back on our journey together we will discuss and share our thoughts. A short description of our experiences at time of diagnosis (box 1) and a personal outlook on the future (box 2) are given here; a more detailed description of the journey is on bmj.com

The map of the journey is characterised by good and bad news. The "companions" of the patient and their influence are most important. Our review therefore concentrates primarily on patients with chronic illnesses and their companions. In our opinion, their paths differ substantially, and their demands change during the course of the disease.

Benign courses without progression for a long time have been reported.1 2 Some patients do not have relapses for years, even without specific treatment. However, the clinical course of the disease is not predicted by particular clinical signs. It has as many different manifestations as there are patients. No one can say whether a particular patient would have done worse without therapy. Statistics of large trials are in favour of a substantial benefit for the patients who receive an immunomodulating treatment.

Despite the progress in diagnosis, understanding of the pathomechanisms, and treatment, half of the patients with multiple sclerosis are forced to quit their jobs after 10 years of illness, owing to fatigue and neuropsychological disturbances. This puts an enormous psychological and …


Sulfur based batteries are considered as very attractive energy storage devices. Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements in the earth, it is electrochemically active material which can accept up to two electrons per atom. In combination with alkali metals, sulfur forms electrochemical couples with much higher theoretical energy density compared to Li-ion batteries commonly available today. At the moment, the electrochemical couple with Li is most extensively studied. While the main principle of operation is known the relevant operation mechanism(s) is not completely clear. Even more promising is the electrochemical couple with Mg providing almost twofold higher volumetric energy density due to its ability to provide two electrons during oxidation. However, Mg-S batteries are still in the very early stage of research and development and the complex mechanism of sulfur conversion has been less extensively studied.
In order to improve the understanding of sulfur electrochemical conversion and its interactions within electrode, we need to apply new experimental approaches capable to provide precise information about local environment of S in the cathode during battery operation. In our work, resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) and XAS measurements at the sulfur K-edge performed in operando mode were used to study the lithium-polysulfide formation during the discharge process. Measurements were performed at ID26 beamline of the ESRF synchrotron using tender X-ray emission spectrometer [1]. Resonant excitation condition enhanced the sensitivity for the lithium−polysulfide detection. On the other hand, the sulfate signal from the electrolyte was heavily suppressed and the self-absorption effects minimized due to fixed excitation energy.
This experimental methodology was used to provide quantitative analysis of sulfur compounds in the cathode of a Li−S battery cell during the discharge process [2]. The high-voltage plateau in the discharge curve was characterized by a rapid conversion of solid sulfur into liquid phase Li polysulfides reaching its maximum at the end of this plateau. At this point the starting point for the precipitation of the Li2S from the liquid polysulfide phase was observed. The same approach has been used also for the Mg-S battery revealing similar mechanism as in case of Li-S battery [3]. The electrochemical conversion of sulfur with magnesium proceeds through two well-defined plateaus, which correspond to the equilibrium between sulfur and Mg polysulfides (high-voltage plateau) and polysulfides and MgS (low-voltage plateau).


Software quality is one of success factors in software development. Usability and user experience (U&UX) as a part of software quality is becoming more and more important. Although, there has been successful attempts to formalize specific parts of U&UX there is still a need for a systematic framework of U&UX evaluation. This thesis is aimed to study the state of the art in U&UX evaluation in order to develop a single framework that comprises existing knowledge on the topic. Furthermore, the U&UX evaluation framework is aimed to support product development in industry and provide a versatile guide for U&UX practitioners. The study is based on reference based systematic review. The literature review covers both scientific publications and industrial grade papers. The papers to be reviewed were selected by their relevance to the study goals and credibility of the source. The result of this is three layer U&UX evaluation framework. First layer of the Model features breakdown structure of usability and user experience. Total number of usability and context of use attributes is 217. Second layer of the model contains guidelines of how to perform usability evaluation. Third layer features validation strategies and guidelines on how to expand the Model. In order to enable practical use of the Model both static and dynamic validation should take place. There are many models in place attempting to formalize U&UX evaluation. However, most of them focuses on particular branch of usability or are too broad to be applied practically without adaption. Furthermore, there are many resources offering practical usability and user experience checklists or guidelines. However, most of them lack connection with industry standards such as ISO/IEC 9126. The Model presented in this thesis attempts to fill the gap between high level industry standards and cook book style U&UX guidelines.


Abstract
The aim of this work was the development of a murine model of septic arthrosynovitis and osteomyelitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus, which could mimic the natural disease occurring in humans and which could be suitable for testing preventive and therapeutic interventions. This model could be particularly useful since S. aureus-mediated joints and bones infections are relevant in humans, both in terms of frequency and severity.
Our attention focused in tracking bacterial infiltration in joints and bones over time using different microbiological and hystopathological tools, which allowed us to have a complete overview of the situation and to evaluate the immunological actions undertaken by the host to contain or eradicate the bacterial infection.
Antibodies and cytokines profiles, as well as recruitment of host immune cells at joints of immunized and infected mice were therefore monitored for a time period that allowed us to study both the acute and the chronic phases of the disease in situ. Finally the Novartis vaccine formulation proposed against S. aureus infections was tested for its capacity to protect immunized mice from joints infections, and the preventive immunization was compared to a standard antibiotic prophylaxis.
The availability of powerful tools to study specific bacterial-mediated diseases is nowadays an important requirement for the scientific community to shed light on the complex interactions between host and pathogens and to test treatments for preventing or contrasting infections. We believe that our work significantly contributes to the overall knowledge in the field of S. aureus-dependent pathologies, opening the possibility for further investigations in several fields of study.


The diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders in childhood and adolescence demands specific knowledge of the particular features of symptomatology and approaches in this age group. The diagnostic criteria in the handbooks are only conditionally valid in young patients and their application must be adapted to the patient's age. Clinically relevant atypical eating disorders have a prevalence similar to the classic forms of anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. High rates of comorbidity exist, in particular with anxiety states and also depression. Monitoring of concomitant somatic symptoms is indispensable. Early detection and treatment improve prognosis. Treatment is multidisciplinary and multimodal. Transdiagnostic approaches take into account the high migration rate of eating disorder diagnoses. There is evidence for the efficacy of family-based therapy in adolescents with anorexia nervosa. In individual psychotherapy motivational treatment, and in bulimia nervosa cognitive behavioural therapy, are in the forefront. Fluoxetine has proved effective in the treatment of binge eating in bulimia nervosa.


Accidents between right turning trucks and straight driving cyclists often show massive consequences. Accident severity in terms of seriously or fatally injured cyclists that are involved is much higher than in accidents of other traffic participants in other situations. It seems clear that adding additional mirrors will very likely not improve the situation. At ESV 2015, a methodology to derive test procedures and first test cases as well as requirements for a driver assist system to address blind spot accidents has been presented. However, it was unclear if and how testing of these cases is feasible, to what extent characteristics of different truck concepts (e.g. articulated vehicles, rigid vehicles) influence the test conduction and outcome, and what tolerances should be selected for the different variables. This work is important for the acceptance of a draft regulation in the UN working group on general safety. In the meantime, three test series using a single tractor vehicle, a tractor-semitrailer combination and a rigid vehicle have been conducted. The test tools (e.g. surrogate devices) have been refined. A fully crashable, commercially available bicycle dummy has been tested. If used correct, this dummy does follow a straight line quite precisely and it does not cause any damage to the truck under test in case of accidental impact. The dummy specifications are freely available. During testing, the different vehicle categories resulted in different trajectories being driven. Articulated vehicle combinations did first execute a turn into the opposite direction, and on the other hand, single tractor vehicles did behave comparable to passenger cars. A possible solution to take these behaviors into account is to require the vehicles to drive through a corridor that is narrow for a precise straight-driving phase and extends during the turn. Other investigated parameters are the dummy and vehicle speed tolerances. The results from this research make it possible to draft a regulation for a driver assistance system that helps to avoid blind spot accidents: test cases have been refined, their feasibility has been checked, and corridors for the vehicles and for important parameters (e.g. test speeds) have been set. The test procedure is applicable to all types of heavy goods vehicles. In combination with the accidentology (ESV 2015 paper), the work provides the basis for a regulation for such an assistance system.


Fernando Torres is already a football idol. Signed to Liverpool for GBP20 Million, 'El Nino' has taken 10 years to go from child prodigy to one of the greatest players on earth. His pacy runs and genius goal scoring has won the hearts and minds of millions of fans. This is his amazing story. Fanatical about the great game from the age of five, Fernando joined Atletico Madrid in 1995, aged only eleven, and three years later was voted best under-15 player in Europe. A few seasons later, and after many a stunning goal, Torres was named Atletico's club captain, going on to score 21 goals in 2003-04. Fast becoming a goal machine, Fernando netted three times in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and established himself as a true contender on the international stage. Several clubs were queuing up to sign him, and form a storm of media speculation emerged the truth: Fernando was to wear the number 9 shirt for Liverpool in 2007. He hasn't looked back since - 33 goals in 2007-8 made Torres the highest foreign goal-scorer in a debut season in football history. To top is all off, Torres put in an incredible performance to take Spain to Victory in Euro 2008. El Nino is a truly extraordinary player, and his story reads like a football fairytale. An intimate look at a star who just keeps on rising, this book is essential reading for any fan.


Expressions of popular culture (here we consider music and carnival) have often been analysed as manifestations of indirect resistance to oppression. Alternatively, they can be seen as displays and practices that dominant political and social elites can easily co-opt. Using a combination of published material and fieldwork observations in Cape Verde and Louisiana, we show how a complex interplay between resistance and co-optation arises. As prior or incoming cultures are creolized they become nationalized, officialized or commercialized, thereby becoming subject to mechanisms of 'destructive tolerance'. However, processes of appropriation are continuously challenged by internal dissent, demands for authenticity and fresh creative inputs. Such inputs are frequently drawn from original (or imagined original) societies and emergent diasporic practices and identities, which we have deemed 'diasporic echoes'.


The taxocene of live epiphytal foraminifera was for one year monitored monthly on six phytal substrates in shallow water (<1 m) in two bays around Nevis, NE Caribbean Sea. Mosquito Bay was subject to a nutrient flux from a leaking septic tank. Long Haul Bay was comparatively undeveloped. SHE Community Structure Investigations (SHECSIs) revealed that the populations on five plants had logarithmic series distributions of species abundances, the slopes of lnS vs. lnE for these five time-series being within −1±0.3. In three time-series, they were within −1±0.05. Cluster analysis of twenty-five sediment samples in shallow water (<3 m) indicates that Nevis is largely surrounded by a single thanatacoenosis, for which SHECSI indicates a logarithmic series population structure. However, it is not possible to reconstruct perfectly the epiphytal population from the sediment thanatacoenosis. The thanatacoenosis included 40% allochthonous Amphistegina gibbosa, Archaias angulatus and Asterigerina carinata, washed in from offshore reefs, and few planorbulinids, although the latter dominates the biocoenosis on seagrass leaves in the backreef.


As noted by President Obama's recent Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, pervasive state surveillance has never been more feasible. There has been an inexorable rise in the size and reach of the national security bureaucracy since it was created after World War II, as we have gone through the Cold War and the War on Terror. No one doubts that our national security bureaucracies need to gain intelligence and keep some of it secret. But the consensus of decades of experts, both insiders and outsiders, is that there is rampant overclassification by government agencies. From its inception in 1966, the Freedom of Information Act has presumed disclosure. And from its inception, Congress intended the federal courts to act as a brake on unfettered agency discretion regarding classification. But courts have not played a strong role in this regard. This article examines the interplay of overclassification, excessive judicial deference, and illusory agency expertise in the context of the national security exemption to the Freedom of Information Act.The national security exemption allows documents to be withheld that are "specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy" and that "are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order." The history of national security classification and the passage of the FOIA illuminate the tension between legislative demands for transparency and the growth of the national security state with its agency culture of secrecy. That tension has generally been resolved by the courts in favor of secrecy, despite agreement that there is rampant overclassification and pseudo-classification (labeling documents as sensitive but unclassified). This deference in turn leads agencies routinely deny FOIA requests that should in fact be granted. Without adequate court oversight, there is no agency incentive to comply with the FOIA's presumption of disclosure.We argue that courts have been systematically ignoring their clear legislative mandate. Although the government is entitled to substantial deference, the role of the judiciary is not to rubber stamp claims of national security, but to undertake de novo and in camera review of government claims that the information requested was both required to be kept secret and properly classified. Congress amended the FOIA in 1974 to make this requirement explicit, overruling a judicial attempt to defer completely to government claims that national security classifications are proper.There are many reasons that courts are reluctant to get involved in determining the validity of exemption claims based on national security. Overestimation of risk may be one reason, as is fear of the consequences of error. We also discuss a "secrecy heuristic" whereby people attribute greater accuracy to "secret" documents. Notwithstanding these rationales, courts have, in other contexts, wrestled successfully with the conflict between national security and paramount rights, such as those found in the first and fourth amendments. Courts have the institutional expertise to review claims of national security, if they choose to exercise it.Our conclusion is that the systematic failures of the federal courts in the FOIA context are neither inevitable nor justified. We show that courts do occasionally order the release of some documents. This article includes the first empirical investigation into the decisionmaking of the D.C. district courts and federal circuit courts in cases involving the national security exemption to determine what, if any, factors favor document release. We find that party characteristics are the biggest predictor of disclosure. We also show that, while politics do not seem to matter at most courts, they do at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, at which Republican-dominated panels have never ordered disclosure.


This study measures the influence that multiple
social, political, and economic conditions have on the development
of ethno/national separatist terrorist organizations. It begins by
analyzing the nationalist theories of primordialism, modernism, and
ethnosymbolism, and the terrorist theories of strategic logic and
psychology. The nationalist theories consider cultural symbols a
powerful component behind nationalist movements and populations
with significant symbolic attachments especially prone to react
aggressively against perceived threats to those symbols. Proponents
of strategic logic and psychological theory also view terrorism as
reactive but deviate on whether this response is conceived
rationally. Examining the origins of Basque and Catalan terrorism
and Roma passivity in Spain assists in identifying background
conditions that are evaluated using a logit regression model. The
logit model assesses two-hundred ninety-seven minority populations
in one-hundred twenty-six states, primarily between 1945 and 2003.
The results show cultural identity and sensitivity, violent
encounters, political freedom, social unrest, underrepresentation,
disproportionate economic privation, and stagnant educational
systems and other factors of civil development correlating
significantly with the formation of ethno/national separatist
terrorist organizations. These findings imply an ability to detect
populations and environments with increased potential for producing
ethno/national separatist terrorism, and that by addressing those
conditions facilitating its development, it may be possible to
reduce the probability of additional campaigns
developing.


This work describes the fabrication of nanospheres from a range of novel polyhydroxyalkanoates supplied by Monsanto, St Louis, Missouri, USA for the delivery of selected actives of both pharmaceutical and agricultural interest. Initial evaluation of established microsphere and nanosphere fabrication techniques resulted in the adoption and optimisation of a double sonication solvent evaporation method involving the synperonic surfactant F68. Nanospheres could be consistently generated with this method. Studies on the incorporation and release of the surrogate protein Bovine Serum Albumin V demonstrated that BSA could be loaded with between 10-40% w/w BSA without nanosphere destabilisation. BSA release from nanospheres into Hanks Balanced Salts Solution, pH 7.4, could be monitored for up to 28 days at 37°C. The incorporation and release of the Monsanto actives - the insecticide Admire® ({ 1-[(6-chloro-3-pyridinyl)methyIJ-N-nitro-2-imidazolidinimine}) and the plant growth hormone potassium salt Gibberellic acid (GA3K) from physico-chemically characterised polymer nanospheres was monitored for up to 37 days and 28 days respectively, at both 4°C and 23°C. Release data was subsequently fitted to established kinetic models to elaborate the possible mechanisms of release of actives from the nanospheres. The exposure of unloaded nanospheres to a range of physiological media and rural rainwater has been used to investigate the role polymer biodegradation by enzymatic and chemical means might play in the in vivo release of actives and agricultural applications. The potential environmental biodegradation of Monsanto polymers has been investigated using a composting study (International Standard ISO/FDIS 14855) in which the ultimate aerobic biodegradation of the polymers has been monitored by the analysis of evolved carbon dioxide. These studies demonstrated the potential of the polymers for use in the environment, for example as a pesticide delivery system.


Many features can be used to describe a human face but few have been used in combination. Extending the feature vector using orthogonal sets of measurements can reduce the variance of a matching measure, to improve discrimination capability. This paper investigates how different features can be used for discrimination, alone or when integrated into an extended feature vector. This study concentrates on improving feature definition and extraction from a frontal view image, incorporating and extending established measurements. These form an extended feature vector based on four feature sets: geometric (distance) measurements, the eye region, the outline contour, and the profile. The profile, contour, and eye region are described by the Walsh power spectrum, normalized Fourier descriptors, and normalized moments, respectively. Although there is some correlation between the geometrical measures and the other sets, their bases (distance, shape description, sequency, and statistics) are orthogonal and hence appropriate for this research. A database of face images was analyzed using two matching measures which were developed to control differently the contributions of elements of the feature sets. The match was evaluated for both measures for the separate feature sets and for the extended feature vector. Results demonstrated that no feature set alone was sufficient for recognition whereas the extended feature vector could discriminate between subjects successfully.


This paper presents the outcomes of a one-year NAIRTL-funded project aimed at strengthening the links between theory, research and practice for teaching and learning on the Master of Social Work (MSW) programme at UCC. The project, which was informed by our primary research into social workers' use of the community work discourse in their practice, integrates the research findings into a resource for use in the teaching of a community work module on the MSW programme. The purpose of the resource is to facilitate student engagement with the contemporary practice dilemmas and themes that emerged from our research. The resource utilises written and audio material derived from 15 qualitative interviews with social workers practising in different contexts. The material is used for both teaching and assessment purposes within the context of an enquiry-based learning approach.This paper will discuss the research process and key findings, explore how we involved first year MSW students as stakeholders in the development of the teaching and learning resource, and present selected elements of the resource.We will illustrate how the integration of research and teaching has impacted significantly and positively on our teaching practice and fostered an approach that is 'student-centred, negotiated, discursive and reflexive' (Brew, 1999, p. 296) and based on the development of students as active participants rather than passive learners.Brew, A. (1999) 'Research and Teaching: Changing Relationships in a Changing Context', Studies in Higher Education, 24(3), pp. 291-301.


We report on the hybrid integration of silicon-on-insulator slot waveguides with organic electro-optic materials. We investigate and compare a polymer composite, a dendron-based material, and a binary-chromophore organic glass (BCOG). A record-high in-device electro-optic coefficient of 230 pm/V is found for the BCOG approach resulting in silicon-organic hybrid Mach-Zehnder modulators that feature low UπL-products of down to 0.52 Vmm and support data rates of up to 40 Gbit/s.


Two different clamping mechanisms are commonly used in pullout and confined extension tests of geosynthetics. The first method of extending the clamps inside the soil to a sufficient length that ensures the confinement of the whole specimen length during testing. The frictional resistance of the part of clamping plates inside the soil is subtracted from the results to obtain the resistance of the geosynthetic specimen. The second method consists of clamping the geosynthetic specimen outside the soil. In this method, displacement measurements are taken in the confined part of the specimen in the soil and, hence, the readings are not influenced by the possible slippage of the specimen between the clamps. A comparison of test results using both installation techniques is presented and the boundary effects associated with both installation techniques is presented and the boundary effects associated with both mechanisms are evaluated. In the tests where the clamps were extended inside the soil, earth pressure near the front facing was measured in order to evaluate the frictional resistance of the clamping plates. Soil pressure measurements were taken after applying the confining pressure and during the test to monitor the development of vertical stresses at the vicinity of the clamping plates. The measurements showed an apparent increase of vertical pressure above the clamps. The results were corrected for the increase of the vertical pressure die to frictional resistance of the clamping plates. When the clamping plates were connected to the specimens outside the box, displacements were measured along the specimen length. These measurements were extrapolated to determine the front displacement of the specimen at the pullout load application point. The use of the extrapolated front displacement resulted in a more reasonable load-displacement relationship for the geosynthetic specimen.


Interactions are understood through the filter of language and culture. Because of this when people of different cultures interact, miscommunications often result. As both verbal and nonverbal aspects of communication are culturally specific, this paper examines trends in the nonverbal communication patterns of generations of Pointe Coupee Creoles undergoing language shift from Creole French in the older generation to English in the younger. The data demonstrate that nonverbal patterns are decoupled from verbal language to some extent in the degree to which they are maintained down the observable generations of Pointe Coupee Creole participants.
This study analyzes videos of naturally occurring conversations in Creole and English filmed in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, as well as an English-speaking control group filmed in Shreveport, Louisiana. These dialogues provide data on the frequency with which participants in various groups gesture, the duration of gesture phrases, as well as the personal sphere with its inverse relationship to the gestural sphere, and the usage of physical contact to regulate turn-at-talk. After establishing nonverbal communicative characteristics of the Creole speakers, I discuss the extent to which these features are maintained through successive generations. I find that while touching as a conversational regulator to hold speaker turn appears to have been dropped by the younger generation, other nonverbal communicative features such as the frequency of gesturing and wider gestural spheres (smaller personal spheres) observed in the older, Creole-dominant generation are maintained by the younger generation of English-dominant Pointe Coupee Creoles. Thus, aspects of the nonverbal patterns survive longer than the verbal system in this speech community.


This paper examines the use of co-constructions in spontaneous Russian conversations. Co-constructions are found when one speaker completes another speaker's utterance, that is, a co-construction is a syntactic unit created within a single turn construction unit but by multiple speakers. Co-constructions argue for the existence of a shared syntax and for projection of that syntax by the first part of the construction. They underscore the interactional and collaborative nature of conversation: radio interviews illustrate how co-constructions can be used by interlocutors to influence topic, and more informal conversations illustrate their use in signaling heightened involvement and solidarity.


In order to solve complex, long-horizon tasks, intelligent robots need to carry out high-level, abstract planning and reasoning in conjunction with motion planning. However, abstract models are typically lossy and plans or policies computed using them can be inexecutable. These problems are exacerbated in stochastic situations where the robot needs to reason about and plan for multiple contingencies. We present a new approach for integrated task and motion planning in stochastic settings. In contrast to prior work in this direction, we show that our approach can effectively compute integrated task and motion policies whose branching structures encode agent behaviors that handle multiple execution-time contingencies. We prove that our algorithm is probabilistically complete and can compute feasible solution policies in an anytime fashion so that the probability of encountering an unresolved contingency decreases over time. Empirical results on a set of challenging problems show the utility and scope of our method.


The prevalence of overweight and obesity continues to rise substantially across the world. It is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide and is associated with a large number of comorbidities that present a perpetual burden on healthcare costs. Much of the recent work to understand and address the problem of obesity has focused on the role of gastrointestinal hormones on the regulation of appetite, satiety, and food intake, and how interventions such as physical activity and exercise can affect the secretion of these hormones. However, the gastrointestinal system and the role of gastric emptying are often overlooked. The aim of this thesis was to enhance understanding of the physiology and regulation of gastric emptying and its interactions with carbohydrates. This will help in the development of novel non-pharmacological dietary interventions or foods that can modulate appetite and energy intake.
A series of studies on human volunteers are presented in this thesis. Firstly, the gastric emptying rate of different 6% simple sugar solutions (water control, fructose, glucose, sucrose, 50:50 fructose and glucose) and gut hormone responses of circulating acylated ghrelin, active glucagon like peptide-1 (GLP-1), glucose dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) and insulin were investigated. Hepatic metabolism and function in response to the different simple sugar solutions were also examined. The time of maximal gastric emptying rate (Tlag) differed significantly between between sucrose and glucose solutions. Differences in insulin and GIP responses between fructose containing solutions and glucose only solutions were also seen. No differences in hepatic metabolism measures or function were observed following the intake of 36 g of the various test sugars. However, lactate production was significantly greater for fructose containing solutions. Following on from these results, the effect of increased dietary fructose intake on gastric emptying rate of glucose and fructose was investigated. Three days supplementation with 120g/d fructose resulted in acceleration of gastric emptying rate of a fructose but not a glucose solution. No significant differences in the circulating concentration of gastrointestinal hormones, but subtle differences in responses over time were suggested which may explain the specific monosaccharide adaptations of gastric emptying. Further work is required to confirm this and to investigate the longevity and reversibility of the gastrointestinal adaptation and the mechanism involved. Lastly, several tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of the GLP-1 receptor gene were associated with gastric emptying rate. Further work is required on the regions identified to pinpoint the exact SNP or SNPs responsible.


We revisit on-average algorithmic stability of GD for training overparameterised shallow neural networks and prove new generalisation and excess risk bounds without the NTK or PL assumptions. In particular, we show oracle type bounds which reveal that the generalisation and excess risk of GD is controlled by an interpolating network with the shortest GD path from initialisation (in a sense, an interpolating network with the smallest relative norm). While this was known for kernelised interpolants, our proof applies directly to networks trained by GD without intermediate kernelisation. At the same time, by relaxing oracle inequalities developed here we recover existing NTK-based risk bounds in a straightforward way, which demonstrates that our analysis is tighter. Finally, unlike most of the NTK-based analyses we focus on regression with label noise and show that GD with early stopping is consistent.


The authors attempt to explain the ubiquity and persistence of human religion by invoking innate, domain-specific cognitive furniture, while dismissing the potential of other approaches, such as memetics, to produce "mindful" understandings of religion. This commentary challenges the explanatory adequacy of cognitive nativism, suggesting that memetics has as much claim to utility and "mindfulness" as innate mental modules do. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? – Matthew 7:3


This biography tells the life story of a secondary school English coursebook in Kenya
following market liberalization (1998) and curriculum review (2002).
In ELT, Gray (2007, 2010) first applied the 'circuit of culture' model to global English
coursebooks; in contrast, I examine the case of a single local publication. The
textbook has been described as a politico-economic, socio-cultural, and curriculum
product. I focus on it primarily as a curriculum product and delink the circuit of
culture from its original application in textbook studies in the service of a sociocultural
perspective. I posit that the model has the explanatory power to capture
the various research focuses that textbook studies may take.
The circuit of culture has five processes or 'moments': representation, identity,
regulation, production and consumption. Following preliminary work, my 'journey'
begins in the representation moment, using Littlejohn's (1992, 1998) framework for
materials analysis. In the regulation moment, I interview three participants linked
to the curriculum development body (KIE). In the production moment, I interview
four authors, the editor and the publishing manager of the selected coursebook. In
the consumption moment, I interview sixteen teachers who are or have been users
of the materials. Four of the teachers participate in classroom observation and their
learners respond to a questionnaire. Finally, I build a key identity statement about
the coursebook, pooled from the findings in each moment. I reposition the identity
moment and posit its centrality at the core of the circuit.
Spurred by insights on innovation in English language education, I support the
strengthening of 'feedback loops' across moments, and the recognition of the
consumption moment as the zone for promoting dynamism and synergy in
textbook development. This can (ideally) result in curriculum products and practices
capable of overcoming challenges of interpretation and transition, while promoting
good practices across moments.


This paper presents Xoodoo, a 48-byte cryptographic permutation with excellent propagation properties. Its design approach is inspired by Keccak-p, while it is dimensioned like Gimli for efficiency on low-end processors. The structure consists of three planes of 128 bits each, which interact per 3-bit columns through mixing and nonlinear operations, and which otherwise move as three independent rigid objects. We analyze its differential and linear propagation properties and, in particular, prove lower bounds on the weight of trails using the tree search-based technique of Mella et al. (ToSC 2017). Xoodoo's primary target application is in the Farfalle construction that we instantiate for the doubly-extendable cryptographic keyed (or deck) function Xoofff. Combining a relatively narrow permutation with the parallelism of Farfalle results in very efficient schemes on a wide range of platforms, from low-end devices to high-end processors with vector instructions.


Abstract The active queue management (AQM) problem of networks is discussed. An AQM scheme is presented based on improved sliding model controller. The proposed controller combines the excellent characteristics of linear sliding model controller (LSMC) and the terminal sliding model controller (TSMC). The LSMC is used to speed up the error convergence when the error is greater than one, and the TSMC is adopted to guarantee the error convergence to zero in a finite time when the error is around the zero. The chattering in the conventional sliding model control systems is avoided with the employed continuous controller. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme has strong robust against the network modeling uncertainties and disturbances, as well as leads to the convergence of the output queue to the desired value quickly and precisely than employing either LSMC or TSMC alone.


Abstract Compared to traditional tennis shoes, using 0-drop shoes was shown to induce an immediate switch from rear- to forefoot strike pattern to perform an open stance tennis forehand for 30% of children tennis players. The purpose of the study was to examine the long-term effects of a gradual reduction in the shoe drop on the biomechanics of children tennis players performing open stance forehands. Thirty children tennis players participated in 2 laboratory biomechanical test sessions (intermediate: +4 months and final: +8 months) after an inclusion visit where they were randomly assigned to control (CON) or experimental (EXP) group. CON received 12-mm-drop shoes twice, whereas EXP received 8 mm then 4-mm-drop shoes. Strike index indicated that all CON were rearfoot strikers in intermediate and final test sessions. All EXP were rearfoot strikers in intermediate test session, but half the group switched towards a forefoot strike pattern in final test session. This switch resulted in a decreased loading rate of the ground reaction force (−73%, p = .005) but increased peak ankle plantarflexors moment (+47%, p = .050) and peak ankle power absorption (+107%, p = .005) for these participants compared with CON. Biomechanical changes associated with the long-term use of partial minimalist shoes suggest a reduction in heel compressive forces but an increase in Achilles tendon tensile forces.


The study presents an analysis of 766 publications; 94 books, 59 chapters in books, 598 research papers and 15 patents contributed by Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman in which 83 (10.83 %) are single-authored while 683 (89.17 %) co-authored published from 1966 to June 2007 in various domains as: Natural Products (90), Natural Products-syn (9), Natural Products-nmr (14) Natural Products-isol (423), Natural Products-x-ray (9), Synthesis (132), Medicinal Chemistry (24), Spectroscopy (27), Analytical Chemistry (8) and Miscellaneous (30). The study shows that with total 3214 collaborativeships as many as 547 authors collaborated with Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman of which M. I. Chaudhary (398) is the most prolific collaborator and the maximum number of co-authors at one time is twenty-one. The highest number of publications in a year is 67 contributed in 2005. Two-authored productivity is the highest by contributing 137 publications while in case of number of authorships (672) six-authored productivity is at the top. His productivity coefficient .69 is a clear indication of his higher productivity period just after 50 percentile age of his research career under consideration. He used 113 channels of communication {local 23 (20.35 %) and foreign 90 (79.64 %)} to disseminate the results of his research. Phytochemistry (93) is at the top of the list followed by Elsevier Science Publishers & Journal of Natural Products each (56). The number of publications published locally is 106 (13.84 %) and 660 (86.16 %) from abroad. Publication density and concentration is 6.72 and 7.89respectively while average number of publications per year is 18.24. The scattering of 766 publications over 113 channels of communication follow Bradford's Law. Among the most prolific keywords in titles are: Alkaloids, Synthesis, Isolation, Steroidal Alkaloid, Natural Products, Bioactive Natural Products, Stereoselective Synthesis, Medicinal Plants, Triterpenoid, Harmaline, 13C-NMR, Synthetic Studies, Chemical Constituents, Buxus papillosa, Rhazya stricta and Diterpenoid.


Network worms that scan random computers have caused billions of dollars in damage to enterprises across the Internet. Earlier research has concentrated on using epidemiological models to predict the number of computers a worm will infect and how long it takes to do so. In this research, one possible approach is outlined for predicting the spatial flow of a worm within the local area network (LAN). The approach in this research is based on the application of mathematical models and variables inherent in plant epidemiology. In particular, spatial autocorrelation has been identified as a candidate variable that helps predict the spread of a worm over a LAN. This research describes the application of spatial autocorrelation to the geography and topology of the LAN and describes the methods used to determine spatial autocorrelation. Also discussed is the data collection process and methods used to extract pertinent information. Data collection and analyses are applied to the spread of three historical network worms on the Virginia Tech campus and the results are described. Spatial autocorrelation exists in the spread of network worms across the Virginia Tech campus when the geographic aspect is considered. If a new network worm were to start spreading across Virginia Tech's campus, spatial autocorrelation would facilitate tracking the geographical locations of the spread. In addition if an infection with a known value of spatial autocorrelation is detected, the characteristics of the worm can be identified without a complete analysis.


Machiavelli is praised for the political implications of his writing in The Prince. However, many do not see the personal implications of Machiavelli's work, because the motivations for action are spoken in terms of political domination and the acquisition of power. There are underlying principles that speak of domination not only of cities and nations, but the domination of the opportunities placed before each individual. The Prince can be read in a different manner; as a manual for daily life and the maximization of opportunity. This article is available in Res Publica Journal of Undergraduate Research: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/respublica/vol1/iss1/4


Fingerprints have been used to identify people for several decades. With the advent of low cost inkless fingerprint scanners and the ample compute power available in client workstations, biometrics in general, and fingerprints in particular, are being considered for many secure authentication applications. Lotus Notes is a groupware product supporting e-mail, calendar management, workflow, and, perhaps more importantly, (shared) database access and management. Because of this wide spectrum of capabilities that allows true collaborative computing, privacy and security are of primary importance in such groupware applications. Lotus Notes has a strong reputation in this regard. In this paper, we describe the architecture of a system that integrates the intrinsic high security of Notes with the conveniences of fingerprints for client authentication. We discuss several design challenges that had to be addressed to achieve a successful product level system design and development. A demo of the finished system is also available.


The purpose of this study was to identify elements present in effective literacy instruction, i.e., those elements that fostered reading, speaking, listening, thinking, writing, and metacognitive skills. By examining variables that promoted literacy acquisition and achievement, a detailed account resulted which described classroom practice as related to teacher beliefs, strategies, materials, and classroom climate. The primary method of qualitative analysis used for this study was the Developmental Research Sequence (DRS) Method (Spradley, 1980). Two classrooms with exemplary teachers were studied extensively. Data collection involved the use of primary sources (interviews, observations, and student and teacher work) and secondary sources (records, databases, etc.). Fieldwork included note taking and audio and video recording. The cyclic model involved asking questions, making descriptive observations, collecting and analyzing data and using analysis to form new questions. Research led to the uncovering of themes present in effective literacy instruction. The study concluded with an ethnographic case study that postulates possible scenarios pertaining to instructional strategies, teacher personal beliefs, materials, and classroom climate. The findings from this study can assist reading teachers in development and implementation of effective instruction. Reading specialists and administrators will find the results useful in developing professional growth activities for teachers of reading. This study expands the existing literature on effective literacy instruction and allows the everyday practitioner to learn from these examples of success.


Do all plant biologists worldwide have equal access to novel methods, enabling them to be equally productive, publish, and receive credit for their research? Or does reduced access to cutting‐edge techniques in countries with lower financial resources create an inequity for researchers located there? Such disparities and biases do exist within our discipline and must be addressed if we are to move forward as a more just society. Applications in Plant Sciences has taken steps to address this important issue of research inequity, as outlined below. We now call upon the entire botanical community—researchers, editors and reviewers, funding agencies, and publishers—to work together toward a more equitable environment for all researchers around the world.


To show that the traditional econometric approach is not able to deal with deterministic chaos, I use an extension of Goodwin's growth cycle model to generate artificial data for output. An EGARCH model is estimated to describe the data generation process. Although, using some traditional econometric tests, no evidence of misspecification is found, the estimated process is qualitatively wrong: it is dynamically stable when the true process is unstable. A specific econometric procedure developed to deal with deterministic chaos is presented: the BDS statistics. Also an explanation for the little evidence of deterministic chaos in aggregated macroeconomic time series is suggested.


Oneida is an endangered Iroquoian language spoken fluently by fewer than 250 people. This is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Oneida language as used in Ontario, where most of the surviving speakers reside. The dictionary contains both Oneida-English and English-Oneida sections. The Oneida-English portion includes some 6000 entries, presenting lexical bases, particles and grammatical morphemes. Each entry for a base shows several forms; illustrates inflection, meaning and use; and gives details regarding pronunciation and cultural significance. The English-Oneida entries direct the reader to the relevant base in the Oneida-English section, where technical information is provided. Completing the volume is a set of appendices that organizes Oneida words into thematic categories. The Iroquoian languages have an unusually complex word structure, in which lexical bases are surrounded by layers of prefixes and suffixes. This dictionary presents and explains that structure in the clearest possible terms. A work of enormous precision and care, it incorporates many innovative ideas and shows a deep understanding of the nature of the Oneida language.


While studies have called the performance of socially responsible investments competitive, many investors do not choose to invest their assets in a socially responsible fashion. Part of this reluctance may relate to reduced diversification possibilities and the risk effects of application of ethical screens to portfolios. This investigation of a sample of Canadian stocks challenges the popular opinion that socially responsible investments are more volatile than conventional portfolios. Judged by two different methodologies, socially responsible companies tend to show less diversifiable risk in their stock behavior than non-socially responsible companies. These findings seem to support social investors? view that the adoption of corporate social responsibility codes of conduct can help diminish the overall business risk of a company, and even improve its long-term risk-adjusted performance.


Many events occur in real-world and social networks. Events are related to the past and there are patterns in the evolution of event sequences. Understanding the patterns can help us better predict the type and arriving time of the next event. In the literature, both feature-based approaches and generative approaches are utilized to model the event sequence. Feature-based approaches extract a variety of features, and train a regression or classification model to make a prediction. Yet, their performance is dependent on the experience-based feature exaction. Generative approaches usually assume the evolution of events follow a stochastic point process (e.g., Poisson process or its complexer variants). However, the true distribution of events is never known and the performance depends on the design of stochastic process in practice. To solve the above challenges, in this paper, we present a novel probabilistic generative model for event sequences. The model is termed Variational Event Point Process (VEPP). Our model introduces variational auto-encoder to event sequence modeling that can better use the latent information and capture the distribution over inter-arrival time and types of event sequences. Experiments on real-world datasets prove effectiveness of our proposed model.


The mood of American introspection and fatigue with the tiresome world is growing fastTHE UNITED STATES IS ENDING THE AMERICAN CENTURY with a striking and ambitious drive to renew and extend the internationalism which has directed its foreign policy since 1941. It is broadening its commitments under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to new allies in eastern Europe while also pledging a new partnership with Russia. It is determined to secure a Middle East peace settlement and to retain its troop deployments and bases in the Pacific to help build a stable and sustainable commercial and security system in Asia. President Bill Clinton and his senior officials, growing comfortable and even familiar with the uses of America's unrivaled military power, appear determined to start the post-cold war period with the same commitment to global strategic and commercial leadership with which the generation of Dean Acheson and General George Marshall launched America's cold war strategy in 1947.But the Clinton administration also promises to pay the $1.4 billion it is in arrears to the United Nations, as a way to start afresh its long-troubled relations with a world body that has not always proved compliant with American presumptions or American policy. And it is with the problematic fate of the Clinton plan for the United Nations that the real paradox of the Clinton administration's global ambitions becomes manifest. Clinton has secured the support of the Republican speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and the rather more lukewarm backing of the Republican leader in the Senate, Trent Lott. But this accord between Democratic and Republican leaders has run into trouble, in the person of Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a highly conservative and nationalist critic of free trade, who as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is perfectly placed to slow and block the administration's foreign policy.Assistant Editor, the Guardian based in Washington, DC. In October 1997 the author will become the European Editor of the Guardian.Deeply sceptical of Clinton's attempt to clear the financial books with the United Nations, of his determination to extend the free trade agenda into Latin America and his hope to include China in the World Trade Organization, Senator Helms is but the most prominent figure of an enduring isolationist sentiment in the United States. His power is clear, from the way that he has delayed, if not blocked, ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, even though Republican worthies from former general Colin Powell to the former secretary of state, James Baker, have rallied to the treaty's support.As co-author with Congressman Dan Burton of the Helms-Burton act, which makes foreign companies who presume to operate in Cuba liable to sweeping damages in American courts, Helms has engineered serious difficulties in United States relations with its closesr allies in Europe and in Canada. The extraterritorial implications of the Helms-Burton act are based on combined assumptions of legislative arrogance and American predominance which are the hallmarks of Helms's world view. Its roots are at once isolationist and superior: political introspection with a superiority complex.This bodes ill for much of the foreign policy of the Clinton administration. First at risk is its dealings with Russia, from the move to a third Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START III) to extended financial support, to the tricky prospects for NATO enlargement. The second threat is to the efforts of the White House to cajole China into a cooperative role in Asia, where again the fund-raising embarrassments of the Clinton campaign give Helms a striking prospect of adding Republican support to those Democratic liberals who do not want to renew China's most-favoured-nation trading status in 1997. Helms stands on suspicious guard against each one. He has already blocked an array of ambassadorial appointments and is holding the State Department's budget hostage to his demands for a streamlining for the Agency for International Development (AID) which threatens to emasculate what remains of the Agency. …


A novel and versatile strategy for the convenient synthesis of mono-dispersed Ag2S@Ag hybrid nano-particles is developed by simply using laser ablation of Ag target in thioaetamide (TAA) solution. The as-prepared Ag2S@Ag nano-particles exhibit superior adsorption performance for the removal of methyl blue (MB) and methyl orange (MO) from wastewater. Most importantly, without any centrifugal process, the new adsorbents can be removed from solutions easily by filters after adsorbing dyes, since the Ag2S@Ag nano-particles are agglomerated and deposited on the bottom. We demonstrated that the excellent features are highly related to Ag structures in the Ag2S@Ag nano-particles. The unique excited and polarized Ag species with positive charge regions enable the Ag2S@Ag nano-particles to have much more active sites as adsorption sites. Then, it will result in the generation of strong ionic bounds via electron-static interaction between positive active site of the adsorbent and negative charge of the dye molecules. Our results provide a breakthrough in the complicated process including the removal of adsorbents that arises from the separate process after adsorption of organic contaminants. Thus, these findings are of great significance for the practical application in water purification.


Human experts in many scientific fields routinely work with data that are heterogeneous, noisy, and/or uncertain, as well as with heuristics that are unproven and with possible conclusions that are contradictory. We present a deployed software system for cosmogenic isotope dating, a domain that is fraught with these difficult issues. This system, which is called ACE (Age Calculation Engine), takes as inputs the nuclide densities in a set of rock samples from a landform. It answers the scientific question, "What geological processes could have produced this distribution of nuclide concentrations, and over what time scales?" ACE employs an encoded knowledge base of the possible processes that may have acted on that landform in the past, complete with the mathematics of how those processes can affect samples, and it uses a workflow system to encode the computations associated with this scientific analysis. Flexibility and extensibility were critical issues in ACE's design to allow its scientist-users to modify and extend it after its developers were no longer involved. The success of this is evident; the system remains in active use to this day, several years after the development cycle ended, without a single request for help from the geoscientists to the computer science side of the team. The ACE project website has received over 17,000 hits since 2008, including 2500 over the last twelve months. The software ( 20,000 lines of Python code) has been downloaded nearly 600 times as of April 2013, which is a significant number in a research community of a few hundred PI-level scientists.


Vol. 7, No. 3 Supplement, June 2001 Emerging Infectious Diseases 535 Mathematical modeling of available epidemiologic data suggests that each year unsafe injection practices are responsible for 8 to 16 million persons contracting hepatitis B virus (HBV), 2.3 to 4.7 million persons contracting hepatitis C virus (HCV), and 80,000 to 160,000 persons contracting HIV worldwide. In most cases, the transmission of these agents goes unrecognized because the infection is initially subclinical. An estimated 12 billion injections are administered annually worldwide. Injections are not the most efficient way to transmit HBV, HCV, and HIV, but because so many injections are given, and enough of them are unsafe, they account for a much larger proportion of bloodborne disease transmission than does unsafe transfusion. Global estimates of the percentage of unsafe injections range from 15% in Eastern Europe to 50% throughout Asia. Injections are popular in many settings because they have important social meaning. Dispensing an injection communicates that the patient's problem is serious and that the provider is concerned and reinforces the special status of the healer in the community. The injection healing ritual usually brings comfort even if it appears irrational from a Western perspective. Because biomedical considerations do not motivate the injection, biomedical concerns with injection safety are often not emphasized. Safe Injection Global Network (SIGN) was established in October 1999 as a voluntary association of stakeholders who share a common interest in safe and appropriate use of injections. SIGN associates agree to collaborate with other members for developing a common strategic framework and communication strategy. SIGN recommends a three-part, multidisciplinary approach to achieve safe and appropriate use of injections. First, behavior of health care providers and patients must be changed to decrease injection overuse and achieve safety. Second, sufficient quantities of appropriate injection equipment and infection control supplies should be available. Third, a sharps waste management system should be set up to ensure that disposable equipment is destroyed and not reused. Before SIGN, a number of successful efforts have reduced injection overuse and improved safety. In Indonesia rates of injections decreased from 73% to 14% after group discussions between health care providers and patients. In Tanzania, avoidable injections decreased from 16% to 6% after guidelines to improve injection practices were developed and communicated. In Hafizabad, Pakistan, the proportion of injections conducted with a new sterile syringe increased from 24% to 60% after a health education program was conducted in mosques. Indeed, wherever a plan to promote injection safety has been implemented, it has brought about at least some success. Vaccine programs are centrally important in promoting safe injections. By adopting safe injection practices, these programs can minimize adverse events resulting from their own intervention. These groups can also share their experience in developing reasonable, safe standards and practices and help catalyze change by being high profile early adopters of injection safety. Persons interested in learning more about injection safety can visit the Web site www.injectionsafety.org. Injection Safety Stephen Luby Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA


Males have dominated societal institutions including the family in nearly all cultures throughout human history. For most of the world, women have a double work role with little economic reward. This gender stratification has both micro and macro effects in nearly all societies. The scene shifted slightly in Western society with the romanticism of the Victorian age as well as with urbanization, the franchise, and the spread of new psychological doctrines in the first half of the twentieth century. Along with other minorities, women began their search for liberation in the 1960s--a struggle that continues through the 1990s. The purpose of this article is to place the change in women's status over the last generation in a broad theoretical and historical context. In Western society from the classical civilizations to the modern age the male has been dominant. Spain, which shaped Hispanic America, was steeped in Roman and Arabic traditions, even more than were its northern neighbors. From colonial times to the early twentieth century men regarded women as chattel; nonetheless, women were asking questions. For instance, in 1879 in La mujer, a women's periodical in Colombia, the editor asks: "Why cannot women enter industrial employment or the university as they do in Europe?" In the 1926 El hogar (a twentieth-century successor to La mujer) a significant question was whether a woman should request her husband's permission to have her hair bobbed!(1) Even in a liberal country like Chile in the early 1900s women could enter the professions but had only secondary rights in the custody of their children and until recently could sign no legal documents without the husband's approval. With exception of the Pinochet dictatorship, Chilean women--unlike their sisters in neighboring countries--probably have as open access to the professions as almost anywhere in the Western world.(2) As the women's movement for identity and equality surfaced in the 1960s, it struggled against an enormous anti-feminist bias. Moreover, in the redefinition of gender statuses and roles in the 1960s and beyond, a number of theories emerged to clarify the underpinnings of gender inequality. These derive from biology, psychiatry, psychology to anthropology and sociology, with several theorists representing cross-disciplines. For example, according to some observers of preliterate societies the subordinate status of females stems from "menstrual defilement." Psychoanalysis, at least the Freudian version, places gender development within the parental relationship, notably the Oedipal and Electra complexes. These notions are under increasing criticism by behavioral scientists. Indeed, feminist revision of orthodox Freudianism stresses the interplay of personality, particularly the asymmetry in parental and sibling relations. That is, the mother assumes a more passive relationship, and the son asserts the autonomy he acquires from his father.(3) Beyond the discussion of biological and psychiatric approaches is a fundamental debate about the feminine role in society. Feminist theory is divided into various factions, ranging from "radical" to "liberal." It is an oversimplification to refer to the radicals as seeing women as free agents, whereas liberals lean to the woman's role as rooted in the family but would prefer a widening of her options. The distinction also hinges on differing stances on both methodology and ideology. These ideologies include Marxist, neo-Marxist, and anti-Marxist analyses by a host of other theorists. As one Brazilian Marxist puts it, capitalism turns to gender to limit the number of individuals who may enter the competitive labor market. Marginalization of women arises from the incapacity of capitalism to use all available workers.(4) A number of feminists adhere to poststructuralism as it denotes a reversal of the stream of structuralist-functionalist positions stretching from Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century to the more sophisticated theorist Talcott Parsons in the mid-twentieth century. …


Lithium is potentially an attractive tracer of continental weathering because its two isotopes have a large relative mass difference, it is unaffected by biological activity and it is only slightly incompatible during magmatic processes so tends to be relatively uniformly distributed in the Earth's crust. Moreover, Li is conservative in the oceans, with a residence time of ca. 1 million years, and it is isotopically uniform on a global scale $({\delta}^{7}Li{\approx}31ppm$. Seminal work by Lui Chan and her co-workers has shown that the Li and Li isotope balance of the oceans is maintained by inputs of high-temperature hydrothermal fluids at oceanic ridges (with $({\delta}^{7}Li{\approx} +6.7ppm)$ and dissolved Li from rivers $(average {\delta}^{7}Li = +23ppm)$, and low-temperature removal of Li into oceanic basalts and marine sediments.

Despite this potential, relatively little is known about the behaviour of Li during continental weathering. In this study, we will present an overview of the work that we have conducted on Li and Li isotopes in rivers, soils and estuaries from catchments in Greenland, Iceland and the Himalaya, as well as laboratory studies of mineral dissolution and precipitation. Each of these case studies illustrates the effects of weathering processes on the riverine isotope signal, and the estuarine data illustrate how this signal is transferred to the oceans. Our data suggest that variations in rock type have little effect on riverine $\delta^{7}Li$; the principal control is preferential removal of $^{6}Li$ into secondary minerals formed during weathering, leaving the residual waters enriched in $^{7}Li$. In subglacial environments, where weathering rates are very low, uptake of Li by ferric oxyhydroxides formed during sulphide oxidation is important.

Our results clearly demonstrate that weathering processes can exert a significant effect on the Li isotope composition of natural waters. In order to understand whether changes in such processes with time are preserved, we have also generated records of the past variation in the Li and Li isotopic composition of the oceans. The challenges in the generation and interpretation of these records will be discussed.


An accurate, simple, and sensitive indirect spectrophotometric method which proposed and developed for the determination of paracetamol in different pharmaceutical preparations. The proposed method was based on acid hydrolysis of PAR to produced p-aminophenol (PAP), PAP was diazotization with nitrite ion to form the corresponding diazonium salt, followed by coupling with histidine reagent in alkaline medium to produced azo dye that showed maximum absorbance at 430 nm. Beer's law was obeyed in the concentration rage of 10-500 μg/20 ml (i.e. 0.5-25 ppm). The molar absorpitivity and Sandell's sensitivity of the dye were. 1.118×10 l.mol.cmand 0.0135 μg.cm respectively. The method successfully has been applied for the determination of PAR in pure form,and its pharmaceutical preparations (tablets, syrup and injection).


Global changes in the 21st century appear intractable as social, technological and environmental trends force the contemporary organization to address these uncertainties in vision and strategic direction. Enterprises across nearly all sectors of the globalized economy must adapt competitive strategies to anticipate specific political, resource, and market uncertainties that could impact expected growth and broader social benefits. Yet the inclusion of strategic foresight within system, product and service design projects has yet to reach its potential in business enterprises.
Given the uncertainties these often-cited global trends impose, why are decision makers not relying on strategic foresight to inform design decisions and strategic product service development? The most popular business design processes continue to be decidedly short-term reasoning practices: Agile, Lean, and Design Thinking are at least three problematic methodologies that might repel or constrain the uptake of serious futures anticipation. Business foresight practices are commonly relegated to strategy development, thereby informing business models and competitive strategy, but not necessarily the productive design capacity of the enterprise.
While design often addresses complex business problems for today's world and the immediate future, strategic foresight develops alternative scenarios for the futures in which these solutions will exist. Scholars and educators in these core fields are devoting increased attention to the question the most effective organizational process or fit for successful, actionable long-horizon strategies .


ABSTRACT PURPOSE With the increased interest in social entrepreneurship demonstrated within business schools and academic environments, the adaption of existing academic entrepreneurial constructs for social entrepreneurship applications becomes relevant. The purpose of this thesis is to develop additional tools to the traditional feasibility analysis. The tools will be specifically directed at technology-based concepts, due to the increased employment of technology-based products to solve social problems, in combination with the authors' engineering background, and the lack of academic contributions in this area. APPROACH A grounded theory approach is employed, in which unstructured interviews are used to collect data on the topic of social entrepreneurship from practitioners and academics. New theory is then developed through a discussion divided into three distinct parts, on the basis of empirical findings and existing literature, before new data is collected through a review of the proposed tools. CONCLUSIONS A total of seven analysis tools are introduced, where some are new constructs, while others are based on existing ideas, or even existing models introduced into a new context. A main characteristic of the tools is that they are not concerned with previously established and distinct sections of feasibility analysis, but rather address the interception between the established analysis components. This is the result of the discovery that the success of social business ideas seem to depend on the ability of the entrepreneur to maintain an overarching market and customer focus, which is infused in every aspect of the proposed venture, thus erasing the division between the Market and Industry section and other established sections of analysis. IMPLICATIONS The main implication for analysts is the opportunity to discover fundamental opportunities and challenges in the process of solving a social problem by bringing a new product to market through the establishment of a new organization. FURTHER RESEARCH Further research should include testing of the new tools in actual analysis of new ideas, as well as implementation in a complete analysis framework


Due to increasing available computational resources and to a series of breakthroughs in the solving of nonlinear equations and in the modeling of complex mechanical systems, simulation nowadays becomes more and more predictive. Methods that could quantify the uncertainties associated with the results of the simulation are therefore needed to complete these predictions and widen the possibilities of simulation. One key step of these methods is the exploration of the whole space of the input variables, especially when the computational cost associated with one run of the simulation is high, and when there exists constraints on the inputs, such that the input space cannot be transformed into a hypercube through a bijection. In this context, the present work proposes an adaptive method to generate initial designs of experiments in any bounded convex input space, which are distributed as uniformly as possible on their definition space, while preserving good projection properties for each scalar input. Finally, it will be shown how this method can be used to add new elements to an initial design of experiments while preserving very interesting space
filling properties.


Abstract. Advancements in precision agriculture technologies such as yield monitors have allowed for improved management capabilities and reduced input costs for a number of crops. Most commercialized developments in yield monitoring systems and technologies to date have been directed for use with the major grain crops such as corn, soybeans and cereal grains. This research focuses on development and testing of an impact plate yield monitor system for the peanut harvest. Using a four row peanut combine in virginia type peanuts, 4.8 ha (12 ac) of simultaneous yield data were recorded from an Ag Leader® grain (impact plate) yield monitor and an Ag Leader® cotton (optical) yield monitor. An instrumented cart was used to weigh calibration loads for the two yield monitors tested. Mean absolute error across 10 loads in two fields was 10.2% for the impact plate and 1.54% for the optical yield monitor. Full-season data was not obtained for the impact yield monitor, but mean absolute error for the optical yield monitor across the 2012 harvest season was 9.4%. Regression analyses indicate that use of the two monitors in unison may result in reduced error of the estimate. A large portion of the error calculated for the impact plate yield monitor may be attributable to excessive vibration from the older, straw walker type combine used in this study.


Several lander, probe and rover missions currently under study at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and especially in the Microdevices Laboratory (MDL) Center for Space Microelectronics Technology, focus on utilizing microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based instruments for science data gathering. These small instruments and NASA's commitment to "faster, better, cheaper" type missions has brought about the need for novel approaches to satisfying mission requirements. Existing in-situ instrument systems clearly lack novel and integrated methods for satisfying their vacuum needs. One attractive candidate for a MEMS vacuum pump is the Knudsen Compressor, which operates based on thermal transpiration. Thermal transpiration describes gas flows induced by temperature differences maintained across orifices, porous membranes or capillary tubes under rarefied conditions. This device has two overwhelmingly attractive features as a MEMS vacuum pump no moving parts and no fluids. An initial estimate of a Knudsen Compressor's pumping power requirements for a surface atmospheric sampling task on Mars is less than 80 mW, significantly below than alternative pumps. Due to the relatively low energy use for this task and the applicability of the Knudsen Compressor to other applications, the development of a Knudsen Compressor utilizing MEMS fabrication techniques has been initiated. This paper discusses the initial fabrication of a single-stage MEMS Knudsen Compressor vacuum pump, provides performance criteria such as pumping speed, size, energy use and ultimate pressure and details vacuum pump applications in several MDL related in-situ instruments.


The Regional Conference of Solid State Science and Technology (RCSSST) is an annual event in Malaysia. This 29th Conference 2016 is jointly organized by the Advanced Optical Materials Research Group (AOMRG) and Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) as the host, in cooperation with the Malaysian Solid State Science and Technology Society (MASS).The aim of this conference is to provide a platform for discussions on solid state science and technology in all aspects of physical and chemical properties, preparation and characterization techniques, optical properties; macro-, micro- and nano-structures. In addition, modelling, simulation and measurement methods as well as current developments in technology will also be discussed.


This paper examines the determinants of the high intermediation spread observed in the Colombian banking sector for over two decades. A reduced-form equation is estimated on the basis of a bank profit maximization model that permits a decomposition into operational costs, financial taxation, market power, and loan quality. Although the average spread did not change between the preliberalization (1974–88) and postliberalization (1991–96) periods, its composition did, with market power being significantly reduced and the responsiveness to loan quality increased. Colombia's progress in reducing operational costs and financial taxation and improving loan quality will determine whether it can narrow the spread. [JEL E43, G21, L13]


For a three user Gaussian multiple access channel (MAC), we propose a new superposition block Markov encoding based cooperation scheme. Our scheme allows the three users to simultaneously cooperate both in pairs, and collectively, by dividing the transmitted messages into sub-messages intended for each cooperating partner. The proposed encoding and decoding at the transmitters take into account the relative qualities of the cooperation links between the transmitters. We obtain and evaluate the achievable rate region based on our encoding strategy, and compare it with the achievable rates for the two user cooperative MAC. We demonstrate that the added diversity by the presence of the third user improves the region of achievable rates, and this improvement is especially significant as far as the sum rate of the system is concerned.


This research found that nine in ten Australian women have experienced street harassment and modify their behaviour in response. Overview Actions women are taking for their personal safety include everything from crossing the street to avoid strangers, to pretending to have a conversation on their phone, to grasping their keys as a weapon. The survey of 1426 Australians, commissioned by The Australia Institute, revealed: 87% of Australian women have experienced at least one form of verbal or physical street harassment. - Among those 56% were alone the last time it happened; - 52% reported harassment was by a man, 23% by a group of men, 4% by women. 83% of those age 18-24 experienced street harassment in the last 12 months 40% of Australian women do not feel safe when walking alone at night in the area where they currently live, compared to 17% of men 87% of Australian women have changed their behaviour in at least one way to ensure their own personal safety in the last 12 months


Flow close to the boundaries of bodies is often difficult to measure using particle image velocimetry (PIV); factors such as glare, velocity gradients and the body itself all present challenges in obtaining good quality results. One common problem in conventional PIV algorithms is that they are based on square grids, which for most applications is not aligned with the shape of the body. This means the body will clip part of the window resulting in fewer particles and erroneously placed vectors. Being able to align the interrogation window shape to the body boundary would remove these sources of error. This
study investigates the effect that applying non-square windows has, compared to conventional square windows for three test cases: a free-field, a circular body and an airfoil shape. For each of these a number of interrogation methods are tested. For the circular body, conventional and rotated square windows were tested along with a body fitted mesh. The image was also deformed into R-θ coordinates to enable conventional square window processing, before de-warping the vector field. Square, rotated square and body fitted techniques were also tested on an airfoil shape. It was found that the body-fitted and warping methods both showed significant improvements in the boundary layer over the square meshes; although the warping process added computational expense. The meshing technique was found to have little impact on the free field as there was no body or velocity gradient. Utilising this interrogation method in conjunction with developed methods of automated edge detection and more mature processing algorithms will result in better measurements close to bodies than is possible with conventional square windows. An example application of this technique on flow around a sphere is also demonstrated.


Traditionally urban design is perceived, communicated and created using physical and digital media. However, these realms are handled as separate entities, which hinder collaboration, understanding and communication. Collaborative Augmented Reality (AR) systems can integrate these tasks into one media type and allow a different conversation with complex issues. Human Computer Interfaces and Tangible User Interfaces play key role in AR. They allow an engagement with both the real and virtual component of an urban design project. This paper describes an urban design studio that employs AR as medium of collaboration, the theoretical framework of sense of presence, the understanding and the quality of the resulting design.


In this paper we consider sparse and identifiable linear latent variable (factor) and linear Bayesian network models for parsimonious analysis of multivariate data. We propose a computationally efficient method for joint parameter and model inference, and model comparison. It consists of a fully Bayesian hierarchy for sparse models using slab and spike priors (two-component δ-function and continuous mixtures), non-Gaussian latent factors and a stochastic search over the ordering of the variables. The framework, which we call SLIM (Sparse Linear Identifiable Multivariate modeling), is validated and bench-marked on artificial and real biological data sets. SLIM is closest in spirit to LiNGAM (Shimizu et al., 2006), but differs substantially in inference, Bayesian network structure learning and model comparison. Experimentally, SLIM performs equally well or better than LiNGAM with comparable computational complexity. We attribute this mainly to the stochastic search strategy used, and to parsimony (sparsity and identifiability), which is an explicit part of the model. We propose two extensions to the basic i.i.d. linear framework: non-linear dependence on observed variables, called SNIM (Sparse Non-linear Identifiable Multivariate modeling) and allowing for correlations between latent variables, called CSLIM (Correlated SLIM), for the temporal and/or spatial data. The source code and scripts are available from http://cogsys.imm.dtu.dk/slim/.


This paper discusses and proposes random selection as a component in decision-making in society. Random procedures have played a significant role in history, especially in classical Greece and the medieval city-states of Italy. We examine the important positive features of decisions by random Mechanisms. Random processes allow representativeness with respect to individuals and groups. They significantly reduce opportunities to influence political decisions by means of bribery and corruption and decrease the large expenses associated with today's democratic election campaigns. Random mechanisms can be applied fruitfully to a wide range of fields, including politics, the judiciary, the economy, science and the cultural sector. However, it is important that random selection processes are embedded in appropriately designed institutions.


The relationships between and among institutions, participant's behavior and economic performance are important in several academic disciplines, in the practical affairs of governments, and in the decisions of firms, households and individuals. The most basic generic paradigm in social science is that social and physical environments shape or at least influence human behavior and the resulting behavior of individuals interacting with the environment influences the performance of the unit of society under consideration. This essay is concerned with the problems of developing and using paradigms, theories, or simple beliefs about the relationships among institutions, behavior and performance, recognizing that behavior is never determined by institutions alone, but is always shaped and influenced by the environments of individual actors as well as by their physical makeup.


This paper is concerned with the stabilisation design problem of Networked Control Systems (NCSs) with a compound Markovian transition probabilities. For handling the inter–sample behaviour, a novel segmented norm bounded method is proposed. By using this method, the conservativeness which is related to the larger interval of network–induced delay can be reduced. Correspondingly, a less conservative mode dependent stabilisation criterion expressed in terms of linear matrix inequalities is obtained. The effectiveness and merits of the proposed method are finally illustrated via numerical simulation.


In the latest skirmish in a long-running dispute over the bones of a 9300-year-old American known as Kennewick Man, the Army Corps of Engineers this week is dumping tons of boulders on the site where the bones were found. Under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the corps wants to turn the skeleton over for reburial to the Umatilla Tribe of northeastern Oregon, who claim him as an ancestor. But eight prominent anthropologists who have sued the corps for permission to study the skeleton say that covering the site will bury important information and possibly additional bones. This clash is part of a larger battle over who controls American prehistory, pitting Native American religious beliefs against scientists9 desire to test their still-evolving theories stemming from recent discoveries indicating an unexpected degree of diversity among the earliest Americans.


An exceptionally facile process is presented for in situ formation of zinc chromium layered double hydroxide (ZnCr:LDH) nanosheets on a conducting substrate. Thus, ZnCr:LDH nanosheets were synthesized from a metallic Zn film/fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass by simply dipping into a Cr nitrate solution for only one minute at room temperature. Then, ZnCr:LDHs were converted into zinc chromium mixed metal oxide (ZnCr:MMO) nanoparticles by calcination. Under visible light irradiation (λ > 420 nm), the in situ synthesized ZnCr:MMO photoanode exhibited a stable and an order-of-magnitude higher activity for photoelectrochemical water splitting than that of a ZnCr:MMO film fabricated ex situ by electrophoretic deposition of already-synthesized ZnCr:MMO powders. More significant was that it generated anodic photocurrents even without an externally applied bias potential, which is an unprecedented result for an oxide photoanode-driven PEC system working under visible light.


here is a public anecdote that Indonesia's Civil Service has low performance and also tends to abuse their power for their own benefit. This condition arose by bloat organization, low paid-salary system and un-professional its managemeTnt. Though Indonesians agree that civil service should be reformed, unfortunately it was not executed comprehensively. Remuneration tried to replace a rigid Indonesia's civil service payment system adopted on selected ministry choosing as a first step of civil service reformation in Indonesia recently. Salary adjustment viewed as a vital element which can improve civil service performance and also prevent government's employee rent seeking from their work. However, remuneration it is only a small part of bureaucracy reform, salary increase was not the only way the bureaucracy reform could improve civil servants productivity and the government's performance. The more important elements are to reform organization structure, business processes and human resources management. Salary adjustment was important as rewards for civil servants but not the key for the success of a comprehensive bureaucracy reform.
Keywords: Civil Service Reform, Organization, Performance, Remuneration


Recent studies have suggested that the viral lysis of microbes not only facilitates the conversion of particulate organic matter into dissolved organic matter, but also promotes the formation of organic aggregates, which enhance the export of organic carbon from the surface ocean to the deep sea. However, experimental data supporting this proposition are limited. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the viral infection of marine diatoms enhances aggregate formation. We used a model system consisting of Chaetoceros tenuissimus, a bloom-forming diatom with an approximate cell size of 3–10 µm, and a DNA virus, CtenDNAV type II, which replicates in the nucleus of C. tenuissimus. The volume of large particles (50–400 µm in equivalent spherical diameters, determined from photographic images) was measured over time (up to 15 days) in the diatom-alone control and a virus-added diatom culture. We also determined the concentrations of Coomassie-stainable particles (CSP, proteinaceous particles) and transparent exopolymeric particles (TEP, acid-polysaccharide-rich particles) with colorimetric methods. The total volume of large particles was significantly higher (5–59 fold) in the virus-added diatoms than in the diatom-alone control during the period in which the viral lysis of the diatoms proceeded. One class of large particles produced in the virus-added diatoms was flake-shaped. The flakes were tightly packed and dense, and sank rapidly, possibly playing an important role in the vertical delivery of materials from the surface to the deep sea. The bulk CSP concentrations tended to be higher in the virus-added diatoms than in the diatom-alone control, whereas the reverse was true for the TEP. These results suggest that proteinaceous polymers are involved in aggregate formation. Our data support the emerging notion that the viral lysis of microbes facilitates aggregate formation and the export of organic carbon in the ocean.


The effects of a stress management program upon the Type A behavior pattern were examined in a sample of patients with coronary heart disease who were enrolled in an on-going cardiac rehabilitation program. Based upon exhibition of Type A behavior (defined by the Structured Interview), patients were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: (a) behavioral stress management, (b) supportive (attention placebo control group), and (c) no treatment (waiting list control group). Patients receiving treatment attended 10 sessions of 1-1% hours duration, as well pretreatment and posttreatment assessment sessions. Patients in the no treatment condition also completed the assessments. The evaluation of treatment outcome was based upon preto post-treatment change. Hypotheses that patients in the behavioral stress management condition would demonstrate greater reductions than the supportive and no treatment conditions on measures of the behavior pattern and cardiovascular reactivity during the Quiz Electrocardiogram (QE) and cold pressor were not supported. Changes during treatment were, however, significant for some of the Type A measures (Structured Interview, Framingham Scale, and Bortner Scale) and the QE but did not distinguish between experimental conditions. Cold pressor results demonstrated neither a significant time (preto post-treatment) by group (experimental conditions) interaction nor a significant time effect. Secondary variables (lipids, anxiety, and marital satisfaction) demonstrated a similar pattern of results. Results did offer a slight suggestion that the assessment procedures may have had a sensitizing effect which motivated patients to act more appropriately with respect vii to the stressors in their lives and that participation in treatment may have assisted patients' daily coping with stress. As a whole, this intervention program was not effective. The lack of positive outcome is discussed in terms of possible mitigating factors, i.e., a negative association between Type A behavior and severity of coronary artery disease, patients' ages, patients' medication, and patients' prolonged participation in an exercise oriented rehabilitation program. The present results suggest that specific Type A interventions are not necessary for all coronary patients and that the parameters of matching coronary patients with psychological interventions need refinement.


Background: Many previous studies on mining prescription sequences are based only on frequency information, such as the number of prescriptions and the total number of patients issued the prescription. However, in cases where a very small number of doctors issue a prescription representative of a certain medication pattern to many patients many times, the prescribing intention of this very small number of doctors has a great influence on pattern extraction, which introduces bias into the final extracted frequent prescription sequence pattern.
Objectives: We attempt to extract frequent prescription sequences from more diverse perspectives by considering factors other than frequency information to ensure highly reliable medication patterns.
Methods: We propose the concept of unbiased frequent use by doctors as a factor in addition to frequency information based on the hypothesis that a prescription used by many doctors unbiasedly is a highly reliable prescription. We propose a medication pattern mining method that considers unbiased frequent use by doctors. We conducted an evaluation experiment using indicators based on clinical laboratory test results as a comparative evaluation of the existing method, which relied only on frequency, and included consideration of unbiased frequent use by doctors by the proposed method.
Results: The weighted average value of the top k for two different evaluation methods is obtained.
Conclusions: The study suggested that our medication pattern mining method considering unbiased frequent use by doctors is useful in certain situations such as when the clinical laboratory test value is outside of the normal value range.