Lung cancer is the commonest type of cancer with the highest fatality rate worldwide. There is continued research that experiments on drug development for lung cancer patients by assessing their responses to chemotherapeutic treatments to select novel targets for improved therapies. This study aims to analyze the anticancer drug sensitivity in human lung cancer cell lines by using machine learning techniques. The data for this analysis is extracted from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This experiment uses 408,291 human small molecule lung cancer cell lines to conclude. The values are drawn from describing the raw viability values for 91 human lung cancer cell lines treated with 354 different chemical compounds and 432 concentration points tested in each replicate experiments. Our analysis demonstrated the data from a considerable amount of cell lines clustered by using Simple K-means, Filtered clustering and by calculating sensitive drugs for each lung cancer cell line. Additionally, our analysis also demonstrated that the Neopeltolide, Parbendazole, Phloretin and Piperlongumine anti-drug chemical compounds were more sensitive for all 91 cell lines under different concentrations (p-value < 0.001). Our findings indicated that Simple K-means and Filtered clustering methods are completely similar to each other. The available literature on lung cancer cell line data observed a significant relationship between lung cancer and anticancer drugs. Our analysis of the reported experimental results demonstrated that some compounds are more sensitive than other compounds; Phloretin was the most sensitive compound for all lung cancer cell lines which were nearly about 59% out of 91 cell lines. Hence, our observation provides the methodology on how anticancer drug sensitivity of lung cancer cell lines can be analyzed by using machine learning techniques, such as clustering algorithms. This inquiry is a useful reference for researchers who are experimenting on drug developments for the lung cancer in the future.


Aims: Microorganisms play an important role in winemaking. Most of their metabolisms are beneficial to the wine quality but several species have spoilage effects. Microbiological knowledge are crucial for improving species and strains identification and avoiding contamination by spoilage agents. Our objective was to follow wine microbial consortia at each stage of the process from grapes to bottles, and also on cellar equipment surface: barrels for the yeast analysis and tanks for the bacteria analysis.Methods and results: For a global microbial monitoring, molecular tools are particularly efficient. We chose the PCR-DGGE for direct analyses without cultivation step. We used the rpoΒ gene as target for the bacteria, and the 26S rRNA gene for the yeast. Species inventories were made during the whole winemaking process, which had never been done before.Conclusion: From the grape surface to storage in bottles, the microbial diversity decreased. Only the most resistant species were able to survive to the ethanol, SO2, low oxygen and low pH constraints. Among them, Pediococcus parvulus for the bacteria and Brettanomyces bruxellensis for the yeast were the most resistant.Significance and impact of study: The use of a molecular method independent of the culture stage of the microorganisms like the PCRDGGE has allowed to have a more exhaustive vision of the diversity of the bacteria and yeasts species and to follow their evolution during the winemaking and in the cellar environment . These follow-ups could be extended to other estates in order to study the causes and the consequences of certain variations. The detection of these two prejudicial species was an argument for the PCR-DGGE approach in wine microbial studies.


Mechanisms responsible for the embrittlement of leaded "free-machining" copper alloys at intermediate temperatures (i.e. around 400 °C) are examined using a combination of microstructural and mechanical characterization. Tensile tests are conducted on pure copper and on industrial high-strength Cu-Ni-Sn alloys, comparing leaded and unleaded versions, at strain rates ranging from 10-4 to 10 s-1, and various temperatures between 25 °C and 800 °C. It is found that, in the leaded samples, both liquid metal embrittlement and grain boundary embrittlement operate at intermediate temperature,i.e., near the melting point of lead. Their respective importance depends mainly on the strain rate: fracture at high strain rate (10 s-1) displays characteristic signatures of liquid metal embrittlement, while at low strain rate (10-4 s-1) the ductility trough behaviour can be attributed to grain boundary embrittlement. In leaded copper and copper alloys, lead is mostly present as discrete inclusions, frequently located along grain boundaries. The dihedral angle of intergranular lead inclusions is then the main microstructural parameter besides their size. A new technique is proposed and demonstrated for the measurement of inclusion dihedral angle in a high-purity Cu-1 wt.% Pb alloy, based on room temperature characterization of samples that were held at elevated temperature at times sufficiently long for shape equilibration of the inclusions and then rapidly quenched. Quantitative scanning electron microscopic analysis of metallographic surfaces along which individual inclusions have been dissolved is used to deduce the dihedral angle using a mathematical fit of their solid/liquid interface. For a specific temperature, we show that the dihedral angle is not unique; this reflects the fact that high-angle grain boundary energies are not constant in copper. Existing micromechanical analyses of shape equilibrium for intergranular inclusions in the presence of external stress are adapted to produce an improved description at low stress and to take into account the inclusion bulk compressibility. The derivation is based on minimization of the global capillary and elastic strain energy associated with such inclusions. An adimensional parameter that depends on the applied stress, the inclusion volume, the elastic properties of the solid, and the relevant interfacial energies emerges from the analysis as the sole factor governing the shape of the inclusion. If void nucleation occurs easily within the inclusion, such that its apparent bulk modulus is nil, the inclusion become unstable, degenerating to a crack when this adimensional parameter exceeds a critical value. Measurements of the dihedral angle on samples previously subjected to a remote stress at 400 °C show that applied stress causes a reduction in the apparent dihedral angle of liquid lead inclusions. Calculated critical stresses for both leaded pure copper and leaded copper-nickel-tin alloys that fail at high strain rate by liquid metal embrittlement are calculated for individual inclusions in the metal. These calculated critical stresses correlate relatively well with the measured fracture stress, suggesting that shape instability of the inclusions cause fracture of the alloys. This result is applied towards the suggestion of general strategies for reduction of the susceptibility of leaded copper alloys to liquid metal embrittlement. A case study addressing the problem of quench cracking of leaded Cu-Ni-Sn alloys on the basis of experimentation and finite element thermomechanical simulation, showing how the problem can be alleviated in production, concludes the thesis.


There are two ways to read the Court's decision in Shelby County, as a minimalist decision and as a decision that has undermined the basic infrastructure of voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. In this Essay, we present the case for reading Shelby County as deeply destabilizing. We argue that Shelby County has undermined three assumptions that are foundational to voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. First, the Court has generally granted primacy of the federal government over the states. Second, the Court has deferred to Congress particularly where Congress is regulating at the intersection of race and voting. Third, the Court and Congress have understood that racial discrimination is the problem and have operated from a similar conception of what racial discrimination means. Shelby County undermines all three assumptions. We explore what this means for voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence going forward.


Background: Treating chronic, uncontrolled, cancer pain with subcutaneous ketamine in patients unresponsive to opioids and co-analgesics remains controversial, especially in light of recent evidence demonstrating ketamine does not have net clinical benefit in this setting. Aim: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of subcutaneous ketamine versus placebo in this patient population. Design and setting: A within-trial cost-effectiveness analysis of the Australian Palliative Care Clinical Studies Collaborative's randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of ketamine was conducted from a healthcare provider perspective. Mean costs and outcomes were estimated from participant-level data over 5 days including positive response, health-related quality of life (HrQOL) measured with the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy–Palliative Care (FACIT-Pal), ketamine costs, medication usage and in-patient stays. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in responder rates, but higher toxicity and worse HrQOL for ketamine participants (mean change −3.10 (standard error (SE) 1.76), ketamine n = 93; 4.53 (SE 1.38), placebo n = 92). Estimated total mean costs were AU$706 higher per ketamine participant (AU$6608) compared with placebo (AU$5902), attributable to the cost of higher in-patient costs as well as costs of ketamine administration. The results were robust to sensitivity analyses accounting for different medication use costing methods and removal of cost outliers. Conclusion: The findings suggest subcutaneous ketamine in conjunction with opioids and standard adjuvant therapy is neither an effective nor cost-effective treatment for refractory pain in advanced cancer patients.


A new statistical sampling sequence called Sampler has been developed for the SCALE code system. Random values for the input multigroup cross sections are determined by using the XSUSA program to sample uncertainty data provided in the SCALE covariance library. Using these samples, Sampler computes perturbed self-shielded cross sections and propagates the perturbed nuclear data through any specified SCALE analysis sequence, including those for criticality safety, lattice physics with depletion, and shielding calculations. Statistical analysis of the output distributions provides uncertainties and correlations in the desired responses, due to nuclear data uncertainties. The Sampler/XSUSA methodology is described, and example applications are shown for criticality safety and spent-fuel analysis.


Previous studies have identified possible linkages between solar activity and tropical cyclone activity in the United States and Caribbean. This study used historical typhoon records dating back to the early 1700s, the Central Weather Bureau records (since 1897), and the JTWC (Joint Typhoon Warning Center) (since 1945) to investigate the relationship between solar activity and the number of typhoons in Taiwan. The results show that a negative relationship exists between solar activity and typhoon frequency in Taiwan at decadal time scales. Fewer typhoons occurred during the periods 1770 to 1790 and 1930 to 1960, with a higher number of typhoons occurring during 1810 to 1830 and 1870 to 1930. A likely mechanism for the relationship is that more intense solar activity can warm the lower stratosphere and the upper troposphere through absorption of solar radiation by atmospheric ozone. This would decrease the convective available potential energy and reduce the frequency of typhoon occurrence. As a consequence, fewer typhoons form over the western North Pacific with fewer affecting Taiwan. The negative correlation between solar activity and the number of typhoons affecting Taiwan is important to understand changes in the frequency and behavior of typhoons resulting from climate change.


Humans manipulate fluids intuitively using approximations of the underlying physical laws. In this paper, we explore a general methodology that robots may use to develop and improve strategies for overcoming manipulation tasks associated with appropriately defined loss functions. We focus on the specific task of pouring a liquid from a container (pourer) to another container (receiver) while minimizing the mass of liquid that spills outside the receiver. We present a solution, based on guidance from approximate simulation, that is fast, flexible and adaptable to novel containers as long as their shapes can be sensed. Our key idea is to decouple the optimization of the parameter space of the simulator from the optimization over action space for determining robot control actions. We perform the former in a training (calibration) stage and the latter during run-time (deployment). For the purpose of this paper we use pouring in both stages, even though separate actions could be chosen. We compare four different strategies for calibration and three different strategies for deployment. Our results demonstrate that fast fluid simulations, even if only approximate, are effective in guiding automatic strategies for pouring liquids.


The Clock Drawing Test (CDT) is widely used in the assessment of dementia and is known to be sensitive to the detection of deficits in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). CDT performance is dependent not only on visuospatial and constructional abilities, but also on conceptual and executive functioning; therefore, it is likely to be mediated by multiple brain regions. The purpose of the present study was to identify component cognitive processes and regional cortical volumes that contribute to CDT performance in AD. In 29 patients with probable AD, CDT performance was significantly related to right-, but not left-hemisphere, regional gray matter volume. Specifically, CDT score correlated significantly with the right anterior and posterior superior temporal lobe volumes. CDT scores showed significant relationships with tests of semantic knowledge, executive function, and visuoconstruction, and receptive language. These results suggest that in AD patients, CDT performance is attributable to impairment in multiple cognitive domains but is related specifically to regional volume loss of right temporal cortex. (JINS, 1999, 5, 502–509.)


The Oko Shear Zone is a late Precambrian, N- to NW-trending, post-accretionary deformational belt in the Red Sea Hills of the Sudan. It left-laterally offsets the c. 800–750 Ma old, NE-trending Nakasib suture by about 10 km. The Shear Zone evolved through three phases of deformations: (1) an early E-W-directed flattening deformation which produced N-trending upright folds; followed by (2) major NW-trending, left-lateral and, minor NE-trending, right-lateral strike-slip faulting; and (3) late E- and W-verging thrusts and buckles associated with a flower structure. The structural similarities between the Oko Shear Zone and other post-accretionary deformational belts in the Arabian-Nubian Shield suggest an evolutionary sequence for these belts: (1) suturing events were completed by c. 700 Ma ago 'and resulted in the formation of E- to NE-trending ophiolite-decorated sutures; (2) an E-W-directed flattening deformation was superimposed due to collision of the Arabian-Nubian Shield with the Nile craton in the west and the Ar Rayn micro-plate to the east at c. 670–610 Ma ago; this produced discrete zones of N-trending upright folds; (3) the flattening deformation culminated in the initiation of major NW-trending, left-lateral, and minor NE-trending, right-lateral strike-slip faults as conjugate sets at c. 640–560 Ma ago.


The introduction of Free Primary Education in Kenya left the government with a greater role and burden in financing primary education. The new role encompassed mobilization of resources, paying tuition fees, training, recruitment and paying teachers, and the provision of infrastructure and instructional materials. Parents on the other hand were required to provide basic needs for their children such as school uniforms, food and transport to school where necessary. This paper sought to establish the funding mechanisms for FPE and examine the sustainability of the FPE initiative. The study was conducted in Kakamega and Kajiado districts (now Counties). From the 59 schools sampled, 59 headteachers and 177 teachers were included in the study. Fourteen Area Education Officers (AEOs), 118 parents, 118 School Management Committee (SMC) members, 2 District Education Officers and 7 senior officers from the Ministry of Education headquarters were also interviewed. The study used questionnaires, interview schedules and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) for data collection. Head teachers and teachers indicated that no preparation for FPE had been given to them prior to implementation and the training given after introduction of FPE was inadequate and rushed. Head teachers and teachers revealed that most parents were not actively involved in school management affairs and had misinterpreted the FPE policy. Members of SMC were seen as lacking the necessary capacity to contribute effectively in financial management, budgeting and curriculum support in schools. Still, SMCs were more supportive than PTAs. Five concerns emerged as fundamental to the sustainability of FPE in Kenya: budgetary provisions and constraints, Kenya's economic performance, donor support, political commitment and community support. The sustainability of FPE is threatened by high cost of funding, the shortage of teachers, reliance on donor support, uncertainty over continued political goodwill, slowed growth of the Kenyan economy and the apathy from parents. There are policy gaps relating to early childhood education, admission of pupils into primary schools and allocation of FPE grants. Keywords: Funding, Free Primary Education, Prospective Sustainability, Kakamega, Kajiado Districts, Kenya


Red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) plantations have been established in Michigan with
expectations of mixed final product goals: pulpwood, boltwood and possibly sawlogs.
The effects of alternative treatments on tree and stand attributes were examined in:
the Atlantic Mine trial, thinned in spring 2006 with three alternatives: (1) every fifth row
removal plus crown thinning, (2) every third row removal plus crown thinning and (3)
every third row removal plus thinning from below; the Crane Lake trial, thinned in fall
2004 with two alternatives: (1) every third row removal and (2) every third row
removal plus thinning from above; the Middle Branch East trial, thinned in fall 2004
with two alternatives: (1) every third row removal plus one in three remaining trees
and (2) every third row removal plus one in five remaining trees. All trials included
control plots where no thinning was applied. The trials were established in the field as
a randomized complete block experiments, in which individual trees were measured
in 3-4 fixed-area plots located within each treatment unit. Growth responses of
diameter at breast height, height, live crown length, stand basal area and stand
volume were examined along with their increments. The Tukey multiple comparison
test was used to detect significant differences between treatments in their effect on
tree growth response. The results showed that diameter increment increased with
increasing thinning intensity and was significantly larger in thinned plots compared to
unthinned. Treatments did not substantially affect average tree height increment.
Stand basal area increment was significantly larger in the control plot only the year
after the harvest. Volume increment was significantly larger in controls, but did not
differ considerably among remaining treatments. However, the ratio of volume
increment to standing volume was significantly smaller in unthinned plots compared
to thinned. Since thinning treatments in all trials hardly ever differed significantly in
their effect on stand growth response, mainly due to the relatively short time of the
evaluation, heavier thinnings should be favored due to higher volume increment rates
and shorter time needed to reach desirable diameters. Nevertheless, economic
evaluation based on obtained results will be conducted in the future in order to make
final decisions about the most profitable treatment.


Abstract The new mineral juansilvaite (IMA2015-080), Na5Al3[AsO3(OH)]4[AsO2(OH)2]2(SO4)2·4H2O,was found at the Torrecillas mine, Iquique Province, Chile, where it occurs as a secondary alteration phase in association with anhydrite, canutite, halite, sulfur and a mahnertite-like phase. Juansilvaite occurs as bright pink blades up to ∼0.5 mmlong grouped in tightly intergrown radial aggregates and also as opaque dull pale pink rounded aggregates. Blades are flattened on {001}, elongated on [100] and exhibit the forms {001}, {111} and {201̅}. Crystals are transparent, with vitreous lustre and white streak. The Mohs hardness is ∼ 2½, tenacity is brittle and fracture is irregular. Cleavage is very good on {001}. The measured density is 3.01(2) g cm-3 and the calculated density is 3.005 g cm-3. Optically, juansilvaite is biaxial (+) with α = 1.575(1), β = 1.597(1), γ = 1.623(1) and 2V = 86(1)° (measured in white light). Dispersion is r < v, slight, and the orientation is X = b; Z ^ c = 27° in the obtuse angle β. The pleochroism is X > Y ≈ Z in shades of pale pink. The mineral is slowly soluble in dilute HCl at room temperature. The empirical formula, determined from electron-microprobe analyses, is Na4.95Al2.28Fe3+0.50Mn3+0.21Cu0.04As5.92S1.83O36H17.37. Juansilvaite is monoclinic, C2/c, a = 18.1775(13), b = 8.6285(5), c = 18.5138(13) Å, β = 90.389(6)°, V = 2903.7(3) Å3 and Z = 4. The eight strongest powder X-ray diffraction lines are [dobs Å(I)(hkl)]: 9.25(100)(002), 7.20(34)(1̅11), 4.545(34)(400), 3.988(39)(1̅14), 3.363(42)(314), 3.145(66)(5̅12,420), 2.960(68)(4̅22,422) and 2,804(33)(131,4̅23). The structure of juansilvaite (R1 = 3.82% for 2040 Fo > 4σF reflections) contains layers made up of alternating corner-linked Al-O octahedra and acid-arsenate tetrahedra. Sodium cations occur both peripheral to the layers and within cavities in the layers. An SO4 tetrahedron and an H2O group also are in the interlayer region.


An enduring aspect of any notion of community is a sense of being connected to others. It is the experience of communitas - in that sense of the word employed by Buber and later developed by Victor Turner - that brings a particular emphasis and persistence to this aspect of 'belonging' associated with community. The disparity between the hopeful ideas placed around community and the often much more chaotic and conflict ridden experience of actually being with others, suggests that communitas needs our consideration. This is particularly so if our involvement with community is to be driven not by a sense of nostalgia or utopian desire, but instead by intention to develop some agency amidst the gradients of power that surround and run through it.

Communitas presents us with a particularly unfettered form of relationship, but one that occurs primarily in liminal environments. Commonly, liminal space is considered to be a moment in time between one state and another, a condition of 'betwixt and between'. However, this observation avoids acknowledging that the function of liminal space is to provide participants with a reflexive environment, one removed from the normal parameters of social structures. Such a reflexive space, consciously entered and exited, can provide both community members and the community itself with the opportunity to more creatively engage with the world and its own contradictions and conflicts.

Being able to move across the threshold into, and out of, liminal space, places considerable demands on those involved. My argument in this thesis, that liminality and communitas are integral to the functioning of community, leads to the proposal that negotiating the transition in and out of liminal environments requires community members to exercise a degree of individual reflective practice. Schőn's concept of reflection-iniv action is proposed as a suitable meta-skill for operating in this way. Reflection-in-action bears an affinity with the sense of flow engendered by communitas; it also implies a readiness both to reframe questions and respond in an improvisational manner. These two gestures are required in order to meet the demands of liminality.


Magnitude pruning is a widely used strategy for reducing model size in pure supervised learning; however, it is less effective in the transfer learning regime that has become standard for state-of-the-art natural language processing applications. We propose the use of movement pruning, a simple, deterministic first-order weight pruning method that is more adaptive to pretrained model fine-tuning. We give mathematical foundations to the method and compare it to existing zeroth- and first-order pruning methods. Experiments show that when pruning large pretrained language models, movement pruning shows significant improvements in high-sparsity regimes. When combined with distillation, the approach achieves minimal accuracy loss with down to only 3% of the model parameters.


What is the scope of the Palestinian entitlement to the territory of the West Bank, currently occupied by Israel? The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and its derivative, a Palestinian right to statehood, have been widely acknowledged. But does the right to self-determination determine the borders of the Palestinian state, giving rise to a Palestinian territorial entitlement to the whole of the West Bank? The article answers this question in the negative, demonstrating that neither state practice nor the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice support a rule of customary international law that assigns self-determination considerations a role in the demarcation of international boundaries.

The article also examines the role of international recognition of title to territory in the resolution of the territorial dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. To what extent does international law empower the international community to resolve a territorial dispute over the objection of an affected party, by pronouncing a collective position that reflects near-consensus? The article concludes that a collective recognition by the international community of Palestinian title to territories currently occupied by Israel would have neither a probative value nor a constitutive effect under international law, unless such international position takes the form of U.N. Security Council action in the exercise of its binding powers under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter.

The article further demonstrates that international law does not support an Israeli claim to sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. This inquiry focuses on a critical examination of a theory recently advanced in legal literature, which predicates such a claim on the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. Finally, the article considers the consequences of the absence of a norm of international law governing the demarcation of the border between Israel and the Palestinians.


Increases in on-chip communication delay and the large working sets of server and scientific workloads complicate the design of the on-chip last-level cache for multicore processors. The large working sets favor a shared cache design that maximizes the aggregate cache capacity and minimizes off-chip memory requests. At the same time, the growing on-chip communication delay favors core-private caches that replicate data to minimize delays on global wires. Recent hybrid proposals offer lower average latency than conventional designs, but they address the placement requirements of only a subset of the data accessed by the application, require complex lookup and coherence mechanisms that increase latency, or fail to scale to high core counts.
 In this work, we observe that the cache access patterns of a range of server and scientific workloads can be classified into distinct classes, where each class is amenable to different block placement policies. Based on this observation, we propose Reactive NUCA (R-NUCA), a distributed cache design which reacts to the class of each cache access and places blocks at the appropriate location in the cache. R-NUCA cooperates with the operating system to support intelligent placement, migration, and replication without the overhead of an explicit coherence mechanism for the on-chip last-level cache. In a range of server, scientific, and multiprogrammed workloads, R-NUCA matches the performance of the best cache design for each workload, improving performance by 14% on average over competing designs and by 32% at best, while achieving performance within 5% of an ideal cache design.


Recently, a series of algorithms have been explored for GAN compression, which aims to reduce tremendous computational overhead and memory usages when deploying GANs on resource-constrained edge devices. However, most of the existing GAN compression work only focuses on how to compress the generator, while fails to take the discriminator into account. In this work, we revisit the role of discriminator in GAN compression and design a novel generator-discriminator cooperative compression scheme for GAN compression, termed GCC. Within GCC, a selective activation discriminator automatically selects and activates convolutional channels according to a local capacity constraint and a global coordination constraint, which help maintain the Nash equilibrium with the lightweight generator during the adversarial training and avoid mode collapse. The original generator and discriminator are also optimized from scratch, to play as a teacher model to progressively refine the pruned generator and the selective activation discriminator. A novel online collaborative distillation scheme is designed to take full advantage of the intermediate feature of the teacher generator and discriminator to further boost the performance of the lightweight generator. Extensive experiments on various GAN-based generation tasks demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization of GCC. Among them, GCC contributes to reducing 80% computational costs while maintains comparable performance in image translation tasks. Our code and models are available at https://github.com/SJLeo/GCC.


We have developed a molecular model to describe the structural changes and potential collapse of weak polyelectrolyte layers end-tethered to planar surfaces and spherical nanoparticles as a function of pH and divalent ion concentration. In particular, we describe the structural changes of polymer-coated nanoparticles end-tethered to copolymers of poly(acrylic acid) (pAA) and poly arcrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonate (pAMPS) in the presence of Ca2+ ions. We find that end-grafted poly(acrylic acid) layers will collapse in aqueous solutions containing sufficient amounts of Ca2+ ions, while polymers and copolymers with sufficient AMPS monomers will not collapse. The collapse of end-tethered pAA is due to the formation of calcium bridges between two acrylic acid monomers and one calcium ion. On the other hand pAMPS layers do not collapse due to the lack of calcium bridges. The collapse of pAA layers is strongly dependent on the pH as well as divalent and monovalent salt concentrations of the environment. The collapse is also strongly influenced by the curvature of the tethering surface.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


It's not just bank managers that have a headache as they watch home-owners repay loans late or not at all. Sectional title schemes and home owners' associations are seeing their finances deteriorate as owners struggle to keep up with levy payments. Some 50% of all members of Western Cape sectional title schemes and home owners' associations are behind on their levy payments - and this can result in the entire scheme deteriorating, maintenance backlogs or, even worse, the scheme running out of funds and ending up in liquidation.


This paper argues that the effects of the food price crisis of 2007–08 put pressure on two variables that are of central importance to the Brazilian government: inflation and social inclusion. We describe how political institutions in Brazil in the past 25 years have given rise to a policy-making process where fiscal stability and social inclusion are the overarching priorities, irrespective of the party in power. In this scenario one would have expected that the food price crisis would have led to significant reactions by the government to safeguard those two central policy objectives. However, the reaction of the government and social groups was relatively subdued, compared to that in most other countries. We explain this apparent puzzle by showing that the negative impacts of the food price increases on consumers was partly counterbalanced by the benefits from agricultural production, given that Brazil is a major exporter of commodities. Also, before the crisis the country already possessed a series of programmes and mechanisms that offered social protection to the poor that could be easily and quickly adjusted. Brazil was therefore well-placed to deal with the impacts of the crisis.


Abstract The Mt Cer Pluton, Serbia, is a complex laccolith-like intrusion (~ 60 km2), situated along the junction between the southern Pannonian Basin and northern Dinarides. It intrudes Palaeozoic metamorphic rocks causing weak to strong thermal effects. Based on modal and chemical compositions, four rock-types can be distinguished: (1) metaluminous I-type quartz monzonite/quartz monzodiorite (QMZD); (2) peraluminous S-type two-mica granite (TMG), which intrudes QMZD; (3) Stražanica granodiorite/quartz monzonite (GDS); and (4) isolated mafic enclaves (ME), found only in QMZD. 40K–39Ar dating and geological constraints indicate that the main quartz monzonite/quartz monzodiorite body of Mt Cer was emplaced not later than 21 Ma, whereas the emplacement ages of the Stražanica granodiorite/quartz monzonite and two-mica granites are estimated at around 18 and 16 Ma, respectively. The Mt Cer pluton is similar to the Mt Bukulja pluton, some 80 km southwestwards. Genesis of QMZD cannot be interpreted by fractional crystallization coupled with mixing or assimilation. It is best explained by a convection–diffusion process between mantle-derived minette/leucominette magmas and GDS-like magmas followed by two end-member magma mixing. The composition of GDS rocks suggests that GDS-like magmas could have formed by melting of lower crustal lithologies similar to amphibolite/metabasalts. The geochemistry of TMG is reproduced by an Assimilation/Fractional Crystallization model with a ratio of rate of assimilation to rate of fractional crystallization of 0.4, using the compositions of the least evolved TMG of the Bukulja pluton and adjacent metamorphic rocks as proxies for the parental magma and contaminant, respectively. The origin and evolution of the Mt Cer and adjacent Mt Bukulja plutons provide new constraints on the Tertiary geodynamics of the northern Dinarides–southern Pannonian region. The quartz monzonite/quartz monzodiorite is interpreted as a result of the Oligocene post-collisional Dinaride orogen-collapse, which included a limited lithosphere delamination, small-scale mantle upwelling, and melting of the lower crust. By contrast, the two-mica granite magmas formed through melting in shallower crustal levels during the extensional collapse in the Pannonian area.


Indonesia is a multilingual speech community with two main groups of languages, Standard Indonesian and vernacular languages. As a result, people talk in more than one language. This also occurs in Petra Christian University (PCU) particularly the Kupangese students. The writer wants to see what the language varieties are used by the Kupangese senior and junior students, the differences in their code choice and the factor that may affect them to use a certain code. The writer used the theory of language varieties, code choices, code switching and code mixing, the social factor that may influence the code choice, and the characteristic of each code in order to analyze the data. The writer used qualitative descriptive approach. She was the instrument of this study by observing and interviewing the senior and the junior students. The data were the transcription of the utterances produced by Kupangese students. From the analysis, she discovered that the code choices used by the senior and junior are different. The influence of talking to different ethnic group somehow had caused the differences. The differences can be observed from the code choices used when they were talking with people from different ethnic background, and the Javanese, Jakartanese and English words that they produced. The ethnicity of the interlocutors in a way seemed to affect the code choices of the Kupangese students. Moreover, Kupang Malay is the dominant code used. The writer concludes that the Kupangese students still maintain their mother tongue despite the fact that they were interacting with people from different ethnic groups.


Single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) is a super-resolution imaging technique developed to image structures smaller than the diffraction limit. This modality results in sparse and non-uniform sets of localized blinks that need to be reconstructed to obtain a super-resolution representation of a tissue. In this paper, we explore the use of the Noise2Noise (N2N) paradigm to reconstruct the SMLM images. Noise2Noise is an image denoising technique where a neural network is trained with only pairs of noisy realizations of the data instead of using pairs of noisy/clean images, as performed with Noise2Clean (N2C). Here we have adapted Noise2Noise to the 2D SMLM reconstruction problem, exploring different pair creation strategies (fixed and dynamic). The approach was applied to synthetic data and to real 2D SMLM data of actin filaments. This revealed that N2N can achieve reconstruction performances close to the Noise2Clean training strategy, without having access to the super-resolution images. This could open the way to further improvement in SMLM acquisition speed and reconstruction performance.


A 4° square, two-part photometric field, symmetrical about a vertical division and viewed through a pupil 3 mm in diameter, is illuminated in both parts by artificial sunlight at a constant brightness of about 3 or 4 millilamberts (retinal illumination, 70 to 90 photons) with a surrounding field of about 0.5 millilambert. Homogeneous light is added to one-half, and sunlight simultaneously subtracted so that the field remains matched in brightness. Two adjustments of the mixture are made: (1) the least purity perceptible with certainty (pmax), and (2) the greatest imperceptible purity (pmin). The purity of these mixtures is then measured, increased accuracy being obtained by measuring a known large multiple of the homogeneous brightness. Values of pmax and pmin have been obtained as a function of the wave-length of the homogeneous component; these values are reported in detail, and some discussion of their interpretation is given.


A retrospective review of administrative claims data was conducted to identify health plan members with asthma who were persistent with their controller medications and those who were not persistent. Utilization of health care services and associated costs were measured for both groups. Non-persistent use of controller medications resulted in more asthma-related emergency department visits and home health services whereas persistent controller use was associated with more physician office and outpatient visits. Mean asthma-related medical costs per member were greater in the non-persistent cohort ($577.62) than in the persistent cohort ($323.03). These findings support the need for targeted interventions to address non-persistence in a managed Medicaid population.(Drug Benefit Trends. 2009;21:112-118)


This text explores the Soviet military offensive into Japanese-held Manchuria in August 1945 by looking at two narratives: the Soviet and the Japanese. The former has dominating the latter, perhaps due to the Soviet success as Japan surrendered a few days into the operation. However, by adding rather than dismissing the Japanese perspective, Soviet performances on different levels can be scrutinized. For example, faults with logistical planning and the difficulties to achieve a 'deep battle' are found. It also highlights the main difference between the two operations, namely that the Soviet operation aimed for a double pincer movement, while the Japanese operation aimed for a withdrawal into a mountain redoubt.


In recent years, computerized adaptive testing (CAT) has gained popularity as an important means to evaluate students' ability. Assigning tags to test questions is crucial in CAT. Manual tagging is widely used for constructing question banks; however, this approach is time-consuming and might lead to consistency issues. Automatic question tagging, an alternative, has not been studied extensively. In this paper, we propose a position-based attention model and keywords-based model to automatically tag questions with knowledge units. With regard to multiple-choice questions, the proposed models employ mechanisms to capture useful information from keywords to enhance tagging performance. Unlike traditional machine learning-based tagging methods, our models utilize deep neural networks to represent questions using contextual information. The experimental results show that our proposed models outperform some traditional classification and topic methods by a large margin on an English question bank dataset.


Poetry Research writing Dialogism Social poetics Shotter This article proposes that poetry provides a method for doing and writing inquiry that is potentially dialogical. Whilst much postmodern scholarship is written in a way that still privileges a monological author, it is argued that poetry contributes to dialogical inquiry in three ways. In foregrounding poetic form, the use of tropes and poetic license with word order and completion, poetry provides a more spacious writing medium for readers to join with writer in joint construction of meanings. In attending to how writing touches and affects people, poetry provides a written forum that is not governed by linear argument or conclusion. Finally, Poetry provides a written medium that facilitates moving around and about a subject in surprising and illuminating ways.


Everything you need to know-and then some!It's the fastest-growing, coolest Linux distribution out there, and now you can join the excitement with this information-packed guide. Want to edit graphics? Create a spreadsheet? Manage groups? Set up an NFS server? You'll learn it all and more with the expert guidance, tips, and techniques in this first-ever soup-to-nuts book on Ubuntu. From the basics for newcomers to enterprise management for system administrators, it's what you need to succeed with Ubuntu. Master the fundamentals for desktop and networks Send e-mail, share files, edit text, and print Download music, watch DVDs, and play games Use Ubuntu on laptops, go wireless, or synch it with your PDA Set up Web, mail, print, DNS, DHCP, and other servers Manage groups and secure your network What's on the CD-ROM? Test-drive Ubuntu on your computer without changing a thing using the bootable Ubuntu Desktop Live CD included with this book. If you decide to install it permanently, a simple, easy-to-use installer is provided. Also on the CD, you'll find: Popular open-source software for Microsoft(r) Windows(r), such as AbiWord, Firefox(r), GIMP, and more An easy-to-use application that simplifies installing these programs on your Microsoft Windows system System Requirements: Please see the "About the CD-ROM Appendix" for details and complete system requirements.Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.


"I define the Neutral as that which outplays the paradigm, or rather I call Neutral everything that baffles paradigm." With these words, Roland Barthes describes a concept that profoundly shaped his work and was the subject of a landmark series of lectures delivered in 1978 at the Coll ge de France, just two years before his death. Not published in France until 2002, and appearing in English for the first time, these creative and engaging lectures deepen our understanding of Roland Barthes's intellectual itinerary and reveal his distinctive style as thinker and teacher. The Neutral (le neutre), as Barthes describes it, escapes or undoes the paradigmatic binary oppositions that structure and produce meaning in Western thought and discourse. These binaries are found in all aspects of human society ranging from language to sexuality to politics. For Barthes, the attempt to deconstruct or escape from these binaries has profound ethical, philosophical, and linguistic implications. The Neutral is comprised of the prewritten texts from which Barthes lectured and centers around 23 "figures," also referred to as "traits" or "twinklings," that are possible embodiments of the Neutral (sleep, silence, tact, etc.) or of the anti-Neutral (anger, arrogance, conflict, etc.). His lectures draw on a diverse set of authors and intellectual traditions, including Lao-tzu, Tolstoy, German mysticism, classical philosophy, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and John Cage. Barthes's idiosyncratic approach to his subjects gives the lectures a playful, personal, and even joyous quality that enhances his rich insights. In addition to his reflections on a variety of literary and scholarly works, Barthes's personal convictions and the events of his life shaped the course and content of the lectures. Most prominently, as Barthes admits, the recent death of his mother and the idea of mourning shape several of his lectures.


Background: Diabetes type 2 is one of the biggest growing diseases in the world. Often are overweight and inimical eating habits the reason to develop Diabetes type 2. Lifestyle changes are the most effective way to improve the disease and become healthier. The nurse has an important role to help the person with the changes by among other things give information, motivation and by setting up goals.Aim: To illustrate how lifestyle changes affect people with type 2 Diabetes and their everyday life. Method: This study was a study based on literature and with qualitative articles. Nine articles were taken from the database Cinahl and one was taken from PubMed. The analysis was done from Fribergs modell.Results: It emerged four themes. Changes in food and exercise; mention that people with type 2 Diabetes needed a lifestyle changes, it meant both positive and negative effects. Food was the hardest thing to change and it appeared harder in the time of a holiday. Emotional changes; talked about the emotional struggle and the struggle against the disease. The life changed in many ways, which became difficult for them to adjust to. Reversed social life; talked about the family and friends who could help and support. Sometimes this support became something positive but sometimes it became an obstacle and something negative. The last theme, Failure and tribulation; mentioned the importance of support from someone when they felt like failures. Often was shame a feeling that was connected to failure and sometimes it lead to cheating.Conclusion: People affects different from lifestyle changes. Change in behavior and lifestyle is not easy to do and it take a lot of time to manage it. The person needs good support, information and motivation. It´s the job assignment of the nurse to help people with lifestyle changes and therefore is this knowledge important to nurses.


This paper will highlight some potential dangers of pursuing the use of restorative justice (RJ) for juvenile offenders in Ireland. It will look at penal reforms of the past, in particular it will look at the work of Stanley Cohen and his examination of the development of "community corrections." Social control theorists, like Cohen, often view changes in penal structures differently to reformists and examine the underlying impact of expanding the social control apparatus beyond the prison system. In this presentation I intend to use the template used by Stanley Cohen in the 70's to analyse the development of restorative justice in the juvenile justice system. The dangers highlighted by Cohen will then be applied to restorative practices in order to provide a framework for the critique of this approach. While it is acknowledged that the development of such programmes are essential in developing an appropriate response to juvenile offending it is also important to critically discuss these projects to highlight the problems and potential dangers emerging out of their adoption. The focus of the paper will remain primarily on restorative programmes although many of the criticisms discussed can also be levied at diversionary programmes.


Background: A Canadian study recommends General Practitioners (GP) to use evidence based Clinical Guidelines (CG) when dealing with co-morbid cardiovascular diseases, in particular for the diagnosis and preliminary management of co-morbid Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) and Atrial Fibrillation (AF). Although paper-based Canadian CG exist for the management of CHF and AF, the challenge for physicians is to simultaneously apply multiple independent CG when dealing with patients having cardiovascular co-morbidities. Objective: The objective of this inter-disciplinary research program is to assist physicians in handling co-morbidities through a computerized clinical decision support framework that recommends evidence-based interventions based on the patient's health profile. We target decision support for the diagnosis and treatment of CHF, AF and co-morbid CHF-AF. Approach: We take a healthcare knowledge management approach to develop a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) for handling comorbid diseases. Our solution involves the development of institution-specific CP from a combination of CG, and then generate a CP knowledge model using a semantically-rich formalism—i.e. a CG ontology. The CG ontology semantically defines the clinical concepts in order to establish semantic interoperability between multiple CG. Next, we systematically align the ontologically-modeled CG of different diseases to realize a unified knowledge model that derives the evidence based recommendations for handling both single and co-morbid diseases. Our methodology entails the following steps: (i) knowledge identification to derive specialized disease-specific CG from existing evidence-based sources; (b) knowledge modeling to abstract medical and procedural knowledge from the CG; (c) knowledge representation to computerize the CG in terms of a semantically-rich CG ontology; (d) knowledge alignment to systematically synthesize multiple ontologically-modeled CG to develop a unified ontology-based CG knowledge model representing comorbid diseases; (e) knowledge execution to generate patient-specific recommendations, based on patient data, by reasoning over the aligned CG model; and (f) evaluation of the knowledge model and the recommendations produced in response to a range of clinical scenarios. Results: We present the COMET (Co-morbidity Ontological Modeling a ExecuTion) system to provide clinical decision support for three scenarios: (i) Cardiac Heart Failure (CHF); (ii) Atrial Fibrillation (AF); and (iii) co-morbidity of either AF or CHF. COMET is designed for GP in Nova Scotia and is accessible over the web. Evaluation: A pilot study was conducted to assess how well COMET meets the physician's needs to manage co-morbid CHF-AF. Conclusion: In conclusion, this project provides a solution for the complex problem of handling co-morbidities in a CDSS. Our solution is based on semantic modeling of disease-specific knowledge which extends the possibility of scaling up to include additional diseases and aligning their knowledge models to handle even further co-morbid situations. Our CG alignment approach helps (a) avoiding duplication of clinical tasks; (b) re-usability of diagnostic results; (c) determine compatibility of different clinical activities; and (d) standardization of care across multiple institutions. We believe that this project achieves knowledge translation whereby we have successfully computerized and translated paper-based CG so that they can now be operationalized at the point-of-care by GP to handle comorbid diseases.


BACKGROUND
Topically applied fluoride gels have been widely used as a caries-preventive intervention in dental surgeries and school-based programmes for over three decades. This updates the Cochrane review of fluoride gels for preventing dental caries in children and adolescents that was first published in 2002.

OBJECTIVES
The primary objective is to determine the effectiveness and safety of fluoride gels in preventing dental caries in the child and adolescent population.The secondary objectives are to examine whether the effect of fluoride gels is influenced by the following: initial level of caries severity; background exposure to fluoride in water (or salt), toothpastes, or reported fluoride sources other than the study option(s); mode of use (self applied under supervision or operator-applied), and whether there is a differential effect between the tray and toothbrush methods of application; frequency of use (times per year) or fluoride concentration (ppm F).

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the Cochrane Oral Health Group Trials Register (to 5 November 2014), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (Cochrane Library 2014, Issue 11), MEDLINE via OVID (1946 to 5 November 2014), EMBASE via OVID (1980 to 5 November 2014), CINAHL via EBSCO (1980 to 5 November 2014), LILACS and BBO via the BIREME Virtual Health Library (1980 to 5 November 2014), ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (1861 to 5 November 2014) and Web of Science Conference Proceedings (1945 to 5 November 2014). We undertook a search for ongoing trials on ClinicalTrials.gov and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform on 5 November 2014. We placed no restrictions on language or date of publication in the search of the electronic databases. We also searched reference lists of articles and contacted selected authors and manufacturers.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised or quasi-randomised controlled trials where blind outcome assessment was stated or indicated, comparing topically applied fluoride gel with placebo or no treatment in children up to 16 years. The frequency of application had to be at least once a year, and study duration at least one year. The main outcome was caries increment measured by the change in decayed, missing and filled tooth surfaces in both permanent and primary teeth (D(M)FS and d(e/m)fs).

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
At least two review authors independently performed study selection, data extraction and 'Risk of bias' assessment. We contacted study authors for additional information where required. The primary measure of effect was the prevented fraction (PF), that is, the difference in mean caries increments between the treatment and control groups expressed as a percentage of the mean increment in the control group. We performed random-effects meta-analyses where we could pool data. We examined potential sources of heterogeneity in random-effects metaregression analyses. We collected adverse effects information from the included trials.

MAIN RESULTS
We included 28 trials (3 of which are new trials since the original review), involving 9140 children and adolescents. Most of these trials recruited participants from schools. Most of the studies (20) were at high risk of bias, with 8 at unclear risk of bias.Twenty-five trials (8479 participants) contributed data for meta-analysis on permanent tooth surfaces: the D(M)FS pooled prevented fraction (PF) estimate was 28% (95% confidence intervals (CI) 19% to 36%; P < 0.0001; with substantial heterogeneity (P < 0.0001; I(2) = 82%); moderate quality evidence). Subgroup and metaregression analyses suggested no significant association between estimates of D(M)FS prevented fractions and the prespecified trial characteristics. However, the effect of fluoride gel varied according to the type of control group used, with D(M)FS PF on average being 17% (95% CI 3% to 31%; P = 0.018) higher in non-placebo-controlled trials (the reduction in caries was 38% (95% CI 24% to 52%; P < 0.0001, 2808 participants) for the 10 trials with no treatment as control group, and 21% (95% CI 15% to 28%; P < 0.0001, 5671 participants) for the 15 placebo-controlled trials. A funnel plot of the 25 trials in the D(M)FS PF meta-analysis indicated a relationship between prevented fraction and study precision, with an apparent lack of small studies with statistically significant large effects.The d(e/m)fs pooled prevented fraction estimate for the three trials (1254 participants) that contributed data for the meta-analysis on primary teeth surfaces was 20% (95% CI 1% to 38%; P = 0.04; with no heterogeneity (P = 0.54; I(2) = 0%); low quality evidence).There was limited reporting of adverse events. Only two trials reported information on acute toxicity signs and symptoms during the application of the gel (risk difference 0.01, 95% CI -0.01 to 0.02; P = 0.36; with no heterogeneity (P = 36; I(2) = 0%); 490 participants; very low quality evidence). None of the trials reported information on tooth staining, mucosal irritation or allergic reaction.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
The conclusions of this updated review remain the same as those when it was first published. There is moderate quality evidence of a large caries-inhibiting effect of fluoride gel in the permanent dentition. Information concerning the caries-preventive effect of fluoride gel on the primary dentition, which also shows a large effect, is based on low quality evidence from only three placebo-controlled trials. There is little information on adverse effects or on acceptability of treatment. Future trials should include assessment of potential adverse effects.


Economic reform has brought many changes to China's rural economy in the past two decades, as reflected in a combination of rapid economic growth, rural industrialization, structural change, and sharp reductions in fertility. This paper explores the impact of economic growth and market development on the changing economic role of women in rural China. In China, recent studies examining female relative wages in industry and urban areas (Meng 1998; Liu et al. 2000 and Meng et al. 1995), and female labor force participation in the rural non-farm sector (Entwisle et al. 1995; Mathews and Nee 2000) find that while market development reduces the male -female wage differential, its effect on female labor participation is less clear. As a result, the link between market development and the contribution of women to household income is unclear. The major challenge in the empirical work is the measurement of individual contributions to farm production, given that only household farm income is observed. This problem I resolve by using individual labor supply in agricultural production to estimate the relative contributions of women and men. A panel household-level data set collected by CHNS in 1991, 1993, and 1997 that contains more than 1400 households is used to conduct the empirical analysis. Both fixed effect and random effect models that eliminate the effect of unobserved household characteristics are estimated. The most remarkable observation is that both women and men are moving out of agriculture, confirming that women are not left on the farm in the process of economic development. However, the effect of economic development, as proxied by village percapita income, is more significant for men. Consequently, the gap between male and female contributions to household income is widening in high economic growth areas. ECONOMIC DEVLEOPMENT AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN RURAL CHINA 2


Methotrexate (MTX) is a chemotherapy and immunosuppressive agent widely used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases in children and adult patients, and ectopic pregnancy. However, MTX is highly toxic to the liver, kidney, and nervous system. This study aimed to quantify the concentration of MTX in human plasma using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). MTX and its internal standard (para aminoacetophenone-PAPA) in plasma samples were extracted simultaneously with methanol. Sample purity was performed using the 1 cc OASIS HLB cartridges. Sample injection volume of 10 µL was analyzed on a Lichrocart Supersil 125-4 column C18 maintained at 40 °C on a Waters 2695 XE equipped with a PDA detector set at 303 nm. The mobile phase contained phosphate buffer (pH 6.0) and methanol at a ratio of 80:20 (v/v) and was maintained at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. The results showed that the total time of chromatographic analysis was 15 min. MTX and PAAP were found in the chromatograms at retention times of 2.3 and 5.2 min, respectively. The linear range of the MTX from 0.5 to 25 µg/mL. Intra-day and inter-day imprecision for MTX ranged from 3.42 to 8.128%. LLOQ of MTX was 0.5 µg/mL and the extraction effects were above 77%. In conclusion, we developed and validated a simple HPLC method to determine the MTX concentrations in human plasma.


Random codes based on quasigroups (RCBQ) are cryptcodes, i.e. they are error-correcting codes, which provide information security. Cut-Decoding and 4-Sets-Cut-Decoding algorithms for these codes are defined elsewhere. Also, the performance of these codes for the transmission of text messages is investigated elsewhere. In this study, the authors investigate the RCBQ's performance with Cut-Decoding and 4-Sets-Cut-Decoding algorithms for transmission of images and audio files through a Gaussian channel. They compare experimental results for both coding/decoding algorithms and for different values of signal-to-noise ratio. In all experiments, the differences between the transmitted and decoded image or audio file are considered. Experimentally obtained values for bit-error rate and packet error rate and the decoding speed of both algorithms are compared. Also, two filters for enhancing the quality of the images decoded using RCBQ are proposed.


ABSTRACT Beneath the surface of the United Kingdom lies a sprawling natural gas infrastructure. Based on recent (2014/15) 'follow the thing' fieldwork conducted in the UK onshore gas industry, this paper explores the ways that dangers related to the subterranean circulation of natural gas come to be visualised, and how these visualisations make possible different security interventions. These practices are shown to be limited by the ground, which despite its enrolment as a security device conceals from view the shifting landscapes of risk that surround these gaseous movements. Drawing on Manuel DeLanda's concept of the possibility space, I provide a conceptual framework for attending to security's visualisation practices, describing how attempts are made to overcome the subsurface obfuscation of natural gas. I argue that, rather than being understood as a process of circulatory 'filtration' or 'maintenance', security must instead be regarded as a series of transformative practices of ecological (re)organisation that are predicated upon the visualisation of entities' spaces of possibility. In the process, I provide an account of how the three-dimensional geographies and materialities of gas circulations and their milieus are intimately tied up in their governance and politics.


Over recent decades there has been a rapid expansion in the use of participatory visual methods to unearth neglected perspectives on complex issues. As example, participatory video can enable participants to show and tell, and connect marginalised communities with external audiences. However, there are important ethical questions raised, which echo wider debates in visual methods, such as the politics of public exposure and reception and the power dynamics between project actors. Furthermore, practical challenges are compounded by the tendency to view participatory video as a data production or research dissemination method, rather than the means to drive research dialogue or social change processes during action research. This provocation draws on participatory video experiences in India and Kenya to raise critical questions about the potentially valuable but tacit or under-utilised sources of research knowledge generated, and the implicit sharing assumptions in contemporary visual practice. I interrogate participatory representation as theoretical frame, because it often functions practically to restrict possibilities for participants by binding activities to the priorities of external agencies. Whilst acknowledging the tensions, I suggest participatory video is more productively conceptualised as the means to mediate communication processes towards both deeper understanding and improvement action. I conclude, that attention needs to shift to ensure the most pertinent knowledge is not overlooked.


Worldwide, B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma is the most common hematological malignancy and represents a substantial clinical problem. The molecular events that lead to B cell lymphoma are only partially defined. Here, we have provided evidence that deficiency of tetraspanin superfamily member CD37, which is important for B cell function, induces the development of B cell lymphoma. Mice lacking CD37 developed germinal center–derived B cell lymphoma in lymph nodes and spleens with a higher incidence than Bcl2 transgenic mice. We discovered that CD37 interacts with suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3); therefore, absence of CD37 drives tumor development through constitutive activation of the IL-6 signaling pathway. Moreover, animals deficient for both Cd37 and Il6 were fully protected against lymphoma development, confirming the involvement of the IL-6 pathway in driving tumorigenesis. Loss of CD37 on neoplastic cells in patients with diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) directly correlated with activation of the IL-6 signaling pathway and with worse progression-free and overall survival. Together, this study identifies CD37 as a tumor suppressor that directly protects against B cell lymphomagenesis and provides a strong rationale for blocking the IL-6 pathway in patients with CD37– B cell malignancies as a possible therapeutic intervention. Research Article Oncology


Background. Children and young adults are particularly vulnerable to intentional and accidental fatal injuries. The majority of deaths in Africa in children <5 years of age are due to infectious diseases. Road traffic fatalities constitute a large proportion of deaths in children and young adults worldwide.  Objective. To evaluate the demographic details, external cause/circumstance of death and manner of death in children and young adults admitted to the Pretoria Medico-Legal Laboratory (PMLL).  Methods. A retrospective case audit was conducted on all persons aged 1 - 20 years admitted to the PMLL from January 2005 through December 2009. Results. A total of 965 cases were identified. Childhood deaths constituted 7 - 9% of all cases admitted. The majority were aged between 16 and 20 years (42%), followed by children aged between 1 and 5 years (33%). The most common cause of death was injury due to road traffic accidents (this was present in all age groups).  Conclusion. Children and young adults contribute a relatively large number of admissions to the medico-legal mortuary. The majority of these deaths are accidental. Many of the accidents could have been prevented with stricter legislation with regard to transportation of children and safety surrounding swimming pools.


tronics can also be implemented so that a closed-loop feedback can be maintained. Changing the contents of the chalcogenide memory cells can compensate for any change in environmental effects that might cause a change in optical path. This real-time control provides significant control and stability in use conditions. This work was done by Karl F. Strauss and Douglas J. Sheldon of Caltech for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, contact firstname.lastname@example.com. NPO46891


The use of bleaching agent has increased as the result of increasing of paper consumption. The conventional bleaching agent that commonly used is material containing of chlorine. This material is not environmentally friendly and should be replaced by environmentally benign chemical, such as H2O2. About 40 gram of dry Akasia pulp was mixed with 600 ml of distilled water was put into plastic bag heated in a water bath. When the temperature reached 63 0 C, a solution of 4 % of H2O2 and distilled water was added to obtain 5 % consistency. This mixture was put into water bath and was heated for 2 hours. The same procedure was conducted with various concentration of H2O2, time and pH. At the end of the process, the pulp was dewatered and washed. The filtrate obtained from the initial dewatering was used to determine the residual of H2O2. The pulp was analyzed to determine brightness, fiber strength and kappa number. The maximum achievement of brightness was 62,1 % ISO, 6.86 of kappa number and 1.02 kg/15 mm of fiber strength, which are reached at16 % of the use of H2O2, pH 11 and 5 hours of bleaching time. This achievement is similar to bleaching result by the additional of 4% H2O2. Inefficient usage of H2O2 was caused by some metal ions in the pulp which facilitate the decomposition of H2O2 to produce oxygen and water which has not effect on increasing the brightness. To improve the bleach ability of H2O2, initial treatment to remove metal ions from pulp should be done.


In this paper, we consider the role of theory, ethics and politics in interpretive research and focus other discussion on the evolving interpretive framework of Caths doctoral study of cultural myths in the science classroom. La constructing this framework, Cath is seeking to gain insight into how myths develop, how myths have been identified and interpreted by other researchers, and how others have described the role of myths in society. Her interpretation of other people's research and theorising constitutes a synthesis of the literature (traditionally called a 'literature review') and is assisting her to construct an interpretive framework for a subsequent analysis of classroom discursive practices in school science. During this self-reflective process, Cath is considering how her study is to be legitimated. In this respect, she is examining the relationship between ethics, theory and politics in interpretive research.


In September 2007 in Trafalgar Square, London, a trafficked woman's bedroom was recreated as part of an exhibition, The Journey, organised by Helen Bamber to raise public awareness on the condition of trafficked women for sexual exploitation. A blood-stained bed moving up and down automatically, a brush and perfumes, a small mirror with 'help me' written on it, and a blonde wig were the details of that tiny unglamorous room shown to the public. The function and scope of the exhibition was far from 'artistic'. The exhibition aimed to raise consciousness that human beings, mainly women, are trafficked into rich destination countries, such as Britain, to be used in the sex industry as sexual objects to be consumed cheaply. If these women are imported in Britain is because there are people willing to consume the product. The 'room' of the exhibition becomes the iconic place where the victim is held against her will to perform sexual duties under duress. The room therefore functions as a crime scene: this contained physical space is the prison of an enslaved human being, repeatedly abused physically, sexually and mentally. However, it is questioned how the reconstruction of this crime scene can be perceived by the public. It is argued that the exhibit can evoke different responses. Visitors animate the space with imagined crimes (repeated violent crimes, rapes) in the silent absence of the victim; and they can imagine as much or as little as they want or can, based on their


Abstract. The integrity of the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) radiation monthly averages are assessed by investigating the impact on monthly means due to the frequency of data gaps caused by missing or discarded high time resolution data. The monthly statistics, especially means, are considered to be important and useful values for climate research, model performance evaluations and for assessing the quality of satellite (time- and space-averaged) data products. The study investigates the spread in different algorithms that have been applied for the computation of monthly means from 1-min values. The paper reveals that the computation of monthly means from 1-min observations distinctly depends on the method utilized to account for the missing data. The intra-method difference generally increases with an increasing fraction of missing data. We found that a substantial fraction of the radiation fluxes observed at BSRN sites is either missing or flagged as questionable. The percentage of missing data is 4.4%, 13.0%, and 6.5% for global radiation, direct shortwave radiation, and downwelling longwave radiation, respectively. Most flagged data in the shortwave are due to nighttime instrumental noise and can reasonably be set to zero after correcting for thermal offsets in the daytime data. The study demonstrates that the handling of flagged data clearly impacts on monthly mean estimates obtained with different methods. We showed that the spread of monthly shortwave fluxes is generally clearly higher than for downwelling longwave radiation. Overall, BSRN observations provide sufficient accuracy and completeness for reliable estimates of monthly mean values. However, the value of future data could be further increased by reducing the frequency of data gaps and the number of outliers. It is shown that two independent methods for accounting for the diurnal and seasonal variations in the missing data permit consistent monthly means to within less than 1 W m−2 in most cases. The authors suggest using a standardized method for the computation of monthly means which addresses diurnal variations in the missing data in order to avoid a mismatch of future published monthly mean radiation fluxes from BSRN. The application of robust statistics would probably lead to less biased results for data records with frequent gaps and/or flagged data and outliers. The currently applied empirical methods should, therefore, be completed by the development of robust methods.


Abstract The aim of this work was to identify concentration levels of different chemical forms of mercury (TGM, TPM) in the ambient air in selected areas of the Silesian Region, characterized by low and high mercury emission. Based on the obtained data TGM and TPM concentration levels were determined. The project also focused on determination of dry and wet deposition of mercury compounds. Data concerning TGM and TPM flux rates in the ambient air and data on mercury deposition were used to determine a deposition coefficient. The coefficient was calculated as a share of mercury deposition on the land surface (dry and wet) to the amount of this contaminant transported with loads of air in the form of TGM and TPM in a given measurement station. At both monitoring stations the deposition coefficient did not exceed 0.2 %. The idea of calculating the deposition coefficient based on the analysis of TGM and TPM flux rate is a new solution. The proposed deposition coefficient allows to quantify information on a selected contaminant concentration and its potential impact resulting from deposition. Further studies on the deposition coefficient may contribute to the development of methods for estimating the impact of contaminants contained in the ambient air on other environmental components based on the analyses of the contaminant flux rate.


Rapid technological, social and economic change is having significant impacts on the nature of jobs. In fast-changing environments it is crucial that policymakers have a clear and timely picture of the labour market. Policymakers use standardised occupational classifications, such as the Office for National Statistics' Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) in the UK to analyse the labour market. These permit the occupational composition of the workforce to be tracked on a consistent and transparent basis over time and across industrial sectors. However, such systems are by their nature costly to maintain, slow to adapt and not very flexible. For that reason, additional tools are needed. At the same time, policymakers over the world are revisiting how active skills development policies can be used to equip workers with the capabilities needed to meet the new labour market realities. There is in parallel a desire for more granular understandings of what skills combinations are required of occupations, in part so that policymakers are better sighted on how individuals can redeploy these skills as and when employer demands change further. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of complementing traditional occupational classifications with more flexible methods centred around employers' characterisations of the skills and knowledge requirements of occupations as presented in job advertisements. We use data science methods to classify job advertisements as STEM or non-STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and creative or non-creative, based on the content of ads in a database of UK job ads posted online belonging to Boston-based job market analytics company, Burning Glass Technologies. In doing so, we first characterise each SOC code in terms of its skill make-up; this step allows us to describe each SOC skillset as a mathematical object that can be compared with other skillsets. Then we develop a classifier that predicts the SOC code of a job based on its required skills. Finally, we develop two classifiers that decide whether a job vacancy is STEM/non-STEM and creative/non-creative, based again on its skill requirements.


Background Acute hyperglycemia in ICU patients is associated with increased risk for nosocomial infections by raising plasma levels of proinflammatory cytokines, stimulating muscle-protein degradation, and inhibiting protein synthesis, which could contribute to muscle wasting. Euglycemic control with insulin reduced septicemia and the need for prolonged antibiotic therapy, prevented nosocomial infection, accelerated resolution of inflammation, and reduced muscle catabolism . Patients and methods A total of 200 patients of both sex, diabetic or nondiabetic, aged 20-70 years admitted to ICU of Ain Shams University Hospitals for more than 2 days who gave written and informed consent were enrolled in the study. Age, sex, clinical assessment for chest infection, C-reactive protein, chest radiograph, random blood sugar, HbA1C, and serum potassium were recorded at the time of ICU admission. Patients were divided into two groups. Group I was the euglycemic control group (n = 100 patients) in which blood sugar was kept between 100 and 120 mg/dl using regular insulin infusion and group II (n = 100 patients) received the standard care using an intravenous insulin infusion titrated to maintain blood glucose between 120 and 180 mg/dl. Blood sugar was measured every 1 h in both groups; indicator of chest infection (clinical signs, C-reactive protein, and chest radiography) was performed daily. Results Regarding all demographic data (age and sex), there were no statistically significant differences between the studied groups (P = 0.744 and 0.730, respectively). Regarding duration of ICU stay, there was a significantly higher rate of ICU stay for more than 7 days among patients of group II (P < 0.001). Comparing the incidence of chest infection in group I and group II, there was low incidence of chest infection in four patients (4%) of group I , whereas 18 patients (18%) of group II (22 of 200 patients) showed chest infection (P 0.003). Conclusion Euglycemic control reduces the incidence of chest infection in ICU patients.


Identifying refactorings in software archives has been an active research topic in the last decade, mainly because it is a prerequisite for various software evolution analyses (e.g., error detection, capturing intent of change, capturing and replaying changes, and relating refactorings and software metrics). Many of these techniques rely on similarity measures to identify structurally equivalent code, however, up until now the effect of this similarity measure on the performance of the refactoring identification algorithm is largely unexplored. In this paper we replicate a well-known experiment from Weißgerber and Diehl, plugging in three different similarity measures (text-based, AST-based, token-based). We look at the overlap of the results obtained by the different metrics, and we compare the results using recall and the computation time. We conclude that the different result sets have a large overlap and that the three metrics perform with a comparable quality.


One usually thinks of a radial density profile as having a monotonically changing logarithmic slope, such as in NFW or Einasto profiles. However, in two different classes of commonly used systems, this is often not the case. These classes exhibit non-monotonic changes in their density profile slopes which we call oscillations for short. We analyze these two unrelated classes separately. Class 1 consists of systems that have density oscillations and that are defined through their distribution function f(E), or differential energy distribution N(E), such as isothermal spheres, King profiles, or DARKexp, a theoretically derived model for relaxed collisionless systems. Systems defined through f(E) or N(E) generally have density slope oscillations. Class 1 system oscillations can be found at small, intermediate, or large radii but we focus on a limited set of Class 1 systems that have oscillations in the central regions, usually at log(r/r−2) ≲ −2, where r−2 is the largest radius where dlog(ρ)/dlog(r) = −2. We show that the shape of their N(E) can roughly predict the amplitude of oscillations. Class 2 systems which are a product of dynamical evolution, consist of observed and simulated galaxies and clusters, and pure dark matter halos. Oscillations in the density profile slope seem pervasive in the central regions of Class 2 systems. We argue that in these systems, slope oscillations are an indication that a system is not fully relaxed. We show that these oscillations can be reproduced by small modifications to N(E) of DARKexp. These affect a small fraction of systems' mass and are confined to log(r/r−2) ≲ 0. The size of these modifications serves as a potential diagnostic for quantifying how far a system is from being relaxed.


Drawing on interviews with civil society actors and international donors, this article examines the role of Kenyan civil society in advancing accountability for serious international crimes, specifically the 2007–2008 post-election violence. We consider civil society as recipient and transmitter of norms of accountability and as transformer and user of such norms, as well as civil society strategies for engaging with actors domestically and internationally. Exploring how civil society has devised advocacy strategies relating to the International Criminal Court and domestic justice mechanisms, we challenge some of the assumptions in the literature on civil society and accountability. In particular, we question whether civil society can predominantly rely on international standards as part of a 'justice cascade,' arguing that the Kenyan case illustrates a more complex situation where narratives of justice and accountability continuously change and may be undermined as a consequence of counternarratives devised by those opposed to criminal justice.


Abstract : We propose a framework that enables the acquisition of annotation-heavy resources such as syntactic dependency tree corpora for low-resource languages by importing linguistic annotations from high-quality English resources. We present a large-scale experiment showing that Chinese dependency trees can be induced by using an English parser, a word alignment package, and a large corpus of sentence-aligned bilingual text. As a part of the experiment, we evaluate the quality of a Chinese parser trained on the induced dependency treebank. We find that a parser trained in this manner out-performs some simple baselines inspite of the noise in the induced treebank. The results suggest that projecting syntactic structures from English is a viable option for acquiring annotated syntactic structures quickly and cheaply. We expect the quality of the induced treebank to improve when more sophisticated filtering and error-correction techniques are applied.


Nondeterministic classifiers are defined as those allowed to predict more than one class for some entries from an input space. Given that the true class should be included in predictions and the number of classes predicted should be as small as possible, these kind of classifiers can be considered as Information Retrieval (IR) procedures. In this paper, we propose a family of IR loss functions to measure the performance of nondeterministic learners. After discussing such measures, we derive an algorithm for learning optimal nondeterministic hypotheses. Given an entry from the input space, the algorithm requires the posterior probabilities to compute the subset of classes with the lowest expected loss. From a general point of view, nondeterministic classifiers provide an improvement in the proportion of predictions that include the true class compared to their deterministic counterparts; the price to be paid for this increase is usually a tiny proportion of predictions with more than one class. The paper includes an extensive experimental study using three deterministic learners to estimate posterior probabilities: a multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM), a Logistic Regression, and a Naive Bayes. The data sets considered comprise both UCI multi-class learning tasks and microarray expressions of different kinds of cancer. We successfully compare nondeterministic classifiers with other alternative approaches. Additionally, we shall see how the quality of posterior probabilities (measured by the Brier score) determines the goodness of nondeterministic predictions.


We investigated light absorption in various Si thin film solar absorbers and designed efficient input couplers using finite-difference time-domain simulation. In the simulation, a dielectric coating on Si thin film led to enhanced light absorption at near-ultraviolet to blue wavelengths, while the absorption peaks at longer wavelengths were nearly preserved. In a 300-nm-thick Si film with a 60-nm-thick Si(3)N(4) top-coated layer, current density was augmented by ~35% compared to a bare Si film. For broadband absorption, we introduced two-dimensional square-lattice periodic patterns consisting of low-index dielectric materials, SiO(2) or Si(3)N(4), or high-index material, Si. The periodic pattern exhibited tunable and pronounced absorption peaks that are identified as horizontally-propagating waveguide modes. The high absorption peaks were significantly amplified with increasing refractive index of the dielectric pattern. For a Si-patterned structure with a pitch size of 400 nm and a pattern depth of 80 nm, current density was achieved up to 17.0 mA/cm(2), which is enhanced by a factor of 2.1 compared to the current density of bare Si film. Deep understanding of the light absorption in optical cavities with wavelength-scale thickness will be useful in the design of efficient thin film solar absorbers as well as novel nanophotonic elements.


Research in lattice structures and its application belongs to one of the most emerging disciplines in development of new types of engineering materials. High strength-to-weight ratio, special damping capabilities or auxetic behaviour are just a set of properties which can be directly influenced during design of these materials. Due to the geometric complexity of these structures, additive manufacturing is usually the only way to manufacture such a material. Among the others, HP Multijet Fusion additive technology with its supportless manufacturing approach offers one of the most convenient methods for production of lattice structures. Scope of this paper is design and mechanical testing of two types of lattice structures, namely body centred cubic structure and simple cross structure. Main attention is focused on printability of structures with different volume ratio in connection with their mechanical performance under uniaxial tensile loading. With respect to evaluated data, the cross structure shows more stiff behaviour for the same volume ratio and the same orientation in the build space of the machine. Body centred cubic structure on the other hand offers higher displacement to break.


Objectives: Invasive fungal infections are a major cause of mortality among patients at risk. Treatment guidelines vary on optimal treatment strategies. We aimed to determine the effects of different antifungal therapies on global response rates, mortality and safety. Methods: We searched independently and in duplicate 10 electronic databases from inception to May 2009. We selected any randomized trial assessing established antifungal therapies for confirmed cases of invasive candidiasis among predominantly adult populations. We performed a meta-analysis and then conducted a Bayesian mixed treatment comparison to differentiate treatment effectiveness. Sensitivity analyses included dosage forms of amphotericin B and fluconazole compared to other azoles. Results: Our analysis included 11 studies enrolling a total of 965 patients. For our primary analysis of global response rates, we pooled 7 trials comparing azoles to amphotericin B, Relative Risk [RR] 0.87 (95% Confidence Interval [CI], 0.78–0.96, P = 0.007, I 2 = 43%, P = 0.09. We also pooled 2 trials of echinocandins versus amphotericin B and found a pooled RR of 1.10 (95% CI, 0.99–1.23, P = 0.08). One study compared anidulafungin to fluconazole and yielded a RR of 1.26 (95% CI, 1.06–1.51) in favor of anidulafungin. We pooled 7 trials assessing azoles versus amphotericin B for all-cause mortality, resulting in a pooled RR of 0.88 (95% CI, 0.74–1.05, P = 0.17, I 2 = 0%, P = 0.96). Echinocandins versus amphotericin B (2 trials) for all-cause mortality resulted in a pooled RR of 1.01 (95% CI, 0.84–1.20, P = 0.93). Anidulafungin versus fluconazole resulted in a RR of 0.73 (95% CI, 0.48–1.10, P = 0.34). Our mixed treatment comparison analysis found similar within-class effects across all interventions. Adverse event profiles differed, with amphotericin B exhibiting larger adverse event effects. Conclusion: Treatment options appear to offer preferential effects on response rates and mortality. When mycologic data are available, therapy should be tailored.


This article attempts to gather the evidence for panhellenism in the fifth century B.C. and to trace its development both as a political program and as a popular ideology. Panhellenism is here defined as the idea that the various Greek city-states could solve their political disputes and simultaneously enrich themselves by uniting in common cause and conquering all or part of the Persian empire. An attempt is made to trace the evidence for panhellenism throughout the fifth century by combining different kinds of evidence: that is, both poetic and historical texts, as well as the testimonia for monuments which are no longer extant. Any thought of a panhellenic crusade was impossible before the Persian invasions, but such an expedition, under the dual leadership of Athens and Sparta, was espoused by Cimon. After his death it remained an item of popular talk for the rest of the century and this talk intensified during the second half of the Peloponnesian War. The paper has six parts: the first finds hints of panhellenist ideology in the fragments of Simonides9 Plataea elegy and in Aeschylus9 Persians. The second part attempts to explain several puzzling passages in Herodotus in terms of his reflecting contemporary panhellenist discourse, especially in his account of Aristagoras of Miletus at Sparta. Part three reconstructs Cimon9 s belief in dual hegemony and his plans for a joint Athenian-Spartan expedition against the Persian empire. Part four connects an anecdote about Miltiades with the Cimonian monuments and argues that the artistic program of the Stoa Poikile was intended to support Cimon9s panhellenist aspirations. Part five discusses panhellenist sentiments in late fifth-century Greek poetry, and dates the Olympic Oration and Funeral Oration of Gorgias to the period 408-405 B.C., Finally, part six relates the panhellenist writings of Isocrates to earlier developments.


A recombinant form of a mature, N-terminal secretory peptide derived from a parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) preprohormone through posttranslational endoproteolytic processing with vasodilating, myorelaxant, and parathyroid hormone (PTH)-like calciotropic activities. Expressed throughout the cardiovascular system, parathyroid hormone-related protein (1-36) [PTHrP (1-36)] was first identified as the PTH-like hypercalcemic factor of humoral hypercalcemia of malignancy; however, its sequence differs significantly from that of PTH (1-34) although both proteins share the same N-terminal end which accounts for the calciotropic activity. Both PTHrP (1-36) and PTH (1-34) bind to the type 1 parathyroid hormone receptor (PTH1R), a specific seven-transmembrane-helix-containing G protein-coupled receptor mainly located in bone and kidney cells.


In this article the development and background of the Directive on procedural safeguards for children who are suspects or accused persons in criminal proceedings is sketched out. Two key rights are reflected upon: the right to legal assistance and the right to other appropriate assistance. The main challenge with regard to the implementation of the right to legal assistance is the possibility of member states to derogate from this right on the basis of the circumstances of the particular criminal case(s) involving the child. The right to legal assistance is contingent upon the proportionality clause that has been built in the Directive and therefore legal assistance is not guaranteed for every child suspect or accused. The right to other appropriate assistance is given separate attention in the Directive, which strengthens the child's legal position and his support during the proceedings.


Experiences of food, meals, and eating that are nourishing, enjoyable, and nutritious are
crucial for older adults who are seeking to maintain their health and wellbeing while 'ageing
in place'. Food insecurity poses a threat to these aspirations. Although existing research has
produced useful insights into food insecurity in older adults, it has not always fully engaged
with the highly subjective, complex, and dynamic nature of the phenomenon. The thesis addresses these gaps in knowledge by applying philosophical perspectives from phenomenological ethnography to explore implicit meanings in older adults' experiences of food, meals, and eating, and then consider their significance for understandings of food security and insecurity in older adults. The thesis takes a phenomenological view of human beings as embedded in lifeworlds characterised by meaningful actions and experiences, including those involving food. Phenomenological ethnographic methods of repeated in-depth interviews, walking
interviews, and observation were conducted in the home environments of 21 community dwelling older adults, aged between 72 and 90 years, in rural Tasmania, Australia. Case based analyses informed biographical sketches of these older adults' rich, varied, and often
challenging lives. The main findings were generated by thematic analyses and pertain to
four dimensions of the phenomenological lifeworld – subjective, inter-subjective, place-based, and temporal. Exploring subjective dimensions revealed these older adults as highly engaged with food
and life. Exploring intersubjective dimensions revealed how older adults' eating experiences
are infused with their social identities and relationships. Exploring place dimensions
revealed how older adults' complex, deep, and nuanced relationships with different places
inform their food experiences. Finally, exploring temporal dimensions revealed how time
permeates older adults' eating lives, whether in terms of quotidian activities or the grand
sweep of life from childhood to old age. The thesis considers these findings and their significance, and generates new
understandings of food security and insecurity in older adults. Perspectives from
interpretative phenomenology, anthropology, sociology, and social gerontology are woven iv
together to inform a theoretical argument for an interrelationship between food security
and ontological security in older adults' lives. The contribution of the doctoral thesis lies in
developing a more in-depth and substantial theoretical perspective on food security and
insecurity in older adults, which has implications for policy and practice. The thesis reveals
rural older adults who are engaging with food and life with considerable perseverance,
resilience, and agency, even in the face of bodily and social contingencies of ageing.