Prions are unconventional pathogens that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). According to the "protein only" hypothesis, prions consist of an infectious protein that is capable of converting a normal host protein termed PrPc into a protease resistant form termed PrPSc. PrPSc is poorly degraded by the host and accumulates in the CNS. Normal biological functions of PrPc and mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration remain obscure. During the past two decades, considerable efforts have been made to elucidate prion diseases and in particular to identify PrP interactors for a better understanding in prion biology. A major break-through was the identification of the 37 kDa laminin receptor (LRP), which represents the precursor of the human 67 kDa high-affinity laminin receptor (LR), as the cell surface receptor for the cellular prion protein.

We investigated the role of LRP/LR in the propagation of PrPSc in chronically infected cells by different approaches. Three strategies resulted in downregulation or blocking of LRP and prevented PrPSc accumulation in different scrapie infected neuronal cell lines (i) transfection with an antisense LRP RNA expression plasmid (ii) transfection with small interfering (siRNAs) specific for the LRP mRNA and (iii) incubation with the polyclonal anti-LRP antibody, W3. We observed that the treatment with W3 abolished PrPSc deposition and reduced PrPc levels after one week of incubation. PrPSc did not reappear in cells being cultured for 14 additional days without therapeutic antibody treatment. Taken together, these results indicate that LRP is not only required for PrPc metabolism under non-pathological conditions but also has a pivotal role in prion propagation in a cell culture model. LRP/LR appears then to be a promising potential target for the development of therapeutics for the treatment of prion disease.

Due to these encouraging cell culture data, we decided to select single chain antibodies (scFv) encompassing a suitable format for therapy. ScFvs are composed of variable parts of heavy and light chains of an immunoglobulin that are connected by a peptidic linker. The antibodies were screened on recombinant GST::LRP employing a phage display strategy. Two scFvs termed N3 and S18 were screened and selected by ELISA. Both antibodies were further characterized by western blotting and FACS analysis: both N3 and S18 specifically recognized mouseLRP and humanLRP overexpressed in mammalian cells under denaturating conditions (western blot) and under native conditions at the cell surface (FACS). Epitope mapping revealed that as expected both scFvs are directed against the extracellular part of LRP: S18 and N3 recognized amino acid residues 225-233 and 273-278, respectively. The ability of N3 and S18 to interfere with LRP/PrP interaction was tested by pull-down assays. In contrast to the control scFv C9 directed against the pre-S1 coat-protein of hepatitis B virus, both anti-LRP scFvs were able to block the specific LRP/PrP binding. In order to investigate a potential curing effect of scFv S18 in vivo, this scFv was tested in a scrapie mouse model by passive immunization. The application of S18 by intra-peritoneal injection was able to reduce PrPSc deposition in the spleen in comparison to mice injected with PBS or C9. However the survival times of S18 treated animals was not increased. Anti-LRP scFv S18 seems to contribute to block prion propagation in the periphery but it is likely that this effect was not enough strong to have an impact on the CNS invasion. Thus, we hypothesized that a strategy targeting directly the brain should be more effective. In this context, an approach based on the expression of single chain antibodies as secretory molecules in the brain via an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector was initiated.

To assure secretion of the scFv expressed in mammalian cells, a signal sequence was fused to the scFvs. Tranfection experiments demonstrated that neuronal cells were able to express and secrete high quantities of both scFvs. Furthermore, the generated scFvs were still functional as shown by western blotting. To find the appropriate AAV serotype for scFv expression, neuronal cells were transduced with varying serotypes carrying a GFP. AAV serotype 2 was chosen due to (i) its good transduction performance in two neuronal cell lines and (ii) the possibility of its purification by affinity chromatography. The sequences encoding for the scFvs N3, S18 and C9 have been cloned in an AAV-based vector. The AAV system was also able to drive high expression of scFvs into the supernatant by transfection or transduction. rAAV-scFv particles were produced and purifed for further stereotaxic injections into mice. Although the investigation of this therapeutic strategy is still in progress in a murine scrapie model, we already proved that a single injection of rAAV led to the expression of scFvs into the brain of mice 30 days post injection. This study represents the first gene therapeutic approach for the treatment of prion diseases.


Santayana's Life of Reason, published in five books from 1905 to 1906, ranks as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical naturalism. Acknowledging the natural material bases of human life, Santayana traces the development of the human capacity for appreciating and cultivating the ideal. It is a capacity he exhibits as he articulates a continuity running through animal impulse, practical intelligence, and ideal harmony in reason, society, art, religion, and science. The work is an exquisitely rendered vision of human life lived sanely. In this fourth book, Santayana writes that art is perfectly native to human endeavor; it is the paradigm of all productive activity. Any worthwhile work of art creates an organic whole, and the whole appeals to many facets of one's nature; beauty brings these many feelings and powers into harmony. The benefits of a cultivated artistic taste contribute to the further growth and harmonization of the self in all its worthwhile activities. Art, or "the remodeling of nature by reason," is, according to Santayana, the most generic form of rational activity; hence the life of reason falls within its domain. The conduct of the life of reason is the supreme art. This critical edition, volume VII of The Works of George Santayana, includes notes, textual commentary, lists of variants and emendations, an index, and other tools useful to Santayana scholars. The other four books of the volume are Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, and Reason in Science.


Key plasma physics and real-time control elements needed for robustly stable operation of high fusion power discharges in ITER have been demonstrated in recent research worldwide. Recent analysis has identified the current density profile as the main drive for disruptive instabilities in discharges simulating ITER's baseline scenario with high and low external torque. Ongoing development of model-based profile control and active control of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities is improving the stability of multiple scenarios. Significant advances have been made toward real-time physics-based prediction of instabilities, including path-oriented analysis, active sensing, and machine learning techniques for prediction that are beginning to go beyond simple disruption mitigation trigger applications. Active intervention contributes to prevention of disruptions, including forced rotation of magnetic islands to prevent wall locking, and localized heating/current drive to shrink the islands. Stable discharge rampdowns have been achieved with the fastest ITER-like scaled current ramp rates, while maintaining an X-point configuration. These elements are being integrated into stable operating scenarios and new event-handling systems for off-normal events in order to develop the physics basis and techniques for robust control in ITER.


This study was carried out in order to determine parasitoid species of the family Agromyzidae (Diptera) in Diyarbakir and Mardin provinces during 2002-2004. Infested leaves with leafminer larvae were collected from both cultivated and non-cultivated plants twice a month. The adult parasitoids were obtained by rearing from infested leaves in the laboratory. Five parasitoid species belonging to the Braconidae (Hymenoptera) were found. These species, Bracon kirgisorum Telenga, 1936, Opius basalis Fischer, 1958, O. monilicornis Fischer, 1962, O. quasipulvis Fischer, 1989, O. exiguus Wesmael, 1835. B. kirgisorum, O. basalis and O. quasipulvis, were new records for the Turkish fauna. In this study, B. kirgisorum and O. quasipulvis were recorded for the first time in species of Agromyzidae. Nine parasitoid species belonging to the Eulophidae (Hymenoptera) were found. These species were Chrysocharis liriomyzae Delucchi, 1954, Cirrospilus vittatus Walker, 1838, Diglyphus crassinervis Erdos, 1958, D. isaea (Walker, 1838), D. minoeus (Walker, 1838), Hemiptarsenus zilahisebessi Erdos, 1951, Neochrysocharis formosa (Westwood, 1833), Pediobius metallicus (Nees,1834), and Pnigalio soemius (Walker, 1839). Two parasitoid species belonging to the Pteromalidae (Hymenoptera) were found. These species were Cyrtogaster vulgaris Walker, 1833, and Sphegigaster brevicornis (Walker, 1833). In this study, among the species, D. isaea was the most predominant parasitoid species found (49.80%).


Two-dimensional (2D) layered metal chalcogenides (MXs) have significant potential for use in flexible transistors, optoelectronics, sensing and memory devices beyond the state-of-the-art technology. To pursue ultimate performance, precisely controlled doping engineering of 2D MXs is desired for tailoring their physical and chemical properties in functional devices. In this review, we highlight the recent progress in the doping engineering of 2D MXs, covering that enabled by substitution, exterior charge transfer, intercalation and the electrostatic doping mechanism. A variety of novel doping engineering examples leading to Janus structures, defect curing effects, zero-valent intercalation and deliberately devised floating gate modulation will be discussed together with their intriguing application prospects. The choice of doping strategies and sources for functionalizing MXs will be provided to facilitate ongoing research in this field toward multifunctional applications.


Recognition of a working environment is critical for an autonomous vehicle such as a mobile robot to confirm its possible intelligence. Therefore it is necessary to equip a recognition system with some sensor which can get environmental information. As an effective sensor, a CCD camera is generally thought to be useful for all kinds of mobile robots. However, it is thought to be hard to use the CCD camera for visual feedback which require to acquire the information in real-time. This research presents a corridor recognition method using the unprocessed gray-scale image, termed here as raw-image, and a genetic algorithm (GA), without any image information conversion, so as to perform the recognition process in real-time. The robustness of the method against noises in the environment, and the effectiveness of the method for real-time recognition have been verified using real corridor images.


Stable political environment and prominent development of political institutions increase foreign direct investment flows by providing lower risks for investors. However, this impact can vary according to the development of the country. This study aims to investigate the impact of various indicators of political stability on foreign direct investment attraction for different economies distinguished by their development level. Our database includes 66 FDI-recipient countries and 98 FDI-investing countries for the period from 2001 to 2018. By applying the gravity approach and Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood method with instrumental variables (IV PPML), we model bilateral FDI flows, incorporating variables reflecting various aspects of political stability formed by the principal components analysis. Interestingly, we found mixed results regarding the impact of political stability on FDI flows. In particular, political stability indicators were found to be insignificant, when analysing the bilateral FDI flows for the group of developed economies. We obtained similar result for the group of developing economies. However, political stability variables significantly influence FDI flows for countries with different development level, confirming the hypothesis that countries' development affects bilateral FDI flows. Besides, we discover the significant difference between developed and developing countries referring to FDI-investors. Based on the obtained results, we highlight a few policy implications for developing and developed economies.


Abstract Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan became an iconic Palaeolithic site following Ralph Solecki's mid twentieth-century discovery of Neanderthal remains. Solecki argued that some of these individuals had died in rockfalls and—controversially—that others were interred with formal burial rites, including one with flowers. Recent excavations have revealed the articulated upper body of an adult Neanderthal located close to the 'flower burial' location—the first articulated Neanderthal discovered in over 25 years. Stratigraphic evidence suggests that the individual was intentionally buried. This new find offers the rare opportunity to investigate Neanderthal mortuary practices utilising modern archaeological techniques.


Helm (2008) asked: 'Climate change policy: why has so little been achieved?' Cultural Theory (CT) has been used to analyse the debate over climate change, arguing that competing worldviews mandate divergent policy responses (Rayner & Malone 1998). CT's framework suggests the
monolithic structure of the UNFCCC process fails to integrate these multiple worldviews, hindering effective action. This thesis uses a
complementary framework, Fiske's (1992) Relational Model's Theory (RMT). Whereas CT analyses the debate at the societal level, RMT proposes a framework of individual social cognition comprising four models of social
exchange: 'Equality Matching', based upon reciprocity; 'Communal Sharing', based on equal entitlement within a community; 'Authority Ranking', based upon established status; and 'Market Pricing', based on an external
currency of merit. RMT implies that the relational models found in individual cognition should be mirrored in any debate at the societal and inter-personal levels. Content analyses of media articles and focus group interviews support the view that there are four coherent Standpoints
matching these relational models in the debate. Survey respondents who believe in climate change used different models from those who did not, but survey evidence also gave support to the view that individuals use
multiple models to reason over novel or contested issues such as climate change. CT explicitly argues that one of the four hypothesised worldviews, the 'fatalist', is not active in shaping policy. In contrast, these empirical
studies suggest that the closest equivalent relational model, Equality Matching, generates the Commons Dilemma (Hardin, 1968) that actually drives much of the debate. The studies also raised new questions about the
structure connecting the four relational models, or the worldviews. Lastly, the framework confirms it will be difficult to get concerted action before climate change impacts intensify, at which point social as well as climate
thresholds will have been crossed.


Abstract. The Baltic Sea is a highly frequented shipping area with busy shipping lanes close to
densely populated regions. Exhaust emissions from ship traffic into the atmosphere
do not only enhance air pollution, they also affect the Baltic Sea environment
through acidification and eutrophication of marine waters and surrounding terrestrial
ecosystems. As part of the European BONUS project SHEBA (Sustainable Shipping and
Environment of the Baltic Sea region), the transport, chemical transformation and fate
of atmospheric pollutants in the Baltic Sea region were simulated with three regional
chemistry transport model (CTM) systems, CMAQ, EMEP/MSC-W and SILAM, with grid
resolutions between 4 and 11 km. The main goal was to quantify
the effect that shipping emissions have on the regional air quality in the Baltic Sea
region when the same shipping emission dataset but different CTMs are used in their typical
set-ups. The performance of these models and the shipping contribution to
the results of the individual models were evaluated for sulfur dioxide (SO2),
nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and particulate matter
(PM2.5). Model results from the three CTMs for total air pollutant concentrations
were compared to observations
from rural and urban background stations of the AirBase monitoring network in the
coastal areas of the Baltic Sea region. Observed PM2.5
in summer was underestimated strongly by CMAQ and to some extent by EMEP/MSC-W.
Observed PM2.5 in winter was underestimated by SILAM.
In autumn all models were in better agreement with observed PM2.5.
The spatial average of the annual mean O3 in the EMEP/MSC-W simulation
was ca. 20 %
higher compared to the other two simulations, which is mainly the
consequence of using a different set of boundary conditions for the European model
domain. There are significant differences in the calculated ship contributions to the
levels of air pollutants among the three models.
EMEP/MSC-W, with the coarsest grid, predicted weaker ozone depletion through NO
emissions in the proximity of the main shipping routes than the other two models.
The average contribution of ships to PM2.5 levels in coastal land areas is
in the range of 3.1 %–5.7 % for the three CTMs.
Differences in ship-related PM2.5 between the models are mainly attributed
to differences in the schemes for inorganic aerosol formation.
Differences in the ship-related elemental carbon (EC) among the CTMs can be
explained by differences in the meteorological conditions, atmospheric transport
processes and the applied wet-scavenging parameterizations.
Overall, results from the
present study show the sensitivity of the ship contribution to combined uncertainties
in boundary conditions, meteorological data and aerosol formation and deposition schemes.
This is an important step towards a more reliable evaluation of policy options regarding emission
regulations for ship traffic and the planned introduction of a nitrogen emission control
area (NECA) in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea in 2021.


To examine the effects of cimaterol (CIM) and its withdrawal on meat tenderness and carcass composition, 214-old broiler chickens (n = 288) were randomly assigned to one of nine treatments. For Treatments 1 through 6, bids were fed a control diet or a diet containing 1 ppm CIM until slaughter at 35, 42, or 49 d of age. Treatments 7 and 8 consisted of birds fed the CIM diet for 14 d and then withdrawn from CIM for either 7 or 14 d before slaughter (42 or 49 d of age). In Treatment 9, birds were fed the CIM diet to 42 d of age, then withdrawn from CIM for 7 d. Breast muscle (BM) weight, leg muscle &M) weight, whole body weight, and BM and LM cathepsin B and L activities were obtained on 12 birdsltreatment. Body, LM and BM composition and BM shear values were obtained on 12 additional birdsltreatrnent. Eight birdsftreatment were used to balance the number of birds per pen. Leg muscle weight, as a percentage of whole body weight, was elevated in CIM-fed birds at all ages, and BM percentage was greater at 35 d of age (P c .05). Leg muscle fat percentage was reduced at 35 and 42 d of age (P c .05), and LM protein was elevated at 42 and 49 d of age (P c .05) in CIM-fed birds. Percentage of protein in the BM of CIM-fed birds was elevated at 35 and 42 d of age. Protein content of the whole body was also increased at 35 d of age. Shear values were higher in 42- and 494-old CIM-fed birds. Withdrawal from CIM increased LM and BM fatness beyond that of controls (P < .05), removed the differences in protein percentage, and removed the detrimental effects on shear value. No differences were found in total cathepsin B and L activities. Broiler chickens fed CIM have increased muscle protein percentage, decreased fat percentage, heavier muscle weights, and reduced meat tenderness. Withdrawal from CIM removed these differences.


In this text I explore the question what we are actually afraid of when we are scared at the movies. It is usually claimed that our fear derives from our engagement with characters and our 'participation' through thought, simulation or make-believe in fearful situations of the filmic world. While these standard accounts provide part of the explanation why we are afraid, I aim to complement them by showing that we often literally fear for ourselves as well. Concentrating on an anticipatory subspecies of cinematic fear I call 'dread,' I argue that we often fear a negative affective outcome, namely our own fearful experience of shock and/or horror that usually ends scenes of dread. By looking at viewers' action tendencies and actions proper activated in dreadful moments, I suggest that we appraise scenes of dread as potentially harmful to our current (and even future) psychological well-being. Dread will thus turn out to be a specific kind of meta-emotion.


Tsukirino, Yumi. Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll . 3 vols. San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2012. Print. Reading young children graphic novels is lots of fun and potentially encourages a more adaptable sense of narrative and enhanced visual interpretive skills. Many European and pan-Asian visual narratives test and thrill readers with the unanticipated ways they resolve the challenges of creating cohesive visual narratives and young readers can begin to appreciate narratives that don't function in familiar, aesthetically normalized ways. The manga Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll has an appealing, unstructured page design that is enjoyable for young readers to negotiate but its real audience is pre-teens and teenagers who yearn for a big dose of super-kawaii Japanese culture. Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll has been given an "A" or "all ages" rating by the publisher and Cinnamoroll, the eponymous fluffy puppy, is part of the empire of Sanrio licensed characters which include Hello Kitty and her cohort of friends. Like Cinnamoroll characters designed for young Japanese readers are generally drawn with simple, "black dot" eyes so it might seem that Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll should be accessible for children in Grades 2 to 5. The appeal of characters designed for young audiences is not, however, always limited to young audiences and that is where consideration of the readership for which Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll is intended gets complicated. Book 1 starts appealingly with an introduction of the characters and magically-themed, short vignettes in which Cinnamoroll and his other puppy friends have adorable and mildly amusing adventures. There is little narrative continuity or intensity and readers must be drawn in by the magnetism of sheer cuteness but effervescent books like Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll have a legitimate place in a child's repertoire of reading experiences. The tone and content in Books 1 and 2 are innocuous in the extreme but in Book 3, the tone and content changes. One of the stories has the pups eagerly auditioning to become pop idols. Another centres on the rigorous diet and exercise that some of puppies have to commit to in order to be ready for "bikini season". It seems as though the writer has shifted tone to write for her own demographic rather than younger children. Book 3 is for an audience that thrills to the cuteness of the puppies but is media literate, relatively sophisticated and perhaps even a little world-weary. Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll is fun to read. It is brimming with interesting Japanese cultural context and is at times quite funny in a light and irreverent way. VIZ Media should be commended for bringing a wide range of manga to North American audiences with a slight proviso that, while can be very difficult to establish age-appropriate ratings, Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll is not quite as uncomplicatedly "all ages" as its "A" rating would indicate. Recommended with Reservations:  2 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Matilda Roche Matilda spends her days lavishing attention on the University of Alberta's metadata but children's illustrated books, literature for young adults and graphic novels also make her heart sing. Her reviews benefit from the critical influence of a four year old daughter and a one year old son – both geniuses. Matilda's super power is the ability to read comic books aloud.


A tunable continuous wave (CW) low temperature operating Tm (6 at.-%),Ho (0.6at.-%):YLF laser pumped by fiber-coupled diode laser is reported. The maximum output power is 4.16 W at 2073 nm by use of 30% output coupling, the slope efficiency is 33%. A tuning range from 2049 to 2081 nm is achieved with a birefringent filter (BF). The factors that contribute to the output power and tuning range are discussed.


Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) provides an "end-to-end" solution for image pattern recognition with impressive performance in many areas of application including medical imaging. Most CNN models of high performance use hand-crafted network architectures that require expertise in CNNs to utilise their potentials. In this paper, we applied the Efficient Neural Architecture Search (ENAS) method to find optimal CNN architectures for classifying breast lesions from ultrasound (US) images. Our empirical study with a dataset of 524 US images shows that the optimal models generated by using ENAS achieve an average accuracy of 89.3%, surpassing other hand-crafted alternatives. Furthermore, the models are simpler in complexity and more efficient. Our study demonstrates that the ENAS approach to CNN model design is a promising direction for classifying ultrasound images of breast lesions.


The development of Indonesia's economy cannot be separated from that spread through regions in Indonesia. Purbalingga as one of the districts in Central Java has a potential and growing industrial sector. One of them is the exhaust industry in Pesayangan. The exhaust industry in Purbalingga has huge assets and total production. Like other industries, the exhaust industry in Purbalingga also has problems such as lack of capital funds , product distribution, and supply of raw materials for production. These problems include into supply chain management. Furthermore, the aim this study is to examine the influence of long-term relationship, information sharing, trust, and process integration on supply chain management performance. The population of this study is the company of exhaust industry in Purbalingga which amounts to 148. This research will use a sample of 100 respondents by questionnaires, where the data obtained will be analyzed which covers validity test, reliability test, classical assumption test, multiple regression test, t test, F test and coefficient of determination test The test results show that the indicators in this study are valid and reliable. The most influential variables are long-term relationship ( 0,286 ), then trust (0,208) , process integration (0,176) , and information sharing (0,169). These results show that all independent variables have a positive and significant influence on the dependent variable supply chain management performance.


On Sunday of November 21, 2004, every half hour the news headlines of the British Broadcasting Corporation reminded listeners around the world that the voters in Ukraine were to make a crucial choice for their country on that day. The question, according to the BBC, was whether Ukraine would join Europe or remain with Russia. This rigid structure, placing Russia opposite the West and presenting Ukraine's choice as an either/or alternative with no middle position, was behind most of the comments and analysis concerning the 2004 presidential elections. Political and intellectual elites in Ukraine, Russia, Western Europe, and the United States, despite their diametrically opposed attitudes toward the two main candidates, silently agreed that Viktor Yushchenko was a pro-western candidate who was going to steer Ukraine away from Moscow, while Viktor Yanukovych would strengthen the ties between Ukraine and Russia at the expense of improved relations with the West. Only a few experts disagreed with this black and white picture, but their voices were hardly heard outside a narrow circle of academics.


Gram-negative bacteria use a variety of virulence factors including phytotoxins, exopolysaccharides, effectors secreted by the type III secretion system, and cell-wall-degrading enzymes to promote parasitism in plants. However, little is known about how these virulence factors alter plant cellular responses to promote disease. In this study, we show that virulent Pseudomonas syringae strains activate the transcription of an Arabidopsis ethylene response factor (ERF) gene, RAP2.6, in a coronatine insensitive 1 (COI1)-dependent manner. A highly sensitive RAP2.6 promoter-firefly luciferase (RAP2.6-LUC) reporter line was developed to monitor activities of various bacterial virulence genes. Analyses of P. syringae pv. tomato DC3000 mutants indicated that both type III secretion system and the phytotoxin coronatine are required for RAP2.6 induction. We show that at least five individual type III effectors, avirulence B (AvrB), AvrRpt2, AvrPphB, HopPtoK, and AvrPphEPto, contributed to RAP2.6 induction. Gene-for-gene recognition was not involved in RAP2.6 induction because plants lacking RPM1 and RPS2 responded normally to AvrB and AvrRpt2 in RAP2.6 expression. Interestingly, the role of coronatine in RAP2.6 induction can be partially substituted by the addition of avrB in DC3000, suggesting that AvrB may mimic coronatine. These results suggest that P. syringae type III effectors and coronatine act by augmenting a COI1-dependent pathway to promote parasitism.


This paper distills core lessons about how researchers (scientists, engineers, planners, etc.) interested in promoting sustainable development can increase the likelihood of producing usable knowledge. We draw the lessons from both practical experience in diverse contexts around the world and from scholarly advances in understanding the relationships between science and society. Many of these lessons will be familiar to those with experience in crafting knowledge to support action for sustainable development. However, few are included in the formal training of researchers. As a result, when scientists and engineers first venture out of the laboratory or library with the goal of linking their knowledge with action, the outcome has often been ineffectiveness and disillusionment. We therefore articulate here a core set of lessons that we believe should become part of the basic training for researchers interested in crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. These lessons entail at least four things researchers should know, and four things they should do. The knowing lessons involve understanding the coproduction relationships through which knowledge making and decision making shape one another in social–environmental systems. We highlight the lessons that emerge from examining those coproduction relationships through the ICAP lens, viewing them from the perspectives of Innovation systems, Complex systems, Adaptive systems, and Political systems. The doing lessons involve improving the capacity of the research community to put its understanding of coproduction into practice. We highlight steps through which researchers can help build capacities for stakeholder collaboration, social learning, knowledge governance, and researcher training.


In 1860, the French geologist and palaeontologist Auguste Bravard (1803–1861) circulated a small number of copies of a hand-written and lithographed catalogue of the fossils he had collected in various parts of Argentina over a period of about eight years. Although the existence of this catalogue has been mentioned by various authors, it has never been really published in full. A facsimile reproduction is provided here. The contents of the catalogue and reactions to them are discussed, with special attention to comments in the correspondence between Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. These comments were largely about Bravard's identification among his fossils from Argentina of the genera Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium , well known components of the Late Eocene mammal fauna from the Montmartre gypsum, in the Paris Basin. This identification was later shown to be erroneous by Gervais, Burmeister and Ameghino. Bravard's catalogue also includes what appears to be the first mention of fossil giant ground birds (Phorusrhacidae) in South America.

# Note added in proof {#article-title-35}


In this paper we consider how Eastern Indonesia may be treated as a linguistic area. We propose five defining linguistic features and we discuss their occurrence in some 40 Austronesian (AN) and non-Austronesian (NAN) languages of South Sulawesi, Flores, Sumba, Timor, Alor and Pantar, the Moluccas, Halmahera, the Bird's Head, and the Cenderawasih Bay. We propose that of these five areal features, three are Papuan features that have diffused into the Austronesian languages, while two Austronesian features have diffused into the Papuan languages. These Papuan features are: (1) possessor-possessum order in adnominal possession, (2) overt marking of the distinction alienable vs. inalienable possession, and (3) clause-final negation. While these features are not generally found in Austronesian, we will demonstrate that they occur in many Austronesian languages in East Nusantara and around the Bird's Head, as well as in the Papuan languages of this area. The Austronesian features are: (4) SVO as primary constituent order, and (5) an inclusive/exclusive opposition in the pronominal paradigm. These features are not found in Papuan languages in general, yet they are attested in both the Papuan and the Austronesian languages of East Nusantara, as we will demonstrate. Although the features do not all converge on the same isoglosses, together they define a linguistic area: East Nusantara. This area has Halmahera and the Bird's Head as its core, and radiates outwards to include the Moluccas and Alor/Pantar first, followed by the island Timor.


In this paper, facial recognition has been widely studied due to its importance in many applications in the civilian and military domains. Although this computer vision problem was initially challenging due to the dynamic nature of the human face and the different poses it can take, however, the research conducted over the last two decades made huge advances with many algorithms reporting high accuracy in the published literature. However, this accuracy is usually reduced in real-life usage especially in the presence of different types of noise. In this paper, six different facial recognition algorithms are evaluated and compared, namely, principle component analysis (PCA), two-dimensional PCA (2D-PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), discrete cosine transform (DCT), support Vector Machines (SVM) and independent component analysis (ICA). The effect of the presence of Gaussian and salt and Pepper noises are also considered during the evaluation of these algorithms. The results show that the best performance was obtained using the DCT algorithm with 92% dominant eigenvalues and 95.25 % accuracy which makes it the best choice under different noise conditions.


In December 2009, Hong Kong hosted its largest ever multi-sport event, the East Asian Games (EAG). Overshadowed initially by the excitement of the 2008 Beijing Olympics – and Hong Kong's part in hosting the equestrian events – the Hong Kong public was slow to appreciate the significance of the EAG. This essay examines the history of sports development in Hong Kong and the relatively 'underdeveloped' sporting culture, the expectations of the Hong Kong government and sporting community, and the impact and legacies of the EAG in terms of social change, economic costs and benefits, national prestige and pride, and education and culture. It argues that, for all the collective euphoria over Hong Kong winning the football gold medal, the EAG brought only limited – and short-term – economic benefits and attitudinal changes regarding sport. However, it did demonstrate that Hong Kong could, albeit with some assistance from China, host a multi-sport event and it did encourage some within and without government to seriously consider bidding for the much larger Asian Games.


OBJECTIVE
The striatum (caudate and putamen) appears to be important in the pathogenesis of depression. Some studies show smaller than normal striatal structure volumes in depressed subjects. This study compared striatal volumes in depressed and nondepressed women, screened to exclude major cerebrovascular disease risk factors and comorbid medical illness.

METHOD
Caudate and putamen volumes were measured from magnetic resonance imaging scans of 24 depressed women and 24 matched nondepressed comparison subjects.

RESULTS
Caudate and putamen volumes were not significantly different between depressed and nondepressed groups.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings differ from those of previous studies, possibly because of the exclusion of subjects with cerebrovascular risk factors in this study.


Abstract Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is a highly successful operation that improves patients' quality of life and functionality. Yet, up to 20% of TKA patients remain unsatisfied with their clinical result. Robotic TKA has gained increased attention and popularity as a means of improving patient satisfaction. The promise of robotic-assisted TKA is that it provides a surgeon with a tool that accurately executes bone cuts according to presurgical planning, as well as provides the surgeon with intraoperative feedback helpful for restoring knee kinematics and soft tissue balance. Several systems are now available, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Evidence that the use of robotics will lead to improved implant survival, function, and patient-reported outcomes is slowly being accumulated, but this has not been clearly proven to date. Recent literature does show that the use of robotics during TKA is not associated with increased surgical time or complications. The goal of this review is to provide an objective assessment of the evidence surrounding robotic technology for TKA.


While European solders were seen to be essential to maintaining Company rule in India, much of their time was spent within the fixed boundaries of a cantonment. The heat of the Indian summer dictated a daily routine for Europeans that meant that most of their time was spent indoors, as commanding officers and surgeons sought to avoid any unnecessary exposure to anything that might sap their energies. This shifted many of the physical demands of the army to the shoulders of Indian soldiers, with European troops 'reserved' for certain operations. How then, did the European rank-and-file spend these many 'leisure' hours? For much of the century, the Company and Crown only supported a very limited number of social outlets for the European soldier - those which were believed to reflect the men's class and character. But what of other activities which emerged in stations with 'forward-thinking' commanding officers? This chapter illustrates how, for much of the century, those commanding officers who supported facilities such as soldier's libraries and coffee shops were in the minority, standing against those who believed that such activities were not only unnecessary, but disruptive to good discipline. This chapter suggests the ways in which official understanding of the European troops was reflected in the activities that were sanctioned for them.


A novel methodology for unsupervised data clustering based on Evolutionary Computation, named "Intelligent Unsupervised Clustering" (IUC) is introduced. IUC searches for the "optimal clusters' representatives" using Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) and utilising a Window Density Function (WDF) as an objective function. EAs ensure that the representative is posed in a region of points of high density. IUC aims in finding a highly dense hyperrectangle around the cluster's representative, that captures a part of cluster. Therefore, IUC uses a windowing technique and gradually enlarges a window, which is centered on the best individual generated from the EA. This process continues until the increase of the value of WDF does not change "drastically". The whole process is repeated on the unclustered data, until all the clusters are discovered. The quality of clustering, delivered by the IUC, is compared with well-known clustering algorithms and the experimental results illustrate its efficiency and accuracy.


Transmission line parameters play a significant role in a variety of power system applications. The accuracy of these parameters is of paramount importance. Traditional methods of determining transmission line parameters must take a large number of factors into consideration. It is difficult and in most cases impractical to include every possible factor when calculating parameter values. A modern approach to the parameter identification problem is an online method by which the parameter values are calculated using synchronized voltage and current measurements from both ends of a transmission line. One of the biggest problems facing the synchronized measurement method is line transposition. Several methods have been proposed that demonstrate how the line parameters of a transposed line may be estimated. However, the present case of today's power systems is such that a majority of transmission lines are untransposed. While transposed line methods have value, they cannot be applied in real-world scenarios. Future efforts of using synchronized measurements to estimate transmission line parameters must focus on the development and refining of untransposed line methods. This thesis reviews the existing methods of estimation transmission line parameters using synchrophasor measurements and proposes a new method of estimating the parameters of an untransposed line. After the proposal of this new method, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to determine its performance when noise is present in the measurements.


Capital requirements linked solely to credit risk are shown to increase equilibrium credit rationing and lower aggregate lending. The model predicts that the bank's decision to lend will cause an abnormal runup in the borrower's stock price and that this reaction will be greater the more capital-constrained the bank. I provide empirical support for this prediction. The model explains the recent inability of the Federal Reserve to stimulate bank lending by increasing the money supply. I show that increasing the money supply can either raise or lower lending when capital requirements are linked only to credit risk.


Temperature data are commonly used to estimate the sensitivity of many societally relevant outcomes, including crop yields, mortality, and economic output, to ongoing climate changes. In many tropical regions, however, temperature measures are often very sparse and unreliable, limiting our ability to understand climate change impacts. Here we evaluate satellite measures of near-surface temperature (Ts) as an alternative to traditional air temperatures (Ta) from weather stations, and in particular their ability to replace Ta in econometric estimation of climate response functions. We show that for maize yields in Africa and the United States, and for economic output in the United States, regressions that use Ts produce very similar results to those using Ta, despite the fact that daily correlation between the two temperature measures is often low. Moreover, for regions such as Africa with poor station coverage, we find that models with Ts outperform models with Ta, as measured by both R2 values and out-of-sample prediction error. The results indicate that Ts can be used to study climate impacts in areas with limited station data, and should enable faster progress in assessing risks and adaptation needs in these regions.


The CPU scheduler is an essential component of vSphere 5.x. All workloads running in a virtual machine must be scheduled for execution and the CPU scheduler handles this task with policies that maintain fairness, throughput, responsiveness, and scalability of CPU resources. This paper describes these policies, and this knowledge may be applied to performance troubleshooting or system tuning. This paper also includes the results of experiments on vSphere 5.1 that show the CPU scheduler maintains or exceeds its performance over previous versions of vSphere.


The irradiance fluctuations of beams which propagate through a turbulent medium can be used to infer the spatial spectrum of the turbulent scatterers. The propagation of Goubau-type beam waves in a random medium is used to show that amplitude fluctuations depend upon the transmitter aperture size, observation distance, and wavelength. Most of the results are presented in terms of a parameter, αL, which is inversely proportional to the Fresnel number, πW02/Lλ. A Monte Carlo numerical procedure is used to obtain the normalized mean-square log-amplitude fluctuation as a function of the inverse Fresnel number for various magnitudes of the turbulence inner scale. The applicability of these procedures to measured turbulence spectra is also discussed.


Many knowledge-based systems need to represent vague concepts. Although the practical approach of representing vague concepts as precise intervals over numbers is well-accepted in AI, there is no systematic method to delimit the boundaries of intervals, only ad hoc methods. We present a framework to reason precisely with vague concepts based on the observation that the vague concepts and their interval-boundaries are constrained by the underlying domain knowledge. The framework is comprised of a constraint language to represent logical constraints on vague concepts, as well as numerical constraints on the intervalboundaries; a query language to request information about the interval boundaries; and a computational mechanism to answer the queries. A key step in answering queries is preprocessing the constraints by extracting the numerical constraints from the logical constraints and combining them with the given numerical constraints.


In this chapter, the author proposes to imagine the aims of the school in light of a cosmopolitan philosophy of education. The first section that follows provides a summary account of what the author takes cosmopolitanism to mean. The second section frames a philosophy of education that stems from this account. The third and penultimate section sketches a conception of the school and its moral and ethical aims in light of this philosophy of education. The discussion will foreground normative ideals. Such ideals can be dangerous if they blind people to realities. They can be disappointing if failure to attain them weighs down hard on people. But if ideals are understood as sources of direction rather than as destinations, they can assist educators to sustain their course in the face of obstacles. The author's core purpose here is to highlight why a cosmopolitan orientation can inspire, encourage, and help guide educators in realizing schools for our time.


Rural development objectives are often framed relative to a targeted number of beneficiary farms and farm households. Yet the data available on the number and distribution of the world's farms has been surprisingly fragmented and coherent estimates of the number of farms in a given region for a given year have not been available. We take a set of simple rules to use existing data sources to generate a harmonized set of farm number estimates at the national level. We estimate there are 656 million farms globally in 2020, with a projected decline to 624 million farms globally by 2030. These estimates can be used to better inform policy and large-scale investment programming and design. We also articulate the need for further investments in basic agricultural census data, and outline an agenda for the generation of farm distribution data that would be most useful for further policy guidance.


Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.


This special issue of Anthropological Quarterly celebrates the life and work of David H. P. Maybury-Lewis, who died at home, surrounded by family, on December 2, 2007, after a long and distinguished career as a remarkable ethnographer, theoretician, humanitarian, and pioneering champion of the rights of indigenous people. As the Edward C. Henderson Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, where he taught from 1960 until his retirement in 2004, he influenced friends, colleagues, and generations of students, some of whom are represented in this collection (for the impact his arrival had on the Harvard Anthropology Department, see Peacock, this volume). Their writings, presented here, testify in part to the moral commitments that drove him and the intellectual ideals to which he aspired. Our collection is divided into two parts, not counting the Forward, which we are very honored to have had written by Professor Claude Levi-Strauss, preeminent anthropologist of the twentieth century. Part one contains an introductory essay and four articles, each representing a different intellectual horizon or phase of David's career. As organized here, these include: 1) his contributions to lowland South American ethnography and ethnology, 2) involvement in the debates concerning the strengths and weaknesses of structuralism, 3) founding of Cultural Survival and defense of the rights of indigenous peoples as ethnic groups in modern states, and 4) the amplification of his teaching and scholarship to embrace Amerindian peoples throughout the Americas in examining what he termed the "Second Conquest," as well as his efforts to broadcast his anthropological vision to a general audience through his hosting of the PBS Millennium series. Part two consists of a series of shorter essays, reflecting the above themes, but highlighting more personal reminiscences of David's professional life as a teacher, scholar, and public intellectual. Most of the contributions, including the forward by Claude Levi-Strauss, have been written expressly for this volume. Some were presented at "Indigenous Theories, Anthropological Ideas, and Public Service," a conference honoring David's career convened at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on May 8, 2004. One, by Nur Yalman, was read at David's memorial service held in Harvard Memorial Church on March 23, 2008 (see also Yalman 2009). Taken together, they illustrate the complex interrelationships that animated David's interests and activities as an anthropologist which, while diverse, nonetheless reflect an overall integrity, like different facets of a single crystal. The forces that shape professional careers are many and varied, but surely some of the most profound are those that can be traced back to one's childhood. Anthropologists seldom acknowledge these earliest influences in print, but in the case of David Maybury-Lewis we are fortunate that he did so. David was born on May 5, 1929, in Hyderbad, Sindh, in what was then the waning days of the British Raj. He maintained that his experiences at the time were not unrelated to the profession he was to choose and the kind of fieldwork he would ultimately conduct. Recounting a story he also sometimes liked to share with his graduate students, he wrote of his early confrontations with alterity: "I met my first aliens in early childhood, and they fascinated me. I was a small boy, traveling with my family in what was then British India and is now Pakistan. My father was a British engineer who built and inspected canals in a constant struggle to make the desert bloom. I loved the months when we were on tour. Every few days, the contents of our entire household, from carpets to crockery, would be packed into huge chests and loaded onto the backs of twenty-seven protesting, government-supplied camels. The camels would go off in the evening and walk through the Sindh Desert...We followed the next morning, transported over the rutted tracks in an Armstrong Siddeley, a car with fenders so high off the ground that I had to be lifted into it. …


What was Gamal Abdel Nasser's attitude toward Israel? Did it change as a result of his country's stunning defeat in the Six-Day War? Was the Egyptian president willing to achieve a political settlement with Israel? Did Israel miss an opportunity to reach an agreement with Nasser? These are some of the questions with which historians and political commentators have been grappling for decades, while offering views that differ in terms of nuance, or more fundamentally, from the canonical version of events.


When fairly homogeneous taxpayers are affected by common income shocks, a tax agency's optimal auditing strategy consists of auditing a low-income declarer with a probability that (weakly) increases with the other taxpayers' declarations. Such policy generates a coordination game among taxpayers, who then face both strategic uncertainty - about the equilibrium that will be selected.and fundamental uncertainty - about the type of agency they face. Thus the situation can be realistically modelled as a global game that yields a unique and usually interior equilibrium which is consistent with empirical evidence. Results are also applicable to other areas like regulation or welfare benefit allocation.


Electroanalytical parameters of different graphitic carbon-based electrode materials were compared to select the best one for the pantoprazole electroanalysis. Such parameters include sensitivity, repeatability, residual background current, and signal-to background current ratio of the analytical response and such electrodes include conventional carbon-based electrodes such as glassy carbon (GC), carbon paste, edge-plane pyrolytic graphite (EPPG), and basal-plane pyrolytic graphite electrodes and film-coated modified GC electrodes with graphitic carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotube, nanographene, carbon black and graphite powder. The EPPG electrode, after applying a simple electrochemical anodization, showed more acceptable analytical performances compared with the other electrodes. Raman spectroscopy was employed to study the surface structural changes that occurred dring the anodic activation. Calibration plot with a good linearity was obtained in the concentration range of 0.2-25 and 0.02-8.5 µM, and the detection limit was estimated to be 0.055 and 0.0041µM using cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry techniques, respectively. Finally, the electrochemically activated EPPG electrode was used successfully for the determination of pantoprazole in tablet dosage forms and human urine samples with satisfactory results.


The function of non-coding variation in the human genome is hotly debated. While much of the genome appears to be involved in some kind of molecular activity, a relatively small portion of the genome appears to be conserved across mammalian species. To try to understand part of this seeming paradox, we examined chromatin accessibility as a model molecular phenotype. We modeled chromatin state as either open or closed as looked at the frequency of open chromatin across 70 Yoruban cell lines. We saw that most regions of chromatin accessibility occurred in only a small number of individuals, although there are a number of regions that are accessible across the entire panel. To delve further into understanding the evolutionary mechanisms, we examined nucleotide diversity in and around accessible regions. We found that in the open chromatin access, low frequency regions had decreased nucleotide diversity, however, they were situated within regions of elevated nucleotide diversity. These results point toward a role of random mutation and genetic drift shaping the distribution of accessible regions in the human genome.


A protein-engineering strategy yields a closer look at the receptor-bound water, sodium, and lipid molecules. Structures of G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs), determined in the past few years, have provided insight into the function of this important family of membrane proteins. Liu et al. used a protein-engineering strategy to produce a stabilized version of the human A2A adenosine receptor (A2AAR). The high-resolution structure reveals the position of about 60 internal waters, which suggests an almost continuous channel in the GPCR and can explain the allosteric effects of Na+ on ligand binding and how cholesterol may contribute to GPCR stabilization. W. Liu, E. Chun, A. A. Thompson, P. Chubukov, F. Xu, V. Katritch, G. W. Han, C. B. Roth, L. H. Heitman, A. P. IJzerman, V. Cherezov, R. C. Stevens, Structural basis for allosteric regulation of GPCRs by sodium ions. Science 337, 232–236 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Today's markets are characterized by over-supply, intense competitiveness in every sector, increasingly aggressive competition and product and market strategies which are open to imitation. Consequently, the brand, and the values it carries, has become the truly critical competitive factor. In order to compete, each company needs to develop an integrated communication campaign which includes different communication tools, with high-impact like advertising, or with specific promotional tasks, as sales promotions (for short-term sales volume increases), merchandising (essential for promoting brand values at points-of-sale), licensing (which aims to transmit brand equity to members of the public and market sectors which would otherwise be difficult to reach) and sponsorship (where brand values are highlighted by associating the company with highly-visible shows and events).


Aims. We study the dynamics and growth of dust particles in circumstellar disks of different masses that are prone to gravitational instability during the critical first Myr of their evolution. Methods. We solved the hydrodynamics equations for a self-gravitating and viscous circumstellar disk in a thin-disk limit using the FEOSAD numerical hydrodynamics code. The dust component is made up of two different components: micron-sized dust and grown dust of evolving size. For the dust component, we considered the dust coagulation, fragmentation, momentum exchange with the gas, and dust self-gravity. Results. We found that the micron-sized dust particles grow rapidly in the circumstellar disk, reaching a few cm in size in the inner 100 au of the disk during less than 100 kyr after the disk formation, provided that fragmentation velocity is 30 ms − 1 . Due to the accretion of micron dust particles from the surrounding envelope, which serves as a micron dust reservoir, the approximately cm-sized dust particles continue to be present in the disk for more than 900 kyr after the disk formation and maintain a dust-to-gas ratio close to 0.01. We show that a strong correlation exists between the gas and pebble fluxes in the disk. We find that radial surface density distribution of pebbles in the disk shows power-law distribution with an index similar to that of the Minimum-mass solar nebula regardless the disk mass. We also show that the gas surface density in our models agrees well with measurements of dust in protoplanetary disks of AS 209, HD 163296, and DoAr 25 systems. Conclusions. Pebbles are formed during the very early stages of protoplanetary disk evolution. They play a crucial role in the planet formation process. Our disc simulations reveal the early onset ( < 10 5 yr) of an inwards-drifting flux of pebble-sized particles that makes up approximately between one hundredth and one tenth of the gas mass flux, which appears consistent with mm-observations of discs. Such a pebble flux would allow for the formation of planetesimals by streaming instability and the early growth of embryos by pebble accretion. We conclude that unlike the more common studies of isolated steady-state protoplanetary disks, more sophisticated global numerical simulations of circumstellar disk formation and evolution, including the pebble formation from the micron dust particles, are needed for performing realistic planet formation studies.


This paper investigates the dynamics and performance of inerter-based vibration isolators. Force / displacement transmissibility and vibration power flow are obtained to evaluate the isolation performance. Both force and motion excitations are considered. It is demonstrated that the use of inerters can enhance vibration isolation performance by enlarging the frequency band of effective vibration isolation. It is found that adding inerters can introduce anti-resonances in the frequency-response curves and in the curves of the force and displacement transmissibility such that vibration transmission can be suppressed at interested excitation frequencies. It is found that the introduction of inerters enhances inertial coupling and thus have a large influence on the dynamic behaviour at high frequencies. It is shown that force and displacement transmissibility increases with the excitation frequency and tends to an asymptotic value as the excitation frequency increases. In the high-frequency range, it was shown that adding inerters can result in a lower level of input power. These findings provide a better understanding of the effects of introducing inerters to vibration isolation and demonstrate the performance benefits of inerter-based vibration isolators.


Power producers distort parameters of their production cost functions and limits for generated power to increase their profit. System Operator uses submitted data for medium-term generation scheduling. Power producers project the levels of market prices and predict prosperous decisions of System Operator. Power producers prepare data taking into account possible behavior of rivals. The paper presents a two-level optimization problem for the data preparation by strategic producers. Nash equilibrium is modeled to represent the behavior of generation companies. Case study demonstrates that producers tend to distort cost functions. An increase in profit of power producers due to data manipulation is shown.


OBJECTIVES
The term "endocrine disruptor" (ED) is used for compounds that mimic or antagonize the effects of endogenous hormones. Synthetic estrogen 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2) and a human carcinogen benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) are assigned as exogenous endocrine disruptors and an estrogenic hormone estradiol is a natural endogenous disruptor. Here, the potency of these three disruptors administered to rats individually and in combination to induce expression of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes involved in their own metabolism (CYP1A1, 2C and 3A) in vivo was investigated.

METHODS
Changes in CYP protein expression after exposure of rats to BaP, EE2 or estradiol were analyzed by Western blotting. Using the HPLC method, CYP1A1, 2C and 3A specific activities in hepatic microsomes isolated from exposed rats were analyzed.

RESULTS
Whereas exposure to BaP induces expression of CYP1A1 protein and its marker activity (Sudan I oxidation) in liver, kidney and lung of rats, no significant induction of this CYP and its enzyme activity was produced by EE2 and estradiol. Treatment of BaP in combination with EE2 and/or estradiol decreased the BaP-mediated CYP1A1 induction in liver of exposed rats. BaP also induces CYP2C11 protein in rat liver and kidney, but does not increase its enzyme activity measured as testosterone 16α-hydroxylation. The enzyme activity of another enzyme of the 2C subfamily, CYP2C6, diclofenac 4'-hydroxylation, is even decreased by BaP. The CYP2C11 protein expression and/or its activity are also increased in liver of rats treated with EE2 and estradiol, but its expression is significantly decreased in lung. The CYP2C6 activity is also elevated by treatment of rats with EE2 and estradiol administered individually as well as in their combination. Whereas only a slight increase in CYP3A protein expression was found by BaP in rat liver, its enzyme activity, testosterone 6β-hydroxyalation, increased significantly in this organ. In contrast, no effect or even a decrease in CYP3A expression and its enzyme activity was produced by EE2 and estradiol in rats exposed to these compounds.


IntroductionUnstructured free-text clinical notes often contain valuable information relating to patient symptoms, prescriptions and diagnoses. These can assist with better care for patients and novel healthcare research if transformed into accessible, structured clinical text. In particular, Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms can produce such structured outputs, but require gold standard data to train and validate their accuracy. While existing tools such as Brat and Webanno provide interfaces to manually annotate text, there is a lack of capability to efficiently annotate complex clinical information.
Objectives and ApproachWe present Markup, an open-source, web-based annotation tool developed for use within clinical contexts by domain experts to produce gold standard annotations for NLP development. Markup incorporates NLP and Active Learning technologies to enable rapid and accurate annotation of unstructured documents. Markup supports custom user configurations, automated annotation suggestions, and automated mapping to existing clinical ontologies such as the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), or custom, user-defined ontologies.
ResultsMarkup has been tested on Epilepsy clinic letters, where captured annotations were used to build and test NLP applications. Markup allowed for inter-annotator statistics to be calculated in the case of multiple annotators. Re-annotation, following iterations of annotation definitions, was incorporated for flexibility. UMLS codes, certainty context, and multiple components from complex phrases were all able to be captured and exported in a structured format.
Conclusions / ImplicationsMarkup allows gold standard annotations to be collected efficiently across unstructured text and is optimized to capture health-specific information. These annotations are important to develop and validate NLP algorithms that automate the capture of important information from clinic letters at scale.


Hypotheses to explain assortative pairing in gammarids (Amphipoda) include size-related habitat segregation and male-male competition. We investigated the influence of micro-habitat heterogeneity on size-assortative pairing in Gammarus pulex, using field-based studies and complementary laboratory-based studies. Firstly, we studied the distribution of males and females of different size and the intensity of size-assortative pairing in micro-habitats differing in particle size at three different study sites. In one site both males and females distributed among micro-habitats in relation to their size, with larger individuals in vegetation and smaller individuals in fine gravel. In a second site, there was no difference in the size of both males and females between two micro-habitats of different particle size, whereas in a third site with two micro-habitats of different particle size the difference was significant for males, but not for females. However, size-assortative pairing was significant within each micro-habitat in each study site. In the first site, pooling data from the three microhabitat subsamples resulted in a higher correlation coefficient between male size and female size, compared to the ones obtained within each micro-habitat, whereas no such difference was observed for the two other sites. Secondly, in experimental conditions, we compared the strength of size-assortative pairing under combinations of both heterogeneous and homogeneous environmental conditions and male-biased or female-biased sex ratios. Size assortative pairing was significant only when the sex-ratio was male-biased. Environmental heterogeneity had no effect on size-assortative pairing. We conclude that male: male competition is the major determinant of size-assortative pairing in G. pulex and that micro-habitat segregation plays only a marginal, if any, role.


This paper takes a
critical view of the application of concepts and approaches originally developed at national level to the
international industrial relations system, providing an overview of this system, identifying its characteristics,
the actors and their relations, and the structure and scope of application of the rules. With regard to the
actors, the paper analyses the economic, political and institutional interests that can lead to the development
of international trade unionism and the factors that may increase its effectiveness: the internal cohesion of
rank-and-file organisations on the basis of shared objectives, the internal and external legitimation of the
international trade union movement, and access to appropriate forms of action. With regard to regulation, the
author outlines the three mechanisms that together influence the workings of the international economy, with
regard to industrial relations. Concerning the first of these, international law, the author examines certain
ILO Conventions, considered to be the most significant, and underlines the key role of the EU in the
production of supranational labour norms. Moreover, the ILO Conventions are seen as providing the basis
for the development of two further types of measures: voluntary regulatory mechanisms, such as company
codes of conduct, and various framework agreements concluded at international level. In concluding the
analysis, the author argues that the future of international industrial relations requires further research and
interdisciplinary analysis, greater familiarity with the linguistic diversity of the existing literature, and a more
sophisticated enquiry into the modes of governance of globalisation.


The chromosome number of the genus Plagiochilion S. Hatt. (Plagiochilaceae, Hepaticae), n=9, is reported for the first time, based on Chinese material of P. mayebarae S. Hatt. and P. oppositum (Reinw. et al.) S. Hatt. Oilbodies of Plagiochilion oppositum are newly described and illustrated. Oil bodies of cultured material of P. mayebarae contain smaller granules sometimes difficultly recognized, and are slightly different from those from the wild.


The primary role o f a management accounting officer in an organization is to collect and provide appropriate and timely information to managers so that they can operate and control the organization's operations and out decided. The enterprise managers often plan and make decisions about production schedules and schedules, marketing managers make decisions about advertising, promotion and pricing, and homes. Financial management often makes decisions on capital mobilization and investment. All these managers need information for their decisions. It is the management accounting staff that will provide useful information to managers at all levels o f the organization. Therefore, a requirement for management accounting staff is that they must be knowledgeable about decision-making situations o f managers. Besides, the research results showed that there were 150 accounting managers who interviewed and answered about 15 questions. The Data collected from 12/06/2016 to 15/12/2016 in the Southern region. The researcher had analyzed Cronbach's alpha, KMO test, the result o f KMO analysis usedfor multiple regression analysis. There are three components following: Political economic environment, information technology system and human resource affecting the organization o f cost management accounting at the enterprises o f mining, processing and trading constructions in the southern region with significance level o f five percent. The research results were processed from SPSS 20.0 software. The parameters o f the model estimated by Least Squares Method tested for the model assumption with 5% significance level.


Pattern electroretinogram (PERG) results recorded in different laboratories from patients with unilateral traumatic transections of the optic nerve have led investigators to opposite conclusions about the sources of this response. There was no absolute demonstration of complete transection in any of these studies. In the present study, PERGs and flash ERGs were recorded from a patient who, 30 months earlier, had undergone surgical resection of the right optic nerve to remove a glioma. The histological section of the biopsied nerve confirmed complete optic nerve transection. Ophthalmoscopically and angiographically, the right eye was normal except for marked optic atrophy. PERGs were produced by 10 Hz reversal of high contrast checks with check widths from 13 deg 30 min to 12 min arc. Field size was 27 deg X 21 deg and space-averaged screen luminance was 110 cd/m2. Smaller checks (3 deg 23 min to 12 min) produced responses in both eyes, but the responses in the right eye were much smaller than those in the left eye. Large checks and diffuse flashes produced approximately equal responses in the two eyes. The implicit times of the PERGs produced by stimulation of the right eye with smaller checks were shorter than those of the left eye. The authors conclude that, in humans, there is a contribution to the high contrast pattern reversal ERG from cells which are not dependent upon the integrity of the ganglion cell layer. These cells and cells dependent upon ganglion cells may both contribute to the high contrast PERG in the normal human eye.


Over the last two decades, there has been a surge of opioid-related overdose deaths resulting in a myriad of state policy responses. Researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of such policies using a wide-range of statistical models, each of which requires multiple design choices that can influence the accuracy and precision of the estimated policy effects. This simulation study used real-world data to compare model performance across a range of important statistical constructs to better understand which methods are appropriate for measuring the impacts of state-level opioid policies on opioid-related mortality. Our findings show that many commonly-used methods have very low statistical power to detect a significant policy effect (< 10%) when the policy effect size is small yet impactful (e.g., 5% reduction in opioid mortality). Many methods yielded high rates of Type I error, raising concerns of spurious conclusions about policy effectiveness. Finally, model performance was reduced when policy effectiveness had incremental, rather than instantaneous, onset. These findings highlight the limitations of existing statistical methods under scenarios that are likely to affect real-world policy studies. Given the necessity of identifying and implementing effective opioid-related policies, researchers and policymakers should be mindful of evaluation study statistical design.


Do Ho Suh's hugely popular installations have been drawing audiences around the world for more than two decades. Their themes of displacement, transience, and longing reflect the artist's own nomadic existence as a Korean emigre. Now this unique volume, which contains numerous previously unpublished drawings and sketches, reveals not only the genesis of Suh's sculptural and installation pieces but also his efforts to translate his artistic motivations to paper using a variety of traditional and non-traditional media. Grouped thematically around ideas of self-exploration, relationships, home, states of transition and Karma, the book features works in pencil, airbrush, watercolour, rubbings, architectural renderings and "thread drawings," which are sewn and embedded into handmade pulp. In addition, sketches from the artist's private notebooks show the inception points for the germination of his ideas. This book also includes three essays focusing on Suh's personal journeys, his architectural drawings and paper sculpture.


Based on a diode coupled silicon carbide field effect transistor (FET) with platinum as catalytic gate material, the influence of dynamic temperature modulation on the selectivity of gas analysis sensors FETs has been investigated. This operating mode, studied intensively for semiconductor gas sensors, has only recently been applied to FETs. A suitable temperature cycle for detection of typical exhaust gases (CO, NO, C3H6 , H2, NH3) was developed and combined with appropriate signal processing. The sensor data were evaluated using multivariate statistics, e.g., linear discriminant analysis. Measurements have proven that typical exhaust gases can be discriminated in backgrounds with 0, 10, and 20% oxygen. Furthermore, we are able to quantify the mentioned gases and to determine unknown concentrations based on training data. Very low levels of relative humidity below a few percent influence the sensor response considerably but for higher levels the cross interference of humidity is negligible. In addition, experiments regarding stability and reproducibility were performed.


When people interact with each other, they implicitly make use of context information while intuitively deducing and interpreting their actual situation. Compared to humans, IT infrastructures cannot easily take advantage of context information in interactions. Typically, context information has to be provided explicitly. Recently, cellular network operators have been showing interest in offering Context-Aware Services (CAS) in the future. For a service to be context-aware it must be able to use context information in order to adapt its behavior or the content it provides. Examples of CASs are restaurant finders, tour guides and dating services. These services will depend on the availability of context information which must be provided at the right time, in the right quality, and at the right place. The quality of this context information is neither identical to Quality of Service (QoS), nor to the quality of the underlying hardware components, i.e., Quality of Device (QoD). Rather, the precision, probability of correctness, trustworthiness, resolution, and up-to-dateness of context information form a new set of quality parameters which we call Quality of Context (QoC). In this paper, we will discuss what QoC is, what its most important parameters are and how QoC relates to QoS and QoD. These three notions of quality are unequal, but not unrelated. Based on several examples we will show the interdependence between them. We will argue that QoC as a new notion of quality is necessary to allow for the provisioning of CASs in an interorganizational manner.


This conceptual article contributes to the post-growth strand of political ecology literature, which seeks to find sustainable ways of organizing the economy that do not require economic growth. It explores the idea that transitioning to post-growth societies requires a transition in the relationship-to-profit of business. I first conceptualize relationship-to-profit as the intersection of purpose, investment, and ownership of firms. Specifically, for-profit business structures entail a financial gain purpose, private ownership, and unlimited returns on investment; whereas not-for-profit business structures have a social benefit purpose, collective ownership, and limited returns on investment. I then outline ideal types of for-profit and not-for-profit economies, based on the differences between these two kinds of relationship-to-profit. The first ideal type shows how the for-profit business structure drives consumerism, economic growth, and ecological harm, as well as inequality and political capture, preventing post-growth transitions. These dynamics might be slowed down by businesses that seek to balance private financial gain with social benefit (known as dual-purpose businesses). The second ideal type describes the dynamics that might be expected in an economy consisting of not-for-profit businesses, which have a legal mandate to pursue only social benefit. This analysis explains how transitioning from for-profit to not-for-profit forms of business might change some of the most problematic dynamics of the economy, allowing for post-growth transformations. A brief discussion of the possible shortcomings of a not-for-profit economy is also offered. Keywords: Not-for-profit business, nonprofit enterprise, for-profit business, relationship-to-profit, post-growth, degrowth, economic growth, sustainability, sustainable econom


Aluminium powder metallurgy (Al-PM) alloys are finding promising applications in many areas such as household appliances, automotive vehicles and many other allied sections where reduction in weight is the primary constraint. In the proposed research, two binary alloy systems Al-X were studied by mixing elemental powders of Aluminium (Al), Tin (Sn) and Magnesium (Mg). Two types of mixing techniques were followed. In one case, elemental powders were blended in a mechanical mixer without any mixing media (A) and another case powders were blended with ball to powder ratio of 10:1 (B). The content in binary premix was varied from 0.4 to 0.8 % Sn (by wt.) and 0.5 to 2 % Mg (by wt.) with base of Aluminium. The blended powders was compacted at 450 MPa followed by sintering in ultra high purity nitrogen atmosphere in tubular sintering furnace at 600 o C. The mixing technique B showed significant influence on increase in hardness by two-


In model extraction attacks, adversaries can steal a machine learning model exposed via a public API by repeatedly querying it and adjusting their own model based on obtained predictions. To prevent model stealing, existing defenses focus on detecting malicious queries, truncating, or distorting outputs, thus necessarily introducing a tradeoff between robustness and model utility for legitimate users. Instead, we propose to impede model extraction by requiring users to complete a proof-of-work before they can read the model's predictions. This deters attackers by greatly increasing (even up to 100x) the computational effort needed to leverage query access for model extraction. Since we calibrate the effort required to complete the proof-of-work to each query, this only introduces a slight overhead for regular users (up to 2x). To achieve this, our calibration applies tools from differential privacy to measure the information revealed by a query. Our method requires no modification of the victim model and can be applied by machine learning practitioners to guard their publicly exposed models against being easily stolen.


A novel orange-yellow emitting Sr3Al2O5Cl2:Eu(2+), Tm(3+) phosphor with bright and long persistent luminescence (LPL) has been newly developed. The incorporation of Tm(3+) into the Sr3Al2O5Cl2:Eu(2+) as an auxiliary activator dominates its long persistent luminescence and thermoluminescence characteristics to a large extent. The emissions in Sr3Al2O5Cl2:Eu(2+), Tm(3+) for both fluorescence and LPL are due to the 5d → 4f transitions of Eu(2+). The orange-yellow long persistent luminescence with the chromaticity coordination of (0.53, 0.46) can persist for nearly 220 min at recognizable intensity level (≥ 0.32 mcd/m2). This investigation provides a new and efficient long persistent phosphor which enriches the color of the existing LPL.


A perturbative expression up to fourth order in koa (ko = 2r/X; a being the rms of the surface height and X the wavelength) has been obtained for the mean diffuse intensity from a one-dimensional random rough surface that has normal statistics and a Gaussian correlation function for s polarization. For p polarization it is not possible to obtain this expression because of the existence of certain resonances; thus the calculations must be restricted to second order in k0a. Perturbative calculations were derived from the Rayleigh hypothesis and also from the extinction theorem. The expression for the diffuse component of the mean scattered intensity was the same for p waves in both cases up to second order in k0a. For s waves the equality was obtained up to fourth order in k0 o. Comparisons with exact numerical results and with those obtained by using the Kirchhoff approximation are made. This comparison allows us to establish assessments on the validity of the perturbative solution and to obtain some new interesting facts. In addition, the behavior of the diffuse halo at small a/X as a function of the correlation length T, the angle of incidence 0o, and the polarization is discussed. The validity of the Rayleigh hypothesis is also studied.


Objective Ulcerative colitis is associated with increased interleukin 13 (IL-13) production by natural killer T cells. Taking advantage of the inhibitory actions of interferon β on IL-13 expression, this proof-of-concept study aimed to show that decreasing IL-13 production is associated with clinical improvement of ulcerative colitis symptoms. Design Open-label interventional drug trial. Setting Outpatient clinical research hospital. Patients Adult patients with active ulcerative colitis (Short Clinical Colitis Activity Index (SCCAI)≥5). Interventions Treatment with 30 μg IM interferon-β-1a (Avonex) weekly for 12 weeks with 6 month follow-up. Main outcome measures Clinical response was defined as ≥3 point drop in the SCCAI for at least two consecutive monitoring visits, and cytokine production was measured in cultured peripheral blood and lamina propria mononuclear cells (LPMC) before and after treatment. Results 11 of 16 patients were clinical responders, and 4 were in remission (SCCAI ≤ 2) at the end of treatment. Rectal bleeding subscores improved dramatically by week 4 (38% with frank bleeding vs 87% pretreatment). Increased IL-13 production by LPMC T cells fell significantly in clinical responders (690±99 vs 297±58 pg/ml p=0.015) but was unchanged in non-responders (542±83 vs 510±39 pg/ml). In addition, non-responders had significantly higher production of IL-17 and IL-6 pre-treatment compared to responders. Conclusions Interferon-β-1a induces clinical response and remission in a large subset of patients with ulcerative colitis that is associated with significant inhibition of IL-13 production. In addition, increased IL-17 and IL-6 production is associated with no response to interferon-β. These data provide a proof-of-concept that IL-13 is an effector cytokine in ulcerative colitis and should be a target for novel therapies.


An accurate understanding
of the respiratory fluid dynamics is instrumental for medical applications, such
as drug delivery system and treatment of diseases. Substantial research has
been done to study such flow. However, a great number of these studies have the
prevailing assumption of having a smooth wall, in despite the human trachea and
bronchi is sustain by a series of cartilaginous rings, which creates height
differences near the wall. To study the effect of including cartilaginous rings
in the respiratory flow we developed two experiments, presenting a comparison
between a smooth model and a model with cartilaginous rings. First, we present
an experimental observation of a simplified Weibel-based model of the human
trachea and bronchi with cartilaginous rings. The experiments were carried out
with a flow rate comparable with a resting state (trachea-based Reynolds number
of ReD = 2650). In the second experiment, we developed a similar
experiment but in a model with a tracheal stenosis (70% in the middle of the model) and no bronchi. In
this case we increase the Reynolds number to ReD = 3350, still a
resting breathing state condition.

For both experiments, we
used transparent models and refractive index-matching methods were used to
observe the flow, particularly near the wall. The flow was seeded with tracers
to perform particle image velocimetry and particle tracking velocimetry to
quantify the effect the rings have on the flow near the trachea and bronchi
walls. From the results, we present a previously unknown phenomenon in the
cavities between the cartilaginous rings: a small recirculation is observed in
the upstream side of the cavities throughout the trachea. This recirculation is
due to the adverse pressure gradient created by the expansion, which traps particles
within the ring cavity. In addition, we found that the cartilaginous rings induce velocity fluctuations into the
flow, which enhances the near-wall momentum of the flow reducing the separation
after the stenosis. Size of the recirculation is reduced by 11% and the maximum
upstream velocity is reduced by 38%, resulting in a much weaker recirculation
because of the rings. Also noticed a delay in the separation from the trachea
to bronchi bifurcation.

The detection of recirculation zones in the cartilage ring
cavities and the perturbation sheds light on the particle deposition mechanism
and helps explain results from previous studies that have observed an
enhancement of particle deposition in models with cartilage rings. The results
highlight the importance to include the cartilaginous rings in respiratory flow
studies. Finally, we compared the results from the stenotic case with Reynolds-averaged
Navier-Stokes (RANS) models (k
– e, k – e RNG, k – ω, k – ω SST, k – ω SST LRN and 4-equation Transition SST).
In the results, indicate significant
discrepancies between the experimental measurements and the simulations, mainly
in the area with flow separation after the contraction. Therefore, RANS
algorithms should not be considered reliable for research purposes in
respiratory fluid dynamics without experimental validation.


Contribution to the Metropolitan Study: 15 -- The project "Nested Dynamics of Metropolitan Processes and Policies" was initiated by the Regional and Urban Development Group in 1982, and work on this collaborative study started in 1983. This series of contributions to the study is a means of conveying information between the collaborators in the network of the project.

The foundation of the project is a systematic comparison of dynamic phenomena in a set of relatively advanced metropolitan regions. This comparison is intended to identify key factors and observable development paths which are shared by all regions, or at least by certain subgroups of regions.

In this paper, we therefore begin to assess the relative stage and speed of economic structural development in a given set of such regions. A methodology based on changing employment shares is developed to examine industrial substitution (that is, aggregate technological change) through time and over metropolitan space. The relocation and restructuring of job opportunities within or outside a metropolitan region can be interpreted in terms of industrial innovation and product cycle theory. In this way, it is possible to identify the trajectory of a global cycle of economic development in terms of each city's current economic and spatial structure and its relative speed of technological change.


due to a positive fecal occult blood test. He was asymptomatic and his medical history included myocardial infarction and hypertension. At colonoscopy, a de− pressed lesion, approximately 7 mm in size, was identified in the posterior wall of the lower part of the rectum. Chromo− endoscopy with 0.4 % indigo carmine de− fined the depression, which mimicked an early depressed cancer. However, magni− fied observation after 0.05 % crystal violet staining demonstrated a type I−like pit pattern according to Kudo's classification in the depressed area (l" Figure 1) [1]. Therefore, this lesion was diagnosed as non−neoplastic based on the pit pattern analysis. An endoscopic biopsy provided a histological diagnosis of ectopic gastric mucosa of the fundic type. Although the lesion exhibited no change in size or mor− phology after 1 year of follow−up, it was completely removed by endoscopic mu− cosal resection (EMR) for both diagnostic and therapeutic reasons. Histological ex− amination of the resected specimen re− vealed fundic−type gastric mucosa sur− rounded by normal rectal mucosa; Heli− cobacter pylori was not detected in the re− sected specimen (l" Figure 2). Ectopic gastric mucosa of the rectum and anus are less common than other sites [2]. A review of the literature has revealed 44 cases including the current one [3], and only two cases, including ours, were reported to be depressed in morphology. At colonoscopy, most depressed lesions are neoplastic, and thus careful endo− scopic observation is necessary. We have applied magnification with chromoen− doscopy for diagnosis. Finally, this lesion was endoscopically diagnosed as non− neoplastic, as it disclosed a type I−like pit pattern [1]. We rarely biopsy lesions diag− nosed as non−neoplastic endoscopically. However, as depressed lesions exhibiting a type I pit pattern have been seldom de− tected or reported, an endoscopic biopsy was taken for histological evaluation. Unlike ours, more than 90 % of the report− ed cases were symptomatic, and com− plete relief could be obtained following treatment, including surgical resection or endoscopic polypectomy or ablation [3]. Sporadic cases of cancers have also been reported to arise from ectopic gastric mu− cosa [4]. Although our patient was asymptomatic, malignant transformation could not be totally denied. Therefore, EMR was conducted for both diagnostic and therapeutic reasons. Ectopic gastric mucosa in the rectum mimicking an early depressed cancer treated by endoscopic mucosal resection


THE LATEST compilation from the US Department of Education (from 2010-2011) reports that about 13 percent of public school enrollment consists of students served by special education programs. That count has pretty much stayed the same for the last 13 years. What's different now is that, as technology pervades all aspects of the classroom, special education teachers need to make a decision about whether they're going to stay on track with specialized assistive technologies or adopt some of the mainstream ones that general education students are using. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The latter approach appears to be winning right now. In many situations the mobile devices, apps, cloud-based computing, and flipped classroom approaches that are finding wide acceptance in general education are also finding a home among the tools used by special ed experts to help their students succeed. Whereas assistive technologies used to be considered a highly specialized field, "Now assistive technology is blurring with educational technology," says Andrea Prupas, who heads up inov8 Educational Consulting, a firm that does consulting in special education and technology. As special education adopts and adapts mainstream products, it's the students that win--now and in the future. Prupas says, "We're thrilled, because we see our students succeed. These are tools that adults are using, that our students will be using for the rest of their lives." Here are ways that special ed experts are levaraging mainstream ed tech initiatives to benefit special needs students. Bring Your Own When Forsyth County Schools started its bring-your-own-technology program across the district, Chris Swaim, assistive technology facilitator for the Georgia district, considered BYOT a "tremendously positive thing" for her special ed students. The reasons are similar to what any teacher at the district might say. For one, ownership makes students take the devices more seriously. "Anytime a student owns something, there's a little bit more responsibility," she explains. For another, she's seeing students more "engaged" in their schoolwork. Plus, since the devices don't always have to be specialized now, special ed learners don't stand out as using something different. On the contrary, outfitted with the latest version of hardware, they could even experience the novel sensation of being envied by their peers. "When a student Is using something really cool, the other kids go, 'Wow!'" notes Swaim. While Swaim is "thrilled" to support students' decisions to bring their own devices to school, there's still a potential disconnect between what's been recommended by her individualized education plan or program (IEP) team and whet the parents have chosen. "They might buy an iPad or a tablet and put a specific communication app on it that they've heard about, that the hype is about. Sometimes it's not the best selection for the student." When that happens, she says, "We make a good faith effort to support what our parents want students to use; but we feel the responsibility of identifying what is the best thing for the student." When there's a fundamental disagreement over which device to choose, Swaim lets the data talk. "We go through a consideration process end determine what tools are the best for that child," she explains. "We'll show them, 'This is what we determine. This is the data that shows your child's ability to perform the task using the tools we have recommended.' Sometimes when we show this to the parent, the lightbulb comes on. The main thing we all want is for that child to improve his skills." Software in the Cloud BYOT plays well into whet Swaim identifies as the biggest push in assistive technologies right now: the move to cloud-based and web-based software. The earliest special ed software was usually installed on a single computer. …


We analyze the spectral changes that occur when unfocused intense femtosecond pulses at 800 nm propagate through different atomic and molecular gases. The observed red shift in the self-phase-modulated spectra after propagation through N2, O2, and air is attributed to a delayed change of the nonlinear refractive index, a consequence of the molecular response to impulsive excitation of rotational coherences. We compare these results on the nonlinear refractive index with those obtained from Ar, Xe, and SF6.