Cisplatin, which is an inorganic molecule containing a platinum ion, is an antineoplastic agent that has been used to treat various solid tumors. However, its side effects include nephrotoxicity, neurotoxicity, bone marrow toxicity, gastrointestinal toxicity, and ototoxicity, which can limit its use. In this study, nephrotoxicity was caused by the intraperitoneal injection of cisplatin into rats, and then metabolome analysis was performed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) to find plasma metabolite biomarker candidates that would facilitate the early detection of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity. As a result, chronological changes were detected in the plasma levels of cysteine-cystine and 3-hydroxy-butyrate in the GC/MS-based metabolomics study. In the LC/MS-based metabolomics study, 3 acylcarnitines and a phosphatidylethanolamine with C18:2-C18:2 were identified as potential plasma biomarkers of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity. The plasma levels of these 6 metabolites altered significantly after the administration of cisplatin, and these alterations occurred quicker than the equivalent changes in the plasma levels of creatinine and blood urea nitrogen, which are usually used as indicators of renal dysfunction. These results indicate that the abovementioned metabolites might be reliable biomarkers that would allow the earlier detection of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity and that metabolomics is a useful tool for discovering biomarkers that could be used to predict the side effects of cancer therapy.


The slowed pulse-rate in the horizontal posture as compared with sitting, and the quicker rate in standing as compared with sitting, depend on wholly different mechanisms and may vary independently.

The relative amount of muscular contraction present in these postures has no appreciable effect.

The sitting-lying difference is due to hydrostatic influence acting mainly, if not wholly, through the carotid sinus reflex. Pronounced variation in the activity of this reflex may occur at different periods of the day and on different days; such variations are associated with the absence or marked occurrence of a sitting-lying difference. When the reflex is not active, a change from lying to sitting, or vice versa, causes no change in pulse-rate; the different incidence of gravity on the splanchnic area and changes in the tension of the abdominal wall and in the tone of the back-muscles, etc., are evidently unimportant as regards the pulse-rate, which is not affected by splanchnic adjustment, compensatory as regards blood-pressure, when the trunk is moved into the vertical position.

The sitting-standing difference is associated with hydrostatic influence acting on the altered position of the thighs, horizontal or vertical, in the two postures. The relative position of the leg is unimportant. In the horizontal position, prone, lateral, or supine, variation in the position of the thighs is ineffective; when the upper end of the trunk is elevated to the vertical or to a certain extent from the horizontal, certain changes in the position of the thighs affect the pulse-rate.

The increased heart-rate in the standing position is not accounted for by gravity acting on the capacious splanchnic area, determining a lowering of aortic pressure, for a lowering does not occur in normal subjects; nor is the acceleration dependent on increased tone of the abdominal wall, trunk-muscles, etc., nor upon the position and tension of the muscle-groups of the lower limbs.

The standing-lying difference equals the combined standing-sitting and sitting-lying differences. While the latter is nil, when the carotid sinus reflex is not active, the standing-lying and the standing-sitting differences are equal. These often vary in parallel fashion. The pulse-slowing in certain postures, e.g. in the foot-up position in standing, is associated with the inclination of the thigh.

The squatting posture may cause slowing or acceleration, sometimes showing a definite relation to the carotid sinus reflex. Compression of tissues and vessels is involved in this position.

Artificially induced vascular turgescence of the lower limbs in the sitting or standing, but not in the horizontal, position is attended by increase in pulse-rate.

Artificial occlusion of the circulation in a lower limb leads to a suspension of certain postural effects on the pulse-rate.

Some effects of bending the trunk in certain ways are described.

While standing motionless the pulse-rate is decidedly faster—5 to 10 beats—than when slight, continued movements are kept up in the lower limbs. The action is directly on the circulation in the limbs and reflexly on the heart-rate, not through change in aortic pressure.

Apart from the conditions present in the splanchnic area, the posture and vascular condition of the lower limbs has a marked influence on the pulse-rate. As the effects are evidently not mediated through changes in general (aortic) blood-pressure, they may be assumed to depend on afferent impulses especially related to the position of the thighs, and probably originating from some part of the vascular apparatus under the influence of the hydrostatic factor.

Changes of the thighs from the horizontal to the vertical kneesdown position are much more regularly effective in most subjects than changes from the horizontal to the vertical knees-up. In some subjects, where the latter is effective, opposite effects have been found in the vertical position knees-down (acceleration) and the vertical knees-up (slowing), while intermediate inclinations tend to give intermediate rates. The effects are obviously dependent on the relation of the thighs to the vertical, not directly on their relation to the trunk.

Slight repeated movements and vascular turgescence of the lower limbs are presumed to influence the pulse-rate through afferent impulses.

Not only pulse-rate, but also blood-pressure adjustments in the standing position, are influenced by afferent impulses from the lower limbs.

Static contraction of muscles on a large scale, e.g. with the knees bent as described, soon causes a remarkably large rise of systolic and diastolic blood-pressures, comparable to what may be induced by strenuous muscular exercise, but differing in certain respects in the mechanism of its production.

Marked variation in postural effects on the pulse-rate may occur at different times apart from obvious disturbing causes, and apart from the increased lability ordinarily present in some apparently healthy persons.

It remains to be seen whether a study of postural effects can give information as to developing defects of co-ordination and control in the vascular system, leading up to conditions of persistent high or low pressures, and whether when abnormal levels have been established any differentiation of types is practicable.

Part of the expenses of this inquiry has been defrayed by a grant from the Medical Research Council.


Virtual environments where users can interact with each other as well as with the environment are today used in many application areas ranging from military simulations to massive multiplayer online games. But no matter the application area, as soon as the number of users reaches a certain threshold, hosting a virtual environment on a single machine can become problematic. Speed and quality of the network connection will limit the number of concurrently connected users in terms of acceptable visual quality and hardware requirements of the server will be strict. With a single point of failure, system reliability could easily be compromised by means of network or host failure. Distribution of the virtual environment therefore seems a reasonable approach in order to address this problem. Hardware and network requirements would not be so critical and it would increase reliability by having no single point of failure. Unfortunately distribution introduces new problems dealing with synchronization of the world state within the distribution network. A possible solution to these problems with the focus on reliability will be presented in this thesis. The solution uses a peer to peer platform that is able to adapt to changes in the network infrastructure as a base for all communication. To improve synchronization efficiency the network will be dynamically divided into multicast groups based on synchronization needs. The solution will be tested for performance with the network fully functioning and in a number of more of less broken states to determine the reliability. The results from the tests conclude that the system is able to perform with what must be seen as acceptable performance levels even in very problematic network environments. The scalability of the system did also meet the expectations but the results would have benefited from more experimentation with larger user populations.


Global change is altering species distributions and thus interactions among organisms. Organisms live in concert with thousands of other species, some beneficial, some pathogenic, some which have little to no effect in complex communities. Since natural communities are composed of organisms with very different life history traits and dispersal ability it is unlikely they will all respond to climatic change in a similar way. Disjuncts in plant-pollinator and plant-herbivore interactions under global change have been relatively well described, but plant-soil microorganism and soil microbe-microbe relationships have received less attention. Since soil microorganisms regulate nutrient transformations, provide plants with nutrients, allow co-existence among neighbors, and control plant populations, changes in soil microorganism-plant interactions could have significant ramifications for plant community composition and ecosystem function. In this paper we explore how climatic change affects soil microbes and soil microbe-plant interactions directly and indirectly, discuss what we see as emerging and exciting questions and areas for future research, and discuss what ramifications changes in these interactions may have on the composition and function of ecosystems.


Objective: Endoscopic transpapillary stenting (ETS) of the pancreatic duct facilitates ductal outflow and may reduce time to pancreatic fistula closure. However, data on the feasibility of ETS in patients with necrotizing pancreatitis are scarce. Background: Pancreatic fistulas often occur after intervention in necrotizing pancreatitis and frequently close only after months of conservative treatment. Methods: From a prospective cohort of patients with acute pancreatitis admitted in 15 hospitals (2004–2007), all patients who underwent ETS or conservative treatment for a pancreatic fistula were identified. Safety, feasibility, and outcome of ETS were evaluated. Furthermore, a literature review was performed for similar studies in necrotizing pancreatitis. Results: Of 731 patients with acute pancreatitis, 19 patients were treated with ETS and 16 patients were treated conservatively for a pancreatic fistula. Fistula closure was achieved in 16 of 19 patients (84%) in the ETS group and in 8 of 12 patients (75%) in the conservative group (P = 0.175). The median time to fistula closure after ETS was 71 days (interquartile range [IQR] 34–142) compared with 120 days (IQR 51–175 days) in the conservative group (P = 0.130). Complications were observed in 6 patients. A total of 10 studies reporting the results of 281 patients with stent placement for pancreatic fistulas were included in the literature review. Fistula closure was achieved in 200 patients (71%). Stent-related complications were reported in 9% of patients. Conclusions: ETS seems a feasible and safe alternative to conservative treatment in patients with pancreatic fistulas after intervention for necrotizing pancreatitis.


BACKGROUND: Many HIV-infected persons learn about their diagnosis years after initial infection. The extent to which missed opportunities for HIV testing occur in medical evaluations prior to one's HIV diagnosis is not known. DESIGN: We performed a 10-year retrospective chart review of patients seen at an HIV intake clinic between January 1994 and June 2001 who 1) tested positive for HIV during the 12 months prior to their presentation at the intake clinic and 2) had at least one encounter recorded in the medical record prior to their HIV-positive status. Data collection included demographics, clinical presentation, and whether HIV testing was recommended to the patient or addressed in any way in the clinical note. Prespecified triggers for physicians to recommend HIV testing, such as specific patient characteristics, symptoms, and physical findings, were recorded for each visit. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with missed opportunities for discussion of HIV testing. Generalized estimating equations were used to account for multiple visits per subject. RESULTS: Among the 221 patients meeting eligibility criteria, all had triggers for HIV testing found in an encounter note. Triggers were found in 50% (1,702/3,424) of these 221 patients' medical visits. The median number of visits per patient prior to HIV diagnosis to this single institution was 5; 40% of these visits were to either the emergency department or urgent care clinic. HIV was addressed in 27% of visits in which triggers were identified. The multivariable regression model indicated that patients were more likely to have testing addressed in urgent care clinic (39%), sexually transmitted disease clinic (78%), primary care clinics (32%), and during hospitalization (47%), compared to the emergency department (11%), obstetrics/gynecology (9%), and other specialty clinics (10%) (P<.0001). More recent clinical visits (1997–2001) were more likely to have HIV addressed than earlier visits (P<.0001). Women were offered testing less often than men (P=.07). CONCLUSIONS: Missed opportunities for addressing HIV testing remain unacceptably high when patients seek medical care in the period before their HIV diagnosis. Despite improvement in recent years, variation by site of care remained important. In particular, the emergency department merits consideration for increased resource commitment to facilitate HIV testing. In order to detect HIV infection prior to advanced immunosuppression, clinicians must become more aware of clinical triggers that suggest a patient's increased risk for this infection and lower the threshold at which HIV testing is recommended.


In this study, we model how traditional factors associated with a supply-side view of business climate, at times identified with neo-liberalism, influence interstate relocation patterns of manufacturers using a panel (2000–2011) of the 48 contiguous American states. We find that very few manufacturing firms relocate across state lines in any given year and those that do relocate are relatively small businesses and are most likely to move to neighboring states. Traditional factors associated with business climate, such as taxation, appear to influence manufacturing interstate relocation. Further analysis shows that the tax policy changes necessary for an economically significant effect on relocation are likely infeasible.


Correctly identifying when a hemorrhagic patient needs immediate medical attention to prevent acute hypotensive episode (AHE) is vital in the short- and long-term care, but is often complicated due to the physiological responses in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems that mask symptoms until a significant amount of blood loss has occurred. These physiological responses affect the arterial blood pressure waveform, changing both dynamics and waveform morphology. Through the use of Markov chain analysis of the arterial blood pressure waveform, we first analyzed patient blood pressure waveforms from a challenge dataset published by Computing in Cardiology 2009 and the MIMIC III database. Markov chain analysis was applied to 20 second intervals over the entirety of a patient's known acute hypotensive episode. Each interval or segment is one second apart from the previous segment with a nineteen second overlap. The mixing rate (2nd largest eigenvalue of the transition probability matrix) was determined for all segments. A subset of patients showed a Pearson correlation coefficient with shock index (SI), i.e., with the ratio of heart rate and systolic blood pressure, similar to a previous swine study. These patients (mean correlation coefficient -0.423 ± 0.32, median -0.352) were found to have been administered pressors (vasoconstrictors), compared to patients who were not administered pressors (mean correlation coefficient 0.392 ± 0.29, median 0.447). Patients were also analyzed based on diagnoses of gastrointestinal bleeding by the ICD-9 code, and mixing rate results were compared between patients in this subgroup and found to have no significance as a metric of predicting acute hypotensive episodes.


Abstract. Low enthalpy geothermal energy is a renewable resource that is still underexploited nowadays in relation to its potential for development in society worldwide. Most of its applications have already been investigated, such as heating and cooling of private and public buildings, road defrosting, cooling of industrial processes, food drying systems or desalination. Geothermal power development is a long, risky and expensive process. It basically consists of successive development stages aimed at locating the resources (exploration), confirming the power generating capacity of the reservoir (confirmation) and building the power plant and associated structures (site development). Different factors intervene in influencing the length, difficulty and materials required for these phases, thereby affecting their cost. One of the major limitations related to the installation of low enthalpy geothermal power plants regards the initial development steps that are risky and the upfront capital costs that are huge. Most of the total cost of geothermal power is related to the reimbursement of invested capital and associated returns. In order to increase the optimal efficiency of installations which use groundwater as a geothermal resource, flow and heat transport dynamics in aquifers need to be well characterized. Especially in fractured rock aquifers these processes represent critical elements that are not well known. Therefore there is a tendency to oversize geothermal plants. In the literature there are very few studies on heat transport, especially on fractured media. This study is aimed at deepening the understanding of this topic through heat transport experiments in fractured networks and their interpretation. Heat transfer tests have been carried out on the experimental apparatus previously employed to perform flow and tracer transport experiments, which has been modified in order to analyze heat transport dynamics in a network of fractures. In order to model the obtained thermal breakthrough curves, the Explicit Network Model (ENM) has been used, which is based on an adaptation of Tang's solution for the transport of the solutes in a semi-infinite single fracture embedded in a porous matrix. Parameter estimation, time moment analysis, tailing character and other dimensionless parameters have permitted a better understanding of the dynamics of heat transport and the efficiency of heat exchange between the fractures and the matrix. The results have been compared with the previous experimental studies on solute transport.


Recently a promising research direction of statistical learning has been advocated, i.e., the optimal margin distribution learning with the central idea that instead of the minimal margin, the margin distribution is more crucial to the generalization performance. Although the superiority of this new learning paradigm has been verified under batch learning settings, it remains open for online learning settings, in particular, the dynamic environments in which the underlying decision function varies over time. In this paper, we propose the dynamic optimal margin distribution machine and theoretically analyze its regret. Although the obtained bound has the same order with the best known one, our method can significantly relax the restrictive assumption that the function variation should be given ahead of time, resulting in better applicability in practical scenarios. We also derive an excess risk bound for the special case when the underlying decision function only evolves several discrete changes rather than varying continuously. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real data sets demonstrate the superiority of our method.


Innovativeness is currently one of the basic determinants of development and building competitiveness in modern organizations. It is conditioned by a number of factors, among which an important group are internal factors related to the activity and participation of employees in the generation, development and implementation of innovative ideas, among other things. Modern enterprises cannot limit themselves to active adaptation, but should themselves become innovative organizations characterized by skillfulness in creating, implementing and disseminating innovations. The aim of the study is to present the concept of measuring innovative employee behavior in the internal perspective of the organization. The article discusses the main methodological problems regarding the employee innovation measurement model. The implementation of the objective required reviewing the literature and developing an independent research model. The novel nature of the issues raised, together with the high relevance of the research problem at hand, prompted the need to pay special attention to the correct design of the research process. As the literature indicates, decisions made at the design stage of research, and further diligence in implementing those decisions, determine not only the quality of the research project itself, but more than anything, the credibility of the conclusions drawn on their basis.


In this work, we show that the embryonic human brain contains multipotent central nervous system (CNS) stem cells, which may provide a continuous, standardized source of human neurons that could virtually eliminate the use of primary human fetal brain tissue for intracerebral transplantation. Multipotential stem cells can be isolated from the developing human CNS in a reproducible fashion and can be exponentially expanded for longer than 2 years. This allows for the establishment of continuous, nontransformed neural cell lines, which can be frozen and banked. By clonal analysis, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, and electrophysiological assay, we found that over such long-term culturing these cells retain both multipotentiality and an unchanged capacity for the generation of neuronal cells, and that they can be induced to differentiate into catechlaminergic neurons. Finally, when transplanted into the brain of adult rodents immunosuppressed by cyclosporin A, human CNS stem cells migrate away from the site of injection and differentiate into neurons and astrocytes. No tumor formation was ever observed. Aside from depending on scarce human neural fetal tissue, the use of human embryonic CNS stem cells for clinical neural transplantation should provide a reliable solution to some of the major problems that pertain to this field, and should allow determination of the safety characteristics of the donor cells in terms of tumorigenicity, viability, sterility, and antigenic compatibility far in advance of the scheduled day of surgery.


Abstract:While enormous challenges persist, the ongoing political opening in Ethiopia offers an opportunity for the expansion of democracy and respect for human rights in a geopolitically important state, and is already having significant implications for peace and security in the Horn of Africa. Managing massive expectations, maintaining stability, and instituting a political order in which the country's divergent political groups and ethnic communities are meaningfully represented and at peace with each other are key tests that will determine the trajectory of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's bold political experiment. With robust citizen engagement and prudent international support, there is reason to believe that the challenges are surmountable.


The objectives of this study were to compare the microhardness, flexural strength and compressive strength of a new bulk-fill composite (SonicFill™) to a conventional nanohybrid composite (Herculite Precis) and an established bulk-fill composite (Tetric N Ceram). In addition, the depth of cure of the two bulk-fill resin composites was also investigated. The materials were prepared and tested for the mechanical properties following ISO 4049:2009. Microhardness and depth of cure were measured using Vickers hardness tester. Compressive and flexural strength were tested using a universal testing machine. To determine the depth of cure, microhardness of the bulk-fill composites were measured as a function of selected depth of materials at 0.5 mm, 2.0 mm and 4.0 mm. Data were analyzed by either one-way ANOVA or Friedman test. Analysis demonstrated that SonicFill™ gave the highest microhardness value (101.8 + 4.6 VHN) compared to the other two groups. There were no significant differences among all groups in flexural and compressive strength. The depth of cure decreased as the thickness of both bulk-fill composites increased. In conclusion, SonicFill™ showed favorable mechanical properties compared to other composites tested. In both bulk-filled groups, microhardness value decreased as the thickness of the composite increased. The polymerization of the bulk-filled composites was effective only at 2 mm or less.


Even in boom times, half of all small businesses fail within the first five years - and two-thirds fail by the seventh year. The fact is, some of these businesses could be saved if the owners simply had more information, telling business owners how to recognize the signs of a failing business before it is too late, how to file for bankruptcy reorganization rather than liquidation, and how to manage a company throughout the bankruptcy process in order to emerge with the business intact, and even stronger. Written from the author's firsthand experience rescuing her own company it explains how to - recognize and solve chronic business problems that could lead to bankruptcy; decide whether or not to file for bankruptcy; select the right lawyer to guide you through the bankruptcy process; communicate with all parties in a bankruptcy, including secured and unsecured creditors, customers and employees; continue to do business with creditors; rebuild a business after a bankruptcy.


A theoretical performance analysis of the graph neural network (GNN) is presented. For classification tasks, the neural network approach has the advantage in terms of flexibility that it can be employed in a data-driven manner, whereas Bayesian inference requires the assumption of a specific model. A fundamental question is then whether GNN has a high accuracy in addition to this flexibility. Moreover, whether the achieved performance is predominately a result of the backpropagation or the architecture itself is a matter of considerable interest. To gain a better insight into these questions, a mean-field theory of a minimal GNN architecture is developed for the graph partitioning problem. This demonstrates a good agreement with numerical experiments.


This study is concerned with the mechanisms of growth and wear of protective oxide films formed under various tribological conditions. In the study three different tribological systems are examined in each of which oxidational wear is the dominant equilibrium mode. These are an unlubricated steel on steel system sliding at low and elevated temperatures, a boundary lubricated aluminium bronze on steel system and an unlubricated reciprocating sliding 9% Cr steel system operated at elevated temperature, in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. The results of mechanical measurements of wear and friction are presented for a range of conditions of load, speed and temper.ature for the systems, together with the results of extensive examinations of the surfaces and sub surfaces by various physical methods of analysis. The major part of the thesis, however, is devoted to the development and application of surface models and theoretical quantative expressions in order to explain the observed oxidational wear phenomena. In this work, the mechanisms of formation of load bearing ox ide plateaux are described and are found to be dependent on system geometry and environment. The relative importance of ''in contact" and "out of contact" oxidation is identified together with growth rate constants appropriate to the two situations. Hypotheses are presented to explain the mechanisms of removal of plateaux to form wear debris. The latter hypotheses include the effects of cyclic stressing and dislocation accumulation, together with effects associated with the kinetics of growth and physical properties of the various oxides. The proposed surf ace mode1s have led to the develop ment of quantitative expressions for contact temperature, unlubricated wear rates, boundary lubricated wear rates and the wear of rna ter ial during the transition from severe to mild wear. In general theoretical predictions from these expressions are in very good agreement with experimental values.


Studies have shown that senior workers endure longer spells of unemployment than their younger counterparts. Age discrimination has been identified as one of the main obstacles to reemployment. This article critically examines how Canadian anti-age discrimination law has responded to the contemporary challenges experienced by senior job seekers. It articulates several difficulties in our existing age discrimination legal framework by analyzing and contrasting social science literature on the present labour market experience of senior job applicants with human rights tribunal and court decisions in hiring complaints. It concludes by sketching a preliminary set of workable proposals for change that derives from the recognition that age discrimination in hiring takes a systemic form and should be addressed as such.


Implementation of Distributed Generation (DG) can improve power quality and reliability, and guarantee continuity of power supply. This paper addresses the issue of continuity of power supply especially for isolated communities. A part of a network can be electrically isolated from the main grid when the grid fails to supply power due to a fault in the network or unavailability of power generation. In this paper, a mini hydro-wind hybrid power system is considered, and operation and control of the hybrid system during connecting it with the grid as well as its operation in the isolated condition are investigated. The system behaviour and DG responses are also examined. Islanding operation is the most sensitive and problematic operation in power systems. Simulation has been conducted with PSCAD/EMTDC on a hypothetical test system for different scenarios and results are presented.


we investigated working memory (WM) performance for tone sequences that either respected musical regularities (tonal sequences) or did not (atonal sequences) using a forward and a backward recognition task. Participants indicated whether two sequences were the same or different, with "same" being defined as all tones played correctly in either the same order (forward task) or backward order (backward task). For the forward task, nonmusician and musician participants showed better performance for tonal than for atonal sequences, therefore supporting the hypothesis that musically structured material increased WM performance during maintenance of tone information. For the backward task, neither nonmusicians nor musicians showed better performance for tonal compared to atonal sequences. Our findings suggest that musical structure influences WM for tones during maintenance (forward recognition task), but not during manipulation (backward recognition task).


We extend the ideas of evolutionary dynamics and stability to a very broad class of biological and other dynamical systems. We simultaneously develop the general mathematical theory and a discussion of some illustrative examples. After developing an appropriate formulation for the dynamics, we define the notion of an evolutionary stable attractor (ESA) and give some samples of ESAS with simple and complex dynamics. We discuss the relationship between our theory and that for ESSS in classical linear evolutionary game theory by considering some dynamical extensions. We then introduce and develop our main mathematical tool, the invasion exponent. This allows analytical and numerical analysis of relatively complex situations, such as the coevolution of multiple species with chaotic population dynamics. Using this, we introduce the notion of differential selective pressure which for generic systems is nonlinear and characterizes internal ESAS. We use this to analytically determine the ESAS in our previous examples. Then we introduce the phenotype dynamics which describe how a population with a distribution of phenotypes changes in time with or without mutations. We discuss the relation between the asymptotic states of this and the ESAS. Finally, we use our mathematical formulation to analyse a non-reproductive form of evolution in which various learning rules compete and evolve. We give a very tentative economic application which has interesting ESAS and phenotype dynamics.


Interest has recently been shown in methods of converting the plane wave from a laser in the uniphase TEM0,0 mode to a plane wave having (a) uniform irradiance over a required cross section, and (b) all the power of the original beam. Two methods are proposed for accomplishing these aims: one employs two plano-aspheric lenses; the other requires a pair of selectively aberrated lens systems. A computer program has been written which determines the aspherics, and one example is presented. The aberrations required of the second method are expressed algebraically in terms of known quantities. These aberrations could conceivably be designed into a system of spherical lenses, by use of one of the automatic lens design programs now extant.


Starting a successful student chapter is not easy. It requires the right mix of support from the parent chapter, academic liaison, faculty advisor, college administration, and students. Most APICS student chapters are struggling with few (less than 10) student members and even fewer activities that encourage student membership as well as ties with local APICS chapters. It is possible to create and sustain a vibrant student chapter given these tried and tested guidelines provided in this paper.


Background: Aggressive fibromatoses are histologically benign fibrous neoplasms originating from musculoaponeurotic structures throughout the body. They are locally invasive and erode adjacent vital structures. The head and neck region constitutes 7-25% of all extra-abdominal cases. Case Report: Here, we report the case of a patient with aggressive fibromatosis in the left side of the neck. While the tumor deeply invaded the scalene muscles, the lesion was successfully treated by surgery followed by radiotherapy. The patient has been disease free for the last 7 years following treatment. Conclusion: Due to its unusual location in the head and neck region, aggressive fibromatosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of invading lesions of the neck.


During translation elongation, amino acid residues are repetitively added to the growing nascent peptide chain, directed by the mRNA sequence and facilitated by two elongation factors, EF-Tu and EF-G. In this thesis, translation elongation is investigated from two new perspectives to further explore the underlying mechanisms. In the first approach, a functional EF-Tu derivative labeled with a fluorescence quencher was prepared and used for the development of two fluorescent assays to study EF-Tu:L11 and EF-Tu:tRNA FRET signals. Application of these two assays revealed the tRNA discrimination on the ribosomal A-site, the effects of errorinducing antibiotics on tRNA selection, and tRNA release from EF-Tu on the ribosome regulated by EFTu:tRNA affinity. In combination with other assays measuring pre-translocation complex formation, ensemble and single molecule FRET studies of the EF-Tu:L11:tRNA triangle indicated that EF-Tu:L11 separation occurs concurrently with inorganic phosphate release and tRNA accommodation, but prior to EFTu separation from tRNA and dissociation from the ribosome. The latter process proceeds through two possible pathways, rapid but reversible dissociation followed by a conformational change off the ribosome versus slow conformational change on the ribosome followed by rapid dissociation. Translation elongation was also studied using mRNAs specifically modified with fluorescent isomorphic nucleoside mimetics. These modified mRNAs maintain considerable functionalities in the formation of initiation, pre-translocation and post-translocation complexes, although with different efficiencies, and show fluorescence changes in different patterns upon ribosomal complex conversion. Pre-steady state measurements of these fluorescence changes demonstrate the responses of modified mRNAs to codon:anticodon interaction occurring after ternary complex initial binding to the ribosome but before tRNA accommodation into the A-site, and mRNA movements on the ribosome during translocation. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Chemistry First Advisor Barry S. Cooperman


Santa Rita Jail is a 4,500 inmate facility located in Dublin CA, approximately 40 miles (65 km) east of San Francisco. Over the past decade, a series of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) installations and efficiency measures have been undertaken to transform the 3MW facility into a Green Jail . These include a 1.2MW rated rooftop PV system installed in 2002, a 1MW molten carbonate fuel cell with CHP, and retrofits to lighting and HVAC systems to reduce peak loads. With the upcoming installation of a large-scale battery and fast static disconnect switch, Santa Rita Jail will become a true microgrid, with full CERTS Microgrid functionality. Consequently, the jail will be able to seamlessly disconnect from the grid and operate as an island in the event of a disturbance, reconnecting again once the disturbance has dissipated. The extent to which that jail is capable of islanding is principally dependant on the energy capacity of the battery-one focus of this investigation. Also presented here are overviews of the DER currently installed at the jail, as well as the value it provides by offsetting the purchase of electricity under the current Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) tariff.


Archived soil samples (0–23 cm, plough layer depth) collected from the same semirural plot in southeast England between 1846 and 1986 have been analyzed for polychlorinated (tetra to octa) dibenzo-p-dioxins and -furans (PCDD/Fs). Atmospheric deposition will have been the major source of PCDD/Fs to the site over this time. PCDD/Fs were present in all the samples, and concentrations started to increase around the turn of the century, rising from 31 to 92 ng of ∑PCDD/Fs (kg of soil)−1 between 1893 and 1986. Unwashed bulked herbage samples from 1960–1970 and the 1980s contained 96 and 85 ng of ∑PCDD/F kg−1 respectively, compared to 12 ng of ∑PCDD/F kg−1 in a sample from 1880–1990. Average ∑PCDD/F net rates of increase in the soil over the last century were calculated as ca. 190 ng m−2 year−1. It is suggested that the increases in soil and herbage PCDD/Fs observed this century at Rothamsted are representative of those likely for agricultural systems in many industrialized regions. The possible changing sources of PCDD/Fs to the environment are discussed in the context of the concentration trends and congener-specific observations.


We investigate a simple model of structured attractor neural network (ANN). In this network a module codes for the category of the stored information, while another group of neurons codes for the remaining information. The probability distribution of stabilities of the patterns and the prototypes of the categories are calculated, for two different synaptic structures. The stability of the prototypes is shown to increase when the fraction of neurons coding for the category goes down. Then the effect of synapse destruction on the retrieval is studied in two opposite situations: first analytically in sparsely connected networks, then numerically in completely connected ones. In both cases the behaviour of the structured network and that of the usual homogeneous networks are compared. When lesions increase, two transitions are shown to appear in the behaviour of the structured network when one of the patterns is presented to the network. After the first transition the network recognizes the category of the pattern but not the individual pattern. After the second transition the network recognizes nothing. These effects are similar to syndromes caused by lesions in the central visual system, namely prosopagnosia and agnosia. In both types of networks (structured or homogeneous) the stability of the prototype is greater than the stability of individual patterns, however the first transition, for completely connected networks, occurs only when the network is structured


The Greek Anthology ('Gathering of Flowers') is the name given to a collection of about 4500 short Greek poems (called epigrams but usually not epigrammatic) by about 300 composers. To the collection (called 'Stephanus', wreath or garland) made and contributed to by Meleager of Gadara (1st century BCE) was added another by Philippus of Thessalonica (late 1st century CE), a third by Diogenianus (2nd century), and much later a fourth, called the 'Circle', by Agathias of Myrina. These (lost) and others (also lost) were partly incorporated, arranged according to contents, by Constantinus Cephalas (early 10th century?) into fifteen books now preserved in a single manuscript of the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. The grand collection was rearranged and revised by the monk Maximus Planudes (14th century) who also added epigrams lost from Cephalas's compilation. The fifteen books of the Palatine Anthology are: I, Christian Epigrams; II, Descriptions of Statues; III, Inscriptions in a temple at Cyzicus; IV, Prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias; V, Amatory Epigrams; VI, Dedicatory; VII, Sepulchral; VIII, Epigrams of St. Gregory; IX, Declamatory; X, Hortatory and Admonitory; XI, Convivial and Satirical; XII, Strato's 'Musa Puerilis'; XIII, Metrical curiosities; XIV, Problems, Riddles, and Oracles; XV, Miscellanies. Book XVI is the Planudean Appendix: Epigrams on works of art. Outstanding among the poets are Meleager, Antipater of Sidon, Crinagoras, Palladas, Agathias, Paulus Silentiarius. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in five volumes. Volume I contains Books IVI; Volume II, Books VIIVIII; Volume III, Book IX; Volume IV, Books XXII; Volume V, Books XIIIXVI.


This study explored the moderating effects of disaster exposure on the relationships between youth conduct problems and a variety of risk and protective factors in a low-income population. Specifically, the study tests the moderating roles of hurricane-related life-threatening events and loss/disruption on the relations between conduct problems and violence exposure, social support, parenting behaviors, and family routines, respectively. This study draws data from an existing dataset, comprised of 281 displaced mother-child dyads from New Orleans and 98 non-displaced mother-child dyads from Baton Rouge, a city approximately 85 miles west of New Orleans. It was predicted that heightened conduct problems would be associated with more prior violence exposure, less perceived social support, and parenting behaviors including more corporal punishment and inconsistent discipline, as well as fewer family routines. It was further predicted that level of hurricane exposure would moderate each of these relations. Results indicate that the level of hurricane exposure moderated the relation between conduct problems and violence exposure, as well as that between conduct problems and family routines. Implications are discussed.


Gossip protocols are considered very effective to disseminate information in a large scale dynamic distributed system. Their inherent simplicity makes them easy to implement and deploy. However, whereas their probabilistic guarantees are often enough to disseminate data in the context of low- bandwidth applications, they typically do not suffice for high-bandwidth content dissemination: missing 1% is unacceptable for live streaming. In this paper, we show how the combination of two simple mechanisms copes with this seemingly inherent deficiency of gossip: (i) codec, an erasure coding scheme, and (ii) claim², a content- request scheme that leverages gossip duplication to diversify the retransmission sources of missing information. We show how these mechanisms can effectively complement each other in a new gossip protocol, gossip++, which retains the simplicity of deployment of plain gossip. In a realistic setting with an average bandwidth capability (800kbps) close to the stream rate (680kbps) and 1% message loss, plain gossip can provide at most 99% of the stream. Using gossip++, on the other hand, all nodes can view a perfectly clear stream.


Connecting a massive number of sensors and actuators with energy and transmission constraints is only possible by providing a reliable connection despite the increase in data traffic due to the Internet of Things, and by guaranteeing a maximum end-to-end delay for applications with real-time constraints. Next generation network architectures need to satisfy these two requirements while connecting IoT sources producing data at massive scales to cloud resources that provide the capability to process and store this data. For this reason, realization of IoT in next generation cellular networks faces the problem of delivering cloud services over the network to things that are placed anywhere. In this study, we explain how the technologies envisioned for next generation networks can respond to the challenge of realizing IoT over a use case prepared for the IoT smart home platform called IOLITE. We start by discussing capacity requirements and focus on network densification as a promising solution method. The challenges of network densification can be overcome by integrating the technological enablers such as SDN, C-RAN, SON, and mobile edge computing. For this reason, we provide a thorough survey on the state of the art in integrating these enablers for a flexible network architecture at all network segments. Finally, we discuss how the needs of the IOLITE community use case scenario can be satisfied by implementing a service- centric abstraction layer on top of a flexible infrastructure for beyond 5G IoT applications.


Seed dispersal is a key event in a plant's life, affecting the outcomes of many ecological processes ranging from species reproduction to population and community dynamics. It is influenced by various environmental and ecological variables and is therefore expected to vary among and within communities. Understanding how dispersal varies in space and time is important, as the effectiveness of dispersal may modify abundance and diversity patterns observed in nature. This work explores seed rain patterns in grasslands in western Norway and how they are influenced by climate. Seed rain was examined during one year throughout twelve grassland sites (ca 4°50' 8°45' E; 60°20' 61°50' N) arranged in a "climate grid" design where the effects of temperature and precipitation can be decoupled. Mean summer temperature ranges from 5.9C to 10.8C primarily driven by elevation and continentality, while annual mean precipitation ranges from 596 mm in the east to 3029 mm in the west. I hypothesized that seed rain, being the primary reflection of dispersal, might: show differences at species, community and landscape scales; be highly influenced by adult vegetation; be constrained by the distance of the dispersal source. About 15 800 seeds from 122 species fell into the seed traps. Temperature appears to be the most important factor limiting seed rain density through the grid, with fewer seeds recorded in colderclimate sites. The results also show that temperature affects correlations between seed and plant abundance within species and restricts dispersal distances through an interaction with precipitation. 98% of the seeds came from the vegetation; the remainder has been assigned to long distance dispersal between communities and this process appears to be regulated by climatic variables. Adult plant abundance and deposited seeds at species level were correlated. Seed rain and vegetation diversity followed broadly the same patterns along the grid while inter and intra-specific variability is more strongly linked to environmental variables and different vegetation composition driven by altitude In general, found relationships appeared to be stronger when zooming up from communitysite to landscape-gradient scale. Thus, climate seems to play a role in seed rain variability, affecting dispersal processes on the scale of this study. These results provide a trigger for more detailed, longer-term studies of the effect of climate on seed dispersal.


Regularization methods allow one to handle a variety of inferential problems where there are more covariates than cases. This allows one to consider a potentially enormous number of covariates for a problem. We exploit the power of these techniques, supersaturating models by augmenting the "natural" covariates in the problem with an additional indicator for each case in the data set. We attach a penalty term for these case-specific indicators which is designed to produce a desired effect. For regression methods with squared error loss, an $\ell_1$ penalty produces a regression which is robust to outliers and high leverage cases; for quantile regression methods, an $\ell_2$ penalty decreases the variance of the fit enough to overcome an increase in bias. The paradigm thus allows us to robustify procedures which lack robustness and to increase the efficiency of procedures which are robust. We provide a general framework for the inclusion of case-specific parameters in regularization problems, describing the impact on the effective loss for a variety of regression and classification problems. We outline a computational strategy by which existing software can be modified to solve the augmented regularization problem, providing conditions under which such modification will converge to the optimum solution. We illustrate the benefits of including case-specific parameters in the context of mean regression and quantile regression through analysis of NHANES and linguistic data sets.


High crime rates and disorder are often thought typical of vagrant groups. But is this because of their greater criminal activity and propensity for anarchy, or is it because their marginal position makes them vulnerable to selective processing by the authorities. Differences which can be readily observed are important in the examination of a group's alleged deviance, and often lead to their being held responsible for social ills. Such folk devils are characteristic of many societies, and those who most effectively fill the role are often among most culturally remote from the ideals of the group holding power. This thesis is concerned with the so-called New Age Travellers, and examines how between 1984 and 1994 they filled the role of folk devils in Britain. Their differing behaviour, practices, appearance and mobility were in opposition to the ideals of the Thatcher government, and their high visibility and ease of identification assisted their processing and labelling as deviants. By publicly vilifying them, the government could justify harsh measures against them, and order was seen to be maintained. The locus of most Traveller incidents in the countryside of the southern England, a bedrock of conservative values, intensified pressure on the primary site of the ideals of Thatcherism and its conception of England. The type and extent of measures taken against the Travellers is shown to be related to the 'authoritarian populism' of the Thatcher government. The Travellers were a heterogeneous group, and their composition evolved steadily during the research period, yet they remained among the most marginal, powerless and least able to mobilise popular support in society. But despite the frequent hardships, being 'on the road' was found to provide a functional alternative to previously existing circumstances, and offered the potential for change in the lives of those concerned.


Brain fingerprinting is based on finding that the brain generates a unique brain wave pattern when a person encounters a familiar stimulus use of functional magnetic resonance imaging in lie detection derives from studies suggesting that persons asked to lie show different patterns of brain activity than they do when being truthful. Issues related to the use of such evidence in courts are discussed. In the field of criminology, a new lie detector has been developed in the United States of America.This invention is supposed to be the best lie detector available as on date and is said to detect even smooth criminals who pass the polygraph test (the conventional lie detector test) with ease. The new method employs brain waves which are, useful in detecting whether the person subjected to the test, remembers finer details of crime. According to the experts, even if the person willingly suppresses the necessary information, the brain wave is sure to trap him.


Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570) was an Antwerp painter and printmaker. Together with his wife, he was one of the first to establish a publishing house for prints. From 1548 their firm "At the Sign of the Four Winds" issued hundreds of important etchings and engravings. Prints after frescoes and paintings by Italian artists Raphael and Bronzino, the first series of classical ruins, antique sculpture, as well as designs by such Northern artists as Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were distributed all over Europe and helped to spread Renaissance ideals of beauty. It was Cock who spotted the talent of Pieter Bruegel, an artist who would eventually supply Cock with more than sixty designs for prints.


A novel electronically reconfigurable fractional-order filter allowing independent electronic frequency tuning and switchless change of the transfer response by a single parameter between standard band-pass, inverting all-pass response and special type band-reject response is presented in this work. The differences between these special transfer characteristics and standard features consist in magnitude and phase response behavior. Inverting amplification or attenuation is also available. The filter has tested frequency range between 1 Hz and 100 kHz. The proposed fractional-order filter (using two fractional-order element having equivalent capacity 8.7 uF/sec^1/4, $\alpha =3$ /4) tunability yields one-decade range approximately between 10 Hz and 100 Hz by transconductance between 0.19 and 1.1 mS (fractional-order design helps with reduction of driving force less than one decade). The application example in frequency/phase detector (operationability around center frequency 100 Hz - between 50 and 180 Hz) and further signaling frequency detecting system for frequency shift keying demodulator offers maximal detectable voltage (about 300 mV) for alignment (zero phase shift) of the signals of the same frequency (center frequency of the proposed filter in inverting all-pass mode). It also offers an interesting application in frequency shift keying demodulation process (or for identification/signalization purposes of certain frequencies) by usage of a simple additional comparator generating clear output state. Cadence simulations as well as experimental tests using integrated cells of special multipliers fabricated in ON Semiconductor $0.35~\mu \text{m}$ I3T25 CMOS process confirm operationability of the proposed concept as well as simple application of special response of the filter for phase/frequency detection and demodulation purposes.


A cellular multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink system is studied, in which each base station (BS) transmits to some of the users so that each user receives its intended signal from a subset of the BSs. This scenario is referred to as network MIMO with partial cooperation since only a subset of the BSs is able to coordinate their transmission toward any user. The focus of this paper is on the optimization of linear beamforming strategies at the BSs and at the users for network MIMO with partial cooperation. Individual power constraints at the BSs are enforced, along with constraints on the number of streams per user. It is first shown that the system is equivalent to a MIMO interference channel with generalized linear constraints (MIMO-IFC-GC). The problems of maximizing the sum rate (SR) and minimizing the weighted sum mean square error (WSMSE) of the data estimates are nonconvex, and suboptimal solutions with reasonable complexity need to be devised. Based on this, suboptimal techniques that aim at maximizing the SR for the MIMO-IFC-GC are reviewed from recent literature and extended to the MIMO-IFC-GC where necessary. Novel designs that aim at minimizing the WSMSE are then proposed. Extensive numerical simulations are provided to compare the performance of the considered schemes for realistic cellular systems.


A newly discovered incomplete dinosaur dentary from the Chenini Sandstones (early Albian) of Jebel Miteur (Tataouine Governorate, southern Tunisia) is extremely similar to the corresponding part of the type of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus STROMER, 1915, and is identified as Spinosaurus cf. aegyptiacus . A review of African spinosaurids shows that baryonychines were present in the Aptian, and apparently became replaced by spinosaurines in the Albian and Cenomanian, perhaps as part of a more general faunal change between the Aptian and Albian. Spinosaurines may have been derived from the less advanced baryonychines. Several alternative hypotheses about the biogeographical history of the Spinosauridae are discussed.


Increasing evidence suggests that ion channels and pumps not only regulate membrane potential, ion homeostasis, and electric signaling in excitable cells but also play important roles in cell proliferation, migration, apoptosis and differentiation. Consistent with a role in cell signaling, channel proteins and ion pumps can form macromolecular complexes with growth factors, and cell adhesion and other signaling molecules. And while cancer is still not being cataloged as a channelopathy, as the non-traditional roles of ion pumps and channels are being recognized, it is increasingly being suggested that ion channels and ion pumps contribute to cancer progression. Cancer cell migration requires the regulation of adhesion complexes between migrating cells and surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. Cell movement along solid surfaces requires a sequence of cell protrusions and retractions that mainly depend on regulation of the actin cytoskeleton along with contribution of microtubules and molecular motor proteins such as mysoin. This process is triggered and modulated by a combination of environmental signals, which are sensed and integrated by membrane receptors, including integrins and cadherins. Membrane receptors transduce these signals into downstream signaling pathways, often involving the Rho GTPase protein family. These pathways regulate the cytoskeletal rearrangements necessary for proper timing of adhesion, contraction and detachment of cells in order to find their way through extracellular spaces. Migration and adhesion involve continuous modulation of cell motility, shape and volume, in which ion channels and pumps play major roles. Research on cancer cells suggests that certain ion channels may be involved in aberrant tumor growth and channel inhibitors often lead to growth arrest. This review will describe recent research into the role of ion pumps and ion channels in cell migration and adhesion, and how they may contribute to tumor development.


The 10th IAPTC&B Congress, Plant Biotechnology 2002 and Beyond, was held June 23-28, 2002, at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, in Orlando, Florida, USA. It was attended by 1,176 scientists from 54 countries. The best and brightest stars of international plant biotechnology headlined the scientific program. It included the opening address by the President of the IAPTC&B, 14 plenary lectures, and 111 keynote lectures and contributed papers presented in 17 symposia covering all aspects of plant biotechnology. More than 500 posters supplemented the formal program. The distinguished speakers described, discussed and debated not only the best of science that has been done or is being done, but also how the power of plant biotechnology can be harnessed to meet future challenges and needs. The program was focused on what is new and what is exciting, what is state of the art, and what is on the cutting edge of science and technology. In keeping with the international mandate of the IAPTC&B, 73 of the 125 speakers were from outside the United States, representing 27 countries from every region of the world. The 10th IAPTC&B Congress was a truly world-class event. The IAPTC&B, founded in 1963 at the first international conference of plant tissue culture organized by Philip White in the United States, currently has over 1,500 members in 85 countries. It is the largest, oldest, and the most comprehensive international professional organization in the field of plant biotechnology. The IAPTC&B has served the plant biotechnology community well through its many active national chapters throughout the World, by maintaining and disseminating a membership list and a website, by the publication of an official journal (formerly the Newsletter), and by organizing quadrennial international congresses in France (1970), the United Kingdom (1974), Canada (1978), Japan (1982), the United States (1963, 1986, 2002), The Netherlands (1990), Italy (1994), and Israel (1998). In addition, the IAPTC&B has a long tradition of publishing the proceedings of its congresses. Individually, these volumes have provided authoritative quadrennial reports of the status of international plant biotechnology. Collectively, they document the history of plant biotechnology during the 20th century. They are indeed a valuable resource. We are pleased to continue this tradition by publishing this proceedings volume of the 10th IAPTC&B Congress. Regrettably, we are not able to publish seven of the lectures in full (only their abstracts are included). The American and Canadian chapters of the IAPTC&B, the Plant Section of the Society for In Vitro Biology, and the University of Florida hosted the 10th IAPTC&B Congress. The Congress was a true partnership between academia and industry, and was generously supported by both groups (see list of donors/sponsors on back cover). A number of prominent international biotechnology companies and publishers participated in the very successful Science and Technology Exhibit (see accompanying list of exhibitors) The IAPTC&B awarded 84 fellowships to young scientists from 31 countries (see accompanying list of fellowship recipients) to support their participation in the Congress.


FOAF is widely used on the Web to describe people, groups and organizations and their properties. Since FOAF does not require unique IDs, it is often unclear when two FOAF instances are co-referent, i.e., denote the same entity in the world. We describe a prototype system that identifies sets of co-referent FOAF instances using logical constraints (e.g., IFPs), strong heuristics (e.g., FOAF agents described in the same file are not co-referent), and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) generated classifier.


This paper aims at providing empirical evidence on social exclusion of immigrants in Germany. We demonstrate that when using a conventional definition of the social inclusion index typically applied in the literature, immigrants appear to experience a significant degree of social deprivation and exclusion, confirming much of the economic literature examining the economic assimilation of immigrants in Germany. We propose a weighting scheme that weights components of social inclusion by their subjective contribution to an overall measure of life satisfaction.Using this weighting scheme to calculate an index of social inclusion, we find that immigrants are in fact as "included" as Germans. This result is driven strongly by the disproportionately positive socio-demographic characteristics that immigrants possess as measured by the contribution to their life satisfaction.


This paper analyzes the role of incentives, risk, and information in determining the structure of employment contracts. In particular, we focus on the functions performed by piece rate versus time rate payment systems and by supervisors. The relative reliance on piece rates versus time rates is related to risk sharing, to the use of the payment system as a method of screening employees, and to differential information concerning the difficulties of the tasks being performed. The choice of payment system thus depends on the attitudes toward risk of workers and employers, effort supply elasticities, the sources and magnitude of the uncertainties, and the nature of the supervision used in the employment relation. The supervisor is viewed as monitoring inputs (enforcing contracts), screening individuals, obtaining information about the state of the world, etc. Their roles are related to the nonconvexities associated with information.


The Relationship between Elementary Principals' Conceptualization of Instructional Leadership and their Perceived Use of Time Mardel Smith Higginson Department of Education, BYU Doctor of Philosophy The purpose of this study was to learn about how elementary principals conceptualized instructional leadership and whether the way they thought about leadership influenced their allotted use of time for instructional leadership. In order to answer this question, two subquestions needed to be answered about how elementary principals conceptualized instructional leadership and how elementary principals perceived they used their time. This mixed-method study interviewed 30 principals in an urban-suburban school district in Utah to produce data. Each principal participated in a newly constructed survey of 84 questions. The survey consisted of four parts including demographics, open-ended questions about instructional leadership, and paper and pencil questions about both instructional leadership and how the principal thought they spent their time. The findings of the study showed that the principals recognized and agreed with a broad definition of instructional leadership when prompted, but they were only able to articulate a limited definition made up of between three and ten sub-concepts. Every principal's self constructed combination of the sub-concepts differed. However, when the principal's conceptualization of instructional leadership was translated into the time they spent on each task associated with that conceptualization, 68% of the responses fell into those tasks associated with the narrow definition of instructional leadership, however only 60% of their time was used for tasks associated with the narrow definition of instructional leadership. (The principals conformed their instructional leadership time to their self constructed conceptualization from 10.7% to 100% of their time.) Principals committed between 7.0-38% of their total time to instructional leadership, but the average amount of time spent on instructional leadership was 20% of their total time. Principals who had more time tasks associated with the narrow definition of instructional leadership committed more of their total time to instructional leadership. The principals who indicated that coaching, mentoring, and collaboration as the most important activities of instructional leadership spent more time doing these instructional leadership tasks than principals who said other activities were most important. The task most often associated with instructional leadership when principals self constructed their responses was ―being in classrooms and evaluating teachers.‖


We introduce and analyze the problem of the compilation of decision models from a decision-theoretic perspective. The techniques described allow us to evaluate various configurations of compiled knowledge given the nature of evidential relationships in a domain, the utilities associated with alternative actions, the costs of run-time delays, and the costs of memory. We describe procedures for selecting a subset of the total observations available to be incorporated into a compiled situation-action mapping, in the context of a binary decision with conditional independence of evidence. The methods allow us to incrementally select the best pieces of evidence to add to the set of compiled knowledge in an engineering setting. After presenting several approaches to compilation, we exercise one of the methods to provide insight into the relationship between the distribution over weights of evidence and the preferred degree of compilation.


The popularly known Human Development Index (HDI) is obtained through linear averaging (LA) of indices in three dimensions - health, education and standard of living. LA method assumes perfect substitutability among the indices. We question its appropriateness and propose an alternative measure, which is the inverse of the Euclidian distance from the ideal. Following Zeleny (1974), we refer to this, as the Displaced Ideal (DI) method. Through an axiomatic characterization, the paper shows that the advantages in the DI method are the following. Uniform, as against skewed, development is rewarded. Through an ideal path, it signals a future course of action. These signify that a given increment in any one dimension, with other dimensions remaining constant, has a greater significance for the index at a lower level than at a higher level. In other words, stagnancy in the dimension that has a lower value is more serious than stagnancy in other dimensions. Finally, an empirical illustration has been done by taking the statistics in Human Development Report 2006. We strongly propose that the DI method be considered over the LA method in the construction of HDI.


This article presents findings from an evaluation conducted in 2012, of the advice and advocacy service provided by the charity Family Rights Group for families involved with children's services. It specifically focuses on the experiences of grandparents and explores accounts from grandparents who were either in the process of seeking care of their grandchildren or were already caring for grandchildren but without formal support or recognition. The findings suggest that there is a need to pay greater attention to the fears of such grandparents about children's services in a context where there appears to be a policy preference for adoption. Also evident is a paradox at the heart of contemporary social work practices towards grandparents. While some felt dismissed and marginalized very quickly by social workers and imaginative approaches to care possibilities did not appear to be pursued, others were carrying enormous burdens of care often for very long periods of time without either financial support or legal recognition. To strengthen the care options for children and respect the ethic of care that is clearly to be observed operating in grandparenting practices, it is suggested that a more thorough interrogation of the multiple and often highly contradictory meanings attached to family is required on the part of social workers.


The pervasive communications between vehicles and dynamic mobility may significantly increase data exchange and therefore bring a huge amount of traffic data in InVANETs. Due to some environmental factors, like the vulnerability of wireless connection, limitation of in-car computing ability, and speed of vehicles, it is extremely challenging to design identity authentication protocols satisfying the requirements of both high security and efficiency simultaneously. To this end, the aggregate signature technology has been employed in InVANETs. However, the technology still suffers from high computational overhead due to the management of certificates, as well as the key escrow problem (i.e., the dependence on a fully trusted third party). In this article, we propose the SE-CLASA protocol for InVANETs in order to tackle the aforementioned problems. In addition, a novel factor-contained aggregation mechanism is proposed to resist an information injection attack investigated in our analysis. Moreover, we prove the security of the proposed SE-CLASA and conclude that it meets most known security requirements in a general InVANET scenario. Simulation results show the superiority of the proposed SE-CLASA, in terms of security and efficiency, compared to the most recent authentications in InVANETs.


Libye has few resources and poverty is rife along its million inhabitants. It is not surprising thorefore that it has a permenant adverse trade balance and budget deficit, both being covered by foreign aid. Arieulture seems to offer the only prospect of overooming these financial difficulties and at the same time raising the living standards of population. The sandy plain round Tripoli is the most important agricultural area and here the conditions are most favourable for an extension of agriculture. The plain known by the Libyons as the Jefara, is composed mainly of unconsolidated deposits of Tertiery, Pleistocene and recent ages these all dip gently northwards and sometimes contain reserves of underground water. They afford very sandy soils which are deficient in organis material. clay and plant nutrients. The climate is a very dry Mediterranean type and Saheran influences result in high temperature and unreliable rainfall. Prior to the 1939/45 war, there were two basic types of agricultures Arab and Italian. Arab subsistence agriculture was either was either irrigated cultivation in small coastal cases or shifting cultivation of barley further inland. Italian agriculture was largely concentrated on the growing of dryland tree crops, such as clives, vines and almonds, and usually associated with winter cereals. There has been radical change in the aricultural pattern in recent years. This has been due largely to the increased importance of irrigation which is dependant on underground water. Groundouts, tobacco, cereals and potatoes, olive and citrus tree, are all irrigated. The numbers of dryland tree crops, particularly almonds and vines, are declining. The expansion of irrigation has increased the productivity of the plain and irrigation now forms an integral part of Jeferan agriculture. Future development should be a combination of dry and irrigated farming with both field and tree crops.


Urban areas in Uganda are increasingly facing competition for their resources in the face of rising population. More than one out of every five Ugandans are residing in urban areas and the urban population is expected to triple in next two decades. Most of the urban population resides in GKMA—a region challenged with unemployment and inadequate opportunities. Enhancing firm performance in urban areas offers a promise for jobs and local revenue to boost city development. Local governments and city council need to create mechanisms that address firm constraints and harness the factors that drive firm competiveness, growth and transition. Potential opportunities lie in collaborating with financial institutions to provide affordable credit, improving taxation procedures, establishing of business spaces for the small firms and influencing vocational schools to impact relevant skills.


ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP) channels are metabolic sensors that couple cell energetics to membrane excitability. In pancreatic β-cells, channels formed by SUR1 and Kir6.2 regulate insulin secretion and are the targets of antidiabetic sulfonylureas. Here, we used cryo-EM to elucidate structural basis of channel assembly and gating. The structure, determined in the presence of ATP and the sulfonylurea glibenclamide, at ~6Å resolution reveals a closed Kir6.2 tetrameric core with four peripheral SUR1s each anchored to a Kir6.2 by its N-terminal transmembrane domain (TMD0). Intricate interactions between TMD0, the loop following TMD0, and Kir6.2 near the proposed PIP2 binding site, and where ATP density is observed, suggest SUR1 may contribute to ATP and PIP2 binding to enhance Kir6.2 sensitivity to both. The SUR1-ABC core is found in an unusual inward-facing conformation whereby the two nucleotide binding domains are misaligned along a two-fold symmetry axis, revealing a possible mechanism by which glibenclamide inhibits channel activity.


A masterpiece of medieval Arab metalwork revealed, shedding light on courtly life in northern Iraq under the Mongol governorship. Accompanying a major scholarly exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this book explores one of the most beautiful and enigmatic objects in The Courtauld's collection: the so-called 'Courtauld wallet', a brass container richly inlaid with gold and silver, imitating a lady's textile or leather bag, and probably made in Mosul in northern Iraq around 1300. No other object of this kind is known. Decorated all round with courtly figures and on the top with an elaborate banqueting scene featuring an enthroned couple, it has long been recognised as a masterpiece of Arab metalwork. Yet, despite the superb quality of its design and craftsmanship and its status as a unique object, this exceptional metalwork bag has never been properly published. Thus it remains little known outside a small circle of specialists, and little understood even within that circle. Encompassing a variety of multidisciplinary essays by distinguished historians and art historians- on subjects ranging from music at the Mongol court, Mosul under Mongol governorship and Mongol marriage customs to the role of women under the Ilkhanids-this publication aims to explore the origins, function and iconography of this splendid luxury object as well as the cultural context in which it was made and used. It will bring together other images of enthroned Mongols with female consorts, as well as scenes of hunters, revellers and musicians in a variety of media, including illustrated manuscripts, ceramics, textile, and metalwork. By presenting the bag alongside carefully selected contemporary material, it will provide an insight into courtly life under the Mongols in the newly conquered areas of their empire, and will also provide an unrivalled opportunity to investigate the inlaid brass tradition in Mosul after the Mongol Conquest. Objects made before and after this seismic event will be reproduced side by side to demonstrate how the Mosul metalworkers adapted their work for their new patrons.


Background: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is the commonest neoplasm associated with a recurrent chromosomal aberration (fused bcr-abl gene on the Philadelphia chromosome), The current used methods for generating bcr-abl gene are very expensive and not feasible in labs with limited facilities. So this study aimed at using a simple, safe and non expensive method for generating bcr-abl gene to be used in CML researches.
Methods: Bcr-abl expression was evaluated in two groups; umbilical cord blood CD34+HSCs (UCBCD34+HSCs) nucleofected with the P210pcDNA3 plasmid (n=5) and UCBCD34+HSCs nucleofected with the GFP-encoding plasmid (pMAX-GFP) (n=5). Then, neomycin (G418) antibiotic selection was done. Stable bcr-abl gene expression in G418 resistant P210pcDNA3 UCBCD34+HSCs clones, was evaluated through quantitative PCR analysis of the expression of interleukin one receptor accessory protein (IL1RAP) gene. IL1RAP gene is newly discovered to be expressed on the surface of bcr-abl positive cells.
Results: G418 resistant P210pcDNA3 clones showed up to eleven-fold increase in IL1RAP gene expression compared to pMAX-GFP clones. Our results demonstrated how nucleofection of conventional plasmids is likely to induce gene expression in HSCs.
Conclusion: This simple method of generating bcr-abl gene expressing CD34+ HSCs, shall open new revenues for chronic myeloid leukemia research especially in laboratories, not equipped for advanced and expensive cancer research. Furthermore IL1RAP over expression on the surface of bcr-abl +CD34+HSCs, could be used as indicator for successful stable bcr-abl expression.


The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) requires server
responses to be signed but does not specify a mechanism for selecting
the signature algorithm to be used. This may lead to avoidable
interoperability failures in contexts where multiple signature
algorithms are in use. This document specifies rules for server
signature algorithm selection and an extension that allows a client to
advise a server that specific signature algorithms are supported.
[STANDARDS-TRACK]


Radiation‐induced lung injury (RILI) is the major complication of thoracic radiation therapy, and no effective treatment is available. This study explored the role of high‐mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) in acute RILI and the therapeutic effect of glycyrrhizin, an inhibitor of HMGB1, on RILI. C57BL/6 mice received a 20 Gy dose of X‐ray radiation to the whole thorax with or without administration of glycyrrhizin. Severe lung inflammation was present 12 weeks after irradiation, although only a mild change was noted at 2 weeks and could be alleviated by administration of glycyrrhizin. Glycyrrhizin decreased the plasma concentrations of HMGB1 and sRAGE as well as TNF‐α, IL‐1β and IL‐6 levels in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). The expression of RAGE was decreased while that of TLR4 was significantly increased at 12 weeks, but not 2 weeks, after irradiation in mouse lung tissue. In vitro, the expression of TLR4 increased in RAW 264.7 cells after conditioning with the supernatant from the irradiated MLE‐12 cells containing HMGB1 but showed no change when conditioned medium without HMGB1 was used. However, conditioned culture had no effect on RAGE expression in RAW 264.7 cells. Glycyrrhizin also inhibited the related downstream transcription factors of HMGB/TLR4, such as NF‐κB, JNK and ERK1/2, in lung tissue and RAW 264.7 cells when TLR4 was activated. In conclusion, the HMGB1/TLR4 pathway mediates RILI and can be mitigated by glycyrrhizin.


Predation is widely regarded as a means to prevent or minimise the establishment of a stunted (high density of slow growing individuals) population. We investigated the effect of predation on two different white perch Morone americana populations (stunted and nonstunted) by examining the stomach contents of piscivorous fishes. White perch and gizzard shad dominated piscivore diets in Branched Oak Lake, whereas white perch dominated piscivore diets in Pawnee Lake. White perch consumed in the stunted population (Branched Oak Lake) were larger and older than white perch consumed in the nonstunted population (Pawnee Lake). Many of the consumed white perch in the stunted population were sexually mature and had the opportunity to spawn at least once. In contrast, all of the consumed white perch in the nonstunted population were sexually immature. Predation may have reinforced the stunting of white perch in Branched Oak Lake through removal of the largest, oldest individuals.


Low adhesion in the wheel/rail contact or the 'leaves on the line' problem is a large operational issue for the railway industry. There is currently a shortage of up to date information about the running conditions of rails with respect to short term adhesion trends (over a daily period) and macro trends (across seasons). This can lead to costly over application of mitigation actions such as rail head cleaning to combat the problem. The generally established methods of assessing areas of low adhesion involve mapping activations of wheel slide and wheel slip protection events to track locations. These methods are reactive and rely upon a slip/slide event to be initiated by the application of traction or braking. The RSSB managed project T959 is forwarding previous fundamental research into methods of low adhesion detection (LAD) in real time using 'modest cost' inertial sensors mounted to in service vehicles. The LAD system proposes that the motions of a railway vehicle (in both lateral and yaw movements) vary as the adhesion conditions under the vehicle change. If the changes in the running dynamics as a result of low adhesion can be observed and interpreted, they can infer the adhesion at all points across a network and not just when slip/slide events are triggered. The main focus of the research has been to use a linearised model of a rail vehicle suspension system to define a Kalman-Bucy filter. The creep forces, that are unable to be measured directly, are outputted from this filter as augmented states. By comparing the estimated values of creep forces against measurable vehicle dynamics, an estimation of adhesion level can be realised. This approach has been verified against rail vehicle simulations performed by DeltaRail using the multi-body physics software VAMPIRE.


Damping determines how the energy in dynamic deformations is dissipated. The design of damping requires models where the behavior along deformation modes is easily controlled, while other motions are left unaffected. In this paper, we propose a framework for the design of damping using dissipation potentials formulated as functions of strain rate. We study simple parameterizations of the models, the application to continuum and discrete deformation models, and practical implications for implementation. We also study previous simple damping models, in particular we demonstrate limitations of Rayleigh damping. We analyze in detail the application of strain rate dissipation potentials to two highly different deformation models, StVK hyperlasticity and yarn‐level cloth with sliding persistent contacts. These deformation models are representative of the range of applicability of the damping model.


Cyclic peptide cyanobacterial toxins, in particular Microcystis aeruginosa, pose a serious health risk to humans and animals alike [1], [2]. Occurring mostly in fresh and brackish water, they have been identified to cause cancer promotion and liver damage [3]. Herein, we describe a portable, microfluidic-based system for in-situ detection of algal toxins in fresh water.

The Atalanta system is a novel, portable and sample-to-answer platform for the detection of toxic cyanobacteria – Microcystin-LR in fresh water. Atalanta utilises the partnership of highly-specific recombinant chicken anti-microcystin antibodies, prepared in-house, with a 3D-printed 'LASER-photo¬diode' fluorescent detection method, also developed in-house. A competitive immunoassay format is utilised to detect free toxin. Furthermore, dissolvable-film (DF) based flow-actuation facilitates full assay inte¬gration. This new approach will form the basis of a cost efficient, USB-controlled water quality monitoring system.

The Atalanta detection system consists of two components; the microfluidic Atalanta disc and the disc-holder. The Atalanta disc-holder was fabricated and assembled from a 3D-printed casing, with electronic components housed in device. The 5-layered microfluidic disc consists of five reservoirs, each with a separate venti¬lation, aligned radially with inter-connected microchannels. Each reservoir represents a functional assay step. First, microcystin conjugate is coated to the functionalised surface of the reservoir 3 prior to assembling the disc. A freshwater sample in reservoir 1 is pre-incubated with recombinant antibodies labelled with fluorophore (Alexa 647) in reservoir 2. This is then spun into reservoir 3 for detection through a competitive immunoassay using Microcystin-LR. Low fluorescence signal indicates high Microcystin-LR concentration in the sample.


Mammalian tracks and trackways are widely preserved at all stratigraphical levels in the Flandrian sediments of tidal mudflat and marsh origins which formed over the last 8000–9000 years on the marginal wetlands of the inner Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary. The fauna recorded in this way, however, is less diverse than that known from the few, small assemblages of skeletal remains, including some from archaeological sites, so far assessed. Missing or rarely represented in terms of tracks are the smaller of the large mammals. Humans are represented by tracks throughout the Flandrian deposits. In the earlier Flandrian, they were accompanied by deer and aurochs which gave way, in the later Flandrian, to domesticated cattle and sheep/goat; there are sporadic indications of the presence of horse. Wolf/dog, represented by just two records, is the only smaller large mammal so far recorded as a track.

The tracks were made, modified, and eventually preserved under a wide variety of sedimentological conditions on the margins of the estuary. Those environmental conditions constrained the quality of the anatomical evidence preserved in the tracks but can be inferred from the character of the tracks. Field experiments suggest that the moisture content of the sediment at the time was crucial to the general nature of the tracks. The mudflat–marsh silts which received the tracks varied from semi–liquid to firm, depending on tidal and seasonal factors and on the elevation of the sedimentary surface relative to the tidal frame. Some tracks were made in marsh peats which offered little resistance. Deep tracks preserving little detail were produced in weak sediments of high moisture content; tracks formed in strong, firm muds retained full anatomical detail. Referring to mechanical theory, and to a series of laboratory experiments using plasticine, the act of making a track is shown to be similar in character and effect to the indentation of an ideal elastic–plastic material by a punch. The punch represents the descending limb of the animal, the face of the punch the sole of the animal's foot, and the elastic–plastic material the sediment which is pierced and deformed by the downward action of the limb. The character of the experimental tracks, and the range and relative size of the deformation structures they include, is qualitatively similar to what is recorded from the field. Many of the tracks recorded from the field were variously modified in a changeable and dynamic environment before final burial and preservation.


Spatial and temporal attributes of watersheds and the associated market failures
that accelerate degradation of agricultural and environmental resources require
innovative institutional arrangements for coordinating use and management of
resources. Effective collective action (CA) allows smallholder farmers to jointly
invest in management practices that provide collective benefits in terms of
economic and sustainability gains. The Government of India takes integrated
watershed management (IWM) as a key strategy for improving productivity and
livelihoods in the rain-fed and drought-prone regions. This study investigates the
institutional and policy issues that limit effective participation of people in
community watershed programs and identifies key determinants for the degree of
CA and its effectiveness in achieving economic and environmental outcomes. We
use empirical data from a survey of 87 watershed communities in semi-arid Indian
villages to identify a set of indicators of CA and its performance in attaining desired
outcomes. Factor analysis is used to develop aggregate indices of CA and its
effectiveness. Regression methods are then employed to test the effects of certain
policy relevant variables and to determine the potential effects of CA in achieving
desired poverty reduction and resource improvement outcomes. We find a positive
and highly significant effect of CA on natural resource investments, but no evidence
of its effects on household assets and poverty reduction outcomes. This may be
attributable to longer gestation periods for realizing indirect effects from collective
natural resource investments and the lack of institutional mechanisms to ensure
equitable distribution of such gains across the community, including the landless
and marginal farmers.


Mathematics is an area of study that particularly lacks student enthusiasm. Nevertheless, with the help of educational games, any phobias concerning mathematics can be considerably decreased and mathematics can become more appealing. In this study, an educational game addressing mathematics was designed, developed and evaluated by a sample of 33 students of the fifth grade of a primary school. Each student played the educational game "Playing with Numbers" (PwN), performing additions with integers, additions with decimals and multiplications with integers for a total of one hour, divided into four sessions. Next, the sample was asked to provide feedback regarding specific questions, and the analysis of the results showed that the PwN application is attractive and delivers usage. The attraction of the PwN game probably owes its success to its competitive element, as users are driven to achieve high scores. The PwN application was also found to be easy to use, and this made the challenge of achieving a high score more appealing, as success depended only on the cognitive skills of the user and not on any weaknesses or difficulties raised by the application itself. The findings of this study show that students would benefit from educational games and would be happy to work within an environment that motivated them and indirectly forced them to deal with mathematical operations while playing.


The Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture retrieves content by names rather than connecting to specific hosts. It provides benefits such as highly efficient and resilient content distribution, which fit well to data-intensive distributed computing. This paper presents and discusses our experience in modifying Apache Hadoop, a popular MapReduce framework, to operate on an NDN network. Through this first-of-its-kind implementation process, we demonstrate the feasibility of running an existing, large, and complex piece of distributed software commonly seen in data centers over NDN. We show advantages such as simplified network code and reduced network traffic which are beneficial in a data center environment. There are also challenges faced by NDN, that are being addressed by the community, which can be magnified under data center traffic. Through detailed evaluation, we show a reduction of 16% for overall data transmission between Hadoop nodes while writing data with default replication settings. Preliminary results also show promise for in-network caching of repeated reads in distributed applications. We also show that overall performance is currently slower under NDN, and we identify challenges and opportunities for further NDN improvements.


Abstract To improve the accuracy of the after-shot plasma equilibrium reconstruction on Tore Supra, the previous EFIT code, which utilizes only magnetic measurements as a constraint (we shall call it EFIT-mag in the text), has been modified into EFIT-pol by taking the far infrared polarimeter measurements into account. With a correct choice of the input parameters (mainly for the P' and FF' polynomial orders and for the weights on Faraday angles), the results reconstructed by EFIT-pol are in good agreement with the experimental values deduced from the magnetic measurements as well as with the CRONOS code simulations. In this paper, after a brief description of the EFIT code, the approach used to parameterize EFIT-pol is presented, and the accuracy improvement is shown for a typical shot of Tore Supra, as well as through statistics on a database of 95 shots of different plasma currents and additional powers.


Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have many options when purchasing goods or services. These include personal contacts and networks, familiar centralised supply sources and other ad hoc means. One purchasing possibility is to buy from and sell to other businesses within a similar geographic area. The benefits of buying and selling locally may not occur to SMEs. They seek, like other consumers, to get value for money, fast and efficient service, and a reasonable level of quality. Many factors can impinge upon an SME's decision to purchase locally. It can be assumed that, given a reasonable local option, SMEs wish to buy from and sell to other local businesses. It can also be reasonably expected that if government purchasers were willing to purchase within their geographic area, SMEs would be interested in supplying local government as well. This study investigates SMEs in the Wanneroo and Joondalup Regions of Western Australia and considers the factors that may influence their decision to use the 2Cities Business-to-Government (B2G) portal. The study is concerned with gaining an i:~sight into particular phenomena from a participants' perspective (SME) with the researcher as the primary instrument for data collection and analysis. The study requires the researcher to get close to the natural setting of the study and interact with the small business owners. This study triangulated results from three major sources. One source of data was contemporary Wanneroo and Joondalup secondary data gathered from research reports relating to local SME matters. This was combined with the semi-structured interviews of forty SMEs and two focus groups. Participant SMEs were invited to discuss factors affecting their decision to use or not use the 2Cities B2G portal. SMEs have a clear perception of what impedes and assists them in running their business and this comes through strongly. The problem facing the 2Cities portal management board is the extent to which it can influence the SME decision to buy and sell within the local area using the portal. The results form the basis of an improved model for B2G participation.