This work is concerned with details of the molecular changes caused by deformation
and also establishes any conformational differences between linear and branched
polyethylene before, during and after deformation. Four blends of isotopically labelled
polymers of different types, rapidly quenched from the melt, have been studied by
Mixed Crystal Infra-red Spectroscopy and Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS), in
order to clarify any differences in the molecular basis of drawing behaviour and in the
initial labelled chains conformation. For all sample types, the neutron scattering results suggest that adjacent folding is not
the major type of chain folding here. This point is confirmed by our infrared results
where most of the crystal stems contributing to the doublet components are in groups of
only 3 to 4 adjacent labelled stems. Differences in initial conformation between the
linear and copolymer samples were highlighted by both SANS and FTIR techniques.
The evolution of the radius of gyration as a function of molecular weight following the
relationship R g ∝ M w ∝ determined from the SANS data, is different for linear and
copolymer sample types, suggesting a more compact arrangement as the molecular
weight of the copolymer DPE guest molecules increases. This was found consistent with
the infrared results, where results from both curve fitting and the simulation of the
infrared CD2 bending profiles show that the number of small groups of adjacent labelled
stems is significantly larger when the DPE guest is a copolymer molecule. Our comparative studies on various types of polyethylene lead to the conclusion that
their deformation behaviour under drawing has the same basis, with additional effects
imputed to the presence of tie-molecules and branches. Three major points were
identified in this thesis. The changes produced by drawing imply (1) the crystallisation
of some of the amorphous polymer and the subsequent orientation of the newly formed
crystals, (2) the re-orientation of the crystalline ribbons and (3) the beginning of
crystallite break-up. However, additional effects were observed for the high molecular
weight linear sample and the copolymer sample and were attributed, respectively, to the
presence of tie- molecules and of branches. It was concluded that both the tie-molecules
and the branches are restricting the molecular movement during deformation, and that
the branches may be acting as "anchors".


AIMS
To assess the impact of English treatment services on CO-validated quit rates at 52-week follow-up, to explore the relationship between service-related characteristics and socio-demographic and behavioural factors with cessation outcomes, and to compare the characteristics of service users lost to follow-up with CO-validated quitters.

DESIGN
Observational study of administrative information linked with survey data for 2069 recipients of smoking treatment services who set a quit date between May and November 2002.

SETTING
Two contrasting areas of England, Nottingham and North Cumbria, consisting of nine primary care trust (PCT) localities.

MEASUREMENTS
Routine monitoring data specified by the Department of Health included information about basic demographic characteristics, postcode of residence from which a deprivation category was identified, nature of intervention, and smoking status at 4-week follow-up. These data were supplemented with information about smoking status at 52 weeks, referral pathways, relapse experiences, number of follow-up contact attempts, socio-economic status and smoking-related behaviours obtained from consenting service recipients by treatment advisers.

FINDINGS
One user in seven (14.6%) reported prolonged abstinence and was CO-validated as a successful quitter at 52 weeks. This rose to 17.7% when self-report cases were included. Relapse rates between 4 and 52 weeks were almost identical between the two study areas--75%. Relapse was most likely to occur in the first 6 months following treatment. Users who self-reported quitting at 4 weeks were less likely (13.7%) than those with biochemical verification of smoking status at 4 weeks (25.2%) to be CO-validated quitters at 52 weeks (P = 0.004). Older users (OR 1.023; CI 1.014-1.032), people who smoke mainly for pleasure rather than to cope (OR 1.38; CI 1.02-1.87), and those who were extremely determined (OR 1.58; CI 1.21-2.05) were more likely to be quitters at 52-week follow-up, whereas those with lower socio-economic status (OR 0.86; CI 0.78-0.96), who smoked their first cigarette of the day within 5 minutes of waking (OR 0.73; CI 0.55-0.96) or had another smoker in their household (OR 0.65; CI 0.49-0.86) were less likely. In contrast, users lost to follow-up tended to be younger and experienced different referral pathways than CO-validated quitters. Gender was not statistically significantly associated with cessation at 52 weeks and nor were any of the key characteristics of intervention, such as group or one-to-one counselling.

CONCLUSIONS
These results obtained from routine services are consistent with those obtained from clinical trials in relation to abstinence at one year. Given that a high proportion of smokers relapsed between 4 weeks and 1 year it is important that future assessments of longer-term outcomes are conducted. However, following-up service users many months after an intervention is expensive, and reasonable estimates of quit rates can be estimated from short-term outcomes, provided that they have been CO-validated. Future studies should monitor outcomes from a selection of services treating different groups of smokers, particularly if more is to be learned about the role of smoking treatment services in reducing inequalities in health.


The acquisition of inappropriate migratory feature is crucial for tumor metastasis. It has been suggested that CD147 and Annexin A2 are involved in regulating tumor cell movement, while the regulatory mechanisms are far from clear. In this study, we demonstrated that CD147 physically interacted with the N-terminal domain of Annexin A2 and decreased Annexin A2 phosphorylation on tyrosine 23. In vitro kinase assay showed that the I domain of CD147 was indispensable for CD147-mediated downregulation of Annexin A2 phosphorylation by Src. Furthermore, we determined that p-Annexin A2 promoted the expression of dedicator of cytokinesis 3 (DOCK3) and DOCK3 blocked β-catenin nuclear translocation, resulting in inhibition of β-catenin signaling. In addition, DOCK3 inhibited lamellipodium dynamics and tumor cell movement. Also, we found that β-catenin signaling increased WAVE2 expression. Therefore, DOCK3 was characterized as a negative regulator of WAVE2 expression via inhibiting β-catenin signaling. Our study provides the first evidence that CD147 promotes tumor cell movement and metastasis via direct interaction with Annexin A2 and DOCK3-β-catenin-WAVE2 signaling axis.


In the context of the damage tolerance approach used to drive aircraft maintenance operations, it is essential to demonstrate the reliability of NDE inspections in detecting structural damage. The Probability Of Detection method, that links the probability to detect a detrimental flaw to its size is generally used for that purpose by giving the maximum flaw size that a NDE process can miss with a given level of probability and confidence. To be statistically valid, this approach requires a sufficient amount of data which is often difficult (and costly) to obtain with a purely experimental approach based on mock-up tests. Numerical simulation can be particularly useful at that stage thanks to its ability to give a very large amount of data at a relative low cost, which constitutes the so called Model Assisted POD approach. Recent developments have even enhanced this capacity thanks to the implementation in CIVA simulation software of metamodels. On top of providing data for POD curves, simulations and metamodels can be also used at the design stage to optimize inspection methods and procedures and target a given POD for a given flaw size. It can also conduct extensive studies on parameters influence on the result, or to achieve sensitivity analysis. This communication illustrates, with some examples based on CIVA, how simulation can help to support NDE reliability studies in aerospace applications.


This Article, written for the 12th Annual Access to Equal Justice Colloquium, explores the disproportionate representation of low-income children in the United States juvenile justice system. It examines the structural and institutional causes of this development, beginning with the most common points of entry into delinquency court — the child welfare system, public schools, retail stores, and neighborhood police presence. It introduces the concept of needs-based delinquency, a theory that challenges basic presuppositions about the method by which children are adjudicated delinquent. It argues that at each stage of the process — from intake through adjudication to disposition and probation — the court gives as much or more weight to the perceived "needs" of the child and her family than to the quality of the evidence against her or the ability of the state to prove its case. Typical features of the juvenile code, including the procedures for intake and diversion and the use of bench rather than jury trials, combine to shift the system's emphasis from an evaluation of a child's criminal responsibility to an assessment of a family's social service needs. The standard of proof, therefore, is determined in large part by the socioeconomic class of the accused rather than the nature of the forum, an orientation that lowers the state's burden for indigent juveniles while heightening it for affluent youth. The result is that in all but the most serious of cases, children from low-income homes do not have to be as "guilty" as those from families of means in order to enter and remain in the system, thereby widening the net of court intervention for poor children. The Article establishes that the juvenile court's traditional focus on the needs of destitute youth continues to be reflected in the system's practices and procedures, despite the modern court's shift in dispositional philosophy from rehabilitation to youth accountability and public safety. It argues that this emphasis on families' needs when adjudicating delinquency has a disproportionate effect on low-income children, resulting in high rates of recidivism and perpetuating negative stereotypes based on class. It offers strategies for confronting and reversing this trend, including data collection that records the income-level of juveniles' parents; initiatives that raise awareness of needs-based delinquency among police, prosecutors, defenders, judges, and agency personnel; diversion programs that reduce the high rate of juvenile court adjudications for minor offenses; cross-agency mental health treatment plans for children and adolescents; and the adoption of international juvenile justice models that are preventative and diversionary rather than penal and punitive. The Article challenges the view that in tight budgetary times, court involvement is the only way for poor children to access services. It concludes by calling for lawmakers and system players to end the practice of needs-based delinquency, with the goal of increasing fairness for all youth in the juvenile justice system.


Three Phase ac power systems have existed for over 100 years due to their efficient transformation of ac power at different voltage levels and over long distance as well as the inherent characteristic from fossil energy driven rotating machines. The proposed system presents power-control strategies of a grid-connected Micro grid generation system with versatile power transfer. This Micro grid system allows maximum utilization of freely available renewable energy sources like wind and photovoltaic energies. For this, an adaptive MPPT P&O Controller along with standard perturbs and observes method will be used for the system. In This paper proposes a ac/dc micro grid to reduce the processes of multiple dc–ac–dc or ac–dc–ac conversions in an individual ac or dc grid. The Micro grid consists of both ac and dc networks connected together by multi-bidirectional converters. AC sources and loads are connected to the ac network whereas dc sources and loads are tied to the dc network. Energy storage systems can be connected to dc or ac links. The proposed Micro grid can operate in a grid-tied or autonomous mode. The coordination control algorithms are proposed for smooth power transfer between ac and dc links and for stable system operation under various generation and load conditions. This Micro grid system operates under normal conditions which include normal room temperature in the case of solar energy and normal wind speed at plain area in the case of wind energy. The Power Balancing Control simulation results are presented to illustrate the operating principle, feasibility and reliability of Micro grid proposed system.


Tissue samples were taken from the gastrocnemius muscle of 26 randomly selected, glucose-tolerant, 48-yr-old men. Hexokinase, phosphorylase, lactate dehy-drogenase (LDH), succinate dehydrogenase, and lipo-protein lipase activity (LPLA), as well as the area per fiber type and capillary density, were determined. Mean fiber area correlated positively with relative body weight (r = 0.53, P < 0.01), but capillary density did not. The result is that, in cases of high body weight, each capillary supplies a larger muscle fiber area. Serum insulin concentration in the fasting state correlated positively with body weight (r = 0.77, P < 0.001) and with mean fiber area per capillary (r = 0.87; P < 0.001). Only during the latter part of an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) did blood glucose concentrations correlate with relative body weight and mean fiber area per capillary (r = 0.42, r = 0.51, P < 0.05). A stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that the different muscle morphology measurements could account for % of the variation in the fasting serum Insulin concentration, the fasting insulin/glucose ratio, and the blood glucose concentration at 120 min in the OGTT. Of the intracellular enzymes, only LDH (r = -0.71, P < 0.001) correlated with the mean fiber area per capillary. LPLA correlated with capillary density (r = 0.66, P < 0.001), and, along with the muscle morphology measurements, could account for ¾ of the variation in serum triglyceride concentrations. The results show that a large mean muscle fiber area/capillary ratio indicates a morphologic imbalance, which is related to both glucose tolerance and various degrees of insulin sensitivity.


Trust management systems enable the construction of access-control infrastructures suitable for protecting sensitive resources from access by unauthorized agents. The "state of the art"in such systems (i) provide fail-safe in that access will be denied when authorizing credentials are revoked, (ii) can mitigate the risk of insider attacks using mechanisms for threshold authorization in which several independent partially trusted agents are required to co-sponsor sensitive activities, and (iii) are capable of enforcing intraand inter-organizational access control policies. Despite these advantages, trust management systems are limited in their ability to express partial trust. Additionally, they are cumbersome to administer when there are a large number of related access rights with differing trust (and thereby access) levels due to the need for explicit enumeration of the exponential number of agent combinations. More importantly, these systems have no provision for fault tolerance in cases where a primary authorization is lost (perhaps due to revocation), but others are available. Such situations may result in a cascading loss of access and possible interruption of service. In this pape, we propose extending traditional trust management systems through a framework of reliability and confidence metrics. This framework naturally captures partial trust relationships, thereby reducing administrative complexity of access control systems with multiple related trust levels and increasing system availability in the presence of authorization faults while still maintaining equivalent safety properties.


Sago starch was incorporated in the synthesis of polymer gel networks by
free radical crosslinking copolymerization in an aqueous solution using potassium
persulfate as an initiator. Three different monomers (2-acrylamido-2-
methylpropanesulfonic acid (AMPS), acrylic acid and methyl-2-acrylamido-2-
methoxyacetate (MAMOA)) with a common crosslinking agent (N,N'-
methylenebisacrylamide (NMBA)) were used to synthesize these gel networks. A
series of studies was carried out to evaluate and optimize the effect of the reaction
parameters such as the amount of the monomer, the cross linking agent and sago
starch as well as liquor volume on the polymer gel networks yield. It was found
that the percentages of gelation fraction and total conversion were dependent on
these parameters.
The swelling behaviors of these polymeric gel networks from the dry state
In distilled water and NaCl solutions of different concentration were also
investigated. The maximum saturated water absorbency of 440 g H₂O/g dry gel
was obtained for the gel network prepared from 1 g sago starch, 38.16 x l0⁻³ mol
AMPS and 1.29 x l0⁻³ mol NMBA in the presence of 45 mL liquor volume. The
absorbency of the hydrogel networks in the salt solutions was affected by the salt
concentrations and the charge number of cations and anions.


Insomnia, the most prevalent sleep complaint, is a common symptom of depression, as well as constituting a 'primary' diagnosis. Controversy remains about whether insomnia should be regarded as 'secondary' when co-occurring with depression, given that insomnia often occurs prior to other symptoms. This study investigated the extent to which insomnia is considered secondary to unipolar forms of depression using a qualitative case study approach to allow for individual differences and to address the phenomenology associated with these conditions. Seven participants (six with self-reported insomnia, four of whom had also been diagnosed with depression, and one suffering from depression only) were interviewed in a semi-structured format and asked to describe their experiences in terms of symptom onset and impact, and their thoughts about the nature of the relationship between insomnia and depression. The participants with both conditions mostly considered insomnia and depression to be independent, despite commonly experiencing insomnia alongside core depressive symptoms. They all had insomnia prior to depression, and they considered insomnia to be 'primary' rather than 'secondary'. Five out of six participants with insomnia reported having an overactive mind when attempting to sleep. Those with only insomnia potentially differed from other participants due to the content of their thoughts and the presence of factors in their life that may be protective in terms of developing depression. Despite experiencing negative and overactive thoughts, the participant with depression, but not insomnia, attributed having an active working life to avoiding insomnia. Further research investigating the complex interplay between life circumstances (risk and protective factors), the content of overactive cognitions, and endogenous versus reactive forms of depression, would be beneficial to better understand the nature of the relationship between insomnia and depression.


AIM To assess the quality of and to critically synthesize the available data on hepatitis C infections in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to map evidence gaps. METHODS We conducted an overview of systematic reviews (SRs) following an a priori developed protocol (CRD42017076736). Our overview followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines for reporting SRs and abstracts and did not receive any funding. Two independent reviewers systematically searched MEDLINE and conducted a multistage screening of the identified articles. Out of 5758 identified articles, 37 SRs of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in populations living in 20 countries in the MENA region published between 2008 and 2016 were included in our overview. The nine primary outcomes of interest were HCV antibody (anti-) prevalences and incidences in different at-risk populations; the HCV viremic (RNA positive) rate in HCV-positive individuals; HCV viremic prevalence in the general population (GP); the prevalence of HCV co-infection with the hepatitis B virus, human immunodeficiency virus, or schistosomiasis; the HCV genotype/subtype distribution; and the risk factors for HCV transmission. The conflicts of interest declared by the authors of the SRs were also extracted. Good quality outcomes reported by the SRs were defined as having the population, outcome, study time and setting defined as recommended by the PICOTS framework and a sample size > 100. RESULTS We included SRs reporting HCV outcomes with different levels of quality and precision. A substantial proportion of them synthesized data from mixed populations at differing levels of risk for acquiring HCV or at different HCV infection stages (recent and prior HCV transmissions). They also synthesized the data over long periods of time (e.g., two decades). Anti-HCV prevalence in the GP varied widely in the MENA region from 0.1% (study dates not reported) in the United Arab Emirates to 2.1%-13.5% (2003-2006) in Pakistan and 14.7% (2008) in Egypt. Data were not identified for Bahrain, Jordan, or Palestine. Good quality estimates of anti-HCV prevalence in the GP were reported for Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen. Anti-HCV incidence estimates in the GP were reported only for Egypt (0.8-6.8 per 1000 person-year, 1997-2003). In Egypt, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, viremic rates in anti-HCV-positive individuals from the GP were approximately 70%. In the GP, the viremic prevalence varied from 0.7% (2011) in Saudi Arabia to 5.8% (2007-2008) in Pakistan and 10.0% (2008) in Egypt. Anti-HCV prevalence was lower in blood donors than in the GP, ranging from 0.2% (1992-1993) in Algeria to 1.7% (2005) in Yemen. The reporting quality of the outcomes in blood donors was good in the MENA countries, except in Qatar where no time framework was reported for the outcome. Some countries had anti-HCV prevalence estimates for children, transfused patients, contacts of HCV-infected patients, prisoners, sex workers, and men who have sex with men. CONCLUSION A substantial proportion of the reported outcomes may not help policymakers to develop micro-elimination strategies with precise HCV infection prevention and treatment programs in the region, as nowcasting HCV epidemiology using these data is potentially difficult. In addition to providing accurate information on HCV epidemiology, outcomes should also demonstrate practical and clinical significance and relevance. Based on the available data, most countries in the region have low to moderate anti-HCV prevalence. To achieve HCV elimination by 2030, up-to-date, good quality data on HCV epidemiology are required for the GP and key populations such as people who inject drugs and men who have sex with men.


Abstract. Seismic signal processing is an important task in geophysics sounding and represents a permanent challenge in petroleum exploration. Although seismograms could in principle give us a picture of a geological structure, they are very contaminated by spurious signals and the ground roll noise is a strongly undesired signal present in the seismograms – it does not carry physical information about the deep geological structures. This fact demands a big effort in developing new filtering methodologies. Using discrete wavelet transform, an efficient filtering for suppression of the ground roll is presented. In this method, seismic data is decomposed in multiple scales. We can remove the noise as a surgical operation in each scale, just from the regions where they are present or strong, allowing us to preserve the maximum of relevant information.


In chronic cardiomyopathy, mechanical circulatory support plays an increasingly important role for children as the shortage of suitable donor hearts increases times on the transplant waiting list. Ventricular assist devices (VADs) for adults have evolved dramatically over the last decade, both as a bridge to transplantation and for permanent support. In contrast, VADs designed for children, especially for all age groups, are still in their infancy. The Medos HIA and the Berlin Heart Excor are specially designed for children with a body surface area <1.2 m2. Increased experience with existing paediatric VADs and the introduction of third-generation VADs for the paediatric age group offer new possibilities for children suffering from end-stage heart failure. We review the literature on this topic, summarise the indications and contraindications for long-term support VADs and describe the decision-making algorithm used at our institution for use of long-term VADs in children.


The purpose of the paper is to determine the applicability of external setup preparation activities of Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) in reducing setup time. Improving the external setup preparation of SMED leads a better and effective working performance. To improve the effectiveness of the external setup in SMED, it is concerned particularly with changing the internal activities into external activities and improving the current external activities. The process failure mode and effect analysis (PFMEA) adopted to analyze the problem faced of external set up process.The verification of the methods is done by an application a plastic injection molding manufacturing process where setup times are critical for time reduction.


Learning discriminative face features plays a major role in building high-performing face recognition models. The recent state-of-the-art face recognition solutions proposed to incorporate a fixed penalty margin on commonly used classification loss function, softmax loss, in the normalized hypersphere to increase the discriminative power of face recognition models, by minimizing the intra-class variation and maximizing the inter-class variation. Marginal penalty softmax losses, such as ArcFace and CosFace, assume that the geodesic distance between and within the different identities can be equally learned using a fixed penalty margin. However, such a learning objective is not realistic for real data with inconsistent inter-and intra-class variation, which might limit the discriminative and generalizability of the face recognition model. In this paper, we relax the fixed penalty margin constrain by proposing elastic penalty margin loss (ElasticFace) that allows flexibility in the push for class separability. The main idea is to utilize random margin values drawn from a normal distribution in each training iteration. This aims at giving the decision boundary chances to extract and retract to allow space for flexible class separability learning. We demonstrate the superiority of our ElasticFace loss over ArcFace and CosFace losses, using the same geometric transformation, on a large set of mainstream benchmarks. From a wider perspective, our ElasticFace has advanced the state-of-the-art face recognition performance on seven out of nine mainstream benchmarks. All training codes, pre-trained models, training logs will be publicly released 1.


A 16-station strong-motion seismic monitoring network covering metropolitan Izmir and the surrounding region was established in July 2008. The seismic network was installed as a cooperative effort involving the Earthquake Research and Implementation Center (ERIC-DAUM) of Dokuz Eylul University (DEU, Izmir), the Earthquake Research Department (ERD) of the General Directorate of Disaster Affairs (GDDA, Ankara), the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality, and the Ministry of Public Works and Settlement. The project was funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) to collect strong-motion data for earthquake hazard assessment studies and to develop a real-time monitoring system in Turkey (Inan et al. 2007) to address public safety issues.

The network is critically important to addressing earthquake hazard issues in western Turkey, an area known to have historically damaging earthquakes. Izmir is the third largest city in Turkey in terms of population, industrial density, economic capacity, and contribution to the national economy, and the economic and human consequences of a damaging earthquake in the Izmir area would be significant.

A primary goal of this project is to acquire strong ground-motion data in order to understand propagation and site response characteristics of the Quaternary and Neogene sediments that underlie the Izmir metropolitan area and are thought to produce large site amplification and seismic hazard (Aydinoglu 2000; Masure et al. 2000). These data will complement laboratory data to characterize the properties of the soft soils underlying the Izmir metropolitan residential area so that engineers and architects can design appropriate earthquake-resistant structures for the region. This project is also a first step toward developing a "Rapid Response and Damage Prediction System" for metropolitan Izmir where near real-time strong ground-motion records can be used to compute ground-shaking maps showing the areas most strongly affected by earthquakes.

The tectonic framework of western Anatolia is dominated …


Ranganathan, S. 2015. Non-linear dynamic modelling for panel data in the social sciences. Uppsala Dissertations in Mathematics 91. 40 pp. Uppsala: Department of Mathematics. ISBN 978-91-506-2481-6. Non-linearities and dynamic interactions between state variables are characteristic of complex social systems and processes. In this thesis, we present a new methodology to model these nonlinearities and interactions from the large panel datasets available for some of these systems. We build macro-level statistical models that can verify theoretical predictions, and use polynomial basis functions so that each term in the model represents a specific mechanism. This bridges the existing gap between macro-level theories supported by statistical models and micro-level mechanistic models supported by behavioural evidence. We apply this methodology to two important problems in the social sciences, the demographic transition and the transition to democracy. The demographic transition is an important problem for economists and development scientists. Research has shown that economic growth reduces mortality and fertility rates, which reduction in turn results in faster economic growth. We build a non-linear dynamic model and show how this data-driven model extends existing mechanistic models. We also show policy applications for our models, especially in setting development targets for the Millennium Development Goals or the Sustainable Development Goals. The transition to democracy is an important problem for political scientists and sociologists. Research has shown that economic growth and overall human development transforms sociocultural values and drives political institutions towards democracy. We model the interactions between the state variables and find that changes in institutional freedoms precedes changes in socio-cultural values. We show applications of our models in studying development traps. This thesis comprises the comprehensive summary and seven papers. Papers I and II describe two similar but complementary methodologies to build non-linear dynamic models from panel datasets. Papers III and IV deal with the demographic transition and policy applications. Papers V and VI describe the transition to democracy and applications. Paper VII describes an application to sustainable development.


The olfactory bulb of mammals aids in the discrimination of odors. A mathematical model based on the bulbar anatomy and electrophysiology is described. Simulations produce a 35-60 Hz modulated activity coherent across the bulb, mimicing the observed field potentials. The decision states (for the odor information) here can be thought of as stable cycles, rather than point stable states typical of simpler neuro-computing models. Analysis and simulations show that a group of coupled non-linear oscillators are responsible for the oscillatory activities determined by the odor input , and that the bulb, with appropriate inputs from higher centers, can enhance or suppress the sensitivity to partiCUlar odors. The model provides a framework in which to understand the transform between odor input and the bulbar output to olfactory cortex.


Universities must better recognize, reward, and support the efforts of researchers who are also excellent and dedicated teachers. Professors have two primary charges: generate new knowledge and educate students. The reward systems at research universities heavily weight efforts of many professors toward research at the expense of teaching, particularly in disciplines supported extensively by extramural funding (1). Although education and lifelong learning skills are of utmost importance in our rapidly changing, technologically dependent world (2), teaching responsibilities in many STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines have long had the derogatory label "teaching load" (3, 4). Some institutions even award professors "teaching release" as an acknowledgment of their research accomplishments and success at raising outside research funds.


As chemotherapeutic backbone for breast cancer therapy, doxorubicin showed various side effects and induced resistancy of breast cancer cells. Devel o pment of targeted therapy on breast cancer focused on combinatorial therapy of doxorubicin and molecular targeted agents. PGV-0 and PGV-1, a curcumin analogue showed potency as co-chemotherapeutic agent with doxorubicin. Our previous study of PGV-0 and PGV-1 showed cytotoxic activity in T47D cells. Therefore, the aim of this research is to examine the synergistic effect of PGV-0, PGV-1 on the cytotoxic activity of doxorubicin through cell cycle modulation and apoptotic induction on MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines . The cytotoxic assay of PGV-0, PGV-1, doxorubicin, and their combination were carried out by using MTT assay . Cell cycle distribution and apoptosis were determined by flowcytometer FACS-Calibur and the flowcytometry data was analyzed using Cell Quest program. Single treatment of PGV-0, PGV-1 and doxorubicin showed cytotoxic effect on MCF-7 with cell viability IC50 value 50 µM, 6 µM and 350 nM respectively . Single treatment of Doxorubicin 175 nM induced G2/M arrest. Single treatment of PGV-0 5 µM induced G2/M arrest while in higher dose 12.5  µM, PGV-0 induced apoptosis. Combination of doxorubicin 175 nM and PGV-0 5 µM induced apoptosis. Combination of doxorubicin 175 nM and PGV-0 12.5 µM also increased apoptosis induction. Single treatment of PGV-1 0.6 µM induced G1 arrest while in higher dose 1.5  µM, PGV-1 induced apoptosis. Combination of doxorubicin 175 nM and PGV-1 0.6 µM induced apoptosis. Combination of doxorubicin 175 nM and PGV-0 1.5 µM also increased apoptosis induction. PGV-0 and PGV-1 are potential to be delevoped as co-chemotherapeutic agent for breast cancer by inducing apoptosis and cell cycle modulation, but the molecular mechanism need to be explored detail. Key words: PGV-0 , PGV-1, doxorubicin, co-chemotherapy , breast cancer, cell cycle arrest, apoptosis


Technology managers struggling with ever-shorter product cycles and corporate downsizing were told at the sixth International Forum on Technology Management, in Amsterdam, to interconnect their R&D teams in cyberspace and build communities of knowledge across company and country borders. Otherwise, they could risk falling behind in today's fast-growing networked economy. R&D executives attending the annual event in October agreed that the possibilities for exchanging information and ideas electronically have boomed in recent years due to the widespread availability of electronic mail and standardized computer systems, in particular the Internet Protocol. But so too have the risks for companies to manage knowledge and maintain their core competencies in increasingly virtual organizations. "Clearly, there is greater potential now than ever before to coordinate product development processes electronically across organizational, geographical and cultural boundaries," said Rod Coombs, a professor at the Manchester School of Management, in the United Kingdom. "But there's also a huge danger in allowing technology to run wild and undermine the ability of individuals to interact personally and creatively in physical teams. And there's also a huge danger in having research managers lose control of R&D knowledge within their organizations." Coombs warned of installing information technology (IT) solutions for R&D teams and expecting everybody to adapt. "You have to have organizational changes drive technology changes rather than the other way around," he said. "You have to rethink your organizational processes first and then implement the appropriate IT to support these processes." However, some companies, already competing in global markets, are having to rethink fast. Global Design Environments In the keynote address, Frank Carrubba, executive vice president and chief technical officer of Philips Electronics NV in the Netherlands, said many organizations have already been forced to move toward around-the-clock, around-the-world product development. "Design environments are becoming global," he said. "Companies in certain sectors, like consumer electronics, need to disperse skills and resources around the globe, and take advantage of geography and information technology to keep pace with ever-shorter product cycles." Indeed, as global networks become an essential element of tomorrow's world in which time and space are far less important, operating in cyberspace will require new management and organizational styles, Carrubba warned. "You have to figure out how to deal with people other than in the terminal of a computer and keep them spirited over long distances, especially when failures arise. And you have to know how to use the brief times when people are brought together to feel each other's body language." For Carrubba, it is crucial that products have a core standard architecture from which remote R&D teams can design proprietary systems for individual markets. "This keeps staff spirited by encouraging them to make their own contribution," he said. …


This chapter combines recent findings from the empirical banking literature with established insights from studies of banking competition and regulation. It starts with a concise overview and assessment of the different methodological approaches taken to address banking competition. While market structure indicators are readily available, they may not be overly informative about the competitive conditions in banking markets. The literature has focused to date on "non-market structure" indicators such as the Panzar-Rosse H-statistic, the Lerner index, and the Boone indicator. The chapter then structures a discussion on the empirical findings based upon a framework that finds its roots in the different theories of financial intermediation. Many other specific approaches to infer banking competition are discussed, in particular, the impact that regulation and information-sharing between banks may have on banking competition.


Art Historians who wish to engage with the potential of digital tools for research and narratives about works of art, architecture and cities often have difficulties identifying appropriate software and receiving basic training.  To address this challenge, the Wired! group at Duke University began to offer workshops in 2009, and since 2012 these have been taught on site at Venice International University, which created a laboratory for this purpose.  Our goal has been to assist scholars in learning basic skills not only to create maps, models, and displays that narrate research questions, but also to acquire enough knowledge to join in effective and directed partnerships with computer scientists and engineers. In 2015, the Getty Foundation covered the costs of travel and living expenses for the faculty and participants, while the Delmas Foundation has helped since 2012 with the costs of tuition.


Cognitive radio (CR) systems allow opportunistic, secondary users (SUs) to access portions of the spectrum that are unused by the network's licensed primary users (PUs), provided that the induced interference does not compromise the PU' performance guarantees. To account for interference constraints of this type, we consider a flexible spectrum access pricing scheme that charges SUs based on the interference that they cause to the system's PUs (individually, globally, or both), and we examine how SUs can maximize their achievable transmission rate in this setting. We show that the resulting non-cooperative game admits a unique Nash equilibrium under very mild assumptions on the pricing mechanism employed by the network operator, and under both static and ergodic (fast-fading) channel conditions. In addition, we derive a dynamic power allocation policy that converges to equilibrium within a few iterations (even for large numbers of users), and which relies only on local signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) measurements; importantly, the proposed algorithm retains its convergence properties even in the ergodic channel regime, despite the inherent stochasticity thereof. Our theoretical analysis is complemented by extensive numerical simulations which illustrate the performance and scalability properties of the proposed pricing scheme under realistic network conditions.


The previous research indicates that technology plays an important role and has a great potential in foreign language teaching. It is also obvious that mobile assisted language learning (MALL) considerably affects learning process among foreign language learners. Thus, this current study aims to present a meta-synthesis of qualitative research results on the MALL published in high stakes academic journals especially in the last decade. Through electronic databases, the results of studies about MALL were identified and included in the study. After collecting the studies about MALL, thematic analysis was used and some of the themes were identified and analyzed in accordance with the data, respectively. It is expected that this study will not only help the target groups such as learners, lecturers and language policy makers to broaden their knowledge about technology in Turkey, but also result in an increased awareness of MALL.


The search tools and information retrieval systems on the contemporary Web use keywords, lexical analysis, popularity, and statistical methods to find and prioritise relevant data to a specific query. In recent years, Semantic web has introduced new approaches to specify Web data using machine-interpretable structures. This has led to the establishment of new frameworks for search engines and information systems based on discovering complex and meaningful relationships between information resources. In this paper we discuss a semantic supported information search and retrieval system to answer users' information queries. The paper focuses on knowledge discovery aspects of the system and in particular analysis of semantic associations. The information resources are multimedia data, which could be retrieved from heterogeneous resources. The main goal is to provide a hypermedia presentation, which narratively conveys relevant information to the queried term. The structure describes the related entities to the queried topic and a ranking mechanism assigns weights to the entities. The assigned weights express the degree of relevancy of each related entity in the presentation structure.


Land surface models (LSMs) are limited in their ability to reproduce observed soil moisture partially due to uncertainties in model parameters. Here we conduct a variance-based sensitivity analysis to quantify the relative contribution of different model parameters and their interactions to the uncertainty in the surface and root-zone soil moisture in the Community Land Model 5.0 (CLM5). We focus on soil-texture-related parameters (porosity, saturated matric potential, saturated hydraulic conductivity, shape parameter of soil-water retention model) and organic matter fraction. A Gaussian process emulator is constructed based on CLM5 simulations and used to estimate soil moisture across the five-dimensional parameter space for sensitivity analysis. The procedure is demonstrated for four seasons across various U.S. sites of distinct soil and vegetation types. We find that the emulator captures well the CLM5 behavior across the parameter space for different soil textures and seasons. The uncertainties of surface and root-zone soil moisture are dominated by the uncertainties in porosity and shape parameter with negligible parametric interactions. However, relative importance of porosity versus shape parameter varies with soil textures (sites), depths (surface versus root zone), and seasons. At most of the sites, surface soil moisture uncertainty is attributed largely to shape parameter uncertainty, while porosity uncertainty is more important for the root-zone soil moisture uncertainty. All individual parameter and interaction effects demonstrate less variability across different soil textures and seasons for root zone than for surface soil moisture. These results provide scientific guidance to prioritize reducing the uncertainty of sensitive parameters for improving soil moisture modeling with CLM.


IEEE 802.16 network is widely viewed as a strong candidate solution for broadband wireless access systems. Various flexible mechanisms related to QoS provisioning have been specified for uplink traffic at the medium access control (MAC) layer in the standards. Among the mechanisms, bandwidth request scheme can be used to indicate and request bandwidth demands to the base station for different services. Due to the diverse QoS requirements of the applications, service differentiation (SD) is desirable for the bandwidth request scheme. In this paper, we propose several SD approaches. The approaches are based on the contention-based bandwidth request scheme and achieved by the means of assigning different channel access parameters and/or bandwidth allocation priorities to different services. Additionally, we propose effective analytical model to study the impacts of the SD approaches, which can be used for the configuration and optimization of the SD services. It is observed from simulations that the analytical model has high accuracy. Service can be efficiently differentiated with initial backoff window in terms of throughput and channel access delay. Moreover, the service differentiation can be improved if combined with the bandwidth allocation priority approach without adverse impacts on the overall system throughput.


For sophisticated reinforcement learning (RL) systems to interact usefully with real-world environments, we need to communicate complex goals to these systems. In this work, we explore goals defined in terms of (non-expert) human preferences between pairs of trajectory segments. We show that this approach can effectively solve complex RL tasks without access to the reward function, including Atari games and simulated robot locomotion, while providing feedback on less than one percent of our agent's interactions with the environment. This reduces the cost of human oversight far enough that it can be practically applied to state-of-the-art RL systems. To demonstrate the flexibility of our approach, we show that we can successfully train complex novel behaviors with about an hour of human time. These behaviors and environments are considerably more complex than any that have been previously learned from human feedback.


Heterotrophic plankton grazing was studied in the Gulf of Trieste (Northern Adriatic Sea) from November 1998 to August 1999 using the dilution method. Four sets of experiments were carried out quarterly in order to assess the impact on communities of both phototrophic and heterotrophic prey. Four different trophic models were observed: during the autumn microzooplankton fed on small dinoflagellates, and phototrophic (PNAN) and heterotrophic nanoflagellates (HNAN), but not on the abundant bulk of diatoms. The entire initial HNAN standing stock was removed; we therefore did not observe any mortality of bacteria, whose biomass was the highest in the whole period. In late winter, the intense diatom bloom of Lauderia annulata remained almost untouched as the microzooplankton fed only on a less abundant small sized diatom (Chaetoceros). Microzooplankton also fed on HNAN, halving the mortality of bacteria induced by HNAN grazing only. In late spring, microzooplankton grazed effectively on a large array of prey (small diatoms, PNAN and HNAN). Reduction of bacterial mortality, exerted by microzooplankton through grazing on HNAN, was less evident, possibly due to direct microzooplankton grazing on bacteria. During the summer, we observed an intense grazing on bacteria by microzooplankton, which shifted from the usual nano-sized prey organisms, due to their extreme paucity, to bacteria. In conclusion, microzooplankton grazing was highly selective and vari- able due to the prey composition and to the predator community structure, which were investigated at the species to genus level. Microzooplankton was unable to control a bloom of large-sized diatoms, but showed a high level of control on most of the PNAN fractions. The result of this selection contributed significantly to the shaping of the phytoplankton community structure. Microzooplankton controlled HNAN biomass even more efficiently with relevant indirect effects on bacterial mortality.


The purpose of this workshop was to discuss, compare and evaluate various methods of operating, and determining operating policies for multi-purpose, multiple reservoir systems. While total reservoir capacities are known, the allocation of various storage volume zones within the reservoirs to various purposes, such as water supply or flood control, may vary in time and be dependent on reservoir operating policy. In the guidelines for preparation of the papers included in this volume, it was stressed that discussion should cover reservoir operation for all possible hydrological situations, i.e., in periods of flood, normal flow, and drought conditions. The importance of procedures used to determine when an extreme situation (such as drought), begins and ends, was emphasized, especially with respect to possible changes in reservoir operation. The participants were requested to discuss how operating policies might differ, depending on whether the reservoirs are in series or are parallel. Also, they were requested to distinguish between operation of "large" over-year storage reservoirs and "small" within-year storage reservoirs. If short-term hydrological forecasting and real-time control models were to be used, the workshop discussion would consider how these could be used together with long-term operating policies.

Some 30 participants from 13 countries presented 17 papers at the workshop, all of which are included in these proceedings. The first nine provide an overview of how multiple reservoir systems are operated in certain countries. The remaining papers report in more detail on diverse case studies and provide discussion of some specific issues related to the subject of the workshop.


The practices of metropolitan governance in the South are normalized and legitimized through the workings of a 'knowledge market' that has evolved at an extraordinary juncture between geopolitical and technological transformations. This essay describes the packaging and management of knowledge since the early 1990s, a period which has seen increasing references to concepts such as 'public–private partnerships', 'new public management' (NPM), 'metropolitan governance' and 'best practice'. It explains the shift in terms of the coinciding dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which removed the brakes on 'neoliberal policy programmes', and the practicability of using the web for knowledge management. Accompanying the 'metropolitan renaissance' since the early 1990s, NPM theory provided support for private sector‐style management of formerly public services and the claimed 'global trend' of decentralization of those services. The essay subsequently explains how, since the early 2000s, knowledge exchange relevant to metros in the South has also arisen from participation in transnational municipal networks (TMNs). Knowledge exchange has become more geographically complex, including learning across sites in the South. A policy discourse once dominated by global agencies and national governments now primarily takes the form of global agency knowledge transfer via the web and participation in TMNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


Robust image hashes are used to detect known illegal images, even after image processing. This is, for example, interesting for a forensic investigation, or for a company to protect their employees and customers by filtering content. The disadvantage of robust hashes is that they leak structural information of the pictures, which can lead to privacy issues. Our scientific contribution is to extend a robust image hash with privacy protection. We thus introduce and discuss such a privacy-preserving concept. The approach uses a probabilistic data structure - known as Bloom filter - to store robust image hashes. Bloom filter store elements by mapping hashes of each element to an internal data structure. We choose a cryptographic hash function to one-way encrypt and store elements. The privacy of the inserted elements is thus protected. We evaluate our implementation, and compare it to its underlying robust image hashing algorithm. Thereby, we show the cost with respect to error rates for introducing a privacy protection into robust hashing. Finally, we discuss our approach's results and usability, and suggest possible future improvements.


As one of the fundamental units of ecology and biogeography, the geographic distribution of the endemic and threatened ebony leaf monkey Trachypithecus auratus (E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1812) on the islands of Java, Bali, and Lombok (Indonesia) has been assessed. All localities where the species has been collected are listed, and forty-two areas (each in itself consisting of numerous smaller sites) where the species has been recorded are discussed. The species occurs in a large variety of forest types, including mangrove, beach, and freshwater swamp forest; everwet lowland and hill forest; dry decidious forest; montane forest up to 3,000 – 3,500 m a.s.l.; and in some forest plantations (teak Tectona grandis, rasamala Altingia excelsa, acacia Acacia spp). In East Java, certain populations are dimorphic, containing, besides the more common melanic individuals, also erythristic individuals. This erythristic pelage morph only occurs in the easternmost part of Java of which the line between Mt. Penanggunang and the surroundings of Mojokerto running southwards, via Wonosalam and Blitar, to Mts Kidul roughly forms the western boundary. Localities where individuals of the erythristic pelage morph have been collected or observed are given.


Abstract : A short tutorial on Homogeneous Transforms is presented covering the triple interpretation of a homogeneous transform as an operator, a coordinate frame, and a coordinate transform. The operator / transform duality is derived and its use in the Denavit Hartenberg convention is explained. Forward, inverse, and differential kinematics are derived for a simple manipulator to illustrate concepts. A standard set of coordinate frames is proposed for wheeled mobile robots. It is shown that the RPY transform serves the same purpose as the DH matrix in this case. It serves to interface with vehicle position estimation systems of all kinds, to control and model pan/tilt mechanisms and stabilized platforms, and to model the rigid transforms from place to place on the vehicle. Forward and inverse kinematics and the Euler angle rate to the angular velocity transform are derived for the RPY transform. Projective kinematics for ideal video cameras and laser rangefinders, and the imaging Jacobian relating world space and image space is derived. Finally, the kinematics of the Ackerman steer vehicle is presented for reference purposes. This report is both a tutorial and a reference for the transforms used in the RANGER vehicle controller. It is both because the models keep evolving and it was necessary to provide the tools, mechanisms, and discipline required to continue the evolution.


A novel resonant cavity enhanced photodetector with asymmetric dual-absorption layer structures that shifts the limitation on bandwidth-efficiency further than is possible in conventional photodetector is proposed. The quantum efficiency and frequency bandwidth are 93% with a lower reflectivity of top mirror, and 88GHz with mesa area for 10εm×10εm, respectively.


Background: Clinical guidelines recommend offering patients options for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, but the modalities vary by frequency, accuracy, preparations, discomfort, and cost, which may cause confusion and reduce screening rates. We examined whether patients reported confusion about the options and whether confusion was associated with socio-demographic characteristics, number of options discussed, and adherence. Methods: Patients ages 50 to 75 years who had visited a clinician within 2 years were randomly selected for a cross-sectional study (n = 6,100). A questionnaire mailed in 2007 asked the following: whether a clinician had ever discussed CRC screening options; which of four recommended tests (i.e., fecal occult blood testing, flexible sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy, and barium enema) were presented; and whether the options were confusing. Analyses were restricted to respondents who reported discussing one or more screening options (n = 1,707). Weighted frequencies were calculated and multivariate logistic regression was done. Results: The sample was 55.5% female, 15.6% African American, and 83.2% adherent to screening recommendations, and 56.0% had discussed two or more screening options. In adjusted analyses, nonadherent patients reported greater confusion than adherent patients (P < 0.01). Adults who discussed two or more options were 1.6 times more likely to be confused than those who discussed one option [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.08-2.26]. Patients who reported being confused were 1.8 times more likely to be nonadherent to screening than those who did not (95% CI, 1.14-2.75). Conclusions: Our study provides the first empirical evidence linking multiple options with confusion and confusion with screening adherence. Impact: Confusion may act as a barrier to screening and should be considered in public health messages and interventions. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(11); 2821–5. ©2010 AACR.


While listening comprehension is the heart of language, but it is the least understood and researched skill. This is the reason why particular attention must be given to listening comprehension as a skill required in foreign language acquisition and especially in part played by listening skills. This study aims to see the effect of computer assisted language learning (CALL) applied to students` listening performance. This study adopts a qualitative approach. Data were collected using questionnaires. The findings in this study reveals Students`-perceptions and feedback on CALL. It shows that many of the students feel easier in understanding the listening material using CALL. It also shows that many of the teachers interested using CALL but not interested with the LMS provided. It can be concluded that most of the students have a positive impression about the use of CALL in English learning, especially for Listening.


Engineering antibodies for diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in neurodegenerative diseasesA. Najjar1, N.N. Vaikath2, I, Hmila2, Nour Majbour2, O. El-Agnaf11Life Sciences Division, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Education City, Qatar Foundation, PO Box 5825, Doha, Qatar2Neurological Disorders Research Center, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar Foundation, PO Box 5825, Doha, Qatar.Neurodegenerative diseases affect millions of people worldwide, with Parkinson's disease (PD) ranked as the second most common age-related neurodegenerative disorder affecting over 1 million people in the United States alone. Common neurodegenerative diseases such as PD, Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) are characterised by progressive deposition of α-synuclein (α-syn) protein within inclusions referred to as Lewy bodies and glial cytoplasmic inclusions respectively. This has led to classifying these diseases under the umbrella term Synucleinopathies due to the pathological accumulation of this protein. The various diseases vary in where the protein is deposited and which regions in the brain become affected.α-Syn is a relatively small protein constituting 140 amino acid residues having an unfolded native state. α-Syn aggregation occurs in a stepwise manner where monomers lead to transient oligomers, which ultimately lead to proto and mature fibrils within neurons. Such accumulation seems to target dopaminergic neurons located in the substantia nigra pars compacta. Current treatment such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and L-dopa (the precursor for dopamine) does not focus on slowing disease progression; rather it focuses on symptomatic relief.Amongst the various approaches attempting to tackle the pathological features of synucleinopathies, immunotherapy holds much promise. α-Syn antibodies could potentially block processes leading to the pathogenesis of such neurodegenerative diseases. The limitation of such antibodies is their inefficiency in crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier. The aim of our project focuses on using a fusion protein engineered to include the FAB region of an existing antibody, which is confirmation specific to α-syn pathology. This single-chain-fragment-variable is designed to have increased BBB penetration by virtue of its smaller size and its conjugation with a carrier. It is envisaged that with enhanced penetration there will be superior brain targeting results compared to conventional α-syn antibodies. Upon expression and purification of α-syn and various designs of the fusion protein, the two proteins will be extensively characterized by means of Dot Blots, ELISA assays and affinity experiments. Neuronal cell lines and primary neurons from rat or mice will be employed to test our fusion protein in vitro. This will ultimately be done using immunocytochemistry techniques. For in-vivo experiments, the fusion protein will be tested on transgenic mice overexpressing α-syn.The outcomes of this project are threefold. If successful, the fusion protein could be useful in passive immunization of Synucleinopathies, finding its use as a clinical diagnostic tool for such diseases. Further manipulation of the fusion protein, namely attachment of a Fluoro-radiolabelled isotope can be used for imaging using positron emission tomography (PET). This would allow for its use in medical imaging to track α-syn pathology in PD, DLB and MSA patients.


Tweets have become an increasingly popular source of fresh information. We investigate the task of Nominal Semantic Role Labeling (NSRL) for tweets, which aims to identify predicate-argument structures defined by nominals in tweets. Studies of this task can help fine-grained information extraction and retrieval from tweets. There are two main challenges in this task: 1) The lack of information in a single tweet, rooted in the short and noisy nature of tweets; and 2) recovery of implicit arguments. We propose jointly conducting NSRL on multiple similar tweets using a graphical model, leveraging the redundancy in tweets to tackle these challenges. Extensive evaluations on a human annotated data set demonstrate that our method outperforms two baselines with an absolute gain of 2.7% in F1.


The 2011 parliamentary election clearly demonstrated that Singapore has transformed into a competitive authoritarian regime. Not only did the ruling People's Action Party's share of the popular vote decline and the opposition win the most seats ever, there was meaningful contestation for ruling power for the first time. As a result of the government's liberalization of the Internet, opposition parties were able to grow in strength by attracting more qualified candidates and an unprecedented number of volunteers. Besides signifying political change in Singapore, the election also worried Chinese leaders, who are trying to copy Singapore's authoritarian state-capitalism.


The large Integral Field Spectroscopy surveys have allowed the classification of ionizing sources of emission lines on sub-kiloparsec scales. In this work, we define two non-parametric parameters, quiescence (Fq) and its concentration (Cq), to quantify the strength and the spatial distribution of the quenched areas, respectively, traced by the LI(N)ER regions with low EW(Hα). With these two measurements, we classify MaNGA galaxies into inside-out and outside-in quenching types according to their locations on the Fq versus Cq plane and we measure the fraction of inside-out (outside-in) quenching galaxies as a function of halo mass. We find that the fraction of galaxies showing inside-out quenching increases with halo mass, irrespective of stellar mass or galaxy type (satellites versus centrals). In addition, high-stellar-mass galaxies exhibit a greater fraction of inside-out quenching compared to low-stellar-mass ones in all environments. In contrast, the fraction of outside-in quenching does not depend on halo mass. Our results suggest that morphological quenching may be responsible for the inside-out quenching seen in all environments. On the other hand, the flat dependence of the outside-in quenching on halo mass could be a mixed result of ram pressure stripping and galaxy mergers. Nevertheless, for a given environment and stellar mass, the fraction of inside-out quenching is systematically greater than that of outside-in quenching, suggesting that inside-out quenching is the dominant quenching mode in all environments.


Semidwarf barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) lines and cultivars with the sdw gene have not fulfilled early expectations of increased grain yield. Accordingly, both breeding and molecular mapping experiments were undertaken to enhance and evaluate performance of lines with sdw The objectives were to examine, in sdw semidwarf barley, the effect on grain yield of enhancing yield component traits—spike number, kernel number, and kernel weight—to confirm the reported allelic relationship between sdw and denso, to identify the chromosome location of sdw, and to determine the genetic relationship between sdw, height, and heading date. Eight tall barley lines having high yield-component phenotypes or high grain yield were crossed to `Royal', an sdw semidwarf, to obtain semidwarf populations for study. Grain yield of semidwarf lines was not significantly increased by enhancing yield-component traits or by the use of high-yield parents. Allelism tests and gene mapping procedures were used to determine the relationship between sdw and denso and to map the sdw allele location. The sdw gene was allelic to denso and mapped to barley chromosome 3H in the same region as denso The sdw allele reduced height by 10 to 20 cm and delayed maturity by ≈3 d. We hypothesize that the sdw allele itself, not linkage drag, is the basis for mediocre yield and late maturity of this short-stature germplasm. The information obtained encourages use of alternative short-stature sources.


The mechanism of formation of initiating radicals for free radical polymerization by the thioxanthone−anthracene (TX-A) photoinitiator was investigated by laser flash photolysis, fluorescence and phosphorescence spectroscopy, and polymerization studies. The proposed mechanism of photoinitiation involves photoexcitation of TX-A and quenching of triplet excited states of TX-A by molecular oxygen to generate singlet oxygen. Singlet oxygen reacts with the anthracene moiety of TX-A to form an endoperoxide. The endoperoxide intermediate was isolated and characterized by MS and 1H NMR. The endoperoxide undergoes photochemical or thermal decomposition to generate radicals which are able to initiate free radical polymerization. A significant deuterium effect on the polymerization rates using CDCl3 and CHCl3 as solvents confirmed the involvement of singlet oxygen in the initiation process.


Since their invention, generative adversarial networks (GANs) have become a popular approach for learning to model a distribution of real (unlabeled) data. Convergence problems during training are overcome by Wasserstein GANs which minimize the distance between the model and the empirical distribution in terms of a different metric, but thereby introduce a Lipschitz constraint into the optimization problem. A simple way to enforce the Lipschitz constraint on the class of functions, which can be modeled by the neural network, is weight clipping. Augmenting the loss by a regularization term that penalizes the deviation of the gradient norm of the critic (as a function of the network's input) from one, was proposed as an alternative that improves training. We present theoretical arguments why using a weaker regularization term enforcing the Lipschitz constraint is preferable. These arguments are supported by experimental results on several data sets.


The status of plum breeding around the world is reviewed. Two distinct types of plums are grown: Japanese-type shipping plums (mostly diploid hybrids of Prunus salicina Lindl. with other species) such as are grown in California, and hexaploid or "domestica" plums (P. domestica L.), which have a long history in Europe. In recent years there has been a resurgence of plum breeding outside the United States.


Background and aims Recent research has suggested that social networking site use can be addictive. Although extensive research has been carried out on potential addiction to social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tinder, only one very small study has previously examined potential addiction to Instagram. Consequently, the objectives of this study were to examine the relationships between personality, self-liking, daily Internet use, and Instagram addiction, as well as exploring the mediating role of self-liking between personality and Instagram addiction using path analysis. Methods A total of 752 university students completed a self-report survey, including the Instagram Addiction Scale (IAS), the Big Five Inventory (BFI), and the Self-Liking Scale. Results Results indicated that agreeableness, conscientiousness, and self-liking were negatively associated with Instagram addiction, whereas daily Internet use was positively associated with Instagram addiction. The results also showed that self-liking partially mediated the relationship of Instagram addiction with agreeableness and fully mediated the relationship between Instagram addiction with conscientiousness. Discussion and conclusions This study contributes to the small body of literature that has examined the relationship between personality and social networking site addiction and is one of only two studies to examine the addictive use of Instagram and the underlying factors related to it.


Food sovereignty (FS) aims to obtain value-added products in proximity agriculture (PA) in order to achieve food security in a country. Social farming (SF) can help to develop this PA as well as favoring integration of people at risk of social exclusion (RSE). The methodology includes a review of the literature, a survey of 161 SF projects in Catalonia, and ten selected in-depth interviews. "Social Return on Investment" (SROI) methodology is also applied to assess the efficiency of the projects analyzed. The results show the economic, social, and environmental viability of the majority of the SF projects which, also favored by FS and PA, allows the development of innovative experiences and sustainable forms of governance. SF has been carried out in different ways in European countries, although with the common aims of benefitting people at RSE, and using the natural environment and PA through projects basically promoted by Third Sector entities. Management of these projects is in the hands of foundations and non-profit companies making top-down decisions, and in cooperatives and associations, where decision-making is bottom-up. It can be concluded that the promotion of SF can favor PA, and therefore, FS in Europe.


Xyliphius sofiae, new species, is described based on a unique specimen exhibiting four autapomorphies: eyes absent vs. present (though reduced); color pale, lacking pigment vs. head and body darkly pigmented; branchiostegal rays five vs. four; and unculiferous tubercles on posterior body distributed evenly vs. enlarged unculiferous tubercles typically arranged in five distinct rows above pelvic-fin base to posterior end of caudal peduncle. In addition, the pectoral fin of X. sofiae, new species, has one ossified proximal radial vs. two in congeners (except X. magdalenae, not examined). Xyliphius sofiae, new species, differs from all congeners except X. lepturus by snout tip elongated and narrowly rounded vs. short and broadly rounded, often with small median notch; fifth ceratobranchial relatively narrow with elongate acicular teeth vs. broadly expanded, leaf-shaped, with shorter and broader, conical teeth; anterior limits of branchial apertures separated by distance less than length of aperture vs. greater than length of aperture; anal-fin rays modally nine vs. seven; and lateral line extending onto base of caudal-fin rays vs. finishing in hypural region. Based on the single specimen collected in the main channel of the Río Amazonas near Iquitos, Peru, we describe the osteology of X. sofiae, new species, using a non-invasive technique: high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (HRXCT). We consider Xyliphius lombarderoi Risso and Risso, 1964, a species based on a unique holotype that is now lost, to be a subjective junior synonym of X. barbatus Alonso de Arámburu and Arámburu, 1962. Variable characteristics are summarized for the seven species of Xyliphius treated here as valid, and their distributions are plotted based on a comprehensive review of museum specimens.


The G20's renewal of faith in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the 2008 financial crisis appears to have reversed the IMF's declining relevance evident in the years preceding the crisis. This article examines this putative revival of the IMF, arguing that the G20's actions contained a paradox of delegation. On the one hand, the nature of the G20's replenishment of the IMF's resources during the crisis (mostly through credit lines available to the IMF) as well as the independence the major G20 economies can afford to have from the IMF (given that they are not beholden to its resources) has meant that the G20 countries faced low sovereignty costs in reviving the IMF. On the other hand, truly re-establishing the IMF's relevance would impose higher sovereignty costs, specifically in the form of strengthened IMF surveillance over G20 economies. This paradox of delegation suggests that the G20's action toward the IMF does not inform properly whether the G20 states have contemplated the trade-off between suffering sovereignty costs and achieving gains from delegation. In this regard, the proper role of the IMF in the governance of the global economy remains uncertain.

Policy Implications

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 The G20's resuscitation of the IMF cannot be simply interpreted as indicating certainty regarding the future of the institution.

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 In order for the IMF to fulfill its key tasks, particularly surveillance of global economic conditions, as envisioned by key members of the G20, these states need to permit the IMF to play the role of a mediator and technical expert in close coordination of their policies.

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 The G20 states should resist the temptation to forum shop, namely charge other institutions with tasks similar to those of the IMF with a view to dispersing/avoiding sovereignty costs.

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 It is no longer viable to hold on to prior assumptions and frameworks regarding the distribution of influence among states vis-a-vis the IMF – scholarly and policy works need to recognize large emerging economies as key principals of the Fund.

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 At the same time, the IMF needs to enhance the evenhandedness of its analysis and advice in order to increase key member states' perceptions of its effectiveness and fairness.


Despite legal alcohol being consumed by the great majority in most nations, there is surprisingly little research regarding the grand impact of its use on societies, and even less on its nonuse by persons and cultures. Correlations find significant relationships between levels of alcohol consumption, gender equality, and sociopolitical conditions, with the latter two being the best when alcohol intake is moderately high. Experimentation and observation have shown that alcohol is an effective social lubricant, especially in situations regarding courting and initial sexual encounters. It is proposed that widespread use of legal alcohol is an important prerequisite for the courting cultures that has to be present for women to enjoy the socio sexual freedom that is necessary for the development of the advanced democratic politics that in turn generate the highest levels of socioeconomic prosperity and security. Societies that ban alcohol are correspondingly apparently unable to achieve gender equality, full democracy, and prosperity, and the common Islamic religious prohibition may be a critical factor in the difficulty of Muslim nations in achieving sociopolitical modernity. Nonuse can also adversely impact individuals by hindering their ability to socialize, including sexually, although nonuse also has it positives. Excessive use of alcohol is also detrimental on a national scale, although not as much as is nonuse.


The use of a footrest while performing activity in standing is frequently associated with improvement of a user's well-being however no information exists on the role of a footrest in improving postural stability. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of using a footrest in postural control. Twenty healthy young volunteers were tested using three experimental conditions: standing with two feet on the force platform and standing on the force platform when one foot was placed on a 15 cm footrest positioned in front or laterally. The mean and root mean square distance, range and velocity of the center of pressure (COP) were calculated in the anterior-posterior (AP) and medio-lateral (ML) directions using the force platform data. The COP displacements in AP and ML directions increased in conditions of standing with one foot placed on the footrest regardless of its location. Standing with eyes closed increased COP displacements further. The outcome of the study suggests the importance of using COP measures for evaluation of postural stability and provides additional information needed for optimization of working conditions involving standing with a footrest.


Hyperspectral imaging has become one of the most
popular technologies in plant phenotyping because it can efficiently and
accurately predict numerous plant physiological features such as plant biomass,
leaf moisture content, and chlorophyll content. Various hyperspectral imaging systems
have been deployed in both greenhouse and field phenotyping activities. However,
the hyperspectral imaging quality is severely affected by the continuously
changing environmental conditions such as cloud cover, temperature and wind
speed that induce noise in plant spectral data. Eliminating these environmental
effects to improve imaging quality is critically important. In this thesis, two
approaches were taken to address the imaging noise issue in greenhouse and field
separately. First,
a computational simulation model was built to simulate the greenhouse
microclimate changes (such as the temperature and radiation distributions)
through a 24-hour cycle in a research greenhouse. The simulated results were
used to optimize the movement of an automated conveyor in the greenhouse: the
plants were shuffled with the conveyor system with optimized frequency and
distance to provide uniform growing conditions such as
temperature and lighting intensity for each individual plant. The results
showed the variance of the plants' phenotyping feature measurements decreased significantly
(i.e., by up to 83% in plant canopy size) in this conveyor greenhouse. Secondly,
the environmental effects (i.e., sun radiation) on aerial
hyperspectral images in field plant phenotyping were investigated and
modeled. An artificial neural network (ANN) method was
proposed to model the relationship between the image variation and
environmental changes. Before the 2019 field test, a gantry system was designed
and constructed to repeatedly collect time-series hyperspectral images with 2.5
minutes intervals of the corn plants under varying environmental conditions, which
included sun radiation, solar zenith angle, diurnal time, humidity, temperature
and wind speed. Over 8,000 hyperspectral images of corn (Zea mays L.) were collected with
synchronized environmental data throughout the 2019 growing season. The models trained with
the proposed ANN method were able to accurately predict the variations in
imaging results (i.e., 82.3% for NDVI) caused by the changing environments. Thus,
the ANN method can be used by remote sensing professionals to adjust or correct
raw imaging data for changing environments to improve plant characterization.


Plain legal language is one of ways to ensure citizens rights to clear and easy understandable information about legal regulations. It is also a valuable tool providing public services. The study of plain legal language reguirement in Lithuania is based on the analysis of resolutions of State Consumer Rights Protection Authority. Currently this is the only institution officially entitled to declare that some conditions of a contract should be considered as unclear. The analysis of Lithuania's situation concerning the usage of plain legal language while providing public services to consumers reveals a few observations. Firstly, while investigating the application of concept of plain language it was noticed that it is not being used in a full extent as it is interpreted by international scholars. Research shows that the concept of plain legal language and its application is orientated to how clearly (in detail) the contract conditions are formulated, but it does not include the requirement to meet the needs of audience. Secondly, the analysis shows that more than a half of consumer contracts providing public services include terms of contracts which should be defined as not clear. Finally, it is noticed that the application of plain legal language providing public services should be monitored and implemented using the variety of criteria of plain legal language conception.


This project engaged with a series of issues concerning the 'connectedness' of young people with their communities and community agencies. We consulted research which has explored the life-worlds of young people in materially poor communities, developing our review via a critical re-interpretation of discourses of 'community' and of 'social capital'. We advocated the adoption and development of research methodologies which enhance the ability to investigate these issues further, exploring the nature and consequences of neo-liberal social and political changes at community level whilst contributing to problem-solving and social justice.
The evidence provided ample testimony of the complex and 'ambiguously connected' lives of young people in poor communities. In feeding our findings back to a series of community meetings, we compared the themes from the literature with issues raised by community members – including young people. Respondents were chiefly concerned, by the impact of social change upon their lives and communities; by the ways in which growing inequalities and blocked opportunities impacted upon the experiences of young people and, above all, by a sense that dis-connection and social fragmentation were resulting from political decisions resulting in the loss of community resources and a diminishing 'commitment to welfare'.


Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities. By Jean Bethke Elshtain. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000. 178 pp. $20.00 (cloth). The issue of personhood has been central to the development of ethics in the last quarter century. The intensity of the debate on this subject has increased so that today we have reached the point that it has been said that there are only two types of bioethicists: those who explicitly distinguish between "humans" and "persons" and those who make the distinction implicitly. Jean Elshtain enters the conversation by asking, "Who are we?" Her first answer, quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is, "Whoever I am, 0 God, I am thine." This is not the answer of the autonomous, sovereign, personal decision maker who is in control of every element of life. We belong, we do not own. Her second answer is equally evident, "VVe are fallen," and that changes everything. To understand the present consequences of the fall, she compares the exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2 by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Pope John Paul II. For Bonhoeffer, man is in rebellion against his remote, totally different creator. Despite rebellion, the created is totally dependent on God and also dependent on relationship with others. It is only in relationships with others that one can be free. We do not have bodies, we are body and soul, enmeshed in one another without possibility of distinction. Yet, after the Incarnation, this rebellious piece of earth is also in the image of God, the whole person is fallen, but the whole person is redeemed. John Paul II is more concerned with "from the beginning," who we were before the fall. We were created for communion; communion with God and with each other. After the fall, redemption is proffered early and humans begin, as historical beings, to live within this theological perspective. The authentic reflection of the image of God is found in the communion of persons, the existence of a person for another. Through mutual recognition of each other, we come to know the meaning of our own bodies. Bonhoeffer places more emphasis on the sovereign, remote Creator who comes close to us only through the Incarnation and the cross. John Paul places more emphasis on the continuing relationship between the Creator and the created. Both write powerfully against the individualistic and voluntaristic constructs of human life and freedom. Both oppose the contemporary notion of an independent, self-sufficient, wholly autonomous self. Both stress the need to be at God's disposal. Elshtain considers two generic sins that result from our fallen state: pride and sloth. Pride is evil action, sloth is evil inaction. Pride causes us to engage in the culture of the world, sloth is the acquiescence to the conventions of the world. Both are sins. Pride causes us to seek to become our own point of origin. In the world of pride we are neither Bonhoeffer's shattered creatures who must throw ourselves on the cross nor are we those described by John Paul II who yearn for more intense relationships. Instead, we normalize pride and selfsufficiency and call it good. We fall into utilitarian thinking without realizing that we need a common value in order to judge the various alternatives. For Hume, this common value was happiness; today it is money. This means that everything and everyone has a price. Such thinking is the antithesis of the anthropological presuppositions of Bonhoeffer and John Paul II who believe that human life is Godgiven and not made for the market. The market, like all human institutions, is distorted by sin, and to allow it to make life a commodity is to sin again. …


The United States faces three simultaneous crises: a pandemic, a civil-rights reckoning, and a crisis of democracy. The first of these crises has sparked dramatic—though potentially temporary—changes to the practice of law: moving much legal work to remote settings almost overnight, after the profession had largely resisted making such accommodations for decades. The second has sparked an assessment of the extent to which the practice of law and the legal system are both riddled with racism and institutional bias. The third, the crisis of democracy, has lawyers at its center, filing frivolous claims and fomenting an armed insurrection with designs on overturning the results of a free and fair election. If the past is any guide, these crises will provoke a period of introspection within the legal profession and prompt calls for change. What the profession tends to do in the wake of such crises and in response to such calls, however, is tinker around the margins of the rules regarding the operation of the profession, leading to little substantive, long-term, formal change. It is entirely possible, if not likely, that the legal profession could respond to these crises according to this same pattern. It does not have to be that way, however. This Article calls on the profession—even as we are still in the midst of these crises in many ways—to seize the opportunity to advance real, lasting, and meaningful change and recommit to the central role it must play in the defense of the rule of law and democracy.


It is often argued that inflation erases all the information about what took place before it started. Quantum gravity, relevant in the Planck era, seems therefore mostly impossible to probe with cosmological observations. In general, only very \textit{ad hoc} scenarios or hyper fine-tuned initial conditions can lead to observationally testable theories. Here we consider a well-defined and well motivated candidate quantum cosmology model that predicts inflation. Using the most recent observational constraints on the cosmic microwave background B modes, we show that the model is excluded for all its parameter space, without any tuning. Some important consequences are drawn for the \textit{deformed algebra approach} to loop quantum cosmology. We emphasize that neither loop quantum cosmology in general nor loop quantum gravity are disfavored by this study but their falsifiability is established.


Background Much of the shape variation found in animals is based on allometry and heterochrony. Horses represent an excellent model to investigate patterns of size-shape variation among breeds that were intentionally bred for extreme small and large sizes. Methods We tested whether ponies (wither height < 148 cm) have a diverging size-shape relationship in skull shape as compared to regular-sized horse breeds (wither height > 148 cm, here-after called horses) during ontogenetic growth. We used a dataset of 194 specimens from 25 horse and 13 pony breeds, two of which are miniature breeds (wither height < 96.5 cm)—Falabella, Shetland. We applied three-dimensional geometric morphometrics, linear measurements, and multivariate analyses (Procrustes ANOVAs) to quantitatively examine and compare the ontogenetic trajectories between pony and horse breeds with an emphasis on the miniature breeds as an extreme case of artificial selection on size. Additionally, we tested for juvenile characteristics in adult horse and miniature breeds that could resemble "paedomorphosis"—retention of juvenile characteristics in adult stage; e.g. large eyes, large braincase-to-face-relationship, and large head-to-body relationship. Results Allometric regression of size on shape revealed that 42% of shape variation could be explained by variation in size in all breeds. The ontogenetic trajectories of ponies and horses vary in slope and therefore in rate of change per unit size, and length. The differences in trajectory lengths and slopes result in ponies having a similar skull shape in an older age stage than horses of the same size in a younger age stage. This pattern could cause the generally perceived "paedomorphic" appearance of ponies. Miniature breeds have larger heads in relation to wither height compared to horses, a non-paedomorphic feature in horses specifically. Also, rostra (faces) are longer in adult individuals than in juveniles across all kinds of breeds. This pattern can be explained by the long-face hypothesis for grazing ungulates and could possibly be caused by the mismatch of selection by humans for shorter rostra and the dentition of ruminants. Conclusions Miniature breed specimens do not exhibit any of the classical mammalian "paedomorphic" features (large orbits, large heads), except for the adult Falabella that has enlarged orbits, possibly because they are herbivorous ungulates that are affected by functional and metabolic constraints related to low nutrient-food consumption. Instead ponies, including miniature breeds, have faster and shorter ontogenetic growth compared to horses, resulting in adult pony skulls looking in part like juvenile horse skulls.


India has been experiencing rising inflows of overseas capital since the deregulation of its financial sector. Often looked upon as a success story among other emerging economies, the country has been subject to pitfalls and trilemmas that deserve attention. It has been officially recognized by the Governors of RBI that the financial crisis in India reflects the "dirty face" of what is described in the literature as the impossible trinity, along with the volatility in the markets that was caused by speculative capital in search of profits. However, Joseph Stiglitz observed that India's policymakers, "particularly the Reserve Bank of India, are already doing a great job. I wish the U.S. Federal Reserve displayed the same understanding of the role of regulation that the RBI has done, at least so far." Recently, the United States made a path-breaking move with the launching of the recent bill on the regulation of Wall Street, which was passed by a majority of the Senate on May 20, 2010. We urge the implementation of similar laws in India and other emerging economies, especially in view of the fact that the recent moves for financial deregulation in these countries have, rather, been in the opposite direction.


Author(s): Hoen, Ben; Rand, Joseph; Elmallah, Salma | Abstract: The commercial rooftop solar energy market remains an under-developed sector. The market is estimated to contain 150 gigawatts of potential in the U.S. but it faces significant barriers to deployment to meet that potential, with an estimated 1.4 GW developed through 2017. This analysis focuses on of over 30,000 solar systems installed through 2017 and the properties on which they are located. The sample represents greater than 60% of the installed market at that time. The properties covered 20 states and almost 30 different types including industrial, warehouse, school/university, office, retail, and municipal/government and were compared to more than 2.4 million non-solar properties in the same geographies. The analysis finds overall commercial rooftop PV penetrations have only surpassed 1% recently across all property types with education properties (schools and universities) leading at over 6% penetration and with NJ and CA seeing the highest overall penetrations close to 2.5%. Also revealed were characteristics of those buildings, owners, and tenants and how solar penetrations change as those characteristics change. The research found clearly higher penetrations on owner-occupied larger (g9000 ft2) buildings with fewer tenants indicating, potentially, areas for future customer acquisition for PV developers. Also investigated were differences of solar system characteristics on commercial buildings such as system installed prices, size, and percentages of third-party owned (TPO) systems. The research found a steady and substantial drop in installed prices over time, a drop in the percentage of TPO systems being installed, and a relatively steady trend of system size. This latter finding indicates that smaller systems remain difficult to develop.


When the endogenous variable enters the structural equation non-parametrically the linear Instrumental Variable (IV) estimator is no longer consistent. Non-parametric IV (NPIV) can be used but it requires one to impose restrictions during estimation to make the problem well-posed. The non-parametric control function estimator of Newey, Powell, and Vella (1999) (NPV-CF) is an alternative approach that uses the residuals from the conditional mean decomposition of the endogenous variable as controls in the structural equation. While computationally simple identification relies upon independence between the instruments and the expected value of the structural error conditional on the controls, which is hard to motivate in many economic settings including estimation of returns to education, production functions, and demand or supply elasticities. We develop an estimator for non-linear and non-parametric regressions that maintains the simplicity of the NPV-CF estimator but allows the conditional expectation of the structural error to depend on both the control variables and the instruments. Our approach combines the conditional moment restrictions (CMRs) from NPIV with the controls from NPV-CF setting. We show that the CMRs place shape restrictions on the conditional expectation of the error given instruments and controls that are sufficient for identification. When sieves are used to approximate both the structural function and the control function our estimator reduces to a series of Least Squares regressions. Our monte carlos are based on the economic settings suggested above and illustrate that our new estimator performs well when the NPV-CF estimator is biased. Our empirical example replicates NPV-CF and we reject the maintained assumption of the independence of the instruments and the expected value of the structural error conditional on the controls in their setting.