ObjectiveDescribe the development of an individual-level tracking system for community-based naloxone dispensing as part of New York City's (NYC) comprehensive plan to reduce overdose deaths. We present data from the first year of the initiative to illustrate results of the tracking system and describe the potential impact on naloxone dispensing program.IntroductionThe number of unintentional overdose deaths in New York City (NYC) has increased for seven consecutive years. In 2017, there were 1,487 unintentional drug overdose deaths in NYC. Over 80% of these deaths involved an opioid, including heroin, fentanyl, and prescription pain relievers.1 As part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce overdose mortality in NYC, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's (DOHMH) Overdose Education and Naloxone Distribution (OEND) Program makes naloxone kits available to laypeople free-of-charge through registered Opioid Overdose Prevention Programs (OOPPs). Naloxone kits contain two doses of naloxone and educational materials. The OEND Program distributes kits to registered OOPPs, which then dispense kits to individuals via community-based trainings. In this context, distribution refers to kits shipped to programs, whereas dispensing refers to kits given to individuals. Increased NYC funding has enabled recruitment of more OOPPs—including syringe exchange programs, public safety agencies, shelters, drug treatment programs, health care facilities, and other community-based programs—and greater dispensing of naloxone kits to laypeople. Naloxone distribution has undergone a dramatic expansion, from 2,500 kits in 2009 to 61,706 kits in 2017.2 In 2018, DOHMH aims to distribute more than 100,000 kits to OOPPs.In order to target naloxone dispensing to neighborhoods in NYC with the highest overdose burden, we developed a tracking system able to capture individual-level geographic data about naloxone kit recipients. Prior to the development of the tracking system, DOHMH collected quarterly, aggregate-level naloxone dispensing data from OOPPs. These data included only the OOPPs' ZIP Codes but not recipient residence. OOPP ZIP Code was used as a proxy for kits dispensed to individuals. Without individual-level geographic information, however, we could not determine whether naloxone kit dispensing reached people in neighborhoods with high overdose mortality rates. To overcome these barriers, DOHMH developed a comprehensive but flexible individual-level data collection method.MethodsTo both capture individual-level data from each naloxone recipient in NYC and meet the needs of OOPPs' varying capacities, dispensing settings, and any existing organizational data requirements, DOHMH devised a two-pronged data collection system. The Naloxone Recipient Form (NRF) system, launched January 1, 2018, primarily employs a short paper form (or NRF) to collect dispensing data. The NRF is a one-page document designed with the OpenText™ TeleForm processing application. It captures individual data and OOPP information. Individual data include: reason for obtaining a kit, whether first-time receipt of a kit, age, and ZIP Code of residence. OOPP information includes: program name and ZIP Code of dispensing location. Forms are completed by OOPPs and recipients at OEND trainings, compiled by the OOPP, then scanned back to DOHMH. We then import forms into TeleForm, which reads the NRF data directly into a database without need for manual data entry and only moderate need for data verification. The second component of the NRF system allows larger organizations and dispensers in clinical settings with electronic health records to submit data extracts to DOHMH that are pulled directly from organizations' data systems. Together with these organizations, we customized these data extracts for direct importation into the master NRF database.To demonstrate improvements in our tracking of naloxone dispensing after the development of the NRF system, we mapped the geographic spread of naloxone kits in NYC during the first three months of 2018 (Q1 2018) by recipients' ZIP Code of residence and OOPPs' ZIP Codes.ResultsA total of 138 OOPPs2 reported any dispensing from January to June, 2018, of which 107 reported individual-level data using the NRF system, accounting for 27,899 kits dispensed to 23,610 individual recipients.3 Logistical barriers to implementing the NRF system varied among OOPPs, thus the data underestimate citywide dispensing during this time period. Some OOPPs experienced delays in reporting recipient-level data until a more-tailored data collection strategy was devised. Visual inspection of OOPP-level distribution and individual-level dispensing maps using Q1 2018 data (See Figures 1 and 2) demonstrate the difference between OOPP-level distribution data and individual-level dispensing data. Mapping data indicate that the largest numbers of naloxone kits were dispensed to people in neighborhoods with the highest burden of overdose in NYC.ConclusionsThe NRF system provides DOHMH, as well as OOPPs in NYC, with individual-level data to more accurately track naloxone dispensing citywide. The simplicity and flexibility of the NRF system allows for timely and geographically precise data collection from dozens of organizations across NYC with little or no additional cost to OOPPs. As new organizations have registered as OOPPs, particularly large health care or human services systems, DOHMH has developed new methods for incorporating dispensing data into the NRF system. Ongoing communication with OOPPs of all types and an iterative data collection improvement process have ensured that the system remains comprehensive while also being responsive to individual program's capacities and data needs.References1. Nolan ML, Tuazon E, Blachman-Forshay J, Paone D. Unintentional Drug Poisoning (Overdose) Deaths in New York City, 2000-2017. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: Epi Data Brief (104); September 2018.2. NYC DOHMH Opioid Overdose Prevention Program (OOPP) Database. All data is provisional.3. NYC DOHMH Naloxone Recipient Form (NRF) Database. All data is provisional.


Although steel girders have been u
sed for many years, new gener
ation of optimized steel
girders is developed by the advances in structural and fabricat
ion technology. Girders with
corrugated webs are used in bridge
s as an efficient alternative
to conventional girders with flat
stiffened webs, It was also found that, the vertically corrugat
ed girders had a 10.6% reduction
in weight when compared with the beam with flat web.[1]
Advantages Economical design of steel girders normally requires
thin webs. The use of
corrugated webs is a possible wa
y of achieving adequate out-of-
plane stiffness without using
stiffeners. Particularly in bri
dge girders with corrugated webs
(BGCWs), the corrugated webs
are the main elements for bearing the shear forces. Instead of
prismatic BGCWs, tapered
BGCWs are currently used mainly due to their structural efficie
ncy, providing at the same time
aesthetical appearance.
Available literature shows that tapered BGCWs may be classified
into four typologies. Among
these typologies, Case I and Case II are the most common cases
appearing commonly near to
the intermediate supports of continuous bridges.
Accordingly, in this thesis, the finite element (FE) method is
employed to investigate the
inelastic behaviour of tapered BGCWs of Case I and Case II, fol
lowing to the fundamental
behaviour of such girders published recently by Hassanein et al
[6].
The thesis seeks, firstly, considering initial imperfection amp
litudes of
200
/
1
w
h
. Accordingly,
with euro code 3 part 1-5, annex D [12],
1
w
h
is the height of the long vertical edge of the web
panel, it investigates the effect of the aspect ratio of the we
b panels, different flange inclination
angles and different
web thickness.
Finally, the thesis checks previously proposed design model usi
ng the results of the generated
parametric studies. Overall, the outcomes of this study are exp
ected to provide more insight
into the behaviour of tapered BGCWs and enable accurate predict
ion of the shear capacity of
this special type of BGCWs.


A need for incorporating sustainability requirements during product development phase so as to ensure green initiatives is the vital focus of today's industries. However, proposed approaches are lacking in terms of sustainability aspects and difficulty in selecting the most sustainable product assembly model at the end of the methodologies. Besides, useful tools such as life-cycle assessment (LCA), streamlined LCA and environmental matrix for assessing the environmental impacts associated with a product have been incorporated in order to fulfil those limitations but the variation in price and complexity makes it difficult to match the goal, scope and budget of the product design. Therefore, this study presents an integrated morphological analysis theory and artificial neural network approach for producing products in sustainable manner that caters to environment, economic and social aspects. As a result from the case study, the most sustainable of new portable vacuum cleaner models can be systematically selected.


The past two years have been a period of landmark transformation in legal education. With the issuance of the Carnegie and Best Practices in Legal Education reports, law schools and law professors have re-begun the essential process of analyzing and transforming legal pedagogy. This widespread re-examination of the law school curriculum has yielded two important changes in legal education: first, law schools - including those in the top tier - have begun radically to amend their curricular goals and structures; and, second, legal scholars have begun to turn their attention to the theory and implementation of better legal education. As Carnegie and Best Practices note, this nascent metamorphosis in scholarly thought about legal education has the potential to transform both the law school and the law practice experience, as well-grounded pedagogy will remove the barriers to learning that some law students have historically experienced while better preparing them to practice law.This article represents one of the first concrete responses to Carnegie and Best Practices. In proposing that law professors regularly use oral argument exercises to supplement traditional Socratic dialogue, it meets head on the concerns expressed by Best Practices and Carnegie that over-reliance on the Langdell method neither mimics law practice nor nurtures student learning. It also responds directly to the suggestion in both reports that simulation exercises may yield better legal analysis and knowledge. Finally, this article advances a novel theory directly related to the objectives and conclusions of the Reports; namely, that for experienced advocates and law students alike, practice oral argument may be a starting point, rather than a mere end point, for teaching, learning, and executing the fundamentals of legal analysis. In the style of the transcribed classroom conversations of the Carnegie Report, it discusses and demonstrates by example a simulation exercise designed for professors to use in introducing this teaching methodology. The exercise, based on seven fairy tales used as precedent cases, provides a familiar, non-threatening technique for students to learn about rule synthesis, weight of authority, analogy and distinction, and theme through oral argument.


The subject of this article are letters by two authors addressed to two rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The first was written around 1429 by a certain Franciscus de Comitibus Aquae Vivae (about him the recent research still has little to say) and addressed to Vytautas the Great (Alexander), the Grand Duke of Lithuania. At the time he was the ruler of a huge state and was about to be crowned. Vytautas's intention provoked many discussions and disagreements with the Polish king Jogaila and other nobles. The author of the letter tries to dissuade Vytautas from seeking the crown with the help of different arguments, praising and sometimes reproving the ruler. The other two letters were written by the famous humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam to Sigismund the Old, the Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, in 1527 and 1528 respectively. Here, the sender speaks in the humanistic manner about the ruler's obligations, virtues, his search for peace and praises the addressee. In this article, I will analyse and compare the canons – literary, rhetorical, cultural and epistolary – used by both authors in these letters. Besides, I will discuss a ruler's portrait created by the authors, evaluation of his personality, actions and behaviour, and the authors' intentions.


Since its initial development in the mid-1980's, and wide accessibility to perform diffusion MRI on all MRI scanners, the use of diffusion MRI has exploded. Nearly every MRI centre carries out diffusion MRI of some kind. Obtaining good quality diffusion MRI and making sound and robust inferences from the data is not trivial, however, and involves a long chain of events from ensuring that the hardware is performing optimally, the pulse sequence is carefully designed, the acquisition is optimal, the data quality is maximized while artifacts are minimized, the appropriate post-processing is used, and, where appropriate, the appropriate statistical testing is used, and the data are interpreted correctly. Professor Derek Jones, a world authority on diffusion MRI, has assembled most of the world's leading scientists and clinicians developing and applying diffusion MRI to produce an authorship list that reads like a "Who's Who" of the field and a definitive, didactic and essential reference volume for those working with diffusion MRI. Renowned for the clarity of his presentations, Prof Jones has worked closely with each author to ensure that the material is presented in the best possible and accessible manner. The book is aimed at those wishing to really understand where the diffusion signal comes from, and obtain a thorough grounding in the theory, methods and applications of diffusion MRI. The aim here is not to 'skim the surface' - but to dig deep into each topic - so that a thorough grounding is obtained. In assembling these topics (many of which have never previously appeared in a text book on the topic), Prof Jones carefully balances theoretical treatments with practical considerations. Destined to be a modern classic, this definitive and richly illustrated reference volume deserves a place on the bookshelf of all imaging centres.


Anthropologist Diane E. King has written about everyday life in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which covers much of the area long known as Iraqi Kurdistan. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein s Ba thist Iraqi government by the United States and its allies in 2003, Kurdistan became a recognized part of the federal Iraqi system. The Region is now integrated through technology, media, and migration to the rest of the world.Focusing on household life in Kurdistan s towns and villages, King explores the ways that residents connect socially, particularly through patron-client relationships and as people belonging to gendered categories. She emphasizes that patrilineages (male ancestral lines) seem well adapted to the Middle Eastern modern stage and viceversa. The idea of patrilineal descent influences the meaning of refuge-seeking and migration as well as how identity and place are understood, how women and men interact, and how politicking is conducted.In the new Kurdistan, old values may be maintained, reformulated, or questioned. King offers a sensitive interpretation of the challenges resulting from the intersection of tradition with modernity. Honor killings still occur when males believe their female relatives have dishonored their families, and female genital cutting endures. Yet, this is a region where modern technology has spread and seemingly everyone has a mobile phone. Households may have a startling combination of illiterate older women and educated young women. New ideas about citizenship coexist with older forms of patronage.King is one of the very few scholars who conducted research in Iraq under extremely difficult conditions during the Saddam Hussein regime. How she was able to work in the midst of danger and in the wake of genocide is woven throughout the stories she tells. "Kurdistan on the Global Stage" serves as a lesson in field research as well as a valuable ethnography."


Aims : The aims of this study were to evaluate the in vitro effect of a cocoa bean husk extract (CBHE) mouthwash in comparison with that of a fluoridated mouthwash on surface roughness of the enamel surface after subjecting the teeth to two types of energy drink challenge. Materials and Methods : Eighty (80) sound maxillary first premolar were collected and randomly divided into four groups, the teeth in the first and second groups were immersed in a tiger energy drink for 14 days and then one group in a CBHE and another in a fluoride mouth rinses for 7 days. While the remaining teeth in the third and fourth groups were immersed in a red bull energy drink for 14 days and then one group in a CBHE and another in a fluoride mouth rinses for 7 days. Enamel surface was assessed by a profilometer device at a baseline, after erosive challenge and after remineralization with the different treatment materials. Results : In all groups, there was a high statistically significant increase in surface roughness after erosive challenge. Meanwhile, there was a high statistically significant decrease in surface roughness in all groups after remineralization, with no significant differences between energy drinks or remineralization materials. Conclusion : Within the limits of the current study, cocoa bean husk extract and fluoride mouth rinses had an effective re-mineralizing


Introduction: Bauxite mining in Kuantan district of Pahang has raised health concerns of communities residing near the mining areas. Bauxite mining and transportation activities have contributed a lot to the pollution of environment. There is a fear among the residents of the areas that whether the soil is free from naturally occurring radioactive substances or not. Therefore, the objective of this study was to detect the presence of natural radioactive elements in the soil of bauxite mining field at Bukit Goh, Kuantan. Methods: Soil samples were gathered from various locations of Bukit Goh. These samples were dried for twenty-four hours and cleared of stones and pebbles. The soil then was crushed and ground to a fine powder, and heated in the oven for two hours to ensure the soil was dried completely. Samples were packed/sealed in plastic bags, labeled and stored for a month to achieve secular equilibrium. The Advanced Nuclear Spectroscopy System with UCS 30 Universal Computer Spectrometer Software and High Sensitivity Gamma Spectroscopy Model SE-9764 with WinDas Software were used for recording the energy spectrum of each soil sample. Results: Comparison of the spectra of all soil samples was made with the background measurement and no difference was found from each other. Conclusion: No naturally occurring radioactive substances were found in the soil of bauxite mining area at Bukit Goh, Kuantan. Therefore, the soil poses no radiation exposure related health hazards to the residents of the areas of Bukit Goh, Kuantan.


Centrifugal pumps are probably among the most often used machinery in industrial facilities as well as in common life. After being invented they passed long evolutionary development until they became accessible for various applications. Centrifugal pump design is well facilitated by the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). But still some problems are arising to improve the pump performance. This improvement can be achieved by making geometrical changes in design of an impeller. In this study, different techniques for improving centrifugal pump performance by changing impeller geometry are


The 1990s witnessed an increased interest in issues of governance and accountability in U.K. companies. In the wake of a series of governance reports (e.g. Cadbury, 1992; Greenbury, 1995; Hampel, 1998), U.K. companies have significantly altered their governance characteristics. The objective of this thesis is to examine the utilisation of governance mechanisms by U.K. companies immediately prior to the beginning of this governance revolution. My first objective is to ascertain the extent to which board composition and leadership, managerial ownership and external shareholder control were substitutes or complements in the overall governance strategies employed by large quoted companies at the beginning of the 1990s. My second objective is to examine the relationship between internal and external governance mechanisms. This is accomplished in two ways. First, I investigate the internal governance characteristics of takeover targets and a matched sample of non-targets to ascertain the influence of internal governance characteristics at various stages of the takeover process. The motivation for this investigation is a perception in the governance literature that takeovers represent a governance mechanism of last resort exercised only when internal governance structures are ineffective in aligning the interests of managers and shareholders. Second, I examine the governance characteristics of mutual and proprietary insurance companies. In mutual insurance companies, the functions of owner and policyholder are merged which eliminates the prospect of governance either through takeovers or through the ownership of substantial proportion of equity. The absence of these two governance mechanisms suggests that mutual insurers may place greater reliance on internal governance such as more intensive monitoring by the board of directors. In the case of large quoted companies, I find a significant substitution between the monitoring potential of both external and internal ownership and the utilisation of non-executive directors. I also find that companies with greater nonexecutive representation on their boards are more likely to acquire the complementary monitoring of directors' and officers' insurance and demand more extensive auditing. Managerial ownership is the dominant influence on the takeover process. Hostile and unsuccessful bids are associated with lower levels of managerial ownership while friendly and successful bids are associated with high ownership levels. I also find some evidence that hostile targets possess less independent boards compared to a matched sample of non-targets. In the case of insurance companies, I find that mutuals place greater emphasis on non-executive directors than their proprietary counterparts. Overall, my empirical analysis suggests that, at the beginning of the 1990s, U.K. companies emphasised different governance mechanisms depending on the specific monitoring problems they faced.


Electrical machines and electrical drives have a large number of applications in the industry such as automobile industry, energy equipments, robotics etc. These industries and research and development institutes, are in constant demand of qualified graduates who are trained in the respective fields. The academic institutes regularly update the curricula for training the graduates in line with these demands. Laboratory experiments, being an integral part of the curriculum, also needs regular updates. However, setting up and upgradation of a laboratory can be a difficult process due to financial and space constraints. Hence, development of a compact, low cost and easy to operate laboratory setup is always in demand. Keeping in view the above needs, work has been carried in this thesis for the upgradation of an existing Mechatronics lab setup, Mechatro Lab. It is a compact and economical laboratory setup for the study of electrical machines. It is capable of demonstrating the working of various AC and DC motors. The setup, although good for performing basic open loop experiments, lacked closed loop control experiments. Moreover, the drive circuitry and the controller are obsolete. This setup, if upgraded, had the potential to be an excellent teaching aid for understanding the basics as well as control techniques of electrical machines. This thesis aims to replace the obsolete hardware components and add closed loop speed control experiments to the existing experiments. The closed loop speed control experiments have been implemented in computer software, hardware and their results are presented.


Alkyl
 carboxylate-modified layered double hydroxides (LDH) were prepared and used as nanofillers for poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polystyrene (PS). The LDH intercalated with long-chain linear alkyl carboxylates (CH3(CH2)nCOO−, n = 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20) were prepared via anionic exchange of MgAl–nitrate, showing a systematic increase in basal spacing with longer alkyls. MgAl–undecenoate LDH was prepared by co-precipitation. The MgAl–LDHs were melt blended with poly(methyl methacrylate) and bulk polymerized with styrene to form nanocomposites. The dispersion of the MgAl–LDH in the polymers was investigated by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. Thermal and fire properties were studied using cone calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis; the thermal stability of both polymers was enhanced and a very significant reduction in the peak heat release rate was observed for almost all of the poly(methyl methacrylate) composites and a few of the polystyrene composites.


Now in its 4th edition, this single resource covers all aspects of the utilization of geothermal energy for power generation using fundamental scientific and engineering principles. Its practical emphasis is enhanced by the use of global case studies from real plants and applications from around the world that increase your understanding of geothermal energy conversion and provide a unique compilation of hard-to-obtain data and experience. Technical, economic and business aspects presented in case studies provide current and up-and-coming geothermal developers and entrepreneurs with a solid understanding of opportunities and pitfalls. Geothermal Power Plants, 4th Edition, presents state-of-the-art geothermal developments and experience of real applications for professionals, and a comprehensive reference for theory and practice.

 Important new and revised content on double- and triple-flash steam power plants, plant and well pumps, and biomass-geothermal and solar-geothermal hybrid systems

 New chapters on global case studies with comprehensive and up-to-date statistics, including New Zealand, Indonesia, Central America and the Caribbean, and the state of Nevada, USA, plus updated chapters on Larderello (Italy), The Geysers (USA), Turkey and Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) make this useable and relevant for a global audience

 Revised and additional practice problems with emphasis on system simulation using electronic equations of state for working fluid properties. SI units are now used exclusively


Abstract Introduction: We examined the interrelationships between context, mechanism, and outcome using a realist approach following the introduction of interprofessional education (IPE) to clinical practice for medical students in the community. Methods: Through participant observation and interviews, a working hypothesis was developed. To evaluate IPE in clinical practice, medical students' reports were thematically analyzed, and configuration on contexts, mechanisms, and outcomes were identified using a realist approach. Results: Influential contexts were medical students' experience of clinical practice and learning characteristics, the capacity of other professionals, interprofessional relationships, and characteristics of the community hospital. One key mechanism was observational learning. Others were self-regulated learning, legitimate peripheral participation, experiential learning, contact hypotheses, awareness of social structure, and cognitive empathy. As faculties supported these key mechanisms, medical students became aware of the legitimacy of community-oriented primary care, noting the roles of physicians who support patients' and/or their family's life in collaboration with other professionals, and reflecting the necessity of shifting from physician-centered perspectives. As a result, medical students deepened their empathic understanding for other professionals. Conclusion: Faculties should develop IPE programs in clinical practice based on the 'mechanism', 'context', 'outcome' pattern and 'context-mechanism-outcome' configuration in primary care settings.


We study the polarization properties of volume phase gratings induced in photorefractive materials that are both optically active and linearly birefringent, such as Bi12SiO20, Bi12GeO20, and Bi12TiO20. Analytic expressions for the diffraction efficiency and for the orientation and the ellipticity of the diffracted light have been derived for the 〈110〉 and 〈001〉 configurations under the assumption of a nondepleted readout beam. The physical parameters that determine the polarization characteristics of the diffracted light are the orientation of the readout vector, the crystal thickness, the optical activity, and the electric-field-induced linear birefringence. Our results are valid for arbitrary values of these parameters. The particular cases of zero optical activity, zero linear birefringence, a thin crystal, or a specific readout-vector orientation can be deduced from the general formulas. The analytic expressions that we have derived permit an optimal choice of different parameters for the image-processing and beam-coupling applications of these materials.


A systematic review was conducted to explicitly identify interventions that alone, or in combination, were effective in improving antibiotic prescribing. The citation search strategy used in the present review provided a database of 365077 studies, of which only twenty-five were included in the final review ("review studies"). Analysis of the interventions used within the review studies indicated that a combination of "guidelines" and "pharmacy" interventions have the greatest potential to improve antibiotic prescribing. Two types of qualitative research were conducted, semi-structured interviews and the collection of naturally occurring data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to determine NHS managers? perceptions of current policies used to improve antibiotic prescribing within selected Primary Care Trusts and highlighted the importance of pharmacy intervention, formularies or guidelines and improved prescribing analysis (IT based intervention) on improving antibiotic prescribing. This was supported by the collection of naturally occurring data, which was used to provide further insight into interventions used to improve antibiotic prescribing. The Specialist Antibiotic Pharmacist (HD) produced and implemented an innovative electronic antibiotic prescribing analysis tool (the Antibiotic Database) to analyse and improve antibiotic prescribing in a consistent manner. The key advantage of the Antibiotic Database was the time and money saved on producing visual electronic outputs containing an inaccurate outcome measure or time period for analysis. The results concluded that an IT based intervention, such as the Antibiotic Database should be used, in addition to the use of antibiotic guidelines and pharmacy intervention, within all sectors of the NHS in order to improve antibiotic prescribing and its analysis.


Title of Document: Local versus regional processes impacting insect diversity loss from urban headwater streams Robert Francis Smith Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Directed By: Associate Professor Dr. William O. Lamp Department of Entomology Watershed urbanization alters hydrologic, geomorphic, and chemical properties of stream ecosystems and decreases water and habitat quality for stream fauna. The resulting loss of insect diversity from urban streams and the mechanisms resulting from in-stream habitat degradation are well documented. In this study, I focus on how urbanized terrestrial landscapes contribute to diversity loss from stream insect communities. Characteristics of fragmented urban landscapes likely increase mortality, reduce reproduction, and block dispersal by adult stream insects, which can contribute to reduced diversity. I compared the adult caddisfly assemblage among 4 urban and 4 rural headwater streams and found no difference in abundance but lower taxa richness at urban than rural headwaters. Poor in-stream and terrestrial environmental conditions likely caused decreased adult diversity at urban headwaters. I expanded this study by comparing adult and larval assemblages residing in the same 8 headwater streams. Patterns of larval and adult taxa richness, assemblage composition, and urban landscape structure at individual streams suggested that constrained dispersal through urban landscapes (a regional process) and poor environmental conditions in the stream (a local process) both contributed to larval diversity loss from urban headwaters. I also compared flight morphological characteristics of 2 caddisfly species restricted to rural headwaters to 4 species that commonly immigrated to urban headwaters. Wing length and wing aspect ratio did not differ between these 2 groups, but species specific differences for both measures indicated that flight ability may have supported immigration to urban headwaters for certain species. Finally, I used multimodel inference testing to determine what combination of geographic distance, environmental dissimilarity, and land use between streams best explained patterns of taxonomic dissimilarity between in-stream insect communities within 4 Maryland watersheds. All three variables together, based on Euclidean geographic distance, provided the best model fit and supported the hypothesis that regional and local processes structure stream insect communities simultaneously. The overall conclusion from my work was that site specific characteristics of terrestrial urban landscapes caused species specific constraints on adult insect migration that contributed to larval diversity loss from urban streams simultaneously with poor instream habitat and water quality. LOCAL VERSUS REGIONAL PROCESSES IMPACTING INSECT DIVERSITY LOSS FROM URBAN HEADWATER STREAMS


Abstract Several episodes of market-oriented reforms in developing countries have been accompanied by a significant rise in work outside of the formal economy. This paper investigates whether the impact of trade on formal employment is mediated by the strength of labour regulations. We rely on data from the Brazilian Census that provides information on workers' demographics and employment, including job formality status. Our estimation strategy exploits quasi-exogenous changes in industry-level real exchange rates to explore the likelihood of informality across employers exposed to varying degrees of de facto labour regulations. We further utilize two key features of Brazilian labour institutions – budgetary decisions about the availability of resources occur at the federal level, while decisions about where to inspect occur at the local level – to instrument for labour enforcement. Our results suggest that strict labour regulations may lead to a precarization of employment, rather than offering protection for workers.


In recent years, self-employment has risen in several Western countries including Switzerland. The controversial discussion of this rise is attributable to shortcomings of empirical research, namely, to the lack of systematically considering, both at the macro- and the micro-level, the push and pull factors that may account for entry into self-employment. Little is known about how macroeconomic forces together with individual-level push and pull factors shape transitions into self-employment. Even less is known about how these factors play out in occupationally segmented labour markets. This paper thus examines how the overall climate for setting up a business, individual job opportunities, and structural characteristics of labour-market positions affect transitions to self-employment in the occupationally segmented Swiss labour market. Based on two data sets, we run event history models. The Swiss Life History Study provides information on transitions into self-employment. With the Swiss Job Monitor, we construct indicators of the time-variant aggregate- and individual-level opportunities and incentives for setting up a business. Results indicate that moves into self-employment are affected both by macroeconomic conditions, individual job opportunities, and structural characteristics of the labour market position, whereby pull factors dominate at the macro level and the interplay of push and pull factors at the individual level.


Various studies on the Ethiopian economy in general, and the urban sector in particular, have discussed the staggering level of unemployment in the country. Rapidly growing population and a less-than-satisfactory performance in economic growth over the years, among other reasons, are to blame for this situation. That the unemployment situation is particularly rampant among the youth which constitutes over a third of the population calls for urgent intervention aimed at improving the fate of the unemployed. Promoting self-employment forms an integral part of any intervention aimed at reducing unemployment.

Given this, studying the determinants of self-employment is essential to inform concerned parties as to how self-employment can be encouraged. As well as surveying the relevant literature, the study undertakes an empirical investigation into the nature of self-employment using data from a unique panel data set, the Ethiopian Urban Socio-Economic Survey. Findings of the study give some evidence that self-employment is largely a route out of unemployment rather than being something driven by entrepreneurship. It also finds a declining trend in the patterns of self-employment over the study period.

Very few studies have looked into issues relating to self-employment in the context of developing countries in general, and none in the case of Ethiopia. As such, this study serves an important role shedding some light on issues pertaining to self-employment.


Abstract: English spelling is unphonetic: the same sounds can be spelled in various and often idiosyncratic ways. It is also ungoverned: there is no authority guiding its development. However, it is not as arbitrary as one might conclude. Investigating the spelling of four derivational suffixes, we show that the spelling of English suffixes is quite consistent. Homophonous endings of morphologically simple words are spelled differently, keeping the suffix spelling distinct (cf. e.g. <nervous> vs. <service>/*<servous>). English spelling thus provides morphological cues for the reader. Diachronically, we show that this system emerged without explicit regulation, but as a result of self-organization. We use the Helsinki corpus to show how variation was gradually reduced for each of the suffixes. The regular spellings of today emerged gradually, through a sorting-out process of competition between alternate spellings.*


Globalization is influencing several agriculture aspects: market globalization has increased export from producing to consuming countries where different food safety or pesticide residue regulations apply, and has raised awareness of global problems linked to agriculture production (i.e., chemical pesticide pollution). Pests, diseases and weeds may cause significant damages to growers and the cost of pesticide increases. Environmental pollution and risk of unwanted residues on food forced researchers to find ways to optimize pesticide applications. However, extension services and research in pest management is often fragmented and efforts to develop support tools for pest management are often duplicated. Furthermore, sometimes the knowledge does not spread from research centers to growers due to difficulties in knowledge transfer. Decision support systems (DSS) are widely used for assisting with integrated pest management (IPM), crop nutrition, and other aspects of information transfer. Developing highly portable and especially web-based DSSs that can be easily adapted to new environments is therefore desirable in view of agriculture globalization. Web-based models and DSSs have the major advantage of reducing software development, maintenance, and distribution costs, while making the relevant knowledge easily accessible to growers world-wide. This paper presents two examples of web-based agricultural DSSs and demonstrates the potential use of these systems in a wide application range in order to adapt to the needs of globalization. Allowing the choice of different values for the parameters renders these DSSs very flexible. Their development process integrated agricultural expertise from two distinct research centers with information systems know-how from a third center, over two countries, demonstrating the need for a global software development that crosses country borders. The results show that it is possible to satisfy the prerequisites: reducing software development cost by enlarging the number of users and reaching growers among whom specific knowledge on diseases is not yet established.


The Liuqu basin formed during the early Miocene between ophiolitic melanges (to the south) and uplifted Cretaceous forearc deposits (to the north) along a central, 150-km-long segment of the India-Asia suture zone in southern Tibet. Sedimentological analysis shows the Liuqu Conglomerate to be composed of mixed fluvial and sediment-gravity flow lithofacies assemblages locally interbedded with mature paleosols. We interpret the Liuqu Conglomerate as coarse-grained fluvial and alluvial-fan deposits. Structural analysis indicates that the Liuqu Conglomerate was deposited in a contractional setting. Paleocurrent and provenance data demonstrate that sediment was transported north-northwest from the hanging wall of a coeval thrust fault system along the southern limit of Liuqu outcrops. Detrital zircon U-Pb ages (and Hf[ t ] isotope ratios) cluster around 80–110 Ma (eHf[t] = −23.5–14.6), 120–135 Ma (eHf[t] = −12.6–13.1), 150–170 Ma (eHf[t] = −14.1–14.7), 500–600 Ma (eHf[t] = −26–3.4), and 1100–1200 Ma (eHf[t] = −27.6–2.9), requiring input from both Gangdese and melange sources. Asian zircons were recycled northward after being incorporated into accretionary melanges along the southern Asian margin prior to India-Asia collision. The age of the Liuqu Conglomerate is still somewhat uncertain, but new chronologic data, including biotite 40Ar/39Ar data, detrital zircon fission-track analyses, and δ13C compositions of soil carbonates, all converge on ca. 20–19 Ma as the most probable age. Together, these results indicate that part of the north-to-south sediment transport system that existed prior to India-Asia collision and into the Eocene was reversed by ca. 20 Ma. The Liuqu Conglomerate may represent deposits associated with the paleo–Yarlung River.


This paper examines Hermann Hesse's penultimate novel, The Journey to the East, from an educational point of view. Hesse was a man of the West who turned to the idea of 'the East' in seeking to understand himself and his society. While highly critical of elements of Western modernism, Hesse nonetheless viewed 'the East' through Western lenses and drew inspiration from other Western thinkers. At the end of The Journey to the East, the main character, H.H., believes he has found the solution to his despair. This paper argues that he has not, at least not in the fullest sense Hesse came to see was possible. H.H. relies too heavily on faith and abandons reason too quickly in seeking to become 'absorbed' into the Other he regards as his higher self. An answer to H.H.'s existential angst can be found in Hesse's final novel, The Glass Bead Game, where educational growth through the development of a critical, questioning, inquiring attitude is a central theme.


Recent statistics indicate that the inflation rate in Iran has increased significantly since 2017, which has resulted in several negative consequences for the Iranian population. A combination of changes in lifestyles, consumption patterns, and economic and cultural capital has resulted in an increase in financial vulnerability among the urban middle class. As a consequence, the middle class may collapse and a new urban poor may emerge. For the purpose of exploring this idea and analyzing the changes in the lifestyles of urban middle-class families, Pierre Bourdieu's class analysis has been chosen to establish a link between lifestyle and class. Through qualitative research and grounded theory, the factors contributing to the collapse of the urban middle class and the emergence of the new urban poor have been identified. The collapse of the middle class has been attributed to a combination of unemployment, changes in employment conditions (part-time jobs, salary cuts, precarious employment, etc.), and the loss of economic and cultural capital. In the absence of effective legal protection and reduced government support, employers are able to alter working conditions and increase unemployment rates. A lack of financial resources in times of crisis (such as the cost of medical treatment, the purchase of essentials, rising rents, etc.) erodes people's social and cultural capital, resulting in their loss of status. Because of economic sanctions, Iranian economies are experiencing structural crises and investment risks, which both contribute to unemployment and a decline in economic and cultural capital. The final focus of this paper is to discuss and analyze the consequences of the decline of the urban middle class. These include changes in lifestyle, poor housing, migration to the suburbs, expropriation of the masses, and marginalization of the workforce. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that, given the qualitative nature of this study, the limited number of interviewees, and the narrow scope of the study (e.g. Tehran city), more thorough and comprehensive research is required to generalize the findings.


The Horn of Africa and Yemen is home to highly visible migration flows, whose numbers have been increasing over the last two decades. Migration in this region has been described as 'mixed', a term used to capture the varied social, economic, political, and environmental motivations of individuals who utilise similar migration channels and trajectories, and, as the insights from this project emphasize, the multiple motivations for migration that may co-exist within the same individual. The term 'mixed' migration may also describe migrants whose motivations for movement may have changed en route, causing them to switch between the different legal categories of migration for which they might qualify.
From January to August 2012, the Global Migration Futures (GMF) project of the International Migration Institute collaborated with the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS) in Nairobi to promote discussions on possible longer-term developments in the region and to create scenarios for future international migration to, from and within the Horn of Africa and Yemen in 2030. Through this collaboration, the GMF research team investigated the patterns and drivers of contemporary movement and the potential futures of migration flows, as well as the scale and scope of the various protection and assistance mechanisms required for the near and mid-term future.


Objective:Quality improvement is an important activity for all members of the interdisciplinary critical care team. Although an increasing number of resources are available to guide clinicians, quality improvement activities can be overwhelming. Therefore, the Society of Critical Care Medicine charged this Outcomes Task Force with creating a "how-to" guide that focuses on critical care, summarizes key concepts, and outlines a practical approach to the development, implementation, evaluation, and maintenance of an interdisciplinary quality improvement program in the intensive care unit. Data Sources and Methods:The task force met in person twice and by conference call twice to write this document. We also conducted a literature search on "quality improvement" and "critical care or intensive care" and searched online for additional resources. Data Synthesis and Overview:We present an overview of quality improvement in the intensive care unit setting and then describe the following steps for initiating or improving an interdisciplinary critical care quality improvement program: a) identify local motivation, support teamwork, and develop strong leadership; b) prioritize potential projects and choose the first target; c) operationalize the measures, build support for the project, and develop a business plan; d) perform an environmental scan to better understand the problem, potential barriers, opportunities, and resources for the project; e) create a data collection system that accurately measures baseline performance and future improvements; f) create a data reporting system that allows clinicians and others to understand the problem; g) introduce effective strategies to change clinician behavior. In addition, we identify four steps for evaluating and maintaining this program: a) determine whether the target is changing with periodic data collection; b) modify behavior change strategies to improve or sustain improvements; c) focus on interdisciplinary collaboration; and d) develop and sustain support from the hospital leadership. We also identify a number of online resources to complement this overview. Conclusions:This Society of Critical Care Medicine Task Force report provides an overview for clinicians interested in developing or improving a quality improvement program using a step-wise approach. Success depends not only on committed interdisciplinary work that is incremental and continuous but also on strong leadership. Further research is needed to refine the methods and identify the most cost-effective means of improving the quality of health care received by critically ill patients and their families.


Patterns of environmental spatial structure lie at the heart of the most fundamental and familiar patterns of diversity on Earth. Antarctica contains some of the strongest environmental gradients on the planet and therefore provides an ideal study ground to test hypotheses on the relevance of environmental variability for biodiversity. To answer the pivotal question, "How does spatial variation in physical and biological environmental properties across the Antarctic drive biodiversity?" we have synthesized current knowledge on environmental variability across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine Antarctic biomes and related this to the observed biotic patterns. The most important physical driver of Antarctic terrestrial communities is the availability of liquid water, itself driven by solar irradiance intensity. Patterns of biota distribution are further strongly influenced by the historical development of any given location or region, and by geographical barriers. In freshwater ecosystems, free water is also crucial, with further important influences from salinity, nutrient availability, oxygenation, and characteristics of ice cover and extent. In the marine biome there does not appear to be one major driving force, with the exception of the oceanographic boundary of the Polar Front. At smaller spatial scales, ice cover, ice scour, and salinity gradients are clearly important determinants of diversity at habitat and community level. Stochastic and extreme events remain an important driving force in all environments, particularly in the context of local extinction and colonization or recolonization, as well as that of temporal environmental variability. Our synthesis demonstrates that the Antarctic continent and surrounding oceans provide an ideal study ground to develop new biogeographical models, including life history and physiological traits, and to address questions regarding biological responses to environmental variability and change.


The rapid expansion of the digital signal processing has penetrated recently into a sphere of high performance industrial narrow band communication systems which had been for long years dominated by the traditional analog circuit design. Although it brings new potential to even increase the efficiency of the radio channel usage it also forces new challenges and compromises radio designers have to face. In this article we describe the design of the IF sampling industrial narrowband radio receiver, optimize a digital receiver structure implemented in a single FPGA circuit and study the performance of such radio receiver architecture. As an evaluation criterion the communication efficiency in form of maximum usable receiver sensitivity, co-channel rejection, adjacent channel selectivity and radio blocking measurement have been selected.


Sepsis is a major cause of patient mortality and morbidity from bacterial infections. Although neutrophils are known to be important in the development of sepsis, how distinctive neutrophil subtypes regulate inflammatory processes involved in septicemia remains unclear. Preconditioning protects organisms against subsequent higher-dose exposures to the same, or even different, stimuli. Several studies have reported various effects of preconditioning on immune cells. However, the detailed mechanisms underlying neutrophil-mediated protection through preconditioning in sepsis remain unknown. Methods: Flow cytometry was conducted to sort the mice peritoneal lavage cells and the blood samples from patients with sepsis. Western blotting and ELISA were carried out to elucidate the expression of TLR9 signal transduction pathway proteins. Histological analysis was used to assess the effect of InP on intestine and liver structure in tlr9-/- and cav-1-/- mice. Fluorescence microscopy, Co-IP, and FRET were carried out to determine the association of TLR9 with Cav-1. Results: We show that membrane toll-like receptor-9 positive (mTLR9+) neutrophils exert a protective effect against fatal bacterial infections through the process of inflammatory preconditioning (InP). InP, which occurs in the setting of a low-dose bacterial challenge, active ingredient is Monophosphoryl lipid A (MPLA), triggers the membrane translocation of TLR9 from the neutrophil cytosol, where it binds to Cav-1. Our findings showed that InP enables TLR9 to facilitate MyD88-mediated TRAF3 and IRF3 signal transduction. Depletion of either TLR9 or Cav-1 largely eliminates the neutrophil-mediated InP effect in sepsis models in vitro and in vivo. Further, examination of clinical samples from patients with sepsis showed that clinical outcomes and likelihood of recovery are closely correlated with mTLR9 and Cav-1 expression in circulating neutrophils. Conclusion: These results demonstrate that the TLR9-Cav-1 axis is a critical signaling pathway involved in the regulation of neutrophil-dependent MPLA mediated InP, and the presence of mTLR9+ neutrophils could be an attractive indicator of clinical outcomes in bacterial sepsis that could be further explored as a potential therapeutic target.


Tumor hypoxia can trigger the induction of angiogenesis. High microvessel density (MVD) as well as hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha (HIF-1alpha) have been related to recurrent disease and tumor aggressiveness, respectively. In this study, MVD and hypoxic status were investigated in primary and recurrent endometrial carcinomas. A total of 65 primary tumors of patients with recurrent endometrial carcinoma (n = 40), and without recurrent endometrial carcinoma (n = 25) were studied. Immunohistochemical analysis was performed on paraffin-embedded tumor tissue. MVD was determined by quantitative analysis of CD31/FVIII positive vessels. Tumor hypoxia was estimated by evaluating the expression of the hypoxia-regulated gene HIF-1alphaand its target gene carbonic anhydrase IX (CA-IX). An additional 23 recurrent tumors were available for determination of MVD and HIF-1alpha expression. Effects of hypoxia on tumor protein p53 (TP53) expression were evaluated in the endometrial cancer cell lines (ECC-1), Ishikawa (derived from adenocarcinomas), and AN3CA (derived from a lymph node metastasis). MVD, CA-IX, and HIF-1alpha expression were not significantly different in primary tumors of patients with recurrence compared to the control tumors. The MVD was significantly lower, and HIF-1alpha expression was significantly higher in recurrent tumors when compared with their primary tumors (paired t test, P < 0.05). HIF-1alpha expression correlated well with TP53 expression levels in primary tumors, but not in recurrences. TP53 protein levels were highest in AN3CA cells. Hypoxic conditions induced TP53 protein in ECC-1 and Ishikawa, but not AN3CA cells. We conclude that MVD, CA-IX, and HIF-1alpha expression are not independent prognostic markers for recurrent endometrial carcinoma. The low MVD, increased HIF-1alpha protein levels, dissociation of hypoxia, and TP53 protein induction in the metastatic tumor cells (AN3CA) support a role for hypoxia in the development of recurrent endometrial carcinoma.


Approximately two weeks after the opening of the 4th Biennale of Sydney (the Biennale opened on 07 April and ran until to 23 May 1982) it was noted by Jon Cockburn that a wall in the exhibition at the AGNSW was not being used (word going around the art community was that an exhibit had failed to arrive). • On the 08 May 1982, Jon Cockburn (with the assistance of Jill Moonie, photographic documentation and Tammy Smith, Roxy [Pat McGuire], Kim Machin and Tim Harris as lookouts) entered the AGNSW and on the blank wall of 4th Biennale Exhibition erected an artwork with its own handmade title card without raising the suspicion of the gallery staff or guards. • On the 18th May 1982 (ten days later) the work was still on display in the AGNSW 4th Biennale Exhibition. • On the afternoon of 18th May 1982, Susan Molloy of The Sydney Morning Herald contacted Jon Cockburn requesting an interview to discuss the work. Jon Cockburn agreed to meet Susan Molloy at the AGNSW where the interview took place and he was photographed. • On the morning of 19 May 1982, The Sydney Morning Herald shop front and newsstand banner headline read ART HOAX AT NSW GALLERY and a photograph of Jon Cockburn and the work appeared with the interview by Susan Molloy on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald. The interview and article led with the title 'The Stick Up that Fooled Sydney', in the article Jan McFadden's ( Jon Cockburn's pseudonym on the fake Biennale title card) unsolicited/unofficial artwork Ambiguity and Tension is endorsed by Edmund Capon, AGNSW Director, and the work allowed to remain until the end of the Biennale (23 May 1982). • On the 21 May 1982, The Sydney Morning Herald 'Stay in Touch' column mentions Ambiguity and Tension in the context of the 4th Biennale of Sydney's closure the following day • On 05 June 1982, The Sydney Morning Herald refers to the 'hoax work' in another article by Susan Molloy headed 'Biennale Director gets a new post at Gallery'. • On the 20 May 1982, The Sydney Morning Herald editorial and political cartoonist Emeric incorporates Ambiguity and Tension into a cartoon comment on Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's foreign policy (p.6)


In this study, fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymers (FMIPs), which were for the selective recognition and fluorescence detection of λ-cyhalothrin (LC), were synthesized via fluorescein 5(6)-isothiocyanate (FITC) and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTS)/SiO2 particles. The SiO2@FITC-APTS@MIPs were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), UV-vis spectrophotometer (UV-vis), fluorescence spectrophotometer, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The as-synthesized SiO2@FITC-APTS@MIPs with an imprinted polymer film (thickness was about 100 nm) was demonstrated to be spherically shaped and had good monodispersity, high fluorescence intensity, and good selective recognition. Using fluorescence quenching as the detection tool, the largest fluorescence quenching efficiency (F0/F - 1) of SiO2@FITC-APTS@MIPs is close to 2.5 when the concentration of the LC is 1.0 μM L(-1). In addition, a linear relationship (F0/F - 1= 0.0162C + 0.0272) could be obtained covering a wide concentration range of 0-60 nM L(-1) with a correlation coefficient of 0.9968 described by the Stern-Volmer equation. Moreover, the limit of detection (LOD) of the SiO2@FITC-APTS@MIPs was 9.17 nM L(-1). The experiment results of practical detection revealed that the SiO2@FITC-APTS@MIPs as an attractive recognition element was satisfactory for the determination of LC in Chinese spirits. Therefore, this study demonstrated the potential of SiO2@FITC-APTS@MIPs for the recognition and detection of LC in food.


Stem or black rust, caused by Puccinia graminis , has historically caused severe losses to wheat ( Triticum aestivum ) production worldwide. The causal race, commonly known as Ug99 and designated as TTKS based on the North American nomenclature, carries virulence for several genes commonly present in wheat germplasm. All Kenyan germplasm are known to be susceptible or partially susceptible to Ug99 although no proper documentation has been done. This study was aimed at evaluating the Kenyan bread wheat varieties on their response to Ug99. The varieties were screened for resistance at seedling stage and adult plant resistance stage. None of the varieties apart from Bonny were resistant at seedling stage. Some old Kenyan varieties were found to have adult plant resistance probably due to the presence of non-race specific gene Sr2 complex which among others can be exploited in breeding for resistance in Kenyan wheat.


The efficient sales policy of the machine building innovatively active enterprises is connected with its rational process financing. Optimal determination of innovative production distribution expenses is top-priority element to increase economic subject's activity profitability and to increase its competitive positions at the market. Thus, planning of costs for innovatively active machine building enterprises sales has to be based on economic and rationally adaptive mathematic tools to industrial enterprises activity specific. Practical implementation of the mentioned task is possible owing to economic and mathematic model to plan costs for innovatively active enterprises production, which preconditions urgency of the given research. Besides the tools investigation is also urgent and it allows to foresee future expenses amounts for sales, demand for production and profit of the innovatively active industrial enterprise, behavior in future depending on market situation. The article deals with scientific and methodic approach to optimize distribution expenses of the innovatively active industrial enterprises in Ukraine. Economic and mathematic modeling methods allowed to formalize models to plan distribution expenses of innovatively active enterprise, demand and profits, that is prerequisite to form prognostications by proper directions. Practical implementation of the suggested scientific and methodic approach on the example of machine building enterprise in Ukraine results in confirmation of models correspondence and establishment of inefficiency to distinguish expenses. It gives evidence about necessity to optimize expenses of enterprise and to introduce active managerial decisions concerning its activity profitability growth.


Variation for K + and Na + accumulation at low salinities in hydroponic (water) culture were observed in shoots of different wheat species. Greater discrimination (in favour of K + and against Na + accumulation) was shown by hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) than by tetraploid durum wheat (T. turgidum L.). Since Aegilops tauschii Cosson (A. squarrosa L.), the source of the D genome in bread wheat, also exhibited high discrimination between K + and Na - , it was concluded that the character resided in the D genome. Studies of aneuploid bread wheat lines and disomic substitution lines of D genome chromosomes for their A and B genome homoeologues in durum wheat cv. Langdon revealed that the trait was controlled by the long arm of chromosome 4D. Since the aneuploid and disomic substitution lines showed better relative salt tolerance than durum wheat, but had lower yield potentials, we recombined chromosome 4D with chromosome 4B in a tetraploid wheat background using a homoeologous pairing mutant. This produced families of 4D/4B recombinant lines, some of which exhibited the enhanced K + /Na + discrimination trait. RFLP analysis confirmed that the trait was controlled by a single gene (Knal) which was completely linked to five markers on the distal third of the long arm of 4D. A second cycle of homoeologous recombination was employed to remote the distal 4D genetic material from the recombined Knal 4B/4D chromosome and to map Knal in greater detail. By this strategy, Knal was mapped within a short 2 cM region. Genetic analysis of K + :Na + ratios showed very high LOD scores in this region for plants grown in solution culture, but lower values for plants grown in the field. In general, recombinant lines which exhibited the enhanced K + /Na + trait were slightly more tolerant of salinity in the field and in sand culture than recombinants lacking the trait. There was, however, considerable variation between individual lines. Ion discrimination and relative tolerance were also higher in a Knal recombinant (line no. R3) than in a knal recombinant (line no. R165) in sodic conditions. In these two lines the enhanced K + /Na + discrimination trait did not alter responses to low potassium or calcium supply.


Hormones: They control the human circadian rhythm, cause happiness after physical exercise, cause butterflies in one's stomach and contribute to the chemistry of love, turn a pregnant woman's life upside down and influence the growth of the fetus, in short, they are essential in the human individual development and homeostasis of organs. Hormones are mainly produced in the brain, pancreas, thyroid, kidney and the genital organs and represent the most important chemical messengers in the human organism. Hormone-dependent pathologic conditions are manifold and dysregulations need to be treated in order to warrant a healthy human body. Idiopathic short stature of children can e. g. be treated with growth hormones and researchers analyze the impact of hormone replacement therapy on well-being and health in the elderly [1, 2]. Hormones even enable the treatment of gender dysphoria, relieving the immense mental burden of the affected individuals [3]. In order to understand the complex functions of hormones, nowadays a lot of research is being conducted. This review will give a short overview of the latest reports published in Acta Physiologica about the research on the regulation of hormones and recently identified ways of how hormones modulate the human metabolism. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


Ontology is defined as an explicit specification of a conceptualization while a conceptualization is an abstract, simplified view of the world that we wish to represent for some purpose. To build high quality ontologies, developers are required to choose and follow a suitable ontology development methodology in which containing a series of steps, activities and guidelines that are put together in an organized and systematic manner. Literatures show that building ontologies by reusing existing ontologies is more cost effective than building from scratch. However, majority of the methodologies only provide a very limited discussion about how to perform integration or ontology reused in their ontology development processes. This paper aims to develop a set of guidelines for the selection of ontology reuse methods which has not been explored in any ontology research. In addition, an ontology development methodology that incorporates ontology reuse methods and a system that can assist to perform integration semi-automatically is proposed. An application scenario has been developed to illustrate how the proposed development methodology can be adopted to create an ontology.


In this article, the authors look back at the African perspective on U.S. race relations in the 1960s through the lens of Jeune Afrique, a major source of news for the African continent, particularly francophone Africa. A careful reading of Jeune Afrique from 1961 to 1971 reveals that more prominent attention in this publication was given to Pan Africanism and militarism against the white establishment than to the non-violent movement, principally under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Obama's election may be the culmination of one of these movements, or both. This article concludes that the readership's interest dictated the selection made by the editors of Jeune Afrique about what to report about events in the U.S. For the reader of Jeune Afrique, although the type of non-violent civil resistance epitomized by Dr. King was inspirational, it was not practical given the historical underpinnings of race relations in Africa. The reader of Jeune Afrique was more likely to learn about the riots in Watts, the peeves of James Baldwin, or the black power movement evoked by H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael than about the march on Selma or the courage of Rosa Parks. To this readership of Jeune Afrique in the 1960s, the peaceful but resounding election of Barack Obama may not be the culmination of the events in the U.S. of the 1960s but a transformation of them. With the election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States there is renewed interest in the African/American connection both on the continent of Africa and in the U.S... This article examines the depth and breadth of coverage of U.S. race relations in Jeune Afrique during a very important decade for both Africa and America. The Sixties represented the first decade of independence for most African countries, and the decade encompassed the most dramatic moments of the civil rights struggle in America. Jeune Afrique, an independent weekly periodical published in France in French, has been a crucial voice of Africa since 1960. Bechir Ben Yamed, a former minister in the Tunisian government and the director general of Jeune Afrique since its inception, described its purpose in an editorial celebrating the journal's first decade. A journal must accurately inform its readers, explain to them events as they happen, propose an interpretation, help the readers have a well documented opinion so that they can act as human beings and citizens in their judgment ... Our credo at Jeune Afrique is that Africa is one in its diversity. Consequently, we make the same journal for all Africans, we react the same way for each African country; we try to interest each African in what is going on elsewhere in Africa. We support any manifestation of African fraternity: we fight and will always fight all those who consciously or unconsciously favor prejudice among Africans (Yamed, 1970, p. 13). In other words, Jeune Afrique has been committed to serving the whole of Africa, regardless of ethnic, linguistic, and political differences that may exist among its readership. Although the journal's weekly circulation was only 8,400 in 1969, a survey conducted by SOFRES, a marketing research firm in France, estimated that 320,000 people read each issue, as most subscribers shared their copies with many others (SOFRES, 1970, p. 62). Since the United States has one of the largest populations of people of African descent outside of Africa itself, and the U.S. has experienced a long fight against racism, it would be expected that in its earliest editions Jeune Afrique would publish significant reports about the U.S. The research questions addressed in the present study are: 1) How did Jeune Afrique cover U.S. race relations from 1961-1971 and 2) What does this tell us about how this period in American history might be understood by Africans? During the decade of the 1960s, Jeune Afrique featured political articles covering official diplomatic visits of Americans to Africa and Africans to America as well as presidential elections, civil rights news describing blacks'[1] struggles to change their status, special reports on civil rights leaders and militant black writers, sporting events involving black athletes, U. …


The work plan aims at deepening the analysis of the theoretic assumptions which support the practice in Vocational Guidance: analyzing the incidence of endogenous and exogenous factors both in the election and studying of a particular course of study and in the occupational resolution of the graduate. This analysis enables the revision and the new theoretic conceptualization which is afterwards transferred to the course, and to different groups and provincial institutions where the practice of Vocational Guidance occurs, as well as to other schools in the Northwest provinces of Argentina. Semiotic analysis, statistical elaboration and the research-action approach which, while surveying data renders a service to the milieu, provide the base for the project. Said project focuses on the following individuals: 1) freshmen, who offer us the following aspects to be considered: a) factors which either favor or hinder the insertion of the students attending the first years of the course; b) the conditions making up the learning situation in each subject, from the teaching point of view; c) the influence of institutional dimension in the insertion process; 2) graduands: the characteristics of the situation following graduation from University, those of the labor field and the different ways of gaining access to it are investigated. This analysis is carried out in the courses of study of Psychology and English (education of Professionals in English and English for Professionals).


Alzheimer disease (AD) is one of the most common forms of dementia in the elderly. Several reports have suggested neurotoxic effects of amyloid beta protein (Aβ) and role of oxidative stress in AD. Figs are rich in fiber, copper, iron, manganese, magnesium, potassium, calcium, vitamin K, and are a good source of proanthocyanidins and quercetin which demonstrate potent antioxidant properties. We studied the effect of dietary supplementation with 4% figs grown in Oman on the memory, anxiety, and learning skills in APPsw/Tg2576 (Tg mice) mice model for AD. We assessed spatial memory and learning ability, psychomotor coordination, and anxiety-related behavior in Tg and wild-type mice at the age of 4 months and after 15 months using the Morris water maze test, rota-rod test, elevated plus maze test, and open-field test. Tg mice that were fed a control diet without figs showed significant memory deficits, increased anxiety-related behavior, and severe impairment in spatial, position discrimination learning ability, and motor coordination compared to the wild-type control mice on the same diet, and Tg mice fed on 4% fig diet supplementation for 15 months. Our results suggest that dietary supplementation of figs may be useful for the improvement of cognitive and behavioral deficits in AD.


The field of digital watermarking has recently seen numerous articles covering novel techniques, theoretical studies, attacks, and analysis. In this paper, we focus on an emerging application to highlight practical challenges for digital watermarking applications. Challenges include design considerations, requirements analysis, choice of watermarking techniques, speed, robustness, and the tradeoffs involved. We describe common attributes of watermarking systems and discuss the challenges in developing real world applications. Our application uses digital watermarking to connect ordinary toys to the digital world. The application captures important aspects of watermarking systems and illustrates some of the design issues faced.


Famous for its insight into a young, inexperienced soldier's psychology, Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" has long been assumed to have been based on little more than magazine articles and veterans' reminiscences. It also has been subject to various misreadings, including ones dominated by fictional responses to the wars of the twentieth century. Perry Lentz now draws on more than three decades of teaching the novel and his own experience as a historical novelist to plumb the historical realities that actually shaped it and to confront these misreadings. Taking a new look at a classic work that many may feel they already know, Lentz shows how this apparently impressionistic novel is actually a faithful reflection of Civil War combat based on thorough knowledge about combat in general and the battle of Chancellorsville in particular. Anchoring the novel's action firmly in the Civil War, Lentz challenges the long-standing assumption that Crane did little research for the novel, arguing that he made extensive use of contemporary sources to fashion an accurate depiction of Chancellorsville. Rich with information about infantry combat in the Civil War, from uniforms and weaponry to formations and battlefield tactics, Lentz's study invites readers to follow the exploits of Private Henry Fleming of the 304th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment as he and his fellow soldiers participate in this legendary battle. Lentz shows how Crane evokes a set of traditional responses from his reader and how close reading expands those responses. He examines Private Fleming's adventures behind the lines of battle in terms of the historical situations in which they are set, then explains how Crane repeatedly entices readers into imposing their initial expectations and final evaluations upon the experiences of this particular soldier. Lentz also investigates why the novel's portrayal of its hero's experiences on the second day of battle is sometimes ignored and always undervalued. By focusing on events both as they actually unfolded at Chancellorsville and as Crane depicted Fleming and his comrades experiencing them, he shows how these soldiers judge themselves, how others judge them, and how a reader can achieve a more sophisticated understanding of these judgments. Lentz's work reclaims a place for this novel in the American canon and enhances our understanding of Crane, of a legendary battle, and of war literature in general.


Scrivere di Islam. Raccontare la diaspora (Writing About Islam. Narrating a Diaspora) is a meditation on our multireligious, multicultural, and multilingual reality. It is the result of a personal and collaborative exploration of the necessity to rethink national culture and identity in a more diverse, inclusive, and anti-racist way. The central part of this volume – both symbolically and physically – includes Shirin Ramzanali Fazel's reflections on the discrimination of Muslims, and especially Muslim women, in Italy and the UK. Looking at school textbooks, newspapers, TV programs, and sharing her own personal experience, this section invites us to change the way Muslim immigrants are narrated in scholarly research and news reports. Most importantly, this section urges us to consider minorities not just as 'topics' of cultural analysis, but as audiences and cultural agents. Following Shirin's invitation to question prevailing modes of representations of immigrants, the volume continues with a dialogue between the co-authors and discusses how collaboration can be a way to avoid reproducing a 'colonial model' of knowledge production, in which the white male scholar takes as object of analysis the work of an African female writer. The last chapter also asserts that immigration literature cannot be approached with the same expectations and questions readers would have when reading 'canonised' texts. A new critical terminology is needed in order to understand the innovative linguistic choices and narrative forms that immigrant writers have invented in order to describe a reality that has lacked representation or which has frequently been misrepresented, especially in the discourse around the contemporary Muslim diaspora.


Sustainable urban planning and management demand innovative concepts and techniques to obtain up-to-date and area-wide information on the characteristics and development of the urban system. The increasing availability of Earth Observation (EO) technologies has provided new opportunities for a wide range of urban applications, such as mapping and monitoring of the urban environment, socio-economic estimations, characterization of urban climate, analysis of regional and global impacts and urban security and emergency preparedness. However, a gap exists between the research-focused results offered by the urban EO community and the application of these data and products by urban planners and decision makers. Hence, the main objective of the GEOURBAN (ExploitinG Earth Observation in sUstainable uRBan plAnning & maNagement) project is to bridge this gap by demonstrating the ability of current and future EO systems to depict parameters of urban structure and urban environmental quality at detailed level. This paper introduces the conceptual approach towards the integration of EO-based geo-information into urban and spatial planning and presents and discusses first results of the indicators developed and evaluated by using remote sensing data.


Knowledge about technical systems deserves our attention for several reasons. It shapes industry's core processes which depend on knowledge. It is an asset of great value because it is used by those who engineer, operate or maintain a system. This paper explains key characteristics of technical knowledge, the reason why it is difficult to manage and what we can do about it. Our experiences e.g. with documentation of complex communication systems and extensive use of SGML let us believe that management of technical information should rely more on conceptual structure and semantic markup. This will affect the way we design DTDs and use ontologies.


This study provides an overview of the strong military component of Celtiberian society, dating back to the sixth century BC and manifesting itself especially during the wars against Rome in the second century BC. This bellicose character developed as a result of a long tradition of warriorshepherds who formed part of the Bronze Age "proto-Celtic" substrate. From the first millennium BC on, Celtiberian society became increasingly hierarchical and by the Iron Age warrior elites had emerged that subsequently evolved into hereditary regional clans. Archaeology, especially the excavation of cemeteries dating from the sixth to the first centuries BC, has provided most of our information about the Celtiberian warrior aristocracy, referred to in later literary sources as nobles and princes. The arrival of the Carthaginians and Romans ushers in the appearance of oppida as administrative centres that controlled large territories and provided cohesion in the wars against Rome. Within this framework, equestrian structures the equites emerged with training strategies that influenced military tactics. Graeco-Latin sources refer to Celtiberian customs such as single combat conflict between champion-warriors and Celtiberian warriors as mercenaries. Epigraphic sources, on the other hand, document the existence of institutions such as magistrates, supra-family organisational structures, and hospitality pacts. In this society, warlike, virile and agonistic ideals played an essential role. Thus, analysis of different kinds of evidence (literary sources, iconography, and funeral practices) provides information about the existence of highly religious ritual practices linked to war. This is verified by the fact that the gods were invoked in such rituals and were called upon to witness pacts. Customs such as the devotio, which had strong ritual associations, must have been relatively frequent among the Celtiberians. Finally, information is included about fighting methods and the concept of war, which in the Hispano-Celtic world evolved along with society, as is confirmed by important variations documented over five centuries of Celtiberian development.


This paper describes F-based dry etching and resulting surface properties of biocompatible silicone elastomer. The etch rate of polysiloxane and surface morphology was found to be highly temperature dependent. An increase in temperature results in a significantly higher etch rate and a lower surface roughness. Possible mechanisms of the etching process and the roughness formation on an elastomer surface are discussed. The polysiloxane surface was proved to have hydrophobic characteristics both prior to and after plasma exposure. The results of the preliminary cytotoxicity study are very promising: cell viability on a raw and plasma treated polysiloxane was found to be very high and comparable to control. Due to the acceptable etch rate and absence of toxic contaminations, a F-containing plasma is considered an excellent method for microprocessing of silicone elastomers intended for biomedical applications.


For positive integers $j \geq k$, the $\lambda_{j,k}$-number of graph G is the smallest span among all integer labelings of V(G) such that vertices at distance two receive labels which differ by at least k and adjacent vertices receive labels which differ by at least j. We prove that the $\lambda_{j,k}$-number of any r-regular graph is no less than the $\lambda_{j,k}$-number of the infinite r-regular tree $T_{\infty}(r)$. Defining an r-regular graph G to be $(j,k,r)$-optimal if and only if $\lambda_{j,k}(G) = \lambda_{j,k}(T_{\infty}(r))$, we establish the equivalence between $(j,k,r)$-optimal graphs and r-regular bipartite graphs with a certain edge coloring property for the case ${j \over k} > r$. The structure of $r$-regular optimal graphs for ${j \over k} \leq r$ is investigated, with special attention to ${j \over k} = 1,2$. For the latter, we establish that a (2,1,r)-optimal graph, through a series of edge transformations, has a canonical form. Finally, we apply our results on optimality to the derivation of the $\lambda_{j,k}$-numbers of prisms.


Answer set programming (ASP) is a form of declarative programming oriented towards difficult combinatorial search problems. It has been applied, for instance, to plan generation and product configuration problems in artificial intelligence and to graph-theoretic problems arising in VLSI design and in historical linguistics. Syntactically, ASP programs look like Prolog programs, but the computational mechanisms used in ASP are different: they are based on the ideas that have led to the development of fast satisfiability solvers for propositional logic.
ASP is based on the answer set/stable model semantics for logic programs, originally intended as a specification for query answering in Prolog. From the original definition of 1988, the semantics was independently extended by different research groups to more expressive kinds of programs, with syntax and semantics that are incompatible with each other. In this thesis we study how the various extensions are related to each other. In order to do that, we propose another definition of an answer set. This definition has three main characteristics: (i) it is very simple, (ii) its syntax is more general than the usual concept of a logic program, and (iii) strong theoretical tools can be used to reason on it. About (ii), we show that our syntax allows constructs defined in many other extensions of the answer sets semantics. This fact, together with (iii), allows us to study the expressiveness of those constructs. We also compare the answer set semantics with another important formalism developed by Norm McCain and Hudson Turner, called causal logic.


The Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model is used to estimate the value an Oakland nursing home, a Riverside high school, and a Sunnyvale data center would need to put on higher electricity service reliability for them to adopt a Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions Microgrid (CM) based on economics alone. A fraction of each building's load is deemed critical based on its mission, and the added cost of CM capability to meet it added to on-site generation options. The three sites are analyzed with various resources available as microgrid components. Results show that the value placed on higher reliability often does not have to be significant for CM to appear attractive, about 25 $/kW·a and up, but the carbon footprint consequences are mixed because storage is often used to shift cheaper off-peak electricity to use during afternoon hours in competition with the solar sources.


ABSTRACT Typically, the core-required undergraduate business statistics course covers a broad spectrum of topics with applications pertaining to all functional areas of business. The recently updated American Statistical Association's GAISE (Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education) College Report once again stresses the pedagogical importance of topic and application relevancy in an increasingly data-centered world. To this end, only two introductory textbooks have incorporated some financial investment measures (Sharpe ratio and beta coefficient) in the teaching of numerical descriptive measures and simple linear regression analysis, respectively, while a few others include them as real-data application exercises at the end of their respective chapters. Although this latter coverage is in compliance with GAISE College Report recommendations on the importance of using relevant real data applications in the teaching of introductory business statistics, it forgoes an opportunity to provide more detailed discussion within the text itself and add value to a business student's learning. Given that all business students will have an opportunity to learn about financial investment, regardless of their functional area major, this paper offers a more proactive use of these and other financial investment measures as part of the current, traditional course or as part of a suggested dedicated introductory business statistics course for finance majors.


Emden, Germany (November. 7, 2012) – PharmaInformatic, a German biotech-company has developed a comprehensive knowledge base on bioavailability, which enables the targeted development of new drugs. Several factors affect the oral bioavailability of drugs. For the first time, these can now be analysed in detail, thanks to a new resource. The new resource, called PACT-F (Preclinical And Clinical Trials Knowledge Base on Bioavailability) unifies the results and experiences of the last hundred years of drug research. The development of the knowledge base began in 2005. Since then the detailed results and conditions of more than 5000 scientific publications concerning the bioavailability of drugs have been evaluated and integrated into the database. Each of the 8296 records contains the chemical structure of the investigated drug and up to 17 additional fields, which describe in detail the experimental conditions of the trials (gender, age, health status and number of subjects, genetic differences, the species examined, route of administration, additional medication, method of measurement, drug formulation and further descriptions of the studies). The knowledge base is a fundamental tool to develop computer models, which can predict the oral bioavailability of new drugs in humans, before clinical trials have to be conducted. This increases the prospects of new drugs and enhances the safety of clinical trials in humans. Dr Wolfgang Boomgaarden, founder and CEO of PharmaInformatic, says, 'Our research is a huge step forward in the area of drug development and will improve the efficiency of clinical trials in humans. Fundamental new findings and conclusions can be derived from the knowledge base which will impact future drug discovery and development.'


This Article contrasts how two leading competition law systems, the United States and the European Union ("EU"), have reacted to the growing internationalization of markets and the relative decline of the ability of any single jurisdiction to regulate transnational business behavior. For reasons unique to their respective histories, cultures, and politics, these two jurisdictions have adopted very different strategies for dealing with this problem. The United States has offered two distinct visions of antitrust enforcement as part of a conscious opposition to the creation of international antitrust rules or true international enforcement. The United States first embarked on a fifty year strategy premised on the extraterritorial application of its antitrust laws. Only recently has the United States deemphasized this aspect of government policy and sought instead to embrace international cooperation as an alternative to either aggressive unilateral enforcement or the true internationalization of antitrust law.In contrast, the EU has used competition law to cement and expand the single internal market that defines the Union, and then has sought to spread the influence of its competition law through the expansion of the EU, the negotiation of new trading arrangements which require the adoption of EU competition law as a condition of preferential access to the EU market, and the promotion of harmonization of competition law at the international level.This Article offers the story of the U.S.-Canadian antitrust cooperation as the paradigm for how the United States would like the internationalization of antitrust to proceed, and the spread of EU competition through expansion and antitrust diplomacy as the paradigm for the EU approach. This Article then examines how these different approaches will play out in setting the agenda for the WTO and other international organizations that deal with competition issues. Rather than argue for the better approach, this Article seeks to suggest how politics, interest groups, and bureaucratic imperatives dictate, and sometimes defeat, national interests. The Article further speculates how other players and pressures in the enforcement of competition law may affect the success of the strategies of these two traditional antitrust powers in facing the decline of the nation state over this most traditional and sensitive area of national economic regulation and law enforcement. Finally, the Article closes with a suggested approach for harnessing self-interest to overcome collective action problems in order to address international antitrust issues without having to create the kind of new rules or institutions that have proved so unpalatable in the past.


We present ktrain, a low-code Python library that makes machine learning more accessible and easier to apply. As a wrapper to TensorFlow and many other libraries (e.g., transformers, scikit-learn, stellargraph), it is designed to make sophisticated, state-of-the-art machine learning models simple to build, train, inspect, and apply by both beginners and experienced practitioners. Featuring modules that support text data (e.g., text classification, sequence tagging, open-domain question-answering), vision data (e.g., image classification), graph data (e.g., node classification, link prediction), and tabular data, ktrain presents a simple unified interface enabling one to quickly solve a wide range of tasks in as little as three or four "commands" or lines of code.


AIM
Many studies are available in the literature on posterior spinal instrumentation, though the use of a rod and a plate is still controversial in the literature. In this study, a finite element analysis of the strength and superiority of modular rigid plate and rod systems, which are used in the lower lumbar region, in comparison with each other was used.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
A Ti6Al4V (Grade 5) titanium biocompatible alloy anterior plate was used for the lumbar spine fixation device, and a finite element analysis was conducted on the human lumbar spine model. In this study, an intact spine, a rigid system fixed with a rod, and modular plate systems were evaluated at flexion, extension, lateral bending, and axial rotation.

RESULTS
They did not show statistically significant superiority over one another in terms of limitations in movement during the range of motion exercises and rigidity.

CONCLUSION
The posterior rigid stabilization system and novel stabilization system do not have a significant superiority over one another. Equivalent results in the limitation of movement and rigidity allow for the use of these systems for short-segment posterior spinal instrumentation with the same indications.


A short R/V Kilo Moana cruise in 2011 conducted bathymetric mapping and revealed various channels to the west of the main (and deepest) part of the Samoan Passage. The second cruise, RR1209 in ABSTRACT. High levels of turbulent mixing have long been suspected in the Samoan Passage, an important topographic constriction in the deep limb of the Pacific Meridional Overturning Circulation. Along the length of the passage, observations undertaken in 2012 and 2014 showed the bottom water warmed by ~55 millidegrees Celsius and decreased in density by 0.01 kg m –3 . Spatial analysis of this first-ever microstructure survey conducted in the Samoan Passage confirmed there are multiple hotspots of elevated abyssal mixing. This mixing was not just confined to the four main sills—even between sills, the nature of the mixing processes appeared to differ: for example, one sill is clearly a classical hydraulically controlled overflow, whereas another is consistent with mode-2 hydraulic control. When microstructure casts were averaged into 0.1°C conservative temperature classes, the largest dissipation rates and diapycnal diffusivity values (>10 –7 W kg –1 and 10 –2 m 2 s –1 , respectively) occurred immediately downstream of the northern sill in the eastern and deepest channel. Although topographic blocking is the primary reason that no water colder than Θ = 0.7°C is found in the western channel, intensive mixing at the entrance sills appeared to be responsible for eroding an approximately 100 m thick layer of Θ < 0.7°C water. Three examples highlighting weak temporal variability, and hence suggesting that the observed spatial patterns are robust, are presented. The spatial variability in mixing over short lateral scales suggests that any simple parameterization of mixing within the Samoan Passage may not be applicable.