We read with interest the article by Khalili et al. addressing the management of small liver nodules detected in patients with cirrhosis under surveillance with abdominal ultrasound (US) that gave indeterminate results by contrast imaging. To optimize American Association for the Study of the Liver Disease (AASLD) guidelines, the authors suggest performing a fine-needle biopsy examination of nodules showing either arterial hypervascularity on computed tomography (CT) / magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or accompanied by a synchronous hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) only, since these were the only independent variables associated with malignancy in their retrospective study. According to this algorithm, approximately 20% of additional tumors will be identified, with a sensitivity of 62%, a specificity of 79%, and a 73% save of liver biopsies. When we applied this algorithm to our patients with a de novo liver nodule prospectively detected during surveillance (Fig. 1), the corresponding figures were 44% for sensitivity and 55% for specificity, with a positive predictive value of 44% and a negative predictive value of 55%, respectively. Overall, among 36 1-2 cm indeterminate nodules the modified algorithm would have diagnosed 7 (44%) of tumors only of the 16 identified by histology, including 15 HCC and 1 intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC). At the same time, the diagnosis of HCC would have been significantly delayed in nine (56%) patients compared with none if treated according to AASLD guidelines. The fact that the majority (75%) of delayed diagnoses were in patients with a very early HCC, i.e., the ideal candidates for radical treatment with local ablation, attenuates the appeal of the modified algorithm, which in addition would have also led to a misdiagnosis of ICC in one nodule devoid of contrast uptake during the arterial phase of CT/MRI. Due to the high incidence of HCC in patients with compensated cirrhosis and the low risk of liver biopsy complications, we strongly endorse unmodified AASLD guidelines for the management of patients with cirrhosis with 1-2 cm liver nodules with undefined radiological diagnosis.


Affairs of party, Jean Baker asserts, were a central feature of public life in nineteenth-century America. In this book she explores the way in which the Northern Democrats of the mid-eighteen hundreds lived their public lives. She begins with a psychobiographical explanation of how people became Democrats, weighing the importance of such influences as education and family life. She then discusses two major elements that set Democrats apart from members of other political organizations: a modified Republican ideology tailored to the circumstances of the Civil War, and a mordant racism conveyed most strikingly through minstrelsy. Finally, Baker studies the neglected subject of partisan behavior, concentrating on the significance of parades, voting, and other rituals. In Affairs of Party Jean Baker brings together the three basic components of a political culture-education, thought, and behavior-and provides an understanding of the collective values of Northern Democrats and an insight into the elusive meaning of party experience. In her new preface, Professor Baker places her book in the context of both recent scholarship and recent political and cultural developments.


Tax-increment financing (TIF) is an increasingly popular way for cities to promote economic development. TIF works by allowing cities to use the property, sales, and other taxes collected from new developments — taxes that would otherwise go to schools, libraries, fire departments, and other urban services — to subsidize those same developments. While cities often claim that TIF is "free money" because it represents the taxes collected from developments that might not have taken place without the subsidy, there is plenty of evidence that this is not true. First, several studies have found that the developments subsidized by TIF would have happened anyway in the same urban area, though not necessarily the same location. Second, new developments impose costs on schools, fire departments, and other urban services, so other taxpayers must either pay more to cover those costs or accept a lower level of services as services are spread to developments that are not paying for them. Moreover, rather than promoting economic development, many if not most TIF subsidies are used for entirely different purposes. First, many states give cities enormous discretion for how they use TIF funds, turning TIF into a way for cities to capture taxes that would otherwise go to rival tax entities such as school or library districts. Second, no matter how well-intentioned, city officials will always be tempted to use TIF as a vehicle for crony capitalism, providing subsidies to developers who in turn provide campaign funds to politicians. Finally, many cities use TIF to persuade developers to build "new-urban" (high-density, mixed-use) developments that are supposedly greener than traditional designs but are less marketable than low-density suburbs. Albuquerque, Denver, Portland, and other cities have each spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting such developments when developers would have been happy to build low-density developments without any subsidies. TIF takes money from schools, fire departments, libraries, and other urban services funded by property taxes. By eliminating TIF, state legislatures can help close current budget gaps and prevent cities from taking even more money from these urban services in the future.


At Earth's dayside magnetopause asymmetric magnetic reconnection occurs between the cold dense magnetosheath plasma and the hot tenuous magnetospheric plasma, which differs significantly from symmetric reconnection. During magnetic reconnection the separatrix regions are potentially unstable to a variety of instabilities. In this paper observations of the separatrix regions of asymmetric reconnection are reported as Cluster crossed the magnetopause near the subsolar point. The small relative motion between the spacecraft and plasma allows spatial changes of electron distributions within the separatrix regions to be resolved over multiple spacecraft spins. The electron distributions are shown to be unstable to the electromagnetic whistler mode and the electrostatic beam mode. Large‐amplitude whistler waves are observed in the magnetospheric and magnetosheath separatrix regions, and outflow region. In the magnetospheric separatrix regions the observed whistler waves propagate toward the X line, which are shown to be driven by the loss in magnetospheric electrons propagating away from the X line and are enhanced by the presence of magnetosheath electrons. The beam mode waves are predicted to be produced by beams of magnetosheath electrons propagating away from the X line and potentially account for some of the electrostatic fluctuations observed in the magnetospheric separatrix regions.


This paper explores the challenges to, and opportunities for, the mainstreaming of conflict sensitivity within the Syrian crisis response in Lebanon by looking specifically at how international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) recruit personnel. The main conclusion is that these practices are conflict blind, not conflict sensitive, with little to no attention devoted to political, confessional or ethnic considerations during the recruitment process. The research also found that the hiring practices of sampled INGOs are negatively affected by governmental policies, which have placed restrictions on the employment of international personnel and Syrian nationals in particular. Finally, tensions, which reflect political and confessional divisions, are growing among INGO staff members, and have at times been made worse by the recruitment decisions that some organisations have adopted in response to the government's policies.


The kidney possesses most of the common xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes, and is thus able to make an important contribution to the body's metabolism of drugs and foreign compounds. The effect of pyrimidine derivatives 6-amino-2-thiouracil (ATU), 2-thiouracil (TU) and 5-flurouracil (5FU), and pomegranate juice (PJ) on kidney nitric oxide (NO), malondialdehyde (MDA), DNA fragmentation (DNAF), caspase-3 levels and kidney function tests in rats treated with diethyl nitrosamine (DEN) and carbon tetra chloride CCl4 was studied. The effect of PJ on rat not treated with DEN and CCl4 was studied also. Administration of rats with DEN and CCl4 caused an elevation in the levels of NO, MDA, DNAF, caspase-3 and kidney function tests, compared to the control. Treatment of rats with PJ pre, during, and post DEN and CCl4 administration improved kidney function and decreased the levels of NO, MDA, DNAF, and caspase-3 activities better than that in DEN-5FU, DENATU, DEN-TU groups compared to the DEN group, indicates that PJ reduced the oxidative stress and apoptosis induced by DEN and CCl4 better than that in 5FU, ATU, TU. Administration of healthy rats with PJ only for 5 weeks not induced oxidative stress and apoptosis for kidney tissues. Treatment with 5FU after DEN and CCl4 administration showed severe toxicity which was higher than that induced by DEN and CCl4.


Abrupt changes in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (comprising northward flow of warm water and a cold southward return flow) are implicated in abrupt climate changes in the late Pleistocene. A sensitive place to assess this circulation is in the cold return flow of Deep Western Boundary Currents. Here, in records of flow speed and isotopic composition of surface and bottom waters from a Deep Western Boundary Current location near the northern source of North Atlantic Deep Water, we show both orbital and millennial-scale coupling between deep ocean flow and climate in the middle Pleistocene (0.75–0.87 Ma), when the boundary conditions in terms of the mean state and amplitude of climate change were different from more recent periods. The coupling appears as a phased series of events initiated by reduced vertical density gradients and initial ventilation of deep waters. The occurrence of these events in interglacials during the middle Pleistocene suggests that the millennial-scale climate variability in the North Atlantic was more pronounced at that time than previously thought. This demonstrates that, given the right boundary conditions, rapid climate shifts can also occur during relatively warm climate conditions.


Extracted from text ... _______________________________________________________________
THE RECEPTION OF INSTITUTES 3.19.19 IN FRANCE
Harry Dondorp (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Introduction
Article 1119 of the French Code Civil rules that "one cannot, in general, bind
himself or stipulate in his own name except for himself".1 Acting in one's own
name, not as a representative of another, one can only stipulate a performance
to one's own benefit.
This rule, the French writers explain, derives from Roman law, referring to the
fact that in Roman law a contract could not confer a right upon a third party.2 In
the nineteenth century, however, many French writers gave another
explanation. Zachariae, ..


Studies of nucleation in freezing nanoparticles usually assume that the embryo of the solid phase is completely wet by the liquid and forms in the core of the droplet. However, recent experiments and computer simulations have suggested that some nanoparticles start nucleating at the liquidvapor interface of the drop in a pseudoheterogeneous process. The goal of the present work is to propose phenomenological models suitable for the study of surface nucleation in nanoparticle systems that can be used to understand the contributions of the various surface phenomena, such as surface and line tensions, to the nucleation barrier. The nucleation barrier for the freezing of a 276 atom gold cluster is calculated using Monte Carlo simulation techniques while previous simulation studies of a 456 atom gold cluster are extended in order to find the probability that the embryo forms in the surface or core of the nanoparticle. These calculations confirm that the crystal embryo forms at the liquid-vapor interface. Geometric studies measuring the liquid-solid and solid-vapor surface areas of the embryo suggest that it changes shape as it becomes larger and grows in towards the core of the droplet. Three phenomenological models that are based on the capillarity approximation and can account for surface nucleation are proposed. These models highlight the importance of accounting for the surface curvature contributions related to the Tolman length and the presence of the three phase contact line in calculating the nucleation free energy barrier. In some cases, the models are able to reproduce the qualitative properties of the free energy barriers obtain from simulation but numerical fits of the models generally result in estimates of the solid-liquid surface tension that are lower than the values expected on the basis of partial wetting in the bulk. Finally, a semi-phenomenological model approach to nucleation is proposed where the usual phenomenological expression for the free energy barrier is retained, but where the geometric prefactors are obtained from molecular simulation of the embryo. This method is applied to nucleation in the gold cluster and to the freezing of a bulk Lennard-Jones liquid.


This study presents a broad investigation on Al implantation in crystalline Ge. We show that up to 600 °C, Al does not diffuse and a remarkable electrical activation of ∼1×1020 cm-3 is obtained. For higher annealing temperatures (from 700 to 800 °C), Al shows a significant diffusion towards the bulk and an unexpected uphill diffusion next to the surface, where the electrical measurements indicate a significant deactivation of Al. Both these latter observations are explained in terms of the presence of dopant traps, able to make immobile and electrically inactive the dopant next to the surface.


Abstract: Abundant biogenic sedimentary structures produced by Perinereis aibuhitensis (formerly Nereis) occur in tidal flats of the Yellow River Delta in China. The burrows of Perinereis are visible as vertical tubes and irregular strings in slabbed cores. The cores were studied by X-ray radiography, computed tomography and VGStudio MAX to obtain three-dimensional images of the burrows and their inner structure. The burrows are vertical to steeply oblique, Y-shaped tubes with multiple branches. They are considered as analogues of the trace fossil Polykladichnus. Some gutter-like surface traces are similar to the trace fossil Archaeonassa. Perinereis burrows and trails occur mainly in the mixed flat, less frequently in the mud flat or sand flats. Potentially abundant occurrences of some analogous fossil burrows and trails (Polykladichnus, Archaeonassa) could mark position of the intertidal zone.


Bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are highly heritable diseases that affect over 3% of individuals worldwide. Genomewide association studies have strongly and repeatedly linked risk for both of these neuropsychiatric diseases to a 100 kb interval in the third intron of the human calcium channel gene CACNA1C. However, the causative mutation is not yet known. We have identified a novel human-specific tandem repeat in this region that is composed of 30 bp units, often repeated hundreds of times. This large tandem repeat is unstable using standard polymerase chain reaction and bacterial cloning techniques, which may have resulted in its incorrect size in the human reference genome. The large 30-mer repeat region is polymorphic in both size and sequence in human populations. Particular sequence variants of the 30-mer are associated with risk status at several flanking single nucleotide polymorphisms in the third intron of CACNA1C that have previously been linked to BD and SCZ. The tandem repeat arrays function as enhancers that increase reporter gene expression in a human neural progenitor cell line. Different human arrays vary in the magnitude of enhancer activity, and the 30-mer arrays associated with increased psychiatric disease risk status have decreased enhancer activity. Changes in the structure and sequence of these arrays likely contribute to changes in CACNA1C function during human evolution, and may modulate neuropsychiatric disease risk in modern human populations.


A single cell creates surprising heterogeneity in a multicellular organism. While every organismal cell shares almost an identical genome, molecular interactions in cells alter the use of DNA sequences to modulate the gene of interest for specialization of cellular functions. Each cell gains a unique identity through molecular coding across the DNA, RNA, and protein conversions. On the other hand, loss of cellular identity leads to critical diseases such as cancer. Most cell identity dissection studies are based on bulk molecular assays that mask differences in individual cells. To probe cell-to-cell variability in a population, we discuss single cell approaches to decode the genetic, epigenetic, transcriptional, and translational mechanisms for cell identity formation. In combination with molecular instructions, the physical principles behind cell identity determination are examined. Deciphering and reprogramming cellular types impact biology and medicine.


The strong spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations in pseudomorphic AlGaN/GaN on SiC substrates are used to induce 2DEG sheet density of > 1 x 10 13 /cm 2 with mobility up to 1,700 cm 2 /vs. The processing sequence and HEMT electrode layout are presented. The output power and power-added efficiency in the 8-10 GHz frequency range are shown for CW bias conditions and optimum tuning in class B operation. Single-gate, center-fed 100 µm periphery devices gave 11.2 W/mm at 32% power-added efficiency; two-gate, 200 µm periphery devices with 50 µm pitch gave 8.7 W/mm at 48% power-added efficiency, and 12-gate, 1.5 mm periphery devices with 50 µm pitch gave 6.7 W/mm at 42% power-added efficiency. For comparison, the latter gave 9.4 W/mm at 43% power-added efficiency in low duty cycle pulsed operation . The key limitation for CW power performance is self-heating, which raises the knee voltage by (T/300) 1.8 for T channel temperature in °K.


Title of Document: ACTIVISM AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COLLEGE STUDENT ACTIVISM INVOLVEMENT AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP CAPACITY Jeremy Dale Page, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Directed By: Professor Susan R. Komives Department of Counseling and Personnel Services The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between participation in student activism and leadership development among college students. This study applied the social change model of leadership development (SCM) as the theoretical model used to measure socially responsible leadership capacity in students. The study utilized data collected from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership (MSL), a research project examining the influences of higher education on leadership development in college students across the country. The sample of 12,510 students consisted of respondents who participated in a sub-study on student activism within the MSL survey. Hierarchical multiple regression models were constructed to investigate the research question using an adapted version of Astin"s (1991) I-E-O college impact model. Regression models included participant demographic characteristics, pre-college experiences, institutional descriptors, and consideration of select college experiences in examining the relationship between activism and leadership development. Results indicated that the regression models explained a significant amount of the variance in participant scores. Participation and holding a leadership position in oncampus and off-campus organizations, community service conducted on one"s own, and participation in an internship emerged as significant predictors of socially responsible leadership capacity among the collegiate experiences included in the model. Participation in activism also emerged as significant, as awareness of local, national, and global issues indicated influence on all leadership development measures, and participating in protests, contacting public officials, signing a petition, and buying or not buying products due to personal views significantly contributed to measures of citizenship. These findings served to address the existing gap in the literature pertaining to the relationship of student activism and leadership development, and indicated the developmental and educational potential to providing these experiences for students on campus. ACTIVISM AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COLLEGE STUDENT ACTIVISM INVOLVEMENT AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP CAPACITY


Abstract. An Aerodyne high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) was deployed along with a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) and a multi-angle absorption photometer (MAAP) to measure the temporal variations of the mass loading, chemical composition, and size distribution of submicron particulate matter (PM1) in Lanzhou, northwest China, during 11 July–7 August 2012. The average (PM1 mass concentration including non-refractory (PM1 (NR-(PM1) measured by HR-ToF-AMS and black carbon (BC) measured by MAAP during this study was 24.5 μg m−3 (ranging from 0.86 to 105 μg m−3), with a mean composition consisting of 47% organics, 16% sulfate, 12% BC, 11% ammonium, 10% nitrate, and 4% chloride. Organic aerosol (OA) on average consisted of 70% carbon, 21% oxygen, 8% hydrogen, and 1% nitrogen, with the average oxygen-to-carbon ratio (O / C) of 0.33 and organic mass-to-carbon ratio (OM / OC) of 1.58. Positive matrix factorization (PMF) of the high-resolution organic mass spectra identified four distinct factors which represent, respectively, two primary OA (POA) emission sources (traffic and food cooking) and two secondary OA (SOA) types – a fresher, semi-volatile oxygenated OA (SV-OOA) and a more aged, low-volatility oxygenated OA (LV-OOA). Traffic-related hydrocarbon-like OA (HOA) and BC displayed distinct diurnal patterns, both with peak at ~ 07:00–11:00 (BJT: UTC +8), corresponding to the morning rush hours, while cooking-emission related OA (COA) peaked during three meal periods. The diurnal profiles of sulfate and LV-OOA displayed a broad peak between ~ 07:00 and 15:00, while those of nitrate, ammonium, and SV-OOA showed a narrower peak between ~ 08:00–13:00. The later morning and early afternoon maximum in the diurnal profiles of secondary aerosol species was likely caused by downward mixing of pollutants aloft, which were likely produced in the residual layer decoupled from the boundary layer during nighttime. The mass spectrum of SV-OOA was similar to that of coal combustion aerosol and likely influenced by coal combustion activities in Lanzhou during summer. The sources of BC were estimated by a linear decomposition algorithm that uses the time series of the NR-PM1 components. Our results indicate that a main source of BC was local traffic (47%) and that transport of regionally processed air masses also contributed significantly to BC observed in Lanzhou. Finally, the concentration and source of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were evaluated.


The effect of teambuilding on team development was studied with a quasi-experimental design by evaluating consultants' teambuilding interventions in 20 experimental groups within a Swedish state authority. These were compared to 22 control groups that did not receive an intervention. Team development was assessed through pre- and post-test with the "Group Development Questionnaire" (GDQ). Results indicated that experimental groups had significant higher values on scale IV in the GDQ in the post-test compared to control groups. There were no significant differences between experimental and control groups on GDQ scale I-III across time. The results indicate that teambuilding contributes to team development and encourages to further research with regard to "real life" work groups.


Pedometrics is the application of mathematical and statistical methods for the study of the distribution and genesis of soils. Pedometrics research in the vadose zone comprises studies of the spatial and temporal dynamics of soil properties as a scientific challenge to increase our understanding of the processes at the earth's surface. While geostatistics has been the main topic of investigation, pedometrics in the vadose zone covers broader areas, which can be summarized in three main topics: (i) characterization of variability and prediction of variation of soil, (ii) sampling, measurement, and inferences of soil properties and processes, and (iii) dynamic spatiotemporal modeling. This review highlights some of the key common research areas for pedometrics in the vadose zone, showing the synergy between pedometrics and vadose zone science. A strength of pedometrics is estimating the spatial distribution of soil properties using empirical approaches. However, pedometrics needs to incorporate process‐based knowledge, which adds the pedological and physical significance to the statistical robustness of predictions. A natural collaboration would therefore be with vadose zone scientists. Dynamic spatiotemporal modeling in a Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework provides a platform that will enhance collaboration between both disciplines. A future collaborative project can be envisaged to develop a global vadose zone model simulating fluxes and stores of soil water, solute, heat, and gas to address globally important issues.


Received 18th October, 2016 Received in revised form 23rd November, 2016 Accepted 27th December, 2016 Published online 28th January, 2017 Occurrence of damping off disease was observed on Hippophae salicifolia D.Don plants at some selected sites in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, India. The typical disease symptoms were observed on the roots and lower stems of plants. Roots turn brown and die after a period of time. On the basis of morphological and microscopic characteristics of the fungus, Fusarium oxysporum was found to be associated with the damping off disease. Koch's postulate was applied to confirm the causal organisms of the disease. According to the literature, this is the first report of damping off disease on Hippophae salicifolia caused by Fusarium from Uttarakhand, and the first report of Fusarium oxysporum from India.


This study of prostitution addresses issues of female agency and experience, as well as contemporary fears about sexual coercion and the forced movement of girls/women, and police surveillance. Rather than treating prostitutes solely as victims or problems to be solved, as so often has been the case in much of the literature, Nancy M. Wingfield seeks to find the historical subjects behind fin-de-siecle constructions of prostitutes, to restore agency to the women who participated in commercial sex, illuminate their quotidian experiences, and to place these women, some of whom made a rational economic decision to sell their bodies, in the larger social context of late imperial Austria. Wingfield investigates the interactions of both registered and clandestine prostitutes with the vice police and other supervisory agents, including physicians and court officials, as well as with the inhabitants of these women's world, including brothel clients and madams, and pimps, rather than focusing top-down on the state-constructed apparatus of surveillance. Close reading of a broad range of primary and secondary sources shows that some prostitutes in late imperial Austria took control over their own fates, at least as much as other working-class women, in the last decades before the end of the Monarchy. And after 1918, bureaucratic transition did not necessarily parallel political transition. Thus, there was no dramatic change in the regulation of prostitution in the successor states. Legislation, which changed regulation only piecemeal after the war, often continued to incorporate forms of control, reflecting continuity in attitudes about women's sexuality.... Download ebook, read file pdf The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria


The reticulum, rumen, omasum, and abomasum were assessed via ultrasonography before, during, and 15, 30, and 120 minutes after feeding milk to 10 healthy calves. The ultrasonographic examinations were conducted using a 5.0 MHz linear transducer. Loops were recorded on video for further evaluation. The reticulum could be visualised before feeding in seven calves. Its appearance and pattern of contractions were similar to those in adult cattle, although the amplitude (1.7 ± 0.75 cm) and velocity (2.7 ± 1.34 cm/s) of the first contraction were smaller than in adult cattle. The reticulum could not be visualised in any of the calves during feeding as it was displaced cranially and laterally and therefore being obscured by the lungs as the abomasum expanded with the ingested milk. 2 hours post ingestion it remained obscured in 5 individual and was visualized again the other 5. The position and size of the entire rumen including the dorsal and ventral sacs and the ruminal contents were assessed. There were no changes in the ultrasonographic appearance of the rumen during or after feeding. Except for its smaller size, the ultrasonographic appearance of the omasum of calves was similar to that of adult cattle. Milk flow through the omasum could not be seen in any of the calves, and there were no changes in the appearance of the omasum during and after feeding. The abomasum was seen to the left and right of the ventral midline before feeding in all calves; it occupied considerably more space on the left than the right. The flow of milk into the abomasum and milk clotting, which occurred 15 minutes after feeding, could be seen in all calves. The milk clots started to slowly disintegrate 30 minutes after the start of feeding, and by 2 hours post feeding, this process was greatly advanced but remained incomplete. Ultrasonography is an ideal tool for the evaluation of the reticulum, rumen, omasum, and abomasum before, during, and after the ingestion of milk in calves.


Active learning also known as an optimal experimental design, is a process for building a classifier or learning model with less number of training instances in the semi-supervised setting. It's a well-known approach that is used in many real-life machine learning and data mining applications. Active learning uses a query function and an oracle or expert (e.g., a human or information source) for labeling unlabeled data instances to boost up the performance of a classifier. Labeling the unlabeled data instances is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. In this paper, we have proposed an approach based on cluster analysis for selecting informative training instances from large number of unlabeled data instances or big data that helps us to select less number of training instances to build a classifier suitable for active learning. The proposed method clusters the unlabeled big data into several clusters and find the informative instances from each cluster based on the center of the cluster, nearest neighbors of the center of the cluster, and also selecting random instances from each cluster. The objective is to find the informative unlabeled instances and label them by the oracle for scaling up the classification results of the machine learning algorithms to be applied on big data. We have tested the performance of the proposed method on seven benchmark datasets from UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository employing following five well-known machine learning algorithms: C4.5 (decision tree induction), SVM (support vector machines), Random Forest, Bagging, and Boosting (AdaBoost). The experimental analysis proved that proposed method improves the performance of classifiers in active learning with less number of training instances.


In this paper, we propose a weakly supervised temporal action localization method on untrimmed videos based on prototypical networks. We observe two challenges posed by weakly supervision, namely action-background separation and action relation construction. Unlike the previous method, we propose to achieve action-background separation only by the original videos. To achieve this, a clustering loss is adopted to separate actions from backgrounds and learn intra-compact features, which helps in detecting complete action instances. Besides, a similarity weighting module is devised to further separate actions from backgrounds. To effectively identify actions, we propose to construct relations among actions for prototype learning. A GCN-based prototype embedding module is introduced to generate relational prototypes. Experiments on THUMOS14 and ActivityNet1.2 datasets show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.


Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject addresses the multi-layered issue of camp, whose inexhaustible breadth of reference and theoretical relevance to the issues taken up by academic research in recent years have made it one of the most salient and challenging issues on the contemporary critical stage. Reassessing the role and significance of the finest essays on camp written by leading intellectuals in cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, and queer theory, this critical anthology simultaneously 'queers' camp as an issue and offers an excellent key to rethinking the history, theory and practice of camp. The anthology is divided into five thematic/historical sections: Tasting It; Flaunting the Closet; Gender, and Other Spectacles; Pop Camp, Surplus Counter-Value, or the Camp of Cultural Economy; and The Queer Issue. These essay clusters help the reader situate the critical debates around the subject. A comprehensive bibliography of items from the earliest use of the word 'camp' to the present completes this unique and exciting volume. * The only comprehensive reader on camp to date * Gathers the best and historically most significant essays on the subject * Arranges the essays in thematic/historical sections for ease of use * A long Introduction provides a challenging rethinking of camp, and a historical/theoretical framework for research on the subject * The first definitive bibliography on camp


Discourse structures are beneficial for various NLP tasks such as dialogue understanding, question answering, sentiment analysis, and so on. This paper presents a deep sequential model for parsing discourse dependency structures of multi-party dialogues. The proposed model aims to construct a discourse dependency tree by predicting dependency relations and constructing the discourse structure jointly and alternately. It makes a sequential scan of the Elementary DiscourseUnits(EDUs)1 in a dialogue. For each EDU, the model decides to which previous EDU the current one should link and what the corresponding relation type is. The predicted link and relation type are then used to build the discourse structure incrementally with a structured encoder. During link prediction and relation classification, the model utilizes not only local information that represents the concerned EDUs, but also global information that encodes the EDU sequence and the discourse structure that is already built at the current step. Experiments show that the proposed model outperforms all the state-of-the-art baselines.


Exercise is frequently recommended in the management of type 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus and can improve glucose uptake by increasing insulin sensitivity and lowering body adiposity. Both alone and when combined with diet and drug therapy, physical activity can result in improvements in glycaemic control in type 2 diabetes. In addition, exercise can also help to prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes, in particular in those at higher risk, and has an important role in reducing the significant worldwide burden of this type of diabetes. Recent studies have improved our understanding of the acute and long term physiological benefits of physical activity, although the precise duration, intensity, and type of exercise have yet to be fully elucidated. However, in type 1 diabetes, the expected improvements in glycaemic control with exercise have not been clearly established. Instead significant physical and psychological benefits of exercise can be achieved while careful education, screening, and planning allow the metabolic, microvascular, and macrovascular risks to be predicted


The utilization of detrital zircon ages as a successful provenance indicator necessitates that source rocks and derived sediment, particularly first-cycle sediment, closely match each other in terms of age and age distribution. In order to test how closely first-cycle sediment resembles its source, zircon ages were determined from a homogenous plutonic source and sediments deposited directly on it in the Stepladder Mountains, southeastern California. U-Pb zircon ages from the pluton and proximal downstream alluvium exhibit substantial differences in proportions of Cretaceous, Mesoproterozoic, and Paleoproterozoic ages. Although geographic relations and major-element geochemistry require that the sediment was primarily derived from the weathering of the adjacent pluton, sample likeness values for zircon ages are commonly low, and age distribution differences are sufficiently large to reject the null hypothesis that they were drawn from the same population. The Stepladder pluton has abundant Cretaceous zircon, formed during magma crystallization, but also contains Mesoproterozoic and Paleoproterozoic xenocrysts inherited during magma generation and/or ascent. Neither preferential release of Precambrian xenocrysts nor differential preservation of Cretaceous zircon during weathering of the bedrock is viewed as a likely sole explanation for the age disparities. Addition of allochthonous Precambrian zircon, that is, aeolian grains, is viewed as a potential mechanism for the explanation of at least some of the observed age proportions. The significant differences between the abundances of zircon ages from the source and from the derived sediment suggest that considerable caution should be taken in the use of detrital zircon ages as a primary means of establishing bedrock sources in provenance analysis.


Motivation Deep sequencing based ribosome footprint profiling can provide novel insights into the regulatory mechanisms of protein translation. However, the observed ribosome profile is fundamentally confounded by transcriptional activity. In order to decipher principles of translation regulation, tools that can reliably detect changes in translation efficiency in case-control studies are needed. Results We present a statistical framework and analysis tool, RiboDiff, to detect genes with changes in translation efficiency across experimental treatments. RiboDiff uses generalized linear models to estimate the over-dispersion of RNA-Seq and ribosome profiling measurements separately, and performs a statistical test for differential translation efficiency using both mRNA abundance and ribosome occupancy. Availability RiboDiff webpage http://bioweb.me/ribodiff. Source code including scripts for preprocessing the FASTQ data are available at http://github.com/ratschlab/ribodiff. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com and email@example.com.


Abstract Debates over copyright and craft are particularly thorny, jumping as they do from notions of a common shared history of quilting bees and knitting circles that should be open and welcoming to all, passing through the idea that as an apparently gendered pastime crafting is regularly devalued (and that this is something its practitioners should resist) and concluding with more recent arguments that there are lucrative opportunities for professional crafters and designers that need to be protected through the copyrighting, patenting and trademarking of designs and processes. Of late, however, calls for ever more stringent protection and policing have marked the online crafting world, a transformation that I connect (albeit indirectly) to massive changes in the global textile industry and increasing anti-piracy initiatives resulting from the 2005 end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA). In this article, I analyze the appearance and spread of this intimidating lexicon of copyright protection in the (online) craft world. I argue that the rising interest in copyright and craft needs to be seen not only in light of growing visibility and marketability for crafting practice online, but also in terms of the positioning of intellectual property as an increasingly important economic strategy for Global North nations. So too, a transition from an ethos of community-based practice to one of individual property rights can be read as a part of ongoing debates over copyrighting (or lack thereof) for fashion designers, regulations concerning craft and textiles as protected national property in indigenous, developing and transitional economies, the changing global textile industry, and further debates over open source software and anti-copyright activism. My purpose here is to understand how and why a reiteration of (often incorrect or unsupported) norms is creating a strong atmosphere of policing and protection that contrasts with more traditional understandings of crafting.


This paper addresses the classic Arrow-Pratt model of choice under uncertainty, relaxing one important condition, and using different tools. The condition relaxed is the single variable in preferences, by allowing for imperfect substitutability in preferences. The tools used are not topological but lattice theoretic. It is argued that when goods are imperfectly substitutable in preferences, not only attitudes to risk but also underlying preferences determine choice and therefore, a complex interaction between preferences and attititude to risk must be addressed in order to establish monotonicity of choice. Comparative static analysis is carried out with respect to changes in income, changes in uncertainty and changes in preferences and it is shown that the appropriate conditions for comparative statics are superextremal and single crossing property conditions with respect to appropriate value lattices (Antoniadou 1996). These are extensions of revealed preference conditions and in the case of a take-it-or-leave-it lottery choice, they are both necessary and sufficient. Furthermore, these conditions are implied by the standard conditions based on the Arrow-Pratt measure of absolute risk aversion in the univariate case. The case of Leontief preferences is studies extensively to demonstrate the work.


Over the past few decades Computer Vision and Computer Graphics have experienced a rapid evolution, thanks in part to the continual improvement in computer hardware, which enables the investigation of increasingly complex problems.

In Computer Graphics this evolution is visible on a nearly day-by-day basis. For instance, computer-generated special effects in feature films have evolved to such a level of sophistication that it is often impossible to distinguish what is real from what is not. However, one challenging problem that still stands, considered by many experts in the field to be a Holy-Grail of Computer Graphics, is the automatic synthesis of life-like human character animation. Although rendering and modeling techniques have reached a stage where a computer generated image of a person is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, as soon as that model begins to move the illusion is broken. The problem is difficult because no-one yet knows how to model human motion in all it's intricacy and subtlety, and also because humans are so well tuned to perceive these subtleties that they can only be fooled if the modeling is done with complete perfection.

In this thesis, we explore a novel method of automatic synthesis of human motion that brings us one step closer to the ultimate goal. The method is based on decomposing human motion into elemental, nameable actions such as walking, running, and throwing, and using observations of people performing these actions to create mathematical models of the actions. Various samples of an action are acquired, and each sample is labeled according to state (initial body configuration), goal (desired outcome of the motion, such as direction of a throw or placement of a foot for a step), and mood and style parameters. Then established and novel techniques of machine learning are applied to derive a function that can synthesis a motion given some desired parameters. We explore the use of polynomial interpolants, radial basis function networks (RBFs), feed-forward neural networks (FFNNs) with sigmoidal activation functions, as well as a new method with local linear models. We find that a linear model more often that not works quite well, whereas higher order polynomial interpolants, RBFs and FFNNs are unable to extrapolate robustly when the motion parameters lie outside of the convex hull of the parameters of the available sample motions. The method with local linear models successfully improves the fidelity of the synthetic motions compared to the linear model, and also provides robust extrapolation. We also investigate the use of a recursive, probabilitic model where motions are specified by defining the initial and final body poses of the motion, and synthesis is done by computing the most likely motion to satisfy the boundary constraints. Although the results with this method are not yet completely satisfactory, it holds promise, and under certain types of conditions can re-synthesize the sample motions more accurately than any of the other methods.

With the additional development of methods to smoothly concatenate actions together and to interactively map synthesized motions to a 3-D polygonal character model, a realtime interactive demo was created that successfully demonstrates the level of realism and interactivity achievable by our method of human motion synthesis.

Our interest in the problem of realistic human motion synthesis arose from an initial study of the (in some sense) inverse problem in Computer Vision of the automatic observation (rather than synthesis) of human motion. Although progress in Computer Vision has not yet reached a level enabling it's widespread use in daily life, this state will most likely be achieved within the next decade. One large class of problems for which this is the case is the endowment of computers with visual perceptual skills similar to those of humans. Among the vast set of visual tasks imagineable, the automatic detection, recognition, and estimation of humans and human motion is a particularly interesting set of problems since there are many possible applications of such a technology in modern life, ranging from security and monitoring systems, to systems for biometric analysis, to novel human-machine interfaces.

In this thesis we describe a method of robustly estimating the motion of a human body from a monocular view. The method is based on the use of a 3-D model of the body, and comparing the actual image to an expected image based on the 3-D model to update the estimate of the body pose at each time step. The method was implemented in realtime as a human-machine interface. This system demonstrated that the method can be used to robustly track a human arm with a hand-tip positioning resolution of 2cm under close viewing conditions (where perspective projection causes significant changes in the appearance of the arm in the camera view).


Two of the best currently practising scholars of Ockham, Marilyn Adams and Paul Spade, seem to have accepted a reading of Ockham's ontological program which, although it contains much that is uncontroversially correct, attributes to Ockham a reductionist view that is on my interpretation of his works far too radical to be genuinely Ockham's. Their reading runs as follows. So far as entities go, Ockham accepts only particular substances and some particular qualities. Aristotle's categories, according to Ockham, are not 10 broad classes of radically different sorts of things, but rather are classes of non-complex terms arranged roughly according to the kinds of questions they can be used to answer. When we look at these terms we find that those in the category of substance and some in the category of quality are not definable by some longer expression synonymous with them but simply signify each of the members of a certain class of substances or qualities. These terms are said to be absolute. But other terms (some in the category of quality and all in the other categories, whether abstract or concrete) can either be replaced by a definition that is synonymous with the term defined or can be interpreted as making "exponible" the sentences in which they occur. These terms are all said to be connotative. It is in principle possible to reword all the sentences in which these connotative terms appear so that the only categorematic terms left are absolute terms from the categories of substance and quality.


`Double descent' delineates the generalization behaviour of models depending on the regime they belong to: under- or over-parameterized. The current theoretical understanding behind the occurrence of this phenomenon is primarily based on linear and kernel regression models -- with informal parallels to neural networks via the Neural Tangent Kernel. Therefore such analyses do not adequately capture the mechanisms behind double descent in finite-width neural networks, as well as, disregard crucial components -- such as the choice of the loss function. We address these shortcomings by leveraging influence functions in order to derive suitable expressions of the population loss and its lower bound, while imposing minimal assumptions on the form of the parametric model. Our derived bounds bear an intimate connection with the spectrum of the Hessian at the optimum, and importantly, exhibit a double descent behaviour at the interpolation threshold. Building on our analysis, we further investigate how the loss function affects double descent -- and thus uncover interesting properties of neural networks and their Hessian spectra near the interpolation threshold.


Introduction

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease characterized by intense pruritus. Dupilumab is a human monoclonal antibody specifically targeted to block the interleukin-4 alpha receptor (IL-4), inhibiting signalling for interleukin-4 and interleukin-13 in the treatment of atopic dermatitis.

Materials and method

Longitudinal study performed under routine clinical practice in the dermatology department of the Royo Villanova Hospital. Eleven adult patients with moderate-severe AD are being treated in a program of extended use of medication authorized by the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Health Products (AEMS). Patients are treated with dupilumab 300 mg subcutaneous injection every 2 weeks with an initial loading dose of 600 mg. artificial tears are recommended for the preventive management of conjunctivitis, and emollient creams for the skin.

Results

Week 16 analysis shows a reduction in pruritus (p=0.003) and in the severity of the disease (91% reduction, p<0.001). Quality of life scores, measured with the DLQI are improved (from 13.9 to 2.0, p=0.001) as with the health thermometer of the EQ-5D (from 57 to 80, p=0.035). Patients do not report conjunctivitis.

Conclusion

The use of dupilumab in routine clinical practice proves to be effective and safe, with an improvement of psychosocial impact and quality of life. Its safety profile is excellent, as well as adherence to treatment and patient satisfaction.


This paper discusses a possible conversion of Brazilian textile and apparel firms from cost based to sustainability-oriented differentiation strategy. Eco-innovation and social-environmental initiatives of ten firms were analysed revealing two distinct typologies of strategies among large and small companies. Nevertheless, none of them seem to be near from meeting the needs of emerging global conscious consumers that accept to pay more for sustainable innovations. A case study showed the hindrances to implementing the desired strategy. Recommendations for necessary intra and inter-organizational changes in the value chain are presented.


Electrical energy has an essential role in society as it ensures high quality of life and steady economic development. Demand for the electric energy has been steadily growing throughout the recent history and this demand is expected to grow further in the future. Most of electrical energy nowadays is generated by burning fossil fuels and there are serious concerns about the resulting emission. Renewable energy sources appeared as a viable alternative for environmentally hazardous sources. However, sources of renewable energy have considerably unpredictable and environmental conditions dependent power output and as such can't be directly incorporated into existing electrical grid. These sources are usually integrated to the electrical grid as part of microgrid or hybrid energy source that consists of two or more energy sources, converters and/or storage devices. In hybrid energy sources, generation and storage elements complement each other to provide high quality and more reliable power delivery. This area of research is its infant stage and requires a lot of research and development effort to be done. Main objective of this thesis is to develop a framework for analysis and control of power electronics interfaces in microgrid connected hybrid energy source. The framework offers the generalized approach in treatment of control problem for hybrid energy sources. Development of the framework is done for the generalized hybrid source comprised of energy source(s), storage element(s), power electronic interfaces and control system. The main contributions of this thesis are, generalization of control problem for power electronics interfaces in hybrid energy source, the development of switching algorithm for three phase switching converters based on the closed loop behavior of the converters and the development of a maximum power point tracking algorithm for the renewable energy sources.


When it was decided in 2002, Ring v. Arizona appeared to be a watershed in the way capital sentences are handed out in the United States: it overturned several states' death penalty statutes and appeared to imperil many more. Ring announced that the rule of Apprendi v. New Jersey applied to capital sentencing and required that any fact necessary to the imposition of the death penalty be proven to a jury and beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet eight years after the case was decided, it is not clear what, if anything, Ring in fact demands of the states. Determining exactly what constitutes fact-finding, and therefore which tasks must be carried out by the capital jury rather than a judge, remains a challenging task. In this article we investigate the impact of Ring by analyzing several typical capital statutes against both the language of the Ring opinion and the broader framework of the Court's Sixth and Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. What we find is that in all but the most obvious cases, Ring's mandate is an extraordinarily weak one. What is more, Ring creates perverse incentives for the states; juries can be removed from the capital sentencing equation entirely simply by making capital decisionmaking open-ended and amorphous rather than fact-based and legalistic. We argue that this pressure toward open-ended decisionmaking creates significant Eighth Amendment concerns. We conclude that this tension between the Sixth and Eighth Amendments demonstrates the limits of Ring's narrow focus on fact-finding and argues for the grounding of a more robust capital jury right in the Eighth Amendment.


Humans exhibit a rich set of manipulation strategies that may be desirable to mimic in humanoid robots. This study investigates preparatory object rotation as a manipulation strategy for grasping objects from different presented orientations. First, we examine how humans use preparatory rotation as a grasping strategy for lifting heavy objects with handles. We used motion capture to record human manipulation examples of 10 participants grasping objects under different task constraints. When sliding contact of the object on the surface was permitted, participants used preparatory rotation to first adjust the object handle to a desired orientation before grasping to lift the object from the surface. Analysis of the human examples suggests that humans may use preparatory object rotation in order to reuse a particular type of grasp in a specific capture region or to decrease the joint torques required to maintain the lifting pose. Second, we designed a preparatory rotation strategy for an anthropomorphic robot manipulator as a method of extending the capture region of a specific grasp prototype. The strategy was implemented as a sequence of two open-loop actions mimicking the human motion: a preparatory rotation action followed by a grasping action. The grasping action alone can only successfully lift the object from a 45-degree region of initial orientations (4 of 24 tested conditions). Our empirical evaluation of the robot preparatory rotation shows that even using a simple open-loop rotation action enables the reuse of the grasping action for a 360-degree capture region of initial object orientations (24 of 24 tested conditions).


Most American lawyers practice in law firms. Although firms are variously structured, the lawyers who practice in them can generally be divided between partners and associates. While associates and partners share professional duties and problems, in several key respects associates' professional responsibility concerns and problems differ significantly from partners'. This article has its genesis in those differences and the common perception that associates are increasingly pressured to act unethically. The article begins by examining law firm culture because it is culture more than ethics rules or other professional standards that influences associates' behavior. The article then discusses associates in the professional responsibility framework, focusing on Model Rule 5.2 and section 12 of the Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers, before examining professsional responsibility subjects of special importance to associates: the duties of competence, diligence, and confidentiality; overbilling; ethics issues associated with legal writing, including the duty of candor to the tribunal, plagiarism, and the duty to diclose directly adverse authority in the controlling jurisdiction; the duty to report serious misconduct by other lawyers, focusing on difficulties associated with reporting misconduct by partners; and associates' duty of loyalty to their firms. The article concludes with a call for further research into associates' professional responsibility problems by groups positioned to conduct empirical studies of the subject, such as the ABA or NALP.


Vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) generation by resonant third-order sum–difference frequency conversion (wVUV = 2wR − wT) in krypton has been investigated. The frequency wR (λR = 212.55 nm) was resonant with the Kr two-photon transition 4p–5p[1/2, 0]. By tuning wT in the range λT = 220–860 nm it was possible to generate wVUV in the wavelength range λVUV = 200–120 nm. The conversion efficiency was enhanced in the range 121–123 nm by phase matching with a normally dispersive buffer gas (Ar); under the best phase-matched conditions employed, VUV output powers at the Lyman-α wavelength of the order of 1 kW were inferred from the estimated VUV pulse energy. This source was used to measure high-lying members of the Mg principal series near 162 nm. High resolution and excellent sensitivity of detection, when a thermionic diode detector was used, have been demonstrated.


Building damage as a result of subsidence and lateral movement can be caused by numerous mechanisms including mining, dissolution of soluble rocks, shrink–swell of clays and landslides. In many instances, the distribution and severity of the damage caused can be diagnostic of the underlying geological condition and can be used as an aid to geological and geomorphological mapping. Many rigid buildings are sensitive to movement, meaning that careful surveys can delineate fine details that can be compiled to identify broader patterns of mass-movement. This paper discusses how damage has been recorded in the past and presents a unified scheme that is based mainly on UK and Italian practice and that can be applied to most situations. It broadens the existing schemes to include the assessment of damage to infrastructure (such as roads and pavements), which are also sensitive to movements; it also extends the existing schemes to include more serious building damage. In this way it unifies the current, disparate approaches and extends the usage of the semi-quantified approach to damage assessment. The damage assessment lends itself to storage in a database that can be interrogated, displayed and interpreted using a geographical information system (GIS).


The thesis describes the use of phosph(on)ate-based self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) to modify and pattern metal oxides. Metal oxides have interesting electronic and magnetic properties such as insulating, semiconducting, metallic, ferromagnetic etc. and SAMs can tailor the surface properties. FePt nanoparticles (NPs) are promising candidates for magnetic data storage applications due to their superior properties. In this thesis, the use of SAMs on conducting metal oxides for electrical applications and at the adsorption of magnetic NPs for data storage applications have been studied. By combining patterning techniques and self-assembly, functional inorganic-organic composite structures have been created.
Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to this thesis. In Chapter 2, a literature overview of SAMs on metal oxides is given. In Chapter 3, the assembly of phosph(on)ate-based SAMs with CH3, NH2, SH, COOH end groups on single crystalline-aluminum oxide (Al2O3) substrates is described. In Chapter 4, the electrochemical properties of SAMs on conducting metal oxide Nb-STO are addressed. Chapter 5 describes the low kinetic energy deposition of Pt top contacts on alkylphosphate SAMs by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and electrical characterization of these SAMs on a conducting Nb-STO metal oxide susbtrate. Chapter 6 describes the controlled assembly of FePt NPs on phosph(on)ate-based SAM-modified Al2O3 substrates. Chapter 7 presents the preparation of high-resolution FePtAu NP patterns on an Al2O3 surface prepared by nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and nanomolding in capillaries (NAMIC). The results described in this thesis show the versatility and efficiency of the use of phosph(on)ate-based SAMs to modify metal oxide surfaces. The use of SAMs on conducting metal metal oxides opens new possibilities for electrochemical studies. Metal top contact fabrication without causing shorts between the SAM and the substrate, combined with the insulating efficiency of the SAM, is promising for electrical device fabrication as well as for fundamental studies to understand the electrical properties of organic monolayers. Combining patterning techniques with chemical modification achieved by SAMs for controlled assembly and patterning magnetic nanoparticles on metal oxides can be used to prepare spintronic devices.


This brief uses an air conditioning system to illustrate the benefits of iteratively combining first principles and system identification techniques to develop control-oriented models of complex systems. A transcritical vapor compression system is initially modeled with first principles and then verified with experimental data. Both single-input-single-output (SISO) and multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) system identification techniques are then used to construct locally linear models. Motivated by the ability to capture the salient dynamic characteristics with low-order identified models, the physical model is evaluated for essentially nonminimal dynamics. A singular perturbation model reduction approach is then applied to obtain a minimal representation of the dynamics more suitable for control design, and yielding insight to the underlying system dynamics previously unavailable in the literature. The results demonstrate that iteratively modeling a complex system with first principles and system identification techniques gives greater confidence in the first principles model, and better understanding of the underlying physical dynamics. Although this iterative process requires more time and effort, significant insight and model improvements can be realized.


Population aging is an inevitable global demographic process. Most of the literature on the consequences of demographic change focuses on the economic and societal challenges that we will face as people live longer and have fewer children. In this paper, we (a) briefly describe key trends and projections of the magnitude and speed of population aging; (b) discuss the economic, social, and environmental consequences of population aging; and (c) investigate some of the opportunities that aging societies create. We use Germany as a case study. However, the general insights that we obtain can be generalized to other developed countries. We argue that there may be positive unintended side effects of population aging that can be leveraged to address pressing environmental problems and issues of gender inequality and intergenerational ties.


Background: Ovarian masses are common gynecological diseases which may appear and develop in any age group. Despite low prevalence rates, ovarian cancers still have a poor prognosis with high mortality rates, which can be effectively treated in the case of early detection and diagnosis. Methods: A total of 368 cases with ovarian masses treated from January 2016 to December 2017 were selected. These patients were diagnosed again by junior and senior blinded physicians using International Ovarian of Tumor Analysis simple rules (IOTA-SRs) and Gynecologic Imaging Reporting and Data System (Gi-Rads) respectively. Then the diagnostic efficiencies of 2 combined methods and individual ones were compared. Results: For the diagnosis of 368 patients, there were no significant differences between the sensitivity, PPV, NPV and DAR using IOTA-SRs and Gi-Rads by junior and senior physicians (p>0.05). Combining the 2 methods, it boosted the diagnostic performance, with the sensitivity, specificity, and DAR increasing to 96.3%, 92.31%, and 93.48% respectively. The sensitivity and NPV were significantly different (p=0.021, 0.032, p<0.05). Conclusion: Both IOTA-SRs and Gi-Rads had higher diagnostic performance and lower dependence on clinical experience. Combining the 2 methods may enhance the diagnostic performance, especially the sensitivity and NPV. Therefore, it is worthwhile to combine IOTA-SRs with Gi-Rads in the standardization and implementation of public reporting mechanism and the promotion of accurate pre-procedural stratification.


The concept of ecosystem services has emerged as a way of framing and describing the comprehensive set of benefits that people receive from nature. These include commonly recognized goods like timber and fresh water, as well as processes like climate regulation and water purification, and aesthetic, spiritual, and cultural benefits. The USDA Forest Service has been exploring use of the framework of ecosystem services as a way to describe goods and services provided by federal lands and attract and build partnerships with stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations. More recently, the agency has sought place-based example applications of the ecosystem service framework to explore its possible use as a tool to guide forest management, and better illustrate the concept for policymakers, managers, and potential national forest partners. Meeting this call, the Forest Service's Deschutes National Forest and Pacific Northwest Research Station are collaborating to explore how an ecosystem service approach can enhance forest stewardship in central Oregon. This effort includes (1) describing the ecosystem services provided by the forest, (2) investigating how an ecosystem service framework can support an integrated management approach across program areas to sustain ecological functions and processes, including examination of the potential outcomes and tradeoffs among services associated with proposed management activities, (3) assessing the relationship between supply and demand for services and strategies to sustainably manage service flows while conserving resources over time, and (4) attracting and building partnerships with stakeholders who value the services the forest provides. In this report, we (1) characterize the concept of ecosystem services as it could apply to national forests; (2) describe the value of an ecosystem service approach and provide examples of how management actions support the provision of these services; (3) compare the Deschutes National Forest's current accomplishment reporting system to ecosystem service outcomes that potentially result from management activities; (4) identify partners with potential to collaboratively plan, fund, or implement projects to enhance or conserve ecosystem services; (5) describe current research efforts to support management application of the ecosystem service concept; and (6) identify research needs.


Australia currently adopts the floating exchange rate system; therefore the value of the Australian dollar is subject to volatility due to the influence of changing domestic and international economic circumstances. This volatility of the Australian exchange rate system is an issue that affects the majority of Australian businesses. With over fifty percent of Australian trading invoiced in foreign currencies, movements in the value of the Australian dollar can potentially improve or worsen Australian companies' financial performance, and consequently, affect the national economic indicators. The importance of managing these currency risks not only stimulates countless studies attempting to capture a set of factors that are most relevant in contributing to the volatility of the Australian exchange rate system, but also encourages research attempting to develop an optimal hedging model that can assist Australian businesses to manage foreign exchange risk. From the review of existing literature, there appears to be a noticeable gap between theory and practice. Indeed, there exists a vast literature that looks at traditional financial derivatives such as options, futures, forward, and swaps for example, the Black-Scholes model is used for options pricings in the share and foreign exchange market. However, there is a paucity of research focusing on the leveraged spot market, both from an empirical and theoretical point of view. This thesis aims to minimize this omission by developing a model of speculation as well as a model of hedging, providing a theoretical framework and empirical simulations. Our model of speculation, developed in Chapter 3, adapts Krugman's (1991) model of target zones, in order to theoretically determine the optimal number of leveraged spot contracts taken by a speculator. Moreover, using historical data on interest rates and spot rates, we conduct a simulation to provide insights into how changing economic factors affects the speculator's position in the real world. In Chapter 4, we extend this model to show how speculation gains can be hedged with forward contracts. Traditional hedging methods involve the use of money markets and forward contracts; however, in Chapter 4, we describe how leveraged spot contracts can be used for hedging purposes. Moreover, we show that under some circumstances, the leveraged spot contract hedge outperforms these traditional hedging methods


PAX2 is a paired box transcription factor possessing a fundamental role             in the embryogenesis of hindbrain and urinary tract. PAX genes are proto-oncogenes,             PAX2 expression may contribute to the pathogenesis of renal cell carcinoma. Because             of the expression of PAX2 in the developing hindbrain and its essential role in             cerebellar development, it has been hypothesized that PAX2 may also be involved             in medulloblastoma tumorigenesis. We investigated the expression pattern of PAX2             and various genes of the neuronal lineage in medulloblastoma and glioma cell lines.             We found high expression of PAX2 mRNA and PAX2 protein in medulloblastoma cells             and some glioma cell lines independent of their neuronal lineage gene expression             signature. Gene suppression of PAX2 decreased the expression of the PAX2 transcriptional             target GDNF in Daoy cells and had a profound cytotoxic effect in vitro on Daoy             medulloblastoma and T98G glioma cells. Expression of PAX2 was then assessed in             two separate medulloblastoma tissue microarrays with a total of 61 patient samples             by immunohistochemistry. PAX2 expression was detected in the majority of medulloblastoma             samples and correlated with less differentiated histology. Therefore, PAX2 is             a biomarker for a more aggressive medulloblastoma phenotype and may represent             a novel therapeutic target.


Electronic government, or e-Government, has become a staple of local governments across the US. While nearly every large city has embraced this trend, the extent that small cities (less than 5000 population) have adopted e-Government practices is virtually unknown. The purpose of this research is to describe the patterns of adoption of electronic government (e-gov) by smaller municipalities in Central Texas. Governments at all levels should recognize the capability of e-Government to provide external and internal service channels (Layne and Lee 2001, 129). Small local governments face a dilemma due to lesser economies of scale and less demand for e-government from residents. However, an emerging population of digital natives increasingly views electronic access to and by government as both essential and a mark of competence (Welch 2005, 378). This research uses content analysis and a simple survey to assess the patterns of adoption of e-gov by the 36 municipalities in the Texas Capital Area Council of Governments area that range in population from 500 to 5000. It finds that small cities have high rates of adoption for electronic services (e-Services) and electronic administration (e-Administration). However, the rate of adoption of information and communications technologies to advance citizen empowerment (e-Democracy) is assessed as ―fair‖. Recommendations are included to authenticate official presence, increase transparency, and examine policies inhibiting local governments' responsiveness.


Traditional forms of communicating best practice disease state management do not adequately support appropriate prescribing in patients with complex needs, such as those with multi-morbidities or aged patients. An effective solution is the use of clinical decision support systems; however, currently available systems do not meet the needs of health professionals (HPs). We wished to evaluate whether HPs find the way in which an early-stage prototype delivers information is useful; however, during prototype development, articles defining fundamental elements of clinical decision support systems (CDSS) success, process model and data requirements were found to be widely dispersed and lacking. We describe a new CDSS prototype for healthcare information delivery tailored for health professional using the identified fundamental elements for success. Concepts described in this article could be used to as the foundation for other CDSS and to inform electronic medical record design.


As part of the wider exhibition programme Amongst Other Things which has occurred through hospitals in Edinburgh, Dr Anthony Schrag has been working with a group of Occupational Therapists (OTs) at the Western General Hospital during their lunch breaks to explore notions of 'identity'. The topic emerged from an understanding that the OT profession is not well understood, both within the hospital as well as more generally. As one of the participants writes; 'Working as an OT in an acute hospital can be stressful and busy. We regularly juggle our work with numerous patients, trying to recall many things about each person (diagnosis, family, home situation, concerns, assessment outcomes etc.). Taking part in this project with Artlink provided good headspace to reflect on my job and think about it in a different way.'


Wind waves in a lake have been observed to reflect from a barrier and to travel upwind for considerable distances. A model has been devised which provides a means of predicting the decay of these waves as a function of wind speed and direction with respect to the barrier. Two floating bridges across a deep lake have formed a convenient, full-scale test basin for the formation and observation of the reflected waves under a range of wind speeds and directions. Wave characteristics have been measured to a limited extent by photographic means, a portable wave probe and visually to provide seme verification of the results computed from the model. The measured and the predicted wave heights and the zones influenced by the waves were found to be in general qualitative agreement.


Stearic acid (18:0) is typically a minor component of soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] oil, accounting for only 2 to 4% of the total fatty acid content. Increasing stearic acid levels of soybean oil would lead to enhanced oxidative stability, potentially reducing the need for hydrogenation, a process leading to the formation of undesirable trans fatty acids. Although mutagenesis strategies have been successful in developing soybean germplasm with elevated 18:0 levels in the seed oil, the specifi c gene mutations responsible for this phenotype were not known. We report a newly identifi ed soybean gene, designated SACPD-C, that encodes a unique isoform of Δ 9 –stearoyl-ACP-desaturase, the enzyme responsible for converting stearic acid to oleic acid (18:1). High levels of SACPD-C transcript were only detected in developing seed tissue, suggesting that the encoded desaturase functions to enhance oleic acid biosynthetic capacity as the immature seed is actively engaged in triacylglycerol production and storage. The participation of SACPD-C in storage triacylglycerol synthesis is further supported by the observation of mutations in this gene in two independent sources of elevated 18:0 soybean germplasm, A6 (30% 18:0) and FAM94-41 (9% 18:0). A molecular marker diagnostic for the FAM94-41 SACPD-C gene mutation strictly associates with the elevated 18:0 phenotype in a segregating population, and could thus serve as a useful tool in the development of cultivars with oils possessing enhanced oxidative stability.


Historically the atmospheric and meteorological communities are separate worlds with their own data formats and tools for data handling making sharing of data difficult and cumbersome. On the other hand, these information sources are becoming increasingly of interest outside these communities because of the continuously improving spatial and temporal resolution of e.g. model and satellite data and the interest in historical datasets. New user communities that use geographically based datasets in a cross-domain manner are emerging. This development is supported by the progress made in Geographical Information System (GIS) software. The current GIS software is not yet ready for the wealth of atmospheric data, although the faint outlines of new generation software are already visible: support of HDF, NetCDF and an increasing understanding of temporal issues are only a few of the hints.


Abstract Member states of the United Nations (UN) agree that its development system needs substantial reform given its fragmentation and outdated structures, as well as new demands from the 2030 Agenda. Yet, a recent two-year reform process yielded no substantial reform decisions. Why did member states fail to endorse the necessary reforms despite almost unanimous recognition of the need for change? This paper describes member states' conflicting positions on reforming the UN and analyses their failure to delegate authority to the UN development system. North and South, donors and recipients, are locked in a struggle for power and control, maximising bilateral influence at the expense of the benefits of multilateral cooperation. The paper contributes to the pool of UN studies, adding a decidedly political perspective of the reform process. It is based on diplomatic statements, negotiation drafts and interviews with UN diplomats.


Introduction
The tubes in the image are held at an angle to demonstrate coagulation of the rabbit plasma after incubation of citrated rabbit plasma with cultures of Staphylococcus aureus (top tube) or Staphylococcus epidermidis (bottom tube). Note the slightly cloudy gel-like clot in the top tube containing the coagulase-positive organism. The plasma in the bottom tube containing the coagulase-negative organism does not stay near the bottom of the tube when held at an angle.
Methods
Bacterial cultures of S. aureus and S. epidermidis were incubated at 37oC for 16 hours in tryptic soy broth. One tenth milliliter of each culture was placed in a glass tube containing 0.4 ml of citrated rabbit plasma (Lampmire Biological Laboratories). Both tubes, one containing S. aureus and the other containing S. epidermidis, were incubated in a 37oC waterbath for 24 hours. The coagulase-positive organism, S. aureus, caused the plasma to form a clot in the tube (see top tube in image) whereas, the coagulase-negative organism, S. epidermidis, did not (see bottom tube in image). There are two types of coagulase produced by most strains of S. aureus, bound coagulase also called clumping factor and free coagulase. Bound coagulase is attached to the bacterial cell wall and can enzymatically convert fibrinogen in plasma to insoluble fibrin and cause the bacterial cells to clump. In this particular test clumping of the bacteria is not seen. This particular test is a better measure of the organism's ability to produce extracellular or free coagulase. Free coagulase reacts with a globulin plasma factor (coagulase-reacting factor) to form staphylothrombin. Staphylothrombin then catalyzes the breakdown of fibrinogen to insoluble fibrin. The insoluble fibrin then forms the clot that is seen in the top tube in the image. The tubes were held at an angle and the image was obtained with an Olympus C-3040 3.3-megapixel digital camera.
Discussion
S. aureus
is a common cause of skin (impetigo, boils, carbuncles, and folliculitis), soft tissue (cellulitis), bone (osteomyelitis), and joint
(septic arthritis)
infections . This species of Staphylococcus can also cause a number of toxin-mediated human illnesses such as food poisoning, scalded skin syndrome, and toxic shock syndrome. There are several other staphylococcal species that colonize the human. These species of Staphylococcus are less commonly associated with human disease but are frequent contaminants in samples taken from skin and soft tissue lesions. The coagulase test is one way to differentiate the highly pathogenic S. aureus from the other less pathogenic staphylococcal species on the human body. S. aureus is a coagulase-positive organism whereas all the other staphylococcal species that colonize humans are coagulase negative

References
1.
Berke, A., and
R. C.

Tilton.
1986. Evaluation of rapid coagulase methods for the identification of Staphylococcus aureus. J Clin. Microbiol. 23
:916–919.

2.
Kloos, W. E., and
K. H.
Schleifer.
1975. Simplified scheme for routine identification of human Staphylococcus species. J. Clin. Microbiol. 1:82–88.

3.
Murray, P. R., K. S. Rosenthal, and M. A. Pfaller.
2009. Staphylococcus and related gram-positive cocci, p. 211–214. In P. R. Murray, K. S. Rosenthal, and M. A. Pfaller (ed.), Medical microbiology, 6th ed. Mosby Elsevier Publishers, Philadelphia, PA.
4.
Yrios, J. W.
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 Comparison of rabbit and pig plasma in the tube coagulase test.
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5

:221–224.


Purpose of the Forum

The Soil Health Research Forum will provide participants with the opportunity to:

Learn about most recent research findings addressing soil health in Ontario topics and discuss finding soil health solutions for enhanced agricultural environmental sustainability.
Discuss accelerating Ontario's capacity while meeting future challenges.
Connect with researchers, industry, government and others who are finding solutions to increase soil health in the agricultural landscape.
Explore opportunities through networking and share strategic ideas on building Ontario's research and innovation strengths, opportunities and alliances.
Be inspired by up and coming researchers and innovators in Ontario.


Various experimental and theoretical studies on the supersonic flutter of circular cylindrical shells are discussed. Results of experiments in the Mach number range 2.5 - 3.5 are presented. Three shells with radius-to-thickness ratios of 2,000 were subjected to radial external pressure loadings and to combinations of axial compressive loading and internal pressurization while in the presence of an external axially-directed supersonic flow. Small amounts of internal pressurization were very stabilizing with respect to flutter, but moderate amounts reduced stability to the unpressurized level. However, high internal pressures completely stabilized the shells. The axial compressive loading was slightly destabilizing for moderate amounts of internal pressurization. The flutter modes (which were standing waves in the axial direction with zero, one or two circumferential nodal lines) contained many waves around the circumference (of the order of 20) that travelled in the circumferential direction. This circumferentially travelling wave phenomenon possibly results from the nonlinear nature of cylindrical shells. Model integrity was not threatened by even the most violent flutter which occurred just prior to buckling under radial external pressure loading and just after buckling under axial compressive loading. Buckled portions of a shell did not flutter. It appears that the large local curvatures encountered in the buckling of a cylindrical shell tend to stabilize the shell locally. However, it also appears that the localized buckling usually encountered in practice reduces the stability of any unbuckled regions of the shell. The experimental flutter boundaries are compared with various theoretical predictions. Following Voss a modal analysis which satisfies the so-called freely supported shell boundary conditions is used in conjunction with different aerodynamic approximations - namely piston theory and the potential theory of Leonard and Hedgepeth. It was found that the pressurized cylindrical shells fluttered at a lower level of free stream energy than predicted by the theory. Of the two results, that using piston theory appears to correspond closest to the experiment both in stability boundary and in critical values of circumferential wave number. Both predictions yield a larger stabilizing influence of the shell internal pressure than observed in the experiment. An analysis is presented for calculating the final limiting amplitudes of flutter based on a two-mode, piston theory approximation. A Galerkin procedure is used to reduce the nonlinear shallow shell equations of Marguerre to two coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations for the modal amplitudes. An approximate limit cycle solution to these equations is obtained by the method of Krylov and Bogoliubov. The results indicate that for practical purposes cylindrical shell flutter does not occur below the stability boundary for infinitesimal disturbances. The limit cycle amplitudes predicted by this analysis seem to agree very well with the experimental ones. The results further indicate that the flutter amplitude, frequency and mode shape should change discontinuously (or jump) as the aerodynamic pressure is increased beyond the value for first flutter.


The decades following the end of the Cold War have witnessed the growing proliferation of international regulatory institutions with overlapping jurisdictions and ambiguous boundaries. Practicing jurists have expressed concern about the effects of this increased fragmentation of international law, but for the most part international legal theorists have tended to dismiss such concerns as unwarranted. Indeed, many regard the resulting competition for influence among institutions as a generative, market-like pluralism that has produced more progress toward integration and democratization than could ever have been achieved through more formal means. In this essay we argue that the problem of fragmentation is more serious than it is commonly assumed to be and also more resistant to reform by the various decentralized mechanisms that operate in international law such as governmental networks. Fragmentation's resistance to reform stems from the fact that it is only partly the accidental byproduct of broad social forces such as globalization. It also represents an ongoing effort on the part of powerful states to preserve their dominance in an era in which hierarchy is increasingly viewed as illegitimate, and to reduce their accountability both domestically and internationally. Fragmentation accomplishes this in three ways. First, by creating institutions along narrow functionalist lines and restricting the scope of multilateral agreements, it limits the opportunities that weaker actors have to build the cross-issue coalitions that are necessary to increase their bargaining power and influence. Second, the ambiguous boundaries and overlapping authority created by fragmentation dramatically increase the transaction costs that international legal bodies must incur in trying to reintegrate or rationalize the resulting legal order. Third, by suggesting the absence of design and obscuring the role of intentionality, fragmentation frees powerful states from having to assume responsibility for the shortcomings of a global legal system that they themselves have played a preponderant role in creating. The result is a regulatory order that both reflects powerful state interests and that only they can alter.


Copper is generally assumed to be immune to corrosion by water itself. However, this is not supported by any scientific experimental evidence. Corrosion results from 15 years of exposure are presented here. A transition from O 2-consuming to H 2-evolving copper corrosion is concluded, which implies that copper can corrode by water itself. The complex corrosion product contains hydrogen. We have also measured a hydrogen uptake in the copper metal as a result of metallic copper corrosion by water which implies a sample thickness dependence on hydrogen uptake. The results are described in terms of autoionisation of water which offers an explanation why copper corrosion can take place in pure O 2-free water.


This article presents a model of the corporate management system within the framework of the cluster approach, developed by the example of production enterprises of the Lipetsk region. The article analyzes theoretical approaches to defining the essence and content of the concept of cluster and analyzes the main participants of a territorial-production cluster by the example of the Lipetsk region. The cluster approach to forming the company's corporate strategies assumes the realization of a way of creating and developing cluster formations in the region with the purpose of increasing the value of the company participating in the cluster. The article presents an algorithm for selecting the method of implementation of the corporate management system in creating company value.


The portrait of the 18th and 19th century "Estonian patient" sketched in this article is a theoretical model of the ill person, based mainly on literary texts, but with reference to a variety of scientific and popular-scientific material. The point of departure is the classic postcolonial theorist, Frantz Fanon, in whose writings medicine, healing, and discourse on such topics are seen as the functioning of a specific colonial practice. The most notable characteristic of the figure of the Estonian patient is non-communicativeness. Communication is avoided and feared primarily because it has to be directed toward those in higher positions of power, or to institutions that embody power (the apothecary, the hospital). While these traits also characterize the separation between peasants and their rulers more generally, in a situation of illness the exclusion is felt with a double intensity. Sickness casts the peasant in a double bind: when in need of help or healing, contact across the divide between social rank, and – more broadly, between two cultures and ways of understanding the world, becomes unavoidable. In such situations, illness signifies an intensification of the gap in social standing. The ill person, who already stands on a lower rung of the social hierarchy, becomes all the more marginalized. In keeping with these observations, the real reason behind indecisiveness and refusal of medical treatment may well be an effort to avoid or postpone humiliation on the basis of lower social standing. Other contributing factors might include unconscious resistance – or even a conscious model of resistance – in the psyche, which manifests as an avoidance of communication. The content and motivating force for the model is not heroism, but rather a sense of shame. Indeed, behind the context of medical culture lurks ethnic and material isolation. The individual's economic situation, living conditions, education and – most important – his or her bodily state, become shamefully humiliating when exposed to a stranger's gaze. Practical aspects of communication are strongly bound to the problem of language barriers – knowledge of a foreign language as well as the "language" of science. The patient is expected to be competent in speaking a language foreign to him, as well as able to orient himself or herself with respect to scientific procedures and discourses. This is a biased, colonial interaction, which brings to light differences in understandings of healing (scientific medicine vs. folk medicine); these in turn expose the patient's educational "backwardness" and the physician's mode of expression, compounded of his profession and his social standing. The Estonian patient of the 18th and 19th centuries encounters a matrix of different understandings of illness, including the scientific approaches of urban society, village folk medicine, as well as the Christian idea of the inexorable "will of God." The patient finds himself in a situation that Frantz Fanon designates as double power: the ill person's body and consciousness have become "a battleground for different and opposing forces." This situation indubitably creates fear that surrounds illness and treatment, which in turn contributes to indecisiveness and the postponement of treatment. The study of cultural narratives of illness also permits the observation of contradictions in the humanistic rhetoric of help and its modes of representation. Illness is a test case for the conditions and relations in the 19th century Estonian agrarian society based on dominance and submission. When speaking of illness, writers speak as representatives of an institution or discourse (eg a higher or lower standing, medical knowledge, anti-German sentiment). The ambivalent nature of illness adds to the complexity of this discursive situation. No one would argue against getting help or getting well, but these entail turning oneself over to a "stranger's" power, thus surrendering to a process of adjustment fraught with dilemmas. In the course of this process, that which has been considered one's "own" for centuries is vulnerable to loss.


This Research Note examines two telephone polls (2007, 2011) and three Internet polls (2016) to track opinionsof U.S. Muslims relating to the war on terrorism. Results indicate that a small but consistent minority (five to tenpercent) justify suicide bombing of civilians in defense of Islam, while those seeing the war on terrorism as a war on Islam have declined from more than half to about a third. This decline coincided with a decline in perception of discrimination against Muslims in the U.S., and correlational results confirm that perceived discriminationis one source of seeing the war on terrorism as a war on Islam. Other results from both the Pew and Internetpolls show that disapproval of U.S. foreign policies affecting Muslims also contributes to seeing a war on Islam.Discussion emphasizes the value of Internet polling for tracking shifts in the opinions of U.S. Muslims, but acknowledges that polling has not yet discovered what is different about the small minority who justify suicide bombing.


Objective: Depression risk increases during the menopausal transition (MT) and initial postmenopausal years—both times of significant fluctuations of estrogen. Research to date provides limited support for the hypothesis that estrogen fluctuations play a role in the greater susceptibility to midlife depression. Importantly, not all women report depressive symptoms during the MT, and recent reports suggest that duration of exposure to estradiol throughout the adult years may also play a role in vulnerability to depression. This study examines patterns of estrogen exposure during the reproductive years and risk of depression during the MT and early postmenopausal years. Methods: A longitudinal, US community-based, multiethnic study of menopause. Data were collected at baseline and annually for 10 years, and included 1,306 regularly menstruating premenopausal women, aged 42 to 52 years at study entry. The main outcome was incidence of high level of depressive symptoms, Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) score at least 16, in the MT and initial postmenopausal years, independent of premenopausal depression symptoms. Risk factors examined were duration of estrogen exposure (menarche to MT), duration of hormonal birth control use, pregnancies, and lactation. Results: In a multivariate adjusted model, longer duration of estrogen exposure from menarche to MT onset was significantly associated with a reduced risk of depression (CES-D ≥16) during the MT and 10 years or less postmenopause (odds ratio 0.85, 95% confidence interval 0.78-0.92). Longer duration of birth control use was associated with a decreased risk of CES-D at least 16 (odds ratio 0.90, 95% confidence interval 0.83-0.98), but number of pregnancies or breastfeeding was not. Conclusions: Patterns of reproductive lifetime exposure to estrogen are associated with risk of high depressive symptoms during the MT and initial postmenopausal years; longer exposure to estrogen seemed protective.