The cell membrane protects the delicate internal machinery of the cell and hosts a complex transport system for ion exchange with the environment. Energy is continually expended to maintain a transmembrane electrical potential of about 80 mV.   Low extracellular potassium leads to some interesting dynamics that elucidate mechanisms for energy expenditure and survival. As the extracellular potassium concentration, K e , is lowered, the transmembrane potential hyperpolarizes. But at a certain point in decreasing K e , a switch to a depolarized state occurs. A switch back to the hyperpolarized state occurs when again increasing the K e , but this switch occurs at a higher K e than the one at which the switch to depolarization occurred. So there is an apparent hysteresis.   In a system of ion pumps, ion channels, and ion transporters the flows of sodium, potassium, and chloride are tightly coupled. A model is set up involving the most relevant components in the ion transport. The model reproduces the observed hysteresis and can quantitatively account for the change in location and size of the hysteresis loop when an important chloride transporter is blocked or stimulated.   The switching points in the hysteresis loop occur when inward rectifying potassium channels (IRKs) close or open. Adding isoprenaline opens other potassium channels and makes the IRK contribution negligible. After also neglecting the role of chloride, the fixed potassium permeability leads to a system that can be analytically solved. Expressions are derived for the position and the size of the hysteresis loop. The expressions agree with experimental data and provide insight into the evolutionary origin of the IRKs. The membrane's freezing temperature is just slightly below physiological temperatures. At the freezing transition the membrane exhibits increased ion permeability. The increased permeability comes in the form of quantized bursts similar to those of ion channel currents. The currents through a pure membrane near the phase transition are measured and analyzed. Power laws are found, and the power spectral density of the current signal appears to follow a 1/ f pattern. A theoretical basis for this behavior is formulated and a physical explanation is proposed. Biological significance is discussed.


Two suites of granitoids, the Late Jurassic (158 ± 3 Ma) Linglong suite and the Early Cretaceous (130–126 Ma) Guojialing suite, crop out in the northwestern Jiaodong Peninsula, eastern China. The Linglong suite is a monzogranite, comprising alkali feldspar, plagioclase, quartz and Fe-rich biotite. The Guojialing suite includes at least five plutonic bodies of both granodiorite and monzo-granite. The rocks are composed of plagioclase, alkali feldspar, quartz, Mg-rich amphibole and Mg-rich biotite. Both the Linglong and Guojialing suites have adakitic affinity. They are enriched in LREE with high La/Yb ratios and show positive Eu anomalies. The rocks are also enriched in LILE and depleted in HFSE with high Sr/Y ratios. The Linglong granite shows very uniform Sr–Nd isotopic compositions with initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.7119–0.7126 and εNd (T) values of −21.3 to −21.6, which are similar to those of the local Neoarchaean basement. The Guojialing suite has variable initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios (0.7108–0.7120) and εNd (T) values (−10.8 to −17.2), which are distinct both from those of the Neoarchaean basement and from those of the local enriched lithospheric mantle inferred from the coeval mafic dykes in the studied area. Detailed petrological and geochemical data indicate that the Linglong suite was derived by partial melting of Neoarchaean metamorphic lower-crustal rocks at depth of > 50 km with a eclogite residue, whereas the Guojialing suite was formed by the reaction of delaminated eclogitic crust-derived melt with the upwelling asthenospheric mantle. The petrogenesis of these two contrasting adakitic granitoids suggests intensive lower-crustal delamination during Early Cretaceous times, following a crustal thickening process from the late stage of the Early Jurassic to early stage of the Late Jurassic with crustal thickness of < 32 km to > 50 km, respectively.


The study on the physical and chemical properties of 28 samples of commercial
transparent soap provided valuable information that could be used as a guideline in
the preparation of palmbased transparent soap formulation. Most of the commercial
transparent soaps had good transparency (above 0.8) with a moderate total f%Iy
matter of between 40% and 60%. They were mostly superfatted products and showed
good foamability and hardness with a penetration value of less than 5 mm
Differences in titer, acid and iodine values affected the ability of different palm
based fatty acid in accepting the amount of sodium salt into soap formulation and the
hardness property. The proper combination of triethanolarnine, glycerol and sugar
solution played an important role in determining the transparency, hardness,
foamability and moisture content of the soap produced. Transparent soap bar made
from blends of distilled palm stearin fatty acid with ricinoleic acid wvered a wide
range of acceptability for triethanolamine (20-90%) with low amount of sugar solution (less than 30%) and less than 70% of glycerol. However, in blends of
distilled palm oil fatty acid-based soap with ricinoleic acid, the transparerrt soap
region ranged between 40% and 80% triethanolamine, less than 40% of glycerol and
between 20% to 50% of sugar solution Both blends of distilled palm htty acid-based
transparent soap had transparency reading above 0.8 and penetration value of less
than 8 nun with the majority of moisture content of soap fklling between 15% and
20%. In the region of low percentage of triethanolamine (OO/i-20%) with 80-100% of
glycerol and sugar solution used, both distilled palm htty acids used in soap
formulation produced soft and gummy opaque soap.
Lipase-catalysed acidolysis is a vital tool to tailor-make refined, bleached and
deodorised palm oil (RBD palm oil) enriched with ricinoleic acid (RA). Lipozyme
IM60 lipase performed better (12.33% FWD4 hours) than Pseudomnas sp iipase
(2.59% RN24 hours) as it was able to incorporate more ricinoleic acid into RBD
palm oil at a shorter time. The alteration in trigly-de composition of acidolysed oil
had led to the changes in their slip melting point, iodine value, solid fat content,
crystallisation and melting behaviour and also the viscosity of the acidolysed oil
produced.
The differences in sodium salt content used in different fatEy raw material-based soap
formulation had caused an effect on the transparency, tow fatty matter, penetration
value, chloride content and foamability of soap d e . In general, the presence of
ricinoleic acid in the blends of distilled palm oil fatty acid soap, blends of distilled
palm stearin fatty acid soap and acidolysed oil-based soap assisted in improving the soap transparency, especially when high mtenfs of sodium salt were used in the
soap fmulatioa


The green wave of sustainability is getting bigger everyday and as consumers' awareness is increasing so are their demands for socio-environmental responsibility. That is the scenario the Brazilian building sector, one of the world´s biggest polluters, must face in order to continue developing. The expected investment for the next 4 years in this sector is more than US$ 165 billion in order to deal with the over $6 million housing units deficit and the growing demand due to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic games. This paper aims to present the Brazilian building sector situation towards the sustainability context and the challenges it must face to succeed. Workforce qualification, partnerships among actors, search for continuous innovation and competition, a performance-based legal and regulation framework and constant investments are the main challenges – and tools – to overcome the obstacles towards the sustainability goal.


21st Century Management provides an authoritative insight into the key issues for students in college or on corporate courses with a particular emphasis on the current structure of the topic in the literature, key threads of discussion and research on the topic as well as emerging trends. This resource will assist lecturers in structuring exciting and meaningful papers and presentations that will engage and enthuse their classes. 21st Century Management provides an authoritative reference source that serves students' research needs with more detailed information than encyclopedia entries but not as much jargon, detail or density as a journal article or a research handbook chapter. It also assists readers in deciding on management areas to take elective coursework in or areas to orient themselves towards for a career, Throughout, the book looks at topics through the prisms of globalization and new information technologies, so issues such as remote leadership are explained. Ethical and ecological approaches to topics such as entrepreneurship reflect cutting-edge interest.This valuable resource: " Addresses the post-9//11 context and associated security and crisis management issues " Offers insights into 21st century business issues such as excessive work and outsourcing " Discusses diversity including gender, ethnic and age " Includes issues of managing non-profit arts, medical sports and philanthropic organizations in the 21st century. " " A free online Teaching Resource Guide, available through the SAGE website, provides suggested teaching and learning activities for each chapter to help instructors tie the content of the handbook to courses within the business and management curriculum. The guide provides suggested lecture ideas, homework assignments, ideas for in-class case studies or workshops, team assignments and more.


Argumentation-based negotiation (ABN) is gaining increasing importance as a fundamental method of interaction in multi-agent systems. In essence, ABN enhances the ways agents can interact within a negotiation encounter. In particular, it allows agents to justify their demands, criticise each others' proposals, and add comments to their statements during a negotiation encounter. Furthermore, ABN gives them the capability to exchange explicit arguments, such as promises, threats, appeals, and other forms of persuasive locutions, to influence one another during a negotiation dialogue. Such enhancements lead to richer forms of negotiation than have hitherto been possible in game-theoretic or heuristic-based models. Therefore, many argue that endowing the agents with the ability to argue during their negotiation interactions, not only facilitates more realistic rational dialogues, but also allows an effective means of resolving different forms of conflicts endemic to multi-agent societies. Even though ABN is argued to be an effective means of resolving conflicts, its operation within multi-agent systems incurs certain computational overheads. In particular, it takes time for an agent to argue and convince an opponent to change its demands and yield to a less favourable agreement within an ABN encounter. It also takes computational effort for both parties of the conflict to carry out the necessary reasoning required to generate, select, and evaluate an appropriate and a convincing set of arguments required for such an encounter. On the other hand, within a multi-agent society, not all conflicts need to be resolved. In some instances conflicts can be avoided by other nonarguing means. For instance, in certain situations agents may be able to avoid conflicts by finding an alternative resource to achieve their actions instead of arguing over a conflicting one. They also may be able to re-plan to achieve the same objective through a different means and, thereby, remove the conflict without argument. In the presence of such overheads and given the alternatives available, this thesis argues that computationally bounded entities such as agents need to consider two critical questions before they use ABN to manage their conflicts. First is when to argue; that is, under what conditions would ABN, as opposed to other non-arguing methods, present a better option for agents to overcome conflicts. Second is how to argue; that is, a computationally tractable method and a set of strategies to successfully formulate such sophisticated ABN dialogues. To this end, this thesis forwards a detailed theoretical and empirical study to address both these research questions. In more detail, first we formulate a novel ABN framework that allows agents to argue, negotiate and, thereby, resolve conflicts in structured multi-agent systems. The framework is unique in the way that it explicitly captures social influences endemic to such agent societies and, in turn, allows agents to use them constructively in their ABN dialogues. Having formulated the framework, we then map it into the computational context of a multi-agent task allocation scenario. In so doing, we bridge the gap between theory and practice and provide a test-bed to evaluate how our ABN model can be used to manage and resolve conflicts in multi-agent societies. Our experimental analysis on when to argue shows a clear inverse correlation between the benefit of arguing and the resources available within the context. It also shows that arguing selectively is both a more efficient and a more effective strategy than doing so in an exhaustive manner. Furthermore, we show that when agents operate under imperfect knowledge conditions, an arguing approach allows them to perform more effectively than a non-arguing one. On the issue of how to argue, we show that arguing earlier in an ABN interaction presents a more efficient method than arguing later in the interaction. Moreover, during an ABN interaction, allowing agents to negotiate their social influences presents both an effective and an efficient method which will enhance their performance within a society.


Novelty detection is a method which highlights unusual data gathered from an environment. The use of novelty detection on a mobile system is an attractive idea. An important aspect of an intelligent robot is the ability to monitor changes as this is one of the important capabilities that are possessed by all biological systems. There are many applications that could benefit from this such as surveillance and inspection applications. However, there are also challenges that arise from implementing novelty detection on a mobile platform. One of them is the problem of mapping sensor measurements that are normally perceived (normal data) from the environment. Most conventional maps require some prior information about the environment to construct their structure, thus they are not readily adaptable to any environment. They also require a large amount of storage space and consequently require similar processing capability,' and consume more power which as a whole constrains the design and size of the mobile system.
This thesis presents an alternative mapping system for storing and learning normal data in the environment namely the flexible region mapping system. Its structure can change to accommodate the distribution of normal data. As a result, data are mapped where they are measured and according to the size of the affected area. This thesis also investigates approaches for reducing false positives and to estimate the position of anomalous objects by taking advantage of the system's mobility. A close range inspection strategy has also been developed to demonstrate
how an autonomous mobile robot could use the results of novelty detection to perform further investigation of anomalous objects. The work in this thesis has been targeted to be applicable to any mobile systems that could localized themselves, particularly those that have limited
resources in terms of data storage, physical size, processing power and power supply. The solution of mapping normal sensor measurements that is demonstrated in this thesis is most suitable for structured environments but it could be extended to more complex environments.
Experiments were conducted in an artificial L-shaped environment as well as m a real office corridor. A mobile robot that carries different types of sensors particularly a laser range finder, an anemometer, a temperature sensor, an ambient light sensor, a chemical concentration sensor and an electromagnetic radiation sensor was used. The results show that the flexible region map used as few as 0.7% and 3.3% of the storage space required for a conventional grid map and a perception based map. The map can autonomously accommodate to changes in the normal
condition of the environment. The implementation of the false positive filter developed in this thesis reduces the false positive rate by up to 20% compared to the unfiltered novelty detection results, when using noisy sensors at the highest sensitivity settings. Apart from that, the close range inspection strategy is shown to be capable of achieving up to I 00% close range inspection coverage near the vicinity of an anomaly.


Background With low and markedly seasonal malaria transmission, increasingly sensitive tools for better stratifying the risk of infection and targeting control interventions are needed. A cross-sectional survey to characterize the current malaria transmission patterns, identify hotspots, and detect recent changes using parasitological and serological measures was conducted in three sites of the Peruvian Amazon. Material and Methods After full census of the study population, 651 participants were interviewed, clinically examined and had a blood sample taken for the detection of malaria parasites (microscopy and PCR) and antibodies against P. vivax (PvMSP119, PvAMA1) and P. falciparum (PfGLURP, PfAMA1) antigens by ELISA. Risk factors for malaria infection (positive PCR) and malaria exposure (seropositivity) were assessed by multivariate survey logistic regression models. Age-specific seroprevalence was analyzed using a reversible catalytic conversion model based on maximum likelihood for generating seroconversion rates (SCR, λ). SaTScan was used to detect spatial clusters of serology-positive individuals within each site. Results The overall parasite prevalence by PCR was low, i.e. 3.9% for P. vivax and 6.7% for P. falciparum, while the seroprevalence was substantially higher, 33.6% for P. vivax and 22.0% for P. falciparum, with major differences between study sites. Age and location (site) were significantly associated with P. vivax exposure; while location, age and outdoor occupation were associated with P. falciparum exposure. P. falciparum seroprevalence curves showed a stable transmission throughout time, while for P. vivax transmission was better described by a model with two SCRs. The spatial analysis identified well-defined clusters of P. falciparum seropositive individuals in two sites, while it detected only a very small cluster of P. vivax exposure. Conclusion The use of a single parasitological and serological malaria survey has proven to be an efficient and accurate method to characterize the species specific heterogeneity in malaria transmission at micro-geographical level as well as to identify recent changes in transmission.


The orbital structure of the asteroid belt holds a record of the solar system's dynamical history. The current belt only contains ∼10−3 Earth masses yet the asteroids' orbits are dynamically excited, with a large spread in eccentricity and inclination. In the context of models of terrestrial planet formation, the belt may have been excited by Jupiter's orbital migration. The terrestrial planets can also be reproduced without invoking a migrating Jupiter; however, as it requires a severe mass deficit beyond Earth's orbit, this model systematically under-excites the asteroid belt. Here we show that the orbits of the asteroids may have been excited to their current state if Jupiter's and Saturn's early orbits were chaotic. Stochastic variations in the gas giants' orbits cause resonances to continually jump across the main belt and excite the asteroids' orbits on a timescale of tens of millions of years. While hydrodynamical simulations show that the gas giants were likely in mean motion resonance at the end of the gaseous disk phase, small perturbations could have driven them into a chaotic but stable state. The gas giants' current orbits were achieved later, during an instability in the outer solar system. Although it is well known that the present-day solar system exhibits chaotic behavior, our results suggest that the early solar system may also have been chaotic.


On 25 December 1989 the largest earthquake ( MS 6.3) in northern Quebec in at least 60 yr occurred in the Ungava Peninsula. This earthquake was unique in that it marked the first time surface faulting could be confirmed for a historical eastern North American earthquake. Field observations indicated a combination of thrust and strike-slip motion. Waveforms modeled in this study show that the earthquake consisted of two subevents—a thrust subevent on a NE-SW striking plane followed by a larger strike-slip subevent on a NNE-SSW striking plane. The surface waves give an equivalent double-couple moment of 1.3 × 1025 dyne cm. The sum of the subevent moments is greater than the simple source moment by almost a factor of 2. Both subevents occurred at a depth of 3 km. They were separated by 0.9 sec in time with the second subevent occurring 5.2 km southwest of the first. The source parameters determined by modeling and those inferred from the ground observations generally agree, but there are some differences with respect to the subevent offset. These may be reconciled if the strike-slip motion was distributed among the several small faults at the southwestern end of the rupture or if the complete surface rupture was not found. The stress orientation (NW compression) inferred from the fault plane solution is consistent with the focal mechanisms of many other recent northeastern Canadian events. The Ungava earthquake and many intraplate events from several continents share a number of characteristics, including shallow hypocenters, source complexity, and occurrence on faults that showed no evidence for previous ruptures.


Due to the aperture problem, the initial direction of tracking responses to a translating bar is biased towards the direction orthogonal to the bar. This observation offers a powerful way to explore the interactions between retinal and extraretinal signals in controlling our actions. We conducted two experiments to probe these interactions by briefly (200 and 400 ms) blanking the moving target (45° or 135° tilted bar) during steady state (Experiment 1) and at different moments during the early phase of pursuit (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we found a marginal but statistically significant directional bias on target reappearance for all subjects in at least one blank condition (200 or 400 ms). In Experiment 2, no systematic significant directional bias was observed at target reappearance after a blank. These results suggest that the weighting of retinal and extraretinal signals is dynamically modulated during the different phases of pursuit. Based on our previous theoretical work on motion integration, we propose a new closed-loop two-stage recurrent Bayesian model where retinal and extraretinal signals are dynamically weighted based on their respective reliabilities and combined to compute the visuomotor drive. With a single free parameter, the model reproduces many aspects of smooth pursuit observed across subjects during and immediately after target blanking. It provides a new theoretical framework to understand how different signals are dynamically combined based on their relative reliability to adaptively control our actions. Overall, the model and behavioral results suggest that human subjects rely more strongly on prediction during the early phase than in the steady state phase of pursuit.


BACKGROUND Exhaled levels of nitric oxide (NO) are raised in asthma but the relationship between exhaled NO levels and a direct measure of airway inflammation has not been investigated in asthmatic patients treated with inhaled steroids. METHODS The relationship between exhaled NO levels, clinical measures of asthma control, and direct markers of airway inflammation were studied in patients with asthma treated with and without inhaled corticosteroids. Thirty two asthmatic patients (16 not using inhaled steroids and 16 using inhaled beclomethasone dipropionate, 400–1000 μg/day) were monitored with respect to measures of asthma control including lung function, symptom scores, medication usage, and variability of peak expiratory flow (PEF) for one month. Measurements of exhaled NO and fibreoptic bronchoscopy were performed at the end of the monitoring period. Bronchial mucosal biopsy specimens were stained with an anti-MBP antibody for quantification of eosinophils. RESULTS There was no significant difference in lung function, symptom scores, or medication usage between the two groups, but there was a significant difference in PEF variability (8.7 (1.2)% in steroid naive patients versus 13.6 (1.9)% in steroid treated patients, p<0.05) and exhaled NO levels (9.9 (3.5) ppb in steroid naive patients versus 13.6 (2.0) ppb in steroid treated patients, p<0.05). There was no correlation between exhaled NO and mucosal eosinophils, or between NO and conventional measures of asthma control. There was a significant correlation between mucosal eosinophils and lung function (r = –0.43, p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS Exhaled NO levels do not reflect airway mucosal eosinophilia and these markers reflect different aspects of airway inflammation. The clinical usefulness of exhaled NO needs to be determined in prospective longitudinal studies.


Atrial distension, which stimulates atrial natriuretic peptide secretion by atrial myocytes, also stretches nonmuscle cells. In a noncontracting in vitro preparation of combined right and left atria we demonstrated by electron microscopy that, at 37 degrees C, transition from zero pressure to a physiological distending pressure of 5.1 mm Hg rapidly rendered atrial endocardial endothelium permeable to the macromolecular probes horseradish peroxidase (HRP; M(r), approximately 40,000) and wheat germ agglutinin-HRP (M(r), approximately 70,000); each probe was introduced at the atrial cavitary endocardial surface. Stretch-dependent permeabilization was also demonstrable in spontaneously contracting atria, was reversed by removing the distending pressure, and was unaffected by varying external Ca2+ concentration from 0.2 to 1.4 mM or by experimental perturbations that markedly decrease ANP secretory rates. Although transendocardial HRP and wheat germ agglutinin-HRP passage required stretch, native ferritin (M(r), = 500,000) could traverse unstretched endocardium. Probes were detected in noncoated endocardial vesicles and intercellular junctions between endocardial cells, but the relative contributions of vesicular transcytosis and paracellular diffusion could not be determined. Although HRP entered plasmalemmal caveolae of myocytes in stretched atria, myocytes did not internalize HRP by fluid-phase endocytosis. Distending pressure also caused apparent flow reversal in thebesian blood vessels, with retrograde transfer of HRP across the endocardium into the myocardium. HRP and ferritin presented at the external surface of the epicardium (visceral pericardium) were endocytosed by mesothelial cells, entered junctions between mesothelial cells, and readily crossed the epicardium of both stretched and unstretched preparations.


Service discovery technologies are exploited to enable services to advertise their existence in a dynamic way, and can be discovered, configured and used by other devices with minimum manual efforts. It plays an essential role in future network scenarios especially with development of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) and emergence of pervasive computing. Because MANET allows these devices to communicate dynamically without fixed infrastructure and centralized administration, it gives rise to the challenges of the service discovery techniques. In this paper, we present a dynamic service discovery infrastructure that uses XML to describe services and match using the semantic content of service descriptions for MANET. We believe that the architecture we have designed is a necessary component of service discovery in non-infrastructure network by further exploring the secure and performance issues of this infrastructure.


Title of the Article: Placental Morphometry in Post-Partum Mother with Anemia Context: Anemia in pregnancy affects the abnormality of the placenta, thereby causing a decrease in placental function. Babies born with an abnormal placenta carry a risk of developing arterial blockage, heart failure, hypertension, and cancer in the future. Aims: Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the correlation between anemia in the third trimester of pregnancy and placental morphometry. Method: A total of 44 placentas from pregnant women with anemia and no anemia were selected by consecutive sampling techniques. The placentas were measured directly in weight, diameter, thickness, surface area, length of the umbilical cord, and the shape of the placenta. The measurement results were tested with Pearson correlation and Rank Spearman, while the placenta shape was tested by Chi-square. Result: As many as 75% of pregnant women experience anemia in the third trimester, by most of the placenta has normal weight and thickness, the diameter and length of the umbilical cord are all normal, and the size is mostly oval. The weight of placenta (p = 0.000), thickness of the placenta (p = 0.023), surface area of the placenta (p = 0.000) and diameter of the placenta (p = 0.000) have a correlation with anemia in pregnant women. Umbilical cord length (p = 0.872) means that it has no correlation with anemia in pregnant women. All of them have a direction of the correlation (r) negative. Statistical analysis used: The test is carried out at a significance level (α) of 95%. Placenta shape (p = 1.00) meaning that it has no correlation with anemia in pregnant women, OR = 0.939 (95%, CI = 0.861-1.024). Conclusion: The condition of anemia in third-trimester pregnant women has correlation with the weight, thickness, surface area, and diameter of the placenta but has no correlation with the length of the umbilical cord and the shape of the placenta.


This is a unique book in its field, in which no serious academic research has been published. (See the small pamphlet 'The Draped Figure', Cecil Gould, National Gallery London, 1952.)
Using material from fine art, photography, sculpture, dress, and film, the research is informed by concepts drawn from psychoanalysis, women's studies, Marxism, postcolonial theory and cultural studies.

Primary research was carried out in archival collections in Paris, including the Bibliotheque Doucet, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Musee Rodin, Musee de l'Homme, the Bibliotheque du Film, and the Musee de la Mode et du Textile. I interviewed important contemporary artists working with cloth and drapery e.g. Alison Watt, Liz Rideal. The research and the publication were supported by a grant from the AHRC.

Keynote lectures drawn from this research were delivered at the National Gallery, and at the Ionian Centre in Athens (as part of a conference and exhibition Ptychoseis=Folds+Pleats during the Cultural Olympiad June 2004). In addition I curated an exhibition to accompany the book at The City Gallery, Leicester, 2002 'Fold: Drapery in Contemporary Art', (exhibition and catalogue supported by regional arts lottery funding). Artists included Helen Chadwick, James Welling, Yve Lomax, Zineb Sedira, Ali Zaidi. I co-organised an international conference (with Professor Alison Yarrington) at the National Gallery London, 'Drapery in Visual Culture: Contexts, Clothing, Corporealities', 30-31.8.2002. This was supported by The British Academy and the National Gallery. Internationally known artists (including Lia Cook and Liz Rideal) and scholars presented research papers.

Reviewed in The Guardian Saturday Review 2.2.2002 p.13 "amazingly pertinent", "fascinating", and in 'Textile' vol.1 no1, 2003, pp204-8 "…one is left with admiration at the skill and ambition of the author ... One can only recommend this publication to writers, makers and art historians…"


Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is a major acute complication in diabetes. The acute coronary syndrome is a risk factor for DKA with a higher associated mortality rate. Also diabetic mellitus is a high risk factor to acute coronary syndrome. Thus, we need to recognize severe cardiac events in a timely fashion when DKA happen. Although DKA initially shows similar symptoms and signs to acute coronary syndrome, including hyperkalaemia, electrocardiographic ST segment elevation and increased cardiac enzymes. We report a patient who presented with a ST segment elevation and cardiac enzymes levels elevation due to DKA without acute coronary syndrome.


Diversity maintenance techniques in evolutionary computation are designed to mitigate the problem of deceptive local optima by encouraging exploration. However, as problems become more difficult, the heuristic of fitness may become increasingly uninformative. Thus, simply encouraging genotypic diversity may fail to much increase the likelihood of evolving a solution. In such cases, diversity needs to be directed towards potentially useful structures. A representative example of such a search process is novelty search, which builds diversity by rewarding behavioral novelty. In this paper the effectiveness of fitness, novelty, and diversity maintenance objectives are compared in two evolutionary robotics domains. In a biped locomotion domain, genotypic diversity maintenance helps evolve biped control policies that travel farther before falling. However, the best method is to optimize a fitness objective and a behavioral novelty objective together. In the more deceptive maze navigation domain, diversity maintenance is ineffective while a novelty objective still increases performance. The conclusion is that while genotypic diversity maintenance works in well-posed domains, a method more directed by phenotypic information, like novelty search, is necessary for highly deceptive ones.


Abstract A scoping study is presented in order to investigate the potential of bentonite extrusion on radionuclide transport in a water-saturated planar fracture. A coupled mathematical model for an abstracted case describing the mass conservation of radionuclides and bentonite extrusion into the fracture is established to observe the mass transport phenomena due to bentonite extrusion in the fracture domain. Results of numerical simulations are then analyzed in order to interpret the potential importance of extrusion in the near-field rock on the overall performance of the engineered barrier system (EBS). The mathematical model developed in this study for radionuclide migration incorporates spatial and temporal changes in porosity due to movement of bentonite particles. Finite element solutions have been derived for the porosity and for the radionuclide concentration. With a sufficiently strong sorption, the radionuclide is observed to be contained within the region of bentonite extrusion, indicating that radionuclides would be retained within the extrusion region even if the waste canister fails early while bentonite is extruding in fractures. Such results imply the potential of the extrusion region to enhance performance in the EBS and warrant more rigorous modeling studies of this domain.


The confinement efficiency for FRP-confined square concrete columns is relatively low compared to circular columns due to a large area of ineffectively-confined concrete and stress concentration at sharp corners. Shape modification of square concrete columns has been proposed but modifying the shape of cross-section from a square to a circle results in a significant increase in crosssectional area and self-weight of the columns, which raises new issues and is not practical when the space in the structure is limited. To address the abovementioned issues, a spline-shaped cross-section is proposed in this study as a target shape for shape modification. A finite element model was first built and validated with results from a previous experimental program. Specimens with square, circular shapemodified and spline-shaped modified cross-section and confined with FRP were modelled and compared. A number of spline-shaped cross-sections with different aspect ratios (defined as the ratio of minor axis to the major axis) were incorporated in this study. Results from the analysis showed that the confinement efficiency of FRP-confined spline-shaped concrete columns was higher than square or circular columns. Among the spline-shaped columns, those with a small aspect ratio achieved higher confinement efficiency than those with a large aspect ratio.


Large-scale integration of adaptive-element building blocks, in a small number of monolithic silicon structures, leads to a degree of freedom and versatility in organizing computing structures that has never before existed. The definition of the function of an adaptive-separation computer is examined, block diagrammed, and repetitive computations are defined. These are then partitioned to define building blocks to be fabricated by large-scale integration (LSI) of arrays of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) into two basic structures, a serial/parallel multiplier chip and a special-purpose shift register chip. Consideration must be given to the problems of compatibility between these chips and the remainder of the adaptive computer.


Parasitic worms secrete proteases that when internalized suppress the immune response to promote an anti-inflammatory environment. Helminths are parasitic worms (flukes) that cause chronic infections in their hosts, an effect that involves the suppression of the proinflammatory T helper cell 1 (Th1) response and induction of the anti-inflammatory Th2 cell response. Helminths secrete cysteine proteases of the papain family, which perform many functions in the parasitic lifestyle, including evasion of the immune response. Donnelly et al. report that the FheCL1 protease secreted by the human liver fluke Fasciola hepatica and the SmB1 protease secreted by the blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni inhibit signaling through macrophage Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) to decrease production of inflammatory mediators. Injection of FheCL1 promoted mouse survival to a normally lethal dose of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a TLR4 agonist, and reduced the serum and peritoneal cavity concentrations of proinflammatory mediators. This appeared to be due to decreased responsiveness of macrophages, because either naïve macrophages exposed to FheCL1 in vitro or macrophages isolated from the peritoneal cavity of mice exposed to either FheCL1 or SmB1 exhibited decreased production of inflammatory mediators in response to LPS. Coapplication of a protease inhibitor or application of a protease-inactive mutant of FheCL1 prevented this reduction in macrophage responsiveness. TLR4 can signal through a MyD88-dependent or a TRIF-dependent pathway, and the TRIF-dependent pathway appeared to be selectively inhibited by FheCL1. To further investigate the effects on TRIF-dependent signaling, the authors investigated the response of macrophages exposed to FheCL1 to the TLR3 agonist poly(I:C), because TLR3 couples only to the TRIF-dependent pathway. TLR3 signaling was reduced in macrophages exposed to FheCL1. Macrophages from mice exposed to FheCL1 did not exhibit any decrease in the abundance of surface receptors involved in LPS signaling—TLR4, MD2, and CD14—nor was there a decrease in the abundance of TRIF. Instead, the abundance of TLR3 was reduced in the macrophages from the mice exposed to FheCL1. In the macrophages from mice injected with FheCL1, FheCL1 was localized to early endosomes, which is also the site of TLR3 (although colocalization experiments were not performed). Thus, FheCL1 appears be internalized and cleaves endosomally localized TLR3. How this compromises the TRIF-mediated signaling downstream of TLR4 remains to be determined but points to an interaction between TRIF-dependent TLR3 and TLR4 signaling that may be exploited by pathogens. S. Donnelly, S. M. O'Neill, C. M. Stack, M. W. Robinson, L. Turnbull, C. Whitchurch, J. P. Dalton, Helminth cysteine proteases inhibit TRIF-dependent activation of macrophages via degradation of TLR3. J. Biol. Chem. 285, 3383–3392 (2010). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Learning stable dynamics from observed time-series data is an essential problem in robotics, physical modeling, and systems biology. Many of these dynamics are represented as an inputs-output system to communicate with the external environment. In this study, we focus on input-output stable systems, exhibiting robustness against unexpected stimuli and noise. We propose a method to learn nonlinear systems guaranteeing the input-output stability. Our proposed method utilizes the differentiable projection onto the space satisfying the Hamilton-Jacobi inequality to realize the input-output stability. The problem of finding this projection can be formulated as a quadratic constraint quadratic programming problem, and we derive the particular solution analytically. Also, we apply our method to a toy bistable model and the task of training a benchmark generated from a glucose-insulin simulator. The results show that the nonlinear system with neural networks by our method achieves the input-output stability, unlike naive neural networks. Our code is available at https://github.com/clinfo/DeepIOStability.


Modern software model checkers find safety violations: breaches where the system enters some bad state. However, we argue that checking liveness properties offers both a richer and more natural way to search for errors, particularly in complex concurrent and distributed systems. Liveness properties specify desirable system behaviors which must be satisfied eventually, but are not always satisfied, perhaps as a result of failure or during system initialization.

Existing software model checkers cannot verify liveness because doing so requires finding an infinite execution that does not satisfy a liveness property. We present heuristics to find a large class of liveness violations and the critical transition of the execution. The critical transition is the step in an execution that moves the system from a state that does not currently satisfy some liveness property--but where recovery is possible in the future--to a dead state that can never achieve the liveness property. Our software model checker, MACEMC, isolates complex liveness errors in our implementations of PASTRY, CHORD, a reliable transport protocol, and an overlay tree.


In 1989 a survey of state health officials was conducted to ascertain the extent that the recommendations of the 1988 Institute of Medicine's report, The Future of Public Health, were in place. We applied a similar survey in 1996 to assess the level of implementation of the IOM recommendations at the local health department level. Agreement with the specific IOM recommendations at the local level was, in almost all cases, greater than 90%. However, when one views the extent of these recommendations in place, nearly half fall below 50%. While there have been improvements in areas such as education of the public and outreach towards legislators and voluntary health organizations, our results show that there are still major short-comings when it comes to implementing the recommendations. Lack of resources at the local level appears to be the predominant cause of the low level of implementation, with restricted authority and lack of support also contributing to the problem. We feel the IOM recommendations can provide a strong foundation for our public health system, and hope these results help serve as a benchmark for further study.


This article explores the recent development of new spheres of public engagement within UK higher education through an analysis of the foundation degree qualification. These, according to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), were designed to equip students with the combination of technical skills, academic knowledge, and transferable skills increasingly being demanded by employers, and they have been identified as being at the forefront of educational agendas aimed at increasing employer engagement in the higher education (HE) sector. As such, they might be regarded as an expression of the 'increasing privatisation' of HE. However, this article argues that, on the contrary, they have enabled the development of new areas of public engagement relating to the design and delivery of courses as well as providing new opportunities for the pursuit of public policy goals such as widening participation. Such outcomes, it is argued, are the result of a number of factors that explain the 'publicness' of the qualification and that should be sustained to ensure the implementation of the 2006 Leitch Report in a manner that further develops public engagement.


Since the beginning of the 1990s the new trends in the matrimonial behaviour and formation of the families were revealed in Lithuania: the rapid diminution of marriages and the growth of divorce rates, the noticeable increase of the number of the illegitimate births. The spreading of the lone mothers families in the country is a direct consequence of these processes. According to the data of the international survey "Fertility and family in Lithuania", more than 10 per cent of the women aged 18-49 bring up their children without a spouse or partner. The families of young women are formed in the result of the birth of the illegitimate child while majority of those older than 24 are divorced or widows. Lately cohabitation is becoming very popular among the youngest cohorts, therefore the consensual unions, being not stable and not lasting for a longer time, can also become an important determinant of the increase of lone-parent families in the future. The findings of qualitative survey, carried out in 20012-2002 (ten in-depth interviews with lone mothers - previously not married, divorced and widows - were conducted) show that economic problems are the most urgent to one-parent families: in most cases they are neither supported by the father of the children nor receive any assistance from the state. The evaluation of the personal experience and the present state of affairs depend upon the marital status of lone mother: public opinion is favourable only towards widows while the others very often experience the negative attitude of the surrounding. The lone mothers are treated as "different", leading the inferior and inadequate to the social norms way of life. All women under survey have stressed the role of father for children and were trying their best to compensate the absence of both parents in the family. However, they were very pessimistic towards the prospects of the new marriage and emphasised the interests of children as the main priority. The investigation has confirmed the results of the previously conducted surveys that in many Lithuanian families the mothers are responsible for the upbringing and care of the children while the primary role of the fathers' is that of a bred winner of the family. However, this role is conducted only within the marriage.


Driving is a complex task, yet some people with dementia are capable of driving safely.1–5 As driving a vehicle is a privilege and not a right,6–8 clinicians are often called upon to provide guidance regarding their patients' ability to drive safely.1,9,10 The Australian Bureau of Statistics has predicted that by 2056, one in four Australians will be aged over 65.11 Older members of our community are increasingly dependent upon the private car as their preferred, and in some cases only viable, mode of transport.5,8 Given that the prevalence of dementia rises with age, we can expect an increased number of drivers with dementia on our roads.5 As outlined in the National Health and Medical Research Council 2013–15 Strategic Plan, Australian health ministers have designated dementia and injury prevention as national health priority areas.12 Thus, there now exists both an impetus and an opportunity to address the issue of driving and dementia on a national level. The purpose of this editorial is to consider: (1) the social impact of a loss of licence; (2) driver and health professional obligations to report conditions that can adversely affect driving; and (3) the response of motor vehicle insurers to the issue of driving with dementia.


This thesis examines the use of denotational semantics to reason about control flow in sequential, basically functional languages. It extends recent work in game semantics, in which programs are interpreted as strategies for computation by interaction with an environment. Abramsky has suggested that an intensional hierarchy of computational features such as state, and their fully abstract models, can be captured as violations of the constraints on strategies in the basic functional model. Non-local control flow is shown to fit into this framework as the violation of strong and weak 'bracketing' conditions, related to linear behaviour. The language PCF (Parigot's with constants and recursion) is adopted as a simple basis for higher-type, sequential computation with access to the flow of control. A simple operational semantics for both call-by-name and call-by-value evaluation is described. It is shown that dropping the bracketing condition on games models of PCF yields fully abstract models of PCF. The games models of PCF are instances of a general construction based on a continuations monad on Fam(C), where C is a rational cartesian closed category with infinite products. Computational adequacy, definability and full abstraction can then be captured by simple axioms on C. The fully abstract and universal models of PCF are shown to have an effective presentation in the category of Berry-Curien sequential algorithms. There is further analysis of observational equivalence, in the form of a context lemma, and a characterization of the unique functor from the (initial) games model, which is an isomorphism on its (fully abstract) quotient. This establishes decidability of observational equivalence for finitary PCF, contrasting with the undecidability of the analogous relation in pure PCF.


Research clearly indicates that ethnic groups differ significantly on levels of mental and physical health, antisocial behavior, and educational attainment. This book explains these variations among ethnic groups with respect to their psychological and social functioning and tests competing hypotheses about the mechanisms that might cause the functioning to be better, worse, or different in pattern from other groups. Attention is paid to educational attainments, antisocial behavior, schizophrenia, and suicide, and to the complex and changing patterns of ethnic identity. The book also focuses on evidence of risk and protective factors that is used systematically to ask whether such factors might account for the differences in both migration histories and ethnic mixture. It concludes with a discussion of the multiple meanings of ethnicity, the major variations among ethnic groups, and the policy implications of the findings discussed in the book.


We show in this paper the multiclass classification problem can be implemented in the maximum margin framework with the complexity of one binary Support Vector Machine. We show reducing the complexity does not involve diminishing performance but in some cases this approach can improve the classification accuracy. The multiclass classification is realized in the framework where the output labels are vector valued.


Ship-borne visual observations are currently the method of choice to detect whales for mitigation efforts during noise producing anthropogenic activities at sea.Detections frequently are based on spotting the whales blow, which is highly transient and frequently of low contrast, requiring utmost concentration of the observer.Conducting such observations reliably on a continuous 24h/day base for multi-week periods requires large teams of observers to compensate for observer fatigue and the limited human field of view.Moreover, visual observations are restricted to daylight hours.However, a whales blow comprises fluid droplets significantly warmer than the environment, at least at high latitudes, rendering infrared thermal imaging a promising observation tool in polar regions, also at night. Here we present data from the deployment of a ship-borne, 360°, cooled thermal imager, FIRST-Navy (produced by RDE, Bremen, Germany), which provides a continuous video stream of the ships perimeter. Data collected with this system near Spitsbergen clearly reveal whale blows up to a distance of at least 1.5 km, even at relatively warm water conditions of 6°C. For lower temperatures, detections ranged up to 3 km. Automated detection algorithms are currently under development, with first results to be presented at this conference.


Preamble and Transition to ACC/AHA Guidelines to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk S50

The goals of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) are to prevent cardiovascular diseases (CVD); improve the management of people who have these diseases through professional education and research; and develop guidelines, standards, and policies that promote optimal patient care and cardiovascular health. Toward these objectives, the ACC and AHA have collaborated with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and stakeholder and professional organizations to develop …


The American administrative state has become a cost-benefit state, at least in the sense that prevailing executive orders require agencies to proceed only if the benefits justify the costs. Some people celebrate this development; others abhor it. For defenders of the cost-benefit state, the antonym of their ideal is, alternately, regulation based on dogmas, intuitions, pure expressivism, political preferences, or interest-group power. Seen most sympathetically, the focus on costs and benefits is a neo-Benthamite effort to attend to the real-world consequences of regulations, and it casts a pragmatic, skeptical light on modern objections to the administrative state, invoking public-choice theory and the supposed self-serving decisions of unelected bureaucrats. The focus on costs and benefits is also a valuable effort to go beyond coarse arguments, from both the right and the left, that tend to ask this unhelpful question: "Which side are you on?" In the future, however, there will be much better ways, which we might consider neo-Millian, to identify those consequences: (1) by relying less on unreliable ex ante projections and more on actual evaluations; (2) by focusing directly on welfare and not relying on imperfect proxies; and (3) by attending closely to distributional considerations – on who is helped and who is hurt.


In this study we explored the application of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) intensity time series for urban flood detection. Our test case was the flood in Lumberton, North Carolina, USA, caused by the landfall of Hurricane Matthew on 8 October 2016, for which airborne imagery—taken on the same day as the SAR overpass—is available for validation of our technique. To map the flood, we first carried out normalization of the SAR intensity observations, based on the statistics from the time series, and then construct a Bayesian probability function for intensity decrease (due to specular reflection of the signal) and intensity increase (due to double bounce) cases separately. We then formed a flood probability map, which we used to create our preferred flood extent map using a global cutoff probability of 0.5. Our flood map in the urban area showed a complicated mosaicking pattern of pixels showing SAR intensity decrease, pixels showing intensity increase, and pixels without significant intensity changes. Our approach shows improved performance when compared with global thresholding on log intensity ratios, as the time series-based normalization has accounted for a certain level of spatial variation by considering the different history for each pixel. This resulted in improved performance for urban and vegetated regions. We identified smooth surfaces, like asphalt roads, and SAR shadows as the major sources of underprediction, and aquatic plants and soil moisture changes were the major sources of overprediction.


Today's rapid growth in information technology has occurred without a full understanding of the human consequences of its use--on individuals, on organizations, and on society as a whole. As a result, initial expectations have frequently not been met, and a backlash has developed. Clearly a more realistic approach to information technology is needed, and applied psychology can offer great help in this effort. This book takes a problem-centered approach to questions of usability, applicability, and acceptability, giving an overview of current research on information technology at work, at home, in education, and in medicine, and where possible, making recommendations for the future. Chapters cover psychology and information technology; management, workers, and the new technologies; factory automation; ergonomics and the new technologies; office systems; expert systems in the health field; health care; the disabled; computers in education; attitudes toward the new technologies; information technology and home-based services; and information technology in the home.


The area known as Mann Island (centred at SJ 3403 9008) is bounded on the north by a road of the same name, on the east by The Strand, and on the west by the Mersey itself, while the Canning Graving Docks form the southern limit. The Strand, as the name implies, marks the approximate position of the natural shoreline of the Mersey, prior to two centuries of land reclamation. Mann Island itself, which lies partly within the Maritime Mercantile City of Liverpool World Heritage Site, consists entirely of made ground, created during the construction of a series of docks.
The process of reclamation began in the early eighteenth century, when a tidal basin to ease the approach to the Old Dock (built 1710–17) was established. The later extension and development of this, from c 1738, created the Dry Dock, from which Canning Dock was adapted in 1829. Further phases of reclamation westwards culminated in the establishment of Manchester Basin (later Dock) in 1785.
The archaeological excavations on Mann Island, carried out by Oxford Archaeology North between May 2007 and May 2008, with further work in July 2009 and May 2011, on behalf of Countryside Neptune, occupied ground extending from the early eighteenth-century reclamation close to the original shoreline, westwards to the northern and eastern walls of Manchester Dock, and included successive limits of land reclamation in between. From an examination of historical records and maps, it was apparent that the excavation was likely to encounter the remains of sea walls, the Dry Dock, the passage between Canning Dock and George's Dock to the north, Manchester Dock, the Mersey Railway Pumping and Ventilation Station, and buildings which occupied the area marked on maps as Nova Scotia.


Over the years, proposals have recommended shifting the focus of public agricultural research from applied to basic research, and giving higher priority to peer-reviewed, competitively funded grants. The public agricultural research system in the United States is a Federal-State partnership, with most research conducted at State institutions. In recent years, State funds have declined, USDA funds have remained fairly steady (with changes in the composition of funding), but funding from other Federal agencies and the private sector has increased. Efforts to increase competitively awarded funds for research have fluctuated over time, as have special grants (earmarks). Along with shifts in funding sources, the proportion of basic research being undertaken within the public agricultural research system has declined. This report focuses on the way public agricultural research is funded in the United States and how changes in funding sources over the last 25 years reflect changes in the type of research pursued.


William Hesketh Lever - soap-boiler, social reformer, MP, tribal chieftain, multi-millionaire and Lord of the Western Isles - was one of the most extraordinary men ever to leave his mark on Britain. Beliefs far ahead of their times - the welfare state, votes for women, workers' rights - jostled in his mind with ideas that were fantastically bonkers - the world's problems could be solved by moving populations from country to country, ballroom dancing could save the soul and the only healthy way to sleep was outdoors in the wind and the rain. Adam Macqueen traces Lever's footsteps from his humble Bolton boyhood to a business empire that straddled the world, visiting the homes and model towns from the Mersey to the Congo that still bear the mark - and often the name - of William Lever. It is a hilarious and touching journey that shines a spotlight on a world and a set of beliefs long gone, and asks several vital questions: where does pnilanthropy stop and social engineering begin? Is it right for an employer to dictate how his workers spend their weekends and hire private detectives to make sure they are doing it properly? Are the length of a lawn and the curve of a bannister of vital importance to the great scheme of things? And why would a multi-millionaire with half a dozen homes and property on four continents chose to sleep on the roof?


As universities allow students greater freedom of choice, a larger percentage of students are choosing private rather than institutional living. Thus, many vacancies are occurring in university-owned housing, resulting in substantial revenue losses for the institutions. In an attempt to resolve this situation, college personnel workers must ask themselves the following questions: What factors should constitute the basis for residence hall reorganization? What are the appropriate rules and regulations for residence hall reorganization? What are the functions of student house government and the residence hall staff?


There has been a vast development within the span of three centuries of industrial
revolution with the introduction of modern technology. The gradual but steady adoption of different technologies including Internet of Things (IoT) in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is now a growing research area including identifying ways for industries to operate their functions. The implementation of IoT in all aspects of human life, which results a fast paced daily life activities is a clear indication that the future is here now. The potentials for cost reduction and profit maximisation have been realised by the involved corporations and a significant number of them is already investing heavily
on the new technologies. Scientists now believe that empowering the Internet of Things (IoT) to have artificial intelligence (AI) could help human beings to complete works more smartly and efficiently. The paper aims to focus on the impacts of IoT that affects the supply change management and will explain the reasons that have led to the ever-growing adoption of IoT.


The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between customer satisfaction and consumer loyalty and apply its relationship into all the market industries including products and services, particularly in financial institutions. Preliminary sample data (N=80) will be collected from faculties and students at Johnson and Wales University of all ethnicities, national and international students. The hypothesis of the study is developed as H1: There is a significant positive relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. A t-test for independent samples is used to address the hypothesis. The discussion of the study indicated that there is a significant positive relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction, however, it is important to fully understand that the loyalty which is the main goal of each industry is very hard to achieve and is not very easy to be reached by industries due to the customer satisfaction which is very hard to reach by itself, and the service quality as well. There are many other variables that can affect the consumer loyalty such as the high level of competition among today's companies and the fast track of technological advancement. These reasons indicate that companies should work hard because loyalty is a fleeting issue, today's loyal customer would not be tomorrow's loyal customer.


The end of the long civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009 generated widespread expectations of a peace dividend that would enable the country to embark on a period of sustained economic growth. Recent developments have dampened that optimism, however, rekindling fears that Sri Lanka's tale of missed opportunities may continue. After showing remarkable resilience during decades of war and conflict, the Sri Lankan economy has failed to capitalize on the window of opportunity presented by the end of the military conflict. In the aftermath of military victory, there has been a sharp reversal of trade liberalization and a marked shift back towards nationalist-populist state-centered economic policies, reflecting the pressures of resurgent nationalism, an unprecedented concentration of political power in a small ruling group, and the influence of some powerful vested interests. Unfortunately, a return to the failed past policies of inward-oriented development strategies offers no viable solutions for the problems confronting small, capital- and resource-poor countries in today's globalized world. Sri Lanka must change both its political practices and economic policies drastically and urgently to cope with the huge development challenges facing it in an environment of global economic turbulence.


A study was carried out to develop an integrated water management decision support system for the Seberang Perak paddy estate. The decision support system incorporated results from a database management system, a model base management system and a rule based knowledge base system.

The domain experts' knowledge on integrated water management were collected together with other secondary historical data that were used in the modeling approach to generate more knowledge on different combinations of possible scenarios. The modeling approaches used in the knowledge generation was evapotranspiration modeling, a flow routing modeling, a water balance modeling and a crop growth and a yield modeling. A GIS was used in the output model to make the decision support system outputs more effective in their presentation.

The evapotranspiration modeling tested the suitability of a few methods to predict evapotranspiration in the project area using 45 years of weather data. The results suggested applying the Penman-Monteith, the Pan or the Blaney-Criddle models for the project area seems to be the best. Because of its worldwide applicability, the Penman-Monteith model was utilized in the study.

The flow routing routine performed showed good agreement with measured data. Evapotranspiration estimates, flow routing and water balance applied to each of the field plots for all possible scenarios, suggested alternative decisions for the better performance of the paddy estate. All these results were coded to rules and kept in knowledge bases that will be posted as outputs for user queries.

Major problem identified in the Seberang Perak paddy estate was the land preparation water management. Land preparation needs to be completed within 16 days so that the targeted 250% cropping intensity could be achieved. This is only possible when canals are flowing full and a part of the total water requirements is supplemented with rainfall. The modeling approach suggested many possible alternate scenarios and decision alternatives, which were gathered in the knowledge bases.

The knowledge generated through modeling approach was always verified with domain experts from the sub-estates concerned. The acceptable knowledge were then coded to pseudocodes and translated to rules of the knowledge bases. All the added rules to the knowledge bases were verified and validated for the proper functioning of the decision support system components. All the knowledge-based modules (menu module, crop schedule, land preparation water management, second supply water management, supply after fertilizer application, yield modeling and drainage management) were linked under a same platform. The outputs and results of these components are linked with a GIS and other relevant information.


We investigate whether a cut in unemployment benefit payout periods affected older workers' labor market transitions. We apply rich administrative data and exploit a difference-in-differences approach. We compare the reference group of 40-44 year olds with constant benefit payout periods to older treatment groups with reduced payout durations. For the latter job exit rates declined, job finding rates increased, the propensity to remain employed increased, and the propensity to remain unemployed declined after the reform. These patterns suggest that the reform of unemployment benefits may be one of the reasons behind the recent incredible rise in old age employment in Germany.


Since the Republican Senate refused to consider President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016--coupled with the Trump Administration's success in filling that seat with Neil Gorsuch, followed by the appointments of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett--there has been widespread interest in how to balance a suddenly solidly conservative Court majority, one likely to remain so for decades. One way to do so is to expand the size of the Court, an issue the Constitution left to Congress, which exercised that authority repeatedly during the Constitution's first 80 years. This article examines those mostly forgotten congressional changes to the Court's size as well as Congress' more notorious failure during the New Deal. The article reveals that the successful expansions were often due to population growth but always the product of political calculations. Since the U.S. population is now nearly ten times larger than it was when Congress last changed the Court's size, reconsidering the Court's size may be an issue ripe for congressional consideration, should the political winds suggest that is possible.


Angiogenesis is a multi-step physiological process which is involved in a large number of normal and disease state processes; In vitro angiogenesis models provide very useful tools to study these processes, one of which is the analysis of tubule formation. Tubules formed in co-culture assays were significantly more heterogeneous and more closely resembled capillaries than Matrigel® tubules. Current co-culture models using primary cells have donor variability, and inconsistent results due to lot to lot variation. In this study, we established an in vitro co-culture model system consisting of an assay ready mixture of an aortic endothelial cell line TeloHAEC-GFP (hTERT immortalized human aortic endothelial cell line) and a hTERT immortalized adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell line (hTERT-MSCs) in a specially formulated medium containing VEGF supplement (Angio-Ready™ Angiogenesis Assay System). Both cell lines were immortalized by hTERT (human telomerase reverse transcriptase) alone and have been well-characterized showing that the cells retain the most important characteristic of their parental counterparts. The new co-culture system forms functional tubular structures in less than 7 days, and in addition, the hTERT-MSC cells which surround the tubular structures have undergone transformation indicated by elevated positive αSMA staining (a marker of smooth muscle cells), indicating that the system has physiological relevance. Notably, our results showed the co-culture system has minimal lot-to-lot variation indicated by the treatment of three lots with the anti-cancer drug, Ramucirumab (Cyramza®), which also targets the VEGF pathway. Next, we tested the new system with compounds that impact angiogenesis, results demonstrated that the angiogenesis system responds positively to elevated doses of VEGF and negatively to increasing concentrations of suramin; more importantly, the tubular formation efficiency is reduced or blocked by well-known anti-cancer drugs such as Sunitinib (SUTENT®) and Bevacizumab (Avastin®), both of which target the VEGF pathway. Finally, we used the Angio-Ready™ system validated 4 HIF-1(hypoxia inducible factors-1) inhibitors which have anti-angiogenic properties identified by high-throughput screening methods; data showed the results of the new system match with other screening methods including a system screening time as short as 3 days. Therefore, the co-culture model developed by using hTERT-immortalized cell lines described in this report provide a consistent and robust in vitro system for studying cardiovascular biology, drug screening and tissue engineering. Citation Format: CHAOZHONG ZOU, Chia-Wen Hsu, Menghang Xia, Metewo S Enuameh. Development of high-throughput cell-based co-culture angiogenesis assay system using hTERT immortalized cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 792. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-792


Adolescents are a group to watch the intake of nutritional health, especially because, in adolescence, physiological changes occur so that the energy and nutrient needs are very influential on the growth and development of adolescents. quality aspects of adolescent health, nutritional status, and achievement of learning as a form of juvenile productivity in turn will affect the quality resources. Students are pubescent and adolescent group adolesens, and is still a lack of research on adolescents. Therefore, researchers interested in studying about the intake of fat with waist circumference ratio pelvis on students in STIKES Wira Husada in Sleman, Yogyakarta. This study is a descriptive cross sectional analytic approach. The sample of 120 people was taken by purposive sampling, the data were analyzed with the Spearman Rank. The average age of respondents was 21,62-2,11 years. Of the 120 respondents consisted of 50,8% were male and 49,2% female. Energy intake of 60,8% of respondents in both categories, and for fat intake of 120 respondents 31,7% in the low category. Circumference Waist Hip Ratio of 120 respondents 67,5% had obese category, with an average of 71,04 and a waist circumference hip circumference average of 81,29. From the research value of 0,307 significancy then there is no relationship between fat intake ratio of waist circumference to hip circumference. Conclusion: There is no relationship between fat intake ratio of waist circumference to hip circumference.


Young people today have grown up living substantial portions of their lives online, seeking entertainment, social relationships, and a place to express themselves. It is clear that participation in online communities is important for many young people, but less clear how this translates into civic or political engagement. This volume examines the relationship of online action and real-world politics. The contributors discuss not only how online networks might inspire conventional political participation but also how creative uses of digital technologies are expanding the boundaries of politics and public issues. Do protests in gaming communities, music file sharing, or fan petitioning of music companies constitute political behavior? Do the communication skills and patterns of action developed in these online activities transfer to such offline realms as voting and public protests? Civic Life Online describes the many forms of civic life online that could predict a generation's political behavior.ContributorsMarina Umaschi Bers, Stephen Coleman, Jennifer Earl, Kirsten Foot, Peter Levine, Kathryn C. Montgomery, Kate Raynes-Goldie, Howard Rheingold, Allen Schussman, Luke Walker, Michael XenosW. Lance Bennett is Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington.


High performance computing studies the construction and programming of computing system with tremendous computational power playing a key role in scientific computing and research across disciplines. The graphics processing unit (GPU) developed for fast 2D and 3D visualizations has turned into a programmable general purpose accelerator device boosting today's high performance clusters. Leveraging these computational resources requires good programming model abstractions to manage system complexity. Today's state of the art employs separate cluster communication and GPU computation models such as MPI and CUDA. The bulk-synchronous nature of CUDA and the role of the GPU as a CPU-dependent co-processor limits cluster utilization. In this master thesis we devise, implement, and evaluate the novel GPU cluster programming model GPU RMA addressing three key areas. GPU RMA introduces a simplifying abstraction exposing the cluster as a set of interacting ranks. The ranks execute on the GPU removing the complexity of explicit GPU management from the host. GPU RMA introduces communication amongst ranks on local and remote devices allowing more fine-grained communication and synchronization compared to conventional models increasing concurrency and resource usage. GPU RMA implements one-sided notified access communication leveraging the recently introduced RDMA support for GPUs providing richer communication semantics than current solutions. We implemented GPU RMA on a cluster with Intel CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, and an InfiniBand interconnect, studied the impact of system components to communication latency, and derived an empirical performance model. We performed a case study to assess GPU RMA performance compared to the established MPI and CUDA approach and validated our performance model. Our experiments show GPU RMA improves performance up to 25% compared to the state of the art and encourages further study of GPU RMA performance and scalability.


When Adolf Eichmann stood trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Israel and the rest of the world experienced a reaction unlike any other produced by proceedings against a Nazi war criminal. Although some details about the Holocaust were generally known by the early sixties, the painful topic had slipped from public discussion as countries touched by World War II moved on to other pressing matters. Among Israeli-Jews fighting for a new homeland, the near-extermination of European Jewry was misunderstood as an embarrassment - an instance of Jewish impotence in the face of victimization by the Nazis. However, as the head of Hitler's Race and Resettlement Office stood trial on Israeli soil under the eye of the international media and Israeli survivors told their powerful stories to the world, the Holocaust became a defining experience for Zionism and human history. This is a detailed account of Eichmann's trial by the poet and journalist Haim Gouri, who was assigned to cover the event by the Israeli daily newspaper "Lamerhav". The trial changed attitudes towards the Holocaust and Gouri's reporting was the literary catalyst of this change.


In the 19th century, the American common law of master and servant was a system of subordination principles designed to command and capture the labor of workers. Blackstone's Commentaries was the received common law, from the nation's early days through the settlement of new states in the American West. Blackstone's Chapter 14, organized the legal rules into a system of subordination as formal inequality. As the system's foundation, Blackstone used slavery, rather than partnership or voluntary free labor. Thus, when the nation abolished slavery by the 13th Amendment, the structure's foundation was implicitly undermined.

Moreover, during Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans, who dominated the post-War Congress, engaged in a sweeping anti-subordination agenda marked by multiple reform initiatives. Oppressive labor systems that they found to be slave-like were deemed "anti-republican." An egalitarian, leveling ethos held sway as Reconstruction brought about a revolution in basic rights. Yet, this ethos did not find its way into a revision of all of the subordinating principles in the nation's common law of master and servant. In the years immediately after its enactment, the anti-subordination agenda lost ground. The 13th Amendment was subject to different interpretations as state courts, analogized more broadly or narrowly, depending upon their state's position as a former slave state or free state. As a result, the nation's received common law was never completely reordered upon a new foundation of fully free labor.


The evolutionary success of reef-building corals in nutrient-poor tropical waters is attributed to endosymbiotic dinoflagellates. The algae release photosynthetic products to the coral animal cells, augment nutrient flux, and enhance the rate of coral calcification. Natural abundance of stable isotopes (δ13C and δ18O) provides answers to modern and paleobiological questions about the effect of photosymbiosis on sources of carbon and oxygen in coral skeletal calcium carbonate. Here we compare 17 species of symbiotic and nonsymbiotic corals to determine whether evidence for photosymbiosis appears in stable isotopes (δ13C and δ15N) of an organic skeletal compartment, the coral skeletal organic matrix (OM). Mean OM δ13C in symbiotic and nonsymbiotic corals was similar (-26.08‰ vs. -24.31‰), but mean OM δ15N was significantly depleted in 15N in the former (4.09‰) relative to the latter (12.28‰), indicating an effect of the algae on OM synthesis and revealing OM δ15N as a proxy for photosymbiosis. To answer an important paleobiological question about the origin of photosymbiosis in reef-building corals, we applied this proxy test to a fossil coral (Pachythecalis major) from the Triassic (240 million years ago) in which OM is preserved. Mean OM δ15N was 4.66‰, suggesting that P. major was photosymbiotic. The results show that symbiotic algae augment coral calcification by contributing to the synthesis of skeletal OM and that they may have done so as early as the Triassic.


The point atomic charges in a number of ionic H‐bonded systems are studied by ab initio calculations as functions of the proton transfer coordinate. In the proton‐bound complexes of water–water, ammonia–ammonia, formamide–water, formamide–ammonia, and dimethylether–ammonia, the net atomic charges were obtained using Mulliken population analysis and from the diagonal elements of the atomic polar tensors calculated at the HF/4–31G and MP2/6–31 + G** levels. The dependence of the atomic charges upon the coordinate of the transferring proton was found to be close (within an error of 0.02 e) to a linear function for intermolecular distances in the 2.5–2.8 Å range. The obtained charge and charge flux dependencies highlight the electron redistribution during the proton transfer process and provide insights into the source of the high infrared (IR) intensities of stretching modes of NH and OH bonds undergoing hydrogen bonding. © 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


Study of the architecture and design of proof development systems has become important lately as their use has spread and become closely tied to programming environments. One of the central issues is how to provide a general framework for defining and using a variety of logics in such systems; in particular, whether it is better to staart with a simple core system, such as the typed lambda-calculus with dependent function types, or start with a very rich theory providing a formalized metatheory. The first approach is exemplified by the Edinburgh LF. Here we illustrated the second approach by showing how to use Nuprl as a framework for defining logics in the style of the LF. Central to the viability of the second apprroach is a method of showing that the encoding of user defined logics in Nuprl is faithful. This paper presents a new semantic method to solve the problem. The method is applicable to the LF as well, and seems simpler than the syntactic methods that previously were used and which seem to hinder the use of rich thoeries as logical frameworks.


We describe a new method of modeling electro-optic (EO) devices, such as lanthanum-modified lead zirconate titanate polarization modulators, that resolves two deficiencies of current methods: (i) the inclusion of depolarization effects resulting from scattering and (ii) saturation of the EO response at strong electric-field strengths. Our approach to modeling depolarization is based on describing the transmitted optical field by superposition of a deterministic polarized wave and a scattered, randomly polarized, stochastic wave. Corresponding Jones matrices are used to derive a Mueller matrix to describe the wave propagation in scattering and depolarizing EO media accurately. A few simple optical measurements can be used to find the nonlinear behavior of the EO phase function, which is shown to describe accurately the material's EO behavior for weak and strong applied electric fields.


Abstract: The status of biological assemblages is often inferred by comparing observational assemblage data with reference data generated by a predictive model. Limiting environmental difference analysis (LEDA) applies the ecological concepts of distance decay of similarity and limiting factor theory to model reference data by extrapolation from samples collected at reference sites. I applied LEDA modeling to data sets from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Laurentian Great Lakes (GL), and Canadian Yukon Territory (YT) to test its accuracy and precision in predicting the composition of benthic macroinvertebrate samples from reference sites, and its specificity and sensitivity in detecting mathematically simulated human impacts on sample composition. LEDA models were significantly and substantially more accurate than null models for all 3 data sets, but not significantly more precise. They mostly assessed unimpacted samples correctly but seldom detected mild simulated impacts. However, they often detected moderate and usually detected severe impacts. Model performance for the test data sets probably was constrained by limitations of the environmental predictor variables and low taxonomic richness in many samples. The simulated impacts provided insight into model behavior but were limited in their scope and realism. I suggest that future simulations should separately test detection of different kinds of assemblage change, not only different intensities, and should address the consequences of human alteration of predictor variables.


1. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly [1] 2. Chronicle of Higher Education [2] 3. Code4Libr Journal [3] 4. College and Research Libraries [4] 5. College and Research Libraries News [5] 6. D-Lib Magazine [6] 7. Evidence-Based Library and Information Practice [7] (2006-) 8. Information Technology and Libraries [8] 9. Journal of Academic Librarianship [9] (1993-) 10. Journal of Library Administration [10] (1980-) 11. Journal of Library Metadata [11] (1997-) 12. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology [12] 13. Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services [13](1999-2013) 14. Library Hi-Tech [14] (1996-) 15. Library Journal [15] (1976-) 16. Library Quarterly [16] (1931-) 17. Library Resources & Technical Services [17] (LRTS) (2004-) 18. Library Technology Reports [18] (2002-) 19. Library Trends [19] (1997-) 20. Serials Librarian [20] (1977-) 21. Serials Review [21] (1975-) 22. Technical Services Law Librarian [22] (1975-) 23. Technical Services Quarterly [23] (1984-) 24. Technicalities [24] (1984-)


Magnesium batteries are energy storage systems that potentially offer high energy density owing to their ability to employ magnesium metal as a negative electrode. Their development, however, has been thwarted by a paucity of functional positive electrode materials after the seminal discovery of the Mo6S8 Chevrel phase over 15 years ago. Herein, we report the second such material – a thiospinel – and demonstrate fully reversible Mg2+ electrochemical cycling vs. a Mg anode, which is complemented by diffraction and first principles calculations. The capacity approaches 80% of the theoretical value at a practical rate (C/5) at 60 °C, and yields a specific energy of 230 Wh kg−1, twice that of the Chevrel benchmark. Our results emphasize the advantage in employing "soft" anions to achieve practical divalent cation mobility.


A trust anchor represents an authoritative entity via a public key and
associated data. The public key is used to verify digital signatures
and the associated data is used to constrain the types of information
for which the trust anchor is authoritative. A relying party uses
trust anchors to determine if a digitally signed object is valid by
verifying a digital signature using the trust anchor's public key,
and by enforcing the constraints expressed in the associated data for
the trust anchor. This document describes some of the problems
associated with the lack of a standard trust anchor management
mechanism and defines requirements for data formats and push-based
protocols designed to address these problems.


This paper discusses the range of interpretative and communicational meanings accorded the giving and receiving of gifts within the psychotherapeutic encounter. It forms a first report of the qualitative analysis of an open-ended survey on this topic completed by eighty British psychotherapists. When a gift was given, as well as what it was, informed the meanings conferred upon it by therapists. These meanings included aggression as well as gratitude or (negotiation of) dependency. The study identified a range of experience and practices around receiving and interpreting gifts which prompts questions about their unconscious elicitation, but also militates against specifying prescriptive guidelines for practice. Attending to the gendered and cultural relations elaborated through these reports of gifts invites a more nuanced discussion of gift giving as acting out (or acting in) within therapy. Moreover, beyond issues of the relative 'health' or 'inappropriateness' of gifts, it is suggested that more general questions arise through the evaluation of gift giving. These concern the relationship between therapy as a specific cultural site and the broader practices within which it is situated.


IEEE- and ASTM-adopted dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) standards are key enabling technologies for the next generation of vehicular safety communications. Vehicle-safety-related communication services, which require reliable and fast message delivery, usually demand broadcast communications in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In this paper, we propose and justify a distributive cross-layer scheme for the design of the control channel in DSRC with three levels of broadcast services that are critical to most potential vehicle-safety-related applications. The new scheme for enhancing broadcast reliability includes preemptive priority in safety services, dynamic receiver-oriented packet repetitions for one-hop emergency warning message dissemination, a multifrequency busy tone and minislot within the distributed interframe space (DIFS) in IEEE 802.11, and robust distance-based relay selection for multihop broadcast of emergency notification messages. Compared with a current draft of IEEE 802.11p and other schemes for DSRC safety-related services, the scheme proposed in this paper is more robust and scalable and easy to implement. Additionally, we investigate the reliability and performance of the proposed broadcast scheme for DSRC VANET safety-related services on the highway analytically and by simulations. The analytic model accounts for the impact of the hidden terminal problem, the fading channel conditions, varied message arrival intervals, and the backoff counter process on reliability and performance.


This paper deals with the theoretical and experimental investigation of acoustically levitated droplets. A method of calculation of the acoustic radiation pressure based on the boundary element method (BEM) is presented. It is applied to predict shapes of droplets levitated in an acoustic field (and as a result, deformed by it). The method was compared with several known exact and approximate analytical results for rigid spheres and shown to be accurate (and a widely used approximate formula for the acoustic levitation force acting on a rigid sphere was found to be inaccurate for sound wavelengths comparable with the sphere radius). The method was also compared with some other theoretical approaches known from the literature. Displacement of the droplet centre relative to the pressure node is accounted for and shown to be significant. The results for droplet shapes and displacements are compared with experimental data, and the agreement is found to be rather good. Furthermore, the experimental investigations reveal a unique relationship between the aspect ratio of an oblate droplet and the sound pressure level in the levitator. This relationship agrees well with the predicted shapes. A practical link between droplet shape or droplet displacement and sound pressure level in a levitator is therefore now available.


To reveal the material removal mechanism of silicon carbide fiber reinforced silicon carbide ceramic matrix (SiCf/SiC) composites during the ultrasonic vibration helical grinding (UVHG) of hole-making process, a hole-making experiment of UVHG was conducted, and the contact behavior between a grain and different components in the SiCf/SiC was analyzed. The evaluation index of the hole wall quality Cw which comprehensively considers the overall level and local defects of surface quality was proposed, while the evaluation index of the hole exit quality Ce which comprehensively considers the area and depth of edge chipping was proposed too. The results show that the periodic changes of the fiber cutting angle θ will lead to different fracture mechanisms of the fibers and the interfaces, so the surface topography will change regularly. The brittle fracture of the matrixes under different process parameters is different, so the surface topography is different. The quality evaluation indexes Cw and Ce are highly reliable. Within the experimental parameters, selecting a smaller pitch, a smaller helical feed rate, and an appropriate ultrasonic amplitude can obtain better hole-making quality.


David Mellinkoff's 1973 book 'The Conscience of a Lawyer' concerned a classic puzzle in legal ethics: what should a criminal defense lawyer do when the lawyer is certain that the client is factually guilty, but the client insists on an all-out defense? Mellinkoff focused on the Courvoisier case, a notorious English trial in 1840 in which defense counsel's tactics created an enormous public scandal. Legal ethicists have struggled with these issues ever since that time and they remain unresolved. This article draws a distinction between strong and weak adversarialism and explains how these two normative positions guide a lawyer's tactical decisionmaking in the certainly-guilty client situation. The article suggests that lawyers should have discretion to choose between the strong and weak positions, depending on context and their personal conscience. Both popular culture and great literature provide surprisingly interesting perspectives on the strong vs. weak adversarialism dilemma. Literature casts doubt on whether a lawyer can ever know with the requisite certainty whether a client is guilty. It presents numerous models of successful strong adversarialists and unsuccessful weak adversarialists. Few literary lawyers manage to be both skilled advocates and decent human beings. American popular culture, on the other hand, presents an emphatic answer to the question of what a lawyer with a certainly guilty client should do. According to pop culture, the lawyer's job is to betray the client to make sure the guilty criminal is convicted, dishonored, or killed. Pop culture's no-adversarialism model is a universe few lawyers would care to inhabit but which reflects popular views on the relationship of lawyering to truth.


Signposts at major roads and motorways hinting at places in neighbouring countries address drivers from different countries speaking different languages. It cannot be expected that, e.g., a French driver knows how German or Hungarian speakers call Prague [Praha] or how a Hungarian speaker calls Vienna [Wien]. Road signposts are therefore first of all to apply endonyms in the sense of names in the local language of the place indicated and only possibly and additionally names in the language, where the signpost is located (exonyms). But practice varies. In some countries indeed only endonyms are shown on road signposts, in other countries also the exonym is given. In several countries practice is not uniform. The paper examines the practice in several countries of Central Europe and formulates guidelines for the use of place names on road signposts, regarding also the question of how to proceed when places indicated on the signpost or the signpost itself are located in a multilingual area.