Objectives Healthcare is now routinely delivered by telecommunications-based services in all developed countries and an increasing number of developing countries. Telemedicine is used in many clinical specialities and across numerous healthcare settings, which range from mobile patient-centric applications to complex interactions amongst clinicians in tertiary referral hospital settings. This paper discusses some recent areas of significant development and progress in the field with the purpose of identifying strong trends in both research and practice activities. Methods To establish the breadth of new ideas and directions in the field, a review of literature was made by searching PubMed for recent publications including terms (telemedicine OR telehealth) AND (challenge OR direction OR innovation OR new OR novel OR trend), for all searchable categories. 3,433 publications were identified that have appeared since January 1, 2005 (2,172 of these since January 1, 2010), based on a search conducted on June 1, 2015. Results The current interest areas in these papers span both synchronous telemedicine, including intensive care, emergency medicine, and mental health, and asynchronous telemedicine, including wound and burns care, dermatology and ophthalmology. Conclusions It is concluded that two major drivers of contemporary tele medicine development are a high volume demand for a particular clinical service, and/or a high criticality of need for clinical exper tise to deliver the service. These areas offer promise for further study and enhancement of applicable telemedicine methods and have the potential for large-scale deployments internationally, which would contribute significantly to the advancement of healthcare.


COMPETENCIES IN ANIMAL ASSISTED THERAPY IN COUNSELING: A QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF THE KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ATTITUDES REQUIRED OF COMPETENT ANIMAL ASSISTED THERAPY PRACTITIONERS by Leslie A. Stewart Existing authors (Reichert, 1998; Watson 2009) have described the unique positive impact of Animal Assisted Therapy in Counseling (AAT-C) on the client's perception of the therapeutic alliance as well as the professional counselor's ability to build positive alliances quickly. When implemented with appropriate education and training, AAT-C can positively impact the therapeutic experience of a diverse range of clients across a wide variety of settings (Chandler, 2012; Fine, 2004). AAT-C requires a specialized set of skills and competencies that allows professional counselors to incorporate specially trained animals into the counseling process to influence the therapeutic process in ways that are beyond the scope of traditional counselor-client helping relationships (Stewart & Chang, 2013). However, there is currently no definition of counseling-specific competencies to guide practitioners in this specialty area. To address this gap, the presenters conducted an investigation using the Grounded Theory Method (Charmaz, 2006; Guba & Lincoln, 1989) to address the following research question: What knowledge, skills, and attitudes are required of competent practitioners of AATC? Based on the themes and subthemes that emerged from the data, the authors constructed a theoretical framework which represents competencies in AAT-C. Using this theoretical framework, the authors uncovered a total of nine essential competency areas for professional counselors utilizing AAT-C. They are divided into three domains in accordance with the competency framework that includes Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes (Myers & Sweeny, 1990). COMPETENCIES IN ANIMAL ASSISTED THERAPY IN COUNSELING: A QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION OF THE KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ATTITUDES REQUIRED OF COMPETENT ANIMAL ASSISTED THERAPY PRACTITIONERS by Leslie A. Stewart


A novel approach to find optimal real power generation pattern will be introduced in this study. This has been achieved by maximizing the power system voltage stability margin and minimizing generation cost. The loadability limit index is used to assess static voltage stability security margin. Based on proposed algorithm, a Toolbox has been developed to recognize the loadability limit by using Lagrangian method. The mentioned problem has been modeled as a non-linear and multi objective optimization problem along with Hybrid Genetic Algorithm Particle Swarm Optimization (HGAPSO) method to reach the optimal generation pattern. The method has been performed as a hierarchical optimization problem. In the first stage, HGAPSO method has been used to reach the securest pattern of real power. Also, mentioned voltage stability toolbox has been executed to evaluate the voltage stability margin respectively each real power generation pattern during HGAPSO search. These simulations are performed on IEEE 30 bus test system. To validation of proposed method, obtained results have been compared with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) results.


In many software intensive systems traceability is used to support a variety of software engineering activities such as impact analysis, compliance verification, and requirements validation. However, in practice, traceability links are often created towards the end of the project specifically for approval or certification purposes. This practice can result in inaccurate and incomplete traces, and also means that traceability links are not available to support early development efforts. We address these problems by presenting a trace recommender system which pushes recommendations to project stakeholders as they create or modify traceable artifacts. We also introduce the novel concept of a trace obligation, which is used to track satisfaction relations between a target artifact and a set of source artifacts. We model traceability events and subsequent actions, including user recommendations, using the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). We demonstrate and evaluate the efficacy of our approach through an illustrative example and a simulation conducted using the software engineering artifacts of a robotic system for supporting arm rehabilitation. Our results show that tracking trace obligations and generating trace recommendations throughout the active phases of a project can lead to early construction of traceability knowledge.


In the last 25 years, feminist scholars have worked tirelessly to recover women's rhetorical theories, productions, and actions that were historically excluded from histories of rhetoric. Rhetoric scholars, many of them feminist scholars, have also worked to address others who have been excluded from the rhetorical traditions. Here, I argue that children have also been largely excluded from rhetorical study. As the next step in the search for more inclusive rhetorical histories, I call here for feminist rhetors to consider rhetoric by children, rhetoric about children, and rhetoric for children. This article examines, in particular, how gendered identities develop in childhood. By studying childhood, we can see how gender and other hegemonic systems that constitute identities work, and we can identify potential disruptions and fissures in them. Since these systems are multivalent, to study them means to examine not only discourse and language but also material, temporal, and spatial arrangements. In this webtext, I conduct a comparative analysis of scientific toys and their marketing. I examine how these toys seek to inculcate a gendered habitus (visual, manual, or bodily ways of doing and being that are typically associated with a particular sex/gender), how marketing materials offer particular gendered roles for boys and girls playing with toys, and how toy makers have sought to develop social networks for boys and girls to participate in as users of the toy. I argue that, insofar as boys and girls are encouraged to play with different types of toys based on assumptions about their sexed abilities and gendered interests, they develop different kinds of knowledge, different ways of perceiving the world, and different kinds of skills. Yet, children's material compositions offer evidence of how children at play have the potential to disrupt, reproduce, or reconfigure a gendered habitus even as they are first learning them.


Identifying adaptive loci can provide insight into the mechanisms underlying local adaptation. Genotype-environment association (GEA) methods, which identify these loci based on correlations between genetic and environmental data, are particularly promising. Univariate methods have dominated GEA, despite the high dimensional nature of genotype and environment. Multivariate methods, which analyze many loci simultaneously, may be better suited to these data since they consider how sets of markers covary in response to environment. These methods may also be more effective at detecting adaptive processes that result in weak, multilocus signatures. Here, we evaluate four multivariate methods, and five univariate and differentiation-based approaches, using published simulations of multilocus selection. We found that Random Forest performed poorly for GEA. Univariate GEAs performed better, but had low detection rates for loci under weak selection. Constrained ordinations showed a superior combination of low false positive and high true positive rates across all levels of selection. These results were robust across the demographic histories, sampling designs, sample sizes, and levels of population structure tested. The value of combining detections from different methods was variable, and depended on study goals and knowledge of the drivers of selection. Reanalysis of genomic data from gray wolves highlighted the unique, covarying sets of adaptive loci that could be identified using redundancy analysis, a constrained ordination. Although additional testing is needed, this study indicates that constrained ordinations are an effective means of detecting adaptation, including signatures of weak, multilocus selection, providing a powerful tool for investigating the genetic basis of local adaptation.


Business Insights: Europe provides a detailed comparative study across all countries in the EU, looking at the requirements in terms of finance and accounting, tax, employment and facilities when establishing an office outside the usual home market. When you set up a business in or expand into a new territory within the EU, you will find yourself in a jurisdiction where, in practice, the basis on which you conduct business can be completely different from your home market. Business Insights: Europe will allow you to know ahead of time what legal, taxation and employment regulations you will face, revealing how to avoid the bureaucracy and 'pen pushing' which can dramatically affect your chances of success. A practical handbook and indispensable source of advice, Business Insights: Europe will first discuss the key issues that need to be addressed when drawing up a business plan for operating in a new EU market. It will also give a detailed breakdown of the legal, financial, tax and accounting practices you must observe if you are to set up and run your business on an efficient and effective basis, while distinguishing between exporting from the UK and running an office, branch or subsidiary within the EU.


We analyse the economics and epidemiology of different scenarios for a phased restart of the UK economy. Our economic model is designed to address the unique features of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing measures affect both supply and demand, and input-output constraints play a key role in restricting economic output. Standard models for production functions are not adequate to model the short-term effects of lockdown. A survey of industry analysts conducted by IHS Markit allows us to evaluate which inputs for each industry are absolutely necessary for production over a two month period. Our model also includes inventory dynamics and feedback between unemployment and consumption. We demonstrate that economic outcomes are very sensitive to the choice of production function, show how supply constraints cause strong network effects, and find some counter-intuitive effects, such as that reopening only a few industries can actually lower aggregate output. Occupation-specific data and contact surveys allow us to estimate how different industries affect the transmission rate of the disease. We investigate six different re-opening scenarios, presenting our best estimates for the increase in R0 and the increase in GDP. Our results suggest that there is a reasonable compromise that yields a relatively small increase in R0 and delivers a substantial boost in economic output. This corresponds to a situation in which all non-consumer facing industries reopen, schools are open only for workers who need childcare, and everyone who can work from home continues to work from home.


This study aims to examine the effect of e-WoM message on the intention level of consumers to spread the word to other consumers in the presence of a moderated mediation interaction effect between risk perception and uncertainty avoidance levels of consumers. An experimental design was implemented, and the manipulated experimental condition was e-WoM message represented in two levels, negative and positive. The results indicate that, compared to negative ones, positive e-WoM messages lead to higher intention to share the message with other consumers. However, in the presence of perceived risk, the positive direct effect of positive messages turns into a negative indirect effect when perceived risk mediates this relationship. Moreover, this negative indirect effect stabilizes with the uncertainty avoidance moderated relationship between e-WoM message and perceived risk. In the light of these findings, a two levels e-WoM communication strategy was proposed to maximize the benefits of positive customer feedbacks: Construction of a strong pool of positive e-WoM messages generated by existing satisfied customers and the use of negative framing in the marketing communication messages targeted to prospect customers.


Abstract This study describes the distribution, species composition and environmental characteristics of benthic habitats and biotopes from 38 stations in the Hardangerfjord, based on observations using high-definition video. Faunal composition was primarily related to substrate composition, distance from open ocean and depth (water masses) by using Detrended Correspondence Analysis. Six different biotopes were observed at depths between 100 and 400 m: (1) Lophelia reef, (2) sponge garden, (3) seapen communities, (4) soft bottom coral garden, (5) hard bottom coral garden and (6) cerianthid stands. Three Lophelia reefs were observed between 140 and 230 m depth in the outer part of the fjord. Geodia spp. and other large sponges were abundant on morainic bottom, on sills. Seapen communities occurred on muddy bottoms mainly between 250 and 350 m depth. The soft bottom coral garden comprised the gorgonian Isidella lofotensis, locally with densities up to 167 colonies/100 m2. Hard bottom coral gardens with Paragorgia arborea and Paramuricea placomus had a much lower density with a maximum of 33 colonies/100 m2. Litter and lost fishing gear were observed on 49% of the locations. Lophelia and sponges were covered with silt to a much higher degree than previously observed offshore. Whether this is caused by naturally higher particle flux in fjords or is due to an increased input from anthropogenic sources cannot be concluded from the present study. In general, anthropogenic activities have lead to increased particle flux in fjords and a demand for monitoring sensitive deep-water habitats to detect related trends of declining biodiversity.


UZUNOVA, S., 2015. Recent changes of zoobenthos communities from the region Cape Kaliakra – Cape Galata (the Black Sea). Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., Supplement 1, 21: 154–158 In 2006, 2011 and 2013 benthic macrofauna investigations were carried out in the region between Cape Kaliakra and Cape Galata, situated at 1 mile distance in front of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and two stations in Varna Bay, so that to reveal the present situation with the benthic communities in the studied area in 2013, compared to 2006 and 2011. The results show strong increase in abundance of benthic macrofauna from 2006 to 2013 and reverse trend for the biomass values. Similar results were established for the period 1998–2002, which prove that situation within benthic community is still very unstable. Trend of decrease in mollusk's share in species composition and increase of polychete number was found in 2013. Shannon – Wiener index shows improvement of the state of benthic communities in the investigated area. Values of Marine Biotic Index (AMBI) and multivariate AMBI (M–AMBI) are in conformity with Shannon – Wiener index and confi rm the relatively good state of the ecosystem in the investigated area.


The objective of this paper is to report a novel non-invasive, real-time, and label-free smart assay technique for the prognostic detection of bone loss by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The proposed system incorporated an antibody-antigen-based sensor functionalization to induce selectivity for the C-terminal telopeptide type one collagen (CTx-I) molecules—a bone loss biomarker. Streptavidin agarose was immobilized on the sensing area of a silicon substrate-based planar sensor, patterned with gold interdigital electrodes, to capture the antibody-antigen complex. Calibration experiments were conducted with various known CTx-I concentrations in a buffer solution to obtain a reference curve that was used to quantify the concentration of an analyte in the unknown serum samples. Multivariate chemometric analyses were done to determine the performance viability of the developed system. The analyses suggested that a frequency of 710 Hz is the most discriminating regarding the system sensitivity. A detection limit of 0.147 ng/mL was achieved for the proposed sensor and the corresponding reference curve was linear in the range of 0.147 ng/mL to 2.669 ng/mL. Two sheep blood samples were tested by the developed technique and the results were validated using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The results from the proposed technique match those from the ELISA.


The most promising approaches for optical neural networks are based on intensity encoding. However, a serious drawback of intensity encoding is the lack of negative values and optical subtraction, which are essential for rendering neural networks useful. To overcome the need for optical subtraction, a novel training method is described here that is especially useful for optical multilayer neural networks. In this method, subtraction is implemented as a transformation of the interconnection weights which makes possible the implementation of multilayer perceptrons with optical thresholding. The method is straightforward to implement in optical neural networks where learning occurs under external electronic/computer control.


The Transformational Consumer

 They are the most valuable, least understood customers of our time. They buy over $4 trillion in life-improving products and services every year. If you serve their deeply human need to continually improve their lives, they will eagerly engage with your brand at a time when most people are tuning out corporate messages.

 They are Transformational Consumers, and no one knows them like Tara-Nicholle Nelson. Her Transformational Consumer insights powered her work at MyFitnessPal, which grew from 40 million to 100 million users in her time there.

 Nelson takes readers on a hero's journey to connecting with customers in ways both profitable and transformational. After going inside the brains, emotions, and behaviors of Transformational Consumers, Tara issues a call to adventure: a rallying cry to leaders to shift their focus from simply making products to solving their customers' problems.

 Nelson uses stories and cases studies from every industry to guide readers through this journey in five stages, shedding light on how to rethink their customers, their products and services, their marketing, their competition, and even their culture.

 The key to growing a business today is not building an app or getting new social media followers. The key is engaging people over and over again by triggering their deep, human desire for growth and transformation.

 When a company reorients every initiative to serve Transformational Consumers, it kick-starts a lifelong love affair with its customers—a love affair that results in unprecedented revenue growth, product innovation, and employee engagement.


The itemized deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 164 had long provided relief to taxpayers residing in high income and property tax states such as New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. It assured these taxpayers that their federal tax obligation would only be computed after a reduction for the state and local taxes that they paid, subject to the application of the alternative minimum tax and the itemized deduction limitation. The SALT deduction meant that the IRS could not impose a double tax on that portion of a taxpayer's income that had been paid in taxes to state and local taxing authorities.

On December 22, 2017, President Donald J. Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which represents the most significant overhaul of the country's tax laws since the Tax Reform Act of 1986. A major component of the TCJA was a $10,000 per calendar year cap on an individual's aggregate deduction for state and local income, property, and sales taxes [IRC section 164(b)(6)]. This limitation applies to tax years beginning after December 31, 2017, and ending before January 1, 2026.


A series of organic dyes containing a phenothiazine central unit were synthesized and were used effectively in the fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). A cyanoacrylate moiety was added at the C(3) position of the phenothiazine as an electron acceptor, and a triarylamine moiety was attached at the C(7) position as an electron donor. The DSSCs made with these dyes displayed remarkable quantum efficiency, ranging from 4.2–6.2% under an AM 1.5 solar condition (100 mW cm−2). A variety of substituents, i.e., methyl, hexyl and triphenylamino groups, were added at the N(10) of phenothiazine in order to optimize the incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency. Along the main chromophore a thiophenylene group was inserted at different positions to examine its influence on the properties of devices. The best performance was found in compound NSPt-C6, in which a hexyl group was attached at the N(10) of phenothiazine and a thiophenylene at the C(7) position. It displayed a short-circuit current (Jsc) of 14.42 mA cm−2, an open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.69 V, and a fill factor (ff) of 0.63, corresponding to an overall conversion efficiency of 6.22%. Their photophysical properties were analyzed with the aid of a time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) model with the B3LYP functional. Their photovoltaic behavior was further elucidated by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.


"Throughout history the socially constructed concepts of gender and sexual desire have played a vital role in the inter-connectedness of human cultures. Nowhere is this more evident than in the performing and visual arts, which act as a looking glass for society as a whole. Within the realm of theater alone, one finds ample representation of gender and sex norms. The genre of comedy casts incisive light on societal norms due to the unwritten license of the author and actors to comment subversively on matters that would otherwise be taboo. In musical comedy the issue of the male singing in his falsetto-a mature male singing in a female's range-inherently problematizes gender. It magnifies the intrinsic differences between masculine and feminine while simultaneously referring to the norms of a society. This study parallels the history of the comic falsetto-singing male in Western culture with the history of gender and sexuality in order to see the relationship that exists between them. The use and appreciation of the comic falsettist, or lack thereof, has typically been a direct reflection of a culture's attitude toward gender and sexuality. This paper provides representative examples of repertoire for the comic falsettist from different time periods and interprets them contextually within their respective cultures. Examples from a play by Aristophanes and from a Baroque intermezzo exemplify the predominantly patriarcal society in which women and men with same-sex desire existed in the pre-modern age. A discussion of the absence of the male falsettist in the 18th and 19th centuries explores the relationship between this voice type, the beginnings of sexual identity, and a more rigid concept of gender roles. Finally, there is a discussion of several comic falsetto roles, written in the 20th and 21st centuries, which mirror the evolution of Western culture's views toward gender and sexuality since 1900."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


This thesis provides a political economy account of how four small open economies – Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Ireland – have coped with the adaptation required by the exogenous pressures of Europeanisation over a period of 25 years. The research is grounded in Polyanian conceptualising of the interaction of States and markets using Varieties of Capitalism as a theoretical foundation. Starting with Katzenstein's (1985) comparative study as a departure point, the research evaluates how each country responded to deepening EU integration over a four stage periodisation broadly aligned to critical junctures of integration, and closing with the fifth anniversary of the Lehman Bros bank collapse on 15th September, 2013.
Particular attention is paid to the Irish case, with a view to resolving the puzzling question of why its 'Celtic Tiger' phase of development proved to be unsustainable. The research also identifies the areas where the different Varieties of Capitalism converge and diverge.
The findings are that the 'Democratic Corporatism' which Katzenstein identified as the means by which small open economies could cope with market forces by balancing them with social compensation, is still intact. Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands have all made necessary reforms to welfare regimes and labour markets without compromising societal values. While having to accommodate to an extent to liberalising forces, they remain developmental states.
Ireland exhibited developmentalist characteristics during the 1990s. It caught up with the rest of Europe in a material sense but not in respect of the capabilities required to carry this developmentalism forward to the new millennium. On the contrary, the 2000s saw the country make serious policy errors principally due to an intellectual failure to assimilate the requirements of living in a currency union. Moreover, democratic corporatism in an Irish context was not embedded. It is imperative that Ireland recaptures this developmentalism and repertories of action to help it do so are identified.
A number of dilemmas confronting the European integration project are outlined. Foremost among them is the challenge of embarking on a course of deeper integration necessary to consolidate the future of the currency in circumstances where political legitimacy is seriously undermined by austerity. A singular focus on fiscal adjustment has resulted in a deflationary debt crisis which seems set to continue for some time. There is no obvious escape route for Ireland. Indeed the situation is much complicated by its relationship with Britain which is becoming increasingly semi-detached from Europe. Within the policy space available to it, the best course for Ireland is to reinvent itself as a Social Market Economy, as far as possible in the image of its northern European peers.
For all the bleakness of the current environment there is opportunity too. The institutional architecture of EMU is so dysfunctional that it must eventually yield to reform if European integration as a project is to survive. Therein lies the possibility for a social democratic revival if a convincing narrative for it can be communicated.


Tropomyosin (TM), a sarcomeric thin-filament protein, plays an essential part in muscle contraction by regulating actin–myosin interaction. We describe two patients, a woman and her daughter, with muscle weakness and distal arthrogryposis (DA) type 2B, caused by a heterozygous missense mutation, R133W, in TPM2, the gene encoding β-TM. Our results demonstrate the involvement of muscle dysfunction in the pathogenesis of DA and the fact that DA2B may be caused by mutations in TPM2.


A new approach for measuring distortion based on dual-channel analysis of non-coherence between a stimulus and response is presented. This method is easy to implement, provides a continuous distortion curve against frequency, and can be used with a multitone stimulus, noise, or even music. Multitone is a desirable test signal for fast frequency response measurements and also for assessing system nonlinearities. However, conventional single-channel multitone measurements are challenging because the number of intermodulation tones grows rapidly with the number of stimulus tones and makes it extremely difficult to separate harmonics from intermodulation products. By using dual-channel measurement techniques, only well-known, standard signal processing techniques are used, resulting in simplicity, accuracy and repeatability.


It is possible to place n points in d-space so that, given any two-coloring of the points, there exists a halfspace within which one color dominates the other by as much as cn 1=2d, for some constant c > 0. This result was proven in a slightly weaker form by Beck and the bound was later tightened by Alexander. It was shown to be quasi-optimal by Matou sek, Welzl, and Wernisch. The lower bound proofs are highly technical and do not provide much intuitive insight into the \large-discrepancy" phenomenon. We develop a proof technique which allows us to rederive the same lower bound in a much simpler fashion. We give a probabilistic interpretation of the result and we discuss the connection of our method to Beck's Fourier transform approach. We also provide a quasi-optimal lower bound on the discrepancy of xed-size rotated boxes, which signi cantly improves the previous bound.


Drawing on recent quantitative and qualitative research, we consider lessons of the Scottish policy of free personal care for older people. The policy is embedded in political debates about devolution and interacts with various changing policies on care and support for older people. Evaluation is complicated by these interactions and by gaps in relevant data, especially concerning costs. Operationally, policy implementation has presented varying difficulties for local authorities. For clients and informal carers it remains popular, but is part of a service-led model of provision which does not reflect their own views of their care and support needs.


Three potential explanations of past CAP reforms have been identified in the literature: a budget constraint, pressure from GATT/WTO negotiations or commitments, and a paradigm shift emphasising agriculture's provision of public goods. The presentation, content and context of the Health Check reform proposals of 2007/08 are assessed. The proposals are probably more ambitious than first supposed. The Health Check was not primarily driven by budget pressures; the European Commission's wish to adopt an offensive negotiating stance in the closing phases of the Doha Round was a more likely explanatory factor. The EU's response to the commodity price spikes in 2008, and its Health Check proposals, suggest that the supposed switch from a state-assisted policy paradigm to the multifunctional paradigm is more apparent than real. The shape and purpose of the CAP post- 2013 is contested, with quite divergent views among the Member States


The traditional harvest of wild resources carries significant nutritional, economic, and sociocultural values for rural residents in the Arctic, especially for Indigenous subsistence communities. Rural communities in the Alaskan Arctic have expressed concern that aircraft activity from industry, commercial hunting, research, and tourism disrupts their harvest of wildlife, particularly caribou (Rangifer tarandus). However, little research exists on how aircraft impact harvest opportunities. Our objective was to assess the extent of scientific knowledge on aircraft-harvester interaction in the Arctic through a systematic search of the available literature. We found that no peer-reviewed publications addressed the conflict between aircraft and harvesters in the region. Some literature addressed aircraft impacts to subsistence species, but did not discuss how those impacts would affect local harvesters. Most research has been directed towards studying aircraft impacts on wildlife or humans in urbanized areas rather than in rural, subsistence communities. Therefore, we expanded our review to draw from gray literature (e.g., public records, government documents) to synthesize the current state of concern and perceptions on aircraft disturbance to subsistence harvesters. Based on the gray literature, we found that harvester frustrations were primarily directed toward low-flying aircraft and non-local operations. However, an absence of quantitative information on the extent of interaction between aircraft activity and harvesters hinders an objective assessment of the conflict. Mitigating conflict will require research focused on this data gap and may begin with better cooperation among rural communities, aircraft users, and decision-makers.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the efficacy and short term effects of a cellophane banding technique for progressive attenuation of canine single extrahepatic portosystemic shunts.

DESIGN
A prospective trial of 11 dogs with single congenital extrahepatic shunts.

PROCEDURE
Rectal ammonia tolerance testing and routine biochemical tests were performed preoperatively on all dogs. In seven dogs, preoperative abdominal Doppler ultrasonography was also performed. Exploratory laparotomy revealed a single extrahepatic portocaval shunt in each animal, which was attenuated using a cellophane band with an internal diameter of 2 to 3 mm. The abdomen was closed routinely. Follow-up biochemical analysis and abdominal Doppler ultrasonography or splenoportography were performed postoperatively.

RESULTS
The shunt was not amenable to total ligation in 11 dogs, based upon reported criteria. All dogs recovered uneventfully from surgery without evidence of portal hypertension, and showed clinical improvement thereafter. Shunt occlusion was deemed to have occurred in 10 dogs based on resolution of biochemical and/or sonographic abnormalities. One dog continued to have sonographic evidence of portosystemic shunting when evaluated 3 weeks after surgery, despite normal ammonia tolerance, but was lost to subsequent follow-up. Two dogs, in which 3 mm cellophane bands were placed, experienced delayed shunt occlusion.

CONCLUSION
Cellophane banding is simple to perform, and causes progressive attenuation of single extrahepatic shunts in dogs. Further work is needed to determine the maximum diameter of a cellophane band which will produce total attenuation, and the long-term safety and reliability of the treatment.


The randomized response technique (RRT) is a classical and effective method used to mitigate the distortion arising from dishonest answers. The traditional RRT usually focuses on the case of a single sensitive attribute, and discussion of the case of multiple sensitive attributes is limited. Here, we study a business case to identify some individual and organizational determinants driving information systems (IS) resource misuse in the workplace. People who actually engage in IS resource misuse are probably not willing to provide honest answers, given the sensitivity of the topic. Yet, to develop the causal relationship between IS resource misuse and its determinants, a version of the RRT for multivariate analysis is required. To implement the RRT with multiple sensitive attributes, we propose a Bayesian approach for estimating covariance matrices with incomplete information (resulting from the randomization procedure in the RRT case). The proposed approach (i) accommodates the positive definite condition and other intrinsic parameter constraints in the posterior to improve statistical precision, (ii) incorporates Bayesian shrinkage estimation for covariance matrices despite incomplete information, and (iii) adopts a quasi-likelihood method to achieve Bayesian semiparametric inference for enhancing flexibility. We show the effectiveness of the proposed method in a simulation study. We also apply the Bayesian RRT method and structural equation modeling to identify the causal relationship between IS resource misuse and its determinants.


Reilly,Tom, and Manley Witten, eds. War With Mexico! America's Reporters Cover the Battlefront. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010. 360 pp. $39.95. Tom Reilly, the founding editor of Journalism History, spent much of his life documenting combat journalism in the Mexican-American War but never got around to putting his findings into book form. After his death in 2002, Manley Witten, a colleague and a friend at California State-Northridge, agreed to fashion the book from sixteen boxes of Reilly's collected documents. Reilly would have been happy with the result, War With Mexico! And as someone who researches and writes extensively about the history of wartime journalism and censorship, this reviewer is, too. Not only does the book fill a hole in the scholarship about the development of war correspondence, but it also is a smart, thought-provoking, and easy read. Perhaps most engagingly, Reilly and Manley have added more evidence that, as Ecclesiasticus said, there is no new thing under the sun. Fundamental elements of modern war correspondence appeared in the 1840s in this very first war covered by professional reporters. These include confusion over journalists' roles as observers vs. military supporters or partisan cheerleaders; officers' love-hate relationships with those who could elevate or destroy their careers; the need for independent observers to act as a check on military accounts of battle; and the difficulty of writing objectively about something as large and foggy as a battle in which no single participant could see more than a tiny window of action. Here, too, is the tragic cost of such independent coverage: At least twenty-five riders in the express service that carried dispatches from the Mexican interior to the coast were "captured, killed, wounded, or tortured" by guerrillas. Reilly and Witten took pains to compile lists of war correspondents, the papers for which they worked, and those papers' political affiliations, all of which are valuable additions to the canon of war correspondence history. They also make a case for identifying the first full-time professional, civilian war correspondent as Christopher Haile of the New Orleans Picayune, a fact that deserves greater recognition in journalism history. The paper sent him to cover the northern battlegrounds in May 1 846 because American demand for war news had outstripped the supply being provided by occasional writers from the field. Even though there was a lull in combat in the late spring and summer, he jumped into the task with enthusiasm. Like the more famous Crimean War correspondents of the 1850s, he detailed the privations and hardships of camp life as well as the impact of poor equipment and logistical problems. He dug into officers' accounts of battle to re-create events to fill the voracious appetites of his readers, mostly extolling the virtues of American soldiers. …


This paper explores the impact of immigrants on the imports, exports and productivity of service-producing firms in the U.K. Immigrants may substitute for imported intermediate inputs (offshore production) and they may impact the productivity of the firm as well as its export behavior. The first effect can be understood as the re-assignment of offshore productive tasks to immigrant workers. The second can be seen as a productivity or cost cutting effect due to immigration, and the third as the effect of immigrants on specific bilateral trade costs. We test the predictions of our model using differences in immigrant inflows across U.K. labor markets, instrumented with an enclave-based instrument that distinguishes between aggregate and bilateral immigration, as well as immigrant diversity. We find that immigrants increase overall productivity in service-producing firms, revealing a cost cutting impact on these firms. Immigrants also reduce the extent of country-specific offshoring, consistent with a reallocation of tasks and, finally, they increase country-specific exports, implying an important role in reducing communication and trade costs for services.


The work presented in this thesis explores two different topics of interest, firstly a synthetic project fabricating small building blocks for supramolecular arrays. The building blocks are a series of perylene monoimide monoahydride (PMIA) compounds, synthesised by a four step process. The PMIA compounds belong to a family of dyes called the rylenes which are known in literature for their optical properties and use in optoelectronic devices. Chapter 2 begins with the description of the synthesis and characterisation of these molecules, where Hirshfeld surface analysis is used to investigate the solid state intermolecular forces between adjacent molecules. This is followed by the details of connecting two PMIA through organic linkers and it explores the structural and physical properties of the so called dimer. The physical properties investigated include, optical and electronic properties utilizing spectroelectrochemistry, cyclic voltammetry and electron paramagnetic resonance techniques. The chapter also explores the asymmetric feature of the building blocks with the aid of X-ray crystallography. The second topic of interest is silicon nanosheets (SiNS). There are many types of these two dimensional (2D) materials published in literature, however one type which has had minimal attention is a buckled sheet structure known as layered polysilane. A synthetic and structural investigation into layered polysilane and closely related siloxene, are carried out in Chapter 3, identifying their bonding arrangement and topographic assembly through a range of analytical techniques. Like many other SiNS, it is proposed that this material can be used in nanotechnology devices in the future, and this thesis makes some way towards identifying the structure which is important in order to use them in such devices. Chapter 4 leads on to discuss the investigation into the modification of SiNS fabricated in Chapter 3, via a range of small organic molecules. This is another area in literature which has great scope for investigation and exciting potential for use in nanodevices. An important difference once the SiNS have been functionalised with small organic groups is their enhanced solubility, in comparison to being insoluble before functionalisation. This opens up a wealth of applications which require solution phase activity. A range of surface analytical techniques aid in identification of functionalised sheets and Chapter 4 details the challenges and successes.


Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) preparations contain activity against HIV type 1 (HIV-1). However, there has been controversy about whether some biological activities of hCG beta-subunit (hCGbeta) preparations are caused by the beta-subunit itself or other proteins present in the preparations. We report here the purification, characterization, and identification of three enzymes with anti-HIV activity present in the beta-core fraction of hCGbeta prepared from the urine of pregnant women. The N-terminal amino acid sequence of one protein is identical to human urinary lysozyme C, and those of the other two are identical to human RNase A and urinary RNase U. We thus refer to these proteins as AVL (antiviral lysozyme) and AVR (antiviral RNases). In addition to HIV-1 inhibition, AVL is capable of lysing Micrococcus lysodeikticus. AVR digests a variety of RNA substrates, including RNA from HIV-1-infected cells. We also find that lysozyme from chicken egg white, human milk, and human neutrophils and RNase A from bovine pancreas possess activity against HIV-1. These findings may offer additional strategies for the treatment of HIV-1 infection.


The Upanisā Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 12: 23) has been interpreted as presenting an overarching account of conditionality, joining the twelve nidānas of paṭicca-samuppāda with a further series of positive factors (upanisās) leading to awakening. The discourse has a parallel preserved in Chinese translation. A close reading of these versions shows how the series of upanisās belongs to a 'family' of upanisā discourses. The connection of the series to the twelve nidānas appears rhetorical rather than doctrinal. The concept of upanisā in Pāli literature is related to the concept of upaniṣad in Vedic literature, and upanisā was also a topic of debate in the ascetic milieu of ancient India. The Buddhist concept of upanisā emerges as that of a supportive inner state that is a necessary condition for achieving the aim of liberation. I propose to translate upanisā as 'precondition'.


The Deutsche Borreliose-Gesellschaft (German Society of Lyme-Borreliosis) raises objections to the IDSA Lyme Guidelines published in 2006. The fundamental basis for our objections is that the implementation of the IDSA guidelines extends beyond the United States and into Europe. Accordingly, our ability to diagnose and treat patients with Lyme disease is being severely restricted by these guidelines, and we believe that the guidelines must be revised to provide greater flexibility in the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease given the poor laboratory test sensitivity, the persistence of the organism despite adherence to IDSA protocols, and the seriousness of this illness.


Known under the general term of phytoremediation, using vegetation as a remedial agent has existed in its basic form for many years, mostly in applications involving waste-water treatment. Recently, however, scientists began experimenting with phytoremediation as an in-situ clean-up option for contaminated soils, sediments and ground water. After approximately five years of lab and field research, phytoremediation is now a full-fledged, albeit very young, technology with a promising future in the hazardous waste clean-up industry. Having learned from the overly hyped advent of bioremediation, most experts go out of their way to caution against thinking of phytoremediation as a panacea for hazardous waste. Rather, it is seen as an exciting new technique with a specific niche: as a polishing step after the hot spots are dealt with, or as a long-term solution for a more isolated, less contaminated site. You wouldn't want to site a day care center for this, says Scott Cunningham of Dupont, Newark, Del., But for areas that are more remote, this is entirely appropriate. Phytoremediation could represent real savings for the government and other entities with pressing clean-up projects. Although the costs vary from site to site, depending on the contaminant, most experts estimate that phytoremediation is only 20% as costly as conventional excavation, incineration and pump and treat systems. But phytoremediation's greatest advantage could be in how it is being received by the public. It stands to reason that a family living near a munitions dump will be far more inclined to support a mass plantation of trees or a new wetlands area than an excavation and incineration operation. It's incredibly politically correct at the moment to use natural processes to remediate our environmental excesses, says Cunningham. And phytoremediation makes technical sense on top of it.


Parshall, Peter, and Rainer Schoch, eds. Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Pp. 372 (9 ½ x 12 inches). 150 ill in color; 20 b/w. This beautifully illustrated book examines the evolution of early printmaking in late-medieval Europe. Woodcut prints are explored in a broad social and economic context, as the means of their production and their utility for massdissemination are investigated. The book is essential for art historians, students, and collectors, as well as for the general reader. In "Early Woodcuts and the Reception of the Primitive" the editors discuss printing from woodblocks in central Europe (southern Germany) by the second quarter of the fifteenth century (after the method had been practiced in Asia for centuries). Now, a large number of people were able to possess images, one generation before Johannes Gutenberg's printing from moveable type. Therefore, Origins of European Printmakingtreats mosdy German evidence. The two basic media of relief prints were woodcuts and metal cuts (engraving); by 1470 woodcuts were used for illustrating printed books, and engraving included a high percentage of profane subjects, in color. Actually, Gutenberg was preceded by the Haarlem printer Jan Laurens Coster (c. 1370c. 1440?). A well-known published inventory of 3,200 prints was assembled later between 1515 and 1525 by Ferdinand Columbus (son of the explorer), who traveled about Europe and acquired woodcuts ; he was an encyclopedist wanting to own (indiscriminately) as many pictures as possible, mostly allegories and satires (3). While some scholars believe that printmaking traveled from Italy to the North, the Chinese had printed from woodblocks many centuries earlier. Serious research on the history of printing did not begin until the mid-eighteenth century, with the three- volume study of Jean-Michel Papillon (1766), who revived the legendary story about the Cunio twins of Ravenna, believed to have been inventors of woodcuts in the late thirteenth century. The earliest formal analysis of a fifteenth-c. relief print was done by Franz Krismer, a librarian, and printed in Christoph von Murr's Journal (1776 - p. 5). Early woodcuts were qualitatively dismissed, however, until the nineteenth century, when the idea to establish the images' history emerged as a part of cultural patrimony in Germany. After the revolutions of 1848, early woodcuts became artifacts of pre-industrial society, a characterization lasting until the modern atavistic engagement with the primitive. It seems as if a connection is seen nowadays relating woodcuts (and the first printed books) directly to modern high-speed presses and mass-media, including photomechanical processes (such as those used for the Elustrated London News and the Leipzig Illustrierte Leitung). In modern times, William Morris and his pre-Raphaelite friends turned to pre-Albrecht Durer woodcuts and the suppression of perspective. To imitate the art of the medieval book, certain techniques had to be relearned and type-fronts created on the basis of Gothic prototypes. In France, a similar development took place before 1890: see the symbolist magazine L 'Ymagier (Remy de Gourmont and Alfred Jarry) . The distinction between high and popular art was abolished, and anachronism as well as discontinuity were espoused by this anti-modernism (7-8). In 1912, an important manifesto of German expressionism appeared: Der blaue Reiter (Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc). Dialogues began between Paul Cezanne, Henri Rousseau, Henri Matisse, Picasso, Delaunay, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, and Max Pechstein. The editors of the Blaue Reiter called for a spiritual renewal, and artists turned to religious subjects after the first World War; later, the National Socialists rejected all primitivism as being degenerate, and welcomed Neo-Classicism (until 1945). Finally, Paul Vogt exhibited Expressionism: A German Institution in 1980 at New York's Guggenheim Museum. …


More than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court is closely and bitterly divided about the meaning of that decision, and about the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause to which it appealed. The first major decision of the Roberts Court, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, took a small step away from a constitutional vision that permits racial discrimination by the government whenever courts believe that the effects on society will be salutary.With respect to non-remedial affirmative discrimination, remarkably little has changed since the Bakke decision in 1978.At that time four members of the Court would have allowed the government virtually unfettered discretion to practice what they regarded as benign forms of racial discrimination. Three decades later, four members of the Court take essentially the same position, and will clearly not be deterred by any of the contrary precedents that have built up during that period.In 1978, four Justices read the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to forbid racial discrimination without regard to the motive for the challenged policy. Today, four members of the Court would give the Fourteenth Amendment (and perhaps also the Civil Rights Act) a roughly similar interpretation, though it is not clear how far they would go in challenging existing precedent.In 1978, Justice Powell's middle position was that racial discrimination practiced for judicially approved diversity purposes is permissible, but that care must be taken to limit its reach and obscure the identity of its victims. Today's swing Justice has expressly endorsed Powell's legal formula, although Kennedy's application of this approach seems less latitudinarian than the one suggested in Powell's Bakke opinion.How much longer will this equilibrium remain stable? We seem to be one vote away from significant progress toward a relatively robust enforcement of antidiscrimination principles. We are also but one vote away from the opposite approach, which would endorse virtually any kind of discriminatory laws that a court believes were "enacted in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class." It is hard to believe that the Court won't shift in one direction or the other fairly soon. But one might have said the same thing in 1978.


This report describes the results of an investigation made to assess the potentialities of nuclear moisture/density gauges for determining the in-situ density of cement-bound bases and sub-bases. The results of field trials showed that density measurements made with nuclear gauges used in the direct transmission mode were at least as accurate as densities determined by the sand replacement test and measurements made on cores cut from the hardened material. Furthermore the speed with which the results were obtained far exceeded those obtained by any other available method. A check of the accuracy and reproducibility of the results of nuclear measurements made on test blocks of known density confirmed that, for the majority of cases, density values recorded by the gauges were within 2 per cent of the actual value. The reproducibility of the results obtained by different operators and gauges was good. However, the work also suggested that there may be materials which give anomalous results because they do not follow the calibration curves for the gauges. Precautions therefore need to be taken in order to ensure that the material is behaving in the expected manner. (Author/TRRL)


Book synopsis: In A Time to Speak Out, a collection of strong Jewish voices come together to explore some of the most challenging issues facing diaspora Jews. With articles on such topics as international law, the Holocaust, varieties of Zionism, self-hatred, the multiplicity of Jewish identities, and human rights, these essays provide powerful evidence of the vitality of independent Jewish opinion as well as demonstrating that criticism of Israel has a crucial role to play in the continuing history of a Jewish concern for social justice. At once sober and radical, A Time To Speak Out reclaims an often intemperate debate for those both inside and outside Israel who prefer to confront uncomfortable truths.

Nearly all contributors were associated with the Independent Jewish Voices declaration which, when launched in Britain in 2007, opened a floodgate of responses. Independent Jewish Voices is a group of Jews in Britain from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who have in common a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights.


Glaciers are melting rapidly across poles due to climate changes. Apart from poles, land-based glaciers are also melting dramatically. It is crucial to monitor and reduce the rapid melting of glaciers. However, on-site monitoring of glaciers is challenging, costly, time-consuming, and entails subjectivity. Therefore, remote sensing techniques are indispensable to provide an automated and cost-effective solution in order to enhance the land-based monitoring of glaciers. This work presents a remote sensing technique that is based on neural networks (NN) and support vector machines (SVM) used for monitoring Baltoro glaciers, situated in the Karakurum range. The classifier classifies land, cloud, greenery, and the glacier mass. The data set used is the Landsat imagery from 1976, 1991, 1994, 2000, 2010, 2013 and 2016 including June and July. We observe that SVM achieves an accuracy of 99.97 %, while ANN attains an accuracy of 98.87 %. The results show that the glaciers have experienced a significant ablation in their masses with the temperature rise around the globe.


Paediatric rehabilitation using virtual reality systems pose unique usability challenges distinct from those in adult rehabilitation. These challenges relate to the different epidemiology and aetiology of childrenpsilas disorders requiring rehabilitation and the physical design of interactive virtual reality hardware for children of varying sizes. Just as importantly, children need highly entertaining interactive scenarios that suit their differing levels of cognitive development and thus their differing abilities to comprehend gaming scenarios. In this paper we present our virtual reality-based Paediatric Interactive Therapy System (PITS) designed specifically for upper arm rehabilitation in children aged from five years of age upwards. It incorporates a range of interchangeable position sensing devices (compass, bend sensor, pressure sensor and camera tracking) that can be adjusted to a large range of different hand sizes, and interactive gaming scenarios specifically designed for maximum entertainment value for children. We describe the neuroscientific principles behind our system, the technical details of the hardware components and the design of the interactive scenarios. An initial usability and patient acceptance pilot study has been conducted at the Rehabilitation Centre Affoltern of the University Childrenpsilas Hospital Zurich. To date all patients have accepted the system, and trained in reaching and grasping tasks at a far higher rate than in conventional occupational therapy. The system thus promises to be a valuable complement to conventional therapeutic programs offered in rehabilitation clinics.


Little is known about transport mechanisms in sloped dormant vegetated and compost only filters for roadway runoff. Residence time experiments were carried out in triplicate in 0.254 m wide × 0.65 m long by 0.10 m deep beds using a bromide tracer. Bed slope was 12°. Only at the lowest flow rate tested (0.276 l/min per m of filter width) were mean residence times in compost beds with and without dormant grasses different. Pools formed ahead of beds at higher flow rate, and pool depth reached bed depth at 3.54 l/min/m. The ideal model of a well-mixed pool in series with a plug flow porous bed was a good predictor of effluent concentration data at flows ≥2.66 l/min/m. Theoretical contact volume within the beds increased with flow rate to reach approx. 30% of available pore space, while free drainage volume declined. Data shows that designs for sloped compost filter beds must consider flow, bed depth and length, and whether or not areas for pooling are needed.


The solution process for diffusion problems usually involves the time development separately from the space solution. A finite difference algorithm in time requires a sequential time development in which all previous values must be determined prior to the current value. The Stehfest Laplace transform algorithm, however, allows time solutions without the knowledge of prior values. It is of interest to be able to develop a time-domain decomposition suitable for implementation in a parallel environment. One such possibility is to use the Laplace transform to develop coarse-grained solutions which act as the initial values for a set of fine-grained solutions. The independence of the Laplace transform solutions means that we do indeed have a time-domain decomposition process. Any suitable time solver can be used for the fine-grained solution. To illustrate the technique we shall use an Euler solver in time together with the dual reciprocity boundary element method for the space solution


Sex Fiends, Perverts, and Pedophiles: Understanding Sex Crime Policy in America. By Chrysanthi Leon. New York: New York University Press, 2011. 444 pp. $70.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.At the crux of the current crisis of mass incarceration, increasing punitiveness, and alarmist politics, is the heated controversy about sex offender policy. Current policies create the impression that sex offender policy has always consisted of lengthy, incapacitating sentences and pervasive post-sentence supervision; moreover, many previous studies have focused on the punitive discourse surrounding sex offenders, thus blurring the line between perceptions and representations of the problem and the methods adopted to address it.Chrysanthi Leon's new book is a welcome and knowledgeable addition to this debate. The book thoroughly analyzes sex offender policy, challenging the existing academic and practical discourse in two important ways. First, it offers a much-needed historical perspective, breaking the timeline into roughly three periods: the sexual psychopath era, featuring a plethora of approaches toward sexual offenses; the rehabilitative era, during which the belief that propensity to commit sex offenses was curable led to a focus on clinical approaches; and the modern containment era, in which mass incarceration and numerous restrictions are related to a belief in incurability. In doing so, the book reveals nuance and layers that existing scholarship tends to mask and compress.Second, the book analyzes both discourse and policy, drawing on an astounding variety of sources, including interviews with practitioners, field observations, quantitative databases of arrest, conviction and civil commitment rates, academic sources, newspapers, and popular culture. In doing so, it provides a more complete perspective on the relationship between academic opinions, political initiatives, professional practices, and public discourse and perceptions.The conclusions Leon draws from this extensive inquiry are nuanced and sophisticated. The most noticeable trend is a unification of the sex offender category. While the sexual psychopath era and the rehabilitation era (to a lesser extent) feature efforts to distinguish sex offenders from each other, in the containment era sex offenders are perceived as a monolithic category of "monsters." This trend has disturbing, and sometimes surprising, implications: Our ability to properly assess risk is hindered by our perception of propensity to offend as static and unchanging, therefore leading to an overbroad category of monitored and controlled sex offenders, but simultaneously diverting our attention away from sexual offenses committed within the family.Leon also problematizes the usual explanations for sex offender incarceration, which focus on moral panics and regard sex offenders as a unique category of subjects, separate from general criminal justice trend. Instead, she offers an integrated explanation that sees sex offender incarceration as part of the general trend toward more frequent and more severe incarceration. …


BACKGROUND: Persons with migration background exhibit higher smoking rates in comparison to the general population.These smokers often cannot be reached by prevention measures at the family doctor's office. METHODS: In summer 2011 the health campaign "Smoke-free by Ramadan" was launched in 11 German cities. Measures included the training of doctors on smoking cessation methods, general bilingual information flyers, and in some cases lectures on smoking, specifically for imams. A number of local events, especially for individuals with Turkish migration background were initiated. For these health events a specially equipped health bus of the BKK-vor-Ort was used, in which visitors were offered following elements: systematic data collection about age, sex and smoking behavior, a test to determine of the severity of nicotine dependence (Fagerstrom test, FTNA), as well as spirometric lung function test. Smokers were generally motivated to stop smoking. Data were anonymously collected and analysed in a documentation and communication sheet in Turkish language, and test results were handed over to participants on a printed information sheet. RESULTS: Data of 1012 people collected on 8 health days were analysed (70% men, mean age 46.5 years). The percentage of smokers was 41.5% (men) or 30% (women). Of 294 male smokers, according to FTNA 43.6% had low, 24.8% had moderate, and 31.6% strong nicotine dependence; in the 91 female smokers the corresponding rates were 54.9%, 30.8% and 14.3%. The distribution pattern of the dependency levels was statistically significantly different between genders (p = 0.006). Reduced lung function (FEV, < 80%) occurred in smokers more often than in nonsmokers (30% versus 21%). CONCLUSIONS: These results reinforce the importance of low-threshold prevention measures. By screening, here shown by the example of individuals with Turkish migration background, a significant number of smokers was identified who had in addition to strong nicotine addiction also significantly impaired lung function. As the odds for successful cessation without support are below 5%, evidence-based smoking cessation was advised to all smokers.


In this compelling work, Ariella Azoulay reconsiders the political and ethical status of photography. Describing the power relations that sustain and make possible photographic meanings, Azoulay argues that anyone -- even a stateless person -- who addresses others through photographs or is addressed by photographs can become a member of the citizenry of photography. The civil contract of photography enables anyone to pursue political agency and resistance through photography. Photography, Azoulay insists, cannot be understood separately from the many catastrophes of recent history. The crucial arguments of her book concern two groups with flawed or nonexistent citizenship: the Palestinian noncitizens of Israel and women in Western societies. Azoulay analyzes Israeli press photographs of violent episodes in the Occupied Territories, and interprets various photographs of women -- from famous images by stop-motion photographer Eadweard Muybridge to photographs from Abu Ghraib prison. Azoulay asks this question: under what legal, political, or cultural conditions does it become possible to see and to show disaster that befalls those who can claim only incomplete or nonexistent citizenship? Drawing on such key texts in the history of modern citizenship as the Declaration of the Rights of Man together with relevant work by Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Susan Sontag, and Roland Barthes, Azoulay explores the visual field of catastrophe, injustice, and suffering in our time. Her book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the disasters of recent history -- and the consequences of how these events and their victims have been represented.


Noël Carroll's influence on the contemporary debate on the horror genre is hard to overestimate. His work on the topic is often celebrated as one of the best instances of interdisciplinary dialogue between film studies and philosophy of art. It has provided the foundations for the contemporary study of horror in art. Yet, for all the critical attention that his views on horror have attracted over the years, little scrutiny has been given to the nature itself of the emotion of horror in the genre. This paper offers a critical understanding of the nature of the emotion of horror for Carroll, with a view to informing future investigations into the nature of horror in film (and beyond).


Aliasing may cause problems for both optimization and reasoning about programs. Since static alias analysis is expensive, and sometimes, even impossible, compilers tend to be conservative. This usually leads to missing some optimization opportunities. Furthermore, when trying to understand code, one must consider all possible aliasing patterns. This can make reasonning about code difficult and non-trivial. We have implemented an approach for having alias-free parameters in C. This approach allows aliasing between the arguments at the call site, but guarantees that there will be no aliasing between arguments and between arguments and globals inside procedure bodies. This is done by having multiple bodies, up to one for each aliasing pattern. Procedure calls will be dispatched to the body that matches the aliasing pattern at the call site. By having alias-free parameters in the bodies, good optimization can be achieved. Furthermore, verification and reasoning about the code is easier when there is no aliasing. The main advantages of our approach are that code to determine the aliasing pattern is automatically generated, and the programmer does not have to code it by hand. We tested our implementation, and found that using this approach can be very practical. It is easy to convert already-existing code to use it. And in some cases, we had run-time execution speedup as much as 29%.


Implied probability density functions (PDFs) estimated from cross-sections of observed option prices are gaining increasing attention amongst academics and practitioners. To date, however, little attention has been paid to the robustness of these estimates or to the confidence that users can place in the summary statistics (for example the skewness or the 99th percentile) derived from fitted PDFs. This paper begins to address these questions by examining the absolute and relative robustness of two of the most common methods for estimating implied PDFs - the double-lognormal approximating function and the smoothed implied volatility smile methods. The changes resulting from randomly perturbing quoted prices by no more than a half tick provide a lower bound on the confidence intervals of the summary statistics derived from the estimated PDFs. Tests are conducted using options contracts tied to short sterling futures and the FTSE 100 index - both trading on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange. The tests show that the smoothed implied volatility smile method dominates the double-lognormal as a technique for estimating implied PDFs when average goodness-of-fits for both methods are comparable.


Due to the specificity of its verb conjugation system, Wolof (Senegal) favors parataxis for clause combining and provides an interesting case where interclausal dependency can be marked by forms indicating information hierarchy. Furthermore, the study of clause combining shows that, with some restrictions on possible combinations, the various combinations of conjugations (or Tense-Aspect-Modality markers) produce different but regular interclausal meanings, such as succession, causality, opposition or consecution. Moreover, due to the nature of the different conjugations, paratactic clause chaining in Wolof yields different types of interclausal dependency, defining a gradient of syntactic integration: from simple assertive juxtaposition to more integrated syntactic dependency, through lesser known types of dependency, defined here as 'situational dependency' and 'pragmatic dependency'.


Electro-optic interferential quenching of light scattering is observed in microsphere and nematic liquid-crystal dispersions. The used drop-filled and nonaligned liquid-crystal matrix allows the formation of large orientational clusters responsible for this phenomenon, which is interpreted according to the single-scattering model.


Given a complex function F(ω) = |F(ω)|exp[jΔ(ω)] of a real argument ω, the extrema of its magnitude |F(ω)| and its phase Δ(ω), as functions of ω, are determined simultaneously by finding the roots of one common equation, Im[G(ω)] = 0, where G = (F′/F)2 and F′ = ∂F/∂ω. The extrema of |F| and Δ are associated with Re G 0, respectively. This easy-to-prove theorem has a wide range of applications in physical optics. We consider attenuated internal reflection (AIR) as an example. In AIR the complex reflection coefficient for the p polarization, rp(ϕ), and the ratio of complex reflection coefficients for the p and s polarizations, ρ(ϕ) = rp(ϕ)/rs(ϕ), are considered as functions of the angle of incidence ϕ. It is found that the same (cubic) equation that determines the pseudo-Brewster angle of minimum |rp| also determines a new angle at which the reflection phase shift δp = arg rpexhibits a minimum of its own. Likewise, the same (quartic) equation that determines the second Brewster angle of minimum |ρ| also determines angles of incidence at which the differential reflection phase shift Δ = arg ρ experiences a minimum and a maximum. Angular positions and magnitudes of all extrema are calculated exactly for a specific case that represents light reflection by the vacuum–Al or glass–aqueous-dye-solution interface. As another example, the normal-incidence reflection of light by a birefringent film on an absorbing substrate is examined. The ratio of complex principal reflection coefficients is considered as a function of the film thickness normalized to the wavelength of light. The absolute value and the phase of this function exhibit multiple extrema, the first 13 of which are determined for a specific birefringent film on a Si substrate.


This work reports on experiments in which antihydrogen atoms have been produced in cryogenic Penning traps from antiproton and positron plasmas by two different methods
and on experiments that have been carried out subsequently in order to investigate the antihydrogen atoms.

By the first method antihydrogen atoms have been formed during the process of positron cooling of antiprotons in so called nested Penning traps and detected via a field ionization method. A linear dependence of the number of detected antihydrogen atoms on the number of positrons has been found. A measurement of the state distribution
has revealed that the antihydrogen atoms are formed in highly excited states. This suggests along with the high production rate that the antihydrogen atoms are formed
by three-body recombination processes and subsequent collisional deexcitations. However current theory cannot yet account for the measured state distribution. Typical
radii of the detected antihydrogen atoms lie in the range between 0.4 µm and 0.15 µm.
The deepest bound antihydrogen atoms have radii below 0.1 µm. Antihydrogen atoms with that size have chaotic positron orbits so that for the first time antihydrogen atoms
have been detected that cannot be described by the GCA-model. The kinetic energy of the weakest bound antihydrogen atoms has been measured to about 200 meV, which
corresponds to an antihydrogen velocity of approximately 6200 m/s. A simple model suggests that these atoms are formed from only one deexcitation collision and methods
that might lead to a decrease of the antihydrogen velocity are presented.

By the second method antihydrogen atoms have been synthesized in charge-exchange processes. Lasers are used to produce a Rydberg cesium beam within the cryogenic Penning trap that collides with trapped positrons so that Rydberg positronium atoms are formed via charge-exchange reactions. Due to their charge neutrality the Rydberg positronium atoms are free to leave the positron trapping region. The Rydberg positronium atoms that collide with nearby stored antiprotons form antihydrogen atoms in charge-exchange reactions. So far, 14 +/- 4 antihydrogen atoms have been detected background-free via a field-ionization method.

The antihydrogen atoms produced via the two-step charge-exchange mechanism are expected to have a temperature of 4.2 K, the temperature of the antiprotons from which
they are formed. A method is proposed by which the antihydrogen temperature can be determined with an accuracy of better than 1 K from a measurement of the time delay
between antihydrogen annihilation events and the laser pulse that initiates the antihydrogen production via the production of Rydberg cesium atoms. First experiments have
been carried out during the last days of the 2004 beam time, but the number of detected antihydrogen annihilations has been too low for a determination of the antihydrogen
temperature.

Trapped antiprotons have been directly exposed to laser light delivered by a Titanium:Sapphire laser in order to investigate if the laser light causes any loss on the trapped antiprotons. Experiments have shown that no extra loss occurs for laser powers of less than 590 mW. This is an important result against the background of the future plan to confine antihydrogen atoms in a combined Penning-Ioffe trap and then to carry out laser spectroscopy on these atoms, since it reveals that laser light does not cause an increase of the pressure in the trapping region to the extend that annihilations with the background gas become noticeable.

The ATRAP Collaboration plans to precisely investigate antihydrogen atoms. The ultimate goal is to test the CPT-theorem by a high precision measurement of the 1S-2S transition of antihydrogen and a comparison with the precisely known value of the corresponding transition in hydrogen. This thesis presents the achievement of the first
step towards this challenging goal: the production of cold antihydrogen itself.


The acquisition of self-knowledge is often described as one of the main goals of philosophical inquiry. At the same time, some sort of self-knowledge is often regarded as a necessary condition of our being a human agent or human subject. Thus self-knowledge is taken to constitute both the beginning and the end of humans' search for wisdom, and as such it is intricately bound up with the very idea of philosophy. Not surprisingly therefore, the Delphic injunction 'Know thyself' has fascinated philosophers of different times, backgrounds, and tempers.
But how can we make sense of this imperative? What is self-knowledge and how is it achieved? What are the structural features that distinguish self-knowledge from other types of knowledge? What role do external, second- and third-personal, sources of knowledge play in the acquisition of self-knowledge? How can we account for the moral impact ascribed to self-knowledge? Is it just a form of anthropological knowledge that allows agents to act in accordance with their aims? Or, does self-knowledge ultimately ennoble the self of the subjects having it? Finally, is self-knowledge, or its completion, a goal that may be reached at all?
The book addresses these questions in fifteen chapters covering approaches of many philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Edmund Husserl or Elisabeth Anscombe. The short reflections inserted between the chapters show that the search for self-knowledge is an important theme in literature, poetry, painting and self-portraiture from Homer


HandLens is a computer program, written in Excel macro language, that calculates the chemistry of minerals in mineral mixtures (for example, in rocks, soils and sediments) for related samples from inputs of quantitative mineralogy and chemistry. For best results, the related samples should contain minerals having the same chemical compositions; that is, the samples should differ only in the proportions of minerals present. This manual describes how to use the program, discusses the theory behind its operation, and presents test results of the program's accuracy. Required input for HandLens includes quantitative mineralogical data, obtained, for example, by RockJock analysis of X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, and quantitative chemical data, obtained, for example, by X-ray florescence (XRF) analysis of the same samples. Other quantitative data, such as sample depth, temperature, surface area, also can be entered. The minerals present in the samples are selected from a list, and the program is started. The results of the calculation include: (1) a table of linear coefficients of determination (r's) which relate pairs of input data (for example, Si versus quartz weight percents); (2) a utility for plotting all input data, either as pairs of variables, or as sums of up to eight variables; (3) a table that presents the calculated chemical formulae for minerals in the samples; (4) a table that lists the calculated concentrations of major, minor, and trace elements in the various minerals; and (5) a table that presents chemical formulae for the minerals that have been corrected for possible systematic errors in the mineralogical and/or chemical analyses. In addition, the program contains a method for testing the assumption of constant chemistry of the minerals within a sample set.


Aims: The prediction of water consumption patterns is a challenge, especially when water metering is not available at scale. The use of time-of-use survey (TUS) data offers an alternative to metering in order to track the general patterns of water consumption across large and representative groups of end-users. The paper focuses on the prediction of analytical domestic hot water (DHW) demand profiles for detailed building archetype models, using an occupant focused approach based on TUS data. The paper illustrates and discusses the resulting capability of dwelling archetypes to capture variations in heat demand and energy usage for water heating on a national scale and at high time resolution. Methodology: Five dwelling types are considered over different construction periods, representative of the majority of the Irish residential stock, which is used here as a case study. They are modelled at room level using EnergyPlus and converted into archetype models. A bottom-up approach is utilised to develop the required operational data at high space and time resolution. That methodology applies Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques to TUS activity data to develop activity-specific profiles for occupancy and domestic equipment electricity use. It is extended to DHW demand profiles by combining the probability distributions for particular TUS activities with average daily DHW consumptions, depending on the household size, day type and season. Results: The archetype models capture variations in DHW consumption, heat demand and energy usage for DHW heating, on a national scale and a fifteen-minute basis. Moreover, they are found to be 90% accurate with the Irish standard dwelling energy assessment procedure in estimating the annual energy requirements for DHW heating. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential for utilising time of use surveys to predict domestic water demand profiles on a national scale and at high time resolution.


Homologs of noncore components of vertebrate hedgehog signaling are required for cilia function in planarians, suggesting an ancestral association between Hh signaling components and cilia. The core components of the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway—the ligand Hh, its receptor Patched (Ptc), the seven-transmembrane protein Smoothened (Smo), the Gli transcription factors, and the Gli repressor Suppressor of Fused (SuFu)—are conserved from flies to mouse, but the requirement for additional components, particularly those involved in ciliogenesis and intraflagellar transport, varies between species. Rink et al. report that, in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, Hh signaling is required for anteroposterior (AP) patterning during regeneration but does not depend on cilia. Genes encoding the planarian homologs of Hh, Ptc, Smo, SuFu, and a Gli transcription factor were expressed in various tissues, suggesting that, as in flies and vertebrates, Hh signaling plays diverse roles. Given its role in developmental patterning events in other species, the authors investigated the role of Hh signaling in planarian regeneration. In regenerating animals fed double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) for hh, smo, or gli1, anterior regeneration was normal, but posterior regeneration was defective both morphologically and by gene expression criteria. Conversely, in regenerating animals fed dsRNA for ptc or sufu, which encode negative regulators of Hh signaling, posterior regeneration was normal and anterior regeneration was defective—the most severely affected animals formed tail tissue in place of a head. Severity of the regeneration phenotypes varied with the dsRNA dosage and was similar to that previously reported for Wnt signaling mutants, in which the highest amount of signaling favors posterior fate and low or no signaling promotes anterior fate. RNAi experiments revealed that Wnt and Hh signaling functioned synergistically in AP patterning and suggested that Hh signaling may regulate expression of genes encoding Wnt ligands. The kinase Fused and kinesin Kif7/27, but not cilia, are required for Hh signaling in the fly; cilia and Kif7/27, but not Fused, are required for Hh signaling in mouse; and Fused, Kif7/27, cilia, and the zinc finger protein Iguana are all required for Hh signaling in zebrafish. The authors determined that Fused, Kif7/27, and Iguana were required for the formation and maintenance of normal cilia, but not for Hh signaling, suggesting that the ancestral function of these proteins is in ciliogenesis. The close association between Hh signaling components and cilia therefore is likely an ancestral character that has been lost in some lineages. J. C. Rink, K. A. Gurley, S. A. Elliott, A. Sánchez Alvarado, Planarian Hh signaling regulates regeneration polarity and links Hh pathway evolution to cilia. Science 326, 1406–1410 (2009). [Abstract] [Full Text]


When is the baseline for Anthropocene? The first indications of human impact on earth closely relate to early human behavior and use of resources. First agricultural societies modified the landscape with the aim of generating their own resources to satisfy the needs of an increasing population. This new system was the result of years of learning and continuous interaction with landscape. Hunter-gatherer societies had shown a vast knowledge of their surrounding environment, which allowed them to exploit and optimize the available resources. But, had these societies the capacity to modify the landscape in such a way that can be traced up until today? How far back in time can we go to find the first evidence of human impact on earth? In this paper, we will try to analyze early human behavior and the possible impact of their activities on the landscape. We will use the paleoanthropological site of Olduvai Gorge (northern Tanzania) as a case study to suggest that the baseline for Anthropocene, taking the term as human impact on earth through cognitive-behavioral strategies, can be moved back to the time when early hominins visited Olduvai. Olduvai Gorge is perfectly suited for this study since the latest scientific research and publications have yielded a detailed knowledge of the vegetation, the landscape, and of the wildlife that lived in the area.


We propose a new method for training an ensemble of neural networks. A population of networks is created and maintained such that more probable networks replicate and less probable networks vanish. Each individual network is updated using random weight changes. This produces a diversity among the networks which is important for the ensemble prediction using the population. The method is compared against Bayesian learning for neural networks, Bagging and a simple neural network ensemble, on three datasets. The results show that the population method can be used as an efficient neural network learning algorithm.


Recently, dual energy x ray absorptiometry (DXA) was presented by Murphy et al as a new method for assessing periarticular bone mineral density (BMD) at the knee joint. Precision errors for BMD measured at the patella, femur, and tibia were reported for 14 subjects. The paper highlights the emerging importance of measurement of radiological data and attention to regional density characteristics in bone and joint diseases. Subchondral bone mineral density of the proximal tibia has previously been assessed by dual photon absorptiometry (DPA)—the precursor of DXA. Relations between subchondral BMD of the proximal tibia and age, height, weight, and BMD of the lumbar spine and femoral neck were examined by Bohr and Schaadt. Petersen et al presented subchondral BMD values for a large number of healthy subjects and for patients with various orthopaedic conditions. Bohr and Lund and Petersen et al examined changes in BMD at the proximal tibia after knee arthroplasty. 5 Petersen et al examined subchondral BMD after meniscectomy, and Madsen et al reported data for subchondral BMD measured in several subregions of the proximal tibia in healthy subjects and in subjects with osteoarthritis of the knee. Moreover, Petersen et al studied relations between bone strength and BMD assessed by DPA and DXA in the proximal tibia. Other related studies could be mentioned. Unfortunately, none of these studies was referred to by Murphy et al.


I. INTRODUCTION In Parker v. Brown,1 the Supreme Court held that states are immune from federal antitrust law for their actions as sovereigns. This has come to be known as the Parker Doctrine or the state action doctrine. In Parker, a raisin distributor, Porter Brown, challenged a 1940 California regulation that raised prices and restricted the supply of California raisins. The Court found that the Sherman Act contained neither a hint nor a suggestion of any intention "to restrain state action or official action directed by a state."2 Therefore, California's regulation of the raisin industry was immune from federal antitrust scrutiny. Because of this desire to defer to state sovereignty, states were found to be immune from federal antitrust actions. Predictably, applying the state action doctrine can be confusing. As one court noted, "[O]f late, the state action doctrine has become a road well-traveled by the Court. Its signposts, however, remain less than clear."3 Unfortunately, the well-traveled road of the state action doctrine splits off into meandering paths that are not so welltraveled. The path of state action antitrust immunity for actions taken by state agencies is one of the more difficult paths to follow, and the signposts that do exist are often confusing. As state reliance on state agency decision making becomes more prevalent, establishing clear guidelines for applying state action immunity to state agencies becomes increasingly important. The rules and requirements governing state action immunity are different according to the category in which an actor is placed. The Supreme Court has established three categories that are used to determine how state action immunity should be applied. The first category includes acts of the state acting as sovereign. The actions of the state legislature and state supreme court fit into this category4 and are considered ipso facto immune from antitrust laws.5 The second category includes acts taken by political subdivisions. The acts of municipalities have been placed in this category.6 Their actions are immune from antitrust liability only where a clearly articulated state policy authorizes their actions.7 The final category includes acts taken by private actors pursuant to state regulations.8 Private actors are immune under the state action doctrine only when they act pursuant to a clearly articulated state policy and the state actively supervises the anticompetitive conduct.9 The Supreme Court has not clearly explained how to categorize actions taken by a state agency. Consequently, lower courtsparticularly the United States Courts of Appeals-have attempted to decide the issue without guidance and, not surprisingly, have arrived at different conclusions. In Neo Gen Screening, Inc. v. New England Newborn Screening Program,10 the First Circuit held that the actions of state executive agencies should be viewed as the actions of the state acting as a sovereign, thereby treating state agencies like state legislatures and state supreme courts and rendering state agencies immune from antitrust liability.11 In contrast, the Sixth and Second Circuits have applied the clear articulation requirement to state agency action, determining that the actions of state agencies should be placed in the same category as actions taken by municipalities or political subdivisions.12 This Note will argue that the First Circuit correctly determined state agencies' actions to be the actions of the state acting as a sovereign and that the actions of state agencies should not be subject to the clear articulation requirement. The clear articulation requirement should not be used because it burdens state agencies by making regulation more difficult, costly, and time consuming. Under the clear articulation requirement, when deciding whether antitrust immunity can be granted to state agencies, courts must search for a statutory provision plainly showing that "the legislature contemplated the kind of action complained of. …


One of the biggest problems in complicated and high-performance SoC design is management of energy and/or power consumption. In this chapter, we present energy management techniques in system design including HW and SW, SoC architecture and logic design. Dynamic power consumption is the major factor of energy consumption in the current CMOS digital circuits. The dynamic power consumption is affected by supply voltage, load capacitance and switching activity. We present approaches to controlling supply voltage, load capacitance and switching activity dynamically and statically in system architecture and algorithm design levels. We also discuss on the memory architecture for reducing power and energy in HW and SW co-design of SoC. In the future CMOS technology, leakage power consumption becomes dominant, because the threshold voltages are scaled as the transistor size shrinks. We summarize the techniques for reducing leakage power in system architecture design. The contents of the chapter include the following issues; (1) power and energy consumptions in SoC design, (2) tradeoff between energy and performance, (3) tradeoff among energy, QoS (i.e., latency and computational precision), reliability, and flexibility (4) techniques for reducing dynamic power consumption, and (5) leakage power reduction techniques.


Cultural variations across countries are considered a major factor affecting customers' readiness to adopt, use, and evaluate technology. Relevant contributions from marketing studies, computer science, and international business are integrated into the literature of cross-cultural management and technology acceptance, and a conceptual model is developed. Drawing on a broader research project on radio frequency identification (RFID) aimed at supporting intelligent business networking and innovative customer services, the development of the framework is informed by the authors' work in the preparation of an RFID-based application at several established grocery retailers for short-life products in Ireland and in Greece. From the findings of our exploratory study, it emerges that low uncertainty avoidance, low institutional collectivism, high in-group collectivism, high gender egalitarianism, and low humane orientation are conducive to greater customers' acceptance of new service technologies. Managerial implications and directions for future research are discussed.


Although vaccination has been an effective way of preventing infections ever since the eighteenth century, the generation of therapeutic vaccines and immunotherapies is still a work in progress. A number of challenges impede the development of these therapeutic approaches such as safety issues related to the administration of whole pathogens whether attenuated or inactivated. One safe alternative to classical vaccination methods gaining recognition is the use of nanoparticles, whether synthetic or naturally derived. We have recently demonstrated that the papaya mosaic virus (PapMV)-like nanoparticle can be used as a prophylactic vaccine against various viral and bacterial infections through the induction of protective humoral and cellular immune responses. Moreover, PapMV is also very efficient when used as an immune adjuvant in an immunotherapeutic setting at slowing down the growth of aggressive mouse melanoma tumors in a type I interferon (IFN-I)-dependent manner. In the present study, we were interested in exploiting the capacity of PapMV of inducing robust IFN-I production as treatment for the chronic viral infection model lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) clone 13 (Cl13). Treatment of LCMV Cl13-infected mice with two systemic administrations of PapMV was ineffective, as shown by the lack of changes in viral titers and immune response to LCMV following treatment. Moreover, IFN-α production following PapMV administration was almost completely abolished in LCMV-infected mice. To better isolate the mechanisms at play, we determined the influence of a pretreatment with PapMV on secondary PapMV administration, therefore eliminating potential variables emanating from the infection. Pretreatment with PapMV led to the same outcome as an LCMV infection in that IFN-α production following secondary PapMV immunization was abrogated for up to 50 days while immune activation was also dramatically impaired. We showed that two distinct and overlapping mechanisms were responsible for this outcome. While short-term inhibition was partially the result of interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase 1 degradation, a crucial component of the toll-like receptor 7 signaling pathway, long-term inhibition was mainly due to interference by PapMV-specific antibodies. Thus, we identified a possible pitfall in the use of virus-like particles for the systemic treatment of chronic viral infections and discuss mitigating alternatives to circumvent these potential problems.