A renewed interest in the intensive harvesting of forest biomass as a source of bioenergy in North America raises concerns about the impacts that this practice may have on the maintenance of forest soil productivity. In Canada, such concerns were first voiced in the 1970s, and studies were launched to investigate and predict the impact of intensive forest biomass removal on site productivity. Most of these studies focused on static nutrient budgets. In Canada and around the world, more detailed process models were also developed to study carbon, nitrogen and base cation cycles under different forest harvesting intensities. However, the validity of modelling results is still constrained by our lack of knowledge on the capacity of ecosystems to supply nutrients. A few sets of field trials have been established in Canada to gather empirical data on the impact of biomass removal on soil nutrient reserves as well as on tree nutrition and growth. Although still fairly recent, these field trials, along with the older ones established in other countries with similar site conditions and climates, provide opportunities to refine our understanding of the resilience of ecosystem processes and of the impacts of intensive biomass removal on ecosystem functions. Although numerous knowledge gaps and questions remain, some jurisdictions around the world have nevertheless issued policy directives and developed guidelines for biomass harvesting. As described by the concept of adaptive forest management, ecological monitoring of harvesting operations, scientific field testing and modelling can all interact to produce better knowledge that could then help improve policy directives.


The current work reports on the fabrication of composite matrix from saw dust (SD) and recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) at different weight ratio by flat-pressed method. Wood plastic composites (WPCs) were made with a thickness of 15 mm after mixing the saw dust and PET followed by a three phase press cycle. Physical properties (Density, Water Absorption (WA) and Thickness Swelling (TS)) and Mechanical properties (Modulus of Elasticity (MOE) and Modulus of Rupture (MOR)) were determined base on the mixing ratios according to the standard. WA and TS were measured after 2 h and 24 h of immersion in water. The results showed that as the density increased, the SD content decreased from 90 % to 50 % into the matrix. However, WA and TS decreases when the PET content increased in the matrix. Remarkably, the MOE and MOR attained a maximum point at 964.199 N/mm2 and 9.03 N/mm2 respectively in 50 % SD content. In comparism with standard, boards D and E can be classified as medium density boards while A, B and C are low density boards. The results indicated that the fabrication of WPCs from sawdust and PET would technically be feasible for indoor uses in building due to favorable physical properties exhibited. The mechanical properties response showed that it cannot be used for structural or load bearing application.


Bin planning (arrangements) is a key factor in the timber industry. Improper planning of the storage bins may lead to inefficient transportation of resources, which threaten the overall efficiency and thereby limit the profit margins of sawmills. To address this challenge, a simulation model has been developed. However, as numerous alternatives are available for arranging bins, simulating all possibilities will take an enormous amount of time and it is computationally infeasible. A discrete-event simulation model incorporating meta-heuristic algorithms has therefore been investigated in this study. Preliminary investigations indicate that the results achieved by GA based simulation model are promising and better than the other meta-heuristic algorithm. Further, a sensitivity analysis has been done on the GA based optimal arrangement which contributes to gaining insights and knowledge about the real system that ultimately leads to improved and enhanced efficiency in sawmill yards. It is expected that the results achieved in the work will support timber industries in making optimal decisions with respect to arrangement of storage bins in a sawmill yard.


Siboglinids are tube-dweling annelids that are important members of deep-sea chemosynthetic communities, which include hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, whale falls and reduced sediments. As adults, they lack a functional digestive system and rely on microbial endosymbionts for their energetic needs. Recent years have seen a revolution in our understanding of these fascinating worms. Molecular systematic methods now place these animals, formerly known as the phyla Pogonophora and Vestimentifera, within the polychaete clade Siboglinidae. Furthermore, an entirely new radiation of siboglinids, Osedax, has just recently been discovered living on whale bones. The unique and intricate evolutionary association of siboglinids with both geology, in the formation of spreading centres and seeps, and biology with the evolution of large whales, offers opportunities for studies of vicariant evolution and the calibration of molecular clocks. Moreover, new advances in our knowledge of siboglinid anatomy coupled with molecular characterization of microbial symbiont communities are revolutionizing our knowledge of host-symbiont relationships in the Metazoa. Despite these advances, considerable debate persists concerning the evolutionary history of siboglinids. Here we review the morphological, molecular, ecological and fossil data in order to address when and how siboglinids evolved. We discuss the role of ecological conditions in the evolution of siboglinids and present possible scenarios of the evolutionary origin of the symbiotic relationships between siboglinids and their endosymbiotic bacteria.


A simple, sensitive and reproducible method was developed using UV spectrophotometer for the determination of Misoprostol in a drug substance and pharmaceutical dosage form. It is applicable for the quantification of and assay of drug substances. The study was carried out at 275 nm. The developed method was validated for linearity, accuracy, precision, Limit of Detection (LOD) and Limit of Quantification (LOQ) as per International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines. Misoprostol was subjected to different experimental stress conditions of oxidative acid, base, hydrolytic, thermal and photolytic degradation. It was found to be stable in oxidative acid, oxidative base and hydrolytic conditions. The method developed was validated as per ICH guidelines and can be used in both bulk and pharmaceutical dosage forms.


Post-conviction DNA testing has led to the exoneration of nearly three hundred defendants. As the number of exonerations grows, we are in an era where the once unthinkable is now undeniable. We convict the innocent. We imprison the innocent. We place the innocent on death row. Daniel Medwed brings this reality to life in his captivating book, Prosecution Complex, which carefully documents the myriad ways that prosecutors can contribute to wrongful convictions at every stage of a criminal case. From the charging decision to plea bargaining to trial to post-conviction, Medwed argues, prosecutors face an "ongoing schizophrenia" as they seek to balance dual roles in the criminal justice system, trying to serve both as zealous advocates for the government and as neutral ministers of justice. This book essay offers three lessons that can be gleaned from Medwed's central thesis that prosecutors must struggle to balance their dual roles as advocates and ministers of justice. Two of these lessons are for prosecutors: 1) that the protection of justice means not only the protection of the innocent, but also the fostering of a fair process, and 2) that prosecutors can mitigate the possibility that they will contribute to a wrongful conviction by seeking out contrary voices that foster neutral decision-making. The third lesson, aimed at the wrongful convictions movement, is to avoid a language of fault, which has a tendency to focus reform efforts on intentional misconduct and to signal to virtuous prosecutors that they need not worry that they may contribute to a wrongful conviction. Prosecution Complex is a significant book that should be read by any scholar, lawyer, or layperson who cares about criminal justice. But its most essential audience is prosecutors themselves, who hold the key to the most feasible and important reforms in the prevention of erroneous convictions.


An increased inflammatory response and deficient synthesis of neurotrophic factors (NTFs) may contribute to the etiology of depression. However, the interrelationship between inflammation and NTFs is unknown. Recently, ethyl-eicosapentaenoate (EPA) has been used to treat depression. The mechanism by which EPA benefits depression is also unclear. Using the olfactory bulbectomized (OB) rat model of depression, this study evaluated two pathways from bulbectomy to the induction of depression-like changes (the inflammation–hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis–stress response pathway and inflammation–nerve growth factor–memory pathway) and the effect of EPA on these pathways. When compared with sham-operated rats fed a control diet, significantly increased locomotor and rearing activities in an "open field," impaired memory in the Morris water maze, increased expression of corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF), and increased secretion of corticosterone were found in OB rats. mRNA expression of nerve growth factor (NGF) was significantly lower in the hippocampus, and phospholipase A2 (PLA2) was higher in the hypothalamus; this change was associated with increased interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in the serum and brain. EPA treatments normalized these behavioral impairments and reduced CRF expression and corticosterone secretion. EPA also reduced serum concentrations of IL-1β and PGE2, but reversed NGF reduction. Similar to the effects of EPA, the anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib significantly reduced blood PGE2, IL-1β, and corticosterone concentrations and increased NGF expression in OB rats. Furthermore, anti-NGF treatment blocked EPA effects on behavior. These results suggest that an interaction exists between inflammation and NGF in the depression model. EPA may improve depression via its anti-inflammation properties and the upregulation of NGF.


"Some progress has been made in the establishment of agreed product models as the basis of a more open information centric approach to engineering, both in the construction sector and beyond. Specific building related initiatives, such as the CIS and the IFC, have been implemented in software and are now beginning to impact on industry. In common with sectors, these standards have drawn heavily on the work of ISO 10303 (STEP), particularly the EXPRESS data definition language and Part 21 file format.

 Today, although they may differ widely in many respects, the majority of product model based information standards share a common STEP based technology. It is also true that most are currently aimed at providing file based data exchange between existing engineering applications software, even if many have more revolutionary ambitions. It is already apparent that the longer-term realisation of the more interesting possibilities implicitly requires that future applications software is built round the product model, rather than using translators to create a degree of retrospective compatibility. At the same time current software engineering trends are towards smaller modular component software. It is postulated that a future architecture for engineering applications might accommodate both these ideas by constructing engineering software on a product model based repository that offers the developer a more appropriate window onto the underlying information.

 The focus of this paper is not on the product model, or on the base functionality that any repository should provide, it is on the nature of the interface that might be provided to the application developer. This also has significant implications for the very nature of contemporary applications software, but this is not addressed in this paper. The main subject of the paper is a description of a proposed architecture that employs a hierarchy of "windows" to present an application with an appropriate view of information objects held in a product model repository. The paper also provides a description of an initial prototype that shows how some of the identified design goals have been realised.

 The proposed architecture essentially provides a semantic and a syntactical bridge between an object server (or repository) and client applications. It enables a structure of different windows to be defined, each window comprising a population of virtual objects whose definition cascades down to the level below – until the real objects are encountered in the underlying repository. A formal EXPRESS schema is used to specify the semantics of each window, and the services provided by each widow include:
 ·Filtering to exclude specified virtual objects
 ·Mapping to create the virtual objects
 ·Validation to check compliance of virtual objects at each window level
 ·Added value engineering functionality.

 The paper concludes with some speculative preliminary conclusions on the practical implications of such an architecture being adopted by the construction sector."


OBJECTIVE Common circadian-related gene variants associate with increased risk for metabolic alterations including type 2 diabetes. However, little is known about whether diet and sleep could modify associations between circadian-related variants (CLOCK-rs1801260, CRY2-rs11605924, MTNR1B-rs1387153, MTNR1B-rs10830963, NR1D1-rs2314339) and cardiometabolic traits (fasting glucose [FG], HOMA-insulin resistance, BMI, waist circumference, and HDL-cholesterol) to facilitate personalized recommendations. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We conducted inverse-variance weighted, fixed-effect meta-analyses of results of adjusted associations and interactions between dietary intake/sleep duration and selected variants on cardiometabolic traits from 15 cohort studies including up to 28,190 participants of European descent from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium. RESULTS We observed significant associations between relative macronutrient intakes and glycemic traits and short sleep duration (<7 h) and higher FG and replicated known MTNR1B associations with glycemic traits. No interactions were evident after accounting for multiple comparisons. However, we observed nominally significant interactions (all P < 0.01) between carbohydrate intake and MTNR1B-rs1387153 for FG with a 0.003 mmol/L higher FG with each additional 1% carbohydrate intake in the presence of the T allele, between sleep duration and CRY2-rs11605924 for HDL-cholesterol with a 0.010 mmol/L higher HDL-cholesterol with each additional hour of sleep in the presence of the A allele, and between long sleep duration (≥9 h) and MTNR1B-rs1387153 for BMI with a 0.60 kg/m2 higher BMI with long sleep duration in the presence of the T allele relative to normal sleep duration (≥7 to <9 h). CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that lower carbohydrate intake and normal sleep duration may ameliorate cardiometabolic abnormalities conferred by common circadian-related genetic variants. Until further mechanistic examination of the nominally significant interactions is conducted, recommendations applicable to the general population regarding diet—specifically higher carbohydrate and lower fat composition—and normal sleep duration should continue to be emphasized among individuals with the investigated circadian-related gene variants.


In the field of hydraulic power plant, the leading edge cavitation is often responsible of sever erosion which may cause a premature shutdown of energy production with costly consequences. This type of cavitation is characterized by an attached vapour cavity at the leading edge of the blades. Transient vapour vortices are generated and convected by the mean ow to the pressure recovery region where they collapse violently. The resulting water hammer pressure is responsible of material damage. In order to investigate the cavitation erosion problem, many theoretical and experi- mental research has been performed in hydrodynamics, mechanical science and metallurgy. We intend in the present work to describe the hydrodynamic attack and provide new mathematical model to characterize and predict the pressure impulses induced on solid surface by repeated collapses of transient cavities. First, the dynamics of a single vortex collapse is performed in the IMHEF Cavitation Vortex Generator. High speed visualization shows systematic rebound of such cavity after the collapse. This explosive rebound is due to the dissolved gas and leads to the generation of a strong shock waves which propagates in the liquid and the solid as well. Assuming Tait'equation for water, an estimation of the shock overpressure has been performed by image processing. Overpressure as high as 2 GPa has been thus measured. Furthermore, the maximum potential energy of the cavity and the uid corresponding to the maximum volume of the cavity stands as a good basis to characterize the collapse overpressure. Investigation of the shedding process by an attached cavity is carried out in the IMHEF High Speed Cavitation Tunnel on a 2D NACA009 blade. The hydrofoil is equipped with 30 piezo resistive pressure transducers. Beside the pressure acquisition, cavitation induced vibrations as well as the main cavity dimensions are synchronously acquired. Pressure spectra and cavitation patterns analysis leads us to consider the free and the forced regime of the main cavity. The forced regime occured when the von Karman vortices frequency matches the first natural frequency of the hydrofoil. In this case, the main cavity pulsation as well as the shedding process are modulated by the blade vibration fre- quency. In the free regime, the main cavity may be stable or unstable. Stable cavitation is characterized by small amplitude of the main cavity pulsation. In this case, the tran- sient cavities have a small size compared to the cavity length and the shedding process is highly instationnary. The unstable cavitation is characterized by large amplitude of main cavity pulsation. The shedding process is modulated by the main cavity pulsation witch is governed by a Strouhal like law. The Strouhal number depends on the incidence angle and stands between 0.2 and 0.32. The cavitation induced vibrations are found to be highly modulated by the main cavity pulsations. Envelope calculation of acceleration signals allows to identify the shedding frequency. This result is validated in a centrifugal pump model. In this case, vibration signal is found to be modulated by the blade passing frequency. Furthermore, we have shown that the use of two accelerometers allows a better cavitation detection through the coherence function corresponding to the acceleration envelopes in well chosen frequency band. Amplitude demodulation of vibration signals stands as a promising technique that may allow in short future the cavitation monitoring in hydraulic machines. Analysis of the previous results allows to build the model of Cavitation Erosion Power. This model is based on the assumption that the pressure aggressiveness of a single cavity is proportional to its potential energy. Furthermore, in the lake of direct measurements of the vapour volume of the transient cavities, the main cavity length is used to scale the dimension of the erosive cavities. The cavitation Erosion Power is related to the macroscopic parameters in a simple way. The validation of this model is performed in the case of isolated hydrofoil by assuming that the pressure uctuations downstream of the main cavity is characteristic of the cavitation aggressiveness. In hydraulic runners, the leading cavitation is often in the forced regime and the Strouhal law is no more available. In this case, the shedding frequency is unknown. In order to overcome this problem and calculate the cavitation erosion power, vibratory approach may be used to measure the shedding frequency.


Abstract Background: Real-world data on emerging combination approaches for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) management are limited. The objective of the current study was to document the characteristics and clinical outcomes of patients with T2DM initiating prandial insulin or a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist while on basal insulin. Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of an electronic medical records database of patients with T2DM managed in a community practice setting in the United States. The main outcome measures were glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), body weight, hypoglycemia, and health care resource utilization at baseline and at 6-month and 1-year follow-up. Results: A total of 33 810 patients were included in the study: 31 848 on prandial insulin and 1962 on a GLP-1 receptor agonist. At baseline there were significant differences in mean age (60 vs 56 years), mean Charlson Comorbidity Index score (1.1 vs 0.7), mean HbA1c (8.8% vs 8.4%), and mean body weight (99 vs 112 kg) between the prandial insulin and GLP-1 receptor agonist groups, respectively (P < 0.001 for each). After matching for baseline differences, significant and similar changes from baseline were observed between the prandial insulin and the GLP-1 receptor agonist groups during follow-up at the 6 months/1 year post-index date for HbA1c (−0.45/−0.60% vs −0.44/−0.58%, respectively; P = 0.907/0.723 between groups). Body weight changes between the groups were significantly different at 6 months/1 year (+1.7/−1.7 vs −0.9/−3.7 kg; P < 0.001). Hypoglycemia incidence and health care resource utilization were significantly greater in the prandial insulin versus GLP-1 receptor agonist group. Conclusions: The results of this real-world analysis of patients with T2DM adding a GLP-1 receptor agonist or prandial insulin to basal insulin suggest an association between adding a GLP-1 receptor agonist with similar glycemic control, greater reduction in body weight, lower hypoglycemia incidence, and lower health care utilization compared with adding prandial insulin.


Both parental decision-making and the choice of language modality for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children have been studied. In investigating the two subjects in conjunction with a bilingual bimodal (bi-bi) program, however, there is an apparent lack of research. A preschool program featuring bi-bi in Maine, named the Maine Educational Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (MECDHH), prides itself on the fact that parents determine their child's primary language upon enrollment. Although many bi-bi programs exist worldwide, the MECDHH program is unique in that the preschoolers are separated into two different classrooms: one featuring solely orally expressed English instruction, and the other featuring strictly ASL instruction. In the present study, a survey was distributed to parents of MECDHH's preschool program asking them to identify the various factors that had the greatest impact on the educational decisions for their child. The study found that the most important factors involved in decision-making for this group of parents included "future goals for my child" "my child's hearing status", and "professional advice".


The policy of deinstitutionalisation, a progressive policy aimed at reducing the civic and social isolation of the mentally ill, did not achieve its utopian aims. Wolff (2005)/Moon (2000) argue that the Asylum has been replaced by fragmented, dislocated world of bedsits, housing projects, day centres or increasingly prisons and the Criminal Justice system. This shift has been termed "transinstitutionalisation". This incorporates the ideas that individuals live in a community but have little interaction with other citizens and major social interactions are with professionals paid to visit them. Other social outcomes such as physical health, which can be used as measures of citizenship or social inclusion, are also very poor. Kelly (2005) uses the term "structural violence" – originally from liberation theology to highlight the impact of a range of factors including health, mental health status and poverty that impact on this group. This paper will explore one aspect of this process – the impact on policing, particularly the assessment of mental health issues in the custody setting. The paper is based on research projects carried out with two police forces in the North West of England. Both the Police and Criminal Evidence Act ( PACE 2004) and the Mental Health Act (2007) provide police officers with powers in relation to the arrest and detention of individuals experiencing mental distress. In addition, this legislation provides greater protections to individuals experiencing mental distress if they are interviewed by the police in connection with an alleged offence. The research uses Chan (1996)'s application of bureaucratic field and habitus to policing to explore ways, in which, the impact of mass incarceration and deinstitutionalisation have led to the increased marginalisation of the mentally ill.


CHORUS: There could be trees It could be a forest There could be moonlight A little moonlight through the tall trees And silence Silence but for the soft stirrings of forest animals The gentle rustling of the leaves also The deep silence of the forest could be there A train could pass through the forest It could be black A steam train with many carriages The wheels of the train could scream on the rails Breaking the deep silence of the forest The forest animals could take flight There could be a wooden house somewhere deep in the forest Here the Forester could live He could live alone He could love the forest Hearing the train pass through the forest he could stand in the doorway of his house In the moonlight he could see far off through the tall trees the smoke and sparks come pluming from the black funnel of the train He could wonder where the train was heading and why it was passing so late at night at such speed through his beloved forest He could not know the answer SINGER: Espenbaum, dein Laub blickt weiss in Dunkel. Meiner Mutter Haar ward nimmer weiss. Lowenzahn, so grun is die Ukraine. Meine blonde Mutter kam nicht heim. Regenwolke, saumst du an den Brunnen? Meine leise Mutter weint fur alle. Runder Stern, du schlingst die goldne Schleife. Meine Mutter Herz ward wund von Blei. Eichne Tur, wer hob dich aus den Angeln? Meine sanfte Mutter kann nicht kommen. [Aspen tree, your leaves glance white into the dark My mother's hair was never white. Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine. My blonde mother did not come home. Rain cloud, do you hover above the well? My quiet mother weeps for everyone. Round star, you wind the golden loop. My mother's heart was ripped by lead. Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges? My gentle mother cannot return.] Night The garden Spandau Prison Albert Speer wearing a long dark over coat He is stooped with age or weariness He stands motionless Casalis appears He also wears a long dark overcoat He also is stooped with age or weariness CASALIS: Where are you tonight? SPEER: Crossing the Alps CASALIS: You still have a long way to go you'll never finish SPEER: Some things aren't meant to be finished I'd tike to finish the garden seedling pines and lindens arrived today I've been making sketches trying to visualise the garden when it's completed but no landscape architect has ever seen in nature what was present to his mind's eye CASALIS: It's time to come in SPEER: Trees bushes flowers grass they take too long to grow together into a landscape but I want to see at least the beginnings of the thing I am working for (Pause) At the same time I fear that very thing CASALIS: Why? SPEER: Spandau has become a meaning in itself Pause CASALIS: I have some more books for you I'll bring them to you in the morning SPEER: I'd rather have them tonight I can't sleep CASALIS: In the morning Pause SPEER: Have you noticed that young sapling by the path? I didn't plant it the garden is transforming itself perhaps it's less mine than I think CASALIS: It isn't yours SPEER: No but one can't help feeling that way CASALIS: It's time to come in SPEER: A blackbird bathed in the pond today and afterwards sang above my head in the walnut tree a young sparrow lost its way underneath the garden bench five hawks flew above and one of them settled down on a tap flew onto the lawn and almost fell on its face because it was still so young and clumsy finally a wild pigeon came and perched in the lowest branch of the walnut tree Herr Hess and I had been sitting beneath the tree in silence for more than an hour tike statues then into the stillness Hess said almost with embarrassment 'Like paradise' Pause CASALIS: It's time to come in SPEER: I can't sleep CASALIS: It's time Casalis turns and moves off Speer follows him CHORUS: Once the train had passed the Forester could walk out of his house and into the deep silence of the forest The darkness and silence of the forest is a tumult in which one unaccustomed to them could be lost But the Forester could see the forest differently from others It could be the way a man sees his be loved's face It could be coming closer It could be dying away A man could see the last of his beloved's face He could see her face for the first time over and over again Such could be the way the Forester walks through his beloved forest As a man walks beside bis beloved The Forester could find a corpse in the forest Her hair could be golden hued or ashen It could spread out from her head as it might spread in a great fan were she lying on the surface of a still pond But she could be lying there among the fallen leaves Her skin as pale as milk The Forester could take the woman in his arms He could carry her through the forest Back through the oaken door of his house He could lay her on his bed And sit alone Looking at her He could see the star sewn on her dress Sewn there above her heart He could look at the star and wonder what it meant He could think that she was a holy woman The Forester could speak to the dead woman and she could answer him Such things could happen in the deep silence of the forest Where no voice is heard I am Magarete I am Shulamith the dead woman could say He could ask her where she came from She could tell him she came from Germany Speer walks around the garden accompanied by Hess SPEER: Lacking a proper tape measure I simply measured my shoe paced off the distance step by step and multiplied by the number of paces placing one foot ahead of the other eight hundred and seventy times thirty one centimetres to a step yields two hundred and seventy metres for a circuit of the garden if I had taken a different route along the prison wall I could have made my track three hundred and fifty metres but this route has a better view (Pause) Every week I add up the kilometres calculate the weekly average enter the kilometres for the week in a table with one column for the general average and another for the total number of kilometres I have to reach seven times seven kilometres by the end of the week if I don't I have to make up for it the following week I keep count of my circuits by putting these beans in my left pocket after every circuit I drop one into my right pocket Pause HESS: I suppose it passes the time SPEER: No more than that I'm actually going somewhere HESS: Around the garden SPEER: I began with a walk from Berlin to Heidelberg six hundred and twenty six kilometres in ninety days then I set out for Munich HESS: Doesn't all this worry you? …


The polarization conversion of a twisted nematic liquid crystal device can be completely characterized by the physical parameters, including the cell parameters and equivalent birefringent parameters. Periodic ambiguity is unavoidable in the measurement; therefore, the exact values of these parameters cannot be uniquely determined. To solve this problem, phase-shift imaging polarimetry is developed to measure the spatial distribution of the physical parameters of a twisted nematic liquid crystal device without periodic ambiguity. The proposed method experimentally showed that as few as eight intensity images are adequate to uniquely determine all of the physical parameters based on an analytical approach.


Advances in the Information and Technologies (ICT) may assist researchers in the assessment of watershed development programmes by developing better visualization understanding of their impacts. GIS based research studies utilizing remote sensing images can facilitate in identifying the potential zones for watershed development and enable improved ground water resources. Effective watershed management is dependent on a number of factors such as demography, climate, soil, land use and topography and these are affected by changing climatic conditions. For example, changes in rainfall intensity and volume in rain fed areas can influence the effectiveness of the placement of watershed structures. Existing methods of impact assessment of watershed development, which are based on farmers' interviews and traditional statistical analysis may explain the impact to a certain extent—the influences of drought or high rainfall conditions. However, with changing rainfall patterns and temperature regimes the effect of infiltration and evaporation of these watersheds needs further analysis. Novel geospatial data mining techniques could help in knowledge discovery and unknown pattern identification of the effects of these changes in rainfall and temperature patterns on the placement of watershed structures. An approach by utilizing these methods to simulate watershed development conditions in different climate conditions will help watershed management officials to make efficient and timely investments for placement of water harvesting structures using a more scientific assessment. Techniques such as spatial trend analysis help to visualize the changes in the ground water level, land use pattern at different rainfall situations. This approach could also help in studying the temporal changes at smaller intervals and with different intensities of rainfall in monsoonal and non-monsoon situations.


The current experimental lower bound on the Higgs mass significantly restricts the allowed parameter space in most realistic supersymmetric models, with the consequence that these models exhibit significant fine-tuning. We propose a solution to this `supersymmetric little hierarchy problem'. We consider scenarios where the stop masses are relatively heavy - in the 500 GeV to a TeV range. Radiative stability of the Higgs soft mass against quantum corrections from the top quark Yukawa coupling is achieved by imposing a global SU(3) symmetry on this interaction. This global symmetry is only approximate - it is not respected by the gauge interactions. A subgroup of the global symmetry is gauged by the familiar SU(2) of the Standard Model. The physical Higgs is significantly lighter than the other scalars because it is the pseudo-Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of this symmetry. Radiative corrections to the Higgs potential naturally lead to the right pattern of gauge and global symmetry breaking. We show that both the gauge and global symmetries can be embedded into a single SU(6) grand unifying group, thereby maintaining the prediction of gauge coupling unification. Among the firm predictions of this class of models are new states with the quantum numbers of 10 and $\bar{10}$ under SU(5) close to the TeV scale. The Higgs mass is expected to be below 130 GeV, just as in the MSSM.


Disproportionate policy response—which is composed of two core concepts, namely policy overreaction and under-reaction—is typically understood to be a lack of "fit" or balance between the costs of a public policy and the benefits deriving from this policy and/or between a policy's ends and means. The disproportionate policy perspective introduces an intentional component into disproportionate response. It represents a conceptual turn whereby the concepts of policy overreaction and under-reaction are reentering the policy lexicon as types of intentional policy responses that are largely undertaken when political executives are vulnerable to voters. In times of crisis, disproportionate policy responses may be intentionally designed, implemented as planned, and sometimes successful in achieving policy goals and in delivering the political benefits sought by the political executives who design them. The premise underlying this argument is that crises vary in many respects, some of which may incentivize a deliberate crisis response by political executives that is either excessive, or lacking. For example, when crises occur at times of electoral vulnerability, the relevancy of policy instruments' visibility, theatricality, spectacularity, and popularity may dominate the calculus of crisis management decisions. The same applies in cases where strong negative emotions emerge, and subsequently, political executives may opt to overwhelm hysterical populations cognitively and emotionally, trying to convince them that the policy system is viable.


Genetic Programming is a form of Evolutionary Computation in which computer programs are evolved by methods based on simulating the natural evolution of biological species. A new generation of a species acquires the characteristics of previous generations through the inheritance of genes by sexual reproduction and through random changes in alleles by random mutation. The new generation may enhance its ability to survive by the acquisition of cultural knowledge through learning processes. This thesis combines the transfer of knowledge by genetic means with the transfer of knowledge by cultural means. In particular, it introduces a new evolutionary operator, memory operator. In conventional genetic programming systems, a new generation is formed from a mating pool whose members are selected from the fittest members of previous generation. The new generation is produced by the exchange of genes between members of the mating pool and the random replacement of genes in the offspring. The new generation may or may not be able to survive better than its predecessor in a given environment. The memory operator augments the evolutionary process by inserting into new chromosomes genetic material known to often result in fitness improvements. This material is acquired through a learning process in which the system is required to evolve generations that survive in a less demanding environment. The cultural knowledge acquired in this learning process is applied as an intelligent form of mutation to aid survival in a more demanding environment.


The ease which Plasmodium falciparum parasites adapt to culture by the method of Trager-Jensen is variable. The strain characteristics of the first three isolates we cultured differed markedly, depending on the ease of adaptation. The West African I, which was cultured readily, proved to be sensitive to all antimalarials assessed by an in-vitro method, caused benign infections in Aotus monkeys, and produced gametocytes both in the cultures and in Aotus monkeys. In contrast, parasites of the Liberian I and Haitian I strains, both of which required an adaptive period of a month or longer proved more tolerant to chloroquine, quinine, and cycloguanil but sensitive to pyrimethamine; commonly produced fatal infections in Aotus monkeys, and did not produce demonstrable gametocytemia. That the differences may be due to the selection of a more virulent and drug tolerant subpopulation is suspected. The implication of these findings, particularly as it may apply to the epidemiology of chloroquine resistant falciparum malaria, is discussed.


Within the history of computing, one persistent theme has been the layering of abstractions. Wrapping critical technologies in new interfaces makes computing easier to use, more reliable, and more secure. Direct hardware programming in turn uses the API to communicate over interfaces using low level system libraries and common driver abstractions. At the application programming layer, APIs are used to build applications, which are networked with web or RESTful APIs. The applications are hosted in virtualized servers. Virtualization is made lighter-weight and easier to scale with the introduction of containers over bare metal hypervisors. The application container itself is even abstracted away with the recent rise of functions as a service or serverless computing.


This table contains a list, in chronological order according to the date of signature, of the treaties referred to in the decisions printed in the present volume. It has not been possible to draw a helpful distinction between treaties judicially considered and treaties which are merely cited. In the case of bilateral treaties, the names of the parties are given in alphabetical order. Multilateral treaties are referred to by the name by which they are believed commonly to be known. References to the texts of treaties have been supplied, including wherever possible at least one reference to a text in the English language. The full titles of the abbreviated references will be found in the list of Abbreviations and Sources printed in the volume containing the Consolidated Table of Treaties to Volumes 1-125.


Dinoflagellates (Alveolata, Dinophyceae) are protists with a truly remarkable diversity in lifestyles (free-living, parasites and mutualistic symbionts), habitats (marine, freshwater, plankton, benthos), and trophic modes (heterotrophic, plastid-containing). Here dino- flagellates are used to evaluate biases in the availability of molecular markers in relation to the variety of functional and ecological charac - teristics of protists. A large number of dinoflagellate sequences are available in GenBank, at least one for 56% of the 264 described genera. The most common marker is the small ribosomal subunit ribosomal DNA (49%). At the species level, SSU rDNA or the large subunit rDNA are available for 15% of the 2,386 described species. Availability of sequences of the internal transcribed spacers (ITS) and cytochrome oxidase I (COI) show a strong bias towards cultivable species. Relative to trophic mode, while about half of the known dinoflagellates are heterotrophic, only 12% of them have been sequenced compared to 29% of the plastid-containing species. For the COI marker availability is 10 times greater for plastid-containing compared to heterotrophic species. Freshwater species are underrepresented (13%) relative to the marine forms (22%). A high proportion of benthic species have been sequenced (46%) reflecting interest in Symbiodinium and harmful epi- phytic taxa. Most of the relatively few described mutualistic species have been sequenced (> 80%). In contrast, only 17% of the described parasitic species have been sequenced, and most of the available sequences were not identified at the species level. In recent years, new species have been described mostly from coastal blooms or cultures. These studies are favored by the availability of abundant material for detailed studies of ultrastructure and multi-gene molecular phylogenies. Many methods are difficult to apply for the scarce specimens avail - able from the open ocean. The requirement of these protocols, easy to apply with cultured species, is an obstacle in our knowledge of the open ocean diversity because it discourages studies based on sparse material. Consequently, in recent years descriptions of new species from the open ocean have declined considerably.


RATIONALE
TBDx automated microscopy is a novel technology that processes digital microscopic images to identify acid-fast bacilli (AFB). Use of TBDx as part of a diagnostic algorithm could improve the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB), but its performance characteristics have not yet been formally tested.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the performance of the TBDx automated microscopy system in algorithms for diagnosis of TB.

METHODS
Prospective samples from patients with presumed TB were processed in parallel with conventional smear microscopy, TBDx microscopy, and liquid culture. All TBDx-positive specimens were also tested with the Xpert MTB/RIF (GXP) assay. We evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of two algorithms-(1) TBDx-GXP (TBDx with positive specimens tested by Xpert MTB/RIF) and (2) TBDx alone-against the gold standard liquid media culture.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Of 1,210 samples, 1,009 were eligible for evaluation, of which 109 were culture positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The TBDx system identified 70 specimens (68 culture positive) as having 10 or more putative AFB (high positive) and 207 (19 culture positive) as having 1-9 putative AFB (low positive). An algorithm in which "low-positive" results on TBDx were confirmed by GXP had 78% sensitivity (85 of 109) and 99.8% specificity (889 of 900), requiring 21% (207 of 1,009) specimens to be processed by GXP. As a stand-alone test, a "high-positive" result on TBDx had 62% sensitivity and 99.7% specificity.

CONCLUSIONS
TBDx used in diagnostic algorithms with GXP provided reasonable sensitivity and high specificity for active TB while dramatically reducing the number GXP tests performed. As a stand-alone microscopy system, its performance was equivalent to that of a highly experienced TB microscopist.


We investigated what strategies adults use to compare magnitudes of fractions, and how the strategies vary with overall mathematical knowledge. Because little is known about how people think about fractions, prior research has attempted to assess the extent to which people think of fractions compared to how they think about whole numbers (Bonato, Fabbri, Umilta & Zorzi, 2007; Schneider & Siegler, 2010; Meert, Gregoire, Noel, 2009). In particular, Bonato et al. (2007) has examined the degree to which fractional magnitude comparisons can yield an understanding of the mental representation of fractions. Schneider & Siegler (2010) argue that these assessments cannot be made independently from understanding the strategies for comparison that a particular pair of fractions elicits. The current study extends prior research by comparing fraction magnitude comparison strategies of students at a selective university, with high math proficiency, with those of students at a community college, with lower math proficiency. The goals of this thesis were to identify, explain and define the strategies that are used in fraction magnitude comparisons by adults, investigate how these strategies vary with the math proficiency of the adults, and evaluate whether adults who do not consistently use desirable strategies recognize desirability of good alternative strategies. Our findings indicate that strategy use and consistency of using good and poor strategies vary with overall math knowledge and performance on our magnitude comparison task; that lower performing participants more frequently used strategies that would yield incorrect results and less often recognize when to switch to good alternative strategies compared to the high performing participants.


BACKGROUND/AIM
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an autosomal recessive disease characterized by degeneration of alpha motor neurons in the spinal cord and the medulla oblongata, causing progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. The aim of this study was to determine association between the SMN2 gene copy number and disease phenotype in Serbian patients with SMA with homozygous deletion of exon 7 of the SMN1 gene.

METHODS
The patients were identified using regional Serbian hospital databases. Investigated clinical characteristics of the disease were: patients' gender, age at disease onset, achieved and current developmental milestones, disease duration, current age, and the presence of the spinal deformities and joint contractures. The number of SMN1 and SMN2 gene copies was determined using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). RESULTS. Among 43 identified patients, 37 (86.0%) showed homozygous deletion of SMN1 exon 7. One (2.7%) of 37 patients had SMA type I with 3 SMN2 'copies, 11 (29.7%) patients had SMA type II with 3.1 +/- 0.7 copies, 17 (45.9%) patients had SMA type III with 3.7 +/- 0.9 copies, while 8 (21.6%) patients had SMA type IV with 4.2 +/- 0.9 copies. There was a progressive increase in the SMN2 gene copy number from type II towards type IV (p < 0.05). A higher SMN2 gene copy number was associated with better current motor performance (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSION
In the Serbian patients with SMA, a higher SMN2 gene copy number correlated with less severe disease phenotype. A possible effect of other phenotype modifiers should not be neglected.


A simple heat balance model for an evolving magma chamber is used to make predictions of the time scales for magma differentiation, which are compared with geological and isotopic constraints on the rates of crystallization and differentiation. In a 10 km3 magma chamber releasing thermal energy at a rate of 100 MW, basalt and rhyolite magmas should reach 50% crystallization after 2500 and <1500 years, respectively. The tendency for phenocrysts to remain suspended in a cooling magma increases with melt viscosity and hence the degree of magma differentiation. The time scales of crystallization and differentiation may be estimated on the basis of the U-series isotope compositions of separated crystals and bulk rocks, crystal size distributions, and trace element and Sr isotope profiles in phenocryst phases. The last of these indicate crystal residence ages in the melt of tens of years up to 100 years. Short residence and even differentiation times are also obtained from Ra–Th isotope studies of alkali feldspars, and rocks that experienced alkali feldspar fractionation. However, much older ages of 103–105 years for separated phases have been reported from recent volcanic centres in St Vincent in the Lesser Antilles, Vesuvius in Italy, the Kenya Rift Valley and Long Valley, California. These old crystal ages are all from relatively evolved igneous rocks, as predicted from their higher melt viscosities and simple models of cooling and crystal settling. However, the old ages are also typically obtained for complex minerals that are not in bulk equilibrium with their host rocks, and so, apart from offering a minimum estimate of the age of the particular magmatic system, their significance for models of differentiation of the host magmas is not clear. An alternative approach is therefore to determine the variations in U–Th–Ra isotope compositions of bulk rocks reflecting different degrees of magma differentiation, and such data indicate that differentiation in more mafic magmas takes much longer than in more evolved magmas. For example, 50% fractional crystallization of basanite to produce phonolite on Tenerife took 105 years, whereas a further 50% fractional crystallization to generate the more evolved phonolites occurred within a few hundred years of eruption. On Tenerife the more mafic magmas fractionated at greater depths, and the rates of fractional crystallization were higher in the more evolved magmas studied. This is readily explained by a cooling model in which a large volume of primitive magma deep in the crust has a longer cooling time than a smaller body of differentiated magma at shallower depths in the crust.


In 2015, Germany entered what would later become known as the 'refugee crisis'.
The Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) trope gained political prominence and met with
significant challenges. In this article, we focus on a series of encounters in Berlin, bringing together
refugee newcomers, migrants, activists and anthropologists. As we thought and wrote
together about shared experiences, we discovered the limitations of the normative assumptions
of refugee work. One aim of this article is to destabilise terms such as refugee, refugee
work, success and failure with our engagements in the aftermath of the 'crisis'. Refugee work
is not exclusively humanitarian aid directed towards the alleviation of suffering but includes
being and doing together. Through productive failures and emergent lessons, the collaboration
enhanced our understandings of social categories and the role of anthropology.


Electricity transmission infrastructure has a fundamental role in the process of integrating national electricity markets in Europe to a single market. Transmission expansion takes place within institutional frameworks that sets the conditions for expansions. So far, most of the transmission business has been organised under the centralised and regulated transmission system operators (TSOs). This is motivated for reliability and grid access reasons. However, a strictly centralised approach to transmission expansion may not be capable of meeting the needs of the market. Central planners cannot incorporate all relevant information and knowledge about the market and its unexploited opportunities. Market participants have context specific knowledge that generates entrepreneurial actions and innovations. This is an essential driving force of markets and it needs to be included in transmission development. The strong interdependency aspect of grid expansions does require some form of common governance. However, for the electricity market to develop, it is also likely that it requires the decentralised actions of entrepreneurial market actors. Can both of these requirements be met? This paper elaborates on several key determinants for developing a market friendly infrastructure without losing control.


Collaboration is a social and interactive process, where participants join efforts toward a group goal. A Group Support System (GSS) can improve the productivity of collaborative work by structuring activities and improving communication. By using context-based adaptive techniques, a GSS can support facilitation of the participants by offering appropriate tools for a certain activity in a specific context. In this paper we present ongoing research about a supporting framework for a semantic GSS that supports efficient collaborative work. Drawing on Collaboration Engineering, the paper explores the use of an ontology to capture and share process information that define the collaboration context. As a result, we present an approach of a collaboration ontology that subdivides the collaboration context into the individual context of a participant and the collaborative context of a group. Researchers can use the ontology to develop context-based adaptive techniques that support collaborative work using GSS.


HP's MPS software and hardware solutions are robust and developing at an aggressive rate, to support mobile networks while simultaneously focusing on protecting information. While they currently only support the brand's devices, businesses that own a multi-brand fleet of multifunctional devices, would make use of a third party MPS solution, which HP offers. Perumal explains, 'This is available on a direct model, yet not via HP's channel one. In essence, HP has two go-to markets, a direct and in-direct (or channel based offering).'


Microduplications of the Sotos syndrome region containing NSD1 on 5q35 have recently been proposed to cause a syndrome of microcephaly, short stature and developmental delay. To further characterize this emerging syndrome, we report the clinical details of 12 individuals from 8 families found to have interstitial duplications involving NSD1, ranging in size from 370 kb to 3.7 Mb. All individuals are microcephalic, and height and childhood weight range from below average to severely restricted. Mild-to-moderate learning disabilities and/or developmental delay are present in all individuals, including carrier family members of probands; dysmorphic features and digital anomalies are present in a majority. Craniosynostosis is present in the individual with the largest duplication, though the duplication does not include MSX2, mutations of which can cause craniosynostosis, on 5q35.2. A comparison of the smallest duplication in our cohort that includes the entire NSD1 gene to the individual with the largest duplication that only partially overlaps NSD1 suggests that whole-gene duplication of NSD1 in and of itself may be sufficient to cause the abnormal growth parameters seen in these patients. NSD1 duplications may therefore be added to a growing list of copy number variations for which deletion and duplication of specific genes have contrasting effects on body development.


This document provides guidance on the use of valproate in girls and women of childbearing age from a joint Task Force of the Commission on European Affairs of the International League Against Epilepsy (CEA‐ILAE) and the European Academy of Neurology (EAN), following strengthened warnings from the Coordination Group for Mutual Recognition and Decentralised Procedures‐Human (CMDh) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which highlight the risk of malformations and developmental problems in infants who are exposed to valproate in the womb. To produce these recommendations, the Task Force has considered teratogenic risks associated with use of valproate and treatment alternatives, the importance of seizure control and of patient and fetal risks with seizures, and the effectiveness of valproate and treatment alternatives in the treatment of different epilepsies. The Task Force's recommendations include the following: (1) Where possible, valproate should be avoided in women of childbearing potential. (2) The choice of treatment for girls and women of childbearing potential should be based on a shared decision between clinician and patient, and where appropriate, the patient's representatives. Discussions should include a careful risk–benefit assessment of reasonable treatment options for the patient's seizure or epilepsy type. (3) For seizure (or epilepsy) types where valproate is the most effective treatment, the risks and benefits of valproate and other treatment alternatives should be discussed. (4) Valproate should not be prescribed as a first‐line treatment for focal epilepsy. (5) Valproate may be offered as a first‐line treatment for epilepsy syndromes where it is the most effective treatment, including idiopathic (genetic) generalized syndromes associated with tonic–clonic seizures. (6) Valproate may be offered as a first‐line treatment in situations where pregnancy is highly unlikely (e.g., significant intellectual or physical disability). (7) Women and girls taking valproate require regular follow‐up for ongoing consideration of the most appropriate treatment regimen.


I Tom Wolfe's most recent book, I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004), is a campus novel replete with the kind of literary pyrotechnics for which Wolfe has long been famous--the point-of-view shifts; the extended and extensive use of dialogue to establish both scene and subjectivities of characters; and the liberal use of quirky punctuation, to include rampant ellipses, colons, italics, and exclamation points. Perhaps more importantly, Charlotte Simmons is a novel buttressed by the sort of pre-composition reportage through which Wolfe has traditionally established authorial ethos and expertise. In several pre-and post-publication interviews, Wolfe speaks of having conducted observational research at college campuses across the United States--Stanford University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, among them--to gather and verify Charlotte Simmons's material. (1) Armed with his considerable stylistic repertoire, then, as well as a commitment to journalistic evidentiary grounding, Wolfe pursues in the novel the realistic representation of his heroine Charlotte Simmons's first semester at the prestigious Dupont University. Charlotte is a brilliant and chaste eighteen-year-old who hails from Sparta, North Carolina, a town tucked deep within the Blue Ridge Mountains, whose economic lifeblood is the production of Christmas trees. She commences her undergraduate career hoping to begin a process of lifelong learning that will facilitate her transcendence of a quotidian upbringing. What she finds at Dupont, however, are fellow students almost exclusively of privileged backgrounds whose concerns alternate between greed, substance abuse, and casual sex. She finds, too, a campus run by faculty members who largely separate themselves into competing deterministic camps, a split occurring along a sciences/humanities dichotomy: first, there are the behaviorists, who speculate that there may be no free will, that genetics and the pressures of one's environment may hold the key to the entirety of human experience; and second, there are the Theorists, who raise anti-foundationalism to a foundational level, who make of relativism, Relativism. (2) Within this debased environment--a reductive one that presupposes a lack of validity inherent in individual experience--Charlotte will lose her virginity at a beer-soaked fraternity formal, experience acute clinical depression, nearly flunk out of school, and prepare to enter her second semester paralyzed by a hyperactive, normalizing consciousness of social status. The genius of Wolfe's novel is that it pursues Charlotte's demise in a darkly comic manner, thereby carrying the reader for some seven hundred pages. Wolfe was rewarded for this achievement at bookstores across the country, with Charlotte Simmons landing on bestseller lists, just as did Wolfe's most popular previous works--to include, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), The Right Stuff (1979), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), and A Man in Full (1998). (3) Despite this success--or possibly because of it--Charlotte Simmons's critical reception has been mixed. Positive reviews of Wolfe's work laud its energy and tend to welcome the novel's sometimes dogmatic depiction of the contemporary life academe. For instance, in a disarmingly honest attempt to save the text from its detractors, the novelist-critic Barbara Scrupski writes that Charlotte Simmons lays bare the limits of "the ethics of the liberal elites," or those who speak "the voice of affectlessness, of studied, deliberate 'cool'" (87, 88). Scrupski continues: It must surely be painful to see Tom Wolfe point out to them so vividly the faults of their dream: these are no children of nature running free, but foul-mouthed, spoiled teenagers, drinking themselves sick, engaging in games of psychological cruelty [...] and indulging in random, meaningless sex. (90) Negative reviews of the text have latched on to its graphic and grueling depictions of sex acts, with Jeff Baker, in a review for The Oregonian, even going so far as to suggest that Wolfe's authorial gaze is akin to that of "a dirty old man" (E7). …


Banks and bankers are hardly the most beloved institutions and people in this country. With its corruptive influence on politics and stranglehold on the American economy, Wall Street is held in high regard by few outside the financial sector. But the pitchforks raised against this behemoth are largely rhetorical: we rarely see riots in the streets or public demands for an equitable and democratic banking system that result in serious national changes. Yet the situation was vastly different a century ago, as Christopher W. Shaw shows. This book upends the conventional thinking that financial policy in the early twentieth century was set primarily by the needs and demands of bankers. Shaw shows that banking and politics were directly shaped by the literal and symbolic investments of the grassroots. This engagement remade financial institutions and the national economy, through populist pressure and the establishment of federal regulatory programs and agencies like the Farm Credit System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Shaw reveals the surprising groundswell behind seemingly arcane legislation, as well as the power of the people to demand serious political repercussions for the banks that caused the Great Depression. One result of this sustained interest and pressure was legislation and regulation that brought on a long period of relative financial stability, with a reduced frequency of economic booms and busts. Ironically, this stability led to the decline of the very banking politics that brought it about. Giving voice to a broad swath of American figures, including workers, farmers, politicians, and bankers alike, Money, Power, and the People recasts our understanding of what might be possible in balancing the needs of the people with those of their financial institutions.


Tuberculosis (TB) infection, caused by the airborne pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), resulted in almost 1.4 million deaths in 2019 and the number of deaths is predicted to increase by 20% over the next 5 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon reaching the alveolar space, M.tb comes in close contact with the lung mucosa before and after its encounter with host alveolar compartment cells. Our previous studies show that homeostatic innate soluble components of the alveolar lining fluid (ALF) can quickly alter the cell envelope surface of M.tb upon contact, defining subsequent M.tb-host cell interactions and infection outcomes in vitro and in vivo. We also demonstrated that ALF from 60+ year old elders (E-ALF) vs. healthy 18- to 45-year-old adults (A-ALF) is dysfunctional with loss of homeostatic capacity and impaired innate soluble responses linked to high local oxidative stress. In this study, a targeted transcriptional assay demonstrates that M.tb exposure to human ALF alters the expression of its cell envelope genes. Specifically, our results indicate that A-ALF-exposed M.tb upregulates cell envelope genes associated with lipid, carbohydrate, and amino acid metabolism, as well as genes associated with redox homeostasis and transcriptional regulators. Conversely, M.tb exposure to E-ALF shows lesser transcriptional response, with most of the M.tb genes unchanged or downregulated. Overall, this study indicates that M.tb responds and adapts to the lung alveolar environment upon contact, and that the host ALF status determined by factors such as age might play an important role in determining infection outcome.


The Supreme Court has described Entick v. Carrington (1765) as "the true and ultimate expression of constitutional law" for the Founding generation, and for more than 130 years, the Court has read Entick carefully to learn the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment. But the Court has been reading a flawed version of the case. This Article publishes, for the first time, a previously unknown manuscript report of Entick v. Carrington. We explain why this version is more reliable than other reports of the case, as well as how this new discovery might challenge prevailing assumptions about the Fourth Amendment and Entick's place in British and American constitutional history more broadly. Although we leave a full reevaluation of Entick for future scholarship, we show that any future judicial or academic discussion of the case must take this new report into account.


Sweat sensors that can continuously sample sweat are critical for determining the time-dependent physiological responses occurring in normal daily life. Here, a new device, termed fluidic patch, for collecting human sweat samples at defined time intervals is developed, and the proof-of-concept is demonstrated. The device comprises micropumps and a disposable microfluidic patch attached to the human skin. The fluidic patch continuously collects aliquots of freshly secreted sweat accumulated in the fluidic pathway at accurately defined time windows (typically 5 min). By measuring the weight of the collected samples, the local sweat rate is calculated. The sweat sample collected can be directly subjected to a wide range of chemical analyses. For the proof-of-concept, we compared the sweat rates during passive heating in human trials using the fluidic patch and the conventional ventilated sweat capsule system. Although the sweat rate obtained using the fluidic patch highly correlated with that of the ventilated sweat capsule (R2 = 0.96, y = 1.4x - 0.05), the fluidic patch overestimated the sweat rate compared with the ventilated capsule system when the sweat rate exceeded 0.5 mg/(cm2·min). The sampled sweat was analyzed for sodium, potassium, chloride, lactate, pyruvate, and cortisol. The device could obtain the time courses of the concentrations of the abovementioned three ions; the concentrations of sodium and chloride increased linearly with the sweat rate during passive heating (R2 = 0.76 and 0.66, respectively). The device can reliably measure the sweat rate and collect sweat samples for chemical analysis. It can be utilized for real-time physiological investigations toward wider applications.


The International Court of Justice (in French, the Cour internationale de justice), also commonly known as the World Court or ICJ, is the oldest, most important and most famous judicial arm of the United Nations. Established by the United Nations Charter in 1945 and based in the Peace Palace in the Hague, the primary function of the Court is to adjudicate in disputes brought before it by states, and to provide authoritative, influential advisory opinions on matters referred to it by various international organisations, agencies and the UN General Assembly.
 This new work, by a leading academic authority on international law who also appears as an advocate before the Court, examines the Statute of the Court, its procedures, conventions and practices, in a way that will provide invaluable assistance to all international lawyers. The book covers matters such as: the composition of the Court and elections, the office and role of ad hoc judges, the significance of the occasional use of smaller Chambers, jurisdiction, the law applied, preliminary objections, the range of contentious disputes which may be submitted to the Court, the status of advisory opinions, relationship to the Security Council, applications to intervene, the status of judgments and remedies. Referring to a wealth of primary and secondary sources, this work provides international lawyers with a readable, comprehensive and authoritative work of reference which will greatly enhance understanding and knowledge of the ICJ.
 The book has been translated and lightly updated from the French original, R Kolb, La Cour international de Justice (Paris, Pedone, 2013), by Alan Perry, Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales.
 Winner of the 2014 American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit for High Technical Craftsmanship and Utility to Practicing Lawyers and Scholars:
 'Robert Kolb's International Court of Justice provides a magisterial, lucid study of its subject. The breadth and depth of the treatment are impressive: Kolb takes the reader from the history of the Court, to its role in international society, to the more technical questions concerning its composition, powers and procedures, to the development of its jurisprudence, and to its future. The finely grained discussion provides much more than a mere survey of the Court's constitutive instruments and decisions. It engages the Court as an institution and asks how it actually operates, and secures efficacy and authority in doing so. The book's careful and detailed coverage of the Court's legal framework and operation will benefit practitioners and scholars alike. There is no doubt that Kolb's volume immediately takes a place among the authoritative references on the Court.'
 ASIL Book Awards Committee


Cognition and Complexity uses the techniques of cognitive science to provide an innovative new way to cope with information. Thinking and knowing actually mean systematic comprehension (knowing the relationships and interdependencies between facts, processes and contexts) rather than accumulating data and facts. Reeves surveys the various models that organize complex information and synthesizes key aspects into a unified, hierarchical model. He leads readers step by step through a hypothetical situation so they can better understand how his model operates. Educators at all levels, particularly policy makers and practitioners in information science, will find that this experimental model supplies a solid foundation for new ways of learning and teaching in the coming century. With bibliography and index.


Neuro-rehabilitation is a medical process aimed at restoring the sensory and motor functions of the nervous system via repetitive learning and training process. The success of neuro-rehabilitation is simply measured by how fast the patients can recover from the disability. However, the continuous growth of the number of disabled patients and the lack of resources and rehabilitation facilities has then questioned the justification of its success in the future. There are questions about whether the present approaches of neuro-rehabilitation are still efficient to keep up with the future growth of the disabled patients which is growing exponentially. Hence, there is a need for constant advancement in neuro-rehabilitation engineering to improve the efficiency of automated rehabilitation. By doing this, the recovery rate of the patients can be increased, allowing more patients to be rehabilitated even with the lack of resources and rehabilitation facilities. The current study explores the utilization of 9 different upper limb's muscles to find the best correlation between the electromyography (EMG) signals of the muscles and the individual torque of the upper joints via mathematical models. The EMG signals are acquired in real time and processed by rectification and filtration to eliminate the interference of the signal. These processed signals are then used as the input variables in GA; training the optimized correlation coefficients to minimize the discrepancy between the actual and simulated torque. The best correlation will be used as a control model in the rehabilitative robot's controller as a decision making. Should the patient require assistance; this model will calculate the amount of assistive force required and supply it to the patient through the servo to complete the rehabilitation cycle. A comparative study, supported by the quantitative data of the simulation results, indicates that the individual torque of the upper limb's joints is best modeled as the inverse logarithm of the EMG signals of the upper limb muscles with a constant. The estimated torque calculated from this model is the closest to the actual torque among the other mathematical models and thus, it has the lowest discrepancy. The average of 32% discrepancy is calculated throughout 100 generations in ±34 minutes. However, this figure is not attainable upon the integration of the inverse logarithm mathematical model into the controller mainly due to the communication rate between the DAQ system and the server. There is a discrepancy of approximately 10% between the experimental and simulated results which deems to be quite significant.


In order to be truly free, must you act arbitrarily? If an event did not happen, could it have happened? Since there is evil, and God could have made the world without evil, did God fail to pick the best course? Grappling with such simple--yet still intriguing--puzzles, Leibniz was able to present attractively his new theories of the real and the phenomenal, freewill and determinism, and the relation between minds and bodies. Theodicy was Leibniz's only book-length work to be published in his lifetime, and for many years the work by which he was known to the world. Fully at home with the latest scienctific advances, Leibniz ultimately rejected the new atomistic philosophies of Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes, and drew upon the old cosmology of Aristotelian scholasticism. There could be no conflict, he argued between faith and reason, freedom and necessity, natural and divine law. Ingeniously defending his postulate of pre-established harmony, Leibniz made important advances in the precise analysis of concepts."


We develop a generalized model to describe thin film interference in interface-specific nonlinear optical spectroscopies of ideal isotropic stratified systems that enables the separation of this effect from the individual interfacial nonlinear responses. The model utilizes a property of the transfer matrix formalism that allows for simplification of an arbitrary layered system to a single layer with newly defined coefficients of reflection and transmission. In addition to the already well known internal transfer coefficients that relate incident fields to internal fields, we define external transfer coefficients that describe how internally generated fields propagate out of the system. By applying the usual boundary conditions we are able to analytically describe the local and induced fields immediately adjacent to an arbitrary interface, followed by transfer of the generated fields out of the system. The model provides a complete and easily implemented approach to calculating the observables from interface-specific spectroscopies on arbitrary layered thin film systems in a concise way.


BACKGROUND
This study aimed to investigate the physiological profile of elite Bicycle Motocross (BMX) cyclists and assess the physiological and perceptual demands of a simulated BMX race. In addition, the neuromuscular fatigue induced by BMX race simulation was investigated.

METHODS
Twelve male elite BMX cyclists performed two testing sessions. On the first day, incremental submaximal and maximal cycling tests were performed, as well as baseline measurements of muscle contractile qualities, a vertical jump test, short sprint cycling test and Wingate test. Following a recovery period of 48 h, athletes race performance times, physiological intensity and fatigue were determined before and after each heat (4 in total) via muscular evaluations, blood samples and perceptual ratings.

RESULTS
During testing, cyclists attained a V̇ O2max of 55.7±4.8 mlmin-1kg-1; peak power output during a short cycling sprint of 1498±189 W and average during Wingate of 1344±158 W; counter movement jump peaks were 58.6±7.7 cm (height), 4625±768 W (power) and 64.3±7.5 Nkg-1 (force). During the BMX race simulation performance times improved slightly and perceived exertion increased, blood lactate and hydrogen ions concentrations significantly increased across heats while bicarbonate concentrations decreased (p<0.001). Similarly, significant decreases were observed for contractile properties (peak torque, p<0.001; maximal rate of torque development and relaxation, both p<0.001) at single and paired stimulations (10 and 100 Hz) across heats.

CONCLUSIONS
Elite BMX cyclists show high anaerobic characteristics (Wingate and sprint) and neuromuscular qualities (height and power jump), while the aerobic qualities are not comparable to those typical of road cyclists. BMX races appear to induce metabolic disturbance, peripheral fatigue and increase perceived exertion, however performance times across heats appears not to be affected.


The impetus for this thesis was the theoretical shortcomings uncovered in the field of urban morphology and its French branch, IPRAUS, when the researcher first attempted to account for the form of the architecture in the case study of Brunei's water city.  In this thesis' first part, this field of study is critiqued, and a series of gaps in its theoretical framework are found. This thesis contests the main assumption of the field that there is a relation between the social and the production of architecture. The questions this thesis aims to understand are: how and why do people build their space the way they do? How do we think about the social and ecological relations that create subjects and bodies? How do we think about how the society is organized and organizes subject? How do we theorise and explore how society produces architecture and subjects? How do we conceive how subjects produce architecture and societies? This leads to call for the establishment of a new philosophical base for urban morphology.  The thesis then argues that work in other disciplines points toward Deleuze's philosophy as a means through which to understand the reasons for the production of space. This philosopher provides ways to engage with a site, to create new research methodologies and to analyse and report findings. However, study with Deleuze, in the field of architecture, is still very much in its infancy. As such, this thesis offers an experimental, original work that explores how we might think about Deleuze, how we might bring Deleuze from philosophy to architecture and how we might convey Deleuze's philosophical thinking through an application in a particular site.  The two sets of critiques, of urban morphology and of Deleuze studies in architecture, establish the two goals of this research: one theoretical, the other practical. The first goal is to develop the means to provide a better account of architectural and urban form. More specifically, this thesis investigates how Deleuzian theory might be suitable for urban morphology studies. The second goal is to experiment with the proposed theory in the study of an actual site, the water city of Brunei Darussalam. The intention of the second goal is to explore the effectiveness of the first.  The second part of the thesis aims to ground the understanding of a series of elements of Deleuze's philosophical system chosen for their relevance to study the production of architecture in relation to the social. The methodology of study follows Anne Sauvagnargue's proposed process of understanding Deleuze's philosophy. It is a step by step work that uncovers the fundamental elements of this philosophy in his early works. These are little known to the architecture field. These findings then ground the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari which has created an ontology and concepts which may be applied to the analysis of concrete social formations and their production. In this ontology, put simply, the world is understood as composed of forces. This thesis put forth that these are social, cultural, political forces—what is term power and desire forces, and ecological forces—that relate to organic and non-organic, human and non-human forces.  A first major contribution to this thesis is Deleuze and Guattari's proposal of the concept of assemblage as the fundamental element of analysis. Assemblages are composed of forces; they have a certain power—an intensity and an ability to do, and a sense that comes with this power—an 'incorporeal transformation'. An incorporeal transformation is 'attributed to bodies'. The second contribution is Deleuze's philosophy of immanence and its related philosophy of time. These allow researchers to conceive how assemblages are composed, formed and dissolved, and how they function. Assemblages are not fixed in time; as forces they assemble, produce, but also always look for better opportunities. They always become; and at a point in time, they disassemble and recompose into different assemblages; that is life.  From this work on Deleuze's philosophy, this thesis proposes an ontology and a research design to study architecture in relationship to what we tend to understand as social, cultural, political, and ecological forces. It is defined that the form of architecture is part of assemblages, form-as-part-of-assemblage, in relationship with other assemblages. This thesis proposes to understand architecture-as-part-of-life. And a major shift that this thesis proposes for within urban morphology is not to give meaning to the form, but to give sense to it. To give sense is to find a series of expressions that relate to these social and ecological forces. Another outcome of this thesis is a research methodology termed a genealogical inquiry. It is a way of researching in time and space, transversally, the assembling and disassembling of all these forces which-architecture-is-part-of. The aim of this methodology is to understand and explain the form, process of formation, of architecture, and to give sense to these by describing a series of expression to forces.  The third part of this thesis experiments with this research framework in the site of Brunei's water city. The genealogical inquiry defines three main eras of the relationship between the forces of interest. The first era concerns the period before the arrival of European powers in Southeast Asia. In this period, this thesis established two elements of importance. First, there is a significant impact of the political and the religious forces in the formation of the social organisation. If was found that there is an emphasis on the politic of the family group, the close and extended family. Also, there is the discovery that the social is organised in a strict hierarchy of 'social assemblages' following a nobility system, with at the top a Raja/Sultan. Second, there is a great importance of the relationship of the social with the water. This relationship shapes the economy, the relation to other cultures, and social formations. Having given expressions to all these forces, the thesis argues that these as they are shaped, in parallel shape the form, process of formation, of the diversity of architecture. Brunei is built in the water, and the forms of the diversity of urban area reflects the powers and the opportunities that are acting in the social field in relation to ecological forces. What is associated to social and environmental forces shapes the built environment.  The second era happened when European powers took over the region. As they did so, they transformed the political system at the top only, and changed fundamentally the economic system. The thesis proposes that even if the form and diversity of architecture seem to remain the same as the previous era, a different sense to the form has arisen. This thesis' description of the new composition of all the forces at play revealed this new sense.  The third era came forth with two factors. First, the colonial power gave back to the head of Brunei's social system, the Sultan, all the country's powers: political, economic and religious. The second factor was the change in the world economic system and its dependence on oil. Within an IPRAUS urban morphology framework, the meaning of Brunei water city's current diversity of architecture would be given as follows: it is a form that is a modern vernacular form with the basis of that form being the form of the past, actualised by modern practices.  This thesis, however, proposes different findings: The diversity of architecture carries a different sense that reflects the struggles between political powers and subjects taking opportunities that are present. There is more than the form. The forces at play reflect the Sultan's will to rectify the water city because the city is dying, slowly disappearing. The social fabric of the villages is dissolving, and so is its architectural fabric. Once only comprising only financially-independent Bruneian families, the water city now houses only poor Bruneians that cannot access the mainland or its economy, and immigrants that have found cheap accommodation and an entry into that economy. The sense of the water city's diversity of architecture is thus better understood by giving expression to the interplay of all these different forces: the form of architectures—built in the past, along with that lived by the lives of today.  This thesis conclusion theorises how the philosophical and experimental findings of this research might open a different approach to discussing and studying architecture than the current approaches offered in urban morphology and through IPRAUS. By returning to a discussion of the questions: How do we "explain the form, process of formation and diversity of urban areas [?]" (Kropf, 1993, 3), and 'how do we theorise the relationship between the social and the architectural in urban morphology?' the thesis identifies an ecology of problems, concepts and presumptions. It proposes that Deleuzian philosophical concepts allow the limitations of current approaches to be transcended. Finally, by drawing on examples of the analysis of Brunei's water city, the thesis emphasises a shift in ontology and method, which may be of use to others in broader efforts to work transversally within urban morphology in the future.


Background: This paper aims to consider whether adolescents' rights differ from adults' rights and whether applying a children's rights framework is more helpful in pursuing a public health agenda for adolescents than promoting individual rights.
Method: An overview of different types and categories of rights is provided. The need to balance rights and the relationships between mental health professionals' roles and others' reciprocal rights is discussed in order to aid consideration of the above questions. The context is healthcare provision for adolescents with mental health disorders and difficulties. The article is informed by practice in the public mental healthcare system in England, hence many examples are drawn from the English healthcare and legal literature, although international connections are made.

Results: Adolescents' rights differ from adults' rights, especially because of the legal and political disabilities of childhood. Applying a rights framework offers one way of reasoning about ethical and legal challenges in adolescent mental health care. In England, however, having a Human Rights Act, with which all other law must be commensurate, has not resulted in significant promotion of the individual rights of adolescent minors who have capacity to consent. Pediatric professional organisations have met with some success in pursuing a public health agenda for adolescents by advocating for their human rights.

Conclusion: Particularly given evidence that most lifetime psychiatric disorders have started by the end of adolescence, mental health professional organisations should strongly and actively advocate for human rights and global equity in healthcare provision for adolescents.


Recent studies have shown that using the cooling fins is one of the most appropriate methods to eliminate the shrinkage porosities in the castings. In fact, Fins play the role of heat exchangers during the solidification and their usage is the same as that of chills. The cooling effect of fins is directly related to their geometry. Also the effect of fin on decreasing the time of local freezing is a function of metal's thermal conductivity, mould thermal conduction, superheating and fin dimensions. In this research, the effect of three types of fins on local solidification time of a casting of A356 and 6069 alloys as well as the effect of moisture content on cooling rate of sand moulds made of carboceramics have been studied. Results indicate that fin affects severely on solidification time and this influence is more severe in castings produced in moulding materials such as carboceramics which can absorb more moisture. The results show that carboceramics as a new refractory material decrease the solidification time significantly. This is particularly evident when the fins were used. Generally, using fins and carboceramics decrease the solidification time down to 45%. This is good news for casting industry in which the mechanical properties can be easily improved using simple ways.


Radicalization theories positing a process towards violence are de rigueur in policy circles yet solicit mixed reactions within the academy. Attempting to build a more robust theory of radicalization, scholars have turned towards criminology. On the basis of a survey of literature where radicalization engages criminology, this article maps theories taken up to advance knowledge of radicalization as a process towards terrorist violence. The mapping exercise demonstrates a growing spectrum of criminological theories referenced by radicalization studies; however, these engagements have been selective: tending towards individualistic theories with limited (but recent) engagements with constructivist and structural theory. Contributing to critical interventions within the accelerating domains of theorizing radicalization to violence, we conclude that these engagements lack some of criminology's broader reflexivity about its object of study.


Valuing intangible assets is a critical issue in modern economics; one of the most important ones is trademarks. In a competitive business environment trademarks can protect and create an advantage for firms. In today's complex and ever faster growing market, a suitable trademark affects firm performance and it is considered as a fundamental economic asset for organizations. Valuing intangible assets and determining its relation with performance indicators has two main benefits, first it can be useful for various stakeholders such as stockholders, creditors and employees in assessing firm performance and secondly it can draw standard setter's attention to importance of recognizing and measuring trademarks and other intangible assets in financial statements. The first step in conducting such research is to identify developed and acquired trademarks of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange and computing their related value by financial oriented models, then the relationship between trademarks value and accounting performance indicators including net profit (earnings), Return on assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE) and Return on sales (ROS) is examined. The results extracted from 2001 to 2011 indicate a significant and direct relationship between mentioned performance indicators and trademarks value. P progr_`oap????oduction targets.


This study examined seven methods for date entry on the web, including text input, selection using dropdown menus or radio buttons, and combination approaches. The focus was on the entry of dates that may be many years in the past, such as a date of birth. A total of 776 participants, randomly assigned to one of the seven methods, each entered ten dates in an online study. Speed and accuracy were measured, and subjective ratings of task ease were collected. The methods with three separate text-entry fields for month, day, and year, either with or without auto-tab, were the fastest and received the highest task ease ratings. However, they also had the highest error rates. Three separate dropdowns for month, day, and year yielded the lowest error rate. The implications of these results for the design of web forms are discussed.


In today's world, there are more than 2000 thousand ethnic groups but only 192 states. When dominant ethnic groups ignore the socio-economic and cultural identity needs and rights of other peoples within the same state, demands for self-determination arise. Wars that threaten the stability of whole regions often result. This book - the collected papers of the historic First International Conference on the Right to Self-Determination & the United Nations held in Geneva in August, 2000 - is unique in that the issue of the right to self-determination is explored within the context of just demands by those to whom it means the most. It presents the views of minority members of various parliaments, UN experts and distinguished scholars, as well as interventions from NGO attendees from all corners of the globe expressing the self-determination needs and struggles of a wide range of indigenous populations, minorities, and internal nations: Kashmiris, QuebeCois, Irish, Tamils, Native Americans, African Americans, Saamis, South Moluccans, Roma, Dalits of India, Canadian First Nations, Khmer Krom of Vietnam, Chechens, Mon of Burma, Puerto Ricans, Native Hawaiians, the Quichua indigenous nation of Ecuador, the Zanzibaris, etc. The Collected Papers address such questions as: The role of the UN in implementing just demands for self-determination Self-determination as a form of collective restorative justice The relationship between policies of forced assimilation and racism, ethnocide and armed conflict Self-determination through minority rights, internal autonomy or Secession Self-determination as a means of further democratization of the UN and the international system


Purpose Rural physicians wrestle with professional boundary issues routinely in everyday interactions, and their situation differs from the experience of their urban colleagues. Medical students receive limited exposure to professional boundary management in preclinical training. Increasingly, schools are implementing rural longitudinal clinical clerkships which expose students to rural boundary setting. This qualitative study explored the management of professional boundaries integral to rural practice and how this management may differ from their urban colleagues. Method Semistructured interviews were conducted in 2010 with 12 rural physicians across Minnesota exploring their perceptions of professionalism in rural practice. A social constructivist approach to grounded theory was used to analyze the data. Results Five primary themes regarding rural professionalism emerged from the data: centrality of care, rural influences on choice, individualization of boundary setting, advantages of dual relationships, and disadvantages of them. These themes served to illustrate rural boundary management. Conclusions This study's findings indicate that rural physicians are routinely confronted with professional boundary issues in everyday situations, and these circumstances do not always reflect those of their urban colleagues. Given the increase in longitudinal immersion clinical clerkship programs to nurture student interest in future rural practice, acknowledgment and acceptance of the nuances of dual relationships and boundary setting in different clinical learning contexts are vital to help students identify their personal needs for privacy and be better prepared to negotiate the realities of rural practice. These findings may inform future medical education initiatives on professional boundary setting as an aspect of professionalism.


Abstract One‐hundred maize samples were analyzed for fungal contamination using conventional and molecular methods. The percentage incidence of different genera isolated revealed the predominance of Fusarium (82%), Penicillium (63%), and Aspergillus species (33%) compared to other genera. Fusarium occurred in 90% and 74% of small scale and commercial samples, respectively, while Penicillium occurred in small scale and commercial samples at an incidence rate of 64% and 62%, respectively. However, among the species, Fusarium verticilloides have the highest incidence of 70% and 76% in commercial and small‐scale maize, respectively, while Penicillium digitatum has 56% total incidence. Aspergillus fumigatus (27%) were also the most dominant of these genera. Fungal genera isolated included Alternaria and Cladosporium although occurring at a lower incidence level of 30%, 32% and 16%, 20%, respectively, in small‐scale and commercial samples. The results emphasize that farmers and consumers should be alerted to the danger of fungal contamination in maize.