In this thesis, we study robust spatial formation control from several aspects. First, we study robust adaptive attitude synchronization for a network of rigid body agents using various attitude error functions defined on SO(3). Our results are particularly useful for networks with large initial attitude difference. We devise an adaptive geometric approach to cope with situations where the inertia matrices are not available for measurement. We use the Frobenius norm as a measure for the difference between the actual values of inertia matrices and their estimated values, to construct the individual adaptive laws of the agents. Compared to the previous methods for synchronization on SO(3) such as those which are based on quaternions, our proposed approach does not contain any attitude representation ambiguity. As the final part of our studies from the attitude synchronization aspect, we analyze robustness to external disturbances and unmodeled dynamics, and propose a method to attenuate such effects. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In the next part of the thesis, we study the distributed localization of the extremum point of unknown quadratic functions representing various physical or artificial signal potential fields. It is assumed that the value of such functions can be measured at each instant. Using high pass filtering of the measured signals, a linear parametric model is obtained for system identification. For design purposes, we add a consensus term to modify the identification subsystem. Next, we analyze the exponential convergence of the proposed estimation scheme using algebraic graph theory. In addition, we derive a distributed identifiability condition and use it for the construction of distributed extremum seeking control laws. In particular, we show that for a network of connected agents, if each agent contains a portion of the dithering signals, it is still possible to drive the system states to the extremum point provided that the distributed identifiability condition is satisfied. iii In the final part of this research, several robust control problems for general linear time invariant multi-agent systems are studied. We consider the robust consensus problem in the presence of unknown Lipschitz nonlinearities and polytopic uncertainties in the model of each agent. Next, this problem is solved in the presence of external disturbances. A set of control laws is proposed for the network to attain the consensus task and under the zero initial condition, achieves the desired H-infinity performance. We show that by implementing the modified versions of these control laws, it is possible to perform two-time scales formation control.


An acoustically-based description is given of the isolation tones and right-dominant tone sandhi in disyllabic words of a male speaker of the Chinese Oūjiāng 甌江 Wu吳 dialect of Wencheng 文成. His seven isolation tones show typical Wu complexity, comprising two mid-level, two rising, two falling-rising and one depressed level pitch shapes. Typical too is his three-way voicing contrast in syllable-Onset stops. However, the typical Wu relationship between tonal register and phonemic Onset voicing is shown to be disrupted, Onset voicing no longer correlating with tonal pitch height. The word-final tones in sandhi are shown to be straightforwardly related, phonologically and phonetically, to the isolation tones, with biuniqueness preserved. The realization of the word-initial tones in sandhi, on the other hand, involves complex mergers conditioned by largely non-phonetic factors related to historical tone categories, resulting in five extra sandhi tones that do not occur in isolation. It is suggested that they not be related phonologically to the isolation tones. The historical implications of the patterns are also briefly explored.


ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to identify proliferating cells in control versus experimental condyles two weeks following experimental Induction of anterior disk displacement (ADD) in the rabbit craniomandibular joint (CMJ). The right joint of 15 rabbits was exposed surgically and all diskal attachments were severed except for the posterior attachment. The disk was then repositioned anteriorly and sutured to the zygomatic arch. The left joint served as a sham-operated control. Ten additional joints were used as nonoperated controls. Mandibular condyles were excised two weeks following surgery and processed for proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) immunostaining. In control and sham operated condyles, PCNA was localized in the nuclei of chondroblasts of the reserve cell layer, chondrocytes of the upper hypertrophic layer and bone marrow cells of the subchondral bone. In contrast to control joints, the PCNA positive cells of the experimental joints were located throughout the osteoarthritic condylar cartilage. In addition, the percentage of PCNA positive cells of the osteoarthritic condylar cartilage was statistically significantly higher when compared to the control group, p < 0.05. It was concluded that surgical induction of ADD in the rabbit CMJ leads to an increase in mitosis of chondrocytes, which lead to cell proliferation and subsequent hyperplasia of the condylar cartilage.


Heliosperma (nom. cons prop.) comprises 15—20 taxa, most of them endemic to the Balkan Peninsula. DNA sequences from the chloroplast (rps16 intron, psbE-petG spacer) and the nuclear genome (ITS and four putatively unlinked RNA polymerase genes) are used to elucidate phylogenetic relationships within Heliosperma, and its position within Sileneae. Three main lineages are found within Heliosperma: Heliosperma alpestre, H. macranthum and the H. pusillum-clade. The relationships among the lineages differ between the plastid and the nuclear trees. Relative dates are used to discriminate among inter- and intralineage processes causing such incongruences, and ancient homoploid hybridisation is the most likely explanation. The chloroplast data strongly support two, geographically correlated clades in the H. pusillum-group, whereas the relationships appear poorly resolved by the ITS data, when analysed under a phylogenetic tree model. However, a network analysis finds a geographic structuring similar to that in the chloroplast data. Ancient vicariant divergence followed by hybridisation events best explains the observed pattern. The morphological and taxonomical diversity in the H. pusillum-group is possibly ecology-induced, and is not correlated with the molecular data. Phylogenetic patterns regarding the origin of Heliosperma are complicated, probably influenced by reticulate and sorting events. At least two ancient lineages have been involved in its evolution, one most closely related to Viscaria/Atocion and the other to Eudianthe/Petrocoptis. Atocion and Viscaria are sister genera, most species-rich on the Balkans, and including six/three species. Phylogenies do not support their traditional classification, and provide a framework for a taxonomic revision. Atocion compactum is found in three different positions in the chloroplast tree, and in a single clade in the nuclear gene trees. Using relative dates we demonstrate that hybridisation with subsequent chloroplast capture is a feasible explanation for the pattern observed. This, and other observed reticulate patterns, highlights the importance of hybridisation in plant evolution.


Background and Purpose: Kimura's Disease (KD) is a rare
benign chronic eosinophlic inflammatory disorder, characterized by
angiolymphoid proliferation with peripheral eosinophilia and elevated serum
immunoglobulin E. Most lesions occur in the head and neck regions. To the best of our knowledge, the relationship between subcutaneous cheek lesion of KD and the surrounding
structures including superficial musculoaponeurotic systems (SMAS) has
never been reported. The purpose of this study was to describe MR imaging
findings of cheek subcutaneous lesion of KD and adjacent SMAS. Materials and Methods: Seven cheek subcutaneous lesions of 5 patients histopathologically
proved KD were evaluated. We retrospectively evaluated the MR imaging findings
of subcutaneous lesions for signal intensity in each imaging sequence, the
border of the lesions, and appearance of SMAS. Results: All cheek lesions were displacing normal fat tissue. These lesions showed ill-defined border (7/7), slightly high signal intensity on T1-weighted images (7/7), and intermediate (1/7) or high
signal intensity (6/7) on T2-weighted
images. Cheek lesions were enhanced by intravenous injection of gadolinium
to signal intensity close to that of fat tissue (3/4), and in one case, the
avid enhancement of the mass was seen (1/4). All lesions attached to the outer
surface of SMAS, however, only one out of 7 lesions distributed below the SMAS
without tearing of the
layers. SMAS below the lesion showed high
signal intensity on T2-weighted images in two lesions (2/7). Conclusion: KD should be included in the differential diagnosis when a cheek mass presents
with non-specific signal intensities and irregular border, which attaches to
but does not interrupt SMAS on MR imaging.


Banking sector is an essential part of a nation's economy and represents one of the most important components of a nation's capital. Similarly, the loan portfolio represents an important component of a bank's total assets. These assets generate huge interest income which is a critical measure of the bank's financial performance and stability. Therefore, the non-performing loan ratio is a critical tool to measure a bank's performance. There is recently a growing recognition between macroeconomic indicators, bank-level factors and the non-performing loans (NPLs) ratio. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a significant relationship between macroeconomic indicators, bank-level factors and non-performing loan ratio in Turkey. In this study linear regression models and cointegration analysis are utilized to determine the significant relations between the periods from January 2007 to March 2013. Our empirical results show that debt ratio, loan to asset ratio, real sector confidence index, consumer price index, EURO/ Turkish lira rate, USD/ Turkish lira rate, money supply change, interest rate, Turkey's GDP growth, the Euro Zone's GDP growth and volatility of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock market index does not have significant effect to explain NPL ratio on multivariate perspective. On the other hand, industrial production index, Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 Index, inefficiency ratio of all banks negatively affect NPL ratio; unemployment rate, return on equity and capital adequacy ratio positively affect NPL ratio.


In the West, women's safe access to abortion services is central to the debate around reproductive freedom. In China, easy access to abortion arrived hand-in-hand with the one-child policy in 1979 as part of the Party-state's birth control programme. Based on interviews with 31 women and 11 men from the well-educated 1980s generation, and using vignettes to explore attitudes towards premarital sex and abortion in the context of an increasingly sexualized popular culture, and the acceptability of premarital sex but lack of safe sex knowledge, I illustrate a strictly moralised discourse around female sexuality, where the normalisation of abortion practice does not translate into public acceptance of premarital abortion for women. I argue that the responsibilisation of women's pregnancy reflects persistent patriarchal values and the state's regulatory power over women's reproductive bodies. While the heterosexual family remains the only legitimate site for reproduction, Chinese women's reproductive freedom is subjugated to the priority of maintaining social stability. Hence, permissiveness over premarital abortion should not be simply understood as moral approval of abortion practice, but reflects pragmatic attitudes under a restrictive regime. I further argue that the Chinese case shows that a more nuanced, contextualised approach to understanding reproductive rights is necessary.


Abstract This article examines the extremely volatile character of electoral system changes that took place in Turkey from the end of the Second World War up until the end of the 1990s. Motives that drove these changes were either related to intentions to prevent the undesirable repetition of the past circumstances, or to political actors' short‐term goals. Some of these changes seem to have reached their objectives while some others have not. The volatility in electoral institutions' design was also strongly associated with the fluctuations Turkey experienced in terms of democratic consolidation. In this respect, the Turkish case may offer a variety of useful empirical material for the prospective designers of new institutions in a number of former communist countries that are likely to experience further stages of democratic transition/consolidation in the years ahead.


Long-term autonomy in service robotics is a current research topic, especially for dynamic, large-scale environments that change over time. We present Sobi, a mobile service robot developed as an interactive guide for open environments, such as public places with indoor and outdoor areas. The robot will serve as a platform for environmental modeling and human-robot interaction. Its main hardware and software components, which we freely license as a documented open source project, are presented. Another key focus is Sobi's monitoring system for long-term autonomy, which restores system components in a targeted manner in order to extend the total system lifetime without unplanned intervention. We demonstrate first results of the long-term autonomous capabilities in a 16-day indoor deployment, in which the robot patrols a total of 66.6 km with an average of 5.5 hours of travel time per weekday, charging autonomously in between. In a user study with 12 participants, we evaluate the appearance and usability of the user interface, which allows users to interactively query information about the environment and directions.


Forests structural differences could result of environmental variations at different scales. Because soils are an important component of plant's environment, it is possible that edaphic and structural variables are associated and that, in consequence, spatial autocorrelation occurs. This paper aims to answer two questions: (1) are structural and edaphic variables associated at local scale in a terra firme forest of Colombian Amazonia? and (2) are these variables regionalized at the scale of work? To answer these questions we analyzed the data of a 6ha plot established in a terra firme forest of the Amacayacu National Park. Structural variables included basal area and density of large trees (diameter > or = 10cm) (Gdos and Ndos), basal area and density of understory individuals (diameter < 10cm) (Gsot and Nsot) and number of species of large trees (sp). Edaphic variables included were pH, organic matter, P, Mg, Ca, K, Al, sand, silt and clay. Structural and edaphic variables were reduced through a principal component analysis (PCA); then, the association between edaphic and structural components from PCA was evaluated by multiple regressions. The existence of regionalization of these variables was studied through isotropic variograms, and autocorrelated variables were spatially mapped. PCA found two significant components for structure, corresponding to the structure of large trees (G, Gdos, Ndos and sp) and of small trees (N, Nsot and Gsot), which explained 43.9% and 36.2% of total variance, respectively. Four components were identified for edaphic variables, which globally explained 81.9% of total variance and basically represent drainage and soil fertility. Regression analyses were significant (p < 0.05) and showed that the structure of both large and small trees is associated with greater sand contents and low soil fertility, though they explained a low proportion of total variability (R2 was 4.9% and 16.5% for the structure of large trees and small tress, respectively). Variables with spatial autocorrelation were the structure of small trees, Al, silt, and sand. Among them, Nsot and sand content showed similar patterns of spatial distribution inside the plot.


ABSTRACT We completed a floristic inventory of the James River Park System (JRPS), a ca. 223-hectare (550-acre) multi-unit park along the James River in Richmond, Virginia. The JRPS includes land within the riparian zone along a 13-kilometer (8-mile) stretch of the river that bisects the city, providing two million annual visitors with recreational access to the rapids along the "Falls of the James." Although the vegetation within the park system is an important attraction for park-goers, information on the flora of the JRPS and this section of the James River corridor is limited. This study updates partial records of the JRPS flora from ca. 50 years ago with collections that were made over the span of three growing seasons from 2016–2018. A total of 566 species and sub-specific taxa were documented from 336 genera and 115 families, including 63 new botanical records for the locality. Native species comprise 69.4% of the overall species richness, with dominant families including Asteraceae, Poaceae, and Cyperaceae. Non-native invasive species are prevalent throughout the park: 51 species are listed on the Virginia Invasive Plant Species List, 21 of which carry a "high" invasiveness rank. Four state-listed rare species were documented within the park, and seven other state-rare "watchlist" species were found. The information presented here is being used to help guide management efforts of the JRPS Invasive Plant Task Force, an organization dedicated to the removal of non-native invasive species, restoration of natural habitats, and preservation of natural communities within the park system.


UNLABELLED
Research in the development of nanoscale drug carriers primarily focuses on maximizing drug delivery efficiency to tumor tissues. However, less attention has been given to minimizing drug toxicity to non-targeted cells to enhance therapeutic selectivity.

AIM
Herein, we report on the use of a newly developed high-density lipoprotein-mimicking peptide-phospholipid nanoscaffold (HPPS) to deliver a lipophilic drug, paclitaxel oleate (PTXOL).

METHOD & RESULTS
The formulated PTXOL HPPS (120:1) drastically increased therapeutic selectivity by reducing cytotoxicity of PTXOL to nontargeted cells. Using mice bearing targeted (KB) and nontargeted (HT1080) tumors as models, we demonstrated that tumor volume of nontargeted cells was decreased to 57% by PTXOL treatment but increased to 1220% by PTXOL HPPS treatment. However, upon treatment of paclitaxel, PTXOL and PTXOL HPPS, tumor volumes of targeted groups were reduced to 85, 50 and 63%, respectively.

CONCLUSION
These data strongly suggest that HPPS can attenuate toxicity of anticancer drugs to nontargeted cells, resulting in cell-killing efficacy only on targeted cells.


ABSTRACT The comparison of adjacent pairs of beach (largely foreshore) and dune sands from 74 localities of world-wide distribution has shown that it is generally possible to distinguish between the two, particularly if there are predominant onshore winds. The dune sands are usually rounder than the adjacent beach sands, have a larger silt content, and this silt has a higher content of heavy minerals. The beach foreshores, on the other hand, usually contain more shells and other calcareous organisms than the dunes. There is also some reason to believe that mica content is greater in beach foreshores than in adjacent dunes. The sand of beach berms appears to be intermediate in most respects between that of the foreshores and dunes. The areas where beaches and dunes are most difficult to distinguish are those where there are longshore, extremely variable, or offshore winds. In such localities it is thought that the dune sands are blown back onto the beaches causing intermixture and that in some cases the dunes are derived from sources other than from the adjacent beach. The best results in separating the two environments have come from beaches of the west coast of the United States and Baja California where onshore winds predominate. It is suggested that the chief reason for the differences between dune and beach sands is that the wind picks up from the beaches more of the rounder grains than of the flat and angular grains. There is no reason to believe that the grains are rounded appreciably by the wind in transit to the dunes. Nor does there appear to be any evidence from these comparisons that the dune grains become frosted. The greater quantity of heavy minerals in the dune silt fraction may be caused by removal by the wind of the light minerals.


AbstractIn the present study, two different by-products, pecan shells, and sawdust obtained from the region of Chania, Crete, Greece, were subjected to slow pyrolysis over a temperature range of 250–550°C, for the production of biochar. The quality of the produced biochars was assessed by evaluating their main properties, namely pyrolysis yield, pH, volatile matter and char content, surface area, and C, H, S, N content. Thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy were used for the identification of the morphology and structure of the produced biochars. The potential of selected pecan shells and sawdust biochars to adsorb Pb and Cu from synthetic solutions was also assessed.


This comprehensive yet brief overview of the adolescent human brain discusses how the brain develops during this critical period of life, and how that development impacts decision making and risk-taking behavior in the adolescent. This originated as a white paper requested by the Canadian government for a specific group looking to understand adolescent brain development in the context of adolescent behavior. The paper was not made available to the Canadian government outside of the specific task force that requested it nor to the general public. The authors have since decided that having put so much effort into concisely summarizing research on adolescent brain development, it would be a useful addition to researchers in psychology generally. The original paper has since been updated and revised considerably.


The criteria for intervention on the existing building heritage in the historic centers cannot be pursued without taking into consideration the renovation of the whole relevant urban territory. This does not imply an idea to postpone to future planning, rather to increase the topics in the General Urban Plan (PUG), by bringing into the PUG the elements of the traditional detailed plans for the historic areas with a methodology simplification. The detailed planning has been characterized in the years as "exemplary", possibly due to the complexity of its project contents and rules and regulations, particularly in the historic areas. Indeed in Italy detailed plans for historic areas are quite rarely introduced and even more rarely implemented. In recent years there has been more awareness of the problem and commitment to change through practical actions. The regional regulations dedicated to the regeneration of the historic centers are an example of this change, and aim at the renovation of the historic areas through a direct intervention (not subordinate to the detailed plan) included in the General Urban Plan of the local administration. The 2007 PUG of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto in Sicily (Fig. 1), is based on a residential capacity of 47,000 people for the next twenty years, with an increase of around 5,000 people. These are distributed over 300 hectares of urbanized area, out of which 86 hectares are represented by historic area, with a residential capacity of 11,600 people and a density of 135 pp/Ha. Recently the local administration has decided to adapt the PUG to the regulations for the regeneration of the historic center. The urban set up of the historic area is characterized by the alignment of the buildings on the old central axis of entrance and exit of the city, incorporating some of the historic rural boroughs. The urban set up is organized as a chessboard, more or less regular, originally over more generating centers, that have today disappeared (the old Dome and the Theater, the first demolished in 1936 and the second one destroyed after a fire in 1972). The building blocks include non allocated spaces and empty areas, as residue of the primitive building set up that was incorporated in the new urban network from the beginning of 1900s. The building units of the historic areas have been touched, particularly in the facades, with interventions that have alternated their original image. Nevertheless, the historic area preserves all its residential and commercial functions, even in the relationship with the new expansion areas and the productive areas. The boundaries of the historic area have been defined by taking into consideration the urban history, the building heritage and its transformations, the functional aspects (accessibility, mobility, availability of services) so as to utilize again the historic building heritage itself. The regeneration interventions have been classified in simplified categories, divided into ordinary and extra-ordinary maintenance, restoration, preservative restoration, regeneration, extensive regeneration, demolition and reconstruction, renovation with the same building typology/philology, demolition without reconstruction. The individual categories are accompanied by other technical detailed regulations to be applied "house-by-house" in the entire historic area.


Mechanistic questions concerning palladium and norbornene catalyzed aryl-aryl coupling reactions are treated in this paper: how aryl halides react with the intermediate palladacycles, formed by interaction of the two catalysts with an aryl halide, and what is the rational explanation of the "ortho effect" (caused by an ortho substituent in the starting aryl halide), which leads to aryl-aryl coupling with a second molecule of aryl halide rather than to aryl-norbornyl coupling. Two possible pathways have been proposed, one involving aryl halide oxidative addition to the palladacycle, the other passing through a palladium(II) transmetalation, also involving the palladacycle, as previously proposed by Cardenas and Echavarren. Our DFT calculations using M06 show that, in palladium-catalyzed reaction of aryl halides, not containing ortho substituents, and norbornene, the intermediate palladacycle formed has a good probability to undergo transmetalation, energetically favored over the oxidative addition leading to Pd(IV). The unselective sp(2)-sp(2) and sp(2)-sp(3) coupling, experimentally observed in this case, can be explained in the framework of the transmetalation pathway since the energetic difference between aryl attack onto the aryl or norbornyl carbon of the palladacycle intermediate is quite small. On the other hand, according to the experimentally observed "ortho effect", selective aryl-aryl coupling only occurs in the reactions of ortho-substituted metallacycles. The present work offers the first possible rationalization of this finding. These in situ formed palladacycles containing an ortho substituent could more easily undergo oxidative addition of an aryl halide rather than reductive elimination from the transmetalation intermediate as a result of a steric clash in the transition state of the latter. The now energetically accessible Pd(IV) intermediate, featuring a Y-distorted trigonal bipyramidal structure, can account for the reported selective aryl-aryl coupling through a reductive elimination which is easier than aryl-norbornyl coupling. Thus, the steric effect represents the main factor that dictates the energetic convenience of the system to follow the Pd(IV) or the transmetalation pathway. Ortho substituents cause a higher energy transition state for reductive elimination from the transmetalation intermediate than for oxidative addition to the metallacycle palladium(II) and the pathway based on the latter predominates.


The benefits, pitfalls, and sustainability of open access publishing are hotly debated. Commercial publishers dominate the marketplace and oppose alternative publishing models that threaten their bottom line. Scholars' use of open access remains relatively limited due to awareness and perceived benefits to their professional goals. Readership of open access publications is generally strong, but some people disagree that more readers leads to increased citations and research impact. Libraries have grown their influence by supporting and promoting open access, but these efforts come with significant financial costs. Today, open access has flourished most significantly as a philosophy: the belief that the world's scholarship should be freely available to readers and that publicly funded research, in particular, should be accessible to the taxpayers who paid for it. Transforming a moral good into a sustainable publishing model rests with lawmakers, scholars, and institutions of higher education. Without laws designed to ensure participation by authors and publishers, Green Open Access cannot effectively replace journal subscriptions. Scholars need to call upon each other to archive their work, utilize open access repository web sites to find quality content, and embrace Gold Open Access journals as a professionally beneficial publishing venue. Institutions must allocate additional internal resources to spur more and better institutional and disciplinary archives, new Gold Open Access journals, and myriad other professional, technical, and financial services necessary to promote open access as a fiscally and academically sustainable publishing solution.


In recent years, educators, particularly those within the tertiary level landscape, have been subject to criticisms for their apparent inability to effectively educate students, in particular, their failure to explore the potential of technology. For the purpose of this paper, education refers to the ability to harness students' ability to engage in written communication, problem-solving, complex reasoning, and critical thinking – all hallmarks of higher education. The educational landscape is characterized by the inclusion of information communication technologies and their potential to facilitate digital learning. Asynchronous learning or Location Independent Learning (LIL) is a student-centered mode of delivery, which posits the idea that students can learn the same material at different times and locations. Compared to the traditional, synchronous mode of delivery, the level of convenience provided by the asynchronous modality offers opportunities for individualized pace and deeper reflection. The 'flipped' or 'inverted' classroom model is proposed as one such way of reaching students by speaking their digital language while at the same time creating opportunities for the development, and  arnessing of the critical thinking skills that could allow them to navigate the professional and social world thereafter. The 'flipped' concept proposes that which is traditionally done in class is now done at home, and that which is traditionally done as homework, is now completed in class. This time shift then frees up the face-to-face time and transforms the classroom into a learning space used for discourse and hands-on, authentic learning experiences. Using action research, this study trialed the transition from a partially to fully flipped video classroom format at a tertiary level institution in Trinidad and Tobago, as a potential means to incorporate: 1) an asynchronous component that could allow for more schedule flexibility and appeal to a millennial audience and 2) a synchronous, interactive face-to-face component which focuses on problemsolving, collaboration, crafting and creating. The primary objectives of this study were to determine students' perception of the flipped classroom as well as to map the progression of learning in both iterations.


ABSTRACT This study was conducted to investigate legitimacy aspects of social network relations in a group of women with undefined musculoskeletal disorder. The aim was to study, from the viewpoint of the patient, the extent to which the symptoms of musculoskeletal disorder have legitimacy within the social network and how this legitimacy affects the patient's social network relations. A structural equation model was used to find the model best fitting the data arising between social support, legitimacy aspects and negative outcomes in the social network relations. The results can be summarised as indicating that illness legitimacy does affect availability of social relations and social support from friends, relatives and family. Of particular importance to this process is the patient's own perception of the legitimacy of her disorder. These results also confirmed previous findings indicating that greater attention should be paid to the impact of negative aspects of social support and its affect on patient health.


Introduction Smoke-free policies are being increasingly promoted and adopted in subsidised multiunit housing to address disparities in residential secondhand smoke exposure. In order to inform the planning and evaluation of these policies, this study examined associations between self-reported in-home smoking and surface nicotine concentrations. Methods A face-to-face, cross-sectional survey was conducted from August to October 2011 with leaseholders in a probability sample of private subsidised housing units in Columbus, Ohio, without an existing smoke-free housing policy (n=301, 64% response rate). After the survey, a wipe sample was collected from a wood surface in the living room to measure surface nicotine concentrations (n=279). Results In-home smoking was reported by 56.6% of respondents. Geometric mean surface nicotine concentrations differed between non-smoking and smoking homes (11.4 vs 90.9 μg/m2; p<0.001), and between homes with complete, partial and no voluntary home smoking restrictions (8.9 vs 56.3 vs 145.6 μg/m2; p<0.001). Surface nicotine concentrations were moderately correlated (r=.52) with the total number of cigarettes smoked indoors per week. Smoking behaviours of respondents, other household members and visitors, and length of stay were independently associated with surface nicotine concentrations in a multivariable model, explaining 52% of the variance. Conclusions Surface nicotine concentrations were significantly associated with a range of self-reported in-home smoking behaviours. This measure should be considered for evaluating changes in in-home smoking behaviours after implementation of smoke-free policies by subsidised housing providers. More research is needed about how surface nicotine concentrations differ over space, time and various indoor surfaces.


The dissertation presents innovative Evolutionary Search (ES) methods for the reduction in computational expense associated with the optimisation of rughly dimensional design spaces. The objective is to develop a semi-automated system which successfully negotiates complex search spaces. Such a system would be highly desirable to a human designer by providing optimised design solutions in realistic time. The design domain represents a real-world industrial problem concerning the optimal material distribution on the underside of a flat roof tile with varying load and support conditions. The designs utilise a large number of design variables (circa 400). Due to the high computational expense associated with analysis such as finite element for detailed evaluation, in order to produce "good" design solutions within an acceptable period of time, the number of calls to the evaluation model must be kept to a minimum. The objective therefore is to minimise the number of calls required to the analysis tool whilst also achieving an optimal design solution. To minimise the number of model evaluations for detailed shape optimisation several evolutionary algorithms are investigated. The better performing algorithms are combined with multi-level search techniques which have been developed to further reduce the number of evaluations and improve quality of design solutions. Multi-level techniques utilise a number of levels of design representation. The solutions of the coarse representations are injected into the more detailed designs for fine grained refinement. The techniques developed include Dynamic Shape Refinement (DSR), Modified Injection Island Genetic Algmithm (MiiGA) and Dynamic Injection Island Genetic Algorithm (DiiGA). The multi-level techniques are able to handle large numbers of design variables (i.e. > 100). Based on the performance characteristics of the individual algorithms and multi-level search techniques, distributed search techniques are proposed. These techniques utilise different evolutionary strategies in a multi-level environment and were developed as a way of further reducing computational expense and improve design solutions. The results indicate a considerable potential for a significant reduction in the number of evaluation calls during evolutionary search. In general this allows a more efficient integration with computationally intensive analytical techniques during detailed design and contribute significantly to those preliminary stages of the design process where a greater degree of analysis is required to validate results from more simplistic preliminary design models. iii


Two novel methods for the sulphur vulcanisation of NR, BR and EPDM rubbers using N-tert-butyl-2-benzothiazole sulphenamide (TBBS) accelerator and zinc oxide (ZnO) activator have been developed. In one method, the optimum loading of TBBS and ZnO were measured for some sulphur-filled NR, BR and EPDM rubbers. The cure systems for the NR were (S/TBBS/ZnO), (1/1.5/0.2), (2/1.5/0.3), (3/1.5/0.25), and (4/3.5/0.2), for the BR, (0.5/1.75/0.2) and (1/3/0.2), and for the EPDM, (1/1/0.075). The cure was very efficient in spite of reducing the amount of TBBS and ZnO chemicals. In another method which used a single additive component in the form of a powder (TBBS/ZnO: 350mg/1g), the loading of the powder in NR was raised increasingly from 0.63 to 5.63 phr, the scorch time was unchanged and the optimum cure time reduced at 1.25 phr powder. The rate of cure accelerated at 1.25 phr powder. The crosslink density reached its maximum value at 5.63 phr powder. This method reduced the TBBS and ZnO requirement in the cure system by 85wt%.

Solid kaolin filler pre-treated with a sulphur-bearing mercaptosilane was used to reinforce NR, BR and EPDM rubbers. For NR, to react the sulphur in the silane on the kaolin surface with the rubber chains and optimise the reaction between the two, 16 phr TBBS and 0.2 phr ZnO were added to the kaolin-filled rubber. The hardness and Young s modulus increased and compression set decreased when up to 3 phr elemental sulphur was included in the kaolin-filled rubber with 16 phr TBBS and 0.2 phr ZnO. The tensile strength, elongation at break, stored energy density at break, and tear energy of the rubber vulcanisate reduced when elemental sulphur was added. Notably, the inclusion of elemental sulphur was the key factor in controlling the rubber properties.
In an extended work, 60 phr silane pre-treated kaolin was mixed with NR, BR and EPDM and the rubbers were cured using the novel cure systems developed earlier. The effect of 140 phr kaolin on the properties of NR was also investigated.

For NR, the hardness increased by 64% when 60 phr kaolin was added and the trend continued rising by another 28% when the loading of kaolin reached 140 phr. Similarly, the Young s modulus rose by 170% with 60 phr kaolin and then by an extra 148% when the full amount of kaolin, i.e. 140 phr, was reached. The tensile strength and tear energy were unchanged and the elongation at break and stored energy density at break deteriorated by a total of 65% and 34%, respectively with 140 phr kaolin. The compression set of the unfilled rubber was 41%, and it then rose to 64% and 71%, when 60 and 140 phr kaolin was added, respectively.

For BR, the hardness increased by 23% and for EPDM, by 34%, respectively when 60 phr kaolin was incorporated in the rubbers. For BR, the tensile strength, elongation at break and Young s modulus rose by 759%, 256% and 114%, respectively. The compression set of the unfilled BR was 9.4%, and subsequently rose to 26% when 60 phr kaolin was mixed with the rubber.
For EPDM, the tensile strength, elongation at break and Young s modulus improved by 964%, 332% and 71%, respectively. For BR, the stored energy density at break and tear energy were increased by 2442% and 536%, respectively and for EPDM, by 3133% and 1479%, respectively. The compression set of the unfilled EPDM was 39%, and afterward increased to 48% with 60 phr kaolin.

Kaolin was found to be extending or non-reinforcing filler for the strain-induced crystallising NR and highly reinforcing for the non-crystallising BR and EPDM.


Concurrent training is a strategy which has been used with the purpose to maximize energy expenditure both during and after exercise by exacerbation of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). However, little is known about the influence of the order of performance of exercises on EPOC. The aim of the present study was to verify the influence of type (aerobic, strength and concurrent) and order (aerobic + strength or strength + aerobic) of exercise on excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption. Eight male volunteers (age: 24 ± 2 years; weight mass: 75.4 ± 3.7 kg; and height: 179 ± 3.0 cm), with experience in aerobic and strength training were studied. The subjects were submitted to a test for the determination of the VO2peak (57.0 ± 2.9 ml/kg/min) and test of 1-RM for the exercises of bench press (68 ± 2 kg), lat pull down (64 ± 3 kg), leg extension (51 ± 3 kg) and leg curl (38 ± 3 kg). Aerobic training was conducted for 30 minutes at 90% of the anaerobic threshold velocity (10.3 ± 2.2 km). The protocol strength training corresponded to 70% of 1RM, divided in three sets of 12 repetitions. Oxygen consumption (VO2) was measured at rest (R) and after the following sessions: aerobic (A), strength (S), aerobic-strength (A + S) and strength-aerobic (S + A), using indirect calorimetry for 30 minutes, which were divided in three time intervals: T1 (0-10 minutes), T2 (11-20 minutes) and T3 (the 21-30 minutes). The comparison of the VO2 among the different situations (R, A, S, A + S and S + A) for each period of time (0-10, 11-20; 21-30 min) was determined by one-way ANOVA with repeated measurements, followed by Tukey test. In T1, the VO2 of the different sessions was increased in relation to R. During T2, the VO2 of situations S, A + S and S + A was increased in relation to R. In T3, only A + S resulted in EPOC. The results indicate that exercise order influences EPOC time. However, in 30 minutes the caloric expenditure caused by EPOC was fairly low (≅ 15 kcal).


The research reported in this paper focussed on the design of learning environments that support the teaching and learning of argumentation in a scientific context. The research took place over two years between 1999 and 2001 in junior high schools in the greater London area. The research was conducted in two phases. In the first developmental phase, working with a group of 12 science teachers, the main emphasis was to develop sets of materials and strategies to support argumentation in the classroom and to assess teachers' development with teaching argumentation. Data were collected by videoing and audio recording the teachers attempts to implement these lessons at the beginning and end of the year. During this phase, analytical tools for evaluating the quality of argumentation were developed based on Toulmin's argument pattern. Analysis of the data shows that there was significant development in the majority of teachers use of argumentation across the year. Results indicate that the pattern of use of argumentation is teacher specific, as is the nature of the change. In the second phase of the project, teachers taught the experimental groups a minimum of nine lessons which involved socioscientific or scientific argumentation. In addition, these teachers taught similar lessons to a control group at the beginning and end of the year. Here the emphasis lay on assessing the progression in student capabilities with argumentation. Hence data were collected from several lessons of two groups of students engaging in argumentation. Using a framework for evaluating the nature of the discourse and its quality, the findings show that there was an improvement in the quality of students' argumentation. In addition, the research offers methodological developments for work in this field.


Recent scientific evidence suggests that food proteins not only serve as nutrients, but can also modulate the body's physiological functions. These physiological functions are primarily regulated by some peptides that are encrypted in the native protein sequences. These bioactive peptides can exert health beneficial properties and thus are considered as a lead compound for the development of nutraceuticals or functional foods. In the past few decades, a wide range of food-derived bioactive peptide sequences have been identified, with multiple health beneficial activities. However, the commercial application of these bioactive peptides has been delayed because of the absence of appropriate and scalable production methods, proper exploration of the mechanisms of action, high gastro-intestinal digestibility, variable absorption rate, and the lack of well-designed clinical trials to provide the substantial evidence for potential health claims. This review article discusses the current techniques, challenges of the current bioactive peptide production techniques, the oral use and gastrointestinal bioavailability of these food-derived bioactive peptides, and the overall regulatory environment.


Owing to population growth, freshwater demand on Guam has increased in the past and will likely increase in the future. During the early 1970s to 2010, groundwater withdrawals from the limestone Northern Guam Lens Aquifer, the main source of freshwater on the island, tripled from about 15 to 45 million gallons per day. Because of proposed military relocation to Guam and expected population growth, freshwater demand on Guam is projected to increase further. The expected increased demand for groundwater has led to concern over the long-term sustainability of withdrawals from existing and proposed wells. A three-dimensional numerical groundwater flow and transport model was developed to simulate the effects of hypothetical withdrawal and recharge scenarios on water levels and on the transition zone between freshwater and saltwater. The model was constructed by using average recharge during 1961–2005 and withdrawals from 2010. Hydraulic properties used to construct the model were initially based on published estimates but ultimately were adjusted to obtain better agreement between simulated and measured water levels and salinity profiles in the modeled area. Two hypothetical groundwater withdrawal scenarios were simulated: no withdrawal to simulate predevelopment conditions and withdrawal at 2010 rates under a 5-year drought. Simulation results indicate that prior to pumping; the freshwater lens was 10 to 50 feet thicker in the Yigo-Tumon basin and more than 50 feet thicker in the Hagåtña basin. Results also indicate that continuing the 2010 withdrawal distribution during a 5-year drought would result in decreased water levels, a thinner freshwater lens, and increased salinity of water pumped from wells. The available water with an acceptable salinity (chloride concentration less than 200 milligrams per liter) would decrease from about 34 million gallons per day to 11.5 million gallons per day after 5 years but recover to pre-drought levels 5 years after the return of average recharge conditions. Five additional scenarios were simulated to assess groundwater demand projections and proposed new well sites for the Department of Defense and Guam Water Authority wells under average and drought conditions. Simulation results from these projected withdrawal scenarios indicate decreased water levels, a thinner freshwater lens, increased water salinity, and unacceptable salinity at several current withdrawal sites. However, for the scenario including projected U.S. Marine Corps demands (46.62 million gallons per day, including 10 proposed wells) more than 40 million gallons per day of the withdrawn groundwater remains in the acceptable category. During a 5-year drought, this same pumping distribution results in only about 15 million gallons per day of withdrawn groundwater having acceptable salinity. A scenario in which groundwater withdrawal was redistributed in an attempt to maximize withdrawal while maintaining acceptable salinities in the withdrawn water was simulated. The redistributed withdrawal simulates about 47 million gallons per day of withdrawal with more than 41 million gallons per day of withdrawal with acceptable salinity.


In this paper, we present the results of a four-week real world study on app launches on smartphones. The results show that smartphone users are confident in the way they navigate on their devices, but that there are many opportunities for refinements. Users in our study tended to sort apps based on frequency of use, putting the most frequently used apps in places that they considered fastest to reach. Interestingly, users start most apps from within other apps, followed by the use of the homescreen.


BACKGROUND
Tinnitus is an auditory perception that can be described as the experience of sound, in the ear or in the head, in the absence of external acoustic stimulation (not usually audible to anyone else). At present no specific therapy for tinnitus is acknowledged to be satisfactory in all patients. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) uses relaxation, cognitive restructuring of the thoughts and exposure to exacerbating situations in order to promote habituation and may benefit tinnitus patients, as may the treatment of associated psychological conditions.

OBJECTIVES
To assess whether cognitive behavioural therapy is effective in the management of patients suffering from tinnitus.

SEARCH STRATEGY
Our search included the Cochrane ENT Group Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library Issue 2, 2006), MEDLINE and EMBASE. The last search date was June 2006.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled trials in which patients with unilateral or bilateral tinnitus as main symptom received cognitive behavioural treatment.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
One review author (PMD) assessed every report identified by the search strategy. The four review authors assessed the methodological quality, applied inclusion/exclusion criteria and extracted data.

MAIN RESULTS
Six trials comprising 285 participants were included. 1.

PRIMARY OUTCOME
subjective tinnitus loudness. CBT compared to a waiting list control group: we found no significant difference (Standardised Mean Difference (SMD) 0.06 (95% CI -0.25 to 0.37)). CBT compared to another intervention (Yoga, Education, Minimal Contact - Education and Education): we found no significant difference (SMD 0.1 (95% CI -0.22 to 0.42)).2.

SECONDARY OUTCOMES
a) Depression. CBT compared to a waiting list control group: we found no significant difference in either group (SMD 0.29 (95%CI -0.04 to 0.63)). CBT compared to another intervention (Yoga, Education and Minimal Contact - Education): we found no significant difference (SMD 0.01 (95% CI -0.43 to 0.45)). b) Quality of life: CBT compared to a waiting list control group: we found a significant difference in favour of CBT versus the waiting list group (SMD 0.7 (95% CI 0.33 to 1.08)). CBT compared to another intervention (Education, Minimal Contact - Education and Education): we also found a significant difference between CBT and the other intervention control group (SMD 0.64 (95% CI 0.29 to 1.00)). There were no adverse/side effects reported in any trial.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
We did not find a significant difference in the subjective loudness of tinnitus, or in the associated depression. However we found a significant improvement in the quality of life (decrease of global tinnitus severity) of the participants, thus suggesting that cognitive behavioural therapy has an effect on the qualitative aspects of tinnitus and contributes positively to the management of tinnitus.


The aim of this thesis is to analyze the OSNR sensitivity on a 100 Gb/s optical coherent PM-QPSK system against the use of different types of laser sources, looking for the impact of the associated phase noise at different laser linewidth. The drive for higher performance in optical fiber systems has focused its interest in coherent detection, a field revived by advances in digital signal processing (DSP). DSP-based phase and polarization management techniques make coherent detection robust and practical. With coherent detection, the complex field of the received signal is fully recovered, allowing compensation of linear impairments including chromatic dispersion and polarization-mode dispersion using difital filters. In addition, fiber nolinearities can also be compensated quasi-exactly. Coherent PM-QPSK has been attracting considerable attention for 100G long haul optical interfaces because of its OSNR performance (>2dB improvement over direct detection formats), spectral efficiency, and tolerance to inter-symbol interference. This thesis firstly describes basic principles of fiber optic communications and digital modulations in order to introduce the system object of our analysis. Then the use of coherent optical systems is discussed, comparing other kind of system detection and looking for the benefits of its use. Thereafter, the Polarization multiplexing – QPSK modulation is introduced, giving a short evolution on optical modulation and showing the main architecture of a PM-QPSK transmitter. Subsequently performance and characteristics of 100 Gb/s PM-QPSK systems are given focusing on its OSNR sensitivity, filtering tolerance and dispersion. In a second stage of the thesis, we define a model of a coherent PM-QPSK system, explaining the principal parameters and modules that conforms the whole composition. Once our starting point of the analysis, wich is the system, has been introduced, we start the analysis on the sensitivity against different types of laser linewidth, performing several simulations using different values on the range of 0 Hz to 10 MHz and looking for the most interesting results. In conclusion, this thesis presents, defines, describes and analyses a coherent 100 Gb/s PM-QPSK system in order to define its OSNR sensitivity against changes on the laser linewidth between 0 Hz – 10MHz.


We report on chunk tagging methods for German that recognize complex non-verbal phrases using structural chunk tags with Conditional Random Fields (CRFs). This state-of-the-art method for sequence classification achieves 93.5% accuracy on newspaper text. For the same task, a classical trigram tagger approach based on Hidden Markov Models reaches a baseline of 88.1%. CRFs allow for a clean and principled integration of linguistic knowledge such as part-of-speech tags, morphological constraints and lemmas. The structural chunk tags encode phrase structures up to a depth of 3 syntactic nodes. They include complex prenominal and postnominal modifiers that occur frequently in German noun phrases.


BACKGROUND
In Germany approximately 2 million sports injuries occur per year. Most common are distorsions and ligamentous injury going along with posttraumatic lymphoedema. With the therapy method deep oscillation very good results in other indications and in lymphdrainage were reached. The purpose of this experimental study was the evaluation of the effects of the therapy method deep oscillation in immediate therapy and after-care of different sports injuries in addition to usual care (complex physical and medical therapy).

METHODS
Two soccer teams were supported by a sports medicine section of a rehabilitation hospital. In n = 14 people (mean age 23.9 years) 49 sports injuries of different kind were treated.

RESULTS
Subjective rating of the symptoms by VAS improved significant (p = 0.001) from 8.7 (baseline) to 2.1 points (post-treatment). Objective rating by the attending physician according to different clinically relevant parameters lead to "very good" or "good" results in 90 % of the patients.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion it can be stated that therapy method deep oscillation is an easy to use and comparably cost effective adjuvant therapy option. We already had good experience with it in other indications concerning reabsorption of oedema, reducing pain, anti-inflammatory effect, promotion of motoricity, promotion of wound healing, anti-fibrotic effect and improvement in trophicity and quality of the tissue. All these mentioned effects can be confirmed in the treatment of patients with acute sports injury and trauma. The soft mode of action is the reason that in contrast to other electric and mechanical therapies it is no contraindication in immediate therapy. In general we noted no side effects; patients were highly compliant and rated this therapy as very good.


The syllable-based approach to morphological representation (Cahill, 2007) involves defining fully inflected morphological forms according to their syllabic structure. This permits the definition, for example, of distinct vowel constituents for inflected forms where an ablaut process operates. Cahill (2007) demonstrated that this framework was capable of defining standard Arabic templatic morphology, without the need for different techniques. In this paper we describe a further development of this lexicon which includes a larger number of verbs, a complete account of the agreement inflections and accounts for one of the oft-cited problems for Arabic morphology, the weak forms. Further, we explain how the use of this particular lexical framework permits the development of lexicons for the Semitic languages that are easily maintainable, extendable and can represent dialectal variation.


The article deals with the current population's quality of life standard. It compares the relation between the beginning and the end of university studies and between university students of two towns in the Czech Republic. It follows up Vital Mind project which was going on at University of Hradec Králové. It presents the results of the research carried out in five years as a part of students' projects. More than one hundred and fifty university students participated in the study. It was conducted in 4 groups of respondents. To assess the quality of life standard the method of subjective questioning SEIQoL based on a guided interview was used. The study provides an innovative newly created application for the online electronic completion and evaluation of the questionnaire. Key-Words: Database, life satisfaction, methods of mental health diagnostics, web application, theories of quality of life, informatics students.


Excerpt] This report provides pay data for 16 staff position titles that are typically deployed in Senators' offices. The positions include the following: Administrative Director; Casework Supervisor; Caseworker; Chief of Staff; Communications Director; Counsel; Executive Assistant; Field Representative; Legislative Assistant; Legislative Correspondent; Legislative Director; Press Secretary; Scheduler; "Specials Director," a combined category that includes the job titles Director of Projects, Director of Special Projects, Director of Federal Projects, Director of Grants, Projects Director, or Grants Director; Staff Assistant; and State Director. Senators' staff pay data for the years FY2009-FY2013 were derived from a random sampling of Senators' offices in which at least one staff member worked in a position in each year.


There is an increased interest in artificially intelligent technology that surrounds us and takes decisions on our behalf. This creates the need for such technology to be able to communicate with humans and understand natural language and non-verbal behaviour that may carry information about our complex physical world. Artificial agents today still have little knowledge about the physical space that surrounds us and about the objects or concepts within our attention. We are still lacking computational methods in understanding the context of human conversation that involves objects and locations around us. Can we use multimodal cues from human perception of the real world as an example of language learning for robots? Can artificial agents and robots learn about the physical world by observing how humans interact with it and how they refer to it and attend during their conversations? This PhD project's focus is on combining spoken language and non-verbal behaviour extracted by multi-party dialogue in order to increase context awareness and spatial understanding for artificial agents.


This paper investigates the factors that influence market participation in rural economies. This is based on the premise that participation in the market is an important channel through which the global economy impacts on the rural areas and can have a positive impact on poverty reduction through increased incomes. A case study approach is adopted using four rural communities in three ecological zones of Ghana.


Learn to think like a coder without a computer! Each of the fun craft activities included in this book will teach you about a key concept of computer programming and can be done completely offline. Then you can put your skills into practise by trying out the simple programs provided in the online, child-friendly computer language Scratch.

Learn about loops by making music, find out about programming by planning a scavenger hunt, and discover how functions work with paper fortune tellers. Children can discover the skills used by coders by doing practical projects and then learn how to use each of these ideas by creating fun programs in Scratch including a game using a micro:bit minicomputer.

Perfect for kids aged 7-9, the various STEAM activities will help teach children the crucial skills of logical thinking that will give them a head-start for when they begin programming on a computer. Famous scientist pages teach children about coding pioneers, such as Alan Turing and Katherine Johnson, and topic pages, such as the internet, give kids a wider understanding of the subject.

Written by computer science expert Kiki Prottsman, How to be a Coder is so much fun kids won't realize they're learning!


Labor is one of the most fundamental aspects of production systems, economic growth and nation prosperity. The growing need for labor has contributed to the increasing number of trafficking cases. Indonesia is one of the senders of migrant labor, especially rough workers and domestic workers. Although most personnel are sent in legal means, Indonesia, like other Southeast Asian developing countries, has not been freed from illegal labor and trafficking. This study seeks to analyze descriptively about law enforcement efforts and economic perspectives in trafficking, as well as in prevention and protection of migrant labor. Therefore, it is required a legal effort in the prevention and protection as well as economic considerations in prevent the trafficking. The results of the study indicate that various strategic plans of criminal law policy, especially the prevention and protection of migrant workers, are in the form of cooperation and synergy between all components in society, law enforcement and government. Moreover, there are needs to establish attractive labor wage, and to provide more jobs in Indonesia.


The identification and treatment of protest responses in stated preference surveys has long been subject to debate. We analyse protest responses while investigating ecosystem services providers' preferences for incentive‐based schemes. We use a choice experiment for olive farmers' preferences for agri‐environmental scheme participation in southern Spain. Our two main objectives are: first, to identify and discuss a range of possible motives for protest responses that emerge in a WTA context; second, we analyse the impact on WTA estimates of censoring serial non‐participation linked to protest or high compensation requirements (very high takers). Using a random parameter logit model in WTA space, we find that the inclusion or exclusion of serial non‐participants in the analysis can have a significant impact on marginal and total WTA estimates. Based on the findings, the paper makes recommendations on how to reduce the incidence of protest responses through survey design, regarding the identification of protesters as opposed to very high takers, and regarding the treatment of both groups of respondents for WTA estimation.


Elder abuse is a significant issue for the Western Australian community, as the population is ageing and the percentage of people over age 65 is increasing exponentially. This research examines the extent of elder abuse in Western Australia, synthesising qualitative and quantitative information from organisations working with elder abuse in order to provide a coherent, consistent estimate of the scope of elder abuse in Western Australia and the capacity of agencies to address this issue. Funding for this project was received through a grant application made by Advocare Inc. to LotteryWest, and researchers from the Crime Research Centre at the University of Western Australia were employed to conduct the research.


PURPOSE
The ETS family of transcription factors regulate several critical cellular functions. They have also been implicated in invertebrate ocular development. This work was undertaken to determine whether epithelium-specific ETS transcription factors are expressed in the retinal pigment epithelium and to investigate the possible role of these factors in retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration.

METHODS
The expression of the epithelial ETS transcription factors ELF5, ESE3, and ELF3 was assessed by RT-PCR in the human RPE cell lines D407 and hTERT-RPE1. The full-length coding sequence of rat Elf3 was isolated with 3' rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) and degenerative primers, and its expression was determined in various rat tissues, by RT-PCR and real-time PCR. A polyclonal ELF3 antibody produced from a C-terminal peptide was used to observe the distribution of the transcription factor within the retina. To assess the possible ELF3 regulation of the TIMP3 promoter, transient transfection assays were performed. Promoter activity was determined with a firefly luciferase reporter gene construct.

RESULTS
The epithelium-specific ETS transcription factor ELF3 was expressed in the D407 and hTERT-RPE1 cell lines. Neither ESE3 nor ELF5 was detected in the RPE. The cloning of rat Elf3 produced two splice variants, designated Elf3a (1786 bp) and Elf3b (1855 bp). The larger form, Elf3b, contained a 69-bp insert in the coding sequence, which showed high homology to a similar insert previously identified in murine Elf3. Both splice variants were expressed in rat lung, kidney, liver, and retina, but were absent in heart tissue. Real-time PCR analysis showed the retina to contain high levels of Elf3, which was subsequently localized to the RPE. Elf3 upregulated the TIMP3 promoter, with Elf3a and -3b inducing an approximate sixfold increase in activity.

CONCLUSIONS
The ELF3 transcription factor is highly expressed in the RPE and can regulate important ocular genes, such as TIMP3, in vitro. The specific expression of ELF3 in the RPE may reflect an important role for this transcription factor in retinal function. Furthermore, its regulation of TIMP3 may have implications for degenerative retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration.


Construction is a sector that accepts innovations slowly. Selection of effective technological systems in construction is a complex multi-criteria task. Many decision-makers refuse innovations once faced with similar difficulties. The article presents an original approach towards a development of multi-criteria assessment and ranking technique for alternatives of technology in construction. The problem was solved using different well-known MCDM methods ELECTRE IV and MULTIMOORA. Three hybrid methods SWARA-TOPSIS, SWARA-ELECTRE III, SWARA-VIKOR were used to solve the same problem. Priority of considered alternatives was determined based on the average of alternatives performance rank. The article presents a practical case study on evaluation of different alternatives for public buildings refurbishment using typical and novel thermal insulation technologies for facades. Research results demonstrate that novel facades thermal insulation alternatives for facades have a higher performance level than commonly used ones.


To investigate the biological and physical mechanisms affecting larval dispersal, we embedded a model of Balanus glandula larval development and behavior into physical circulation fields of waters along the central California coast. Physical circulation fields were generated by a three‐dimensional ocean circulation model with a horizontal resolution of 1.5 km and 20 topography‐following layers in the vertical. The ocean circulation model was forced by air—sea fluxes derived from a mesoscale atmospheric model and assimilated temperature and salinity data from the Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network II experiment. An ecosystem model that calculated chlorophyll a (a proxy for larval food concentration) was also coupled to the ocean circulation model. The coupled model of larval development, larval behavior, food concentration, and physical circulation was used to run simulations of larval dispersal. Simulation results predicted a greater return of larvae to the nearshore waters with relaxation circulation patterns than with upwelling. More larvae were supplied to the coast north of Monterey Bay than to the south, and larvae that successfully returned to the nearshore waters generally had limited dispersal distances. These modeling results agree with previous observations of B. glandula population dynamics in central California.


Exploiting low-rank structure of the user-item rating matrix has been the crux of many recommendation engines. However, existing recommendation engines force raters with heterogeneous behavior profiles to map their intrinsic rating scales to a common rating scale (e.g. 1-5). This non-linear transformation of the rating scale shatters the low-rank structure of the rating matrix, therefore resulting in a poor fit and consequentially, poor recommendations. In this paper, we propose Clustered Monotone Transforms for Rating Factorization (CMTRF), a novel approach to perform regression up to unknown monotonic transforms over unknown population segments. Essentially, for recommendation systems, the technique searches for monotonic transformations of the rating scales resulting in a better fit. This is combined with an underlying matrix factorization regression model that couples the user-wise ratings to exploit shared low dimensional structure. The rating scale transformations can be generated for each user, for a cluster of users, or for all the users at once, forming the basis of three simple and efficient algorithms proposed in this paper, all of which alternate between transformation of the rating scales and matrix factorization regression. Despite the non-convexity, CMTRF is theoretically shown to recover a unique solution under mild conditions. Experimental results on two synthetic and seven real-world datasets show that CMTRF outperforms other state-of-the-art baselines.


On an island continent, Australians proclaim themselves to be "girt by sea" in their national anthem. Most of the country's abundant oceans and coastal lands are common property, vested in one of three levels of government. National coastal and oceans policies have invoked community and industry stewardship of these assets yet the nature of this stewardship remains largely unspecified and at risk of remaining symbolic rather than substantive. This is despite there being long history of oceans stewardship which has led to the construction of oceans and coastal areas as particular kinds of commons in the Australian context.

This project uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand the historical basis for the current perceptions of these commons and the policies in place for their governance and management. A genealogical approach is used to explore how stewardship concepts emerged in environmental ethics, and what value can be gained from giving greater weight to ethical approaches in stewardship of the coast and sea.

The thesis is presented in three parts. Part One presents a historical basis for adopting stewardship roles in relation to marine systems. The historical social construction of oceans and coastal areas as commons focused on rights of access, leading to the current challenges for the health of marine and coastal ecosystems. The nature and scale of human impacts on global ocean systems is linked to the diagnosis that the world has entered the era of the Anthropocene. Key responses to the challenges are critically examined against the narrative of stewardship regimes. The core of Part One is an analysis of marine and coastal policies in Australia, focusing on their implementation in Western Australia during the period 1992-2012. Australia's Coastcare program is identified as a useful model for substantive stewardship policies.

Part Two presents an argument that the concept of stewardship has ethical richness, when framed as an expression of civic virtue and ecological citizenship. A genealogical approach is used to trace the emergence of stewardship into environmental ethics. It has an important role as a pragmatic ethic, linking to existing institutional arrangements, and able to be used in daily life due to its nature as virtue ethics. The importance of this virtue ethic in relation to civic virtue leads to an examination of the different citizenships that Australians, for example, have by virtue of their situation in a particular place on earth.

In the third and final part, examples of coastal stewardship in Western Australia are presented as cases in which links between stewardship practices, ethics and citizen engagement in the public sphere contribute to the common good and sustainability of the commons.

The dissertation concludes by suggesting how the civic virtue of stewardship can be more effectively and widely adopted. It points to the roles of government, the corporate sector, local communities and civic education. It responds to recent calls to rethink human responsibility for coasts and seas, and to debate the role of marine citizenship.


Polyherbal formulation has been used all around the world due to its medicinal and therapeutic application. It has also known as polyherbal therapy or herb-herb combination. This article enlists some commercial and noncommercial polyherbal formulation all around the world. The authors have focused last six years of Publications on Polyherbal formulation in different countries and found that India have topped among the number of publications on polyherbal formulation followed by Nigeria, South Korea, Pakistan and Bangladesh. List of other countries also mentioned on scientific contribution of polyherbal therapy. The authors have mentioned list of publications on polyherbal formulation in the treatment of different diseases are based on pharmacological activity in the year 2015 and found that most polyherbal formulation found in the treatment of diabetes followed by an antioxidant, Hepatoprotective, Anti-inflammatory and anxiety disorder.


OBJECTIVES
To investigate whether it is clinically effective and cost-effective to provide (i) a unilateral cochlear implant for severely to profoundly deaf people (using or not using hearing aids), and (ii) a bilateral cochlear implant for severely to profoundly deaf people with a single cochlear implant (unilateral or unilateral plus hearing aid).

DATA SOURCES
Main electronic databases [MEDLINE; EMBASE; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; CENTRAL; NHS EED; DARE; HTA (NHS-CRD); EconLit; National Research Register; and ClinicalTrials.gov] searched in October 2006, updated July 2007.

REVIEW METHODS
A systematic review of the literature was undertaken according to standard methods. A state-transition (Markov) model of the main care pathways deaf people might follow and the main complications and device failures was developed.

RESULTS
The clinical effectiveness review included 33 papers, of which only two were RCTs. They used 62 different outcome measures and overall were of moderate to poor quality. All studies in children comparing one cochlear implant with non-technological support or an acoustic hearing aid reported gains on all outcome measures, some demonstrating greater gain from earlier implantation. The strongest evidence for an advantage from bilateral over unilateral implantation was for understanding speech in noisy conditions (mean improvement 13.2%, p < 0.0001); those receiving their second implant earlier made greater gains. Comparison of bilateral with unilateral cochlear implants plus an acoustic hearing aid was compromised by small sample sizes and poor reporting, but benefits were seen with bilateral implants. Cochlear implants improved children's quality of life, and those who were implanted before attending school were more likely to do well academically and attend mainstream education than those implanted later. In adults, there was a greater benefit from cochlear implants than from non-technological support in terms of speech perception. Increased age at implantation may reduce effectiveness and there is a negative correlation between duration of deafness and effectiveness. Speech perception measures all showed benefits for cochlear implants over acoustic hearing aids [e.g. mean increase in score of 37 points in noisy conditions (p < 0.001) with BKB sentences]; however, prelingually deafened adults benefited less than those postlingually deafened (mean change scores 20% versus 62%). For unilateral versus bilateral implantation, benefits in speech perception were significant in noisy conditions on all measures [e.g. 76% for HINT sentences (p < 0.0001)]. Quality of life measured with generic and disease-specific instruments or by interview mostly showed significant gains or positive trends from using cochlear implants. The Markov model base-case analysis estimated that, for prelingually profoundly deaf children, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) for unilateral implantation compared with no implantation was 13,413 pounds per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY). Assuming the utility gain for bilateral implantation is the same for adults and children, the ICERs for simultaneous and sequential bilateral implantation versus unilateral implantation were 40,410 pounds and 54,098 pounds per QALY respectively. For postlingually sensorineurally profoundly deaf adults, the corresponding ICERs were 14,163 pounds, 49,559 pounds and 60,301 pounds per QALY respectively. Probabilistic threshold analyses suggest that unilateral implants are highly likely to be cost-effective for adults and children at willingness to pay thresholds of 20,000 pounds or 30,000 pounds per QALY. There are likely to be overall additional benefits from bilateral implantation, enabling children and adults to hold conversations more easily in social situations.

CONCLUSIONS
Unilateral cochlear implantation is safe and effective for adults and children and likely to be cost-effective in profoundly deaf adults and profoundly and prelingually deaf children. However, decisions on the cost-effectiveness of bilateral cochlear implants should take into account the high degree of uncertainty within the model regarding the probable utility gain.


This study was initiated to determine the effects of defoliation frequency (based on amount of growth present), intensity, and length of grazing season on quantity and quality of big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi Vitman) in the Southern corn belt and to provide further data regarding the reasons for rapid quality decline of warm-season grasses. Three clipping frequencies (when plants reached heights of 30, 41, 51 cm) at 2 intensities (stubble heights of 10 and 20 cm) were imposed on established plots of pure big bluestem (cv. Kaw). Harvest season length was studied by terminating clipping on 15 August and 15 September as 2 separate treatments. Two years of data indicated that big bluestem regrows insufficiently after 15 August to warrant additional harvests under the imposed managements. Prolonged regrowth and leaving a short stubble of 10 cm resulted in greatest yield. Short stubble led to greater reductions in nonstructural carbohydrates, but did not damage the stand compared to pre-study measurements. Nonstructural carbohydrate levels and stand composition improved with taller stubble. In vitro dry matter digestibility and crude protein were higher on treatments clipped to leave a 10-cm stubble. The greatest proportion of leaves resulted from treatments where a 20-cm stubble remained. These results agree with studies indicating that leaf maturity is more responsible for lower quality forage than is the amount of stem material present in the stand. Our results indicate heavy use can be more safely accomplished in the Southern corn belt than for areas to the west because big bluestem can be more intensively defoliated in the Southern corn belt (10-cm) than that recommended for other areas (20 to 40 cm).


The arts and humanities were allowed into the British medical curriculum in 1993 when the General Medical Council re-structured it in a paper entitled 'Tomorrow's Doctors'. Since then many medical schools have developed humanities modules and the broad term 'medical humanities' refers to these. They can contribute to medical education in at least three ways: as a supplement to what is already in the curriculum, especially for ethics and communication; as an outside critique of medical practice; and to personal and professional development. Nevertheless, there are practical problems concerning appropriate teachers and methods of assessment. Moreover, the dominant interest is now academic research rather than education.


Access to safe, affordable and nutritious food is an obstacle facing many Indigenous people in the inner city of Winnipeg, which is known for having vast food deserts. While food security is an urgent social, economic, cultural and health issue for Indigenous people in urban areas, and particularly those living in inner city areas, there are some unique elements of food security related to cultural values. Access to cultural food in urban communities is a challenge for Indigenous people. This paper discusses the results of some preliminary research conducted which explored the experiences and meanings associated with Indigenous cultural food for Indigenous people living in urban communities and the larger goals of what is being called "Indigenous Food Sovereignty" (IFS) with regards to cultural food specifically. When Indigenous people have the skills to practice IFS, a whole range of positive benefits to their social and economic well-being can unfold. Three themes which emerged from this research include (1) growing, harvesting, preparing and eating cultural food as ceremony, (2) cultural food as a part of connection to land through reciprocity and (3) re-learning IFS to address food insecurity in the city.


A defining feature of (at least) the last three general elections has been the emphasis placed on each political party's fiscal credibility and their ability to deliver "sound public finances". Applying the logic of household book-keeping, balancing the fiscal budget is said to capture such soundness. There is, however, little evidence that a balanced budget is necessarily sound. Instead, the evolution of public finances depends on (1) both the fiscal choices made on the level of spending and taxation, (2) the underlying growth of the economy which depends on far more than the fiscal decisions, and (3) interest rates on government debt and the financing needs of the government. As the economic situation changes, so too does the likely path of debt to GDP and hence the possible fiscal options open to a country. Sticking to the soundbite of "sound finances" has often distracted from the underlying menu of political choices and as such is a disruptive narrative in UK economics today.


The ubiquitous saprophytic filamentous fungus Aspergillus fumigatus is a
significant pathogen among individuals undergoing chemotherapy, allogenic stem cell
transplantation and in patients with underlying pulmonary conditions or chronic
granulomatous disease patients. Central to the virulence of A. fumigatus is the
production of various secondary metabolites, proteolytic enzymes and iron sequestering
molecules which coupled to the rapidly growing nature of the fungus aid its persistence
in host tissue. Assessment of the virulence of A. fumigatus isolates has previously
centred on the use of murine models of aspergillosis however in recent years there has
been an increasing body of evidence suggesting the use of invertebrates as a viable
alternative.
The work presented here sought to further develop the use of the Greater wax
moth Galleria mellonella as a novel in vivo tool to assess the pathogenicity of A.
fumigatus isolates as an alternative to murine models of infection. The data presented
here characterises the pathogenicity of clinical and environmental isolates of A.
fumigatus in G. mellonella. Results here suggest that mycotoxins are produced at
varying levels in the A. fumigatus isolates with culture filtrates demonstrating
immunosuppressive properties. In vivo mycotoxin production by A. fumigatus ATCC
26933 in G. mellonella was characterised and demonstrated that high quantities of
fumagillin were produced in the first 24 hours of invasive infection.
A study was performed to assess the effect of fumagillin on human neutrophils
and G. mellonella haemocytes. Fumagillin inhibited phagocytosis and pathogen directed
killing in both cell types and disrupted oxygen consumption through reduced
translocation of p47phox and its insect homologue. Exposure of neutrophils and
haemocytes to fumagillin also disrupted degranulation. Experimental evidence
presented here suggests that the inhibition to cellular processes is mediated by reduced
F-actin assembly. A proteomic analysis of G. mellonella haemolymph revealed
evidence to suggest that fumagillin mediates an oxidative stress in vivo and disrupted
the humoral immune response.
Recent literature has suggested that the immune system of G. mellonella could
be primed to subsequent infection. Larvae primed with specific sub-lethal inocula of
conidia demonstrated improved resistance to subsequent infection through increased
haemocyte density, protein activity, and synthesis of proteins involved in oxygen
transport, pathogen recognition and iron sequesterisation and increased expression of
antimicrobial peptides.
This project has further developed the G. mellonella model as a model system to
investigate the pathogenicity of A. fumigatus isolates and the immunomodulatory effects
of fungal secondary metabolites due to an immune system which shows a high level of
conservation with the human innate immune system.


The life cycle of the malaria parasite in its mammalian host begins with a liver-specific stage, in which sporozoites delivered by the mosquito invade hepatocytes, where they develop into merozoites that invade red blood cells. Merozoites must enter the bloodstream, although precisely how they move from hepatocyte to the lumen of the liver sinusoid has remained a matter of speculation. In a study of a rodent form of the parasite, Sturm et al. reveal that, as the merozoites induce death of the hepatocyte, they simultaneously hold in check the normal cues that would signal phagocytosis of the dying cell. This alteration allows membrane-bound extensions of the infected cells, which the authors term merosomes, to bud off and shuttle the merozoites directly into the bloodstream. Thus, the parasites modify the host response to dying infected cells to ensure better survival and replication. A. Sturm, R. Amino, C. van de Sand, T. Regen, S. Retzlaff, A. Rennenberg, A. Krueger, J.-M. Pollok, R. Menard, V. T. Heussler, Manipulation of host hepatocytes by the malaria parasite for delivery into liver sinusoids. Science 313, 1287-1290 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text] A. F. Cowman, S. H. I. Kappe, Malaria's stealth shuttle. Science 313, 1245-1246 (2006). [Summary] [Full Text]


Relatively recent developments in medical imaging allow the anatomical and functional noninvasive study of internal organs of the body. One of the most complex and interesting organs in our body is the brain. Many efforts are being carried out to try to understand how it works, its internal connections, how different zones interact with each other, why, in some cases, a zone takes in charge a functionality of another damaged one, etc.; the questions are innumerable and the answers, if any, are sparse. Recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipments have been developed to capture the functional activity of the brain. Unfortunately, functional images suffer from a lack of spatial resolution. Thus, the need of combining them with anatomical ones, which have a much higher quality. Nowadays these images provide precious information for diagnosis purposes and this is the reason for the need of imaging tools to extract and analyze the information which is present in those images, and which sometimes is not appreciable for the human eye. Acquired MRI images are presented as volumetric sets of data with which one can reconstruct a three dimensional volumetric model of the scanned organ. Nevertheless, sometimes physicians are just interested in the surface of the organ, for example in brain functional activation studies. In addition, many times it is important to be able to carry out group studies, or to locate a lesion with respect to a standard reference. To do such studies it is necessary to perform a transformation of the surfaces in order to put them into correspondence. Such technique is called registration. Unfortunately, volumetric registration does not give satisfactory results for surface registration purposes. The solution is to work directly with surfaces instead of processing the volumetric data. Unfortunately we do not have information about the surfaces, hence the need of computer graphics and computer vision techniques. The present work proposes a number of methods to help in the task of providing information from volumetric objects to surface registration. To achieve that some stages are necessary. The proposed stages are independent one from another so they can be used, or not, depending on the particular need. They can even be used for other purposes than those presented in the present work. The first two stages address the problem of image quality. This is a very important "preprocessing" step because posterior processing will depend on the image quality. Usually MR images are corrupted with different artifacts; among them a spatial-dependent bias field and a Riciandistributed noise. For the former a supervised correction is proposed, and for the later a directional spatial filter using a novel diffusivity function. After both stages the volumetric MRI data is ready to be classified. The purpose of the proposed classification process is to extract the white matter of the brain, given that sulci are better extracted from white matter than from the gray one. So far we have handled volumetric data, the next stage is concerned with the registration of the reconstructed white matter surface. This is achieved by means of a hierarchical representation of brain's sulci using level sets. The hierarchical representation and surface registration are carried out using the theory of partial differential equations (PDE) and level set methods. Validation studies are carried out independently in order to show the performance of the proposed approaches. Also a full scheme is proposed with the aim of presenting a complete approach from volumetric objects to surface registration.


Empirical analyses of firms' Price-setting behavior show that while the exchange rate pass-through of Japanese firms is low (many Japanese firms adopt pricing-to-market [PTM]), the export prices charged by U.S. firms nearly perfectly reflect foreign exchange rate fluctuations. This paper analyzes how the difference in domestic and foreign firms' price-setting behavior affects the domestic and international transmission of monetary policy by using a model that explicitly incorporates differences in the price-setting behavior of domestic and foreign firms. This model is constructed by adopting the framework of the "hew open-economy macroeconomics" that has been the subject of numerous research papers an recent years. The findings demonstrate that the effects of domestic and foreign monetary policies differ greatly when domestic and foreign firms adopt different price-setting behaviors. This indicates that central banks have to give sufficient attention to firms' price-setting behavior for the implementation of monetary policies. Additionally, model simulations based on Japan and U.S. data show that the external effect of Japanese monetary policy is negligible compared with that of U. S. monetary policy due to the PTM-price-setting behavior of Japanese firms.


SWAP Editions invites artists to each create a small artwork as an edition. The multiples are then published into sets and each artist receives back a complete set containing all the works in that edition. SWAP is a growing collection of artist's multiples made as editions in a wide range of materials from casts and prints, to mixed media, video and photographs. The aim is to collaborate with artists to explore the process of making editions and forge an alternate non-commercial socially driven platform to enable swapping and collecting original artworks between artists. Publishing semi-annually in Spring and Autumn, each edition is curated and launched with a gallery exhibition or public event and the works will join a growing showcase of art multiples available to view online. Through invitation and open submission opportunities we aim to commission new works from both established and emerging artists, whilst acting as a network, resource and online showcase for artists making multiples and editions.

SWAP is a curated set of small scale art multiples in a range of media, materials and approaches that together form an eclectic collection for each participating artist to own. For each published edition, several complete sets will be gifted to high profile international museum collections and academic institutions to ensure a wide reaching public legacy and help to develop the profile of the artists involved. A further complete edition will be kept as part of a growing archive by SWAP. The remaining editions will act as the art bank to be promoted and swapped for goods or services either as complete sets or individual artworks as an exchange to facilitate future editions.

SWAP is an artist run, not-for-profit initiative that operates with zero public funding and was created by London based artist Robin Tarbet. As a DIY project it is sustained by swapping art objects with time and services, and deliberately puts all emphasis of value within the collective artworks rather than their potential monetary value. SWAP Editions and associated artworks are not for sale - but a limited number are available to swap.


ABSTRACT Purpose: Living with Alzheimer's disease (AD) can involve a person being unable to recall and convey information in daily life. There are several ways to provide person-centred care to older people with AD, e.g. by empowering them in a situation. The use of animal-assisted therapy (AAT) with a therapy dog in the care of people with dementia is increasing, with the presence of a therapy dog being described as improving, among other things, the well-being and socialization of the person. The aim of this study was to illuminate meanings of care for people with AD in their encounters with a therapy dog. Method: The study used video-recorded observations of the person with AD and the dog. Data were transcribed and analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic method. Results: The main theme was "Using one's own resources and abilities as a human being", which meant being the person one can be and distancing oneself from the symptoms of AD during the time with the dog. Conclusions: The feelings evoked in the people with AD included empathy and altruism, which allowed for a sense of joy and tenderness, which may induce a sense of self-worth, of being needed, and of being meaningful.


Organisations are already using their corporate website to advertise jobs and receive resumes online. However the matter of question is how efficient is the web features and e-recruitment process? This research evaluates job opportunities advertised at Top Ten Saudi companies listed in February 2016. Factors evaluated on company webpage are: Navigation (career link), Job advertised (updated and information), nationality and gender focus for advertised job, information about company values on career page, process for filling application. These criteria were evaluated as they are the key determinant factors to identify efficiency and functionality of a webpage. Furthermore, it will assist to understand trend for pooling applicants in Saudi context. Based on concise review of online recruitment practices, it was possible to suggest ways on empowering and usability of e-recruitment method for Saudi companies.