An important unresolved question is whether non-state plaintiffs have standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution to sue in federal courts in climate change cases. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court held a state government could sue the U.S. government to address climate change issues, and suggested, but did not decide, that private litigants might have lesser rights than states. In Washington Environmental Council v. Bellon, the Ninth Circuit held that private groups did not have standing to challenge Washington State's failure to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from five oil refineries, and implied that private plaintiffs may never bring climate change suits because such suits are generalized grievances and the Massachusetts exception for GHG suits applies only to states. However, dissenting from the Ninth Circuit's denial of a rehearing en banc, three judges argued that the panel's opinion was overly broad in interpreting the Massachusetts decision to deny standing rights to all non-state GHG plaintiffs. In recent district court decisions, two different federal judges concluded that private plaintiffs may have Article III standing to challenge the government's regulation of climate change or greenhouse gases. In Center for Biological Diversity v. EPA, the Western District of Washington held the plaintiff suffered concrete standing injuries from the defendant EPA's approval of Washington's and Oregon's decisions not to identify any waters experiencing ocean acidification as impaired under the Clean Water Act (CWA). In distinguishing the Washington Environmental Council decision, the district court concluded that the plaintiffs demonstrated local GHG impacts, and local mitigation efforts could partially redress the injuries to their members. In Murray Energy Corporation v. Gina McCarthy, Administrator of EPA, the Northern District of West Virginia concluded that that the plaintiffs sufficiently established that the EPA violated its duty under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to examine the employment impacts of its enforcement and regulations under the Act on employment in the coal mining industry to have standing. The Murray decision's focus on employment injuries could be used to provide standing in a challenge to GHG regulations. While there is an argument that expanding standing to non-state GHG plaintiffs could flood the federal courts with too many suits, courts can manage the number of climate change suits by requiring a meaningful demonstration of a connection between GHG emissions and harms to the plaintiffs, and by giving substantial deference to reasonable government regulatory policies in this area.


Background
In the UK, most people with dementia die in the community and they often receive poorer end-of-life care than people with cancer.

Objective
The overall aim of this programme was to support professionals to deliver good-quality, community-based care towards, and at, the end of life for people living with dementia and their families.

Design
The Supporting Excellence in End-of-life care in Dementia (SEED) programme comprised six interlinked workstreams. Workstream 1 examined existing guidance and outcome measures using systematic reviews, identified good practice through a national e-survey and explored outcomes of end-of-life care valued by people with dementia and family carers (n = 57) using a Q-sort study. Workstream 2 explored good-quality end-of-life care in dementia from the perspectives of a range of stakeholders using qualitative methods (119 interviews, 12 focus groups and 256 observation hours). Using data from workstreams 1 and 2, workstream 3 used co-design methods with key stakeholders to develop the SEED intervention. Worksteam 4 was a pilot study of the SEED intervention with an embedded process evaluation. Using a cluster design, we assessed the feasibility and acceptability of recruitment and retention, outcome measures and our intervention. Four general practices were recruited in North East England: two were allocated to the intervention and two provided usual care. Patient recruitment was via general practitioner dementia registers. Outcome data were collected at baseline, 4, 8 and 12 months. Workstream 5 involved economic modelling studies that assessed the potential value of the SEED intervention using a contingent valuation survey of the general public (n = 1002). These data informed an economic decision model to explore how the SEED intervention might influence care. Results of the model were presented in terms of the costs and consequences (e.g. hospitalisations) and, using the contingent valuation data, a cost–benefit analysis. Workstream 6 examined commissioning of end-of-life care in dementia through a narrative review of policy and practice literature, combined with indepth interviews with a national sample of service commissioners (n = 20).

Setting
The workstream 1 survey and workstream 2 included services throughout England. The workstream 1 Q-sort study and workstream 4 pilot trial took place in North East England. For workstream 4, four general practices were recruited; two received the intervention and two provided usual care.

Results
Currently, dementia care and end-of-life care are commissioned separately, with commissioners receiving little formal guidance and training. Examples of good practice rely on non-recurrent funding and leadership from an interested clinician. Seven key components are required for good end-of-life care in dementia: timely planning discussions, recognising end of life and providing supportive care, co-ordinating care, effective working with primary care, managing hospitalisation, continuing care after death, and valuing staff and ongoing learning. Using co-design methods and the theory of change, the seven components were operationalised as a primary care-based, dementia nurse specialist intervention, with a care resource kit to help the dementia nurse specialist improve the knowledge of family and professional carers. The SEED intervention proved feasible and acceptable to all stakeholders, and being located in the general practice was considered beneficial. None of the outcome measures was suitable as the primary outcome for a future trial. The contingent valuation showed that the SEED intervention was valued, with a wider package of care valued more than selected features in isolation. The SEED intervention is unlikely to reduce costs, but this may be offset by the value placed on the SEED intervention by the general public.

Limitations
The biggest challenge to the successful delivery and completion of this research programme was translating the 'theoretical' complex intervention into practice in an ever-changing policy and service landscape at national and local levels. A major limitation for a future trial is the lack of a valid and relevant primary outcome measure to evaluate the effectiveness of a complex intervention that influences outcomes for both individuals and systems.

Conclusions
Although the dementia nurse specialist intervention was acceptable, feasible and integrated well with existing care, it is unlikely to reduce costs of care; however, it was highly valued by all stakeholders (professionals, people with dementia and their families) and has the potential to influence outcomes at both an individual and a systems level.

Future work
There is no plan to progress to a full randomised controlled trial of the SEED intervention in its current form. In view of new National Institute for Health and Care Excellence dementia guidance, which now recommends a care co-ordinator for all people with dementia, the feasibility of providing the SEED intervention throughout the illness trajectory should be explored. Appropriate outcome measures to evaluate the effectiveness of such a complex intervention are needed urgently.

Trial registration
Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN21390601.

Funding
This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research programme and will be published in full in Programme Grants for Applied Research, Vol. 8, No. 8. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.


Background/aim The aim of this study is to present our experience on various endovascular treatment modalities of basilar fenestration aneurysms and reviewing our findings together with literature data. Materials and methods A total of 26 basilar artery fenestration (BAF) aneurysms in 24 patients were endovascularly treated in two different neurointerventional radiology clinics. All patients had been evaluated with computed tomography (CT), CT angiography, and digital subtraction angiography before the procedure. Results Aneurysms of all patients were successfully occluded (technical success rate 100%). Procedure-related complications were seen in two patients. Our comprehensive literature research revealed that studies related with the topic are composed mostly of case reports. In the literature, a total of 113 BAF aneurysms of 101 patients had been treated endovascularly in 46 studies between 1993 and 2019. Success rate of the treatment was reported as 97%, clinical success rate as 91%, and complication rate as 8.8%, while these rates are 100%, 92%, and 7.6% in our study, respectively. Conclusion Although the number of cases is low in our study, to our knowledge, it is the widest series in the literature until today. Our results demonstrate that BAF aneurysms can be treated successfully and safely with different endovascular techniques, with more stent use in recent years.


Six experiments were conducted to evaluate methods for measuring NDF in corn and distillers grains plus solubles. Methods included using sodium sulfite, α-amylase (AMY), amyloglucosidase, heat and steam with an autoclave, grinding methods, and a pre–fat extraction to decrease factors that interfere with measuring NDF accurately. Using sodium sulfite and AMY resulted in decreased (P < 0.01) corn NDF values, but these decreases were different dependent on dry-rolled corn or high-moisture corn (interaction P < 0.01). Two doses of AMY (0.5 mL each) was optimum at decreasing dry-rolled corn, high-moisture corn, and steam-flaked corn NDF, but using amyloglucosidase, heat and steam with an autoclave, or both did not aid in decreasing corn NDF. Grinding corns through a 1-mm Tecator Cyclomill, compared with a Wiley mill, resulted in decreased corn NDF (P < 0.01). Using a pre–fat extraction method before the traditional NDF method resulted in decreased NDF values for distillers grains plus solubles (P < 0.01) compared with using 100 or 200 mL of NDF solution. The recommended methods for obtaining accurate NDF concentrations include using cyclo grinding and adding two 0.5 mL of AMY doses and 0.5 g of sodium sulfite for corn and pre–fat extraction for distillers grains plus solubles.


Dying cells release chemotactic cytokines that attract phagocytes. Phagocytes are attracted to apoptotic cells by "eat me" signals present on the surface or secreted from dying cells. Cullen et al. report that activation of the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) family member Fas, in addition to inducing apoptosis, leads to production of chemotactic cytokines that help phagocytes find apoptotic cells. As well as triggering apoptosis, activation of Fas with an anti-Fas antibody prompted several types of mammalian primary cells and cell lines to secrete various proinflammatory molecules, including the chemokines interleukin-8 (IL-8) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). Treating HeLa cells with a broad-spectrum caspase inhibitor coadministered with anti-Fas prevented apoptosis but did not prevent the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines. In contrast, small interfering RNA (siRNA)–mediated knockdown of the inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) proteins cIAP-1 and cIAP-2 increased the proportion of cells that initiated apoptosis in response to low concentrations of anti-Fas but inhibited proinflammatory cytokine production. The kinase RIPK1 and the transcription factor nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), both of which participate in TNFR signaling responses, were also required for maximal Fas-induced cytokine secretion. Coimmunoprecipitation experiments indicated that Fas activation induced the formation of complexes containing RIPK1, caspase-8, and the adaptor protein Fas-associated death domain (FADD) that stimulated NF-κB–mediated cytokine production. When added to the lower well of a standard chemotaxis chamber, conditioned medium from Fas-stimulated HeLa cells induced monocytes in the upper well to migrate toward the filter separating the two wells. Immunodepletion of Fas-stimulated HeLa cell culture supernatant indicated that MCP-1 was primarily responsible for attracting monocytes, with IL-8 playing a minor role, whereas IL-8 was required for the chemotaxis of primary human neutrophils. Treating HeLa cells with an IAP inhibitor or siRNAs targeting RIPK1 in combination with anti-Fas reduced the ability of the conditioned medium to promote monocyte chemotaxis. Thus, proapoptotic signaling through Fas can stimulate cells to release chemokines that attract phagocytes. S. P. Cullen, C. M. Henry, C. J. Kearney, S. E. Logue, M. Feoktistova, G. A. Tynan, E. C. Lavelle, M. Leverkus, S. J. Martin, Fas/CD95-induced chemokines can serve as "find-me" signals for apoptotic cells. Mol. Cell 49, 1034–1048 (2013). [PubMed]


The work presented in this thesis covers a range of different surfaces and interfaces of organic molecules/polymers and metallic materials. It is of vita importance to understand how charge transfer processes and other electrical interactions existing at physisorped contacts can influence the electronic structure at an interface. Hence our mission in these studies was to understand the physics happening at the aforementioned surfaces and interfaces of relevance to electronic devices, mainly solar cells.In order to explain the observed measurements at physisorped interfaces, a model previously has been put forward. The Integer Charge Transfer (ICT) model explains why and how charge transfer can occur at an interface consisting of π-conjugated molecules/ polymers and a metallic/semi-conducting substrate. The main output of this model is depicted in a typical curve and considers two different regimes, namely when charge transfer occurs and when it doesn't happen. This curve is obtained through measuring work function of the organic semi-conducting material atop of different substrates covering a wide span of work functions. The measured work function of the organicsubstrate is visualized as the vertical axis of a graph with the substrate work function as the horizontal axis. The ultimate curve then resembles the famous, well-known "mark of Zorro". The part with slope=1 is an indication of the vacuum level alignment. In plain text it means there is no charge transfer between deposited/ span material and substrate. On the other hand, part of the curve with slope=0 is a measure of Fermi-level pinning and occurrence of charge transfer. The threshold point between these two regimes is called pinning point which either implies ICT+ (positive Integer Charge Transfer state) or ICT- (negative Integer Charge Transfer state). It is crucial to realize that a π-conjugated molecule can be both acceptor or donor depending on the substrate work function.Our efforts were aimed toward further improving this model and understanding impacting factors on charge transfer and the pinning point. Factors such as interface dipole and inter- and intra-molecular order are among the most important ones. Order and packing of the spin-coated and vacuumdeposited materials thus directly affect the position of the pinning point/Integer Charge Transfer states. Therefore any parameter which can influence order/packing can affect the interface dipole and resulting energy level alignment. Intra-molecular order, for example, can be tuned by annealing (twisting of the conjugated chains, crystal grain growth) while thickness of the deposited material also can modify intermolecular packing. All those factors were studied in the context of this thesis, mainly using materials common in socalled bulk heterojunction solar cells. Another way to tune the energy level alignment at interfaces is through Self-Assembled Molecules (SAMs). We have utilized such molecules to manipulate the surface of zinc oxide, a common ingredient of transparent solar cells, studying the effects on work function and therefore charge injection properties.


This paper examines the relationship between a) stock prices and b) foreign reserves, exchange rates, and interest rates in emerging and developing economies in Asia. Empirical results show that there is no co integration relationship among these four variables. Instead, foreign reserves have significant positive effects on stock prices; however, the opposite is not true. Moreover, exchange rates and interest rates have not influenced stock prices. Accumulation of foreign reserves is important in these countries, as it engenders financial stability and economic growth.


In addition to its documented antitumor effects, previous in vitro and in vivo infectivity experiments have shown that sulforaphane (SFN), an isothiocyanate compound found abundantly in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, inhibits the growth of the bacterial pathogen Helicobacter pylori. No recent evidence exists, however, on the possible microbial activity of SFN against a broader range of microorganisms, including those that may develop resistance to conventional antibiotics. The aim of this study was to determine the in vitro susceptibility patterns of SFN against a wide variety of bacterial and fungal pathogens. Sensitivity testing was done on 28 different microbial species using a modified Kirby-Bauer disk-diffusion method and results were interpreted based on guidelines established by the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards. The broad-spectrum antibiotic, ceftriaxone (CTX), was used as a positive control for antimicrobial inhibition. It was found that 23 out of 28 different microbial species were inhibited by SFN with a minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) ranging from 1-4 microg/mL. Five pathogens--Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 3 methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates and Candida albicans--were considered resistant to SFN, having MICs >or= 16-32 microg/mL. These findings suggest that, with the dual action of SFN against a select group of microorganisms and its ability to inhibit tumor growth, SFN (or the consumption of SFN-containing vegetables) might be especially helpful in preventing certain types of infections in both cancer and non-cancer patients.


In this paper, we introduce a new approach for altering the properties of bridged polysilsesquioxane xerogels using post-processing modification of the polymeric network. The bridging organic group contains latent functionalities that can be liberated thermally, photochemically, or by chemical means after the gel has been processed to a xerogel. These modifications can produce changes in density, volubility, porosity, and or chemical properties of the material. Since every monomer possesses two latent functional groups, the technique allows for the introduction of high levels of functionality in hybrid organic-inorganic materials. Dialkylenecarbonate-bridged polysilsesquioxane gels were prepared by the sol-gel polymerization of bis(triethoxysilylpropyl)carbonate (1) and bis(triethoxysilylisobutyl)-carbonate (2). Thermal treatment of the resulting non-porous xerogels and aerogels at 300-350 C resulted in quantitative decarboxylation of the dialkylenecarbonate bridging groups to give new hydroxyalkyl and olefinic substituted polysilsesquioxane monolithic xerogels and aerogels that can not be directly prepared through direct sol-gel polymerization of organotrialkoxysilanes.


Antigenic variants of CVS-11 strain of rabies virus were selected after treatment of virus populations with monoclonal antibodies directed against the glycoprotein antigen of the virus. These variants resisted neutralization by the hybridoma antibody used for their selection. Two independently mutating antigenic sites could be distinguished when five variants were tested with nine hybridoma antibodies. The frequency of single epitope variants in a cloned rabies virus seed was approximately 1:10,000. Animals were not or only partially protected when challenged with the parent virus or with another variant, but were fully protected against challenge with the virus used for immunization. Variants were also detected among seven street viruses obtained from fatal cases of human rabies. Animals immunized with standard rabies vaccine were protected against challenge with some but not all street rabies variants. A comparative antigenic analysis between vaccine strain and challenge virus by means of monoclonal antiglycoprotein antibodies showed a slightly closer degree of antigenic relatedness between vaccine and challenge strain in the combinations where vaccination resulted in protection. It remains unknown, however, whether these apparently minor antigenic differences in the glycoproteins account for the varying degrees of protection. The results of this study clearly indicate that the selection of vaccine strains and the methods used to evaluate the potency of rabies vaccines need to be revised.


This book examines the working of the Munition of War Acts 1915-1917, during the First World War. The munitions code, parts of which remained in force until 1921, appeared at first to constitute a radical break with the pre-war voluntarist system of industrial relations. It aimed to prevent strikes by law, it imposed wage controls and tighter factory discipline and discouraged munitions workers from leaving their jobs. Munitions tribunals were established to enforce the law. Using, among other sources, the evidence offered by the tribunal proceedings under the Acts, the author suggests that a policy of strict enforcement of the law was transformed to one of sensitive conflict management, involving trade unionists, employers, and the tribunal judges. The identification of complex working-class attitudes to the wartime state accounts largely for the creation of this modus vivendi, despite the controversial nature of the legislation. This book, though dealing with events which arose during wartime in an atmosphere of militarism, radicalism as well as patriotism, inflation and full employment, may nevertheless offer glimpses of insight to analysts of modern industrial relations.


Work foundations are not well known institutions having a great potential to promote an improved and stronger social dialogue, worker participation and employee social responsibility. Perhaps, the Austrian work foundations are the most well known, serving as an example of success that may become the basis of a new model that is founded on flexicurity. However, there are other experiences in Europe from which knowledge may also be derived for both European and national good practices perspectives.

The purpose of this research is to analyse the main characteristics of Spanish labour foundations. The interest in these foundations is based on two main points. On the one hand, they give us a concrete and specific regulation on labour foundations which comes directly from the law. In this sense, they are based on a completely different legal system as compared to the Austrian experience. On the other hand, they represent the first regulation in Europe on this specific type of foundation. This not only means a longer tradition, but more importantly, that they are based on a completely different socio-economic perspective.

This paper has been divided as follows: first, there is a brief description of the concept of labour foundation; second, the regulatory framework is described, which consists of both the legal regulation and its practical manifestation. As for the latter, one of the most thorough and developed experiences has been chosen: the case of Construction Labour Foundation of Asturias. Finally, some conclusions about the practical development of labour foundations in Spain are offered.


Article history: Received 28-09-2021 Accepted 03-10-2021 Available online 21-10-2021 This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.


In this paper, we test the argument that self-employment may be a strategy for dealing with competing demands of work and family. We do this by comparing work–family conflict experienced by self-employed and employed men and women. By examining to what extent the self-employed versus regularly employed value time for themselves and their family — i.e., whether they are driven by family/lifestyle motives in their working life — we examine whether self-employment can help reduce work–family conflict among those guided by family/lifestyle motives. Using data from a 2011 Swedish survey of 2483 self-employed and 2642 regularly employed, the analyses indicate that experiences of work–family conflict differ between self-employed and employees. Self-employed men and women, especially those with employees, generally experience more work–family conflict than do employees. However, self-employment can sometimes be a strategy for dealing with competing demands of work and family life. The presence of family/lifestyle motives generally decreases the probability of experiencing work–family conflict, particularly among self-employed women with employees.


In the manufacture and use of the several thousand chemicals employed by technological societies, portions of these chemicals escape or are intentionally introduced into the environment. The behavior, fate, and to some extent the effects produced by these chemicals are a result of a complex interaction of the properties of the chemical with the various processes governing transport, degradation, sequestration, and uptake by organisms. In addition, such processes as adsorption, evaporation, partitioning, and degradation are influenced by ambient conditions of temperature, air movement, moisture, presence of other chemicals, and the concentration and properties of the subject chemicals. These influence the level and extent of exposure to these chemicals that man might receive. Study of the physiochemical properties and extent of exposure to these chem;cals that man might receive. Study of the physiochemical properties of compounds in relation to these various processes has provided a basis for better understanding of the quantitative behavior. Such information is useful in development of predictive models on behavior and fate of the chemicals in relation to human exposure. Beyond this, it provides information that could be used to devise procedures of manufacture, use, and disposal that would minimize environmental contamination. Some of the physical principles involved in chemodynamics are presented in this review.


One of the prominent questions in paleoanthropological studies is the origin of bipedalism. There have been several hypotheses presented on the ancestral type of locomotion that predated bipedalism. These hypotheses include a terrestrial knuckle-walking quadrupedal ape, a brachiating hylobatid-like ancestor, a palmigrade terrestrial ape, and a climbing arboreal ape. Thorpe et al. present an extension to the climbing hypothesis with the data that they gathered from wild orangutans of the Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia (2006, 2007). They present the hypothesis that bipedalism originated with an arboreal ape similar to extant orangutans, and they provide that the orangutan locomotor data that they gathered supports this claim. This paper includes locomotor data that I collected from captive orangutans in the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo. The two data sets are not correlative, but my observations of assisted and unassisted bipedalism in the captive orangutans lend some support to the climbing hypothesis. When considering the functional anatomy of the wrist and ankle of extant primates and extinct hominins, the answer still remains inconclusive.


In this paper, we present an interconnection structure, called the balanced hypercube, which is a variation of the standard hypercube with desirable properties of strong connectivity, regularity, and symmetry. The proposed structure is a special type of load balanced graph designed to tolerate processor failure. In balanced hypercubes, each processor has a backup (matching) processor that shares the same set of neighboring nodes. Therefore, tasks that run on a faulty processor can be reactivated in the backup processor to provide efficient system reconfiguration. Other properties of balanced hypercubes are examined. It is also shown that odd-dimensional balanced hypercubes have smaller diameters than that of standard hypercubes. As an application of balanced hypercubes, we show a fault-tolerant embedding of rings in balanced hypercubes.


Intermediation approaches integration via medium, as does interdisciplinarity via field/content, while both involve concerns of methodology. "Media" are distinguished by the perceptual acts required for their constitution (cf McLuhan, 1964) - by the relationship to the body which they institute. Intermediation integrates, without eliminating, multiple perceptual acts and bodily relationships. Thus hypertext tends not to be an inter-medium, because its output is usually in one medium (video or print). while classrooms are almost always inter-media of print, spatio/temporal design, performance, and imagery (Carp, 1991). Artists, designers, and anthropologists of material culture have most thoroughly and consistently investigated intermediation. Artists and designers adopt intermediation as a communicative strategy; anthropologists posit intermediation as a site for cultural resistance, post-colonial creativity and non-Eurocentric wisdoms.


The structure of laminar diffusion flames is analyzed
in the limiting case of large, although finite,
reaction rates.

It is shown that the chemical reaction takes place
only in a very thin region or "chemical boundary layer"
where convection effects may be neglected. Then the
temperature and mass fraction distributions within the
reaction zone are obtained analytically.

The flame position, rates of fuel consumption, and
temperature and concentration distributions outside of the reaction zone may be obtained by using the assumption
of infinite reaction rates.

For large Reynolds numbers mixing and combustion take
place in boundary layers and free mixing layers. And
again analytical solutions are obtained for the tempera
ture and mass fraction distributions outside of the
reaction zone.


Training Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) that are robust to norm bounded adversarial attacks remains an elusive problem. While verification based methods are generally too expensive to robustly train large networks, it was demonstrated in Gowal et al. that bounded input intervals can be inexpensively propagated per layer through large networks. This interval bound propagation (IBP) approach lead to high robustness and was the first to be employed on large networks. However, due to the very loose nature of the IBP bounds, particularly for large networks, the required training procedure is complex and involved. In this paper, we closely examine the bounds of a block of layers composed of an affine layer followed by a ReLU nonlinearity followed by another affine layer. In doing so, we propose probabilistic bounds, true bounds with overwhelming probability, that are provably tighter than IBP bounds in expectation. We then extend this result to deeper networks through blockwise propagation and show that we can achieve orders of magnitudes tighter bounds compared to IBP. With such tight bounds, we demonstrate that a simple standard training procedure can achieve the best robustness-accuracy trade-off across several architectures on both MNIST and CIFAR10.


In 1930, the British Colonial Office signed a formal agreement with Moshe Novomeysky, a Jewish Russian mining engineer from Siberia and committed Zionist, creating Palestine Potash Ltd (PPL). This company was given exclusive rights over the extraction of mineral salts from the Dead Sea for a period of 50 years and was the predecessor to today's Israeli enterprise, the Dead Sea Works (DSW). Reading through Novomeysky's memoirs, as well as the handful of Israeli histories of the Dead Sea industry, the concession appears as a hard-fought Zionist victory in the face of stiff opposition within British parliamentary circles. From this point, the formation and subsequent success of PPL is described as an important early stage in the attempt to build up a national chemical industry in the state of Israel. Arab Palestinians are almost entirely invisible in this story, save for Novomeysky's occasional mention of PPL's 'friendly relations' with Arab communities in the area. Focusing on the story of Ibrahim Hazboun, a Catholic merchant trader from Bethlehem, this article retells the story of the Dead Sea concession from a local Arab perspective, employing a variety of sources, both written and oral, to fill in the gaps left by the colonial and Zionist archives. Contrary to the claims of British and Zionist officials, it is shown that Arab Palestinians had been intensely interested in exploiting the riches of the Dead Sea since the end of Ottoman rule, and they continued to express their interest throughout the Mandate period. Weaving Ibrahim's personal story into the bigger picture of national opposition to the Dead Sea project, it is argued that this neglected historical episode can serve as a window onto the wider problems facing the Arab merchant classes during the transition from Ottoman to British rule in Palestine


An examination of Herbert Marcuse's political claim for the aesthetic dimension, focusing on defamiliarization as a means of developing radical sensibility. In Uncommon Sense, Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herbert Marcuse—an original member of the Frankfurt School and icon of the New Left—while also acknowledging his philosophical limits. His account reinvigorates Marcuse for contemporary readers, putting his aesthetic theory into dialogue with antiracist and anti-capitalist activism. Leonard emphasizes several key terms not previously analyzed within Marcuse's aesthetics, including defamiliarization, anti-art, and habit. In particular, he focuses on the centrality of defamiliarization—a subversion of common sense that can be a means to the development of what Marcuse refers to as "radical sensibility."
 Leonard brings forward Marcuse's claim that the aesthetic dimension is political because of its refusal to operate according to the repressive common sense that establishes and maintains relationships dictated by advanced capitalism. For Marcuse, defamiliarization is at the center of the aesthetic dimension, offering the direct means of stimulating its political potential. Leonard expands upon Marcuse's aesthetics by drawing on the work of Sylvia Wynter, going beyond Marcuse's predominantly European and patrilineal intellectual framework—while still retaining his aesthetic theory's fundamental characteristics—toward a human dimension requiring decolonial, feminist, antiracist, and counterpoetic perspectives.


Innovation contests in their basic structure have a long-standing tradition and can be attributed to continuously gain in importance as a corporate practice. A deep understanding of this online instrument, however, is still lacking. Contrary to other methods used to realize open innovation, research in the field of online innovation contests displays a growing, but only rudimentarily intertwined body of publications. This paper provides the essential systematization of the field, integrating both, academic knowledge and business deployment. Juxtaposing 33 relevant journal and conference publications with empirical basis and an analysis of 57 real-world innovation contests, we highlight interesting disruptions and distill six pathways for future research. These cover the optimal degree of elaboration, the interplay of competition and community, the importance of community applications, the trajectory towards open evaluation, and the identification of additional design elements.


Demographic globalisation, as the counterpart of economic globalisation, is interpreted as the movement towards a state depicted as the ""global village"" where there are no official impediments to the cross-border movement of people. Such movement is posited as the outcome of inter-country disequilibria which determine the levels of the propensity to migrate. Relevant problems are addressed such as whether the international trade in goods and services can serve as substitute for migration of labour (accompanied or unaccompanied by dependents); demographic complementarities between more and less developed countries; the type of labour demanded by countries of immigration; demographically perverse migratory flows; the socio-economic problems ensuing from the formation of numerically strong ethnic minorities in host countries; and what the outlook is for the realisation, in demographic terms, of a global village mode.


This investigational study was directed to establish the correlation between piled raft foundation and two soil improvement techniques, stone columns and lime columns to evaluate the bearing improvement ratio BCR for the soft clay soil with three values of undrained shear strength, 8 kPa,10 kPa and 12 kPa. The 12 model tests was conducted in the present work, three models of untreated soil, three models of soil with piled raft, three models of soil treated with stone columns and three models of soil trea ted with lime columns. The container used in experimental works was made of steel with plane area of 500 mm * 500 mm and 500mm in height. The thickness of soil sample inside the container was 400 mm. The study showed that the piled raft was more efficient in the bearing capacity improvement than the two soil improvement techniques. The bearing improvement ratio were 3.39, 3.27 and 2.78 in the three model tests of piled-raft for three samples of soil, respectively, while the lime columns provided the lowest values of the bearing improvement ratio were 1.64, 1.67 and 1.8 respectively.


CONTEXT
The human adrenal zona fasciculata (ZF) and zona reticularis (ZR) are responsible for the production of cortisol and 19-carbon steroids (often called adrenal androgens), respectively. However, the gene profiles and exact molecular mechanisms leading to the functional phenotype of the ZF and ZR are still not clearly defined. In the present study, we identified the transcripts that are differentially expressed in the ZF and ZR.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of the study was to compare the transcriptome profiles of ZF and ZR.

DESIGN AND METHODS
ZF and ZR were microdissected from 10 human adrenals. Total RNA was extracted from 10 ZF/ZR pairs and hybridized to Illumina microarray chips. The 10 most differentially expressed transcripts were studied with quantitative RT-PCR (qPCR). Immunohistochemistry was also performed on four zone-specific genes.

RESULTS
Microarray results demonstrated that only 347 transcripts of the 47 231 were significantly different by 2-fold or greater in the ZF and ZR. ZF had 195 transcripts with 2-fold or greater increase compared with its paired ZR, whereas ZR was found to have 152 transcripts with 2-fold or greater higher expression than in ZF. Microarray and qPCR analysis of transcripts encoding steroidogenic enzymes (n = 10) demonstrated that only 3β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, steroid sulfotransferase, type 5 17β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, and cytochrome b5 were significantly different. Immunohistochemistry and qPCR studies confirmed that the ZF had an increased expression of lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 and nephroblastoma overexpressed, whereas ZR showed an increased expression of solute carrier family 27 (fatty acid transporter) (SLC27A2), member 2 and TSPAN12 (tetraspanin 12) CONCLUSION: Microarray revealed several novel candidate genes for elucidating the molecular mechanisms governing the ZF and ZR, thereby increasing our understanding of the functional zonation of these two adrenocortical zones.


The righoletto was a type of round dance current in Florence and its surrounding countryside in the late 14th and 15th centuries. It was above all a dance accompanied by song, one in which all the dancers sang the refrain, and a soloist sang the stanzas. Twelve canzone a righoletto have been identified in literary sources, together with three closely related works also appropriate to accompany the dance. The lyrics occupy a medium or lower poetic register; they range from moralizing texts to ribald narratives. Despite its country origins, the righoletto and its canzone were shared across social classes, largely via oral transmission. One canzona a righoletto survives with its music, the lauda ""In su quell9alto monte."" Another, the satiric ""Non ti fidare che oggi ee sii pocha fee,"" has been reconstructed from its model in the Squarcialupi Codex. The righoletto thus offers valuable glimpses of a vanished form of vernacular culture in late medieval Italy.


Summary Isolates of Armillaria mellea and A. gallica that differed in virulence to healthy blackcurrant, strawberry, Lawson cypress and privet were used to inoculate plants exposed to different watering regimes. Host plants from which water had either been withheld or their roots kept constantly flooded with water, both showed increased susceptibility compared to those plants, which had been watered regularly. At the end of the period of stress, roots from randomly selected plants from each treatment were harvested. Following chemical analysis of the roots for protein, lipids, and carbohydrates including starch, in vitro assays were carried out with these substances. The increased amounts of these nutrients in both groups of stressed plants are sufficient to stimulate the growth of both A. mellea and A. gallica and enhance their virulence.


Over the period 1999 through 2009, the incidence of dengue in Brazil has shown an upward trend with more than 700 000 cases per year reported during 2002 and 2008. Despite efforts to control Aedes aegypti, a hyper-endemic situation has remained with large outbreaks involving all the four dengue serotypes (DENV-1 to 4). The average age of DHF/DSS cases has decreased, making it a disease affecting children. The number of fatalities has also increased. While other countries in the Americas have also witnessed an upward trend in case numbers, Brazil has been subject to more extreme peaks. Other arboviruses also cause sporadic human cases which are commonly confused with dengue and remain undiagnosed.


We study the problem of secure communication in a multi-channel, single-hop radio network with a malicious adversary that can cause collisions and spoof messages. We assume no pre-shared secrets or trusted-third-party infrastructure. The main contribution of this paper is f-AME: a randomized (f)ast-(A)uthenticated (M)essage (E)xchange protocol that enables nodes to exchange messages in a reliable and authenticated manner. It runs in O(|E|t2 log n) time and has optimal resilience to disruption, where E is the set of pairs of nodes that need to swap messages, n is the total number of nodes, C the number of channels, and t < C the number of channels on which the adversary can participate in each round. We show how to use f-AME to establish a shared secret group key, which can be used to implement a secure, reliable and authenticated long-lived communication service. The resulting service requires O(nt3 log n) rounds for the setup phase, and O(t log n) rounds for an arbitrary pair to communicate. By contrast, existing solutions rely on pre-shared secrets, trusted third-party infrastructure, and/or the assumption that all interference is non-malicious.


This article explains the importance of business process management for service orientation and illustrates how process models can be used for the design and realization of service-oriented architectures. We will introduce a multi-level concept consisting of a design, a configuration and an execution level. The approach presented here, illustrated along the standards of EPC, BPMN, BPEL and WSDL, bridges the existing research gap between conceptual modeling and service-oriented IT support. The requirements analysis from an online-mail order company in the consumer electronics sector serves as a use case. Results show that up to now, organizational aspects have been neglected in the SOA discussion.


Families and Change: Coping with Stressful Events. Patrick C. McKenry & Sharon J. Price (Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 1994. 346 pp. Hardcover ISBN 0-8039-4925-1. $52 cloth, $24.95 paper. Reexamining Family Stress: New Theory and Research. Wesley R. Burr, Shirley R. Klein, & Associates. Thousand Oaks; CA: Sage. 1994. 220 pp. Hardcover ISBN 0-8039-4929-4. $49.95 cloth, $24 paper. Family stress theory provides the underlying framework for both of these books. The authors take divergent approaches with the explication of the theory, however, with the result that each book serves a different purpose and audience. Patrick McKenry and Sharon Price's volume, Families and Change: Coping with Stressful Events, "presents a synthesis and analysis of the vast literature that has emerged in recent years detailing families' responses to various problems and change" (p. vii). A survey of over 400 randomly selected undergraduate and graduate college and university catalogs indicated that over 60% offered courses on family stress and change in a variety of departments and schools. A suitable text, however, was found to be lacking for these courses; this volume is an attempt to fill that gap. A relatively brief first chapter (16 pages) is the editors' conceptual overview of research on family stress theory, that draws in both the precrisis variables in Hill's ABCX Model (Hill, 1949) and the later depiction of postcrisis variables in the Double ABCX Model (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983). The remainder of the book is divided into two sections: one on stress and change over the family life cycle (gender issues, marital problems, work/family stresses, adolescence, aging, physical and mental illness, and death, dying, and bereavement) and he second on situational stressors (divorce, remarriage and recoupling, drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, ad homelessness). Thus the book addresses both nominative and situational stressors facing families in today's society. The chapter authors are recognized names in their specialty areas of family research (e.g., Katherine Allen and Kristine Baber on gender from a feminist perspective, David Demo and Lawrence Ganong on divorce, Margaret Crosbie-Burnett on remarriage, and Richard Gelles on family violence). While family diversity is addressed in- terms of gender issues, family stress and change as it affects families of color is regrettably absent. Three chapters may be used to highlight the value of this book. Colleen Murray emphasizes and demonstrates the importance of both individual stress and family systems stress in understanding death, dying, and bereavement. Sharon Nickols brings to the reader an appreciation for the dynamic interactions between the; world of work and the world of the family as they clash, overlap,; and spill over to impact on the marital relationships Margaret Crosbie-Burnett calls attention to the importance of understanding the difference between precrisis and postcrisis factors in shaping family adaptation in the recoupling process. Crisis in this context, congruent with Reuben Hill's conceptualization, is viewed as a state of disequilibrium calling for system change. The authors note that the book is intended to be a primary or supplementary text for undergraduate or introductory graduate courses; it does fulfill this purpose. Because of the breadth of topic covered, some depth is sacrificed so that supplementary readings would seem to be needed to give students a more complete picture of how these specific stressors and changes affect family life. In Reexamining Stress Theory, Wesley Burr, Shirley Klein, and associate's offer the field a fresh perceptive to family stress theory. Their book builds on the earlier theory building efforts by Robert Burr (1983), using a systematic approach, and tests this refined theoretical approach with an empirical study. This theory development includes the introduction of several systemic concepts, insights from qualitative research, and the residual benefits from a meaningful discourse on the limits and advantages of positivism and non positivistic methods of inquiry. …


Shimizu et al. sought to identify proteins that interact with Smad2, a protein involved in activin and transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β)-dependent signaling. They identified Swift (Smad wing for transcriptional activation), a protein containing six BRCA1 COOH-terminal (BRCT) domains. Heterologously expressed Xenopus Swift localized to the nucleus in human cells. Swift bound to Smad2 in vitro and in vivo, and the association of these two proteins required the three BRCT domains located nearest the Swift COOH-terminus. Microinjection of Swift mRNA and an mRNA for constitutively activated activin receptor (ActRIB*) into Xenopus embryos led to synergistic gene expression compared to expression of ActRIB* alone. Injection of Smad2 and Swift mRNAs into Xenopus embryos gave results similar to those of Swift and ActRIB* mRNA injection. Overexpression of dominant-negative mutants of Swift in Xenopus embryos blocked ActRIB* signaling and led to deformed trunk development. The authors demonstrated that Swift has intrinsic transactivation activity, and further experiments indicated that Swift functions in TGF-β/activin but not in bone morphogenic protein (BMP) or in fibroblast growth factor (FGF) signaling. Thus, Swift appears to be a necessary component in activin signaling and Xenopus development and may signify the existence of a new family of transcriptional regulators. K. Shimizu, P.-Y. Bourillot, S. J. Nielsen, A. M. Zorn, J. B. Gurdon, Swift is a novel BRCT domain coactivator of Smad2 in transforming growth factor-β signaling. Mol. Cell. Biol. 21, 3901-3912 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


A botnet is a collection of computers infected by a shared set of malicious software, that maintain communications to a single human administrator or small organized group. Botnets are indirectly observable populations; cyber-analysts often measure a botnet's threat in terms of its size, but size is derived from a count of the observable network touchpoints through which infected machines communicate. Activity is often a count of packets or connection attempts, representing logins to command and control servers, spam messages sent, peer-to-peer communications, or other discrete network behavior. Front line analysts use sandbox testing of a botnet's malicious software to discover signatures for detecting an infected computer and shutting it down, but there is less focus on modeling the botnet population as a collection of machines obscured by the kaleidoscope view of Internet Protocol (IP) address space. This research presents a Bayesian model for generic modeling of a botnet due to its observable activity across a network. A generation-allocation model is proposed, that separates observable network activity at time t into the counts yt generated by the malicious software, and the network's allocation of these counts among available IP addresses. As a first step, the framework outlines how to develop a directly observable behavioral model informed by sandbox tests and day-to-day user activity, and then how to use this model as a basis for population estimation in settings using proxies or Network Address Translation (NAT) in which only the aggregate sum of all machine activity is observed. The model is explored via a case study using the Conficker-C botnet that emerged in March of 2009.


Dromedary camels have the capability and the genetic potential to achieve high levels of milk production. However, systematic breeding programs to increase milk production are not common in this species. Dromedary camels are not well adapted to machine milking. Milk removal obviously requires in most farms a pre-stimulation through calf suckling before the milking machine can completely harvest the stored milk. In camels, most of the milk is stored in the alveolar compartment (>90-95%) of the udder. Therefore, almost no milk can be obtained in the absence of milk ejection. In addition, the morphological, anatomical and physiological properties of the camel udder are complex and not fully understood. Because of all biological and economical limitations related to machine milking dromedary camels are mostly hand-milked. The introduction of machine milking makes only slow progress and is limited to intensive dairy camel farms in a few countries. Machine milking of dromedary camels showed so far acceptable results. However, some studies clearly showed that udder emptying by machine milking with the available equipment is not satisfactory. The amount of residual milk after machine milking is high and was up to 30 % or even more of the stored milk in some studies. This means that the used machine needs to be improved to fit the camel's udder. Nevertheless, some studies clearly showed that a major proportion of dromedary camels have a suitable machine milking ability.


"This is an excellent book. It should be read by all who are interested in any aspect of Tuberculosis, including the growing problem of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis." "Journal of American Medical Association "The book serves an important function, relaying statistics and TB hot spots, proposing funding and international standardized treatments. Government officials, researchers and nonprofit health organizations will likely cast this as the authoritative book on the subject." "Publishers Weekly"Like other recent works on the threat of infectious diseases such as Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague, Timebomb has the power of fiction and it is sometimes easy to forget that it is not. Unlike the Garrett book, which is more a collection of short dramatic stories collectively telling a big picture about our coexistence and evolution with microbes, Reichman selects one story and presents it in novel form with better material that most science fiction. The book is organized in a clear and riveting manner.Within the narrative style, the book is rich with up-to-the-minute details and references that add to its depth. An incredible account of politics and disease dynamics occurring at all levels, "Timebomb helps us realize that controlling or eradicating TB is not just about science and facts; likely if it were, TB would have long been relegated to the history books."-- "Nature Medicine Magazine Tuberculosis, supposedly defeated by antibiotics half a century ago, has returned in a highly contagious and fatal new form that cannot be treated with conventional drugs. Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), could cause some 10 million deaths over the next decade and is thriving in theovercrowded prisons of the former Soviet Union.As "Timebomb explains in unnerving detail, the virtual collapse of the world's borders means that refugees, tourists, immigrants, business travelers, and others can spread the TB bacillus very efficiently. London, for example, has experienced a 100% increase in reported cases in the past 10 years. Written by the world's preeminent TB expert and an award-winning medical and health writer, "Timebomb details the evolution and the current state of the MDR-TB epidemic, interweaving the science of MDR-TB with personal stories of people whose lives have been threatened by the deadly bacteria.


Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and end stage renal failure. Accurate identification of those with a reduced glomerular filtration rate and significant proteinuria facilitates early diagnosis and risk stratification.

This thesis explores the optimal measure of proteinuria, to accurately quantify proteinuria and as a predictor of renal and patient outcomes. We examine the prevalence of CKD in a general population cohort and assess the impact of different estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) formulae. We explore the prognostic role of reduced eGFR and proteinuria in patients with hypertension and present the baseline characteristics of a community cohort study of patients with predominantly early CKD. They will be followed for ten years to identify predictors of cardiovascular and renal outcome.

Urine total protein:creatinine ratio (TPCR) and albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR) have largely replaced 24-hour urine collections for proteinuria quantification. The performance of these spot measures to identify significant proteinuria is compared in a cohort of 6842 patients attending a general nephrology clinic. Both tests perform well overall but TPCR is statistically significantly superior as a predictor of 24-hour total proteinuria than ACR (as measured by the area under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve to predict 1g/day total proteinuria). On sub-group analysis the performance of the spot samples is poorer in women and the elderly, likely as a result of low muscle mass and low urine creatinine (the denominator in TPCR/ACR).

The performance of TPCR and ACR were then compared as predictors of outcome in a similar cohort of 5586 CKD patients using a hierarchical Cox survival model. TPCR and ACR both performed well as independent predictors of death, commencement of renal replacement therapy (RRT) and doubling of serum creatinine. Notably TPCR performed well at low levels where albuminuria has been considered superior. These findings are novel. The spot samples performed as well as 24-hour collections in the sub-group with timed urine collections.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in England recommend ACR to monitor all patients with CKD; the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network recommend TPCR for non-diabetic renal disease. Therefore, we investigated the implications of these recommendations using survival modelling. The same cohort was divided into 5 groups: no proteinuria, low proteinuria (using TPCR and ACR), high proteinuria (TPCR and ACR) and two groups where TPCR and ACR were discordant (i.e. TPCR above the diagnostic threshold but ACR below it and vice versa) using the recommended thresholds (ACR 30mg/mmol/TPCR 50mg/mmol to predict 0.5g/day total proteinuria and ACR 70mg/mmol/TPCR 100mg/mmol to predict 1g/day total proteinuria). Using univariate survival analysis the discordant group had significantly poorer outcomes (using the same outcomes as previously) than those with significant proteinuria as measured by both tests. The discordant group was older with poorer renal function and some of the excess risk was abolished on multivariate analysis, however the risk did not return to the level of those without detectable proteinuria. TPCR, but not ACR, measures non-albumin proteins and these may have pathophysiological roles in progression. This requires further study. However this analysis confirmed that TPCR identifies patients at high risk of adverse outcomes.

TPCR and ACR may vary as a result of muscle mass. We adjusted TPCR and ACR for estimated creatinine excretion (ECE) (calculated using the Cockcroft and Gault formula) and performed cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Adjusting TPCR and ACR for ECE improves prediction of significant proteinuria in sub-groups with poor baseline test performance (such as women and the elderly) using ROC curve analysis. However when adjusted and unadjusted values were compared as predictors of outcome (using a net reclassification index analysis) adjusted values were significantly inferior. Urine creatinine is an independent predictor of mortality and hence may be directly contributing to the predictive value of TPCR and ACR rather than simply correcting for urine flow rate. As such, adjusting for ECE may act to remove the effect of a second independent predictor, leading to inferior test performance. Therefore the decision to adjust TPCR and ACR for ECE depends on the test application: to predict significant proteinuria adjustment of TPCR and ACR is of benefit, but adjustment leads to inferior performance as a prognostic test.

The prevalence of CKD stages 3-5 was assessed using a general population laboratory database. Overall population prevalence was 5.63% using the modification of diet in renal disease (MDRD) formula and fell to 4.94% when the CKD-Epidemiology group (CKD-EPI) formulae were applied. Those reclassified to an earlier stage of CKD were predominantly middle aged women. Prevalence over a five year period was found to be stable using the CKD-EPI formulae but rose slightly according to MDRD.

Proteinuria and eGFR were assessed as predictors of outcome in a large specialist hypertension clinic cohort. On multivariate survival analysis both baseline dipstick proteinuria and an eGFR<60ml/min/1.73m2 remained strong independent predictors of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, despite intensive specialist intervention to control blood pressure. These simple tests should be advocated for risk stratification in these patients.

Lastly the baseline characteristics of a community CKD cohort are presented. We recruited 411 participants from seven general practices around Ayrshire and a detailed baseline clinical and biochemical assessment was performed. Patients were invited to participate if they were included in the primary care register of CKD stages 3-5. Over a quarter had an eGFR>60ml/min/1.73m2 on the meat-fasted study sample. Proteinuria was of notably low prevalence and the cohort had a large burden of cardiovascular disease. Complications of renal disease were uncommon. The characteristics of the cohort differ from those under hospital follow-up. Their long term outcomes should contribute to refining risk stratification in this population.

Proteinuria and eGFR are key aspects of diagnosis and monitoring in CKD. Identification of the optimal measures of both is essential and findings presented here contribute to that. There is a need to refine risk stratification in CKD, to identify those who require intensive intervention, and to reassure the rest. The findings of this thesis also contribute to that. Further study is required to refine the core aspects of diagnosis and investigation of CKD.


The performance of missing transverse energy reconstruction algorithms is presented using √s=8 TeV proton-proton (pp) data collected with the CMS detector. Events with anomalous missing transverse energy are studied, and the performance of algorithms used to identify and remove these events is presented. The scale and resolution for missing transverse energy, including the effects of multiple pp interactions (pileup), are measured using events with an identified Z boson or isolated photon, and are found to be well described by the simulation. Novel missing transverse energy reconstruction algorithms developed specifically to mitigate the effects of large numbers of pileup interactions on the missing transverse energy resolution are presented. These algorithms significantly reduce the dependence of the missing transverse energy resolution on pileup interactions. Finally, an algorithm that provides an estimate of the significance of the missing transverse energy is presented, which is used to estimate the compatibility of the reconstructed missing transverse energy with a zero nominal value.


The study of church growth has historically been divided into two strands of research: the Church Growth Movement and the Social Science approach. This article argues that Dunbar's Social Brain Hypothesis represents a legitimate and fruitful third strand in the study of church growth, sharing features of both previous strands but identical with neither. We argue that five predictions derived from the Social Brain Hypothesis are accurately borne out in the empirical and practical church growth literature: that larger congregations lead to lower active engagement from members; that single-leader congregations are limited to around 150 members; that congregations of 150 are further stratified into smaller functioning groups; that congregations expanding beyond 150 members undergo internal tensions and are forced to reorganise; and that congregations larger than 150 will require structural sub-divisions to retain active member involvement. While these assertions are reflected in the church growth literature and articulate the common sense assumptions of church growth experts, the Social Brain Hypothesis offers a coherent theoretical framework which unifies these observations and thereby represents a distinctive contribution to church growth studies.


This is a philosophical study of concepts that lie at the foundation of antitrust - a body of law and policy designed to promote or protect economic competition. Topics covered are: the nature of competition; the relation between competition and welfare; the distinction between per se rules and rules of reason; agreements; concerted practices; and the spectrum from independent action to collusion. Although there are many legal and economic books on antitrust, this is the first book devoted to the philosophical scrutiny of the concepts that underpin it. No prior knowledge of philosophy is presupposed. The book is primarily directed at students, theorists and practitioners of antitrust, but will also be useful to lawyers, economists, philosophers, political scientists and others who have an interest in the discipline.


Background: The political and social transition in central and eastern Europe has been generally associated with widening educational differences in life expectancy. However, interpretation of these findings is complicated because the size of educational categories within the population has also changed. It is therefore important to disentangle these two phenomena. Setting: The Czech Republic, Estonia, the Russian Federation and, as a western European reference, Finland, in two periods, 1988–89 and 1998–99. Methods: Life tables were calculated in three categories: university; secondary; and less than secondary education. Changes in life expectancy were decomposed into contributions of population composition and within-category mortality. Results: In Finland and the Czech Republic improvements are seen in all educational groups, with only a slight widening of the educational differences. Over 80% of the total life expectancy increase is attributable to improved mortality within educational categories. In Estonia and Russia, less favourable overall trends coincide with a dramatic widening of the educational gap. A decrease in life expectancy in those with low and middle education has been compensated for, to a small degree in Russia but a greater extent in Estonia, by improvements among those with higher education and by the improved population composition. For highly educated Estonians, the gains were seen at all ages, the greatest at age ⩾60 years. In Russia mortality increased in those <60 years although compensated for by improvements at older ages. Conclusions: Russia and Estonia exhibit much less equitable transitions compared with the Czech Republic. Analyses of trends in health inequalities should capture the changing population composition. In Russia and Estonia an improved educational structure prevented an even greater decline in life expectancy. The highly educated Estonians can potentially catalyse a wider health progress.


ABSTRACT South Africa's policy of quiet diplomacy in the face of the economic and political crises of Zimbabwe has been criticised severely by both domestic and international observers who cite South Africa's "obvious hegemony" as sufficient to take a tough stance against the Mugabe regime. This article explores the extent to which such assumptions about foreign policy behaviour provide an explanation for South Africa's policy and sheds some light on the problems faced by South Africa in trying to be both an "African country" and a good international citizen. It concludes that "obvious hegemony" (being a much more powerful country than Zimbabwe in terms of tangible indices such as military strength and economic power) does not mean "genuine" hegemony and that unless the dominant country's values are acceptable, it cannot exert its influence on weaker neighbours by means of so-called soft power. We are what we are by how we interact rather than being what we are regardless of how we interact. (1) 1. INTRODUCTION South Africa's stance towards Zimbabwe and its foreign policy behaviour regarding the various crises and apparent deterioration of what is broadly the Zimbabwean "state" (including the implosion of the Zimbabwean economy, the political repression of the opposition, the undermining of the rule of law, the farm invasions and lack of a concerted and coherent land redistribution policy) in recent years (2) have left many observers and analysts puzzled. The Mbeki government's insistence on a policy of quiet diplomacy and constructive engagement, its reluctant criticism of the Mugabe regime and its declaration that the presidential election of March 2002 was free and fair have been criticised severely, and in some quarters amazement at the South African policy choice has been evident. The frustration with and disappointment in South Africa's policy behaviour can be traced to a number of distinct assumptions about foreign policy behaviour. First, the country's economic hegemony in the southern African region and the underlying assumptions of hegemonic theories lead many analysts to believe that South Africa could have done "much more" to address the Zimbabwean crisis. In short, South Africa's economic strength should, at the very least, have been used as an instrument to curb Mugabe's excesses and to ensure free and fair elections. Second, South Africa's identity as a country with a firm commitment to democracy and human rights, based largely on what Mills refers to as the fact that "[a]partheid has given the democratic South Africa a morally prominent position in international relations", (3) raised expectations of a "moral" or "principled" vocal and public stance from the perspective of a normative commitment to liberal values in foreign policy. Such a commitment would see a much more outspoken denouncement of Zimbabwe, backed up by visible sanctions. Added to these assumptions, were the principles of the newly announced New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative--a recovery programme that sets much store by good governance on the part of African leaders. Zimbabwe has been viewed as a first test for the sincerity and commitment of Africa to behave responsibly and to practice the ideals set forth in the document. South Africa's leading role in the development of the programme and its efforts to bring the highly developed countries on board, ipso facto made its behaviour and, in the case of Zimbabwe, its policy towards its neighbour, an early test for the chances of NEPAD to induce change in Africa. In its turn, Pretoria asserted that tough action would be inappropriate--Zimbabwe was a sovereign state and no other country had the right to interfere in its domestic affairs. That there were problems in Zimbabwe were not denied, but the way South Africa preferred to engage with Zimbabwe, was on the basis of quiet diplomacy and constructive engagement. …


Use this guide to search for biographical, historical, and critical articles and books for assignments in EH 217: World Literature I (Literature before 1660), a course offered by the UAB Department of English.


Despite the great achievements of the modern deep neural networks (DNNs), the vulnerability/robustness of state-of-the-art DNNs raises security concerns in many application domains requiring high reliability. Various adversarial attacks are proposed to sabotage the learning performance of DNN models. Among those, the black-box adversarial attack methods have received special attentions owing to their practicality and simplicity. Black-box attacks usually prefer less queries in order to maintain stealthy and low costs. However, most of the current black-box attack methods adopt the first-order gradient descent method, which may come with certain deficiencies such as relatively slow convergence and high sensitivity to hyper-parameter settings. In this paper, we propose a zeroth-order natural gradient descent (ZO-NGD) method to design the adversarial attacks, which incorporates the zeroth-order gradient estimation technique catering to the black-box attack scenario and the second-order natural gradient descent to achieve higher query efficiency. The empirical evaluations on image classification datasets demonstrate that ZO-NGD can obtain significantly lower model query complexities compared with state-of-the-art attack methods.


A renaissance in the research and development of computer-based, tutoring systems over the last ten years is motivating scientists to ponder the application of intelligent tutors and coaches in more challenging team training problem spaces where human tutors are either unavailable or impractical. This paper reviews some of the challenges and emerging technologies (tools and methods) that might influence the development of adaptive, intelligent tutors for geographically-distributed team training. Team tutoring presents many challenges. Even human tutors struggle to develop team cohesion, coordinate roles and responsibilities of team members and assess their contributions (Sottilare, 2010). Computer-based tutors face additional challenges: sensing and assessing the cognitive state (including affect) of each team member (Sottilare and Proctor, in press; D"Mello and Graesser, 2007) in near realtime to understand each team member"s readiness to learn (e.g., their engagement and motivation); measuring team performance; perceiving and weighing team member contributions to team performance; and selecting instructional strategies that will optimize team performance. Emerging sensing technologies are showing promise as enablers of computer-based perception of each team member"s behavior and physiology with the goal of predicting unobserved variables (e.g., cognitive state). Along with performance measures, historical and self-reported data, behavioral and physiological measures can provide the tutor with the information needed to model the trainee"s state and their relationship with other team members and the tutor. Accurate (and timely) trainee and team state information (e.g., performance, competency, trust) are considered to be determining factors for the team tutor to select appropriate instructional strategies (e.g., support, direction) for optimal team performance. Design goals, ongoing experimentation, and potential applications of computer-based team tutors are also discussed.


Plasma cleaners have been recognized as a necessary accessory for rapidly and effectively eliminating hydrocarbon contamination from vacuum chambers and samples [1]. Operating at turbopump pressures [2], the Evactron plasma radical source with a unique RF hollow cathode generates a low-temperature RF plasma to create oxygen radicals when air is the feed gas. The oxygen radicals combine with surface hydrocarbons to form gaseous phases which are removed by the pumping system. The benefits of plasma cleaning include faster pumpdown times [3], improved image quality of serial block-face SEM volumetric sets [4], prevention of hydrocarbon deposition during imaging [5] and no damage to EDS detectors or xray windows due to oxygen radical generation [6].


The equal probability of transmission of alleles from either parent during sexual reproduction is a central tenet of genetics and evolutionary biology. Yet, there are many cases where this rule is violated. Such violations limit intraspecific gene flow and can facilitate the formation of genetic barriers, a first step in speciation. Biased transmission of alleles, or segregation distortion, can result from a number of biological processes including epistatic interactions between incompatible loci, gametic selection, and meiotic drive. Examples of these phenomena have been identified in many species, implying that they are universal, but comprehensive species-wide studies of segregation distortion are lacking. We have performed a species-wide screen for distorted allele frequencies in over 500 segregating populations of Arabidopsis thaliana using reduced-representation genome sequencing. Biased transmission of alleles was evident in up to a quarter of surveyed populations. Most populations exhibited distortion at only one genomic region, with some regions being repeatedly affected in multiple populations. Our results begin to elucidate the species-level architecture of biased transmission of genetic material in A. thaliana, and serve as a springboard for future studies into the basis of intraspecific genetic barriers.


Karl Polanyi has been one of the most eclectic thinkers, difficult to classify in one unique tradition of thought due to the multiple influences that can be found in his oeuvre. This has contributed to the great variety of interpretations and readings his work can offer, sometimes very diverse, and therefore classified in a diversity of thought. Influenced by Marx and Marxism, the Fabian thinkers, the marginal economy and German sociology, he has been considered sometimes as a Marxist thinker, others as a liberal and as a romantic intellectual too. In the field of anthropology his works have been considered as part of empiricism, institutionalism or functionalism. The aim of this PhD thesis is to defend a reading of Polanyi's work from the tradition of a republican political thought. His criticism of the market society and the economic liberalism is very valuable in order to reflect about the institutional conditions that a society where freedom is possible should have. First of all, my intention is to discuss those readings that make Polanyi a reactionary thinker, whose defense of the anthropologic protectionism would be equal to the defense of the natural communities, affected by the hierarchical and dominance relationships and therefore incompatible with an emancipatory political project that erases the dominance relationships in all social spheres. I will argue that it is precisely Polanyi the one who proposes the anthropologic conditions that no political project can disregard without risking society itself. It is only through these conditions that liberty can be thought. Polanyi's fundamental contribution has been to demonstrate through the anthropological and economic history results of his investigations that market societies are historical exceptions since it is only in them that the economic structure is disassociated from the rest of the social bonds. This provokes serious consequences from an anthropological perspective. However, this proposal does not only have epistemological consequences, it is fundamental for the political thought. The central core, which gives sense to all his work, is the notion of liberty and the material conditions for its practice. This situates Polanyi in the same line of thought of the republican thinkers. The importance that the issue of subsistence has for Polanyi, the concept of substantive economy, the necessity of the embeddedness economy subordinated to the social needs and his double movement theory, have made him one of the fundamental thinkers of the democratic republicanism for contemporary societies. Besides, my intention is to show the link between Marx's thought and Polanyi. Although Polanyi was very critical with the orthodox Marxist doctrines of the Second and Third Internationals, I will argue that Marx's theoretical work has to be considered independently from the dogmas and recipes that future Marxist theorists made of it. Thus, Polanyi and Marx are perfectly compatible and are both inscribed in the tradition of democratic republicanism.


The electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is an emerging route for producing clean hydrogen. Recently, Ru-based catalysts have exhibited good activity towards the HER, making them attractive substitutes for Pt. However, the HER performance of Ru-based catalysts still cannot reach the same level as that of commercial Pt/C in acid solution. The atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique has proved to be an effective route for the preparation of noble metal catalysts on substrates. Herein, we successfully deposited RuOx catalysts on octahedral and cubic Pd seeds through an ALD process. Interestingly, we found that RuOx was selectively deposited on Pd particles when Pd/nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (NCNTs) were used as the substrate. Importantly, the as-prepared Pd@RuOx/NCNT showed comparable activity with state-of-the-art commercial Pt/C catalysts for the HER. The performance exceeds all of the current Ru-based nanocatalysts for the HER in acid solution. The X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy analyses indicated that the RuOx shell consists of metallic Ru and Ru(IV). Density functional theory calculation results indicated that the Gibbs free energy of the intermediate state H* of octahedral Pd@RuOx was much lower than that of cubic Pd@RuOx, which resulted in the superior HER activity. This paper provides an example for the rational design of efficient catalysts through a combination of shape-controlled synthesis and the ALD technique.


An old saying has it, "slavery will persist until the loom weaves itself". All ancient civilization, no matter how enlightened or creative, rested on slavery and on grinding human labour, because human and animal muscle power were the principal forms of energy available for mechanical work. The discovery of ways to use less expensive sources or energy than human muscles made it possible for men to be free. The men and women of rural India are tied to poverty and misery because they use too little energy and use it inefficiently, and nearly all they use is secured by their own physical efforts. A transformation of rural Indian socieity could be brought about by increasing the quantity and improving the technology of energy use.


Goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (RL) usually suffers from sparse reward and inefficient exploration in long-horizon tasks. Planning can find the shortest path to a distant goal that provides dense reward/guidance but is inaccurate without a precise environment model. We show that RL and planning can collaboratively learn from each other to overcome their own drawbacks. In "CO-PILOT", a learnable path-planner and an RL agent produce dense feedback to train each other on a curriculum of tree-structured sub-tasks. Firstly, the planner recursively decomposes a long-horizon task to a tree of sub-tasks in a top-down manner, whose layers construct coarse-to-fine sub-task sequences as plans to complete the original task. The planning policy is trained to minimize the RL agent's cost of completing the sequence in each layer from top to bottom layers, which gradually increases the sub-tasks and thus forms an easy-to-hard curriculum for the planner. Next, a bottom-up traversal of the tree trains the RL agent from easier sub-tasks with denser rewards on bottom layers to harder ones on top layers and collects its cost on each sub-task train the planner in the next episode. CO-PILOT repeats this mutual training for multiple episodes before switching to a new task, so the RL agent and planner are fully optimized to facilitate each other's training. We compare CO-PILOT with RL (SAC, HER, PPO), planning (RRT*, NEXT, SGT), and their combination (SoRB) on navigation and continuous control tasks. CO-PILOT significantly improves the success rate and sample efficiency. Our code is available at https://github.com/Shuang-AO/CO-PILOT.


A workshop on ''Simulation Research in Gastrointestinal and Urologic Care: Challenges and Opportunities'' was held at the National Institutes of Health in June 2016. The purpose of the workshop was to examine the extent to which simulation approaches have been used by skilled proceduralists (not trainees) caring for patients with gastrointestinal and urologic diseases. The current status of research findings in the use and effectiveness of simulation applications was reviewed, and numerous knowledge gaps and research needs were identified by the faculty and the attendees. The paradigm of ''deliberate practice,'' rather than mere repetition, and the value of coaching by experts was stressed by those who have adopted simulation in music and sports. Models that are most useful for the adoption of simulation by expert clinicians have yet to be fully validated. Initial studies on the impact of simulation on safety and error reduction have demonstrated its value in the training domain, but the role of simulation as a strategy for increased procedural safety remains uncertain in the world of the expert practitioner. Although the basic requirements for experienced physicians to acquire new skills have been explored, the widespread availability of such resources is an unrealized goal, and there is a need for well-designed outcome studies to establish the role of simulation in improving the quality of health care.


On Java, carbonates of Oligo-Miocene age are widely distributed. This time period is also noted for its volcanism which is commonly referred to as the period of the "Old-Andesite" volcanism and is distributed across southern Java. This interesting contemporaneity has been evaluated to understand the inter-relationships between the tectonic-volcanic setting of the carbonates and their petroleum implications. Two trends of Oligo-Miocene carbonates can be recognized: (1) A Northern Trend, including the Cepu-Surabaya-Madura, North Central Java, and Ciputat-Jatibarang areas, comprising the carbonates of the Kujung, Tuban, Baturaja and Middle Cibulakan formations and(2)A Southern Trend, including the Gunung Kidul – Banyumas – Jampang – Bayah – Sukabumi – Rajamandala areas. The Northern Trend carbonates developed in a back-arc setting, 75-150 kms away from a contemporaneous volcanic arc located in present-day southern Java. The Southern Trend developed within an intra-arc setting where contemporaneous volcanism took place. No reefal carbonates are found to be developed contemporaneously with the volcanism in the Gunung Kidul-Banyumas-Jampang areas of the Southern Trend. The Oligo-Miocene reefs which were growing on ridges in the Bayah-Sukabumi-Padalarang areas were not deposited contemporaneously with the volcanism. A window of volcanic quiescence occurred across Java from 18 – 12 Ma (uppermost Early Miocene Middle Miocene). During the same period, the sea significantly transgressed many areas in SE Asia. This condition caused deposition of abundant reefal carbonates along the Southern Trend and included the following formations: * BPMIGAS Wonosari/Punung Formation in the Gunung Kidul area, the Jonggrangan Formation in the Kulon Progo area, the Karangbolong/Kalipucang Formation in the Banyumas region, and the Bojonglopang Formation in the Jampang area. The Northern Trend carbonates are very prolific petroleum reservoirs. Volcanic impurities are absent to very minor and are diagenetically insignificant. The geological setting of the carbonates is very supportive for the existence of a viable petroleum system. The Southern Trend carbonates in part show good-excellent porosities such as the Wonosari Formation carbonates, while others show severe neomorphism such as the Rajamandala Formation carbonates. There is no hydrocarbon discovery along the Southern Trend but the area has been inadequately explored. Nevertheless, the presence of a viable petroleum system is considered of higher risk than that of the Northern Trend.


Fusion of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and forward looking infrared (FLIR) images is an important subject for aerospace and sensor surveillance. This paper presents a scheme to achieve a natural color image based on the contours feature of SAR and the target region feature of FLIR so that the overall scene recognition and situational awareness can be improved. The SAR and FLIR images are first decomposed into steerable pyramids, and the contour maps in the SAR image and the region maps in the FLIR image are calculated. The contour and region features are fused at each level of the steerable pyramids. A color image is then formed by transferring daytime color to the monochromic image by using the natural color transfer technique. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective in providing a color fusion of SAR and FLIR images.


The twanging of mouth harps, buzzers and zithers, the percussive sounds of tubes, and the rasping of scrapers are put against the backdrop of what could be labeled as Philippine modernity. These counter-hegemonic sound impulses challenge an ever-dominating soundscape created by commercial industry. This paper presents critical views on the ascendancy of what was before a marginalized object of culture: that of bamboo musical instruments. It gazes upon the appropriation of bamboo in various modes of production in musical composition and attempts to analyze its place within an emerging Philippine cultural imaginary.


After fertilization in C. elegans, activities encoded by the maternally expressed par genes appear to establish cellular and embryonic polarity. Loss-of-function mutations in the par genes disrupt anterior-posterior (a-p) asymmetries in early embryos and result in highly abnormal patterns of cell fate. Little is known about how the early asymmetry defects are related to the cell fate patterning defects in par mutant embryos, or about how the par gene products affect the localization and activities of developmental regulators known to specify the cell fate patterns made by individual blastomeres. Examples of such regulators of blastomere identity include the maternal proteins MEX-3 and GLP-1, expressed at high levels anteriorly, and SKN-1 and PAL-1, expressed at high levels posteriorly in early embryos. To better define par gene functions, we examined the expression patterns of MEX-3, PAL-1 and SKN-1, and we analyzed mex-3, pal-1, skn-1 and glp-1 activities in par mutant embryos. We have found that mutational inactivation of each par gene results in a unique phenotype, but in no case do we observe a complete loss of a-p asymmetry. We conclude that no one par gene is required for all a-p asymmetry and we suggest that, in some cases, the par genes act independently of each other to control cell fate patterning and polarity. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for understanding how the initial establishment of polarity in the zygote by the par gene products leads to the proper localization of more specifically acting regulators of blastomere identity.


The thesis describes the social and political effects of the transformation of the Dukeries district of Nottinghamshire, where seven new coal mines were sunk between 1918 and 1928. The coal companies responsible for developing the Dukeries field constructed new colliery villages 'at the pit gates' as part of their investment. The thesis deals with the history and characteristics of these townships, planned, built and owned by a single authority. Like other new communities, they suffered 'teething troubles'. It proved difficult to engender a unified community spirit as miners and their families migrated from older coalfields throughout Britain during the early years of high labour turnover. Relationships were strained between the miners and the existing residents of the Dukeries, although the aristocrats whose landed estates gave the district its name came reluctantly to favour mining because of the royalties they obtained therefrom. The first years of the new coinmuniti j:.es were beset by difficulties affecting the provision of facilities for education, religion, shopping, female employment and leisure. But the thesis does not just analyse the problems accompanying industrialisation. The power of the employers in the communities they had created produced much characteristic of company towns. Political representation and control was retained by the colliery companies and the old leaders of Dukeries society, while the Labour Party was not founded until the 194Os. The 'non-political' Spencer Union, a Nottinghamshire phenomenon, monopolised trade unionism in the new pits. Minor regulations were enforced in the villages by uniformed company policemen. As 'benevolent paternalists', the companies sponsored stores, sport, recreation and even religion. The notion of the orderly 'model' village was encouraged as a means of disciplining the workforce. The predominant characteristics of the colliery villages did not disappear until the 194Os, when the war followed by nationalisation destroyed the power of the private owners.


Abstract We validated the diagnostic tests for the high-profile disease, chytridiomycosis, in wild amphibian populations. We compared histological samples with a Taqman real time quantitative PCR (qPCR) test in five species of frogs at different times of the year at six locations in the wet tropics of northern Queensland. The sensitivity and specificity of each test were estimated using prior estimates from previous laboratory studies and Bayesian methods. The qPCR test was almost three times as sensitive 72.9% (62.7–82.2%) than histology 26.5% (19.9–33.9%) but was less specific 94.2% (89.3–98.6%) than histology 99.5% (98.4–100%), which was likely caused by contamination. Monitoring of the negative control success rate of the qPCR test is potentially a good indicator of specificity. It is likely that using individual gloves for handling amphibians reduces cross-contamination and, therefore, improves specificity rather than cause inhibition of the qPCR. Classifying indeterminate results as positive will increase the qPCR test sensitivity but will lower specificity to a lesser degree depending on the likelihood of contamination. Although PCR is the preferred test for amphibian populations, histology is useful when wishing to confirm a diagnosis of infection and in situations where observing the severity of infection and pathology in skin is desired. In this study, we show that diagnostic test validation in wild animals is now relatively straight forward using modern computing power and can incorporate prior knowledge generated from laboratory studies using Bayesian approaches.


Adrenal medulla has often been used as a donor tissue for transplantation into damaged central nervous system, with functional effects ranging from very good to nonexistent. The grafts have often been associated with morphological evidence of stimulated recipient dopaminergic fiber plasticity. The interpretation of these results has been difficult due to variable but mostly poor graft survival. The present study combines two experiments which evaluated the effects of intrastriatal xenogeneic adrenal medullary cell suspension grafts on rat recipients. First, bovine adrenal medulla cell suspension grafts of various compositions were tested for their functional and morphologic effects on immunosuppressed hemiparkinsonian rats. In the second experiment, graft rejection was allowed to occur in half of the rats in order to determine a possible contribution of the inflammatory/immune response to increased dopaminergic fiber plasticity of the recipient. At 28 days, grafts of all cell types survived well in immunosuppressed rats, but none of the grafted cell types was associated with either an amelioration of amphetamine-induced rotation or an increase in striatal tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactivity around the graft site. The latter phenomenon was observed only in the nonimmunosuppressed rats with rejected grafts. Our findings strongly support the role of inflammatory/immune response to grafting in stimulating dopaminergic fiber plasticity and in the appearance of sprouting.


The study of fossil organized remains has hitherto been directed too exclusively to the consideration of the specimens themselves; and hence has been considered rather as an appendix to botany and zoology, than as (what it really is) a very important branch of geological inquiry. From a comparison of fossil remains with those living or extant beings to which they bear the closest analogy, great resemblances and striking differences are at the same time perceivable. In some instances the generic characters materially differ, but in most they very closely correspond; whilst the specific characters are very rarely found to agree, except when the fossil appears to have existed at, comparatively, a late period. Of man, who constitutes a genus by himself, not a single decided remain has been found in a fossil state. Chemical analysis has been called in to the aid of the naturalist, in order to account for the perfect state of preservation observable in remains organized with the most exquisite delicacy, and which there is every reason for supposing to have been readily decomposable in their recent state. From this investigation we learn the manner in which these memorials of the old world, so interesting and so frail have been preserved. Some have been impregnated with calcareous matter, others with siliceous, and others with iron or copper pyrites. But these facts, however important and interesting, cannot, when considered by themselves, add much to our knowledge respecting the formation and structure of the earth. To derive any information