Introduction While the US health care system has the capability to provide amazing treatment of a wide array of conditions, this care is not uniformly available to all population groups. Oral health care is one of the dimensions of the US health care delivery system in which striking disparities exist. More than half of the population does not visit a dentist each year. Improving access to oral health care is a critical and necessary first step to improving oral health outcomes and reducing disparities. Fluoride has contributed profoundly to the improved dental health of populations worldwide and is needed regularly throughout the life course to protect teeth against dental caries. To ensure additional gains in oral health, fluoride toothpaste should be used routinely at all ages. Evidence-based guidelines for annual dental visits and brushing teeth with fluoride toothpaste form the basis of this implementation science project that is intended to bridge the care gap for underserved Asian American populations by improving access to quality oral health care and enhancing effective oral health promotion strategies. The ultimate goal of this study is to provide information for the design and implementation of a randomized controlled trial of a participatory, multi-level, partnered (i.e., with community stakeholders) intervention to improve the oral and general health of low-income Chinese American adults. Methods This study will evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of implementing a partnered intervention using remote data entry into an electronic health record (EHR) to improve access to oral health care and promote oral health. The research staff will survey a sample of Chinese American patients (planned n = 90) screened at three outreach centers about their satisfaction with the partnered intervention. Providers (dentists and community health workers), research staff, administrators, site directors, and community advisory board members will participate in structured interviews about the partnered intervention. The remote EHR evaluation will include group adaptation sessions and workflow analyses via multiple recorded sessions with research staff, administrators, outreach site directors, and providers. The study will also model knowledge held by non-patient participants to evaluate and enhance the partnered intervention for use in future implementations.


Costa Rica's environmental services payments program (Pagos por Servicios Ambientales, or PSA) started in 1997 and was the true pioneer in this area. It is broadly cited and has led to numerous calls for emulating its approach in various ways. It has itself evolved over time, with acknowledged shifts in focus. To measure the impacts of changed implementation, following earlier work on the 1997–2000 payments (Sanchez-Azofeifa et al. 2007; Pfaff et al. 2007), we evaluated the impact of the PSA forest protection contracts during 2000 and 2005. We found that less than 1 in 100 (about 0.4 percent) of the parcels enrolled in the program would have been deforested annually without payments, i.e., due to the net impact of the land returns in agriculture versus in ecotourism, as well as the effects of other conservation policies. This low return on investment is, to first order, the same as was seen for 1997–2000. However, we found that shifts in implementation have eliminated the bias in PSA location toward places where PSA's impact on deforestation was even lower than on average plots. Thus, we showed that the impact increased due to changes in how program parcels were chosen. However, significant potential gains can be realized by increased targeting of areas with some deforestation pressure, including with payments that differ over space.


The G20 is at a crossroads. It can retreat to a reaffirmation of nationalisms or commit to a new form of multilateralism, guided by the primacy of social prosperity and the principle of subsidiarity. The G20 has traditionally focused on economic policy issues – economic growth and financial stability. This is appropriate as along as social progress is closely tied to economic progress, for then the achievement of material prosperity will promote human flourishing. But when economic and social progress becomes decoupled – as we commonly observe through growing income disparities, growing disempowerment and disintegrating social affiliations – then an exclusive preoccupation with economic policy issues is unlikely to quell the widespread public discontent. On this account, it is appropriate for the G20 objectives to be broadened to include resilient, inclusive and sustainable prosperity. This wider conception of human needs calls for a new worldview to underlie G20 policymaking, one that generates social acceptance for multilateral cooperation in tackling multilateral problems, while allowing different countries to nourish different national, cultural and religious identities.


Abstract The aim of this research is to investigate the intergenerational changes that have occurred in Australian Jewish day schools and the challenges these pose for religious and Jewish education. Using a grounded theory approach according to the constant comparative method (Strauss 1987), data from three sources (interviews [296], observations [27], and documents) were analyzed, thus enabling triangulation. Findings show that there is an incongruity between what the adult community defines as the central components of Jewish and religious identity, which are more particularistic, and the perspectives of Jewish youth, which are more universalistic.


There is strong observational support for two significant warming episodes of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre (SPG), one starting in the mid 1920s the other in the mid 1990s. Possible mechanisms responsible for the two warming events are investigated and compared using hind cast simulations with a stateof-the-art global Ocean General Circulation Model (OGCM). The OGCM was forced by an adjusted variant of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 2 (20CRv2) for the period 1871–2009. It is found that the preconditioning of the ocean was an essential component for the observed warming and the decline in the SPG circulation in the mid 1920s and the mid 1990s. Both preconditioning phases are characterised by positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) forcing and subsequent enhanced production of intermediate to deep water masses in the SPG region. The latter causes a lagged intensification of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and by that, increased poleward transport of warm, saline waters of subtropical origin. In addition, a reduction in the NAO forcing following the mid 1920s and mid 1990s contributed to the warming. The preconditioning of the 1990s warming was stronger than that for the 1920s warming. As a consequence, the shift in the marine climate in the 1990s was more abrupt and stronger than the 1920s counterpart. Sensitivity experiments have been run in order to examine the role of the atmospheric forcing for the two warming events. From and including 1920 and 1990, the ocean was in these cases forced by a constructed atmospheric field dominated by winters with negative NAO forcing. It is found that negative NAO forcing is important for the onset of the warming, but that the ocean preconditioning determines the magnitude of the shift in the ocean climate in the SPG region. The conducted sensitivity experiments suggest that the preconditioning of the ocean prior to 1990 could have been sufficient to initiate a comparable collapse of the gyre as the one in 1995, if nature had presented a negative NAO that year. Obviously, the latter conclusion is based on a single model system and needs confirmation from other models and additional model simulations before a more robust conclusion can be drawn.


The annual cycle of oxygen and nitrogen flux, denitrification and microphytobenthic variables (primary production, biomass, composition and calculated N demand) were studied for 2 shallow-water microtidal sediment sites in NE Kattegat, 1 sandy and 1 silty, by incubating undisturbed sediment in the laboratory in light and darkness. Both sites (2 stations within each) were characterised by low concentrations of inorganic nitrogen (IN) in the overlying water during summer (NO 3 generally < 1 μM), with winter concentrations of 5 and 30 pM for the sandy and silty site, respectively. Through the activity of microphytobenthos, the sediment systems appeared to be net autotrophic during most of the year. Net oxygen production varied between -400 and 6600 pmol m -2 h -1 , being highest during the warmest season. Although the composition of the microphytobenthos depended on the sediment type, it did not have a crucial effect on the magnitude of the microphytobenthic biomass or function. The temporal pattern of the function of the microalgal community, on the other hand, was significantly influenced by the sediment type; sandy sediment exhibited a smooth seasonality, controlled mainly by temperature and light, while the silty microtidal sediment was also controlled by stochastic events, such as sediment resuspension. Microphytobenthos had a significant effect on the IN flux, the clearest effect being found for NH 4 . Total denitrification (isotope-pairing technique) generally varied between <1 and 40 μmol m -2 h -1 , being dominated by nitrification-coupled denitrification (D n ), and being 1 order of magnitude higher at the silty site. Microphytobenthic activity generally inhibited denitrification in the low-N areas in this study. The results suggest that the microphytobenthos functions as a major control throughout the annual cycle, by forming communities that are net photoautotrophic throughout the year, and by significantly influencing both the IN flux and denitrification rates. Sandy sediment appeared to function as an IN sink during winter and early spring, while no clear seasonal pattern was found for silty sediment. Calculated N demand of the microphytobenthos far exceeded the measured sediment net uptake of N, supporting the idea that sandy systems in low-nitrogen areas can be highly productive through a closed recycling of N. The ratio between calculated microphytobenthic N demand and measured denitrification rates suggests that denitrification has a minor role as a N sink, particularly in sandy, cold-climate microtidal sediments.


Disability friendly virtue ethics calls for an accessible world. With the help of Aristotle I argue that to be fully virtuous one must be able to flourish. I also argue that all disabled people have the potential to flourish and be fully virtuous, including those with profound intellectual impairments. I point to systems of oppression and discrimination against disabled people and argue they are wrong in part because they block flourishing. By imagining a world where disabled people, and all people, can flourish I identify seven virtues that would most encourage removal of barriers to the flourishing of people with disabilities. Disability friendly virtue ethics is grounded in Aristotlian virtue ethics and includes insights from disability theory and activism.


The past decade has seen a rise in complexity and scale of software systems, particularly with the emerging of the Internet of Thing consisting of large scale and heterogeneous entities which results in difficulties in providing trustworthy services. To overcome such challenges, providing high quality information for IoT service provider as well as monitoring trust relationship of end-users toward the services are paramount. Such trust relationships are user-oriented and subjective phenomenon that hook on specific quality of data. Following this catalyst, we propose a mechanism to evaluate quality of information (QoI) for streaming data from sensor device; then use the QoI evaluation score as an indicator of trust. Concepts and assessment methodology for QoI along with a trust monitoring system are described. We also develop a framework that classifies streaming of data based on semantic context and generate QoI score as a relevant input for a trust monitoring component. This framework enables a dynamic trust management in the context of IoT for both end-users and services that empowers service providers to deliver trustworthy and high quality IoT services. Challenges encountered during implementation and contribution in standardization are discussed. We believe this paper offers better understanding on QoI and its importance in trust evaluation in IoT applications; also provides detailed implementation of the QoI and Trust components for real-world applications and services.


We show the development and implementation of a new methodology that can be used to evaluate the energy and comfort performance of fenestration in non-residential buildings. The methodology is based on the definition of a fenestration system figure of merit.'' The figure of merit'' is determined by considering five non-dimensional performance indices representing heating energy, cooling energy, cooling energy peak, thermal comfort, and visual comfort. These indices were derived by performing a regression analysis of several thousand hour-by-hour building heat transfer simulations of a prototypical office building module using the DOE-2 simulation program. The regression analysis resulted in a series of simplified algebraic expressions that related fenestration configuration variables to performance parameters. We implemented these equations in a hypermedia'' environment -- one that integrates graphics, sound, animation, and calculation sequences --and created a prototype fenestration performance design tool. Inputs required by the program consist of geographic location, building type, perimeter space, and envelope definition. Outputs are the calculated performance indices for electricity and fuel use, peak electric load, and thermal and visual comfort. 6 refs., 7 figs.


Introduction: Breast Cancer gene 1 (BRCA1) and Breast Cancer gene 2 (BRCA2) have gained major scientific interest as potential prognostic and predictive markers for various tumours. Management of breast cancer depends on availability of robust clinical and pathological prognostic and predictive factors to guide patient decision making and the choice of treatment options. One of the prognostic factors of breast cancer is the BRCA1 and BRCA2 protein expression. Immunohistochemical studies on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumours have demonstrated a loss or reduction of protein expression, not only in BRCA1 associated breast carcinomas, but also in non-BRCA1 associated familial and sporadic breast carcinomas. Immunohistochemical information might guide therapy selection for patients.
Aim: To study association of the expression of BRCA1 and BRCA2 protein with their histological phenotype by immunohistochemistry in Malawian females presenting with breast cancer at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH).
Materials and Methods:This was a laboratory based cross sectional study in which 63 Formalin-Fixed,Paraffin-Embeded(FFPE) breast cancer tissue samples from QECH and College of Medicine in Malawi were analysed. Tissues were cut for histological analysis and immunohistochemical staining using a microtome. Haematoxylin and eosin staining was done on slides to confirm invasive breast cancer, then underwent immunohistochemical staining with BRCA1 MS110 monoclonal antibodies and BRCA2 polyclonal antibodies. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 20.0 for windows. The statistical test used was Pearson chi square and fishers exact test where necessary.
Results: Sixty three FFPE breast cancer tissues were analysed from the year 2012 to 2015. The histological phenotypes that were found in the study were; invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) 41.3% (26/63), invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) 27% (17/63), medullary carcinoma 6.4% (4/63) and others 25.4% (16/63). The age of the patients in our study ranged from 21 to 82 years. The most affected age group was between 31 to 60 years. However, the peak age group was between 41 to 50 years. The different histological phenotypes showed a varied expression of both BRCA1 and BRCA 2 protein. Medullary carcinoma had the highest expression with 100% retention of both BRCA1 and BRCA 2.
Conclusion: The study showed the peak age for breast cancer presentation to be between 41-50years. Invasive ductal carcinoma was the predominant histological phenotype representing 41.3% of all the breast cancer samples. The overall retention for BRCA1 was 49.2% and 46% BRCA2. This shows that more than half of the breast cancer presenting at QECH had lost both the BRCA1 and BRCA 2 expression and suggests an aggressive course of these malignancies.


Frustrated by electoral defeat at the hands of Jefferson and his allies in 1800, North
Carolina's Federalists devised a plan in 1802 to send the Minerva, a Raleigh newspaper edited by
William Boylan, to leading Federalists across the state. These Federalist leaders, including
Duncan Cameron, William R. Davie, and Alfred Moore, all prominent politicians and lawyers,
believed that the public mind had been corrupted by the newspaper propaganda of the
Jeffersonian Republicans. The dissemination of the Minerva, however, could restore the public
to a deferential position as well as increase their knowledge about the true state of political
affairs. Though the newspapers found their way to each judicial district in North Carolina, they
failed to transform the public sphere. The editor of the Minerva, William Boylan, increased the
rancor of his partisan invective throughout 1802 and 1803, even though Federalist electoral
success still remained elusive. Boylan also pursued the position of state printer, a job which he
and his uncle had held for a number of years, but which had been given to Joseph Gales, an
Englishman and Republican editor of the Raleigh Register. When Boylan failed to obtain the
position of state printer in 1804, he became increasingly bitter toward Gales. When Gales
accused Boylan of burning down the press of the Raleigh Register, Boylan responded by beating
Gales savagely on the streets of Raleigh in 1804. Boylan, humbled in court by a fine in 1805,
retreated from his former partisanship as his Federalist comrades abandoned him because of his
attack on Gales. The Federalists, therefore, failed in their attempt to control the public sphere
because they could not imitate Jeffersonian propaganda without betraying their conceptions of
disinterestedness, virtue, and reason.


Spoofing attacks are a serious problem for civil GNSS applications with safety content, such as airplane landing or maritime navigation in harbors. Also many strategically important infrastructures, such as electric power grids or mobile communications networks, are becoming increasingly dependent on GNSS services. Military GNSS users solve that problem by signal encryption at chip level. This reduces the threat to only allow for meaconing, i.e. retransmitting the GNSS signals from a certain location, since the exact waveform is unpredictable. Civil users cannot rely on encryption at the moment and most likely in the near future. They must be protected by additional techniques, which are able to detect and mitigate spoofing attacks.
A number of receiver-autonomous solutions for the spoofing problem have been proposed in the last decade. For single antenna receivers the detection of spoofing attacks can rely on the observation of the time evolution of different signal parameters such as power and Doppler frequency shift, the PRN code delay and its rates, the correlation function shape as well as the cross-correlation of the signal components at different carrier frequencies. However, the most advanced protection against the sophisticated spoofing attacks can be provided by utilizing the spatial domain for signal processing available by using antenna arrays ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]). A GNSS receiver with an antenna array is able to estimate the directions of arrival of the impinging waveforms and so to discriminate between the authentic and counterfeit signals. Moreover the malicious signals can be mitigated by generating a spatial zero into the array antenna reception pattern in the direction of the spoofing source(s).
The use of the array-aided joint estimation of the array attitude and spoofing detection was investigated by the authors in [1], [3], [5]. A post-correlation estimation of the signal direction of arrival (DOA) was utilized as the first step of the corresponding signal processing chain. This approach however still suffers from the effects of short-term distortions in the receiver tracking loops and the resulting unavailability of the DOA estimations during the spoofing attack. Two approaches have been identified to overcome this effect. On the one hand, a more accurate direction of arrival detection and antenna calibration can be used. On the other hand, the attitude estimation can be made more robust by skipping the DOA estimation step and using instead directly the post-correlation array outputs in the underlining measurement model, similar to method 2 in [6]. The latter possibility will be exploited throughout the current paper. One of the main challenges here is to design robust and computationally effective attitude estimation when the post-correlation array outputs consist of the superposition of the authentic and counterfeit signals. This problem, for example, is not adequately handled in [6] and [7].
In the aforementioned approaches, the estimation of the actual direction of arrival in terms of (antenna local) azimuth and elevation was done explicitly before the attitude was estimated. The approach presented in the paper will avoid this (computationally expensive) step, by introducing an adequate measurement model. This model connects the measured relative phases between the antennas elements (spatial signature) to the ones expected from the almanac. This interconnection involves the receiver attitude, which is the state to be estimated.
In a second step, the model fit (i.e. residuals of least square fit) is used to detect anomalies. Further processing is done by comparing the spatial signature for different satellites. Contrary to using the cyclic nature of PRN codes to detect the direction in the pre-correlation domain as described in [2], the spatial signature in the post-correlation domain is used. If one dominant direction is present, the likelihood of spoofing or meaconing is considered high. If detected, a second processing stage is triggered, capable of spatially filtering out the spoofers signature (post-correlation nulling). Finally a second run of the aforementioned procedure is done to estimate the antennas attitude using a spatially filtered signal. Theoretical results as well as hardware simulations ([8]) show, that if a GPS/CA or Galileo receiver already tracks a certain PRN, the likelihood of success is very low for an unsynchronized spoofer. In this context (un)synchronized is related to the PRNs current frequency shift (caused by the Doppler Effect), as well as code delay. The code delay error should not be larger than one chip in general. The tolerable frequency mismatch however, highly depends on the receivers implementation (i.e. FLL and PLL parameters and stages), but should not be bigger than a few multiples of 50 Hz. A synchronized spoofer or meaconing signal which is turned on when the receiver already tracks the corresponding PRN will be considered in the context of the paper. The described methods will be evaluated using software simulations. Scenarios without spoofing or meaconing are used to demonstrate the attitude estimation. Scenarios with repeaters will be used to demonstrate the two-stage approach with spatial filtering.

[1] M. Meurer, A. Konovaltsev, M. Cuntz, and C. Hattich, "Robust Joint Multi-Antenna Spoofing Detection and Attitude Estimation using Direction Assisted Multiple Hypotheses RAIM," in Proceedings of the 25th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2012), September 2012, Nashville, TN, USA., 2012.
[2] S. Daneshmand, A. Jafarnia-Jahromi, A. Broumandon, and G. Lachapelle, "A low-complexity GPS anti-spoofing method using a multi-antenna array," in Proc. ION GNSS 2012, 2012, pp. 1233–1243.
[3] A. Konovaltsev, M. Cuntz, C. Haettich, and M. Meurer, "Autonomous Spoofing Detection and Mitigation in a GNSS Receiver with an Adaptive Antenna Array," in Proc. ION GNSS+ 2013, 2013, p. 12.
[4] M. Appel, A. Konovaltsev, and M. Meurer, "Robust Spoofing Detection and Mitigation based on Direction of Arrival Estimation," in Proc. ION GNSS+ 2015, 2015, pp. 3335–3344.
[5] M. Meurer, A. Konovaltsev, M. Appel, M. Cuntz, E. M. Meurer, A. Konovaltsev, M. Appel, and M. C. De, "Direction-of-Arrival Assisted Sequential Spoofing Detection and Mitigation," in ION ITM 2016, 2016.
[6] M. Markel, E. Sutton, and H. Zmuda, "An antenna array-based approach to attitude determination in a jammed environment," in Proceedings of the 14th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2001), 2001, pp. 2914–2926.
[7] S. Daneshmand, N. Sokhandan, and G. Lachapelle, "Precise GNSS Attitude Determination Based on Antenna Array Processing," in Proceedings of the 27th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, ION GNSS+ 2014, Tampa, Florida, September 8-12, 2014, 2014.
[8] M. Appel, A. Hornbostel, and C. Haettich, "Impact of meaconing and spoofing on galileo receiver performance," 7th ESA Workshop on Satellite Navigation Technologies NAVITEC, 2014.


We present a caustic model of morphology-dependent resonances based on geometrical optics, which describes the electromagnetic field in cylinders or spheres by families of ray congruences. A ray congruence in this model is basically a family of rays that osculate in phase on a common circle, the caustic. The circumference of this circle is in the plane case an integer multiple of the wavelength. This integer number corresponds to the mode number in the multipole expansion. In the spherical case two families of caustics exist. The mode numbers l, m of the multipole expansion for spherical particles define the corresponding radii of the caustics of the two ray families. The localization principle follows in this model simply by conservation of angular momentum. The condition for narrow modes caused by total internal reflection and the leaking of these modes is explained. The excitation of narrow resonances can also be explained in a straightforward manner by requiring that rays propagating from the caustic to the surface couple in phase to the caustic after reflection. Comparison with the exact solution shows excellent agreement.


Several different methods are established for the analysis of gases, including optical spectroscopy, photoacoustic spectroscopy as well as colorimetric and resistive sensing, the measurements systems are either too complex or have limited sensitivity. In particular, when the goal is to apply a large number of sensors in networks, it is highly desirable to have devices that are simple, have low cost and energy consumption, yet sensitive and selective to monitor analytes even in traces. Herein, we propose a new type of resistive sensor device based on a composite of single-wall carbon nanotubes and an ion-in-conjugation polymer, poly(1,5-diaminonaphthalene-squaraine), capable of detecting H2S and NH3 in air even at room temperature with a theoretical concentration limit of ∼1 ppb and ∼7 ppb, respectively. Density functional theory calculations revealed that H atoms of the analytes and O atoms of the polymer chain interact and form hydrogen bonds, and the electron withdrawal from the gas molecules by the polymer chain results in the change of its electrical conductivity. To demonstrate the feasibility of the new nanocomposites in sensing, we show the devices for monitoring food safety with good sensor stability of operation for at least 3 months of period of time.


Much as peri-urban zones in Africa are places of possible disaster outbreaks in terms of disease outbreaks and other social hazards due to their general lack of planning and institutional integration, they can act as cradles for building health cities. This is so for many practical reasons poised in the sustainable development framework – the prevalence of horticultural activities; their attractiveness to investment by the moneyed classes of society in the areas of housing, commerce and other big-time ventures; and attention by regional planners in their quest for tapping on the wealth of the rural-urban linkages.  This article captures these various dynamic activities and developments in the peri-urban zones of some African countries towards building a case for building healthy cities in the sustainable development framework.  The key questions addressed in the article are: (a) To what extent are Africa peri-urban zones areas of possible disease outbreaks owing to the increased migration trends in different countries? (b) What regional planning measures to be put in place so that the sustainability of peri-urban areas of the selected cities and towns to curb incidences of waterborne, airborne and other pandemic diseases? (c) What housing options must be put in place towards addressing the slum conditions in these quintessential areas? (d) What is the contribution of developers and investors in the place making of peri-urban settlements? In addressing these questions, the comparison of the different factors are key in determining whether or not the question of spatial scale matter; technologies to be employed and how best a stewardship approach will help in consensus-building by the different stakeholders so that harmonious places in the form of healthy and stable peri-urban African settlements are fostered. The case study approach was chosen in order to depict spatially relevant details and dynamics that link the subject of peri-urban interfaces and their implications for regional planning in Africa.

 Key words: Peri-urbanity, public health, stewardship, metropolitanisation; consensus, community.


The efficiency of decentralized book systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum has always been a challenge. It is usually measured by three major factors: scalability, throughput, and latency. Scalability refers to how the system capacity is increased by adding more physical resources. Throughput measures the volume of transactions for a given period of time, where most current solutions attempt to improve such as NEO, EOS, etc. Latency measures the processing time of any single transaction. In current blockchain based systems, the block generation rate is the main latency bottleneck. Off-chain processes such as state channels are the most recent work that can integrate partial inbound transactions, reducing latency. Unfortunately, the state channel introduces more issues at the same time, such as cross-channel synchronization, which makes the state channel unavailable for full adoption of current blockchain solutions.
In order to solve the efficiency problem, we proposed an end-to-end solution called ALZA, which links the dedicated high-throughput blockchain with self-organizing payment fields. This mechanism allows arbitrary set of users to create payment fields that process extremely low latency transactions within each field. Therefore, users can make transactions almost immediately. Since all transactions are conducted within fields, transaction costs will be reduced by several orders of magnitude. In addition, ALZA distributes main ledger to each client through an innovative replication mechanism. Therefore, the system will be significantly more robust to blockchain system failures. In theory, ALZA can complete millions of transactions in one second, which naturally supports high-frequency trading.


Yakutia (Russia, northeastern part of Eurasia) represents one of Earths most extreme climatic settings in the worldwith deep-reaching frozen ground and a semiarid continental climate with highest seasonal temperature contrastsin the northern hemisphere. The amplitude of temperature variations around the year sometimes exceeds 100oC.There are few examples of quantitative palaeoecological studies in Siberia and these data have to be tested byquantitative studies from other sites in this region, inferred from different proxies and using regional calibrationdatasets and temperature models that are still lacking. Chironomid midges (Insecta, Diptera, Chironomidae) havebeen widely used to reconstruct past climate variability in many areas of Western Europe and North America. Achironomid-mean July air temperature inference model has been developed, based on a modern calibration set of200 lakes sampled along a transect from 110° to 159° E and 61° to73° N in northern Russia. The inference modelwas applied to sediment cores from 2 lakes in the Central Yakutia in order to reconstruct past July air temperatures.The lacustrine records span mid- to late Holocene. The downcore variability in the chironomid assemblages and thecomposition of organic matter give evidence of climate-driven and interrelated changes in biological productivity,lacustrine trophic states, and lake-level fluctuations. Three phases of the climate development in Central Yakutiacan be derived from the geochemical composition of the lake cores and according to the inferred from chironomidassemblages mean July air ToC. Content of organic matters reached maximal values in the period between 7000-4500 yBP. Sedimentation rate is especially high, numerous molluscs shells are found in sediments. All this alongwith the reconstructed air temperature confirmed that Mid Holocene optimum in Central Yakutia took place in thisperiod with the maximal temperatures up to 4oC above present day ToC. Strong faunistic changes take place after4500 yBP. Temperature reconstruction has shown that around 4500 ka BP air temperature went down up to 2oCbelow modern temperature. These observations confirm end of Holocene climate optimum at this time. The lakestatus record reveals a long-term trend towards lake-level lowering in the course of climate deterioration after 4.2cal. ka BP and reduced evaporation as well as progressive sediment infill. This long-term trend is overprinted byshort-term fluctuations at centennial time scales with high lake levels and decreased biological productivity duringcool climate spells with reduced evaporation, as also observed in modern thermokarst lakes of Central Yakutia.


Lake Matano and Towuti are two of 15 lake priorities in Indonesia. For preservation purposes, a routine water quality monitoring from satellite is needed. In this study, 11 scenes of Landsat 8 data were processed to produce chlorophyll-a concentration as an indicator of water quality condition on these two lakes. The result showed that water quality in Lake Matano and Towuti were in low cholorphyll-a condition with chlorophyll-a concentration ranged from 0.000– 2.298 mg/m3, 0.000-2.236 mg/m3, respectively. The accuracy of estimated Chlorophyll-a in these two lakes were affected by an inaccurate of atmospheric corrected data. To improve the accuracy, a more accurate atmospheric correction algorithm for Landsat 8 was still required.


The Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) four-step sequential extraction has been adapted for fractionation of potentially toxic elements (PTE) in simulant airborne particulate matter (APM) samples presented on 47 mm filter dynamics measurement system (FDMS) filters as used in routine air quality monitoring. Simulants were prepared from an urban soil reference material and from BCR CRM 701, which is certified for analytes extractable by the BCR procedure. Analysis was performed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry using an Agilent 7700x instrument. Fractionation patterns similar to the full-scale protocol were obtained when test portions as small as 0.0625 g were extracted in 2-3 mL of reagents. However, changing the extraction vessel used was found to affect the outcome. This highlights the operational nature of sequential extraction procedures and the need carefully to evaluate the effects of procedural modifications. When the method developed was applied to blank FDMS filters, large amounts of Zn were detected, especially in step 3, the oxidisable fraction, and step 4, the residual fraction. Despite this, following blank-correction, fractionation patterns similar to certified values were obtained for BCR CRM 701, with overall recoveries ((steps 1-4)) of 84.2-113%. Given the increased awareness of public health risks associated with poor air quality, a sequential extraction procedure specifically designed for use with APM samples collected during routine air quality represents a valuable tool for use in source apportionment and to improve understanding of human exposure to PTE through inhalation.


'A book full of richness, unexpected enticements, short sharp shocks and breathtaking writing' - "Guardian". Welcome to the real, unauthorised London: the disappeared, the unapproved, the unvoiced, the mythical and the all-but forgotten. The perfect companion to the city. 'Exhilarating, truly wonderful, a cavalcade of eloquent writing. London demands an anthology like this to remind us of the irascible quirkiness of its residents, and we have Sinclair to thank for marshalling such a perverse and ultimately pleasurable exercise' - "Independent on Sunday".


Douglas Livingstone is rightly regarded by many critics as the leading poet now writing in South Africa. Yet, South Africa has been slow to recognize his poetic talent. (The first critical study of his work, Douglas Livingstone: A Critical Study of his Poetry, was published by Ad. Donker, Johannesburg, in 1981.) In spite of his being honoured with a D. Litt: from the University of Natal (Durban) in 1982, his poetry has been more favourably received in England and America than in his own country. He has won international awards from the British Society of Authors and at the Cheltenham Festival, yet in South Africa his only poetry prize has been in a competition which he entered anonymously. His latest collection, The Anvil's Undertone ( Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, 1978), has been well received abroad: the London Magazine, comment· ing on Livingstone's 'powerful evocation of a doomed South African dreamland', concludes that there is 'no better poet writing on this continent in any language'.' But this collection, which (to quote Richard Rive) 'must appeal to any serious student of South African literature', 2 was almost totally ignored by reviewers in South African literary magazines. This journal article is available in Kunapipi: http://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol4/iss2/14


An experiment with growing-fin-ishing pigs was conducted to evaluate the effects of a corn-soybean meal diet supplemented with crystalline amino acids in an ideal pattern for the first four limiting amino acids (lysine, tryp-tophan, threonine, and methionine) on growth performance, plasma urea concentration, and carcass characteristics in barrows and gilts. Barrows were pair-fed to gilts within the same dietary treatment. For the entire grow-ing-finishing period, there was a diet x sex interaction for daily gain and feed efficiency. Barrows and gilts consuming a corn-soybean meal diet performed similarly; however, barrows receiving diets formulated on an ideal protein basis had a 10 percent lower daily gain and a four percent lower daily feed intake than gilts. Barrows and gilts receiving the ideal protein diet gained weight more slowly and consumed less feed during the growing-finishing period than did pigs receiving the intact corn-soybean diet. Diet did not affect the percent lean in the carcass. Plasma urea concentrations showed that nitrogen was conserved in pigs consuming the ideal protein vs intact corn-soybean meal diet. Differences in plasma urea concentration were not observed between barrows and gilts within either treatment. These results indicate there is no advantage in terms of daily gain and feed efficiency of providing growing-finishing pigs an ideal protein diet. However, feeding an ideal protein diet will reduce the amount of nitrogen the pig wastes. Future research will focus on the effects of ideal protein diets on nitrogen excretion and amino acid utilization.


We present multi‐satellite observations of large amplitude radiation belt whistler‐mode waves and relativistic electron precipitation. On separate occasions during the Wind petal orbits and STEREO phasing orbits, Wind and STEREO recorded intense whistler‐mode waves in the outer nightside equatorial radiation belt with peak‐to‐peak amplitudes exceeding 300 mV/m. During these intervals of intense wave activity, SAMPEX recorded relativistic electron microbursts in near magnetic conjunction with Wind and STEREO. This evidence of microburst precipitation occurring at the same time and at nearly the same magnetic local time and L‐shell with a bursty temporal structure similar to that of the observed large amplitude wave packets suggests a causal connection between the two phenomena. Simulation studies corroborate this idea, showing that nonlinear wave–particle interactions may result in rapid energization and scattering on timescales comparable to those of the impulsive relativistic electron precipitation.


The copious literature on love in early India has most recently been interpreted as a variant of the universal experience of human sexuality. Studies have rooted the uniqueness of Indian ideas either in theological conceptions of the immanent and transcendent, or in the particularity of the parent-child relation in India. Whatever the insights of such scholarship, two major problems relevant to this essay are its positioning of a 'civilizational' backdrop as its subject of analysis—either 'India' or 'Hinduism'—and, particularly with the former approach, the subsequent application of what has been called the 'repressive hypothesis' to the Indian material, which poses the 'transcendent' principles of Indian civilization in a restraining role over those deemed life-affirming or immanent. This essay will offer an alternative to these interpretations by placing conceptions of romantic love in medieval India within their social and discursive contexts, and connect up the discourses on self-discipline in medieval India with those of love in a more historically specific and illuminating way.


Application performance tuning is a complex process that requires assembling various types of information and correlating it with source code to pinpoint the causes of performance bottlenecks. Existing performance tools don't adequately support this process in one or more dimensions. We discuss some of the critical utility and usability issues for application-level performance analysis tools in the context of two performance tools, MHSim and HPCView, that we built to support our own work on data layout and optimizing compilers. MHsim is a memory hierarchy simulator that produces source-level information not otherwise available about memory hierarchy utilization and the causes of cache conflicts. HPCView is a tool that combines data from arbitrary sets of instrumentation sources and correlates it with program source code. Both tools report their results in scope-hierarchy views of the corresponding source code and produce their output as HTML databases that can be analyzed portably and collaboratively using a commodity browser. In addition to daily use within our group, the tools are being used successfully by several code development teams in DoD and DoE laboratories.


This thesis addresses the problem of planning and controlling complex tasks in a humanoid robot from a postural point of view. It is motivated by the growth of robotics in our current society, where simple robots are being integrated. Its objective is to make an advancement in the development of complex behaviors in humanoid robots, in order to allow them to share our environment in the future. The work presents different contributions in the areas of humanoid robot postural control, behavior planning, non-linear control, learning from demonstration and reinforcement learning. First, as an introduction of the thesis, a group of methods and mathematical formulations are presented, describing concepts such as humanoid robot modelling, generation of locomotion trajectories and generation of whole-body trajectories. Next, the process of human learning is studied in order to develop a novel method of postural task transference between a human and a robot. It uses the demonstrated action goal as a metrics of comparison, which is codified using the reward associated to the task execution. As an evolution of the previous study, this process is generalized to a set of sequential behaviors, which are executed by the robot based on human demonstrations. Afterwards, the execution of postural movements using a robust control approach is proposed. This method allows to control the desired trajectory even with mismatches in the robot model. Finally, an architecture that encompasses all methods of postural planning and control is presented. It is complemented by an environment recognition module that identifies the free space in order to perform path planning and generate safe movements for the robot. The experimental justification of this thesis was developed using the humanoid robot HOAP-3. Tasks such as walking, standing up from a chair, dancing or opening a door have been implemented using the techniques proposed in this work.


Significance To what extent is brain organization driven by innate genetic constraints, and how dependent is it on individual experience during early development? We show that an area of the visual system that processes both hands and tools can develop without sensorimotor experience in manipulating tools with one's hands. People born without hands show typical hand–tool conjoined activity, in a region connected to the action network. Taken with findings from studies with people born blind, who also show intact hand and tool specialization in the visual system, these findings suggest that no specific sensory or motor experience is crucial for domain-specific organization of visual cortex. Instead, the results suggest that functional brain organization is largely innately determined. The visual occipito-temporal cortex is composed of several distinct regions specialized in the identification of different object kinds such as tools and bodies. Its organization appears to reflect not only the visual characteristics of the inputs but also the behavior that can be achieved with them. For example, there are spatially overlapping responses for viewing hands and tools, which is likely due to their common role in object-directed actions. How dependent is occipito-temporal cortex organization on object manipulation and motor experience? To investigate this question, we studied five individuals born without hands (individuals with upper limb dysplasia), who use tools with their feet. Using fMRI, we found the typical selective hand–tool overlap (HTO) not only in typically developed control participants but also in four of the five dysplasics. Functional connectivity of the HTO in the dysplasics also showed a largely similar pattern as in the controls. The preservation of functional organization in the dysplasics suggests that occipito-temporal cortex specialization is driven largely by inherited connectivity constraints that do not require sensorimotor experience. These findings complement discoveries of intact functional organization of the occipito-temporal cortex in people born blind, supporting an organization largely independent of any one specific sensory or motor experience.


Land & Lee (1994) documented that car drivers direct gaze to the tangent point of the curve when steering a bend. Wann & Land (2000) described how fixating on an appropriate point on the road (tangent of the curve or the path) may simplify the task of steering. The first part of this study revisited Land & Lee, using head-mounted gaze tracking and simulated roadways presented on a 90deg FoV screen. Gaze records were digitized and catalogued by researchers who were not aware of the proposals in Wann & Land. The results suggest that for the majority of the time, during bend steering, gaze is directed to a point on the future path (centre of the road) rather than the tangent point. This experiment was then repeated with a divided attention task, of monitoring both the road and a speed indicator, and similar results were obtained. Finally a series of trials were constructed where gaze location was cued by small transparent indicators that were placed within the scene to test whether stabilizing gaze or fixating on the anticipated path resulted in more accurate control. The general pattern of results suggest that gaze fixation is an important component of controlling steering, but opens a debate as to whether the tangent point or future path have special status.


OBJECTIVE Preoperative depression has been linked to a variety of adverse outcomes following lumbar fusion, including increased pain, disability, and 30-day readmission rates. The goal of the present study was to determine whether preoperative depression is associated with increased narcotic use following lumbar fusion. Moreover, the authors examined the association between preoperative depression and a variety of secondary quality indicator and economic outcomes, including complications, 30-day readmissions, revision surgeries, likelihood of discharge home, and 1- and 2-year costs. METHODS A retrospective analysis was conducted using a national longitudinal administrative database (MarketScan) containing diagnostic and reimbursement data on patients with a variety of private insurance providers and Medicare for the period from 2007 to 2014. Multivariable logistic and negative binomial regressions were performed to assess the relationship between preoperative depression and the primary postoperative opioid use outcomes while controlling for demographic, comorbidity, and preoperative prescription drug-use variables. Logistic and log-linear regressions were also used to evaluate the association between depression and the secondary outcomes of complications, 30-day readmissions, revisions, likelihood of discharge home, and 1- and 2-year costs. RESULTS The authors identified 60,597 patients who had undergone lumbar fusion and met the study inclusion criteria, 4985 of whom also had a preoperative diagnosis of depression and 21,905 of whom had a diagnosis of spondylolisthesis at the time of surgery. A preoperative depression diagnosis was associated with increased cumulative opioid use (β = 0.25, p < 0.001), an increased risk of chronic use (OR 1.28, 95% CI 1.17-1.40), and a decreased probability of opioid cessation (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.95-0.98) following lumbar fusion. In terms of secondary outcomes, preoperative depression was also associated with a slightly increased risk of complications (OR 1.14, 95% CI 1.03-1.25), revision fusions (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.05-1.26), and 30-day readmissions (OR 1.19, 95% CI 1.04-1.36), although it was not significantly associated with the probability of discharge to home (OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.84-1.01). Preoperative depression also resulted in increased costs at 1 (β = 0.06, p < 0.001) and 2 (β = 0.09, p < 0.001) years postoperatively. CONCLUSIONS Although these findings must be interpreted in the context of the limitations inherent to retrospective studies utilizing administrative data, they provide additional evidence for the link between a preoperative diagnosis of depression and adverse outcomes, particularly increased opioid use, following lumbar fusion.


An iteratively decoded variable length space time coded modulation (VL-STCM-ID) scheme capable of simultaneously providing both coding and iteration gain as well as multiplexing and diversity gain is proposed. Non-binary unity-rate precoders are employed for assisting the iterative decoding of the VL-STCM-ID scheme. The discrete-valued source symbols are first encoded into variable-length codewords that are mapped to the spatial and temporal domains. Then the variable-length codewords are interleaved and fed to the precoder assisted modulator. More explicitly, the proposed VL-STCM-ID arrangement is a jointly designed iteratively decoded scheme combining source coding, channel coding, modulation as well as spatial diversity/multiplexing. As expected, the higher the source correlation, the higher the achievable performance gain of the scheme becomes. Furthermore, the performance of the VL-STCM-ID scheme is about 14.6 dB better than that of the fixed length STCM (FL-STCM) benchmarker at a source symbol error ratio of 10-4


Programming by Demonstration offers an intuitive framework for teaching robots how to perform various tasks without having to preprogram them. It also offers an intuitive way to provide corrections and refine teaching during task execution. Previously, mostly position constraints have been taken into account when teaching tasks from demonstrations. In this work, we tackle the problem of teaching tasks that require or can benefit from varying stiffness. This extension is not trivial, as the teacher needs to have a way of communicating to the robot what stiffness it should use. We propose a method by which the teacher can modulate the stiffness of the robot in any direction through physical interaction. The system is incremental and works online, so that the teacher can instantly feel how the robot learns from the interaction. We validate the proposed approach on two experiments on a 7-Dof Barrett WAM arm.


This is the first collection of essays to be published on Durkheim's masterpiece The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. It represents the work of the most important international Durkheim scholars from the fields of anthropology, philosophy and sociology. The essays focus on key topics including: * the method Durkheim adopted in his study * the role of ritual and belief in society * the nature of contemporary religion The contributors also explore cutting-edge debates about the notion of the soul and collective rituals.


Importance of the field: The role of toll-like receptors (TLRs) in the immune response to exogenous pathogens is well characterized. These receptors have been suggested to be involved in the initiation and/or perpetuation of many inflammatory autoimmune diseases and have become attractive candidates for the modulation of inflammation. Areas covered in this review: This review discusses the evidence to support a potential role for TLRs in inflammatory diseases, focusing on rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus. The approaches to targeting TLR activation are outlined. What the reader will gain: An appreciation for the role of TLRs in inflammatory diseases and in particular the contribution of specific TLRs in rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus. This review focuses on recent developments in targeting TLR activity from ligand binding through to the resultant signaling. Take home message: As initiators of immune responses, TLRs have previously been targeted to increase the immune response with some success. However, targeting TLRs to attenuate immune responses for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases will require further evidence of the mechanisms of TLR involvement in the pathophysiology and a better understanding of the potential effects of modulating TLR physiology over a sustained period.


Selection pressures associated with strong environmental gradients on salt marshes pro- vide a mechanism for the genetic subdivision of species. We investigated the importance of differen- tiated habitat niches in explaining the distributions of 2 forms of the halophyte Sarcocornia perennis: ssp. perennis in lower/middle marshes and the Iberian endemic ssp. alpini on more elevated salines. The fundamental niches of the 2 subspecies were investigated at the Odiel marshes, SW Spain with an experimental transplantation to 4 points along an elevation gradient. Subspecies perennis sur- vived at the 3 lower elevations, from + 2.26 to + 2.84 m relative to Spanish Hydrographic Zero (SHZ) and flowered only at the highest of these locations. Subspecies (ssp.) alpini survived only at the 2 higher elevations (+2.84 and + 3.65 m SHZ), flowering only at the highest location. As expected, sed- iment redox potential increased at transplant sites up the marsh, with decreasing tidal submergence; sediment salinity also increased and its water content decreased with increasing elevation. Sediment pH also declined with increasing elevation. Air conditions in the Mediterranean summer become cooler and moister with proximity to the sea. The failure of ssp. alpini to survive below its limit was attributed to its intolerance of increasingly hypoxic, reducing sediments. The failure of ssp. perennis to survive above its limit was associated with hypersalinity and water stress in summer. The funda- mental niches of the 2 subspecies showed limited overlap (i.e. one transplantation site): that of ssp. perennis approximates the realized niche observed in the field but the realized niche of ssp. alpini appears to be more restricted than its fundamental niche.


Segmentation of the left ventricle (LV) in 3D echocardiography is essential to evaluate cardiac function. It is however a challenging task due to the anisotropy of speckle structure and typical artifacts associated with echocardiography. Several methods have been designed to segment the LV in 3D echocardiograms, but the development of more robust algorithms is still actively investigated. In this paper, we propose a new framework combining Structured Random Forests (SRF), a machine learning technique that shows great potential for edge detection, with Active Shape Models and we compare our segmentation results with state-of-the-art algorithms. We have tested our algorithm on the multi-center, multi-vendor CETUS challenge database, consisting of 45 sequences of 3D echocardiographic volumes. Segmentation was performed and evaluated for end-diastolic (ED) and end-systolic (ES) phases. The results show that combining machine learning with a shape model provides a very competitive LV segmentation, with a mean surface distance of 2.04 ± 0.48 mm for ED and 2.18 ± 0.79 mm for ES. The ejection fraction correlation coefficient reaches 0.87. The overall segmentation score outperforms the best results obtained during the challenge, while there is still room for further improvement, e.g. by increasing the size of the training set for the SRF or by implementing an automatic method to initialize our segmentation.


The Royal Hobart Hospital, after due consideration of the reported potential problems, has adopted mobile phones as one of the primary methods of communication within the hospital. Having worked with this system for the past 6 months, I believe it offers significant benefits. An inherent disadvantage of the bleep system is the need to find a phone in order to respond. Using a mobile, a call can be answered from the anaesthetic workstation with far less disruption of, and distraction from, patient care (even when compared to using an extension phone in the theatre or anaesthetic room). This results in much improved ease of communication with other areas of the hospital such as the wards, delivery suite or recovery. If required, summoning senior help is also facilitated. As well as their personal phone, a dedicated mobile is carried by the on-call anaesthetist. This phone's number is widely distributed throughout the hospital, making it very easy for the anaesthetic team to be contacted. Another area where mobiles have a useful role in patient care is during transfers. As part of a paediatric retrieval team (in the UK), I found the ability to contact a consultant back at the base hospital (no matter where they happened to be within that hospital) at the touch of a couple of buttons was useful and reassuring. In this hospital, there have been no reported problems secondary to mobile phones causing interference with medical equipment in theatre. This may be because, in practice, phones are rarely in the close proximity to equipment that has been shown to be associated with electromagnetic interference. The only note of caution is that after keeping my hand-held computer in the same pocket as the phone, my logbook database became corrupted. Overall, I believe that mobile phones contribute positively to patient care by improving lines of communication. Further research and development of the technology with the aim of reducing the risk of interference with medical equipment (which in practice appears low) to zero, would be the ideal for the future and well worth pursuing.


Digital literacy is an important educational topic because most children consume and create digital media regularly. We used procedural rhetoric to iteratively design an educational game for 11--13 year olds about digital literacy topics. We conducted three empirical user studies to evaluate the game's usability and effectiveness throughout the design process. Results from our summative study showed that children's digital literacy knowledge and intended behavior improved significantly immediately after playing the game and one week later. They also found the game usable, fun, and relatable. We present a case study of our design process, and use insights from our work to propose recommendations for designing children's educational games using procedural rhetoric.


We report and describe abundant, well-preserved, parallel-sided, U-shaped spreite burrows ( Rhizocorallium ) in the upper part of the latest Cretaceous into early Paleocene Ferris Formation of south-central Wyoming's Hanna Basin. Rhizocorallium typically is a component of the widely represented ' Cruziana ichnofacies,' principally involving benthic marine environments seaward of the intertidal zone in shallow to offshore settings. Traditionally, this Ferris section has been interpreted as coal-bearing, continental deposits formed after full withdrawal of the Western Interior Seaway from eastern Wyoming and adjacent areas. The burrowed strata overlie fossiliferous rocks diagnostic of parts of the Puercan Land Mammal Age, early Paleocene. At time of burrow formation, and for several million years thereafter, the vicinity of the future Hanna Basin remained as an undivided, eastern component of an enormous, greater Green River Basin that encompassed almost all of Wyoming's southern half. The Rhizocorallium -bearing marine strata represent westward expansion of a previously more restricted Western Interior Seaway that persisted through latest Cretaceous time in what is now the western Great Plains. Even though tidal influences may have affected rapidly aggrading fluvial systems far upstream to the west in Montana and Wyoming, we regard actual Paleocene marine inundations to have been uncommon and geologically ephemeral events as far west as the Hanna Basin.

Diverse fossil assemblages from strata of the Williston Basin, representing the first five million years of Paleocene time, have led to documentation of fully open, marine conditions as the Cannonball Formation was deposited. Stratigraphic distribution of fossils within the Cannonball shows persistence of the Western Interior Seaway in the northern Western Interior through the Cretaceous, followed by expansion (renamed the 'Cannonball Sea') during early Paleocene time. Connections of that seaway to the south, however, remain poorly understood because of later Cenozoic massive erosion of any Paleocene rock record that had existed south of the borderland between the Dakotas. No Paleocene localities in southern Wyoming or Colorado have yet yielded assemblages of marine invertebrate body fossils or microfossils as known from the Williston Basin. No verifiable means, therefore, have been recognized to characterize the Paleocene marine record of the Hanna Basin in terms of species uniquely shared with the Cannonball biota. Short-lived, Paleocene seaway excursions into the Hanna Basin may have been: (1) direct and exclusively from the Gulf Coast; (2) solely from the Cannonball Sea, with seaway contiguity east of the emerging Black Hills; or (3) initiated from a more extensive, midcontinental seaway connecting the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Substantial structural uplift of the Laramie Mountains prior to mid-Paleocene time would have precluded even brief westward pulses of marine inundation into the vicinity of the presumptive Hanna Basin.


Although angels are typically associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ancient Angels demonstrates that angels (angeloi) were also a prominent feature of non-Abrahamic religions in the Roman era. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the study uses literary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence to examine Roman conceptions of angels, how residents of the empire venerated angels, and how Christian authorities responded to this potentially heterodox aspect of Roman religion. The book brings together the evidence for popular beliefs about angels in Roman religion, demonstrating the widespread nature of speculation about, and veneration of, angels in the Roman Empire


Abstract. The Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University operates the Esrange Rayleigh/Raman lidar at Esrange (68° N, 21° E) near the Swedish city of Kiruna. This paper describes the design and first measurements of the new pure rotational-Raman channel of the Esrange lidar. The Esrange lidar uses a pulsed Nd:YAG solid-state laser operating at 532 nm as light source with a repetition rate of 20 Hz and a pulse energy of 350 mJ. The minimum vertical resolution is 150 m and the integration time for one profile is 5000 shots. The newly implemented channel allows for measurements of atmospheric temperature at altitudes below 35 km and is currently optimized for temperature measurements between 180 and 200 K. This corresponds to conditions in the lower Arctic stratosphere during winter. In addition to the temperature measurements, the aerosol extinction coefficient and the aerosol backscatter coefficient at 532 nm can be measured independently. Our filter-based design minimizes the systematic error in the obtained temperature profile to less than 0.51 K. By combining rotational-Raman measurements (5–35 km height) and the integration technique (30–80 km height), the Esrange lidar is now capable of measuring atmospheric temperature profiles from the upper troposphere up to the mesosphere. With the improved setup, the system can be used to validate current lidar-based polar stratospheric cloud classification schemes. The new capability of the instrument measuring temperature and aerosol extinction furthermore enables studies of the thermal structure and variability of the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere. Although several lidars are operated at polar latitudes, there are few instruments that are capable of measuring temperature profiles in the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere, as well as aerosols extinction in the troposphere and lower stratosphere with daylight capability.


This column provides information on accreditation for nursing programs of all types. Readers may submit questions to the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission. General questions of interest to a wide audience will be addressed in this column, whereas more specific questions or those requiring confidentiality will be answered directly.


Abstract Shock caused by impacts can convert carbonaceous material to diamond. During this transition, new materials can form that depend on the structure of the starting carbonaceous materials and the shock conditions. Here we report the discovery of cage-like nanostructured carbonaceous materials, including carbon nano-onions and bucky-diamonds, formed through extraterrestrial impacts in the Gujba (CBa) meteorite. The nano-onions are fullerene-type materials and range from 5 to 20 nm; the majority shows a graphitic core-shell structure, and some are characterized by fully curved, onion-like graphitic shells. The core is either filled with carbonaceous material or empty. We show the first, natural, 4 nm sized bucky-diamond, which is a type of carbon nano-onion consisting of multilayer graphitic shells surrounding a diamond core. We propose that the nano-onions formed during shock metamorphism, either the shock or the release wave, of the pre-existing primitive carbonaceous material that included nanodiamonds, poorly ordered graphitic material, and amorphous carbonaceous nanospheres. Bucky-diamonds could have formed either through the high-pressure transformation of nano-onions, or as an intermediate material in the high-temperature transformation of nanodiamond to nano-onion. Impact processing of planetary materials was and is a common process in our solar system, and by extension, throughout extrasolar planetary bodies. Together with our previous discovery of interstratified graphite-diamond in Gujba, our new findings extend the range of nano-structured carbonaceous materials formed in nature. Shock-formed nano-onions and bucky-diamonds are fullerene-type structures, and as such they could contribute to the astronomical 217.5 nm absorption feature.


The studies presented here evaluate the biliary, parenchymal and vascular enhancement effects of two T1-shortening liver-specific contrast agents, Gd-BOPTA and Gd-EOB-DTPA, in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of healthy subjects and of patients. Ten healthy volunteers were examined with both contrast agents in a 1.5 T MRI system using three-dimensional gradient echo sequences for dynamic imaging until five hours after injection. The enhancement of the common hepatic duct in contrast to the liver parenchyma was analyzed in the first study. This was followed by a study of the image contrasts of the hepatic artery, portal vein and middle hepatic vein versus the liver parenchyma. While Gd-EOB-DTPA gave an earlier and more prolonged enhancement and image contrast of the bile duct, Gd-BOPTA achieved higher maximal enhancement and higher image contrast for all vessels studied during the arterial and portal venous phases. There was no significant difference in the maximal enhancement obtained in the liver parenchyma. In a third study, another 10 healthy volunteers were examined with the same protocol in another 1.5 T MRI system. Using signal normalization and a more quantitative, pharmacokinetic analysis, the hepatocyte-specific uptake of Gd-EOB-DTPA and Gd-BOPTA was calculated. A significant between-subjects correlation of the uptake estimates was found and the ratio of these uptake rates was of the same magnitude as has been reported in pre-clinical studies. The procedure also enabled quantitative analysis of vascular enhancement properties of these agents. Gd-BOPTA was found to give higher vessel-to-liver contrast than Gd-EOB-DTPA when recommended doses were given. In the final study, retrospectively gathered datasets from patients with hepatobiliary disease were analyzed using the quantitative estimation of hepatic uptake of Gd-EOB-DTPA described in the third study. The uptake rate estimate provided significant predictive ability in separating normal from disturbed hepatobiliary function, which is promising for future evaluations of regional and global liver disease. In conclusion, the differing dynamic enhancement profiles of the liver-specific contrast agents presented here can be beneficial in one context and challenging in another. Diseases of the liver and biliary system may affect the vasculature, parenchyma or biliary excretion, or a combination of these. The clinical context in terms of the relative importance of vascular, hepatic parenchymal and biliary processes should therefore determine the contrast agent for each patient and examination. A quantitative approach to analysis of contrast-enhanced liver MRI examinations is feasible and may prove valuable for their interpretation.


Melatonin has shown the potential to inhibit growth of different tumors, both in vitro and in vivo. There is clear evidence that the administration of melatonin alone or in combination with chemo and radiotherapy in cancer patients with advanced solid tumors has been associated with improved outcomes of tumor regression and survival. Moreover, chemotherapy has been shown to be better tolerated in patients treated with melatonin. However, there are different ways of preparation and administration of melatonin to the patient. This review article aims to offer the insight into the preparation, biological features and clinical findings in its use in cancer patients. Melatonin (MLT) can only be solubilized in water at 40-45 °C; at other temperatures it can only be solubilized in alcohol. It is absorbed in the human body complexed with adenosine by a hydrogen bond. It acts on two common denominators: proliferation and differentiation; in addition to anticancer homeostasis, MLT has a documented antidegenerative and immunomodulatory role. It also plays an important role in limiting oxidative stress, affecting blood and bone marrow constituent ratio, leukocyte formula regulation, hemoglobin synthesis, platelet genesis, aggregation and in erythrocyte resistance. Despite of all these important roles, most well-known features are probably the least important ones, such as sleep and wakefulness regulation and its effect on jet lag. In the preparation formulated by Prof. Di Bella, melatonin with adenosine at a ratio of 1:4, stabilized with 30% of glycine (MLT-DBM), has been used since 1994 in many patients with various indications and positive therapeutic responses and a total absence of toxicity. This method can be a good alternative to commercially produced preparations, as it was scientifically proved and published worldwide at conferences and in various medical journals.


Correlation of continental shelf-slope stratigraphy in Santa Monica Bay (southern California) with Ocean Drilling Program records for nearby slope-basin sites has illuminated the timing and scale of terrigenous sediment dispersal on margin since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Marine flooding surfaces preserved in a transgressive sequence on the Santa Monica Shelf provide a key link between base-level elevation and sediment transport across shelf. Sediment-accumulation rates at slope-basin sites were maximal ca. 15–10 ka, well after the LGM, decreased during the 12–9 ka transition from fluvial-estuarine to fully marine conditions on the shelf, and decelerated throughout the Holocene to 30%–75% of their values at the LGM. The deceleration is interpreted to manifest a landward shift in the margin depocenter with the onset of transgressive sedimentation beginning when sea level surmounted the shelf edge ca. 13 ka, as predicted by sequence-stratigraphic models. However, the records make clear that factors other than base level modulated slope-basin accumulation rates during the deglaciation.


Background Breast milk is the ideal food for infants. According to the 2007 Indonesian National Household Health Survey, only 23% of mothers exclusively breastfeed for six months. Objectives To determine the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in Indonesia, to evaluate factors associated with infant feeding practices, and to compare the nutritional and developmental status between exclusively-breastfed and formula-fed infants. Methods A survey was conducted in hospitals located in 17 provinces in Indonesia. The rate of exclusive breastfeeding was calculated. Many variables were investigated as potential predictors for exclusive breastfeeding using a multivariable logistic regression analysis. Further analysis was performed to compare the nutritional and developmental status between exclusively breastfed and formula-fed infants at the time of survey. Results From 1,804 infant subjects, the overall rate of exclusive breastfeeding was 46.3%, ranging from 10.5% in East Java to 66.9% in Jambi. Predominant breastfeeding, complementary feeding, and formula feeding rates were 14.3%, 8.6%, and 30.7%, respectively. Maternal unemployment was associated with a longer duration of breastfeeding (P=0.000). There were significantly more formula-fed infants who were undernourished compared to exclusively-breastfed infants (14% vs. 8%, P=0.001). There were also significantly more infants in the formula-fed group who had abnormal head circumference compared to those in the exclusively-breastfed group (9% vs. 6%, P=0.031). Child development, as assessed by the Pre-screening Developmental Questionnaire, was similar between the two groups (P=0.996). Conclusion The overall rate of exclusive breastfeeding in Indonesia is 46.3%. Maternal unemployment is associated with longer duration of breastfeeding. Exclusive breastfed infants have significant better growth and head circumference compared to formula fed infants, while the development is similar between the two groups.


The microlensing event OGLE-2008-BLG-510 is characterized by an evident asymmetric shape of the peak, promptly detected by the Automated Robotic Terrestrial Exoplanet Microlensing Search (ARTEMiS) system in real time. The skewness of the light curve appears to be compatible both with binary-lens and binary-source models, including the possibility that the lens system consists of an M dwarf orbited by a brown dwarf. The detection of this
microlensing anomaly and our analysis demonstrate that: (1) automated real-time detection of weak microlensing anomalies with immediate feedback is feasible, efficient and sensitive, (2)
rather common weak features intrinsically come with ambiguities that are not easily resolved from photometric light curves, (3) a modelling approach that finds all features of parameter
space rather than just the 'favourite model' is required and (4) the data quality is most crucial, where systematics can be confused with real features, in particular small higher order
effects such as orbital motion signatures. It moreover becomes apparent that events with weak signatures are a silver mine for statistical studies, although not easy to exploit. Clues about
the apparent paucity of both brown-dwarf companions and binary-source microlensing events might hide here.


An all-digitally implemented 1st order and a 2nd order time-mode ΔΣ ADCs are proposed and presented in this dissertation. Each proposed ΔΣ ADC consists of a voltage-to- time integration converter, a seven-stage gated ring oscillator functioning as a 3-bit quantizer, and a 7-stage digital differentiator that provides noise-shaping and frequency feedback. The 2nd order architecture differs from the 1st order by cascading two digital differentiators. The 2nd order design improves noise-shaping characteristic and SNDR. However it does not effectively suppress the harmonic tones due to the non-linear effect of the circuit components. Thus a detailed analysis of the nonlinear characteristics of the modulator is conducted. Designed in IBM 130 nm 1.2 V CMOS technology and with a 100 kHz 100 mV input, the 1st order time-mode ΔΣ ADC exhibits an SNDR of 45.5 dB over 0.4 MHz bandwidth with power dissipation of 1.1mW. In comparison, the 2nd order ADC provides 54.8 dB SNDR, which equivalently offers an ENOB of 8.8 and it consumes 1.45 mW RMS power. The figure- of-merit of the 2nd order time-mode ΔΣ ADC is 407 pJ/step. Since the order of the system cannot be increased by simply cascading more differentiator stages, a time-mode ΔΣ ADC architecture employing a time-mode loop filter is suggested in the last chapter. Several key building blocks including a time amplifier, time register and time adder for implementing such a loop filter are presented. The time amplifier has an input dynamic range of 50ps and provides a gain of 20. The implemented time register has a dynamic range of 5ns and a peak error of 2% over the 5ns full scale. The time adder remains high accuracy as long as the input time difference is no greater than 1:6ns.


Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. That's who I am," says Haing Ngor. And in his memoir, Survival in the Killing Fields, he tells the gripping and frequently terrifying story of his term in the hell created by the communist Khmer Rouge. Like Dith Pran, the Cambodian doctor and interpreter whom Ngor played in an Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields, Ngor lived through the atrocities that the 1984 film portrayed. Like Pran, too, Ngor was a doctor by profession, and he experienced firsthand his country's wretched descent, under the Khmer Rouge, into senseless brutality, slavery, squalor, starvation, and diseaseall of which are recounted in sometimes unimaginable horror in Ngor's poignant memoir. Since the original publication of this searing personal chronicle, Haing Ngor's life has ended with his murder, which has never been satisfactorily solved. In an epilogue written especially for this new edition, Ngor's coauthor, Roger Warner, offers a glimpse into this complex, enigmatic man's last yearsyears that he lived "like his country: scarred, and incapable of fully healing. "


This paper describes a first year engineering course that is taken by both engineering and non-engineering students. The project-based Introduction to Engineering course, EAS107P, fulfills a university core curriculum elective. Although engineering students take the course during their first year, students from other majors typically elect to take the course later in their curriculum. The focus of EAS107P is to have students experience the engineering design and problem solving process in a multi-disciplinary, team-based setting. In addition to learning about design, students develop an interest in the engineering profession and build a foundation of skills for future work. An additional expectation for engineering students is that they gain a basic understanding of engineering foundation topics, such as basic circuits, mechanics, and programming concepts. Students` understanding of these topics is enhanced as they are revisited along the " Multi-Disciplinary Engineering Foundation Spiral" . Non-engineering students benefit by learning how to apply the engineering methodology to solving problems and by developing a greater understanding of how engineering contributes to society. Students develop skills in problem solving, teamwork and technical communication through a series of projects that showcase the primary engineering disciplines. Each project emphasizes a different step or aspect of the design process, including computer simulation, optimization, and construction of physical models. Typical projects include the design, construction and testing of bridges based on the West Point Bridge Design program; development of characteristic curves for fuel cell system; building and programming robots to maneuver through an obstacle course, and solid 3-D modeling of puzzle cubes. For each project, pre-and post-tests are used to evaluate the student's increased understanding of concepts. This paper provides details of the project modules and summarizes our experiences to date using this active learning style. Pilot versions of this course have been offered since Fall 2002 with positive feedback.


Car ownership is set to triple by 2050, trucking activity will double and air travel could increase fourfold. This book examines how to enable mobility without accelerating climate change.  It finds that if we change the way we travel, adopt technologies to improve vehicle efficiency and shift to low-CO2 fuels, we can move onto a different pathway  where transport CO2 emissions by 2050 are far below current levels, at costs that are lower than many assume.
The report discusses the prospects for shifting more travel to the most efficient modes and reducing travel growth rates, improving vehicle fuel efficiency by up to 50% using cost-effective, incremental technologies, and moving toward electricity, hydrogen, and advanced biofuels to achieve a more secure and sustainable transport future. If governments implement strong policies to achieve this scenario, transport can play its role and dramatically reduce CO2 emissions by 2050.


The study of protein expression profiles for biomarker discovery in serum and in
mammalian cell populations needs the continuous improvement and combination of
proteins/peptides separation techniques, mass spectrometry, statistical and bioinformatic
approaches.
In this thesis work two different mass spectrometry-based protein profiling strategies have
been developed and applied to liver and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) for the
discovery of new biomarkers.
The first of them, based on bulk solid-phase extraction combined with matrix-assisted laser
desorption/ionization - Time of Flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and
chemometric analysis of serum samples, was applied to the study of serum protein
expression profiles both in IBDs (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis) and in liver
diseases (cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, viral hepatitis).
The approach allowed the enrichment of serum proteins/peptides due to the high
interaction surface between analytes and solid phase and the high recovery due to the
elution step performed directly on the MALDI-target plate. Furthermore the use of
chemometric algorithm for the selection of the variables with higher discriminant power
permitted to evaluate patterns of 20-30 proteins involved in the differentiation and
classification of serum samples from healthy donors and diseased patients. These proteins
profiles permit to discriminate among the pathologies with an optimum classification and
prediction abilities. In particular in the study of inflammatory bowel diseases, after the
analysis using C18 of 129 serum samples from healthy donors and Crohn's disease,
ulcerative colitis and inflammatory controls patients, a 90.7% of classification ability and a
72.9% prediction ability were obtained. In the study of liver diseases (hepatocellular
carcinoma, viral hepatitis and cirrhosis) a 80.6% of prediction ability was achieved using
IDA-Cu(II) as extraction procedure. The identification of the selected proteins by MALDITOF/
TOF MS analysis or by their selective enrichment followed by enzymatic digestion
and MS/MS analysis may give useful information in order to identify new biomarkers
involved in the diseases.
The second mass spectrometry-based protein profiling strategy developed was based on a
label-free liquid chromatography electrospray ionization quadrupole - time of flight
differential analysis approach (LC ESI-QTOF MS), combined with targeted MS/MS
analysis of only identified differences. The strategy was used for biomarker discovery in
IBDs, and in particular of Crohn's disease. The enriched serum peptidome and the
subcellular fractions of intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) from healthy donors and Crohn's
disease patients were analysed.
The combining of the low molecular weight serum proteins enrichment step and the LCMS
approach allowed to evaluate a pattern of peptides derived from specific exoprotease
activity in the coagulation and complement activation pathways. Among these peptides,
particularly interesting was the discovery of clusters of peptides from fibrinopeptide A,
Apolipoprotein E and A4, and complement C3 and C4. Further studies need to be
performed to evaluate the specificity of these clusters and validate the results, in order to
develop a rapid serum diagnostic test.
The analysis by label-free LC ESI-QTOF MS differential analysis of the subcellular
fractions of IECs from Crohn's disease patients and healthy donors permitted to find many
proteins that could be involved in the inflammation process. Among them heat shock
protein 70, tryptase alpha-1 precursor and proteins whose upregulation can be explained
by the increased activity of IECs in Crohn's disease were identified. Follow-up studies for
the validation of the results and the in-depth investigation of the inflammation pathways
involved in the disease will be performed.
Both the developed mass spectrometry-based protein profiling strategies have been
proved to be useful tools for the discovery of disease biomarkers that need to be validated
in further studies.


Background The development of comorbidities has become increasingly relevant with longer-term cancer survival. Objective To assess the pattern of comorbidities among Australian women with breast cancer treated with tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor. Design Retrospective cohort study using Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) data (10% sample) from January 2003 to December 2014. Dispensing claims data were used to identify comorbidities and classified with the Rx-Risk-V model. The breast cancer cohort had tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor dispensed between 2004 and 2011 with no switching between types of endocrine therapy. Comparisons were made between the breast cancer cohort and specific control groups (age- and sex-matched at 1:10 ratio without any dispensing of anti-neoplastic agents during the study period) for the development of five individual comorbidities over time using Cox regression models. Results Women treated with tamoxifen had a higher incidence of cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, and pain or pain-inflammation, but a lower incidence of hyperlipidaemia compared with non-cancer control groups, as indicated by PBS data. Women treated with aromatase inhibitors were more likely to develop cardiovascular conditions, osteoporosis, and pain or pain-inflammation compared with non-cancer control groups. The risks of hyperlipidaemia and osteoporosis were significantly lower among tamoxifen users compared with aromatase inhibitor users. Conclusions Women with hormone-dependent breast cancer treated with an endocrine therapy had a higher risk of developing specified comorbid conditions than women without cancer, with different comorbidity profiles for those on tamoxifen versus aromatase inhibitors. Further research into the causes and mechanism of development and management of comorbidities after cancer is needed.


If one is convinced that " quantitative research provides data not interpretation " [Moretti, 2005, 9], close reading should thus be considered as not only the necessary bridge between big data and interpretation but also the core duty of the Humanities. To test its potential in a neglected field – the Arabic manuscripts of the Letters of Paul of Tarsus – an enhanced, digital edition has been in development as a progression of a Swiss National Fund project. This short paper presents the development of this edition and perspectives regarding a second project. Based on the Edition Visualization Technology tool, the digital edition provides a transcription of the Arabic text, a standardized and vocalized version, as well as French translation with all texts encoded in TEI XML. Thanks to another Swiss National Foundation subsidy, a new research project on the unique New Testament, trilingual (Greek-Latin-Arabic) manuscript, the Marciana Library Gr. Z. 11 (379), 12th century, is currently underway. This project includes new features such as " Textlink " , " Hotspot " and notes: HumaReC.


Background: Autoimmune diseases are a group of disorders with heterogeneity in epidemiology and in clinical phenotype, characterized by tissue and organ damage as a result of auto attack against self antigens. Vitamin D receptors have not only been identified in tissues that take part in calcium homeostasis, but also in a variety of cell groups that mainly interfere in immune regulation. Epidemiological evidence has shown that low levels of vitamin D are related with various autoimmune diseases. The aim of our study was to compare vitamin D levels in patients with autoimmune diseases and in healthy controls. Materials and Methods: The sample group consisted of 100 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of an autoimmune disease and 40 healthy volunteers. Use of medications or treatments that decrease vitamin D levels or interfere with mass bone loss was a strict exclusion criterion. Results: Study results demonstrated statistically significant differences in vitamin D levels between patients and healthy controls, regardless of possible confounders such as gender, as well as complement C3, complement C4 and serum calcium levels. Since these factors presented statistically significant differences between patients and healthy controls, they were selected as potential confounders. Other clinical or demographic characteristics which significantly affect vitamin D levels in patients were not observed. Conclusions: Overall, this study highlights the significant role of Vitamin D in autoimmune disease development for the first time in the Greek population. A statistically significant difference in vitamin D levels between patients and healthy controls was observed.


Government statistical agencies and other organizations publish data on the World Wide Web, making it available to users through browser-based tools. As a result, many data users with little experience working with statistical information now have online access to these data. Findings of usability tests of three Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data access tools revealed usability problems in three categories: insufficient guidance or instructions for tool use, unclear data naming and database organization, and unsystematic interface organization. Specific instances of each problem class are provided, and methods for resolving these types of usability problems are proposed.


Abstract. Observations of NO, NO2, total peroxy nitrates (ΣPNs), total alkyl nitrates (ΣANs), HNO3, CO, O3, and meteorological parameters were obtained from October 2000 through February 2002 at 1315 m a.s.l., 38.9° N, 120.6° W on Sierra Pacific Industries land, adjacent to the University of California Blodgett Forest Research Station (UC-BFRS). We describe the data set with emphasis on the diurnal cycles during summertime 2001. We show that transport of the Sacramento urban plume is a primary factor responsible for diurnal variation in total reactive nitrogen mixing ratios as well as in NOx, ΣPNs and ΣANs, all of which exhibit a late afternoon/early evening peak. In contrast, HNO3 has a peak just after local noon indicating that HNO3 is in near steady state during the day with production due to photochemistry and removal by deposition and mixing with the background free troposphere. Boundary layer dynamics influence mixing ratios of all species in the early morning. Analysis of the morning feature suggests that higher mixing ratios of NOx and HNO3 persist in the residual layer than in the nocturnal boundary layer indicating the presence of nocturnal sinks of both species. Nighttime observations also indicate large HNO3 and ΣANs production through oxidation of alkenes by NO3.


Babrius is the reputed author of a collection (discovered in the 19th century) of more than 125 fables based on those called Aesop's, in Greek verse. He may have been a hellenised Roman living in Asia Minor during the late 1st century of our era. The fables are all in one metre and in very good style, humorous and pointed. Some are original. Phaedrus, born in Macedonia, flourished in the early half of the 1st century of our era. Apparently a slave set free by the emperor Augustus, he lived in Italy and began to write Aesopian fables. When he offended Sejanus, a powerful official of the emperor Tiberius, he was punished but not silenced. The fables, in five books, are in lively terse and simple Latin verse not lacking in dignity. They not only amuse and teach but also satirise social and political life in Rome. This edition includes a comprehensive analytical Survey of Greek and Latin fables in the Aesopic tradition, as well as a historical introduction.


This study reports the management practices and strategies of wholesale nursery operations in Arizona. In this desert environment near large California competitors, Arizona firms attempt to differentiate their products and develop market niches as competitive strategies. Xeriscape using low-water-use plants is an evolving specialty product of the industry. Future industry and public education concerning xeriscape is necessary to strengthen this strategic advantage for these firms.


A corticolimbic circuit including the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) affects sensitivity to threat, related aspects of personality and risk for psychopathology. Serotonin (5‐HT) is a potent neuromodulator of this circuit, however, 5‐HT receptors mediating these effects and genetic sources of variability in 5‐HT receptor availability are not understood. We determined the association between 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A binding and the response to threat within this corticolimbic circuit using a multimodal neuroimaging strategy in humans in vivo. Corticolimbic circuit function was assessed with a threat‐related faces matching paradigm using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Regional 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A binding was assessed with [11C]WAY100635 and [18F]altanserin PET, respectively. We evaluated the association between receptor binding and common polymorphisms (rs6295, rs6311 and 5‐HTTLPR) in 5‐HT related genes.In Study 1 we found that 5‐HT1A binding within the dorsal raphe nucleus was inversely associated with threat‐related amygdala reactivity. This is consistent with 5‐HT1A autoreceptors negatively regulating 5‐HT release, which within the amygdalapotentiates its response to threat. In Study 2 we found that mPFC 5‐HT2A binding was inversely associated with threat‐related amygdala reactivity and positively associated with amygdala habituation and amygdala‐mPFC functional connectivity. In Study 3 we found that mPFC 5‐HT1A binding significantly moderated the inverse association between mPFC 5‐HT2A binding and amygdala reactivity.These findings are consistent with the co‐localization of 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A on glutamatergic neurons within mPFC indicating the 5‐HT2A receptor is localized to facilitate regulation of the amygdala and the 5‐HT1A receptor is localized to moderate its effects within mPFC. In Study 4 we found that 5‐HTTLPR genotype predicted 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A binding in brain regions within this circuit such that the S and LG alleles were associated with reduced 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A binding.These findings provide novel insight into mechanisms that mediate the effects of 5‐HT signaling on the response to threat of a key corticolimbic circuit in humans. Our findings indicate that 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A receptors contribute significantly to threat‐related corticolimbic circuit function in humans. Furthermore, the 5‐HTTLPR may contribute to individual variability in neural and behavioral sensitivity to threat by biasing 5‐HT1A and 5‐HT2A availability.