More and more older people are using smartphones or tablet computers; for many it is a viable substitute for a normal mobile phone, or even an entry into the new digital age. With mobile devices, older people can use mobile Internet at home or on the move. Smartphones and tablets allow mobile access to information and  communication, so it provides a mobile guide for older adults in their daily lives. But what is the level of acceptance and use of mobile Internet in the older population, and what factors influence the use of these devices? This paper examined older Swiss peoples' acceptance of and attitudes toward the use of smartphones and tablet computers, as well as mobile Internet. A representative study was conducted: a Swiss survey of 1,037 people aged 65 and older. 56% of the older people interviewed used the Internet in the autumn of 2014. 32% of the interviewed owned a smartphone and 26% a tablet computer. Between the age groups and the sociodemographic groups a divide by the mobile devices was found. 34% of Internet users also use mobile Internet. The data showed that, beside lower age,  technological affinity and general attitude towards the Internet are positively  associated with the use of mobile Internet. The research also showed that many mobile Internet users describe the use of their smartphone as a resource for coping with daily living.


The marketplace in which manufacturing firms are operating becomes more competitive. The Malaysian manufacturers become more internationally competitive by outperforming their international competitors in terms of one or more
of the competitive priorities. The previous studies show that the MPC practices of manufacturing firms are essential for achieving and leading to the success of the companies' performance and competitiveness. Currently there is lack of
internationally published studies on the use of MPC practices in the Malaysian manufacturing industries, particularly studies on the extensiveness of MPC practices
usage. It is very important to assess the current trend of MPC practices of the Malaysian manufacturers in order to establish how extensive they are using the MPC practices to meet the competitive demand of the marketplace. The sample population was identified and selected from the Standard and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SlRIM) 1999 Directory. The current information on MPC practices were gathered using the modified version of the Wbybark and Rho
(1993) survey questionnaire from. the manufacturing firms across several industries. The survey questionnaires were distributed via mail to 870 manufacturing firms scattered all over Malaysia. Only, 86 manufacturers responded to this study, yielding a response rate of 9.9 per cent The information provided by the manufacturers was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS).
The statistical data analysis shows that the manufacturers are customer-driven and responsive. They are extensively using a set of MPC practices that have been identified as essential for achieving and leading to the success of the companies' performance and competitiveness. They are also using the approaches for MPC practices which are similar to those used in other countries. Based on the Bivariate Correlations analysis, the factors taken into consideration are different depending on the specific MPC practice. The non-parametric Mann Whitney test, shows that there are differences due to firm size in several areas of the approaches for MPC practices. For further improvement of their MPC practices and competitiveness, the Malaysian
manufacturers are advised to use the approaches comprehensively. In future studies, more manufacturers should involve themselves. In addition, future studies should also be done on assessing the companies' performance and competitiveness.


Gaia in Turmoil is the latest collaborative work put forth by the interdisciplinary group of Gaian thinkers. The contributors set out to meaningfully grapple with the bewildering ecological and social crises that humanity faces in this young century. Their work clearly rests on the assumption that such crises not only exist, but are dire—a conviction that unifies the essays in Gaia in Turmoil. By demonstrating how Gaia theory can advance various research projects, Gaia in Turmoil is an alarmist plea to integrate the Gaian perspective into mainstream thought as the next watershed paradigm through which humanity can survive and prosper.


Research into tactical psychology has found remarkable effects on opponent willingness and ability to fight from applying apparently simple techniques. Combining threats causes indecision and inaction, more than doubling the number of opponents surrendering. Flanking give an obvious sign that the opponents are unlikely to succeed and more than trebles the number withdrawing from combat. Proximity -getting close to the enemy- once the first two effects are achieved, allows interpersonal non-verbal negotiation which 'seals the deal'. This rapidly ends the engagement in favour of the attacker (Rooney, Bennett and Salt, 2018). However, these findings are merely indicative, being based on small opportunity samples using assessment techniques that do not account for operational and strategic level effects. This PhD study is examining over 100 armed engagements from a single operation to apply robust statistical tests to more reliable and valid measures. The findings will provide a clearer picture of the effects of tactical psychology and the obstacles to applying it, informing UK tactical doctrine and collective training to greatly increase operational effectiveness.


Echinoderms display unique and complex patterns of locomotion that are not well understood biomechanically. In particular, they often use fluid-filled podia, or tube feet, to move. Although the gait of seastars is typically described as 'crawling,' recent research has characterized a novel bouncing gait in the Indo-Pacific seastar Protoreaster nodosum, finding that it is associated with faster horizontal speeds (Ellers et al., 2014). Only one other study, Montgomery & Palmer (2012), observed a similar up and down movement during locomotion of the seastar Patiria miniata; however, that study had no interpretation of this movement's function. Thus, it is not known how widespread the bouncing gait is in seastars. We discovered that the bouncing gait also occurs in the Atlantic seastars Asterias forbesi and Asterias rubens, suggesting that this gait may be widely used. Through motion analysis of videos of seastars, we discovered that the bouncing gait of Asterias was similar to that of Protoreaster. For example, in both species, kinetic and potential energy were in phase similar to terrestrial running, bouncing increased speed, and groups of podia were coordinated to push together during a bounce. For Protoreaster, on average each podia contributed to a push every third bounce; whereas for Asterias preliminary analysis suggests that the average number of bounces between a given podia's push occurred over longer intervals and was less regular. Taken together, our study supports the hypothesis that a bouncing gait driven by coordinated podial pushes may function in escape locomotion among broadly distributed seastars.


Boron isotope composition was used to identify boron sources in groundwater in the eastern part of central Italy, on the west side of the lower alluvial plane of the Pescara river, a few kilometres from the coastline. This area was characterized by two possible boron sources: human activity and a geogenic source. We collected 10 water samples during two sampling surveys, in October 2015 and February 2016. We conducted chemical analyses to determine major ions, boron concentrations and boron isotope values. The results obtained highlight that the groundwater is characterized by high mineralization with electrical conductivity values that reach 8180 µS/cm. Sodium and chloride are the principal ions, reaching values that exceed 3000 mg/L. Boron values exceed the limit provide by Italian legislation for groundwater (1 mg/L) in many samples, reaching the maximum value of 9630 µg/L during February 2016. The isotope values allow the identification of different sources of boron such as landfill leachate, rock leaching and water–rock interaction with terrigenous–evaporitic sequence. This manuscript highlights that isotope analyses are a powerful tool for monitoring and environmental planning.


The perception of lack of control over resources deployed in the cloud may represent one of the critical factors for an organization to decide to cloudify or not its own services. The flat security features offered by commercial cloud providers to every customer, from simple practitioners to managers of huge amounts of sensitive data and services, is an additional problem. In recent years, the concept of Security Service Level Agreements (Security SLAs) is assuming a key role for the secure provisioning of cloud resources and services.

This paper illustrates how to develop cloud applications that deliver services covered by Security SLAs by means of the services and tools provided by the SPECS framework, developed in the context of the SPECS (Secure Provisioning of Cloud Services based on SLA Management) European Project. The whole (SPECS) application life cycle is dealt with, in order to give a comprehensive view of the different parties involved and of the processes needed to offer security guarantees on top of cloud services.
The discussed development process is exemplified by means of a real-world case study consisting in a cloud application offering a secure web container service.


Trichomonas gallinae is the flagellated protozoan parasite belongs to the category of zoomastigophorea, and order of trichomonadida. This parasite is located in the upper section of the gastrointestinal tract of numerous birds such as pigeons, chickens, eagles. Nitroimidazole compounds are carcinogenic, therefore is prohibited their use in veterinary medicine. . The aim of this study was to examine the effect of 6 herbals medicine extract on Trichomonas gallinae in vitro. The effect of different concentrations (1.25, 2.5 and 5 mg/ml) of extracts of Quercus Persica, Allium sativum, Artemisia annua, Myrtus commuis, Zataria multiflora, Rosmarinus officinalis was compared with metronidazole in 2, 4, 6, 18, 24, 48 and 72 hours after treating using trypan blue and eosin staining as vital stain. Sensitive of T. gallinae to the oak extract 2 mg/mL in 2 hours was more than the others and was close to the effect of metronidazole. In contrast to garlic extract did not show any sensitivity. The effect of the other extracts was between two mentioned extract. According to the results, the most effective extract on the trichomonas parasite was the oak fruit extract and then the rosemary extract. It is suggested, the study is also examined in vivo and if it was effective, used for the treatment of trichomoniasis in birds after the complementary studies.


Following passage of health care reform in Massachusetts, the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), a public safety-net health system, began to establish an account- able care organization in an effort to continue its mission and remain financially solvent. In examining how CHA undertook its delivery system transformation, this case study explores the organization's four major strategies: establishing patient-centered medical homes, enter- ing alternative payment arrangements with managed care organizations, launching complex care management, and establishing a partnership with a tertiary care institution. Workforce education and culture change were also core principles. Within two years, CHA had already received National Committee for Quality Assurance patient-centered medical home recog- nition for six of its primary care sites, and quality metrics demonstrate improvements in these sites compared with others. Moreover, utilization in one managed care organization is trending downward. Challenges persist, however, due in part to fiscal pressures created by state health care reform.


The H ii complex N 44 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) provides an excellent site to perform a detailed study of star formation in a mild starburst, as it hosts three regions of star formation at different evolutionary stages, and it is not as complicated and confusing as the 30 Doradus giant H ii region. We have obtained Spitzer Space Telescope observations and complementary ground-based 4 m uBVIJK observations of N 44 to identify candidate massive young stellar objects (YSOs). We further classify the YSOs into Types I, II, and III, according to their spectral energy distributions (SEDs). In our sample of 60 YSO candidates, ∼65% of them are resolved into multiple components or extended sources in high-resolution ground-based images. We have modeled the SEDs of 36 YSOs that appear single or dominant within a group. We find good fits for Types I and I/II YSOs, but Types II and II/III YSOs show deviations between their observed SEDs and models that do not include PAH emission. We have also found that some Type III YSOs have central holes in their disk components. YSO counterparts are found in four ultracompact H ii regions and their stellar masses determined from SED model fits agree well with those estimated from the ionization requirements of the H ii regions. The distribution of YSOs is compared with those of the underlying stellar population and interstellar gas conditions to illustrate a correlation between the current formation of O-type stars and previous formation of massive stars. Evidence of triggered star formation is also presented.


Insulating Concrete Forms (ICF) walls generally comprise two layers of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), steel reinforcement is placed in the center between the two layers and concrete is poured to fill the gap between those two layers. ICF's have many advantages over traditional methods of wall construction such as reduced construction time, noise reduction, strength enhancement, energy efficiency, and compatibility with any inside or outside surface finish. The focus of this study is the Screen Grid ICF wall system consisting of a number of beams and columns forming a concrete mesh. The performance of ICF wall systems under lateral loads simulating seismic effect is experimentally evaluated in this paper. This work addresses the effect of the different design parameters on the wall behavior under seismic simulated loads. This includes different steel reinforcement ratio, various reinforcement distribution, wall aspect ratios, different openings sizes for windows and doors, as well as different spacing of the grid elements of the screen grid wall. Ten full scale wall specimens were tested where the effects of the various parameters on wall behavior in terms of lateral load capacity, lateral displacement, and modes of failure are presented. The test results are stored to be used for further analysis and calibration of numerical models developed for this study.


We adopt a process-based approach to investigate the influence of entrepreneurial bosses on the two main decisions of employees towards becoming entrepreneurs: exit from the current firm and entry into entrepreneurship. In other words, we study the push and pull mechanisms possibly underlying the influence of entrepreneurial bosses. We do so by employing an identification strategy based on comparisons of same-gender matches of bosses and employees, using rich register data for Denmark. We show that same-gender entrepreneurial bosses have a great impact on employees' future entrepreneurship choices, especially among women. We do not find any evidence that female bosses push female employees out of the workplace, by creating a discriminatory environment that forces them to search for alternative career paths. Instead, our analysis finds consistent support for pull mechanisms, with role modeling being the main explanation for the positive influence of female entrepreneurial bosses on female employees' transition into entrepreneurship. We show that the female boss effect is greater than other social interactions identified in prior research. We conclude that entrepreneurial bosses can be role models and female entrepreneurial bosses may thus act as a lever to reducing gender gaps in entrepreneurship rates.


Growth in Christianity has spurred the appearance of the subfield of world Christianity, whose assumptions increasingly shape scholarship on Christianity. What I term the world-Christian turn, which is often linked to mission studies, yields more comprehensive approaches to the Christian past, connecting local histories of Christian communities to larger-scale historical movements and producing innovative comparative perspectives on Christianity past and present. In Catholic theology, this turn has encouraged new comparative and contextual theologies. Yet support for Christian mission and the world-Christian turn need not go together. Two cases in point: comparative theology tends to eschew mission while the work of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, is suspicious of some impulses behind the world-Christian turn and their potential for undermining Christian mission. Such cases notwithstanding, I argue that missiology is a promising resource for the field of world Christianity.


Abstract.  The hemipteran infraorder Cicadomorpha comprises the superfamilies Cicadoidea (cicadas), Cercopoidea (spittlebugs or froghoppers) and Membracoidea (leafhoppers and treehoppers). Earlier attempts to determine relationships among these three monophyletic lineages using either morphological or molecular data suffered from insufficient sampling (taxonomic and data) and problematic tree rooting, leading to discordant results. Presented here are phylogenetic reconstructions within Cicadomorpha based on DNA nucleotide sequence data from multiple genetic markers (18S rDNA, 28S rDNA, and histone 3) sequenced from representative taxa of Cicadidae, Tettigarctidae, Cercopidae, Aphrophoridae, Clastopteridae, Machaerotidae, Epipygidae, Cicadellidae, Membracidae, Myerslopiidae and Aetalionidae. To test the robustness of the phylogenetic signal, these sequence data were analysed separately and in combination under various alignment parameters using both manual alignment (of both attenuated and full sequences) and alignment via clustal x. The results demonstrate clearly that, despite the alignment method used, basing a phylogeny on a single gene region is often misleading. Analyses of the combination of datasets support the major relationships within Cicadomorpha as (Membracoidea (Cicadoidea, Cercopoidea)). Internal relationships recovered within each superfamily shows evidence for: (1) the placement of Myerslopiidae as the sister group of the remaining Membracoidea; (2) the paraphyly of Cicadellidae; (3) the sister‐group relationship between Machaerotidae and Clastopteridae; (4) the monophyly of Cercopidae; (5) the diversification of Epipygidae from within the possibly paraphyletic Aphrophoridae.


The purpose of this paper was to report on the findings of a study examining students' online interaction patterns. The context of the study was a graduate online class delivered via Blackboard®. The primary data for the study came from students' discussion board postings, online learning journals, and course grades. Various data analysis methods such as descriptive and regression analyses were utilized to examine students' evolving interaction patterns and different interaction patterns among students in the same class. Results of the study indicated that there was considerable variability in students' postings. Students' postings were found mostly heterogeneous across students and across modules. The study suggested no correlation between the number of posts and students' success.


Discussions and understandings of college curriculums are focused almost exclusively on the academic experience.  Such framing of discourses on college curriculums began in the 17 th century and continue through today's increasing focus on strict academic disciplines and linear, hierarchical structuring of the university experience.  The development of student affairs departments on American college campuses occurred as a challenge to rigidifying conceptions of curriculum and learning experiences in the college environment.  Throughout the field's history, student affairs has existed for the purposes of challenging colleges to think more expansively about the college curriculum, pedagogical practices, and student learning – beyond the academic or vocational to a "whole" education.  This challenge has developed in the philosophical and guiding statements of the student affairs profession, as well as in the programs and initiatives that raise discussions or offer education not being examined in the traditional academic college curriculum.


Over the past years the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has developed an econometric model that predicts appliance ownership at the household level based on macroeconomic variables such as household income (corrected for purchase power parity), electrification, urbanization and climate variables. Hundreds of data points from around the world were collected in order to understand trends in acquisition of new appliances by households, especially in developing countries. The appliances covered by this model are refrigerators, lighting fixtures, air conditioners, washing machines and televisions. The approach followed allows the modeler to construct a bottom-up analysis based at the end use and the household level. It captures the appliance uptake and the saturation effect which will affect the energy demand growth in the residential sector. With this approach, the modeler can also account for stock changes in technology and efficiency as a function of time. This serves two important functions with regard to evaluation of the impact of energy efficiency policies. First, it provides insight into which end uses will be responsible for the largest share of demand growth, and therefore should be policy priorities. Second, it provides a characterization of the rate at which policies affecting new equipment penetrate the appliance stock. Over the past 3 years, this method has been used to support the development of energy demand forecasts at the country, region or global level.


We present experimental results of two-wave mixing in single-mode Er-doped optical fibers for which dynamic Bragg reflectance gratings are formed as a result of saturation of fiber-optic absorption (i.e., by means of the effect of spatial hole burning). The gratings are probed by the same recording waves at lambda approximately = 1549 nm and are detected as periodic changes of the intensity of light reflected from a Sagnac interferometer (with a piece of the doped fiber included) observed when periodic phase modulation is induced in one of the waves. Both rectangular and sinusoidal modulation were used, which permitted evaluation of the grating recording time (tau(g) approximately = 3 ms for OFS-Fitel EDF-HG980 fiber) and the grating amplitude, which proved to be approximately 6-7 times lower than expected from measurements of saturation of fiber-optic absorption by one wave only.


Listeria monocytogenes is a pathogenic bacterium associated with RTE meat products sold at the retail level. The objective of this research was to determine the prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes in RTE meat products sold at retail in Costa Rica and to study the factors associated with the levels of contamination; analyzed factors include hygienic practices within stores (cutting techniques, microbial contamination of products) and the behavior of the isolates (persistence against antimicrobials and transfer potential). A total of 190 samples of RTE meat products were collected and analyzed for the presence of coliforms and Listeria species.  Isolates of L. monocytogenes were then evaluated in terms of resistance to disinfectants (quaternary ammonium compounds and chlorine) and their transfer potential from food contact surfaces (knife and cuttingboards). Overall Listeria spp. prevalence was 37,4% (71/190); L. innocua was present in 32,1% (61/190) of the products and L. monocytogenes was found in just 2,6% (5/190) of the samples. Most of the contaminated samples were cut with a knife at the moment of purchase (44,2%). When analyzing practices within the stores, it was observed that L. monocytogenes transfer from inoculated knife to "salchichón" was higher for samples cut right at the beginning of the experiment. Also, L. monocytogenes transfer from inoculated cuttingboards was independent of the number of slices but contamination from plastic was higher than wood. Regarding L. monocytogenes resistance to disinfectants, average reductions of 2,6 ± 1,1 log CFU/mL were detected after 6 minutes of exposure to 200 ppm of chlorine; however, chlorine resistance varied among the strains. Prevalence of L. monocytogenes in RTE meat products sold at retail could be associated with handling practices within the stores; further studies are necessary to estimate the impact of these practices on the overall risk for consumers.


The purpose of this experiment is to measure the latency to onset of the contraction of the pupil, as a function of the size of positive steps in luminance, starting at various luminance levels to which the eye has been adapted prior to the stimulus steps. In the past, latency of the pupil response has been inaccurately measured, owing to the difficulty of separating the end of the latent period from the slow beginning of contraction. To overcome this, a digital curve-fitting technique involving a time delay followed by a modified second-order step response was developed. Latency was defined as the time delay giving the most accurate fit.Because the curve-fitting procedure needed a response with less random variation than is normally present, an average was used. Such averaging was first justified by using the standard deviation to show that there is probably no significant variation of latency for responses of a given subject under identical stimulus conditions. This analysis also showed that 20 responses is an efficient number to average for the pupil-contraction system.The excellent agreement between each average experimental response and the computed fit verified the value of delay used in the computation. Latency, thus defined for each stimulus condition, was found to be primarily a function of luminance during the step and only secondarily of the ratio of the step change of luminance to the adaptation luminance.


Local governments have decided to take advantage of the presence of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in their cities to efficiently manage several applications in their daily responsibilities. The enormous amount of information collected by sensor devices allows the automation of several real-time services to improve city management by using intelligent traffic-light patterns during rush hour, reducing water consumption in parks, or efficiently routing garbage collection trucks throughout the city [1]. The sensor information required by these examples is mostly self-consumed by city-designed applications and managers.


Canada is not yet maximising the return on its public investment in research. Canadian research councils spend 1.5 billion dollars annually. Canada produces at least 50,000 research journal articles per year, but if it is worth funding and doing at all, research must be not only published, but used, applied and built upon by other researchers ('citation impact'). The online-age practice of self-archiving has been shown to increase citation impact by a dramatic 50-250%, but so far only 15% of researchers are doing it spontaneously. Citation impact is rewarded by universities (through promotions and salary increases) and by research-funders such as SSHRC (through grant funding and renewal) at a conservative estimate of 100 dollars per citation. If we multiply this by the 85% of Canada's annual journal article output that is not yet self-archived, this translates into an annual loss of 2.125 million dollars in revenue to Canadian researchers for not having done (or delegated) the few extra keystrokes per article it would have taken to self-archive their final drafts. But this impact loss translates into a far bigger one for the Canadian public, if we reckon it as the loss of potential returns on its research investment. As a proportion of the Canada's yearly 1.5 bn dollars research expenditure (yielding 50,000 articles x 5.9 = 295,000 citations), our conservative estimate would be 50% x 85% x 1.5 bn = 640 mn dollars worth of loss in potential research impact(125,375 potential citations lost). The solution is obvious, and it is the one the RCUK is proposing in the UK: to extend the existing universal 'publish or perish' requirement to 'publish and also self-archive your final draft on your institutional website'. The time to close this 50%-250% research impact gap is already well overdue. This is the historic moment for Canada to set an example for the world, showing how to maximise the return on the public investment in research in the online era.


A PIC microcontroller based digital electronic system has been designed to monitor the fuel level and total amount of load on the freighter and generate scan report for the captain of the freighter. The system is designed for three different freighter load levels; no load, optimal load and over load. At initial level it remains in no load status, when load increases and still remain in optimal level then the system notify crews to initiate voyage. If the load increases to over load level then the system gives alarm and sends alert message to the main control tower for necessary initiative. The communication between the vessel and main control tower is done by GSM module to ensure long distance reliable communication. For amenity, freighter fuel level is monitored in both analogue and digital scale. The system is implemented by PIC midrange microcontroller based hardware and low cost GSM module which makes it more economic, reliable and efficient.


In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. "America the melting pot," how many times have we heard this remark, yet it is so true. It is a diverse melting pot of many people, cultures, and religions. Diversity can lead either to intolerance or to acceptance. It is up to us, as Homo sapiens, or wise humans to accept the latter. This however comes with a challenge, for we are compelled to defend ourselves in the face or ignorance and cruelty. We live in a very complex country and time, yet we face the same problems that humans all over the world and different eras have. Even though we are all humans, it is hard to accept another person at a same level as us, and it is hard to comprehend that those who are different from us, share the same emotions and feelings as ourselves. We are also sometimes afraid to share our life with those who have other gods or a different God. Religion plays an important part in human life and affects millions of people worldwide. This great worldwide variety of religious devotion indicates that for thousands of years, humanity has had a spiritual need and yearning. Man has lived with his trials and burdens, his doubts and questions, including the enigma of death. Religious feelings have been expressed in many different ways as people have turned towards God or their gods, seeking blessings and solace. With the wide diversity of religious expression that has developed around the world over the past 6,000 years, it is at least educational and mind broadening to understand what others believe and how their beliefs originated. After all, all religions try to answer the same questions raised by humankind: Why are we here? How should we live? Where do we go after we die? In many countries now, owing to immigration and population movement, people of different religions share the same neighborhood. Therefore understanding one another's viewpoint can lead to more meaningful communications and conversations between people of different faiths. It may also decrease some of the hatred in this world based on religious differences. People may strongly disagree about their religious beliefs, but there is no basis for hating a person just because he or she holds a different viewpoint. The ancient Jewish law stated, 'You shall not hate your kinfolks in your heart. Reprove your relative but incur no guilt because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love you fellows as yourself: I am Lord" (Leviticus 19:17-18 Ta). In addition, the founder of Christianity stated, "But I say to you who are listening, Continue to love your enemies, to do good to those who are hurting you...your reward will be great..." (Luke 6:27). The Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, also states a similar principle. "It may be that Allah will bring about friendship between you and those whom you hold as enemies...and Allah is powerful, forgiving, and most merciful" (Surah 60:7). When it comes to worship, God himself should not determine what is and is not acceptable." This living with other gods is available in Verbum: http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/verbum/vol2/iss1/5 "Living With Other Gods" Essays


Extracted from text ... Skrade, K (ed) 2005 - The Lutheran Handbook: Here we stand
Publishers: Augsburg Fortress. 264 pp. US $14.99
Reviewer: Rev Etienne Fourie (Kempton Park)
This pocket-sized book (it measures 13cm x 17.5 cm) comes packed with delightful reading material. It sets out to be a "How to" manual in the tradition of other such manuals that, according to the Preface, "turn complicated, inaccessible ideas into simple, easy to understand concepts, and, if necessary, into action steps that are easy to follow" [12]. In the Lutheran Handbook, one will discover "a combination of reliable, historical and theological information alongside some fun ..


The real economy repercussions of financial crises are the ultimate focus of financial stability monitoring and policymakers. By extending a standard set of financial stability indicators with indicators capturing spillover and contagion risks, this special feature proposes a financial stability risk index (FSRI) that has predictive power for the near-term risk of deep recessions. It is shown that the empirical performance of the index benefits from combining a large set of macro-financial indicators and, notably, that the information content of the spillover and contagion risk indicators is important. JEL Classification: G00


First meeting in September 1941, the Kinship in Husbandry was a group of twelve men concerned for the future of English rural life in the post-war world and determined to communicate their vision of a revitalised countryside. Central to this vision were an agriculture based on organic principles and a rural culture which would encourage craftsmanship while drawing spiritual sustenance from a Christianity reconnected with nature. This paper traces the Kinship's origins in the pre-war activities of Gerard Wallop (Viscount Lymington) and Rolf Gardiner, and examines the names of those considered by the original twelve as possible associates. Archival evidence indicates tensions between Kinsmen over the group's strategy and the extent to which it should cooperate with other bodies. In particular, correspondance shows that H. J. Massingham was deeply unhappy about Gardiner's pro-German sympathies and mistrusted the influence within the Kinship of Gardiner and his fellow landowners Wallop and Lord Northbourne, who appear to have formed an inner circle. The article concludes by considering briefly the extent to which the Kinship succeeded in spreading its ideas, and suggests that, despite its failure to influence post-war developments, its longer-term impact can be seen in the current public interest in organic food and farming.


Background and Purpose— Depression is known to increase stroke risk. Although limited, there is some evidence for age differences, with a suggestion for a stronger association in younger groups. We investigated the effect of depression on stroke incidence in a large cohort of midaged women. Methods— We included 10 547 women without a history of stroke aged 47 to 52 years from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, surveyed every 3 years from 1998 to 2010. Depression was defined at each survey using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (shortened version) and antidepressant use in the past month. Stroke was ascertained through self-report and mortality data. We determined the association between depression and stroke at the subsequent survey, using generalized estimating equation analysis, adjusting for time-varying covariates. Results— At each survey, ≈24% were defined as having depression. During follow-up, 177 strokes occurred. Depression was associated with a >2-fold increased odds of stroke (odds ratio, 2.41; 95% confidence interval, 1.78–3.27), which attenuated after adjusting for age, socioeconomic status, lifestyle, and physiological factors (odds ratio, 1.94; 95% confidence interval, 1.37–2.74). Findings were robust to sensitivity analyses addressing methodological issues, including definition of depression, antidepressant use, and missing covariate data. Conclusions— Depression is a strong risk factor for stroke in midaged women, with the association partially explained by lifestyle and physiological factors. Further studies of midaged and older women from the same population are needed to confirm whether depression is particularly important in younger women and to inform targeted intervention approaches.


Drawing on social identity and self-categorization approaches to collective action from social psychology, and social movement theory from sociology, the empirical studies in this thesis investigate the identities and experiences of those engaged (and disengaged) in various social movements in Australia - including environmentalisms, international aid and development, human rights, and animal rights movements. The participants were at various points of commitment to these social movements - from being sympathetic, to actively engaged, and even in leadership positions. The two research aims were to: 1) expand current understandings of the ways that problematic aspects of social identity content and identity boundaries can prevent sympathizers from engaging in collective actions; and 2) examine strategies those committed to collective action use to manage problematic aspects of their social identities, and how they establish a unique contribution to social change in contrast to other social movement groups. Each of these questions speak to the other in that they centre on the ways that a narrowly defined but shared understanding of the "activist" or "protester" constrains and shapes alternative means of pursuing social change.

The empirical work consists of four studies. Study 1 is a qualitative analysis of materials and interviews with members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I examined how members rhetorically construct their identities in order to frame their cause as legitimate, and how members come to personally identify themselves as members of the organization in a way that allows them to manage potential conflicts between multiple identities – as individuals, and as group members. Study 2 uses an inductive open-ended survey to understand how social barriers can shape people's willingness to participate in collective actions during their early socialization into social movement groups. Study 3 is a quantitative analysis of survey data, using themes from Study 2, which demonstrates how stereotypes of activists can influence individuals' identification as activists. Study 4 is an interview study with experienced activists, coordinators, and advocates of various social movement organizations. In this study it was found that people experienced in collective action can distinguish themselves from a primarily protest-based activist identity in order to establish their unique contribution to the broader movement, and also maintain feelings of personal satisfaction.

The contributions of this thesis are that it establishes a more nuanced understanding of the types of identity routes available to people who want to engage in collective action – such as an advocacy route, contrasted to the activist route. The thesis also concludes with a discussion of the need to understand transitionary socialization processes when people attempt to join social movement organizations, and it makes suggestions for developing a model of conversionary collective action – which is what participants termed the "quiet" approach to social change.


The Supreme Court's 1935 Humphrey's Executor decision paved the way for the modern administrative state by holding that Congress could constitutionally limit the President's powers to remove heads of regulatory agencies. The Court articulated a quartet of features of the Federal Trade Commission's statutory design that ostensibly justified the Commission's constitutional independence. It was to be non-partisan and a-political, uniquely expert, and performing quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial, rather than executive, functions. In recent years, the staying power of Humphrey's Executor has been called into question as a matter of constitutional design. This article reconsiders Humphrey's Executor from a different angle. At the end of a one hundred years natural experiment, the Commission bears almost no resemblance to the Progressive-technocratic vision articulated by the Court. The Commission is not politically independent, uniquely expert, or principally legislative or adjudicative. Rather, it is essentially a law enforcement agency beholden to the will of Congress. This finding has potentially important implications for agency design, constitutional doctrine and theory, and understanding of agency functioning.


Influence diagrams provide a modeling and inference framework for sequential decision problems, representing the probabilistic knowledge by a Bayesian network and the preferences of an agent by utility functions over the random variables and decision variables. Computing the maximum expected utility (MEU) and the optimizing policy is exponential in the constrained induced width and therefore is notoriously difficult for larger models. In this paper, we develop a new bounding scheme for MEU that applies partitioning based approximations on top of the decomposition scheme called a multi-operator cluster DAG for influence diagrams that is more sensitive to the underlying structure of the model than the classical join-tree decomposition of influence diagrams. Our bounding scheme utilizes a cost-shifting mechanism to tighten the bound further. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme on various hard benchmarks.


In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis. Following an illness in 2009 the diaries, kept for over sixty years, cease. Published here alongside these last diaries are Tony Benn's highly personal insights into the challenges of old age and failing health, of widowhood, and of moving out of the family home after sixty years. Finally, we share in Tony Benn's hopes for the future based on his years of experience and his natural optimism.


Extracting spatio-temporally consistent segments from a video sequence is a challenging problem due to the complexity of color, motion and occlusions. Most existing spatio-temporal segmentation approaches have inherent difficulties in handling large displacement with significant occlusions . This paper presents a novel framework for spatio-temporal segmentation. With the estimated depth data beforehand by a multi-view stereo technique, we project the pixels to other frames for collecting the boundary and segmentation statistics in a video, and incorporate them into the segmentation energy for spatio-temporal optimization. In order to effectively solve this problem, we introduce an iterative optimization scheme by first initializing segmentation maps for each frame independently, and then link the correspondences among different frames and iteratively refine them with the collected statistics, so that a set of spatio-temporally consistent volume segments are finally achieved. The effectiveness and usefulness of our automatic framework are demonstrated via its applications for 3D reconstruction, video editing and semantic segmentation on a variety of challenging video examples.


Half-Massless Certain materials, such as topological crystalline insulators (TCIs), host robust surface states that have a Dirac (graphene-like) dispersion associated with massless carriers; the breaking of protective symmetry within such materials should cause the carriers to acquire mass. Okada et al. (p. 1496, published online 29 August) used scanning tunneling microscopy to map out the energies of the electronic levels of the TCI Pb1-xSnxSe as a function of the strength of an external magnetic field. The massless Dirac fermions coexisted with massive ones, presumably as a consequence of a distortion of the crystalline structure affecting only one of the two mirror symmetries. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of Pb1–xSnxSe in a magnetic field reveals two types of Dirac fermions. In topological crystalline insulators (TCIs), topology and crystal symmetry intertwine to create surface states with distinct characteristics. The breaking of crystal symmetry in TCIs is predicted to impart mass to the massless Dirac fermions. Here, we report high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy studies of a TCI, Pb1-xSnxSe that reveal the coexistence of zero-mass Dirac fermions protected by crystal symmetry with massive Dirac fermions consistent with crystal symmetry breaking. In addition, we show two distinct regimes of the Fermi surface topology separated by a Van-Hove singularity at the Lifshitz transition point. Our work paves the way for engineering the Dirac band gap and realizing interaction-driven topological quantum phenomena in TCIs.


The aim of this thesis was to explore the statistical physics and the mechanical properties of individual biomolecules, to study their interactions, and to develop new techniques based on atomic force microscopy (AFM). First, we exploit the high resolution imaging of AFM over long DNA molecules adsorbed on a surface to measure the average end-to-end distance as a function of the DNA length, along with its full distribution function. The latter is almost never determined experimentally, and is not available with ensemble techniques, such as light scattering. We found that the scaling exponents are closer to the values predicted by the polymer theory for a 3D self-avoiding random walk (SAW) than for a 2D SAW. These results suggest that the adsorption process of the DNA molecules is akin to a geometric projection from 3D to 2D, known to preserve the scaling properties of fractal objects of dimension df < 2. Second, taking advantage of the possibility of AFM to also manipulate biomolecules, we investigate the specific interactions between the glycoprotein avidin and the vitamin biotin, the ribonuclease barnase and its inhibitor barstar, and the West Nile Virus surface glycoprotein E and the laminin binding protein. The dependence of the most probable unbinding force on the force loading rate has revealed details of the energy landscapes of the unbinding process of these highly efficient and specific interactions. Beside this standard method, we have measured the lifetime of the avidin-biotin bond, kept stretched at a constant force, as a function of this force, and combined this approach with a small dithering of the AFM tip in order to further explore the avidin-biotin energy landscape. Finally, the viscoelastic properties of biomolecules, such as dextran and titin, have been studied using standard force spectroscopy combined with a small oscillation of the AFM tip. A theoretical description for excitation frequencies near the first and the second resonance of the cantilever has been developed to be able to extract, from the amplitude and phase measurement of the oscillations, the stiffness and friction coefficients of the biomolecule being stretched. We conclude that an excitation frequency of 3 kHz gives reliable results for the stiffness measurement whereas frequencies of 15-25 kHz are more appropriate for the dissipation measurements.


Celastrol, a triterpene isolated from the root of traditional Chinese medicine Thunder of God Vine, possesses anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory activity to treat rheumatoid disease or as health product. Necroptosis is considered as a new approach to overcome chemotherapeutics resistance. However, whether celastrol exerts necroptosis leading to gastric cancer cell death is still unclear. Here, for the first time we showed that celastrol induced necroptosis in HGC27 and AGS gastric cancer cell lines. More importantly, celastrol down-regulated biglycan (BGN) protein, which is critical for gastric cancer migration and invasion. Furthermore, celastrol activated receptor-interacting protein 1 and 3 (RIP1 and RIP3) and subsequently promoted the translation of mixed-lineage kinase domain-like (MLKL) from cytoplasm to plasma membrane, leading to necroptosis of gastric cancer cell, which was blocked by over-expression BGN. In addition, celastrol suppressed the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-8 in HGC27 and AGS cells, which was reversed by over-expression BGN. Taken together, we identified celastrol as a necroptosis inducer, activated RIP1/RIP3/MLKL pathway and suppressed the level of pro-inflammatory cytokines by down-regulating BGN in HGC-27 and AGS cells, which supported the feasibility of celastrol in gastric cancer therapy.


We present a probabilistic variant of the recently introduced maxout unit. The success of deep neural networks utilizing maxout can partly be attributed to favorable performance under dropout, when compared to rectified linear units. It however also depends on the fact that each maxout unit performs a pooling operation over a group of linear transformations and is thus partially invariant to changes in its input. Starting from this observation we ask the question: Can the desirable properties of maxout units be preserved while improving their invariance properties ? We argue that our probabilistic maxout (probout) units successfully achieve this balance. We quantitatively verify this claim and report classification performance matching or exceeding the current state of the art on three challenging image classification benchmarks (CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and SVHN).


Examination of Anabolic Signaling and Muscle Growth with Caffeine Treatment in Overloaded Hindlimb Muscle and Electrically Stimulated Muscle Lacking Liver Kinase B1 Timothy Michael Moore Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology, BYU Master of Science Skeletal muscle has the ability to increase in size (hypertrophy) after resistance is placed upon it. This hypertrophy is marked by significant upregulation of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and its downstream targets. The upstream kinases, protein kinase B (also known as Akt) and AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), are two of the many regulators of the mTOR pathway. Recent studies suggest that the widely consumed neuroactive compound caffeine could potentially inhibit mTOR by acting through Akt and/or AMPK. The purpose of this thesis was to: 1) determine if caffeine can inhibit the mTOR pathway and ultimately attenuate skeletal muscle hypertrophy and 2) determine if this inhibition is through LKB1, an upstream regulator of AMPK. First, 3 month old male rats underwent unilateral tenotomy of the gastrocnemius, resulting in overloading (OVLD) of the synergistic plantaris muscle. The contralateral limb was sham-operated (SHAM) on. Rats were given ad libitum access to tap water or tap water + caffeine (1 g/L). The OVLD procedure resulted in significant hypertrophy of the plantaris which was attenuated after 1 wk of caffeine treatment. However, after two wks this effect was not observed. mTOR targets were examined in both the SHAM and OVLD plantaris muscle which showed significant upregulation with OVLD but no impact with caffeine treatment. Akt and AMPK was also assessed in the plantaris muscle which showed diminished Akt phosphorylation in 1 wk treated rats while the phosphorylation of AMPK remained relatively unaffected. Notably, caffeine caused decreased atrophy of the tenotomized gastrocnemius after 1 wk along with decreased body weight gains, food consumption, and retroperitoneal fat pad weight in both 1 and 2 wk treated rats. Sec, to elucidate how caffeine could be impacting the mTOR pathway and how LKB1/AMPK might be involved, skeletal muscle specific LKB1 knockout (skmLKB1-KO) mice were subjected to high-frequency electrical stimulation (HFES) of the sciatic nerve resulting in contraction of the tibialis anterior (TA) and extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles against the larger gastrocnemius. All mice were given an intraperitoneal injection of saline or saline + caffeine (20 mg/kg BW at 1 g/L). HFES resulted in marked upregulation of mTOR targets in the TA/EDL of mice 0, 3, and 8 h post HFES. mTOR targets remained relatively unchanged with caffeine treatment. We also observed that these markers were consistently upregulated in our skmLKB1-KO mice with or without HFES. Our findings indicate that caffeine, at physiological concentrations, does not impact anabolic signaling. Furthermore, diminished LKB1 levels resulted in increased levels and activation of markers of protein synthesis.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS OF THE STUDY
The Björk-Shiley Delrin (BSD) disc heart valve was first used clinically in 1969. We estimate that as of January 1996, no more than 7,000 patients may be alive with the BSD valve.

METHODS
We reviewed the published reports of clinical experience with the BSD valve in addition to the records regarding BSD valves returned to Shiley Incorporated. Measurements of the maximum radial gap, static leak flow rate and inspection of the Delrin disc for wear were obtained.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
We concluded that clinically important regurgitation, due to disc wear, was rare but may occur. Larger prostheses, in general, showed greater disc wear than smaller sized valves. There were no reports of fracture of the Delrin disc. Two cases of inlet strut fracture were reported. Late disc embolization, in the absence of inlet strut fracture, occurred in two patients following surgical manipulation. Disc wear did not cause abnormal valve opening or closing although increased regurgitation may occur.


Predictive performance of a random forest ensemble is highly associated with the strength of individual trees and their diversity. Ensemble of a small number of accurate and diverse trees, if prediction accuracy is not compromised, will also reduce computational burden. We investigate the idea of integrating trees that are accurate and diverse. For this purpose, we utilize out-of-bag observation as validation sample from the training bootstrap samples to choose the best trees based on their individual performance and then assess these trees for diversity using Brier score. Starting from the first best tree, a tree is selected for the final ensemble if its addition to the forest reduces error of the trees that have already been added. A total of 35 bench mark problems on classification and regression are used to assess the performance of the proposed method and compare it with kNN, tree, random forest, node harvest and support vector machine. We compute unexplained variances and classification error rates for all the methods on the corresponding data sets. Our experiments reveal that the size of the ensemble is reduced significantly and better results are obtained in most of the cases. For further verification, a simulation study is also given where four tree style scenarios are considered to generate data sets with several structures.


The composition limits of FexO are sensitive to both pressure and temperature. Earlier studies have shown that FexO becomes highly nonstoichiometric when in equilibrium with metallic iron above 10 gigapascals, which is difficult to reconcile with available thermodynamic data. Experiments with a uniaxial split-sphere apparatus demonstrate that the iron content of FexO increases continuously at high pressure in excellent agreement with quantitative models and suggest that there is a discontinuity in the elastic properties of FexO above x = 0.95. On the basis of these results, it is inferred that the Earth's present lower mantle is not in equilibrium with metallic iron.


This study investigates the prevalence and magnitude of job insecurity experienced by employees in an organisation undergoing major transformation, while taking cognisance of intercorrelations among its subdimensions. The research adopted a formal, hypothesis-testing approach whereby quantitative data was collected using a cross-sectional survey method from a sample of 1620 employees. The findings indicate that threats to salient job features/total job and feelings of powerlessness trigger the potential for job insecurity. This study identifies conditions that increase the potential for job insecurity. Recommendations are presented for reducing the prevalence and magnitude of job insecurity.


The article presents results of research carried out on the occurrence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in gases of exhalation zones, created on the surface of a thermally active coal mine waste dump. The oxidation and self-heating of mine waste are accompanied with the intensive emission of flue gases, including PAH group compounds. Taking into consideration the fact the hydrocarbons show strong genotoxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic properties, research was conducted to establish their content in the examined gases. The research object was a gangue dump located in Rybnik. The research was performed in 2012. In total, 24 samples of gas were collected with PUF (polyurethane foam) sampling cartridges with a quartz fibre filter and an aspirator. The collected samples were analysed with the use of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and a fluorescence detector (FLD) to evaluate the amount of PAH present.


Reliable and cost-effective monitoring of rural water supply infrastructure has long been hampered by the geographical curse of dispersed and low-income populations, and weak institutional performance. Recent advances in monitoring technology combined with mobile network expansion into rural areas has created an opportunity to bypass these seemingly intractable challenges. Mobile-enhanced technologies have the potential to produce data that is orders of magnitude richer, faster, and cheaper than that provided by traditional monitoring methods, which require costly field visits. However, more data does not equate to better data; information generated by crowd-sourced and automated systems each has its respective limitations. We propose a framework for analysing monitoring and surveillance systems, which can help assess the strengths and weaknesses of different emerging approaches. We suggest that these advancements present an opportunity to fundamentally change the way we consider and conduct rural water s...


The behavior of a 2R optical regenerator in a link limited by amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) is investigated in detail in this paper. 2R regeneration techniques are well known for combating the accumulation ASE noise in an optical signal, but their behavior in the presence of PMD is mostly unknown. Here, we propose a general method to calculate the total outage probability in a link including a cascade of optical regenerators. Through the use of semianalytical models, we study the ability of 2R optical regenerators to combat at the same time PMD distortions and ASE noise accumulation in an optical signal, and show their interesting potential to counter independently both detrimental effects.


PURPOSE
We conducted a phase III randomized study of two adjuvant treatment schedules of doxorubicin (A) and cyclophosphamide (C) in early-stage breast cancer to determine if administration of sequential single agents (A --> C) results in superior disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) versus the same total dose given in combination (AC).

PATIENTS AND METHODS
High-risk node-negative or low-risk node-positive breast cancer patients received AC given: (arm I) concurrently (AC) doxorubicin 54 mg/m2 and cyclophosphamide 1.2 g/m2 intravenously (IV) every 3 weeks for six cycles; or (arm II) in sequence (A C) doxorubicin 40.5 mg/m2 IV days 1 and 2 every 3 weeks for four cycles followed by cyclophosphamide 2.4 gm/m2 IV every 2 weeks for three cycles. Total dose and duration were identical, but the intensity of each drug was increased on A C. Both arms included granulocyte colony-stimulating factor support and prophylactic antibiotics. All but premenopausal women with receptor negative tumors received tamoxifen after chemotherapy.

RESULTS
Between 1994 and 1997, 3,176 patients were randomly assigned. Arms were well balanced; 48% of eligible patients were node-negative and 48% were estrogen receptor-positive. No significant differences in OS or DFS were observed; 5-year estimates of OS (95% CI) were 88% (87% to 90%) on AC and 89% (87% to 91%) on A --> C. Grade 4 hematologic toxicity was greater on A --> C, but nonhematological grade 4 was similar.

CONCLUSION
The overall result does not support superiority of dose-intense sequenced single agents. The greater toxicity of higher doses of single agents does not support their sequential use.


Context. Active region moss are transition region phenomena, first noted in the images recorded by the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) in λ171. Moss regions are thought to be the footpoints of hot loops (3-5 MK) seen in the core of active regions. These hot loops appear "fuzzy" (unresolved). Therefore, it is difficult to study the physical plasma parameters in individual hot core loops and hence their heating mechanisms. Moss regions provide an excellent opportunity to study the physics of hot loops. In addition, they allow us to study the transition region dynamics in the footpoint regions. Aims. To derive the physical plasma parameters such as temperature, electron density, and filling factors in moss regions and to study their variation over a short (an hour) and a long time period (5 consecutive days). Methods. Primarily, we have analyzed spectroscopic observations recorded by the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) aboard Hinode. In addition we have used supplementary observations taken from TRACE and the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) aboard Hinode. Results. The moss emission is strongest in the Fe XII and Fe XIII lines. Based on analyses using line ratios and emission measure we found that moss regions have a characteristic temperature of log T[K] = 6.2. The temperature structure in moss region remains almost identical from one region to another and it does not change with time. The electron densities measured at different locations in the moss regions using Fe XII ratios are about 1-3 × 10 10 cm -3 and about 2-4 × 10 9 cm -3 using Fe XIII and Fe XIV. The densities in the moss regions are similar in different places and show very little variation over short and long time scales. The derived electron density substantially increased (by a factor of about 3-4 or even more in some cases) when a background subtraction was performed. The filling factor of the moss plasma can vary between 0.1-1 and the path length along which the emission originates is from a few 100 to a few 1000 kms long. By combining the observations recorded by TRACE, EIS and XRT, we find that the moss regions correspond to the footpoints of both hot and warm loops.


Separate processing of local luminance and contrast in biological visual systems has been argued to be due to the independence of these two properties in natural image data. In this paper we examine spatial, retinotopic channels formed by these two quantities and use Independent Component Analysis to study the possible dependencies between the channels. As a result, oriented, localized bandpass filter pairs are learned, where one filter processes the luminance channel and the other the contrast channel. We study the relationship of the learned filters and their pairings, and show that these are due to dependencies existing between local luminance and contrast. Subsequently, our results suggest that the separate processing of local luminance and contrast can not be attributed to their independence in natural images.


Several psycholinguistic studies have investigated the influence of local and global semantic contexts on word processing. The first aim of the present study was to examine local and global level contributions to harmonic priming. The second was to test a spreading-activation account of harmonic context effects (Bharucha, 1987). The expectations for the last chord (the target) of eight-chord sequences were varied by simultaneously manipulating the harmonic relationship of the target to the first six chords (global context) and to the seventh chord (local context). Human performances demonstrated that harmonic expectancies are derived from both the global and local levels of musical structure. Bharucha9s connectionist model provides a possible account of local and global context effects. In isochronous chord sequences, harmonic priming seems to result from activation spreading via a schematic knowledge of tonal hierarchies.


BACKGROUND
Cancer cervix is the leading cause of cancer deaths in females in developing countries and one in five women suffering from cervical cancer lives in India.

AIMS
The aim of this study is to determine the awareness about cervical cancer and Pap smear among nurses working in a tertiary care institute. Study Setting and Design: Cross-sectional survey in a tertiary care institute.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Nurses working at our institute excluding those who have worked or working in the Obstetrics and Gynecology department were provided with a pre-designed questionnaire testing their knowledge about cervical cancer.

RESULTS
Approximately, 86% were aware about cancer cervix and 69% were aware of a pre-cancerous stage. 42.3% were not aware of any risk factor and 27.6% were not aware of any symptom of cancer cervix. 86.2% were aware about Pap smear, but only 58.6% were aware that facilities of Pap smear were available at our hospital.

CONCLUSIONS
Knowledge about cervical cancer and awareness of Pap smear as screening test was inadequate in nursing staff. Awareness programs about cervical cancer and screening are needed to increase awareness for this preventable condition.

RECOMMENDATION
There is a need to arrange reorientation programs to sensitize nurses and establish cytology clinics to offer facilities for easily accessible and affordable screening.


Economic challenges in developing Asian countries have become more complex: urban populations are growing at great cost to the environment, climate change has increased risks of natural disasters, and income gaps within and between developing countries are widening. These factors threaten the sustainable growth and development of urban areas, the drivers of Asia's economy. A strategic approach for inclusive growth is needed. The City Cluster Economic Development approach provides a strategic framework and a set of analytical tools, which governments, businesses, and communities can use to support the inclusive and sustainable development of competitive urban economies in Asia. Said approach was developed and tested by the Asian Development Bank to improve the basis for integrated planning and development of urban regions in Asia and the Pacific. It also helps urban managers and other city stakeholders identify action plans and determine priority investment areas.


The nature of masculinity is a popular subject for contemporary authors, either treated critically from a sociological standpoint, or analysed from a psychological and spiritual perspective. In Remaking Men, David Tacey argues that we must strive to bridge the gap between these separate traditions - masculinity should neither be hijacked by the spiritual, Jung-influenced men's movement, nor discussed merely as a product of socio-political forces. Examining his own and other men's experience in a critical and lively discourse he evades the simplistic optimism of the 'inner journey' approach and the chronic pessimism of contemporary academic arguments. This is a fascinating and very accessible look at masculinity for those who want to explore self and society with intelligence and soul.


Abstract The continental Argana Basin of Morocco is the trans-Atlantic counterpart of the extensively studied Fundy, Hartford and Newark basins in north-eastern America, that have provided the astrochronologically tuned geomagnetic polarity timescale (GPTS) for the late Triassic and earliest Jurassic. The Argana red-bed successions also show astronomically driven time control, which allowed trans-Atlantic correlations and revealed that the interval towards volcanism of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) is without any significant hiatuses. Here, we present palaeomagnetic results from the cyclically bedded upper Triassic red-beds and the intercalated volcanics associated with CAMP. Our composite Argana section comprises an interval of 3.5–4.0 Ma, but its magnetostratigraphic pattern does not allow a straightforward correlation to the Newark GPTS. The continental red-bed deposits of the Bigoudine Formation demonstrate a dominant magnetic overprint that could only be removed at temperatures above 600 °C. We suggest that this overprint could have been caused by a period of (Jurassic, c. 170 Ma) magmatism that caused pervasive overprinting of the Triassic palaeomagnetic signal. Correlations between the sections in the Tazantoute region are not straightforward, hampered by the presence of a magmatic sill. The CAMP lava sequences of Tazantoute are all of normal polarity and record secular variation in a manner that agrees with short-lived pulses of CAMP activity in Morocco. Our results indicate that the sedimentary successions of the Argana Basin have the potential to evaluate the Newark GPTS, but that detailed palaeomagnetic analyses of more suitable sections with long(er) cyclostratigraphic records are required.


In tetragonal SrCo2As2 single crystals, inelastic neutron scattering measurements demonstrated that strong stripe-type antiferromagnetic (AFM) correlations occur at a temperature T = 5 K [W. Jayasekara et al., arXiv:1306.5174] that are the same as in the isostructural AFe2As2 (A = Ca, Sr, Ba) parent compounds of high-Tc superconductors. This surprising discovery suggests that SrCo2As2 may also be a good parent compound for high-Tc superconductivity. Here, structural and thermal expansion, electrical resistivity ρ, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), heat capacity Cp, magnetic susceptibility χ, 75As NMR and neutron diffraction measurements of SrCo2As2 crystals are reported together with LDA band structure calculations that shed further light on this fascinating material. The c-axis thermal expansion coefficient αc is negative from 7 to 300 K, whereas αa is positive over this T range. The ρ(T) shows metallic character. The ARPES measurements and band theory confirm the metallic character and in addition show the presence of a flat band near the Fermi energy EF. The band calculations exhibit an extremely sharp peak in the density of states D(EF) arising from a flat dx2-y2 band. A comparison of the Sommerfeld coefficient of the electronic specific heat with χ(T → 0) suggests the presence of strong ferromagnetic itinerantmore » spin correlations which on the basis of the Stoner criterion predicts that SrCo2As2 should be an itinerant ferromagnet, in conflict with the magnetization data. The χ(T) does have a large magnitude, but also exhibits a broad maximum at 115 K suggestive of dynamic short-range AFM spin correlations, in agreement with the neutron scattering data. The measurements show no evidence for any type of phase transition between 1.3 and 300 K and we propose that metallic SrCo2As2 has a gapless quantum spin-liquid ground state.« less


In dogs with reduced liver function (portosystemic shunting, parenchymal liver disease), metabolic functions of the liver are disrupted, resulting in increased concentrations of ammonia, amino acids and poorly water soluble uric acid in the blood. This is associated with hepatoencephalopathy and excretion of ammonium-urate crystals in the urine. The analytes are measured in the blood and serum and urate crystals are easily recognised in the urine sediment under light microscopy.

Changes in liver function can be documented by measurement of pre and post prandial serum bile acid concentrations and, when available, whole blood ammonia concentration. Measurement of serum amino acid concentrations are routinely performed for people but infrequently applied in animals although testing can be available through human laboratories. Energy dispersive analysis is a new, semi-quantitative method for examining urinary crystals and is available to veterinarians.

This report describes the whole blood ammonia, serum aromatic amino acid concentrations and urinary crystal analysis in a dog diagnosed with a portosystemic shunt. The urine crystals were identified as sodium and potassium urate using energy dispersive analysis. Purchasing a portable ammonia-meter for whole blood ammonia measurement and sending serum samples to human or research laboratories for determination of amino acid concentrations could provide useful additional information for clinicians assessing dogs with hepatic dysfunction. Because many urinary crystals are morphologically similar, crystal analysis can be useful to determine their content and hence their pathogenesis. This information is especially useful when the typical ammonium biurate crystals are absent.


This Special Issue offers PhEmaterialisms as a way to explore the world asvital and complex, while simultaneously being response-able to the multiple ethical imperatives of late-stage capitalism. We argue that PhEmaterialist thinking and practices can help us grapple with growing educational complexities, enabling strategies toresist and create alternatives to the patterns of injustice occurring across the world, from burgeoning ethno-nationalist and neo-fascist political movements, to rising global poverty levels, to massive population displacements, to environmental degradation, to toxic internet movements grounded in misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia (Strom & Martin, 2017a). To understand, enquire into, and generate action worthy of the complexity of our times requires a fundamental shift in our thinking and research practice. This shift disrupts the foundational logic on which dominant thinking in education (and indeed, all Western society) is based—humanism and anthropocentrism (Braidotti, 2013; Murris, 2016; Snaza et al, 2014). Instead, we argue that we need to put theories/concepts to work in education and educational research which can better account for the multiple, entangled, ever-shifting, difference-rich nature of processes of teaching, learning, schooling, and activism. For this work, we also draw on a rich feminist legacy attentive to unequal power relations (e.g., Ahmed, 1998; Anzaldua, 1999; hooks, 1994; Spivak, 1978), and our critical approach to rethinking Vitruvian "man" is especially informed by posthuman/new materialist feminist thinkings and thinkers, including Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, and Karen Barad.


This thesis aims to explore the potential of wrist-worn gesture sensing. There has been a large amount of work on gesture recognition in the past utilizing different kinds of sensors. However, gesture sets tested across different work were all different, making it hard to compare them. Also, there has not been enough work on understanding what types of gestures are suitable for wrist-worn devices. Our work addresses these two problems and makes two main contributions compared to previous work: the specification of larger gesture sets, which were verified through an elicitation study generated by combining previous work; and an evaluation of the potential of gesture sensing with wrist-worn sensors. We developed a gesture recognition system, WristRec, which is a low-cost wrist-worn device utilizing bend sensors for gesture recognition. The design of WristRec aims to measure the tendon movement at the wrist while people perform gestures. We conducted a four-part study to verify the validity of the approach and the extent of gestures which can be detected using a wrist-worn system. During the initial stage, we verified the feasibility of WristRec using the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm to perform gesture classification on a group of 5 gestures, the gesture set of the MYO armband. Next, we conducted an elicitation study to understand the trade-offs between hand, wrist, and arm gestures. The study helped us understand the type of gestures which wrist-worn system should be able to recognize. It also served as the base of our gesture set and our evaluation on the gesture sets used in the previous research. To evaluate the overall potential of wrist-worn recognition, we explored the design of hardware to recognize gestures by contrasting an Inertial measurement unit (IMU) only recognizer (the Serendipity system of Wen et al.) with our system. We assessed accuracies on a consensus gesture set and on a 27-gesture referent set, both extracted from the result of our elicitation study. Finally, we discuss the implications of our work both to the comparative evaluation of systems and to the design of enhanced hardware sensing.


While 50% of cancer patients use complementary therapies (CT) during treatment, few studies have examined why individuals choose not to use CT. This study aimed to address this gap in knowledge using a focus group methodology, where 36 participants took part in one of eight groups; participants were recruited until saturation of themes was achieved. Three categories of participants were investigated: patients/recent survivors (n= 14); volunteers/advocates (n= 16), the majority of whom were also long-term survivors; and health professionals (n= 6). Focus groups were digitally audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded thematically using NVivo software. Reasons for non-use fell into four broad themes: (1) Resource barriers, particularly the cost and lack of time; (2) fear and distrust, including the potential for drug interactions; (3) lack of evidence, including the unproven nature of many CT practices; and (4) satisfaction with conventional treatment. Two further themes related to the benefits of non-use and reasons for discontinuation. A sub-analysis indicated that reasons for non-use differed by CT category, with non-use being mentioned more frequently for biologically based and body-based therapies. Differences in understanding CT non-use emerged between patients, volunteers and health professionals. Findings have clinical implications regarding tailoring information for patients during and after cancer.


Most embedded systems have limited amount of memory. In contrast, the memory requirements of the digital signal processing (DSP) and video processing codes (in nested loops, in particular) running on embedded systems is significant. This paper addresses the problem of estimating and reducing the amount of memory needed for transfers of data in embedded systems. First, the problem of estimating the region associated with a statement or the set of elements referenced by a statement during the execution of nested loops is analyzed. For a fixed execution ordering, a quantitative analysis of the number of elements referenced is presented; exact expressions for uniformly generated references and a close upper and lower bound for nonuniformly generated references are derived. Second, in addition to presenting an algorithm that computes the total memory required, this paper also discusses the effect of transformations (that change the execution ordering) on the lifetimes of array variables, i.e., the time between the first and last accesses to a given array location. The term maximum window size is introduced, and quantitative expressions are derived to compute the maximum window size. A detailed analysis of the effect of unimodular transformations on data locality, including the calculation of the maximum window size, is presented.


Recent corporate financial scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and others have heightened awareness of the need to revisit corporate accountability. Congressional response in the form of the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 raises questions about the transparency of corporate environmental disclosure.Over the years, corporations have selectively disclosed their environmental performance. In the past, corporate environmental disclosure was driven by three things: environmental compliance statutes, federal securities law, and public relations. Corporations sought to positively influence investor and public opinion of their environmental record through the use of the "green report"; typically a glossy, unaudited showcase of corporate environmental good deeds. However, the Enron scandal and Sarbanes-Oxley are likely to change what corporations disclose as to their environmental matters.This Article explores the impact that post-Enron corporate reform, and specifically the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, has had on corporate environmental financial disclosure, particularly green reports. Part I provides an overview of the current environmental disclosure landscape and pressure for reform after Sarbanes-Oxley. Part II details the shortcomings of corporate, investor, and regulatory efforts to encourage corporate compliance with environmental regulations, creating a need for more accurate environmental disclosure. Part III describes the current demand for a heightened standard of corporate environmental disclosure and the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) attempts at establishing a satisfactory disclosure standard. Part IV analyzes the central feature of a current corporate environmental disclosure proposal developed and presented by the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), which would require a cumulative assessment of the financial impact of all environmental liabilities for "materiality." This "cumulative materiality standard," if adopted, would replace the present SEC standard of materiality for each proceeding or liability. The author concludes that, while Sarbanes-Oxley does not expressly address corporate environmental disclosure, large economic entities, including publicly traded corporations and the federal government, should adopt the ASTM "cumulative materiality standard" over voluntarily published green reports.


This report records observations and recommendations resulting from an inspection trip to representative aircraft manufacturing establishments and repair stations. This inspection was made for the Navy Department and was specifically in reference to gluing practice at the various places visited. The period of the visits was between November 23, 1926 and February 16, 1927.


Behavioral economics has demonstrated systematic decision‐making biases in both lab and field data. Do these biases extend across contexts, cultures, or even species? We investigate this question by introducing fiat currency and trade to a colony of capuchin monkeys and recovering their preferences over a range of goods and gambles. We show that capuchins react rationally to both price and wealth shocks but display several hallmark biases when faced with gambles, including reference dependence and loss aversion. Given our capuchins' inexperience with money and trade, these results suggest that loss aversion extends beyond humans and may be innate rather than learned.


We investigate the parameterized complexity of computing an outcome of the Kemeny rule in judgment aggregation, providing the first parameterized complexity results for this problem for any judgment aggregation procedure. As parameters, we consider (i) the number of issues, (ii) the maximum size of formulas used to represent issues, (iii) the size of the integrity constraint used to restrict the set of feasible opinions, (iv) the number of individuals, and (v) the maximum Hamming distance between any two individual opinions, as well as all possible combinations of these parameters. We provide parameterized complexity results for two judgment aggregation frameworks: formula-based judgment aggregation and constraint-based judgment aggregation. Whereas the classical complexity of computing an outcome of the Kemeny rule in these two frameworks coincides, the parameterized complexity


Abstract: Flow in the unconsolidated glacial deposits near the city of Carmel in central Indiana was simulated by a digital-computer model in a study of hydraulic characteristics of the deposits. The study shows that 21 • 3 million gallons per day (933 liters per second) of additional water could be withdrawn from the aquifer for an indefinite period of time. This pumpage is approximately 5 million gallons per day (219 liters per second) above the projected water needs of Carmel for 1990. Saturated thickness, transmissivity, and storage coefficient of the outwash aquifer along the White River east of Carmel were determined, using available data supplemented by test drilling . The saturated thickness of the aquifer ranges from 10 to 110 feet 0 to 34 meters ); transmissivity ranges from 1,000 feet squared per day (93 meters squared per day) to 24 ,000 feet squared per day (2 ,230 meters squared per
day); and the average storage coefficient is 0.11.


Development of a sensor system with high molecular recognition ability was examined for comprehensive detection of numerous volatiles. The built system extracts molecular profiles and classifies odor and VOCs by structurally discernible adsorbents with high selectivity and condensation ability. These adsorbents have multilayer structures where molecular imprinted filter was fabricated on various concentrating materials. Target molecules were selectively absorbed into concentrating layers and other gases were blocked by the nanofiltration. Therefore, the system embedded developed adsorbents enables the detection and discrimination of low-concentrated gases. In addition, nano-filters are optimized and tailored for various applications. These possess not only the flexibility to be easily reconfigured with different properties, but also specific properties to interact with a variety of volatiles. In this study, basic characteristics of molecular filters with reconfigurability was investigated by applying functional materials.


This study demonstrates that occupational success is an important factor in the adaptation of highly skilled migrants to host societies, as seen through the experiences of the international medical graduates (IMGs) who came to New Zealand and became general practitioners (GPs). New Zealand is reliant on IMGs to support and deliver quality health care to its population: IMGs constitute over 40% of the current medical workforce. The central contributions of this thesis are to three distinct discourses on the experiences of migrants. The first contribution is an investigation and critical analysis of the experiences of IMGs who came to practise medicine in New Zealand. During the course of analysing the primary data, and relating it to existing literature, it was observed there was a lack of a model that captured the essence of the specific acculturation of highly skilled migrants such as IMGs. Therefore, the second contribution is the development of a concise integrated framework the Integrated Framework for Acculturative Research (IFAR), for the study of highly skilled migrants' acculturation to new environments. The experiences of the IMGs who came to New Zealand have been used to develop and discuss the application of the IFAR to cross-cultural adaptation research. There is an historical component to these narratives as the IMGs in this research spanned nearly five decades of acculturation into New Zealand society. The third contribution is in the domain of qualitative research, where email interviews (e-interviews) have been used to gather data within the context of ethnography. While there has been significant literature, theories and models developed about cross-cultural and intercultural adaptation of migrants into host nations, there are gaps in the understanding of the experiences of highly skilled migrants, who are different from other types of migrants, given their predispositions and higher levels of human capital such as education and work experience. There is an emerging literature on this subject, to which this study adds. The IMGs in this study used their human capital to become medical practitioners in New Zealand, achieving their main motivation for migrating in the first place. The reasons the IMGs stated for migration are consistent with existing literature on 'push' and 'pull' factors; however for all of them, the primary reason was to pursue their medical careers in New Zealand. After arrival, most of them had to do additional training before they were allowed to practise independently. The medical training ranged from those required to achieve the registration of the Medical Council of New Zealand (MCNZ), to those needed to achieve the Fellowship of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP). The participants noted several challenges during their training period, including a lack of clear information on what was required; having to prove their ability despite many years of experience as medical practitioners; dealing with poor teachers for some; having to travel long distances to attend training seminars; and for a few, dealing with financial constraints. However, they all overcame such challenges and became successful independent GPs. Their age, pre-migration human capital, and post-migration motivation were essential in initiating their desired occupations in New Zealand. These three success factors are supported by emerging literature on highly skilled migrants. The early participants initially worked in hospital settings before choosing general practice. Some left because they experienced issues in the hospital environment such as tensions with local colleagues, and the need to work long unfriendly hours. All participants noted that the reasons for choosing general practice included their desire to work more closely with communities and to experience a greater variety of medicine. Additionally, many reported that the flexibility of working in general practice gave them a better work/life balance that allowed them to do other things within the community and outside of their general practice. Female participants noted that general practice was more conducive when raising a family, compared to hospital-based specialties. These are the strengths of general practice that are well documented in literature. While the participants did not note any major ongoing challenges, some reported being frustrated with the poor links between primary and secondary health care that impacted on the timely care of their patients. With an increase in chronic conditions and mental health issues, coupled with an ageing population, many participants reported that they needed more time and frequent consultations to treat certain patients. Given New Zealand's co-payment system, participants reported having to consider the appropriate levels of care for patients with chronic conditions so as not to financially overburden them. For participants working in rural and economically deprived areas, there were other social factors that affected their medical practice, such as the high levels of family violence, sexual health issues, teenage pregnancies and substance abuse. These issues are supported by current literature regarding health and society in New Zealand. Despite the challenges they faced, all the IMGs planned on continuing to work in general practice in New Zealand for the foreseeable future. Migrants' pledge of continuing in their chosen occupations in host nations can be a very good indicator of acculturation and integration. The MCNZ reported that nearly two-thirds of all IMGs left New Zealand two years post-registration. However, retention rates improved significantly once IMGs obtained their vocational registration. Occupational continuity sheds light on immigrants' level of acculturation because it establishes that they are comfortable living among the hosts, and working in their chosen professions. This study demonstrates that occupational success is a key prerequisite to continuity and long-term integration into host societies. As highly skilled migrants, they could have gone to almost any country but they chose New Zealand. They remain here, having forged their medical careers and a lifestyle of their choosing. They now consider New Zealand their home, at least until they enter a different stage of their lives.


New results from MAST are presented that focus on validating models in order to extrapolate to future devices. Measurements during start-up experiments have shown how the bulk ion temperature rise scales with the square of the reconnecting field. During the current ramp-up, models are not able to correctly predict the current diffusion. Experiments have been performed looking at edge and core turbulence. At the edge, detailed studies have revealed how filament characteristics are responsible for determining the near and far scrape off layer density profiles. In the core the intrinsic rotation and electron scale turbulence have been measured. The role that the fast ion gradient has on redistributing fast ions through fishbone modes has led to a redesign of the neutral beam injector on MAST Upgrade. In H-mode the turbulence at the pedestal top has been shown to be consistent with being due to electron temperature gradient modes. A reconnection process appears to occur during edge localized modes (ELMs) and the number of filaments released determines the power profile at the divertor. Resonant magnetic perturbations can mitigate ELMs provided the edge peeling response is maximised and the core kink response minimised. The mitigation of intrinsic error fields with toroidal mode number n  >  1 has been shown to be important for plasma performance.


An analysis of the available information of years 2006 and 2007 at diverse sources in dependences, institutions and commercialization systems of cattle in Sonora was made. We analyzed international price fluctuation data of corn with base in information of stock-market of Chicago. From the previous information, data that allowed analyzing the present price behavior, weight and seasons were generated at which the yearling calves leave to the market through the year in the state of Sonora. Results show that this type of cattle is sold throughout the year, showing two picks at which the affluence is greater: in March and November. Depending on the condition of the animals, these classify like yearling calves number one (European type), one and a half (crossed) and two (Creole or zebu), with average monthly weights that fluctuate between 165 and 187 kilograms; average monthly price by kilogram of 22 to 28 pesos. Through these two years, animal weight as well as the sale price has had marked fluctuations, displaying declining tendencies in both cases. In this study, it was observed a noticeable and proportional inversely effect between these tendencies and the international prices of cereals and the bioenergetics.


A micropolar discrete-continuum coupling model is proposed to link the collectively particulate mechanical simulations at high-order representative elementary volume to field-scale boundary value problems. By incorporating high-order kinematics to the homogenization procedure, contact moment and force exerted on grain contacts are homogenized into a non-symmetric Cauchy stress and higher-order couple stress. These stress measures in return become the constitutive updates for the macroscopic finite element model for micropolar continua. Unlike the non-lcoal weighted averaging models in which the intrinsic length scale must be a prior knowledge to compute the nonlocal damage or strain measures, the proposed model introduces the physical length scale directly through the higher-order kinematics. As a result, there is no need to tune or adjust the intrinsic length scale. Furthermore, since constitutive updates are provided directly from micro-structures, there is also no need to calibrate any high-order material parameters that are difficult to infer from experiments. These salient features are demonstrated by numerical examples. The classical result from Mindlin is used as a benchmark to verify the proposed model.


A system to record the ultraviolet (UV) spectra of atmospheric global irradiance with the miniature fiber optic spectrometer AvaSpec-256 was developed for continuous computer-aided spectrometry at Tartu Observatory in 2005. As a result, the database of spectra recorded with 15-min-interval round 24 h over 300–400 nm, has been developed. The quantities retrieved from the spectra have been compared with those measured by the Scintec erythemal UV-SET sensor and the Kipp & Zonen narrowband 306 nm sensor. Almost clear and overcast days were selected for comparison. Reliable results on the spectral distribution of the UV global irradiance as well as the integrated daily spectral doses could be obtained at least during the bright half-year. The results were compared with the calculations performed by means of the LibRadtran package. The biases in irradiance were significant at SZA above 70–75°. At dominating larger SZA the recorded values need sophisticated corrections and remain less reliable. At lower latitudes than that of the study site (58.3°), the reliability of the spectrometer is expected to increase due to a smaller contribution of data measured at large SZA. The variations of the ratio of UV-A/UV-B irradiance, retrieved from the spectra, were investigated. Also the covariation of the narrowband 306 nm irradiance and the irradiance integrated over the whole UV-B range was studied. The biases between the UV-A/UV-B irradiances calculated by means of the LibRadtran package and measured with the AvaSpec were small at SZA below 70°. At larger SZA the values of the ratio as well as the biases increased, significantly depending on total ozone.