Nanoparticles of iron and iron oxide are widely explored in several biomedical and technological applications. We report on the magnetic properties of amorphous Fe/Fe–O core/shell nanoparticles compared to those of a reference system with crystalline Fe–O nanoparticles. These nanoparticles are prepared by thermal decomposition of iron precursor, where the amorphous and crystalline nature of core and shell is determined by the choice and concentration of the ligand. The crystalline system exhibits a blocking temperature higher than 300 K and negligible exchange bias effect. In contrast, the amorphous systems display large exchange bias, and collective magnetic behavior at low temperatures, with features of magnetic frustration and disorder reminiscent of those observed in spin glass and superspin glass systems. We discuss the origin of the dynamical magnetic behavior of the amorphous particles and study the dependence of the exchange bias field on the cooling field.


A novel method (Sophia) is presented to track oxygen saturation changes in a controlled environment using an RGB camera placed approximately 1.5 m away from the subject. The method is evaluated on five healthy volunteers (Fitzpatrick skin phenotypes II, III, and IV) whose oxygen saturations were varied between 80% and 100% in a purpose-built chamber over 40 minutes each. The method carefully selects regions of interest (ROI) in the camera image by calculating signal-to-noise ratios for each ROI. This allows it to track changes in oxygen saturation accurately with respect to a conventional pulse oximeter (median coefficient of determination, 0.85).


Multiple episodes of extensional tectonism dominated the formation of Mesozoic fault-bounded basins on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the Irish Continental Shelf and the central North Sea. A range of structural and stratigraphic responses in the Jeanne d'Arc, Porcupine and Moray Firth basins support widespread synchronous tectonic controls on sedimentation during one of these episodes, the Late Cimmerian.

Rifting was preceded by a phase of related tectonism during which subsidence rates began to vary across broad areas but without significant fault block rotation. This Late Cimmerian 'onset warp' pattern of subsidence is considered to have been essential in the establishment of restricted anoxic basins from latest Oxfordian through Kimmeridgian (sensu gallico) time and the development of one prolific layer of organic-rich source rocks.

The most prominent and widely recognized structural/lithostratigraphic response to Late Cimmerian rifting was the deposition of sediment wedges. Tithonian to early Valanginian strata generally thicken- into northerly trending faults in the Jeanne d'Arc and Porcupine basins, indicating that extensional stress was orientated WNW-ESE across a very broad area. The misalignment of this regional Late Cimmerian extensional stress with local inherited structural fabric may be responsible for transpressional uplift of individual fault blocks in the Outer Moray Firth basin.

Sedimentological responses to Late Cimmerian rifting were varied, though a common lithofacies stacking pattern is recognized. Variably thick conglomerates and/or sandstones were widely deposited at the start of rift deformation, while palaeoenvironments ranged from alluvial and braid plain to submarine fan even within individual basins. The relatively coarse basal sediments fine upwards into a second layer of commonly organic-rich shales and mark The widest variations in palaeoenvironments and sediment thicknesses occurred during the last phase of Late Cimmerian rift tectonism, though all three basins show evidence of decreasing water depths, increasing oxygen levels and increasing grain size. This lithofacies stacking pattern of relatively coarse to fine to coarse (reservoir/source/reservoir) and the development of bounding unconformities are largely attributable to progressive changes in rift-controlled subsidence. Rift basin subsidence rates are interpreted to increase from a low at initiation of faulting to a mid-rift peak, followed by slowing subsidence to the end of extension. A number of counteracting crustal mechanisms that may account for progressive variations in rift-induced subsidence are considered.


This paper examines the differences in agricultural water application per crop ton output in semi-arid jurisdictions in the Jordan Basin, focusing on Israel and Jordan, with some analysis relevant to Palestine. In order to understand differences in water application, it delivers a nationally averaged assessment of applied water application for 14 key regional crops, with most cases suggesting Israeli best practice in water application per unit crop. The paper draws on a secondary assessment of agricultural water intensity and primary data from farmer interviews to demonstrate differences in applied water productivity and agricultural context. The analysis suggests a conservative estimate that a difference of 168 Million Cubic Meters (MCM)/yr (33% of agriculture and 18% of national total) exists in terms of water application for a given crop production in Jordan when compared with Israel. The paper then proposes further work required to establish how differences in water application might translate into differences in agricultural water productivity, and thereby potential water savings that might enable growth of production within current agricultural allocations, allowing new future resources to be allocated to other economic and social needs. The paper also delivers a preliminary analysis of the political and institutional landscape for implementation, assessing the challenges of institutional silos and overlap that some policy stakeholders see as hindering cross-sectoral progress. The paper concludes by examining the limitations of the analysis, and it proposes future work to deepen the robustness of results and examines some of the challenges facing improved agricultural water productivity and changing farm behaviour in the region.


The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they offer not only significant proposals for improving established theories of punishment and compelling arguments against long-held positions, but also ori-ginal and important answers to the question, "How is punishment to be justified?"Part I of this collection, "Justifications of Punishment, " examines how any practice of punishment can be morally justified. Contributors include Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alan H. Goldman, Warren Quinn, C. S. Nino, and Jean Hampton. The papers in Part II, "Problems of Punishment, " address mor specific issues arising in established theories. The authors are Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael Davis, and A. John Simmons. In the final section, "Capital Punishment, " contributors discuss the justifiability of capital punishment, one of the most debated philosophical topics of this century. Essayists include David A. Conway, Jeffrey H. Reiman, Stephen Nathanson, and Ernest van den Haag.


Galactic cosmic-ray composition reflects the effects of nuclear interactions during propagation through the interstellar medium. In order to use measurements to determine the source of cosmic rays, one needs a model to deconvolute the propagation effect. This paper presents a new numerical method to solve cosmic-ray diffusive transport equations with a complete network of nuclear interactions. The new method uses the time backward Markov stochastic processes to solve the transport equation by tracing the particles' trajectories starting from the solar system back to their sources in the Galaxy. To make the calculation efficient for large arrays of equations for many cosmic-ray species, a matrix representing the composition of all cosmic-ray heavy nuclei and location is used. The results for abundance ratios of key elements such as B/C and sub-Fe/Fe compared with observations from HEAO-3, ACE, and Ulysses and for isotopic ratios such as 36Cl/37Cl and 54Mn/55Mn are shown to be consistent with other numerical approaches. The ability to track particles through the Galaxy, which is inherent in this technique, offers new opportunities for investigations. For example, one can look at the spatial and propagation time distributions and element composition of source particles that arrive in the solar system.


This paper argues that to restore the link between economic history and modern India, a different narrative of Indian economic history is needed. An exclusive focus on colonialism as the driver of India's economic history misses those continuities that arise from economic structure or local conditions. In fact, market-oriented British imperial policies did initiate a process of economic growth based on the production of goods intensive in labor and natural resources. However, productive capacity per worker was constrained by low rates of private and public investment in infrastructure, excessively low rates of schooling, social inequalities based on caste and gender and a delayed demographic transition to lower birthrates and the resultant heavy demographic burden placed on physical capital and natural resources.


The placenta plays a critical role in regulating fetal growth. Recent studies suggest that there may be sex-specific differences in placental development. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the associations between birthweight and placental morphology in models adjusted for covariates and to assess sex-specific differences in these associations. We analyzed data from the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network's population-based case–control study conducted between 2006 and 2008, which recruited cases of stillbirth and population-based controls in 5 states. Our analysis was restricted to singleton live births with a placental examination (n = 1229). Characteristics of placental morphology evaluated include thickness, surface area, difference in diameters, shape, and umbilical cord insertion site. We used linear regression to model birthweight as a function of placental morphology and covariates. Surface area had the greatest association with birthweight; a reduction in surface area of 83 cm2, which reflects the interquartile range, is associated with a 260.2-g reduction in birthweight (95% confidence interval, −299.9 to −220.6), after adjustment for other features of placental morphology and covariates. Reduced placental thickness was also associated with lower birthweight. These associations did not differ between males and females. Our results suggest that reduced placental thickness and surface area are independently associated with lower birthweight and that these relationships are not related to sex.


The aim of the study was to determine the effect of the mammalian female sex hormone estrone on differentiation of somatic tissues and on induction of autonomous endosperm in culture of female gametophyte cells of Arabidopsis thaliana ecotype Columbia (Col-0). In culture, estrone-stimulated development of autonomous endosperm (AE) occurred in 14.7% of unpollinated pistils. The AE represented development stages similar to those of young endosperm after fertilization and AE of fis mutants in vivo. In the majority of ovules the AE was in a few-nucleate young stage. Some ovules showed more advanced stages of AE development, with nuclei and cytoplasm forming characteristic nuclear cytoplasmic domains (NCDs). Sporadically, AE was divided into regions characteristic for Arabidopsis endosperm formed after fertilization. Direct organogenesis (caulogenesis, rhizogenesis), callus proliferation and formation of trichome-like structures were observed during in vitro culture of hypocotyls and cotyledons of 3-day-old seedlings cultured on medium supplemented with estrone for 28 days. Histological analysis showed adventitious root formation and changes in explant anatomy caused by estrone.


Shortly after his arrival at Carthage, while he is waiting for Dido to meet him, Aeneas finds that the walls of her temple are adorned with pictures of the Trojan War. Sunt hie etiam sua praemia laudi, he cries to Achates, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. The description of the pictures which follows is a remarkable example of Virgil's ability to use a traditional device in such a way as to strengthen and illuminate the main themes of his poem. It is my object here first to reinterpret one of the scenes which has been misunderstood, and then to discuss how Virgil has chosen and arranged his episodes so that the description of a picture gallery becomes a part of an epic poem.


Since 2011, a joint team of the Paris-Sorbonne University and the French Institute in Cairo (IFAO) has been excavating an exceptionally well-preserved harbor complex from the Early Old Kingdom at Wadi al-Jarf along the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea. Considered now to be the oldest port site in Egypt and the first prototype of this kind, it was used for a short time as a departure point to the Sinai Peninsula for royal expeditions on the way to the regions of Serabit al-Khadim and Wadi Maghara, the principal mining areas for copper and turquoise. According to the finds and epigraphy, all these installations date back exclusively to the very beginning of Dynasty 4. In 2013 the site received much scientific attention after the discovery of hundreds of fragments of narrative and administrative papyri, some of them name King Khufu and report various operations linked to the construction site of the Great Pyramid at Giza.Since 2013, the installations along the coastline have been under investigation and revealed all the constitutive elements of a harbor, such as an extensive mole underwater, numerous nautical elements, dwelling and storage buildings with evidence of administrative control and even a large workmen's barracks. The site at Wadi al-Jarf seems to naturally extend on the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula and a clear connection now has to be considered with the so-called late Old Kingdom fortress at Tell Ras Budran identified on the shore of the El-Markha plain. Based on the Wadi al-Jarf discoveries, its short-term occupation and the pottery evidence, which create a direct link between the sites, the function and chronology of the fortress needs to be completely reassessed and be regarded as a component and the bridgehead of the same ambitious system established at the very beginning of the Dynasty 4 along the two sides of the Gulf of Suez in order to reach the mining areas securely.


Binocular rivalry has intrigued researchers for over two centuries, but research into its neural mechanisms was until recently limited to behavioral and animal studies. The availability of functional magnetic resonance imaging since the 1990s has boosted the neuroscientific investigation of binocular rivalry in humans. Functional neuroimaging has revealed an involvement of all levels of the brain's visual processing hierarchy in rivalry dynamics, including early subcortical and cortical stages, functionally specialized visual areas, and non-sensory frontoparietal regions. Moreover, variants of binocular rivalry have helped to elucidate the neural fate of unconscious information during binocular rivalry suppression. The findings from neuroimaging research are integrated into a comprehensive view on how different processing stages interact to resolve perceptual conflict in the human brain.


It is shown that Bretherton's view of baroclinic instability as the interaction of two counter‐propagating Rossby waves (CRWs) can be extended to a general zonal flow and to a general dynamical system based on material conservation of potential vorticity (PV). The two CRWs have zero tilt with both altitude and latitude and are constructed from a pair of growing and decaying normal modes. One CRW has generally large amplitude in regions of positive meridional PV gradient and propagates westwards relative to the flow in such regions. Conversely, the other CRW has large amplitude in regions of negative PV gradient and propagates eastward relative to the zonal flow there. Two methods of construction are described. In the first, more heuristic, method a 'home‐base' is chosen for each CRW and the other CRW is defined to have zero PV there. Consideration of the PV equation at the two home‐bases gives 'CRW equations' quantifying the evolution of the amplitudes and phases of both CRWs. They involve only three coefficients describing the mutual interaction of the waves and their self‐propagation speeds. These coefficients relate to PV anomalies formed by meridional fluid displacements and the wind induced by these anomalies at the home‐bases. In the second method, the CRWs are defined by orthogonality constraints with respect to wave activity and energy growth, avoiding the subjective choice of home‐bases. Using these constraints, the same form of CRW equations are obtained from global integrals of the PV equation, but the three coefficients are global integrals that are not so readily described by 'PV‐thinking' arguments. Each CRW could not continue to exist alone, but together they can describe the time development of any flow whose initial conditions can be described by the pair of growing and decaying normal modes, including the possibility of a super‐modal growth rate for a short period. A phase‐locking configuration (and normal‐mode growth) is possible only if the PV gradient takes opposite signs and the mean zonal wind and the PV gradient are positively correlated in the two distinct regions where the wave activity of each CRW is concentrated. These are easily interpreted local versions of the integral conditions for instability given by Charney and Stern and by Fjørtoft. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society


The professionalization and commercialization of sport have created an increasing need for trained sports club managers globally and in South Africa. In the past, sports clubs in the country were run mainly by volunteers, but the new demands that require professionally educated, permanent staff mean that it is necessary to identify and describe the competencies required of sports club managers. This study compared the managerial competencies of sports club managers as they themselves perceived it with their managerial competencies as perceived by sports club coaches from selected sports codes in the North West Province. The data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire. A total of 63 respondents participated in this study out of a sample of 80, selected from different sporting codes. An independent t-test determined the difference between what sports club managers thought were the competencies required to manage a sports club and what the sports club coaches thought were the competencies necessary. From the 25 questions in the questionnaire, the results of 18 questions showed statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05), 15 showed moderate practical significant differences (d ≈ 0.5) and 3 showed large practically significant differences (d ≈ 0.8). From the results it can be concluded that the coaches of the sports clubs perceived their sports club managers not to be competent in performing their tasks as managers of the club.


This empirical exploratory study quantitatively analyzed content similarity indices (potential plagiarism) from a corpus consisting of 360 dissertations and 360 published articles. The population was defined using the filtering search criteria human resource development, training and development, organizational development, career development, or HRD. This study described in detail the process of collecting content similarity analysis (CSA) metadata using Turnitin software (www.turnitin.com). This researcher conducted robust descriptive statistics, a Wilcoxon signed-rank statistic between the similarity indices before and after false positives were excluded, and a multinomial logistic regression analysis to predict levels of plagiarism for the dissertations and the published articles. The corpus of dissertations had an adjusted rate of document similarity (potential plagiarism) of M = 9%, (SD = 6%) with 88.1% of the dissertations in the low level of plagiarism, 9.7% in the high and 2.2% in the excessive group. The corpus of published articles had an adjusted rate of document similarity (potential plagiarism) of M = 11%, (SD = 10%) with 79.2% of the published articles in the low level of plagiarism, 12.8% in the high and 8.1% in the excessive group. Most of the difference between the dissertations and published articles were attributed to plagiarism-of-self issues which were absent in the dissertations. Statistics were also conducted which returned a statistically significant justification for employing the investigative process of removing false positives, thereby adjusting the Turnitin results. This study also found two independent variables (reference and word counts) that predicted dissertation membership in the high (.15-.24) and excessive level (.25-1.00) of plagiarism and published article membership in the excessive level (.25-1.00) of plagiarism. I used multinomial logistic regression to establish the optimal prediction model. The multinomial logistic regression results for the dissertations returned a Nagelkerke pseudo R2 of .169 and for the published articles a Nagelkerke pseudo R2 .095.


What is drug addiction?
To answer above question, considerations are given to what is meant by drugs and when addiction could be said to have taken place. The drugs of concern here are psychoactive drugs.
Psychoactive drugs are substances that when ingested interact with the CNS to affect the individual's thoughts, feelings and actions. They affect one's mental process and behavior, perception of reality, level of alertness, response time and perception of the world. WHO 1998 defined Psychoactive drugs as "any chemical substance which, when taken into the body, alters its function physically and/or psychologically". Ikpeme (2010) specifically described it as any substance people consider to be a drug, with the understanding that this will change from culture to culture and from time to time. This definition supposes that psychoactive drugs vary from place to place and from time - do you agree? Does the fact that opium has transformed into a household name in china change its effect on their people who use it and get hooked on it? Or had our acceptance and celebration of alcohol in anyway negate its powerful and damaging effect on our local population especially the youths? However, culture must be considered in order to understand people's affiliation to a particular drug and to achieve effective treatment.


We use the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) III to examine the effect of the availability of the school breakfast program (SBP). Our work builds on previous research in four ways: First, we develop a transparent difference-in-differences strategy to account for unobserved differences between students with access to SBP and those without. Second, we examine serum measures of nutrient in addition to intakes based on dietary recall data. Third, we ask whether the SBP improves the diet by increasing/or decreasing the intake of nutrients relative to meaningful threshold levels. Fourth, we examine the effect of the SBP on other members of the family besides the school-aged child. We have three main findings. First, the SBP helps students build good eating habits: SBP increases scores on the healthy eating index, reduces the percentage of calories from fat, and reduces the probability of low fiber intake. Second, the SBP reduces the probability of serum micronutrient deficiencies in vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate, and it increases the probability that children meet USDA recommendations for potassium and iron intakes. Since we find no effect on total calories these results indicate that the program improves the quality of food consumed. Finally, in households with school-aged children, both preschool children and adults have healthier diets and consume less fat when the SBP is available. These results suggest that school nutrition programs may be an effective way to combat both nutritional deficiencies and excess consumption among children and their families.


Aims To analyse the surgical outcomes and postoperative complications of 23-G lensectomy–vitrectomy in the management of ectopia lentis in patients with Marfan syndrome. Methods This retrospective study evaluated all patients with Marfan syndrome who received 23-G lensectomy–vitrectomy either through pars plana or the limbus for management of ectopia lentis between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2011 at Eye and ENT Hospital of Fudan University. Results A total of 64 eyes of 39 patients with Marfan syndrome (28 males and 11 females) underwent lensectomy–vitrectomy as a primary procedure for ectopia lentis. The best-corrected visual acuity improved significantly from 0.5 (0.3–0.7) LogMar preoperatively to 0.3 (0.1–0.5) LogMar (p<0.01) at the last postoperative visit. Retinal detachment (RD) occurred in 11 eyes. Comparing the characteristics between those patients with detached and non-detached retinas, a more severe grade of lens dislocation (p=0.001) and higher axial myopia (p=0.035) were observed among those with detached retinas, whereas there were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of age (p=0.624), pseudophakia or aphakia (p=0.672), and preventive photocoagulated breaks (p=0.719). There was no significant difference in the incidence of RD between the scleral-fixated intraocular lens group and anterior chamber intraocular lens group (p=0.412). Conclusions Development of RD in patients with Marfan syndrome remains a risk following surgery for ectopia lentis. Caution should be taken in eyes with severe lens dislocation or high axial myopia when planning the surgery.


With an annual budget of about $400 million, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is about 5 percent the size of the Environmental Protection Agency, another federal agency created by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the "Year of the Environment." Nearly all workers in the United States come under OSHA's juridction, with some notable exceptions, including miners, transportation workers, many public employees, and people who are self-employed. OSHA is currently responsible for ptoecting over 100 million workers at 6 million work sites with the help of only about 2,000 workplace health and safety inspectors. Nevertheless, suppoers of OSHA argue that it has significantly improved worker safety over the last 30 years and that a beefed-up enforcement effort would produce even greater improvements. We examine the available evidence and find little support to the notion that OSHA has effectively reduced accidents and diseases in the workplace or that a more vigorous enforcement campaign would be likely to do so. Other policy instruments--tort laws, state Workers' Compensation insurance programs, and research and public education on the causes and consequences of work hazards--now keep workplace deaths and injuries low and can reduce them even more. The wage premiums, estimated at $210 billion per year, that workers receive for accepting job-related health hazards give employers a stronger economic incentive to eliminate workplace health and safety hazards than the $132 million per year in fines imposed by OSHA and its state counterparts for violations of workplace safety standards. Because of the heterogeneity of workers and firms, we argue that public policy should expand the economic incentives for workplace safety while allowing firms and workers freedom to discover on their own the best ways to improve workplace safety.


The legal position of the terminal operator changes by the integration of the carriage of goods between the sea port and the hinterland into his service profile. The terminal operator performs a wide variety of obligations, including loading and discharging, stacking, warehousing, measuring, weighing and carrying goods within and beyond the terminal's premises. These obligations fall into different categories of contracts for which the law provides specific rules, i.e. a contract of carriage, a contract of deposit and a service contract. Some of these obligations might be subject to mandatory provisions derived from applicable national legal systems or uniform private law conventions. This book examines how to determine the applicable rules to the terminal operator's mixed contracts. This serves a practical purpose as one of the main differences between the applicable legal regimes is the terminal operator's liabilities towards third parties such as cargo owners or ship owners who do not have a contractual relation with the terminal operator.


Abstract Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection is the most common cause of lower respiratory tract infection and the leading cause of hospitalization among young children, incurring high annual costs among US children under the age of 5 years. Palivizumab has been found to be effective in reducing hospitalization and preventing serious lower respiratory tract infections in high-risk infants. This paper presents a systematic review of the cost-effectiveness studies of palivizumab and describes the main highlights of a round table discussion with clinical, payer, economic, research method, and other experts. The objectives of the discussion were to (1) review the current state of clinical, epidemiology, and economic data related to severe RSV disease; (2) review new cost-effectiveness estimates of RSV immunoprophylaxis in US preterm infants, including a review of the field's areas of agreement and disagreement; and (3) identify needs for further research.


In this paper computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques have been used to investigate the effect of changes to the geometry of a vortex amplifier (VXA) in the context of glovebox operations in the nuclear industry. These investigations were required because of anomalous behavior identified when, for operational reasons, a long-established VXA design was reduced in scale. The study simulates the transient aspects of two effects: back-flow into the glovebox through the VXA supply ports, and the precessing vortex core in the amplifier outlet. A temporal convergence error study indicates that there is little to be gained from reducing the time step duration below 0.1 ms. Based upon this criterion, the results of the simulation show that the percentage imbalance in the domain was well below the required figure of 1, and imbalances for momentum in all three axes were all below measurable values. Furthermore, there was no conclusive evidence of periodicity in the flow perturbations at the glovebox boundary, although good evidence of periodicity in the device itself and in the outlet pipe was seen. Under all conditions the modified geometry performed better than the control geometry with regard to aggregate reversed supply flow. The control geometry exhibited aggregate nonaxisymmetric supply port back-flow for almost all of the simulated period, unlike the alternative geometry for which the flow through the supply ports was positive, although still nonaxisymmetric, for most of the period. The simulations show how transient flow structures in the supply ports can cause flow to be reversed in individual ports, whereas aggregate flow through the device remains positive. Similar to the supply ports, flow through the outlet of the VXA under high swirl conditions is also nonaxisymmetric. A time-dependent reverse flow region was observed in both the outlet and the diffuser. It is possible that small vortices in the outlet, coupled with the larger vortex in the chamber, are responsible for the oscillations, which cause the shift in the axis of the precessing vortex core (and ultimately in the variations of mass flow in the individual supply ports). Field trials show that the modified geometry reduces the back-flow of oxygen into the glovebox by as much as 78. At purge rates of 0.65 m 3h the modified geometry was found to be less effective, the rate of leakage from the VXA increasing by 16-20. Despite this reduced performance, leakage from the modified geometry was still 63 less than the control geometry. © 2012 American Society of Mechanical Engineers.


The Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation on sustainable consumption and production, and the Rio+20 Declaration have consistently emphasized the essentiality of promoting sustainable patterns of consumption and production to realize objectives of and requirements for sustainable development. To support these goals, this brief makes a recommendation to consider the crucial impacts of trends in smaller household size.


This article investigates issues in the areas of work outcomes, self-determination, career decision-making skills, person centered planning, and transitional planning for students with disabilities. In particular, training in cognitive decision-making is suggested for students with mild disabilities. Educators and schools are charged with providing challenging, current, and useful experiences for students, including those with disabilities, so they may become fell members of society. Students with disabilities are often not taught cognitive decision making skills, and many leave high school with very little training in how to make decisions about careers. Little research has been conducted with this population investigating maintenance and generalization practices and student outcomes associated with self-determination, career decision-making, person centered planning, and transition planning. Students with disabilities can benefit from classroom instruction in skills needed for finding and maintaining successful work. Further research is needed to explore the characteristics, inhibitors, and supports that lead to successful outcomes sue to maintenance and generalization of career decision-making skills for students with mild disabilities. ********** The challenge for schools and educators is to provide relevant, challenging, and contemporary experiences in school for youth with disabilities, which will help them become lull members of society. One often-neglected strategy to aid these youth to become full participants is to teach them cognitive decision-making skills (Blackorby & Wager, 1996; Destefano & Wagner, 1993; Wehmeyer, 1993). Teaching such skills can promote maintenance and generalization of learned and observed behaviors in a variety of school and community settings. Teachers can incorporate cognitive decision-making training in classroom lessons, including experience relevant to the student social and economic needs (Burdick, Pond & Yamamoto, 1994; Ward, Wehmeyer, Martin & Marshall, 1993). Cognitive decision-making skills are essential for establishing and meeting goals, planning careers, exploring/investigating career choices, making decisions about the future, and establishing objectives and activities. Building on efforts to increase awareness of cognitive executive decision-making skills for persons with disabilities, Wehmeyer (1993) defines cognitive executive decision-making as developing an improved self-concept, self-esteem and awareness of personal needs, interests, goals, strengths and limitations. Perceptions of personal career goals, including perceived control over outcomes, responsibility, and factors such as one's anxiety about the decision-making process are part of the process. Each of these skills, independently and collectively, can be taught. Research on maintenance and generalization of career planning for persons with special needs has often been restricted to marginal topics and program conditions (Lichtenstein, 1995; Martin & Marshall, 1995; Miner & Bates, 1997a). Little investigative attention has been given to the decision-making skills, career/vocational development, and the relatively narrow range of career options for students with disabilities in today's labor market. The purpose of this article is to review relevant research on cognitive decision-making skills and to demonstrate how these skills facilitate the overall development of students with mild disabilities (Wehemeyer, 1993; Dunn & Shumaker, 1997). Efficacy of work outcomes for persons with disabilities, strategies for facilitating self-determination. and development of career decision-making skills, and transition planning will be discussed. Finally, implications for classroom instruction will be reviewed. Historical Work Outcomes In the past few years, a number of studies have focused on adult adjustment and work outcomes of students with disabilities. …


Natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes) affect millions of people each year, causing widespread destruction in their wake. People have recently taken to social media websites (e.g., Twitter) to share their sentiments and feelings with the larger community. Consequently, these platforms have become instrumental in understanding and perceiving emotions at scale. In this paper, we introduce HurricaneEmo, an emotion dataset of 15,000 English tweets spanning three hurricanes: Harvey, Irma, and Maria. We present a comprehensive study of fine-grained emotions and propose classification tasks to discriminate between coarse-grained emotion groups. Our best BERT model, even after task-guided pre-training which leverages unlabeled Twitter data, achieves only 68% accuracy (averaged across all groups). HurricaneEmo serves not only as a challenging benchmark for models but also as a valuable resource for analyzing emotions in disaster-centric domains.


Signaling by glial cells helps to preserve cerebellar neurons that control movements. The role of glial cells and their interaction with neurons in normal behavior is unclear. To address this question, Saab et al. studied a special type of glial cell in the cerebellum. Conditional mutant mice were produced in which the two glutamate receptor subunits normally present in Bergmann glial cells were efficiently ablated in a temporally controlled manner. Glutamate signaling of the glial cells contributed to the structural and functional integrity of the cerebellar network. Bergmann glial cells also played a role in the "fine-tuning" of neuronal processing, which is crucial for the fast and precise control of complex motor behavior. A. S. Saab, A. Neumeyer, H. M. Jahn, A. Cupido, A. A. M. Šimek, H.-J. Boele, A. Scheller, K. Le Meur, M. Götz, H. Monyer, R. Sprengel, M. E. Rubio, J. W. Deitmer, C. I. De Zeeuw, F. Kirchhoff, Bergmann glial AMPA receptors are required for fine motor coordination. Science 337, 749–753 (2012). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Ginger is used worldwide as a cooking spice, condiment and herbal remedy. Ginger is used extensively in Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India to block excessive clotting (that is, heart disease), reduce cholesterol and fight arthritis. In Arabian medicine, ginger is considered an aphrodisiac. The Eclectic physicians of the 19th century relied on ginger to induce sweating, improve the appetite and curb nausea, and as a topical counterirritant. Nowadays, ginger is extensively cultivated from Asia to Africa and the Caribbean, and is used worldwide as a nausea remedy, as an anti-spasmodic and to promote warming in case of chills as presented in this report. Ginger is also extensively consumed as a flavoring agent; it is estimated that in India, the average daily consumption is 8 to 10 g of fresh ginger root. Moreover, the German Commission E has approved the use of ginger root as a treatment for dyspepsia and prophylactic against motion sickness.

 Key words: Ginger, Zingiber officinale, traditional usages.


This guide is a starting point for members of the Fitchburg State University community seeking information and resources to learn about anti-racism, white privilege, and inclusion.


Based on interviews and field research,the authors explore the sets of ideas Arab tribespeople from Ras Al-Khaimah had about tribe and community; social and economic networks, and jural contracts for livelihoods and profits; their uses of their environments; the moral relations of credit, debt andlabour; ruling; economic and political transformations; and ideas of regional history where conflicts were regarded as disputes over sets of ideas, and informal accounts of tribal and local histories.Published sources give a wider context to these ideas and events which show the great complexity and differing perspectives of "life before oil" in the Gulf.


Importance
Randomized clinical trials have shown the efficacy of thrombectomy of large intracranial vessel occlusions in adults; however, any association of therapy with clinical outcomes in children is unknown.

Objective
To evaluate the use of endovascular recanalization in pediatric patients with arterial ischemic stroke.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This retrospective, multicenter cohort study, conducted from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2018, analyzed the databases from 27 stroke centers in Europe and the United States. Included were all pediatric patients (<18 years) with ischemic stroke who underwent endovascular recanalization. Median follow-up time was 16 months.

Exposures
Endovascular recanalization.

Main Outcomes and Measures
The decrease of the Pediatric National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (PedNIHSS) score from admission to day 7 was the primary outcome (score range: 0 [no deficit] to 34 [maximum deficit]). Secondary clinical outcomes included the modified Rankin scale (mRS) (score range: 0 [no deficit] to 6 [death]) at 6 and 24 months and rate of complications.

Results
Seventy-three children from 27 participating stroke centers were included. Median age was 11.3 years (interquartile range [IQR], 7.0-15.0); 37 patients (51%) were boys, and 36 patients (49%) were girls. Sixty-three children (86%) received treatment for anterior circulation occlusion and 10 patients (14%) received treatment for posterior circulation occlusion; 16 patients (22%) received concomitant intravenous thrombolysis. Neurologic outcome improved from a median PedNIHSS score of 14.0 (IQR, 9.2-20.0) at admission to 4.0 (IQR, 2.0-7.3) at day 7. Median mRS score was 1.0 (IQR, 0-1.6) at 6 months and 1.0 (IQR, 0-1.0) at 24 months. One patient (1%) developed a postinterventional bleeding complication and 4 patients (5%) developed transient peri-interventional vasospasm. The proportion of symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage events in the HERMES meta-analysis of trials with adults was 2.79 (95% CI, 0.42-6.66) and in Save ChildS was 1.37 (95% CI, 0.03-7.40).

Conclusions and Relevance
The results of this study suggest that the safety profile of thrombectomy in childhood stroke does not differ from the safety profile in randomized clinical trials for adults; most of the treated children had favorable neurologic outcomes. This study may support clinicians' practice of off-label thrombectomy in childhood stroke in the absence of high-level evidence.


This study investigates the role of the e-tutor within an Open Distance Learning Higher Education institution in terms of perceptions of their work roles and the assessment of the competencies of the e-tutor. In the universities' strategic plan the importance of providing excellent service to learners is strongly emphasised. E-tutors are the learner's first and foremost contact with the university; they invariably become the "face of the ODL university" to the geographically distant learner. E-tutors are therefore strategically important for the perceived quality and attractiveness of the university; however they can also be a vulnerable link in the university's educational chain. The process of online tutoring therefore becomes a critical success factor in learners' acceptance of e-learning. The first phase of the research focuses on the e-tutor perspective, investigating the competencies required by e-tutors to function effectively in an online environment, as well as their perceived role. A survey was administered to e-tutors in the College of Economic and Management Sciences of the University to assess their perceived roles and competencies. Understanding the importance of these roles and identifying necessary tutoring skills is paramount for the success of e-learning solutions.


A polarization-independent magneto-optical waveguide isolator using nonreciprocal phase shift for a TM mode is proposed. The isolator is a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) that is composed of transverse electric (TE)-transverse magnetic (TM) polarization converters and nonreciprocal phase shifters. The MZI induces a phase difference between the reciprocal TE and nonreciprocal TM modes that are converted to each other by the polarization converter. Since the design uses a nonreciprocal phase shift only for the TM mode, it allows fabrication of an integrated structure. This paper describes the principle of operation and its design.


Cerebral palsy is one of the most common causes of serious physical disability in childhood. Exercise for children with cerebral palsy is gaining more popularity among pediatric physical therapists community as an interventional choice. Under water exercise appeals children with cerebral palsy because of the unique quality of buoyancy of water that influences poor balance and poor postural control. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of aquatic exercise program on muscle tone in spastic hemiplegic children. Thirty spastic hemiplegic children with cerebral palsy were enrolled in the study and were evaluated before and after treatment using Hoffman reflex and H/M ratio. They were randomly distributed into two groups of equal number; each group consisted of fifteen children. Group A received an exercise therapy program while wearing ankle foot orthosis as a home routine, two sessions per week for twenty weeks. Group B received the same exercise therapy program in addition to an aquatic exercise program for twenty weeks two sessions per week for twenty weeks. Results: The results revealed significant difference in all measured variables regarding group A and B when comparing pre and post treatment mean values (P<0.0001) Statistically significant improvement was observed in favor of group B. Conclusion: Combination of exercise program and aquatic exercise program had significant effect on decreasing H-reflex in spastic hemiplegic cerebral palsy.


Platinum (Pt) is the best catalyst component towards fuel cell reactions, while its scarcity and high cost largely restrict its practical applications. To overcome these limitations, precisely designing functional Pt-based electrocatalysts is highly desirable. Herein, for the first time we report a facile strategy for the construction of ternary PtNi/PtxPb/Pt core/multishell nanowires (NWs), which combine the features of a core–multishell structure, an alloy effect, and a one dimensional structure. The use of preformed ultrathin PtNi NWs as substrates, sequential reduction/diffusion of Pb onto the ultrathin PtNi NWs, and the further reduction of Pt play important roles in the formation of ternary PtNi/PtxPb/Pt NWs. The combined features enable them to be more active and stable for anodic alcohol oxidations including the methanol oxidation reaction, ethanol oxidation reaction, ethylene glycol oxidation reaction, and glycerol oxidation reaction, as well as the cathodic oxygen reduction reaction than commercial Pt/C. Among various electrocatalysts investigated, the optimized PtNi0.67Pb0.26 NWs show the best activity and durability for all the fuel cell reactions tested. This work highlights the importance of precise composition and structure tunings of Pt-based electrocatalysts for fuel cell reactions.


Background Syphilis infections continue to increase among men who have sex with men (MSM) in many countries, with rates often higher among HIV-positive MSM. There is limited understanding of the risk and determinants of syphilis transmission between men. We aimed to examine the concordance of early syphilis infection between male sexual partners and clinical factors associated with transmission. Methods Men attending Melbourne Sexual Health Centre with their male partners, where at least one was diagnosed with early syphilis, were identified from linkage of partner records between March 2011 and April 2016. Early latent syphilis was defined as a new asymptomatic syphilis presentation of less than 2 years' duration. Associations between concordance and potential risk factors were examined using Fisher's exact test. Results Among 43 couples (86 men) identified, there were 13 couples (26 men) where both were diagnosed with early syphilis, representing a concordance rate of 30.2% (95% CI 17.2% to 46.1%). Among the 13 concordant couples, 5 men had primary syphilis (4 penile, 1 anal), 11 secondary syphilis (8 generalised rash, 3 penile, 2 anal, 1 oral lesion) and 10 early latent infections. Concordance was higher among couples where at least one partner had secondary syphilis compared with couples where neither partner had secondary syphilis (53% (9/17) vs 15% (4/26), P=0.016). Furthermore, concordance was higher among couples where one was HIV positive compared with couples where both were HIV negative (62% (5/8) vs 23% (8/35), P=0.042). Conclusions There was an overall concordance rate of 30%. Higher concordance rates for early syphilis infection between male sexual partners were associated with HIV and secondary syphilis.


Background How do we account for the persistent difficulty the U.S. community of science has in educating larger numbers of talented and diverse undergraduates? We posit that the problem lies in the community's unremitting focus on scientific subject matter knowledge and students' ability to learn, to the neglect of interpersonal social relations—particularly trust. Our study focuses on trust in academic mentoring. This topic is particularly relevant in studies of the undergraduate segment of the pipeline into science that typically occurs in large, impersonal settings that often generate student alienation. Our study hypothesizes that trustworthy relations may be both a significant condition for academic mentoring as well as an important outcome. Purpose The study we report explores the promise of a new research direction in undergraduate science education, one focused on trust in academic mentoring. A focus on interpersonal trust is unusual, if not entirely overlooked, in most studies of undergraduate science education, and stands in sharp contrast to the situation in K–12 education where an emergent body of survey and field research measures trust and documents its educational importance. Our framework derives from social capital theory and cautions that a science curriculum that informs and motivates entails attention not only to cognition, as indicated by subject matter knowledge, but also to the educational significance of other complex forms of cognition that undergird social skill, relational awareness, and the development and maintenance of trust. Research Design Because the MARC-U*STAR training program funded by the National Institutes of Health sponsors only a select number of talented upper division science major students on each host campus, our correlational analyses were based on a unique and relatively small sample of data collected from undergraduate science major students (N=161) in 16 colleges and universities in the Pacific Southwest. We analyzed the data in two linked parts: (a) an analysis of the association between trust and motivation; and (b) an evaluation of whether the Program affects trust. We link the two parts by using the same longitudinal dataset in each and, further, by building the evaluation on the findings from models that compare trust and motivation among upper division science major students enrolled in the Program (n=49) with trust and motivation among upper division science major students not in the Program (n=112). Given the study's exploratory purpose and design limits, we situate the results near the front end of the continuum from preliminary studies designed to suggest further research directions to the kinds of precise predictions we can expect from truly randomized controlled experiments. Findings Despite its necessarily preliminary findings regarding trust, this study contributes to the literature on academic mentoring in undergraduate science education in several ways. First, our study develops a novel conceptual perspective on the measure and utility of trust as a crucial form of social capital. Second, we used this perspective to develop a set of structural models that suggest interpersonal trust is producible in undergraduate science education; is pedagogically powerful, not a mere nicety; and is particularly important for students who are members of groups historically underrepresented in the sciences. Third, and surprising because the literature on trust does not prepare for them, are results suggesting that trust may work differently for different groups of students in different contexts. Conclusions/Recommendations Our findings are unusual and encouraging, and they bring several issues to light regarding (a) the utility of theory in research and practice in undergraduate science education, (b) inequitable representation in the sciences, and (c) contextual complexities that condition the development and maintenance of trust within institutional settings. First, our framework on trust derives from social capital theory and cautions that a science curriculum that informs and motivates entails attention not only to cognition but also to the educational significance of other complex forms of cognition that undergird social skill, relational awareness, and the development and maintenance of trust. In cognitively and socially consequential exchanges in undergraduate science education, trust and mistrust are important. Next, our most unusual finding—that trust in a mentor seems to matter more for the motivation and career expectations of the MARC-U*STAR Program students than for non-Program students—raises the question: How does trust in a university mentor matter for equitable undergraduate education in science? With our data, we cannot fully account for this unexpected finding. Drawing from studies that disentangle the concept of interpersonal trust from more generalized notions of trust in the social environment, we have worked at a tentative interpretation: Perhaps interpersonal trust is especially impactful in situations where the more general social environment poses perceptible threats. Last, when the literature on trust is examined concurrently with our findings, trust emerges not as an invariant entity, but as supremely contextualized. We conclude by calling for a more expansive, multidisciplinary, and multimethod research agenda focused on trust, which may contribute to a reorientation of undergraduate science education.


Evaporite deposits preserve a wealth of information on Earth's past surface conditions. The deposits are sensitive indicators of depositional environment and climate, recorded in a wide variety of mechanically and chemically produced sedimentary structures and fabrics. Unique to evaporite deposits is the record they carry of the hydrochemistry of surface waters, including seawater. Sulfate minerals are important components in understanding the hydrochemistry of ancient surface waters.

Sedimentological aspects of evaporite deposits were compiled by Melvin (1991). In the compilation, sedimentology specific to Ca-bearing sulfates was described by Warren (1991); Lowenstein and Hardie (1985), Handford (1991), and Smoot and Lowenstein (1991) discussed the sedimentology of evaporites in general. These general principles can be applied specifically to the sulfate minerals in evaporite deposits. Sedimentological aspects of sulfate minerals in evaporite deposits are not discussed here. For this information, the reader is referred to the above references.

Hardie et al. (1985) and Spencer and Lowenstein (1988) discussed the petrography of evaporites and the interpretation of fabrics of evaporite minerals. Examples of petrographic aspects of sulfate minerals in evaporites are presented here along with references specific to the sulfate minerals. For a more complete understanding of these aspects the reader is referred to the above references.

The major focus of this chapter is on the chemical aspects of the common sulfate minerals that occur in evaporite deposits. The discussion begins with an explanation of the concept of chemical divides and the determination of evaporation paths, and the evolution of brines in accordance with mineral solubility and the composition of dilute inflow waters. Determination of the precipitation pathways of the more soluble salts is more complex. Examples of sulfate-mineral assemblages in evaporation systems, calculated via thermochemical modelling, are given for both marine and non-marine systems.

The mineralogy of evaporite deposits is …


The growth of multimedia applications on the Internet made at least one fifth of the total network traffic to run over UDP. Unlike TCP, UDP is unresponsive to network congestion. This may cause, interalia, bandwidth starvation of responsive flows, severe and prolonged congestions or in the worst-case scenario a congestion collapse. Hence, the coexistence of both protocols on fair-share premises converges towards impossibility. The paper deals with a new approach to solving the problem of taming down the unresponsive flows. By using some of the desirable properties of mobile agents, the system is able to control the influx of non-TCP or unresponsive flows into the network. Various functions performed by mobile agents monitor non-TCP flows, calculate sending rates and modify their intensity according to the needs of the network to attain as good performance as it is possible


Modern irrigation techniques use automated systems where irrigation schedules are controlled according to certain criteria. The objective of this study is to numerically estimate irrigation events, water content and temperature distributions, evaporation, drainage, and soil water under closed loop automated irrigation systems of a bare soil. The automated irrigation system is activated and deactivated according to the water content value. The governing equations for transient one-dimensional liquid water flow and heat transfer of unsaturated porous media are applied. The energy balance equation at the soil surface is used as an upper boundary condition based on measured meteorological data of Jeddah City. The results show that the current procedure can be applied to simulate different variables under automated irrigation systems. The water content shows periodic behavior, as well as time lags and decreases in amplitude with soil depth. The timing of applied irrigation has an important impact on evaporation and soil temperature. Applying irrigation water during the daytime leads to increased evaporation. The soil surface temperature decreases suddenly when water is supplied in the afternoon, while a slight increase is observed when irrigation is applied at midnight.


This thesis covers issues related to financing in mergers and acquisitions. It studies the relationship between firms' financing conditions and firms' decisions to either buy or sell assets.The first paper, "Cross-border mergers and acquisitions with financially constrained owners", studies the effects of costly external financing in international asset sales. We propose a cross-border merger model with home biased financially constrained owners in which the subsequent investments of the buyer and seller can be determined. We show that governmental policies blocking foreign acquisitions to protect the domestic industry can be counterproductive and propose "financial efficiency" defense in merger law.In the second paper, "Misvaluation and financial constraints: method of payment and buyer identity in mergers and acquisitions", I study how stock price misvaluation and financial frictions affect whether an acquisition occurs between or within industries and whether the acquirer pays in cash or stocks. I set up a model where stock market misvaluation correlates within industries and across industries and assume that managers' have private information regarding their own firm and firms similar to it. The model yields predictions regarding which firm acquires which firm and the method of payment used in transactions. The third paper, "Misvaluation and merger activity", investigates how merger activity varies over time and sectors of the economy. Using data on mergers between publicly traded US firms, I study the role of stock overvaluation on merger activity. I focus on how overvaluation affects mergers occurring within sectors differently from those occurring between sectors and how the effect differs between cash- and stock-financed mergers. The results suggest that marketwide misvaluation does not drive overall merger activity, but that sector-level overvaluation increases the probability that firms conduct stock-financed acquisitions of firms in other sectors. The results indicate that overvaluation affects stock-financed merger activity only if it increases the overvaluation of some firms relative to the overvaluation of other firms. An analysis of the acquisition decisions of individual firms support this interpretation.


Abstract This essay deals with Friedrich Schleiermacher's readings on ecclesiastical geography and statistics that will be published soon for the first time as volume II/16 of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe. For Schleiermacher the ecclesiastical statistics were the last part of historical theology; he developped this subject to describe the present state of the churches in the whole world, especially their life and culture, their constitutions, and their relations with states and goverments. Though Schleiermacher's statistics had some influence on comparative symbolics and the study of denominations as well as on Practical Theology, they could not be established as one discipline among the other theological disciplines.


Bacillus stearothermophilus No. 236 isolated from the soil is a strong xylan degrader producing all the xylanolytic enzymes. However, the strain was discovered to be highly intractable to its transformation. In the present study, we have developed a reliable method for transformation of B. stearothermophilus No. 236 by a systematic examination of several factors which might have an influence on the efficiency of electrotransformation, Notably, we found that the most critical factor influencing the transformation efficiency (TE) was the incubation temperature after pulsing, with its optimum incubation of 37°C. At 50°C, the optimum growth temperature of the B. stearothermophilus strain, the transformants could not be obtained at a recognizable level. The combination of field strength of 7.5 kV/cm along with pulse duration of 10 msec (resistance of 400 Ω and capacitance of 25 μF) was shown to be the best electrical parameters at the incubation temperature of 37°C. A higher TE was obtained when the cells were harvested at an early-exponential phase. Twenty percent of PEG-8000 in a suspension buffer and an addition of 0.1% glycine in the growth medium resulted in about 4-fold and 3-fold increases in TE, respectively. We also found that the plasmid DNA which had been cycled through the host B. stearothermophilus cells enhanced TE by one order of magnitude higher. Under the presently described conditions, 2.5×10 5 transformants per μg DNA was attained.


This paper states a distribution network information support system (DISS). The system provides an environment for building a distribution database which includes both graphic and alphanumeric data. The database can be used for inventory, facility management, engineering analysis, and map production. Facility data or network models can be retrieved from the database. The retrieved data can then be used by application programs. With a good man-machine interface (MMI), graphic output or text reports can be viewed from the graphic screen online. A good DISS could also produce a practical result for strategic decisions by considering land use, value, zoning, as well as other physical restrictions. These physical restrictions are not easy to quantify, and are awkward to model with mathematics.


This dissertation extends the understanding of asymmetric group behavior in the provision of public goods. Previous studies, using an asymmetric framework, have so far focused on situations where all players profit form the social optimum. The discussion in the first paper breaks with this tradition and the results show how strong inequalities may decrease group contributions, as the high endowment players only contributes a small share of their endowments. This is in contrast to experiments using a weaker asymmetry, which indicate that players tend to contribute a fair-share of their endowment. This is of importance since it shows how a big rift in the income structure of a society may negatively influence the voluntary provision of public goods. The approach in the second paper joins the discussion on crowding-out of intrinsic motivation as well as the question which mandatory contribution mechanism performs the best, in an asymmetric endowment setting. It shows how progressive mandatory contributions stimulate the highest level of public good provision of all treatments, while displaying the same level of motivational crowding-out as in the treatment without mandatory contributions. Furthermore, the results suggest a norm setting character of mandatory minimum contributions.
The third paper puts the emphasis on peer punishment in asymmetric groups of three players. The focus rests on the contributions as well as punishment to and punishment from the player types in majority. This experiment shows that especially high endowment players are punished more. This finding is independent of whether the high endowment type is in a majority or minority situation.
The last experiment focuses on fair-share behavior in asymmetric public good games and potential effects of the way the interface in the contribution stage is presented. In each round, players have to choose the presentation style of the contribution mechanism, which can be either in absolute or relative terms. It shows that most participants prefer to contribute in absolute terms, which is consistent in all treatments. However, this has no effect on the level of contributions. Groups with weak asymmetries show overall a fair-share behavior, which vanishes if groups with mostly full or zero contributions are excluded, showing low endowment players to be contributing a larger share of their endowment than the high endowment players. Low endowment players in a strong asymmetry setting contribute a larger share compared to the high endowment players. At the same time, participants adapt their preferences of the interface depends on the actual design of the experiment. This is reflected in the observation that more participants pick the relative contribution method in the treatments with a stronger symmetry.


There is very little replication of research in economics, particularly compared with other sciences. This paper argues that there is a dire need for studies that replicate research, that their scarcity is due to poor or negative rewards for replicators, and that this could be improved with a journal that exclusively publishes replication studies. I then discuss how such a journal could be organized, in particular in the face of some negative rewards some replication studies may elicit.


At a regional scale, the high species numbers (gamma diversity) of tropical forests have been explained by either a gradual accumulation of species through time (museum hypothesis) or, by contrast, rapid recent speciation in large genera. However, the origins of local rain forest diversity (alpha diversity) have been given little attention. Cyrtandra (Gesneriaceae), an understorey genus in the highly species-rich Indo-Malayan rain forest, has considerable capacity for producing local endemics, making it particularly suitable for studying diversity on a local scale. We sampled Cyrtandra species from one community on Mount Kerinci, Sumatra, and phylogenetic analyses of ITS sequences suggest that this community is an assembly of three distinct phyletic lineages: (1) a group of herbaceous or subshrub plants of Bornean affinity, (2) one member of a group of widespread shrubs forming Cyrtandra section Dissimiles and (3) a second group of shrubs. The evolutionary origin of this community is therefore not a result of rapid and recent speciation: it is assembled from species resulting from a gradual accumulation of diversity through time (museum hypothesis), although one lineage shows evidence of more recent, continuing speciation than the other two. The community includes two distantly related, apparently endemic species, but there is no evidence for a local adaptive radiation. The protection of representative species from each lineage would allow the conservation of genetic diversity. © 2004 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2004, 81, 49–62.


Recent years have seen significant shifts in the world of work, with the focus moving away from industry, towards innovation and the 'knowledge economy'. At the same time, the global economic slowdown has meant fewer labour market opportunities, particularly for young people. Consequently, young people today enter a world of unparalleled uncertainty and risk, with the most marginalised and vulnerable facing the greatest threat. The majority of young people in South Australia continue to thrive, with lower than average youth unemployment, and a well-performing school system. But for a significant proportion of young people, the transition from school to further education and especially to the workplace, remains challenging. Efforts to improve formal qualifications and work-based training have been redoubled in response, but there is also a growing consensus that more must be done to build the 'softer' skills which employers say are increasingly important in getting on at work. In this paper we explore the evidence for the importance of a greater emphasis on social and emotional learning, as part of a holistic view of young people's education. We look firstly to the trends in the field globally, and in Australia and South Australia specifically, highlighting the need for new approaches.


The XenoServer project will build a public infrastructure for wide-area distributed computing. We envisage a world in which XenoServer execution platforms will be scattered across the globe and available for any member of the public to submit code for execution. Crucially, the code's sponsor will be billed for all the resources used or reserved during its execution. This will encourage load balancing, limit congestion, and make the platform self-financing. Such a global infrastructure is essential to address the fundamental problem of communication latency. By enabling principals to run programs at points throughout the network they can ensure that their code executes close to the entities with which it interacts. As well as reducing latency this can be used to avoid network bottlenecks, to reduce long-haul network charges and to provide a network presence for transiently-connected mobile devices. This project will build and deploy a global XenoServer test-bed and make it available to authenticated external users; initially members of the scientific community and ultimately of the general public. In this environment accurate resource accounting and pricing is critical – whether in an actual currency or one that is fictitious. As with our existing work on OS resource management, pricing provides the feedback necessary for applications that can adapt, and prevents over-use by applications that cannot.


Purpose: Immune dysfunction reported in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients may contribute to tumor progression. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) represent one mechanism by which tumors induce T-cell suppression. Several factors pivotal to the accumulation of MDSC are targeted by the tyrosine kinase inhibitor, sunitinib. The effect of sunitinib on MDSC-mediated immunosuppression in RCC patients has been investigated. Experimental Design: Patient peripheral blood levels of MDSC and regulatory T-cell (Treg) and T-cell production of IFN-γ were evaluated before and after sunitinib treatment. Correlations between MDSC and Treg normalization as well as T-cell production of IFN-γ were examined. The in vitro effect of sunitinib on patient MDSC was evaluated. Results: Metastatic RCC patients had elevated levels of CD33+HLA-DR− and CD15+CD14− MDSC, and these were partially overlapping populations. Treatment with sunitinib resulted in significant reduction in MDSC measured by several criteria. Sunitinib-mediated reduction in MDSC was correlated with reversal of type 1 T-cell suppression, an effect that could be reproduced by the depletion of MDSC in vitro. MDSC reduction in response to sunitinib correlated with a reversal of CD3+CD4+CD25hiFoxp3+ Treg cell elevation. No correlation existed between a change in tumor burden and a change in MDSC, Treg, or T-cell production of IFN-γ. In vitro addition of sunitinib reduced MDSC viability and suppressive effect when used at ≥1.0 μg/mL. Sunitinib did not induce MDSC maturation in vitro. Conclusions: Sunitinib-based therapy has the potential to modulate antitumor immunity by reversing MDSC-mediated tumor-induced immunosuppression.


Abstract Character Education initiatives within schools have gained both proponents and opponents over recent years and continue to garner mixed reviews. Proponents argue that the need is urgent and the increasing level of school disruption, antisocial behavior and violence requires a focus on values/virtues/moral education and claim this is synonymous with good practice in education. Opponents ask, whose values will be taught and how does this address the needs of our multicultural reality? While others claim that, many initiatives embrace moral education delivered in a behaviorist fashion promoting control by other and lack a humanistic understanding of the pluralistic nature of modern society. This review addresses these issues by exploring, critically interpreting, and synthesizing educational and psychological research. The aim being to develop a definition of character education that is not confined to antiquated understandings of ethnocentric non-negotiable ideological values/virtues/morals. The main focus of the review being to inform a unified theory of character education embedded in a sociocultural understanding of personality development that can inform practice in multicultural settings. By developing a research informed discussion of characteristics beneficial to life outcomes a theory of integrative character education is offered.


Metallothionein complexes are of a complex nature and have yet to be fully characterised. The work in this thesis concentrates on the complexation of oligopeptide fractions similar to those in thionein with cadmium (II) so as to simulate the complexation sites in the protein and to help clarify the most likely points of attachment of the metal. Complexes of related ligands have also been investigated. In Chapters 2-5 the preparation of various types of ligands, their complexes with cadmium (II) and the solution behaviour of these complexes are described. Cadmium (II) forms octahedral and pseudoctahedral complexes of the type CdL2X2 or CdLX2 (X = halide) with non-thiol ligands such as pyridine, diaminodithiaoctane, 1,3-bis-(2-aminoethyl)-1,3-propanediamine, the Schiff's base 2-hydroxyacetophenoneethylenediimine, and dioxocyclam. In these complexes the ligand complexation sites are N or/and O atoms with the halides acting as bridging ligands. Ligands which contain thioether donor sites only, e.g. tetrathiadioxatricyclohexacosane, do not form complexes with cadmium (II), but if another coordinating group is present in the same ligand, e.g. NH2 or COOH, complexes are readily formed with likely involvement of the thioether group in coordination. Hence the complexes CdL2 and CdLCl were obtained with S-benzyl-L-cysteine and S-benzyl-L-cysteine ethyl ester respectively. Monocarboxylate monothiol ligands, e.g. cysteine and 2-thiolethanoic acid, form the complexes [Cd(HL)X]n in ethanol and [CdL]n in water in which X = halide, thiolate groups or carboxylate groups act as bridging ligands. In case of dithiolate ligands such as 1,2-ethanedithiol, 1,3-propanedithiol, trans-1,2-dithiolcyclohexane and 1,4,8,11-tetrathiaunedecane polynuclear complexes form in which all the S atoms complex to one metal and some are also involved in bridging. Biological thiol ligands such as L-cysteine and D-penicillamine also form polymeric type complexes with cadmium (II) of formulae [Cd(HL)X]n and [Cd(L)]n. A number of peptide complexes of cadmium (II) have been isolated. These include [Cd(H2L)Cl]n and [Cd3L2]n where H3L is glutathione; Cd2(HL)Cl3 and Cd2LCl2 where H2L is gly-cys; Cd2(HL)Cl2 and Cd(L)Cl where H3L is cys-cys; and CdL.xH20 where H2L is gly-cys-gly, gly-cys-ala, gly-cys-val, leu-cys-leu and val-cys-val-val. Dissociation and complex formation equilibria involving a number of cysteine-containing tri- and tetra-peptide ligands were investigated by potentiometric methods and the data analysed using the "MINIQUAD" computer program. The ligands investigated were gly-cys-AA (AA = gly, ala, val), val-cys-val, thr-cys-val, asp-cys-val, leu-cys-leu, val-val-cys-val and val-cys-val-val (their synthesis is described in Chapter 4). At ligand to metal ratios of 1:1 the main complex species in solution are LMH (111), LM (110) and LMOH (11-1) the last of these being formed as a result of deprotonation of an aquo ligand. Peptide ligands containing a thiolate and two carboxyl groups such as asp-cys-val form higher stability constants than those with no thiolate or carboxyl group such as gly- gly-gly or those with a thiolate group but without a side chain carboxylate such as val-cys-val. This indicates that stronger complexes between Cd(II) and cysteinyl peptides will be formed when a coordinating group such as CO2 is present in the ligand side chain. The major coordinating sites are therefore most probably the thiolate, carboxyl and terminal amino (when available) groups. Likely structures for the complexes formed in solution are proposed.


We investigate spectral responses of two different terahertz (THz) metamaterials of double split ring resonator (DSRR) and the nano slot resonator (NSR) for molecule sensing in low concentration. Two different resonant frequencies of DSRR can be controlled by polarization angle of incident THz beam. For comparison of THz optical characteristics, two NSRs were made as showing the same resonant frequencies as DSRR's multimode. The monosaccharide molecules of glucose and galactose were detected by these two types of metamaterials matching the resonant frequencies in various concentration. NSR shows higher sensitivity in very low concentration range rather than DSRR, although the behavior was easily saturated in terms of concentration. In contrast, DSRR can cover more broad concentration range with clear linearity especially under high quality factor mode in polarization of 67.5 degree due to the Fano resonance. THz field enhancement distributions were calculated to investigate sensing performance of both sensing chips in qualitative and quantitative manner.


Far from being a measure of progress or humanitarian aid, Indian welfare policy in Canada was used deliberately to oppress and marginalize First Nations peoples and to foster their assimilation into the dominant society. 'Enough to Keep Them Alive' explores the history of the development and administration of social assistance policies on Indian reserves in Canada from confederation to the modern period, demonstrating a continuity of policy with roots in the pre-confederation practices of fur trading companies. Extensive archival evidence from the Indian Affairs record group at the National Archives of Canada is supplemented for the post-World War Two era by interviews with some of the key federal players. More than just an historical narrative, the book presents a critical analysis with a clear theoretical focus drawing on colonial and post-colonial theory, social theory, and critiques of liberalism and liberal democracy.


This paper will test the relationship between income inequality and ethnic heterogeneity. Although previous research has used ethno-linguistic fractionalization as a control variable in inequality regressions, no research has focused primarily on an alternative measure of heterogeneity – polarization. Using Gini coefficients from the from the World Income Inequality Database and polarization data from Montalvo and Reynal-Querol (2005b), a pooled OLS regression is run using data from 58 countries with 205 total observations. The results of these regressions suggest that ethnic polarization does have a positive effect on income inequality, even controlling for country characteristics and allowing for regional differences.


The current structure of U.S. federal tax law incentivizes state governments to adopt tax policies that inflict costs on the federal government, at the expense of national welfare. We label this the "tax cannibalization problem." This article introduces the tax cannibalization problem to the law and policy literatures for the first time. This article also explains how U.S. federal tax law might be restructured so as to alleviate the tax cannibalization problem — to counteract the perverse incentives currently leading U.S. state governments to design their tax systems so as to, in effect, wastefully devour federal tax revenues.


This dissertation is a study of the Christian thematics in the novels of Christine Falkenland. It has two basic aims. First, to demonstrate how Christine Falkenland writes herself into, and becomes a distinct voice in, a Christian literary tradition, while simultaneously breaking with this tradition by staging and portraying modern people's questioning of the Christian worldview. Second, to uncover, examine, and bring together the recurring thematics, motifs, and imagery in Falkenland's novels. Four novels – Slaggan och stadet (The Hammer and the Anvil; 1996), Skarvor av en sonderslagen spegel (Fragments of a Broken Mirror; 1997), Min skugga (My Shadow; 1998) and Sjalens begar (The Soul's Desire; 2000) – provide a focus for the study. The novels are not seen as separate works, but as parts of a whole; they display a notable consistency in inner as well outer composition. The theoretical foundations of the study come together under three headings: thematics, intertextuality, and dialogism. By uncovering and mapping the occurrences of repeated symbols, motifs, and themes, a pattern can be discerned – a pattern which is characteristic for the oeuvre as a whole. When it comes to Christine Falkenland, it is obvious that the use of certain recurring words, symbols, and metaphors is connected to the thematic unity of the works. It is also clear that Christine Falkenland is connected to a rich textual tradition through her thematics. Through quotations and allusions, the Bible stands out as her principal intertext, but other sources can also be found, such as sadomasochistic erotic literature and Classical myth. The different voices in the texts are not in accord, but in constant discussion, fighting each other and pulling in opposite directions. Falkenland's novels display a traditionally Christian set of problems with basic theological oppositions such as heaven–earth, body–soul, and law–gospel, oppositions which can contain praise as well as lamentation. In this manner, Christine Falkenland displays a literary portrayal of an existential position in the thematics of faith and doubt: the solitary person who fights for her faith, someone who ceaselessly sings her broken hallelujah to a hidden God.


Firms normally keep certain inventories, including raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods, to operate seamlessly and not to miss possible business opportunities. But inventory is costly, and the optimal firm inventory differs depending on various economic conditions, including trade and transport costs. The paper examines firm inventory behavior in East Africa, in which transport connectivity, especially to the ports, is considered as one of the major business constraints. Using firm-level data from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, it is shown that transport connectivity significantly affects firm inventory behavior. In particular, road density and transport costs to the port are important to determine the optimal inventory level. With more roads in a city and/or cheaper access to the port, firms would hold smaller inventories.


1. Abstract This work deals with the aerodynamics optimisation of a generic two-dimensional three element high-lift configuration. Although the high-lift system is applied only during take-off and landing in the low speed phase of the flight the cost efficiency of the airplane is strongly influenced by it [1]. The ultimate goal of an aircraft high lift system design team is to define the simplest configuration which, for prescribed constraints, will meet the take-off, climb, and landing requirements usually expressed in terms of maximum L/D and/or maximum CL. The ability of the calculation method to accurately predict changes in objective function value when gaps, overlaps and element deflections are varied is therefore critical. Despite advances in computer capacity, the enormous computational cost of running complex engineering simulations makes it impractical to rely exclusively on simulation for the purpose of design optimisation. To cut down the cost, surrogate models, also known as metamodels, are constructed from and then used in place of the actual simulation models. This work outlines the development of integrated systems to perform aerodynamics multi-objective optimisation for a three-element airfoil test case in high lift configuration, making use of surrogate models available in MACROS Generic Tools, which has been integrated in our design tool. Different metamodeling techniques have been compared based on multiple performance criteria. With MACROS is possible performing either optimisation of the model built with predefined training sample (GSO) or Iterative Surrogate-Based Optimization (SBO). In this first case the model is build independent from the optimisation and then use it as a black box in the optimisation process. In the second case is needed to provide the possibility to call CFD code from the optimisation process, and there is no need to build any model, it is being built internally during the optimisation process. Both approaches have been applied. A detailed analysis of the integrated design system, the methods as well as the optimisation results of the comparison between the techniques is provided. 2.


Established in 1967, Milton Keynes is England's largest new city and one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the UK. It is also a suburban city, genuinely liked and appreciated by most of its citizens. For many reasons, however, Milton Keynes is misunderstood, and its valuable recent lessons are mostly ignored in debates about national urban policy. This book discusses the popular and intellectual prejudices that have distorted understandings of the new city. A city is nothing without its people, of course, so Mark Clapson looks at who has moved to Milton Keynes, and discusses their experiences of settling in. He also confronts the common myth of the new city's soullessness with an account of community and association that emphasizes the strength of social interaction there.


Water rescue practitioners must balance the degree of risk associated with a given technique with the needs of the victim. One such technique, the focus of this study, consists of a rescue boat positioned within moving water by means of a high line. It has been shown to be useful for high risk rescues, often when the patient or subject is unable to assist with their own rescue. Despite the degree of risk, little empirical data pertaining to the resulting load (force) placed on the highline by a boat in moving water can be identified in the literature.
In the absence of contextual data, this study examines the research undertaken by the rope rescue community into the forces exerted by suspended loads, and argues that many of the resulting principles, especially the establishment of the load, are not applied during highline positioned boat operations. Therefore the research question of this thesis; 'what force (N) will be induced by a boat positioned from a high line when deployed in moving water typically encountered during swift water rescue?' is addressed by establishing the load under real-world operational conditions. In addition to this, the antecedents leading to a proposed worst case event (WCE) are also presented, and tested.
Testing was conducted within a flow-calibrated channel offering stream velocities typical of those encountered during water related rescues. Two contrasting craft were selected for the investigation as representative of those used during swiftwater rescues, a Eurocraft (large hull) and an MFC Rescue Sled (small hull). The experiment subjected the high line to a range of forces induced by the two craft over a range of stream velocities between 0.6 – 5.4ms-1. A load cell was utilised to collect force/time data during deployments to the current vector. The independent variables of trim (relative positioning of the load within the boat) and average stream velocity were investigated.
Under low flow conditions, when trimmed neutrally (the crew were positioned centrally), the Eurocraft induced the highest force on the high line (approximately 1.22kN at 0.6 ms-1 average stream velocity). When trimmed with the load placed to the rear (aft) or towards the front of the boat (bow trim) force was reduced on the high line. Conversely at higher stream velocities (4.5 – 5.4 ms-1) force values rose rapidly when bow or aft trim conditions were induced, and force was reduced in a neutral trim state.
The testing of the WCE induced a peak force of 3.42kN when the boat was deliberately flooded with water during the highest flow available (5.4 ms-1). The force associated with the WCE for a high line constructed with a track line mid-point angle tending to >120o is a theoretical force multiplication approaching that of the rating of the equipment.


Ever wondered why we can say "Maria made the boy cry" but not "Maria made the boy crying"? Or why "Two coffees, please" is acceptable, but "Melvin loves coffees" is generally wrong? Or why we say "It has been raining since ten", even though nobody asks "What did you say has been raining"? These are some puzzles that will be examined in The Nuts and Bolts of English Grammar. This book will help you understand what English grammar is and how it works. It will show how English combines parts of words to form longer words, how words change their form and combine with other words to form phrases, and how phrases are subsequently combined to form clauses and sentences and texts. Grammar is made both interesting and practical with real-life grammar puzzles. Will this book help you to improve your grammar? Probably, because if you've gained a better understanding of grammar by the time you reach the end of this book, you should be able to analyse your own sentences in ways you've never done before, and spot and avoid common grammatical errors.


Three new species of nummulites; Nummulites minutus sp. nov., N. omanensis sp. nov. and N. schaubi sp. nov., are described and illustrated from the Eocene of Northern Oman. N. omanensis sp. nov. and N. schaubi sp. nov. are shown to range from Early to Middle Lutetian whilst N. minutus sp. nov. ranges from Late Ypresian to Early Lutetian. N. minutus sp. nov. is far smaller in all major dimensions than any species of Nummulites previously described and if found in isolation would be assumed to be very primitive and probably dated as Late Palaeocene. However, N. minutus sp. nov. was found in association with an unreworked Lutetian fauna. The commonly held belief that proloculus size and test size are smallest in the most primitive (i.e. oldest) species must therefore be treated with some degree of caution.


The study is a corpus-based variationist analysis tracing the development of quotative marking in Indian English. It seeks to enhance our understanding of the way the quotative system changes over time and complements existing academic research, most of which has primarily explored constructed dialogue in native-speaker English. Stemming from far-flung locales in North America, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, burgeoning findings demonstrate that the system has undergone internal reorganisation, with more traditional elements, say and think, giving way to other forms, notably quotative go and the copula construction be like. Relying on second-language data from the early 1990s and the late 2000s, I mainly explore the gradual retreat of say as a quotative marker in Indian English. More specifically, I look at the changes in the language-internal conditioning through which the decline occurs and examine how those are related to the contexts through which the innovative quotative marker be like is paving its way into the system. All in all, I attempt to establish regularities in the developmental paths of native and non-native quotation. I also point to idiosyncratic developments characterising Indian English quotative marking, while making an effort to tap into their origin.


The article presents the results from a study on the understanding of written and spoken Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The study was carried out in the years 2003–2005 within the INS-project and involves pupils and adults from the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The results are compared to those from a study published by Maurud in 1976. The comparison of the two studies reveals significant changes in the mutual understanding in Scandinavia that can be attributed to political and economical internationalisation and globalisation, changes in the media landscape and an increasing migration rate into Scandinavia, but also between the Scandinavian countries. The study is completed by a simultaneous investigation of the comprehension of English.


Cloud computing is becoming increasingly important for provision of services and storage of data in the Internet. However there are several significant challenges in securing cloud infrastructures from different types of attacks. The focus of this paper is on the security services that a cloud provider can offer as part of its infrastructure to its customers (tenants) to counteract these attacks. Our main contribution is a security architecture that provides a flexible security as a service model that a cloud provider can offer to its tenants and customers of its tenants. Our security as a service model while offering a baseline security to the provider to protect its own cloud infrastructure also provides flexibility to tenants to have additional security functionalities that suit their security requirements. The paper describes the design of the security architecture and discusses how different types of attacks are counteracted by the proposed architecture. We have implemented the security architecture and the paper discusses analysis and performance evaluation results.


A chronic infectious mononucleosis-like illness caused by Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) is called 'chronic active EBV disease', which is defined as an EBV-associated lymphoproliferative disease. This lymphoproliferative disease is rare and predominantly occurs in Japanese children. Between 1998 and 2010, seven adult-onset cases (aged 20–45 years, median 39 years) were identified, which initially presented with inflammatory diseases, including hepatitis, interstitial pneumonitis, uveitis, nephritis and hypersensitivity to mosquito bites. They showed an EBV viral load in the peripheral blood and evidence of EBV infection of T or natural killer (NK) cells. Five cases (71.4%) developed EBV-positive T/NK-cell lymphoma/leukaemia at a median of 5 years (range 1–7 years) after the diagnosis. Although l-asparaginase-containing chemotherapy was effective for the lymphomas, only allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation eradicated EBV-infected cells. This observation indicates that persistent EBV infection of T or NK cells defines a distinct disease entity, which provides an underlying condition for EBV-positive T/NK-cell lymphoma/leukaemia.


Perforin (PFN) is a pore-forming protein produced by cytotoxic lymphocytes that aids in the clearance of tumor or virus-infected cells by a mechanism that involves the formation of transmembrane pores. The properties of PFN pores and the mechanism of their assembly remain unclear. Here, we studied pore characteristics by functional and structural methods to show that perforin forms pores more heterogeneous than anticipated. Planar lipid bilayer experiments indicate that perforin pores exhibit a broad range of conductances, from 0.15 to 21 nanosiemens. In comparison with large pores that possessed low noise and remained stably open, small pores exhibited high noise and were very unstable. Furthermore, the opening step and the pore size were dependent on the lipid composition of the membrane. The heterogeneity in pore sizes was confirmed with cryo-electron microscopy and showed a range of sizes matching that observed in the conductance measurements. Furthermore, two different membrane-bound PFN conformations were observed, interpreted as pre-pore and pore states of the protein. The results collectively indicate that PFN forms heterogeneous pores through a multistep mechanism and provide a new paradigm for understanding the range of different effects of PFN and related membrane attack complex/perforin domain proteins observed in vivo and in vitro.