The main object of this study is the simulation, using the MCNP5 code, of the irradiator 226Ra-Be unit which is available at the physics department of the sciences faculty, Damascus University to calculate the neutron fluxes. The simulation results showed that neutron fluxes, in the energy ranges: thermal (10.9 MeV to 10.6 MeV), fast (0.11 MeV to 12.0 MeV), and medium (10.5 MeV to 10.1 MeV). Where flux percent was about (thermal 70.0%, fast 18.0% and medium 12.0%). The calculation of activity for a silver foil, in a specific time after irradiation, was simulated and compared with the experimental results. The comparison shows good agreement between the simulated and measured activity.


Distributed applications have wide ranging requirements. Message-based applications must now co-exist with multimedia-based applications that often require precise bounds on the delivery of data. A single best effort service is no longer sufficient. Attempts at supporting a wide variety of applications have come from different directions, and have inevitably led to a scenario where one is better at supporting a certain type of application than the other. What is clear is that different network services and different protocol stacks are required in order to satisfy the needs of the emerging variety of application types. This paper discusses an approach to providing seamless integration for different network control mechanisms, providing access to network services in a clear and consistent manner. We build on the previously defined Open Service Model and introduce the idea of meta-signalling, used to negotiate end-to-end network requirements. We employ the Internet Protocol as a means for signalling control information, and object technology as a mechanism for providing distributed resource management. We look at the requirements for a signalling protocol, notably reliability, low bit rate and low delay, and consider how in the context of an IP network we can provide a level of quality of service for signalling messages.


We examine the carbon balance of North American wetlands by reviewing and synthesizing the published literature and soil databases. North American wetlands contain about 220 Pg C, most of which is in peat. They are a small to moderate carbon sink of about 49 Tg C yr−1, although the uncertainty around this estimate is greater than 100%, with the largest unknown being the role of carbon sequestration by sedimentation in freshwater mineral-soil wetlands. We estimate that North American wetlands emit 9 Tg methane (CH4) yr−1; however, the uncertainty of this estimate is also greater than 100%. With the exception of estuarine wetlands, CH4 emissions from wetlands may largely offset any positive benefits of carbon sequestration in soils and plants in terms of climate forcing. Historically, the destruction of wetlands through land-use changes has had the largest effects on the carbon fluxes and consequent radiative forcing of North American wetlands. The primary effects have been a reduction in their ability to sequester carbon (a small to moderate increase in radiative forcing), oxidation of their soil carbon reserves upon drainage (a small increase in radiative forcing), and reduction in CH4 emissions (a small to large decrease in radiative forcing). It is uncertain how global changes will affect the carbon pools and fluxes of North American wetlands. We will not be able to predict accurately the role of wetlands as potential positive or negative feedbacks to anthropogenic global change without knowing the integrative effects of changes in temperature, precipitation, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and sulfur on the carbon balance of North American wetlands.


This study investigated secondary school physical education teachers' experiences of using a game based approach (GBA) with the primary aim of exploring the qualitatively different ways teachers experience what they consider to be a GBA when teaching games. Participants in this study (n=12) taught in schools in either southeast Australia or southeast England and all had previous experience of using a GBA to teach games. With the investigation of teaching experience being the fundamental focus of this study a phenomenographic research framework was chosen to explore a primary research question that inherently focused upon GBA experience interpretation and meaning. An analysis of findings indicated three conceptions of awareness detailing the collective meaning of participants' GBA teaching experience; that being as a Learner, a Collaborator, and/or a Catalyst. Implications for physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes and recommendations from findings are offered for physical education teacher educators.


This paper investigates the relationship between energy prices and the real effective exchange rate of commodity-exporting countries. We consider two sets of countries: 10 energy-exporting and 23 non-fuel commodity-exporting countries over the period 1980-2011. Estimating a panel cointegrating relationship between the real exchange rate and its fundamentals, we provide evidence for the existence of "energy currencies". Relying on the estimation of panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) models, we show that there exists a certain threshold beyond which the real effective exchange rate of both energy and commodity exporters reacts to oil prices, through the terms-of-trade. More specifically, when oil price variations are low, the real effective exchange rates are not determined by terms-of-trade but by other usual fundamentals Nevertheless, when the oil market is highly volatile, currencies follow an "oil currency" regime, terms-of-trade becoming an important driver of the real exchange rate.


Feedback between soil moisture and precipitation influence climate variability in semiarid regions. However, serious concerns exist about the ability of coarse‐scale global atmospheric models to depict one key aspect of the feedback loop, namely the sensitivity of daytime convection to soil moisture. Here we compare regional simulations using a single model, run at different spatial resolutions, and with convective parameterizations switched on or off against Sahelian observations. Convection‐permitting simulations at 4 and 12 km capture the observed relationships between soil moisture and convective triggering, emphasizing the importance of surface‐driven mesoscale dynamics. However, with the inclusion of the convection scheme at 12 km, the behavior of the model fundamentally alters, switching from negative to positive feedback. Similar positive feedback is found in 9 out of 10 Regional Climate Models run at 50 km. These results raise questions about the accuracy of the feedback in regional models based on current convective parameterizations.


In this paper, we are presenting a learning model for XML document classification based on Bayesian networks. Then, we are proposing a model which simplifies the arborescent representation of the XML document that we have, named coupled model and we will see that this approach improves the response time and keeps the same performances of the classification. Then, we will study an extension of this generative model to the discriminating model thanks to the formalism of the Fisher's kernel. At last, we have applied a ponderation of the structure components of the Fisher's vector. We finish by presenting the obtained results on the XML collection by using the CBS and SVM methods. .MOTS-CLÉS : Documents XML, réseaux bayésiens, noyau de Fisher, classification, modèles discriminants.


A procedure is set out for calculating the buoyant flow induced in a duct with heat input at the wall, as in the cooling ducts used behind photovoltaic arrays. In these, buoyancy is opposed by various pressure losses, due to obstructions at the inlet and outlet, fluid friction at the walls and structural support members passing transversely through the duct. New methods are developed for calculating these losses, and each is validated separately by tests in a purpose-built isothermal rig. Measurements are also reported for some further losses, not yet amenable to calculation, due to nets and hoods at the duct ends, as might be used to exclude rain and wildlife. Finally, the whole procedure is validated by measurement of a duct with one heated wall. Practical application: Verified by measurements at every stage of its development, the method reported gives greater confidence in the routine calculation of the flow induced in ductwork where there is heat gain, as in systems for PV cooling and natural ventilation. The new treatments given for the hydrodynamic losses at basic components apply wherever these are used in the field of HEVAC.


Understanding how reprogramming induces a cancer cell–like metabolic signature in stem cells may yield drugs that target tumor metabolism. In the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a man is born elderly and ages in reverse. Similarly, human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSs) begin life as fully differentiated agents and are reprogrammed to resemble the human embryonic stem cell (hESC) state. But how closely the biology of iPSs mimic that of hESCs is an area of intense research. We can speculate lightly about whether Ben's cells grew metabolically younger with time, but characterization of the metabolic signatures of iPSs and hESCs is crucial if these cells are to be exploited in the therapeutic arena. Now, Varum and colleagues compare energy metabolism in hESCs as well as in iPSs and their differentiated somatic counterparts. hESCs mostly depend on glycolysis for energy generation. As these cells differentiate, their mitochondria mature and energy production shifts from (cytoplasmic) glycolysis to oxidative phosphorylation via the mitochondrial tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and electron transport chain. Varum et al. demonstrated that mitochondria in hESCs are indeed immature, with fewer cristae—internal membranous compartments that house the energy-generating machinery—and a lower electron density matrix (and thus lower levels of energy production) as compared with differentiated somatic cells. In contrast, iPSs displayed mitochondrial features of both hESCs and somatic cells. iPSs differed from hESCs with respect to glucose metabolism–related gene expression, although in a heat map these two cell types clustered together rather than with their somatic counterparts. Furthermore, despite elevated expression of genes that encode TCA cycle enzymes and an increase in components of the electron transport chain, both human iPS and hESC mitochondria were hypofunctional compared to somatic cells as shown by lower oxygen consumption rates, reduced ATP production, and increased lactate production. Finally, this study demonstrated a significantly higher expression of hexokinase II and inactivation of the pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) complex in iPSs relative to somatic cells. Hexokinase II catalyzes the first and rate-limiting reaction of glycolysis by converting glucose to glucose 6-phosphate. The PDH complex is localized in the mitochondrial matrix and irreversibly decarboxylates pyruvate (a product of glycolysis) to acetyl coenzyme-A in a reaction that links glycolysis to the TCA cycle. Taken together, these results indicate that human iPSs like hESCs and in contrast to somatic cells, rely more on glycolysis than on oxidative phosphorylation for energy production. Many types of tumor cells and perhaps cancer stem cells share similar metabolic signatures with hESCs and iPSs. Thus, it is of great interest to determine whether and how iPSs acquire a more glycolytic-based metabolic scheme upon reprogramming with the goal of using iPSs to design therapeutic strategies that selectively target metabolic pathways in cancer cells. S. Varum et al., Energy metabolism in human pluripotent stem cells and their differentiated counterparts. PLoS ONE 6, e20914 (2011). [Full Text]


Current research on systems and synthetic biology relies heavily on mathematical models of the systems under study. The usefulness of such models depends on the quantity and quality of biological data, and on the availability of appropriate modelling formalisms that can gather and accommodate such data so that they can be exploited properly. Given our incomplete knowledge of biological systems and the fact that they consist of many subsystems, biological data are usually uncertain and heterogeneous. These facts hinder the use of mathematical models and computational methods. In the scope of dynamic biological systems, e.g. metabolic networks, this difficulty can be overcome by the novel modelling formalism of flexible nets (FNs). We show that an FN can combine, in a natural way, a stoichiometric model and a kinetic model. Moreover, the resulting net admits nonlinear dynamics and can be analysed in both transient and steady states.


The nervous and immune systems are the two most complex systems in the body. That complexity is amplified by the fact that each influences the other, as they constantly exchange messages in response to environmental and internal cues. The best known messages from immune cells are the cytokines, which trigger changes within neurons through well-established receptor-initiated cascades. But in a new study in this issue of PLOS Biology, Kirsten Ridder, Stefan Momma, and colleagues show that hematopoietic cells, which include the cells of the immune system, release messenger RNAs (mRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) that are absorbed by neurons. This mechanism of signaling is elevated in response to inflammation, and the transferred RNAs have the potential to influence neuronal responses.

Inflammation has recently been shown to drive an even more unexpected neuro–immune interaction—fusion of hematopoietic cells with Purkinje neurons of the cerebellum, in which the resulting cell contains both nuclei. The authors sought to determine whether less drastic transfers of genetic messages might be taking place as well.

To do so, they relied on the Cre recombination system. In this system, a gene of interest is engineered to be flanked by target sequences ("lox" sequences) for the enzyme Cre recombinase. Enzymatic action rearranges the site and triggers expression of the gene within. Here, the authors used mice with a lox-flanked reporter gene in all tissues. The Cre recombinase gene, though, was introduced only to hematopoietic cells. Thus, any non-hematopoietic cells expressing the reporter gene must have picked up either the Cre recombinase gene, its mRNA, or the protein itself, from hematopoietic cells.

The authors found that a small number of Purkinje neurons expressed the reporter, despite the absence of any double nuclei (ruling out cell fusion as described above and therefore gene transfer). So how were the neurons getting the message? Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have lately emerged as a significant vehicle for trafficking multiple kinds of molecules between cells, including proteins and mRNAs, so the authors isolated EVs from peripheral blood. When they analyzed the contents, they found the EVs contained Cre recombinase mRNA, but not the protein.

In healthy mice, the number of Cre-recombined neurons was very low, far less than 1%. But when the authors triggered a peripheral inflammatory response that number jumped by several orders of magnitude, affecting an average of 6% of Purkinje neurons. Under such conditions of inflammation, several other types of brain neurons were also targeted, including those in the hippocampus, cortex, and substantia nigra.

These results show that mRNA can be transferred from immune cells of the peripheral blood to neurons of the central nervous system via EVs. It remains to be seen whether other immune-derived mRNAs take advantage of the same means of transport to enter neurons.

But known exosome passengers also include miRNAs, short non-coding RNAs that influence gene expression in many types of organisms. By excising single neurons, the authors showed that Cre-recombined neurons contained three miRNAs not found in non-recombined neurons; the same three were also present in exosomes isolated from blood in mice experiencing inflammation. These results suggest that the three miRNAs could derive from the same immune cells as the Cre recombinase. If that is so, this study indicates there is not only another medium of information exchange between the immune and nervous system but also a whole new type of message, and it suggests that the regulation of the nervous system by the immune system may be more extensive and intimate than previously appreciated.

Purkinje neurons express a reporter gene upon uptake of RNA from hematopoietic extracellular vesicles. The number of these vesicle-targeted cells increases in response to inflammation.

Ridder K, Keller S, Dams M, Rupp A-K, Schlaudraff J, et al. (2014) Extracellular Vesicle-Mediated Transfer of Genetic Information Between the Hematopoietic System and the Brain in Response to Inflammation. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001874.


The Delivery of Human Rights reflects on two overlapping issues in international human rights law: how can existing norms be better implemented and effected, and how can other branches of international law or other international actors be used so as to provide an improved delivery of those norms. Rather than simply looking at the content of the rights, this book will also explore how the framers' intention that individuals benefit from the norms can be achieved. The book is written and published in honour of Professor Sir Nigel Rodley KBE. It celebrates his career as an academic and practitioner in the area of human rights. Professor Rodley acted as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture from 1993 to 2001 and is currently a member of the UN Human Rights Committee. He is also a member of the International Commission of Jurists. Since 2001 he has been a Member of the UN Human Rights Committee, established under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In 1998 he was knighted in the Queen's New Year's Honours list for services to Human Rights and International Law and in 2000 he received an honorary LLD from Dalhousie University. He is Professor and Chair of the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, having taught there since 1990.


Ghana's recent status as an oil producer focuses attention on the relationship between domestic politics and transnational actors. While the political settlements literature is useful for focusing on how elite coalitions shape the governance of natural resources, it is not explicit about the role of transnational factors in shaping and enabling these coalitions. As such there is a tendency to downplay the significance of transnational-national interactions and national-local dynamics. This paper analyses the changing nature of the political settlement in Ghana pre- and post-oil and the role that transnational actors play in reshaping the coalitions which underpin and reproduce the overall settlement. We find that the discovery of oil has not radically altered the nature of Ghana's political settlement, which remains of a competitive clientelist form within which institutional functioning and policy actors are heavily influenced by the need of political elites to secure success in increasingly tightly-fought elections. These tendencies and the ongoing structural inequalities between transnational capital and the sovereign state have resulted in oil licences being negotiated on terms favouring external actors. Through primary data collected from key informant interviews and case studies we show that power lies with the external actors albeit through the elite brokerage of contracts. Within these bargaining processes we see parts of the Ghanaian state acting strongly and effectively to serve both the interests of domestic elites and transnational capital. The combined effect of competitive clientelism and new sources of foreign capital is that structural issues and longer term planning decisions are largely deprioritised in favour of shorter-term gains.


We devise a novel technique to control the shape of polymer molecular weight distributions (MWDs) in atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). This technique makes use of recent advances in both simulation-based, model-free reinforcement learning (RL) and the numerical simulation of ATRP. A simulation of ATRP is built that allows an RL controller to add chemical reagents throughout the course of the reaction. The RL controller incorporates fully-connected and convolutional neural network architectures and bases its decision upon the current status of the ATRP reaction. The initial, untrained, controller leads to ending MWDs with large variability, allowing the RL algorithm to explore a large search space. When trained using an actor-critic algorithm, the RL controller is able to discover and optimize control policies that lead to a variety of target MWDs. The target MWDs include Gaussians of various width, and more diverse shapes such as bimodal distributions. The learned control policies are robust and transfer to similar but not identical ATRP reaction settings, even under the presence of simulated noise. We believe this work is a proof-of-concept for employing modern artificial intelligence techniques in the synthesis of new functional polymer materials.


This research paper is the first of a series of short articles that provide an overview of what is known about the scale and impact of disinformation in different Asian countries.

While concerns over "fake news" have prompted rigorous investigations into the related areas in the United States and Europe recently, little is known about the way misinformation and disinformation is spread in many Asian countries where economic and digital development, especially smartphones, have transformed people's lifestyles including their patterns of news consumption and distribution.

On which platforms do falsehoods spread? Who are the actors? What motivates them? Why do specific topics, issues, and individuals become targets for information disorder? What is the scale and impact of false or misleading news reports?

Of course, Asia is comprised of many countries; we speak different languages, have different cultures and religious beliefs, and live under various political systems. Naturally, the matters at the heart of the misinformation ecosystem in each country vary considerably.

In this research project, we aim to map the landscape of each country's own "fake news" problems. Many intertwined factors affect the situation, including culture, history, politics, economy, education, digital adoption, technology trends, media law, and press systems.

Our goal is not to encompass all such aspects, but rather to highlight salient characteristics that will inform academics, media professionals, tech companies, non-government organizations, and government organizations of critical issues and their impact on the community.

We believe these case studies would also inform the broader global discussion and research on misinformation already in progress; in some areas, Asian countries lead the rest of the world in technology use. Mobile-only internet usage, heavy reliance on chat apps, the popularity of emojis and messaging app stickers—these are some of the phenomena we observed in the Asia-Pacific region a few years before they caught on internationally.

We don't know how long the overall investigation will take in the end, but as a start, we are releasing an overview research article on information disorder in different Asian countries in this document.


Wound dressing plays an important role in wound recovery and collagen interacts with the human body in such a way that it has specific advantages compared to synthetic materials. The aim of the present study was to get an optimal crosslinking agent for collagen and so the mechanical, chemical and biochemical properties of crosslinked collagen materials were investigated. Fibroblast cells are important in the process of wound healing, so the interaction of human fibroblast cells with crosslinked collagen films were investigated as well.
Collagen I was isolated from bovine achilles tendons and collagen films were formed using the isolated collagen I solution. Collagen films were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (GA), genipin, hexamethylenediisocyanate (HMDC), 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide (EDC) at the equal concentration of 0.02 M and these crosslinked collagen films were compared with uncrosslinked collagen films (control).
The surfaces of the crosslinked films were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). There was observable fibre structure on GA- and genipin-crosslinked collagen films. The tensile strength, elongation at break and low strain modulus of the crosslinked collagen films were investigated. The results showed that GA-, genipin- and HMDC-crosslinked collagen films obtained higher tensile strength than the control. Elongation at break of all the crosslinked collagen films became lower than the control. GA- and genipin-crosslinked collagen films obtained higher low strain modulus than other crosslinked collagen films and the control. The denaturation temperatures of all crosslinked collagen films were significantly higher than the control and the denaturation temperatures of GA- and genipin-crosslinked films were much higher than those of HMDC- and EDC-crosslinked films. All the crosslinked collagen films were resistant to the digestion of collagenase. These results suggest that all the crosslinking agents are effective and GA- and genipin-crosslinked films obtained more extensive crosslinking.
The interaction of crosslinked collagen films with fibroblast cells was investigated, e.g. adhesion, proliferation and migration of fibroblast cells. The results demonstrated that the control, genipin- and EDC-crosslinked collagen films were conducive to cell adhesion. Fibroblast cells on the control, genipin- and EDC-crosslinked collagen films were able to proliferate after 24 hours, with increased growth after 48 hours. The fibroblast cells on the control, genipin- and EDC-crosslinked collagen films migrated directionally. The cells on genipin-crosslinked film initiated directional migration earlier than those on control- and EDC-crosslinked films.
In summary, genipin crosslinked collagen films show high denaturation temperature, higher tensile strength and good biocompatibility for fibroblast cells adhesion, proliferation and migration. Genipin should be regarded as a suitable crosslinking agent for reconstituted collagen for use in wound dressing.


Abstract This Article highlights that when procedural rules are legislated and there is substantial coordination between the executive and legislative branches, procedures with potential structural impact are weighted against alternative means of policymaking and implementation. This makes many Continental law countries, parliamentary countries, and countries governed by solid national majorities with substantial control over elected branches, and in general places where power is less fragmented, less likely to encourage American-style class actions. This is manifested in legislative choices of a private enforcement regime for class actions, which, when allowed, is designed to be subordinate to or to piggyback on the enforcement of preexisting bureaucracies. The theory is illustrated with the enactment of class actions in Chile, which is a civil law country that has experimented with class actions since 2004.


Earlier studies in The Gambia suggested that the use of impregnated bednets might prove to be a useful malaria control strategy. Based on the results of these studies, in 1992 the Government of The Gambia was encouraged to initiate a National Impregnated Bednet Programme (NIBP) as part of the National Malaria Control Programme Strategy. This paper describes the implementation process/procedure of the NIBP. Evaluation results showed that, overall, 83% of the bednets surveyed has been impregnated, and 77% of children under the age of five years and 78% of women of childbearing age were reported to be sleeping under impregnated bednets.


ABSTRACT Marine species of the oomycete genus Olpidiopsis that infect cultivated red macroalgae, most notably Pyropia spp., are one of the main causes of economic loss in the Asian seaweed industry. We recently described novel Olpidiopsis species infecting red algae in Scotland, and thus hypothesized that this genus is more abundant and widespread than previously recognized. Here, we show that the eukaryotic microbiome of macroscopically healthy Porphyra umbilicalis thalli frequently contains marker genes closely related to Olpidiopsis. Thanks to a custom pipeline that allows for de novo OTU and biogeography discovery, and the recovery of precomputed OTUs from large-scale metabarcoding campaigns, we unveil more than 20 unknown Olpidiopsis taxa with a worldwide distribution. Additionally, laboratory-controlled cross-infection experiments show that a Scottish variety of O. porphyrae is virulent on the most commonly cultivated Pyropia yezoensis cultivar in Korea and that conversely, a Korean strain of O. porphyrae successfully infects wild Bangia sp. strains isolated from Scotland. These results provide proof-of-concept that a native Olpidiopsis pathogen may threaten an introduced crop or that an Olpidiopsis pathogen potentially introduced alongside a non-native crop might cross-infect a native European alga. Thus, we draw parallels with several current biosecurity crises, where major risks to native floras and faunas, as well as crops, are caused by the inadvertent introduction of poorly known pathogens through the agricultural and horticultural trades. Therefore, we express concern that the rapid growth of algal cultivation worldwide, linked to international movement of seaweed seed and the absence of biosecurity monitoring or reulation pertaining to this trade, potentially lays the ground for grave ecological and economic crises in the marine environment.


We present a soliton modelocked Yb:YAG laser, which produces 1 ps pulses at 45 MHz repetition rate and 1.5 W average output power at a center wavelength of 1030 nm. The Yb:YAG crystal is pumped with a 40-W, 1-cm, high-power, low-brightness diode bar at 940 nm. Passive modelocking is initiated by a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror. We suppressed Q-switching instabilities by choosing the cavity and absorber parameters according to a previously developed theory.


This technical report is a compilation of several papers on the task of solving diagnostic problems with the help of topology preserving maps. It first reviews the application of Kohonen's Self- Organizing Feature Map (SOFM) for a technical diagnosis task, namely the fault detection in CNC-Machines with the KoDiag system [RW93], [RW94]. For emergent problems with coding attribute values, we then introduce fuzzy coding, similarity assignment and weight updating schemes for three crucial data types (continuous values, ordered and unordered symbols). These techniques result in a SOFM type network based on user defined local similarities, thus being able to incorporate a priori knowledge about the domain [Rah95].


It has been the authors' experience that the overwhelming majority of students in MBA derivatives courses go on to careers where a deep conceptual, rather than solely mathematical, understanding of products and models is required. The first edition of "Derivatives" looks to create precisely such a blended approach, one that is formal and rigorous, yet intuitive and accessible. The main body of this book is divided into six parts. Parts 1-3 cover, respectively, futures and forwards; options; and, swaps. Part 4 examines term-structure modeling and the pricing of interest-rate derivatives, while Part 5 is concerned with credit derivatives and the modeling of credit risk. Part 6 discusses computational issues.


The bilingual collection of poetry Tejiendo los sucesos en el tiempo/ Weaving Events in Time (2002) by Maya-Kaqchiquel writer and spiritual guide Calixta Gabriel Xiquin, is characterized by political denouncement to the social violence Mayas experienced during the Guatemalan (post)civil war period. (1) The poems root this violence and historical marginalization in colonial legacies that continue to exist in the country. These legacies also forcibly displace thousands of Guatemalans, including Gabriel Xiquin, to the United States. However, besides political denouncement, Tejiendo los sucesos en el tiempo/ Weaving Events in Time equally expresses and inscribes not only Maya cultural and spiritual practices, but also affirms another way of remembering and recording contemporary Guatemalan history. The book provides a public cultural record that is critical of official historical accounts. Calixta Gabriel Xiquin's text is a lyrical textile. Each of the seven sections, "Roots," "Uprooting," "Quest," "Taking the Word," "Refuge," "Testimony," and "The Return," encode the varied forms of physical, sexual, and epistemological violence historically waged against indigenous peoples in Guatemala. (2) All the sections denounce the established (neo) colonial systems that provide the foundation for transnational capitalism that exploits Mayas today. To counteract these systems, the text inverts (neo) colonialism by centralizing Maya culture and spirituality as important tools for resistance. Structurally, the language and use of free verse make the poems read like narratives that tell a story much like in the oral tradition. Many of the poems, like "Indian," "Writing," "The Walk of the Poor," and "Poem," read like personal, and spiritual conversations between members of the Maya community, outsiders, as well as with the spirits of Maya ancestors, the earth and heavens. Gabriel Xiquin's aesthetic style is one that Native American scholar, Janice Gould in "American Indian Women's Poetry: Strategies of Rage and Hope" (1995), describes as a shared element in indigenous writings: "Our poetry, as story and record, is part of the fabric of oral tradition, transliterated finally into the rhythms, structures, and techniques of contemporary verse. It is woven out of the life stories we tell one another, sometimes in tears, sometimes in rage, stories recollected, envisioned, and breathed into existence" (798). It is through these stories that Tejiendo los sucesos del tiempo/Weaving Events in Time articulates Maya cosmologies as a discourse that affirms Maya resistance and survival. Taking this context as a point of departure, in this article I analyze four poems, "Indian," "Writing," "The Walk of the Poor," and "Poem," to argue, first, the ways in which language and the production of Eurocentric knowledge in the West sustains the everyday systematic violence and marginalization of indigenous peoples. And second, I show how these colonial legacies are challenged through the appropriation of Spanish language to affirm Maya culture, history and spirituality. COLONIAL LEGACIES AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE In the poem "Indian," the violence of colonization is made visible by noting the ways in which colonialism continues to exist through the codification of language, as it is explicit in the title of the poem. It gives testimony to the everyday experience of Mayas in Guatemala where the term Indio is many times used in derogatory ways by non-indigenous Guatemalans to justify and establish racial hierarchies. (3) The adjective "Indian" is the first line for each of the ten stanzas. The repetition of the term underscores the visible presence of the concept in Guatemalan society. The denouncement becomes urgent, in the seventh stanza, particularly as the speaker lists the material conditions of Maya communities in Guatemala, where they are denied basic necessities like the right to formal education, medical attention and drinking water. …


Large-panel housing estates have become a permanent element in the landscape of numerous European towns and cities, especially in the eastern part of the continent. Initially, they evoked delight and gave hope for a better housing environment. Then their picture changed radically, when it turned out that in numerous cases they were becoming a place of spatial and social pathology. The search of solutions to the problem, and – depending on capacities – undertaking remedial measures – this is the next stage in their existence. Nevertheless, it pertains most of all to wealthier European states, with Germany being in the lead in this respect.
In Poland, such housing estates are still referred to as crisis areas, but so far no systematic approach to the improvement of their situation has been adopted. This could be changed by works undertaken predominanly in the second decade of the 21st century at the governmental level, devoted to an efficiently functioning system allowing for systematic revitalisation activities. In the context of housing estates, they can constitute a chance not only for the crisis elimination, but also for the creation of a high-quality housing environment, corresponding to new and constantly changing needs of the 21st-century society and complementary towards other housing structures of the city.
The goal of this paper is to present a synthesis of issues connected with the revitalisation of large-panel housing estates depending on their characteristics and conditions, which constitutes a case study upon the example of two housing estates located in Cracow. These problems are also demonstrated in the context of methods of improving of the quality and building of the continuity of urban public spaces using the potential offered by the space of open housing estates.


The electrooptical properties of single-walled carbon-nanotube (SWCNT) mixed liquid-crystal (LC) cells fabricated by rubbing and ion-beam (IB) process are investigated. The increase of SWCNT concentration in the LC mixture led to a decrease in the threshold voltage of twisted nematic cells by reducing the screening effect. Threshold voltages of 1.3 and 1.7 V are lowered to 0.8 and 1.2 V, respectively, with SWCNT mixtures up to 10×10-3 wt%. LC alignment characteristics including LC orientation state, transmittance spectra, pretilt angle, and thermal stability of LC cells are also observed.


Robert Arking's Biology of Aging, 3rd edition, is an introductory text to the biology of aging which gives advanced undergraduate and graduate students a thorough review of the entire field. His prior two editions have also served admirably as a reference text for clinicians and scientists. This new edition captures the extraordinary recent advances in our knowledge of the ultimate and proximal mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of aging. As a result, six important conceptual changes are included here: * Clarified distinctions between the biological mechanisms involved in longevity determination and those involved in senescent processes. * A new conceptual framework around which we can organize all the new facts about aging. This will assist readers to make sense of the information and use the data to form their own ideas. * Increased knowledge of aging cells has lead to new ideas on how a cell transits from a healthy state to a senescent state, while still allowing for high levels of intra- and inter-specific variability. * Discussion of senescent mechanisms assists the reader to understand that aging is a non-programmatic loss of function, likely arising from the loss of regulatory signals, and so is modifiable in the laboratory. * Because the standard evolutionary story does not fully explain the evolution of social organisms, this edition also includes recent work dealing with intergenerational resource transfers. * Lastly, if aging mechanisms are plastic, then the demand to move these anti-aging interventions into the human arena will inevitably grow. A discussion of the biological and ethical arguments on both sides of the question frames the question in an appropriate manner. The mass of data related to aging is summarized into fifteen focused chapters, each dealing with some particular aspect of the problem. The last two chapters integrate all this material into a coherent view of how the relevant biological processes change over the life span. This view is expressed in two non-technical figures (you might say that the whole book exists to fully support Figs 9-4 & 14-9), whose meanings are elucidated as the reader progresses through the book.


1. A study of the length, total weight and weight per cm of the small intestine of virgin, pregnant and lactating rats has provided evidence for an increase in intestinal surface area in pregnancy and lactation. 2. Because of such alterations in morphology of the gut the absorption, in vivo , of the substrates studied, glucose and glycine, has been expressed in terms of amount transferred per loop and also per g dry weight of intestine. 3. Using these parameters the results show that pregnancy does not alter the ability of the upper jejunum to absorb glucose and glycine. In lactation there is a significant decrease in the transfer of these substances when expressed per g dry weight of intestine, but not in absolute terms.


For the several years, primarily as a political ploy, the President and Republican Congress, proposed an amendment to the US Constitution to prohibit marriage between people of the same sex - the Federal Marriage Amendment. This article analyzed this proposed amendment in light of the constitutional principles that govern our society, individual rights, federalism, separation of powers, and judicial review. The article concludes that the FMA is itself constitutionally suspect and is more destructive, on balance, of the basic democratic constitutional principles than any amendment previously adopted or proposed. The amendment violates every tenet of constitutional democracy by: (1) expressly limiting the due process and equality interests of a minority group; (2) precluding the Supreme Court from fulfilling its role as the protector of individual rights; and, (3) foreclosing the states from experimenting with progressive laws designed to promote equality within an area uniquely reserved to the state governments.


A perennial challenge for criminal justice educators is deciding which reform movements in criminal justice are worthy of coverage. Restorative justice is one such new movement that has made significant inroads in both criminal justice policy and practice. In this article, we argue that there are numerous benefits to including coverage of restorative justice in a criminal justice curriculum. We also offer a number of concrete suggestions for helping students learn about this radically different approach to dealing with crime.


The production of high quality milk is a requirement to sustain a profitable dairy industry and somatic cell count (SCC) values are routinely used to identify subclinical mastitis and define quality standards. The objective of this paper is to review the use of SCC as a diagnostic tool for subclinical mastitis in order to improve milk quality on dairy farms. Mastitis is detected based on inflammation subsequent to intramammary infection (IMI) by pathogenic organisms. Individual cow SCC values are used to detect the inflammation that results from IMI and are necessary to define the prevalence and incidence of subclinical IMI. A threshold of <200,000 cells/mL is considered to be of the most practical value used to define a mammary quarter as healthy. The development of IMI is the most significant factor that influences milk SCC and assessment of monthly values to determine newly and chronically increased SCC can be highly diagnostic for resolving problems with increased bulk tank SCC. Methods to reduce the development of new IMI are well known and adoption of best management practices for milking and herd management have consistently been shown to result in reductions in bulk tank SCC. Implementation of mastitis control programmes can be improved by focusing on three practical recommendations: 1) Farmers should work with their advisors to develop an annual udder health plan that includes clear goals for milk quality. 2) The annual udder health plan should emphasise prevention of new IMI. 3) Farmers must identify and manage chronically infected cows. Proactive management of IMI can be extremely effective in helping farmers produce milk that meets industry standards for milk quality.


Maize has the highest potential yield and responds greatly to applied fertilizers especially in the irrigated conditions in Tamil Nadu. Phosphorus and sulphur are the major yield limiting factor after nitrogen in the study area- Sivagangai district of Tamil Nadu. Therefore, this study was initiated with the aim of increasing the yield of hybrid maize by optimizing the phosphorus and sulphur fertilizers in the farmer's field. The experiment was laid out in a Factorial Randomized Block Design replicated thrice with five levels of phosphorus viz., 0, 50, 75, 100, 125 kg P 2 O 5 per ha and five levels of sulphur viz., 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 kg S per ha. The results revealed that plant height, dry matter production, cob length, cob girth, the number of grains per cob and hundred grain weight were significantly increased with increased dose of P and S, and significantly higher at 125 kg P 2 O 5 per ha and 80 kg S per ha. Similarly, the maize grain yield was higher at 125 kg P 2 O 5 per ha (5964 kg per ha) and 80 kg S per ha (5035 kg per ha). Interaction of phosphorus and sulphur was additive with respect to growth and yield of maize.


Editor – As a plastic and reconstructive surgeon using laser for some considerable time, I could not agree more with the central core idea of Trelles's paper (pp. 237–241), that knowledge of laser-tissue or light-tissue interaction should be used to select ideal treatment parameters on a patient-by-patient basis and that a simplistic 'cook book' approach should be rejected. This of course applies to the treatment of other cutaneous anomalies as much as it does to rejuvenation of photoaged skin – perhaps even more so since, for example, we can often find differences in distribution, density and depth of blood vessels even within the same port wine stain. In such a case, the 'cook book' approach would often leave a patient with an 'after' which is actually worse than the 'before', if the same treatment parameters were applied uniformly over a non-homogeneous lesion. In previously published works by Trelles et al . 1,2 specifically on the use of the combined Er:YAG and CO 2 system for laser resurfacing, it is clear that the parameters he and his colleagues have evolved are based on the photobiological principles that govern the different tissue reactions to the Er:YAG and CO 2 laser wavelengths, whereby the optimal characteristics of wavelengths are applied. The fact that he then asks us to use a narrow range of parameters is not the same as suggesting another blanket 'cook book' approach but should rather be recognized as a valuable step towards standardized treatment parameters (and thus towards reducing the confusion engendered by the vast range of skin resurfacing parameters published elsewhere). In other words, the ' cook book ' approach involves the indiscriminate adoption of one set of parameters, despite differences in lesion size, density and location and indeed the skin type of the patient. Working with a set of standardized parameters , on the other hand, allows the clinician to individually tailor the treatment to the particular patient and their lesion but nevertheless to work within a comparatively narrow range of parameters (which have evolved based on the light/tissue interaction associated with the laser or lasers being used, the lesion being treated and the patient's skin type). Although this approach is particularly relevant for cutaneous lesions, it is equally applicable to skin resurfacing or rejuvenation. Working in Japan, I would like to emphasize, however, the essential difference between Caucasian and Asian skin, which of course includes the Japanese. 3 The former is well recognized as being very robust and resilient to laser-induced secondary hyperpigmentation, so that a comparatively aggressive approach can be applied in many patients. Japanese skin, on the other hand, while recognized as being remarkably tolerant to solar UV exposure, is paradoxically weaker to other exogenous insults, including laser treatment. Severe and long-lasting secondary hyperpigmentation may easily occur in Asians after laser treatment, if parameters suitable for Caucasians are used. I should like to ask Dr Trelles (and indeed any other readers) what parameters are recommended for this combined laser system in Japanese and other Asian patients, with particular regard to avoiding secondary hyperpigmentation.


Expression of TERT, the catalytic protein subunit of the telomerase complex, can be used to generate cell lines that expand indefinitely and retain multilineage potential. We have created immortal adipose stromal cell lines (ATSCs) by stably transducing nonhuman primate‐derived ATSCs with a retroviral vector expressing TERT. Transduced cells (ATSC‐TERT) had an increased level of telomerase activity and increased mean telomere length in the absence of malignant cellular transformation. Long‐term culture of the ATSC‐TERT cells demonstrated that the cells retain the ability to undergo differentiation along multiple lineages such as adipogenic, chondrogenic, and neurogenic. Untransduced cells demonstrated markedly reduced multilineage and self‐renewal potentials after 12 passages in vitro. To determine the functional role of telomerase during osteogenesis, we examined osteogenic differentiation potential of ATSC‐TERT cells in vitro. Compared with naive ATSCs, which typically begin to accumulate calcium after 3–4 weeks of induction by osteogenic differentiation medium, ATSC‐TERT cells were found to accumulate significant amounts of calcium after only 1 week of culture in osteogenic induction medium. The cells have increased production of osteoblastic markers, such as AP2, osteoblast‐specific factor 2, chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan 4, and the tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily, compared with control ATSCs, indicating that telomerase expression may aid in maintaining the osteogenic stem cell pool during in vitro expansion. These results show that ectopic expression of the telomerase gene in nonhuman primate ATSCs prevents senescence‐associated impairment of osteoblast functions and that telomerase therapy may be a useful strategy for bone regeneration and repair.


Inputs of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to lakes derived from the surrounding landscape can be stored, mineralized or passed to downstream ecosystems. The balance among these OC fates depends on a suite of physical, chemical, and biological processes within the lake, as well as the degree of recalcintrance of the allochthonous DOC load. The relative importance of these processes has not been well quantified due to the complex nature of lakes, as well as challenges in scaling DOC degradation experiments under controlled conditions to the whole lake scale. We used a coupled hydrodynamic-water quality model to simulate broad ranges in lake area and DOC, two characteristics important to processing allochthonous carbon through their influences on lake temperature, mixing depth and hydrology. We calibrated the model to four lakes from the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research site, and simulated an additional 12 'hypothetical' lakes to fill the gradients in lake size and DOC concentration. For each lake, we tested several mineralization rates (range: 0.001 d−1 to 0.010 d−1) representative of the range found in the literature. We found that mineralization rates at the ecosystem scale were roughly half the values from laboratory experiments, due to relatively cool water temperatures and other lake-specific factors that influence water temperature and hydrologic residence time. Results from simulations indicated that the fate of allochthonous DOC was controlled primarily by the mineralization rate and the hydrologic residence time. Lakes with residence times <1 year exported approximately 60% of the DOC, whereas lakes with residence times >6 years mineralized approximately 60% of the DOC. DOC fate in lakes can be determined with a few relatively easily measured factors, such as lake morphometry, residence time, and temperature, assuming we know the recalcitrance of the DOC.


For half a century, the Nonappropriated Fund Instrumentality (NAFI) doctrine has shielded certain federally created entities from suit, holding that they are immune from suit in state and district court because they retain some of the sovereign immunity of the United States, but, unlike arms of the United States, may not be sued in the United States Court of Federal Claims. In the absence of a list of known NAFIs, courts apply an ad hoc test to determine, as a factual matter, whether an entity is a NAFI and, as such, immune from suit. This often leaves government contractors without legal redress against entities that breach their contractual obligations, even when these entities hold themselves out to be agencies of the United States and purport to conduct business in accordance with the federal acquisition regulations.In its recent Lion Raisins decision, the Federal Circuit, the court which is essentially the final word on issues related to the law of government contracting, addressed the NAFI doctrine, taking up what courts and legal commentators agree is an unjust anomaly in the law. However, rather than resolving the uncertainty created by the NAFI doctrine, the court introduced a new layer of complexity by holding, for the first time, that the United States Court of Federal Claims has jurisdiction over claims for an uncompensated Fifth Amendment taking of property, but not a breach of contract, brought against a NAFI.This article critiques the distinction introduced by the Federal Circuit in Lion Raisins, examining the history and logic of the NAFI doctrine and the precedent underpinning the court's recent NAFI decisions. This article concludes by offering a new test for resolving the anomaly created by the NAFI doctrine, drawing on agency principles to construct a coherent NAFI jurisprudence for breaches of contract and Fifth Amendment takings alike.


The world has been aging, and technology has been advancing. Increasing popula- tion and chronic diseases indicate that importance of home care will continue. Many important chronic diseases in the world-such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), hemodialysis and heart failure-affect the daily life and quality of life of the individual negatively. The patient needs help and support from the caregiver in many ways, such as using medicines, maintaining health checks, and maintaining daily living activities. In particular, in the home care process of the disease, there are difficulties in the physical, social, emotional and economical areas for both individuals and caregivers. Through the role of educator, the nurse can help to share the burden of care with family members, to give equal responsibility for each individual in the family and to plan the care period.


As fundamental components of a language, words are essential for successful language learning. Vocabulary learning strategies thus become a vital important field to be focused on. This investigation is based on the framework of O' Malley and Chamot' s (1990) taxonomy about language learning strategies, which include metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social/affective strategies. This study aims at studying the relationship between students' attitudes toward vocabulary learning, their vocabulary learning strategies and their vocabulary level. The participants of this study are fifty English majors from a university in China. A vocabulary test and a questionnaire are used so as to collect data from the investigated students. Finally, this study generates the following results: (1) the students hold a neutral attitude toward vocabulary learning, and they believe vocabulary learning sometimes is interesting, but sometimes not; (2) the students adopt all the three strategies, but cognitive strategies are most frequently used; (3) the correlation analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between the students' attitudes and their strategy use, the strategy use and their vocabulary level; (4) the successful learners are more positive as regards English vocabulary learning, and adopt learning strategies more frequently than less successful learners. Based on the findings of the investigation, some pedagogical implications are provided to suggest teachers encourage and help students to hold an active and positive attitude toward English learning, and introduce more learning strategies to promote the students' English acquisition.


Two of the three processes making up the deformation mechanism of intergranular pressure solution, being dissolution and diffusion, take place in the grain boundary fluid phase. Hence, the structure and physical properties of wet grain boundaries under stress can be expected to influence the kinetics of both dissolution and diffusion, as a result of effects such as molecular structuring of the fluid film, the grain boundary surface area available for dissolution, the dissipation of energy otherwise available for driving dissolution/diffusion by other processes operating in the grain boundary, and expulsion of fluids from the grain boundary by surface energy driven grain boundary healing. Despite recent interest and experimental studies, the properties of fluid-filled grain boundaries, such as the fluid film thickness and contact roughness, are not well-constrained, especially in quartz. As a result of this poor understanding of grain boundary structures and processes, dissolution and diffusion kinetics in grain boundaries undergoing pressure solution are not well quantified. Quantification of these kinetics is crucial for the prediction of pressure solution rates in for instance fault gouges and sedimentary basins using theoretical rate models. The work presented in this thesis concentrates on investigating the structure of fluid-filled grain boundaries in geological materials undergoing pressure solution and the influence of this structure on pressure solution kinetics. In situ electrical resistivity measurements made on halite-glass and halite-halite contacts undergoing pressure solution showed that crystallographic orientation influences grain boundary structure and that contact type and relative misorientation have a significant effect on contact evolution. Models are presented that describe the effects of grain boundary structure and of plastic deformation of contact points in a rough (island-channel type) grain boundary on dissolution controlled pressure solution rates. When applied to quartz, these models show that, whereas grain boundary structure has negligible influence on dissolution rates, microscale plastic deformation at grain boundary islands could slow down pressure solution considerably. Another model is presented that predicts the onset of surface energy driven healing of a grain boundary with an island-channel structure when contact normal stresses fall below a critical stress, or "yield stress", offering an explanation for the cessation of pressure solution in nature and experiment at low effective stresses. A second suite of experiments investigated the structure and diffusive properties of grain boundaries in silicate materials undergoing pressure solution, using electrical impedance spectroscopy on single glass-glass and glass-quartz contacts under hydrothermal conditions. Cracking and irregular dissolution on and around the contacts likely influenced the resulting grain boundary diffusivity and fluid film thickness estimates, but post-mortem study of the contacts formed did show that these contacts were rough. Finally, a set of isostatic compaction experiments performed on quartz aggregates, with special focus on investigating grain boundary structures and processes, showed that during quartz pressure solution at temperatures in the range 300-600C, dissolution in rough grain boundaries is the most likely rate controlling mechanism, and that cracking is an important mechanism for creating and maintaining contact roughness. Furthermore, evidence was found for limited plasticity at high stress grain contacts.


Design of experiments and estimation of treatment effects in large-scale networks, in the presence of strong interference, is a challenging and important problem. Most existing methods' performance deteriorates as the density of the network increases. In this paper, we present a novel strategy for accurately estimating the causal effects of a class of treatments in a dense large-scale network. First, we design an approximate randomized controlled experiment by solving an optimization problem to allocate treatments in the presence of competition among neighboring nodes. Then we apply an importance sampling adjustment to correct for any leftover bias (from the approximation) in estimating average treatment effects. We provide theoretical guarantees, verify robustness in a simulation study, and validate the scalability and usefulness of our procedure in a real-world experiment on a large social network.


Unemployment persistence

George S. Alogoskoufis and Alan Manning

A comparison of unemployment across fourteen European countries, Japan and the US shows a great diversity of persistence: high in most of Europe outside the Scandinavian countries, Austria and Switzerland, low in Japan and the US.

Three reasons for unemployment persistence are examined. First, employed workers may not care about the unemployed, and only wish to protect their own jobs. The authors find little support for this view, except perhaps in the US. Second, workers may be reluctant to revise downward their wage aspirations. This seems to be the case in Europe, as opposed to the US and Japan. Third, firms may be slow in adjusting employment to its optimum level. This is the case in Europe and Japan, not in the US.

Labour market reforms might help, but have their own costs. The authors conclude that the best course of actions is a demand expansion combined with incomes policies.


Introduction: Otitis media is one of the most common diseases in children. It is believed that gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a predisposing factor in most upper respiratory tract problems including pharyngoesophagitis, croup, oropharyngeal adenophagia, rhinosinusitis, and otitis media. The probable role of H.pylori in otitis media with effusion (OME) was investigated in this study.
Methods: Fresh stool specimens and serum samples from 40 children with OME were analyzed with antigen in stool and antibody in serum. The effusion samples were taken and analyzed using rapid urease test (RUT) and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).
Results: RUT was positive in 13 (32.5%) patients and PCR was positive in 15 (37.5%) patients. Ag in stool was positive in 27 (67.5%) and Ab in serum was positive 21 (52.5%).
Conclusion: The presence of H.pylori in the middle ear effusion and stool indicates that this bacterium might be involved in the pathogenesis of OME.


Established wildlife populations in periurban environments provide an opportunity to spread zoonotic pathogens within human-associated environments. Characteristics of prevalent pathogens harboured by periurban wild dogs suggest that dietary preference could influence their infection status; however, data comparing diet composition and pathogen presence are rarely available. We analysed the stomach contents of 170 periurban wild dogs (Canis familiaris) for the occurrence and biomass of prey items, and then associated this with their known infection status of key zoonotic pathogens. The staple prey items detected were mammalian prey species, most commonly swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor) (20.6±6.1%), canines (C. familiaris) (prey) (10.6±4.6%), eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) (10.0±4.5%), and deer (various species) (10.0±4.5%). Unidentified bird species (10.0±4.5%) were also common. Wild dogs that were positive for Echinococcus granulosus were significantly more likely to have consumed swamp wallabies. These findings demonstrate the importance of managing both the definitive and intermediate stages of E. granulosus, and suggest that diet correlates with pathogen presence in some cases. This information may assist the development of specific strategies to manage zoonotic pathogens of wild dogs, which are currently lacking.


How do designers of interactive media work on the dynamic aspects of their designs? Previous research has emphasised the role of gestures to express what users and computers do. This paper contributes with a detailed analysis of interaction design master students' enactments. Two kinds of enactive means for expressing behaviour are identified: interaction walkthroughs and improvised role play.


Germination requirements of seeds can dictate when and where plant offspring establish. Microsites available for germination vary spatially and temporally in factors such as temperature and moisture; thus the production of seeds with identical requirements may limit germination. When seed mass influences germination and offspring establishment the production of seeds with a range of sizes encourages differential behavior in progeny. Seed heteromorphism the production of two or more seed types with different forms and/or behaviors by the same plant may be "cryptic" when seed types have different behaviors but similar morphologies. Although rarely documented cryptic seed heteromorphism may be widespread among plant taxa. The production by a plant of seeds with variable mass or heteromorphism may increase the number of microsites favorable for germination. I investigated seed mass variation and seed heteromorphism in Packera tomentosa (Michx.) C. Jeffrey (woolly ragwort Asteraceae) a clonal plant found in disturbed habitats in the coastal plain of the southeastern U.S. Like most members of the Asteraceae P. tomentosa displays flowering heads that contain disc and ray florets which produce central and peripheral seeds respectively. Seeds were collected from 50 purported clones of P. tomentosa at East Carolina University's West Research Campus (WRC) Pitt County North Carolina. Seed mass was compared among- and within-genetic individuals as well as between floret types of a flowering head. Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) profiles confirmed that all 50 clones were unique genetic individuals or "genets" verifying that seedling recruitment does occur in this population of P. tomentosa. I compared total mass and allocation to the embryo and pericarp between central and peripheral seeds. An initial study investigated germinability and speed of germination for both seed types in controlled conditions. I then tested the germination response of central and peripheral seeds to frequent intermediate and infrequent watering intervals. A final study determined whether germination speed or success of central and peripheral seeds was influenced by aging and/or cold stratification. Overall seed mass of Packera tomentosa was highly variable among- and within-plants. Larger seeds exhibited faster higher germination. Central and peripheral seeds did not have different morphologies but differed in mass characteristics and germination. Central seeds were 11% heavier with 80% larger embryos than were peripheral seeds whereas peripheral seeds allocated 17% more of total mass to the fruit coat than did central seeds. Differences in total mass between seed types appear to be driven by embryo size. Central seeds germinated at a higher proportion than did peripheral seeds (74.5 vs. 36.0% respectively) and germinated faster than peripheral seeds (32.8 vs. 36.2 d respectively). Differences in germination may be due to pericarp thickness or embryo size. Central seeds exhibited greater germination success in frequent and infrequent watering intervals but not in the intermediate watering interval. Both seeds types showed lowest germination in response to infrequent watering suggesting germination success decreases in drought conditions. Germination speed increased in central seeds following aging; thus central seeds after-ripen. In contrast peripheral seeds germinated faster after cold stratification suggesting they delay germination and are stimulated by cooler temperatures. Cryptic seed heteromorphism occurs in Packera tomentosa supporting the suggestion that this trait may be more common than is documented particularly in the Asteraceae. In P. tomentosa variation in germination behavior resulting from seed mass variation and seed heteromorphism may spread the risks associated with germination among many offspring phenotypes potentially functioning as bet-hedging strategies and providing success in the unpredictable environments this species inhabits.


Water scarcity has intensified in northeast Brazil over the past decade. The same period has brought economic growth, aggressive government-funded social support programmes, and technological advancements. These latter factors have led to widespread, successful, and largely unintended adaptation to increasing climatic stress. With specific focus on the experience of irrigated farmers in Pernambuco during the 2011–2013 drought, the worst in a half century, in this article, we examine how Brazil's societal changes have led to the emergence of unique climate adaptation strategies. To put this into context, income diversification, particularly in the form of employment in clothing production, provides a stable back-up income for farmers amidst environmental uncertainty. Aggressive poverty alleviation programmes, foundational to the presidential administrations of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, have had the spillover benefit of decreasing climate vulnerability. Efficient irrigation technology, which farmers have adopted primarily in an effort to decrease erosion and labour needs, saves water and decreases drought vulnerability. In summary, we find that the study area serves as a global example that economic, political, and social developments not aimed at climate adaptation can inadvertently facilitate it and decrease drought vulnerability.


Since the publication in 1908 of the "Catalogue systematique des Mollusques" by R. HORST and M. M. SCHEPMAN, the collection of 's Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie has attained a not unimportant extension, so that since long this catalogue is no more up to date. After the revision of the genus Bursa, which resulted into the addition to the collection of a great deal of hitherto unidentified material and which brought about several changes in the catalogue, it seemed necessary to me, to edit a new catalogue of this genus, and it is my intention to publish such a list every time when a new part of the collection has been revised. In order to give this catalogue a more general value, I have included as far as possible, all the true species of Bursa which are mentioned in literature, also those of which we do not possess any material in the Leyden Museum, moreover I added the commonly used synonyma. In the classification of the species I followed principally the systems proposed by A. H. COOKE and W. H. DALL. All the revised material is written on a card-catalogue, in which the specimens from the same locality and collector, as far as they are kept dry, bear the same letter; concerning the material preserved in liquor the number of the bottle is given instead. I have inserted these letters or numbers in the list below, followed by a number indicating how many specimens we possess from that locality. After the localities the names of the collectors are mentioned, in cases when the locality or the name of the collector is unknown I have put an interrogation mark. Genus Bursa Bolten, 1798. Ranella Lamarck, 1812.


Interactive navigable 3D visualisations of built and natural environments have become commonplace in design and planning of urban environments and landscapes, and are regarded as potent prototyping and communication tools. In training applications, for instance for fire fighters, virtual environments displayed on desktop monitors or on projection screens are used to represent situations and scenarios that cannot be created in the real world for reasons of safety, cost, and time. A valid simulated environment should induce not only a cognitive, but also an emotional response in the observer equivalent to the response to the real environment. For visualisations, this means that viewers experience the 'ambience' of a place as they would in the real environment. In training environments and serious games, the emotional response of the trainee to the virtual scenario should be similar to the response in a real, often stressful, situation. A common assumption is that the highest possible level of photorealism ensures a valid representation. However, the focus in the development of virtual environments is on spatial tasks or other cognitive tasks, not on the affective qualities of an environment. The virtual environments do not contain the required information for that purpose, which can be visual, but also of other sensory modalities (audio, tactile and olfactory). In eight empirical studies (lab experiments and field studies) we examined factors in the content and representation of the virtual environment, and factors related to user characteristics, and their effects on the emotional response of users. We found that when users appraise a virtual environment they do not distinguish between their appraisals of the represented environment, of the representation, and of their pre-existing individual mental representations. The mental representation fills in more information than the user is aware of. The user's emotional state, induced by other factors than the virtual environment, such as cybersickness, may influence the appraisal of the virtual environment. The absence of personal involvement, factors that diminish the perceived (graphics and audio) quality of the 3D environment, and factors that distract the attention of the user, attenuate the impact of cues and thereby the intensity of the emotional response. The importance of personal involvement and the context of use of a visualisation or a virtual training for their validity are generally underestimated. We discern three categories of features of real environments, relating to spatial layout and functionality, to the meaning and function of elements of the environment, and ambient conditions, that can be used to guide the modeling process. We developed a comprehensive framework containing factors (such as features of the environment, representational modifiers and response moderators) that influence and modify the appraisal process in virtual environments, that can be used for measuring emotional responses in virtual environments. We complete our research with guidelines for the development and use of desktop virtual environments for visualisations and training applications


Central banks have recently introduced new policy initiatives, including a policy called 'Quantitative Easing' (QE). Since it has been argued by the Bank of England that "Standard economic models are of limited use in these unusual circumstances, and the empirical evidence is extremely limited" (Bank of England, 2009b), we have taken an entirely empirical approach and have focused on the QE-experience, on which substantial data is available, namely that of Japan (2001-2006). Recent literature on the effectiveness of QE has neglected any reference to final policy goals. In this paper, we adopt the view that ultimately effectiveness will be measured by whether it will be able to "boost spending" (Bank of England, 2009b) and "will ultimately be judged by their impact on the wider macroeconomy" (Bank of England, 2010). In line with a widely held view among leading macroeconomists from various persuasions, while attempting to stay agnostic and open-minded on the distribution of demand changes between real output and inflation, we have thus identified nominal GDP growth as the key final policy goal of monetary policy. The empirical research finds that the policy conducted by the Bank of Japan between 2001 and 2006 makes little empirical difference while an alternative policy targeting credit creation (the original definition of QE) would likely have been more successful. JEL Classification: E41, E52, E58


Coal fly ash (CFA) derived synthetic zeolites have become popular with recent advances and its ever-expanding range of applications, particularly as an adsorbent for water and gas purification and as a binder or additive in the construction industry and agriculture. Among these applications, perpetual interest has been in utilization of CFA derived synthetic zeolites for removal of heavy metals from wastewater. We herein focus on utilization of locally available CFA for efficient adsorption of mercury from wastewater. To this end, experimental conditions were investigated so that to produce synthetic zeolites from Kazakhstani CFAs with conversion into zeolite up to 78%, which has remarkably high magnetite content. In particular, the effect of synthesis reaction temperature, reaction time, and loading of adsorbent were systematically investigated and optimized. All produced synthetic zeolites and the respective CFAs were characterized using XRD, XRF, PSA and porosimetric instruments to obtain microstructural and mineralogical data. Furthermore, the synthesized zeolites were studied for the removal of mercury from aqueous solutions. A comparison of removal eficiency and its relationship to the physical and chemical properties of the synthetic zeolites were analyzed and interpreted.


We consider the problem of training speech recognition systems without using any labeled data, under the assumption that the learner can only access to the input utterances and a phoneme language model estimated from a non-overlapping corpus. We propose a fully unsupervised learning algorithm that alternates between solving two sub-problems: (i) learn a phoneme classifier for a given set of phoneme segmentation boundaries, and (ii) refining the phoneme boundaries based on a given classifier. To solve the first sub-problem, we introduce a novel unsupervised cost function named Segmental Empirical Output Distribution Matching, which generalizes the work in (Liu et al., 2017) to segmental structures. For the second sub-problem, we develop an approximate MAP approach to refining the boundaries obtained from Wang et al. (2017). Experimental results on TIMIT dataset demonstrate the success of this fully unsupervised phoneme recognition system, which achieves a phone error rate (PER) of 41.6%. Although it is still far away from the state-of-the-art supervised systems, we show that with oracle boundaries and matching language model, the PER could be improved to 32.5%.This performance approaches the supervised system of the same model architecture, demonstrating the great potential of the proposed method.


The use of spiral links for preventing diagonal failures in beams will enable designers to utilise transverse reinforcement geometry for a better confinement effect. However, to develop such model it is essential that better understanding of the actual structural behaviour of beams with different transverse shear reinforcement configuration is reached. This can be achieved by looking further into the concepts of shear transfer mechanisms and by investigating the influence of the spiral geometry on the level of shear contribution. This paper provides an analytical method based on equilibrium of sectional analysis for predicting the shear load capacity and the mode of failure for beams reinforced with spiral links under different spiral configurations.


A marking menu is designed to allow a user to perform a menu selection by either popping-up a radial (or pie) menu, or by making a straight mark in the direction of the desired menu item without popping-up the menu. Previous evaluations in laboratory settings have shown the potential of marking menus. This paper reports on a case study of user behavior with marking menus in a real work situation. The study demonstrates the following: First, marking menus are used as designed. When users become expert with the menus, marks are used extensively. However, the transition to using marks is not one way. Expert users still switch back to menus to refresh their memory of menu layout. Second, marking is an extremely efficient interaction technique. Using a mark on average was 3.5 times faster than selection using the menu. Finally, design principles can be followed that make menu item/mark associations easier to learn, and interaction efficient.


This thesis studies the encounter of the local and the foreign in Davao, a region in the southern Philippines, during the first half of the twentieth century. Davao, under American rule, was a multi-layered contact zone where local peoples met and interacted with foreigners and their market systems, and appropriated and consumed their manufactured goods and ideas.

Divided into three parts, the thesis begins with how the indigenous world dealt with Spain and the United States at the turn of the century. It explores how the idea of the frontier, and its progress and development, as conceived by the Americans in their westward movement was carried over to an area of Mindanao being settled by a Filipino majority co-residing with other nationalities, including Spanish, American, British, Chinese, and Lebanese people, as well as a significant Japanese population.

Abaca, the crop from which cordage fiber was produced, lured these diverse peoples to Davao. Consequently, utilizing a commodity-based approach, the second part of the thesis investigates how Davao's mono-crop economy and frontier was developed by plantations producing this export commodity. The plantations transformed Davao from what was regarded by the colonial regime as an isolated "backwater" comprised of small coastal villages to a thriving agricultural and commercial center, supplying the United States, Britain and Japan's demand for abaca. In the process, new production techniques and marketing methods evolved by combining traditional practices with modern technologies on a developing resource frontier.

The third part examines the cosmopolitan character of Davao through material exchanges and personal encounters, providing a social and cultural dimension to history. In the same way that the multinational population of Davao appropriated imported goods through the sensory experiences of taste, sight, sound and touch, their day-to-day interactions with one another also transformed existing cultures, giving rise to new cultural forms and practices. What arose from these encounters of mentalities, economies, and material life is a history and culture that was both cosmopolitan and, ultimately, distinctly Filipino.


This paper uses new micro data from the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) to examine the gender gaps across the distribution of wages in Ukraine during communism (1986), the start of transition (1991), and after Ukraine started to be considered a market economy (2003). We find that the gender pay gap is higher in the top half of the distribution than at the bottom half and that this 'glass ceiling' is persistent across the three points in time, while the wage floor rose for women in 2003. Closer inspection of two sectors – the private and the public – reveals the striking finding that the glass ceiling is lower in the public than in the private sector but the floor is the same. We use the Machado and Mata (2004) method to create counterfactuals that advance our knowledge of which factors are driving these differences; we find that the differences in men's and women's rewards (?s) rather than differences in their productive characteristics (Xs) explain most of the wage gap throughout the distribution. The different ceilings in the public and private sectors are largely due to differences in men's and women's productive characteristics, which favor men in the public and women in the private sector. The fall in the gender gap in the lower part of the distribution from 1986 to 2003 is explained partially by the improvement in women's productive characteristics and partially by the worsening in men's rewards in the bottom half of the distribution over time. However, probably the most important reason for the reduction in the gap at the bottom of the distribution over time is that the value of the minimum wage was set relatively high in 2003 and it raised the wage floor for more women than men.


The emplacement of igneous material into upper crustal rocks of sedimentary basins is likely to be strongly controlled by the geometry of the pre-existing basin structures. These controls are investigated using examples from the Tertiary igneous complexes of Skye, part of the Sea of Hebrides basin of NW Scotland. The basin consists of an array of half-graben related to SE-dipping normal faults. These pre-volcanic, Mesozoic structures are traced near the igneous complexes using geological relationships preserved unconformably beneath the widespread basaltic lava fields. The unconformity represents a period of Cretaceous uplift and denudation of the basin and its flanks, entirely pre-dating the Tertiary volcanism of NW Scotland. This unconformity seals stratigraphically the major basin faults, preserving field relationships that permit the tracing of these faults in the country rocks to the Tertiary intrusions. The major Camasunary fault is separated from the Raasay fault via a series of minor graben, linked by a series of steep, NW–SE-trending faults that transfered Mesozoic displacements between the principal fault strands. A broad range of igneous material of various compositions was intruded into part of the Mesozoic Sea of Hebrides basins and their flanks during Palaeocene times. Different emplacement styles and different structural controls are found. The major gabbroic centres do not appear to be controlled by upper crustal structures, having been emplaced into the footwalls of major faults. However, minor synmagmatic displacements on the basin faults may have been sufficient to generate dilatational sites in these footwall positions, thereby facilitating emplacement. In contrast, the granitic melts have been emplaced as sheets and domed into the sediments and overlying lava pile, reactivating segments of the basin fault network. Doming occurred from an array of sills, the stratigraphic levels of which can be reconstructed using structural relationships preserved in the roofs and walls of the intrusions. The sill levels and their transgressive forms are strongly related to inferred Mesozoic basin structures. The major fold structures of Tertiary age in southern Skye are interpreted as accommodating granitic emplacement rather than crustal shortening. The NW-SE Mesozoic transfer fault trend appears to have strongly influenced the segmentation of the granite domes. These interpretations are illustrated using field relationships mapped in the vicinity of the Coire Uaigneich granophyre. It is concluded that although the higher parts of the basin faults were reactivated to facilitate the doming of granitic intrusions, the deeper levels of the Mesozoic faults show no evidence of substantial reactivation.


Abstract Ablative targets for the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) have been fabricated by sputter coating spherical mandrels made of glow discharge polymer (GDP) with graded copper doped beryllium (Be) layers. The inner mandrel must be completely removed to meet specific ignition design requirements. The process of removing the mandrel requires elevated temperature in the presence of oxygen. However, elevating the temperature in air also oxidizes the Be and can cause blistering on the inner surface of the Be shell. This paper will discuss a refined technique, which removes the GDP mandrel without compromising the integrity of the inner Be surface. The oxygen gradient that develops during the mandrel removal and the impact of its presence will also be discussed.


Neutrophils are implicated in many inflammatory lung disorders. However, the mechanisms regulating neutrophil migration in acute lung inflammation are incompletely understood. Although, integrin β2 mediates neutrophil migration in lungs in response to many stimuli such as E. coli, integrin involved in S. pneumoniae induced neutrophil migration is not known. Therefore, the role of integrin αvβ3 in neutrophil recruitment was tested. First, it was found that the number of neutrophils expressing the integrin subunits αv and β3 is reduced or remains in lung inflammation induced by E. coli or S. pneumoniae, respectively. Next, the role of integrin αvβ3 using β3 knockout mice (β3) and function blocking antibodies was addressed. Neutrophil recruitment did not vary between wild type and β3 mice. Although β3 antibodies reduced neutrophil recruitment, similar effect was observed with isotype antibodies. Therefore, one can conclude that integrin αvβ3 is not critical for neutrophil recruitment in S. pneumoniae induced pneumonia. Apart from integrins, TLR4 also regulate neutrophil migration. Because, the pattern of TLR4 expression at various times of lung inflammation is not known, TLR4 expression during different phases of lung inflammation in a rat model of LPS-induced inflammation was studied. TLR4 expression in the septum increased and decreased at 6h and 12-36h of inflammation, respectively. Since these correlate with the time of increase and decline of neutrophil recruitment, the findings support previously observed requirement for TLR4 in neutrophil recruitment. Neutrophils recruited into the lungs regulate the inflammatory process by controlling subsequent monocyte/macrophage recruitment. The mechanisms involved and the pattern of monocyte/macrophage recruitment in lungs are not completely understood. Therefore, the possible involvement of monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, which is a premier chemokine in monocyte/macrophage migration and produced by neutrophils and other cells was tested. This was addressed by quantification of monocytes/macrophages at various times and using neutrophil depletion experiments in LPS-induced lung inflammation in rats. It was found that monocytes/macrophages migrate very early and before neutrophils in addition to their migration in the late phase of acute lung inflammation. Neutrophil depletion abrogated both early as well as the late monocyte/macrophage recruitment without altering the expression of MCP-1. Therefore, possibly other chemokines and not MCP-1 are involved in neutrophil dependent monocyte/macrophage recruitment. To conclude, the experiments further the understanding on acute lung inflammation by ruling-out the involvement of integrin αvβ3 and MCP-1 in β2-independent neutrophil migration and neutrophil dependent monocyte/macrophage recruitment, respectively. Further studies are essential to find the integrins and chemokines operating in the above situations. Equally important will be to understand the functional significance of early recruited monocytes/macrophages in the lung.


Background and Purpose— We aimed to investigate the safety and efficacy of the Push and Fluff technique (PFT) as compared with the standard unsheathing technique for closed-cell stent retrievers in acute ischemic stroke. Methods— Acute ischemic stroke thrombectomy database was analyzed (September 2010 to January 2015) with the Trevo Retriever as a primary strategy. The PFT was compared with our internal standard unsheathing technique and with the Trevo Versus Merci Retrievers for Thrombectomy Revascularization of Large Vessel Occlusions in Acute Ischemic Stroke 2 (TREVO2) trial. Additionally, a silicon flow model was used to compare cell size/configuration, wall apposition/device diameter, and degree of foreshortening/device length across the 2 techniques. Results— One hundred fifty-one out of 662 patients qualified for the study. The PFT (n=71) was associated with higher rates of first-pass reperfusion (54% versus 35%, P=0.03; 54% versus 32.6%, P<0.01), lower number of passes (1.3±0.8 versus 1.8±1.0, P<0.01; 1.7±1.0 versus 2.4±1.6, P<0.01), and higher rates of modified treatment in cerebral ischemia-3 reperfusion (58% versus 40%, P=0.03; 58% versus 14%, P<0.01) as compared with the standard unsheathing technique (n=81) and the TREVO2 Trevo arm (n=88), respectively. No differences in hemorrhagic complications were observed across the groups. The in vitro model indicated that, compared with standard unsheathing technique, PFT resulted in improved wall apposition (device diameter, 75% larger) and cell size (mean area, 51% larger) at the cost of a mild degree of foreshortening (25% length reduction). Conclusions— The PFT is safe and leads to optimization of wall apposition and cell size/configuration, resulting in higher chances of first-pass reperfusion, lower number of passes, and better rates of complete reperfusion.


This well-documented study of the Roman army provides a crucial aid to understanding the Roman Empire in economic, social and political terms. Employing numerous examples, Brian Campbell explores the development of the Roman army and the expansion of the Roman Empire from 31 BC-280 AD. When Augustus established a permanent, professional army, this implied a role for the Emperor as a military leader. Warfare and Society in Imperial Rome examines this personal association between army and emperor, and argues that the Emperor's position as commander remained much the same for the next 200 years.


The first computer-assisted Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) was performed in 1997. The FDA approved computer assisted knee arthroplasty systems used in the early 2000s. Since then, surgeons and institutions all over the world have gradually adopted the technology. While the computer holds an importance place in the majority of workspaces across all industries, computer-assisted surgical technique has yet to become the preferred tool of the orthopaedic surgeon. Why has "e-instrumentation" not yet substituted conventional instrumentation in TKA orthopaedic surgery? In this article, we argue that main reasons which oppose the use of this technology are based on inaccurate or misleading observations. We isolated the factors likely to explain such opposition to this innovation: current results of total knee replacement, surgeon age, operative time, system ergonomics, cost for users, and cost for suppliers and "disruptive" innovations. Other factors such as surgeon habits, hospital environment and available assistance for support, although relevant, are not discussed. We assessed the advantages and drawbacks, costs and benefits of this technology to assess whether or not this opposition is justified. Finally, we explored the reasons why such a technology may impel surgeons to use this technique or any "related technologies" in the future. The main factors limiting TKA navigation spreading amongst orthopaedic surgeons are ergonomics and economics. Other factors, such as current TKA outcomes and surgeon's age are fallacious arguments in the rebuttal of CAS system use. Computer assisted knee arthroplasty surgery is not yet mainstream, but TKA will not escape technological progress.


The idea of economic security is placed into a debate about the nature of the relationship between political structure of international (in) order and economic structure of the world market. The main contradiction of the relationship creates differing views about which has primacy in this relationship: the state and society or the market, and whether individual economic actors may be entitled to the protection of the functioning of the market The global financial crisis is inevitable economic and security implications for NATO and its Member States. Two priorities are especially important for NATO-reducing defense costs and legal extracting lessons from the crisis. The economic crisis has replaced terrorism as the primary security concern in the near future. "The crisis frightening resembles to the terrorist attack. In order to destabilize the country, the terrorists typically use a limited destruction of lives and property as you would a massive economic and social costs. Jeopardizing the basic financial or physical infrastructure (e.g. transport, energy, communications links) January terrorists force the Government and people of defensive action. The frightened consumers are withdrawn from the market stopping the economic growth and giving thus contributing to unemployment and political instability. Otherwise the first moment when the idea Macedonia to join NATO appeared, public debate was focused on political and military aspects of the issue. In addition to political and security, joining the most powerful political-military alliance of the Republic of Macedonia will bring many economic benefits especially in the 'посттрецисски' period include the Republic of Macedonia. Membership of NATO alliance countries that joined the union brought this expansion of foreign investments and in some countries, they tripled. This paper examines the economic dimensions of future membership of Macedonia and other countries of Southeastern Europe in NATO. He is scheduled to make proposals that would guidelines presented a plan for future action in connection with NATO enlargement: how to be supported by the business and be used for general benefit of business environments and society as a whole. Set the basic aspects of the economic dimension of enlargement of NATO in Southeast Europe: The link between security and safety and trade union amid economic crisis; economic role of  modernization of the military - the defense sector; impact on military industry and particularly on the civilian sectors of industry and the overall economy. Keywords: economics, security, jobs, foreign investment, NATO